Memories are made of this

Over her dead body
For a moment she was rooted there on the spot, but then she somehow found her voice. Esther’s first positive, real protest No way on god’s earth could she allow him to be buried in the same grave as her mother, no matter what that man without a name had said to the lady at the council offices. It was now, as her mum had been unable to fight or use her bright voice anymore, that she might be able to carry that force on. Anger and fear made her knees later wobble as she walked to see her brother nearby, and then there ahead was the village bobby cycling home at the end of his shift, she wondered if he ever knew as he stood at the same bar where her stepfather stood and drank through the night. Mrs. Smith was there then standing on her chair and stretching to reach the uppermost casement window of her semi-detached house two doors away from where her stepfather had lived and died. Going through the motions bright and early the next morning, she had called at the florists on the Obelisk Road and then ordered without any fuss or thought, choosing the flowers that might be included in a simple rigid spray. If passersby had heard of his death, none seemed to mention it but talked of the weather whilst the Avon lady, who lived in their street, spoke about how beautiful her girls were now. It would take her more than a day to realize the consequences of his death or of his inheritance he had left behind. On the morning of the funeral there seemed to be little change in the weather as the heavy snow continued to fall in sharp cold continuous sheet that obliterated the land of their little town. Most folk in their street hadn’t drawn their curtains back as the gravediggers began their miserable task of cutting back the hard frozen icy ground, with them taking most of the morning; at least though, it was now on the opposite side of the cemetery from where her mum lay those last nine years. No more did they have to pretend as folk moved on with their lives, and some also wondering why a husband and wife should be buried in separate graves.

A jug fills slowly drop by drop. How true, thought Esther, as her stepfathers small coffin was carried into the same Roman Catholic Church where he had married their mum-half a lifetime ago. There were no feelings either, as they carried him out into the clear blue sky through the door that she as a child had pushed so hard against. She had slowly begun to realize that no one could make her feel inferior any longer as long as she didn’t give them permission. It was also certain that only she could control her destiny and that by believing in and acting on her own beliefs and values she might move on and leave the pain from the past behind where it belonged. As fortune or misfortune had it, there old ford Cortina driven by Arthur had spluttered and shuddered to a halt almost a mile away from his last resting place on Wellingborough Road and his hearse moved on without them. The last mission, and painful journey, carried out by someone else. When would she be able to go and stand there beside his covered grave and say her last farewell; perhaps not ever? As Esther had grown, she hadn’t loved the pathetic weak creature but also as she grew, she did feel something that bordered on deep sorrow that one small human being should hurt so and then pass on that hurt to those who were forced to share their lives with him as they all had done. Now though it was time for his own atonement and it had little to do with three hail Mary’s as he had done upstairs in his bedroom each Sunday morning with a missionary as they sat gathered below in the living room, him knowing his sadness and remorse, if it existed at all, would be short-lived once his lips touched the booze and the kindly visitor left and went home for his roast dinner, with a job well done and all well with the world.
Only those who had lived their lives with him could know the struggles they faced as they tried to shed off the pain he created and not pass it onto their own family.

Their other family even though no relations at all lived right next door and it seemed as if they had been there forever as much a part of Stanton as Stanton a part of them. Ted had to take early retirement from his job in the clicking room of the local shoe factory and never seemed to complain about his health, though in fact there was much to complain about.
“It’s lovely to have a young family like yours,” Ted would constantly say. There was so much love in all their hearts for Ted and his lovely wife Margaret. It tended to be Ted who would baby sit Caroline and James on cold or wet mornings when Esther took Catherine to nearby infant school. It would be of no surprise on returning home about half an hour later to discover their front room had been transformed into an adventure playground, with sofa cushions now upended and James a cowboy jumping up and down and Caroline in a cardboard box complete with a wooden spoon in her hand and chocolate all over her face.
Their homes could be accessed via a gap in the hedge, and so a constant flow of visitors crossing the long thin garden and then through the porch, which years before had housed the boiler where such laborious tedious, but necessary, work must have gone with water and lux flakes buckets in rows. They would enter the neatly stocked kitchen where forever the kettle boiled and cups with matching saucers and novelty teaspoons from the various bed and breakfast seaside establishments they stayed in each year. Margaret made the most wonderful pastries and goodies each Christmas, and this despite her flitting back and forth to her elderly mum who took up residence in their best room at the front of the house, and talked about her time on the bus’s as a conductress, and how beautiful their children were, and didn’t take after Esther at all on that score! Ted would push James for miles in his buggy around their surrounding picturesque towns returning later like a child who had found his rainbow or pot of gold with windswept grey hair and a bit more colour in his face. James some months later sat in the wheelbarrow at the bottom of their garden crying when he heard of Ted’s early death, although they would never see him again he left such wonderful and happy memories behind and who could ask for more than that.

Margaret, although of course very sad, following the man who had shared decades of his life including the loss of an infant they had treasured so and loved more. She wore little make-up apart from a quick slick of red lip-stick re-applying it in shop windows or department store mirrors as Esther’s wayward kids ran through the dresses and blouses that dangled from plastic hangers, or set in motion all the toys they could reach on the shelves, pleading for those that made the most noise. They would later sit on the embankment at Bedford and feed the crusts left from the sandwiches they had purchased in the market, and Esther would declare her wish for one of the narrow boats silently moving by. Later they would return home on the united counties bus, happy for the time that they had and knowing that nothing ever stayed the same forever. Their lovely gentle but defiant mum who had been through so much and not once had she sworn or yearned for what she could not have.
Esther had always wanted to share her sight and tried hard to explain what she was seeing to her mum but how could she do this. How might she say what a cloud looked like or a tree or a house or elephant or even how she looked herself. Yes, of course she could feel and touch but for Esther this was never enough.

Some months after her mum’s death she was sure she saw the coat her mum once wore being worn by somebody else.
Yet in spite of all this she would continue to live with them all and it was only her rocking chair that stayed still.