mbrellas

The water from their shared umbrella dripped from the spokes onto Gwen’s macintosh with comforting plops. Mrs. Martin held the umbrella slanted against the wind and Gwen stood close to her on the rain-pooled tarmac. They were half an hour early for the Cardiff bus; and they waited in quiet restraint with the others in the queue, like those awaiting the safety of Noah’s Ark at the time of the big flood.
Gwen looked up at her mother and was surprised to see her face radiant with a rosy hue, tinted by the light shining through the umbrella’s big pink flowers. Gwen stood first on one leg, then on the other, to get a better look. A drop of cold water landed on the back of her neck and she shrugged her shoulders and made a face.
Stand still, Gwen.
She thought how pretty her mother would look if she put a little rouge on her cheeks, but Gwen’s brain took up a song of religion’s rebuke: You’ll never get to heaven, / in powder and paint, / ’cause the Lord don’t like / you as you ain’t.
The bus rumbled and rattled into the station about five minutes ahead of schedule. Gwen’s mother took hold of her hand and they shuffled forward to board.
Inside, people jostled and elbowed each other for space. Packages and suitcases were stowed away between their owner’s feet or hoisted onto the overhead racks. The conductor collected the tickets and everyone settled down for the journey. The bus roared and lurched out of the station under the driver’s guiding hand.
The bus heated up. Moisture from the rain-soaked people evaporated into the air and the windows misted over. Rivulets zigzagged this way and that with each bump in the road, and ran down the glass joining together in clear globes at the bottom of the pane. Gwen rubbed the back of her hand over her window and peered through the small opening to look for some landmark. Fields, hedges and trees, punctuated by unreadable white signposts at every country lane, appeared in never-ending repetition, on and on, like the frieze around her bedroom wallpaper.
At last they reached the village of Caregwen mid-way to their destination.
Fifteen minutes, the conductor said.
The driver and conductor got out of the bus; they stretched and yawned, stamping their feet against the morning dampness. They moved into the bus shelter and one of them struck a match and lit their cigarettes. The conductor blew smoke into the air, making dirty-white rings that hovered like tainted halos around their heads.
Gwen changed places with her mother and sat in the aisle seat. The local farmers’ wives made cheerful Welsh conversation as they loaded their butter and eggs on to the bus. They were off to the Wednesday Cardiff market.
Bore da, a young woman said to Gwen.
Bore da. Gwen was proud that she could speak enough Welsh to exchange a good morning greeting. They didn’t speak Welsh at home, but she took it in school, learning the difficult pronunciations and the back to front way of the sentence.
The renewed drone of the engine and the smell of the fuel made her nauseated. Gwen was tired and they still had a long way to go. She caught sight of a small box, fire engine red, at the front of the bus beside the driver. Inside this box sat a hammer and the words on the sign below mesmerised her.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK WINDOWS WITH HAMMER.
The words crept inside her brain. They mingled with the vibration of the bus, the singsong voices of the Welsh and the powder and paint song of retribution. Gwen read the words over and over again. She wanted to run to the front of the bus, grasp the hammer and break all the windows. She felt compelled to do this by the very commandment that said she mustn’t. Only the words underneath held her in her seat:
FINE OF 500 POUNDS FOR IMPROPER USE.
Gwen anticipated the moment when she would be sick and the more she thought about it the worse it got. She wished that her father was with them, he would have given her his big pocket-handkerchief to hold in front of her mouth. Then Gwen remembered the hard-boiled sweets.
Did you bring the butterscotch, mum?
Mrs. Martin pulled her canvas bag up from the floor and rooted around. She found the wax paper cone that daddy had given them that morning. It was filled with wrapped butterscotch sweets. Gwen took one. The cellophane gave a satisfying crackle as she pulled on the twisted ends to reveal the gold nugget inside. The feel of solid roundness in her mouth along with the taste of buttery sweetness settled her stomach. Gwen moved the sweet around her mouth with her tongue and the butterscotch clicked against her back teeth.
Suck it, don’t bite it, her mother said.
Gwen concentrated on sucking not biting. Her mother put her arm around her shoulder and Gwen leant against her. She drifted off to sleep with the rhythm of her mum’s heartbeat in her ear.
We’re here, Gwen.
Gwen was foggy with sleep and bus fumes and she couldn’t think where here was. She got up and moved toward the door at the front of the bus with her mother close behind her. Her mother’s hand pushed Gwen in the small of her back. Gwen was cross and wiggled to make her mother stop.
They had an appointment at Wichester Cottage Hospital, a fifteen-minute walk from the bus station her mother said. Gwen had never been there before and she wasn’t sure why she was going there now. She worried that something nasty would happen to her. Gwen had been to hospital to have her tonsils out and she hadn’t liked it.
The red brick building was square, like the pictures of houses Gwen sometimes drew, with the front door in the centre and lace-curtained windows either side and above. It looked too big for a cottage and too small for a hospital and Gwen wondered why it was called a Cottage Hospital. In the entrance hall a sickening odour of ether and antiseptic greeted her, a half-forgotten, half-remembered smell. A vague uneasiness came over her.
This way, her mother said.
Mrs. Martin marched ahead of her daughter through buildings linked by walkways and corridors marked with coloured arrows. She seemed to know this place and no longer held Gwen’s hand in hers. It was as if she knew that whatever was ahead of her, she had to face alone; no one could help her, she had to do it herself.
Her mother entered a large room and approached the desk. She held her head up and her shoulders back. A nurse in royal blue uniform took her appointment card. No words were spoken, no smiles exchanged.
Gwen hung back and watched from the door. There was a heavy sadness hanging in the air like humidity on a hot summer day waiting for a thunderstorm’s ease. Polished wooden benches stood row on row, on the gleaming hardwood floor. The patient people sat waiting for some sign that they were not forgotten.
Come on, Gwen, her mother said.
She followed her and they found a space big enough for one person to sit; everyone squashed closer together to make room for the two of them. Gwen squeezed in beside her mother and they were like Siamese twins joined on one side.
Everybody faced the front like they did in church on Sundays and no one spoke above a whisper. All eyes focussed on the closed door as if their concentrated gaze would make it transparent, and that the visibility of the secret happenings on the other side would render them harmless.
From time to time the door swung open and a nurse came into the waiting room. She would pick up one of the brown folders, look at it, and call out a name. Then the whispering stopped, the silence crackled, every breath stilled to hear her voice. Gwen’s ears seemed to expand to the size of her Uncle Edwin’s ear trumpet, so that she heard every anxious murmur around the room.
Who did she say? Johnson, was it?
One person stood up and stepped forward, while the rest slipped back into their thoughts and bodies to await the next name to be called.
Mrs. Margaret Martin.
Gwen and her mother jumped up.
Stay here, Gwen.
Gwen watched her mother go forward to the front, and her eyes filled with tears. Would she ever see her mother again, she wondered. If her mother didn’t come back, how would she get home? She said silent, urgent prayers. Dear Lord, please send her back to me. Dear Lord, please make mummy better. Dear Lord, don’t let her leave me. Dear Lord, help me to get home.
Come on, Gwen. We’re going now.
Gwen smiled at her mother. She didn’t smile back. Whatever happened in that secret place had made the light in her eyes go out.
We’d better spend a penny, her mother said.
A smell of age-old urine met them when they opened the lavatory door, and except for an overlay of disinfectant, the room was as unpleasant as the one they had used at the bus station a few hours earlier.
They left the hospital and made their way back to the bus terminal. The sun was shining and drying the puddles. They arrived too early for the bus.
There’s Auntie Joan, Gwen said.
Auntie Joan was her favourite Aunt. She lived in Cardiff. Gwen supposed that her mother must have told her that they were coming and asked her to meet them. They hugged and smiled, cried and laughed. Gwen took Auntie Joan’s hand and they went into the café.
Go and get us a table, Auntie Joan said, I’ll get something to drink.
Mrs. Martin and Gwen sat down while Auntie Joan got two cups of tea and a glass of orange squash. When she brought the tray to the table, Gwen could see that there was a plate with slices of railway cake on it, a buttercup-yellow cake speckled with bright red cherries. Her father had told Gwen once that it was called railway cake because it’s the kind of cake they sell at railway cafés.
Her mother seemed happier now that Auntie Joan was with them and that made Gwen happy too. When Gwen had eaten her cake, Auntie Joan gave her a shilling and told her to buy something nice. She went to the magazine rack and picked out a comic, paid for it at the counter and checked the change the man gave her. She went back to the table. Her mother and Auntie Joan stopped talking when they saw her.
Would you like to come and stay with me and Uncle David for a little bit? Auntie Joan said.
Yes please, Gwen said, if mum says it’s all right.
Yes, Gwen, that’ll be fine.
Wouldn’t you like to come too, mum?
Mummy’s going to be busy for a while, Auntie Joan said.
She looked at Gwen’s mother with tears in her eyes and squeezed her hand.
It’ll be all right, Margaret, you’ll see, Auntie Joan said. This operation will soon be over and you’ll be all better.
I hope so, Joan, I don’t know how much more I can take.
They saw Gwen looking at them.
It’s all right, Gwen, her mother said, I’m just being silly, that’s all. Don’t worry.
Gwen smiled at her. She did worry, but she didn’t want her mother to know.
Auntie Joan and Uncle David have a swing in the garden, Gwen said, I like it there.
Daddy will come to see you, her mother said, and I’ll be better soon and then I’ll come home.
Gwen spent the summer with Auntie Joan and Uncle David and her two older cousins. She learned how to roller skate and ride a bike—her mother never let her do these things because she was afraid she would hurt herself. She played in the garden and sometimes helped Auntie Joan peel the vegetables for dinner; she went to the bookstore where Uncle David worked, while Auntie Joan visited her mother in the hospital. You had to be fourteen years old before you could visit at the hospital, so Gwen didn’t see her mother for the whole summer holidays.
Auntie Joan took her home in time to start school in September. Mrs. Martin came home a few days later, but she wasn’t better like she’d promised. She lay in bed all day and a nurse came to look after her. The nurse wouldn’t let Gwen help, but when she went for her supper, she sneaked into her mother’s room and read to her from her schoolbooks. Her mother fell asleep to the sound of her voice and Gwen crept away so she didn’t disturb her or get herself into trouble with the nurse.
Gwen asked God, each night, to make mummy better. Her father asked too. God didn’t even hear the Methodist minister who came to the house saying long loud prayers.
One morning in early December her father woke her up and told her that her mother passed away in the night. The house took on a hush, and the blinds were pulled down so that the neighbours would know that Mrs. Martin had died.
Two days later they went to church and sang hymns. Gwen put a small cross of purple violets on top of the coffin. Then they went to the cemetery in big cars.
It rained.
Her father held an umbrella slanted against the wind. Gwen stood close to him. A drop of cold water landed on the back of her neck and she shrugged her shoulders and made a face. She looked up at her father and saw that his face was sad. His umbrella was black. Gwen looked around and saw that all the umbrellas were black and all the people were sad.
Gwen wished she’d brought her mother’s umbrella with the big pink flowers to cheer everyone up, but then she wondered if pink flowers, like rouge, would stop mummy from getting to heaven. Perhaps it was better to have black umbrellas and sad faces than pink flowers and happiness. Mummy mustn’t miss out on heaven. It never rained there and she wouldn’t need an umbrella at all.

 © Judith Lawrence

 [Author’s Note: For my mother taken from me far too early. Written from the heart of the child and the words of an adult’s memories.]