Honour Thy Father

by Lesley Glaister

  The light is spilling in now. I can see the coarse grimy graininess of Agatha’s face. Her eyes are moving, sliding behind her thin lids. Of what does she dream? She has no lashes left, just a red rim where they have fallen out. She used to have such lashes! There is a crashing downstairs now, and the howling. Louder. What are Ellenanesther doing down there? It could not be nearer. My ears are playing tricks now like my memory.

  And what does it matter now, whether he was her father or not? It was wicked either way. When I saw what they were doing, I resolved, again, to go. Oh I do try not to remember that time. I try to keep it locked away but in the night it will, sometimes, creep up on me. But it is not the night now. It is morning now, almost. The light. Do not think of that time. In the light, do not think. I have not thought of it for years and years but now it is forcing its way out. No, do not think. It is Agatha’s fault. She is too close. Bitch. I cannot bear her so close. I cannot control my memory.

  And one day I heard a screaming. Father was recovering by then, recovering the use of his leg anyway, and he was outside. I looked out of the window. He was dragging Agatha towards the barn and she was screaming. ‘No better than an animal,’ he was shouting at her and I could see the beads of mad spittle flying from his mouth. ‘No better than your whore of a mother.’ And Agatha was screaming in terror and I could not go to her. What could I have done? It had happened before. I lay on my bed. Useless, I lay on my bed. When it is over, I thought, I will be nicer to Aggie. I will help her with Father. Why is she screaming so? I could hear a curious noise, a curious buzzing mumbling noise, like a nest of wasps.

  Oh that is it. That is what it reminds me of, the noise that Ellenanesther have been making tonight.

  It was Ellenanesther. It could not be called speech. It was like a buzzing chant. There was a rhythm but it was not a song. It grew higher and further away and it travelled outside. Something happened to me then. I could scarcely have slept, not at midday, not with all that racket going on – but the next thing I knew I was waking up.

  It was all quiet. I got up and went downstairs. There was blood on the kitchen floor; on the blue-and-white tiles; on the table; in the sink. I turned round and Ellenanesther were there. They were holding hands. They had sweet smiles on their bloody faces. ‘All better now,’ they said.

  I found Agatha in the barn. Her dress was torn, her hair was a tangle of straw, but she was not hurt. Not in any way that you could see. She was sitting in a corner, her hands clasped round her knees. Her eyes were huge dark circles in the whiteness of her face. She was staring at what was left of Father.

  They had killed him with sharp knives. They had stabbed him many times. They had cut off his fingers and his thing, and lined them up beside him, neatly.

  Agatha is moaning in her sleep now, struggling, her eyes sliding and twitching wildly behind her lids. I shake her.

  ‘Wake up,’ I say. ‘It’s all right. It’s only a dream.’

  She opens her eyes and stares up at the ceiling. For a moment I am not sure whether she is really awake, whether she has heard me, but then she speaks.

  ‘It is not all right. It is not only a dream.’

  I consider this. ‘Listen,’ I say. ‘Now that it is light we will have to think about what has been happening downstairs. We will have to do something.’

  She is quiet for a moment. ‘It has stopped raining. That is something.’

  ‘Come downstairs with me,’ I say.

  She sighs. ‘Not yet. I don’t want to see.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘What?’ But I know. She does not want any more horrors stored up in her brain to flicker against her sleeping eyes. I know all about that, but I am not a coward, and what has to be done simply has to be done.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ I say, ‘but you must follow.’

  The truth is that although I am not a coward, I am as frightened as Agatha of what we will find.

  ‘Not yet,’ says Agatha. ‘Let’s wait till it’s properly light.’

  I relent. Now that it is nearly time to go down towards the noise my heart is beating painfully. I close my eyes. I am tired after all and I should try to sleep a little. It is blood I am afraid of.

  I pulled Agatha up off the floor. ‘Look away,’ I commanded. Agatha switched her eyes away from Father. There was no light in her eyes, they were huge and blank. She looked into my eyes.

  ‘Ellenanesther …’ she began, a hysterical quiver in her voice, ‘like machines. You should have seen …’

  ‘Do not think,’ I said. ‘Go into the house, Agatha.’

  ‘But Ellenanesther …’

  ‘They won’t hurt you. Don’t you see? Go into the house.’

  For once Agatha obeyed me. There was a strength in my voice, a purpose that I had never heard before, and Agatha obeyed. Once she had gone, stumbling like a blind woman, I set to work. Just for once I knew just what to do. I piled straw over the body, and wood. I led the cow outside and tethered her in the orchard. She was calm as ever, oblivious. The horror had not touched her.

  I chased the pecking chickens out of the barn, then I went into the kitchen. Ellenanesther were in the sitting-room, kneeling by the hearth. For the first time in ages they were playing with the old peg dolls. They were snapping the legs and throwing them into the fireplace. ‘Omotheromothero,’ they were mumbling, ‘and a sonandaboy and a holy goat. We toll them dead. Forever-anever.’

  ‘Stop it!’ I shouted. They turned and looked at me aghast. After all that had happened, it was me shouting like that that frightened them.

  ‘Go into the kitchen and clean yourselves up. Clean up all that blood and change your clothes.’ They got up off their knees then, Ellenanesther did, like good children, and did what they were told.

  I went upstairs and made Agatha take off her dress and her underwear. ‘Just get into bed and stay there,’ I said. ‘Try to sleep. Try not to think. I’ll make some tea later. I’ll heat water for a bath.’

  I filled the stove with wood, filled the great pans we used only for baths and washdays and put them on to heat. All the time I did this I felt strong and eager. I knew just what to do. This was work, real work, real important work, and I was the only one to do it. I lit a candle and, shielding the pale flame with my hand, carried it across the yard and into the barn.

  I paused for a moment, the warmth of the flame flapping against my hand, and I looked at the place where Isaac and I had made love that first time, that disappointing time, and many times more. Sunshine slanted through the gaps in the roof lighting the floating dust particles so that they gleamed like gold. It’s a lovely day, I thought, surprised. Without looking too closely at the pile of blood-soaked straw I put the candle down beside it, and piled fresh straw around it. Once it was blazing I built it up into a proper fire with wood from the pile. Soon joyful hot clean flames leapt and crackled greedily, and began to creep into the pile that had been Father. It was harder to burn this, for it was dense and wet, but I persevered. I fetched Aggie’s torn dress, and the stained clothes of Ellenanesther and piled them on to add to the blaze. I piled wood and straw on top and poked and poked with a broom handle into the dense mass of it to let air penetrate. At last there was a smell that told me that he was burning; a terrible delicious smell of roasting flesh. I held my breath. The air filled with blacker stickier smoke. The fire popped and spluttered and splattered as it devoured Father. I ran backwards and forwards to the door for gulps of clean air and then back to the blaze whenever it began to flag to pile on more fuel, and to stir it around.

  The smoke floated up and clung to the rafters, some of it escaping through the hole in the roof. But it was all right, the barn wasn’t going to catch. This is what I feared most, for that would have created a beacon, a light that would surely have attracted attention. It would have been seen for miles and miles on every side. It was all right. But it took many hours to reduce Father to ash and bone. By the time the job was finished it was st
arting to get dark. I swept up the remnants, the bones and the ashes, the buttons and the pipe-stem, and dug them into the garden. Then when it was completely finished I went to the privy and I was sick.

  That night we all bathed in gallons of clean hot water. We scrubbed our bodies pink and clean with coal-tar soap. We scrubbed away the stench of our father from our skin and hair, and then cleanly and calmly, we sat down and ate bread and butter and eggs and drank tea and ate ginger cake. Aggie was very quiet, but she did smile now and again, a trembly smile. It was worse for her, I suppose, because her feelings were most complicated. All her life she had adored Father. What she felt about the twisted stranger who had returned from the war, I don’t know. She never said. But whatever else there was there was relief. She never asked me exactly what I’d done, though she must have seen the blackened circle on the floor of the barn.

  Ellenanesther looked angelic with their sweet young faces shining clean, their long light hair spread out drying like silken shawls upon their shoulders, their toes pink and bare beneath their nightdresses.

  We talked as if nothing had ever happened, as if we had never been other than normal.

  ‘We haven’t been away from here for weeks.’

  ‘Months.’

  ‘Tomorrow let’s go for a walk.’

  ‘If it’s fine.’

  ‘We could walk to the dyke, or the other way. We could go to the village.’

  ‘But Mr Whitton …’

  ‘But Father’s back from the war now, remember.’

  ‘We are free.’

  We pondered this. ‘To do what?’ Aggie asked at last.

  ‘To do anything we like! That’s what it means.’

  ‘But what do we want to do?’

  ‘Go,’ I said.

  ‘But go where?’

  ‘We don’t want to go,’ said Ellenanesther.

  ‘Well that’s all right,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to. The point of it is that we can go if we do want to.’

  ‘I suppose you will …’ began Agatha.

  ‘Oh yes. I’m going,’ I said. ‘I’m going to London. I’m going to look through the papers in Father’s room and see what I can find. Money. Addresses of Mother’s family.’

  ‘I would like to see Mrs Howgego,’ said Agatha.

  ‘Well you can! We all can! We can go to the village. Tomorrow we can go to the village.’

  We walked to the village. It was a long walk, a warm windy day. It all looked much smaller than I remembered, all the little houses low in the sunshine. I had so looked forward to this, dreamt of it many many times, but now I felt as if I was looking down a tunnel at the long street of houses – and they looked hardly real houses at all. Even the church looked diminished. It seemed unreal, like a flat cardboard front with nothing behind it. There was nobody about. Odd. It was quiet, flat and quiet with only the wind moving, swaying bushes, swinging a gate. We walked through the dusty village like live figures in a dream. We found the cottage the Howgegos had stayed in, but they were no longer there. An old woman who lived nearby saw us knocking and peering through the windows and she came out to speak to us.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ she said, ‘long since.’

  ‘Do you know where they’re staying?’ I asked.

  ‘Cambridge way I believe,’ she said. ‘After her lad died she seemed to lose heart.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘That little fellow.’

  ‘Davey?’

  ‘That’s the one. Croup. He had it dreadful. You could hear him from here.’

  I had a little flash of memory: fat legs; round blue eyes the exact colour of Isaac’s; a dribbly grin.

  ‘Yes that’s the one. Nice little lad,’ continued the old woman, ‘and she never could seem to pull herself together after that. Lost two of her big boys in the war … and then that little lad … that was too much for the poor soul, she …’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Agatha. She pulled me away. We walked in silence all the long hot way home. The dust blew into my mouth. It blew right in me and through me. I was nothing but dust walking along, dust suspended for a short time. My tongue was dust and my eyes. I saw nothing.

  ‘I’m staying put,’ said Agatha when we were home. ‘Did you see the way they laughed at us?’ I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘People, from behind their curtains. Those women outside the church. Those boys on their bicycles. I saw them laughing.’

  ‘I saw no one. And why should they laugh?’

  ‘Well just look at us in our childish dresses! Look at us!’

  I looked at Agatha. ‘No one was laughing,’ I said. ‘No one even saw us.’

  ‘That’s all you know,’ said Agatha. ‘I feel completely … humiliated.’ She had not cried when Father had dragged her into the barn, or when Ellenanesther had put a stop to Father; but she cried now, because she imagined people were laughing at her. Oh Agatha.

  She has gone to sleep again. There are beads of sweat on the grey hairs on her upper lip. It is hot, with two in the bed. It will be a hot day. For once there is no wind and the air is still and humid. When the sun comes up it will be hot.

  Well she could stay put. Ellenanesther could stay put; but I was going. I dragged out the trunk again, and replaced the few things that I had sorted out last time. They looked no more convincing cowering in one corner of the trunk than they had before. Agatha would hardly speak to me.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘Please, Aggie, don’t be angry. I wish you’d come too. Wouldn’t you like to go to London? We could find out what they are wearing, the ladies in London, we could buy new clothes.’

  ‘What with?’ she said. ‘I might not know much, Milly, but I do know you need money.’

  I knew that too, of course. I just felt that it was a problem I would get over once I was away. The important thing was to get away. I went through all the boxes of papers in Father’s room. Most of them were incomprehensible to me: complicated documents; things to do with investments and insurances and so on. The provisions made for us. I could not find anything useful, no addresses. There was nothing to do with Mother except the certificate of their marriage: Charles Edwin Pharoah to Phyllida Maisie Smith. Aggie came up to find me. She sat beside me on the bed and began looking through the papers.

  I lay down on Father’s bed, thinking how fine it would have been to have had this room, to have had that great open sweep of view to gaze out upon instead of the cramped mossy tree branches outside the window of my little room.

  ‘You can’t go!’ said Agatha, suddenly, sharply. ‘He’s made sure of it. Look!’ She held up a piece of paper which was covered in tiny cramped writing.

  ‘What does it say?’ I asked.

  ‘It says what he said; that we only get money to live on if we stay here, all of us. Whether he’s alive or dead or missing, the money will keep on being paid for our food and so on.’

  ‘But I can go.’

  ‘No, don’t you see. It says all of us must stay. If you go, Ellenanesther and I will get no money. We’ll starve.’

  ‘But who will know?’

  ‘You can’t leave us, Milly! You couldn’t dream of being so wicked!’

  Agatha was being melodramatic as usual, but still there was truth in what she said. I closed my eyes and lay back on the bed. The surge of anger I felt had no direction. He had gone, completely gone. There was just a space, a smoky space, a blackened circle, but still he had control. Still he had control of me. Still I was not free.

  ‘So you will stay, Milly?’ insisted Agatha. ‘You must.’

  I could not answer. I could not think for a moment. I had lost my bearings again and a terrible deadness spread through me. I left my trunk, half packed, and I just stayed in Father’s room.

  Agatha wanted it, I know she did, but she did not dare push. She moved up to the playroom where the twins had been sleeping because she wasn’t going to stay in a tiny room if I was having Father’s room. She moved in there, but one day when I was outside she went into F
ather’s room, my room, and she stole Mother’s things. She took her silver-backed hairbrush and mirror; her eau-de-Cologne; and the pots of cream she used to rub on her face. I never said a word about it. But I knew she’d done it. And she knew I knew.

  Agatha has never forgiven me for taking the best room like that. She’s been longing for something like this to happen, for the roof to give way, to give her an excuse to intrude. She has carried her grudge inside her all this time. She has become old and wizened, and the grudge is as much a part of her as her nose is a part of her face. But it was not a grudge she could openly bear. Oh no! She owed me too much. She owed me my freedom, my chance to live a proper life. I stayed to help her bear her shame. I was young and strong, not a beauty perhaps, but a fine young woman. I could have, would have married. I would have had children, grandchildren by now. But look at me! An old woman, an old barren disappointed woman. Oh no! She could not say a word although she did flounce around, a martyred look upon her face, reeking of eau-de-Cologne. She could not complain for if she had I would have upped and left, so instead she’s spent the years crashing about up there, moving the furniture, not to make it right, not to make it more comfortable or homely, but to bother me, to punish me.

  Because later, some weeks later, I tried again. I would go. Somehow I would get money, earn money and I would send it. I would support them. It was a last wriggle, a last desperate attempt to flip out of the net before I was overcome with the terrible tedium of this life. The trap of what we have done.

  And who knows whether I would really have succeeded? Agatha put a stop to it anyway. She came into my room one day, when I was lying on my bed and sat beside me.

  ‘Milly,’ she said. ‘You know what Mrs Howgego said about keeping ourselves nice.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She said, do you remember? She said that the time to worry was if the bleeding stopped …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that that means there’s a baby on the way.’

  ‘Yes.’ So that was his final trump. Agatha was going to have a baby. I hated Agatha then. Disgraced. A disgrace … Not that I cared about that. What I felt most strongly was simply pure hard cold jealousy. It should have been me. I’d tried and tried with Isaac, for me and Isaac, for a child of our love. It should have been me!