At My Mother's Knee (4 page)

Bread poultices and hot cabbage leaves would bring a boil to
a head and draw out the infection, and tea made from
raspberry leaves would help induce a pregnancy that had gone
beyond full term. She used lavender for burns, oranges for
constipation, and the water from a boiled onion mixed with a
little ginger and cayenne pepper for the treatment of catarrh. Two hundred years earlier and she most likely would've been
burned as a witch. As it was, she went about the garden treating
me to an impromptu botany lesson.

'How did the dandelion get its name?' she'd ask, as she tore
the unfortunate weed out of the flower bed and dropped it on
to a sheet of newspaper. 'It's from the French.
Dent-de-lion
,
meaning lion's tooth. You can eat the leaves, you know, but if
you eat too many your wee turns blue.' I don't know where
she'd acquired all this unusual information but I found it
fascinating, particularly when it came to the deadlier residents
of her patch.

'This is a bugger, this stuff,' she'd say, waving a large bunch
of small pinky-white flowers with long stems that she'd hacked
at with the carving knife. Thinning, she called it. 'It's a herb
really.' She was warming to her theme. '
Valeriana officinalis
,
otherwise known as valerian. The root is good for the guts but
it can also be a lethal sedative, a killer. It grows like wild mint,
you have to keep an eye on it otherwise it's inclined to take
over. Bit like her,' she said, nodding in the general direction of
Rose Long's house.
Rose Long
lived next door but one and was
not my ma's favourite person. 'If anyone needed sedating it's
her . . . permanently.'

'You see this plant?' She'd point to a large pink foxglove.
'
Digitalis purpurea
, used in the treatment of heart disease, also
known as dead man's bells, and do you know why?' she'd ask
dramatically. 'Because it can kill you, that's why. It's deadly
poisonous, and at its most toxic just before it flowers. Prettylooking
thing, isn't it?' She'd stand back and gaze lovingly at
the plant with more than a hint of admiration in her voice.
Thanks to my mum, I was an expert toxicologist by the time I
was ten and could've poisoned half of Birkenhead if I'd felt like
it.

'D'ya fancy a trip to
Bidston Hill
?' meant get your coat,
we're going to steal leaf mould for the roses. In the early sixties, Bidston was still untouched by the spreading urban
desecration of council estates and bypasses. It was a film
location manager's dream; you stepped back in time as you
entered this ancient village with its cobbled courtyards, farmhouses
and thatched cottages. The village shop had a huge,
heavily studded wooden door that wouldn't have looked out of
place in a Harry Potter saga. Inside the shop, all was order and
calm. My mother would put on her society voice and ask the
old lady behind the counter for 'Two Pendleton's ice creams,
pliss, one cornet, one wafer, think yew.' We'd eat these as we
strolled at a snail's pace up towards Bidston Hill, stopping as
always to stare at the carving of a horse hewn into a rock at
the side of the path just as you turned into the woodland.

'That was carved in one hundred AD,' she'd say through a
mouthful of Pendleton's, 'and some swine has gone and
defaced it,' gesturing disgustedly to the words 'Thomo is a
wanker' scrawled across it in black marker pen. 'They want
horsewhipping in the street – no, hanging, horsewhipping's too
good for them.' Had she been a magistrate God knows what
sentence she would have passed on a serious offender, say a
murderer. Probably he'd be hung, drawn and quartered very
slowly after a period of prolonged torture.

There was another carving on a flat rock, further up towards
the observatory. This was of a sun goddess, older than time
and nearly five foot in length. I didn't like to hang around the
sun goddess for very long; she always left me feeling unsettled.
I had an eerie sensation that someone or something was
observing me. I felt that this ancient deity should be shown
more respect, that it wasn't quite right to be standing on a rock
casually looking at her.

I always enjoyed a day out to Bidston Hill, even if it did
mean a return trip carrying my own body weight in leaf mould.
Bidston Hill was a glorious adventure playground and it
catered to my overactive imagination. Tales of Robin Hood and William Tell were played out as I ran through the woods,
accompanied by appropriate sound effects as I dodged the
imaginary arrows of the sheriff's men. The windmill that sat
on top of a rock was transformed in my mind's eye into the lair
of the Evil Queen, so I'd re-enact the death of Snow White,
playing the parts of the huntsman and Miss White respectively.
My mother was busy shovelling trowels of leaf mould into
a laundry bag and muttering to herself as she went about
her work.

'Look at this,' she'd coo fondly at a shovelful of earth,
waving it towards me. 'Isn't that the most beautiful leaf mould
you've ever seen? Marvellous for the roses! Come and have a
sniff.'

Holding a handle apiece we'd drag this bag of earth home
with us, hauling it off the bus and up Sydney Road. 'If your
dad asks,' she'd say conspiratorially, pausing to get her breath
as we hiked up the hill, leaning against the wall and grabbing
her chest for effect, 'tell him it's a bag of washing.' And in case
he happened to look into the bag, not that he would, she
would wrap her cardigan over the top of the earth to make it
look more 'convincing'.

She spent hours in that garden tending to her flowers. Roses
were her speciality; she grew almost every variety from the
delicate tea roses to the big blowzy blooms that truly
intoxicated you with their heady perfume. Refusing to wear
gardening
gloves, she preferred to feel the soil with her bare
hands. After an afternoon spent pruning her roses, she would
emerge from the garden weary but content and, standing in the
front room, would hold out her cut and bloodied arms and
hands wearing the martyred expression of a nun with stigmata.

'Do you think I should go for a tetanus?' she'd ask, the
blood running down her arms from various thorn wounds, 'or
should I chance it with a bit of Dettol?'

She always chanced it.

No sensible cat within a five-mile radius of our house would
chance it near Molly O.'s garden though. No cat in its right
mind would put a paw inside the garden gate for fear of bitter
and sometimes deadly reprisals. The neighbourhood moggies
had obviously passed a message around the feline grapevine
telling all members to keep away from the madwoman at
Number 23's garden regardless of how inviting the beds of
flowers and tasty blackbirds looked.

She loved to listen to the birds. There was a
robin
that she
was particularly soft on, and she would lovingly buy him mealworms
from the fishing tackle shop in town.

'Do you know why the robin's breast is red?' Without
bothering to wait for an answer, she would go on to relate the
tale of the robin's breast as she had done countless times
before.

'When Jesus was on the cross,' she would say, adopting her
pious voice, 'the brave little robin, who was brown all over in
them days, tried to ease poor Jesus's suffering by pulling out
the nails in his poor bloodied hands. As he tugged at those
hard iron nails, red with Jesus's blood, he stained his breast
and that's why it's red today, as a testament to that little bird's
undying bravery and loyalty. So think on, my lad, and don't
start screaming like a bloody big ciss when that plaster on your
knee has to come off tonight, think of poor Jesus.'

Mum enjoyed telling this fable of the robin. I'm still
reminded of it whenever I see a robin in the garden and they
are my favourite birds, just as they were hers. I also think of
Jesus when I'm pulling a plaster off my leg, a lot more painful
since I hit puberty. As the plaster is ripping chunks of hair out
of my leg, I even shout his name, the full title: 'JESUS
CHRIST!'

All was harmonious in the garden of Number 23 until the
arrival of a strange black and white tomcat, an enormous beast that was oblivious to all of my mother's frantic protestations
from the frontroom window. The monster would pause
momentarily as it strolled across the postage-stamp lawn and,
with a yawn, would glance up contemptuously in her direction
before it moved on at a leisurely pace to have a nice lie-down
on a bed of pansies. Completely ignoring her, it would stretch
out its paws luxuriantly and roll around, flattening the flowers
with its massive girth.

'Me pansies!' My mother would be driven insane by this
effrontery and the air would turn every shade of blue as she
charged out of the house, hurling a lump of
coal
at the creature
with the speed of a fast bowler at Lord's. She would invariably
miss. My dad said there was more coal in the garden than there
was in the coal bunker in the back yard. It was beginning to
look like a slag heap. The battle raged, and as the weeks progressed
the garden began to show the wear and tear of an
urban war zone.

The cat would lie in wait for the birds, hidden in a bed of
lavender and poised to pounce. It would pee scornfully against
the front door and on the coal in the bunker, which made the
entire house stink of cats. Cocking its insolent arse in the air it
would crouch behind the roses and defecate, digging up
delicate plants as it buried the evidence.

My mother was wild with fury. She set up defence headquarters
in her bedroom and maintained a permanent vigil.
Standing close to the open window, her face half hidden by the
net curtains, she waited patiently, surveying the garden with
gimlet eyes for any sign of the Hun, armed with an artillery of
rocks and coal.

Each morning daily bulletins of how the war was progressing
were shouted up the stairs to me.

'That bloody cat's had all me sweet peas down and it's done
its business right behind the gate again, the filthy swine. I'll
have to throw this slipper out now.'

Blithely the seemingly unassailable
cat
carried on using her
garden as if it were its own personal property, acknowledging
her presence only by spitting viciously when a lump of coal,
fired with great force from the bedroom window, miraculously
scored a bullseye.

The final straw came on that dreadful day when, looking out
of the window, she saw the behemoth sprawled out on the
grass before her, its tail lashing back and forth, proudly taunting
her with its recent kill. Hanging limply from its mouth by
the tip of its wing was the lifeless body of Her Robin. She let
out a strangled scream and was out of the house and into the
garden like a woman possessed. By the time she got there the
enemy had fled, leaving behind the sad little casualty of war.

She was genuinely distressed by what she considered an
unprovoked act of cruelty on the part of the cat and was
unable to stem the tears of frustration that flowed as she
buried the broken corpse of her old friend, lovingly wrapped
in a sheet of blue toilet paper.

'I know it's a natural instinct for a cat to kill a bird,' she
moaned, 'but why didn't its owners put a bell on the cat's
collar? Robbie would've heard it coming then and flown off.'

As she mourned the loss of the bird, she blamed herself for
encouraging it to come into the garden. My poor mother had
tried every repellent known to man to keep the cat out; the
place was a minefield. If you bent to sniff a rose you collapsed
in a violent sneezing fit thanks to the amount of pepper that
she'd sprinkled about the flower beds to deter it from 'doing
its business'. All to no avail: the moggy was impervious to
her attempts. Defeated by this last sickening blow, she took to
her bed.

She lay under the counterpane for a few hours, her mind
seized by dark thoughts. A solution slowly dawned on her and
she began, I believe, to hatch an evil plan that would rid her of
her adversary once and for all. Over the next few days she observed the hated creature from the frontroom window as it
stalked the occupied territory of the garden, destroying what
was left of her beautiful flowers and plants.

I would catch snatches of the curses she was muttering to
herself as she watched it prowl among her flowers. 'That's
right, me lad, you help yourself,' she'd say grimly, tapping her
foot. 'Just you wait.'

One morning I returned home from my paper round earlier
than usual. As I turned the corner to go up the path my mother
suddenly appeared from behind the garden hedge, dressed in
her nightie, holding a dead cat by the tail.

'Ooh! You nearly gave me a bloody heart attack,' she complained,
clutching her chest. 'What d'ya think you're doin',
creeping around at this hour of the bloody morning?'

'I've been doing me paper round,' I answered, 'and what are
you doing creeping around the garden in your nightie swinging
a dead cat in your hand?'

'What cat?' she asked innocently, playing for time. 'Oh,
this . . .' her voice trailing off as she surveyed her nemesis with
more than a glint of satisfaction in her eyes. 'I've just found it
. . . dead, poor thing. I was opening the bedroom window and
I saw it lying there motionless, in a funny position like . . . so
I came down to investigate, and that's why I'm in my nightie.
Now, if you don't mind, keep your bloody voice down and
your big trap shut in case they hear you,' she hissed, glancing
nervously up to Dot next door's bedroom window, 'and help
me get rid of the bloody thing.'

Indicating for me to hold open a bin liner that she just
happened to have with her, she dropped the dead cat into it,
instructing me to dispose of the corpse in the bin chambers of
the block of flats on Sydney Road.

'Serves it bloody right,' she sniffed, as she hurried back
indoors before the neighbours saw her. 'It must have eaten
something.'