Audrey Ellis - Searching Fifty Shades Of Grey

Her mum stretched across the dining room table, bought years earlier from an auction house.

Tuesday was traditionally the day for cutting up strips of newspaper for their outside lavatory.

“What’s to be done said her mother, as she furiously slashed with her scissors at yesterday’s news. May reached out to touch the steadily growing heap of newspapers upon the oil cloth covered table and thought about such pointless frugality. Everything in their house was making do and mend, so when the sash-cord in their bay window snapped her father hammered it shut.

Her father was interrupted by someone knocking on their front door.

“Don’t bloody folk know when to stop hammering and intruding on our home lives. I’ll speak with you later, our May, and it’s no use turning on your damn waterworks!”

They heard him drop the coins for a tray of cracked farm-eggs, sold to an elderly neighbour, onto the dresser he had brought back in his lorry after another mysterious overnight stay in Birmingham. May had shared this knowledge with her auntie who'd bought a cottage at the other side of town.

During the war, whilst May was away at boarding school, her auntie had worked as a capstan lathe operator, where she'd shared how she once made screws and nuts for planes and guns, instead of working as a clicker in a shoe factory. May loved getting her aunties letters and news of what was happening as fighter planes flew overhead.

Her town had made significant contribution to the countries war efforts with the town’s eligible men torn from their assured lives where they had once worked in dimly lit shoe factories or toiled the sodden or sunbaked land that wrapped their town.

As elsewhere, it had then been up to the women to pick up where the men had been forced to leave off.

May’s mother scuttled back and forth to the scullery; carrying supper plates that she dropped into the sink.

May was told by her auntie that her mum was pretty with brown hair and blue eyes like hers had once been; but with a lovely and kind nature too. She idolized her mum, and wouldn’t forget how she had cared for her. Although she loved her parents and the town she'd grown up in but May had to leave them all.

As she sat on her single iron-framed bed drinking her last mug of bitter cocoa that evening she thought of James’ words.

“Everyone will come to their senses eventually. I know my folks will be fine, but your dad doesn't seem to understand. I know we can handle most challenges but you need to be sure that eloping is the right thing to do!” She was sure….

So it was that, early the next morning, May shivered at Birches’ bus station. As she placed her hands on the rail she heard a familiar voice.

“If you so much as take one more step onto that there bloody coach then you needn’t bother coming home again!” It was her father, and he meant it.

She’d no idea how her dream might end but was certain it wouldn't be without a fight. Hadn't she a right to a normal life-no matter what the challenges were.

The seasons came and went…..

Darkness had fallen over woods and fields, whilst town folk got on with their living. May’s father had brought in a good wheat harvest then, with the help of a gang from the next village, bundled it into neat sheaves.

Her brother, Errol, had married Enid, and she fortunate enough to be a bridesmaid. Enid had proudly been flashing an engagement ring that October of 1948, and she had told anyone with half a mind to listen,

“It cost only ten pounds!”

“I booked the damn organ for Errol and Enid!” she had overheard her father mutter, as he tucked into his egg, bacon and fried bread.

“I hope they remember how I arranged eight choirboys at two shillings and sixpence per head. Anyone would think me made of money......god knows where they get that idea”.

May sobbed in her room knowing she couldn’t mention her lovely man’s name.

Her isolation compounded on, what should have been a happy day, as her sister-in-laws bouquet soared through the air and confetti fluttered in the church-yard.

.

May paced the stationmaster’s office, imagining what might have been.

“My god, I thought you were dead. Don’t do that to me. You can’t use the underground again that’s plain for anyone to see!”

He drew her closer; feeling her body tremble. Gently he stroked her hair as she sobbed.

“It’s okay. I’m fine. No harm done.”

“You don’t seem alright to me. Feel the mess you are in. Your clothes are torn and wet, and there’s a smell of oil and grease all round you. How can you expect to go on the underground again? Not after this!”

She didn’t see him smile but heard a deep sigh.

“What do you want me to do? Surely you can see, May, that if I stop trying or taking risks my life's done. Then where will we be? How will I get to work or visit mates? I can’t get closer to pushing up daisies. I haven’t hurt myself. Let’s go back to my digs and settle you in. It wasn’t my fault I fell. The copper said it was the surge of people pushing me over the edge – and the times I’ve used that platform before!”

May knew he was right but…

“If you had agreed to a guide dog as your Ma and Pa in Coventry wanted you to do before you came down here!”

“It wouldn't have made any difference.

“There’s one thing for certain!”

“What’s that sweetheart?”

“We shouldn’t tell anyone back home, they won’t cope, and God knows what Father might say!”

James reached out to take May's arm.

“It’s kind of you to arrange a taxi to drive us home mate”.

The gathered crowd disappeared whilst whispering amongst themselves about the near-miss. Sitting together in the taxi she couldn’t stop doubting even though she was now free.

Her ankles still aching; following the rush to escape from her own home she'd grabbed a new pair of shoes. She shouldn’t have run down her street as she had. Yet the pain she felt now was nothing in comparison to....... Whatever might the future bring?

Their world had seen two world wars and the austerity of those times where people were bound together. His beloved mum Lucy forced to face the terrifying thought of a National Assistance man suddenly on her doorstep. Yet she'd learned how to make do in her scullery with fudge bread made with mashed potato, sour milk added to cooked dishes instead of cheese, and grated vegetables to scones and cakes.

She worked at her treadle sewing machine; making coats out of blankets or unpicking outgrown clothes in order to make scarves and gloves.

Lace unpicked from pillowcases to trim her summer dresses. Gazing fondly as she sat beside her sewing machine at one of her son's creased photographs. A sad half smile crept across her face. Reflecting upon the traumas from which their family had emerged. They'd been worried about how he might cope in a world where disability was almost a swear word! It seemed an interlude, rather than a decade of memories, that flooded like pictures on a cinema screen one clip after the other flowing back….

“Wasn’t it bad enough for an adult to be robbed so cruelly of their eyes? Yet a child seemed so much more difficult to cope with. Her husband’s voice echoed through the years and the pain.

“I’ve cried as long and hard as you sweetheart, but we need to be stronger!”

She wondered where her love for the man whom she had adored since childhood. Sweet memories of school summer holidays. Tender times, such as picnics on Tunstall Hill, and so their magic had spun briefly until war had blasted it away. Leaping to catch a cramp in her calf, her mind carried back and she thought of her man and the life time of love they had shared. Yet in that moment and that distant time she couldn’t stop the storms nor quench her fears.