A Sister's Duty

by June Francis

  She made no answer, dark button eyes sliding from Babs’s face to Rosie’s. ‘Yous the eldest?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes.’ Rosie’s expression was curious.

  Her answer did not seem to give the old woman much pleasure. ‘Yer the picture of her but I hope yer not like her,’ she grunted. ‘The lad, though, he’s the spittin’ image of our Joe when he was that age – and I’ve a proper studio photo at home to prove it. I’m Maggie Kilshaw, yer grandma, and I’ve come to see what I can do for yous all.’

  There was an astonished silence.

  ‘You’ve chosen your moment,’ said Amelia, ice in her voice. ‘We’ve had the funeral and everything’s sorted out.’

  ‘We thought you were dead,’ said Rosie in wonder, trying to take in that this old woman, who somehow reminded her of a dame in a pantomime, was really her dad’s mother.

  ‘I could have been for all anybody cared,’ sniffed Maggie. ‘As it is I’ve dragged meself out of me sick bed to come and do me duty by yous kids.’

  ‘You don’t have to bother. I’m in charge of these children,’ said Amelia, fingers tightening on Harry’s shoulder, remembering that confrontation on her own front step years ago. ‘I’m their aunt, Amelia Needham.’

  A scowl brought Maggie’s bushy brows together. ‘Aye! I thought I recognised yer. And still just as hoity-toity as ever yer was. I haven’t forgotten yer pa keeping me waiting on the step, telling me my Joe wasn’t good enough for his daughter.’

  Amelia’s eyes flashed. ‘And who was it who said my sister wasn’t good enough for her son?’

  ‘She wasn’t!’ Maggie rapped her stick on the pavement. ‘A right flibbertigibbet! Thought she’d get her hands on me money through our Joe, but I wasn’t having it!’

  ‘You don’t look like you’ve two farthings to rub together,’ said Rosie, ears pricking.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t go by appearances, girl,’ said Maggie. ‘My Joe should have taught you that.’

  ‘Dad did. But even so.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Mam wouldn’t have cared if you’d looked like a duchess or owned the Bank of England. She married Dad because she loved him.’

  ‘Ha!’ Maggie’s expression was disbelieving. She leant heavily on her stick. ‘Sez something, I suppose, that yer loyal to her memory. And yer dad, what did you feel about my Joe?’

  ‘I loved my dad. It was awful when he was killed.’ Rosie blinked back unexpected tears.

  Maggie made a noise in her throat. ‘Glad yer feel like that,’ she said gruffly. ‘Strong, are yer, girl?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ said Amelia, deciding the conversation between the two of them had gone on far too long. ‘If you think you’re going to take this girl and use her as a skivvy, you’ve got another think coming!’

  ‘Perish the thought,’ said Maggie, little button eyes rounding, one hand going to her bolster of a bosom. ‘Use me own flesh and blood as a skivvy? Not bleeding likely! I was thinking what I could do for the girl.’

  ‘You do surprise me.’ Amelia raised her eyebrows in that way Rosie was becoming familiar with. ‘Going to spoil her, are you? Give her everything you’ve got?’

  Maggie pursed her lips. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Amelia, eyes glinting. ‘Our Violet said once you were an old Scrooge and I’ve seen no reason to doubt it. Come on, children. The only thing your grandmother will pass on to you is bad language and bad ways.’ She lifted Harry into the cart but Rosie stayed where she was, eyes darting to the dumpy figure of her grandmother before returning to her aunt. ‘Wait! I can’t just walk away. She’s my gran. Don’t I have a duty to her?’

  ‘Give me strength!’ cried Amelia, rolling her eyes. ‘This woman has ignored your existence all these years, Rosie. You don’t owe her a thing. She was rude about your mother and cut your father off without a farthing. Did he ever talk about her, you tell me that?’

  ‘No. But—’ The girl gnawed on her lip. ‘But she’s still Dad’s mam and she’s not going to send Harry to Australia, is she?’

  ‘I’m not. And I’m your aunt who came as soon as I was called. Despite our Violet cadging plenty of money from Father for you lot when times were hard in the Thirties.’

  Rosie began to tremble inside. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘Why else d’you think he had to mortgage the house? She used to go to the shop when Father was there on his own and give him her sob stories. Brownie told me.’

  ‘Nobody called me, not even when our Joe died,’ said Maggie, tapping Rosie’s arm with her stick to gain her attention. ‘It wasn’t until I saw yer ma’s death in the newspaper that I gets to know our Joe’s dead too. Broke me heart, I did, crying. Almost bust me stitches. So I gets up off me sick bed and goes along to the cop shop to find out where yous kids live. And, blow me down, don’t I find out that yers have been living only five minutes away all this time. So I came right away. Family’s family, after all.’

  ‘Family didn’t matter to you in the past when your Joe was struggling,’ said Amelia, staring at her with distaste. ‘This has gone on long enough.’

  ‘Now you just watch it,’ said Maggie, shaking one leathery-looking finger, face flooding with dislike. ‘Family’s always mattered to me. It was yer sister getting her claws into my Joe that made me do what I did. But he was besotted and put her before his poor old mother. Still, that’s all in the past now he’s dead, poor lad. But one thing’s for sure: he’d want me to look after his kids.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh! He had more sense than that.’ Amelia tugged Dotty’s hand, urging her up into the cart. ‘Come on now, Babs. And you, Rosie.’

  She hesitated. ‘Wait! Gran, we thought you lived down by the docks?’

  ‘And so I did, girl.’ She chomped on toothless gums. ‘But I was bombed out, wasn’t I? So I moved in with me friend Emily, but she kicked the bucket a few months ago. Fair ol’ shock, that was. Now I’m on me own.’ She sighed gustily. ‘There’s room for yous all. But I wouldn’t deprive yer aunt of the pleasure of all of yer company. Just yous, girl, would do me. I’m real lonely these days and mightn’t have long to live.’

  Rosie did not know what to make of this grandmother of hers, and was still stunned by what Amelia had said about her mother taking money from her grandfather. Still, there was one thing her grandmother could give her that Aunt Amelia definitely could not and that was information about her father. ‘I’d like to go with her,’ she said, gazing up at her aunt.

  ‘I’d let you,’ said Amelia, ‘only I wouldn’t be doing my duty by our Violet if I did. This woman is working on your sympathy. You can’t trust her. Think of your father. And I’ll remind you, Rosie, that you have sisters and a brother who have more of a claim on you and will need you in the coming months. Also that I’m your legal guardian. Now, in the cart! And that’s an order, not a request.’

  Babs scrambled up into the cart but still Rosie hesitated and the atmosphere became tense. ‘Where do you live, Gran?’ she asked.

  The old woman told her.

  ‘Right!’ The girl smiled and flung her bundle into the cart, climbing in after it. ‘I’ll come and see you, then. If that’s OK?’

  ‘I’m disappointed in yer, girl.’ Maggie’s expression had turned ugly. ‘I thought yer were one of me own and would do what I asked, but yer just like yer father. No backbone.’ And without another word, she turned and stumped away.

  ‘You all off then?’ Suddenly Gwen was there, taking their attention from that solitary figure.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Baxendale.’ The children smiled at her.

  ‘You’ll come back and see us?’ she said, scooping up their cat in mid-lick as it cleaned itself on their front step.

  ‘Of course we will,’ they chorused.

  ‘Thanks for everything,’ said Rosie, resting her chin on the side of the cart, thinking Davey’s mother was someone who had been there for them for as long as she could remember.

  ‘Well, don’t you forget.’ Her
thin face with lines crisscrossing it, as fine as a spider’s web, creased into a smile. ‘Our Davey’ll be looking out for you, Rosie.’

  The girl flushed and murmured something indistinct, thinking Davey’s mother was just daydreaming.

  The driver flicked the reins and the cart jerked forward. The children continued to wave until the skinny figure in the flowered pinny and headscarf turban turned and went indoors.

  Chapter Five

  ‘I’m going to need your help, Rosie,’ said Amelia. ‘And yours, Babs.’ She smiled at this middle niece of hers, regarding her as the least troublesome of the three girls.

  Rosie looked up from contemplating the cobbled road which was taking her away from the place that held all the dearest memories of her parents and childhood. ‘What kind of help? You never mentioned help before.’ There was an edge to her voice.

  ‘I am now,’ said Amelia firmly, gripping the side of the cart as it took a corner too sharply. ‘Surely you don’t expect coming to live with me to be a joyride? I have to be at the shop all day, and so until you leave school, we’re all going to have to pitch in with the housework and everything else. As well as that, there’s the Hudson twins.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Babs, looking interested.

  ‘You’ll be meeting them later. And I’m expecting you all to put yourselves out to make them welcome. They’ve lost their mother too.’ Amelia saw no need to explain further.

  The Hudson twins were identical except Tom had a tiny scar at the corner of his left eye from where he had walked into a wall. They each had their father’s thick tawny hair, slate-grey eyes and well-defined nose. When they smiled, dimples formed in their cheeks. But there the likeness to their father ended because the vicissitudes of life had not left a mark on the boys’ freckled faces, nor had the years slimmed their short stocky bodies into the tough, lean fitness of Peter Hudson, who even before he had gone to war had been an active member of the Territorials.

  They had also to learn the arts of dissembling and of thinking before they acted. They had not been in Amelia’s house an hour before getting into mischief. They stood before her now, hands behind their backs, feet slightly apart, clad in similar navy-blue jumpers and black serge shorts, trying to look as if half-drowning her cat and then attempting to put it through the mangle to dry had not endangered its life.

  ‘We wouldn’t really have put it right through,’ said Tom, the elder by half an hour, in his most beguiling voice.

  ‘We were just trying to squeeze some of the water out of its fur,’ said Jimmy helpfully. ‘And that seemed the quickest way. We didn’t want it catching cold.’

  Harry snorted. ‘It was wicked!’

  Two sets of eyes swivelled in his direction as the twins calculated how best to get revenge.

  ‘Look at me!’ ordered Amelia, tapping each on the shoulder with the bamboo cane she held. ‘You must think I was born yesterday!’ She had hoped it was not going to be like this. Why she had been so optimistic she didn’t know.

  Tom eyed the cane uneasily. Telling the truth had always worked fine with their mother. ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil’ had been one of her favourite sayings and it had served them well. She had caught them with the back of her hand occasionally but that had been more by luck than anything. He felt a soreness in his throat just thinking of his mother and shifted so that his shoulder touched his brother’s, the warmth of it bringing some kind of comfort.

  ‘We didn’t mean to hurt Sooty. We like cats,’ he said. ‘We’re very, very sorry.’

  ‘Yes. We’re sorry,’ echoed Jimmy.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it but you’re not getting off without punishment. Sooty’s tail will never be the same. Now, left hands out.’ One swift stroke each, enough to sting and make them think twice before doing such a thing again, thought Amelia. ‘Now go and play. There’s a game of Snakes and Ladders in the cupboard over there. You can teach Harry.’

  Thomas plonked himself down on the rug in front of the fire. ‘We don’t want to play stupid Snakes and Ladders with him. He’s a telltale tit!’

  ‘Don’t use that expression.’ Amelia frowned down at him. ‘Rosie, you watch them. I have to see to supper.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ she groaned. ‘I’ve homework. Anyway, I think they’re a pair of horrors and should have got six of the best.’ She whisked out of the room carrying an armful of books.

  ‘Babs?’

  ‘I’m setting the table.’

  ‘I don’t want to play with them,’ said Harry, wheeling his engine on the floor.

  ‘That suits us,’ said Tom, eyes fixed on the toy.

  Silence reigned, lulling Amelia into thinking matters would get better between the two lots of children, but all the time lines of defence and attack were being drawn up.

  Chris came to pick up the twins around eight o’clock. By then Harry and Dotty were in bed and the twins were drooping. Amelia took him into the kitchen and made him a cup of tea, asking how the inquest had gone.

  ‘They said she took her own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed,’ he whispered unhappily. ‘Do you think people imagine and say things that aren’t true when they’re like that?’

  Amelia did not know how to reply. She faced sick people every day in her work, as well as the dying and the bereaved, but she knew little about the mentally ill. She would have liked to have had a ready answer for him but didn’t. There was something obscene about suicide. It said dreadful things about more than one person’s failure.

  ‘She couldn’t face the blindness, that’s all I know,’ said Amelia in a low voice, not wanting to hurt him by saying any more.

  ‘But she might not have gone blind! Didn’t she care about us at all?’ he said bitterly.

  Amelia looked at his young, bruised-looking face. Shock and not enough sleep had marked him. Gazing at him, a memory stirred. ‘I’m sure she loved you.’

  He was silent and she guessed he found that hard to accept. She did herself. If you loved, how could you deliberately do something which you knew would hurt those closest to you? The mind had to be unbalanced. Yet hadn’t she herself given up Bernard, knowing that would hurt him? But the thought would not help the boy or herself. For now, there was nothing she could think of to say that would help him but there were things to do. ‘The funeral?’ she murmured.

  Chris nodded. ‘They won’t allow her to be buried in consecrated ground, will they?’

  Amelia shook her head. The thought hurt her. Even though Tess had not been a Catholic, Amelia believed she had a soul worth the saving. Surely God in His mercy knew that as well and would have pity on a life which had been spoilt by an illness not of Tess’s own making?

  ‘She will be buried, though. And we’ll pray for her.’

  Chris nodded, knowing that the two women had never let their religious differences affect their friendship.

  Amelia gave him the remains of the soup she had made and went to get the twins’ coats.

  Tess’s funeral was the most trying of all the events she had gone through in the last couple of weeks. Very few people attended the graveside service but the boys were stoic, bearing themselves well, and Amelia thought Tess and Peter would have been proud of them.

  The next day, she visited the Mother Superior of St Vincent’s and, not without a great deal of persuasion and reference to the girl’s background, arranged for Dotty to be allowed into the school. Amelia had already initiated a course of instruction for her in the Roman Catholic faith. Tears were shed, almost enough to fill a bucket on the day she was parted from her sisters and brother, but Amelia remained firm in her conviction that St Vincent’s would be the making of Dotty.

  Babs and Harry were also to take instruction but as Babs was nearly fourteen and would be leaving school soon, Amelia thought there was little point in her moving from the school she already attended. Harry was enrolled at a small local Catholic school where he seemed happy enough. At least, he did not complain to his aunt.

&nb
sp; Rosie would be sixteen in March before taking her school certificate in the summer. She insisted she would not take instruction. Amelia decided to leave things as they were for the moment.

  An uneasy month passed in which the twins’ aim to get back at Harry was thwarted time and again by his sisters. So Tom and Jimmy took to wandering, not only on Lord Sefton’s Estate, where Chris worked on the farm, but much further afield. They were a constant worry to Amelia and were it not for that letter from Tess, there were times when she would have cheerfully washed her hands of them.

  One day they walked as far as the Pierhead and were brought home by a policeman. Another time they played darts and one put a dart into the other’s head. Their welfare caused Amelia many a sleepless night. Two families! How could she possibly amalgamate them if anything should happen to Peter? The house seemed overcrowded to her, having become used to her own company during the last year. So many things about having children in her home drove her crazy. But most of all it was just having more of everything to deal with. More wet towels, more washing, ironing, shopping, cooking. More noise. Even the wireless no longer seemed her own.

  Then in March, when the first of the crocuses were opening their purple and yellow petals beneath the apple tree, two letters arrived for her. Having no time to read them immediately and with a certain amount of trepidation concerning their contents, she crammed them into her handbag and placed it in the basket in front of her bicycle as she set off for work, wishing not for the first time as she passed the chemist’s on the corner opposite Alder Hey Hospital that her father could have held the lease on that shop. As it was, theirs was in Kensington, nearer the town centre, because that was where he had lived as a boy. Amelia had been born in the rooms over the shop and it was not until Iris arrived that the family had moved out to West Derby. Iris . . . What would her letter say?

  As soon as Amelia reached the shop, had donned her overall and greeted Mr Brown, she took her sister’s letter from her handbag and began to read:

  Dearest Lee,

  I hate to think of what you must be going through, having to deal with Violet’s funeral and everything. It must bring back memories of that terrible quarrel and Father’s stroke. I think you’re noble taking on Vi’s kids but is that really fair, I wonder? Bill and I would dearly love to lighten your load. It is a great grief to us that due to his wounds we’ll never be able to have children of our own.