Spilt Milk

by Amanda Hodgkinson

  Nellie lowered herself into the steaming tin bath in front of the stove. Vivian’s love and kindnesses were as warm as the hip bath she sat in. She admired her sister. Vivian was a romantic soul, unaware of the hard toil that farmwork was for Nellie and Rose. She kept their home, and was gentle and gay, and good with the names of plants and wild flowers that grew around the cottage. She was a great reader and there was always the feeling that, with better luck, she might have been a schoolteacher instead of a washerwoman.

  ‘I’m coming in too,’ Vivian announced. She undressed, letting her slack black pinafore drop to the ground, clambering over her sister, who complained but laughed, pushing her with her hands. They were a muddle of legs and arms, slippery buttocks and bellies until they finally sat facing each other, legs dangling out of the tub, water slopping onto the floor.

  Nellie watched Vivian washing. Her naked body was always a surprise, no matter how many times she saw it. With her clothes on, Vivian looked like a pale little moth, fluttering from one chore to the next. Naked, she was a secret revealed. Something private and delicate. Watching her was like peeling back the petals from a flower and seeing the stamen hidden inside.

  ‘You are a rare beauty, Vivian.’

  ‘And you are splendid, Nell.’

  ‘I’m like Rose,’ said Nellie, passing her sister the block of soap. ‘Too tall and I have shoulders like a man.’ She stretched a long leg out of the water, revealing a scar across her thigh, a farming accident when she had been a girl. ‘And look at that,’ she said. ‘It’s lucky for me I don’t need to worry about finding a husband.’

  Vivian laughed, a rich, rippling sound, unguarded and loud. She lathered up the block of yellow soap in her hands. ‘You are handsome and fine, with very pretty ankles, and that’s what counts for a man, isn’t it? You are my splendid twin and I would marry you tomorrow.’

  Nellie laughed. They were not twins. They both knew they were not. But long ago, as children left alone with nothing but their imagination to entertain them, they had created this story for themselves and still liked its fantastic qualities. They’d decided Vivian had fallen out of her mother’s womb early on account of her small size, while Nellie had grown extra large to take up Vivian’s place. So though they had been born a good fifteen months apart, they were still twins. Nellie knew this was not possible, but she and Vivian had told the story to each other so many times, the truth of it was unimportant.

  And what did truth have to do with stories, anyway? The truth as far as the villagers saw it was that Rose, Nellie and Vivian were unfortunate spinsters, forgotten and dull, hidden away from the world. In fact, they had chosen not to marry. Truth was always different, depending on whether you were the listener or the teller of a story.

  Nellie’s favourite childhood tale was about two little girls found in a pit in the woods nearby. Nobody could ever say if it was true or not. The wild girls had green skin and spoke a language unintelligible to others. The girls smelled like fox cubs and ate only fruit. The villagers sold them to a travelling showman. He made them eat meat and would not let them be together, and soon the sisters died of sorrow and stomach pains.

  Who cared about the veracity of that village tale? Nellie still, even now as a 22-year-old woman, felt angry the girls had been separated. And there was the truth of the story, if it needed one. The way it made her feel like her heart was swollen and raw with love for Vivian.

  Vivian reached a wet hand over to the table where she picked up a small bundle of burnt matches. With a match she drew a soft black line carefully across both her lids, close to the lashes. She opened her eyes. The black made them shine and appear luminous, like the eyes of music-hall stars on cigarette cards. She handed the match to Nellie.

  ‘Your turn.’

  Nellie took it just as someone rapped on the window.

  A male voice called out, ‘Hello? Anyone in there?’

  Nellie dropped the match in alarm and the two women began to struggle to get out of the bath, water sloshing across the hard earth floor.

  ‘I saw a face!’ cried Vivian. ‘It’s those boys again.’

  A shadow passed by the window, and Nellie hurled the bar of soap at it.

  ‘Get out of here!’

  Vivian was crawling on the floor, trying to reach her dress on the back of the chair.

  Nellie stood naked, her long limbs dripping soapy water.

  ‘Take a bloomin’ good look at us, would you?’ she yelled. ‘I’ll put the wind up you. I’ll tell your mothers what you were doing. I know who you are!’

  ‘Nellie, sshhh! Don’t shout!’

  ‘Why not? They need telling.’

  Nellie felt her face darken with shame. This was what being a spinster meant. No village lad would dare spy on a married woman. He’d get horsewhipped for his trouble. But she and Vivian were fair game for rowdy boys.

  ‘They’ll be calling us witches next,’ she said. ‘Like poor old Anna Moats.’

  Vivian was already dressed. She pulled on her boots.

  ‘She is a witch.’

  ‘She is not.’

  There was a knock at the door. And again.

  ‘I’ve got sandbags from Mr Langham. I can leave them here. Are you all right in there? Mrs Langham said to see you were safe. The river’s rising fast.’

  The sisters looked at each other in panic.

  ‘You go upstairs,’ whispered Vivian. ‘I’ll answer the door.’

  In her bedroom Nellie fell onto her knees, pressing an eye to a hole in the floorboards. Vivian opened the door to a man wearing wet-weather clothes, a big black rubberized cape, and a hat that covered his face.

  ‘Good day, Miss,’ he said, taking his hat off and shaking the rain from it. He had high cheekbones. Dark hair. ‘I’ve sandbags for you. Terrible weather, isn’t it? If this goes on much longer we’ll all be turning into fish. I nearly had to swim here myself.’

  He told Vivian that Rose was ill. Mrs Langham had called the doctor and Rose would not be coming home tonight. Nellie could see Vivian holding her hand to her face, trying to hide her black-lined eyes.

  Nellie crossed to the window and watched the man leave, hunched against the weather. It was the man she had seen walking. Her stranger. The farmhand. Rain splattered against the window and she finished dressing. When she looked out of the window again, he was standing by the river, looking back at the cottage. She slipped away, afraid he might see her staring.

  Vivian mopped up the spilt bathwater and Nellie made Rose’s bed, tucking in the blankets extra tight. Neat corners, a blanket turned down properly, pleased Rose, and Nellie liked to please her. A black-bound Bible sat on a chair in her room. In it was a photograph taken at a village fete to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Rose, with a very young Nellie and Vivian, stood by a flower arch away from the crowds. She had on a wide-brimmed hat decorated with flowers. The three of them held hands. Rose looked young and hopeful.

  Rose didn’t look young or hopeful these days. The time was coming when she would be unable to work. Then they would care for her here. She’d lie in this bed until the end came for her, and what would become of Nellie and Vivian then?

  Nellie held the photograph up to the light. She had no memory of it being taken. She loved the way they held hands so tightly, like paper-cut maids in a row. Or maybe she loved the wonder of a recorded image from another time, like the magic lantern shows she’d seen as a child in the Parish Rooms, all the brightly coloured, faraway foreign lands that had astonished her innocent eyes.

  The next morning Nellie was collecting eggs in the hen house and was the first to see the flood water coming across the fields. She ran through the orchard and found the front gardens flooded. Despite the sandbags against the door, the parlour was already ankle deep in water. A knot of shining eels flickered on the scullery floor. Vivian was trying to scoop them into a bucket.

  Nellie carried Rose’s newspapers to safety. As she came back downstairs she heard a sharp crackin
g sound, then the front door creaking and groaning on its hinges. The flood waters were pressing against it. The thin wooden panels of the front door gave way. They split and broke, and a gushing wave of dirty brown water exploded through the door. Riding on it, a monster burst into the kitchen. A three-foot-long fish with clouded eyes. It came through the broken slats, fat and fast as tarnished coins tumbling from a ripped purse.

  Vivian screamed. Nellie tried to take the thrashing beast into her arms. It was an omen. A sign of luck. An antique creature come from the depths of the river.

  ‘We should put it back,’ Nellie yelled. ‘Free it. It’s a sign of good luck.’

  Vivian climbed onto the kitchen table. ‘For heaven’s sake! Do you think it’s going to grant you three wishes? Get away from it, Nellie, before it hurts you.’

  ‘It belongs to the river,’ Nellie insisted.

  The pike bucked and flapped at her feet. It was a muscular creature and solid; it flexed and panicked like a carthorse trying to free itself from deep mud. They were never going to be able to save it. In desperation, Nellie took an iron poker and ended its suffering with a blow to the head.

  ‘I’m going to get herbs to cook it with,’ she said in the silence that followed.

  Vivian climbed off the table and gave Nellie a hug. ‘It’s not magic. It’s just a fish,’ she whispered, and turned her attentions to catching the pots and kettles floating around her knees.

  Nellie waded through the garden. The rain was softer now but still persistent. The fields were covered in pale lakes of water. The cottage was an island, a place where monsters could wash up and yet, not far away, the modern world hurried along. There was a daily omnibus service to neighbouring villages. It stopped outside the post office in the village, from where telegrams could be sent all over the world, so the postmistress claimed. A railway station too, where you could ride a train all the way to London. New factories had sprung up, miles downriver. On still days their hooters could be heard, telling the workers it was time to go home. The young twentieth century was all around her. It was just that their lives were not a part of it.

  Three wishes, Vivian had said. One for each sister.

  Good health for Rose. Ostrich feathers for Vivian and sherbet for her sweet tooth. Nellie didn’t know what she’d wish for. A train ticket or a boat ride to other lands. Maybe just an end to the long winters when she froze her hands blue, harvesting turnips out of the frosted mud.

  What happened next stayed in Nellie’s mind for a long time. A boat rowed into view. In it were two men. The one standing, the one without the oars in his hands, was her stranger.

  ‘We’re to take you to the farm,’ he called. ‘Mrs Langham sent us. Your sister’s very ill.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ called Nellie. She heard Rose’s voice in her head, telling her to send the men away. ‘No, we don’t need help, thank you. We’ll walk there.’

  Then Vivian appeared at the broken door. She had her hat and coat on; the pike, wrapped in brown paper, lay in her arms.

  ‘We’ll come with you.’

  Nellie could see her lip tremble a little. Vivian rarely left the cottage.

  ‘Bring the boat up to the door, please.’

  The two women sat with the pike lying across their laps. Nellie held a black umbrella over their heads. The boat rocked gently on the flood waters. The rain was softly falling, leaving misted jewels of raindrops on their clothes.

  ‘And that pike just came in through the door?’ the stranger asked, wiping his face with his sleeve. Nellie tried to imagine his name. Was he a Tom, a Dick or a Harry?

  ‘Now that’s a poacher’s excuse if ever I heard one. The local policeman would laugh till his socks fell down if you tried that one on him.’

  ‘It is a gift for Mrs Langham,’ Nellie said, glancing up from under the brim of the umbrella. She noticed his eyes were dark brown, dark as winter plough. ‘There are no poachers in our family. We do not take what does not belong to us.’

  She looked down again and the rest of the journey passed in silence. When the boat slid onto dry land up by the farmhouse, Nellie shook out the umbrella and closed it. Vivian held the pike, struggling slightly under its weight. The sisters stood up, readying to get out. The rower took the fish from Vivian and the stranger held out his hand.

  ‘Here, let me help you ladies out.’

  Vivian ignored him. Nellie hesitated and then put out her hand.

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ he said, and grasped her fingers in his.

  His hand was warm, hard and muscular. There was a pulse in his thumb that she felt as he pressed it against the flesh of her palm. Had she ever held a man’s hand before? But yes. How could she have forgotten? There had been the incident that had scandalized them all. She remembered and stumbled, nearly falling over the lip of the boat. Heat flushed her face and she laughed nervously, pulling her hand away, stepping quickly away from the man.

  ‘Come on, Joe, leave off playing the gent and give us a hand,’ said the rower as Nellie and Vivian carried the fish towards the farmhouse. ‘We’re to drag the boat up to the stables.’

  Joe. His name was Joe. She whispered it to herself as they trudged through the mud, the word as round and smooth as a river pebble in her mouth.

  ‘The doctor has been,’ said Mrs Langham, folding her solid arms across her chest. The woman was a great one for misery. She had brown hair as fine as darning wool, eyes that glittered with the thrill of impending disaster, a high colour in her round cheeks. ‘He came for my son, who was taken bad the other day, and he heard your sister coughing and didn’t like the sound of it. She had a shocking bad night, I’m afraid. The doctor thinks she should go to hospital.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Vivian. ‘Rose wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘Rose has been like this before, Mrs Langham,’ said Nellie. ‘We’ll get her home and nurse her ourselves.’

  Mrs Langham shook her head.

  ‘It’s a time of waiting, my dears. You’ll just have to see what her fever does.’

  ‘She would prefer to be at home with us,’ insisted Vivian.

  ‘You can’t move her now. Go and sit with her. Be with her in her last hours. Take the vigil. Poor old Rose, she’s not had much of a life.’

  Rose lay in a single bed, a pale grey blanket covering her, sweat dampening her brow.

  ‘Take me home.’

  ‘We will,’ whispered Vivian. ‘Tomorrow.’

  Rose closed her eyes. She seemed to sink lower into her pillows. ‘Together you will be safe. You must promise me you’ll always be together.’

  The sisters promised easily. Of course they would stay together. Hadn’t they always?

  ‘The morphine has calmed her,’ said Vivian after a time. The two of them were settled in chairs, blankets over their knees. The lamp had been put out and the room was in darkness. The sound of their sister’s breathing washed back and forth.

  ‘Joe is a fine name, don’t you think?’ whispered Nellie. ‘The man in the billycock hat? His name is Joe.’

  ‘Sshh. Don’t wake Rose.’

  ‘She’s sleeping. Joe must be short for Joseph, I suppose?’

  ‘I have no idea, Nell. And you should stay away from him. You know what Rose says. Don’t forget what happened to you.’

  Nellie hadn’t forgotten. Rose and Vivian would never let her. It had sealed the sisters’ fate.

  Some years ago, when Nellie was seventeen, one of the Langhams’ hired hands had said hello to her, leaning over a farm gate as she passed by. Rose insisted they mustn’t speak to strangers, but Nellie had ignored her rules. She was full of good feelings that day. What harm could it do to say hello?

  He was an ugly little fellow with bowed legs and a fleshy smile. He showed her his wallet, which contained three locks of hair.

  ‘This is my wife’s chestnut hair, this buttery curl is the baby and this brown lock our son.’

  Nellie was touched by his tender words. He told her he hoped she would make a good wif
e one day. Nellie nodded. Rose had never spoken of their future back then, but she and Vivian talked secretly of the husbands they might have.

  He picked yellow-hearted field daisies for her, and Nellie sat until late into the night, listening to his talk. She wished she was his wife so he could have spoken as gently of her as he did of the woman whose lock of hair lay in his hand.

  There seemed some heroic quality in a woman loving a man as ugly as this one, and Nellie at seventeen thought she would be equal to the task. When he asked if he could have a curl of her hair as a keepsafe, she agreed readily.

  ‘Oh, but you’re beautiful,’ he told her, his breath damp on her neck. Night had fallen and insects spun around them, drawn by the flame of the hurricane lamp he lit. His fingers stroked her long neck. ‘A peach you are, my dear. A cherry, a sweet blossom in God’s garden.’

  Nellie closed her eyes as the scissors flashed in his hand. He left her with cropped hair as short as the hogged mane on Mr Langham’s bay cob. The man slid her severed plaits into his knapsack and told her to get on home before the bogeyman got her.

  Rose rocked Nellie in her arms when she returned to the cottage in tears. Hadn’t she warned her about strangers? Had he done anything else? Oh, but Nellie was so young to be ruined by a man. Nellie tried to explain that he had not even kissed her, but Rose didn’t seem to believe her. Beside them Vivian cried heartily as if she were the one whose hair had been stolen.

  Anna Moats the midwife came to the cottage soon after. She’d heard the village gossip.

  ‘The hair will grow,’ she told Nellie. ‘It’s your heart we need to protect, my dear.’

  Rose sent Anna Moats away. Doctors cured illness; policemen and courts punished badness. Everything else between birth, love and death was in God’s hands. Anna Moats was a fraud. Hadn’t her husband died of illness even though she said her remedies could cure all? The woman was a drunkard without a seed of sense in her head. That woman couldn’t cure a ham hock for Christmas, let alone a gullible girl taken in by a man who sold hair to wig makers.

  Nellie had thought differently. She crept to Anna’s house and asked for a cure. Anna’s daughter, Louisa, invited her in, showing her a pale pink ostrich feather fan she had been given by a travelling showman she’d met. Wasn’t it beautiful? She flapped the fan and danced around the room while Nellie ignored her, trying not to breathe in the sour smells that made her eyes water and her gorge rise. Herbs hung in bunches from the ceiling, and dried animal bones tied together with twine dangled like marionettes.