Then she shut the window and climbed into bed, where she spent a long and disturbed night, lying awake for hours, and dreaming horrid, lurid dreams when she did finally drop off to sleep. And between dreams, she tossed on her pillow and tried to reach a decision, to choose between her brother and his convictions, which she largely shared, on the one hand, and her employers and their convictions, which she respected, on the other. All night she dreamt and tossed about and thought and thought and dreamt and tossed, and by the time the sun came up over the grey, pointed spire of the church of the Holy Trinity and glinted on the coloured windows of Mount Argus, she knew what she must do.
Lucinda’s News
Amelia was still getting used to being allowed to sit up for dinner in the evenings with the grown-ups, and she tried hard to behave terribly well, for it would never do to show herself unworthy of her elevation to the dining room. So she was careful to wipe her mouth daintily with her napkin before taking a sip of water, to make a minimum of chomping and slurping noises as she ate, and to pass the butter and the salt and the redcurrant jelly or the horseradish sauce or the gravy or whatever there was to go with the meat, to Grandmama, who sat gravely next to her and chewed her food slowly and purposefully. The hardest bit was not making eating noises, especially when there was clear soup, as there was tonight – consommy Mary Ann called it, and nobody was unkind enough to correct her pronunciation. Thick soup was easier to eat quietly – it seemed to be less irredeemably wet – but clear soup was so thin that it was difficult to control.
Amelia was making such a determined effort to transfer the beef consommé from the soupspoon into her mouth and safely down her throat, which would make the most unbecoming swallowing sounds, no matter how hard she tried to control it, that she almost missed the conversation her parents were having quietly at the other side of the table. But not entirely. She tuned in just as Mama was saying, ‘Eleanora is prostrate, and as for Gerald, he’s out of his mind with worry and anger and disapproval and heaven knows what other emotions. It really is too bad of the boy.’
Amelia recognised the names of the parents of her friends Frederick and Lucinda Goodbody. ‘The boy’ could only mean Frederick – there was only one son in that family. Amelia pricked up her ears. What on earth could Frederick have done that was having such a very dramatic effect on his parents? Frederick was always so polite and well-behaved, it was hard to imagine him involved in a family row. And yet she was not entirely surprised to hear that something was up in that family, after Frederick’s odd moodiness on Sunday.
‘But does he realise the seriousness of what he is doing?’ she heard her father ask, his voice full of concern. What could he be talking about?
‘Oh, Papa!’ Amelia cried out, exasperated, ‘I wish you and Mama wouldn’t mutter so. You always complain if Edmund and I have secrets at breakfast, and you say that meals are for sharing conversation as well as food. I do think grown-ups might follow their own maxims occasionally.’ It all came out much more irritable than she intended it to.
Grandmama gave a disapproving little cough, but she said nothing – just lapped away quietly at her soup, without a hint of slurping. How ever did she manage it?
‘You’re quite right, Amelia,’ said Mama, who was always fair. ‘It’s rude to have a private conversation at a family meal.’ But instead of addressing the situation by letting Amelia into the conversation, she chose instead to change the subject. After her outburst, which really was stronger than the situation had warranted, Amelia felt a little sheepish, so she didn’t dare to try to turn the subject back again, but instead answered monosyllabically the questions Mama put to her about her history essay and whether her second-best boots needed heeling.
And so it wasn’t until the following morning that Amelia found out what was afoot in the Goodbody household. Lucinda came into the classroom pale and red-eyed. Good heavens, thought Amelia, it must be something truly dreadful that Frederick has done if Lucinda is so upset. Lucinda Goodbody was not known for the softness of her heart or the quickness of her sympathies.
When they were little girls of twelve, Amelia and Lucinda had been best friends: Amelia had admired Lucinda terribly, and Lucinda had basked in the admiration. But there had been a coolness between them at one point, and though they had long since made it up and were no longer pitted against one another, they had never resumed their former closeness.
Still, Amelia didn’t care to see Lucinda miserable, and besides, she wanted to find out about Frederick, so she sidled up to Lucinda at coffee-break and asked, not unkindly, ‘What’s up, Lucy? Everything all right? You look a bit washed out.’
‘Oh, Amelia!’ said Lucinda, with a wobble in her voice, and with that she collapsed on Amelia’s shoulder and sobbed out: ‘Frederick’s enlisted! He’s going to Flanders to fight the Hun!’
Amelia’s heart did a little leap inside her chest. Flanders meant Belgium, where the war was. Gallant little Belgium, people used to call it, when the war started. Nobody said that so much any more. But who was the Hun?
‘What?’ Amelia asked, gently disengaging herself and brushing Lucinda’s fringe out of her eyes, so that she could look at her. ‘What did you say, Lucinda? Frederick is going to the war?’
‘Yes!’ said Lucinda in a strangled voice. She was rather enjoying being the grief-stricken sister, and she hung her head, so that her burnished curls trembled in an affecting manner.
‘To fight who? I mean, whom?’ asked Amelia, still trying to get the story straight in her mind.
‘The Hun of course. The Bosch.’
‘The Hun? The Bosch?’ They sounded like monsters or machines.
‘Yes of course, you ninny. The Germans. Who do you think we’re at war with? Anyway, the thing is, Frederick has joined up. He just marched into some horrid recruiting office in Grafton Street, and he’ll be gone by the day after tomorrow!’ And here she gave another effective little sob.
‘Lucinda, I don’t understand. Quakers don’t go to war. Frederick is a pacifist. Isn’t he? He must be. We all are. Aren’t we?’ Amelia was quite confused.
She was remembering Frederick’s outburst on the train on Sunday. He had sounded quite the conventional Quaker, showing his abhorrence for this war. Hadn’t he? Or had he? She tried to remember his exact words – war is beastly, people get killed, not a laughing matter. At the time, they had sounded like anti-war views, but of course you could read them as just the apprehensive thoughts of somebody about to join up and under no illusions as to the seriousness of his action. Then a thought struck her:
‘They haven’t conscripted him, have they?’ she asked. ‘I thought there wasn’t any conscription in Ireland.’ No, they couldn’t have. Amelia was sure Mama had been involved with other Quakers in a successful campaign to oppose conscription in this country.
‘No. That’s the awful thing. He wasn’t conscripted. He went and enlisted, voluntarily. Isn’t it dreadful? Mama is distraught.’
‘Prostrate,’ corrected Amelia absently. No wonder Frederick had been so uneasy on Sunday. She was right to think he was trying to tell her something. What a piece of news!
‘And Papa …’
‘Is nearly out of his mind with worry and anger.’
‘How did you know?’ asked Lucinda in surprise.
‘Oh, you know, one can imagine,’ replied Amelia. ‘But why, Luce? What can have possessed him?’
She searched her own mind for the answer. And why hadn’t he told her all this the other day? He must have been afraid she would have tried to dissuade him. Would she have? She supposed so, but she wasn’t sure. Why wasn’t she sure?
‘That’s the thing. He won’t say why. At least, he’s been rowing a bit with Papa lately, I suppose. Maybe he’s trying to …’
Lucinda spilt out a long and complicated story of family tensions which she thought must be the cause of Frederick’s taking this extraordinary step. Frederick had finished school some months before and had joined his father in the family busines
s. They had not been getting on together at all, Lucinda said. Frederick didn’t like the office, he didn’t like the work, he didn’t like working with his father. In short, he was deeply unhappy with his life at the moment. The war, dreadful as it was, must have looked like a way out, a chance to prove himself as a man, separate from his family and away from his father. But what a course of action! No wonder his parents were in such a state!
Amelia sat down and tried to assess her own reaction to this piece of news. Her heart had given a lurch when she first heard it, but then her heart gave that same lurch every time Frederick’s name was mentioned. After that, she had been confused and surprised by what Lucinda had said, but what ought she to feel next? Anxiety would be appropriate. After all, Frederick might be wounded, shell-shocked, even killed. But though she did feel some anxiety, it was only in a mild sort of way. She couldn’t really imagine Frederick dead or wounded. It was too unbelievable. No.
What she felt, she now began to realise, was a sort of secret, shameful elation. Frederick was taking a stand. He wasn’t going to just go on living his life the way other people – his parents, his community – had ordained that he should. He was going to make something of himself. Yes, he was going to really do something, be somebody. Frederick Goodbody, officer of the king’s forces – for surely he would be an officer, a young man of such good background – off to the trenches to defend the rights of small countries to rule themselves and to resist invasion. Why, it was all so gallant and adventurous! Oh, if only girls could do such fine things as fight for justice and truth, the defence of the Empire and the protection of the innocent! But here she was, doomed to remain on a remote little island at the edge of Europe, writing history essays and hearing Edmund’s spellings, while Frederick could sail off to glory on the battlefield. Amelia had made up her mind how she felt after all – she had decided to be overcome by the magnificence of it all.
‘Cheer up, Lucinda!’ she commanded, slapping her friend heartily on the back, as she thought glorious thoughts. ‘Young Frederick knows how to look after himself, and with a bit of luck he’ll be home in six months with a chestful of medals and a fund of tales of bravery in the face of the enemy.’
‘Don’t!’ wailed Lucinda, determined not to be robbed of her great sorrow. She shrugged Amelia off and gave a becoming little sniff into her dainty, lace-edged handkerchief. Just then the bell rang for the next lesson, and the girls drifted back to the classroom.
‘And the worst thing is,’ said Lucinda as they reached the classroom door, ‘he’s not even an officer or anything, just an infantry soldier in some wretched little regiment nobody’s ever even heard of. The Dublin Fusiliers – I ask you.’
When Amelia returned to Casimir Road that afternoon she threw her satchel under the stairs and went into the kitchen. Mary Ann was black to the elbows, and had odd black smudges here and there on her face too, and there was a strong, acrid-sweet, metallic smell in the air.
‘What ever are you at?’ asked Amelia, to whom the mysteries of the servant’s life had still not fully been revealed.
‘I’m making a cake,’ muttered Mary Ann.
‘A cake?’
‘Yeh, a lickerish cake,’ Mary Ann affirmed.
Amelia looked curiously about the room. There was no sign of baking utensils or ingredients, and the smell of the black substance wasn’t remotely like liquorice.
‘I see,’ said Amelia. ‘And tell me, if you’re making a cake, why is it necessary to use half-a-dozen filthy rags, a wire brush and three goose-wings?’
‘All right,’ conceded Mary Ann, ‘I’m cleaning the stove.’
‘Golly, isn’t it pretty!’ said Amelia, peering at it as if for the first time. ‘I never noticed this little panel of birds and flowers down the side before. Look! They’re smiling at us, since you polished them up.’ And so they were, gleaming and preening themselves coquettishly.
‘Huh!’ said Mary Ann. ‘I could have done without that panel, thank you very much, smiles or no smiles. It’s all little cooks and grannies and fiddly bits.’
‘Cooks and grannies?’
‘Yes, it’s good isn’t it. Like me and your grandmother of an afternoon.’
Amelia looked bewildered.
‘Nooks and crannies, Amelia. Gosh, you’re so slow on the uptake sometimes! It’s a joke. Anyway, them things were absolute murder to polish. Lucky for you it’s nearly done, or I’d have had you at it as well as meself. But at this stage there’s no point in the two of us getting covered in black-leading, so if you want to play cooks and grannies too, you can fill the kettle.’
Amelia did so, and then sat down to tell the news about Frederick to Mary Ann.
Mary Ann didn’t say much. She just put away the cleaning things and then used a skewer to pick black-leading out from under her fingernails and grimaced at Amelia’s story.
‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I thought you people didn’t believe in warfare.’
‘Mmm,’ said Amelia, reluctantly. She had known all along that this was a problem, but she didn’t want to face it. She didn’t want to let Frederick down.
‘Well, then, it should be against Master Goodbody’s religion to go to war.’
‘Yes,’ said Amelia lamely. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘Then he shouldn’t go, should he?’
‘No, I suppose he shouldn’t,’ agreed Amelia, deflated. ‘But perhaps,’ she went on, making it up as she went along, ‘perhaps he feels so strongly about this war that he is prepared to set his pacifist principles aside on this occasion.’
Even as she said it, Amelia knew it didn’t ring true. In truth, she didn’t really understand Frederick’s motives, and though the idea excited her, it also confused and worried her.
‘Feels strongly about this war!’ Mary Ann sniffed. ‘How could anyone feel strongly about this war? What’s it about, can you tell me that?’
‘Oh yes,’ began Amelia confidently. ‘It’s about – well, it’s about putting the Kaiser in his place.’
‘Putting the Kaiser in his place, is that it? I see,’ said Mary Ann. ‘In other words, it’s about the English being in charge of Europe, not the Germans.’
‘Well, yes, I mean, after all …’
‘Oh, I see. So you think the English should be in charge of Europe, do you?’
‘Not exactly, no. But I think the Germans shouldn’t be either.’ Amelia had a sudden flash of inspiration: ‘We should all be in charge of our own countries.’
‘Aha! Like the Irish. In charge of Ireland, like?’
‘Certainly.’
‘So it’s a nationalist you are now, Amelia Pim. Well, I never would have thought it!’ Mary Ann sounded both amused and triumphant.
‘A nationalist, am I?’ said Amelia wonderingly. She was sure there was something wrong with this assertion. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I seem to remember you being very pleased when this war started, Mary Ann Maloney.’
‘Ah yes, but that’s because England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity,’ said Mary Ann cryptically, throwing aside her skewer and coming to sit at the table opposite Amelia.
Amelia hadn’t the smallest idea what that was supposed to mean, but she was sure it wasn’t anything very nice, so she gave a disapproving little sniff. Mary Ann misinterpreted the sniff.
‘Poor Amelia,’ she said, with sudden sympathy. ‘You’ll miss your beau, won’t you?’
Amelia had been so busy convincing herself what a fine thing it was for Frederick to be going off to fight in this terribly important war that she hadn’t allowed herself to think this perfectly simple thought at all. She had considered the idea of his being hurt or killed, and she had set that thought firmly aside. But now that Mary Ann put it so simply, she realised that she would indeed miss her beau, very much. She plonked her elbows on the kitchen table and gave a long, slow sigh.
The Visitor
Mary Ann was up to her elbows in greasy water, washing up after an afternoon’s cooking, when the do
orbell rang.
‘Bad cess to it, anyway,’ she swore, and gave the cooling grey water a vigorous, irritated slosh before lifting her arms out.
The bell rang again, imperiously.
Mary Ann ran cold water quickly over her forearms and grabbed a towel as she lurched to the hall door. She flung it open, the damp towel still scrunched in her hand, and her sleeves still rolled up. Of course it would be more than her situation was worth to snap at the visitor for ringing too loudly and peremptorily, but she fully intended to be distant and cool with whoever it was. As it happened, she was far too amazed by the words the person on the doorstep spoke to be anything but civil in return:
‘Miss Maloney,’ (that was the amazing part, and he swept off his hat as he spoke) ‘I do apologise. I wasn’t sure if the doorbell sounded the first time, so I’m afraid I rang it a second time, to be quite sure. I hope I didn’t startle you.’
The speaker was what Mary Ann called a fine figure of a man, but it was the amber lights in his remarkable eyes that caught her attention so that she hardly noticed for a moment his extraordinary attire. He was all decked out in what looked like rather uncomfortable khaki. But there was something about a uniform, however colourless and uncomfortable, that gave a man bearing, Mary Ann had to admit, and there were metallic bits that caught the afternoon sun and made him look nothing short of splendid.
‘Well, as a matter of fact you did,’ said Mary Ann, steadying herself against the doorpost. ‘You put the heart crossways in me, actually, Sir.’ Mary Ann’s respect for expressing the truth about her own reactions to things was as sound as Amelia’s grandmother’s regard for truth in all things.
Frederick – for it was none other – didn’t apologise a second time, but inclined his head in the most charming bow that Mary Ann had ever witnessed.
No Peace for Amelia Page 3