The day the world changed, the sun was shining.
It was long after the party, when all the street was covered with flags made from old clothes and bed sheets, and we’d stayed up late, and I saw my mother smile with her eyes for the first time. The women were always chattering, but the chattering had taken on a different air, as they prepared for the big celebration. The factory was closed for the day. Everyone was happy that day, eating, drinking and smoking, dancing even, into the night. And mother was full of bumptiousness, as Aunty Sarah called it. Although mother wasn’t sure that was the right word at all.
After that we waited “for the men to come home” but the waiting went on. Mother lost her smile again, but after a while of staring at the door, everything went back to as it was. Mother went to the mill and I stayed home with Auntie Sarah, until the day I was dressed in new shoes from Aunty Nancy’s shop, and we had our picture taken at the photographer shop. Me, mother and Ruby, in a pretty dress with her hair in long plaits and bows. Then I went to the school each day, like our Ruby. Mother was still waiting for the men to come home, but months went by.
The day the world changed, I was sat on the step waiting for mother to come home, pushing my little blue car along by my feet. A shadow fell across the road, but it wasn’t the shape of my mother. I looked up, the sun was low behind the dark figure, so I couldn’t see his face at first, but the voice, like a low bell, frightened me. Apart from old man Joe at number 10, I’d not really met a man before, and he barely said a word. He just seemed to listen and roll his eyes a lot, whilst sat at his chair outside, puffing on his pipe.
“You must be Lawrence. I’m your Dad.”
I banged on the door with my fists until Ruby let me in, burying my face in her dress.
“It’s all right,” the voice said, and I turned to see the tall figure in the doorway, with red wavy hair and watery eyes, smile.
Ruby’s face lit up and she gently pushed me aside to run into his outstretched arms.
When mother came home, she screamed, “Law-rence!” through the door, “Where were you? I’ve had to struggle all the way up the…”
The man stood up from the kitchen chair, where he was sat, with our Ruby. I was sat in the corner on the floor with my blue car. The shopping bags crashed to the floor.
“Where the bloody ‘ell ‘ave you bin, Kenty,” she shouted. “You’re late.”
“Ooh, you’ve not changed one bit, Lizzie,” he laughed, and picked her up off the ground.
“Put me down you daft bugger,” she said, but she laughed, and she didn’t seem to worry about the waste of the smashed eggs that night. She opened a bottle of her homemade wine, and laughed as the man (my Dad) tap danced on the floor, and I could still hear their loud voices as I lay in my bed, trying to sleep.
The world changed, and mother didn’t go to the mill no more. She said it was because the men came home. She seemed happy at first, doing the jobs she never had time to do before. But the days that Dad came home late, and his dinner was at the back of the fire, and I would sit on the top step of the stairs with our Ruby listening to them shouting and clattering about, I would have this black feeling in my tummy.
Not long after the world changed, I felt a man’s fist for the first time, and I sometimes wondered if the world wasn’t a better place before it changed. But on the nights when I could hear my Dad cry out in his sleep, I would feel so sad for him. And mostly he had a shine in his eyes, when he told me long tales of his life when he was my age, swimming in the rivers and playing cricket with his friends, and then he’d look distant and sad when he told me about the time that they took away his horse Rosie for another war, and she didn’t come back. He missed his friend, Jock, and there was a photo of the two of them when they first arrived in Africa. My Dad would never talk about it. He would get solemn and angry and say, “There is nothing good about war”. Jock never got to go home to his family.
And not long after the world changed, it changed again. My mother’s belly grew so fat and then one day, the baby came. And that was the day that, for me, things really changed.
