that would suit me down to the ground.’
Bill let out a bellow of laughter. ‘I think, Tony, that you and school are not the best of friends.’
‘No,’ Tony said. ‘I hate school, if you want to know. Everyone does, don’t they?’
‘No, they don’t,’ Magda contradicted. ‘I don’t. I like school. Don’t you, Missie?’
Missie nodded as Tony said disparagingly, ‘That’s because you’re still in the infants. You wait till you’re in the juniors in September. You do summat wrong, or don’t do your work right or quick enough, and they hit you with a big cane, or bring the ruler down on your knuckles.’
‘How many girls does that happen to?’ Bill asked with a sardonic grin.
‘Well, not that many, I suppose,’ Tony had to admit. ‘They seem to have it in for boys.’
‘That’s because boys are always playing up,’ Magda said.
‘And you don’t, Miss Goody Two-Shoes?’
‘No,’ Magda said. ‘I don’t like being yelled at, and really the only person who seems to do that all the time ? to me anyroad ? is Grandma Murray.’
‘Don’t take that personally,’ Bill said. ‘She seems to have it in for a lot of people.’
‘But it’s not fair,’ Magda said. ‘The one she should tell off more is Tony, but he always gets away with it, just ‘cos he’s a boy.’
‘Can’t help that, can I?’ Tony said with a cheeky grin, and Bill had to compress his lips to stop himself from smiling.
‘Come on, stop bickering,’ he said, ‘it’s time to head home. If we’re late we’ll all be in for the high jump.’
Magda gave a grimace in her sister’s direction because the twins knew exactly how it would be when they got home. As far back as they could remember, their grandparents had come to tea on Sunday. It was always served in the parlour, the room their mother set such store by, like she did about the piano. Sarah had told Magda and Missie their father thought the piano a waste of money, for no one had ever learned to play it, but their mother had wanted the piano because she said none of their neighbours had anything so fine.
‘Why does that matter?’ Magda had asked.
Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t know why,’ she’d admitted. ‘It just does.’
It was very confusing to both girls but, as Missie said, grown-ups often did odd things, and Magda had to agree.
All the furniture in the parlour, like the piano, was big, dark and gloomy. On Sundays it all had to be moved about to accommodate everyone. Six days a week, the big mahogany table would be set in the bay window behind madras net curtains. It would be covered with a dark red chenille cloth, with an aspidistra in a decorated pot in the centre of it. Either side of the table were two straight-backed dining chairs with padded seats, and two more dining chairs stood either side of the matching sideboard.
The picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in which Jesus held one hand to his heart dripping with blood in his open chest ? a picture that always made Magda feel queasy ? hung on the wall above the fireplace. That was surrounded by marble tiles and protected by a brass fender. In front of it sat the dreaded horsehair sofa.
However, on Sunday afternoon, the aspidistra would be placed on the sideboard and the chenille cloth changed for one of Nottingham lace. In order that the table could be pulled out with the four padded chairs round it and two wooden ones brought out from the kitchen for Sarah and Richard, the horsehair sofa would be swung in front of the piano. And every Sunday the twins had to sit on it in silence and wait for the adults to finish eating before they could have anything, because their grandmother said it would put manners on them.
It was just like that when they went in that day. Marion and Sarah were carrying things to the table in the parlour where the children’s grandparents were already sitting, but Tony was nowhere to be seen. He had been with them as they walked back home and when they went in through the back gate, but between there and the back door he sort of melted away and Magda knew he had gone over the wall again. So did Bill, and he couldn’t blame the boy, nor had he any intention of going after him. As soon as he had started doing this, a year or so ago, Marion had said that he should discipline him. ‘For what?’ Bill had said angrily. ‘For refusing to sit still and silent for as long as it takes us to eat our tea on a Sunday, and all because that’s what your mother wants? It’s bad enough for the girls but Tony would never be constrained that way and you know it. It would be more trouble than it’s worth.’
Marion knew that Bill spoke the truth and she would spend the whole of the meal telling Tony off, so she had said nothing more. Every week Tony got away with it, as far as Missie and Magda were concerned.
‘No Tony again, I see,’ Grandma Murray remarked as the girls settled themselves on the sofa. ‘Ah, well, boys will be boys.’
Grandma Murray was fond of sayings. One she usually directed at Magda was, ‘Little girls should be seen and not heard.’ Magda often wondered if there had been a similar one she attached to grown men because Granddad Murray never seemed to say much more than please and thank you at the table where his wife held sway, and even her father was less talkative at Sunday tea.
‘Magda, if I have to tell you again about keeping those legs still I might be forced to administer a sharp smack across them,’ her grandmother suddenly snapped, and Magda realised that they were waggling again, just as if they had a mind of their own. She fought to gain control over her wayward legs because she had felt the power of her grandmother’s slaps before.
She heard her father’s sharp intake of breath clearly and saw his lips pursed together and knew he was vexed. If her grandmother were really to smack her then it would probably result in a row, as it had done in the past, and that was worse than any smack.
She knew her father didn’t like the fact they had to sit there every Sunday he’d said to Marion angrily and watch the adults devouring all the dainty sandwiches, crisp pastries and feather-light sponge cakes that Mommy had spent hours preparing, because she’d heard him arguing with her mother about it. ‘It’s unfair to them,’ Magda had heard him protest angrily after their grandparent had gone home. ‘They’re only children and its ridiculous to have them sitting there each Sunday like a pair of bloody bookends.’
Bill Whittaker, however, knew only the half of it because, as the adults ate, the horsehair pushed through the fabric of that sofa and through the twins’ clothes to attack their legs and buttocks like thousands of sharp needles. That was why Magda swung her legs and shuffled about, to try to ease the torment that Missie seemed better able to bear.
Missie was always neater and tidier than Magda was as well, as her mother and grandmother were always reminding her. She stole a look at her twin sister. There she was, sitting as if she were made of stone, with her pristine Sunday clothes still neat and tidy, and her dark ringlets shining in the sunlight.
Magda knew her hair wouldn’t look like Missie’s. Each weekday, the two of them had their hair in plaits because of the risk of nits at school, and Magda would marvel that Missie’s plaits never came unravelled and she never lost her hair ribbons. Magda’s kirbi grips, too, seemed to develop a life of their own and would fling themselves recklessly from her tangled locks, to be trodden underfoot and lost for ever.
On
