We Must Be Brave

by Frances Liardet

  I heard his tread, soft, on the turf. He was following me.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said, without turning my head.

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ I heard him say. ‘If I could have kept her, stopped her going, I would have done it, to make you happy.’

  I could have laughed in despair. As if my happiness counted for anything. She was the only one who mattered. If she’d gone running to her father with open arms, my heart would have broken, but I’d have lost her fairly. I’d have known that she was happy.

  ‘It wasn’t your job to keep her,’ I told William. ‘It was mine.’

  Dusk was beginning to fall in the east. I thought about the road to the sea. Perhaps I’d see a bonfire, a brazier glowing in the woods, and go to warm my hands with other travellers, tramps or trappers, folk who were abroad in the night. It would be a relief, perhaps, to speak to people who didn’t know me or what I’d lost.

  ‘I must go and get that child down,’ I said at last. ‘I need to take her back to Upton Hall. There’s no need for you to stay.’

  ‘I’ll wait here, all the same,’ William said.

  ‘I don’t need you to. I don’t need you.’

  ‘Well, I need you.’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t think why.’

  *

  Penny was sitting beside me at the edge of the dry, sheltered bowl of a dewpond, her suitcase by her knees, looking out towards the sea. She had her back to me. She hadn’t turned round when I sat down next to her on the springy, scented turf. I wondered if the wind had snatched away the tramp of my feet across the ground, and she didn’t know I was there.

  But then she said, ‘Go away please.’

  Such a high, sweet little voice.

  I ran my eyes over Southampton Water, along the cranes and warehouses that crouched blotted at the waterline, hatched out in bleeding ink under a bank of heavy iron-grey clouds that were massing on the sea. Below them there was a line of yellow light.

  ‘Where were you going with your suitcase, Penny? Ireland?’

  She nodded. ‘I knew I had to go south. But I didn’t have a map. So I came up here to look. Then I saw how awfully far away it was.’ She hunched her shoulders, turned her face more adamantly towards Southampton. ‘Why are you here, anyway, Mrs Parr? I shan’t call you Ellen any more. Since you don’t care about me.’

  ‘I do care about you, Penny.’

  ‘That’s not true. You only care about this Pamela girl. Even though she broke your bird.’

  ‘Yes, I did care about her.’ How easily the words came when looking at the sea, at that bright stripe of water fifteen miles away. ‘Her mother died during the war. I looked after her for a while, and then her father came and took her away to live with her cousins. She didn’t want to leave, but her father and I, we made her go.’

  There it was. My sad little story of wartime. Viewed as through the wrong end of a telescope, distant, gem-clear.

  ‘I loved her, you see,’ I said. ‘And you reminded me of her. And I was a bit silly about it.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her squint at me.

  ‘Hm. That wasn’t very fair, was it. Making her go.’

  The iron clouds parted, the yellow light mounted over the refinery.

  ‘We thought it was for the best.’

  Somewhere high above us a long sweet song of adulation began. Penny stared upwards. ‘A lark, Mrs Parr. Can you hear him? Where is he?’

  ‘He’ll be a little dot in the sky somewhere.’ I watched her as she searched. ‘When I came here with Pamela, we heard a lark. We were having a picnic. I had some seedcake – it was a bit stale, but never mind. We were running away, you see. Trying to escape, so that she wouldn’t have to go away with her father. So we didn’t care too much about cake. It was a warm day and she dozed off.’ I pointed. ‘We were lying down there, at the bottom of this bowl.’

  Penny didn’t see. She was looking up at the sky.

  I closed my eyes. Pamela lay on the warm springy turf, in that pale-blue summer dress with the trim of white daisies around the hem, her head pillowed on her arm. The grass making little prints on her forearm as she dozed. I told her about the lark and she moved her head and looked up at the sky through her eyelashes. A lock of hair blew across her forehead. In her drowsiness she seemed once again like a small child.

  ‘If you were running away,’ Penny said, ‘why did you stop for a picnic? You’d have been better off biking as fast as you could, till you got clean away. Instead of hanging about eating cake.’

  Pamela’s cheeks were rosy from the sunshine. All I wanted was to hold her and kiss her again.

  ‘Maybe you knew it was useless, really. Like me. I knew you’d find me in the end.’ Penny sighed. ‘Did she like it up here?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘So that was good, wasn’t it?’

  I opened my eyes. Penny was looking at me. A small child, narrow-shouldered, with shiny light-brown hair and light-brown eyes. A few glints in them but they were greenish. None of that deep pebble-grey of a peat brook. Eager, she was, quick and seeking life.

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘I should think Pamela had fun with you. That’s why she didn’t want to go.’ She picked at a loose thread on her knee patch, her head down. ‘I’ve had fun. But I don’t suppose you’ll want me to come back now I’ve torn up your letter and run away.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘I expect you’ll tell the Dennis and she’ll gate me.’

  ‘The Dennis.’ I couldn’t help chuckling. ‘Penny, that’s awfully rude. And what on earth’s gating?’

  ‘They don’t let you out.’

  ‘Penny,’ I said, ‘I will make sure that doesn’t happen. And I don’t care about the letter. I’d already crumpled it up, remember.’

  She sniffed, glanced up at the sky again. ‘Oh! I can see the lark.’ She pointed. ‘Look, Ellen. There he is!’

  I gazed upwards. His soliloquy ran on and on, but I couldn’t spot him. Nevertheless, he was up there somewhere. The trick was to let the gaze wander, to wait for the vision to clear. And I was starting to see very clearly now. Yes. There he was, a small brown dot in the blue, buoyed up by his own singing.

  We left the dewpond and walked down the ridge. Upton Hall lay below us, a winged building of grey stone and brick. My eye was caught by movement on the path. Two figures were approaching: one wiry, holding on to his hat brim; the other tweed-skirted with a stalwart tread.

  ‘Mr Kennet’s coming up now, Penny. He’s got Mrs Dennis with him.’

  They stopped short of the brow of the hill like strangers unsure of their welcome, come to parley. Penny clung to my hand.

  ‘Please stick up for me, Ellen.’

  ‘Always.’

  I let go of her hand and strode down the hill.

  ‘Dear Mrs Parr,’ Mrs Dennis began, as I approached. ‘We were a little anxious. Althea—’

  ‘Lady Brock might not have heard me quite correctly,’ I said. ‘Her hearing’s not to be relied on, especially on the telephone, as I’m sure you’re aware. Now, Penny needs to see her father. I’m sure you can do something about that, Mrs Dennis. You’re very persuasive.’

  Mrs Dennis nodded. ‘As it happens, Mrs Parr, I’ve arranged for him to come and visit. He’s arriving in a few days.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’

  ‘Sometimes they need a bit of a wigging, these chaps.’ She permitted herself a broad grin. ‘I know the type, you see.’

  I turned towards the child, waiting alone above us on the ridge, and beckoned her down the hill. ‘You can take her back to school in my vehicle if you wish,’ I told Mrs Dennis. ‘William and I are used to walking all the roads around here, in Upton and Barrow End.’

  I handed her the Land Rover keys. Then I embraced the child. ‘I will always be delighted to see you, Penny Lacey.’

  ‘Can I come to tea soon?’ Her eyebrows were raised in excitement at the possibility. ‘I could bring my David Bowie record!’

  If I were the parent of
a child who was so easily pleased, I reflected, I would not want to spend a day out of her company.

  ‘I shall look forward to that,’ I said. ‘Very much indeed.’

  William stood by me, holding his hat in front of him like a soldier in mourning, the wind buffeting the corn stubble of his hair.

  ‘This light,’ I said to him. ‘It reminds me of the Absaloms. That spring, when we had the broken tap.’

  He nodded. ‘The sun would be the same. A yellow old thing, low in the south.’

  We turned and made our way down from the summit. The narrow path was in deep shadow and I held out my arm for him so that he wouldn’t stumble. When we reached the top of the track I said, ‘I’m going on round the hill.’

  ‘Ellen, it’s getting dark.’

  ‘On this side of the hill it is. But the sun’s not set. I’m going round to the southern road. There’ll be light for a good while yet.’

  ‘You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘I’m a grown-up woman.’

  ‘A stubborn one.’

  I spoke softly. ‘Go home, William.’

  I could see his grin in the lowering light, his shake of the head. ‘Just like Ma. She wouldn’t be told, either.’

  The road in front of me was dull, the sun going down behind the refinery.

  I remembered the time I had walked this road the other way, back from Southampton and the offices of Raymond & Rose. My mother was with me: the man with the ledger had called us Calthrop. We had left in the heat, caught the bus from Southampton to Waltham. But we had no money for the journey from Waltham to Upton, so we rested at the bus shelter in Waltham and gathered our strength for the walk home. It was so pleasant and cool in the shade of the tiled roof. I remembered looking at Mother’s shoe, the toe in the sunshine, the rest of the foot in the shade, and the shoe and stocking dusty.

  We didn’t want to be seen dragging ourselves along the main street so we climbed the stiles over the fields to the graveyard where honeysuckle grew abundant in the hedgerow. We spent some time picking the flowers, biting off the small button at the base and sipping the nectar. Each sip a minim of sweetness, and the flesh of the trumpet tube sweet as well. Then we went on to the Absaloms and dipped our cups into the bucket and drank and drank, water streaming from the cups over our hands and down our arms as we lifted them to our lips.

  No hunger or thirst of my youth was as strong as my love for my child. We’d never be apart, not completely. Even after death we’d find each other. Our atoms would be released into the earth, air, water and they’d find each other, even if it took a hundred years. One atom of her and one of me would mingle in a sun-shot blade of grass, and so we’d embrace again. And a millennium later we’d kiss in a raindrop seeding in a cloud, and after an aeon we’d be hugging tightly in the scale of a fish in the sea. It would be so for ever.

  Down on the coast the yellow light dwindled. My steps slowed. I wished suddenly that William was here. How lion-like he had been, calling me to my senses. How steadfast, standing by me, the light catching the side of his face, his temple and cheek. But if I felt lonely now, I only had myself to blame. I could be down at Upton Hall with him, sharing a pot of tea.

  His ma was the same, was she? Stubborn, like me? I remembered her portrait, hanging high on the wall in his room. That softly shadowed, but nonetheless firm, jawline. Men, in their pride, were wont to call women stubborn, when in fact we were no such thing. When the truth was that we simply knew our own minds. I could imagine sharing a few hearty words with her on the subject. I should take William to task. But she would have done that already. I could already see him smiling as I began to chide him, saying, Yes. My mother used to tell me that.

  I came to a halt in the road, my mouth open. My breath misting in the air.

  Then I turned back towards Upton.

  *

  The following morning the air was still and mild. The kitchen garden at Upton Hall lay in low relief under the weak sunshine. A giant hand could measure it out, the fingers spanning the beds, stroking the smooth, worn lineaments of the paths. William was bent over one tomb of a bed, stripping away turf. The sod lifted up cleanly over the turfing iron and the soil was rich beneath. ‘It’s all in there, still,’ he said between breaths. ‘Generations of beautiful compost. Just needs turning.’

  ‘Surely the girls can help you,’ I said.

  I was happy to look at the soil, to talk to him about it. I had spent a night sleepless, wide-eyed at the enormity of it, of the realization that waited, like a breath held, just beyond my grasping. For I hadn’t come to it yet. I couldn’t, not on my own.

  William pushed his hat back and wiped his brow. ‘Oh, those girls are going to learn double-digging, weeding, the lot. Gardening school, you see. Potatoes, cabbage, carrot, onion. A few flowers. Mrs Dennis likes dahlias.’

  ‘So did Sir Michael.’

  ‘That he did.’

  ‘William …’

  ‘How about a cuppa?’ he said, avoiding my gaze.

  There was no shed. Just the trunk of a fallen beech, broad and high, to sit on. And a sawn-up limb of the same tree smoking on an open-fire patch, the ash white in the weak winter sunlight. And a Thermos flask.

  ‘It was the day of the thunderstorm, wasn’t it,’ I said. ‘When you took me into the barn and we waited out the rain. You were standing by the barn door and I was sitting on a hay-bale. Crop-haired, of course. No tresses falling around my cheeks.’

  He poured tea from the flask, handed me the tin mug in a pincered grip. Every minute, every second I sat beside him made me more certain.

  ‘Am I right, William? Was it then?’

  With the tip of the turfing iron he nudged a branch further into the fire. ‘This iron is forty-five years old. Sir Michael bought it from Skelton in Southsea. I should not be putting it in the fire.’

  ‘William, please!’

  ‘Yes!’ He laughed loudly. ‘It was that day.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me? Why did you wait for it to dawn on me?’

  ‘You might not have wanted to see it. Not want it to be true.’

  I watched the small flames lick at the tree bark, pale in the sunlight. The smell of woodsmoke filled me, sharp and wholesome. Mother had come here. It was not so bad, to think of her in this crisp aromatic air.

  ‘So my mother came here and sat with you, and looked at your hand and didn’t flinch,’ I said. ‘Was that when it began?’

  ‘No. She first set eyes on me in nineteen fifteen. Before I went to war.’ For the first time he met my eyes. ‘I wasn’t always this rum old cove, you know, Ellen Parr. All string and bones. I was something to look at.’

  ‘You are no such rum cove. And she was something to look at, too.’

  ‘So she was.’

  ‘She watched me beat out the plumage of the weathercock. Her hands over her ears – she was laughing. She’d come to my workshop, to ask me if I wanted cider jars. Your cellars were full of them, you see. Godfrey Stour had left them – Godfrey and his father and grandfather no doubt. So I came to your house with a handcart. She welcomed me in. We went to fetch the jars from the apple press. So I stood with her in there and I …’

  ‘You kissed her.’

  ‘She was so beautiful with that mass of hair. So fine.’

  I frowned. ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘She cut it off. At that early time she wore her hair in the old style. All gathered up behind, but low on the neck.’

  I sipped the strong tea. ‘I only have my memory, you see. Not a single photograph or drawing of her.’

  ‘The war came and stole away all my youth and talent, all my gusto. I thought I’d never see her again. But she found me at Upton Hall. She sat there by my charcoal stove and took hold of my hand. I lied to you, Ellen; it wasn’t the work that stopped me mourning my hand. It was love for her.’

  ‘How did it end, then, William?’

  He gave a long sigh, cleared his throat.

  ‘You were born.
I came through the snow with a sheepskin for your cradle. I knew I’d done wrong when your Connie admitted me to the nursery and there they were, your mother and the Captain, and Edward, and you tucked in your mother’s arm. And she’d cut her hair, all that beautiful hair had gone. I bellowed out in surprise. What have you done to your hair? It was beautiful! It was as good as a confession. The next night the Captain came to my aunt and uncle’s house where I lived, and he knocked me clean across the parlour floor. And she wrote to me in such terms. I tell you, Ellen, it hurt me worse than the wound to my hand. I was not to address her or look at her anywhere in Upton on pain of losing my job. I learnt it very hard, that lesson. That her reputation trumped my love without a second’s thought. I never suspected about you, back then. She told me she took pains to prevent a baby and I believed her. I think she did indeed take such pains, but nature foiled us.’

  I thought about that sheepskin. It had warmed my feet at the Absaloms, shoved into the bottom drawer of the chest. At the town-hall hostel it had remained folded in my suitcase – too warm, there, to need it. And at the mill it lay on the floor by my dressing table. Selwyn had put it there, not me. Thinking it would be a soft carpet for my bare feet.

  ‘My God,’ I said aloud. ‘Do you think she knew?’

  He thrust his chin into his collar, pursed his lips. ‘I’ve got no way of knowing.’

  I thought of her that day when William mended the bucket. Her eyes hollowed, wandering over the damp-patched wall and the empty range. Oh, William Kennet, she’d said, in a voice equally hollow and wandering. Yes. We used to know him. And there was nothing, not a flicker of warmth, or conscience, or memory, or anything.

  ‘All I know …’ I spoke slowly. ‘All I know is that she kept that sheepskin.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m sorry for hitting you, William.’

  ‘You did it right softly.’

  ‘And for railing at you. You won’t have to save me again, I promise.’

  His mouth stretched in a grin of silent laughter. ‘You’ve been an errant daughter, that’s for sure,’ he said at last. ‘Not that it matters, since I’ll love you for ever, whatever you do.’