by Ros Franey
‘Gwen plays the piano. As do I.’
‘Will you play for us, Missiggs?’
‘Perhaps. One day.’
After a couple of conversations like this, I thought she might start to be nice and not always think of me as a bad child. I wanted to be friends with her. Mostly I wanted to be friends with her so she would help me with my arpeggios, which I was just beginning.
‘Missiggs,’ I started, the next time we were together. ‘You know C-minor? I always make a mistake going from the G when you have to get your thumb on to the C above.’ I tried to demonstrate on the kitchen table tucking my thumb under my palm. ‘I sort of miss. I can’t do the stretch. Does that happen to you?’
‘No.’
‘Did it used to? When you were my age?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
I looked at her sideways. ‘I wonder how you learn …?’ I so wanted her to help me. Also, I’m afraid to say, I wanted to make it quite clear that it was arpeggios I was doing, not just silly old broken chords.
‘You practise. And if at first you don’t succeed—’
‘Yes I know … but sometimes I just can’t.’
‘There’s no such word as can’t.’
I sighed. ‘It’s not so bad coming down. It’s going up that’s hard.’
‘It won’t happen on its own. You need to work at it. How long do you practise?’
‘Quite long … but I need to get on to my pieces.’
‘Then you need to practise arpeggios and scales for longer, so you need to spend longer altogether.’
‘But I have homework this term …’
‘Then it’s simple: you get up early in the morning and do it then.’
I began to regret this conversation. Getting up early, specially in Winter, was not my favourite thing.
Miss Higgs went on, ‘I’ve told Elsie to start earlier as she can’t seem to do her jobs before breakfast. She can wake you at six.’
I stared at her round-eyed. ‘But she won’t have done the fires at six!’
‘Don’t moan, child. You’ll soon warm up with the C-minor arpeggio.’
Next morning, Elsie tiptoed into the room at 6.15. ‘Annie!’ she whispered. ‘Sorry, me-duck, I daresn’t leave you sleeping any longer. She gave me instructions.’ I swung my feet dizzily on to the lino. It was pitch dark and my toes ached. Elsie lit the oil lamp rather than dazzle me by switching on the electric bulb overhead. ‘Don’t worry, lovie, I’ll have the fire lit downstairs by the time you’re finished.’
I poured icy water into the bowl on the wash-stand and dabbed it on my face, neck and fingers, then I grabbed my clothes and dived back into bed to dress. When I crept downstairs to the drawing room, where the piano was, some of my fingers were white at the ends and my chilblains, almost healed at the end of Winter, came back to life and throbbed.
There is something I need to say about the drawing room. It is the smell. It’s always there, of course, but I think I noticed it more in my nose that first morning of the early piano practice because it was so cold and dank. The drawing room doesn’t get used very much; they never light a fire in there and the sun doesn’t shine through its windows. But the smell isn’t because of that: it’s because the drawing room is over the cellar. It is a smell partly of damp, and partly of something worse which I shall come to later.
Anyway, what with the smell, the aching cold and the chilblains that morning, the arpeggios did not go well. I played them holding down the soft pedal because I dreaded her listening to me in the silent house. I could see my breath in the Spring dawn, least I think I could. After half an hour, when it was light enough to see the music without the electric light, I started on Für Elise, jerkily, my fingers folding on the keys. Suddenly the door opened to reveal Miss Higgs. My hands flew into my lap. I stared at her.
‘Well, Annie. Have you practised your arpeggios?’
‘Yes, Missiggs.’
‘I didn’t hear them.’
‘I did. I played them.’
‘Begin again.’ She advanced on the piano. She was carrying a metal ruler, tapping one end softly into the palm of her hand. I had heard some teachers would rap your knuckles if you got the notes wrong. I thought, I’ll show her. I blew on my fingers and rubbed them against my cardigan to try and make the white ends pink. Then I started to play, clumsily at first, trying to imagine she was not in the room. Thankfully, the arpeggios sort of behaved themselves this time, thumbs and fingers cascading and tripping but more or less hitting the right notes.
‘Elbows out. Fingers UP.’ She stood behind me, listening. I imagined her ruler at the ready; it made my spine go funny. After a while she left the room, saying as she went, ‘Your technique is sloppy. I shall speak to your teacher, but you have a good touch.’ For a little moment my heart sang: a good touch! Mother used to say that when I very first started to play. At the end of an hour, I was told I could go and have breakfast.
*
‘The Keeping of the Bridge’ and other poems were to be performed by our class at parents’ evening a few weeks later. It was a shock to hear from Maisie that Daddy had asked Miss Higgs to go with him.
‘’S none of her business, parents’ evening!’ Fred said. I agreed with him. It gave me an odd feeling that Miss Higgs should go with Daddy.
‘Specially when she’s only just arrived,’ Fred continued. ‘She knows nothing about us.’
‘Well, I’m sure Mr Lang thought it would be a good opportunity for her to learn more about you,’ Maisie told him. ‘She only sees you when you come home from school. She doesn’t know what you get up to all day.’
‘That’s the trouble!’ Beatrice muttered. ‘Perhaps we’d rather she didn’t find out.’
‘Heavens above,’ said Maisie. ‘You little angels have nothing to worry about! A sight too well behaved, if you ask me!’
Maisie!’ I took her hand and stared into her face. ‘Didn’t you know, I’m BAD? Really, seriously BAD? Auntie Vera says God will strike me down!’ I did an evil spirit’s dance around the scullery.
‘It’s true though,’ said Fred a bit later, when Maisie had gone. ‘Miss Higgs knows nothing about us, and we know nothing about her. Has she got a proper home of her own?’
‘She told me she folded sheets with her sister,’ I chimed in. ‘But we don’t know – she might have a husband.’
‘She can’t have a husband, silly. She’s a miss. Anyway, how could she look after him and us?’
‘Maisie does.’
‘Maisie doesn’t live here,’ Fred pointed out.
This was true, of course. I thought of Maisie up her tree with Mr Brown, the owl.
‘Well, where does Miss H go on her half-day off?’ Fred asked. ‘Hey, we could follow her. We could be Emil and the Detectives.’
‘Supposing she turned round and saw us? We’d have to take Nana to protect us.’
‘We couldn’t take Nana. She’d give the game away. We’d have to go in disguise. I could wear a handlebar moustache and Daddy’s trilby hat. What about you, Bea?’
Beatrice wasn’t listening. ‘D’you think she’ll come to Mablethorpe with us this summer?’ she asked.
‘Ugh no. Mablethorpe’s a holiday. We don’t want her around.’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ I said.
‘Just because she said you have a nice touch,’ Fred taunted, ‘you’re sucking up to her all of a sudden.’
‘I am not,’ I retorted. ‘But I think she’s trying. She just doesn’t know what children want. I’m going to make friends with her, then she’ll find out.’
‘Good for you, Annie,’ Beatrice said.
One sunny Saturday afternoon we were in the yard and Miss Higgs was teaching me how to thin out seedlings in the tubs. It was early for sowing, she said, but it was good to get a grip on things. She sighed as if to say there was a lot to get a grip on. I sighed, too. I liked to watch her with the trowel, gently coaxing and firming the stronger plants in the soil, pinching out the weaker.
‘Where do they go?’ I asked. I pointed to the limp pinched-out ones lying on the ground.
‘What do you mean? They go in the ash-pit.’
‘But they’ll die!’
‘Yes.’
‘Couldn’t you plant them somewhere else?’ I asked.
‘They wouldn’t grow, Annie. They wouldn’t survive.’
‘You could give them a chance.’ It seemed a waste of flowers to me. ‘They all belong to Jesus, don’t they?’ I added doubtfully, unsure where this would take me.
She shot me a look – to see if I was being insolent, I suppose, but I just felt sad for the flowers. I picked the tiny stems from their hard grave on the floor of the yard and held them in my hand. ‘Go to Heaven and flower for my Mama,’ I whispered to them.
Miss Higgs continued her twitching and tidying; I watched her, wondering if I would ever be able to give her a hug, but her mouth was in its straight line. After a few moments, she put down her trowel. ‘You’re a fanciful child, aren’t you?’ she said.
I dropped my gaze. ‘I don’t know.’ I would have liked her to explain or ask me a question or something, but she didn’t seem to know what to say next. At last she resumed her work with the seedlings. ‘Your mother was a good woman and a lady,’ she told me. ‘That’s what we always thought.’
So I really did try with Miss Higgs, but as the weeks passed and turned into months we sort of got stuck. It was hard to have conversations with her, and this wasn’t helped by her talent for sniffing out small misdemeanours along the way, which meant I always had to be on my guard. In her reorganising of Elsie, she spotted at once that a system requiring Elsie to dose me with cod liver oil was open to cheating. One morning, she stood and watched as Elsie, with shaking hands, poured cod liver oil into a teaspoon, spilling some of it down the side of the bottle.
‘Come along, girl,’ Miss Higgs instructed. ‘Pull yourself together. You’re behaving as though you’ve never done this before’ – which, of course, Elsie hardly ever had. Poor Elsie started to shake uncontrollably and spilt more cod liver oil, while I shifted from foot to foot eyeing the teaspoon.
‘Oh give it to me!’ Miss Higgs took the bottle from Elsie and poured a deft spoonful. ‘Open wide, Annie.’
I obeyed, screwing my eyes shut while she approached me with the horrid spoon, jamming it so far back in my mouth that I started to gag uncontrollably.
‘Well, swallow it!’ she commanded, as I stood there goggle-eyed.
I gazed at her, unable to speak and equally unable to swallow. I could feel nausea rise to the top of my gullet. Knowing I would be sick, I launched myself past her, almost knocking her flying, and retched into the sink, greenish yellow oil and bits of porridge dripping from my hot face. ‘I’m sorry,’ I was crying. ‘I’m sorry, Missiggs, I’m terribly sorry – I didn’t mean to—’ I hunched over the sink waiting for the punishment I was certain would come, but instead I heard her say,
‘Well, that was a bit of a shock, wasn’t it? I never liked cod liver oil, either, Annie, but I made myself get used to it.’
‘Yes, Missiggs.’
‘So clear up that mess before you go to school and tomorrow we’ll try again. Elsie, don’t stand there gawping. I shall give Annie her cod liver oil in future.’
Accordingly, each morning after breakfast I would take a deep breath and accept the spoonful of cod liver oil from Miss Higgs. Then I would calmly leave the kitchen, closing the door behind me, gallop upstairs to my room and throw myself down beside the cupboard where the dolls’ clothes were kept. Day after day, their little dresses and coats absorbed mouthful on mouthful of cod liver oil. In one of those peculiar lapses of very efficient people, she never noticed that I neither spoke nor breathed nor swallowed after my dose of oil. She never demanded I say thank you, as she normally would, nor stopped me leaving the room. Each day I promised myself I would take the dolls’ clothes out of the cupboard and wash them in secret, but somehow there were always better things to do.
FOUR
About the next thing that happened in my memory of all this is that Fred had his ninth birthday and was sent away to school. You’d think that nothing ever happened in our family except in Winter time, and I know it must seem odd. The truth is that all my little scraps of memories before Our Own Mother died were of the Summer, and everything that happened afterwards seems like Winter, which is called pathetic fallacy. This is a thing invented by John Ruskin, as we learnt last week. Of course it wasn’t really always Summer or Winter but according to Ruskin and this pathetic fallacy, it seems that way. Which proves I am not writing a True Account at all, and this is bothering me. I write my memories as they seem to me to be true. But if I pretended that what happened next was Summer, I would be making it up, and that would be wrong also. So whatever I write is wrong.
All I can say is that Fred was born on Christmas Day, which is why his middle name is Noel: Frederick Noel Lang. At the beginning of New Year after his ninth birthday it was definitely Winter, and that’s when he went away. Beatrice says he would not have been sent if Mother were alive because she didn’t agree with it, but everything had changed now. I remember going into his room a few days before the end of the holidays. He was crouched on the floor running his new London and North-Eastern Railway engine past a signal our cousins had given him for Christmas. On the bed, laid out in neat rows, were stacks of vests and socks and white shirts, each marked with his name tape; Maisie had been stitching them in for weeks. I gazed at the array of clothes. A big printed list lay on the eiderdown to one side. ‘Three prs games socks grn,’ I read aloud. ‘Three prs college socks bl. 24–36 plain white handkerchiefs. Golly, they obviously expect you to have loads of colds.’ Fred said nothing. I picked up Desmond, who is a floppy white dog with Fred’s pyjamas inside, a present to him from Mother the last Christmas she was alive. ‘Are you taking Desmond?’ I asked. I knew Fred cuddled Desmond in bed every night.
‘Come and look at this,’ said Fred.
I stroked Desmond’s velvet nose. ‘Desmond’s not a teddy bear,’ I said. ‘He’s a pyjama case. It’ll be all right.’
‘Look, the signal works!’ Fred said. ‘Watch!’
I squatted down beside him, still holding Desmond. To be honest, I’m not very interested in signals, but I liked the beautiful engine. The black and white signpost bit of the signal was operated by a lever at its base. Fred pulled the lever and the signal rose and fell, just like on a real railway line. ‘Who works the lever?’ I asked.
‘The signalman walks up the line.’
‘I thought he stayed in the signal box with some levers connected to wire things.’
‘That’s the points, silly. It’s the de luxe version,’ said Fred huffily. ‘They don’t sell it in Jessops. You have to go to London for that.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter. This is just as good.’ I knew he was unhappy about going away. ‘When are they coming for the trunk?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Can you take all this?’ – I indicated the train set, its lines and tunnels; the shunting yard and station with painted trees. But I guessed he wouldn’t be allowed to.
‘Goodness no. She sent me upstairs to pack it away.’
‘You’ve got another two days, haven’t you?’
‘She said I’ve to do it now.’
We both sighed.
‘It’ll be all right,’ I told him. ‘When you get there.’
‘Oh I can’t wait,’ he said and smiled a tight smile so as to make me think he meant it.
‘You’ll get away from her for a bit!’
Silence.
‘Wish I could go to boarding school!’
‘No you don’t.’ His voice was wobbly.
‘You will take Desmond, Fred, won’t you? You’ll need something to remind you.’ I didn’t want to say, remind you of Mother. ‘I bet the other boys will all have teddy bears!’
Fred wiped the back of his hand across his nose. ‘Course they won’t,’ he said.
‘Desmond will miss you,’ I told him, smoothing the dog’s ears.
‘He’s a pyjama case, for heaven’s sake,’ whispered Fred fiercely.
I was suddenly very glad I am not a boy. I thought for a moment. ‘It’ll be more fun there.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Lots of sports and stuff. Lots of boys to play boys’ games with.’ The grown-ups were always saying how terrible and unhealthy it must be for poor Fred to have to endure life with mere sisters.
‘Yes.’
‘No Mission!’
‘S’pose not.’
‘No Auntie Vera.’
He said nothing. Then, ‘Look after Nana for me, Annie.’
‘How can you ask? I love Nana!’
‘I take her for more walks than you do.’
‘I’ll take her for as many walks as I can, Fred, I promise.’
‘I’ll miss her, Annie.’
‘You won’t miss Bea or me, though!’ I gave him a dig in the ribs and he lost his balance. That made him laugh at last. He turned back to the railway, picking up the engine lovingly. ‘It’s the Flying Scotsman,’ he said. He cradled it in his hands for a moment and then placed it gently in its box.
I didn’t think that Fred’s departure would make a great difference to life in Corporation Oaks, which sounds unfeeling, but truly his days as a boy had been different from mine, despite our closeness in age. He didn’t have to get up early to do piano practice for one thing. And it was Beatrice I had always turned to for wisdom and comfort and with whom I shared stories and poetry. Fred’s things were all slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails and it wasn’t till some days after he had gone that I realised there was a hole. For a while I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly had vanished. And then came the unpleasantness over the cod liver oil, and I understood.