JOSIAH PYKE AND THE EXPLANATION

I take a chapter to discover why Mildred was so keen to foster and then adopt Josiah.

“But why, mum?” asked Josiah on the eve of his fourteenth birthday, “you’ve never said why you want me here, not that I want to be anywhere else, so don’t get me wrong.”

“I’ve had three husbands and lost them all, Josiah,” she said quietly. “From when I was old enough to know what was what all I wanted was a family of my own, babies you know, maybe a whole football team of them, but look at me: it’s much too late for me to even think of it any more. Somehow it never worked for me. Somehow it seems I wasn’t meant to be a mother. But I knew all about you, Josiah. Everyone in Henstooth did and probably still does. If your father had been anyone but the vicar he’d have been locked up long since for the way he treated you and your mother. So rather than do nothing once I was too old to become pregnant myself I decided to do something useful with my life, and you came along.”

“By accident. I didn’t come this way on purpose. I was exploring because the Vicarage was locked and I couldn’t get in,” said Josiah. And it was true, though if asked afterwards he would have said it was the best bit of exploring any boy cold have done.

“When I was a teenager, nineteen I think, I fell for an older man,” sighed Mildred. “I should have been warned and probably was, you know, that he was too old for me, but I was sure I was in love with him, and I suppose that I really was even though when we got married I was still nineteen and he was fifty. But he was a handsome fifty. And virile, if you don’t mind me saying it. And for ten years we had a close and loving life until, well, he died. Heart attack at night, it was, after we’d … it doesn’t matter. He’s buried under one of the mounds in the garden, or at least his ashes are. I was heart broken, though I knew I expected him to go before me. But for the ten years we had together it didn’t seem to matter how hard we tried I never got pregnant. I didn’t even have a false alarm!”

“Why have a mound when you could have set him free by scattering the ashes?” asked Josiah thoughtfully.

“I wanted a place to set a little vase and a headstone,” sighed Mildred. “And so I buried the urn containing his ashes in a wooden box, not a coffin but a crate the same general size, and the soil left over made a mound. It seemed the right thing to do.”

“I think I understand,” murmured Josiah, who didn’t really.

“I wanted him in the earth. Not just flittering about on any old wind until he became so dispersed he wasn’t anywhere any more,” whispered Mildred. “His name was Terry and I put a small gravestone by his resting place. And then I met Ozzy.”

“Who was Ozzy?” asked Josiah.

“Ozzy became the love of my life Mark Two,” smiled Mildred, “and you’d have thought I’d learned the folly of attaching myself to an older man, but he was older than me too, quite a bit older, hut it didn’t matter for around ten years, and then he died in bed. We were together and I had known that togetherness was a struggle for him for a couple of years, but I still harboured the hope that he’d help me have at least one child, but again it never happened. He’s another of the mounds in the garden, again his ashes in their urn and buried in a box. A smaller box this time, so I buried a few rocks from the rockery next to him.”

“That was sad,” contributed Josiah.

“I lived alone, quietly, for a couple of years,” she murmured, “but my body clock was winding down and I knew that if I didn’t have children soon then I’d never have them. And when Mickie came along, a younger fellow, for once the same age as me give or take a year or so, I thought at last I had a chance. He was a widower with two kids, both grown up and living lives of their own … he was even a grandfather! So I suspected he was gloriously fertile, would finally give me children, and we courted as folks do and got married, in the church in Henstooth where your father has his living, and he came here to live with me. On that first night of wedded bliss … and it was wedded bliss … he asked me what I most wanted in life and I said a baby of my own and he sort of shrivelled up and confessed that his deceased wife had only had the two children because the second one had been a very difficult birth and nearly lost her own life during it, and to save her any more anguish he’d had a vasectomy. He couldn’t father children however hard he tried.”

“I suppose he might have mentioned it sooner,” commented Josiah.

“I was forty something and he no doubt didn’t see it as a problem,” sighed Mildred. “Anyway, it rocked my world, but I was fond of him, and we stayed together until the accident.”

“Accident?” asked Josiah.

She nodded. “Yes,” he almost whispered, “the ceiling of the dining room fell on him. One of us, and I’m sure it was him and not me, had left the bath tap running, the bath had slowly filled up and overflowed, water had spilled down, collected above the ceiling until eventually the weight caused an almighty collapse, and that was when he happened to be sitting at the table directly under it. A beam that must have been there since the place was built ages ago struck him across the head, and he died two days later, in my bed. He’s in the third mound in the garden, or at least his ashes are.”

“Terry, Ozzy and Mickie,” murmured Josiah, and then he looked up at her surprised. “Is that why this house is called what it is?” he asked.

“Tom’s Playground,” whispered Mildred, “I changed it to Tom’s Playground after I buried Mickie. It seemed right, somehow, to give the three loves of my life a memory even though they all passed away. They would have loved the idea!”

“So the children you’d dreamed of having never came along?” sighed Josiah, questioningly.

“Until the day I saw your pale face and knew what I must do,” she said quietly. “I’d known about you, crikey, who didn’t? And when I saw you there clutching your brown paper bag I knew what I must do. And I’m so glad that I did.”

“My birth mother died,” Josiah reminded her, “two years ago now. I’ve never known how she felt about me living here. All she ever did is give me that horrible medicine when I was sick and sent me to my bed in the attic. I wonder if she missed me?”

“Who can say,” replied Mildred vaguely, “I can’t, though I do suspect it was that medicine that killed her in the end. They say the bottle was empty when they took her away, and that her death was caused by poisoning. Some even blamed your father, but I’m sure it wasn’t him this time. I’m sure the stuff in that bottle of hers was as toxic as arsenic!”

“It was horrible,” shuddered Josiah. “I had a spoonful every time I was sick, and I was sick quite often.”

“From what I heard she thought it was the perfect cure-all and swore by it,” sighed Mildred, “but that was a delusion. A great big horrible delusion. Anyway, now you know too much about me I’d better finish by saying that although I never had a child of my own I rather suspect that you’ve been the next best thing this past four years!”

“You saved me, mum,” whispered Josiah.

“Tosh,” she smiled, “I just gave you a roof, that’s all, and hopefully a better roof than you were used to.”

“Much better,” he nodded, “much, much better.”

© Peter Rogerson 10.03.18