1938
Little Elizabeth Ford, Sissy as had previously been to all and sundry, was in the process of being defeated by a jigsaw puzzle. The really vexing thing was not the complexity of the puzzle, which in a previous life – the one in which she was still Sissy – would have posed no problem, but the fact that she had been trying to place the same piece for fully fifteen minutes. She had found its home in the mesh of the jigsaw; she had found it fully fifteen minutes ago, in fact. This did not appear to have got through to her hands, which stubbornly misgave her, slipping and sliding across the coffee table. It was varnished to a terrifying degree; if she looked, Elizabeth could see her mulish fingers in the gloss. The puzzle piece in question slid out from between said fingers and onto the floor. She scrabbled about for a further five minutes trying to retrieve it, then gave in to childishness, and shrieked her indignation.
Enter Madrun. Of course Madrun appeared. Mum was out, and the boys were at school, and Madrun with her unflappable, healthy hands seemed always on hand now, poised to interfere. She was saying something in Welsh now, something that might have been consolatory, or might have been a lecture .The singsong of it made it hard to tell. So did the fact that Elizabeth had never bothered to learn the language; that had been Anthony, sitting teacher's pettishly at Madrun's elbow and stamping biscuits while she recited declensions and conjugations and he parroted them back. That the biscuit-stamping was Anthony's apology to Madrun for his stubbornly musical bent did not appear to ruffle Madrun at all.
It ruffled Elizabeth now, even though Anthony wasn't here and she couldn't understand the Welsh – possibly because she couldn't understand it. It was all right for Anthony, who had found a way to make up his perceived shortcomings. Nothing was ever going to make up for Elizabeth's twisted hands – and it wasn't even her fault! One minute she'd complained of a headache and the next she was in the comforting embrace of an iron lung, relieved beyond measure that the vexed job of breathing had been taken out of her hands.
A large, mottled hand folded around Elizabeth's little, withered fingers.
'Perhaps leave it for now, fy ngeneth i.' She prised Elizabeth up off of the carpet with its floral weave and began to shepherd her towards the kitchen. Madrun-Land, Jims called it behind her back. It occurred to Elizabeth to wonder if Madrun knew. She probably did, Madrun being practically omniscient.
The kitchen smelled warm and yeasty, something like Elizabeth imagined stepping into a bread oven might smell. Flour floated in motes on the air, but did not otherwise dare blaspheme Madrun-Land by actually settling. Madrun-Land was like that; even flour dust lived in terror of her. This went some way to explaining why Elizabeth, iron-willed daughter of the house of Ford, allowed herself to be settled in one of the knobbly wooden chairs at the kitchen table. She sat there half dazed, half furious with herself, another half accusatory in the direction of the puzzle, and dared anyone to challenge her mental maths. She was, therefore, entirely unprepared for the bowl Madrun plopped in front of her, or the puff of flour that rose up from it like a cloud.
Elizabeth blinked at it. Inspection proved it the source of the yeasty smell; Madrun was bread-baking. Inexplicably, Madrun expected Elizabeth to help. This was either an honour – Madrun never allowed help in her kitchen – or a condemnation – young ladies should not display temper – depending on how one looked at it. Elizabeth was too stunned by the bowl of bread dough to come down one side or the other.
'A change is as good as a rest,' said Madrun, staunchly. 'I thought it might help to clear your head. Fiddle with something less persnickety for a spell.'
Elizabeth held out her hands for examination. The polio of the summer had warped them, and she wasn't even sure that they counted as hands any more. They didn't look like hands. Well, they didn't look like her hands.
'You cannot,' said Madrun, unflappable as ever, 'be angry and kneed bread, calon bach.'
'I can't kneed it at all,' said Elizabeth waspishly. She waved her hands in Madrun's direction for emphasis. 'No motor skills,' she said, 'See?' For emphasis, she made to pick up and manipulate one of Madrun's teaspoons. It went the same way as the troublesome puzzle piece and landed with a clink on the floor. Madrun clucked. Told you so, Eilzabeth thought with satisfaction.
'You can kneed bread,' said Madrun. 'Everyone can. You try it and see.'
Elizabeth set her mouth and crossed her arms. 'Go on,' said Madrun. 'You just go on and prove Madrun wrong. You cannot be angry and kneed bread, she says. Well, you just set that clever mind of yours going and show her she's an old woman who talks nonsense. Go on.'
All credit to Madrun, Elizabeth thought, she knew just where to poke so that you snapped. In the case of Elizabeth, she had more than stuck the landing.
'I can't,' said Elizabeth, dealing a punch to the unsuspecting dough. 'I can't you stupid woman, don't you understand? I can't. Do. Anything.' She was working herself up into what Mum would have called a state. Possibly the doctor would have called it hysterics.
'Nothing at all. Don't you understand?!' And all of this punctuated with punch after punch to the yielding, puffy bread dough. It began to web around Elizabeth's fingers, making them stickier, and clumsier than ever. And still she went on, knuckles sinking deep into the dough.
'Even Hattie and baby Bea up at Struan,' punch, 'are cleverer,' thwack, 'than I am!' Another punch. She was crying by then, tears hot and sizzling. One or two landed in the bread dough. Madrun, great dragon of domestic exactitude said nothing about it. 'They do more, too, and they're babies!' Punch. Whack. Pummel.
She was losing momentum, in spite of herself, her hands becoming sluggish with dough. She tried to swat it off of her fingers, but somehow that only made it worse, and the more it stuck, the harder Elizabeth cried. She wasn't even kneading the dough now, so much as plucking at it. She was too stupid even for that, and anyway, couldn't see for the rainbow kaleidoscope of tears in front of her. It made everything look shimmery.
'There,' said Madrun, pulling Elizabeth, sticky hands and all tight against her chest. 'There it is.' She stroked Elizabeth's hair with stubby, reddened fingers. She daubed at Elizabeth's eyes with an apron, and tilted her head so that it was perforce staring at the neglected bowl of bread dough. It had shrunken down on itself, a tight ball of doughy self-protection against Elizabeth's polio-raddled hands.
'Look at that,' said Madrun. 'If that isn't the best help I've ever had.'
Elizabeth did not much care about the bread, but was crying too hard to say so. She was crying too hard to breathe; periodically she had to stop and force herself to take deep, shuddery breaths. It hurt her throat.
'Now,' said Madrun, who, improbably, was still smoothing Elizabeth's hair, 'you come straight to Madrun whenever it gets too much, and you ask for the bread dough. There's always some going around here. And you knead it down, just like that, fy mach i . You knead it whenever you're angry, and the world is wrong, and you remember that whatever you can't do, whatever that hospital took away from you, your mind still works. Here.' She broke off smoothing Elizabeth's hair, which was becoming increasingly flyaway with static, and tapped her forehead for emphasis.
'You, Miss Elizabeth are still brighter, and quicker and cleverer than anyone Madrun knows.' She gave Elizabeth a little shake of the shoulders to carry her point.
'And you can't,' said Elizabeth with a sniff, 'be angry and knead bread.' Her nose was stuffed, and it came out Ou can't ve angwy and mabe fred, but Madrun was undeterred.
'Didn't I say she was clever?' said Madrun to the kitchen at large. Then, nodding to herself, so that her grey head bobbed against Elizabeth's dark one, 'Even cleverer than Jims.'
Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself. It was a shaky and watery sound, but it felt good. Madrun clucked approval.
'I didn't tell you that, though,' she said as she dusted flour on Elizabeth's hands. This had the improbable effect of eliminating the brunt of the dough from the nests it had made between her fingers. Elizabeth washed the rest off with water, Madrun looking on. She had the strong impression she ought to say something, but what was there to say to the woman who had half-cajoled, half-bullied one into kneading bread unsolicited? Even if it had been cathartic? Elizabeth began to shuffle out of the kitchen, leaving Madrun-Land behind her. She was at the door when Madrun said, 'You'll have to come back in two hours and do it again. Miss Elizabeth The recipe says so.' Elizabeth found she didn't mind.
'It's Sissy,' she said instead. Opposite her, Madrun blinked. Elizabeth shrugged. 'I guess,' she said, 'if my hands can do things after all, then Sissy still exists in there too. Elizabeth never sounded like me, anyway.' She smiled at Madrun. It felt good.