Mother and Child

by Annie Murray

  We learned a little bit about him from his defence lawyer. Lee was the middle child of three brothers and the youngest was disabled in some way. His mother’s health was not good either. There was not much mention of his father. Lee had spent most of his school days either truanting or excluded and was unemployed. There was nothing in his attitude that spoke of defiance. He looked beaten down and hopeless.

  The judge gave him five years: he would likely serve half of that.

  Ian and I left the court, numb, speechless. When we got home, Ian finally said, ‘I suppose whatever time he got would never have been enough, would it?’ Soon he’ll be out again, getting on with his life.

  Twenty-Four

  SUGAR-SUGAR, DOUBLE-DOUBLE

  Over the weeks of early summer we settle into our training habit and it does wonders for me. There’s the running for one thing. Twice a week, meeting in the park after my warm-up walk. We run one lap, two, then three.

  ‘There’s no need to run six miles very often,’ Hayley says. She is soon recovered and back with us. ‘Not unless you want to. You’ll do it on the day when you have to.’

  We all say we’d at least like to have a go, just so we know we can make it. We jog along gently, have stops if we need them to walk a few paces. But gradually we cover the distance, dodging dogs and Canada geese, running in pairs which change, slow enough to chat. And sometimes to sing, in a broken-up, gasping way.

  Sunita is a changed woman. It’s as if this is something she has been waiting for all her life. Now and again she breaks into a little dance on the path, singing Bollywood show tunes. Our favourite is the ‘double-double’ song which is says is called ‘Kashmir Main, Tu Kanyakumari’, about two people who are opposites but need to be together. The jigging tune suits us all fine and we join in whenever she gets to the double-double bit, which is in English, and try to pick up other lines but we’re pretty hopeless. We sometimes have to stop because we’re laughing too much.

  ‘Doesn’t running make you hungry, though, Sunita?’ Pat asks, when Sunita announces she has lost six kilos.

  ‘Hungry?’ Sunita frowns. ‘No, not really. A lot of times I am only eating because I am bored at home. You know, nibbling at this and that. Running makes me not so hungry and anyway I have something to do, you know? I am reading a book about running. It is called No Need for Speed.’

  ‘Good title – sounds ideal,’ Pat says as we laugh.

  It is Pat who constantly surprises me. I feel ashamed of my first impression that she might be rather boring, a bit housewifey (after all, who am I to judge?) and too much under her husband’s thumb. They might be things that life has somehow forced her to be, but I can see there is a Pat who is longing to break out.

  ‘Right,’ she says one morning, when we have been running together for a month or so. We’re gathered in the car park, valiantly ignoring a light drizzle. She tugs a folded sheet of paper out of her trouser pocket. ‘I’ve been thinking about some more songs.’

  ‘Wow!’ Hayley says, giggling. ‘You guys will be so fit – all this running and singing.’

  ‘Well, Sunita’s already doing her Hollywood-Bollywood routines,’ Pat grins. ‘So I thought . . . OK, how about this, to the tune of that “Sugar, Sugar” song you were talking about, Jo . . .’ She stands now, bashful but determined and sings, tapping one foot, to the tune of the chorus:

  ‘We’re the ladies

  Of Hollywood – and

  We’re running for Bhopal!

  For the mums and children there . . .’

  She looks round, laughter in her eyes. ‘That’s as far as I’ve got.’

  ‘That’s fantastic, that’s brilliant!’ from all of us.

  ‘Do it again,’ Hayley says. ‘And we can learn it.’

  And we all set off into the damp, trying to remember the words . . . ‘We’re the ladies, of Hollywood . . .’

  A few dog walkers look startled, then smile, more often than not. And we laugh and pant and sing.

  I decide it’s time to tell Ian about it all. When he gets home one night, over our meal, I explain about it, and what’s it’s for. He eats with his head down while I’m talking.

  ‘Oh. Right,’ he says, finally looking up when I go quiet. I feel deflated. I want to tell him everything – about the boy in the magazine, how this happened and made me look out of myself. But I can see he’s not really interested.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’ I say. Suddenly I feel almost close to tears.

  ‘I dunno. I’d’ve thought you’re getting on a bit to be running about that far. You want to be careful.’

  I sit, thinking, I’m being careful, very careful – not to tip my plate of dinner in your lap.

  I find I am spending more time with Pat. Now and then we have a coffee after the run, at one or other of our houses. She lives about half a mile from me in a similiar sort of street. Pat and Fred’s house is immaculate, even though she is a childminder. I have once glimpsed into the garage when Fred left the door up and I have never seen such a well-ordered place, every kind of tool you could want, all in regimented lines.

  Sometimes we meet at dinner time, or I pop round for a cuppa once she has picked up the two children she cares for after school. They are a brother and sister of five and eight and seem so tired – their mother leaves the house at seven – that they are content to have snacks and watch telly, or play out in the garden, where Pat and Fred have a little slide and a sandpit.

  Fred is mostly out somewhere doing something busy when I call and Pat and I chat, sitting at the table or responding to the kids in between. I find I don’t mind being with the children, which surprises me.

  One sunny afternoon we are sitting out on the little patio with a cup of tea, watching Jack and Ruby play. The garden is a rectangle of green stretching away from the paving slabs, with flowers round the edge, all very organized. There are biscuits and cups of squash on the table for the kids and they come up every now and then and take a few gulps, their big blue eyes taking us in us, before seizing a custard cream and running off again.

  ‘Don’t run about while you’re eating,’ Pat warns them.

  ‘At first, I couldn’t stand being around any children at all,’ I say to Pat. ‘It’s funny. I feel OK now. Ish, anyway.’

  She smiles gently at me.

  ‘I was the same with babies for a long time. How dare anyone else be happy sort of thing.’

  We both smile at the sadness of this.

  Cautiously, I say, ‘And Fred?’

  She looks away for a moment and I hear her sigh. I know I must have touched a nerve and I begin to regret saying anything.

  ‘The thing is,’ she says, looking back at me. ‘My Fred had an absolutely terrible childhood. He’s a good man and I love him, always have . . .’

  I go to say something about how I didn’t mean to be rude, to intrude, but she waves a hand.

  ‘He can be very irritating and he always needs to be in control. But in a way I know he’s amazed that he’s got this far in life, that he’s even made it to this age, the way his father was. But where it really affects him is, he needs life to be very settled and predictable. It makes him feel safe. Even things in the house – well, you can see.’ She laughs. ‘When we lost the baby – it was just too much for him, I think. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel anything, he just had no idea what to do, how to . . . You know . . .’

  She’s finding it difficult to speak. I nod, understanding.

  ‘Ian’s been much the same. It’s lonely.’

  She looks seriously at me. ‘It is. But then we had our boys and things went on . . . It’s just, it’s been hard. No – that’s not quite right . . . What I mean is, I suppose I’ve trimmed myself back to fit him all these years, hardly even noticing I was doing it. You do when you’ve got a family anyway, don’t you? Cut back on yourself – you have to, to make room for other people. It’s just that now they’ve grown up it’s hard to get Fred to see that we don’t have to stay the same . . .
’

  I’m just about to ask whether he knows about the London 10K yet when we hear the front door bang shut and Fred’s voice, ‘Pat? You there?’

  ‘Every time –’ she makes a face, half-resigned, half-exasperated. ‘He can’t come into the house without yelling for me.’

  ‘Here!’ she calls back. ‘Jo’s round for a cuppa.’

  Fred soon comes out through the sliding door at the back. He looks very healthy, as ever, in long olive-green shorts and a white T-shirt which hugs his muscular chest. His mobile features move into a grin.

  ‘All right, ladies?’ He says it with a coyness that grates on me. But I feel annoyed with myself because I can see he’s a good man. ‘All right, are you, Jo? Nice to see you.’

  ‘There’s tea,’ Pat says. ‘I made a pot.’

  ‘Oh, no, you’re all right. I had some with Maureen – my sister,’ he tells me. ‘Just popped in to see her. So.’ He sits on the third white plastic chair. ‘How’s all the running going?’

  So he does know. Here we are, I think, 2015 and we are still worrying about what our husbands think of us for doing something different.

  ‘All right, thanks,’ I say, smiling at him. It seems as if he’s OK with it.

  ‘Nice for you all to train together – get a bit of exercise,’ he says, crossing one leg over the other. ‘Not my thing, but they say it’s good for you. That young dollybird’s coming along as well, I hear?’

  ‘Hayley?’

  ‘Yeah. Pretty little thing, isn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ Pat says, reaching out to play-slap his arm.

  ‘She got some sort of rough boyfriend, has she?’

  Hayley appeared last week for our runs and for yoga with an injury on her left cheek, the bruising spreading round her eye.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think so. She’s never mentioned any boyfriend. She seems too busy one way or another. She had a fall at work – or so she said.’ All this does seem odd to me, but I don’t really feel I can challenge Hayley on it because I would be accusing her of lying to us and she doesn’t seem the type to do that.

  ‘I’m not surprised, the shoes she insists on wearing,’ Pat says. ‘Have you seen the state of her feet? Cut to ribbons.’

  ‘Funny girl she is,’ I say. ‘Lovely though. You can’t help wanting to look after her, can you?’

  ‘You lot want to get yourselves ready for a marathon or something,’ Fred says. I can feel that he’s trying to wind us up. ‘Have a goal for all your training.’

  My eyes meet Pat’s. So he knows we do a bit of jogging, but he doesn’t know about London yet. Goodness, I think to myself. Life does seem unnecessarily hard work at times.

  Ian, on the other hand, does know. While not expressing any view on the subject at all, he is clearly not happy. In general. I’m finding it hard to read what’s going on. He’s so closed in and forbidding, I’m afraid to ask. He’s over at the business working away every hour possible, it seems, despite the new guy Carl being apparently very good, very capable.

  Communication between us is not great. There are a few good moments but mostly it all feels distant as if we live in different worlds. It’s still weighing on me, all that Dorrie has told me, but I don’t feel I can sit Ian down and tell him anything – not the way things are at the moment.

  Twenty-Five

  I go to Lodge Hill Cemetery every few days now, instead of daily. It’s so far and I hardly ever have the car. In the beginning it was the only place I wanted to be. That’s what I did, some weeks, once I’d stopped pretending I was coping at work and left the school. I used to spend half of the day on buses. Having to leave his body at the hospital that night, after it happened, was like being torn apart. All I could do to survive was to be close to him, to his body, which I was so attached to and could not yet take in that he was not. If I didn’t go for some reason, I was weighed down with guilt.

  I took him flowers, read him things from the paper, told him everyday bits of news. I remember wandering round and round those paths lined with the dead, in the winter cold, sometimes under an umbrella. Time was a blur, especially when I had taken sleeping tablets. Once or twice I remember screaming. It would have been better if I had been able to cry.

  When I can go now, I still offer him flowers like a present. Sometimes I think of taking chocolates and then realize how ridiculous this is. I tidy up as if I am arranging his bed for him to come home to. I talk to him. I tell him over and over again how much I love him and miss him, how I will always love him.

  But less and less, these days, does it feel as if he is there. It is a grave, with grass sprouting round the stone, leaves spiralling down and settling, spiders weaving tiny veils of grey, and lichen spots appearing. It is a marker where we can commune with him – as his bedroom was before we left the house. But now we are not living there, and he is not here to answer me. His remains are here, lying, as he does, in a garden full of markers of the long dead. But not him. My boy with his quiet way and sensitive eyes. And now I am feeling that, suddenly, like a chill wakening to reality.

  And so I have reached a point where there are chinks in the black wall of my own pain, through which I can see out around Paul, even though hardly a beat of my heart passes without my thinking of him.

  Dorrie seems to need to talk now, urgently.

  All along, since I have known her, Dorrie has said so little, despite her long life and the loss she has experienced. She has kept it tight inside her. I must ask her about her happy years, the life with Tom before he died. Must hear anything she wants to say, because who has ever been there to listen to her? Not her own mother, by the sounds of it.

  ‘She must want someone to know,’ Pat says when I talk it over with her. We grow closer by the week. ‘Or why would she have written it all down – or at least why show it to you? She wants you to ask, maybe to tell your husband because she can’t, somehow – don’t you think?’

  So I try to give her a chance to begin. One warm day, I say to her, ‘Would you like to sit out at the back, Dorrie? I can get the garden chairs out?’

  ‘Oh, no – I can’t be bothered.’ She waves this idea away and we sit, as usual, in the front room with tea, Dorrie huddled up in a rug. I think it’s probably warmer outside than in today.

  I have to steel myself to start because I’m used to the way older people often just don’t talk. Some of them have never been given the words for their own feelings, or been allowed to take them seriously. Breaking through the surface of that feels invasive, rude almost. So all I say is:

  ‘You’ve never really told me much about your Tom, Dorrie.’

  She sits forward as if she has been waiting all along for me to ask.

  ‘He was a wonderful man,’ she says. She’s not starry-eyed, not that type, but instead, matter-of-fact, which makes it more moving. ‘I don’t think it’s just that I didn’t have him long. He was one in a million and other people said so as well.’

  She takes a sip of her tea, remembering. ‘We were happy, me and Tom. Happier than any other married couple I knew. And because I didn’t have a very good start – my mother and father like wasps in a bottle and Mom was still kicking up – well, I knew I was lucky. I knew what I had – that’s the thing that keeps me going, thinking of it. I never took it for granted.’

  Smiling, she says, ‘It was a good time to be young and in love. I met Tom in 1955. Course, Birmingham was ever so scruffy after the war years – all knocked about and like a building site. But at least they’d called off rationing, finally – fourteen years we’d had of it altogether. I hardly knew what sweets were! But everyone wanted to get on with their life and have some fun. And we did. We worked hard – long hours. But in the time before we was married and had Ian, Tom and I were off somewhere every night. Mom didn’t half mither about it. She was used to having me under her thumb and suddenly I had someone else.

  ‘Tom wasn’t keen on dancing – there was a lot of dance halls but he said he had two left feet. I ne
ver minded. I didn’t know how to dance and I was shy of that sort of thing. We went to the pub, walked out round the park in Sparkhill – this was before we moved to Smethwick. Or just walking the streets was enough. It was free and we were that happy to be together, arm in arm, sort of thing. We were saving to get married although we didn’t wait long!

  ‘If there was one thing Tom really loved, it was a funfair. He’d go miles for it, Tom would – Aston, Kings Norton – wherever you could go on the rides and be out there with all the flashing lights and the smell of onions frying and candyfloss – oh, I can smell it now.’

  She laughs, her wrinkled face lighting up, then stops, looking down as if she has lost her thread.

  ‘He was a good’un – always good to me – and his family, most of ’em anyroad. But then . . .’

  Her expression changes and I suddenly have that cold feeling you get when you walk from a sunlit street into cold blue shade.

  ‘Yes . . .’ She drifts. ‘We had our times, Tom and I. And then Ian . . . You see, when Bill Riley came round he told me there was summat wrong with the tracks in the factory . . . There were two sort of levels, you see, on the machine – a double thing.’ She makes gestures, trying to explain the rolling machines. ‘The metal went in on the lower track and through the rollers, then it bent round and passed through another set of rollers to get the right thickness. And there were steps up and like a platform along the side for them to keep an eye, make adjustments and that. So Tom was standing on that when the metal – and it was red hot – bent off the lower track and just came at him.

  ‘Bill said he guessed what was wrong – the tracks weren’t adjusted right or the floor was uneven – but Tom wasn’t the first. No one else had died but there’d been near misses. One feller was off weeks after one of the bits they were rolling came off and wrapped itself round him, terrible burns he had. It was all in the accident book, but so far as I know no one did anything. It was like that in them days, you see. People’d say, “Oh, that’s just part of the job,” but of course if anyone actually died . . . Well, that starts to look different. And they just wanted everyone to go straight back to work after, with Tom. They didn’t want to stop production.’