All rights reserved 10/12/2009  Steve Deronda

The start of it

The whispers floated in the sea air, alongside autumn leaves, birdsong and the aroma of roasting meat. They shook the pram and whistled around the sides of the house until they found my grandmother, bent double over the brassicas, seeking solace as she always did now, in the latter part of the afternoon, in manual labour and the cultivation of her neat little vegetable garden.

It mattered little that she was so preoccupied with the job in hand, or that her deafness was becoming increasingly acute, she knew they were there she could feel them. Bounding around the corners, they whipped up the laundry, and left it dancing on the line, all bibs and nappies, nappies and bibs. Then building in intensity and venom they swept around the greenhouse, rattling its glass before shaking the last apples from their tree. Then stopping short of my grandmother and taking a long deep breath, they went without mercy for her heart.

As an easy target, you might expect her to be allowed the opportunity of a fair fight. She’d have had a go too, there can be no denying. Alas though it wasn’t to be, there was no way they could have looked her in the eye. So before she even had time to straighten up, they took their chance and without showing the slightest mercy, took out their knives and cut right through her.

The pain was always intense and the hurt would never end. No bandage could cover it and surgery was rendered useless, the prognosis was a crap one, this was a life sentence. She wiped her eyes, grit her teeth and cursing the day he rode into their lives, drove the spade deep into the ground.

They hovered like paparazzi at the front gate. Their sights set and fingers poised, ready to pull the trigger. They'd have killed for a glimpse of him. He was their 'A' list. Or as consolation, an opportunity to stare righteous indignation at my mother would suffice. But they were out of luck today and eventually their conversation took its usual course.

The first to speak was a rather well dressed lady, standing tall and proud, a fortress in a long navy coloured coat, buttoned to the neck against invasion. Gesturing with a gloved hand toward the pram. ‘There he is again' she would say to her audience.

'Always here’ confirmed the most compassionate of her companions ‘Ah the shame of it. Can you imagine? Should have been drowned at birth. And I thought they were a decent family'

A third woman, a prize fighter in a velvet scarf, hitherto impatiently biding her time, now seized the opportunity and embarked upon her own little speech 'Well more fool you. I'm not so easily duped. Margaret was always such a quiet child, too quiet if you ask me. I for one never took to her' She would always stop at this point and look around at the others conspiratorially before adding 'And I'll tell you something else', and now she was jabbing with clenched fist in my direction 'I don't know about the rest of you but I reckon he is just the start of it'

The others nodded and a minute silence was observed. Cars passed, beeping their horns in solidarity, a neighbourhood dog barked his support and vociferous seagulls gave swooping endorsement. A fourth woman arrived. Late, she had further to walk, and as such was more of an outsider. She desperately wanted in and today came armed with a scoop and unable to contain it, blurted out, ‘I’ve seen him….. I’ve actually seen him, the other day, sat in his car, like the duke himself, like big John Wayne, like he was sheriff of the whole darn county’

'I don't believe, no one has ever seen him. You imagined it, or you've been on the gin' it was the prize fighter again. They were all peeved though, and their laugh couldn't hide it. The fortress ended the debate, 'he'll not likely be seen around here in a hurry'

She was wrong though. I was one month old that day and only the night before, my mother sneaked out of the house and across the road into the arms of her very own wild west hero.  Under cover of darkness he threw her into his wagon, un-holstered his gun and filled her belly with enough lead to make me a kid sister.

And so it was that, early in the following spring, when the pregnancy could no longer be denied, and the flow of tears was reeking havoc with my grandparents soft furnishings, and John Wayne had long since ridden off once more into the sunset, we found ourselves on a bus heading anywhere; ‘anywhere but here’. My mother, carrycot in one hand and a carrier bag in the other, was leaving home. We were on a slow, slow journey to number 9.