Sugar and Spice

by Ruth Hamilton

  Our Emily – that is so touching.

  I kiss my poor, sick little baby, and she smiles at me. Today, I shall spend every hour with her. For some reason best known to someone who certainly isn’t me, this child was born with a chip on her shoulder. I have to mend her.

  The fight for survival begins in the womb. I harboured two foreign bodies for the best part of forty weeks, and Emily was the stronger. The animal she used to be wanted all the nourishment, all the oxygen – it’s natural. And, when foetus became embryo, she continued in a uterus that was rather ancient for the task of maintaining a pair of semi-detached residences, and she fought for superiority. For that, she cannot be blamed, though I would prefer it not to have happened.

  Today, I have learned that she needs me. Lottie is happy in almost anyone’s company – I guess she is just grateful to be alive. But Emily needs her mum, so I shall have to do some very clever juggling.

  I believe that personality begins to form before birth, that the unborn react to exterior noises, to the feelings and actions of their carrier, and to each other when the pregnancy is multiple. In that third trimester, they start to be people. This one was bigger, heavier, more demanding; Lottie was grateful to be away from the dark place in which, by some means, her sister clobbered her constantly. I must learn to live with this; I must keep Emily occupied while I draw out Charlotte, the shyer twin.

  Living with Emily for the best part of a whole day, giving her medicine, keeping her hydrated, I see what Susan has seen. There is an imp in her even now, while she sweats and coughs, while she sneezes and holds my hand tightly. She’s laughing at me. There’s humour here, and not a little intellect. I have misunderstood. The kid is lovable.

  ‘She’ll be all right, Anna.’ It’s Marie and she’s standing behind my chair. ‘She’s a little stunner, isn’t she? There’ll be a few hearts broke when she gets on her horse and hits town, eh? And the other one – she’s very thoughtful, very deep.’

  ‘Deep?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. She thinks a lot. Quiet, like, but always thinking, never stops till she sleeps. They’ll keep you on your toes, love. See, they’re all different, and I thank God for my girl, because for the life of me, I’ll never understand my lads. My girl’s my treasure, and you’re twice blessed. I’ve noticed with nieces and all that lot – no two girls in one family are the same. They all shine in different colours.’

  For a so-called uneducated woman, Marie paints some lovely word-pictures. ‘Thanks for everything, Marie.’

  ‘Oh, go away with your bother. I’ve lived here in the lap of luxury for a couple of weeks, no rent, just a bit of housework – it’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven. But the best bit – apart from being with my Susan and Stephen – was having Mo here. She’s a cracker, our Mo. I mean, she can’t be trusted in a shop, but she’d do anything for anybody what needs her.’

  Susan comes in. She’s anxious for me to taste her crème caramel before she has a go at baked Alaska. It’s good, and I tell her so.

  ‘Butties aren’t enough,’ she says. ‘Our Maureen should be running a café, because she can cook nearly anything – can’t she, Mam?’

  ‘Start a business,’ I say rashly. ‘Call yourselves Third Party.’

  Maureen arrives. ‘What about fire and theft?’

  We all tut at her. ‘That’s car insurance,’ says Marie. ‘Go on, Anna.’

  What have I started now? I talk about women who are too busy to cook, people who work every day, but whose husbands expect them to produce a meal for friends or work colleagues in the blink of an eye. ‘You meet with them, let them choose a menu, then you go to their houses and get all their serving dishes and so forth. Sometimes, you can cheat and cook a batch of something or other, stick it in the freezer, re-cook it and put it in their tableware. Juliet would pay a fortune for that sort of service.’

  Maureen is catching on. ‘Then we go round with the goodies and plant them in the house before husband and guests turn up.’

  ‘Got it in one, Mo. Think big,’ I tell her. ‘Think shoplifting in reverse. What’s your speciality?’ I ask.

  ‘Anything to do with pastry,’ is her answer. ‘I have a light touch.’

  ‘Susan?’

  ‘Puddings and cakes,’ she replies.

  ‘Marie?’

  ‘No idea. Mostly Pimblett’s pies and anything from the chippy. But I can wash up. Oh, I don’t do egg mayonnaise.’

  Susan digs her mother in the ribs. ‘You do brilliant soups, Mam. Remember? When we had next to nothing and you got bones from the butcher? You just do the same and chuck a glass of wine in.’ She studies me. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I tell her honestly. ‘But we should think about it.’ They need hope. They need to be good at something, to succeed, to become businesswomen. ‘It’s not impossible. When you get the flat in St Helens, some of the cooking could be done there. But most would be here, because I have the six burners and the double oven. It’s a simple enough concept, and there’d be no bills for rent, heat and light in a business premises. We’ll use a bit more fuel, but that can be accounted for with a proportion of the profits.’

  ‘What about money?’ Marie asks.

  ‘Right.’ I swallow hard. ‘I’d have to invest, but I met a man today who’s an accountant. He can look at the idea and give us an opinion.’ He can also come here and see how full my house is. That will put a stop to any risk of him ‘popping in while passing’. He’ll come soon. I know he will.

  Emily is asleep, and my left arm is dead. Marie takes her away and, when my arm returns to me, I pick up Lottie from the pram in the dining room. I am learning. Motherhood is like algebra, icing a cake and sex – you have to bloody concentrate.

  My living room is sizeable – twenty-eight by seventeen, and it contains three sofas, some side tables, lamps, a massive coffee table and four women, but it’s lost its carpet. I’m on my knees, as are Susan, Maureen and Marie. They’ve discovered my loose-leaf recipe holders and are sorting entrées from starters, soups from puddings, wheat from chaff. The chaff is being dumped in a cardboard box marked CRAP, and I am sad that some of my ideas and cut-outs from magazines have been relegated to the reserves bench. Some of the remarks passed are so cutting – I imagine that half of my extras won’t even get to kick a ball.

  ‘This here beef strong enough,’ comments Maureen.

  ‘Stroganoff. Keep it,’ I order. ‘I’m very good with nutmeg. I’m very good with main courses, actually.’ Well, it’s true – I do a lovely rack of lamb and am inventive even with offal.

  Marie is laughing. ‘What’s this prawn hentail with a difference?’ she asks.

  I grant her a disdainful glance. ‘I am ridding my life of the masculine, so the cock goes.’

  ‘You mucky mare,’ giggles Susan. ‘Hey, Mam – she might be posh, but she’s one of us.’

  Posh? I washed my mother’s body in a house with no hot water, no electricity, gas lights and few windows, since Hitler enjoyed another Kristallnacht in our back street, but I don’t say anything. I tend to speak clearly and without much of an accent, have qualifications and know the order in which to use cutlery. Beyond that, I’m as confused as the next woman. Look at these three. Susan’s a brilliant mother, Maureen’s inventive and unafraid, Marie is stoic. Sometimes, they make me feel quite small and that’s not easy – I’m five feet and nine inches tall, and rather larger round the equator since I had the twins.

  ‘Talking of cocks of the walk . . .’ Maureen throws a Magic Roundabout birthday cake in the CRAP box, ‘. . . Jimmy got eighteen months in Walton. Let’s hope I’m done, dusted, settled and invisible when he gets out.’

  ‘My feller’s gone holy,’ Marie says.

  ‘Another hole in his head?’ asks Maureen sweetly.

  Marie shakes her head. ‘Church. He’s being confirmed and taking the name Andrew. So he’ll be Charles Andrew – must have gone royal as well. Whatever, he’ll still be a right Charlie.’

  We a
ll sit back on our heels and think for a minute. I don’t know why, but I nurture a slight suspicion that Charles Andrew could be on the right track. There’s no hope for Jimmy. I think he may be on hard drugs, because the behaviour described by Maureen is a long way up the wall. ‘Will you give Charlie a chance?’ I ask.

  Marie puffs out her cheeks. ‘He’s a mad bastard, but it could be the drink. I mean, when we got told our Sue was pregnant, he clouted her good and hard. I’m ashamed to say I was ashamed of her, but I’m not now. He was worse than me when we found out. The answer is, I have no answer, Anna. He could go either way.’ She shrugs. ‘I’ve prayed to God the Father and God the Son. Confirmation brings the Holy Ghost, so let’s see what He can do.’

  I take a sideways look at Susan. If the truth ever comes out, Marie will kill her son, and Maureen will be done for aiding and abetting before, during and after the act. Some dogs are best left to slumber. Oh, I forgot. ‘Susan, I’ve got you a dog. Well, a bitch.’

  She claps her hands like a five-year-old. ‘What make is it?’ she asks.

  I am tempted to tell her Ferrari, but I don’t. ‘Golden retriever. She’s a pedigree better than any of ours—’

  ‘Couldn’t fail,’ Maureen interjects.

  ‘And her name’s Ellison Queen of Sheba. Ellison’s the name of the breeder, and she has four paws, a tail at the back and teeth like needles. That’s the animal, not the breeder. But they’ll drop out once she’s eaten all my furniture. Her teeth, I mean.’

  ‘Sounds like our Gary,’ says Marie. ‘His teeth are falling out, and it’s all because he daren’t go near a dentist. His breath stinks.’

  Susan raises a hand to her face. She remembers smelly breath. It was our Gary. I distract the other pair by leaping on my game pie recipe. Iris Mellor started my collection with that one.

  ‘Can you cook that?’ Maureen asks.

  ‘Of course. But we have to do a bit of deer-stalking, catch some rabbits, skin them and—’

  ‘Shut up,’ orders Maureen. ‘Or I’ll be sick all over your brandy chocolate mousse.’

  I shut up, Susan seems to have calmed down. She leaves the room, goes to look at the sleeping babies. I won’t follow her, because sympathy might make her weep, and she doesn’t need that right now. If I thought I’d get away with it, I’d kill the creature myself. But I’m a coward. By a similar token, if I could do just one bank job and get away with it, I would. That’s not out of common decency – it’s because I don’t fancy prison. Perhaps many of us stay on the right side of the law just to avoid incarceration. Perhaps one of us here in this room is more like her twin sisters than she cares to admit. Whatever, we’re yellow-bellies.

  Into the valley of death and recipes walks Alec Halliwell. ‘I knocked,’ he says, ‘but nobody heard me.’

  He’s beautiful. I must remember to keep the side door locked. ‘This is Dolores’s other half,’ I tell the small congregation. ‘Alec – Marie, Maureen and Susan, but Susan’s upstairs.’

  ‘Nice carpet,’ he comments.

  I inform him that we are starting a new trend, possibly a new business, and ask will he look at our proposals once I have them on paper.

  ‘More paper?’ His eyes are laughing.

  ‘Don’t get clever with me,’ I advise him. ‘Make yourself useful, find the kitchen, find the kettle and make tea.’

  He leaves.

  Marie is staring at me. ‘You jammy little cow,’ she whispers.

  ‘I’m not little. Stick to your recipes.’

  They are whispering about me, saying they feel love is in the air, laughing behind their hands.

  ‘One word,’ I warn. ‘One word, and you are homeless. Both of you.’

  He’s back. ‘Where’s the tea?’

  Maureen shakes her head gravely. ‘Are they all daft, or what? It’s in the small flour bin.’

  ‘Of course,’ he answers. As he walks down the hall, we hear him saying, ‘Where else would it be?’

  Maureen’s eyes have bored all the way to the back of my skull. She makes a crude gesture with her hands. ‘Are you and him . . .?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She said that a bit fast, Marie.’

  ‘She did. And she’s gone red.’

  ‘I’ve always voted Labour,’ I say. ‘Just shut up, or you’ll be selling butties out of the back of that Hillman.’

  Susan enters and asks about the gorgeous hunk in the kitchen. If she doesn’t stop, she’ll be getting a mongrel and a black eye.

  ‘We can grow our own vegetables,’ I announce. ‘And salad stuff.’

  Nothing. Not a word out of any of them.

  ‘We did old-time ballroom at school,’ Marie informs us eventually. ‘You had to change partners there, too.’

  There’s murder in my heart again, but I’m doing time for no one. I go to help with the making of tea. As I walk towards the kitchen, I convince myself that Alec wants to have sex with me just to get his own back with Den. ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask him.

  He doesn’t know. ‘I didn’t think you’d have a meeting of mothers here. Or a wall-papered floor.’ With no warning, he drags me towards him and traps me against his body. ‘Anna.’ He kisses me just once before releasing me.

  It is very difficult for a person to maintain a clear head when desire floods the veins. But I manage. Just. ‘Unless otherwise informed, Alec, always assume that I am busy. Don’t make the mistake of taking me for granted. Den did that, and he’s on his way down the road with both my size sevens planted on his rear. This house belongs to my children, and I live in it with them. Three of my friends are here, as well. Two are temporary, the other I’m not sure about. She has a baby, too. You can’t just swan in here – ever heard of a phone? A letter? A pigeon?’

  ‘Smoke signals,’ he adds. ‘I’ll go.’

  I scald the pot while he exits stage left, then I carry the tray through to the living room. ‘He’s gone,’ I say airily. ‘Forgot to bring some papers – divorce stuff. And I don’t think he wanted to sit among piles of recipes. So.’

  ‘So what?’ Susan takes the tray. ‘He fancies you, you fancy him – go and have a meal with him. Or something.’

  ‘I had a meal with him yesterday lunchtime.’ And something. But I don’t mention the something. ‘He’ll be back. We have business to discuss.’

  The three women line up in front of me. Susan taps the floor and counts the others in. Their rendition of Big Spender is interesting, but not perfect. ‘Spe-e-e-nd a little ti-ime wi-ith me.’

  ‘Sit!’ I command.

  They sit. ‘Any more from any one of you, and there’ll be no Third Party.’

  Maureen can’t resist it. ‘No, but we can have fire and theft . . .’

  I kid you not – this dog thing is clinically insane. Do they have mental hospitals for animals? She eats anything – and I mean anything. Shoes, chairs, skirting boards, carpets, loo roll, pram tyres, toys and doors. I am not prepared for this, not insured against wilful damage by a canine. I’ve never had a dog. Nothing against them, no phobia, no axe to grind. And she’s so happy. Manic, almost. She runs everywhere, even when a wall is three inches away, she still runs. I swear she’s going to end up looking like one of those boxer dogs – flat faced and drooling.

  In spite of her tendency to crash, and despite all the tellings-off, Sheba is eternally optimistic. She sits in front of me smiling, tongue lolling, breath panting to and fro so that the tongue quivers. She’s saying, ‘Chase me,’ because she suddenly dashes off, bangs into some other wall, turns and says, ‘Why haven’t you followed me?’ I am holding one baby, sometimes two.

  But – and this is the wonderful thing – when I place my children on the floor, a blanket spread beneath their bodies, she insinuates her fat little personage between them and she lies as still as stone. It’s incredible. She does not bite babies, nor does she attack anything pertaining to them. Blankets, toes, clothes and fingers are all safe, because, in spite of being a mad creature, she knows where to dra
w the line.

  She isn’t Susan’s dog at all, since she’s chosen me. Susan accepts that with equanimity, though she does borrow the puppy from time to time because of the entertainment value.

  Great. We now have four babies between two of us, and we pretend that it’s perfectly natural for Stephen to share his pram with a two-month-old retriever. Why should we care? People talk, so let them talk. We have a life, they should get one.

  The most wonderful news is that my home-made bolster is no longer needed. Propped up, Lottie and Emily seem to tolerate each other very well, especially when Stephen and Sheba keep pace at one side of us. I am coming to realize that dogs and children are a good combination and, though I have to tolerate some chewing and idiocy, the young bitch has added another dimension to the lives of our babies.

  Maureen and Marie have moved out to a house with two bedrooms. They were delighted to get a house instead of a flat, and they are settling in – arguing, of course – before attempting to launch the new ship named Third Party. Alec, who has gone all suit-and-tie professional – he’s gorgeous in a suit – has looked at the idea, made a few suggestions and, apart from a couple of meetings with us, has kept his distance. He’d probably be even more handsome out of the suit. Juliet is finishing some paperwork, and we shall all be sweating over a hot stove when our first clients bite. I am a lascivious old cow. It’s going to happen. I can’t keep this up much longer.

  Summer’s thinking about moving on. The days are still lovely, but, when evening arrives, there’s something in the air, a crispness that warns of cooler days to come. Sunsets are becoming spectacular.

  I haven’t phoned Alec, and he hasn’t phoned me. The only contact we have had has been in the company of others, and I am beginning to feel saintly, because I resisted temptation. Or did I merely postpone the inevitable? I’m not sure, and I still nurse the suspicion that Alec may have tried to make a move on me just to get even with Den.

  Oh yes, Den. He’s left the area, and Mrs Dolores Halliwell is with him. She left her children in order to move in with an older child, one who is very high maintenance and unpredictable. Never mind. He may find it in his heart to tell her about removable parts when it comes to the cleaning of gas fires.