Gift

A dark story set in the 1930s

Spring tasted of carbolic soap that year.

Sometimes cod liver oil, but mainly soap. That soap. How it conquered the uncertain air in unapologetic, hygienic triumph, lining my nine year old mouth and lungs with a strange combination of disgust and reassurance.

Spring sounded like mops that year.

Their fat dumpling heads rammed forcefully against worn out creaking floorboards and faded tiles. Jammed mercilessly into corners. Spring also sounded like the clacking and clopping of two pairs of sensible shoes. Their noises became so familiar to me that I was able to distinguish who was entering the room before I saw them.

But the thing I recall most about that spring, was how it felt. It touched me differently. Not as others had done with the yielding, cool rubber of the small balls we bounced, the hard railings I strummed my hand along, the flirting sun upon my back and splashes of plentiful water that gushed from the fountain in the park.

No.

That particular spring had felt like stiff, starched bed sheets. I’d been limited, confined. That spring will always be remembered as a tightening hold, as cold fingers gripping my weakened, sick frame. How you tune in to your senses when you are left alone with them. I became so acutely aware of them that I started to wonder whether prior to my stay at Springfield, I’d ever really known myself at all.

“When did you go in hospital? How old were you?”

Gemma asks me.

Her fair, bouncy ringlets remind me of my own at that age. I run my skinny pearl fingers through them, the facets of my garnet ring catching the light and painting the magnolia ceiling. It distracts her.

“Your ring looks like blood!”

She tells me.

I, am the great, great grandmother now.

So old I probably shouldn’t still be alive. 98. I am translucent, a living ghost, a relic of another era. My veins shimmer through my skin like dragonflies hounded into veils.

“Your hands are cold, Nanny Catherine”

Gemma says.

“All the better for making pastry!”

I say. Not that I’ve made pastry for at least ten years.

No, all I am good for these days is telling stories from an old rocking chair to those who want to hear them. The rhythms of time are mine and I pass them on generously, past to present, present to past. Recollections of cobbled streets and gas lamps, plumes of mill smoke and knocker-uppers. Of mummers and rag and bone men.

And sometimes, like today, I tell the story of my stint in hospital when I contracted scarlet fever.

Not everything, of course.

One should never reveal everything.

“Remember it plain as day, the day I went in. 6th May. Day of the silver jubilee. George the fifth. Your age, I was. Just nine years old. I stayed for three weeks.”

“And no-one visited you? Really? In all that time?”

“They didn’t believe in it back then. Once you had scarlet fever, if could afford to and were able, you went to hospital and were left there, isolated til it was safe for you to come home. IF you came home.”

Gemma’s eyes widen. She’s a little older now. She understands about death, can take it.

“But you had your doll, right?”

She says, clutching her own best doll, Bella. How dolls have changed, I think as I survey her through my cloudy cataracts. Their expressions softer, their eyes perhaps a little kinder.

“That’s right. I always had my doll. Only her, in fact.”

“Amy!”

She says brightly.

“Yes, Amy! You remembered!”

I close my eyes, drift off a little as us old folk tend to and I’m back there again. Springfield House. A small, private hospital set in the grounds of the spacious, well tended Springfield Park. 1935.

A practical, unfussy place with minimal furniture, pale yellow curtains, mouse grey walls and white skirting boards. It reminds me of boiled eggs when cooked and left for salads. My bed is cold and made of metal. Bedbugs can’t get into metal, you see. Sometimes I think I see one in the crumbling plaster but I may be imagining it. Illnesses do strange things to people, after all.

Sometimes, there’d be a fly or wasp enter through a gap at the bottom of the heavy sash window. From a distance, I’d watch them, the crackling buzz reminding me of Father’s gramophone. There’d be a rise in noise as the poor creature realised it couldn’t get out.

And then, finally, nothing.

How they tried hopelessly, persistently to liberate themselves, those bugs. Repeatedly tapping and butting the pane. It’s a noise I probably wouldn’t have noticed at home in town, but in the peace of the parkland where lucky convalescents were sent, you heard everything.

I knew how they felt. Trapped. Away from all I knew and loved. My dear little sister, Violet, Mother and Father.

I’d lie there in my bed, willing them to find their escape, those tortured insects. I knew there were spiders came out after dark. They lived behind the clock and the curtain rail. The places people didn’t think to look or clean. With all might, I’d will the flies to free themselves.

Come on! The gap is at the bottom!

I’d think as I observed their fat bodies struggle.

That’s where you need to go! Down a bit. Go on, you can do it!

And one day, it worked.

A sturdy, frustrated bluebottle suddenly found the gap and flew away.

I knew I’d done it.

Can’t explain why or how, only that I had. Amy, my pot doll looked at me. Her glass eyes wide and blue. Her rosebud mouth oh-ing.

“See, Amy”

I said, cheerily.

“We may not be able to have visitors here, but we shall make our own fun”

Amy agreed.

Sometimes, we chose not to play the game.

We just watched them die.

***

Matron was a stocky woman with the complexion of pink ointment. Her lank dark hair was scraped back into a bun. How she’d order Nurse Martha around, making sure the place was ship shape. Spick and span! It wasn’t that long after Victorian times and vigorous cleaning was paramount, necessary.  She was a kind lady, firm but fair.

“I must be getting old!”

She said one day as she walked into the room.

“Because sure as god I’ve forgotten what it is I’ve come in here for!”

“Water please ma’am.”

I said.

“That is….may I have a drink?”

And that’s when I realised.

It worked on people too.

I could move them like counters on a game board, in and out of rooms. Where I wanted them to be.

I couldn’t always do it.

Just sometimes.

But the more I practised it, the better I became.

So I did.

Practise.

***

“It’s not like your parents don’t want to see you, you know”

Nurse Martha offered sympathetically one day as she stripped my bed. She was a young, cheerful nurse with dance halls in her lively brown eyes, silk stockings and cigarettes on her mind.

“I know”

I said meekly.

“But I do miss them so”

“But we can’t have your Violet coming down with this can we? Your mother tells me she’s already had diphtheria. She’s younger than you are. Weaker.”

“Yes, I know”

How I missed Violet. The two of us playing shop with Aunt Alice’s brass scales, weighing out pebbles we’d found in the garden and pretending they were finest chocolates!

“How many would you like, Catherine?”

“Two ounces of rose cremes please and a quarter of Turkish delight.”

We’d take Mother’s old hat box and fill it with the stones. Pretend it was a chocolate box from one of the fancy London shops we’d heard about.

“Mama, we’ve bought some chocolates for you”

I’d say to her.

Mother’s eyes would crinkle at the edges as she smiled.

“Turkish delight! My absolute favourite.”

She’d proclaim joining in, taking care to pick out a stone before pretending to eat it.

“Apart from Violet cremes of course….”

She’d add, winking at young Violet before planting a kiss firmly upon her forehead.

“Violet cremes are loveliest of all!”

Father, however, took a different view, the day he saw us playing that game. Maybe because he was that much older than mother, he remembered more about past times; consumption, pox….. He remembered diseases the colour of beetroot, open sores that pussed and wept, lice. He remembered tales his own father told of the maladies of stinking rivers and open sewers. The temperatures that sent one into delirium. And he worried.

“They shouldn’t be playing with dirty stones from outside”

He said crossly to Mother before turning to us.

“You’re from a good home. You have dolls and spinning tops, books……all manner of fine things. You’re not waifs from the slums!”

He scolded.

“Elizabeth, have them put those stones outside at once where they belong!”

And she did. No-one dare question the man of the house back then.

As I came to a little, from my half nap, I relayed some more of the tale to Gemma.

Some of it.

I see him clear as day in my mind, my father, his tall commanding body, slim as a walking stick, narrow eyes, his pipe, the shines on his shoes that sneered like crescent moons. Funny how no matter how old the body is, some memories remain at the forefront of the brain, steering all else.

“So you didn’t even see Violet? In all those weeks?”

“No I didn’t. Not Mama, not Father, not Violet.”

It was true. Apart from the nurses, I’d had just one companion from home. Amy. Amy with her cream frilled dress and primrose cardigan. Amy with her rose cheeks like dots of Mama’s rouge. 

Just Amy and I, playing our games with flies, wasps……..people.

Sometimes, we’d spot a thrush or a sparrow outside on a branch by the window and I was able to muster up enough energy to summon it in. Willed it inside the room so we could watch it flutter.

Never, however, did I manage to make it sing.

“I’ve never known anything like it”

Exclaimed Matron.

“Birds getting in. And so many too! Very peculiar I’m sure. Still, so long as it’s not rats….”

I’d smile at Amy.

“We mustn’t tell”

I’d say.

“They wouldn’t understand.”

Said Amy.

***

31st May.

The day I went home.

Just an ordinary spring day, really.

But I do recall it smelled strange. Putrid. Off. Friday 31st May 1935. Yes, if spring had smelled of cleanliness, the 31st May had the opposite scent.

Death.

I’d pass the stench of the slaughterhouse on the way to school and knew it anywhere. It throttled me like a gas, stuffed its gagging foul into my gasping airways.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about”

Said Matron.

“Can’t smell a thing. This place is like a new pin, clean as a whistle!”

She said dismissively.

“And you…..are going home today, Missy!”

She grinned proudly. Pleased as punch she was. I was a child saved. A job well done.

I clasped Amy close.

It might have been my imagination but her pot belly also seemed inflated by the heaviness in the air.

I put my hand inside the top of her frilled bloomers to ease the elastic for her, make it easier for her to breathe. Undid the buttons of her cardigan.

“We’ll be home soon”

I whispered. I prayed it would be better than the last memory I had.

Of that house.

Of him.

***

“Scarlet fever! In my home!”

Father had said when Doctor Brearley had declared it. Took it as personal insult.

“It‘s YOU letting them play with stones from outside! You! Like street children. Like urchins! Goodness Elizabeth! What were you thinking?”

He chastised my mother.

“But Doctor Brearley said it was probably another child at school…….it’s highly contagious”

“Look at them! Look at their nails, Elizabeth, their faces! How do you think disease gets in? It finds a weak point, that’s how! A weakness! Didn’t they teach you at Sunday School that cleanliness is next to godliness? I can see dirt. DIRT! Look! My dear daughters are no better than common chimney sweeps!”

He held Violet’s hand to the light to try to prove his case.

“No! William no!”

Mama said as she saw his face flush in anger, his eyes bulge.

Then without hesitation, he frog marched us all into the bathroom. Possessed, he took hold of the scrubbing brush from the metal stand and ploughed it into the dish of carbolic soap.

“Hold out your hands”

He said, and I did.

“Not you! You foolish girl. YOU’RE already infected!”

I watched in disbelief as he took the brush and thrust it upon Violet’s chubby five year old palms. He began to scrub them vigorously, obsessively. Her skin changed colour before my eyes; from porcelain to rose to red to plum. The coarse bristles dug deep into my sister’s hands like needles and they began to bleed. Streams of scarlet teardrops dribbled down her arms as her soft skin was broken. She yelped in pain as he continued, rolling up her sleeves, scrubbing at her aggressively, relentlessly as though she were a filthy floor.

My mother watched in horror but knew to say nothing or risk his wrath.

Then, they all turned and looked at me. How I remember the weight of their combined gaze. Did they blame me? Was it my fault?

All I know is, a couple of hours later I was in hospital and they didn’t look at me again for a very long time.

Any of them.

My eyes filled with tears as I recounted this particularly painful memory. I hoped Gemma hadn’t noticed them. Still, who notices the tears of an old lady, anyway? Don’t we all just look sort of fluid? Like jellied paintings hanging in the corridor between two worlds? Life and Death. Smeared and blurry.

“Tell me about when you got home!”

She demands.

“I bet Violet was so pleased to see you. Did you play dolls or shop……or read?”

It was a warm reception I’d received when I’d arrived home from hospital that day. We weren’t rich but we certainly weren’t poor either, as Father was extremely fond of reminding us. The occasion had been marked by a tray of fresh scones and strawberry jam. It had been placed on a side table beside the huge, roaring fire I’d missed so much. Yes, it was May, but there was still an uncomfortable nip in the air and they’d so wanted me to keep well. There were large red apples on a plate too and cups of warmed milk for Violet and I, big as a bowls.

She was so pleased to have me home. Lovely blonde Violet with a cherub face and mischievous eyes like a Mabel Lucie Atwell illustration. How she’d seemed to have grown in the weeks I’d been away! She told me she had a slate and chalk and that tomorrow we would play school mistress and I was to be the pupil.

“And Bessie too!”

Bessie was her favourite doll. It was then that I remembered Amy. Amy must join us for tea!

Where was she?

And that’s when I noticed her.

Or rather, her eyes.

She was on the furnace in front of me and she was burning.

My doll Amy.

My best friend in all the world.

Burning on a fire.

Her pale blue eyes looked startled and horrified as the lace of her cream dress curled up and turned black, her fair hair melting.

Father opened the heavy door and I glared at him, confused.

“But….”

I searched his eyes to make sense of it.

“I don’t unders….”

“You didn’t seriously think we could keep it, Catherine. Surely?”

He said haughtily.

It?

“Goodness knows what it’s harbouring. That doll. All those germs from that hospital. We will get you a new one.”

My body twisted into knots as heat and rage consumed me. It felt like snakes. Serpents slithering and writhing in the darkest, ugliest pit of my stomach. Amy, who had been by my side all those weeks in that hospital. Amy, my one and only companion in that unfamiliar, functional place.

And that’s when it happened.

Father.

He began walking slowly towards the fire. Almost as though he was in a state of trance. I saw the sweat building on his face. The beads wobbled like those of a crystal necklace.

At first, it was as though he was going to warm his hands but as he grew nearer, I noticed a blank yet determined expression on his face.

Violet looked on, bewildered.

“Father, the fire! It will burn you!”

She said. But he didn’t stop. He kept going. Walking steadily towards it in a focused march. His starched white shirt finally catching flame, followed by the hems of his black trousers.

Amy was watching me from the fire. Or should I say, her eyes were.

Those cool glass eyes, those aqua, spinning worlds.

Father began to shriek a little, but continued, climbing on to the open fire, heaping himself on there, a human coal. Compelled. Then came more noise. Panting, hissing and sizzling followed by noises I’d only heard come from the slaughterhouse. The groaning. The low growls mother had made in the back room as she’d given birth to Violet. The surrendering earthy barks and moans of a beast.

The smell filled the room. The sickening stench of smouldering flesh.

It was at that point, Mama flew in, panicked and scooped up Violet who was trembling and sobbing in terror.  I looked at the two eerie glass eyes in the cinders. Perfect spheres of blue and white, like pretty marbles. How innocent they looked amongst the last of the coal and my rapidly charring father. 

I considered my possible part in matters.

My role.

And as I did, I could have sworn I heard Amy instruct me not to tell anyone, so I didn’t.

Naturally, I don’t tell Gemma any of this either.

Instead, I tell Gemma the official version of events. That Father had most likely had one too many gins that evening. That the rug had a kink in it. Loose slab underneath.

But the thing about old age, is how absent minded you become.

And the thing I should have remembered, about Gemma - the thing I’ve always sensed - is that Gemma, has gifts of her own.

Gemma, is a seer.

These gifts - or curses - often run in the family, after all. She turns her head from my lap to examine my face.

“You killed him”

She says venomously, her tone changing in an acid bath of instant as she cuts through my lies as only the gifted can.

“You made him die!”

I ruffle her ringlets like a good, kind elder, try to tell her she’s talking stuff and nonsense, but I know there’s no point.

“It was wicked!”

She says.

“You need to be punished, Nanny!”

She announces with the black and white judgement of a nine year old. I recognise it only too well.

And then, impulsively, from the depths of her soul, Gemma sends me something.

Something sharp that feels like a dagger. It plunges its way through the wall of my aged chest. Something she twists and twists, again and again, over and over.

Something, that later, will no doubt look like nothing more than a fatal heart attack in a very frail, old lady.

*Thanks for reading. I now have more than 300 pieces on substack! If you enjoyed this piece, you can find more stories under the heading ‘stories’ on my home page.