We Must Be Brave

by Frances Liardet

  I climbed over the gate, landing with a splash into soft mud, and set out across the field. The water rose only to my knees but inside the waders my legs rapidly began to chill. My boots swished through the water as I approached but the child didn’t move. The sight of its mud-caked shoes, entirely soaked trousers, was appalling. I didn’t say anything. To ask, What on earth are you doing? was almost as stupid as Are you all right?

  I came closer and leaned over the top of the fence to get a better look. It was a girl – a pinched little face, hanks of hair protruding from her hood. She shrank away from me, shaking so wildly with the cold that I thought she might slip and tumble down into the mud.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened,’ I said, ‘but you need to get down off this fence.’

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘I’m absolutely fine here, thank you very much.’

  I gave a laugh of exasperation. There was such a thing, it seemed. ‘What are you planning to do next?’ I was genuinely curious.

  ‘Cross this next field.’ Her teeth chattered. ‘And keep going.’

  I leaned further over the fence, glimpsed a violet edge to her lips.

  ‘Did you know that the cold can be dangerous?’ I said. ‘It can stop you thinking straight. I think that’s what’s happening to you. You’re too cold to think straight. If you were warmer, you’d realize that wasn’t much of a plan.’

  Her head turned then, and as her body twisted she lurched sideways and clung on. Her fingers whitening against the wooden rail.

  ‘Mummy will be irate.’

  ‘Where is Mummy?’

  Silence.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m going to try and carry you to my Land Rover. Piggyback-style. OK?’

  She stared at me, blinking. I recognized that hypothermic fogginess. At last the message penetrated. She lifted one cautious leg, and then the other, over the top of the fence, staring hard at the swirling water below. It made me shiver simply to imagine her walking through it. What on earth could have made her do that?

  Now her feet were firmly on my side of the fence. I stepped in front of her and reached behind me.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Put your hands on my shoulders.’

  Her arms yoked me, pulling back against my neck. Her knees dug vice-like into my hips. As her weight settled on me I felt the bones of my back pressing down, one upon the other, and my feet were driven deeper into the mud. Now I wasn’t even sure if I could walk at all. I hooked my hands under the backs of her knees and started to move. Just then she shifted, pulling herself up over my shoulders, and I staggered sideways, my right foot skidding out from under me.

  ‘Keep still!’ I hissed from between my teeth. Her forearm was jammed against my larynx.

  ‘I’m going to fall off—’

  ‘You won’t.’ My left leg, carrying all her weight, was threatening to buckle now. ‘I promise you.’

  Surely the rashest promise of my life. I regained my balance, managed a proper step, then another, dragging a weight of mud and pressing water each time I put a foot forward. The field seemed immense, the water leaden as the sun lowered. I was slow as an astronaut. Strange, since they were weightless and I was carrying – what, four stone of child? A grey wagtail landed on the road gate: I focused on it, counting the dips of its tail, and made headway. Every half-minute or so the child was racked by deep shivers, and I had to slow down for each bout and endure the delay. The only sound was our breathing, mine harsh and regular, hers whiffling in the region of my right ear.

  We reached the gate and she scrambled off me to cling to the bars. After a pause, during which I hung my aching arms over the gate and heaved in any number of strangled breaths, we negotiated the last few feet to the Land Rover, where I pulled the door open and let her down onto the driver’s seat. Relief flooded me, and with it a heady mixture of incredulity and near-indignation.

  ‘Now,’ I said, still panting. ‘What on earth did you think you were doing?’

  She scrambled away from me into the back of the vehicle where she sat gasping and squeezing her hands together. ‘Running away.’

  A high little voice. Of course she was. She hadn’t gone out there for fun.

  ‘Who from? Mummy?’

  She made no move to answer. But there was no time. There was a car coming up the lane. I ducked out of the Land Rover to see it breasting the floodwater, headlights on. It was small and white and, as it toiled through the rising tide towards us, I realized that the driver wasn’t slowing down. The water, already churning around the tops of the hub-caps, would flood the engine at any moment. I ran with a heavy, splashing stride out into the road, waving my arm. ‘Stop! Stop!’

  The car came to a halt, its mud-brown bow-wave settling and stilling. The driver, a woman, wound down the window. ‘I’m looking for my daughter.’ She spoke in a sort of controlled shout. ‘I was trying to get her to Upton Hall, and—’

  ‘She’s in my vehicle. She was sitting on a fence, so I helped her down.’ I didn’t say which fence, or anything else. I didn’t have enough breath.

  ‘For crying out loud. I slowed down for the water, and she jumped out. She’s the absolute bitter end.’ She peered reproachfully up at me. A strange, frowsty odour emanated from the interior of the car, rather as if bottled fruit had gone off.

  ‘Her lips are turning blue.’ I spoke slowly and with emphasis, for the only course of action was rapidly becoming clear to me. ‘She needs to get warm, now. You must both come to my house. It’s not far. Please turn round and follow me.’ I began to walk back to the Land Rover.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she called. ‘We’re going to Upton Hall School—’

  ‘Forget the school,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘It’s closed. I’ll explain later. Now please turn your car.’

  It was a relief simply to give orders. The girl’s mother glowered at me for a moment longer, and then yanked her steering wheel round.

  I kept an eye on the white car in my rear-view mirror. She chugged along competently enough. Soon we’d be on the track to the mill, and safe. Occasionally I glimpsed the child’s pale little face, her wary eyes.

  ‘I should have carried on,’ she whispered. ‘Even if the mud had got to my waist.’

  I pictured a small lone figure travelling over a distant field, struggling through the mire.

  We crowded into my hall and removed our coats. I sloughed off my waders and hurried upstairs, returning with two thick blankets, long socks, a towelling dressing gown. The girl obediently removed her wet shoes, trousers and socks. I was glad to see she had a woollen polo-neck jumper. I stoked the sitting-room fire and put coal in the kitchen range. There was no electricity, as I had feared, but we would do well enough without.

  The girl’s mother stood clutching her handbag. ‘Shouldn’t we put her in a bath?’

  This truculent tone, I thought, must be her natural manner of speaking. ‘No.’ I spoke tersely, pumping the bellows until the logs in the grate flared into life. I pulled my small armchair close to the fireplace. ‘Come here … what is your name, dear?’

  Now swathed in my robe and socks, she stepped forward and sat where I bid her, and I folded the blankets around her. She was still wearing her school beret. ‘Penny,’ she whispered.

  ‘Well now, Penny, don’t worry. This is a watermill, and I know what to do when people get cold and wet. Wrap up and sit near the heat. You’ll feel better in a jiffy, especially with a hot drink inside you. It won’t be long until the kettle boils.’ I turned to her mother. ‘I have a solid-fuel range. It’s a boon at times like this. I expect you’d like a cup of tea as well, Mrs …’

  ‘Lacey. Veronica Lacey.’ The mention of tea seemed to mollify her somewhat. ‘Awfully decent of you. This whole thing. Rescuing, and so on.’

  ‘Please don’t mention it. It’s nothing more than any villager would do in a flood. I’m Ellen Parr, by the way.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Parr.’

  ‘It’s Mrs, actually.’r />
  ‘Beg pardon. Just thought you looked like a Miss. Don’t know why.’

  I searched in vain for a civil reply to that comment.

  I went into the kitchen and started to prepare tea. After a few moments Penny slipped into the room.

  ‘You should stay by the fire, dear. You must get warm.’

  ‘It’s warm next to this stove.’

  No truculence here. The words came out soft in her little treble voice. And it was true: she was spreading her hands over the closed lid of the hotplate. As pale as before, but the violet line had disappeared from the edges of her lips. She watched me from beneath the brim of her beret. The hat, and the wary look, were familiar.

  ‘I saw you at Lady Brock’s house, didn’t I.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You’re the lady who came in. How do you do.’ She darted a look towards the closed door to the sitting room. ‘Sorry about the fuss.’

  Her voice had dropped back to a whisper. That, and the light of fear in her eyes, stopped all the questions in my mouth.

  ‘Look. We’ll have toast.’ My voice was almost as quiet as hers. ‘And then we’ll think what to do.’ I fetched down the hotplate toaster. It was a simple thing, made of two round grilles joined by a hinge and furnished with wire handles. ‘Would you like to make it?’

  She picked it up. ‘What a funny contraption.’ Under my instruction she loaded the grille with four slices of bread, folded the top half over, and slid it under the lid of the hotplate. ‘How can you tell when it’s done?’

  ‘The room fills with smoke.’

  She allowed herself to smile. I hadn’t expected the word contraption from so small a person. I wondered how old she was. They took them as young as eight, at Upton Hall. When the toast and tea were ready I draped her wet trousers over the closed hotplates and put the shoes on a piece of newspaper in the bottom oven. The hems of the trousers were frayed, the shoes hardly visible through their coating of mud.

  ‘Well now!’ I said, as I put the tea tray down in the sitting room. ‘Hopefully we’re all a little warmer?’ This sort of brisk inanity being the only course, in the face of such bizarreness, such daunting cold and distress. I remembered William telephoning before dawn, the sandbags in Church Walk, my savaging of Lucy, Colonel Daventry’s cheerful chirping. I could hardly believe it was still the same day. As if in response my lower back began to ache, a compressed feeling around the cradle of my hips.

  My guests were hungry, I was certain, and so was I. For a while the only sounds were the crunch of toast and the series of noisy gulps made by Mrs Lacey. The teacup empty, she set it down.

  ‘That hit the spot,’ she said. ‘Sorry to be a barbarian.’

  She was sitting with her coat round her shoulders now, a cigarette held jauntily between two fingers, as if it were the morning after an all-night party. Not a good party, I felt: there was a sort of accidie emanating from her, something compacted, an impasse reached. Her eyes swivelled, her pearls were dirty. A tideline of tan make-up scuffled along her hairline.

  ‘Don’t apologize, Mrs Lacey.’ I pushed an ashtray towards her. ‘This is rather a trying time for you.’

  ‘I’ll have to take her all the way home again, I suppose. They could have phoned.’

  ‘They did try. Anyway, all is not lost.’ I explained about the girls’ refuge at The Place. ‘You’ll have to go back to the main road, though, and enter the village at the other end. The water this side is too deep for your car.’

  She grunted. Not a single word, kind or otherwise, had passed between this woman and her daughter. I turned to the child.

  ‘The others are having a grand time at The Place, Penny. They’re all fixed up on those inflatable beds, the ones you can float on. People loll about on them now, instead of having a proper swim. What are they called? Lidos.’

  Penny stared at her hands, rubbed them together. ‘Lilos,’ she offered.

  ‘Lilos. Of course. Because you lie low on them. That is clever.’

  Mrs Lacey abruptly stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. ‘Right. Well, if you give me directions to this house, we’ll get out of your hair.’

  There was something odd about the way she was standing, feet planted wide apart, giving her daughter a stony, befuddled stare. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I wasn’t certain she was thinking at all. I pondered this for a second or two, and a strong impression began to form in my mind. I rose to my feet.

  ‘Mrs Lacey, you can’t go yet.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ She frowned.

  ‘Penny’s clothes are still wet.’

  ‘So what. She’s got more in her case.’

  ‘Mrs Lacey.’ I looked her full in the face. ‘Please sit down again, and I’ll bring you some black coffee.’ For it had dawned on me what the problem was.

  ‘I’m absolutely fine.’

  A warm, intimate blast of fermentation, the same fruity odour that I had smelled in her car and which I now recognized of course as half-digested alcohol, hit me full in the face. I breathed out, hard.

  ‘Of course you are,’ I said. ‘I’m simply suggesting you wait a while, before taking the wheel.’

  ‘And I’m simply suggesting it’s none of your business.’

  I stood silently, Penny’s miserably hunched outline in the corner of my eye, my heart racing with the sheer nastiness of the scene. Suddenly Mrs Lacey let loose a startling bray of laughter.

  ‘OK, if that’s how you want it.’ She began rummaging for her keys. ‘You can take my daughter into the village. And I’ll clear off.’

  She turned and left the room. Dismayed, I listened to her striding steps on the hall floor, the creak of the front door. By the time I came to my senses and hurried after her she was opening her car door.

  ‘Mrs Lacey!’ I ran towards the car. She was getting in now and starting the engine. ‘Mrs Lacey!’

  ‘You’ve been very kind!’ she shouted back. ‘Very kind!’ Then she pulled away with a squirt of gravel from her tyres, some of which spattered over my legs. I watched her lurch out onto the track and proceed, engine roaring, up to the lane. The car disappeared, and I heard it gather speed as she made her way back towards the main road.

  A small blue suitcase lay on its side, dumped on the damp gravel. I picked it up. I swallowed convulsively, two, three times, to get rid of the sordid taste on my tongue. Slowly I made my way back inside.

  Penny was still curled up in the small armchair near the fire, knees by her chin. She didn’t move as I came in. I didn’t want to look her in the eye, because then I would be openly seeing her shame, and I needed to spare her that. I put her suitcase down and stretched out my hands to the warmth. My fingers were trembling. I wondered what to say, but only came up with tritenesses, not to be uttered. In the end it was Penny who spoke.

  ‘Some people hate home, and some people hate school.’ She dug her chin down between her shoulders. ‘But I hate home and school.’

  I listened to the crackle of the fire, the occasional phutt as a pocket of water in the wood turned to steam. I rubbed my hands together, just to make friction, to get a purchase on this absolute despond. ‘I’ll go and see if your trousers are dry.’

  They were. I took them off the top of the range and remembered the shepherd’s pie for this evening. William was coming to supper. The pie was ready in the larder. I put it in the oven to heat through. When I brought the child’s trousers into the sitting room, she wedged herself deeper in the chair, binding her arms around her knees. ‘You need to get changed, Penny,’ I told her. ‘Not into these muddy things, but into some of your clean clothes. I’m going to tell Mrs Dennis you’re here, and then take you to join your school-friends.’

  She pressed her lips together, said nothing.

  ‘You can change here by the fire.’ I went towards the door. ‘After I drop you off I’m collecting a friend for supper.’

  ‘What are you having?’

  I paused. ‘What?’

  ‘For supper. What are you havi
ng?’

  ‘Shepherd’s pie.’

  She unfurled the polo neck of her sweater and pulled it all the way up over her nose. Above the woollen ribbing her lower eyelids were a flat line, the upper lids semicircles. It was the perfect shape of sadness.

  The number for The Place, when I dialled, was engaged. I tried twice more, at intervals of about half a minute, but the line remained busy. I went back into the sitting room to find Penny still lodged in the armchair as tight as a whelk, her suitcase unopened on the floor beside her.

  ‘Dear,’ I said. ‘Come, now.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Mrs Dennis?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  She lifted up her chin, as Lady Brock had taught her. I opened my mouth, shut it again. The implication was clear. When summoned, she would get ready to leave. But in the meantime she would sit by the fire.

  I retreated to the window and looked out into a featureless, settling dusk overlaid by the reflection of the room behind me. Running my finger down the side of the window frame, I felt a little dimple in the wood. Two, three – a whole line of them, about three inches apart. They were the holes made by the hooks we had screwed into the frame, the hooks that held our blackout curtains taut to the window. We’d never filled them in properly, those little holes. Just added a coat of gloss paint, then another as the years went by. I had no idea that they could still be felt, after all this time.

  The firelight silhouetted the child’s snubbed little profile, the fuzz of hair beneath the beret. She’d pulled her polo neck down so I could see individual tears reflected in the glass as they tracked down the side of her nose. What had I said to her mother? How we looked after people in floods? Well, then. Let there be a moment’s truce in the world, a natural contract between two human beings, one the owner of a warm house, the other clinging to a gate in a flooded field. I thought of the lilos, the draughty barracks of bedrooms at The Place.

  ‘Come, dear,’ I said. ‘You shan’t stay in that chair.’