with a hoop and a skimmer wasn’t worth doing.
Our street, twenty houses big, was a regular United Nations; the only colours in kids we didn’t have were green ones and blue ones, we had nearly every other colour. Our street was a nice street. Nobody had any money, but in all the years I lived there, I can never remember anyone’s front-door being shut in the daytime, or, for that matter, for most of the night either. It was a nice street to live in and all the people were friendly, but after a few weeks of Anna the street and the people in it took on a buttercup glow.
Even our boss-eyed cat, Bossy, mellowed. Bossy was a fighting tabby with lace-edged ears who regarded all humans as inferiors, but under Anna’s influence Bossy started to stay at home more often and very soon treated Anna as an equal. I could stand by the back-door and yell myself silly for Bossy, but he wouldn’t budge for me, but for Anna, well, that was a different thing. One call and he simply materialized with an idiot grin on his face.
Bossy was about twelve pounds of fighting fury, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. The cat’s-meat man used to leave the meat under the knocker, wrapped up in newspaper. Bossy used to lurk in the dark passageway, or under the stairs, waiting for someone to reach up for the cat’s meat, at which moment he would launch himself like a fury, all teeth and claws, using whatever was available to get up to his meal. If a human leg or arm could be used to claw his way up to the meat, Bossy would use it. Anna tamed him in one day. She lectured him with an admonishing finger on the vice of gluttony and the virtues of patience and good manners. In the end Bossy could make his meal last for about five minutes, with Anna feeding him bit by bit, instead of the usual thirty seconds. As for Patch the dog, he sat for hours practising beating new rhythms with his tail.
In the back-garden was an odd collection of rabbits, pigeons, fan-tailed doves, frogs, and a couple of grass-snakes. The back-garden, or ‘The Yard’ as it was called, was for the East End a fairly sizeable place. A bit of grass and a few flowers and a large tree some forty feet high. All in all Anna had quite a lot to practise her magic on. But no one fell under her spell more completely or willingly than me. My work, which was in oils, was not more than five minutes’ walk away from home, so I was always home for dinner at about 12.30. Up to this time the answer to Mum’s question as to what time I would be home that night as I left for the afternoon’s stint had been ‘Some time before midnight’. Now things were different. I was seen off by Anna from the top of the street, kissed wetly, promising to be back about six in the evening. Knocking-off time usually meant a few pints in the pub on the way home and a few games of darts with Cliff and George, but not now. When the hooter went I was off home. I didn’t run exactly but walked very briskly.
That walk home was a pleasure; every step was one step nearer. The road I had to travel curved to the left in a gentle arc, and I had to walk just more than half the distance before the top of our turning came into sight, and there she was. Come rain or shine, snow or icy wind, Anna was always there, not once did she miss this meeting, except – but that comes later. I doubt if ever lovers met more joyously. When she saw me coming round the bend of the road she came to meet me.
Anna’s ability to polish any situation was truly extraordinary. She had some uncanny knack of doing the right thing at the right time to get the most out of an occasion. I’ve always thought that children ran towards those they loved, but not Anna. When she saw me she started to walk towards me, not too slowly, but not too quickly. My first sight of her was too far away to distinguish her features; she might have been any other child, but she wasn’t. Her beautiful copper hair stood out for miles, there was no mistaking her.
After her first few weeks with us she always wore a deep-green ribbon in her hair for this meeting. Looking back, I feel sure that the walk towards me was deliberate and calculated. She had grasped the meaning of these meetings and seen almost instantly just how much to dramatize them, how long to prolong them in order to wring out their total content. For me this minute or two of walk towards her had a rounded-off perfection; no more could be added to it, and nothing could be taken away without completely destroying it.
Whatever it was she projected across that intervening space was almost solid. Her bobbing hair, the twinkle in her eyes, that enormous and impudent grin, flicked like a high-voltage charge across the space that separated us. Sometimes she would, without any words, just touch my hand in greeting; sometimes the last few steps transformed her, she let everything go with one gigantic explosion, and flung herself at me. So many times she would stop just in front of me and hold out her closed hands. I learned rapidly what to expect on these occasions. It meant that she had found something that had moved her. We would stop and inspect whatever the day’s find was – perhaps a beetle, a caterpillar, or a stone. We would look silently, heads bowed over today’s treasure. Her eyes were large deep pools of questions. How? Why? What? I’d meet her gaze and nod my head; this was enough, she’d nod in reply.
The first time this happened, my heart seemed to come off its hook. I struggled to hold on. I wanted to put my arms around her to comfort her. Happily, I managed to do the right thing. I guess some passing angel nudged me at the right moment. Unhappiness is to be comforted, and so perhaps too is fear, but these particular moments with Anna were moments of pure and undiluted wonder. These were her own and very private moments which she chose to share with me, and I was honoured to share them with her. I could not comfort her, I would not have dared to trespass. All that I could do was to see as she saw, to be moved as she was moved. That kind of suffering you must bear alone. As she said so simply, ‘It’s for me and Mister God’, and there’s no answer to that.
The evening meal at home was more or less fixed. Mum, being the daughter of an Irish farmer, was given to making stews. A large black iron pot and an equally large black iron kettle were the two most used utensils in the kitchen. Often the only way one could distinguish the stew from the brew was that tea always came in large cups and stew was put on plates. Here the difference ended, for the brew often had as much solid matter in it as did the stew.
Mum was a great believer in the saying that ‘Nature grows cures for everything’. There wasn’t a weed, or a flower, or a leaf that wasn’t a specific cure for some ailment or other. Even the outside shed was pressed into use for growing cobwebs. Some people have sacred cows or sacred cats, Mum had sacred spiders. I never quite understood the reasoning concerning spiders’ webs, but all cuts and abrasions were plastered with spiders’ webs. If spiders’ webs were not available there were always fag papers under the clock in the kitchen. These were well licked and stuck over the cut. Our house was littered with bottles of juices, dried leaves and bunches of this, that and the other, hanging from the ceiling. All ailments were treated the same way – rub it, lick it, or if you can’t lick it, spit on it, or ‘Drink this, it’ll do you good’.
Whatever the value of these things, one thing was certain, nobody was ever ill. The only time the doctor entered our house was when something was suspected of being broken, and when Stan was born. No matter that the brew, or to give it its full title, ‘the darlin’ brew’, and the stew looked the same, they tasted wonderful and meals were certainly man-sized.
Mum and Anna shared many likes and dislikes; perhaps the simplest and the most beautiful sharing was their attitude towards Mister God. Most people I knew used God as an excuse for their failure. ‘He should have done this’, or ‘Why has God done this to me?’, but with Mum and Anna difficulties and adversities were merely occasions for doing something. Ugliness was the chance to make beautiful. Sadness was the chance to make glad. Mister God was always available to them. A stranger would have been excused for believing that Mister God lived with us, but then Mum and Anna believed he did. Very rarely did any conversation exclude Mister God in some way or other.
After the evening meal was finished and all the bits and pieces put away Anna and I would settle down to some activity, generally of her choosing. Fairy stories were dismissed as mere pretend stories; living was real and living was interesting and by and large fun. Reading the Bible wasn’t a great success. She tended to regard it as a primer, strictly for the infants. The message of the Bible was