Hidden Lives

by Margaret Forster

  Three children now and life was hectic, all memories of once having wondered how to fill in the afternoons long gone. Nan came over often with Michael and already Lily could see the difference money made. Michael wanted for nothing – clothes, toys, picture-books, outings – he was totally indulged. Lily knew such material things didn’t matter but she was ashamed of how much they mattered to her. She couldn’t dress her children as she would have wished, especially as she would have loved to dress Margaret, the way Mother, in the good years, had dressed her and Jean and Nan. The only consolation was that in wartime no one, certainly no child (except for Michael), was well dressed. Clothes were not only costly, if you could get them in the first place, but coupons were needed. Each adult got sixty-six a year for most of the war, and a pair of shoes cost five for a start. All Lily’s coupons went on her children, though Nan did make her a new dress after Pauline was born, a plain navy which cost a few for the material. It wasn’t a very nice dress either, though Nan did her best – the style predetermined by wartime regulations, where even the number of buttons and width of the seams were laid down. The dress was actually as dreary as Lily felt, in spite of its white collar.

  She took her dreariness to church and was comforted just by being there. She’d always liked going to church not only because she believed in God and was a devout Christian but because of the atmosphere. Even in the new St Barnabas’s she felt soothed, cut off in the most satisfactory way from the real world and all her troubles. She liked the choir and the vestments and the candles (St Barnabas’s, for all its modernity, was High Church) and the singing of hymns in her rich voice, and listening to sermons and lessons being read. Her mind, while she was in church, stopped bothering her. The awful scramble of discontent that was often confusing her settled down and she found some peace. Over and over again she would count her blessings and, listening to the many prayers for the fighting men, and those bereaved by the war, she knew she had many. She had what she had wanted, after all, the home and the children, especially the children, two girls, a boy – what a lucky woman. Nothing else should matter except her family and she hardly dared admit then, at the age of forty, that anything else did. In church she was humble and grateful and tranquil.

  That was how the new vicar saw her, quiet Mrs Forster, such a good parishioner. He was the sort of man Lily felt she ought to have married, a professional man, educated. She could see herself as a vicar’s wife quite easily (and wistfully). This new vicar wasn’t married. He was a pleasant, rather lazy, kind man without much charisma but he had the common touch to a remarkable degree. He went into local pubs and had half a pint of mild and was quite at ease, which is more than could be said for the other patrons who didn’t approve of the vicar joining them at all. Arthur thought it scandalous behaviour, he loathed the sight of a dog-collar at the bar, and even Lily was uncomfortable hearing about it, with her fear of drink. She had to work hard to persuade herself that if the mountain (Arthur and Co.) wouldn’t come to Mohammed then Mohammed had to go to the mountain, namely the Horse and Farrier pub – or something like that. ‘He has to go there to do the Lord’s work,’ she said piously to Arthur. ‘He has to go because he’s gasping for a drink, more like,’ snorted Arthur.

  The new vicar visited Lily at home, as he did all his parishioners, cycling round the Raffles estate on his regular calls. She was one of his most stalwart supporters, never failing to come to church on Sundays and twice when Communion was given at the morning service. Two of her children were baptized in St Barnabas’s and as soon as they were old enough enrolled in Sunday School. Mrs Forster’s strong voice could be heard soaring over the mumbles of others and he told her frequently what pleasure it gave him to hear her singing hymns as they should be sung, with vigour and enthusiasm. Mr Forster, it need hardly be said, never darkened the church door and was always at work when the vicar called, as were all the husbands on the estate, at work in the factories mostly. Mrs Forster, the vicar commented to several churchwardens, did not seem like a working man’s wife – she was so immaculate in appearance, in how she kept her home, in how she brought up her children. He asked her help with organizing the church bazaar and the Christmas sale of work and she did it most efficiently. This brought them together quite a bit and he gradually realized that for all her outward air of control Mrs Forster must suffer some inner turmoil. She had a facial tic, not very pronounced most of the time but there, an involuntary muscular spasm between her left eye and the corner of her mouth. Every now and again when she was privately, though not obviously, agitated the left side of her face went into this rapid, shuddering, momentarily disfiguring, spasm. Others had noticed it too but no one ever commented on it. Nan and Jean, when they met, discussed it and agreed it had only begun after Mother died, and only become marked after the birth of Pauline. Lily was under strain, they said, but couldn’t really understand it. What strain? What was wrong with her?

  VII

  Lily went to the vicar about Margaret when the child was four and told him how worried she was because her daughter needed to be at school, she was so bright, and yet the starting age was five. Margaret could read already and tried to write and was never finished asking questions. The vicar picked up a copy of the parish magazine, not the most alluring reading matter for a four-year-old, but not at all daunted, indeed eager to show off, Margaret duly read aloud the Bishop’s Easter message, stumbling over only a few words. The vicar was impressed. He suggested that Mrs Forster should take Margaret down to Ashley Street Infants School and demonstrate her ability to read and ask if an exception could be made for this exceptional would-be pupil. He would be happy, he said, to put a word in himself, to ring the headmistress and arrange an interview, which he did. Margaret was taken to Ashley Street and given a book to read and asked questions. She enjoyed all the attention very much and Lily was vastly relieved not to be let down. The headmistress said that yes, in the circumstances, she thought an exception could be made and that Margaret could start school in September though she would be only four years and three months old. It was an experiment though – if she could not cope she would have to be removed. Was that understood, asked the stern headmistress sternly. It was a privilege, letting so young a child start school, and she hoped it was appreciated.

  It certainly was. It was appreciated by Lily, who now had the exhausting Margaret off her hands for most of the day, and appreciated by Margaret herself to the utmost. She adored school from the moment she began and had no fear of the huge building itself, the same kind of grim red-brick edifice built in the same Gothic style as Lowther Street School, Lily’s old school. The playground was a concrete Square, the lavatories were the same kind of freezing outside horrors shared still by all the Board Schools, but inside things had changed. The Infants reception classroom was big and light and it had a chair-swing suspended from the beams of the ceiling and a small see-saw and a sandpit, and bright pictures on the cheerfully painted walls. But it was the books Margaret seized on, many of them, picture-books with easy words, too easy. Margaret zipped through them in no time. There was never any question of her not coping – when her mother came to collect her at the end of each day she was suffering from nothing more of a problem than overexcitement. It proved difficult to explain that there was no school on Saturdays or Sundays. Margaret had to be taken down to Ashley Street to have it proved beyond dispute that the doors were firmly locked.

  Then, after six months, in the middle of the now happy Margaret’s second term, catastrophe: she was taken away from her beloved school. She and her sister Pauline, aged not quite two, were suddenly taken on the train by their father to Motherwell, to their Aunt Jean. Their father left them with Jean and returned to Carlisle the same day. No explanation was given to the confused Margaret, torn from the school she loved. Nothing made sense to her. Pauline cried inconsolably and, when not weeping, stuck her fingers in her mouth and held her ear with her other hand, her fat little arm crossed over her body as though to comfort herself. Margare
t didn’t cry. She was said to sulk, her silence taken as a deliberate insult. She was A Big Girl she was told and Big Girls did not sulk. The only words she uttered were ‘When can I go back to school?’ The answer was always the same: soon. But soon never came. Every day she asked the same question and every day she got the same non-answer, together with the aggrieved reminder that she was having a lovely holiday and should be grateful and happy. Jean became quickly and naturally exasperated – there she was, doing her best, looking after her nieces as well as her own two boys and all she got was mutinous stares from one and tears from the other. Life was hard. Her sons slept in one of the two beds-in-the-wall in the living-room and the girls in the other, and they constantly woke each other up. Dave was on shift work and needed his sleep during the day sometimes and it was impossible to give him peace. She could have stood this if she had received some affection from her nieces in return but she didn’t. Pauline wanted only her mother and Margaret her school.

  In May Pauline was two and Margaret five within three days of each other. Jean excelled herself by having a party for them. She managed to scrounge an egg to make a birthday cake and icing sugar to ice it with and there were eight pink candles to go on it and orangeade to drink with it – quite a feat of organization and effort in 1943, not to mention the involvement of expense. She bought presents too, a cuddly toy for Pauline and a book for Margaret, and had them properly wrapped up in some tissue paper she’d hoarded. Other children in the Buildings were invited and within the confines of Jean’s one room and kitchen games were played. Oh, how hard Jean tried! But though Pauline stopped crying for all of ten minutes, Margaret didn’t smile once. She was sulkier than ever in spite of looking so pretty in a dress Nan had made and sent. Jean was furious. She came near to regretting she’d ever taken her difficult nieces, but what choice had she had? She had to help poor Lily, that was what families were for, that was what sisters did, took each other’s children when necessary. Arthur couldn’t look after them. He had to work to keep his job, and if there was no relative to take the children at times like these then they went into a Home. She and Nan, who had taken Gordon, had had no alternative. They didn’t pause to wonder if there might be one, knowing there was not. But Jean wished Nan had taken Margaret all the same. It was true, the child was not in the least like her saintly grandmother after whom she had been so misguidedly named. She was like Nan. But Nan had taken Gordon whose schooling couldn’t be interrupted. It didn’t matter about disrupting Margaret’s as she was only five.

  In June 1943 the girls were collected by their father. Their mother didn’t rush to welcome them when they got home. All the kissing and hugging was on their side, but they had enough warmth and delight between them to make up for their mother’s apparent lack of it. She was very, very quiet, very still. She moved about carefully, as though she might break. And she was thin, very thin. Their father watched her anxiously and warned the children repeatedly about noise. Margaret found it very strange but at least she was home and, better still, back at school. The headmistress was cross that she’d been taken away so abruptly but as Lily frequently said afterwards, what else could she have done?

  It is at this time, in 1943, when I was five, that my own real memory begins, real in the sense that I can not only recall actual events but can propel myself back into them, be there again in my Aunt Jean’s room-and-kitchen, standing by the window at the back of the Buildings, staring out at the outside staircase and the tops of the wash-houses, while behind me Jean asks me what is the matter. Why am I not playing the party games, all in my honour, and she turns me round and I see her exasperated face and feel her anger and it is a triumph. I feel triumphant, though I don’t know why. That is what I call real memory, not at all the same as ‘remembering’ being taken to Ashley Street School to demonstrate my boasted ability to read. Though, because my mother later told me about it so often, I often claimed to remember it and could easily convince myself that I did.

  So I can stop now, writing in the third person, stop retelling stories I was told about the years before I was born, about when I was under five, stop splicing oral history with local history and start instead letting my own version of family lore come into play. I am there, at the centre. What a difference it makes, how dangerous it is.

  Quite what was wrong with my mother in the spring of 1943 nobody in my family has ever been prepared to tell me, either then or now. Again and again I would ask my mother why I was taken away from school when I had virtually just started and it had been such a struggle to get me a place. But after the usual ‘What else could I do?’, there was only ‘I was ill’, said firmly and always followed by an abrupt leaving of the room or the beginning of some task, the making of tea, the washing, always some activity to hide behind. Nan and Jean, when in adult life I tried them, when I asked what kind of illness my mother had requiring Pauline and me to be sent to Motherwell for two months, pretended forgetfulness which was at obvious odds with their notoriously sharp memories. Jean would say, ‘Oh, you don’t want to go bothering yourself about that. Dear me, it was centuries ago. What does it matter?’ and Nan, who in general loved to tell things that shouldn’t be told, said, ‘It’s Lily’s business,’ and resisted temptation for once. My father is still alive. He is ninety-four and his mind is as clear and vigorous as ever, but he plays dumb. He doesn’t say he can’t remember, I notice, but that there is nothing to remember, and that has to be that.

  But since this is where I enter the family story as myself it matters to me that I come on to the stage in a cloud of freezing ice, obscured by that deliberate suppression of the truth which my grandmother turns out to have been so good at. Probably something is being made of very little. I suspect my mother may have had some kind of nervous breakdown and that attached to it, in 1943, was the same sort of stigma as attached to the bearing of an illegitimate child, the same sort of social pressure to find this shameful. Only medical records would prove whether I am right and they do not exist. Most doctors keep records for ten years after a patient’s death and then destroy them and it was thirteen years after my mother’s death that I began trying to check her health in 1943. She may only have had some sort of collapse and stayed at home, with rest the only treatment, or perhaps she was hospitalized. Carlisle’s mental hospital, Garlands, only releases records a hundred years after the death of the patient, so goodbye all hope of finding out anything that way.

  Still, I am convinced my mother’s illness was mental rather than physical. After we came back from Motherwell my father’s most oft repeated instruction was ‘Don’t upset your mother, or else’. Or else what? He often finished orders with this ‘or else’ in a mildly threatening way, but there seemed some vague extra significance about this particular ‘or else’. My mother was not to be upset, ever. We, the children, understood that, if not the reason for it. I tried to keep to myself anything that might upset her and that came to mean everything that troubled me.

  Soon after I went back to school I had a finger which turned septic – I’d cut it in the garden – and my mother took me to a clinic in George Street. It was for mothers and young children and mainly dealt with routine weighings and inspections, but on Wednesdays, at nine o’clock, it also dealt with minor ailments and injuries. Why I was taken with my sore finger to this clinic, and not to Dr Stephenson or the Out-patients at the Infirmary, reflected my mother’s dislike and distrust of both. She was more comfortable, less intimidated, using the clinic and that was more than a little due to the fact that it was mainly staffed by women doctors and nurses and health visitors. She was still overawed, though, by the white coats and very tense indeed, very anxious that I should behave properly and that I should understand how quiet I should be.

  This was odd because the clinic was noisy. It echoed with shrieks and roars and all the staff were constantly shouting to be heard above the din. We sat on a hard wooden bench and watched and listened as doors were banged open and shut and solid shoes thumped the brown linoleum as
they marched to and fro. Bowls, enamel bowls, were carried in and out of rooms whose interiors were never seen, so quick was the door-slamming, bowls often covered with muslin cloth and those cloths sometimes stained red and handled with distaste, held far away from the body. There was a lot of clattering, the harsh metallic sound of steel instruments being dropped on to trays and tables and into containers. Over everything hung the smell of disinfectant and iodine and some other strange, sickly, cloying smell. I was frightened and my mother, sitting rigid beside me, clearly nervous and worried herself, the tic in her face hardly leaving her poor cheek alone, didn’t help. I wanted to go home but I didn’t say so nor did I cry. My mother had explained, gently and patiently, that my finger had to be looked at because there was something very wrong with it and at this clinic it could be made better. It was my index finger, on my right hand, and it was massively swollen and painful and had not responded to my mother’s careful attentions. She’d had me soaking the finger in a pudding bowl of water and salt as hot as I could bear it. She’d even tried a poultice, a revolting affair of soaked bread wrapped up in a bandage. But nothing had done any good and now, the pain worse, the swelling spreading down the finger and the fingernail black, professional help was needed. I understood all that. There was no escape.