Honour Thy Father

by Lesley Glaister

  But I cannot put it off any longer. I take a deep breath before going down to George’s room.

  For a long time after Mother died we continued to go to church. Witchsea was nearly five miles away, too far to walk every week – Father insisted that we walked. Aggie thought it was humiliating to arrive on foot, just as if we were poor, but Father wanted to rest Pepper and anyway, he said, the exercise would do us good. About once a month we went and the evening before was spent in preparation. We used to bathe by the fire, Aggie and Ellenanesther and I, while Father kept out of the way, and then we’d twist each other’s wet hair in rags. We’d toss and turn all night trying to get our tight knotted heads comfortable, praying for a fine day, praying that something exciting would happen.

  Early on Sunday we’d be up, Aggie and I vying for the mirror to see how our ringlets had turned out. Ellenanesther didn’t care, and anyway, they had only to gaze at each other. Then there were the chores to do and lunch to prepare and leave cooking slowly in the range. Father might have been very strict and very moral, but he didn’t hold with all that superstitious day-of-rest nonsense. He would wear his best suit, and we wore clean white muslin dresses and petticoats and white bonnets and gloves. It felt special, the whole family out together like that. Special but sad too, for there was a very obvious hole next to Father, a hole that I could never ignore. I used to walk behind it, concentrating on that space, conjuring a vision of Mother, the wideness of her skirt, the neatness of the back of her head, until I could almost hear the swish of her skirt on the road.

  We walked the five miles on the road which ran indirectly – following the seams of clay that threaded the low earth – to the village to keep our newly polished boots clean; but on the way home, if the weather was dry enough, we sometimes cut across the fields. When we were near enough to the village to see the spire our excitement would grow and our pace quicken. Any belief in God had been washed away with Mother – but Aggie and I longed for the congregation, for new faces, for other voices. There were plenty of young men there too, to stare at. Churchgoers, a cut above the Howgegos, who were out-and-out heathens.

  We were proud of Father too while others could see us, so smart in his Sunday suit, smart and sad and dignified. He was a businessman, important, dealing in crockery. He employed people; and in an area where work was scarce was a respected figure. We knew we made a handsome group, our father and his four girls, and would revel in the eyes of the congregation, and though as eager as anyone to have a good look round would appear aloof. At least Aggie would; tall and elegant, she had a way of tilting her chin that seemed to add to her inches. She knew the congregation must be full of young men who would set their caps at her when the time was right. Her future husband might even be there now, his eyes fixed longingly upon her.

  Mush he eats. White mush. I don’t think it matters. I don’t think he tastes it. I don’t think there are any teeth left in his mouth. The rages have stopped anyway, mostly. White blubber, pale body, pale eyes blinking at the light I need to see. I think he prefers the dark. Hardly a flicker on his face. Impassive now. Pale fat lips open. Spoon it in, the white mush. Hold breath against the stench. Sometimes he swallows straight away. At other times gobs of it come back, white on his chin, and I scrape them off and push them back in. Think about something else.

  Think about – try not to think about – Father. All right, but try to go back to before. Remember him as he was, before. Smart. A smart man, a little stout, very fussy about his appearance. ‘Distinguished’ sounds like the right word, with thin brown moustaches, brown hair. He was, above all, respectable. He liked to be seen to do, liked us to do, the right thing. Did I love him? Impossible to remember. I hardly remember him before Mother died. Big hands he had, long fingers. Sometimes he’d pick us up, one of us, Aggie or me, and swing us round in terrifying swooping circles, feet flying out, till when he set us down we staggered, bumped into the furniture and made him smile.

  He was a good provider, that’s what Mother said about him. Certainly we always had money and after he died some complicated trust has kept us just above the bread line, kept the wolf from the door. Some complicated trust! But love? I don’t know. You never did know where you were with him. He was mild mostly and distant, but sometimes he would change suddenly, grow sharp teeth and pounce. Sometimes Mother was wary of him. Her movements would shrink when he came in, caged, cagey. She would stop singing. She knew so many songs, funny songs, and she sang well and danced and made us laugh and laugh. There was this song about Fashionable Fred, her joking name for Father – when he wasn’t there. It went something like … Of me you may have read, I’m fashionable Fred, And no matter where I chance to show my face … I’m looked on as the cheese, and all the girls I please, I’m a model of elegance and grace … I don’t remember the tune, but Aggie does. That’s one thing she does remember properly, tunes. Like Mother in that way, Aggie, musical. Mother could have been an actress! But I never saw her sing and joke and dance around the kitchen when Father was about. She was quiet and demure then. Perhaps she was an actress.

  She was, well, sugar and spice and all things nice like in the nursery rhyme, like little girls are supposed to be made of and aren’t. She was warm and soft. I’ve never felt anything like that since, like the feeling when she picked me up and cuddled and stroked and soothed away the hurt. Maybe she was angry sometimes and sad. I try not to remember, and anyway, memory plays us tricks.

  Ellenanesther don’t remember at all. They were only babies when she died, just one year old, just staggering. They would have died too if it hadn’t been for Aggie and me. Only little girls ourselves we were but we’d already half taken over from Mother before she left us. We copied her and chopped up food for Ellenanesther and kept them clean. We didn’t have much of a heart for playing with them though, and they soon turned in upon themselves, leaning in, muttering in a language that only they could understand. Pretty they were, prettier than Aggie, for her good looks were more serious; and prettier, certainly, than myself.

  We seemed to manage all right, and once Father had decided that we could, he shut himself out. There was some talk of getting a woman in from the village to keep an eye on us, but it never came to anything. He did not like us to see anyone. As time went by he became more and more insistent that we should not, should never see anyone from the outside. He would always ask. His first question would always be, ‘Who have you seen? Has anyone been here?’ and we always answered ‘No’. And usually that was true. Apart from this obsession with keeping us apart from the world he was very little involved with us. His life was his work and whatever else he spent his time doing when he was away from home. In the winter he’d stay away for days. We never knew quite when he’d be back. He’d eat his breakfast silently before he left, and bid us be careful as he went, rubbing our heads, one, two three, four, and mind the dyke and he’d be off. We’d hear Pepper’s hooves and the squeak of the wheels and he’d be gone. Sometimes he stayed away a week or two, in town, sometimes he went further, abroad even, on business, and left us for weeks. I minded at first, missed him, though really we managed just as well without him. Later we were grateful when he stayed away.

  I used to spend hours watching for his return, never believing until I saw him that he would, for after all Mother never did.

  When he did come home it made a change. Aggie would go out and feed and groom Pepper while I made more of an effort with tea than usual. He would bring back groceries. We enjoyed unpacking them; tight brown bags of flour and sugar, and tea to decant into the caddy; bacon and currants and cheese; and sometimes for a treat, humbugs or toffee or, best of all, tiger nuts for us to chew. Twice a year there were clothes too, dresses made in the town. We chose the stuff from little square sample books which he borrowed and brought home for us to see. How I longed to go into town, or at least to the village, myself, on a weekday when there was a shop or two open, to go and buy something myself. But Father had forbidden it.

  For a lon
g time I tried to talk to him, ask him about his business, his friends in town. But he didn’t take me seriously, would make some flippant remark, maybe pat me on the head. I wanted to know about his work. I never understood quite what he did, but he would sometimes bring home the crockery and the tiles that he dealt in. The kitchen walls are lined with Dutch tiles that Father said were very old, even then. They are blue and white with pictures of shepherds and sheep and children playing on them. Mother liked them. Clean and bright she said they were, nice in a kitchen – I think they were the only thing she liked about the house. Now, those that are left on the walls are grimy and cracked, and the stuff between them has rotted away into black softness. The crockery Father brought home was mostly blue and white too. Mother arranged the plates on the dresser in the kitchen: a big oval plate for meat with a ship sailing across it surrounded by curls of waves and clouds, and smaller plates with different pictures on them. On ordinary days we used the blue-and-white crockery, but Mother had another tea-service. It had been her grandmother’s and so it was very old and precious. It was fragile, creamy, with tiny yellow roses, and the edges of the plates and saucers, the rims of the cups and the milk-jug were traced with gold. It was so old that the surface was covered with a fine crazing of cracks, like hairs. Flimsy, Father thought it, but Mother cherished it. Just sometimes she’d unpack it from its wrappings of paper and we’d drink tea from the frail cups. The tea used to taste extra delicious to me, as if some of the gold from the rim had come off on my lips. Mother crooked her finger like a lady when she drank tea from one of her grandmother’s cups. After she left us, Aggie and I still got the tea-set out sometimes, just to wash and dry the cups, just for the elegant feel of it. Sometimes when Father came home I’d set it out to try and remind him, make him think of Mother – but if he noticed, he never said. I wanted him to talk to me, to talk about Mother, but he hardly mentioned her. Only sometimes I would see him gazing at her photograph, a strange expression on his face.

  There was only one photograph. It’s on the mantel now, faded, until it’s almost gone, a faint face floating up through a pale sepia sheen.

  On a hot windy day about a month later Agatha was once again pale and withdrawn. After lunch she sat still in a chair by the hearth vacantly watching Ellenanesther’s game. I was about to go upstairs, with a handful of currants and a book, but I paused in the doorway, studying her.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘Same as before … you know,’ said Agatha. ‘It makes me feel, I don’t know, not like working.’

  I felt a cold flutter of fear then. It wasn’t like Aggie to be so still. ‘We must do something!’ I said, and then suddenly I realized what we could do. ‘I know! Why don’t we go and see Mrs Howgego! Could you talk to her?’

  Agatha thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think perhaps I could talk to her.’ And so that was a day of change. Excited, we got ready and we set out, and our walk was more purposeful than usual. It was for Aggie that we were going, but my mind was full of Isaac. Isaac my friend. Please please please, I muttered in time with my footsteps, please let him be there.

  Although it was so hot, a strong wind buffeted and blew the earth around, and whipped the loose strands of our hair sharply into our faces as we walked the two miles to the Howgegos’ red brick house. It was tiny in the distance, a ship moored in the flatness.

  ‘Mrs Howgego was a good friend to Mother, wasn’t she?’ I said, hurrying to catch Agatha up.

  ‘Yes she was.’

  ‘She is a saint. Mother said that about her. That she is a saint.’

  ‘That’s not what Father said.’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything. What is it he hasn’t got? In that rhyme? Gentility?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Milly,’ said Agatha looking down her nose at me.

  ‘Well that’s what Mother said, and Mother wasn’t stupid.’

  ‘She didn’t say that actually. But Father will be angry if he finds out we’ve been to see Mrs Howgego. We’ll have to lie. Mother said that was all right sometimes. You don’t say anything to Father. Understand?’ Aggie called back to the twins. There was little fear of this, for the twins hardly said a word to Father, but it made their blue eyes grow round with importance.

  ‘Yes Agatha,’ they said.

  ‘I think he’s mad, Father,’ I said. ‘Don’t you Aggie? One day we’ll have to get used to seeing people. One day we’ll go. We can’t stay locked in that house for ever.’

  ‘We’re not locked in,’ pointed out Agatha.

  ‘Well that’s what it feels like. I just want to be normal. I just want to … just to …’ I groped for what it was I wanted. ‘Just to be one of the world.’

  ‘Well anyway,’ said Aggie, ‘we’re out now.’

  ‘Do you remember when we were always seeing Mrs Howgego and the boys. Mother would make tea for them and lemonade for us. We had fun.’

  ‘There was that picnic.’

  ‘By the dyke. And Isaac and I climbed a tree and – Oh I wish she hadn’t gone and left us,’ I said, suddenly angry. ‘It’s not fair!’

  ‘It’s no use going on like that,’ said Agatha. ‘What’s done is done.’

  We could hear the shouts of the young Howgego boys playing with a rope tied to a tree long before we got there. Then the boys caught sight of us and shouted, ‘Mam! We got some company!’

  Mrs Howgego came hurrying out. ‘Bless me, we have and all!’ She came forward to meet us, smoothing down her wispy hair. ‘Well, I never expected to see you here again! And will you look at them twins! Talk about two peas in a pod! and Agatha, how you’ve grown. Bless me if you aren’t the dead spit of your poor mother!’

  I shot a jealous look at Aggie. It was true, of course, and truer still the more she grew up. Aggie was tall and dark and ivory skinned. She was almost a beauty. She just stopped short of it – her big sharp nose saw to that. Still, she looked like Mother, like the photograph of Mother. And the twins and I were all dumpier and mousier – though we had our father’s bright blue eyes. Aggie’s were dark, startlingly dark and long lashed – just like Mother’s had been.

  ‘Well then, you better come in now you’re here,’ said Mrs Howgego, ‘out of this blessed wind, and shake some of that dust off you.’

  The kitchen was cluttered and messy. Mrs Howgego cleared a space on the table, and tipped cats from the chairs to make room for us. ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she said, ‘in honour of this occasion,’ and she laughed at our solemn faces, reminding me with a pang of my mother. She had teased us like that sometimes … curtseying, treating us like royalty. ‘Yer ’ighnesses,’ she would call us in her put-on cockney voice, Aggie and I, sitting at the table at home, and she would serve us soft-boiled eggs and dainty fingers of bread and butter.

  ‘Well then,’ Mrs Howgego said, ‘that’s obvious that there’s something up … you’ve all got faces longer than fishing poles. Are you going to tell me what’s the matter?’

  Aggie flushed scarlet and hung her head. I could see that she was not going to speak.

  ‘It’s Agatha,’ I said. ‘She’s not well. She’s got something wrong, a pain … blood …’

  ‘Is that all!’ breathed Mrs Howgego. She moved towards Aggie, and stroked her hair. Aggie jumped. We were not used to touch. Mrs Howgego laughed. ‘That’s quite natural at your age, girl,’ she said. ‘I suppose you haven’t told–?’

  ‘We couldn’t talk to Father!’ I said. ‘Not about anything under our skirts.’

  ‘Milly!’ said Agatha. ‘What a thing to say!’

  ‘Well it’s true.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Mrs Howgego agreeably. ‘But you have to have someone to tell. I reckon that father of yours needs seeing to, leaving four great girls all alone like that. That’s not as if he doesn’t know the ways of the world.’ She shook her head and smiled at Aggie. ‘Well I never did! You poor old girl! Fancy not knowing about the curse!’ She patted Aggie’s shoulder. ‘You need a moth
er, the lot of you.’ She looked at the twins, ‘Haven’t you got a word to say to your Auntie? I remember when you was born. Never expected the two of you we didn’t. Never even thought of it. She weren’t even that big, your poor mam. Could have knocked me down … There was one of you, already in your mam’s arms, and then she starts pushing away again, a proper frightened look on her face. “Candida,” she says to me, “Yes dear,” I says. “I think there’s another,” she says and right enough there was the other one. Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Tiny you were then, I’ve never seen tinier that’s lived. Talk about peas in a pod …’ Ellenanesther smiled their identical smiles first at Mrs Howgego and then turning in to each other.

  ‘They don’t say much,’ explained Aggie, ‘except to each other. They talk to each other all right.’

  ‘But never to you?’ Mrs Howgego looked more closely at them and they hung their heads. ‘Are they all there then?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Of course they are!’

  ‘It’s just that they don’t seem to need anybody else,’ explained Aggie. ‘But they do need each other. I don’t know what they’d do if they were separated.’

  ‘They even go to the privy together,’ I added.

  ‘Well I never did!’ said Mrs Howgego shaking her head. ‘They ought to get out there and play with my boys, that would soon sort them out. Would you like to go out and play?’

  Ellenanesther hung their heads and flushed. ‘I don’t think so, thank you,’ I said for them.

  Mrs Howgego shrugged. ‘Now, you,’ she said looking at Agatha, ‘can come upstairs with me and I’ll find you some rags. You mustn’t worry yourself. That’s just the curse, your monthlies, and that shows you’re a woman now. If that doesn’t come one month that’s when you should be worrying! That means a babe’s on the way. Not that there’s any prospect of that till you’re married,’ she added hastily. ‘As long as you keep yourself nice.’