Annie Lizzie--A Quiet Life, Part II

The aforementioned wardrobe was always locked, and Aunty Annie had the only key, hidden--well--no-one knew where.   One day, when listening in on adult conversations (a favorite pastime),  I heard my mother say to Grandma, "Well, whatever does she keep in there that's such a secret?"   Grandma sniffed, and said she supposed it was all her money, for she certainly didn't spend any on clothes or outings."    Then, I heard Grandma tell my mother that she was tired of hearing the folk at the Forget-Me-Not Club say how lucky she was that she had such a wonderful sister.  "They never tell Annie how lucky she is to have me," she complained.  "They have no idea what she can be like.   Trying to persuade her to part with even a shilling is an uphill battle, and getting her to do any vacuuming or sweeping is impossible.   I wish I could switch places, so I could stop doing the heavier work and take over her dusting and dish-washing instead."

The only interesting part of this information for Pat and me was the wardrobe, and we tried hard to find out what Annie Lizzie had in it by searching for the key in the room (forbidden!) and following her up the stairs and peeking through the crack in the door.   But she was too canny for us, and when she opened the wardrobe, her key appeared like magic in her fingers.   She opened the door only wide enough to insert her hand and arm inside and pull out whatever she needed, usually an apron or cardigan.  She was always neat and tidy, but her clothes were shabby, bearing out Grandma's observations.

When my brother was small, he dreaded going to Blackpool.  He had asthma and eczema and they always, along with his agitation, became worse in the car on the way there.   My poor, dear,  little Tyke.   He was obviously suffering, but didn't have the vocabulary yet to tell us why.  Later on, we found out that the problem was with Annie Lizzie and her room.  He slept in the bed "for spare" in my tap dancing space between the storage boxes and the wardrobe.  He heard her clothes fall to the floor in the dark when she undressed, but he couldn't identify the sound;  when he looked at Annie Lizzie laying tidily in bed, almost upright in her white gown with her hands folded neatly across her chest, he imagined he was sleeping in a room with a dead body;  the wardrobe loomed over his bed like an ancient sepulchre holding who-knew-what horrors, and the gleaming white sheet was the spirit of Dearjim that looked as if it were moving in the shadows.     I was probably sleeping with Grandma, but if I happened to be sleeping with Aunty Annie, he couldn't see me in the valley.

The only time Grandma was really furious with Pat and me was when we hid at the bottom of the stairs and cried, "Boo!" when Annie Lizzie came down.  What a palaver.  She clutched her bosom and staggered to the couch, falling backwards in a heap.   She cried, "Oh, oh, oh," then closed her eyes and lay very still.   Grandma bounded into the room, took in the scene, and in a deadly, quiet voice, ordered us to go outside by the front door and NOT TO MOVE.   When Grandma joined us, she was trembling with anger.  We were really scared as we thought we must have killed Aunty Annie.   But it turned out the fury directed at us was because Grandma had spent a long time persuading her that, yes, she could manage to do a little sweeping, and Aunty Annie was preparing to try that very morning.   In one fell swoop, we had ruined several weeks of sweet-talking.   Once again, she was faced with having to do all the heavier work herself, and it was ALL OUR FAULT.

Not long after, Annie Lizzie issued a call to arms.   It was a regular rallying cry, "Ants, Em'ly, Ants."   Ants--the bane of their existence in the Blackpool house.   The little critters usually congregated along the threshhold of the back door or along the window sill in the kitchen before beginning their foray into the house, and their numbers were legion.  Hearing the alarm, Grandma prepared for action, armed with a tin of ant powder in each hand.  At this point, Annie Lizzie, having completed her mission, was hors de combat, and stood back to encourage her sister's fight.  The two of them were close allies--a veritable Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick of the Ant Brigade.   Muttering under her breath, Grandma liberally sprinkled the powder on the intruders, and with brush and tray, swept the dead bodies into the dustbin.    It was then cup-of-tea time to celebrate a battle won--but no resting on laurels as we all knew another assault by the little black devils was always in the offing.

When my parents, brother and I left England for Australia in 1958, the two sisters were still living together in Blackpool in peace and harmony--mostly.    I recall that Annie Lizzie never spoke sharply to or grumbled about any of us, but loved us in a calm and quiet way.   Grandma, talkative and in-charge, was realistic and pragmatic, but loved us anyway.   I saw them once after that on a trip back to England nine years later.   They were living with Grandma's daughter, my Aunt Emily--Pat's mother, and the three widows were amicably residing together in a large house in Burley-in-Wharfedale.  Emily owned a business and worked away from home, but she did the sweeping.   Grandma had taken over the dusting and dish-washing, but Annie Lizzie still got up to clear away the plates.

Many years later, I found out that when she was a young woman, Annie Lizzie had undergone a double mastectomy for cancer.  I can't imagine what it must have been like to undergo such an ordeal with ether as the anesthetic, with women's breast surgery in its infancy, and with mutilation and its terrible scars as inevitable--a daily reminder of her ordeal.   I thought about the courage of other women like her, who, when widowed, had only a small pension to sustain them, and so lived mainly through the largesse of siblings or extended family.   Perhaps that's why she didn't spend very much.   It is obvious that the family did not think she had a bad heart, and her long life also gainsays this conclusion.  I am led to wonder how many years her fear, suffered in silence following her shocking diagnosis and treatment, really lasted, and how likely it was that such dread led to her palpitations and conviction that she was doomed to live the rest of her life in poor health.  We'll never know.

I'm pretty sure she did look forward to all our visits, but her privacy, gained only in her bedroom, must have been treasured.  Her scant property and personal papers most certainly deserved a home under lock and key in her old, oak wardrobe, don't you think?

Annie Elizabeth Slater Beaumont, c. 1883-1975.   Annie Lizzie.    Bless her.