The Scarlet Sisters

by Helen Batten

  But Bill got down on one knee and said, ‘Grace, will you do me the honour of marrying me?’

  And before she had time to think, the word was out of her mouth: ‘No.’

  ‘No? Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s yes.’

  ‘No. It’s a no.’

  Bill was dumbfounded. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s just not right. This snail … On their honeymoon … It don’t feel right.’

  ‘Oh, what, so if I’d given you roses and an orchestra and a diamond, you would have said yes?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

  And with that Grace ran out of the Haunted Snail past a bemused Alice and Joseph, leaving Bill alone in the dark bowels of the snail, still on his knee.

  A tricky few hours followed, with Alice and Grace holed up in the newly weds’ bedroom, drinking cups of tea and crying, and Joseph and Bill stationed in the pub, drinking. Messages were ferried backwards and forwards.

  Bill was furious. He felt he had been led on and made a fool of and if they weren’t getting engaged, then they were finished. It was one or the other.

  Alice and Joseph met halfway on the pier and swapped messages.

  Joseph was insistent. ‘We’ve got to get this sorted out by tonight, because I’ll die if we can’t share a room tonight.’

  Alice felt a lurch in her stomach that was very much like when she had gone over the top of the scenic railway. ‘Let me go and have another word with her.’

  Back in the room she asked the one question that mattered: ‘Why did you say no?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just what came out. It had nothing to do with my brain, it was just down here,’ Grace said, pointing at her stomach. ‘But now I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. I keep thinking what it’ll be like without him.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Empty, lonely. Especially now you’ve gone and got married.’

  ‘I’m not leaving home yet!’

  ‘No, but you will, soon. We can hardly go out dancing like we used to, can we? Who am I going to go out with now? And the thought of spending every evening at home … it would be like going backwards.’

  ‘You’ll find someone else.’

  ‘But will I? Will I find anyone who makes me feel the way he does? I don’t want to be one of those old spinsters, spending the rest of my life as the poor maiden aunt, on the shelf, typing up a man’s letters and taking his phone calls while his wife makes a home and a family. I don’t want people to look down on me – “Poor Grace, she did have a man once but he got away.” I want a home of my own.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I just don’t know.’

  ‘But forget all that. Do you love him?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s something not right and I can’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘Hmmmm. Well, you’d better put your finger on it soon, otherwise he really will be the one that got away.’

  Silence.

  ‘All right, I’ll do it. Go back and tell him if he proposes again I’ll say yes.’

  ‘Oh, Grace, are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, are you ever sure? Yes, yes, go on!’

  ‘I think you can be sure.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s just you. That’s not me. Now go and tell him.’

  So Alice went out with a new message.

  An hour later Bill and Grace met on the promenade. Bill couldn’t look Grace in the eye. With Margate Pier behind, Bill asked Grace to marry him again and this time she said yes. But it was a muted, angry proposal and a nervous acceptance.

  They never talked about this awkward engagement, but it cast a shadow over the beginning of their life together.

  As the four of them left to go home, Joseph took Bill aside. ‘I want you to do something for me. If anything ever happens to me, can you give this to Alice?’ He pressed a letter into Bill’s hand.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Don’t read it. I can’t explain. It’s just in case.’

  ‘In case of what? Blimey, mate, you’re a bit gloomy!’

  ‘No, not gloomy. Nothing is going to happen. But you never know, do you? Life’s a funny thing. Can you give me your word? It’s just for my peace of mind.’

  ‘All right then. But cheer up, it may never happen.’

  ‘No, it might never. Thanks, Bill, I knew I could count on you.’

  And the four of them ran for the bus and went home.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Funeral and Three Weddings

  Grace’s wedding

  Dora’s wedding

  Katie’s wedding

  It’s interesting which of the sisters’ wedding photos have survived. There are quite a few of Grace looking remarkably joyful – in fact, everyone looked happy at that wedding. Grace is all Roaring Twenties in a drop-waisted short dress and a veil like Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. There are lots of Katie looking simply stunning in gold lamé, with lilies: quite the thirties film star, but the most photos that survive are from Dora’s wedding. It’s a wedding on the brink of the 1940s with a full-length dress, again in gold – a brave departure for Dora from her customary black or navy – but the material is shot taffeta, with a tiny waist and elaborately curled hair in that forties style and again, like Katie, carrying a dramatic bunch of arum lilies. When I went to see Dora’s daughters, the twins rushed upstairs and came down with the dress, still in perfect condition. I couldn’t get over how modern it seemed – an evening dress I could still wear to a do today, except I’d never fit into it. I have a relatively small waist, but Dora’s seems unfeasible, especially as she wasn’t young for those days – twenty-eight when she finally married Spencer Sier.

  In contrast there are no photos of my nanna, Bertha’s wedding. Apparently she wore coffee-coloured lace and carried yellow chrysanthemums, the better to offset her bright red hair. There are also none of either of Alice’s weddings.

  It could just be a coincidence, but I think there’s a reason why no one kept or perhaps even took photos at their weddings. I think it was because they were weddings that were not universally approved of. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the number of wedding photos that survive are in direct proportion to how popular the marriages were with the family, particularly with Clara. Hence the large number of photographs of Dora and her grammar-school, bank-manager husband, and none of Bertha’s marriage to the penniless, orphan carpenter, William Kendall – my grandfather.

  Obviously there is a reason why there are no photographs of Alice marrying Joseph Davidson – the wedding was a secret, she practically eloped. But Alice did marry again, and there are no photographs of this wedding either. And I wonder whether it’s because Clara’s disapproval of Joseph Davidson disappeared into insignificance compared with the opprobrium she felt for Alice’s second husband, Thomas Corbett. Clara could never understand why Alice ran off with Tom in such a hurry; why her favourite daughter, the one with whom she most identified, and for whom she had such high hopes, ran off to a mining village in the Welsh valleys and came back with a baby in her arms.

  But then, as Clara didn’t know about Alice’s dash to the altar with Joseph Davidson, it would be rather mysterious.

  Alice was to look back to that day in January 1929 and feel terrified that it was possible for her whole life to evaporate into thin air and not to have the slightest inkling. A wave of sheer existential dread would turn her stomach. She really tried to erase the memory of that day, but every so often it would leap out and leave her reeling.

  For Alice it was just an ordinary day at the bank. It was hard work and long hours – she had to be at her desk by 8.30 a.m., in a long line of one of many long lines of ladies typing the letters of the bank employees – all men. They were shut in a windowless, hot room, segregated from the naturally lit, cooler offices on the more elevated floors of the bank. There was no prospect of promotion and, for most wom
en, it was just a useful interlude between leaving school and becoming a wife. The job was prestigious and relatively lucrative, but the day-to-day reality was not glamorous.

  The thought that sustained Alice was the money she was accumulating. Alice and Joseph had set themselves a target when they got engaged, and they reckoned that by the time they reached the anniversary of their engagement in May 1929, they would be ready to put down a deposit on a house, reveal their marriage to the outside world and try for a baby. Alice couldn’t wait. She was nearly twenty-eight, and she had had enough of comments about ‘being on the shelf’ – interestingly, not from her mother, who preferred her daughter to be working than married inappropriately; nor from her sisters; but from everyone else.

  Those were the thoughts that were filling her head as she hurried back in the cold and dark from Grays station at 8 p.m. on 15 January 1929. As she trotted along, an arm shot out and grabbed her, nearly sending her slipping on the ice. Alice’s first thought was that it was Joseph – sometimes he managed to come and meet her.

  But when she wheeled round it was Bill Smith.

  He looked dreadful.

  ‘Hello, Bill. Gosh, you gave me a fright. Are you all right?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  She studied his face. ‘What’s the matter? Oh my God, has something happened? Is it Grace?’

  ‘No, Grace is fine. I don’t know how to tell you this, Alice. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Jo. He’s dead.’

  And this is where Alice’s memory failed. She experienced little flashbacks for the rest of her life, seemingly unprompted – the feel of her head hitting the pavement as she fainted with shock, the look on Bill’s face as he bent over her, the burning sensation of the whisky from his hip flask as he poured it on her tongue, the words ‘heart attack’, the terrible unearthly wail that must have come from her, and then the feel of the cool sheets as Grace tucked her into bed, and then blackness, sleep.

  What Grace told her afterwards was that she stayed in bed for nearly a week with the covers over her head and the curtains closed. Grace told everyone that Alice had a migraine. The ladies of the Swain family, and indeed their descendants, including me, suffer periodically from disabling headaches, with wonky vision, flashing lights and sickness. The world becomes blurry and unreal, and the pain blots out anything else that might be going on. There have been times when I too have welcomed them.

  On this occasion the family migraine bought Alice a bit of space. She slept. In fact, she hardly woke up. When she did come to, she thought it was an ordinary day and she got ready to leap out of bed, and then she realised she was alone in the room and why. And Alice felt like the pedal on the Mighty Striker, pummelled by the hammer of Joseph’s death so that the alarm bells went off in her head and she had to shut down again, knocked unconscious by the sheer shock of what had happened. All her hopes for the future, which only she (and Grace and Bill) had known were gone.

  An enormous, aching loneliness gripped her and her teeth started to chatter so that all she could do was close her eyes.

  At some point she realised she had a letter and remembered Bill had given it to her, but seeing her name written in Joseph’s hand just made her feel sick.

  On the fifth day of Alice’s hibernation, Grace came in and opened the curtains, and sat down beside her bed. ‘I haven’t said anything to Mum or to anyone else. I haven’t let on about you and Jo. I don’t know what you want to do, but I’m guessing it’s best if no one ever does know.’

  Alice stared at Grace and then nodded.

  Grace took her hand and started stroking it. ‘But it does mean you’re going to have to get up. Not right now, but soon. Mother is murmuring and worrying about the bank. Anyway, the funeral is tomorrow, at St Thomas’s. I’m going to go. Please can I take you?’

  And Alice found herself nodding again.

  ‘Good girl! We’ll get you looking really nice. Dora’s already offered to lend you one of her black dresses. I’ve told everyone we’ve been invited as Jo’s friend, and to keep Bill company. Mum raised an eyebrow but she didn’t say anything. I think everyone is feeling for poor Mrs Davidson.’

  What Grace didn’t say was that Clara had said, ‘At least she still has eleven other sons,’ which sent a stricken look around the family as they remembered Charlie Junior. She also said, ‘Well, he didn’t look well when he came here. Good thing Alice stopped walking out with him, otherwise where would she be now?’

  At which Grace kept very quiet.

  The funeral was quite an affair. Joseph had been popular and, of course, came from a large family. There was plenty of vocal grief at such a young and tragic death, which meant Alice could sit at the back of the church unobserved and lost in the crowd. As the coffin was carried in, she buried her head in Grace’s shoulder and couldn’t look up. She tried very hard not to think about the last time she had been in the church, getting married, but the priest’s voice was echoing in her head. She could feel her wedding ring on a chain around her neck hidden beneath her dress, cold and heavy. Alice wrapped her scarf around her ears and Grace took her hand.

  As the coffin was carried out she had to look away again.

  ‘Are you all right to go to the cemetery?’ Grace whispered.

  Alice shook her head. Instead, she walked purposefully home, hardly able to breathe. People stepped sideways to let her pass: like the night she first saw Joseph and pushed through to stop him falling off the table, the normally placid Alice felt she might punch anyone who got in her way.

  She flew into the house and ran up the stairs, closing the bedroom door with a bang. She grabbed the chair and put it under the door handle so there could be no sisterly interruptions.

  Then she opened Joseph’s letter.

  My dearest Alice,

  I am writing this letter dreading that you will ever receive it. But my greater dread is that I am taken from you and I never will have had the chance to explain.

  Please, please forgive me. I have not told you everything that you, as my darling wife, should know.

  Just before that night when I met you, our New Year’s Eve, the best night of my life, I received the worst news. I had been feeling ill for a long time and then I was told that I had diabetes – you will probably know it as the sugar sickness. I was told I didn’t have long to live. I am incredibly grateful for your patience at my skinny body, my strange diet, my ‘funny turns’. I still have no idea how you could fall in love with anyone so strange. There were so many times I nearly told you, but every time I couldn’t. For that I hope you can forgive me, knowing that I will never be able to forgive myself.

  I was so happy, you were so happy. I thought if I didn’t say it, it wouldn’t happen. Somehow our love could conquer it or perhaps the doctors had got it wrong, or they would find a cure, or perhaps I’d grow out of it, and I write this with the prayer that God will spare me, although if you are reading it I know He hasn’t.

  I took a gamble. That maybe by marrying but marrying in secret we could have it all – that if we managed to make it past a couple of years, I would probably live, but if I didn’t then at least we didn’t miss out on truly loving each other. I have tried to have my cake and eat it and I am sorry.

  Please forgive me and know that I didn’t tell you, not because I don’t love you, but because I love you too much. I wanted you, I wanted you to be my wife and if I died, then at least we had had that. You have made me the happiest I have ever been and my life worth living, however short it turns out to be.

  Please now forget me, live your life, marry again, be happy. It’s all I want. Do it for me.

  All my love, for ever.

  Jo

  Suddenly everything made sense.

  In the 1920s diabetes was a certain death sentence – most people died within a year of being diagnosed. In the meantime they were put on a starvation diet (which included no alcohol). It made them thin, sweaty and prone to blackouts. Organ failure and h
eart attacks were the eventual result of the body’s inability to process sugar. A few years before Joseph’s death, insulin had been discovered by a Canadian scientist and was beginning to be manufactured and given to patients. However, it wasn’t yet widely used in Britain. Just a couple of years later, Joseph’s life would have almost certainly been saved, and he would have lived a full and relatively normal life. He was absolutely right to hope that a cure might be found in time.

  Alice sat on the bed in a stunned silence, hit by waves of conflicting emotions. She read and reread the letter. There was relief, because suddenly, yes, it did all make sense; anger and hurt that he hadn’t told her – she absolutely would have married him anyway, how could he not have believed that? And then horror that he’d had to carry this secret all by himself. But then with it she felt his love, and then quickly the agony of losing this love.

  In fact, the more she thought about it, the more Alice felt grateful that Joseph had spared her the worry, although of course instead she did get the most terrible shock. On the one hand their secret marriage meant that they had spent time apart when they could have been together, but on the other it had given their time together a real poignancy and intensity and sweetness.

  In the end, the bit she dwelt on was that last sentence. With it, he’d given her the clue and permission for her next move and the way to carry on – no, he had actually ordered her to do it.

  After an hour or so she brought the letter up to her face and sniffed it, and then kissed it and said out loud, ‘Thank you.’ Then she folded it up and put it away in her own secret place, in a room filled with the secret places of five sisters. And a few of their mother’s too.