I gasped. ‘It’s enormous!’
‘Not at all.’ William bore it across the room and placed it with a metallic boom on the top of the filing cabinet. ‘There are many far larger.’ He pulled the sacking away. ‘This was given to Mrs Dennis and her aunt Miss Wyatt. They never view, you know. They agreed we should put this one into service. I said I knew just the chap who would benefit.’
‘Strike me, Bill. Strike me. That is damn generous of you.’ George’s thin face was alight with embarrassed pleasure. ‘I’ll be sure to think of you, if you was ever to be laid up.’
‘Thank the schoolmisses.’ William took off his hat and shook it, wiped his gleaming temples with a handkerchief. ‘Lucy Horne, I could do justice to a cup of tea.’ He turned to me. ‘I got a lift with your Colin Bowyer. He was leaving the mill, and kind enough to stop.’ He bent to plug the television into the yellowed socket in the corner of the room.
‘You mean you set off from Upton Hall,’ I began, ‘with the intention of carrying a television all the way along the lanes—’
‘Stand off, Ellen.’ George held up a long finger. ‘We men like work.’
William turned on the television, conjuring a buzzing warped grain of variegated greys onto the screen. ‘That we do.’ He fiddled with the aerial. ‘I wouldn’t have gone along the lanes anyway. I’d have cut up through Pipehouse.’
I choked on the last of my tea.
William and I made our way down through the beech wood in the dusk. I turned my face to the wind, sniffed the damp air. It had been raining hard to the west, in the higher hills, and that water too would come down to us. William walked beside me, a light band on his hat glowing in the half-light, sniffing the air along with me. ‘There’ll be a bump in your channel tonight,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if we were awash, up at the Hall.’
‘What on earth will you do with all those girls?’
‘The pupils have got their October furlough. They’re not due back till tomorrow. There’s only half a dozen in the school, poor creatures with no one to go to. Mrs Dennis will stow them in the village, I expect.’
The wind blew in the branches. ‘You know,’ I went on, ‘I’ve slept to the rush of a millstream for many years now, but I could nod off just as well to the sough of beech branches, if I were ever to move from the mill.’
‘Do you think you might?’
‘I hadn’t given it a second’s thought, until this moment.’
‘I was wondering if you needed a change,’ he said. ‘You look careworn, Ellen. What is it?’
‘Nothing at all. Really.’
‘If you say so, my dear.’
We travelled down over the mounds and dips of the path, the spoil heaps and sinkholes of generations of badgers and rabbits who tunnelled there. You had to know where to put your feet, but we did, William and I, even in the dusk. We asked each other questions like this from time to time; always softly, in situations where we didn’t have to look each other in the eye, and I had never strayed from the truth before. ‘Really,’ I repeated, when we reached the bottom of the wood, ‘it’s just a little thing, too small to mention. I’ve let it upset me. Stupidly.’
He nodded gravely, and ushered me ahead over the stile, his extended arm pole-like in the heavy coat. Both Lucy and I gave him supper once a week, piling his plate with mashed potatoes, pork chops. Other than that we relied on the school cook to keep him fed, and she was a busy woman. ‘I’ll have a shepherd’s pie ready tomorrow evening, William. I hope you’ll join me as usual.’
‘I would be very glad.’
*
The flood came during the night, heavy and incompressible, loading and overloading the river bed and the mill channel until the water stopped falling, being the same height everywhere. The special silence woke me at three in the morning, and I got up and went to the window. A blackness was conquering the fields on either side of the embanked track, a panther moving into the woods beyond. My mill cottage, on its rise of land, was as safe as ever. But I thought of Selwyn, his calm in the face of these deep waters, and I wished all the same that he was here to watch it with me.
I went back to bed and dozed until six-fifteen, when the telephone began ringing.
It was William.
‘Water’s in at Upton Hall. Basements and kitchen flooded and no electricity. Mrs Dennis has called the fire brigade and now she’s driving her girls to The Place. Colonel Daventry has got Marcy to open up the back of the house for them.’
Marcy Corey was Daniel’s widow, housekeeper to the Colonel.
‘What a good idea.’
‘Meantime the teachers are ringing round, telling everyone to stay away till the water’s pumped out and the electrics are back on.’
‘I’ll go and see if Marcy needs any help.’
‘You do that, Ellen. I’m going down to have a look at Lady B.’
‘Remember I can bring her here if needs be. What about your rooms?’
‘Dry,’ he said. ‘I’ll sit it out.’
‘You can’t stay there, with no power and no hot food!’
‘I will so. I’m the caretaker, and I have a gas lamp and a stove. Someone must supervise the fire brigade. The laying of the pump hoses.’
‘At least let me fetch you for supper, as we arranged.’
He agreed and we said goodbye. The telephone rang again almost immediately. It was Lucy, as I thought it would be, needing a lift to the kennels.
I got dressed and ate a hasty piece of bread and butter. Pulling on Selwyn’s waders, I left the house. In the lane I met high water but the Land Rover cleared it. I reached the village to find the high street a fast-running stream. In the half-light I saw the flash of a torch at the top of the bank at Lucy’s cottage. She nipped down the steps and opened the passenger door.
‘I’ve got the Suttons up there, every single one of ’em including old Ivy. They’ve been in my parlour since two o’clock this morning. They didn’t sandbag, did they.’
‘Oh, no!’ The Suttons were low down near the ford. ‘What are they going to do?’
‘Clear off to their cousins in Barrow End, is what. As soon as I can make ’em. Shall we do a run of the village first? I want to see if anyone’s got water in.’ She swung herself into the passenger seat. ‘This will be down by ten o’clock, I bet you. Look at the sky. Those ain’t rainclouds.’
The first light was coming in the east. I cast a doubtful look at the lowering sky. ‘I hope you’re right.’
We drove through Upton at a crawl, with the window open. Neighbours were gathered upstairs where torches flickered in the dark rooms behind them. They were all sandbagged, expecting the worst, but I wasn’t sure the flood would come to them. The main street was a trough worn down by centuries of cattle herds and heavy drays, and nearly all the garden paths climbed to their front doors. It was the lack of power that would chill them. We called back and forth, and they insisted they needed nothing. We crossed the green and reached the turning to the church, where we came to a halt and looked over the wall at the submerged meadows beyond. Our little river was, just now and just here, the width of the Rhine. Lucy whistled between her teeth.
‘I’m going to The Place later,’ I told her. ‘Colonel Daventry’s taking in the Upton Hall girls.’
Lucy gazed unseeing over the river. ‘I wish he was out and about.’
Suddenly I knew she was thinking of the war and the day Southampton was bombed, when the crowds came to Upton and Colonel Daventry drove cartloads of them to village houses and surrounding farms. This was what happened when you knew a woman for over forty years. You knew her thoughts, the way they ran, almost as well as you knew your own.
I let my mind dwell for a few bright seconds on that long-ago day. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was indispensable, wasn’t he.’
I put the Land Rover into gear and moved off. We’d only travelled twenty yards when I heard the hoot of a horn. A small lorry carrying sandbags was coming up behind us. I reversed alongside. The wind
ow wound down to reveal the driver, a black-haired man with a black beard.
‘Morning, Vicar,’ Lucy said. ‘Bloomin heck.’
Belatedly I recognized the Reverend James Acton, new to the parish and hardly known to me. ‘I wonder if you could assist?’ he said. ‘Church Walk is nearly under.’
‘We’ll follow you, Reverend,’ I said.
Church Walk was bounded by a flint wall on one side, on the other by a terrace of half a dozen houses that were home to some of the frailest and most elderly souls in Upton. There was no lane, just now, instead a brawny flood sucking at the terrace steps. I got out and met the Reverend in the middle of the water.
‘We don’t have much time,’ he said.
‘You’re right.’
Lucy could barely walk without the water overflowing into her boots. The Reverend gave her a leg-up onto the flatbed of the lorry and she began passing sandbags to him. I took each one in turn and laid them in the first doorway. Brown water swirled over the step whenever I approached, but retreated again. We worked fast, the Reverend moving the lorry steadily up the terrace. The faces of the elderly appeared in the windows, some pale and confused, others mouthing thanks and messages we couldn’t make out. ‘They’ll be awfully cold,’ I said, ‘with no power.’
‘I have paraffin stoves,’ said the Reverend, breathing hard.
Soon all six doorways were barricaded behind a wall of small, snugly brick-laid sandbags.
‘Let’s hope that’s high water,’ the Reverend said.
I shook my head. ‘We can’t be sure. There might be another bulge coming down the river.’
He held out his hand. ‘I’m sorry, we haven’t met. My name is James Acton.’
‘Ellen Parr.’
His hand was cold, and so was mine.
‘Of course. Althea Brock has mentioned you,’ he said. ‘She told me you were a miller’s wife. You would know about rivers.’
I smiled. ‘My late husband was always careful to point out that I was a miller.’
‘I – we – stand corrected.’ He was giving me a slightly perturbing stare, his eyes wide, dark blue, almost lidless.
‘Where did you get the sandbags, Reverend Acton? I thought they were like gold dust.’
‘Requisitioned from the soldiers. The camp up on the hill.’ He nodded at the lorry. ‘I’ve got contacts.’
‘That’s good of them.’
He broke into a white grin. ‘I don’t think the quartermaster is fully aware of how generous he’s been.’
I laughed, and laughed again with surprise.
‘Reminds me of a pirate, that man,’ Lucy said, as we drove to the kennels. We were taking the back way, a track up the spine of Pipehouse Wood.
‘Ha. You’re more right than you know. Those sandbags are half-inched from the Army. It shows what a poor churchgoer I’ve become, that we’ve only just met.’
‘Why don’t you come any more, Ell?’
I considered her question. Perhaps I had always drawn more comfort from the body of the church, the frost-fractured brick and lichened flint, than from the liturgy or the doctrine. And it was only now that I felt free to act accordingly.
‘Selwyn’s not there to sing.’ It seemed as good an answer as any.
Lucy cleared her throat. ‘Ellen. You know I would never think badly of Mr Parr.’
I shot her a bewildered glance. The track to the kennels was a treacherous gully in the wet. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I wouldn’t say anything bad about him.’ She began a small, tentative, twisted smile. ‘Or if I did, it would be by mistake. I wouldn’t mean it. You know, if it seemed like I suggested that somebody else …’
‘Oh, so you’ve remembered, have you?’
‘Yes. Ellen—’
‘You did indeed suggest somebody else. Someone who would have given me the full bowl of cherries. So what is the bowl of cherries, Lucy? The one I missed having because of Selwyn?’
A shocked silence followed. My voice rang in my ears, leaden and vicious. I hardly recognised it.
Eventually Lucy cleared her throat. ‘I told you, dear. I didn’t mean it—’
‘Even better. Next you’ll say it was only a joke.’
‘I shan’t talk about it any more, Ellen.’ Lucy turned to face the window. ‘I think that’s for the best, don’t you?’
‘If you say so.’
The silence descended again, dreadfully thick, and lasted until we reached the kennels, where she jumped down and hurried away without a word. I turned the vehicle, my hands unsteady on the wheel. She’d been saying sorry, and what had I done? Run her to ground like one of her hunting dogs.
Slowly the thrills of anger died away. Bewildered and shaken in equal measure, I drove to the Place.
‘I’ve got eight girls already,’ Marcy Corey said. She jerked her head towards the back of the house. ‘The staff didn’t manage to ring all the families in time, so they’ve come trailing back to school. Mrs Dennis has been directing them here. Goodness knows how many we’ll end up with.’
She and Dan had married two months before us: their wedding had been full of joy and jokes about cradle-snatching, since she had a full seven years on Dan. She’d never remarried after he was killed, though it wasn’t for lack of offers. She looked youthful still, unbowed. I was glad of that, for her sake.
‘Do you need help, Marcy?’
She grinned. ‘Those girls, it’s like they’re on manoeuvres. Bedding rolls, picnic supplies – I haven’t had to lift a finger. They’ve even swept out the back bedrooms.’
My spirits, depressed by my shameful altercation with Lucy, began to lift. ‘That’s Mrs Dennis for you.’
‘She’s a trooper.’
Through the doorway to the drawing room I saw Colonel Daventry sitting in his armchair. He saluted me wordlessly, lifting a hand, his cardigan sleeve baggy round his thin wrist. ‘Lucy and I were talking about the Colonel this morning.’
‘Come and tell him,’ Marcy said. ‘Take those great boots off and have a cup of coffee with me. I’m ready for a sit-down.’
Colonel Daventry’s once russet moustaches were wispy and grey and he spoke very high now. ‘I’ve been invaded by girls,’ he chirped. ‘It’s absolutely splendid. A detachment is coming in for a hand of whist this afternoon.’
I couldn’t help smiling. ‘It’s very kind of you, Colonel. I’m sure Mrs Dennis is grateful.’
‘Nonsense. Keeps a chap on his toes.’
‘Lucy and I were talking about the war earlier today.’ I smiled. ‘Everything you did, on the day of the air raid.’
He harrumphed. ‘That’s going back a bit. We only did what we were supposed to. How is it at the mill?’
‘Snug. The Bowyers run a tight ship.’
He nodded, very satisfied. Then he said, ‘Ah. Marcy, dear, will you fetch the book?’ Marcy got to her feet and left the room, returning a few moments later with a battered brown volume. ‘I found it a few months ago in my library. I’ve been meaning to return it to you ever since. But one’s memory fails.’
Marcy handed the book to me. It was dog-eared, foxed, the spine broken. It always had been. Looking at it now, the book I’d not seen for nigh on forty years, I knew that it would never have fetched more than a handful of copper coins. The Colonel would have seen that instantly but he had taken the book from me, with a small bow, when I was fourteen years old. It was my copy of Downland Flora, which I had given to him to sell for me, to pay for my shorthand course at Spall and Benn’s.
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d want it,’ the Colonel said. ‘Then I decided you should be the judge.’
He was right not to be sure. I turned the book over in my hand, looked up at him. ‘Thank you, Colonel Daventry.’
His thin shoulders lifted, his gaze widened and drifted over an inner landscape, one which seemed to sadden him. ‘You deserved more than what we gave you.’
There was a moment of silence while I searched for a reply. ‘It was a different age,�
� I told him. ‘We’re living in a better one now.’
‘Here’s to that,’ Marcy said. I opened Downland Flora and she and I looked together at the brighter plants: the bird’s-foot trefoil, the mouse-ear, the early gentian. ‘They’re so delicate and pretty!’ she exclaimed, but the sight of that misty shielding paper made me feel cold, and I smelled mice as I turned the pages.
The trees closed above me, hollow and wind-whipped, spattering leaves across my windscreen. Above the trees, the low ceiling of the clouds, glimpsed occasionally when my cover broke, a malicious iron-grey. We would be sunk if there were more rain. My hands, chilled by the sandbags or by Downland Flora, I was not sure which, gripped the wheel of the ancient Land Rover. I crossed the bottom of the main street, looked up the road towards Lucy’s cottage. Because of the power cut, not a single house was lit. The street looked much as it had done during the war.
I turned for home, ploughed towards the dip in the lane. The hedges thinned out here and I could see clear across flooded fields squared out by half-drowned fencing. Some creature was perched on the fence on the other side of the field, across the vast expanse of water. I brought the Land Rover to a halt and peered out in the lowering light.
It was a figure, definitely. A person in an anorak, hood up, back to the road. The person – a child, I was certain now – clung to the fence with an air of great anguish, frozen in fear like a bear cub or infant monkey at the top of a swinging tree.
It, the child, must have waded through the field.
My feet were made of ice, my hands numb, and I was hungry. All I wanted was a bath, a cup of tea and a crackling fire. Perhaps even a small luxurious nap, before heading out again to fetch William for supper.
‘Oh, hell,’ I said aloud. ‘Oh, absolute bloody hell.’
24
I GOT OUT of the Land Rover, stepping straight down into the water. The road gate, I saw immediately, was padlocked.
‘Hello there! Are you all right?’
Perhaps my voice hadn’t carried. Or perhaps the question was too ridiculous to answer. Either way, no reply came. I screwed up my eyes. I could see the small body was quaking with cold. Or fear, or sobs, or all three.
We Must Be Brave Page 30