Mum had lost a little of her authority in my eyes, somehow, along the way. At first I had been amazed that she could tell if I had disobeyed her orders and neglected to brush my teeth, but then I worked out that she gave my toothbrush a surreptitious stroke and scolded me if it was dry. The stiff bristles bore witness against me. After that it was easy to wet it from time to time.
In those days I really loved the Just So Stories. Miss Reid would read them with me, sitting on the edge of my bed. I wasn’t sure that teachers were allowed to do that, whether they counted as doctors or only parents, but I wasn’t going to say anything. A cuddle from her would have been nice, but I knew there was no chance. It was nice enough seeing her white nylon overall with the corner of my eye, and then having her big white botty approaching and flowing in from the left. Then she’d hold up the book and start to read. I wondered if the man had asked her to marry him before she had such a big bottom. If so, she must be kicking herself for saying no while she was still young and pretty. But if he had asked her when she already had a big bottom, how could she have turned him down? Logic didn’t seem to help me to understand this important part of her life story. Perhaps she felt about tailies the way I felt about pockets. Not that keen. Perhaps it was as simple as that.
At about this time I wrote my own Just So Story by accident. It was all to do with Sarah’s mum, and if it had really been written by Rudyard Kipling it might have been called ‘How Muzzie Got Her Name’.
One day I had a real titbit to pass on to Mum, something that was guaranteed to give her pleasure. It was a lovely piece of intimate gossip about the Morrisons: I knew what Sarah called her mother when there wasn’t anyone else around. I knew the special home private nick-name the daughter had for the mother. I told Mum what it was, and she seemed very pleased. I’d only heard it spoken the once, and then I felt as if I’d stumbled over a jewel. It was so sweet and private, part of a secret language, and I treasured the knowledge of it.
Sarah called Mrs Morrison ‘Muzzie’. ‘Mummy’ was for the ward and the rest of the world, but when they were alone together it was ‘Muzzie’. I spent a lot of time with them, on the days when Sarah’s mum was the only visitor on the ward. When Sarah’s mum brought Sarah a present, she always remembered to bring something for me, so that I didn’t feel left out, but this was the best present she could possibly have given me, the sharing of the home word and pet name.
Mum enjoyed being in on the secret, but it was only going to be a matter of time before she revealed what she knew. Jacquetta Morrison was clearly an upper person, and everything about her was inherently interesting to Mum. Finally after the tea trolley had come round Mum said, ‘I know Sarah’s secret name for you, and guess how I found out?’
Jacquetta looked genuinely puzzled, and so did Sarah. They seemed to have no idea what we were talking about. Finally Mum and I had to announce the fact that Sarah called Jacquetta ‘Muzzie’, and still they looked blank. It became obvious that the name meant nothing to them. Mum covered her tracks by saying, ‘John comes out with all sorts of things nearly all the time.’ So much for loyalty.
‘But I’m telling you the truth!’ I stammered, getting very emotional. ‘Sarah wanted a lift and you lifted her all wrong, and Sarah said “Oh, Muzzie … “But if you don’t believe me, I don’t care! I haven’t told a lie, I know what I heard, Sarah said “Muzzie” — and if you don’t want to believe me, I couldn’t care less. From this time on I shall think of you as “Mrs Jacquetta Morrison, Mrs Jacquetta Morrison!!”’ I don’t know why I was getting so worked up, why the nick-name issue affected me so passionately.
I thought of Jacquetta as being old, at least compared to Mum, but that may have been partly due to the damage done to her complexion by the sun in India. Now she had a sort of faraway look and a younger, hesitant expression. ‘I don’t remember Sarah ever calling me that,’ she said haltingly, ‘but somehow … Well I don’t see why you couldn’t call me by that name, in fact it’s rather …’ True to her destiny as an upper person, Jacquetta was capable of letting a sentence trail away forever without reaching the final word ‘sweet’.
I couldn’t wait that long. ‘So you are Muzzie?!’ I said. By now I was blinking back tears of rage.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I don’t see why not. I am now. Muzzie. Yes. Why ever not?’ From that day on, Mrs Jacquetta Morrison was never anything but ‘Muzzie’ to both our families, to me and Mum and Sarah too. The name bedded down beautifully and became second nature, and I certainly felt I’d earned the intimacy. Mum too was grateful for the existence of the nick-name, perhaps more than me. She liked Sarah’s mother such a lot, but had never been comfortable calling her Jacquetta. It was an effort for her to embark on the presumptuousness of Christian names with such an upper person. Then Sarah’s mum said, ‘Oh, call me Ketter. All my friends do!’, making it ever so much worse.
Muzzie meant to put Mum at her ease, but the task was impossible. For Mum, dealing with someone so posh meant scrambling over a whole series of hurdles at every meeting. Now this casually intimidating instruction turned every conversation into an even more daunting event, a pole-vault of social aspiration. ‘Muzzie’ was a lifeline. What a relief! — it sounded safe and familial.
Funny rattly gappy
What I said was perfectly true. I had heard the word said. What I hadn’t taken into account was the larger context. In fact Sarah always called her Mum ‘Mummy’, whoever happened to be around. It’s just that one day she had slumped a little in her chair, as happened from time to time, and needed lifting back into a more comfortable position. Her mum was there, and she was the best person in the whole world to lift her, but there were times when even Jacquetta Morrison didn’t quite get it right, and this was one of them. She was lifting her daughter back into place into the chair, but not to Sarah’s satisfaction.
Sarah complained bitterly when a lift was badly managed. There was nothing strange about that. We all did the same. It was painful. This time, being impatient, she started to protest before her mother had finished settling her. ‘Oh Muzzzzie,’ she said, almost groaning, ‘you’re doing it all wrong, now you’ll have to do it all over again!’ Her voice squeaked in a funny rattly gappy way while she was being lifted so ineptly.
She was the doll fanatic on the ward, with a large collection, but she had something in common with a doll herself. Her size was small even for that ward because of the early onset of the disease, and the subsequent impact of steroids. There are dolls that have little speakers in their backs, and they make an uh-uh-ah-ah-ah-uh-uh kind of staccato thrumming noise. Sarah’s diaphragm, under pressure, produced a very similar effect.
‘Oh Muzzie … ‘I had misunderstood. I overheard a chance event and turned it into a splendid secret. Life on the ward was not eventful, and we got our excitement where we could. Sarah called Jacquetta ‘Mummy’ and nothing else. While Jacquetta was in the process of lifting her difficult daughter, Sarah’s brain rapped out the words, ‘Oh Mummy, you’re doing it all wrong!’ but those weren’t exactly the words which came out of her mouth. She got out the ‘Mu—’ fine, but for the next bit Jacquetta must have been squeezing Sarah’s rib-cage in a funny sort of a way, forcing the air out just as it got mixed up with an emotional sob (Sarah was so looking forward to sitting correctly and comfortably) and then it emerged as a sort of distorted sigh. There may have been some congestion in Sarah’s lungs, as there often was. Anyway, the middle part of the word came out as a sighing ‘ZZzz.’ With that extra squeeze of Sarah’s squeeze-box the consonant was mutated. A bilabial dental came out as a voiced alveolar fricative, and that’s how Muzzie got her name.