OUR SECRET

I like the windows at Granny’s. They get all cloudy when it’s cold and I draw aeroplanes on them and bomb Gramps’ old metal soldiers that are on the window sill. Gramps plays too, sometimes, but Granny says we mess up her windows and give her more work to do. Gramps says that she’s never happier than when she’s grumbling. Some soldiers have got heads and arms missing, but that’s good, cos we pretend the bombs got them. They’re the Germans.
He says the game we play on the window is called a ‘dog-fight’. That’s silly though, cos dogs can’t fly, but Gramps says that’s what they called it in the war, so it must be true.

I’m living with Granny and Gramps cos my mum’s in the hospital. She got sick when my dad died. I heard Auntie Jackie say that she’s got suicide and she’s broken down, so I don’t think she can get better cos suicide can make you die. I don’t want her to die too. I want her to stay with me.
I can see the train track from the bedroom window. The trains shake the house when they go by and everyone stops talking, cos you can’t hear anything. It’s like being in a wobbly jelly house. Gramps says it’s good if Granny’s grumbling then, cos he can’t hear her, but he’s just joking me. He’s always creeping up behind her in the kitchen, telling her how cuddly she is and then stealing a toffee for us, out of her apron pocket. Granny grumbles that he’s getting in the way, but she’s just joking too. He says she once was so tiny he could get his hands round her waist. Now he has to use both his arms!

Mums old teddy, Rugless, sleeps in my bed and I bought Eenuff elephant with me. I take him everywhere. Well, not to school, cos he’s not allowed there. When I was a baby I kept sucking one of the ears and it got all messy, so Granny made him new ones out of Gramps’ old shirt, so now he’s got blue and grey stripy ears. Oh, and button eyes, cos the felt ones fell off as well. He can have button eyes now I am big, but they would be dangerous for babies. Dad used to make him fly round the room and then he would tickle me on my belly with him. My dad is the best. I think God made a mistake when he come and got him, and I will tell him too, when I go to Heaven. Bad people should go first, but not to Heaven. They have to go to Hell.
‘Shoot the lot of ‘em, bloody IRA. Let ‘em rot in ‘ell’ That’s what Dad and Gramps says.
My dad weren’t bad; he got squashed by a lorry at work.

I went to see Mum yesterday. Me, Granny and Gramps went in the car. I sat in the front and Granny sat in the back. It was brill. Eenuff sat next to Granny. Mum has been in the hospital for three Saturdays now. I heard Gramps telling Granny that I was not old enough to go there, but Granny said
‘Look George, The boy needs to see his mum and we are taking him tomorrow.’ You always know Granny is going to get her own way when she says ‘Look George.’ Mum laughs when she says it, cos she says the argument is already won. She don’t laugh at the moment though, she cries a lot and forgets things. That’s why I’m living with Granny and Gramps. I had to make cornflakes for my dinner all by myself, and we had no milk cos Mum forgot we had none. And I didn’t have my favorite pyjamas for four Saturdays cos they was in the wash basket. One day I couldn’t wake Mum up, so I asked Jenny next door to wake her up for me cos I was hungry. She called Granny and the ambulance came and took Mum to the hospital and Granny took me back to her house.

The hospital is really, really old, like before God was born. No-one had coloured in the bricks like they do now. Gramps says that soldiers what got shot in the war came here. When I asked him what for, he said ‘They had jumbled brains worse than your toy box, lad.’ Gramps’ cheeks always go red and his eyes go all watery when he talks about the war. His dad died like mine did, only not by a lorry, but in a big mud field when he was fighting the Germans, and no-one ever, ever found him. Granny says Gramps never saw his dad. Not never.

We walked down this really long hall. The walls were the same colour as the yellow stuff Gramps has on his ham sandwiches. It’s really yuk. Our feet sounded like we all had big work boots on like Uncle Steve’s. I counted past five doors, but then a lady was sitting on a chair by the next one, and I forgot to count after that. She had white trainers on with undone black laces and grey socks like Gramps wears, but one was pulled up and one had fell down. She had a red woolly scarf tied round the middle of her yellow and orange dress, and hair what looked like white candyfloss! She was rocking on the chair like it was a rocking horse, and she kept banging her head on the wall when she went backwards. I don’t know who she was talking to, but she kept saying
‘Top’s n tails, count ‘em all I said. Don’t fall I said. Count ‘em all.’ and then she said it again and then again, but no-one was there.

Round the corner we went in a big room. It had giant windows all down the wall that looked like big staring eyes, with massive white monster teeth under them. They weren’t monster teeth really, they was radiators what looked like scary monster teeth. Auntie Jackie had some littler ones like that at her old house, but Uncle Steve took them out and put new ones in. He put one on the wrong wall and Auntie Jackie still moans at him for messing it up. The ceiling was higher than the sky. A giant could easy walk in there and not bang his head. There were different chairs everywhere and some had people sleeping in them.

Mum was sitting on a green chair at the other end of the room. She was looking out one of the windows, but it was dark so she couldn’t see anything.
Me, Granny and Gramps walked down the room.
‘Hi darling, look who’s come to see you,’ said Granny to my mum, but she just kept looking out the window. She looked like she was sleeping with her eyes open. Gramps walked round besides her chair, kissed her cheek and stroked her long black hair. It was all messy and crinkly like Amy’s old Sindy dolls. Amy’s my cousin. She’s nine and bosses me about cos she’s bigger than me, but she lets me play with her Lego when we go to her house. I like playing with Mums’ hair when we watch telly. It’s usually all soft and straight and shiny like liquorice laces.
‘Hi sweetheart, look at this fine young man who has come to visit you’ he said. I loved it when he called me that; it made me feel all fizzy. Then the old man in the chair across the room started shouting rude words, ones Dad says I must never ever say, so I don’t. Dad does sometimes, well he did, but I don’t think he says them in heaven. I don’t think God lets you say rude words in heaven. Then the man got up and started taking his trousers off. I like doing that, walking around in my pants, not at Granny’s though, cos it’s colder at her house. But I don’t think the man should have done that, cos the nurse told him off and then he shouted more rude words at her and started taking his pants off too. But the nurse pulled his trousers back up and took him out of the room. I think he got sent to bed.
‘Poor bastard.’ said Gramps and Granny said ‘George!’ I giggled, but Mum just stared out of the window.
‘The doctor said you seemed a little better this week darling. You look a bit brighter.’ said Granny. ‘Billy has painted you a picture, haven’t you Billy? Go on, show your mum.’
I put the picture in front of her face but I don’t think she could see it cos she didn’t say anyhing, so I put it on the table in front of her.
‘There’s me and Eenuff in the bedroom window and there’s you putting the washing out,’ I tell her, pointing at the house in the picture. She always puts the washing outside to dry. Well, before she got really sad she did.
‘My favourite bed time.’ she always says. ‘Fresh clean sheets dried outside in the wind, a nice bath and my two handsome men snuggled under the covers with me.’
There will just be me now though. But we could pretend … if she ever comes back home.

A lady came over and sat down in the chair by us. She had loads of beads on, like the ones Amy makes with her the jewellery kit we got her for her birthday. But this lady had a hundred necklaces, pink, orange, purple, red, blue, yellow and sparkly ones too. And she had loads of rings on all her fingers; like the ones you get out of crackers and bubble gum machines. I’m not allowed bubble gum. She had big slides in her hair with feathers and flowers stuck on them and red lipstick on her lips, bigger than her mouth, and more on her face, so she looked like a big raggy doll. She smelled of smoking. You’re not supposed to smoke cos it’s bad for you, and it makes you die. Granny made Gramps stop when she said ‘Look George’ and then told him to stop.
‘Good evening. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Princess Grace of Monaco’ she said ‘It’s a long way from here, but I’m going back as soon as they have finished building my new palace.’ she continued, looking across to Granny and Gramps.
She didn’t look like a princess, she looked like she had got dressed out of a dressing up box; one like Amy’s got. S’pose grown ups can do dressing up. My teacher wore Andy Pandy pyjamas to school when we had ‘back to front’ day last term, and everyone went to school in pyjamas. It was good fun, but Mum wouldn’t let me wear my new blue jumper to bed, so it wasn’t really fair.

Then … Mum looked up and said
‘This is my Billy.’ It was just like magic.
I looked at Gramps and his cheeks were all red again and Granny was squeezing his hand.
‘He drew me this picture. That’s me in the garden and there’s Billy and his elephant up at the bedroom window.’ Mum said.
I got that fizzy feeling in my tummy again.
Then, a nurse lady came over then and said
‘Grace, come on now. You know you are not to intrude when people have visitors. Come and play a game of cards with Jack and me.’
‘Princess Grace to you deary, and I am not intruding. I am gracing these good people with the presence of royalty.’ said the lady
‘And I am asking you to join us in a game of cards. Come on now. Let Maggie have some time with her family.’ said the nurse, and waited until she got up and went with her. I don’t think the nurse believed she was a princess either. She wasn’t wearing a crown and she didn’t have any servants, so I just think she was pretending.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Gramps ‘She’s a bit gone in the head, that one. Poor cow. Not her fault, but good grief, I got worn out just looking at her. Thought we were going to have to spend the whole time with Princess what’s her name there.’
Mum looked up.
‘I saw a doctor again this morning,’ she said. ‘I keep telling them that I just needed a sleep, but you just get labelled.’ She looked at Granny.
‘I just want to come home, Mum. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not like them. I just needed to sleep. I just needed some rest so I could take care of Billy.’
Then Mum looked at me, and her eyes were working again. They were sort of broke when we got here, but now they were working again, so I thought she could come home with us. But she didn’t.

On the way home in the car I went in the back so I could go to sleep. Granny asked Gramps what they were going to do.
‘We can’t lose her, George. We just can’t. She looks so fragile and she’s so thin.’
‘Now listen here duck,’ he said. ‘She’s a strong’un, our Maggie. And you was right about taking young Billy today too. Her eyes lit right up for the first time in weeks. She’ll be just fine, just needs a bit of time, that’s all.’

She will be home soon … I know. Cos, when we left she twiddled my ear and stole my nose with her fingers. And she hadn’t done that for nine Saturdays.