Not My Life

Not My Life...

A novel

By

Anita Dawes

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This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

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Authors website;   http://jenanita01.com

Email:  jenanita01@btinternet.com

"I am not my body, I am more,

so much that mind in a flash cannot comprehend.

I have dreamed a thousand lifetimes.

Yet know not where or when I shall begin again."

Anita Dawes

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Chapter One

Mother was having her usual moan about the amount of time I spent doing odd jobs over at the Patterson’s. She had a set moan about almost everything I liked to do and I never paid much attention to what she was saying. Her words never changed; they repeated like a broken record.

When she reached the part where she always said, ‘there must be other things you could be doing, Sarah Curtis’, I knew the record had finished and I was free to go.

Although the money I was paid for the jobs wasn’t much, it was a bonus. I liked talking to Grace Patterson. It didn’t matter to me that most people thought her husband George a bit weird, all because he was old and spent most of his time in the shed at the bottom of his garden, making wooden toys and animals, fruit bowls and spinning tops.

George would study a piece of wood for a long time before knowing what it wanted to be, that’s what he said anyway. Most of the wood he brought home were the discarded pieces from the furniture makers. Where most people would have seen only firewood, George saw something beautiful waiting to be born and gave it life; most of which he gave away to the local kids.

You would think people would be grateful someone still cared enough to put a smile on their kid’s grubby faces. It seemed to me that most people always looked upon the kindness of any kind with suspicion.

Some of the kids were made to give their toys back and I knew this made George sad, even though he kept smiling and saying it was all right. I had tried telling George he would be better off selling the toys, but he didn’t believe anyone would pay good money for anything he made.

George must have been about sixty. Still a strong, fit man with a good head of silver hair, which judging by his eyebrows must have been dark a long time ago. They were thick and bushy, like enormous furry caterpillars. His eyes were a sharp and cloudless blue, the kind that looked at you and made you smile, even if you didn’t want to.

Grace’s powdery grey eyes had faded with age and I suspected they had been a little bluer once. They were an odd couple, him so strong, and her so delicate, almost fragile with her breathing problems. There were other differences too; he was a little eccentric and a bit on the scruffy side, while she was graceful, almost regal.

The Patterson’s lived in a prefab, one of those temporary bungalows they put up after the war to help the homeless. It was still in good condition and they kept it spotless. Mother thought it was high time the council pulled it down. ‘It must be the last one in Battersea. I can’t understand why they haven’t done it yet.’

Listening to her made me feel sad, for I knew she was only echoing the words she heard in the market. This made me think that all adults acted and thought the same stupid way. Their total lack of understanding about the Patterson’s, who had married at sixteen and lived all their lives together, said it all.

They didn’t have any children, but not because they didn’t like them.  Grace had told me that when she found out she couldn’t have any, she had offered to let George go and find someone who could give him the children she knew he desperately wanted. He had refused, saying she was all he needed. This made me wonder, if these things were known prior to falling in love, would love still grow under those conditions?

Mother had asked me once why George if he was so fit, didn’t do the jobs himself?  There was no point in talking to her or telling her I thought they were more than capable. I suspected George liked Grace to have some company, and this is why he paid me.

Mother had decided that I should spend more time with people my own age, forgetting I was at school all day and found them boring. Apart from Jimmy Black that is, whose parents ran the local pub. He was born in one of the upstairs rooms and said he remembered everything about it. He was always saying daft things like that and was one of the reasons I loved him.

He was good-looking, kind and considerate.  I considered myself lucky that he loved me back and it was certainly true what they say about Irish eyes. A magic behind them made Jimmy’s blue eyes dance whenever he smiled and he smiled a lot.

Mother was adamant that at fifteen, I was far too young to be in love; ‘and Jimmy is not the kind of boy you will want to marry,’ she would add, mysteriously.

When I asked why she said that, she said it was because he had only one foot on the ground. My aunt Faye, mum’s younger sister, gave me a knowing wink and said he was a handsome looking devil. ‘Life wouldn’t be boring with him around. Let her have some fun, Connie, before you tie her to a sink and a sensible fellow like your Jack.’

Mother spun around so fast in her eagerness to defend dad; she almost dropped one of her best dinner plates. Faye always seemed to know which spots to dig at, setting mother off on a flurry of hot words that took most of the air from our small kitchen.

I left them to it, knowing it would end in tears.

I never worried about them. Gran, my dad’s mother, had once remarked they were like salt and pepper and belonged together, despite all of their arguments. Mother, with her steadfast ways being salt; always needed and part of life itself. Faye was pepper, hot and fiery and not to everyone’s taste, but you always felt good in her company. They even looked like the parts they played, Mother, with her dark hair and plain, sensible clothing and Faye, with her dark red hair and bright clothes. I think the red hair came out of a bottle but was never sure.

Later that day I was beginning to think Gran had it wrong. Mother was still mad at Faye. I heard her say heatedly she would be glad when Faye’s flat was liveable again. It had been flooded out by a broken pipe in the flat above, forcing her to stay with us for the past three weeks.

It wasn’t like them not to have made up by tea-time. Dad told my mother she shouldn’t let Faye get to her so easily. ‘You know she doesn’t mean to upset you.’

My dad, always the peacemaker; never taking sides. I can’t remember him ever losing his temper, and sometimes he had enough reason. ‘It will be all right by morning,’ was one of his favourite sayings.

Later that evening when I was in my room, I heard the click of the light switch in their bedroom. Then the noise of the dodgy springs as dad lay down beside my mother. Silence descended on the house and there was no music coming from their bedsprings. They hadn’t made love in ages, which made me wonder if Faye might be right. Did mother sometimes wish dad were not such a sturdy fellow, as Faye put it?

I thought of Jimmy climbing the tree in our back garden to get to my room, just as the sound of his fingernails tapped on the glass, speeding the rhythm of my heart, mixing fear with excitement. Fear that one day he would be found in my bed, yet not able to send him away.

I don’t know if it was wrong to wonder if dad made my mother feel the way Jimmy did. His touch, his soft warm lips waking up those parts of me that have no name. His gift given to me in the dark, something that could never be shared by trying to explain it to another living being. Did my mother’s body scream silently from every pore at my father’s touch; the way mine did whenever Jimmy made love to me?

Was Faye trying to tell her she had missed something by marrying dad? A part of me hoped not. Maybe trying so hard for a child had stolen some of the magic, some of the excitement from their relationship. Was I, the long-awaited child, to blame for the way my parents had turned out or was it all meant to be this way?

Dad, on his fruit and vegetable stall in the High Street market, inherited from his father, Henry, whom he had worked for from the time he was fourteen. He was a wonderful man and when he died, something important left all our lives.

The day Henry’s coffin drove slowly through the market in a big black car was one of my saddest memories. All the market traders stood silently beside their stalls. No birdsong or breeze to lift the leaves on the branches, creating a stillness I had never experienced before nor wished to again.

Should mother have married someone from a different occupation, someone more like her father, a solicitor?

Faye had once said in anger, ‘Trouble with you is you don’t know when you’re well off. Still thinking you married beneath yourself, are you?’

Mother was quick to turn on Faye that day, telling her that martyrdom to what she believed was the love of her life had not helped in her decision-making. ‘Jumping from one bed to another, looking for something you can no longer see right under your nose doesn’t give you the qualification to tell me what I am thinking. What made you say such a thing?’

‘It’s easy, Connie. Any fool can see by the way you treat him. Like a child that hasn’t learned his manners, trying to make him into something he can never be. Laying the table the way mother used to, with all the cutlery, when you must know by now Jack likes to eat with his fork. Do you want me to go on?’

I thought mother had been a little cruel that day. Faye often spoke to me about the boy she had fallen in love with when she was my age. Michael had been a little older than Jimmy, and his father had brought him a motorbike for his seventeenth birthday. One month later, a lorry knocked him off the road. He lay in a coma in hospital for three months before his parents had reluctantly let him go. I honestly believe if Michael had lived; Faye would not be the way she is now. As mother said, never seeing the love anyone had for her. It’s funny how you never see the faults in someone you love until they are pointed out.

Faye was right about one thing though.  Mother was always trying to get dad to do things her way; eating with a knife and fork being one of them. Gran was sure it gave her something to do, thinking someday she would make a silk purse out of my dad. I didn’t give it much thought at the time but found myself watching and listening a lot more.

Chapter Two

I wished someone would hurry up and move into the house next door. The people who used to live there had gone away and I knew mother missed them terribly. A new neighbour would give her someone to talk to again.

The Williams’, the people that lived on the other side of us, were too young for mother. They were also noisy, always doing jobs and fixing things around the house. She wished they would move away. Chelsea would suit them better, with their fancy cars and flash holidays.

She always said it loud enough for them to hear and my cheeks would burn with embarrassment. I often wondered if they noticed. When they were out of earshot, I would tell my mother she shouldn’t always say whatever came into her head about people. There were too many people around here with tongues like razors without her joining in. I had never spoken to her like that before and expected all hell to erupt.

She looked at me with a blank expression, which made her look hard when I knew she wasn’t. Generally, I thought I got off lightly. Once mother got into using long words, she could go on for hours. Luckily, today was not going to be one of those days. The dark blue removal van pulling up outside had taken mum’s thoughts elsewhere and I was extremely grateful.

I was already half an hour late. Jimmy would be waiting down by the river with cigarettes, crisps and something to drink, all taken from behind his father’s bar. We would smoke too many cigarettes, which I didn’t really like; and make plans for the future. Some of which I suspected we both knew would never happen.

Jimmy had decided to stay on at school. He had hopes of becoming an architect someday. Mother remarked he would need to get his head out of the clouds if he wanted something so grand.

That day down by the river, I asked him if I could borrow one or two of his school reports. I wanted to show mother he had a good brain, one with room enough for other things to run alongside the sensible stuff.

He didn’t bring them around until Saturday morning. Mother answered the door and let him in and as he swanned past her the way he always did, I watched her face for the usual expression. The ‘God help my daughter; she’s in love with a fool’ expression. By the time she reached the front room, Jimmy was sprawled on the sofa.

From the doorway, Mother said sarcastically, ‘Do make yourself at home, Jimmy.’

‘Thanks, Mrs C.’ he said cheerfully. That was only one of many ways he liked to annoy her.

‘Mrs Curtis to you, and get your feet off my sofa!’

‘Sorry, Mrs C.’ I watched as the smile parting his lips slid up his face, lighting his eyes with a special magic. Not even mother could resist his charm for long.

Sure enough, mother almost allowed a smile to move the muscles in her face as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Jimmy let her half turn away before leaping from the sofa. Holding out his school reports, he said, ‘Mrs C, I believe Sarah wanted you to see these.’

‘And what might they be?’ Mother said, taking them from his outstretched hand as if they were contaminated.

‘School reports, Mrs C.’ before she could say anything else, he took my hand and pulled me from the room. ‘No hurry, Mrs C, I’ll pick them up later.’

I knew mother would be surprised, as he always got top marks in every subject. It seemed easy for him; he didn’t have to work hard. Whereas I had to cram in hours of homework to get the kind of marks he did.

I kept hoping mother would not think I had been rude, that she wouldn’t think it had been shoved in her face. Almost like saying, ‘here, read this. He’s not the kind of fool you like to think he is.’ I wanted her to know there was more to Jimmy than she could see, not that I could ever tell her about his more daring side.

Like making love in the park in broad daylight, leaning against the bark of a tree with my legs wrapped around his waist. Not one of my most favourite places, I might add. Or late at night, down by the river in the graveyard next to the Castle pub, hearing the bell for last orders. Knowing people would soon pass close by, taking the shortcut through the graveyard did somehow excite me a little. Jimmy knew it too, his movements slowly stretching out each electrical wave of our bodies, until I thought we would surely crack the stone underneath us.

That side of Jimmy was only for me to know about, but there were times when I wanted to shout from the rooftops after making love, to let the world know I was on fire. In a funny sort of way, I thought I had Faye to thank for it.

There was one fly in the ointment though. Jimmy didn’t like wearing rubbers and I didn’t want to get pregnant. We had started to fight about it, Jimmy swearing he would pull out and not get me in trouble. I knew he couldn’t and didn’t really want him to; it would spoil it too much.

One night when Faye had taken me to the pictures, she asked why I had been looking so sour lately. I didn’t think I could talk to an adult about such things but somehow everything fell out of my mouth. She surprised me by saying she would take me to the clinic, ‘Get you on the pill, young lady. Babies too soon will spoil all your plans, and we can’t have a handsome devil as Jimmy look elsewhere for his pleasure, now can we?’

I had never thought he might try his luck with other girls. Now I wondered if that was why he never stayed mad at me for long. Before I went to the clinic, I asked him, and that was the first time I ever saw hurt in his eyes. Jimmy was never serious, so I was shocked when he took hold of my arms, almost shaking me, making sure I was paying attention. ‘Sarah, I want us to spend the rest of our lives together, have kids someday. Grow old but never too old to make love, to sneak down to the graveyard when our kids think we’re past it.’

I couldn’t help thinking this was all a little more serious than I realised. I tried to lighten the mood by telling him we could be caught one of these days.

‘That’s half the fun,’ he said. ‘Besides, anyone passing through after a night in the pub would be pissed enough to think we were a couple of ghosts come back to play. Don’t you ever see them watching us?’

‘Who has been watching us? I asked in horror.

‘The resident ghosts of course.’

‘Don’t be daft, Jimmy; there is no such thing.’ Now we were laughing and he pulled me close, kissing me so passionately I could taste the salt from our bodies. He made love to me with the same determination, as if he needed to burn into every fibre of my being the knowledge that he loved me and always would.

After reading Jimmy’s reports, mother did change her attitude towards him. She invited him for tea and Sunday dinner whenever the thought crossed her mind. Dad had always treated Jimmy as someone he liked, but then dad got