Shadow Baby (3 page)

She still had a mangle, though. There was nowhere inside to put it so it stood in the yard, and Mary worried about it constantly. When they were in the house and the rain and wind were lashing the windows she’d groan and say, ‘Oh, my mangle, out in this. Oh, that lovely mangle.’ It was kept covered with a bit of sacking but many a wind was strong enough to whip this off in the night, no matter how well it had been secured, and then the mangle would be soaked and little by little the soakings were rusting the iron. It took both of them, these days, to turn the handle and it tired Mary. ‘Sooner you grow big and strong the better,’ she would say. ‘This mangle is beating me, it’s a devil, I had it tamed once but it’s breaking out, it’s beating us.’ One day, not so long ago, she had said something else while she struggled with the fearful mangle. She said the usual bit about how the mangle was beating her now and there followed the well-worn memory of how once she had mastered it easily, and then she said something new: ‘Your mother always promised …’ And then she stopped, abruptly, and turned the handle of the mangle furiously, with a sudden extra vigour, for a while.

Evie had heard the words quite distinctly - ‘Your mother.’ Her mother. She had a mother, then. Was it a mother who, like Mary, like her so-called grandmother, wasn’t a mother at all? She didn’t ask, she only registered the crucial word ‘mother’. She’d seen little

girls with mothers, she heard them saying ‘Mam, mam,’ she’d seen them belonging together, girls like herself and women called mam. She’d never asked, not yet, why she didn’t have a mother but that wasn’t because she was not curious, or that she didn’t want to know the answer. It was just that she didn’t ask questions at all. Questions annoyed Mary, even simple ones. ‘Why does the clock tick?’ for example produced rage, and a sharp ‘It’s a clock, now stop bothering the life out of me, why do clocks tick indeed, the idea, I don’t know what’s to become of you, I don’t!’ Any question at all brought forth this cry - ‘I don’t know what’s to become of you!’ and Evie had grown to dread it. It worried her, that and her grandmother’s constant refrain that soon she would no longer be around, that her time was nearly up, she had not long to go.

The day after the census man came, Mary was even more shorttempered than usual and muttered all day long in a state of extra agitation. The bread was made, the broth cooked, the washing done, everything went on as normal but Evie knew something was going to happen. Her grandmother was forever telling her to ‘Be still, settle yourself,’ but now it was she who flitted about, touching things, as though checking them, as though making sure the table and chairs and cupboards were there. She opened and shut drawers all day long and in the afternoon, when she often had forty winks on her bed while Evie was given some task to do quietly - cleaning the cruet, making a fresh paper doily for it, cleaning the six precious silver teaspoons, tidying the larder, polishing the sideboard - she could be heard moving about and dragging something from under the bed. Evie wasn’t in the least surprised to be shouted for long before the regular half hour was up and she went willingly, eagerly, up the few narrow stairs into the one bedroom.

Her grandmother was sitting on the edge of the bed with a small suitcase open beside her. It appeared to be full of papers, bundles of what looked like letters and some longer documents tied up with string. Mary was undoing the string on one lot. ‘I’m all thumbs,’ she complained, ‘damned knots. Here, with your little fingers, you do it, Evie, but take care, mind, don’t tear anything, eh?’ Evie took care. She enjoyed delicately plucking at the knots and gradually working them loose and managing to draw the string free time after time. The knots were knobbly things, hard with age; they had been meant to be as secure as they were proving to be. Mary watched her, breathing hard, but for once ceasing to rant on. When the last

vicious knot was undone she pushed Evie’s excited hand away and pulled the bundle towards her, protecting the papers with her hands as though Evie might snatch them and run off. ‘Now,’ she said, staring at the child, ‘now, there’s something I’d better be telling you before it’s too late. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you when I’m gone but it isn’t right you should be left wondering, I never thought it was, you can’t blame me for that, eh? It wasn’t my fault, not what I wanted, I never thought it right.’ She stopped and stared at Evie, who returned the stare. Mary saw what she had always seen, a small pale face, not pretty, and a mass of unbrushed dark hair and eyes that held no challenge, that were accepting of everything before them. She saw a calmness and stillness that pleased her. And Evie saw an old woman who had suddenly changed. All the crossness had momentarily gone, all the power. Mary’s face was as creased and pinched, her skin as yellow and coarse as ever, but she looked helpless, all the fight Evie was used to had vanished. It made her nervous, this collapse of her grandmother, it worried her and she twisted her hands together not knowing what to do.

‘You can’t read,’ Mary said, in dismay. ‘You should be at school, you’d learn soon enough, eh? I should have seen to it, but there’s been enough to do, keeping body and soul together.’ She selected an envelope from the papers on her lap and waved it in front of Evie’s eyes. ‘Now,’ she said again, ‘see this here? This is yours and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Look, see this mark?’ - and she showed Evie the letter ‘Ł’ on the envelope - ‘that’s you, that’s for Evie, I kept it for you and nobody knows. It’s in the Holy Trinity register for those who’ll bother to look if anyone does and I’ll be surprised if they do, though there’s no telling what will happen after I’m gone, no knowing the mischief that will be done and me not here to see fair play, but you’ve got this here and I’m giving it to you now and it’s up to you to guard it and keep it and use it when you need to, eh? There’ll be questions and you won’t know the answers but this will give you something to hang on to, you’ll always know who you are if people forget to tell you, eh? Something, it’s something; there’s only one person knows more and she’s never told and there’s nothing I can do about that, Evie, and nothing you can do either, no good upsetting yourself, my lass.’

But Evie was not upset. She was confused but too excited to feel real distress. Her attention was completely caught by the envelope with the mark on it that was her, the line down with three straight

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spokes coming out of it. Her grandmother held it out to her and she took it and loved the feel of the very paper with ‘Ł’ written on it so plainly. Whatever was inside the brown envelope was thin. If she didn’t hold the envelope tightly it was so flimsy it would slip from her fingers. ‘Do you remember that day we stood outside the church, Evie?’ her grandmother said, in a whisper. ‘When the trees were all orange, eh? We stood well back, nobody could see us, the trees hid us. And that lady and gentleman came out?’ She took Evie’s wrists and pulled the child, still clutching the envelope, to her and whispered even lower and more urgently, ‘Do you remember, Evie, eh?’ Slowly, Evie shook her head. She didn’t remember standing outside any church with her grandmother nor any orange leaves nor a lady and gentleman coming out. Mary sighed. ‘You were too young,’ she said, ‘too young. Well, it can’t be helped, it wouldn’t do any good anyway, it’s maybe just as well. Now, where will you put that envelope? Where have we got for you to put it?’ ‘In my pocket?’ Evie suggested, feeling inside her apron pocket to see if it was big enough. Instantly, Mary was back to being as irritable as she nearly always was. ‘No, no, child, for heaven’s sake, an envelope with that in it in an apron pocket, the idea, no, you’ll need somewhere safer, but it’ll have to go with you wherever you go, it’ll have to be a box or a bag you never let out of your sight when you leave here, now what can I give you, what’ll serve …?’ Mary looked about the bedroom and her eye fell on the mahogany chest of drawers on top of which there was a clutter of different kinds of boxes containing a variety of things, necklaces and brooches, pins and buttons. She pointed and said to Evie, ‘Fetch that tin here, the one with the dog on.’ Evie reached up - it was a chest a little taller than herself - and pulled the flat tin towards her and lifted it off. She knew what was in it. Nothing important, nothing of value, only some ribbons, all folded neatly and never used. Her grandmother said that when her hair was smooth and tangle-free she could have one of these old, long-preserved ribbons to tie it up with, but Evie had never succeeded in brushing her wild and springy hair into anything like the required state and had never earned a ribbon. ‘Nobody will bother about a girl having this,’ Mary said, ‘a tin of ribbons, they’ll think nothing of it when the time comes. Look, we’ll lift the ribbons and the envelope will fit snug.’ It did. ‘Then we’ll cover it with ribbons, see?’ The coils of ribbon, lilac and yellow and a beautiful red Evie particularly coveted, were laid flat side down

together forming a concealing band over the envelope with ‘E’ on it. ‘There, that’ll fox them, eh?’ said Mary, and seemed pleased. ‘You take it now, keep it with you, put it under your mattress.’ Evie hurried to do just that, putting the tin under the pillow end, and Mary sighed with satisfaction.

Evie slept on the flat tin of ribbons for almost another year. Every day when she made her bed she peeped inside the tin and gently lifted one of the ribbons to check the envelope was there. She never took it out and she never looked inside it. It was enough to know it was there. Every now and again her grandmother would ask to see it and she’d take it to her and it would be inspected and then returned to its hiding-place. Meanwhile, Evie learned to write not just an ‘E’ but her whole name and some other words besides the alphabet. A man came round and, though Evie was instructed as usual to hide, the man was persistent and, lurking in the kitchen, Evie could hear him raising his voice to her grandmother and saying, ‘I have it on good authority there is a child in this house of school age, madam.’ Next time he came her grandmother had prepared her. ‘You’re sickly, Evie,’ she told her, ‘remember that if asked, you’re sickly and can’t go out, you have to stay with me or you get took badly. It might work for a while and there’s nothing else will.’ It did work. The man stared at Evie, who must have looked as convincingly sickly as she tried to suggest because he said, ‘I see,’ to her grandmother and then, ‘The child needs a doctor.’ Mary said she had no money for doctors nor for the medicines they might prescribe. The man addressed Evie directly and asked her how often she went out, how well she ate, whether she slept well - but Evie had been well instructed by Mary and simply stared up at him in bewilderment with her mouth hanging open. He never came again.

Life went on in the same way until one day Mary did not get up. Evie took her tea and toast and got on with what she always did, the household tasks by which she measured time. It was only when it grew dark and her grandmother was still in bed that things began to feel strange. She drew the curtains and lit the lamp and built up the fire but then, sitting alone with the mending, she felt awkward, she missed Mary in her chair talking to herself. She went to bed early, carrying out all the going-to-bed rituals of locking doors and dampening the fire and putting the guard round it to catch stray sparks and checking the wick of the lamp was turned low and the oil extinguished. But even lying on her mattress at the foot of her

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grandmother’s bed didn’t seem right. Twice in the night she was wakened by the rattling of Mary’s breathing and twice she got up and went and peered at the old woman, but she was deeply asleep and did not respond to the timid touch on her cheek. The next morning Mary woke up but did not touch her tea and toast nor the soup offered later on, and Evie began to be frightened. She spent most of that day in the bedroom hovering by the bed, longing for some instructions and receiving none, not a word. She wanted somebody to come but nobody ever did. There were people next door, on both sides, and Evie knew their names but not their faces. Even the names seemed to change - ‘New folk,’ her grandmother occasionally said when somebody had come to their door and Evie had been told to keep herself hidden, ‘new folk again next door, I knew that last lot would never stay, but they’re nothing to do with us, Evie, eh? Potts they’re called, but that’s no concern of ours, we keep ourselves to ourselves and ask nothing of nobody, eh?’

There was a smell on the third day that told Evie she must call on the Potts, or someone. She knew the smell of urine but this was worse, it came from her grandmother’s mouth and it was foul. Going downstairs, opening the curtains on to the grey dawn light, Evie found herself crying. She didn’t want to cry, she hadn’t intended to, but the tears rolled down her cheeks and would not stop. She stared out of the window but there was nothing to see, nobody going down the lane at that time of the morning. But she couldn’t tear herself away from the window, it offered some sort of hope. She stood motionless for half an hour, an hour, and when the first footsteps sounded on the sandstone flags she pulled the net curtain aside and peered out and tapped hard on the window-pane. A man passed by without so much as a glance but shortly after two women carrying big baskets heard her tapping and stopped and stared at her. But then, stupidly, Evie just stared back and did nothing and the women frowned and looked annoyed and went on their way. Still weeping, and trembling now, she at last left the window and stumbled to the door which she opened with difficulty, it was always so stiff, and then she stood in the doorway and waited, not knowing what she was going to say when someone asked her, as they surely would, what was the matter.

The woman who did ask her was young and she was carrying a baby. She hitched the baby on to her hip and looked at the little girl

weeping in the doorway, a pathetic figure, very small and pale and ill-kempt and thin, standing there shaking violently. ‘What’s the matter, pet?’ she asked, and when Evie went on shaking and sobbing the woman peered into the passageway of the house and said, ‘Is your mam there? Hello, missus?’ The baby, affected by Evie’s sobs, began to cry too, though half-heartedly, merely in imitation, and the young mother knew it and paid no attention. ‘We can’t have this,’ she said, putting the baby down on the step, whereupon it began to bawl in earnest, feeling the cold even through its layers of shawls. She drew Evie to her and stroked her hair and said, ‘There, there,’ over and over again. When Evie was quieter, though her thin body still shook, the woman said, ‘Now what is it? What’s wrong? What’s your name, pet? Can’t you talk? Can’t you tell me?’ Choking, Evie managed to hiccup the words. ‘My grandma’s sick.’ ‘Are you on your own then?’ asked the woman anxiously, already seeing herself dragged into a mess she’d rather keep out of. ‘Isn’t there anyone else in the house? Where’s your mam? Where’s your dad? When will they be coming home? Where are they? Where can they be sent for?’