Chapter Text
No one ever told Mary Miller that having a baby while the world was going to hell would break her heart. It was 1957 and she was just nineteen. On the little television they'd all gathered in front of serious men talked about ghosts like they'd once talked about the Germans.
In Mary's arms her firstborn daughter was boxing her little hands weakly in the blanket. She'd come tearing into the word, screaming and kicking, a red and wriggly bundle of fury. She made a little snuffling noise, wet lips puckered in her scowly face. Mary didn't look down. She found she couldn't quite bear it.
Instead she looked at the television. The Smiths at number seven had bought it last year when John became foreman. It was the first on the street. Mrs. Smith, gray and obstinate in her middle age, had been insufferable ever since. Today all the neighbours had crammed into the little sitting room for the special program. Like all the cottages number seven was low ceilinged and draughty, but there was the additional discomfort of Mrs. Smiths tendency to over-decorate just to show that she could. The sofa was a flowery abomination that was in the process of eating Mary alive. On the windowsill a row of porcelain dogs stared at her with glassy, sorrowful eyes. She was struck by the embarrassing thought that she needed to save them.
On the table the remnants of the promised food was arranged on plates covered in salad leaves. Mary had wanted to eat beforehand but her Thomas, who was a good man but not what you might call perceptive, had worried that it was impolite. They'd been served little cubes of hard cheese on toothpicks and tiny triangular cucumber sandwiches. Her stomach was growling.
"Can you tell the audience your name young lady?" the man on the television was saying. His voice sounded tinny and a little high.
"Marissa Fittes, sir."
"And this young gentleman is Mr. Tom Rotwell, is that right?"
"That's right."
"Miss Fittes, Mr Rotwell, you are responsible for some quite remarkable claims about the Herefordshire Problem and how to fight it. Could you tell us a little about that?"
"Of course," the young woman aimed a charming smile at the cameras. "But first, let's not be coy, Mr. Thompson. We're talking about ghosts. Supernatural visitors of the most malicious kind."
Mary stared at the two black-and white youths on the television without paying much mind to what they were saying. They were so young! Even all neat and prim as they were, in their pleated skirts and slacks and blazers, they were just kids. She felt strange twisting in her stomach.
"Salt seems to have an effect on some visitors," Miss Fittes was saying. "Besides the more traditional iron and silver."
Thomas grunted from his place behind Mary. "That'll be good for the mines," he said in his simple way. "If the price of iron goes up."
"It won't trickle down," Graham Watson argued. "It'll pool wherever the brass plonks their fat arses down, like it always does."
"It will if we threaten to walk out."
"Now I will have none of that talk in my house, Thomas," John Smith's voice was gravelly from the cough that never seemed to let up. Miner's lung, more likely than not. His words put an end to the discussion.
When the first reports of the Herefordshire Problem had started to come almost two years ago. It had been little more than a pattern of unexplained deaths. A farmer was found blue and frozen in a field, a vicar stopped in the middle of the street as a scream died in his throat. Most assumed it was some new disease. Down at the chippy the old biddies were going on about the Spanish Flu, which at least made a change from their usual blabbering about one great war or another. Mary had tuned it out. Then it became more difficult to tune out. A year later and the whole world was holding its breath. Stock markets fell, foreign governments redirected funds right and left as they tried to make concessions for the oncoming storm, whatever it may be. In London all the politicians seemed to scramble for a solution. Some made light of it, others talked like the country was under attack. By ghosts. That was the ridiculous part, the one aspect that made it quite hard to take any of it seriously. Mary still went to church on Sundays. The congregation was a more or less evenly split between denial, crisis of faith and the firm belief that they had arrived at the end times. It made for an uncomfortable Sunday tea service.
No matter, Mary thought. Maybe it was a disease, maybe ghosts. What really distressed her was the fact that it was moving. Spreading. Coming closer. Dead was dead, no matter what killed you.
"Do you think it will come up here?" she blurted out. The baby in her arms gave a little kick in protest. The men, miners all, turned to her like they'd quite forgotten she was there.
"What's that lass?" John Smith said.
"If... if it's moving. The Problem? If it's coming to London, like they say it might, do you think it will come here too?"
Mrs. Smith let out a little chirping laugh. She placed a too warm had on Mary's shoulder.
"Oh pet, there's nought to come here, is it? It's a southern problem. Let them call it ghosts if that makes them glad." She laughed again. "We know what it's really about, don't we?"
She had that look that Mary hated so much. Smug and knowing, like she expected everyone who was anyone to be in on her joke, although she wasn't sure you were anyone.
"Well it's a distraction, isn't it!" she continued when no one made any effort to reply. "They're trying to stop us from looking at... Well, I don't know what exactly, but it'll be one thing or another. I just hope it's not another war. None of us wants to send our lads away." She looked at Mary. "Little Mary is so lucky to have a little lassie."
"Not much job for them in the mine," Graham said in his glum way.
"Well, miners need wives don't they? I don't see you washing your socks Mr. Watson. Either way ghosts are not real, unless it's the holy ghost and I'm not so sure about that one either," Mrs. Smith said. "Now does anyone fancy a cuppa?"
Thomas and Mary went home an hour later, just as dusk was falling. The stroller jumped on the uneven stones and the baby was crying. Mary looked at the sunset and Thomas' shadowy profile. She was a handsome man, from the right angle.
"Aren't you going to comfort her?"
Mary looked down at her daughter, the bubble of guilt that seemed to be always be ready to burst within her growing a little more. She rubbed at the baby's plump stomach. She scream wavered by the motion but didn't let up.
She looked at her daughter's scrunched-up face and once again she felt the unbearable weight. For this tiny little person Mary was everything. She represented the world, so when the world was failing she was failing. She just wished the world wouldn't be failing quite so badly... How could she bring the baby into this? What kind of future was there for her? What kind of life? The economy was in shambles and ghosts walked the earth. There was unemployment and poverty everywhere, and drinking and violence. Even without ghosts this place took all your promise, all your hope, and scrunched it up until you were just another paper ball being tossed into the trash. An awful feeling of foreboding was twisting and curling around her insides until it was difficult to breathe. She grabbed the stroller so hard her knuckles whitened and tried not to fall apart.
***
Thomas was right. The mine did well when the price of iron went up, although the government set a hard stop before it could spiral. They didn't get rich but they did well in the following years. When Thomas' mother became widowed suddenly they moved her into the cottage. She was a strange woman, full of ideas that seemed rooted in the old world. She seemed particularity wary around her granddaughters, two at the time as Rose now had a little sister.
"Everyone knows there's witches' blood in your family Mary," she'd say, and when the girls misbehaved she responded with a vigour that seemed a little untoward to Mary. She didn't think her girls needed the wickedness beat out of them. Quietly she added old Mrs. Miller to the long list of the worlds failings.
The guilt never quite left her, or the heartbreak. She just pulled it deep inside where it wouldn't show. It came out anyway when she was unwell. When daughter number three was born she couldn't rise from her bed for weeks. A heavy sort of malaise had befallen her, and in it she went over all the horrors of the world, again and again in a torturous circle. She wore that circle deep, treaded it too many times, around and around. The doctor came and found nothing wrong with her. Nerves, they said. Slowly she made herself self human again, put herself together bit by bit. One day she rose from her sheets and tied the apron around her waist, painted her face and curled her hair. Her stomach was still a little soft from the pregnancy but when she smoothed out the blouse she could feel her ribs.
England didn't get better in those years, far from it. The problem spread like a sickness. She watched the progress like the inhabitants of Pompeii must have stood staring at the volcano. All around her life in the little town continued. Mrs. Smith had become even firmer in her conviction that ghosts were not real. The more evidence, the less she seemed to believe. In London Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell started their ghost hunting agencies. They employed children. This was particularly awful as far as Mary was concerned. She remembered a time when she was little and how she'd hated the graveyard at night. The way the winds had blown around the eaves of the church had sounded just like whispers.
***
Then, all of a sudden, John Smith on number seven died. She supposed it wasn't actually sudden. His cough had gotten worse until he couldn't breathe at all. Thomas became foreman instead. This was the way of things as of late. The world was falling apart but their little bubble was on an upwards trajectory. They had the money to build an extension to the cottage.
Mary stood with one hand on her rounding belly and watched the workers. They had ignored the judgemental looks from the biddies at the chippy and splurged on two contractors from Liverpool. They were using all the modern materials and techniques, asbestos insulation and iron mesh in the walls. Looking at them she felt a rare spark of optimism. Humanity hadn't just stalled, frozen by fear and defeat. It soldiered on in the shadow, just as it had done during the two great wars. A cloud of dust from the construction site made her cough and she turned away for a moment. Her gaze caught on two brown eyes. Little Rose was standing in the door, cautious not to get too close to the construction site. She wasn't looking at the workers, but instead had her serious eyes aimed at her mam. Mary tried not to flinch. Her own look slipped a little to the side. She had fallen into the habit of never quite looking at her girls directly. It was like they were too bright somehow. As if, if she looked at them too long, she would burn away in painful rapture until there was nothing left of her. After a while the habit became an obsession. She no longer just avoided their looks, she feared them. The bubble of guilt pressed all the air from her lungs. She felt clammy and weak.
"What is it pet?" she said. "Something the matter?"
"Emma's wet herself."
"Well we can't have that, can we? Gran isn't here is she?"
Rose shook her head. Mary tried not to smile. That was another perk of the new extension. The old Mrs. Miller was dead against it. She had taken to staying over at her friend Vera's house. Apparently there was evil in the walls. Mary wasn't sure if she meant the insulation or her granddaughters. Maybe both. The old Mrs. Miller had become increasingly uncomfortable around Rose in particular. The girl was growing strong. She didn't take well to discipline. Sometimes Mary thought about that baby boxing her little fists in the blanket. She'd come out swinging. Absently she stroked her belly where baby number four was incubating. Thomas wanted a boy but she had a feeling it was another girl.
***
"It's running out, Mary."
Mary looked to her husband where he sat hunched over his tea. He was a large man, burly, but he'd always had soft eyes. In the years they had perhaps become a little too soft, a little too distant. She wondered what was going on in that head of his, with the heavy brow and thinning hair. It was rare that he started conversations. It had quite taken her by surprise.
"What is?"
Thomas chewed his crumpet, swallowed it down with milky tea. His eyes were trailing the restless movements of a starling in the Smith's old apple tree. "The ore. We're talking about digging deeper, a new shaft, but..." he sighed. "Foreign iron is cheaper." He gave a little shrug. "They might wind down."
"What does that mean for us?"
He still didn't look at her. They had become a family of people not looking at each other. Someone tugged at her skirt and she placed a hand on her daughter's head. Emma was clingy. She hoped it was a phase. The world wasn't kind to women who gave their heart too freely.
"I've never done anything else," he said.
She pressed her lips together. Soaked in the news. Added them to the pile of worries. "Well, we don't know, do we? No use worrying."
But of course she did worry. That was her lot in life. All day she plastered on the can-do attitude her magazines raved on about. She listened and reassured, and in so doing she pulled all of her family's worries inside, soaked them up where they could join her choir of anxieties. Mary worried all the time. She worried as daughter number five and six joined the family, two more hungry, screaming mouths. She worried when little Emma stopped outside Millom Castle and Holy Trinity Church late one evening and started talking about the sad woman, even though Mary heard nothing but the wind. She worried when the general curfew was extended to the whole country and Millom city council put up the strange ghost light on the central square. The problem was closing around them until they were completely hemmed in. On one side the sea, on the other the walking dead.
"I'll get a job," she said at last. "Part time. We'll have a buffer."
Thomas only grunted.
***
Finally the thing they'd all quietly been waiting for happened. Old Mrs. Smith braved the curfew one night to go tend her husband's grave and was found blue and swollen the next day. The sickness had reached Millom. Mary wondered if Mrs. Smith believed in ghosts now. Then she felt a little mean.
The agents came the day after. They were from the northernmost agency, started up in Manchester just a little over a year ago. A girl with mousy hair and three boys, all of them alike to Mary's eyes. She supposed she'd have been better able to tell them apart had she been their age. They all wore their hair too long and their uniforms seemed to just be a cardigan with a logo thrown over whatever they had in their wardrobe. On their hips were long, narrow swords and workman's belts like the contractors that built the extension had worn. It made their hips look to heavy on their small frames. One adult was with them too, a fashionable woman in a pink trouser suit and comfortable shoes. She was holding a binder.
"Derek, Eric, Manish, get the bags into the house. It's number seven I believe..."
"So it is," Mary spoke up. The woman's eyes on her were not too awful, but the children, oh, the children... She could feel their contempt for her—this small-town mother who had done nothing to stop the problem from taking their childhood's away, who knew nothing of their craft, their battles, their war. There was a horrible disconnect between their eyes, that were so serious and deep, and their soft, youthful faces. Mary glanced over at number seven. "There's a key under the flower pot, if you haven't got one," she continued nervously. "She didn't die there though. Mrs. Smith."
"You knew the deceased then?" the woman said.
"Of course, I mean we all know each other here. We were neighbours for years. They were the first house to have a television." Mary realised she was blabbering and stopped herself. She put a hand on her belly. It was round again. Number seven was on the way. She thought she liked motherhood best when they were still tucked away in there, snug and safe. She didn't feel as lonely, or as guilt ridden. She could protect them. They couldn't look at her.
Her insides twisted at the sight of the little agents. The boys had disappeared inside with the bags but the girl with the mousy hair remained with the woman. She'd been saddled with taking notes apparently.
"Anything else we should know? Any reason for her to come back?" Mary was surprised to hear a southern accent from the girl.
"No!" Mary shook her head, then hesitated. "Although, she could be quite obstinate. Stubborn, set in her ways, the way some people get..."
"And what was her ways?"
"Oh, well... She didn't believe in ghosts for one. Probably quite annoyed if she does come back, she didn't much like being wrong. She was fond of her home. Decorated it with all sorts... It used to be the biggest on the street before we had our extension. She didn't like that one bit."
The girl nodded. "She probably won't come back, but just to be sure we'll salt and iron and pack up her trinkets."
"What will happen with them?" Mary suddenly remembered of the solemn porcelain dogs on the windowsill and felt a little silly.
"Cremation," the girl said. "You had any other walkers around here? On the street I mean, the cemetery is set to be ironed up by DEPRAC. Your kids seen any?" She nodded at the little knot of girls at Mary's skirts.
"None."
"Mam," Emma said in a small voice. "Mam, the tissue paper man..."
"Hush, don't be silly," she hissed down. "Suppose it's not so bad up here yet," she said to the agent.
"It goes fast when it comes," the girl said. "You have one, and then bam! One day you wake up with your dead grandfather mooning your bedroom window."
The agents didn't stay long in Millom that time. Mary suspected they'd half-arsed it. They seemed the types. Two weeks later Emma woke up in the middle of the night and wouldn't stop crying. Apparently Mrs. Smith had been out in her garden and you could see the apple tree through her arm.
***
Child number seven was another girl. Mary decided that would have to be enough. Thomas wouldn't have his son, but now that the mine was doing poorly he didn't seem all that keen. He'd gone quiet, his moods heavy. She forced herself to rise from the comfort of her own bedbound despair and took her youngest daughter down to the sitting room. The television was on but the volume turned low. Some children's program it looked like. Thomas was staring at it with one of his girls bouncing on his knee, mute and distant.
In the big armchair sat a little woman who didn't come by nearly as often these days. The old Mrs. Miller seemed to have shrunken a little, but her eyes were still sharp. They fell on the bundle in Mary's arm and she made a cross sign. It was almost enough to make Mary snort. The older woman was only religious when it seemed convenient.
"That one you'd be better off throwing down the well." She said in lieu of greeting. That stopped Mary in her tracks. It even got Thomas to lift his eyes from the television.
"What are you saying mam? Why would you say that?"
"Should be done properly, at midnight. Walk seven times backwards around the well and throw a sprig of lavender after each loop. That way she won't be walking."
"Christ," Mary said, sitting down with a huff. "Is that all you think about? Some old stories?"
"There's witchcraft in your family Mary. We all know it, and it's bad enough. But the seventh daughter... That's when it gets really dangerous. They're strong, seventh daughters, and prone to wickedness. They're too close to the edges of things."
"Mam, we're not drowning our baby!"
The older woman exhaled a hiss though her teeth. She only had about half of them left. "Ah well, I suppose there's no changing your mind when it's set. You always were a stubborn boy. It's a small blessing that Mary only has that layabout brother of hers, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter—ah, that's an entirely different beast. I'd have drowned it myself if that was the case, mark my word. And that's with my aching limbs."
In Mary's arms the baby was squirming, fists boxing against the blanket, legs kicking. In the middle of the heartbreak that had defined her motherhood Mary felt a flare of defiance. She made herself look down on the red little face. Her eyes were still the deep blue of a newborn, but they would change. Maybe she would have her eyes. She fought the wave of guilt, so familiar yet so impossible to brace against. Her head span.
"Well, since you're here," she said, smiling at old Mrs. Miller. "You may as well know we've decided on a name for the lass, Thomas and I." Thomas looked a little nonplussed but he didn't contradict her. "We thought we'd name her after you, Edith."
***
The cough started when Edith was seven. Mary's lungs had troubled her for a time but normally it came and went. She thought of all the men with miner's lung, but she'd spent her life above ground. It was just a cough. Surely it was just a cough.
Edith was a surly child, practical and not prone to bouts of affection. Mary found her sitting at the window one night, staring out at number seven. When she asked about it she said she was watching the funny lady. They'd never told anyone about Mrs. Smith haunting her garden. She didn't seem terribly dangerous and no one lived in the house. Instead they'd just hung some chain links to fence her in.
"What's she doing?" Mary asked, quenching a cough. It had woken her up and she'd made herself a cup of tea with honey.
"Ranting and raving," Edith said.
"What's he saying?"
Edith scowled. "Dunno. Can't hear."
"Let's go closer."
They went out together, mother and daughter, bundled up warm against the chilly night. Frost crunched under their feet when they neared number seven.
"Can you hear her better now?" Mary whispered.
"Something... I think it's something about ghosts. She's upset. She doesn't like them."
"Oh." Mary couldn't help a small laugh escaping. "She's not.. You don't think she's still going on about ghosts not being real do you? That would be silly if she did."
But Edith was just seven and her attention had been drawn to something else. She was already turning back inside. Mary coughed into her sleeve and followed her.
***
Edith's sisters didn't like her. It hadn't taken them long to clock that the youngest Miller was their mother's favourite, and apart from that her personality was hard and jagged. Mary liked that about her. She always found her daughters most bearable when they were only half paying attention to her. It's not that she loved them more like that, exactly. She always loved them—too much if anything, so much that it physically hurt sometimes. She just found them so very difficult to endure. She knew this was her own failing. By now she was convinced she was an unsuited mother and yet fate had given her seven healthy daughters. Her own worries weighed her down, and that damn guilt. With the years the burden of loving them had made her resent them a little, and that just added to the malaise that was her constant companion.
Edith was not very outwardly affectionate. Mary liked that. She was self-sufficient. Mary liked that too. But even with all that Mary had to admit to herself that the reason Edith was the favourite was what old Mrs. Miller had said about throwing her down the well. Mary had successfully protected this one. Not against ghosts or the economy or disease and poverty and drinking or anything like that. She'd protected her against her family, which of course included Mary, having her drowned as an infant. The bar was very low.
***
Thomas was home early from the job the day Mary finally went to the doctors. She'd not expected that, and it touched her. He'd grown a bit of a paunch and his hair was thin but he met her in the hallway.
"Where are the girls?" Mary just barely got it out before the cough started up again. Thomas put a meaty hand on her back, rubbing a little. When she looked up she caught her face in the mirror. It was red and gaunt, the greying hair coming loose from it's clasp.
"I sent them to the chippy. What did they say?"
Mary took a wheezing breath, steeling herself. There was fear in Thomas' eyes, the realised. It was so unusual to see proper emotion there these days. She set her lips hard. "It's not good."
"How not good?"
She made a face. "Months. Maybe."
He flinched, rubbing his face with his hand. "Never... You're not a miner," he said at last. "I'm the one who spent years inhaling stone dust... How..."
"Not the mine." She walked into the sitting room and sat down heavily. Thomas followed. The door to the extension stood open and she almost laughed. Couldn't help it. "Evil walls," she said.
"What?"
"It's... the construction. When..." she coughed again. "It's the asbestos, Tom. It made me sick."
"The construction? The bloody extension made you sick?"
She leaned back, focusing on her breaths. "Edith has talent," she said at last, changing the subject.
Thomas grunted. "I know."
"If the mine closes..."
"When it closes." He sat down next to her, leaning back as well. To her surprise he grabbed her hand. She didn't think he'd done that since they were young sweethearts. There always seemed to be a baby holding hers, or chores to keep them busy. "They decided last month. I thought I'd wait to tell you until you were better, but, well..."
"We won't have my salary for long." Her salary hadn't been much. Some part time hours at the nursing home, but it had been something.
"Of course you can't work Mary. Don't worry yourself about it, we'll figure something out."
"There is an agency in Carlisle now. It's not too far. She can take the train. And they'll have room and board for her, one less mouth."
"She's a child Mary!"
"She's tough and she needs to eat. Emma will move out soon and Beth can take a part time job if she can find one. That leaves Edith, the twins and Sarah."
As if her words conjured them the door was opened and her flock of girls came in. Emma was the first to notice something was off. She'd always been perceptive.
"What's the matter?"
They all gathered around her, crowding in, their expectation turned into apprehension. Beth had bags of fish n' chips and the room smelled of deep fried batter and vinegar. Youngest of the group, her surly little Edith looked like she wasn't quite keeping up. Her brows knitted together, trying to puzzle out why everyone was acting so strange all of a sudden. She'd stopped sucking her thumbs years ago but now it slipped between her lips and she started chewing it absently. Only the oldest, Rose, was missing from the group. She'd moved to Leeds to get a better job and education. She'd have to call her later. She didn't mind calling. They talked easier like that.
No one ever told Mary Miller that having a baby while the world was going to hell would break her heart. It broke again at the thought of abandoning them to it. It added up, all the guilt. To love was a wonderful, terrible thing.