These Four Rows Form the Pattern

Remembering a Slow Life from Long Ago

I am restless and wakeful, in pain with my knee, and for some reason, I try to recall the brightest moment of my childhood. I swallow painkillers, and sit with my dog at my feet, while the house sleeps, and it feels like it matters, 62 years in, to remember the sweetest days.

My parents were generous, excessively maybe, and with these old eyes and some hard-earned wisdom, I realise they over-reached themselves, from the latest toys and smartest clothes for a six-year-old, to catastrophic house moves and a real live pony at twelve. I wonder why, now, with this fragile, parent’s heart. What were they trying to prove?

But oh, the kindest days, were visits to my Great Aunt Maud and Uncle Arthur.

Maud and Arthur lived in a splendid council house in Oldbury, which was then in Warley, in Worcestershire, but is now in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell. They were chapel to the core, had signed the pledge, and lived the simplest and slowest of lives.

Maud was the sister of my paternal grandmother. There were six of them: Katie, Joseph, Clement, Maud, Bertha, Agnes.  My grandmother, Katie, was the oldest.  As a child, I remember all but one.  Joe died in the war. Clem was an incorrigible drunk, whom I adored. Bertha and Rand lived in a drab, cold terrace, and Agnes and the other uncle Arthur, whose son in law had been a spiv in the war, in unimaginable comfort in Sutton Coldfield, which, to my childish understanding, was akin to living in Solihull.

Maud, my favourite ever aunt, lived in Oldbury, and despite my mother’s disdain for social housing, I adored her, her home, and everything about them. She was a school dinner lady, with a crossover apron, a tight perm, and an occasional blue rinse.

Maud’s house had a front parlour (for best, Sundays, company, and funerals) which housed plastic fruit, from a special offer from the Co-Op, in a rectangular crimson plastic fruit bowl. The living kitchen was the other side of the small hall, and was the day to day living space, with a comforting fire, a chenille tablecloth, and a budgie, called Joey, in a cage.

The back kitchen, or scullery, held all the delights for me. A rubber cone attached to the old-fashioned tap over the stone sink, to direct the water into the gas kettle, which sang on a hob with an eye level grill. A kitchen cabinet stood to the left of the cooker, with the hatch down to butter white sliced bread (my poor mother!) for tinned salmon sandwiches. Through the open back door, a little yard with a shed, where my cousin Carolyn and I were allowed to play, then a small and precious flower garden, before the length of the vegetable plot.

Aunt Maud loved to knit, but unlike her older sister, complex patterns and size 14 needles were beyond her. She like a cardigan with size 10s for the rib and 8s for the body, and nothing more than a four-row pattern.

My fondest childhood memory, bizarrely, is sitting on the settee in that Sunday parlour with her, going through a great pile of patterns, to choose her next. She would scan through the instructions for the rib and the increase, the change of needles, and the setting of the pattern, looking for the words ‘these * rows form the pattern’, and it needed to be four or less.

“These twelve rows form the patron?!” she would howl. (She always said patron for pattern) and throw the offending leaflet dramatically from her. “These six rows …” she would ponder but think better of it.

My very heart contracts as I remember, her merry laugh, her silliness and kindness. Her insistence that her son, a soldier, had married a Malteser. She was an out and out joy, and if have a quarter of her light, I’ll be gratified.

She loved her home, though she never owned it. They came to stay with us for a few days the week the council fitted an indoor bathroom, and her excitement and gratitude were palpable.

She adored her husband, whose close curled dark hair as well as his now unrepeatable nick name indicate Afro-Caribbean heritage. They were both soft, gentle, and kind despite the unimaginable hardship life had handed them.

She adored her children, although her daughter disappointed her by falling pregnant and marrying a Mormon, she had the grace to admit that the marriage was a good one, and her son in law turned out alright.

She was kind, forgiving, and gentle. She knew her limits and smiled softly on my mother’s competitive ambition. She dusted her fruit, talked to the budgie, and kept her house and garden pristine. She never tried to knit anything with a greater than four row repeat.

2 am has been and gone. The painkillers are at work on my knee.

Contrary to family myth, they did not die together, but three days apart, according to the record. She was 82. A good age, for a poor girl, with a wonky heart.

To love my tiny, shared-ownership house, to find the right tablecloth, and grow enough vegetables the year round on my plot. To make more of the identical kitchen cabinet that now sits in my one living room, and to work productively within my limits, knowing when something is beyond me, and settling for what I can do. To smile that easy smile, to dust my fruit, and live with such great gratitude and generosity.

The legacy of a poor, simple, but joy-filled woman. Thank you, Maud, for these hopeful objectives.