A Sister's Duty

by June Francis

  Dearest Lee, could you see your way to sending one of each sex to us? There’s plenty of room here and we’re not short of a bob or two. Write me times of sailings and everything as soon as possible.

  With much love,

  Your loving sister, Iris

  With careful fingers and an uncertain expression, Amelia folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. Oh, Lord! What was she to do about such an offer? Poor Iris, not to be able to have children. It was a generous proposal but Rosie would not like the idea one little bit. Even so . . . Amelia stared into space, thinking of all the material things Iris and Bill could give two of the children that she could not. What was she to do? Then she remembered the other letter in her handbag and reached for it, glad to delay making a decision.

  For a moment she hesitated, apprehensive about the contents of Peter’s letter. Then, abruptly, she slit the envelope with one finger and spread the sheet of paper on the counter.

  Dear Lee,

  It was good of you to write so quickly and although you make no mention of a letter from Tess, I know she sent you one because she wrote of it in her one to me. This is a difficult letter to write. You must be feeling as stunned as I am by what she did but I have to pull myself together and think of the children. I don’t know what you feel about her idea of us taking care of the boys? She doesn’t mention the words ‘a marriage of convenience’ but that’s the only way I can see us managing it.

  Amelia stopped reading and put a hand to her breast as if she could contain the sudden heavy thudding of her heart, which seemed to be threatening to break out of its confines of skin and bone. Marriage! Was that what Tess had meant?

  Amelia bit on her lower lip so hard she tasted blood and hastily resumed her reading.

  I know it needs some thinking about. You would have to give up much more than I would. Your house, the shop. Perhaps it’s too much to ask when all I can offer is my name, a limited income and three lads to mother? As well as that there’s the question of me being a Proddy and you a Cattywak. It is too much! Forget it. I don’t know what else to say except thanks for always being a good friend to us both.

  Warmest regards,

  Pete

  Amelia had to sit down because her legs were trembling so much. To give up her independence, house and shop and marry Pete whom she had liked for a long time? To be a married woman at last! The thought gave her a certain amount of pleasure but was liking enough? And all for the sake of Tess’s children. She did not know what to think. Then she remembered Pete did not know yet that Violet was dead and that Amelia had her children to take care of too. She would have to write and tell him it was impossible. Although there was Iris’s offer to take two of the children . . . But would it be right to separate them? Besides, there was still some danger from German U boats. She just did not know what to do. She needed to think and would do that better after she had seen the solicitor dealing with Violet’s affairs. She had a meeting with him that afternoon. Perhaps she could ask him for advice?

  Amelia left the solicitor’s office full of hope. Hours on her feet, back at work having to deal with several difficult customers and a mistake with a prescription, meant she had little time to consider just how she was going to word the letters to Iris and Pete. So it did not help or improve her mood when she arrived home to be told by Rosie that the twins had stolen Harry’s engine.

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t just wash your hands of them Hudsons,’ said the girl, hands on hips, scowling at her aunt. ‘They’re always picking on our Harry.’

  ‘You’ve got proof, have you, that they’ve taken his engine?’ said Amelia, pulling off a glove.

  ‘Who else would have done it? They know he loves that engine and they’ve been determined to get their own back after the episode of the cat and the mangle.’

  ‘So you accused them?’

  She shrugged. ‘Harry accused them. We just backed him up and they shot out of the house. We’ve been to theirs but got no answer.’

  ‘Does Chris know about this?’ said Amelia, pausing in the act of taking off her hat.

  ‘No. You don’t think we were going to go looking for him on the farm?’ said Rosie with an incredulous expression on her face.

  ‘One of the neighbours told me the twins have been seen in the street during school hours, eating scraps thrown to the birds,’ said Babs, licking jam off her fingers. ‘She’s going to report them to the school board. She thinks they should be taken into care until their dad comes home. Said Chris wasn’t doing a good enough job.’

  Amelia was silent, wondering what to do. Rosie sat down and picked up a pen which she dipped into a bottle of ink. She glanced at her aunt and saw she looked tired and, annoyingly, felt guilty. ‘I’m sorry if you think we should have gone to the farm. But it was getting dark and it’s a heck of a walk. Besides, I’ve work to do, Aunt Amelia – you told me I’ve got to do well in these exams. And we had to see to the tea – and Babs has been doing the ironing – and there was our Harry—’

  ‘OK, you don’t have to give me any more excuses!’ Amelia put her hat and gloves on again and walked out the back to get her bicycle out. Why couldn’t that woman have helped? she fumed. Just because the twins were little devils, it didn’t mean they didn’t deserve some help.

  She cycled down the path and almost collided with Chris, wheeling his bicycle as he pushed open the gate. ‘Have you seen the twins?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah! I told them to go home but they’re not there. That’s why I’m here, just in case they’d come to bring the engine back.’

  ‘So they do have it?’

  ‘They told me all about it.’ He groaned. ‘They’ll be the death of me! Where can they have got to now?’

  ‘They don’t have a den anywhere? You know what kids are like.’ She was thinking of Rosie and the others running away.

  His eyes widened. ‘Of course! I know where they’ll be. It’s a bit of a way, though.’

  ‘Let’s go. And when I find them, I’m going to kill the pair of them,’ she said vehemently. ‘Worrying us both like this.’

  Amelia had to climb over piles of rubble in a street off Prescot Road. She had to duck under cracked and broken lengths of wood and remnants of brick wall before finding the twins. They were huddled in front of a miserable, crackling apology for a fire. ‘You pests!’ exclaimed their brother wrathfully. ‘D’you know how much trouble you’ve caused?’

  ‘Shut up, Chris,’ said Amelia, noticing the boys were not only filthy but shivering. ‘That can wait. Let’s get them home.’

  ‘Don’t want to go home,’ muttered Tom, poking a stick into the fire. ‘Nothing there.’

  ‘I meant my house. Come on, you can’t stay here.’ Her voice was firm, although inside she was trembling. What if something had happened to them? What if they’d fallen into the Mersey or accidentally gassed themselves at home? Then she would be to blame. Tess had asked her, almost literally on her death bed, to take care of them, and she was failing them, just as she had failed her friend.

  Jimmy glanced at Tom. Neither of them moved.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Amelia, crouching until her face was on a level with theirs.

  Jimmy’s eyes shifted to his twin. Tom whacked the ground with the stick. Amelia kept a hold of her temper. ‘Now, Tom.’

  ‘D’you hear Aunt Lee? Move, you two!’ yelled Chris. ‘Or I’ll clout you one.’

  Tom darted past him, just out of reach.

  Amelia seized his arm. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Everything will be all right.’

  ‘You’ll take their side,’ shrilled Tom. ‘I want Mum. I want me mum!’

  Amelia hugged him to her, thinking of her friend and wishing things could be different. The boy struggled a moment then sagged against her shoulder, sobbing his heart out. Jimmy rapidly joined in. Chris turned his back on them but Amelia was aware that his shoulders were shaking too. What was she to do? The extent of their pain and inability to understand their mot
her’s death only intensified her own sense of loss and pain. ‘Come on, you can ride on the bikes. We’ll be home in no time,’ she managed to say, even forcing a cheery note into her voice.

  ‘Where were they?’ asked Rosie, standing in the bathroom doorway watching her aunt supervising the twins.

  Amelia raised her eyes and said wearily, ‘Does it matter? What does is that you make them feel welcome here. They can’t stay in their house any more. Chris can’t manage.’

  ‘So we have to put up with them? I tell you, Aunt Amelia, if they start on our Harry again—’

  ‘Enough!’ she shouted, throwing a sponge into the water. ‘They have lost their mother. You should know what that’s like! They don’t have an elder sister to care for them, or a real aunt, just Chris and me. So be kind . . .’ Her voice broke. Horrified, she turned her back on her niece.

  Rosie backed away, not only alarmed by Amelia’s vehemence but uncomfortably aware she herself had not been kind to the twins and still did not want to be. They seemed even more like intruders now they had come to stay than they had been before, and she did not doubt they were going to cause her more work.

  Amelia tucked them up in her own bed then sat in a chair, wondering if she had run mad but knowing now exactly how she was going to respond to Iris’s and Pete’s letters.

  The next few weeks were hectic with Amelia having to visit both a shipping agent and her solicitor. The twins seemed more settled and, although there were squabbles, the cane which Amelia kept handy under the sideboard ensured a degree of discipline. She cleared out the sewing room and the twins moved in there, sharing a bed from their old home. The noise of young people filled the house and Amelia had no rest at all. Her hands were also full at the shop because everyone seemed to have colds or else was demanding tonics. Finally, she received answers to her letters and dithered for only a few hours before finalising the arrangements for Babs and Harry to join Iris and Bill in Canada.

  It was early one Saturday morning towards the end of April, when the newspaper headlines announced the probable end of the war in Europe, that Chris dropped in before work to inform Amelia that Peter was home and would be calling in to see her later that day. She was filled with trepidation. Writing to him had to be a lot easier than speaking face to face. Despite having known him almost as long as she had known Tess, Amelia felt she had only really got to appreciate him after she had broken off her engagement to Bernard. Then only Peter had seemed to understand the difficulty of her situation and the pain of having to choose her family above the man she had loved. Although he had never said so, she had also known he had no time for the kind of man Bernard had been in those days.

  At least Amelia knew Peter was unlikely to go off the rails over Tess’s suicide. She found herself remembering the past and how once he had been besotted with the beautiful, delicate girl that Tess had been. Besotted enough to accept a mystery man’s child and Tess’s story of how she had been taken advantage of.

  They had married young and Peter had supported his wife and the baby, born supposedly prematurely, by working as a clerk in the Post Office – a job which Amelia guessed bored him to tears. He had joined the Territorials not long after his marriage but resigned when the twins were born.

  When war broke out he had volunteered and been assigned to the Pay Corps for Western Command in Chester, where Tess had been able to visit him with the children. Amelia had wondered at the time whether he had joined up to get away from his wife. Something had definitely gone out of the marriage by then. Had she finally told him who Chris’s father was? Amelia had no idea. Tess had always kept mum about the man’s identity. Probably she had taken that secret to the grave with her.

  The last time either woman had seen Peter was when Amelia had accompanied Tess and the twins to a transit camp in Newcastle after he had been called up for overseas service late in 1944. By then, Tess’s eyesight had been failing and the twins had been too much for a woman in her state of health to cope with alone.

  Amelia decided she had to get rid of the children for this first meeting. It was Saturday so Rosie was helping out at the shop and Chris was at work. She gave Babs money to take the boys to the pictures.

  Wanting to look her best, Amelia tried on various frocks before deciding to wear one of Violet’s. It was made of oatmeal crêpe-de-chine with padded shoulders and a calf-length skirt, fluttering about her long slender legs.

  The weather had turned cold again. The skies were heavy, threatening rain. Not the best of days, she thought, sitting in the parlour, an accounts book in front of her, wondering what time Peter would come.

  She saw him before he saw her but made no move, watching him come through the gate, glance up at the house (noticing the woodwork needed painting, she thought), and walk up the path. Her heart was already pounding before he rattled on the letter box and rapped the door with his knuckles.

  She dropped her fountain pen, ink blotching the page. Damn! She almost tripped over the cat as she made for the door. ‘Coming!’ she croaked as the letter box rattled again.

  He was gazing upwards, the line of his jaw and throat taut, profile etched against the dark sky, trilby pushed way back on his head, threatening to topple off. She was reminded of heads on coins, of Jesus saying to the Pharisees, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’, and wondered whether to hand the twins straight over to him and say she had changed her mind.

  Then Peter lowered his head and his slate-grey eyes met hers. It was the most peculiar feeling, seeing that likeness to the twins. She had no time to put up her defences and felt as if her inner self had been stripped bare and inspected. He removed his hat and smiled. She felt she had almost forgotten how to smile in the last few weeks but he made her remember. He had a lovely smile.

  ‘Hello, Lee. That’s a nice frock. And you’ve done something different with your hair. It looks good.’

  She did not know whether he really remembered how her hair used to be but so unaccustomed was she to compliments that a blush flooded her creamy skin. ‘You look very presentable yourself.’

  He was wearing a collar and tie, beige corduroy trousers and a brown hairy-looking jacket with elbows patched with leather. He was not really handsome, but when he smiled he gave the impression of being very good-looking indeed.

  ‘I had a job finding something decent to wear,’ he said ruefully. ‘The house was a bit upside-down.’

  She resisted the urge to say it had been worse before she and the girls had scrubbed and polished it from top to bottom a week ago. ‘Come in. I’ve sent the kids to the pictures so we can talk in peace.’

  He wiped his feet on the coconut mat and said almost casually, ‘You haven’t changed your mind?’

  ‘Have you?’ She rubbed her bare arms, feeling cold all of a sudden. ‘Written down, it sounded so sensible.’

  ‘But in the flesh I’m a bit too much to take, perhaps?’

  She made no answer, leading the way into the sitting room, hesitating in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘What are you offering?’ His eyes met hers briefly.

  ‘I’ve some whisky.’

  ‘Lucky me.’

  She went over to the drinks cupboard and poured them a double each. ‘It was Father’s. I was saving it for the end of the war. But what the hell? Your war’s as good as over, isn’t it?’

  ‘Catterick for a few weeks and then hopefully I’ll be home for good. I’ve explained how things are to my commanding officer. He has children of his own and is trying to be as helpful as he can.’

  ‘Good.’ She smiled and handed him a cut-glass tumbler. Their fingers brushed. His were cold, the skin rougher than she expected.

  ‘To us!’ he said, raising the glass.

  She was silent, nursing the drink between her hands.

  ‘Cold feet?’ He put down his glass.

  Amelia took a sip of her whisky. ‘I’m not sure. Everything feels so strange.’

 
‘It would be odd if it didn’t. We’ve never been in this situation before.’ His voice was pleasantly masculine. If he sang, he would probably be a tenor, she thought. And there was a certain scent issuing from him, compounded of a masculine smell, shaving soap and tweed. She liked it.

  ‘Why don’t you show me over the house?’ he said. ‘Tell me the arrangements you’ve made.’

  ‘OK.’ Amelia put down her glass but he picked it up again, handing it to her. ‘You might as well drink it if you’re feeling cold.’

  She did not argue, thinking a bit of Dutch courage wouldn’t go amiss. She hoped he would not grow bored and led him quickly through the morning room to the kitchen and then into the parlour. He had only been in the house once before and that was thirteen years ago.

  ‘You do your own accounts?’ he said, glancing down at the open pages of her ledger on the arm of a chair in the parlour.

  ‘Saves money.’

  He nodded. ‘Isn’t that partly what this is all about? Two households can live almost as cheaply as one.’

  She did not question what this was. ‘Not just money.’ Her voice was firm as she closed the book. ‘It’s about the children mainly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course. And Tess and you and me.’ There was sadness in his face. ‘A dying wish is a dying wish.’

  ‘From a suicide?’ she burst out, and immediately needed to take a large sip of her whisky.

  His expression froze. ‘Don’t ever say it aloud again. You can’t blame me any more than I blame myself.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said, mortified. ‘I blame myself. I was here at hand. You weren’t. And I blame her, if I’m honest.’

  ‘She was never strong. I used to think sometimes that I could snap her between my hands.’ He looked down at them, flexing his fingers, turning the palms over and gazing at the backs.