Spitting Feathers

By Pearl Ashby

Pearl Gregson believes it takes one person to enter your life, or one event to occur, and without warning the whole course of one’s life changes. And that’s how it happened when her husband, Ralph, passed away in the back room of their corner shop.

Spitting Feathers is a memoir set in Lancashire, England when Pearl, a widow, me

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chrisitne Liddle
• Release date: Oct 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648403210

Book preview

Prologue

I was thirteen-months old with two older brothers when Charlie entered our household; four years after him, Laura arrived, the youngest of our little lot. It was Charlie’s birth that prompted dad to take me away from the house to let the midwife get on with bringing another baby into the world.

On that Sunday in March, dressed in my best, with patent shoes and a straw poke bonnet, as young as I was, I toddled through the park supported by dad’s hand. He carried me when I stumbled. There in the shade of an oak tree, a flock of birds on the ground pecked as though seed had been scattered. Dad held a silencing finger to his lips, and with a quiet look in his eye, tentatively removed his trilby and tossed it like a frisbee just as the birds took to flight, trapping a young sparrow inside, and it dropped to the ground. Dad carefully picked it up. I watched him cup his hand inside the hat and pull out a shivering fledgeling to show me.

‘Look, Pearly girl. Pretty?’ With one swift movement, dad’s hands raised up as though offering the bird to God, and it flew away. I couldn’t have a better earliest memory.

As I grew, I helped my father cut up worms to feed injured birds that the neighbours brought for him to care for. He became known as the birdman in our street, with an aviary of budgerigars and a dovecote for doves, plus all the wingless birds as he called those without mothers to feed them.

Always by his side, I watched when dad decorated taking notice of brush strokes while he painted, and I remembered the words he used to explain each part of the process. It was the same thing in the garden when I followed him around watching, listening, learning. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it became a firm basis for my life.

It goes without saying as I grew, I was expected to help around the house, and mum was an excellent role model and teacher of baking and cleaning which gave me a head start in Secondary School placing my efforts top of the class.

The winters were cold, so cold I thought they would never end, and the summers long and hot are how I remember them. In winter copper piping inside the house froze overnight making it difficult for mum to get five children ready for school. The fire was always lit, and the oven switched on to add extra heat to the live-in kitchen by the time we were up.

With holes in my shoes, a piece of card cut to size from a Scotts Porridge Oats packet and slipped inside helped for a while to separate my foot from the pavement. My foot size was average for a young girl, my mother an ordinary women’s size. On snowy days, I wore her boots to school carrying my own shoes in a brown paper bag to change into in the cloakroom. I felt like Minnie Mouse clonking along with oversized feet. My clothes were hand-me-downs from an unknown source. Mum knitted cardigans and balaclavas for the boys, although I don’t know how she found the time.

Some mornings, loud, aggressive arguing would wake me. In an instant, I knew my dad had entered my brother’s room again. ‘Get out! Get out!’ It became an immediate action as I shrunk below the covers to shut it out.

‘What’s going on?’ Mum’s protective voice was heard.

‘I’m tucking them in,’ was dad’s usual response.

‘Keep out of their bedroom. The boys are too old to be tucked in,’ said mum.

At the time I was glad that dad didn’t tuck me in. Other mornings I would find mum sobbing by the time I made it down to the kitchen. Dad had gone to work leaving her in that state. I hated seeing her like that. Their bad arguments were a usual occurrence although dad seemed cheerful enough with the neighbours and other male friends who visited. We were told never to speak of anything that went on in our house. ‘What goes on here stays here,’ was the warning. Once I heard dad tell mum, he ‘wished she was six feet under.’

Six feet under what? I wondered.

By the time my brothers became teenagers, their friends were calling at the house, and the word about my father’s tendency to touch young men became an unpleasant joke. But what did I know as an innocent female unused to those type of things? No one spoke of it in my presence. All I knew was that I had an uncomfortable feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Looking back in my mind’s eye, I wonder if it was a case of the three monkey’s that saw nothing, heard nothing and spoke of nothing. And I never did, but inside, I felt all the more pity and shame. At the time I was thankful for being female. Now that I am older, I have spoken with Laura and Charlie, and it would seem my father’s habit made him a degenerate, and no one was excluded.

An ageing aunt started to visit regularly bringing her young grandson, Tim, with her. By this time as a young teenager I had become used to dad’s overly-friendly ways of coaxing young people into a situation where there would be just the two of them. I prefer now to call it manipulation, and it made me uncomfortable. Dad did this with Tim, persuading him to go with him and look at his aviary. The boy didn’t want to go.

‘Go on, Timmy. Don’t be silly, go with uncle Harry,’ coaxed the grandmother.

My stomach flipped because I thought I imagined I knew why Timmy didn’t want to go, but what could I do or say to stop it? All I had to go on was the awkward feeling in my stomach. Dad was a law unto himself. Because of his grandma’s insistence, Tim went. No one followed. There was no way of knowing what happened except what my gut feelings inferred, a sense of something that made me feel uncomfortable which I had lived with since childhood. My stomach would cramp at that memory, while guilt tore at my heart for Timmy.

This gut instinct for anything furtive stayed with me throughout my life.

And I learned when to listen to it.

CHAPTER ONE

The Counsellor

‘The Housing Officer must have thought my name sounded like a tube of toothpaste. He apologised for smiling and repeated my name as though it were a question.’

‘Pearl White?’ Bradley Jones, the counsellor, did the same, and he too smiled, ‘I see what you mean. The house you’ve rented is on Mill Street, isn’t it? Settled in have you?’

‘Mill Street wasn’t by choice, and I don’t think I’ll ever be settled. Women of a certain age as myself should not be in a position of uprooting and going in search of cheap accommodation. Emotionally naked was how I felt the day I signed my name on that lease document, as though I had exposed my shame.’

‘Shame?’ questioned Bradley. His eyes held mine for a moment then darted to the clock on the wall. I felt he sensed my agitation.

‘Yes. I am ashamed of living there, even sitting here telling you my troubles. Although, I admit I was grateful for the Housing Officer’s offer of a hundred pounds towards cleaning the place up, and his promise to remove the dumped rubbish from the backyard. It was good of him. I sensed his empathy for my situation when he asked if it would help?’

‘In a state, was it?’

A derisory laugh sprang from me. ‘Sorry. You could say that. Smoke damage—kitchen fire—a drug addict had squatted there. I’m about as near rock bottom as I care to go.’ I pause, then quietly add, ‘There is nowhere else.’

‘How is the legal side of your situation? Any news on that?’

For a second, I look down at my hands that won’t stay still, when I look up the counsellor is making a note. ‘I’m afraid to let go of what it is I feel for fear I might collapse under the pressure of the break-up with Alan. I wonder if I’ve done the right thing?’

‘But you have family near you, don’t you? A little support?’

‘Yes, my sister, Laura—and two daughters’ Chloe and Sophie, plus three young grandsons. It’s no place for children where I live. I hate the thought of them coming on our Thursday gatherings. You can’t miss it, I told my sister when I signed the document, It’s the one at the top of the street with a Corporation Green door. The brightly coloured graffiti on the gable-end adds the finishing touch of labelling the address a non-impressive calling card.’ A bubble of laughter dies away. ‘No—it’s no place for children.’

‘At least you’re alone. Be thankful for that, Pearl.’

‘It takes one person to enter your life, or one event to occur, and without any warning, the whole course of one’s life changes. Doesn’t it? Everything gets turned upside down. And right now mine feels upside down like something on the bottom of someone’s shoe.’ I stop. What I’d said seemed enough.

‘Go on,’ the counsellor urges.

Taking a deep breath to calm my pounding heart I think about what I really want to say. My heart races just thinking about it. ‘There is something I need to get off my chest. More to the point, I need to understand why the people I’ve loved chose to hurt me in ways that can’t be explained or repaired?’

‘Go on,’ Bradley encouraged. ‘What is it, Pearl?’

Slow to start, I swallow, aware I was about to say something our family had kept under wraps for most of my life.

‘As a child, I woke on many mornings to angry yelling coming from my brothers’ room telling my father to get out. I would shrink under the covers praying for it to stop. On other days it was my parents themselves screaming at each other before my father went off to work leaving mum sobbing. I hated seeing my mother cry like that. One Sunday my mother’s aunt was expected for high tea; we hadn’t seen her for several years. Mum had been busy baking and preparing all day. During an argument, dad smashed every piece of crockery in the house moments before our special visitor arrived. In their tussle, mum’s glasses fell off. Dad knew she couldn’t see without them and kicked them into a corner.

‘We were warned never to speak of what went on inside our home. Any comments made about my father, I turned a blind ear to. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me, or so I thought. Until I married.’ For a moment I am silent. ‘It seemed my husband preferred sex with my father. Not me.’ There, I’ve said it.

Bradley sat forward. ‘Are you sure, Pearl?’

‘Yes, I am. For years I was expected to accept my husband’s excuses for why he couldn’t make love to me? It started on our honeymoon. Later it became apparent when my husband would go off with my father for hours at a time, both of them returning like schoolboys who had had a fun time scrumping. When asked where they had been, they said they’d been to a garden centre? But gardening wasn’t something my husband was interested in or did. With two small children, it seemed more comfortable for me to put up with the excuses than to mention something that both he and my father would undoubtedly deny.

‘Over the years there were arguments when my husband used certain situations as reason enough not to be intimate with me. Being pregnant was one. He ridiculed me, pushed me away, and never held my hand. Is it normal for any man to go without sex for twelve months?’

‘No one should feel ashamed for wanting human closeness, it’s one of life’s pleasures, and should be freely and affectionately given to that certain person in your life.’

‘My husband said I was oversexed, even used the word nymphomaniac during an argument. I was shaken to the core, as though the rug had been pulled from under me. I felt I didn’t know what love was anymore.’

‘But you stayed together?’

‘Eleven years. I accepted the problem had to be mine. One day we visited my parents for the weekend. I made breakfast, my father brewed tea and took a cup into my husband who was still sleeping. Later, I went to the bedroom to get clean clothes for my daughters from our suitcase. My father was kneeling on the floor beside our bed, his hand inside the bedclothes where my husband lay.’ Unburdening a lifetime of secrets had my heart wildly thumping. I looked at the counsellor embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘How did you react?’

‘I didn’t say or do anything, but I was thankful for not having witnessed any obviously rushed movements of a cover-up. They knew they’d been caught. With my eyes averted, I took what I needed from the case and hurried from the room feigning ignorance. Both my father and ex-husband are no longer living. That’s why I’m able to talk about it. Even so, here I am trembling. Inside I’m hurting more than I can describe, because the two most important men in my life, disrespected my feelings. Is it wrong to want respect, honesty and affection from a loved one?’

The counsellor shook his head. ‘No, Pearl, it’s isn’t wrong to want that.’

‘John was my first husband; he knew why I divorced him. The reason I’m hurting is that of my third husband, Alan, who I’ve recently separated from after ten years. The emotional abuse finally destroyed me, and our marriage, yet I’ve been made to feel I’m the one at fault.’

Bradley gave an agreeable nod and smiled. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Pearl. That’s what the abuser wants you to believe. Getting that earlier stuff off your chest couldn’t have been easy. Well done to you. Let’s meet again next week shall we if you feel it will help? You’ll be writing the main points of your marriage for your divorce, won’t you? Bring that along with you for our discussion.’

CHAPTER TWO

The Writings

With several packing boxes half opened, I am torn between preparing a paper for the solicitor to explain reasons how I met and married Alan and sharing his secrets that brought about our demise, or to continue unpacking. While the thoughts are still fresh in my head, I sit beside the fire, take a sip of my water and begin to write.

In the spring of eighty-eight, I moved away from Nelson. My marriage to Ralph Gregson, husband number two had been happy until a heart attack took him from me in the back room of our corner shop. Open all hours we were, seven days a week until ten-thirty at night. And to make ends meet, we each had a second job which was hard, but we were happy. Coming to grips with life as a widow was harder still.

Thinking of Ralph fills me with memories of that awful day. It’s difficult to explain the effort needed at the time to work through that kind of pain. The ache held my body prisoner until it decided when to leave. The grieving laid heavy on my chest like a stone. No one saw it, yet it lived inside me like a permanent fixture.

At first, I felt relieved Ralph’s suffering was over. He was at peace. But then it plagued my mind. Feelings of guilt clung to my already distressed heart - wanting to be alone seemed a selfish burden. Then anger crept in. That’s when I withdrew into the blackness of my sorrow.

Something snapped me awake at four o’clock every morning missing Ralph’s warmth beside me. The stone that had once been my heart became heavier. I wanted to rip it from me, but it kept beating. Life as I knew it had no meaning, not until I’d done my time, grieving. Only then would I be ready to turn another page I told myself.

Having made a start on preparing a paper, I put down the writing and turned my attention to straightening the room.

The burgundy cloth falls softly across the circular table. I smooth it out then step back to check if it’s straight. Pulling at the sides evens it. In the centre, I place a lamp and a brass picture frame of my girls when young identically dressed, red ribbons holding pigtails in place. They are grown now with sons of their own. Thoughts of my grandsons visiting for our Thursday get-together disturb me as I dust the frame.

This maze of backstreets riddled with petty crime and the bane of drugs is no place to bring children.

A similar table in the opposite corner is home to a telephone that hardly ever rings. Beside it a robust pouffe, and propped against the door, a rolled-up Chinese hearth-rug. I lay it down in front of the gas fire and neaten the fringe. It’s hardly a hearth, my subconscious reminds me, but the room is coming together. Not quite a home either if I’m honest, but, freshly painted, it’s clean and beginning to look comfortable.

Outside, slated rooftops darken as daylight fades. It’s raining a fine drizzle the type that soaks you through when accompanied by a northern wind, like now. Workers are hurrying home along the narrow footpath outside my lounge window. Light traffic rumbles over worn cobbles, everyday life happening to people who know nothing of me. I noisily hammer a tack into the freshly painted wall then hang up one of two pictures. Stepping back to assess if it is straight, I tell myself how much I still enjoy the refreshing artwork symbolic of the fragility and beauty of life.

Past desires and memories fill my thoughts like faint shadows as I polish finger-marks from the glass surfaces. Then with one swift movement, the Stanley knife slices open another taped-up box.

How did it come to this? Stuck in this godforsaken place with a legal battle staring at me that seems to be going nowhere? I find I’m paying attention to my own self-talk.

The crumpled newspaper used for packing grabs my attention. I have read this horoscope many times, but still, I smooth out the wrinkles and read: Pisces, the symbol of two fishes swimming in opposite directions. As with astrology stars in the wrong order, or malevolently influenced by Algol, a most troubled star, your life has been at war, has done battle, and it’s not over yet.

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I say tossing it back into the box.

The quietness is a relief after the stresses and upheaval of the past few years. There is no one to see the sadness that plays with my senses or snaps me awake at four o’clock each morning when I reach for someone who isn’t there.

Alan White was that someone, husband number three of eleven years who suddenly became a silent shadow as he watched the distance growing between us like a wedge that brought pressure to bear on our marriage and offered no reason for his sudden preference to sleep in the spare room. It’s only now in this strange house as I unpack these few possessions that I question if our years together counted for anything?

What about memories? What about the traces of love I came across when I packed up my things in preparation to leave; old love letters, keepsakes from concerts, and the elephant pendant he gave me one Christmas?

My thoughts are slow as I look down; my fingers caress two unique expertly contrived flat pieces - an elephant’s head and trunk swinging side to side in front of its hindquarters. Touching it stirs something fluttery inside me, and I recall the Christmas when Alan gave it to me. Elephants never forget. Do they? This gold pendant should no longer hold sentimental value. But it does. Damn it!

Moments later because of my mind flips, I find myself censoring the number of times we made love.

No, it wasn’t making love – he fucked me when he hadn’t wanted to before he moved into the spare room. Bloody fucked me and couldn’t finish what he started.

My anger has a way of execrating whenever I recall what Alan did. My thoughts never find an answer other than a decade is a long time to be with someone and end up with nothing. The man I used to love has become nothing more than that four-letter word.

With the divorce settlement going nowhere, Jodie, my solicitor had suggested last week she could get me reinstated in the marital home. ‘You could have rooms set aside for your personal use. The house is large enough,’ she’d said. ‘If Alan won’t settle, then we have to do something, Pearl.’

A nervous surge washed over me at the thought of sharing the marital home again with Alan. ‘Sorry, Jodie—definitely cannot do that. Is there a Plan B?’

Renting this house with the ‘Corporation Green’ door on Mill Street, the one with graffiti on the gable end wall, and the stench of urine that fills my nostrils every time I step outside—this is Plan B.

The volume is turned low on the radio/cassette player, a present from Alan last birthday before our marriage became over-and-out having made it clear that I wanted no more of his gifts. ‘No thank you,’ I’d said. Not after the earlier Christmas debacle, when, armed with scissors, and fuelled with joy on that Christmas morning, I snipped my way through the overly taped decorative wrapper, secure enough to prevent something with sharp claws from escaping. With the contents revealed I snatched an excited breath, pulled the gadget from the confines of the torn paper and plugged it in. It crackled and hissed, the aerial flopped to one side, seemingly broken. I turned to Alan, ‘What a shame. It’s faulty. Can we exchange it, d’you think?’

‘Can’t take it back, Pearl. It’s second-hand.’

My subconscious yelled, Secondhand!? The word flattened my spirits. Within seconds, it had flown from my thoughts to my mouth. ‘Second-hand?’ The niggling hurt his statement caused had been swift. Only then could I see it wasn’t new. The shape was too square, the surface dull and scratched. It wasn’t in a box, and there was no guarantee. Alan’s eyes bore into mine as though he thought me ungrateful. My pulse raced as I waited for an explanation. When none came, I turned away, and ‘second-hand’ stayed with me all that day.

How could Alan assume it to be acceptable to give a used Christmas gift to his wife and not explain why? He had watched me open it. My thoughts on the matter remain resentful, and still, I question at what point my husband intended to admit it was second-hand? A radio/cassette player is not an expensive item, unlike jewellery. His mother would have been appalled had she been given a used gift. Why me? These questions plus many others have filled my head since that Christmas morning having only just recovered from an unusual birthday gift earlier that same year. What was going on?

‘Happy birthday.’ In the ensuite doorway, Alan stood boyishly holding a bunch of Spar shop chrysanthemums with one hand, passing something with the other wrapped in a recycled, brown paper bag.

With a towel around me, I accepted the offered gift. ‘Thank you,’ I said smiling until a distinct glugging gave its contents away before I had pulled the handy, half-bottle of Bell’s whisky from the confines of the paper bag; the flat shape, the kind that fits most alcoholics’ hip pockets yet was not quite small enough for my handbag, the humour of which Alan failed to appreciate.

My thanks were polite but quietly spoken. I turned away wondering what had happened to change things all of a sudden? What had happened to romance, or had Alan forgotten my birthday? I feared the latter and understood that at eightthirty at night the Spar convenience store would have been his only option. That is why, on my last birthday Alan elected to buy the new radio/cassette player, in a box, with a receipt and a guarantee. But he failed to see why the Christmas debacle became the final straw in a long line of unexplained foibles that year.

I turn up the volume then return to the lounge, sipping my coffee. Roxette is singing It Must Have Been Love.

With little effort, I run a duster across the top of the TV thinking how love at first glance is for storybook romances or the kind of thing you read about in Hello magazine. Falling in love with Alan had grown slowly over the weeks and blossomed at the right time on that magical spring day. My sad thoughts allow me a moment to relive the rush of feeling that love before reality stabs again at my heart; a reminder of why I am here alone on Mill Street.

With the room almost in darkness, I snap on the table lamp, drink the last of my coffee and step across to the window to close the curtains. A frustrated sigh escapes me as I peer from the side of the net drape. Street lamps light up littered gutters and weeds growing between cracks of the cobbles. This sad look screams out that road-sweepers never venture into these streets, and rats probably scavenge in pairs. The flat tyres on the abandoned Vauxhall Carlton that sits rusting outside my front door have become magnets for squashed and faded litter. A young man wearing a hoodie steps back into the shadows of my gable end; having seen drug deals taking place from behind my curtained windows, intuition tells me he is up to no good. A burdening realisation fills my thoughts, and I let the drape fall fearing for my sanity if I have to stay in this place too long. The nervous ache deep inside has returned, a heaviness low in my stomach which seems never to go away.

With the same speed, I snatch at the brocade curtains their wooden rings clatter on the pole as I pull them across the window to block it out. With pulse racing, I neaten the edges where they join. This place is not what I’m used to, and Alan knows it. He’s wearing me down.

This should not be happening. Would Alan consider it acceptable if he lived here on Mill Street, this terraced row in a maze of fifteen streets in the older part of town?

Stone houses blackened with age where cotton-mill-workers at the turn of the century had lived and raised families. The imagined clatter of wooden clogs with irons on the bottom rattling over these same cobbles fills my thoughts like an approaching army of men and women as they made their way to the mills. I imagine their voices, their Lancashire brogue.

Now it’s an Asian community, the air pungent with aromas of curries, spices. Jangling music thumps from car speaker systems and shops in the town sell silks and fabrics in the brightest of colours; sparkling jewellery and bangles adorn jeweller’s windows, the type worn at weddings or gifted to a deserving wife. Such intensity and brightness this town had never before seen, or heard the wailing mosque calling Muslims to prayer each Friday afternoon. It’s a far cry from industrious cotton mills, woollen shawls and cloth caps.

The houses now are neglected, poorer looking than the semi-detached better-off areas of town. Some are half painted; a kicked-in front door or boarded-up broken window stand out, others appear abandoned. In renting this house, it’s hard to accept the situation in which I find myself, but for the time being, until my legal battle with Alan is resolved, I need to make this my home. I must!

‘How long will it take?’ I asked Jodie, the solicitor.

Frustrated herself, she shrugged and said, ‘Who knows, Pearl? Anything’s possible. This case has already gone on far longer than anything I’ve ever known.’

Aware that it had, I had no answer.

Wild Cat leaping onto my lap startles me; he circles slowly on white paws, his gentle purring pulses through me as I hold him close stroking his sleek black fur. I’m grateful for this creature to keep.

‘I know you want your dinner. We both need to eat.’

Skinny and gaunt when we found each other ten days ago, he, like myself was without that special someone to love. ‘We’re both newly poor aren’t we, Willie?’

In the kitchen, I put down Willie’s food, and despite having no appetite, I check the freezer.

Thoughts now filling my head disturb me as I open the low-fat, meal-in-a-box and drop the sachets into boiling water and set the timer for twenty minutes.

Alan thinks the longer he drags on the settlement, the more chance he has of paying me as little as possible. He’s done it before and believes I will tire of it and give in. It’s been a bloody year already! A plate slips from my fingers. Wild Cat squeals and jumps when it hits the floor and smashes. ‘Sorry, Willie, I’m all fingers and thumbs. We’ll stick it out as long as we have to, won’t we?’ I tickle his ears, then sweep up the broken pieces; they clatter when I empty them into the bin as spits of water sizzle on the hot stove top.

My pleading to talk with Alan never got me anywhere. He never seemingly was in the right mood to discuss our problems despite the glaring atmosphere that lived with us. A decade ago, I was a wealthy young widow and the very thing I feared losing my financial independence by trusting the wrong man had happened.

Celine Dionne is singing My Heart Will Go On reminds me of when I took Alan to see the blockbuster Titanic and paid extra to see it in the Directors Lounge. A three-hour film deserved comfortable armchairs, and besides, I had been trying to bring ‘the silent shadow’ out of himself, hoping he would open up, talk about the reasoning behind his secrecy.

It never worked, my subconscious criticises.

Music talks to me. I find it evocative. The first few notes of a song on the radio take me right back to the moment of where I was, who I was with, or when something incredible happened. My thoughts now are swishing around my head like living things as though they have a right to be in there just like the friendly bacteria in my stomach. They are there for a reason.

The timer dinging signals the meal-in-a-bag is ready. With the table set for one I pick at the meagre food and eventually with a world-weary sigh, I scrape it into the bin.

Wild Cat rushes out when I open the back door to let him out for the night, then with a freshly made coffee, I retreat to the comfort of the front room as scenes of war-torn Kosovo flash across the muted TV screen. I reach for the remote to