by Comfort Me
‘That’s because you freeze men off. You don’t encourage them. In fact, you’re not even friendly with them, as you would be if they were girls,’ said Dorrie.
‘I don’t want them to think I’m chasing them,’ Anna muttered. ‘I see enough girls doing that.’
‘But you don’t have to go to the other extreme,’ Dorrie retorted.
Anna laughed but the thought of becoming like her aunt was a real worry to her. She knew she saw faults in people far more easily than Dorrie did, and she tried to curb her sharp tongue, but sometimes remarks would pop out before she could stop them.
She tried to explain this to Dorrie but her sister only said, ‘You’re just witty and you think quickly, that’s where you’re different from me, but you never say anything to hurt people.’
‘Not intentionally,’ Anna said. ‘But perhaps I do without meaning to. And perhaps that’s how Aunt Clara started and she gradually got more malicious.’
‘Never!’ Dorrie said emphatically. ‘I’m sure she’s always been wicked and enjoyed hurting people.’
‘I can’t remember her being any other way,’ Anna admitted. ‘I remember when the last little baby was born and Aunt Clara came here. She said to Father, with a horrible smirk, “Another rose for your rosebud garden of girls, Jeremiah.”’
‘Yes, and you told me it was because Father admired Mr Tennyson’s poetry,’ Dorrie said. ‘It was only years later that we realised it was because Father was hoping for a son and she was pleased that he and Mama were disappointed.’
‘Fancy you remembering that, Dorrie,’ said Anna. ‘You would only be about nine and I was eleven when the baby was born.’
Dorrie sighed. ‘Yes, and poor little Emma died so soon afterwards anyway,’ she said. ‘But I’ve noticed that Aunt Clara has that same horrible look on her face whenever she’s saying anything very nasty. Never think you could be anything like her, Anna. You haven’t got that malice in you.’
‘I hope not,’ Anna said. She changed the subject, unwilling to tell Dorrie the other reason she thought she might be an old maid. When they were children she had overheard a visitor remark, ‘What a pity they’re not alike. Dorothea so pretty and the other girl so plain.’
Anna had never forgotten those words and as she and Dorrie grew older she noticed the differences in their looks and characters more and more, especially in the company of young men. They all vied for Dorrie’s attention and ignored Anna, or used her as an excuse to draw near to Dorrie, but Anna knew it was not her sister’s fault. She did nothing to invite it except be herself.
They heard movement downstairs and went down to make tea for their mother and some scones and fruit pies to follow the cold meat of the evening meal. Ada had Sunday off after she had washed the dinner dishes and Aunt Clara sat in the parlour reading missionary magazines while Anna and Dorrie prepared the meal.
Afterwards the girls set off to attend Evening Benediction at the church, where they saw many of their friends, sons and daughters of large families in the parish.
James Hargreaves was there alone. He was rarely seen without his mother and never seemed free to join the many clubs and sodalities attached to the church and Anna whispered to Dorrie, ‘Has the worm turned, do you think?’ He passed by them as they left the church and gazed hungrily at Dorrie, and because she suspected that his heightened colour meant he was remembering his humiliation of the morning, she smiled warmly at him.
He was soon pushed aside by others claiming Dorrie’s attention and was too diffident to fight back but he walked away thinking only of the warmth of her smile.
Aunt Clara opened the door to Dorrie and Anna when they returned home and she was obviously in a bad temper. ‘Your mother’s asleep again,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t know why. She never does anything to make her tired. I’m the one who’s worn out.’
The two girls said nothing but went into the parlour where their mother lay asleep on the sofa. In sleep the peevish lines on her face were smoothed away and there were signs of the beauty she had been, in her small straight nose and soft mouth and the long lashes lying on her cheeks.
‘She must have been lovely when she was young,’ Dorrie whispered and Anna smiled and nodded.
They went to the kitchen where their aunt was banging about and began to prepare supper. Aunt Clara was still grumbling and to divert her Dorrie made an innocent remark about her mother being a society beauty. It only provoked more fury.
‘Society beauty! Is that what she told you? More of her fairy tales!’ Clara snapped. ‘She was a ladies’ maid. That was the nearest she got to society! And where she got her airs and graces. I suppose she told you she married beneath her too! Let me tell you, miss, your mother took a step up in the world when she married my brother. He should have done better for himself.’
Dorrie shrank back and burst into tears but Anna said furiously, ‘That’s not your business or ours and you shouldn’t be talking to us like this.’ Clara, who had said more than she intended, replied quietly, ‘I can’t abide lies and you shouldn’t be speaking to me like that.’
Dorrie had already rushed to the parlour and Anna said briefly, ‘Mama doesn’t tell lies. Dorrie misunderstood. That’s all,’ then picked up the tray and followed her sister.
When her mother stirred Dorrie dried her tears and was plumping up cushions behind Mrs Furlong when Anna walked in, followed by Clara. Nothing was said about the scene in the kitchen and after drinking cups of tea and refusing sandwiches the two girls said goodnight and went to their bedroom.
‘I hope it’s safe to leave them together while Aunt Clara’s in such a temper,’ said Dorrie.
‘Don’t worry. They’ll be all sweetness with one another,’ Anna said bitterly. ‘That’s what sickens me.’
‘If only Father hadn’t brought her here,’ Dorrie mourned. ‘We could be so happy, just you and I and Mama.’
‘He had no right to do it without asking them,’ Anna said suddenly. ‘Women are people with feelings and ideas, not chattels to be moved about to suit men.’
‘But he did it for the best, Anna,’ Dorrie protested. ‘He must have been so worried, going off on a long voyage with Mama so grief-stricken and Aunt Clara alone in Hull. You can see why he did it.’
‘I still say he should have consulted them,’ Anna said stubbornly, ‘and us, although we were only children. He’s been home often since then though and never asked how it was working.’
‘But Mama and Aunt Clara never quarrel when he’s at home,’ Dorrie said innocently, ‘and they don’t even talk about each other to us.’
Anna smiled at her with affection. Dorrie’s like the three wise monkeys, she thought. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
They had been preparing for bed as they talked and Dorrie was soon asleep but Anna lay awake, her mind too active for sleep. Eventually she got up and stood looking out of the window. Frost rimed the branches of the trees in the little park opposite the house and further down the hill she could see moonlight glinting cold and blue on the roofs of the houses in Shaw Street. She thought of the doctor’s words about the moon shining down on the world and of how little she knew of it.
If only I was a man, she thought, I could be on a battlefield far away like the doctor’s nephews or sail the seven seas like Father. Even if I stayed in Liverpool my life would be different, more free.
Sometimes, when she listened to music, Anna had a sensation of a door opening on a wider world but she could never pass through it. Disgust at the events of the day, the pettiness of the quarrels and the narrowness of her existence overwhelmed her.
Is this all there is? she thought. There must be more to life than this. She looked ahead and saw her life as an endless procession of empty days, with interminable Sundays, the same ritual of meals, the same petty quarrels and hidden warfare between her aunt and her mother.
She saw all the paltry restrictions of her narrow life, away from all that was happening in the world. I can’t bear it, Anna thou
ght, beating her hands on the windowsill in frustration. Yet what can I do? Nothing.
She realised that she was trembling, not only with anger, but with cold. She crept into bed, moving close to the warmth of her sister’s body, but careful not to touch her with her icy feet, and eventually she fell asleep.
The next day was one of Anna’s days for helping at the Ragged School and she felt ashamed of her self-pity when she saw the poor hungry children who came for the free dinner which she had helped to prepare.
When Anna left school she had hoped to train as a nurse or a teacher or to work in an office but her father had dismissed the idea. ‘I can support my daughters,’ he said and his word was law.
Jim Deagan, the eldest son next door, had offered to find Anna a place as a clerk in a Friendly Society and when Anna told him that she would be forbidden to take it he spoke to her father.
‘It’s quite usual now for unmarried girls to work, sir,’ he said. ‘Although not married women, of course.’ But Captain Furlong was adamant. He could, however, find no reason for refusing to allow Anna to do charitable work so another of the Deagan family arranged for her to help with the free dinners two mornings a week.
Dr O’Brien had also asked the captain to allow Dorrie to make regular visits to one of his patients, a Mrs Wendell. She was a widow, alone in the world, so it was almost impossible for the captain or his wife to refuse Dorrie this limited freedom.
Dorrie arrived home from a visit to Mrs Wendell at the same time as Anna so they went into the house together. They found their mother and aunt sitting together, both anxious to be the first to announce an item of news.
‘Dr O’Brien has been in,’ Mrs Furlong said immediately. ‘Mrs Hargreaves died last night!’
‘An apoplectic seizure,’ Aunt Clara cut in. ‘Doctor said he’d expected it for years.’
‘But we saw Mr Hargreaves at Benediction,’ Dorrie gasped. ‘Did she die alone?’
‘No. He was there,’ said Clara. ‘Ran for the doctor but it was too late.’
‘Poor Mrs Hargreaves. Like our dear Queen, she never recovered from the death of her husband,’ Mrs Furlong sighed sentimentally. ‘Death was a merciful release for her.’
‘And for her son,’ Anna whispered to Dorrie as they hung their coats in the hall but Dorrie only said, ‘Poor man. I feel so sorry for him.’
Mrs Wendell had heard the news and was agog when Dorrie went to see her again. ‘I never liked Amelia Hargreaves, or Seddon as she was. Our families were neighbours but we were never friends. She was always taking offence, imagining she was being slighted or insulted, and she was such a man chaser!’
‘A man chaser!’ Dorrie gasped. ‘I can’t imagine it.’
‘Oh yes. Poor Sam Hargreaves was too nice and too gentle, that’s how she caught him, and he had a terrible life with her. Nag, nag, nag, then when he died, the tears! I swear the Mersey rose.’
Dorrie, who enjoyed the old lady’s salty comments, smiled at her. ‘I don’t think her son had a very happy life with her either. He never seemed very free or happy.’
‘I don’t think there’ll be many tears shed for her, except by her brother, because they were two of a kind,’ said Mrs Wendell. ‘Still, I’d like to attend her Requiem, although I won’t be invited to the funeral. Would you be able to come with me, dear?’ and when Dorrie agreed she said with a satisfied sigh, ‘This is where it makes such a difference to me, having your company, Dorrie. Now I can plan these little outings.’
Dorrie’s lips twitched at Mrs Wendell’s idea of ‘a little outing’, but she was fond of the old lady and she also thought it would be comforting for James Hargreaves if the church was full of people, so she readily made the arrangements for them to attend.
There was only a small group of official mourners but there were many other people in the church to attend the Requiem Mass. People like Mrs Wendell, who had known the family in earlier years, and others who attended every Requiem or Nuptial Mass as ordinary worshippers. Some came to fill empty lives, watching the joys or sorrows of others.
Whatever their reasons for being there, Dorrie was pleased to see the church so full for James’s sake. Yet, as James Hargreaves followed his mother’s coffin, it was only Dorrie’s face he saw in all the large congregation.
Chapter Two
The chief mourners at the funeral were James and his Uncle James Seddon, his mother’s bachelor brother who was general manager in the firm of cotton brokers where James was a clerk.
James felt no grief for his mother. She had never shown him any affection and as a child his main feeling for her had been fear, although he craved her approval. It was soon after his father’s death when he was little more than a baby that she began beating him and the beatings increased in ferocity as he grew older. He knew that she enjoyed them by the way she licked her lips as she reached for the cane.
Amelia Hargreaves knew that James was afraid of the dark so she often locked him in the cupboard under the stairs or in the coal cellar. It was his job to carry the coal up from the cellar, a room whose only light came from the door at the top of the steps. James always shovelled the coal frantically into the scuttle, knowing that at any moment his mother might shut and lock the door, leaving him terror-stricken in pitch darkness, perhaps for hours. Even when the door was opened and he made a rush for the stairs she sometimes shut it in his face.
James dreaded most the visits from his uncle, who came several times a month and sometimes stayed the night. At first his mother asked her brother to beat James saying, ‘He needs a man’s hand, Brother. It’s too much for a weak woman.’ They always took James to his bedroom and made him strip naked for the beatings.
One night when he was about ten years old he was made to stand before them after the beating and as they examined him his mother wailed that he would never be a proper man. With the same sanctimonious air with which he intoned, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ his uncle handled James’s genitals and sighed, ‘Poor boy. How sad. I’ll do what I can, Sister, but…’ He shook his head.
Torn between fear and humiliation James stammered, ‘What is it? Am I going to die?’
Neither answered. His mother only said curtly, ‘Get into bed,’ and they left the room. A little later, as he lay there trembling, his uncle reappeared in his nightshirt, carrying a candle.
‘You are an ignorant boy, James, but I am going to do what I can to help you for the sake of my poor sister.’ He blew out the candle and slipped into bed beside James. What followed was so unbelievable and so horrifying that James’s mind refused to accept it. He must have passed out at some stage, as he came to with his uncle gone and his mother shaking him.
‘Get up,’ she said harshly. ‘Come to the scullery.’ He stumbled after her, scarcely able to walk. There was an earthenware bowl half full of water in the scullery and his mother poured in the contents of a large black kettle and handed him a bar of soap and a flannel. ‘Wash yourself thoroughly,’ she said. ‘Then go back to bed. There’s a clean nightshirt.’
He washed and went back to bed, feeling that it was all a nightmare. Only the pain he felt made it real but his mother handed him a cup of dark liquid. ‘Drink that,’ she said and he drank and fell asleep almost immediately.
His uncle’s next visit passed as though nothing had happened but after that his visits to James’s bed were often repeated, always on the pretext of ‘helping him’. The physical damage was never as bad after the first time but the fear and revulsion that James felt increased with every visit.
His mother warned him that nothing must be said about his uncle’s efforts to help him. ‘We don’t want people to know you’re a freak,’ she said and she never left him alone with Frances O’Neill, a small woman with a deformed spine who came daily to clean and who was the only person who ever showed him kindness.
School should have been a respite for James but his mother’s love of food and hatred of waste meant that he was made to eat up the vegetables swimming in butte
r and the stodgy puddings she enjoyed but was unable to finish and the fatty meat she disliked. As a result he was not only nervous and timid but fat and spotty and a natural butt for the school bullies and a sadistic teacher.
The visits from his uncle ceased quite suddenly and as James grew taller than his mother the beatings also ceased but her verbal and emotional abuse of him increased and destroyed any confidence he might have had in himself.
When he was fourteen school was exchanged for a position as a clerk in the cotton brokers where James’s uncle was general manager but it was only one misery exchanged for another. He made no friends, as the other clerks resented his connection with the general manager, and the office manager, a toady of his uncle, constantly found fault with James.
Lonely and unhappy, James, as usual, hid his feelings behind a dull and stolid appearance and rarely spoke. Each evening, when he returned from the office, he and his mother had the usual heavy meal, after which she slept for an hour while James did various household tasks, then he was required to play cards with her. He was too used to submitting to his domineering mother to resist but it was a miserable existence, made bearable for James only by the opportunity to see Dorrie on Sunday mornings.
After the scene with the prayer book he and his mother rode home in silence in a cab but as soon as they were inside the house Mrs Hargreaves began to scream at James.
In spite of his anger and bitter sense of humiliation, long habit made him stand silently while she poured out a torrent of abuse but when she screeched, ‘Don’t you know you’re only a laughing stock to them? A fat, stupid fool and a laughing stock. Only a harlot like that girl would encourage you,’ something seemed to burst in his brain.
‘Don’t you dare to speak of her like that!’ he shouted, stepping towards her threateningly. ‘She’s so… so—’ He felt that if he stayed he would physically attack his mother and turned and rushed out of the house.
His mind was a jumble of emotions as he strode along the quiet Sunday streets – rage at his mother, humiliation when he thought of the scene at the church, love when he thought of Dorrie and even, after a lifetime of being told he was at fault, a feeling of guilt at his behaviour to his mother.