Women Are Bloody Marvellous! And Other Stories

by Betty Burton

  'You ought to know better.'

  'At your age!'

  'Come on, Miss Biddlecombe got plenty to do.'

  Mothers, busy at their leisure, unpack the fruit and sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs.

  'We forgot the salt.'

  'Ah, never mind, we can ask her for some with the tea.'

  'I'll go.'

  'We'll ask.'

  'We'll go.'

  It doesn't work, but it was worth a try.

  Children in the upper age-range wander off to rediscover those places in the wood which are known only to those who have Archard blood. One or two cousins who were too young last summer, but are old enough this year, watch our every move. Nobody tells — watch and learn. Archards don't tell tales. Archards don't cry. Three of us are double-bond Archards. Special. A brother and sister married a sister and brother. Some Archards have red hair.

  The new cousins are shown special moss that has scarlet lanterns, we pick some and try to make them stay in our eyebrows; shown nests, and spiders that look like brooches, shown the track where King William the Rufus — which means red hair — was carried dead, with an arrow in his chest and his blood dripping out all the way to Winchester; told about peewits' eggs that you can sell for a pound each and are easy to find just lying up on Green Hill and we shall look for some on our way home; told the giggling secrets of lords and ladies and wild arum flowers being rude.

  The boys pick up old acorn cups and stick them on their eyelids and noses, we make screeches with blades of grass and drum-beat hollow trees. Girls write boys' names on laurel-leaves and put them inside their vests next to their hearts, to work. The new cousins learn how we are bonded by sights and smells and sounds and textures.

  The fathers polish a cricket ball on their only pair of flannels. They windmill their arms, strong from the daily use of heavy tools, the upper muscles have surprisingly fine white skin. They place their teenage fielders, who know from experience that they are unlikely to get much of a go at either bat or ball. Soon they will slope off and become kids again — just as their fathers are doing.

  The younger children go off to the swings.

  'Not where we can't see you.'

  'No — not in the woods.'

  'Next year, when you are big enough.'

  ...and the littlest ones stay with the mothers.

  The mothers are doing what they do every day, a change though to be doing your job out of doors. There is not much letting down of hair, no equivalent to the cricket game, but it's company and Miss Biddlecombe is preparing some of the food.

  Grandfather nods off for half an hour. It has been a long walk after a week at the forge shaping metal into railway engines.

  We have found an animal skull, eaten clean and white. Eye-sockets. Teeth. Nose-holes. Teeth. Blood and fox and teeth like needles. Try to forget it.

  'Ready. Coo-eee. Tea.'

  It is Miss Biddlecombe.

  Fathers down bats, leave the wicket and hurry to the pavilion for tea. The splintery table creaks as they put down the great brown teapots and water-jugs. Mothers sit and pour, and hand things out, and issue mind-outs, and carefuls and I didn't hear you say thank-yous. We know they like us to be a credit to them, so we try to be careful, but still drop our egg-yolks. We eat them gritty and try to remember our table-manners, and wonder why it is that everybody seems to have better sandwiches. I swap my neat triangles of Marmite for some hunks of bread and dripping.

  Fathers sit on the grass, or benches, or tree-stumps as the fancy takes them. Children sit on the grass and no choice, wanting none. Grandfather never drinks anything but Instant Postum or beer. Here his beer comes flat and tepid. Grandfather takes things as they come — and lets us have a swig, secretly.

  Teatime runs into rounders and piggy-in-the-middle — to give the little ones a chance. The last of the goat's-milk tea is drunk, the last jammy scone shared between two of the boys who have ever-open traps. The brown pots and thick cups are collected with enthusiasm by those of us who will try for another excuse to get into Miss Biddlecombe's kitchen.

  How long have we been here? From early afternoon under full sun, to the first midge-rise from shady parts in the long grass. Shadows become purpled. Tomorrow's fine day is in a high-dancing cloud of gnats and mackerel in the sky. There must be days when the gnats are laid low and rooks make woolly baskets in the sky over Squab, but we shall not know of them.

  'Everybody ready then?'

  'You all packed up?'

  'Got your cardigan?'

  'Your football?'

  'Your primroses?'

  'Rhododendrons?'

  'Bits of moss?'

  'Animal skull?'

  Are they serious? We haven't seen the big scene.

  'Wait!'

  'Please wait!'

  'Oh, Dad, Dad.'

  'We want to see her feed the birds.'

  'Here she is.'

  Her apron sags with the weight of the corn she carries.

  'Chick, chick, here chick, chick.'

  Hardly has she said 'chick' once, when there is a flapping, fluttering and squawking, hooting and honking from every part of the woodland. From everywhere come the birds. Geese, hens, cocks, ducks, drakes, guinea-fowl, pigeons and wigeons and all the woodland hangers-on. Goats, kids and a piglet or two run in. No, not at all like Disneyland. It is a sight like no other. Starlings locust-like over Birmingham, ostriches in huge flocks on the South African veldt, flamingos in pink thousands will never compete with her — feeding the birds over Squab.

  The walk home is taken at the pace of the slowest. There is time to look, to listen to the zizz-zizz of the solitary bumble-bee and the on-and-on cuckoo and the fossilized eight o'clock curfew ribboning in the evening air. There is time for us to make wings from bracken and to stick the name of our sweethearts in burrs on our sleeves, make heads of rye-grass crawl up our arms, and to strip the ribs from plantain leaves to make tobacco secretly.

  Mist rises from marshy ground. Mothers button up and frown at fathers who ought to know better than to dawdle once the sun has gone. Summer mists can be treacherous. Our mothers who were flappers dancing the Charleston and the Cakewalk ten years ago, have become old wives without intending to. They know that there's something nasty about a summer mist, and Aunt Rose will have to make her Barbados sugar and snail cure again if we hang about here.

  At the bottom of Green Hill, where it has been for centuries, is the Horse and Jockey.

  'Going in for a quick one?'

  Ah ... Grandfather could do with a pint ... maybe four or five ... back at the forge tomorrow.

  'We ought to get on.'

  'We got the greenhouse to shut.'

  'The horse to see to.'

  'The baby to see to.'

  So, those who have no horses to water, pigs to feed or children too tired to take any more, go into the garden at the back of the Horse and Jockey to round off the perfect day with a glass of cold bitter. Those of us still young enough to appreciate it, get a glass of sharply-sweet, brilliant saffron-yellow draught lemonade. Our tongues will still be coloured in the morning.

  As we walk home from the Jockey, the twilight runs out and the moon rises. We go to bed with a lick and a promise.

  After the excitement of the day, my sister breathes her tiny night-time asthma wheeze close to my ear. Sometimes when I listen I think that she isn't really my sister but a field-mouse who has been enchanted and there will be a reward when she is returned to her real family of field-mice.

  I can just see the picture of the lady in the crinoline with her stupid poem, 'Roses for remembrance,/Summer's sweetest flowers,/Yielding their sweet fragrance,/To bless the passing hours.' Usually I hate her for never doing anything except look at the blobs she says are roses, but not tonight. I am still full of whatever it is I get from my big family when we are all together.

  The night is full of smells and sounds.

  The hawthorn hedge that was cut this morning, the newly-turned earth of the front
garden, the Seven Rubbing Oils on my sister's chest, next-door's lilac and the chips they are frying.

  In the distance the late train to Bristol toots to Mr Hopkins in the signal-box. I've been there with Grandfather. It is like being inside a real toy, it smells of the hot stove and burning coke, tea and Brasso; messages are passed on in clicks and bells.

  A whiff of Grandfather's Nosegay tobacco.

  My mother is cutting the bread for the slices of lamb my father is carving, ready for work tomorrow.

  Grandfather's boots crunch on the gravel as he goes to fasten the gate.

  'Goodnight, George.'

  'Ah, goodnight, Bert.'

  That's Mr Nutland.

  'Had a good day?'

  That's Mrs Nutland.

  'We saw you going off.'

  'We've been over Squab.'

  'It's been a nice day for it.' She walks on.

  Mr Nutland will see Grandfather in the morning, on the train going to work, exchanging no more than a nod. He lingers.

  'We haven't been over Squab for years.'

  'It don't change.'

  'Ah.'

  'Seems further these days, though.'

  'Might as well make the most of it while we can.'

  'Ah, you're right there.'

  'D'you reckon it'll come then?'

  I listen hard, straining my ears, not wanting to hear. Grandfather knows everything about politics and economics and unions. If he says there will be a war, then there will be. Heavenly Father, please don't let there be a war. Amen.

  'Good war's just what They want. Never did harm to profit. Shan't have no unemployed, Bert.'

  'Ah.'

  'They can always find money for a good war.'

  'You're about right, George.'

  'You won't see many of That Lot in the front line, though.'

  'And that's a fact, George.'

  'I give it till the end of the summer.'

  I know now that there will be a war, and that I shall probably not reach double figures. All the time I've waited to be ten.

  'Night then, George.'

  'Night, Bert.'

  Grandfather comes up the path quietly singing one of his party songs.

  'Up the ladder with the bricks and mortar,

  Down the ladder with the empty hod,

  All we want are labourer's wages,

  We're the boys to carry them along.

  Oh!

  There's money in the country,

  It's locked up in the store,

  We fork it out most quickly

  When we want to go to war,

  The Rolling Trades, in motion,

  We ask for nothing more

  That seems to be the cry all over England.'

  He comes indoors, places his working boots and blacksmith's spark-cap near the back door ready for six-thirty tomorrow morning and the railwayman's train. Before he leaves, he will have a pint of Instant Postum made with plenty of sugar, and a piece of fruit cake, or perhaps lardy-cake or doughnuts. One of the things I've been waiting to be grown up for is having cake for breakfast like him. He won't even have the lamb sandwiches Mother and Father have been making. Sweet tooth, he bends hot metal with Co-op jam or lemon curd.

  The gaslamp in the street flickers and it occurs to me quite suddenly that God isn't true. I felt like this when I realized that there was no Santa Claus. Relieved, contained, glad it was all done by people who loved you. No mystery, no magic, just people.

  It will be a long time before it will be safe to tell anyone — my school is C of E, and next year I'm going to be Confirmed.

  The pipes bang as my mother fills the kettle.

  The familiar sound of my father rattling a spoon around in the pickle-jar.

  Grandfather takes a bottle of beer from under the stairs.

  SISTERS — UNDER THE SKIN

  SISTERS — UNDER THE SKIN

  It was odd that we didn't hear the doorbell in the night. There's no doubt that Sara's friends tried to waken us, but none of us heard — not even the children whose room was across the hall. Possibly it was because I had been in hospital for a few days, which meant that routines had been disrupted and we were all making up for it. The fact remains, though, that during the night they had tried to waken us four or five times, but it wasn't until dawn that I heard the bell go.

  The Zulu overseer of the cleaners, James, was waiting.

  'M'em, the girl Sara. The other girls can do nothing. Can the M'em come?'

  'Is she ill?'

  'She is...' he searched the ground for the right word. 'She is unwell. Emily is with her.'

  Of course, Emily would be. Emily was always in the midst of everything.

  As I climbed the last step to the servants' living quarters on the roof, I heard her clearly above the hubbub.

  Emily's massive bosom was the source of her command. She weighed twice that of the other women servants, and was as tall as any of the men. Nobody had such a magnificent sounding-board to enhance voice quality. English, Xhausa, kitchen-Kaffir, she could out-boom everyone.

  She saw me and detached herself from the crowd, shoving people to one side.

  'Here she is. Here is the Medam. Medam, over here.'

  She spread her arms wide and I ran the gauntlet of inquisitive Africans. Ill at ease, an intruder in their territory, I kept my head down and they made way for me.

  Emily received me with ponderous gravity.

  'The Medam is well again?'

  'Oh, I wasn't ill — just a little operation.'

  She nodded knowingly. 'In the woman hospital.'

  I don't know how she knew, perhaps she didn't — an educated guess. Anyhow, that is where I had been for the past week.

  'Things will be better for you now.'

  'Yes. Thank you, Emily. Much better.'

  She turned to a little group of women eating mealie-pap straight from little saucepans.

  'I said the English Medam would come.'

  Contempt for those who hadn't expected me to go up on the roof.

  'I say to James he must tell the English Medam the Worm has come to the Girl.'

  My stomach turned over. Oh God. Worms. That's what it was. You don't have to live in South Africa long before you learn an entirely new set of possible attacks upon the body. Don't swim in rivers. Wash everything that isn't cooked. Be careful about water-melons. Be careful about the spring milk. Wear the shoes, Medam, the jiggers will eat the toes! 'The Worm has come to the Girl.' I dreaded loathsome and unknown, disgusting infection.

  It was one of those moments when an experience is so alien that it is difficult to relate to it. Yesterday I was behind huge plate-glass windows ... polish, space, air-conditioning, in the luxurious surroundings of the private wing of the Rand Clinic. Today I was on the roof surrounded by black faces and lines of washing, little cooking-stoves, washing-troughs and rows of shed-like rooms and 'The Worm has come to the Girl'.

  Emily turned to the little crowd which wanted to see what I would do.

  'Go, go,' she waved her massive arms. 'This is not the carnival parade.'

  The servants picked up their employers' washing or mops and brushes and drifted off to work. I was left standing with Emily and James.

  'Wait here!' she ordered, and James hunkered down at her command and took out a flat, pinched-out dog-end and lit up. Emily beckoned and I followed.

  'It is the Girl. The Worm has come to her in the night. Please sit.' She indicated a wooden stool which she brushed off with her apron.

  'Shall I phone the doctor?'

  She didn't answer, but turned to James and said, 'You hear, the Medam will phone a doctor?'

  James grinned at me.

  'Right then, show me which is her room and I'll go and see how she is. I can't get the doctor out until I know what's wrong.'

  I was still standing. Again she dusted off the stool.

  I sat.

  'Does the Medam know what is the Worm?'

  I shook my head.

  'It
is,' she lowered her voice confidentially and turned her head away from James, 'a thing that comes to many girls — very much when they come to This Place.'

  'This Place' was the name Sara always used for Johannesburg — the city, but I got the impression that Emily was referring to here, Chaucer Hall, the flats.

  'It has come to your Girl.'

  I assumed that she was trying not to talk indelicately to the young Madam.

  'You mean?' I mimed holding myself as though suffering cramps.

  'No, no, no.' She waved her hand back and forth erasing the idea. 'This Worm — it is ... bad spirit.'

  Bad spirit. When Sara spoke about bad spirit, I had taken it to mean feeling out of sorts, down, depressed. Some normally friendly woman passing along the corridor head down and withdrawn, would be 'full up of bad spirit today'.

  'Well, where is she? I've come to see her.'

  This was Emily at her most exasperating. In the corridor you could always break away from her with some excuse or other, but here she had me trapped.

  Emily lowered her lids and shook her head.

  'Medam, I will tell you. This thing, this Worm, it makes the girls not know what they do. Medam, did you not hear your Girl screaming?'

  I caught glimpses of movement out of the corner of my eye. Several women were pretending to be busy, they were mostly women I knew well, from our own corridor. What was going on between me and Emily was evidently of intense interest.

  'No, I didn't hear anything until James came.'

  'Medam, we have come for you many times in the night.'

  'I know, I know...'

  She put up her broad hand, full of command. 'It is all right, Medam, you could not hear the doorbell, or even the knocker. Sara's bad spirit would not allow...'

  I think it was my unease that brought me to my feet, but for some reason I kept my voice down. 'Emily, that's a lot of nonsense. If you don't show me where Sara is, I shall ask somebody else.'

  'Very well, Medam.'

  I followed her through the rows of washing almost to the edge of the building. It was very high up. The parapet was not much more than waist-high.

  When Emily unlatched one of the doors I found that I had been holding my breath.

  'Sara's room, Medam.' She held open the door for me and followed me in.