This experience changed me utterly, like Heaven, ‘in the twinkling of an eye’, and I believe is the reason for the next point I have to make clear before getting on with the story. Which is that I am not really very popular. Some people in fact do not really like me at all. In fact if you really want to know quite a lot of people absolutely can’t stand me.
I’m not just saying it and trying to cadge sympathy like they say eldest children do when they are displaced in their parents’ affections by the birth of a second child. I’m not in the least bit jealous of Rowley. You couldn’t be jealous of him. He’s sweet although he’s terribly spoilt and gets away with everything they used to go for me like anything for (I am fond of putting prepositions at the end of sentences, as in fact was Shakespeare).
The thing I can’t understand though about being unpopular is that people often start by liking me very much. You can see. For instance when we moved from father’s school to this place, Cleveland Sands, and I was sent to the High School at Cleveland Spa I was terribly popular. I was chosen as form captain my very first term and even rounders captain although I’m hopeless, and everyone wanted me for their partner in team games and skipping and train-line. Then it slowly all faded away and they seemed to start hating me as much as they had liked me. It was awful. You could see them curling their lips and turning away and sniggering. I didn’t know what to do about it. I even got three bags of toffees—it was before rationing—and handed them round everyone saying, ‘Take two, I’ve got heaps,’ but they all just looked at me as if I were mad and said, ‘Thank you,’ watching me while they dipped their hands in, and I heard them all laughing about it afterwards. Florence Bone—she’s my friend—said, ‘Why do that?’ and I didn’t say anything. Then I said, ‘Why does everyone hate me so?’ and she said, ‘They don’t. What’s the matter with you? Calm down.’ She is very calm and steady, Florence Bone, and terribly good at Mathematics and very truthful as a rule.
But she wasn’t being truthful then. I knew they didn’t really like me and except for Florence there wasn’t any one of them I really liked either, so I don’t know why I cared. ‘I can’t see why you expect so much,’ Florence said. ‘We like you all right. What on earth do you want?’
But she was telling lies. There is this other thing I have to explain about myself which will show that she was telling lies: and that is that I have this power of knowing what people are thinking. I’m not boasting about it. Honestly, it is just something I was born with. As a matter of fact it’s not all that uncommon. I have met one or two other people who can do it. I met one last year and you will hear about her and much good will it do you because she was the ghastliest woman . . . But that is not the point at the moment.
The point is this—in three parts. Tripartite. Viz:
1. I am not quite normal
2. I am not very popular
3. I am able to tell what people are thinking. And I might add
4. I am terribly bad at keeping quiet when I have something on my mind because
5. I ABSOLUTELY ALWAYS AND INVARIABLY TELL THE TRUTH.
I am honestly not being conceited about this (No. 5). It is something I cannot help. There is nothing good about doing a thing if you can’t help it. It is more like an illness than anything. Florence Bone says that really I ought to see a psychiatrist about it and I even asked my father if he thought so too. All he did though was snort like mad and say that I needed a psychiatrist less than anyone he’d ever met.
Incidentally this business of having to tell the truth has absolutely nothing to do with my father being a curate.
When I had been at Cleveland Spa for simply ages and was twelve years old I thought it would be a good idea to do something at the end of the term, like going out to tea or something. There was a tea shop called Elsie Meeney’s on the corner of Ginger Street which we passed every day on the way from the station (Cleveland Spa is ten miles from Cleveland Sands). It was a very dark shop with a glass canopy outside it over the pavement, held up with posts. Before the war there had been baskets of flowers hanging between the posts, giving it all an air, and you could still see the metal baskets hanging though there were no flowers in them. The canopy thing had had the glass taken out because of air-raids and was boarded up.
The windows in this shop had slanting cake-shelves in them with circles of paper at intervals where cakes should have been. There was a notice saying ‘Weddings a Speciality’ and two oldish teacakes lying in a corner. Already, though the war had only been on a bit more than a year, cake shops were beginning to look much too big.
‘Do they do teas?’ Helen Bell asked. ‘They don’t look as if they do anything.’
‘Yes they do,’ I said, ‘I found out. I went in one dinner hour and I asked. I said, “Do you serve afternoon teas?” and they said, “Well I suppose so,” and there’s a notice inside pinned up actually saying “teas”.’
The three of them—there were Helen Bell, Florence Bone and this peculiar girl, Cissie Comberbach—looked as if they would believe it when they saw it and we all filed into the shop and rested our shoe bags and gas masks and satchels on the floor, putting our report envelopes in our mouths while we did it. There was a thin woman behind the counter in a lavender overall reading a magazine. Now and then she gave a colossal great sniff and turned a page. Florence gave me a push. ‘Go on then,’ she said. I coughed.
The woman didn’t look up. She turned a page and flexed her feet and I coughed again.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘may we have some tea?’
‘Eh?’ she said.
‘Tea,’ I said.
‘Tea?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Like it says.’
‘Well I don’t know,’ she said. She looked hard at the card. It was pinned to an archway where two long red plush curtains were caught back in the middle at the top of the three steps.
‘It does say tea,’ Florence said, not to the woman though, just to the air round about.
‘Oh well I dare say it says tea,’ she said and sniffed. She turned over a page of the magazine and flexed her feet round and round.
‘Well I did ask and it says tea and we’re going in,’ I said.
We stamped in under the archway up the steps and sat down in a small round room with a stained glass window in the back with strips of brown sticky paper stuck all over it in a lattice in case of bombs. It was a very stuffy room and there were only two tables in it. One was a big round table with a dirty cloth on it and the other was a little table with a clean cloth on it and a notice saying ‘Reserved’. We sat down at the dirty table. Helen and Cissie looked at each other and Cissie sniggered.
‘Now we order,’ I said. ‘We ask for a menu.’
‘If there is one,’ said Florence. ‘We’ve got a hope.’
It grew very quiet.
‘Look,’ said Helen after a while, ‘why did you want to come out to tea? I can’t see what you wanted.’ She has narrow hands and a narrow face, Helen Bell. She is good at playing the piano. On the whole I don’t like people who are always playing the piano. They have mean little mouths.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s an outing, isn’t it? It’s nice. It’s something to do at the end of term. My mother often used to take me out to have biscuits and lemonade in tea shops where we lived before. It was just a cheerful thing to do, that’s all.’
‘We’ll miss the train home.’
‘Well we can get the next. That’ll be even nicer.’ We’d had all this out before I may say, we’d discussed it for hours. We’d got permission—letters from our mothers and a shilling each and everything. The way they plugged on at things at this school! It takes them ages to get on and do anything. There is a lot of Danish blood on this part of the coast my father says, and the Danes tend to stand about rather. After all, look at Hamlet.
‘They think I’m crazy at home,’ Helen said. ‘I’ve told them to keep my tea hot.’
‘But this is your tea. Proper tea. Little eclairs and things. Afternoon tea.’
‘Where?’ asked Helen.
‘Well, in a minute,’ I said.
‘Are you crazy?’ Cissie Comberbach said (she hardly ever spoke). ‘There’s a war on.’
‘It’s not been on that long. If there’s still tea shops there’s still teas. You just don’t know round here anything about it. It used to be marvellous in places like this, people in coloured hats eating ices, and flowers hanging and lovely fat chocolate biscuits and the sun!’ Helen turned her face away and picked her gas mask up and swung it about as if she would soon be going, and I suddenly felt absolutely fed up with her.
‘AHEM,’ I shouted. We really DO NEED THE MENU. Do you think we could please have a MENU.’ (I used my mother’s voice when she suddenly thinks I USED TO BE A HOUSEMASTER’S WIFE!)
Through the curtains in the shop the woman clattered down off her stool and came and stood in the archway. ‘We don’t have any menu,’ she said curiously. She kept her finger in the magazine and looked at us. Then she shouted ‘Allus!’ Far away there was an answering call and a fat untidy woman slopped up into view at the back of the dark dining room, through some hole in the floor so far as we could see. She seemed surprised to see us. ‘We’re shut,’ she said, and prepared to vanish.
‘You’re not,’ I said. ‘I asked yesterday. We’ve got permission. And anyway there’s a clean tablecloth laid over there with reserved on it.’
‘That’s a regular. ’Op it.’
‘We won’t. We’ve got the money. We’ve come for tea.’
‘If you don’t ’op it I’ll send for the p’lice.’
‘If you don’t bring us our tea, I’ll get the police,’ I said, ‘because you have advertised something you haven’t got.’
Florence kicked me under the table. ‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘You’ve gone all red. We’ll go.’ The others were already getting up and picking up their things. I said, ‘We’re stopping.’
‘Oh come on, we’re going,’ said Helen.
‘We’re stopping here,’ I said in my mother’s voice and then unfortunately I knocked over a very large and heavy seaweed-green round plant pot on the top of a sort of bamboo thing behind my chair. It fell on its head. You’d never have believed the crash.
‘Me busy-lizzie,’ the lavender-aproned one shrieked.
I said, ‘We’re stopping.’
‘Oh all right then, stop,’ said the fat woman. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing. It’s only rum balls. No fancies.’
We waited. Cissie Comberbach kicked the soil about under her feet and Helen said, ‘I don’t think I like rum balls.’
I said, ‘If they’re alcohol I will tell the police. She’s not allowed to give alcohol to children.’ Florence said, ‘Never mind alcohol. You never asked how much it’d be. She didn’t say. We ought to have got it straight. I mean we’ve only got a shilling each. I haven’t any extra, have you?’
I hadn’t. Helen had fourpence and Cissie Comberbach had a penny. We had railway passes to get home with.
‘Let’s call her back.’
‘Help, no.’
‘We’d better. We’d be in a mess.’ Florence went over to the mantelpiece and pinged a bell like a metal muffin. After a while the counter woman shouted through, ‘What’s it this time then?’
‘We want a shilling tea,’ Florence said.
‘Ho, you do, do you?’
I said, ‘Florence, you couldn’t have!’
‘What?’
I said, ‘You couldn’t have asked for that!’
‘Why not?’
‘Well it’s awful. “A shilling tea”. It sounds awful. It sounds coarse,’ I said.
‘Why’s a shilling tea coarse?’
‘It just is. Like “a meat dinner”,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t say no to a meat dinner,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. They’re awful people here.’
The fat woman rose up through the floor and slapped a tray in front of us. ‘’Ere’s yer rum balls,’ she said, ‘bread an’ butter, marg., that is, pineapple jam, teacakes, potter tea for four, four cups, sugar.’
‘Is it a shilling tea,’ Florence asked.
‘Shilling! Huh!’ she said and went.
Helen sighed and said, ‘So what do we do? We don’t know if it’s a shilling whatever happens or it’s so much according to what we eat.’
But Cissie had started. ‘We’ll eat something,’ Florence said. ‘We’ll just not eat it all in case. Actually I don’t think I could eat more than one rum ball.’
Helen said that she didn’t think she would be able to lift more than one off the plate. She said she thought they were made out of the soil of the plant pot which for her was an absolutely stupendous joke. Cissie even laughed at it, or tried but was unable to force open her teeth. I began to laugh and unfortunately knocked the teapot over and it began to pour about all over the tablecloth and into the teacakes and then slowly began to pour on to the floor with a very rude splashing noise and Florence suddenly started to howl like a dog.
‘O lor’ now I’ve done it. I’d better ping the thing.’
‘No, mop it up.’ Helen handed over her science overall. ‘The cloth was filthy to start with.’
‘I didn’t want any teacakes,’ Florence said kindly. ‘Actually I think it’s softened them up a bit.’
‘Good job there’s no one else here.’
‘You’d not have made such a mess if there had been.’ (Florence had recovered herself.) ‘You’d have been more careful.’
‘You’d of be’aved,’ said Cissie.
‘We’re the only ones that’ve ever been here, I should think.’
‘I expect the odd bod comes in,’ Florence said. ‘And odd is what they’d have to be.’
The bell on the shop door rang out, a voice cried ‘Coooeee!’ and feet tapped and a woman came up the steps into the tearoom, a woman who was the most dreadful colour—dark yellow, and her face all painted with paints. She had removed her eyebrows so that she had only shiny semi-circles and had painted other black semi-circles above them. She had a painted curly mouth like a doll and wore a band low down on her head like a Red Indian. Her clothes hung down from the shoulders and were looped up with a belt well below the waist and she had old pointed shoes on with buttons. On her poor old arms she had a lot of amber bangles hanging. There was something about her that made you think you’d seen her before somewhere. She was like someone your mother knew when you were young. She was very old. Her arms were quite wasted away. ‘The rainbow comes and goes,’ she said. ‘And lovely is the rose.’ She sat down at the clean table and nodded across, and smiled.
‘Churchill is speaking tonight,’ she said. ‘Winston. He may be Churchill to all the world but he’s Winston to me.’
‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘D’you know him?’
Helen said, ‘Shut up, don’t talk to her. For heaven’s sake!’
‘Know him! Of course I do. Known him for years. Oh I wish I were in dear old London.’
‘Did you know him when he was young or something?’
‘He’s not old,’ she said. ‘He’s my age.’
The others put their faces in their cups.
‘Churchill to all the world but Winston to me,’ she went on as the counter lady came up without her magazine and began to flap a clean napkin over the shiny white tablecloth. The fat woman, Alice, appeared and put a tray down in front of her. ‘There you are, Mrs. ’Opkins then,’ she said in a different, sweet, bright sort of voice. ‘Lovely day. Just a bit of a fret. Your usual, dear?’
‘Winston to me,’ she said lighting a cigarette and putting it in a great long green holder. ‘I’ve known them all.’
‘Look at her tea,’ Helen said. ‘Crippen, just look at her tea.’
On the tray were little cress sandwiches and egg ones—even egg ones—three slices of fresh bread and butter, thin and curled like cornflakes, quite fresh, and a chocolate eclair in pale green paper. There was a tiny glass dish with blackcurrant jam in it. We sat and we looked. We looked and we looked and we went on looking.
She dropped ash on the bread and butter and poured herself some tea. She stared into space. ‘I’ve known them all. Every mother’s son of them,’ she said. ‘Henry James . . .’
Helen said, ‘Where on earth does a tea like that come from?’
‘I suppose you can get it if you pay,’ said Florence.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Well of course you can. You don’t expect Churchill and the King and so on to eat rum balls and muck, do you?’
I said of course they did.
‘Gaarn,’ said Cissie. ‘Never ’eard of the Black Market?’
‘It’s not Black Market,’ Florence said. ‘If you’re a restaurant or a tea shop or something you get an allowance. In posh places you get posh things. Like grouse. There’s plenty of grouse and stuff if you can pay. You don’t expect dukes and things to eat rum balls.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe it of the King. He keeps to his rations. I read it. And he’s ploughing up Buckingham Palace for vegetables.’ (I was still pretty young.)
‘That’ll be to feed the cooks,’ said Florence.
‘I am absolutely certain,’ I said, ‘of the King.’
‘I suppose you know him,’ said Helen.
‘I know them all,’ said the woman across the room, staring ahead of her through the archway at the quiet, drizzly road. She stubbed out her cigarette in the eclair and pushed her plate away. ‘Now I don’t suppose you girls even know who Henry James was?’
‘The Old Pretender,’ I said. It was polite to have a go.
‘That’s her,’ said Florence. Cissie collapsed. So did I as a matter of fact, but Mrs. Hopkins didn’t appear to notice.
‘He was a Man. He was more than a Man, he was a Mind. He was a great and civilized Mind. He loved England. He understood England. He even lived in England.’
‘Well we all live in England,’ I said.
‘Shrup,’ said Florence, ‘I think he must have been an American.’
‘The Old Pretender was a Scotsman.’
‘The Old Pretender was not the same as Henry James,’ said Florence.
‘Why wasn’t he?’ I said, getting angry.
‘He was Henry James to all the world,’ said Mrs. Hopkins. ‘But he was Harry to me.’
‘Oh, Henry Fifth,’ I said. ‘God for Harry.’ It was something my father was always saying.
‘WHAT did you say?’ For the first time Mrs. Hopkins seemed to see us. ‘You, child, what did you say?’
‘I said “God for Harry”,’ I said uncomfortably, and then I added, ‘England and St. George.’ I shouldn’t have.
‘My dear child!’ she cried, ‘my dear child! That’s what I thought you said. My dear child!’ and she came tweedledeeing over the room and kissed me! There was a terrible old smell about her like chests of drawers, and I shuddered and pressed back and nearly sent the busy-lizzie going for the second time. ‘Well, would you believe it!’ she said, ‘“God for Harry, England and St. George”. My dear children, might I just shake you by the hand? I’m going to write this down. Every word. I’m going to send it to the papers. I’m going to send it to Winston. Now would you mind if I were just to ask you your ages?’
‘Around twelve,’ said Florence, watchfully.
‘And thirteen,’ said Helen.
‘My dears! Oh, my dears, how lovely. On the threshold. Four little Juliets. Younger than she are married mothers made! My dears, I want to repay you. Repay you just for being what you are. Little English Juliets. Lovers of dear old England. Now, I’m going to tell Winston about all this.’ She spotted Helen’s roll of music under the table. ‘And what’s this, you play music, too—what’s this? Chopin? No! This has been a wonderful afternoon. Oh I do wish I could thank you dear children for it in some way.’
She shook hands all round and went off. We heard her saying ‘Chopin, Grace,’ to the counter lady, ‘Chopin! He may have been Chopin to all the world but he was . . .’
‘Quick,’ said Florence, ‘get her tea.’
We divided sandwiches, eclair, bread, butter, jam, sugar lumps. In less than two minutes there were none of them to be seen.
‘Come on,’ said Helen. ‘Let’s pay and go. Ping the thing. Good heavens.’
But the fat one, Alice, was already in the room. ‘Now then?’ she said.
‘We’d like to pay,’ I said.
‘You’d like to pay.’ She looked intently at Mrs. Hopkins’ empty tray. ‘You’d like to pay. Mrs. ’Opkins made a good tea today, Grace.’
‘Paid ’er usual,’ called Grace. Alice looked at us suspiciously. ‘Four shilluns,’ she said.
Florence, Helen and Cissie each put their shilling on the table and I began to look in my satchel.
‘Four shilluns,’ she said. ‘That’s one shillun each.’
‘I can’t just . . .’ I said, ‘just for the moment . . .’ Florence said, ‘Look in your gas mask.’ I looked in my gas mask and took out my identity card, sweet coupons, stones, string, a drawing, a first-aid book, a bandage, a twig, a photograph, handkerchiefs and so on, and she just stood.
‘I know I had it. I had it loose. It wasn’t in a purse. I had it when I came in.’ She put her hands on her hips and turned her mouth ends down like a tortoise. ‘Now we’re in a mess,’ said Florence.
‘I’ll need the other shillun.’
‘Oh crikey,’ I said.
‘They’re short on a shillun, Grace.’
‘Oh go on!’ Grace called unexpectedly.
‘Eh?’
‘Go on! They’re paid up. She paid.’
‘She paid. Mrs. Loony ’Opkins. She paid her pound and five bob over. For the girls, too, she said.’
We stared. ‘Talk about luck,’ said Florence. ‘That was pretty kind when you think of it.’
‘She was rich,’ said Helen.
‘Yes, but kind.’
‘Darft,’ said Cissie, the only thing she’d said for ages.
‘Well thank heavens she was. We’d have been in a mess. We’d have had to go to the police. Gaoled for all I know.’
‘No we wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve found it. It was in my sock.’ We were outside now. ‘What did she mean “Four Juliets” and “married mothers”? Did she really think we were married mothers? Juliet wasn’t married, was she?’ (I honestly didn’t know.)
Florence said perhaps she was an unmarried mother and Helen raised her eyebrows. ‘Married to the Old Pretender,’ I said and Cissie actually laughed. We were all suddenly in a very good mood and we ran down under the subway, screaming a bit. Cissie fell over.
‘It was worth it,’ I said. ‘I told you it’d be worth it. It was worth the shilling.’
‘What you haven’t realized,’ said Florence, ‘what you haven’t grasped’ (she had on her Mathematics face) ‘is that we’ve still got the shilling. We have all still got a shilling. We can all have chips.’