We were under the pub sign, the Prince of Connaught. He creaked in the breeze, above our heads: a stiff breeze, but the herald of fine weather. It was time for skipping ropes to come out, and for all the summer games to begin.
‘I did “My Hobbies”,’ I said. If all went well, I would be beyond skipping ropes soon. Susan Millington, you may be sure, was never caught skipping.
Karina sneered at me. ‘You haven’t got any hobbies.’
‘I put, reading books.’
‘That’s not hobbies. Hobbies is stamp-collecting.’
‘I put that.’
‘You did not.’
‘I did because my father collects stamps, so it’s the same as me doing it. I put jigsaw puzzles.’
‘You lied,’ she said. ‘They’ll know.’
‘I did not lie, and I put knitting a jumper.’
‘What, that green thing you’ve been mangling? It looks more like a fishing-net.’
I was angry. How dare she malign my knitting? ‘What composition did you do, then?’
‘I did “The Person I Would Most Like to Meet”.’
‘Who did you put?’ The possibilities ran though my head. She might have put Cliff Richard. Adam Faith. Marty Wilde.
Karina smiled. ‘I put, the Pope.’
‘You did what?’ I stopped in my tracks. ‘The Pope?’
‘You should really say, His Holiness the Pope,’ Karina pointed out.
I did not have the words for the anger I felt, and the disgust. Disgust and fear: because I knew now that Karina would pass the entrance exam. A small part of me suspected those Holy Redeemer nuns would see through her; a much larger part knew that anyone as smart and smooth as Karina would pass anything she set her mind to. And I had passed too, I felt it in my bones; Karina’s piece of hypocrisy spread its great black wings over me, and wafted me towards my future, protected by its stretching shadow. She had vouched for me, in a perverse way, because even though we did not have a uniform, even though we did not know what desk to sit at, she had shown that we were the right stuff: she had not disgraced the name of our school.
So we would go to the Holy Redeemer, shackled together, and I would never have a pen or a book or a piece of knitting or anything else in my whole life that I could like, that Karina would not take away and pass comment on and spoil. It came into my mind that perhaps one day I might want to get married, if I did not become a Sister Superior or lady explorer. If I did obtain a husband, I must be sure Karina did not see him, and spoil my wedding day. I must be sure that if I was ever sent a baby she was not there when it was christened; I pictured her screwing its little fat legs in and out of its hip-joints, and saying she could get a better baby for one and ninepence.
There’s a time when childhood ends, and it was then, under the swaying grandee on Eliza Street, under Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught. I put down my schoolbag so that I had two hands free, and gave Karina a shove into the gutter. She shoved me in turn against the wall, and we went on like that round the corner on to Curzon Street, pushing and grunting and trying to fend each other off, until we reached my front door which was on the latch and I went in and slammed it behind me. I wanted to bawl up the stairs, ‘Guess what Karina’s done now,’ but I knew that my mother was always on her side, and would think the pontiff a smart move, and want to know why I hadn’t written something similar.
Nowadays, when the word ‘child’ comes into my mind, I can never see a particular child, any single flesh-and- blood entity. I can only see one of the plaster cripples that in those days stood outside shops, effigies the height of a two-year-old, their outstretched hands supporting collecting boxes. Some of these effigies were boys and some girls, but their features were the same and their plaster-coloured curls; the only difference was that the boys wore short trousers and the girls a frill of skirt, and beneath this there was a cruel leg-iron, clamped to the lower limb. It was the leg-iron that caused people to drop pennies into the box; that, and the upturned, painted blue eyes.
You’re only young once, they say, but doesn’t it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.
six
I must now tell you about our life at the Holy Redeemer; but first of all I must tell you how we came to be outfitted for it.
We had a list of what we had to get, and these were some of the things on it.
Outdoor shoes
Indoor shoes
Gym shoes
Shoe bag
Aertex blouse
Winter tunic
Girdle – girdle! ‘Martin,’ my mother said, ‘she’s required to have a girdle!’
‘Girdle!’ my father said. This had become his favoured method of communication: repeating what my mother said, as if it were alarming, far-fetched or intrinsically ludicrous.
‘A foundation garment,’ my mother said.
