Memories are made of this

Picture this
When the small voice sounded from the kitchen Esther’s mum had said, “Of course it’s not your fault that you have to take your school photo back again…just say we have some already!”
Andrew looked puzzled as he took his best photo to date back to school, knowing there were none in the house. In a way it didn’t seem sensible to have pictures that neither his mum nor anyone else could see then, but there was still the future wasn’t there? True, there were school reports that proclaimed they could all do better, though his reports were always so much better, probably because he shut himself away in his bedroom, which he shared with Andrew, having the magic touch of being able to escape into another world of knowledge and books. How exited his mum had been when he brought back the note that said he had passed his thirteen plus and was off to the Technical College in the next Town, whilst Esther and Andrew headed for a Secondary School which didn’t quite expect so much from its candidates.
Anyway, study and dreams like that did not enter Esther’s mind as the pages of her life turned one after another without the talents, it seemed, of her elder brother and still so stuck in the past. Yet photos were still very important to Esther.
“I don’t know where that article or the photo’s are sweetheart…it was such a long time ago now…you were, I think, still at the infants in Harold hill I think!”
“I remember…I remember now that when we got back from school the reporter was there, and a man with a camera. He took photos of all of us running down The Close holding hands, and there was you and dad each side, and we were skipping!”
Her mum smiled at that precious memory, still locked in the past and at her daughter’s imagination. “I remember,” continued Esther, sitting quietly in the kitchen, “there was another one of little Mark being washed in the sink as well…he wouldn’t like that now would he? It would be so lovely to have a photo of dad, just one would be nice. I sometimes find it hard to remember just what he looked like as time goes by. Perhaps if we contacted the News of the World they might be able to help us to get a copy!”
“I don’t know, sweetheart…” then she was stopped in her tracks as the voice that stuck to the walls in their house shouted loud above Wilfred Pickles and Mabel at The table on the radio.
“Where’s my f….ing tea women? And you boy…..close the door or were you born in an f…ing barn?”
And that was the end of Esther’s questioning then for that day.
He maintained his demand as the leash that guided him moments earlier reigned down on his guide dogs bedraggled body, and he slipped deeper into his own insanity, foaming from his mouth like bubbles from her mum’s twin tub washing machine. His brogue shoes sliding and crunching and gripping yesterdays’ ashes now cold and dead. His face mask like and eyes cold. Suddenly though, and in a moment, she had found her brave moment to escape, running past the outside toilet left open earlier by someone. She shot unbridled down the dank dark tunnel as he stood there in the darkness at the end of the tunnel screaming and deranged.
"Come back you f...ing stupid useless animal...come back now! Only moments later there was an almighty slam of brakes and she, his slave, bloodied and crushed beneath the front wheels of what turned out to be a director of a shoe factory on his way to an early start at an exhibition in London.
Esther and her brothers and mum cried. Surely though, the guide dog people would not train him, or give him another guide dog? How could they do something so stupid? People didn't work and raise funds, and dream of helping blind people, to have guide dogs to end as that one had done. Who had worked so hard unstinting through her years of beatings with never a show of teeth? Esther's sadness whirled and dipped and gripped her own insecurities and doubts for as a child on the threshold of teenage years who would listen to her? And what could any of them do, unable to take care of themselves then, although she often wanted to run, but in which direction should she go and what should she say? And she was frightened they might all end up torn apart and away from their mum, who they all loved and felt sad for, hadn’t they been through so much? If only someone somewhere could help in their sad soiled house.
“Ssh Esther, you can't say anything or do anything. Leave him where he is in his bed!”
She had seen him there, and hated him with an intensity which frightened her. Banging with an old walking stick for her mum to fly to his ministry with his usual second mug of black tea, always leaving what she was doing. In their house he always came first, no matter what. In the school bike shed later that morning, Esther recounted her story to a boy who towered above her and listened as his thin gangly arms rested on the post of the shed and relit his cigarette. He seemed to understand, though there was so much she couldn't say and would have to keep back. How could she say how he who was there to care for them and protect them had damaged them all so much?
The tall gangly boy talked about his dreams and then, how she could do what she wanted with her own life and how somehow, sometime, things could change. But she would have to dream and try if she wanted to get out of the trap, and then he had touched her on the wrist and gone to his carpentry class...putting his fag out beneath the sole of his shoe and later heading home to his foster parents who weren’t very kind or warm.