She looked up, startled, with the same fearful light in her eyes as before. I made a sound, something between a sigh and a laugh.
‘No, Penny,’ I told her. ‘I’ll give you a bed.’
25
IN THE BATHROOM I turned on the hot tap and left her sitting on a towel on the lip of the bath, her suitcase on the floor at her feet.
‘Don’t let the bath run over. I’m going to fetch my friend William.’
‘OK.’ Her voice, small and high, came through steam.
I telephoned The Place again. Margaret Dennis answered this time, and I explained the situation. ‘I met Mrs Lacey coming into the village. She didn’t get the message.’
I didn’t mention the woman’s shunning of her daughter; her precipitate, outrageous departure.
‘Thank you, Mrs Parr. That is helpful. We’re filled to the gunwales here. James Acton’s been singing your praises, by the way. I gather you saved Church Walk. He says we need more practical people like you!’
I laughed. ‘Lucy Horne helped too. But that’s very kind of him.’
‘Look after young Lacey. She’s a miserable little thing.’
‘I think there’s a reason for that.’
‘Yes.’ Mrs Dennis grunted. ‘Mum’s on the sauce.’
‘I’m glad you know.’
‘Major Lacey’s stationed in Ulster, you see.’ She sighed. ‘These modern army wives. Half of them aren’t remotely cut out for it. Look, I’d better ring off. We’ve got games to plan for tomorrow. Beanbag relays, that sort of thing. I’m staying the night here so Marcy can look after the Colonel. I’ve brought my own camp bed, of course, and a hot-water bottle.’
I fought back the urge to giggle. Althea had appointed the right kind of headmistress.
I plunged down the wet lanes towards Upton Hall and William. Selwyn had taught me to drive in the days when men wore gloves at the wheel. He’d bought me a pair the first time I successfully double-declutched. I’d driven this road with headlamps slitted for the blackout, knew it better than the back of my hand.
Practical. Ellen has such strong fingers. She’s so practical. Who had said that?
Mrs Daventry and Miss Legg, of course, in the village hall. They couldn’t deal with the knot on a bale of blankets. Southampton was engulfed in fire, and they hadn’t been able to untie a simple reef knot between them. Mrs Daventry had none of her husband’s courtesy, Miss Legg none of her mother’s kindness – her mother being the grocer’s wife who had steadied my nerve, in the face of our mounting bills for potatoes and cheese, during the time of the Absaloms. That was why, on that day in the village hall, I had said, I simply know where to pull, coldly, as the rope loosened in my grasp. Uncaring, in the face of their complete ignorance of life, of how rude I seemed. I had released that knot one-handed, of course, because my other arm was bearing the sack-like weight of a small girl.
William was among the firemen outside the school building. A wide hose snaked across the flagstones, its origin in the basements where a banging, hectoring engine was driving the pump. A chute of stinking brown water erupted from the mouth of the hose into a tank.
‘The boiler rooms are nearly empty,’ William said to me. ‘They won’t get much more out with this great sucker.’ He kicked the hose gently. ‘The rest will be done with shovels.’
The cloud bank was at last passing over, it seemed. The horizon was a clear, dimming blue in the eastern quarter beyond the elms, their enlacement of branches bare against the sky. We negotiated the drive and the first part of the journey in silence. I hoped that Penny had turned off the bath tap.
‘I’ve got an Upton Hall girl at home, William.’ I described my encounter in the flooded lane, the ensuing debacle. ‘She’s such a wretched little thing, I simply couldn’t say no.’
He was nodding. ‘That’ll be young Lacey. Her mother’s already famous.’
‘Oh, dear.’
‘Mrs Dennis will appreciate it, any road.’ He shook his head. ‘Nobody understands how unbudgeable water is, not till they grapple with a flood. Barring you millers, of course. Water being your stock-in-trade. I always thought Mr Parr took to the job exceptionally well, being that he never expected to inherit the mill.’
‘Selwyn would have been gratified by your compliment.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Do you think he gave me what life is meant to be?’
I didn’t take my eyes off the lane ahead of us, the headlights probing the mist that was gathering over the tea-brown water.
‘I’ve always had the impression,’ he said at last, ‘that Mr Parr gave you everything you wanted. But it’s hardly a matter for another person to judge. Friends may not understand that, of course, and speak out of turn.’
So Lucy had already talked to him. Of course. I could tell from a lightening in the corner of my eye that he’d turned his head to look at me.
‘Lucy doesn’t feel she’s quite been forgiven,’ he continued. ‘And it can be wounding, when forgiveness is begrudged.’
‘I see.’ I gave a short laugh, no humour in it. ‘She casts aspersions on my husband, and so I should apologize for wounding her.’
William was shaking his head several times slowly, not in negation so much as sorrow. ‘There’s no call for bitterness, Ellen. She meant nothing by it.’
Penny was creeping down the stairs in her dressing gown, her beret pulled low on her brow. That, and the way she froze when she saw us, gave her the air of a small, unsuccessful burglar.
‘Come down, Penny. Don’t be shy.’
In the kitchen William greeted her. ‘Hello there, lost sheep!’
I put a pan of peas on the heat. ‘Lost sheep?’
‘She couldn’t find her classroom. So I showed her the way.’
I stared from William to Penny. ‘Surely the teachers showed you your classroom on the first day?’
‘She didn’t arrive on the first day. Isn’t that right, Penny?’
Penny looked up at William and nodded, pressing her lips together.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Lady Brock did say you arrived late. What happened?’
‘Her ma never received the letter. The one that told ’em when to come, and what to bring, and so on.’ I could tell from his steady stare that William thought the letter was lying unopened at the bottom of Veronica Lacey’s handbag.
‘What bad luck. Now, could you lay the table, dear?’
The shepherd’s pie came out bubbling with a black rim. My guests sat, their eyes trained on the small fumaroles of steam escaping from the crisp mashed potato. I dug in with the serving spoon and they lifted their plates in due reverence. ‘Wait a while,’ I pleaded. ‘It’s so hot.’ But it was hard for them to resist. There was much blowing around mouthfuls, and great care taken when loading the fork with peas. Soon the plates shone, and second helpings were distributed. ‘I haven’t fed such hungry people for a long time,’ I told them.
Similar short work was made of an egg custard. William and I were exchanging a few words about the Upton Hall basements, the age of the boilers, when Penny suddenly said, ‘Granny made egg custard for me.’
She had been quiet all the way through the meal. I hadn’t expected conversation, after the day she had endured.
‘Did she, dear? That’s nice.’
‘Yes. She was wearing an overall with poppers on the side. I was about three. Anyway, Granny was talking to Mummy, and Mummy said to her, “Yes, Mummy.” And that’s when I realized that mothers had mothers too. It was an extremely interesting fact, and kind of a delicious one too, because I was eating egg custard at the same time.’
It was like a burble of fresh spring water, suddenly stopped up. Her cheeks went pink under our gaze.
‘That is interesting.’ I smiled at her. ‘Do you know, when I eat flaky pastry I always see a lady called Mrs Horne in my mind’s eye. She was kind, and so I taste the kindness in the pastry.’
She nodded, the blush fading, and picked up her spoon again.
Whe
n I returned from dropping William back at the school I found Penny had gone upstairs and curled herself up on my bed, on top of the blankets and counterpane. The single bedside lamp was on. When she saw me she stirred in the yellow light, raised her head and struggled upright, hampered by her dressing gown.
‘Were you asleep?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘This is your bed, isn’t it. I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to be cosy. And the fire went out.’
‘It’s fine, Penny.’
‘Where do you want me to go?’
The room was saturated by a thick quietness. My limbs felt so heavy.
‘Get under the covers, dear.’ I nodded my head towards the steps up to the old dressing room. ‘I’ll make up another bed for myself next door.’
She lay still, following me only with her eyes as I passed back and forth with bed linen. Her deep fatigue made her gaze clear and dream-like at the same time. I fetched a thick blanket from the wardrobe and swung the door closed. The mirror caught the reflection of the bed and the child lying there. I glanced at her, away, and back again, and now her face had a dense, creamy pallor, and it was rounded like a small moon. A face I had not seen since wartime.
I stared into the glass. A pair of shining hazel eyes looked straight into mine. I held this extraordinary gaze. Three, four, five seconds passed, counted off by a pounding pulse in my ears.
At last I turned and looked back at Penny. Then once more to the mirror, where I saw her reflected exactly. The vision had gone.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Parr?’
I sat down heavily on the end of the bed. Eventually I found my voice. ‘I’m fine, thank you, dear.’ She blinked slowly, with a sudden solemnity that made the hairs rise on my scalp and fall again. She had brown eyes, hair a similar colour. Beyond that, she was nothing like. We sat in silence for a few moments.
Eventually I cleared my throat. ‘Penny, can I ask you something?’
She nodded.
‘Do you always wear that hat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even in bed?’
‘Especially in bed.’
She snuggled down, and soon lay as still and swaddled as if she’d fallen and become covered in drifting snow.
I tidied up downstairs, listened to the wireless. There would be no more rain. That, at least, was a blessing. Later I crept past Penny to the dressing room and lay wakeful on the narrow bed. I hadn’t slept here since Selwyn’s final illness. I picked up his clock, set it, and put it down. It rocked back and forth on the hardwood, making a tiny, high-pitched rumble. Through a chink in the curtains Southampton glowed dull orange from the sodium streetlamps, turning the night sky blind and dusty. Next door Penny stirred, muttered something, a repeated phrase, but I couldn’t hear it.
I was tired, that was all.
*
At seven in the morning the sky was clear. Penny didn’t move when I fetched clothes and left the bedroom. I had breakfast, and took a telephone call from Lucy. ‘Water’s down,’ she said curtly. ‘I can make it up to the kennels through Pipehouse. Ta for yesterday.’ I opened my mouth to reply, but she had already rung off.
I stood at the foot of the staircase and listened. It was strange to be in my own house, waiting for someone to wake. Selwyn had nearly always risen before me.
I climbed the stairs, glanced down the landing. The bathroom door was open, no one in there. No answer when I knocked on my bedroom door. I pushed it gently open to see the bed empty.
I moved into the room and approached the steps up into the smaller bedroom. There she was, standing by the window in her pyjamas and beret, holding the balsa wood hawk in her hand, the one that Edward had carved for me. She was weaving it back and forth through the air so that it dipped and swooped. Tilting her head and murmuring to the hawk in a private undertone, gesticulating with her free hand to make sure he understood. She said, ‘Good bird,’ kissed him, and began to dance him along the deep windowsill. Then she saw me, started, and blushed.
‘Good morning, Penny. Don’t worry, he likes conversation, and flying. They all do.’
There were twelve birds now, a variety of budgerigars, peacocks, parrots lined up on the windowsill, one for each time Edward had visited. The most recent, a merry little chicken, had been carved in 1971 when he came to stay with me after Selwyn died. He’d made that chicken while teaching the technique to William – I remembered them both hunched over the kitchen table, chips and chunks and curlicues of balsa wood everywhere on the floor, and Edward’s brown hands moving under William’s watchful craftsman’s eye.
‘Do you like them?’ I asked her.
She nodded. I waited for her to say more.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘The person who did this, they must have started with the smallest top curl.’ She passed me the hawk. ‘And then peel, peel, peel all the way in, to the longest feather.’
I turned it in my hands. ‘Just think, if you snapped one feather off. You’d have to start all over again with a new piece of wood. My brother made these, you know.’ I ran my finger along one wing, and felt an unwelcome sharpness. Three or four feather tips had been amputated. ‘Oh, look! It’s broken!’
Penny jumped. ‘I know. I saw that. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.’
‘Of course it wasn’t.’ I could see the breaks were old; there was dust clinging to the brittle stumps. ‘Oh, the rascal. How could she.’
‘Who did it?’
‘A naughty, naughty little girl.’
‘You don’t sound very cross.’
I met her enquiring gaze. She was trying to raise her eyebrows but the low brim of her beret squashed them down. The effect was comical.
‘I’m not cross any more.’
At the time I would have been. The entire household would have witnessed my sharp cries of annoyance, the dressing-down that would have followed, the list of chores to be done as recompense.
‘Who was the naughty girl?’ Penny asked. ‘What happened to her?’
I pictured her coming up the village street towards me, her arm linked in Bobby Rail’s. The day’s dirt, mostly ink and mud, smutting her face and knees. Her mouth moving. What had she been saying before I came into earshot? Something about a lardy cake they were going to buy. A silent speaking, never forming into words.
‘She was called Pamela,’ I said. ‘She went to Ireland.’
I looked out at the flooded field. Here and there, tufts of pasture could be seen, islands in a reflected sky.
‘North or South?’ said Penny.
I turned to her. ‘South. A long time ago.’
‘My dad’s in the North. He’s in the Army.’ For a moment, her mouth formed a perfect upside-down U.
I nodded. ‘Mrs Dennis mentioned it.’
She looked away. I considered her.
‘Do you know what I think, Penny?’ I said. ‘It’s time to take off your hat.’
Shutting her eyes, she hooked her fingers under the brim of the beret and yanked it off her head. The hair tumbled out, falling around her face and shoulders, a mass of knots and snarls, great hanks of it matted inextricably, inexplicably together.
‘Gosh.’ I swallowed. ‘Gosh, that’s quite a nest.’
She placed her hands over her head, but they were too small to hide this prodigious, embrangled growth. ‘They call me Pigpen at school.’
I didn’t entirely blame them. ‘Oh, Penny. How on earth did it get this way?’
‘I went on hair strike.’
I smothered a smile. ‘Why? So you wouldn’t be sent to Upton Hall?’
Silence.
‘Well. Reason or not, you’ll still have to go to Upper Cuts in Waltham.’
‘That’s what Mrs Dennis said.’ She started to blink rapidly, shaking the horrid tresses away from her face. ‘Just think of all the customers pointing at me and grimacing.’ She pronounced it grimace-ing. I was about to deny this but I couldn’t be sure, looking at this awful growth, that a few people wouldn’t grimace.
I flexed my fingers. I had trimmed Selwyn’s hair on occasion, using the long, sharp scissors I kept for fabric, and the results had been perfectly acceptable. ‘Why don’t you let me cut the worst tangles out? You can always visit the hairdresser when I’ve finished. At least it won’t be so embarrassing by then.’
Her eyes welled. ‘It’d be the end of the strike.’
‘I’m afraid so.’ I went to the door. ‘After breakfast you can decide if you want me to cut your hair. What would you like for breakfast? I have porridge, eggs, or porridge and eggs.’
‘Haven’t you got any Alpen?’
‘No, I haven’t got any Alpen, madam.’
She gave me a sudden grin, and the raincloud was torn from the bright sun. No little teeth left at the front, and the big ones yet to be grown into.
26
I PUT A CHAIR by the kitchen window, fetched the scissors. From the bedroom I brought down my free-standing dressing-table mirror, the kind that swung in a sturdy frame. She sat obediently upright for me to put a tea towel over her shoulders. In the good clear light of the window the mess reminded me of home-made felting. I found myself quite light-headed with anger. A dog in this state would be rescued from its owner.
‘It was because of Dad,’ she said.
‘What? The hair strike?’
She nodded. ‘I thought if he knew what a state it was in, he’d come home and tell me off. But when I wrote to him about it, he just wrote back and said not to be so silly. So it’s obvious he couldn’t care less about me.’
‘Penny, I’m sure it was because he simply couldn’t come. Not that he didn’t care.’
She folded her arms. Cautiously I embarked on the task, working in silence until curiosity got the better of me.
‘Will you like school better now, Penny? The girls won’t be able to call you Pigpen any more.’
‘Oh, yes they will. They don’t need a reason to be awful. They’re horrible, stupid people. None of them even know who David Bowie is.’
I couldn’t help chuckling.
‘I knew you’d laugh.’ She was laughing too.
I continued to cut, delicately parting the locks and pruning where I could. ‘I know who David Bowie is.’
We Must Be Brave Page 32