Authors: Jean Ure

Shrinking Violet (8 page)

BOOK: Shrinking Violet

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“Ooh! Look. Panties!” shrieked Sarah, as we went up the escalator, past all the adverts. Lily screeched.

“
Panties!
” she went.

I don’t know what they found so funny about it. I mean, everyone has to wear them, even the Queen. (Unless they’re a nudist, which I personally wouldn’t want to be as I would almost certainly break out into goose pimples.)

“Pantyhose!”

“Chest hair!”

“Ooh, look, there’s a naughty one!”

They giggled and shrieked all the way up the escalator. By the time we reached the museum they were totally hyper. Mrs Frost spoke to them, quite sternly. She said that unless they pulled themselves together and stopped acting like five year olds she would send them straight back to school with Miss Adams.

So then they went a bit quiet and crept round on exaggerated tiptoe, silently pointing at things and pulling faces. Every now and again Mrs Frost would check them out. She’d shoot them one of her dagger glances and they would stare soulfully back with these hurt expressions on their faces. Lily can look just
so
angelic when she wants to.

I walked round with Pandora. I would rather not have walked with her as I was trying to make mental notes of everything I saw so that I could report back to Katie next time I wrote. It is very difficult to make mental notes when someone is constantly wittering at you, but Pandora is a person that just kind of
sticks.
Unless you are rude there is no getting rid of her. I didn’t want to be rude as she is very easily hurt, she crumples at the least little thing, so I did my best to
shut out her wittering and hoped that I would remember a few interesting things to tell Katie. She was going to tell me about her party, so I had to have something to tell her in return!

It was the mummies we all wanted to see. They were quite spooky! I’d seen mummies before, of course, on television and in books. But never in the f-f-f-flesh!

Not that mummies have flesh, really. Not that you can see. They are all done up in bandages. You can only imagine what lurks beneath ….

Fortunately they are all kept in glass cases, otherwise I would probably have had visions of them getting out and walking round the museum at dead of night, like in a film I once saw. I was only quite little and I had to keep hiding my head in a cushion. Mum said afterwards that I shouldn’t have watched it. I do have this rather over-active imagination.

Lily doesn’t have any imagination
at all.
To her a mummy is just a dead guy. This is what she yelled – “Dead guys!” – as she went shrieking off with Sarah across the polished floor. Pandora clutched at my sleeve and said, “Are they really dead?”

“Well, they’re not
alive
,” I said.

“But are they real people?”

I told her that they had been, once; a long time ago.

“So if you took the bandages off … what would they be like?”

“Just sort of …
skin
,” I said. “All dried and withered. ’cos there’s nothing inside them. It’s all been taken out. All their organs,” I said. “Their intestines, and their livers, and their lungs … they used to take them out and put them in special jars.”

Pandora’s lip quivered. “While they were still alive?”

I said, “No! When they were dead.”

We’d already done all this at school, but Pandora’s a bit slow at taking things in. She always has to be told several times over. It is no use being impatient with her. Something happened when she was born and made her not quite right. Maybe for all I know something happened when I was born and made me not quite right. Maybe that is why I
am a shrinking violet and it is not my fault any more than it is Pandora’s fault that she keeps asking stupid questions all the time.

While we were talking, Lily and Sarah had been racing excitedly from mummy to mummy. All of a sudden, Sarah shrieked, “Hey, look at this one! Who does he remind you of?” Naturally we all went running over to look.

“It’s Mr Spooner” cried Lily. “What is he doing here?”

We all collapsed! We just couldn’t help it. Poor Mr Spooner! He is one of our teachers at school.

“Mr Spooner,” said Pandora, gazing at the mummy.

Just then, Mrs Frost came over to see what we were giggling at. She must have heard what Pandora said! I could see her lips start to
twitch, as if she would have liked to giggle, too. I mean, that mummy really did look like Mr Spooner! But of course, being a teacher, she couldn’t let herself.

We all stopped giggling except for Pandora, who had only just started. The rest of us made like we were sucking on lemons. Disgraceful! Quite disgraceful!

Mrs Frost shook her head. “Without any doubt,” she says, “you are far and away the worst bunch I have ever had to deal with!”

After that we all went for snacks in the cafeteria then back to the station to catch the train home. And I’ve gone and forgotten every single mental note that I made! All I can think of to tell Katie is Mrs Frost saying we’re the worst bunch she’s ever had to deal with …

Good morning! This is me. Katie!

How are you? I think your scribble picture was really good! Some people that in the past I have tried to play it with, they have just had no imagination at all. It is no fun when people have no imagination.

The maze that I sent you was one I did in a hurry as I wanted you to have it. I have done another one that is more difficult. I like drawing mazes. It is something I have only just started doing. I didn’t mind you saying the first one was too easy, though a maze doesn’t always have to be difficult. There are some that are just pretty. My one wasn’t but that was because I didn’t have time.

I loved hearing about your visit to Riverside. I am just S000O envious! If I was smiled at by Tony I think I would swoooooooon. I would never recover! I knew about the little houses not being real because I read about it somewhere but I would still very much like to go and see them. If I didn’t swooooon!

I told Mum about you not liking to be called Lil or Vi. She says she is glad. But we don’t know why you don’t like your names! Mum says they are charming and unusual. I think Violet is nice as I just happen to love violets. They are so sweet and dainty! I don’t like Lily so much. (But
don’t tell her I said so!!!) I think lilies are a bit too pale and droopy. They smell nice, of course. But so do violets! Plus you can have violet chocolates. I never heard of lily chocolates!

Here is you and your sister:

It didn’t embarrass me, you saying how you both came out of the same egg. We have already done this at school, so it is something I know about. How silly of that girl Pandora to go red! As you say, it is only biology. She must be really weird. There is a girl in my class that is weird. She is called Shayna and she eats flowers! Our teacher once told us that
you could eat nasturshums (?) and so now she eats every flower she comes across. Nothing is safe from her! Last week there was a bowl of hyercinths (?) in the hall and she picked off the top and devoured it! Mrs Glover (our teacher) says that she will make herself ill, but still she goes on doing it. Mum thinks that maybe she is feeling neglected and it is her way of drawing attention to herself. I think she is just loopy.

I have drawn a picture for your dad of you being a toad. I will cut it out and stick it on NOW.

I agree it is sad when you cannot do things that you would like to do. It is very frustrating. Especially when there are people that can do them that don’t particularly want to. Then you think to yourself that they do not know how lucky they are and that life is so unfair. Only I try
not to think that too often as it is what Mum calls COUNTER PRODUCTIVE. Meaning: it doesn’t get you anywhere! It just makes you bitter and unsatisfied.

No, I don’t show Mum your letters!!! No way!!! I tell her things that I think will interest her and that I think you will not mind if I tell her, like for instance about you being a twin. That sort of thing. But nothing private!

I do like to play word games, even though I am better at the drawing ones. I worked out all the musical instruments! I will draw them for you.

But I could only make seven words out of that word you gave me. The ones I didn’t get were: ire, rue, rein, sue, rinse. I asked Mum if she could do it and she got the same as you! She says you must be very good at English. I am afraid you will think I am rather ignorant as I had never heard of the word ire! Please don’t be shocked. I have heard of it now and I will remember it.

Mum told me what it meant. She said it is another word for RAGE, which is what I felt last week at school when a stupid boy called Rory McArthur bashed out at another boy (Kevin Halliwell, who is his Dire Enemy) and got my friend Yasmin instead. He got her on the ear and made her cry. I know he wasn’t aiming at her, but I still felt ire. He is such a clumsy boy, and so aggressive. Poor Yasmin had to go to the rest room and lie down. Rory got a good telling off. But he will just go and do it over again. There is nothing that can stop him. He and Kevin have this hate thing, and anyone
that gets in the way, well that is just too bad. BOYS. puke!

We are on half-term! Are you? If so, are you doing anything exciting? I am just staying home with Mum but we are playing lots of games and having fun.

Oh, you asked me about e-mails! I am afraid we do not have a computer. I am really sorry about this, Mum says we will have to get one some time but not just yet as she has too many bills to pay. I expect Arthur would get one for us if Mum told him I wanted one, but Mum always says she is not going to SPONGE. In other words, we must make do and be independent. I know she is right and I am not complaining. But meanwhile we will have to be pen pals by snail mail, if this is all right with you?

I hope you will not mind. There are a lot of things that other people have that we do not. For instance, a video. For instance, a microwave. For instance, a dishwasher. A girl at school called Carrie Francis once asked me how we survive. She says it must be like living in the
1940s house that they showed last year on TV Did you watch it? I was like GLUED to the set, it was so fascinating. Seeing how people lived! But Carrie is just stupid to say that me and Mum live like that. We don’t! We have central heating and a television and a washing machine, just like everyone else. We are not primitive! That girl really gets on my nerves at times.

Now for the exciting bit! I have been keeping it till last. THE PARTY!

It was the hugest fun! It was held in a hall, and there was this DJ called Ryan who organised everything and did Prince Charles impressions. He looked just like him! It was really funny.

There were thirty of us in all. NO BOYS. Carrie Francis arrived wearing a tall white floppy hat with asmile on it. She kept batting her eyelashes at the DJ, trying to make him fancy her. (Which he clearly didn’t!) Susanna, the one that was having the party, said she was way over the top. In the end Susanna’s mum had to step in and tell her to calm down.

You will want to know what we did. Well, we danced a lot! The bands we danced to were S Club 7 and Steps. (Two of my favourites!) He also played “Sex Bomb” by Tom Jones, which Susanna’s dad didn’t approve of! Susanna says he is not very cool. But anyway there was nothing he could do to stop it!

As well as dancing there were also lots of songs that you do the actions to, such as “Superman” and “Macarena” by Los Delrio. We also had a limbo contest using the DJ’s microphone stand, plus a game where there were three teams and we had to pass a balloon over, then under, from person to person. Phew! I think that DJ wanted to tire us out. Which if he did he certainly managed it, as by the end even Carrie Francis had stopped batting her eyelashes. Oh, and her tall floppy hat wasn’t tall any more! She took it off and put it on a chair while we were doing the limbo and a girl called Abbie that is rather BIG, went and sat on it and squashed it flat. So now it was
a squashed floppy hat! It looked ridiculous. Well, it looked ridiculous to begin with, but after Abbie had sat on it it looked even more ridiculous. I expect it was a bit mean of me but when I told Mum about it afterwards I giggled. I said, “It looked like a hat that’s had too much to drink!” But it serves her right for saying me and Mum live like they did in the 1940s.

Anyway, that is all about the party. I hope you enjoyed it. Now I want to hear about your visit to the British Museum! And see how quickly you can get into my maze.