Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) (15 page)

It turned into a competition, then. Between me and Stella, I mean. We both had pride and wanted to be the best, and we started to goad each other. Who could be the wickedest? Who could make the nuns despair the most?

S
tella arrives the same day as me, along with another girl who's skinny and buck-toothed with bad-smelling feet, called Valerie Tomlinson.

Stella is a tall girl with close-together eyes and straight hair that she swishes over her shoulder with a gesture Nan would have said was showing off. I look at this girl keenly, taking in her big bosoms and her shoulders-back posture, and the way she is making tiny chewing movements every so often with her mouth, moving something around in there, as though she is trying to chew gum, although there are signs everywhere saying it's forbidden.

“So many of them . . . that's three new ones this week!” says the wobbly old nun we're to call Sister Grey, sitting at the table and looking hopelessly at our forms. “We shall have to build another wing if this carries on.”

“I blame war fever,” the other nun says. This nun has her back to us and is built like a gas cooker, straight up and down. She has a voice full of opinions: “These girls are boy mad, they go for anyone in a uniform, and the
American influence
didn't help, either.”

This makes no sense to me since I'm in for hoisting and nothing whatsoever to do with boys or “war fever”; what's more, the war's been over now for two years, so what on earth are they talking about? The tall girl next to me titters and shifts impatiently from foot to foot. She seems a lot older than me, so I'm surprised to read (upside down on the notes on the table in front of me) that her birth date is only the year before mine. That makes her fifteen. Impressive then that she's already got Sister Grey snapping her ruler on her desk in irritation.

“You think that's funny do you, Miss Stella S—”

Better still, I recognize Stella's name as being from a big Jewish/Irish family in Bethnal Green and I beam my recognition of this at her, so far from home in this country house in darkest Kent. She seems to take a minute to decide whether to beam back, running her dark-green eyes over my crumpled pinafore dress and my straggling brown hair before finally moving the gum to one side of her mouth, and half-smiling.

“And is that chewing gum, young lady? A disgusting habit—give that to me!” screams Sister Grey. This funny old nun is slightly shaky, all the time, I realize: her head, her hands tremble, like she's a cup of milk on a train journey, ready to wobble over at any moment.

Sister Grey pushes the wooden ruler towards Stella's mouth and indicates with a shove that she's to put her gum on the end of it, so that Sister Grey can walk with it to the wastepaper basket without having to touch it. Stella slowly sticks out her tongue and with finger and thumb deposits the rolled up belly-button-sized piece of grey gum on the end of the ruler. Of course, it sticks a little, and Sister Grey gets to the bin but just shudders and can't flick it off. She gets agitated then, obviously regretting that she asked Stella to do such a stupid thing—why didn't she just make Stella put it in the bin herself?—and the other nun turns around and stares at her, clearly thinking the same thing, and shaking her head a little, which makes me want to snigger, and almost feel sorry for Sister Grey. I can see at once how it is between those two nuns. A bit like me and Stella. Sister Grey, now really flustered, shakes and stammers and squeaks a little, and in the end throws the ruler in the bin, and wheels back towards us. Her upper lip is sweating.

“Disgusting! You're thoroughly repulsive, you girls. Now get to your rooms.”

Stella grins and glances at me. The girl with the smelly feet looks worried and tries to hurry out of the door. First point to Stella, I think to myself. Battle lines are drawn.

“What are you in for?” I whisper to Stella, clutching the three belongings I've got with me in my dolly-bag: Annie's nail-buffer, Annie's lucky gloves, and Annie's empty cigarette case. They were the only things I managed to grab that day—which feels like an age ago now—when I was first taken for a ride in the Black Maria. Not exactly practical, but since I can't harm myself with them, I've been allowed to keep them in my room.

“Too much war fever with too many boys,” Stella whispers back, and I giggle, excited by her willingness to spill the beans. Maybe Approved School might teach me something useful, some of those things to do with men and boys that the Green Bottles were always hinting at and laughing over, but never quite spelling out?

It takes a long while to fall asleep, that first night. Stella is in the bed next to mine, and we've been whispering for hours after lights out, and finally I slip into a twitchy sleep, and start dreaming at once. I'm standing above a huge staircase. The staircase is long and steep so that I can't see the bottom; it shelves suddenly like a cliff, and you can drop off the end, I know that. Someone is beside me holding my hand, and I think at first it's Nan, but then I see her about halfway down the staircase, waving at me and smiling, showing her pink denture-gums. So I try to turn my head to see who's beside me, thinking it must be Bobby then, but my head won't turn, and I somehow know without being told or without seeing for myself that it's not Bobby, either, it's someone else. I want to see that person, and I start to panic a little, not knowing if it's someone or something I should be scared of—is it a nice person or not?—but my head won't budge and whoever it is is just out of range. And the panic goes and instead I'm sad because Nan's a ghost, and there's nobody else on the staircase and I feel awfully lonely. I glance over the edge, wondering whether to take a step. Stella's snoring breaks in then, startling me awake for a moment. When I sink back again, I can't find the dream, no matter how hard I look for it.

D
ear Bobby,” I write. “I've made a friend here and her name is Stella. She's teaching me lots of things like how to smoke. We've found these butts the gardener leaves in the garden where we do work in the allotment, and even though they are only Capstan and very squashed up and taste a bit soily, we can stretch them out and light them with matches nicked from the kitchen and it's great. Hope you are finding some nice cigarettes in borstal and have found a good friend like I have. I hope that they are letting you do your Important Touching of things twenty times before you put them on. Love your Loving Sister, Queenie.”

I push the letter under my pillow, where it sits on top of a small pile of others, tied together with an elastic band. I've finally stopped trying to post them, or expecting a reply. I'm not sure that my other letters even reached Bobby—I always gave them to Annie or Dad to post, relying on them to buy me a stamp, and I realize now that they probably didn't bother.

Sister Catherine—the Head Teacher—sends a note to call me into the office and makes me sit there waiting while she sharpens a load of pencils. I don't mind being there because most of the school day is so boring, just full of rules rules rules, like stand up to talk to the teacher and wait until you're spoken to before saying something and don't ask questions unless you're asked to and then don't sit there in silence like a big lemon when I ask you something, young miss. Anyway I have been sent to Sister Catherine's office partly because today I wouldn't stand up when Sister Grey asked me to and partly because there is going to be a visiting Ed Psych (Educational Psychologist) and I'm to be tested on things like my memory, which any nincompoop could tell you is
brilliant,
and then this other thing to do with my verbal reasoning or something and then this thing called the Stanford Binet for my IQ. Intelligence Quotient.

Sister Catherine has a thick brow that sort of joins in the middle and shadows her eyes. She suddenly looks up from her sharpening of pencils, sighing really loudly and says:

“You've been here some time now, Queenie. Nine months, I think. And so little improvement. Don't you want to be a good girl?”

I say nothing.

“What would it take, I wonder, for you to be
obedient
for once?”

“Miss?”

“It's Sister Catherine, Queenie, as well you know. If we can change with the times and call our pupils by the first names, the least
you
can do—”

“Sister Catherine—people in Nazi Germany was
obedient
.”

“
Were
obedient, Queenie. People in Hitler's Germany
were
obedient.”

“Yes, Sister Catherine. They did what they . . .
were
told and that's why they did all those terrible things to Jewish people. I don't want to be obedient, miss. I want to be an Old Scallywag—like my dad.”

She sighs even more loudly, and sips at a mug of tea on the table.

“Indeed. Well you're obviously a clever girl—as well as a downright cheeky one. It's such a waste, that's all I'm saying. You could put your cleverness to a better use, Queenie, eh? You're making life hard for yourself, with this resistance to rules, and your time here is ticking by and you've been sent here to
improve
you, do you understand, to—”

She gets cut off then, as a tap on the door is followed by it opening a little, and a curly haired ginger man stands there, a great hulking man with a ginger beard, and a stupid smile on his face. The Ed Psych. He shakes Sister Catherine's hand and they chat for a moment or two—the usual stuff about the shocking rise of juvenile delinquents since the war—as if I'm not in the room. Then he turns to me with a big phony smile and says:

“So this is the young troublesome missy herself, is it? Well, let's get started then, shall we?” and he leads me to the recreation room where the lingering smell of pineapple upside-down cake makes my stomach rumble. He has lots of papers, and a timer with a dial that he turns once and sets on the table. Stella passes the window to the room on her way to gardening duty outside, and sticks her tongue out at me, annoyed, I know, because
she's
not being tested. She then turns her back to the window and lifts up her skirt, pressing her bum in her navy blue knickers against the window, hoping that the Ed Psych will turn round, and I blurt out a laugh so loud that I'm sure he will, but the stupid giant just frowns and pushes a piece of paper towards me, and says I'm to “give it my best shot.”

“Sister Catherine tells me you're quite a puzzle to them all, Queenie. Quite the most troublesome girl they've ever had . . . but then you're clearly such a clever one, too. She says you're good at maths, but to Sister Grey it seems like a lucky guess most of the time, because she says when she asks you, you can never show your workings. You know, how you got the answer. So to them it seems like a fluke, or that you might be copying. Do you know what a fluke is, Queenie?”

“A fluke. Like being lucky, you mean?”

He pushes the paper again towards me, and the pen, and stands up, heading towards the window. The line of girls in their navy hats that look like flying saucers on their heads are aiming towards the allotments, carrying their trowels. Stella's skirt is shorter than the rest—the waistband rolled over twice to achieve this, her bigger-than-average backside fanning out the pleats even further. I can always pick her out from the rest. Him, too. Old Giant Ginger Beard is studying her.

So I begin writing on the paper he's pushed at me, and when he asks me questions I answer them, each one, just saying whatever comes into my head, and not trying to be cheeky. The room seems to be getting smaller, or somehow all the air has been sucked from it, and I watch him closely, noticing strange things about him. He's fiddling with his tie, tugging it from side to side and stretching out his neck, trying to loosen it. His eyes keep going to the window. His palm, when he puts it down on the wooden table, leaves a sweaty print. And his breath is coming out short, as if he's been running.

“Now I'm going to show you some pictures, Queenie, and point at a word, and I'd like you to say which picture most fits which word.”

He shows me some dumb pictures, badly drawn, and some written words. Incision. I choose a knife, of course. Inspiration. I point to a picture of a woman diving into a pool.

“That one? You're sure? What about the man painting—don't you think that might be . . . inspiration?”

“You said I could say what I wanted. Now you're telling me. That picture's a man. And I'm a girl, and so I was thinking of myself. I think
diving.
When I dive into something, I feel ‘inspired.' ”

“So. What do you think ‘inspired' means then, Queenie?”

“Um. Like you really want to do something. Like you just think of it one day. Like you're a genius because you like dream something up which isn't real yet . . .” I pause, waiting for him to tear his attention back from the window and the girls in the garden outside. “ . . . sir.”

He turns back to face me, really slowly, and I struggle not to laugh.

“Quite. OK, let's go on then, shall we? I'm going to say a series of numbers and I want you to repeat them back to me, in exactly the order I say them. Shall we start with five digits? Here goes . . .”

I get his attention eventually. I drag his attention back from watching outside. I repeat the numbers back to him, and then he reverses the order and I repeat them back again. This startles him. He coughs and sits up straighter in his chair. He adds ten more numbers to the list, making a great show of writing them down and covering them with his sweaty arm (his sleeves rolled up now, like we're in a fight or something), and he reads them out to me carefully and I say them back to him and then he checks his own list.

“Hmm,” he says, turning to face me at last.

So he adds ten more numbers, writing them down on another bit of paper and then he reads those out kind of quickly, gabbling, like he doesn't want me to hear properly, and I repeat those ones back to him as well. He stares at the paper in front of him as I do it, holding it close to his chest so I can't read what he's written.