Rain Drops on the Window by Leo Vine-Knight (good summer reads .txt) 📖

refused, sending him instead to the chemist for strange parcels which were handed over with querulous looks, but no comment.
It then became an exercise in wish fulfilment, as every evening he walked home from school hoping that she would have got up during the day, and that the windows would not be dark as he rounded the corner with a queasy feeling rising in his gut. But more and more she remained in bed and the breakfast pots would stare at him through the half-light, as he drew the curtains and walked upstairs past the picture of the weeping urchin, and into the shadows of his mother’s bedroom. A sickly sweet smell would often meet him and like travelling on a macabre roulette wheel, he would wait to see if rage, muteness or tears greeted his inadequate hello. Then it would be down to the kitchen to select some tins for their tea, put on the telly and hope that ‘Blue Peter’ would nullify his thoughts with its cheerful faces, cardboard castles and licking pups. But the situation was becoming acute, and he couldn’t help his fourteen-year-old mind contorting and twisting into a revulsion which he knew was morally wrong, but seemed unavoidable. It was as if a probing blackness was surrounding him as he squatted in front of the smoking fire every night, looked through the 40-watt smog at the tatty remnants of their 1950’s heyday, and sensed the building blocks of his mind being inexorably rearranged.
The skies seemed full of rain.
By 1967, Kelvin’s mother was almost totally bedfast and still refusing to see the doctor. She had told some story or other to the neighbours, and they contented themselves with occasional civilised enquiries at the door, and probably intense speculation at home. One neighbour had even been duped into shifting a single bed downstairs so that his mother (who was then only 45) could sleep permanently in the living room, without this apparently raising further alarm. Kelvin just drifted along with a combination of childish naivety, the conditioned fear of defying his mother’s wishes, and the even greater terror of hearing the worst if professionals were brought in.
It was an impossible position and his mother moved from white-faced stoicism and secrecy, to appalling candour as she began describing her problems in stark revolting detail. She was “haemorrhaging badly”, “bleeding both ways”, and was having to use a bucket as a toilet downstairs. She was scared of what the doctor might tell her and she was getting through a pack of large external sanitary towels every day (thus Kelvin’s trips to the chemist). It reached crisis point during the Christmas of 1967, when they spent the holiday in a daze of alternating anger and despair, and she gathered him into her arms to finally admit:
“I think I’ve got cancer”
A neighbour sent for their old doctor and immediately tests were arranged, revealing within a short space of time that his mother had a non-cancerous growth in her womb. They had apparently been sharing the agonies of the last two years for no good reason, and a hysterectomy would set things right. They both breathed a sigh of relief and Kelvin reflected on how terribly callused he‘d become to suffering. Little did he know, that the problems were in many ways just beginning.
The time his mother spent in hospital was like a morbid religious holiday, as he hung warily between feelings of loneliness, and newly discovered independence. After a short recuperation, his mother came home and for a while there was honeymoon period of mutual sensitivity, but it wasn’t long before he noticed some strange changes occurring in her personality. She was deeply immersed in the whole experience of illness, and didn’t really seem to expect full physical recovery, or the resumption of a normal life. She was extremely negative about her general prospects, saying she was totally “worn out”, and seemed to take little interest in anything but her ordeal.
“I’ll soon be dead” she commented in the morning.
“I’m finished” she said at bedtime.
As the months went by, she spent most of her time sat in the fireside chair, with eyes closed and arms crossed. She avoided doing any household chores and the house became untidy, cluttered and dirty. She firmly believed that her problems were a combination of physical incapacity, congenital ‘nerves’ or acts of unchangeable fate, and any implications that she was experiencing psychological problems would be greeted with massive temper loss, embarrassing scenes, threats and tears. She finally trained other people to leave the idea well alone.
The rain beat against the windows.
“I’ve given up” she said. “I’m jiggered.”
Kelvin was at this time old enough to be rather looking forward to a more self-sufficient, freedom loving lifestyle than was possible in the family home – bringing him into inevitable conflict with his mother. Some of their exchanges would never be forgotten as she went scarlet with rage, called him every name in the book and attempted to bombard him with blows as he scrambled out of the house. She waylaid every neighbour, friend and acquaintance to update them on his perfidy, and harangued his stunned friends on the doorstep if they were ill-advised (or curious) enough to call for him. He retained indelible images of his mother with her feet up on the chipped, 1930’s tiled mantle piece, surrounded by unopened mail order catalogue parcels and mountains of magazines, picking the dead skin off her shins and asking him to turn the telly off for her, because she’d “had enough of that tripe”. She seemed to love the miserable silence and razor tension that ensued, while to him it was like a swirling black hole which was slowly swallowing him up.
“I haven’t the strength to go on” she said one day. “I’m……..”
“Finished” he unwisely interjected.
“Smack!” came the response, as she leapt across the room like a kangaroo and landed a smart right-handed slap to his temple.

Mad as Hell
One rainy day Kelvin had done something to offend his mother, and she charged after him like a rhino through to the kitchen, her eyes wild with fury, screaming abuse, raining slaps around his defensive arms, mad as Hell. His first impulse was to escape into the garden and just hang around outside until she’d cooled down, but for some reason the door was locked. As he wrestled with the handle and fiddled with the key, he could feel further blows stinging the back of his head and neck. Multiplying and getting harder. Much harder.
Like a cornered animal, he turned around and fought, pushing her hard against the old washing machine. He heard her gasp as he made for cover upstairs, and as he passed her astonished face, he instinctively knew that something had changed. The sitting duck was no longer sitting, and temper had found its place, like all things. The physical attacks were finished.
He had grown up.

The boy is the father of the man.

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Publication Date: 09-18-2009

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