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.