We Must Be Brave

by Frances Liardet

  We travelled past a farm where nobody went. Only the dogs saw us and barked unheeded. Dry pats of cow dung littered the road.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ said Pamela.

  ‘We’re not staying in it.’

  ‘Where are we going? I’m hungry. I want to get off.’

  ‘We will. We’re just going over the back of the hill there. Look at those clouds, how puffy they are.’

  They were marshalled on the horizon, piled up and pearly on their flat undersides, almost still in the light breeze. We reached the back of the hill. There was a stile by the side of the road leading to the summit. I dismounted by the fence and bade her get down. The bicycle toppled away from the fence, striking my calf as it fell. ‘Stupid bicycle.’ I left it there. ‘Come on, Pamela. Climb ahead of me.’

  Over she went onto the other side of the stile, and then a neat jump to the ground.

  ‘What a girl,’ I said. ‘I’ll love you for ever.’

  I watched her run ahead of me up the chalky path. I didn’t know if she’d heard me.

  We had our picnic in the bowl of the tumulus on the crown of the hill, its little ramparts sheltering us from the breeze which had stiffened over the high ground. The turf was warm, peppered with dry rabbit droppings. Among the grass I saw buck’s-horn plantain, tiny spread leaves flattened by millennia of nibbling teeth. ‘When I was twelve, Pamela, I used to read a book called Downland Flora. It was the only thing I had which was nice.’

  She didn’t say anything, just bit into her slice of cake, chewed, yawned, chewed again more slowly. Her cheeks were rosy in the sunshine, her eyes sleepy.

  ‘Will you come to Ireland, Ellen?’

  ‘You know that your daddy and I told you that I can’t.’

  ‘Not tomorrow. But in the future?’

  The future. A high road on a chalk land.

  ‘We will all do what is best.’

  She let her eyes run over me, considering my words, weighing them for truth or lies or any meaning at all. Then she seemed to give up on the task. We had told her so many things. Why should she take account of us now? She lay down on her side, pillowing her head on her arm. I lay down too, so that I could see her and also the sky on the brow of the tumulus, the clouds chasing. I shut my eyes, and then opened them to look straight up at the sky. The wind dropped for a moment, and I heard a high sweet rivulet of sound above us.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘A lark.’

  She turned towards me, screwing up her eyes against the bright of the sky. ‘I can’t hear him.’

  ‘You will.’

  The wind guttered again, the lark wheedled. She opened her eyes. ‘Oh yes!’ She pointed upward. ‘I can see him now, too.’

  I lay back down on the turf. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You will!’

  We both laughed, and then my eyes caught a small dot in the blue, the song reeling off him like thread from a bobbin.

  The breeze was now gusting over the hill. My hair streaked across my face as I took her back to the bicycle. The sun was still strong, throwing a heavy horizontal light across the chalky fields. This was the upland where little grew. The lane led flat and straight towards the horizon, where another line of hills undulated and where the fleets of clouds, darker now, waited. Beyond them lay Southampton. When the clouds parted the sea would gleam like a bar of metal.

  ‘I’d like to get under those clouds,’ I said to Pamela.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Her hands were digging into my stomach, she was clinging so hard. ‘Ellen? Where are we going?’

  ‘To the sea.’

  It was downhill from here. All we had to do was keep pedalling. The sun brightened ahead of us somewhere out beyond the clouds gathering on the coast. How beautiful they were, stately and opalescent. Underneath them a section of the sea duly started to shine. Pamela swayed sideways to look at it and we both laughed.

  ‘Let me pedal, Ellen, I’m getting cold.’

  ‘Just a little longer.’

  The tyres made a fine rushing on the smooth road and the wind buffeted my ears. We would be there in half an hour or so, I thought. A great big port city.

  ‘If only Edward were here,’ I told Pamela. ‘He’s a wharf rat of long-standing, you know. He’d find all the nooks and crannies. Boltholes, and so on.’

  ‘What’s a bolthole?’

  I strove onward. The light was making my eyes water. The skyline swelled, the road became a blur. There was a kind of hatched shadow lying across it. A break of brushwood, or something. Why would anyone do that? I slowed, and as the wind in my ears abated I heard the hum of a car engine approaching behind us.

  ‘A bolthole,’ I was saying, ‘is a place where – when people come looking for you—’

  The engine behind us was louder. The thing in the road sprawled larger and darker. I braked and the water streamed from my eyes which then saw full clear the barrier of barbed wire that crawled thick from one side of the road to the other and into the fields too. My fingers clamped down on the brakes, and the car came alongside. Pamela suddenly caught sight of the barbed wire and screamed, and pulled me sideways. I couldn’t help but yank the handlebars round. We skidded over the light gravel on the edge of the road and onto the verge, and fell with the bicycle. Pamela shrieked and scrambled out from under the frame. I couldn’t move my leg, and for a moment the pain in my ankle was so intense that I thought I’d broken it. I flexed my foot, cried out. Pamela’s hands were on my leg. ‘Ellen! Ellen! You’ve broken your bones!’

  I lifted my hand, saw a graze on the ball of my thumb. Beads of blood were springing.

  ‘I’ve just twisted my ankle a bit,’ I heard myself say. ‘Honestly, Pamela. What a tragedy queen.’

  The car had halted just ahead of us. It was Lady Brock’s motor. I waited for Lady Brock’s feathered hat to emerge from the driver’s door. But it was William Kennet who got out.

  ‘Oh, William.’ I struggled into a sitting position. ‘We’re all at sixes and sevens.’

  He lifted the bicycle off my leg and laid it on the edge of the road. Then he came and kneeled down beside me. ‘Can you move?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good job you didn’t hit that.’ We looked at the barbed wire. It was a nasty hedge, four or five foot high. ‘We laid it out to see how much we needed. Didn’t you see the signs?’

  ‘I had tears in my eyes.’

  ‘Tears in your eyes. You’d have had more than tears in your eyes.’ His voice was peremptory, bleak. ‘Get up now, girl.’

  I lumbered to my feet. William took not my hand but Pamela’s, and she allowed herself to be led to the car. I followed them, limping, and leaned against the car while he loaded the bicycle into the boot. The boot wouldn’t close, of course, so he lashed the handle to the mudguard with a piece of twine, his hands skilful, angry and quick. He glanced up at me. ‘What a right mess you look.’

  Pamela climbed into the back of the car, her face frozen. ‘What did you bump?’ I asked her. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She looked at William as she answered. ‘I’m quite all right.’

  I levered myself into the passenger seat. Now that I was seated the pain in my ankle lessened. William turned the car in the narrow lane. We drove in silence for a mile or so. Then he said, ‘You were above Galley Down. That’s how far you got.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I spoke with difficulty, being suddenly terribly cold. ‘I thought it was further.’

  ‘They’re frantic at the Hall. If you were younger I’d put you over my knee.’

  I started to laugh at that, a sliding wail of a laugh that rose and fell beyond my control. William took no notice, speaking on through the unseemly noise. ‘We’ll say you sprained your ankle and couldn’t move. You just thought you’d take a turn along the Beacon Hill road, and you lost track of time. But on the way back you fell off because of a— Stop now, with that racket. Ellen. Stop.’

  I clamped my hand over my mouth and held it firm there until I was sure I
had quelled the wailing. ‘Because of a farm dog,’ I said finally. ‘Which ran out. That awful dog that belongs to the farm nobody goes to.’

  ‘And you couldn’t budge,’ he went on. ‘Never mind what the little one says. She’s always full of stories.’

  I craned my head round towards the back seat. Pamela was huddled wet-eyed in the corner. My wailing had shocked her. I stretched out my hand in remorse: she considered it, and looked away out of the window.

  William drove easily, his maimed hand a soft claw gripping the rim of the wheel.

  ‘I suppose you drove all over the place, looking. I’m so sorry, William.’

  ‘I had an idea where you’d be. You like those top roads.’

  The sun lowered at last, striking the glass of the windscreen, hazing his hair.

  Pamela was calm when we reached the Hall. Selwyn and Aubrey came out, followed by Lady Brock. William got out of the car and went to speak to them, the words indistinguishable. Then Lady Brock bent down to my window. ‘Just as long as you and Pamela are all right.’

  ‘She’s unharmed. Only upset. By the accident, and the wait.’

  Lady Brock peered into the car. Pamela was sitting motionless, her hair across her face, her dress rumpled. ‘Dear little child. Did no one come by, on the road?’

  ‘Not a soul. I was so glad to see Mr Kennet.’

  Her small brown eyes held mine. I could hardly see her expression. ‘You must be cold. Sitting so long, immobilized. You’d all better get back to the mill.’ She glanced behind her and straightened up. ‘Selwyn, take the wheel. Lieutenant Commander Lovell, your daughter needs you. You’re keeping the motor for tomorrow, anyway, so off you go.’

  I heard light male voices. I looked for William but he’d gone. ‘Please thank Mr Kennet,’ I told Lady Brock, but she had turned her back and was walking towards the steps of her house.

  Selwyn got in behind the wheel and started the car as Aubrey took his place beside Pamela. He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned her head against his chest. Over her ruffled hair he met my gaze.

  ‘I was silly,’ I said to him.

  But it was Selwyn who replied. ‘Everybody does silly things from time to time, my love.’ His face was turned away from me as he reversed the car over the gravel.

  We travelled silently in the heavy gloom of the car. When we reached the mill Selwyn helped me out and we went haltingly into the house.

  We had a supper of soup and the last of the bread. Afterwards in the sitting room Selwyn and Aubrey began a long, slow wind through an A to Z with Pamela, the subject being Birds of the World. Albatross, buzzard, they chanted, sticking for a long time at M before arriving at mallard, and again at U. ‘There’s a bird called an upland goose,’ I told them. ‘I learned it at school.’ When we had finished Selwyn played the piano and Pamela fell asleep on the sofa. Selwyn carried her up the stairs and I followed him into our bedroom. He laid her on our bed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

  ‘I’m just glad that William found you.’

  He straightened up. I looked into his face. He knew what I’d done, tried to do; the knowledge was in his eyes, but he held it there. He didn’t give voice to it.

  ‘Selwyn …’

  ‘I love you so much, Ellen. I’m so sorry—’

  We clung to each other, dry-eyed. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I told him, many times, because it wasn’t, and the truth bore repeating until he understood.

  Later I undressed and lay beside my small child. The night was short. I pulled the sheet over her cold, round little arms. For most of the night I watched her but my eyes and mind were worn out with looking and, anyway, she had closed herself off from me now, it seemed, and lay like a nut in a shell with her back towards me and her face turned away.

  In the morning I gave her a bath, and squeezed the sponge over her shoulders. ‘I shall wear my dark-blue dress,’ she said, with solemnity. ‘The one with red pockets.’

  I buttoned up the dress and brushed her hair for the last time. She was supposed to do it but today she let me, her head rocking backwards with the strength of my brush strokes, her eyes impassively trained on her reflection.

  We went downstairs. I gripped the banisters, limping a little. She turned back and said, ‘Your poor ankle,’ and then walked on down.

  I couldn’t eat, so sipped at a cup of tea. Pamela had her porridge. There wasn’t enough jam for a whole face, only for the two eyes. She shrugged, and started eating.

  Aubrey came in, followed shortly by Selwyn. She looked up at them. ‘What sort of woman is it, that’ll take me to Ireland?’

  ‘A nanny,’ Aubrey said. ‘One specially trained in travelling with children.’

  ‘Yes, but will she be a kind one or a bossy one?’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be kind,’ I told her. ‘Only kind people do jobs like that.’

  After breakfast Pamela and I brushed our teeth and finished her packing. The nerves in my stomach were singing and I felt light-headed. I remembered that I hadn’t yet found a bag for Pamela’s remaining things: her peg dolls and her books. I brought out an old shoe bag of Selwyn’s, but as I began to fill it an idea came to me. ‘I know. You can have my little suitcase.’

  It was the one I’d taken from the Stour House when we moved to the Absaloms. I removed the label which said ‘Ellen Calvert’ and turned it over and wrote ‘Pamela Lovell’ on the blank side. The case was cream-coloured with a pink inside, a pink I’d never liked, nasty and artificial. She laid in the dolls, and stuffed in a cardigan to keep them all lying down in position, and put her London book, and her drawing book and pencil, in on top.

  I fetched my letter to her and tucked it into the side pocket. ‘You can read this when you get to Ireland.’

  ‘Is it from you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell it me now?’

  ‘Because it’s for Ireland, not now. Look, we can tie everything in with these little straps.’ There were two of them on the inside of the case, also pink, with brass sliding buckles.

  But she shook her head. ‘The Pegs’ll be comfier without them.’

  She hadn’t smiled all morning, and I realized I’d seen the last of her smiles the previous day, and I wouldn’t see another.

  Selwyn called up the stairs. ‘Darling. It’s time.’

  I carried the large case downstairs, she the small one. When she reached the hall she said, ‘I need to go to the lav.’

  We went to the downstairs lavatory. I made sure she washed her hands well. ‘Don’t neglect your hand-washing on the journey, Pamela,’ I said. ‘Just because I’m not there to tell you. And if you need the lavatory, always tell Daddy well in advance.’ She still dried her small hands so clumsily. It was astonishing how long it took, to learn the grips and turns of the fingers for washing and drying. I finished the task by patting the backs of her hands with the towel.

  Elizabeth was waiting by the lavatory. She held out her arms. Pamela embraced her, putting her cheek flat against Elizabeth’s belly. ‘Dear Pammie,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Little pet.’ Then she set her hands on Pamela’s shoulders and bent to kiss the top of her head, and then she turned quickly and made for the kitchen.

  The front door was open. Lady Brock’s car was outside, Selwyn already in the driver’s seat. He was wearing his motoring hat. He looked at me, but only to be sure that there was nothing amiss. He knew better than to do or say anything else. Aubrey was waiting on the path. I went to join him. I put out my left hand and he took it in his, clasping it rather than simply shaking it. Pamela followed me out and clutched my other hand. I was bound by them.

  ‘You must both let go of me,’ I told them, and they released me.

  I kneeled on the path in front of Pamela. ‘Be a good girl.’ I embraced her. Her arms came round my neck, gripping hard. I pulled her against me and breathed in, sniffling as the tears flowed down my nose. She gripped harder and I felt her sobbing.

  ‘Come now, Pamela.
You must be brave. We must both be brave.’

  ‘No. No.’ She began to cry loudly. ‘We haven’t even fed the hens. You said we would.’

  ‘Never mind now. There’ll be hens enough in Ireland. You’ll see.’ I let go of her middle and took her hands in mine, tugging them from my neck. She was sobbing hard. ‘Come on. Good girl. Into the car.’ Aubrey tried to guide her by the shoulders but she twisted away from him.

  ‘Ellen!’ She clung to me again. ‘I don’t want to go! I want to stay here with you and feed the hens!’

  I put my arm across her back and led her forcibly to the car. She sat sideways on the seat and started screaming, kicking out at me. I caught hold of the flailing legs and pushed them round so that she faced the front. ‘Get into the car,’ I told Aubrey. I slammed the door shut on Pamela, who was still screaming. As Selwyn started the engine she held up her arms. ‘Ellen! Ellen! I don’t want to go! Ellen!’

  ‘Drive on,’ I said to Selwyn, as Aubrey got in. ‘Drive on!’ I cried, when he hesitated. I stepped back from the car and Selwyn drove away. I watched them reach the end of the lane and turn. The car window was shut but I could still hear Pamela calling my name.

  When the sound faded I went inside. Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen. I went upstairs to the bedroom. Pamela’s dress, the one she’d worn the day before, was lying on the bed. It was too small to pack, she was growing out of it, and the trim of white daisies at the hem was coming off. I picked it up and held it against my face. The sky-blue cotton was still warm, and it smelled of her. I didn’t know how long the smell would last.

  I held the dress to my face and breathed in. I held the breath and the dress.

  Some time later I looked out of the window. William was in the garden watering my apple trees. I went downstairs and out into the garden. I was still holding the dress.

  I said to him, ‘I don’t understand how I can still be alive.’

  William set down the watering can and embraced me. Rough tweed, stiff, against my face. ‘And yet you are,’ he said. ‘Come with me to Upton Hall, Ellen. Sit a while with Lady B and me.’ The trees were damp at the knees, their leaves fluttered in the breeze. I saw Elizabeth crying in the doorway and beckoned to her. William took my arm. We left the apple trees to grow, and the three of us set off up the lane together.