A Whisper to the Living

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘I don’t know: I wish I did know.’

  ‘Pray for yourself, Anne. Something about you disturbs me. We will offer a Novena in the convent. You may go now. God bless you, my dear.’

  ‘And may He bless you also, Mother. Thank you for being so understanding.’

  ‘Well now,’ she said, smiling at me and deliberately thickening her brogue, ‘isn’t me bark worse than me bite?’

  ‘I would say so, Mother – but do I tell the others?’

  She threw back her tiny head and laughed. ‘Ah no, that would be going too far. When you’re my size, you need a card or two up your sleeve.’

  My heart went out to her. The words were on the tip of my tongue, just waiting to leap out and please her – ‘yes, Mother, I’ll get confirmed . . .’ but I held them back. It was easy to know other people, easy to work out what they wanted and required of me. But there was one person I didn’t know at all, one person whose moods and attitudes altered, it seemed, every time the wind changed. Would I ever get to know Annie Byrne?

  All during that night, I thought of Mother and her questions, tossing and turning in my bed, my mind a turmoil of jumbled thought. What had shaken my faith was the faith itself with its frigidity, its cold, clear-cut attitude to mankind. And yet within that faith there were real people, good, generous and intelligent men and women like Father Keegan and our Mother St Vincent. They must be the exception that proved the rule; they must, in spite of their cleverness, be misguided.

  It seemed to me that most Catholic leaders could see only good or bad, black or white, everything cut and dried, rules to adhere to, laws that must never be questioned.

  Catholicism left no room for moderation, no space for compromise. It required blind acceptance and stupidity; as far as I could see, it precluded intelligence and I could not understand how it captured people of integrity, people like Mother St Vincent. No matter how hard I might be pushed, persuaded, cajoled, I could not allow a bishop to lay his sanctified hand upon my unbelieving head. God, Whoever He was, created not just pretty flowers, charming animals, pleasant people. He also produced items like Eddie Higson. God made mistakes. And because the Faith commanded me to believe in God’s perfection and omnipotence, I could not allow myself to embrace it.

  I lay in my bed watching the sun rise over the moors. Another day was dawning. Perhaps this day would hold the answer, the answer to the main question. Who was Annie Byrne?

  12

  Fighting Back

  The learning process had been clearly defined for me; listen to a teacher, take notes, copy down the bibliography, read the books on the list, write more notes, produce the essay. So, although I had no teacher for this unscheduled subject, I set about the task of learning about myself in the same mechanical way, turning the pages of memory, re-creating my own history and writing it down in a carefully coded shorthand that no-one but myself would ever decipher. And at last I understood Sister Olivia’s mutterings about the importance of background, about a country without a history being like a man with no memory. My past was suddenly important to me.

  Although I did not yet recognize or understand it, I was inventing my own therapy, defeating depression by allowing my anger to pour outwards onto paper, exorcizing frustration through the painting of bold word-pictures. It was like talking to some invisible person and the writing of my short memoirs became an obsession almost.

  I recognized early on in my research that people, like ants, lived in colonies, were interdependent and that I, a very small worker, could only know and judge myself by discovering how others saw me. While assessing their attitudes to me, I found myself in turn judging them and I soon had a large ring-file filled with studies of the various characters who had touched my life thus far.

  ‘What are you up to, Annie?’ My mother’s voice floated from the bottom of the attic stairs. She seldom came up here; this was my domain and I was therefore responsible for keeping it in order.

  ‘I’m writing, Mother.’

  ‘For school?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied, glancing down at the ‘shorthand’ notes I was currently compiling on the subject of Edna Pritchard, wife of our doctor, mother to my friend Simon.

  ‘As long as you haven’t got your head stuck in one of them daft library books again . . .’

  Yes, my bibliography was indeed strange. At first, the historical novels had been an escape for me. They provided easy reading, were repetitive, predictable – history was history no matter how fancy the embroidery, the dead remained dead no matter what. But the books were teaching me things, things I might never have come across in the normal course of my life. Normal. Now there was a word to conjure with, a concept difficult to define. Was there anything ‘normal’ about my life? And how ‘normal’ were other people’s lives?

  Through the borrowed books, I had stumbled, quite by accident at first, on certain clues that might equip me for . . . for what? I faced it squarely before writing the word in my complicated code. Revenge. And because that was what I wanted, because that was where all this self-discovery and soul-searching was leading, I wondered sometimes if I were a good or even a nice person. I would not be confirmed, I could not be a proper Catholic or even a watered-down Christian. I was out of step, out of place . . .

  ‘Just make sure you get that homework finished, that’s all.’

  ‘I will. Hasn’t Angela arrived yet?’

  ‘No, love. I’ll leave the door on the latch so’s she can let herself in. Eddie’ll be late – he’s gone up to his brother’s. And don’t be stopping up all night talking to Whatsername. I want you coming out top of the class again . . .’

  My mother. So vulnerable, so transparent, so easy to write down. Her wants were simple. She needed me to be what she might have become had she not remained stuck in the mill all her working life. She was honest, good, caring, hardworking and very naive. Already she looked up to me because I was ‘getting an education’. Yet this did not prevent her from laying down her law whenever she had time and opportunity, for beneath that façade of gentleness there lurked an iron will, a determination so grim that I would never have dared to bring home a book with bad marks in it. About once a month she would scrutinize my homework and although she did not understand some of the contents, she was swift to pounce on anything less than a seven out of ten. ‘You’re not trying, Annie . . .’ She seldom raised her voice when she accused me. It would have been easier if she had shouted, but she would say the words in a sad and quiet voice that cut right through me. All her eggs were in one basket; had my brother or sister been allowed to live, then she might have depended less on me, on my success. But I was her reason for living; on account of me she slaved night after night in that filthy mill. I owed everything to her and was acutely aware of it.

  Because of my mother, I was edging my way towards a solution that might protect both of us, was growing up quickly, speeding up the process by learning, observing, absorbing anything and everything that might serve my purpose. Although revenge was what I desired, protection for my mother and for myself was what I needed. She, most particularly, must not be hurt any more.

  The books she complained about had taught me much. From them, I had learned about rape, had discovered what incest meant. Not that it would be incest – even if he did ever manage it – but it would be damned near, him being married to my mother. The burning question throughout had been – had I brought all this on myself? Had I pushed Eddie Higson into such a pattern of behaviour by treating him with so much disdain right from the start? But no, an echo from the past, already noted somewhere in the diaries, prompted me to know otherwise. Florrie Hyatt from Ensign Street, dead and buried these five years, spoke out loudly and clearly – ‘’e joined up on account o’ that lass’ and ‘a bad bugger if ever I saw one’. What did you know, Mrs Hyatt? And how much did Tom know? Should I ask across so many miles of ocean?

  Also, was my mother weak for sweeping such warnings under the carpet? Or was she simply afraid to be alone, was s
he insecure, dependent on marriage? Perhaps for my mother a bad marriage was preferable to none at all. But surely she didn’t know, couldn’t know what he was doing to me. I was too important to her. If she had known, or suspected, then she would definitely have tackled him and it was the fear of such a confrontation that had prevented me from telling her. Twice he had beaten her, once almost to death . . .

  I flicked through the pages as I waited for Angela Marsh, my next piece of research, to arrive. On the first sheet was my Dad – or as much of him as I could remember, six foot four in his socks, a fine strong man with a wickedly loud laugh and a bristly chin. Then Tom, Freddie, Mrs Hyatt, Sheila Davies . . . and Eddie Higson. Even on the page, he made me shiver as I conjured up in my mind’s eye the image of his face leering over me while he bent to touch my body. Oh God, how I hated the hooked nose, those mean thin lips, the stink of his breath, that corrugated black hair, the small deep-set blue eyes. I heard myself screaming aloud and this sound brought me back to reality, making me grip the edge of the table. Had anyone heard? Had my mother left for the mill, was Angela in the house yet?

  No-one came. I buried my face in my hands for a few seconds, forcing myself to breathe slowly and evenly. Control was the key; sometimes, I seemed less controlled now, at thirteen, than I had been at eight or nine. My body was changing – that was obvious, especially to him and to me. I now measured five feet and five inches in height, wore a size six shoe, had a definite waist and small breasts and a great deal of physical strength. So now he depended on blackmail, approached me more warily and less frequently, because even wits as dim as his could not fail to recognize that I was acquiring the bodily power with which I might, one day, overcome him.

  Intellectually, I was streets ahead of him and it was on my intellect that I was depending totally.

  But my emotional development was another matter altogether and I feared my feelings, was terrified that one day they might get out of hand, that I might commit murder or, worse still, run to my mother, turn for help to the law, scream out in the street and tell the whole world of Eddie Higson’s crime.

  I thought, not for the first time, about the police. I’d watched them in the streets many a time, chasing lads for fighting and scrumping apples, or telling folk the time and how to get to Affetside, checking up at night to see if doors were secure. They seemed ordinary somehow, just men dressed up, nothing unusual. How could I find the words for such ordinary men and what would happen anyway? Prison for him, shame for my mother and me. And to achieve even that, it would need to be a good day, a day when I was coping well, when I was fluent and confident with strangers. On a bad day, I might not even be believed . . . No. The police were well out of this; I could not turn to them. Instead, I wrote pages and pages, full accounts, searched my memory for the tiniest of details. This was my sole outlet. Perhaps one day, somewhere in the distant future and after my mother was dead, I would set this tale in another time, dress it up, have it published . . .

  ‘You there, Anne?’ I pushed the diaries into a drawer and went to open my bedroom door. Angela Marsh began her ungainly ascent of the attic stairs. Angela, at fourteen, was a fee-paying non-Catholic who had not moved up at the end of last year because she had failed her terminals. She was therefore in a class with younger girls and she treated us, on the whole, with a degree of contempt because she was experienced. Most good Catholic girls of thirteen were not interested in Angela Marsh’s experiences. But I was not a good Catholic girl and Angela’s knowledge, which she seemed only too willing to impart for a small fee, might prove very useful to me.

  She stood in the doorway breathing hard. ‘That’s a lot of bloody stairs,’ she grumbled.

  ‘Never mind – see, I’ve got lemonade and cakes.’

  Her eyes glistened with greed as she sat down on my bed and I handed her a glass and a plate which she accepted without thanks. She was a plump girl with large breasts, dark red hair and white skin. With her mouth full of cake, she spoke. ‘Don’t forget – you do my French homework for a whole month.’

  I nodded mutely. She flicked a few crumbs from her ample bosom. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘So you’ve got yourself a boyfriend and you want to know all about it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t want to . . . get into any trouble. I know this may sound silly, Angela, but I . . . er . . . want to know how far to go. You seem so clever about these things, but I’m just so ignorant. How far do you go?’

  She grinned lewdly. ‘Well, I’ve never done it. You know what I mean?’

  I smiled at her encouragingly and she went on, ‘I don’t let them . . . you know . . . put it in me. I’ve got periods now – have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you might get away with it then. But I daren’t – my mother would kill me if I got pregnant. So I just . . . well . . . let them touch me and sometimes I touch them.’

  I had to go warily now. ‘How do you stop . . . it . . . happening?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I’ve had a few near misses, I can tell you. It’s not easy because sometimes . . . well . . . girls want to do it too, you know. I mean, it’s only natural. But you see, it’s a case of not driving them too far, hold them back a bit . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She swept a superior look in my direction ‘Christ, you don’t know much, do you? And you’re supposed to be the clever one?’ She giggled and crossed her fat legs, one hand straying to her face to pick at a large ugly spot at the side of her nose. ‘Look, for a start I make sure there’s other people there – like in the back row at the pictures or behind a house with a light in the window. If he gets me on the floor or up against a wall, I usually . . . well . . . you know . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t know, Angela. And if you’re not going to tell me, then you’ll be doing your own French homework.’

  She stared at me for a while and I thought she was going to get up and walk out. Then, because even she, the hard case of the class, could feel embarrassment, she came across the room to where I sat in my chair by the window and, in a whisper, she explained to me how she used her body to please the boys without actually allowing copulation to occur.

  ‘Satisfied?’ she asked, her cheeks scarlet as she stepped away from me.

  I turned to look out of the window and asked, as casually as I could, ‘What would you do if someone tried to force himself on you, tried to make you do it?’

  I heard the bed creak as she threw her large frame onto it. ‘That’s what nearly happened to me a few weeks ago with Steve. He’s older than me – nearly nineteen. It’s the older ones you’ve got to watch. And you see, with boys, once they get excited . . . you know . . . swell up, they sometimes don’t know what they’re doing. I’d let him . . . well . . . unfasten my bra and once he got my blouse off, he just went crazy.’ I could hear the pride in her voice. ‘It’s with me being so big. Anyway, the next thing I knew, he was pulling his trousers down. Christ, I was terrified . . .’

  ‘So what did you do?’ I turned to face her. ‘What did you do, Angela?’

  ‘I kicked him in the balls!’ She began to roll about the bed, her body convulsed with almost hysterical laughter. I waited for a few moments.

  ‘And that stopped it?’

  ‘Stopped it? Stopped it?’ she howled. ‘I reckon it stopped him for a week or two.’ She calmed down gradually. ‘Since then, I’ve stuck to boys my own age, ones that have never done it. Don’t go with anybody older, Anne. They’re the ones that get you into trouble, they’re the ones that force you. Once they’ve done it, they want to do it again and they’re not satisfied with the other stuff. Has your boyfriend ever done it with anyone else?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know him.’

  ‘Ah – frightened to tell me his name in case I take him off you?’

  ‘No.’ There was, of course, no boyfriend. And now I had heard all I needed to know, I was no longer interested in
the company of this very boring girl. ‘I think you’d better go now, Angela. After all, I’ve your homework to do as well as my own.’

  ‘Please yourself.’ She flounced out of the house with an unattractive pout of her small lips and I watched her as she walked down the road, wide hips jerking from side to side, chest thrust out, sturdy legs mincing along, ankles swaying slightly as she balanced her weight on the cubed heels of her black plastic shoes. Yes, Angela had been quite useful.

  After she had disappeared, I came out of the house and went to sit for a while on the library wall. This had always been the unofficial meeting place for us – the Cullens, myself and, when he could escape, Simon Pritchard. Here we had all gathered as children to play ‘walk the wall, close your eyes, if you fall, mud in your eyes’ and ‘salt, pepper, mustard’ on the steps. Here we had met to swap comics, to play marbles on the pavement, to exclaim over ladybirds and hairy caterpillars trapped in matchboxes – with air-holes of course.

  Simon joined me after a short while, his eyes darting constantly towards the house on the next corner in case his mother should be peeping from a side window. Edna Pritchard was a spy and I had written her down as such. She was a mean, hard-faced woman and I pitied Simon for having to live with such a mother, one who twitched at her lace curtains all the while, one who watched, it seemed, everyone who passed along Long Moor Lane. She didn’t like me. Because she didn’t like me, the same devil that had prompted me to defy the nuns often came to the fore in her presence, made me go out of my way to greet her in the shops, to open doors with a flourish, to offer assistance with her loaded baskets. I suppose Simon’s mother amused me in a way. His father, Dr Pritchard, was a different kettle of fish altogether, lovable, warm, dependable, humorous. So while I pitied Simon for his mother, I could only envy him for having such a fine father, one I might have chosen for myself had I been granted but half a chance.