Look, look if you dared, England was coming alive. February finished and gone. It was still cold, still dark too early. England in early spring was still a country of bare branches. Ice on the roads, frost sprinkled over the grass. Grey skies, grey roads, a narrow stubborn island floating in a sea of grey. But if you looked closely, small miracles of colour appeared around the trunks of great trees. Elegant snowdrops bowed their lovely white heads. Here was the rise of the orange crocus, the yellow bell heads of daffodils sounding their horns. Their smaller cousins, the jonquils, blessed us with fragrance and, amid all this burgeoning life, the prime minister of England finally called an election. The Tory party were voted out, and my father’s great fear came true.
Never mind about the spring. Harold Wilson was taking over and smoking his filthy pipe in the hallowed hallway of 10 Downing Street. Never mind about the daffodils, England would soon be red, a satellite Soviet state. Laughter would be abolished, unless it was state-owned. There would be no private ownership of property. All artworks and famous paintings would be removed from the National Gallery and replaced with pictures of scythes and ice picks. Everyone’s savings books and piggy banks under the bed were to be forcibly taken by large men in black coats and never seen again. According to my father. I did not understand my father’s thoughts or feelings and he did not share mine. And we all thank the living Lord for that. My parents came from a different dimension, the 1920s and 30s. Parts of them belonged to their past but my mother didn’t care too much about politics. Maggie was in the big smoke, the wild city, gone to the desperate sleep-deprived life of an undergraduate student. Socialism was neither here nor there compared to that for my mother. She guarded her children fiercely. No stupid pipe-smoking politician was going to come between her and her girls. Did she know her second daughter lived with a tall thin man in her bedroom while his sad mad sister roamed the woods at night?
My mother was making bread. This was what she knew. This was how she planted us in the earth of her pragmatic love.
‘Knead this,’ she said, nudging me towards a warm slab of dough on a floury kitchen table.
Emily skipped around, attempting to poke a hole in the dough with a pencil.
‘Go away, pea brain.’
‘Tiny brain yourself.’ Emily flashed me a smile.
‘Is this what you wanted me for, Mother? To make bread?’
‘Yes, do something useful and don’t forget next Saturday we are going to see your sister.’
My mother knew when the weather would change miles before it did. She knew if someone had evil in their hearts. She knew how to make bread and prophesy good fortune when you most needed it. She knew what was coming and what needed to go. These were the things my mother told me I knew nothing about:
• Coming in late when they had no idea where I was. (Five minutes down the road, Mother, one ghost, no, make that two ghosts, or three or four.)
• Other people’s feelings.
• Wrapping cheese up properly before I put it away.
• Washing up and drying up.
• Tidying my wardrobe and cleaning my bedroom. Thanks, Algie.
• The legal age for consuming alcohol. (I thought I knew a lot about this.)
• How my behaviour reflected on my father.
• Having thought for someone else other than myself. (Refer back to other people’s feelings.)
• AND dressing properly for the cold.
I wanted to bury my head in her apron and beg for forgiveness for things I hadn’t yet done, but knew I was going to do. Since that day in Wye when Dave and Mrs Dave arrived on our front doorstep she wanted to make sure she was keeping up. She wanted to know more about what I was up to. As if I was ever going to tell my mother.
She made two loaves at a time, one to freeze, one to eat in about five minutes after it had come out of the oven and never mind the terrible stomach aches that we would definitely get if we ate—like wolves, like a pack of wolves—freshly baked dough. The kitchen smelled of glorious fresh dough and jam and toast and crumbly bits of cheese before I managed the graceful art of proper cheese-wrapping for the pantry.
‘Tell me about college. Mr Treadwell says you are doing very well. Which is great, I’m pleased. Your father’s happy you’re starting to settle in.’
She could smell my blood stirring in my bones. She could sense someone edging closer to her daughter.
‘How are you getting on with Byron?’
‘All right, but I still don’t get what his poetry has to do with me.’
‘It’s the experience of it, Rebecca. Keep reading and one day it will just click. Poetry’s like that. How’s the journal coming along?’
‘Fine.’ He’s always using it. It would only be a matter of time before she discovered what exactly it was that she knew.
‘Try this.’ She put a piece of hot bread in my mouth, fresh from the oven. There was no arguing with the taste of that.
When my father arrived home the rest of the loaf was gone in a minute.