One Life: My Mother's Story by Grenville Kate

Author:Grenville, Kate [Grenville, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, History
ISBN: 9781782116868
Amazon: B00RZL98KU
Goodreads: 25510331
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2015-03-18T07:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

TIME HAD a different meaning after Christopher was born. It wasn’t measured by the clock, but by the baby. Time to feed him, to change his nappy, to play with him, to take him out in the pram. Nance loved to watch him sleeping, loved to feel him feeding and know that her body was all he needed. It was as if she’d gone to another country where all the big things became small things, and the small things were all that mattered.

There was a little garden at the back of the flats and she loved to put him on a rug there and laugh with him at the new wonders of his world. Fingers! Leaves! Birds! When she leaned in to kiss his fat cheek she could see herself tiny in his eyes. It was a bond more profound than anything she could have imagined, frightening in its power.

Ken loved the baby too, made a popping noise with a finger in his cheek that made Christopher laugh. Carried him around the room, jiggling him and singing, This is the way the ladies ride, ladies ride, ladies ride. She’d think, He’s changed, it’s going to be different. But soon he’d hand Christopher back and it would be as it always was. He had papers to go through, or a meeting to go to.

At work every day, Ken didn’t have the timeless moments with Christopher that she loved so much. Nance would have felt sorry for him if she thought he missed them. He loved his son, she knew. But she’d come to see that something in her husband was stunted. Grand, overwhelming feelings frightened him. He was content with something smaller. Perhaps I can’t blame him, she thought. It’s that cold upbringing he had. It’s left him embarrassed by emotions. Having feelings meant going into some part of himself he wanted to keep hidden.

He was out more and more with the comrades. Took elaborate precautions, setting off briskly from the front gate towards La Perouse when she knew he was really going to Paddington, his Trotsky papers rolled up in a newspaper so he could get rid of them quickly. She thought all the cloak-and-dagger stuff was ridiculous until one night he came home shaking. He and another man had been putting pamphlets in people’s letterboxes along Selwyn Street in Paddington when the coppers were suddenly there. Tipped off, Ken said. He legged it, got away down a dunny lane, strolled out to Oxford Street and jumped on the first bus. They got the other man, put the cuffs on him. He’d do time. Distributing subversive literature. Six months and a five-hundred-pound fine.

She knew Ken wouldn’t have wanted to be caught. Imagine him in a cell with some burglar, and a bucket in the corner! At the same time, she thought there was a flicker of him wishing that he hadn’t been so smart in getting away.

Christopher was two months old when his uncle Frank’s unit was sent to Timor. Three months later, the impossible happened: Singapore fell to the Japanese.

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