A Daughter's Shame

by Audrey Reimann

  Lily pulled her coat tight. ‘I’m not an orphan. I have a Mam.’

  ‘But you haven’t got a dad. Never did have one.’

  ‘I did. He was a hero.’

  Doreen sniffed loudly and then flung over, in the taunting way she had, ‘I bet you’re no good at games. Postman’s knock and that.’

  Lily was good at playground games. She always won at hopscotch and tenzie with a tennis ball against a wall, where you had to do twisters and bouncers and under-the-Iegs. She hated team games and relieve-oh. But she had not heard of this one. ‘What’s postman’s knock?’ Doreen looked pleased by this extra proof of her ignorance. Tomorrow she would jeer, ‘Silly Lily can’t play postman’s knock.’

  ‘I’ve never played postman’s knock,’ Lily said. ‘How d’you play?’

  Doreen gave one of her sly smiles. ‘They give you a number, and if a boy calls it, you have to go outside with him and kiss him on the lips.’

  Lily felt heat come into her face, spreading up from her neck, bathing it a shameful red. Doreen was making it up. There would be horrible boys at the party; boys who fought with girls and pulled their hair. She had to think up a clever answer. ‘I won’t tell anyone my number.’

  ‘Ha, ha!’ Doreen jeered. ‘They pin the number on you when you go in. You’re blushing. You great baby!’

  Lily tried to appear nonchalant but … it couldn’t be true. Could it? They couldn’t make you kiss a boy … could they? ‘I don’t like kissing. I don’t want to kiss a boy …’

  ‘You would like it if you practised,’ Doreen said, full of experience.

  ‘I would not.’ She would die of fright if a boy kissed her.

  Doreen was looking far away into the distance. ‘If Ray Chancellor kisses you, you’ll like it.’ She leaned against the wall. ‘I wish he’d kiss me. I saw him kissing Mollie Leadbetter up our alley. She liked it.’

  Mollie Leadbetter was only fifteen. Girls who went about with boys had to watch out or they’d get a bad name. Lily said, ‘I would not like it. And I don’t think Ray Chancellor would kiss Mollie Leadbetter.’

  ‘He’d kiss anyone,’ Doreen said. ‘He says I’m pretty. I went to the mill with my dad, and when my dad wasn’t looking Ray tickled me round the waist and said I was the prettiest girl in Macc.’

  ‘I am not kissing anyone at the party,’ Lily said.

  ‘You‘ll have to. If you don’t want to kiss the boys you have to tell Mr Chancellor. You can’t refuse to go.’

  The thought of telling Mr Chancellor that she did not want to be kissed was worse than suffering a kiss from a boy. But she was saved. Mrs Grimshaw came to the back door, calling out for Doreen.

  ‘Isn’t that right, Mam?’ Doreen looked back at Lily as she sauntered towards her mother. ‘You have to kiss the boys at the mill party?’

  Mrs Grimshaw gave her clucking laugh, like Nanna’s hens after an egg was laid. ‘It’s only a bit of fun. Silly girl.’

  Lily had to say something before Doreen spread it all over school that she was a baby. ‘I’m particular!’ she shouted across to them both. ‘I am particular who I kiss!’

  ‘Well, you don’t get that from your Mam!’ Doreen called back. ‘My mam says that your mam’s been kissed by every man in Macc.’ She turned her head then, and began to say, ‘Isn’t that right … ?’, but Mrs Grimshaw was setting about Doreen’s head and face, slapping and shouting, ‘You are a wicked girl, our Doreen! I don‘t know who teaches you such things!’ She took Doreen roughly by the shoulder and dragged her, protesting, into the house.

  Lily was spared the ordeal of the Christmas party. Mr and Mrs Hammond were giving a children’s party on the very afternoon of the mill party, the Saturday before Christmas. The invitation had arrived and been accepted for her by Nanna, though neither Nanna nor Lily could have foreseen that the three young men she would fall in love with would all be at the wonderful Christmas party at Archerfield.

  The day of the party was bright and sparkling with sun and frost. When it was light Lily dressed and ran down the stairs, past the kitchen door where Nanna was riddling cinders from under the range. The garden wall was high, so, putting the toe of her boot into a crack in the wall, she heaved up, looking along the lane. The sky was pale blue, the grass at the edges of the roadway was stiff and starchy white, and through the open gateway she saw the rhododendron bushes, dark and rimed with silvery frost. The only sound was the water of the brook tumbling over its stony bed, until slowly this sound became overlaid with a growing mechanical noise. In a noisy gear a taxi cab was climbing the hill.

  It reached the top and with a crashing of gears picked up speed. Lily was only a foot or two from them but none of them saw her: a man wearing a tweed cape and huge checked cap, a dark-haired young man, and a girl a little older than herself who was wearing a coat and beret of rich red tartan. On the flat luggage place sat two great trunks, fastened about with address labels and pasted-on stickers.

  She ran into the kitchen. ‘Nanna! I’ve just seen a taxi. Going to Archerfield. Full of Scotch people.’ Nanna laughed. ‘Scotch is name o’t whisky. People are Scottish.’

  ‘Are they Magnus’s cousins? The ones I’ve never met?’

  ‘Yes. They are here for Christmas this year. The Hammonds are going to Scotland for New Year.’ Today she was going to her very first party. And she was going to meet Rowena and Ian Mackenzie. Magnus and Sylvia had talked about their cousins for years. Lily’s stomach was churning with excitement.

  At two o’clock on the day of his thirteenth birthday party, Magnus stood before the washbasin in the bathroom and carefully placed a dollop of Father’s brilliantine into the palm of his left hand. This was how it was done. He glanced into the big mahogany-framed glass over the basin and, pleased with what he saw, rubbed his palms together quickly and ran sticky hands over his blond, flyaway hair. Next he rinsed his hands and took from the shelf Father’s two silver-backed hairbrushes and wielded them about his head, trying to get the action right, the way he’d seen Father do it. ‘OK. OK …’ he said as he laid the brushes down carefully and made a very straight parting with the tortoise-shell comb he kept in his breast pocket. Then he gave a little frown into the glass, practising his expressions. He was a man. Well, from the neck up he was. There was the misshapen ankle that the last of the knocks had left him with. But his shoes were specially made to correct the slight shortening of his left leg and the in-turned foot. He stared at his reflection and tried the sardonic smile of the hero in that romance he had read. He had asked the kitchen maid to lend him her book. The hero was blond and he had a limp and a sardonic smile.

  He whistled ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ through his teeth as he replaced Father’s brushes in exactly the same position. Then he nearly jumped out of his skin when his cousin Ian opened the door.

  ‘Sorry!’ Ian said. ‘Thought it was free.’ Magnus, relieved it was not Father, said, ‘Come in. I’ve finished.’

  Ian was sixteen, taller and heavier than himself; dark-haired and, Magnus suspected, very handsome. Ian would sweep the girls off their feet, no doubt. Magnus glanced at himself again before asking, ‘Has Mother told you about the parties?’ There was to be one for the young ones at three-thirty until half past seven, followed by an adults’ dinner party with dancing.

  ‘Yes. Great idea – a party.’ Ian’s voice was deep and humorous. ‘Your mother says that Sylvia, Rowena and I are to go both – the children’s party and the grown-up do.’

  ‘Not me?’ Magnus felt his face redden. ‘I am thirteen dammit! Am I the only one to be left out? I am not an invalid.’

  ‘Your mother thinks so,’ Ian said. ‘Seriously, you do have watch it.’

  Magnus gritted his teeth, determined to go downstairs and confront her – this infernal patronising of a chap! ‘She knows I’m all right. I‘ve seen the specialist in Edinburgh. Soon I’ll out of her reach. Mother won’t have any say once I’m at school.’

  Ian grinned and put his soap bag, shaving tackle a
nd towel on the wicker chair. He went to the iron bath and dropped the plug plunger into the hole. The bath took ages to fill. He would need the bathroom to himself for an hour. He said, ‘I agree. If you are fit enough to live with us in Edinburgh …’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Magnus. ‘I have been pushed around by Mother.’

  ‘Will you stand up to her?’ Ian said. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? My mother? Why not?’

  ‘I don’t have your confidence,’ Ian said. ‘I don’t remember my mother. Aside from Rowena, and sisters don’t count, I never know what women are thinking.’ He held open the door. ‘Off you go.’

  Magnus found his mother in the drawing room, supervising the placing of chairs around the cleared floor, ordering the gardeners about in an imperious voice. ‘Here with the Hepplewhites, Jackson! Don’t put the love seat in the alcove, Watts. Keep the far end clear for the band. Oh, really!’

  ‘Mother!’ he shouted and saw surprise on her face as she came over. He liked surprising her. He had stopped calling her Mama, for starters. Men of his age never called their mothers Mama.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ She placed a hand gently on his shoulder. ‘You are handsome, my pet!’

  He could not remain cross with her, but he steeled himself. How could she show him up before his cousins? ‘I insist,’ he said, echoing her dogmatic manner, ‘I am going to both parties. I am not a child.’

  Mother climbed on to her high horse. ‘I cannot allow …’

  He interrupted her. ‘I’m going. To both.’

  She walked away, up the hallway to her little study. ‘The servants will hear us,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘We’ll talk about this in private. Follow me.’

  There was muffled laughter from the staff as Magnus went, angry, to her room. He closed the door and faced her. ‘Father expects me to have a social life. If I can go to Edinburgh to school …’

  ‘It’s your father’s decision to send you. I wanted you to go to King’s, in Macclesfield, so I can supervise …’ She broke off, and concern came over her face. ‘Have you been today? I don’t think you went yesterday. Take your opening medicine if there is the slightest risk of …’

  He was so angry. Father never said a cross word either to Mother or to Sylvia, but it really was time he spoke up. ‘I have told you, Mother. I will not have you nagging, pestering me. I am better. Don’t ask, “Have you been? Done anything?”’

  She made a sharp intake of breath. ‘It’s because of my constant devotion that you are standing here and daring to challenge me.’

  ‘Today is my birthday. Tonight my farewell party!’

  ‘I invited your friends to the children’s party. Tonight is for adults.’

  ‘Sylvia’s one year older than me. Ray is fifteen. Ian and Rowena are sixteen and fifteen. Not much older than me.’

  She hesitated, then, in a pleading voice, ‘You have to rest, darling. Build your strength slowly, Magnus.’

  Her tone of voice told him he had won. He filled out his chest, pulled his narrow shoulders back and stuck out his chin. ‘You must accept that your son is a man. He is leaving home. And may never come back!’ He was no longer her little pet, her little invalid. He would always have to come back because he was besotted with Lily. His love for her was growing whilst that for his mother was diminishing. He had loved Lily from the first moment of his life. Bolder now, he said. ‘Soon I will be in charge of the mill. In a few years’ time I will marry. Have children.’

  He had gone too far. Mother said, ‘I’ve told you, Magnus, as tactfully as possible, but very plainly. You can never be a normal man. Your last haemorrhage was into your …’

  ‘That’s enough!’ He would not allow her to talk about the most personal details of his manhood. Not even to him. ‘I am normal.’

  She’d expect him to have his own way. He always did. She softened. ‘Very well. You can go to the party.’

  ‘Can Lily stay for the dinner and dance?’

  Mother flared. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Magnus.’

  ‘You hate her, don’t you?’

  ‘I hate nobody. It’s too close, that’s all.’

  ‘You don’t think she is good enough for me and Sylvia?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. There’s nothing wrong with Lily. It’s her mother I object to. Putting herself and her child beyond the pale – letting her parents down by bringing the child up in the slums of Macclesfield!’

  ‘Jordangate is nowhere near the slums,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want you to make too much of a childhood friendship.’

  Magnus only had to listen while Mother let off steam, which she did whenever he or Sylvia mentioned Lily’s mam. ‘All right, Mother,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask for your approval of my girlfriends in future.’ He left her study, whistling, as he went to his room to put on his whitest shirt and the new school blazer in readiness for Lily’s arrival.

  By three o’clock Lily was ready. Nanna had brushed her dark hair until the springy curls were softened into long, loose ringlets tied with satin ribbon and fastened with a mother-of-pearl clasp. Mam had let her buy, from her savings, a pair of Cuban-heeled dancing slippers; silvery kid with crossover straps on her high, dancer’s instep. White rayon stockings, shiny and opaque, were held up by six long elastic suspenders attached to a Liberty bodice; cotton drawers lay flat, not bunched up like fleecy school knickers; a fine white petticoat over them and, on top, the most beautiful party frock.

  Mam had excelled herself. The dress had gold-embroidered sleeves on a bodice of sea green foulard silk that dropped low over her narrow, childish hips before the skirt sprang out in froths of net frills upon silk flounces beneath a wide, dark green sash of satin. Over all this she would wear a white cape that had belonged to Nanna’s grandmother. It was in heavy, dense velvet and both cape and its hood were edged with white angora. ‘I feel like Cinderella,’ Lily said as Nanna fastened the cape ties. ‘As if a fairy had waved a magic wand.’

  Nanna said fondly, ‘I hope you have as many parties as a young girl could wish for.’ She pulled Lily close. ‘It’s been like the old days, getting you ready. Eeh! I remember your Mam getting dressed up to go gallivanting!’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Grandpa said. ‘Our Lil’s only young.’

  Grandpa drove her to Archerfield in the trap. He was acting the gallant, saying she was his little princess and should arrive in style. ‘We’ll walk back,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring your overcoat and boots.’ He looked splendid in the blue striped suit and black bowler he usually kept for Sundays. He wore his tweed overcoat and leather gauntlets. Though he was seventy-eight, he looked like a young man with his white hair hidden under the hat.

  There were two motor cars ahead of the trap and two behind in the slow procession down the drive that curved away from the brook towards the house. There were lanterns, more than two dozen of them, strung across the semi-circular stone balustrade at the front of the house. There was light enough not to need them, yet they burned and flickered in the slight breeze. Beyond them the front doors were thrown open to reveal the firelit entrance and Mr and Mrs Hammond framed in the doorway, receiving the guests.

  Lily sprang down from the trap. She heard the harness jingling and hoped that everyone had seen Grandpa’s shining brass on the gleaming trap. Then she was on the top step and it was her turn. Edwards, the butler, was leading Clive and Bertie Ryle, a millowner’s sons the same age as herself, towards the drawing room. Lily put out her hand to Mrs Hammond. Mrs Hammond ignored it and called out, ‘Come back, Edwards. It’s only Lily Stanway. Take her as well.’

  Colour burned in Lily‘s cheeks. Behind her a girl giggled. Mr Hammond waved Edwards away and took her hand. ‘All right, Lily?’

  ‘Yes, yes, thank you …’

  ‘Magnus asked me to send you up to the schoolroom. He wants you to wait with him there until everyone has arrived.’

  She ran swiftly along the hallway and sped up the wide, carpeted staircase to the scho
olroom that had once been a nursery. Magnus and his Scottish cousin were standing by the fireplace. Magnus, tall, gangling and with the same cool good looks as his father, towered over her. He held out both his hands. ‘You look spiffing!’

  Lily unfastened the neck ties and dropped the cape into his arms. ‘Thanks.’ She laughed to see him standing there; not knowing what to do with the thing.

  He put the cape over a chair and took her hand in a proprietorial grip before turning to the other boy. ‘Let me introduce my best friend – my best girl friend, Lily Stanway,’ he said. ‘My cousin, Ian Mackenzie.’

  She gazed into blue eyes that were level and steady. Sylvia’s cousin was taller than Magnus. He had a long, aquiline nose, sleek black eyebrows and a lock of wavy black hair that fell forwards over a fine high forehead. He put out his hand, Magnus let hers go, and as Ian’s firm hand enclosed hers Lily felt the strangest sensation, as if warm water were rippling up her arm.

  She knew how to behave from watching Sylvia and trying to copy her charm – not unfeeling like Mrs Hammond or bold like Mam. ‘Hello,’ she said without letting on that there was anything out of the ordinary in meeting him, in holding his hand. ‘I saw you arriving this morning.’

  He let go of her hand and the smile that transformed his serious features sent another shock through her. His teeth were strong and straight and very white against his tanned outdoor skin. His eyes crinkled, and at the sides of his mouth, deep lines creased. ‘We travelled overnight,’ he said in a rich, warm voice. He made an attractive curly sound when he pronounced ‘travelled’, as if the consonants were rolling off his tongue. ‘Arrived in Manchester at six this morning and were in Macclesfield for seven.’

  Magnus’s voice was beginning to break. It would drop very low and gruff and he would cough to get it back. He said, ‘Ian’s sixteen. I’m going to his school so I expect I’ll have to kow-tow to him.’

  Ian said, ‘We’ll hardly see one another in school. At home you will just be my cousin, as ever.’

  Lily asked, ‘Where’s Sylvia?’