The Sisterationship: A Charlatan’s Story

Water Soldier

‘Are her children still in there? ’

‘Oh, my God —’ a young mother shouted, ‘Where is she?’

‘I guess she went out and left her pan on the stove… ’

Purple smoke lifted into a lavender sky, high above the pink slate roof. Tongues of fire stabbed cruel gashes into shadow near the front door. Somewhere, a young woman emptied her heart. But the howl could not be heard above moans from generators in the shunting yard.

Sister Silvia, dressed in a navy-blue cardigan with a light blue skirt, stood in the middle of the road and frowned. She lifted an eye to the smoke that curled from the building then she bit her lower lip. She addressed a spectator: ‘You, yes, you... Do you have a water barrel?’

‘Water barrel?’ replied a dishevelled housewife. The woman wiped gunky fingers across buttery hair, then spat gum in the gutter.

‘Hurry now, think ’ persisted Sister Silvia. ‘Do you keep a barrel for water? Yes or no?’

‘Um?’

‘You’re useless... ’ The Nun pushed the idiot aside and looked around for a more sensible bystander.

‘Did you say barrel of water?’ asked a woman who sucked on a fruit-drop and jerked a cigarette between thin fingers. She squinted at the plain-clothes Nun.

‘Yes, yes... Do you have one?’

‘They do...’ the woman announced. She pointed a finger into the middle-distance, to indicate a garden that backed onto Abbotsbury Road. ‘They grow runner beans, ’ she explained. ‘That’s why they keep a butt.’

‘Is there a man?’

‘Is there what?’

‘Do not say what — are you an imbecile? Do you know if a man lives in that house, yes or no? Why am I surrounded by dolts this evening?’

‘Um? I think a man lives next door. An old man — he sits in a chair all day.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, how can he help? Think about it, is there a man in the house who has the strength to lift me, yes or no?’

The woman shrugged.

‘My son can lift you...’ shouted a woman in the back row. ‘He’s a butcher’s boy. Very strong. He’s home right now.’

‘Get him to come with me. Good grief.  Do I have to think of everything? Tell him to meet me, pronto in the back garden of number 55 Abbotsbury. Tell him to meet me by the water butt. Tell him to rush. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hurry now, get your son to come right away, don’t dilly-dally — or we’ll be late.’

Sister Sylvia hurried towards a path that narrowed between two long terraces opposite the house fire. She squeezed through a gap and snagged her sleeve on chicken wire. She looked at the pulled-wool and said, ‘Arthur Tuck’s sake...’

The crowd heard the curse but ignored it. They were accustomed to the Nun’s uncouth language. They watched the plain-clothes Nun examine her sleeve, then they turned around — as one — to enjoy the housefire emergency while Sister Silvia dashed from sight.

*

When Sister Silvia reached the back garden of number 55, she clobbered on the rear window of the house with a clenched fist. A frail, white-haired lady wobbled to her feet to clank-open the window: ‘Whosh going on? Wosh thish noishe?’ The old woman had taken her teeth out for bed.

‘I haven’t got time for lickety split...’ shouted Silvia. ‘I’m telling you I’m here... rummaging in your back yard.’

‘Okeydokey Sister...’ mumbled the old lady. She went to find her teeth, but Silvia had already gone off to check the water butt. At the side of the property, the Nun found what she wanted. She located a tall wooden drum that had been placed under a guttering pipe to collect rainwater.  The butt looked big enough to get into. Sister Silvia fully intended to baptise herself tonight. ‘Where’s that dolt-headed butcher’s boy, when I need him?’ she growled. ‘He ought to be here by now...’ Silvia slipped the lid from the butt and slung it onto the damp turf. Then she crouched to remove her thick boots and to scratch her backside. While hunkered down in this indecorous pose, the Nun heard heavy footsteps advancing. ‘Is that you boy?’ she asked, not bothering to look up.

‘Mum says you need me. An errand of some kind?’

‘Yes, I do...’ Sister Silvia removed her second man-size boot. ‘Let’s have a look at you.’  She budged-up from her genuflected position to cast a sceptical eye over the young man’s puny shoulders. He was not exactly Charles Atlas — but he might do. ‘To be honest, I’ve seen more tendon on a pullet,’ she commented, ‘Do you think you have the strength to lift me?’

‘Lift you, Sister?  Do you want me to pick you up?’

‘Yes, is that so difficult? Why am I surrounded by pudding-heads tonight? Quickly, we’re out of time. Can you get me into that tub? Yes or no? Dunk me right in. Can you do that?’

‘Dunk you? You want me to sink you into a barrel-full of rainwater?’ The lad seemed baffled by the request.

‘Get on with it...  I haven’t time to explain. Get me in the tub. Push me under. I require full immersion.’

The butcher’s boy shrugged but prepared to do as he was told. After all, he lifted heavy carcasses all day, and he knew that Sister Silvia would be an easy lift — half the weight he usually lugged.

*

After he’d immersed Sister Silvia into deep rainwater, fully clothed except for boots, she ordered him to take her out: ‘Good boy, now I need you to do another job for me, right? Lift me over the hedge behind. Lift me high over it so I can get myself back to Bordesley Road quick. I haven’t time to squeeze down along the passage. I need to go back to that fire. Bring my boots as well, yes? Tuck them into your pockets. Be a good lad.’

‘Yes Sister, whatever you say.’

So, the strange couple hurried to the far end of the garden. Him, with clumsy steps and reek of sour blood around his neck. Her, a skulking hunch that squelched in wet socks, and smelt of parma violets. At the backend of the garden, the young man pushed the soaked bottom of the Nun over the tall hedge and then heard her roll to the ground on the other side. She obviously landed in a crumpled pile because she shouted back: ‘Falcon hell, idiot. You might have let me down slowly. You stupid, great big oaf.’

‘Sorry Sister,’ offered the lad.

But the Nun didn’t hear his apology. She was away again. She rushed across the road like a crazy thing and headed straight for the smoking house. Sister Silvia prodded onlookers aside with sharp, angry elbows as she heard silver bells approach from the direction of the Manor House. ‘The Brigade will be here soon,’ a spectator remarked. But the Nun didn’t stop to think. She simply pushed towards the fiery house; a sopping wet sleeve held over her mouth. She looked around, to locate a heavy object to sling through the front-window and found a door-brick by the milkman’s empties. She heaved it up but, at the last moment, glimpsed a rusty key hidden underneath. ‘Good, girl,’ she muttered. She rammed the old key into the yale-hole as fast as she could manage, then pushed through the open door and into ferocious heat. By then, almost the entire neighbourhood had arrived from the terraces to observe the thrills and spills.

As the resonant bongs from several fire engines got closer, Sister Silvia emerged from the vapours with two bundles in her arms.  She presented these packages to the closest woman she could see as if they were prize courgettes. But they were not vegetables, they were twin babies. The two bundles moaned when she passed them over, which was a good sign.

The sensible woman took the twins from the Nun’s arms, and cradled them tight, even though both stank of smoke and wee.

Then Sister Silvia dropped to her knees.

Not to pray, though.

Sister Silvia spewed her guts all over the pavement.

*

Golden Shield

It had been a while since the last doodlebug streaked into suburban streets, causing slaughter in a dying breath. It had been years since flying bombs coughed across the skies of Mitcham and Morden, but people still imagined they heard something ferocious above their gables. The memories of such terrible sounds echoed around the compact council-homes all the time, reminding the virtuous folk of Carshalton of a war gone-by. But the drone-sounds heard these days were made by irritating engines in rolling yards, or from trucks being jumped to life in the dairy. The buzzes the public now heard were no longer made by the V1 rockets. For example, once or twice a week, a motorcycle would hammer down the London Road, to create behind the back-wheel an identifiable burst of sounds; the kind of farting death-rattle that a buzz-bomb might make on a final approach. When they heard that unique sound, the people looked to the sky. Moreover, they uttered an impulsive prayer.

The war was over. Working men had returned to wretched jobs in dirty factories or gritty workshops along the banks of the Wandle. Women flooded back too. From rural farms, where they’d dug wartime Earth, or from hidden depths in bunkers, where they had studied maps or connected military telegraphs. The sisters of Morden had returned. These were the same women who had kept the combat-machines going while their menfolk had been on exciting adventures. Now the women of Britain returned home to settle and make babies. The government expected them to do this because it was a National Duty. So that’s what they did. These women were from a generation who did what they were told. That’s how a nation fights and wins a war. By doing what it’s told. The government promised the filial women that they would create a generation of Pretty Things, and the offspring would enter a world of abundance. The era of opportunity had begun, so they said. This was a time of conception, not conscription. However, another war was probably due, and things weren’t going to get much better after that, either. Most people knew these things. People were not completely stupid. The people of London had endured two World Wars by being clever and resilient. The average Londoner was a very smart person. For example, the people of Morden knew that the Empire they cherished was the price that had been paid for victory. They also knew that things would get worse before they got better. For example, even without actual rationing, regular foodstuffs were rare. And, every winter, childhood illnesses were as deadly as the asphyxiating fogs. Nothing functioned properly, it never would again, and the urban environment collapsed all around them. Wages were humble, life wasn’t a bed of roses. However, despite all these difficulties, British women were persuaded to stay indoors to produce post-war families. To replenish what had been lost during fighting years.

To escape the monotony of these gloomy days, Carshalton’s housewives went to the cinema on Aberconway Road to see Hollywood films. These films often starred Audie Murphy, or John Wayne. British women watched stories about pioneers and stubborn frontier families. And while they sat, one seat apart, to munch barley sugars, they whooped as handsome cowboys rushed to defend garrisons that had been surrounded by marauders. When sneaky enemies crept up, the women of Morden yelled ‘Look out behind’. Then clapped when the cavalry arrived. Those movies, watched by post-war sisters in the early afternoon, often depicted struggling families who had reached their limits. These were families who had lost everything. Families who’d escaped one misfortune to find themselves in a worse scrape. Moreover, even though these Hollywood Westerns were set in the Old West, they were storylines that the women of English suburbia could identify with. Nearly always, for example, the Wild West families circled their covered wagons — women and children in the middle — and did absolutely everything to defend the perimeter. Often, a strong and particularly courageous female would be left alone by a scorched wagon. It was she who would be destined to save the day. This lone female would take a rifle from the waning hands of a husband and return the fight. When that happened, when the flaring arrows were almost too much to bear, the Carshalton women, their gobs stuffed with penny-sweets, egged-on the female protagonist with cheers and hoots until the enemy was defeated.

The heroine would stand at the end of the battle, brazen and bloody, with a torn chemise that might reveal her breast. She’d watch the last of the pagans slip from the battlefield. They’d been beaten by a woman’s fury.  And as the housewives watched these films, they considered their own small group of homes, settled here in the crammed urbanization of Carshalton, and they imagined themselves to be living in a circle of covered wagons at the remotest edge of the Western trail. They imagined they were surrounded by barbarian enemies. Perhaps one day they’d be expected to fight for their families. The women of Carshalton wondered if the moment arrived, would they show the same courage and resistance as the B-movie heroine?

The answer would be yes.

*

Lady’s Bedstraw

Sister Silvia first appeared in my mother’s narrative in the summer of 1953. To be honest, my mother, Mrs. Elanor Birch nee Taylor of Morden, had always been a capricious witness. So please don’t rely on the accuracy of these dates. Even so, when I sat on her knee in the kitchen, she told me the legend of Sister Silvia and how she rescued twin babies from a burning building. She told me that the rescue happened twelve months before I arrived. So it must have been 1953. When she told me her tale, I was a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy, not even five. As I grew older, she told me other stories. Some I will share. Others I won’t. But this is the beginning of the legend of Sister Silvia:

Apparently, family and friends had gathered around my mother’s bed on the ground floor of our house in Bordesley Road, on the St. Helier estate, one October evening. ‘She will not last long, not after midnight,’ Sister Silvia told the clan. Each gasped, many sobbed, and others placed brown-stained fingers across half-closed eyes, and they sniffled. ‘The preparation for heaven begins with certain ceremonies... ’ Silvia explained. The family watched, eager to observe these secret rituals. But the Nun sensed their intrusive stares and turned to face them: ‘You should leave, leave now, she must have privacy.’ The family approved. They went into chilly night air, where they assembled around an iron-spotted lamppost that had been recently doused with dog-urine. There, they listened to electric motors from the engine sheds and they smoked strong cigarettes.

The old woman died that night. On the stroke of midnight. Taken by angels, as predicted by Sister Silvia. To be re-born in paradise. Sister Silvia uttered the appropriate prayers to prepare the old woman for the one-way trip. Everyone in the street felt confident that the old lady was on the right track for eternity.

*

Two weeks later, my mother and her new boyfriend, a bloke she met by chance on a train to Limehouse — a man she’d only known for a month, a man named Julio —took the old woman’s deathbed to a local place known as The Bec. It’s an ancient site near Wandsworth Common. Julio drove a van that he’d borrowed from work while my mother reclined in the front seat, her feet