‘Here’s some news,’ Lucy said. ‘Dan’s home for Christmas.’
‘Oh, how splendid!’
Daniel Corey was a friend from our childhood at Upton School. We hadn’t seen him since the summer when he came home on leave after Dunkirk. Then he was sent away into the east of England, there to transform the flat shoreline into a bulwark against enemy landings. ‘Think of all those concrete blocks,’ I said now. ‘Like giant sugar lumps, all along the beaches. They’ll stop a tank dead.’
‘That’s what Dan says.’
‘It’s true. Anyway, the Germans can’t bring an army across. Colonel Daventry says they haven’t got the boats.’
‘Let’s hope he’s right.’ Lucy stared for a moment into the middle distance. Then she sniffed. ‘Tell you one thing. If those buggers come up the high street, there’ll be trouble if they shoot me dead. I’m the only one who can start that bloomin tractor.’
I couldn’t help smiling. ‘How is it on the farm?’
‘Cold. The dogs, they worked up a good fug.’
The first proper grin of the old days.
‘I was thinking of that pie earlier,’ I found myself saying. ‘The first one I had from your nan. I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘Oh, yes. Nan’s flaky pastry.’ Her face softened. ‘You was so perishing hungry.’ She released Pamela’s hand, patting the back of it. ‘I’ve got to get back to that harrow. Stay and play with those donkeys a while, unless you want a lift back to the turning?’
‘No, we’ll walk.’
‘I’ll say ta-ta, then, Pamela.’ She went off towards the steps. ‘Shut the gate,’ she called back, ‘or Mary Wiley’s dog’ll come and have a go at Maurice.’
‘Who’s Maurice?’
‘The tortoise,’ Pamela said. ‘Ta-ta, Lou.’
Pamela and I made our way home, unprovisioned. We’d all have an early tea of potato pie if there was some lard. I hoped there was some lard. Beacon Hill was caught in pale sunlight. I wanted to take Pamela there and lie on the top as I had with my brother Edward when we were young. She hung on my hand, whining, dragging her feet. ‘That bread didn’t touch the sides, did it?’
‘Touch the sides of what?’
‘The sides of your tummy.’ But she didn’t really understand. I drew her onward down the winter lane to home, and found four loaves on a rack on the kitchen table. Quickly I put them away before she caught sight of them. Then I took her upstairs to get warm under the bedcovers. She stared at me as I moved around the room, so small and huddled in the bed. I was already cold and the sight of her, snug against the pillows, made me feel even colder.
‘I’ll get in with you, Pamela. Five minutes can’t hurt.’
She rolled away from me and started to breathe hard, in and out. I wondered for a moment if she was starting to sob, but I soon realized she was simply puffing and blowing for the enjoyment of it, like a small engine at rest. The rhythm soothed me, and I fell headlong into a deep sleep.
The slam of the front door woke me. The last boy into the house walloped it shut. Pamela was now crying quietly.
She elbowed me away. ‘No. I want to be on my own.’
I made some pastry while the boys, subdued and orderly, peeled the potatoes. ‘Pamela’s lost her mother,’ I told them. ‘She died in the bombing.’ I hated saying this, but they had to know. ‘Only speak about this if she does. Be as kind as you possibly can.’
Pamela came downstairs, and the boys fell into a deathly, unnatural quiet until Hawley lifted her onto a kitchen stool and gave her a slice of carrot. She ate it, and started to groan with hunger. I didn’t offer her any bread because it would immediately mean four slices off the first loaf, since the boys wouldn’t stand for being left out. When suppertime came she beat the boys to an empty plate, and Donald, used to being the youngest and hungriest, was aggrieved. ‘She’s as greedy as a dog, Mrs Parr!’
‘Donald, that is not kind. Pamela’s hungry.’
‘She’s going to eat all our food. Munch and gobble up the meat and everything nice.’
‘She’s got her own coupons. For that teasing, Donald, you stack the dishes. Hawley, please take them to the sink so Jack can start the washing-up. Pamela, darling, please don’t cry. There, there, darling. Oh, Donald, don’t start too, for heaven’s sake.’ The uproar drew Elizabeth from the vegetable garden. She clasped Pamela to her, and stood viewing me in the midst of my domestic straits. No help, no calming shushes came my way. Instead, unaccountably, in the face of the sobbing of the two younger children, the clattering of plates, the strewing of scraps of potato peel on the floor, the bullock-like jostling of the two older boys at the sink – in the face of this, Elizabeth succumbed to helpless laughter.
The boys took Pamela upstairs for a game of snap. Elizabeth, Selwyn and I tackled the remains of the potato pie. The dish was wholesome, with a dried sprig of mint snipped small and mixed with the potatoes. Elizabeth and I ate with relish but Selwyn left a slab of pastry on his plate.
‘I’m sorry we missed the bus, darling. I’d have made a better job of supper, if we’d been shopping.’
‘I wasn’t blaming you.’ He pushed away the pastry with his fork, politely, to show he had finished. ‘You were saddled with Pamela. By the way – was she playing with the telephone today?’
‘The telephone?’
‘There’s a crack in the receiver.’
I remembered the bang it had made as it hit the wall. I hadn’t noticed any damage when I’d made my own telephone call. But then I’d been so flustered.
‘She shouldn’t, you know. It’s not a toy.’
‘I realize that. No, it wasn’t Pamela.’
‘Did you dash it to the ground in rage?’ He gave me a tired smile. ‘I wouldn’t blame you, if you were speaking to the Ministry. We’ll have to do another letter. It’s getting ridiculous.’
The Ministry. Of course. We needed to replace the metal screen which stopped the flotsam of the channel from getting into the mill turbine. The screen was rusting, much patched with wire. The next split would be irreparable. But we couldn’t obtain a new screen without an order from the Ministry.
‘I haven’t yet. I’m so sorry.’ I picked up my plate and clinked the cutlery onto it. ‘I must have replaced the receiver clumsily.’ I stood up and took his plate. ‘I wasn’t saddled with Pamela, actually. We just set out too late. It won’t happen again.’
Elizabeth and I carried the plates to the kitchen. When I returned alone he was sitting with his head in one hand. I sat down beside him without speaking. After a moment he lifted his head and stared at the curtained window.
‘I passed a house today,’ he said. ‘With its face torn away, only the gable remaining.’ His eyes wandered towards mine. ‘It reminded me of someone I met in the hospital gardens. Nothing left below the browline, yet somehow the man was alive. Bandaged, of course. With a tube for breathing.’
Where had Selwyn been treated after the Great War? Somewhere in the North, I thought, a stately house of grey stone, viridian lawns, a cedar casting black shadow. He’d told me about it when we met, but the details had since escaped me. We were in peacetime back then. Why should I remember?
‘I didn’t realize there were any … I thought your hospital was only for nerve patients.’
‘It was.’
The horror reigned inside me for a long moment. Then I opened my palm and put my hand over his and formed my lips for speaking. ‘Next time,’ I said, ‘I will go to Southampton. You know how much I like driving the lorry.’
His own lips moved. ‘It’s no picnic. Slag heaps of rubble. And smoke.’
‘You’d better give me some tips, then.’
‘Practical girl.’
Elizabeth came in from the kitchen bearing toast cut into fingers and sprinkled with a few grains of sugar. ‘Pudding,’ she announced.
I put Pamela to bed without opposition. I said that it was her turn to tell me a story, and so she did, one about her imaginary donkeys.
/> ‘Did you know, Mummy was killed in the bombs?’ she suddenly said, on the edge of sleep. ‘That’s what Donald said when we were doing snap with the cards.’
I sat back down on the bed and clasped her shoulders. ‘I was going to tell you, darling, but I thought I would wait until you asked. You must forgive Donald. He doesn’t think before he speaks—’
‘All the boys said it.’ Her eyes were limpid, tearless. ‘They also said you can’t come back from Heaven. You can look down, though. Hawley’s grandpa’s looking down, he says. He went up there from drinking drinks, though, not from the bombs.’ She rolled away and put her thumb in her mouth.
7
PAMELA DIDN’T BREAK my night this time. And when I woke early she was still asleep, motionless on her stomach, issuing soft snores, her arm flung over a pillow. I’d do better today. Get her some proper warm clothes – a coat, a nightdress, stockings. We’d have plenty of time if I went to the office early. Got the most important letters done before breakfast.
As I watched she rolled without waking onto her side and drew up her knees, giving the pillow a hearty kick.
‘Silly nonsense,’ she declared, and I almost laughed. Somewhere in her sleeping mind she’d found a place without grief and knowledge, huddled into it like a mouse into the bole of a tree. I encircled her with my arms for five minutes or so, and she smelled of warm, dry, brushed cotton, and something else, that somewhat salty aroma of newly baked bread I had noticed when I lifted her off the seat of the bus. What was it? Her heated skin, her hair at the nape of her neck? I didn’t know.
Stealthily I got up and dressed, and went to the mill before dawn broke. I climbed the stairs to the office, my feet finding their way in the gloom. The stairs were wooden, with two worn dips in each tread. We were to install a fine iron stair, fit for a century to come, but the war began and there was no metal for such vanities.
I lit the gas lamp and typed in my coat. I no longer had my book from the loft at the Absaloms, coated with dust and mildew and the frass of woodworm. Typewriting: A Practical Manual Based Upon the Principles of Rhythm and Touch. By W. R. Sedley. The back had been eaten half off but there had been a keyboard, a cardboard keyboard which folded out, and I used to batter this keyboard with my fingers according to the principles of rhythm and touch. I had no idea, half the time, whether I was right or wrong.
‘Darling, what are you doooing?’ came the worn cooing from the bedroom, and I would reply, ‘Homework, Mother. Just thinking out my arithmetic.’
I found my shorthand pad and wrote now to the Ministry, Selwyn’s voice in my ears and in the rhythms of my fingers. If the screen is regularly put out of action our stoppages will mount until we are unable to fulfil our orders. There is a certain truth, Mr Gresham, in the saying ‘spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’. I considered this saying, and substituted another, more apt in my opinion. For want of a nail the shoe was lost. And I added: I am sure, sir, you are familiar with the final lines of this rhyme. Perhaps this was going too far. But the prevarications of Mr Gresham were wasting our paper, ink, typewriter ribbon, postage, not to mention the time and attention of our women. Perhaps I should add something about morale. Our own manager, a capable woman, reports that the constant repairs to broken machinery sap her morale—
As if by telepathy, Suky Fitch stuck her head around the door. ‘I’m closing the sluicegate, Mrs Parr.’
‘Suky. How do you feel, when the screen needs mending?’
She stared.
‘I’m writing to the Ministry. Would you say it sapped your morale?’
‘Oh. Yes.’ She grinned. The most unsappable woman one could hope to meet. ‘And that of my workforce.’
… and that of her workforce. ‘Thanks. Why isn’t Mr Parr doing the sluice?’
Suky raised her shoulders. In someone less delicate it would be a shrug. ‘I don’t know. He asked me. Oh – I saw you with the little girl. Yesterday on my day off. You were running for the bus. I was on it, but I couldn’t make that old sourpuss of a driver stop. Oh, I felt for you.’ She was smiling down at me, warmth in her bright blue eyes.
‘Oh, yes. We missed it by a mile. Children.’ I shook my head as if knowingly. Where was Selwyn?
‘I expect you’ll be glad to get her settled,’ Suky said. ‘The Henstrows are respectable people, very clean. Mrs Henstrow I’ve always found very … practical.’
I let my fingers drop onto the keyboard. A handful of keys rose into the air, the limbs of a struggling metal insect.
‘The Henstrows?’
‘That farm up at Speeds Hill, yes. You sound like you’re getting a throat, Mrs Parr. Be sure and tie your scarf high. Peter told me last night. Peter Flack, Constable Flack, you know he’s my half-brother. Oh, Mrs Parr, are you off, then?’
I fled out, coat unbuttoned. The cold air in my throat like pewter. I reached the house, skating on the damp flagstones of the path. I went into the hall. ‘Selwyn!’
His voice came, muffled, from our bedroom. I ran upstairs.
He was sitting on the floor with Pamela. Between them was a wavering rank of toy soldiers and a cushion.
‘The Henstrows,’ I said. ‘Suky told me.’
‘Yes.’ He levered himself to his feet, tugging the bags out of the knees of his trousers. ‘I arranged it yesterday. We got them in the nick of time. They were about to take a boy from Portsmouth. I’ve just been explaining it all to Pamela. I thought it was important that we had a proper talk about it as soon as she woke up.’
Pamela toured a toy soldier over the plumped cushion. ‘I’m going to be with a family, you know, Ellen.’ She spoke without turning her head, her face a small, pale, full moon in the wardrobe mirror.
‘You telephoned.’ I looked at Selwyn. ‘Yesterday afternoon, while we were out.’
I sank down onto the bed. He came to sit beside me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His wrists were thin, the veins stark, his cuffs frayed. His large, spare hands were beautiful. ‘Darling—’
‘Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?’
‘I should have. I know.’
In the mirror I saw Pamela’s face close. It was almost nothing, a barely perceptible tightening of the corners of her mouth. Many people wouldn’t have noticed, but I knew her face already.
Selwyn spoke. ‘We were thinking about packing, Pamela and I.’
I got up and left the room. On the landing I paused. In front of me was a picture, a Victorian oil of a family of bucolics disporting themselves in a tree-shrouded lane entirely free of mud and animal dung. Young and old alike were rosy-cheeked, clad in clean, white smocks. I felt a blunt stab of pain, as if from a bone needle.
Selwyn followed me out, laid a hand on my shoulder, withdrew it again when I didn’t turn round. ‘Selwyn, did you know I hate this picture beyond measure?’
He gave a small puff of soundless laughter, agonized. ‘I love you so much.’
‘What?’ The word broke out of me in a stunned gasp. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
Pamela opened the door. ‘Why are you whooshing?’ she asked.
‘Pamela,’ I said, ‘why don’t you make a battlefield? You can show the boys when you’ve finished.’
We went downstairs. The boys were chattering in the kitchen, and Elizabeth was hanging the children’s smalls on a clothes-horse in front of the sitting-room fire. We slipped outside and sat on a bench in the garden. For a minute, sitting straight-backed in the sharp frost and the low morning sun, I felt that we were both young, with everything before us. A great shiver convulsed me.
He began speaking immediately. ‘I can’t have a child in this house. It’s too dangerous.’
I gaped. ‘What are you talking about? The house is full of children. They’re here because it’s safe.’
‘It won’t be, in an invasion.’
‘My God.’ The nerves leaped in my belly. ‘Have you heard something? Has there been a warning?’ I clutched his arm. ‘Selwyn—’
‘He didn’t say anything about that when I saw him.’
‘Discretion is the watchword. He probably didn’t know then.’
Above me the mill rose quiet in the sunlight. Such a fine place it was, well-founded and built for peace, the only damage two centuries of weathering by frost and sun. I could not picture it pierced by gunsights, even less wreathed in smoke. The idea was sickening. I wrapped my arms around my body. If no one would comfort me, I would do it myself. ‘Why just Pamela?’ I spoke mutinously. ‘Why aren’t the boys going?’
‘Their families will take them when the moment comes.’
‘If it comes.’
‘If it comes. But with Pamela it’s different. Her life’s been shattered. We can’t risk her taking root here, and then having to be moved again. It wouldn’t be fair. Constable Flack suggested we find her a family, and that’s what I’ve done. On a farm, far from the roads, as safe as can be, for the duration of the war. That’s no more than our duty, in my view.’
The sun was lifting into the bare branches of the rowan tree. There was a rowan outside my house at the Absaloms, and an owl that used to perch in it. The tree and the sun were tainted now with a dreadful bitterness. If only Selwyn hadn’t driven down to fetch the grain. If only he hadn’t seen the city after the air raid.
‘I should have gone to Southampton,’ I said.
He laughed; it was an unpleasant sound. ‘Yes, you should,’ he said. ‘You’d have seen the children then, with tears running through the soot on their cheeks. It’ll be worse, of course, after the actual invasion.’ He turned to look at me. ‘You really should have seen France in the last war, Ellen. Children standing alone in shelled houses, too stunned to cry, surrounded by the bodies of their families.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, France. You’d know, then, what could happen to Pamela.’
We Must Be Brave Page 7