The Thorns of '69

When Barbara left for Universe City, Dad said she went with a rocket up her ass. 'Not a by-your-leave' according to Mum who still couldn’t quite believe she'd 'just flounced right on out of the door'. I think she really meant 'bounced' for I could see how my sister would have done that if she’d been sat on a rocket. Don’t know where she did blast-off. Maybe the carpark.

Mum was so mad at her going like that as she’d wanted to see her off, and she’d made all those sandwiches too, went out and bought that special coffee. Wouldn’t get anything near as good for a long time, but maybe she could send it on. Dad might as well just tuck into the sandwiches, get fat if he wanted, save them going to waste, and I needn’t act so upset, I could have her room now, but only if I stopped all that god-awful shrieking.

Barbara had made it quite clear she wouldn’t be back on weekends - and who could blame her? I was enough to drain anyone’s energy and their reserves as well. I wondered, had I put a hole in my sister’s fuel tank accidentally? Maybe with a too-sharp pencil when I’d tried to write my name - T for Tessy, T for Trouble - on her bag. I hoped it wouldn’t leak or she might not get where she was going. Might even crash. But, like Mum said, there had been no need for her to go ‘all the way up there’ when she could have just gone to Edinburgh like she’d planned to before I came screaming along. Only now, thanks to me not sleeping, and all my screeching and pestering and not letting anyone have a minute’s peace, Barbara ‘had to have her space, miles and miles of it, and from this day on she might as well be on the moon…’

So, Universe City wasn’t there then? I wished I had seen her go off in her rocket, then I would have known where to wave.

‘Goodnight, Mummy. Goodnight Daddy. Goodnight Barbara.’ I looked to the evening sky hoping she could see me, but then I thought maybe not. She might be looking down at the other side of the house, so I’d left my new room which used to be hers and run back around to Mum and Dad’s room. Don’t know how long it took Dad to rebuild my cot.

The next day I decided to draw my big sister a picture. Mum said she would send it off, but I wanted to do that myself. I could get some string and tie it to a balloon, watch it float, way, way, way, up high till it reached her. But I was bad at tying knots so the picture wouldn’t fix to the balloon and I ended up tearing it. I lost the balloon as well. It burst when it landed on the rosebush. The Honeymoon Rose, Mum called it, because Dad had planted it just after they’d got married and it got its very first bloom the next summer when Barbara came about. I was born in winter so no flowers for me. Autumn, like it was then, was in between so only one flower left, and because Mum loved it so much, I got scared when the balloon got burst on the thorns and all the petals fell off. My fault, my fault! Only one thing for it. I had to hide what was left of the balloon, put it in the dustbin, except I couldn’t get the lid off, so I dug it into the sandpit like I sometimes did with my dolls - the ones I didn’t like so much, the ones Mum had dressed up in baby clothes and old-fashioned dresses, and called silly flowery names. Pansy and Petunia dead and buried till Mum pulled them out again and washed them, pegged them up on the line to dry, telling me off, saying I didn’t deserve them. She wouldn’t be able to do that with a balloon, and I didn’t want to try another, so maybe I’d just blow bubbles instead. Barbara was bound to like them.

If only we could have music in the garden. Not opera like Mum and Dad put on the radiogram, but something poppy and fun like the songs Barbara sung along to. The ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ record was hers and even though I’d scratched it once when I’d tried to put it on myself, she’d sometimes play it for me. And ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ and ‘Little Boxes’. In ‘Little Boxes’ everyone went to Universe City too, and I liked all the funny ‘ticky-tacky’ words, and how the little boxes were all different colours. Next time I’d draw a picture like that, let Mum send it off. She’d worked in a mill before she had me using up all her energies so was much better at tying knots than I was. She was always telling people how many she’d had to do, and if only she’d had a penny for every one, she’d be a millionaire. She’d also say how determined she was that her kids wouldn’t end up doing the same. I couldn’t work out why that was such a bad thing, even if we did get less than a penny a knot, we’d make a million eventually, but then she said something about working her fingers to the bone, and the skin on her hands did look a bit thin and stretched, so that must have been why she’d told the shoe shop man ‘no’ when they didn’t have the buckle shoes in my size and he’d asked if I’d like to try a pair with laces. Nothing to do with me having two left feet at all.

Mum talked about Barbara too, said how glad she was that she was aiming high and had direction, even if she had gone off like she did and question when we’d see her again. The people she spoke to always looked a bit sad at that but then they’d all nod and say, well, that’s something to be thankful for at least, and how wonderful really, for wasn’t it truly amazing what the young folks these days could achieve? Man had been to the moon, after all. Never thought they’d see that in their lifetime, now did they?

I don’t know where Barbara was the night the men went to the moon. She hadn’t left home yet but it was only me and Mum and Dad who saw the landing on TV. We all stayed up so late, and for once they didn’t have to worry about the ‘screaming match’ which was 'certain to follow and last half the night' when they put me into my cot, so it was all really fun and exciting. I didn’t even get shouted at when I practiced being a spaceman by jumping around the furniture. Dad just told me to ‘shush’, they were watching this, and Mum said I should be too because it was a historic event, one I would always remember if I just stopped acting the goat and sat down and paid attention. The goat was my star sign so maybe that was why she thought I was one. I think Dad said Barbara, who was a lion but a quiet one up until I came along, was at some gala… vanting. I asked him later what that meant but he said he didn’t know. Or maybe he didn’t hear me right. Mum would sometimes shout and tell him to open his eyes and ears, so he might have been a bit tired and closed them right before I spoke.

Was Barbara coming home for Christmas, I’d asked when autumn was over and my birthday was near. Dad said I shouldn’t hold my breath, but I knew that already. People who did it turned blue and died which was why I didn’t want to blow up any more balloons to try and send pictures to Barbara, even when Mum said it might be nice if I made the effort, and even if there weren’t any more flowers left on the rose to get destroyed. She must have been wrong about the knots because she got me shoes with laces after all, and even though she had to tie them for me, the bones hadn’t come through her fingers yet.

On Christmas Eve I turned three. Barbara didn’t come but she did send a present. Must have given it to Santa to bring a day early, or she might have dropped it down into the garden herself. Just like the book Mum found on the rosebush, the one with the picture of Jesus on the front.

It had been snowing, lots and lots, and we’d been out feeding the birds when she’d spotted it. All soaking wet, sticking out from under the snow on the branches. ‘Someone up there must be looking out for me,' she’d said, and had taken it into the house and started crying. I’d asked if the book was from Barbara, but she’d told me not to be silly, she’d been thinking of her mum and dad, my granny and grandad who I’d never met because they’d lived so far away at the other end of the country, and were dead now. I knew that because they’d only died a little while before – ‘within a fortnight of one another, that’s how close they were’ – and because of me, Mum had never got to see them again. She’d tried to take me once, on the bus and then on the train, but the train had been busy and I’d got scared and upset when all the people got on, especially the ones sitting across from us who looked like witches. Two wrinkled old women, one big, one small, with scarves on their heads and all dressed in black. The smaller one had a napkin on her lap full of pears gone mushy and brown, and a knife in her hand which she used to keep cutting them up. ‘Want some?’ she’d pushed the yucky pear and the knife towards me, so I’d screamed, and when I didn’t stop, the big one had threatened to throw me out of the window. I’d been so glad to get off – to play again. Choo, choo, choo, I could be a train! An even better one if I could just jump down onto the tracks. Mum, who later told everyone she met that she’d nearly had a heart attack, and how she’d ‘practically had to pull my arm out to save me’, hadn’t got to see Granny and Grandad after that. Couldn’t risk taking me. Couldn’t ‘compromise’ their fragile state of mind and their physical health. Compromise - was that something to do with a promise? Was that why she was crying? The Jesus book might have been her mum and dad’s way of telling her off for not going to visit. Jesus was God’s son and God was always watching, knew if you were bad and broke your promises. Except how could Granny and Grandad have dropped the book down from the sky when Mum had already said they were ‘six-foot under the ground’ and had never been to Universe City in their life? In fact, no one in the family had before Barbara, and that was why everyone thought her so special. That and because she’d never been naughty like me. My fault she’d changed. My fault she’d taken off the way she did, and all the way up there. My fault, my fault!

She did come back though. Like Dad said, she had to find her way home eventually, even if her landing was so unexpected it had left Mum all in a flap. I was so much older by then - three and a half – so most days I forgot all about her. No waving up to the sky, no saying goodnight, no thinking of sending her anything even after I learned that Mum could just put her letters in an envelope and post them in the box. One day the postman brought a letter with something stamped on it. Dad said it was airmail, so Mum must have used that. A plane, of course! There was an airport in Edinburgh so there had to be one in Universe City. Maybe I’d got it wrong about the rocket.

It was summer when Barbara returned – really hot – and, right enough, she didn’t come on a rocket. She said she’d got the bus down despite the long journey and had dragged her suitcases all the way from The Square. I couldn’t imagine a bus coming down from the sky, so maybe she’d got on a plane before then. We were all in the garden when she ‘just waltzed in through the gate, easy-breezy as the grass on yonder hill’ as Mum later told the neighbours, except she'd been wrong about her dancing and there hadn't been any wind. She’d brought me a doll, too big to fit in the sandpit, she’d said, and she’d laughed because it was a really big doll, almost as big as I was, soft bodied like a rag doll but with a hard head. It had long blonde hair like mine, red and white striped dangly legs, and a blue cotton dress on. Loopy Lou, she called it. Loopy not Looby, as she thought I might like that better. ‘More fitting, don’t you think, Dad?’ Then she gave me an ice-lolly that she’d bought at the corner shop. All red and orange and yellow, and shaped like a rocket. ‘Best eat it quick now, before it melts…’ Zoom, Zoom, Zoom… that’s what the lolly was called, but only one Zoom, so that’s what I made it do, running round and round and round as Mum went inside to hunt out her purse to go to the shop as well – excited, I thought, but also angry - and Barbara sat on the lawn next to Dad, Loopy Lou’s legs beating up against mine, my eyes raised to the sky where the ice-rocket flew dripping its yummy-bright rainbow fuel. I would land it soon, lick the drips away then make it take off again… And then it happened. Loopy Lou tripped me up and I fell into the Honeymoon Rose…

Icky-sticky, ticky-tacky, paper-tissue-pale. Oozy-woozy-gooey flying… Up through the air and down again… Inside now... Light to dark… Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, sister singing. Red and white, red and white… Loopy legs… Lost my Zoom, want it back… Crying… What happened here? What now…? A bag full of shopping, special coffee, little boxes… Sure she didn't do it on purpose, throw herself in? I told you about the train, the railway tracks, the screaming, the tantrums, the constant seeking attention…

This time when Barbara left, Mum went to the bus stop with her. That way she wouldn’t have to drag both of her cases herself. Her going to school in Aberdeen didn’t seem nearly as exciting as the rocket launch to the Universe City I’d imagined, so I stayed home with Dad. ‘Best your mother’s not here to see this’, he said when he went to fetch his axe to chop down the Honeymoon Rose. ‘A shame alright’ but he ‘simply couldn’t risk another accident’. Funny how Mum had said the same when she’d got rid of their double bed. I hadn’t even fallen off it, and I could play spaceman on the single ones just the same. Bouncing around like on Luna Land at the fair, or up, up, up and away like the Superman-girl I kept telling them all that I was.