Sugar and Spice

by Ruth Hamilton

  Anna nodded. ‘I washed her and combed her hair and gave her the rosary and Missal. Then I waited for you, because she’s special, you see. And I slept with her. I always sleep with Mam when Dad’s away.’

  He squatted down in front of her. ‘You know we have to take your mother away now, don’t you?’

  Of course she did! Did this man think she was stupid? ‘She doesn’t like pink. Don’t put anything pink in the box. She likes red roses and nearly white ones, creamy-coloured, and her church is Peter and Paul’s. She’ll want Ave Maria, and the hymn with dark sataninic mills – something like that, anyway. Her favourite priest is Father Brogan, but keep him away from the whisky.’ An important thought struck. ‘You’ll not get roses in January, but no pink flowers.’

  The man had never seen such composure, certainly not in a bereaved child. He picked her up and passed her over to Bert Dixon. ‘Take her home and get her warmed up,’ he said. ‘She’s frozen halfway to death herself.’

  Those were the last words Anna was to hear for many weeks. In the arms of her would-be foster father, she lost consciousness. Spring had arrived before she heard that presses local and national had nominated her a war heroine, that owners of businesses had pledged money enough to feed and clothe her for some time, that her real dad had sat with her for over two weeks before leaving for foreign shores. Not for a while would she learn that the Co-op hearse had provided the means of getting her to the infirmary before returning to pick up her wonderful mother’s body.

  It was pneumonia. Double pneumonia seemed so impressive and important, as was the framed item above her bed, a message from Buckingham Palace signed by King George and Queen Elizabeth. It was all very lovely, but Mam was still dead and Anna had not attended her funeral. She hadn’t the strength for tears, so she remained quietly sad for several days. They were trying to build her up. Building her up involved a great deal of food and learning to walk all over again. The once robust child had lost much of her upholstery, and her legs were so weak that they didn’t make any sense.

  Recovery was slow. But, once Anna managed to teach her lower limbs the difference between straight ahead and going round a corner, she had the best time ever. Bolton Corporation sent people from the Town Hall to talk to her, and newspaper reporters interviewed her and took photos.

  Slowly but surely, the scales approached figures commensurate with her age and frame. Eating ceased to be a chore and became a pleasure, because she was better fed than she had been at home. Unlike others on the ward, Anna had a savoury tooth, and often chose a second helping of dinner rather than a pudding. She was finishing a bowl of hotpot when the Man From Welfare arrived.

  He sat down and told her his name was Mr Sugden. ‘You all right now, love?’ he asked.

  She nodded, because her mouth was full.

  ‘Only we wondered whether you might like to get fostered somewhere in Wales – on a nice farm, perhaps?’

  Anna swallowed. ‘With Mr and Mrs Dixon?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. They’ll be staying here.’

  ‘Mam didn’t want me vacuumated,’ she told him. ‘She said the Yanks would come, then Hitler would be . . .’ She searched for her mother’s words. ‘He’d be a spot of grease on the road and a dirty page in the history books.’

  Mr Sugden nodded. This child was a celebrity, so he had better mind his manners. In most cases like this one, the kiddies would have been moved at the stroke of a pen, but Anna was one of Bolton’s heroes, and Bolton might well want to keep her. ‘If we found somewhere up in one of the villages where Mr and Mrs Dixon could be with you, would that be better?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask them. Grown-ups decide, don’t they?’

  Like many who had met Anna MacRae, Bernard Sugden wanted to take her home and give her the best life possible in these difficult times, but she was part of a package and, if possible, siblings should be kept together.

  Father Brogan, who had administered Extreme Unction on Anna’s second day in hospital, came to visit the afternoon following the Man From Welfare. ‘God bless you, child, you’re a sight for sore eyes, and isn’t that the honest truth on a rainy day?’

  She smiled as she remembered her mother’s words. ‘He’s a lovely man, but he will put himself outside half a bottle of scotch every day.’

  ‘Did you do Mam’s funeral?’ she asked, although she already knew the answer.

  ‘I did. The church was packed like a sardine tin, and she got the full Requiem. There’s a headstone now with her name on it – people have been very kind. There was nothing pink. The Co-op said I was to be sure to tell you that.’

  ‘Thank you, Father.’

  He took a flask from a pocket and poured some of its contents into his mouth. ‘Medicinal purposes,’ he said with a wink.

  Anna chuckled. ‘My mam liked you,’ she said.

  ‘And I liked her. She’s missed by the whole of the parish, but there’s many a good soul in this town who’ll want to help after the tragedy.’ He held her hand. ‘Mr Dixon’s to work in the countryside with the Land Army, and Mrs Dixon will look after you and the babies in a cottage outside Bolton. I baptized them – Katherine Joan and Rebecca Frances. They’re doing fine, so they are. Mortallious troublesome when hungry, but isn’t that ever the way of it? You’ll be home soon. God bless.’ He left.

  Anna wasn’t sure how to feel about any of it. Nothing could be done to retrieve the life she had known, because nothing could be done to bring back her mother. Jesus had resurrected Lazarus, and his sisters had been as happy as Larry, but Jesus wasn’t here. So, unlike Martha and Mary, Anna couldn’t sit and wait for her Saviour to come along and fetch Mam back. She didn’t want to leave hospital. Although either Elsie or Bert had visited every day, they had never brought her sisters, and she was ashamed to admit it, but life in the celebrity lane had been preferable to the thought of living with those two angry, red-faced little people.

  Anna decided to make herself indispensable. After finding her way to the geriatric wards, she visited daily and read aloud from books, newspapers and magazines. The patients were delighted, as some had few visitors, and many were not long for this world, so the new presence on the wards was a source of great pleasure to them.

  However, the powers in the paediatric department noticed that Anna MacRae was becoming institutionalized, so she was released into the community at the beginning of April. Staff and patients wept when she was driven away by one of the doctors, and many expressed the opinion that the infirmary would not be the same without her. ‘Bright as a button.’ Sister Morton dried her eyes, then dragged her reluctant nurses back inside. ‘Come along,’ she snapped. ‘There’s a war on, you know.’

  Anna was driven around the edge of her very large town, and she recognized little of what she saw. The world was very green and there were no mills, few shops, no tall chimneys staining the sky. ‘You’ll be safer and healthier up here,’ said Dr Openshaw. ‘Your foster parents have jobs. Mr Dixon will work on a farm, and his wife will help some evenings at a home for mothers and babies. Hitler won’t waste his bombs out here.’

  Anna gulped. She would miss Peter and Paul’s, would even miss the nuns, many of which number were humourless, sour-faced and swift to punish all offenders, however minor their crimes. Two or three of the sisters were pleasant and very stimulating when it came to education, and the lay teachers were mostly all right. But she had lost everything. She had no mam, a dad who was away killing Germans, no friends, no home, no school, no expectations. What did people do out here in the countryside? There were cows, horses and sheep, but so what? She couldn’t play hopscotch with a sheep. ‘Where’s my school?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a bicycle ride away,’ came the answer.

  ‘I can’t ride a bike.’

  ‘You’ll learn,’ the doctor promised. ‘And riding will make your legs stronger. You can have your own hens, so your own eggs will be collected daily. You’ll be able to run in the fields and help with your sisters.�
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  Ah. She hadn’t forgotten Kate and Beckie, but she’d chosen not to dwell on them. At the back of her mind lingered the small suspicion that the twins had killed her mother, that Frankie MacRae would still be alive were it not for the babies and the snow. It was better to blame the snow, because accusing her sisters was not nice.

  The car stopped outside a stone-built cottage. It was in a row of four, so there would be neighbours, at least. ‘Can I go in?’ she asked.

  The doctor nodded, but stayed where he was while Anna went through the gate and into the house.

  It smelled empty. There was no furniture, and her footfalls echoed along stone floors. She found a front room, a big kitchen, and a huge rear garden that needed immediate surgery. Upstairs, there were three bedrooms, plus a small bathroom with a metal bath that was stained below the taps. She almost laughed. There was a real bath! Grandad used to have one of those, and water had been heated in a boiler behind the fire downstairs.

  She returned to the car. ‘There’s no gas,’ she said.

  Her chauffeur nodded. ‘Oil lamps and candles, I’m afraid. But at least you have mains water and a back boiler. No one can have everything, child.’

  It was Anna’s opinion that some people had nice cars, good suits and jobs that didn’t make their hands dirty, but she said nothing. Her mother and the nuns had trained this child well, as she remained anxious not to upset anybody. ‘Thank you,’ she said dutifully. ‘I’m sure I’ll learn how to ride.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  A thought struck. ‘Is it a Catholic school? The one I need a bike to get to? Is it Catholic?’

  The doctor cleared his throat. As far as he knew it was an ordinary state primary school, but he wasn’t a hundred percent certain. ‘Not sure,’ he replied.

  Anna, knowing that she had struck gold, thanked him politely and stepped out of the car, automatically steering herself in the direction of number 13. It looked different. The step hadn’t been stoned, and Mam always . . . She turned her head and saw the enormous pram outside number 11. They were propped up and making noises. Ignoring the twins, she stalked past and opened the door to a future that had to contain the Dixons and two strangers in a pram. But there was hope; that hope rested in Father Brogan’s boss, the Bishop of Salford.

  Within days of her return, Anna found herself caring for the babies. She was not expected back at school, which was just as well, as her days were packed with changing and feeding two very young infants. It wasn’t Elsie Dixon’s fault. She was getting on in years, and she wasn’t used to children, as she and Bert hadn’t had any of their own.

  ‘Anna,’ Elsie said as they were finishing supper one evening. ‘Don’t you think you and the little ones might be better off with somebody a bit younger than me and Bert? I mean, if we move up to the country, he’ll have to do farm work, and I’ll be expected to do my bit a couple of evenings a week because of the war. It’s not easy, love.’

  Bert cleared his throat. He wanted to keep the three girls, but he understood his wife’s misgivings. ‘Think on, Anna,’ he said. ‘We love you to bits, but it won’t be easy for any of us.’

  The child thought for a moment before replying. ‘It would be better if we stayed here,’ she said. ‘That house smells funny and it’s got no gas mantles. It’s all grass and trees, sheep on the hills and cows in the fields. No picture house, no shops, no nothing.’

  ‘There’s a bus into town,’ said Elsie.

  Anna was ready for this. ‘And do you take the twins on the bus? Who looks after them while you go to town and I go to the Proddy school and Mr Dixon works on the farm?’

  Elsie, too, was ready. ‘They can stay where I’ll work,’ she replied. ‘Mrs Mellor has a big house full of young women and babies – she looks after them – so two more won’t be a problem. Me and Bert are looking forward to getting away – we’ll all be safer.’

  Anna sighed dramatically. ‘All right,’ she pronounced. ‘But my mother wouldn’t be happy with me sitting next to Protestants. When my dad gets back from the war, he won’t be pleased, either.’ The bishop would save her. He wouldn’t sign to say she could get taught by non-Catholics.

  ‘When do Kate and Beckie start sitting up?’ Anna asked.

  ‘A couple of months yet,’ answered Bert.

  A couple of months? What was she supposed to do in the mean time? Sit in a field making daisy chains among a few dozen cow pats? Feed chickens, do sums next to a Proddy and learn to ride a bike? ‘When do we have to go, Uncle Bert?’ She had been instructed to name them Auntie and Uncle, and had decided that it seemed to be a good idea.

  ‘Next week,’ he said. ‘The bishop’s given his decision. You can go to the school, and a priest will come to the house and teach you on a Saturday.’

  Great. The list was growing again. She’d lost her mam, her dad, her house, her school, her town, her friends and her Saturdays. She’d almost lost her life, and she’d almost become famous, but she still had to do as she was told. Upstairs, she made her first THINGS list. Something would happen. There was always a next thing. So she wrote what she wanted to happen, then said a decade of the rosary. She could do no more. Like a buttercup in a field, she bent every time the wind blew. But it wouldn’t always be like this. Would it?

  Tom Brogan had to walk away. As a priest, he was used to raw emotion, because he counselled the bereaved, forgave the sinner, attended the dying, baptized the newborn. But the tragedy embodied by Anna MacRae, whose faith shone from every pore, was more than he could cope with. She was talking to her mother. In Anna’s mind, Frances was seated at the right hand of God, so the child was speaking to a saint. He wished with all his heart that his own beliefs could be so pure, so simple.

  ‘They can’t even sit up,’ she said. ‘They just dribble, drink milk and wet their nappies.’

  Even two graves away, he could hear her. Several sips from his hip flask helped a little, and he steadied himself on a headstone belonging to Somebody Riley. He wasn’t drunk. His vision was clouded by tears, not by alcohol.

  ‘We’re going tomorrow, and our new address is number three, Weavers Row, Eagle Vale. It’s all right. It has a bath with taps and the water comes from behind the fire. If you want to visit us, that’s where we’ll be, but God will give you directions if you forget the address. Come and see us. I’m not frightened of your spirit.’

  This was the last straw for Father Brogan. He sobbed into a handkerchief until Anna touched his hand. ‘It’s all right, Father,’ she advised him. ‘When the lining came away, she started to lose lifeblood and it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t the twins’ fault. It could have happened when I was born.’

  He stared at her, his sobs slowing. ‘Anna? Who told you that?’

  ‘Mam did. When I was asleep.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ She had probably overheard a conversation between Mrs Dixon and another woman. This had transferred into her sleep, and she believed that her mother had told her. ‘That’s good, then, isn’t it, Anna?’

  She nodded. ‘Oh, and Mam said if you don’t stop drinking, you’ll be dead in five years.’

  ‘Did she say that when you were asleep?’

  ‘She’s always said it. She could even smell it at confession, because it came through the holes in the whatsername.’

  ‘Grille,’ he said helpfully.

  ‘So I want you to pour what’s left in your pocket onto Mam’s grave. She’ll get rid of it for you.’

  Angels came in all shapes and guises, the priest decided. Tramps, thieves, vagabonds, the elderly and the young had been his teachers for many a year. He stood over the grave of a beautiful woman and poured away his scaffolding. ‘I’ll go back to Ireland,’ he told mother and daughter. ‘There’s a place in Dublin for priests like me who take a drop or a gallon too much. For you, Frankie, and for you, Anna, I’ll get dry.’

  Anna laughed. ‘You’ll not be dry long, Father. Here comes the rain . . .’

  The cart arrived to take them and their belonging
s to their new home. The horse ambled along and began the long trek through town and up Tonge Moor Road. The rain held off, at least, so that was one happy circumstance. Anna sat with her mother’s table, dresser, parlour furniture and rugs. She was taking all that was left of Frankie MacRae and putting it in a house made of stone and uneven plaster work. Folded near her feet was the green baize cover she had wrapped herself in when her mother had been dead just a few hours. It was difficult to know how to feel, because although she was happy to have her mother’s things, she was sad about moving them.

  ‘You all right, love?’ asked Bert.

  She nodded. She had to be all right, since she needed to learn to ride a bike and go to school with a load of Proddies. There were very few houses. Field after field spread all the way to the horizon, and Anna swallowed hard. Why did people choose to live up here in all the silence? Where did they buy bread, see a doctor, go to the pictures? But she had to admit, however begrudgingly, that the countryside smelled and tasted good. It smelled and tasted of raw peas straight from the pod. The taste was green. Could a taste own a colour?

  They reached their own tiny hamlet and found a young woman in the front garden. ‘Welcome,’ she said cheerily. ‘I’m Land Army, but I’ve been posted to you for the day. Still, at least I don’t have to do any mucking out, which is the best news ever.’

  She talked funny and she had pink hair. Later, Anna would be told by Elsie that the colour was strawberry blonde. Lifted down by Bert, Anna studied the Land Army. It had no uniform – just overalls and a pair of heavy boots. ‘I’m Anna.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ answered the Land Army. ‘I’m from Essex, but I’m here for the duration because I asked to come here. My grandparents live just over the hill, and I help on their farm. Anyway, aren’t you the famous one? Everybody knows your name. I’m Linda, by the way.’

  ‘Hello, Linda-by-the-way. We have to live here because of my pneumonia.’