Memories are made of this

A time to change
A press, a click, a whirl as the conductor tore off the ticket from his diminishing perforated roll. Like worn and familiar clothes which, if a little too tight, were still hers, just as the view out of the green United Counties bus, was peculiarly hers. There, in the distance, slowly coming into view as the bus took the second bend and slowed down for a lad on his wobbly cycle, was her old secondary school where, it was true to say, she had gloriously failed.

Down past Polly Parrot’s mum’s sweet shop which they visited illicitly most lunchtimes by sneaking under a side-gate; her dropping her coconut mushrooms in the mud on the way back and picking them up quickly again before returning to the conundrum which was forever mathematics; however well or badly explained it seemed to make very little difference, then, to her.
Then past the Cross and the ‘printers-no-candlestick-makers’ and several boot and shoe factories where men had been retained throughout the Second World War, she had heard later. Onward then to the mill where, it had been reported in their local paper that weekend, a young mother had last been seen alive. Ten minutes later she wondered just where exactly the writer H.E. Bates used to live, then the bus stopped at the spot where she would alight to go and visit her aunt and uncle for her orange juice and biscuit before they hurriedly ejected her with a smile on their faces and a peck on the cheek but they wouldn’t be doing that any more, for, at last, she had realized there was no point and that you had to have a heart and a conscience to feel. The will now written, it was no use thinking of the rights or the wrongs of the matter, but instead just get on with life as it was.

She’d learned there were many people out there facing difficulties and hardships she would never know, and that included the young people she chose to work with at Colton Ward who, with no communication or social skills, spent their lives in a hospital ward where they would bang, shout, bite and eat anything, edible or not, in sight. That voluntary work in a world, foreign to most, helped her to appreciate what she had and even, in comparison, what her own parents had and was another full stop in her life as well as a realization and willingness to change.

Returning home on the same United Counties bus, the journey seemed better and any loss or anger she had felt, so much smaller, and she would be going there again because of her pain.
Releasing the leash
One day in the not too-distant future, their war of pain would be over and she and Laura would be free. What with him being sixteen years older it didn’t seem, at the time, to be an unreasonable thought. Laura had always looked forward to her weekly arts and crafts class where her knitted scarves grew longer and large holes gaped through her knitting, but somehow that didn’t matter at all. As she had been unable to secure work due to her disability, she really saw her craft classes as an escape. Like a port in a storm and somewhere to chat with her best mate who had moved to the town from the east end of London only months before.

“I am glad to be out of the house Mary! I really don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have this craft class to come to every week. Have you been anywhere nice over the last week?”
“No mate, but I’m glad I stopped commuting to London and the office...gives me more time with my garden and my talks for the guide dogs!”
“That’s great, Mary I’m really pleased you do that...but I wish they would check their dogs closer than they seem to...I know that there aren’t many people out there like Joe, thank God, but I wish there was something we could do!”
Her friend didn’t know what to say to Laura.
“Esther’s challenging him all the time now, and it’s just making things worse. I have pleaded with her not to answer him back, but she just won’t listen. I had to lie to the cab driver who brought me here today and tell him that the window was broken by kids, but really it was Joe. He hurled a beer mug at Esther when she yelled at him to tell him she hated him, and she dodged it, which was just as well. I begged her to say she was sorry but she refused – perhaps if she had let Joe adopt her…”

Laura’s voice trailed away as she reached out for her cup of tea on the work-station where Diane, the kindly canteen lady who lived nearby, was now pouring out tea into small white cups. Laura then continued the weave of the stool for one of her relatives’ approaching sixty-fourth birthday whilst she heard Mary clicking away with her needles with another dishcloth for their bazaar almost completed.
“She shouldn’t keep going to see Enid as it won’t make any difference, and the will is done already. I really have done fighting and arguing. I wish that Esther could see that and stop her crying and sobbing. It doesn’t help things at all, I don’t think”.
“You can’t blame her, love. It sounds like sheer hell for all of you. Damn good job Mark came back from his mates so late, or you would all have been burned in your beds...with Joe’s chair alight, so you just said...with him dropping a fag into it. Surely someone, somewhere, might help, but you have to ask”.
Social life
Laura took Esther’s arm as they crossed Salem Hall, past tables and chairs assembled and crammed in neat lines for the afternoon organized for the blind in the area by the volunteer ladies wanting to give something back to their community.
“Hello Laura”.
Although years since they had last met, Laura still recognized the voice of the social worker who had dealt with the case of Michael all that time ago when their sadness had ended. They shook hands. “Hello, how are you doing? I suppose you know Mum died just before Christmas, didn’t she, Esther?”
Esther didn’t answer, but thought kindly of her Nan who had always done the best she could, even if she hadn’t understood her or Laura and who had lost so much more than Esther could ever know, or Laura feel free to talk about.
Her mind travelled back years as she stood there in the large cold and draughty hall with moth-eaten curtains and a clock askew, though still ticking away. She remembered then, in that moment, her brightness and sparkle when so much in love. It hadn’t been their fault or fair how they had lost their son but, at the time, the social worker had really been convinced that the home visitor for the blind, all those years past, had done the right thing; the books she read and the lectures she went to later seemed to confirm this way of thought. Michael had missed so much however, like visits to the seaside, down to the park or laughter in the woods and knowing who they were then.
“A lovely lady, your mum and I do hope she didn’t suffer. Michael must be about twenty now!”
A tenor and soprano were now on the tiny stage as their poor pianist struggled to keep up, whilst there in that cold and draughty hall the grateful, lonely, old and bored did their best to half-politely listen as they ate sausage rolls and then jelly in pretty, flimsy dishes that most didn’t see. They still felt the cardboard dishes and food that slipped off of their spoons and slipped cold and wetter onto their best clothes. As they tried hard to both balance and listen and chat with friends they and Laura may not have met since the party the year before.
Laura was now back and seated beside Esther and Joe, behind their own trestle table, plates now empty, but tea-cups being refilled by a very generous lady with crooked teeth who spoke gently and leaned closer to Joe. He thanked her profusely then stood to pull out a chair for Laura.
Esther left him there, hardly believing he was the same man who brought such chaos to their lives. Then, from the toilet and on the top concrete step, she looked through the dirty window pane, pigeon droppings lying thick and dry outside on the Church Hall window ledge. She looked at the closing of the Wednesday market day with the stripy old market stall covers and a dustman lightly balancing boxes or hauling big rubbish sacks to the dustcart as the church clock nearby on the square, where her mum once worked in an office, struck four. She needed to be getting back home as soon as she could and do some last-minute revision if she had a cat-in-hell’s chance of passing her O-level evening class exam at college.
Then she returned to her mum and Joe as they were being helped to pack away their raffle prizes and homemade jam, meanwhile him coughing again with his emphysema and him dying for his fags. There then, as usual, followed by ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and maybe ‘Hokey Cokey’. Then, later still, prayers for some whilst others simply bowed their heads.

The crowd of blind and partially sighted people with their caring helpers negotiated the wide, steep concrete stairs, glad for the chance they had had to meet up with their friends and back home to their radios which opened out their worlds and brought the outside world in, particularly for the frailest. So, pushing against the heavy dark wood doors, Joe lighting a fag in the churchyard until it was their turn to get on the coach that would take them home to insecurity once more! First though, the long crowded coach rattled and groaned along the narrow lanes to the villages the other side of town where people got quietly on with living and, even the men, their knitting. Joe swore for that inconvenience as the coach moved on but, as usual, they said nothing as their coach rattled and chugged along into their darkening world.