The Everest film was a great deal more interesting to kids like us. Much of it had been shot with hand-held cameras on treacherous slopes in howling gales so you got quite a lot of camera-shake, but the photographers had captured some breathtaking scenery, and it was interesting to see mountaineers strung out across the snowfield roped together, stumping doggedly upward with ice-clotted beards. Another interesting thing was the mounds of paraphernalia lying around their camps: oxygen cylinders, nylon tents, electrically-heated snowsuits, radio transmitters and filming equipment, not to mention what looked like tons of grub and a posse of Sherpas to hump everything. Brought home to us how pathetically underequipped Piggo’s uncle had been with his three loaves and two tins of oatmeal, his silken flag. Or had it been two silken flags? Underequipped anyway.
We sat there gawping, absorbed but waiting for the climax: that first glimpse of the summit which would silence poor Piggo once and for all, and he was impatient too, confident we’d see his uncle’s flag and be forced to eat our words. It was a longish film, but presently the highest camp was left behind and we were seeing shaky footage of Tensing: ‘Tiger,’ the press would soon christen him, inching upward against the brilliant snow, and of Hillary, filmed by the Sherpa. We were getting occasional glimpses of the peak too, over somebody’s labouring shoulder, but it was too distant for detail. There was what looked like a wisp of white smoke against the blue, as though Everest were a volcano, but it was the wind blowing snow off the summit.
Presently a note of excitement entered the narrator’s voice and we sat forward, straining our eyes. The lead climber had only a few feet to go. The camera, aimed at his back, yawed wildly, shooting a blur of rock, sky, snow. Any second now it’d steady, focusing on the very, very top of the world. We held our breath, avid to witness this moment of history whether it included a silken flag or not.
The moment came and there was no flag. No flag. There was the tip of Everest, sharp and clear against a deep blue sky and it was pristine. Unflagged and, for a moment longer, unconquered. A murmur began in thirty throats and swelled, the sound of derision. ‘Wilson you moron,’ railed someone, ‘where is it, eh: where is your uncle’s silken flipping flag?’
Piggo sat gutted. Crushed dumb. We watched as he shrank, shoulders hunched, seeming almost to dissolve into the scarlet plush of the seat. Fiercely we exulted at his discomfiture, his humiliation, knowing there’d be no more bragging, no more porkies from this particular piggo. The film ended and we filed out, nudging him, tripping him up, sniggering in his ear.
We were feeling so chipper that when we got outside we looked around for some posh kids to kick, but they’d gone. This small disappointment couldn’t dampen our spirits however. We knew that what had happened inside that cinema: the final, irrevocable sinking of Piggo Wilson was what we’d remember of 1953. We piled on to our coach, which pulled out and nosed through the teatime traffic, bound for Ecole Rue laPage. When we came to a busy roundabout the driver had to give way. In the middle of the roundabout was a huge equestrian statue; the horse rearing up, the man wearing a crown and brandishing a sword. Piggo, who’d been sitting very small and very quiet, pointed to the statue of Alfred the Great and said, ‘See the feller on the horse there: he was my grandad’s right-hand man in the Great War.’
Berlie Doherty The Puppet Show
‘My theatre’s broken.’
BERLIE DOHERTY started writing seriously at university, where she was studying to be a teacher. She has twice won the prestigious Carnegie Medal, once for Granny Was a Buffer Girl – in which there was a whole chapter based on her parents – and once for Dear Nobody, the playscript of which won the Writers’ Guild Award. Daughter of the Sea also won the Writers’ Guild Award. Her other books include The Snake-stone, Street Child, The Sailing-ship Tree, Tough Luck, Spellhorn and Holly Starcross.
Berlie Doherty The Puppet Show
It began with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. My older brother, Denis, gave them to me for my ninth birthday. I had just left the little school in Meols at the time. I loved that school. In winter we had a real coal fire in the classroom, and when it grew dark the flames would flicker shapes and shadows on the walls until the light was put on. You could hear the sea from the yard. In the autumn we gathered chestnuts and leaves from the monkey woods round the school and brought them in to decorate the walls and windows. Some children hardened the chestnuts in vinegar and made holes in them, then threaded them with bits of string for conker fights in the playground. I liked to line mine up on my desk, admiring the way they gleamed like brown eyes. At the end of the day we used to run home along the prom, with the gritty sand whistling round our bare legs, and if there was time we’d play out till dark.
But the autumn term in the year of my ninth birthday had hardly started when the parish priest told my parents that I should be going to a Catholic school, and persuaded them to take me away from there. So I had a long journey by bus to a large flat school in the middle of a modern housing estate. There was a plaster statue of a saint in every classroom. Our room had the Virgin Mary in a blue dress, and she seemed to be watching us all the time with her sorrowing eyes. Occasionally the sickly smell of chocolate drifted in through the windows from the nearby Cadbury’s factory, mingling with the smell of boiling cabbage or fish from the kitchens.
By the time I started there, nearly halfway through the autumn term, friendships had already been made. I was much too shy to talk to anyone, and nobody talked to me. I used to stand in the windy playground with my back against the railings and watch all the children running and shrieking and wonder how there could be so many children in one place, and how they could all know each other. I wished I could squeeze through the railings and run back home. When Mr Grady blew the whistle at the end of playtime the children all froze like the statues in the classrooms, and then at his second whistle they walked absolutely silently into class rows. There wasn’t a child in the school who wasn’t afraid of Mr Grady. His face was cold and hard and white, and I don’t think I ever saw him smile.
One day he caught me reading in a lesson. I was supposed to be doing Arithmetic. I felt his hand coming over my shoulder and too late, he snatched the book away from my grasp and held it up. I was ice-cold with fear. The whole class watched him as he walked with the book to his desk. He had been known to beat children with his cane until they bled. He sat on the edge of his desk and drew a pile of exercise books towards him. Then he rooted through them and drew one out. It was mine.
‘One day,’ he said to the class, ‘this girl will be a writer.’
But I did not feel proud or happy that he had said that. I felt afraid, and ashamed. I hung my head and didn’t look at anyone.
Our class teacher was Miss O’Brien, who had auburn hair like a fox’s back. Her lips were bright red and shiny, as if she was always licking them wet, though I never saw her doing it. I longed to be noticed by her, but she always seemed to be in a dream, gazing out of the window as she taught us, somewhere far away. And around me, the children in the class giggled quietly and passed notes to each other, and shared secrets. They all seemed to be going to each other’s houses for tea or to birthday parties. I was outside it all, just watching.
When my own birthday came around, in November, there was no point having a party. There was no one to invite. So it was a special treat when my brother arrived home unexpectedly, especially as he brought me two presents. ‘I couldn’t decide which one to get you,’ he said. ‘So I got them both.’
They were glove puppets, one of Mickey in a blue smock, one of Minnie in a pink smock with a yellow bow painted on her shiny black rubber