Winter came and, with it, my thirteenth birthday. Mother gave me a silk fan in a silk bag. The silk was the colour of a tea rose and the fan opened to show a sepia line-drawing of an oriental scene: pagodas, bridges, long-tailed birds in the sky. The birds looked fat and good to eat.
‘It’s beautiful, Mother. Thank you.’ I folded the fan and returned it to its bag.
That Christmas there was no duck from Miss Dawes, and Mother and I didn’t attempt to celebrate the feast. For a large part of the afternoon she paced up and down the lane. I lay on the bed and remembered last year, drowsing in the mild sunshine on Beacon Hill, the turf against my cheek and Edward lying beside me.
A letter had come from him recently, along with a pitiful amount of money, disbursed to the grocer, paying off half our mounting bill. We’ve all been taken with dysentery and I have had to buy quantities of kaolin and morphine. Extremely unfortunate but not without comic aspects. I became so thin that when I sneezed my trousers fell down around my ankles. Stouter now, however.
‘Is there something funny about a young man’s trousers falling down?’ my mother had asked when I laughed. ‘Both vulgar and flippant.’
She’d stared at me; she had a new way of staring, unblinking and oddly concentrated, as if she were trying to bore into my mind with her tiny black pupils.
On Boxing Day the pipe froze outside, and split to show a wink of granular ice. I climbed over the rickety fence at the end of the lane to a well half-hidden by the nettles. I hauled off the cover in stages, resting by leaning against the well. The bucket thudded down onto ice, so I pulled it up and threw half a dozen large stones down. Once the ice was broken up I lowered the bucket again. When I pulled it up for a second time, water streamed from a split in the side. I stood, panting, watching the water pour back down the shaft.
I heard a clang, and looked up to see someone closing the gate on the far side of the waste ground. It was a man in a wide-brimmed hat, moving slowly: as he raised the hat I saw that it was Mr Kennet.
He came and stood beside me and we peered into the now empty bucket.
‘Hello, Mr Kennet. I broke it when I threw it down on the ice.’
His maimed hand stretched into the bucket and inched crabwise over the split. Then he stepped away and stood for a moment, casting his eyes around. ‘Ah,’ he said, and went over to a fallen-down shack – a hen house, I thought – and tore a wide square of the tarred material off the roof. ‘Put this in and push it well down. No, the other way up. The underside is clean, look.’
I did what he said.
‘Now some string.’ He delved in his jacket pocket and handed me a bundle of twine. ‘Whip that around the outside, tight like a pudding. And then a stone in the bottom.’
I bound up the lining and let the bucket down and filled it. He took the rope from my hands and began to haul. Soon the bucket was standing on the edge of the well. Water slopped, but only from the top. The repair was sound. The sun danced on the water, and I realized what a beautiful day it was, clear and mild.
‘Where did you come from?’ I found myself asking.
‘I work for Lady Brock.’ He jerked his head to the north. ‘At Upton Hall. My job’s the kitchen garden, but sometimes I walk out this way.’
Beacon Hill lay high and quiet beyond the flat fields, the sheep-tracks on its sides sharply lit by low winter sunshine.
‘It was your pie, Mr Kennet.’ I realized it almost as I spoke.
‘Pardon?’
‘That evening at Mrs Horne’s house. It was your pie that I ate. You gave it to me.’
‘Oh yes.’ He nodded. ‘So I did.’
‘Thank you for that. It was extremely kind. Sometimes I feel faint, you see. It’s just because I’m growing so fast.’
He gave me a smile. ‘I was the same, your age.’
‘And thanks for mending the bucket.’
‘It won’t last long.’
‘Neither did the pie!’
‘Ha! Ha!’ His eyes went into slits when he laughed. I laughed as well, too wildly. I couldn’t remember the last time I had. Then we stood quiet again, but he continued to smile at me. He had such a nice smile, square at the edges like his face, showing good square teeth.
Someone far away started chopping wood, the axe blows carrying clear through the cold air.
Seeing that I had brought no container, he untied the bucket from its rope and walked with me to the fence. I had a sudden dread that he’d come to our door, perhaps see inside, how we lived. But he stopped as we reached the boundary. ‘Give my regards to your mother, miss.’
I climbed over the fence and took the bucket from him. ‘You know her?’ I was instantly ashamed at the surprise in my voice.
‘I pruned your apple trees, once upon a time, at your old house,’ he said. ‘I expect it was before you were born.’ Then he turned his back and set off again over the waste ground.
‘Who did you say?’ Mother tipped her head at the mirror, this way and that.
‘Mr Kennet. He said he used to work for you and Daddy.’
‘Oh, William Kennet. Yes. We used to know him … What about him?’
‘I just told you. He mended the bucket.’
‘Should I shingle my hair, darling?’ Her hair was in a loose, greasy bun: she raked it with stiff fingers.
I was used to Mother’s ways but this was too much and I snapped at her now.
‘Must you be so off-hand? He was very kind. Not only did he mend the bucket, he gave me his pie at the Hornes’—’
She wheeled on me, her face contorted by a sudden fury. ‘You went to George Horne’s house? George Horne, who cleans up dog mess for a living. And his daughter a cretin, unable to write her own name.’ She went to the door and jammed her hat on her head. Loops of hair hung down unevenly on either side. I watched her make her way down the path, her shoes slipping off the backs of her feet so that the heels clopped on the stones. Her feet were so thin. Perhaps the hunger had shrunk her brain as well.
In the second week of January Mr Dawes sent Mr Blunden to mend the pipe. He hammered a sleeve of lead around the crack and then lagged it with rags. It thawed enough to give us a trickle of icy water, and froze again. A yellow rime grew around the windows and the sink. I dragged in wet mossy logs, damp sacks of leaves, sticks, swathes of ivy and shards of bark that ran with woodlice. I dried it all as best I could but it still smoked. We sat by the smoke, feet propped on a chest because it was painful to set foot on the icy floor. I found an old sheepskin we’d brought from the Stour House and put it in the bottom drawer of the chest, and then I put my feet in the drawer and wrapped the sheepskin round until I could feel them again. At night we lay in our coats, side by side under a quilt with a carpet laid over the top, a Turkey rug, historically dark red, now brown, saturated with the smell of mice.
One afternoon I came home to find my mother kneeling in front of a sorry little heap of kindling and a dead match, and nothing in the scuttle but a smear of soot.
In the morning I went to Lucy.
‘Lucy, we must have coal.’
Her face was yellow in the winter light, her eyes very dark and blank. She twisted her mouth. ‘Wait for me after school at the top of your lane.’
She appeared out of the dark with a lantern and a sack. ‘Come on.’ She spoke without breaking her stride.
‘Where are we going?’ I fell in behind her.
‘To the sidins.’
‘The sidings?’
‘The say-dings?’ she echoed, mimicking. ‘May dyah. Not only does Ay have to show you where the say-dings are, but tell you what they are. You’re the bitter end, you truly are.’
I kept on following her through the dark. I didn’t care what she said, as long as she led me to the coal.
‘And your ma too. If she’s so good at sewin, why don’t she come down the Hall with Nan and Mrs Broad and sew for George and Emily Rail, that lost the whole back of their house when the rick caught fire? Five children and not a stitch between th
em. Instead of prancin along the lane with her hat on sideways.’
‘We didn’t know about the fire.’
‘Didn’t know! Didn’t know! The whole bloomin village saw it go up. Lady Brock ran up some nighties. And Mrs Daventry from The Place. They turned up. She don’t even go to church.’ She meant my mother. ‘She don’t do nothin.’
‘No,’ I agreed.
‘And now you’ve got no bloody coal.’
‘No.’
‘You take the biscuit.’
‘I only wish I could.’ I sighed. ‘I’d love a biscuit.’
Lucy stopped, so abruptly that I bumped gently into her back. She turned round, holding the lamp so that it made dark hollows of her eyes. ‘What did you have for your tea?’
‘Tea.’
‘Yes, tea,’ she said impatiently. ‘What did you have?’
‘I just said. We had tea. With milk in.’
‘Holy Christ, Ellen.’
In the dark we slid down over frozen mud and chalk onto the railway line. Above us there was a tangle of branches where the trees closed in and, down at the end of the line, a blockhouse and a square window filled with yellow light. Next to it, a coal truck, silent and black. Lucy doused her lamp. ‘Sam Pearce is in there. We don’t want him to find us. No, we don’t. So you just keep your mouth shut and your head down, and he won’t see us at all.’
Sam Pearce was young and fat with a small stoker’s cap on the back of his head and shaven stubble above his ears. I could see one small eye, oddly thickly lashed and a thick eyelid too, like a pig’s. He turned his head quite regularly, his jowl bulging over his collar. I realized that he was reviewing a spread deck of cards. We were in full darkness, keeping to the bank where our footfalls were soft.
At last we got to the truck. Up close it was a behemoth. I couldn’t see how we were to reach the coal.
Lucy was picking her way down the bank onto the line. The track was bedded on sharp chunks of granite that ground together under her boots, making an electrifying crick-crick-crick. I crouched, paralysed by the noise, and Lucy kept stock-still. Sam Pearce didn’t look up. Lucy was waiting for me to give the all-clear: she couldn’t see the window because the truck shielded her from the blockhouse. I made myself wave, and then crept sideways down the bank and onto the line. My eyes had been dimmed by the strong light from Sam Pearce’s window but now I could see pieces of coal everywhere on the ground, under the truck and beside it. Lucy was already busy filling the sack. We laid each coal in as if it were porcelain.
A sudden, horrifying screech: a door, being forced open over a cindered step. Then the blockhouse light went out. Pitch black, and heavy feet descending. Along the ground, the sweep of a torch beam in time with the same footsteps. Lucy fumbled for my hand and I clutched her fingers.
The beam travelled over the sharp stones and towards the truck. I squeezed my eyelids shut and saw a golden glare which dimmed and flared. But then I heard the scrape of shoe-soles on grit as he turned on his heel. The torch beam swept away. The footsteps receded and the door squealed once more. Lucy’s fingers slid from mine. The blockhouse light came on again and her face was before me, white as a chip of chalk. ‘We’re all right. Let’s get a bit more in.’
‘Oh, no, Lucy, please, let’s go now—’
‘I’m not shittin myself for half a bag of coal.’
We filled the bag and sidled out from under the truck. I wondered how black my hands and face were. The soot seemed sticky; I’d have to get rid of it somehow with our sliver of soap. The door screeched open again, the feet tramped down the steps, and the torch flared over us, over my black hands, over Lucy’s knee and a patch of raw skin the size of a halfpenny. And Sam Pearce a phantom behind the torch beam, laughing.
‘I thought I heard some coal rats. Never thought it’d be you, Lucy Horne, and with such a fair friend and all.’
He had a little rasp of a voice that came from high in his nose. He bent down and put his large, warm hand around my upper arm. His huge fingers and thumb met. An odour came off him far deeper and ranker than any classroom air at Upton School.
‘Get your sweaty paws off her—’ Lucy yelled, throwing herself at him, but he caught her by the collar. The torch fell to the ground. In the gloom he swung us both towards the blockhouse. ‘Pick up the torch, Lucy Horne.’
My voice turned to a high babble. ‘Please don’t please don’t touch me, Mr Pearce, you may take the coal, please—’
‘Not before I’ve had a bit o’ company.’
Lucy picked up the torch and began a shocking refrain. ‘Fuck you, Sam Pearce. Fuck you and your fuckin disgustin ways. You won’t touch that girl, nor will she touch you—’
He laughed, the torchlight playing over his jowls, his eyes hidden. ‘Or what? Your little ferret of a dad’ll come and see to me?’ He gave a buzzing snort. ‘He wouldn’t find the guts, not if he had till kingdom come.’ He pushed us ahead of him. ‘Now light our way or you’ll dash your brains out on them steps.’
We climbed the stairs to the upper door, Sam Pearce pushing in the small of my back and hooking Lucy’s coat in his fist so that her collar fairly choked her. My knees were shaking too much to go at any speed. He shoved us ahead of him through the door and shut it. A kettle dripped and wheezed on the hob, and on the table by the window, next to the telephone, gnawed sandwich crusts were scattered over his deck of greasy cards. Every square inch of air in that room stank of him.
He stood there dwarfing the doorway. ‘Make yourselves at home,’ he said, and sniggered.
I looked sideways at Lucy. She was licking her thin lips like a fox. I’d never seen her scared before, and the fear leaped higher in me too.
Just then the telephone rang. For an instant he took his eyes off us. Straight away Lucy sent her foot shooting out to land between his legs. He screamed, buckling and burying both hands in his groin. Lucy danced in front of him. ‘That’s what you get for being a filthy fucker!’ She grabbed the coal bag as Sam, roaring, lunged at her. She fell with one of his huge hands clamped over her leg. I picked up the boiling kettle and swung it down on his head. Bellowing, he let go of Lucy. She scrambled to her feet and we hurtled down the steps and into the dark.
We took a shortcut through the woods, lugging the full sack between us, stumbling over the hollows. Our breath sawed in our throats and we looked back and stumbled again, fearing a lamp beam swinging through the trees behind us, but all was dark. In the end Lucy came to a halt, her hands on her knees, coughing.
A weird, high keening came out of my throat.
She put her hand on my shoulder and rubbed rhythmically, sucking her teeth. ‘Sorry, old pal. We should have gone when you said. I just wanted to get you more than half a bloomin bag. God damn Sam Pearce. Good work with the kettle. If only he’d got his privates scalded. That would put paid to him.’
The white shape of an owl flitted along the treeline at the edge of my vision. It brought no comfort. ‘Oh, how … how revolting! We should report him!’
‘Report him?’ She creaked like a door. ‘Oh, lor, oh lor. And who would believe us, you chicken? We were the ones thievin on the track. Sam Pearce would most likely say we were flatterin ourselves. “As if I’d look twice,” he’d say.’
We reached the Absaloms and in the dim light from our window I saw my stockings were utterly torn.
‘They were done for anyway, those stockings. Sell a bit of this coal to Bill Kennet, get yourself a new pair.’ Her own legs were scratched and bare.
I shook my head. ‘I couldn’t sell the coal. I didn’t come by it honestly. And I’m certain that Mr Kennet isn’t short of coal.’
She was sardonic again, sucking her teeth, shoving her hands in her pockets. She bent to pick up her lamp and took a couple of backward strides down the path. ‘Try and wash your face before mornin. And don’t you worry about men, dear. They ain’t worth it.’
10
ONE DAY IN FEBRUARY I woke to a liquid cheeping and chirruping and wondered why a
warbler would come from the riverbank to our garden. But it wasn’t a bird; it was water issuing from the pipe that served our outside tap, the pipe the ice had split during the freeze. And now came the thaw, its silence rent by the illusion of birdsong.
We moved carefully through the weakening cold, Mother and I. Meticulous with our coal, scrupulous with our firewood and kindling. Because at times we were sorely tempted to burn it all up at once, in one great fire festival, on a pitch-black night. Then, on a quiet March morning, the sunrise shifted at last from behind the rowan tree out on the lane and my room was filled with new yellow light.
Mother and I lay, our hair frowsted on the pillow, our limbs trapped beneath the mouse-saturated carpet. Mother was blinking in the sunlight. The face she had now was a sunken version of her former face, with skin the colour of unbleached flour falling into deep grooves either side of her mouth, and oddly huge nostrils. I watched her eyes wander over the ceiling and around the room as if she’d never seen it before.
‘I think she’s become a little unhinged,’ I confided to Lucy and Daniel. ‘The way she stares about.’
Lucy looked sombre. ‘She wouldn’t be the first to go that way. That lived in the Absaloms, I mean.’
Unexpectedly I found myself laughing. ‘Thank you, Lucy. How heartening.’
‘I’m just sayin,’ she said, already shame-faced, quailing under Dan’s beetling glare. When he’d finished silently admonishing her he turned to me.
‘She’ll perk up come the spring, Ellen,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it. Now, Saturday afternoon you’re to come along with us. You need a change of scene.’
On Saturday I followed them down a lane that ran along by the river in the lee of a high wall. We came to a halt beneath a line of elms, their branches still leafless against the clear sky, their tops untidy with the bundled nests of rooks. Lucy drew a key from her pocket.
We Must Be Brave Page 11