Once We Were Mothers Read online

  TAJIB and NEVENKA enter laughing.

  NEVENKA: Tajib thought you’d run away.

  MILENA: I’ve had a bird hopping about in my stomach all night.

  TAJIB: So you came up here to set it free?

  MILENA: I came up here because I’d flushed the toilet so many times the whole house was awake and snarling at me.

  NEVENKA: I should like to roll down this hill from top to bottom, over and over like a log.

  MILENA: You’d be scratched and torn to pieces. Just because it looks inviting doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

  TAJIB: Like marriage?

  NEVENKA: He’s having doubts.

  MILENA: I can understand that.

  NEVENKA: It’s a very serious business.

  MILENA: Choosing the right person.

  NEVENKA: This one? Or that one?

  MILENA: That one? Or this one?

  NEVENKA: Come on Tajib, which is it to be? The guests are waiting, the food is prepared. Mamas and aunties have been cooking for weeks, bourrek and baklava, roast lamb on a spit, cakes and pastries, patties and pies. Papas and uncles are tasting their home-made plum brandy, comparing potency – the way men do. The room next to your parents lies waiting, freshly painted, the recently purchased, nearly-new double bed strewn with petals. The walls are thin but you were always a quiet lover. Tonight, as your friends carry you to bed – preserving, for tradition’s sake, your manly strength for the weighty task of consummating your marriage – spare a thought for them, the old couple in the bed next door. Will this be you in thirty years’ time? Finishing each other’s sentences, arguing still about the same things, knowing each mole and wrinkle, stretch mark and scar as if it were your own. Will this be you, holding hands in the dark, listening to the future in the room next door, hearing in the creak of the headboard the laughter of your grandchildren springing to life, their footsteps running through your dreams?

  TAJIB: I could do with a drink.

  NEVENKA: You could do with us both.

  TAJIB: (Laughing.) I could. Oh I could. But you I’d divorce in a fortnight.

  NEVENKA: We’d last that long?

  TAJIB: Whereas you. Milena moya doosho, my soul.

  He puts his hand on her stomach.

  How is the bird?

  MILENA: Calm. Thank you.

  She kisses him.

  And thank you, my Kuma, my best of friends.

  She puts her other arm round NEVENKA and kisses her too. MILENA looks at TAJIB.

  MILENA: Ready?

  TAJIB: Steady.

  NEVENKA: Let’s go to a wedding!

  Burst of fireworks/gunfire, music and singing.

  Scene Eleven

  Kitty’s Story (4)

  KITTY: Gordon finds it hard to understand. Why I had to put my foot down. I’m not that kind of a person usually. Well I thought I wasn’t. Now that everything’s back to normal, rationing over and all the excitement about oranges and bananas being available once more. Not that you don’t have to be careful mind you. Old habits die hard and making ends meet is the duty of every careful housewife. And I am careful. In most things. But if you take your eye off the ball, just once, you pay,dearly. Believe me. That said, managing is what I’m good at. Kitty Annie Cornish, housewife and mother. I find the mornings the hardest. Getting up. But not today.

  KITTY consults her list as JEANETTE enters with a duffle bag.

  Sausage rolls, bridge rolls, sandwich spread sandwiches – triangles, crusts off – swiss roll, Arctic roll.

  JEANETTE: Plenty of rolls then.

  JEANETTE takes out her dirty gym kit.

  KITTY: Have I forgotten anything?

  JEANETTE: Mum…

  KITTY: I don’t do washing till Monday.

  JEANETTE: It’s all right I’ll do it myself

  KITTY: That’s nice. Jelly, I forgot the jelly.

  JEANETTE: It doesn’t matter.

  KITTY: I want it to be perfect.

  JEANETTE: I know but…

  KITTY: Maybe eighteen’s too old for jelly anyway. We do have the Arctic roll. And a birthday cake of course. You’re never too old for that. Make yourself useful and fold these.

  KITTY hands JEANETTE some napkins.

  I borrowed Dolly’s icer. I just wrote Susie, there wasn’t room for Susannah. That’s one thing Dad and I never thought of.

  JEANETTE: Sorry?

  KITTY: Susannah and Jeanette – they’re very large names to fit on birthday cakes. Still I don’t suppose they had icers in my grandmother’s day and you were off a knitting pattern.

  JEANETTE: And there was me thinking it was the stork brought me.

  KITTY: Shouldn’t you be at school?

  JEANETTE: It’s half term.

  KITTY: Oh.

  Where’s your dad?

  JEANETTE: He’s down the allotment.

  KITTY: But he’ll be late, for tea.

  JEANETTE: He had to go to the council offices.

  KITTY: I’ve told him, I’m not having it. I’m not moving from here. They can’t make us. That’s what we fought the war for wasn’t it?

  JEANETTE: Don’t get yourself in a state.

  KITTY: Can they make us?

  JEANETTE: No, but…

  KITTY: Then I’m not going. What about my neighbours?

  JEANETTE: The whole street’ll be moving, not just us.

  KITTY: You weren’t here when all the windows blew out.

  JEANETTE: I wasn’t born.

  KITTY: Exactly. Dolly and I found glass everywhere. Weeks it took us and we were still coming across shards down the back of the chairs, lodged under the skirting board. You can’t relocate that.

  JEANETTE: It’s time to move on. Things are changing.

  KITTY: I don’t want them to. I don’t want to live up in the clouds. I don’t want a view. I can see more than enough from my bedroom window here. I can see the park and the trees going down to the railway line. I know here.

  JEANETTE: Okay, okay.

  KITTY: I had my babies here. I survived here. I know where everything is.

  JEANETTE: Mum, it’s all right.

  KITTY: How could he not be here, today of all days? His own daughter’s eighteenth birthday.

  JEANETTE: It’s not Dad’s fault.

  KITTY: How’s Susie going to feel then, if she walks in now, dropping her satchel and her mac on the floor the way she does, no matter how many times I tell her hooks are for hanging, and there’s no happy birthday welcome? Put this on.

  KITTY puts a paper party hat on JEANETTE’s head and one on her own.

  JEANETTE: Mum don’t do this.

  KITTY: Deserted, that’s how. I didn’t raise her through a world war, measles, mumps and a cousin with polio, poor mite in callipers, to give up on my Susie just because she hasn’t come home for a while.

  JEANETTE: It’s not a while.

  KITTY: Three years and 329 days. What would you call it then? A lifetime? Now put that hat back on Jeanette. We’re celebrating your sister’s birthday.

  JEANETTE puts the paper hat back on.

  Scene Twelve

  Ali’s Story (5)

  FLORA enters carrying the bundle of infant Flora. ALI takes it from her. FLORA watches.

  ALI: When Flora was a baby, her heart problem meant she was often in hospital and they weren’t keen on operating on Down’s babies. Her condition meant that to deal with the blood leaking into her lungs, she’d swell up and go into heart failure. We got to know the signs better than the doctors. At one Casualty they wouldn’t believe it was serious and sent us home. Overnight all the blood vessels in her eyes burst. She had bright red eyes like Damien 2.

  Throughout the following Scene FLORA physically commentates on the action, not being able to breathe, being ignored, trying to attract attention etc.

  Then they believed us.

  DOCTOR enters.

  DOCTOR: She should have been brought in earlier.

  ALI: She was but…

  DOCTOR: You don’t usually co
me here do you?

  ALI: The Royal has all her notes but this was the nearest and we thought…

  DOCTOR: Well Mrs Gerpett. We’ve been giving her medication which I’m afraid is not so far taking effect.

  ALI: So what can you do?

  DOCTOR: You are aware of how serious her heart condition is?

  ALI: Yes.

  DOCTOR: The poor little thing is in some discomfort.

  FLORA signals this – she’s well over the top.

  ALI: I know.

  DOCTOR: Don’t worry. We’re doing all we can for her.

  FLORA rolls her eyes in disbelief.

  ALI: Thank you. At the Royal they said if she…

  DOCTOR: Really I mean it – don’t worry. We’ll start her on morphine which should ease things along.

  FLORA shakes her head.

  ALI: Thank you so much.

  FLORA waves her arms about to attract ALI’s attention.

  FLORA: Mum! Mum! Wake up!

  ALI hears FLORA’s voice as a distant memory. Gradually it begins to dawn on her. She runs after the DOCTOR.

  ALI: Excuse me. No, you can’t do that.

  DOCTOR: Really Mrs Gerpett, you must try and stay calm.

  ALI: Hang on, just hang on.

  DOCTOR: You’re under a lot of pressure I know.

  ALI: Just tell me if I’ve got this right. Morphine –

  DOCTOR: In my opinion is the best … (treatment)

  ALI: Depresses breathing. Right?

  DOCTOR: That is one of its effects but –

  ALI: My daughter is swelling up like a frog because she is having trouble breathing and you want to give her morphine which depresses breathing?

  DOCTOR: I understand you’re upset…

  ALI: (Low and dangerous.) I want her transferred to the Royal.

  DOCTOR backs away slightly.

  DOCTOR: That is really not an option.

  ALI: Ring them, now. Please.

  DOCTOR: Mrs Gerpett please wait outside.

  ALI gets hold of him by the throat.

  ALI: Get on the phone and arrange a transfer now you murdering bastard!

  FLORA punches the air in victory sign.

  DOCTOR: I was only trying to help.

  ALI drops him and he rushes off.

  ALI: And he was. He truly thought he was doing us a favour. The hospital sent a special ambulance and she made it, that time. During one of her times in hospital I taught her to read. She didn’t speak but I’d learned Makaton and she signed back ‘Mum?’ (FLORA signs ‘Mum’.) ‘Dad?’ (FLORA signs ‘Dad’.) ‘Granma?’ (FLORA signs thumbing her nose.). I made a book with photos of some of her favourite things and the word for it underneath. She responded really well. Then I made a book without pictures and she signed the words. Flora could read. The Educational Psychologist we saw to try and get Flora into primary school refused to believe me at first. Said ‘She’s just barking at the print’. You know, I used to be one of those quiet people who never spoke out in public. Maybe it was talking for two changed all that. She eventually said her first word at five. Time for bed, Flora.

  FLORA: No!

  ALI: That was worth waiting for. After that Flora slowly progressed to talking almost entirely in Disney – especially Pinocchio – and finally to speech as we know it. Irony and sarcasm were wasted on her but she had an incredible memory…

  Tongue.

  ALI moves to flick FLORA’s tongue which is hanging out. FLORA whips it in just in time.

  ALI: It’s amazing how many IQ points you gain just by keeping your tongue in your mouth. They’d told me in one hospital she could have her tongue made smaller but then she wouldn’t be able to taste. We decided to carry on with the flicking. Mean but effective.

  ALI brings FLORA milk and biscuits as GWEN enters.

  GWEN: You look exhausted.

  ALI: I had Ballet Group 3 this afternoon, all ambition and no co-ordination. And the mothers, dear God protect me from pushy parents.

  GWEN: That’s what children need if they’re to get on.

  ALI: Children need…oh never mind.

  GWEN: And how’s Flora?

  ALI: She’s doing very well, aren’t you, considering she’s in a class full of naughty boys.

  GWEN: Oh dear. Do they tease her.

  ALI: Ask her.

  GWEN beams at FLORA.

  GWEN: How are you Flora?

  FLORA: I’ve got a fur cough.

  GWEN: Oh dear. Does it hurt?

  FLORA: No. I haven’t got a cough either.

  GWEN looks to ALI for help. ALI shrugs.

  Tom and Darren said I had a fur cough.

  ALI gets it.

  GWEN: (Bemused.) Fur cough?

  GWEN gets it.

  What kind of a school is this?

  ALI: Normal one. Flora darling that’s swearing.

  FLORA: Like Oh bugger it?

  ALI: Yes but –

  FLORA: Where are the sodding car keys?

  GWEN: Alison!

  ALI: Flora stop it. If you need to swear, go up in your room and do it there, not in front of Gran.

  FLORA: It’s not me. It’s my mouth talking.

  ALI: Who controls your mouth?

  FLORA: (Truthful.) I don’t know. But I expect someone does.

  ALI: And coats hang on pegs don’t they?

  FLORA: Sorry, my hands forgot. They’ve let me down again. It’s very disappointing, Mum.

  ALI: Never mind. They’ll learn one day. Show Gran your new glasses.

  FLORA glares at her.

  Go on.

  FLORA puts them on reluctantly.

  There, doesn’t she look lovely?

  FLORA: I look like a rat.

  ALI: No you don’t. Does she?

  GWEN: We never had rats at home.

  FLORA: I told you I did.

  FLORA takes them off and exits crossly.

  ALI: Thank you. Thank you very much. How helpful.

  GWEN: I expect it was the dogs and cats kept them away. A home isn’t a real home without animals.

  ALI: She used to say it wasn’t a real home without children, but then I got one of those and she moved the goalposts.

  She needs to wear them.

  GWEN: What a shame. You never needed glasses, nor Michael.

  ALI: Yes but we were perfect.

  GWEN: You sound so bitter. I did my best

  ALI: I know you did.

  GWEN: I was so proud of you.

  ALI: Once upon a time. When did you stop?

  GWEN: You were such an adorable little girl, like a fairy, so dainty – a real girl. One day you put your arms round my neck and whispered ‘Mummy I love you more than life itself’.

  ALI: I must have been at the Mills and Boon.

  GWEN: And then you grew up.

  ALI: Not so’s you’d notice. Isn’t it interesting that however old you get, mothers can still reduce you to short socks in seconds? It’s their secret weapon.

  Scene Thirteen

  Milena’s Story (4)

  MILENA: Apart from the groom, the most important person at a woman’s wedding is her Kuma. To be a Kuma is to be a friend always. Which is why I told Nevenka my news first.

  NEVENKA: You’ll name it after me of course.

  MILENA: He might have a few problems as a result.

  NEVENKA: It’s going to be a girl. I know. I can hear. Nevenka.

  MILENA: (Laughing.)OK.

  NEVENKA: She says she’s worried about inheriting your thighs.

  MILENA: Better mine than Tajib’s!

  NEVENKA: What’s she look like?

  MILENA: Just a sort of speck at the moment I suppose.

  NEVENKA: No, in your head.

  MILENA: Dark hair, wide mouth, brown skin.

  NEVENKA: (Delighted.) I knew you’d know! Mothers know everything.

  TAJIB enters holding a bundle of baby like it’s an unexploded bomb.

  TAJIB: I’m going to drop it. What is it?

  NEVENKA: It’s a frog.
>
  TAJIB: What?

  NEVENKA: A female one and loud. She weighs 3.3 kilos, she has blonde hair and blue eyes.

  TAJIB: (Delighted.) A girl.

  MILENA: Yes.

  NEVENKA: And she’s called –

  TAJIB: Alma.

  NEVENKA: Excuse me?

  TAJIB: It means apple.

  NEVENKA: I know what it means.

  TAJIB: And it’s my mother’s name

  NEVENKA: But we agreed – (Turning to MILENA.) didn’t we?

  TAJIB: We?

  NEVENKA: Yes. Ask your wife. Milena?

  MILENA: I don’t know who she is yet.

  She holds out her arms for the baby.

  Aah. Zhabitza moya. Look at her little legs, just like a frog.

  She looks up at the adults.

  Don’t look so stern. It’s not a battle.

  TAJIB and NEVENKA stand their ground.

  MILENA: Nevenka was here with me throughout her birth.

  TAJIB: She’s your Kuma. She’ll always be there.

  MILENA: Whereas…

  TAJIB: My mother won’t.

  NEVENKA: (Under her breath.) No chance. That one will outlive us all.

  MILENA hides a smile. TAJIB glares.

  God willing.

  TAJIB: Well?

  MILENA: The thing is, my Kuma will forgive me. But my mother in law won’t.

  NEVENKA: Alma.

  MILENA: Alma Nevenka.

  TAJIB: (Happily.) The most beautiful baby in the world.

  MILENA: And she was. A princess. Princess Frog. She loved the water and was swimming almost before she could walk. And by the time her brother was born Princess Zhabitza – the Frog – had announced her determination to swim for Yugoslavia in the Olympics. My mother in law decided that our son should have a proper Muslim name so he was named Faruk after her father which didn’t please my mother who wanted him called after her father who was Croatian. Faruk was as dark as his sister was fair and as round as she was slender, a regular butterball of a baby, who smiled indiscriminately at everyone he met. Unlike Princess Frog who pulled her delicate eyebrows down over her nose and scowled at all but a favoured few. She was fearless. I came home from work one afternoon to find her pointing a red painted fingernail at her grandmother cursing her with the words ‘You ingredients!’ By the time she was ten Princess Frog was the unquestioned ruler of her small familiar world and Faruk her number one and still smiling slave.