AUTHOR'S NOTE: Anonymous, in chapter 15 I'll write about that scene you mentioned, where Pippa shows Steven the photo. But it will be my take on it so I'm going to send Steven back to the Home for a little while - hope you'll enjoy reading anyway:o)
This chapter is about Pippa's childhood. People on back to the bay net told me about Pippa's mother suffering from kleptomania and about her having a brother called Danny who joined the Army when he was older. The rest comes from my imagination.
chapter 14
A lot of love went into the stitches that knitted the rag doll.
Five-year-old Pippa King was the youngest of her family by several years and was much loved, cosseted and protected by three older brothers and two older sisters. But a time comes for each of us when we must stand alone and for little Pippa that terrible moment arrived the day she started school.
Even now she could still recall, as vividly as though it had happened only yesterday, her terror as her mother's hand slipped out of her own and how she had gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate on something, anything to stop the ready tears.
Frightened and alone among the crowd of noisy, bustling children, she was gazing up at a bronze plaque above the door, wondering what the words there said (the school was a very old one, built in the days when boys and girls were educated separately, and much later Pippa discovered that the mysterious words read 'Boys' Entrance') when a tall, gangly boy with a shock of red hair, who was fighting with an equally tall, gangly boy with exactly the same shock of red hair pushed into her and the other yelled, "Outta the way, doofus!"
Pippa never did find out whether it was Joey or Jimmy who pushed her over and whether it was Jimmy or Joey who yelled at her; she was far too busy trying to stop herself from falling to the cold, hard ground and scraping her knees and the heels of her hands in the process. And trying, oh, so hard not to cry like she'd promised.
The weeks leading up to Pippa starting school seemed to have coincided with some crisis in her normally happy family and, sensing something was amiss but not knowing what, Pippa, despite her qualms, had made up her mind she was going to be very, very brave. But fifteen-year-old Danny, the eldest and her favourite brother, was the only one she told and Danny smiled, a little sadly, Pippa thought, and said she was a good kid.
"But I won't leave home to join the Army as soon as I start school," Pippa added earnestly, thinking perhaps it was this that was worrying Danny.
Danny was always talking of joining the Army as soon as he was old enough, and he loved to watch war movies where soldiers were always being hailed as brave heroes by the grateful civilians who's lives and towns they'd inevitably saved from death and destruction. Army and brave were words that were irretrievably linked in five-year-old Pippa's mind.
It would be a great many years before Pippa learnt that her mother Coral had suffered from kleptomania.
Back in the Fifties depression was an illness that was little understood and poor Coral, having recently lost an old schoolfriend to cancer, beginning to develop arthritis in her knees, and trying to eke out enough money to feed and clothe a family of eight when her husband Bert was made redundant and had to take on a much lower paid job, found that pocketing a bottle of nail varnish or walking out of a shop with unpaid-for groceries gave her a temporary lift that nothing else could.
But, while depression was little understood, kleptomania, one of its symptoms, was rarely even acknowledged as an illness.
It was nothing more than a great curtain-twitching scandal when the police finally knocked on Coral King's door and found two stolen skirts, a cheap dragonfly brooch, eight fountain pens and six pairs of gloves in her shopping bag, and tongues wagged unabated about the sight of the quiet, churchgoing mother-of-six being taken away, head down, shoulders sagging, the picture of guilt. Imaginations overflowed and theories ranged from Mrs King's many years' non-payment of fines for overdue library books to her being the mastermind behind a spate of post office robberies to her having put rat poison in her husband's tea.
Of course little Pippa, asleep in bed, knew nothing of these things.
Pippa's father, shocked and dismayed - and, well, I'm going to be honest here, secretly rather pleased; they were a very poor family - to keep discovering stolen goods in their cupboards and at a loss how to handle the situation, had decided the best course of action was to hush it all up and say nothing at all and only Danny had been taken into his confidence.
But now, with the arrival of the police to arrest Coral, the beans were spilled (and literally too, one of the kids had knocked over a dinner plate) and the whole family except for Pippa knew some crime had been committed.
The King household was in total shock and confusion. Danny was instructed to "run like the clappers" and fetch his grandmother, who lived six blocks away, and thirteen-year-old Shirley, to be helped by twelve-year-old Heather, was tasked with keeping an eye on Pippa, who was still fast asleep, and Ronnie and Peter, the ten-year-old twins, who were screaming hysterically for their mother, while Bert accompanied his sobbing wife to the station. His wife needed him and so did his children, and Bert was tearing out what little hair he had left, wondering what on earth to do next.
And that was when some much-needed support arrived.
Brenda King was a sprightly woman of seventy-five with lots of common sense. Her first husband had turned out to be a wife-beating drunken bully and her second husband, although a kind, gentle man, was an invalid and unable to work due to tuberculosis and she had brought up eleven children almost single-handedly. The closest she had ever come to a holiday was an occasional day trip to the seaside or, in her later years, staying with one of her grown-up children, but nothing seemed to get her down.
"Knit two, pearl two" was always her smiling answer when people asked how on earth she managed to cope over the years. When Danny breathlessly told her what had happened, Brenda's latest knitting was immediately packed into her bag too.
Granny Brenda, never one to splash out on unnecessary luxuries, decided the seriousness of the situation merited extravagant action and so she and Danny screeched round the corner in their cab only moments before the police were to take Coral away for questioning. Within minutes she had calmed everyone down, within hours arrangements had been made, via the pay-phone at the end of the Kings' street and the large black phone that had pride of place on top of a doily and a small, polished table in a neat white house next to the sea in the lovely little town of Settlers Point, for Coral and Bert to stay with Maureen and Eric, Bert's sister and brother-in-law, who had no children and who were considered quite wealthy by the rest of the family, both to give Coral a much-needed break and while events blew over.
Poor Pippa meanwhile had cried herself to sleep. Her first day at school had been terrible, but she didn't know how to tell anyone.
Determined not to cry and realising that there was no one now to help her up like there always had been before, she struggled to her feet, her bottom lip beginning to quiver when she looked down and saw blood. For a moment there was silence.
And then somebody laughed!
Pippa had never been laughed at in her life before. Laughed with and called cute heaps of times, but never laughed at. She had been so brave but now her resolve crumpled and hot tears splashed down her cheeks.
Miss Pettigrew, her teacher, pushed her way through the crowd to check Pippa's hands and knees.
"Now don't be silly, there's hardly a scratch," she said briskly. "A couple of band aids and you'll be right as rain."
"But I...I have to have lollies or a present too!" Pippa gasped in disbelief. It always happened. Whenever Pippa hurt herself, something nice was bought for her by her family to make up for it.
"I see," said Miss Pettigrew in a tone that clearly said "a spoilt brat". "Well, you're a big girl now, Pippa, and that certainly won't be happening here. Miss Denver," she called to one of her helpers. "Could you kindly attend to this child and then bring her along to my class?"
The day had got worse and worse. Jimmy and Joey sat in the desk behind Pippa and kept sniggering and whispering "cry baby" and because they were so fierce none of the other kids got involved. Pippa's first day at school, that she'd looked forward to so much, she hadn't made a single friend.
When she grew up, she was going to fix it so no kid would ever be as sad and alone as she felt tonight, Pippa thought, crying herself to sleep. She didn't know how but she would and...
Pippa started awake and listened, puzzled, to the commotion that had so suddenly woken her from a strange dream that she had been wandering all alone in the school and every door she opened simply led to another door to open. And then she heard a familiar voice - a much loved voice!
She scrambled out of bed and ran downstairs, flinging herself into her grandmother's lap to tearfully tell her story and sobbing her heart out when she realised Mum and Dad had abandoned her to go off on a very sudden holiday. But Granny Brenda kissed the tears better, tucked Pippa up in bed and told her in the morning someone would be there who would make everything alright.
And when she went down to breakfast next day there was Mrs Martha sitting in the chair.
"Mrs Martha wasn't meant to be here till your birthday but she couldn't wait to meet you," Brenda said, folding up the knitting pattern and smiling at the rapt look on her small granddaughter's face. It was hard to pick a favourite when she had so many grandchildren, but Pippa, although a trifle spoilt, was sensitive and sweet-natured and very, very special to her. It had been worth staying up all night to ensure the gift was finished in time.
From that moment on, Pippa and the doll were inseparable and she would whisper to Mrs Martha all her hopes and fears and dreams. Mrs Martha even helped her make friends at school because the other kids were curious about who had knitted her, and curious to know too why she was knitted with such fine clothes and a wide, floppy hat (Mrs Martha had been invited to a wedding, Pippa explained, quoting the story Granny Brenda had told her from the knitting pattern).
When her grandmother died the year after her marriage to Tom, Pippa had taken the rag doll down from the dusty shelf and wept inconsolably into its yellow wool hair. Even now, when something was troubling her, she would still pick up the doll and, smiling, remember how Granny Brenda had managed to cope with everything life threw at her. Tom teased her unmercifully but he knew what a great sacrifice it was when Pippa gave Mrs Martha to Sally.
"You have to have someone to love when everyone else lets you down," Pippa explained, placing Mrs Martha on the dressing table in Sally's room so that the rag doll would be the first thing Sally saw when she came to stay.
"You have to have someone to love when everyone else lets you down," Tom gently reminded her, echoing Pippa's words. "And I guess all we can do, Pip, is love them."
Pippa smiled and snuggled against his chest. "I love you, Tom Fletcher," she said, wishing that fate hadn't been so cruel and that they'd been able to have children of their own too. But they couldn't and all Pippa could do instead was keep her promise that no kid would ever be as sad and alone as she had felt when she'd cried herself to sleep on the loneliest night of her childhood.
Sally looked back. It wasn't fair! She hadn't told anyone Milko had been kidnapped in case the Phillips brothers killed him and now even Milko was chasing her and throwing the stones too. A sharp pain stung her cheek and as she swiftly turned again another stone pelted her in the back. Blinded with tears and terror, she could only keep on running...