A Hopscotch Summer

by Annie Murray

  After laying the wax doll back in the little bowl, both quiet suddenly, they looked at each other, wondering.

  Thirty-Five

  ‘Now, come and sit down, all of you. Here’s a bit of paper each. You can write a little message to your mom and I’ll take it to her tomorrow.’

  Dot stood over the three Brown children who were seated at the table in her house. Each of them had a sheet from a pad of cheap paper and were taking it in turns with a pencil. Bob wouldn’t think of it, she was certain. But the prospect of being in a place like that at Christmas was too much for Dot. She had to do anything she could for her friend.

  ‘What do I have to write?’ Sid asked, squirming at the difficulty of the task. The girls were looking to her for an answer as well. Although they ached for nothing more than to have their mother back, the person who was absent in this unimaginable place called the ‘asylum’ seemed to be someone else altogether. What might anyone say to her?

  ‘Well.’ Dot sat at the table with them. Nancy was standing next to Joyce, who was in possession of the pencil, watching quietly as if aware that this was a solemn moment. ‘You could tell her a few things you’ve been doing.’

  ‘Playing in the snow!’ Joyce beamed as inspiration came to her.

  ‘Yes!’ Dot said. ‘She’d like to know that. I bet she was thinking of you playing out when she saw the snow from her window. You can tell her all about your games.’

  ‘I can tell her Miss Jenkins gave me the cane,’ Sid said uncertainly.

  ‘Perhaps not that, bab. She might worry. Try and tell her nice things.’

  He thought hard, frowning. ‘I was milk monitor?’

  ‘Yes – now that’s a good thing. And you can tell her you miss her and hope she feels better.’

  One by one she helped the younger children shape their letters.

  Joyce covered the page in big, painstaking letters.

  Dear Mom,

  I am well. I hav been makeing snowballs. I hav ben a good girl. I want to see you.

  Love

  Joyce Brown

  xxx

  ‘That’s lovely, Joycie,’ Dot said, having helped her with ‘snowballs’. ‘She’ll like seeing that.’

  Sid seemed to find a sudden flow of words as well, accompanied by much sniffing. His tongue slid out as he wrote, spit and snot mingling on his upper lip.

  ‘Let’s give your nose a wipe, shall we?’ Dot suggested.

  Dear Mom,

  I hope you are wel. I am wel. I have been a very good boy at school no trubble. I went on a tray in the snow and threw snowballs at Wally and Gordon.

  We are all here. Dad is looking after us and Mrs Wiggins is. We want you back. Happy Christmas where you are.

  Your son,

  Sid X

  Sid and Joyce ran out to play, but Em sat for a long time chewing the end of her pencil and looking round Dot’s room. Though she always struggled for money, Dot had the place looking as cheerful as possible. They had all helped make paper streamers which were crisscrossing the room, and Dot had made sure they put some up next door as well. There was a cherry-red cloth hanging over the mantelshelf with a few knick-knacks arranged on it and a mirror hanging over it, which helped add light to the room. On the wall opposite the table hung a picture, painted in bright colours, of two young girls in pretty, old-fashioned dresses and plentiful hair, looking at each other as if they were both about to burst out laughing. They looked like friends or sisters and Em had always liked the picture. She especially liked the girl on the left, who had a dimple in her cheek and a pale blue ribbon tied in her hair. She wished the girl was her best friend. Somehow Em knew that the girl would be kind and sweet and never behave like Katie O’Neill. She tried to imagine the girl in Kenilworth Street, playing out with them all. She looked older than Em but she would be like a big sister and look after her . . .

  ‘How’re you getting on, Em?’ Dot dragged her back to the present.

  ‘All right,’ she whispered. But the truth was she could not think of a single thing to say to her mother.

  ‘What’s up?’ Dot said gently.

  Em shrugged. Her cheeks burned and she suddenly felt like crying.

  ‘Oh, bab, I know it’s hard!’ Dot put her arm round her and squeezed her. ‘You don’t have to say much. Your mom’ll just be pleased to have a little note from yer. Or you could do her one of your drawings?’

  Em shook her head emphatically. She turned her eyes up to Dot. ‘When are we going to see Mom? Can we see her at Christmas?’

  ‘Oh no, love, I don’t think so.’ Even if children were allowed in that place, she felt sure Bob would not take them. She wouldn’t want them to see in there either. ‘I expect your dad’ll go, though.’

  ‘Can we come to see you on Christmas Day?’ Em asked.

  Dot’s face broke into a weary smile. ‘I wish you could, love. But I always go to my brother and his wife – it’s the one day of the year when someone cooks a meal for me. But I’ll see you’re all right before I go.’

  Em turned back to her unwritten letter. Dot’s smile changed to a look of sad worry. What sort of Christmas were they going to have, with no Cynthia and Bob besotted with that woman? She’d have to give him a good talking-to about it. And how much did Em know? Dot had a terrible misgiving, from the pained look so often in Em’s eyes, that she understood a lot more about everything than they all realized. She watched, her heart aching, as Em hurriedly wrote the following stilted note:

  Dear Mom,

  How are you? We are all well. I am doing well at school. Sid and Joyce are being good. We hope you have a nice Xmas.

  From

  Em

  Visitors were allowed at Hollymoor Hospital on a Wednesday as well as a Saturday afternoon. Dot travelled with a heavy heart to see Cynthia, carrying a few treats for her, as well as the little notes from her children and Bob’s verbal message – ‘Just, er, say I hope she’s feeling better. I’ll be along to see her soon. Got a lot on my plate, like. Send her my love.’

  Dot swelled with anger inside, thinking about it. It was so obvious now that Bob was sniffing round that scheming Mrs Dawson. Though she barely knew the woman, Dot thoroughly mistrusted her. There she was, playing the wide-eyed, helpless widow, too smooth for words, preying on a man who already had a wife – yet whatever Dot said, Bob was deaf to her warnings. He seemed to have lost all sense.

  ‘Whatever she says about how hard up she is, she’s dressed up like a fourpenny rabbit,’ Dot pointed out to him. ‘Don’t that make you wonder? If she’s so flaming poor, why’s she got them clothes? I wish I had a coat like that, I can tell yer! And if she ain’t hard up, what’s she doing living round ’ere with the likes of us?’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman!’ Bob leapt to Flossie Daw-son’s defence. ‘Keep your bloody nose out of it! Mrs Dawson’s fallen on hard times since her husband died. I’m just giving ’er a bit of help from time to time, that’s all.’

  ‘I bet that’s not the only thing you wish you was giving her an’ all,’ Dot said bluntly. ‘I know a schemer when I see one and there’s summat about her that ain’t right. You wait and see. But don’t forget you’ve got a wife, Bob – one that’s stuck with you through thick and thin. You ain’t showing much sign of standing by her, are yer?’

  Whatever she said to Bob, he shrugged it off. It was as if he was locked in a world of his own making. And here she was, carting over to see his wife when he never bothered! And she’d find herself making excuses for him because she didn’t want to see Cynthia in any more pain than she was in already.

  She came away from her visit that day not sure whether to be hopeful or even more worried. Cynthia looked much the same as on her last visits, if noticeably thinner. She said she didn’t like the food in the hospital and had no appetite. When Dot handed her the children’s letters and invented loving excuses and messages from Bob, Cynthia filled up and hugged the little letters to her chest, crying with longing for her children. But instead of distress an
d agitation, there was more calmness about her this time. She asked after Dot’s family, wanted to know more about the children, the neighbours. She had also been able to make three little knitted figures, a soldier with a tall black hat for Sid and two tiny girl dolls for Em and Joyce.

  ‘D’you feel any better?’ Dot dared ask at last.

  Cynthia’s dark eyes turned to her but there was something drifty in her expression, almost as if the question had no meaning.

  ‘Yes, a bit,’ she whispered.

  When Dot left to go she said, ‘Thanks, Dot. You’re a real friend.’

  Thinking about it on the way home Dot tried to make out what it was she had seen. That still, quiet air Cynthia had worn – was it a sign of her settling, of real improvement, or was it the calm before another storm whose dark clouds were massing in the distance? It was impossible to tell.

  But she went home and told the little ones that their mom was feeling better and sent her love to all of them. She handed each of them the tiny dolls their mother had made. She saw Em hug it against her and give the faintest of smiles.

  Later that week, Bob dropped his bombshell. They were all sitting down for tea one evening.

  ‘I’ve had a very kind offer.’ He seemed excited. ‘It’s about Christmas.’

  Their eyes were all fixed on him.

  ‘One of our neighbours has said we can go to her – for Christmas dinner, like.’

  ‘We’re going to Auntie Dot’s!’ Joyce cried happily.

  ‘Ain’t our mom coming home for Christmas?’ Sid asked. Em thought she saw his bottom lip quiver.

  ‘No, she ain’t,’ Bob said brusquely. ‘And it ain’t Dot who’s asked us. I reckon Dot’s seen quite enough of you all as it is. No, we’ve been asked by Mrs Dawson.’

  ‘Who’s Mrs Dawson?’ Joyce asked sulkily. She knew perfectly well who Mrs Dawson was by now. ‘I want to go to Mrs Wiggins.’

  ‘Mrs Dawson lives round the corner,’ Bob explained. ‘I’ve got to know ’er a bit and she’s on her own, with her daughter, like, and we thought it’d be a good idea to get together.’

  ‘Is Mrs Dawson all right?’ Em asked innocently.

  ‘Why? Yes, course she is,’ he said. ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Mrs Dawson,’ Joyce said, pouting.

  ‘Well, we’re going.’ Bob roared at them. ‘And that’s that!’

  The subject was closed. The children all looked at each other in silence.

  Christmas Day dawned grey and very cold. It was a poor Christmas for many, the Depression biting deep into the household pockets of the neighbourhood. Dot had badgered Bob into making sure the children had a few small presents to open and he managed to get up and come into their bedroom to watch as they peeled off the pages of the Sports Argus he’d wrapped them in.

  Sid was especially delighted with a red tin engine Bob had bought for him and spent the morning vrooming it round the floor and getting under everyone’s feet. Joyce had a little rag doll and Em some coloured pencils and paper for more of her drawings.

  Mrs Button came across to wish everyone a happy Christmas and handed Em some mince pies she’d made.

  ‘Just a little something,’ she said, wrapped up in her cheerful red coat. She smiled with delight when they all thanked her, and was obviously enjoying being among the children. She didn’t seem any too eager to go home again.

  Bob got very irritable with them all, trying to get them ready to go for their dinner at Mrs Dawson’s. None of their clothes looked very clean and Sid’s socks seemed to have disappeared without trace, only to be found finally under his mattress.

  ‘You’ll just have to go without any!’ Bob said, exasperated. ‘Come on – we need to get going. Get your coats!’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’ Joyce, as ever, was able to put into words what no one else dared. ‘I don’t like Mrs Dawson and I don’t like Daisy, she’s nasty. And she wears an ugly hat.’

  ‘What’s her hat got to do with it?’ Bob was finally losing his temper. ‘We’re going and that’s that. And you’d all bloody well better behave yourselves when you get there!’

  They all trooped along the quiet street and round the corner to Flossie Dawson’s house. Sid was grizzling because Bob had not let him bring his engine with him. Em held the tiny doll Mom had given in her fist, clutched inside her pocket. She saw that Bob had on his Sunday best and looked as smart as she ever saw him. He must have got it out of Mrs Larkin’s pawn shop himself. He looked bright-eyed, expectant and handsome.

  ‘Right – pack that in!’ he hissed fiercely at Sid once they were outside the house. Sid, seeing that it was no use, did as he was told.

  There was a pause after he knocked on the door, before it swung open on this mutinous little family. A delicious smell of roasting meat greeted them.

  ‘Ah hello, Mrs Dawson, this is very kind—’ Bob began, gushingly, then stopped as he took in what Em also noticed at the same time.

  ‘Oh, my word,’ Bob said.

  Em’s eyes widened in horror. Mrs Dawson had come limping to the door on sticks, and on her leg was a big white plaster cast. It was the same leg – Em knew straight away – that she had lopped off the candle-wax dolly with the knife!

  ‘It’s all right.’ Flossie Dawson was the picture of heroic bravery. ‘It happened yesterday evening. I slipped on a patch of ice. But everything’s all right. Your piece of beef is in the oven, Bob, er . . . Mr Brown. Happy Christmas to all of you!’

  Daisy was standing in the narrow hall and as they all squeezed inside she stood behind her mother, wrinkling her nose and sticking her tongue out at each of them in turn.

  Marbles

  Thirty-Six

  Cynthia sat looking out through one of the long windows at the side of the ward. They were called ‘sun balconies’, constructed especially so that inmates could benefit in mood from the touch of any available rays.

  These days of February had been some of the darkest, dead-seeming of the year, with no sign of the sun and no breeze. Hardly a crack had appeared in the clouds, which spread themselves like a brooding lid between horizons. It was as if they were doubly shut in, by the weather and by the high walls and long drive curving out towards that distant world outside the hospital.

  Today, though, the leaden cover suddenly crumpled apart and spears of sunlight pierced through. Cynthia, reclining in a chair, tilted her drawn, pasty face to drink in the light. The warmth seemed to stroke her closed eyelids like gentle fingers.

  She breathed in deeply, her hands relaxing their grip on the arms of the chair. For some moments it felt as if she was floating; she was aware of a light, neutral sensation, as if there was no feeling, no mood inside her, like the moment of daybreak, neither dark nor light. She breathed in deeply and let out an ‘O-o-o-o-h’ sigh. Startled, she opened her eyes, realizing that what she felt was new and strange, like the first glimmering of dawn. She was experiencing pleasure.

  ‘Why don’t you put those away for a bit, dear – you’ll wear them out looking at them.’

  One of the nurses came up to Cynthia later that day while she was gazing, for the thousandth time, at her little Christmas letters sent by Em, Sid and Joyce. In two months the folds of the cheap paper had become so worn that they were almost falling apart, but they were Cynthia’s most precious possessions.

  Without a word, she clutched the flimsy pages defensively to her chest.

  ‘It’s all right, I only asked!’ the nurse said. ‘If it matters that much to you I s’pose they can’t do you any harm.’

  Cynthia watched her move right away in her white uniform before she felt she could relax again. Nothing was your own here. They were always watching and interfering.

  ‘Dear Mom . . .’ She read again and again, trying to picture each of their faces.

  At first, when Olive made her come here, she was in the most terrible distress after being torn away from Violet. She craved her baby with a wildness that several times resulted in her being
dragged into the padded room to beat herself to exhaustion against the walls. In those early days her body was hot and feverish. At night, waking from uneasy pools of sleep she found the bed drenched in sweat and was convinced that Violet was there with her, but when she felt round in the dark she would meet only nothingness and the rough hospital covers, no warm baby form beside her. Each time she was overwhelmed by grief and hopelessness.

  But she didn’t blame Olive for putting her in here. Nor did she blame Bob for not visiting. Christmas had hurt terribly. He had not come to join the relatives’ party on Christmas Day – no one had. She didn’t like to think back to that day – no husband or children, abandoned by everyone. She told herself it was all she deserved. She knew her man; Bob could not stand her being weak or ill. What he needed, had always needed, was for her to be strong and steady, to mother him as well as be his wife, and in all these she had failed. It was all her fault. She had let everyone down. Somewhere in her she knew she had never been good enough and everyone would always leave her in the end because she was a bad daughter, wife and mother.

  In the early days, her agony was so overwhelming that she found it better to bite into the dwindling flesh of her arms until her teeth left deep pink grooves, and sometimes drew blood. Or she would bang her head against the wall, the floor, anything to let out the volcanic pulses of pain and loathing inside her.

  Those first weeks, her whole being had craved Violet, but over time she found that she longed for her other children just as much: their voices, those cheeky smiles, their soft skin, the feel of them, the life in them. They were the only spark left in her, she decided, when she had none of her own.

  At the same time she was so frightened of them coming anywhere near her because she could not trust herself. The thought of going home, to the house which had been her cosy haven, was utterly terrifying. Sometimes she imagined walking in through the green front door in Kenilworth Street, seeing all her familiar things, but with everyone watching for her, expecting, needing . . . All she could imagine doing was crawling into the tiny space under the stairs for safety, curling up tight in the gloom, from where her presence would seep, like a black, evil stink, through the house. She was bad, and lost to life: there was no possibility of going back. That was for other people, but not her.