15. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

The state of Daisy's awareness is becoming obvious as she confuses today with a long ago yesterday

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

15. The Day Before...

Isabel came home from college and rushed into the bathroom. She’d had to postpone the rest of her college course until her baby was born and prove that she could cope with a child and her studies.

Why she had asked herself a thousand times, had she let Ricky do it to her, make her pregnant while Miss Marple was setting up one of her cunning schemes in order to trap a killer? But she had and she was not only pregnant as a consequence but in everyone’s bad books. She had been warned that if it was judged that her sanity was in doubt then she could even end up in a mad house! She didn’t believe it, of course, it was by then 1959 and surely in this enlightened age in which Elvis Presley ruled the world no girl got condemned as insane because a man had taken advantage of her? It was Ricky who deserved to be locked up, surely, as criminally insane, for skewering her like he had...

The bathroom sink was a disgrace. How did it get so grubby? And when the midwife came round to assess her, as she knew she would, if she looked into the hygiene in places like the bathroom sink and the nearby toilet she might put a cross against her name and decide right there and then that she was an unfit mother. Not that she ought to be a mother at all, at sixteen!

The funny thing about it all was, Ricky Shepherd had vanished from the scene. The moment news had leaked out about her terrible sin and consequent pregnancy he had absented himself from Brumpton, and she had no idea where he had gone.

“Mother!” she shouted, and from down the stairs her mother’s voice returned to her, “down here, darling…”

I know you’re down there! That’s why I shouted!

Then she heard the steady clomp as Daisy made her slow way up the stairs.

She seems to old these days, thought Isabel, there was a time when she would have just about run up… She was trying to wipe the worst of the stains from the sink and they were proving to be obstinate. She heard her mother clomp into the bathroom and stand, almost breathless, behind her.

“What is it, Issy?” she asked.

“So you know who I am? You didn’t this morning,” she snapped, “have you seen the state of this sink? In fact, have you seen the state of the whole bathroom And you’ll have to stop Brian weeing on the floor! Look by the toilet where he’s left a puddle!”

“I think it must have been Isabel who did that, darling,” almost cooed Daisy, oblivious for the moment as to who she was talking to.

“But I’m Isabel, and I don’t make that kind of mess on the floor!” she almost shouted, “I’m a girl, for goodness sake, and I’m…” she was gong to say pregnant, but didn’t.

“Are you, darling? I sometimes forget, you know. It’s me being pregnant again. I wonder if I’ll have twins… at my age it might be twins, or even triplets. Wouldn’t it be nice, Issy, having three little babies crawling around the house?”

“It’s not you, mother, who’s pregnant, it’s me!” snapped Isabel, ashamed to say it but at the same time having faith in the truth.

“Now you’re teasing me,” giggled Daisy, “you’re not married, so you can’t be expecting a child! You must know that much! But I’m married. He’s in Heaven now, but he came to see me a few months ago, and he lay in my bed with me and it was just like the old times!”

“Mother! That was Ricky and he’d just done you know what to me when I was reading my book!”

“Silly girl,” laughed Daisy, “trying to make me feel better over everything. Now what was it you wanted?”

“How do I clean this muck off the sink?” asked Isabel, “I want this place to be nice and clean for when she comes…”

“Why, dear, isn’t it clean?” asked Daisy, clearly confused.

“You can see that it isn’t. Mum!” muttered Isabel angrily as she dabbed a greasy mark with one finger and showed her mother just how dirty the sink was.

“I mean, look! It’s really filthy, and she won’t like that at all.” I’ll be in trouble and who knows what’ll be said about us.”

“Won’t she like it, dear?” Daisy didn’t know who her daughter meant by she, but didn’t ask because at the back of her mind she thought she ought to know, and it was scary the way she couldn’t always remember things that she knew she really ought to be able to remember.

“Look, mum, what do I do to clean it?” asked Isabel. She did know, of course she did, elbow grease and Vim from the cylindrical cardboard container. But she’d had an awkward time at college, admitting to a middle aged vice principal what hee trouble was and he clearly thinking she was spawn of the devil, and now she felt tired and anyway the baby weighed heavily on her. She wanted to sit down, to rest, maybe put her feet up for a few minutes.

“I’ve finished at college, mum,” she said, “and it means I need a rest.”

“I tell you what, dear, go down to the lounge and have a comfy sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“No, mum, I want this sink to be clean! It’s not hygienic, like it is.”

“It’s your father, dear. When he comes home from work he’s covered in grime! I’ll get him to clean it when he gets in.”

“He’s been dead for more than ten years, mum,” reminded an exasperated Isabel, “and anyway he was a clerk in an office.”

“Was he, dear? Then that was thoughtless of him…”

And out of the blue Daisy felt tears from nowhere pricking her eyes, and then, for no reason she could fathom, she was crying like a baby and couldn’t stop.

“What’s the matter, mother?” asked Isabel. Not that she didn’t know. There were demons lurking from the past inside her mother’s head, demons that reminded her of long ago and a great sadness. Sixty years was a long time, thought Isabel, for a woman to accumulate things that hurt when they were remembered.

“It’s Fred, you’re father,” replied Daisy when she could string four words together without sobbing in between them, “he’s dead, you know. And… and I miss him… and we’re having a baby!”

What could she say? The confused world of her mother found itself revolving round a different star in a different Universe, and not very much made any sense to her any more.

“Let’s go downstairs, mum,” she sighed, “and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.”

“How sweet of you,” almost cooed Daisy mindlessly, and then to prove that she was quite the observant mother, “my, you are putting on weight, love. Better watch what you’re eating…”

© Peter Rogerson 10.03.23

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