by Moannie
My mother was beautiful. I know, all mothers are beautiful in their children's eyes, but mine truly was lovely; slim and delicate, with legs that went on forever, large china blues eyes and hair which became progressively more platinum as the war progressed and uniformed men flooded London. Unfortunately she was also flirty, frivolous and a bit too free with her favours [good alliteration there, Annie] which is why I was the only one of her three children to be born under the respectable cover of a marriage licence. Not that that made me favourite, on the contrary, the boys were first and second and I came a long way behind. I didn't mind this, well, to tell the truth I only noticed it later, much later and by then it was a done deal, and anyway it would all change in her MS years when JP and I looked after her and 'her boys' more or less abandoned her.
I tell you all this to give you a picture of how she looked on the day that she left us, Mick and me [Anthony. would come ten years later]
I tell you all this to give you a picture of how she looked on the day that she left us, Mick and me [Anthony. would come ten years later]
When I see a dark road glistening with rain, and hear the tap, tap, tap of high heeled shoes, I can go back to that late autumn afternoon. St.Edith's was hugely terrifying and mum was in tears even before the front door was opened by a nun and we were shown into the Mother Superior's office. Mick was taken away immediately and I was told to sit still on a chair outside the office. Soon another nun came for me and I followed her without question. She took me into what I would learn was the common room and, saying 'Sit', left me there. I stared round the room and saw a long bare table with many chairs around it. A black stove stood at one end of the room with a wire guard in front of it; against one wall was a large cupboard-like piece of furniture with large metal discs ... the name of it escapes me now but it was a musical instrument which was never played, was it a Polyphon? Against the third wall was a wide, shallow bookcase and on top of this was the largest dolls house I have ever seen. I jumped down and dragged a chair over to it and clambered up, just managing to see into all the many rooms, each one exquisitely decorated and peopled by dolls so tiny and beautifully dressed that my imagination went into overdrive. I turned on the taps in the ornate bathroom, pulled the tiny chain over the lavatory and flicked on lights, moved the mistress of the house down to the kitchen that had food prepared on the table, scullery maids tending the spit over the fire and scullions at the sink piled with pots and pans.
Suddenly I was dragged from the chair and shaken, the nun's silent anger more frightening than any words. Out of the common room and along dark passages, up a secondary staircase [no-one ever used the main curving Victorian beauty of a fine staircase that rose opposite the front door]- and into the dormitory. Before she closed the door behind us I saw Mick, on a chair, his hands on the glass and his nose to the window of the room opposite. Many years later he said he had been watching mum going down the street, and in my mind the streets were shiny with rain and her heels were going, tap, tap, tap.
The picture was taken on one of her infrequent visits. We would be dressed in our best Sunday clothes and the tight lipped nuns would harrumph at the sight of the pretty, well dressed woman who had placed her children in an orphanage. We would have a lovely few hours and then the long walk back along Dial Hill Road, and she would sing : Just Molly and me, and Micky makes three, We'll be happy in our, blue heaven. Then to finish we all sang Twinkle Twinkle little star and at the end she would always say 'Make wish'. 'Find us a new daddy' we always begged. And she did, oh yes, she did.
