IF ONLY.

by Nadine Morris.

My mother dreamt most of her married life about meeting someone else. Someone who was comfortably off, so that she could do what most of her neighbours did; stay at home. She wanted to do things like listen to Mrs. Dale’s Diary and Woman’s hour while she was ironing the immaculately laundered washing, done in a machine of course, and always on Mondays, instead of giving it an overnight soak in the bath on Saturdays and scrubbed on the washboard on Sundays.

If I close my eyes I can still see the washing in wet weather hanging on the pulley in the kitchen and draped over the tops of doors. My sister and I used to write our names on the steamed up windows and the smell of dampness permeated round the house as everything dried. Then of course the washing would be ironed on an ironing board instead of on a cupboard top in the kitchen, usually last thing at night when she was half-asleep.

To my mother, Hilda Maud Hughes, a name she loathed by the way and wished that her father had stayed in the garden with Maud and not come back into the house to Christen her with it.

"So," she used to say to my sister and me, "don’t do me any favours by naming any daughters you might have, after me." And another thing she was fond of telling us was that besides lumbering her with her name, her father wouldn’t pay for her to have the education she deserved. "I was clever at school, but because our Eric was the boy he got the education. If only I’d had a better handle and better schooling I might have had a different life."

So an ironing board and washing machine were to her, replacements for disappointments and became the outward symbols of being comfortably off and a kept wife. She said that she wanted to leave her kitchen door open when she was cooking, like her neighbours did; so that the smell of baking and roasting would waft across the hedges and fences, indicating that we were being well nourished. The truth of the matter being that my sister and I were helping the comfortably off local chip shop owner become even more so with his modern kitchen where his wife was kept.

The dream of that someone else was always simmering, but until he happened she just carried on with her cleaning jobs or when the circus was in town, becoming an ice-cream lady at the Stadium in Liverpool.

Looking back now I realise that she needed that dream of a man, who would have given her everything she wanted because it helped her cope with my father who gave her nothing but heartache.

Whenever I hear the words, ‘if only’, they remind me of my mother. "If only I hadn’t gone to that football match, I’d never have fallen for your father as he dashed up and down that field," she said. "He was so good-looking, all the girls fancied him. If only I’d known what I know now I’d have let them have him and who knows I might have married Fred Dawson from accounts. He was very sweet on me but, God help me, I had stars in my eyes for your father. Ada Love, plain Jane that she was, married Fred and they’re comfortably off in Woolton in a detached house and he’s big in the Masons. Those do’s must be wonderful, with long frocks and gloves up to your armpits."

"If only Syd hadn’t fallen off that ladder fixing a gutter for his mother he probably would have been picked for Everton. It was a dead cert they’d have given him a chance, particularly when that scout spotted him playing for the Automatic in Edge Lane. If only he hadn’t damaged his knee and had that big operation."

Those were the times when he was in favour and she was feeling sorry for him and remembering the handsome boy he’d been. "Poor Syd. I reckon that’s why he’s such a miserable beggar. Life’s passed him by and if only we’d had a boy. You were going to be Rodney Neal," she’d say to me. "And your father would have had you in football boots before you could walk. That could have been a bit of compensation. No, it’s not his fault he’s the way he is, we must make allowances," she’d say, until he wandered off again with some woman or other and borrowed on the mortgage which threatened the roof over our heads

Then he was the world worse and what she ever saw in him she’d never know. "And now I’ve got to flog myself twice as hard to pay your grandmother back. If only he stays away for good this time then I can find someone else who’ll cherish me till death do us part, instead of having to work morning noon and night to make ends meet. You’ll both have to leave school and get jobs. And don’t you two be telling people about our problems, I don’t want pity. Your father’s away on business if you’re asked."

I’m sitting here at the moment looking at their wedding photograph. It’s all handkerchief style flimsy dresses and those monster bouquets trailing down to the floor. And men standing as stiff as starch in unaccustomed suits with their bowler hats resting awkwardly by their waists. You know I can still hear my mother’s voice raised in anger about that supposedly wonderful day of days. "Look at the way he’s commandeering that rug. Just look at the way he’s shoved me off the edge and onto the gravel. If only I’d hit have him with my flowers and walked away."

When we asked her why she didn’t? She looked at us in amazement. "You’re my most treasured possessions and I wouldn’t have had either of you if it hadn’t been for him."

When my father died and other men showed an interest in her she didn’t want to know, "Syd has spoiled it for anyone else," she said and I detected a touch of pride in her voice which totally amazed my sister and me.

"But mum, go for it. You’ve had a rotten life with dad. You should have left him years ago."

"Why? Poor Sid couldn’t help the way he was. It was that accident that did it and keep in mind, I’d got you two to consider? After all you didn’t ask to be born so I just had to remake the bed again. And he did make me laugh, drunk or otherwise. The trouble was he played the piano like a professional and of course in the pub, it was always another drink for the pianist."

It upset her if we criticised him so we stopped and eighteen months later she joined him. The last thing she said to us was that she was off to have a word with him about the garden gate. "I’ve been at him for ages to mend it but he’s managed to get out of it again. The damn thing’s hanging on one hinge. It’d only take a good blast of wind to send it flying into next door’s garden and Mrs. Pierce is such a fussy beggar about her beds." Then she smiled at us as she’d fallen asleep for the last time. "Poor Syd. He was always useless at do-it-yourself and his mother must have known. If only she hadn’t asked him to mend that gutter."