Becky Bananas Read online

  For Ann-Janine, with love and gratitude

  and in the hope that we may be able to work

  together again one of these days

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  1 “This is Your Life!”

  2 My Goal

  3 Me and My Favourite Things

  4 “Here’s Looking at You, Kid!”

  5 Bow Bells

  6 My Gran

  7 Reflections

  8 My Brother Danny

  9 My Cat Kitty

  10 New School!

  11 I Meet a Famous Author (and Write a Book …)

  12 “Born to Dance”

  13 The Bad Times

  14 Jokes!

  15 Wonderland

  Also by Jean Ure

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The story that follows was taken from Becky’s thoughts, and hopes, and dreams as she recorded them over the last few months; also from the conversations that she had with her family and friends, and especially Sarah and Zoë.

  1. “This is Your Life!”

  Becky Bananas, this is your life!

  Yes, it is. It is my life! And I have lived it for eleven and three-quarter years.

  Eleven years nine months and three days, to be precise.

  Eleven years nine months three days and fourteen hours, to be even more precise.

  I can work it out, because I know when I was born. I was born at ten past two in the morning. Mum’s told me about it heaps of times.

  “You arrived all of a sudden, in this terrible rush. It took everyone by surprise, including me!”

  I can never understand how it can have taken Mum by surprise. You’d think if you had a great enormous thing like a baby kicking and battering inside you, you’d feel when it was starting to come out. I should think it would be really painful.

  I’ve asked Mum about this. She says, “It was painful, but it was worth it. Every second of it!”

  But she still doesn’t explain how it took her by surprise.

  I said, “Didn’t you feel it was happening?” and she said, “I felt something was happening but I wasn’t quite sure what. Not until someone said ‘Push!’ and you came bursting out, all red and angry without any hair.”

  Ugh! What a yukky sight.

  It seems a very odd way of carrying on if you ask me. You’d think things could have been arranged a bit better. Like with worms. Or amoebas. When amoebas want babies, they just split in half so that there are two of them.

  Ever so much easier. I don’t expect it hurts at all, hardly.

  Not that I would want to be an amoeba. They are plain, blobby-looking creatures without any brain and they don’t really seem to do anything, as far as I can see, save flop about in the bottom of pools and suchlike. But I suppose they are happy.

  Can you be happy, if you haven’t any brain?

  At least you wouldn’t be unhappy, I shouldn’t think. Or scared. Or cross or lonely or saying to yourself that things aren’t fair. But then you wouldn’t be able to dance or laugh or read books, either. So on the whole I wouldn’t want to be one.

  How could you cuddle a baby amoeba?

  There are lots of pictures of Mum cuddling me. There’s also a picture of me completely naked, waving my arms about on a blanket.

  I’ve always found that really embarrassing. If I grow up and have babies, I will never take those sorts of pictures of them.

  Sometimes when my friends come round, Mum pulls out the photograph albums and shows them. She says, “Look!” and she giggles. “There’s Becky when she was only a few weeks old … like a little pink slug!”

  Mum thinks it’s funny, but I can see that other people are just as embarrassed as I am. Sarah once said, “Isn’t it frightful, the way your parents come out with these terrible things?”

  She meant her parents as well as Mum. Everyone’s parents. All parents. But I don’t think Mum means to say terrible things. She just can’t stop herself. It’s what comes of being an extrovert, which is a word I learned from Mrs Rowe. She said it to me last Parents’ Day. She said, “Your mother is quite an extrovert, Rebecca, isn’t she?”

  I didn’t know what it meant. I asked Sarah and she said it meant that you laugh a lot and are friendly.

  Deanne Warburton said it meant noisy.

  It is true that Mum does laugh more than most people and also I suppose her voice is quite loud. But she can’t help it! It’s just the way she is. That’s why she’s in show business.

  I love my mum. She is beautiful and funny and I am really proud of her. I don’t mind her being loud! I wouldn’t want her any different. But I do wish she wouldn’t keep showing people the picture of me as a little pink slug! I won’t ever do that to my children, if I have any. Which most probably I won’t, I don’t expect.

  On the other hand, I might. You never can tell. But if I do, I won’t embarrass them.

  Another of the things Mum says about me is that I was a bonny bouncing baby. “Oh, you were such a bonny bouncing baby!”

  She’s got this story about how one time I bounced so high I almost managed to bounce right out of my playpen.

  She says, “I used to think you’d end up being a pole vaulter in the Olympics!”

  If ever they decide to do one of those This is Your Life programmes about me, like for instance when I am a famous dancer, Mum will be able to come on and tell all the people that are watching about me bouncing out of my playpen. She’d like that.

  I’m not sure that I would. I think I might find it a bit embarrassing. But I suppose if you are on This is Your Life you can’t always choose what people say about you. More’s the pity!

  2. My Goal

  Oh, she was such a bonny bouncing baby!

  Poor Mum. Sometimes when I’m tempted to feel sorry for myself, I start thinking about Mum and feel sorry for her, instead. All that pain when I was being born, and what was the point of it? Just a waste of effort, really. That’s what I would think.

  I’ve made her cry, I know I have. I’ve heard her crying, when she doesn’t know I was there. I can’t bear for Mum to be unhappy! But when I’ve tried talking to her about it, like one time I said about it being a waste of effort, it made her really upset. She said, “Becky, you must never, ever think like that! What a dreadful thing to say! It was the most wonderful day of my life, the day I had you.”

  She didn’t know how things were going to turn out. People don’t, when you have babies.

  Like Violet, Gran’s best friend, who used to teach me dancing and who had this son called Bobby that was Down’s syndrome. I remember once I was at Gran’s and Gran and Violet were talking, and Violet suddenly burst out, “I wouldn’t change my Bobby for the world!”

  I suppose if you have a baby, you love it no matter what. Even if it’s got two heads or is brain-damaged. It’s still your baby. But it would be ever so much better if things didn’t happen like brain damage and Down’s syndrome and such. Not till you’re really old, and then perhaps it wouldn’t matter quite so much. I think God should have arranged it so that everyone is allowed to live to be at least forty. I don’t think you would mind so much then.

  I am going to live to be a hundred. Ha! That will surprise them. Except that nobody will be here by then. Only Danny. And he will be ninety-three!!!

  What will the date be when I am a hundred? It will be … 2086! And I will get a telegram from the Queen.

  No, I won’t, because the Queen won’t still be alive. And I don’t think Prince Charles will, either. I don’t know how old he is but I think he must be older than Mum. So it won’t be King Charles III. And it won’t be William V, because Wills is sixteen and that would make him 103 and practically no one lives to be 103. And it won’t be
King Henry, I shouldn’t think, because Harry would be 100 and I bet there’s never been a king that’s 100. But whoever it is, they will send me a telegram!

  I wonder what they say when they send telegrams?

  The only trouble is, you couldn’t really have much fun if you were a hundred. You wouldn’t be able to play games or go to parties or visit Wonderland. You’d just sit about in a chair all day wearing false teeth.

  Yeeuch! I can’t stand false teeth. There’s this old woman I saw once that had taken hers out and put them in a glass of water by the side of her bed.

  Ugh. It made me feel really sick. I don’t ever want to have false teeth.

  Maybe I won’t live to be a hundred. Maybe I’ll just live to about … forty. That’s probably long enough.

  I once heard Mum say to her friend Anna when they were speaking on the telephone that she was going to hold a big party when she was forty. She said it was going to be a special farewell party.

  “Farewell to my lost youth … before I go into my zimmer frame.”

  Zimmer frames are what old people use to help them walk.

  But you have to be really old for that. I can’t imagine Mum being really old. I can’t imagine her having grey hair and wrinkles.

  Mum says that she can’t, either, so I expect she will have a face-lift and dye her hair. That is what people in show business quite often do. They also, sometimes, have their noses altered or their boobs made bigger, to make themselves look more beautiful.

  Gran used to say, “We didn’t do that in my day,” but Mum said, “Go on! I bet you wore falsies.”

  I thought she meant false teeth. It was ages before I discovered that falsies were special padded bras to make people think you had big boobs when in fact you only had small ones, though personally I can’t think why anyone would want big boobs. I would think they must be quite heavy and get in the way, I mean if you’re running or dancing, or anything. Surely they would wobble up and down? And if you were doing a pirouette, for instance, they would probably spin round faster than your head and unbalance you.

  I wouldn’t want to have big boobs. Sarah says it’s men that like them and that’s the reason women go and get them made huge. Just to please men.

  Weird.

  I bet in a hundred years’ time people will be able to order bits of body from catalogues, like nowadays you can order clothes and things. They’ll have these sections saying “Noses” or “Boobs” or “Ears”, and all these different shapes and sizes.

  All you’ll have to do is pick out the ones you think will suit you and fill in an order form saying how many you want and when you want them fitted. Only by then things will be so advanced that you won’t have to have an operation and be cut open, they will be able to change your shape simply by pointing some sort of ray gun at you which will make your body go like gloop.

  Some people will even be able to do it for themselves, I shouldn’t be surprised. They will have their own personal ray guns. They will wake up in the morning and think, “I don’t like this nose. I am sick of this nose. I think I will make a new one.” Or if they are going on holiday, for instance, they will be able to use the gun for taking away all the bits of flab round their tummies so that they can wear their nice new bikinis and be attractive to men. Just zap! with the gun and all the flab will be melted.

  Mum is always going on about flab. She hasn’t got any, really. Not for an ordinary person. I mean, an ordinary showbiz person. I expect if she were a dancer she would have to do a bit of toning up. I fortunately do not have problems with fatness, though Mum says I have now lost too much weight and must start to put it on again. She is threatening to feed me on nothing but pasta and chips!!! I have told her I will end up like a beach ball but she says, “That will be the day.”

  When it is the year 2086 – when I am a hundred! If I decide to be a hundred – people I should think will be able to pump themselves up with special pumps if they are too thin. The pumps will inject calories into them, as many as they want. And if they are too fat they will take the calories out. It will be a bit like the sludge-gulping machines that go round the gutters gulping sludge.

  It is interesting to speculate how people will say it when it is 2086. Will they say, twenty eighty-six? Or just eighty-six? Or will they say it in full? The year two thousand and eighty-six?

  If they are American they will probably say two thousand eighty-six without the “and”. I have noticed that Americans do this. They shorten things. Like they say math instead of maths and wash-up liquid instead of washing-up. I expect they do it to save time, as they are always frantically rushing everywhere and talking very fast and being busy.

  The way I know about this is because of Susie Smith, at school. You’d think she was American, the way she talks, but she isn’t. It’s just that she lived there for a year. So now she calls her Mum “Mom” and writes these essays about her little sister wearing diapers.

  Mrs Rowe says, “Diapers, Suzanne? What are diapers?” making like she doesn’t understand. She’s ever so English, Mrs Rowe.

  She doesn’t mind people speaking American when they are American, but she can’t stand what she calls “apeing”. But it’s difficult not to pick things up. Like when me and Sarah saw this film where people kept shouting “Way to go!” and it started us off saying it, so that whenever we met we used to yell it at each other. “Way to go!”

  We didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded good.

  We were only little, then; we were still nine. I always wanted to be nine. I don’t know why. It used to be my favourite age. And then when I got to be it, it didn’t feel all that much different from being eight, and so I decided that the next thing I wanted to be was eleven.

  I never specially wanted to be ten. Perhaps it was because ten reminded me of decimals. I hate decimals. I also hate adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing and everything that has numbers in it, including telephone numbers because I can’t ever remember them.

  Gran once told me that before I was born we didn’t have great long telephone numbers like we have now. Instead of being 020 7373, for instance, you’d be a name, like Bluebell, maybe, or Elgar. Those are the only two that I can remember, but there were lots of them. I think Bluebell and Elgar are really pretty. Much better than boring old numbers.

  Maybe that’s why I didn’t specially want to be ten. Or maybe it was because eleven was like a sort of goal. Like eleven was a really Great Age and if I got to be eleven I would have achieved something. Except that now I’m here it doesn’t seem like very much at all.

  My present ambition is to be twelve. If I get to be twelve I am going to go to Wonderland. In America. Mum has promised.

  Mum always keeps her promises; she’s really good about that. Sarah’s mum forgets. She once told Sarah she could come swimming with me and then at the last minute she said she hadn’t said it and that Sarah had to go and visit her aunt and uncle instead.

  Mum isn’t like that. She always keeps her promises. So I know I shall go to Wonderland. I’ve got to. I want to so much!

  It said in a book I read that if you want something badly enough you’ll get it, but only if you keep it in front of you the whole time, like a vision, and “work steadily towards it”. That is what I am doing. I am keeping Wonderland in front of me and I am working towards it.

  I told this to Uncle Eddy and he squeezed my hand and said, “That’s my girl! Go for it!”

  I am going for it. Definitely, absolutely, and without question. I AM GOING TO WONDERLAND. And maybe Sarah could come with us. That would be fun!

  It would be lovely if Zoë could come as well, but I know her Mum couldn’t afford it and I don’t think she’d let us pay because she’s what Mum calls “proud”. That means she doesn’t like accepting charity, even for Zoë. But I could always get Mum to ask. It would be brilliant if Zoë could come! She would be so excited and we could keep it in front of us together. That would be like double determination, and then we would be bound t
o go.

  If only one of them could come, it would have to be Zoë, because although Sarah is my oldest friend, and my best friend, Zoë is my special friend. And Sarah could go to Wonderland any time she wanted, so for her it wouldn’t be such a treat.

  I think it is ever so unfair that some people are rich and some people are poor. Like it is unfair that some people are born ugly and some people are born beautiful, and some are born stupid while others are born clever.

  I know what Uncle Eddy would say. He would say, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles, kiddo.”

  He is always using these quaint and colourful expressions. Sometimes I try using them in essays, but Mrs Rowe just puts big exclamation marks by them.

  All I can say is that whoever crumbles the cookies doesn’t make a very good job of it, what with big heaps here, and little heaps there, and even occasionally just crumbs.

  Even sometimes nothing at all.

  Being born, I must say, is a very strange and unsatisfactory experience. Why is it, for instance, that no one can ever remember it? You would think you would remember such an amazing event. For nine whole months you live in the dark, all warm and safe and tucked away, with nothing bad happening to you, and then quite suddenly you’re pushed out into the world in really a very brutal rough fashion, like being squeezed headfirst out of a tube, gasping for breath and wondering whatever can be going on.

  I would think it must be quite frightening. Maybe that is why you don’t remember it. Maybe it is so terrible that your brain seals it away in a little corner, never to be thought of again.

  It is spooky, when you think about it. All these poor defenceless little babies being expelled from the womb with absolutely no idea what the future is going to hold. Some people, if they knew what was going to happen to them, might not want to be born at all.