looked, it had gone.
So she married my father and reformed him and he built the church and never got angry. I thought he was nice, though he didn’t say much. Of course, her own father was furious. He told her she’d married down, that she should have stayed in Paris, and promptly ended all communication. So she never had enough money and after a while she managed to forget that she’d ever had any at all. ‘The church is my family,’ she always said whenever I asked about the people in the photograph album. And the church was my family too.
At school I couldn’t seem to learn anything or win anything, not even the draw to get out of being dinner monitor. Dinner monitor meant that you had to make sure everybody had a plate and that the water jug didn’t have bits in it. Dinner monitors got served last and had the smallest portions. I’d been drawn to do it three times running and I got shouted at in class for always smelling of gravy. My clothes were gravy-spotted and my mother made me wear the same gymslip all week because she said there was no point trying to make me look clean as long as I had that duty. Now I was sitting in the shoebags, with liver and onions all down my front. Sometimes I tried to clean it off, but today I was too unhappy. After six weeks’ holiday with our church, I’d be even less able to cope with any of it. My mother was right. It was a Breeding Ground. And it wasn’t as though Ihadn’t tried. At first I’d done my very best to fit in and be good. We had been set a project just before we started last autumn, we had to write an essay called ‘What I Did in my Summer Holidays’. I was anxious to do it well because I knew they thought I couldn’t read or anything, not having been to school early enough. I did it slowly in my best handwriting, proud that some of the others could only print. We read them out one by one, then gave them to the teacher. It was all the same, fishing, swimming, picnics, Walt Disney. Thirty-two essays about gardens and frog spawn. I was at the end of the alphabet, and I could hardly wait. The teacher was the kind of woman who wanted her class to be happy. She called us lambs, and told me in particular not to worry if I found anything difficult.
‘You’ll soon fit in,’ she soothed.
I wanted to please her, and trembling with anticipation I started my essay. . . . ‘ “This holiday I went to Colwyn Bay with our church camp.” ’
The teacher nodded and smiled.
‘ “It was very hot, and Auntie Betty, whose leg was loose anyway, got sunstroke and we thought she might die.” ’
The teacher began to look a bit worried, but the class perked up.
‘ “But she got better, thanks to my mother who stayed up all night struggling mightily.” ’
‘Is your mother a nurse?’ asked the teacher, with quiet sympathy.
‘No, she just heals the sick.’
Teacher frowned. ‘Well, carry on then.’
‘ “When Auntie Betty got better we all went in the bus to Llandudno to testify on the beach. I played the tambourine, and Elsie Norris brought her accordian, but a boy threw some sand, and since then she’s had no F sharp. We’re going to have a jumble sale in the autumn to try and pay for it.
‘ “When we came back from Colwyn Bay, Next Door had had another baby but there are so many of them Next Door we don’t know whose it is. My mother gave them some potatoes from the yard, but they said they weren’t a charity and threw them back over the wall.” ’
The class had gone very quiet. Teacher looked at me.
‘Is there any more?’
‘Yes, two more sides.’
‘What about?’
‘Not much, just how we hired the baths for our baptism service after the Healing of the Sick crusade.’
‘Very good, but I don’t think we’ll have time today. Put your work back in your tidy box, and do some colouring till playtime.’
The class giggled.
Slowly I sat down, not sure what was going on, but sure that something was. When I got home I told my mother I