A Mother's Love.

When I remember my childhood it's with all five senses. Smells, sights, sounds, touch and feelings. Maybe that's not strictly true, but that's how I interpret the senses. Of the sixth sense I cannot speak, its too nebulous even now, long after those days. People speak of their past with exaggeration, one-way or the other. Either it was of deadly poverty or it was "the good old days. Neither is true, there is no black nor white, only shades of grey and these varied according to who is reminiscing about those times. That's why I'm so wary of writing about it, various authors, usually female, have made a small fortune over the years writing about slum-dwellings and the people who triumphed over their backgrounds. I dislike such stories, only reading a handful to gauge the truth of different locations.

I was born just after the 2nd World War; I still have my old ration book somewhere in my attic, along with other mementoes of my early childhood. Life was hard, food was still rationed and jobs were hard to come by, despite the terrible loss of life in the war. Unlike the books written about those times, I was unaware of being poor. Everyone in my neighbourhood lived the same, the only difference being in the way my siblings and I were brought up.
We lived in rented accommodation; council houses were still in the future and my mother made the best of a poor deal. The houses were terraced with a bit of garden in the front and slightly more in the back. Most people kept their bit of front garden as a dumping ground for prams, pushchairs and even the occasional unwanted furniture, the council didn't pick up much refuse in those days.

The rear gardens were kept for growing what vegetables were the easiest to grow, usually potatoes and root vegetables. My mother used every available space to the maximum, potatoes were cheap to buy, but greens were more expensive, so we had rows of runner beans, peas and cabbages. For a while she tried to keep chickens but the hutches were too big and the yield of fresh eggs too small, besides, we needed space for the outdoor privy and the coal shed. By the time I was six years old there were two adults and five children living in a small house with two tiny rooms, a kitchen with a huge old boiler and two small bedrooms with a tiny box room. It never seemed cramped to me at the time, there were identical houses with as many as ten children sleeping in similar rooms.

The only difference was in the smells. Our house smelt of carbolic soap and boiled cabbage. A strange mixture, but passing other houses I crinkled my nose up at the smells of stale urine, beer, vomit and unwashed bodies. Our front doorstep opened onto a small patch of grass where my younger sister and brother shared a large pram. It was a faded navy-blue with shiny chrome wheels and a net to keep the neighbourhood cats off. My best friend Elaine lived in a smarter house, she only had one brother so they were better off than us, but we still lived in a run-down area with no park and only a waste ground to play on. To get there we had to cross a tiny stream and although it was supposed to be out of bounds, we spent many a lovely spring and summer days there.

The older boys and girls hung around the streets or went walking down a long alleyway that bordered the local pottery. As I grew older I realised this was a place for snatched kisses and a quick grope, but that was in the future. All I knew then was that it was a forbidden place by both parents and older brothers and sisters. In later years I was to find out that my own parents had carried out some of their courting there, my Gran lived with my older aunty in the same street, although she'd only moved there when my mother was in service.

So my first memories were sounds; the hooters that called the men to work in the steelworks that had brought most of the work to the area. Few cars passed by, but the ringing of school bells soon punctured the silence. Then there was the hooting of Mr Dolling's van as he did the weekly rounds. I loved that sound as he brought goods around that saved us the long journey into the town centre. In his big green van he seemed to carry an Aladdin's cave of treasures. He mainly sold groceries, potatoes, carrots, turnips and swedes. There were boxes full of oranges and apples and occasionally some ripe bananas. There were candles, sewing needles and thread, whitewash for the laundry, blue bags for the nets, polishes of all kinds, for boots and shoes, black lead for the fireplaces and red polish for the steps. I'd be lifted up the three steps to stand and close my eyes while my mother chose the things she needed. The smells of fruit mingled with musty smells of goods only rarely bought, but over the odour of the petrol my keen nose picked out the fragrance of sweets. Jars full of every kind of sweets, gumdrops, liquorice, mints, sherbet dabs and chocolate. How I longed for chocolate but the money never went far enough. I'd be lifted back down with maybe a stick of barley sugar to ease my pangs of longing. Sometimes Elaine's mother would emerge with biscuits, cakes and sweets, but mother, who didn't believe in charity, I think she was secretly scared that I might get a liking for things that she could never buy, forbade me to share this bounty with my best friend.

Mother made bread puddings from stale bread with a sprinkle of raisons and nutmeg, or rice pudding with a spoonful of homemade jam. At Christmas there would be a great pudding, rich with dried fruit and I'd lick the bowl when she wasn't looking. Our Christmas stockings (old worn-out socks) would contain an apple and an orange, but never the golden wrappings of chocolate coins. Still, we considered ourselves lucky, neither of my parents went out drinking, unlike many of our neighbours.

I discovered this alarming fact when I was about eight years old. I'd seen the children of poorer families playing in the streets with barely a vest and a pair of underpants to wear; they went about barefoot even in the colder nights of autumn. Long after I'd been tucked up in bed, my two sisters cuddling up for warmth, the paraffin stove casting weird shadows in the gloom, I'd hear the voices raised in song, drunken revellers returning from the nearest pub while their children huddled in the cold and dark, no money to feed the meters for light and no coal to keep the fires burning. I both pitied and despised them, not a very Christian thing to do, but I was young and unaware of the struggle my mother made to keep us clean and fed. Some winter's nights we huddled under thin blankets with coats on top of us and still shivered all night.

It was a cold night in November when I discovered the extent of my mother's charity. As I said, I was about eight years old and since it was dark early I was about to come indoors ready for supper. I'd been playing with a few of the children, making up ghost stories to frighten them; I had a rather morbid imagination, which made me popular with both girls and boys. The lamplight was dim and I was looking forward to a warm fire and a supper of bread and dripping. The wail caught me off-balance, it rose and fell in the night air like the banshee in my story. I shivered with a touch of fright before I saw the strange procession wending it's way towards me. The girl in front was about my age, but she looked younger with her dark fearful eyes. Behind her trailed four young children, two girls about four or five and two boys, one maybe six and the youngest barely more than a baby, about two if he was that.

She had a thin dress on and a cardigan wrapped around her shoulders, she was clutching the hand of the baby, blue with cold, only a thin nightshirt covering his tiny body while a soiled nappy hung around his ankles. The other girls were dressed in a similar fashion while the older boy wore a pair of short trousers and a thin vest. The wailing was coming from the older girl, the others looked too cold to utter a sound. I stood there for what seemed like ages, but couldn't have been more than a few minutes. As her sobs started to die down she begged me to ask my mother for sixpence to feed the meter, the light had gone out and she was scared of the dark. I asked her where her parents were, but she didn't know. A small voice inside me said they were out drinking. I looked at them with the disdain of a girl, who was brought up to be neat and tidy, but something softened and I wondered how to approach my mother.

I think I started to grow up that night, telling them to gather as close to the streetlamp as possible I entered the house and went straight to my mother. She didn't seem surprised at all, even though I was late in and the supper already on the table. From her purse she took a coin and putting on her coat she waked out with me trailing behind. Gathering the children around her she walked down the street and entering the house she seemed to know exactly where the meter was. Light flooded the room and I saw for the first time what poverty and neglect really was. We had a thin carpet in our house, but homemade rugs covered the patches. Here the floor was bare, except for some cheap lino. There was a sagging sofa and a dirty chair that the little ones climbed onto.
Mother took me upstairs and showed me the bare room where two soiled mattresses lay side by side. I wanted to run away from the bleak and dirty room but somehow I couldn't.

She sent me home for a loaf of bread and a jar of her best jam. I wanted to ask her about a spare blanket, knowing we none to spare but the bleakness of the room had shocked me deeply. I let myself into our house and went straight to the kitchen. Picking up the loaf I saw we would have none for the morning, but I did as I was bidden, choosing the blackberry jam I faltered and run upstairs for our nursing blanket. I didn't stop for questions; I don't think I could have answered them anyway. When I got back mother was coaching a tiny fire in the bedroom, the ashes from the living room fire topped up with a bit of fresh coal.
I went back to the kitchen and found a fairly clean plate; spreading the jam on the bread I took it upstairs. They sat there on the dirty mattress and wolfed the food down as if they hadn't eaten for a week, perhaps they hadn't, I could well believe that by now.
Mother looked at the nursing blanket I'd brought, an old welsh blanket, woollen and warm. She looked so sad but nodded at me to lay it around the children. We watched for a few minutes as they settled down to sleep, the youngest laid in the crook of his sister's arms.

We tiptoed away, mother's arms around my shoulders. That was unusual for her and the warmth of her love sent the night chills away. We stayed up late, baking another loaf for the morning, I felt closer to her than I had ever had before. Perhaps it was the shared experience, or the knowledge that she cared, not just for her family, but for the waifs and strays she would shelter for the rest of her life. That night she told me about the possibility of the blanket bring sold for money for drink. I was horrified and promised to go and fetch it the next day. Gently she told me not to worry, if it was sold she would buy it back, but maybe the parents would be shamed this time and leave it there. Then she told me about the blanket, every one of her children, including the ones that had died shortly after birth were swaddled in that blanket, sometimes cuddled up, but more often on her hip as she went about her work. She had never been demonstrative; maybe she was to frightened to love too much, in case she lost another child. I was very sleepy by then but I kissed her cheek and then hurried to bed.

The experience changed me, although I was never an easy child to bring up. I'm ashamed to say that although I learnt a valuable lesson that night I still yearned for all the things I wanted and could never have. My mother's charity continued, even when she knew it was a drop in the ocean, but until well into my teenage years I would go with her on her missions of mercy. Did we ever make a difference? It was many years before I had an answer to that. Most of that family turned out well, except the parents who should never had been allowed to bring children into a world when they couldn't give them any love or attention.

My memories of those days have never left me; we were poor in money but rich in love. I learnt to feel, rather than go through the motions that many people think are real. I passed this on to my daughter and our relationship couldn't have been better. She surprised me one Christmas by making me a proper stocking, the apple and orange at the bottom and a big bag of chocolate coins amongst the more expensive gifts. I can't remember telling her about that, maybe my mother did sometime over the years; I would like to think she did that.

I nursed her through her final years and went to pieces when she died. I thought I had done enough, but the past kept creeping back. I had tried so hard to tell her I loved her, but she had never responded in kind. I grew angry, she had always cared about other people, why couldn't she say, "I love you? It was then that the sixth sense finally made it's appearance.
She had trusted me so long ago, enough that only I knew the sacrifices she made, not just for her family, but also for everyone in need.

I see her now, clad in her cheap pinafore, waiting for her children to come home from school. The tea laid out, nothing special, just good homemade fare. She gave us values to live by but kept nothing for herself. Over the years she befriended many people in need and never once regretted it. I see her now, that night when she taught me how to care, not just for my family but anyone who cried out for comfort. I followed her pattern without knowing it, maybe that was her own way of saying "I love you, because she let me into her innermost heart.

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