Sugar and Spice

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘What’s she done now?’ Elsie demanded.

  ‘She made it happen. She had a word with my soon-to-be-Ma-in-law.’

  ‘Aye, she would,’ said Elsie in her matter-of-fact voice. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

  Another year passed, and the war continued. Anna made her First Holy Communion, and when the breakfast party at the church of Saints Peter and Paul was over, Tom Brogan drove her home. She was unusually quiet. Because of her tendency to think a little too deeply about things, he was slightly concerned. ‘Well,’ he said as they waited at traffic lights, ‘that’s you done and dusted and a full member of the clan.’

  ‘Yes.’ But she didn’t feel any different. Something holy was meant to have happened, but it hadn’t been holy at all. When she’d opened her mouth to receive the wafer, no light appeared, no warmth entered her chest. And, when she got back to her pew, the girl next to her had whispered and giggled all the while, and the boy to her left had spent most of the time playing with a matchbox containing two caterpillars. The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ had sat in the mouth of a boy who played with creatures in a Swan Vestas container.

  ‘What’s the matter, Anna?’

  She sighed. ‘It stuck to the roof of my mouth. I had to pull it down with my tongue, because otherwise, I think the Holy Host would have been there all day.’

  ‘Sure, that’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the not being able to eat or drink,’ she complained. ‘And I went dizzy. Auntie Elsie calls it faint for lack of nourishment.’

  ‘It’s a law of the Church,’ he explained. ‘When you receive Jesus into your heart, you have to be empty.’

  ‘It’s my stomach that was empty,’ she complained. ‘My heart and my head were filled with Kate and Beckie terrorizing everyone. They’re naughty. It’s a special kind of naughty.’

  ‘Ah, away with your bother. They’re three years old with no sense of right or wrong. They’re babies, Anna.’

  Nobody would listen, it seemed. No one would try to work out what she was trying to say, because it sounded daft. Yes, they were babies. But there was something extra to them, something odd. They weren’t identical. At least there was no problem with who was who and who was to blame. But they were so similar in character, so secretive and fastened together, so crafty . . .

  ‘You’ll never work it out,’ he told her now. ‘People are people, and no two are the same.’

  ‘They’re the same,’ she said softly. ‘And that’s what makes them twice as bad.’

  ‘You mustn’t think like that, child. You’ll see. Wait till they grow up a bit more and get to school – they’ll be different altogether, so they will.’

  When they reached the cottage, Anna went off for a walk. She told Father Brogan to go in for a cup of tea, and she would be back in a few minutes. ‘I just want to think,’ she said. ‘About Communion and all that.’

  The priest sat with the Dixons and watched the twins playing nicely at the table with their dollies. ‘She’s very mixed up,’ said Tom Brogan.

  Elsie nodded. ‘You’ve got to remember what happened, Father. She sat with Frankie, cleaned her up, never went to the funeral because she was in hospital. The twins came along and her mother left. That’s the sum total of it.’

  The visitor lowered his tone. ‘But she seems to think they’re evil, Elsie.’

  Bert spoke up for his best girl. ‘Anna’s got a lot of sense and she talks a lot of sense. They’re little buggers, the pair of them – excuse me swearing, Father. But I can see some of what Anna means. Happen she does exaggerate a bit, but them two would try a saint. They’ve got their own language and their own rules. They listen to nobody, and don’t give a fig for any of us. Me and Elsie are just servants – we clean them up, dress them, put food in front of them. There’s no . . .’ He paused. ‘I don’t mean thanks. I don’t even mean appreciation. I think there’s no love in them.’

  ‘Love for each other?’ the priest asked.

  Bert shrugged. ‘Who knows? They talk a language called rubbish, and I don’t see them hugging each other. They certainly don’t hug us or their sister.’

  At that moment, the pair turned, looked at the guest and smiled.

  A cold, but lightweight finger travelled the length of his back. Dear Lord, were these people making him fanciful? Had Anna’s words in the car caused him to imagine things? It was their eyes – laughing, yet empty. It was nonsense, of course. They were only babies.

  ‘It’s true, Uncle Bert. Look.’ Anna held up a newspaper. She read aloud. Some Jews in Warsaw had committed suicide rather than give in, and approximately 50,000 people had been killed. ‘You know they have the same God as we have?’ she asked. ‘The Jews, I mean. Jesus was a Jew. Father Brogan told me we all come from Jews. This is just horrible.’

  ‘Aye, and that was last year. Since then, there will have been a lot more, love. We have to hurry up, or there won’t be a Jew left breathing.’

  Anna looked at the piles of newsprint that surrounded her. She needed to hurry, too, because she wanted to get this war cut out and stuck down while it was still happening. She had nine very large scrapbooks filled already, and she was well into the tenth. But it wasn’t easy, because she had to work while the twins were out, since they certainly kept a keen eye on her progress. ‘I’m over a year behind,’ she grumbled softly.

  Bert watched his favourite girl as she read pieces about the desert campaign, her lips moving when she laboured over names that were scarcely pronounceable. He loved her to bits. Elsie just plodded along, seeming to ignore or to miss the behaviour of the other two. But Bert knew what was what. If those little buggers could get their hands on Anna’s scrapbooks, they would. Angelic faces sometimes hid naughty minds, just as the biblical whited sepulchre might conceal the gravest sin.

  Elsie came in with the twins. Bert, standing in the kitchen doorway, gazed at the industrious eight-year-old with her scissors and glue. ‘Anna?’

  ‘What, Uncle Bert?’

  ‘The books you’ve already filled – shall I take them up to the hall and ask Mrs Mellor to hide them?’

  Anna smiled. Uncle Bert understood. He knew what they were capable of, and he was on her side. ‘Yes, please.’

  Elsie shook her head. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. They’ve been as good as gold for weeks now.’

  Bert stared at his wife. ‘They wait their chance.’ The words were pushed past narrowed lips. ‘But I’m taking no chances with our Anna’s bits and bobs.’ He walked upstairs to get Anna’s scrapbooks from their top shelf. ‘It shouldn’t be like this,’ he muttered to himself.

  Downstairs, Elsie was squaring up to Anna. ‘I don’t know what came first, chicken or egg,’ she declared, ‘but you and Bert see only bad in these two little girls. That could be why they’re sometimes naughty, because they know you don’t give a damn for them. Three years old,’ she said. ‘You should be ashamed, both of you. They can’t be held responsible for their actions at this age.’

  Anna continued to tidy away her treasures. The twins were now causing rows between the Dixons, and that was exactly what they wanted. Auntie Elsie forgot things so easily. They had flattened the chicken run – fortunately, it had been empty at the time. They had thrown chicken droppings at washing on the line, broken two windows by throwing stones, dug up all Auntie Elsie’s lettuces, picked the French marigolds. According to their foster mother, Kate and Beckie had high spirits and would grow out of this phase. After picking up all her belongings in order to carry them to her room, Anna made her reply. ‘Did you find the bread knife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I did. They’d been poking it between the planks of the coop. Perhaps they fancied chicken for tea.’ She stalked out, head held high. Auntie Elsie wasn’t as clever as Uncle Bert, so she hadn’t yet seen past those pretty faces and beautiful curls.

  Bert Dixon was sitting on Anna’s bed and looking through the full scrap books. ‘Four bloody years,’ he said gloomily.
‘Millions dead. All because of a madman. I ask you, Anna, where’s the sense?’

  ‘There is none,’ she replied.

  She was right, and they both knew it.

  Anna’s friendship with Linda Harris, now Linda Mellor, flourished anew once Roger had disappeared into the jaws of the war in Europe. Iris Mellor became unexpectedly fond of her daughter-in-law, and the change in her attitude was probably influenced by Linda’s pregnancy. A beautiful boy was born, so the Mellor line was assured, and that mattered. Grandmother doted on Richard, while his mother found him to be so much fun that she nicknamed him ‘Sausage’.

  ‘Why Sausage?’ Anna asked one day as they walked to the Post Office.

  ‘Squidgy and fat,’ came the reply from Linda.

  Anna laughed. ‘Steak puddings are fatter than sausages,’ she said. ‘Pudding’s a better name.’

  Linda shook her head. ‘The war ruined your northern steak puddings, Anna. Where there was meat, there’s now breadcrumb and gravy. At least we can still get a half-decent sausage if we play our cards right. He’s a sausage. Aren’t you, Sausage?’

  The baby chortled and Anna shivered. How often had the twins laughed when being pushed in a pram? The only time they chuckled was when someone else was in trouble. They no longer needed Anna to read to them. They could both read for themselves, so their self-containment was almost complete. They slept together, ate together, bathed together, played together. No one was allowed to enter the world they had constructed so carefully just for themselves. It was a club with two members and no affiliates. Anna ordered herself to think about something else. ‘Linda?’

  ‘What?’ She parked her pram outside the shop.

  ‘Can you tell me what a shotgun wedding is? Only I heard people talking about it and wondered what it was.’

  Linda coughed and bent down between pram and window.

  ‘Linda? Why are you laughing? It’s not funny. If there was a gun at your wedding, I never saw it. Don’t pretend to fasten your sandal – I know it’s not undone. Come on, give me an answer.’

  Linda stood up and leaned on the Post Office window. ‘You will be the death of me, girl.’

  ‘What?’

  Linda leaned forward and whispered. ‘We had to get married because of Sausage.’ She patted her belly. ‘I already had Sausage in here.’

  Anna decided to pretend not to have caught on. Living in the countryside had taught her a thing or two about bulls and cows, about how calves were made. ‘There were no sausages,’ she said in mock-seriousness. ‘There was salmon, game pie, trout and salad. And some pork. No sausages and no guns at your wedding.’

  ‘I was already expecting him.’ The mother pointed to her child.

  It was Anna’s turn to laugh. ‘I know. I knew, I knew, I knew all the time.’

  They entered the shop together. Mrs Culshaw, local seamstress and postmistress, glared at Anna. ‘There you are. I waited for someone to come so that I can go and get Elsie. I’ve shut them in the shed. Two pure-bred Persians I could have lost because of them.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Linda.

  ‘Them bloody twins. They shouldn’t be out on their own, not at their age. Pinched two of my Tilly’s kittens, they did, and they’re nobbut two weeks old. A few hours away from their mam, and they would have been dead. It’s all right, I got the kitties back, but one of them little buggers of yours kicked me.’ She stared hard at Anna.

  ‘They are not mine.’ These four words emerged slowly and clearly. ‘They have the same mother and father as me, but they aren’t mine. Everybody carries on as if I’m their mother – well, I’m not. I’m just a child.’

  Edna Culshaw looked at Linda. ‘Well, that’s me told, isn’t it? And this poor kiddy’s right – she’s not in charge of them. Well, she shouldn’t be, but I know she often is. Can you stop here while I nip up and get Elsie? If there’s owt you can’t manage, tell the customers to take what they need as long as they have the ration points, and I’ll sort money out later.’

  Linda and Anna waited. ‘They’re getting no better then?’

  ‘No,’ Anna replied. ‘They are terrible. Uncle Bert can see it, but Auntie Elsie won’t.’

  ‘Yet they’re no trouble in nursery.’ Linda looked through the window to check on Sausage. ‘Good as gold, a mile ahead of everyone else, no problems. The teacher’s thrilled to bits.’

  Anna folded her arms in the manner of Auntie Elsie. ‘The teacher should live at our house for a month or two, then. Let her do her washing twice because they’ve covered it in chicken muck. See, they’re good if it suits them, Linda. If they think they’re getting their own way, they’re great. School must be something they enjoy. If they start doing something in class that Kate and Beckie don’t like, it’ll be a different story.’

  Linda shook her head slowly. How could one woman give birth to a child like Anna, then to a pair of potential nightmares? But the woman had died, hadn’t she? Perhaps the twins had always felt out of place, unwanted, sad.

  ‘You can make up all the excuses and reasons,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve done all that myself. But they’re not right. Naughty isn’t enough, because they’re more than that, worse than that.’ Underneath all Anna had just said was another point, though she didn’t care to make it just now. It wasn’t her fault that Mam had died and that the twins existed. But it seemed as if half her life had been spent watching them, walking them, taking them to and from nursery. She was missing things. She wasn’t sure what the things were, but she knew she was missing out.

  Elsie Dixon bustled in, Mrs Culshaw hot on her heels. ‘Weren’t you supposed to be watching them?’ Elsie asked Anna.

  And it all burst out in that moment. It was as if the words had a life and strength of their own, because Anna could not control them. ‘They aren’t mine,’ she told her beloved foster mother. ‘And I can’t play when I want to, because I often have them with me. It’s not fair. If you can’t manage them, give them to someone who can, because I’ve had enough.’ On that note, she turned on her heel and left the scene. She was horribly angry, mostly with herself, but she was fed up with being in charge. Mrs Culshaw would understand, because she had cats, not kids. Linda would be sympathetic, since she had seen the twins in full flood during a visit to the Dixons’ house. But Auntie Elsie thought all children were the same and she wouldn’t listen to any bad news about Kate and Beckie.

  Elsie dragged the two miscreants into the shop and made them face Mrs Culshaw. ‘Say sorry,’ she ordered.

  ‘Sorry.’ They giggled after delivering the syllables in unison.

  Mrs Culshaw stood in the shop doorway. No one was leaving until she’d had her say. ‘Elsie, I know it’s not been easy for you getting three kiddies when you were coming up fifty. I’ve no quarrel with Anna, because she does her best. But these two listen to nobody.’

  Elsie shifted her weight from foot to foot. ‘They said they’re sorry.’ Her voice was quiet.

  ‘Aye, and I say the moon’s green cheese, but do I mean it? Now, I DO mean this. Keep them two away from my shop. They’ve no right touching my cats. They’ve no right being out on their own at this age.’

  Elsie sat in one of the customers’ chairs. ‘The gates don’t stop them any more,’ she said. ‘I suppose we could fix padlocks or something, but it’s treating them like animals in a zoo, isn’t it?’

  Linda stepped into the arena. ‘Just don’t blame Anna – any of you. She’s worked hard, got them reading, counting, knowing their numbers. The nursery’s never seen such clever children, and that’s what Anna set out to produce, since her mother did it for her. But she’s eight years old. We all forget that, because she’s an old head on her shoulders.’ She spoke to Elsie. ‘Good luck, Mrs Dixon. You’re going to need it.’

  In June 1943, the U-boats lost heart. Depth charges, radar and warning systems developed by scientists made life impossible for the crews of these killer submarines. Allied aircraft were now capable of bombing U-boats out of existence, so another corner
had been turned. Anna cut and pasted the news into her scrapbook. She didn’t know where her dad was, though a letter had arrived weeks ago. Bert thought he’d be going for Palermo, capital of Sicily, but no one could be sure. ‘As long as he’s getting nearer to home, eh?’ said Bert before going into the garden.

  But Anna was worried about Elsie, so she heard scarcely a word. She couldn’t forget how rude she had been in the Post Office, because, having thought through what she had said on that occasion, she had to admit that it wasn’t Elsie’s fault, either. Auntie had not contributed to Mam’s death, and she was no blood relation to Beckie and Kate, so the care of those two mischief-makers had to be shared.

  It was being shared now. Beckie, with her tongue poking from a corner of her mouth, was measuring the articles Anna wanted to keep. She then measured the page in the scrapbook, and made her calculations on a bit of paper. Anna stopped reading. At three-and-a-half, Beckie was coping with calculations that would certainly have flummoxed many of the students in Junior One.

  Kate was reading. ‘Pan-tell-eria,’ she said carefully.

  Anna looked at the piece. The island of Pantelleria was between Tunisia and Sicily. Did Kate realize that her father was in that area? How much did these two know? ‘Yes, it was done by aeroplanes. The people surrendered before our army went in.’

  ‘Bombs,’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes, bombs.’ Anna carried on sticking.

  Kate spoke to Beckie. ‘Corra Anna borra kittle?’

  Beckie shook her head.

  ‘You’re not having a kitten,’ said Anna. ‘And don’t think for one minute that I don’t understand enough of your daft-speak, because I listen. You’re not fit to have a cat. You’d probably kill it.’

  ‘No,’ they shouted.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be no-plee? Or are you going to have a bit of sense and talk like the rest of us?’

  There was no response. There was seldom a response, because they preferred their own world, their own company, their own plans. But they continued to help and no attempt was made to sabotage Anna’s work. For some time, their older sister had known that they were clever; this was the day when she realized that they were more than that – they were unusually brilliant.