The Museum of the Mothers

Ah – Welcome.

So glad you could make it.

Come this way.

Follow me.

Through the revolving doors at the end of this corridor.

You have been expected: most people make their way here in the end.

We keep the lighting deliberately low. Too much and the exhibits begin to fade, as we wouldn't want that, would we?

Now, who was it you wanted to see?

Ah – I see. You are not really too sure whether you want to do this or not.

I know: it is hard, very hard.

Most people find on their first trip that it is, how can I put this – challenging?

I mean, it is the answer, well, a sort of answer to some of those very dark questions, isn't it, and if the answers are not quite what you expected, well, that is disturbing - I do understand that.

I have seen some very strange and very distressing reactions to what we have in here; but that can't be helped. We only have the exhibits in the condition in which they were deposited, and then time does take its toll.

The more we expose the exhibits to the light, the more they deteriorate. Come in quite complete they do, but then, visit after visit, they get exposed, more stripped away. Some are really quite tatty, you know. Viewing, after viewing. What is to be expected? What was it that the visitor wanted to see? They do not seem to realise that with each seeing they take something away. After all, that is why you all come, isn't it?

Mind the steps.

I know that the lighting is dim, so please be careful. You really wouldn't want to crash into someone else’s cabinets would you?

Now – here we are.

Gather round.

Are you a party or have you all just arrived at the same time?

It is important to know. You see, if you are all together it is so much simpler - we don't need a separate guide for each of you then as you all have some interest in seeing each others exhibits. But if you are all separate, then I must ask you to wait here until we can get enough guides: one each I am afraid - unless you are in groups that is?

Much simpler if you are in groups.

So are you a party?

Ah – some of you are.

Oh good.

If you are part of a party would like to stand together so we can see what groups you are in - then we can assign you to an escort.

Now - what about the rest of you?

Are you all positive that you want to do this alone? Some people do find it very hard.

A little support? A bit of company?

We do find that people who do this in groups or pairs stay a lot longer. I like to think they get more out of it. Besides, seeing other people's exhibits does give some sense of perspective to seeing your own: So much more balanced.

We do find that sole viewers often leave in a very distressed state, and, judging by the ware on the exhibits, they have taken very little away with them.

Hardly worth it for all of that distress I would have thought. I don't know. Perhaps we all need the insight that viewing with others gives us - makes it possible for us to take more away; to benefit more. But who knows? It is not for me to say what you should get out of this visit, now is it?

So I shall let you decide - do you want to view on your own, or would you like to pair up, or even, perhaps, make up a small group?

I shall let you deicide what you want to do whilst I sort out those three big groups we have got; I do need to go through the preliminaries with them before they set off with their guides; meanwhile you can decide what how you would like to do this. I does help us if you are in groups, but that is only incidental - it really is up to you. What you want will dictate what we will do - but it will all take so much longer to organise if you all want to have solo viewings. Anyway – I shall be back in a while, when I have sorted out the others.

Ah – sorry to have been so long; was not quite as simple as I thought; they were groups, but not groups of relatives. So much easier to organise when it is relatives; then at least they all have known the people they are seeing. No need to go into all that background, you see, well, not as much anyway. Relatives should all know the history of the deceased, at least in broad outline if not in fine detail.

Surprising how much extra comes pouring out when they start the viewing with relatives though; each one seems to remind the other of this or that.

Women especially seem to want to tell each other some much more detail, as if they have to work out a whole web of family history before they are free to go.

Dreadfully superficial some of it. That is the down side with family groups.

Superficial!

So much that cannot be said, you see: so many little family taboos and fictions. Some times it take lots of visits before they can even being to look at the obvious features of the exhibits. Sort of unsayable so much of the time.

Then very often, they have to sneak back, one at a time, to look at the bits they dared not mention when the others were there.

Non-family friends are so much more forthright about the exhibits. Get through it all so much quicker. And everyone seems to take away so much more.

So. Have you decided whether you would like to view on your own, or would you like to go in groups?

AH – groups. Oh good. So much simpler – and I am sure you will get so much more out of it this way.

Now. Mixed groups or single sex?

We do find that women work very well together, but men tend to be a little reluctant if they are in an all male group. Some groups of men are almost impossible. They just freeze up and will not look at what they are seeing.

Others are not too bad. But if they have been to boarding school, or have been in the forces, it is more or less pointless. Nothing happens. They could come a thousand times, and nothing has changed. It is as if they want to turn the exhibits into shrines or something: too holy to be even looked at. Mostly men on their own do that.

And Man who has been to boarding school and then in the forces, they are the worst. When they die the exhibit is still here, just as pristine as when it came in, then what are we to do with it? There might be other relatives, in which case there is hope. Someone might do all the viewing necessary – but is is only a hope.

But women - now that is different. Dissection! Especially if they come with close friends. They really go at it. They really won't let the other not see what they are seeing. They will just keep on and on at it until the other gives in and looks fully. Close friends are good, as they feel that they just have to tell them everything, every last detail, no mater how intimate. Nothing is left unsaid eventually. Works wonderfully. In not too many trips the exhibit is quite used up.

Ah good – you have all decided.

OK. If you are five groups – that it, two or three together does work well!

Not quite so sure about you seven though; always get the feeling that some get left out a bit when the number is that big; too easy for the quiet ones not to say what they need to say, and then they only find they have to come back so much more often. But if you are happy with such a big group? - OK – your choise.

The other guides are on their way. They will be with you in a minute. If you would all just stay in the groups you have chosen.

And you sir, if you would stand over there, a guide for solos will find you.

You are sure, sir, that you want to do this on your own?

Ah well!

I have arranged for a special guide for you. They are fully trained in shock recovery. Some people just are not prepared for what comes out of the experience, and we wouldn't want you permanently injured, now would we?

Some people, men in particular, do not handle the emotional recoil well. They do not know what has hit them and are left either totally confused or in compete denial. Either way they have not benefited as they might, and it may take months, no, even years of remedial work for them to recover the ground they have lost. Such a shame. After all, the point is to dissolve the exhibit over time. And that is never going to happen if they are covered with an extra layer of hubris each time, now will it.

OK. If you two would like to come with me. I shall take you through the initial briefing before we proceed to the viewing hall where your exhibits are.

First, you must understand what the exhibits are.

When people die they not only leave a body, but they also leave a extra-personam. It is a bit like the skin a snake leaves when it sheds its skin, only it is made up of all they ever did or said ossified into a shell. A sort cast of what they were.

It looks like them. It sounds like them. It speaks like them – only it is frozen in place, stopped in time the moment they died. We get these extra-personam brought here and we put them into display cases.

Far better than having ghosts drifting around all over the place, with the advantage that they can be viewed whenever relatives or friends want.

Ghosts are just so unpredictable and unreliable. Besides people are usually so disconcerted by ghosts turning up at random, that they do not make the most of the opportunity. What we found was that there was a real need for more orderly viewings – hence this museum was established.

We decided to focus on mother's first as they seem to be the one's that people most want to see – hence the name of the museum – but we are expanding the collection to include other relatives and acquaintances. Should cover the entire range in time. I believe copies of our museum are springing up all over the world.

We do discourage vicarious viewing - preferring only people with whom the exhibit was actually acquainted in real life to view them; or friends of those people if accompanied by the acquaintance. We do find that viewing with a friend, or at least a mentor, is far more fruitful – a soul guardian ad litem is quite a good idea if a good friend is not available – very professional they are.

You may find the exhibits look a little strange at first. You must understand what you are seeing is a condensate of all that that person was, so it contains all the visual images that they were, from babyhood to death. Many people find this rather difficult to focus on at first, but, if you stick with it you will find that the swirling of images stabilises, and the one that you are most used to will emerge as the dominant one. It should be quite recognisable as the deceased at one or other times of their life – usually that stage that the viewer most wants to understand about.

Occasionally some exhibits are more unstable, but we find that is often to do with the agitation of the views; although there are some that are simply utterly unstable; we wonder if they might have been like that in life?

It is a good idea when viewing to have clearly in mind what it is you need to know or what it is you want to show about the exhibit to the people you have come with. It is not ever possible to get a fully rounded view of the exhibit, so it is better to focus on just a few things. If each visit you make you choose a few different things to deal with, then in no time you will have got though the whole process of decomposing the exhibit, and all we will have is a nice empty display case ready for the next occupant.

Sadly, there are not that many visitors who manage a complete decomposition, who reach a point of resolution for each point they they needed to examine about the relationship they had with the deceased. Many give up the process and leave us stuck with a part decomposed extra personam. Most unfortunate.

But we cannot make peole come can we? Shame really, but there you are.

Now, I do hope you have a clear mind as to what you want to discover today - what aspect of the exhibit it is that you want to deal with. You will find a number of buttons on the front of the display case that should help. They each activate some aspect of the exhibit – anger, laughter, sadness, happiness and so on.

We do advise uttomost caution when using the lust botton.

Finally, I do have to warn you that you will be entirely responsible for any damage you do to the case. Please, no matter how enraged you may feel about the exhibit, remember that it is only an image in there, an extra personam, not the real person any more. It cannot respond to you in any way.

All that you are doing is carrying out a process of slow exorcism. When you have taken away all that you came for then they will be completely decomposed and we can reuse the case.

And now, if you would like to follow me I will take you to meet your deceased's extra personam.

Jung & I

Pretentious of me, but, well, why not? Am I not also just a human-being attempting at being? Stumbling and fumbling, tripping and falling, and mostly failing – or is that last point my labelling myself with negative spin? I don't know. And perhaps that is the point. We cannot know, not in some deep, organised final, absolute, truth from all points of view, ultimate frame sense. In a relativistic universe all we can aspire to is some sort of truce of understanding – a partiality that functions – a survival map.

The very paradox of life, at its core, is that we must believe in the world we inhabit, believe the fiction that we impose, take that mind-trick as reality. If we do not believe whole-heartedly then we tear ourselves apart. We deny the reality of reality - or at least of the only reality we can have: none other is on offer. We must have absolute conviction that the ground under our feet is indeed ground under our feet, that the sky over our heads is indeed sky over our heads, that what we touch and feel is as we perceive it to be. We must not step outside of that illusion. Yet at depth we know it to be an illusion; know it cognitively; know it logically; know it scientifically: but if we dare to know it with our whole being then we walk the path of madness.

Such a place is a place of gut wrenching fear, or numbness, or terror. To dissociate from the reality of reality is to enter a very dark hell. The longing that you have for reality to be real once more, to walk and talk, to wake and sleep, to feel and touch, to hear and see once more as when you were a child, when reality was truly real and sharp and pressed upon you with a keenness, that longing is unbearable. So we live the paradox, no, more, we embrace it, oh how we must embrace it.

It is as if we were passengers upon a ship at sea, a ship with no windows or door to the outside. A ship that contains all that we know and all that we can know. It furnishing and light, its rooms and spaces are the sum total of our world. They are the limits of our being. Yet it is but a ship tossed on a vast sea. A vast sea with deeps and shallows, with storms and calms, with unending skies and dark nights. A sea in which lurks who-knows-what monsters and apparitions, for it is a sea which we will never glimpse.

At times we may get intimations of the sea's existence. Our world is tossed by its storms and we are thrown about by its tumults – but yet we have no way of referencing it. It is the outside that we can never access. We can, by act of imagination, by picturing, by turning down the volume of the rush-a-day life of the inboard, of what we take to be the totality of our reality - this dance of life - and just for a time sense the dark sea on which we travel. Then we will understand that all that we see, all that we know is but the inside of an ocean tossed ship.

Like Jung I suffered, as do many, perhaps most even, a mid-life crisis. Perhaps it is no more than the shedding of a younger skin, something that we must all do, so that we may grow old usefully and not trapped in our youthful follies. There is something sad about older people who are still try to be no more than their younger selves. The Peter Pans of this world, be they male or female. The older women dressing the same as their daughters and going out clubbing, competing together for the same men. The older men still trying to be seen as young and vital, with flash cars, gold chains and designer watches. A face-lifted society forever pretending to be what they once were.

To survive we often feel that we need to devise a map of this existence we are in – to help us come to terms with it, to help us to regain a sense of sanity. To put the “reality” that we know it into place. To understand it in a wider context. To see the life-ship upon the sea as it were. For Jung it was the mandala, the recurrent pattern of the quaternion and the circle that provided him with a key. With it he built his map - the cross sectional view of the levels of the self. For me it was the pentagon emerging from a scattering of rune stones.

The insight inspiration, the leap of imagination that produced my map was, when it happened, overwhelming. It poured into me and swamped all other thoughts and activity. It was a knowing of a deeper understanding, a wordless understanding, an emergent eureka. I felt so much at peace – a feeling of a great mental battle won - and yet I had not been aware of the battle, just the angst, just the nausea, just the perplexity, the grinding sense of unease. Worse, a sense of a world pattern in which I could no longer live arranged as it was. I felt the sharp edge of the paradox. I knew reality to be an illusion within an illusion, and it made no deep sense.

My world had crashed. I was no longer fit for purpose. My occupation had gone. My house had gone, carried away on a tide of debts that were not of my making but on a whirlpool of chaos generated by the flounderings of my wife under which we were sinking. My daughter had tried to kill herself, the opening salvo of a creeping guerilla war that was her own struggle for sanity and her own attempt to survive her own life-pain.

All this left my emotions mind-wrenched. I had an unvoiced deep fear that at bottom all of these were due to my inadequacy, my falling short of being a proper man, of my being a halfling, a biological error, a freak. Being a man was outwardly an illusion, and inwardly a delusion. In the end the double subterfuge had been shown for what it was – a mockery of adulthood. I was simply a non-real person, a botched attempt of biology that was so dreadful that it could not even be named. A hermaphrodite masquerading as a human. I knew with absolute certainty that I was only tolerated if I hid under a cloak of shame, that inner truth of what I was utterly unmentionable – the masquerade to be preserved at all costs. And in my shame and because of the shame I colluded with this – struggling to maintain the pretence.

Jung built his map. Four diamond quaternios stacked one on the other, reaching from the fuzz of the “Rotundum” to the purity of the “Anthropos”. It was his ladder to sanity, his map of the soul.

Mine was the pentangle. Each point an aspect of being, united in the middle in a pentagon.

Each aspect of reality was necessary as a part of the map of what it is to be human and the realisation of the internal truth of each aspect of reality was essential to gaining a balanced view of being.

The Material world was the description of the world that might be given by science – at bottom little more than an energy fuzz knotting into ever more complex field and forms.

The Raw world: the experienced reality without human language constructs projected upon it. The world of things-in-themselves. The world touched on by Zen. A world without purposefulness, without intent; the very ground of being through which life flows by accident as no more than a temporary phenomena. 

The Word world: the projected world of human intention and meaning – a shared illusion, an artefact of language; the place we inhabit once we are inducted into the shared mythology of its existence; a children's game made real – a lets pretend played for high stakes. 

The Life force: that which burns through each living thing starting from that first spark aeons ago, and which will burn through each of us and on beyond. We are but fuel to its passage. 

The Vital world: that which charges each and every place, each and every thing, each and every moment with emotional richness, with love and wonder, with its own energy of person and place, of timeliness and potential. It is what enchants or alienates, petrifies or enthrals, chills, stagnates, enlivens, deadens, bores or enwraps. It is that by which we engage with the world. It calls us forth to wed it with our being. It is, if you will, the spiritual reality, that vitalisation that is the very magic sparkle which can intoxicate us with the mere act of living by its burning presence.

Some sort of map. A little temporary sense, or semblance of sense. I am not about to suggest that it is in anyway a good or useful map. It helped me for a while, that is perhaps why it emerged. But in truth little more than some rickety scaffolding that was helpful in rebuilding an illusion of sanity – something that could be hung onto as I attempted to crawl back into life. My compromise of understanding held against the prospect of its all being swept away: my survival map.

It still helps.

Pennies

In dark corners, against dark boards copper coins lurk almost unseen. Unseen that is except for the sharp eyes of young boys whose games involve much crawling and creeping close to the edge of things, close to the corners, close to the dark places where coins have lain unseen since they slid there unnoticed by their owners. Coins of many reigns: Victoria, Edward, George V, George VI and, brighter, new more easily seen, Elizabeth. Some with Britannia on their tail side, some with a ship in full sail, even some tiny ones with a wren perched on a branch with its tail upright. Coins lodged between floorboards. Coins half stuck under the edge of skirting boards. Coins just under the edge of carpets, down the sides of chairs, under tables, in cracks and crevasses, undetected by all who stand full height, but visible to those whose games take them crawling under and over and through. 

First one coin, and then. A new game? “Can I find more?” One here, one there. Try another room. Try the landing where no windows add light to see these hidden treasure. Try the stairs. Try down the side of the wickerwork settee. Try under cushions and under the front of the dresser. 

Find one stuck edgewise between floorboards. Get a compass and use its point to jack it up and out.

Collect, seek, find, until a little trove is collected. Ah, the delights these could become. Sherbet dips, liquorice – specially the whirls, or even better the ones shaped like pipes – or perhaps a packet of sweet cigarettes, with their bright red ends. Such joy pretending to be grown ups smoking, blowing pretend cigarette rings, offering one another a “fag”. Best of all, perhaps, a bottle of frothy Corona ginger beer with its rubber stopper and “3d”¹ back on the bottle. Good days when finding six empty bottles to take back to the shop would get you the price of a new full one. Then the “pop” sound and you prized back the stopper and it flipped on its hinges going “clink” as it hit the side of the bottle. Pop, clink, fizz. Pop, clink, fizz. The sound of childhood joy. The expectation of the tingling, fizzy warm slightly burning sensation as the pop was guzzled down, the bubbles frothing up and making your nose tickle, followed by a satisfying “burp” as the gas came back up. Looks of approval for those who could produce the loudest or the most frequent.

Full of expectation and wide eyes with the success of the hunt, take the handful of coins to Mother to say,

“Look what I have found! Can I go to the shop and buy some pop?”

A pause. A look of questioning. A frown. These looks were not expected. Then the awful question -

“Where did you get those?” 

“I found them”

“NO YOU DID NOT – NOW TELL THE TRUTH”

“I did, I really did, I crawled all around the house and found them”

“NO YOU DID NOT – YOU ARE LYING – YOU NAUGHTY BOY – YOU STOLE THEM OUT OF MY PURSE. GIVE THEM TO ME AT ONCE.”

An hand comes down from above and seizes my arm, holding it firmly and shaking me.

“Tell the truth - NOW”

The anger and disappointment in the voice is too hard to bear. The injustice. The confusion.

"Give me that money immediately and tell me the truth”

I hand over my hard found treasure trove. Gone all hope of sherbet, or liquorice. Gone all hopes of sweet cigarettes. Gone all hopes of fizzy ginger beer.

The anger drives me down lower and lower into the floor. The look bores through me. I can not look into her face any more. My eyes cast down, my knees weaken. I can feel tears forming. I begin to shake and to hold back the sobs that want to come. I have mortally offended. I know shame and confusion. I know that I have done immense wrong - but have done no wrong. I am condemned and cast out, accused and convicted. There is no appeal. The court has been held and the judgement has been given. I taste the bitter edge of justice and know its unreason. Punishment will now come like an awful pall over the day. There will be no fun or joy. 

Later an uneasy kindness with undertones of disapproval sends me to bed – the repentant double sinner redeemed by living an untruth – as a boy who steals from purses and tells lies.

---

1: 3d = three pence in UK pre-decimal coinage

Not seeing the wood for the trees

I thought I understood this so familiar, so well known, everyday expression, first learned in childhood, in Primary school in fact. We used to have tests, questions to answer, in our English exercise books. “What does 'A stitch in time saves nine' mean?” or “What does 'A rolling stone gathers no moss' mean?” Proverbs and sayings that were so much part of the currency of everyday speech, or at least what was regarded as part of correct, polite, “nice” speech in those days – oh how my teachers hated the word “nice”. “It does not mean 'pleasant' it means 'exact'!” they would parrot. Well, exactly what it meant in our mouths was 'pleasing' and we were sticking to it resolutely, come what may. 

And our speech was not always 'polite' or 'correct' and contained, from time to time, when we dared, when we were very, very sure that we were not being listened to, when we could risk using some of those words we heard on the lips of SOME adults; adults who did hard jobs; adults who came out of the pub drunk; adults who spiced what they said with lots of words beginning with F or B and who we were told not to listen to; adults who were 'hushed” at and from whose words our ears were covered. Adults like I'll, so called because on pay night he would come reeling up the road, staggering and shouting “I'll …” followed by lots of threats of what he would do to his poor wife, although we never quite knew what he would do as all the threats were in Welsh. Repute had it that she would greet him at the front door with a rolling pin, or a frying pan, and made very sure that he did not do what ever it was he was so threatening to do. The only words of I'll's that we knew were those very English words starting with F or B with which his tirade was peppered. The Welsh we did not know, but, Welsh having no swear words, he made great use of those English words that did as well; and we knew these were very bad words. Words that were so bad that instant punishment would follow if you were ever heard uttering them, even at a whisper. I was too scared ever to use them. Well, almost. I did once say “ruddy” which gained me instant retribution, and once I did say “bloody” which almost caused the sky to fall on me – well my mother's instant ire at any rate. Never again did I risk those words.

But to the subject. “Not seeing the wood for the trees”. I had always, at least since I first began to understand it, took it to mean 'Not seeing the woodland for the trees', that is taking the word 'wood' to refer to woodlands, coppices, stands of trees, forests; understanding the expression to mean not seeing the wider picture because of being so fixed on seeing the particular, the individual, the “trees”. I was a little taken aback when someone began taking about that so familiar expression, but meaning 'wood' to refer to the material from which the trees were made.

I was disorientated. How could this be? Had I spent an lifetime misunderstanding the words? Had my answer, given with such confidence at the age of ten as to what it meant had been quite wrong, quite focussed in an incorrect direction? How typical of me not to have quite got it right, not to have heard or understood it properly. No wonder I was sat at the back of the class with the other dimmies, those of us who were never going to be destined for the great heights of passing the Eleven-plus. Those elevated souls, the ones who were worth investing the time in on the part of our school, they sat at the front, those ones who might be destined for Grammar school and for an elevated life ever after. Our job was to be still, to be quiet and to be docile so as not to impede the progress of those elect. If we were lucky we might be able to read by the time we left school, or to count correctly, at least enough to measure and weigh, as our lot in life would be in workshop or field, or behind a counter or under-stairs. The understanding of the complex ideas embodied in 'seeing the wood from the trees' was, after all, beyond us, as my complete misunderstanding of the expression clearly demonstrated.

So – not seeing what something is made out of because of being too focussed on what it is. Now I have it, but a lifetime too late.

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.

Henry

I think I may have been about three when Henry came to stay. Only I could see Henry; only I could know how naughty he was; only I could hear his laughter when he had wild fun and things flew around the room. I think it was winter when Henry first came. He was somewhere in the shadows of the play room, in the gathering half light before my mother lit the lamps. We had lamps, paraffin lamps, not electricity. They sputtered and smelt. Their light threw shadows, big shadows, across the rooms. There would be only one in a room, standing on a table. My mother would pick it up and carry it with us when it was time for me to go up to bed. Paraffin lamps light rooms softly and leave dark shadow filled corners, places where the imagination could lurk and things could be half seen. 

 

The play room was at the back of the house, off the great hall where the big inglenook fireplace was; the very fireplace in which I had stood the day the sky fell down – but that is another story. The play room had a fireplace too, one with a big fire-guard that was at least as high as I was – well, almost as high. It had a wide shiny brass rim at the top that my mother used to make gleam until it glowed in the fire light. I could see over that rim, see the flames of the fire reflected in its shiny top. I could stand on my tiptoes and, if I tried hard, I could throw things into the fire and watch as the flames licked them, wrapped round them, and then danced with delight as they ate them. 

 

It was fun when Henry came out of the shadows behind the big chair, out from the dark corner where he hid when anyone else was around, out and started passing things to me to throw into the fire. First one thing, then two. Flump, they would land in the fire. Sputter, flicker, foosh would go the flames as they grew around them and danced higher making the shadows frolic and flicker in the room. 

 

Henry was such a naughty boy. 

 

Henry liked teasing the terrier. Henry liked waving the ends of my sleeves in front of the terrier’s face. Henry kept doing this even when I knew the terrier would get cross and would bite the sleeve and go growly, growly, tug, tug until the threads of my jumper unwound and would hang all ragged down. 

Naughty Henry.

Naughty Henry would make me do this even when I knew the terrier would bite my fingers and hang on to them and make me cry. The excitement was worth it. It hurt. The pain seared. The pain was almost crazy fun, but it hurt too much, so much I had to do it again.

My mother told me how cruel it was to tease the poor dog like that. She told me not to make him cross. She told me not to make him bite my sleeve. She told me not to make him hang on to it until it unravelled, not to make him pull the thread after him as he dashed under the chair whilst Henry and I danced and laughed. I told her the truth. It was Henry who had waggled the sleeve in front of the terrier. It was Henry who had danced and skipped and pulled ever so hard as the dog shook and shook the end of the sleeve until the threads pulled out and it unravelled. 

Naughty Henry.

Mother did not find out about Henry giving me things to throw into the fire. Not then. I did not want Henry to get into trouble.

In the corner of the play room furthest from the fire, the corner opposite the door, there was a big toy garage where all of my brother’s toy cars were kept. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, big opening doors, and a ramp down which the cars would whoosh if you pushed them. But the real secret was their rubber tyres. If you picked the toy cars up and put them next to your face, you could get your teeth around the tyres, and, with a big bite and pull, you could get them to come off. They did go whoof and make big flames when you threw them into the fire. 

Naughty Henry. 

 

One day my mother sat me down and made me listen very carefully to her. She told me that the fire was very dangerous and that I must never, never throw things into it. I looked at her and I told her “Don't me cross mumma - I just be good”. 

 

I was. 

 

Henry wasn't. 

 

Naughty Henry.

When we were alone in the play room, when my mother had to leave us in the warm when it was getting dark because she had to go and feed the chickens, and the ducks, and the guinea fowl, and the white pheasants, and the geese and the pigs and she would not be long, but it was too cold and wet for me to be out, so I must promise to be good. 

 

I did promise, I really did.

 

Henry, naughty Henry, did not. 

 

He hid behind the big leather chair and he peeped out. Mother did not see him. She did not know he was there - he was so hidden in the shadows. When we were alone, that is when Henry came out from behind the big leather chair, the one with big lion's paw feet, the chair the terrier would hide under when Henry gave me toy cars to throw at him.

Henry made me pull the cat's tail. The cat had only three legs. One of his rear legs had been cut off by the gang-mower as it mowed between the trees. The men had come running into the house holding the poor cat with its leg hanging off. They were so sorry. My mother had grabbed me and had got Mr Fox to drive us to the vet's where the vet had cut off the leg to save the cat. The cat, Ginger, was cousin Ann's cat and my mother did not want Ann to come home from work and find her cat was dead, so she brought the poor bandaged thing home. It lived for many years after, happily stumping around on three legs and still laying waste to all the mice, rats and rabbits it could find. When Henry made me pull the ginger cat's tail it swung its front paw around so fast that its claw tore my arm and there were long bleeding scratches all across the back of my hand. Henry thought that was fun. He made me rub the blood on to the wall. Then he made me find my bothers wax crayons and scribble all through the blood and on over the wall to make scribble birds. 

 

I sat and watched them fly.

Naughty Henry. 

 

Henry thought it was such good fun when my brother’s toy cars went flying around the room. My brother got cross because they had missing tyres. I never told him what Henry had made me do with them. 

 

Henry was barefoot. Henry dressed in rags. Henry was a wild boy and Henry lived in the stinging nettles at the bottom of the larch wood. He was lonely and cold there, and he was afraid of the wolves that came at night. That is why he sneaked into the house and came and played with me - it was warm and we had fun. 

 

One day, when I had told my mother that Henry had made me throw things all over the room again - naughty Henry - she decided to go and find him. I told her where he lived and what he looked like. She got us ready to go out for a walk. I had my red Wellington boots on, the one that would get stuck in the mud and come off, making me fall over and get covered in the sticky mud. It must have been in the late spring because the stinging nettles had grown back. 

 

My mother walked me all the way down the hill to the bottom of the drive where the larch wood was. It was in the stinging nettles at its edge that Henry lived. It was in between the dark trees that the wolves would come peeping out, so softly tiptoeing on the spongy floor where the needles fell. In places the fallen cones stuck out. I was scared of the dark of the wood. I was scared of the wolves that might come out. Mother kept walking further and further in and calling “Henry” “Come out Henry”. I knew the wolves would hear her. I knew they would come sniffing with their ears pricked up. I knew their sharp eyes would come watching. I knew mother was not safe. I knew I had to get her out of the wood, so I told her a lie. I told her Henry had gone. He had run off with the gypsies. We went home and had tea. 

 

Funnily, Henry really had gone. He was not hiding in the shadows behind the big leather chair with the lion's paw shaped feet. He was not waiting for me in the attic. He was not under my cot. He was not in any of the cupboards. He was not hiding in the larder. He was not hiding in the doughskiels* along with my toys. He had gone. I hope he liked his life with the gypsies. 

--- 

*For those who do not know, doughskiels – that is the name my mother used for them – were four legged chests used in old farms in the Marcher Country for bread making. The dough was kneaded on the top and then placed inside the chest with the lid down so that it might rise overnight ready for baking in the morning. My mother had found one at an auction. It was made of elm. It had bits of old dried dough sticking to its insides. She polished up the outside and then we used it to keep toys in.

Two True Stories

Sometimes you hear stories of those years of war that scared the first half of the twentieth century that you cannot let pass because they stick with you, they say too much, paint too strong a picture. In this last year I have heard two such stories, one from the Ukraine, one from China.

First a story from the Ukraine. This was told by a lecturer at the university in L’viv who had been a little more than a child herself at the time of the German occupation. She included this in one of the lectures she gave.

After the first shock wave of the German conquest the two sides, the occupiers and their subjected peoples, had to set about living together. The occupiers gave themselves full licence to demonstrate their superiority in all sorts of ways, in this case over the two carriage trams that ran in the city. The Ukrainians had to travel in the rear carriage of the trams leaving the front carriage for Germans. Perhaps there might be only one or two Germans in the front - the rear one would be crammed to overflowing. Sometimes one of the Germans might call a child forward into the front to come and sit with them as a treat. If you were called you dare not refuse but went and sat dutifully as you were told. No one dared to interfere.

Neither did people dare to be in the front carriages even if they were completely empty, even if there were no signs of any Germans being about - it was just never safe.

Such a simple story, but one telling so much about power and fear, about oppression and the oppressed, about division and separation. One no doubt duplicated in a thousand subtle ways across the world - in segregated America, in racially divided South Africa, or by division of wealth and class in Britain, or by caste as in India - repeated in so many place, in so many ways. in so many times.

The second story is from China, from Shanghai just at the point when it had been occupied by the Japanese in November 1937. Many, if not most, of the Europeans left the city on whatever ships they could find as soon as the fighting subsided . My friends mother was working as a governess to one such European family. She had done well for a village girl from the South to have a job like that. For whatever reason the family decided to take her with them when they left. Who knows, perhaps the children she cared for were too attached to her to make leaving her easy? Getting her out through the Japanese check points would be a very risky thing to do. Europeans were given passes so that they could go to the harbour and board whatever ships they could find passage on. Chinese were forbidden. The Japanese expected absolute obedience. If they even considered that a Chinese had not bowed quickly enough or low enough they were executed there and then.

The family put my friend’s mother into the middle between them all and there she sat petrified in case she was spotted. For trying to escape the city she would have been beheaded immediately. Somehow, and my friend has no idea how, the family were not challenged at the check points. At each one their papers were meticulously inspected, but other than a cursory glance, no check was made on exactly who was in the car. They were crowded and perhaps a small Chinese woman somewhere in the middle of many faces was simply not noticed.

They left on the last boat out of the harbour.