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Little Bets and Her Little Black Book

And a backpack crammed with used banknotes

By Alex MarkhamPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
3
Image by Pepper Mint from Pixabay

She wore a secondhand school blazer, long boys’ trousers and had $20,000 stuffed inside her backpack.

Her classmates wore pristine red blazers and the girls were in identical red and white check dresses. If this bothered her, she didn’t show it. Nor was she concerned there were two hundred $100 bills in the bag hanging on the back of her chair.

The classroom settled around her. The pupils sat at their desks and chatted, many meeting again after the summer break. A few shot glances but no one spoke to her. Her new tutor Mr Jackson arrived and dropped a pile of textbooks on his desk with a bad-tempered crash.

She removed her little black notebook from under the stack of money in the backpack and opened it on the desk. She looked up at the other children then lowered her head over the notebook and craned an arm around it. She wrote using a stubby well-used yellow pencil. The eraser had fallen out of the end some time ago, they always did.

She made notes about the other children and wrote $20,000. She didn’t know how much $20,000 was, but it sounded a lot. The Queen was probably the only other person in England with that much money. Hers would be in British pounds and not in a backpack with a faded Janet Jackson photo on it. It would be in a safe and guarded by soldiers in red tunics and big furry hats.

The Queen won't have found her fortune in a plastic supermarket bag under a park bench on the way to her first day at the new school. As she had. The Queen got her money by doing queenie things: waving at people and living in castles with hundreds of bedrooms.

The Queen would have taken the money to a police station if she’d found it. She wasn’t the Queen though. No one was going to pay her to wave and she lived in a tiny house with scuffed magnolia walls. She shared with her younger sister because there were only two bedrooms.

She made another note in her book to remind her to ask her dad how much $20,000 was worth and how to change it into British money. She’d have to be careful, she wasn’t going to tell her parents she was now a billionaire like the Queen. And like Janet Jackson. Pop stars also had big houses and were rich but they didn’t wave at people much.

Her dad knew almost everything. The only thing he didn’t know was she had a little black notebook with her plans written inside it and $20,000. Her mum knew nearly everything too but pretended she didn’t so her dad could feel clever. It was one of those games grown-ups played.

Her mum had told her never to go to the park where she’d found the money. It was a place where naughty people sold naughty things to naughty people who did naughty things to themselves and others because of the naughty things they bought. What those naughty things were was unsaid and confusing. This made it interesting and why she had gone there that morning.

She had plans for the money and plenty of years to wait until the naughty people forgot about it. Then she’d swap it for money with the Queen’s face on it rather than an old man with funny hair. She'd written that plan in her notebook too.

Maybe naughty things meant leaving American money under park benches in plastic bags with yellow post-it notes inside saying $20,000? That wasn’t so bad. She wanted to go back to look for more but decided to lay low in case the naughty people were looking for their $20,000.

Lay low was a new expression. She’d heard Mr T say it to Hannibal on the A-Team after a big fight with the baddies. Americans had fantastic names, like The Fonz, Minny Apoliss and Sam Francisco. The police there were called CHiPS and Hawaii Five-O instead of The Metropolitan Police Service of London.

Her name was boring. It was the same as the Queen’s who'd had her sixtieth birthday earlier in the year. They’d had a day off school. Sixty! That was even older than her grandmother who was so ancient she’d probably met Jesus and saw live dinosaurs.

Her dad heard her say lay low to her sister and told her not to say foreign things. This was strange as both lay and low were in her Oxford English Children’s Dictionary, 7+. She wrote lay low in her little black notebook to remind her to check in an adult’s dictionary. When she could find one.

“Elizabeth.” Mr Jackson’s deep bark broke into her thoughts.

Elizabeth snapped her notebook shut. She sat up and flicked the black elastic over the black cover, letting it slap against the soft material. She loved that sound. She didn’t want anyone to read her plans, they’d tell her they were stupid ideas for a little girl. She looked up into her tutor's tired eyes.

“Welcome to St Margaret’s school,” he boomed.

Mr Jackson held the lapels of his jacket as if he was someone important, like Winston Churchill or ET. Churchill never had brown leather patches on the elbows of an old checked jacket with a thread hanging from the back. Neither did Margaret Thatcher. They were always well-dressed. ET didn't wear clothes, but he never had a thread hanging either. She’d have to write all those thoughts in her little black book. They seemed important.

Not everyone liked the Prime Minister. Elizabeth did. Mrs Thatcher didn’t wave at people or live in a castle because that wasn’t important even though it meant you got $20,000 and people bowed to you. She’d never bow to anyone.

“Please stand and introduce yourself to the rest of the class,” said Mr Jackson. He moved his hands behind his back like the Queen’s husband. He was the man who followed her around everywhere.

Elizabeth scraped her chair back on the dark parquet flooring. The teacher’s eyes narrowed to focus on her old clothing and scuffed black shoes. His nose twitched.

She turned towards the class. A watery September sun beamed through the high Victorian windows and glistened against the shiny seat of her trousers. Her blazer was short on small skinny arms.

“My name is Elizaberff,” she said, wishing it was Minny, Fonz or Miss T.

Mr Jackson’s lips pursed tight at hearing her nasal east London working-class accent. He looked like he was sucking on an unripe lemon. The school allowed a small percentage of the poorer locals in on a scholarship. He said nothing. This time.

“But everyone calls me Little Bets.” She turned back to her tutor, her eyebrows lifted for a moment. “Becoz I’m little.”

“Thank you, young lady, we had worked that out for ourselves.” He cleared his throat and breathed in. “We’ll use Elizabeth in class if you don’t mind.”

A gentle grin rose on one side of her face. Her deep blue eyes sparkled. “Nah, I don’ mind, mate. You c’n call me poo-poo face fer all I care.”

A giggle simmered through the room. It was cut short by a bang from Mr Jackson’s desk at the front of the classroom. His hand remained flat on the desktop, one of his cheeks twitched.

Little Bets watched him for a moment then leaned down. She opened her little black notebook and scribbled inside. She shut it and slapped the black elastic band back over the cover. She never got fed up with that sound. Mr Jackson’s forehead creased into rows of deep furrows, like a ploughed field.

“Young lady.” His body was rigid, his words clenched through a tight jaw. “You have a lot to learn.”

Little Bets stared back at her tutor, her eyebrows lifted for a moment. “I ’ope so mate, that’s wot I’m ’ere for, innit.”

She sat down, flicked open her notebook, and wrote another line.

* * *

The Queen held out a white-gloved hand. “Congratulations on your election victory, Prime Minister.”

The Prime Minister’s sharp blue business suit was crisp and without a crease. The Queen extracted her fingers from the firm hand grip and waited for the bow. It didn’t come. This was most irregular. In all her 72 years on the throne, she’d never met a politician who hadn’t at least dipped their head. Even those left-wing politicians who pretended to be working class but whose parents were wealthy minor aristocrats bowed in the face of tradition.

Mrs Thatcher had curtsied, despite her stiff arrogance. She thought of the number of strange people she had to meet over the years and sighed inside. It was one of the challenges of her duties. Here was another one.

The Queen told herself she would deal with this lack of etiquette through the proper channels. She forced a smile and held out an open hand towards two waiting armchairs.

“Thank you.” The Prime Minister’s voice was educated, like thick rich honey. The hint of something in the tone and eyes alerted the Queen. Could it be mischief she saw? This politician was hard to read. That was unusual, they were usually so obvious.

The Prime Minister hadn’t addressed her as Your Highness. This was most unbecoming. The new democratic leader of the UK was proving to be an ignorant boor when it came to etiquette. Where were you without etiquette, tradition and history?

They sat opposite each other, eyes meeting and dualling. The Prime Minister's back never touched the seat; it was held in a confident upright poise.

The Queen composed herself. She may be 98, but her mind was as sharp as ever. The Queen had been well-briefed about the Prime Minister's impoverished background and possible weak spots. This was a good time to get onto the front foot and ask where the money had come from to pay for that education at Imperial College London.

It was the one question in the Prime Minister’s otherwise open backstory. The question was always met with a bland statement about an anonymous American benefactor. The first term's fees had been paid in cash with US dollars.

She cleared her throat. “So, tell me, Prime Minister…”

A hand went up in front of her face. A pair of deep blue eyes sparkled back at her like the reflections of a thousand stars dancing in a clear stream.

“Everyone calls me Bets."

The Queen’s mouth dropped open. "Bets?"

"Yes. It used to be Little Bets. As you can see, I'm not so little anymore."

She watched the Prime Minister reach into a white leather handbag. Bets pulled out a small black notebook with a soft cover and rounded edges. She flicked off the elastic holding band and let it slap against the back. She seemed to savour the sound for an instant before opening the notebook. She delved into a pocket at the back and removed a slim silver propelling pencil. She looked up at the Queen for a short moment, smiled, and looked down again. She scribbled a short note in the book.

The Queen peered across, intrigued by this strange new Prime Minister. She couldn't see what Bets had written. Bets had her hand around the page and her head down.

fact or fiction
3

About the Creator

Alex Markham

Music, short fiction and travel, all with a touch of humour.

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