reason, I remembered my grandparents coming round to our house when I was little and in bed. After a few Guinnesses I would hear the Irish records being put on and then “Get the bairn up and daaaancing!” And I would be got out of bed and put up on the table in the dining room to dance.
I started singing, “Hiddly diddly diddly.” In an Irish accent. To an Irish tune that nobody has ever heard of, because it doesn’t exist. I started doing Irish dancing, keeping my arms straight by my sides and kicking my legs about whilst hopping on tippy-toes.
I don’t know whether you have ever seen Irish dancing, but you’ve probably never seen it done by someone with eight-foot legs. I struck Sidone a glancing blow with my foot as I turned round.
I like to think it was a showstopper.
In the break we all went to the café to calm down.
Flossie, Vaisey, Jo, Honey and I sat together. Shipwrecked from the Dother ship.
Honey said, “Cwikey.”
And she wasn’t wrong.
A group of older girls came over. The leader was a slim girl with copper-coloured hair and very blue eyes, wearing expensive-looking clothes. She looked about seventeen or eighteen.
She said, “Now would you be Oirish, to be sure, to be sure?”
She was talking to me.
I said, “Well, yes, half of my family is Irish, and the other—”
Before I could go on any further she said, in a very posh voice, “That was railly fun. Railly fun. Wasn’t it, girls?”
The other two were nodding and looking. And saying, “Ya, raaillly fun. Well done.”
The blue-eyed girl said, “You did railly, railly well. I’m Lavinia, for my sins, and this is Dav and Anouska. Noos for short.”
The others said, “Yeah, hi.”
Lavinia went on. “You mustn’t feel that you made berks of yourselves.” And she looked directly at me when she said that bit. “We’re like a family here. And funnily enough my mater and pater have an old groundsman in our country place and he’s Oirish too! To be sure, to be sure. So we’ve lots in common. To be sure.”
Vaisey said, “Are you on the proper course?”
Lavinia laughed, “Yes, it can be hell, but I suppose we must love it! Come and see the performance lunchtime, some of us are doing a work in progress. See you later, begorrah, bejesus.”
After they’d gone, Vaisey said, “She seems very nice, doesn’t she? Good-looking too, isn’t she?”
Flossie was chewing her hair, “Hmmmmm.”
I said, “What does hmmmmm mean?”
Flossie said, “She does seem nice, but I wanted to squeeze her head, and my squeezing-head instincts are usually good.”
Jo said, “Hmmmmm.”
I said, “Is this a hmmmmm-in?”
CHAPTER 6
Out of control yoof
Quickly get a bucket of water
It’s a girl fest
For the rest of the morning Gudrun took us round for a tour of Dother Hall. We saw the studios for painting, the kiln area, the technical workshop. The backstage dressing rooms. We even went down to the music recording studios. Bob’s office is to one side and Gudrun said, “We can just ‘Bob’ in.”
He didn’t hear us ‘Bob-ing’ though, because he had heavy metal booming out of his speakers and he was pretending to play a guitar.
I said, “I didn’t know that Mrs Rochester was musical.”
And the others sniggered. Which was quite a nice feeling.
After our tour, we were all lying down on the grass when Sidone came across to us. She was wearing an enormous hat and dark glasses.
“Darlings, darlings. Are you having fun? So, so thrilling, isn’t it?”
We mumbled, “Yes.”
She went on. “Now then, all in to the studio theatre for the performance lunchtime. It’s a work in progress by some of the seniors called ‘Untitled…Now!’ Oh, and by the way, girls, would you use the upstairs loos for the rest of the day. There has been an unfortunate blockage situation which Bob is trying to get to the bottom of.”
I didn’t look at the others.
In the studio we were handed slips of paper.
Untitled…Now!
Question: What is a woman?
Is it a Woe…man?
Is it a Wombman?
How can we re-find our egg-sistence?
A work in progress by Lavinia Pilkington, Davinia
McCloud and Anouska Pritchard
With thanks to the example of our inspirational
teacher Sidone Beaver
The studio went black and a faint spotlight came up in the centre. Lavinia walked into it. She was carrying an apple. She walked right into the centre of the light and looked at us meaningfully. She pointed to the apple and said, “Orange.”
And smiled sadly.
Then Dav and Noos came on with scarves all over them and started snaking about chanting,