Writing for Fun
June 2023
In Hindsight - Jenny Bowker
I was very little, so little I had to stretch my arm up to hold my mother’s hand. I was definitely under five years old because I had not started school.
I was tripping along Palmerston Road hanging onto my mother’s hand; I did not have the vocabulary then to describe what I beheld: a vision, two tall men were walking towards me. They both wore beautiful light summer sky blue suits – at this time in grey post war Britain, the prevailing colours of clothing was black, grey, navy and still khaki. They were laughing! Unheard of! What was there to be happy about? Many, houses had boarded windows, some were still showing signs of what we now call war damage, any flowers that had been frivolously planted among vegetables in front gardens were dusty, tatty, bedraggled. Unloved. My mother yanked my arm. ‘Shh. Don’t look,’ she hissed but then, one of the apparitions smiled at me . . . with a velvet voice and a huge beam of flashing white teeth, ‘Hello little girly.’ I looked at the speaker. I know my mouth fell open. It was as if a ray of sunshine warmed the air and lifted the greyness of the surroundings. He must have come from heaven. My mother yanked my arm so viciously it hurt and she almost spat, ‘Don’t look!’ and dragged me along faster than I could walk. I immediately hung my head in obedience but was sorry to see such wonderful angels of light go …
That evening my mother complained to my father that she (me) couldn’t take her eyes off ‘two niggers walking along the street.’ Tut tut.
My uncle Nob had a large black dog called nigger. I loved it when he came to visit and I could play with him and I thought what a lovely name for the two beautiful men I had seen and how suitable they should share the same name as my furry friend.
I had not started ‘senior’ school so I must have been 10 or 11. During the summer holidays I had a list of tasks to do before I was allowed to go to Lloyd Park. I had to be home by 3 o’clock. I had no watch. It was pure luck rather than judgement that I usually kept to this rule, made easier by the punishment for failing to do so. A minute late – a day in. I was not allowed friends in to play and my mother did not wish me to play with the ‘Oiks’ who lived in the street. One half of the road where I lived was occupied by a huge grammar school and so there were very few children out of school time anyway.
Released, I would run along Erskin road, Walpole Road, cross over the busy Forest Road, and pop into William Morris House at the entrance to Lloyd Park. I loved the museum. Some may have found it boring, fusty and dusty but I loved looking at the patterns, the paintings and exhibits. I also liked it that one of the curators called me Miss which made me feel very grown up. Then, skipping over the bridge, quick conversation with the swans (one black and 3 white) and checking that the moorhens were still keeping an eye on their red beaked broods, laughing at the ducks squawking and onto the playground.
Zip down the slide first, then queue up to have a go on the roundabout, then squealing with laughter on the swings and jostling with others to get onto the big seesaw where there must have been 15 or twenty of us. It was noisy boisterous fun and perfectly safe because there were always adults or parents on hand if ever there was an accident but nobody wanted problems and the Park Keeper ruled the day. Occasionally groups would form and we would spread our arms and spontaneously charge each other shouting ‘rat tat tat tat’ or weeee000ng as our airplanes danced among the swings. I don’t think any of the children knew the names of others. It wasn’t that sort of relationship.
It was getting late so I started for home, not so enthusiastically as I had arrived. I retraced steps. Meilvillé road, Greenleaf Road, Gainsford Road.
‘You’re late.’
‘Sorry Mum.’
‘You know the rule. You can’t go out tomorrow.’
‘But Mum, I’ve GOT to go. I promised.’
‘You’ve Got to go! Who did you promise?’
‘Stanley.’
‘Stanley? Who is Stanley?’
‘A boy and he’s going to fuck me.’
‘WHAAAAAT?’ Her eyes opened so wide her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline ... Her head jutted forward like a busy cock Pidgeon on the chase. Her arms jutted out sideward like crab’s claws and her hands became pincers. She grabbed hold of my hair and swung my body around, smashing my head into the half glass paned kitchen door.
‘You (bash) dirty (bash) little cow (bash).’
‘Mum (bash) you’ll break (bash)’ my nose was bleeding.’
‘You Bitch’, smash.
It happened. My head went through the glass pane, I looked down on the hall carpet be-speckled with glass shards and looked at the jagged pieces of glazing still remaining in the frame which were very near, my face and throat.
Fortunately, the breakage acted like a douche of icy water on my mother’s volcanic eruption. ‘Get out,’ she screamed. Uncle Harry who had been nervously standing behind the action was dispatched to clear up the damage and then my father came home. I was standing at the scullery sink trying to stop my nose from bleeding, Harry was feverishly sweeping when my father asked what had happed. ‘Oh, she’s so clumsy, she walked into the door.’
‘Oh dear. Have to be more careful,’ he said as he went to change out of his work suit!’
I had no idea why what I had said could have resulted in such an explosive reaction and furthermore, my mother had lied which is, as we all know, something we should never do.
I was 11 and had started attending William McGuffie sec mod school, much to my mother’s chagrin but my father had been seriously ill and the question of my schooling had taken a back seat. There was a girl at the new school named Pauline Smith. I knew she would never have been smiled upon by my mother but I really held her in high regard; for one thing she used the ‘F’ word with volume and frequency. I still had no idea what the word signified but I knew it was a really BAD word so when Pauline used it, I just smiled knowingly. I can’t say I liked her because she was a bully. A few of the girls were sporting brassieres (I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to use this word – so I didn’t) and she would pinch them in the changing room and be rude to them. I wasn’t so far advanced, so for a time I was not bothered by this behaviour until I was among the last to comply to budding girlhood, then the teasing commenced. l digress.
I came home from school one day. My father was home I walked in hung my satchel up and came in saying, ‘Mum, what does a prostitute mean?’
Again the WHAAAT screeched out and the belligerent stance reappeared.
‘Oh, Pauline Smith said that Miss Clark (the needlework teacher) is a prostitute.’
A high-pitched scream. ‘You can go to prison for saying that – whack – split lip this time, ‘You wicked little cow,’ arm raised for another southpaw blow but my father interrupted saying, ‘You are spiteful, May.’ My mother shouted at me to ‘get out!’ which I did with alacrity. She left the dining room and took weeks before she spoke to my father. I hid myself in the downstairs bathroom tending to my swollen, bleeding mouth and reflected.
In hindsight, I learnt never to ask my mother ANYthing unless I had some idea what the answer might be; Always read the signs and back away if pugnacious body language resembled mating pigeons appeared and the saddest thing was that the lovely name given to the heavenly apparitions was not always lovingly meant. I also became best friends with a dictionary ...