Blue Above the Chimneys

by Fraser, Christine Marion

  Puffer watched all the proceedings with wary green eyes and I tickled her chin reassuringly and spoke affectionately to the little cat who had been my faithful companion for more than six years.

  A week before the move to the new house Puffer became increasingly restless, padding from kitchen to room with a frown on her pussy face. She was sensing that a change was imminent and couldn’t settle because of it. All her days she had been very much a home cat, only going out to relieve herself or to lie stretched on the sun-warmed dykes. During that last week she hardly left the house, as if afraid we would be gone before she returned, and her trips downstairs were only made out of sheer necessity. One afternoon she failed to return. Her fish was in her plate and normally the very smell of it was enough to bring her running. Margaret went out to call her from the landing. Her voice grew fainter and I knew she had gone downstairs. Minutes later she reappeared. She was crying, great tears running down her face and on to the limp little body of Puffer who lay still in her arms.

  ‘What’s wrong, Margaret?’ I asked, but I knew the question was superfluous, a gamble for time to prepare myself for the truth.

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Margaret tonelessly. ‘For the first time in her life she crossed the road and a car must have hit her. She managed to make it back to the close … and just died.’

  The last whisper of a breath dilated Puffer’s dainty pink nostrils. For a moment we hoped for the hopeless, but she was gone. Gently I took the furry bundle into my arms and buried my face in the soft white fur of her belly. Pictures flashed through my mind: being wakened in the morning by a tentative paw patting my face; a warm purring scarf draped round my neck; a snoring bundle at the small of my back as I went about in my chair; a rough tongue washing my hands with brisk affection; everything gone in one careless moment of a little cat’s life.

  Quietly and sadly we placed her in a shoe box and buried her in a little plot of land nearby. In the days that followed we mourned for her. Even Da looked uncomfortably deflated when he found a ball of silver paper in the dross bucket. Playing with these balls had been one of Puffer’s favourite games and to make sure she would never be without one she often hid a spare in the dross bucket. For a long moment Da stared at the little ball, perhaps seeing in his mind’s eye a purring bundle twisting into the air to catch a silver ball tied to a piece of thread. Perhaps he was remembering times of loneliness when the warm heaviness of Puffer on his knee had brought a measure of comfort to an old man’s life. Whatever his thoughts, they were deep enough to bring a large drip to his nose. He wiped it away with an impatient hand, then hurled the silver ball into the fire. ‘There’ll be no more damned cats,’ he mumbled gruffly.

  ‘No, Da,’ I said sadly. ‘There will never be another Puffer.’

  He looked at me, surprised by my lack of argument, but I think he knew we were all too weary to have the strength for squabbling.

  We were glad when the day came for us to move. With hardly a backward glance, we left behind the home of our childhood. I was lifted in my chair into the removal van beside what few possessions we had, and though I breathed a sigh of relief when I took a last long look at the tall grey tenements, I also felt a pang of emotion, knowing that the friends and neighbours we were leaving behind were people with warm hearts, always willing to lend a helping hand in times of need. I stared at our room window, feeling oddly sad to know that before very long another family would live in our house. Fleetingly I remembered the days of dummy parcels thrown from the window; of Mam’s face hovering as she waved us on our way to the park; of Da’s iron-grey head poking out in a search for his brood – and I wondered if his voice would find an echo over years of still, summer nights, when children played, heedless of time, unwilling to answer to the conventional demands of the grown-up world.

  Jockey, our budgie, chirped loudly at my side, bringing me back to my present world. The van doors closed, shutting out the streets and the familiar buildings.

  The new house was a five-roomed apartment with a long front garden, as yet desolate and bare. In a few weeks we changed all that. Kirsty became a keen gardener and bought plants and shrubs with enthusiastic extravagance.

  ‘We’ll need tae get marigolds,’ said Da, as he pottered about getting in Kirsty’s way.

  ‘Ay, Da,’ she said patiently. ‘We’ll get everything, but it will take time.’

  When Mam was finally allowed out of hospital she was greeted with a garden ablaze with colour. Pansies winked velvet eyes in welcome, the scent of roses dominated the air, and large orange marigolds splashed in vivid luxuriance against bright green foliage.

  She stepped out of the taxi and came slowly up the path with tears of joy in her eyes. ‘My, it’s grand to be home,’ she said happily, and the minute she stepped over the threshold our house was a home again.

  She had a few weeks of happiness. All the things we never managed to have in our old home were hers to enjoy for a while. Kirsty had bought carpets and bits of furniture. The old chairs from the kitchen had been discarded, and Mam was able to sit in the luxury of a cosy armchair at last. Da hadn’t wanted to part with the old chairs and he put up quite a battle to keep them, but it was more in the form of a peacock displaying its feathers to prove its superiority over the female. Mam couldn’t walk very far but sat in the garden enjoying the sunshine. Margaret took her for walks in my chair and in the evenings she played the old piano that Kirsty had bought for my last birthday. But soon she took more and more to her bed, and I think each of us knew in our heart there would never be a complete return to health for her.

  She lay in the bedroom upstairs, divorced from the rest of the household in a way she would never have been in the Govan house. We heard her singing to while away the weary hours. We all went to sit with her at different times in the day. The new house had a few drawbacks for a disabled person, the main one being the number of stairs between the living areas and the bedrooms. But I had devised my own method to overcome this obstacle. Sitting on the bottom step I folded my chair, and going upstairs on my bottom I pulled the chair up after me. A good deal of expertise was involved in the procedure. Unless properly balanced the chair fell over and I had several minor mishaps before I perfected the whole affair. Descending was even more precarious because the chair was liable to bounce down faster than I could follow and it was an arm-aching business keeping it under control. But I was undaunted. Anything that gave me independence was an achievement. I christened my stair-conquering technique ‘bumming it’, which was appropriate if not exactly lady-like.

  Mam and I talked for hours. When we ran out of conversation we sang together. Sometimes I played the piano so that she could listen, and I often caught my breath on a tear when I heard her singing to the music. She was a prisoner in her room, yet her buoyancy of spirit somehow kept her cheery. Pain was a constant companion again and there came a day when she could stand it no longer and asked the doctor to let her go back into hospital.

  She spent the entire winter there on various drugs. It was a dangerous merry-go-round. Too many drugs were needed to combat the symptoms of a disease that had started as a serious skin complaint but which had now spread inwards to bones and organs. At first the skin had peeled from her body, leaving raw flesh. Agonizing months of treatment had cleared her skin, but now that was the least of her problems. No one seemed to know exactly what had happened or what was going to happen next, and it was the not knowing that was the worst to bear.

  Summer came round again, and I was due to go to the holiday home in Dunoon for a fortnight. I kept hoping that Mam would be well enough to come with me, and she didn’t give up hope till the very last. Margaret took me to the hospital the day before I was due to go to Dunoon. Mam was in a little side ward and when we appeared her smile showed how pleased she was to see us. We weren’t allowed to give her sweetmeats because she was on a diet, but we had picked a huge bunch of pansies from the garden.

  ‘My, but they’re bonny,’ she said, stroking the velvet
petals with a touch so gentle she might have been caressing the skin of a new-born infant. ‘I can smell the earth in them, and the sun.’

  She was full of hope that night, telling us she felt so much better she knew she would soon be going home. She spoke with such faith I was convinced she was on the road to recovery. I looked at her dear face and my heart soared. I told myself that everything would soon be as it once was, with Mam sharing our lives again; we would go to bed at night and know she would be there in the morning, the way it had been all through childhood, feeling a security as in the nucleus of the womb but aware of it in a way that one can’t possibly be while growing in the silent world that is ours before birth.

  Before leaving I took her warm hand in mine and looked into eyes that held peace and infinite love. ‘Next year, Mam,’ I said softly. ‘Next year we’ll go to the hills when the heather is in bloom. Don’t give up hope.’

  Her gaze held mine and everything that was life reached out in an eternal moment that made us one, a fusion of souls whose earthly bodies were of the same flesh and blood. ‘Look after yourself, Chris,’ she murmured. ‘I’m so proud of you, my lamb. You’ve conquered things that would have floored a lot of folk. I’ll be thinking of you …’ Her eyes became faraway and she continued almost to herself, ‘If only I could have seen the Grampians once again. In the autumn they’re really purple with heather. I used to walk there … a long time ago … when I was a wee girl … just walk, picking the heather …’

  I gripped her hand tighter and choked out, ‘I’ll bring you back a big bunch, Mam … for luck …’

  ‘I’ve had my luck, Chris,’ she said quietly. ‘All there was meant for me.’

  She kissed us both goodbye and I have often wondered if she knew she would never see us again. She had never been one for such demonstrations of affection, her kind of love had never needed them.

  At the door we looked back and blew her a kiss. She smiled, a happy smile, her hand lifted in farewell, her silver hair shining like a halo under the bed light. It is this picture of her I will carry in my mind for as long as I live, because it was the last time I saw her alive.

  And she died alone, this dear, gentle mother of mine, alone in a hospital ward. She went with a struggle, for although life held so little for her she hadn’t wanted to leave it. At the last minute she fought to keep it, but her weary heart would not allow it.

  The news came to me in a telegram when my holiday was two days old. It took a long time for the words to sink into my fiercely resisting mind. Then I knew … I knew, but it didn’t make sense.

  ‘I wasn’t with her!’ I upbraided myself. ‘She died with none of us beside her, only strangers who didn’t love her! Oh God … why?’

  Hours passed, one upon the other, but to me they might have been days. Kind people came to me like shadows in a dream. Impressions of arrangements for my return home were hazy incidents in time. The journey on the boat to Gourock was a nightmare. The dull throb of engines, the sea swaying the decks, phantoms moving and daring to laugh. I felt like an onlooker watching something unpleasant, and glad it wasn’t happening to me.

  Kirsty and Margaret had come to the station to meet my train but somehow we missed each other and I was fortunate to find a kind taxi driver who helped me into his taxi and folded my chair up beside him.

  My nightmare became a reality when I arrived at the house at the same time as the vehicle bringing Mam from the hospital. I stared in disbelief at the coffin being carried in, and the echo of her last words came to me: ‘I know I’ll be going home soon.’ She had gone home, right enough, but to one far removed from the humble little abode that had been hers on earth.

  I came face to face with my family, and their white, strained faces reflected all that I felt. We were numb with shock and could say very little to help each other.

  Later, I went up to look at Mam in her last sleep. She was very peaceful-looking. It was hard to believe that she wouldn’t open her eyes at any moment and recognize me with a slow dawning of her wonderful smile. Her face was calm, free from lines of suffering, and I knew it was selfish to want her back. She had wanted this release, but I wanted her to be alive so that I could know again the thousand and one little things that were so endearing in her. It was then I cried, my face buried in her soft white hair, my heart a heavy pebble in my breast. Afterwards, I took a little lock of her hair and placed it in a little casket she had given me. It was a beautiful box, made of an inexpensive metal with a picture of Jesus enclosed in a tiny glass dome on the lid. I had often admired it and recently she had said, ‘Here, Chris, you keep this wee boxie, I know how much you like it.’ The action was typical of her. She had never placed much store on material possessions and was forever giving her things to us.

  The sun shone on the day of her funeral, the birds sang, children laughed, life went on as usual, but for us a light had gone from the world, never to return. During her short stay in the new house she had made many friends, and her coffin was covered with wreaths from the neighbours. On top of all the elaborate floral tributes we placed a bunch of jewel-bright ‘annie-moonies’ and a spray of pink carnations from the garden.

  The minister who conducted the service was an Aberdonian. He and Mam had enjoyed many a chat together, reminiscing about places that were familiar to them. He recognized in her a courageous spirit, with her trust in and loyalty to God beautiful in their simplicity.

  The service was conducted in the house, but the minister’s voice couldn’t shut out the sounds of the coffin lid being nailed down, the trestles scraping on the floor over our heads and, finally, the coffin being carried downstairs. Our hearts went with her to a place far beyond the grave where her soul had at last found the peace it deserved.

  Many months went by before we could bring ourselves to look at her pitifully few personal possessions which we had hurriedly scooped from her hospital locker. We found a parcel Kirsty had sent. It contained a new purse but had never been opened because it had arrived at the hospital on the day of Mam’s death. All the letters and cards we had sent her were tied in a neat bundle because these were the things that she could never bear to part with. The sum of her life was in that well-fingered pile, and in the methodical collection of safety pins, elastic bands and recipes we found in her worn old purse. Tucked away in a corner were some verses she had written about her precious holiday in Dunoon, and an unfinished letter to me, a letter that read: ‘The days are long and dreich, Chris, and I’ll be glad when it’s over. I can’t see as well as I did, my eyes are easily tired. I think I’m growing old before my time, lamb. Some days I feel good but today I feel the old man heavy on my chest …’ Here the letter tailed off, and with heavy hearts we abruptly ceased to look into the past. One line in Mam’s letter held the key to her two years of suffering. She had hit on the truth without being aware of it. All along the doctors had told us that Mam’s illness was one related to age. For it to happen to someone as young as Mam was a rare occurrence. The post-mortem had revealed that all her internal organs had aged long before their time.

  To put it plainly, she simply died of weariness.

  Black Maria

  My life held a lot of loneliness after Mam’s death. Da and I spent a great part of each day together, but we had little to say. He couldn’t communicate with me, tell me about his grief, and I could not tell him the things closest to my heart.

  I had a good deal to do with the running of the house. Ian had married a year before Mam died, the rest of the family were out at work. I had the meals ready for them coming home, and I kept the house as clean as I could, though I was unable to get upstairs to attend to the bedrooms. These were cleaned by Kirsty and Margaret at weekends. The house had an empty echo about it during the daytime. There was a coldness that had never been in the Govan room and kitchen. Deep in my heart I didn’t really like the open atmosphere of a house that forced us to spread out at night, taking away the unity and cosiness that our Govan home had provided. Every morning Da plodded up
stairs to bring me a cup of tea, an indication that he thought it was high time I was up and attending to the housework. The situation was ludicrous. I feared and resented the burden of responsibility on my shoulders, but could do little except make the most of my abilities. I felt sorry for Da, knowing how much he missed Mam, but I was unable to comfort him. He took himself off on lonely walks, his head bent, hands deep in pockets, unseeing, uncaring. At times he took to his bed, sometimes for as long as a week, and this in itself was an indication of how empty he felt. He had always hated laziness in any form, believing that activity cured all ills.

  He was alone and I was alone, but I also had the terrible symptom of boredom to contend with. This wasn’t a new thing in my life by any means. A prisoner in the Govan house, I could have screamed with frustrated boredom. With the advent of the new house I was perhaps even more tied, simply because my brothers and sisters now had their own pursuits to follow. There was no time to spare for the placid occupation of taking their wheelchair-bound sister out for walks. I longed to be out working and I had reached an age when I needed something more than the stimulus of my Guide functions, though it was perhaps these that kept me sane.

  But even after death Mam was working for me. One of the last things she did was to write to the Ministry of Health, requesting that I be given some sort of transport to make me mobile. After some initial tests I got word that I was to be given an invalid car, and I was beside myself with joy. After months of waiting my heart sank to my shoes when it finally came. I had visualized one of the little blue three-wheelers powered by petrol and looking like a ‘real’ car. The one that arrived at the gate was like a bath chair from a funny old movie. It was black with a large hood which boasted yellowing perspex windows. It was powered by batteries. Steering, acceleration and brakes were operated by various twists of a long rod-like structure.