Living On Three Continents: Getting It Right
...The war’s been over for years, but Mum’s still fighting. You should see her, making the beds in a morning, throwing the covers around like she’s wrestling the world, or scouring hell out of the front steps...
Susan Siddeley tells a perceptive story about a daughter who likes books, a "lost'' husband and a Mum who has to keep herself busy.
For more of Susan's well-crafted words please click on Living On Three Continents in the menu on this page.
Before I was born my mum was happy. She waved Dad off to work with a kiss and a packed lunch, and waited for his return with warm slippers. Or so she’s told me.
They didn’t ‘court’- such a funny word, and how her mouth puckers when she says it. I often look at their faces smiling out of the crimp-edged squares of the photos in the album she keeps at the back of the sideboard. There’s a shot of them clinging to each other on a shell-studded beach. Dad is upright, but Mum is leaning into his shoulder, arm curled over his chest as they stand in the North Sea with the waves playing out in tiny crests around their feet. In another picture, Dad is bending over and Mum is hanging mid-air, arms pushing down, knees drawn up, leap-frogging over his back. You can hear her whooping. They’re wearing shorts. Shorts!
Did Mum ever wear shorts again? No, as she moans every summer, pointing to her varicose veins. Any whooping is aimed at me, pushing me on some errand or pestering me to help with the washing up.
Mum met Dad in a Barn Dance at a social at the Chapel. I can just imagine them, coming face to face, liking what they saw, and stepping forward to claim each other, carried away by the crush and the music.
They married a few months later.
They were only twenty. How did she know how to behave, how did she manage? She couldn’t have learned about Things, like I have, from magazines. She was busy when she was young - as she never fails to rub in when I’m trying to get on with my homework. She had brothers to see to, and a tiring job in a bakery.
After me, they never went to the coast again. I was a shock. I must have been. Who would plan to have a baby less than a year after a wedding when war was threatening? Of course Dad joined up and eventually went overseas. So, instead of a warm man to snuggle up with every night, Mum was left holding a wailing baby. Dad never came back.
The war’s been over for years, but Mum’s still fighting. You should see her, making the beds in a morning, throwing the covers around like she’s wrestling the world, or scouring hell out of the front steps. As for the pots she chips washing up … I keep out of her way. Our house is too tidy, too clean. There should be a man’s overcoat pushed behind the door, oily tools scattered in the cellar and a pipe on the mantelpiece. Of course Mum never admits this. But it’s something I’ve always known.
As long as I can remember it’s been, “Here, help me with cake,” or “Put your shoes on and come with me to the Co-op,” and, “Go and play out a bit.” She’s always nagging, nudging me into activity when all I want is peace, quiet and my books. I’ll never satisfy her. Never be able to replace the man she loved and lost.
It is odd though, because yesterday I happened to hear her talking low to next-door - as neighbours do around here when something’s confidential.
“I don’t know what I’d have done without our Hazel, Mrs Greenwood,” she was saying, “Never thought I’d ever feel as happy as I did that summer, when I met Jack. I’d have died if I’d not had her. She’s not like him, not a bit. She’s a funny old thing, shy, yet when she smiles, I see his face. And now - last night - at the Parent-Teachers Evening, they say she’ll pass her ‘O’ levels - no problem, with flying colours. She’s headed for university is Our Hazel, Mrs G. Jack would be so pleased, so proud.”
