Open Writing

I told a big lie at school today. We were having our Music and Movement time in the Hall and Miss said, Now I've got something important to tell you. Quite soon our school will be putting on a concert for some very special visitors. Some of your Mothers and Fathers may come along too. There will be singing and poetry and country dancing. Of course, not all of you will be able to take part. Only the best children will be chosen. And only those who know how to behave. Children who can sit up straight and pay attention. That's better.

Miss said, Now, first of all, put up your hands, all the girls who do ballet, because I shall choose some of you for a Dance of Spring. Straight away some of the boys made a rude noise but Miss gave them a look. Some of the girls put up their hands and I put up my hand. Susan Jones saw me. Her eyes went like a fish, like the eyes in the whiting that Mum gets for our cat to eat. Susan whispered, You don't do ballet. I said that I did. You don't, you're a liar.

Anyway, then we had to dance around while Miss watched and I was one of the lucky ones. Susan Jones wasn't a lucky one so she said, You're a liar and I'm telling. But Miss just said, It doesn't matter. Go and sit down, Susan.
Anyway, I do do ballet. I do it a lot in the back yard.

I liked doing that dancing. Mum borrowed me some pink ballet shoes for it. I had to give them back after.

Mum says, I suppose you're old enough to know how to behave by now. I took you to a class once before, when you were little - you probably don't remember - and you kept running out to stand beside teacher and hold her hand. I apologised about you afterwards and the teacher said, Oh she's just full of beans. Bring her again. But I didn't.

Now Mum thinks I know how to behave I can learn tap dancing. Not ballet. Mum says I'm daft enough already without ballet. But she says I can do ‘limbering’ instead. I don't know what limbering is but I expect I will like it.

The walls in this place are brown gravy and dirty dish-water. A piano is in a corner, not a shiny one like ours at home. This piano is old and tired and its teeth are all yellow. There's no furniture except some old wooden chairs. Nothing to get in the way. That's good. The floor is wood. Very dirty. That floor, Mum said, and she clicked her tongue. You'll be kicking up the dust on that floor all right.

Here comes the teacher, Miss Dale. She has special shoes. They look like old lady's lace-ups but they go ‘ching’ at every step, like the harness on the greengrocer's horse. Now she’s standing at the front. She stands tidy - very straight up and down. A buttoned right up to the neck blouse, tidy black skirt, like a lady in an office. Her hair is tidy too, tight and smooth. No smile, but she seems all right.

At home, I like to do tap dancing in our scullery. The floor is hard as stone. It makes a good noise. You can hear all the beats, nice and clear. Mostly, I try to keep to the corner where the mangle is. Time-steps, tap-springs, pick-up springs, as fast as I can go. Arms in opposition, parallel and co-ordination. Mum gets fed up sometimes. Will You Keep Your Feet Still!

When Mum heats up the wash-boiler I have to get out of the way. So I do steps that go sideways, Suzi-Qs and Shuffle-Off-To-Buffalo, along the passage. Stop scratching the lino! Mum calls out. So I take off my shoes and socks and do high kicks and spring kicks. Not enough room for fan kicks. Do you mind? I'm trying to get past! Mum is always busy.

My brother does piano. You have to be clever to learn piano. He gets piano and I get dancing. Mum is very fair. He practices in the front room every morning and Mum always hears if he makes a mistake. If he keeps making the same mistake she goes and stands at the door of the front room and gives him a look. Mum can't play the piano but she knows what's what.

My brother told the lady who plays for my dancing class that her piano was out of tune. Mum was embarrassed but a bit pleased as well. I think he should have minded his own business. The lady who plays the piano has very old yellow sheets of music. Mum says some of the tunes are old enough to have come out of the Ark. I don't care.

We've got to rehearse for something special so I've got an extra class today. And I'm walking along the Fulham Palace Road by myself. It's Saturday and so there are all these men coming from the football. Grey marching men. Heavy overcoats they wear. It's cold and their hands are deep in their pockets. Clumping boots and shoes. They seem cheerful, so Fulham must have won. I slip in and out of them like a tadpole.

Grey coats and trousers, grey socks. Lots of things are grey. Grey buildings, grey sugar paper and dirty plasticine in school. Grey playground outside. The smog is grey and creeps down your throat.

At my dancing class we sing, ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the mo-ho-hor-ning.

Butterflies will flutter up and kiss each little buttercup at daw-haw-haw-ning.' Buttercups are yellow and so are the flowers that grow on the bomb site in summer. I'm not allowed to play on bomb sites. Picking flowers isn't playing, though, is it?

Mum's made a place in our yard where she grows dahlias and tobacco plants. Dahlias are for a bit of colour and tobacco plants smell fit for a queen, she says.

Mum takes me with her to the Fabric Hall. They have these little platforms and stages there for showing off all kinds of material. They can throw it over columns so that it falls down in long folds and spills around on the floor. Or they hang it high above your head like posh washing. We wander around fingering stuff and holding it up at arms length and spreading across our fronts. Mum always roots around in the special box that has odd bits and pieces in it. Sometimes she buys a little bit of something bright. But grey flannel or navy serge or wincyette is more useful.

This stuff is not real silk, Mum tells me. It's like fake silk. It's called taffeta. Wretched stuff, she says. It slithers about, it frays like mad, it gets caught on the sewing machine. It melts if you're not careful with the iron. But it's in bright bright colours for my dancing costumes and I like it.

My Mum doesn't like people making an exhibition of themselves. Making an exhibition is when people talk in a loud voice and wave their arms. And she doesn't like swank. Stop swanking about, she tells me, Nobody wants to see your swank. And sometimes in the street she says, Who does she think she is? Lady Muck?

Yesterday Mum and I were carrying home the shopping. She had all the vegetable and a lump of meat. I had the bread and bananas. The shopping bags always pull Mum's arms straight down at her sides. Her heels strike hard on the paving stones. Stomp, stomp, stomp. That's the sound of doing the shopping.

We saw a tall lady with brown skin walking ahead of us. She was wearing a snow white blouse and a pretty skirt. She had long bare brown legs and flat shoes and she didn't have a bag. I've never seen a brown lady before. The way the lady was walking, I thought my Mum would click her tongue and mutter about swank. But she didn't. Doesn't she look nice, Mum said. The way she walks and holds her head up like a queen.

Mostly Mum makes herself serviceable clothes. Serviceable means boring and not wearing out for a long time until you're fed up with it. But she makes herself something nice for the Christmas party. Last Christmas, though, she bought herself a dress from a shop. The colour of it was Shocking Pink. It's the latest thing, she told me. Something dressy, she said. For a change. And she wore the diamante brooch that my brother bought her in Woolworth's.
At the Christmas party the Aunties all meet up. Their eyes snap as they bite into the cheese straws. They make remarks. Their smiles don't count. I'm glad they don't take much notice of me, especially Aunty Edie. My Mum's Shocking Pink was brighter than Aunty Edie's red dress.

I go out into the passage with my cousin. We slide up and down on the cold lino in our socks. He is all right to me, even though my Mum made him some purple velvet page-boy trousers and then made him wear them.

Miss Dale always dresses in her tidy white blouses and black skirts but she likes her pupils to have lots of colourful costumes. That Miss Dale certainly likes a bit of colour, Mum says. We have to have royal blue jackets and red striped trousers, cardboard bowlers for our 'California, Here I Come' routine. The emerald green and orange two-pieces outfits are for the acrobatic dance. (Mum hasn't time to stitch a button hole so she sews on press-stud instead. It pops open when I do a back bend. Mum says, Stop fussing. Nobody was looking at you.)

It was dark by the time the show was finished. Mum got the make-up off my face with a few hard wipes and we rushed to catch the bus. I was wearing my brother's grey winter coat so nobody on the bus saw my shiny blue jacket and red bow-tie underneath. And nobody could see my stripy trousers because Mum had pulled a pair off his long grey socks up over them.

We are going to be Cossacks at the Albert Hall. The dance is mostly just leaping about and high kicks and cartwheels. And standing with our hands on our hips. We do it to Tchaikovsky's 'Trepak' and Mrs B really pounds away on the old piano. I'm wearing a turquoise taffeta shirt and purple baggy trousers. The trousers have to be tucked into Wellington boots. Cossacks wear Wellingtons all the time. We have all got to have new ones specially. More expense, Mum says. She says it's all getting a bit much.

Mum sits at the sewing machine in the evenings after Dad has gone off to work. Sometimes she really pounds away at the machine. She turns the handle so hard and so fast that the whole table wobbles. She asks me to thread the needle for her when her eyes are getting tired. And sometimes she lets me wind the thread on the bobbin and pop the bobbin into the shuttle or tidy the reels of cotton.

I said, Why don't you make dresses and things for people instead of working in the factory? She shrugged and didn't say anything. Well, why not, Mum?
She bit off a thread, hard. Her eyes snapped at me over the top. What did I say wrong?

I had to to take what there was, she said. Like it or lump it, that's how it was, that's how it is. Time you were in bed, my girl. You've got school tomorrow.

Mum makes going to school and going to work sound like carrying something heavy. Lumping it. Like carrying the shopping home.

Miss Dale told us how she used to be a Bath Bun. She was one of six little girls who danced for people in hospitals and in big houses or at the seaside and they were called The Bath Buns. But when she was older she went to the Royal Academy and became a ballerina. She told us this when we went to tea at her house – just a few of us. I liked her house. I liked all her things. She showed us posters and programs and bits of costumes from long ago. She gave me an old head dress - a bit bent but still pretty, yellow silk and sequins. When I got home I showed it to Mum and then I put it on my dressing table. Now I don't know where it's gone. Perhaps it's fallen down the back.

Mum, how about if I do ballet instead of 'limbering'? Can I? I like limbering but it's mostly only high kicks and back bends anyway.

Mum says, I saw what ballet girls are like when I did that cleaning job at the Ballet School. Daft ha'porths. Too much swank and not enough scrubbing. Putting on airs. Grubby vests and spotty backs. And she says, Ballet dancers don't last very long, you know.

Later, she says, Before you know it you'll be at secondary school and you won't have time. If you do well at school you could become a private secretary.

I asked Mum what a private secretary does. She said, Oh, you do shorthand and typing and you sit at a desk making appointments. You have to speak nicely and look smart.

Mum says being a private secretary is a good job. And she says, Maybe you could learn ballroom dancing. That might come in useful.

I had my school interview today. In the entrance hall there are old oil paintings of pupils from hundreds of years ago. Mum said I should tell the Headmistress that I wanted to be a private secretary when I left school. So I did and it must have worked because the school said I could go there. The uniform costs a lot of money and is boring.

I've stopped the ballroom dancing. It was boring.

We've got a new English teacher. She's come for just one term. I like her. She sits at the desk in her tidy white blouse and black skirt but she says interesting things. You can just see Cleopatra, can't you? she asked. Sweeping into Woolworth's and decking herself out with every single thing on the jewellery counter? And yes, I could see Cleopatra like that. She'd be draped in in layers of gaudy taffeta and she'd swan into the store and start loading herself with skeins of cheap necklaces and bracelets, pinning diamante brooches all over her front. Then she'd stride down to the Mall at Hammersmith, to her barge with the purple sails and go sailing off down the Thames. A woman who liked a bit of colour. A woman who wasn't afraid of a bit of swank.

So this is how you can think about Shakespeare people.

So, I've shuffled through school and out the other side. I've got one very good 'A' level, one mediocre grade and one scrape. Not exactly a star but not exactly a daft ha'porth. I get to go to a university. Everyone's probably a bit surprised. Mum hopes I'll be able to get a good job in the end, though she's not sure what use a degree in Philosophy and Politics will be. Me neither. But I took what there was.

Well, that didn't last long. Off to university and back home after only two terms. Couldn't get to like Philosophy and Politics. Couldn't lump it, either. Mum hasn't said much.

This is the coat Mum says I can borrow for the job interview. She's at work right now, dishing up school dinners. It's a coat of fine grey wool. Very smart. It's been made with care on her electric sewing machine. She saved up for the new machine when she started going to evening classes to learn to do dressmaking properly. I've got the old machine now. This coat is not exactly Swinging Sixties but it's a nice coat. I will look suitable in it, I suppose. Employable.

Now, look at that. The coat lining's bright scarlet taffeta. What about her other coats?

Black wool hiding crimson satin. Navy linen hiding turquoise silk. Is this how to swank without it showing?

In the sitting room I flip on the radio. Glen Miller. Not exactly Swinging Sixties but no-one can hear this old music and stay still. My feet shift on the carpet, trying to shuffle in the shag pile, a toe and heel riff, a shunt and a slide. And as they shuffle, my feet get me thinking. Kicking up the thoughts. Simple thoughts. Like... the trouble with Philosophy is there's not much colour and no high kicking involved. And... the same goes for shorthand and typing.

I'll go and get a job. But I'll be looking around. And I shall bear in mind, Mum, the fact that, although you talked about typing and getting a good job and the importance of not swanking etc, you did pay out your hard-earned money for someone to teach me to dance. And you did sit and sew me costumes in bright taffeta. And what's more, I've seen your secret coat linings. And let's not forget that long-ago party dress of Shocking Pink (though you only wore it once). It could be that your actions have spoken louder than your words. So I'm going to try to give full credit to your actions.

**

To read more of Jacqueline's memorable words please click on http://www.openwriting.com/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=jacqueline+finesilver