Alice's Girls

by Julia Stoneham

  Hester looked carefully at her brother. At the familiar, bony head with eyes slightly too closely set, nose too sharp and lips too thin for him to be considered handsome. But there was something different about him now, a confidence which Hester saw her mother register and perceive as a potential threat.

  ‘Drink your tea, Ezekiel,’ his mother told him. ‘Then you’d best come upstairs and see your father. ’E’ll want to know about the money.’

  ‘What money, Ma?’

  ‘What you’ve earned, son. And the gratuity the army gives out to soldiers when they’m discharged. He’ll be needin’ that, your father. For ’is church.’ She eyed her son firmly, poured tea into a chipped cup, added milk and, moving carefully, went to the stairs and up them.

  Zeke sipped his tea. Hester felt the scrutiny of his narrowed eyes and became conscious of her soiled dress, scuffed shoes, broken fingernails and unwashed hair.

  ‘You’m lettin’ yourself go a bit, Hes, aren’t you?’ he asked her, not unkindly. ‘I never seen you like this afore, and when you was down with them land girls, you—’

  ‘Cut me ’air and wore coloured frocks! Yeah, I did, Zeke! An’ you come pokin’ your nose in and then went runnin’ off ’ome, tittle-tattlin’ to our father. Tellin’ ’im I’d gone to the devil!’ He dropped his eyes.

  ‘Yes, I did do that, Hes, and I’m truly sorry for it! In them days I did as Father said without question. But you was braver than I was. You stood up to ’im and Ma and you wed your fella.’ He searched her face and saw the shadows under her eyes and the pale skin, drawn thin over the delicate bones. He saw how much older and more careworn she had become since he had last seen her. ‘So what’s goin’ on, Hes?’ he asked her. ‘Why don’t you go to America, to your in-laws there? I thought that’s what you was gonna do. Or what about that Dave Crocker down to Post Stone as fancied you? Or don’t ’e care for ee no more?’

  ‘’Ow could I leave ’ere, Zeke?’ she rounded on him sharply, avoiding his question. ‘With Father that poorly he can’t so much as stand no more? And Ma worn out with carin’ for ’im? It’s all I can do to keep us fed, without doin’ washin’ and ironin’, brushin’ me ’air and worryin’ ’bout what I looks like!’

  As Hester spoke she felt a curious sensation of relief. Her brother had come home. There were two of them now. And he, who seemed to be no longer simply their father’s censorious acolyte, was regarding her with something close to affection showing in his sharp, sensitive face. Their mother was calling to them from the top of the steep stairwell.

  ‘Your father says as you’m to come upstairs, Ezekiel. Now this minute, he says! And you’re to bring your sister.’

  Zeke had not seen his father since the first symptoms of his illness had been revealing themselves. Then, he had been stumbling, misjudging steps, dropping tools, lurching into walls. Tests were carried out. Doctors gave him a name for his disease and told him that nothing could be done to cure it. Since Zeke’s last visit Jonas’s body had given up its useless struggle to resist the relentless progress of the paralysis that had overwhelmed it, and now he lay in his bed more a carcass than a man. Both his nightshirt and his bed sheets were stained where gruel had dripped from the spoon with which his wife fed him. His hair was lank and his beard straggled from the sharp bones of his jaw. His huge, useless hands lay occasionally plucking at the soiled sheet. His skin had an odd sheen to it. An unhealthy iridescence, as though he was made of melting wax. He was, Zeke realised, almost unrecognisable. Except for his eyes. They were as terrible now as they had always been. They had scared Zeke as an infant, threatened him as a growing lad and bullied him through his adolescence. During those years Zeke had accepted this. Both Jonas’s children had been reared to fear their father and had seen their mother constantly defer to him. They had experienced no other relationship between a father and a son, a father and a daughter or a husband and a wife. They had watched their father rant. Not only when he preached to his intimidated congregation but at the flinching subordinates who acted as officers within the hierarchy of his church. Neither Zeke nor Hester had ever witnessed any resistance to Jonas’s will. They were unaware that other fathers did not make their children cower or that the penalty, in most families, for failure to instantly obey did not result in a torrent of uncontrolled verbal and physical abuse, until submission was absolute.

  As Zeke reached the foot of his father’s bed and stood, regarding the wreckage of this once powerful man and met the eyes that were locking onto his, he experienced a familiar sense of weakness which began to sap his energy. His father’s eyes, blazing in the sallow mask of his face, were once more overwhelming him. All the potency of the sick man seemed to have sited itself in these two glowering orbs, turning them into one unassailable source of energy from which Jonas would continue to dominate and terrorise. Zeke felt his mind being penetrated, dissolving under the familiar and irresistible dominance which was being exerted over him by all that remained of the man who lay, otherwise helpless, in a bed odorous with the stench of his sickness.

  ‘I do not see you pray,’ Jonas mumbled, his voice slurred, and when Zeke hesitated, the paralysed man repeated the single word ‘pray’.

  Zeke went down on his knees at the foot of the bed, closed his eyes, lowered his head and was surprised how easily the words came back to him, reaching him from his earliest memory of an overshadowed childhood. Raising his head enough to look into his father’s eyes he began to mouth the familiar phrases.

  ‘Oh, Lord God, forgive me my transgressions. Show me the evil of my ways so that I may resist the temptations of the flesh. Make me repent each sin and know that if I fail to make amends, your wrath will descend upon me and deliver me to Lucifer and the everlasting flames of hell. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ their mother echoed.

  Thurza, growing restless in Hester’s arms, began to protest. This distraction took Zeke’s attention and had the significant effect of breaking the eye contact between him and his father.

  Later, walking beside his sister as she pushed her little girl along the lane in her pram, Zeke understood that it had been Thurza’s sharp cry that had released him from his father’s attempt to reimpose his will. He had refused, after that moment, to re-engage his father’s eyes, focusing his own, guardedly, on his mother and, more easily, on his sister or his niece. When his mother attempted to raise the subject of the money his father wanted for his church, Zeke forestalled her.

  ‘The money I’ve brought ’ome bain’t going to the church, Ma,’ he said. ‘If we’re to make enough to live on ’ere, us’ll need to put that money into this place. We need more livestock for a start and proper feed for ’em. First off I must buy a van for to get the produce into market on a regular basis.’ As his mother drew breath to protest Zeke silenced her. ‘No, don’t you argue with me, Mother! I’ve thought this through, careful like, and if I’m not to ’ave a free’and ’ere I’ll be off, and now I’ve seen the state of things, I’ll take Hester and the little ’un with me, ’cos there be no future for ’em ’ere! It’ll be touch and go for a bit, as ’tis, but ’tis worth a try and I’ll give it all I got, for Hester’s sake and for ’er baby.’

  Although, during his absence, Zeke had not been fully aware of the sharp decline in his father’s health, or the effect this had on the running of the family smallholding, the experience of being free of Jonas’s dominance, and in a situation where he had had to learn quickly how to survive within a group of feisty young conscripts, had allowed Zeke’s underlying character to emerge. Although he retained a sense of responsibility where his parents were concerned – and for his sister’s welfare, should she need him – Zeke had begun, during his months in the south Welsh coal mines, to perceive the width and breadth of the world and become aware of the day-to-day things which his upbringing had obscured from him. He had even begun to grow ambitious. Once his duty to his parents was discharged he would address his own life and make something worthwhile of it. His obligation to return to the
smallholding and do what had to be done in terms of labour, to revive it and, if possible, make it prosper, would be on his terms. So, having delivered his ultimatum and while continuing to avoid the father’s eyes, the son had got to his feet and gone noisily down the stairs, followed by his sister.

  Zeke acted swiftly and before long there were half a dozen point-of-lay pullets in the yard, a new cockerel had seen to it that two hens were brooding large clutches of eggs, a plough was borrowed and the overgrown acres made ready for seeding. The last of the soft fruit was picked and delivered to Bideford in a small, rusted van. Wood for the copper was chopped, and with the fuel stove back in commission there was hot water for baths. Every day the washing line sagged under sheets, blankets and assorted garments. Hester bathed herself and Thurza and washed their matching, auburn hair.

  Jonas, his body sponged, his hair cut, his beard trimmed, lay in a clean nightshirt between laundered sheets, his head on a freshly ironed pillow. To begin with, his eyes retained their poison but, as the weeks passed, and although initially no one noticed, they began to lose their dangerous intensity. His wife was the first to become aware of this.

  ‘I do believe your father may be feeling better,’ she said to her daughter one day as she heaved a blanket out of the copper and put her weight to the handle of the mangle. ‘’E seems easier in’iself and ’is eyes bain’t so angry-lookin’ no more.’

  ‘You gotta think about your future, Hester,’ Zeke said one day as the two of them hoed their way along a row of spinach. ‘Ma says as there’s money comin’ to you every week, from the US military. You should be spendin’ it, Hester. Thurza be growin’ too big for ’er clothes and yours is in tatters! I’ll take you in to Bideford next market day and you can kit yourself out, right?’

  ‘But that be Reuben’s money, Zeke,’ she told him. ‘I can’t take that!’

  ‘You ’as to, Hes! ’Tis yorn! ’Tis meant for you and Thurza! You’re Reuben’s widder! Thurza’s ’is baby! I reckon ’e’d turn in ’is grave if ’e knew you two was goin’ short!’

  She watched her brother labouring from dawn till dusk. It would be months, if ever, before the smallholding would begin to adequately provide for the four of them. But if she gave some of Reuben’s money to Zeke, he could spend it on tools and equipment, seed and fertiliser. He could repair the pigsty, fox-proof the chicken house, buy in more livestock. And Zeke was right. Thurza had outgrown her baby clothes, and her own cotton frocks and winter skirts were threadbare and faded. The elbows were out of her winter jumpers. So she went to the post office in Bideford and withdrew some of Reuben’s money, bought clothes for Thurza and replaced some of her own worn garments. She folded a handful of the notes and passed them to her brother in one of the rare moments when their mother’s sharp eyes were not on them.

  ‘I can’t take this, Hester, ’tis yorn!’

  ‘You can spend it on this place, if you choose,’ she told him. ‘There’s lots needs doing, you knows that. Reuben would say it was the right thing, I’m certain. So take it, Zeke.’ So Zeke took the money and used it to repair the henhouse and the pigsty. He bought four young porkers for fattening and two more goats and a pair of geese, intending to breed from them. Hester and her mother cleaned the cottage, gradually restoring it to the spartan, cheerless order which had prevailed throughout the years when the siblings had been raised there. And as she cleaned and cooked, minded her baby and helped her brother with the livestock, Hester considered the possibilities that were open to her. She thought of America, she thought of Thurza’s future if she were to remain on the smallholding. A lonely child, reared without the company of other children, making the long, solitary walk each day to and from the village school. And she thought of Dave Crocker and how he’d said she could go to Lower Post Stone any time she liked and be his wife. How he had told her he wanted her and her alone and that no one else would do for him, then or ever. And she remembered how she had felt, the day they had spent together on the snowy hills of the Post Stone valley.

  ‘But, Alice, you don’t have to choose!’ Georgina was visiting Lower Post Stone and together she and Alice had crossed the yard to collect eggs for the custard tart the warden was proposing to make for the land girls’ pudding.

  ‘Why don’t I?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Because,’ Georgina told her, ‘if ever there was a case of having a cake and eating it, this is it!’ Alice glanced at Georgina with a mix of incredulity and impatience.

  ‘Everything always seems so simple to other people,’ she sighed. ‘You have absolutely no conception of how complicated it all is and how many people have to be considered!’

  ‘That’s only because you’re not concentrating on the most important factors. Chris says the rest of it will simply fall into place when you sort out the key issues.’

  ‘Oh, does he. And what are these “key issues”?’ Alice enquired stiffly, wondering what she would say if she was asked to answer that question and feeling relieved that she had not been.

  ‘That there are two things that you very much want to do. Right?’

  ‘Two?’ Alice queried, hoping that Georgina would not challenge her to name them. There seemed to her to be as many things as there had always been and a lot more than two. She wanted Roger. She wanted the independence which a career in London would give her and for that career to be successful. She also wanted a home of her own and for Edward John to be able to stay where he could pursue his interest in farming. And she wanted Roger to be happy. That seemed to her to amount to five, if not six issues and there were, she feared, others which should be added to the list.

  They had crossed the yard and re-entered the cool interior of the farmhouse. Alice put the eggs carefully into a bowl and sat down at the kitchen table.

  ‘Your consultancy work wouldn’t impose a nine-to-five routine on you, would it?’ Georgina asked, taking the chair opposite the warden.

  ‘No,’ Alice told her. ‘Each commission would involve a few weeks of consultation and site visiting, followed by the drawing up of plans …’

  ‘Which could be done anywhere, couldn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t be obliged to be in London while you were doing the designs, would you?’ Alice had already considered this.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not until the project reached the stage where the selection of equipment was under discussion. Why?’

  ‘Because you could do all that part of the job at Higher Post Stone, couldn’t you?’ Before Alice could interrupt her, Georgina went enthusiastically on. ‘You could have a small studio at the farm and a glamorous little pied-à-terre in London! Edward John could stay on at his prep school in Exeter until he goes to Wellington, and you’d be home at the weekends and for the best part of his holidays. Roger would be the happiest man in the world and most probably see more of you than he does now – and the magic of your romance would stay alive for ever!’ Georgina concluded, triumphantly. Alice laughed.

  ‘You make it sound so easy!’

  ‘That’s because it is easy, Alice!’ The warden sat in silence for a while, trying, as she had been for some time, to identify the downside to what seemed, on the face of it, to be a perfect solution and one which had already occurred to her. She had, however, been convinced of the necessity of making a choice. Surely she had to choose? Having everything one wanted was so seldom possible, how could it now be possible for her? But perhaps that was the problem? Perhaps she was so preoccupied with the responsibility of having to make the right decision that she was overlooking the possibility that she did not, after all, need to make one.

  ‘I wonder what Roger would have to say to that?’ She spoke almost to herself and was taken aback when Georgina immediately answered the question she had barely asked.

  ‘We’ll soon know,’ Georgina announced.

  ‘What makes you so sure of that?’ Alice was looking keenly at her now.

  ‘Because my beloved husband is, even as we speak, putting the idea to him!’

  ‘How dare you tw
o poke your noses into this!’ Despite herself, Alice was laughing.

  ‘Because you are both so hopeless! Chris and I couldn’t sail off into the blue with you two still shilly-shallying! Go to dinner tonight at that pub on the river.’

  ‘Which pub?’

  ‘Oh, you know, Alice! The one where you have your major scenes and—’

  ‘Major scenes? Me?’

  ‘Yes! You! You and that naval man for a start.’

  ‘Oliver?’

  ‘Yes, Oliver, when he tried to seduce you …’

  ‘And failed!’

  ‘And you and my father-in-law, when the pair of you fell out over Christopher!’

  ‘How did you know about all that?’ Alice asked. Georgina shrugged.

  ‘Not sure,’ she answered, truthfully. ‘From Rose, probably. Local intelligence is pretty good in these parts! Oh, don’t be cross, Alice! It’s only because we love you!’

  It was not summery enough, that evening, for Alice and Roger to eat outside. The water meadows which the pub overlooked were shrouded in a chill, luminous mist. The publican had lit a fire in the inglenook and on his recommendation they chose to eat his wife’s excellent fish pie.

  Earlier, while Alice had listened to Georgina’s plans for her future with Roger Bayliss, he, at the higher farm, had listened to Christopher’s, for him, with her.

  ‘Gross impertinence!’ Roger said, enjoying his meal and amused by the young couple’s two-pronged intrusion into what he considered to be a private matter. ‘I thought it was parents who meddled with their offsprings’ intentions, not the other way around! And, of course, they’ll never believe that I had already thought of that solution and was about to put it to you, without any help from those two upstarts!’

  ‘Were you?’ Alice was astonished. ‘Oh, Roger, were you? Really?’ The two of them sat for a moment while each realised that both of them had arrived at an identical solution to what had seemed to be a collection of insurmountable obstacles to their happiness together.