Should I Stop?
The women sat knitting or mending stockings with fine hooks. Jeanette left the other children to watch fascinated as stocking ladders were picked up and then stroked gently with the back of a needle. It was magic! The ladders completely disappeared.
One by one they were called, "Lav first and then to bed."
The shared lavs stood in a row at the bottom of the terrace. The doors hung drunkenly on rusty hinges, privacy was gained by clinging to a string tied to the latch. "Should I stop?" Jeanette asked herself as sheets of rain stung the windscreen. The car veered madly, buffeted by the wind. I'll pull in once I'm over the bridge, she thought, and wait until the worst has past.
She lent forward trying to penetrate the darkness.And then she saw it. The gargoyle grinning wetly in the headlights beam.
"I'm going to hit it." She heard a voice screaming.
Voices, reassuring her. Hands raising her up. Wrinkled hands, brown blotched hands soothing, a voice murmuring in a strange yet somehow familiar tongue.
"Did I go over the bridge?"she asked.
Faces all around,hands pulling her towards the arched entrance to a terrace.
A small man in baggy trousers held her arm. "You'll be all right," he said ."You belong to the Froggy lot. They look after their own no matter what." He chuckled through the smoker's phlegm which threatened to drown him.
She pushed her long dark hair back from her face. Where was she?
When the car crashed it had been night and now the sun sizzled the tar between the cobbles.
"Come on duck," he was urging her through the terrace entrance. The heat in the enclosed yard made her suddenly dizzy.
"Sit on the doorstep a bit." he said.
As she sat the doorstep seemed as familiar as though she had always belonged there.Through half closed eyes figures swirled. She heard men's voices raised in argument.
"United we stand."
"United, don't mek me laugh. There's no greater capitalist than the working man."
"Gerroff your soap box and put yer tanner in the kitty 'fore beeroff shuts."
The speaker rattled a man's cap. A large creamy white, jug, scrolled beneath the chipped lip, was passed to a thin dark girl. She emptied the silver coins from the greasy cap and disappeared into the street.
"Mek sure it wets your thumb," the men called after her.
"There you are," the small man said, pushing her forward. "They're all sitting on doorstep as usual."
"She's had a fall", he added.
The women did not move. One spoke, "We've bin waiting for you. Get your clothes off."
A small boy ran naked toward a long tin bath in the middle of the yard. He was stopped in his tracks by a small heavy busted woman.
"Wait while I scum it," Deftly she scooped the grey froth into a saucepan and threw it down the yard where it inched sluggishly towards the wall.
The woman's dark button eyes fixed on Jeanette. "Well," she said. "What you waiting for."
"You're muckier than me tonight so you can be last in," laughed the boy, "Come on."
Slowly she pulled off the tight gingham dress no longer surprised to see her short brown legs. This was where she belonged. Here in this terrace of six back to back houses.The doorsteps were chairs and tables for the whole family. Chips, dripping, bread and jam and even mugs of soup were all consumed sitting there.
After the bath, clad in pants and vest she crouched down with the group of newly scrubbed cousins flicking cigarette cards against the wall.
Her head drooped, she felt herself lifted, Heard a murmuring, "Mon petite chou chou," as she was laid on a lumpy bed already filled with other children.
Through the long sweaty hours she heard the voices of the grown ups lingering outside until the cold night air sent them in. And still their voices rose disjointedly.
She heard a woman's voice declare, "they've got baths and gardens."
A man laughed, "You've got a bath and a window box, what more do you want?"
The woman screamed at him above the general laughter, "Taps to let the water in and a plug to let it out."
As she drifted into sleep snippets penetrated her consciousness. "Two taps at sink-one with hot water!"
She awoke to voices raised in anger. A mans voice harsh and firm, "I don't care if the whole bloody lot go to Aspley. Were not going and that's flat!"
She felt the tears drying, itching her cheeks. The doorstep struck cold through her thin dress. She was alone, the bread and jam sticky in her hand.
They had all left the terrace -all the Aunties, Uncles and cousins but Dad wouldn't go. He'd found another house in the same district, near to Maman and Grandpere. They were her only companions now and the closer she drew to them the more isolated she became.
"Froggy, stinking froggy-go an eat frogs legs," childish taunts swirled through the fog of her mind.
"I was an outsider then and I've been an outsider ever since."
"What's that? What you saying dear?"
Jeanette dragged open her eyes to meet dark eyes in a shiny black face. "Where am I?" she asked.
A black hand held her wrist, "Don't worry now. You in hospital and you going to be just fine."
"The car-did I hit any one?"
"No, no- just one of those garden ornaments some stupid joker put in the road. Now, is there anyone we can contact for you?"
Jeanette shook her head. There was no one. She had lost touch with her family years ago. The move from the terrace had only been the first step. The eleven plus and a scholarship to the grammar school had created a greater chasm than mere space. War, college, marriage, each of life's milestones had taken her further away from her roots.
"They're everywhere! Blackies wherever you go." A voice from the next bed cut short her reverie.
"They should send them back!" The voice hissed.
Jeanette raised herself on one elbow to stare at the speaker. She met dark brown eyes in a yellow crinkled face that was some how familiar. "Do I know you? She asked.
"Shouldn't think so but I reckon I know you. Used to live down Hyson Green didn't you?"
"That was a very long time ago," Jeanette nodded and closed her eyes. She had no desire to renew this acquaintance. Then she began to laugh. It was to say the least ironic that this woman who resented and insulted the nurse could be one of those who had once called her ,"Froggy." But it wasn't funny really. She had lost all trace of her ethnic background but the insults were etched upon her soul.
Visiting time brought a procession to the next bed and the nurse fussed round Jeanette.
"My Grandparents were immigrants nurse, but no one would guess that now." She sighed, "Once we were a community."
"That's sad," the dark eyes smiled down on her. "No one should lose track of their roots. Are you sure their is no one- a friend perhaps?"
"No one." She had been too busy climbing the ladder to make friends. "I think I'll try to sleep now." She had never needed pity.
She closed her eyes but the murmur of voices from the next bed drew her attention. Nurse was telling that revolting woman about her background. Anger reared inside her as she sensed one of the visitors had approached her bed.
"Jeanette in't it?" A man's voice asked.
She opened her eyes to stare hostilely at the intruder.
"Jeanette Delaney, as was?"
She nodded briefly giving him no encouragement.
He cleared his throat nervously, "Only nurse told us. Small world in't it?"
Still she made no reply.
"Appen you don't recognise us. Well you wouldn't after all this time. Louise recognised you though."
Startled Jeanette sat up and gazed at the woman in the next bed. "Louise?" she gasped.
"Ay that's right. Your cousin Louise. I'm Victoire. It's a right turn up in't it.!"
"It certainly is." she replied. "A right turn up indeed. Talk about kettle calling frying pan."
"Oh ay." He wrinkled his forehead. "I'm not sure I follow that only I just want to say if you need somewhere to go, when you come out, you can come to us for a spell. We're still at Aspley. You used to like Aspley, when you was a kid, remember?"
"But I didn't"-she began. And then she remembered. The long hot summer when she had walked every Sunday from her home in Hyson Green to play in the garden in Minver Crescent.
The grass grew tall making an ideal prairie for cowboys and Indians. The Anderson shelter was the cave from which they attacked whooping and firing imaginary arrows. A magical world so different from her own small back yard and Auntie let her have a bath in the real bath, before she went home. The first time she had been so excited she forgot to take her vest off. But that was before the second move which had taken her too far away to make visits on her own. "It was a long time ago," she sighed.
"Yes well, we're still family," he said. "No matter what."
She clasped his rough tobacco stained hand, blinking away the tears threatening to cascade. "Ca va Victoire," she whispered. "Ca va."
07923 572 8612
Comments powered by CComment