The Gift

They were halfway down the stairs when the parlour door opened wide. Lizzie glimpsed a shoulder and neck, and then the whole man—carrying something—a stretcher —another man holding the opposite end. Joe McBride stood behind them, face unshaven and blurred in tears.

“Mum!”

“She’s dead,” Annie whispered.

Their father glared at them, and their mother stirred, raised her head from the pillow. In the half-light her eyes seemed to shine. They focused on Lizzie.

“You’ll have to be their mother now, Lizzie. Look after your father.”

Annie pressed into her, trying to squeeze past. She was crying like Lizzie. Elsie joined in, and the men stumbled. One of them cursed. They seemed to be moving with difficulty, as though the hallway was too narrow, the air suddenly thick. The door closed behind them, and their mother was gone.

Joe McBride stood where their mother had been, staring down the hall, staring at nothing.

“Where’s she gone? Where’re they taking her?”

“You’ll have to be their mother now, Lizzie…” Her dad stopped. He held the wall for support, and Lizzie ran down the few remaining stairs. One arm still clutched Elsie, now wailing in rage.

“She’s gone,” her father said.

Lizzie’s arm was around his shoulder, Annie alongside and taking Elsie from her.

“Where?”

“Walton. The Infirmary. Your mother’s very ill.”

“The Workhouse!”

Her father shuddered. He looked old. “She won’t be coming back.”

Elsie bawled even louder. Lizzie jerked her head. Annie understood, hushing the child and running to the kitchen at the end of the hall.

“I want to see her,” Annie shouted from behind the door.

“Tomorrow . . . You’ll see her tomorrow.” His words were slurred, as though spoken through treacle.

She won’t be coming back but we’ll see her tomorrow. See her tomorrow. Lizzie tried to make sense of it.

His tone softened. “It’s getting late, girl. Get your sisters ready for bed. It’ll be better tomorrow.”

Lizzie woke up slowly knowing something was wrong. No one had called her. There was no smell of fried bread, no sound of her mother.

No sound of her mother.

Lizzie slid from the blankets, careful not to wake her sister, and knelt on the floor. Every prayer began with one for their mother. Now she prayed all the harder, thinking of her surrounded by the sick and the dying. The forgotten was what her dad called them, but their mother wasn’t forgotten. They were seeing her today.

She pressed her hands to her face, leaving a gap for her nose, and squeezed her eyes shut. In her mind, two men carried a worn-faced woman out on a stretcher. Lizzie closed her eyes tighter, remembering their mother as she’d been, slender and tall, her long raven-black hair swept up in a bun. An Irish princess, her dad called her, sometimes a witch when he was angry. She wished it were true, that she would make herself better. Lizzie grimaced. Once she had believed everything. Her mother was a princess and a witch. A witch-princess.

Her mother had played the game, too. One windy night she had whispered it to her. They’d cuddled as windows rattled and shadows danced across walls. ‘But you’re not to tell your father. You promise me that.’ And Lizzie hadn’t. It was a game, and if it was true, her dad probably knew it already. He was always boasting about his Irish princess. ‘Her smile makes the blood quicken. Her eyes light up a dark room.’ He hadn’t said that for a time, not since Elsie was born.

A noise in the street disturbed her. A cough at the front door, followed by three furtive knocks.

“Lizzie…”

“Annie – Shsssh! Stay in bed.” Lizzie raised a finger to her lips and padded across to the window. Curtains, threadbare but once red, cast a pink light on the floor, and she followed its path, enjoying cold wood on her feet, the magic colour that turned dust into gold. Annie believed that rose-light would take you to Fairy Land, if you found a stretch long enough. Lizzie tightened her lips. She’d told Annie that because once she’d believed it, too.

At the window, she stopped and lifted a curtain. The bed creaked and moments later Annie stood alongside, her breath warm on Lizzie’s cheek.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is it?” Annie asked again.

“I can’t see but Dad’s talking to someone. Come on.” Lizzie grabbed her sister’s arm, pausing as they reached the unpainted door to the room. To its left was a large chest of drawers, the bottom drawer open and holding Elsie. The ‘malevolent baby’ her Irish aunt called her, sometimes the ‘devil’s child’ but then in a whisper.

The ‘devil’s child’ gurgled and raised her hand, a finger outstretched. Lizzie stooped to pick her up. “Hush now, Elsie, let’s go see.” She crept on to the landing, Elsie snuffling and burying her face in Lizzie’s chest.

Their aunt, a stern lady from Cork, blamed Elsie for their mum’s illness, expressed it in a word: malevolent. Like all of her mum’s family, they spoke in whispers, behind hands and not to your face. Her dad had no time for them. He liked things straight out, and he knew what they thought of him: wrong family, wrong class, wrong everything and now one of their own was dying—their mum—and they blamed Dad first and then Elsie.

“Downstairs,” hissed Lizzie. “They’re in the parlour.” Elsie whimpered like she, too, knew something was wrong. Lizzie held her tightly, rocked her, hushing as loud as she dared. Dad hated Elsie’s cry.

They heard voices but no words, then the parlour door opened and a man they had never seen before walked out followed by their dad. The two of them shook hands and their dad let the man out, and Lizzie knew.

“She’s dead.”

“Yes.” Her dad stroked his chin. “She’s dead.”

His tone was flat, emotionless. Lizzie wondered if he’d been crying all night and had become dry. She wondered why she wasn’t crying, why Elsie was quiet, and why Annie was sobbing with no one to hug.

Joseph McBride straightened and opened his arms wide, and they stood for a moment united as one.

“I’ll make us some tea,” Lizzie at last whispered. One of the few things she remembered doing that day. Later, lying in bed and unable to sleep, she tried to recapture what had happened in the time in-between. Their father had been out most of the day, ‘arranging things.’ She remembered him standing at the sink, shaving, and taking longer than usual. She remembered ironing his shirt the way their mum did, and Annie cutting bread, slathering each slice with a layer of dripping. And then her eyes closed.

She awoke with a memory, her mother standing over the bed, talking to her. She tried to remember the words . . . ghosts covet you . . .others more dangerous . . .hunting in darkness… be strong.

But I’m not strong . . . why would anyone hunt me?

Lizzie sat up keeping the scatterings clear in her mind, jigsaw pieces rapidly fading. She picked on a shadow that flickered, gaining in substance, and with it a smell of dry tinder; a voice that still lingered where her mother had been, faint but imperative. “Don’t cross the water.” The words echoed in Lizzie’s head as she opened her eyes and saw a room dim in shadow. Don’t cross the water.

What water…? Lizzie eased back into her bed. She drifted in half-sleep, every so often raising herself up on an elbow in the hope of seeing or hearing her mother. Who were hunting her? Ghosts coveting . . . what did they want? She had been dreaming; she knew that, but sensed that their mother was close.

A series of bangs woke her. The knocker-upper. He didn’t knock on their door. They couldn’t afford him. But Albert walked down the street knocking loudly on a few chosen doors. He used a long baton, thwacking the wood as though hitting a drum or a vagabond, and all but the deaf heard him.

Lizzie crawled out of bed, shaking the night from her head. In the cold light of the room, talk of ghosts and things hunting in darkness made little sense. And, ’don’t cross the water.’ What did that mean? What did any dream mean? Their mother was dead, and she had sandwiches to make. Her father would be going to work, couldn’t afford not to. A job was a job and work at the docks a privilege too easily lost. She shivered, her feet cold on the stairs, the hall below dark still, morning not broken. Even so, someone was up.

A sliver of light shone through a crack in the kitchen door. A chair scraped.

“Dad, I was going to make them.”

“I’ve made some for you.” He pointed at two piles wrapped loosely in cloth, in front of them four pennies, polished and gleaming on wood. “You’re going to Agnes.”

The door opened behind her.

“All of you.”

Annie began crying. Elsie joined in. Lizzie turned. “Not forever— just today. That’s all.”

“And tomorrow.” He put on his coat. “Until things get settled. She’ll see you’re alright.”

He hugged Lizzie hard, hugged Annie, touched Elsie’s fingers and left them, as though glad to be going somewhere, somewhere else. Lizzie waited until the front door closed. Then she opened it and watched him trudge on cobbles until he vanished in mist. It was something their mother did every day. ‘The early morning watch,’ she called it. And now it was Lizzie’s turn.

“It’s a long walk. Your father works hard,” she whispered, repeating what she’d heard many times. Just then, her mother seemed close.

A hand touched her shoulder and Lizzie jumped.

“Are we going then?” Annie stood behind her, Elsie struggling and threatening to cry. Lizzie took her, brushing her lips against the baby’s face, shushing her quiet.

“I wish I could do that,” Annie said. “Make her go quiet.”

“Let’s hope she’s asleep when we get there.”

“Bloody Agnes, I don’t like her.” Annie clumped her boots, freeing her hand from Lizzie’s to splash a puddle. “I hope Elsie cries all day.”

“No you don’t. Anyway, I don’t think she likes us,” said Lizzie, using both arms to snuggle Elsie into her chest. “But she’s dad’s sister.”

“Half sister, and she’s posh…Do you think she knows – about mum?”

A ghostly clanging forestalled any answer. A dark smudge turned the corner, a rumble muffled in a thickening mist. “Come on!”

Lizzie ran, Elsie bouncing between shawl and breast, Annie close behind. They made the tram-stop barely in time and piled on board gasping for air.

The conductor laughed. “Steady on girls. We’d a stopped.”

Lizzie panted, the raw air stripping her lungs. “If you saw us…”

“Ah that’s different. Would we have seen them, Jim?” He spoke to the driver.

“The tall pale girl?”

“With hair like coal.”

“Carrying a baby.”

“And little carrot-head?” The driver chuckled. “We’d a seen yer, luv. Don’t you worry about that.”

Annie sniffed, and then sniffed again. She stalked on the tram following Lizzie, sat down beside her. “Carrot head.”

Lizzie grinned. Both men had been funny, and it was good to see Annie angry once more. “Dad’s ginger. You’re proud of it. Anyway he called me sooty.”

“No he didn’t. He said your hair was black…like…” She stopped. Lizzie hugged her, and for a time they said nothing. The tram was half-empty, the conductor content for a time to chinwag with Jim. They spoke in low comforting murmurs and Lizzie hunched into her seat, relieved Elsie had settled again, and stared out the window. There was magic in roads, she thought, where they led to, the streets that led off them. In sunlight, houses were hard and bright, red bricks gleaming and armoured in slate. But at night, and in winter they became something more; melting in greyness and rain, those roads could lead anywhere.

“Where to, girls?”

Lizzie jumped. She hadn’t seen him.

“Wakey-wakey! Where to?”

Where to, our aunt’s—half-aunt’s? That was no good. She handed him the paper her dad had neatly folded. “Me dad said you stopped somewhere close by.”

“Aye, we do. I’ll let you know.”

She handed him pennies and watched the small gleaming machine whir out three greyish tickets. Elsie went free, but still he issued her one. She reached out, looked at it curiously, and then began chewing it.

“She’ll choke,” the tram-man said.

Then why did you give it her? Lizzie said nothing. Elsie would join their mother in heaven. A wicked thought. She didn’t mean it.

“No, she’ll cry,” said Annie, watching as the tram-man took the ticket from Elsie’s mouth.

“She cries and you sit at the back.” He grinned to show he was joking. “Anyways, what are you three doing up so early – and by yourself?”

Lizzie spoke. It was her place to speak. “Oh, our mother’s dead and we’re going to my aunt’s. But we have sandwiches.”

The tram-man grunted, stroked his moustache and nodded. “I’m sorry.” They watched him walk down the tram and re-join the driver. Lizzie listened, but heard nothing.

Ten minutes later he walked up the tram again. “Your aunt lives somewhere near here, girls… Look after yerselves.”

They walked off in silence, Lizzie managing a smile, Annie remembering to sniff. She handed Elsie to Annie, and watched the yellow and green tram fade in mist, a smudge, a ghostly clang and then nothing. She waited without knowing why until, at last, she opened her dad’s map. The writing was poor, turning to squiggle where he was unsure of a word. The pattern of lines offered some kind of clue, as did the X that marked where Agnes lived.

“We start from here.” Lizzie jerked her head at the tram-stop and pointed at the map. Annie looked over her shoulder. “And we follow this line.”

Annie nodded and placed a finger in Elsie’s mouth. “Go on then.”

And if we get lost it will all be my fault. Lizzie shrugged and turned down the first street. Twenty minutes later they were lost, in a maze of terraced houses, all looking the same with their red brick and neatly trimmed bushes.

An elderly lady helped them after first crossing the road to avoid doing so. Lizzie called her, running across to block her escape. To both their relief the old lady had heard of their half-aunt, knew where she lived, and scuttled off rapidly after giving directions.

“Number 16, this is it.” Lizzie regarded the dark blue door. The windows gleamed. The curtains were crisp.

“You knock,” hissed Annie.

“I’m going to. Anyway, she knows we’re here.” A net curtain had twitched, a finger pulling it still.

Lizzie knocked once and then once more, the second time harder. They waited, Annie hopping from one foot to the other as though needing the toilet. Lizzie knocked a third time, wondering what they’d do if their aunt didn’t answer. She must have heard. She’d seen them from the window too.

At last the door opened an inch at a time, as though the person inside was afraid of letting in flies. Half-aunt Agnes looked like their dad but wore a dress, and she sucked on her top lip when she was angry. She was sucking it now.

“Yes?”

“Our mum’s just died and dad said to come here for the day. We’ve brought sandwiches.” Annie raised her package as proof.

She looked at them, sucked harder, sighed and then shut the door, leaving a trace of mothballs and starch.

The two of them stared.

“Snotty cow. We could have been dog-shit.”

“Annie!”

“Well it’s true. We could have been.”

“There’s just something wrong with her,” said Lizzie. “Come on. And walk straight.”

They walked down the street, heads high, Lizzie feeling rotten inside. Curtains twitched; Lizzie was sure of it: Dog shit on the move. Don’t breathe in. Don’t touch. Beware. Beware.

Annie pulled at her hand. “What’s that?”

The answer was obvious, a wall of grey mist blocking off where the street ended. “Fog,” Elizabeth said. “But you’re right. It shouldn’t be there. Not like that.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll race through it. I remember the way.” Elizabeth didn’t, not exactly, just that her dad’s map had them turning right a number of times—after first turning left. At least it was something, and running was better than standing there crying. Annie was scared, Elsie about to wake up.

They set off at a jog, Elsie bouncing and gurgling, enjoying the game. The mist thickened. Hedges, houses, assumed different, impossible shapes; lampposts loomed and then vanished, and all the time Elizabeth had the uneasy feeling that someone or something was watching them.

Gradually the mist thinned and with it Elizabeth’s unease.

“There it is,” said Annie, pointing to the stop.

“And there’s somebody else there, too.”

“Where?” Annie stopped, re-adjusting her hold on Elsie.

Elizabeth squinted. There was someone there, she was sure. She ran to the stop without knowing why and almost ran into her, an old woman holding on to the cylindrical post as if for support.

“Are you all right? Elizabeth swayed, gasping for breath. The air was cold on her lungs and her head seemed suddenly heavy.

The old woman smiled and a nut-brown face creased in wrinkles. “You’re so very kind… so kind.” She held out a hand and Elizabeth felt her own hand move in response. The woman’s eyes widened and Elizabeth froze. Two things happened at once. Elsie screamed and cobbles trembled as something approached.

“The tram!” Annie shouted, standing where the woman had been.

It turned the corner, a sleek snake that rumbled and clanged.

Elizabeth turned as she boarded the tram. The pavement was empty.

“Where’re you off to now then, girls?”

The question drew her back to reality. They were standing on the same tram that had brought them here,

the same conductor who had teased them earlier, regarding her now with a smile.

“ Our aunt didn’t want us,” Lizzie said. “We’re going back home.” She was proud of her voice, no trace

of a tremble. She kept her lips firm.

The smile vanished. “Well you’re not paying, girls. You’re going home free.” He bashed out three tickets, slipped Elsie’s into her bonnet.

Lizzie’s eyes prickled and she blinked, fighting back tears. They sat without speaking, Annie whistling tunelessly, occasionally staring out the window. Lizzie thought again of the tram-stop, of the woman who was there and then wasn’t. She tried to remember the face and realised she couldn’t, just the old woman’s eyes, the abnormally kind eyes. And Annie, why hadn’t she seen anything?

Annie’s elbow banged into her ribs, and Lizzie started awake. The tram slowed and then stopped.

“Thanks, Mister.” Annie eased Elsie on to her shoulder and stepped on to the street.

“That’s all right, Carrots. Keep yerself warm.”

“He was a nice man,” said Lizzie, opening her arms to take Elsie. They walked slowly, both knowing what they would see on turning the corner. Walton Workhouse stood like a fortress, a tall red building guarded by walls and a thin strip of grass.

As the building came into view, Annie quickened her pace. Lizzie pulled her back and both of them stopped.

“Mum died there. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise.”

Annie turned away, her face closed and tight. “She’s dead. That’s all.”

Lizzie said nothing. She stared at the building and picked on a window. She imagined her mother looking down from the shadows, imagined her smile.

“How long have you been sitting there?” Their father looked angry, confused, his face flushed. “I’ve come from Agnes’s. No answer.”

“She wouldn’t let us in,” Lizzie said.

“Just snorted.”

“No sucked, but she still wouldn’t let us in.”

“How long have you been here?”

“All day.” Lizzie thought. “Well most of it. Mrs Clarke let us in for a bit but sent us packing when her old man came home.”

He sat down beside them. “I don’t understand.”

“Half-aunt wouldn’t have us.”

“Half-aunt be damned. She’s nothing to us now. She can go to the devil with the rest of her crew.”

“What about us?” Annie looked frightened. The devil frightened her. They knew he existed. Their mother had warned them. ‘Watch out for your souls.’

“It’s all right, Annie. It just means we don’t have a half-aunt, not anymore. Isn’t that right, Dad?”

He kissed her on the cheek and then squeezed her knee. His breath smelled of beer. “That’s right. We don’t need her.”

“Mum said I’m to be mother,” said Lizzie. “Look after your father she said.” Her dad began crying, and Annie joined in. Lizzie understood. He was drunk and that was to be expected. Annie was still a child. She stood, bringing her dad up with her through sheer force of will. They watched as he fumbled and then dropped the key. Lizzie retrieved it from the step and opened the door. The house was cold and damp and smelt of nothing. She would change that. She would change everything.