But the children were not around to see how well it worked for, with the school holiday over, they were compelled to resume their education. Beata and the rest of her siblings were envious of Mims, who remained at home, the little one rather smug at having Mother all to herself as she waved the others off.
‘And remember!’ Grace called after them. ‘You’re not to go down Paver Lane, the gypsies will get you!’ Once they had turned the corner, she turned to the child in her arms and jiggled her affectionately. ‘Now let’s you and I go make the beds.’ Set on her feet, an eager Mims scampered up the stairs with Mother behind her, the pair of them going from bed to bed, chanting, ‘Make the beds, shake the beds, turn the blankets o-over!’
Those on their way to school disobeyed their mother, risking capture by gypsies for the simple pleasure of tormenting Mad Billy, rapping like woodpeckers on his window, which they knew from past experience would drive him into hysterics and make him start ripping his pictures from the wall and smashing them. It was such fun. Today, however, even more demented by their cruelty, the poor creature hurled a wooden frame at the window, shattering the pane and sending them running and screaming in laughter.
Seeing Billy start to cry, Madeleine felt a rush of shame for her part in it. Condemning her fleeing siblings – ‘You mean devils!’ – she came back and stooped to gather the broken picture, placing it gently on the man’s windowsill before going sheepishly on her way.
At their places of education, the brothers and sisters were segregated, the girls’ school being at the end of Chapel Row and surrounded by a wall and a big iron gate. Banned from contact, the Kilmaster girls were totally ignorant of what went on in Joe’s school, other than he was taught by the Christian Brothers. They themselves were to be instructed by the Sisters of Charity, who wore blue habits with a white collar, a large winged wimple and a black apron. The building had only one room but had been sectioned into four classes by a folding room divider.
Besides the nuns, there were lay teachers in charge of classes, and it was in one such class that Beata found herself on that first day.
Happily for a child eager to travel, after morning prayers the first lesson was geography and her interest was quickly secured, so much so that by the time the teacher asked the pupils to write down all that she had told them, Beata was the first to grab her pen.
‘You, new girl, come out here!’ Miss Ambler pointed a finger at the ground before her chair.
Beata raised a startled face from her exercise book. Guessing that the tone spelled trouble, she did not immediately realize what she had done but nevertheless answered the summons.
‘Did I see you writing with your left hand?’
Beata blushed. ‘Sorry, mi—’ Barely had she issued her apology when the school mistress lashed out and struck her across the face.
‘Now! You won’t do it again, will you?’
‘No, miss.’ Her vision fractured by tears, Beata returned to her bench.
The imprints of Miss Ambler’s fingers were still upon her cheek when she went home at lunchtime. Aghast, her mother demanded an explanation.
In Father’s presence, Beata hardly dared confess. ‘Teacher caught me writing with my left hand.’
‘What have I told you?’ Probyn wagged a stern finger, his words making Beata feel stupid, especially when her mother agreed.
‘But look, Probe, it must have been a hefty clout to leave such a mark!’ Grace showed matronly indignance. ‘We can’t have that.’
Stern but fair, Probyn had to agree that the teacher had been overzealous. ‘You’re in charge, Mother.’
‘Right! I’ll go and have a word after dinner.’
Beata dreaded the outcome.
But Grace was neither aggressive nor discourteous, addressing Miss Ambler in the gentle manner that had won her many friends. ‘I realize that Beata was in the wrong – her father and myself have insisted that she holds her pen in the correct hand. But look,’ she indicated Beata’s cheek. ‘It’s still red two hours later – in fact it’s turning to a bruise. I’d rather you didn’t do it again.’
That Miss Ambler took heed of this came as a huge surprise to Beata, and for the next few weeks at least others were to be the recipients of the schoolmistress’s foul temper.
But gradually Mother’s warning seemed to fade from Miss Ambler’s mind and her vicious nature once more took precedence. This coinciding with one of Mother’s bouts of ill health, Beata chose not to add to her worries. Mother was a brave person who never moaned about her discomfort. Taking this as her example, Beata was to bear future punishments in silence.
Yet, despite Miss Ambler’s violent nature she too had recognized Beata’s natural propensity for tending those less fortunate, and whenever any of the pupils were taken ill at school, which was quite often in such a deprived locale, it was always Beata who was called upon to attend them. This morning she was appointed chaperone to a girl who required stitches in her arm.
Meeting her sister in the schoolyard, Beata said she didn’t have time to chat. ‘I have to get Mabel to Nurse Falconer’s.’
On an errand herself, Maddie replied that she could not stop either, but had time enough to examine the bloodstained rag that bound the other child’s arm. ‘What’s happened to her?’
Respecting her charge’s feelings, Beata murmured confidentially in her sister’s ear, ‘Her mother slashed her with a knife. I think she must be loony.’
Before she knew it she was reeling from a shove. Without another word her sister stalked off, leaving a perplexed Beata to take an equally bemused Mabel on their way. With Nurse Falconer sewing up someone else and the wound too serious to wait, they went instead to the hospital. The stitching turned out to be quite an ordeal, for the victim at least, but Beata tried to comfort her as best she could, for which she was congratulated by the medical staff for her lack of squeamishness.
This praise, however, was no conciliation for a grumbling stomach. Delayed at the hospital until past midday and finding herself with no time to go home for lunch, it seemed that Beata would have to go hungry. In the playground was a group of lilac trees left over from a derelict garden and she sat despondently beneath them, hoping that one of the other girls who congregated here would share their chips with her. But just then one of her many relatives came shuffling by in her black dress and bonnet, and upon discovering the situation old Aunt Mary donated a penny bap which, filled with chips, provided a most delicious treat. And as she munched on it, Beata reflected on the kindness of her relatives and how wonderful it was to have so many of them.
Mother was to remark upon this too when Beata told her about it at teatime, reserving acid comment for Miss Ambler, whose fault it was that Beata had nearly gone without sustenance.
‘I shall have to be having words with her again, I think,’ she said sternly to her husband.
‘Oh, it wasn’t really her fault!’ Beata did not want this, not out of concern for the teacher but so as not to upset her mother. Normally Mother’s bouts of illness would last only a short time and she would be up and caring for her brood again. This time, though, even now that she was up and about she continued to look unwell. Moreover, the rasping little cough that had dogged her on and off for ages was refusing to go away, her eyes were sunken and she was even thinner and paler than before. ‘It was Mabel’s mother who’s really to blame. I didn’t mind taking the poor lass to hospital.’
Ready to dish out the tea, Grace looked dark. ‘And you say she cut the child on purpose?’
‘Somebody said she’s loony— Ow!’ Beata drew in her leg as it was kicked under the table and looked across to find Maddie scowling at her.
But, to escape accusation, Maddie quickly announced, ‘I need to take a penny tomorrow, Mother. For the black babies.’
‘Oh, right.’ Serving spoon still in hand, expression vague, Grace moved as if to get her purse but was prevented.
‘Mother, sit down!’ Augusta grabbed the serving spoon from her hand
.
‘Oh, all right bossy-boots.’ For once Grace did not resist, sinking onto a dining chair and allowing her eldest daughter to fill the plates.
‘You look worn out.’ Probyn was softly scolding.
‘I shouldn’t be,’ said Grace. ‘We’ve been sitting down all afternoon, haven’t we?’ She smiled fondly at Mims, whom she had cuddled on her lap, whilst singing songs and telling stories, too lethargic to do otherwise.
‘If her ladyship’s too much of a handful maybe you could send her to Baby Class.’
At a low ebb, Grace had been considering this herself, not because Mims was a nuisance but because she feared it was unhealthy to keep her shut up in this airless house all day. ‘But she’s so little, and if the teachers are all like Miss Ambler…’
‘Sister Magdalene’s lovely,’ said Beata. ‘They have sandpits to play in and little trestle beds to have an afternoon nap on.’
‘Do you like the sound of that, Mims?’ her mother turned to the youngest and asked.
Keen to be like her brothers and sisters, Mims nodded.
And so it was that the last of Grace’s beloved children went off to school, bringing tears to her mother’s eyes as she watched her toddle up the street the next morning. The task of looking after Mims fell to Beata, the others naturally according her this responsibility.
‘She won’t mind,’ opined Maddie to the rest. ‘Beat’s good at looking after folk.’
It would not have mattered if Beata minded or not, for, thereafter, the taking of Mims to school assumed a regular routine in which she would drag her little sister along to Standard One for prayers throughout which Mims would fidget, before gratefully handing her to the care of Sister Magdalene whose kind nature was in total contrast to Miss Ambler’s, the latter continuing to make her life a misery.
* * *
That autumn Beata took her First Communion. The white dress and veil worn by her sisters before her was brought out of storage, altered to fit, washed and starched. After breakfasting with the nuns at the convent in Fishergate she joined the procession to church where her family awaited. Father stood out from a congregation comprised mainly of women and grandfathers, the nation’s manhood away at war. Notwithstanding this, it seemed the entire O’Brien clan had turned up to see her, plus all her mother’s Catholic friends, many of them pressing copper or even silver threepenny pieces into her hand.
‘Look!’ The cupped hands she held out to Gussie almost overflowed with coins. ‘I didn’t know so many people liked me.’
Her eldest sister was quick to discourage boastfulness. ‘It’s not because they like you. It’s so you’ll say a prayer to get them into heaven.’
Slightly disappointed, Beata was nevertheless pleased with her haul – maybe there was enough to buy a book! But then she remembered Gussie’s chastisement over the ice cream and, prompted by the religious enrolment she had just received, she knew what must be done.
Presented with the entire amount, Grace’s eyes filled with moisture. ‘Oh, you’re a good, kind girl, Beat!’
All feeling of sacrifice evaporated, for the look on her mother’s face was reward in itself, as was the splendid dinner Mother was to cook when they got home, the first proper meal they had eaten in ages. And from that moment, Beata learned that the ultimate pleasure came not from acquiring wealth or luxuries but by giving to others, and that through such a channel the prize was handed back manifold.
‘It’s nice to have so many aunts and uncles, isn’t it?’ Beata smiled up at her mother.
The fragile face beheld her with devotion. ‘It is, Beat.’ Turning to her husband, Grace shared a sympathetic smile, for Probyn had been cut off from his sisters for many a year. ‘It was kind of them all to come to see you today.’
‘That big fat lady didn’t come.’ This observance was from five-year-old Duke as he carried his empty dinner plate into the scullery.
Realizing that he meant Aunt Kit, his eldest sister broke off the washing-up to cuff him. ‘Don’t let Father hear you call her that.’
‘Father did hear,’ Probyn called from the other room, ‘and you’re going to get a good hiding, my boy, if you’re not careful. Aunt Kit isn’t here because she’s not a Catholic.’ Even knowing there was little point, he and Grace had still sent her an invitation. He turned to his wife, feeling slightly guilty that he had not made time to go to see Kit. ‘I wonder how she’s managing these days.’ With all their own hardships to endure there had been little thought for others lately. ‘I should go and make sure she’s all right. Aye, I’ll go this weekend.’ But then the weekend came and all he wanted to do was to spend time with Grace and his family. Hence, his aunt was relegated to the list of things to be attended to in the future.
13
How long could this dreadful grief persist? If anything, time had made it worse, not better. It was like having a pain in one’s stomach that no amount of bismuth could heal – a deep raw ulcer. Kit had watched other widows cope with their losses and wondered why she could not do likewise – but then surely they could not have felt the same intensity for their husbands as she had for her own beloved. Robbed of Worthy, alone and afraid, unable to sleep without his giant body beside her, she had become obsessed with the thought that she was going to lose her son too. Millions of mothers had lost their sons during those four terrible war years, why should she be spared? She prayed, oh how she prayed, but the others must have prayed too and it had not done them an ounce of good, and she had prayed for Worthy also, but the Lord had taken him just the same.
Kit had taken to sleeping downstairs, partly through difficulty of hauling her overweight person up the staircase, but mainly because she could not bear even to sit upon the bed she had shared with her beloved. With no beasts to care for now – the horses commandeered by the army, even the dairy cattle having to be slaughtered during those lean years – there seemed no reason to get up on a morning, except that the cockerel did not know this and hence woke her at the usual early hour. Only because it was worse just to lie there did she drag herself out of bed on yet another morning to feed the few chickens and geese that were left.
Afterwards, to try and comfort herself she made what would normally be termed a hearty breakfast though there was no heartiness in its consumption and, unable to cram in any more, she just sat gazing into space, bogged deeper in despair.
‘You’re going to take root if you’re not careful, missus!’ It was the old white-bearded farm labourer, a man of eighty-five who had volunteered to work as a replacement when his youngest son, the normal helper, had gone off to battle. At that time there had still been cows and pigs to look after, and Kit and Worthy had accepted gladly. Now there was none, and with Worthy dead there were hardly any crops planted either, but Kit had not the heart to say she no longer needed the old chap.
Nodding sadly, she simply sighed.
‘Tea’s a bit stewed.’ An earthy old hand tested the pot.
With what seemed like great effort Kit dragged her mourning-clad bulk from the chair and moved across the kitchen like an automaton to put the kettle on for a fresh brew.
‘You’re no good to anybody like this,’ declared old William. ‘Why don’t you go and visit that family of yours? Stay for a while. I’ll take care of things for you.’
‘I’ve got to be here if Toby comes home.’ With the kettle on, Kit flopped back into her chair, her rolls of fat quivering. Her girth had in no way been diminished by sadness, rather she had become even fatter from all the effort to comfort herself.
There was to be no sentimental twaddle from William. ‘You won’t keep him alive just by sitting there wishing it.’
She turned on him with annoyance, ready to upbraid him for this callous observation. But then, remembering that the old man had lost a son and two grandsons and still managed to function, her anger abated. ‘I suppose I should make an effort…’
Yet it was to take a great deal of exertion on her part and a good deal more persuasion from William for her
actually to go and pack a bag. As, one by one, she laid items in her case the thought occurred that it might be sensible to have a destination before she set off on her trip. Which of her family would she call on to make her feel better? Probyn, definitely, but such a trip would not require a suitcase for she could not expect a bed in his overcrowded abode. She had three sisters but two were in America. The third lived in England, but Gwen would only compound Kit’s misery with one of her famously blunt remarks. That left her nieces, and a visit to them would mean various train journeys. But then why not? There was no one here to rely on her and nothing much for her to do in the way of farm work. It might help to pass the time until Toby came home … if he came home.
Whatever her final destination, with no railway station nearer it would mean having to pass through York in order to catch a train so she would visit her nephew at the same time. Acquiring a lift with another neighbour who was on his way to market, Kit reached Probyn’s house at midday. Noting the flash of concern on Grace’s face as she wondered how she was going to feed the visitor, Kit was swift to convey the basket of victuals she had thoughtfully brought along. By the look of her nephew’s wife it was just as well she had done, for it seemed to Kit that Grace was on the point of starvation, her shoulder-blades jutting clearly through the back of her blouse, her face abnormally pale and her eyes sunken. But it was the dry, rasping cough that worried Kit most for she had heard that sound before.
The children were well-cared-for, though, and the younger ones were to provide delightful company during the afternoon.
Probyn was pleased to see his aunt when he came home from work. Yet it seemed abnormal for her to be dressed in black when she was usually so colourful, and though she tried hard to be her exuberant self he was shocked to detect melancholia under that superficial jollity. He had been foolish to presume that she was over Worthy’s death. She wasn’t over it at all – seemed totally lost without him – but he realized later when they had a chance to chat in private that this was not the only reason.
A Different Kind of Love Page 26
