For Tisa


I was anxious, I clasped your hand a little tighter.
I was maybe seven, and you weren’t going to school.

Our tall dark aunt had promised us a lovely holiday
but when she had driven us to a remote and primitive

shack where she lived with her new husband, she knelt
before us and said she would be going to work tomorrow

and I was to mind you till she got back. This dereliction of
adults was not new, they often abandoned us to circumstance

but this place was off my map. As we had been hustled down
the path a row of witchy trees had cast shadows and creaked.

And the kitten had wee-ed where it should not and raised our
aunt’s ire. One bare light bulb burned above. The house smelt.

The house with her old husband had been grand. In the garden
the brook with the bridge arching over. This house was a shock.

But downstairs in the bathroom, her bottle of Gin Fizz by Lubin
from which I took frequent aromatic therapy. The shapely flask.

She doesn’t remember, my tall dramatic aunt, curled in her bed
like a quarrelsome baby. We were so many, us children, arriving

for no good reason, or refusing to arrive, which was even worse.
She doesn’t remember that her high-heeled shoes slopped off

behind her as she knelt, or how her chin pointed grimly to the floor.
I was so afraid of having to look after you. You cute button, you.


*


The first day we played in the garden and I thought up ‘collecting
caterpillars’. I knew I had one life and that is what I did. I thought

it up. The caterpillars gave outcry and writhed, they were squidgy
brutes, and they poo-ed black tarry dots. I felt no pity, actually.

I found a box on the sideboard within which to imprison them,
but our distracted aunt said, after the very long day, that it was

a special box, a lucky box, that a dear dear friend had given her.
I turned on my heel and scrupulously rendered the lamenting

bodies of future butterflies back to where they came from. Hungry
hungry caterpillars. I’ve no memory of the kitten after the first time.

I do remember her crusted bowls on the kitchen lino. As I pressed
the lucky box into my aunt’s hands, I gave her a dark child’s look.

When would this end? I didn’t know. No one told a child anything.
And where was our new uncle? I had overheard his aggrieved voice

from the next room as I lay shivering in my chilly bed and our aunt,
a little squiffy, almost shrill, explaining and explaining. Late home

from the pub I expect, later than usual. Because of us. One thing was
certain. We were not welcome. And you, my little sister, snoring like

a prickle-backed hedgehog, lapped by the moonlight pouring through
the window without curtains. And we woke to another day. This life!


*


I helped you to the toilet, lifted you onto the bowl, although you could
wipe yourself. I pressed the flush. And then we found the steps down

to the beach cut into the cliff. You remembered, I saw you remember,
and you were so young to remember anything. How we loved the beach!

Those seagulls with red stockings on who are walking with high heels.
At low tide a sand bar poked its shoulder out and I risked the rippling

shallows. I was becoming bold. I knew that we had been abandoned
but I kept it from you as best I could. All that claptrap about a lovely

holiday! Those grown-ups couldn’t tell the truth or lie straight in their
beds. I sneaked downstairs and took another snifter of Gin Fizz. Nice!