‘Oh, Mary Ann, I never thought you were a coward!’ said Amelia slyly.
‘Coward!’ Mary Ann was stung. ‘I’m no coward, Amelia Pim.’
‘Well, then, if you’re not a coward, you will stay and speak to my mother before you go, and you will tell her yourself that you refused to hide the guns for Patrick.’
Amelia knew that if she could manage to keep Mary Ann until her mother came home, she had a much better chance of keeping her altogether.
Mary Ann stopped folding, but still she didn’t meet Amelia’s eyes.
‘If you want to be believed, Mary Ann,’ went on Amelia, ‘you’ll have to tell her yourself. If you leave now, without talking to her, she might think you left out of guilt.’
‘But I’m not guilty! I didn’t do it!’ Mary Ann cried out, running her fingers distractedly through her hair, forgetting that she had her cap on, and knocking it to one side.
Amelia said nothing. She just slotted the loose floor-board into place, closing up the dark hole.
‘Very well,’ said Mary Ann at last, and she threw the bodice she was holding onto the bed and finally looked Amelia straight in the eye. ‘I will talk to your mother myself. But then I’m going, Amelia. I can’t have it said that I brought disgrace on this house.’
Amelia smiled a big, warm, triumphant smile. ‘Come on, so,’ she said, and went ahead of Mary Ann to the top of the narrow staircase.
As it turned out, Mary Ann wouldn’t have been able to slip away even if she had wanted to, for Amelia’s parents were both home already. The girls found them all crowded into the kitchen when they got down. Mama and Grandmama sat at the table, and Edmund crouched on his mother’s lap, which he was really far too big for, his face turned away from the company, and only the gleam of his hair showing, gold against her navy-blue shoulder. Papa was pacing up and down, shaking his head from time to time.
As soon as Mary Ann came into the room, she spoke quickly and firmly:
‘I’m very sorry for all the trouble I’ve brought on this house, but yous needn’t worry about any such a thing happening again, because I’m going to leave. I’m sorry I can’t give you the proper notice, but I know yous won’t want me to stay another night in yer house, so I’ll just leave quietly now.’
For a moment, there was silence in the kitchen, broken only by Edmund’s soft sighing.
Then Papa spoke: ‘Don’t be absurd, girl. We haven’t a notion of letting you go.’
Mary Ann looked disconcerted.
‘Certainly I can work a week’s notice, Sir, if you prefer,’ she said proudly.
‘No!’ The volume of Papa’s assertion seemed to surprise even himself. He continued more gently: ‘Mary Ann, we don’t want notice.’
‘That’s fine, so,’ said Mary Ann. ‘I’ll just finish my packing and go in that case.’
‘Mary Ann, Mary Ann,’ said Papa in exasperation. ‘What I am trying to say is that we want you to stay. We are very angry about what happened here today, but it is not you we are angry with. We know you wouldn’t even dream of doing the sort of things these people had in mind. We all know it wasn’t your fault.’
Mary Ann slid her eyes around to meet Amelia’s, in shamefaced acknowledgement that she had certainly, at the very least, dreamt of betraying the trust of the Pim family, but Amelia just gave her a friendly little smile in return.
Suddenly there came a muffled wail from Edmund, his face still buried in Mama’s shoulder: ‘It’s my fault!’
Everyone turned to look at him, but all they could see was the crown of his head.
Mama caught hold of a fistful of his fringe and gently prised his head back, so that she could look into his eyes, but he kept them tightly shut.
‘It’s me they’re angry with!’ he wailed again. ‘It’s all my fault, not Mary Ann’s.’
And he suddenly opened his eyes, jumped off his mother’s knee and ran to Mary Ann.
‘I’m sorry, Mary Ann,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘I swapped my best engine for it. I thought I wanted it. This big boy had it at school, and everyone thought it was great, and I thought I wanted it. But I don’t want it any more.’ He shoved his toy gun at Mary Ann. ‘You can give it to your brother if you like. I think he likes guns.’
This was the first Papa had seen of the gun. He looked in consternation at his son.
‘Edmund!’ he said sternly. ‘That is not the sort of toy you are allowed to have.’
‘No, Papa,’ said Edmund. ‘I’m giving it to Mary Ann’s Patrick now. He’s allowed. I shouldn’t have had it. That’s why the bad men came. I don’t know how they knew, though.’ And his tear-stained face scrunched up in puzzlement. ‘I always kept it hidden.’
‘Why did you hide the gun, Edmund?’ asked Mama.
‘Because I shouldn’t have had it.’ Edmund was looking at his boots. Mary Ann looked at hers too, in silent sympathy. It might have been she who had been caught out like this – and it wouldn’t have been with a toy. Amelia looked uncomfortable too, and tried to suppress an image of Frederick in uniform.
‘And why not, Edmund?’
‘Because we are a Quaker family, and we don’t like guns.’
‘And why not? Why do Quakers not allow guns in their houses, even toy ones?’
‘I don’t know, Mama.’ Edmund continued to regard his boots, as if they were the most interesting footwear ever made.
‘Well, Edmund, it’s because we are opposed to war.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘And we are so opposed to war, that we don’t think that children should even play at war. Do you understand, Edmund?’
‘Yes, Mama.’ Edmund suddenly looked up at his mother and added: ‘Mama, I wasn’t playing at war. I was only playing at cowboys.’
At this, the whole family – all except poor Edmund, that is – burst out laughing, the tension of the dreadful afternoon broken at last.
Even Papa laughed. He fluffed Edmund’s hair and reached out for the gun.
‘Here, give it to me,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ll give it to Mary Ann’s brother. I don’t think he should play with guns either, even if he is grown up. And now I am going to write to my MP to protest at this disgraceful invasion of privacy.’
‘That’s an excellent idea, Charles,’ said Mama. ‘I think I shall write a few letters too. We have to let those in authority know the outrage this has been, on a pacifist household such as this.’
Mary Ann and Amelia exchanged glances. They didn’t either of them think those in authority would be particularly impressed by outraged letters from Amelia’s mother. Her record as a model citizen was not entirely untarnished, for she herself had been arrested a couple of years ago for a breach of the peace while attending a Suffragette meeting, and had spent some time in gaol.
But this didn’t appear to occur to Amelia’s mother.
‘Now,’ she went on, ‘I expect Mary Ann has a lot of catching up to do and would be glad to have her kitchen to herself for a while. I suggest that all Pims evacuate the kitchen. You will stay, Mary Ann, dear, won’t you? We’d be lost without you, and I think Amelia would just die of grief. We do trust you, and we know you wouldn’t betray our trust, whatever your political feelings might be. Isn’t that right?’
‘Oh yes, Ma’am,’ said Mary Ann fervently, resolving on the spot never again even to dream of using this house as a hiding place for anything even remotely connected with violence. She would personally dispose even of Edmund’s toy gun in the dustbin, and that was the very last she would ever have to do with guns of any description.
Amelia Writes a Letter
The flower head that Amelia had randomly but lovingly snapped off and stuck in her buttonhole stood now in a little porcelain bud vase. Its purply blue spears had glowed staunchly for some days, and its searing yellow streak had gladdened her heart. But now it was starting to lose its gleaming hues, and the petals were turning mauve and papery and sad. Amelia touched it sorrowfully with the tips of her fingers as she pore
d over her task, and it rustled a papery rustle.
When Frederick’s letter had arrived, Amelia had been suffused with happiness. It lay there innocently by her breakfast plate, looking fat and exotically stamped and full of promise. It meant he was alive, of course, which was a relief, but it also meant that he cared enough to write to her. She didn’t even need to read the letter to know that much. The mere fact of its being there, plainly addressed, in the Quaker style, to Amelia Pim, was assurance enough.
‘Aren’t you going to open your letter, Amelia?’ Edmund had asked, spitting toast crumbs across the table cloth.
‘Yes,’ Amelia had replied vaguely, happily, not opening it.
‘Well, go on then,’ Edmund urged her, wriggling on his chair.
Slowly, Amelia had picked up the letter and slit it open with her knife. It wasn’t as long as it looked. It was fat mainly because Frederick had written on thick, lined paper, not because he had written a great deal. She tried not to be disappointed when she saw it was just a page and a half long, and she made a point of reading it very slowly to make it last. She didn’t want the happy feeling to go away.
But no matter how slowly she read it – and she paused every now and then to look over the top of it and give Edmund instructions about staying on his chair and not smearing butter in the marmalade dish – she couldn’t make it last more than a minute or two, and she couldn’t avoid noticing that the letter sounded strained and odd.
‘Is it from Frederick Goodbody, Amelia?’ asked Edmund.
‘Of course it is, Edmund,’ Mama intervened. ‘Who else would be writing to Amelia from the Front? And don’t ask questions with your mouth full.’
Frederick sounded thoroughly miserable. He described the boat journey, which Amelia had expected would be such fun, but he made it sound uncomfortable and sickening, and then he described a long march they had had to make when they’d arrived in France. He couldn’t say where they were going or why, of course, in case the letter should fall into enemy hands, but it seemed to be a terribly long distance to travel on foot. He said his boots were too tight and the leather too hard and he’d had to take them off in the end, because they blistered his feet and the blisters broke and festered. He tied the laces together and hung the boots around his neck. He sounded as if he was sorry he had ever joined up.
‘How is Frederick, dear?’ asked Mama gently.
‘Well. Very well,’ said Amelia curtly, folding the letter up again and putting it under her plate. Her head felt fuzzy.
She wondered why he had bothered to tie his boots around his neck. Why didn’t he throw them away if they were no good to him, and why didn’t he ask for a pair that fitted? She tried to imagine walking for miles and miles and days and days in ill-fitting boots with infected feet, and then she tried to imagine walking the same distance barefoot, with the added encumbrance of boots hanging about your neck and swinging against your chest or shoulders at every step, not to mention the backpack you would have to carry also, and your gun.
‘What does he say, Amelia?’ asked Edmund.
‘Edmund,’ said Mama in a warning tone.
The boy stuffed more toast into his mouth and waggled his legs emphatically and defiantly.
Amelia poured coffee for herself and her parents. Her hand shook, and it wasn’t just the weight of the coffee pot. There was a pricklish feeling at the back of her throat.
Edmund swallowed hard, licked his lips ostentatiously, to prove his mouth was empty, and asked:
‘Has he killed anyone yet?’
Amelia gave a little gasp and spilt some coffee on the snowy white tablecloth.
‘Edmund!’ thundered Papa. ‘That’s quite enough.’
‘I was only …’ Edmund started to squeak.
‘You will only be sent out of the room if there is another word out of you,’ said Papa.
Amelia was exasperated by Edmund, but she couldn’t bear the thought of a scene. So she put on what she meant to be a bright tone and said:
‘He says he had a lovely trip on a big boat, and they had sea shanties all the way and rum to drink. And now they are living in tents, like explorers, and have picnics for every meal, and adventures every day.’
But it didn’t come out bright at all. It came out in a semi-hysterical, high-pitched, gabbled monotone.
‘Gosh!’ said Edmund, half-frightened.
‘Don’t, Amelia!’ said Mama.
Amelia rammed her plate down harder on the letter, crushing it flat, and said:
‘Could we now please talk about something else? The price of cocoa perhaps? How is the commodities market this morning, Papa?’
‘Gosh!’ whispered Edmund again, and reached for some more toast.
That had been yesterday morning. Now she was calmer, of course. She should never have opened the letter in public like that. She could have coped with it much better if she’d been in the calm of her own room. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. Now she was trying to reply to this oddly disappointing letter, which sounded as if it had been written by a stranger. Well, it hadn’t been written by a stranger. It was Frederick, even if he was tired and confused and regretful, and she was plainly going to have to cheer him up.
Mama had said certainly she might write to Frederick. If she felt the urge to send him knobbly knitted socks and cocoa tablets, she could do so too, for we must distinguish between the war and the soldiers, Mama said, and so long as Amelia wasn’t planning on sending gunpowder or poisoned arrowheads, she could certainly correspond with Frederick. ‘Poor lamb,’ she added. This had been a great relief to Amelia, but now that she had the freedom to write, she didn’t know what to say.
She wondered whether socks would be such a good idea to send after all. Stout socks might afford some protection against the leather of stiff boots, but if the boots were too small, thick socks would only make it an even tighter squeeze, and if the socks were knitted and knobbly, they would chafe the blisters. Silk socks would be best, light silk ones next to the skin. She would see if she could get silk socks for Frederick. Even cotton ones would do, if they were fine enough. That would be a kindness. And she would advise him to ask for a better-fitting pair of boots. She thought Napoleon quite wrong to say that an army marched on its stomach. No amount of good feeding could compensate for ill-fitting boots.
She wrote these thoughts down, about the socks and asking for better boots, and she added the bit about Napoleon, because she thought it was clever and showed she could sympathise with a soldier’s hardships and also that it was rather wise.
She wanted to tell Frederick all about what was happening at home, the raid, for example. But just as she tried to compose a sentence to describe it, it occurred to her that these nasty, horrid soldiers who had invaded their house were comrades-in-arms, in a sense, of Frederick’s. Perhaps it wouldn’t do to tell him about the raid. And because she couldn’t tell him that, she couldn’t tell him how they had nearly lost Mary Ann, because of course that story depended on knowing about the raid.
She thought then that she might tell Frederick about the new straw hat she had just bought – her Easter bonnet it was to be. It had a most realistic bunch of fruit tucked into the band on one side, which gave it a colourful glow, all cherry red and plum purple and banana yellow against a deep and satisfying glossy green. But then she thought this sounded a little frivolous and selfish, in view of the problems with the boots.
She thought and thought, but she could come up with nothing, no news to tell him, no plans she could share, nothing. She looked at the two short paragraphs she had already written, thanking him for his letter and giving him absurd and grannyish advice about his footwear. She couldn’t even send him greetings from his family, for they never mentioned him, not even Lucinda, whom she saw every day at school. After that first day, when she had wept on Amelia’s shoulder, she had never breathed another word about her brave and errant brother.
In exasperation Amelia added a final paragraph to her letter, telling Frederi
ck that his family was well – that much at least she could vouch for, and certainly Lucinda was bouncing with health – and that she and her family were well, and expressing the devout if rather pointless hope that he too was well, and finally that she missed him very much. She regarded that last sentence, and wondered whether she ought to scratch it out. It embarrassed her, now that she had written it. But on reflection, she thought a scratched out sentence would be an irritation and in any case would make her letter such a mess that she would only have to write it all out again. So she left it in.
Then came the problem of the closing greeting. ‘Yours truly,’ that was what you said. Not ‘Yours faithfully,’ not to a close friend. But ‘Yours truly’ sounded stiff and strange. She looked at Frederick’s letter. ‘Your Frederick,’ he had signed it. That was nice. It made her feel warm. He was telling her that he was her Frederick. Yes, that would do. She would return the compliment. ‘Your Amelia,’ she added to hers with a flourish, squiggling her signature dramatically across the bottom half of the page so that it didn’t look so blank and empty.
She reread the letter. It sounded flat and cold to her, in spite of the felicitous ending. What could she do with it? Tentatively, she added a few crosses at the bottom, for kisses. She hoped that wasn’t too forward. Ink kisses didn’t really count, did they? She hoped not. She needed to send him something. She looked again at the fading iris. With a sudden smile, she snatched it out of its little vase, snipped the wet part of the stem off with her thumbnail, and patted the remaining stem against her blotter, to be quite sure it was dry. Then she folded the letter and slipped the papery flower inside it. She sealed the letter quickly into an envelope and addressed it, before she could change her mind about the iris and the kisses, and walked swiftly out and deposited it on the hall table, where all letters for the post were put.
She laid her index finger against the boldly written address, where the envelope lay pale and stark on the gleaming walnut patina of the table, and felt the dry flower crinkle under her fingertip. With a quick gesture she lifted her hand and kissed her fingertip and then laid it swiftly on the envelope again.
No Peace for Amelia Page 7