by Marie Joseph
‘No!’ Libby took a step forward. ‘No, that’s where you’re wrong, Father. I didn’t go down to take anybody’s side. I went because I wanted to listen to what they had to say. I have a right to know, to make up my own mind.’
Oliver’s florid face turned purple. ‘Right? Did you say right?’ Let me tell you something, lass. As long as you live under my roof you have no rights. If you’d been born sooner you’d have been like them daft women chaining themselves to railings for the vote. And for what? To vote for something they know nowt about!’ He raised a clenched fist. ‘One son. One son was all I had, and he had to go and get himself killed, leaving me here in a house full of women, with even the cat a bloody female!’
‘Oliver . . .’ Ettie Peel made an involuntary movement as if to get up. ‘Please don’t bring Willie into it. You know how it upsets me.’ She laid a hand over her heart. ‘It’s not my fault, and it’s not Libby’s fault she’s not a man. She’s high-spirited, that’s all. No harm’s been done.’
‘No harm?’ Oliver turned on his wife. ‘No harm for a daughter of this town’s best-known mill owner to be seen mingling with the scum of the earth, down on the market of an evening looking like a night woman? What did you do down there, Libby Peel? Jump on a soapbox and encourage that rabble to walk out on their wicked employers? I must be the laughing stock of the whole town. “How can he control his workers when he can’t control his own daughter?” That’s what they’ll be saying over their ale. Oh, aye, they can always find money for ale even when their families are supposed to be starving.’
‘Some of their children are nearly starving, Father.’ Libby spoke quietly, ‘There are a dozen children in my class alone with rickets, and that is a direct result of not getting proper food. Half of them with head lice, and not because they’re dirty, but because they have to sleep four and sometimes five to a bed.’ Forgetting all self-control, Libby raised her voice. ‘It’s time they rebelled. And I’ll tell you something else. I hope they all come out, and I hope they stay out long enough to make you and your like see sense! That’s what I hope!’
One minute Oliver was standing, back to the fire, then the next, without seeming to move, he shot out a big hand and struck Libby hard across the face.
Too shocked to retaliate, Libby felt tears of outrage and shame fill her eyes, and saw in the same moment her mother crumple forward, to be saved from falling to the carpet by the swift action of Sarah Batt who, moving like lightning, came from behind the chesterfield to take her mistress in her arms.
‘I am all right.’ Ettie spoke in a whisper, her face white as chalk, her lips a strange blue colour. ‘I never thought to see the day when in my own house . . .’ Her voice faltered as Sarah helped by Carrie, led the trembling woman from the room.
Oliver stood irresolute for a moment. Before Libby too turned to follow the little procession upstairs their eyes met, and the glance was shot through with mutual dislike, a hatred that was almost tangible.
‘Go and see to your mother,’ he muttered before striding into the hall and flinging open the door of the billiard room opposite. ‘And just keep out of my sight for a bit, that’s all.’
For as long as Libby could remember her mother and father had slept in separate rooms. The carrying of twins and their difficult birth had left Ettie a semi-invalid. Libby could never remember a time when, bursting in from school full of the day’s doings, she had not been shushed into silence by the frail little woman half lying on the chesterfield in the big front room.
Now Ettie was drooping, ashen-faced, as between them Sarah Batt and Carrie helped to undress and get her into bed.
‘Shall I send for Dr Brandwood?’ Libby hovered, helpless, one side of her face scarlet, the tears of humiliation still prickling behind her eyes.
Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, miss. She’s just upset, that’s all. It affects her like this. I’ll go down and fetch some hot milk. It usually settles her nicely.’
Neither Libby nor Carrie thought there was anything unusual in Sarah talking to them over her mother’s head as if Ettie was not only blind and deaf but mentally retarded as well. Sarah’s devotion to her mistress was complete, and although the reason was never mentioned it was fully understood.
At twenty-six, Sarah Batt had the figure of a young matron and the face of a twelve-year-old child. Hair as red as a lick of flame sprang from her childish forehead above eyes as blue and shining as bluebells. Coming to the family straight from school, she had disgraced herself by having a baby in 1918, fathered, it was understood, by a soldier who had had his way with her on one of her rare evenings off. The child, a boy, was being brought up by Sarah’s parents in a village five miles the other side of the town, and in deference to Sarah’s sensitivity the matter was never referred to. The entire episode had warranted a mere five months’ absence by Sarah from Westerley, and if Sarah pined for the boy she saw only once a month on her weekend off, the longing was never expressed, not even by a sudden unexplained clouding of the blue eyes or a droop of the wide smiling mouth.
When Sarah came back upstairs bearing a tray with hot milk in a glass and a couple of water biscuits on a tray, Ettie was being ministered to by a twin on either side of her bed, one patting her hand and the other smoothing her brow.
‘You must try and understand your father better, she was telling Libby in a weak voice. ‘It’s not just this strike upsetting him. He’s not a young man, and with Willie gone . . .’ Her lip trembled. ‘With Willie gone there’s nobody to take over.’ She sighed at the skin forming on the top of the hot milk, only to have the offending layer spooned away by Sarah Batt before the sigh was over. Tears formed in her eyes, and as if following an unseen signal Libby and Carrie nodded to each other, leaned over to kiss their mother good night and left the room.
There was a dividing door between the twin’s bedrooms, usually left open so that they could call out to each other, but conferences, shared secrets, long unrewarding discussions about their parents – ‘Was Mother really as ill as all that?’ and ‘How much longer could Libby stand being in the same house as her father?’ – always took place in Libby’s room.
‘That’s it! Finished!’ Libby declared the minute the door on to the wide landing was closed. ‘If it hadn’t been for Mother I would have left, for good!’ She threw herself down on her bed, twisting round so she could see her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. ‘I can’t stay here now until the wedding at Christmas. He might have reduced Mother to a nothing, but he’s not doing it to me.’ She touched her cheek as if still feeling the flat-handed slap. ‘He’s mad, that’s what he is, and it’s no use blaming Willie’s death for his behaviour. It’s eight years since it happened. Eight years since the war ended, and I am sick and tired of being blamed for not being a boy to take over at the mill.’ She sat up suddenly. ‘How does he know that Willie would have wanted to, anyway? He hadn’t shown much aptitude for it when he rushed off to enlist. Why should his being killed have suddenly turned him into a plaster saint?’
Carrie sat down on the dressing-table stool. ‘Nobody knows how Willie would have turned out. But he was special, you know that.’ She picked up a small leather-framed photograph of a fair young man in army officer’s uniform gazing seriously into the camera. ‘He only went into the mill for Mother’s sake, because that was what was expected of him, and because he knew Father would have created. It was his kindness I remember best. Do you remember the time he talked Father into letting us ride bicycles? And how nice he was to Sarah? I think she had a bit of a crush on him. I’ve seen her blush sometimes when his name is mentioned.’
Libby wasn’t really listening. She was still shaking inside from the aftermath of the scene downstairs. It was all very well for Carrie to sit there, calm and reasonable so that it was impossible to know what she was really thinking. Carrie was too calm and reasonable, especially lately. It seemed at times as if she was away in some far-off place, dreaming her own dreams, thinking her own thoughts, so t
hat nothing happening around her really touched her. She would come home each day from the private school by the park where she taught History and French, to sit with her sewing, going occasionally to concerts in the town with a friend who still wore black for her sweetheart who had been killed at the front. Carrie, in her twin’s opinion, was halfway to being a spinster herself. And she didn’t seem to care, which was worse.
‘What will you do here when I’m married?’ Libby heard herself ask the question suddenly.
‘What do you mean? What will I do?’ Carrie stared down at the pink flowers blooming on the carpet. ‘Stay here, of course. What else could I do? I like my job, and I’ve got my friends and my music, and you’re not exactly going to the other side of the world. Not even to the other side of the town.’
For a long moment the sisters stared at each other, a look compounded of a love that was closer than any mere affinity. Libby, perhaps for the first time, was seeing clearly how it would be for Carrie when she had gone. How it would be for herself, too.
No more bedroom conferences, no more shared amusement at mealtimes when their eyes would meet in silent laughter. No Carrie to run to when she was mixed up and frustrated. No Carrie for Libby to lead, sure that her sister would follow.
‘Oh, I wish Harry had fallen in love with you instead of with me!’ Libby kicked off her shoes. ‘You would make a much better doctor’s wife that I can ever hope to be. You tolerate fools, Carrie, where I . . . where I want to spit in their eye.’
‘If you really wish that, then you don’t love him.’ Carrie went to pick up the scattered shoes, laying them neatly side by side. ‘You’re not marrying Harry just to get away from Father, are you? Because if you are, that’s despicable. He’s far too nice for that.’
‘I think you love him more than a little yourself,’ the demon on Libby’s shoulder prodded her to say. ‘All right, then, you can have him. I hand him over to you, as of now.’
To her astonishment, instead of flaring up in indignation, Carrie went as pink as the carpet flowers. Turning her back and sitting sideways so that all Libby could see was her straight back and her brown hair twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, she whispered, ‘Suppose you fell in love . . . oh, what I mean is, suppose, just for the sake of supposing, you fell in love with someone not at all suitable – what would you do?’
‘Marry him,’ Libby said promptly. ‘If he wanted me, that is. But then I would never fall in love with anyone who didn’t love me. It would be a waste of time.’ She started to unpin the heavy weight of her hair, too self-obsessed to realize that her twin was in real distress, that Carrie’s fingers were twisting together in an agony of despair. ‘I happen to love Harry, not because he is a good doctor with a thriving practice to take on when his father retires, but because I enjoy being made love to by him, especially when he is angry with me. His kisses are exciting when I know he really wants to hit me, like Father hit me downstairs.’ She took her brush from the dressing table and began to sweep it through her hair. ‘I’m longing to know what it’s really like when you’re married. Aren’t you? I wonder if it’s as wonderful as it says in books?’
But Carrie, her shoulders heaving, got up suddenly from the stool and rushed through into her own room, closing the dividing door behind her with a soft click.
As she was standing right behind the door, Libby could hear her crying as she turned the door handle, only to realize that the bolt had been shot into place on the other side. With the width of the oak-panelled door between them Libby spoke softly, urgently. ‘Carrie! Open the door! Come on. Stop being silly.’ She pushed as if by sheer strength she could force her way through into the other room. ‘Carrie! I had no idea. I didn’t know . . . look, we have to talk. I always knew you liked Harry, but I never dreamed . . .’
‘It’s not Harry.’ The whispered words sounded as though they were hurting Carrie to say them. ‘Please go away. Libby. I can’t talk to you. Not just now. Tomorrow perhaps, but not tonight. There’s been enough.’ There was a slight pause. ‘When Father hit you it was as though he was hitting me, and in a strange way it hurt me more than I think it hurt you. I just want to be alone. Please, Libby.’
Libby rattled the door handle in a last protest, then stepped back. What Carrie had just said made indisputable sense. To chastize one twin was to chastize the other, to hit one twin was exactly the same as hitting the other. It had always been so, and always would be, because the bond between them was stronger than could be explained rationally. It was probably the only inexplicable fact that Libby could accept.
But who? When? Where? She tried to bring to mind half a dozen of Carrie’s admirers, dismissing each one with a shake of her head. Carrie had never been serious about any man. Libby knew her through and through. Sometimes the ten minutes’ difference in their ages stretched into years as far as worldliness and experience went. And yet . . . She moved to the door again.
‘You’re all right?’ I won’t go to bed till I know you’re all right.’
‘I’m all right. Truly.’ Carrie’s voice was weary, but she had stopped crying. Knowing for once when she was beaten, Libby began to pull the stockinette blouse over her head. It was nothing. Probably some man had stared at Carrie on the tram on the way to school, and, knowing her sister’s romantic mind, Libby assumed she had blown it up into a grand passion, fired now by the distressing scene downtairs. Libby raised her voice. ‘Meet me after school downtown tomorrow and we’ll have our hair cut off, shall we? I dare you.’
‘Without telling Father?’
Libby sighed with relief at the normality of her twin’s breathless voice.
‘Without telling Father. He can’t stick it back on again once we’ve done it.’
‘Maybe.’ Libby saw the door handle begin to turn, held her breath, then sighed as Carrie changed her mind. She rubbed at the beginning of a headache throbbing between her eyes. Enough was enough for tonight. Too much had happened in too short a time. Now she was alone for the first time since coming back home, she could hear the shouts and angry voices of the men down on the market place. She saw the tall, thin man with black hair fall from the platform, his face as grey as dust, the blood running down his cheeks from the wound on his forehead.
‘Oh, God. My coat!’ She looked wildly round for a second, then remembered dropping the fawn duster-coat on a chair in the hall as she came in with Harry. The bloodstains down the front would be the start of another violent inquisition by her father if he found it.
Pulling the loose blouse over her head again she opened the door quietly. If she could creep downstairs without being seen she would be safe. She hesitated, peering through the crack in the door.
The house was quiet. Sarah Batt would be in her own room, the little room at the end of the landing, once used as a sewing room but now given over to Sarah so that she could be as near as possible to her mistress. Mrs Edwards, the live-in cook, as deaf as a post, would be snoring her head off in her room on the upper floor, and Martha Cardwell, the maid of all work, had gone to bed long ago to read one of the new confession magazines to which she was addicted. And Oliver . . . he was still downstairs in the billiard room. Libby knew that because the hall light was still on. If she went down now, if she crept down, picked up the coat and ran back, all would be well. Libby bit her lip. It was possible that Oliver would never see it, but then Sarah Batt or Martha might pick it up early in the morning, see the mud and the bloodstains on it, and oh, dear God, she was in no mood for explanations. She moved to open the door, then stepped back quickly as the light streamed out from the billiard room into the hall with its shaded wall fixtures.
Oliver Peel was coming up to bed.
Still as a mouse, Libby waited until she heard his unsteady progress up the stairway, heard him stumble past her door. Opening it a crack she saw him turn, not into his own room at the end of the landing, but towards the shorter flight of stairs to the upper floor, pulling himself up by the banister rail, unfastening his waistcoat but
tons as he went.
There was no mistaking it. No mistaking where he was going. Libby put a hand over her mouth. Her heart was beating rapidly as if she had run a race, and she felt sick. She could have been sick right there.
Instead she tiptoed to the foot of the short flight of stairs, heard the click of the door – but whose door? Mrs Edwards, a thin sparse widow of at least forty-five, hiding her deafness with wild and mostly inaccurate guesses at what was said to her? Or little Martha Cardwell, sixteen, no more, with her giggles and her pathetic efforts to please?
Was she pleasing Oliver Peel right this minute, sitting up in her narrow bed in her nightdress, waiting for him to come to her?
But her father was old. He was . . . he was . . . Libby ran downstairs, making no sound, needing to run somewhere, even if it was only to fetch the coat, which now seemed less important.
Back in her room she sat on the edge of her bed, holding the coat pressed to her cheek, rocking backwards and forwards, trying to come to terms with what she had just seen. Oliver Peel was a strong, virile man, with a full-blooded man’s appetite. As his wife had lived the life of a semi-invalid since the birth of her daughters, it followed that what he needed he must find. Libby stopped the rocking and let the coat drop to the floor.
With trembling fingers she began to undress, kicking the coat to one side and dislodging the little leather-backed book from the pocket. It meant nothing to her at that moment, but when she was in bed and before she had put out the light, she opened it at random.
‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began; so is it now I am a man.’