Honour Thy Father

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘I think there is a baby on the way.’

  ‘Oh.’ I turned my face to the wall.

  ‘Milly. Please, don’t turn away, talk to me please.’

  ‘It will be a bastard,’ I said. ‘Like you.’

  ‘Milly!’

  ‘It’s true.’

  She sat still and quiet for such a long time that I thought she must have crept out. But then she spoke again, almost eagerly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Father was not your father.’

  She was silent for some time more. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Isaac knew … and I heard Mother once, talking to Mrs Howgego. I didn’t understand then. I didn’t believe Isaac.’

  ‘But you never said! Oh thank God!’

  I turned over and looked at her. ‘What do you mean, thank God?’

  ‘Don’t you see? It’s not so bad then. If Father isn’t my father then it’s not such a terrible thing. Not such a sin.’

  ‘Still a sin though. You thought he was Father.’

  ‘No, perhaps I knew all the time,’ she lied. ‘Perhaps deep down I did know. Of course I knew! I always felt I was different, special, and of course, he knew! Don’t you see? What he was doing was wrong, yes, but not as wrong as I thought it was. If he knew I wasn’t his daughter.’

  ‘Still wrong though. He still forced you. He still hurt you.’

  Agatha was miles away now. ‘It will have been the man with the ice swan,’ she said, ‘that time when Mother went out to dinner in the emerald dress. And there was a sea of violet petals.’

  ‘He did force you, didn’t he, Agatha?’ I asked. She looked down. ‘Didn’t he?’ I insisted.

  ‘Not at first,’ she whispered, her eyes down, lashes of silk against her flushed cheeks. ‘At first … I don’t know … something came over me, washing him, caring for him so closely. When he touched me at first I was … I was … I mean I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t help it, I was almost pleased. No one touched me. You would hardly speak to me. I was lonely. And when he touched me at first, it was nice. I felt proud. He was touching me like he touched Mother.’

  ‘Aggie!’

  ‘It was only after I’d let him just touch me a little … Oh I don’t know … I was all stirred up, remembering the painter, I suppose. I liked it. I suppose that means I’m wicked. I don’t care. It was only after that that he wanted more, wanted to do more and then I could see it had been a mistake to start. It was wrong, but he would not stop, and we were alone so much.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  She looked at me as if I was stupid, and she was right. I’d kept as far away from the two of them as I could at that time. And anyway, I had known. I should have said something, done something. I had been useless.

  ‘And when I’d let him do it … like the animals … like you told me … then he went horrible. He got cruel. He started to call me names, hit me, force me.’ She paused. ‘I understand now, some of the names he called me. Some of the reason he seemed to hate Mother so much. It was as if he was trying to hurt Mother by hurting me. I understand a bit now. If it is true. I think it must be true, don’t you, Milly? It explains why he was always cold towards me, before.’ She seemed almost happy. ‘It will be all right, won’t it Milly? We can bring the baby up. It will be fun to have a child in the house again.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I must go.’

  ‘But I need you Milly. More than ever before. I need you to be here when the baby’s born. Ellenanesther won’t be any help.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be any help. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I can remember a little from when Mother had the twins. But I’ll need your help.’

  I could remember a little of that time too. I could remember Mother’s cries and the rain and the wind that blew. I could remember a basin of bloody water. I hid my face in the pillows. I could almost hear the door banging shut on me, the key turning in the lock. I was shut in properly now. Father might be gone, but he had set the seed for his successor.

  So I stayed. There was nothing for it but to stay. Agatha was right: I could not leave her now. I agreed to stay and help her but vowed that I would do nothing else. No cleaning. No laundry except what was necessary for the confinement. I wasn’t going to be Aggie’s unpaid servant. I left the trunk where it was in the middle of the room as a reminder to Aggie of what I had given up for her. It is there still, half-full of dust. Sometimes the cats jump in and out disturbing the tatters of my clothes. We have grown so used to walking round it that that is the pattern of our walking. When I said I would do no more cleaning Aggie said then nor would she. Ellenanesther, too, soon gave up. So the same dust is there, the underlayer of dust that stirs and mingles with the rest, is the same dust that settled silently that day all those years ago – can it be sixty years? – when I gave in and I agreed to stay.

  It was a strange, long time waiting for Agatha’s baby. We had no idea how long it would be. She swelled so slowly, so tediously – and she made such a fuss. I am sure Mother never made a fuss like that. I’m sure she just got on with it. But Agatha! Oh she made a proper performance of it. Special food she had to have, she couldn’t fancy anything ordinary. What Mrs Gotobed thought when we began ordering bloaters and anchovy essence and olives, I don’t know. She’d stopped talking to us by then. And she never saw more of Agatha than a face at a window.

  I began to worry as the weeks and months went by, the seasons changed and nothing happened. The cow died in that time and it was Agatha’s fault. She neglected the poor thing, so absorbed in herself was she. The poor beast stopped giving milk and stopped eating and started to cough – and then one day she was dead. We did not burn her. We just left her where she was and it took a very long time for her to be reduced to bone. There was a very long time when the smell in the barn was unbearable, when on all but the coldest days the hum of flies reached the house, and the carcass was a black seething mass of them. The cats lurked too and would stalk into the house sated in the morning, their whiskers clogged with blood and grease. But by the time Agatha’s baby was born she was clean bone, clean bluish bone, and they left her in peace.

  One evening Agatha lifted her skirt to show us the huge mound. It looked frightening, distended and scored with red marks where it was strained almost to bursting. Her navel stuck out, insolently as a tongue. Ellenanesther and I stared at it aghast, and as we watched a knobble appeared and slid across, a knee or a heel or something. It made me feel sick.

  ‘Sometimes I worry,’ said Agatha, smiling but anxious, ‘that it will never be born. That I’ll just get bigger and bigger and bigger.’

  ‘Until you,’

  ‘Burst.’ said Ellenanesther.

  Agatha laughed. But I looked doubtfully at the great mound wondering privately however else it would get out.

  Soon after that time, early in the New Year, Agatha came in from the barn, her face pink with cold, her eyes bright. ‘It’s starting,’ she said. ‘There’s been some water, and some pain.’

  She went up to her room and I put the big pans of water on to heat. She put on her nightdress and got into bed. I arranged soap and a basin and scissors and a clean sheet cut into strips by the bed, just as Mrs Howgego had done. Oh how I wished Mrs Howgego was there. How I wished it was me in that bed, that it was Agatha and Mrs Howgego who knew what to do, and that Isaac waited downstairs for the first cry of his child. But it was not so. She was like a queen lying there. So important! I would never have gloried in it like her. I would have got on with it, like Mother. You’d think it was something special, something clever, the way she carried on in all those hours of waiting. I wanted to remind her that this was a sin. This was disgrace. What she was doing was as base and mindless as what the animals did; that she was about to give birth to a bastard.

  For a long time it was all calm. I did not know what to expect. Perhaps the baby would just slide out of Agatha with no further ado. But then things changed. It began to really hurt
her, and hurt her and hurt her over and over. And it was like that for two days. She was gradually swallowed by exhaustion and pain. She lost her queen face, she was an ordinary frightened woman struggling like a butterfly on a pin, insignificant, a tiny battered creature writhing in this little house in the middle of nowhere under the vast empty sky. I lost my resentment for a while then. I was frightened, for I really thought Agatha would die. For two days she rose and fell over rocky mounds of pain. Sweat poured from her body, blood and greenish water seeped from between her legs. And I watched. I bathed her forehead and gave her sips of water, but I could do little else but watch. If only Mrs Howgego could have been there. She would have known what to do to help.

  Ellenanesther never came into the room, but they stayed close outside, their murmuring rising and falling with Aggie’s moans and screams.

  At last, when I thought Aggie had got to the end of her strength, she began pushing. I watched her flesh tear and her blood flow and at last I saw the sticky crumpled screwed-up rock of the head, and then the surprisingly small slithery body covered in blood and wax and green stuff. It was dark blue and I thought that after all that it would be dead. I cut the cord and tied it with cotton like Agatha had told me and I tried to hand the baby to Agatha but she had no strength left so I wrapped it in a bit of sheet and put it aside while I tried to clean Agatha up. I thought it was going to be like Mother’s time, I thought there would be another one, when Agatha started straining again, but it was only the afterbirth. I cleared it all up, holding my breath for the meaty bloody stench made me heave. I tried to make Agatha comfortable. I put on a clean nightdress and I washed her face and brushed her hair. I brought her a cup of sweet tea. I had forgotten all about the baby, so eager was I to clear up the blood. I cannot stand a room full of blood. Agatha looked exactly like Mother had looked after Ellenanesther, pale and small against the pillow, a weak child.

  I picked up the bundle of sheet then and shook it a bit and it stirred. It made a tiny mewing sound. So it was alive. I wiped its face. It was horrible. A funny colour, putty grey.

  ‘Boy or girl?’ murmured Agatha, her eyes closed.

  I unwrapped it and had a look. ‘Boy … I think,’ I said. Though I really could not tell.

  She smiled, a tiny weak lifting of the corners of her mouth, and opened her eyes just a slit. ‘So Father’s got his son,’ she said.

  I wish he had died. I wish I had not picked him up when I did. I think he would never have breathed if he had not breathed then. Nobody ever loved him. He just wasn’t lovable. Ellenanesther played with him for a while. They treated him like a doll, dressed and undressed him, laid him by the hearth, carried him out into the fresh air. I did not watch too closely. If there had been an accident it would have been for the best; but they always brought him back, safe. They soon got bored with him and his lolling head. He did not respond. He was dull and had no expression. But he was no trouble as a baby. Agatha could not bear him. She could not bear anything ugly. And look at her, now! Typical of Agatha to have a child like that. If I’d had a baby it would have been a chubby, freckly, blue-eyed child. A Howgego child.

  Oh how I wish he had died. How I wish he had never been. I wish I had gone away when I had the choice. But now we must go down. The noise downstairs is terrible. It is frightening, the banging and the crashing and the howling … a watery sloshing sound too. But worst of all is the wasp sound of Ellenanesther, it makes my teeth ache. It is a high mad murmuring. It is rhythmic but it is not a song. We must go down now and see what there is to see. It is light now and there is no more excuse. Agatha and I must go down.

  We go downstairs. Me first. Trembling. My heart is struggling in my throat, my hands are wet, slippery on the banister. Agatha follows. Because she is behind me I cannot stop and that is good. They are in the kitchen. Ellenanesther are in the kitchen. As I descend the staircase I can see them. The knife drawer is shut and there is no blood. That is good. They stand by the cellar door. They are like children in their ragged nightdresses, their faces are pink, their hair hangs long over their shoulders. They smile at me. For a moment all is calm. I might call it peace, but then, suddenly, startlingly, there is a roar from the cellar, but not down in the cellar. It comes from just behind the door. There is a roar and a crash and Ellenanesther’s voices rise together in a weird chant. Oh it is not a chant, it is not really words it is … I don’t know. The words are blurred and skewed. It is the language they made when they were tiny, when they spoke only to each other. It is something like: omotheromotheromothero the blood and the mud antheholygoes omotheromothero … Oh it is no good. It does not make sense. It is maddening. It maddens me. It maddens the one who roars behind the door. Mother is no more to them than a floating face in a white hat but it is in her name that they do their terrible things. O mother. And it goes on and on and George is the loudest and when he roars their voices rise in pitch and when he is quiet they fall again. He crashes against the door.

  ‘He is trying to escape,’ says Aggie from behind me.

  ‘That is obvious,’ I say.

  Ellenanesther tear their eyes away from the cellar door and look appealingly at me. ‘If we had,’

  ‘Knives …’ they say.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘No more blood,’ says Agatha. ‘But he cannot come out. Why does he want to come out, now?’

  ‘Because of the,’

  ‘Water,’ say Ellenanesther.

  It is only then that I register the fact that there is water sliding out from under the cellar door and spreading across the floor. I look out of the window. The land is shining. It is not dry land any more, there is a skin of water as far as I can see, only a thin skin, pierced by the grass and the plants and the fence posts. The cellar then, is flooded.

  ‘Look!’ I say to Agatha. ‘There’s been so much rain …’

  ‘Perhaps Mother’s Dyke has gone?’ she suggests.

  ‘No, it would be worse if that had happened.’

  We stand for a moment in silence looking at the shining surface all around us. It is a clean and beautiful summer morning. The sky is a tender blue and the land reflects the sky, reflects the miniature puffs of cloud. Long green grasses and leaves rise out of the blueness, and underneath buttercups and clover flowers sway slightly.

  ‘It’s like snow!’ says Aggie. It is not in the least like snow, but I know what she means. There is the same exhilarating feeling of waking to find the world transformed, everyday things looking new and different.

  And then George bellows again. This time, along with the crashing on the door there is a splitting sound, the beginning of a splintering. Ellenanesther’s voices rise so that the sound is almost painful.

  ‘Open the door!’ cries Agatha.

  ‘Oh no,’ I say. I am frightened now. I do not want to see him in the light of day.

  ‘But he will break the door down!’ Agatha screams. ‘Open it. I do not want the door broken down.’ She goes towards it, weak old shuffling woman.

  ‘No!’ I push past Ellenanesther who are so wrapped up in the noise they are making that they hardly notice. I lean against the door. My feet are in the wet. I can feel him bashing and battering.

  ‘Let him out!’ Agatha cries, clawing at me. ‘Let him out I say. He is mine!’ Oh yes. He is hers now. After all this time when she’s never been near him. After all this time when I, only I, have kept him alive. But she is right. The door will break if there is much more of this, and then there will be no shutting him out.

  I move aside. Her twisted fingers fumble with the bolt, and then as he pushes and roars, as he batters and crashes, she slides it to and the door suddenly bursts open, pushing her aside, and he emerges in a rush of water, a wet and bloody monster. He is white and fat in the bright light like a bloated pond creature, his hair has almost gone; his head is bruised and bleeding. His long soft nails have peeled back with all the scraping at the door. He is soaking. Water runs down him as he lurches and staggers and stumbles. He has never lea
rned to walk, not properly. He falls on his knees in the water which is at least an inch deep now. He looks at Agatha and he blinks his tiny eyes sunk in the white lard of his face. And he smiles.

  Agatha screams. Her hands cover her face. She screams and pulls away from the fat tattered hand that reaches for her leg. She backs away, backs herself up the staircase.

  ‘Make him go back!’ she stutters. It is peculiarly quiet in the kitchen now that George has stopped, and Ellenanesther have stopped. George makes tiny contented grunts and there is the sound of water lapping. ‘Make him go back!’ Agatha insists more loudly. There is an edge of hysteria in her voice.

  I cannot move. I cannot stand it. I cannot stand the way he smiled at Agatha. There was a look like gratitude on his face. As if he remembers Aggie. As if he is capable of feelings. No no no. Of course he’s not! How could he be? Just look at him, hideous freakish thing, drooling and swaying now.

  ‘Yes, he will have to go back,’ I say. I look at Ellenanesther. I cannot bear to touch him. I would not be strong enough. He is heavy – though in the light I am surprised he is not bigger. In the gloom of the cellar he seemed almost endlessly massive but he is quite an ordinary person size, though grossly fat. Agatha has retreated to half-way up the stairs and she sits clenched there, her bony hands gripped round the bones of her knees. Ellenanesther move towards him, their faces pleasant, and they begin to make their infernal noise again. They move towards him, one each side: ‘Georgey georgey georgey into the holy the watery watery watery,’ and they each place a hand on the folds of lard where his arms join his body. Their fingers sink in the fat. He balances a moment. He seems to be looking straight at Agatha. At his mother.

  ‘Oh just do it!’ she screams, and hides her face in her hands. Ellenanesther push hard at his fat womanly chest. His face is blank though he seems to resist. But he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know. It’s not the same for him as it would be for us. He does not feel. For a moment nothing happens. Ellenanesther’s voices rise with the effort and then he topples back. He overbalances back. He doesn’t cry out. Doesn’t cry or roar. There is just a wallowing, a horrible billowing bubbling. And then there is silence.