‘I’m so sorry about Mummy. But I can’t have you, Penny.’ I pushed out the words with enormous difficulty, as if I were trying to speak in a dream. ‘I’m afraid I’m busy.’
‘Oh.’
I turned to look at her. Her eyes were caught in the low sun, wet with tears.
‘It won’t be so bad, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I expect the meanest girls are going home. And Mrs Dennis looks after us. On Saturday afternoon she takes us to the cinema.’ She wiped her nose. ‘Somebody said we go for a Chinese takeaway afterwards. But I don’t know if that’s true.’
‘Well,’ I forced my hands into my pockets. ‘I hope it is. I expect you like Chinese food.’
‘Yes.’ She shifted her feet on the path. ‘Okay. Thanks for coming.’
I found no more words. In agony I struggled into motion, covered the short distance to the gate, grasped the handlebars of my bicycle.
‘Bye, Mrs Parr!’ she called, her voice high and trembling, and spurred by this final wound I struggled through the gate and broke into a lumbering trot. The back wheel of the bicycle bounced and the pedal struck my leg hard. I went faster, left the tennis courts behind, ploughed on over the gravel sweep in front of the Hall. There were no footsteps hurrying behind me.
I parked the bike by the door of William’s room in the old stable yard. The sun had gone down behind the roof and a lamp shone weakly on the cobbles. I knocked, and William opened up without a word. The light in his room was deep and dim, a sixty-watt bulb under a flared metal shade that cast the light wide but downward, leaving the ceiling and the upper walls in shadow.
My hand was in my pocket; it closed on the rock cake and mindlessly I took it out and handed it to him.
‘Come in, my dear. Did Deirdre make this? Good. I’m partial to them, on account of their not being too sweet. Esther gave me a doughnut last week with my tea.’ He pushed the kettle onto the hotplate of his little stove so that it burbled to a boil. ‘Sickly stuff. I couldn’t stomach it.’
‘You liked that egg custard.’ I tried to master my breathing. ‘It had a little bit of sugar and no more.’
‘Exactly.’ He nodded gravely. ‘I would call myself an egg custard man. Come. You’re flustered. Sit down in the armchair.’
I did as he said, smoothing my hand over my calf, the coming bruise where the pedal had struck it. My fingers shook. I lifted my eyes upward, over some copper pans of his own making that Althea gave him, which used to hang in the scullery of Upton Hall. Photographs at the top, women of the last century, high-necked in black, almost invisible above the shadowline. His medals, a paraffin lamp. A wooden box in the shape of a chest, with a barrel lid and a tiny key. ‘Do you still have your Art of Prowling, William?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Your Home Guard pamphlet.’
‘Oh. Not any more.’ He spooned tea-leaves into a battered metal pot, smiling. ‘I gave it to the school, along with all the others. So the children can do the war. What do you want with it?’
In my mind’s eye Pamela took the Art of Prowling from the box and dropped to the floor of William’s shed. Crept out though the doorway onto the stones of the path, there to be lost in sunlight.
‘God!’ I cried. ‘Why didn’t that woman bulldoze that kitchen garden to pieces! Leaving the remains there, in a sort of – half-life – it’s ghastly!’
‘Ah!’ He turned to look at me, gravely concerned. ‘What took you down there? It’s not a place you like to go. Do you know what the pupils call it? The humps—’
‘And bumps. Yes.’ Hot tears brimmed behind my eyelids. ‘I had to go to the kitchen garden. I didn’t have a choice.’ My voice echoed in the room, harsh and unsteady. ‘Penny wanted to meet me there. She asked me if she could stay with me and I said no, even though I’d promised her she could come back, after last time—’
‘No, no, Ellen. Listen. There are plenty of others to help her. All paid to deal with troublesome young people. It’s not your place—’
‘But I was so cruel!’
Silently he poured the tea into two deep mugs and set them down, seating himself on a wooden chair. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Cruelty isn’t in your nature.’
Oh, yes it was. Look at what I had done. I’d pulled a child off me as if she were a wretched scrap of a thing, as if she disgusted me. I’d shoved her into a car and shut the door. I’d pushed her legs in and shut the door and told my husband to drive on. The mirror swung, a pale moon gleamed in the glass.
‘Penny’s not troublesome, anyway,’ I whispered. ‘It was lovely having her.’
William leaned forward, put his good hand over mine. ‘You’re not her shepherd, my dear.’
I looked down at his hand. How beautiful it was, strong and square, the fingers lithe and unknotted by work or age. I thought of the gamut of creation he could have fashioned, the life he could have had. I gazed again at the shelves. What loss there was in the grain of all those things, their lights and gleams and shadows. It welled up in the gaps between them and also in their very fabric: the patina of the copper, the tin, the dull black of the ebony frames. I met his gaze, shook my head in wonderment.
‘Oh, William. You’ve always been so kind. Ever since you gave me your pie. And mended my bucket. You looked after us, me and Lucy and Daniel.’
He squeezed my hand and released it, sank his face in his mug.
‘That was an easy job,’ he said, after a moment.
‘Not to speak of my typing lessons. I’ve never given you anything! Or done anything for you! You’ve just stayed here, William. Looking after Lady Brock all those years. Never saying one word about that bloody ruin of a garden. How can you be so contented!’
‘So I should be contented!’ He gave a sudden, mighty laugh. ‘I’ve got everything I want! Thank you very much.’
What was it, the reddening of the inner eye, or the lack of blinking in the old, that made their eyes blaze so? Suddenly I laughed too, unable to help myself.
‘I missed my old life sorely after the Great War,’ he went on. ‘Laid up at my aunt’s house, my hand in a bandage. Sir Michael saved me. He made me gardener at Upton Hall under Mr Binfield. The work was hard, you see, and Mr Binfield didn’t care that I had only the seven fingers to help me get to grips with all the new tools. But I didn’t have enough time for mourning.’
I tilted my head. ‘Are you saying I need a job, William?’
He grinned. I’m saying idleness doesn’t suit you, and since that Barney Bowyer and his Colin took over the mill, you haven’t had near enough to do. Why don’t you follow my example and have a little holiday of your own? There’s nothing like a change of air.’
I remembered him sitting in my kitchen in the warm late summer, talking of the craters of St Eloi while the apples stewed on the stove. How many weeks had passed since then? Six, seven? It was a different era.
I got up from the armchair, and he also rose to his feet. He was my height now that he was stooped a little. I glanced up at the high shelf. ‘We’re beneath your ancestors.’
He reached up and grasped the rim of the lampshade, tilting it so the light was thrown upward to the top of the shelf. A woman framed in black looked out, her jaw and nose and chin rendered in clean bare lines, and the shadows gentle. Her gaze, from the great height, was directed at her son. My eyes roamed freely along the lines, into the soft hollows, and it was only slowly that I became aware of his silence and mine.
‘Gosh, William,’ I said when I’d gazed my fill. ‘Don’t you look like your mother.’
‘Yes, Ellen. I take after her, for certain.’
He let the lampshade go and the shadow fell, and rose and fell again, but less each time until it was still. We moved together towards the door.
‘Are you going to the vicar’s housewarming, Ellen? I think it would give you a filip.’ He touched my arm. ‘You don’t want to be roaming around this old place.’
I gazed out where the lamplight fell on the cobbles, unable to look at William for wh
at he might see in my eyes. From a distant shadow Nipper barked. Oh, Nipper, you naughty, naughty boy.
‘I’m taking Lady Brock to the party,’ I said after a moment. ‘I didn’t realise it was a housewarming. Isn’t it a little late? Reverend Acton’s been here a good few months.’
William spoke solemnly. ‘A housewarming, you can hold at any point in the first year.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ I found myself smiling. ‘I’d better go home and look for a present.’
He opened the door. ‘You do that, my dear.’
28
‘LORD, ELLEN, I wish you’d sell this Land Rover. It’s like travelling in a meat safe.’
Althea and I were driving to the vicarage on a cold cloudy midday, blasts of chill air sweeping our feet and knees.
‘The heater’s broken,’ I told her.
‘I’m aware. Do you really need this great beast? You aren’t hauling tree trunks out of the mill channel any more. You could have a nice little car. One with a heater that works.’
‘It’s useful in floods.’
‘And how often do we have a flood, for heaven’s sake?’
I didn’t reply.
‘I know what I was going to tell you,’ Althea went on. ‘Our Reverend was in one of those Oflags during the war. A POW camp in Germany.’
‘Hmm?’
‘James Acton.’
‘What about him?’
‘You’re rather distraite these days, Ellen, if you don’t mind me saying.’
Distraite. Distracted. Distraught. I let it pass.
‘Tell me again.’
‘He was a prisoner of war in Germany, dear. Tried to escape and got caught in the woods, sent back, then he tried again – oh, I can’t remember how many times.’
‘Gosh.’ My attention was caught now. ‘Extraordinary. Why didn’t he give up?’
‘You’ll have to ask him,’ Althea said. ‘Now here we are, and it’s party time. Do try to snap out of it, darling, and enjoy yourself.’
The vicarage drawing room was a vast, draughty space with a ceiling high enough for stalactites, or more likely columnar icicles, to form without inconveniencing us. Luckily today it was filled with most of the parish of Upton and Barrow End, who were keeping warm by talking as loudly as possible and fuelling themselves from the buffet, where a wide range of colourful bottles stood next to a huge hot heap of home-made sausage rolls.
‘God, it’s an absolute scrum,’ said Althea happily as she was borne away by friends to a large battered leather sofa. I caught sight of Lucy, touchingly dainty and trim in a navy two-piece, merrily raising a plastic cup in a toast before the crowd obscured her.
Gradually the gaiety and the chatter diverted me, and half an hour later I was being propelled pleasantly through this cheerful throng when I came face to face with the Reverend James Acton.
‘What a nice party, Reverend.’ I handed him a small parcel. ‘I hoped these might come in handy.’
He unwrapped it there and then. Laughed as he drew out a pair of oven gloves. ‘Thank you very much. I haven’t got any. Keep burning my fingers.’
Traditional porridge-coloured yarn woven thick, a long strip with two slip pockets, one at each end. I swore by them. ‘They’re the best kind. I buy them from the Women’s Institute market.’
What an old maid I sounded.
‘You don’t come to church,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid it would be lip service only for me, Reverend Acton.’
‘Please call me James.’
‘James. I don’t mean to offend. I’m getting to be rather a pagan these days.’
He raked me over with the same bold, dark-blue, rather disconcerting stare I had noticed when we met at Church Walk during the flood. ‘Happens to a lot of women your age.’
I laughed in astonishment. ‘Kindly explain!’
He looked somewhat, but only somewhat, abashed. ‘Sorry. I meant that people can get to a point where the received wisdoms don’t satisfy them any more. And women see more of life than men, often they see too much, and so it happens more to them.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Oh, yes. Men have this great capacity for busyness, minutiae. The behaviour of machines, and so forth. They don’t look up, and so they miss things.’
I didn’t think the Reverend fell into this category. He hadn’t taken his eyes from my face. If he were a pirate, it was a very civilized one, comfortably taller than me. I was glad of my new suede boots with a heel. I didn’t have to crane my neck as we talked.
‘What an intriguing idea.’ I found myself smiling. ‘Reverend, I’m assuming this story about Germans chasing you through the woods isn’t a fantasy of Althea’s?’
‘They actually trod on me one time. And I felt insufficiently like a pine log.’
I had a sudden image of him prone in undergrowth, wide-eyed as a lizard as the guard’s boot landed between his shoulders. ‘What on earth made you keep trying?’
‘It was my duty. Let me get you another drink.’
I accepted. My first had been a punch made by the Sunday School children, consisting of blue lemonade and a waterlogged cherry. ‘And a sausage roll, please.’
He moved away towards the buffet. Over the other side of the room a pair of spectacles glinted: Margaret Dennis was sending me a friendly lighthouse-like beam, as if, were there not fifty pink-cheeked chattering people between us, she would be moving in to buttonhole me. A glass of light dry sherry materialized in front of me along with James Acton.
‘I was also lucky.’ He handed me the glass, and a sausage roll in a paper napkin. ‘To escape with my life, I mean.’
I smiled. ‘Like my brother.’ Hampered only slightly by spiced pork and delicious pastry, I recounted my story of Edward’s hair-raising journey from Singapore to Sumatra and thence to Ceylon. ‘Edward told me once that he was a wharf rat of long-standing, and that I should trust him. So I did.’
The French windows were being opened to admit fresh air and allow guests to drift out onto a scruffy lawn which in weak sunlight looked inviting. Without discussing it we moved towards the glass doors and crossed the threshold into the early afternoon, strolling until we were upwind of a band of determined cigar-smokers.
‘So what’s your creed, then, Mrs Parr?’
‘Ellen, please.’
‘Ellen. Does your paganism include a hereafter?’
His tone was very light. It didn’t feel like an interrogation. I smiled.
‘I believe in the beeches in Pipehouse Wood. I can’t think of anything more sensible than to worship them. And the downland flora on Beacon Hill. I believe we go down into the earth and disintegrate.’ I thought for a moment. ‘And then – how do I put this – bits of us turn into bits of other living things. A piece of moss, or a beech leaf, or an orchid. Or a raindrop. Which is as it should be, because we only came together in the first place, via a few links in the chain, from pieces of moss and beech leaves and rain. And it never stops, all through time.’
‘I see.’ He sipped his drink. His eyes over the rim of the glass were keen, amused, serious. ‘Well. That’s the Resurrection demolished!’
‘Yes, unfortunately.’ I was smiling. ‘But not the Life.’
A robust figure emerged through the French windows. Margaret Dennis, striding towards us in tartan skirt and frilly blouse. She greeted the vicar affectionately. ‘Lovely party. Couldn’t get near you to say hello, goodbye or how d’you do.’
He grinned. ‘Is that what makes for a lovely party, Margaret? Hazardous overcrowding?’
‘Yes, dear. One of the things, anyway. Now, may I borrow Ellen?’
The Reverend made a polite ushering gesture. ‘By all means. I’ve just spotted Mr Kennet. I’ve been meaning to ask him about my fruit trees.’
Margaret Dennis took my arm. ‘Good to see you two having a chinwag,’ she said, once he was out of earshot. ‘Haven’t met properly before, have you. Awfully nice man, widower, in case you were
wondering. Ten years now, she got cancer, very sad.’
‘I wasn’t wondering, actually.’
‘What? Oh – ha, ha, ha.’ The syllables of her laughter were separate, like the puffs of a steam engine. ‘Listen, I need a favour. It’s about Penny Lacey.’
I fixed my eyes on the Reverend Acton, his retreating back as he joined William and Althea under the trees. Althea was braced forward on her two sticks, a pair of red flared trousers hanging from her bony hips. I thought about running to them like a hunted hind, drawing the three of them round me.
‘What about her?’
‘Oh dear, Mrs Parr. Your face.’ Mrs Dennis shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve done so much already. And I never even thanked you properly for the hair. You saved her housemistress a dreadful ordeal at Upper Cuts. Anyway the thing is, it’s the exeat next weekend. And Mrs Lacey’s been carted off to some sort of drying-out bin. Terrible, I know. But hardly unexpected. But what with Dad in Ireland Penny’s got nowhere to go. I’ve made enquiries among the girls but none of them want her, poor little baggage.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve cracked down on the bullying but they haven’t warmed to her. She’s too forthright. Too enthusiastic. I try and instil precisely those qualities, honesty and keenness, in the girls, but it doesn’t work. Nowadays, you see, the prevailing tone is world-weary sarcasm and indolence. So they intimidate and mock her.’
Mrs Dennis was giving me an expectant smile. Her upper teeth, I noticed, were almost as small as the lower ones. They sat, little square bricks, one row on top of the other. There was a long pause, during which laughter rose from the drawing room. The wind changed, and a noxious tide of cigar smoke began to envelop us.
‘I only came to you, Mrs Parr, because she asked for you. Bless her. Are you all right, my dear? You look a bit wan.’
I watched Althea raise one stick and prod the bole of the nearest tree with it, for all the world like an elderly insect.
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