I had the determination. Then on 14 April I became more focused: 'I bought a WONDERFUL little book called 'Teach Yourself to Write' by Kathleen Betterton. It is wonderfully encouraging and has given me absolutely heaps of ideas.'
I still have my copy of that little book now, well thumbed, with the cover in tatters. Kathleen Betterton says:
No book can teach you how to write, much less how to succeed as a writer. It can teach you only how to teach yourself to write: the rest depends on you. Literary success springs from an unusual combination of originality, luck and industry – especially industry.
I was an odd one out, a strange, shy, weird, imaginative girl who seemed to think differently from everyone else. Did that make me original? I was prepared to be ultra industrious. All right, I could hardly bear to open a school textbook and I was pretty hopeless at helping Biddy with the dusting and vacuuming – but I wrote for hour after hour in my notebooks and diaries.
I wasn't so sure about the luck element though. It's the one thing you can't really control. You can do your best to make your own luck, keeping an eye on literary trends and always being one step ahead. You can force yourself to write an artful letter, make a phone call, approach the right person at a publishing party (though it's agony if you're shy like me). But it's still mostly a matter of luck whether you get your manuscript accepted or not, whether it wins awards and races up the bestseller charts.
My biggest best-seller has been The Story of Tracy Beaker. It was a reasonably original idea to choose to write a story about a fierce little girl in a children's home, desperate to be fostered. I certainly worked hard at it. There was no problem with Tracy herself. She sprang to life the moment I made up her name. It was as if she'd seized my pen in her own hot little hand, determined to write her story her way, in her own voice.
I needed to check my facts and find out about fostering. This is where the first piece of luck flashed forth. My friend Bryony works for the Fostering Network and has very successfully fostered children herself. I asked her if she had any pamphlets about the whole procedure. She gave me a handful, including a yellow booklet specially for children called My Book About Me. As soon as I opened it and saw: MY NAME IS . . . I AM . . . YEARS . . . MONTHS OLD. MY BIRTHDAY IS ON . . . my heart started thumping. This was the way to write my book. I imagined my fidgety, stroppy Tracy being sat down by an overly earnest social worker and told to start writing her life story in her special book. She'd start messing about almost at once, telling fibs, going off into little flights of fancy. She'd doodle little drawings all over the page too. I knew I wanted those drawings in the published book.
I nervously asked my then editor, David Fickling, if I could have lots of black and white illustrations throughout the text. This was quite unusual in those days and I worried about it being an extra expense.
David just beamed at me. 'An excellent idea, Jacky,' he said. 'I tell you what, I think I know exactly the right person.'
That right person was Nick Sharratt, now my dear friend, who has illustrated every one of my books for nearly twenty years now, and provided each one with an imaginative, distinctive, colourful cover. I am sooooo lucky to have Nick as my artistic partner.
I've written around ninety children's books now and people often ask me if I've ever thought of writing for adults. I did actually write five dark and depressing crime novels for adults long ago but I'm not the slightest bit tempted to write for adults now. I only ever want to write for children and teenagers.
However, I didn't always feel that way. I read Kathleen Betterton's chapter on 'Writing for Children' and felt disheartened. Kathleen states dogmatically that 'the writer for children must not attempt subtlety of character in which good and evil are blended'. That was precisely what I found disappointing in many children's books. The children just didn't seem real. She suggests that children like to read fantasy or adventure or school stories. I hadn't especially enjoyed any of these genres. I decided the fault lay with me. I'd simply been a very weird child.
I wrote in my diary:
I have been reading Enid Blyton's autobiography again, but this time far more cynically. She doles out advice again and again to would-be writers – yet surely her books are not all that great. If I ever write I won't write for children. I can't understand how Enid Blyton can write all day, yet leave out everything about real life. Her families don't quarrel, her parents don't nag, her teenagers aren't interested in lipstick and boys, her children never listen to dirty stories or wet themselves, and she ignores babies and pregnancy and sex. Surely all these things must have some part in her life. I just don't see how she can go on about little Noddy and the Famous Five, etc., etc.
9
School
I hated school. I didn't mind Latchmere, my primary school, but I couldn't bear my five years at Coombe County Secondary School for Girls. I've been back to Coombe quite a few times to give talks to the girls. I've even presented the prizes at the end of term. I've talked about my school days and I've been polite and tactful, because Coombe now is a very different school. It's warm and relaxed and all the girls (and now there are even boys in the sixth form) seem cheerful. They get excellent exam results and they're very sensitive to any girl with special needs. They tick every box and get ten out of ten, full marks for a fine school.
Coombe way back in 1960 was a very different sort of school. All schools were different then. There were pointless rules, fierce regulations about uniform, a strict standard of behaviour. You were expected to conform. I've never been very good at that.
I loathed most of the lessons too. I disliked PE most of all. Every Friday morning I'd wake up and stick my head out from under my eiderdown, straining my ears. What total joy if I heard rain pattering against the window! Friday was double hockey in our yellow shirts and green shorts – 'G-r-e-e-n and yellow, G-r-e-e-n and yellow, oh Mum be quick, I'm going to be sick, just lay me down to die,' we sang in the changing rooms.
I had no idea how to play hockey. Miss French, the formidable new PE teacher, had told us the rules, but I'd never listened properly. I simply ran when she blew the whistle – away from the ball and the likely whacks from everyone else's hockey sticks. Then she'd blow the whistle again and shout, 'Jacqueline Aitken! What are you playing at?'
I didn't want to play at anything. If it poured with rain, making the playing fields too muddy, we couldn't have double hockey. We had country dancing instead, and I adored any kind of dancing.
Hockey was the worst torture, but netball was almost as bad, shivering on the court in the middle of winter, our bare legs beetroot red. I couldn't see the ball until it practically knocked my head off. One day it caught the side of my glasses and sent them skew-whiff, so I went around looking lopsided for weeks.
The scariest ball of all was the hard little rounders ball. Miss French became fed up with me lurking way out on the edge of the pitch as a deep fielder. For one terrible term she insisted I man first post at every game. This was a key position. It was vital that you caught the ball to get the batter out. Miss French was such a sadist. She knew I couldn't catch the ball to save my life.
'Come on, Jacqueline Aitken, wake up, watch that ball, catch it, catch it, catch it!' she screamed.
I dropped it. I dropped it. I dropped it.
The batting girl hared round second post, third post and was home with a rounder before I'd stopped fumbling. Then Miss French would scream some more, and the other girls on my team would yell at me too. I'd stand there, trying to hold my head high, acting like I couldn't care tuppence whether I caught the stupid ball or not – but I'd be trembling, sometimes dangerously near tears.
Then there was gym. For some inexplicable reason we weren't allowed to wear our green shorts and plimsolls in the gymnasium. We had to run round in our bare feet in just our ugly yellow blouses and our grim grey knickers. We were all shapes and sizes – fat, skinny, wobbly, hairy – so this was bad enough. But in those long-ago days none of us yet used tampons when we had
our period. We used sanitary towels hooked onto belts – awful pads like nappies, so of course the shape of them showed right through your knickers.
Sometimes if Miss French was in a very good mood you might whisper to her that you had a very heavy period and then she might let you wear your shorts, but not always. You could get out of showers if you said you had a period, and that was a relief. Who wants to parade around stark naked so that all your enemies can nudge each other and giggle at your sticky-out tummy or your non-existent chest? We huddled under our towels, and Miss French would shout, 'Get those towels off, girls, and get in the showers. Don't be so ridiculous!'
Did Miss French whip her cosy tracksuit off and gambol naked in the showers in front of everyone? No, she did not.
Biddy once suggested that if I was frightened of a teacher I should imagine them naked. I was frightened of our Latin teacher, Miss Cambridge. She looked comical standing pink and plumply bare in my mind's eye, but I was still frightened of her in real life – and oh, how I hated Latin. I never got to grips with it. If we'd been taught about ancient Rome as an introduction I might have become interested. If we'd had a simple conversation book it might even have been fun. (When my daughter learned Latin, the first two words she was taught were 'Hello, sailor!' which made all her class collapse laughing, though they all remembered Salve nauta for evermore.)
Miss Cambridge went straight into those bewildering grammatical declensions and conjugations, giving us long lists to learn almost every night. Then we started translating a very long text about Hannibal and his elephants crossing the Alps, and that should have been interesting too, but as I understood one word in fifty (probably just Hannibal, elephant and Alp!) I never mentally joined them on their journey. I doodled in the margin, I daydreamed, I made up the next part of my story, I thought about the boy on the bus that morning – and then jumped violently when Miss Cambridge yelled, 'Jacqueline Aitken, are you sure you're paying attention? Translate the last four lines!'
Although I hated Latin I rather liked Miss Cambridge, even though I was scared of her. She used to be funny in a highly sarcastic way, and if she was in a mellow mood she didn't mind if we tried to be funny too.
On Monday 18 January I wrote:
In Latin we had 28 vocabs to learn! Not homework, mind you, but just to be done in our spare time! Honestly, isn't it ridiculous? I'm just dying to leave school. Miss C was complaining that we ought to read more literature, and someone said 'How can we when you give us all this homework?' We, including Miss C, roared with laughter.
But you had to judge her mood very carefully. She could squash you flat if she wanted. She had the ability to march into the rowdiest classroom in her sensible polished shoes and get instant respectful silence. She didn't shout or clap her hands, she just looked – and every girl shut her mouth and sat up straight.
The only way we could get the better of Miss Cambridge was to sigh and say, 'I wish I knew what the Colosseum really looked like,' and then Miss Cambridge would be off, telling us about her many holidays in Rome. Her eyes went dreamy and her cheeks would flush as she talked, sitting on the edge of her teacher's table, her large legs planted on the desk in front, talking away half the lesson while we sat back happily in our seats. Maybe we weren't getting the better of her at all: she was probably as bored with the lesson as we were and was happy to stride back down Memory Lane to all those carefree Italian summers.
I hated maths too, but again I liked Miss Rashbrook. She wasn't fierce like Miss Cambridge, she was sweet and softly spoken with curly red hair. She was very pretty, though she was disfigured with a hunchback. This made her look lopsided and she walked with a little limp. With unusual delicacy we never once referred to this, even amongst ourselves, and anyone imitating her would have been ostracized.
However, we could be hateful to some of the teachers. There was poor Mrs T, who couldn't keep control at all: 'Every time Mrs T turned her back for us to write on the blackboard we slung dishcloths at each other. Soon five or six dishcloths were in orbit!'
We thought we were so funny. I expect she wanted to stuff the dishcloths down our stupid throats.
I did enjoy some lessons though. I was always happy in history lessons, especially with a new teacher.
Thursday 7 January
We had Mr Stokes for History for the first time today. He's quite nice but a bit Welsh, look you. He's young, but already he's going a bit bald. I sit next to Jill right in the front. She can be ever so funny. For instance she put on a gruff voice and proceeded to relate to me how she hated Parliament, and was a strong Charles supporter, and how she wanted to throw a brick through the window of 10 Downing Street at the Mackintosh person. I couldn't help laughing at the 'Mackintosh' and Mr Stokes looked at us two and grinned.
I loved art. I struggled to make my line drawings as delicate and beautiful as Mr Jeziewski's. He had the knack of pressing firmly at the point of a leaf, the turn of an elbow, the corner of a table, that made everything look three-dimensional. I struggled with shading. Sometimes my drawings worked, sometimes they didn't.
We were occasionally taken on sketching parties, which were great fun, but not necessarily productive: 'This afternoon we went sketching to Hampton Court. I drew the ducks most of the time on the pond – I think they're sweet.'
I could have been sketching those fantastic twisty Tudor chimneys, the sculptured yew trees, the gnarled Great Vine, the white classical statues, the fountains, the knot garden . . . and I drew the ducks!
I drew a lot at home too, making up my own imaginary people, drawing them in a long line, sometimes muttering to them as I coloured them in. No wonder Biddy sighed over me.
I loved English lessons the most of course, though I could be scathing at times:
Then we had English in which we read a babyish play. I wish we could do a really modern play like 'A Taste of Honey', 'The Grass Is Greener', etc., etc. Even Shakespeare would be better. Last term all our group went to see 'As You Like It'. I enjoyed it very much. I also enjoyed the train ride going home when we poked a comb into the adjoining carriage in which there was a highly amused boy.
Now what would I call that behaviour? Babyish! And how irritating of me not to write more about the play and who was playing Rosalind. It was heroic of Miss Pierce and her colleagues to shepherd us silly giggly girls up to London to the Old Vic. We sat right up in the gods in four-shilling seats, which were really just like big wooden steps. Your back ached unbearably and your bottom got pins and needles, and if you were short-sighted like me the little figures down on the stage were just a blur. But in spite of all this we found those performances thrilling. I was lucky enough to see the young Judi Dench playing Juliet, and that time going home on the train we didn't play silly games with combs and boys, we discussed her brilliant, passionate performance and tried to talk in the same soft sexy voice.
Miss Pierce didn't just take us to plays – she had us perform them too. She ran a drama club on Monday nights. Anyone could join. She chose plays with very large casts to make sure everyone could have a part. They weren't all speaking parts of course.
I secretly hoped I'd get chosen for a main part. I loved English and I was good at reading aloud, but I don't think Miss Pierce thought I was extrovert enough to rise to the occasion. I was always Village Girl or Courtier or Extra Child. It wasn't too taxing standing about on stage, laughing or gasping as required. We generally had a little dance too, and at least we could wear stage makeup and a proper costume.
Monday 11 January
After school I went to Drama Club. At Easter we are going to do a Chinese play, and I saw my costume material today. It is a nice silky pink, far better than my last costume which I had to make out of old brown curtains. But actually the brown didn't look too bad as I wore a lime-green sash and ribbon so it brightened it up.
We rehearsed every Monday evening, but as Easter drew nearer we needed to make more time.
Wednesday 16 March
After school I had to st
ay for 45 minutes for a Drama rehearsal. Honestly, Miss Pierce is the limit, she had told us that we would only need to stay for 10 minutes. The play is coming on slowly but surely. We have a lovely silver cage and a stuffed nightingale as props. For the nightingale's voice Geraldine Taylor blows (behind stage) a sort of whistle filled with water. It sounds beautiful.
The two performances of The Imperial Nightingale took place on 5 and 6 April.
Tuesday 5 April
THE PLAY!
All the drama club were let off the last lesson so they could get home, have their tea, and get back to school in time. I got off at Norbiton with Cherry and went home. Mum (she's got a stinking cold) got me some scrambled egg on toast, some tomatoes and some currant slices, and then after a good wash I was ready. I cut through the back of our flats and down Crescent Road and called for Cherry. Her house is very untidy but has a nice lived-in feeling, and I like the way that even if she's in on her own there's always the television blaring, the budgie cheeping, and the cat providing company as well as noisy miaows. She got ready quickly although she was very nervous as she had quite a big part, and then we set off, two little girls neat and tidy in grey uniform. On the way we met Mrs Eldridge and saw Roger Foulds twice. On the bus we met Mary Todd and Susan Wooldridge. We enabled them to smuggle Miss Pierce's fifteen-shilling bouquet into school without her seeing it. Then we went upstairs and got dressed in our costumes. I wore my pink oriental dress and my pink Alice band with a pink flower on each side. (I was told I looked pretty.) Then we were made up. It was fascinating watching ordinary schoolgirl faces turn into startling Chinese courtiers or suspicious old men, etc. Actually the play didn't go as well as we thought it would, and quite a few girls forgot their lines. But it didn't matter so much today, so long as we are okay tomorrow when the Mayor etc. and the 'Surrey Comet' come.