I lived in a kind of a bubble after that, a bubble within the bubble of our own curious separate existence. Now that Mrs Howgego no longer called, we hardly saw a soul. Mr Whitton was there. Watching. But he rarely spoke to us. Had Father paid him not to, I wonder? I hated him anyway, him and his bull. I got used to him, to him watching, appearing at random intervals, his arms hanging by his sides. Just watching. Just keeping an eye.
I waved at first. Tried to start a conversation, but he only grunted in reply, edged away if I approached him, kept his eyes averted. I didn’t care. I hated him anyway, him and his cruel laugh. It’s just that he would have been someone else to talk to. A hook to fish me out of myself. We all got used to it. It was no different in the end, having him there, lurking, than being constrained by our own fear of Father’s return. It was easier really. He took over the job of our consciences. And anyway, there was nothing for him to see or know. No more Isaac. No more Mrs Howgego.
The groceries were delivered regularly. Less of this or that sometimes because of the war. I hardly noticed. I hardly cared. We didn’t bother much with food, nothing elaborate anyway. Rituals that we’d carried on since Mother’s death began to peel away in this odd time, this pause. We stopped eating at particular times. If no one was hungry, no one cooked. If anyone bothered to cook then everyone would eat. Ellenanesther made meals occasionally; strangely neat meals – turnips and carrots and potatoes cut into exact cubes (you’d find the odd-shaped edges rejected in the bin); meat squared off on the plate. Nothing ever touched anything else. They were not like plates of real food, although they were, of course, and if Ellenanesther cooked, we ate. And it was not only a pause.
Some days we ate only bread and butter and drank milk, standing up, separately. Sometimes we let the stove go out, although it was a devil to light. Mother had tried never to let it go out. It had been a warm heart, a centre. But now … A cold layer of grey ash settled and no one bothered to clean it up.
I don’t know how long that time lasted. I was very far away. I spent a lot of my time just wandering about. I often walked to Mother’s Dyke and thought about my mother and her despair. If only she hadn’t done it. It wasn’t right, it couldn’t be right to leave your children like that, to leave your big girls to care for your baby girls in such a place; to leave them all in the care of the man who had driven you to this. Oh Mother. Why didn’t you take us too? Or surely we could have escaped together from this gaping trap of a place? Scuttled together away from the hugeness of this sky?
Sometimes I walked past the Howgegos’ old house. Once, I went right up to it and peered through the dusty windows. There was the stone sink, the staircase that curved steeply from the kitchen to Mrs Howgego’s room; the worn flagged kitchen floor. It was so familiar and so different. Cold, empty, impersonal. And it was my fault, all this. It was my fault that Mrs Howgego had lost another one of her sons, and her home. I sat on the hollowed doorstep and looked at the walnut tree that the boys used to play under. There was a ragged strip of rope still dangling from the lowest branch. The wind stirred the branches and the rope swayed. The old tree moaned sadly.
Isaac would not come back. I knew that, suddenly, sitting there on the step of his home, the step that his footfall had helped to wear away. There was a feeling of such emptiness there, of such suffocating sadness that I got up quickly. I must leave, I knew, before I believed in it, in the sadness. There was an old broken cart sticking out of the long tangled grass. Isaac had played on that when he was a boy. He had even cajoled me onto it. ‘Scared?’ and I’d said, ‘No,’ of course, and sat upon it, my heart thudding, my eyes squeezed tight, and he’d pushed and I’d hurtled along and hit the gate and fallen off and grazed my knee. I hadn’t cried, and Isaac had looked admiringly at me as he scolded, ‘You’re daft you are, you should have steered.’
Quiet. Ah … just a moment of – almost – peace. Just for a moment everything, everyone, pauses. If only that peace would last I would sleep, I would just sink into it, let it soak into me. That is what I need, but there is no peace here, in the middle of nowhere. And then it starts again, the terrible frightening, frightened, frightful noise.
Sometimes our father sent us letters, close, clipped and cold, delivered with the groceries. In a postscript to one of these he informed us of Isaac’s death. He had been shot dead, a long time ago.
Shot? Shot where? In the head? Did the bullet smash his darling fragile skull? In the chest? In that heart I’d felt the beating of against my own breast? In his soft, smooth belly? His long pale back? Shot? Shot dead.
Oh that dreadful wailing! I cannot stand much more of this! And although the rain seems to be stopping, although I think there is the first early glimmer of light in the sky, there is still the dripping. It is enough to drive you mad. And I cannot move. I cannot even breathe with Agatha so close.
And then there were months. A year? years? Existence. A sort of sleep without rest. A long dull stretch to struggle through. I suppose I ate and drank and walked and talked, but I wasn’t there. Not really. I could not let myself be there, properly, not switch on my mind, properly, or I would have had to scream. For Isaac was dead. And this was no pause. This was it.
It sounds as if Ellenanesther are going downstairs. Yes, I can hear them on the stairs. I wonder if the rain has got into their rooms too? Tomorrow I will go with Aggie up to the attic and see how far the rain has damaged her room. We will have to make some sort of arrangement for her. I cannot endure another night with her in my bed.
I could not cry in all that time because I knew that if I started I would not be able to stop. There was a flood inside me, dammed inside with ice. I was dry. But the bitterness of those useless unshed tears soured my soul, aged me, made my head heavy and my face a mask of sadness. In the mirror I was a stranger. I did not speak, not for ages. My tongue grew dry and heavy. I stayed away from Agatha, because Agatha had arms that might encircle me, and if someone had held me then I would have caved in.
Ellenanesther drew more into themselves too at this time. They stopped playing games. They worked hard, in unison, and they kept things neat. They cleaned up the ash. They managed, mostly, to keep the stove on.
I kept away from Agatha, but Agatha kept going. She used to sing to herself and not just to herself. I saw her with the rows and rows of audience before her. I saw how she sparkled and flirted her dark eyes and how her voice grew warm and husky with all those strangers’ eyes upon her. She should have been on the stage. She could and should, but instead she battled on. She fed the cow, she milked, she churned butter, she collected eggs, she fed the hens, she dug and planted. She sang to herself. She talked to herself too, for there was no one else. I would not talk. Ellenanesther did not bother to talk, even to each other they hardly talked, there was no need. They had not the need of words, they just knew.
Aggie sang to herself but something kept happening to the words. Each time she sang the words sounded different, the meaning slipping and sliding. Words became vague. It was only the tunes that Agatha remembered now. And sometimes it was as if Mother was back, with that voice those tunes just there, just resting in the air somewhere near Agatha’s industrious self.
And then one day I woke up and saw that it was spring. I really woke up. I lay in my bed and watched the way the sun filtered through my curtains and fell, a dusty ribbon on my bed. I lay still for a long time, wide awake for the first time. I climbed out of bed and looked out of the window. The apple trees were in blossom, sweet fragile pink petals against the tender green of the new leaves. In the long grass underneath, hens were pecking, and kittens stalking. A tiny tabby creature leapt at the trunk of my tree, the tree Isaac and I used to climb. It dangled for a moment, its minute curved pins of claws catching in the bark, and then it fell, a soft weight, into the springy grass.
And Isaac was dead. There was of course, only one thing I could possibly do, and that was leave. Why didn’t I do it before? Oh why didn’t I?
I dressed quickly, aware of
the curious lightness of my limbs. I felt as if I was recovering from a long illness, light and ravenous. I was thinner and my hair was a long and greasy mess. I knew I must eat and I must wash and then I must prepare to leave. Mr Whitton could do what he liked, tell Father what he liked. By the time he knew anything I would be gone. I would find my way to London, find people who knew Mother’s family. Father would never find me. I would be free.
Agatha was amazed to see me that morning. I prepared breakfast and laid the table properly in a way it hadn’t been done for I don’t know how long. I put bread and butter on the table, and a pot of honey. I put fresh milk in a china jug and I brewed tea. I picked a spray of flimsy yellow dog roses and put them in a vase on the table.
‘Come on, Aggie,’ I called, for I could hear her in the barn. ‘Come on, Ellenanesther, breakfast.’
‘Well, Milly! Well thank goodness,’ said Aggie coming in quickly. ‘It’s nice to see you looking better.’ She tried to touch my arm but I pulled away.
‘I’ll pour you some tea,’ I said. I was shocked to see how pale she looked. There were shadows under her eyes, and sad lines. I had not really seen her for such a long time.
‘Are you well?’ I asked. ‘You look pale.’
‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad that you’re … back to your old self?’ she looked at me quizzically.
‘Yes,’ I said. But that was a lie. I was not back to my old self. That self had shrivelled and died. That old self had had only one purpose – to marry Isaac. That purpose had gone: that self had gone. But it was all right. There was something left. I looked at them all anew. I looked at them with the knowledge that I would soon be gone, and might never see them again. Ellenanesther looked different. Strangely, they looked younger. There was less expression on their blank and pleasant identical faces. Perhaps I would see them again, perhaps once in London I could send for them. We could all live in London in a nice little house. We could be normal.
‘But how?’ said Aggie when I told her I planned to leave. ‘You’ve got no money. You don’t know how they do things.’
‘I’ll walk to the village,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and find Mrs Howgego. I’ll find a way to get to London. I’ll walk if I have to. Perhaps there’s something I could sell …’ I looked wildly around. ‘I’ll send someone from the village to get my things.’
Agatha reached out to me again, but I flinched away. ‘Don’t go,’ she said softly.
‘I’ve got to go. I can’t live here. I simply can’t now. Not now that Isaac …’
‘But I need you to stay,’ she said, ‘and Ellenanesther need you too. And what do you think will happen to you? In all that wickedness?’ Agatha believed Father. She was so simple in some ways. Not stupid but gullible. She simply believed whatever she was told.
‘That’s just what Father tells us to keep us here,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe it’s true. Mother loved London. She wanted to go back there, and that’s what I want.’
‘I don’t think you can,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’ll know how to do it, live among people, find your way. What will you eat?’
‘Oh do be quiet!’ I snapped. I did not want to hear her voicing my own doubts. ‘If the world’s so wicked and terrible and impossible why does Father live in it? He could stay here.’
‘It’s probably different for men,’ she said. She followed me around as I dragged Mother’s old trunk up from the cellar. It was heavy and exhausting work bumping it up the steep steps. She did not help. It was dirty. It was mildewed. In the bottom were the faded remains of a dress. It had been a fine dress by the look of it, long and full, a dark green stuff. I pulled it out and tried to unfold it but it gave way in my hands. It fell in a flutter of dusty shreds and moths, and the smell of mildew filled the room.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said firmly. I went up to my little room and sorted my belongings into three piles: things I didn’t need; things I’d pack in the trunk and send for later when I was established; and things I’d carry with me. I took the second pile downstairs and put them in the bottom of the trunk. They looked pathetic and small, lost in there. Hardly enough to run a life on. I added some books, and then I stopped. I was at a loss. Ellenanesther stood in the doorway watching, their eyes round and solemn. Kittens were racing round batting bits of Mother’s fine dress with their paws. Agatha was watching me, the bitch look on her face.
‘Now what?’ she said. I felt like punching her. She was watching and waiting for me to stop, to admit that this was ridiculous, that of course I couldn’t go. How could I? I didn’t know the first thing.
I do not know what I would have done next, whether I would really have gone, how it would have ended, if a boy with a telegram hadn’t arrived that morning. My heart leapt with joy and apprehension when he arrived with the envelope. Was he dead then? Was Father dead?
No. He was only wounded. He was on his way home. The telegram was old. He could arrive home at any time. So, of course, I could not go. I would have got to the village at least. I would have got that far. Even that would have been better than nothing, would have been freedom of a sort.
And how did Agatha know just what to do? How did she know to say, ‘No reply, thank you,’ and smile at the boy who was an ugly boy, nothing like Isaac, a sallow boy, and close the door crisply behind him before reacting to the telegram at all.
‘Wounded!’ she kept exclaiming, pacing around the room. ‘Oh poor Father … but there’s no indication of how! Of what sort of injury.’ She was excited. Important. Oh yes, she loved a drama, Aggie did. A nurse now she was, I could see it in her face. Angel of mercy. Oh how I could see through Agatha then, how I despised her.
It is certainly getting light. A greyness is seeping in, showing the edges, the folds, the corners of things. The cats will start scratching soon to be let in. They will bring their furred and feathered plunder into the kitchen, gifts for Agatha. A summer dawn. I do not wish to see another summer.
Agatha is still sleeping, flat on her back in the middle of the bed so I have to squash to the edge to avoid her. Her sharp gristly nose, a crow’s beak, rises out of a face that has sagged back in sleep to reveal the bones beneath the shadowy skin. She is puffing, her cheeks ballooning out, thin grey balloons, and then the air escaping through her lips in a gush. Soon I will kick her awake, kick her out. And then perhaps I will sleep.
I can see a new shape on the ceiling. It is like a map. It is a dark wet patch of plaster. Water is still dripping through, but more slowly now. It’s typical of Agatha to let the leak in her bedroom ceiling damage mine. She could have put something there, a basin or something to catch the drips. The crack in the ceiling runs through the map like a wide river, a river with many tributaries cutting through a foreign land. A foreign land. France. Isaac went to France. They go all over now, Mark was telling me, Spain, America, Africa. They fly in aeroplanes. Quite often aeroplanes fly across here, loud and low sometimes, enough to give you a fright. There was another war, and there were planes too, and bombs, but that was nothing to do with us. We had no men to lose. Even in the night they fly over, waking me sometimes. In the dark the sound is ominous, but on a bright blue day, when a far-off plane leaves a trail like a scratch on the surface of the sky, I must say, I feel tempted to try. Whatever must it feel like to plunge up into the sky like a bird? But such a heavy bird. No, I don’t think I could trust it. Aggie is afraid that one will fall out of the sky one day, and land on us, squash us flat. I don’t think that is very likely. But if it did, it would be neat, it would be sudden, it would be final. It would be better than this gradual wearing away.
Father was wounded, yes, but not in any way that we’d expected. He’d got shrapnel in his leg and had an ugly wound that needed dressing. But that was not really the trouble. Something had happened to his head and he was not the same. He would sit quiet for hours, not hearing or not listening to us. But then suddenly he would come to and then we never knew what to expect. He might be quiet and lucid. He migh
t be angry. He might even laugh.
Ellenanesther would not go near him, but Aggie – to begin with – was in her element. She bustled about quiet and grave and important. Her step became smooth and confident, filled with purpose. And she knew what she was doing. I cannot understand how. I certainly did not. She dressed his wound which made me sick even to think of. She took him his food, the best of food, prepared carefully herself. She spent hours sitting with him, talking about what I cannot think. She even persuaded him once or twice to play cards. I used to stay out of the way. I did not want anything to do with him. As far as I was concerned, he had killed my mother and he had killed my lover. I would have left him to rot. I resented Agatha too for her capability, for the pleasure she was getting from serving Father.
But then it all changed. He began to call her Phyllida. He began to call her whore. She changed. She grew pale and nervous, her confidence all gone. I would hear her whimpering sometimes at night. And then one day, accidentally through the crack where the door had swung ajar, I saw what he was doing to her, what she was letting him do to her. Ugly old man with his rotting leg. Fucking her. That was his word. I heard that word from him. Fucking her, not making love. He was doing it like an animal. I saw his face, red and mad, the veins in his neck bulging. I saw her face closed as if in sleep, closed, composed. But did I catch just the hint of a smile, a look of satisfaction? She had got him.
No. No. No. I am wrong. Agatha was frightened. I know she was. I heard her whimpering in the dark of the night. She was frightened and devoted and confused. It was unspeakable and wicked what her father was doing to her. If he was her father. I did not know, do not know. What Isaac told me sowed a seed in my mind, but I do not know. I don’t know any more what is truth and what is lies. I don’t know any better than Agatha does.
Honour Thy Father Page 13