Memories Ago

Previously: Terry continues to tell Mel about his problems. Before passing out, he ponders the place that Aunt Violet has in his story.

Hospital beds are not the most comfortable places in the world. The one I found myself in was possibly the least. There was a lump that seemed to be fidgeting more than I was. No matter what position I adopted, the lump counter-manoeuvred. Nevertheless, during a brief respite from the discomfort, I rested, slipping into a hypnotic dream filled slumber. The first clue that my reality had given way to recollections of an age gone by was when my private room transformed into a crowded ward.
In the far corner of the room was a large television, under which nurses meandered between the other children’s beds and cots. They were feeding spoonfuls of medicine and offering a tub of boiled sweets as an accompanying bribe. I remained curled up, nervously peering over my blankets. Television time had been over for around ten minutes. I was still scared. When I was at home I could hide behind the settee when Dr Who was on. Here though, there was no escape. The nurses approached, bed by bed. I feared them as if they were members of some strange alien race that was about to turn into a Dalek or a Cyberman. As they neared I got more and more scared and I was right to. With broad, reassuring smiles, one nurse peered over my bed while the other prepared a syringe the size of a Mars bar, which I’m sure we all know were much bigger in those days.
‘I hope you aren’t planning on sticking that thing up my fucking arse,’ I threatened. At the time I didn’t realise what I was saying. Of course, in due course I realised that it wasn’t actually me that said anything. I was four years old and I didn’t even know what an arse was, let alone a fucking one. The nurses weren’t the slightest bit impressed. As the image of their embarrassed yet furious faces faded from my thoughts, I was struck by something that jumped into my consciousness as if it were a long lost friend arriving by parachute. The odd thing was that I wasn’t even conscious at the time. I was asleep in my cot. The only reason that I was even aware that the nurses were approaching me, was because somehow I was watching myself, in a sort of out of body way.
When my mum arrived at visiting time, she entered into a heated argument with the ward sister. To be honest, I’m not actually sure if she was the ward sister. She ordered everyone else around, even the doctors. It was just a reasonable guess. She wore a stern expression that would probably put a dent in a mallet if she were smashed in the face with it, and if she were, there would likely be a long line of suspects as the mallet wielder. I think the other nurses thought that us kids were deaf or something. They would gather around the beds, whispering about her like we weren’t even there. Anyway, hard as nails she might be but she was barking up the wrong tree in squaring up to my mum. Mum had a special technique. I don’t know if it was something that she was aware of or if she made a special effort, but it worked every time nevertheless. Tears would flood down her face and she would wail uncontrollably. To all intents and purposes she was completely broken. Yet her eyes would glaze over to the point where it was impossible to predict what she might be capable of. On top of it all she would gradually ease her way further and further into the personal space of whoever it was that was confronting her. So, as the Sister growled at my mum, occasionally glancing in my direction and mouthing words like, obscene and unacceptable, mum howled. She held her hands up, defensively but as tears poured down her face, her psychopathic stare forced the Sister to retreat step by step. Mum took another step forward and said the strangest thing.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It’s not him. He didn’t say anything obscene or offensive. It wasn’t him. It was someone else.’
At the time I thought it was very strange. Now however, I think it to be totally bizarre.
‘She must know all about Eddie,’ I told myself. However, even as I watched my memories unfold before my very eyes, I struggled to believe my own conclusions.
The lump in my bed moved again, nudging me in the ribs and forcing me to roll over onto my back. I stared up at the ceiling for a while, thinking. I looked around my small hospital room. Tubes ran out of my veins and pads monitored my chest and pulse. Cables bonded me to machines that went ping and pong. It was like trying to sleep in an amusement arcade.
‘Of course she knows!’ I announced. ‘Of course she does!’
Then I remembered the time when granddad was in the local paper. It was the anniversary of some accident in the mine or something. I don’t really remember that well. What I do remember is that my mum and dad ferried all of us kids over to gran’s house to see it, as if we couldn’t afford a paper of our own. I was about two years old. All the adults were drinking and passing the newspaper around to each other. I wandered around the house eating a rusk until my mum shoved the paper in my face.
‘My nose looks big in that picture,’ I told her.
My mum spilled her sherry.
“What did you say, Terry?’ she asked after taking another close look at the picture.
‘There look,’ I said, pointing. ‘My nose looks huge.’
‘My word,’ said mum. ‘But Terry, that isn’t you, that is granddad Eddie.’
She was clearly quite amused. She smirked across one side of her face as if hiding her smile from me.
‘Dave Higgins looks a bit constipated,’ I stated, referring back to the picture. ‘And Albert’s syrup looks even dodgier in print.’
Mum stared at me. Her bottom lip opened and closed as if she were miming to a hymn. Then her expression changed dramatically. Fear burst from her eyes in anger.
‘Don’t be so stupid!’ she snapped.
At the time, I wondered why she would say such a thing. Her look also showed a certain amount of confusion, which no doubt was about half as perplexed as mine. The silence that followed didn’t last long. I seem to remember puking shortly after the incident, which is a child’s way of changing the subject.
It’s funny really but I haven’t visited that memory since that very day. As I lay in my hospital bed, I was amazed that such an incident should slip away from me. I was also curious as to why it would return so clearly into my mind.
Staring blankly at the ceiling, I was slightly startled when mum knocked on the door. Then, just as Mums do, she stepped into the room without waiting for an invitation. Pete followed her carrying the world’s smallest bunch of grapes.
‘Come in,’ I told them.
‘How are you feeling, Tel?’ asked Pete, nervously. I could feel a sarcastic comment on the tip of my lips. I checked myself, wondering why I was always so nasty to Pete. After a second’s thought, I determined that he had bought the grapes himself. Mum never bought fruit. I felt cruel. The bloke desperately wanted my approval. Goodness knows why. I ought to have been more eager for his.
‘Cheers, Pete,’ I thanked. I could see the relief in his face, so I added a smile.
‘Did you bring anything?’ I asked Mum. I was hoping that she would have bought me some fags because I was gagging.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I brought your kids with me in the taxi.’
‘Oh,’ I replied. That was a pleasant surprise. ‘Where are they?’ I asked.
‘They are waiting outside with our Sandra and Mel,’ said Mum. ‘And Great Aunt Hilda,’ she added. ‘And your father and his girlfriend.’
Mum sniggered, which was unusual for her. I assumed that there was something amusing about Dad’s girlfriend. Of course there was. She wasn’t his girlfriend at all.
‘Is she older than him by any chance?’ I asked her.
‘What?’ asked Mum. ‘You’ve met her then have you?’
‘No, Mum,’ I replied. ‘But I’d bet money that she isn’t actually his girlfriend.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Mum asked.
‘Because I think that she might be the infamous Aunt Violet.
A shriek from the corridor confirmed my unlikely suspicion. Great Aunt Hilda sounded like she had found a ferret in her bloomers.
My Mum had gone pale in the face. She was a tone or two lighter than white. For a second or two I thought she had turned Scottish. She stormed toward the door.
‘What the hell does she think she is doing here?’ she growled.
Pete bravely stood in her path, ushering her back to my bedside. I was quite impressed by his bravery, more so in his assertiveness. In the time that it would take for me to click my fingers together, my whole view of Pete shifted. I have always had this opinion that men should be strong and that strength is measured in might. I was wrong. I could batter Pete to a pulp without even breaking into a sweat, yet it is him that is the stronger. His eagerness for my approval has always seemed pathetic to me but another perspective could be that he might just fear me. Everything he did was low-key. He was like the brain to mum’s brawn. I always thought that Pete was a wimp and that mum wore the trousers, though perhaps she wore them because he let her. Over the years he had managed to integrate himself into our family without so much as causing a ripple on the water’s surface. Yet, he wasn’t like the invisible man, just sneaking in without anybody noticing, he was a calming influence. Since he had been around, mum’s house had been a refuge where all problems went to die. Behind Mum’s brash, confrontational exterior was Pete, keeping things balanced. I made a mental note to be less of a twat to him in future.
‘That woman has caused enough heartache in this family,’ declared mum. ‘Get rid of her, Pete!’ she ordered.
‘Calm down, love,’ he reassured. ‘She didn’t do anything wrong. It was Eddie, not her.’
‘Somebody had better tell me what the fuck is going on,’ I demanded, trying to sit up in my bed. As I did so though, my head exploded. A searing pain bit into my brain. My vision blurred until mum and Pete disappeared into a hazy mist and there I was staring into the abyss of unconsciousness once again. Or so I thought. Everything went blank and dark like someone turned the lights off and the volume down at the same time. I expected to start dreaming there and then. In fact my dreams had been so lucid recently that I was half looking forward to it. Nevertheless, initially I was to be disappointed.
The silence was broken by mum’s panic-stricken voice.
‘What’s happened to him? What’s happened to him?’ she shrieked. ‘Has he gone already?’
Now that was a strange thing to say. ‘Has he gone already?’ I repeated her words in my head as if I might win a prize for getting the answer right. Then a thought struck me. It was a realisation that would have paralysed me in terror if I hadn’t already been beyond physical movement. All my family had come to visit me. They were all waiting in the corridor. They all think I am about to die. Maybe I am. Maybe I am dead already.
Staring into darkness, listening to my mother wailing like a banshee, I concluded that I was still alive. Pete was repeatedly telling mum that I was breathing ok. He did however, call for a nurse but the pinging machines were pinging away nicely, so I assumed that they were working ok. On top of that, there was no light. I was always led to believe that when our time is up, we are drawn toward the light. All I could see was the darkness. Either that or I had gone blind.
‘You are mine now, Malone.’
The strange new voice came from nowhere and yet also from everywhere. It was all around me. I wanted to turn my head to see if I could work out its origin. It was eerie. It was a deep, dark, emotionless and sinister tone that sent chills up my spine.
‘You are mine now.’
‘Alright, alright,’ I replied. ‘I heard you the first fucking time!’
‘You are not listening to me.’
‘Yes I am. Over and over.’
‘Your time is nigh and when it arrives I will be waiting for you.’
It seemed to me that this strange new voice was contradicting itself.
‘Make your fucking mind up, arsehole!’ I yelled. A short silence followed in which I started to panic. I was hallucinating. I was sure that I was, though I wasn’t sure that I could actually hallucinate voices. No, it was more than that. I had always had this deep-rooted fear of the devil. All my fears were wrapped up in a single phobia. Very little scares me but I just can’t watch any movies that have the devil in. It just creeps me out. Maybe its because I’ve always been a bit of a cunt. Perhaps my personality flaws have deeply scarred my inner essence. Whatever the case, bullshit or not, I’m terrified of the fact that one day I’m going to hell.
So I figured that in my sleep my fears were getting the better of me. I was dreaming. It was a nightmare. Satan was after my soul.
‘You are mine, Malone,’ the creepy voice repeated.
‘Fuck off!’ I yelled. Devil or not, I was buggered if I was going to be intimidated by the fucker.
‘Terry?’ asked a softer more gentle voice. ‘Terry? Are you alright?’
Beyond Mum’s fretting about me, I could hear Pete talking to the Doctor.
‘He just seemed to pass out, Doc,’ Pete described.
‘He is very ill, Mr Harris,’ replied the Doctor. ‘And very weak,’ he added. ‘I suggest that you let him rest.’
Mum kissed me on the forehead before leaving. However, if I hadn’t been unconscious I would have laughed at the rumpus that followed. I assumed that Mum bumped into Aunt Violet in the corridor. I’ll tell you something for nothing and that is that my money was on Mum. She could go the distance with the world’s baddest mother-fucker. Having said that, I still had no idea how much of a bad-ass Aunt Violet might be.
All was quiet for a while. There was no satanic voice, no worried Mum, just the pinging and ponging of the hospital technology, which to be fair was a reassurance that at least I was still alive.
‘So who is the wicked bitch?’ asked a new voice.
For fuck’s sake! It was like around the world in eighty voices. Worse still was that they were all in my head.
‘My Step-Mother,’ replied Marmaduke.
At last I had a reprieve from the darkness. Marmaduke was in a bar with a couple of his friends. It was one of those poncy cocktail lounges that bummers go to. Come to think of it, as I looked around me it became fairly obvious that it was exactly that. It was a gay bar. The puffs snogging on the dance floor was a dead giveaway.
‘What’s up with her?’ asked the friend.
Marmaduke stared into a tiny telephone handset as if his hate could travel by telecomms.
There was something strangely focussed about events. For years I had had insights into Marmaduke’s life. I had known him since he was a boy. However, my perspective had always been obscured somehow. It was like a hazy dream. Faceless characters had muffled conversations about indecipherable subjects. The truth was that I didn’t really know that much about the boy. I had seen into his heart, so I knew he was a good lad. I knew he was gay and I knew that his Step-Mother was a bitch.
‘She’s kicked me out of the house again,’ answered Marmaduke, trying hard not to let his sadness show. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go,’ he added. ‘I’ve got to go to my Nan’s and see if I can bunk there for a while.’
Duke leaned over to his friend and kissed him on the lips. I could feel it. Another man’s lips touched mine. It was the first time that had happened since Uncle Colin kissed me on my thirteenth birthday. Colin didn’t know me very well. He kissed me on the lips and ruffled my hair. I kneed him in the bollocks. Needless to say that he never did that again.
There was something very comforting about Marmaduke as he strolled down the street, presumably as he walked to his Nan’s. It was very familiar, almost as if I had walked the very same path. I didn’t recognise the route. I couldn’t really focus well enough to see that well. I could feel it though. I could feel the familiarity.
Duke rapped on the front door. He then bent over and shouted into the letterbox.
‘Nan?’ he called, impatiently. ‘Are you in?’
The heavy red door opened startling us both. Duke stepped into the hallway. I could feel his relief. Dukes heavy bag scraped the wall as he entered.
‘Has she kicked you out again, Duke?’ asked Duke’s Nan.
‘Yeah,’ Marmaduke replied, sadly. He made his way down the hall toward the kitchen. As he did so, he glanced across a series of framed photographs that were hanging on the wall. One of them stunned me. In it was a happy, smiling couple. Marmaduke stared at the picture. He was quite intense as he studied its every detail.
‘My nose looks huge in that picture,’ he said. Mel stepped back into the hall and glanced at the picture.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You had a whole different nose in those days,’ she said.
From the picture on the wall, two happy, young faces smiled back. Beneath was a plaque embedded into the frame. It read, Terry and Melissa Malone, Married 19th August 1979.


© Copyright 2005, Harry Parry. All rights reserved. No part of this nonsense may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.