Fromelles, finally

 Donny

I sometimes wondered who that kid was who walked past the house. But I didn’t think a lot about it, I couldn’t be bothered. I don’t think I thought deeply about much at all in those days. I saw him go past three or four times, stopping briefly on one occasion to look at our windows. I was about 17 at the time and I reckon this kid would have been around 11 or 12. I didn’t know him but there was a familiar look about him I couldn’t put my finger on.

 

I was living with my grandmother, “Ma” to me and to most people who knew her.  Her house in working class Newcastle had been my home for most of the years I could remember. Living near the steelworks I learnt early to look at the wind pattern and help Ma get the washing on the line before the fine black soot belching from the ‘works would drift over and settle on everything. I hated that dust, I hated the way it made Ma cough, I hated the way it got up your nose and into your throat and over everything. It came to represent everything I hated about my life in Newcastle. But I couldn’t leave Ma, and at least I now had a job and could contribute to the house.

 

Your father isn’t a bad man, Donny, she would say. It’s the drink that does it. He was different, changed, when he came back from the war. We don’t know what those men suffered in those jungles with their diseases, and the Japs with their blood-thirsty attacks. And the rain, and the blood-sucking insects. Dad was different when he got home, couldn’t settle, quiet, wanted his own company.

 

Ma never spoke much about mum, and I never heard her talk badly about her. It took me years to realise how confused and messed up this made me. If my parents were this ok, why did I rarely see dad and never see mum? Why didn’t they want me? 

 

I remembered the arguments and fights. Being 5 and hiding under the blankets as a plate was thrown and shattered on a wall. Dad shouting about “him”. Mum taking me to her sister’s house one day, before dad got home from the pub, and with our clothes in the few small bags we could carry.

 

How long we stayed there I don’t know, but I remember clearly the day dad turned up. A sunny morning and I was outside climbing along the fence. Be a good boy and get your things, he said. To my mother he said he’s coming to live with me and Ma. And taking my hand, we left. I hardly saw her again after that day. There would be tears in the days to come, but that day I just walked to the bus-stop with dad, and hopped off the bus at Ma’s.

 

Dad got a job in the mines and we would go months without seeing him. In time, that grew to years. I was around 13 when the news came that he had been killed in a mine cave-in. Ma received some money from the mines, “compo” she called it, which would help now that there would be no more money from dad to help with the bills. Stirring the soup for dinner one night, out of nowhere the word “orphan” swum through my mind. No dad. No mum. Just me and Ma. I knew I could never leave her. She needed me as much as I needed her.

 

Where’s mum, I asked one night as we did the washing up. Ma, who was usually so forthright, was quiet for a while and didn’t look at me. I don’t know if she’s still in Newcastle, love. I think she might have moved away. She had family who needed her. Lying in bed later it occurred to me that if mum had family, then I had more family too. I knew dad had no brothers or sisters and there had never been cousins to play with, but it had never occurred to me that mum might have other family members. For the first time in years I felt an incompleteness, something undefinable that was missing, and the dull ache of loneliness.

 

Ma must have noticed a change in me, as she was uncommonly cheery over the next few days, pointing out things to me in the weather, the changing light of evening, or exclaiming over the cussidness of the laundry boiler. Anything to fill the silences. And the dull ache lessened.

 

I enjoyed school, but didn’t really fit in with my peers. They would leave as soon as they could, chasing the prized apprenticeships at the steelworks. I had discovered books and a world of the imagination. Ma had never had the money nor the inclination to buy books, beyond some  staple children’s fare. A collection of “Little Golden Books” had been accumulated in my childhood and I knew by heart the adventures of the “Poky Little Puppy”, the travails of “Scuffy the Tugboat”, and the wisdom of “The Little Red Hen”. The local Librarian took me under her own ample wing and over the years led me gently through Biggles, the Bobbsey Twins, and, when I was ready, Mark Twain and Dickens. I was happiest in my escape into my books.

 

I was the only boy in the school that year who completed the 5 years of Secondary school, and as the decision of “what next” loomed, Ma encouraged me to look at the “Office “ jobs  at the Steelworks. I had vaguely thought I would enjoy University, and pursuing an interest in History that had blossomed in my final school years, but I knew we couldn’t afford it. It would have meant leaving Newcastle, leaving Ma, not contributing to the household. Ma had no-one else to do the jobs around the house and yard. I knew she needed me.

 

And so I became an office boy at the ‘works. Very quickly the social distance between “the workers” and “the office” became apparent and was reinforced daily in all sorts of ways – the clear expectation that I would sit on the front seats of the work bus, the exclusion from the banter on the walk to our various places of work – even from those I had known at school, the simmering resentment when one of the apprentices came to the office. I didn’t within myself feel “superior” but every social interaction started to become coloured with a hierarchical stain. Even within the office, I felt an outsider. It took a few years before I understood that everyone else there had started after leaving school with the prized possession of an “Intermediate Certificate”, obtained after the exams at the end of the 3rd year of High School. No-one else had stayed the 5 years to complete their “Leaving Certificate”.

 

I couldn’t tell Ma how miserable I was becoming. Increasingly frail, she needed my support and the money I brought into the house. In any case, growing up with her I knew her credo was “just get on with it”. And so I did. After 5 years I had progressed to “Records Clerk”, had met a girl in the Payroll Office, and found there was a life beyond the narrow lanes of work and home.

 

Ma had had a bad fall, often felt dizzy, and stayed largely in bed or on the couch. I brought her tomato soup for lunch one weekend and our conversation turned to times past. I asked her about my father, and then my mother. Your mother was just a girl when she had you, said Ma. And your father was too mucked up by the war. He drank to get some peace in his head. He got better and got that good job in the mines, but he and your mum could never patch things up.

 

Why did he come and get me from mum? Ma looked sadder than I had ever seen her. He just thought it would be better if you came and lived here with him and me. But why couldn’t I see her? Even as I said it the shadow of a thought crossed my mind – why didn’t she want to see me?  Ma was silent for a while. She married again and was probably too busy with her new family. Did she have more children? I think so, said Ma, I think she had another two boys.

 

Each of us sat quietly. Ma seemed exhausted, and my mind was unable to hold consecutive thoughts. Did I have brothers? What did dad know? How old are they? Where does mum live? Did dad keep drinking up at the mines? It was the first time in years and years that the word “mum” had become a presence to me, and the longer it stayed the more disconcerting it became. I kissed Ma on the forehead, pulled up her coverlet, and took out the soup bowls to wash.

 

Have you met any of my brothers, I asked Ma the next day. Well, not exactly met them, but I have seen one of them go past the house from time to time. Instantly I knew exactly whom she meant. Ma I would like to meet them, I said. She was quiet for a long time. I don’t think that’s possible, dear. But Ma, they’re my brothers, dad is dead, surely my mum………I trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

 

Ma put her hand on my arm. She was silent and I could see tears in her eyes. Donny, I don’t think you can. Your mum is a lovely girl, but her new husband doesn’t want her to be upset. Ma, he’s hardly a new husband now. I am her son, don’t I have a right to know my mother. I know dad came and took me away, and I’ve never understood why she didn’t come to see me. Why not, Ma? Why just leave me?

 

We sat in a silence punctuated by quiet tears. Donny, it’s time you knew the truth. Your dad wanted to leave you with your mum. He knew that would be best for you, as hard as it would be for him. He was angry that your mum would not come back to him, and that she had taken up with another man while he was away. He had no time for her new man, but he knew the best thing for you was to be with your mum.

 

As Ma spoke, I felt increasingly bereft and alone. Your mum wanted you to live with her after she married again, but her new husband wouldn’t allow it. And he didn’t want her to keep seeing you.

 

Ma closed her eyes and lay back. A burden both lifted and newly laid. For me, nothing had changed and everything was different.