Zennor in Darkness

by Helen Dunmore

  Little pigeon on my sweetheart’s roof

  Little pigeon with grey feathers

  Fly to my sweetheart’s soft breast

  And tell him of my love…

  John William does not understand, thinks Clare, glancing at him. But from the look on his face she wonders if he might have learned some French over there. And everyone knows the word for love.

  The songs follow one another tenderly, hesitantly, humorously. Little villages sleep in the sun, girls are married, lovers run away, old mothers long for their sons to come home. Eliane sketches out the meaning of each song to them before she sings it. A red cockerel is deceived by a sly brown hen. A young girl sings in the early morning as she tills her vegetable garden. Then there’s a funny one with a chorus about a little sailor who runs back home to his mother. Eliane translates for them and coaches them in the French chorus, and they sing along, first shyly and then with gusto as she draws them in with her white fingers. One last time, the little sailor runs away to sea and does not like the look of the dark green waves. His little boat shakes and makes him afraid. He wants to be home by the fireside, does he, drinking his soup? But he has to go, there’s no way out of it. The contingent from downalong roars its approval. They know the feeling.

  Then there is a change of tone. The piano accompanist drops his hands to his lap. Eliane steps forward almost to the edge of the stage. She closes her eyes and her eye-sockets became huge and shadowy but remain violet, as if the colour is still shining through her closed lids. She cannot sing this one with her eyes open. The audience leans forward. She says, ‘This is a song I wrote myself, about my country. I am going to sing it to you now in English.’

  In my country there grows an apple tree

  Full of white blossom

  The blossom is blowing

  In my country there grows an apple tree

  Full of green apples

  The apples are ripening

  In my country there grows an apple tree

  Full of red apples

  The apples are falling

  In my country there grows an apple tree

  Black and empty

  The wind is blowing…

  It works. It always works. The slender, intimate thread of Eliane’s voice swells and dies down. The tree is empty, the orchard has been broken open, and the fields are ploughed up by guns and shells. There will never be any apples any more.

  Eliane stands very still, her hands folded. She opens her eyes and looks along the rows. Each man thinks she is scanning the row to find his face. Clare sits back in her seat. Father should have come – this wasn’t at all the usual Belgian thing. Not a mention of priests, churchbells, atrocities, flags, vengeance or valorous resistance. And people are standing up in their seats, applauding Eliane. Waves of sound beat around her grey dress and her small bowed head. Clare looks around at the audience, because for some reason she does not want to look at Eliane any more. Their faces glisten as they clap and cheer; only a few matrons sit it out, with reserved, sceptical looks on their faces. One or two are already striding purposefully towards the collecting boxes, ready to position themselves at the exit. Eliane remains still, and it is obvious that she’s not going to sing again. She bows once and leaves the stage, and the steady clapping dissolves at once into hubbub as each person turns to a neighbour to say the same things about the singer. They are quickly said, and then it’s time to scan the audience. Who’s here, who’s unaccountably absent, who is with whom, what is she wearing, she looks very bad poor soul, is that John William Treveal, I wouldn’t have known him.

  John William doesn’t say anything. He is still looking at the stage, though Eliane is no longer on it. He is grey with fatigue, and he is unnaturally still, leaning forward slightly, as if he hears something Clare cannot hear. There is a light film of sweat on his forehead. He does not look well, but perhaps that is the heat of the hall and the noise of the people? Clare touches his arm, and he turns towards her like someone waking up.

  ‘That apple song,’ says Clare. ‘It reminds me of the orchard where you caught the hen.’

  ‘The orchard she was singing about,’ he says. ‘You want to find it every day when you wake up. You would give the rest of your life to wake up in that orchard, with one blackbird singing. All grey and cool with wet grass, Clarey, and so quiet you can hear the leaves moving. Only you never get there. You start hearing the guns.’

  ‘Do you want to stay on?’ she asks, feeling her own generosity. ‘Do you want to speak to her? After all you’ve been over there…’

  ‘Me and how many more? No. She’s got nothing more to say to me than she’s said already, and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling himself.’ But he speaks harshly, as if he’s crushing down the person who might think otherwise and fool himself.

  ‘We’ll go, then, will we?’ says Clare, and they stand and he takes her arm and they wait while the press of people thins. Then she sees something at the other side of the room. Red, flaming, jutting. A beard. Well, she would have never thought to see him here. This would have been the very last place. But the crowd is sweeping her closer to him. If he doesn’t move, they’re going to pass right by him. Will he speak? Should she? Will other people know who he is?

  He turns and sees her and his face dissolves into a smile of such warmth that she smiles back at once, openly, the way a baby does to its mother, without even thinking about it. He reaches and takes her hand and pulls her out of the stream of people. She catches a curious look from Aunt Mabel. She’s going to hear about this later, for sure. John William still has hold of her arm and suddenly there they are, the three of them forming an island among the people.

  Lawrence speaks only to Clare, quickly and intimately: ‘What did you think? Did you like her?’

  She hesitates, then tells the truth.

  ‘Not really. I felt as if I were meant to be feeling something, but I couldn’t feel it.’

  He laughs. ‘It’s true, she hasn’t a good voice. But can’t she put it over!’

  Clare smiles back at him, delighted. ‘You didn’t like her either!’

  ‘Nevertheless she knows her stuff. Look at ’em!’ He gestures at the buoyant, glistening, departing crowd, fumbling in its pockets, smiling gratefully at the collectors as if glad to be given the chance to express its feelings in coin.

  Beside them, John William darkens so perceptibly that Clare remembers him with a start.

  ‘This is my cousin, John William Treveal. John William, this is Mr Lawrence. He’s staying up at Higher Tregerthen.’

  The men acknowledge one another. John William’s eyes make the rapid, automatic scan of the conscripted soldier. A man of military age. Civilian clothes. He notes the oddness of the clothes, but doesn’t bother to think about it yet. Not called up. Why not? Health, probably. Rejected. Look at his colour. And his thinness.

  ‘You are on leave, I think, Mr Treveal?’ inquires Lawrence, and in spite of himself John William finds himself responding.

  ‘I’m due at the training camp tomorrow night,’ he says.

  ‘And you liked Eliane?’

  ‘I did.’

  Clare looks from one face to the other. John William’s is alive now, and intelligent. He has lost the small-headed animal look he had on him in the morning, down by the sea. He looks like what he is, her cousin with his books and his night-school and his carefully guarded plans, and his wild fights under the hedges.

  ‘I’m glad. Your time is so short, you should enjoy it.’

  John William says, ‘There’s a woman who knows what it’s like over there. No one here does.’

  He is unanswerable. He has played his card and the two of them are silenced.

  ‘And if I’d a wanted that sort of enjoyment I’d a stayed in London,’ continues John William, who is clearly responding to some argument which has been going on inside himself, rather than to what is actually being said.

  What sort of enjoyment does he mean, thinks Clare? Oh. He thinks Lawrence is
telling him to have a good time, the way soldiers are supposed to. He’s offended. He imagines Lawrence thinks he is not clever, that he is just a common soldier. But I’m sure he is mistaken. Lawrence is watching John William attentively. The words between them have been prickly, but the two men don’t now feel unsympathetic to one another. Suddenly Clare can imagine them walking together, talking. But now there are people jostling at their backs – they are in the way here.

  ‘I must go,’ says Lawrence. ‘Frieda doesn’t like to be alone late at night. She’s expecting you on Tuesday, Miss Coyne.’

  ‘How will you get back – you won’t walk, surely?’ For it’s late, and dark, and six and a half miles to Higher Tregerthen.

  ‘I shall walk. I shall like to walk. There’ll be a moon.’

  He must be stronger than he looks, thinks John William. He’ll walk through the moonlight, on the high road up to Zennor. The coolness and freshness of that walk through the night sweeps over him suddenly like the most desirable thing in the world. He must go too – but there’s Clarey, holding on to his arm. But Clare won’t mind. She will know how he feels.

  ‘If you like,’ he says to Lawrence, ‘I’ll walk my cousin home, then give you company up to Zennor.’

  Lawrence must have caught the shock of disappointment that went through Clare, or the look in her eyes before she drops her lids. He says quickly, ‘I don’t want to take you out of your way. I s’ll enjoy the walk.’

  ‘I may as well walk,’ says John William. ‘I walked all last night. I don’t sleep here.’

  ‘You slept this afternoon, Kitchie said,’ Clare reminds him.

  He hitches his shoulders. ‘That was easy. Nan was talking.’

  ‘John William!’

  ‘I don’t mean it like that, though. She was talking to Aunt Mag, not to me. Only, it felt good to sleep while she was in the room.’

  ‘Yes, you sleep best in the presence of someone who loves you,’ says Lawrence. ‘But walking may do it too. You can fall asleep on your feet. I shan’t stop you.’

  ‘I’ve seen columns of men marching, all of them asleep,’ says John William. ‘And you should hear the sound of their boots when they go out of step. It’s like waves breaking on Treen Cove in a south-westerly. D’you know Treen Cove?’

  Lawrence nods.

  ‘We walk all along – all around the country,’ he says.

  ‘Ah, then you’re a real Zennor goat!’ says John William.

  Clare says nothing as they laugh. She is very tired suddenly and knows that she looks pale and shrunken. Now she has swallowed her first disappointment, she wants to be rid of them both. She hasn’t got close to John William at all the whole evening. First Peggy, then Eliane, and now her own friend. And yet under it all there’s some small, secret part of her which is relieved. What might he want of her? They are not children any more. She begins to see how much John William might want of her now, and how much he could hurt her. If he asked something of her, she could never help giving it. If she could make herself into an orchard for him, she would be bound to do it.

  They set out past the Wesley Chapel and turn up Wesley Place. As they come to Windsor Hill, the men each take one of Clare’s arms, though she is supple and light and used to any hill. She has the red-bearded one on her left, moving quickly, though she hears the strain in his breathing, and her dark cousin on her right, drawing her arm close within his. The moon is up, just as Lawrence said, and there’s honeysuckle in one of the gardens. She smells it briefly and tantalizingly as they go past its garden. In a few more minutes they are up on the top, with the cemetery beneath them. Clare looks along the row of houses and sees the light in her porch.

  ‘Father will be waiting up for me,’ she says. Let John William know that she never intended to do anything but accompany him to the concert and then home at perhaps just a slightly slower pace than the one they’ve taken. She is wanted, waited for, shielded by Father and this house and God’s Holy Church and her own good sense. She is not like Hannah, she thinks betrayingly, then catches her hand on Hannah’s skirt and flushes in the darkness, as if she’s smirched Hannah’s quick loyalty to her. How Hannah had spoken to Peggy – that was what Hannah was like. Hannah’s brother stops in front of Clare’s house.

  ‘My train leaves at eleven,’ he says. ‘You’ll be there, Clarey? You won’t stay away this time?’

  She nods. She’ll come.

  ‘I’ll see you then.’

  He leans over her and draws her shawl close over her shoulders, although the night’s not cold and she’s about to go indoors. His bare hand touches her neck and she shivers. He leaves his hand lying there, heavy and solid. He is not a ghost. He is real and present, but tomorrow he’ll be gone. She tilts her head so that her cheek touches the back of his hand.

  ‘You go on in now, Clarey. You don’t want to catch cold.’

  ‘Goodnight, John William.’

  And she wants to cry out to Lawrence to be careful of him, not to let him roam back along the coast-path but to make him go home by the road. For it’s night, and the moon’ll set, and he’s in the mood to think he hears singing from down in one of the coves. Women’s voices… Don’t leave him on his own up there, she wants to say, and what she sees is Eliane, gleaming on a black, salt-soaked rock with just enough moon to show her eyes and her small half-smile turned to the land, beckoning.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she says again and stretches up and brushes his cheek quickly, lightly, with her own. It’s not really a kiss.

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Lawrence,’ she says into the dark where she can barely see his outline, and he answers, ‘Be sure and come on Tuesday. Frieda expects you.’

  She opens the house-door and there is the smell of her father’s tobacco and a glint of Sheba disappearing down the passage.

  Twelve

  Father’s study door opens as she crosses the hall, and he comes out, stooped and blinking. How old he looks. She’s never noticed before that the space between his eyes is webbed with small lines. He’ll have been straining his eyes, reading late in bad light, and tomorrow he’ll have a headache.

  ‘Ah! Clare. Did you enjoy the concert?’

  ‘Yes, Father. It was very good. Have you had your Bengers? Shall I make some for us?’

  He smiles gratefully. She is looking more like herself, he thinks. The concert has done her good. She ought to go out more. It’s a pity there are so few people here for her to get to know. She should be going to dances, concerts, tea with friends, weekends in the country. Look at her now, all dressed up just to go out to a Red Cross concert with her cousins.

  ‘I am glad you wore your grandmother’s shawl,’ he says.

  ‘Oh!’ She’d forgotten. She’d meant to slip the shawl back without his noticing. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all, you wear it, you wear it. She would have liked you to have it. It was made to be wrapped around beautiful young ladies.’

  She wishes he wouldn’t talk like that. The role of creaking complimentary Papa doesn’t suit him at all. She much prefers him bawling absent-mindedly for his cup of tea while she’s in the middle of peeling potatoes. That’s the way they’ve always lived together. He peers at Clare’s skirt. That seems familiar too. Where has he seen it? He can’t quite recall but it brings a disturbing association into his mind, one which doesn’t belong with his Clare.

  ‘I hope John William brought you home?’ For these cousins can be careless. They forget that his Clare is not a child any more, to knock about the streets with them and find her own way home.

  ‘Yes; he was going to go for a walk with a friend, so he brought me home first.’

  A friend, thinks Francis Coyne. Clare is being discreet, or is she just innocent? John William is on leave, sandwiched between war and preparation for war. There’s bound to be a woman somewhere who’ll let him bury himself in her tonight. Someone he’ll pay, or perhaps a girl who’s always cared for him and won’t wait now he may be going off again for ever. It happens all the time
. Perhaps Clare even knows the girl. She was always closest to John William, out of all her boy cousins. Does he confide in her? Does he tell her things she ought not to know?

  ‘How is your cousin?’ he asks abruptly.

  Clare moves off towards the kitchen, fidgeting with her shawl.

  ‘Oh, well, you know John William. He hasn’t said much. He looks well, though, doesn’t he? Isn’t he brown? Didn’t you think so when you saw him?’

  ‘He looks older. I’d never have thought the boy would grow up so fast.’

  She rounds on him, blazing, her eyes dark in a white violent face.

  ‘He isn’t a boy any more, Father, he’s a man.’

  He is shocked. His Clare sounds as if she hates him.

  ‘It was just a manner of speaking, Clare. Of course we are all proud of him. He’s done great things, great things –’

  ‘Or if he’s a boy, then why don’t the men go? The ones who are always telling us how much they’d like to go if they could? It makes me sick when Uncle John says he wishes he was twenty years younger. He knows it’s a lie, and we know it’s a lie. But we have to pretend to be grateful to him for what he’d never had done anyway.’

  ‘But Clare – you know your Uncle John. He’s not an educated man. He talks as he hears others talking.’

  ‘Yes, why don’t they all go,’ she repeats bitterly. ‘Why not Uncle Arthur and Uncle Stan and Uncle William and Uncle John, since they know so much about the war? They’re always so proud of telling us what they’ve read in the Daily Mail.’

  ‘I think you’re being a little unfair. Look how hard Uncle John’s worked to get the boys exempted.’