by Annie Murray
‘Incredible,’ I say.
Dorrie looks at me. ‘Oh, there was no care. Not like now. People moan about safety regulations but most of ’em have no idea how things used to be.’
‘What about – I mean, did you get any help? Compensation?’
She gives me a look as if to say, You are joking?
‘Make no mistake . . .’ She’s leaning towards me, grim-faced. ‘When it comes to making money, no one cares. It’s profits they’re bothered about, nothing else. They have to be made to care – you have to have laws.’
She subsides, sits quiet for a moment, huddled with her arms wrapped round her.
‘So. That was that. I had Cynthia and I just had to get on with it.’
This statement buckles my heart. ‘Oh, Dorrie,’ I say.
‘They were hard years.’ She sits up, flexing her spine. ‘It was when our mother really started to . . .’ For the first time, to my surprise, I see real distress pass across her face and she looks down.
‘Your mother?’ I say, not sure whether to ask.
‘Oh –’ Again, the dismissive wave of her hand as she looks up. ‘Enough. You don’t need to hear all this old nonsense. Ancient history now.’
‘I do, Dorrie,’ I tell her. I look searchingly into her eyes. Something passes between us. I see her understand that I am really listening.
‘How about putting the kettle on again, bab?’ She prises herself to her feet and I go to help. Dorrie is quite bent over now. ‘I’ll spend a penny while it boils.’
Once we are settled again, she has had time to think and she begins in a considered way.
‘Both our mother and father were drinkers. The unhappy man’s consolation – and woman. And drink does terrible things to you. So I look back and think of all our mother said over the years – terrible things sometimes, cursing us all high and low. Was that really her or was it just the drink talking? And I don’t know – I never really knew her. Ethel Parsons. Who was Ethel Parsons?’ She shrugs. ‘She was never a happy woman, that I do know.’
‘What about your father?’
‘Well, he wasn’t too bad really. Not in himself. Could be quite good with us kids at times, given the chance. But of course, the way they were together . . . And he was out at work or down the pub. We didn’t see a lot of him really. It was her always there, carrying on. My father died in 1953 – just before the Coronation. His heart it was, I think. And that’s the only time I’ve ever seen our mother cry. She bawled and bawled, made a right carry-on. Heaven knows why really – I think it was just her way of getting attention . . . It’s not as if they were even married any more. It was Aunt Beatt who found out and had to tell her about it. Course, Eric and I – Bert took off years before, we never knew where he’d gone – we could hardly believe it, her going on like that after all that time as if he was the love of her life.’
Dorrie takes a shaky sip of her tea and holds the mug in her lap. It seems to take a long time.
‘So there she was. She’d been living on her own for a while since I moved out. I wasn’t even married by then, but I just couldn’t live with her, even though I felt I had to keep going in to see if she were all right. I was restless myself, moving from job to job – I’ll say that, there was plenty of work in them days. But I couldn’t stick living under the same roof as that harridan, heaven forgive me. Beattie popped in to see her – and I went to see Beatt more than I ever did our mother. But Mom just went from bad to worse. She’d always been a drinker but after a certain point she really hit the bottle – it became a full-time thing with her. Terrible.’
She looks down again, seeming to be ashamed.
‘She got herself into a bad state. Very bad. I kept trying to say to her, “Mother, you’ve got to stop this, you’re making yourself bad.” I’d go in sometimes, find her passed out on the couch – she’d’ve wet herself and everything. She didn’t seem to care at all. Oh, she was a dirty old thing. She was always a bit that way – you know, careless of herself. But she was going downhill fast . . . And the thing was, her mind went. You never knew whether what she was telling you was real. And on top of that, of course, she was always after money . . .’
‘This went on for quite a time. Aunt Beattie – she was more my father’s sort of age, a good few years older than Mom . . . Beattie was kind but she’d had enough of Mom’s nonsense over the years. She used to say, “I know you do what you can for her, Dorrie, but don’t let her ruin your life. She’s not been much of a mother to you and she’s on the downward path of her own choosing.” I was grateful to Beattie – lovely, she was. She had no other family of her own, after all, so she was stuck with Mom and the rest of us. And her life had been the hardest of the lot, but she never went the way Mom did.
‘See, by this time – this’d be 1955 – Tom and me was thinking of getting married. So with our mom playing up in the background it wasn’t easy. I never wanted Tom to meet her – I was ashamed of her, to tell you the truth. But he insisted, said it didn’t reflect on me. He wanted to see who my mother was and what I was having to deal with. He said he wanted to support me and it was no word of a lie – he always did.
‘So I warned her one day that I was bringing my intended round to meet her. Not that I was asking her permission – I was twenty-five, after all, and quite old enough to make up my own mind by then. Well –’ She gives a strange chuckle. ‘I could hardly believe it. We went over to Deritend as arranged, me with my heart in my mouth as to what state the old girl might be in or what she might say. I say old – course, she was only in her forties but she was a wreck. When we got there, she come to the door all dressed up like a fourpenny rabbit in her best finery – the finery being her own wedding dress that she’d kept somewhere. I mean, I’d never seen it before. It was all cream lace and such but it had gone a horrible shade of yellow and she could hardly squeeze into it – it wasn’t done up at the back and she was all bulges. And her skin was almost as yellow as the dress.’
Dorrie puts her hand over her mouth, remembering. ‘Oh, my Lord.’ She shakes her head. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it. She’d put lipstick on and piled her hair up – and even that was a funny colour. Course, she’d gone grey but her hair had a yellowish tinge as well. I looked at Tom and he could see in my eyes, I think, that . . . Well, that this was unexpected.
‘ “Come in,” she says, all grand. I just don’t know what had got into her. She knew who Tom was, that the Stefanis were from a few streets away. They were prosperous enough for the time but it wasn’t as if I was marrying the Prince of Wales.’
Suddenly she sits back, rocking with laughter until tears run down her face and I can only join in.
‘Oh, Jo, it was terrible – you’ve never seen anything like my mother that day. Tom and I couldn’t look at each other. She made tea as if she was the Queen and put a cloth on the table – an embroidered thing I’d never seen before either. All the cups were cracked – mine never even had a handle. And she’d bought a packet of biscuits and laid them out on a plate. I just don’t know now what we talked about.’ She’s still shaking with laughter, crying a little. ‘Dear, oh, dear. Her mind was going then but . . . Anyway, after we got out of there – we only stayed an hour, if that – I said to Tom, “Well, she’s going to be your mother-in-law – so now you know.” I’d told him a fair bit about how she really was. And as we walked along the street, he in his Sunday best to meet her, he just drew my arm through his and he said, “Never mind, Dor. She needn’t bother us. We’ve got each other and that’s all that matters.” And I tell you – if it was possible, I fell even deeper in love with him that day.
‘She carried on like she was, and Tom and I married – I never told her when it was happening – and got on with our lives. I went in now and then, screwed myself up to do it – but we were living a long way off. I’d take Ian over, very occasionally, for her to see him. He wouldn’t remember her though, he was too small.
‘But then I lost Tom . . .’ She stops abruptly
I sit, waiting. I feel tense, sick, waiting to hear even more pain.
‘That was 1959, so you can imagine by then she was getting pretty bad. I went round to see her one time and I don’t know how long it’d been going on but I realized she couldn’t walk. She tried to get up and fetch summat and she must’ve forgotten she couldn’t and she just fell flat on her face. The place smelt terrible. I helped her up, of course, and I went to see Beattie. She had some idea, but we both knew it was all getting worse – much worse than we realized. A lot of what she said didn’t make much sense any more, either. By then she was forty-six. No age, is it? Even then it wasn’t. And she was a wreck. A complete and utter wreck of a person.
‘Beattie was living in a little house in Sparkbrook and I knew where my duty lay. I couldn’t stand the thought, but I said to Beattie, “Well, she can’t go on like this. She’ll have to come and live with us and be looked after.” I don’t know why I said it, really. There was me, a widow with a small child and another on the way, but it felt as if it was laid on me. I was so sorry, so ashamed of her and even being near her – it was like an aversion. Terrible to think she was really my mother. I could hardly stand to be in the same room. But still, I felt I had a duty to her. Eric was no good – he’s never made much of a life and he was still just lodging in one room. And our Bert was nowhere to be seen.
‘ “Oh, no, you don’t,” says Beattie. “I’m not seeing you ruining your life by taking her on. What she’s done, she’s done to herself and there’s no blame on you. You’ve got quite enough on your plate.” Well, Aunt Beattie was a rather splendid-looking woman by then. She had a rounded sort of figure, very straight-backed, waist nipped in with her corset, and she still wore her hair up as she’d always done and brown lace-up boots. And she stood there, hands on hips – this was out in the little yard at the back of Mom’s house. “I’m not going to stand by and watch her drag you down,” she said. “She may be my sister, but that doesn’t mean I have much respect for the way she’s gone on.” ’
‘But what can we do, Auntie?’ I said to her. I really had no idea.
‘ “Well,” Beattie said. “I’m sorry to say, but Ethel is no longer in her right mind and she’ll have to go and be looked after where other people go who are in that state.”
‘I just stood there gaping at her. Surely she didn’t mean what I thought she was saying?
‘ “What?” I remember whispering it. It was so frightening, so shameful. “You mean the asylum?” ’
Even now, Dorrie’s face registers shock. She can’t seem to look at me as she says it.
‘And Beattie looked me right in the eye and nodded. “I think it’s come to that,” she said. “I can’t manage her and neither can you. She’ll have to be looked after in there.”
‘It was terrible really, the relief of it. I’ve never told Ian or Cynthia. They think their grandmother died at home when they were very small. I never took them to see her. I was too ashamed. The thing was, of course, once she got there – they took her to All Saints asylum – they wouldn’t let her drink in there. They dried her out and she improved in some ways. But she’d already done too much damage to herself – she hardly ever knew who I was when I did screw myself up to go and see her. But she lived on and on, for twelve years. If she’d stayed on the way she was at home it would have been another story . . . It was her chest finished her off finally, in 1967 – pneumonia.’
She looks down at her veined hands.
‘Beattie died in 1978, bless her. She and I were the only ones at Mom’s funeral. And I never told anyone – not a soul – that I still had a mother or where she was. Seems terrible, doesn’t it?’
She looks up at me cautiously, and I can see all the shame she has been unable to shake off over the years.
‘You couldn’t have done anything else,’ I say gently. ‘You did the only thing you could. Beattie was right – wasn’t she?’
Dorrie nods. ‘She was. I know she was – only it seemed a shameful thing. She wasn’t a nice person, our mother. She was very bitter and she could be cruel and violent with it. But she was unhappy. I thought I should be able to save her somehow – but there was never a way.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘There wasn’t. It’s very sad.’
She takes in what I say as if she needs to hear it. After a moment she looks away and reaches out to put down the empty mug.
‘Well, there you are,’ she says. ‘That’s how it was.’
I wait a moment and we sit in silence.
‘D’you want me to tell Ian?’ I ask. ‘Any of this?’
Dorrie shrugs. ‘Sometime, maybe. When things are a bit easier, eh?’
It’s my eyes that fill with tears then. Without my even saying anything she seems to know that we are not doing very well.
‘All right.’ I get up and touch her shoulder, give a gentle squeeze. ‘The right time will come, I’m sure.’
Dorrie smiles as I let go. ‘Are you off to see your friends this afternoon?’
‘Yes,’ I say, getting my things together. ‘I’m going to be drinking a lot of tea today!’
‘Nice, that they do that. Sheila, you say – the person whose house you go to?’
‘Yes. She’s very kind.’ I go to the door. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t come across her.’
‘Hm. Can’t place her,’ Dorrie says. ‘But then I’ve never been one for church.’ She twinkles at me. ‘I expect I’m bound for the Other Place.’
Twenty-Six
There are only the four of us at Sheila’s that afternoon – Pat, Sunita, Sheila and me. We sit inside, but with the window open over her immaculate garden. Pots and hanging baskets spill fuchsia, geraniums and Busy Lizzie. Sweet peas are weaving themselves up a lattice on the side wall of the house.
Herbert, the old Labrador, who has had his neck protector off for some time, comes and rests his jowls on my leg.
‘Hello,’ I say, stroking him.
‘Oh – you’re the Chosen One,’ Sheila says. As usual she’s moving stiffly back and forth to the kitchen, refusing offers of help.
‘I know.’ And I do feel ridiculously honoured. Herbert’s warm presence is like a comfort blanket. I keep my hand on his head. Maggie the superior-looking cat is nowhere to be seen.
‘No Hayley?’ I ask.
‘I haven’t heard,’ Sheila says. Hayley usually turns up pretty regularly.
‘There’s something about her that worries me,’ Pat says. She’s voiced this to me before. ‘D’you think she’s got a boyfriend? She never mentions anyone. But the way her face was the other day. I didn’t say anything but that didn’t look like something you’d get from falling.’
‘You mean someone is hitting her?’ Sunita says.
Pat shrugs. ‘I don’t know. She just seems . . . sort of secretive. Evasive – about some things. I don’t like to push it with her.’
‘Oh, hang on – I know what she said.’ Sheila comes back, bringing a plate of home-made shortbread. She’s missed the rest of the conversation and so we end up changing the subject. ‘Something about college. An open day, I think?’
‘Good for her,’ Sunita says. ‘Everyone should go to college, that’s what I think. Ooh, shortbread – delicious.’ She bites into it with enthusiasm, our new, streamlined Sunita, who looks the picture of health. ‘Running is good – I am eating everything I want and still losing weight!’
‘You look great,’ I say.
‘So do you.’ Pat nudges me. ‘It’s put roses in your cheeks.’
‘How’s it going?’ Sheila asks. I can hear the slight reluctance in her voice and realize she feels left out.
‘It’s going fine,’ I say.
‘You’re all absolutely mad.’
‘You’ll come and watch us, won’t you?’ Pat says to her. ‘On the day, I mean? We’ll need someone to cheer us on.’
‘What – in London?’ Sheila seems taken aback.
‘Why not?’ Sunita says. ‘It only takes two hours to drive
– less. Early on a Sunday morning the roads will be quiet. You don’t need to be there right at the beginning.’
Sheila looks pleased suddenly. ‘Well, I suppose I could ask Roy. We could make a day of it.’
‘There’s a picnic afterwards,’ I tell her. ‘Or you could go off and see the sights.’
‘Are all your husbands going?’ Sheila asks.
‘Mine is coming,’ Sunita says. ‘My brother lives in Wembley – we can stay with them.’
Pat and I look at each other.
‘We’re not sure yet,’ Pat says.
I’m trying really hard at home. I know a lot of things are my fault, the way I have been so shut in with my own feelings, the way I resented Ian for not grieving the way I understood we should grieve, for not sharing it with me, for seeming to have energy only for work.
All the same, sometimes I feel like just screaming at him, ‘You’re not the only one who’s lost your son, you know! What about me? Why can’t you talk to me?’ But so far I’ve managed not to – not because I’m especially self-controlled but because in the end I know it wouldn’t be fair, and even more to the point, that it wouldn’t actually make any difference to anything. Ian can’t help the way he is – really can’t, any more than I can – and that’s how it is.
I’m there a lot of the time, making the house nice, cooking, looking after his mom – not that that’s a hardship – trying to be open to him. And I’m trying to find a way of getting back on my own feet, of having a life and not staying in the tomb as someone once said to me. We moved house partly to try and drag ourselves out of that tomb.
But this new life is what seems to worry Ian. I’m making friends, going running. He doesn’t want to know – not about the friends. And as for the running: