Memories are made of this

This is a Social Services phone
“Tell whoever it is not to ring here. Don’t they know that this is a Social Services phone? Anyway, I’m waiting for him to call!” They left the house quietly, leaving Joe yelling and slamming doors, still oblivious to the fact that he was now alone once more.
“Anyway, Esther, tell me about his new chap of yours. What’s he like and what does he do? Not that that matters. All I want is for you to be with someone kind and thoughtful and just to be happy!”
“Well…” Esther thought how she should describe him as they continued their walk down the mill as the Intercity sped on to London, with miniature people getting on with their lives, as they walked and chatted about Arthur and how tall he was. “He actually comes from Peterborough, where he works as an engineer at Perkins’, but he is not at all posh! In fact, when I first met him at that Polish club, I thought he wasn’t my cup of tea at all, which shows how wrong first impressions can be!”
Surely anyone with the slightest of airs would soon fly from their house without a backward glance and with much to say to their friends later.
“Why should he be posh, Esther?”
“Well, he reads the Times, went to grammar school and his mum lives in a posh house on a private estate in town and he says she talks really well”.
“Living in a posh house doesn’t make you better than anyone who lives in the most humble of places”.
Esther didn’t reply but knew her mum was right. She was already aware that their home was the ‘wrong side of town’ in some folk’s eyes, especially if they lived across the A6, which seemed like a demarcation line. How sad it was that one’s identity and value seemed packaged with the house where you lived as well as the area and the car in which you drove to work. Esther had only recently spoken to an elderly gentleman in a nearby shop who, on learning where she lived, had said how sad that was and that people let their kids run wild there. He then went on to talk about non-whites not being allowed in and she quickly realized that those she lived with were far superior to the thinking of this man and those that lived in her area would never have such uncharitable views as him.
“He follows Leeds football, loves steam engines, where he is right now and seems really into Harley Davids. I’m sure you will like him. He has asked if you would like to come with us when we go to Northampton to hear the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, give an election speech”.
“That’s so nice of you and him to take me. Are you sure he won’t mind me tagging along?”
“Of course he won’t, and anyway, it’s a nicer and gentler way to meet him rather than in the house with Joe and his drink and hatred that seems somehow forever there!”
They both walked back up the lane as dusk settled and so they turned up their collars, probably both thinking of what would be at home. They met Dee out with her little dog. As they strolled together, leaving the silver stream to paint across the summer patchwork fields, Dee chatted and they listened.
“I don’t know where the years have gone but I lived in this very lane as a child and always delighted at the wild flowers, hedgerows, the river, the railway, the birds and the farm workers who, in the summer at their threshing machines, would stop to wave at me. I still remember the special smell of the leather from the boot and shoe factories. Oh, how easy life is now; though to hear folk groan round about us you would think we were living in the back of beyond. I remember how we would visit my friend’s parents’ house for a Sunday dinner that had been cooked in the bake-house down Church Street and how lovely it was and how it cost five pence and, do you know, strange to say, we were so happy then!”

At the end of that week Esther was on the coach speeding along the M1 to Nottingham Palais. She had thought about apologizing for her stepfather’s aggression, but eventually decided to let it pass, as one might a cold. What else should she say to fill the awkward gaps? Arthur wiped the coach windows with his sleeve, which then slipped almost to the bone of his thin elbow.
“Looks like an accident ahead”.
It was. The traffic slowed and Esther wondered whose style had he borrowed, what with drainpipe trousers, one green and one yellow fluorescent sock. Then, in a moment of curiosity, she wondered what exactly he was carrying in his Tesco carrier bag, although she did just about see the Times newspaper poking out from the top.
“Thought I would miss this bus tonight!”
“Oh, why was that?”
“My brother Graham rang me and, being long distance, I couldn’t really ask for him to ring back”.
“I suppose not!” Answered Esther, glad for a night out but slightly suspicious.
“Anyway, he was just ringing to say he is coming home sooner than he had first thought. He was going to travel back from Australia with me but then he met up with some other travellers. I would have loved to have stopped, but work wouldn’t have been happy with me taking off any more time, so here I am!”
Esther felt her heart skip a beat. There was something both gentle and understanding and she saw that he listened to her and didn’t speak about himself all the time. She was also quite envious that he had travelled the world whilst she was still hanging onto the hem of life.
“Did you stop in hostels?”
He grinned,
“We actually stopped in one nice place where I thought there was a cat on the bottom of my bed – only realized what it was when it’s long thin pink tail swept over my face – it was a bloody rat, so we didn’t go back there again!”
She thought back to the rats at her grandfather’s farm and how they hung by their tails on the shed door waiting to be incinerated. Then of her street, those that were born there, worked close-by – and buried closer – with an occasional trip to Skeggy or Blackpool, the rush and the crush of the annual torchlight parade to brighten their lives and the gayness and loud noises that filled the streets. Poverty stopped you trying, stopped you dreaming, so perhaps that was why Joe was the way he was. Esther was always trying to make excuses for the man that blighted their lives.
Arthur offered her a drink later that night, but she refused. He then asked her to dance but, at first, she wasn’t sure, perhaps determined not to get hurt. So he went and leaned against the bar with a glass in his hand and stood there alone looking so sad and uncomfortable. He later took the risk and asked her to dance spinning her in his long arms and his eyes seemed to sparkle incredibly. At the end of a slow dance he had kissed her and at that moment she forgot about his fluorescent socks and his drainpipe trousers as well as the fact that he had had a little too much to drink.
The next day, at work, she was dealing with a woman stressed about the fact that her giro had not arrived and there was the weekend coming up with no money coming in. After arranging an urgent payment to tide the young mum and her kids over that weekend she thought of Arthur. Partly she wanted to put the clock back, put that kiss away and forget it. Best she gave love a miss. Yet, in all honesty, how could she remain at home and give up her own life to the brutal consistency she would undoubtedly face for the rest of her life and share the pain along with her mum.