Absolute Hush

by Sara Banerji

  Elizabeth took a long nourishing draw and the grey colour began to leave her cheeks.

  ‘They’ll take him into a Home and make a man of him,’ said Mrs Lovage. Elizabeth let out a shriek of anguish.

  ‘They’ll let you see him on Sundays. And for the rest of the week he’ll be taught to do all sorts of things that’ll be useful to him when he’s grown up.’

  ‘What sort of things?’ cried Elizabeth, like one denying an accusation.

  ‘Well, polish his boots, wash behind his knees. Even lay the table. Sissy will be more docile after the boy’s gone, too.’

  Elizabeth rocked a little like a bereaved Arab and cried, ‘Part with my darlings? Oh, no, Mrs L. Never! Never! Never!’ but there was a lack of conviction in her voice which Mrs Lovage found encouraging.

  Mrs Lovage told her carefully. ‘They’re reaching the difficult age, you mark my words. You won’t be able to cope with two such children turned teenager, dearie.’

  Elizabeth began to sob into her hands. She looked up after a while, her eyes sparkling with tears, and said in a small shaky voice, ‘After all, Mrs L, it will be fun for him to be with other boys, instead of only having his sister to play with.’

  Mrs Lovage let out a sigh as though some great victory had been won.

  Out in the stable Sissy said to George, ‘You will have to hide all the time from now on. If they catch you now it will be borstal because, by running away, you have let them know you did it.’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ whimpered George. ‘I keep telling you.’

  ‘You’ll have to live up in the attic all the time and not even Mummy or Mrs Lovage can know you’re up there. And when you hear anyone but me, you’ll have to get out on to the roof and run. Those policemen will never catch you round the chimneys.’

  ‘Oh! Ah!’ wept George.

  ‘Come on. Stop blubbing. You shouldn’t have done it if you can’t take the consequences,’ snapped Sissy, totally in charge now.

  ‘But I didn’t,’ moaned George.

  Sissy said, ‘You’ve got to come out of here or they’ll have you trapped with a hand grenade.’

  ‘A hand grenade?’ gasped George, the blood draining from his face.

  ‘I think they’ve gone to get weapons,’ said Sissy.

  By the time Myrtle arrived with the blue chiffon dress tacked up for a fitting, Elizabeth was on her second cigarette and cup of tea, and feeling better, almost optimistic. The sight of the dress set her back, but Mrs Lovage swiftly calmed her.

  ‘It’s all right, dearie. I’ve seen our Sissy as good as gold sitting reading a book in the drawing-room. Her hands are even clean.’

  Elizabeth was amazed, and tried to picture Sissy good and Georgeless. Perhaps this was what Sissy was going to be like after George had gone into the Home.

  ‘Where is George?’ she asked Mrs Lovage, a bit nervously, not really wanting to know, but feeling she ought to. Mrs Lovage shrugged.

  ‘Skulking in the bushes no doubt. But the police will find him soon enough. Don’t worry about all that now, dearie. You just relax and see the pretty dress.’

  Elizabeth’s relief at Sissy present and amiable caused her to banish anxiety from her mind.

  When the dress was put on Sissy it looked so charming that Elizabeth let out a little cry of joy and gave Myrtle a pat on the back of her hand.

  Sissy did not even protest, as she had done at the measuring session the previous day, when pins prickled, chill scissor tips touched her skin, or Myrtle tittered.

  ‘That is very good indeed, dear,’ Elizabeth said to Myrtle at last, unable to keep the surprise from her voice. ‘You have talent.’

  Myrtle muttered, ‘It’s what I want to do when the war’s over. Make frocks.’

  Sissy’s stubby body, draped in the soft cloth, had taken on a shape. She seemed taller. She seemed almost pretty.

  By evening there was still no sign of George, but Elizabeth’s mind was no longer on him anyway. She had become totally involved in acquiring the things needed for making her dining-room beautiful; candles, floor wax, wood polish, Brasso, wire wool. Through Mrs Lovage and Myrtle’s boyfriend she had found most but was unable to get hold of any starch for the table napkins.

  ‘Starch?’ repeated the lady in the village shop. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’

  In the end Elizabeth reluctantly phoned Beattie.

  ‘Starch, Elizabeth! In the middle of the war?’ Beattie exclaimed.

  ‘Well, if you haven’t any, just say so,’ snapped Elizabeth.

  ‘Don’t get on your high horse,’ soothed Beattie. ‘I just wondered what you want it for.’

  ‘Well, what do you think? Starching cloth of course.’ Beattie was one of those people with whom it was safe to be rude. She practised a firm policy of forgiveness and turning the other cheek, and never retaliated, however hard she was provoked. And now that Tim was gone there was no one to make Elizabeth feel guilty about being rude to Beattie.

  ‘Well, naturally I understand that,’ assured Beattie calmingly. ‘But starch what? That’s the point.’

  Oh God, thought Elizabeth. Now she’s going to find out about the party and lecture me. But time was short and Elizabeth’s need dire.

  Elizabeth explained, adding, ‘It’s to help the young fighting men of the village.’

  There came a happy laugh from Beattie. ‘Well, dear, how nice of you. I hope you’re going to ask me too.’

  ‘I couldn’t hear,’ gasped Elizabeth numbly.

  ‘I said, I hope you are going to ask me too,’ shouted Beattie.

  Chapter 12

  No hand-grenade-bearing policemen came that day. Or the next.

  ‘Where is George?’ Elizabeth asked nervously and Sissy said swiftly, ‘We’re having our meals out. Camping,’ extending her hand vaguely to indicate some area beyond the house.

  In the evening Elizabeth asked, ‘Isn’t George going to say “goodnight”?’

  ‘He said, “Tell darling Mummy ‘goodnight’ but I’m busy with getting the camp-fire lit”.’

  ‘How sweet,’ sighed Elizabeth, seduced.

  Mrs Lovage, bagging peelings for Mr Lovage’s hens, said, ‘You oughtn’t to be lighting fires.’

  Elizabeth, relieved that for once Sissy and George were enjoying games like normal children, said, ‘They’ll take great care, Mrs L,’ and to Sissy, ‘Won’t you, dear?’

  ‘Him? Take care, mum?’ Mrs Lovage cried in horror, ‘Don’t you remember what it is the police want him for?’

  George, gone from shivering terror to depressed boredom from hours spent alone in the attics, moaned, ‘I can’t just sit up here doing absolutely nothing for days and days.’

  ‘You might have to for ever,’ said Sissy.

  ‘For ever?’ screamed George.

  ‘Well, what did you expect when you went and set those cottages on fire?’

  ‘I didididididi … nononono …’ George went off like a machine-gun.

  After Mrs Lovage had gone home and Elizabeth to bed, the twins crept, quivering with terror, out to the shrubbery with the Nymph Quilt and the tent that Aunt Beattie had given them.

  ‘I said we’re camping,’ Sissy explained.

  Blubbing with frustration, the pair crept among folds of rigid canvas, getting long lines tangled, trying futilely to thrust skewers into hard turf.

  It began to drizzle and George burst out, ‘It’s all your fault, Sis. If you’d just let Aunt Beattie show us how to put it up we’d be asleep by now.’

  Sissy, because she was experiencing a new sort of nervousness, gave George a smack.

  As it began to rain in earnest, the children started groping each other with hatred, only able to see shining glistens of each other where starlight caught the edge of water dripping off their teeth, their hair, their cheeks. They angrily grabbed at each other’s bodies, so tired and afraid that their reactions were wild and sore and violent. And in one moment, during which they fell apart and were preparing for another bout of
struggling, George, who had never even given Sissy the smallest slap, no matter how provoked, whacked her in her stomach. She reeled and shrieked, horrified, unable to believe, even as she crashed into the mud, that George had hit her.

  The rain hammered loudly on the leaves, the hard ground, and the crumpled canvas of the failed tent. Then Sissy, still sprawled, humped her body up a bit and began to be sick.

  It took George a moment or two to understand, in the noisy dark, what was happening. Then he realised and threw himself on top of her. He began to kiss her soaking hair and hug her round her body with arms desperate to be forgiven and to help her. He pressed his wet open mouth against the back of her neck and said over and over, ‘Darling, I’m sorry, forgive me, forgive me, I’m sorry.’ But Sissy just went on being sick and George did not even know if she could hear him.

  If it hadn’t been so dark, so wet, so frightening, George would have run back to the house and called Elizabeth. But he could feel Sissy shuddering and he knew he couldn’t leave her alone for a minute.

  She stopped vomiting after what seemed like ages.

  George pulled the canvas of the tent over the pair of them like a sheet. Sissy lay limp at first and then began shivering. George groped for the Nymph Quilt and, hauling that over her too, stroked Sissy’s hair till she fell asleep.

  He, however, lay awake for ages, the smell of canvas strong in his nostrils, the sound of rain hammering on the hard canvas like ack-ack guns.

  He had hit Sissy. Looking back, he saw that she had been sick on and off for weeks. And he had hit her when she was ill.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be needing food. I thought you were camping,’ Mrs Lovage said to Sissy at lunchtime the next day.

  ‘What do you expect us to eat? Buttercups?’ Sissy wailed indignantly.

  Elizabeth sighed. ‘We thought you’d catch rabbits and things. That’s what adventurous children do.’

  Mrs Lovage added, ‘When we were kiddies we ate the young tops of nettles stewed in a dab of butter.’

  After three days had passed and the police had still not come to arrest George, Elizabeth, in some abstracted way, felt as if he had already left home, and was being drilled with a rifle on his shoulder like a real little soldier, so when Sissy asked suddenly, ‘What’s George wearing?’ Elizabeth did not properly take it in.

  She said vaguely, ‘Wearing? George? For what?’

  ‘For the dinner party.’

  ‘I think he’s a bit young for dinners,’ mumbled Elizabeth. She would not have spoken so calmly if she had been able to see Sissy’s face.

  There fell a sharp silence.

  Then Sissy said, her voice icy, ‘I don’t think you have understood, Mother. If he doesn’t come, I don’t either.’

  ‘There, there, dearie,’ said Mrs Lovage to Elizabeth. ‘George’ll probably be gone by then, anyway.’ But she spoke without her previous conviction. ‘If the police don’t come in time you can always give him his father’s things on the night. He’s a fat boy so he’s probably got the same waist and chest measurements as Mr Tim.’

  ‘If I’m having a new dress, I don’t see why George should have to make do with hand-me-downs,’ sneered Sissy.

  ‘Your father’s!’ gasped Elizabeth, as though talking about the relics of a saint. She lit a cigarette and waited for the gentle blue fumes of nicotine to still her exasperation.

  ‘Oh, God, put it out!’ cried Sissy.

  ‘What?’ Elizabeth stared, eyes narrow against the slow smoke.

  ‘It stinks! It’s vile!’ said Sissy, going pale and covering her face in her hands.

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ Elizabeth chided, puffing more deeply.

  Sissy rushed out, making gagging sounds.

  ‘She’s gone quite mad,’ said Elizabeth to Mrs Lovage.

  Mrs Lovage did not answer, but stared after the fleeing figure of Sissy with speculation in her eyes.

  ‘Do you think she’s got some illness, Mrs L?’ asked Elizabeth pathetically. ‘If she has, my party might be ruined.’

  ‘Maybe not, mum,’ muttered Mrs Lovage, filled with suspicion.

  Something in Mrs L’s tone made a horrid fear creep like a tiny smoke tendril into Elizabeth’s mind. She thrust it out instantly as ludicrous.

  George, out in the copse, poked a dry grass into an ant hole and watched, without much interest, the way the frantic creatures scurried. The only thing that made his life bearable was embracing Sissy under the folds of the Nymph Quilt at night. But nowadays even that was not the same.

  ‘You ought to see a doctor. Your titties have gone black and sore. You’re getting sick all the time. You can’t bear the smell of Mother’s smoke.’ Four days of captive camping and constant anxiety had made him irritable. ‘And suppose you have to go to hospital, Sis, what will I do? Who will get food for me? How will I know when the police are coming?’

  Sissy gazed at him, outraged. ‘That’s all you care about, is it, you selfish creature?’ she stormed. ‘You don’t care about my suffering, but only about food … And fucking!’

  ‘What?’ asked George gobbling.

  ‘Myrtle called it that when she described the things she did with her Yank when they go out together, and I realised that it’s what we do.’

  There was a long silence.

  George bent forward and seemed to be carefully examining a quite unexceptional blade of grass.

  After what seemed to Sissy like ages, and during which she began to get nervous and wonder what she had said wrong, George asked, ‘What’s that word again, Sis? The one that Myrtle told you?’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Sissy dully.

  George looked up. He smiled and said beamingly, ‘Shall we fuck, Sis?’

  ‘They caught him at last,’ Mrs Lovage said the next day, as she came in, pulling off her headscarf.

  Elizabeth said indifferently. ‘Caught who, Mrs L?’

  ‘The fellow who set the cottages in Bedham on fire.’

  Sissy, leaving the kitchen, arms clutching a colander of old peas, flywalk, and cold sausages, paused.

  Elizabeth stammered doubtfully, ‘But … but I thought it was George who had done it.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Mrs Lovage seemed despondent. ‘It was a chap who discovered his wife had been … you know,’ she looked warningly in the direction of Sissy, ‘… doing it with the neighbour while he was off fighting in North Africa.’

  ‘But … but … but,’said Elizabeth.

  ‘So our George is in the clear,’ said Mrs Lovage, sighing.

  Sissy crept back to the copse, dropping peas through the colander’s holes without noticing, and thinking heavily.

  ‘You look worried, Sis,’ said George. ‘Did you hear anything about the police?’

  ‘No,’ lied Sissy. ‘Not yet.’

  In that moment Sissy had seen a way of keeping George for herself instead of having to share him with Elizabeth. He’d come down for the party, but that was all.

  On the fifth day the blue chiffon dress was ready. Elizabeth, Myrtle, and Mrs Lovage pulled it over Sissy’s head and Elizabeth gathered together the waist to button it. There came a gasp of admiration as the three prepared to admire their handiwork.

  Then Elizabeth let out a wild shriek of anguish.

  ‘You’ve got too fat!’ she cried. ‘In just five days you’ve got too fat for the dress!’

  I’ve only been in here three months but am developing deliriously, revelling in the steadiness of flesh and blood and gristle. When I was clothed in smoke I had to shape it endlessly and still it kept drifting away from me.

  I will be with you soon, Earth. The hero is swelling well under the folds of Sissy’s dress.

  Chapter 13

  On the day of the dinner party Myrtle, with a suppressed snigger, tacked a loose gusset to the waist of Sissy’s dress to make it close across Sissy’s belly.

  ‘All ones littlejoys are deprived one – Sissy getting fat. Perhaps I won’t let her come, after all,’ mourned Elizabeth. ‘And I wan
t young attractive men sitting by me at the dinner table but suppose I’ll have to have ugly senior ones or they’ll be offended. I’ll put the padre on my left. Barney. At least he’s handsome in spite of not being young.’

  Sissy felt unfairly treated. No one had thought it her fault when she became taller than George. Even he, humiliated and aggrieved as he was, had not accused her of doing it on purpose. But, because she had got fat, Mrs Lovage had caught hold of her arm and had hissed, ‘You filthy little slut! How could you bring such a disgrace on your poor mother who has given up so much and suffered so for your sake?’

  Sissy had been reminded of an angry goose that had chased her and George across Potter’s Farm. Its eyes had glittered, its sharp tongue had vibrated, and its voice had been a sibilant hiss too.

  ‘You’ll break your poor dear mother’s heart, you will, you dirty girl and you with all your advantages and never having to go short …’ Mrs Lovage seemed to be quite breathless with anger. ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Myrtle’s put another bit in so I don’t see what the problem is …

  ‘Problem!’ cried Mrs Lovage. Then mystified Sissy further by asking ferociously, ‘Is the fellow black? If he is that’ll really be the end of your poor mother, you slut.’

  ‘I don’t like to be called these horrid names, Mrs Lovage,’ said Sissy, trying to draw herself up with dignity, but the ferocity of the attack had shaken her.

  ‘Oh, well, what’s done’s done, and, black or white, it’s down the lav before any one has time to know. Tomorrow I’ll get you some quinine. You can’t have it today because it makes you ever so ill, and you won’t be any good for the party. Not that, in my opinion, you deserve to have a nice dinner with starched napkins, and PX rolls, but, still, we don’t want your mother getting suspicious.’

  ‘She’s gone potty like the greengrocer’s Clive,’ Sissy told George when she brought him some food at midday.

  The whole village had heard Clive shrieking the night his leave ended, and Doctor Hobbs, after examining him, said his nerve had gone because of the bombs.