Ardnish Was Home Episode 18

LOUISE Mam was in the ward when I got there, dressed in her green cleaner’s overalls. I was horrified by how she looked – like a 60-year-old, with grey unkempt hair, stooped shoulders and a lined face.

Dad was lying on his front, ashen, with a wooden bucket beside him. His eyes lit up when he saw me, and he flopped his arm to welcome me, but he didn’t say anything. I leaned over to give him a kiss. He smelled curious – a sweet unpleasant smell – not like Dad. Anyway, that set him off coughing.

I’d forgotten how bad it was. The fit went on for longer than you could hold your breath for, and it was obviously painful as his whole body coiled and uncoiled in physical exertion.

“It will kill him this time,” Mam said and rushed off to get a nurse.

I tried to hold him to me, but he broke free, and it was a good 10 minutes before he lay back, dripping in sweat, without an ounce of strength left.

“He’s worse,” Mam said, tear-streaked and distraught. “It won’t be long now. Thank God you could make it.”

We both knelt down to pray in the corridor outside his ward. Mam has always been religious.

Then we heard Dad starting up again and we returned to his side. My aunt had brought Owen along that afternoon, but Thomas couldn’t get off work.

Dad died that night. Mam had left the two us alone while she went to lie down; she’d been sitting up with him for two solid days and nights.

I talked to him for ages. peace with him.

He died in the middle of a coughing fit, his face a look of agony that stayed with him even after the last breath had left his body.

I pulled the sheet over his face and wept.

Relief

I felt

I made

Mam and I got the first bus home in the darkness of the morning.

“It was a year of hell he gave me at the end,” she said, “but we had 20 great years before that, and it will be those that I will remember.”

The odd thing about a long and painful illness is that death is a relief.

My mother seemed to have a weight lifted from her, and the talk was about what she would do now rather than what they had done.

It was great to see the others. Owen was short and solid, always smiling and happy. Mam said Dad was just like that when he was young.

Thomas was settled in the mining job and had made some good friends.

Mam was so pleased he had been excused conscription, being a miner and all.

Don’t forget to get a different job after the war, Thomas, she would say every time she saw him.

Daffie jumped up and down all over me, but he was Owen’s now, I could tell.

I loved to see that little dog, though, and it was good for him and Owen to have each other. A weight was lifted from my shoulders, just as it had been from my mother’s.

We talked about the future that night. The mining company would want the house empty within a month, now Dad had gone.

We would move to Abergavenny, which would get us out of the Valleys and nearer to Mam’s work at the hospital.

The school was better there, too. Owen wouldn’t have to go down the pit – maybe he could even get to university.

“Don’t ever come back, Louise, you promise?” Mam said. “Marry a farmer or a rich man and live an easier life.”

The best thing

Mam always felt that a farmer’s wife was the best thing: plenty of food, land for the wee ones to run around on, and everyone healthy.

Miners died so young and painfully; their wives then lost the house and they never had enough money to live on.

Mam asked if I’d met a boy. Was there anyone that had caught my eye?

I told her that on nights out with the girls in London there were always men making passes at me, but none was right for me.

“There was an awfully nice soldier on the train on the way here though,” I confessed.

“He’s called Donald and he’s from the Highlands of Scotland. He’s tall with soft red hair and freckles and smiles the whole time. We talked for hours.

“He told me about the northern lights. He said that, now and again, when the sky is clear and it’s a cold winter’s night, you can see bright greenish-blue clouds, and the sky lights up.

“He said his father used to wake him and his brothers and sisters up and take them outside to lie on the beach and look at them. So romantic.

“He said he wanted to show them to me.” At least Mam and Thomas had jobs. Mam and I talked about my life in London; she couldn’t hear enough about it.

She would still come to London when I got qualified, she said. She needed to get away.

I left before the funeral. I had my exam to pass and I was also worried about how strict Matron would be about my extended absence.

I slept all the way back to London. The exams came and went, and the only one of us to fail was Madge.

She spent too much time thinking about her soldier and not enough about work, we thought. We weren’t too worried about her though.

Madge would be was.

Posting

I want to tell DP that I chose Gallipoli as my posting, because that’s where the Scouts had gone.

I want to tell him how much I had wanted to meet him again, though meeting him as a patient and one so close to death had not been part of my plan.

With more than 100,000 troops down here and a significant number passing through the medical service, it was a miracle we had met at all.

More tomorrow. all right, she always

Don’t ever come back here, Louise, you promise?” Mam said. “Marry a farmer or a rich man and live an easier life