Sugar and Spice Read online

  Susan swallows her biscuit and studies the intruder. Again, her mechanism is almost audible. Wrong side of seventy – click. Apron from World War Two – click. Face like a prune – click. Thinks she knows everything – click. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I’m having the caravan.’

  ‘Hmmph.’ The old woman folds her arms.

  But Susan has the measure of her. In flat, almost disinterested tones, she brings Mrs Bee up to date. When the facts are laid out, my neighbour shakes her head. She wants to know what the world is coming to, but Susan did right in choosing not to abort, and she’d be all right in the caravan, better than a bloody box room.

  My shoulders relax slightly.

  ‘How could he beat his own daughter?’ asked Mrs Bee. ‘And on top of that, how could any man hit a daughter with his grandchild on board? Bloody criminals, some of these folk. Just don’t let him near me,’ she adds. ‘Because I’ve still got one of my hubby’s shotguns.’

  Susan’s jaw drops. ‘A gun?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Best poacher for miles, Ernie. In fact, he were that good, he got a job as a gamekeeper. Set a thief to catch another, you see.’ She nods wisely. ‘Other than that, he weren’t very bright. I don’t know where my daughter got her brains, because her dad thought manual labour were a left wing president of some South American country.’

  Susan and I laugh. It is only too clear where Jenny got her brains. Had Mrs Bee been educated, she would have been dangerous – even now, she is a force to be reckoned with. I try to imagine her as a university lecturer, but the flowered apron would never fit in.

  When the Speaker of the House has left us, I show Susan her bedroom. ‘Den is away a lot, so, sleep here if you want to when he isn’t here. Three babies waking him would be worse, so it’s the caravan when he’s in residence.’

  ‘You don’t like him.’ There is no question mark at the end of the sentence.

  She is right, but I say nothing. I have discovered rather late in life that liking a partner is more important than loving him. Husbands and wives need to be friends, not just lovers. The space between us is now our own Grand Canyon, and nothing will ever span it. Growing apart has little to do with love, though the erosion of friendship has, in my case, affected my ability to feel affection for him, and I no longer want him to touch me. There is no real communication; the only ground we supposedly share is our children, and Den has little interest in them. He wanted a son, but got two daughters.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve wandered off.’

  ‘Yes, I do that sometimes.’

  ‘So do I. You don’t love him.’

  ‘The friendship between us died, Susan. As for the rest of it – I think the course of true love is closed for major road works.’

  ‘It’s a bugger isn’t it?’ she says.

  I agree with her. ‘It’s a bugger in a bucket.’

  ‘What’s one of them, Anna?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a Mrs Battersby-ism. I think she believes a bugger in a bucket would make a lot of noise.’

  Susan’s laughter is too shrill. Today, she has left behind the only family she has known. Today, she has made a decision that will affect her future and that of her little son. On the one hand, I am a life-raft that has saved her from stormy waters; on the other, she has deleted a form of semi-security that she has come to understand, at least. The abusive father is still her dad, while the ashamed mother is the only one Susan has. But Stephen will not always be two months old; soon, he might begin to notice the disquiet around him, and he could well become afraid. ‘You’ll be fine,’ I tell her.

  She swallows noisily. ‘I hope so. I want the chance to get to know my baby.’

  ‘And to learn to love him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  This child and I understand each other thoroughly. I don’t know why, and I wish someone could explain to me how a glance across the baby clinic could lead to so sudden and complete an understanding. ‘This is my second lot of twins,’ I tell her.

  Susan’s eyes are wide. ‘You what? Did they die?’

  I shake my head. ‘Still very much alive, I’m afraid. My mother died when they were born. I was five years old, the war was on, so the country had a lot to worry about. New babies with a five-year-old sister were not high on the agenda.’ I stared at the floor so that Susan might be spared the self-pity in my expression. My childhood was stolen, and I have no power to eliminate that fact. I am a firm believer in coping skills. We can all reach back through the years and blame a happening or an injustice that changed our lives. But we have to get past it, or our history becomes a winner. Yet I wish I could have played more often like the rest of the kids, regret not joining in with rounders, tag and hopscotch.

  ‘So were your foster parents nasty?’

  I laugh. ‘Not at all. They were the same as everybody else, trying to scrape a living, trying to manage my sisters.’

  ‘Naughty?’ she asks.

  I am not ready for this, not just yet. The fact that history may be repeating itself is obvious, but only to me. I come from a family that regularly produced twins – three of my mother’s sisters gave birth to fraternals – but my sisters and my daughters are the only ones who have been . . . difficult. ‘Let’s get you sorted,’ I say to my companion. ‘There will be plenty of time to talk.’

  The afternoon is hilarious. We make up the double bed and bring in a carry cot for Stephen. Susan gets involved in rearranging the kitchen, and there is much clattering of pots and pans. The babies are out in the garden, mine in two separate prams. She doesn’t ask why, and I offer no information. Like children playing house, we produce tea and toast, then Susan makes the miracle happen.

  Determined to show her home to Stephen, Lottie and Emily, she brings them one by one into the caravan, propping them up with cushions on a long sofa. Emily punches Lottie, and Susan deals with the situation in a way that has never been available to me; she places her son between the two girls. The one-sided war stops. Emily grasps one of the little boy’s arms while Lottie holds the other. Peace. Perfect and absolute peace. I refuse to react, though tears sting my eyes. It seems that God is good after all, because a woman I didn’t know until yesterday has applied a dressing to my soul. Emily is smiling. Lottie, who has not had a great deal to smile about, is gurgling. A milky froth appears on her lips, and she blows her first perfect raspberry. The sound startles Susan’s son, but Emily chortles.

  This is a day to remember. I got one phoob (Susan’s word for raspberry) and a laugh out of my other child. Emily is beautiful when she laughs. I have not noticed before how lovely she is.

  ‘You all right?’ Susan asks.

  I nod, as I do not trust my voice to carry words in one piece.

  ‘Depression’s a bugger, isn’t it, Anna?’

  ‘In a bucket,’ I manage finally. ‘But we’ll be OK, love. I just know we are going to be OK.’ We have to be. One middle-aged woman, one teenager and three children between us. We will get there one day. Because we must.

  Two

  The winter of 1940 would be talked about for several decades. Most people had stopped looking up in expectation of German planes overhead, but the sky remained the source of a problem so huge that the north-west of England almost ground to a halt.

  The town of Bolton, Lancashire, placed as it is in a dip between moors, was in serious trouble, because the lowest of its streets became snowbound to the point where people could not leave their houses. Thus far, the war had been a quiet one; now, at the end of January, it was as silent as the municipal graveyard.

  But, in 13 Broom Street, there was noise enough to waken the dead. At each side of the blackleaded range, plaster that had already been crumbly was pitted with holes inflicted by a heavy poker. The news had eventually been passed to the top of the street, and digging had gone on all day. Frankie MacRae was in labour. Men and women had conveyed this information by leaning out of bedroom windows and yelling the message until it reached number 1. A bra
ve soul went to fetch a doctor, a midwife or anyone else with the ability to deal with a birthing – even a vet would have done.

  Anna, Frankie MacRae’s five-year-old daughter, had been carried next door by Mr Dixon. Snow banked at each side of the cleared area was unsteady, and Mr Dixon looked rather like a snowman by the time he deposited the child at his own fireside. ‘This one’s terrified, Elsie,’ he advised his wife. ‘You’d better go now, love, and sit with Frankie. She’s in a hell of a state.’

  So Anna was left with a childless and middle-aged man who had no idea of how to entertain an infant. He was a nice fellow. Anna had always loved Elsie and Bert Dixon, so she decided to look after him. Looking after Mr Dixon took her mind off all the worry next door, and the young Anna was a born entertainer, so she wrote him a story and drew some illustrations. At the back of her mind, she could still see her mother battering the wall with the poker, but everything would be all right now, because Mrs Dixon was with Mam.

  After what seemed a lifetime, Mrs Dixon came back. She stood in the kitchen doorway and shook her head. ‘Twin girls,’ she announced. ‘Doctor’s still there.’

  ‘And Frankie?’ asked Bert Dixon.

  No reply came from Elsie Dixon’s lips. She simply stared at her husband and blinked back some tears.

  ‘Mam says I can pick their names, so they have to be Katherine and Rebecca, and she doesn’t mind if they get called Kate and Beckie,’ said Anna. ‘When can I see them? When can I see my mam?’

  Elsie Dixon pressed a balled fist against her mouth before fleeing the scene.

  Bert picked up Anna and sat her on his knee. Her mother was dead. Newborn twins required care and attention, but who would bother while there were guns and tanks preparing for battle across the English Channel? Kiddies had been scattered to the four winds, some to Wales, some to Scotland, others to parts of England in which the Nazis might take little interest. The children of London were in the most serious danger of becoming orphaned, but no one in any town was safe. Bolton, just a few miles from Manchester, was scattered generously with munitions factories, engineering works, mills, foundries. What would happen to Frankie’s girls? Would they be removed and stuck on some remote Welsh farm? Would they be separated from each other? ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘Not as long as I draw breath.’

  ‘I can’t draw breath,’ said Anna, whose hearing was acute. ‘I can draw a house and a tree and my mam, but . . . Don’t cry, Mr Dixon. It’ll be all right, the Germans won’t get us.’

  ‘My wonderful girl,’ he sobbed. ‘You’re a credit, that’s what you are.’

  Anna, who had no idea what a credit was, knew something terrible had happened. Death had already paid a visit to number 13, because Smoky, Anna’s half-Persian, had been poisoned by a pigeon fancier in the next street, so she had witnessed one departure. ‘Is Mam dead like Smoky?’ she asked tearfully.

  Bert sniffed. The trouble with kids these days was that they knew too much too early. It was likely that the war had made them old-Sweet Jesus! What about Billy? Billy MacRae was possibly still in England, but he might be shipped off at any time. Where the bloody hell was he barracked these days? He needed to be told that his wife was dead and that he was now father to three daughters.

  The door opened and Dr Moss appeared. ‘A word, Mr Dixon? Please?’ He backed away as if intending to retreat to the narrow lobby.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Anna asked before the two men could escape.

  The medic stopped in his tracks. There was something about Anna MacRae that demanded and deserved the complete truth. She was five, but she seemed to be nearing forty. ‘Yes. It’s very sad, Anna, but we couldn’t get your mother to the hospital. She needed . . . erm.’ Transfusion was rather a difficult concept. ‘She needed an operation, and we were unable to take her to town.’

  Anna turned her back on the two men and stared into the fire. ‘Pictures in the flames,’ Mam always said. But she wouldn’t be saying it any more, would she? Smoky had been so still and stiff after his fit. Mam was like that now, Anna supposed. Without the fur, of course, but still and stiff. They would take her away and put her in a box in the ground – that had happened to Grandad. Lots of flowers, people crying, black clothes, beer afterwards, everyone singing and pretending to be all right.

  ‘What will happen now?’ she asked without turning to face the others.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ the doctor replied.

  ‘We’ll mind them for the time being,’ promised Bert Dixon. ‘Welfare department’s got enough on its hands.’

  Peter Moss swallowed hard. ‘I’ll . . . er . . . make it my business to ensure that you get financial help, Mr Dixon. There are committees, charities, organizations. I’m sure you will be awarded assistance.’

  When Dr Moss had left, Elsie made her appearance with the two babies. She placed them on the rug, and Anna stood over them. They were funny-looking creatures, faces all crinkly like balloons with some of the air let out. Anger hung in the air above the red-faced newborns, and their cheeks burned bright, shining wet with tears. Anna bent down and dried their faces. ‘This one can be Katherine,’ she announced. ‘She’s got the most hair, so we’ll be able to tell which is which.’ They wore little white nightdresses, mittens and bootees. These two people had come out of Mam, and she had died afterwards. They had no mother. She had no mother.

  The tears came then, and Anna realized that she was easily as angry as her little sisters. She screamed and howled while Mrs Dixon prepared baby milk, while Mr Dixon tried to offer comfort. Anna wanted to beat the walls with a poker, just like Mam had done. She wanted to burn the whole world, kill Germans, because they had taken her dad away. Had it not been for that piled-up, suffocating snow, she would have run all the way to town, just to get away from . . . from everything and everyone. ‘I want my mam,’ she screamed.

  The babies tried to compete, but their sorry wails were nothing compared to sounds produced by a pair of healthy, five-year-old lungs.

  ‘It’s not fair!’

  Bert Dixon grabbed the child, picked her up and cried with her. ‘We’ll mind thee, lass,’ he said repeatedly.

  She was sad, lonely, frightened and furious. With tight fists, she beat her kind neighbour on his shoulders, neck and face, but he continued to hold her close. ‘It’s all right, Anna,’ he told her. ‘Hurt me all you like, because I know your pain’s bigger than mine.’

  She ran out of steam eventually, and was placed on the horsehair sofa under the stairs. Elsie Dixon handed her a baby and a bottle, then showed her how to feed Rebecca. ‘I’ll do the other one in a minute,’ she said.

  ‘You’re crying as well,’ hiccuped Anna.

  ‘We all are,’ came the reply.

  ‘Not Mam. Mam won’t laugh or cry ever again.’ The baby took a few sucks, then fell asleep.

  ‘Tickle her feet,’ ordered Elsie, her voice quiet and cracking slightly. ‘Keep her awake, petal. You’re not the only one missing her mam.’

  Bedtime arrived. Elsie stayed downstairs with the babies, who were housed in two padded drawers carried down from an upstairs tallboy. Anna found herself alone in the back bedroom, and she was scared all over again, as she had always slept with Mam since Dad left for the war. When everything was quiet, she made her way downstairs. Silently, she pulled on her teddy-bear slippers and went outside. Snow towered above her, and she prayed that it would not collapse, yet she was determined enough to make her way back to number 13.

  Mam was still here. Stretched out in front of a cold range, Frankie MacRae waited for the undertaker to make his way through the product of a severe blizzard. She was white, very pretty, and like a lying-down statue.

  Anna collected tablecloths, the green baize table cover, some coats and two cardigans. After wrapping herself in the clothing, she wound the rest of her finds around herself before lying down with Mam. Very gently, she took hold of an ice-cold hand, then, as quietly as possible, she sang Brahms’ Lullaby, but she could not quite manage the ‘red roses I’ll sprea
d, all over thy bed’, because Mam had loved roses. There had been roses on her wedding day – Mam had shown Anna the photo.

  When morning entered the kitchen via a pinprick in blackout fabric, the little girl found a brush and a comb for Mam’s hair. The water was cold, but it didn’t matter now, did it? With a clean flannel, Anna washed her mother’s face and hands. The fingers were slacker now, not as fastened to each other as they had seemed in the night. She found her mother’s Missal and rosary, winding beads and chain round those poor, chilled fingers before placing the Missal on Mam’s chest. It had been given to Frankie when she had made her First Holy Communion, so it should go with her to the grave.

  Anna sat at the kitchen table waiting for someone to come. It was wrong to leave Mam alone in this lifeless house. Frankie MacRae had been the centre of everything, the caregiver, nurse, washerwoman, cook and mother. Like Smoky, she was very dead, but the body that had housed Anna’s female parent was deserving of respect, and Anna would award that to the woman she had loved with all her young heart. Smoky had been different – just a beloved pet. The lady on the floor was special, and Anna wanted to make sure that everyone knew that.

  There was a big noise outside. She ran into the parlour and saw that the snow was moving again. Some big shovels appeared and, attached to them, the nose of a snow-spattered green tractor put in a partial appearance behind the twin blades. They were clearing the way for Mam. It should have been done last night, then the operation could have happened and Mam might have lived. But Anna was too cold and exhausted for anger, so she simply returned to the kitchen and waited with Mam.

  After some shouting and the clatter of hand-held spades, the door opened and the world walked in. Anna lifted her head high and looked a black-clad man full in the face. ‘I did my best to get her ready,’ she said. ‘But there’s blood on her clothes and I couldn’t get them off her. She’s too big.’ This experienced undertaker bit hard on his lower lip before speaking. When he did manage to produce words, they arrived at a pitch higher than usual. ‘Have you been here all night?’ he asked.