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!