Watershed

By Susan Day

As deaths mount during the coronavirus pandemic a retired history teacher reflects on the much greater personal impact of the death of her sister 12 years before. Through the lens of lockdown, Pam Dearly looks back on her and her sister Pauline's childhood, and how their family was affected by the Canvey Island flood of 1953. When they both sett

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leaping Boy Publications
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999840174

Susan Day

Susan is an author, canine behaviourist, and a storyteller. She lives with her family and dogs, in particular, Rocky the Border collie and Stella, the blind dog. She spends her time blogging, writing and illustrating; training and counselling dogs and being bossed around by the family cat, Speed Bump Charlie and his sidekick, Furball (see Dogs in Space). Susan travelled around the world twice before she was seven years old. It seemed only fitting that the wonderful events she experienced and the places she visited on these journeys be recorded for history. Thus, her story telling skills began. Firstly, to Rupert Bear, her lifelong companion, and then to a host of imaginary friends and finally to her pet dog once the family finally set down roots in Australia. Susan is passionate about children's literature and wants to inspire children to be better people and encourage them to follow their dreams. She runs workshops for children teaching them how to form the wonders of their imaginations into stories. Susan lives in a small country town where there are more kangaroos than people. She shares her country property with four dogs, three cats, three rescue guinea pigs and a very large fish and her patient husband. More about her adventures are reflected in Clarence the Snake from Dunolly.

Book preview

Books by Susan Day:

Who Your Friends Are

The Roads They Travelled

Hollin Clough

Back

Watershed

Copyright © 2020 Susan Day

Susan Day asserts the right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by Leaping Boy Publications [e-mail]

www.leapingboy.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electronic or mechanical, through reprography, digital transmission, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Diagrams and cover design by Ken Rutter

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-9998401-6-7

ISBN 978-1-9998401-7-4 (e-book)

Watershed

1. The region draining into a river system

2. A critical turning point that marks a change

Dearly, Pauline June, on 2nd December

following an accident.

Much loved sister of James, Edward, Maureen,

Barbara, Alan, Pamela and the late Vincent,

mother of Heidi and adored Granma of

Jordan, Jarvis, Cassidy and Jayden.

Sheffield Star Friday 8th December 2006

Contents

Brogging End to Upper Thornseats

Thornseats to Low Bradfield

Damflask

River Loxley to Malin Bridge

Malin Bridge to Owlerton

Sources & Acknowledgements

About the Author

The Roads they Travelled

Hollin Clough

Back

Other Leaping Boy titles

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It was an extreme event that happened. It was a bomb, or a shot, or a thunderbolt. It was a giant's axe – no, a cleaver – that came down and cleaved me in two, from the mid-point of my skull, downwards, and left me severed, one part lifeless, the other just twitching, in pain, barely alive.

And then Christmas came anyway.

It comes back to me clearer than yesterday. More than twelve years have passed and I can still remember – I can see and smell and feel – that Christmas Day, imbued as it was, coloured as it was by the overarching pain of what had happened a few weeks before. And even these days, with all that's going on, worldwide disruption, state of emergency, imminent lockdown of entire population – these days will never have the charge, the shudder, the vividness of that Christmas and the days before it and after it, because things come and things go in the world, wars, disasters, earthquakes, they come, they disrupt and shock, they go into the history books. They are elsewhere. They are far away, they concern other people, they are nothing to do with me, I can continue living in my usual way.

Trust me, I was a history teacher – if the World Wars, if the Black Death, if the employment of children as chimney sweeps, if any of that was immediate and personal we would all go around in a chronic state of hopeless distress and sorrow. A class of thirty children could not, at the end of the lesson, get up and put their chairs tidily under their desks (I wish) and go calmly (!) to Maths or PE if the bombing of Hiroshima was something that really touched them. I could not have gone coldly to the staffroom for my break time coffee and calmly discussed the need to order more exercise books, or the interesting pairing off of two of my colleagues.

I was a history teacher and now I am a retired old woman, and soon I might be a prisoner in my own home – not even my own home, in my view – so as to avoid the virus. We are told there's a virus and we have to believe it, even though the evidence is not in front of our own eyes, only in newspapers and on the TV and radio. And, doubtless, all over the internet, but not there, in front of us, live. And it's like they say: a million Chinese can die and it's something to read in the paper, hear on the TV, and pass over. One person dies, a person you know slightly, a friend of a friend, say, or someone who lives along the street, and it's something to pause over; you might send a card. Someone you know dies, one of your extended family, then yes, you are sorry, you are sad, it leaves a gap. But, that, that thing that happened in December 2006, that changed everything, me, my life, my whole existence. I'm remembering what it was like, I'm writing it down, some of it, writing it down and I could not if anyone was to ask, I could not explain what is the purpose of what I'm doing.

So, official guidance: everything has to shut down for the time being. I went to choir yesterday, my only outing most weeks; not more than half of the normal number of people was there, and the decision was taken to suspend meeting for the foreseeable future. And today the government have officially said the same thing: for the time being there is a prohibition against gatherings of people.

However. I get in my car and drive to the next street to pick up Jojo. I do this three mornings a week – pick him up from home and take him down to Hillsborough to his placement. Nearly every time I go in and spend the morning there, being a bit useful, helping a bit, with Jojo, or with the other service users. (Dreadful term I know, but what is a better one?) The manager meets me at the door – they have been spraying our hands on arrival for over a week now – and tells me she is sorry but now the guidance says I am only allowed to drop him off at the door and watch him be met and have his hands sprayed with sanitizer before he goes in. Are they protecting me, or their service users? I don't know and maybe neither do they.

‘We may have to close altogether,' she says. She sees the look on my face and says, ‘I know.'

They go on – the press and the media I mean – about this being the worst emergency since the flu epidemic of 1918. That old forgotten bit of history, tacked on the end of a documentary about the First World War. These days history-in-the-making is visiting us, us who believed that we had the right to safety and plenty and freedom. Well, freedom if you didn't look too closely. A once in a century epidemic, a virus that can kill anyone – though mostly, they say, old people. Thanks.

People – Heidi's Adam for example – are blustering hopefully that there's nothing to worry about, it's only like the flu, only people who are already ill with something serious have any cause to worry. Other people are anxious; children are scared; there is panic buying. We are being told, over and over, to wash our hands. Over and over. The shops are running out of hand-sanitizer; before this I didn't even know there was such a thing. People are making their own, someone says, from vodka and vinegar.

People are stranded on cruise ships, people are stranded in foreign airports; people who have symptoms must not go out. Their families must not go out. What are the symptoms? Could be anything, varies from person to person – where's a distinctive rash when you need one? Dry cough, temperature – or maybe you can be symptom-free but still infect other people. We are all in the dark, these days.

It came through a blur, Christmas that year, 2006, the weather wet and misty, the lights struggling through the haze. People sent me cards, they came sliding through the front door, making me jump; Christmas cards from people who didn't know, more subdued and dutiful cards from those who did.

Heidi wanted me to go there for Christmas Day – worse, to sleep over there on Christmas Eve, ‘So you can see the children opening their presents.' Nothing could be less appealing to me. I wanted to stay at home, on my own, in silence, and not have to give any thought to anyone else. But Heidi wouldn't have it. ‘I can't let you do that,' she said. ‘It's not what Mum would have wanted.'

‘What about what I want,' I said.

‘I need your help,' she said.

‘You've got Gavin,' I said.

‘I know,' she said, and simpered a bit, as if she cared deeply for Gavin, though I was pretty sure she didn't. I didn't want her to. ‘But still –‘

Of course she was in a state. She had every right to be, but so did I. They made me angry, Heidi, her new boyfriend, my brothers and sisters, everybody who seemed to believe that I would be just fine and it was Heidi who needed all the sympathy and all the looking after. They cited the fact that she had four children as a reason why she needed to be especially cared about, where actually the opposite should be true, and the four children would help her get through it with sheer busy-ness. I however had no distractions.

‘And anyway,' she said, ‘it isn't as if you've got anyone else to spend Christmas with.' Which was true

But I had never stayed – or wanted to – at her house, Christmas Eve or any other time and I had no understanding of why she would want me to this time. But after I'd said no several times, giving perfectly good reasons and offering to come early on Christmas morning, she started snivelling and I gave in, as she knew I would. So I went, as late in the evening as I reasonably could, which, however was not late enough that I didn't have to join in with the filling of stockings and the tiptoeing round to put them at the end of beds. The baby was asleep and anyway, too young to have an idea of what was going on. The little girl was asleep too and wasn't disturbed by Gavin creeping about – creeping was a good word for him – being bloody Santa. In the boys' room, so Heidi reported, Jojo was fast asleep and Jarvis was at least pretending to be.

'We can have a drink now,' she said, though from the bottles on the mantelpiece I could surmise that it would not be their first. 'Gin and tonic?' she said to me.

I should have refused it but I didn't, and before I reached the bottom of the glass I could feel myself starting.

'Have another one,' she said but I had just enough sense to stop there. I swiped at my eyes with my sleeve and blew my nose on a tissue and muttered something about having a cold. I think I got away with it.

'I'll get off to bed,' I said. I was sharing Cassie's room, sharing her bed as it turned out which I had not expected.

'She's only little,' said Heidi. 'You'll have plenty of room.'

So I spent a disturbed night in a child's bed interrupted by the dog. It had managed to get out of the kitchen and came up the stairs to whine mournfully and scratch at the boys' bedroom door. Also the baby woke and cried several times during the night and the girl kicked me and coughed intermittently and then bounced out of bed unreasonably early. By seven o'clock they were all up, the stockings had been torn through, there was paper everywhere and Cassie was agitating for the presents under the tree.

‘Breakfast first,' said Heidi, and the children began to shovel their way through bowls of sugary cereal while Heidi put the oven on and stood looking forlorn and puzzled at the large turkey.

'Do you know how to do this?' she asked me, but she should have known that I would have no more idea than she did how to cook a Christmas dinner. Neither of us had ever had to do it.

'I can't believe you don't know how to do it,' said Gavin. 'Both of you. I thought anyone could cook a Christmas dinner.' Any woman, he clearly meant. 'I'll ask my mum, she'll tell you what to do.' He took out his phone, a flashy and surely unnecessary gadget, but the mention of the word mum made Heidi start to cry and he put it away again.

I refused breakfast and went to stand in the cold garden with a cigarette, preparing myself to sit through a morning of people ripping paper to fragments in order to get at meretricious bits of plastic and gadgets and ornaments, while working their way through a selection box – the children – and sloshing down Prosecco – Heidi and Gavin. And me probably though I knew it would be a bad idea.

By half past nine I was standing in Heidi's hall face to face – or face to chest – with Gavin. He was big, bearish. Boorish. Not very bright, which was not unusual with her men.

'It's not her fault,' he said. No he didn't say, that would have been halfway civilised. He whined in a grumbling sort of way.

'Funny,' I said. 'To hear you talk this morning, it seems like everything's her fault. Now all of a sudden you're on her side.'

'You can keep your nose out of our business,' he said.

'Look,' I said, 'all I said was –'

'You said you couldn't stand it another minute. You inferred that Heidi's kids were out of order when –'

'Implied,' I said. 'It's you doing the inferring.'

'– it's not their fault either is it? They can't help it if their nannan's passed. Heidi's lost her mum, she don't need any comments from you.'

He adjusted his face to try and look sad. From the front room came the sound of The Snowman on television and of the little girl testing her new toys to destruction, and the buzzes and beeps of some Playstation game. Also of Jojo, muttering in his usual way, with the occasional squeak of excitement or protest.

'Granma,' I said. 'She was not Nannan, as you well know.'

'Whatever,' he said, and gave up trying to have an appropriate expression.

He was, I thought, the most unpleasant ever of Heidi's men. I could smell him, a sort of sweaty smell, overlaid with aftershave and whisky from the evening before. 'You smell of drink,' I said.

'You smell of fags,' he said, and laughed, as if he had won.

I had no more to say. I turned and took my coat – it was on the floor, having been muscled off the hook by Gavin's big work jacket. My handbag was there too, mixed in with assorted trainers and gloves and plastic carrier bags. I picked it up and went out. I had left my overnight bag in Cassie's bedroom, and my toothbrush in the bathroom, and I didn't care at all. He saw what I was doing and started on excusing himself, he's only thinking of Heidi, only wants her to have a nice Christmas, only comes once a year, all that sort of thing.

I went outside and sat in my car in the street. The day was calm and quiet and overcast and there was nobody about. If it weren't for the Christmas trees in all the front windows you'd think it was just any other day.

I sat in my car for some time. I truly intended to go straight home, I truly was not waiting for anyone to come out and try to persuade me back in. It was just that it all came over me all of a sudden, that was all, and I was leaning my head on the steering wheel when my phone rang. I let it ring for a bit, but at last I gave in. I expected it to be Heidi but it was Gavin. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said. I could imagine Heidi sitting there looking at him, glaring with an expression that meant: I'm really angry and if that doesn’t work I don’t mind crying for the rest of the day.

‘I'm sorry,’ he said again. ‘Come back, why don’t you. The kids want you to. Here.’

Now it was Jarvis on the line. ‘Come back?’ he said, somewhat uncertainly. ‘Auntie Pam? Go on, please.’ He was a nice kid and I could see him too, looking at his mum and at Gavin to be sure he was saying the right things.

It wasn’t really me they wanted at all, I knew that. It was the Christmas dinner. Someone to cook the dinner was what they needed or rather – since they knew perfectly well that I was no cook – someone to blame when it all went wrong. That turkey in the oven, which I had collected and taken there the day before, meant a lot to them. Not that it was me who had ordered and paid for it; that had been – someone else. The turkey, and its sausages and stuffing and gravy and roast potatoes, all went to attest that Christmas would still be Christmas, just the same as ever, as Christmas had been ever since Jojo was a baby. It might be happening in Heidi’s house instead of – somewhere else, but that was all right just so long as they could look around and know, or pretend, that all was right with their world. After all Christmas was variable. There was always something different – a new child, a different partner, occasionally one or another of our relatives doing us the honour of a visit. We had taken them in our stride. We could adapt to things like that. Like this, maybe not so easily.

I sighed really loudly to show them all that I was doing them a big favour – which I was, I absolutely was. ‘All right,’ I said. And I got out of the car and went back into the house, back to what I knew would be the worst Christmas I ever had, or will ever have, even though Christmas had always been for me, since Heidi was a child, a day of pretending. I could do that. I had pretended for more than thirty years that I didn't hate it; I had smiled and been helpful, and put myself last behind Heidi, and then her children, for whom, apparently, the whole weary frolic was invented. This year it would be harder, I expected, but all I had to do was bash about in the kitchen and present some kind of dinner, which would fall well short of its usual standard. Just as well. They would never forgive me if I managed to do it as well as – someone else.

And then I could make my escape when the two littlies went to bed, before Gavin and Heidi got down to some more rigorous drinking. I could leave before I could get into an argument with Gavin about the advisability of allowing Jojo a ‘little sip' of Drambuie. Before Heidi started crying again, before I had to see Jarvis – who was sometimes the most grown-up person in that house – trying not to cry himself. Before they started feeding their misery and working themselves up to a satisfying hysteria, and trying to get me to do it too. Before they started accusing me of lacking proper feelings, I could drive home, or walk if necessary, or even ring for a taxi, I could be home by eight o'clock.

That was just about how it worked out. We got through the morning. The baby was put down for a sleep and we tackled the dinner. The turkey was dry and the roast potatoes undercooked and the gravy a bit on the watery side of perfection. The sprouts were nicely cooked – not too soft, but only Gavin and I would even attempt to eat them. No one was even mildly interested in food it seemed, let alone really hungry. There were crackers with jokes that only the grown-ups and Jarvis could either read or understand. Only Gavin and Jojo wanted Christmas pudding. There was a lot of everything left and I had a sick feeling that most of it would be thrown away – someone would have been furious at that but I just felt sad and helpless.

Then we went back to the telly and what was left of the chocolate. Gavin, I was finding, as well as being boorish, was creepy in his insistence at making Heidi cry. It seemed Heidi had known him somehow for a while, but he had only recently become a live-in boyfriend. Partner, whatever you're supposed to call it. He seemed to me like some sort of hearse-chaser, never missing an opportunity to remind her – and the children and me – of what we in any case couldn't help thinking about. In his imagination he was Director of Mourning and I had to be present as he fed the children on chocolate and made them cry by telling them their nannan – he just couldn't grasp she was Granma – would have wanted them to be happy. So the mood was fragile, as Cassie and Jarvis and Heidi – and I – were dragged through incompatible emotions. Jojo looked at me occasionally, furtively, as if I was an interloper, or a ghost. Which I was I suppose. Jarvis looked anxious too, any time I said something remotely un-festive. Cassie called me Granma without realising her mistake and Gavin pointed out to her, in his most poisonous understanding voice, that I wasn't her nannan. Even the baby, who was too young to understand what sort of day it was, became more and more fractious and Gavin solved it by giving him more and more chocolate buttons. Heidi protested but only a little and he poured her more Prosecco and apologised for forgetting that she was grieving too.

By half past five I felt that I would not be missed if I went home. I fetched my bag from Cassie's room, put my coat on and stood in the doorway of the front room. ‘I'll be off now,' I said. ‘Thank you for –‘ I did not know what to say I was thanking them for. Heidi seemed to pull herself together enough to see me to the door when I left and touch me on the shoulder – she knew how I felt about the hugging that seemed to have become fashionable – and say thank you to me.

'We wouldn't have got through it without you,' she said. 'Are you doing anything for New Year?'

'No,' I said. I had no wish to join them for any more festivity. 'I'll just stay quietly at home.'

'I wonder then,' she said, 'I wonder could you have Jojo over to stay with you. Gavin wants us to invite his people round.'

'Maybe,' I said, but I knew that there was no maybe about it. I could see how things were going to pan out for the foreseeable future and I could not see that there was any way to stop it, or not any way that – someone – would approve of.

I expected to feel relieved to be out of here, and I did I suppose, but even before I'd turned the car for home the awful desolation and loneliness came over me and I had to stop driving and rest my head on the steering wheel once again.

It is not an experience we have ever contemplated repeating. These days Christmas still happens in their house, not mine. I am the old relative who has to be invited to dinner. I go, out of duty, Adam cooks, and I am always satisfied that I did go, and