13. THE UNMARRIED MOTHER

A sudden twist in Wallace's life...

The council house where Helen still lived with her son Wallace was really too large for them but the council seemed perfectly happy for them to rattle around inside it without being moved to a smaller home. The downside of a large house is it tends to have a large garden and before Amy left to start a life of her own she had gone fifty-fifty with Helen to pay for much of it to be grassed over.

Grass, as every householder with a lawn knows, needs mowing and in the nineteen fifties, when Wallace was still at school and doing rather well despite the fact that the eleven plus examination had deemed him unsuitable for a grammar school, lawn mowers were of the manual pushing variety unless you were really well-heeled and could afford a petrol driven mechanical beast. Helen was far from being really well-heeled, working as she did in the primary school kitchen where she was assistant cook.

Wallace decided that keeping the grass mowed was a man’s task, and he, in the absence of an adult male, was the man of the family, so he pushed their (already second-hand) mower up and down the lawns whenever it seemed to need cutting.

He was mowing the front lawn when they had a visitor, and to his eternal surprise that visitor was Miss Hawkesbury dressed, for once in something less severe than her usual run of skirts. In fact, it was a cotton dress with a floral pattern and buttons down the front and for once she looked a great deal less prim than the woman who persevered to get them understand adjectival clauses at school.

She glanced at him mowing the grass, but he had his back to her at first and she didn’t recognise him even though he faced her in class five half hour periods a week, when he was shining at sentence construction and the ins and outs of apostrophes.

“Young man,” she said in a voice he instantly recognised, “is this where Mrs Pratchett lives? Mrs Helen Pratchett, widow of the Reverend Jack Pratchett?”

“Miss Hawkesbury!” he exclaimed, eyes wide open with surprise.

“Ah, Pratchett...” she said, and he could see that a light was suddenly shining inside her head when she associated the boy from her English class at Mickelthwaite Secondary school with the lady she had come to call on. They were both called Pratchett, the light told her, and they both seemed to live in this same house. They must, it’s beam concluded, be related. Probably mother and son.

“She’s in,” he burst out with, confused. What on Earth was a teacher doing here, calling on his mother of all things and on a Sunday too? Did it mean that Penny’s assumption was right? Did it mean that Miss Hawkesbury was really one of those women who sometimes made a name for themselves in the Sunday papers because they went around (here he mentally shuddered) snogging with other women? And was his own mother part of that group? Was Penny right? Were they lovers?

He was disgusted by the thought. He had to be. It was the prevalent assumption of the times, that the sort of relationship that burst into his mind, between his English teacher and his mother, was sinful.

“Why, young Wallace, or I’m a Dutchman,” she said, her voice suddenly effusive. “It’s a crying shame that we’ve never met outside the classroom, you and I, seeing as we’re so closely related...”

Closely related?

He knew what closely related meant and he knew they couldn’t be.

His confused thoughts were interrupted by his mother’s voice, suddenly, from the now open front door of the house.

“Why, Edina, how lovely...” his mother said.

So it was lovely, was it, his English teacher and his mother being on such intimate terms that they kissed each other in the park?

“Lovely?” he sputtered, “I should coco!”

“Of course, Wallace, you’ve never met your auntie Edina, have you?” said his mother.

“I haven’t got an auntie Edina!” he almost wept, though why unwanted tears should have suddenly and unexpectedly started to flow he could never have explained, not if he’d been given a month of Sundays in order to do it.

“Oh, but you have,” laughed his mother nervously, “come in, both of you, and I’ll explain. What do you prefer, Edina? Tea or coffee?”

Edina Hawkesbury opened the gate, her face more smiley than it ever was in class, and made her way to the front door.

“I can’t stand coffee,” Miss Hawkesbury said to his mother, “horrid stuff! But a nice cup of tea will be very nice, thank you very much.”

By this time Wallace was on the cusp of running away into the big wide world and seeking solace in the arms of Penny Ashton, who he knew would comfort him by stroking his hair and surrounding him with the sweet fragrance of floral soap. But only on the cusp, because something inside him wanted to know more.

His mother made a pot of tea and they all sat round the old kitchen table that predated its time at the vicarage, where they had found it.

“Well, Edina, shall I tell who, or do you want to?” asked his mother.

“Go ahead. You understand him better than I do,” suggested Miss Hawkesbury.

“All right then,” sighed Helen, “this is who Edina is,” she began, “and please, don’t make any judgements just yet.”

“Besides being your English teacher at school,” put in Miss Hawkesbury.

“Exactly. Besides that,” agreed Helen, “you see, Wallace, do you remember that I told you that I met your father before the war? It was dreadful, was that war. It tore families apart, turned friends and allies into enemies and stole sons from their parents. Your father might have gone to war if he’d been fit, but an injury from his boyhood gave him that limp that he took with him to the grave...”

“What’s that got to do…?” began Wallace.

“Not much, and a lot at the same time,” said Helen, frowning. “You see, your father had a brother, a lad really, slightly younger than him, and he had a girlfriend called Edina Hawkesbury...”

“You?” asked Wallace staring at his English teacher, who took up the story.

“We were going to get married,” she said sadly, “the date was fixed, the church booked, everything was prepared, and days before what I was certain was going to be the happiest day of my life he got killed by a bomb, a direct hit, and my world was stolen from me...”

“So dad’s brother was killed? I think I remember things being said about it, years ago,” mused Wallace, “but if he was killed like that, you can’t be my auntie! You weren’t married to him!”

“Maybe not,” sighed Edina Hawkesbury, “but I would have been if it hadn’t been for that bomb that should never have been dropped. They said that if the enemy still had the odd bomb left on board they’d just dropped them wherever they happened to be to lighten the load home. And the love of my life died that day, but his son didn’t.”

“You had a boy?” asked Wallace.

“It was disgraceful, me being pregnant and unmarried,” sighed his teacher, “and I’d be pleased if you didn’t let this go any further, you know how people are about such things, but I did have the baby back in 1943 and my lover’s brother, knowing how moral people could be, offered to bring him up as his own. You see, he was married, so it would be all right.”

It didn’t quite make it’s way into the deepest part of Wallace’s brain, so his mother, Helen, painted the picture for him.

“I’m really sorry, Wallace, and I love you dearly, I couldn’t love a son more than I love you, but Edina here, your English teacher, is your true mother.

“We did if for the best. People, my darling, can be so cruel in their judgements of right and wrong, especially in wartime...”

© Peter Rogerson 09.06.19