‘You don’t!’
‘Keep your head still, dear. There’s a young chap called Colin, who works at the mill here. He’s got a T-shirt with David Bowie on it, so I asked Colin about him. What a striking young man he is, I must say. You seem a bit young for pop music, dear.’
She sucked her teeth. ‘I’m nearly ten. That’s old enough.’
‘Colin’s favourite song is called “Space Odyssey”.’
‘It’s “Oddity”, actually. Would you like to hear it?’
It was a dirge-like melody, reproduced in a wavering soprano. ‘That was very nice, dear,’ I said when she stopped.
‘Wait. That was just the first verse.’
The story of the troubled lone astronaut and his obscure demise lasted until I had cut away all the larger pellets of hair. The few knots that remained were too near her crown to be tackled without scalping her, so I began to shape the rest. She had fallen into a contented daydream, and there were no sounds now except the snip of my scissors and the crooning of the hens outside, and the tick of the railway clock which hung on the kitchen wall. Althea had given it to Selwyn when he was a young man, after it had served many years in the kitchen of Upton Hall. I heard the deep, measured tick, the seconds falling away.
The blades had come so close round my neck and ears, the black ointment had dripped on my neck. Elizabeth’s face was above me in the mirror, a thin face, a shadow of down on her upper lip, eyes on her work. She never said an unkind thing, not even to Donald of the shaggy locks, our most mutinous evacuee, when he refused to have his hair cut. Donald, you’re a proper disgrace. They knew she didn’t mean it.
Snip, snip, snip. No sound save the deliberate tread of the clock.
Donald got a pudding-bowl like the other boys, and in the New Year Selwyn took the boys to Waltham, to Suggs the barber for a short back and sides. He took Pamela too, even though she was so new with us, for a trim. I thought she might not like it without me. But he brushed me aside and proceeded to manage four children on the bus, four children successively in the barber’s chair, effortlessly keeping order and providing distraction.
And Elizabeth said, Your Mr Parr, he’s a natural with them.
Her hair was shining now, soft, a bobbed style with a slight wave in the short locks at the front.
‘There we are, darling. Done. Look in the mirror.’
She did so, turning her head this way and that, wriggling in her seat with pleasure. ‘Oh gosh, Mrs Parr. It’s groovy.’ She looked up at me, smiling.
‘Is it?’ I smiled back. ‘I’m very pleased. You can see what a nice colour it is, now.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s annoying. Too dark for blonde, but I can’t call it brown, either. What colour do you think it is?’
She pushed the mirror and my child swung into view looking heavenwards, her hair curling on her brow, her sublime pallor that of a bored cherub, the light catching her eyes. There was a strong, bright silence.
‘What do you think, Mrs Parr?’
I looked away, saw a patch of blue sky beyond the window, widening between ragged, running clouds.
‘I don’t know,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t know at all.’
Penny was gazing up at me, the tea towel caping her straight little shoulders. When I said nothing else she shifted in the chair. ‘I suppose I should be going.’
‘Yes.’ I spoke deliberately. ‘They’ll be waiting for you at The Place.’
She got up out of the chair. ‘Thank you very much for the haircut, Mrs Parr. And the shepherd’s pie—’
‘Wait. Penny.’
‘What?’
‘I’m thinking. Perhaps you don’t absolutely have to go. The school is still closed, after all. If I ring Mrs Dennis, and she says it’s OK, would you like to spend the rest of the day here?’
‘That would be terrific.’ Her eyes were sparkling.
‘Wait till I tell you what we have to do.’ I smiled. ‘Feed the hens, and then go on the bike to visit Lady Brock.’
‘I love biking.’
‘More than beanbag relays?’
‘We have to do them in the gym when it’s raining.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I prefer death to beanbag relays.’
Mrs Dennis, effusively grateful, allowed it. The number of refugees at The Place had risen to fourteen. I gave Penny my wooden hen-run clogs and a bucket of peelings. Going upstairs for extra socks, I saw her out of the bedroom window casting the scraps wide, like a sower in a field. The beret was back on her head, but more rakishly set.
Neither of us were heavy, but together we probably weighed as much as a corpulent man. The bicycle tyres needed more air. I handed her the pump and she worked it vigorously, her face turning a faint rose. At last I’d got her blood going round. I tied an old hassock to the bicycle rack. Much darned and finally thrown out by the church worthies, I used it as a kneeler for weeding and scrubbing. William’s sheepskin was kept upstairs again, hanging on the back of a little chair in my bedroom. It was so old, the hide cracked and frail. It had done good service.
Penny climbed on. I put my weight on the front pedal and, with one fearful wobble, we moved off. I laughed aloud and so did she. Soon we were going apace. Momentum was vital in the water, and we took the bends of the lane in style. ‘You’re a good passenger, Penny. You lean the right way.’
‘Charlie takes me on his motorbike when he’s on leave. My big brother.’
‘Is he in the Army too?’
‘Mm. He’s in Cyprus.’
We came to the Absaloms. There was a neat path of floodwater up to, and inevitably under, each front door. The concrete walls looked at home in the wet, since they were already green from sucking up decades of damp from the ground. There was nobody left inside.
‘Look at those houses, Penny. They’re prefabs. Not yet thirty years old but they’re empty. Condemned.’
‘Prefabs?’
‘Prefabricated houses. They arrived on great lorries after the war. Whole walls and roofs. Men put them up in an afternoon or so. Plumbed them in, ran the electricity along the lane and hey presto. They thought they’d get rid of poverty itself.’ I drew breath and worked my legs harder. ‘I don’t know how anyone thought it would be a saving, to buy cheap housing. Look. Number One. That was where I lived, but not in that prefab. This was long before they came. My house was a brick house, and nearly a ruin.’
There was a silence, broken only by my breathing. Then she began talking, her voice so soft I barely heard her.
‘I’m sorry about Mum, yesterday. Dad’s just gone back to Northern Ireland, you see. And what with Charlie as well …’
I considered this, the life that her mother wasn’t cut out for. I doubted I could ever reach the stage of pardoning Veronica Lacey, but understanding her – that, perhaps, glimmered on the horizon.
‘Penny, you don’t have to explain.’
‘Dad says it’s more dangerous to cross the road in London.’
‘I’m sure he’s right.’
I was too short of breath to say more.
‘Let me pedal, Mrs Parr.’
‘Really? Do you think you can?’
‘I could have a go.’
I guided us to a damp field verge and we changed places. She pushed off and careened to the other side of the road, as if she were breaking in a black metal steer, one with a bell on his horns.
‘Wheee! This is the biggest bike I’ve ever ridden. Ha ha! We could go off on an adventure, Mrs Parr. Why don’t we? We could have a picnic!’
‘Perhaps when the water’s lower.’ I was laughing. ‘Keep left, I implore you, Penny.’
Lady Brock’s front door was locked this time, but we couldn’t summon her. Our second, more imperious knock only alerted Stuart, who could be heard working himself into a frenzy somewhere within the house. I slid my hand inside a broken flowerpot on the step, and took out a key. When I opened the door Stuart came racing down the hall, barking so hard that he almost fell off his feet. From the sitting roo
m came Lady Brock’s voice, shouting, ‘Stuart, hold your blasted tongue,’ through the noise.
‘Althea?’
‘Ellen.’ Lady Brock sounded hoarse. ‘Come through.’
The sitting room was grey and cold. Lady Brock was on the floor surrounded by pieces of the suit of armour. She flourished a nonchalant hand at them. ‘I thought I’d give my knight an overhaul. Who is this creature?’
‘It’s Penny, Althea. From the other week. I’m not surprised you don’t recognize her.’
‘Good lord, so it is.’ Althea guffawed appreciatively. ‘Is that your work, Ellen? Bravo. Very gamine.’
Only now did I see how Althea’s other arm was braced rigid behind her back, her legs splayed straight out in front of her. ‘Penny,’ I said. ‘Go and put the kettle on, do you mind?’
When she was gone from the room Althea groaned. But it wasn’t a beseeching look in her dark eyes. Althea would never beseech. ‘I’m cast, Ellen. Like a mare in a stall.’
‘I know.’ I brought a footstool near, and then bent over her. ‘Lift your arm if you can. And now the other. Round my neck.’
‘I’ll bring you down, my dear.’
‘No, you won’t. This is how I got Selwyn out of bed in the last week. Now hold fast.’
I swung her gently onto the footstool and thence to the sofa. She was so easy to lift, for all her height. Her bones had to be as hollow as a bird’s. She leaned back, mouth open, alarmingly like her own death mask. Then the carmined lips moved. ‘Good God. It’s come to this.’
‘Althea, please think about a daily woman. Suppose I was busy and couldn’t call?’
‘Oh …’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘Someone always drops by eventually.’
I turned my back, which was sometimes the only resort in the face of such pig-headedness, and went to the kitchen.
Penny and I brought tea. Then she and I sat on the floor and worked on the knight’s dismembered limbs. I watched her dashing away at a greave, buffing it to a mirror shine. The bike ride had thawed her: she was quickening, all elbows and eagerness. ‘I wouldn’t mind if Upton Hall was washed away in a tidal wave. Oh, Lady Brock, I forgot it used to be your house …’
Althea, snorting with mirth, agreed: ‘I have felt the same at times, my dear …’
Penny’s light cotton jeans were stretched over bony knees. No wonder she shivered. I could take her to Waltham, buy her some warmer clothes. ‘Penny, I’ve had an idea. This afternoon, if you like, we could—’
A heavy rapping at the front door provoked Stuart once more into clamour. Althea cocked her head. ‘Must be William. Why everyone feels they have to beat my door down, I can’t imagine. Penny, do go and let him in.’
William entered, wild, damp and gaunt, and full of life. ‘Hello again, young Lacey,’ he was saying to her. ‘You’ve had a shearing, I see. I’ll bet that’s Mrs Parr’s doing. Ah, I thought I could smell metal polish. No, Lady Brock, I don’t want a sit-down. Let me at that armour.’ He took his jacket off and kneeled with us on the floor and began work. I watched Penny observing the grips and squeezes of his ruined hand. He glanced up at her face from time to time, tranquilly, without disapprobation. She was unaware of these glances.
He gave his report on the state of Upton Hall. ‘The basements are drying out now. There’s two generators up there, and the electrics will be back on tonight, they say. Esther – that’s Mrs Staveley to you, Penny, your cook – she’s lost a roomful of stores, so you girls will be having soup in packets.’
‘Cup-a-Soups,’ said Penny.
‘Cups o’soup. That describes them fairly. Lord.’ He gave a high yipping laugh. ‘We could have done with them! Oh yes! They’d have gone down a treat in Plugstreet Wood!’
‘Were you camping in the wood, Mr Kennet?’
‘We were not, my dear.’ Courteously he turned to her. ‘We were fighting. Or waiting to fight.’
She smiled. ‘Cup-a-Soups would have been perfect, then. Just boil the kettle and there you are. You could pounce on the enemy while they were still heating up their old tinned stuff.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
When all the pieces of armour were equally shining, William got up, flexed his knees. ‘Let’s put the old chap together again. After that I’m off up to the kennels. See George about some snares.’
‘I am shutting my ears,’ announced Lady Brock.
‘Can I come?’ Penny blurted. ‘I could read to Mr Horne again and have some Bourbon biscuits.’
‘You were the one,’ I said, as it dawned on me. ‘Who drew on his plaster. You’re PL.’
She nodded. ‘I thought it was sad that no one had written a message.’
‘Go on, William,’ said Lady Brock. ‘Take her with you. She’s going to be bolted up in the Hall by tonight.’
I clambered to my feet, making a business of pulling my skirt straight, hanging my head so that no one would see the fast-rising tide of ridiculous disappointment that was flushing my face and making my eyes burn. I cleared my throat. ‘Yes, go, dear. I’ll pop home and start collecting your things together.’
Penny sounded uncertain. ‘Is it OK, Mrs Parr?’
‘Of course!’ I manufactured a cheery smile. ‘Why on earth not?’
‘You said something about this afternoon.’
‘No, it wasn’t anything. You go on, dear.’
William raised his good hand, judge-like. ‘We’ll go up the kennels, but we won’t be long. She’ll have had enough spoiling by then, skiving off all this time. Mrs Dennis will be wanting her back in the fold.’
Without speaking I passed Penny and William the pieces of armour for them to hang on the frame. Soon the knight stood whole and shining, his metal fists fielding beams of light and bouncing them onto the walls. ‘Behold the High Middle Ages,’ crowed Lady Brock, and Penny lifted his visor and looked inside, and I bade goodbye to no one in particular, and received a flurry of distracted goodbyes in return, and in no time I was outside, getting back on the bicycle again alone. The air was sharp and the road more slippery than it had seemed earlier. I was lighter now, of course, spinning along on my pumped-up tyres.
Her belongings were dropped and scattered everywhere. I started to pick them up. What was it with children? Did those young fingers suddenly become nerveless, lose their grip? How could one girl strew so many things across a bedroom floor? Trousers, hairbrush, slippers, rabbit, hat. I performed the bendings and straightenings, dip and up, just like before, each time with another small object in my hand, a child’s garment or toy. Years of such gleaning. My body began to insist, to push and nudge. You don’t fool me. You remember.
In sudden anger I tossed the clothes and hairbrush into the suitcase, banged down the lid and snapped the catches shut. I didn’t have to be a maid to this child.
I stood, breathing hard. The counterpane of my bed was thrown back and the bottom sheet bore the imprint of her curled body, a comma-shaped trough. Without thinking I lay down there, and stared at the ceiling with smarting eyes.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said aloud, and got up again.
Opening the case, I took everything out and repacked it, one garment after another, folding and tucking. Vests, knickers, small mud-stained socks. A Viyella blouse, the yoke narrow for narrow shoulders. A pair of sad cotton trousers, thinner even than the ones she was wearing. The case was blue, eggshell on the outside, grimy and battered at the corners, the inside a slightly darker dusty blue, an old-fashioned colour, with interior straps to hold everything in place. I fastened the straps and then tightened the gilt buckles with care.
When the knock came at the front door I brought the suitcase downstairs and met Penny on the doorstep. William was waiting by the Land Rover, transfixed by Venus hanging aglow among the lower branches of the ash tree. The jangle of my keys awoke him from his reverie.
They both sat in the back, passing a few words to each other, something inconsequential about the kennels. Beacon Hill rose against the darkening sky.
�
��Gosh,’ Penny said. ‘Look at that beautiful hill.’
‘That’s Beacon Hill. You can see the sea from the top. The sea, and Southampton.’ I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Her light-brown eyes were wistful.
‘Southampton’s a major global port, you know,’ she said. ‘Mrs Dennis told us. You can get a ship to anywhere in the world.’
‘Mrs Dennis is right,’ said William. ‘Mrs Parr’s brother did that very thing. He ended up in the Far East. He’s had some great adventures.’
‘And he carves birds.’
‘That he does.’
‘That would be my best job. Bird carver and adventurer.’
At Upton Hall I came to a halt on the gravel and got out along with my passengers. Two minibuses were disgorging pupils and luggage. William sketched a wave and hastened away to the mews and his quarters. Penny stood facing me, shivering in the wind, away across the gravel from the horde of pupils, her teeth clenched with cold and distress, and I saw again the girl I had carried through the flood.
‘Don’t worry, Penny,’ I said. ‘You’ve come back with lovely hair, remember. If they say nasty things, just – just take no notice.’
She lunged forward and hugged me, binding my arms to my body, her head hard against the join of my ribs.
‘Bye-bye, darling,’ I heard myself say. She had pinned my arms so tightly to my sides, I couldn’t hug her back. ‘Come back and see me again.’
‘Bye, Mrs Parr.’ Her voice was muffled against my belly. Then she tore herself away, leaving me without words, able only to stand and watch her dragging her suitcase towards the throng of children.
The Olivetti was on the table in my bedroom where it had been since I’d given up the mill. In the drawer beneath it, a stack of folded messages tied together with darning wool, navy ink on sky-blue Basildon Bond. The envelopes bore cobalt Irish stamps depicting a young man casting grain. I hadn’t read them for years. There was no need. Occasionally I simply held the small parcel in my hands.
I pulled the drawer wider and extracted another set of letters, these typewritten on foolscap. Phrases jumped out as I shuffled through them. Bareheaded under the Lion Gate. Glittering, drooping under dewdrops. A pencil stub at the back of a desk drawer, the end chewed by milk teeth. Years of babble and persiflage. I could toss the lot onto the fire and it would flare and char in twenty seconds and I would have lost nothing. I brought the stool close, sat down, inserted a fresh sheet of paper into the roller of the typewriter, and let the words rattle off the keys.
We Must Be Brave Page 33