‘Have you ever thought of running away?’
‘Not really. There isn’t anywhere to run to,’ Dulcie replied. ‘Why? Do you?’
‘I used to when we first got here,’ May admitted, chewing her lip thoughtfully. ‘But I didn’t know how to get to Granny’s, or Susan’s. Anyway, Sister Teresa said I was stained with my parents’ sins, and everyone who looks at me can see it.’
Dulcie looked at May in alarm. Yet before she could reassure her sister it was rubbish, May began gabbling away nineteen to the dozen with other nasty and scary things Sister Teresa had said to other girls: they would die a painful death if they ever harboured bad thoughts about a nun, be struck down by God as they left the confessional if they had omitted to confess a sin, and in one case, when a child who had become ill after wolfing down a whole bar of chocolate a visitor had brought her, she was told that the chocolate would swell up inside her and make her burst.
Dulcie didn’t interrupt her, not even to say it was all nonsense, because it was so good to hear May talking again in the animated way she always used to. She hoped that her sister was warming up to telling her what Sister Teresa had done to her on that first night.
But suddenly May changed tack. ‘I wish I hadn’t ever told the other girls I was glad to leave Granny’s house because it smelled funny,’ she said plaintively. ‘It wasn’t true. I liked living there.’ Then, without drawing breath, she blurted out that she was ashamed because their father was in prison, and wished he was dead like their mother.
‘It would be better to have nobody at all,’ she said passionately, clenching her fists and looking angrily at Dulcie. ‘Sometimes I’ve even been bad enough to wish you’d die too, Dulcie, so you couldn’t keep looking at me and reminding me about Mummy. But now Granny has died I know it’s because I’m wicked and to punish me.’
Dulcie was horrified to find that her sister had all this locked in her head. She’d never imagined May thought or cared about anything or anyone from the past. Yet shocked as she was, she sympathized. None of the girls here knew anything more than that their mother had died. One of the reasons they’d been given for not writing to their father was because the other girls might discover he was in prison. So the girls probably thought he’d abandoned them like most of theirs had. So many times when the subject of fathers came up, Dulcie would have given anything to be able to talk about hers, but she couldn’t, she just had to squash down all her feelings about him and say nothing. May was often a kind of torture to her too, for every time she looked at her face, she’d see her mother’s.
‘Granny died because she was old and sick, not to punish you,’ she said, putting her arm round May and cuddling her tightly. ‘As for Sister Teresa saying you are stained by our parents’ sins, that’s a wicked lie just to make you scared.’
‘Are you sure?’ May asked, her voice trembling.
‘Of course I am. Sister’s nuts,’ Dulcie said firmly. ‘I bet she told you that something really bad would happen to you if you ever told me what she did to you on that first night we came here too! Didn’t she?’
May nodded against Dulcie’s shoulder.
‘Tell me now then and that will prove she’s a liar,’ Dulcie said. ‘We’re stuck here, Mummy’s dead, Daddy’s in prison, and now Granny’s dead. There isn’t anything worse that could happen to us.’
Just saying that made Dulcie feel the loss so acutely that she began to cry. Granny was gone now, and they hadn’t even been able to tell her again they loved her before she went.
‘Please don’t cry, Dulcie,’ May said, squeezing her arm. ‘I can’t bear it. It makes me feel so bad and I don’t really want you to die. Take a look at my front tooth, it feels all wobbly, do you think it’s going to come out?’
It was so like the old May to find something trivial to distract her that Dulcie almost laughed. She was like a dragonfly, hovering over one place on the water, then shooting off again to something else.
She touched May’s front tooth and sure enough, it was wobbly. ‘I think it will be out before the day’s over,’ she agreed. ‘But I don’t think the Tooth Fairy visits here.’
‘I never believed in Tooth Fairies,’ May said airily. ‘It’s as silly as believing in Father Christmas. Now, let’s go and explore the rest of the garden, before someone makes us go inside.’
Later that night, lying in bed watching the dormitory curtains fluttering in the soft breeze from the open windows, Dulcie thought over the events of the day. She never did manage to get May to tell her about what Sister Teresa did to her. Yet perhaps it didn’t matter, for they had had such a lovely day together, and she had a feeling that if Granny was watching them she’d have taken pleasure in seeing them happier than they’d been for a long, long time.
Sister Grace brought them out corned beef sandwiches and an apple at dinner-time, and they’d taken them into the orchard and made a kind of den with some wooden apple boxes they found. It was so peaceful there, and warm in the sun, just insects buzzing and birds singing.
They both had sunburnt faces and arms when they came in for tea. Dulcie could feel her skin stinging a bit now. It was good to think she’d got her sister back as a friend. Granny had always said May needed her more than she made out, even if she was the more confident of the two of them.
The last thing Dulcie thought of as she began to drift off to sleep was May’s words about feeling ashamed of their father. She should have told her sister firmly that was wrong, and that she must always keep her faith in him. But she was guilty, too, of forgetting him: when she tried to imagine his face she couldn’t really see it clearly any more. She wondered if he’d been told about Granny yet. He would be so sad, he’d loved her so much.
It seemed to Dulcie as the summer drifted by that she must be growing up because she didn’t get so hurt and upset about anything any more.
She ought to have been upset when Mother Superior said she and May couldn’t go to Granny’s funeral, yet she wasn’t. But then she didn’t get upset either when Susan and Miss Denning did their best to try to change the Sisters’ minds about writing to her father, and they still refused.
Susan came to see her and May the Sunday after Granny’s funeral. She’d written to them immediately she got the news and said how sorry she was, and that she would be going to the funeral and would place some flowers from them on her grave.
It did make Dulcie cry when Susan told them about all the flowers that had been sent for Granny, and when she repeated all the lovely things her friends and neighbours had said about her at the service. Yet it wasn’t really upsetting, it was kind of nice to think of Granny up in heaven without her bad legs, and all her problems over.
Later on that same afternoon Susan told them she was going to get married in August and that she’d be going to live in Yorkshire because her husband-to-be was a vet there. Dulcie found herself just listening to her explaining how she’d still write and visit, though not so often, and that they might even be able to come for a holiday in Yorkshire, and all the time she was thinking,
Well, that’s Susan disappearing out of our lives too.
‘Trust me,’ Susan said, perhaps guessing because Dulcie was quiet that she didn’t really believe her. ‘I won’t forget you both, not even now I’m getting married.’
Dulcie just hugged her, said she was glad for her. How could she say that so many people had urged her to trust them, and they’d all let her down?
Susan sent a little box with two pieces of wedding cake for them, each with a tiny silver horseshoe tucked into it. There was a lovely letter too telling them all about the wedding and her new home, and a photograph of herself and her new husband. Dulcie thought he looked nice, tall with dark hair, but a bit of a stern face. Susan said she would be writing to Mother Superior before long to ask when they could come to Yorkshire for a holiday, but as Dulcie wrote back she thought she would rather have a visit from Susan every month than wait all year to see her for a holiday. As she addressed the envelope to Mr and Mrs Ian Bankcroft, she had a nasty feeling that she might very well have lost Susan for good.
Chapter Seven
‘This one’s addressed to both of us,’ Ian said to Susan as he came in through the kitchen door with a couple of letters in his hand. ‘But I suspect it’s really for you.’
She took the letter from his hand, glanced at the spidery writing, recognized it was from Mother Superior at the Sacred Heart, and put it down while she finished frying the eggs and bacon for his breakfast.
‘This won’t be a moment,’ she called out. Ian had already gone into the living-room; through the door she could see him warming his backside in front of the fire. It gave her such ridiculous joy seeing him doing things like that, just as watching his intent expression when he was examining a sick animal, or hearing him chuckle to himself over a funny book did.
Ian wasn’t handsome, he very likely wasn’t even attractive to anyone else, or he’d probably have been snapped up years ago, for he was thirty-eight and had considered himself a confirmed bachelor until he met her. His forehead was too big, his nose too snub, and he was too thin for his six-foot height, but she had fallen for his soft grey eyes, the warmth of his smile, and his way with animals.
It was early December, they’d been married nearly four months and their marriage was all she had hoped for and more. She had never imagined herself capable of feeling so much passion and tenderness, or that she’d find such complete fulfilment in turning their little cottage into a real home. Every day brought fresh delights, whether it was helping Ian in the surgery, working out in the garden, or merely trying out a new recipe. When she looked out of the window and saw the beauty of the moors all around them, she wondered how she had ever tolerated brash, dirty London.
She quickly made a pot of fresh tea, slid the bacon and eggs on to a hot plate and carried them both into the living-room.
‘That looks great,’ he said, sitting down and attacking it with relish. ‘Who’s the letter from?’
‘It’s from the convent. I’ll just pour the tea before I read it,’ she said.
This was another part of being a vet’s wife that she loved. The unpredictability of it. None of the regular meals at set times like her parents had. Ian could be in and out of the house twenty times in one day, away for twenty-four hours the next. It meant they appreciated each other’s company and generally made the most of their time together.
Susan opened the letter.
Dear Mr and Mrs Bankcroft, she read. I have given a great deal of thought to your invitation for Dulcie and May to spend Christmas with you. It was very kind of you, but sadly I must decline it for them. It is the most important religious festival of the year, and one I feel Catholic children should celebrate in their own church.
I have recently been in discussion about the children’s present and future welfare with our governing body here at the convent, and sadly we have come to the decision that in the children’s best interests it would be advisable for you to gradually distance yourself from them.
We feel it is necessary to ask you to do this as it will of course come naturally anyway, as I hear you are expecting a child of your own, and given the great distance you live from London and the nature of Mr Bankcroft’s work. But we would not wish your relationship with the children to come to a hurtful, abrupt end at that time, for it would be distressing for them. So we suggest your letters become gradually more infrequent as of now.
We are very aware how much you have done for the Taylor children in the past, and your affection for them, and so I feel sure you will agree to act in their best interests now.
Wishing you a joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year,
Mother
‘I don’t believe it,’ Susan gasped, flinging down the letter in disgust. ‘She not only won’t let them come for Christmas, she wants me to abandon them too!’
Ian took the letter and read it.
‘She has a point, Susie,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I mean about the baby, the distance and my work. It really won’t be feasible to keep up visiting.’
‘Not immediately after the baby is born of course,’ Susan retorted. ‘But I will be travelling down there every three or four months to see my parents anyway, and I explained that in my letter to Dulcie.’
‘Maybe she got upset when she read it,’ Ian said thoughtfully. ‘You can never be certain how children will take such news.’
‘Dulcie’s very bright, brighter than that stupid woman who has the cheek to sign herself
Mother.
I knew she would understand. And I didn’t upset them by telling them we were getting married either, they were pleased for me. I had no option but to tell them that day after Maud’s funeral. If I’d left it till the next month it would’ve been just before the wedding, and how would that have looked? Like they were the least important people in my life!’
‘It sounds to me as if the woman knows what she’s talking about, Susie. She has had a great deal of experience of children in care.’
‘That place is only one step up from the old workhouses,’ Susan said angrily. ‘They don’t care tuppence about individual children, all they want is a docile flock of sheep they can finally herd into working in laundries, factories or even becoming nuns themselves when they are old enough. That’s why they won’t let Dulcie and May come here, and why they want me to stop writing and visiting, because they know I’ll put bigger ideas into their heads.’
Ian looked at his watch and got to his feet. ‘Look, I’ve got to go, I’ve got a spaniel bitch to spay. Have a cup of tea, calm down, and we’ll talk when I’ve finished.’
Susan felt crushed that Ian wasn’t incensed by the letter, and by the speed at which he left the house. She remained brooding at the table for a few minutes, then loaded his breakfast things on to a tray and went into the kitchen. What could she do? She didn’t have any rights because she wasn’t a relative. Miss Denning couldn’t intervene because Catholic orphanages were governed by their own people. It was pointless writing to Reg because he couldn’t do anything, and it would only upset him. She had seen the rest of the Taylor brothers at Maud’s funeral, and a sorry bunch they were too. All hard-faced, mean-spirited men, with harpies for wives. They hadn’t even listened when she tried to tell them about Dulcie and May, they were far more interested in getting back to Maud’s house to rifle through her stuff to see if there was anything of value. So she certainly wasn’t going to get any help from them.