INGRID AND HER KNIGHT IN JEANS AND JUMPER.

A YOUNG GIRL ONE SATURDAY IN LONDON IN 1950S.

There were raised voices. Ingrid heard them. Her father's booming voice over her mother's screech. She stirred in her small bed. Pulled the blankets over her shoulder. Sheltered by the thick ex army coat of her father's on top of the blankets she snuggled down trying to shut out the sounds. It was Saturday, no school. She hated school, hated the tormenting kids, the lessons, the teacher bellowing at her. Only Benedict talked kindly to her, only he made her laugh, took her on adventures round and about, the bomb sites, the cinema, the swimming pool in Bedlam Park. The voices got louder, there was a sound of glass smashing. Silence followed, her mother's screeching began again, her father's booming voices trying to drown her out. Ingrid pulled the blankets tighter around her. She daren't go out along the passage until it was over. Even though she needed to pee, she held it in, thought of other things. Her wire framed glasses lay on the bedside cabinet her mother had bought at a junk shop. The thick lens were smeary, the wire frame slightly bent where her father's hand had clipped them when he slapped her about the head for talking out of turn. There was a small cut on her nose where the glasses had caught. A radio began to play, the voices had stopped. A door slammed. Her father had gone out. She poked her head out of the blankets. Music filtered through into her room from the radio. She got out of bed and stood on the wooden floor boards. Her clothes: dress, cardigan, underwear and socks were laid neatly on a chair where she'd folded them the night before. She opened the door of her bedroom and ventured down the passage to the toilet and shut the door and put the bolt across and sat down. The music played on. Her mother began to sing. She had weak voice, kind of like a child's. Ingrid played with her fingers. Pretended to knit, as her mother had unsuccessfully tried to show her, with imagined knitting needles. As she sat she felt the bruise on her left buttock. Her father's beating of a day or so ago. She knitted faster, fingers racing. She stopped dropped a stitch as her mother called it. She left the toilet and went to wash in the kitchen sink. She wished they had a bathroom like her cousin did. Her parent's bath was in the kitchen with a table that was let down when not in use. She washed in the cold water, her hands and face and neck. Dried on the towel behind the door. Her mother came in carrying a cup and saucer. She set it down on the draining board and looked at Ingrid. Get yourself some breakfast and then get dressed, if your father catches you in that state, he won't half have a go, her mother said. Ingrid went into the living room and got a bowl from the glass fronted cupboard and a spoon from the drawer and poured herself some cereals and added milk from a jug on the table and sat to eat. Her mother brought in a mug of tea for her and put it on the table and went off to the bedroom to make the bed. The music from the radio played on from the living room window she could see the streets below, the grass area beneath with the two bomb shelters left over from the War where she and other sat or climbed or played around. Over the street was the coal wharf where coal lorries and horse drawn wagons loaded up with sacks of coal. She ate her cereals. A train went across the railway bridge over the way;puffs of smoke rose in the air. Below boys played on the grass. One of the boys had offered her 6d to see her underwear, but she had refused. He shrugged his shoulders and said your loss and wandered off. 6d would have bought her sweets, a drink of pop, but she had her pride. She finished her breakfast and sipped her tea. Warm and sweet. She let her tongue swim in the tea. Benedict said he would buy her some chips after the morning film matinée at the cinema. Her mother said she would give her 9d for the cinema, but not to tell her father. As if she would, she mused, watching a horse drawn wagon leave the coal wharf. She drank the tea and took mug, spoon and bowl into the kitchen  and washed them up and left them on the draining board. She went to her bedroom and took off her nightdress. The mirror on the old dressing table showed a thin pale looking nine year old girl with short cut brown hair and squinting brown eyes. She only saw a blur. She put on her glasses and peered at herself. No wonder the boys laughed at her and the girls avoided her. Only Benedict was friendly to her. He said she was pretty. She couldn't see it, the prettiness. She turned. Over her thin shoulder she saw the bruises on her buttocks. Fading. Bluey greeny yellowish. She walked to get her clothes off the chair and began to dress. She wished she had a cleaner dress, she'd worn that one for nearly a week. The cardigan had holes and there were buttons missing. She did up what buttons there were and brushed her hair with the hairbrush her gran had given her. It had stiff bristles and a large wooden handle. She stood in front of the mirror and peered at herself. She put the 9d her mother had given her in her pocket. Ready or not Benedict would be there soon. He knocked his own special knock. Once her father answered and glared at Benedict and asked what he wanted. Benedict said, to see the prettiest girl in the world. Her father glared harder, Benedict simply smiled. How did he do that? How did he do that to her father? There was a tensive wait, her father glaring and Benedict looking passive. Then her father called her to the door and said, this here boy asked for the prettiest girl in the world; he must have got the wrong address. Ingrid went red and looked at Benedict. No, right address and girl, Benedict said,looking by her father's brawny arm at her. How she managed not to wet herself she didn't know. Her father just walked back indoors and left them to talk on the balcony without any more words and she never got a beating afterwards, either. Now she waited for that special knock. That rat-rat and rat-rat. She smiled at her reflection. Prettiest girl. Ugliest more like. Rat-rat and rat-rat. He was there. He'd come. She could hear his voice. She took one last look at herself in the mirror, wet fingered she dabbed at her hair. Time to go, time to get out of there. Her knight in jeans and jumper had come on a white horse to take her away; imaginary of course.