Becky Bananas (13 page)

When I got the prize for being Pocahontas I
heard Greta Lundquist whisper to Susie Smith, “You know why they gave it to
her?”
and I saw Susie nod. They weren’t being nasty, or anything. I mean, they didn’t know that I could hear. But I wondered if that was what everyone else was thinking and if I really had only been given the prize because of people feeling sorry for me.

I don’t want people to feel sorry for me! It is horrid when you think that they are looking at you and thinking things.

I would like to ask Sarah if she thinks things, but I am too much of a coward. Zoë is the only person I can talk to about it. She is the only one who understands. And Zoë agrees with me.
We do not want people to feel sorry for us.

Except ourselves, because sometimes you can’t help it, though I try hard not to. I think that self-pity is a negative emotion. It doesn’t lead to anything positive but just to tears, which makes you feel worse.

The author who came to our Book Week was a lady called Jane Rue. There are some of her books in the library but I had never read any before she came. Then we did one in class and it was quite funny so that I was looking forward to the visit, though some people groaned and said that it would be a dead bore.

Susie said, “An
author.
Yuck!” and screwed up her nose.

Someone else said, “I’d rather do maths!” Other people got fussed in case she wanted us to write things, but Mrs Rowe said all she was going to do was talk to us and tell us about her books, and then we would be expected to ask questions. So Elinor Hodges immediately went away and prepared a huge long list that would have taken about ten days if she’d asked all of them.

Before Jane Rue came, we speculated what she would look like. Sarah said she would be old, because authors were always old. Andrea Francis thought she would be rich and arrive in a Rolls-Royce. I didn’t know what to expect, never having seen an author before, but I thought she would probably be very smart with high heels and a handbag and maybe wearing a fur coat, though hopefully not a real one.

I was so amazed when she came walking into the hall behind Mrs Rowe and Mrs Rowe introduced her! I couldn’t believe that she was an author! She just looked completely ordinary, like a person that you might meet anywhere. She was older than Mum but not old, like Gran was old. She didn’t have grey hair. And she wasn’t dressed in the least bit smartly, just in
jeans and a sweater, without a fur of any kind. She didn’t have a handbag, either – or high heels! All she had was a huge big shoulder bag containing lots of books.

She dumped all the books on a table, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Susie pulling faces. Susie doesn’t go for books. She reckons they’re dinosaur material. But I quite like reading, and so I was interested. Had this author really written so many?

She had! She had written
dozens.
I couldn’t imagine where she would get all her ideas from, but she said that that was what she was going to tell us.

She said that she started writing when she was little because she was very shy and couldn’t make any friends. So that was why she started writing. She made up her own friends and put them into books.

She said that the very first book she ever had published was a book about a girl who becomes a dancer. That made me sit up! She said that she always desperately wanted to be a dancer herself but that her mum and dad couldn’t afford for her to have lessons and so she became very unhappy and frustrated. So then one day when she was about fifteen she thought she would write a book about a girl who wanted to learn ballet, and so she wrote this book called
Castanets & Ballet Shoes,
in which the girl becomes hugely successful, and guess what? She ends up dancing Odette!

I was
really
interested in that. Everyone turned round to look at me and I could feel myself growing bright scarlet. Mrs Rowe said, “We have our own little ballerina here,” which truly embarrassed me. I could have fallen through the floor! Fancy calling me a ballerina! When I’m not yet even a member of the corps de ballet! But people that aren’t dancers don’t understand.

The more this author talked to us, the more I realised that she wasn’t as ordinary as she looked. She was a very amusing and witty person. She told us, for example, how she and her husband had all these animals that they had rescued. Pigs and goats and chickens. And two Shetland ponies and some sheep. Not to mention fifteen cats and six dogs!!!

She showed us pictures of the cats and dogs and told us how they spoke, using different voices. Susie, thinking she was being very clever, put up her hand and said, “Excuse me, but animals can’t talk,” and the author said, “Excuse me, but mine can!”

She told us how, if you listened very carefully and took the trouble to get to know them and to really
understand them, then you would hear them talking. It is true! Bella and Bimbo talk all the time. They are very superior and have upper-class voices like the Queen.

I don’t think Kitty would have had an upper-class voice. I think she would speak what Mum calls “common”. But I still love her best!

Another thing the author told us was that all the dogs slept in the bedroom with her and her husband, and that four of them actually slept in the bed so that they had to have this really huge great bed taking up most of the room. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Four dogs sleeping in bed with you!

We were all giggling like crazy because some of the stuff this author was telling us was really funny, like about this one dog, Benny, that is a deaf dog and looks like a walking hearth rug and sleeps in the middle of the bed with his head on the pillow. She said he has this habit of suddenly standing up underneath the duvet so that all the cold air comes billowing in. And then he starts shaking his head so that his ears go flap
flap flap and the cold air whirls all about. And then when he has done that he starts turning in circles and trampling up and down as he makes a nest for himself. And the duvet goes in circles with him so that in the end he is all wrapped up in it like a big walnut whip and she and her husband are left without any.

Everyone laughed at this except for Elinor Hodges. Even Susie laughed. You could tell that Elinor was being all disapproving and thinking that it was not hygienic to let dogs sleep in the bed and that dogs should be kept outside in kennels. Which is what I personally do not agree with, and neither would the author have done because she was a real animal person.

She told us that some people thought she was mad, but that she didn’t care. She said, “Some of you probably think I’m mad,” and she looked at Susie as she said it. And Susie turned pink and couldn’t think what to say, which is the first time I have ever known her to be at a loss for words!

At the end we were told we could ask questions, so Elinor Hodges at once stood up with her great long list and started asking these really dreary, boring sort of
questions such as “How long does it take you to write a book?” and “Do you have a word processor?”

The author said she didn’t use a word processor, she always wrote her first draft by hand and then typed it out on an ordinary typewriter. She said, “I’m afraid I’m a bit of a technological dinosaur.”

Susie turned round at this and made an “I-told-you-so” face at me and Sarah. But then the next minute she was waving her hand in the air to ask a question and the question was, “How much do you earn?”

Mrs Rowe was absolutely furious! She told Susie off for being impertinent and vulgar, though the author didn’t seem to mind. She explained to us that she didn’t earn a fortune and that hardly any authors did. She said, “You don’t write books for the money, you write them because you feel you have to,” and Susie raised her eyebrows right up into her hair as if the author was a bit simple, or something. Susie is really into making money. She understands all about stocks and shares and compound interest, which to me is just boring.

When I got home I told Mum all about the visit and about the author having all these animals and four dogs sleeping in the bed, and Mum said that she was obviously mad.

I told Mum that lots of people thought she was mad but that the author didn’t care, and I said that I personally thought it would be lovely to have four dogs sleeping in bed with you. You could cuddle them and never get cold, and if you woke up and felt a bit lonely or frightened there would always be someone to lick you or snuggle up to.

Mum cried, “Oh, darling!” and held out her arms. She said that if I ever woke up and felt lonely I could go into her room and sleep in bed with her. She said, “You can snuggle up to me any time you like. You know that.”

I do know it, but it seems childish at my age to sleep with your mum.

After the author had been to visit us I wrote to her telling her how totally brilliant her talk had been and how interested I was in her having wanted to be a dancer because I hoped to be a dancer myself one day. She wrote this long letter back, which I still have. I will never get rid of it! It is a precious object. Right at the end she wished me luck and said that she would watch out for my name on the posters.

So that is two famous people who are going to watch out for me! Jane Rue and Darcey.

When I am on
This is Your Life
I very much hope
that Ms Rue will be a guest because then I can tell her how her visit inspired me.

One of the other things she said in her letter was that I used words very well and that maybe one day I would write a story myself. “A ballet story, perhaps.” She said, “It was a great comfort to me when I wrote
Castanets & Ballet Shoes.
It didn’t stop me yearning to be a dancer, but it took away some of my frustration.” She said that writing is a very good way of exploring your emotions and can be a great solace.

I thought about what she said and last term I wrote this book about a girl called Bryony who wants to be a dancer only she gets ill with AML and has to go into hospital and have drugs and everyone thinks she is going to die, but she doesn’t. Instead she goes into remission and starts at the Royal Ballet School when she is twelve years old and when she is seventeen she is taken into the Company and dances in
Swan Lake.
She dances Odette and everyone applauds and she is given a big bouquet of flowers and that is how it ends.

The book is thirty-five pages long. I typed it out on the word processor with wide margins and double-spacing, like Jane Rue said you had to. She said that publishers cannot read handwriting, they can only read typing. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps their eyesight
is poor because of all the books they have to look at.

I had to use the word processor when Mum was out as the book is
A Secret!
There is only one person I have shown it to, and that is Uncle Eddy. He thinks it is good enough to be published, maybe, but I am not sure about this. For one thing I don’t think the spelling is quite right, though Uncle Eddy says that doesn’t matter. He says the publishers would see to it. He says the only thing that I would have to do is to explain about AML, as not everyone will know what it is.

I would have to explain that it is
acute myeloid leukaemia
and that acute means it is not something that goes on for years and years just the same but is something that happens quite quickly, like for instance a pimple that comes to a head and bursts, and that myeloid is to do with bone marrow, and that leukaemia is a sort of cancer that attacks the blood.