The Scarlet Sisters Read online

  Meanwhile, in all the excitement, he had forgotten the real reason why enlisting might not be such a good idea: it was only as he filled out his enlistment form and got to the bit where he had to list the names and ages of his children, and he found himself putting: Charles Swain, 9, and then the girls in age order: Alice, 14; Grace, 12; Dora, 4; Katie, 1; Bertha, 1, that he wondered how on earth he was going to break the news to Clara.

  By the time he made it home, Charlie’s lunch had been redistributed among the hungry Swain girls, and now Clara was preparing a stew for supper.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, stirring the pot vigorously with her heavy iron ladle.

  ‘My dear, prepare yourself. Things are going to change around here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve joined up.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Clara sank into one of the kitchen chairs, still holding the dripping ladle.

  ‘You’ll be proud of me. I can’t stand by and do nothing any more.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Yes. You know they’ve started gassing them.’

  ‘I don’t bleedin’ well care.’

  This was not going well. Clara was working class but respectable, and she rarely swore.

  ‘It’s my duty.’

  ‘Duty? What duty? What about your duty to your family?’

  ‘Sometimes there is a greater duty.’

  And then the normally calm and collected Clara exploded. With a roar she jumped up and flung the ladle at Charlie’s head. He ducked and it smashed into the wall with such force it created a small dent, and remnants of Clara’s dumplings splattered across the whitewash.

  ‘Get a hold of yourself, Clara! Look, you’ve made a hole!’

  ‘A hole? How dare you! What about the hole in my heart, you idiot!’

  ‘What? What are you talking about? You’ve lost it!’

  ‘Lost it? Six children, one in a box, two under two, never a sixpence to rub together! I’ll give you lost it, Charlie Swain! How do you expect me to keep this family going while you are doing this “greater duty”, then? Come on, tell me how?’

  ‘The same way everyone else is. We’re at war and we’re going to lose if we don’t all make sacrifices and do our bit.’

  ‘Everyone is not doing it. Not them that are thirty-six years old and have six children.’

  Charlie kept quiet. There wasn’t a lot he could say.

  ‘What if you get killed? What do you think is going to happen? You don’t mind your children going to the workhouse?’

  Charlie knew he was in trouble now. The workhouse was never mentioned in the Swain house, so he said, ‘I’m not going to get killed.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, you know that, do you? Who are you then, God?’

  ‘No! The war’s going to be over soon.’

  ‘You just said we’re going to lose.’

  Charlie decided to change tack. ‘You know they’ve started giving white feathers?’

  ‘I don’t care! I’d rather have a white feather than a husband in a coffin.’

  ‘Where’s your pride, woman?’

  ‘I don’t care about pride. I care about our children and feeding them. I wish to God I’d married someone who felt the same way.’

  ‘I’m not listening to this.’ Charlie stormed out of the kitchen, slammed the front door, and marched past his playing daughters, back down the road to the Two Brewers, which was just about to open for the evening. Here he would be guaranteed to receive a hero’s welcome, and he would drink enough to forget how guilty he felt.

  Because it was true – they had six children and they were struggling, and although Charlie couldn’t admit it to anyone else, he was starting to feel pretty bad.

  Clara sank back down into the kitchen chair and put her head in her hands. She felt like a refugee, trapped in the gilded cage of this peaceful market town on the banks of the Thames. She had a sudden longing for her six big sisters, down river. She knew there was nothing she could do and she was going to have to think of a plan, but first she allowed herself just a little time to be angry.

  Yes, she was angry with Charlie, but most of all she was angry with herself – she had chosen him, after all. Charlie had been the hero, but since his son had got ill, he seemed to have lost his stuffing. She often found herself gazing at him while he kept her awake at night with his drunken snores, a question running around her head: ‘Why can’t you be a proper husband and a proper father?’

  It hadn’t taken long after Charlie Junior had come back from hospital for Clara to notice that Charlie was avoiding going into the front room – before, he had been in there all the time.

  One day, as Charlie walked down the hall, she said, ‘Why don’t you pop in and see Charlie? He’s been asking for his dad.’

  And he had swung around and hissed, ‘Don’t you ever, ever, say that to me again. I don’t want to see him now. Not like that. I want to remember him the way he was.’

  ‘But you talk as if he’s dead.’

  ‘Well, he may as well be.’

  ‘Charlie … don’t …’

  But he had slammed one of his hands over her mouth and pointed a finger at her. ‘No you don’t. Don’t you dare.’ And he’d marched out of the house.

  Since then Charlie had taken refuge in beer. And the problem was, that cost money. After Dora was born, the amount Charlie gave Clara from his weekly wage packet began to dwindle, and after the twins were born, sometimes the money didn’t appear at all. Worse, he ran up gambling debts. Clara felt the absence of every penny as if it was one of her own toes.

  Clara’s best and oldest friend had always been the heavy, bound ledger in which she did her accounts. She inhaled its leather, library smell as if she was smelling a flower. It was weighty and solid, giving security like a baby’s blanket. She also had a special, black tortoiseshell ink pen she had bought herself with her first week’s takings from Darn It!, and she carefully drew her numbers in beautiful, clear loops. But, bit by bit, the ledger no longer felt like a friend and Clara dreaded taking it out, because it had started to whisper, and then shout, something that was devastating – her business was going under. Too much money was going into the housekeeping and bailing out Charlie. She could no longer pay her suppliers; worse, she could no longer pay the rent not only for her shop, but also for their house. Clara knew they were facing her father’s fate if she didn’t do something quickly.

  She shut the shop. As she closed the door on Darn It! for the last time she made a vow which she said over and over to herself: ‘One day I will open a shop again, and this time it will never close.’

  For ever etched in Clara’s mind would be their strange, moonlit procession through Marlow on the night they had to flee their home. As the light faded, a brewery wagon that Charlie had managed to ‘borrow’ pulled to a halt outside. A few of Charlie’s mates arrived with it. They shambled in, touching their caps respectfully at Clara, not really knowing what to say.

  Clara only had sympathy from the local menfolk – Charlie was great company, but you wouldn’t want to be married to him.

  Clara tried to break the ice. ‘Thank you for your help, Bertie, Bill.’

  They nodded but avoided eye contact and started loading the wagon as quickly and as quietly as possible. Alice and Grace, with little Dora clamped to them, stood at the side of the house and watched wide-eyed.

  ‘Why have they left the gap in the middle?’ Grace whispered in her big sister’s ear, pointing at a space on the back of the wagon.

  ‘Why do you think, dummy?’ Alice rolled her eyes.

  Grace shrugged.

  Alice pointed at the front room: ‘Charlie’s box.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Shhhhhh …’ Alice hissed as their mother shot them a look.

  When all their belongings were loaded, Clara came out with the twins, still practically newborn, in the large perambulator. Never light, now weighed down with pots and pans hanging from the sides, it was quite the little tank.

>   There was one thing missing. The men went inside and carefully carried out Charlie Junior in his box. The little boy was turning his head, looking slightly wildly from side to side. It was the first time he’d been outside since he was carried into the house from the ambulance.

  ‘It’s all right, Charlie. We’ll get you down in a moment,’ his father whispered. Face to face with the reality of his son, Charlie couldn’t ignore him any more.

  The box was loaded carefully into the middle of the wagon. Charlie got up onto the wagon and leant down so the two Charlies’ faces were almost touching. ‘It’ll be all right, son. We’ll be at our new home soon,’ he whispered.

  Then he stood up and leapt off the wagon and the procession started moving slowly down the back streets of Marlow. It was a cold night. The wagon went first, followed by the men, and then the three girls, with Clara bringing up the rear, pushing the pram. She didn’t dare look around, but kept putting one foot in front of the other. They reached the river. She noticed the tide was taking the water up to London. If she jumped in, maybe it would wrap her in its watery embrace and carry her to Borough, to home, and away from all this.

  Charlie dropped behind and walked alongside her. She didn’t look at him. Eventually he squeezed her arm. ‘I’m sorry, Clara. I’m really sorry.’

  She didn’t respond. Charlie had another go.

  ‘It’ll be all right. Really, it will. It’s a nice little cottage. You’ll see.’

  She carried on walking.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’

  Clara didn’t reply, and then all she could manage was, ‘I thought we’d left this behind in Lant Street.’ She was thinking about the night they had to make a run for Peckham.

  ‘Well, that was a bit different.’

  ‘Was it?’

  Charlie stayed quiet.

  Clara stopped pushing the pram and turned to look at him. ‘On our wedding day, you said that you would look after me. You promised, in front of my whole family.’

  They stared at each other. The procession carried on moving forwards, away from them.

  Clara turned away from Charlie and resumed her slow, steady walk.

  They gradually made their way through the centre of Marlow and then out the other side. The shops dwindled and ran out, the rows of terraced cottages got smaller. Now there were gaps between dwellings, and fields either side.

  ‘Are we ever going to get there?’ Grace asked her sister.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Dora joined in.

  ‘You’re not helping, you know,’ Alice snapped.

  ‘But the houses have run out.’

  There was one more row of houses left, before the lane they were on descended into black countryside. Alice decided if it wasn’t one of these, they would be living in a field.

  The wagon came to a halt at the second to last cottage.

  Clara stopped and looked at it. It was a sweet cottage, safely sandwiched in by the homes either side. A plaque with the brewery arms was in the centre of the row. To Clara it seemed like a proclamation that the Swains were going to be looked after. She would make this work. It wasn’t so bad. Charlie was right – it wasn’t quite Peckham … yet.

  On the morning that Charlie set off to war, as he stood in the kitchen in his huge greatcoat (made to withstand the Russian front) almost brushing the ground (him being so short), Clara didn’t feel so confident. It seemed to her that every time she had just got used to her new, reduced circumstances, Charlie threw in a new grenade of horror.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to see me off?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘I’ve got things to do. No one else is going to look after these children, are they?’

  As if demonstrating her point, Dora clung to Clara’s skirts and started to cry, but with a twin on each arm there was not much she could do. And then Charlie Junior started calling for her from the front room.

  ‘No time to hang about,’ she said, brushing past him. ‘You’d better go … you’re no use here,’ she muttered under her breath, but just loud enough for Charlie to hear.

  Clara knew it was wrong. She knew she might never see him again but, damn it, she felt so angry she could quite easily do some serious damage to him herself.

  Charlie walked out, his heavy boots clumping, and started off down the hill towards the main street where the new recruits were gathering. He hadn’t got far when he caught sight of Alice and Grace.

  ‘Dad! Are you going?’ they called out.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  The two girls ran over and hugged him tight, burying their heads in his body. He kissed their heads and when the familiar smell of his girls’ warm red hair, and home, hit him, his tears started to fall.

  ‘Oh, Dad, we’re going to miss you,’ Grace said.

  ‘Look after your mum,’ Charlie replied and then, lifting up Alice’s chin to look in her eyes, he said, ‘And you, little miss – you be good … if that’s possible.’

  She nodded and gave one of her mischievous smiles. ‘I’m going to pray for you every day, Dad.’

  Charlie laughed. His eldest daughter’s enduring love for the Almighty never ceased to amuse him. ‘You do that, my very own fairy cake, and remember also to say a prayer for your mother.’

  ‘And for little Charlie, too?’

  Every time it pierced him like a knife.

  ‘Yes, princess. And Charlie, too.’

  And with that he had to go. He wriggled out of their embraces and started off again, down the hill.

  ‘Don’t die, Dad,’ they called after him.

  He started to walk faster, but the girls followed him. That familiar itch to have a drink made his fists clench. But soon Charlie saw the crowd in the distance – soldiers, men, women and children, flags waving. He could hear a band playing, and people singing.

  Charlie rushed forwards and lost himself in the middle of it. Before he knew it, his friends were calling out to him and slapping him on the back. He started to join in the singing – ‘Pack up your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag’ – and then they were marching off to the station. People lining the streets were cheering, and his grief was overtaken by excitement. Yes, he was not proud of how he’d been since Charlie Junior had got ill. He had a strong feeling he’d failed a test. But this war had given him a chance to redeem himself: he was going to come back a hero.

  Just as he got on the train he turned and looked back, and he thought he caught sight of two little red heads jumping up and waving.

  Meanwhile, Clara had rushed to answer Charlie Junior’s call. She firmly detached Dora from her skirt and closed the door in her face.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, son?’

  She bent over and kissed him. He reached up and touched the side of her face, tracing the line of the tears still on her cheeks, both of them ignoring Dora’s mewling on the other side of the door.

  Charlie was anxious. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Clara lay face down, on the sofa, exhausted. Ever since Charlie Senior had announced he was going to war, she had felt as if she had lost her foundations.

  Charlie may have been unreliable, but he did exist. Clara moved through the world as a capable, confident woman. But in her head she was still the baby of a family of eight, with indomitable parents. When they had faltered, Charlie had stepped in.

  She had never lived on her own before – it was her Achilles’ heel.

  Charlie tried again. ‘Mum?’

  With a sigh she said, ‘Your father’s gone off to fight.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Germans, of course!’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course … Wow!’

  Dora’s mewling suddenly stopped, which meant the sound of Clara sniffing became more obvious.

  Charlie Junior was a sweet boy who, in the absence of any other calls on his intelligence, had developed a fine attunement to his mother’s emotional needs. ‘I mean, oh no!’

 
; The sniffing got louder.

  ‘I suppose he’s going to be all right, isn’t he, Mum?’

  ‘Yes. The devil looks after his own. It’s us that I’m thinking about.’

  ‘Oh, Mum!’ And then, all of a sudden, Charlie started to hiccup and sniffle.

  Clara’s tears were trumped by her boy’s distress, and she jumped up from the sofa and took his hand. ‘Oh, Charlie, what is it?’

  ‘Well, I should be the man of the house now, shouldn’t I? If I wasn’t like this, I could look after you all.’

  Clara stroked Charlie’s forehead. ‘Oh, Charlie – box or no box, you’re still a little boy. And such a brave one at that. No, I’m just being silly … we’ll manage! Let’s face it, your dad was never here much anyway, and when he was, well, he wasn’t much good, was he? I mean, who does all the work around here anyway?’

  ‘You, Mum!’

  ‘Exactly!’

  And just as she reassured Charlie, Clara found she was starting to reassure herself. After all, wasn’t it true?

  Charlie piped up: ‘And Alice and Grace help too.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got Alice and Grace too.’ And it was at this point that a plan started to develop in Clara’s mind. ‘We shall still have Dad’s soldier’s wages. They won’t be as much, but maybe there’s something we can do about that. Don’t worry, Charlie, I have an idea.’

  And with that she kissed him on his head and bustled out, scooping up a shaky Dora on her way.

  Later that evening, she packed the little girls off to bed and beckoned Alice and Grace to sit down at the kitchen table. In front of her she had a piece of paper and a pencil.

  ‘I’ve been thinking. It’s going to be hard to keep everyone fed and the rent paid with your dad away.’

  A look of horror came over the girls’ faces. Alice and Grace had been holding whispered meetings in their bed at night. They had had an idea that their dad joining up was going to cause a financial crisis of some description, and had seen an obvious, if ghastly, solution: in those days, when things got tight, it was common to ship spare children off to the extended family.

  Alice burst out: ‘Don’t send us to stay with Aunt Louisa! I promise I’ll be good. I’ll help. Grace and I won’t eat so much.’

  ‘Eh?’