by Kate Long
‘Never mind the pain. This is champion. Hoy, everybody, see the amazing walking man! Top, int it? Let’s see if I can go as far as that wall.’
Inch by inch he shuffles the length of the room. When he reaches the end, he gets a round of applause. Mum’s radiant, her eyes bright and her purple velvet blazer shimmering under the fluorescent light. It’s too big for her now, that blazer. ‘Yes, I’ve been on the heartbreak diet,’ she tells people who comment on her weight-loss. ‘It’s not one I’d recommend.’ You can tell she likes it, though, being a bit slimmer; every cloud, and all that. I think the salsa classes have helped.
And now the physios are turning the machine so Dad can retrace his steps.
‘Depending how you progress with this, Mr Cooper, we can start thinking about elbow crutches.’
‘Fantastic.’
He’s tired now, you can see it in his face. Just that very short distance has worn him out. Mum’s fishing in a carrier bag for his paracetamol and for the blanket to go over his legs.
They reach the treatment table and apply the brakes. It takes a while to unstrap him and shift him from the hoist into his wheelchair. By the time we’ve eased him back on the cushion, he’s exhausted.
‘You were brilliant. Wasn’t he brilliant, Charlotte?’ Mum’s fussing about, thanking the physios, tucking the blanket in, unpacking her umbrella ready to make the homeward trip.
‘He was.’ I take the wheelchair handles.
‘Wait.’ Dad reaches over his shoulder and grasps my wrist.
‘What?’
‘Are you OK, Charlie?’
‘I’m fine. You were terrific, Dad.’
‘Come round, where I can see you.’
I leave the handles and go to squat in front of him. I know he’s hated these past months, not being able to talk to people eye-to-eye. He says he gets left out of conversations and talked over the top of. People can be crap with you when you’re in a wheelchair.
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘What you have to do is think about where I was straight after the accident, and how far I’ve come on since then. Focus on the achievement, not what I’ve lost. That’s the way to see it. I was lucky. Hang onto that.’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
Mum puts her hand on my shoulder.
I straighten up again and we push the chair together across the lino and out through the double doors, past reception and a man on crutches.
‘Would you believe it,’ says Mum. ‘It’s stopped raining.’
My daughter is pretending she hasn’t seen me. There she is, in the corner of the college canteen, sitting at a table with her mates. I can’t get over how smart Charlotte looks today in a navy pencil skirt and a high-necked blouse. Like a real teacher. I did tell her ages ago she’d have to get her act together for teaching practice; you can’t be skipping into a classroom wearing twenty shades of black. Especially not at big school. Teenagers hate it when you try for cool. I said, ‘You’re young, you’ll need to put a bit of distance between you and your students.’ To which she replied, ‘Since when were you an expert on secondary education, Mum?’ Because I’m ‘only’ doing a primary-level course and my pupils stop at eleven. Therefore I know nothing. Her placement’s bandit country whereas I just play with wooden blocks all day. I’ve told her, ‘There’s no need for snootiness: we’ll both be on the same wage when we qualify.’
Now she’s got a box-file out on the table and she’s tapping one of the pages with a pen. The other girls are nodding in agreement. So serious! But then I knew Charlotte would apply herself once she’d decided a teaching course was what she wanted to do. She’ll be up to date with her lesson plans, have done all her background reading. Every hand-out she’s been given will have been filed and colour-coded in a little plastic wallet. Which makes me think, I must get on and sort out my notes, actually, before Steve buries them under car mags.
It makes me laugh, this new smart Charlotte, because they should have seen her last weekend at the boating lake, sprawled in a pedalo with Will and oblivious to the fact she was showing her knickers to everyone in the park. Ho ho, imagine if I left my seat now and wandered over to share the story with her mates. Her expression! Or alternatively I could tell them how she phoned the night before in a state of high panic because Will’s school won’t let him bring his blanket in, the one he’s taken to trailing about everywhere and cries if it’s removed. She rang wanting to know what to do. I said, ‘There’s nothing you can do. He’ll have to leave it at home, and that’s that. He’ll get over it.’ My advice didn’t go down too well, of course. She’ll always have trouble being the kind of mother who puts her foot down. But it’s OK. Daniel and I are on the case.
Oh, hey up, it looks as if they’re leaving. She’s closing up her box-file, sliding it into her shoulder bag, standing, smoothing down her skirt. One of the other students in the group is showing round a book, another’s placing the empty cups onto a tray. They begin to make their way towards the exit, heads bobbing as they put the British education system to rights. Still she’s blanking me, my daughter, but I can’t help following her with my eyes. She stands so straight, so beautiful, I can hardly believe she’s mine. Oh, Charlotte, I think, we got there in the end, didn’t we? Against all the odds. Well done, us struggling mothers.
And then, as she’s about to pass through the double doors, she turns and gives me this wonderful, radiant smile. Just like that, out of nowhere. Kids: no matter how old they are, they never cease to surprise you.
God forgive me but my first reaction is, ‘No, no, I can’t!’ Will’s downstairs watching Thomas the Tank Engine, I hear whistles being blown and the gloomy tones of the narrator predicting collisions ahead. Dan’s still at work. So it’s me sitting on my own in the bathroom, staring at a positive pregnancy test.
Four terms I’ve been at my new job, four terms. I try and imagine the Headmaster’s face when I go into his office and announce my news. Of course he’ll smile and say congratulations, what choice does he have? But in his head, it’ll be: What the hell are you playing at, Charlotte Gale? We’ve just worked out the new timetable. I thought you were supposed to be revising the Department’s library policy, and standing in for Carmen when she has her hysterectomy? It’s all arranged. We were depending on you. We took you on in good faith, supported you through your probationary year, and this is how you repay us. Swanning off at our busiest time. Frankly it’s the last thing I needed to hear right now. Having a baby! How selfish can you get?
I sit down on the cold edge of the bath. The afternoon sun’s streaming in through the net curtains and making a pattern on the tiles. The mirror needs a wipe and I suppose I should degunk the shower head at some point before it blocks up. Dimly I remember it’s Will’s hair-wash night tonight so that’ll be half an hour’s screaming and coaxing. I might get Dan to see to it.
I check my watch: 4.30. At least an hour till he gets home.
I get up and pace about for a bit. All the indignities and stresses of pregnancy, I’m now revising: the months of health professionals prodding and peering and measuring, the intrusive questions. The way your body expands beyond anything reasonable, leaving you in those final days unable to sit, stand, walk, lie, eat or breathe. The extreme agony of getting the baby out. All the paraphernalia you then have to assemble, the time-consuming rituals and special equipment involved. The exhaustion, the lonely night-feeds. The terrifying fragility of newborns.
Twelve hours late with my pill, I was, one time. That bloody Fertility Fairy.
In the end I go downstairs to my son. Sure enough, it turns out a blue train has smashed into an unconvincing polystyrene mountainside.
I look across to where he sits, thumb in mouth, gaze fixed on the screen, and feel a pang of something. People say he looks like his dad, meaning Daniel, which makes us smile. But in a funny way he does. Especially when his hair’s due a cut. ‘How would you like a little sister or brother?’ I imagine asking. His mild eyes flicking across to me, full of questions. B
ut it’s too early yet for any of that.
And don’t ask me who we’re going to find to take over your GCSE classes, the voice of the Head breaks in. You’ve only just set up the reading recovery programme with Year Seven. What’ll happen to them?
I shake him away, and instead reach under the sofa where I keep Will’s baby record album. Six years since I put this book together, faithfully stuck in a clipping of his hair, his hospital wristband, the label off his cot, the copy of the Novena prayer Ivy sent me. Here’s a photo of a shiny young Daniel, his hair even wilder than I remember it, waving a knitted giraffe over the Moses basket; here’s Mum and Nan sitting on Nan’s bed with Will across their laps. Here’s a page of Firsts: first smiled, first rolled over, first clapped hands, first sat up, first crawled. Baby’s first holiday, baby’s first Christmas. Will clutching a multicoloured felt ball which, I seem to think, had a bell inside it that would rattle when you threw it.
I go back to the page where Daniel’s holding the giraffe, recall the last, disastrous time I showed him a positive pregnancy test. Two seventeen-year-olds sitting on the damp grass in Menses Park and frightened out of their wits. I can’t believe how far we’ve come.
I can’t believe how well we did.
Suddenly I’m desperate for him to be here.
I reach for my mobile, find it’s been switched off, turn it on and straight away get one of his texts: Dropping in mums on wy hme. Dnt wait fr tea. X
Well, isn’t that typical? Bloody Mrs Gale, I suppose I’m stuck with her now. Ha ha, there’s someone who won’t be cracking open the champagne when she finds out. I might be really mean and insist she goes shopping for baby clothes with me.
The phone beeps again and I see it’s a missed call, from Mum. Mum. That’s who I want to talk to. Even as I’m dialling, I can hear her. Oh, Charlotte, you daft ha’porth, you’ve got this cock-eyed. This is a baby, yours and Daniel’s. You wanted another, didn’t you? All right, it’s landed sooner than you planned, but does it matter? There’s never a right time to get pregnant. If you waited till every last thing was in place, you wouldn’t get off the starting-blocks. Be glad. Think of how happy Daniel’s going to be, think what it’ll mean to him.
After an age she picks up. The line’s crackly and there’s an odd whining noise in the background. I wonder if they’ve been invaded by wasps.
‘What can I hear?’ I ask her.
‘It’s your dad.’
‘No, that buzzing noise.’
‘That’s right. He’s watching motorbike racing on TV. I say watching. More shouting, really.’
‘Get your arse in there, Hodgson!’ goes Dad, on cue.
‘Did you want something?’ she says.
Now’s my chance. I hug my secret to myself, my heart beating faster as I imagine spilling out the news. Mum’s exclamations, Dad’s mumblings, the TV maybe even switched off. Then a split second later I realise, no, much as I’m longing to share it with her, it has to be Daniel who hears first.
‘You rang me, Mum.’
‘Did I? Oh, yeah. All it was, I wanted to tell you I’d found your nan’s spoon.’
‘What, the famous poo scoop?’
‘That’s right. I dug it up under the flowering currant. It is the one. Brass collar round the handle, shell-shaped bowl.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Well, I thought you’d be interested. It’s an heirloom. You have to keep these objects safe for the next generation. Everything’s coming to you in the end, you know. You and Will. Family treasures.’
‘Eight false moustaches and a gross of plastic rainhoods?’
‘Don’t scoff. There’s your granddad’s tenor horn, the barometer in the hall, the mantel clock, they’re worth something. I want Will to have those.’
The buzzing’s getting louder.
I say, ‘Look, Mum, while I’m on, I wanted to tell you – I wanted you to know that you’ve been a really fantastic grandma. The best. We’ve really—’
There’s a sudden clattering noise followed by Dad swearing.
‘It’s OK, Charlotte. It’s only his stick he’s knocked over. Ah, and the biscuit barrel and a full glass of shandy. All up the wall, marvellous. How does he do it? No, Steve, leave it. I’ll fetch a cloth in a minute. Go on, what were you saying?’
‘Nothing, Mum. It doesn’t matter.’
‘OK, well, I’ll see you Sunday, yeah? I’ll show you this spoon and we’ll have a catch-up then.’
‘See you Sunday.’
Yes. I’ll tell them as we sit round the table, the family all together, united. Right now it seems an age away and I can hardly bear the wait, but it will come round.
Because that’s the thing about the future. It always does get here eventually.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to: Alexandra Pringle and family, Dr Corinne Smith, Judith Strachan, Alison Winward, Sam Sinclair, Jonathan Howard, Andy Hamill, Kat Dibbits, John and Margaret Green, Lizzy Willams (@LifebyLizzy), Reena Kaur, Pam Dunnill at the CAB, Darryl Wandless, Edward Roberts, Nicky Carter (@gherkinette), Sue Marsh (@suey2y), Kaliya Franklin (@bendygirl), Pam Griffin (@_PamGriffin), Claire King (@ckingwriter), Sharon Owens (@SharonOwensAuth), @tazerbo, Anna Cassar (@oddbohemian), Jo Richards (@JoRichardsKent), Anneliese (@sluggishwalnut), Lindy Parkinson (@qubeoca), Susan Elliot Wright (@sewelliot), Phil (@GiantDespair), Helen Hunt (@hmhunt), Charlotte Ross (@ellaboheme), Rebecca Stanley (@BettyMcFab), @Ian_Kirkpatrick, @LeahFHardy, Jo Thomas (@jo_thomas01), Greg L (@natureoncam), @Martha_Williams, @BriarRidgeBooks, @PlashingVole, Jane Lawson (@BookeditorJane), Katie Fforde (@KatieFforde), Sally Quilford (@Quillers), Celia Bartlett (@ailecphoto), Naomi Alderman (@naomialderman), @bookmonkeygirl, Ian McLoughlin (@IanMcL13), Stewart Gillies, Reference Team Manager at British Library Newspapers, the always-fabulous WW girls, Peter Straus and all at RCW, Suzanne Baboneau and the team at S&S.
Bibliography
Gordon Crumpton: Standish and its People 1900–1926
Robin Everett, Ed.: Lancashire: Representing the Past
Lancashire Federation of Women’s Institutes: Lancashire Within Living Memory
