Other People's Mothers

Author’s Note : The spelling errors in the opening parts of this story are wholly intentional!

THE SECRET DIARY OF JENNIFER JACKMAN AGED …..

7 AND THREE QUARTERS

It’s not fair! It’s just not fair! Everyone elsies  elses mummy lets them have all the eye icecream they want and this morning in the park Linda had a cone AND A TUB AND A WAFER and her mummy just laffed and said she has a good happy tite  tight and it serves her right she was sick and not happy at all! 

     And Sandras Mummy lets her wear her best shoos all the time. My feet will be to small for mine before I get to wear them.

     Mummy wood not of have got me this book she calls a dairy if she new what I put in it! Even if it does have a unicorn on it. I don’t know why they say sum times at school I can’t spell when I can spell a word like unicorn. 

     It is a very nice dairy and she is not a bad sort of mummy. But she still makes me CROSS!

9 AND THREE QUARTERS

It’s just not fair! Everyone else’s Mum is letting them go on the trip to the water park, and mine doesn’t want me to have any fun AT ALL IN THIS WORLD EVER. I’m a good swimmer and have my 100 metre badge and was one of the very few at Brownies who could get the rubber doll they call resussy-Annie (or something like that) to start breathing again. The gentleman from First Ressponders (I think that’s how you spell it) said I had very strong lungs. Cassie is going on the trip to the Water Park and she can’t even swim. 

     I have been listening in and I know you shouldn’t but people should have conversations where they know they’re private if you don’t want them to be heard. Daddy thinks I should be allowed to go. He said something about not wrapping them in cotton wool and I had this picture in my mind of me being wrapped up in cotton wool and I nearly had to laugh and give away I was listening in, but Mum said something about that awful accident last year and how she’s heard some of the supervisers are only school kids themselves. 

     And everyone else’s Mum is letting them go and have a go on the giant slides, and the wave pool and what will I be doing? Looking at the fish in the fish pond if she lets me do THAT! 

     When I said everyone else’s Mum is letting them go, she asked, “Well, if everybody else’s Mum told them to run into the road if a bus was coming, would you want me to do that?”

     That is the kind of stupid thing that grown-ups say that they think puts an end to any argument and makes us think, oh how wise they are and oh how they look after us but it is none nonsense. Nobody’s Mum would say run into the road if a bus is coming, not even Sophies Mum who Gran says was at the back of the queue when brains were given out. I think that is very funny but also know that I would be in big trouble if I repeated it. “Anyway,” said Mum, “Your not the only one who is not going.”

     That is true but it is also a stupid thing to say, as stupid about the thing with the buses. Charlotte is not going because she has been very ill with appendicitis and still has to look after herself and not even do games, which she says is very boring. I know how to spell appendicitis because Sally has it in my Malory Towers books. It has never yet turned up in a spelling test which is not fair! And Rose is not going because she has to go to her cousin’s wedding on the same day. She is VERY CROSS about that. She has hardly ever seen her cousin who is much older than she is (well of course she is or she wouldn’t be getting married!) and she isnt even a brides maid. She says shes glad about that as they are wearing silly outfits in pink with flowers that make them look like babies but it is not true. Apart from Charlotte and Rose everyone else is going to the water park or at least I think they are because they dont have Mums who tell them they cant do this and they cant do that! 

12 AND THREE QUARTERS

I had given up this diary lark (at least I know how to spell it properly now!) for more than a year as I was writing my fantasy novel about Princess Palomina and the horse people. It’s funny, I gave up on pony books when I was ten as I thought they were silly and wasn’t a bit interested in pony clubs and rosettes any longer. Mind you I still think that Mum was making a daft fuss about nothing not letting me have riding lessons when everyone else’s Mum did because they rode on the road (I dread to think how I would once have spelt THAT sentence!) and it wasn’t safe. But writing about Princess Palomina is different altogether and they don’t have to worry about tackle and mucking out and all that boring stuff. When Linda told me that they had to do the mucking out, part of me was quite glad that Mum had put her foot down, though of course I had no intention of saying so!

     So I have abandoned my ambition of winning at the Horse of the Year Show or the Olympic Games. Now I’m not sure whether I want to be a writer or an actress. But it looks as if Mum has made my mind up for me. I just can’t figure the woman out! It seems wrong to call Mum the woman like that but when I get mad at her I can’t help myself and don’t intend trying.

     She was pleased as pleased could be when I got one of the big parts in the school play, one of the youngest pupils who did, and applauded like mad and gave me a big hug and I know that she has kept both the programme and the cuttings. So why did she start acting silly when I told her that I wanted to leave the Girls’ Grammar School and go to stage school? I even knew the one I wanted to go to, it was in London and of course I would miss Mum and Dad and my cat Sinbad, but don’t folk always say you have to suffer for your art? And sometimes it seems like every child who has been on TV has been to stage school! Mum has pointed out that this is not true and it is only a small majority but she is always pedantic and twists things to her own ends. She has tried to be reasonable about it all, “

     “Jenny, if you are really serious about wanting to be an actress then I won’t stand in your way, but I want you to get a proper education at a school that doesn’t cost a fortune first. If you really have the will and the talent then you will still succeed.” She made to give me a little hug but I wriggled out of her grasp. What does she mean IF I have the will and the talent? She has led such a boring life she can’t understand anyone who hasn’t and who doesn’t want to.

     A bit later on. I suppose I should be ashamed of that last sentence but then so should she be ashamed of what she said about not knowing if I had the will or the talent. And I do know that neither of us is going to apologise. We are being polite to each other but that is as far as it goes! Oh, and she has made one massive ultra – oh, what’s the word??? – CONCESSION. At least that’s how she sees it. I have said that instead of Jennifer I want to be known as JENUFA which is the name of the heroine of an opera that Mr May played to us (well, just bits of it, of course, not the whole opera!)in music last week and to be honest I don’t really like either the name or the music that much, or hanker after it, not like the way I was desperate to be called Daphne when I was hugely into Scooby-Doo (and it mattered, like, MASSIVELY at the time). But it’d still a gazillion times better than JENNIFER which is such a well-behaved sort of name and Jenny or Jen or Jenna only make it worse instead of better. The trouble is it is very much a pyric phirric   oh, whatever, victory, and she knows it too and she hardly puts much stress on the NOO bit of it! Oh, and she went into full “I UNDERSTAND” mode by saying as if trusting me with something that makes the code for the nuclear button look like your password for a book club, by confiding in me that when she was my age or thereabouts (I hate that word!) though her first name is Cheryl she was obsessed with being called Cherry. She’s either trying to kid me or just doesn’t get it. More likely the latter. Cheryl is a perfectly nice name if not that exciting and as for anyone over the age of eight wanting to sound as if they’re part of a fruit salad …. no, she just doesn’t get it!

14 AND THREE QUARTERS

I’ve had enough and I know I keep saying it but there is a world of difference between HAVING ENOUGH about an ice-cream or a trip to a water park or even being allowed to stage school and THIS. EVERYOBODY ELSE’S MOTHER would be delighted that their daughter wanted to go out with Oliver Hayward. Why the hell (and even if it was to her face I wouldn’t say why the heck!) can’t she see that? 

     For Christ’s sake (and I know that Sandra who is now in the Christian Union would tell me off for that but I think he or He would have things far more in perspective!) you’d think she’d see him as her dream come true and Jennifer (I dropped that Jenufa business, it was starting to get on my nerves, and of course it had NOTHING AT ALL to do with Rose saying it sounded like the name of an upmarket roll-on deodorant!) has finally done something right, for once in her life!

     I mean, am I wildly in love with someone who has multiple piercings and smokes (and not just your regular ciggies!) or hangs out with the Bus Station Crowd when everyone knows they’re not waiting for a bus?

     No, I am NOT! 

     I’m not wildly in love with anyone, of course. But I feel a definite empathy (I checked the spelling of that just to be sure) with Oliver Hayward. He IS quite handsome, of course. More than quite handsome. But of course I’m not superficial and it wouldn’t matter if he was only up to my armpits and had a gap in his front teeth and was already going bald. We are so absolutely on the same wavelength! We like the same music and the same books and both think that canned peas are the work of the devil and that black coffee tastes a gazillion times better than white. He’s clever and he makes me laugh, and he doesn’t treat me like some silly kid. But will that suit Mum? Oh no, of course it won’t! The daft thing is that it’s not even as if she thinks I’m too young to be “courting” – yes she actually did use that word! – and let me use some of her make-up for the Christmas disco, and said that Simon Lawson was a really nice young man. Which he is. In his vapid kind of way. She makes out it matters so much that Oliver is a grown-up and I’m still a schoolgirl. Well, that’s rubbish. Okay, so it’s technically true, but there are only 4 years difference between us and she’s FIVE years younger than Dad! She just has it in for him and keeps going on about there being something slidey about him. That’s a Mum word. I think it’s supposed to mean more or less the same as slimy, but implies that there are horrors that lurk beneath, it’s not just that he’s sico sycophantic – which he isn’t, anyway. If he didn’t have nice manners then THAT would be all wrong for her. She’s not actually forbidden me from seeing him but indicated that it’s something that can’t be ruled out at some future date! 

     I came quite close to having a fall-out with Rose when she said that she didn’t like Oliver and could see what my Mum meant. I mean, who is she to talk? She’s going out with Greg and he has barely a brain cell and thinks that kicking footballs into flower beds is big and clever which most boys grow out of while they’re still at junior school. I can’t stand him but that’s not the point. It goes to prove that other mothers don’t try to interfere and keep their noses out. But oh no, not mine!

     Oh of course I know one reason – Oliver is an actor, and I don’t mean in that pathetic little amateur dramatic group that Mum has suggested I join as if she thinks that I’m remotely interested in stuff like Salad Days or The Importance of Being Earnest. He’s been on the Edinburgh Fringe and wants to take me there this year. Everyone else’s Mum would be delighted that their daughter had a chance like this. But oh no, not mine. 

17 AND THREE QUARTERS

I can still hardly believe it. I’m going to University this year, to study English and Drama. Our local university does a great course combining the two, and I’m so impatient for it to start that I’ve almost been tempted to make a chart with days and even hours to cross off like a little girl waiting to go on holiday and thinking that makes the time pass more quickly. 

     But of course there’s a sadness about the whole thing too. It means I’ll spend less time with Fliss – with Felicity Louise Jackman! Felicity because it means happiness and Louise after my grandma, who passed away a few years ago. My little girl has made me so blissfully happy. But with a real happiness, a happiness that has known and still knows moments of frustration and panic and just not seeing how I could cope and despair and self-contempt for letting myself end up in that position.

     Oliver had assured me he was using protection and I only realised too late that he wasn’t. I felt sheer terror. My first fear wasn’t even of being pregnant (I’d have said I didn’t believe that it couldn’t happen the first time but didn’t really believe that old wives’ tale though I wished I could) but of just what else could be the legacy of something I did as much to defy Mum as because I loved Oliver. To be frank by then I’d started to find him rather boring and even wondered if Sandra (who had now decided her God was Sigmund Freud) was right when she said he struck her as borderline narcissistic.  

     I had put off telling Mum as long as I could but realised that in the end I just wasn’t brave enough to try to manage on my own. Mind you, I thought, she’ll throw me out anyway.

     She didn’t. She just said quietly and unsteadily “Oh, love….”! and took me in her arms. She went with me for the tests I needed. And she was the one who had a beam on her face that seemed to light up the whole world when we discovered that the only legacy of that idiocy (and I have to say I was entirely willing, I’ll give him that much, if nothing else!) was a baby. “And a baby can make life complicated, but it’s never bad news,” she said, “And you know your Dad and I will be with you every step of the way.” Dad’s first reaction was to say that he’d find that “scumbag” and make him face his responsibilities, but when I pleaded with him not to, Mum said, “She’s right, Andrew. He’d be a lousy Dad. You’ll be a great grandpa!” And suddenly we all laughed at the double meaning of that and he said he wasn’t THAT old yet!

     No, everyone else’s Mum would NOT have reacted like that. But I’m the lucky one. The incredibly, undeservedly lucky one!