Tell Me Why, Mummy: A Little Boy’s Struggle to Survive. A Mother’s Shameful Secret. The Power to Forgive.. David Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ a small lawn and the whole garden is dry-stone walled so that passers-by can’t look inside, which makes it nice and private. To me at the age of seven it is fantastic. However, as a garden it is drastically in need of remedial work and Mum does that over time as she loves gardening. As well as picking fruit in the garden, she spends many hours on a summer’s evening and weekend picking wild blueberries and blackberries in the surrounding countryside and in summer she goes to Halifax market at teatime on a Saturday and bulk-buys strawberries that would otherwise be thrown away. The traders have to sell them cheap because, although they’re fit to eat, they wouldn’t last until Monday to resell.

      She loves growing and picking fruit and making jams and jellies. She makes at least a hundred jars every year and we have every type of jam imaginable. She also heats fruit and puts it into Kilner jars which can later be used for making pies. She bakes every weekend and is very good at it. The biscuit tins are always full of fruit scones, parkin, flapjack, buns of all kinds, biscuits and fruit pies. Jam and baked foods are a staple part of our diet. Whenever I’m hungry, Mum tells me to ‘go and get some jam and bread’, which is a real treat.

      Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve started to develop a sweet tooth.

      * * *

      Not only is home life good but we now have an extended family. Reg’s daughter Pauline lives only 200 yards up the road with her husband and their children. She is a dour, bespectacled woman who rarely smiles and wears her hair piled on top of her head. To begin with I’m a little wary of her, but she and her family welcome us into their family too.

      Reg’s brother Bert comes to visit him two or three times a year. Bert never knocks on the door and never comes into the house. He sits outside the house in his van, waiting for Reg to come out and talk to him. He’s a man of even fewer words than Reg, distant and curt in his speech to the point where I’ve wondered why he even bothers to drive all the way over to see his brother.

      ‘OK, Bert?’ says Reg.

      ‘Oh ay,’ Bert will reply.

      ‘I’m not bad myself.’

      ‘Mmm.’

      ‘Looks like rain.’

      ‘Oh ay.’

      Pauline’s youngest son, Andrew, is a year older than me and is always coming down to the house. Andrew is fun to be around. He’s a little taller than me and often seems to be laughing, but I sometimes sense a kind of malice in his laughter. He’s mischievous, which makes things a little more intriguing. We have a chair in the living room that swivels around 360 degrees. We get told off if we get caught swivelling on it too much, but Andrew goes round at breakneck speed and hang the consequences.

      It feels great to have someone I think of as family close by. My parents only have one sibling between them – my Uncle Jim, Mum’s older brother. I know he has been married at least once and I have cousins somewhere but I’ve never met them. I have even discovered that one of my cousins was born on the same day as me, which fascinates me and I want to meet her. But despite the fact that my uncle is collecting children and cousins that I never see, Andrew is as good as family to me. He lives nearby and we play together.

      We have an even stronger connection when it comes to ‘naming’ Reg. His grandfather is my new father and the whole family situation is sealed when we agree I will call Reg ‘Grandad’, just like Andrew and his brothers and sisters do.

      Reg can be very kind in these first few months and when he’s got time at the weekends he’ll spend time with me while I ride around on an old bike.

      ‘Easy on the brakes, lad,’ he’ll say. ‘Gently does it and if you just want to slow down but not stop, open them up again the same way, gently.’

      I do as Reg says and it makes a big difference. I become more confident on the bike, and I’m soon whizzing around Ludden Vale and Bradling.

      I can’t believe my luck and decide that Reg is the bee’s knees.

      But things can’t last that well forever.

      * * *

      The first thing to bring my wonderful new life crashing down comes about when Mum and Reg decide to build another bedroom. Up until now I have been sleeping in the room next to Reg and Mum’s room. My bedroom is like a junk room with a camp bed in it. The room is bigger than my old bedroom at Calder Bridge but because it’s so full of bits of broken furniture, gardening equipment, old clothes which I think must have belonged to Reg’s old family, and other bric-a-brac, there’s barely room to move, and the camp bed isn’t too comfortable either, though I put up with it.

      During the first summer at Ludden Vale, Reg and Terry, a builder friend, build a second storey on top of the kitchen on one end of the house to create a new bedroom for me. The room I’ve been sleeping in – which will now be the upstairs middle room – is to be turned into another living room, though in reality it will be Mum’s room where she can spend time on her own, maybe to have a little space from Reg as for the last few years since Dad left she’s been used to living on her own.

      It’s amazing to see it develop and all summer I help Reg and Terry as much as I can. They are both retired so they are over 65 and it’s quite a task for them both. I sense this and do as much as I can to help them. My favourite task is to have my own measuring tape and fetch a stone of a specified height. Reg sends me off looking for what he needs and I run around until I find one.

      I am dazzled and amazed by the building work. To me it seems almost magical that out of all this brick and stone and mortar we – Reg, Terry and I – have managed to conjure up a part of the house that looks to my eyes as if it has always been there. I’m very proud of it.

      I’m also discovering how clever Mum is – she has a knack of making money stretch a long way and getting things done. She finds the money to get this extra bedroom built, to renovate the rest of the house, install a new fitted kitchen, and re-paper and re-carpet every room. She has fresh furniture put in too. This may not be new but it doesn’t matter. She knows how to find good quality secondhand furniture at bargain prices, all on a secretary’s wage and a retired man’s state pension.

      Working with Reg on the building and the praise he gives me has been wonderful. I feel that he wants me there, and that, for the first time in my life, there is a father–son bond between us that I’ve never had with my own father. But in reality, building a new bedroom means something very different: I am getting my own room.

      This is to cause me more pain than anything else in my childhood although for the time being I am delighted at having my own space. But one of the barriers preventing my mother from gaining full access to me has been removed.

      * * *

      Another thing that has changed at Ludden Vale is that we have our first family holiday. From now on ‘holiday’ for me means staying in tents on campsites.

      I hate camping, particularly as we don’t have good quality gear when we first start. Camping is rough at the best of times but when the three of us are squashed into a small tent without decent protection and waterproofing it can be downright miserable if the weather turns against us. In the next few years we go all over the country camping, although on this first holiday camping trip with Reg we actually break this rule by staying for two nights in a hotel in Paignton, Devon. This feels so luxurious, especially as our house in Ludden Vale has still not been renovated. I love the sea air and it СКАЧАТЬ