Memories are made of this

More Learning

In those last months of Junior School (before it became a Dr’s private residence) Miss B had said to Esther as she sat uneasily on her form, “What did you say for buoyancy, the meaning of it Esther?”
“It means…it means…”
Miss B had appeared visibly shocked that Esther actually knew that 11-plus answer. However, she had not known enough, for only three girls out of a class of over forty (and they from well-heeled families on the other side of the A6) actually passed the 11 plus, two of those going to High School and the other to Technical School. Everyone else, including Esther, were shipped off to a nearby Secondary Modern School where little was expected, so little given.
At the end of the day those girls returned from High school with their home-work, their leather satchels, their boaters with blue ribbon, their grey socks. Then didn’t acknowledge their old friends who still swore, blew bubble gum that got stuck to shoes, seats, floors and sometimes hair. Old friends who wore parkas, stood in gangs outside the co-op in the fog, or hung upside down on monkey frames in the little park in one of the little swings and then getting stuck so hauled out with red faces, but laughter, as adults walked by and sighed at the foolishness of youth. Once it grew too cold for the bravest of the gang they would head to the youth club at Star Hall. It was there that Esther over-heard something that she did not entirely understand.
“Albert, you know my brother, Albert, who works down at the pits. Well…silly bugger, only gone and got himself a dose of the crabs from some old snapper.”
They had all laughed, including Esther, who still had no idea what she was laughing at.
“Anyway,” he continued, as he noisily drew coke-cola through a blue and white striped straw as he sat centre-stage, with his mates probably wondering to. “Anyway, he cleared it himself with no help from the quack with Ajax and a scrubbing brush. I tell you though; he did walk real funny for weeks after that.” He had got down from his stool at the coffee bar and staggered round the room, which had once been the old post office, but walking as if he were wearing three nappies and with a severe case of diarrhea. Esther remained puzzled with the only crabs she knew about being those that you got at the seaside or in posh restaurants. The way he walked and laughed must have been quite nasty though.
Dancing With Glee
April moved quickly into May, and of course Maypole dancing, with Esther tripping rather than skipping around the tall thin white pole that stood in the middle of the playground, and her so fascinated with the weave of brightly colored ribbons that seemed to magically thread themselves and spread like ink on blotting paper, until she suddenly fell flat on her face then a mass of arms and legs and screams of protest with her feeling guilty, but protesting it was not her fault. Weakness would never help her survival and so she stood again and took up her ribbon and continued her dance through life. Why should they want, or need, another daddy like you could pick one from the pick and mix sweetie counter at Woolworth’s and then pay with some pennies? It wasn't as if they didn't have other male influences in their young lives. There was an uncle who owned a wood-yard that ran and spread wider at the back of his little cottage that he shared with his lovely wife, he had a precious gift of really listening and not pretending.
On her way back home from her Uncle Frank later that week, and another ‘lovely haircut’ assured her Aunt Rose with a beard, had kindly handed her the very last dry piece of her once delicious sponge cake. Esther had stuffed quietly, and politely, the cake deep into the hedge outside her aunt’s house. As she later walked the long flat grey street noticing her grandfathers pig-van wheels touching the edge of the curb. And two workmen’s red lights sat close to the front and back of his van (lights that he had used when once a night watchman but that was before he won the football pools). Esther decided not to go in, as it was getting quite late, and he would be watching the news and her Nan with her bunion feet pressing and spreading in a tin bowl beside the coal fire that flickered and burnt in the soul-less and sad house.
The next day she didn’t go to school because they all had overslept. It didn’t matter and anyway, she was always glad to be free from school and Miss B, who had discovered her weakness was knitting and mathematics, although she excelled at learning her times table for rote. Soon she would want to go to school, however much she might have once hated it. Terror forced most of the girls in her class not to make too many mistakes. They didn’t particularly like the idea of being struck by their teacher of steel, flashing the innards of her constantly opening mouth and ill fitting false teeth in the direction of her charges. Standing legs astride where fat met fat, chalk in fingers and half rimmed spectacles balancing on her fat wide nose cutting with a ruler carried with great force and precision but just missing her captive’s knuckles. At other times slapping on their bottoms or sending them to stand in the corner of their historic school for at least thirty minutes until they saw the error of their ways.
It had been difficult to concentrate for the last few days though, as she thought of the man who was now supposed to take the place of their daddy, and who they were told should call, although he had suggested that he should adopt them and legally become their new daddy; a sickening thought!
“Go back to your desk immediately Esther and undo all that tangled mess and start again with your knitting. By the time you have knitted those slippers you will have grown out of them. Buck up, you stupid child, and go and sit down and stop sniveling. I need to see at least two inches of knitting or there will be no playtime for you.”
In a way, Esther was glad at the thought of stopping in the warm near the noisy old radiator instead of the cold and the snow that was settling quickly in the same school yard where the maypole once stood. She really needed to sharpen up if anyone was to ever rely on the skills that her Aunt Rose with a beard and a deft hand had…especially with embroidery and cakes to die for. Again she later hid the last dry bit in the hedge of her aunt’s house on the A6 on the way home. She passed on the way home that teatime a red headed roadman who, with a stiff broom, cleaned their streets and roads so thoroughly and who always had a smile on his face and would pass the time of day with those with a readiness to do so. And then life drifted, driftwood on driftwood, one sad day into the other, and they caught in that turbulent relentless cruel tide, but at least they did it quietly and played the backstage so very well.