The Scarlet Sisters

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: The End

  1. The Hero

  2. The Crippler

  3. Fighting on all Fronts

  4. Playing the Hand

  5. Poppy

  6. The Albatross

  7. If a Job’s Worth Doing …

  8. The Veneer

  9. Flappers!

  10. A Funeral and Three Weddings

  11. Mind the Gap

  12. Keeping Up Appearances

  13. Staying Alive

  14. The Heroine and The Boyfriend?

  15. Sisters at War

  16. Least Said, Soonest Mended

  17. The Beginning

  Conclusion: Breaking the Spell

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  ‘Oh my goodness – another girl Mrs Swain!’

  Clara’s normal iron composure broke and she screamed, ‘No! That’s not the bloody deal!’

  And that is how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world.

  When Helen Batten’s marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family’s past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna’s early life.

  What she unearths is a tale of five feisty red heads struggling to climb out of poverty and find love through two world wars. It’s a story full of surprises and scandal – a death in a workhouse, a son kept in a box, a shameful war record, a clandestine marriage and children taken far too soon. It’s as if there is a family curse.

  But Helen also finds love, resilience and hope – crazy wagers, late night Charlestons and stolen kisses. As she unravels the story of Nanna and her scarlet sisters, Helen starts to break the spell of the past, and sees a way she might herself find love again.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Helen Batten is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Sisters of the East End and Confessions of a Showman. She studied history at Cambridge and then journalism at Cardiff University. She went on to become a producer and director at the BBC and now works as a writer and a psychotherapist. She lives in West London with her three daughters.

  For my mum, Dianne

  ‘This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

  We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.’

  C. S. Lewis

  PROLOGUE

  The End

  I knew it was the last time we were going to see each other, and she knew it was the last time we were going to see each other, and we both knew each other knew. Of course neither of us said anything, but it did make a difference. Our conversation was less flippant, more direct, and in between our bursts of talking, I held her hand tight, stroked it, kissed it and told her I loved her over and over again.

  I’d got the phone call from Mum first thing in the morning: ‘You’d better go and see Nanna quick. I think this is it.’

  Mum went on to fret because it wasn’t visiting time, but I’d had plenty of experience of hospitals and nurses: ‘No one’s going to stop me from seeing Nanna. Just let them try.’

  I was eleven weeks pregnant with my third child and as sick as if I was a tiny boat tossing around in an ocean storm. But I dressed with care. If I didn’t hurry Nanna might die before I got there, but then I knew the sight of a messy granddaughter would do nothing for her state of health. What if her last sight of me was looking unpressed? I worried about hauntings. I took out a designer pencil skirt that I had purchased from a West London charity shop, and I was relieved when I managed to zip my new bump into it. Then I added a plain, stretchy black shirt, and completed the outfit with red wedge sandals. Sophisticated and understated – it was not necessarily my normal look, but I knew it would please her.

  And, as I walked into the intensive care unit, feeling at home with the beeping monitors and resuscitation unit stashed in the corner, glaring at the nurses and daring them to stop me, Nanna took off her oxygen mask and looked me up and down with a smile. ‘Hello, dear. Well, you do look smart, I must say.’ She paused, took my hand, pulled me closer, and said in an earnest whisper, ‘Always keep your hair short, Helen.’ I nodded. And then, satisfied I’d got the message, she nodded too.

  She looked down and gestured at her hospital gown. ‘What do you think of this?’

  I looked at it thoughtfully and said, ‘It’s pretty, Nanna. I noticed it when I walked in – the little blue flowers are exactly the colour of your eyes.’

  ‘Oh, really, dear? I guess you’re right.’

  And she put her oxygen mask back on, once more satisfied.

  And it was the thought I’d had. Nanna had very blue, periwinkle eyes and they were exactly the colour of the sprigs of blue flowers in her rather superior hospital gown.

  Looking her best and, in fact, all of her descendants looking their best, was very important to Nanna, but there was method in her vanity. She had been the youngest of five sisters, growing up in poverty. All she’d had were her looks. Nanna had always put a great deal of effort into standing out from the crowd. She was a master of unusual colour combinations and not afraid of a clash. I often heard her friends make comments such as, ‘I would never have thought to put red with purple, but it really works. You are so clever, Bertha.’ She loved accessories: hats, gloves, beads, scarves in jewel colours wound around to create a stir. She had an air of glamour about her, although the money her husband had made had all been lost by the time I came into the world. So it was left to her children and eventually her grandchildren to indulge her. With one of my first pay packets, I bought her a scarf from Liberty’s. I thought its swirly autumn colours would look beautiful against her fair skin. The next time I saw it, it was wrapped around my nanna’s head as an elaborate turban. She’d chopped it up, taken a sewing machine and some stuffing to it, completed the look with a brooch and feather, and used it to create a splash at my brother’s wedding.

  Nanna’s hair was her trump card. All of the five Swain sisters were blessed with thick wavy hair of differing shades of red – the Scarlet Sisters. When they stood together it was like a wood in autumn. The third sister, Dora, had the darkest hair. It was a kind of rich brown chestnut. Then came Grace, a lighter chestnut; Katie a bit auburn; and the eldest, Alice, a sort of strawberry blonde. Nanna was the youngest of the sisters, and her hair was the brightest. She was the only one who had really inherited her father, Charlie Swain’s, traffic light for a head. By the time I knew her it had turned a beautiful glossy, snow white, but she still had a bit of the brightest red in a layer underneath, at the back. As a little girl I used to sit on her knee and stroke this silky, red seam in awe and wonder. My own hair was fine and mousey. My cousin Elisabeth had inherited Nanna’s red hair and I was most jealous.

  Competition was a bit of a theme in the family: there was nothing the Swain sisters wanted to do more than outshine each other. Their back-handed compliments were legendary and went on until the end. Typical was the stir Nanna caused at her sister Grace’s funeral. As they lowered her coffin into the ground, Nanna peered down and then turned to her sisters, and Dora’s daughter, and said loudly, ‘Did they lower your mum on top of your dad at her funeral, Jackie?’ Then she went over to Grace’s granddaughter, who held out her hand in greeting, but Nanna bypassed it and took a lock of her hair instead. She felt it and said loudly, ‘Is this your own colour, dear?’

  Which leads me on to what happened next. As I knew it was the last time I’d see Nanna, I felt compelled to tell her about my new baby. I took courage and launched straight in. ‘I’m pregnant again.’

  She looked shocked and then took off her mask. ‘Are yo
u sure?’

  ‘Well, yes. Eleven weeks and I’m feeling really sick, so yes, pretty sure.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was an ominous silence.

  ‘Did you mean that to happen?’

  ‘Um, well … Nanna!’

  ‘What I mean is, are you pleased?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  I don’t know why I said ‘of course’. There was no ‘of course’ about it. My first pregnancy ended tragically and being pregnant was not a happy, healthy state for me. I knew that this was what she was thinking and she knew I knew, but as in so many of my dealings with Nanna, the uncomfortable, painful thing was left unspoken.

  ‘Girl or boy?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll find out, but that’s at the twenty-week scan. I haven’t even had the twelve-week one yet.’

  ‘Hmm. Yes, but what do you think? What do you want?’

  ‘Oh, I really don’t mind. A healthy baby and I’m not just saying that. You know that.’

  A look of recognition passed between us.

  ‘Another girl, though, Helen.’ She sighed. She seemed to know something I didn’t, but I decided not to question the premise.

  ‘Well, I like girls.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, of course! Girls are best. Come on, Nanna, you like girls too.’

  ‘Sisters, though. Awful.’

  ‘Awful?’

  ‘Yes, all the fighting and the jealousy. Sharing a bed. Yes, dear. Three girls. Too many.’

  Three girls? I was confused. I only had one – my two-year-old, Amber.

  Then she said, ‘You were so lucky to have a brother.’

  Suddenly there was a ghost in the room. Nanna had had a brother, one boy slap in the middle of the five girls, but he’d died and, so the story goes, broken their father’s heart. Charlie Swain never recovered from being a lone man surrounded by six women. Apparently he would put his head in the gas oven, and took to drink. More than that I didn’t know. Now I was tempted to ask, but Nanna had put her oxygen mask back on and I was suddenly aware of the intensive care machinery around me.

  Instead I kissed her hand again and stroked her forehead. ‘I love you,’ I whispered in her ear. Nanna closed her eyes, looking tired. ‘Her heart’s giving out,’ I thought. She was ninety years old. Apart from having her children, this was the first time she had ever been in hospital. The doctors said there was nothing wrong with her: her heart was just worn out with all the years.

  I studied the back of her hand. The shape of her fingers and nails was so familiar to me, as were the big freckles. Images flashed through my mind – those hands teaching me to knit, holding her cards playing bridge, smoothing her hair, waving her elegant tortoiseshell cigarette holder with her one-a-day Silk Cut cigarette, grabbing the bowl of dish water and throwing it over the fire I’d started in her kitchen when I accidently knocked a bottle of turps down the back of the fridge, and dissolving into laughter when we ran outside to escape the billowing smoke: ‘Oh, Helen, I’ve never seen your face so white. You’re a ghost!’

  She’d cried with laughter despite the fact I’d sent flames licking up the walls of the kitchen and she had to have it redecorated. How she paid for it, I’ve no idea. But that was the thing – she only ever made me feel incredibly loved.

  And I couldn’t believe that this hand that was so familiar wouldn’t be there any more. Here in front of me was Nanna, so sharp, so herself, it was difficult to believe that within days she would be gone for ever.

  My mobile phone rang. It was my husband, worried about Nanna and about me. I put his mind at ease and then we fell into our usual banter. Nanna opened her eyes and watched me carefully. I was suddenly self-conscious and felt maybe I was crossing a line, being too flippant. I hung up.

  Nanna took off her mask. ‘Is he good to you?’

  I was slightly taken aback. ‘Yes, Nanna, he is.’

  She looked at me. She didn’t seem convinced and I was surprised. He was a singer and so was she. He made her laugh. He was short and stocky and had lovely chestnut, wavy hair. The sort of man she said she always fell for. A man that was a bit like her father, Charlie Swain.

  She changed the subject. ‘It’s Maundy Thursday, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘Can you get me a radio? I’d like to listen to the Messiah. It’ll be on this afternoon.’

  Well, I tried. I fiddled with the radio beside her bed. I summoned the nurse. I am hopeless at technology. I promised I would ask Mum to bring a radio in later. But in the chaos of morning sickness and having a small child and a noisy husband, I forgot. The Messiah was her favourite piece of music – she’d sung it in choirs every Easter since she was a child. Now when I sing it with choirs, I sing it to her with an apology. Playing it at her funeral was not enough.

  It was time to say goodbye. I leant over and the words were out of my mouth. It seemed cruel but a bigger obligation was at stake. For the first time, I mentioned that name to her. ‘Look after Poppy for me.’

  Nanna looked scared and I wished I hadn’t. I’d broken the rule and admitted I knew she was dying. She did nod, though.

  I leant over and kissed her for the last time. ‘I love you,’ I said again. And then I walked out of the door. I stopped first and looked back. We stared at each other. And then I turned my back and carried on walking.

  I couldn’t take her with me. The universe had decided and was pulling rank. It felt unbelievable and yet weirdly right – the natural order of things. I had a feeling she was so indelibly printed on my psyche that she’d always be with me.

  When my life started to unravel, years later, this last meeting with Nanna started to take on a new level of significance. Nanna had never been known for her psychic powers and yet something about her hovering between this world and the next had seemed to give her the power of prophecy: the questions about my husband, her anxiety about my three daughters – because I did indeed end up having three daughters and my husband was not good to me – in the end he was very bad for me, and I had to ask him to leave. And as I thought more about Nanna and her life, I realised I really didn’t know anything about her. Yes, she had been such a presence in my early life, I could still feel her around me. But who was it I thought I knew? Nanna could talk and she loved to keep a room entertained, but she never talked about her childhood, and her four sisters were strangers to me.

  One day, while studying for a history degree and writing an essay on working-class Conservative voters between the wars, I had asked Nanna how her father had voted. ‘Because you were working class, weren’t you, Nanna?’

  ‘Well, dear, I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘What would you say, then?’

  She looked unusually annoyed.

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Nanna.’

  She pretended not to hear.

  But I wasn’t giving up. I had an essay to write and I was lacking inspiration. ‘Mum told me your grandpa used to drive Gladstone to Parliament in his hansom cab and he lived off the Old Kent Road, so I reckon that makes you working class and I know you always vote Tory.’

  ‘Look, there was working class and then there was working class. All I’ll say is on election day, there were those that wore red rosettes in the playground and those that wore blue, and me and my sisters always, always wore blue.’

  ‘Really? That’s fascinating. Why?’

  ‘I’m not talking about it any more.’

  ‘But you are an electoral phenomenon! The Conservative Party has been in power more years than it hasn’t because there has always been a significant, solid, working-class Conservative vote. Help me, Nanna! I’ve got to write an essay on why.’

  But she had closed her eyes and absolutely refused to engage any further with me.

  The only time I ever met one of the Scarlet Sisters was when her twin, Katie, flew over from New Zealand. It was the last time Nanna ever saw her. They had a few sherries and starte
d telling stories of their hapless father in cockney rhyming slang and giggling till the tears started rolling.

  I watched in fascination. Normally Nanna spoke like the Queen Mother.

  After twenty-four years of being with my husband, I suddenly found myself a single mother of three daughters. I had by accident found out that he had been seriously and serially unfaithful and everything I thought was so, wasn’t.

  It seemed I had been a bit naïve. I knew something had fundamentally changed (and not in a good way) when I became pregnant with our last child, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. When I gave him a set of cufflinks which said ‘If Lost’ on one, and ‘Return to Wife’ on the other, I was only half joking. He had always been the International Man of Mystery but he suddenly became a bit more mysterious, travelling the world and not answering his phone. When I said to an older male friend of mine, ‘I did ask him many times if he was having an affair and he always said no,’ he had looked at me, astonished. ‘Well, what did you expect him to say? He was hardly going to say yes, was he?’

  ‘Wasn’t he?’

  ‘No.’

  Of course having four children in six years meant I had slightly taken my eye off the ball. But he had never been a womaniser – or so I thought. He had always seemed such a devoted husband. He had started sending me flowers (stupidly, I forgot what he used to say: ‘A man who sends a woman flowers, sends lots of women flowers.’) He started picking me up from nights out with my girlfriends. ‘He’s very possessive, isn’t he?’ they said. ‘He never used to be,’ I’d replied, not really questioning why he started being so solicitous. ‘He loves you so much,’ my girls said to me. But I think you can sense when it’s an act.

  And that niggling doubt sometimes became a feeling in the pit of my stomach and I thought of the parable of the house built on sand. At times I felt as if I was going mad: the blurring of truth and untruth, the endless ever-more complicated excuses, the shifting realities. He just didn’t touch me like he used to and even when he was there, he wasn’t. There was an absent look in his eyes. I can spot it now: ‘The Eyes of the Cheating Man’. I think I see it sometimes in certain husbands’ eyes at parties. So when I started to emerge from that new baby madness, I made an ultimatum and we had a year of couples counselling.