Secrets My Mother Kept (7 page)

The house was even more chaotic now than it had been before. Meal times were complicated, and sleeping arrangements were even more so. We now shared the bed settee with Mum in the kitchen, which meant that we stayed up very late every night. When the bed was put down, Margaret and I would snuggle up on each side of Mum. I remember so clearly how Mum would unfold her arms so we could rest our heads there. She always did this even when I shared her bed as an older child in the box room. It must have made her arms ache, but she never moved me away.

One bonus of having both Michael and Isobel and Peter and Linda living with us was that they both had tiny babies. Once they were born, Vicky in December and Carolyn in January, my brothers’ search for a place of their own began in earnest. This meant that Margaret and I spent even longer periods of time away from school. We were allowed to play with the cast-off bottles, dummies, nappies and other baby paraphernalia. Mum even showed us how to ‘swaddle’ our dolls in some old material she found for us. Margaret was in her element.

Soon after the babies were born, my brothers both managed to find flats of their own. Michael was given an army flat in Woolwich and Peter found a small flat on the ground floor of a converted house not far from my Aunty Maggie in Seven Kings. Mum would often take us to visit them but most often we went to see Michael, or rather Isobel and baby Vicky. The journey from Dagenham to Woolwich seemed never ending. We would walk to the bus stop to catch the 62 and then get the 106 from Barking. For me, the journey was fraught with danger. Would people look at us? Would they say something horrible to Mum? Would they shout at us and would Mum have to shout at them? There had already been so many times in my young life where exactly that had happened. Everything could turn on a sixpence, and happiness could descend into chaos with a single look, word or action.

There was one time when Margaret and I had been playing happily upstairs. Mum was just about to serve up dinner. It was one of the ‘plenty’ days. We were having meat pudding. The savoury smells from downstairs were wafting up to us and our tummies were getting excited at the thought of the feast to come. Aunty, Pat and Jo were home and Marion and Marge were doing their homework on their laps at the top of the stairs, under the landing light.

‘Shush,’ Marion complained to us. She always had the hardest homework as she’d won a scholarship to a very posh grammar school in Hackney called St Victoire’s. When the time had come for her to start she still hadn’t got her special grey uniform and the tailored stripy blazer that was a requirement. The girls who were there on a scholarship had been sent grant cheques to pay for their uniform, and so they were to collect them direct from the school office. When her first day came she was called with the group of three other scholarship girls to go and collect it. When she came forward the lady looked down through her glasses at the label on top of the neatly folded pile.

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said kindly but with a knowing look in her eye, ‘I’m afraid you can’t take yours today; it hasn’t been paid for yet.’ Marion slunk back to class with a dreadful dawning awareness that tomorrow she would be the only girl in the class with the wrong clothes. When she came home and told us, Mum was furious.

‘What do you mean she wouldn’t let you have your uniform?’ she said angrily. ‘Just you wait; I’ll write you a letter.’

It had taken more than a letter, Mum made many visits to the school and many protestations to the head teacher before the school accepted that the grant cheque had never arrived and Marion was allowed her uniform.

Today she had brought it home, and so was determined that this was a new start. Tomorrow she would look like the other girls, she would have done all of her homework and she would be able to walk into school without feeling that everyone was looking at her. She had even saved her bus fare by walking the three miles from the station so that she could buy some celebration sweets on the way home. It was going to be a good day.

Suddenly there was a sharp, loud
bang bang
at the front door. When Mum opened it the shouting started.

‘I want me bleeding money!’

I recognised the man from next door. Margaret and I sat huddled together on the stairs, terrified. Mum was soon joined by Aunty and Pat and they all began to shout together. Then the man’s wife Vera arrived on the doorstep.

‘You promised! It’s been over free bleeding weeks naw!’ she bellowed and began swinging for Mum. The noise reached a crescendo and suddenly Mum pitched forward, clutching her chest.

Aunty let out a cry. ‘Flo, oh no! Flo are you awright?’ Pat supported Mum, who looked as though she was going to pass out, but the shouting carried on. I wanted to run to Mum, but was holding tightly on to Margaret who was now crying.

‘It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s all right,’ I kept repeating, while I rocked back and forth, feeling as though my limbs were turning to liquid, and my tummy sinking in on itself. Aunty gave a huge push and managed to slam the door on the man and woman.

‘Flo, Florrie,’ she kept repeating as Mum slowly started to recover herself. Aunty was panicking as she always did. ‘Paddy, get the doctor! Flo, Flo, oh my gawd, you awright Flo?’

Pat calmly led Mum into the kitchen, sat her down and then went to put the kettle on. We stayed on the stairs trembling for a while and then crept down and peeped into the kitchen; seeing Mum sitting on her usual chair by the side of the fire, we rushed over to cuddle her. Marion and Marge had stayed at the top of the stairs but now made their way quietly down, their eyes big and round. No one enjoyed their meat pudding that night.

9

Margaret

Margaret had stopped eating. She was getting thinner and thinner and deep black rings appeared underneath her eyes. Mum was beside herself with worry.

‘Come on now, have a drop of tomato soup just for me.’ Margaret turned her head away. Nothing anyone offered her could tempt her to eat. She was six years old but looked about four as she began to shrink and disappear before us. Her eyes, always big, now took on the appearance of dark brown saucers set in her bleached white face. Her hair had always been much darker than mine, and this seemed to exaggerate her sunken features.

Mum took her to see Dr Stanton. We sat in the crowded waiting room with its cream-coloured, sterile walls. The chairs were hard and were lined up close together in rows so that there wasn’t enough room to move between them easily without having to push past people. I kept close to Mum but noticed one of the girls from my class at school just across the other side of the room with her mum. She had a big handkerchief held to her nose and kept coughing. We seemed to be there for ages when at last the voice that had been calling the patients one by one suddenly called out ‘Margaret Stevens’, so Mum got up and we walked towards the doctor’s room. As we passed by the girl from my class, she said in a loud voice, ‘Why is your sister called Margaret Stevens instead of Margaret Coates?’

As Mum pulled me forward, I turned and whispered, ‘That’s our special doctor’s name.’

I thought everyone had a special name they used just for when they visited the doctor’s; that was what Mum had told us. I wondered why this girl looked at me in such a quizzical manner.

Mum knocked on the door and we went into the room where the doctor sat smoking a cigarette.

‘Now then, what’s the matter with you, young lady, worrying your Mummy like this?’

Margaret just stared down at the floor. She attempted to bury her head in Mum’s ample bosom but Mum turned her back towards the doctor again so he could examine her.

‘Well young lady, you look fine to me.’ The doctor smiled at Mum. ‘I think she just needs fattening up!’

‘But she won’t eat, Doctor. She just turns her nose up at everything I give her.’

‘Well let’s give her a tonic and some Senokot granules in case she’s constipated – that can sometimes affect children in this way. If she’s not any better by next week bring her back.’ We left the surgery and walked slowly home.

Margaret wasn’t any better next week. Mum had duly cajoled and encouraged her to take the Senokot granules, which had to be mixed with water to make a muddy brown liquid drink. As Margaret would try to swallow it down she would retch and splutter. It was awful to watch and quite often I would hide away with my eyes screwed shut and my hands over my ears so that I didn’t have to listen.

Today Mum had bought a special ‘variety pack’ of cereals to tempt her. This was made up of eight individual packs and was, Mum said, very expensive. Margaret pecked at a bowl of Ricicles, but she didn’t really eat very much at all. I sat opposite her at the square wooden table, eating my cereal with enthusiasm, scraping up the last of the milk with my spoon. The kitchen wasn’t a large room but it was stuffed with furniture. Apart from the big old wooden table there was a settee and three armchairs: one for Aunty, one for Mum and one for Pat. They had wooden arms and legs and there was a huge, ornate sideboard across one corner. Fitted carpets were still considered a luxury and our kitchen floor was covered in oil cloth, which was a bit like linoleum or vinyl flooring. I was always fascinated by the multitude of tiny circular indentations that were made by the stilettos my older sisters wore, and would sometimes trace their shape with my fingers. There was also a big rectangular grey rug in the middle of the floor which, even though it was quite threadbare and worn, made the room feel warmer. Today, as it was winter, wet washing was hung around the room to dry. Margaret’s spoon dropped onto the table suddenly and it was as though she didn’t have the energy to pick it back up. Mum stood up and carried her over to the settee – it was too cold for her to go upstairs. She tucked a coat over her, and put a shovel full of coal on the fire.

I was lonely without Margaret to play with. We were only eighteen months apart in age and had always been very close, but now that she was ill I began to be a more solitary child. I had always enjoyed reading, and would find books around the house – often unreturned remnants of my siblings’ library visits. The whole family were now blacklisted, so although Margaret and I were sometimes taken to the library, we could never join or take books out.

I don’t ever remember learning to read; I just seemed to be able to do it one day. I do know that I was reading quite well before I started school so must only have been about four or five. Books were very important in my life. There were plenty around the house, even though many of them were for adults.

When Margaret was first ill she wasn’t yet able to read, so that became my job. Over the years I became adept at reading and sharing books with her. I wasn’t scared or nervous when I read aloud to Margaret in the little bedroom she now shared with Josie. It was really quite cosy in there. Josie had stuck lots of posters of Elvis Presley on the walls and she kept the room tidy. Mum sometimes even lit a little fire in the fireplace on the coldest days if we had enough coal. We read the Katy books,
Little Women
and
Jo’s Boys
; we devoured quantities of Enid Blyton and cried over
Black Beauty
. We explored some old poetry books that we found, and I sang the words to old songs and tunes that we half remembered. I would like to pretend that I did all of this because I was such a kind sister, but that wasn’t the truth. I did it because I was tormented with jealousy. Margaret was the centre of attention. She was tiny, vulnerable and listless and so my Mum, Aunty and all of my sisters did their best to cheer her up. This meant that she got special little treats, one of which was a box of chocolate kittens each individually wrapped, which I coveted. I longed to be ‘special’ and wished many times that it was me that was ill, but I hid my feelings from everyone. The best way for me to get the attention I craved was to be the kind big sister. So I was.

Margaret was ill for several years. Over that time she had periods when she seemed to get better for a while, and things would be almost back to normal. We would play out in the garden again and get up to our usual mischief, but then she would suddenly go back downhill and slip back into a state of decline. Her body took on the appearance of an undernourished waif and Aunty would joke, ‘Don’t stand behind the lamppost or we won’t see you.’

We started calling her ‘Maggie Aggie Baggy Pants’ and that name stuck with her until adulthood.

When you live with someone and see them every day you aren’t always aware of their decline but looking back at photos it is clear that she was shrinking away. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with her and I suppose these days she may have been diagnosed with an eating disorder or a more general ‘failure to thrive’. The causes and symptoms were varied and sometimes vague, but for Margaret I believe it was a kind of saddening.

10

A Family Christmas

It would soon be Christmas. The preparations were always very exciting. Mum would buy us some little ‘make your own’ Christmas cards which we would spend hours colouring and spreading with glue and glitter. We would make one each for everyone in the family, taking great care with each of them and carefully writing: ‘To . . . Merry Christmas from Kathleen and Margaret xxx’. We were also allowed to make paper chains from strips of paper – long looping strings of colour to hang around the walls and from the ceiling. Then the most exciting day would arrive and Pat would go to the market near where she worked in Poplar to get the Christmas tree. It would be placed in the same corner every year and we would cover it in all the old decorations. We would sing Christmas carols, and Mum would let us dance around the room like angels, and act out the Christmas story for our sisters.