A Family At War by Beryl Kingston

Author:Beryl Kingston [Kingston, Beryl]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

We've had a really dreadful week. Mum's been after the lady every minute of the day, following her about the bungalow when she dares to come out of her room, shouting at her, over and over again. 'Have you got somewhere else yet? Have you? Don't walk away from me. I want to know.' I feel quite sorry for her. I know she shouldn't still be in our house, because it's our house and we're the only ones who have a right to live here. Mum keeps saying so. But it's awful to see her cry.

On Thursday Mum suddenly puts on her hat and coat and flounces out in a temper. It scares me when she does that because it always means trouble. And sure enough, she's back in about an hour to say she's fixed up a school for me, so they needn't start writing her silly letters. I didn't know anyone had written her a silly letter but I don't like to ask her about it. I'm to go to Villa Maria, which is the local convent, and Pat's coming with me.

I try to ask her if it's a grammar school but she just says it's a convent and that's all I can get out of her.

'I shall have to buy a uniform for little Pat,' she says, 'but you can wear your old one. They're quite agreeable.'

So here we are walking through the footpath into Bognor for our first day at yet another school, my ninth and Pat's second. She keeps saying she's tired and she wants a piggyback but I keep saying she's big enough to walk by herself. She'll be nine in a few weeks’ time and I'm not carting a great fat nine-year-old about.

The school is in an old house not far from the end of the footpath. It's right on the edge of town and everything in it is very old-fashioned, including the teachers. The form rooms are simply ordinary living rooms with desks in them. There's a blackboard on a stand at one end and a teacher's rostrum with a rather larger desk on it, usually next to the fireplace, but apart from that it's just a plain dull room, buff coloured walls, brown lino, brown desks, with lessons to match.

We've just had a science lesson, which was so bad I couldn't believe it. The teacher gave us a piece of litmus paper - or to be accurate, one piece between two - and we had to draw it. Can you imagine drawing a piece of litmus paper? It's ridiculous. Then we all had to sit quietly while she explained what it was for and then she dictated notes for the rest of the lesson. I was blind with boredom by the time it was over.

Now we're in another room where we're going to be taught French. Heaven help us.

The teacher is a dowdy sort of woman and the books she hands out are dowdy too, written in stupidly easy French, all in the present tense and with no sort of vocabulary to speak of, really childish.

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