MARINA LEWYCKA was born of Ukrainian parents in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany in 1946. She moved with her family to England and now lives in Sheffield, where she lectures at Sheffield Hallam University. Her debut novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, appeared in 2005 and has been translated into more than thirty languages. It was followed by Two Caravans (2007) and We Are All Made of Glue (2009).
WHEN NAPOLEON’S SOLDIERS RETREATED in chaos from the burnt-out ruins of Moscow in the winter of 1812, and tried to beg their way back to France, some stragglers wandered southwards through the frozen marshes of Pripyat to turn up, mad with hunger and cold, with cracked lips and frost-bitten feet, in the snow-bound villages of Ukraine. They would knock on the doors, and plead, ‘For the love of God, give me refuge, mon ami.’
The villagers called them ‘monamishchiki’. Some took pity and brought them in, sat them by the fire, and fed them beetroot soup. But it was no good. Once the gangrene had set into their frost-black toes, it was followed soon by a killer fever. Of some 500,000 who had set off to conquer Russia, barely 10,000 made it back to France.
And it was all because of unsuitable footwear, my great great-great-grandmother told my great-grandmother, who told my mother, who told me.
And snuggled up in front of the coal fire in our two-up-two-down terrace in Bradford, listening to the wind and sleet hammering on the door, my heart went out to those poor frozen-footed refugees.
My mother dressed me up warmly for school. I wore a grey woollen coat buttoned up to the chin, with mittens threaded through the sleeves on a long piece of elastic, and a striped knitted scarf, and sensible lace-up shoes and grey woollen socks that came up to my knees. For, said Mother, we have a saying in Ukraine: ‘Keep your head cool, your belly hungry, and your feet warm, and you will live a hundred years on God’s earth.’
‘The main thing is the feet – keep your feet warm,’ said Mother, and gave me a big hug and a little shove to propel me through the gates of St Christopher’s Primary School into the mass of kids milling in the playground. ‘And work hard, and always listen to the teachers.’
The other kids laughed at my sensible shoes and woollen socks. They sniggered at my long plaits, and my funny name, and my brand-new school satchel. I burned with secret shame, but I pretended not to notice. I wanted more than anything to fit in – no, to blend in, to be invisible.
My chief tormentors were two lads called Roger Biggins and Colin Crouchley. I feared them. They would creep up behind me and pull my hair or run off with my satchel. Roger Biggins was scrawny and mean with a permanently runny nose. Colin Crouchley had a high whinnying laugh that got all the other kids laughing too.
‘Take no notice,’ Mother said. ‘Work hard, and listen to the teachers. Once you have a good education and a good job, you will be the one to laugh at them.’
The form teacher, Mrs Turlow, was a stout bossy woman with a loud voice, a large bosom and dyed golden hair. There was no messing about in her class. She played the piano at assembly, sitting upright on the narrow stool, her feet working up and down on the pedals, her muscular wrists poised dramatically above the keys for a moment before crashing down – plonk plonkety plonk – ‘Sing up, F3! I can’t hear you!’
Obediently, I sang up: ‘Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light.’
Roger Biggins smirked and winked at Colin Crouchley, who leaned forward and tugged my plait.
‘Like a little candle, burning in the night,’ I shrilled.
‘Like a likkle candle!’ whinnied Colin Crouchley. There was a buzz of suppressed giggles. Mrs Turlow stopped, her wrists suspended in the air, and swung around on her stool. Silence fell.
‘Some children’, she said, ‘are being very silly. I hope I’m not going to have to say this again.’
Plonk plonkety plonk.
Everybody sang: ‘In this world is darkness, so we must shine.’
‘Is everybody shining?’ bellowed Mrs Turlow. ‘I want to see everybody shining!’
‘You in your small corner, and I in mine.’
I liked Mrs Turlow. I felt safe in her classes. I shone. Where Roger Biggins and Colin Crouchley couldn’t get me, I buried myself among the books in the reading corner and explored the mysterious world of Janet and John.
But my favourite teacher was Miss Stapleton, who taught Scripture. She was tall and wispy, with silver hair tied back in a bun, and large yellow teeth.
‘Ukraine!’ she said in our first lesson. ‘How fascinating! And are your family Orthodox or Catholic?’
‘I’m not sure, Miss. I’ll ask.’
But when I asked my father, he laughed.
‘We were brought up to believe in Diamat. Dialectical Materialism.’
‘Don’t talk such nonsense!’ said Mother. ‘Orthodox. Tell your teacher we are Orthodox.’
‘Please Miss, my mother is Orthodox, and my father is Dialectical Materialism.’
‘Dialectical Materialism! How fascinating!’ said Miss Stapleton. ‘Perhaps you can tell us all about it one day.’
For a while, I lived in dread that I would be called upon to explain Dialectical Materialism. One day I saw Miss Stapleton looking at me with a kind little smile, and when she caught my eye she winked. Then I knew I never would.
At the beginning of December we started to practise for the end of year Nativity Play, and I was chosen to be the Virgin Mary.
‘For what were Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, if not refugees?’ said Miss Stapleton, with her kind yellow-toothed smile.
Mother was proud when I told her I’d been chosen.
‘It’s because you worked hard and listened to the teachers,’ she said, giving me a hug. I didn’t tell her that I thought a different principle was in operation, for Roger Biggins, who never worked hard or listened to the teachers, had been chosen to be Joseph. And Colin Crouchley was to be the innkeeper.
I was to wear Mrs Turlow’s ample pink nightgown, tied in with a curtain tassel round the waist, and Miss Stapleton’s blue tablecloth on my head. Roger Biggins wore his father’s striped dressing gown, and a tea towel on his head.
‘You look lovely,’ Mother said, as she pinned the table-cloth under my chin. ‘Just like the Virgin Mary in the icon at St Michael of the Golden Domes. But it’s December, and the school hall will be cold. What will you wear on your feet?’
‘I can’t wear those big black shoes,’ I said. ‘They’d look stupid.’
‘No,’ Mother agreed, ‘the Virgin Mary wouldn’t wear shoes like that. But she would need to keep her feet warm on such a long journey. Just wear the socks.’
Mother was right. It was cold in the school hall, even though the big cast-iron radiators had been on all day. The parents trooped in and sat in rows on the child-sized chairs. In the wings there was a frenzy of excitement as Mary and Joseph and the three wise men and the six shepherds, and the eight angels, and the ox and the ass and the piglet (don’t ask) and the innkeeper and his wife all struggled to get into their costumes. You couldn’t move for tea towels, table-cloths, nighties, dressing gowns, net curtains, tinsel and safety pins.
‘Lovely, dear!’ said Miss Stapleton, straightening my tablecloth. But Mrs Turlow spotted the socks.
‘Did the Virgin Mary wear grey woolly socks?’ she boomed. ‘I think not.’
‘But Miss …’
But Mrs Turlow was already adjusting Joseph’s tea towel. And hadn’t Mother told me always to obey the teachers? I took off the socks, and shoved them into my satchel, which was hanging with my coat in the hall.
Then Mrs Turlow seated herself at the piano, raised her stout wrists into the air and brought them down on the keys.
‘In the bleak midwinter,’ the choir of angels sang, ‘frosty winds did moan.’
It was my cue. I came onto the stage, leaning on Joseph’s arm.
‘Oh, Joseph, my dear, I am so weary and so cold. Where will I lay my head tonight?’
‘Earth stood hard as iron …’
‘Do not worry, Mary. Look, here is an inn.’
‘Snow had fallen, snow on snow. Sno-o-ow on snow …’
There was a commotion in the hall. A figure jumped up in the middle of the third row, and pushed herself past the knees of the seated parents towards the door.
‘Isn’t that your mum?’ whispered Roger Biggins slyly.
‘Oh, please, Joseph. Knock on the door!’ I replied.
Roger knocked on the wooden stage door, but before the innkeeper could answer, someone burst onto the stage and rushed up to me. In her hands was a pair of grey woolly socks.
‘Put them on at once!’ my mother exclaimed. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold!’
The music stopped. The action stopped. Everyone in the hall watched with bated breath as I bent down, wobbling on one foot then the next, and pulled the socks on under Mrs Turlow’s nightgown.
‘That’s better,’ whispered Mother, so loud that even the people at the back could hear. Then she disappeared into the wings.
The piano started up again. The choir sang.
‘In the bleak midwinter lo-o-ong ago!’
I stood and watched, paralysed, as my mother resumed her seat in the audience.
‘Oh, oh, my baby’s coming!’ Roger Biggins whispered into my ear.
‘What?’
‘You’re supposed to say, ‘Oh, oh, my baby’s coming!’
‘Oh, oh, my baby’s coming!’
The innkeeper appeared at the door. It was Colin Crouchley.
‘Oh, who is this?’ he exclaimed. Then, pausing for dramatic effect, ‘My, what a lovely pair of socks!’ He laughed his high whinnying laugh, and the whole hall erupted in laughter. The shepherds laughed. The choir of angels laughed, the three wise men laughed. Even the ox and the ass and the piglet laughed. Only the Virgin Mary didn’t laugh. She stood silently amid the laughter, and a tear rolled down her cheek.
Then Miss Stapleton tiptoed onto the stage and brushed away the tear with a corner of the tablecloth, and Mrs Turlow struck up on the piano again.
‘Ding dong merrily on high!’
A little while later, Baby Jesus was laid in the manger at St Christopher’s Primary School and the Virgin Mary dried her tears and went home with her mother.
I never forgave my mother for that until her dying day, but on her dying day I forgave her.
It was December, too, and there was snow on the ground outside. Mother was propped up in bed in the downstairs room, lying quite still, because every movement brought a spasm of pain, despite the morphine the doctor had prescribed.
I sat by the bed, holding her hand, and talking to keep her mind away from the pain. And when the pain got too bad for memories to blot out, I fed her a little more morphine on a spoon.
‘My dear,’ she whispered, pulling my hand to bring my cheek down close to hers, ‘my feet are so cold. I think I’m going to die soon.’
‘Shhh! I’ll find you some socks.’
I rifled through the chest of drawers in her bedroom, and found a pair of pink fluffy bed socks, and reaching under the blanket pulled them onto her cracked swollen feet, gently, so as not to disturb her pelvis, where the cancer lay.
‘Ah, that’s better.’
And that simple action suddenly opened the door on a memory some fifty years old.
‘Do you remember the school play, Mother, when I was the Virgin Mary, and you came onto the stage and made me put on a pair of warm socks?’
‘Did I do that? How terrible.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘When you’re a parent you try to do everything that’s right for your children, then later you find that you did it all wrong.’
‘You did everything right,’ I said, and kissed her cheek. ‘It mattered then, but it doesn’t matter now.’
Mother died later on that afternoon. I held her hand as it turned cold in mine, and a tear rolled down my cheek. But I was glad, too, that when she stepped out on her last long march into the cold unknown, at least her feet were warm.