Washing up in Malta

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© 2012, 2014 by Josephine Burden. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 03/31/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1803-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1804-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1805-1 (e)

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prologue

PART 1 Starting Out

Chapter 1. Jessica: Post World War 2

Chapter 2. Grace: Post World War 1

Chapter 3. Jessica Gets Out Of Trouble

PART 2 Travelling Through

Chapter 4. A Married Woman: 1939-54

Chapter 5. The Death Of Bill Boatman: 1970S

Chapter 6. Jessica Goes Fishing: 1980S

PART 3 Washing Up

Chapter 7. Jessica And Grace

Chapter 8. Endings And Beginnings

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dedicated to my mother whose stories gave birth to Grace Boatman.

Thanks also to my friends, Carol and Olive, and to my sister, Jackie, who heard my own tales and encouraged me.

PROLOGUE

I am old. Age has come quietly like snow in a Scottish winter. It cloaks my mind in drifts of forgetfulness and slows the pulse of blood in my veins. When spring comes, it no longer stirs my heart to new adventures.

I sit in the Mediterranean sun and watch children running through the dancing jets of the new fountain in the square. I see young people using one hand to text their friends and the other to cradle the buttock of a lover. I greet my neighbour pushing her grandson in a stroller as she walks to the bakery where her daughter works long hours.

I see all this and I want to tell my story for the young people in the square. I want to tell them about my mother who turned her back on Malta to bear the children of her Scottish man and about me who has returned when I have neither. Perhaps I will not tell you why, I will just tell the story. My name is Jessica.

PART 1

Starting out

When a girl starts out

The circle sings

For her life holds others in her soul

When a girl starts out

Her mother cries

For her own sad longing to be free

When a girl starts out

She cries and sings

For both joy and pain are in her choice

CHAPTER 1

Jessica: Post World War 2

JESSICA WAS PLAYING on her own with some pots and pans. It was the weekend so dad was home from work and his presence was a cosy part of the household atmosphere as Jessica built her pots and pans into a farmer’s field with cows. A weak shaft of sunlight penetrated the tiny basement window and shone over her shoulder onto the rag rug.

Through the open door to the garden, Jessica could hear her mother in the outside washroom. Her younger brother, Peter, was asleep in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers. Her older brother, Ben, was off on his round of the village, charming the Scottish housewives into offering him toast or a piece of freshly baked cake if he was lucky and the sugar ration was up to it.

Dad wasn’t there any more. Jessica looked up and knocked over her pots and pans. She could still hear her mother in the outside washroom but there was no hint of her father. The door was open. She ran down the garden path, round the garden wall, onto the pebbly beach.

Dad was rowing out in his small dinghy to go fishing. The salt smell of the sea stung her eyes. Slipping and sliding on seaweed and tears, she made it to the water’s edge and howled as she watched her father pull away from the shore. He kept on rowing steadily, rowlocks creaking and all the time looking back at a small child whose heart was breaking.

Jessica sat down on the long strands of brown seaweed. The quiet popping of their air sacks kept her company as she waited. She locked her eyes on the small figure in the boat as he paused to drop his spinners into the water. Seagulls winged and watched, waiting for an easy meal. Jessica did not see them.

Dad brought home blue striped mackerel for tea, and his smile for Jessica was only slightly reproachful.

Jessica trailed after her brother, Ben, up the steep lane at the side of the house to go to school on the bus that stopped across the village street in Arrochar. She was not yet five but the head teacher at Tarbet told mum she could start school early. Ben always walked up ahead of her and didn’t bother to look round to see if she was following.

Jessica studied her feet. They became slower and slower to allow her to count the number of holes in the brown lace-ups. When she found there were eight holes on each shoe, she stopped and looked around. Ben was at the top of the lane looking left and right before crossing the road. Jessica looked left. There was an interesting moss pattern growing on one of the stones in the wall along the side of the lane. She wandered over to investigate and that lead her back down the lane onto the beach.

She leaned her back against the sea wall and looked over the beach to her father’s boat bobbing on its mooring. A complicated system of ropes lay across the beach. Dad called it a trotline and she sometimes watched as he pulled on one of the ropes and brought the boat in to shore. She wondered which rope you had to pull.

Jessica looked around the corner of the wall and up the lane. There was no sign of Ben or the school bus.

What are you doing there? asked mum. Jessica didn’t know. She hung back as mum took her hand and led her back up through the garden to the house. The school bus had gone and mum seemed cross. Jessica couldn’t tell her why she had walked away from the bus and skipped school. Jessica couldn’t say that it just seemed like a good idea at the time or that she wanted to go fishing with her father.

Jessica’s dad got a job with a government department and the Boatman family were on the move again. They went to a place called Halfpenny Green in the North of England. They lived in an old Nissen hut next to a camp for people displaced by the Second World War. There was no seaside for Jessica to wander along exploring and children started school when they were older in England so she didn’t have to go to school.

Jessica explored the camp. At first she just wandered along the outside of the barbed wire and looked at the people walking around their huts inside. There were a few kids like her and sometimes they stared at each other. One day she found a bit of a hole where the wire had been pulled up and she managed to scramble under and go into the camp. People were talking a funny language but they smiled at her. Some older boys were playing a game with a ball and Jessica watched them for a long time. Another kid her age came and stood next to her.

When the kid’s mother called her to go home, Jessica also ran off to go back under the wire. But this time she wasn’t careful enough. She was almost through to the outside when a barb hooked in behind her knee. She tried to wriggle the last few inches but the wire tore at the skin on the back of her leg. If she lay very still the pain was better so that’s what she did until dad found her when he was riding his bike home from work. Even then, it took a long time for dad to get the barb out and the scar on the back of her leg stayed with Jessica for the rest of her life.

The displaced persons’ camp had a big coal heap. Everyone in the camp went along with their bucket when they needed fuel for heating or cooking. Jessica’s mum soon worked out what the routine was and when their own coal ran out she donned a headscarf and joined the queue of refugee women. Sometimes Jessica went with her and stood shyly at her side watching the older girls roam around the camp in small groups.

Jessica was still walking around with a bandage on her leg when dad brought home a tiny rabbit. He was riding his bike home from work and found it at the side of the road with the mother rabbit lying dead beside it. He slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. When he got home, he was very mysterious and made a game out of revealing what he had hidden in his jacket pocket. Jessica loved the game because dad seemed so happy.

At first the rabbit had the run of the house and used to hide behind the settee. Jessica learnt to call its name, ‘Rudi, Rudi, Rudi’ and it would come out. Dad fed it with milk off his fingertips but as it got bigger mum said it was unhygienic to keep it indoors so dad built a run for the rabbit in the garden. He used wire netting from the displaced persons camp but it wasn’t long before the rabbit tunnelled out and disappeared. Jessica was curious about how the rabbit had managed to make the tunnel and run away but she did not miss the furry creature bobbing around in its cage.

Soon after the rabbit disappeared, dad announced that he had been posted to Malta and they were all on the move again.

On the plane from England, Jessica was sick all over the frilly pink doll that someone had thrust into her arms at the airport. The doll was half as big as she was and had smooth, hard pink flesh. The elbows and knees were quite interesting as they were hinged so you could bend the arms and legs into different positions. But after fiddling with those for a while, she had to sit with all the pink frills spilling over her lap like her mother who was sitting next to her with Jessica’s baby brother, Peter, asleep across her belly.

Jessica was looking out of the window at some mountains that reminded her of going to school in Scotland. The seats in the noisy plane faced backwards and made her feel odd.

A neat cardboard box of food was placed in front of her. Inside the box, sandwiches were arranged in a little tray. Jessica watched her mother to see what she did and then she carefully avoided her frilly pink doll to eat up everything she had been given. She finished the last mouthful as the plane hit some turbulence over the Alps and Jessica had nowhere to deposit her lunch but onto the engulfing frills of her doll.

Jessica lay back and turned her face to the window as a strange woman and her mother fussed around, removed cardboard boxes and took away the frilly pink dress. Her doll looked odd with all that hard, pink skin exposed and the funny cracks at elbows and knees. Jessica stared at the two black holes where the tops of the legs went into the hips leaving a smooth little bridge between. She wondered how the legs stayed in there. Her older brother, Ben, who was sitting in the window seat behind her looked over the top of the seat and gloated at her discomfort.

By the time everything was cleared up, they had travelled down the length of Italy and were flying across the sea towards Malta. Her little brother, Peter, woke up, looked around solemnly and peed down the front of mum’s new cream suit that she had tailored especially for her return journey to Malta.

They had to wait for everybody else to get off before they did. Mum tried to tidy up as best she could and arranged a blanket to drape down the front of her suit to hide the dark patch.

When they got to the door at the top of the stairs, the heat hit them like a wet towel and Jessica was frightened. She hung back behind her mother and held her skirt. Ben pushed her from behind and Jessica set off grimly down the stairs looking hard at her own feet.

At the bottom of the stairs, a man in uniform stepped forward. Jessica looked around for dad but he wasn’t there. A cluster of people wilted in the sun behind a metal barrier. Mum spoke to the uniformed man and then led her children across the tarmac towards the waiting group of people. Jessica felt the heat burning up through the soles of her shoes. She wondered why they were here. She wondered why her mother was greeting the funny looking people behind the barrier and why everyone stared at her and smiled. Her brother Ben came and stood stiffly next to her and they waited in the hot sun while people leaned over the barrier to hug them as best they could. When her mother finally turned away to walk back to the waiting car, everyone in the group looked disappointed as though they had been told they had to start school when they were expecting tea and cakes.

The car drove them through a strange, colourless landscape. Jessica had to sit in the middle of the back seat and she couldn’t see very much. Strange smells wafted in with the hot wind through the open windows. Jessica lay back on the leather seat and went to sleep.

Jessica paid very little attention to the time they stayed in a hotel. Even when her father joined them, she felt listless and uninterested. Another car came and took them to a house with a huge, wide staircase where she was given her own room with a bed pushed up against a wall.

Ben, Jessica and Peter lay around indoors for several days. There was a huge mirror in a gilded frame on the landing of the marble stairs up to their flat and Jessica found the shock of her reflection stopped her venturing beyond the top stair. Besides, it was too hot and too different to go out. Sometimes she went up the stairs to the peculiar flat roof where you could look out over other rooftops to the sea, but it was too hot and burned her bare feet so she never stayed very long.

Dad went off to work each day. Mum cleaned the tiled floors and prepared food. The children were gripped by a purposeless lethargy. It was school holidays so Ben and Jessica had no way of finding their way into this hot, stony, yellow world. They heard strange voices calling from the street, the sounds of animals and wheels as the vegetable cart went round or a herd of goats was moved through the village for milking.

It seemed like a long time before Jessica ventured out with her mother to the garage shop next to their house. The man behind the counter smiled at her and talked to them in a curious English. He invited Jessica to see his rabbits that he kept in a room behind the shop. Jessica hung on to mum but peeped at the big cages that were built on legs so the rabbits couldn’t tunnel out like their own rabbit had done so long ago in Half-penny Green. The shop keeper reached down and picked her up to give her a better view but Jessica didn’t like the way he held her up between her legs so she wriggled out of his grasp and returned to stand beside her mother.

Their landlady, Ma Schultz, came into the shop and the awkward moment passed as the shopkeeper went to serve her. She bought a bottle of cheap Malta wine and settled down at a table to enjoy it. Jessica and mum escaped to the security of their upstairs flat.

That weekend, dad took them all on an expedition down through Paceville to the sea. Here there was a shallow rock pool with smooth, slightly slimy rocks on the bottom. Jessica was allowed to take off all her clothes except her knickers and go into the pool. Some of the rocks around the edges near the sea were very sharp and difficult to walk on, but in the little pool Jessica and Peter could sit or lie on their tummies on the smooth stones. Mum and dad had swimming costumes and Jessica heard them laughing as they went into the sea. There was a small lagoon with a rocky ledge a few metres out from the water’s edge.

For the first time since coming to Malta, Jessica became absorbed in the pleasure of the game. Peter sat in the warm water of the little pond and looked glum. Ben sat at the edge of the sea with his legs dangling and watched his parents swimming to the rocky ledge.

Ben was the first of the children to learn how to swim and take the plunge into the lagoon to swim out to the rocky ledge. All through that first summer, Jessica watched people swimming and lay on her tummy in the little pool to practice. By the end of summer, she too could swim out to the ledge. Dad helped them all in turn with rubber rings that he progressively deflated and rides on his back. But for Jessica and Peter it was the little pool where they learnt the most.

The next week, Ben and Jessica started school at St Andrews. A bus picked them up each morning from outside their house. Mum came with them the first day but after that they organised themselves. The other children were mostly from Army families living at Paceville and St Andrews.

At the start of the second day, a teacher asked Jessica what religion she was. Jessica just looked at her with no idea what she meant. The teacher said You’re probably Roman Catholic, and Jessica nodded. She was sent to Catholic assembly. All the other children were chanting words she didn’t understand and doing things with their hands. She tried to copy but it was very confusing. By the time dad told her teacher at the first parents evening that Jessica was Church of Scotland, Jessica had almost mastered the prayers and songs that mum must have learnt when she was a little girl.

And the cord got twisted around its neck and it was born dead, Jessica was telling her two friends who lived down in Paceville. This was what mum told her when Jessica asked why she wasn’t going to have a baby sister after all.

One of the girls jumped up straight away and raced in to her house. Jessica sat on the edge of the pavement and gathered up suitable stones to play five stones. She was absorbed in trying to catch them on the back of her hand when the front door opened and her friend’s mother appeared.

How dare you tell my daughter such terrible things, she shouted. Jessica clutched her stones and looked at her friend’s mother as her words accelerated and jumbled together. She could see her friend hanging back behind her mother and looking at Jessica with something like fear. Jessica couldn’t follow the full tirade but she did understand the final get away from here. I don’t want you ever playing with my daughter again.

Jessica gathered her stones and walked slowly up the road. When she got to the front door, Ben was just arriving back from somewhere too.

Why didn’t you go to the party? he asked. Jessica stared at him and vaguely remembered that it was somebody’s birthday party that day. The invitation had been sitting on the window ledge since her mother had gone into hospital to have the new baby.

Jessica felt her face collapsing and she threw her stones onto the ground. The tears that poured out of her had something to do with missing the party, something to do with her mother’s failure to remind her it was on, but mostly it was about not having a little sister to play with and not understanding why another mother seemed to hate her and didn’t want her to be friends with her daughter. She raced upstairs and threw herself onto her bed where she sobbed for a world where someone could be born and be dead at the same time.

That first year in Malta was also a year of broken bones. The scattered limestone blocks and uneven, rocky ground of this new place lured the children into dangerous situations. Once they had recovered from the shock of heat and strangeness, Ben and Jessica ventured out and explored the terrain around their new home. The first to fall was Ben who was playing in an unfinished building across the street.

You can’t come, Jessica, he said pompously before the fall, it’s too dangerous.

There were plenty of half built buildings scattered everywhere in Malta. He tumbled from the first floor and was lucky just to break an arm.

Jessica was the next. She was playing on a ramp that people drove onto to mend their cars. The game was jumping from one side of the ramp to the other. Jessica was wearing lace up shoes with leather soles. As she pushed off, her shoe slipped, her shin crashed into the sharp, stone edge and she tumbled into the pit beneath the ramp.

She lay there winded and silent as Peter raced up the road to get help. After what seemed like ages, she managed to crawl to the start of the ramp as her father arrived. He swept her up into his arms with her legs hanging over his left forearm. The pain became excruciating and Jessica howled.

Stop it, Jess, said dad in his no arguments voice, and somehow Jessica did stop. They laid her on the couch at home and dad improvised splints for her leg until the ambulance came.

Jessica was in hospital for several weeks with plaster from toe to hip. She thought about the joints on her doll and made up stories about why there was water puddled under her bed sometimes. According to Jessica, Malta had rainstorms every night whilst she was in hospital and the rain blew in through the open window beside her bed and soaked her mattress. Jessica continued to wet her bed until she was ten years old.

When she came out of hospital, they put a funny kind of lump on her plastered foot so she could swivel on it with the leg propped outwards slightly. She went back to school and was as fast as anyone else in walking from the school building to the lunchroom along the side of the soccer field. She even worked out a way to push herself on her new red scooter using the plastered leg.

Every time she went back to get new plaster put on, they told her off about the cracks that had appeared in her knee. She became adept at pushing a ruler down her thigh to scratch. By the time they cut the plaster off for the last time, the straight, dirty white leg had become part of Jessica.

You’ll have to start bending your knee if you want to get your leg working properly again, said mum.

Jessica