“This is my dad,” she would’ve told Madge and Ada, her best friends at school, and watch their eyes widen in amazement that anyone as plain as she was could’ve been fathered by something as handsome as Arthur Gladstone. But, unfortunately, the man in the photo available to her suited the job perfectly. By the time she reached the grand old age of eleven he’d have been even rounder and his shiny skin lined with the odd ageing river trickling down his face. A plain, eleven year old standing next to a plump, pretty non-descript-looking bloke would’ve looked smashing together, suitable as bubble and squeak, and everyone who saw this photo would’ve observed that father and daughter was the obvious relationship.
But in her fantasy world, there he was. Long, lean, posh, complete with trilby hat and winning smile. She absolutely adored her fantasy world. It was so much more enjoyable than her real one.
And when she thought of that, of course, she felt guilty for ever having the temerity to wish her father was anything other than he had been. Because it wasn’t a film star she wanted. It was a father.
“Killed?” If she’d heard a stupid classmate say that once, she’d heard it a hundred times, though only a few had taken it any further, daring her to be nice to them when her expression defied the odds. Eric, the cheeky chappie – she could see that now, but at the time she hadn’t liked him one bit – said, “What’s that?” He wasn’t very bright, Eric, and when she saw him years later, milk bottles in hand, delivering to grumpy Mrs Hartley, she could see that eight or nine more years of education hadn’t really changed things because Mrs H was saying she never had milk on a Tuesday.
For years she hadn’t cared for cars. Not the noise of them, the smell of them; the damned petrol always made her feel sick, and she couldn’t for the life of her understand why so many men seemed to like the look of them more than they did a beautiful woman. Ah, beauty. Well, there’s the rub. Give her a bouquet of flowers any day. Now there’s a thing of beauty. So it wasn’t as if she hated everything to do with her dad dying. Because every year on 17th March, which apparently was her dad’s birthday, their mum took them to his grave to put down a bunch of flowers, usually daffodils as they were all she could afford, though once or twice she did remember her mum buying a few roses. And yet she still loved flowers, even though they were brought into the house as a grim reminder of everything she and her brother lacked in life. One year, this solemn family occasion coincided with Easter and she was old enough to remember the vicar, whose name she forgot, saying something about her father being blessed having his family visit at such an important time in the holy calendar and she couldn’t help thinking he was one of the most idiotic adults she’d ever come across. He did her a favour, though, because when she later became a nurse she was always most careful what she said to any family member who knew that neither medication nor doctors and nurses were going to be any aid to their relative’s predicament.
Did she ever feel angry at the cards they’d been dealt? She didn’t think so. It wasn’t like nowadays where everyone’s either angry or crying. Crikey, she got right fed up with people bursting into tears whenever they were on telly these days. No, it wasn’t like that then. And it wasn’t as if she really knew her dad. She’d never spoken a word to him because he died before she could talk. She was eleven and a half months when he stepped off the pavement and that bloody bloke – it was a bloke, probably one of those who loved the look of his car – went bang into him and her dad could no longer talk to her.
Their mum used to go on a bit about the good old days when they were of an age to appreciate what she was saying. Not just good in that a lovely man had been taken from them, though that went without saying, because the one thing she knew about her mum was that she loved her dad and she couldn’t ever imagine her mum loving anyone who wasn’t worthy of that love. No, the good old days were also spoken about in relation to the material comfort they’d all enjoyed under the umbrella of dad’s good wage. How they could have tinned salmon for the odd sandwich and not always have to rely on paste, though of course she never benefited from this, not having much in the way of teeth before he died, or they could look forward to the odd day out and, occasionally, a little holiday. Sometimes, she slightly disliked her brother for having basked in the glory of the good old days more than she had. Being eight years older, he would sometimes chime in with their mum and agree that that picnic they’d had by the river had, indeed, been very nice.
About nine £10 notes had arrived and been used over nine Christmases before she started to ask questions about them. So she and her brother had had nine treats because of each note. The first few, of course, she wouldn’t have a clue about. Her memory couldn’t possibly stretch back that far. But she did remember the Christmas when she was about six and a glorious doll Santa had given her who she called Lucy. She told Lucy lots. Lucy knew practically everything about her. And she knew her secret thoughts as well. Things that she wouldn’t have ever told anyone else because it would’ve seemed, well, disloyal really. Like how she wished she had a happier mum. And one that didn’t have to go out and clean everybody else’s house as well as theirs. Other mums seemed to giggle quite a bit. Hilda’s mum never seemed to do anything else, though she did think sometimes Hilda got a bit embarrassed by it. But her mum never seemed to smile much, or hum, or do anything that might have indicated to her and her brother that things were OK. Her mum didn’t seem to ever want flowers in the house. She didn’t really understand that, because she and Lucy agreed that flowers were pretty and they made you smile.
So there was Lucy. Then there was the skipping rope, which gave her hours of fun. It made her smile thinking of the first time she’d got to fifty skips without her ankles and the rope intermingling. And the first time she got to twenty on the fast skips. It must have driven her mum bonkers when it was raining and she’d be skipping in the house. There’d be the sullen or exasperated look and sometimes her mum said, “Please, Vera,” and touch her forehead, but she never got cross.
Then, when she was twelve, she got her first bicycle and, by that time, she just about cottoned on to the fact that it wasn’t Santa who’d given it to her. So she felt a bit confused because if her mum had communicated anything it was that there wasn’t much in the way of money to go around. “No, we can’t afford that”, “Clean your plate because there’s nothing else when that’s gone”, “I’m sorry, Vera, but we can’t go to the cinema, do you know how much that would be for all of us?” were sentences she was familiar with and she’d got used to them as much as she’d got used to getting a cold; they were never welcome, but they were a fact of life.
She was so very excited, but she couldn’t help herself. “How?” she tentatively asked.
“Never you mind,” had been her mum’s initial response, but when this hadn’t worked because she knew her daughter was cleverer than that, “You can save quite a bit when you set your mind to it, you know.” But she knew her mum was lying. And she was pretty sure it wasn’t her brother, who by this time was bringing in money from the colliery but who gave her his own present. Anyway, he couldn’t have kept a secret to save his life. She’d have soon known that he’d chipped in to buy her a bicycle.
So she just accepted the way things were and got on with it. She loved her bicycle because it meant she could get away from both her mum and brother if the fancy took her and ride off into a world where no one could interrupt her or expect anything from her. She could take a deep breath. The bicycle, it turned out, was a bit of a lifeline. And luckily, her mum didn’t seem to worry about her in the way other mums seemed to, so she was free to go off, providing she’d done her schoolwork, as often as she liked and she liked to do it a lot. She became, unusually, quite the envy of girls like Hilda, who could barely move from the front door without her giggling mum wanting to know exactly where she was going and when she’d be back.
One day, when she’d been out on her bicycle for over a couple of hours takin
g in the lovely fresh air rather than the words of others and, as a result, had in her a confidence that the constraints of the rules of the house didn’t allow, she took off her clips and, pretending she didn’t care, asked her brother where he thought their mum’s money came from when it came to Christmas.
He looked up from his paper. He loved the local rag.
“We don’t know for sure,” he answered.
It always riled her when he said “we”, as if he and their mum were in some kind of secret society together, gradually letting out information to her when they deemed fit. At least the air had given her the guts to stare him out.
“But we think” – now he was doing it deliberately – “that it might be the bloke.”
He didn’t have to say any more. They all knew “the bloke” was the… well, the b—, the bloke who’d shattered their lives.
She wasn’t sure if she was curious or furious. She was very shocked, but it didn’t stop her asking questions. How did they know? How did their mum get the money? How did he know where they lived? Her brother said he was tired and he didn’t want to talk about it and when, in her confusion, she said, “Do you mean he’s come to the house?” because he had said something about this envelope with the £10 note in never having any writing on it, he told her to shut up and go away. He’d never spoken to her like that before and he never did again, though equally he never apologised for his outburst.
She felt a bit sick. And, to her dismay, she suddenly felt differently about her beloved bicycle. And, for that matter, Lucy and the skipping rope. It all felt mighty unfair and she was cross with herself for asking the questions because, if she hadn’t, she could’ve cycled blissfully on for years to come and never been any the wiser. Maybe her brother and her mum knew her better than she knew herself.
But curiosity was always going to be her downfall. Like on the ward rounds when she had this habit she couldn’t seem to break of asking one question beyond what was expected of the doctor and was told by the very worst sort that hers was to do, not to ask, by the medium sort the answer but with great irritability, and by the best the answer as if he, and it was generally, if not always, a “he” in her day, was enthralled that she was so interested and even a smile sometimes came her way.
She remembered the first time she got told off by one of the very worst sort of doctors for apparently misunderstanding his instructions from the day before, though to this day she was sure the error was on his side; she took refuge in the staff kitchen as soon as she could. It was night-time, probably about two in the morning, and all the patients’ flowers from the ward were still lying in a bucket, looking for all the world as if nobody cared about them. She reached high up and opened the pale yellow cupboard door where they kept the vases. It was very quiet apart from the odd snore or the occasional cough, and the moon cast its light on the table. She arranged the roses for Mrs Thomas – she had a lovely husband; the pink carnations for Miss Ford, whose mum and dad had been so worried about her, but she was going to be all right; and the freesias, how grand they smelt, for Mrs Harris, whose niece had said how much she loved them. She thought they might be her favourite flowers too.
She didn’t ride her bike for quite a few months after that conversation with her brother, though in the long run she got so fed up hanging endlessly around the house that she took up with it again. So much for principles. Lucy and the skipping rope had already been put in a box marked “charity shop”, though no one had ever taken them to one.
At a time when she was trying to find boyfriends who didn’t seem to be trying very hard to find her, she found herself looking out of her bedroom window one evening, wishing, as she often did, that someone could’ve taken her out, like boys had Madge and Ada and Hilda, and given her a kiss under some mistletoe. It was 21st December, dry, crisp, everything you wanted from a Christmassy night. Even the moon was doing its bit. It was chilly in her bedroom, so she put another sweater on.
Her mum called out, “Vera, do you want a hot milk?”
Oh well, if it had to be hot milk, it had to be hot milk. “Yes, thanks, I’ll be down in a minute.”
A bloke got out of a very shiny big car. She could tell it was shiny because the moonlight showed its sparkle, but the night didn’t give away its colour. But it looked new. Not one of those second-hand ones one of her friends’ dads had, though they thought they were mighty lucky to have that. No, this one had a look about it that hadn’t seen many journeys; you could almost smell its newness.
He was very smartly dressed, a darkish suit, again she couldn’t tell exactly what colour, and a trilby hat. She thought him extremely suave, though he was someone her mum would’ve called a smarmy kind of bloke. It was true, there was something about him you probably shouldn’t trust. Nevertheless.
But she then started to feel herself go very hot. The man was walking towards their house. She could see that he had an envelope in his hand.
“Your milk’s ready,” her mum called, but she wasn’t about to miss this. She had to see this. Sure enough, the man, no, the bloke, the Bloke, came up to their door and hastily, very hastily, pushed the envelope through the flap. She could hear it drop onto the mat, though her mum probably couldn’t hear a thing because she had her music playing quite loud. Some classical concert on the radio.
“Vera!”
“I’m just coming,” she said, barely thinking about the hot milk and almost solely concentrating on the bloke who was quickly getting into his car. He’d taken off his hat and she could just about see through the window his shiny, Brylcreemed hair.
She felt really panicky. She wanted to run down and shout at him. But she didn’t. She was rooted to the spot.
Her mum was quite cross when she finally appeared as the milk was now reduced to lukewarm. She’d passed the mat on the way and she gave the envelope to her mum who just took it from her without a word.
She took her milk upstairs and when she looked out of her window, the bloke was still there. He was gazing at their house, as if its appearance mesmerised him in some way.
She stared at him, gripped by a similar force, until they just caught sight of one another and he immediately started up his shiny car and was away before she knew it.
She got herself a hot milk. Seventy-five years later and she still loved one at night. She sat down and looked at Dad’s Ted, scruffy as anything, witness to a war and a house that got bombed over the road, to her marriage to Stanley, to their lively children, Joyce, Bob and Alan, who he’d barely survived, and to her increasing old age. Well, he couldn’t talk. He was as old as she was. She knew this because her mum told her that her dad had given it to her when she was six months old.
A BROKEN HEART IN TWO LANGUAGES
Her heartbreak could often be seen on the painted faces of her friends. Or in her photos. For instance, the small street where she lived, a perfect image for the tourist guide, with its warmly lit melancholic antiquity, held many of her tears. If she’d kept every one of them, they would have definitely filled a bucket and she could have added paints, then frozen and sculpted them. Perhaps into one gigantic teardrop. Instead, words that could be spoken to a counsellor or a sympathetic ear were brush strokes on the faces of willing friends. Sometimes, a wintry scene full of icicles and crisp branches or an animal, maybe a tiger, who would walk her back towards her childhood, and she would be standing excitedly, at some level knowing everything was in front of her, in that purple and pink woollen dress, her face a painted cat. If only she could be that little girl again, making the cat smile so her mum could take a photo to look back on when she was as old as she was now. She wanted to revisit a time when she didn’t know what heartbreak was; she just bawled her eyes out if someone upset her or didn’t let her do what she wanted. She didn’t know then what grief was, even though crying and crying and crying was her response to being told she would never see her favourite wellies again beca
use some arse had stolen their car and the two little protectors of her feet were sitting, minding their own business, on the back shelf. She couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t see them anymore and sobbing was the only thing she knew.
Today, she’d woken up, as she usually did, crying, but twenty years on from the wellies, she knew this was heartbreak. She understood this was grief because, as with the wellies, she knew she would never see her boyfriend again. Someone had stolen him. She, too, was on the back shelf and could be put in the bin. So here she was every morning and for much of every day, with a whirling stomach, metaphorical vomit in her throat and a feeling she was freefalling without a parachute. It was as if there was no one else on the planet or her freefall had taken her somewhere else, where the beings that were walking about had no idea of what she was feeling because they were laughing and talking. She thought she must be mad. Certainly, too barmy for the work required to get from five minutes to ten minutes past the hour. Nobody could offer any comfort and it would be quite a while before she truly appreciated how much they listened. One day, though, she had found something of an intermission in her crying and panic. She picked up a brush that lay on what was laughingly called her work table. She hadn’t been to college for a while. The incessant crying had put paid to that. She put some black paint on it and passed the brush up and down a scrap of paper, then left and right. She did this a few more times and found she was mildly pleased with what she saw. Her heartbreak, no matter what else it had done, had been singularly unsuccessful in depriving her of artistic ability.
The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories Page 25