Aunty Lily Read online

  Katherine and Richard stumbled in looking bleary eyed, and you wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong with Nurse Chadwick. She started bustling around quite like her old self. “Hello, my little chickens,” she cried. “Come and see what your mummy’s got.”

  They climbed onto the bed. Richard took one look at you and said your were ugly—well, he would, wouldn’t he—and Katherine asked to hold you, but you let out such a blood curdling yell, she tossed you into the air and according to Richard, you bounced twice before I caught you. Now, I ask you, would any of this have happened at Bond Street Hospital? No, I don’t think so, she said, answering her own question.

  Of course, your dad went off to work as usual—couldn’t afford to miss a day’s work—and on the way he stopped off to tell Nellie Swan she’d be needed. Do you remember Nellie? A rough diamond of a woman, who worked for the welfare? She would do the cooking, the laundry, and housework until I was back on my feet.

  So, Jen, in answer to your question, no, you were not born at Bond Street Hospital.

  For a moment, I couldn’t say anything—I couldn’t find any words to make sense of what I was feeling, and so I said the first thing that popped into my head.

  “What happened to Nurse Chadwick?”

  “Oh, she was a real trooper. She jumped on her bicycle and pedaled the three miles back home. She’d no sooner arrived when she was rushed into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. On her return home from the hospital, the first thing she did was to take a taxi at her own expense to our house to check up on us both. She said she’d neglected her duties for far too long. They just don’t make them like that any more, our Jen.”

  As my mother talked, a rush of memories flooded through me. When my father died, it had taken me a long time to get over his death—I felt as if he had deserted me somehow. For months afterwards, I had the same dream: he was in the secret service on a mission which he could tell no one about. One day, wearing a navy blue military uniform, he came back and just like that everything was all right again. I suppose even as an adult, I had been living my life still needing to know that everything was going to be all right again. Finding out after so many years that my father had performed for me this, oh, so precious task seemed to come as a message directly from him. Standing in my kitchen in Connecticut with the telephone in my hand, an umbilical cord of sorts connecting me to my mother, a strange sort of peace descended upon me. Once more I could feel the beat of my father’s presence, once more I could feel his gentle touch, and once more I could feel his deep and abiding love.

  As if lost in her own thoughts, my mother whispered softly, “So, thanks to your dad, Jen, everything was all right in the end, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, Mum,” I said with a smile. “In the end, everything is just fine.”

  Paying Homage

  THE NURSING HOME had been built in the 60s and was in need of extensive renovation. However, when I walked in and sniffed the air, I could detect no whiff of urine under the scent of institutionalized food that hung in the air—a good sign, I thought.

  A large woman, one of the staff, poked her head around the door of the office. She had black, spiked hair, multiple piercings, and sported a huge smile that revealed a broken front tooth and several gaps, the result, no doubt, of years of neglect and sporadic British dentistry. My brothers had looked into other more upscale nursing homes, but my mother wouldn’t have been happy in such places. Hadrian House, by contrast, was in the village where she had lived most of her life, which meant that her neighbors and friends could visit easily. The caregivers here were local people, too, a little rough around the edges, but—according to my brothers—had compassionate hearts and unflagging good humor.

  “I’m here to see my mother, Mrs. Blount. She moved in recently.” My mother wasn’t expecting me. I had just arrived from the States and had driven straight to Hadrian House from Heathrow. My visit was a surprise—a distraction of sorts to help smooth over the move from her bungalow into the nursing home.

  “You must be looking for Barbara. She’s in the lounge.” She pointed the way. I thanked her and headed toward the door.

  As I walked in, a bow-legged old man with a walking stick was leaving. “Hey up,” he roared, “has my bloody car been fixed yet?” For a moment, I thought he was addressing me when suddenly the black, spiked hair reappeared, “Watch your language, John. It won’t be done until next week.”

  “Bugger!” he swore as he hobbled off. I found out later that John had no car and wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.

  I glanced around the lounge, searching for my mother. To the left, old ladies and old men resided in various states of consciousness. Some stared vacantly ahead, others snored loudly. One old lady was fast asleep. Her top dentures had fallen out of her mouth and sat on her chin grinning like a disembodied Cheshire cat. Another lady, her eyes, large and forget-me-not blue, gazed vacuously in my direction. Her beautiful face and indiscriminate smile warmed me—and the room. To the right, it was a different story: the residents chatted, read the paper, or tried—unsuccessfully—to watch the television. This was the “with it” section, and I was relieved to see my mother among their number.

  My relief was somewhat short-lived. She sat hunched over in her wheelchair and her thin arms stuck out from the short sleeves of her purple blouse like chicken legs; her chin rested on her hollow chest and she snored quietly. She was a small, wizened shell of a woman who bore little resemblance to my mother. Sadly, I sat in the chair next to her and waited until she woke.

  A lady opposite peered at me over the edge of her paper. She nodded toward my mother. “She saw the Queen Mother yesterday. Said she was wearing a yellow hat with feathers all around it—and the Queen Mother was waving to her. Standing behind her on top of the church wall, she said there was a full gospel choir singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.” She snorted, making it clear she resented my mother’s presence in the “with it” section.

  “Well,” I responded haughtily, “If you’re going to hallucinate a full gospel choir, why not invite the Queen Mother along to listen?” The woman didn’t answer but quickly disappeared behind her paper.

  And perhaps, I thought to myself, my mother wasn’t hallucinating! A spiritualist all her life, she has always lived close to the world of the dead. Perhaps she actually did see the Queen Mother, a sort of royal Charon waiting to transport her from the world of the living to the world of the dead, with a gospel choir of angels ready to serenade her as she crossed.

  Just then, Mother’s eyes flickered open. “Hello, Mum,” I said quietly.

  It took a moment for her eyes to focus, but then she recognized who I was—another good sign.

  “Oh, you’re lucky, our Jen” she smiled as the tea and coffee trolley arrived. “You’re just in time for elevenses.” Taking my hand conspiratorially, she whispered, “They give us biscuits, too.”

  Her lack of surprise at my arrival was typical. Not long after I had moved to the States, I visited her without warning. Back then when she opened the front door, she just looked at me and tutted, “Well, I’d better put the kettle on.” It was nice to know that, in this respect, Mum hadn’t changed much.

  Then, as everyone settled down to enjoy their tea or coffee, my mother made sure she had their undivided attention. “This is my daughter from Chicago,” she announced with the intonation of someone whose daughter has recently received the Nobel Peace Prize. And it wasn’t true. I no longer lived in Chicago, but Connecticut. She had known that for a long time, but she loved the idea of Chicago because it had a much more dangerous ring to it, as if I were some mobster’s moll.

  And she was not disappointed—an impressed chorus of “Well, I never!” rose up as one voice.

  After tea, we visited her room, which did smell of urine. Oh, well.

  “This is where I live now, our Jen,” she said sadly.

  The walls were bare; her move to the home had been somewhat rushed and my brothers, Richard and John, had time
only to transport the necessities. Since my sister Katherine is in a wheel chair and couldn’t help, I told my brothers I would take care of making her room more like home when I arrived. It was the least I could do after they had done so much. But in that bare room, my mother seemed frailer somehow—lost in a world and body that had betrayed her. No one looking at her now would see even the shadow of the impressive woman she had once been.

  My mind wandered to the past. We had lived in a three-bedroomed council house on Charnwood Avenue in Thurmaston. My father worked in construction, a plasterer by trade. My mother didn’t work outside the home. By all measures except one, we were poor. The house had an outside toilet next to the washhouse, which was a square, concrete room containing a sink, a mangle9 and a dolly tub, a free standing zinc container shaped like a barrel where my mother did all the laundry.

  One wash day, when I was probably about five years old, I went in to ask her an important question. Though she was lost a cloud of steam, I could see the impressive muscles of her arms bulging with the effort of thrusting the podger again and again into the tub filled with hot soapy water and bed sheets. The podger was a long stick with a copper bowl on the end with holes around its rim and shaped liked a toilet plunger. Really it was just a step up from rubbing the laundry between two boulders by the side of a river.

  “What is it, my little chicken?” She had abandoned the podger and with one hand was now using a pair of wooden tongues to haul the waterlogged sheets out of the tub and feed them between the rollers of the mangle. With the other hand, she turned the handle of the great wheel with its vicious interlocking green teeth, which made the rollers go round. We were terrified of the mangle because years ago, those vicious green teeth had bitten off my grandfather’s thumb.

  “Muuumm? Can I keep what’s in my pocket?”

  She paused and straightened. “Well, I suppose that all depends on what it is. Can I see it?”

  I hesitated and then produced the field mouse. “His name’s Malcolm.”

  My mother looked at the small creature and then at my earnest face. “Do you know where Malcolm’s mummy is?” I shook my head. “Don’t you think his mummy will miss him if he came to live with us?” I hadn’t thought of this. “Why don’t you play with him the rest of the day? Then, you can let him go back to his mummy in time for tea.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. “You’ll love it, Malcolm,” I said enthusiastically. “My mum makes the best toys in the world!” And she did. I took him into the kitchen where we played with the large can of sand that came with an old battered tray and a bizarre assortment of bowls and spoons. As I poured and mixed and spilled, Malcolm ran up and down the miniature Sahara Desert I created. When he lost interest, I took him for a walk on the tin can stilts my mother had made by turning the cans upside down and attaching a long wire handle to each. “We’ll break our bloomin’ necks, Malcolm,” I laughed imitating my mother.

  Before I let him go, I took him for a ride on Dobbin. We had two ponies, Dobbin and Hercules, which Mother had made from two discarded sawhorses. She had made two saddles fashioned from old towels, stirrups and reins made from neighbors’ discarded dog leashes, and had attached wooden hobby-horse heads replete with woolen manes—at the other end were long woolen tails.

  Mum made everything magical. Years later when I visited with my own children, Ben and Andrew, they, too, fell under her spell.

  “Hi, Grandma!” yelled Ben when we first arrived. “We just came on a bus filled with escaped convicts!”

  “Well, we’ll have to call you Pip from Great Expectations then!” she exclaimed, which pleased the boys to no end.

  “They were released convicts,” I explained quickly, but no one was listening to me.

  “Dave’s coming to Chicago to baby-sit for us, isn’t he Andrew?”

  “Oh, I’m sure your daddy will love that!” laughed my mother.

  Andrew pulled on her skirt. “Can we go outside to play, Grandma?”

  “Of course you can, my little chickens!” They’d never been called that before and they ran off giggling. “Just remember,” she yelled, “you mustn’t play on people’s lawns. You must play in the street.”

  Their heads spun around and their eyes sparkled. In one swift stroke, all my years of careful parenting unraveled before my eyes. Later that night, before they climbed into bed, she took them into the back garden. She put her hands to her lips. “Shhsss! Just watch!” She held a saucer of milk. “Horace! Come on, my baby!” Soon, they heard a snuffling sound and out of the darkness a small hedgehog, a creature my boys had never seen before, shuffled across to my mother’s outstretched hand, nudged it gently, and then started to lap up the milk. The boys’ eyes were as wide as the saucer!

  I smiled as I thought of this and once more felt the magic of my own childhood return. I looked down at my mother. How had this frail woman managed to conjure it all and do all the cooking and cleaning for a family of six—seven when granddad came to live us? Not to mention ironing all that laundry using an old metal iron she heated on the top of the stove. She ironed everything—even our underwear.

  As if she had followed my mind into the past, my mother said, “I was just thinking about poor old Richard. Do you remember when he got the cane?” The disciplinarian’s cane was a thin whippet of a stick made of rattan that sliced through the air with a threatening hiss. I remembered it with a shudder.

  At four-fifteen on that afternoon, Katherine and I burst into the kitchen, which was filled with the aroma of homemade Chelsea buns. “Wash your hands and sit down,” cried Mother. “The buns will be ready soon.” We did as we were told and soon a mound of buns—the icing melting down their warm sides—appeared on a plate.

  “Where’s Richard,” my mother wanted to know. Just then, he arrived, pale-faced and serious. “What on earth’s the matter?” But he said nothing and went up to his room. That night, he ate little supper, and when we were all in bed, we heard him sniffling in the dark. The next morning he tried to eat some toast, but threw up instead. Mum put her arms around him. “What’s wrong my little chicken? Surely you can tell your mummy,” she crooned. Richard broke down, “Mr. Atkinson,” he sobbed, “is giving me the cane today.”

  She didn’t ask what Richard had done to deserve it; instead, she threw on her hat and coat, put John in his pushchair, and accompanied us to school, which had never happened before. Even on our first day of infant school, she had kissed us goodbye at the garden gate and sent us on our way with all the other kids from the street. But not today! After she deposited us in the play ground, she marched inside to Mr. Atkinson’s room where, as she told Father later, she gave him a piece of her mind. “I don’t want to know what Richard did yesterday to get the cane, because I’m sure he deserves it, but to make him, or any child, worry for a whole day and night. Well, that is just downright cruel! It’s unworthy of you.”

  To his credit, Mr. Atkinson looked shamefaced and withdrew the threat to cane Richard.

  “Yes, you will cane him, Mr. Atkinson! If a child of mine has done something wrong, then he should be punished. Just cane him right away next time.”

  My mother sighed at the memory and then she brightened, “It’s nearly lunch time! And guess what? Spotted dick for pudding today!” This British delicacy is a steamed sponge pudding made from flour, milk, sugar, beef suet, and raisins—hence the “spotted”—where the “dick” came from I’ve no idea, but it was our favorite pudding when we were children. How could I resist?

  When we entered the dining room, my mother told me to push her toward a table at the back of the room where all the “with-its” were seated. It was full. She glared at the interloper. “You’re sitting in my seat! I always sit here.” Her voice rose a little.

  “We’ve been telling her, Barbara, but she won’t move,” the others at the table assured my mother. The small wiry woman ignored them and held her ground. I could see immediately that this was more than a battle over a seat—this was a battle against the cr
eeping effects of dementia, a claim to mental acuity to which this woman and my mother only tentatively clung. Barely able to walk, Mother struggled to her feet. Immediately, I knew things were going to get ugly. Though she was kind and generous to a fault, you just didn’t mess with my mother.

  After we were grown up and had left home, every Saturday morning Mother caught the bus into town to do her weekly grocery shopping at the Leicester City Market—and, if the truth be known, to stop and enjoy half a pint of bitter with a friend at the pub before she came home.

  One Saturday morning as the bus was heading into town, it made a stop along Melton Road, and two unsavory looking teenagers boarded the bus. Their greasy hair fell in long stringy tendrils down the backs of their battered leather jackets. As soon as they sat down, the pair lifted their legs over the seatbacks in front of them so that their feet rested on the vacant seats. They leaned back like kings, and their eyes, narrow slits in their ferret-thin faces, flickered around the bus just daring someone to challenge them. No one did. Gradually, the bus became crowded and the only remaining seats were those occupied by the teenagers’ feet. At the next bus stop, an old lady climbed on board. She looked at the teenagers, at the potentially empty seat, but was either too timid or too frightened to ask them to move their feet. My mother was neither. “So, did you buy four tickets, then?” she demanded pointedly.

  Sneering, they turned to her. “What do you mean, luv?” The word “luv” was a threat.

  “I mean,” she said, leaning forward so that they were sure to hear, “you’re taking up four seats while this lady has to stand!”

  Suddenly, a man from the back of the bus yelled, “That’s right, me duck, you tell ‘em!” Immediately, Mother shot down this potential ally, “And you can shut up! You didn’t say anything, did you?” Turning once more to the young men, she hissed in an icy voice no thicker than a scalpel, “Now, you take your feet down, or I’ll take them down for you.”