NAN DREAMS

When I was twelve I fell and broke my elbow. It was election day 1929 and we were mucking about on top of the wall by the polling station. It was about six feet up and you were all right as long as you sat astride the coping stones, only I’d turned side-saddle so as to spot the people who’d voted Conservative, my dad said you could see it in their faces. Jimmy nudged me and we started singing:

‘ Vote! Vote! Vote for Alec Sharrock
He is sure to win the day
And we’ll get a salmon tin
And we’ll put the Tory in
And he’ll never see his mother any more.’

I swung my legs to make the words come out better and the next thing I knew I was sprawled on the ground with my arm underneath me. Jimmy tried to make a sling out of the yellow muslin banners we’d been waving but I screamed and he started to cry in panic. It hurt so much I was afraid to get up in case I left my arm on the floor.

The following day, when we heard Labour’d got in, Dad got so drunk he couldn’t
open the back gate.
‘ I’ll go and let him in’, Jimmy volunteered.
‘ Tha’ll not!’ said Mother. ‘Leave him where he is.’
So I lay on the sofa with my arm all strapped up and watched him struggle. Finally he fell over and my mother drew the curtains on him.
It was funny, we’d never known him touch a drop before.
His vices lay in other directions.

JANUARY 1997

The day after it happened everything seemed normal. Even from behind my bedroom door I could hear Mum going at Nan. She tries not to get cross but it’s the only emotion my mother does these days.
‘ Come on, Nan, it’s time for your bath.’
‘ I can’t. My arm hurts.’
‘ No, it doesn’t. You’ve been dreaming again. Come on.’
Ours is a house of lost things; keys, hearing aids, identities. There was a row about sausages this morning. My mum had cooked two sausages for Nan’s dinner and left them on a plate to cool. Then the window cleaner came to the door and when she got back they’d gone.
‘ What have you done with them?’ she asked Nan (patient voice).
‘ I han’t touched ‘em.’
‘ Yes, you have, you must have.’
‘ It were t’dog.’
‘We haven’t got a dog, Nan. Where are they? I just want to know, you’re not in trouble. Have you eaten them?’
‘ Aye, I might have done. Yesterday. I had ‘em for my tea.’
‘ How can you have had them yesterday when I’ve only just cooked them? Go Almighty, it’s every little thing.’ My mother ran her hand wearily over her face and sighed. It’s something she does a lot.
‘ By the Crin! There’s no need to shout. You’re a nowty woman. You’re like my daughter Karen, she gets her hair off at nothing.’
‘ I am your daughter Karen.’
‘ Hmph.’