Trouble In Paradise

by Pip Granger

  ‘Shift ’em, gels. I want me dinner. I’m starving to death here, and at my age, I ain’t got that far to go.’ The cackle would have told me Gran had arrived, even if her elbow hadn’t. Zinnia and I parted and let Gran go in first. ‘Oh Gawd, not again! Can’t you two try to get along? It’s Sunday, the Sabbath Day, you bleeding heathens! It’s the day to worship, eat and spend the afternoon digesting. How the hell are we supposed to do that with you two tom-cats going at it hammer and tongs?’ Gran demanded, glaring at Dad and Tony in turn.

  ‘You could try eating in your own home!’ Dad shouted back.

  ‘Don’t you talk to my mum like that, Harry Marriott,’ yelled Mum.

  ‘Don’t you worry, petal, I’ll deal with him,’ said Gran, menacingly, and advanced on Dad. ‘Now you stop bullying that lad this minute, Harry. I mean it, or I’ll make you pay.’

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’ Dad sneered.

  Gran picked up a chair. I thought she was going to hit him with it, and took a step forward, ready to grab it before it landed, but Gran simply sat on it. Slowly, very slowly, she removed her long hat pins from her hat and laid them on the table, then took off her hat and smoothed her hair. Next, she removed her Sunday gloves and carefully placed them together on her lap, before undoing the buttons of her coat. ‘I’ve never told you about the time when Florence was born, have I? Awful it was, the blood clots kept coming liked chopped liver …’

  We heard a thud. When we peeled our eyes away from Gran and looked down, there was Dad, out cold.

  Gran smiled her slow, sweet smile. ‘It never fails,’ she said. ‘Even when he knows what’s coming and braces himself. Thank Gawd he never had the babies, eh?’

  She turned to Tony and fixed him with a gimlet eye. ‘So what have you done this time, to get on your grandfather’s top note?’ she asked. All the sweetness was gone from her face.

  Tony shrugged and looked down. ‘I missed church,’ he muttered.

  ‘We all know that, on account that we didn’t miss church. What we want to know is, why did you?’

  ‘I dunno, do I?’

  ‘For once, I agree with your grandfather, and we can’t often say that, now can we? Of course you know. Where were you?’

  ‘Down the market,’ Tony mumbled.

  ‘It’s closed on Sundays. What did you want with the market?’

  ‘To see me mates.’

  ‘Which mates?’

  There was a long pause. ‘Brian and them,’ he finally admitted.

  ‘How many times have you been told about Brian Hole and his gang?’

  Tony kept his eyes firmly on the floor. Gran leaned forward, lifted his chin and stared into his eyes, voice very quiet now. ‘How many times? A dozen? Two? When will you learn that we mean it?’

  There was another long silence, then Tony shrugged again.

  ‘Right then, go to your room and stay there. There’ll be no dinner for you today.’ Gran’s voice was firm.

  Tony trailed towards the door, head down. I knew what a blow this was for him. Sunday was the best dinner of the week.

  ‘Oh, and Tony, you’d better be there when I come to see you after dinner.’

  ‘Yes, Granny Ida,’ he whispered.

  ‘What?’ Gran asked.

  ‘I said, yes, Granny Ida,’ he said louder.

  ‘Good. Time for grub, I think. Serve it up, Florence. It’s handy, Zinnia being here. She can have Tony’s and, by the looks of it, Harry’s as well.’ Dad had got up from the floor and was staggering towards the door in Tony’s wake, still green behind the gills. He didn’t trust Gran not to go ‘all gynaecological’ on him again. Judging by the sound of springs creaking a few moments later, he’d gone to lie down. Peace reigned at last.

  But not for long. A few minutes later, Doris, Reggie and the twins arrived. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Doris. ‘We just got in from church when Lenny Hobbs dropped by on his way to the King’s Head. He had a knitting pattern his mum sent round for me. Anyway, he was saying that our Mavis was in the King’s Head last night, waving this engagement ring, or something very like it, at anybody with a heartbeat and a pair of eyes. She says – wait for this – that it was “from a secret admirer”, but then she won’t say any more. Lenny reckons she’s walking out with some married bloke, from something one of her brothers said later on, when he’d had a few.’ She turned to Vi. ‘She’s your mate. What do you know about it?’

  All eyes turned towards Vi as if she was the goal at a football match. But as so often happens in life, and at football matches, we were disappointed. ‘I know about as much as you do,’ she replied. ‘The ring turned up on her finger at the beginning of the week, but she’s not telling anyone who gave it to her, not even me.’

  ‘Do you reckon the geezer’s married?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Well …’ Vi hesitated. She’d obviously been told to keep her lip buttoned, but on the other hand, she was the keeper of a bit of gossip that wasn’t about her Tony. ‘Mavis did say she was sworn to secrecy until he’s free,’ she told us. ‘I took that to mean he had a wife somewhere that he had to get shot of before he could make it official with Mavis.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ said Mum. ‘And if she ain’t careful she’ll wind up being named as “the other woman” in court. It could be very nasty, that, for her mum and everyone else. Can you imagine trying to hold your head up at church if your daughter was involved in a divorce case?’

  ‘No,’ said Gran drily, looking at Dad’s empty chair, ‘but I’d like to give it a try. I expect I’d manage, and so would Mavis’s mum – probably will too, if it comes to it.’

  I looked at Mum. She had the grace to blush. Zinnia noticed, too, and decided to bail her friend out.

  ‘Has anyone heard the rumour about Brian Hole?’ All heads turned to Zinnia, just in time for the goal. ‘He’s been seen siphoning off petrol down at the lorry depot near the station. George Grubb says his informant definitely identified Brian, saw him as clear as anything in a street light, but doesn’t want to give a formal statement. The usual story. There were two other lads with him, but they were not known to the man. As George said, now we know what the three and a half feet of rubber hose from the warehouse was for, if only he could prove it.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked Gran.

  ‘Early hours of this morning, I believe,’ Zinnia answered.

  ‘Ah!’ somebody said. It didn’t take all three guesses to know why Tony had missed church; he was busy helping stash jerry cans of petrol somewhere. Probably in a lock-up at the market, seeing that’s where he admitted to being. There was money to be made in stolen petrol, as there was still so little of it about.

  Gran nodded grimly and we finished our dinner in silence. Well, near silence; nothing really shut the twins up, especially talk that they were too small to understand.

  The washing up was done in very short order, as there were many hands available to do it, and then we all went our separate ways. Mum took Dad his dinner on a tray – she’d kept it warm on a saucepan of hot water – and Vi went down to the basement with Gran to confront Tony.

  Zinnia and I were not invited, thank God. I’d had enough family life for one day. I was looking forward to going home, putting my feet up and listening to the wireless, or maybe the gramophone. Or perhaps I’d just listen to my hair grow in the peace and quiet of my own home.

  23

  Mrs Dunmore was still in a good mood at the beginning of the following week, so all was quiet on the work front. Which was just as well, because my nights were bloody awful. I kept tossing and turning and waking up in either a hot or a cold sweat depending on which of two dreams was plaguing me that particular night. They kept playing over and over like a double feature at the Odeon.

  The trouble was, I couldn’t remember either of them in enough detail to know what was going on. They got jumbled up. In one dream, there were cries coming from deep in the earth, and a feeling of sadness. The other dream was far worse; it involved fear
, pure and simple. I seemed to be in a dark, cold, clammy place, like a cave or possibly a cellar. I was in a cold sweat when I woke up and the awful sense of dread that had filled the dream filled my mornings as well.

  By Wednesday, I was so fed up I decided to nip around to Zinnia’s to see if she could give me something to help me sleep a dreamless sleep for a night or two. I was feeling ragged, and she wasn’t much better. Her cats had been missing for a week now and I could tell she was worrying herself out of sleep over them as well.

  ‘Why do you suppose you’re having these nightmares, hen?’ she asked, brow wrinkled in concern. ‘Is it anxiety about Charlie and yourself, do you think?’

  ‘I expect that’s what’s putting me in the right frame of mind. I’m really afraid of him, Zinnia, terrified. I thought he was going to kill me last time, honest I did.’ I was getting upset and tears were beginning to well up.

  Zinnia patted my hand comfortingly. ‘I know, hen, I know,’ she sighed.

  ‘But I’m not dreaming about that. I may be dreaming up all this fear, but it’s not mine, I’m sure it’s not. It feels separate, different.’ I shrugged, really near to tears. It was so frustrating, because I just couldn’t explain.

  ‘Perhaps the very fact that you are fearful yourself has made you sensitive to the same thing in others, hen. Like tuning in on the wireless. It happens, I’m sure. It will pass. Meanwhile, I’m sorry dear, I’m not certain we should interfere with the dreaming. I can only smother it, anyhow. I can’t make the feelings go away.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said lightly. ‘Dad says you’re a witch, that’s why we never got a direct hit in the war. He reckons you were protecting your precious house, garden and allotments.’

  ‘It’s true that the Makepeaces do have special talents,’ said Zinnia, ‘but I’m not sure they run to making the Luftwaffe do as they’re bid. How am I supposed to issue my instructions to the pilots – thought waves?’ She laughed a shade too heartily at her own joke.

  ‘No, I think he was thinking more along the lines of a spell, complete with cauldron and eye of newt, testicle of toad, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Aye, I see. Well, it’s nothing like that at all. Sheer luck, I’m afraid. Do you think that if I could weave spells, I’d’ve not woven one to stop Hitler in his tracks? And I’d certainly weave one now, to turn my tormentors into the rats they so richly resemble,’ she concluded – with some venom, I thought. Poor old Zinnia was pretty shaken by the turn of events and she was missing her cats very badly.

  ‘No, hen, the Makepeaces aren’t witches in any sense that your father would recognize. We’re healers. We’re chosen and trained for the purpose and have been for hundreds of years.’

  ‘Who chooses you?’ I asked, intrigued.

  ‘A committee,’ she answered, surprisingly. ‘They choose the candidates, then the final selection is made by the resident Makepeace, who is also the one who does the training.’

  I wasn’t enlightened. What was she talking about? ‘Zinnia, start from the beginning,’ I begged her. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

  Zinnia sighed, and settled back into her chair. ‘Very well, hen,’ she said. ‘There has always been a Makepeace living in this house ever since the Great Plague.’ She shuddered as if she’d been there and remembered it all too well. ‘A wise woman saved the precious son and heir to the local Laird, or Lord of the Manor, with a combination of herbs and good nursing. Also, despite nursing and treating many, many victims, she did not succumb herself. Perhaps your dad is right,’ Zinnia chuckled. ‘Perhaps the first Makepeace was a witch.’

  ‘So what happened then?’ It was like listening to a fairy story. Zinnia’s voice had even taken on the singsong rhythm of a teller of tales.

  ‘Ach well, it was a toss-up whether to burn her as a witch or reward her for her endeavours. At the last, they decided on gratitude and the Laird gave over a house and some land to the old lady. She was a spinster with no child of her own to leave it to, but she was clever. She built more houses on the land and rented them out so that the rents paid her way, while she concentrated on healing the poor who could not pay her. When she felt the end drawing nigh, she chose a likely lass to succeed her. And we’ve been chosen ever since.

  ‘The only requirements for the post are that we remain unmarried, so that our energies may be used for the folk who need us – the puir, the ones who suffered so badly in all the epidemics because their living conditions were so bad; that we take training in herbalism, midwifery and the particular care of children and women; and finally’ – she smiled gently – ‘we must take the name of Makepeace in memory of Flora Makepeace, the lady who saved the boy and so many others. Usually we take the name of a flower as well, to do it properly. As you know, it was Primrose before me.’

  I was fascinated. I could tell that my jaw had dropped open and my eyes were wide. ‘What’s your real name, then?’

  ‘Well, hen, it’s Zinnia Makepeace, of course.’ She laughed again. ‘But before that it was Ishbel Macleod, or Isabel to you.’

  I tried them on my tongue; ‘Ishbel Macleod’, then ‘Zinnia Makepeace’. ‘They’re both nice,’ I concluded, ‘but I prefer Zinnia Makepeace, perhaps because I’m used to it. And it runs off the tongue better.’ Then it occurred to me that that might be tactless; maybe she was very fond of her given name. ‘Do you mind? I mean, did you mind having to change your name?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. Not at all. I’d’ve changed it if I’d married. I see no real difference.’

  ‘But you only have to change the one when you marry,’ I argued, ‘not your first name as well.’

  ‘Aye well, I never was that struck on Ishbel. The original was my grandmother, and an awful old besom she was. She used to delight in frightening us wee ’uns with dreadful stories at bedtime. Which reminds me, isn’t it about time we turned in?’

  ‘I s’pose so,’ I said vaguely, unwilling to leave the story there. ‘So, what’s in it for you?’

  ‘I don’t understand, hen.’

  ‘Why would you give up marriage, children, your name, your homeland, everything, to become a Makepeace?’ I asked.

  Zinnia chuckled. ‘Well, I’d already come to London to learn nursing and to see a little something of the world, the Hebrides not being in the centre of things, you ken. So I didn’t give up my homeland to be a Makepeace. And there’s never any guarantees about marriage and children, as you well know, and so did I, from my own home life. But what I gained was a rewarding career in helping folk, which is what I trained for anyway, at the hospital, and a home for my lifetime with no rent to pay and a good income.

  ‘The committee of the Makepeace Trust administer the estate. Over the centuries they’ve built new houses to fund the enterprise, and they pay me well, better than a nurse’s pay. So there was no heroic sacrifice on my part, hen.

  ‘Now, I’m tired and I can see that you are too; your eyelids are drooping. Why don’t you try sleeping here tonight?’ Zinnia suggested kindly. ‘There’s a bed already made up in the spare room. You may feel more secure there, and that could give you a quieter night.’

  I yawned mightily and nodded blearily. She was right, it was time for bed. I could barely drag myself upstairs to her spare room, and was snoring almost before my body landed on the mattress.

  24

  Zinnia’s spare room was at the back of the house, overlooking her garden, the railway carriage, the allotments and the railway line. Apart from the trains, it was a quiet room. The narrow single bed was neatly made, with the sheets, blankets and bedspread tucked in with hospital corners, thanks to Zinnia’s early training. The bedspread was almost white; it had been washed so often that the pattern of roses had faded to ghostly shadows. The bed linen smelt of lavender from Zinnia’s garden, dried and sewn into the muslin bags that nestled among the piles of sheets and pillowcases in her linen cupboard.

  Beside the bed was a small chest of drawers that gleamed with polish and elbow grease. On top was a mirror stand.
A chair, with a ladder back and a rush seat, stood in the corner and a small vase of freshly picked buttercups on the windowsill. And that was it. It was one of the calmest and most peaceful rooms I had ever been in. No wonder I went out like a light.

  It should have guaranteed a deep and dreamless sleep, but it didn’t. At two o’clock in the morning I was pounding on Zinnia’s bedroom door. ‘Zinnia, wake up. I know where the cats are. Bring a torch.’ I’d had the crying dream again, and finally I knew who was doing the wailing and where it was coming from. It was Hepzibah, and the noise was coming from the bombed-out cellar of the old dairy.

  Zinnia appeared at her bedroom door in her nightie and a surprising pink hairnet. The net was surprising because Zinnia’s hair never gave the slightest sign that it had ever been restricted by anything. It made me wonder how wild her barnet would have been without its nightly straitjacket. As it was, it could have had things nesting in it.

  ‘What did you say, hen?’ she asked, yawning wide but covering it politely with her large right hand.

  ‘I said I know where the cats are. Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen. I’ve had a dream. Where do you keep your torch?’

  Ten minutes later we were ready to set off. Zinnia was wearing sturdy brogues and tweeds, but I had to make do with my work clothes, which was all I had with me. The night was dark, with clouds covering any moon there might have been. It was the kind of weather that had been a relief to see during the Blitz, because you knew there would be no bombing that night. It was less of a boon and a blessing in peacetime when trying to get around the bombed-out streets on foot.

  We spoke very little because we needed every ounce of concentration just to pick our way across the bomb sites. Although we had a torch each, there were muffled curses as we ricked ankles, stumbled against piles of rubble and splashed into water-filled craters of a variety of sizes. Twisted pipes and sharp nails made grabs for our clothing; I heard the ominous rip of material more than once, but tried hard to ignore it. Broken glass crunched underfoot.