‘Isaac!’
‘Yes, Isaac.’
‘You’re not really serious about him, Milly. I know he’s been your friend, but he’s not … I mean you could do a lot better.’
‘I don’t want to do better,’ I said. ‘I love him.’ I felt very cross with Agatha, hurt on Isaac’s behalf now. How stupid I’d been ever to consider the two of them together, to mind Isaac thinking her beautiful. As far as she was concerned Isaac was beneath her consideration. Poor Isaac. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what makes you think you’re so special.’ I wondered what she’d say if she knew what Isaac and I did together when we were alone. I wondered if she really knew about it. I only knew because Isaac had told me.
‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Agatha,’ I said turning away from her, ‘about the world and so on.’ Agatha snorted, but I know I left her wondering what on earth I meant.
All through tea Agatha and I kept exchanging glances, smiles. We knew what Father was going to tell us. It was a strange mealtime. Some of the tension was gone. Father had been home for two days and there had not been a sign of his dangerous angry side. He could be so charming. It made me wonder whether it hadn’t all been in my imagination. He had seemed a brute with Mother to me. But then what had Mother been? I remembered, I tried to remember, the sweetness and the songs and the fun – but there was the other side of her too. The side that could sit for hours with bleak empty eyes while we minded Ellenanesther, minded ourselves. Isaac said she was mad. Oh it is so hard to know. But Father could be cruel. Mother was never cruel. Father was charming – and cruel. I remembered the way he had been with Mrs Howgego, the way he had turned her away from the house with tears in her eyes and a basket full of goodness for us after Mother had gone. Now that I knew more of life; now that I’d seen and touched and had a man of my very own, I felt less afraid of him. Although he was a man, he seemed less immense, less of an enigma. I thought I knew all there was to know. Oh what stupidity! What arrogance!
‘What do you like to do?’ Father asked one of the twins, suddenly. They looked startled, Father so rarely seemed to notice them.
‘We play with dolls. We clean the house. We collect the eggs,’ they said in unison.
‘Good,’ said Father. ‘Now I’m going to speak to you,’ he pointed to one of them. ‘I’m sorry, child, but I have to admit that I’m not entirely certain which one you are. Are you Esther?’
‘Ellenanesther,’ she mumbled.
‘Speak up child!’
‘Ellenanesther,’ they both said, very distinctly.
‘Yes, I know your names,’ said Father, an edge in his voice. ‘Do you think I don’t know my own children’s names for Heaven’s sake! What I want to know is which is which.’
The twins had gone very pale. ‘That’s Ellen and that’s Esther,’ I said quickly. The truth was that nobody could remember. One was left-handed and one was right-handed: that was the only difference between them. There had simply never been any need to refer to them separately. They were, to all intents and purposes, one person; a four-legged, two-headed person; a person called Ellenanesther.
‘All right then, Ellen,’ continued Father, ‘look at me when I’m speaking to you. I want you to tell me your exact age, in years and months.’
‘Nine years and ten months,’ I said.
‘I’m not addressing you,’ said Father icily.
‘Nine,’ mumbled Ellenanesther, then in a louder voice, ‘We are nine years and ten months, Father.’
‘Can you never speak alone?’ Father exclaimed. ‘Good gracious! are you all right in the head? – heads,’ he added.
‘That’s just how they are, Father,’ I said. ‘They’ve always been like that.’ Father frowned at me and then at them.
‘They don’t do any harm,’ I wheedled.
‘It’s like coming home to an asylum,’ he said, subsiding a little.
‘You said you had something to tell us, some good news,’ said Agatha timidly.
Father twitched his eyes away from Ellenanesther who visibly sagged with relief. My own hands which had been knotted painfully together under the table, I allowed to relax. He began in a leisurely way to fill his pipe. ‘I don’t know about “good” news,’ he said, ‘but yes I do have something to tell you.’
Once his pipe was filled to his satisfaction he leant back and began to speak. ‘As you are well aware – although I know it has had little impact on you as such, our country is at war with Germany. Since it has dragged on so much longer than anticipated, more and more men, men with families, now are being called upon to join the army. Although I didn’t volunteer in the first instance, because of my responsibilities, I now feel it is my duty to answer the call.’ Aggie and I darted confused looks across the table.
‘So you’re going to war?’ I said. ‘That’s what you wanted to tell us.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘So you’re not getting married?’ Agatha kicked me under the table.
‘What an extraordinary idea! Whatever made you think …? Well never mind that now. Yes, I am going to France and you are not to worry. No harm will come to me, I’m certain – but even if it did, as I have explained to you, everything would be all right. I have arranged my finances so that you would be provided for, for as long as you live, as long as you remain here, in this house.’
‘But if we wanted to marry?’ I blurted out. I could not help it.
He paused, as if considering a surprising idea. But I was a young woman. What ever else did he expect me to be thinking of?
‘You seem to have a head full of marriage this evening,’ he said. ‘First me and then yourselves.’
‘But we will want to get married one day,’ I said.
‘That is, I suppose, a possibility sometime in the future,’ he conceded. ‘But there is no sense in worrying your head about such an eventuality now. We mustn’t be so wicked and so selfish as to be thinking only of ourselves at a time like this.’ He talked on and on until we were yawning. The war was nothing much to me. There was talk of food being rationed, but no danger that we would starve. I had pondered over news in Father’s paper about unimaginable numbers of young men being killed. Isaac’s big brothers were away somewhere over the sea, in France or Belgium. I wished them well but all I cared about was that Isaac didn’t go and join them. He must not. Father could go and then we would have more freedom. I needn’t be afraid of his return, not for months and months. Yes, Father could go and welcome. But not Isaac.
It is raining harder now. The house is creaking. Agatha is moving about. Rain is dripping even into my room so it must be wet up there. Ellenanesther are mumbling still, a low buzzing like wasps. I wish it would grow light.
Whatever can be the matter with George tonight? He’s never been as noisy as this, not for years. I cannot bear to think how many years he has been down there. He or she. I decided upon ‘he’ because George was more like a boy than a girl as a baby. When he was born, we could not tell. I said it was a boy to please Agatha, but his private place was strange, not like a boy’s and not like a girl’s. It didn’t matter. He was no trouble as a baby. He scarcely ever cried, just a high whimper now and again to remind us he was there. It was easy to forget. He wasn’t appealing, not like Ellenanesther when they were babies. When they were past the skinned rabbit stage they were lovely, rosy and fat. But George didn’t have lovely skin and big bright eyes. He was all dull and yellowish with a big tongue, a tongue too big for his mouth, lolling and protruding. He was not lovable, but he was no trouble. We fed him with milk and changed him, and apart from that he just lay in the old crib that we had all slept in as babies. He just lay there for hours. Sleeping sometimes, sometimes just staring out. He was like that for years.
I said to Aggie that it wasn’t natural. He didn’t crawl or sit up or babble, not till he was huge. He just opened his mouth for the mushy food we made him. Sometimes his tongue got in the way, so that although he seemed hungry, the food would spill everywhere. Sometim
es he did smile. He did learn to smile, and he still does. He smiles a toothless old man/woman’s smile when I go down into the cellar to feed him.
Anybody might think it was cruel keeping him down there – but there is no alternative. When he got to seven or eight he grew more troublesome. He began to hurt himself, bang his head against the wall, bite his arms until they bled. And then he began to bite us too, or lunge at us, throw his arm at us as if it was a heavy branch. And he began to get fat. By the time he was about twelve, he was very fat. His body was even more confusing then, because his chest grew rounded as if he had breasts and his face blew up into a great pale blubbery moon.
We had to put him down in the cellar for our own safety. He was violent. He was ugly and stupid. He stank because he soiled and wet himself. We could not stand him. We could not stand seeing him or smelling him or hearing him. Agatha, particularly, could not bear to look at this monster of her own making.
He seemed interested when we took him down at first. It’s a good cellar, not too damp, and it is just above the ground at the top so that a narrow slit of daylight can be seen. We put a chair down there and a bit of carpet and a toilet bucket, and straw and blankets for his bed. I can’t forget the look in his eyes. As if he was interested. This was something new! An adventure. No. He was excited. No. No he was not capable of feeling that. It was just the light, a trick of the light. He cannot have feelings like that, he is just a lump, an ignorant freak. He’s a monster created out of evil. He has no feelings. He deserves no pity. I will not feel guilt.
But there was a screaming when we left him there and shut the door. I would have left a candle, I would, but it would have been dangerous, and anyway there was a little light, in the daytime, from the slit of a window. He screamed and roared. He banged and groaned. He hardly let up for days. We did not dare go down until he was weak and quiet, until he had given up. When we did we found everything toppled and broken and fouled. He had not even tried to use the bucket and the stench was sickening. He had banged and rubbed his head against the wall so that the hair came out. There were tufts of his dull stringy hair everywhere and patches of his scalp were bald and scabbed. There were teeth marks and wounds and blood all over his forearms, as if he had tried to eat his arms.
Agatha came straight up out of the cellar and was sick. Strange that Aggie, so good with animals, so practical with everyday things, is so squeamish with George. But then he is a reminder to her. He is her flesh and blood. He is her guilt. Horrible. I sorted the mess out that time, and I washed George and fed him, and then, for his own good, I tied him to the chair. I think it was better like that. He was safer.
He was quieter too. There was an awful sobbing, a soft moaning that you could hear at night. I used to sleep night after night with my head under the pillow, but after a time he settled down.
After a time there was no need to tie him to the chair. He sat there anyway. He’s not a human really, he’s a freak, a heavy, ugly, stinking, drooling freak. And tonight he’s a crying freak. It’s a dreadful sound; a man/woman voice. It sounds frightened. But what can he be frightened of now? What is he capable of being frightened of? He’s been there most of his life. What could have upset him so, now? When it’s light, I will go down and see him, but I cannot now, not in the dark of the night, because yes, I am afraid. Not of the dark, but of George.
When I hear his crying and Ellenanesther’s murmuring and Agatha crashing about, I think Father was right. He was seeing into the future when he called this house an asylum. I’m the only sane person here – and I sometimes wonder how much longer that can last.
We had to do it. We could not live with George – he was simply not livable with. We could not have had him taken away as he should have been. There are places for people like him – but how could we explain his existence? Nobody knew then, or knows now, about him. Agatha was afraid she’d be taken away, be put into prison. I was afraid questions would be asked about Father; afraid that they’d take Ellenanesther away. They wouldn’t have been able to stand that, and nor would I. I would have been alone if they’d taken everyone away from me. I would have been free, but by then I had lost any desire for freedom. We thought he would die down there. I thought human beings needed sunlight. I thought he would not last many months, but he did not die. He has been a torment to us down there all these years, that man/woman, that freak. And he has lived as long as us.
The painters were all that Agatha could have dreamed. Two young men, strong and handsome, one of them as dark as the other was fair. Father was careful not to let them out of his sight, but he could not stop Agatha noticing the strength of their arms as they moved their ladders; he could not stop her noticing the deftness of their brush-strokes. He could not stop her hearing the light-heartedness of them: jokes and laughter!
I tried not to notice, tried to keep my mind on Isaac. Soon, soon, soon, Father would go. Go for ages, months perhaps, and then Isaac and I would have plenty of time to make our plans, to leave. It would be hard to leave Agatha and Ellenanesther. They would have to do more. I knew I would have to teach Ellenanesther to do more before I left. But then there would be the time, if Father was going away there would be plenty of time. And then it would be hard for Agatha with no one to talk to, for Ellenanesther were no company. But I knew that I must live my own life, I must. Isaac and I together, forever. There was one worry on my mind. The months were passing and something was wrong. It hadn’t worked. In the months since Isaac and I had become lovers I’d been waiting for the bleeding to stop as a sign that there was to be a child. For then it would all be so simple. Mrs Howgego would insist upon our marriage then. Even Father, if we managed to get away, get married before he found out, would have no choice but to accept it. And then, once the baby was born, he’d soften, surely, once he saw his grandchild. And if it was a boy! It would take the place of the son he’d wanted, that Mother hadn’t given him. Perhaps he’d give us his blessing then, if there was a son. Perhaps he’d give us his money too.
I tried sternly to keep my mind on Isaac as the painters worked. Neither was as tall as Isaac, neither as sweet. But I did enjoy hearing them joke. It was so rare to catch the sound of laughter here. They kept trying to catch my eye, or Agatha’s. I sensed that sometimes when they talked, their eyes squinting up at the windows, it was of us they talked, of the girls inside the walls. It would have been so good just to talk to them, and no harm in that, surely? Just for the novelty of new faces, new voices. That would have been good. But Father had forbidden it, and he was always close by. He sat in his chair outside, smoking his pipe, working, writing letters, and occasionally criticizing one of the painters for a shoddy corner, or paint splashed on the brickwork.
Inside the house, I kept finding myself straying to the room where one of them was painting the outside window frame. I could not prevent my eyes from resting on the strong arms of the fair one. They were brown arms, covered in hairs that shone in the sun like wires. The wrists were broad, the fingers long and thick and well shaped. My awful mind kept straying to wonder if the gold of the hair on his forearms was the same all over his body; whether his legs were as strong and brown as his arms; even about the secret part of him – would that be sturdy too, thick and brown and well-shaped too? I made myself blush with such thoughts and had to leave the room where the strong arm of the painter moved back and forward, where the brush, wet and heavy with paint, caressed the wood of the frame. I left the room and went round the back to the orchard, and forced my mind back to Isaac, and his smooth freckled youthfulness, his soft baby manness.
‘I am in love,’ Agatha whispered to me in the cool of the evening when Father had gone early to bed.
I pulled a face. ‘Which one?’
‘The dark-haired one of course,’ replied Agatha. ‘He’s by far the most handsome, the finest.’
I was surprised at the little surge of relief I felt. ‘I don’t agree,’ I said. ‘The other seems far more … pleasant to me.’
‘Well there
you are then! I said there’d be one each,’ said Agatha triumphantly. ‘He’s got such a wonderful nose. Noble I’d call it. And such dark hair. I could never look at a fair man.’
‘What are you going to do then?’ I said. ‘Ask him to marry you?’
‘Oh do be quiet,’ snapped Agatha, and then her eyes became dreamy. ‘He smiled at me today you know, when Father wasn’t looking. Such a smile! It was as if he was speaking to me with his eyes.’
‘And what was he saying, with his eyes?’
‘Oh Milly,’ sighed Aggie. ‘You’ll never understand.’
‘I do!’ I said. ‘I understand more than you think. More than you. Me and Isaac …’
‘Isaac! You and Isaac! You’re just children.’
‘Little do you know,’ I said. I hated Aggie when she was like that, so haughty, so know-it-all.
Agatha looked at me closely. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked.
‘Oh nothing,’ I said. But I could not keep it in. I could not resist making Agatha feel small. ‘Just that I know it all. The meaning of love.’
‘The meaning of love? What are you talking about?’
‘You wait, Agatha, you’ll find out one day.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Agatha, flushing. ‘I don’t believe you know what you’re talking about.’
‘Do you know how babies are made?’
‘Of course I do! They’re made when people get married.’
‘Or when they’re not nice.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Agatha doubtfully.
‘And what does that mean? Not nice?’
‘I don’t want to talk about this. What if Father …’
I lowered my voice, for Father was indeed only the thickness of the ceiling away. ‘It’s what the bull does to the cow,’ I said. ‘Their things grow big as …’
‘Milly!’
‘And they push it inside you just like the bull and …’
‘I don’t want to hear!’ Agatha whispered fiercely, blocking up her ears. ‘You are disgusting, Milly. That’s what comes of spending so much time with Isaac. It isn’t like that. Love is more than that.’ She looked at me down her nose as if I was a smudge on the wall, turned away and began climbing the stairs.
Honour Thy Father Page 11