| Boys and butchers |
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| Written by Alma Williams, 2005 | |
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A short story by Alma Williams. "Write about what you know," is advice often given to new writers. One way is to rely on your own store of personal memories, perhaps reinforced by old diaries and the family photo album."Boys and Butchers" is an episode from my childhood. It could have been written as a straightforward article comparing health services - and attitudes - before and after the setting up of the NHS. But written as a short story, using the actual remembered dialogue and personalities of a long-ago childhood, the facts are turned into a more powerful drama that readers can relate to. Moreover, an adult peering into the recollected memories of a traumatised five-year-old also now understands and conveys the agony of a mother confronted by her child's suffering: "Why did you let them do it to me, Mammy?" "They tear 'em out with pincers," pronounced Tommy. "No they don't, tha's wrong - it's pliers." Benny Jackson, the carpenter's son, was an expert on such matters. I stood whimpering in a bleak corner of that long-ago playground, whipped by the wind blowing off the North York moors, listening and learning. Tomorrow I was going to have my tonsils out. Nobody had told me what tonsils were. But Benny knew. "It's that little red wobbly thing at ' back of your throat. They pull it off and there's loads a blood. Tha can drown in tha blood," he added maliciously. He didn't say why people talked about tonsils as though there were several of them when there was only one wobbly thing. Mam hadn't told me much about the operation. It was just something most children had done, like being lined up for diphtheria jabs. But next morning she washed my hair until it was all shiny, and helped me into my best nightie, freshly starched and ironed, with a purple collar. "Tha's got to look right posh for them doctors," she said. "Put tha slippers on." They were fawny-brown slippers with rabbit faces. They were special and I loved them. I couldn't go on the bus in my nightie, so as soon as Mam had delivered our baby next door to Mrs Thompson, Grandad arrived in his car. This was a real treat and I quite forgot Benny and his pliers for a while. As we drove along, we passed my friends walking to school. Benny was there. He stuck his thumbs in his ears and waggled his hands at me and put out his tongue. I took no notice. I felt important sitting on the back seat of Grandad's shiny red car. I raised my hand slowly in salute when I saw my teacher, pretending for a minute that I was Princess Elizabeth, though I reckoned she wouldn't be allowed to travel around in her nightie. We didn't turn off to the hospital. Instead we drove up the drive of a big stone house with a wide-open door. This wasn't going to be so frightening after all. It didn't fit Benny's description of red-brick hospitals with children queuing up in white gowns, mouths open, waiting for the pull of the pliers. We went nervously into the hall. There was no one around. Dressed in her best coat and hat, with a bright-eyed stuffed bird sitting on it, Mam perched on a narrow wooden bench. I scrambled up beside her, nestling close. We went on waiting. Waiting. Endlessly... I got off the bench. The rabbit slippers with their smooth leather soles were splendid for sliding on slippery polished floors. "Stop that this minute, you naughty girl." We had at last received attention from a nurse. She wore a long, stiff, white thing on her head, tight over her eyebrows, reaching down to her waist. She crackled and crinkled as she walked, scowling, lips drawn into a tight line. "Mr Thacker-Neville will see her now." So I wasn't going to see a proper doctor after all. He was only a Mister. And what a funny Christian name. The boys I knew were called Tommy, Joe, George and Benny. I'd never heard of anyone called Thacker. I didn't know, until Mam explained, about posh people having two surnames joined together with a dash. I liked the nurse even less when she talked about me as "her", as though I didn't exist as a person. "I'm me and have a name of my own," I wanted to shout, but decided not to. Without a word, she dragged me down the hallway into Mr Thacker-Neville's room. Very strange - tables covered with white cloths, shiny pointed things laid out in rows, and scissors with curved ends. The bed was high, hard and cold, and covered with a thin sheet. Two nurses now hoisted me up and I sat shivering on the edge. The rabbit slippers dropped off. I never saw them again. Mr Thacker-Neville looked down at me, peering over little glasses propped on his nose. He didn't say anything, just looked. I didn't like this long silence, so tried telling him a bit of important news: "I've got a little sister..." The nurses seized my legs, swung them round on to the bed, arms pinned to my sides. I was beginning not to like this at all. Then they began to smother me with a squashy cushion. It smelt strong, strange and sickly-sweet. Benny hadn't said anything about being smothered. Had he got it all wrong? I began to kick and tried to shout. Mam heard me faintly as she sat waiting on the bench. Still waiting. "Mammy, Mammy, why are you letting them do this to me?" Days later, I overheard Mam talking to Mrs Thompson as they pegged out their nappies. Mr Thacker-Neville had marched out of the operating theatre and stood looking down at Mam. "How do you intend to pay?" he'd demanded. "I were that upset," she told Mrs Thompson, "but I weren't going to be beat by the likes of him with his airs and graces. So I said, 'Would you like it now?' - in the grandest way I could." She had thrust at him the five newly-ironed five-pound notes Grandad had given her. She reckoned she'd had the last word because she'd said, "And I'll have a receipt, thank you very much." She showed it proudly to Mrs Thompson over the fence. I wakened up later in my parents' bed with its lumpy feather mattress. I didn't have the words to describe the pain in my throat, a red-hot poker burning the place where the little wobbly thing had been. I was going to drown in my own blood, just as Benny had said. But Mam was there beside me. Gently and lovingly, she wiped the dribbles off my chin as they flowed down, staining the purple collar of my nightie. There was blood on her hands. Inside my head I was still screaming, as I did for many months to come, "Why did you let them do it to me, Mammy? Why? Why? Why?" |
