Ellie (12 page)

Because of his profession, Amos saw life from a different perspective to other men. He rarely met his neighbours except under circumstances of grief and distress and his sister’s temperament made it impossible to have any kind of social life. He was thirty before he fully realised he was trapped. His father died, leaving him not only the business, but also the burden of Grace. One by one he watched his old classmates get married, but girls shunned Amos not only because of how he made his living, but because of his sister. If he popped into a pub for a drink after a funeral, Grace became hysterical. If he even arranged to play a game of cricket on the long summer evenings, something would be damaged when he got home. Years ago, when Amos had been forced to call the doctor to sedate her during one of her hysterical rages, he’d been advised to have her committed to an asylum. Yet Amos couldn’t bring himself to do such a thing to his own sister. Instead he just humoured her and hoped she would improve with age.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Amos said eventually. ‘I rarely see Ellie except when she helps me in here. I like her, Dora, and please believe me, I had no idea Grace was ill-treating her. Why hasn’t she complained before?’

Ellie had in many little ways made his life more comfortable. During the bitter winter she often warmed his coat by the stove in the mornings, and many a cold night he’d come home late at night to find she’d put a hot-water bottle in his bed. She helped him clear the snow from the yard, she sorted his drawers of handles and screws, swept up the floor in here and often brought him a mug of tea when he was working, unprompted by Grace.

‘I think she felt obligated to keep quiet,’ Miss Wilkins said. ‘She knew there was no other available billet in the town. She didn’t want to make her mother anxious. But above all Ellie’s a practical girl, Amos. She likes our school and loves the acting class and perhaps even believes she’s doing her duty for the war effort by accepting Grace’s tyranny.’

‘I wish she’d said something at the outset,’ Amos said. ‘I hope she isn’t afraid of me too.’

‘I don’t think she’s afraid of anyone,’ Miss Wilkins said firmly. ‘She’s a brave, conscientious girl who tries hard to please people. That makes Grace’s behaviour even more despicable.’

‘What do you suggest I do about it?’ Amos asked. He was mortified that he hadn’t looked closer. ‘Are you saying Ellie should be taken away?’ He dreaded more gossip about his sister and he would miss Ellie too.

‘I wish I had room to have her with me,’ Miss Wilkins said, her soft brown eyes deeply troubled. ‘But I haven’t, and as childhood friends I don’t want you to be shamed further by this getting out. But if Ellie is to stay with you, you’ll have to change things. Ellie must have more food, more freedom to socialise with other girls, and she mustn’t be humiliated and used as a slave. Unless I see a dramatic improvement in the next few days, I’ll have no choice but to report Grace.’

She stood up, anxious to get home now she’d said her piece. She felt sorry for Amos; his life was bleak enough with such a sister, without her adding to his burdens. But she knew he was an honourable man and she trusted him to act fairly.

‘I’ll do what I can, Dora.’ Amos stood up and held out his hand. ‘I’m sorry about all this.’

‘We have to pull together.’ Miss Wilkins smiled as his big calloused hand gripped hers. It was unfair that people had such aversion to undertakers. There was a great deal more to the profession than a man in a black frock-coat, driving a gleaming hearse filled with flowers. His role was akin to doctors’ and priests’ as he offered consolation and organisation at the lowest point in people’s lives, yet he received no praise or admiration. ‘I’ve got a feeling that this war is going to get tough soon for all of us. The children are England’s future and it’s vitally important that each one of them is cared for, emotionally as well as physically.’

‘I want to talk to you, Grace,’ Amos said once the supper things had been cleared away. Ellie had gone into the living-room to do some homework and he’d noted for himself how pale and drawn the girl looked.

‘What about?’ Grace said sharply. She was taking down some airing clothes from the hoist, and her head jerked round, giving him one of her bird-of-prey chilling looks.

Grace had never been attractive, not even as a child. Her voice was shrill, her features sharp, hair dull and stringy. Even as she slipped into middle age, her body had stayed as flat and unyielding as one of Amos’s planks of timber.

‘Into the parlour. Now.’

‘The fire isn’t lit,’ she snapped.

Amos took no notice and marched on ahead, fixing the black-out curtains firmly, then drawing the curtains over the top and switching on the light.

Grace followed him, but instead of sitting down, began to fuss with the curtains.

Amos disliked this room intensely. Since his parents’ deaths Grace’s personality had stolen the warmth it once had and she had acquired still more ugly furniture and ornaments, making it claustrophobic and almost menacing.

‘Sit down at once,’ he ordered her. ‘We aren’t entertaining the vicar, this is just you and I.’

‘Don’t you speak to me like that,’ Grace wittered, clearly taken aback by her brother’s sharp tone.

She sat down primly on the hard leather
chaise-longue
. Amos was reminded that she was incapable of relaxing. In twenty years he hadn’t seen her slip off her shoes, or read anything more than the parish magazine or a newspaper. She was like a loaded gun, cocked ready to fire.

‘From what I understand I should have been watching you like a hawk,’ he said. ‘I’ve had Dora Wilkins round this evening and I don’t like what I’ve been hearing.’

Grace’s face was always the colour of old parchment, but at his words a flush of pink crept up her neck. ‘I suppose that girl has been telling lies about me,’ she said quickly.

‘Ellie has said very little.’ Amos tried very hard to control his anger. ‘I suspect if she’d told everything we’d have women throwing stones at our windows. How could you treat a child so heartlessly?’

Grace denied everything, just as he knew she would. She counteracted his charges of starving Ellie by insisting the girl had the same size meals as herself; that the only chores she gave her to do were simple ones and that Ellie was bone idle, greedy and stuffed up with self-importance.

‘She is none of those things,’ Amos said, tempted to slap his sister. ‘You on the other hand are crazy, Grace, you always have been.’

‘Me! Crazy?’ She made a cackling noise in her throat which was the closest she could get to a laugh. ‘How can you say such a thing after all I do for you?’

‘You know exactly what I mean.’ Amos gave her a withering look. ‘My memory is almost as sharp as your tongue and if I’d had any sense I should have had you committed to the asylum years ago. You’ve made my life a misery. But I won’t stand by and see you ill-treat a child in our care.’

She flew off the
chaise-longue
, reaching out to strike him, but Amos was too quick for her, catching hold of both her arms and pushing her back into her seat.

‘I’m warning you now,’ he said, speaking in a low, firm voice. ‘You’ll start undoing the wrong you’ve done. You’ll give Ellie the same meals as you give me. You’ll treat her with kindness, as far as you are capable of it, and she’ll have freedom to see her friends after school and on Saturdays. I’m going to speak to her myself and tell her the new arrangements. I shall make it quite clear she is answerable only to me in future. If there is any repetition of this kind of cruelty, I won’t think twice. I’ll be straight round to see the doctor and get you taken away. Do you understand?’

As Amos looked down at his sister he felt nothing but disgust. Her eyes were wild with fury and she had spittle at the corners of her thin mouth. He wondered if he could trust her not to strike behind his back.

‘Have I made myself plain?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll do as you say.’

‘You’d better,’ he said, letting go of her. ‘Now go and make a cup of tea for us. I’m going to talk to Ellie.’

*

Ellie had heard raised voices from the parlour but it hadn’t occurred to her that the disagreement between Mr and Miss Gilbert had anything to do with her. The talk with Miss Wilkins after school had made her feel better about herself and she’d even begun to think of herself as a woman rather than a child. She looked up in surprise as Mr Gilbert came into the living-room with two cups of tea in his hands.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Do you want to listen to the wireless now? I’ve almost finished my homework.’

It was half-past seven. Miss Gilbert always ordered her to bed before eight, and usually Mr Gilbert went into his office across the passage straight after the evening meal. Miss Gilbert always stayed in the kitchen until it was time to hear the nine o’clock news, but Ellie assumed she was coming in here now too.

‘The tea’s for you,’ he said putting one cup down by her and sitting down at the other side of the table. He cocked his head to one side, listening to the sound of aircraft going overhead. It seemed to him that each night there was more and more activity on the air bases. ‘I didn’t come in to listen to the wireless, but to talk to you.’

Amos wasn’t a man who thought about people’s appearance much, but he noted now that Ellie had changed dramatically in six months. Losing so much weight had revealed high cheekbones, and her face was heart-shaped, not round as he’d always supposed. Her dark eyes had always been her most attractive feature, but now she was so much thinner they were huge and dramatic. He could see now what Dora had meant about her hair being dull and the glow gone from her skin, yet despite this she was slowly turning into a beauty, and maybe that was just what Grace couldn’t stomach.

He wondered whether he would’ve made a good father if he’d had children of his own. He couldn’t help but think how proud he’d be if Ellie was his.

Out of loyalty to both Dora and Grace he had to pretend he’d observed things weren’t quite right himself. Brusquely he said it had come to his notice that she was doing too many chores and she looked pale. ‘I’m sorry if it’s been hard for you here,’ he said, running one finger inside the collar of his shirt nervously. ‘I know my sister can be very difficult to please, but neither of us are used to children. But I intend to change things, to make it better for you. I want you to see your friends after school if you want to, and on Saturdays you can please yourself how you spend your time. If you are troubled about anything, come to me.’

Ellie was astounded. It didn’t occur to her that Miss Wilkins had intervened on her behalf. ‘I don’t mind helping you,’ she said, sensing something more was troubling him, and wanting him to know he wasn’t responsible. ‘Or doing things around the house. I just hate it when Miss Gilbert is so nasty.’

Amos looked into Ellie’s eyes and saw complete honesty. It pricked at his own conscience and he faltered. ‘If you want to be moved, I’ll understand,’ he said. ‘But can we give it another shot first?’

Amos felt a sense of shame as a warm, almost affectionate smile spread across her face.

‘Yes please,’ she said without any hesitation. ‘I’ll try harder to make Miss Gilbert like me. And I do like helping you in the workshop, really I do.’

Some kind of current passed between them. It was soothing, comfortable, a kind of silent reassurance that their relationship was going to grow from now on. Amos wished he could find the words to explain how he felt, but he’d always been a listener rather than a talker.

‘
ITMA
’s on in a minute,’ he said to hide his acute embarrassment. Grace had never allowed Ellie to listen to the programme, but he guessed she would like it. ‘Will you stay and listen to it with me?’

The joy in the girl’s face was like an electric light being switched on. ‘Oh yes,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’d love to.’

Grace Gilbert lay awake, every bone in her long thin body stiff with rage. How dare Amos say she should be in an asylum? Hadn’t she scrubbed, cooked and sewed for him for years without complaint? It was that girl! She was a she-devil, and she was turning Amos against his own flesh and blood.

Grace had seethed with anger as she heard them laughing at
ITMA
together. How dare he sit in her living-room with that common child and exclude her?

‘Just you wait,’ she whispered into the darkness. ‘I’ll get even with you, little Miss Perfect. Just when you least expect it.’

Amos tossed and turned, unable to go to sleep. He switched on the bedside lamp, sat up and reached for a book and his reading glasses.

He read a whole page, yet as he turned to the next he realised he hadn’t taken in a word.

With a deep sigh he put down the book, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Should he go downstairs and make himself a drink?

His room was his parents’ old one and the only thing he’d replaced was the mattress his father had died on. Both he and Grace had been born in the old oak bed, and he could still see his mother sitting at the dressing-table brushing her hair, laughing as he bounced up and down.

His childhood had been a happy one. Both his parents had been jovial characters, not at all how people supposed undertakers to be. What had happened to make Grace so deeply disturbed? She had been loved just the same as he was.

It had been an odd sort of day. First calling to measure up old Herbert Lucas who had died the previous evening and finding his wife, crippled with rheumatism, struggling to dress him in his Sunday suit. Herbert had treated Mrs Lucas shamefully for sixty years of marriage, beating her, drinking and womanising, yet she still insisted on making him look his best to meet his Maker and was prepared to spend her meagre savings to give him a funeral to be proud of.

Amos had spent the rest of the day in his workshop making the coffin for the Sawyers’ baby, brooding as he sawed and planed about why God saw fit to take a small, dearly loved child, yet keep someone like Herbert in rude health till he was over eighty.

Dora’s unexpected visit had stirred him up still more. Not just the shame of discovering he had failed to notice cruelty to a child going on right under his nose, but also reminders of what he might have become if only he’d been stronger willed.