The Bonds That Bind Us
‘Come here.’
Again, louder this time, more gruff. ‘I said, come here.’
I slunk closer. A hand, work roughened and callused encircled my wrist and a quick jolt was enough to pull me the last few inches. He patted the empty chair next to him. I sat down, my face hot. I could hear the others sniggering behind me but didn’t dare turn away. The smell of alcohol rolled off him in waves and he slid a heavy arm around my shoulder, pulling me even closer. When his eyes met mine, they were the eyes of a drunk, rolling and unfocused. He closed them for a long moment, long enough to hope he’d fallen asleep but then, with some seemingly gargantuan effort, he opened his eyes and fixed me with a steady gaze.
I knew it was coming. It was always the same.
‘You see your mum.’ I nodded. My mum wasn’t there, but I nodded anyway. ‘Look after her. She’s the best friend you’ll ever have, I swear to god.’ I should have known that wasn’t the end of it, merely a long pause in which he lit another cigarette and took a deep drag, blowing it out as he continued to speak so that the smoke came in small puffs. ‘Here’s me hand and here’s me heart, believe me when I tell you, no one will ever know you better than your mum.’
All these years later and I can still remember that moment. I can see it in my mind’s eye now, a still of that wood panelled kitchen in the early hours of the morning. The soliloquy of my best friend’s drunken step-father and his late night, beer fuelled philosophy.
As I write this, the memory makes me smile, a treasure from my past. I remember how afraid of him I was, a hard working class man, tempered by hardship just as iron is tempered by the constant heating and cooling. But not at that moment. Softened by alcohol, in that melancholic state that precedes the kind of sleep that only alcohol can induce, he was something else. A man-child, lost himself in his own memories, his eyes no longer focused but instead closed, head slumped in hand, cigarette dangling from fingers, spilling ash on the table top. A man-child.
This moment has stuck with me, popping up from the depths of my memory palace now and then, particularly as I get older. And the older I get and the more I think about it, I think he was wrong. That or perhaps he was an only child. Because as important as parents are (and make no mistake, they are), I think it’s siblings that become our best friends, who know us better than anyone else. Better even than ourselves perhaps.
If you’d told me as a kid that my sisters would end up being my best and most trusted friends, I’d have laughed at you. Long and hard. My sisters and I fought like cats and dogs. There are four of us all together so you can imagine the fun my mother had. And yet it was those times, along with the good of course (not to mention everything in between) that forged the bonds of sisterhood, of friendship.
The town I grew up in and where I still live, is a small rural town in the middle of England. Sounds idyllic right? But we were poor, our home a council house on the street with the worst reputation. Cardboard city, I once heard a kid at my primary school call it, and I think that was the first time I really noticed how others viewed the place I lived and the people who lived there. And by extension, me.
It’s a weird experience, that moment of knowing, like a loss of innocence. The first hint that the difference I often felt inside wasn’t just some internal issue, but one that was perhaps started by the perceptions of others before I was even aware of them myself. Who knows. But that feeling of being othered was there, and it was something that grew as I did. And, when you are in such a position, the instinct is to draw closer to those like you.
Those people were my sisters.
I can remember first starting nursery school, that first day, only three or maybe four years old. And I say I can remember first starting nursery, but really I have just one snapshot.
When you think about it, starting school can be quite traumatic for small children. It was for me. All I can remember of that day is being in a strange place with strange people and all I could do was ball my eyes out in the corner. When my older sister found me and asked what was wrong, who had hurt me, I didn’t say I was scared, or wanted to go home, or any of the other things I felt. I told her a boy pushed me over before pointing out the biggest kid. My sister went over to him and pushed him off his tricycle. The poor kid hadn’t done anything wrong, but looking back now with my adult mind and perspective, I guess it was just all too much. But it didn’t matter in the end. I wasn’t alone. My sister was there. I knew she’d always be.
Don’t feel too bad for me though, this isn’t a story of doom and gloom. Besides, my childhood was filled with great times. In fact, I feel a bit sorry for kids nowadays, even as a parent myself. Oh the adventures we had!
Children are most wild in the summer months. I know we were, my sisters and I. When I recall our summers, I can’t help but smile, wince too, at the things we did then, so carefree and brave. I’m a parent myself now, and that’s what makes me pull a face in grimace, the thought of my own kids getting up to the kind of things we did.
Times change, and with it what is considered acceptable.
Back then, my eldest sister, from the age of around thirteen or fourteen, was often left in charge of the rest of us while my parents worked. Pretty much standard practice back then. But what teenager wants to stay in the house on those hot summer days with their siblings? And so, when she went out with her friends, we had to go too. And of course, her friends were all in the same boat, the end result being there would be loads of us!
Sometimes we would go to the woods. It’s about a ten minute walk from the estate, Devils Woods the locals called it and still do, whether that’s the real name or not, who knows. There was an old air raid shelter in the woods, just waiting to be explored the older kids, using lighters swiped from parents pockets to create a strobe light effect. But the older kids didn’t really want us there, and nor did the younger siblings want to be and so the woods and fields were our domain..
There were many other places we went on our summer days out. Newt and toad catching down an abandoned railway line (it’s now a popular nature walk and cycle track), different spots along the river, the boys from the estate jumping off the elbow bridge into the water below. The gypsy field, so called because every summer, travellers would pitch up in their caravans and we’d make friends with the kids. It seems that wherever I look, whichever memory slips into my thoughts, the carefree and fun summer days were always spent with my sisters.
Even as an adult, with my own children, I have revisited those places, encouraging that closeness that being out in nature with your family can bring. I guess, on reflection, it was this that enhanced my childhood and made it something special. Pure magic.
Nowadays though, there is no swimming in the river, save for the rebellious teens who always seem to make the font of the local paper every summer, perhaps that sense of exploration, of immortality and the feeling of youth and longevity stirring something inside them.
Those weeks off school were the most glorious and when I think back on days out by the river or swimming at the concrete barge, they always seem hazy in that way when you squint and the sun reflects off your eyelashes. Sometimes I see them as stills, single sepia toned moments. A snapshot, but always with that scent of the hot sun, like ironed linen.
When we were kids we’d go swimming. Not in any pool, with lifeguards and parents, but instead at the river with the other kids from the estate. The river was close by, a ten minute walk, and the older boys would jump off the elbow bridge into the sparkling water below. The more foolish would climb the train bridge, more than double the height of the elbow bridge and wait for trains to come before jumping into the river. How none of them died I’ll never know and I often wonder if they think back to those days, have the same thoughts, perhaps with the same cold shiver.
Other times, and my favourite, much better than the river, we’d go to the concrete barge. Where the river splits into two parts, the old and the new, there’s a lake. On the banks of that lake, an old abandoned concrete barge sits.
The journey there was always filled with excitement and I’d imagine myself in a group not unlike the Famous Five. The concrete barge was in the next village, a two mile walk, but back then it felt much longer, like I was in the film Stand By Me. We’d stop off at a church and drink water from the outside tap. When hunger struck, we’d pluck ripe plums from overhanging branches or eat wild fruits. If we were lucky, someone might have money left by a parent for lunch which was promptly spent on snacks and drinks.
These concrete barges were used during and after the second world war but eventually fell out of useage. This one was collapsed in the centre (the memory of looking down into depths of that hole and seeing the empty gaze of a dead fish staring back at me comes back unbidden as I write this) but still sturdy if you kept away from the edge of the hole.
We’d climb the barge and sit on top in the hot sun. The older kids would jump off into the cool waters below, but I was always too afraid and never the strongest swimmer. Once, I did dare jump off after one of the older boys, a teenager the same age as my sister, said he’d catch me at the bottom. He did, but not before my head went under and I swallowed a mouthful of the water, and then his hands were under my arms and I was up and out, the tang of the cold water in my mouth and the hot bright sun on my skin. That was the first and last time I jumped off the concrete barge, my oldest sister laying down the law, more scared of being found out by our parents than any real concern. Still, how I loved those days!
And it wasn’t just those long and lazy summer days that deepened the bonds of sisterhood. Christmases were always fun, loud and exciting. What else could it be with four girls?
One year my older sister and I got mountain bikes. They were our first proper adult ones and, filled with pure excitement, we went on a bike ride all over the town. The streets and roads were deserted. It was a grey day, cold but dry, perfect for cycling. It didn’t matter my fingers were freezing as they gripped the handlebars, gloves forgotten in my haste to be out. It was a great feeling.
We went everywhere!
I don’t remember anything much about that Christmas in particular, all Christmases seem to bleed into one as the years pass by. But I remember that bike ride. That exhilarating feeling of being outside with the wind in my face, riding through the empty town with my sister beside me.
But childhood soon passes, all too soon though I doubt our younger selves would ever believe such a thing.
Nothing remains the same, everything changes, is constantly in flux. That includes us too. Each and every one of us, and so, this affects us, those we share our lives with and our relationships with.
Slowly the fights of childhood died away and something else emerged. No longer just sisters, but friends too.
And then our own children too, cousins but as close as siblings change things further, but still, the essence of the kids we were lingers. We have a group chat, and it seems whenever we are together, online or in real life, it feels like we are those same kids from all those years ago. As much as things change, I guess they stay the same.
Or something like that.
And I suppose I’m lucky. I have healthy relationships with all my siblings. I know others might not have that relationship. Perhaps friends fill that void, they are after all the family we choose for ourselves, but there is something else too. Ever present in all of these memories, the glorious backdrop to childhood adventures, is nature. Every memory recalled is linked to the land it occurred in and on, land that has now, in many places, changed beyond all recognition, but still as I pass by, there is still that feeling, that aura, that sense of spirit that persists.
The bonds that bind us to one another may change and vary but they are there. In times of need, it is these bonds that serve us best, that can form the basis of community in the truest sense of the word.
EMMA KATHRYN
Emma Kathryn, practises traditional British witchcraft, Vodou and Obeah, a mixture representing her heritage. She lives in the sticks with her family where she reads tarot, practises witchcraft and drink copious amounts of coffee.
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