Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

    Alone on the step, Charlotte pulled at the iron hook. Her father was already on his way back to the station, cutting her next few months from the fabric of his life. The door opened and swung shut behind her with a solid satisfied click. Ribbons of coloured light from its glass panes snaked across the polished floor. The girl who had been doing the polishing, lumbered up from her knees and scurried away with her tub of wax. Sister Conceptua swept across the tiles in her immaculate white habit and wimple like a majestic yacht. She picked up Charlotte’s suitcase and locked it into a cupboard before leading her up the wide curving staircase to a vast attic dormitory. All around the walls stood rows of iron bedsteads, each covered with a grey blanket, each covering a cardboard box containing spare underwear and overalls. ‘Until your time comes,’ said Sister Conceptua, ‘This is all you will need.’

We smoke in the sluice room. We’re not supposed to, of course. We’re supposed to go outside the back door on one of our designated breaks but you only get halfway through before you’re called in again. In the sluice room we always have the windows open to get rid of the smells so it’s easy enough to poke your head out and puff away while the tap’s running.

Mandy empties the mop bucket while I unearth the matches. ‘Did
you get that new one?’ she says.

‘Snotty old bag? Posh?’

‘Yeah. Give you any trouble?’

I take a deep drag. She’s already been ordering everyone around as if she’s an empress. As if she’s come to stay in a luxury hotel in Monte Carlo where you have to dress for dinner and can’t flaunt too many strings of pearls. As if she hasn’t spotted the absence of table linen and waiters in dickey bows or noticed the commodes on castors squeaking over the lino. And there’s nothing decent in her wardrobe but a wool coat with a fur collar fifty years old that would bury her if she ever put it on. Like a lot of them she’s shrunk practically to nothing but it doesn’t stop her acting high and mighty. You grit your teeth and get on with it; it’s just a job after all. Only here’s the twist:

‘Get this – she reckons she used to live here.’

‘Go’way!’

We lean out of the window into the dark. Patches of yellow wink from the porches of the housing estate: lots of neat little just-about-detached with integral garages. I suppose it was all fields once. And at the front we have a dual carriageway roaring past. They don’t care, the old dears. We sit them outside facing the traffic and most of them don’t even hear it. It’s not likely the fumes will see them off either, after the other stuff they’ve survived.

‘You should of seen the look on her face when she realised.’ I’d finished unpacking her sad old clothes and we were coming downstairs when all of a sudden her hand gripped the banister where the varnish is a bit worn. She stared at the pattern the leaded lights make on the hall floor like she’d seen a ghost. ‘Stinking rich her family must of been.’

It was a grand old house once, though all the big rooms have been
divvied up now with flimsy partition walls that shake when you hoover. I wonder how it might feel to sit in a slip of a room and recognise little snatches of skirting board, or picture rail or window frame.

Mandy drops her fag end onto the paving below, which is downright careless. I always swish mine down the sink.

‘Not any more that’s for sure. I seen her brought in. She’s a social services referral.’ She knows all the gossip. I just want to get through the night, get the job done with. She tears a piece of gum in two to keep our breath sweet. ‘Fancy coming out this weekend then?’

She’s always asking and I’m always making excuses. I can’t really tell her that she’s too loud and too fat and I don’t want to be seen with her. And I can’t tell her that I’d rather spend the time with Charley, because nobody here knows about Charley anyhow. I probably see more of Mandy as it is and that’s a deal more than I need.

The bell rings before I have time to reply which is a relief. Mandy goes charging up the corridor shouting wakey-wakey at the top of her loud fat voice and I rifle quickly through the cupboards. Now, I don’t do drugs, but I do need my sleep so I’m fresh for the night shift. They’re on all sorts, the residents here, we’re awash with prescriptions. I slip a few more pills into my overall pocket.

Charlotte’s arms were buried to the elbows in the blood-stained water of the sink in the sluice room. Unlike the girls in their care, the nuns bled regularly once a month, and part of laundry duty involved washing out the wads of material they used as sanitary napkins. She had taken over from Jean, whom she could see shivering in the yard. Jean suffered from morning sickness and a cascade of vomit had spattered her overalls, her shoes and the quarry-tiled floor. She had been stripped to her petticoat and thrust outside to get rid of the smell.

Charlotte was also in disgrace. The previous evening, as the girls bent their heads over drawn thread work and the creation of a basic layette, she had foolishly written her name and address on a scrap of paper and stitched it into the hem of her baby’s matinee jacket. Sister Conceptua, inspecting the garment, felt the crackle and smiled indulgently. ‘Silly child. Your message will disintegrate on the first wash. Besides, your baby cannot read and his parents will have no wish to know.’
   
Savagely Charlotte squeezed the clotted fabric, turned the tap to a torrent. At night whispers of rebellion would whistle round the dormitory, but in the real world she knew they had no chance of escape, that none of them would watch their children grow up.

When I draw her curtains the Empress is propped up against her pillows with her eyes shut. I can’t make out whether she’s awake, so I hum and bang about a bit. She likes to have her hair done before she’s dressed so I drag her over to the mirror and start to brush. Her hair’s so thin and brittle you can see straight through to her mottled old scalp and she winces as I stick in the pins.

‘Must feel strange,’ I say conversationally. ‘Coming back here after all this time.’

She has a sly face; her hands twist in her lap and a thin gold ring hangs loose on her wedding finger.

‘Your family sell up, did they?’

'I’ve no idea,’ she snaps. ‘We lost touch. They didn’t care for my
husband.’

Families are a liability; I know the feeling. ‘Didn’t they want to see
their grandkids?’

‘We had no children. I’d rather not talk about it.’

Well that suits me. This place oozes with old folks’ memories, sticky as treacle. Just because they’ve nothing to look forward to except another meal of boiled pap that won’t challenge their teeth, they think they’ve got the right to bore you with their past. I don’t bore them with my miserable present. Some of them, it’s true, ask me if I’ve got a boyfriend, but they don’t really care about the answer. They’ve used up all their hormones; they’ve forgotten what it feels like.

She’s very particular about her outfit and I have to offer her three
changes of blouse before she’s happy. The one I’m buttoning is frayed at the cuffs and has stains under the arms but I’m not going to suggest another because we’re running late as it is. I swing her legs over my knees and feed her feet into their support stockings.

‘I’m surprised you recognised it at all,’ I say. ‘There’s been that much redevelopment lately.’

‘Some things,’ says the Empress haughtily, ‘even at my age, you never forget.’

‘Come on, give me your arm. You’ll miss the Weetabix.’

Good for the bowels, is Weetabix. I need to be home for eight o’clock. Once I’ve sat her in her spot at the dining table – none of the others will speak to her, they think she’s too stuck up – I can leg it.

During the night Jean began to cry out. Charlotte, in the next bed, tried to muffle the sounds by burying her head under the stiff heavy pillow. Jean’s hand groped for the support of the metal bedrails; her screams became more urgent. A ghostly Sister Conceptua materialised carrying a night light. The two nuns with her hauled Jean
from her bed. Charlotte could see the pale soles of her feet dragging along the floor, a trail of blood spotting the lino.

By morning everyone knew that Jean’s baby had been born dead and blue and this was God’s punishment for her wickedness. In fact the loss was of great inconvenience to the nuns and the disappointed adoptive parents. As a result they paid even closer attention to the comportment of their charges.

Charlotte’s was the next expected confinement. Overdue for two weeks she was isolated in a small white cell on the ground floor near the sluice room. She could hear the slap of footsteps up and down the cold corridor, the clatter of zinc buckets and the rush of water. In a drawer beside her was a painfully embroidered layette. There was nothing left for her to do but tell her rosary over and over. After each Hail Mary she added a prayer of her own: please God may no-one treat me like this again.

Charley, bless her little cotton socks, is usually up and dressed in her
school uniform; has a pot of tea waiting for me and all. She likes me to braid her hair and really it’s a pleasure, after those scabby old heads, to be pulling a brush through a thick glossy mane like Charley’s. I reckon she could do some of those shampoo adverts when she’s older. Her face is beautiful too.
   
After she goes I tidy up a bit, clear the stuff she’s dumped on the floor, do some ironing. We’re on the waiting list for a two-bedroom flat but nothing’s come through yet. I pop a pill before climbing into bed and setting the alarm for 4. She gets the school dinners and I get meals at work so we don’t have to worry too much about our tea, just have what we fancy.

Last thing I do before going on duty is to get Charley to swallow her tablet. She makes a bit of a fuss – Do I really have to, mum? – but I insist it’s safer this way. Even if she sleeps so deeply she wets the bed I don’t mind. Anyway it’s only till I get a better job with better hours. I can’t stay with her until she nods off, but I tuck her up and kiss her cheek and she still likes her teddy to cuddle. Then I double lock the doors and windows so no-one can get in and harm her. Like her dad tried to once and noone ever will again.

This morning, though, is different. I can’t wake her. She’s lying in
bed, her sheets are drenched, and when I try to open her eyes I can only see the whites. I slap her cheeks and even pour a jug of water over her face but it doesn’t help. Her skin isn’t as rosy and pink as it usually is and her breathing sounds heavy.

I’ve seen old ladies die, like little wisps of dry paper they curl up and fade into nothing. But Charley is my bonny bouncing baby and I’m scared shitless that she’s overdosed. We’re on the third floor so there’s no way I can get her down the stairs on my own. I have to call an ambulance. 

Twenty minutes they take. I’m going mad, pacing up and down our ten feet of floor space, watching the window and the empty street below. I’ve tried to sponge her and get some clothes on her but it’s not easy. When they come up the stairs at last and take her away, her two little bare feet hang over the paramedic’s arms like a dead chicken’s.

‘Better if she sits up,’ he says as I climb into the ambulance after
them.

Sitting upright with her eyes closed she looks like all those shrunken old dears in the nursing home, all those nearly-corpses. I can’t stop shaking.

At the hospital they wheel her away on a trolley and leave me with a nurse who keeps peering at me in a funny way over the top of her glasses. My job isn’t that different from hers; she just has a few more qualifications. I’m as good as you are, I want to tell her. But of course I don’t – any more than I can tell her the truth.

‘You couldn’t wake your daughter?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Had she had a disturbed night?’

‘She always sleeps like a log.’

‘Has she been on any medication?’

I shake my head firmly.

‘What about you?’

' Is she staring at the shadows under my eyes? I’m exhausted. It’s way past my bedtime and my head is spinning. ‘I sometimes take something to help me sleep.’
 
‘What?’

‘Um, Seconal, I think.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘The prescription keeps changing.’

‘Are any of your tablets missing?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Suddenly I hear Charley’s voice in my head, more whiny than usual. ‘But mum, I’ve already had one.’ And my own voice saying, ‘You can’t fool me, pet.’ Even so…two Seconal…could they have been double strength? Could I have picked up the wrong pack? The sound of matron’s keys in the corridor, as I stuff my pockets, jangles across my nerves.

‘She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?’

‘She’s not going to die,’ says the nurse casually. ‘But we don’t know yet whether there may be any damage to her organs. Or her brain.’

My lovely Charley.

‘Is there anyone you want to call? Any family? The child’s father?’

‘I threw him out years ago. When can I see her?’

She stands up and I can smell her disapproval like escaping gas.

Ours is the cleanest, tidiest flat in the block, I want to shout at her.
Every inch of her uniform is ironed. I do not neglect my daughter!

‘We’ll be keeping her under observation,’ she says. ‘We’ll let you know.’

There was no pain she had felt to compare with it; not the beating by her father when he discovered her condition, nor the penances imposed by the nuns. As each wave of pain grew and crashed she pleaded that the next would be gentler; instead the contractions intensified. The nursing sisters had delivered hundreds of babies.

They ignored Charlotte’s distress in labour as they later ignored the flood of emotion that spilled down her cheeks when she briefly cradled her red-faced infant.
  
Then they took him away.


I’ve decided to come to work. I might as well. I’ve had no sleep of course – Charley’s sleeping for both of us – I’m like a zombie. I’ve got my mobile in my pocket though, in case they phone me.

At about five a.m. there’s a bell ringing. Turns out the Empress has soiled her bed. It happens sometimes and they all have rubber undersheets and you get on and clean it up without a fuss because that’s what you’re there for. But I’m now losing my mind with worry. I’m no longer a cheery I-can-handle-anything-I’ve-seen-it-all-before care assistant. I dump her in a cold bath and leave her there while I change the bedding. Then I make her sit in the sluice room while I rinse out her shit right under her nose. I want her to feel as tortured as I do.

There’s fear in her face and I’m glad to see it. Her head is jerking
about and her eyes are glazed. She’s muttering away and it sounds like yes sister, no sister, please God sister. I’m praying too, as I leave her sheets soaking in bleach, that God will rescue Charley, that she’ll come back to me as good as new.

‘Shut up old woman,’ I say finally. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble for one night.’

‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she says with a crack in her voice.

No more should I. I should be with Charley. I aim a little kick at her ankle and she flinches.

‘I can look after my own baby,’ she cries. ‘You’ve no business to take him.’

‘What are you on about?’ I feel unsteady; I know it’s because I’m over-tired, but it panics me the way she’s reading my mind. I can’t shake off that awful chill feeling that something terrible is going to happen. I know I’ve protected Charley with all my power, but I’m beginning to realise that they might not see it the same way.

‘He’s mine.’

‘Who?’

Her face seems to clear for a moment and she holds out her hand for me to help her up, even though I’d rather see her tumble and bruise.

‘My son,’ she says. ‘Such a pair of lungs, he had, such a pair of eyes…’

She still isn’t making sense, though I’m getting a little nearer to the
heart of it. That’s what happens when people get old: time shifts for
them. Any child of hers would be fifty at least by now.

‘You told me you didn’t have kids.’

‘Not afterwards. I was too…damaged.’ She fixes me her imperious look. ‘If he knew I was here he’d come and rescue me.’

It’s the sort of thing they all say. We don’t handle them badly, they just don’t like being helpless. ‘Look, you’ve nothing on me,’ I tell her. Thinking: I’ve brushed your hair and laced your shoes and cleaned up your crap and if I’m sometimes too fucking shattered to show you some sympathy, well, tough.

I grip her shoulders and propel her back down the corridor to her
own room. At least she had a bit of money and a good background to start from. If she messed everything up and fell out with her relations so she got shoved into a nursing home, that’s her fault. It wouldn’t surprise me if she invented a missing child simply so she’d feel less lonely.

‘All my life,’ she sighs, ‘I’ve wondered how he is.’

A tremor shoots through me. It’s as if this sense of loss she’s been
carrying around is a parcel she’s handing over. Well, I won’t accept it.

 I ease her carefully into the freshly-made bed – don’t want to be
accused of snapping one of her old bones. She calms down as I fluff up her pillows; her fingers stop twitching and picking at loose threads. In another world we’d have nothing in common, she and I, but here she knows she has to be grateful. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

I go back to the sluice room and light a cigarette. I’m going to give up this job. I’d rather be on the dole. I’d have all the time in the world for Charley then. Quickly I punch the number into my mobile. I need to be done before Mandy or anyone else sticks their noses in. The sun is just beginning to rise behind the housing estate as I wait for the hospital to answer.