Sometimes a harsh reality can break through the façade of domestic
tranquillity.
It did tonight.
We had both just suffered through an evening meal of such
unrelenting austerity that a cup of tea or coffee appeared to be an absolute
luxury. I was shuddering my way through
the tales of terror that make up the stories in The Guardian nowadays, lurching
in despair from the lunacy of 45, through the on-going self-harm of Brexit, via
the laughable ideas of democracy and justice in Spain to various natural and man
made disasters, when the front gate intercom buzzed into life.
We do not usually have unannounced visitors at night time so picking
up the intercom to answer is usually tinged with concern.
It was our next-door neighbour who had found a small girl wandering
the streets, lost and without a parent.
She wanted to know if anyone spoke Russian, as the little girl appeared
not to speak anything else. We could
only offer Spanish, Catalan and English, with a smattering of French. No use!
But after, regretfully putting down the phone, I thought of the
large detached house opposite, which has, in the past been occupied by Russian
speakers, so I slipped on my coat and went down to the street.
Our next-door neighbour was walking along with a very small child taking
one hand and carrying a small scooter in the other. She was accompanied by another neighbour from
a few doors down with whom we had yet to speak.
The little girl was distressed and close to tears but she was comforted
by my next-door neighbour with motherly hugs.
Obviously the police had to be informed, but my suggestion of trying
to get someone from the big house on the corner to speak to the kid was taken
up and, as I had seen lights there from our kitchen window
which is at first floor level, I knew that there were people at
home.
We buzzed through and we were greeted with an entire family exiting and
our discovery that the kid did speak Russian and so did they, but they did not
know who she was. The son of the
household was obviously asked if he recognized her and he replied in the
negative.
Although the Russian family offered to take the girl in and contact
the authorities, I felt that as the police had already been called, it was
important to wait for them and a neighbour went to the outside of our houses
and eventually brought the police back.
It then appeared that the police knew where the mother was and that
the kid had wandered off and managed to put ten blocks between her mother and
herself before she was taken into protective care by my neighbour. Neighbour and girl were asked into the police
car and with much happiness and thanking on all sides, they slipped away into
the darkness.
Throughout this incident, I kept thinking how my own mother would
have reacted. And then stopped myself
because it was too distressing to contemplate.
Even in its hypothetical state and allowing for the fact that my mother
is no longer around to be concerned.
My parents told me that I had to be watched at all times when I was
smaller as, given any opportunity, I would be away like (as my father used to
say confusingly) “a long dog”!
My crawling ability was legendary and my mother told me that I had
to be “attached” to the sides of my crib to keep me in it. This didn’t always work, as on one occasion I
was found to be out of the crib, crawling along with a side still attached to
me.
As soon as I could walk I was put in reins in a desperate attempt to
keep me in the same locality as my parents, but again, my mother said that letting
the reins slip from her hands or putting them down for a moment to pick up and
examine some article she needed to buy in a shop was an opportunity for escape
that I never rejected.
The only time that I can recall that I “escaped” by mistake was when
I was too small to see over the counters in M&S. As a six foot adult I find it difficult to
think back to a time when I was so small, but I know I was because my early
memories of M&S were of the wood veneer of the sides of the counters, of
nothing interesting to see, and of light in the store that was far too
bright. On one occasion I was standing
next to my father and when his trousers moved so did I. I must have been in a mood of mildly sullen
obedience as I traipsed around with nothing more than featureless material to
keep my attention. Eventually I got
bored with this textured landscape and looked upwards towards my Dad’s
face. And it wasn’t him. I had been following a strange man’s
trousers!
I can still remember the bemusement I felt, but not how quickly the
situation was remedied. Knowing my
mother, and her constant observation and monitoring of my potential fugitive
propensities, it must only have been seconds.
But seconds are not what the event felt like. I can remember no panic. Which is interesting.
When I was a small child in the 1950s in Cathays in Cardiff, I was
allowed to play out on the road with my friends - and this, remember, was with
a mother who was close to paranoid (no, make that clearly paranoid) about my safety.
But I was allowed to play, and nothing much happened to me apart from the
usually scratches and cuts. There were
also very few cars around then and the streets were generally empty.
I could be playing streets away from home, but I was trained to
listen for my father’s distinctive whistle and reappear in double quick
time. Which I did, sometimes
disappearing from a friend’s house in mid-sentence at the sound of the whistle!
When we had a dog, the same whistle was used for her, but I have to say that I was much more responsive than she ever was. Well, she was a pedigree Labrador! And everyone knows what they are like!
When we had a dog, the same whistle was used for her, but I have to say that I was much more responsive than she ever was. Well, she was a pedigree Labrador! And everyone knows what they are like!
So, the small girl is now reunited with her mother. How will the kid think about this experience
in the future? As an interestingly
confused experience with a group of people she saw once, with police and people
speaking different languages, something to think back on and giggle? Or something altogether more serious: something
that threatened her worldview that showed her just how fragile what she thought
she knew was? Who knows? Nothing happened, but what might have
happened is too awful to contemplate.
And what of the mother? As I’ve
said, thinking of my mother sends shivers of horror down my spine. I know that my mother would, instantly, have
thought the worst and suffered indescribably until my return, and then she
would have blamed herself and . . . well, you get the idea. The delight of reunion would have been
overshadowed by the dark imaginings of what might have been.
But let’s be positive. The girl
is safe and has been returned.
And who knows what memory will make of what has been?
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If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to: smrnewpoems.blogspot.com
If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to: smrnewpoems.blogspot.com
