The Mark of Cain

by Lindsey Barraclough

  Then Mum comes up quite close and peers into my eyes. “Roger? Have you been drinking?”

  She calls Dad, who is out in the hall putting on his coat to go to Grandma’s. “Rex! I think Roger’s tipsy.”

  He strides in and sniffs my breath. I see his fists clench. “Who the blazes has given you alcohol?”

  “The bees made it.” I yawn and sink down onto one of the kitchen chairs.

  “You’d better get off to Mother’s, Rex,” Mum says to Dad. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  The back door closes with a thud so loud it makes my head pound. Mum throws a plate onto the kitchen table in front of me. I sit there, my head twirling, staring at the bits of lukewarm, fatty meat. Mum runs some tepid water into a bowl, sticks it under the table, and tells me to put my frozen feet into it. When I complain that it’s too cold, she says if it was any warmer I’d get chilblains.

  Looking at the congealed, jellified gravy makes my stomach heave.

  Mum whips the plate out from under me. “Oh, go and lie down, for heavens’ sake!” she shouts. “Take a towel from the bathroom in case you’re sick, and if you are, you can jolly well clean the mess yourself.”

  I fall up the ladder trying to climb onto my bed. When I eventually get there, my head sinks into the pillow and the room goes spinning round and round and round.

  The cold marsh air clears my head a bit, though my feet are a little shaky on the bridge. As I trip over one of the drums of Cerebos salt, I hear, to my relief, laughter coming from inside the house. I pause inside the back door, take a deep breath to steady myself as I walk along the stone passage, then look in at the kitchen door. Ange and Mimi are putting food out on the plates. I am amazed to see Mimi downstairs.

  “Haven’t you eaten yet?” I ask.

  “We got a bit held up, one way and another,” says Ange, turning to fetch the knives and forks from the drawer. Mimi flashes me an odd sideways look, but I don’t know what she means by it.

  Dad has lit the fire in the dining room. Although the reek of smoke and the oily tang from the paraffin stove in the corner clog together unpleasantly in the air, we still take our dinners in and sit around the table.

  Ange makes a huge effort to be cheery, gets us to pretend we’re the royal family. Dad seems to have got over his outburst earlier and does a funny turn as Prince Philip, but Ange is even more comical doing the Queen, making Mimi giggle so much I worry she’ll get indigestion. Ange dashes out of the room halfway through and comes back wearing around her beehive a crown she’s quickly cut out of a page of The People, with a picture of President Kennedy right up the front prong.

  The giddiness seems to wear off the more I eat, and the food is delicious. Ange has roasted the chicken with a whole lemon up its backside, and the meat is so tender it melts on your tongue — the best dinner I can remember.

  Dad tells a whole load of jokes, one of them I haven’t even heard before. Ange goes into hysterics laughing, which turns into a burst of coughing so bad I have to fetch her a drink of water and her brown pill bottles.

  It feels like it should be Christmas, especially when the snow begins to fall again on the other side of the diamond panes, all soft and light as the evening draws in.

  Afterwards Ange makes a pot of tea and we all go into the sitting room, where Dad falls asleep in front of the fire with the newspaper draped over his head, the pages fluttering up every time he snores. Each time it happens, we try not to laugh too loudly so as not to wake him.

  Perhaps it’s the dreaminess of the alcohol making me go along with this easier way, this attempt to be happy, this need to make things work with Ange. It’s better than going back to the uncertainty of where we were before, and there’s the sense that if we think ourselves contented for long enough, we might be. Except that I glance at Mimi, poised on the edge of her chair, watching for Dad’s newspaper to flicker up again, and wonder if I will ever be really sure what she’s thinking.

  Ange has brought her big straw bag full of scraps of material. The bag has real cockleshells sewn on the front to look like flower petals, with stems and leaves made of coloured raffia. She shows Mimi and me the things inside her wooden sewing box. Under a tray of cotton reels and embroidery silks is a stuffed felt pincushion like a big ladybird, spiky with needles so it looks more like a hedgehog, a box of long pins with brightly coloured glass heads like jewels, cards of shiny press studs and hooks and eyes, lengths of black and white elastic, lovely scissors shaped like two entwined silver swans, and a tobacco tin rattling with different sorts of buttons.

  “Now, what needs doing?” she asks.

  “Your blue cardigan’s gone through at the elbow,” I say to Mimi. “Go and bring it down, and see if you’ve got anything else needs sewing.”

  I notice Ange watching Mimi with a fond smile as she leaves the room.

  “She’s a lovely little girl, your sister,” she says quietly. “If I’d had one, I’d have liked her to be like Mimi.”

  Dad snores. The fire crackles.

  “Have you … um, did you ever have a husband?” I ask, seeing as she isn’t an especially young woman.

  “Yeah, well, did have,” she says, reaching down her legs to smooth her stockings, turning her calves to check that her seams are straight. “Stan, he was. Died in the war building a railway for the Japanese.”

  Ange lights a cigarette. She draws in her first breath of smoke, then a cough explodes out of her, followed by another, then a long, uncontrollable burst. Red in the face, choking, she drops the cigarette, with its waxy ring of red lipstick, into the saucer on the little table. She coughs repeatedly into her fist, her eyes streaming.

  After a while the fit subsides. She thumps herself on the chest a couple of times, winces a little, then wipes her eyes with her fingers and picks up the cigarette.

  “Think I’m going to go on menthol,” she says. “These Capstans’ll be the death of me.”

  “Did you and Stan have any kids?”

  “Nah. Well, we did, but it came early, and died. We were living with his mother, God rest her mean little soul, in the East End. I hated it — the city, the noise and dust and everything, coming from the country where it’s quiet. Anyway, this big air raid started the baby off. Stan was out on fire watch, and Mrs. Russell said the kid would be ages yet and I wasn’t to make such a fuss. Then the woman next door came in and saw I was in a bit of a state, and nobody could get hold of the midwife. So when the all-clear sounded, the woman came with me on the bus to the hospital, and it took blimmin’ ages to get there through the rubble, with me screaming me ruddy head off and scaring all the passengers. When the baby came, the nurse said it wouldn’t have lived even if I’d got there before. Didn’t even let me see it, said it would upset me. I caught a glimpse of her wrapping it up in some newspaper. Didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl.”

  Ange drags on her cigarette.

  “Not long afterwards Stan went off to the war. Never saw him again. Last I heard he was captured in Singapore. He always wanted a load of kiddies, did Stan. Me an’ all.”

  Dad shifts in his chair, snuffles, goes back to sleep.

  The flames rise in the fireplace.

  “Do you have a mum and dad?” I ask.

  Ange drops her eyes. “Died young.” She sighs. “We don’t make old bones in my family. My sister, Doris, and me ended up in an orphanage, but she’s dead now an’ all. Oh, look, here’s Mimi back with her cardie. Won’t do to get maudlin.” Briskly she stubs out her cigarette. “Did you say you had some other stuff to mend?”

  I go into the cold kitchen, look through the washing basket, and find a couple of Dad’s shirts with missing buttons and some socks for darning.

  The telephone rings. I drop the socks and am just through the door when I see that Ange has already picked it up. She listens for a few seconds, then puts it down again briskly, without even speaking.

  “Who was it?” I ask; my first thought was Roger — not that he’d be in a fit state to dial
anything.

  “Wrong number,” she says.

  Back in the sitting room, I throw a couple more logs on the fire and it blazes away merrily, while Ange’s skinny but nimble fingers darn the worn patch on Mimi’s cardigan with a large bodkin and some knitting wool wrapped around a piece of card from the bottom of her box. Then she joins Mimi’s gloves with a long piece of elastic to thread through the sleeves of her gabardine mac so they won’t get lost, and sews buttons back on Dad’s shirts.

  I go off to make some more tea, and when I come back with the big tray, Ange is cutting some scraps of fabric from her straw cockleshell bag into two rag doll–shaped pieces, front and back. Before she sews them together she shows Mimi how to make tiny black French-knot eyes and a little red mouth of running stitches. Mimi smiles and looks up into Ange’s face. Ange smiles back, leans forward, and plants a kiss on her forehead.

  “What colour shall we make her hair? I’ve got yellow wool or orange,” says Ange.

  “Orange, like yours,” says Mimi.

  “Orange, indeed!” Ange pouts. “It’s flame, this is, like Rita Hayworth. And what are you going to call your doll when she’s finished?”

  “Ooh …” Mimi thinks for a moment. “She wants to be Aggie.”

  “How do you do, Aggie,” Ange says.

  “How do you do, Ange.” Mimi makes a little voice and wiggles Aggie’s arm. “Can you make me some clothes, please? I’m cold.”

  “Of course, Aggie,” says Ange. “What would you like to wear?”

  “I like this bit of green,” comes the little voice.

  “Ooh, yes, I like that too, Aggie.” Ange looks into the little knotted eyes. “That’s from a summer skirt of mine. It used to be long — like with the New Look, you know — but I cut it a bit shorter last year, thought I’d be daring. What do you want — plain skirt or gathered?”

  “Gathered, please,” says Aggie. “Like a fairy.”

  “Wave your magic wand, Aggie,” says Ange, “and you’ll have a dress in two ticks.”

  She cuts out a strip of material with her swan-necked scissors, threads her needle with green thread, and runs some stitches along the edge, in and out, in and out.

  “Ouch!”

  “Ooh, what’s the matter?” Mimi asks.

  “I’ve pricked my blessed finger,” says Ange, sucking it. “Oh, dear, some blood’s got on poor Aggie’s face.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Mimi smiles. “Aggie doesn’t mind a bit. Look — there’s a drop on each side, like red, rosy cheeks.”

  Ange takes her finger out of her mouth, puts her arm around Mimi, and gives her another little kiss.

  I smile to myself.

  Mimi used to have a little knitted soldier called Sid; she’d carried him around everywhere with her since she was a toddler. It was the only toy she ever wanted. Then, the day we left Limehouse a couple of weeks ago, the rag-and-bone man came up the street on his horse and cart. We were by the car, waiting for him to go by before we could open the doors to get in, our street was that narrow. When he’d passed us, I just happened to glance up and saw Sid lying there in the cart on top of a dirty old mattress.

  “Mimi, look!” I shook her arm. “Sid’s fallen on the cart. I’ll run after him.”

  But she just turned her back and got into the car, and Sid disappeared with the cart round the corner.

  I’m so glad Ange has made a doll for her and that Mimi likes it.

  Mimi runs her fingertip along a brooch pinned to Ange’s cardigan — three flashy green stones on a bar of small dark gems that sparkle in the firelight.

  “Them real diamonds?” she asks.

  “Diamonds? Good Lord!” Ange laughs, looking down at it. “Nah, they’re just glass. Cheap as anything.” She strokes Mimi’s hair and whispers in her ear, “Found them in the dustbin outside Buckingham Palace.”

  Mimi grins.

  I sit and drink my sweet tea, watch the dancing flames, let the unexpected wave of annoyance wash over me — that Mr. Thorston has gone and taken away his papers, so I know little more than I did before.

  The snow stops falling. Dad wakes up and goes into the hall for his coat, seeing if he can get to the Thin Man on foot. I take Mimi up to bed.

  The woman is alone. She tidies away her sewing, sets the dirty cups and saucers on the tray, and puffs up the cushions in their places. She is remembering the small cold room in the hospital, the rustle of the midwife’s white apron. She is thinking about the dead baby thrown away, seeing it as a little child playing, her arm entwined in her husband’s.

  An infant gone, a man gone — neither with any resting place in the earth.

  I know this wretched hunger for things lost beyond time.

  She leans over to turn off the light and notices some crushed paper down the side of the chair, pulls it out, sees it is a letter.

  She looks towards the door, glances up at the window, smoothes the page as best she can, then runs her finger along the line of writing at the top, saying softly, “The Gilead House Institution, Mitre Fields, London, 9th November 1962 … Hmm, last Friday week.”

  She swivels her head towards the door once more, listens for a moment, then reads under her breath, stumbling over some of the words:

  “Dear Mr Drumm,

  I thank you for informing us of your new address and take this opportunity to advise you of the present condition of your wife, Susan Drumm. It has been noted that you have not visited since January 1960, and have not contacted us in regard to the last report we sent you. We feel you should be aware that there has been a marked deterioration in her condition of late. As Mrs Drumm was exhibiting symptoms of extreme anxiety prior to her electroconvulsive therapy sessions, Dr Dorritt decided to proceed with a combination of ECT and barbiturate-induced deep sleep treatment, which, in so far as it induces memory loss, has proved successful, but unfortunately has also prompted successive bouts of bronchopneumonia, which we are finding increasingly difficult to treat in Mrs Drumm’s weakened state.

  I would appreciate it if you would contact me, either by letter or by telephone to my secretary, Miss Thrussell, at the earliest opportunity to make an appointment to discuss your wife’s prognosis and treatment.

  Yours sincerely,

  Dr Hugh Ghent-Plowden

  Director”

  She has understood enough to whistle gently through her teeth. She looks down the letter once more, mutters, “Well, who’d have thought it? The mother isn’t dead at all… .”

  I did not think of the mother, the other Guerdon still living — that feebly beating heart.

  I must consider this.

  The Gilead House Institution, London.

  I hide myself deep among the layers of this woman and bide my time.

  Mum pushes me out of the back door, even though I’ve been telling her since she dragged me out of bed that I’m dying, that my brain’s swollen and trying to burst out of my skull, and she needs to get the doctor in.

  I slip on the snow. Mum won’t open the door, so I knock on the window and groan.

  She tweaks the net curtain aside and angrily flaps me away off to school.

  “The buses won’t be running!” I yell, which makes one eye throb. “They weren’t yesterday!”

  “You won’t find out till you get to the bus stop!” she shouts back. “Anyway, the snow’s melting!”

  Pete and Dennis have already turned into Ottery Lane. I haven’t the will or the energy to catch them up, but the bus has had to plough through slush and is late, so unfortunately I don’t miss it.

  I ache inside and out all day. Over and over again I revisit the horror of actually vomiting in front of Cora, and every time, a ghastly flush surges up my neck and over my cheeks with a horrible, sickly warmth.

  Raymond Harty asks me why I keep going red, and I say the first thing that comes into my head: that Mum’s made me wear a woolly vest under my shirt and it’s bringing me out in a rash.

  Ange comes into the sitting room.

  �
��Cora? Could you take Mr. Wragge this cup of tea?”

  “Oh, is he here?”

  I jump up from the settee and fetch my coat from the hall.

  “He shouldn’t be working this late, and in the freezing cold, old bloke like him,” she says.

  As I round the house, a bright spread of light from the barn draws me on, the glare of a hurricane lamp blazing away and spilling out of the doorway onto the remnants of the snow. I am so eager to reach him that my feet nearly slip from under me on the bridge, but I manage to hang on to the cup and saucer.

  From the barn comes a muffled chinking, followed by the creak of a wheelbarrow.

  I tramp across the farmyard and peer round the door frame. “Hello, Mr. Wragge.”

  He jumps nearly a foot in the air. “Flaming hell!” he says. “Don’t come creeping up on me like that.”

  “Sorry. Brought you this cup of tea. It was hot when I left the house.”

  “Ta very much.” He takes the cup and saucer and sips it noisily. “Ooh, that’s warming,” he says.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You can see what I’m doing,” he says, putting down the cup and bending to pick up the base of the bottle with the fused rusty nails and hair, and dropping it into an open sack lying in the barrow. “Ed’s going to try and get the van down here to load up some more of this rubbish.”

  He looks at me curiously, his mouth turned up at one corner, almost to a smile. “I’m surprised you’re on your feet today. That was strong liquor yesterday, and it was a big bottle.”

  “Roger drank most of it,” I say, moving closer through the straw. I take the piece of pottery from the sack and tease out the hair.

  “Mr. Wragge, please tell me what these bottles are — why they’ve got these nails and things in. I know you know.”

  “You be careful,” he says. “Some sharp bits of glass have fallen out of one or two of them.”

  “But why — why nails and glass?”

  “I told you before, you don’t want to be bothering with them,” he says.

  “If they’re nothing, why don’t you want to tell me? I’ve nobody else to ask now Mr. Thorston’s not around. Please, Mr. Wragge …”