by Karen Powell
‘Alexander!’ she called, holding out her hands. ‘This way.’
He stopped, looked over his shoulder at her in surprise. As if a stone or a bush had spoken to him. Then he changed direction, heading towards her in another great spurt of energy. His eyes were blue as the sky, bright with the joy of movement as he wavered, fat little hands steadying himself on unreliable air. ‘Come to me,’ she said, a twinge of anticipation or perhaps it was excitement growing in her stomach. And then, out of nowhere, love for her child crashed over her like a wave that had been quivering above her all this time. ‘Come to mother, Alexander!’
A butterfly flitted in front of the child, its wings primrose yellow, almost transparent in their delicacy. Alexander, distracted, reached for it. She called again, opened her arms to him. He stared at her for a moment, thoughtful, and then waddled after the butterfly, chasing something more certain.
CHAPTER 33
Lennie, September 1955
She rose early, tamped down the growing nausea with dry toast and tea. Tom was going to Leeds to meet a friend so she could be sure of being alone. First, though, he wanted eggs and bacon. Lennie tried not to inhale as she stood over the stove but the hot, porcine smell of rendering fat found its way into her nostrils, her throat, and the sight of raw eggs, plopping into the pan with a foetal weight, sent her hurrying to the lavatory. She vomited as quietly as she could. It felt as if her ribs were wrenching apart. Her stomach ached from the silent heaving. She washed her face and hands and returned to finish her task. Thankfully, her father wanted only his usual porridge made with water. Lennie stirred the beige slurry, grateful for something so bland and inoffensive, though the slop of it dropping from spoon to bowl nearly undid her again.
Tom spoke little over breakfast, his mind already elsewhere. It had always been that way with him: his thoughts travelling ahead of him, disengaging with the present. Lennie had felt it ever since they were small. When Tom was preparing to go off to school each term, he never seemed to think twice about leaving. In his mind he had already departed. It made everything he left behind feel drab and less significant, somehow devalued by his indifference. There was a bit of Tom that existed separately from this cottage, this family; she wondered how it must feel to have the freedom to change your world for another whenever the fancy took you. If the world was to change overnight, turn in some new way that shifted the balance of everything, would she have the courage to exercise her new-found liberty, to lay down her sewing basket, the pots and pans for dinner, walk out of the door of the cottage without a backward glance? She wondered if that sort of thing might not require practise, and she had never even got started.
Lennie filled the kettle, put it on the stove. Then she went out into the garden. It was a sprightly morning, still fresh at this hour. She stepped between neat humps of thyme, curled in upon themselves like small mammals, sage plants bursting from the dewy earth in artless bouquets. When she reached the prostrate rosemary bush, its scarecrow arms marking the centre of the herb garden, she took out scissors and began snipping, taking sprigs from the established, woodier parts of the plant, rather than the soft new growth whose properties might be less concentrated. Returning to the kitchen, Lennie stripped the sprigs of their needle-sharp leaves. She fetched her rolling pin, the bread board. Using the end of the pin she began to pound the little heap of leaves. Soon, the chopping board was green and oily from the smashed leaves, and the air was filled with a pungent, medicinal scent. The process felt ancient and satisfying and womanly; on any other day Lennie might have smiled or sung to herself as she went about the simple task.
The kettle started to whistle, Lennie scraped the pulverised leaves into a jug and poured the boiled water over them. She wasn’t clear about quantities—the book hadn’t specified. Neither did she have any idea how long the process of infusing might take. Five minutes or five hours? She waited until the liquid was cool enough to drink before straining it carefully into a teacup, took a tentative sip.
The rosemary tea was watery, yellow in colour but less unpleasant than she’d expected. She had been anticipating something foul and undrinkable, like pond water. She took the unexpected outcome as a sign. It was not so different to lemon tea. Lennie picked up the cup again, drank it down slowly but steadily, fearful of making herself sick, fearful that she might have to start all over. She was surprised to find that her stomach did not threaten to reject the liquid and she finished it without any trouble. She washed and dried the cup, replaced it in the cupboard, suddenly buoyed by how easy it all was.
Her mother’s book of remedies had given no indication of what to expect or how long things might take. Lennie decided to go about her morning chores as best she could, her body already having learned to move more cautiously than usual, as if it wanted to protect the very thing she was trying to expel. With slow, deliberate strokes, she mopped the kitchen floor, the repetitive, mindless motion and her lightened mood setting her thoughts free.
How different things might have been if she and Alexander were already married, joyful even. Hard to imagine when she felt like this all day long, her limbs granite-heavy, the sickness simmering away inside her like a witch’s cauldron, always on the point of boiling over. She’d finished ironing the last of the sheets, when she felt it. Like a fist gripping her insides and then after it a familiar ache, like the one she had each month, but this time concentrated into the small of her back, as if someone had kicked her. She put away the ironing board, folded the sheets into the cupboard, went upstairs.
Her room was cool, peaceful, the curtains easing in and out of the window in the breeze. It was definitely happening now. The contractions were coming from somewhere deep inside her and the ache was spreading. Lennie felt almost giddy with the relief of it. Bad things happened sometimes but then they were over and you were allowed to go on living. The world would be a blank and wonderful place again, where any story might yet be written. Tomorrow, she would go up to the Hall to find Alexander. She wouldn’t wait for him to come to her.
With the release came a wave of tiredness. Lennie closed her eyes, drifted. Alexander on the river bank, his mouth moving silently. She knelt down, trying to hear what he was saying above the roar of the water. It was not Alexander, just a small boy. Danny Masters gazed up at her from the lip of the river. He was calling for help. Lennie stroked his hand, comforting him, and then, one by one, she prised his fingers from the crumbling soil.
CHAPTER 34
Danny, Summer 1949
It was just the three of them and they were lost in the woods. Not in a bad way because if you kept on going you’d eventually see something you recognised and work it out, but at this particular moment nothing looked familiar, which could only mean they still weren’t anywhere near home. They walked on until they came to a clearing. A group of lads was building a den in the middle of it. Not much of one—the branches they’d used to form a wigwam shape looked flimsy, like they might buckle any minute, and they’d shored the thing up with greying planks, deeply ridged, stuck with rusty nails, that threatened to send the structure toppling. A fire smoked to one side of the den, a small boy crouched over it, poking.
‘Where do you lot think you’re going?’ Danny recognised the lad who stepped forward. Danny’s mam, who knew everyone on account of her midwifing, had pointed out the family in Helmsley one day not that long ago, when he’d gone to help her with the shopping. Kids allowed to run wild she’d said, and they’d looked it to him, a pack of wiry, walnut-brown creatures in mish-mash clothing, something wild and hard in their eyes. From Branleigh, they were, which meant that he and Alexander and Lennie shouldn’t be standing in this clearing, on someone else’s territory.
‘Go where we like, can’t we?’ he said.
There was no point admitting fault now. The best you could hope for was a stand-off. Adults acted like that was the wrong way of going about things. There was no point explaining to them that all those ideas
they tried to teach you in school and at home—doing unto others, that kind of stuff—went out the window as soon as you were in the woods. None of that worked here, which the grown-ups must know, having been young themselves once. Forget about kindness and fairness; work things out for yourself.
‘You can leave yer girlfriend if you like.’ The lad, the one who was the ringleader, sniggered and lifted his chin towards Lennie. ‘Want to come inside my den for a bit?’
His mates all laughing, drew together behind him. Danny was calculating. The lad was shorter than him, just a bit, but weirdly muscular in his arms and across his chest, like he spent his time swinging through the trees or punching walls. Lennie looked straight ahead as if the boy hadn’t spoken. Her chin tilted up, just a fraction. The lad looked around at the little crew behind him. ‘Fancies herself a bit, don’t she? Just as well, cause nobody else does.’
His friends howling with laughter, way more than it was worth. Danny’s fists clenched now, ready.
’Don’t speak to her like that,’ said Alexander, stepping forwards. Danny could feel him there, a slight golden presence beside him. The Branleigh lot clocked the accent right away. Danny could hear it as if through their ears, sharp and honed as a well-cared-for tool. Like he was hearing it himself for the first time. Had it got stronger since he had been away at school or was it just that they were here, in this clearing, where differences mattered more? ‘Anyway,’ Alexander’s voice grew sharper, posher, ‘we’ll go where we bloody well like.’
Was that a tremble in Alexander’s voice? Danny noticed it, picked up on fear behind the brave words, which were greeted with more howls of laughter from the group. There was a tension in the air now. The Branleigh lads hadn’t worked out who Alexander was, Danny could see that. Would it make a difference? He couldn’t be sure and Alexander wouldn’t thank him for letting them know, not one bit.
‘Mouthy aren’t you?’ said their ringleader. His tone was jovial but his eyes were dark and fixed all of a sudden, like a mad person’s. A line had been crossed and everyone knew it. ‘Well, I’ve got a bigger mouth and bigger fists than you, see?’ It was true, Danny thought, checking. The boy’s fists were enormous.
‘What are you going to do?’ said Alexander. ‘Hit me, or suck me off?’
The fight, when it came, was quick and brutal. The Branleigh kid lunged towards Alexander but Danny got there first. He was angrier than he’d thought, a mad kind of blur in his mind for a minute or two. Then it was over. The other kids had retreated to a kind of log seat in the trees where the brambles grew long and whippy, and he and Alexander and Lennie were turning back towards home, instinct taking over now they needed it, being sure to go slowly to demonstrate that it was choice not necessity that sent them in that direction.
Danny’s face stung from the blows he’d taken.
You didn’t need to do that.
Alexander never said it, but Danny could feel the unspoken words hanging between them as they walked. It wasn’t like he’d made a choice, he told himself. Sometimes things just happened. What were you supposed to do about it? Lennie walked between the two of them, as if it was best to keep them apart. He could tell that she was upset, as if it had bruised her skin in some invisible way. It made him angry again, with the wild Branleigh kid, with Alexander, with Lennie even. Something had shifted between the three of them that he didn’t want to think about. He wished he’d been with one of the lads from the village, some other girl too, Bridie say or even Hattie, who would have silenced the Branleigh kid with some mean answer. They’d have been laughing about it by now, same as they always did when trouble came along and they survived it.
But after a while the woods were theirs again and Danny felt his shoulders relaxing. They skirted the great oak that had been charred by lighting years before and turned onto a familiar track towards the river.
‘Are you all right?’ said Lennie softly.
‘Fine,’ he said, because he was now.
When they reached the river path, she seemed to hesitate. For one moment it felt to Danny that she wanted to go with him, towards the village. She looked at him, went to say something, but then just smiled and shook her head, as if catching herself at it. She turned the other way instead, following Alexander towards Richmond Hall.
CHAPTER 35
Lennie, September 1955
There was blood. Thin and watery, but there it was. The contractions in her womb had stopped. A relief that there was something. She hadn’t known what to expect, had not allowed herself to think about what might emerge from her body. There was just this. No little limbs, no hands like peony fronds clawing up through spring soil, no unblinking eye staring up at her, no unformed, pulsing blob, none of the monsters of her imagination. Silly to have been so scared. It could only have been a matter of weeks, could barely have been a real thing. With the future back in its rightful place again, Lennie flew through the rest of the day’s chores on light feet. She went out into the garden to gather some of her father’s awful marigolds for the dinner table. For some reason she felt extraordinarily grateful to him, as though he’d had a part in rescuing her.
They had a pleasant time over supper, just the two of them, Tom having left a message to say he would be late. Lennie made a special effort to reassure her father, knowing that he worried about the company Tom kept. The secretiveness, which their father took as a personal affront. She knew from experience that it was best to let her father voice his concerns. With patience, she knew that his attention would eventually turn to happier subjects. She had found his fretting wearisome lately, all her thoughts taken up by Alexander, her own trouble, but tonight Lennie felt herself overflowing with sympathy, capable of dispensing goodness to the whole world.
When she washed the dishes she saw that the lights were still shining up at the Hall. It looked like a great ship against a dark sea. She wondered if Alexander was still cross about the missed trip to York. She would have to make it up to him somehow. She climbed the stairs to bed, lay for a time, staring up at the ceiling.
When had loving Alexander become so difficult, a jangling up of her once-peaceful cells, the world off-kilter all around her? People talked about love as though it was a blissful state; to Lennie it seemed something taut and perilous:
Why are you dressed like a whore?
But no. She placed her hand on her stomach. Flat, warm, empty. The universe would be on her side from now on. Alexander loved her; she loved him. The world had moved in precise ways to make it so.
CHAPTER 36
Danny, July 1955
The girls had gone to a lot of effort, hanging up bunting and streamers and stars cut from silver paper all around the village hall. Someone had found a bit of red carpet, stained only down one edge, to lay out in the entrance, and the high windows of the hall were covered with coloured paper to keep out the early evening sunshine. By the time Danny arrived the band was already playing, on a stage decorated with swags of gold material. They’d been hired in from York, Bridie Martin said, all flushed from balancing on a chair to cover the last of the lights with red crepe paper.
The village boys arrived in twos and threes, hair brushed back and ties knotted too tightly, daring anyone to comment, the girls growing self-conscious and shrill in their stiff new dresses. A good few of the lads wanted to know about training, how long he was home for and suchlike. Danny was happy to answer but already he felt older, set apart from these boys yet to be called up. Just a few days ago he’d said goodbye to the rest of his billet and already he was nostalgic for the friends he’d made in those short intense weeks. He felt adrift, as though he didn’t belong anywhere.
A glass of beer in his hand, he moved closer to the stage. The band was playing numbers sedate enough to satisfy the odd parent who put their head around the door. When he looked closer he thought that if you took away their smart suits, the lads looked a bit rough around the edges. He could imagine them l
ater, when the violent orange punch had taken effect, taking their chances when the local girls grew tired of the familiar old faces. Mary Stockton and Jackie Bracegirdle were dancing just in front of the stage, already clinging too closely to one another. Bridie and her friend Dorothy danced together, giggling at themselves as they swung each other round.
‘Not dancing then?’ said Hattie, arriving at his side. She handed him a beer, took a ladylike sip from her own glass of punch. She was wearing a yellow dress with big skirts that showed off her small waist, with thin straps at the shoulders. Quartered bits of orange floated in her punch, with some murky-looking leaves of some kind.
‘Not yet,’ he said, taking the beer from her. Hattie’s mouth went flat with disappointment. He felt bad. ‘Maybe later.’
‘The band are great, aren’t they?’ said Hattie, cheering up. ‘Better than last year’s anyway. Oh, look who’s here.’
‘Who?’ But he knew from the way her expression had fallen again.
He hadn’t, for one moment, expected Lennie to come. The party was an annual event, eagerly waited for by the young people of Starome, yet Lennie had never once attended. He had only come along himself to avoid being alone—it was amazing how quickly army life got you accustomed to the company of others and then you couldn’t do without it. Yet there she was, standing in the doorway, wearing a dress with blue flowers on it, looking down at the run of red carpet beneath her feet as if puzzled to find it there.
Danny looked away, forced himself to listen to Hattie, though he heard nothing, saw nothing. When, at last, he trusted himself to glance over his shoulder again, Lennie had moved away from the door, was speaking to Miss Price, their old schoolmistress who had organised the party, and who had dropped by to make sure all was well. He should walk across the room, speak to them both. What would he say? Could he ask Lennie to dance? No, not that, here in front of everyone they knew. He watched as they were joined by Sandra Taylor and Jeanie Patterson. Sandra had left off her glasses for the occasion so that her face looked all bare and twitchy, like an excitable mouse. Jackie Bracegirdle came across with another beer, flinging his great arm around Danny’s shoulder, wanting to know where he was being posted to next.