I asked my mother to teach me French, but her face clouded over, and she said she couldn’t.
‘Why not?’
‘It was nearly my downfall.’
‘What do you mean?’ I persisted, whenever I could. But she only shook her head and muttered something about me being too young, that I’d find out all too soon, that it was nasty.
‘One day,’ she said finally, ‘I’ll tell you about Pierre,’ then she switched on the radio and ignored me for so long that I went back to bed.
Quite often, she’d start to tell me a story and then go on to something else in the middle, so I never found out what happened to the Earthly Paradise when it stopped being off the coast of India, and I was stuck at ‘six sevens are fortytwo’ for almost a week.
‘Why don’t I go to school?’ I asked her. I was curious about school because my mother always called it a Breeding Ground. I didn’t know what she meant, but I knew it was a bad thing, like Unnatural Passions. ‘They’ll lead you astray,’ was the only answer I got.
I thought about all this in the toilet. It was outside, and I hated having to go at night because of the spiders that came over from the coal-shed. My dad and me always seemed to be in the toilet, me sitting on my hands and humming, and him standing up, I supposed. My mother got very angry.
‘You come on in, it doesn’t take that long.’
But it was the only place to go. We all shared the same bedroom, because my mother was building us a bathroom in the back, and eventually, if she got the partition fitted, a little half-room for me. She worked very slowly though, because she said she had a lot on her mind. Sometimes Mrs White came round to help mix the grout, but then they’d both end up listening to Johnny Cash, or writing a new handout on Baptism by Total Immersion. She did finish eventually, but not for three years.
Meanwhile, my lessons continued, I learnt a bout Horticulture and Garden Pests via the slugs and my mother’s seed catalogues, and I developed an understanding of Historical Process through the prophecies in the Book of Revelation, and a magazine called The Plain Truth, which my mother received each week.
‘It’s Elijah in our midst again,’ she declared.
And so I learned to interpret the signs and wonders that the unbeliever might never understand.
‘You’ll need to when you’re out there on the mission field,’ she reminded me.
Then, one morning, when we had got up early to listen to Ivan Popov from behind the Iron Curtain, a fat brown envelope plopped through the letter box. My mother thought it was letters of thanks from those who had attended our Healing of the Sick crusade in the town hall. She ripped it open, then her face fell.
‘What is it?’ I asked her.
‘It’s about you.’
‘What about me?’
‘I have to send you to school.’
I whizzed into the toilet and sat on my hands; the Breeding Ground at last.
EXODUS
‘WHY DO YOU want me to go?’ I asked her the night before.
‘Because if you don’t go, I’ll have to go to prison.’ She picked up the knife. ‘How many slices do you want?’
‘Two,’ I said. ‘What’s going in them?’
‘Potted beef, and be thankful.’
‘But if you go to prison you’ll get out again. St Paul was always going to prison.’
‘I know that’ (she cut the bread firmly, so that only the tiniest squirt of potted beef oozed out) . . . ‘but the neighbours don’t. Eat this and be quiet.’
She pushed the plate in front of me. It looked horrible.
‘Why can’t we have chips?’
‘Because I haven’t time to make you chips. There’s my feet to soak, your vest to iron, and I haven’t touched all those requests for prayer. Besides, there’s no potatoes.’
I went into the living room, looking for something to do. In the kitchen I heard my mother switch on the radio.
‘And now,’ said a voice, ‘a programme about the family life of snails.’
My mother shrieked.
‘Did you hear that?’ she demanded, and poked her head round the kitchen door. ‘The family life of snails, it’s an Abomination, it’s like saying we come from monkeys.’
I thought about it. Mr and Mrs Snail at home on a wet Wednesday night; Mr Snail dozing quietly, Mrs Snail reading a book about difficult children. ‘I’m so worried doctor. He’s so quiet, won’t come out of his shell.’
‘No mum,’ I replied, ‘it’s not like that at all.’
But she wasn’t listening. She had gone back into the kitchen, and I could hear her muttering to herself against the static as she fiddled for the World Service. I went after her. ‘The Devil’s in the world, but not in this house,’ she said, and fixed her gaze on the picture of the Lord hung about the oven. It was a watercolour about nine inches square, painted by Pastor Spratt for my mother, before he left with his Glory Crusade for Wigan and Africa.
It was called ‘The Lord Feeding the Birds’ and my mother put it over the oven because she spent most of her time there, making things for the faithful. It was a bit battered now, and the Lord had a blob of egg on one foot, but we didn’t like to touch it in case the paint came off too.
‘I’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘Go away.’
And she closed the kitchen door again and switched off the radio. I could hear her humming Glorious Things of Thee are spoken.
‘Well, that’s that then,’ I thought.
And it was.
The next morning was a hive of activity. My mother dragged me out of bed, shouting that it was half-past seven, that she had had no sleep at all, that my dad had gone to work without his dinner. She poured a scalding kettle of water into the sink.
‘Why didn’t you go to bed?’ I asked her.
‘No point if I had to get up with you three hours later.’
She shot a jet of cold water into the hot.
‘Well you could have had an early night,’ I suggested, struggling with my pyjama top. An old woman had made it for me, and made the neck hole the same size as the arm holes, so I always had sore ears. Once I went deaf for three months with my adenoids: no one noticed that either.
I was lying in bed one night, thinking about the glory of the Lord, when it struck me that life had gone very quiet. I had been to church as usual, sung as loudly as ever, but it had seemed for some time that I was the only one making a noise.
I had assumed myself to be in a state of rapture, not uncommon in our church, and later I discovered my mother had assumed the same. When May had asked why I wasn’t answering anybody, my mother had said, ‘It’s the Lord.’
‘What’s the Lord?’ May was confused.
‘Working in mysterious ways,’ declared my mother, and walked ahead.
So, unknown to me, word spread about our church that I was in a state of rapture, and no one should speak to me.
‘Why do you think it’s happened?’ Mrs White wanted to know.
‘Oh, it’s not surprising, she’s seven you know,’ May paused for effect, ‘It’s a holy number, strange things happen in sevens, look at Elsie Norris.’
Elsie Norris, ‘Testifying Elsie’ as she was called, was a great encouragement to our church. Whenever the pastor asked for a testimony on God’s goodness, Elsie leapt to her feet and cried, ‘Listen to what the Lord has done for me this week.’
She needed eggs, the Lord had sent them.
She had a bout of colic, the Lord took it away.
She always prayed for two hours a day;
once in the morning at seven a.m.
and once in the evening at seven p.m.
Her hobby was numerology, and she never read the Word without first casting the dice to guide her.
‘One dice for the chapter, and one dice for the verse’ was her motto.
Someone once asked her what she did for books of the Bible that had more than six chapters.
‘I have my ways,’ she said stiffly, ‘and the Lord has his.’
&n
bsp; I liked her a lot because she had interesting things in her house. She had an organ that you had to pedal if you wanted it to make a noise. Whenever I went there she played Lead Kindly Light. Her doing the keys, and me doing the pedals because she had asthma. She collected foreign coins and kept them in a glass case that smelled of linseed oil. She said it reminded her of her late husband who had used to play cricket for Lancashire.
‘Hard Hand Stan they called him,’ she said every time I went to see her. She could never remember what she told people. She could never remember how long she kept her fruit cake. There was a time when I got offered the same piece of cake for five weeks. I was lucky, she never remembered what you said to her either, so every week I made the same excuse.
‘Colic,’ I said.
‘I’ll pray for you,’ she said.
Best of all, she had a collage of Noah’s Ark. It showed the two parent Noah’s leaning out looking at the flood, while the other Noah’s tried to catch one of the rabbits. But for me, the delight was a detachable chimpanzee, made out of a Brillo pad; at the end of my visit she let me play with it for five minutes. I had all kinds of variations, but usually I drowned it.
One Sunday the pastor told everyone how full of the spirit I was. He talked about me for twenty minutes, and I didn’t hear a word; just sat there reading my Bible and thinking what a long book it was. Of course this seeming modesty made them all the more convinced.
I thought no one was talking to me and the others thought I wasn’t talking to them. But on the night I realized I couldn’t hear anything I went downstairs and wrote on a piece of paper, ‘Mother, the world is very quiet.’
My mother nodded and carried on with her book. She had got it in the post that morning from Pastor Spratt. It was a description of missionary life called Other Continents Know Him Too.
I couldn’t attract her attention, so I took an orange and went back to bed. I had to find out for myself.
Someone had given me a recorder and a tune book for my birthday, so I propped myself up against the pillows and piped out a couple of verses of Auld Lang Syne.
I could see my fingers moving, but there was no sound.
I tried Little Brown Jug.
Nothing.
In despair I started to beat out the rhythm section of Ol’ Man River.
Nothing.
And nothing I could do till morning.
The next day I leapt out of bed determined to explain to my mother what was wrong.
There was no one in the house.
My breakfast had been left on the kitchenette with a short note.
‘Dear Jeanette,
We have gone to the hospital to pray for Auntie Betty. Her leg is very loose.
Love mother.’
So I spent the day as well as I could, and finally decided to go for a walk. That walk was my salvation. I met Miss Jewsbury who played the oboe and conducted the Sisterhood choir. She was very clever.
‘But she’s not holy,’ Mrs White had once said. Miss Jews-bury must have said hello to me, and I must have ignored her. She hadn’t been to church for a long time because of her tour of the Midlands with the Salvation Symphony Orchestra, and so she didn’t know that I was supposed to be full of the spirit. She stood in front of me opening and shutting her mouth, which was very large on account of the oboe, and pulling her eyebrows into the middle of her head. I took hold of her hand and led her into the post office. Then I picked up one of the pens and wrote on the back of a child allowance form,
‘Dear Miss Jewsbury,
I can’t hear a thing.’
She looked at me in horror and, taking the pen herself, wrote, ‘What is. your mother doing about it? Why aren’t you in bed?’
By now there was no room left on the child allowance form so I had to use Who to Contact in the Event of An Emergency.
‘Dear Miss Jewsbury,’ I wrote,
‘My mother doesn’t know. She’s at the hospital with Auntie Betty. I was in bed last night.’
Miss Jewsbury just stared and stared. She stared for so long I began to think about going home. Then she snatched my hand and whisked me off to the hospital. When we got there my mother and some others were gathered around Auntie Betty’s bed singing choruses. My mother saw us, looked a bit surprised, but didn’t get up. Miss Jewsbury tapped her on the elbow, and started doing the routine with her mouth and eyebrows. My mother just shook and shook her head. Finally Miss Jewsbury yelled so loud even I heard it. ‘This child’s not full of the Spirit,’ she screamed, ‘she’s deaf.’
Everyone in the hospital turned to peer at me. I went very red, and stared at Auntie Betty’s water jug. The worst thing was not knowing at all what was going on. Then a doctor came over to us, very angry, and then he and Miss Jewsbury waved their arms at each other. The Faithful had gone back to their chorus sheets as though nothing was happening at all.
The doctor and Miss Jewsbury whisked me away to a cold room full of equipment, and made me lie down. The doctor kept tapping me in different places and shaking his head.
And it was all absolutely silent.
Then my mother arrived and seemed to understand what was going on. She signed a form, and wrote me another note.
‘Dear Jeanette,
There’s nothing wrong, you’re just a bit deaf. Why didn’t you tell me? I’m going home to get your pyjamas.’
What was she doing? Why was she leaving me here? I started to cry. My mother looked horrified and rooting in her handbag she gave me an orange. I peeled it to comfort myself, and seeing me a little calmer, everyone glanced at one another and went away.
Since I was born I had assumed that the world ran on very simple lines, like a larger version of our church. Now I was finding that even the church was sometimes confused. This was a problem. But not one I chose to deal with for many years more. The problem there and then was what was going to happen to me. The Victoria Hospital was big and frightening, and I couldn’t even sing to any effect because I couldn’t hear what I was singing. There was nothing to read except some dental notices and an instruction leaflet for the X-ray machine. I tried to build an igloo out of the orange peel but it kept falling down and even when it stood up I didn’t have an eskimo to put in it, so I had to invent a story about ‘How Eskimo Got Eaten’, which made me even more miserable. It’s always the same with diversions; you get involved.
At last my mother came back, and a nurse pulled me into my pyjamas and took us both to the children’s ward. It was horrid. The walls were pale pink and all the curtains had animals on them. Not real animals though: fluffy ones playing games with coloured balls. I thought of the sea walrus I had just invented. It was wicked, it had eaten the eskimo; but it was better than these. The nurse had thrown my igloo in the bin.
There was nothing for me to do but contemplate my fate and lie still. A couple of hours later my mother returned with my Bible, a Scripture Union colouring book, and a wedge of plasticine, which the nurse took away. I pulled a face, and she wrote on a card, ‘Not nice, might swallow.’ I looked at her and wrote back, ‘I don’t want to swallow it, I want to build with it. Besides plasticine isn’t toxic, it tells you on the back,’ and I waved the packet at her. She frowned and shook her head. I turned to my mother for support, but she was scribbling me a long letter. The nurse started to rearrange my bed, and put the offending putty in her uniform pocket. I could see that nothing would change her mind.
I sniffed; disinfectant and mashed potatoes. Then my mother prodded me, put her letter on the bedside cabinet, and emptied a huge carrier bag of oranges into the bowl by my water jug. I smiled feebly, hoping to gain support, but instead she patted me on the head and rolled away. So I was alone. I thought of Jane Eyre, who faced many trials and was always brave. My mother read the book to me whenever she felt sad; she said it gave her fortitude. I picked up her letter: the usual not-to-worry, lots-of-people-will-visit, chin-up, and a promise to work hard on the bathroom, and not let Mrs White get in the way. That she’d come soon, or
if not she’d send her husband. That my operation would be the next day. At this, I let the letter fall to the bed. The next day! What if I died? So young and so promising! I thought of my funeral, of all the tears. I wanted to be buried with Golly and my Bible. Should I write instructions? Could I count on any of them to take any notice? My mother knew all about illness and operations. The doctor had told her that a woman in her condition shouldn’t be walking around, but she said that her time hadn’t come, and at least she knew where she was going, not like him. My mother read in a book that more people die under anaesthetic than drown while water-skiing.
‘If the Lord brings you back,’ she told May, before she went in for her gallstones, ‘you’ll know it’s because he’s got work for you to do.’ I crept under the bedclothes and prayed to be brought back.
On the morning of my operation, the nurses were Smiling and rearranging the bed again, and piling the oranges in a symmetrical tower. Two hairy arms lifted me up and strapped me on to a cold trolley. The castors squeaked and the man who pushed me went too fast. Corridors, double doors and two pairs of eyes peeping over the top of tight white masks. A nurse held my hand while someone fitted a muzzle over my nose and mouth. I breathed in and saw a great line of water-skiiers falling off and not coming back up. Then I didn’t see anything at all.
‘Jelly, Jeanette.’
I knew it, I’d died and the angels were giving me jelly. I opened my eyes expecting to see a pair of wings.
‘Come on, eat up,’ the voice encouraged.
‘Are you an angel?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Not quite, I’m a doctor. But she’s an angel, aren’t you nurse?’
The angel blushed.
‘I can hear,’ I said, to no one in particular.
‘Eat your jelly,’ said the nurse.
I might have languished alone for the rest of the week, if Elsie hadn’t found out where I was, and started visiting me. My mother couldn’t come till the weekend, I knew that, because she was waiting for the plumber to check her fittings. Elsie came every day, and told me jokes to make me smile and stories to make me feel better. She said stories helped you to understand the world. When I felt better, she promised to show me the basics I needed to help her with numerology. A thrill of excitement ran through me because I knew my mother disapproved. She said it was too close to madness.