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MOTHER
(1904–73)
1
Boys
then as now did not go with their mums
to
football, fishing. They
went to shops
for
school caps, shoes, or did weekly rounds
to
butcher’s, grocer’s. And
got, perhaps,
toffees,
sherbet, bagged up by the ounce.
2
Finch-like,
little and nervous, black-haired,
with
a dark, Levantine-olive skin
found
in sea towns, a pigment she shared
with
her brother Ted, my mum had been
the
one in their brood of nine who cared
for
the rest, pressed shirts, a specimen
common
then. Second eldest but
scared
of
life. She would be the
female in
her
terrace not wed, but latish she paired
with
Dad, for rich or poorer, thick and thin.
3
Pretty
little Dorothy, or Dot:
I
couldn’t understand what
made
her marry my dad,
not
the best choice to be had,
though
I saw a few merits later.
Was
it all his fault he beat her
(and
me when I helped her out,
twisting
fang words in his gut)?
She
was vain and frigid, I think,
and
might’ve nagged most men to drink.
4
But
I as first-born adored her.
By
her coffin I laid a card
said
my life’s work was for her sake.
At
school till fourteen, she loved books
and
wrote a grammatical hand,
bought
me my first dictionary
and
a Bible found on a stall.
These
choices she couldn’t refuse.
A
calm presence, and with me still.
5
We
never get to know people unless
we
are willing to let them need us. As
I
did not ever notice if she had
a
hurt that haunted her or howled or bled
its
lot out through her, so I never knew her
completely
or perhaps at all. There
were
moments
we had together in furtive
reciprocated
emanations of
peace.
I read her Spenser one summer and
she
read romances by a fire which burned
dark
brown reticulated patterns
on
her bare shins. She doted
on her sons,
we
knew that. We knew she’d
had harder times
when
young: she had dabbed up crumbs. But
the strains
on
this world’s mother in the second war
were
not for trench sons but for nippers near.
I
sensed terror, not complaint. She
taught us
to
say our prayers, and never let us miss
Sunday
School. She believed in a
plain way
in
God, tall doctors and the family.
She
knit us to cousins, aunts, uncles.
At
Christmas:
crammed front-room parties. Elders
wet
their
whistles and murdered music hall songs.
No
one was a drunkard or thief. The
young
were
fed. The men jobbed.
The women scrimmaged.
People
looked old when they hit middle age.
She
lost one breast to cancer. A
thyroid
made
her eyes bulge. And as
she’d smoked
all
her life, her last year was horrible.
After
decades of house faints, heart trouble,
total
reliance on Dad, throat cancer
was
the last and worst pain, though ‘heart failure’
technically
killed her. I was away.
She
said
I was not to miss my holiday.
Alan
Marshfield
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