Uprooting us

Chapter 3

The new home has tall hedges at the front and gravel with a few spindly Roses. At the back is a large lawn with an air raid shelter in the middle and sparse borders round the edges. The husband mows the lawns and I stay out of his way as much as possible. I have my bedroom and he has his. I buy a bolt and screw it to the inside of my bedroom door.

“I’ve found a goldfish” says the youngest child coming in from the garden. “Have you darling? That’s nice”, I say, carefully turning fish fingers in the pan. Apparently the broken ones don’t taste as good. “Set the table someone! Wait a minute, where did you find a goldfish?” “It was on the lawn” he says, “It’s flapping a lot so I’ll put it in a glass of water.” He decides to advertise it in the lost and found column of the local newspaper.

“You found a live goldfish on your lawn?” said the journalist on the phone, and came round for an interview. We had no idea how it had arrived, maybe a heron went food shopping in a nearby pond and then accidentally dropped it whilst flying home. My six year old was thrilled to get his name in the paper with a description of the gallant goldfish rescue.

By this time all the children are at school and I have finally begun an Art Foundation course at Hammersmith College Of Art And Building. Each day after seeing the kids off, I catch the train into London. It must have been a funny sight on Iver station platform. The collection of bowler hatted men with their rolled umbrellas heading for The City and me in my long hooded cloak made out of an old blanket dyed green. Henny and I had been to see The French Lieutenants Woman at the cinema and fallen in love with Meryl Streep’s mane of red hair and her long green cloak.

I drag an A1 sized portfolio of half completed artwork with me because I leave college early each day to be at home when the children finish school. After I’ve put them to bed I catch up on the college time that I’ve missed. In the midst of the deepening misery of the marriage it’s a delight to me that I’m finally at art school. This was the plan that I’d had before pregnancy took me down another road into marriage and a family.

Having chosen to stay at home with the children until they were all of school age, I’d been scared that the long waited for art school experience would not live up to expectations. Maybe I’d be no good at it, or after years of yearning I wouldn’t like it. I was also terrified of making a mistake, getting lost, not understanding what I had to do. “We were all intimidated by you” one of the other students told me later. “You were so confident and seemed to know your way around from the start.” My face had revealed nothing.

Although I’m several years older than most of the students, and the only one with children, with my afro perm and flared jeans, passed on by my friend’s husband, I seem to be accepted. The friend’s husband is in advertising and buys new clothes frequently. His tiny bottom means that the second hand jeans act like a tight corset on my more capacious rear and I can just about squeeze into his unwanted platform-soled, patent leather boots too.

Because it’s a Foundation Year the schedule includes sculpture, graphics, fine art and fashion modules. I love all the different opportunities to try techniques and get absorbed for hours in artwork. Apparently I’m good at it too.

My husband had never seen it as his role to help with the children or household chores at all. It was the seventies and this attitude was common in many marriages. Without knowing it I was becoming a feminist and could not accept his behaviour as either fair or loving.

The marriage got worse. He never struck the children but had used intimidation and violence to me for some time. It was the quiet and controlled kind. One night as I closed the door to my bedroom, I slid the bolt across and noticed that it had been sawn off level with the door.

I would not be using my place on an Arts degree in South London after all. Frightened of what he threatened to do to me if I left, I became more frightened of what he would do to me if I stayed.

I uprooted myself and ran away, not daring to take anything but my three favourite plants, the children.

My sister and her family who live much further north, take us in. They are unfailingly kind to us as I fall to pieces after such a long period of anxiety and they are loving and thoughtful with the children. Their child is seven, and fits well between my six year old and nine year old boys. Far from resenting this crowd squeezing into his home, he welcomes them as live-in play mates. Henny at eleven is of course the leader. She is briefly at the same school as her brothers and then after taking the eleven plus late, moves to secondary school.

Every night I wash the one set of underwear that each of us owns and spread it out on radiators to dry ready for morning. My sister takes me to her doctor who tells me that I’m not going crazy despite forgetting where I am at times and having periods of freezing into stillness and not being able to speak. He says that my mind is simply confused and tired with worry and just needs some peace to heal. What a wise man. In the safety of my sister and her husband’s home I am able to let go, to sleep at night.

It’s surprising how little I miss all the trimmings of life. My record collection and my friends are the main deprivation.

Just before Christmas the children put on a nativity play. My sister, brother-in-law and me are the audience, squashed on the sofa which is pushed to one end of the living room. Wearing tea towels tied onto their heads with string, they drone their way through We Three Kings Of Orient Are. Then little cousin Robbie suddenly bursts into an unscheduled verse. “We three kings of Liverpool Fair’’ he shrills “Selling knickers a shilling a pair. Quite fantastic. No elastic, and you can buy them over there!” His face is radiant with enthusiasm.

My children are unamused. “Robbie, this is a holy occasion” they say, “And you’ve ruined it.” We grown ups bite our lips, staring hard at the floor and not daring to look at each other. Robbie, the regular Sunday school attendee is unrepentantly beaming. My lot remain dour. Having had no clue for years, how Christianity could possibly work, I’ve handled the situation by letting my kids make up their own minds. They obviously have.

 Gardening is the last thing on my mind. It‘s winter outside in my sister’s little garden and frequently winter in me. All is still and cold but in the deep, dark soil I am coming back to myself, in readiness for a new spring.

Over the next six months the kids and me grow more robust, we move into a flat, I get a job as a lollipop lady at the private school around the corner. “What’s a private school?” ask my kids. “It’s a school that you pay to go to” I tell them. “People pay… to go to school?’’ Their mouths drop open with incredulity. “Yeah,” I say loftily, “I don’t cross any old kids, just posh ones”. This is rubbish as I quickly find that many of the parents are working long hours to keep their children in this school, instead of the one in their area which has frequent knife fights.

The woman who owns our flat, lives in the one downstairs and when she gets to know us she says the kids can go down to watch her telly. They promptly drop all the family card games and imaginative home puppet shows we’ve filled the evenings with. They disappear downstairs every evening and I sit upstairs filling sketch books with images of screaming people, and teaching myself to crochet from a library book.

I’m lonely. Despite my feminism, it seems that I want a man. To complete me.

Never even think about wanting a garden.