The position of the dark red high backed armchair was predetermined within the room. The coals in the small fireplace occasionally spat out bright orange phlegm, just to its right. From here you could view whatever was going on in the back room of this terraced house. The floor space always looked cluttered; a folded down dining table and its guardian chairs; a three piece suite with brightly crocheted antimacassars; various poofs, sewing, sewing machine, thread boxes, photo albums stacked under the low coffee table. A long sideboard and display cabinets fully inhabited each alcove, containing a miscellany of cutlery, plates and ceramic objects. Everywhere stuffed to the gill in this nonetheless cosy nook.
The wings of the armchair formed huge amplifying baffles, directing softly spoken conversational details to any person who sat between them. Dora, as usual, was ensconced there, attentively listening, legs placed close together, feet front facing, arms relaxed, hands at ease in her lap. The frailness of her body dwarfed by the chair in which she rocked. Today she was seventy, the supposed focus of a family celebration, a queen for the day being greeted by her subjects.
Currently frowning, she wasn't in pain, but simply straining to follow the chaotic mess of interactions between her grown up children, whilst their own youthful offspring energetically bounded under, over and around tables and chairs. Though it was her birthday, this felt like too many people. Frequently proving tricky for her to hear, she missed, or misinterpreted, a lot.
'It ud help me if the didn't gabble su much'
She thought half aloud, never quite sure where the volume knob her own speaking was set. An under the breath mutter easily came out as an exclamation. Too quiet you wouldn't be able to successfully interject, too loud and it sounded as if she were shouting them down. It was rare that they fully caught her drift anyway. She was used to non-comprehension, both her own and other people's.
Their gossipy chatter continued hopping around from one subject to another and then back again. Sometimes Dora managed to keep up with this conversational flow quite well, through a combination of lip reading and snippets her hearing aid picked up. On other days, like today, everything was painfully distorted, as though passed through a hiss of static. The consequent experience of isolation was distressing. She had the desire to be at the heart of these family get-togethers, but it was common for her to be the mute figurehead.
The feeling of being forcibly removed that the deafness imposed upon her, had only increased in frequency as she'd got older. Being ignored in a group growing in direct proportion to how elderly you were anyway. She often resigned herself to sitting back and being the quiet observer, voluntarily absenting from active engagement. The proximity of memories became easier to interact with than other people. So her attention drifted off, gazed into the fire or empty space. Remembering past incidents from decades ago, to the days before her husband died.
Her husband Douglas? Well, almost to the end he'd been an active hulk of a man. Though, after fifty six years of life, he was snatched away in just a matter of days by un-diagnosed blood pressure and circulation problems. Dora, suddenly bereft, was bringing up the remaining dependents of her brood of eight, single-handed. Her children had done their best to step up and help out, Reginald and Maureen, the eldest, in particular.
The following years were tough financially and emotionally. The family would be a strain to feed until more of them were working age. No matter that the children at that time were ranged in age from on the brink of teenage to into their twenties or married, she'd needed to rapidly reduce the size of the family home and then somehow fit the remaining progeny into this more manageable terrace, The one she was now retired in, with her eldest daughter Maureen as her default carer, still living with her.
Was it a coincidence that Douglas's death had also been the point when she'd first noticed the decline in her hearing? Initially she'd made light of it. Jokingly blaming it on over twenty years of perpetual pregnancy. Yet the drain on her energy of repeatedly giving birth had weakened her physical stamina, as did forever clambering up and down the cellar steps to fetch water to boil and wash clothes. The day to day drudgery any Mother had to do then for her children.
'Douglas! wer useless at bein a Father.....no elp to nobdy but hiself.'
She muttered.
Maureen looked up from her sewing
'What wer that Mother?
You Father...blumin useless'
'Ay, suppose he was, didn't behave as if he wer though'
Everyone accepted Douglas would retire to his 'study' the moment he arrived home after work. To do whatever it was he found to do in there. Only eating a meal or spending quality time with them on a Sunday. As a consequence he'd become more feared than loved. He appeared to want to keep everyone at a distance, the paternal mystery man. Playing the aloof Edwardian patriarch and the disciplinarian with a leather belt whenever it felt appropriate. Yet, apart from bringing in the money and being the sire of children, he was sod all use around the house. There were things he considered played no part in his role as Father, or as a man, however self serving that appeared now.
'Eeeee.......e wer gud wi is hands though, wurever they were involved in mekin.'
Dora spoke to herself fondly, without any hint of innuendo or irony.
Just as she'd started to feel the first bodily signs of declining energy, this had happened. She'd become the sole director and centre of a whirlwind of unending activity, of things needing to be done, money to be earned. She remembered the constant tiredness and concern. The weary weight of it lingered on now in her body, in the tenderness and creaking of her arthritic joints. She loved all her family, but there was the tattered remnant of bitterness still hanging out back to dry. It had taken a toll on her outlook on life.
When she'd first gone for the hearing tests they'd informed her of the many known causes of deafness. That most probably hers was inherited, a family disposition. She couldn't remember any of her family being deaf, not in middle age anyway. But then maybe, like her, they too had become expert at disguising it. Life up on the edge of the moors in the low granite cottage where she'd been born and brought up, was always physically cold. The family temperament as austere as the moors that surrounded them. They were never a close knit family, more the reverse. No one seemed to have much to say to anyone, even at the best of times. They were self contained, chapel stained through and through, each as silently morose company as carved gravestones. They could have all been deaf as a door post and nobody would have known.
'If thee has nowt useful to say, tha shoudn't speak on it'
She'd heard her Father's voice speak that phrase, with the usual pseudo biblical inflection of the part-time Methodist lay preacher, countless times. Hearing it again echoing through her mind, accompanied by the usual finger waving reproof. If there'd been any love in that man, it had been driven out by the cold of a persistent north westerly wind.
The hearing loss occurred in both ears. Though progressing slowly at first, it was cumulative and mostly irretrievable by the time it was finally diagnosed and treated. Yet if the deafness was not a family legacy, then prolonged physical stress or a severe blow to the head were some of the other less palatable options. Half recollecting murky events from earlier life, she thought it best not to go there.
Though if truth be told, Douglas too had not been averse to administering a well aimed clout or two, whenever his temper, the children, or her backchat got the better of him. His pride had proved to be a surprisingly fragile thing. She forgave him his failings now, she'd even forgiven him for dying. Forgiving helped when she had cause to miss his companionship. It would be far too convenient to lay blame at his unresponsive feet for her being deaf. Nothing could be done about any of that. She'd been widowed and become profoundly deaf. None of it was going to be removed by knowing of its cause.
Though not hearing absolutely everything sometimes had its advantages. Whenever Maureen was bustling round, trying to boss her into having yet another radio in the house, that she did not want. She had a practiced way of looking blankly or confused, sometimes deliberately choosing not to comprehend. Those radios she knew would be bought anyway, making her hearing aids whine and whistle wherever she went.
'Ow many more did she blumin need? '
There was only so much blathering from her daughters and daughters in law that she could tolerate. Her sons and son in laws,? well, they fell all too conveniently into the cowardly tendency of the northern male - the stoical but unknowable silence.
Dora had moments when she was really glad to be able to shut herself off completely. Pretend that she was listening, but really it all just floated over her head. Occasionally interjecting, but never entirely sure whether the topic of conversation had moved on or not. So she'd just throw in a comment, to test the water, as a way of letting them all know she was still there.
'well, mebay he should just gee up tryin and start afresh some weir else'
If everyone looked puzzled or pretended to ignore what she said, then obviously she was way off the current topic. She'd see Maureen's shoulders shudder from a chuckle, then loudly over enunciate the confirmation:
'Mother... Weev moved on from... talkin... about r Ben'
Being left on her own could in many ways be easier, more manageable than company. There was always a conflict within her, feeling isolated and lonely on the one hand, or longing for the quieter stiller hours of the day, on the other. Those times when Maureen would go into town, or was out at work. Times when she could just sit in her armchair, not have to worry about what she had or had not heard, or trying to make herself understood, she could commune with the flames in the fireplace for hours if she wanted.
On the better days, she'd sense a change in the air quality. The fire would briefly bring smoke into the room, as if someone had just come in the back door. Then there would be the recognisable form and mass of her husband approaching. Quietly slipping into the back room for a chat, with an appreciative -
'Hello Luv'
On this evening of her seventieth, all the family having now departed, Maureen was upstairs sorting out photos humming along to one of her blessed radios. Then she heard the familiar tones of his voice in the doorway saying -
'Happy Birthday Dora'
As he emerged from the kitchen into the back room, her attention skipped to alert in an echo of younger love. There he was. Douglas, visibly sitting down in front of her, smiling with àll the warmth in his eyes she remembered from long ago. He rarely said more than his opening greeting. Yet without even opening her mouth she could give him an uninterrupted catch up on how his daughters and sons were doing, all the up to date family gossip. Mind to mind like.
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