Mother’s Boy, page 7
‘Only we don’t,’ said Father, ‘as doctors are expensive and I’m all right in the end. See?’ And he ruffled Charles’s hair to change the subject.
He usually went very still and quiet while she took his temperature or when she made him go to bed early. It seemed to embarrass him, like having nappies changed or having no clothes on. The TB was also linked to his cough which, Charles noticed, made everyone else stop talking and look at their plates until it had passed, like a bad smell, and to the special creamy milk he had to drink after every meal and at bedtime, and to his Blue Henries.
There were two of these and they fascinated Charles because it was very important that nobody touched them but Father. Each day there was one on the go, which meant it was in his jacket pocket for when he needed it, and one soaking in a bowl of smelly disinfectant. (This was another word that was fun to say, especially loudly, as it sounded a bit rude, only you mustn’t.) The Blue Henries were for the end of his coughs, when everyone else was looking at their plates or up at the ceiling, but Charles had seen and knew Father slipped thick stuff from his mouth into them. They were made of bright blue glass, like a Milk of Magnesia bottle, but had a wide mouth so he could easily dribble the stuff into them without spilling any. Charles had also seen how every evening, after his third glass of milk and before his bedtime, Father lifted the lid on the range and emptied the day’s Henry on to the coals with a sizzle before rinsing it out under the tap and putting it to soak in the disinfectant.
Just once, when he had to stop and cough and use one on their slow afternoon walks together, he let Charles examine the shiny silver lid, which had the mysterious words on it: ‘Beatson Clark and Co Ltd Rotherham’, like a sort of spell. They must all use handkerchiefs when they coughed or sneezed, of course, and surrender them to Mother for a boil wash at the end of the day, but only Father had the awful cough that made people turn aside and that needed the Blue Henries.
Like all the children in the neighbourhood, Charles played outside all day long unless it was raining. It was expected as he would otherwise have been in the way. For as long as he could remember he had been fetched at some point most days for this by his cousin Gwennie, who lived down the road by the river and the cottage where he was born, but which they’d left in a hurry because of rats. He loved her unquestioningly although she was older than him so was apt to treat him like a long-suffering doll, to be tugged here and there, dressed up, undressed, told off and co-opted into complicated games. With the instinct of any small defenceless animal, he quickly sensed she was his protector as well as a major source of treats. If she did not come for him first, he would seek her out. Waiting patiently for her outside the nearby school gates, if it was a school day, he had become fascinated by the chanting, songs, shouts and bells he heard from within.
His mother and aunts kept saying he was ready for school in a weighted grown-up way whose full meaning he could not catch. Now that he had finally turned five, he would be allowed to start next term and could not wait as there were few children he cared to play with who were not already there.
Walks with his father were quite unlike playing with Gwennie and her friends. For a start, Jack the terrier came too. Since being found by him, shivering and alone on a Plymouth station platform, Jack only left Father’s side when Father went to bed. Charles had given up persuading him out to play with him alone. When he did, the dog assumed a pained expression and glanced repeatedly over his shoulder until it was too much for him and he darted back to security and the man he loved best. Unless Father was having to be quiet in bed because of the thermometer, a daily walk was part of his day. Because he didn’t have a job like other fathers, the daily walk was what he did. He could only walk very slowly, so he wouldn’t get out of breath or too hot, but he did a lot of stopping to look at things and talk about them instead, so that the slowness was sort of hidden unless you knew to look for it. They had several routes. Downhill to the station to watch the trains and talk to the Matchbox Man. Downhill and then out to the Jubilee Baths and back, with a pause on the railway bridge if a train was going under on its way to the sea. Or, if Father was feeling very energetic, uphill into the market square where he might buy them secret penny buns.
Today they went up into town. They went so slowly that Charles did quite a bit of running ahead and running back so he didn’t explode. He held Jack’s lead so that Father could hold on to his walking stick and sometimes the railings as well. They took the quieter, back route, past the big red library and past the overflow gravy yard with the poisonous tree whose berries he must not eat. Then they came to the junction with Angel Hill, which Father said was called that because it was so steep Charles would take to the air if ever he ran down it, then they turned up into town and under Southgate Arch. Father bought them secret buns, which weren’t really secret because they bought one for Mother, too, for later, and they ate them on the spot, with Jack making Charles giggle by snatching any falling crumbs before they hit the pavement, the way he caught flies in summer. And Father challenged him as to who could last longest without licking the itchy sugar off their lips, and won of course, however hard Charles tried.
Then Charles showed him what he had been shown by Gwennie and Bridie the other day. There was a statue of Mary Magda Leeny at the back of the church and if you could throw a pebble so that it stayed there and didn’t just bounce off, you’d get a new suit. It was quite a distance from path to statue and he couldn’t make his pebbles get anywhere near but he knew from their trips to the quieter stretches of the river that Father was clever with stones and could make them skip over the water like bouncing balls. Unlike Charles, Father wasn’t from Launceston, hadn’t grown up there and needed these things explaining to him just as Gwennie explained them to Charles. Once he understood he fetched a pebble.
‘So tell me again,’ he asked. ‘What must I do?’
‘You have to stand just here and throw the stone so it lands on Mary Magda Leeny. It’s no good if it just hits and bounces off. It has to stay there.’
‘And if it stays I win a new suit?’
‘Yes,’ Charles giggled, sensing he was being humoured.
‘And if I knock someone else’s pebble off, do their new trousers suddenly disappear?’
‘No!!’
‘So I just throw it so it stays? Like this?’
And he threw a pebble very carefully so that it lodged tidily behind the statue’s shoulder with a satisfactory click. Charles clapped.
‘New suit!’ he said. ‘New suit!’
‘Do you want one and all?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right.’ And Father produced a second stone and tossed it and lodged it as neatly as he had the first.
Charles laughed. He felt slightly giddy, like when they’d been on the Golden Gallopers at the Shrovetide fair. He began to feel a little nervous as well, in case so much good fortune was not allowed, like taking a second slice of heavy-cake before everyone else had eaten a first one.
But then Father slyly produced a third pebble and raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Best of three? Would your mother like a new suit? A nice tweed one, maybe?’
And somehow the idea came to Charles’s mind of Mother not wearing the kind of suits ladies wore to church sometimes, with a tweed skirt and matching jacket, but in a man’s suit, bulky and baggy, and with a man’s hat to match. And a pipe. And it was so outrageous a thing to imagine, there in a gravy yard with grown-ups clicking by on their business with baskets and parcels and serious faces, like Aunt Ellen’s when someone burped, that Charles laughed so hard he may have wet himself a little. And then Father was laughing too, perhaps because Charles laughing was funny. But then he stopped laughing and had to cough.
Normally his coughs weren’t so bad. He would splutter, tug out the day’s handkerchief – some days he had more than one before bedtime – turn carefully away, cover his mouth and cough once, three times maybe. But this time he coughed several times so hard that it must have hurt, like when Albert from next door had whooping cough and his mother took him to breathe in the gasworks fumes every day to help it get better. Father had to grip a tombstone with one hand, bracing himself as the coughing shook him, and a lady made a clucking noise and stepped off the path to avoid them. Charles didn’t know where to look. Everyone always looked away from Father when he coughed, and he knew it was rude to stare, but it was frightening and he couldn’t look away for long. Finally the handkerchief was fumbled back into the suit pocket, but not before Charles saw a splash of poppy red on it. And then Father had to make a noise a bit like someone about to be sick – more tutting from passers-by – and made very tidy use of the day’s Blue Henry.
He tucked the little bottle away in his jacket’s outer pocket – where Mother made him keep it as she was frightened he’d forget it and sit on it if he kept it in his trouser pocket, took a few shallow breaths and leaned back against the tomb. He saw Charles and Jack both watching him anxiously and ruffled Charles’s hair, which he knew he hated, and whistled to cheer Jack up.
‘Sorry about that,’ he muttered. ‘We can go on in a moment.’ Then he just stood there, leaning against the tomb with his eyes shut for so long Charles thought he might have fallen asleep standing up. Charles watched people stepping off the path to walk past them: an old woman with a lively little dog on a lead that Jack growled at; a man his father’s age with a black leather bag; two pretty girls with parcels from the butcher, which were starting to leak blood; Edna the tramp lady, who lived in a hedge near the baths, of whom Mother always said mysteriously, ‘You can tell she’s clean underneath’, and the vicar. The vicar looked as though he was about to speak to Father, then saw his eyes were closed, glanced down at Charles and visibly swallowed his words like a dry wafer as he walked past instead.
Finally Father stirred, but slowly, and led them on home by the most direct route. They were so slow that people kept having to step into the gutter to overtake them and Jack tugged on his lead. All the laughter was gone out of Father. All the words, too. He rested a hand on Charles’s shoulder now and then as they walked, as though to reassure himself Charles was still there. Charles knew better than to talk although, when he was nervous, his mouth got like sparrows in a bush.
They had to stop again at the top of Old Hill. It was steep – people sledged on it when there was snow – but it looked like a hill in a nightmare now that he saw it through Father’s eyes. Somebody must have seen them because suddenly Mr Wills was there and another man Charles didn’t know and they said, ‘Lean on us, Charlie. That’s the way,’ and helped his father slowly down the hill to home while Charles walked behind with Jack still tugging and Mother’s bun in its bag.
There was a fuss when Mother saw them. She left her laundering, arms pink from the soap and heat, and took charge of Father, seeming stronger and bigger than him, thanked Mr Wills and steered Father up the outside stairs, his arm across her broad shoulder.
‘You,’ she said to Charles when they got in, ‘sit there and be quiet. You know better than to tire him out like this,’ which seemed very unfair as Charles was only just five and Father a grown-up who had fought in a war and galloped horses into battle, but he knew never to answer back and made himself small at the kitchen table while Mother bustled in and out, cleaning and changing the Blue Henry, tossing the bloody handkerchief into a pan with a fistful of carbolic acid and a splash of water.
It was some comfort that Jack felt himself in disgrace as well and made himself small in his basket after the necessity of a long, noisy drink from his bowl.
‘We got you a secret bun,’ Charles wanted to tell her, ‘and Father won you a new suit,’ but he remembered laughing at the idea of Mother in a suit so said nothing. When she was out of the room and he could hear her murmuring from their room and Father coughing again, he dared to fetch a plate and set her bun neatly on that by her chair with a cloth over it, the way she had taught him, to keep off the flies, and then he sat with Father’s newspaper. He looked at the pictures and picked out the words he knew. And a few he didn’t.
THE PORK-BUTCHER’S SON – 1925
On Fridays now, Laura worked at Werrington, the Williamses’ big house. Like a lot of landowners the family had hired local help while their male live-in staff were caught up in the war and when so many did not return had decided that using occasional outside help was fine. Fridays often saw the household preparing for a party of weekend guests and Laura could be set to cleaning, or helping assemble vast quantities of game pies and rhubarb fool for a shoot lunch. She appreciated the variety of the work after the monotony of laundry.
Today the family were away on their estate in Scotland, so she spent the entire day on her hands and knees scrubbing and then waxing and polishing the floor tiles that led from the big entrance lobby to the distant, leather-panelled dining room. The thoughtful housekeeper had given her some old sacking to kneel on, but even so, the floor was hard and cold, and her knees and lower back were sore by the time she had finished.
One of the reasons she liked working at the house was the longish walk to reach it, up the steep hill to St Stephen’s, then over the hill’s brow and down again along the house’s back drive through the beautiful landscape of its park. The cattle grazing there were always superb creatures that looked as though each had been combed and polished for a show, and there were magnificent trees and exotic flowering shrubs of a kind she had seen nowhere else. At the end of a long day, however, the stiff climb from house to lodge was daunting. When her knees were sore, walking downhill was harder work than climbing, and the way home from the estate’s lodge was all downhill. All she wanted was to sit in her mother’s old armchair waiting for the kettle to boil and hearing Charles prattle about his day. Never at a loss for words, he could always be relied on to talk for two when she was too tired to contribute much. She knew he could be shy, but he took in everything he heard and saw, and would often come home bursting to tell her all he had packed away inside him.
It worried her that he had taken his father’s death so calmly. Admittedly he had never known Charlie well and strong, but when the last horrible fever struck just before Christmas, laying Charlie low and sapping his strength so fast Laura summoned Maggie down from Trusham so they could take turns at his bedside when not napping in Charles’s little bed across the landing, the boy’s response had been watchful and oddly muted.
Charles loved his daddy, she knew he did, and was as capable of crying as any small, sensitive boy, but when Charlie’s last hours were over and she and Maggie had wept quietly together and sighed and tidied themselves up and she had gone to find Charles and break the news to him while Maggie, bless her, washed Charlie’s body and put clean pyjamas on him, all the child said was an oddly flat, ‘Oh’.
She wished he had a sibling to discuss it with or one of the younger cousins like Gwennie. He remained an only, of course, although she and Charlie had broken doctor’s orders a few times, and her sisters and brothers kept their children away from Charlie, fearing infection. She understood, but their withdrawal hurt Charles, she could tell. If she took him to visit any of them she pointedly washed hands with him on arrival. Her siblings were kind but she knew they were scared; TB scared people the way poverty did, or the workhouse, and they felt dirty by association.
There’d been no tears until after the funeral. Charlie was laid to rest with his ancestors in Trusham. Laura understood this, painful though it was to have him so far away; he had roots there and none in Launceston. Besides, the Launceston graveyard was hemmed round with the bustle of trains and industry whereas the Trusham one was a country idyll.
The service was a small, quiet affair, though with several friends of the family she didn’t know, and Charles was the only child present. She had thought of leaving him at home with Em but he wanted to be there, he said quietly. Afterwards Maggie, who loved him dearly, suggested he stay on in Trusham for a few days of winter holiday so that Laura could sort things out at home, erase the traces of sickness by whitewashing the bedroom and so on. All seemed well. Charles loved Maggie back, although Dora and Lewis unnerved him sometimes with their staring and silence. He would enjoy playing with Jack in the snowy woods and sleeping in the tiny bird’s nest of a spare room under the eaves.
After Laura kissed him goodbye, Maggie hugged him and said, ‘Oh, we’ll be all right. He’s my Charlie now!’ which finally brought on a great outburst of delayed grief from him, though it was expressed as not wanting to lose his mother, too. As the two women patted and reassured him, half laughing at the strength of his emotions, that it was only for two nights and that he’d have a nice repainted bedroom waiting for him when he got home, there was relief in both their voices that he was finally letting something out that might otherwise have poisoned him.
Charlie left Laura a hundred and thirty-five pounds, which he must have salted away in a Post Office account before the War, and she mentally earmarked it for Charles for boots and clothes and books. The women of the family had been very kind passing on unwanted clothes when he was really small, but once he started school, she told Charlie, she was determined no child of theirs would be dressed in hand-me-downs. She knitted him a jersey for every Christmas but his other things were to be pristine and bought at Treleaven’s.
Charles had barely started school when it became clear he was very short-sighted and had to be kitted out with tiny wire spectacles so as to read the blackboard. Charlie had impressed on him that these were valuable and to be cared for like his boots, so polishing both before leaving the house had become a little ritual for the boy.
When Charles started school Charlie had told Laura off for being too protective. The boy had to take a few knocks to fit in, he reminded her. She had not forgotten the rough and tumble of the schoolyard and knew Charles was just the kind of boy to be picked on. Even without the glasses he was too keen, too trusting, too ready to speak. She was glad he had Gwennie and tough little Bridie in the seniors to keep an eye on him, but he lacked male protection and playgrounds were tribal in the way boys and girls separated out. If he continued to play with girls the way he always had, the boys would be brutal. Some of the girls would, too, in time. She didn’t want him to change; she simply wanted him to be happy and to fit in. When he twice won top marks in a test she was thrilled and proud, naturally, but she was also fearful.
