‘Yes, I will,’ I promised. I would have done anything then to help Mother, to make her happier and stronger, but the smell made me feel sick and the sight of the babies who had hurt her so much made me feel sick too. ‘See you later on,’ I whispered, ‘I’ll bring you some food when you wake up.’ I crept out of the room and closed the door softly behind me.
I do not like the noises in this house tonight. It is not just George, it is not just those awful howls; it is not even the sound of Aggie pacing about, dragging something about; it is the other noise that is the worst.
It is Ellenanesther I can hear. It is their voices I can hear, their language of half words, nonsense words, muttering and mumbling and buzzing through the walls. It seems to vibrate inside the bricks of the house, to shake the walls and the ceilings. They are mad and they are dangerous, yet we live with them, have lived with them all our lives and been all right.
Pretty faces they have still, like pushed-in doll faces, and they wear their iron hair in straight bars across their foreheads and hanging long down their backs. And sometimes they wear ribbons After the twins were born, Mother kept to her bed for a long time. The birth of Ellenanesther did something to her, shrunk her somehow, diminished her, and that part of her never quite grew back. Father mainly stayed away. Oh he did come back from time to time, and when he came back he was kinder than he’d been lately. On the surface he seemed kind, but I knew, thought I knew, thought I had seen – or had I dreamed? – his cruelty to Mother. Aggie was charmed. Hung around him, grateful for every word he spoke, every breath he breathed in this house. There was Mother upstairs and it was as if Aggie was grateful. She could play the woman of the house now, with Mother tucked away safely like a sickly child. She could make Father’s tea just the way he liked it, and jump up to pour him a second cup before he’d even swallowed the last of his first.
Poor Mother, little white face against the pillow, little thin white hands. I was angry with her for being weak. She was supposed to be my mother, to be strong. I couldn’t stand the tears that crept out from the corners of her closed eyes.
‘What’s the matter, Mother?’ I would say. ‘When are you getting up?’ And sometimes, looking at Father’s calm and handsome face in the firelight I used to wonder if it was her fault and not his. Perhaps it was Mother’s fault that this was not a happy home. There she lay growing whiter and whiter as if the pair of wailing skinned rabbits were sucking her blood from her and not just her milk. Why couldn’t she just get up now and be our mother, properly our mother again? It made me so angry to hear her trembly tearful voice. Oh she was tired for the babies cried all night. I used to hear her moving about, pacing, sometimes singing and sometimes crying herself and yet in the morning they all slept, and we had to tiptoe and whisper our way through our work. Sometimes I felt I would have liked to hit her myself, just to get her moving, wake her up.
But Father stayed away most of the time. He had too much work. And the weather was too bad for him to travel home more often, he said. I don’t suppose there was much to come back for. Only us, little girls, and a sick wife and a pair of babies that kept him awake and in which he showed not the slightest interest. I saw him, I saw the way he averted his eyes from them and I couldn’t blame him for they were ugly and noisy and squirmy.
Mrs Howgego came to visit once a week or so, and helped us with the house. She always brought some food with her to warm up in our oven, and in an hour or so she’d get the place feeling right again. I do not understand even now the sort of magic she had. She was not a tidy or a methodical person but she had a way of poking the fire that brought it leaping to life; and she could, just by moving a chair a fraction, sweeping the table free of clutter and straightening the hearth rug, make it feel right and safe, bring a sense of order into the room.
I remember a time close to Christmas. The babies were still tiny, but stronger now and we had brought them downstairs and tucked them in their crib by the fire. Aggie and I had decorated a little branch from outside and put it on the shelf over the hearth with some new candles. With the fire blazing, and the timid white dance of the candle flames; with the warm smell of Mrs Howgego’s pie in the oven and her Christmas present to us, a fat cake bursting with fruit, on the table, the room looked lovely.
And then Mother came down. ‘That’s about time, Phyll,’ I heard Mrs Howgego saying to her sternly. ‘You won’t feel any better stuck up here. You come down and start getting things shipshape again. Those poor girls of yours need their mam. You’re no more use than ornament stuck away up here.’
And Mother, pale and frail but obedient, came downstairs and sat on the chair by the fire. The firelight brought a glow to her cheeks and she held a cup of tea between her palms and I thought it would be all right. We all drank tea, and then Isaac came in, his nose like a cold cherry, with his Christmas present to us: a basket of chestnuts he’d picked and saved.
I do remember that afternoon close to Christmas, with Mother back downstairs, and Mrs Howgego and Isaac, and the firelight dancing on the walls and then the smell of roasting chestnuts and the dry burnt taste of the shells on my teeth and finally the hot chewy sweet nuts inside. I felt complete then, but sad too because I knew this would not last. I was nostalgic already for this moment. I could not really immerse myself in it, rather hold back and watch and save it up because I knew that soon Isaac and Mrs Howgego would go. I knew that then the babies would wake and wail and that Mother would have no time for us and that the fire would go down. It would grow chilly and gloomy and Mother might weep. I wanted to tie a string around everyone and keep them there, prisoners of this moment, when everything was as it should be.
But, of course, I was right and it all dissolved. When the Howgegos opened the door to leave, the cold and the damp leapt in like cats, and the babies woke. The candles drowned in their own tears and the fire sulked. Father was expected home and Aggie and I struggled to make things tidy, to clear the mess of chestnut shells from the hearth, while Mother nursed the wailing twins.
Mother did not return to bed. Once Mrs Howgego had persuaded her to get up she stayed up, but she remained pale, like a watery reflection of herself. Aggie and I got used to it. I always felt angry when she sank weakly down in a chair, when she sighed so wearily. I pretended not to see, not like Aggie. She was there with cups of tea, and a stool for Mother’s feet and a cushion for her back. She loved it, loved to be strong while Mother was weak, and Mother thought she was wonderful. ‘Oh Agatha,’ she’d say in her trembly voice, ‘you are an angel.’ And Agatha would gloat, and I would pretend not to have noticed, not to have heard.
Father stayed away more and more, even when the weather improved and there was not so much excuse. Sometimes, just sometimes, as spring approached and freed us, little by little, from the pull of the hearth, glimpses of our old mother would return. She might sing to us and joke and there was a warm feeling about us like there used to be. One day, after Mrs Howgego had left, Agatha kept asking Mother why it was that Father didn’t approve of her, didn’t like Mother being friends with her, why they had to keep it a secret. ‘Is it because she’s common and poor?’ she asked. ‘Because she’s so fat and her dress is all patched?’
Mother was quiet for a moment, looking hard at Agatha until she looked down, embarrassed. I thought she would be angry with Agatha. I hoped she would be angry, but instead she just smiled sadly. ‘That is part of it, yes,’ she said. ‘Father doesn’t understand, like we do, that Mrs Howgego is a saint. Those things, the clothes and the money, are not important. It’s what’s inside that’s important.’ She hugged Agatha. ‘My mother taught me a rhyme when I was just your age,’ she said. ‘Let me see if I can remember it.’ She gazed into the fire, the dark little furrow of a frown on her forehead. I thought of Mrs Howgego’s face, her little bright blue eyes and the purple squiggles in her fat cheeks. Mrs Howgego the saint. ‘I remember!’ she said and she stood by the window, her hands clasped together, exactly like a little girl, and she recited the
rhyme. ‘“Vulgar Little Lady,”’ she said and cleared her throat and began.
‘“But mamma now,” said Charlotte, “pray don’t you believe
That I’m better than Jenny my nurse?
Only see my red shoes and the lace on my sleeve;
Her clothes are a thousand times worse.
I ride in my coach and have nothing to do,
And the country folk stare at me so;
And nobody dares to control me but you,
Because I’m a lady you know.
Then, servants are vulgar, and I am genteel;
So really ’tis out of the way,
To think that I should not be better a deal
Than maids and such people as they.”
“Gentility, Charlotte,” her mother replied,
“Belongs to no station or place;
And nothing’s so vulgar as folly and pride,
Though dress’d in red slippers and lace.
Not all the fine things that fine ladies possess
Should teach them the poor to despise;
For ’tis in good manners, and not in good dress,
That the truest gentility lies.”’
‘Oh!’ sighed Agatha, ‘how I’d love to have red slippers.’
Mother laughed again. ‘Don’t you see the point? My little goose!’
‘Yes,’ said Agatha grudgingly, ‘I suppose so. But it’s not like us. We don’t have servants, we are servants. We have to do all the work ourselves. Look at my hands!’ She held her chapped hands up despairingly.
‘You’ll survive,’ said Mother. ‘We don’t have any help because your father doesn’t trust … doesn’t trust anybody else to be here. He thinks harm might come to us if there were others in the house with him so far away.’
‘What sort of harm?’ I said. ‘Murder?’
‘No,’ Mother smiled at me, ‘not that sort of harm. More, a bad influence, manners and morals and that sort of thing.’
‘But you’re here! Bad influences couldn’t happen to us with you here. You teach us to do things right.’
‘But … oh it doesn’t matter.’ Mother had given up trying to explain. She sat down, as if she was suddenly exhausted.
‘So have we got gentility or not?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I think we have.’
‘And the Howgegos?’
‘Oh yes, they’ve got it, a natural gentility.’
‘But Father hasn’t?’
‘Of course he has!’
‘Stupid,’ added Agatha, turning her nose up at me, looking adoringly at Mother.
‘But you said … you said he didn’t understand …’
‘Come on,’ said Mother, ‘enough of this, you two girls get some potatoes peeled while I see to the twins.’
I scraped my finger in the cold muddy potato water. Why did Agatha always understand better than me? Why would Mother never answer me properly? I could hear her singing to and soothing the babies. I was neither one thing nor the other. I wasn’t tall and beautiful and special like Agatha and I wasn’t small and weak and needy like the babies. The only person who specially liked me was Isaac, who had a natural gentility, who was the son of a saint. That would have to do.
Ellen and Esther learned to smile and gurgle. They grew fat and rosy, sweet and wholesome as Mrs Howgego’s currant buns, and we started to love them. On warm afternoons Aggie and I took them for walks, taking turns to push the pram, leaving Mother in peace. They giggled as the pram bumped and jolted over ruts in the road, and we picked them flowers and leaves to look at and chew. Sometimes we walked all the way to the dyke and the babies eventually slumbered in the pram; arid sometimes we called in to see the Howgegos and refreshed ourselves with tea or ginger beer and Mrs Howgego’s conversation before we set off home. Often, if Isaac was there and not out rook scaring or stone picking, he would walk some of the way back with us, or with me, for on these occasions, Agatha, thinking herself above us, would walk on ahead with the pram, leaving us to dawdle behind.
On lovely days we stayed away as long as we could, but we always grew nervous as we approached the house. We never quite knew what we would find. On the good days, the days when everything was all right, we would see, relieved, from miles away, the flapping of washing on the line, or else the windows would be flung open to air the house, a beaten rug hanging over a chair outside the door. Or there might be the smells of baking drifting out and even, sometimes, the sound of Mother singing. But there were bad days too when we got home to find Mother drooping in a chair, just as if she had not moved since we had left her. Then she’d start when we opened the door and look at us dully, as if she’d forgotten all about us. On those days we had to ignore our tired feet and our dry throats and make the tea ourselves while Mother struggled wearily to change the twins and hold them to her skinny breasts.
In spring, the pond in the orchard is full of tadpoles which by July have developed into tiny frogs, amazingly delicate detailed perfect frogs, dainty as if they’ve been fashioned by a jeweller. The cats stalk and pounce upon them, crunch them with their pointed teeth – but there are always plenty more – frogs and toads too.
I used to love catching one, holding it in the prison of my cupped hands and feeling the tiny cold strength of its fury as it leapt and leapt against my fingers to be free; and then suddenly I’d open my hands and it would spring out, high in the air, and plop like a pebble into the pond.
Isaac and I used to spend long afternoons crouched by the water, lifting stones and searching in the long grass for them. If you crept towards the pond from the house and then suddenly stamped your foot they would shoot into the air, twenty or thirty of them at once, and hurl themselves back to the safety of the pond, disappearing with a bubbling plopping beneath the water. After that you had to search for them. There are newts too, that Isaac used to tease with the stems of reeds, chasing them this way and that. There are water boatmen that dimple the skin of the water with their minute weight, and maiden flies, and sometimes, even, a dragonfly that hovers above like royalty, in a shimmer of blue.
It was when Mrs Howgego was with Mother in the house that Isaac and I would wander round the back, would climb the trees, or play round the pond. It is one of those days I remember. The last of them.
It was hot and the twins were sitting up in their pram outside the door, and Davey and Bobby were playing around and Aggie was watching them. Mrs Howgego and Mother were drinking tea in the kitchen, and Isaac and I went round the back to the orchard. We threw a few stones at the barn target, but it was too hot, so we went to play by the pond. We had surprised the froglets already that morning and were searching amongst the grass when Isaac said, ‘I reckon there’s some really big uns in there, down at the bottom.’ We gazed at the muddy inscrutable centre of the pond. ‘Shall we go in and catch one?’ he said. He looked at me in that awful way he had, his blue eyes gleaming, daring me. I hesitated. I had no wish to go in there. It was a busy pond, oozing and teeming with life, and I did not want to go into it, but I did not want to say no to Isaac either. I wasn’t having him calling me a coward.
‘Come on Milly,’ he said. ‘I reckon there could be anything in there. Perhaps even treasure that someone chucked in there hundreds of years ago. There might even be jewels.’
I looked sceptically at the muddy unpromising water, but Isaac had already rolled up his trouser legs and was in up to his ankles.
‘That’s quite warm,’ he said.
‘But I’ll get my dress filthy!’
‘That’ll wash. You can tuck it in your drawers, anyway.’
I knew that I had no real choice. Best to get it over with. I tucked up my skirt and stepped tentatively into the water. The bottom of the pond was soft and yielding, the silky mud that squeezed between my toes was oddly warm, like something living.
‘See,’ said Isaac, ‘that’s all right.’
It felt as if there were things moving, churning and winding about my ankles. Some slimy green weed clung to my shin.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s all right.’
‘Shall we go in the middle then, where it’s deeper?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘I reckon that’s where the big uns are,’ Isaac said, stepping forward. ‘Come on.’ He grabbed my hand.
I felt as if I would slip. ‘No, don’t pull, there’s no need to pull,’ I said, but he held on to my hand all the same.
‘You don’t want to go falling down,’ he said. ‘You just tell me if one of them big uns bites you and I’ll get it.’
‘Don’t,’ I shivered. ‘Anyway, they don’t have teeth, do they? Frogs? I’m sure they don’t.’
‘Oh yes they do,’ said Isaac, ‘of course they do. How do you think they eat all them slugs and snails and worms … and toes.’
‘Why do you always tease me?’ I said. ‘Anyway, you can’t scare me. It’s only water. I’ve never heard of anyone being bitten by a frog!’
Isaac stepped forward again and sank about a foot deeper so that the water came above his knees. ‘That’s colder here,’ he said.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, snatching my hand from his. He tried to grab me again. ‘What’s the matter? Are you frightened now?’ I said, making my voice teasing as his had been.
‘I’m sinking!’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘Quick Milly! Hang on!’ and he did indeed seem to be sinking and I reached out my hand and grabbed his again, panicking. I thought I should call Mother, I opened my mouth to call her, but then I saw that he was laughing.
‘You’d believe anything. You’re daft you are!’ he stood up straight. ‘Come on, that’s quite safe. That’s harder on the bottom here.’ I swallowed my crossness, and let him tug me deeper in, knowing the only way to get this over was to get on with it.
The water reached half-way up my thighs and just lapped the bottom of my bunched skirts. The bottom of the pond was firmer, though there were things, hard things and sharp things – and worst of all – soft things, that gave under my feet.
Honour Thy Father Page 7