6. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

Daisy seeks for help from her doctor in order t combat her endless weariness...

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

6. Handstands Against the School Wall.

Daisy stood by the railings next to the school playground, staring at her daughter and wondering if the girl should be doing that, what with there being boys running around or standing in small groups engaged in goodness-knows what earnest conversation. Or some of them using forefingers to shoot each other, pretend real guns quite unlike the real thing that cowboys on the Saturday morning cinema show in town did.

Because Isabel was a girl she had joined a row of other girls all doing handstands against the school wall and if the running, chasing and shooting little boys had wanted to they might well have chosen to stare at the row of bottoms with the skirts hanging upwards or downwards however you look at it, revealing a row of navy blue knickers.

But she was relieved to see that none of the little boys seemed remotely interested in the girls.

Soon a handbell was rung and the children formed lines facing the door. Playtime was over, and Daisy breathed a sigh of relief and found herself almost weeping as she continued on her way to keep an appointment with Doctor Horne. She had decided that she should take herelf in hand, so to speak, and seek help. She couldn’t sleep at night, and when she did eventually pass into an uneasy sleep the dawn wasn’t so far off, and so life had become one long bout of weariness.

After a blissfully short wait in the waiting room she was called to the doctor’s surgery.

Doctor Horne was an easy-going and pleasant man who wasn’t much older than her, and she was in her late forties, and feeling it. At home, Isabel was ten and Brian a mischievous eight year old and she found herself frequently worrying whether she was doing the right thing when she made a decision if they asked her a question, maybe for permission to do something out of the ordinary or perhaps to go somewhere by themselves or with friends. But she was always so tired, so in need of an hour’s rest, and yet even when they were out of the way at school she found it hard to put her feet up and close her eyes, what with all the housework that needed doing, the bathroom sink that showed exactly where Brian had washed his hands after doing something disgusting with mud in the garden. No matter how hard she tried there was always something that needed doing whilst all the time her mind was plagued by worries about nothing.

Then there were the clothes. They wouldn’t wash themselves and somehow by the end of thr week Brian’s underpants were a disgrace and although Isabel’s skirt hardly looked as if it had been worn for a week she knew it had been and would need washing.

And washing was in a copper. They called it that, but she rather suspected it was made of anything but copper because it was the wrong colour. But it wasn’t the copper itself but the work she had to do when it had hot water in it and soap flakes, and what everyone down her way called the ponch, a metal device with holes in it on the end of a broom handle needing to be vigorously pumped by hand through the clothes and hot water.

Some things, Brian’s underpants came to mind, needed scrubbing in the kitchen sink by hand, and after all that, the copper, the ponching, as she called it, needed to be done until she was worn out. Then the bedding, the towels, all of the latter getting threadbare but she couldn’t afford to replace them, not with Christmas coming on.

And the arm-aching ponching until everything was clean. This was real life, and she was so very tired...

She needed help and she hoped she’d find it in an appointment with Doctor Horne. Surely he would understand? After all, he’d been around when Fred had been ill and died. He’d even told her that if she needed any help from him well, she knew where his surgery was. And she knew she did need help.

“It’s so good to see you looking so well, Mrs Parfitt,” he began, and she wondered who he was looking at. She, looking well? She had never felt less well in her entire life, not even during the miserable weeks after the funeral a few years earlier.

“I don’t feel well, doctor,” she began, “I can’t sleep at night. That’s my problem, and it’s getting worse. There’s everything to be done in the house, the kids to be taken care of… do you think I’m wrong worrying about Isabel doing handstands in the playground at school? I just saw her and rows of other girls doing it, handstands against the school wall during morning play time… but I do worry. What would Fred have said?”

“He would have said don’t worry, I’m sure of that, Daisy,” smiled the doctor, almost shockingly using her Christian name, though people in authority never did that. But somehow it eased her mind.

“The trouble, Mrs Parfitt, is sleep. You identified it when you first mentioned your state of mind and, truth to tell, a mind that’s gone without enought sleep imagines all sorts of things. It’s really very unhealthy.”

“But what can I do, doctor? I can’t get to sleep and when I do it’s nearly time to get up, then I feel so tired…”

“I could tell you to clear your mind of everything that worries you, but I bet you a pound to a penny that you can’t do that, but what I can do to help you is prescribe some tablets that will put you in a nice peaceful sleep. You might need an alarm clock to wake you up, though!”

“I’ve got one of those, doctor, if I remember to wind it up.”

“Then I’ll write a prescription for some barbiturate tablets if you promise to wind that clock of yours. Take one at bed time, maybe just before you go to bed, and you’ll sleep like the beauty in the fairy tale!”

“Oh, thank you so much,” she whispered, “as long as they work...”

“Oh, they work all right Now, then, Mrs Parfitt, after your alarm clock has done its business and rattled your brain, you may still feel a bit weary. So I’ll also prescribe some waking up tablets as well. They’re pale yellow in colour, so you’ll not get them mixed up with the others. They’ll perk you up and before you can say Jack Robinson you will have made your way through all the chores that are your lot in life, and give you plenty of perky strength to read a romantic novel or get out into the garden with a spade and fork!”

“I do that anyway, doctor,” she muttered.

“Get that girl of yours to help, Mrs Parfitt! And the boy! They’re both old enough to turn their hands to planting peas and lettuce!”

“They do try to help, doctor,” she said as he wrote the prescription and then handed it to her. “Take this to the chemist and all your problems will be over,” he smiled, and shook her by the hand, “and don’t take the wrong one at night or your head might explode!”

“Thank you, doctor,” she almost whispered, and went out of the surgery, onto the street.

All my problems are over… she thought, at last I’ll live through a day without getting tired out through lack of sleep.

It must have been lunch time by the time she walked back home, past the junior school where her children were, because there was Isabel, on a handstand, her feet up the school wall, and there was Brian deeply in conversation with a boy she knew as Ricky and who was very clever indeed.

They’ll be in space on their way to Mars by now, she thought, and smiled secretly to herself, boys and their dreams.

© Peter Rogerson 28.02.23

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