Becky Bananas (11 page)

W
hen Mum got married to Alan, we came to live in Kensington. “Out West,” Uncle Eddy calls it. It is nice out West and Alan was a nice dad (just for a short time). The house that we live in is a nice house. The garden is a nice garden. Everything is nice.

The house is very tall and thin, with attics that are real rooms that you can sleep in and a basement where there is a kitchen.

It has a garden with a wall round it, with spoke things stuck in the top so that the cats can’t get out into the road and be run over.

There isn’t any grass because it is not that sort of garden. Instead there are paving stones and lots of little trees, and plants growing in tubs.

I asked Mum if we could have Gran’s toadstools when Gran died but Mum said there wasn’t room for them. What she really meant was that she didn’t like them. She never liked Gran’s toadstools. She said they were as bad as garden gnomes.

I don’t know what the matter is with garden gnomes! I think they are fun. I would like to have a pond with fish in it and gnomes sitting all around, smoking their little pipes and sitting in garden chairs underneath the toadstools. When I suggested this to Mum, she shuddered. She said, “Darling, don’t be so vulgar!”

What is vulgar about it, I would like to know?

Mum says that Uncle Eddy is vulgar when he talks about needing a gypsy’s or going to the bog. But Uncle Eddy just grins and makes a gesture with two of his fingers which is
really
vulgar. I know this for a fact because Sarah once did it to Elinor Hodges and Mrs Rowe saw her and nearly had a fit. I don’t think Sarah realised that it is as terribly rude as it is.

It is funny how many things are rude that you don’t know are rude until someone tells you off about them. Like once when I was little I saw this word written on a wall and I said it to Mum and she flew into the most furious rage and said that if ever she heard me say it again she would box my ears. She said that that was what came of having to live in Bethnal Green and let me mix with people like Stacey Kitchin.

That was ever so unfair. It wasn’t Stacey’s fault. She couldn’t have said the word because she didn’t even know how to read properly. She was still on her first reader when I was into real books. I wonder what has happened to Stacey?

She could be one of my guests!

I think nowadays that we have quite a lot of money. Mum has been in
Ask Auntie
for six years!!! It is shown in loads of other countries, including America, and when it is shown in other countries Mum gets a cheque. A
big
cheque if it’s for America. When she gets a big cheque we go out and celebrate.

Last time she had one she took us to tea in a specially posh hotel in Piccadilly and I ate squishy cakes and buns with pink icing. Danny made a mess of everything as usual, dropping crumbs all over the floor. He is really too young to go to posh hotels. He doesn’t know how to behave.

Mum said if he didn’t learn better manners he wouldn’t be able to come again.

It is nice having lots of money as it means we can buy clothes and go on holidays, which we never could before. It also means that I can have my own bedroom and can go to ballet classes with Miss Runcie. I adore Miss Runcie! When I am famous and on
This is Your
Life
I will tell everyone that it is because of her.

And also of course because of Violet.

We are very lucky to have so much money as it is much better than worrying all the time how the bills are to be paid. It is terrible, I think, to see people begging in the street because they have nowhere to live, especially if there is a child or a dog with them. I get upset when there is a child or a dog, thinking of them being cold and hungry. So I am very grateful that Mum is a success and I can go to Oakfield and learn ballet with Miss Runcie. I am definitely not complaining, but I still can’t help remembering how it was when we lived with Gran.

I wish that Gran was here! I wish I could see her again, just once. I would far rather have Gran than new clothes and holidays. If I had a choice, that is. I would have my gran every time!

And Kitty.

I would have Kitty, as well. Bella and Bimbo are beautiful, but they are too superior to be cuddled. And they are Mum’s cats. Kitty was mine. Well, she was Gran’s really, but Gran always said she loved me best. I wanted to take her with us when we moved but Mum said it wouldn’t be fair. She said that Kitty had lived with Gran all her life and she was too old to start again somewhere else.

She said, “She’s seventeen, darling. It’s a great age for a cat. She wouldn’t be happy, in a new place.”

I thought Mum was just making excuses. I thought she didn’t want her because she had lost all her teeth and because she dribbled and sometimes bits of her fur came out. But Mum was right. When Gran died, Kitty missed her terribly. She came to live with us and she slept on my bed, but she pined. She wanted so much to be with Gran!

I hope Gran is right and that when you die you meet all the people who have gone before you. I would like to think of Kitty being with Gran again.

I cried oceans when Kitty died. Even more than when Gran did. I think it was because with Gran I knew that she wanted to go and be with Granddad, and so I knew that she was happy. But with Kitty, I couldn’t be sure. Do animals meet up with their people or is it just for human beings? Heaven, I mean. If it’s just for human beings, then where do the animals go?

I kept thinking of poor Kitty all on her own, without either me or Gran. I kept thinking how lost and lonely she would be, and I couldn’t sleep for crying.

Mum got really worried. She said, “I knew we should have left her at the vet’s instead of bringing her back home.”

It was me that begged for Kitty to be brought home. I wanted her still to be with us. So Uncle Eddy came round and he took up one of the paving stones in the back garden and dug a hole and we made a proper little grave for her. Mum wrapped her in her favourite pink blanket and I kissed her goodbye and Uncle Eddy wrote “Kitty, a much loved cat. Aged 18 years 7 months” on the paving stone and painted some pawprints.

And then I cried and cried and couldn’t stop, and that was when Mum went out and bought Bella and Bimbo, in the hope that they would comfort me.

I suppose they did, in a way. Kittens are very amusing and delightful, so that you cannot ignore them. Bimbo used to climb up the curtains, and Bella ate Mum’s house plants. It was really funny! You would pass her on the stairs carrying bits of plant in her mouth.

One year she climbed into the Christmas tree and tried to sit at the top of it as if she was a Christmas cat.