14

LOSS OF FACE

Home and Colonial.

‘Your mother is coming Friday. I’ve given a note for school. You will have to be here beforehand, in case she arrives a day earlier; she was not certain what day,’ Matron told me in a cross-sounding voice, one Tuesday.

I was glad, fearful and excited. I couldn’t recall the last time I had received a visit from her – six months, even a year – but such calendar spans were timeless, and almost forgettable as a child.

Staying in at the Home for the day, and separated out from my friends, I was a bit self-conscious – like I had some disease. I felt I was betraying the other boys – even the Home – for “parents” to visit was as if strangers were descending, interfering in the life of the orphanage. But the day arrived: it was Easter Good Friday – and the other boys were at the Home anyway, in the playroom. I had to wait in the hallway, by myself, for my mother to arrive. Matron appeared around the passage corner. ‘Your mother’s coming at an awkward time.’ She spoke this to me in passing. Hours had gone by since breakfast time, and since then the other boys had left the playroom, rushing by me in excitement: they were going on a walk. Returning from her sitting room Matron addressed me again: ‘You had better get your mac – she may take you out. Tell your mother to bring you back by four, if you still want to go to the service.’

‘Yes, I will.’ I got a sharp pang of pain in my stomach on the contradiction this situation presented to me: the demands, indeed attractions, of the day out with my mother (however a “distant” person as she was to me) and the more powerful commitment to keep my attendance at Master’s Good Friday evening service. I decided I would get back in good time for Master.

‘Hello, Eric. How are you, luv?’ Her Lancashire accent was friendly. She stood – loomed – large over me. I stood up, my height barely reaching her chest.

‘All right, thank you.’ Politeness seemed the correct procedure of reply, especially as my mother was a formal person in appearance to me – and I didn’t feel any exchange – or very little – of warmth from her.

‘I’ll let Matron know I’ll be taking you out for the day…’

‘I want to be back for church with Master.’

‘I will ask Matron.’

‘Matron knows,’ I called to my mother as she walked, without a concern about my information, to Master’s sitting room.

We left soon after – I was fully dressed for the early springtime weather, and Mother was in her everlasting dark blue overcoat (I forever visualise her wearing this outer garment). We travelled by taxi to the railway station, then an hour’s travel or so, to Lancaster.

Apart from the Home & Colonial Store, when we sat on the high stools awaiting service, and the splendid array of cakes filled my eyes, and the surrounding liveliness of the place, with objects, colour and brightness everywhere, in a world which overpowered my senses, full of sound and the bustle of people; what stood out in my memory of the day were the grey blocks of stone buildings of the main streets, and the bleak emptiness, without the company of my Home friends. I was being guided here, by my mother, yet I did not have much to say to her. She had little to converse with me: ‘Would you like something to eat?’ or ‘We need to return soon.’ We had some difficulty travelling back, as mother had a problem with money. I didn’t really understand this – as money was to me “pocket money”, money was for saving. I didn’t fully realise that it was the vital means to do everything; that it was like a smiling face – it would get you everywhere in the shops and on transport – that without it you were faceless – unrecognised.

In trying to give me a happy time, my mother had spent too much money, and did not have enough to pay the fares to get us back.

My mother was short of it – and she looked helpless and weak – and as confused as I was. A police car finally solved the question of my return to the Home.

I heard my mother, in sorrowful voice, telling the desk sergeant of her plight. I was meek on seeing the cold-shouldering of my mother’s importance that day; her loss of face was mine too.

We missed the time of my expected return. I therefore did not attend the Good Friday service. That’s how I remember my mother’s Good Friday visit – and the lesson in the meaning of “money”.

The unhappiness of this day was compounded by Matron’s evening remark – just before my bedtime: ‘I don’t see how your mother can buy a house to take you there to live when she can’t even pay for the train!’

If my mother was planning such a thing I would fear it, for the only safety I had was at Barrows Green. The outer world was still too far beyond me; without the other boys I would be all by myself in the world. Yet at my age, approaching thirteen, my horizons were opening up; and even the unhappiness of the secondary modern school would soon be a thing of the past.