by Ros Franey
After dropping various hints to Maisie, which she never seemed to take, I screwed up my courage to ask Mother if she would sew the roses on to my dress. We were playing a game after tea while Mother did some needlework.
‘D’you like sewing, Mother?’ I began.
‘I have satisfaction in a good job well done,’ she replied.
‘A stitch in time saves nine,’ Beatrice chipped in smugly. Honestly, what a thing to say. I ignored her.
‘So Mother, you know my dress, for the pageant. You know the roses: the crepe paper we were cutting out?’
I paused expectantly. Mother said nothing. Bea hunched over the Halma board trying to look as if she were somewhere else. ‘Please would you sew my roses on for me, Mother?’ There. I had asked her.
A long silence fell. At length she said, ‘We’ll see, Annie, but I think it is unfair of you to ask. One day you will understand just how unfair it is.’ Something about the way she said it made me feel small.
Later, when we were upstairs, Beatrice told me exactly what she thought of me. ‘She’s very religious. Much more religious than us. We need to respect that. If it was up to her we wouldn’t be taking part in the pageant and you’re really stupid because if you’re not careful she’ll talk to Daddy and get us barred from it.’
‘No she won’t. Daddy won’t let her.’
‘Don’t be so sure, Annie! You always go too far. You don’t know when to stop.’
‘Well she’s no business being in this house anyway. Our Own Mother would have sewn my roses on. I wouldn’t have had to ask her.’
‘S-P!’ flashed Beatrice and gave me a dig in the ribs.
She was right of course. There wasn’t much I could say to that.
But the next day when I came home from school and looked in the wardrobe, my cream First Fairy dress had five small crepe-paper roses sewn neatly on to its net skirt: two at the front, one at each side-seam and one at the back. I hope it doesn’t sound ungracious if I admit they weren’t quite as … abundant as the ones I’d had in mind when I cut them out, but they were there. I raced downstairs and arrived breathless in the kitchen where Mother was helping Maisie to roll out pastry.
‘Mother! Thank you! Oh, Mother, you are wonderful, thank you, thank you!’ I threw my arms around her and hugged her legs. Nana, sensing there was something to celebrate, lumbered out of her basket and wagged her feathery tail and barked. I felt Mother stiffen. It was like hugging a lamp post.
‘Annie! Stop it! What are you doing, girl? Can’t you see you’ll get covered in flour? And make that dog behave!’
Maisie chuckled. ‘Well you did the right thing there, Mrs Lang. You’ve got a friend for life now.’
Mother disentangled herself from my arms. ‘There’s no need to get overexcited about a few roses,’ she told me. ‘Take that dog out into the yard. Then go and do your homework.’
I took Nana and went away happy. Mother wasn’t such a bad old stick. I was starting to learn that ‘we’ll see’ sometimes meant ‘yes’.
*
I loved my dress with a passion, tried it on in secret, balancing on the dressing-table stool and doing a twizzle to see it go swish, and whispering my lines.
Beatrice’s dress was nice, but I’m glad I didn’t have to wear it. Being classical times it was straight, a tunic, cut from white material in Jessops’ sale. Bea called it damask but it just looked like curtains to me. I think it was a bit left over because it only came just below her knees. Beatrice was to be packed into her box with the Spites. She said there would be seven of them altogether, which was giving Mr Makins a problem because he had to build the scenery.
‘We all have to crouch down behind these desks,’ Beatrice explained. ‘They’ll put a canvas over, painted like Auntie Grace’s big oak chest or something. I’m at the bottom because of course I have to come out last.’
I didn’t understand what they were all doing in the chest in the first place. Beatrice said, ‘Oh Annie, you must remember! Our Own Mother read us the story.’
I said she never read it to me and I thought it was a stupid story.
Then Beatrice sighed that sigh that means she’s worrying about me. She said I must have been too young and touched my hair. But I can’t stand it when she’s all sorry for me, Little Orphan Annie, as if she’s going to hug me or something ridiculous, and I jerked my head away. ‘Don’t!’ I get this lumpy feeling in my throat when she goes like that.
But on the first day of Spring, March 21st, it went really cold like mid-Winter. I was doing E-flat minor and in my early-morning practices my fingers were flabby and whitish all over again, like tripe when you’ve just unwrapped it from the greaseproof. The scales came out in clumps. Beatrice and I both got colds and had to do inhaling over the scullery sink with the Friar’s Balsam, disgusting, and Mother’s primulas went brown and slimy overnight with the late frost. The hooves of the coal horses trying to pull the cart up St Ann’s Hill went slithering on the cobbles and I watched them snorting and heaving at the load of greasy coal sacks, and the clang of metal on their shoes echoed round the yard. The coal man yelled at them, as if it was their fault, poor things. I yelled at him, but he didn’t hear.
We took no notice of Lent in our family. There was nothing to give up, what with the grown-ups all signing the pledge and not smoking or playing games on Sundays or committing any sins at all as far as I could tell. When Beatrice and I asked Mother to test us on the Litany, which we had to do at school every Friday prayers, she muttered at its being Popish, which must be wrong because if Mundella was Roman Catholic they’d have us out of there before we could say ‘knife’. (That’s an expression of Auntie Grace’s, but I don’t know why ‘knife’ rather than ‘cat’ or ‘gusset’.) Anyhow, Mother said she would test us because she was pleased we were learning the prayer book rather than Shakespeare or Thomas Love Peacock. I wish I was called Annie Love Peacock rather than Annie Lang.
So we were well into Lent and the Litany and the Friar’s Balsam what with the late frost, when Mother announced – it was eleven days before the concert – that the weather was too cold for the wearing of flimsy dresses. We were walking back from the Mission at the time, which has a special coldness that goes deep into your bones when Pastor Eames is doing the sermon. Mother was walking just ahead of us, with Beatrice and me tagging behind and she sort of threw it over her shoulder. She knew it wouldn’t be popular. I clenched my fists deep in my pockets and mouthed at Beatrice, ‘I’ll kill her!’ Bea shot me a look of warning and said, ‘Mother, perhaps we can wear our flannel vests under our costumes?’
Mother stopped and waited for us to catch up because you don’t talk about underwear when you’re crossing the Woodborough Road, especially on a Sunday after Mission. ‘You’re wearing flannel vests already. It will be too much of a change in temperature.’
‘We’ll wear two!’ I said. I was desperate. ‘And our long coms!’
Now it was Beatrice to get upset. She gave me a sharp pinch. ‘I can’t wear my long coms!’ she protested. ‘They’ll show. I’ll wear two flannel vests and – and a liberty bodice.’
But Mother had made her mind up. Flannel vests, liberty bodices and long woollen combinations would be worn for the Easter concert.
I felt awful. ‘Beatrice, I’m so, so sorry,’ I told her when we were in her room later that day.
‘It’s all right for you. Your dress comes down to your ankles almost.’ She raised her face from where it had been buried in her arms. She’d been crying.
‘Well, Mother was on the point of saying we couldn’t wear our costumes at all,’ I pointed out. I picked up Bea’s coms, lying in a heap on the floor. They were thick and pink and hideous. But maybe – ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Let’s try something. Put these on a mo.’
‘What for?’
‘Just put them on. I’ve thought of an experiment.’
Beatrice reluctantly pulled the combinations over her black stockings and I started to roll one of the legs up from the
ankle. ‘It won’t. It’s too bulky,’ she groaned. ‘I tried that already.’
But after a lot of pulling and scrabbling we managed to roll them up to mid-calf length, where they stuck. Beatrice shook her head. ‘They’re really tight. They’ll cut off my circulation. I won’t be able to stand up, let alone leap about the stage.’ On her release from the box Hope was to do a dance indicating the conquest of the Spites. So then I made her take them off again and we bunched them like a concertina and heaved, and this time we got them just high enough to be invisible above the tunic. Beatrice plodded round the room. ‘It’s everso uncomfortable,’ she complained. I couldn’t help laughing because she looked like a duck. She took the combinations off and dropped them on the floor again in a heap.
Then suddenly I had a brainwave; it was absolutely the only thing to do. ‘Mother won’t come to the pageant, will she?’ I asked. ‘She told Maisie she’d never let down the Lord by going to a play or something.’
‘She came to the Poetry,’ Beatrice said. ‘And the Christmas carols.’
‘Yes, but that’s like church and music and stuff. She doesn’t approve of this one. Specially with it being Maundy Thursday.’
‘So?’
‘So we just don’t wear them!’
‘How d’you mean? How can we tell her that?’
‘Beatrice, we wear them when we leave the house and then we … take them off.’
Bea stared at me. ‘How can we?’
‘When we change our frocks.’
‘Are you saying we lie?’
‘No, of course we don’t lie. We’re not expected to come home and say, Oh Mother, it was so good wearing our long coms in the school concert! We just don’t mention it.’
‘We lie by omission!’
‘No we don’t! It’s not omission if it just doesn’t come up.’
‘We disobey.’
This was it, of course. I rolled Beatrice’s combinations into a ball and put them carefully back in her drawer. ‘Well, in a way.’
‘What d’you mean in a way? We deliberately disobey our Mother!’
‘Well we wouldn’t have to if she didn’t make stupid rules!’
‘Annie, I worry about you, I really do. How can you even suggest such a thing?’
‘Daddy’ll come, but he won’t notice. He’ll just imagine we’ve rolled them up.’
‘That’s not the point!’ She was really angry. She went on about it being a moral thing.
‘Listen,’ I burst out. This was something that had been dawning on me all day. ‘Mother isn’t thinking of us and our colds and all that. She doesn’t approve of the concert or Shakespeare or your tunic or my vanity or anything. She can’t stop us doing it because Daddy’s told her. So she’s finding a way to spoil it for us. Don’t you see?’
‘Annie, that is nonsense. We’ve both had bad colds. We could have a shadow on our lung. We could have the TB if we get chilled. She’s right!’
‘No she’s not! It’ll be warm in the hall with the lights and the people and it’s only for a short time. No one else’s mothers will make them wear their long coms. You’ll see!’
‘But that makes no difference. She’s trusting us to do what she tells us. It’s dishonest if we betray her trust.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if that’s the way you see it, but I’m not wearing mine.’
‘Yours won’t show. Mine will!’
‘So take them off, Beatrice!’
I was sorry because it makes me sad when there is a space between Beatrice and me and this argument made a big hole. And I felt guilty because whichever way you looked at it, I was being dishonest and I don’t consider myself a dishonest person. I thought about it a lot over the next few days. I stood on my dressing-table stool and did another twizzle to see if the long coms showed beneath the dress. It seemed to be all right as long as I didn’t do a big twizzle. I went into the yard and looked to see if the daffodils were growing in the hope that the weather was getting warmer. I asked Marjorie Bagshaw would she be wearing her long coms and she said was I daft? I told her Mother was making us wear ours and she shrugged and said, well they won’t show under the bridesmaid’s dress, will they? This made me feel worse. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone else to disobey. Beatrice and I didn’t talk about it again but I could feel a cold draught across the space between us and I wished I hadn’t started it.
On the day of the concert we both wore our long combinations, so I wasn’t dishonest in the end, except in thought which some say is as bad. I had hitched them up a bit and tied them with pink ribbons, so that if they showed I hoped they would look like part of my petticoat. My scene was a big success and Mrs Spencer gave me a hug afterwards to her ample bosom. But I don’t want to talk about that because when it was time for Pandora’s Box, and Beatrice and the Spites had been stuck beneath Mr Makins’s canvas ‘chest’, and Nora Porter and Joan Gadsby had gone around stinging Pandora and Epimetheus and flown off to attack the rest of the human beings in the world and at last it was Beatrice’s turn, a terrible thing happened. She came out of the box with Miss Wise playing sort of hopeful music on the piano and it was very tingly and dramatic. And Bea began her dance, a bit carefully at first, I could tell, and we know why. But then just as I thought it was going to be all right, the music sort of swelled. She had to do this little run across the stage, and the long woolly combinations started to slide just a little (and perhaps only I watching from close by would have noticed them at first) but then, as they got lower down, they kind of gathered speed until there they were in their full pink horror, cascading to her ankles.
From where I was standing by the side door I could see most of the audience and I looked desperately for Daddy because I knew he would do the right thing, whatever that was. He was sitting about seven rows back and I saw with a pang that he hadn’t noticed; he was smiling at some blonde person sitting next to him, as if she had just made a joke that was nothing to do with Beatrice and the long combinations. Then some nasty girls in 4D started to snigger and there was a terrible wave of giggles all over the hall, and I sank to the floor and my cheeks were hot and I couldn’t watch my dear sister because I knew that honesty had got her nowhere. And I was angry that Mother was not present to witness the humiliation of Beatrice and our entire family that was All Her Fault. And I think that was the second time I stopped believing that Jesus is a friend to little children, because even when they are honest and pure like Beatrice, He just is not.
Truth to tell, this episode made me worry more than ever about my soul. Of course, we’re brought up to believe these things without question. Beatrice believed it, so I couldn’t talk to her, and Fred would just have snorted if he’d been there, which he was not. So the following Sunday after Sunday School, when Beatrice had gone out to tea and I was to go home on my own, I hung around waiting for Miss Blessing so as to walk to the bus stop with her.
‘I wanted to ask you,’ I began, ‘about Jesus.’
‘Oh dear!’ She gave an uneasy little laugh. ‘I’m not sure I’m the best person to speak to, Annie. I’m not an expert, you know.’
‘But you teach us Sunday School. And you’re Mission, aren’t you?’
‘Well, my father was, and my mother kept up with it for his sake, but the rest of our family aren’t in this congregation, you know. I don’t think they’re quite as, well, rigorous about it as you are at Golgotha.’
I noticed two things about this answer: first, she had spoken of her father in the past tense; secondly she had said, ‘as you are at Golgotha’, as though she was outside and not part of it.
‘But you do belong to the Mission, don’t you?’
‘I came here because they wanted someone to play the harmonium, and it’s very good practice for me. So yes, I joined the congregation, but I may not know all that much about Jesus Himself.’
I was intrigued. ‘What do you have to practise for?’ I asked.
‘Oh … well.’ I felt she was wondering whether to tell me and hoped it wasn�
�t an impertinent question. But she went on, ‘You see, I’d really like to be a piano teacher. I love the piano and I’m taking Grade Eight next year, but we can’t afford for me to go to the Royal Academy in London, or anything, so I’m practising for my LR, if you know what that is – LRAM?’ She broke off and looked at me, her eyebrows raised in a question. Then she went on, ‘When I leave school, I’m hoping to get a job that’ll let me study music part-time … But I don’t know why I’m talking about me! What did you want to know about Jesus?’
I had stopped bothering about Jesus. I was deep in the information she had given me. Grade Eight – when she must only be six or seven years older than me! And she wanted to be a piano teacher, which was a marvellous thing. ‘I don’t see why you need to come here for that!’ I said in wonder. I didn’t know what ‘LR’ was, but it sounded very grown-up.
‘Oh, I get nervous playing in public,’ she said with a laugh. ‘So playing at the Mission really helps me with that. Then they asked me to do the Sunday School.’ She shrugged. ‘So here I am. But I’m not exactly an authority on Our Lord. I just know the stories.’
I remembered what I ought to ask her. ‘It’s just …’ I began, ‘that we’re told Jesus protects the little children, but we also have to be punished so we can be saved, and – and things keep happening to our family which make me wonder if Jesus can do both things at once.’ I hoped it didn’t sound blasphemous.
‘What sort of things?’ she asked.
I couldn’t tell her about the long combinations because that was too shameful, so I said, ‘Well, one thing is our mother dying when we were little.’ I tried to say it in a very offhand sort of way, like a report in the newspaper, so there would be no hint of the S-P, which would have been just awful.