Haunted by a shameful old memory
PERHAPS it’s a result of age and recent bereavement, but I lie awake at night (oh, insomnia — after Nytol and melatonin and herbal tea) brooding on the past. The strangest memories can slide into your mind in the small hours — forgotten for years, yet suddenly vivid.
Does this happen to you? Old memories, old regrets . . .
It must have been the promise of spring, but the other night the magical green flowered carpet flew in to haunt me.
Every Saturday night, my brother and I stayed with our father’s parents in their rented house, while my parents had a night free. I’d lived the first two years of my life in their home, because my young parents couldn’t get a council house in bombed-out Liverpool.
My brother Bill and I each had a bedroom in that spotless, cosy home. Mine had a single bed and a kidney-shaped dressing table — and one day Nan decided it needed a new carpet. (They weren’t fitted in those days, just put on top of lino).
We went shopping and I chose a spring-green weave, patterned with fresh white daisies. How pretty it was!
The following Saturday, Nan told me the magic carpet was upstairs. Excited, I dashed for the stairs, but was hauled back while she fetched a rag to wipe the soles of my shoes. Why didn’t she ask me to take them off?
Anyway, a tantrum followed, and the cross child (nine or ten?) kicked out at her, resenting the indignity of having my feet wiped. She was very upset, and that lovely new mat waited, unsullied.
Why does guilt return? I brood on the fact that my grandmother worked as a dinner lady at Childwall Valley Girls’ School behind their house, and also as a cleaner.
She came every day to give my brother and me our tea when Mum was still at work, lugged heavy shopping, washed up, ironed our clothes. What did I understand about the relentless toil, the sheer graft that reddened her rough hands and paid for that precious carpet?
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.