by Pam Weaver
‘My sister was killed in a car crash on Saturday,’ she told us, her voice thick with emotion. ‘We’re not sure what’s going to happen yet, but until we do, we want Jenny and Nigel to have as normal a life as possible.’
We were deeply shocked. It didn’t mean much to the children, probably because they didn’t really understand. They would say, ‘Mummy’s gone to be with Jesus,’ in a voice that sounded like she’d gone to the shops, but we did our best to keep things as low key as possible, even though we spent most of the day fighting back the tears. Soon after, the children left the nursery to go and live with their auntie.
When Princess Anne married her husband, Captain Mark Phillips, in 1973, there was a lot of talk about weddings in the nursery. David and I married in 1974 and that had the children making me wedding pictures and buying me wedding presents, so it came as no surprise when in the following year, we had a ‘wedding of the year’ in the nursery. All the children were ‘guests’ when little Ellie and Bradley got ‘married’. We had a trendy vicar with long hair (a wig) and a dog collar, and two of the children held a bower aloft as the bride and groom kissed. At first we just did it ‘in house’ but the children didn’t stop talking about it so we did it again for the mums. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. I took the camera to work and used up the whole film taking photographs. We pinned them on the noticeboard and several mums ordered copies. One of the girls was teasing the nursery bridegroom. ‘Oooh, you looked so handsome,’ she said. ‘When you’re all grown up, perhaps you would marry me?’
‘When I’m all grown up,’ said four-year-old Bradley sagely, ‘you’ll be dead.’
The nursery was quite well stocked with toys. We were sometimes donated ‘old’ toys but we had a small budget and every year we were allowed to buy something new for each room. By careful planning we were able to keep up-to-date and to have plenty of variation. Each room had its own painting easels, and we had an old baby bath on its own stand, which was filled with silver sand. Sometimes the children would play with the sand when it was dry and at other times we would make it quite wet. The toys in the sand tray when it was dry were entirely different to those when it was wet. The children would stand at the easels to paint, using large brushes and pots with individual colours. The pots had lids on them and the brush fitted into a hole in the lid. That prevented us from ending up with mud-brown paint. A popular variation for painting was doing bubble pictures. We would colour some water with food colouring in a shallow tray and give the children a straw. Once they had mastered blowing rather than sucking the straw, bubbles would form and if we put a sheet of paper lightly on the top, you got a pretty picture. We also cut up potatoes and did potato cuts. We made hand prints and on a few days when we didn’t mind all the hard work, we would do foot prints with the children. How they loved the mess!
Less messy play would have been using playdough. We made our own, which was much cheaper than the shop-bought variety and could be kept in the fridge. The recipe was two cups of flour, two cups of warm water, one cup of salt, two tablespoons of vegetable oil and one tablespoon of cream of tartar. We mixed all the ingredients together over a low heat. When it was ready, we would divide it and use food colouring to colour it. The cream of tartar was a preservative and we kept it fresh by keeping it in an airtight tin. Pastry dough made a good alternative but even though we put plenty of salt in it, that didn’t last so long because after a while it began to smell horrible.
If the cook was feeling generous, she would make up a little water icing and we would decorate rich tea biscuits. The children generally had one at their break time and took another home. If we were doing this sort of thing, we generally had to supply our own ingredients. One afternoon, I bought a loaf of bread and the children in my room made sandwiches. There was one little girl called Sally, who was very small and rather thin. When we had finished making the sandwiches, we had enough for everyone to eat one at break time. I noticed that Sally couldn’t get her sandwich in her mouth quick enough. She never stayed for lunch but she did seem to be extremely hungry. I gave her my sandwich as well and then discussed the matter with Mrs Lucas and we alerted Social Services. It turned out that Sally’s mother was suffering from a serious illness and was unable to care for her properly. Sally and her older sister were put in the care of foster parents until her mother was better able to cope.
We had no piano but singing was very much a part of our routine. We taught the children finger play and nursery rhymes. Sometimes we would get the percussion instruments out as well and have a good old sing-song. I loved these times together and so did the children. They were far more confident than the residential nursery children and enjoyed being in nursery.
One child who came to be in my room had bright ginger curls. As he and his mother walked into the room, she told me his name was See-Ann. Mrs Lucas frowned and looked at the name on the admission paper. The child’s name was indeed Sean but of course it’s pronounced ‘Shaun’.
‘What a nice name,’ Mrs Lucas remarked.
‘Yeah,’ said the mum, ‘I read it in the paper.’
I stayed in the day nursery until I was pregnant with my first child. The week before I left, dear old Quackers the guinea pig died. When I buried him in the grounds, well away from where the children played, I was crying so much I could hardly see what I was doing. It wasn’t just the size of my bump getting in the way, but that little creature had meant a lot to me. The girls teased me a bit, saying he must have known I was going. He was old and in truth, although I didn’t wish him dead, I hated the thought that the next girl might not love him as I had done or look after him so well. He had come home with me every Christmas and Easter since I’d been there. Time moves on, and I was entering uncharted waters. I had been looking after other people’s children all my life and now it was time to have one of my own. I may have said goodbye to nursery life but I still haven’t said goodbye to working with children. As I brought up my girls, I was a child minder and then a playgroup leader and now I look after my grandchildren. Children never fail to make me laugh, and we have such fun together. I can only hope that I have given some of them half the pleasure they have given me.
A photo of Pam during her time working with premature babies.
© Pam Weaver
Footnote
1 Department for Education website ‘Looked after’ statistics 2011. www.education.gov.uk
Read on for an exclusive short story from Pam Weaver and the first chapter of her bestselling novel, Better Days Will Come.
Son of Pale Face
There is a nail-biting moment when we check the height restriction but everybody passes with flying colours. While I grab their backpacks and coats, Christopher, Thomas and Liam, their faces bright with excitement, join the end of the queue waiting to go on The Corkscrew.
‘Are you sure about this?’ I ask Rob.
Avoiding my eye, he gives me a brief nod. ‘You go. We’ll be fine.’
Oh joy … that means I can do what I’m desperate to do. I stagger to the nearby café and plonk myself down at a table. In my condition, even though it’s only a matter of weeks, taking a ride on The Corkscrew doesn’t seem like a good idea. I’m so glad of the chance to sit down.
Things are turning out really well today and yet just a few short months ago we were in crisis. It had come to a head one Saturday after the boys came back from their various club activities. We’d found a brand new toy car on the hall table. Rob and I had never seen it before and whoever had been playing with it had also scratched the top of the table, doing some very expensive damage.
Christopher and Thomas looked a bit blank. ‘It’s nothing to do with me!’ Liam shrieked.
Rob’s expression said it all. We all knew Liam was lying. I looked at him helplessly.
‘Honest, Mum,’ he said, digging himself in deeper. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen that car.’ He picked it up. ‘It’s very nice, isn’t it?’ he went on in a silly voice. ‘I like the colour to
o. I wonder who could have put it there. Where have you come from, little car?’
Rob put his hands on his own two sons’ shoulders and led them towards the patio doors. ‘Come on, boys,’ he said quietly, ‘Let’s leave them to it.’
‘But it wasn’t me,’ Liam cried after them. ‘Why do I always get the blame for everything?’
‘Oh, Liam …’ I began.
‘And I don’t need you here, Mum.’ He stared at me, his eyes bulging, his cheeks aflame.
I was at a complete loss as to what to say. He certainly looked guilty, but he was so adamant.
‘Darling,’ I began again, but he just turned on his heel and ran up the stairs.
This wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. A couple of weeks before, someone had ‘borrowed’ Christopher’s bike without asking. When it reappeared, the mudguard was buckled and it had a flat tyre. All three of the boys had a terrible fight, so bad that Rob had to separate them. When the inquest began, I could vouch for the fact that Thomas had been upstairs all afternoon. But even though he had the same telltale coloured mud on his trousers, Liam was adamant that he was not responsible for taking the bike.
Later, as I began to add up the other ‘little incidents’ my stomach churned. The shoe mark on the side of Rob’s car where a small foot had kicked the bodywork; the pieces Thomas couldn’t find when he was making his latest model aeroplane … Liam’s behaviour was turning our peaceful home into a war zone.
Of course we’d always known it wasn’t going to be easy to stitch people from two single families into one, but Rob’s two boys had adjusted to the change a lot more easily than my son.
From my seat in the café, I can watch them unobserved. The boys are dancing with excitement but Rob has the air of a lamb being led to the slaughter. I smile to myself. My big tough guy is looking a bit unsure. They’ve been waiting about twenty minutes but the queue is still quite long. Well, there’s still time to duck out. I chew my lip thoughtfully and wonder if I should say something, but then the waitress comes and I order a coffee.
When we’d first got together, Rob and I came to an agreement. We decided to work together as a family but we would leave the serious discipline of our own children to each other. He would do anything for his boys, a loving father but strict, a lot more strict than I am with Liam. I was glad of the lines of demarcation and the system had worked well … until that Saturday afternoon. After the incident with the toy car, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that my son was struggling.
Liam calls over the great divide and I look up. Some people near the front of the queue have dropped out. It looks as if one child needs the toilet and the rest of the family, although pretty annoyed, are going with him. Now my family are six people closer to the front. Liam gives me the thumbs up and I wave back.
I had hoped my sister might tell me what to do. After Paul died, we got into the habit of getting together once a month for lunch. We met a couple of days after that Saturday and Lindsay must have seen from my expression that I had something on my mind.
‘So you’re absolutely sure it was Liam who took the toy car?’ she said when I told her what had happened.
I nodded sadly. ‘Afraid so. When we tackled Christopher and Thomas, they seemed totally surprised.’
‘They could have been lying.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m getting to know how they look when they’re guilty, Lindsay,’ I said. ‘Christopher always goes bright red and Thomas can’t look you in the eye when he’s up to something. Liam denied it but he put on that silly cartoon voice, the one he always uses when he knows he’s done something wrong. I’m afraid as far as I’m concerned, that gave the game away right away.’
Lindsay stabbed her jacket potato and the prawn mayonnaise oozed all over the plate. ‘So, what happened when you tackled Liam about it?’
‘He just shouted at me.’
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the details, how he’d lashed out at me, even hitting me in his anger. ‘Go away Mum. I don’t want you here. I hate you …’ Then bursting into tears, he’d slammed the door to his room leaving me feeling like a whipped dog.
Lindsay shrugged sympathetically. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
I’m still miles away as the waitress brings my coffee to the table but then I hear Liam shout again and a car comes sliding towards the platform. The boys are next. I watch them all climbing in, Christopher and Thomas in front, Rob and Liam behind. We all grin at each other and wave as the ride begins. They look so good together. Happy families? To a degree, but one part of this body feels out of joint.
When Liam’s father was killed, I genuinely wished my life could end. It was only my curly-haired two-year-old who kept me sane. He didn’t understand why his daddy wasn’t there anymore. He’d cling to me, needing me, frantic if I was away from him for too long. His need for me was what kept me going all through those first awful months. That, and the need to fight my own corner.
Before his car accident, Paul had only just set up the business, buying and selling antiques. The family had urged me to sell it after he died, saying the money would set me up nicely, but somehow or other I couldn’t do it. It felt too much like being disloyal.
Lindsay’s husband had been very insistent. ‘But you don’t know anything about antiques,’ he’d said crossly. ‘With all due respect, you only have to make one disaster and everything will go down the tubes.’
I was furious at the time, but it gave me great pleasure to see the expression on his face when I thanked him for saying it a couple of years later.
‘Your comment was just the spur I needed,’ I’d said sweetly.
Absolute Antiques didn’t exactly keep us in clover but it did give us a decent living. It gave me an unexpected bonus too. I’d honestly never thought I’d find love again. Rob worked for one of the local auctioneers. We met through work but we soon discovered that we had an awful lot more in common than a love of antiques. He’d been left to bring up his two sons alone after his wife had died. The previous two years had been a terrible time for him but he’d nursed her until it was no longer possible for him to cope alone. Poor Rob. Life is so unfair at times and cancer is such a filthy disease. One thing I do know, he’d go through hell or high water for his kids.
In the beginning we just used to pour out our troubles to each other but after a while we discovered that before we had married our respective partners, we had both enjoyed amateur dramatics. We joined the local club and began the long haul back into life after bereavement. It was great that our boys got on so well too. Christopher was two years older than Thomas and Liam but it didn’t seem to matter. So six years after Paul died and three after Sarah had gone, Rob and I married. Despite my family’s dire predictions, everything was working out very well. Apart from the problem with Liam, that is.
‘You’ve got to be a lot more firm with him,’ my mother had said, after he’d kicked down the flowers in her border.
‘Liam is having a hard time right now,’ I said, anxious to give him the benefit of the doubt.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ my mother said crossly. ‘We’re all having a hard time. He’s got to learn he can’t go about pinching other people’s stuff and messing up gardens just because he’s feeling miserable.’
As I sip my coffee, I reflect that she’s probably right. Perhaps I should be tougher with him.
The Corkscrew is gathering momentum. Can you believe the speed of that thing? It clatters along at what seems like 150 miles per hour. Everybody’s screaming and although I know where they are, I can’t make out their faces. Just as well, perhaps. If any of them hate it, there’s no way I can get them to stop the ride anyway. I put my cup down and go back to my thoughts.
Saturdays were always something of a juggling act and that particular Saturday was even more frenetic than most. Christopher was captain of the school cricket team and had an all-day match. Thomas’ model aircraft club had a show in the morning. At the same time, Lia
m had yet another swimming lesson but despite his best efforts, he still hadn’t made a lot of progress.
Before we went to the cricket match to meet up with Rob and the boys, I took Liam to Badger’s Antiquarian Books. I wanted to chat with the owner about an assignment of books I’d just bought. As we came out of the shop, Liam showed me a book on marine wildlife he’d bought with his pocket money. ‘One day,’ he said proudly, ‘I’m going to see the Great Barrier Reef first hand.’
I laughed. ‘You’ll have to master your swimming first,’ I blurted out in classic ‘foot in mouth’ mode.
‘OK, Mum. Then I’ll just look at the pictures.’
When I saw his angry glare that’s when it hit me, so while the boys were altogether in the pavilion enjoying a spot of lunch, I pulled Rob to one side.
‘I think perhaps Liam is feeling left out because your boys are so good at everything.’
He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You could be right, I suppose, but what can we do about it?’
I sighed helplessly. He put his arms around me and drew me close. ‘Things will settle down soon, darling. It’ll be alright.’
‘I hope so,’ I said with little conviction that it would.
By late Saturday afternoon, his boys were on top form. Christopher’s team had beaten the county champions by eleven runs and Thomas was telling us how fantastic it was to get his prototype model aircraft airborne. Liam was very quiet.
On the way home, we stopped for a pizza but when we got back indoors, I couldn’t find the pizza cutter anywhere. Everybody helped me to turn the drawers upside down but it was hopeless.
‘Perhaps,’ said Christopher looking straight at Liam, ‘somebody has pinched it.’
‘Yeah,’ Thomas agreed.
There was an embarrassing silence and Liam went beetroot.
‘That’s enough,’ Rob said shortly.