Mary and I had shown in the past that we were a good team. When a suggestion box was unveiled in the ward, Mary and I decided that what was needed to cheer everyone up was a bird table. CRX after all was a hospital in a forest. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a bird table outside, so that patients could see it by going into the day room? We filled in our own suggestion slips, talked about nothing else to everyone, and we made it happen. A bird table was installed just where we’d said, and kept well supplied with bacon fat and crumbs. It was particularly lovely to watch in winter. The cost was five pounds, paid for by the League of Friends. I felt that Mary and I should have jolly well had our names inscribed on it, seeing that it was our idea in the first place.
If I had become disaffected about raffles it was because my previous venture in the field, judged by my own high standards, had been a failure. I had been very professional. I had bought a book of proper raffle tickets — or cloakroom tickets, at least. I had persuaded some of the nurses to give prizes, little packets of sweets and so on, and I made some of the smaller prizes out of modelling clay. I charged sixpence a ticket, three for a bob. There were bigger discounts on larger quantities. The tickets sold well. I felt I had a gift for this line of thing. You try selling a raffle ticket to a nurse who has already donated some sweets, so that she’s paying for a chance to win back something she’s already given away! I felt I should really take a commission, but Sarah explained you couldn’t. I wasn’t the first charitable administrator to feel that my work should be properly rewarded, but I managed to restrain myself and keep my hand out of the till.
When I sold the tickets in my boy’s voice I said it was for the PDSA. I began to think that adults couldn’t hear properly, because they kept saying, ‘John’s holding a raffle for the RSPCA.’ When I tried to correct them they looked at me indulgently, as if I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about. One ‘grown-up’ even said, ‘It’s probably a branch of the RSPCA especially for children.’ I was nearly in tears as I muttered, ‘It isn’t. It isn’t! It ISN’T!! PDSA means People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals and it’s for people who are poor and have animals and can’t afford to make them better.’ Nothing I could say would change their stubborn minds. It was maddening that nothing seemed to be taken seriously unless it had something ‘Royal’ about it. That was the whole point of supporting the PDSA, because it didn’t have the Royal Family giving it a blessing and a leg-up, only Enid Blyton. The RSPCA had the Queen behind it, the PDSA only had ‘Queen Bee’, as she liked to be called.
At Taplow we were only a hop, skip and a jump from Windsor and the Castle, and it was partly that I liked the idea of cocking a snook at the Royals by supporting the other team. I don’t know where I got this republican streak — perhaps I was fervently royalist in a previous life, now making amends. In the end I took my woes to the wise Sarah, who had a knack for talking to the daft beings called grown-ups. They took notice of Sarah. Nobody ever thought she was making things up.
I collected a total of two pounds, which was pretty good, but that was only the beginning as far as I was concerned. The raffle was a means to an end, and I’m ashamed to say that the end wasn’t actually funding the treatment of poor people’s pets, while slyly putting the Royal Family’s nose out of joint. The end purpose of all this activity was to get my name in the Busy Bee News (Enid Blyton, editor). Queen Bee lived only a little further away from us than Queen Elizabeth, at Beaconsfield, which was maybe a hop, skip and two jumps away. She felt much nearer. She played a much larger part in our thoughts.
A stupid zoo
I reported my achievement to Queen Bee, and got back a form letter telling me it was a ‘splendid effort’. When the next issue of Busy Bee News came out, though, there was no mention of my raffle on the ‘Honeypot’ page. This was the page set aside for Busy Bees who were not members of Hives as such, but had performed outstanding services or shown ingenuity. Barbara Ward had raffled a bunch of rhododendrons and sent in a measly 1s 9d — she got a mention. Jacqueline Wallace charged admission to a stupid Zoo in her dad’s garage — a Zoo, if you please, consisting of a tortoise, some silkworms and a goldfish! The total take was a piffling £1, but she had her name in print for all time.
Of course when Sarah Morrison had organised a raffle, she not only won a glowing notice in the Busy Bee News, she got a hand-written letter from Queen Bee. She was invited to pay a visit to her at home in Beaconsfield. At this point I gave serious thought to the idea of hating Sarah Morrison. ‘Queen Bee’ wasn’t just anybody, she was the most famous person in our lives. Sarah had been invited to meet Enid Blyton in person — and she didn’t even like the Famous Five!
It was deeply unfair. Mary and I were the true devotees. I entertained the ugly thought that Sarah had only appeared in Busy Bee News because she’d mentioned in her letter that she had a fractured back. Which was true, but sneaky to put in your letter. I wondered if it was too late for me to write to Queen Bee again, saying that I was the worst walker in the whole hospital, and that sadly my condition was incurable. Then the iron entered my soul and I accepted defeat. I decided that ‘splendid effort’ only meant ‘must try harder’, but I didn’t see how I could. It looked like the end of my charity work.
Then on that Friday afternoon before Easter, Mary Finch got me all excited again. She said she’d help out by doing some handicrafts — some modelling, maybe? She was a good craftsman, one who didn’t blame her tools, though perhaps that was only natural as her tools were better than mine. I mean her hands. Her hands were far more dextrous, they were positively nifty. She asked, did I have any raffle tickets left? Well of course I did. She said we should make all the prizes have something to do with Easter. We could make cotton-wool bunnies. We could make bonnets. We could make daffodils from crêpe paper and glue and pipe-cleaners.
She really inspired me. She made me realise that we’d only been scratching the surface with our previous efforts. We needed to raise our sights, to be more ambitious. There was a world of pipe-cleaner modelling to be explored.
We would show ingenuity all right! We would set every Hive buzzing with envy. We would get the recognition we deserved if it killed us, if it left our fingers in ankylosed knots. What we were planning was so exciting. Raffle fever came back upon me doubled and redoubled, and Mary in her more selfless way became wildly keen too. Steroids give people a moon-faced look with prolonged use, but even when there was a touch of the chipmunk about her cheeks it didn’t blur Mary’s alert look. Cortisone couldn’t filch the merry flicker from her eyes.
After sessions of hydrotherapy boys were dried off behind a separate screen from the girls. I was still wrapped in my towels on a slow dry. Mary was being dried off much more rapidly, for a reason. She was going to have a long weekend at home with her parents, who lived in a big house in their pocket handkerchief of a county. They were picking her up later that afternoon. Even rapid drying had to be done carefully, to avoid jarring the joints, but the bustling of the towels to and fro around her shoulders made Mary’s voice wobble in a delightful, musical way. She wasn’t singing, exactly, though this was a very happy moment, but the wobble in her voice made her drag out a word like ‘p-i-i-i-i-i-pe-clea-ea-ea-ea-ner’ as if she was one of the lady singers on the surplus-stock opera records Decca had been kind enough to send us, reaching the end of her aria. One fine day. When I am laid to earth. The towels massaged her vowels and stretched them out.