Ten of the Best (3 page)

We sat there gawping, absorbed but waiting for the climax: that first glimpse of the summit which would silence poor Piggo once and for all, and he was impatient too, confident we’d see his uncle’s flag and be forced to eat our words. It was a longish film, but presently the highest camp was left behind and we were seeing shaky footage of Tensing: ‘Tiger,’ the press would soon christen him, inching upward against the brilliant snow, and of Hillary, filmed by the Sherpa. We were getting occasional glimpses of the peak too, over somebody’s labouring shoulder, but it was too distant for detail. There was what looked like a wisp of white smoke against the blue, as though Everest were a volcano, but it was the wind blowing snow off the summit.

Presently a note of excitement entered the narrator’s voice and we sat forward, straining our eyes. The lead climber had only a few feet to go. The camera, aimed at his back, yawed wildly, shooting a blur of rock, sky, snow. Any second now it’d steady, focusing on the very, very top of the world. We held our breath, avid to witness this moment of history whether it included a silken flag or not.

The moment came and there was no flag. No flag.
There
was the tip of Everest, sharp and clear against a deep blue sky and it was pristine. Unflagged and, for a moment longer, unconquered. A murmur began in thirty throats and swelled, the sound of derision. ‘Wilson you
moron
,’ railed someone, ‘where is it, eh: where
is
your uncle’s silken flipping flag?’

Piggo sat gutted. Crushed dumb. We watched as he shrank, shoulders hunched, seeming almost to
dissolve
into the scarlet plush of the seat. Fiercely we exulted at his discomfiture, his humiliation, knowing there’d be no more bragging, no more porkies from this particular piggo. The film ended and we filed out, nudging him, tripping him up, sniggering in his ear.

We were feeling so chipper that when we got outside we looked around for some posh kids to kick, but they’d gone. This small disappointment couldn’t dampen our spirits however. We knew that what had happened inside that cinema: the final, irrevocable sinking of Piggo Wilson was what
we
’d remember of 1953. We piled on to our coach, which pulled out and nosed through the teatime traffic, bound for
Ecole Rue laPage.
When we came to a busy roundabout the driver had to give way. In the middle of the roundabout was a huge equestrian statue; the horse rearing up, the man wearing a crown and brandishing a sword. Piggo, who’d been sitting very small and very quiet, pointed to the statue of Alfred the Great and said, ‘See the feller on the horse there: he was my grandad’s right-hand man in the Great War.’

BERLIE DOHERTY started writing seriously at university, where she was studying to be a teacher. She has twice won the prestigious Carnegie Medal, once for
Granny Was a Buffer Girl
– in which there was a whole chapter based on her parents – and once for
Dear Nobody
, the playscript of which won the Writers’ Guild Award.
Daughter of the Sea
also won the Writers’ Guild Award. Her other books include
The Snake-stone, Street Child, The Sailing-ship Tree, Tough Luck, Spellhorn
and
Holly Starcross
.

I
t began with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. My older brother, Denis, gave them to me for my ninth birthday. I had just left the little school in Meols at the time. I loved that school. In winter we had a real coal fire in the classroom, and when it grew dark the flames would flicker shapes and shadows on the walls until the light was put on. You could hear the sea from the yard. In the autumn we gathered chestnuts and leaves from the monkey woods round the school and brought them in to decorate the walls and windows. Some children hardened the chestnuts in vinegar and made holes in them, then threaded them with bits of string for conker fights in the playground. I liked to line mine up on my desk, admiring the way they gleamed like brown eyes. At the end of the day we used to run home along the prom, with the gritty sand whistling round our bare legs, and if there was time we’d play out till dark.

But the autumn term in the year of my ninth birthday had hardly started when the parish priest told my parents that I should be going to a Catholic school, and persuaded them to take me away from there. So I had a long journey by bus to a large flat school in the middle of a modern housing estate. There was a plaster statue of a saint in every classroom. Our room had the Virgin Mary in a blue dress, and she seemed to be watching us all the time with her sorrowing eyes. Occasionally the sickly smell of chocolate drifted in through the windows from the nearby Cadbury’s factory, mingling with the smell of boiling cabbage or fish from the kitchens.

By the time I started there, nearly halfway through the autumn term, friendships had already been made. I was much too shy to talk to anyone, and nobody talked to me. I used to stand in the windy playground with my back against the railings and watch all the children running and shrieking and wonder how there could be so many children in one place, and how they could all know each other. I wished I could squeeze through the railings and run back home. When Mr Grady blew the whistle at the end of playtime the children all froze like the statues in the classrooms, and then at his second whistle they walked absolutely silently into class rows. There wasn’t a child in the school who wasn’t afraid of Mr Grady. His face was cold and hard and white, and I don’t think I ever saw him smile.

One day he caught me reading in a lesson. I was supposed to be doing Arithmetic. I felt his hand coming over my shoulder and too late, he snatched the book away from my grasp and held it up. I was ice-cold with fear. The whole class watched him as he walked with the book to his desk. He had been known to beat children with his cane until they bled. He sat on the edge of his desk and drew a pile of exercise books towards him. Then he rooted through them and drew one out. It was mine.

‘One day,’ he said to the class, ‘this girl will be a writer.’

But I did not feel proud or happy that he had said that. I felt afraid, and ashamed. I hung my head and didn’t look at anyone.

Our class teacher was Miss O’Brien, who had auburn hair like a fox’s back. Her lips were bright red and shiny, as if she was always licking them wet, though I never saw her doing it. I longed to be noticed by her, but she always seemed to be in a dream, gazing out of the window as she taught us, somewhere far away. And around me, the children in the class giggled quietly and passed notes to each other, and shared secrets. They all seemed to be going to each other’s houses for tea or to birthday parties. I was outside it all, just watching.

When my own birthday came around, in November, there was no point having a party. There was no one to invite. So it was a special treat when my brother arrived home unexpectedly, especially as he brought me two presents. ‘I couldn’t decide which one to get you,’ he said. ‘So I got them both.’

They were glove puppets, one of Mickey in a blue smock, one of Minnie in a pink smock with a yellow bow painted on her shiny black rubber head. They both had round beaming cheeks and huge smiling eyes. The heads were hollow, so I could put my hand inside them and bunch up my fist in the cheeks. The smocks covered my hands. I could make the heads bob about and look round and talk to each other. Everybody laughed when I made funny voices and made the puppets talk. I found I could say anything I liked with these puppets on my hands, and nobody minded. I could tell Jean, my sister, that her hairstyle was horrible, or her new dress looked like a sack of potatoes, and as long as I said it in Mickey’s voice she thought it was really funny.

‘Gee, I guess I’ll just have to smarten myself up for you, Mickey,’ she drawled, putting on an American accent. When my mother lit up her cigarettes, which I hated, I would put my Minnie puppet on and pretend she was coughing, and Mum would dab her cigarette out. ‘Sorry Minnie,’ she would say, ‘I forgot about your bad chest.’

It was a kind of magic.

I took Mickey and Minnie to school, and sat with my hands under my desk, tucked inside them. Usually in class I sat in absolute silence, never daring to speak or even to put my hand up, even if I knew the answer to any of Miss O’Brien’s questions. Her voice droned on in the hot classroom. I looked round. Everyone was looking fidgety and sleepy. Suddenly my hands seemed to shoot up of their own accord, with Mickey and Minnie bobbing about in the air.

‘This place could do with a bit of livening up!’ said Mickey.

‘Don’t you know any jokes, Miss O’Brien?’ said Minnie.

Only it wasn’t Mickey and Minnie, it was me. The children sat up in their desks and stared at me, and Miss O’Brien stood with her mouth wide open. And then an amazing thing happened. She answered back in a Donald Duck voice.

‘Oh boy!’ she squawked, pouching out the side of her cheek like a balloon, ‘there’s two darned mice in my classroom!’

After school, everybody wanted to have a go with the puppets. I looked round till I saw the most popular girl in class, Dorothy Ewers, who had a mass of curly hair. ‘That one,’ Minnie said, ‘that girl with bubbles all round her face. She’s my best friend.’ Dorothy flushed with pleasure and grabbed Minnie from my hand.

‘Well, I’m Mickey’s best friend,’ another girl, Maria Stephens said. ‘If you let me play with him you can come to tea tomorrow.’

As soon as we got to her house Maria put on a purple ballet dress and pranced round the garden, leaving me sitting with my glove puppets making comments like, ‘Whoops, there she goes, Mickey. Did you see that fairy?’ ‘No, but I saw a flying elephant, Minnie,’ making Maria giggle breathlessly. When she finally stopped, red-faced and gasping, she said, ‘You can wear my ballet dress now, and I’ll have a go with Minnie and Mickey.’ It was a dream come true, and I floated round her rose beds like a princess, snagging the foamy material on thorns while Maria beamed at me.

The next day I was invited to Dorothy Ewers’ house. We had chocolate marshmallows for tea. Dorothy sat playing with Mickey and Minnie while I tucked in. I had only had a chocolate mallow once before in my life, and my dad had cracked open the chocolate shell on his forehead as a joke. I did it at Dorothy’s, expecting everybody to smile. Her father stared at me for a long time and said, ‘Who is this bad-mannered child, Dorothy?’ I was mortified. I nearly burst into tears, but I remembered the magic. I grabbed Mickey off Dorothy’s fist and made him say, ‘Who is this grumpy man, Minnie?’ And they all laughed, even Mister Ewers.

Suddenly I had more friends than I could cope with. Everybody wanted a go with Mickey and Minnie. I was bribed with licorice sticks and chocolate marshmallows, offers of invitations to birthday parties, of goes on scooters and with yo-yos. It was a dizzy time of popularity, a social whirl of outings to tea, and Mickey and Minnie got grubbier, the smocks got torn, and finally, the smiling rubber faces split in half.

As if a balloon had popped, the fun fizzled away. The cheeky comments didn’t work without the puppets. I wasn’t special any more; nobody shared their playtime biscuits with me. And without my puppets, my shyness came back. I stopped speaking in class. I started fainting in assembly. Nice Mr Jenkins used to scoop me up and carry me out to the playground for fresh air. Word got round that I could make myself die and come back to life again. The children looked at me as if I had some strange, mysterious power, and kept away.

During this time another new girl arrived. She used to stand at the other end of the yard staring across at me. Nobody played with her. I knew how she felt, but I looked away, pretending not to see her. I didn’t know how to go up to her and say, ‘Can I be friends with you?’ I could have said it in Minnie’s voice, if she’d still been alive. Because that was the way I thought about them. My puppets had died, really died, and I was in mourning for them.

And then one day I had a wonderful idea. I would make more puppets. I ran home after school and begged my mum for some material, and she gave me an old pair of curtains. I cut out two shapes of a princess in a ballet dress and sewed them together, and turned them inside out. Then I tried to stick my hand inside. It was too small for my hand, but I could just squeeze it over three fingers. It was all right. She could bow, she could turn, and I could make her sing. I sewed yellow wool on to her head for hair. That made her tighter still, but it was still all right.

I made a prince, being careful to cut out larger shapes this time. He was so big that he flopped right over my fist and his velvet smock covered my arm up to my elbow. It was fine. He could bow and he could kiss the princess and he could speak in a loud, deep voice. I went to bed dreaming about my puppets. Before school I ran next door and asked Mrs Berry if she had any old frocks I could use, and she gave me some glistening sequins to put in my princess’s hair, and some blackout curtains left over from the war for a witch’s cloak. ‘I’ve lost one of my lovely fur mittens,’ she said as I was leaving. ‘Would you like the other one to make a cat with? Here’s some pipe cleaners for his whiskers.’

At the end of a week of frantic cutting out and sewing and glueing, my bedroom was a mess. My sister Jean, who shared it with me, threatened to make me sleep in the WC in the back yard. I had an array of glove puppets lined up on my bed, all different shapes and sizes, some with the stitches showing and gaps in the seams where the cotton had broken. I thought they were utterly beautiful. I had a prince and princess, a clown with a red button for a nose, a witch, a cat, an old man with white wool hair and beard, a giraffe that had started off as a dog, a baby with a safety pin holding a handkerchief nappy round its middle, and a teacher who was supposed to look like Miss O’Brien, with orange wool hair and bright red lips. I made up voices for all of them, and then – well, this is where my ambitions carried me away – I decided to make a theatre for them.

I would write a play, and they would be the actors. I would tour it round the school. I would be popular again.

I don’t know how I had the courage to advertise my show. I was such a shy child most of the time, without my Mickey and Minnie props. But I wrote out posters and stuck them in the classrooms, and arranged with the teachers to do my show at the end of the week. They all agreed. It was Monday. I had four days to build a theatre, write a show, rehearse the actors and learn the lines.

I wrote feverishly, a speaking part for every character, howls and hiccups for the baby, miaows for the cat, and something like a horse’s whinny for the giraffe. The story was a mixture of
Punch and Judy, Cinderella
and
Lorna Doone,
which I’d just heard on the radio. I had to make sure that no more than two actors were on stage at the same time, or I would run out of hands. I don’t think I slept all week. I worked by torchlight while Jean grumbled and muttered and snored and grumbled again. I begged some shoeboxes at the local Woolworth’s store and carried them home on my bicycle. Back to the cutting and glueing. Out came the paints. And – the final touch – curtains on a piece of string stretched across the stage. The show was ready.

It was raining on Friday. I waited at the bus stop hugging my theatre in my arms, trying to keep it dry. The puppets were in my schoolbag on my back. I stood with my eyes closed reciting my lines and nearly missed the bus. Somebody’s umbrella spiked through a corner of the theatre. The wet curtains dripped dismally. Still, the show wasn’t due to start until after the last playtime. There was plenty of time to dry everything out.

I fainted in assembly again that morning, in a drowning rush of black and red swirls and dazzling sparkles, of overwhelming heat and icy cold. When I came round Miss O’Brien was dabbing my face with a cold flannel and the new girl, Rita Chrisp, was staring down at me, her eyes huge and blue and full of concern. Miss O’Brien tipped my head between my knees and sent her away.

Nobody else spoke to me all day. I couldn’t face the Friday boiled fish at dinnertime. My posters taunted me wherever I looked. I’d misspelt one of the words. Puppet Theater, I’d written. Someone had crossed it out and corrected it in red ink. I squirmed miserably. I wanted to tear the posters down and forget that I’d ever even thought of doing the show. I wanted to run home and hide in my bedroom. The afternoon dragged on. Playtime came. And after play – the show. I went to look at my theatre again. Someone had trodden on it. One of the sides had come right off. And I knew, then, that I couldn’t go on with it. The puppets were ridiculous; I could see it now. They didn’t look anything like the characters they were meant to represent. They were just bundles of old rags. And I couldn’t remember a word of the script. I sat on the floor and sobbed my heart out.

I was aware that someone had come into the classroom. I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my cardigan.