Doris sobbed and Peggy brought a boiled, cooled towel and Dottie toppled onto her side.
‘Is it done?’ called Jimmy from where he sat sentry on the other side of the door.
Nobody could tell him. They were catching their breath. They were welcoming Dottie’s son.
* * *
‘Can you take me all the way back to London like this?’ Peggy was surprisingly comfy on Jack’s back, her legs stuck out either side, her forearm throttling him as they lurched back from Broom Corner. Her cavalier had kept his word.
‘If you like.’ Jack felt, all things considered, he’d rather be at war; she’s a lot heavier than she looks. ‘Move your arm, girl, I can’t breathe,’ he squeaked, then, ‘I haven’t taken out a single girl since I met you, Peggy Perkins.’
‘Why would that interest me? It’s up to you who you court.’
‘No reason. Just…’ Jack hoiked her upwards and she whooped. He tottered on. He almost fell a couple of times, but he got her to the bus stop in good time.
‘I’ll wait with you,’ he said.
‘Up to you,’ said Peggy.
Like everyone else, they talked about the Battle of Britain. He pretended he was chums with an RAF ace. He even named him, and saw Peggy bite her lip at the mention of ‘Reggie, erm, Farquarharson’. Nothing worked with this one. He asked her about London.
‘Sandbags everywhere. And uniforms. Plenty of soldier boys. Dancing most nights. There’s so many new ones to learn. Do you dance?’
‘’Course.’ Jack sneaked a look at her. She’d kept her hat on throughout everything; it was wonky. It didn’t spoil her looks; nothing could. He found her spectacular. Like a firework that kept going off. He had watched her, with a sense of ownership that was not his right, as she grilled her brothers in the Horrobin kitchen.
She was an empress visiting the poor. The way Peggy crossed her legs made Jack want to sing. And Jack couldn’t sing. She had scolded Vic Horrobin for filling the boys’ heads with foolish ghost stories. She’d pulled a face when Billy said his best friend was a ferret. And she’d seemed deeply sorry for Stacey, the dog who pined for her master.
‘You told your brothers off good and proper,’ he said, taking out his cigarettes. He offered her one and she shook her head. He thought for a moment, then put the packet back in his pocket. ‘But I saw you slip them a shilling when you left.’
The only time Peggy’s composure had faltered was when John had asked after their dad. She had brushed him off.
‘It’s you, isn’t it,’ said Jack, ‘who has bad dreams about the boys, not your mum.’
The bus came.
Jack leaned in for a kiss.
Peggy dodged him. Hit him. Laughed at him.
She was gone.
And Jack was bereft.
* * *
The grass thrived in the graveyard.
All those dead bones below, supporting all that green life above. Caroline had to pick her feet right up as she tailed her mother, the doll tight in her arms against her chest. The doll was Emily; Kitty had christened her. She looked like an Emily.
Skirting The Green, Kitty felt sweat gather under her arms. The blue seersucker was one of her favourite dresses; she looked ornamental in it, but she couldn’t feel that way while the heat made a Borneo of Borsetshire. Her freckles had almost joined up; it was the nearest her Celtic skin got to a suntan.
Outside the shop was a blackboard. Frank chalked up the score each time there was news about the Battle of Britain. Today, apparently, the combat up in the clouds – no, hang on, there were no clouds – had gone England’s way.
But Frank could be lying. She recognized his mission to prove his loyalty. Englishness wasn’t a club she had ever belonged to, but unlike Frank she had no wish to do so.
Only an hour ago, Alec had talked of the aerial dogfights while they lay together in bed. Not her preferred pillow talk, but that was what you got for falling in love with a Brit. While he’d gassed on about Hawker Hurricanes versus Messerschmitts, she’d put up her blackout boards and pulled the curtains tight.
They never got to have a night together. How sweet it would be to lie beside Alec right through, until the next day got going. She wanted them to have a dusk and then a dawn, all joined up. She wanted continuity. She wanted to get bored of him. What odd ambitions she had these days. To eat a dull dinner opposite Alec, to argue about a bill for something frivolous she’d bought. To not have sex. To not have momentous discussions. To not watch him greedily as he left because it might be the last time she saw him.
Fake bars of chocolate stood smart in the window. It was time Frank removed them. Seeing what you can’t have depresses a person; this Kitty knew. ‘No, sweetie, not today,’ she said for the umpteenth time when Caroline pointed and cooed.
After her outburst, she and Alec had simply picked up where they left off. No milestone choice had been made, no plumping for Kitty or Pamela. This, it seemed, was their pattern.
I explode.
He retreats.
He returns.
We are naked.
Inequality was nothing new. Kitty was accustomed to it. She had run towards it earlier that day, in their faux night, in her all-or-nothing way.
Her whisper had been hot in his ear. ‘You can do anything you like to me.’ She was nothing. They had proved that now. She existed at Caesar’s whim. The sweat on Kitty’s skin from their lovemaking hadn’t yet dried when she hurled her fireball of the erotic and the emotional. ‘Hurt me if you want to.’
‘I don’t want to do anything to you! Do not talk like that.’
His disgust was an unflattering coat that nonetheless keeps out the cold. She’d wondered then, and she still wondered now, staring into the shop, if she was fooling herself that Alec, a totem pole of privilege, would ever be able to listen to and know her.
He’s a well I’ve dropped a stone into. It might take the rest of her life for Kitty to hear the plop.
‘Come on, in we go.’ Kitty squared her shoulders. She would have to beg another week’s grace from Frank, and hope he would allow her to add to the bill. She had collected nettles in the churchyard; they would make good broth but Kitty thought of the bones forming inside Caroline’s stout little legs and knew man cannot live by homemade soup alone.
Once inside the shop, Kitty picked up on the festival atmosphere. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Cherries!’ Agnes’s lips looked bloody. ‘Mrs E’s cherry harvest is in.’
‘You should ration them, Frank,’ said Jane.
‘Finders keepers, I say!’ Agnes grabbed another handful.
Looking on with pride, Mrs Endicott bemoaned her inability to enjoy her own produce. ‘They’re full of acid, or is it gelatin, and just one could put me in bed for a week.’
‘Dig in, little one.’ Frank tilted the basket towards Caroline, who didn’t need to be asked twice. ‘What’s that stuck to dolly?’ he said, nodding at a muddy scrap on Emily’s dress.
Kitty picked the torn rectangle of paper from the tartan, and crumpled it in her palm.
Outside once more, she turned towards Brookfield. She would have liked to go straight to Alec, but of course she could not.
* * *
While the cherries were cheering up the shop, Dan was following Doris into the scullery, out again, to the range and then to the table. ‘Love, you can’t avoid me for ever. I’m making a good point, and you know it. It’s time we told the truth about your mum.’
Dejection reigned in the farmhouse. It had been a watershed moment, fitting a lock to the outside of Lisa’s bedroom. It felt so cruel. ‘Confused’ was the term they tacitly agreed on for her condition.
It was a diplomatic word, and manageable, in a way Lisa’s behaviour was not.
‘The children ignore her,’ said Doris, as if Dan hadn’t spoken. She slammed down a fork, a fork, a knife, a spoon, a ladle into the drawer. Her mother was fading from view, becoming a non-person.
‘No they don’t.’ Dan
flinched at his wife’s furious glance. His customary downsizing of problems didn’t fly with this topic. ‘Doris, have some faith. God is good.’
‘Is he?’ snapped Doris. ‘Is he, Dan?’
A timid tap at the door and they both turned to see Kitty. She had Caroline in her arms and held out a piece of paper. ‘Letter number four,’ she said.
* * *
In the circle of thorns, sequestered by the woods, Billy and John sat in their sumptuously appointed HQ.
A cushion had been added. It was too fancy to be Connie’s, and fitted the description of one Jane Gilpin had left in her porch to air. There was a bottle of lemonade, and Wizbang.
They talked, as gentlemen do, of society.
‘What’s so great about a baby?’ Billy screwed up his face. Dottie’s kid was boring, yet it was all the village women seemed to talk about. ‘So what if he opens his eyes? If I burp I get told off.’
‘Not by Connie,’ said John, approvingly. ‘Only by Mum.’ He missed getting told off, now that he thought of it. ‘How did they get the baby out of Dottie’s bum?’
‘Dunno. With a stick?’
AMBRIDGE WINTER PAGEANT COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES
Date: 21 August 1940
At: Woodbine Cottage
Chairwoman: Pamela Pargetter
Present: Frances Bissett, Margaret Furneaux, Emmaline Endicott, Doris Archer, Kathleen Dibden-Rawles, Jane Gilpin
Absent: Dorothy Cook
1. Jane welcomed us all to her home and apologized for the smell and said ‘Agnes is distempering the outhouse’.
2. Pamela asked if there was any joy with finding a pony to borrow to pull Elizabeth I’s cart.
3. Magsy said how could anybody concentrate on the pageant when an actual miracle has occurred in Ambridge. Pamela said the restoration of Jimmy Little’s sight is not a miracle. (Note to self: ask Henry to have a word with Pamela re: miracles, God etc.) Kitty said she would make a card for us all to sign before Jimmy leaves to join the army. Doris made a noise that startled us all but she assured us it was only a frog in her throat.
4. Jane said it was a shame there would be no ploughing match this year because most of the local young lads have joined up and when will this dreadful war ever end. Pamela asked what had that to do with the pageant exactly. Jane did not know.
5. Jane suggested a change of theme from Elizabeth I. Doris suggested quite loudly it was a bit late for that after all the work put into the costumes. Pamela said the theme will stay the same.
6. Caroline fell over and began to cry. Pamela took her on her lap.
7. Magsy asked if we thought poor dear Dottie had noticed about the baby and what will the poor girl do? She said we must do all we can to help. She asked if somebody should gently point out what was amiss with the baby. Doris said ‘Don’t be daft of course Dottie knows’.
8. Pamela said could we please get on with the meeting.
9. Jane said she couldn’t sleep for wondering what had happened to the anonymous letter Stan Horrobin had nailed to the church door. Kitty said it hadn’t been Stan but Jane said there’s no smoke without fire. Magsy said it could be any of us, even Jane, and Jane said she had never been so insulted in her entire life.
10. Pamela said everybody should calm down and said ‘Sit down Jane’ and could we please get on with the meeting.
11. Doris said this might sound silly and asked if everybody was feeling all right and Pamela asked how did she mean and Doris said doesn’t the war and the hate and the aggression seep into them and Pamela said if there was no other business then we might as well call it a day.
SEPTEMBER
The farmhouse lay soaked in sleep.
Snoring – whimsical from Philip and intermittent bronchial thunder from Dan – lulled Doris to sleep.
Another noise, alien, woke her. Not because it was loud but because it was out of place. Diligent Doris, sentinel of Brookfield, shoved her feet into slippers and was out on the landing in her dressing gown before she was properly aware of what she was doing.
Jez.
Always her first thought when a detail was out of place. What if he was prowling, touching things?
There it was again. A soft voice – not Jez’s – and the gentle drag of a chair across a rug. Doris pulled the bedroom door closed behind her when Dan stirred. The harvest left them so few hours to sleep; no point in them both being up.
Down the stairs, feather-footed, Doris looked forward to catching Christine in the act. No scolding, just a hug and a ‘Back to bed, young lady!’ It wasn’t the first time Doris had had to break up a midnight feast with Christine’s teddies. The teddies had survived the eight-year-old’s recent purge of ‘babyish’ toys and Doris was glad, but she sped up at the thought of a bear sticking his embroidered snout into her carefully hoarded sugar.
Flat and silver in the moonlight, the kitchen was not itself.
Doris put her hand to her throat and watched, possessed by what she saw.
In her nakedness, Lisa was a pale flame as she stood at the table, her back to Doris. Slight, blueish, she was cutting a slice of bread from a loaf. She cut it beautifully thin.
As Doris watched she buttered the bread. Carefully, going right to the edges. ‘I’m making soldiers for you, love,’ she said, over her shoulder. Not to Doris. She spoke to the empty rocking chair, spotlit by the moon on the flagstones. ‘You do love soldiers with your dippy egg, don’t you, Janet?’
The chair rocked just once, up and back.
Doris walked past her mother and out of the back door.
* * *
A mac thrown over his pyjamas, Dan made for the top field at speed.
‘Love,’ he said, stopping a little short of Doris. He pulled his belt tight. It had trailed in the mud.
Her slippers filthy, Doris stared up at the moon. Huge, low, it was a true bomber’s moon. ‘Don’t worry, Dan. I’m not mad. I’m not my mother. It’s just that it’s beautiful out here.’
‘It’s always beautiful out here, Doris. You don’t need to stand in the cold to appreciate it.’ Dan took a careful step forward, holding up his pyjama bottoms with one hand. He was at a loss. He needed someone to show him how to deal with this peculiar circumstance. His wife was always where he expected her to be. He relied on her to be utterly Doris-like around the clock. And now this. He racked his brains. ‘Is it your mum? What if I helped more? If you won’t let anyone else give you a hand, at least let me muck in, love.’
He meant the offer, yet he didn’t want her to say yes. He didn’t have any energy to spare. When she shook her head he was shifty about his relief.
‘Come on, love, let’s get you back into bed.’
She let him take her hand, but her own was dead against his fingers. She let him lead her home. As they reached the gate of the yard, Doris kicked off her slippers, and her feet bled on the paving.
* * *
The summer was still doing its damnedest but there was the sense of an ending in the early September day.
Daisies were everywhere, modest and exquisite. They carpeted the slope where Hollerton Junction’s platform gave way to nature, their chalky white and yellow outfits slightly stained. They were on the turn.
Only one person stood waiting for the train. Slight, slim, Jimmy Little was in khaki. His boots were too big. As was his hat. His eyes were fixed on the daisies. As if memorizing them.
They were supernatural, Jimmy’s eyes. His happy ending was a heaven-sent dollop of pure good news in the midst of casualty figures and a ranting Adolf stomping all over the map. It was a miracle. The vicar encouraged use of the word, asking what else could they call proof of God’s benevolence.
God had been particularly busy the last couple of days. Alongside tinkering with Jimmy’s eyes, he’d found time to punish the Luftwaffe for their arrogance. Believing the RAF to be beaten, the German planes had turned their attention to London. And then, literally out of the blue, the RAF had found their second wind, picked up the Battle of Br
itain where they left off, and inflicted record losses on the Luftwaffe. The tide had turned. Or, as Dottie put it, ‘Take that, Adolf!’
Bob Little had wanted to see his son off, but Jimmy had been firm. ‘No fuss, got it, Dad?’ The photograph of Hilda was in pieces, swept into the dustpan back at The Bull. The miracle hadn’t impressed his sweetheart; she’d found another. A navy chap. Sub lieutenant.
Alec, approaching Jimmy on the platform, didn’t know what the boy was thinking, had never heard of Hilda. ‘I know, I know,’ he said, when Jimmy turned. ‘Your dad told me you don’t want goodbyes. My apologies.’
Jimmy nodded. Shy.
‘I just wanted to tell you that I was frightened too, when I went off to France in ’17. Nothing wrong with being frightened. Quite the opposite, if you ask me. It shows common sense.’
A cigarette was handed over. Alec’s gold lighter sparked. His blue enamel cufflinks showed for a moment. ‘Six weeks basic, is it? Then the infantry?’
They smoked in silence for a while. Jimmy looked down the track.
‘It’ll be hell, Jimmy. I promise you that. Either boring or hellish, sometimes both. But know this. Ambridge is rooting for you. We’re proud of you. We won’t change. We’ll be waiting for you to come home in one piece.’
Jimmy didn’t look at him. Wouldn’t use the miraculous eyes on Alec. He must have heard, though, the rustle as Alec took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. He must have heard the click and hiss of the lighter, and smelled letter number four burning on the platform.
DEAR FRIENDS,
CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?
I SEE JIMMY LITTLE. I SEE THAT HE CAN SEE. I SEE THAT HE DODGED THE CALL-UP BY DIGGING UP HIS OLD GRANNY’S WHITE STICK.
SIGNED
YOUR NEIGHBOUR
‘We should have burned this when Dan and I came to see you. Rest assured that nobody knows, and it’ll stay that way. Not even your father will ever hear about it from us, Jimmy.’ Alec tapped Jimmy’s elbow, and when the boy turned, he held out his hand.
The Archers Page 21