Crying over spilt milk

Title Tile floors are hard, unforgiving, there is no give in them, no chance for anything falling to bounce, to somehow not shatter. A truth learned early. 

 

The house in Malvern, Elbury, was Victorian, grandly, even grossly, Victorian. Its rooms were cavernous, its ceilings high and its tile floor in the hall and in the porch hard, very hard.

The porch was a proper Victorian glass porch on the front of the house protecting the grand front door. It had greenhouse type slatted shelving all along the outer wall, its own door to the front path and lots of glass, three sides of glass, so that it completely enclosed the front door. The door to the porch lay to the left of the front door as you looked out. The porch functioned as a small greenhouse as well as protecting the front door from the weather.

When we first moved into Elbury my bedroom was in the attic. It had bars on the windows. Just as well for a boy who was rising five years old. The window were sash windows and opened upwards. A small boy could put one arm though the gap between the bars and the window frame and reach out. A small boy could pop his head out and look down. He could not quite get his shoulders through or get both of his arms out. They were very wise keeping small boys behind bars.

In my bedroom was my bed along one wall and boxes with my toys in along the other. In one of the boxes were lots of toy bricks, wooden bricks. Red, green, blue, yellow. All sorts of sizes. And I found a really good game. I could just reach out of the window and drop a wooden brick, which would bounce on the glass roof of the conservatory below, and then go skittering off on to the grass on the small lawn in front of the conservatory. When I had dropped a few bricks I would run along the top landing, down the narrow stairs from the attics, along the landing of the next floor, down the big stairs – or, if I wanted extra fun – sliding down the banisters, or sliding bump, bump, bump down the stairs themselves on the slippy slidey carpet – and along the hall, pull open the big front door, jump down the step into the porch, pull open the porch door and out on to the front path, skittering around towards the front gate, and then up on to the small lawn to find where the bricks had bounced to. Sometimes the bricks were not there as they had caught in the guttering on the front of the conservatory, but if they had bounced well enough then they would be there on the grass.

Some of the bricks were bigger than others. One of the big bricks went sailing down, down out of my hand, down past the window of the toilet on the floor below, down past the brickwork, down past the stone mullions, down and down on to the glass of the conservatory roof and, crash, splinter tinkle, tinkle, onto the tile floor below.

Mother was not pleased. Mother heard the smash, tinkle, tinkle and discovered my game. I did try to say it was not me, but the big green brick was there on the tile floor surrounded by all the shards of glass. She told me to stay in my room. She cleared up all of the glass. She had the windows of my room screwed shut.

My brother kept very quiet. His game was climbing out of his attic window by holding on to the stonework of the mullions and then into the valley of the roof. He and his two friends who used to come to stay, the Baldwin boys, used to think that was great fun. They could climb right up on to the ridges of the roof and sit there, feeling like conquering heroes, imagining themselves climbers of the Eiger, or of Everest itself. From the top of the roof you could see clear forty miles all the way to the Licky Hills near Birmingham, or, if you looked to their side, past the Clent Hills, you could just see the Wrekin poking its head up from the Shropshire plain.

My mother had become friends with the Baldwin’s father when she served on an RAF base during the war and he had been one of the pilots. The boys used to come and stay during their summer holidays when we lived at Bank Farm, to give them a change from town living. They lived in Sutton Coldfield, to the north of Birmingham.  They stopped coming to stay a year or two after the divorce.

I know how hard that tile floor was, how cold it was, how unforgiving and merciless it was from that day when we had just moved in to Elbury. We were just going out, my mother, my brother, my cousin Ann and I. My mother had just put my coat on me and was trying to do it up and I asked where my dog Waife was, and where Ginger the three legged cat was. My mother said they were staying at Bank Farm and were not going to live with us, but were going to live with the new people who had moved in there.

I flung myself down on those hard, cold, unforgiving, merciless tiles and the tears were torn from me. I howled. I wept. My forehead went bang down onto those tiles and I grappled their hardness. I shook and I dragged my nails across their cold, unyielding.

My father came in through the front door and shouted at me and at my mother. Their words burned fury and deep anger. The hard tiles were a safer place. My face pressed into them. My sobs let warm tears drop all over them until they were wet. I hurt with a pain that felt as if my chest were being wrenched open. Cousin Ann tried picking me up. I clung to the floor. She carried me to the bottom of the stairs and held me whilst the anger and word lashes of my father and mother filled the hall.

Then my father was gone and my mother came to Ann and I. My mother was ashen faced and stiff. She look at me with despair and spoke to Ann. Ann handed me over. My mother made me stand up and made me stop crying because “boys do not cry”. She looked bewildered. My brother was stone faced and silent. My mother shook me until I was completely silent and still. Then she said she would ask if we could have Waife and Ginger back, and sent me upstairs with Cousin Ann to go to my room.

Ann tried to get me to be interested in my toys. I just sat on the floor inert. Eventually my mother came up and told Ann to leave me and they both when down stairs.

I don't think I moved until my mother came up to take me down for a bath and got me ready for bed.

I know that she put me into bed and read a bedtime story, but the words did not go in. She drew the curtains and shut the bedroom door. I did not move. I was an empty shell.

A few days later my father drew up in the car just outside the garden gate. Waife was in the car and Ginger was in a box that he carried in. I sank my face into Waife's coat and wound my fingers into his fur. That evening I sat on the tiles of the hall by Ginger stroking him. I could not have minded how hard or cold those tiles were.

Once more I was to cry tears onto those tiles.

The milkmen delivered milk every morning. They would open the porch door and put the bottles on the tile floor. I liked helping my mother to collect the milk from there. Each day there would be the big bottles of milk and a special small bottle of milk for me. Every pre-school child had a free small bottle of milk every day to help them grow, sent by the government. I think this had started in the war and continued afterwards as part of rationing. Rationing continued for almost ten years after the war ended.

One day I was too enthusiastic to help. I grabbed at the small bottle. I grabbed it up. I fell out of my hand. Tiles are hard and unforgiving. It smashed and the milk went everywhere. My mother shouted at me to stand still. I burst into tears. I cried over spilt milk.

My mother bent down and held me until I stopped crying, and then told me that there was no point in crying over spilt milk. She took me upstairs to our kitchen and gave me a glass of milk from one of the other bottles. 

That is how I learned not to cry over spilt milk.