A Bundle of Sticks

Roy

Chapter 1: Revelation

Friday, November 17th, 1961

Coincidences and the month of November can be grim.

I stood in the Head teacher’s room. I was only there because my brother, Tony, had sent me to school, and told me exactly what to say. At that time I obeyed him unquestioningly. My mother had died the night before and we had sat up all night talking, but Tony decided that everything should be as normal. Tony never made concessions to tiredness: he was like our father. At school, with numb politeness I told Mrs. Evans what had happened. She was a comfortable-looking woman, approaching sixty, her grandmotherly air hiding a sharp intellect. When occasion demanded she could be frightening.

Today her concern was warm, genuine and unwanted. She touched my arm gently, and I flinched. In the house where I grew up, no one had touched me since infancy, except in anger. We didn’t hug or kiss, and I was embarrassed by those who did.

‘Go home, Judith dear,’ urged the kindly Head. ‘I’m sure there’s a great deal to do and arrange.’ I’m sure there was, but it was all in hands more competent than mine. Tony had told me to go to school, and I was grateful for the illusion of normality.

I turned away from the Head’s room and made my way down the corridor. Over a thousand girls were on the move, and yet no one spoke. The school rules were uncompromising, and silence in the corridor was one of them. Feet marched in straight lines round a one-way system, rubber and leather slapping the floor in unison. As a prefect I could walk against the traffic: it was easy as the line of navy tunics kept to one side.

I suddenly spotted a young girl coming towards me among a line of fourth years. She had brown, wavy hair like mine, but bouncier, thicker, prettier. She had dark, sensitive eyes, a face with a ready smile. She was taller than I was, but three years younger, and I thought that she looked at ease with herself and the world.

Prefects sat with classes when teachers were absent, but I had never overseen this young girl’s class. As I gave out the set work, making the usual comments about doing it in silence, I would, however, scan the room, just in case.

Now I looked straight at her, and she looked back without even registering my presence. I was just another prefect. The first emotion to pierce my numbness crept over me as silent panic set in. The thought was unbidden, unwelcome: that girl’s mother died last night, and she doesn’t know.

Thursday, June 5th, 1953

I woke up with a tight feeling in my chest. But why? I struggled to remember. Beyond the uncurtained window there was no hint of malice in the sky. It was Coronation year, a time of national and street celebration, and although Elizabeth had formally accepted her destiny three days ago, in the pouring rain, the weather had now relented.

Beside me, stretched out diagonally across the bed we shared, my older sister, Jill, did not stir. Suddenly I remembered why I was troubled: that evening we were competing in the annual Dunstable Musical Festival, a spectacularly ambitious programme, against individual candidates from all over the county. We couldn’t play musical instruments, but our mother had entered us in the poetry sections for our different age groups. There was no way we would dare to refuse.

I thought of my words:

A ship sails up to Bideford, upon a western breeze…

I pushed away the grey army blankets without disturbing Jill, and tiptoed with bare feet, down the stairs. In the kitchen my mother, Violet, was banging dishes around, her forehead creased, her lips a tight, narrow strip. I sidled into the room, anxious not to offend.

‘Is there anything I can do, Mum?’

She looked up, dark curls tangled, but dominant, determined and as always, angry. ‘Don’t let me down, tonight. I’ve spent weeks rehearsing you for this. You’ll be up against all those posh competitors who have paid to be coached.’

Anxiety hung over her like a cowl.

Jill appeared in the doorway, silent and watchful. Our mother swung round. ‘And that goes for you, too.’

Jill nodded, too scared to say anything.

Eager to please, I made a great show of dragging out the vacuum cleaner, hauling it into the front room.

My mother called out, ‘Remember the corners. If you do, the middle takes care of itself. I don’t want any of your slipshod efforts.’

An hour later, we dashed to school, and all day I immersed myself in lessons, refusing to think about the evening ahead. Far too soon the final bell rang. I hurried home, to scrub my face, hands and knees with Lifebuoy carbolic soap. Then, my reddened skin smelling of newly-washed laundry, I slipped on a clean red check school frock, white socks and polished red sandals.

‘Come here.’ My mother’s voice was impatient as she kept checking the time by the cuckoo clock in the front room. She pulled a comb through my tangled hair and plaited it tightly, fastening the ends of the plaits with bright scarlet ribbons. My scalp tingled as she stood back, regarding her work with satisfaction.

Anxious to avoid the ordeal, Jill had already plaited her own hair, and we stood there, pictures of meek cleanliness. Our mother was smartly dressed in a black costume, the tailored jacket pinched in at the waist. Her curly hair was now tamed and her court shoes made her seem even taller than her five-foot-seven inches. She smiled as she looked down at her own costume.

‘Right, we’re ready. Now, remember all I’ve taught you.’

Behind the stage, waiting for my turn, I suddenly felt the ice of terror and turned round, to see Jill a few rows behind. Jill looked straight back. ‘We have to win, we have to do what she wants,’ she mouthed, and I relaxed. Of course we did; there was no option.

Then I was on stage, standing up straight, hands by my sides, gazing out at an imaginary spot on the back wall of the hall, aware of my mother sitting rigidly in the third row. The adjudicator caught my eye, and nodded. ‘When you’re ready, dear,’ she said as she picked up her pen.

As I launched into the poem I was back in our front room, standing in the corner, with my mother instructing: ‘You need a note of wonder in your voice when you come to ‘’oranges from Jaffa, and gold.’’ Remember to lower your voice for ‘’misty English trees’’ and, for goodness sake, don’t forget the note of pride you need for ‘’and sights the hills of Devon…’’ ‘

At ten- and- a- half and nine years, Jill and I were entirely biddable and frightened of defying our mother. We would not dream of protesting about the dreary hours of rehearsal, but I remembered my father, Dabber, sighing behind his paper and muttering, ‘Violet, how much more of this reciting lark do we have to put up with?’

Then it was over, and I left the stage to wait for the results, and silently wished Jill good luck.

After the results for both our competition classes were announced, in relief, and for once with pleasure, we joined our mother in the audience. She beamed, flushed and happy. ‘Well done.’ Turning to the stranger beside her, she said, ‘These are my daughters, and they’ve both won. I coached them myself.’

While the stranger murmured polite compliments, Jill and I exchanged embarrassed glances.

The poetry competition for younger children was next on the programme, and our mother decided to stay and listen. I sat by her, content. She was triumphant - the triumph was hers so the evening might be bearable. I gazed around me. The town hall was filling up rapidly, as competitors for later classes arrived. There was an expectant, nervous atmosphere. I looked up at the vaulted ceiling and felt proud that I had won in such a prestigious place. It was a moment of delight and I wriggled happily in my seat, prepared to enjoy seeing the little ones perform.

The competitors appeared on the stage, one by one. They were too young to be nervous, and each waited confidently for the adjudicator’s signal to start.

Then a little girl of about six, whom I had never seen before, walked on to the stage, pretty and smiling. She was dressed as I was in a check cotton dress. Hers was blue. But unlike me, she had a natural poise and grace. I longed to have her Milly-Molly-Mandy haircut, a bob with a fringe. The girl’s hair shone under the Town Hall lights, as she stood, happy and composed, looking out into the audience. Framed by the ornate stage curtains she had everyone’s attention.

At a signal from the adjudicator she began to recite her poem. My mother’s eyes were fixed on the girl. Suddenly she clutched her chest and gasped. The colour drained from her face which was now an unpleasant grey with red blotches. I felt alarmed and Jill, on the other side of her, whispered, ‘Mum, are you feeling ill?’

The adjudicator retired to make her decisions, the hall broke out into chatter, and the people near us gave my mother curious glances.

‘Shirley’s here,’ Jill said, and I heard the relief in her voice. ‘She’ll know what to do.’ Our elder sister, Shirley, had come straight from work to join us, and when my mother saw her, she grabbed her arm and began to whisper urgently.

‘Mum, how do you know?’ Shirley’s tone was reasonable. ‘You can’t possibly know.’

‘I know, I know, of course I know. How could I not?’ Tears began to run down her face; her body was shaking. ‘She’s mine. Look at our Judy, then look at her. They look like twins.’ I looked over at the little girl. She was standing quietly with her teacher and some friends. Did I look like her? Was I as pretty as she was? I found that hard to believe.

‘Mum, you need to go home.’

‘The papers in the wardrobe…’ she sobbed. ‘They’ll have her name on them.’ She turned to me, eyes glittering and desperate. ‘Judy, go over to that little girl with the short, dark bob and ask her what her name is.’

‘Mum…’Shirley began again, but my mother pushed her aside. ‘Judy, do as you’re told, now.’

I looked from my mother to Shirley and back again. My mother shoved me and I made my way over to where the girl stood. I felt confused. Why had this girl upset Mum so much? How did Mum know her when Shirley, Jill and I did not? I jumped straight in. ‘What’s your name?’

The little girl’s smile did not waver. ‘Judy Woods.’

We stood looking at each other for a brief moment, two small children, one nine-years-old, the other just six, strangers with a shared name.

Chapter 2: 322 Luton Road

In November the year was dying. It was not a time for birth and regeneration, but my mother lay in labour for almost a week in that unforgiving month in 1943. The grey wartime misery echoed hers, and the weather was misty as though in sympathy. As she lay there, fighting her own battle to get her sixth baby to emerge into an uncertain world, the wireless reported that gales off France were making flying difficult for bombers.

Although I was Violet’s sixth child, I was the first that was so reluctant to be born. My mother feared giving birth. When I was fourteen, she told me that each time she endured labour she hated all men with a deadly loathing. But with my birth, she said that she went through an experience so threatening, that the hatred gave way to a terrible fear that she would not survive.

My father, Aubrey, had cycled home from work for his mid-day meal. Afterwards he prepared to wheel his bicycle down the side passage, towards the front gate, for the mile ride uphill back to the iron foundry. Violet, agitated, appeared at the back door. ‘Dabber, it’s started.’

She always called him Dabber if in trouble.

Unless fuelled by political passion my father generally said little, so his response was terse: ‘Don’t leave it too long before you call for the midwife.’ He swung his leg over the saddle and pedalled away.

Seven years earlier, in 1936, when her second baby, my sister Shirley, had been born, they had had a similar exchange. Then it had been a Wednesday lunchtime, up the hill on the other side of the road, in a different rented house, with an outside privy and a coal cellar. That time my father had added generously, ‘You needn’t bring up the coal; I’ll do it when I come home.’

But the contractions had eased, and Violet had struggled down to the coal cellar to fill the scuttle, saying to Tony, the eldest, aged two, ‘Stay at the top of the steps, wait for Mummy and be a good boy.’

Despite her exertions the contractions had paused, and she went to bed that night certain that her baby’s birth was not, in fact, imminent. But, in the early hours, with the wind howling round the eaves and the snow piling higher, she had woken my father. ‘Dabber, Dabber, it’s coming after all. It won’t be much longer, get the midwife now.’

After throwing on a few clothes, he had run out into the January gale, skidded and slid the bicycle over ground as crisp as biscuit, to the midwife’s house. He couldn’t rouse her by banging on the knocker, so he dug into the snow for a handful of gravel and threw it at the bedroom window. She opened it and shrugged off his urgency: ‘The baby isn’t due for another fortnight, it’s just practising.’

My father got on his bike again, and slithered home to find my mother lying on the bedroom floor, distraught, beside the chamber pot where she had given birth, confusing the baby’s arrival with the need to empty her bowels. The air was freezing, the panic tangible. Once more, he had dashed out into the harsh whiteness, banged on the door of the house next door, and begged the neighbour, Daisy Brown, to stay with his wife. Then he raced off to the doctor’s house.

Young, newly qualified Dr Ashton came immediately, also on a bike, and found that the umbilical cord, still attached, had blinded baby Shirley in one eye. Gently he administered to mother and baby, and in fury, vowed aloud to get the midwife struck off.

Now, in wartime November, 1943, seven years later, enough time had passed for my mother to forget the terror she had felt. She had also given birth three more times in the intervening years, without any problem. However, by the time my father arrived home from the foundry he found her in distress and unable to cope.

Ten- year-old Tony and seven- year-old Shirley were doing their best to look after Roger aged five, Roy, three, and eighteen- month-old Jill. The new, local midwife was called, and cheerfully said nothing much was doing although the contractions were very strong. Plump and reassuring, she said that she would call again the next morning. ‘But don’t hesitate to call me if the baby decides to come in the night. Babies come when it’s convenient for them, not us.’

The baby had still not arrived when the next morning dawned, grey and miserable. Day and night began to be one long painful blur for Violet. Her children could hear her whimpering when they woke in the dark, and in the daytime they fended for themselves, for their father had to work. As foundry foreman, Aubrey Darby could not be spared from the important war munitions manufacture at Bagshawe Conveyors, where he supervised the manufacture of conveyor belts for Royal Ordnance factories, and caterpillar tracks for Bren gun carriers. And as a father of a large family he dare not cut his income. Kindly neighbours brought dishes, ill-spared in a time of rationing. They remembered the eggs given so freely by my mother from our chickens in the back garden, when my less generous father was at work. Most eggs had to be handed in to the authorities for distribution, but most people ignored that dictate.

Upstairs in the front room my mother lay in the bed behind the door. Opposite were utility wardrobes, bought proudly when they had moved to the house six years previously. She lay, twisting the pink satin eiderdown between her fingers, the veins on her rough, house worked hands raised in tension and pain. The windows were low and deep, and from her bed she could see Dunstable Downs, partly shrouded in mist, grey-green at that time of the year, and tinged with frost as the sun rose on her suffering each morning. Bluebell Woods, where her children explored happily in the Spring, bringing back tangled bunches of delicate, musky smelling blooms, lurked darkly towards the back of the downs. A woman of vivid imagination, she wondered whether the world outside would ever be hers again.

She ate nothing. Sips of water were all she could endure. She coughed frequently as the needles of pain shot through her lungs. And throughout those terrifying days and nights the rhythmic contractions cruelly tortured. When necessary she struggled from her bed to sit on the chamber pot to pass dark, evil smelling urine, which Shirley would carry downstairs, to empty in the lavatory outside the back door.

Downstairs the children were unnaturally quiet. There were no squabbles, no noise, merely an exchange of anxious glances and tremendous relief every time normality was restored by an adult knocking on the door with food or a cheerful word. Tony and Roger were sent to school, where a hot mid-day meal was served, while Shirley cared for Roy and Jill.

As the week wore on, even the blasé midwife began to express concern. She had stopped fielding my father’s anxious enquiries with cheerful platitudes. My mother’s condition was deteriorating fast. By Sunday morning she was having trouble breathing. My father ignored the midwife and sent for Dr Ashton who was shocked by what he saw. ‘Why wasn’t I called earlier?’ he asked the midwife, ‘Couldn’t you see she has double pneumonia?

‘I thought that Mrs. Darby would be all right once the baby arrived.’ The midwife sounded hesitant.

‘I would rather you had not conjectured, but called someone who had greater knowledge.’ The doctor’s tone was savage. ‘Then he turned to my father. ‘We’re going to have to deliver the baby as soon as possible; the pneumonia has been brought on by days spent lying in labour...hard labour.’

At seven o’clock that Sunday evening the doctor delivered a screaming baby girl. ‘Keep the baby away from her mother,’ he ordered the midwife, ‘we mustn’t risk infecting the child. God knows what damage has been done already.’ His tone softened as he spoke to my father: ‘You’re going to have to find someone to look after the baby. Your wife needs to be taken to hospital immediately.’

Outside, in the dark street, neighbours watched in sympathetic silence as my mother was carried to the ambulance. She beckoned a tearful, stricken Shirley to her side and whispered, ‘You can name the baby.’ Then the ambulance doors were slammed shut.

Over the next few weeks as my mother lay in hospital, my father faced the problem of the care of his children. He had to work and he had to find medical fees. This was five years before Bevan introduced the National Health Service and health did not come cheaply.

The immediate problem was what to do about the new baby. Then, one of the neighbours, Mrs. Tottle, knocked on the door.

‘I hear you need someone to look after the little one,’ she said. ‘I could do that. I’m used to babies.