Heroine Of Her Own Life

3. Two Up, Two Down-4

Meg lay on her back with one hand on her brow. She hated the memory of that day in 1910 when Annie left with Aunt Polly and her husband, Jack Doran. Annie cried as they took her by the hand and led her out the front door—the start of a trip to their lonely farm. The four older girls cried as well, Will paced the small room like a caged animal, and the younger boys cowered together in a corner. They’d just lost their mother and now they were losing their sister.

The family only knew what Annie wrote them in those monthly letters: lots of clean air and fresh milk, and happy days on the farm. Meg didn’t imagine slaps from the aunt, who dictated those letters, and couldn’t imagine the uncle who cornered Annie in the pantry when his wife was out.

Her letters home were so cheery—how were we to know what was happening? Was there some way she could have known the truth? Meg couldn’t remember. What she could remember was that blindingly bright October day in 1912 when she found Annie at home for the first time in two years. Crying and snuffling, she sat on Jinny’s lap, like a baby. Gaunt and pale-faced, her hair dirty and lank, she wore a short and tattered dress. Meg hardly recognized her sister. Florence and Lizzie surrounded them, looking grave. The question of whether Uncle Jack interfered with Annie, uttered by Florence, hung in the air before they saw Meg in the doorway.

They shooed her out of the house on an errand, and she never heard more of the story until Annie started her rages. During them, she’d rant about being in the pantry with their uncle, and his hands—his horrible, shaming hands. There were slaps and kicks from both the aunt and the uncle, tales of the drudgery of the farm chores, and the terrible food they fed her while they ate better food at the same table.

The poor child … alone with those fiends… all alone.

Meg rolled over—exasperated at still being awake—and attempted to focus on the walk she and David would take the next day. She failed. Annie’s remark was the only thing on her mind: “You’ve no real feelings, no normal ones.” It was true that she never thought about men the way she supposed she ought, with no urge to kiss them, no dreams of marriage.

One or two of the boys in the shipyard kitchens had kissed her, nice boys, not the ones who groped or tripped girls carrying crockery for their pals’ amusement. They’d shared innocent, fleeting kisses, which left her unharmed and unmoved. Not like kissing Amy. If she married, she knew she’d have to do more, but marriage was no plan of hers.

Meg rolled over again and stuck one foot outside the covers.

Why did I ever let myself … and with that awful woman? She’s told the world and his wife about me, and even though I’ve kept myself to myself, I’m made to suffer for it, even now. I was only a girl.

Rolling over yet again, she threw the sheet aside.

But I’m not a girl now, and my thoughts are the same—my feelings are for women. I’ve given myself away, more than the once. Normal girls know I’m not like them. The girls in the kitchen, my last friends at work, avoid me. Not Lillian though. Lillian has stuck by me. Does she know?

Writhing, Meg read the clock’s radium-painted hands: it was nearly half ten. “Oh, H-E-two sticks.” Twice, she muttered the Presbyterian curse into her pillow. Closing her eyes was no solution, since what lurked there was the vision of kicking legs, the dun-coloured lump spattered with blood, and … the face. Meg sat up, panting and struggling to get her legs over the side of the bed. One of her sisters groaned in her sleep.

Meg left the room and softly descended the stairs. Picking up her book from the parlour table, she turned up the gaslight, but didn’t add any precious coal to the dying embers in the grate. Cloaked in her brother’s blanket, she read Ireland, Its Scenery and Character, Volume II, by Mr and Mrs CS Hall. The book was ancient and dull, but Meg believed that reading would improve her mind and education, so she always stuck with anything she started reading, which in this case was punishment, but one that lulled her back to sleep.

* * * *

David woke her when he returned and she walked sleepily to the bottom of the stairs to return to bed under his gentle, stout-fumed guidance.