Shadows Of Childhood Past

I had been working at an office in the English seaside town of Southend-on-Sea in the county of Essex.  Southend was famed for having the world’s longest pier and possibly the most frequently burned and accident prone claim to fame.  The last time it burned beyond repair was in October 2005.  It was a pretty little town in Victorian times, a bit like Brighton, but post-war development and poor town planning had long ago ripped the guts out of the place and left a hotchpotch of buildings new and old huddled together or staring blankly out to sea.  I have some fond memories of the place though and had a few adventures there over the years.

 

At lunchtime it is my habit to walk, get some fresh air, and think and I haven’t changed in that respect.  The thoughts I was thinking were of how it had all gone wrong for me in London and what I was going to do with myself.  Sometimes, if feeling energetic, I would even walk to the end of the pier.  These walks were something like moving meditation because I never had to think where I was going and sometimes I would arrive almost completely unaware of the journey.   It was 1990 and I was back in my home county of Essex having been at University in London for three years and then filled in with some teaching at an education project for offenders with learning difficulties.   I had just taken a job as an assistant probation officer but my heart wasn’t really in it and the worst part, looking back now at that time,  was that the people I worked with must have known it too.  I looked around at my new colleagues and couldn’t help thinking what a sad bunch of people they really were and how I really did not want to be sucked in to their petty world of arguments about stationery and rotas.

The last thing I wanted in fact was to be stuck in an office based job.  I had been running around London at 100 miles an hour in the thick of things one moment and back home in Sleepy Ville the next.  But I knew deep down that I needed some time out to mend and recharge myself both mentally and physically.  To tell the truth I was lost at this time and felt empty inside.  I had just split from my long-term girlfriend (who I am happy to still be in touch with to this day) and then reluctantly moved away from my beloved London turning my back on the life I had established there.  I tried a relationship with someone but quickly realised I was not ready for any kind of serious relationship with anyone.  I seemed to have lost my way in terms of what I was doing career-wise too.  Sometimes I was so low I wondered if it was worth going on but somehow I managed to roll out of bed every morning and do just enough to keep my job.

Here I was wandering around in my out of place fashionable clothes getting fewer and fewer calls asking me where I was.  I seemed to have no energy to get back to anyone and in any case felt too miserable to enjoy the company of others.  I even quit smoking because it seemed too much of a drag in a no smoking office.  I imagined I was putting on weight and then I realised with interest that I was and looking back on it I can see that that was when I should have taken a bit more care.  Without my usual diet of nervous energy and a quick bite here and there on the run I was putting on pounds of flab weekly.  I was also convinced my longish wavy brown hair was receding and that turned out to be true too.  It sounds awful but that was nearly twenty years ago and I feel a lot better now.

I was barely 22 and I felt like my life was falling apart at the seams when I thought it should have been a non-stop party.  I knew that I oozed misery from every pore but despite this I somehow managed to keep going.  At about this time I started having a recurring nightmare about being trapped in an enormous airport where the way to the exit was hidden from me.  Just as I appeared to be making progress towards my departure I would take a wrong turning and find myself back where I had begun.  It did not take much of a psychoanalyst to work that one out.  I was back home and nothing seemed to have changed except me and whilst on one level it was comforting at another I felt like I’d flopped badly.  All the previous years seemed like a waste of time.  I walked the same streets as I had done as a child and saw the same people about doing the same things as they had always done.  It would have been bearable if those I had grown up with had not long since departed for pastures new and were not sending home such glowing reports of success after success.  They now only returned for Christmas and other occasional celebrations parading gorgeous new partners and in some cases children in front of me whilst I wallowed in the mire of my own miserable existence.  I was embarrassed to be there and they did not know what to say to me either really because it was obvious that my balloon was grounded possibly permanently.  Benfleet where I grew up was a nice safe place to grow up in but it was always been too small and claustrophobic for me except when I was about five years of age.  That is why I had left in the first place like a brightly coloured bird released from a small cage only to taste what I could be briefly before being stuffed into another place of confinement.  Now I was back behind bars working with those who had been or would be sooner or later.  It was worse because I now knew what freedom was.

Everywhere I looked I saw happy smiling couples who I assumed were doing what happy smiling couples loved to do.  The news I heard from people I used to hang out with indicated they were getting on well in their chosen professions and all, even the least gifted, seemed to be doing alright.  I was stuck under a lonely black cloud of despair and there just didn’t seem to be any way out for the likes of me. 

It was then whilst walking at lunchtime, largely oblivious to anything, that I began to catch glimpses of a vaguely familiar person.  At first I thought nothing of the tall elderly woman strolling with ease around the park.  I had a nagging recognition but couldn’t place her at first.  However, something about her movement triggered a long buried memory.  It was whilst returning to my office that the thought struck me that the woman bore a striking resemblance to my first teacher in primary school.  It scarcely seemed possible that she was in fact the one and only Miss McHugo.   She was a tall lady with silvery grey hair.

On my subsequent visits to the park I kept an eye out for her determined to get a good look at her next time to confirm her identity.  Alas, I did not see her despite now being on full alert.  It was whilst cutting through the park with my mind on other things and barely aware of my surroundings that I suddenly came face to face with her.  One moment there was no one there and the next instant her presence enveloped me.  She smiled at me her eyes full of warmth and recognition.  It was a smile that lifted your heart whatever had been going on.

She simply said,

“Hello David”.

These two words dug into me deeply and overwhelmed me with an inexplicable feeling of joy.  It felt as if something in my head that made me happy, and that had previously been disconnected, was suddenly plugged back in and had gone into overdrive.  All I could manage was to stammer,

“Hello Miss McHugo good to see you”.

In that moment I was five years of age again and in awe of this woman who had taught me to read and whose long fingers had held my hand firmly sending waves of reassurance through me. This was the same woman whose voice was as clear in my memory as my own mothers. There she was wearing the same long green tartan skirt secured with a bright silver pin and her old woolly jumper just as I remembered her.  She was as tall and thin as ever and bizarrely I even thought I smelt the faintest whiff of chalk dust, damp paper, and mothballs memories buried deeply in my brain.  It was as if in the time between heartbeats both of us took the other in and that moment passed and in the blink of an eye she was gone. 

I felt so happy that she was still going strong and I looked forward to our next meeting when I hoped to tell her all my news and thank her for giving me a good start in life.  I felt truly wonderful all that day thinking about happy carefree days in Miss McHugo’s class.  I knew now that I was in the right place at the right time.  It was as if the meeting with my old teacher had imparted to me a little seed of hope that now glowed warmly inside and was spreading through me and out to everyone near me. The monochrome world in which I had just existed suddenly became colourful again.  I was like Dorothy transported to Oz (I always thought that was a neat bit of that film).  I started to feel happy and positive and made some decisions that seemed to get me back on track. Feelings of hope and optimism re-entered my world like long absent friends.  The phone began to ring as if an invisible announcement had gone out on the ether and I got loads of support from unexpected people.  It was a great time and looking back I now realise that I was whipping up a storm that would carry me forward for many years.  I got myself a scholarship to do a masters degree and started taking a real interest in the job I was doing rather than treating it as a bit of a nuisance.  I started taking the initiative in my social life too and getting back in the drivers seat of my life.  I contacted my old friends and persuaded them to get together for maybe our last get together before we all dispersed even further. 

The following week I met up with a few of my old school friends.  I had known them all since the age of four or five.  It was whilst we were enjoying a pint or three of fine English ale in a very lovely old pub that I told them of my chance encounter with our old teacher Miss McHugo.  We laughed out loud together remembering our classroom antics and what we would do to be the first in line to hand out the milk. I felt so happy to be with them all and felt my roots in our shared experiences and thought for a moment how our parents had all come to this small town and raised us the best way they knew how and hoped that one day we would be at this stage in our lives.  This was what they had all been working towards all those years.

We agreed that Miss McHugo had been a really special teacher to all of us in lots of different ways.  It helped that she was blessed with a voice that could shatter glass or soothe the most painful grazed knee.  She also had the uncanny ability to teach any child how to sit down and stay sat down long enough to learn something. Nothing seemed to get past her and we were convinced that she had eyes in the back of her head.  If anyone was hurt she was there in an instant or if something funny happened she was there to share in the joke. 

One of my friends was abnormally silent and when I looked at him he appeared worried and puzzled.  I asked him what the matter was. He looked at me a while as if wondering whether it was the time to tell me some bad news.  I had never seen him look like this before.

“When did you say this happened?” he asked me in a serious voice. 

“It was only a couple of weeks ago.  Why?” I replied casually. 

“It’s impossible you know”

 ”How come?” Now I was the one who was puzzled. 

“Well this is going to sound crazy but you can’t have seen her because she’s dead David.”

“You’re joking!” I must have looked pretty shaken by the news.

“No I’m not.  She really is dead; in fact her funeral was last week”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, I’m positive. All I know is she suffered a stroke some time ago and never recovered.  She just lay in bed or sat in a chair for months not really able to speak but she must have been thinking a lot”

“How do you know?” I said suddenly feeling totally confused. 

“There was a little bit in the local paper and I saw someone who knew her who was at the funeral.  I was going to mention it but forgot. It’s all a bit sad really.” 

We sat in silence each of us remembering what a great teacher she had been and what a great loss she was to all that had known her.  All of our lives had been touched by her and countless others too.

I walked home from the pub thinking over and over again of my encounter with Miss McHugo. I felt a little lost and asked myself all kinds of questions.  I never doubted that it was Miss McHugo for one moment.  If not her who could it have been? They simply don’t make people like that anymore and you could not mistake her for someone else.  

Did I really meet her?

I thought again of what my friend had said and wondered if I had mistaken her for someone else.  It was impossible but also impossible I could have mistaken her even if I was having some kind of depression induced flashback.  I can’t rule it out but the timing was uncanny.

Had I seen her spirit?

What was going on?

She was so real.  I even smelt her.  There was no doubt.  Had I been hallucinating it was a pretty good hallucination involving auditory, olfactory and visual elements that were perfect in every way.  A vision? An angel?  I have never been able to explain what happened but as a result I made the effort to get my life back on track and started moving forward again.