Sugar and Spice

by Ruth Hamilton

  Anna forgot the tea and sat down. What would become of her little sisters? Because, no matter what, they were the daughters of Billy and Frankie, just as she was. ‘I hope I never have twins,’ she said. Years later, she would look back on that day when she and her father sat huddled over an empty grate. Had she ever made the tea? She couldn’t remember.

  But what she would never forget was that this was the day when Dad found the Shepherd’s Crook, a small hostelry over the hill. Weakened by war, made sane by the regularity of days in the country, he could not take on board the knowledge that his younger daughters were, in truth, not right. He renewed his relationship with beer and whisky, joined in small talk, played dominoes and came home in a state that would have shocked his daughter had she been awake.

  For months, he held himself in check and limited his intake. Sometimes, he slept in the woods, either in his tent, or in the cabin provided by the estate, always with a bottle of whisky as his companion. But Billy’s descent into alcohol dependence had begun, and it would never be completely reversed.

  It was all down to Linda Mellor yet again. Anna had accepted long ago the concept of having two mothers – three, if she counted Dirty Gerty, as the pupils of St Mary’s termed Mother Gertrude. Elsie was the cuddle-mam, Linda was the mother who made things happen, while Gertrude was a support when it came to learning.

  Linda was the power. She could train her sights on the twins and fire at will, but even she was slightly flummoxed on this occasion. ‘Anna, while they’re killing one another, the rest of the world is safe.’

  ‘They’re my sisters.’ Sometime, Anna didn’t quite understand herself, because she found it difficult to hate her mother’s children completely. As for her dad – he was behaving strangely again, and the twins had been the cause of that, so everything in Anna’s head was as cluttered and disordered as an attic filled with centuries of junk. She didn’t know how she felt.

  But Dad? It was as if they weren’t really his, since he hadn’t been there from the start. But they were his. The bonds of flesh and blood were elemental and strong, which factor was probably the reason for him beginning to fall apart again. ‘I’m worried,’ she told her friend. ‘They’re getting dangerous. Elsie’s had to give Kate my old bedroom, because they’re not getting on with each other.’

  ‘Don’t they practise their violin music together?’

  Anna nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Together, but not together. When one starts, the other starts, but they deliberately play different tunes. It’s been sudden and very nasty. Auntie Elsie and Uncle Bert are living in hell.’

  Linda walked to the window and stared out at the gardens. ‘Perhaps they should be split up. You could go back to Elsie’s and let one of them stay with your dad.’

  That could not possibly work, and Anna said so. She did all the chores, while neither of the twins did anything in the house. And the cacophony of two violins competing at a slightly greater distance might prove disastrous for the whole neighbourhood. Dad neither knew nor liked them, their teachers couldn’t stand them, and Anna had taken enough. ‘It makes me tired,’ she said.

  Anna stood up and joined Linda at the window. ‘It’s as if that snow brought a curse with it. It fell from heaven, but it originated in another place that’s meant to be too hot for that kind of weather. I can’t concentrate. My own school work has to be done, but it’s hard trying to make sense of Latin declension when all this is going on.’

  Linda put an arm across Anna’s shoulders and drew her in. ‘I shall write to them. Two separate letters, but the twins will come here together. I hate threatening people, yet nothing else will work – no point in appealing to their better nature, as they seem to have been born without a good side. Go now, my dear. I have some telephone calls to make.’

  Linda stayed where she was for some time after Anna had left. She had no calls to make, but she intended to go out very shortly and deal with Billy. Over the months, she had become rather too fond of the man. Since the death of Roger, no one had appealed to her in the least way. Until now. He was an employee, as she repeatedly advised herself. And pity was akin to love.

  She pulled on a pair of boots and a coat, marched briskly down the drive until she reached the edge of Grantham Woods, stopping to listen after a few more strides. Nothing. There was more to woodsmanship than the chopping down of trees, but Linda’s worry went deeper than mere concern about forestry. She made for the cabin, opened the door to her property without knocking, and there he was, a half-bottle of whisky gripped in his right hand.

  He jumped to his feet. ‘Just putting a drop in my thermos,’ he said. ‘Keep the cold out.’

  Linda slammed the door home. ‘You let that girl down, Billy MacRae, and as God is my witness, I’ll kill you.’

  He forgot himself for a moment. ‘Eh? You what?’

  ‘You heard me well enough. I love Anna, and I’ll do almost anything for her. If that has to include separating you from your whisky-tainted breath, so be it. One of my staff will take over the house, do shopping, cooking and chores. Anna’s a skivvy, no more than that – just an unpaid serf who waits on you hand and foot. She wants to be a teacher – how’s she going to manage that with a weight like you to carry?’

  He closed his mouth with an audible snap.

  ‘You’re in the Shepherd’s Crook almost every night, you’re drinking on duty, and no alcoholic should be let loose with a saw and an axe.’

  Billy swallowed hard. ‘I’m not an alcoholic,’ he said.

  ‘Denial,’ was her reply. ‘That’s where you are right now – in denial. You can’t go a day without a drink, and well you know that. It’s time to stop before you find yourself drinking a full bottle of spirits every day. What will happen to her when you die of alcohol poisoning or cirrhosis of the liver? Elsie and Bert are getting no younger – and look at you. Burying your head in a bottle while your little girl tries to set right all that’s amiss in your life? I thought you were a man. I liked you, enjoyed talking to you. But I’m not wasting my time on an old soak.’

  She slammed her way out of the hut and found that her legs weren’t working. For about five minutes, she sat on a tree stump and tried to compose herself. He wasn’t even handsome any more. His skin had grown rougher, while the male-pattern baldness was threatening to leave him looking like a pink snooker ball, but . . .

  Cupid was notoriously unpredictable and, whenever he intended to fire an arrow, he should perhaps prepare himself via an eye test. Billy MacRae was poisoned meat, and she should begin to dine elsewhere. Not that he knew, of course. Not that he felt anything in return. His attachment was to Johnny Walker, and he was too selfish to sever the connection. Linda had seen it all before in her family from the south. Billy MacRae had begun to kill himself.

  They were not quite eleven years old and dressed in school uniforms. Both managed to look like Anna, while failing completely to resemble each other. They didn’t blink very often, and Linda found herself thinking of that old friend named Adolf Hitler, who had owned staring, probing eyes.

  The bull whose horns Linda grasped took the form of a large tome on the subject of mental health. They knew all the words, so they had better look at this one. These were children, yet they weren’t, so the risk had to be taken. It was for Anna’s sake, she repeated inwardly several times. It was a cruel act, but Anna mattered. Didn’t they matter? How beautiful they were, how cold those eyes.

  Linda had to keep Billy out of the equation; she didn’t want the dreadful duo to know that their father had been to the school. She passed the open book to Beckie and asked her to read aloud the marked section.

  Beckie cleared her throat. ‘Psychopathy,’ she read without any effort. ‘This is an antisocial personality disorder manifesting itself via aggression, perverted, criminal or amoral behaviour, no empathy, no sympathy, no remorse. Psychopaths are manipulative and capable of remaining outwardly normal. Those of high intellect may achieve success in a career, but seldom in domestic life.’ Beckie loo
ked up. ‘Then there’s a list of drugs, some stuff about research and a bit about treatment.’

  Linda retrieved the book. ‘I have spoken to the school board,’ she said. ‘And they say your teachers are concerned about the two of you fighting, and about the total lack of imagination in your English essays. Your essays are dull, because you cannot imagine the feelings of anyone except yourselves. You don’t care enough to wonder how others feel.’

  A half-smile played on Beckie’s lips. ‘We haven’t got that,’ she announced smugly, pointing to the book. ‘The doctor says we haven’t got it. We’re not psychopaths.’

  Linda kept a tight rein on her temper. ‘The doctor is one man, and a very old one. Others might see you differently. And you don’t fit in at school, do you? While at home, you create chaos and cause misery. I wonder how your headmistress would react if she knew your history? The burning of a barn, the kidnap and attempted manslaughter of a child, the stealing, the—’

  ‘All right. What do you require of us?’

  Linda shook her head in near-disbelief. Beckie talked like a forty-year-old, while Kate seemed to be keeping her counsel for the time being.

  The lady of the house passed a list across her desk. ‘The rules,’ she snapped. ‘Keep to them, or I’ll have you out of that school faster than water down a plug hole. I mean it. I’m not going to sit here while two evil creatures destroy Anna, Bert, Elsie and Billy. I shan’t allow you to undermine that wonderful school. You think you’re clever, don’t you? But you’re just a collection of knowledge, with no sense of how to apply such learning. Ten and ten makes twenty, but twenty what? Loaves, fishes, people? All the same to you, all consumable, all there to be stamped on by the nastiest pair of children it has been my misfortune to meet. Get out. You make me sick.’

  Beckie made for the door, but her twin remained for a while. She wanted to ask how to learn to behave, but she couldn’t, not with Beckie near enough to hear. So she followed her sister out of the house, and went home to learn the rules.

  Linda Mellor wept. She cried mainly for Anna, but also for Billy. A decent man, he was on his way to hell in a handcart, courtesy of a Scottish distillery and two difficult little girls. And there was no more she could do.

  Thirteen

  Charlie Hughes is sitting in a corner in the Throstle’s Nest, and he is nursing a pint of orange juice with a few ice cubes rattling against the sides. He has the shakes, and I don’t know whether it’s still from withdrawal, or whether seeing his son going into a hole in the ground has caused the tremors. Whatever, he looks lost, lonely and upset. Something needs to be done. All my life, I’ve been a sucker for sob stories, but my interest in folk has always repaid me tenfold, so I’ve few regrets.

  So I go and park myself next to him, because I don’t quite trust this lot – they look as if they’ve been let out for twenty-four hours because there’s no full moon. Are they armed? Will we all be standing at the wrong end of a machine gun in an hour or so? I don’t want any of them slipping him a mickey, since he’s doing well. Which is more than can be said for the cabaret.

  An Irishman of indeterminable age is propped up by the bar and is murdering Silver Threads Among the Gold. The fact that he knows very few of the words isn’t helping a great deal. When he finishes, a collective sigh of relief emerges from a dozen or more of us, but he’s starting on Danny Boy. Some almost sober bloke gives the would-be warbler a double whisky, so that’s all right for the moment.

  Across the room, Marie is watching over Susan, while I am getting to know Charlie. Charlie Hughes has found religion, and I envy him. The child I used to be never managed to handle the so-called one true Faith, but Charlie is like a newly converted Catholic, so he is in danger of becoming evangelical and tiresome. And yet . . .

  And yet, he’s funny. He has some hilarious anecdotes about life in an alcohol-free zone, and he even makes the DTs amusing. I remember Father Brogan doing the same after his escape from Ireland. ‘I could have worked with pink elephants,’ Charlie tells me. ‘Or anything any colour any time – purple rabbits, green lions – bring ’em on. But it was the real people that scared the shit out of me – excuse my French. Bloody terrifying, they were. Nuns everywhere, priests drying out – and climbing out at night to get some booze. One priest broke into the chapel one afternoon and stole the altar wine. It was Ribena, so his luck bombed. Another fellow broke his leg when a drainpipe gave way, but he wasn’t a priest, he was just a plonker. Sorry I swore.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Didn’t Tom Brogan tell me that the worst part of recovery had been nuns?

  ‘All that praying. I got used to it, like, and I’m down for confirmation, because it started being all I had. Faith, I mean. It was the nuns that got me straight in the end, but they were frightening. I’ve never seen the point to nuns – who needs ’em? But when you’re trying to come off the piss, they’ll scare you into going teetotal.’

  We’ve had curly ham sandwiches, peanuts and crisps. There was a disagreement earlier on over a few sausage rolls, but they’ve all disappeared. Needless to say, Third Party didn’t cater for this event. Gary’s brothers aren’t here, because the neighbours complained, and the lads are on remand for malicious damage. They were in church and at the graveside, but each had become very attached to a policeman, so that was that. The house has been boarded up, and they will be sent down, or sent to live in hostels.

  ‘I hear you’ve done a lot for our Susan,’ Charlie says. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘She did a lot for me.’

  ‘Aye, she would. She’s a good girl. They’re living in St Helens?’

  ‘Marie and Maureen are, yes.’

  ‘I’ve no home now,’ he says mournfully. ‘The lads’ve been chucked out.’

  ‘Marie had had enough, Charlie. She was worn to a shadow.’

  ‘I know, love. I know. Mind you, none of us gave Marie an easy time. Except for our Susan, and she got up the duff, didn’t she? I was pissed when I hit her.’

  ‘She’s forgiven you.’

  A fight breaks out near the door, and one fellow chucks another into the street. ‘Are they with us?’ I ask Charlie.

  He shrugs. ‘Well, one of them isn’t any more, that’s for sure. Who knows, eh? They all look the bloody same to me – they’ll be cousins or some such articles. It’s not a proper funeral without a fight. Weddings are very much the same. After a while, they get blurred round the edges because of the booze, and it all turns into a bit of a free-for-all. It’s a normal fight, only with chairs, stools, bottles and glasses. Speaking of recognizing folk, where’s our Maureen?’

  ‘Babysitting my twins and Susan’s Stephen.’

  Charlie tells me that Maureen could never stand their Gary, and I can’t explain why her hatred has grown to the point where she couldn’t attend the funeral. The truth about what happened to his daughter might push Charlie back inside the beer barrel, and I don’t want to be responsible for that. ‘Go and talk to Marie, Charlie. She knows how hard you’ve tried to get yourself back on track.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I—’

  ‘Just do it. She knows you’re trying your best in that place, that you’re making a real effort to change. Go on. Take your orange juice. If she thumps you, I’ll sort her out.’

  While he walks across the bar floor, I see how thin he is. The dark navy trousers flap, and the matching jacket is wider than his shoulders. Dad was like that at the end, because he stopped eating. It occurs to me that Dad may have sent Charlie to me, just as Mam sent Marie and Susan. These people may be my chance to do something right.

  I gaze around the pub and look at all the men and women who have gathered to say goodbye to a thug. And I listen to their conversations and their jokes and yes – they’re exactly like the rest of us. I was wrong – they’re not loonies having a day off. In fact, they’re quite smart when it comes to quips and put-downs. When is somebody going to do something with them? If the energy in this tiny pub could be channelled, we might get a shock, becau
se your day-to-day, common-or-garden Scouser is as sharp as a pin. But in the year of Our Lord 1975, no one wants to know.

  My Alec walks in. I didn’t know he was intending to come, don’t know how he found out where we are, but perhaps he just followed the debris. He stands in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his today-I-am-an-accountant suit. He looks delicious. ‘Oi,’ he calls to the barman, who takes no notice.

  Oh, God, here we go. Alec puts fingers in his mouth and delivers a whistle fit to crack every glass in the joint. Silence reigns. The Irish singer shakes his head as if trying to rid himself of the noise, falls off his stool, and nobody else moves. He just lies there and either goes to sleep or passes out. Not a soul cares, because at least he won’t be singing.

  The barman gives his full attention to the suit in the doorway. ‘What’s up?’ he asks.

  Alec’s mouth twitches, because he and I have a secret joke about ‘what’s up?’ and it’s not for general consumption. He can’t look at me, or that twitch will become a laugh. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he says in his best English. ‘But I noticed blood and guts outside here. About ten people in all. I counted legs and divided by two.’ Well, he is an accountant. ‘They’re all tangled up together, and I think we may need an ambulance or three.’

  The barman pushes his way to the door and peers out. ‘Oh, they’re all right,’ he announces. Then he looks Alec up and down. ‘It is a wake, you know, lad. This is what we call normal round here. Did you want a pint?’

  Alec carries his pint to my table. ‘Do you want anything, darling?’ he asks.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Was it grim?’

  I nod. Susan was hysterical, Marie wore a face like stone, but at least her shoes were a pair, while I stood there feeling guilty because I’d funded the mess.