Behind her Doris Ewart washed out the staff-room mugs, complaining that no-one bothered to wash their own, and went on with some interminable story about young Miss Francis’s affair with a pet-shop owner. That was, apparently, where all the terrapins came from.
“Well,” said Miss Kinsey. “I wonder who we’ll get tonight.”
She was watching the mothers collecting their children. The kids looked so sweet, dashing about in their crumpled uniforms of red jumpers, grey trousers or skirts. To be met by, frankly, mothers who had let themselves go. Who smoked beside the main entranceway, their hair unwashed.
“What do you mean?” asked Doris, and came to see. Then she realised.
Sally stood, clutching her lunch box, waiting to be collected.
“We could run a book on this,” said Doris.
“I hope you’re not advocating gambling on the school premises,” Miss Kinsey purred.
“Oh, no. But I bet a fiver we get her mother tonight.”
“You’re on. A fiver says it’s that nice young man again.”
Because, so far this week, Sally had had different people to meet her from school each night.
Monday, a nice young man with wavy hair, a Labrador and a leather jacket. Miss Kinsey and Doris Ewart were a little concerned, but on Tuesday night Sam—the legitimate mother—had picked Sally up and explained that Richard was ‘a friend of the family’. On Wednesday came Sally’s grandmother—whom Miss Kinsey had met before—with a pushchair and a squawking brat. (Miss Kinsey liked children to be between the ages of five and eight.) And on Thursday there was a police car for Sally and a beaming, handsome policeman. The other kids will be getting jealous, the headmistress thought.
“We’ve both lost a fiver,” Doris Ewart said.
Miss Kinsey sighed. “What a shame!” And she went to close the venetian blinds.
Because on Friday night Mark came to collect Sally. She ran to him and grasped his blue hand. The crowd of mothers and kids, waving thickly painted posters and tugging on anoraks, didn’t move apart for this casual reunion. Sally and Mark had to fight through the mass, standing out for anyone’s inspection only by virtue of the tattoos and the especially vivid pink of Sally’s lunch box.
JUDITH’S DO ROUND HERS
I’LL TELL YOU WHO I’M A FAN OF THESE DAYS, AND THAT’S THAT ROSEANNE. You know that fat wife on Channel Four? I think she’s dead funny. And it’s like they say in the TV Times: she’s a role model.
She’s my role model now, I’ve decided. She gets away with it. She’s not ashamed of who she is, and she tells people what she thinks of them. She doesn’t put up with any old shit.
I was at work when I was reading this interview with her, the one in the TV Times. We keep them on the counter with the evening papers. Which means we have to stand there all week with the same old famous faces staring up at us. You can watch the weeks go by that way.
Last week it was Roseanne and I thought she looked dead glamorous. Well, she is dead glamorous for a fatty.
I’m not being nasty when I say that. She says she’s a fatty herself, she admits to it and has a laugh about it. She’s famous anyway and it needn’t bother her now. She knows she’s a fatty and really, she’s made her fortune out of it. And I can’t use it as a term of abuse anyway, because when the chips are down, I’m a fatty. Mind, it’s got me bloody nowhere.
So all last week it was Roseanne’s face staring up from the counter, and that’s when I read the interview. It was quite interesting. She’s had a hard life, actually, even though she’s on the telly and that. I felt quite sorry for her.
I like a good read. Especially interviews with stars like that. When they’d had a decently hard life, but everything turns out all right and there was stardom waiting just around the corner.
We get all the magazines with that kind of real-life stuff in here. I can have a good flick through when we get slack. I needn’t ever buy the things. Which is a saving, really, because I think I’m addicted, sometimes, to showbiz gossip and chitchat.
No, that’s not true. Some of them stars I couldn’t care less about. Specially some of them younger ones. Pauline, who I’m on with serving usually, asks me who it is on the cover of Hello! or Top Santy or whatever, and sometimes I just can’t tell her. Who are these people? Why do they think they’re famous? I have to look to see what it says underneath the faces.
Pauline still follows both, so she knows more than me. She still asks me to read the names out. Tell the truth, I think the lass has trouble reading. She squints up right close at invoices and stuff. And she’s only just out of school. I’ve told her—I’ve had a lot longer than she has to forget everything what they taught me!
Anyway, yeh, so I read these chitchats and articles when we get a moment to ourselves. I mean, there’s always someone in the shop. It’s one of those shops where there’s always someone coming in for something. We’re handy and that’s the point. Cigarettes—we’re the place they come dashing out to and we’ve got an impressive range from your Craven As to your tweny-five-to-a-packet Royals, all the way up to your John Players and your Marlboros and even your Hamlet cigars. Top-of-the-range stuff we don’t sell a lot of, but makes the place classier to have on show.
Or at least, so says Eric. Now, Eric’s the bloke who owns the place. He’s a bit younger than me, in about his mid-forties I’d say, and he speaks a different
