TB

MUM ALWAYS HAD TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL for regular X-rays as her sister had died of tuberculosis (TB) some years earlier. So when Dad told me that Mum had to go to St Ann’s Hospital, I didn’t think anymore about it. Life for me was a succession of ups and downs. It wasn’t all downs, and it wasn’t all ups. It lurched from one to the other with frequently more downs than ups.

There were rare moments when Mum got a job. In those up moments Mum would give us breast of lamb, rice pudding and the like, but more often than not, she didn’t work and we were left in poverty and porridge.  I was worried whenever Mum went to the hospital because without Mum, there weren’t any ups at all. I lived in hope, because I refused to look at it in any other way.

I toddled off to school on the morning of Tuesday 13th September 1960, wondering if she would be home in a few hours. It was lunchtime as I turned the corner into Langhedge Lane. An ambulance stood at the end of the block. It was just waiting there, the driver sitting in the cab.

I walked in the house as normal, and trotted up the hallway. There was a lot of thumping and banging in the living room and I wondered what was going on. I peeped around the living room door.

Dad was standing next to an old battered half empty suitcase. The lid was laid open, and I could see some of Mum’s clothes lying in a heap.  He looked sheepish, as if he were caught in the act of something he didn’t want me to see. For a moment I didn’t understand what was going on. I know it sounds silly, but I didn’t really connect the ambulance that stood at the end of the block, with the suitcase: I didn’t know what to make of it. I knew my mum was cold and distant towards me, but she was my Mum! I didn’t understand why she was leaving home.

I quickly glanced around the living room. “Where’s Mum?” I asked. I walked towards Dad. He bent down, put his hands on my shoulders and spoke tenderly to me.

“She’s in the kitchen, love.”

Dad was sober. I mean, he was shaved, dressed smart and there wasn’t a hint of booze on him. I knew straightaway that something was wrong.

I ran into the kitchen. She looked up at me, her face stained with tears. Then she blurted out, one line at a time. “I’m going to St Ann’s.” She tried to dry her eyes with a hanky.

“Why Mum?” It was the first time I had seen my mother cry for something other than being beaten up by Dad, and I really didn’t know what to think.

There was a strange silence.

Cough, cough. She put another hanky to her mouth.

“Tuberculosis (TB)—yeah.” She drew a breath like she was sucking on a straw.

Cough, cough, splutter, wheeze.

“Be away a few months—yeah,” she said. “Isolation ward.” She doubled up, struggling to get her breath. As she pulled the handkerchief from her face, I thought how pretty the hanky was with its bright crimson spots.

We didn’t have any pretty hankies.

Then I saw that the red spots were blood. I gasped!

Now I was frightened. No, really frightened, and instead of crying for myself, I felt like crying because I was losing my mum.

My little mind had just cottoned on to what was happening. The ambulance was for her.

I really was losing my mum.

I had lost Les, and now this terrifying disease had moved into the house to take his place. I didn’t know what TB was, but I had seen what it could do. Mum’s sister died from it.  She was in the ground, buried in the cemetery, dead and gone to heaven.

“Oh, no! Not again,” I cried. I couldn’t bear it again.

My world fell apart after Les left. I had to start begging from the shops to feed the family, and now it was all happening again. I was going down into a pit of despair and it was all too much for me. I didn’t understand anything anymore. I so wanted to cry and sob, but the urge to cry just dried up.

It was like every time something like this happened in my life it would leave a little scar. I could powder over it with makeup, to hide and bury the hurt, but still it would be there. Every now and then, something would happen and would blow my powder away, exposing all the raw hurt underneath and I would be left, worthless and alone once more. What had I done that was so dreadful?  I wondered if I was paying the price for someone else’s misdeeds? I just felt so mixed up in my mind. So many questions left unanswered. I just stood there: I felt both worried and frightened at the same time, my mind spinning in a whirlwind of haze.  When would it end? It was as if an invisible blanket had come between me and the outside world

The North Middlesex Hospital was only a ten minute walk away—I didn’t know about St Ann’s.

“Where’s the hospital?”

Mum looked up at me from the kitchen chair by the stove. She went through another fit of crying and coughing and, not wanting to risk another coughing fit, she silently reached over to the note lying on the table. I picked it up and read it.

On one side there was a list of routes by bus and train. I turned it over and saw a simple line drawing that looked like a map.

Sitting down at the kitchen table, I studied it for a few moments trying to work out how far it was. I didn’t recognise any of the numbers of the buses or the names of the roads because I never went to London on my own.  Most of the time I would go into Edmonton, which was in the other direction. I recognised Seven Sisters Station. It showed the road leading to St Ann’s and suddenly I could see that it was at least two train stops from Silver Street Station. At least five miles away. I couldn’t walk and visit her there. It would be too far. It would use all my pocket money and I had only just managed to do my laundry, and I was blowed if I was going to give that up. I went back to speak to Dad in the living room.

Suddenly I began to feel strange. Light headed, I reached for the chair. It was the first time I had seen my mum so upset. I couldn’t tell if she was crying for us, or herself, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt; she had watched her sister die from TB.

I sat there quietly for a moment whilst Dad carried on packing, until I felt a little better. I slipped back into the kitchen to see how Mum was.

“I’ve gotta go to the Isolation ward,” she muttered, “because—you might catch it—see.” She was trying not to cough again.

“What’s happening?”

“Yer father will cook yer meals, and,” cough, cough, “you’ll have to look after Jane.”

I heard the suitcase snap shut.

The ambulance crew came in and I was brushed aside as they helped Mum out of the house and into the ambulance. Dad left with them to the hospital. The house fell silent and I was left alone.

I went back to school that afternoon and tried to join in with my class. I bumped into Mr Green in the corridor, and as I walked on, he called me back.

“Mary, Mary, come back here.”

“Yes Sir.” I slowly turned and walked back to face him as the other children brushed past.

“Whatever is the matter with you today, Mary?” he asked.

“Nothing Sir,” I said.

I may have been only a teenager but I was one step ahead of him now. I knew that if I told him anything there would be a problem. I didn’t want the social workers coming round otherwise I might be taken into care, or something equally frightening.

“You look very pale. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes Sir,” I sighed. “Just a bit tired Sir.”

He bent down and looked at my face. Could he tell I had been crying?

“Red eyes. Too many late nights, I shouldn’t wonder. Get an early night. You need it.” He waved me away and carried on walking back to the staff room.

He was right; I couldn’t concentrate on anything. My mind was a bag of racing worry, but what could I do? I had to soldier on. As I had done so many times before.

The next few days went fine and life carried on much as normal. There was still some food in the cupboard and if I nagged Dad, he would give me half a crown.

I picked Jane up from her school as usual and made dinner most nights in the first week that Mum was away. One day I came home and found there wasn’t enough for Jane to eat, never mind the rest of us! She whined and moaned about being hungry. I sat her in the kitchen, gave her a rusk I had found in the cupboard, and made her a drink to keep her quiet. Then I went upstairs and got her some comics that I had stashed in my bedroom.

“Now you stay here,” I said, shoving a pile of comics on the kitchen table.

She looked up and nodded before dipping her nose into her cup.

“I’m just going round the shops for some food, and I’ll be back in a minute—all right?”

She dragged a comic across the table and dropped her cup on it, then looking up at me she just watched me leave the kitchen. I glanced back and watched her, sitting there swinging her feet against the chair busily lost in her comic once more. I suppose I was a little uncomfortable leaving her on her own, but I didn’t have a choice: Dad wasn’t home.

I quickly I ran out of the house and down to the greengrocer’s shop nearby. I managed to get some jacket potatoes and some hard cheese. It had only been about ten or fifteen minutes at the most, but by the time I got back, I found the house empty.  There was no sign of Jane—she had disappeared; she was only five years old. 

Panic set in. I called out for her, but got no reply. I desperately searched upstairs, pushing open each door, peering under beds, and looking in all cupboards. I searched the toilet and thought that perhaps she had got locked in, or maybe she had fallen in and drowned in the bath.

Frantically searching through the house from room to room, I couldn’t think straight. Had the rent man called and had she accidentally locked herself in somewhere? The under stairs cupboard had a little latch which would drop down and lock on its own. I checked—not there! Then the kitchen. I didn’t have to check the fridge because we didn’t have one, but I did look in the larder, then finally, the living room—she wasn’t there.

Bursting out of the back door and into the garden I raced up and down the alley, over Grove Street, and then back down the lane toward the railway. Nothing! 

It was getting late. I began to cry. I blamed myself for not taking Jane to the shops with me. Why didn’t I think to take her with me? I kept asking myself this question over and over again.

I was running in circles, calling her name until my throat hurt.  I searched all the places I knew. Out in the coal shed, over by the church and I even went back to the old junior school, I was so desperate. It didn’t seem to matter how hard I searched, she was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t want to give up, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I thought, perhaps she had been taken by someone, or run away from home or something. I just didn’t know. I reasoned that if she had run off she would have talked to me about it on the way home from school; she would have said something about it to me, I was sure of it.

No, I thought, she wouldn’t have run away; after all, where would she go?

Then I thought that if she had been taken she would have screamed the place down, and so I ruled that one out. At the end of all my thinking, the only explanation I could come up with, was that she must have wandered off with a friend.  The problem with that theory was that she didn’t have many friends around where we lived. I didn’t know where to look anymore. I didn’t think she would go off on her own—she was too young. I ran out of ideas and I didn’t see anyone else to ask, until I spotted a young girl my age walking across the green.

“Hello,” I said. “My name is Mary. I live just over there.” I pointed to my block. “I’m looking for my little sister, Jane, and I wonder if you have seen a little girl wandering on her own?”

“Nay, I have seen naebody, nere a wee bairn. I’ve jist come down from Scotland, and I doona know anybody. My name is Joyce.”

“So you haven’t seen a little girl then?” I thought I would try again, thinking she came from a special school or something.

“Nay,” she said, “I’ve na seen a wee girl.” That was a waste of time I thought: obviously foreign.

“Thanks.” I gave her a little wave and turned away.

It was getting very dark and I was starting to get cold. I sat on the grass curb by the old school playground, alone, shivering and sobbing uncontrollably. I sat there, my mind racing and muttering to myself with my face all blotchy and red, my eyes streaming with the tears. I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.  I didn’t know how long I sat there. It seemed like a lifetime. My bottom was getting cold from sitting on the damp grass verge, and without a warm coat I was now starting to shiver.

Eventually I had to give up and return home. With a mixture of deep sobs and open loud crying, I sat on the front step, my head in my hands, my lifeless eyes closed and with the familiar taste of salt in my mouth, I was all alone.  I dashed inside, up to my bedroom, flinging myself onto my bed, chucking the blanket over me, and burying my head deep into the pillow.
    

Something woke me, but I thought I was still in a dream. The smell of hot vinegar on chips, and voices from downstairs. Then I realised it wasn’t a dream.

I got up and bounced down the stairs, and there was Dad with Jane standing in the hallway arguing over sweets or something. I ran up to him, smacking him and beating him hard with my fists; I was so angry with him.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were taking Jane with you?” I screamed, flaying out with my hands and banging him hard. “Why didn’t you leave me a note or something?”

He seemed startled and held out the bag of Fish and Chips, and then, shoving the bag at me, he gestured for me to take one. I can’t remember if he just said nothing or he was simply overwhelmed by my outrage and the onslaught of my attack.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I shouted at him again, louder than before—and then—I hit him again with my fists. But he just looked down at me, taking no notice of the blows raining down on him, and holding me off with his long arms.

“I’ve been all over the place looking for her! You bloody sod!”

“Shorry.” The stench of Rum and Blackcurrant caught me full in the face. “Thought you might like some Fish and Chips.”

He lurched toward me, and then tipping two packets of Smiths Crisps and two wrapped parcels of hot newspaper onto the kitchen table, he shuffled off into the living room with his meal still wrapped up. Jane and I were left to our own devices to unravel the newspaper and get ourselves a drink. We plonked ourselves down at the kitchen table and wolfed the food down, picking up the hot chips with our fingers.

We sat there and tucked into it. I could never resist the sweet smell of vinegar on hot newspaper. It always wafted through the house and seeped into every room. It was proper food, it was hot and I certainly wasn’t going to wait for it to cool down. I was so grateful for the food. I was starving hungry and it was such a treat. We both relished the moment, filling our tummies until we were fit to burst.

He must have won ‘on the dogs’, and had some money for once. Rum was expensive in comparison with a pint of bitter, less than a shilling, and he would only have a ‘Rum and Black’ when he was flush with money, and the only time he had money, was when he won on the horses or dogs.

Fish and Chips was a fairly easy food to be able to afford if you were very poor, but it didn’t seem to work that way in our house. For some reason it was a very rare treat and I can’t remember very many times that it happened.

This was just the first week and we had fish and chips. Dad told me that mum would be in hospital for three months. That left eleven weeks of ‘missing Mum’ to go before she would be home. I wondered if we would have fish and chips every week until then.

I hoped that things would get better. Perhaps Mum had asked someone to look in on us, or Dad had asked Auntie Alice to help us—I didn’t know, but lived in hope.  Hope... that I could rely on Dad.