The House Martin

by William Parker

  Jollo’s not inside the bag. I don’t know what’s happened to him. He’s disappeared. I didn’t notice when he first went missing what with the muddle of everything that happened. When the blue bag—the same one that I’m holding the handle of right now—came back, he just wasn’t in there, neither was my broken clock. They must have taken them both out. I think Jollo’s been thrown away. They probably thought he was just a bit of old smelly rubbish. And that means I’ve broken my promise to him, because I remember the last thing I said to him was that I would see him again. I think of him every day though, and I want him back so, so much. But there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll just have to grow out of missing him.

  Q

  The next thing I really properly remember after being on the roof is sitting in the garden at home. I was looking down at my knees at the books that they had sent from school so that I didn’t get behind with all the work, but the sun was shining so brightly on the pages that I couldn’t see to read. That’s when my memory started up again.

  I was being treated as if I was properly ill, although I wasn’t really, except for everything being a bit of a blur in my head as though I was dreaming and not knowing what’s real and what’s not real. There was Lucozade in a glass, rice pudding, thermometers always being put in my mouth, and a blanket over my legs even though it was really, really hot. It was as though I was slowly going to die like Beth does in that film of Little Women when she’s staring out of the window of her bedroom looking at a robin one second and then dead the next.

  It was Granny that was doing all that. She turned herself into Florence Nightingale, though probably a bit stricter, actually. I’m not sure how long she’d been with us on account of nothing being very clear, but I do remember her arriving. My dad and I were watching the telly all about poor Robert Kennedy who’d been shot dead in the kitchen of a hotel in America, and just as the programme was finishing we heard the car outside scrunching on the gravel. My dad jumped to his feet and rushed to the front door looking ever so relieved. When he was taking her suitcase up the stairs to the spare room, he kept saying to her, ‘Fantastically good to see you, Sylvia,’ and all night long ‘Marvelous to have you here with us,’ over and over again until it was quite embarrassing. He’s never been bothered about her before, actually. I’ve even heard him saying some quite horrid things about her to Mummy. That might be because he thinks that she wasn’t very nice to her when she was a little girl, and that’s why Mummy’s become such a worried sort of a person. But anyway, he was probably just fantastically pleased that he didn’t have to look after me all by himself and could concentrate on the office again.

  Before that day in the garden, everything is sort of misty and chopped up. There was a white room with one of those long extra-bright lights and a fan on the high up ceiling that never turned and had cobwebs on it, and there were shadows and cracks that sometimes turned into scary faces that were staring down at me. There were bars from top to bottom on the windows which had no curtains and no view whatsoever to the outside because of a frosty type of glass, and bare floorboards brimming full of splinters that made me stay on the high up bed as though I was marooned on a desert island. There were stiff white sheets on the bed and a stiff white hat on a nurse who never smiled, and big pills that arrived on a trolley clinking with bottles that you could hear coming down the long corridor forever before it arrived. And there were pitch-black nights of no sleeping with total silence and mornings of staring at the doorknob waiting for it to move so someone would come in and see me. I don’t know if I was there for just one day, or one week, or one month. It might be that I made it all up in my head. It could have been a dream. I just can’t remember about it.

  It may have been the same place that Granny took me to three or four times on the train a little bit later on, not very far from our house, but I’m really not sure. The first time we went there we walked holding hands down a long unkempt driveway with lots of weeds growing up through the gravel until we got to a red-bricked building with huge chimneys that reminded me a little bit of school. At first I thought perhaps we were going to see Mummy, and it was all meant to be a surprise for me. When I dared to ask Granny if that was true, she looked all surprised and told me that the visit was for me and that I was going to speak to a special doctor. Nobody had told me anything about it and I knew that I didn’t need to see a doctor because I wasn’t the slightest bit ill.

  When we got to the big building, there was moss growing up the walls from where the gutters were leaking, big rusty fire escapes zigzagged all over the place, and signs pointing everywhere with medical-type words on them. Just in front of the steps that went into the main building there was a bit of a parched lawn, and standing on it was a very tall stooping-over man. He had an awfully big wet open mouth, no teeth, and he was using a rake on the same bit of yellow grass over and over again. A lady in a big winter coat past her knees held a hanky up to her mouth and did a funny little dance because she was trying to keep her hand in the man’s jacket pocket while he went back and forward, back and forward with his raking. It was very difficult not to stare at them. There was a bench right next to them with a fat lady with a shiny white jacket on, chewing gum and staring into the distance, so I think she was looking after them without bothering too much. Right beside her was a not very old man with a too-big head who was swaying from side to side as though he was listening to some music that nobody else could hear.

  Inside we walked along a corridor that was especially dark after the sunshine outside and smelled of disinfectant and burnt toast. Some of the doors were open and you could see into the rooms, all big with not much furniture and glossy white where the sun was coming in, reflecting off the walls. Just for a second you couldn’t help but see even when you knew you shouldn’t be looking at the poor people inside on account of it being rude to stare. I saw a lady in a grubby old nightdress with the straps falling down over her shoulders. She was sitting on the side of her bed swinging her feet to and fro while someone was feeding her with a spoon, like Worgan at school rubbing his legs with his hands when he’s eating his porridge to try to help it go down. Then in another room I saw a man in his vest and pants and long tangled hair with wide-open eyes turning his head from side to side while he was lying on a bed with a doctor person and a nurse holding him down. In the next room a huge round man with a red scarf and a cap and trousers right up to his chest was jabbing his finger in the air, talking loudly like you see politicians sometimes doing to a crowd of people, except he was doing it to nobody at all.

  When we got to the end of the corridor, we sat together on a wooden bench outside a door, and I could hear someone inside crying in the distance, as though the room was very big and they were far over by the window. After quite a long time, an old man with a strict expression and his glasses in his hand opened the door. He was wearing a white coat just the same as everyone in charge at that place. ‘Mr. Teasdale?’ he said, not looking at us even though we were the only people there. I didn’t think I should say anything back because I was waiting for the crying person to come out and because ‘Mr. Teasdale’ is my dad—not me.

  ‘Ben Teasdale?’ he said again after a bit.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s me.’

  He put his glasses on and beckoned me into the room at the same time as he was walking back in. Granny put her hand on my back and did a little push and a pat, and I got up and followed the man who hadn’t even looked at me once.

  I can’t remember anything that was said in that room. Not from that first time or the other times that I went there. It might be that I sat there saying nothing at all, or perhaps I told the unfriendly man in a great big babble all the things that had happened at school. I don’t know if he said some things to cheer me up or if he made me talk or anything. It’s really just a big blank, actually. I think I just sat there and stared out of the window behind his head at all the silent people under the trees who were rocking back an
d forward, like the Israeli soldiers did when they got to that wall in Jerusalem in the war with the Arabs last year.

  Q

  ‘We’ll get you some long trousers for next term, Ben.’

  That was my dad’s way of telling me that I was going to go back to Courtlands for the winter term. Granny was serving out our dinner, and I could see him looking at my face to work out what I was thinking about it. I don’t think I was very surprised because I had overheard him having conversations with Mr. Burston on the telephone in his study, and he had been forgetting to whisper about it.

  ‘I’ll send you the report I’ve had from Dr. Carstairs, Headmaster.It’s really most encouraging.’ He was talking in a sort of sucking up voice, which is why he was forgetting to be quiet about it. He must have been worried that Mr. Burston wouldn’t let me go back, and then what would he do about it all, what with no Mummy being at home and Granny probably not wanting to stay with us for ever and ever.

  Nothing was being talked about in our house. Granny treated me as if I was ever so ill, and I’d only get better if there was as much fuss as possible. But not ever, not once, did she talk to me about the roof business at school or anything about Mummy. In fact, she didn’t even ever say her name out loud. Just like my dad. Exactly the same. I knew it was a rule in the house, but I don’t know how Granny did without being told. So she just fussed over me instead. Fuss, fuss, and more fuss. Whenever we left that horrid old loony bin after seeing Dr. Carstairs, we’d get on the train, and she’d ask me if I was hungry, or thirsty, or too hot, or too cold, and even if I didn’t answer, she’d poke around in her bag to find a banana, or some squash, or a Mars bar. Then I’d have to take my jacket off or put it on, and she’d wipe my forehead with a hanky that she’d poured some eau de cologne on, and the smell would fill up the whole carriage so that people would begin to look at us. I’d get annoyed because I thought they must all be wondering if there was something wrong with me, like the poor people who were living at the hospital.

  It was getting to be more and more silent at home. My dad stopped saying ‘Marvelous to have you here, Sylvia,’ and when he came in from work he’d go straight to his study till dinner was ready because he said there was work to be caught up with. Then after the silence at the table, Granny and I would do the washing up together, and he would be back in the study with the door closed and his horrible Wagner records blaring out.

  Q

  And then finally, after such a long time, Mummy came home. It was in the middle of August, not very long before I was going to go back to school.

  I woke up in the morning and could hear two ladies’ voices in the kitchen, one of which I knew was Granny’s, and the other just the same but a little bit younger sounding, more like a girl’s. At first I hid my head in the pillow to think about it for a bit because it was too good to believe, but then, when I heard her laughing, I knew it was true that she’d come back.

  I jumped down the stairs three or four steps at a time and rushed into the kitchen. ‘I knew you’d come back, Mummy—I just absolutely knew it!’ As soon as I saw her, I knew she was better because of her smiling and what her eyes looked like, and she wasn’t so very, very tiny any longer like when I last saw her. I wrapped my arms right around her, and she put both her hands in my hair and kissed my ear over and over again, and we both had tears in our eyes.

  Granny drove away the next day in her car that she’d never used once since she’d arrived. She’s a bit more nervous of driving since she got it back after they repaired the accident damage. She must have been very happy after such a long time in such a silent house to go back to all the things she does at home, like playing bridge with posh Mrs. Coleridge next door, her Woman’s Institute meetings, and her visit to the hairdresser’s to have her hair made blue again and the curls put back in.

  And then I had whole days of Mummy to myself. There she was, sitting in her usual place in the armchair by the fireside, which was all filled up with bowls of roses from the garden with the petals falling around and filling the sitting room with beautiful smells. It was just lovely to sit on the sofa and watch her slowly smoking a cigarette with her legs all curled up, twizzling her hair with her fingers while she was doing the crossword puzzle from the paper. My dad had brought some new books back from London for her that she’d specially asked for, and right on top of the little pile was her teacup, which I made sure was never ever empty. It was just like the old days before the sherry.

  ‘My constant companions, Only One! You and my books. It’s all I need.’ I can remember those books. There was a book of short stories by Somerset Maugham. I read one of them about a man in the South Pacific who waded into the water because he was bored and his wife didn’t love him anymore, and he got eaten by a shark. Then there was another book about a man called Lytton Strachey who was an intellectual at the beginning of the century and another about the life of Tolstoy. The one at the very bottom of the pile was Anna Karenina, one of Mummy’s favourites of all time. She wanted to read it again after she’d finished the one about Tolstoy so that she would understand it better.

  She opened the study door and played records very loudly of Maria Callas singing Verdi and Puccini, and concertos by Elgar and Beethoven, and then some songs by Elvis Presley, The Mamas and Papas, and Joan Baez. The sound of it all filled the house right up to the attic and floated out of the open windows into the garden and down the street. At first she did a little bit of dusting round the house, but I don’t think she’s so bothered about that sort of thing and isn’t very good at it, so she decided to stop and dead-headed the roses in the sunshine instead. After that we took all the silver in the house out onto the steps by the front door and slowly by slowly cleaned every last bit of it together. She said we were doing it because it was ‘therapeutic’—that means ‘treating or curing of disease’ in the dictionary, and the funny thing is I think that’s just what was happening because everything was getting happier and happier and better and better. My dad started talking and smiling again and shouting out ‘I’m home, Pammy’ when he came in the door from the station after work. Mummy was laying the table again and making nice things for our supper, and there were lots of conversations when we were eating, instead of the silence. They talked about all sorts of different things, like how the neighbours were putting up a new shed all wrong, the one way system in the town, how ugly the new cathedral in Guildford is, and lots of other really interesting political things that I didn’t completely understand but were still nice to listen to. And after dinner was finished, Dad wasn’t going into his study all by himself anymore. In fact, he started helping with the washing up which has never happened before. Then, best of all, the rule about me being in bed by nine o’clock was suddenly completely forgotten about and just for the very end of the holiday I was practically going to bed at any time I liked!

  One day when Mummy had been back with us for about a week, I came downstairs for my breakfast and there she was in the kitchen with the tiny transistor radio from the bathroom pushed up against her ear. You could just about hear some voices very faintly coming through as though they were trying to speak above the noise of a hurricane. Now and again it would fade away completely, and then the voices would slowly come back again.

  ‘What are you listening to, Mummy?’

  ‘The most terrible thing, Darling. The Soviet Union is invading Czechoslovakia. I’m listening to a radio station they haven’t taken over yet.’

  That afternoon we got on the train together and went to London to the Czechoslovakian Embassy which is a massive grey building. When we got there we joined hundreds of other people, and we shouted and shouted ‘Dubcek, Svoboda, Dubcek, Svoboda’ who were the rulers of Czechoslovakia that the Russians wanted to get rid of. There was a huge crush of people in the crowd, and Mummy was explaining to me who they all were—there were old gentlemen in army uniforms with lots of medals waving little paper flags who were probably exiles f
rom their country since the end of the war, people from universities who looked like hippies and had tied bandanas round their foreheads, big burly men from trades unions in Fleet Street and from the docks, teachers and professors, and a load of people with black flags who charged at the police even though they were on horses. Then there were others with red flags who were shouting, ‘Down with Stalinism, no to state capitalism,’ and carrying banners with drawings of the people in the Kremlin with their trousers down and tanks coming out of their bottoms. It was terribly exciting and actually quite dangerous. But it was very important to go. ‘We have to take a stand,’ Mummy kept saying to me.

  I don’t know whether she’d actually arranged to meet Trotsky John there, but when I turned round to see who was patting my head in the crowd, there he was with his beard all stained with the smoke from his cigarettes and his beret lopsided on his head. ‘Hello, young man,’ he said to me, and then he put his arm round Mummy’s waist. I could tell that she didn’t want to catch my eye when that happened, and actually, for a bit I didn’t feel like talking to her anymore. I didn’t want to see Trotsky John; he made me feel as though everything might go wrong again.

  We went for tea in a café after the demonstration finished. It was crowded out with demonstrators all sitting around, some on the chairs, some on the tables and some even on the floor, with their rolled up banners and flags leaning up against the walls and ashtrays and cups falling off the tables when somebody’s bottom sent them flying, and the ground all littered with thrown away pamphlets.