Alice By Accident. Lynne Banks Reid
said poor old dog, and I didn’t say anything. Then she said what dog is that? I said it’s just a dog. She said have you got a dog and I said NO THANKS I hate dogs. She said well you certainly seem to hate that one.
I think maybe she asked Mummy about the dog and Mummy caught on because I never had to go to Mrs Blewitts after that. When Mum had to go to classes she used to take me to the council playgroup. It was rough and noisy there but it was better than Mrs Blewitt and I stopped wetting my bed and only had a tantrum sometimes. I kept on fussing about food though.
Another time Brenda said I should draw pictures of my family and I drew me in bed with Mummy. It was a really good drawing, I did the whole living room with the futon unfolded and I put some of my pictures on the walls. Brenda said do you and Mummy sleep in the same bed and I said the same futon. She said don’t you have a bed of your own and I said yes but it’s wobbly and besides it’s upstairs and I like to sleep downstairs where Mummy is. I didn’t tell Brenda how I lay awake sometimes feeling scared of prowlers and wishing she’d stop studying and cuddle in with me. Sometimes I made myself cry so she’d come to bed early.
I was eight before Gene bought me a new bed. She said it was obseen to be sleeping with my mum at my age. Mum wanted Gene to give me the bed so she didn’t say anything but later she told me obseen means something dirty and that Gene had no right to say that even though she didn’t exactly mean it, Mum said actresses use exajerated language. She said “Gene always hints I’m not bringing you up properly and it’s none of her dam business. She should just stick to being a grandma.”
I haven’t written anything for three weeks. I wanted to write only about my life till now but my life keeps getting new things to write about. I wish it would stay still for a bit and let me catch up. The big news is, Gene wrote to us to say we have to leave this house because she’s given it to my father.
My father’s got married. It was in the letter and Mum cried and I snatched the letter and read it. Lucky I can read cursive. I asked Mum if she was crying because she loved my dad and was angry he married another person and she said “I don’t know. I suppose I always dreamed he might come back one day and make us a family but I knew deep down that he wouldn’t.”
I said but what does it mean if Gene’s given him the house, does it mean he’ll come and live here?” Mum said “No. Your dad married a Dutch woman and he’s gone to live in Holland.” I wondered how she knew but I suppose Gene told her. She and Gene used to be friends even though they fratched sometimes. Once Gene called Mum her daughter-out-law. Mum told me that means a woman who is NOT married to your son.
I said, “So why has Gene given my dad our house if he doesn’t want to live in it?” and Mum said houses are useful for earning money from rent. I said don’t we pay rent for this house, because we did at Brighton, Mum was always on about finding the rent, and Mum said no, Gene said we could stay in it for nothing. So I said well we could pay Dad rent, and Mum shouted through her crying, us pay him, I’d rather die than give him money. He should give us money. I said why and she said mentenance. I said what’s mentenance and she said, “it’s the money fathers are supposed to pay for their children even if they don’t live with them. That’s the law. Now please stop asking questions because this is bad news and I have to think it through.”
I said will we go back to Brighton and she said, we can’t, you’ve started school here and my work’s in London and we can’t commute, it’s impossible. Then she just shouted “God I hate that bloody woman she makes me just want to die or kill someone!” She used to like Gene, sort of, but she hates her now. I get very scared when my mum gets like that. I remember about the knife and Big Pig and think she might really get vilent.
Brandy always said you should give background in a story. So I am going to be calm (not like Mum) and give the background.
Mum told me that when I was about three and things were really hard before she was a professional, she decided I needed a grandma and she wrote to Gene and asked her if she would be my grandmother. Gene’d never even seen me then and she hadn’t seen my mum since before I was born.
Mum was really nervous after she sent the letter. She thought Gene might write back and say get lost or something worse but she didn’t. She rang Mum (in Brighton this was) and they had a row strait off because Mum had called me Williamson-Stone on my birth certificate. Stone is her name and Williamson is my father’s name and Gene’s too. Gene said I had no right to that name because Mum wasn’t married to my dad and she said Mum’d stolen it. Of course that’s stupid, you can’t steal a name and you can call your child anything you like, she could’ve called me Alice Pokémon or Alice Peanut Butter Sandwich if she’d liked but Gene didn’t see it like that so she said at first that she didn’t agree to be my grandmother.
But then one day she just turned up outside our door. I found out later that Gene had always been thinking about me since I was born and even before, when she’d come to see Mum at the digs with the medical students and told her off for being pregnant. She said it would spoil my dad’s life and she called my mum a little tart.
I think it’s weird that such a sweet name is really bad, it means a woman who has lots of boyfriends and that was really unfair because my mum’d only ever had one boyfriend then and that was my dad who was at university with her. She was afraid of men because of the Big Pig. My dad was very gentle and she trusted him. Now she says you can never trust men, even Pierre-Luc who was gentle too and really liked her but she got rid of him because of the respect. Since then she hasn’t had a boyfriend at all so it was really bad of Gene to call her a little tart, she’s NOT.
Anyway so she turned up in Brighton and Mum was in a state because the flat was a mess and I was in scruffy clothes and we hadn’t much to eat in the flat because Mum hadn’t been shopping and Gene asked for coffee and there wasn’t any. Mum sort of lost her head and thought giving Gene coffee was the main thing and she dashed out to the shop and left Gene with me.
I wasn’t used to strangers and I started crying (I don’t remember this but Gene told me afterwards) and Gene got nervous and said “I can’t stand this I’m afraid, I’m off and she went upstairs which is where the front door is and I heard a door shut and I thought she’d gone. I was never left alone when I was little and I was so scared that I just froze up. The minute I stopped crying Gene came back down. She walked back in and said that’s better, now that we can hear ourselves think let’s read a story. I stood looking at her and she said, Do you know who I am? I’m your grandmother, your father’s mother. My name’s Eugenie but you can call me Gene.” I said “I hate you.”
I was saying that alot just then, I didn’t really know what it ment but I knew it upset grown-ups. But she wasn’t upset she was quite cheerful. She said “Oh do you, well in that case I hate you right back.” Nobody had ever said that to me. Mostly grown-ups said something like oh dear, or no you don’t really. It gave me a shock when she said she hated me back. Then she said you’ve got some terrific books here. Which do you like best?” I picked up a book Mum had been reading to me (she read to me alot then). Grandma said, “Wow, Greek myths, those are my favourite too, which one shall we read?” And I said Jason and the golden fleece and she read it and then I said I’ve got a goldfish called Jason and she said “Show me” so we looked at Jason and she said “He needs his tank cleaning” and then she began talking to him and saying funny things for him to say back, like “Is anyone out there, I can’t see you through all this green stuff, and she made him cough and sneeze, and when Mum came back with the coffee we were larfing.
The first thing I said to Mum was “Jason says he needs his tank cleaning” and Mum looked embarased and went to make the coffee. I went into the kitchen and told Mum that Gene said she hated me. Mum staired at me as if she didn’t believe she’d heard right and Gene said from the other room well you don’t expect me to love someone who doesn’t love me but it’s too early to decide what we feel. I peeped at her and she winked at me and I thought she doesn’t really hate me. (I sort of remember that now, it’s funny how you remember things when you’re writing them, like photos.)
After she’d had