Fragments of Springtime

ἁ

“Push,” said the nurse, leaning over her. All she could see were the bright lights and the intrusive head, bold and commanding, like a gargoyle. What did she know about it? “With your head down.”

“Aren't I pushing?” Ellen grunted, because it felt as if all fury was being let loose down there. She couldn't help pushing, and the pain!

“You're doing fine,” the nurse said.

“Well, what are you telling me to...” she grunted… “push for?” Stupid woman, and where was Reg while she was going through all this? It was all right for him. He was sitting outside, and she was going to die if she pushed any harder.

“Good girl,” the nurse said.

It was as if she was expelling all her guts through her – oh, beg pardon – ARSE, but she couldn't help saying that. It was enough to make you BLASPHEME.

“Just once more,” whinnied the old gargoyle.

Once more! She couldn't stop if she wanted to, and she wanted to all right.

“Gently,” said the nurse's head.

“I can't,” she screamed. “I'll never do this again.”

“You're doing fine.”

It was like spears reaching to her coccyx and rending the pelvis. She gasped and tried to think of the midwife's advice, breathe deeply, relax, and like a drowning creature, she struggled to control her heaving lungs, expelling low moans of discipline, and the pain was coming again.

“Hold back if you can, love,” the nurse said.

“Where's Reg?” she shouted.

From between her legs the midwife announced: “It's nearly here.”

A gas mask was pressed over her face as the crowds began to gather. She breathed hollow gasps, echoing through her head, while her eyes saw the gazing faces staring down. All the heads were revolving; the lights blazed from the ceiling, drunkenly reeling.

The vulva yawned, and a head emerged, purple and puckered, with black hair clinging in bedraggled streaks above its face. Small sack-like shoulders followed and then the whole torso, wrinkled like an orange. The small arms unfurled and trembled.

“It's a little boy,” they said. They lifted him up, a small crouching seahorse of a figure. The umbilical cord was cut, and he was free, free from the body that had made him, free and falling.

It was the brightness of the day's dawning. The long night of the evolving savage and the rhythmic drum, the night of the accumulative pounding began to pale and from the lapping water on the muffled red shore he heard the day break with a resounding bang, and he was tumbling outwards, downwards and upwards as if he was exploding into the world. He'd been ejected from the walls of his close, warm home and he grasped. But there was nothing. He grasped again. Air filled his lungs, and as it fled the sky was rent with a long, loud cry that was him, ringing with the harsh cacophony, mingling with the ever-present, unpredictable sound of chaos.

There was no more warmth, no water, no flesh to bury into.

The nurse took him to the slight, exhausted figure that was his mother. “There, Mrs Mitchell. Isn't he a bonny boy?”

His mother looked up and smiled. “Can I hold him?” she said.

“Just for a moment,” said the nurse.

A blue plastic band was prepared. “And what are you going to call him?”

His mother said, “Peter – Peter Reginald.”

“Reginald after his father, I suppose. How nice.” The midwife wrote it down.

They fixed the band to his wrist with that name on it, and the midwife took him. “We're just going to give him a bath, Mrs Mitchell.”

A strange tepid sea encompassed him like the waters of the womb again, but still there were the bright lights screaming and the harsh ringing sounds. The warmth of the intimate heartbeat had gone, and he yelled as they lifted him into space, while his hands grasped out in desperation.

“We'll weigh him now,” they said.

“How heavy is he?” his mother asked.

“Seven pounds eight ounces,” said the midwife. “What a fine baby.” She held him at arm's length. “He's got lovely eyes. I think he's got your eyes, and what a fine pair of lungs.”

Then they took a shawl and bound him tightly, like a mummy. He felt the soft material touching his arms, touching his legs, touching his body, and its warmth filtered through him. The air came more gently. The harsh cry melted to a whisper and died. He was safe again.

“Will you try and feed him now?” said the midwife. She lay him in his mother's arms. He felt the flesh. He buried his mouth deeply and snuffled his nose into the warmth of her breast. It was lovely and gentle, and he sucked, groping blindly, and by chance, he tasted a sweetness.

“Well, I never,” laughed the nurse. “He's found it already.”

“Is he on, dear?” asked the midwife.

“I think so,” said his mother.

He sucked and squirmed. Then he lay quietly as he had in the womb, hearing again the distant heartbeat, and at last he slept, slept as he'd always done, cocooned, imprisoned in darkness, but now he was no longer in darkness. Now he was not imprisoned. Now he was in light. Now he was free.

1

1-i

He was his mother's son and a very spoiled son because, to her, he was a new toy; a toy who smiled when he woke, so she would wake him just to see him smile. She played with him and sat beside his bath propping him up so that he could kick and splash and fling soap suds. She sang to him while she bathed him, and when he was eighteen months old, he sang back the very notes she was singing.

Then he became a performer who, at the age of two and a half, the legend said, went to his grandmother's house, as did Little Red Riding-hood, and sang to the visitors.

Yes, his grandmother, who was a fine old lady and a tower in the church, took in visitors through the summer and Peter became court minstrel.

The legend has it that one day he asked to sing to the visitors while they were having their dinner. His maiden aunts, Aunty Ethel and Aunty Betty, were busy serving the food and, as usual, his Aunty Ethel was rushing in a flap with plates and dishes and worrying that the dinner would be cold. Aunty Betty never flapped. She loved Peter, and Peter liked her to pick him up and make a fuss of him. But he liked Aunty Ethel because she would say, with a voice as solemn as a judge, “Don't you smile, mind!” and he would sit without moving his lips one fraction, but laughing inside, and she would be laughing inside because her eyes were twinkling. She would lift her finger and wag it solemnly and say again, “Now you're not to smile. No. Don't you dare!” And he would feel his mouth bursting at the seams to laugh, but he wouldn't, and she would say, “Now, come on. I saw your lips move. Now stop it!” and he would laugh like a bell, and she would smile all over her face, and it would change her from being a judge, and her face would light up like her eyes.

Yet she would be in a flap, running around with plates and potatoes and she would say, “Look, Mother,” – she always called Granny, 'Mother'. “Look, Mother, don't you let that child go in there now. They're having their dinner.”

But Peter went down into the dining room as soon as Aunty Ethel had gone back to the kitchen, and he began to sing Crimond. All the visitors stopped eating and listened to his small voice coaxing their money from their pockets.

Now Aunty Betty would have stood outside the room until he'd finished, and then she would look at Granny with full eyes, and she would have said, “Dear of him,” and would rub his curly head, and she wouldn't have cared if the visitors' dinners got cold. But Aunty Ethel thought the dinner was more important than Peter, and she brushed past him as he sang.

This, sad to say, was not in his plan, and he was angry. In fact, legend has it that he looked up at Aunty Ethel and said in a voice full of wrath, “There, now! You've been and put me off.”

Granny thought that was funny, even though she was a tower in the church.

They were beautiful days, though, when he was a child and still in the land of the legend. He had seen those days in photographs. They were the days when they lived by the beach in 'Thatch Cottage' and Cliff Road was always awash with sunshine. The sea was blue, the sky was blue, and always the seagulls drifted through the air lifted by gentle breezes. The beach was warm, and the water lapped against the pebbles with only a plash of delightful music. The boats lazed on rocking waves, and the granite posts on the cliff burned the white hot day through, and it was always summer with its ethereal blue sky. He'd heard his dad say that. “The sky today,” he said, “is ethereal blue.” He liked those words, and when he said them to his mum she always laughed. He sat in the garden under the ethereal blue, behind a bowl of water with his yacht sailing in it, and people's voices chattered by the wall, and he always had the funny white cloth sun hat on that he had seen in the photographs, and always he was his mother's son.

When they moved from 'Thatch Cottage' though, and from Granny, who lived next door, it was different. The sea was farther away. The harbour was just down the hill, but Granny was no longer next door, and Peter was more alone, because, although he was his mother's son, he was everybody else's son as well: Granny's, Aunty Ethel's, Aunty Betty's. He missed the fussing and petting – and at this time he was aware of other things that were not quite the same.

His mother, for instance. One day he was across the room by the kitchen door sitting on a stool. The door had a glass window, patched with a pale oil cloth of faded flowers, and outside, between the cellar and the kitchen, was a yard – a grey, cold, concrete yard. It had high, crumbling walls all around and only a patch of the blue ethereal sky could be seen, and only one or two gulls crossed over.

In the yard it was always damp and chilly, and the moss grew up the walls, with green slime on its white-worn-grey surface. He couldn't see the yard as he sat on his stool because he was too small.

Only the other day, he had stood and leaned his head against the tabletop, and his father had told him he was growing because he used to be able to run under the table. But he still couldn't see out of the window into the yard. He knew what it was like though, because when his mother had gone out there, he had been with her, and there was a clothesline out there with a clothes pole, and the line was attached to a hook just above the window.

His mother was afraid to go out in the yard now, because once there was a rat out there, a huge rat, oh, about a foot long, like a rabbit, brown and low-down glowering on the floor. The rat would attack her, she said, and they jump, and they grab your throat.

The drain was out there too, where all the waste water went. That was where the rat lived. It was a square drain that was always surrounded with green slimy concrete and little puddles of white-blue water, milky from the washing up, and the drain was like a slate-blue star patterned square, sunk down into the concrete. That was slippery too, because of the damp.

His mother, now, yes, on that day, she was not interested in talking to him. She was always busy and didn't care whether he was there or not. So, he sat on the stool with a ruler in his hand, tapping on the pale oilcloth. The glass in the corner of the window was broken, and it was only the oilcloth that was holding it together, and when he tapped, it grated where the broken bit rubbed against the rest. That got on his mother's nerves, but she was going on with her work today and didn't even speak to say, “It's getting on my nerves.” So, he carried on because she should have spoken to him.

She had said earlier that he would have to stop clinging to her apron strings because of the baby, but it wasn't his fault, the baby, so why wasn't she talking to him? She kept on working, and he kept on tapping.

It was a dreary day just like It was Christmas day in the workhouse. His dad used to say that one too.

It was Christmas day in the workhouse.

The walls were whitewashed pink.

They were cooking the Christmas turkey

in the kitchen sink.

And this was the workhouse because his mum worked here, and the walls were crumbling with wrinkled shiny cream paint, and there were bits of green and white check oilcloth on parts of them, and the cooker was blue-grey and covered with streaks of sticky mess that his mum hadn't cleaned off yet. The sink was cream on the outside with little brown chip marks like potato peel. There was a big chip, as well, on the edge of the sink and that was brown too, so it must have been the right sink, the one where they cooked the turkey.

The kitchen was steamy, and all the walls were wet with tiny drops of moisture, and down by the skirting board, there was a dirty brown stain where the damp had come up from the ground.

His dad's brother, Uncle Fred, was a builder, and he said the walls were heaving with damp. That was a good way of describing them, like a man with asthma, heaving up and down, up and down with sweat on his forehead and on his chest, heaving silently like the poor, heaving wall. Uncle Ted in Swindon had asthma, and he had a little black pump to pump himself up with. That would make him heave better.

His mother was still working between the poor heaving walls of the kitchen, but she hadn't spoken to him, and the whole room was full of afternoon stillness, the stillness of nap time when both he and his mother went to sleep, when no sound was heard. It was annoying him. All the time he was tap-tapping the ruler against the broken pane. It was even getting on his nerves, but he wouldn't stop because she just didn't take any notice. She just kept on sighing, like the heaving walls, as she worked.

Yesterday, his dad had brought a new car home. It was lovely because it had a straight back with a black grid holding the spare tyre. It wasn't like Florry Ford. His dad always called the cars names. This one was called Tin Lizzie. Florry Ford had a sloping back and a boot and a clear window. Tin Lizzie didn't have a boot but sat bolt upright and had yellow stained windows which were much better because they were just like the ones Mr Hosking up the road had in his car.

Of course, he'd got a car of his own, but he didn't take it out often as they hadn't got any garden in this house, and his mum wouldn't let him take it off the pavement. Sally, who lived next door, played with it too, and she took it off the pavement even though he'd told her not to because of his mum, but she had said, “Well, she's your mum. She's not my mum. My mum didn't say I mustn't take it off the pavement, so I'm going to.” Sally was a naughty girl sometimes, but her house was bigger than his.

“Peter, if you don't stop tapping that beastly ruler, I'll put it about you.”

His mum said that – all of a sudden.

It was not a very nice thing to say. He hadn't done anything to her. All day she had been working there without speaking to him. Then, when she did speak, it was to say that. Peter was cross. If that was what having a baby was going to do to his mother, then he didn't want one. She would like the baby more than she liked him.

“Go on then,” he said, “hit me,” because he was so cross, and he hadn't done anything. She did hit him too, for nothing. He got off the stool and stamped his foot. All his mother wanted him for now was to hit him because the baby would be too small to hit and because he would be older than the baby. He would always be the big one, and he would always get the hits.

“It's all that beastly baby's fault,” he said. But his mother only laughed.

Not long after that, she went away. Peter wasn't alone because his Aunty Margaret had come down from Swindon to look after him, but Peter didn't like that because she'd brought a boy with her called Jonathan, and she made more fuss of Jonathan than she did of him, Peter Mitchell, who was his father's son and heir and his mother's precious angel.

It was summertime and down by the harbour.