Two

The Whitehouses and the Goulds had lived side by side in Kings Heath in their quiet, terraced neighbourhood for years. First Pauline and Ted moved into their house, with Audrey as a baby. When the house next door came up for rent a few months later, the Goulds moved in when they had just had Raymond.

The children grew up together and rubbed along, as youngsters are expected to, and most of the time it was lovely. But there were always things that were not so nice, that stayed with you – like that one afternoon Sylvia would never forget.

Mr Gould made them all play one of his games. Stanley Gould was forever thinking up pastimes designed to make his sons count or add up. Dad said that Stanley had always been ‘a clever bugger’, and he pushed his sons into anything he thought would make them grow up to be brilliant engineers. He loved anything to do with counting. One of his favourite hobbies was collecting loco numbers. They often saw him craning over the fence at the Kings and Castles and the other engines rushing along the LMS line. Just beyond the iron railings that bordered their gardens was the cutting, its vegetation scorched by fires from the scattering sparks.

Stanley Gould was a short, restless man, his hair brushed back over his head like two tarry bird’s wings. He had a clipped black moustache and, at the left side of his mouth, a metal tooth, which glistened when he spoke. Sylvia found it fascinating. Stanley worked as pattern-maker in a firm that, for the war effort, had gone over to making parts for tanks. He was quick-minded, competent and chirpy and expected everyone else to be the same. On this particular warm summer afternoon, when the children were playing in the Goulds’ garden, he started giving orders.

‘Come on,’ he urged. Sylvia could sense his impatience underneath the jolly tone. Life was for getting on – it was no good idling about, wasting time! She felt a plunge of nervousness in her stomach. ‘Line up now, in age order. Raymond first.’

Audrey was never easy to order around at the best of times. She planted herself in front of Mr Gould on her long legs, throwing her dark plait back over her shoulder.

‘I’m first. I’m the oldest.’

‘So you are!’ Mr Gould said, flustered at being found in the wrong. ‘By a whisker. Right, step up, Audrey.’

They lined up in front of the pile of builder’s sand that they called their sandpit.

‘Right, give your name and age.’

‘Audrey – ten!’

‘Surname?’

Audrey rolled her eyes. ‘Whitehouse, of course.’

‘Right, next. Look lively!’ Sylvia’s father sometimes said that Stanley Gould should have been in the Army, though up until now he never had been. He’d been too valuable in the factory during the Great War.

‘Raymond Gould.’ Raymond leapt into position, his pumps spraying gritty sand. ‘Nine – nearly ten!’

‘Sylvia Whitehouse – eight.’ She was always much more biddable than Audrey and plodded into the lineup, happy just to be included with the others.

In the middle of this Marjorie Gould came outside. She stood with her arms folded over a vivid green dress, watching the military line-up of the children.

‘Oh, Stan, leave ’em be,’ she said in her easy voice. ‘Let them come and have some lemonade – I’ve got it all ready – and a bit of cake.’

‘We’re in the middle of something, Marjorie,’ Stanley said. ‘They can have a reward when they’ve done some work.’

Marjorie went off, shaking her head. ‘Work . . . They’re only kids, Stanley!’

‘Now, next!’ Stanley Gould commanded.

Raymond’s little brother looked very uncertain and they hustled him into line. Sylvia took pity on him, whispering, ‘Say your name, and how old you are.’

‘Laurie Gould . . .’ He looked at Sylvia with anxious grey eyes and quietly inserted his little hand into hers. ‘Seven!’

There were only the four of them then, although Mrs Gould must have been carrying Paul at the time, but they didn’t know that. Jack’s arrival was a good way off yet.

‘Right,’ Mr Gould said, hands on his waist. His forearms, below the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt, were covered in dark hair. ‘Now, what do I get if I add Raymond and Audrey together?’

Sylvia tensed. Her hands started to feel clammy. This was when Mr Gould’s games stopped being fun. She had not the faintest idea what the answer was. In fact, she didn’t even realize he was talking about a number. She pictured a strange creature with four arms and four legs, with both Audrey’s and Raymond’s heads. The same cold dread filled her that she felt at school. She was about to be caught out and punished. She found she was gripping Laurie’s hand as tightly as he was hers.

‘You get nineteen,’ Audrey said straight away. Her handsome face looked back at Mr Gould with something like defiance.

‘And what if I take Laurie away from Sylvia?’

‘One!’ Audrey cried.

Sylvia was beginning to feel thoroughly fed up with Audrey, though at least it meant Mr Gould might not ask her his horrible questions. Although they weren’t at school now, and no one would stripe her hand with a ruler until it smarted, like Miss Patchett did, she was already feeling churned up with nerves. Fortunately Audrey had also had enough of Mr Gould and his numbers.

‘Can we have some lemonade now?’ she asked.

Stanley looked disappointed at their lack of stamina. ‘I think you mean: please may we . . . Go on then,’ he said. ‘Boys, we’ll carry on with this later.’

No wonder Raymond and Laurie had both won places at the grammar school. When Paul was born, they were told he was a ‘mongol’. It was some time before Sylvia had any idea what that meant. When they were at last allowed to see baby Paul – she and Audrey vying to be the first to look into the pram – she could see that his eyes were a bit different, that was all. It didn’t seem to be so bad, she thought. But Stanley Gould knew what it meant and saw it as a curse – probably from God, because it was hard to know who else to blame. He seemed to believe that God might be as spiteful as that, and didn’t know what to do with a child who wasn’t clever. It had taken years for him even to begin to come to terms with it. For a long time he didn’t even like Marjorie to take Paul out of the house, which of course upset her.

As she grew up, Sylvia often wondered why Dad and Stanley were friends. They were forever arguing. For a start, Stanley was a staunch member of the Church of England, while Ted said he wasn’t having ‘any of that old claptrap’. And that was before you got to their views on politics, the education of girls (which Stanley Gould thought was basically a waste of everybody’s time) or the best way to grow carrots. But the two of them drank together, went for long bike rides, played the odd game of cribbage and chewed the fat contentiously over the garden wall while their wives rolled their eyes. Sylvia realized, eventually, that they thrived on their arguments. Maybe that’s how she and Audrey had learned to fall out all the time.

Despite pressurizing his sons, Mr Gould had a kindly side to him and could be a tease. It was he who had nicknamed Sylvia ‘Wizzy’ because of her dark, flyaway curls. The name stuck and her own family started calling her ‘Wizz’ sometimes as well.

But that afternoon stayed painfully pressed into Sylvia’s memory and one reason was that Raymond, who was usually quite kind, had been unkind. Audrey had managed to stop Mr Gould’s number games, but Raymond wanted to carry on after the lemonade and cake.

‘What are nine nines?’ he demanded. He was good at tables, and so was Audrey.

‘Eighty-one,’ Audrey answered smartly. She and Sylvia were kneeling, tunnelling their hands into the pile of reddish sand. They gave each other a shove every so often, if one felt the other was too close. ‘Get off, that’s my bit!’ ‘No – you get off.’

Sylvia loved playing with the sand and resented Raymond carrying on like this. She kept her head down.

‘What about six sevens, Sylvia?’ he demanded.

Sylvia pretended she didn’t hear him.

‘Come on,’ Raymond said, standing over her. ‘It’s easy!’

‘Sylvia can’t do numbers and things,’ Audrey said in her superior voice. ‘She can’t even read.’

Sylvia hid further under her cloud of hair to hide the red heat seeping through her cheeks. She squeezed handfuls of the coarse sand, longing to hit Audrey over the head with something. They knew she was bad at letters and numbers! They were so mean. None of them knew what it was like to see a mass of letters merge into a swimming chaos in front of her eyes until she was in such a panic she couldn’t think at all. With all her being she hated Raymond at that moment – and Audrey even more. But she felt too small and shamed to fight back.

‘Six sevens are forty-two,’ Audrey said airily. ‘It’s no good asking Wizz.’

‘Sylvia’s stupid,’ Raymond said. He stood rocking from foot to foot, chorusing, ‘Stupid-stupid Sylvia! Sylvia’s a du-unce!’

Then Audrey joined in the chant, hopping from foot to foot in time with the words. ‘Stupid-stupid Sylvia! Sylvia’s a du-unce!’

She thought she even heard Laurie join in, until she was surrounded by their jeering voices. Of course they teased each other often, but not like this. Not with this mean, humiliating nastiness. The words echoed in her head, filling her as if she would never be able to get rid of them.

Sylvia got to her feet, keeping her head down so that she didn’t have to look at their mocking, superior faces. All she wanted was to crawl somewhere dark so that she could curl up and never come out. Trying to keep from sobbing out loud, she hurried away, down to the gap where you could walk through between the wall and the railway fence and into their own garden.

‘I’m not stupid,’ she growled in a fierce little voice. ‘I’m not, I’m not! I hate you . . . I hate you.’ She ran into the house, hardly able to see where she was going through her tears.

Her teachers never understood that she was willing, but not able. Words and numbers ganged up on her. When they learned about the parts of flowers and fruit, everything went well until Miss Patchett wrote names by the arrows, pointing into the parts, and then Sylvia was lost. She sat staring at her slate in despair. A moment later she realized, to her terror, that Miss Patchett was standing over her.

‘What’s that?’ Miss Patchett pointed her scrawny finger. She was quite a young teacher, with wire spectacles, hollow cheeks and stony eyes.

‘It’s . . .’ The named bits of the flower scrambled in Sylvia’s head. There’d been something beginning with S, she was sure. ‘It’s a staple, Miss.’

Miss Patchett slapped the left side of Sylvia’s head so hard that for a moment she couldn’t see straight.

‘It’s a stamen. As I have written perfectly clearly on the blackboard.’ She pointed witheringly. ‘See? Stamen.’ This brought another slap with it.

The other children sniggered.

‘Yes, Miss,’ Sylvia murmured. She couldn’t see anything now through her tears.

‘Thank heavens your sister’s not like you!’ Miss Patchett said. ‘A staple,’ she went on, witheringly, ‘is for attaching one sheet of paper to another. Go on, girl – write the proper label on your flower.’

Almost beside herself with panic, Sylvia leaned towards the slate, her hand so sweaty she could hardly hold the pencil. She breathed in. S. It began with S. She managed to write a wavery S, but then couldn’t think for the life of her what came next. There was a twinge in her lower body and she was frightened she might wet herself. Miss Patchett was leaning over her. Sylvia could smell her greasy hair and body odour, blended with the stale tea on her breath. She squeezed her eyes closed, fidgeting to avert the urgent pressure from her bladder, and said ‘stamen’ to herself over and over again.

‘Come on, girl,’ Miss Patchett insisted, standing tall again. ‘Keep still! What comes next?’ The class had gone quiet. Sylvia felt as if she was the only person in the world apart from her bony teacher with her nasty, slapping hands.

‘I don’t know,’ Sylvia was about to say when Jane, next to her, dared to breathe, ‘T.’

‘T,’ Sylvia said grasping this like a life raft.

‘T! Well, write it down then, girl.’

‘A,’ Jane sighed next. How Miss Patchett didn’t hear her, Sylvia would never know. She was able to sit still now, for the crisis had passed.

With Jane’s help she managed to get to the end of the word without another slap. Miss Patchett moved away and Sylvia gave her friend the smile of the rescued.

She could draw a flower perfectly. Why could she not do the rest? She didn’t know, and no one seemed to understand. She hated school, every part of it except playtime, when she and Jane and some of the other girls played jackstones and skipping in the yard, at the other end from the rowdy boys. When she came home it was like being let out of prison. She tried to shut school right out of her mind so that the thought of it did not pollute the rest of her life.

But the teasing at home was different. The humiliation and unfairness of it bit deeply into her. She felt it as actual pain in her body, an ache that spread all over her. As she ran inside, Mom heard her sobs and came out to see what was going on.

‘Oi, where’re you off to, Miss?’ Pauline asked as her daughter tore up the stairs. She stood in her apron, looking up. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

Sylvia curled up tightly on her bed in the room she then shared with Audrey. Hearing her mother’s steps on the staircase, she tensed, afraid this might mean more mockery or punishment.

‘Wizzy?’

Sylvia opened one eye. Mom was standing at the door. She looked comforting, with her round pink cheeks and her auburn hair in thick plaits, pinned around her head and crossing over at the front. Sylvia desperately wanted someone to understand. Her reports from school were very poor, and her parents sighed over them in a way that Sylvia took to mean: Why can’t you be like the Goulds? Or at least like Audrey?

Mom came and sat on the bed. Her pinner was dusted with flour and there was a whiff of onions about her as well.

‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘I thought you were all playing next door?’

Sylvia squeezed her eyes closed and pulled herself into an even tighter coil. Words burst out of her. ‘Raymond called me stupid. And Audrey! I hate them. Both of them are pigs.’

Her mother gave a long sigh and Sylvia felt her hand rest on her skinny shoulder.

‘You don’t want to take any notice,’ Pauline said. ‘Your sister should know better than to talk like that – and Raymond. I don’t know why you and Audrey can’t get on a bit better.’

Sylvia pushed herself up, limbs stiff with outrage. ‘I can’t not take any notice! They’re calling me horrible names and . . . And I’m not stupid!’

Mom was looking at her with a tender expression. She raised her hand, and Sylvia felt her mother’s work-roughened, oniony thumb rubbing away the tears from her hot cheeks.

‘Look at your little face,’ her mother said fondly. She dropped her hand again and sighed. ‘I know you’re not stupid, bab,’ she said. ‘That’s the worst of it. Your father and I’ve talked about it. You’re as bright as a button. So why can’t you read and write properly, like the others?’

Sylvia hung her head. ‘I don’t know. I just can’t.’

Pauline had words with Marjorie Gould. Could she please ask Raymond not to be nasty and upset Sylvia? After that, they all kept off the subject. They never got to the bottom of Sylvia’s problems. Year by year she struggled on.

The one person she felt at ease with was little Laurie Gould. He was younger than her and left-handed, so he struggled with writing. Stanley did not like having a left-handed son. In his day you would have been made to sit on your left hand and write with your right one – that was his attitude. Under the pretence of Sylvia helping Laurie learn to read, she would help him with his little story books; and he helped her, with Sylvia learning along with him. She did get the hang of reading and writing eventually, but she was slow at it. After Paul was born, even Stanley Gould stopped keeping on about success and ‘getting on’, now that he had a son who had little prospect of it.

Sylvia dreamed of the wonderful day when she would be able to walk out of school and never come back. At last, when she was fourteen, the day arrived and it was one of the happiest of her life. She took her reference and headed away from the place of shame and humiliation, to a job – any job that did not involve reading or writing. At first she worked in factories and then a laundry. No one made her read or write. The work was boring, but restful. No one went out of their way to make her feel stupid.

Raymond floundered at the grammar school and did not pass his exams with much distinction. He couldn’t sit exams without being paralysed by nerves, which Sylvia’s dad said was obviously Stanley’s fault (‘the silly bugger’). Raymond left school when he was sixteen, almost as glad as Sylvia to get away from it.

Only when she was much older did Sylvia realize that Raymond’s nastiness that day was in some measure Raymond passing onto her what he felt about himself.