‘They haven’t seen us,’ I whispered to Isaac, who perched slightly above me. ‘Can you see Agatha?’
‘I reckon she’s gone soft in the head!’ said Isaac and we giggled so that the branches shook and threatened to dislodge us; for Agatha, believing that she was out of sight, was acting away to an imaginary audience, wagging her finger and gesticulating along with her song.
‘We’re like spies,’ said Isaac, when Agatha’s antics had ceased to amuse us.
‘Yes. We can see what everyone’s doing – and they can’t see us. Look at Bobby!’ Bobby was wriggling and squirming, a mysterious smile on his face.
‘He’s got that slow-worm down his pants I reckon,’ said Isaac.
I shuddered. ‘What is it then if it’s not a snake?’ I asked.
‘Shhh,’ hissed Isaac, ‘if you stop yakking for a minute, we can hear what they’re saying.’
I strained my ears. It was true that if you listened carefully and concentrated hard to sift the soft speech from the rustling of the leaves, you could just hear snatches of the conversation between Mother and Mrs Howgego.
‘That’s boring,’ I complained. ‘Who wants to listen?’
‘Shhh,’ commanded Isaac again.
I sighed and relaxed, wondering whether it would be possible to fall asleep here, pressed against this strong, slightly swaying branch. I was still full, and the sun filtered warm through the leaves. I didn’t share Isaac’s interest in eavesdropping, but unwillingly my ears began to focus in on the conversation below us.
‘I know,’ Mother was saying, ‘but I do hope it’s a boy this time. Charles has never … well he loves little Milly of course, his image, but Aggie …’
‘Who is your image.’
‘He’s never really taken to Aggie.’ This was news to me. I always thought everyone doted on Agatha.
‘And do you think he knows?’
‘He’s never said, but yes, I think he’s realized. He’s different with Milly, you see. He’s all right with Aggie – but just not like a father. And his temper gets worse.’
‘Oh Phylly,’ said Mrs Howgego, ‘and is he still …?’
‘I’m not so afraid now that I’m expecting again. He’s so careful about this son I’m supposed to be having.’
‘I didn’t know she was expecting!’ I hissed indignantly.
‘I know what I’d like to do to that husband of yours,’ said Mrs Howgego darkly.
‘And you will be there?’ said Mother, clutching Mrs Howgego’s hand. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Candida. It’s been so awful.’
‘I’m getting down,’ I said, feeling suddenly sick on the swaying branch. I scrambled down the tree, and Isaac, in one light leap, landed beside me. ‘I’m going to walk along the dyke,’ I said, and strode off pretending not to care whether he followed or not. My face was burning. What did she mean?
The surface of the water reflected the sky, a blue metallic sheen over its muddiness. I gazed down into it. ‘What did she mean?’ I demanded of Isaac who stood meekly at my shoulder. ‘What did your mother mean about my father?’
Isaac shrugged. ‘Well he belts her, doesn’t he? I reckon that’s what she means.’
‘Belts her! No never,’ I said. I hurried away from him but he followed close behind.
‘I heard them talking about it before,’ he said, as if this would comfort me. ‘That’s nothing new. My dad belts my mam too. She do belt him back though,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘I can’t see your mam doing that.’
‘But …’ But a hundred muffled cries and sharply closing doors; a hundred fearful expressions, blinked back tears, bruises, cuts; a hundred things to be kept from Father – songs and laughter, friends, this very day. A thousand unexplained things fell into place with a horrifying jangle.
I looked Isaac straight in the eye. ‘There’s one more thing I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What did Mother mean about Aggie?’
Isaac’s eyes slid back to the water. ‘Let’s go and see if there’s any ginger beer left,’ he said.
‘Isaac,’ I insisted, catching hold of his arm. ‘You must tell me if you know. I must know.’ Isaac sat down, dangling his dirty toes above the moving surface of the water. ‘Please,’ I said.
Isaac hesitated, then he looked accusingly at me. ‘That’s not fair,’ he said, ‘whenever I tell you something you don’t like,’ his eyes looked searchingly into mine, ‘you get mad at me.’
‘Oh I don’t!’
‘Oh yes you do, Milly. That’s all right when we’re playing games and such like but then I go and say something and you get mad at me.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I still have to know. You have to tell me.’
Isaac threw a lump of dried earth into the water. It made a fat plopping sound as it sank out of sight, and we watched the circles it made vanishing into the flow of the water. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I reckon I know what she meant but I’m not sure.’
‘Yes?’
‘That Aggie has a different dad.’
‘What do you mean!’ This was too preposterous. ‘How can she? Mother’s married to Father, to our father. You must have got it wrong.’ I relaxed. For once Isaac didn’t know it all. For once he was wrong. It made me like him more then, his pale worried face, his serious voice. And he was wrong.
Isaac looked at me, a wry smile on his face. ‘Yes,’ he said, relieved, ‘I reckon I got it wrong.’
‘Come on then,’ I said, pulling him up, ‘let’s go and get a drink.’
How long will the house last? It’s an old house. A good square house, but an old one. We haven’t done the things you’re meant to do: painting and papering and plastering. It would mean cleaning first. Those things come after cleaning. When things drop we leave them where they fall. When things break we leave them broken. The house is older than us. We will die: the house will fall down. And that will be a finish.
There are broken windows and missing roof tiles. A gutter has peeled away from the roof at the back, and swung out, tangling with the fruit trees. Good trees they are, they haven’t been pruned for … well years, not for tens of years and still in the autumn there are apples and pears and, some years, a crop of sticky golden plums. We have to fight the wasps for the plums. The noise I can hear is like wasps, a waspish noise, a low buzzing murmur, dangerous. Don’t think about it. Don’t think.
Mark’s father was looking for odd jobs, so Mark said. Would we like him to fix the gutter? Replace the glass in the windows? Take a look at the roof? We said no, Agatha and I, we agreed. She gets letters full of numbers from the bank sometimes, in envelopes with little windows that tell her that there is enough money still for groceries, just, but nothing else. Besides, there seems little point. We are all right like this. There is a satisfaction in watching the house grow old along with us.
A young woman came to visit us some time ago. She came several times, oh some time back now. She was from Social Services she said.
‘You’ve come to the wrong place here,’ I said. ‘We’re not very social.’
‘That’s just why I’m here, Miss Pharoah,’ she said, so polite. Mark’s mother who is some sort of a busybody, well it runs in the Gotobed family, had contacted somebody or other when Mark told them what a mess our house is, I shouldn’t wonder. ‘It’s a mystery to us. It’s almost as if – as far as the authorities and so on are concerned – you don’t exist. It’s not being on a road, I suppose, or connected to any mains services.’ She had her hair very short and she wore great big spectacles with green frames. Green! And she wore wonderful clothes. Red trousers, tight, and a sort of baggy, I can only describe it as a vest, but a lovely one, yellow with a pattern on it. She did look cheerful.
‘And we don’t seem to have you on any of our GPs’ lists.’
‘GPs?’
‘Doctors.’
‘Oh we can’t be doing with doctors.’
‘But you must … you’re getting on all of you … you must have a doctor. You never know
what might happen.’
‘We might drop dead,’ I said.
She was nervous, I realized, with her little eyes blinkety blinkety behind those great lenses, and her chewed-up fingernails. And she wasn’t any prettier than I used to be. And she had tiny parrots hanging from her ears! She said there were places we could go to be looked after. We could still be quite independent, she said, with our own front door, and our own key, only there would be a warden to keep an eye on us, a bell to ring in an emergency. Well we have our own front door, thank you very much, I told her, though the key went missing a long time since; and an emergency is just what we need – then that would be an end of it. All of us were born in this house, and in this house we intend to die.
Sometimes when there’s a storm, when the wind roars and blunders around the house, I think that it will simply fall down and bury us. That would be neat, a tidy end. I wonder how long before anyone noticed? The briars and the brambles would simply grow over the ruins, the beams; the bones; the old sticks of furniture and our four skulls. The cats would prowl, would eat our flesh, would eat the rats that came to gnaw our bones. I have no illusions about the cats – unlike Agatha.
One November morning when the wind growled round the house, when it was not yet light except for a seam of sickly yellow that showed on the horizon through the black filth of a Fen blow, Mother sat with her back pressed to the stove, her hands clasped round her distended belly, rocking herself gently backwards and forwards.
Father stood before her, dressed to go to town. He looked smart and handsome and fine.
‘Charles no … the girls …’ whimpered Mother. She looked up at him, beseechingly, and her face was swollen and wet.
I was on my way downstairs, my head full of stories and dreams, and I stopped, unnoticed, half-way down. I stood and watched my father tread, with his hard shiny black shoe, on my mother’s softly slippered foot. He trod hard, grinding his heel.
I saw my mother’s face, the way the tears flowed over bruises. I saw my father step back off my mother’s foot. I saw my mother close her eyes, and wrap her arms tightly around herself and press back against the warmth of the stove. I saw my father strike my mother sharply on the belly with his malacca cane. ‘Bastard,’ I heard him say. ‘Another bastard for me to feed. You fucking whore.’ And then he left.
I could not bear to see the tears seeping from Mother’s eyes. I did not know what I could do or say. I did not understand. I crept back up the stairs and into bed. I put my head under my pillow and I held my breath, and I tried to die.
I remember the afternoon the twins were born. Father was away and Mrs Howgego was upstairs with Mother. Aggie had run over in the morning and asked her to come. Isaac and I had to mind Bobby and Davey. I wasn’t allowed upstairs in Mother’s bedroom, but Aggie was, for whenever Mrs Howgego needed something – hot water, cool water, clean sheets – she’d call Agatha. And Agatha thought she was so important. She hardly glanced at me. Oh there was such a high and mighty look upon her face. She might have been making trips to heaven the way she looked.
At least Isaac was with me. We sat by the window, not talking, just looking out at the dreadful day – it was almost dark by half-past three. A dirty rain beat against the windows and occasional drops of it sizzled down the chimney onto the fire that just would not burn properly. When the wind’s in a particular direction it never will, and on this day there was more smoke than flame and when the wind gusted it blew puffs of it back down the chimney and into the room.
Davey was toddling about, pulling down everything he could reach, opening cupboards and pulling out the contents, making a terrible mess everywhere; and Bobby had brought a wet half-grown cat in from outside and was teasing it so that it clawed its way up the curtains and knocked things off the shelves.
And in the background always, from above us, I could hear Mother moaning with pain.
I knew she would hate the mess and the noise. I knew I should make it tidy and quiet; make the boys behave; make the fire burn bright; the rain stop; the pain stop. I felt useless.
There was at last a cry that covered me in goose-flesh and brought frightened tears jumping to my eyes. And then it was quiet. I didn’t even think of the baby, so relieved was I that Mother’s pain had stopped. And then as if in a nightmare, it began again.
‘Aggie!’ shouted Mrs Howgego, and Agatha shot up the stairs as if she’d been fired from a catapult. She struggled down a few minutes later with a basin full of bloody water.
‘More water, try and find some more sheets … It’s a girl and it looks like there’s another.’ She emptied the bowl and refilled it with clean water from the kettle, then she refilled the kettle and set it back on the stove. So busy and clever and useful. I felt like a worm.
‘Sheets!’ she hissed at me. ‘And would you pump some more water.’
‘Twins then,’ said Isaac, when Agatha had gone back upstairs.
‘Maybe the other one will be a boy,’ I said, not caring, but knowing that that was what Mother wanted. If not, Father might be even more angry, two more girls’ mouths to feed. ‘Bastards,’ I whispered.
‘What?’ said Isaac.
‘Oh nothing.’ I felt sick. I did not want to know any more today.
Once, when I was very young, I had come across one of the cats in the barn while she was kittening. I had not, at first, realized what was happening. I had almost tripped over her in the barn, among the scattered straw. I thought at first that she was injured, trodden on by Barley perhaps. She lay on her side, face twitching, tail lashing wildly, howling and growling if I tried to come nearer. I watched the first of the births not understanding, thinking at first, horrified, that it was part of her own injured body that was squeezing out of her. And then I understood, saw that the knobbly bluish bundle was a kitten. I watched the cat turn and nip and rip the creature free from its skin bag and the long twisted string attached to its belly; and then lick the blind and sticky thing until it mewed, a thin high mew. And then it started again, the howling and the growling and there was another birth and another until there were six.
I told Mother about the new kittens, and Aggie heard and was angry. ‘Why didn’t you call me!’ she said. She liked to be there when the cats kittened, in case they needed help. She found it fascinating and wonderful, not like me. I found it quite interesting – but more disgusting.
‘Don’t tell your father there are any more kittens,’ Mother had warned.
‘Or he’ll murder them,’ I said.
‘He’ll want them drowned,’ she agreed. ‘We’re getting overrun.’
‘Never!’ Aggie had cried in her most dramatic of voices. ‘If Father drowns them I’ll run away! I’ll never come back.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Mother had replied. ‘With any luck he won’t notice.’
I could not stand to hear Mother in pain. It had seemed so easy for the cat, but it was not the same for Mother. It took so long. All I could worry about was the mess. I was so worried about the mess in the room! I suppose I thought she’d be down when she’d finished to cook the tea, cross with me for not keeping things clean and neat. I was an ignorant child. I would not look at Isaac. No doubt he knew all about it, things that I didn’t. No doubt he was noticing how useless I was while Agatha knew just what to do.
Eventually, Mrs Howgego came down the stairs. She looked tired and white and the front of her apron was red with blood. My mother’s blood.
‘Will you get that kettle on again and make me a cup of tea, Milly?’ she said, flopping exhausted into a chair. I’d never seen her like that before.
‘Is my mother all right?’
‘Your mam is … very tired,’ she said gently. ‘Sometimes when ladies have babes they get very tired and they bleed a lot. She’s had a terrible time. I was all of a mind to send Isaac to the village for the doctor, but she wouldn’t have it. She’s very torn and ever so weak. But I reckon she’ll be all right now. She’ll have to rest up. You’ll have to be good girl
s and help out. You’ve got two new little sisters,’ she added, ‘no bigger than this.’ She held her hands a few inches apart.
‘Can I see?’ I asked.
‘I should leave them be.’
‘Please …’ surprising myself, I burst suddenly into tears. I needed to see my mother. I didn’t even care if Isaac saw me crying. ‘I want my mother!’
‘Oh all right then,’ said Mrs Howgego, ‘I don’t suppose that’ll hurt. But don’t you go pestering her, and don’t wake her if she’s asleep. You just take her up a cup of tea and leave it by the bed.’
I fumbled with the pot, shooting tea everywhere with my trembling hands. Mother was torn. I expected to find her lying like a tatty bloody rag on the bed – but no – I opened the door with one hand, cup and saucer rattling dangerously in the other, and there was Mother. She looked just the same as usual, only very pale and very small. She was tucked into clean sheets, her dark, damp hair brushed away from her creamy brow, her eyes closed. I was relieved that I could see no blood.
I put the cup down gently beside her and she opened her eyes. ‘Milly,’ she whispered, ‘there’s a good girl.’
‘Are you all right now?’ I asked, bending to kiss her cheek. For a moment it felt as if I was the mother and she was the child, small and needy, tucked up in bed.
‘Yes, I’m all right now,’ she whispered, but her voice was papery thin. ‘There are your new sisters,’ she said, and nodded to the old crib at the end of the bed.
They looked like skinned rabbits, little red wizened faces, heads no bigger than apples, hands the size of halfpennies.
‘Are they all right?’ I asked.
‘I think so,’ said Mother, ‘but they’re very small. They’ve come too early. We’ll have to keep them very warm.’
There was a funny smell about Mother, an ill, animally sort of smell that was stronger than the lavender smell of her soap.
‘I’m going to drink this lovely cup of tea you’ve brought me,’ she said, ‘and then I’m going to have a little sleep.’ I could see that her eyelids were fluttering already. ‘Be a good girl and thank Mrs Howgego, won’t you.’
Honour Thy Father Page 6