by Ros Franey
‘Oh Mama,’ I said. It was my special name for her. But she had closed her eyes again and actually I was glad because my chin was wobbling and I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to take her hand but her hands were under the bedclothes in the tall bed, so I stretched out on tiptoe and could just reach her nose. I think she smiled. Then Maisie walked in and I was told to leave.
The strange doctor came again. He was upstairs a long time, and Maisie with him. I saw Daddy out in the yard. He seemed to be looking at the flower tubs with great attention. I saw the doctor go out and speak to him before he left the house. They both had their heads bent as if the doctor was interested in the flowers, too. Sometime after that, I was passing the open door of the sitting room and I heard Daddy crying, the only time before or since. Now this is a terrible thing for a little girl to hear in her own father. He was crying in big sobs and my whole world went head over heels and broke. Each a glimpse and gone for ever. I ran into the breakfast room and threw myself down beside Nana’s basket. I remember the rolled-thick bristly hair at the back of her neck as I hugged her desperately, and her dear, smelly breath and her worried nose. I wished Beatrice would come home, and then she did – early – and that was worse. God Bless Mother and God Bless Daddy and God Please, Please, Please don’t let her die.
But He did. That was where it all went wrong. And Grandfather and the whole Mission droned on about it being God’s Will and God in his Mercy and Wisdom Gathering Agnes His Child unto Himself. Whenever they spoke like this I did not know what to think. I would watch Daddy look at his toes and say ‘hmm’. I don’t know what he meant by this ‘hmm’, but as I grew up, I wondered. As I have got older I think more and more, what is Merciful or Wise about God gathering Mother, for goodness sake, when He has all His other children in the whole world who He can Gather and do whatsoever else unto them He wisheth? How unthinkably selfish to help Himself to our mother when she’s the only one we’ve got. Then Beatrice told me that someone let on Mother had died of a stupid thing that no one’s meant to die of. I asked whether, if Dr Martin had been there, he might have cured her and stopped God doing it, at which Beatrice’s eyes went as round as saucers and she said that was blasphemy and I must wash out my mouth. Of course, if God wanted to gather Mother He would have seen to it that Dr Martin wasn’t around. He’s clever like that and all-seeing, so He thinks of everything. His will be done. Hmm.
And so began life after Mother. Whenever I open the photograph album all the after-Mother pictures fall out because there is no one to stick them in any longer, so I always start at the beginning where everything is neatly in its place, secured by the thick black photo-corners that taste funny and curl up when you lick the back. First there is the drawing of Grandfather’s mill, four storeys high with a flag flying above the roof that says ‘Eames Eureka Flour’. Around the bottom of the building there are tiny horses and drays and outbuildings and men bustling about in top hats and frock coats; and floating in the sky there is a second picture entitled ‘London Office’. I have a miniature rolling pin, china with wooden handles and ‘Eames Eureka Flour’ in blue writing, but that is the only thing left. Fred says Grandfather gave all his money to the Lord when he built the Golgotha Mission and he doesn’t own the factory any longer. Fred says our Grandfather went bankrupt, but honourably, on account of saving the souls of all the little Beatrices and Annies: Pastor Eames is also a Freemason and much revered in the city and we must hold our heads high. Some boys and girls have tea with their grandfathers on Sundays, but of course ours was always busy, and at Christmas and Easter, too. So it may have been to do with that, or it may have been what Fred said later: our grandfather thought children were a nuisance. Whatever the reason, we didn’t see much of him outside the Mission. To me, he was always Grandfather Pastor Eames in his pulpit.
All the same, I’m glad he didn’t lose so much of his money that he had to give up the house at Mapperley Top. There is a photograph of my grandmother (whom I do not remember) and a maid in a long white apron and a frilled cap, and my mother and Auntie Vera as young women standing at the front door with their dog who was called Major. I know every inch of the picture of the beautiful wedding party in their garden, but there is another photo I love even more: it must have been taken much earlier. Mother is sitting in the same garden between her sisters Grace and Frances, whom we call Auntie Francie. (Auntie Vera isn’t there, I’m pleased to say.) They are all very young, just girls, Mother not much older than Beatrice is now, and the person taking the photograph must have told a joke because she has just exploded in giggles. In all her other photos Mother looks serious or startled, but in this one she is herself: thick curly hair falling around her shoulders, the long full sleeves of her blouse more stylish than those of her sisters, and a big grin. That is how I like to remember her.
Sometimes I ask where Mother used to keep those photo-corners so that I can stick the new pictures in, but the others have all got more important things on their minds. The first picture to fall out is of Daddy with the three of us in the yard at Corporation Oaks, which is where we live. I am very close to him, holding his hand. Beatrice is sitting on the kitchen stool which proves it was a proper, posed family photograph because the kitchen stool is never normally allowed out in the yard. Beatrice has one leg crossed over the other and her hands folded on her knee like a grown-up. Fred is standing slightly apart from us. I think he is trying to look as if it’s all the same to him if his mother is alive or dead. Next in the pile is the photo of me in my Chinese costume. I look very sweet and am clasping my hands together in the way I’ve been told Chinese mandarins do. The costume is, of course, a present from Auntie Francie, who isn’t in the wedding photos because of being a missionary. She lives in China now and goes around on a bicycle unbinding the feet of the women and making sure they are Saved. She lives in Shansi Province in a place called Tai Yuan-Fu. She’s always been there, even before I was born. Every Christmas she sends presents to England, and our house, Grandfather’s house, Auntie Vera’s and Auntie Grace’s are all full of vases and jugs and plates and teapots and incense burners and silk dressing gowns and embroidered slippers and bendy teaspoons with a funny taste – all sent by Auntie Francie. Beatrice says she wants to be a missionary when she grows up and go to China with the God’s Purpose Overseas Mission which we call the G-Pom, but Beatrice is anxious just going to Mablethorpe for the Summer holidays so I don’t expect she’ll get to Tai Yuan-Fu. I’d like to go to China, but I don’t want to be a missionary so I can’t.
There seem to be quite a few family portraits in the two or three years after Mother died, which is odd because I can’t find any photos of us all when she was alive. Maybe they didn’t feel the need for them when everything was still all right; perhaps Daddy thought that with Mother not around any more he ought to get the family together and make sure we all knew the rest of us were still there. Daddy is not very tall but you don’t know that when he’s sitting down. He has a cheerful face, lots of dark hair and a walrus moustache. The thing you notice most in all the photos of him is his wide blue eyes which are very smiley. I am on his knee, my hair tied with a big ribbon. In one photo I’m wearing the velvet party frock I loved so much, with its scalloped lace collar. The dress was royal blue, though of course you can’t tell that from the photo; nor can you see that Little Sid is sitting in the gathered pocket – but I know he’s there. The collar was made, I believe, by Maisie’s sister who works in the Lace Market where they make the Nottingham lace that is world famous. Maisie sometimes tries to teach me how to begin with simple stitches, but it’s all I can do to manage doubles and trebles in crochet. Fred, dressed in a sailor suit, stands beside Daddy’s chair and looks serious. Beatrice, the oldest, is behind him. She has long hair and a misty look about the eyes, which some people may find fascinating, but I know comes from not wearing her spectacles; she needs them all the time now and does so hate herself in photographs. None of us looks like Mother.
After the family portraits in the j
umbled pile comes the first photograph of the other Agnes.
TWO
When life began without Mother, I realised that everything and everyone I knew – Eames Eureka Flour, the Aunties, China, the Mission and Grandfather Pastor Eames – was to do with her family. I know nothing about Daddy’s family at all. I suppose that’s because he came from somewhere else, so there were no grandparents or places or cousins to grow up with from his side; the only thing was Auntie Vera saying that our father ‘had a good war’. From the way she said this, which was not quite approving, I thought perhaps he didn’t fight in it, but he did do something. Whatever it was, he never told us about it, and I suppose we never asked him. I don’t even know if Daddy was religious to begin with. If he was, I had the feeling he didn’t throw himself into it with quite as much fervour as Mother’s side of the family. (Fervour is a word Grandfather Pastor Eames is very keen on in his sermons.) I mean, Daddy had taken the pledge and came to Sunday morning services and so on, but the things he did outside work, mostly with the Mechanics’ Institute and the ’Masons, were nothing to do with the Mission. Fred said Daddy was a businessman and liked cars, and that was all we knew when I was little.
It didn’t matter, though, because Daddy was very jolly; a lot more fun than Auntie Vera and Grandfather Pastor Eames, anyway. He liked dance music and we were one of the first families I knew to get a wireless and listen to music on the BBC. Sometimes he used to dance with Beatrice and me around the armchairs in the sitting room. He was a very good dancer. If you couldn’t do the steps, he would guide you so surely that you got it right – and you could almost believe you had done it by yourself, which was thrilling. The music bubbled through him when he danced and he loved it, too, grinning from ear to ear and telling us we were ‘doing fine’. I’m too young to remember him dancing with Mother, but Beatrice said they used to go to Ladies’ Evenings at the Lodge. Mother had some beautiful dresses which still hung in the wardrobe as if she might be coming back for them: my favourite had a rich satin lining in peacock blue. Of course, after she died, there was no more dancing for a while, and later, when it was all right to dance again, things had started to change.
One of the first things to happen after Mother’s death was that Maisie spent more time at our house and Elsie arrived. Maisie called her the Scullery Maid. Elsie slept in the little attic bedroom above Fred’s room and got up early to light the fires. We don’t have fires in our bedrooms, of course, but once she had done the stove Elsie would wake us, so we were able to go downstairs to a warm kitchen. I can still hear her sing-song voice calling up the stairs,
‘Come and ‘ave yer break-fast, duckie.’
I hated porridge, but if she had time and the fire was glowing and not flaming she would make me toast on the toasting fork with the Chinese monkey at the end of the handle, another present from Auntie Francie. This she spread with dripping from the big green enamel bowl, the same one we have now but not as chipped. The toast and dripping was a secret; Maisie would not have approved, but it was what Elsie said she had at home. We had other secrets, too. In the corner cupboard was a large clear bottle of disgusting yellow cod liver oil with a sticky cork. I was supposed to have a big spoonful every day. Each morning Elsie would go to the cupboard, take down the bottle and give me one of her looks. And I would say Oh Elsie, and screw up my face and she would hesitate a moment before putting the bottle back in the cupboard again. ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she would tell me. I never knew what this meant. From time to time she would pour some of the bottle down the stone sink so Maisie wouldn’t suspect, and look at me, and wink, and that was that.
‘You’ve got Elsie round your little finger,’ Beatrice would say.
‘So?’
‘It’s not fair, Annie. She could get into trouble.’
‘What for?’
‘You know what for.’
‘Elsie’ll not tell.’
‘That’s worse. She’ll have to tell a lie and then she really will be in trouble.’ She meant, with God of course, not with Maisie.
I wanted to think God would understand that the lie was in a good cause, but after Our Own Mother and everything I knew God was not on my side. He would strike Elsie down very probably. This made me feel guilty, so I said nothing.
The truth was that in those days, meaning eight months after my mother’s death so they had stopped making allowances because I was a poor motherless waif and stray, people found me argumentative and were always saying things about me, such as, ‘Annie, you are growing increasingly trouble-some.’ That’s what Miss Battersby, our headmistress, said, and she was not the only one. Maisie would shake her head and mutter, ‘Too clever by half’, which I wasn’t sure was a compliment.
I remember overhearing a conversation between Auntie Vera and Daddy one Sunday teatime. I was playing with Irene and John, my cousins, in the yard and had been sent inside to fetch the skipping rope. Passing the drawing-room door, I heard voices and immediately knew they were talking about me.
‘… out of control,’ Auntie Vera was saying. ‘No discipline.’
‘A bit of a madam,’ he answered.
I stopped and put my ear to the door-hinge in an effort to hear through the crack, but they were speaking softly and I could only pick out the odd word: ‘insubordinate’, ‘highly strung’, ‘cheeky’. Then Auntie Vera must have moved because I began to hear her voice more clearly.
‘… really can’t carry on like this, Harry. Dear Agnes would have wanted … Children need a moral structure … discipline.’
I swallowed hard. If Auntie Vera were our mother we would certainly have had that. Cousin Irene confided in Beatrice once that poor John still wet the bed like a baby, he was so frightened of her.
‘I suppose you’re … Had thought of … housekeeper,’ Daddy was saying. He sounded doubtful. His voice dropped at the end of each sentence in a hopeless-sounding way, so I couldn’t hear. But what was he talking about? We already had a housekeeper: we had Maisie!
‘… some good woman,’ Auntie Vera told him. ‘… Golgotha.’
From the Mission? This was an appalling prospect. My mind ran swiftly through a few candidates. Mrs Rancid; Hilda Barnes? I found myself shivering. Maybe Madge Grocott who taught us Bible Story at Sunday School. We must have our lives interfered with by a stranger from the Mission, and all on account of me being ‘insubordinate’. I was still reeling from the awfulness of this when the sound of Auntie’s sharp heel on the floorboards at the edge of the carpet brought me to my senses. I fled.
For weeks after that conversation I made a huge effort to behave well. I was courteous and polite, did what I was told, tried not to speak unless spoken to, wore gloves at all times and even forced myself to swallow a few spoonfuls of cod liver oil – believing that if I did lots of unpleasant but virtuous things God would stop Daddy bringing in a housekeeper. I tested this theory on Beatrice, who didn’t think much of it. ‘That’s what Catholics do,’ she said. I was secretly thrilled. Catholics were greatly disapproved of at the Mission. If Catholics did it, I thought I might be on to something.
I also kept a close watch on the grown-ups. I hung around their conversations and lurked outside doors in the hope of picking up some titbit of information. Whenever Daddy was late home in the evening I dreaded that he might be calling at the houses of Grandfather’s parishioners on the lookout for a housekeeper. I envisaged him tramping round the streets off the Woodborough Road where many of the Mission’s congregation lived; streets of flat, grimy red-brick houses strung together, with ranks of front doorsteps that got scrubbed every morning and backs with washing lines. It was not an encouraging picture: there were no trees in those streets.
But Beatrice’s response was practical. ‘He might find someone who can cook dumplings and treacle pudding,’ she said. Maisie was a wonderful cook, but she went home after lunch on Saturday and never worked Sundays. Elsie was not allowed to cook, thank goodness, apart from the porridge.
Fred said, �
�Daddy will never replace our mother.’
‘No one’s suggesting he will,’ Beatrice assured him. ‘He’s looking for a housekeeper, not a wife.’
‘But we’ve got Maisie!’ I protested.
‘Well,’ explained Beatrice. ‘Maisie started doing it because she was sort of here already. She’s not really a housekeeper.’
‘Perhaps the new one will read us stories, like Mother used to,’ I suggested hopefully.
Fred grunted. He was reading his own stories now.
‘She could test you on Horatius,’ said Beatrice. Our class was learning ‘The Keeping of the Bridge’ by Lord Macaulay. I had been reciting it all over the house.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
‘Now look what you’ve started!’ Fred groaned.
‘And, like a horse unbroken
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard
And tossed his tawny mane—’
Fred threw the coal-glove at me. I dropped my voice to a whisper, thumping Nana’s large head in time to the rhythm as I recited:
‘… And burst the curb and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free,
And whirling down in fierce career
Battlement and plank and pier,
Rushed headlong to the sea!’
Nana beat her tail on the ground. ‘This housekeeper’d better like Nana, too,’ I added fiercely.
At the end of the verse, Fred heaved a loud sigh and went back to his book.
‘Come on, Fred,’ said Beatrice. ‘You love the tiger poem.’
‘Poetry’s for girls,’ he muttered.