The Palace of Strange Girls
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Grand Central Publishing Edition
Copyright © 2008 by Sallie Day
Reading Group Guide copyright © 2009 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-55819-8
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For Julian
Contents
I-Spy at the Seaside
Hello, children! Welcome to your very own I-Spy book. In these pages you’ll be able to look for all kinds of secret, exciting
things that are found only by the sea. As you spot each of the things pictured here—and answer the simple questions—you earn
an I-Spy score. It’s fun!
Beth has had it with Jesus. She’s kicking the baseboards to prove it and she hopes He’s watching. Mrs. Brunskill at Sunday
School says He’s watching all the time, even when you’re asleep. It’s amazing. You’d think He’d be too busy (what with all
the cripples and foolish virgins) to be bothered with Beth. Thus assured of an audience, she pauses in her assault and eyes
the heavily varnished wood. Beth is disappointed; the baseboards are as yet undamaged, so she changes leg and carries on kicking.
Flakes of dirty cream paint and gray plaster spiral down from the wall above her head and the picture of a little boy crying
rattles in its frame. Beth carries on kicking.
“You big bugger,” she mouths on the off chance He’s listening as well as watching. Beth has learned the word from the dustbin
man, Mr. Kerkley, who lives next door. Mr. Kerkley shouted “You little bugger” at Beth’s best friend Robert when he dragged
a club hammer into their coal shed and reduced all the big shiny lumps of coal into powdered shale. Beth had repeated the
story to her mother. Word for word. She’d hoped to witness a satisfying gasp of shocked disbelief and disapproval from her
mother, but her tale had the reverse effect. Her mother took her by the scruff of the neck and washed her mouth out with soap
and water for using dirty words. Since then the offending word has been a constant resource for the child, who mouths it silently
on a daily basis.
Beth woke early this morning. Wiping the sweat from her face, she sat up and dangled her feet out of the bed, waving them
back and forth through air thick with the smell of bacon fat, unreliable plumbing and floral disinfectant. After a moment
she slipped on her sandals (ignoring the shiny steel buckles that must always be fastened) and rummaged around under her pillow
for the book. She has had the I-Spy book for four days now. Beth’s initial reverence for the volume has been replaced with
an obsessive fascination. Its white pages have softened to cream under Beth’s sweaty-fingered perusal. It was purchased at
the newsagent’s on the first day of the holiday and Beth will not be parted from it. By day she carries it around in her pocket
or, failing that, inside her knickers. By night she sleeps with the book under her pillow and her hand on top of it. Beth
is at a loss to decide which is the best part—the book itself or the codebook that came with it. And then there’s the membership
card, the source of her present frustration.
The green card announces in heavy type “Official Membership Card—Issued by Big Chief I-Spy, Wigwam-by-the-Water, London.”
Underneath there are four dotted lines for the member’s name and address. Although Beth can write her first name easily enough,
her surname is long and fraught with difficulties. It has to be perfect. Bearing this in mind, Beth reached reluctantly for
her glasses. The pink clinic glasses have a plaster stuck over the right lens. It is there to correct a lazy eye. The flexible
wires hook ferociously round her ears and the frames dig in across the bridge of her nose. The discomfort always serves to
concentrate Beth’s mind. The “B” for Beth went down wobbly but correct, the “e” and “t” were easy and even the string on the
“h” was almost straight. She paused before attempting her surname, Singleton. The task demands a deep breath before she starts
and, in the face of her inability to write the letter “S,” something approaching a miracle. Where should she start? Does the
snake go this way or that? Within minutes the virgin card is smeared with rubber and gouged with the swan-necked traces of
continued attempts. It makes no difference how hard she tries, the “S” always comes out back to front. Beth cast around for
a solution to her dilemma. An idea occurred. The verse she had to learn and recite at Sunday School last week was,
Ask and it shall be given. Seek and ye shall find.
The memory slipped back unbidden into Beth’s head as she surveyed the wreckage of her once pristine membership card. It might
be worth a try.
Beth placed her palms together and scrunched her eyes shut in an effort to attract the Almighty’s attention and asked. She
then set the point of her pencil to the card. When she finally opened her eyes, eager for the promised miracle, she found
yet another backward “S.” The letter lay fixed on the page. Eternally, immovably wrong. Beth stared at the card in disbelief.
This is why she is now venting her fury on the nearest thing—the baseboards.
The room that Beth shares with her sister is devoid of any luxury other than a dusty blue rug between the two single beds
and a similar gray offering underneath the washstand in the corner. This is the Belvedere Hotel (“Families Welcome, Hot and
Cold Water in Every Room, Residents’ Bar”). Management do not supply eiderdowns in their fourthfloor bedrooms, nor do they
supply dressing tables, trouser presses, suitcase stands or any facilities for hanging clothes other than two hooks behind
the door. Not that either girl is discomforted in any way. Save for the washstand and the film of dust, room forty-eight is
exactly the same as their attic bedroom at home. Except that Beth wouldn’t dare kick the baseboards like this at home. Beth
lands another almighty kick on the woodwork.
The noise wakens her sister Helen who, aware of the damage that Beth, clad only in her undershirt, is visiting upon the toes
of her new Startrite sandals, is quick to respond. “For goodness’ sake, Beth! Stop that kicking. You’ll ruin your sandals
doing that. What’s the matter?”
“I can’t do it,” Beth shouts.
“What can’t you do?”
Beth gets down onto her knees by way of reply and searches under her bed. Helen yawns, scrapes her fingers through her thick
blonde fringe and flips the rest of her hair behind her shoulders. Helen has been trying to grow her hair to shoulder length
for over a year now but her mother, who considers long hair to be an open invitation to nits, has constantly thwarted her.
Normally Helen would have had her hair cut at the beginning of the Easter term but her mother was distracted by other things
and Helen escaped. It is now July and her hair has grown long enough for a ponytail. Her mother has told her that she will
have to have it cut before school starts again in September. But Helen isn’t inclined to have her hair cut and she’d rather
be dead than go back to school.
At last Beth retrieves the card and wipes it down the front of her undershirt to dislodge the dust, fluff and flakes of discarded
skin.
Helen yawns again and says, “Is that all? Flippin’ ’eck, Beth. It’s just a membership card. Oh, for goodness’ sake! Don’t
start crying. Give it here and get me something to rest it on.”
Beth hands over the card and watches as her sister gets out her white clutch bag. There had been an upset when their mother
had first caught sight of the bag. Helen had claimed that it was “soiled goods” that couldn’t be sold at the shop, so Blanche
had given it to her for working late one Saturday. Ruth remarked that it didn’t look soiled to her but Helen insisted that
it had been and she’d managed to get the mark out of the plastic with soap and water. The truth was somewhat different. Helen
had purchased the bag from the brand-new spring range at Freeman Hardy & Willis. She’d have preferred leather but plastic
will do—just so as it’s this season’s color: white. She’d got the money in the form of an unofficial cash bonus from Blanche.
Blanche is keen to escape the attentions of the taxman and Helen is equally anxious to avoid her mother getting wind of the
extra cash. Helen is expected to hand over her untouched wage packet to her mother every Saturday night. Ruth takes the little
brown packet and, having counted out the ten-shilling notes, gives Helen the residue of change back as spending money. It’s
called “bringing the old cat a mouse.” The sudden appearance of Helen carrying a brand-new bag rattled her mother, who would
never dream of buying a white clutch. Ruth makes do with a more serviceable brown handbag with strap handles that she’s had
since the war. She was suspicious of Helen’s explanation but limited herself to saying, “I don’t know why Blanche let you
have a bag. You’ve nothing to put in it.”
“I’ve got my purse and a handkerchief,” Helen replied, waiting until her mother was out of hearing before adding, “and the
rest of my bonus.”
Helen, stung by her mother’s dismissal, has made it her immediate ambition to fill the bag. Her first secret purchase with
the hidden money was a miniature diary and notebook from Mayhew’s and she intends to buy a whole range of forbidden items
in the future—a lipstick, mascara, powder, maybe even cigarettes. With one pound, two shillings and sixpence the possibilities
are well-nigh endless.
Beth is impatient. She pushes the I-Spy book into Helen’s lap and says, “Can you write my name and everything? Can you do
it now?”
The bag opens with a sophisticated click and Beth watches transfixed as Helen pulls out a tiny gilt case with matching gilt
pencil topped with a rubber. The card is thin and creases easily under Beth’s clumsy fingers, but after Helen rubs the paper
it’s so clean that there’s barely a trace of Beth’s abortive attempts. When she’s satisfied Helen asks, “Do you want it big?”
Beth nods enthusiastically.
Helen picks up the pencil and writes the word SPUTNIK in block capitals. Underneath, where it says address, she writes “COAL-’OLE-BY-THE-TOILET,
BACKYARD, BLACKBURN.”
Beth’s face is a picture.
“What’s wrong? That’s your name, isn’t it? It’s what Dad calls you.”
Beth clenches her teeth and her hands bunch into fists. Helen laughs. “Well, what do you want to be called then? What shall
I write?”
“Elizabeth Singleton.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, is it?”
Helen goes into her bag again for her mottled blue Conway Stewart pen with the fat gold nib and begins to write. Helen is
nine years older than Beth and her handwriting is beautiful; she puts little circles over her “i”s and even draws little flowers
inside the letter “B.” When she’s finished Beth’s name looks so pretty, so grown up.
Beth is elated. She reads the card avidly until she reaches the space for her Redskin name. She looks up at her sister and
points at the blank space. “I thought you weren’t supposed to fill that in until later,” Helen remarks. This is true. Beth
must fill in every page of
I-Spy at the Seaside
and send it to Big Chief I-Spy who will send her a certificate and a feather to prove she’s a proper Redskin. Only then can
she choose any name she likes. But Beth is impatient—she wants a name now.