Memories are made of this

Was this it then?
Esther was summoned to leave her desk by the teacher who caused her to involuntarily shiver whenever she opened her mouth to utter a word in the battleship which was her teacher’s classroom.
Oh, how scared she felt as she fled through the streets in the valley and along Treadmill Lane where once, years ago, newly milled cloth would hang. Then, ten minutes later, steadying as she faced the steep slope where the Co-op drapery and butchers, as well as the wet fish shop owners, jostled the patronage of mainly boot and shoe part-time female customers with their baskets and bags and popular papers of that day. There they would patiently queue whilst passing on the latest golden tit-bits of the previous day to those who had the inclination or manners to listen or turn their heads deliberately away, not wishing to be labelled as gossips and the like, with their characters or the progress of their children to think carefully about and 11-plus uniforms to purchase; and thereby, they believed, set their kids free from the dross and the grind their own working lives had often sadly been.

Breathless; her spindly legs propelled toward the mid-morning traffic now clogging up the A6 and then continuing with thumping heart and dry lips along the long grey street. All manner of thoughts invaded her mind, including the thought, so disturbing, that Joe might have killed her mum or brother in a fit of fury; or maybe her mum might suddenly have been taken ill or knocked down by a speeding car, how horrifying a thought that was! On a lighter note, her stepfather might have simply and quietly dropped down dead. It was news she didn’t want to hear, and yet confusingly, she also yearned for such information as it would sort the problem out; not least for his guide dog. The inspector for the guide dogs had just kept his allotted appointment to see how their expertly trained guide dog was progressing. The young man with the crooked teeth and windswept blonde hair smiled up from his red mini as he slammed the door and, waving briefly at Esther, drove away down the long, grey, flat street, reassured that everything regarding the dog’s welfare was in order, as it had been in the years before. Only moments earlier he had ticked all the boxes and passed the time of day with Joe, who spoke quietly and perfectly well as he reached down to gently cradle the head of his dog as she in turn had rested her soft, warm coat on his beer-stained trouser knees, her eyes on the leash that would always lay close-by on the arm of his threadbare chair. At least she had been offered the opportunity of wandering safe and blissfully free whilst her master innocently supped his tea from a pint mug, knowing as he did the stronger drug that would pall his senses and his humanity for what would follow later.

At tea-time again, Joe had sat in his chair in the corner with his arms crossed impatiently whilst Laura carefully carried another mug of tea and a plate stacked irregularly with best ham sandwiches. How that saddened and frustrated Esther, as she quietly watched her mum make-do with a boiled egg and bread and butter, but sometimes not even that. Meanwhile, he still protested through his ill-fitting false teeth that he would be reporting her to his own doctor about how she was starving him and he would be dying soon.Was it so very bad of Esther to dream he would hurry up and die? That fantasy didn’t seem to be answered then. How could her mum whistle and sing brightly or conceal her sadness? Maybe only God would know that. Esther was afraid to tell anyone of her childhood and scared they would be repulsed by those who knew the truth. How National Assistance could fuel his drinking, she wondered, knowing how it felt to be marginalized. Esther was positive that she wouldn’t ever do that to others then or in the future; that was, of course, if life were ever to improve.
Her family’s relative poverty was either viewed with sympathy or disdain. She was probably not the only target of school bullies. In the classroom her books, bag, pencils and rubbers were tossed around the room. It didn’t take long to realize it was better to wait quietly and not to make a fuss if she was to avoid continual bullying outside the ‘security’ of home. Surely similar treatment and, indeed, cruelty was happening to other members of her family; but were they not also too ashamed to speak out loud about such treatment. Was it better to be at home or school? Sometimes it was difficult to say.

Sylvia was one of the few people who came into their home. She did a few hours’ cleaning each week. She talked about how, during the war, she had patched the trousers of servicemen who were billeted right around their town and did general mending for the Americans and regaled them with memories of how these same men took them to dances at different places like Chelveston Drill Hall in the back of their army trucks. She was a hard-working person who, although small in stature, never seemed to stand still as she rushed from job to job but always putting her own family first. She would often come up with her own way of delivering speech such as; “…she makes the bullets for him to fire…, …they’re all tarred with the same brush…, …he’d argue with an echo…, our cat ran up your alley…”, and “…a watched pot never boils!”