The Burn Dress

The Burn Dress lay in the drawer, wrapped in mothballs, for nearly four years. Every summer Mummy took it out and tried it against Ruthie and then folded it up again, commenting,

            “You’d still look like a little waif in it. Maybe next year.”

            It was a dark turquoise color with an orange and brown plaid design. The skirt was full with ties at the waist, and there was a round white collar. Ruthie thought it was beautiful and each year she hoped that at last she would have grown into it, but she did not seem to be very good at growing.

Mummy said that she had grown slowly since the scald. She also said that Ruthie’s hair used to be curly before the scald and Ruthie herself could see the results of that event in the brown dimpled skin on her body under her left arm. There seemed so many things that had happened ‘because of your burn’. Most of them were not good but, Ruthie reflected, there would have been no Burn Dress without it so, she supposed, in the end good things and bad things get all mixed up together.

Ruthie was one and a half the year of the burn. Mummy and Daddy had hired a caravan for a fortnight’s holiday in Polzeath. For the first four days it had been a nearly perfect holiday. They were close to the beach so they could spend the morning there and then come back in the afternoon for lunch and naps, so Mummy did not have to pack everything needed for a six-month-old baby and a toddler for a whole day out. The weather had been warm and dry but not uncomfortably hot, and having a caravan with a small built-in sink made it easier for Mummy to wash out nappies than if she had had to bend over the portable baby bath which they used when they camped in a tent. Cooking was easier too as they had a small gas stove. No pumping a primus for them this year!

On the morning of the fifth day, as Mummy boiled the milk for the coffee, Ruthie started asking Daddy to put butter on her Shreddies. This was a treat Daddy had introduced some months before, little realizing how popular and how bothersome it would prove. As Ruthie began clamouring for butter, Samuel began to cry.

“Can you pick him up, please?” Mummy asked. “I’m just pouring out the coffee and then I’ll feed him.” Feeling ignored, Ruthie knelt up on the bench and stretched across the table for the butter.

“No, no, Ruthie. Sit down,” Mummy told her, as she put the first cup of boiling hot coffee onto the table and turned back to pour out the second, but Ruthie obstinately persisted in her object and reached right across the cup. As she picked up the butter dish and brought it back her small hand failed to support the weight of the dish with its half pound of butter and it fell down on top of the cup and tipped it over. The hot liquid puddled across the table and fetched up against Ruthie’s chest pressed to the side of the table. She screamed as the coffee penetrated straight through her thin cotton blouse. Putting down the milk pan quickly, Mummy put the other cup of coffee in the sink where it could not come to any harm and snatched up Ruthie, pulling the blouse off as she did so. To her horror the skin underneath was already red and blistering.

“Cold compress,” whispered Daddy hoarsely, unable to move with Samuel in his arms. Mummy took the tea towel and wet it thoroughly under the tap, before wrapping it around Ruthie’s body. Ruthie continued to scream and by now Samuel was also screaming in fear.

“What shall we do?” asked Mummy.

“We’ll have to take her to the hospital,” said Daddy.

“Where’s the nearest one?”

“Twenty miles,” Daddy said shortly. They looked at each other fearfully, wondering about the logistics of the journey. Both knew that twenty miles along narrow Cornish roads would be almost an hour’s journey, and both wondered whether Ruthie could wait an hour for treatment.

“God, give us wisdom!” Daddy breathed, and just at that moment there was a knock at the caravan door.

“Is everything alright?” sounded the voice of their neighbour. Daddy let her in and explained the situation briefly. 

“I’ll take the baby,” she said immediately.

“I haven’t even fed him yet. I’m breast-feeding. I haven’t any formula,” Mummy said anxiously.

“Don’t worry. You need to get that one to hospital. The shop will be open soon. I’ll get some formula for him.”

Kindly and efficiently she helped them wrap Ruthie in a blanket and saw them into the car before returning to the caravan and finding clothes and nappies for Samuel.

Daddy drove as fast as he could on the winding roads and Ruthie lay in Mummy’s arms. Gradually her sobs quieted as she cried herself to sleep and presently the only sound in the car was an occasional hiccup as the last few sobs forced their way out. Mummy and Daddy were silent for many minutes and then as he pulled up at a junction, Daddy put his hand gently on top of Mummy’s.

“It’s alright,” he said softly. “She’s in God’s hands.”

“I know,” Mummy nodded. “I’ve been thinking that.”

At the hospital, the doctor had both good and bad news for them. The good news was that falling asleep in the car had probably saved Ruthie’s life.

“I’ve see children with less traumatic scalds that this one lose their lives from shock,” he told them; but he also said she must stay in hospital for several days. The burns would need dressing to prevent them going septic.

Grimly, Mummy and Daddy were forced to leave Ruthie alone in the hospital when visiting hours were over. They almost wept themselves as they heard her desolate crying and knew that they must stonily go out of the door; but now their hearts were torn, as they remembered Samuel back at the caravan and wondering how he had managed without them.

The next few days were hard for the whole family but in later years Ruthie only had slight memories left. She could see a silver cot in the corner of a white-washed room, with a small window high above it. On the side of the cot hung a green plastic mug. It was the same shape as her own faded pink mug at home, but it had a funny taste.

There was great rejoicing when the doctor finally released her from the hospital, even though there were still trips for dressings every other day. The biggest problem was that none of Ruthie’s clothes would go on over the bandages, so Daddy went into Polzeath and returned with a dress large enough to cover the bandages, but which came down nearly to her ankles.

“She looks like a little waif,” Mummy said, and it was in that role that Ruthie was to be found in all the subsequent family photos, so that years later when looking through the photo albums it was easy to identify the year of the burn by the Burn Dress topped by Ruthie’s curls.

The Wrong Arm of the Law

Mark laid the last bundle of sleeping child into the back of the car and climbed into the front seat.

“Goodbye, Goodbye!” he waved, and Mr. and Mrs. Eastman standing on the doorstep, silhouetted in the light from the hall behind them, waved back whilst Elizabeth carefully put the car into reverse and backed down the drive.

“Nine o’clock”, Mark commented. “Not bad time. We should be back by eleven.  Are you alright to drive?”

Elizabeth smiled. He could never believe that she really enjoyed driving and would always willingly have taken over a job he hated in order to save her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I spent a quiet evening with Mrs. Eastman whilst you were preaching, so don’t worry about me. As long as you can navigate for me. I don’t want to miss the turn this year.”

They chatted quietly about this and that but Mark kept an eye open for the Birmingham road. It would have been easy if they had gone by the main road but they always preferred to stick to the country lanes as long as they could. The only problem was that in the dark it was easy to miss the sign-posts if they did not keep alert.

“Are the children all asleep?” Elizabeth asked, quietly.

Mark turned his head to consider the three bundles lying on the folded down seat with their feet sticking into the boot. There was no movement.

“Think so,” he answered softly. He turned back to the road. The moon had risen and was making a silver glow on the fields ahead of them.

“Pretty,” he said. “And we’ve got it all to ourselves.”

“Almost,” Elizabeth agreed. “There’s a car behind us that I see now and again, but it’s not in a hurry to get past.”

They came to the Birmingham road and turned left. As they did so the other car behind appeared again and seemed to come a little closer to follow them around the turn, but once turned it again seemed in no hurry.

It was a perfect night for a drive. Elizabeth felt as though she did not want it to end, but she was jolted into reality by a cramp shooting up her left leg.

“Ow!” she exclaimed softly, still aware of the sleeping children.

“What’s the matter?” asked Mark.

“Cramp,” she replied shortly. “Got to stop.”

She put on the indicator, slowed down and pulled over onto the grassy verge, watching that there was no ditch at the side. As she did so the car that had been following them also pulled over and came and parked behind them.

“Funny!” said Elizabeth, massaging her leg. “Wonder what they want.”

A door opened and the driver got out and came towards them.

“Is it locked?” asked Mark, at the same time locking his own door. As Elizabeth checked the lock on her door the other driver came around to Mark’s side of the car. He had a large torch with him, and by its light they could see that it was a policeman. Mark rolled down the window a short way and the man looked in.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked. It was a reasonable question. They were pulled up on a grass verge in a deserted country lane without street lights at nearly 10 o’clock at night.

“I just got a cramp in my leg,” Elizabeth explained. “We won’t stop long.”

The policeman seemed to be taking in all the details of themselves and the car. He peered over Mark’s head into the back where the sleeping children were just visible as lumpy packages.

“What have you got in the back?” he asked and turned his torch to give himself a better view.

“Oh, please don’t wake the children!” Elizabeth exclaimed, but it was too late. Three little heads popped up and three little faces, screwed up against the light, shone in the glow. The policeman looked disappointed.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I think I made a mistake,” and withdrawing his head quickly he disappeared back to his car.

Mark wound up his window and grinned.

“How many miles has he been following you?”

“About ten, I think,” Elizabeth replied.

“Well I think by now his quarry is far away and laughing up his sleeve. We couldn’t have been better decoys if he had paid us – loot and all!”

“Well I hope the loot will go back to sleep,” Elizabeth said as she started the engine. 

Alice in the Schoolroom

Monday was the last teaching day of the school year, and on Tuesday there was always a class outing, but Wednesday had no special activities except for the Awards Chapel in the middle of the day. Each year Ruthann revised her script of 'Alice in Wonderland' to make it suitable for the students she had that year. They learned their lines for homework the penultimate week of school, but Wednesday was devoted to pulling together a play for the parents to watch at the end of the day.

The first run through of the day was a disaster. The children had either not read the stage directions or had memorized them to say with their words. Despite a week's worth of memorization they did not know their lines and kept asking in disbelief whether they really had to do it without the script. Ruthann, with the thinning patience of a teacher in the last few hours of the year wondered, as she did every year, whether they would really have anything to show the parents. That was before first recess, a break welcomed by teacher and students alike.

However, by lunch-time, and the fourth time through, everybody knew where to enter and even those who thought they could never speak all their words without their papers were beginning to know their lines. Ruthann's forced praise of the beginning of the day started to flow naturally and she permitted herself to hope that she would not need to cue every entrance and every other line.

The Awards ceremony came as a welcome break for them, and thankfully only involved half an hour of sitting still, but after one more rehearsal, Ruthann realized that even the usually unexciting chore of cleaning their desks would be received with fresh interest. Plunging their hands into warm sudsy water was enough reason to keep them returning to the pail at the front of the class to wash out their cloths, and when their own desks were cleaned they were uncharacteristically willing to help their peers.

Interest in the last practice of the day was raised by permission to finally wear the costumes they had been looking at longingly all day. These were deliberately simple - ears for the White Rabbit and March Hare, an apron for Alice, and whiskers for the Cheshire Cat and the dormouse. The King and Queen of Hearts tried to look regal in crowns that had a tendency to fall down over their eyes and the Mock Turtle's shell looked more like a cloak than anything else, but attired in their splendor the children acted better than they had done all day.

Just as they finished their last scene the parents arrived. Whatever was not perfect now would have to stay that way, but the parents were easily pleased and started their video cameras before the play had even begun. Ruthann was kept busy ensuring that everyone remembered where they were supposed to place each piece of scenery, making sure that the White Rabbit had his fan and the Mad Hatter his cup and slice of bread and butter, and at the same time remembering to come in for her two lines as the Duchess's grumpy cook. However, it was soon over and she was leading the applause for the final scene and helping the children pick up the pack of cards that the White Rabbit had thrown over Alice's head. Parents were taking last photos and ushering their children out, laden with grocery sacks full of the contents of their desks, and before long Ruthann was left to herself. She sank into her chair. Her crazy project had worked once again.