A Daughter's Duty

by Maggie Hope

  ‘Look, Mrs Morland, if you want to get off now, do. I can see to everything else. You’ve been great, you really have, I don’t know how we would have managed without you.’

  ‘You’d have managed,’ Kate replied. ‘Still, I was glad to do what I could. But I don’t deny, I’m ready for a rest now. I’ll be off, if you’re sure you don’t need me any more?’

  Alf looked up at her. ‘Aye, thanks,’ he muttered. Kate allowed herself a wry smile, thinking of the time when she had been ordered out of this house.

  ‘Oh, I was just coming to see Rose,’ said Marina as she almost bumped into her mother on the corner of the street.

  ‘Don’t bother Rose now, pet,’ Kate advised. ‘She has her Aunt Elsie with her so she’ll be all right for the minute.’

  ‘Was it awful, Mam?’

  ‘It’s never nice, pet.’

  They walked arm in arm back to their own house. Marina’s heart was full. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose her mother.

  The wind whistled through the bare trees which lined the edge of the cemetery, drowning out the minister as he read the service. Michael and Mary started to weep as the coffin went down and suddenly, surprisingly, Alf picked up Mary and cuddled her and she put her thin arms around his neck and clung to him. Michael looked up at them bleakly and Rose put an arm around his shoulders. Snowflakes were beginning to fall. As they stood there everyone was covered in a light dusting of white. Rose pulled Michael’s striped woollen pixie hood further over his head, shielding his face, and beside her Aunt Elsie took hold of his other hand in its striped mitten.

  ‘Earth to earth,’ said the minister. Marina struggled to control her tears for Rose wasn’t crying and somehow it seemed presumptious to weep when her friend did not. Alf Sharpe’s nose was red and he sniffled so perhaps he had been weeping? And Rose’s Aunt Elsie … Marina forced herself to attend to the burial service, closing her eyes as the minister offered a last prayer.

  It was the second of January and a working day, but Marina had taken a ‘lieu’ day for the funeral. Most of the women and even some of the men who were not working had attended the chapel service, some of them following the body to the cemetery. They stood around awkwardly, watching as Alf threw his handful of earth into the open grave, followed by his sister and eldest daughter.

  Rose was the first to turn away after the minister had gone. At the gate she said, ‘You are welcome to come back to the house for a bite,’ in time-honoured tradition, to whoever might be listening. She couldn’t afford to let go, she kept telling herself, not yet, not until the funeral tea was over and the house was their own once again.

  Kate was back at the house, keeping the fire bright and the kettle boiling, and Marina had to hurry back to help her. She was glad to have something to keep her busy, offering cups of tea and plates of sandwiches and cake from the Co-op obtained with the extra ration points which were allowed for a funeral. She was glad that she really had no time to say more than a few words of condolence to Rose, stilted words which she could see meant nothing whatsoever to her friend. And the words had dried up in her mind anyway.

  ‘The lass is still in a state of shock,’ Kate whispered to Marina. ‘She’s not taking in what anyone is saying to her.’

  In the event there were only a few neighbours present, those who had been friends with Sarah in the good days. It was barely five o’clock when Kate decided they could go, the other guests gone, leaving only Aunt Elsie and the family.

  ‘Mind you,’ she said as they hurried through the freezing slush of the dark January night, ‘I feel sorry for the bairns but I’m glad to be away from there, I can tell you. There’s something about that family … something I just can’t put my finger on.’ She shook her head. ‘It never used to be like that.’ And Marina knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘Alf, I can take the twins home with me tomorrow. Now, it’s for the best. Me and Rose have had a talk about it and we both think it’s for the best. She’s too young to have charge of their bringing up.’

  ‘Have you quite finished, woman? I’ll decide what’s to be done.’ Alf spoke very softly but his tone made the two women glance apprehensively at one another.

  ‘It’s the right thing to do, Dad,’ Rose put in, though she couldn’t imagine what it would be like in the house without Michael and Mary. Goodness knew how she was going to live without them. But it would only be for a few days (and nights, a persistent voice in her head reminded her), for though she hadn’t told Aunt Elsie yet, she had every intention of following the twins just as soon as she could. She had tentatively suggested she might to her aunt but Elsie had been adamant that Rose should stay to look after her father.

  ‘A man needs a warm house and a meal ready when he comes in from the pit, Rose,’ she had said. ‘Don’t make it worse for your dad, hinny, don’t let him think you can’t wait to get away.’

  Rose couldn’t wait to get away and didn’t care if her dad knew it. She almost blurted it out to Aunt Elsie but she didn’t know how to put it. Elsie was Dad’s sister after all. Rose considered what it would be like in the house alone with her father. She looked quickly across the kitchen to the door connecting with the room where her mother lay. ‘Please, Mam,’ she almost said aloud. And it suddenly struck her like a blow that her mother no longer lay there, she was gone, she was dead. And she bent her head and sobbed for the first time since the death.

  ‘Now then, lass, bear up,’ said Elsie, rising swiftly to her feet and going to her. She held Rose’s head against her thin chest for a moment or two then offered a handkerchief.

  ‘You’ve done so well up until now.’

  With a tremendous effort, Rose controlled her tears, blew her nose and wiped her face. ‘I’m all right, Aunt Elsie.’ She looked across at her father who was staring fixedly at her. Oh, dear God.

  Elsie resumed her seat. ‘As I was saying, I think the twins should come to me. I can look after them – I have a bit of money from your Uncle Tom’s compensation. I can manage. And maybe you, Alf, can send some now and then, to help out like.’ Her voice trembled as she gazed earnestly from Alf to Rose. She desperately wanted the twins. Michael had completely stolen her heart and, to a lesser extent, so had Mary. Surely they would be better off over at Shotton? They could go down to the sea sometimes, it was only a few miles, they could take a picnic, they would have some lovely times, she would be a mother to them … Elsie’s runaway thoughts stopped abruptly. It all depended on Alf and there was no denying he could be … well, selfish. But then, their own dad had been so harsh with him. He’d beaten Alf mercilessly when he was a bairn. Many was the time she’d hidden him in her bedroom cupboard, away from her dad’s rage.

  ‘I want the little ones here,’ said Alf. As if on cue, Mary crept downstairs in her nightie, her face rosy with sleep. And as she had used to do with her mother on many another evening, she went, not to Rose but to Alf. Rose could hardly believe it.

  ‘Daddy, I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Come here, me bairn, come to your dad.’

  As he took the child up on his knee her nightie rode up, showing the tops of her legs, and Alf put his hand there and hugged her to him.

  A sense of horror took hold of Rose. She began to tremble. Not Mary. Oh, no, not Mary. The child had turned to him when he began to show affection for her, as a substitute for her mother no doubt. Rose vividly remembered how she herself had liked it when Dad had done the same to her. It was only later, and very gradually, that the caresses had changed subtly until they became uncomfortable and then worse. To be avoided at all costs. But she had been older, much older than Mary was now.

  ‘Pull your nightgown down!’ she said harshly, jumping to her feet and doing just that before Mary had a chance to do it herself. She bent over the child on her father’s lap and Mary’s lower lip trembled and jutted out and Alf bent and hushed her and kissed her on the cheek then looked straight at Rose and smiled. She couldn’t believe it. It was such a knowing look, one that m
ade Rose’s insides churn and her head whirl until she thought she would fall over, she was so dizzy.

  ‘Aunt Elsie!’ she cried and clutched at Mary, dragging her from her father’s grasp.

  ‘What? What is it?’ Elsie looked up quickly and Rose realised she hadn’t seen a thing, suspected nothing at all. Mary was sobbing into Rose’s shoulder and she automatically patted her back and stared at her father as he smiled up at them.

  ‘Take her to bed, Rose,’ he said kindly. ‘Take her to bed, the bairn’s worn out.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Let the twins go to Aunt Elsie’s,’ Rose begged her father. The two of them were on their own in the kitchen, Alf lacing his pit boots and Rose packing his sandwiches in his bait tin. There was a canteen in the pit yard now, but the miners still took their ‘bait’ for they didn’t come out of the pit for their meal break.

  He straightened up and walked over to her, standing right behind her. He slid an arm around her waist and she moved away quickly. She said nothing about it, even though she could still feel his touch burning into her after he had picked up his water bottle and the sandwiches and slipped them into his pockets. He walked to the door, not replying to her plea about the twins.

  ‘Dad?’ she tried again.

  He turned back to face her. ‘Rose, it would be a crying shame to send little Mary away. You know she’s turned to me since her mam went. The poor bairn needs all the love she can get.’ He knew all the right things to say, oh, yes. Even if it was all lies, just to cover up what he really wanted.

  Perfectly reasonable words, Rose thought numbly. Or they would have been in any other father. She stared at him, her gaze hard and bitter. She had spent a sleepless night and now, after a day spent going over the situation endlessly, felt as though her head was filled with cotton wool. Then he grinned at her in exactly the same way he had grinned at her the night before as he held little Mary, and the thought of him with her sister filled her with terror and loathing.

  ‘I’m going to tell Aunt Elsie about you!’ she cried. ‘Just you see if I don’t!’

  Alf walked back to the table and leaned on it, supported by his two fists, so that his face was within inches of Rose’s.

  ‘Aye? And what are you going to tell her? There’s nothing to tell!’

  ‘You’re … you’re evil, unnatural, that’s what you are.’ Rose stepped back from the table, away from him.

  ‘You really hurt me, do you know that?’ said her father in an injured tone. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong, you know I haven’t, just showed a bit of affection for my lasses. And now you want to send my little one away. I tell you, it’s you that’s unnatural, Rose. You’re a bonny lass, you are, especially when you get into a temper, but you’re hard.’ He turned back to the door. ‘I have to go now, I’ll be late for work if I don’t. If you have anything more to say to me, you’ll have to say it come the morning.’

  Rose listened to his pit boots clip-clopping on the cement of the yard, heard the noise of them fading away as he turned out of the gate and went up the street. Then she sat down at the table and put her head on her arms and wept. She wept for her mother and for the twins and she wept for herself.

  ‘Eeh, I say, lass, come on, bear up.’ It was Aunt Elsie, Rose hadn’t even heard her come in, the twins with her. ‘Howay, I know it’s hard for you, Rosie, but you have to think of the little ones, you know.’ She laid an arm across Rose’s shoulders and hugged her for a bare second before patting her head briskly and moving over to the fire. ‘Come on, kids, let’s have your coats off, boots an’ all and slippers on. You’ll soon get warmed up.’ She talked away to Rose as she undid laces and buttons and helped the twins with their outdoor clothes. Michael and Mary stood quietly and let her do what she would, all the time staring solemnly at Rose.

  She took a handkerchief out of the top drawer of the press and mopped her face, her back turned to them as she struggled to control her emotions. When Michael was ready he slipped over to her and put his hand in hers. ‘I’ve been crying an’ all,’ he confided. ‘Never mind, Rose, Mr Dent says Mam’s in Heaven. She’ll like it there, it’ll be warm. You know Mam didn’t like the cold.’

  ‘Yes, she’ll like it there,’ Rose agreed, managing to smile. ‘We’ll set the table, will we? Are you hungry? I’ve got baked potatoes in the oven, and there’s melted cheese and real butter, won’t that be grand? Have you had a nice time out with Aunt Elsie?’

  Michael’s face lit up. ‘Eeh, we did, Rose. We went to Rossi’s and had ice cream then we went to see the castle and Aunt Elsie said it was Robin Hood’s castle. By, Rose, it was this big!’ He opened his arms wide. ‘There’s a park an’ all and a deer house but I didn’t see any deer. I expect Robin Hood was shooting his bow and arrow and they’ve all run away.’

  Rose gazed at his eager little face, rosy with the cold and excitement. Had he never seen the bishop’s castle before? Had she never shown the twins Auckland Castle or the deer park? She felt a twinge of guilt and looked across at her aunt. ‘Thanks for taking them out, Aunt Elsie, you’re ever so good to us,’ she said.

  ‘I enjoyed it.’

  ‘Folks might be a bit surprised to know Robin Hood got so far north, though.’ Rose grinned. ‘Especially the bishop.’

  ‘Well, nobody’s to say he didn’t,’ asserted Elsie. ‘Now, what do you say to us getting the bairns to bed and then we can settle down and listen to the Light Programme, how about that? A nice, cosy evening, just the two of us.’

  The children were in bed and Rose and Elsie were sitting before the fire, mending and darning. ITMA had ended and Elsie put down the pit trousers she had been patching and turned off the wireless. She came back to her chair and gazed at Rose, the crease between her eyebrows showing she was worried. Rose looked up. ‘What, Auntie? What is it?’

  ‘That’s just what I was going to ask you,’ Elsie replied.

  ‘You’ve been staring at that darn for five minutes without touching it with your needle.’ She paused and bit her lip. ‘I know you’ve had your share these past couple of years, Rose, and I know you were hit hard when your mam went, God rest her soul. But there’s something wrong in this house apart from that. And it’s not just because your dad wants to keep the twins here. That’s his right, after all. He’s their dad. Though I’m not saying I wouldn’t love to have them,’ she added wistfully. She stared into the fire, then got to her feet again and picked up the long steel poker and stirred the caked small coal until it burst into flames, sending sparks and smoke up the chimney. So she didn’t hear the sharp intake of breath behind her, nor see the expression on her niece’s face until she replaced the poker in its stand and turned away from the fire.

  ‘Why, Rosie, what is it?’

  ‘Auntie, you have to take Michael and Mary out of here. You have to!’

  ‘Well, like I said, there’s nothing I’d like better –’

  ‘No! I mean, you have to, Aunt Elsie. I’m afraid for Mary, afraid of what me dad might –’

  ‘What? Rose, what are you saying? Your dad? He’s never hurt the bairn, has he? I don’t believe it!’

  No, he hadn’t hurt Mary, thought Rose. ‘It’s what he might do, Auntie Elsie,’ she said, and Elsie looked at her in disbelief.

  ‘Look, maybe you feel like this because … because of all you’ve had to put up with.’ Elsie walked to the window and stared out at the rectangle of light illuminating the dark back yard. She folded her arms across her chest, her thoughts churning, not exactly sure why. She only knew she didn’t want to hear this, whatever it was Rose was going to say.

  ‘Aunt Elsie, he … touches me where he shouldn’t,’ Rose said to her back. ‘I’m frightened for Mary,’ she said again. Elsie swung round and Rose saw her face was red, whether with anger or deep embarrassment it was hard to tell.

  ‘You wicked little cat! That’s my brother you’re talking about! Aye, and your dad!’ She strode over to Rose and slapped her face. She was like a stranger to Rose, a completely
different woman.

  ‘But, Aunt Elsie –’

  ‘Not another word, you little madam, not a word!’

  Rose subsided. She sat forward in her chair and covered her eyes with her hands. She didn’t know what she had expected but it wasn’t this absolute refusal even to listen to her. She couldn’t bear any more. If Aunt Elsie were not going to support her, what was she going to do? She fled upstairs to the dark bedroom and crawled into bed beside Mary.

  Downstairs it was very quiet. Elsie was suddenly aware of the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the sound of her own ragged breathing. She stood in the middle of the floor, staring at the wall, seeing nothing. It wasn’t true, of course it wasn’t true. Poor Alfie, he loved his children, she knew he did. It was hard for him after the upbringing he had had. Their da had been so much harsher with him than he had been with Elsie. Poor Alfie, poor little Alfie. Many was the time he had crept into her bed after a thrashing, just for a cuddle, just for comfort he’d said, and she’d been so sorry for him. She used to listen with dread to the sounds the leather belt made when Da sent her to bed with a look and started to unbuckle …

  Elsie got to her feet and picked up the kettle, taking it into the pantry to fill it. No, she didn’t believe it, of course she didn’t, not of her brother. He was just a man who felt things strongly; demonstrative, that’s what they called it. And anyroad, Rose was so upset, she wasn’t thinking straight. She probably didn’t meant to tell such lies, just got things exaggerated in her mind.

  The kettle boiled and Elsie made cocoa, considering whether to take a cup up for Rose. No doubt she was sorry she’d said such things. But no, best leave her, she was probably asleep now and, Lord knows, she needed her sleep.

  Mind, Elsie reflected as she sipped at the hot sweet liquid, she would still like to take the twins. As she thought about how it would be with children in the house, she was filled with a longing so strong it eclipsed all thought of anything else. She began her favourite daydream, the one about sitting on the sands at Crimdon, watching the twins build a sandcastle or paddling in the water. Or in wintertime she would meet them out of school when it was snowing and hurry them home and give them each a bowl of broth and they would sit by the fire in their pyjamas – oh, she could see it all, it would be lovely. And she would look after them so well, buy them bicycles, give them so much love it would make up for the loss of Sarah.