Audrey Ellis - Searching Fifty Shades Of Grey

She noticed a man yelling at a lady for losing her handbag. Whilst the steam filled station concealed the activities on the next platform. A lady talked into the air and everyone stopped to listen to her. Something about a cancellation; whatever that was! Not for one moment did it enter her child’s mind, running beside her father, how soon everything would alter. His thin white stick tapped in quite a comforting way. Most people stepped to one side but some didn’t bother.

“Bloody ignorant or lazy muttered her father, whilst forcing his way through, nothing seemed to stop him until…..

“Daddy is resting in bed again; he is tired and has pains in his legs that the doctors are still trying to help to get better. Dr. Feldman at the practice has prescribed strong medicine” their mum had said as they walked together that night.

It had only been a couple of weeks earlier that Esther remembered her father taking himself off to his vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden, following a huge row about bringing....... home. As a peace-keeper he had returned clutching a huge cauliflower which he had given to her mum and she had cried and said,

“I really don’t know what to do about this, James”.

If they argued about anything it was about..... There would easily be two less people living on this planet if her mum hadn’t been such a skilled mediator.

Mrs. Franks would no longer bring her husband round for a cup of tea. Esther noticed how he had legs like two sticks of rhubarb but that didn’t stop him from wearing the most garish of shorts in summertime.

Not for one moment did it enter her child’s mind that life could ever change.

May heard rain pooling as water collected in gushes and rushes at the end of the close and into the gutters as their dray-man delivered his coal. Then a short time later, three pairs of eyes stared as a Daily Mirror reporter and photographer walked up their garden path. Eyes that kept May up-to-date with her neighbour’s comings and goings. Who didn’t seem to miss anything? Small things like when workmen came to paint nearby houses with a fresh coat of paint, or if someone different was pushing a pram; these eyes logged it all.

“Ah, you must be Esther” said the reporter, as she put her notebook down on the piano lid. She listened whilst May chattered about never being frightened of being blind and how there were compensations, like having a surer touch and keener hearing than most.

“I was really frightened though, when Esther was born. I was kept in longer than usual. Yet, with lots of patience from the maternity staff, I learned how to bath and look after her. I was fumbling at the beginning, but quickly gained in confidence. I was mixing baby feeds and taking Esther for walks in her pram. I used to listen for her heartbeats. I'd tickle her to see if she would laugh. If she didn’t I knew something wrong with her. I've managed to nurse them all through things like whooping cough and measles!”

So she continued, as she carried the reporter her freshly made cup of tea; with the tea dripping onto the saucer.

“I’m happy but of course I do have regrets. I long to know what spring looks like, I can feel it and smell it, but I can’t see it. I would love to see Esther’s blue eyes and Peters mischievous grin but the funny thing is I don’t even know what a mischievous grin looks like!”

The reporter turned to Esther who was anxiously standing behind the sitting room door.

“Your mummy has been telling me all about you and what a helpful little girl you are. Have you had a nice day at school?”

Esther didn’t reply but ran to her mum, sitting on the warm saggy sofa and whispered.

“You told me not to talk to strangers. Who is that funny man who has a big camera round his neck?

“It’s okay darling he's a photographer at the Daily Mirror, a big paper that wants to tell all their readers how daddy and I are managing. Is that alright? I did talk to you about them coming at the weekend. Don’t you remember?”

What she didn’t try to explain to Esther was how she'd written to the paper herself after James had mentioned how a blind couple who he’d known had their kids taken into care just because they were blind.

Esther nodded and walked to the kitchen to get her usual orange juice and biscuit, then returned and listened as a young lady, who said she was a reporter, talked to her mummy about how she coped with not being able to see and what the difficulties were and why she contacted the paper about their story.

Shortly afterwards her younger brothers dashed in from Mrs. N.’s, where they’d been watching a Granada children’s television programme called Zoo Time , being spoiled with Swiss roll and bread and jam sandwiches, with remnants on their faces and would Mummy and Daddy please take them to London Zoo to see a panda please.

Their mummy talked quickly, whilst the young reporter with windswept hair and long red painted nails (with one being broken in her car door, she said) scribbled in her rapidly filling notebook. Then they waited for their daddy to join them briefly out in the Close where together they ran down the road where her daddy had first taught her to ride her bike and with the magic camera capturing that memory for ever.

The reporter and photographer slipped away to report on what they called another bigger story, whilst life in the close seemed to be normal again. How might they, sleeping in blissful ignorance, be prepared for the changes that lay ahead for them all?

Esther and her brothers were leaping over cracked pavements in Peters field Avenue, the nearest red phone box working. Their mum was now in charge; aware of how life was about to change and unable to do anything to mend their breaking world. Esther pushed against the door, hearing the shilling her mum had dropped roll. Esther Stooped to pick up the spinning coin. Then their mummy pressed button A – or was it button B? – And they heard their mum’s voice breaking.

“Of course it’s an emergency operator. Do you think I would be sending a life and death telegram if I didn’t think it was a matter of life or death? For God’s sake, why are you not listening to me? My husband is critically ill. The doctors have told me that he has only hours to live. His mother and sisters must be told. Why are you asking these questions?”

Then she cried as her children stood there watching; barely grasping anything.

Earlier Esther and her brothers had sat in a hospital side room. A young doctor had leaned forward with elbows on his crowded desk; with a half-empty box of tissues.

“I’m sorry but we can't do any more for your husband. He spoke of a blood clot. How one day this condition would be treatable.

Esther still remembered walking down narrow twisting corridors and how glass in the windows rattled and even how leaves fluttered into corridors.

Squirrels leapt from tree to tree in an inner courtyard where a laundry van and a strange black van stood. Nor would she shake away from her memory his ashen and sweaty face or the clear tubes of liquid that slowly flowed from the bag on a stand near his bed into his nose. Upon first seeing his paisley screen being slowly drawn back by the young nurse, the unspoken dread was that her daddy was already dead.

“Your husband is more comfortable” whispered a nurse. Despite feeling frightened Esther kissed her father's forehead. He groaned. Again she kissed him on the forehead, noticing how different he was from the dad she knew; who had burst forever like their party balloons.

Singing (although out of tune) alongside his accordion. She was standing beneath his towering legs. She felt guilty for being frightened. This was her dad after all. She cast her eyes down the ward with six beds on each side. A nurse in a blue starched apron and ice cream-shaped hat sat at her desk near the swinging doors. Another nurse wheeled a squeaking trolley toward her father’s bed; then a screen was drawn.