B. Johnson: House Mother Normal

joined in snowballing in the street outside as

though you’d all been kids together, had grown up

in the same street. And we had some money for

a change, had a bird instead of a joint, a capon,

the baby had some giblet gravy with roast potato

mashed up in it, very nourishing for him it was.

Knowing he was for the Front made him

depressed, then suddenly he’d be so cheerful, such good

company, he made it a wonderful Christmas for all of

us, him and his brother, they did a sort of act for

us, Jim got up as a woman, makeup and all, we ached

from laughing, they were so comical, the pair of them,

ached from eating too much, as well, I never — Me ?

Me and Charlie? Trusties, she talks to us

as though we were doing bird, indeed, one of these

days I’ll show her how trusty I am!

What’s Charlie got in them bottles, then?

Looks like gin, smells like spirits, too — she

must be at it again, the crafty old chiseller!

Still, what’s it got to do with me?

Glad I haven’t got the job, anyway, never could

stomach the smell of spirits, I told him that before

we were married, stick to your pint, I said,

don’t you come home here reeking to high heaven of

spirits, I won’t have it in my home.

Yes?

Little bottles, what are they?

Soak the labels off, I bet. Use the bowl from

the sink, I’ll stand them in that, in water, would

some soap help? Do you want me to keep the labels?

My nails are broken, have been for years,

but give the bottles a good old soak and they’ll come off.

Shall I use a knife?

Good, this is an

easy job, I can get on with that, it helps to pass the

time, I don’t mind, get the bowl, fill it with water.

What’s in these little bottles? Chloro-benzo….

Can’t read it properly, whatever it is. No matter, none

of my business anyway. Charlie, have you got a fag?

Mean old sod. And

I know he smokes. Like my Ronnie, always telling

lies, I’d catch him with the fag in his hand

and he’d put it behind his back and drop it and

breathe out the smoke all over the kitchen and

swear he wasn’t smoking at all.

And he married a like one, his kind, oh I hated

that creature, bad as my Ronnie was he didn’t

deserve her, no, never. Lie, she would

lie her way black and blue out of anything, you

could catch her out any number of times and she

would still deny it. I gave up in the end, you

just couldn’t rely on anything she said, anything

at all, anything even as simple as just meeting

you for shopping, she’d lie about who she’d just

seen and what she’d just bought and how much

money she’d won on the bleeding dogs. I’d no time

for her, it must be twenty years since I saw her,

fifteen since I last saw my Ronnie, too. He came

into the pub we had in Strutton Ground then, I

was so surprised to see him walk in, he had a

Guinness and no more than a dozen words to say to

me, a dozen words, and most of them he could

hardly get out, he was that ashamed, I think,

ashamed of not going to see his old Mum for all

that length of time, months it was, perhaps a year.

Not like Laura’s son, twice a week he used to

visit her regularly, once for a cup of coffee at

lunchtime early in the week, and later — There,

that’s enough soaking, let’s see if these little

labels will come off now.

No, tough little customers they are, it’s not

waterproof paper, is it, can’t be?

Perhaps it would help if I scratched them a bit,

to let the water soak in better. A fork would

do it.

Yes, that’s easier, let’s try doing that

to all of them.

I wonder if

Ronnie knows I’m here? Not that he’d want

to visit me, no one gets any visitors here,

anyway, but I’d like to see him just the once more

before I pass over, just the once. He

wouldn’t have to see me if he didn’t want to, no,

as long as I could see him, out of a window,

perhaps, going along the road, just the once.

As long as she wasn’t

with him, the barren sow, she could never give him

any kids, and I know he always wanted kids, my

Ronnie, he was ever so good with them, look how

he used to go and play football with them until

he was quite a grown man, used to run a team for

them as well, he used to get me to wash the team

shirts each week in the winter, it was a trial

getting them dry, it was, she wouldn’t wash them,

I doubt if she washed Ronnie’s own things properly,

let alone the team’s, she was that lazy, Doris

was her name, yes, Doris, I wouldn’t want to see

her again, no, just my Ronnie, once.

Does he think I’m dead? How could

he know I’m here? Could I find him? How?

Could ask House Mother. She’d laugh at the

idea, brush it aside, take no notice, I’m

afraid of her

Not her!

Now let’s see if they’ll come off Yes,

nearly there, if I have a good scrape at this one

then by the time it’s off the others will be even

more soaked, all ready.

What does she want with them?

Yellowy sort of stuff inside, yellowy, runny.

Nasty-looking stuff.

In summer there everyone seemed to take life

easily, so easily, it was as though there were

no pain, no work either, everyone had time to

just walk about, go swimming, sunbathing, get

up boat races, and go dancing. They danced a

new dance called the gavotte, or it was new to

me, anyway, being a foreigner. And they danced

in the streets, too, that was new, the streets

lit by paper lanterns in their fashion. And the

sun so hot at midday that the market-women

put up their red umbrellas for shade, and the

men went into these sort of cellar pubs that sold

wine, I never went into one, could only see down

into them that they were cool and shaded, and there

was a lot of laughing and the tables had zinc

tops and so did the bar, a long bar, the bottles

kept in holes, no labels, I was so thirsty I

went to a café down on the promenade with the

children, little Ronnie was all right but that Clarissa

was a little bastard to me, she knew she could

play me up with safety and she took advantage

of it. I could have been so happy

there, there was so much sun and the life was easy

apart from Clarissa, and she was my job, to

let her parents have some time free, free of her,

that is, for she was a little bastard to them

as well as to me. I wonder what she

could have become, she was already an Hon., I

think, Clarissa, and it was doing little Ronnie

so much good, the sea air and three good meals a

day, the food was good in that hotel, even for

those in service, and it seemed as though it

would go on for ever, the summer, the sun, and

for the first time since the War I really felt

that things were getting back to normal, though

all the ones who could remember better than I

could were saying that things would never be the

same, never could be, after the War, which I could

understand in the case of someone like myself,

who’d lost their husband because of the War, but

not those who’d not lost their nearest and dearest

in it. And it was there I

think I first got over Jim’s death, not got over

it, exactly, but accepted my lot, that I was a

young widow with a young kid, like lots of

others, that this was what my life was, that