Writing for Fun
August 2017
A Children's Story - Anne Wilson
Once there was a pretty little girl who lived in a big, secluded house in the country, with her mother and father, her two older sisters and younger brother.
She was a happy little girl, sheltered from the world and the coarseness of working class children by learning all her lessons at home with a governess. When she wasn’t studying she played contentedly with her sisters, who allowed them to join in their games. But her favourite person was her younger brother, who was almost as close to her as her beloved pet rabbit called Nibbles. Nibbles was a lovely looking animal, with a coat of thick fur and a liking for lots and lots of lovely green lettuce.
One day the little girl noticed her mother looking sad and her sisters told her that they had heard Daddy shouting at her. He shouted at her several times after that and it was a terrible day when, packing lots of furs and jewellery into several big trunks with the help of their trusted servants, the four children and their mother left the big home and went to live somewhere a lot less grand, but they didn’t complain. Mummy and Daddy then went through something called a divorce, which was not a thing ordinary working people did because it left the woman without any money, so it was a small relief to realise it only happened in the best circles. The children were pleased that their father had something called ‘visiting rights’ to of all of them, other than the rabbit, and that they could see him as and when they wanted.
After moving away, the little girl went to ‘proper’ school for her lessons and made friends with several girls whose parents had titles and therefore knew how to use their knives and forks properly, so things were not as awful as they might have been.
The visits to their father were jolly and all the family settled into a routine, and being cheerful and helpful like all good children should do, but one day her father called them over and sat them down in the big armchair by the log fire, which crackled and glowed in the expensive antique fireplace.
‘Now children, I want you all to be very grown up,’ he said solemnly. ‘Your mother has been behaving rather badly and I don’t think you should go back and live with her.’ Their faces fell.
‘What has she done?’ the pretty little girl asked. ‘Did she forget to feed Nibbles whilst we were away?’
‘No, it’s even worse than that,’ he replied. ‘But don’t worry,’ he reassured them. ‘A nice man with a wig is going to decide whether you will all stay living with her or can live here with me. He will know best.’
‘But he might say we’ve all got to stay living with Mummy,’ the pretty little girl pointed out. ‘And why does the nice man wear a wig? Is he so old he doesn’t have any hair?’
‘No,’ said her father. ‘He wears a wig because he’s clever and has lots of money. And don’t worry about having to go back to Mummy because Granny is going to say she’s not capable of taking care of you when she’s behaving so naughtily.’
The pretty little girl screwed up her face in puzzlement.
‘Granny?’ she said. ‘Don’t you mean Nana?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean Mummy’s Mummy, not my Mummy.’
‘But that’s not right,’ she pouted. ‘Granny shouldn’t say horrible things about Mummy.’ Her bad mood passed quickly, though, when she realised that Nibbles needed someone reliable to see he was fed with a daily meal of lettuce – otherwise he might starve. Daddy was probably protecting them all from her mother by keeping this awful failure on her part to himself. It took her mind off her own troubles and she was able to think of others less fortunate than herself, something which children should do at all times.
Their father was right. In due course the wise man with a wig did something her sisters referred to as ‘ruling in favour of Daddy’. Some of the unkind things Granny said even made their way into some of the popular newspapers – the short ones that didn’t have obituaries in them or stocks and shares, but contained lots of photos so that poorer people did not have to spoil their eyesight by reading too much.
They saw Mummy occasionally and she married someone else who became someone the children called ‘step daddy’, but the pretty little girl was growing up to be a sad, lonely person and nobody really noticed.
Her sisters were growing up too and having a lovely time making friends with people who were not girls. They didn’t want to do the things that little boys wanted to do, though, like building tree houses and playing roughly in the woods so that they grazed their knees and matron had to put Elastoplasts on them. One of them was a nice young man who liked the middle sister very much. She didn’t think he was at all handsome so she soon made friends with someone else she liked better, which made the young man sad. The pretty young girl wanted to find out more about him, though – particularly when she discovered he had lost a relative close to him and was now even sadder than he had been when her sister had told him she didn’t like him enough to be his special friend. She spoke to him about how awful he must feel.
‘I say, you’re a good old stick to care the way you do,’ he said appreciatively, sipping a glass of her favourite ginger beer. ‘You seem like a nice, jolly girl. Can I come and see you next week?’
The pretty girl knew she had met the person she was going to marry and it was a wonderful day when, some months later she found herself in a huge cathedral in front of thousands of guests, wearing a beautiful white dress which was in so many folds she almost tripped over it. The young man’s parents had been very thoughtless and given him so many first names she couldn’t remember them in the correct order when she had to repeat them. No-one minded though. They were all having such a jolly time and there was a sumptuous meal of ginger beer, jam sandwiches and currant buns to look forward to afterwards at a magnificent palace in London afterwards.
As the pretty girl and the young man walked back together down the centre of the huge domed building the young man nodded to a familiar fair-haired, long-faced woman who was sitting in one of the pews and she nodded back. It was nice that the young man still had his old friends, the pretty young girl thought to herself and it showed what a loyal person he was. How wonderful everything was going to be.