Aren’t We Sisters?

Lettie

Lettie Quick believed in what she was doing as other women believed in the Trinity: she was spreading a faith. To this end she had suffered. She had worked for even lower wages than she earned at present, had in the early days fought her way to work through placard-wielding mobs shouting murderer, whore, and found shards of glass in her hair one evening, from a half-brick flung through the clinic window.

When Dr Stopes had come up with her travelling-caravan idea, Lettie had instantly volunteered. A mobile clinic, drawing up week by week in a different town or village, spreading the precious knowledge all across the country! It was another masterstroke, to Lettie; in those days she had adored the Madam. But it soon turned out that no one wanted to climb in or out of a van so clearly marked. And if it wasn’t clearly marked, how would anyone know what the van was supposed to be for? Hardly a soul had turned up anywhere but even so on a trip to Bradford someone had managed to set the bloody thing on fire, and not before time, thought Lettie by then, but the Madam had been distraught.

‘It is stark madness,’ she had cried. ‘Why must our culture deny the existence and purity of marital passion?’

It was best, Lettie had found, not to smile when the Madam said things like that, though the idea of pure marital passion down some dank gunnel in Poplar was enough, some of the girls said, to make a cat laugh.

Still, the idea of travel had stuck, for Lettie. Why not set up officially, then, with discreet Council support: get things moving, train up the locals, and move on to pastures new! If most current practice was still essentially home-made – the plug of beeswax, the wad of waxed paper, cotton wool smeared with vaseline and dipped in boracic powder – essentially home-made, and ineffective, or wholly reliant on the willingness and cooperation of Men – if the whole country lay in such utter darkness, what was more important than personally spreading the light?

‘So, have you been using anything already, Mrs Tucker?’

‘Well – yes, but … not very … you know, not very nice –’

Which meant do-it-yourself. Something sticky out of the larder, something perilously hard to get fully out again, something that stained the sheets or hurt you or made your husband look sick.

‘Well, ah, he’s been using one of them, you know, them French things – and sometimes he just ain’t got one, or it’s been in his wallet so long that –’

Which meant the sheath.

‘We’ll find out what suits you best – so it’s up to you. It’s you gets pregnant, not him.’

Usually Lettie begins with the cervical cap. She takes out the first little box, all clean and new.

‘Here. Ever seen one of these before?’

The cap is folded into soft clean white muslin prettily tied (one of the Madam’s ideas, of course) with a bit of blue ribbon; as the Madam also suggested, she has chosen for her example the very smallest size. She unties the bow, unwraps it, and sets it, mushroomy, delicate-looking, in her own clean palm.

‘See it’s like a little bell? Bit thicker round the top – see?’ She turns the thing over, so that its inner ridge may be inspected. ‘It’s very soft.’ She squeezes it, demonstrating bendy resilience, and smiles a little. ‘Not that bad, really, is it?’

If Lettie had her way, the way of her faith, the cervical cap would be as familiar a shape as the socks on any husband’s feet, and displayed in shop windows like sweeties for all to admire and choose – if Lettie had her way the cap would not be made only in witless pink imitation of skin tone but in a rainbow of colours and choices, pretty stripes, pink and white dots, gold stars, why not?

As it is she waits, while the wretched woman sitting in the client’s chair beside her thinks about whether the ordinary pale example on display can in any way be said to be anything but revolting, while she wonders whether she could ever bear to touch one, let alone pick it up and put it – oh God, and how on earth it’s supposed to – oh Lord, and while she remembers with strengthening despair just why it is that she is here in the first place.

‘Here. Take it, go on. That’s right. Just a little bit of rubber. But reliable. That’s No More Worry, that is, that little thing. That’s almost all you need, right there. See?’

Giving them time, that’s the main thing, time to relax a little, to understand that Lettie is giving them permission to think and talk in detail about things usually kept secret, or hidden behind those baffling vaguenesses, health, efficiency, purity, and racial strength. Time to realize that above everything else Sister Quick is on their side. She’s not just an expert here; she’s been a customer herself. This is where the wedding ring on her left hand is such a help. A little unprofessional, certainly, but she is serving the faith. Her voice very low: ‘Of course I’m a widow now, but this is what I used to use myself. Bit difficult at first, but you get the knack ever so fast. And – it’s discreet.’

Which further enables her to say something hardly anyone ever dares to ask about; perhaps because it simply doesn’t occur to them there and then. But Lettie prefers to get this particular reassurance in early, just in case: not every husband knows all his wife’s concerns. Not every husband shares them.

‘What I mean is, your husband won’t’ (voice lowered even further) ‘ever feel it. Far as he’s concerned’ (pause for emphasis, so that all implications will eventually sink in) ‘there’s nothing there at all. See?’

That’s the first few hurdles over. But the next are much higher: the examination. The half-undressing in a strange place, in front of the waiting hard high table-like bed, its cold oilcloth draped with a slippery sheet, and the electric light suggestively mounted on a wall bracket beside it.

‘All set?’

Lettie enters from the outer office, or in less salubrious places from behind the folding screen, with her apron on and her hands freshly washed. She proceeds as quietly as possible. She has lain on such hard high beds herself, and fully understands the horripilating power of the squeaking trolley wheel, the padded chink of steel instruments being set out in preparation on a covered tray, and the snap of rubber gloves.

‘I’m going to be slow and gentle, you say if it hurts, alright?’

First-timers should always be thoroughly checked. That was one of the Madam’s maxims. There are all sorts of things to look out for.

‘Now, just bend your knees up, ankles together. That’s it, keep your ankles like that, and just let your knees fall apart. Perfect. Touch of cold water now. Sorry –’

Entertaining, thinks Lettie sometimes, how much everyone varies down there. You never know what to expect. Meek little mousey-haired creatures take off their drawers and there’s Blackbeard the Pirate, springy and magnificent; redheads faded brown with the years may still be brilliantly pale orange in private; some glamorous blondes turned out not to match themselves at all. There are the crisply gilded, the neatly tufted, the matted, the gnarled, the almost bald; none of it particularly related, it seems, to hair anywhere else: a hidden array of localized personality. Or as if each woman were following not so much a pattern of humanity as a rough guide.

Nor is there any particular standard for the inner lips. It all makes what Lettie is really looking for just a little harder to spot: the distortions of trauma and poor healing, scar tissue, disease, infection, prolapse.

Then the speculum. She holds it in her hands to warm it. The light is on, properly angled, so that she can nudge it into perfection with her elbow. She dips the thing in her bowl of warm water, carefully parts the labia with one hand, introduces the shining steel with the other. Sideways it slips in easily enough. It’s turning it right-way round that’s uncomfortable, and opening up the long beak of its curved distending blades that hurts, forcing potential passage into actuality.

‘Nearly there, ever so still now, that’s right –’

Lettie directs the light, and stoops to look through. The walls of the revealed tunnel gleam reddish in the lamplight, pressing softly inwards on either side of the long steel beaky jaws. There is variety here too, of breadth and length, reflecting the bony structures underneath, the widely varying shapes of pelvic brim, cavity, and outlet. She measures, calculates. The neck of the womb, that little circular nub of flesh, hangs centrally right at the back, its little mouth slightly open as if meekly pouting, for this, of course, is a cervix that has already opened wide to let a baby through, usually more than once, more than twice: for the law requires that officially Nurse Quick may deal only with the married.

‘Perfect,’ says Lettie this time, and she withdraws the speculum and switches off the light and gives the poor thing a moment to recover while she herself decides which type, which size of cervical cap to go for: always the Madam’s preference if she can – the Madam was very down on diaphragms.

She holds out the right-sized cap, never as small and neat of course as the one first on show, but the correct multiparous size.

‘See, you just put a bit of the jelly inside. And you squeeze it together, like this. And you pop it in. You could try it with one foot up on a chair. Or crouching. But you let go of it – and it just sort of jumps into place. On to the neck of the womb – it’s working by suction, see? That’s why you have to get the right size fitted.’

Sometimes they’re game, even eager, to try straight away there and then; sometimes they need a little persuasion. ‘You see,’ Lettie must explain, ‘if you just take it home to try, you won’t have had any experience of taking it out again. And that can be the hardest part at first. I just need to know you’ve done it the once, see?’

Often the poor soul can’t manage any of it. Can’t get the thing in at all. Can’t get it out again.

‘Just a fingertip. And then gently pull sideways. Loosens the suction. No?’

But perhaps until this afternoon, until this very hour, the patient had no prior knowledge or personal acquaintanceship with her own insides at all. She has borne three children but if told what an orifice was and pressed to say how many of them there are between her legs, she would have said Two. All these years she’s assumed without thinking about it at all or wanting to that she pees out of the same place her husband has sexual relations with; naturally enough, since this is the arrangement he so evidently has himself.

But newly in the know or not, the patient still has to get over putting her own fingers there, and of all the information Lettie’s clients tend to have had at their disposal already, this is the most widespread: Don’t touch yourself down there at all, because it’s not just immodest and dirty, it’s wrong.

‘How you getting on?’ calls Nurse Quick from the outer office, or from behind the folding screen, while the patient in the exam room struggles to commit dirtiness and wrong in private.

‘I just check, make sure the fit’s right? … Oh yes. That’s right – perfect!’

Or if the thing is still impossible, if the cervix is too far away, too far back at the end of a vagina rather longer than usual, there are the Madam’s despised diaphragms to try. Less discreet, perhaps, these wedges across the passage, not so much closing the door as obstructing it; Lettie has a variety, simple coin-shapes of curved amber rubber, which must fit with a fine exactitude to work, and the newer thin membranous kind with springy circumferential metal rings, which must be compressed before insertion, and which naturally at first tend to slip through the fingers when well jellied and ping themselves right across the room. Lettie only smiles if the patient does.

‘Never mind. Happens to everyone. Try again –’

And eventually, sooner, later, the woman has what she came for. She has control, sovereignty. She can put the thing in, or not; it’s all up to her. Control means freedom. No need to specify what from.

‘Best to set up a routine,’ says Lettie finally, when the patient has straightened her hemline and stockings, put her hat and gloves back on, checked herself in the mirror Lettie has caused for that purpose to be hung near the door. ‘Every night at the same time, even if you don’t usually have relations. Just in case. Makes it harder to forget. Because one thing’s for sure: no matter what you use, no matter how good it is, it won’t stop you getting pregnant if you leave it in the box.’

There is not a detail of the entire interview that Lettie, virtuoso of contraception, has not consciously thought about, rehearsed, carefully adjusted. It is as kind, sympathetic, and practical as she can make it. I really am the best, Lettie thinks to herself quite often, with a little sigh of satisfaction, as she writes up her notes, or tidies her office after a long, full afternoon.

Three comforting thoughts: Only contraception can save the world. I am spreading the word. I’m the absolute best.

Surely this extreme professional virtue more than balances out any private personal lapses? So Lettie thinks. The lapses are mainly on the side of right in any case, she believes.

A client finds herself in difficulties, and has asked for discreet assistance …

A sincere client of more than ample means …

A distinguished client in urgent need of privacy …

Such letters, typed, unsigned, arrive at Lettie’s office, wherever that might be, at widely spaced and irregular intervals, but very much to her eventual financial advantage. There are risks involved, of course. But in a while, only a year or two more, perhaps, the special bank account will reach the right sum.

Security, that’s all she’s asking for. I’m not greedy, Lettie reminds herself, slipping the wedding ring back in her pocket, buttoning up the drab gabardine raincoat, setting the hard felt hat firmly central on her head. I’m not greedy.

Well, not very.

Norah

After her mother died Norah Thornby had a bad few months. She was very troubled, for example, by a bag of potatoes in the scullery cupboard. She had bought too many, and soon they were sprouting little white pointed shoots.

‘Ought to use those up,’ Norah had thought to herself, but the little shoots seemed somehow touching in their hopefulness; she decided to have bread and butter instead. But after that she kept forgetting them, and went on opening the scullery cupboard and being shocked, by shoots that had quickly grown longer and longer into something more like waggling spindly arms, topped here and there with tiny pallid leaflets.

Presently she could not close the cupboard door at all, for fear of trapping the shoots, and severing the little imploring leafletty fingers. Norah had dealt with the situation by avoiding the scullery altogether, and washing her smalls in the kitchen.

She forgot a great many other things too, committee meetings, library books, choir practice, and dental appointments. It seemed to take her much longer than before to get through her normal working day at the estate agency; she muddled files, put the wrong letters in addressed envelopes, left a folder of private papers on a bus. Once she found herself walking down the lane heading towards the coast road, out to Wooton, and completely unable to remember why. She was carrying her briefcase, but when she opened it for clues had to sit down for a moment on the grass verge, weak with unease; the bag contained only her embroidery, and while it was bad enough thinking that someone had inexplicably broken into her home to fool about with her belongings, it was rather worse when common sense prevailed.

Was it perhaps her time of life? She had read somewhere of perfectly normal women suddenly developing all sorts of peculiarities as middle age approached, going off their heads, in fact. Women without men, without children, were especially prone, it seemed, like dogs that hadn’t been allowed to have puppies.

Now and then Norah felt an intense shame at not being married. Everyone sneered at spinsters, and who could blame them? What had you been born for, if not to marry and have children? But sometimes she was able to push past this steady weight in her mind. You were born to live, that was all. You were born to do your best. And one might take a certain pride, she could sometimes tell herself, in turning away from the whole unimaginable business.

Literally unimaginable for Norah, who had been raised in complete ignorance of anything sexual, and had gathered only patchy information since. She had the basics: male anatomy was not a complete mystery to her, and she knew that the man’s penis somehow stiffened, and that this stiffness enabled him to insert it in some way into the woman. But this struck her as not just frighteningly crude and unpleasant, involving as it did those body parts more usually concerned with the frank dirtiness of excretion, but inherently unlikely – how could anyone want to try something so bizarre?

There were questions Norah hardly dared frame to herself, though not knowing the answers occasionally bothered her. How long, for instance, did the insertion have to go on for? Perhaps it was brief. Birds took no time at all, she had often seen a cockerel leap on to a hen and off again without the female having so much as looked up from her grain. But it seemed likely that human beings took longer. There was so much fuss about the process after all. A woman’s honour, and so on; that was important; there had to be more to it than mere birdlike leapings.

But her vague mental picture of sexual engagement was essentially avian, a silent congress with both parties needing to keep fairly still once in the correct position: rather as Norah herself had once, for several uncomfortable minutes, beneath the dentist’s drill.

And surely it must hurt. Not that she had ever discussed it with anyone, but it was obvious to her that insertion must hurt the woman. Clearly it didn’t hurt men; she was aware that on the contrary the process was something they were particularly keen on. Women of course didn’t feel like that, but put up with it. A woman had to allow insertion if she wanted children. It was the price married women had to pay.

But worst of all was the spine-chilling notion, gathered from various sources during her wartime experience as a VAD, that once the insertion process was underway it was dangerous, in fact impossible, to stop it. A man could not, it seemed, alter his course. Once a woman had agreed, and let him start, or at any rate reach a certain point (whatever that might be, another blank) she had to go through with it, because the man had no choice, he was physically unable to desist. As if he had just jumped off a high place, he couldn’t change his mind: he must fall. How terrifying it would be, thought Norah, to be helplessly alone with a man who had abandoned his normal everyday self and let the unstoppable animal process take him over! Of slightly less but still considerable horror was the idea of clothes, the impossible embarrassment of taking off one’s drawers in front of someone else, and the someone else a man!

Sometimes, as she half considered these ideas, a certain quick slithery sensation lightly darted through Norah’s insides, a sort of deep shiver she associated with fear, and generally took as a signal that it was time to jump sensibly out of bed, or concentrate properly on her sewing, or pick up her book again, or at any rate firmly to think about something else.

Perhaps it was a little galling, to be so ignorant, when so many completely uneducated people obviously knew all there was to know. But what they knew was shameful, after all. Everything that Norah didn’t know helped to keep her pure, and purity was valuable in itself. In some way she did not understand, but had implicit faith in, virginity had grace. Part of the consolation of religion, for Norah, was the respect it seemed to accord to purity and virginity. She was not quite aware of this, though, and thought she went to church every week from conventional religious conviction, and because she liked the hymns, especially at Evensong.

Though in fact what she felt at St George’s, even at the most perfect Evensong, was nowhere near as intense, as uplifting, as lasting, as the wonderfully complete release from being Norah Thornby that she achieved, also once a week, in the smoky shifting darkness of the Picture Palace, or recently, even better, the Silkhampton Rialto.

Norah’s mother had simply not noticed cinema, any more than she had known the whereabouts of the local gymnasium or the nearest four-ale bar. Such things had not concerned her. But every Thursday, while she had attended the last of her remaining charitable committees, Norah had made her choice, paid over her one and tuppence, and departed this life for an entire blissful Palace or Rialto evening.

It was almost enough to keep her going until the following week, especially if it was helped along by the Film Lover’s Weekly, which in those days of relative plenty had arrived by post every Monday direct from London, in a discreet plain brown wrapper, to be read in greedy secret and then hidden in the suitcase beneath the bed: pages of photographs of stills from coming delights, interspersed with beautiful studio portraits of wonderfully perfect young women and clear-eyed young men, all wearing lovely new clothes, the women often holding bouquets or kittens; there were also brief articles beneath each photograph, about the actor’s earlier films or stage background and future plans. The young men sometimes held pipes, and smiled into the camera, showing their perfect teeth, their smooth faces glistening with health; the young women often confessed to a desire to travel the world, or learn how to fly an aeroplane; they had often decided to further their careers by moving to America, or sometimes adored being back on the London stage, where they felt so delightfully at home.

The Film Lover’s Weekly was like nothing Norah had ever read before. It was so optimistic, for one thing, its pages crackling with the powerful energy of Hollywood itself. It seemed to promise a complete world of choice and beauty, and of a strange complex excitement, as if the stories in the films Norah saw at the Palace or the Rialto had somehow had a lasting effect on the actors who played in them; as if anyone, even Norah, might share that excitement, taste it just a little on the tongue. It was the closest Norah could get to the haven of cinema at home.

Of course she had cancelled the subscription straight away, as soon as she had understood that every single penny counted, when Mamma’s small pension had died with her, and still rather missed those fresh new Monday-morning arrivals; though of course these days she was able to go to the pictures almost any night she chose, albeit in the cheapest seats right at the back; would (and had) rather go to bed hungry than miss a programme change.

But how was she to live? That was the question that had roughly slapped her awake night after night. She was four years older than the century; in September she would be thirty-six. The last few years had sapped her, she thought, they had aged her, they had made her catch up with Mamma. They had been two querulous old ladies together, saving up for little treats, arguing over the merits of new embroidery stitches, petulant if the tea tray was brought in late.

In better times Norah might have sub-let her old home, and moved somewhere smaller. But she knew perfectly well from her work that houses like this one, so old-fashioned when it came to heating and bathroom, full of heavyweight Victorian furniture and dreary with faded wallpaper and threadbare carpet, would never find a tenant. Not even for the summer, this far from the sea.

At night sometimes, Norah pictured herself in her bed in the second-floor back, as if the house were a doll’s house; she saw all of it, the rooms full of varying furniture, all in scale, matching, all of it carefully chosen to look as much like a real house as possible. Herself the only occupant, not really cosy in bed but a lifeless simulacrum, a stiff little dolly, part of the furnishings that went with the house.

Five floors of doll’s house: at once home, refuge, and inescapable cage.

Interlude

It was her perfection, he said. Her secret beauty. He just wanted to keep a record, a proof. It would be entirely private, of course, it would be something just the two of them knew about and shared.

Him? Well, yes, of course, if she wanted him to.

Laughing: ‘I’ll wear whatever you wear. Promise.’

A winter afternoon, the curtains drawn against the chill, nice little fire glowing in the grate. The camera ready on its tripod.

‘What, now?’

‘Yes. Now.’

‘Well – how, then? I feel a bit, you know –’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll direct you. You look, oh, wonderful …’

He touches her. He stands behind her, his fingertips lightly caressing her nipples.

‘Just here. And bend over a little. Lean on the table. That’s right. Little more. Oh, lovely. Can you look over your shoulder at me? Yes. And smile. Hello, darling.’

flash

‘Bend a little further. Oh God.’

flash

‘Can you turn round now? And –’

He gestures, cupping his hands round his own naked chest.

‘Yes, but look right up, up at the ceiling while you – yes. Oh, yes.’

flash

‘Mmm – oh, come here, that’s enough, that’s quite enough of that, quick, you, you –’

That was how it started. Both of them naked, and laughing, in it together, literally in it together sometimes. He could do that, rig the camera somehow so that it flashed only when he had joined her. He couldn’t get enough of her then, nor she of him.

Once when she was having a cup of tea in the café he had passed by outside, and seen her. He had come in, saluting one or two other familiar faces, and briefly sat down at her corner table, his manner abstracted and professional as he looked through his bag for a particular envelope.

‘Ah, here it is. Thought these might be of some interest to you, Sister.’

She had slit the envelope open with a clean butter knife, assuming of course it was something official; opened it there and then in the Little Owl Tearooms, tables nearby crowded with locals, and what seemed to be dozens of photographs had slipped out on to the starched white tablecloth, large glossy black-and-white images: she sat naked with her knees apart, she wore nothing but high heels and bent right over, she knelt, offering her breasts.

‘What do you think?’

Covering them fast with her napkin, breathing hard.

‘Good, aren’t they!’

His face unreadable.

‘Just a joke,’ he said afterwards. God, what was she getting in such a state about? No one had seen anyway. He thought it was wild, so many nice old ladies sipping their tea, and all the while in a corner these marvellously undeniably pornographic –

‘– Pornographic?’

‘Well yes, that’s what it means: arousing. Literally arousing photographs. See them and rouse.’ Nuzzling her neck by then, so that her insides dissolved with happiness, happy body winning out over uneasy mind. Uneasy mind making all sorts of clever excuses for him, coming up with arguments on his account. He made none of them himself.

At night sometimes as she lay in her bed she pictured the two of them in the Little Owl Tearooms that day. He in his sober grey suit, she in tweed and her spectacles, with her hat on straight, and her secret body displayed all over the table in front of her.

Sometimes she thought about Marion, whom she had arranged to meet in the Little Owl Tearooms that afternoon, and who had been delayed by a patient. But suppose she’d come after all! Suppose Marion had, say, just gone to the Ladies or something as he came in, and arrived back at the table as she was slitting open the envelope! Sometimes, imagining this, she let a photograph fall, and made her friend bob down for it, pick it up, and turn it over, while she and he waited, their eyes on each other, for Marion to understand what it was she was seeing.

She began to long for him to run the risk again.

Lettie

She was restless; a year anywhere was long enough. And she was certainly very bored with David. What had she ever seen in him? That was a question Lettie had often asked herself over the years, about various types, and usually the only answer was a shrug.

That autumn evening was all David’s idea, and she didn’t fancy it; felt far more like going somewhere lively, bit of dancing, maybe. Art galleries not her cup of tea, thanks.

No, no, she didn’t understand, he said. It wasn’t an art gallery at all, it was some sort of travelling exhibition, all for charity – ex-servicemen – and of course they would go on anywhere she wanted to afterwards, please, darling Lettie – I said I’d go, d’you see. And it’s in the West End –

Oh alright then, she said.

At least West End meant The Coat. A Vionnet. Her latest acquisition, and not something you could put on for any-old-where. Though sometimes Lettie liked to wear it at home with nothing on underneath, as if it were a dressing gown. This meant that it had certain swoony associations for David, who might thus be tiresome later on. But there, Life is full of trouble, thought Lettie idly in the taxi, stroking her discreetly splendid cuffs.

There was a waiter holding a tray just inside the hall door; she caught his eye as she helped herself to a glass of something. ‘Thanks, mate,’ she said to him, for the fun of seeing his face change.

The place was hung not with proper painted pictures, she saw, but with old photographs framed as if they were art, and all about them thronged the sipping chattering moneyed, men in cashmere, women in fur.

‘Thought I’d lost you!’ said David later. And so he had.

Some of the photographs were ancient, women in crinolines, city streets full of horses, all fairly dispiriting until she came to one labelled The Square, Silkhampton, and gave a little gasp aloud of pleasure and surprise.

The Square, Silkhampton, was crammed with market stalls, and people with antique clothes and faces, and cheeses as big as cartwheels.

Perhaps Mum had known those stalls, walked about on those cobbles, maybe admired those very cheeses. Perhaps if the camera had veered off a bit to one side, it would have caught Rosie Quick aged eighteen, sitting on a wall or something in her ankle-length skirts and her whopping Edwardian hat, waiting out her time far from home.

Seduced and deserted, that was the phrase often applied to girls like Rosie; not that Dad had entirely deserted her, at the time, Lettie remembered. Though on balance, she thought, leaning in for a closer look at The Square, Silkhampton, it might have been better for everyone if he had.

Lettie had known about Silkhampton all her life, but until that evening she had hardly thought of it as real. It had been a special half-imaginary place where Mum had been young and pretty and hopeful, where she herself had been born, and where for a happy month or so, before they went back home again, it had been just the two of them, safe together all those years ago, Rose and Violet.

‘Two flowers, you and me!’

Lettie could find no name attached to the photograph, just the initials PPS in white handwritten letters in the bottom right-hand corner. Presently she realized there was a whole wall of others: PPS really seemed to have gone in for historic market towns, crammed stalls in Truro, stony-faced women in huge boots cleaning fish in Penzance, idlers leaning in doorways in Launceston, scruffy children now and then caught eyeing the camera, all of them a pre-war world ago.

And not only in Cornwall: here was PPS doing London. The East End, look at that, two of Roman Road market! Lettie bent to look closer at the lank-haired women in shawls, the dirty children sitting in gutters.

And then.

Then her heart seemed to stop altogether.

After a while someone touched her arm. It was David. ‘Bit of a crush,’ he said. ‘Ready to go?’

She said: ‘Wait.’

The photograph was called July 1914. It showed a park in summer, bunting overhead, the edge of a bandstand to one side with a hazy suggestion of trumpets just visible; and throngs of young people standing – they were listening to the music, thought Lettie, the girls holding lacy parasols, the men in boaters, children in the foreground. In the bottom right-hand corner was written, in the same white handwritten capitals, small but perfectly clear, PYNCHEON PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIOS, SILKHAMPTON.

July 1914. Dear God. Who would ever have guessed that? PPS. From Silkhampton, where she and Mum had once been two flowers together.

‘Lettie? Are you alright?’

‘Yes – no – can you buy me this one? Please.’

‘What? Oh, well, of course I’d love to, darling, but – it’s not for sale.’

‘Ask them.’

‘It’s just not that sort of show, I’m afraid.’

‘Who does it all belong to then?’

‘Well – some collector or another. I could find out for you – which one is it anyway, this one?’ Stooping to look at it dispassionately, as if it were ordinary. ‘Really? Why?’

None of your business, she thought.

‘Might be able to get hold of a copy, I suppose,’ he said, peering at it again. She wanted to push him violently away from it. Then she had the idea. After all, she was ready for pastures new anyway. Restless, looking for change. Hadn’t fate just sent her a ruddy great sign?

‘No, forget it. Never mind,’ she said. She slipped her arm through David’s, sumptuous fur-trimmed wool through decent tweed, and spoke as lightly as usual: ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

A week or so considering, and then she had written several letters, and made one or two appointments. If not Silkhampton itself then perhaps somewhere else nearby in the countryside; a bit of greenery might be a pleasant change.

But hardly a fortnight had passed before she had a letter from the local Borough Council, written in the usual circumspect code, inviting her to attend an interview there the following month, and soon she was cheerfully handing in her notice, packing her things, sending off one or two parcels, and finally giving David the mitten.

‘I’ll send you my address when I know it,’ she told him, during their last evening together, trying to cheer him up. It was always best, she thought, to part friends. Just in case.

Patricia Ferguson

AREN’T WE SISTERS?

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

AREN’T WE SISTERS?

THE BEGINNING

Lettie

Norah

Interlude

Lettie