Mother and Child

by Annie Murray

  It was not even that we had never talked about it. Paul would sometimes say, hesitantly, sweetly, that he loved me but was not sure where he belonged. It was hard for him to explain. Sometimes we took walks together in the little park, in Moseley, a circle around a small lake, big, ornate Edwardian houses on the skyline above.

  ‘It’s not like I want to go and find her or anything – you’re my mom and dad. I don’t mean I don’t belong with you and Dad. I just mean . . . in myself. I think.’

  ‘I think all teenagers feel that to some extent,’ I said, guessing, trying to remember. It was not as if I had ever really felt compatible with my parents – even my brother Mark and I were never close. And I told him so.

  ‘Oh, right, yeah,’ Paul said, watching his feet on the path. But even then, I could tell from the way he said it that this was no help. Is it ever, knowing how other people feel? I said it to make him feel less alone, but I could see that alone was exactly how he felt.

  ‘Would you like to talk to somebody?’ I asked, that day.

  His brow crinkled. ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone . . . professional. About how you feel.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ But he did not seem to welcome it.

  ‘Let’s wait and see,’ I said to Ian afterwards. He left me to handle all the emotional side. He said he had no idea what to do – as if I did. But I knew he was worried as well. ‘He might feel better after the exams.’

  He scraped through his GCSEs. The only fail was in science, which he hated anyway. The rest were Cs and Ds. Without any enthusiasm he chose to do A levels in English, philosophy and geography.

  ‘Well, where’s that going to get him?’ Dad asked, in his usual I never had any education and look where I ended up sort of way.

  ‘You can hardly get any work these days without A levels,’ Ian said quickly, glancing at me. He didn’t have any either.

  Dad tutted. ‘They’d all be better off with a stint in the army, teach ’em some discipline. None of this lying in bed ’til midday. No wonder we’ve got hardly any industries left in this city.’

  Before I could open my mouth to start on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, Ian said quickly, ‘D’you need some help with those paving stones out there, Ron? Looks as if you’ve got a job on.’

  Paul never sat his A levels. Year by year, the bright little boy who had been, if not at the top of the class in his primary school, at least near the middle, sank lower. Teachers spoke to me, concerned. It wasn’t that he was unpleasant, they said. He was a nice boy. But he seemed distracted, sunken into himself. There was talk of tests, of ADD, but no one seemed sure about anything. Paul managed to do most of the first year of A levels, going through the motions, making out that it was all right.

  In the summer of 2006 he broke down. Being Paul, even this was a quiet event, no histrionics, no outward anger or blame. It was as if he disappeared, slowly, then suddenly. One minute he was revising for his AS exams, the next it was as if he had disappeared, like someone crawling into a large concrete pipe by the roadside for shelter.

  He slept, hours at a time even in the day. He had hardly any appetite. When I asked him questions about how he felt he could not seem to answer, as if there was nothing to grasp hold of and an emptiness had taken over. That was how he seemed: empty.

  From the outside he appeared like someone who had been unplugged. Watching him try to get up and do anything, I could see it required an enormous amount of effort and he was often defeated. On one of the mornings of the summer half-term, I went up, mid-morning, thinking I really must try and help him get going. The room smelt. He was not washing, or not enough, and he had a sweaty, unaired smell about him, like an old man.

  When he swung his long, pale legs over the side of the bed, I sat beside him, full of frustration, of sorrow and tenderness, because I knew he never meant any harm, my boy, not to us. It was only himself he was harming and he could not seem to help it.

  ‘Come on, lovey.’ I put my arm round him and squeezed him gently.

  Paul sat, impassive.

  ‘I’ll wash your sheets today. Let’s take them off together, shall we? You can go and sit out in the sun – it’s a lovely day.’

  He did not react. He sat sunken into himself.

  ‘Paul?’

  No answer.

  ‘Love?’ I leaned down, trying to see into his face. ‘I’m worried about you. I think we need to ask someone for help. The doctor for a start, maybe?’

  He moved his head fractionally, almost a nod, but not quite.

  ‘I think we need to, don’t we?’ I put both arms round him then, hugging him close, kissing his oily hair, babying him as tears stung in my eyes. I didn’t want to do anything against his will, this gentle boy, who was frightening me now with his inner sickness. ‘Someone who can help you feel better? We all want you to feel better – I hate seeing you like this, my love.’

  There was a faint, defeated nod. ‘Yeah. OK,’ he said.

  Eleven

  18 December 2014

  Dorrie complained that her sight was cloudy and I made the optician’s appointment on that particular date for both our sakes. Keep busy, something else to think about – Paul’s ‘royal’ birthday. And in the afternoon, tea at Sheila’s with the Creak and Groaners. I’ll barely have time to stop all day.

  Dorrie is waiting for me in her chair. When I arrive, she makes moves to get up, struggling, pushing down on the arms.

  ‘Can you manage?’ I hurry over to help, seeing how much she is shaking with the effort. Looping an arm under hers to pull her up, I can feel her bones actually creaking and how thin and insubstantial she is, the frame of something which has lost its substance.

  ‘We ought to get you one of those chairs,’ I say. ‘The ones that help you get up. You press a button and—’

  Dorrie gives a dismissive flick of her spare wrist. ‘I don’t want one of them things. Throw me half-way across the room one of them would.’

  ‘I think you can adjust them,’ I’m saying, but she’s shaking her head, the stubborn old girl.

  But it really hit me this morning. Since I have been coming to see Dorrie regularly, we’ve just sat and talked. Have I seen her get up and move about, even once? How could I have been so stupid, so wrapped up in myself that I have not tried to find out how things really are for her? She, dignified and stubborn to the last, has probably not wanted us to know what a struggle her life is. And there is part of me that does not want to know. I want to think that this loving old lady will just go on and on . . . I can’t bear the thought of her not being there any more . . . I am awash with guilt. I haven’t even read the stuff in that envelope she gave me because, to my shame, I have hidden it away and forgotten all about it.

  ‘Ah – that’s it,’ Dorrie says valiantly, once upright, though she doesn’t seem steady on her feet.

  Questions nag at my mind. How is Dorrie getting up and down the stairs? Is she struggling to get dressed? Has no one from the hospital asked or offered help? But Ian and I are her closest family and even we have not thought to ask.

  ‘D’you think you’re going to be able to manage?’ I ask gently.

  ‘I’ll be all right, bab.’ Dorrie looks down, bracing herself. She holds out a clawed hand. ‘Pass me my stick.’

  As I help Dorrie into her old mac, looping a scarf round her neck, my mind speeds over needs and possibilities: a Zimmer frame, a wheelchair, one of those stair lifts. The bathroom has already got some handles and she has a shower. But there’s a step up into it . . . I don’t say any more to her then though, not wanting to chivvy Dorrie with all of it at once.

  We inch down the front path to the car, Dorrie a sharp-boned weight on my arm. Ian got a lift to work today so that I could have the car. I help Dorrie fold herself slowly into the seat, lean down and strap her in, pull her coat straight over her knees.

  ‘Thanks, Jo.’ She sits upright, steeling herself, then looks up at me. ‘Never get old.’

  ‘Dorrie,’ I say bright
ly as we head out to the main road. ‘How about we get one of those stairlifts put in for you?’

  Dorrie’s head shoots round. ‘A Stannah?’ I’m surprised she is so clued up. ‘Oh, I don’t need one of them things. I can get up and down the stairs. I’m slow, but I can do it.’

  There are times when it’s better not to argue. I’ll talk to Ian about it all later.

  We get through the whole business of parking and getting her into the optician’s, an epic journey across a small patch of tarmac which suddenly seems ocean wide, Dorrie pressing down on my arm. Seeing Dorrie in her own house is one thing. Outside she seems shrunken and terribly frail.

  It takes her a while to get her breath back in the waiting room. Sitting in the bright, white space, she seems somehow exotic, like a little old owl brought indoors.

  ‘Nice and clean in here.’

  ‘When did you last have an eye test, Dorrie?’ I enjoy the feeling of sitting beside her. It’s a time for a little chat, mother and daughter. Almost.

  ‘Oh,’ she says vaguely. ‘I don’t know. Years back.’

  After a comfortable silence, she says, ‘Ian all right?’

  ‘He came in to see you on Sunday, didn’t he?’

  She nods. ‘But is he?’

  ‘I think so.’ I hesitated. ‘As much as he ever is. It’s not always easy to tell.’

  ‘That’s what I meant, bab. He bottles things up.’

  I know we are both thinking about the same thing.

  ‘It’s twenty-five years today since you took him home, in’t it?’ Dorrie says very softly, with a sideways tilt to her head.

  ‘Twenty-four,’ I whisper.

  ‘Oh. Oh, yes. Twenty-four.’ She nods slowly.

  ‘Mrs Stefani – are you ready to come through?’ A young woman in dark-framed glasses has emerged through the door facing us.

  Back at the house, I make tea and a sandwich for each of us, slices of gleaming ham, wafers of tomato, no skins, the way Dorrie likes it.

  ‘Cataract operations are very straightforward – she said, didn’t she?’

  We are each side of the fire, Sweep sprawled out between us. I can see now what I have not chosen to see before – the milkiness of Dorrie’s right eye.

  ‘Ar – I s’pect so.’ She takes a sip of tea, hands shaking.

  ‘You don’t need to worry, Dorrie – really. It’s all done in five minutes. They do loads every day.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’

  I follow her every move – just in case – as she painstakingly returns the mug to the table and stares down at the brown, saggy hearthrug. Her fire is an old-fashioned electric thing, hot coils of orange with thin silver bars in front.

  She seems preoccupied and I assume it’s because she is fretting over her eyes. In fact, I start to wonder again if something else is going on, something physical. I quickly finish my last mouthful of sandwich, lay the plate on the floor. I wonder whether to ask my mother-in-law if she’s feeling all right. She doesn’t much like questions of that sort. I must go home and read her thing, whatever it is – her collection of papers. She wants me to read it, to know something, and I haven’t even bothered to get it out yet. I’m fretting, guilty and worried, when Dorrie looks across at me suddenly, apparently lively as a cricket.

  ‘Put the telly on for me before you go, will you, bab? There’s one of them old films on. Pass us the remote control and I’ll settle in for the afternoon.’

  Twelve

  ROSES WITH THORNS

  Our house seems terribly quiet when I get home. I don’t want to start thinking, to sink into myself, so I hurry to fetch Dorrie’s envelope from upstairs and settle down on the sofa with it. I find myself feeling nervous. I would never have put Dorrie down as someone who would find the time to write. It’s like discovering a hidden side of her.

  I had pushed the papers she gave me into my chest of drawers upstairs, under some T-shirts. The Manila envelope, with Dorrie’s typed address crossed out, is old and soft with wear. I draw out the sheaf of cheap bits of paper folded inside and flick through them. The sheets are all lined, of varying sizes, and one side of each is covered in Dorrie’s childlike copperplate, in blue ink.

  ROSES WITH THORNS by Doreen Mary Stefani, I read on the front page. The words are underlined, rather like a school writing exercise.

  I’ve decided to write down some memories from my life which most of my family don’t know.

  I frown. ‘My family don’t know.’ What does Dorrie mean – that she has never taken the time to tell her children about her own childhood? That wouldn’t be so surprising. She was left a widow with two small children so there could not have been much time for leisure or for looking back. Judging by the steadiness of the writing and the yellow tinge to the paper, she must have started on it some time ago and written bit by bit, when the mood took her.

  I ease off my ankle boots and tuck myself up on the sofa, pulling my jumper down over my jeans to keep my legs warm.

  It’s my own walk down Memory Lane and I suppose they might find something in it interesting one day. I’ve called it Roses with Thorns because my life has had some very happy times so often cut short and there were always thorns along the way, however much the flowers smelt sweet.

  I’ve come to realize the only way through is to try and snip off the thorns and smell the blooms and be kind where you can, don’t get too caught up in yourself. I don’t have any great philosophy of life apart from that, even after all these years.

  Already, reading the words of this younger Dorrie, tears start to blur my vision. It’s as if what happened in the yoga class two weeks ago has taken the stopper off my feelings. Since then I feel in danger of crying at any time – in the supermarket, at odd moments walking down the street, late at night . . . I draw the heels of my hands across my eyes to clear my sight.

  I was born in 1929 near the middle of Birmingham, city of a thousand trades as they called it and certainly it was humming with industry. It was a big, hard-working, mucky old place, but we had our grand parts and some are still standing, for all the bombs and bulldozers have done their best to flatten it – the Council House and Art Gallery with its tea rooms. The old library is long gone though. It was all musty and dark in there then and you had to whisper, not like today.

  There’s not many left now remember our old city as it used to be when it wasn’t smothered in concrete and neighbourhoods where we all knew everyone’s names ‘up our end’ even if we didn’t see eye to eye. The streets were lit by gas lamps and a man came round every night to light them. There was yards of little houses – slums they seem to have decided to call them now – almost up to the Council House itself, before Joseph Chamberlain came along and redesigned it all. That was even before my time. Course Hitler did his bit to destroy us, but we stood proud even with bricks and bombs falling all about us. He failed in the end being a bully, they always do. It was bulldozers did the rest in the name of progress though some would say it had to come.

  Our house would seem a very poor thing now, on a cobbled street, another house behind it facing on to the yard at the back. 2/18 we were, two back of eighteen. Truth to tell, they were half houses, built back to back, a bug-ridden row of damp, cramped hovels all holding each other up. There was one room downstairs with a scullery at the back and we all lived and died in that room. There was two bedrooms upstairs, a brass bedstead in each – Mom and Dad in one and us kids all together in the other. Our door opened direct on to Fazeley Street from the front room, no inside toilet or hot water or all the comforts taken for granted in this modern world. There were some roses – like my Aunt Beattie, our mother’s sister, who was the saviour of all of us – but there were plenty of thorns from the start, cold and hunger being just two of them.

  I’m wandering. The floor of the front room was of brick and we bodged rugs to cover it – old strips of material, the best colours we could find, threaded through a bit of sacking. There were a few sticks of furniture and the iron range where our m
other did all the cooking and kept her pots and pans. It was the only thing kept us warm. The hearth was always the heart of a house in those days as we all had to huddle up together. I wonder if it’s not central heating that’s broken up families.

  There was no water in the house – we went out with a pail along the entry to the pump in the yard. That was always a job for us kids. Many’s the time I’ve staggered along between the houses with a full bucket banging my legs and my shoes filling with water. My legs would be all bruises from the metal pail, not to mention my brothers kicking me in bed. The yard was where the lavatories were as well, shared with the neighbours. No running water or that sort of fine living – they were dry-pan lavs and not nice in the summer. And if you took too long in there someone’d come banging on the door. Nothing was clean and safe like now. If the water was dirty for some reason, whole yards and streets would go down with diarrhoea.

  Our mom didn’t have much of a start. Ethel Parsons was her married name, but she was born Ethel Timmins, in a house off a yard in Milk Street, Deritend, Birmingham in 1913. In all her life she only moved a stone’s throw away.

  At seventeen she walked up the road to Fazeley Street to get married, a decision that, she did not trouble to hide from anyone, she regretted for the rest of her life. She was the middle child of seven, Beattie the eldest. Our grandfather worked in a factory somewhere nearby but he didn’t go away to fight in the Great War because of his health, which must have been bad because by the end they were after anything that could move on two legs to send to the front.

  They hadn’t been too bad off to begin with but Grandpa’s health went downhill and soon our Grandmother Alice was left a widow, sometime during the Great War. Our mom used to say she could remember spending hours on the floor as a small child, with just a bit of sacking between her and the bricks, helping her mother, Alice, glue matchboxes together. Mom used to say she’d never forget the foul stink of the glue they used, made of boiled old bones.