Post by Rosebud on May 9, 2004 12:44:52 GMT 1
If anyone had said to me a month ago, ‘Rosie, by the end of April you’ll be writing a book,’ I’d have thought they were daft. Come to think of it, if I’d told anyone that I was writing one, they’d have probably thought, ‘He’s not right in the head, best humour him.’
I’m not really writing one at all. People like me don’t write. Not proper writing. No, people like me put letters down on a sheet of paper or up on a screen and it’s hit and miss whether anyone can manage to make sense of them. Half the time I can’t myself.
So how can this story be appearing here? It’s simple. I am sitting quietly on my sofa at home with a borrowed tape recorder, a pile of empty tapes and talking it.
Beside me Linny is stretched out and relaxed, her head in my lap and letting me fondle her ears as I talk. Linny is a border collie. A working sheepdog, but a very special one to me. I wouldn’t be doing this now without Linny.
The first time I saw her I knew she was special. She came sidling up to me the way sheepdogs do, half wary, half waggy, and all it took for her to greet me proper was for me to bend down, pat my leg and say, ‘here, girl, come to Rosie.’ All over me, she was then. Wagging and licking and rolling over showing me her belly to be rubbed. I knew then I wanted a dog again.
No, that’s not true. I wanted Linny. Trouble was she belonged to my friend.
People like me might know lots of people and call them friends but we don’t have many proper ones. Not ones that stand by when your world falls apart and help you put the pieces back together stronger than before. Friends like that are special. They don’t take you for a ride or have self-centred, hidden agendas. If they want anything at all in return for their friendship then it’s the pleasure of seeing you happy and living your life proper. That and being there for them in the same way when their lives take a turn down a rough track.
Perhaps if I’d spoken up that day things might have been different? My friend had only just got Linny and another young collie bitch off a farmer he knew. Their owner had died and the farmer had taken in his working dogs but didn't want the two young bitches. My friend wanted one to help him drive the mountain sheep off his land and back where they belonged. He only took the two to stop the other being shot. He told me that but I still never thought to speak up then and ask if I could have Linny. Slow, see? Always have been.
I had a dream that night. A nightmare really. Woke up with sweat pouring off me and expecting to find the the chapel preacher of my youth towering over me. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife; nor his ox; his ass; his sheep; his goat; his dog…”
How I’d hated Sundays. That ritual of Mam scrubbing us kids until our faces shone red above our Sunday clothes. Her dragging a brush through the mop of tangled curls that were yet another curse of my childhood. Then the walk to chapel, Mam with her head high and defiant and me, my brother and sister shepherded along by Bampa to take another dip in the spit the preacher always showered his little congregation with. The older boys used to bet on how far back the preacher’s spit would reach but I was terrified of him. Too terrified to risk turning in my seat to see who had their hankie out and was dabbing their face.
Awake, and with little chance of returning to sleep, I dressed and went downstairs to make some tea.
It was seeing the pack of sausages in the fridge as I got the milk that gave me the idea. Dogs like sausages. Into the oven they went at three o’clock in the morning. If my neighbours got wind of that wonderful scent of baking sausages they’d have thought me dafter than ever.
By four o’clock they were done. Cooked and cut into little pieces, packed in a plastic bag and hidden away in my jacket pocket.
I looked at the kitchen clock. Five past four. My friend was an early riser but not that early. More tea and the minute hand dragged its way down the clock face slower than I’d dragged my feet to chapel. Still more tea, toast, bacon and eggs as the minute hand struggled its upward journey. I tried to concentrate on the early TV news but took nothing in. Had the clock stopped?
Reaching the vicinity of my friend’s home, a full half hour to spare before there was any likelihood of signs of them stirring, I backed the car into a nearby gateway and wished I’d not quit smoking. I could have killed for a fag. Even looked in the car’s ashtray hoping someone I’d given a lift to might have left a butt-end. They had but I hadn’t a light.
Reclining the seat, I lay back closed my eyes and tried to clear my head. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d arrived at the crack of dawn on my friend’s doorstep. Before it had been things like my wife having left me; problems with one or other of my five children; even the troubles of the young couple that became my lodgers for a while. How could I explain my early presence on that occasion? ‘I’ve come to visit your new dog,’ hardly sounded a passable excuse but it was the truth - if not honest.
The dogs alerted me to movement on the yard. If there was a question in the look my friend cast in my direction as I let myself in through the gate it was voiced only as, ‘come for some breakfast, Rosie?’
First there were horses to feed. Water buckets to fill and I was glad of something to do. A bit more thinking space before blurting out, ‘had some sausage in the fridge past its sell-by date. Cooked it for the dogs.’ A half-truth. The sausage was fresh the day before.
‘Wondered why they were so interested in your pocket?’ said my friend. ‘Perhaps you’d best give it them before they start fighting over it?’
I shared it out. Tossed bits towards the sea of faces and bit back the thought that with so many around the place, surely my friend could let me have one? The one that, instead of fading away to her bed once the sausage had gone was nudging and nuzzling my hands at that moment. But I didn’t ask. I still had the vision of the preacher, arms flailing and spit flying, as he brought the fear of God into my life. For so long whenever I thought of God, all I could see was that preacher’s face.
I wanted to speak about that. About the nightmares that haunted me but we weren’t alone. The presence and banter of three lively teenagers and Linny’s head on my knee as I sneaked her bits off my second breakfast plate lightened my mood.
‘If she’s pestering you, I’ll put her out the yard,’ said my friend.
‘No, she’s fine,’ I replied, fussing the dark head with a firmer touch. ‘My mam would love to meet this girl. She’s like my Bampa’s old dog, Nelson.’
‘Then borrow her next time you go to visit her.’
The offer was unexpected. A bolt from the blue and yes, a thorn to prick my conscience over covetous thoughts. Mumbled thanks became lost in the realisation that time had ceased to drag and I was going to be late for work.
All day thoughts wound themselves around in my head like a tangle of thorny briars. So many of them that my insides felt they were being ripped and torn by those thorns.
‘Are you alright?’ a workmate asked.
‘Yes,’ I lied, ‘just a touch of indigestion.’
Falling asleep in front of the TV that evening was a mistake. The high-pitched, piercing tone when the station closed for the night woke me with a start. The wail of a fast approaching train and for a moment I’d been tied to the tracks, helpless as it thundered down on me.
I went to bed but further sleep was impossible. Instead my imagination ran wild. I was a young child again. Solid and sturdy-legged. Knees stained grubby from grass and mud and playing with Nelson, the one-eyed collie Bampa had saved from being drowned in the river. How I’d loved Bampa and the times we’d spent tramping around the woods and fields together, Nelson at our heels.
Most people think my nickname comes from Rosebud and has something to do with me growing roses and liking gardening, but it doesn’t. It was Bampa’s name for me and likely from before I was old enough to toddle after him.
‘Will you look at them rosy cheeks,’ he’d say to people he knew and pinch my cheeks, wobbling them up and down between his finger and thumb and making me laugh.
‘Come along young Rosie,’ he’d say, ‘let’s get out from under your mam’s feet and feed the chickens.’
I loved to run ahead, open the lid to the nest boxes and wonder at the magic of finding the eggs Bampa always said the chickens cooked in their ovens. Look as I might, I never did find one of those ovens but, like Santa Claus, I believed they existed for years and because Bampa had said so. He was full of tall stories. Tales to explain the mysteries that seemed to fill my life as a child. Even the reason why neither my brother nor sister, both older than me, ever seemed to want to play with me.
‘Don’t worry,’ he’d say when I was left behind and my face began to pucker, ‘they’re just jealous of all that curly hair of yours.’
Bampa was the only person I didn’t mind ruffling it or teasing me that way. Where my brother and sister took after Dad, I had many of my mother’s features, if not her intelligence. Next to Mam’s robust, healthy and buxom figure, Dad seemed to pale to insignificance as he sat on his chair in the corner of the kitchen, immobile and silent for hours on end. I needed few reminders from Mam or Bampa to leave Dad be. His presence in the room was enough to have all of us kids creeping around in silence – and for years I was the most silent of all.
‘Don’t worry,’ Bampa would say to Mam, ‘young Rosie will learn to talk when he’s good and ready.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that! His name’s Geoffrey,’ she’d snap back but he never took offence. Just patted her shoulder in a way that seemed to mean something unspoken and I never once heard him call me Geoffrey. As far as he was concerned the only Geoffrey in our house was his son. That strange and sinister presence in the corner chair.
I’m not really writing one at all. People like me don’t write. Not proper writing. No, people like me put letters down on a sheet of paper or up on a screen and it’s hit and miss whether anyone can manage to make sense of them. Half the time I can’t myself.
So how can this story be appearing here? It’s simple. I am sitting quietly on my sofa at home with a borrowed tape recorder, a pile of empty tapes and talking it.
Beside me Linny is stretched out and relaxed, her head in my lap and letting me fondle her ears as I talk. Linny is a border collie. A working sheepdog, but a very special one to me. I wouldn’t be doing this now without Linny.
The first time I saw her I knew she was special. She came sidling up to me the way sheepdogs do, half wary, half waggy, and all it took for her to greet me proper was for me to bend down, pat my leg and say, ‘here, girl, come to Rosie.’ All over me, she was then. Wagging and licking and rolling over showing me her belly to be rubbed. I knew then I wanted a dog again.
No, that’s not true. I wanted Linny. Trouble was she belonged to my friend.
People like me might know lots of people and call them friends but we don’t have many proper ones. Not ones that stand by when your world falls apart and help you put the pieces back together stronger than before. Friends like that are special. They don’t take you for a ride or have self-centred, hidden agendas. If they want anything at all in return for their friendship then it’s the pleasure of seeing you happy and living your life proper. That and being there for them in the same way when their lives take a turn down a rough track.
Perhaps if I’d spoken up that day things might have been different? My friend had only just got Linny and another young collie bitch off a farmer he knew. Their owner had died and the farmer had taken in his working dogs but didn't want the two young bitches. My friend wanted one to help him drive the mountain sheep off his land and back where they belonged. He only took the two to stop the other being shot. He told me that but I still never thought to speak up then and ask if I could have Linny. Slow, see? Always have been.
I had a dream that night. A nightmare really. Woke up with sweat pouring off me and expecting to find the the chapel preacher of my youth towering over me. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife; nor his ox; his ass; his sheep; his goat; his dog…”
How I’d hated Sundays. That ritual of Mam scrubbing us kids until our faces shone red above our Sunday clothes. Her dragging a brush through the mop of tangled curls that were yet another curse of my childhood. Then the walk to chapel, Mam with her head high and defiant and me, my brother and sister shepherded along by Bampa to take another dip in the spit the preacher always showered his little congregation with. The older boys used to bet on how far back the preacher’s spit would reach but I was terrified of him. Too terrified to risk turning in my seat to see who had their hankie out and was dabbing their face.
Awake, and with little chance of returning to sleep, I dressed and went downstairs to make some tea.
It was seeing the pack of sausages in the fridge as I got the milk that gave me the idea. Dogs like sausages. Into the oven they went at three o’clock in the morning. If my neighbours got wind of that wonderful scent of baking sausages they’d have thought me dafter than ever.
By four o’clock they were done. Cooked and cut into little pieces, packed in a plastic bag and hidden away in my jacket pocket.
I looked at the kitchen clock. Five past four. My friend was an early riser but not that early. More tea and the minute hand dragged its way down the clock face slower than I’d dragged my feet to chapel. Still more tea, toast, bacon and eggs as the minute hand struggled its upward journey. I tried to concentrate on the early TV news but took nothing in. Had the clock stopped?
Reaching the vicinity of my friend’s home, a full half hour to spare before there was any likelihood of signs of them stirring, I backed the car into a nearby gateway and wished I’d not quit smoking. I could have killed for a fag. Even looked in the car’s ashtray hoping someone I’d given a lift to might have left a butt-end. They had but I hadn’t a light.
Reclining the seat, I lay back closed my eyes and tried to clear my head. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d arrived at the crack of dawn on my friend’s doorstep. Before it had been things like my wife having left me; problems with one or other of my five children; even the troubles of the young couple that became my lodgers for a while. How could I explain my early presence on that occasion? ‘I’ve come to visit your new dog,’ hardly sounded a passable excuse but it was the truth - if not honest.
The dogs alerted me to movement on the yard. If there was a question in the look my friend cast in my direction as I let myself in through the gate it was voiced only as, ‘come for some breakfast, Rosie?’
First there were horses to feed. Water buckets to fill and I was glad of something to do. A bit more thinking space before blurting out, ‘had some sausage in the fridge past its sell-by date. Cooked it for the dogs.’ A half-truth. The sausage was fresh the day before.
‘Wondered why they were so interested in your pocket?’ said my friend. ‘Perhaps you’d best give it them before they start fighting over it?’
I shared it out. Tossed bits towards the sea of faces and bit back the thought that with so many around the place, surely my friend could let me have one? The one that, instead of fading away to her bed once the sausage had gone was nudging and nuzzling my hands at that moment. But I didn’t ask. I still had the vision of the preacher, arms flailing and spit flying, as he brought the fear of God into my life. For so long whenever I thought of God, all I could see was that preacher’s face.
I wanted to speak about that. About the nightmares that haunted me but we weren’t alone. The presence and banter of three lively teenagers and Linny’s head on my knee as I sneaked her bits off my second breakfast plate lightened my mood.
‘If she’s pestering you, I’ll put her out the yard,’ said my friend.
‘No, she’s fine,’ I replied, fussing the dark head with a firmer touch. ‘My mam would love to meet this girl. She’s like my Bampa’s old dog, Nelson.’
‘Then borrow her next time you go to visit her.’
The offer was unexpected. A bolt from the blue and yes, a thorn to prick my conscience over covetous thoughts. Mumbled thanks became lost in the realisation that time had ceased to drag and I was going to be late for work.
All day thoughts wound themselves around in my head like a tangle of thorny briars. So many of them that my insides felt they were being ripped and torn by those thorns.
‘Are you alright?’ a workmate asked.
‘Yes,’ I lied, ‘just a touch of indigestion.’
Falling asleep in front of the TV that evening was a mistake. The high-pitched, piercing tone when the station closed for the night woke me with a start. The wail of a fast approaching train and for a moment I’d been tied to the tracks, helpless as it thundered down on me.
I went to bed but further sleep was impossible. Instead my imagination ran wild. I was a young child again. Solid and sturdy-legged. Knees stained grubby from grass and mud and playing with Nelson, the one-eyed collie Bampa had saved from being drowned in the river. How I’d loved Bampa and the times we’d spent tramping around the woods and fields together, Nelson at our heels.
Most people think my nickname comes from Rosebud and has something to do with me growing roses and liking gardening, but it doesn’t. It was Bampa’s name for me and likely from before I was old enough to toddle after him.
‘Will you look at them rosy cheeks,’ he’d say to people he knew and pinch my cheeks, wobbling them up and down between his finger and thumb and making me laugh.
‘Come along young Rosie,’ he’d say, ‘let’s get out from under your mam’s feet and feed the chickens.’
I loved to run ahead, open the lid to the nest boxes and wonder at the magic of finding the eggs Bampa always said the chickens cooked in their ovens. Look as I might, I never did find one of those ovens but, like Santa Claus, I believed they existed for years and because Bampa had said so. He was full of tall stories. Tales to explain the mysteries that seemed to fill my life as a child. Even the reason why neither my brother nor sister, both older than me, ever seemed to want to play with me.
‘Don’t worry,’ he’d say when I was left behind and my face began to pucker, ‘they’re just jealous of all that curly hair of yours.’
Bampa was the only person I didn’t mind ruffling it or teasing me that way. Where my brother and sister took after Dad, I had many of my mother’s features, if not her intelligence. Next to Mam’s robust, healthy and buxom figure, Dad seemed to pale to insignificance as he sat on his chair in the corner of the kitchen, immobile and silent for hours on end. I needed few reminders from Mam or Bampa to leave Dad be. His presence in the room was enough to have all of us kids creeping around in silence – and for years I was the most silent of all.
‘Don’t worry,’ Bampa would say to Mam, ‘young Rosie will learn to talk when he’s good and ready.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that! His name’s Geoffrey,’ she’d snap back but he never took offence. Just patted her shoulder in a way that seemed to mean something unspoken and I never once heard him call me Geoffrey. As far as he was concerned the only Geoffrey in our house was his son. That strange and sinister presence in the corner chair.