‘All set, Darling? The taxi’ll be here in a minute, I think.’ Mummy was standing at the door to the drawing room holding the handle with both hands and she was swaying as though she was caught in a gust of wind. I could tell she couldn’t see me properly although I was sitting straight in front of her on the sofa. That’s when I knew it was going to be one of her very bad days.
‘Horrid, horrid, horrid. I hate you going away, Ben. I just can’t bear it. I hate it like you do, My Only,’ she said. She calls me ‘My Only’ because I’m the only child she has, and she says she won’t ever have another one now. Just me.
Then she leant against the door and it swung wide open and knocked into the chair behind it, which then bumped the tall lamp so hard I thought it was going to fall over. That funny smile she does with half her mouth on her bad days came for a while. I thought she was going to cry which is another thing that happens when she’s not so good, so I looked out of the window for a second and hoped that everything would just be alright, which was plain silly really.
‘The taxi’s here already, Mummy,’ I said. ‘It’s outside. I’m ready to go, actually—I’m all ready. You don’t have to come with me. I can easily get to the station by myself; I just need the taxi money.’
‘Of course not. I’m coming to the station with you. I’m going to wave to you till the train has completely disappeared! I just need to find my bag and my ciggies and then we’ll…’
‘Please, please, Mummy—I can manage, I really can. I’d much prefer to go by myself, really I would…’
The taxi driver tooted the horn again. He could see us through the window, and he was getting even more impatient. I don’t know why he was in such a hurry, especially when he wasn’t even meant to be there yet. I started to rub my eyes, and my chest was hurting.
‘I need a wee before we go, Mummy.’ She’d sat down on the arm of the chair by the door, but even then she was a bit wobbly. I ran past her and up the stairs to my room and closed the door.
Then I lay down on my bed and put my face right in the pillow. Sometimes if I squeeze my eyes closed hard enough I think that I’m somewhere else just for a second, and it makes things easier. Then I got up and straightened the bedcover so that my room would still look nice, even though I’m not going to be in it for a long time, and went back downstairs.
Just before leaving, I tuned the radio properly so that Mummy would have it nice to come back to, though I knew it wouldn’t be long before she twiddled it, and it went all blurred again. She had it turned up so loud that just for a minute, when I put it right, it seemed as though Pete Murray was shouting the whole place down with one of his silly jokes. The house went completely silent when I turned it off, just as though it was lonely and about to start missing me as much as I was going to miss it. For a long time, there’ll just be Mummy here alone with me at school and my dad out at work all day.
When I was closing the front door, the blossom from the wisteria that grows up the side of the house was beginning to fly away in the wind and cover the front steps. It was like the confetti that everyone was throwing at Sandra from next door’s wedding, but this wasn’t a happy occasion like that. Already I was too hot in my blazer although there was a breeze, and I had my boater on because it was easier than carrying it and one less thing to remember.
Mummy was looking in the bottom of her handbag for her keys. She can never find them, but they’re always there in the end.
‘I’m sure I had them, Ben. I’m sure they’re here…’ There was a bottle in her bag. She never goes out without one in her bag, but this one must have been half empty, because I could hear the sherry sloshing up and down.
‘Let me lock it, Mummy,’ I said to her when she found the keys. ‘It doesn’t fit in very easily, and I know just how to do it.’ I took them out of her hand and locked the front door. I put the keys back in the bag, though I could tell she didn’t want me to, because she doesn’t like me to see the bottle. I took out a packet of her mints. She always has mints in her bag—lots of half packets of extra strong ones. I don’t know why she starts a new packet when the old one isn’t finished, but she likes to have them all around her so that her breath smells nice instead of sherry.
By the time we got to the station, Mummy was getting to be very vague, and she was trying to open her bag and hold a cigarette at the same time. Her fingers got all glued up, so I took her bag from her to get out the purse to pay for the taxi. I was very worried the money that my dad had given her for my ticket and the taxi wouldn’t be there because I know for a fact that sometimes she loses money; I heard them arguing about it once. Money’s always a problem, and it’s been much worse since my dad was sent a bill from the wine stores after Christmas for £100. £100! Imagine that—that’s as much as it costs to send me to school for a whole term! But, the money was in her bag, thank goodness, so I paid the grumpy old taxi driver, and then I didn’t put the purse back because I had to buy my ticket to Chepstow at the ticket office. After I’d bought it, I tried to buy Mummy’s platform ticket from the guard at the barrier, but he stared at her for a while with his mouth a bit open and then said ‘That’s alright, Sonny; that’s alright,’ and let her in free.
It wasn’t busy at the station. All the people who work in London had already gone, and there was only me and Mummy on the platform, apart from a smart old lady with shiny black shoes and white gloves and a man in a suit with a briefcase who kept looking at his watch. I thought that he might know something about the train being late that I hadn’t been told about.
There was a girl with her mother on the opposite platform, and I could see she was going back to school like me. She was pretty with blonde hair, and she was wearing a red check dress. She had a blazer like mine on the bench beside her, and her boater was on top of it. I felt a bit silly wearing mine when I saw her. At school everyone tries to wear their boaters as little as possible because they look so stupid, and it’s a major thing to get teased about if people ever see you wearing it when you don’t absolutely have to. I took it off and put it on top of my blue bag. The girl had a tennis racket over her lap and she was fiddling with its strings and the handle was banging against her mother’s knees. She didn’t seem to notice. They didn’t look at all worried. I think she was just going along to Guildford or Godalming, and if that’s where her school is, she probably goes home nearly every weekend so there was nothing for her to be homesick about.
Then I heard the bell in the distance that means the train’s about to arrive, and straight after that the announcer came on the loudspeaker above my head. ‘The train approaching platform two is the fast service to London Waterloo. Waterloo only, platform two…’
It was gently rocking from side to side and the steam from the engine was swirling all around it in the breeze. I like the steam engines. Quite soon there’s only going to be electric ones, which is a bit of a shame if you ask me. This one was just like an African elephant I’d seen on a wildlife telly programme at school last term, lumbering out of the misty forest. And just like the taxi, I was pleased to see it, and at the same time, I wasn’t.
‘My bag, my boater, my ticket,’ I said to myself. Granny taught me that. Count how many things you’re starting your journey with and keep repeating it to yourself as you go along. Three things. ‘Bag, boater, ticket.’ That’s why I had my blazer on even though it was too hot. So’s not to have four things. I stood up and decided to put the boater on however silly it looks because it could so easily have been forgotten in the train. There was no one from school to see it. Then I squeezed the top pocket of my blazer and felt the stiffness of the ticket inside. The schoolgirl on the other platform looked up and smiled at me just as the engine passed so that I couldn’t see her anymore. I didn’t have time to smile back.
‘Bye bye, Mummy. I’ll write to you on Sunday before church. See you at the end of term…’
‘Oh Darling, I can’t bear it,’ she said, st
anding up and looking sort of surprised. She put both her arms around me, but she forgot she had her bag in her hand. It swung round and banged into my back, and I could hear the sherry inside again.
‘I’m going to come and see you, My Only. All by myself. No Daddy. Just me and my lovely boy.’
‘Okay, Mummy. I’ll see you then.’ She was holding me so tight I couldn’t move. I wondered what I would do if she didn’t let me go, and the train went without me. I could hear the doors slamming closed as some people got off and the smart old lady and the man in the suit got on. Then for a little while there was just silence as Mummy stood there with her arms around me. She had started crying silently, and I could feel some warm tears on my ear and my neck.
‘I’ve got to go, Mummy…’ I pushed her away then. I tried to do it as gently as possible but she still wouldn’t let go. ‘Please, Mummy…’
Then she put her arms down to her sides, and I ran to the carriage door and tried to open it. But I just couldn’t because it was too stiff. I could see the guard had his whistle in his mouth. He was waving his flag, and I thought I was going to be left behind. Luckily he saw me and quick as a flash came over and opened it.
‘In you get my old mate!’ He took my bag and just about threw it into the carriage, and I climbed in while he was blowing his whistle! I put it on the seat, and then I turned back to the window. It was all smoggy with dirt and when I tried to open it so that I could see Mummy properly, it was stuck as well. But I pushed it as hard as I could and it opened a bit at the top, so that when I went up on tiptoes I could just about put my chin on the ledge and see out. The train started to move. Mummy was staring at the door, and tears were running down her cheeks.
‘Don’t cry, Mummy. It’ll go very quickly, you know. The summer term always does…’ It’s not true, that. It’s the longest term of them all, but I wanted to say something to cheer her up.
She was telling me something, but I couldn’t hear it because we were quite close to the engine. Then I tried to push the window down again, and suddenly it opened all the way with a clang.
‘Daddy’ll be waiting for you under the clock, Ben,’ she said.
‘I know, Mummy, like he usually does…’
‘I’m coming to see you, Ben. Very soon…’
‘Bye bye, Mummy.’
I watched her growing smaller and smaller in the distance. I put my hand out of the window and waved as hard as I could, and she waved back with one hand and clutched her handbag against herself with the other. Soon she was as small as an ant and then she disappeared, but I carried on waving in case she could still see me.
I tried to close the window, but it wouldn’t budge. I was the only person in the compartment, so it really didn’t matter. The window was open on the other side too, so there was a rush of air as the train got faster and faster. It was one of those carriages that doesn’t have a passageway that you can walk along—just two doors on either side. They only use them for short journeys when people are going to work in London and coming home again. You couldn’t go for a long journey in a train like that because there’s no way to go to the lavatory or get something to eat.
An empty crisp packet swirled round and round in the breeze as though it was a bird, like when that robin flew down the chimney at home and couldn’t get out even when we opened the windows. The packet stopped for a moment by a poster on the compartment wall that said ‘Welcome to Bournemouth’ and then went on travelling again till it finally stopped on the luggage rack above my head. I’d love to go to the seaside at Bournemouth one day, but my dad says it’s not really our sort of place.
‘Boater, bag, ticket,’ I said to myself very loudly. It didn’t matter because there was no one to hear me and make fun. Boater on my head, bag by my side on the seat, and the ticket safely in my pocket. I could have a bit of a relax. Actually, I never mind that bit of the journey when I’m going to meet my dad at Waterloo. I quite like being by myself for a little while, and it’s not like the term has already started.
Mummy probably went to The Two Brewers after she left the station. She would have had even more sherry there, and I don’t know how she would have got home. But I was on the train, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Mummy’s favourite drink used to be tea, and I know exactly how to make it just right for her. You’ve got to warm the teapot with hot water first and then just before the kettle boils you pour the water over two teaspoonfuls of tea leaves. Then you have to leave it for a minute or two before you put a little milk into the bottom of the cup and pour the tea in after. ‘M.I.F. Ben…’ That’s what she used to say to me when I brought the tray in. It stands for ‘milk in first’. She says I’m the best tea maker in the entire world. But she only has it in the mornings these days, and she’s told me that she really prefers a drop of sherry now. Some mornings when my dad’s away and her new friends have been around for the evening, she stays in bed very late, and then I still make her a cup of tea to help her get up.
The Two Brewers is her favourite place now, and she’s met lots of new friends in there. That’s where she met Trotsky John. He wears a dirty duffle coat and a blue beret even when it’s really hot and his beard is yellow and stinky from all the smoking he does. He comes to the house when my dad’s away and sometimes in the afternoon before he arrives back from work. He sits for hours and never says anything, just drinking beer and smoking. Then he sort of loses his temper and starts going on about Stalin and Khrushchev and state capitalism and Che Guevara. Mummy says Trotsky John is teaching her all about injustice, and she says Che Guevara was like ‘a light unto the world’—a bit like Jesus—and has given his life in the fight against American imperialism. There was a picture of him in my dad’s paper a few months ago, dead on a table with his eyes open. Mummy and Trotsky John were going to demonstrate at the American Embassy last month to protest about the war in Vietnam, but they sat in the sitting room all morning and then it was too late to bother to go. I was glad they missed it because I saw on the news later that some people had been hurt when the police horses charged into the crowd, and I just know my Mum. She would have been one of the people to get hurt.
Mummy recites her favourite poetry to Trotsky John, like The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Under Milk Wood. Once, when I was in the study, waiting for Children’s Hour to start, I heard Trotsky John shouting at her. He said ‘fucking bourgeois bitch’ over and over again, but I don’t think he was really cross because they were both laughing at the same time. My dad doesn’t like him, and Mummy’s asked me not to say when he’s been in our house. After he goes, she opens all the windows in the sitting room to let out the smokiness. Mummy smokes lots too, but his cigarettes are really smelly. My dad doesn’t know he’s at the house so much.
The train to Waterloo whizzed along and never slowed down once, even when we went through all the stations on the way. There was a crowd of school children with their teacher on the platform at West Byfleet, and they all had to hold onto their caps as we passed. It made me laugh, and I thought to myself that I was feeling quite happy, all alone like a grown-up on the train. But then quite suddenly we were in London and started to pass all the big offices along the side of the river Thames that look as though they’re made of glass. In between them on the other side of the river I could see the Houses of Parliament with the massive flag flying over the top, and when you see that you know you’re just about arriving at Waterloo. It went really dark for a minute when the roof of the station blocked out the sun, and by the time I got used to it and could see clearly again, the worry had come back.
My dad was waiting for me under the big clock as usual. He didn’t have his briefcase with him because he was going straight back to the office after taking me to Paddington. It must be a nuisance for him to come and get me because he’s a very busy man and doesn’t have much time to spare.
‘Ah! There you are Ben. All ready for the off, then?’
When we were going down into the underground on the escalator, he put his hand on my shoulder. I thought he was going to say something about me not standing properly, so very, very slowly I tried to straighten up without him noticing.
The last time I’d been alone with my dad was when he had to take me to the doctor at Christmas because my asthma got so bad I couldn’t eat anything. I was getting skinnier and skinnier and could only sleep if there were three pillows propping me up. Mummy got so worried she thought I wouldn’t be able to go back to school, and then I hoped that my asthma would be bad forever, so I’d have to become a day boy and go to the Grammar School in Guildford.
Fat old Dr. Scott listened to my chest with his stethoscope. He was wearing a big bow tie, and the hanky in his top pocket tickled my nose. He smelt of cigars and coughing. Then he pushed his hand into the middle of my back and said. ‘Of course the boy can’t breathe. Look at his posture! The young man’s got to learn to stand up straight, hasn’t he? Straighter! Come on—move that back!’ I looked at my dad while the rubbishy old doctor carried on, and he was putting his eyebrows together in the way that means he’s angry. ‘More PT and cross country running’s the answer if you ask me—not nearly enough of it at schools these days.’ I actually started to cry a little, but they didn’t see it because I was able to wipe the tears away very quickly on my vest because luckily, just then I was putting it back on.
The House Martin Page 3