A Whisper to the Living

by Ruth Hamilton

  My mother squirmed in her chair, putting me in mind of Willy Walford from the Cottage Homes, an orphan boy who came for his lessons with his head shaved against the nits. He was a squirmer, was Willy Walford. And here was my mother carrying on the same way, the only difference being that she was bigger and had a full head of hair.

  I knew I was getting angry. My mother might not love me any more, but I didn’t want old Sister Nasty Knickers (as we called her on the sly) making my own Mam squirm like somebody from the orphanage. I fixed my gaze on the statue of the Immaculate Conception with the blue-glassed night light burning at its feet.

  ‘Have you anything to say for yourself, Annie Byrne?’

  I shifted my eyes towards the black-robed figure which, silhouetted against the window, looked like a grim monster from hell.

  ‘No,’ I replied, my voice clear and high.

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘No, Sister.’

  The nun came round the desk and stood in front of me and my mother and although this left but a few inches of space between her and us, I determinedly held my ground, though my mother did scrape her chair back a fraction, which made me even more angry and impatient.

  ‘Did you or did you not write those . . . foul words on Sister Immaculata’s blackboard?’ There was a long silence.

  ‘Answer the Sister, Annie.’ I felt very annoyed with my mother. Although her accent was never strong and her speech was virtually free of the usual Bolton colloquialisms, here she was, trying to talk dead posh just because we were in old Nasty Knickers’ office. My mother was afraid of Sister Agatha! Well, so was I, but I wasn’t going to let it show.

  ‘Yes. I wrote them.’

  Sister Agatha’s lip curled into a snarl. ‘Then I suggest you learn to spell, girl. The undergarment you mentioned in your scribblings begins with a K. And my name, young lady, is Sister Agatha.’

  My mother’s face was bright crimson by this time. No doubt she had already been informed that I had inscribed on the blackboard ‘Sister nasty nickers is a wicked old wich.’ It had only been for a dare anyway. Peter Bates had promised me his biggest, silverest bolly-bearing if I’d do it. And I’d done it, while Peter Bates had not, as yet, fulfilled his side of the bargain. I would deal with him later. Even if he did have irons on the soles of his clogs, while I had only rubbers on mine, I’d deal with him. I knew where to kick the boys to make it hurt.

  ‘Come on now, girl. Do your catechism,’ Sister Agatha was now saying. ‘Show your Mammy that we’ve taught you something, at least. Who made you?’

  ‘God made me.’

  ‘Why did God make you?’

  ‘God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.’ I paused for breath.

  ‘And have you any idea at all of what that means, Annie Byrne? It means that you are to be a good girl for the sake of your immortal soul.’

  My immortal soul was something I had not yet managed to come to grips with. Sister Immaculata had drawn an immortal soul on the blackboard only last week. It was like a balloon. When it was full of grace, it was round and coloured in with bright pink chalk. When it was empty, it sagged and had no colour at all. Except, of course, for the black spots of sin covering it like an attack of measles. And there again, you only got the measles if the sins were venial. Should your misdemeanours be mortal, then the soul would surely be black right through to the core – black, deflated and totally without shine.

  Of the location of my immortal soul I was unsure. Perhaps it was in my chest where I got the bad feelings when I was angry; perhaps that swelling, choking sensation I got was my immortal soul erupting and letting all the grace drain away. But I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I knew that my soul was in my belly where I often suffered pain after a bout of naughtiness. The whole thing was a terrible worry and I tried not to dwell on it too frequently.

  ‘And you will be making your First Confession soon, Annie Byrne. After which you will receive the most Blessed Sacrament of all, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.’

  I felt sick. I had no notion of cannibalism and therefore no opinion on the subject, but this did not sound quite right to me. I looked pleadingly towards my mother, who was no help at all. She just sat there staring at her shoes, her face grim and still crimson.

  Sister Agatha tutted her annoyance then, warming to her subject, went on in a shrill tone, ‘My goodness, child, have you not a grateful bone in your body? Jesus Christ suffered for you, died for you . . .’

  I didn’t hear the rest, because here was something I could latch on to, something I appreciated and understood. Jesus Christ was a hero. He had died for me. Well, my Dad had done the same; he was a hero too, he had died for me, for all of us, in fact. Why, he’d even died for old Nasty Knickers, though I felt sure she didn’t deserve it. My Dad had died so that the Nazis would stop bombing the mills and our houses. They were hopeless shots, Nazis. Four or five times they’d had a go at Trinity Street Station and missed. And they didn’t just miss a bit, they missed by miles.

  ‘Are you listening to me, Annie Byrne? Would you look at that now, Mrs Byrne. She’s away daydreaming while we’re here, the both of us, concerned with the survival of her immortal soul.’

  My mother nudged me none too gently with her elbow. ‘Whatever are you thinking about, Annie?’

  ‘Nazis,’ I replied, looking straight at Sister Agatha. Perhaps my original half-formed idea had been to elaborate, to tell Sister Agatha that I now understood the theory of martyrdom, that I was beginning to appreciate the fact of Jesus’s sacrifice. But something held me back and that single word, dropped into the room from the mouth of a five-year-old, seemed to have almost as devastating an effect as another bomb on Emmanuel Street. Sister Agatha nearly sat down on the edge of her desk as she groped for support, her right fist clenched tightly over her left breast, while my mother’s chin dropped, her gaping mouth allowing her a vacant and rather idiotic appearance.

  ‘Did . . . you . . . hear . . . that, Mrs Byrne?’ gasped Sister Agatha. ‘This child is wicked . . . wicked, I tell you!’

  I waited for my mother to speak, hopefully in my defence, but no answer came, though her tongue moved in her mouth as if she were trying to shape her thoughts.

  Sister Agatha began to pace back and forth across the room, throwing her arms wide then crossing them over her chest, looking for all the world like an ugly black crow trying to get off the ground. ‘She called me a Nazi . . . a Nazi – you heard her, Mrs Byrne.’

  She marched towards me, her claw-like hand pointing towards my face, the extended index finger stopping about an inch from the end of my nose. I looked straight at her, didn’t flinch, made no move away from her and I could see plainly that my boldness was not appreciated.

  ‘You will go, Annie Byrne, into the corridor. There you will say a decade of the Holy Rosary before the Sacred Heart. You will not stand, you will kneel and you will have no cushion for your knees.’

  Knowing I had done something bad, but having no real concept of what my sin had been, I toyed with the idea of standing my ground. Had my mother not been there, had I not been a witness to her lack of sympathy for me, I probably would have chosen to remain and take a whipping. But knowing that my mother would neither support nor defend me, I took one last look at her mortified expression before creeping out into the corridor to stare at the effigy in the corner.

  It was a statue of a long-haired man in a red cloak, patience and suffering etched deeply into its face. One hand lay across its chest where a heart dripping vivid red blood sat on a plain white undergarment. This was the Christ who had died for me. This was the Christ whose Body and Blood I would have to receive. I still felt sick.

  I touched an icy bare foot, tracing the toenails with the end of my finger. Well, this was definitely not body and blood. I scraped away a bit of the flesh-coloured paint to reveal chalky white plaster underneath. Then, kneeling on the cold marble floor, I took the beads from my pocket and bega
n to count my way through the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys and the Glory Bes. My knees hurt. On the end of my rosary, another Christ figure dangled, this time crucified and made of base metal and I swung this item about a bit to relieve the monotony.

  I knew I didn’t believe in what I was doing, in what I was saying. None of it made any sense. I shut my eyes tight and fought to believe, reaching down inside myself, trying to locate my immortal soul, hoping that it would inflate and fill with grace as I prayed. Nothing happened. I shuffled about the floor, trying to ease the agony in my knees.

  When I opened my eyes and gazed once more at the dripping heart, my stomach heaved and I vomited noisily onto the clean black and white floor before sliding down into unconsciousness. They found me there eventually, cleaned me up, put me into a nursery cot and gave me sips of water and a cool cloth for my head.

  From that day on, Sister Agatha ignored me almost completely. She never seemed to look directly at me again, avoiding me whenever possible, delegating my punishments to beings lesser than herself. Occasionally, I caught her looking at me sideways, but as soon as I met her eye she would turn away quickly, leaving in the space between us an atmosphere I did not yet recognize as shame.

  My contempt for her grew then lessened as other, more pressing, events pushed her from my mind. She was, after all, a person of no importance.

  4

  Changes

  ‘See what Eddie’s got for you, Annie. Come on, hurry up.’

  I pretended not to hear, whipping my newly chalked top into further frenzy until it skidded to a halt among the cobbles at the pavement’s edge. Sheila Davies, my best friend for the moment, straightened from her task of marking out a hopscotch on the flagstones. ‘Yer Mam’s shouting, Annie.’

  I picked up my top and sauntered over to Sheila.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see what she wants?’ she asked. ‘I think you’re right daft not playing with all them things he’s bought you.’

  She was right, I supposed. There I was with a veritable treasure trove – a scooter, a skipping rope set in varnished wooden handles with ball-bearings for smooth turning, a dolls’ house with curtains and smart furniture, all ignored out in the air-raid shelter. I couldn’t explain, not even to Sheila, why I wouldn’t play with the things. In truth, I found it difficult – indeed impossible – to explain to myself why I couldn’t, or wouldn’t take advantage of Eddie Higson’s generosity.

  ‘Get in here now, Annie!’ The tone of my mother’s voice precluded the possibility of any further attempts to ignore her.

  On entering our kitchen, I found Eddie Higson sitting, as usual, in the big rocker, my father’s rocker. This was placed to the left of the range and sideways on to the window, a position chosen by my father because the light enabled him to read his Bolton Evening News until dusk forced us to use the gas.

  I resented Eddie’s presence in my Dad’s chair, resented his presence in our house, the way he would put his feet up on the fireguard while my mother fetched him pint pots of thick, stewed tea and wedges of window pie. I had always loved window pie; it had been my favourite, made specially for me and only for me. Now I refused it, just as I refused to share anything with this man who had invaded my house, stolen my mother and spoiled my life.

  But this time, it was not going to be easy, for Eddie Higson held in his lap a beautiful ball of blue-grey fur, a tiny scrap of feline life that mewed and clawed gently at the man’s fingers.

  ‘It’s a little cat, Annie,’ he announced, his small deepset eyes narrowed in anticipation. Did he think I was daft or something? I’d seen cats before. My heart went out to the little creature. I longed to pick it up, stroke it and love it, make it my very own. It would love me in return, I knew it would.

  ‘It’s a Persian,’ said my mother. ‘Eddie’s paid a bob or two for that, I can tell you.’

  I knew what was expected of me. I knew what I wanted to do – I wanted to do the very thing that was required of me, to take the kitten, express my gratitude and forge a link that both he and my mother were waiting for – depending on, almost.

  I wandered to the dresser and picked up my copy of Robinson Crusoe, the one my father had bought for me during his last leave.

  ‘Well?’ enquired my mother. ‘Aren’t you going to thank Eddie for getting you such a pretty little cat? Smokey, he’s called.’

  I flicked through the pages of my brightly illustrated children’s version, then snapped the book shut loudly. ‘I don’t want a cat,’ I said, carefully avoiding looking at Smokey whom I wanted in that moment more than I’d ever wanted anything before in my life.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ cursed Higson. ‘There’s no pleasing some folk. What does she want, then?’ he enquired of my mother who simply raised her arms in a gesture of despair.

  ‘What do you want, then?’ he asked of me.

  I placed my book back on the dresser. ‘Nothing,’ I replied.

  ‘She bloody hates me, Nancy,’ he shouted, furious now. He hurled the kitten to the floor and I steeled myself not to flinch as its little body hit the peg rug. My breathing quickened and became shallow as that familiar feeling of anger and confusion rose in me, overwhelming me almost, filling my chest to bursting point. I had always known instinctively that this was a cruel and vicious man, but now the living (or dying) evidence lay at our feet, mewling piteously before the fire. I also knew that had I accepted the cat, his fate would have eventually been similar, for Higson would have used the animal to get at me sooner or later. I was full of hatred for Higson, full of contempt for my mother, who was stupid, so stupid not to see through this terrible man.

  She ran now and picked up the kitten, cradling it in her arms as she screamed at me. ‘Now look what you’ve done, Annie. Poor little thing.’ Obviously, she was blind as well as stupid. I took a slow and deliberate breath. ‘I didn’t do it, Mam. He did.’ I pointed an accusing finger at Eddie Higson. ‘He is a bad man,’ I announced. ‘And I don’t want him in my house.’

  Higson crossed the room in two strides and hit me full across the face with the flat of his hand. This was the first time he had hit me, but I knew, with an unwavering certainty, that it would not be the last, that should my mother marry this man, then I would suffer for a long time to come.

  ‘Don’t touch her,’ screamed my mother. ‘Don’t you ever hit her, Eddie.’

  Although my face smarted from the blow, I stood my ground as he glowered before me. ‘Don’t hit me again,’ I said quietly, simply repeating my mother’s words and staring full into his small, deep-sunken eyes.

  I never found out what happened to the little cat, but I wept bitter tears for him in the privacy of the air-raid shelter. When my tears were dried, I took the scooter and the skipping rope down the back street and flung them onto the Emmanuel Street bombsite. The dolls’ house followed suit, but it looked incongruous sitting among the dust and rubble of ruined homes, so I picked up a half-brick and destroyed it as efficiently as the German bombers had wiped out the real houses that once stood there.

  At the end of my destructiveness, I felt exhausted but victorious. One battle at a time. If I won enough skirmishes, I would surely win the war.

  The real war broke out, of course, after the wedding. Considering our impoverished state (since Eddie Higson was still unfit for work) and taking into account the post-war shortages, it was a lavish affair. The reception was to be held in my grandfather’s house, which was a large one, in the centre of a high terrace on Vista Street at the top of Daubhill. The street was aptly named, because from my grandfather’s house you could see for miles across the moors surrounding Bolton. We had even had a grand view of Manchester as it burned after one massive raid, three or four sets of cousins pressed against the upstairs windows marvelling at the orange brightness of the night sky.

  The wedding took place at All Saints in August 1946. The church was filled to bursting with aunts, uncles, cousins and friends of my mother from the mill. Higson seemed to have no friends. His two brothers a
nd their wives and offspring were in evidence, but apart from them, he had few supporters.

  My mother had decided against bridesmaids, knowing full well that I would be, at best, an unwilling participant and that my absence from such an entourage would attract comment and cause embarrassment.

  In fact, I did not really attend the service, escaping early on to a small side pew next to a confessional box, where I busied myself studying a spider that was carefully constructing a web across a corner of the door. This was Saturday. By Wednesday night the web would be in ruins when the first sinner would cross the confessional threshold at seven o’clock.

  I wore a silly pink satin frock with smocking on the bodice and a wide sash that kept coming loose and trailing on the floor. On my feet I had black patent ankle-strap shoes which had cost, so I had been informed, an arm, a leg and a cartload of coupons.

  My mother was dressed in powder blue crepe and wore a hat with a small open-weave veil. She looked pretty, but rather like a fragile china doll with her painted rose-bud lips and pink-rouged cheeks.

  Higson looked clean, at least, though rather uncomfortable in his greenish-grey suit with the wilting carnation hanging from a button hole. But then, I thought, no self-respecting flower would survive long in such unsavoury company. His hair, usually crinkly and springy, was plastered flat to his head with a liberal application of grease. There were some improvements – even I had to admit that, because he didn’t really look like something off a pirate’s flag now. The face was rounder and fuller, the skin a more acceptable colour. But nothing would ever improve that nose, nasty black bristles poking out of the nostrils, the whole thing hooked like the beak of some flesh-eating bird. He was, in my opinion, a very ugly man.

  I would not smile for the photographs. My mother, gritting her teeth and trying to hang on to her patience on this happy day, rubbed at my scuffed shoes with her wisp of a handkerchief and told me to smile, for goodness sake. There was nothing to smile about, so I carried on frowning and dragging my toes in the dust.