Looking back on this all as an adult, I still find it astonishing that even with no mortgage she never fell into debt or borrowed any money, as far as I was aware, considering the double whammy of low household income and her drinking which must have drained her purse.
* * *
When we move into the house, to my relief, Mum’s visits to my bedroom – the Special Time which I have now come to dread – suddenly come to a stop. As a seven-year-old I understand as little about why they stop as I understand why they started in the first place, but I think it’s because now that Mum is sharing a bedroom with Reg she no longer needs me in the same way as before.
In any case, in the last few months of living at Calder Bridge, things have begun to change. I am now much more aware of what is right and wrong and have been feeling uncomfortable about what she makes me do when she’s been drinking. I know we shouldn’t be doing it and I have already begun trying to resist her. But until now I have always ended up doing as I was told, especially as she is so forceful and aggressive when she is drunk.
I think she is also drinking less as she is happier and more settled with Reg than she has been in a long time. I know that she always drinks more when she is feeling stressed or unhappy. So her demands for me to play with her seem to have ended, I have a new ‘father’ and Mum is drinking less. It feels like a brand new start and the house move seems to resolve the issues of my early life. We have security, stability, a home life and a family unit.
That’s how it seems, at least.
* * *
In the first few months of living with Reg, Mum seems much happier. She loves gardening and sets about making the most of it. I think the garden looks a big mess and certainly isn’t going to win any awards, but Mum grows rhubarb, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, potatoes, cauliflowers and peas in the summer, tomatoes in the greenhouse, lots of flowers, particularly sweet peas, shrubs, plants and her own holly with proper red berries for the house at Christmas.
There’s a small lawn and the whole garden is dry-stone walled so that passers-by can’t look inside, which makes it nice and private. To me at the age of seven it is fantastic. However, as a garden it is drastically in need of remedial work and Mum does that over time as she loves gardening. As well as picking fruit in the garden, she spends many hours on a summer’s evening and weekend picking wild blueberries and blackberries in the surrounding countryside and in summer she goes to Halifax market at teatime on a Saturday and bulk-buys strawberries that would otherwise be thrown away. The traders have to sell them cheap because, although they’re fit to eat, they wouldn’t last until Monday to resell.
She loves growing and picking fruit and making jams and jellies. She makes at least a hundred jars every year and we have every type of jam imaginable. She also heats fruit and puts it into Kilner jars which can later be used for making pies. She bakes every weekend and is very good at it. The biscuit tins are always full of fruit scones, parkin, flapjack, buns of all kinds, biscuits and fruit pies. Jam and baked foods are a staple part of our diet. Whenever I’m hungry, Mum tells me to ‘go and get some jam and bread’, which is a real treat.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve started to develop a sweet tooth.
* * *
Not only is home life good but we now have an extended family. Reg’s daughter Pauline lives only 200 yards up the road with her husband and their children. She is a dour, bespectacled woman who rarely smiles and wears her hair piled on top of her head. To begin with I’m a little wary of her, but she and her family welcome us into their family too.
Reg’s brother Bert comes to visit him two or three times a year. Bert never knocks on the door and never comes into the house. He sits outside the house in his van, waiting for Reg to come out and talk to him. He’s a man of even fewer words than Reg, distant and curt in his speech to the point where I’ve wondered why he even bothers to drive all the way over to see his brother.
‘OK, Bert?’ says Reg.
‘Oh ay,’ Bert will reply.
‘I’m not bad myself.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Looks like rain.’
‘Oh ay.’
Pauline’s youngest son, Andrew, is a year older than me and is always coming down to the house. Andrew is fun to be around. He’s a little taller than me and often seems to be laughing, but I sometimes sense a kind of malice in his laughter. He’s mischievous, which makes things a little more intriguing. We have a chair in the living room that swivels around 360 degrees. We get told off if we get caught swivelling on it too much, but Andrew goes round at breakneck speed and hang the consequences.
It feels great to have someone I think of as family close by. My parents only have one sibling between them – my Uncle Jim, Mum’s older brother. I know he has been married at least once and I have cousins somewhere but I’ve never met them. I have even discovered that one of my cousins was born on the same day as me, which fascinates me and I want to meet her. But despite the fact that my uncle is collecting children and cousins that I never see, Andrew is as good as family to me. He lives nearby and we play together.
We have an even stronger connection when it comes to ‘naming’ Reg. His grandfather is my new father and the whole family situation is sealed when we agree I will call Reg ‘Grandad’, just like Andrew and his brothers and sisters do.
Reg can be very kind in these first few months and when he’s got time at the weekends he’ll spend time with me while I ride around on an old bike.
‘Easy on the brakes, lad,’ he’ll say. ‘Gently does it and if you just want to slow down but not stop, open them up again the same way, gently.’
I do as Reg says and it makes a big difference. I become more confident on the bike, and I’m soon whizzing around Ludden Vale and Bradling.
I can’t believe my luck and decide that Reg is the bee’s knees.
But things can’t last that well forever.
* * *
The first thing to bring my wonderful new life crashing down comes about when Mum and Reg decide to build another bedroom. Up until now I have been sleeping in the room next to Reg and Mum’s room. My bedroom is like a junk room with a camp bed in it. The room is bigger than my old bedroom at Calder Bridge but because it’s so full of bits of broken furniture, gardening equipment, old clothes which I think must have belonged to Reg’s old family, and other bric-a-brac, there’s barely room to move, and the camp bed isn’t too comfortable either, though I put up with it.
During the first summer at Ludden Vale, Reg and Terry, a builder friend, build a second storey on top of the kitchen on one end of the house to create a new bedroom for me. The room I’ve been sleeping in – which will now be the upstairs middle room – is to be turned into another living room, though in reality it will be Mum’s room where she can spend time on her own, maybe to have a little space from Reg as for the last few years since Dad left she’s been used to living on her own.
It’s amazing to see it develop and all summer I help Reg and Terry as much as I can. They are both retired so they are over 65 and it’s quite a task for them both. I sense this and do as much as I can to help them. My favourite task is to have my own measuring tape and fetch a stone of a specified height. Reg sends me off looking for what he needs and I run around until I find one.
I am dazzled and amazed by the building work. To me it seems almost magical that out of all this brick and stone and mortar we – Reg, Terry and I – have managed to conjure up a part of the house that looks to my eyes as if it has always been there. I’m very proud of it.
I’m also discovering how clever Mum is – she has a knack of making money stretch a long way and getting things done. She finds the money to get this extra bedroom built, to renovate the rest of the house, install a new fitted kitchen, and re-paper and re-carpet every room.