Stories by Roni Moore
Accusing Valerie
Little Valerie Price hated who she was and she hated her name, and
although she loved her family she hated being one of them. She was a
postwar baby, being born only a few years after WWII had ended; and in
her early years there was still rationing on certain things and some
were still hard to find. Her father had come back from the army with a
weak chest and stomach ulcers, so he was sick a lot of the time. That
meant her mother had to work to make a little money but even then they
were still poor.
There were eight children in the family, originally nine, but her
mother’s first child, Ellen, died when she was three months old. When
Valerie was born she had two brothers and three sisters. Bobby,
fourteen, Betty, twelve, Mavis, ten, Rachel, seven and Derrick, five.
Now all was well for Valerie until she reached five years old and had to
start school. This was fun for her at first as her other siblings were
so much older than her. She loved to play with the other children in
school but by this time Mavis, now fifteen, Rachel, twelve and Derrick,
ten, had became little tearaways getting into all sorts of trouble.
Although they sometimes stole from shops or from factories, if things
were unattended, they never took anything from ordinary people. They
knew times were still hard.
After a couple of months things at school started to change. Valerie
noticed most of the children wouldn’t play with her and some started
calling her Pricey, and told her their mothers had said they were not to
play with her as all of her family were thieves. Only a few children had
anything to do with her after that.
She went up into the junior school when she was seven. It was all girls
as the boys went across the road to school. Most of the girls wore
school uniform and loved telling her she was too poor to have a uniform.
The child longed for a navy gymslip and knickers, but knew her mother
couldn’t afford it, so she said nothing to her. What made school harder
was she wasn’t a scholar and found the work very hard. She was very
unhappy there. It was made worse by the ladies who did playground duty
at lunch time. They all knew about her family and would talk to each
other about the ‘Prices’ and Valerie would squirm with embarrassment as
they never spoke quietly. They would say things like ‘have your sisters
and brother been locked up yet’ and then another would add ‘it wont be
long before her mother gets her doing it, they all need locking up’. She
would hate her family because she blamed them for this. The girls
standing near would stare at Valerie and sometimes she would lose her
temper and say something to the ladies, but then she would get into
trouble with the teachers for being rude to the dinner ladies. It was no
good her telling the teachers as they were not interested in what she
had to say. It wasn’t her parent’s fault. They never sent any of their
children out stealing and would have never let them get away with it if
they had known; but it was her parents who got the blame and the bad
name to go with it.
As Valerie got older she got more withdrawn, she had few friends and
never trusted anyone. Once, when she was ten, she made friends with a
Welsh boy called Philip. They played together for about three months and
she also used to go to his house for tea, and met his mother and
grandmother. They must have been told about her family as one day she
called for Philip and he told her wasn’t allowed to play with her any
more because she had stolen something from his house. Which was totally
untrue. She had never stolen anything in her life. Valerie cried all the
way home because she was tired of always being suspected if anything
ever went missing. She felt it was so unfair.
The young girl could never understand why everyone treated her so badly,
she never had anything to do with what her brothers and sisters did,
good or bad. When she was six and a half her mother gave birth to
another baby girl named Julie. But Valerie still felt lonely as Julie
was so much younger than her. The years passed and Valerie left school
with no qualifications. She hated school and couldn’t wait to leave.
When she was older she had an easier time as she didn’t have to listen
to anyone’s nonsense, anyway her brother and sisters had quietened down.
As a child she never got on very well with her big sister Rachel, as
Rachel thought Valerie just got in the way. Now they were growing up
they started to get close. Especially after Valerie got married and had
children. Rachel’s children were older so Valerie would often ask for
Rachel’s advice. She might have been a bad child but Rachel was a good
mother to her three girls. Valerie had three boys and one girl, and made
sure they never had the life she had by moving away from her home town
of Chiswick, West London, and Rachel left Chiswick too but they still
kept in touch. As the years went by and all their children grew up they
still they kept in touch even though most of the family moved away and
lost contact. Valerie often thought it was funny both of them had a real
dislike for each other as children but after so many years they grew
closer than ever. It just goes to show you can never tell how families
turn out.