Rites of Passage
The Castle
Three things in my life have fundamentally changed and developed my worldview. One was having my son and my daughter thereby investing in the future. The second was working for a creative extensive period in prison and the Third was the teacher Training course I took when I left school.
My mother was a visionary and encourage me to do this – at great personal sacrifice. I didn’t learn much about teaching in the time when I was there; what I learned was much more important.
Picture this: our girl is older now: skinny and intense. She’s made it to college despite wishing she had been able to go to university. She now sports a ponytail that holds back her bushy hair. She is sitting by a narrow space enclosed by four glazed windows looking out on lawns enclosed by a curtain wall which frames trim triangular lawns.
Behind her is a large square room with four single beds, four wardrobes in four chests of drawers. She reflects that her personal quarter of the space would absorb the whole top floor of the little house she left behind this morning. At the centre of the room is the long writing table with four chairs; to one side is an elegant marble fireplace and cold scuttle full of coal. The fire is not lit but expertly laid with paper and sticks.
Our girl is sitting in the window space, reading a women’s magazine in the dying light from the window. Evading the fact that she is alone among strangers. The last time she slept among strangers was after father died when she stayed with her auntie Lily in Bradford who had something of a reputation as a psychic. At 18 she had never even been on holiday but here she was in the Castle with strangers for five whole weeks. (No home visits until Half Term, the paperwork says.)
The door opens and in comes a girl in green wearing her long black hair in a ponytail. The air fills with the scent of roses.
Our girl blinks.
‘What are you doing here?’ The girl says, smiling. ‘All on your own?’ The accent is as soft as rain from the West. Our girl thinks of Lancaster, where her family lived before they moved to Coventry, the city where her daddy died.
‘I’m reading,’ she croaks, waving her magazine. Even through the croak her tone is sulky, excluding. The girl in green leans on the writing table in the middle of the room. She says, ‘Do know they call this corridor Nursery Corridor?’
Our girl nods. ‘It was in the paperwork. Room 11 Nursery Corridor. It’s the Kingdom of Children up here!’ The girl grins. ‘Have you seen the bathroom?’
Our girl shakes her head, thinking of her little house where there is no bathroom, just a zinc bath on a hook in the yard.
The girl goes on, ‘It’s big enough for four ducal children, I’m telling you. And water! Gallons and gallons of hot water!’
Our girl swallows, unable to say anything. Her throat is sealing itself up again. A chasm of silence grows up between the two of them.
The girl in green glances around the room then turns her dazzling smile on the girl sitting in the window. ‘Look, Love, a few of us are having cups of tea along the corridor. I’ve brought me own tea pot.’ She ties then re-ties her ponytail, pulling the ribbon tight. ‘I came here specially for you. You should come.’ It certainly wasn’t a request. ‘At the very end of the corridor. Up a few steps.’
Our girl nods and shakes her head waving the magazine. The girl in green vanishes. Our girl waits for five minutes, her head down over the magazine before she makes her way along the corridor following the laughter.
So, she makes friends with the charismatic girl in green. In time her own voice returns, and her newfound friend puts soap and sugar poultice on her boils, brought on by eating three rich food three times a day: three times more than she would eat in three days back home.
In time, now part of a group gathering around the girl in green, our girl starts to talk and smile. She learns how to link arms and tolerate the touches of others. Occasionally this gaggle of girls finds life so comical that the collapse into a heap on a bed, helpless with laughter. The girl in green calls this their special heap of worms.
Despite the coal fires in the Adam fireplaces, Nursery Corridor is cold and the girls pile on their coloured tights and flaunt their red, yellow and blue college scarves like flags. In the vacation our girl takes her new friends to visit her sister, now a happily married woman living on a new estate outside Durham. Her sister looks askance at the girls, with their coloured tights and the hippie demeanour. Her joke is that she would have to walk 10 paces behind them in Durham city, so people don’t think they were with her.
In this cold Castle our girl relishes the warmth of the human touch for the first time since her Daddy died, after which she could no longer feel her small hand in his large one his little finger finding space in the sleeve of her cardigan.
