Mum’s Sister

Since I am full of that smelly fruit called ‘Durian’, there is a case for digressing slightly away from Mum.  This is not, really, apropos of anything specific, I just don't feel like writing about Mum right now.  Is that OK?

When Mum was ‘chosen’ at the orphanage she was taken to the flat where Nan and Granddad Billy lived.

Billy worked on the buses.  He remembered a time of horse drawn buses and hearses.  When there was a funeral they would pad the horses feet as a sign of respect, no noise to disturb those who were mourning the deceased.

Times change, don’t they?

Long after Mum came from the orphanage, during the Great Strike, Nan saw all the men from the bus depot hanging around in the street outside her flat.  She fetched Billy’s rifle from the First World War, opened the window and waved the gun at them shouting, “Get back to work you ‘lazy people’,” or words to that effect, in her broad Cockney!

[She used to call me ‘Ducks’, it was a term of affection but it confused me for many years!]

The police came and disarmed her, gave her a severe ‘tutting’ and went away.

Nan was a lady who had terrible ulcers on her legs.  The health service in those days was non-existent.  She would go on a particular day to a clinic for poor people where they would line up all those with leg ulcers.  Then, with what looked like a wallpaper brush, they would ‘paint’ all the legs with some solution from a bucket.  There was no thought of disinfecting the brush between ‘treatments’.

That was life in those days.  You just put up with what you had.

Mum discovered that she had a ‘sister’.

Her sister was a shade older and had a terrible temper.

At one time there was an argument during which sister threw a knife at Nan and Mum.  They were already heading out of the door, which they slammed shut to hear the knife thud and quiver into the other side of the door.

Another time, sister was banished to her room.  Later she was found sitting in a major pout in the middle of the room surrounded by wallpaper; none of which was left on the walls.  Billy said it saved him a lot of trouble since he planned to redecorate anyway.

Mum was in trouble at school.  The school had glass partitions so the classes could see each other.  The teacher got the cane out to punish Mum; at which point sister appeared.

“You are not caning my sister,” she raged.  Grabbing the cane she snapped it over her knee.

Ultimately, sister married a man who I was not, personally, very keen on.  I suppose he was all right in his own way but I could never be comfortable with him.

They lived on the banks of the river near Twickenham and had three children.  A boy with two younger sisters.

The boy was chased by the swans once, possibly he had wandered too near their nest.  Frightened him, as you might imagine.

He also had a time when he was dour and reticent.  Sister sat him down and told him that they were not leaving his room until he told her what the problem was.

Seems there was a lamp-lighter preying on young boys.  Sister rolled up her sleeves...  The police saved him.  Pity, really.

They were all coming to Devon, to us, for a holiday but the husband reversed the car into the river, thus cancelling the holiday.

They all became sick.  Very sick.

They were, all of them, active members of the local Church.  Nobody came to see how they were.  Nobody came to help.  Nobody.

Until.

‘Tap, tap, tap,’ on the door.

“Ugh?  We are sick, you can’t come in,” sister croaked at the smartly dressed ladies.

“Deary me.  That’s no bother.  You go and lie down, we’ll soon sort you out.”

They did.

In no time they had organised people for shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking and feeding.  They sorted out a doctor to come and made sure the medications were taken appropriately.  They kept this up for two weeks.

Thus sister and her family became Jehovah Witnesses.

Ultimately they moved to a better life in Canada.  I was told my cousin had died so it was with some surprise that Mum had a letter from her shortly before she passed away.

Billy had complained of a stomach pain.  Nan was never one for much sympathy for sick people, “Pull yourself together, Billy,” she told him.

When the ambulance came she was seen running after it calling out for her Billy.

She never saw him again.

You just never know, do you?

And that’s why, every time I say goodbye to BOM, I say, “I love you.”

Because you never know.

Perhaps it is best that I get on with writing now.  Because?

From the Orphanage Onwards

Previously, on ‘The Write Stuff’...

No, no!  I have been watching far too much TV recently.  Some of it good but much of it is just pap to soak up time.  Discipline, that is what is needed.

‘Law and Order, SVU’ is the main culprit.  The stories are heart rending in the extreme, the plots are well written and the acting is excellent.  How to turn my back on the TV at eight o’clock?

Needs must.

I left the ‘story of Mum’ hanging somewhat.  It needs a little more because there is a story of life in amongst it that is applicable to lots of people.

As I said, a long time ago, Mum’s life revolved around the idea that she was rejected at birth.  She had no value or worth.

Let’s look at the beginning of that idea.

In the orphanage all the little girls had their own tasks to perform.  Every day was a ritual of cleaning and other small chores.  Girls who had been very good were awarded a piece of the crackling off Matron’s pork joint; something to be treasured and guarded.

Every so often there would be a ‘Choosing Day’ when they were all lined up and members of the public would wander in out of boredom or, maybe, to genuinely select a girl to be raised as their own.

Mum was ‘chosen’ one fine day.  The couple that chose her picked her because she smiled.  Probably a nervous reaction but she did smile and was chosen.

The agreement was that she could go with this couple providing that they supplied her with clothes, her orphanage clothes would then be returned.  Keeping her was subject to a periodic check by a nurse (Houghton, one believes) who would either give the couple permission to keep her or she would be returned to the orphanage.

The Royal Richmond Orphanage no longer exists and no record can be found.  Perhaps it was bombed out during World War 2.  There are references to 'Fatherless Children's Asylums' but nothing specific.

The couple became known to me as Nan and Grandad, this will give you a clue that she stayed with them for a long time but, on the way to their flat in southwest London, she was asked if she would like a toy.

They took her into a toyshop where, after much deliberation, she chose—a dustpan and brush.

Red. A red dustpan and brush.

Of course she had never had a toy.  Never.  She had always been required to share her work implements; to have a dustpan and brush of her very own was something wonderful, a thing of great joy.

Nan stopped at the butcher’s before they arrived home.  An extra mouth required an extra bit of meat.

While Nan was selecting the appropriate piece the butcher shouted, “Hoi!  Stop that!  What does she think she’s bleedin’ doin’?”

Mum had decided that the floor was filthy and wanted to clean it up using her new ‘toy’.  Sadly, the butcher had only just laid clean sawdust on the floor to soak up any spilt blood from his produce and was incensed that this strange little girl was sweeping it up.

Mum had never been in a butcher’s shop before but she recognised the difference between clean floors and dirty floors.

And so Mum was introduced to family life at the age of eight years.  Suddenly she had a sister who was, almost, a homicidal maniac at first.  She had been in and out of foster homes for a long time because nobody could cope with her temper.  Her Mum was Welsh and her Dad was a German Prisoner of War.  Somehow she had ended up in an orphanage and was fostered out.

Nan was not going to be defeated by a slip of a girl.  And she was not.  Nan stayed the course and Mum’s sister grew up to be a lovely soul.

This was 1924.  A new start.

Not until the sixties was it discovered that Mum had no birth certificate.  Nobody had thought to register her at birth and Nan never adopted her.

At one point she needed a passport but, with no birth certificate, it was decided that it could not be done.

In 2002 I got Mum a passport.  No problem.

And that is how she came to live with us here in Malaysia.

She was abandoned at birth so, no matter what, she was not going to be abandoned at the end of her life.

There is more to the story, of course, but maybe another time.  Writing this is still painful but, just maybe, it needs to be done.

How we develop.  How we find our lives set.  Our characters, our little idiosyncrasies are all laid out for us at an early age.  Fight though we do it is so difficult to get past certain ideas, certain barriers that have been put into place for us or by us.

Abuse takes so many forms.  For many people abuse is sexual, for others it is psychological.  Sometimes you can have the kindest people in the world around you but if you are not prepared for the big world ‘out there’ then that is also a form of abuse.

Leopards, they say, do not change their spots.  For us authors we are encouraged to develop, or grow, our characters, but beware.  Characters are real people.  They live in our minds, they exist, they are our friends, colleagues and, sometimes, our enemies.

They do not change.

People rarely, if ever, really change.

Superficially there are some subtle changes but the character we grew up with stays with us for life.  I wish it were not so.  I dearly wish that people could change but it is my experience that any change is usually only in the mind of the beholder.

We just get better at hiding it.

But that is another story for another time.

Stories

Four stories from the mind of David S Leyman to suit all tastes:

‘The Hags of Teeb’ is a humorous novella underscoring the British form of xenophobia and the class system. Major Jassington Farquar DeTovington-Beauville, Duke of Scafell Pike and the fifth Baron Livesey, twenty-third in line heir to the throne of the Empire with his faithful family retainer, Gaspard, go into battle with the ‘Herds of Dollib’.  The result of this encounter will determine their ultimate fate; will they get the treasure or will they be doomed forever?

‘Meevo’, a novelette with a military flavour.  A dangerous mutant escapes from a high security prison in Molepolole, a windswept, icy and toxic wasteland where escapees can expect to die once they are clear of the confines of the prison.

A squad of the toughest space soldiers is sent south from their tropical headquarters in Liverpool to catch the mutant and either return it to its cell or kill it.

The soldiers are ill suited to a mission where the hunted will make you see what it wants you to see.

‘Crater’ is a, largely, military space opera focussing on a war of attrition between humans and an ancient race of beings who crashed one of their ships on Earth.

They want us, and everything on our planet for fuel, we would rather not allow this and go into battle to prevent our extermination at their hands.

They believe they are immortal but we have an advantage—we breed.  They may have the technology but we have numbers, a history of warfare and a will to survive.

This story spans millennia and the far reaches of space.  Who will prevail?  What is mankind’s ultimate fate?

‘Three’s Company’.  A romantic short story set somewhere ‘up there’ amongst other worlds on an unknown planet where an attachment is formed between a human and a rather feline human as a result of an expedition into the jungles of the north.

Years later a mystery develops when the human, Iffan Beute, leaves his home in the south to visit a dying friend in the northern part of their homeland.  All the ‘Northerners’ regard his companion as a ‘ghost’ and his friend, Metth Croym, is fixated on a painting that he cannot remember creating.

All of the stories are available on Kindle at:

Amazon.com                  [http://amzn.to/my2xAB]

Amazon.co.uk                  [http://amzn.to/kRW8tv]

[Also on Amazon.de]

All covers on ‘iqliptiq’ books are by ‘Hishgraphics’:

(http://www.hishgraphics.com/)

There are also some ‘free to read’ stories on the web site:

www.davidleyman.com

These are ‘in the rough’, mostly, straight from the head into the keyboard with no ‘post writing’ work done on them.  Except ‘Silicon Ballet’ that was an entry for a writing competition.

Have fun and enjoy; tell your friends and ask them to tell their friends.