Fandango in the Apse! (3 page)

‘No, you may not.’

‘Please Mum, I’ll wash up after, I promise, and we won’t make a mess.’

I waited a moment or two, and when she didn’t answer, I pressed on even
though I recognised my chances now were slim to none.

‘Mrs Williams said she didn’t mind looking after all three of us, she
even said she’d make fairy cakes, so, can I?’

‘
May I
,’ she ground out.  I was getting flustered now.

‘Sorry, may I… please?  I promise they’ll be gone before you come home.’

My mother slapped her book shut and turned in her chair to face me. Her
eyes bored into mine. ‘I have given you my answer and I do not intend repeating
myself, the subject is closed.’

‘But why?  I…’

‘Don’t you dare question me, girl, who do you think you are?’

‘Please, Mum, just this once.’ I wouldn’t normally have dared this much,
but it was important to me.  However, it wasn’t a good move, which I quickly
realised when she stood up and pointed at the door.

‘Get out of my sight – go to your room, now!  How dare you think I would
put up with a group of common brats in my home?’

I went to my room thinking of my dwindling friends.  They all seemed to
go to each other’s houses and I had hoped that if I invited some to my house,
the offer might be reciprocated.  I had no choice but to accept that wasn’t
going to happen now.

I have to be careful to give you the correct impression here.  I don’t
want you thinking I was a timid wallflower as a child; in my own way I was a
plucky little madam.  For obvious reasons I kept it well hidden, I was young
after all and in no way a match for my mother’s nastiness, but I gave it a good
go.  Occasionally an opportunity arose and I would seize it.  One of my best –
to this day it still makes me smile – was what I like to call, “The false teeth
episode”.

It happened the evening my mother was making an important speech to the
Women’s Institute, in her capacity as Chairman of the Church Fund.  In
preparation, she was taking a leisurely bath.  I happened to be passing her
bedroom when I noticed her upper set of false teeth in a glass at the side of
her bed.  I was about eleven at the time, so I really should have known better,
but I couldn’t resist. 

Clenching my bum cheeks for fear of being caught in the act, I sneaked in
and took the teeth.  I tipped the glass over to make it look as if the cat had
overturned it and rushed back to my own room.  Panic-stricken, I found a secure
hiding place and rushed downstairs.  My mother’s screech twenty minutes later
told me my plan had worked.

            ‘Katie, come up here quickly… hurry up, girl!”  I rushed up,
looking suitably bewildered.  ‘Find the cat, find the damned cat!’ she
spluttered. 

            ‘But why – ’

            ‘Because the bloody thing has knocked over the glass and run
off with my teeth.’  I’d never heard her use bad language before, it was a
testament to how upset she was.

            ‘Go!’ she bellowed. 

I turned on my heel and rushed around looking for the cat, eventually
coming across him in the garden.  I made a pretence of searching in the
flowerbeds in case she was looking out of the window, before going upstairs
again.  She was on her hands and knees peering under the bed.

            ‘Um… I found the cat, but he hasn’t got your teeth,’ I said,
while looking supremely apologetic.

            ‘Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what am I going to do, what am I
going to do?’ By now, she was so close to hysteria, I thought it might be prudent
to offer some form of help.

            ‘Shall we pray to the patron saint of lost things?’  I
ventured. ‘Saint Anthony, isn’t it?’  My mother’s glassy stare spiked me like a
moth on a pin.

            ‘Oh, get out, you stupid idiot.  Search the house… look
everywhere!’

There was no way my mother could cancel the speech, the event had been
planned for months, there simply wasn’t enough time and as she was the main
speaker she had no choice but to attend.  I will never forget sitting in the
audience trying to hide my glee, as I watched her make the whole speech with
her hand strategically placed over her mouth. 

I kept the teeth for three days, before miraculously “finding” them in
the herb bed.  In gratitude, my mother bought me a cream cake, which I ate with
only a minimal degree of remorse.
 

You may be thinking what a despicable wretch I was, and to some degree,
you’d be right, but I blame it on the guilt.  I had it in abundance when I was
a child.  I mean for goodness sake, if your  mother constantly tells you you’re
a trial equalled only by the Antichrist sent to test her, it has to have some
effect along the line, doesn’t it? 

However, it wasn’t until I was twelve that the seed of guilt I was
nurturing was given the full benefit of a self-contained, nutritionally balanced,
Fisons Gro – bag.  It happened during a jumble sale my mother had forced me to
attend at the church hall.  I had wanted to go cardboard-sliding down a grassy
hill, but she had other ideas. 

I was stuck in the stuffy hall, hiding behind some put-you-up tables the
redoubtable women of the WI hadn’t used, when I was privy to a conversation. 
It was a defining moment in my life, which could have been avoided if I’d done
as I was told and manned the tombola stall. 

‘Margaret’s done well again this year,’ Agnes Firth mentioned to her
fellow WI member and friend, Maureen Tibbs.  They were both sitting with their
backs to me behind the bric-a-brac stall. 

‘She has that, Agnes.  But isn’t it the same every year?’

‘Indeed it is, Maureen, everything runs as smooth as butter when she’s at
the helm, devoted she is, devoted.’ 

From my hiding place, I could see two grey heads nodding together in
agreement. Their ample buttocks clad in almost identical print dresses overflowed
the fold-up chairs.  I was lost in a wonderful vision of sticking two pins in
the rotund rear ends when something they said riveted me to the spot.

          ‘She hasn’t had it easy, you know…after what happened…it was
such a shame.’

Maureen, her nose on the scent of a juicy tit-bit, scraped her seat
nearer to Agnes.  Her questioning, ‘Oh?’ was all the incentive Agnes needed to
lower her voice and recount the tale.

‘I’m not telling you anything that isn’t common knowledge, Maureen; you
know I’ll have no truck with gossip.’

‘Everyone knows you’re
the soul of discretion Agnes, so go on…what happened?’

Agnes lowered her voice even further and with my interest well and truly
piqued, I strained to hear. ‘I have it straight from Imelda Hewitt as was…you
remember Imelda, she married Eugene Barney’s brother; can’t remember his name?’

‘Err…’

‘Eugene, you know…from the bakery…on Weston Street, it’s knocked down
now, the bakery that is – not the whole street.’ 

It was obvious from Agnes’ tone, that she was getting frustrated with
Maureen, but not nearly as frustrated as me.  Why do old women take an age to
tell a tale?

‘Ah yes…I know who you mean now,’ Maureen replied after what seemed like
an age.

‘Right, well she used to go to school with Margaret.’

‘Who did?’

IMMELDA BLOODY HEWITT!  I wanted to yell, but Agnes did the honours more
quietly.

‘Well, if you told it properly, Agnes, I might be able to keep up,’
Maureen huffed.

‘I-m-e-l-d-a went to school with Margaret, they’ve known each other
donkey’s years – that’s how I know what she says is right.’

‘Righto, I’ve got it now, so go on…what did she say?’

‘Imelda told me, Margaret and Jack – Jack was her husband – didn’t want
children.  Adamant she was…hated them, and he wasn’t much better, by all
accounts.’

‘But she has…’

‘Yes, she has…and the word is, that’s what caused the trouble.’

‘Trouble?’

‘Apparently – and don’t repeat this, Maureen, apparently, she was so
determined not to get in the family way she refused to come up with the goods,
so to speak.’

‘No!’

‘Honestly – that’s what Margaret told Imelda.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have been admitting
that,
would you?’

‘No, I wouldn’t, not many had sympathy for her after that got out let me
tell you.  Even
though it was common knowledge he was a bit of a
philanderer.’

‘So how come she had…’

‘Ah well,’ Agnes butted in, ‘that was down to Annie Renton’s wedding.’

By this time, Maureen was agog and I wasn’t far behind her.

            ‘What happened at Annie Renton’s wedding?’

            ‘The tale goes that Margaret went on the fruit punch thinking
it was non-alcoholic – got pissed as a fart and did the dirty deed later that
night.’

            ‘You jest!’  Maureen’s ample bosom heaved with laughter.

            ‘I kid you not; it’s as true as I sit here, the child was
born nine months to the day.’ 

Both women dissolved into a fit of giggles and I removed myself outside
to digest what I’d heard.  Sitting under a large sycamore at the back of the
hall, I ran through their conversation in my head.  For the most part, I hadn’t
heard anything new.  My mother had never made a secret of her aversion to
motherhood, but listening to the two women had brought it home with more
force.  I suppose I had always thought that my mother was the way she was
because Dad had left her, and it was the bitterness she felt towards him, that
manifested itself in her treatment of me.

Now it all seemed different.  The one new piece of information I had was
that my father hadn’t wanted children either.  This was a shock.  I had been
under the impression he left because of my mother – not because of me.  I was
devastated.  My parents had broken up because I had been born.  I had infected
their world like a nasty germ and destroyed it. 

I felt angry, I wanted to disappear, I wished I’d never been born, but
hidden deep in my heart was a conviction that it really wasn’t my fault.  I
hadn’t asked to be born, but the daily diet of guilt I had been swallowing
forever was hard to forget.  I had to remember, my birth had ruined two lives.

The one thing
that kept me going during the last couple of years of junior school was the
thought that it wasn’t long until I started secondary school.  I was looking
forward to it.  For one thing, at St Mary’s Convent School the girls wore grey
knee socks and I would defy even my mother being able to find grey socks with
frills.  The other was that during the school holidays, she began to allow me
to do my own hair.  So long as I tied it back, she left me to it.  I was
fervently hoping this would continue once school started.  If it didn’t, I had
already made the decision that I would take a pair of scissors to the damn
plaits and lob them off.  Maybe I would still look like an idiot, but at least
I would be an idiot without plaits.

            However, my enthusiasm for the start of the new term dulled
significantly after we had been shopping for school shoes.  My heart sank as my
mother picked out a pair of dark brown, flat, lace-ups.  There we were in a
shop full of gloriously, fashionable shoes, and she picks out the worst pair
available.  I should have known it would happen, but I always lived in hope
that one day she would let me choose for myself. To make matters worse, as I
was walking up and down the shop so my mother could check the fit, I had to
pass the Smith twins trying on their gorgeous, patent leather shoes, complete
with little bows on the top.  I could still hear their sniggers as I walked out
of the shop.

            On a brighter note, I have to say, I was nothing if not
resilient in those days.  On the first morning of term, I walked the short
distance to school with a light heart.  The swish of my long ponytail across my
back completely outweighed the embarrassment of my clod-hoppers.   I didn’t
have great shoes, but I didn’t have plaits either. Yay!

            I was a little less happy at first break though, when once
again I became the butt of jokes from two girls that had been in my primary
school.  Comments like, “Has your granny lent you her shoes?” had me searching
out a quiet corner of the playground.  It was a few days later while I was
hiding away on the bottom rung of a fire escape, that I first met Alison. I was
almost crying after a particularly nasty bout of jibes.

            ‘You shouldn’t let them get to you, it only makes them
worse.’

            ‘I don’t normally, but sometimes they’re just so nasty.  It’s
these…’ I plonked my feet straight out in front of me.  The girl stared
silently at my shoes for a moment and then sat beside me on the step.

            ‘They are a bit grim…’she said. I waggled my feet for a
moment and then suddenly we were both laughing.

            ‘They have got to be the ugliest shoes ever,’ the girl said,
between hoots of laughter.

            ‘You don’t have to tell me, I know, they’re on my feet.’

            ‘I’m Alison Bunn, by the way.  I think you’re in my maths and
English classes.’

            ‘And French and geography, I’m Katie.’  I recognised Alison
from the classes because of her bright, red hair.

            ‘I used to get teased because of this, you know,’ Alison
said, motioning to the wayward curls.  ‘But my sister, Lucy, told me how to
deal with it and it worked.’

            ‘How?’

Alison jumped to her feet. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

            I followed her across the playground until we were about ten
feet away from the girls who had been teasing me earlier.  They, as soon as
they had seen our approach, huddled together and were once again pointing and
laughing at my shoes.

            Alison looked at them and then whispered in my ear.  ‘Laugh
when I tell you.’

            ‘What?’ I whispered back.

            ‘Just do it!’  Alison pointed at one of the girls and then
leaned into me and whispered, ‘Now.’ I looked at the girls and laughed.  Alison
repeated this a couple of times and I did my bit, that was, until my heart
jerked in my chest when I saw them walking towards us.