Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Sixty-Nine

Sixty-Nine

Trams and buses commandeered by women conductors (since the 20th of last month) swerved to avoid a sea of black-clad people processing into the Chapel Royal. Drenched street sellers cried out their wares, and a newspaper boy handed Father The Spectator, which he passed to Mary and I, ‘disliking’ their sarcastic voice. We opened it hurriedly with gloved fingers.

"Twenty-three killed, thirty missing, fifty wounded,” Mary read. The British steamer Mercian had been attacked by an enemy submarine in the Mediterranean Sea.

“All those lives lost, all those families torn apart,” I whispered, turning the page to the list of soldiers who had died, another list of lives lost- and for what? What reason?

My own family was held together by a small, easily pulled stitch. Tensions ran high from news of the war and Father’s sudden compliments and care of us. He thought Mary ‘a charming young woman’ now, but I did not trust those sly eyes one bit.

Indeed, the Mary and Elsie I once knew were lost to me. Who was this stately, serious and serene girl walking ahead of me, arm in arm with the father who had beat our mother, Susanna and shot Carlos Lutenez and Joseph Vitner? It seemed stupid that in the midst of this war where wives were becoming widows and soldiers returned with shell-shock or amputated feet from trench foot, that I should hold a grudge. But I could never forgive Father.

*****

We spent the rest of the day purchasing lavish gifts for Mother, which she opened on her birthday, although I could see the protest in her eyes; why spend money on a trinket which could go towards our Tommies? Father had his arm around her, calling her his beautiful white dove, one hand on her bulging stomach. Father’s birthday was three days later, on the fourteenth.

Even though he was twelve years older than Mother, it seemed the other way round. Everything about her person ached or was stiff, her hair was greasy, her forehead creased with lines.

“I wish this baby would hurry up,” she groaned, as I helped her dress for Father’s birthday tea.

“It’s only another month,” I replied, “Have you thought of any names?”

“Emmelina, for my sister.”

“Did you kill her?” I blurted out, forgetting her condition, which meant that I should not upset her.

“Yes.”

*****

The evening was the best in months. We ate and drank heartily, danced, sung, cracked jokes and laughed at them. For a while I forgot about the war, the fact that my Mother had killed her own sister, and all my other worries.

“Emma, come and join us!” Mary yelled, yanking her hand and pulling her into the photograph about to be taken. We looked and felt like a family, shining faces lit up by the dancing fireplace. I should’ve felt annoyed that the girl I once hated was in my family’s photograph, with Father’s arm around her and his surprised smile looking down on her, but somehow it felt right.