by Leah Fleming
‘Let’s just shut the door for a minute. You’re right, I’ve got some bad news but it wasn’t Uncle Gerald’s ship. You see, a ship did go down…We don’t know all the details yet. There was a phone call the night before Christmas Eve. I thought it was best to let you all have a proper Christmas. Mrs Batty was there when the call came through. I don’t know how to say this, Maddy, but it wasn’t Uncle Gerald.’ She paused.
In that split second Maddy saw the look on her face and knew what she was going to say and put her hands to her ears. ‘No, no…Please, no, not my mummy and daddy!’
Everything went all fuzzy round the edges and her throat sort of froze so she couldn’t swallow. There was a ringing in her head. Plum’s words were faint, something about enemy action and a troop ship off the coast of Ireland, lifeboats and survivors, but it was all very quick. ‘No, no, it’s not true…?’
Aunt Plum nodded. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. I didn’t know how to tell you.’
‘But there are lifeboats and they can last for days? They found the children from the City of Benares when all was lost, days and days after!’ Maddy was pleading for hope.
‘It’s been nearly two weeks. There were only a few survivors. It must have been very quick.’ There was no comfort in her words.
The mantelpiece clock ticked and the fire crackled and blew out smoke. The blackbird was hopping around for crumbs and the icicles were dripping from the stone bird table. Time seemed to stand still.
‘Then they’re never coming home, are they?’ she said, looking Plum straight in the eye.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘So I’ll have to go to an orphanage like Anne of Green Gables?’
‘Of course not! Your home is here in Brooklyn.’
‘But Grandma doesn’t like me. She wore a red suit…’
‘She doesn’t know yet…about Arthur. I had to tell you first. I didn’t see the point in spoiling your Christmas,’ Aunt Plum sniffed.
‘There’s no Father Christmas, is there?’ Maddy said, feeling ice cold inside. ‘All I asked him for was to see Mummy and Daddy again and he sent them to the bottom of the sea. It’s all lies! All of it…’ she screamed.
‘Maddy, I’m sorry, but Brooklyn is your home,’ Aunt Plum stuttered, looking older and unsure. ‘Forgive me if I’ve got it all wrong. I’ve never had to do this before. I just wanted you to have a nice time. Your home is with us now.’
‘No it’s not! I’ll not stay where I’m not wanted. I’ll go to the Vic and stay there. I’m not a Belfield any more!’ she spat out, and jumped off the sofa, making for the door. She wanted to get away from this house. Grabbing her gabardine mac and galoshes, and the dog lead, which got Blaze bounding after her down the steps, Maddy stepped out into the dusky whiteness of the front drive.
There were no tears in her eyes. She couldn’t cry. It couldn’t happen twice, could it? First Uncle George and Granny Mills and now Mummy and Daddy? That wasn’t fair. It didn’t make any sense.
Maddy wandered down the lane in a daze, picking out the frozen footsteps of the hostel gang before her. She looked up at the tall poplar trees standing like Roman candles, the snow on the bark making pretty patterns. It was all so crisp and white and silent, so beautiful and so sad.
Would Mummy and Daddy know how sad she was? Did they care? Were they out there somewhere looking down on her, watching over her, with Granny too? She hoped so.
How strange that her own life was going on right now whilst their lives had been over days ago and she didn’t know. All the time she was having fun at Christmas and the school concert, they were already gone. Her life was going on and they’d just disappeared. Now she’d grow and change and do things and they wouldn’t know–or would they? Oh, how she hoped so. It was the only comfort she could cling on to.
Maddy looked down the avenue of poplars and thought of all those other boys who never came home, who were just names at the bottom of the trees. Now Daddy would be a tree on the lane with Uncle Julian. How strange all her family were in a far-off place and she couldn’t reach them.
Now the dark chill wrapped itself round her but she wasn’t a bit afraid. She didn’t feel cold. She didn’t feel anything but a numb sort of tiredness as she made her way to the Victory Tree. She felt safe there tucked away, hiding in the crevice.
It was like sitting in the tree in The Feathers all over again, but without any hope of letters coming from Egypt. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep until the war was over and things would go back to how they were before.
How could I have been so stupid? Trust Gloria to get it all wrong and spoil the moment; that silly nosy little tyke! Plum jumped up to follow the child. How could I take it on myself to play God and get it so wrong?
Pleasance would have to be told but not yet. First she must find the girl. It was too cold to be wandering about in the dark. Her footprints would be easy to follow and chances were she’d head for the Old Vic and to her friends.
Plum wished there was a phone in the house to warn Vera Murray, the vicar’s wife, of the situation. It was not surprising Maddy preferred the shabbiness of the old pub to the genteel grandeur of her grandparents’ house. Hurt puppies always headed for safety, where they could watch the world from under some table and lick their wounds.
Maddy wasn’t running away, she was running to where she knew there’d be a welcome. To Plum that thought was no comfort at all.
When Mrs Plum arrived at the hostel everyone was still clearing up the mess before bed. The little ones had been sent up first and Greg was summoned into the kitchen to hear the bad news.
‘Maddy’s disappeared,’ said Mrs Plum. ‘Gone to ground. Have you the foggiest where she’d go, Gregory?’
It made him feel grown up that she always consulted him in a crisis, as if he was important.
‘I think I know where she’ll be, miss–up the garden by the big tree, in our Victory HQ. You’ll find her there,’ he offered, feeling so sorry for young Maddy ‘I’ll fetch her back if you like,’ he offered. ‘She won’t have gone far, not in the dark.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Mrs Belfield jumped up from the kitchen table.
‘Give me five minutes so she don’t run off,’ he said, knowing that if it were him he wouldn’t want grownups fussing. Maddy was a funny kid, even for a girl.
Greg crunched up the allotment path whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’ so she’d know it was him. ‘I know you’re up there, Maddy Belfield. I’ve brought some cocoa and syrup with condensed milk…Poor Mrs Plum is doing her nut wondering where you are,’ he yelled, watching the steam come out of his mouth into the chill air.
‘Go away! I’m not talking to anyone,’ she shouted back.
‘Don’t be daft. It’s freezing out here. Come down while it’s still hot.’
‘I don’t care!’
‘Yes you do. You don’t want the dog to catch a chill, do you? It’s sitting on the icy ground.’ There was silence and he saw her peering out into the darkness. He shoved the mug into the hand dangling from the tree.
‘The vicar’s wife says we can cook chips in the frying pan tonight if we clear up afterwards.’ That was their favourite treat when The Rug wasn’t around.
‘I’m not hungry.’ Maddy sniffed at the cocoa as if it was poison. ‘What’s it like being an orphan?’ she added. Her glasses were all steamed up from the hot drink.
‘It’s just a label you get stuck on you. It don’t mean anything. I’ve got no mam and dad, never had, and what you never had you don’t miss,’ Greg said, which wasn’t exactly true but he wasn’t sharing that with anyone. ‘I’ve had loads of aunts and uncles, some good and some rotten…I just heard your bad news. I’m really sorry. You’re not really an orphan, though, you know.’
‘I was just trying it on for size,’ Maddy answered, hugging the the hot mug for warmth. ‘My parents aren’t ever coming back. I don’t know what to do.’
‘But you’ve got yer gran and yer auntie. You’ve got family. Orpha
ns have no one.’
‘I don’t want to go back to Brooklyn Hall, not now.’
‘It’s a bit stuffy there but it were a good do this afternoon for the little ones, and you belong with that lot, up there. Mrs Plum is your real Auntie.’ Greg didn’t want to admit he’d had a right good nosy around and grabbed as much grub as he could.
He felt sorry for Maddy and that was why he had taught her to ride her bike and get her balance, even if she looked a bit odd with her patch and glasses, her eye flickering all over the show. She was no Shirley Temple, not like Gloria, but he quite liked her funny stare.
‘If you ever run away again, promise to take me with you,’ she begged. ‘I’m not stopping where I’m not wanted. Mummy and Daddy are drowned so I’m like you now.’
‘No you’re not and never will be. They’ll look after you up at the Brooklyn. Mrs Plum cares about you. She’s a good ’un.’
‘But I’m useless at everything and Grandma ignores me,’ Maddy sighed.
‘Come off it! You’re top of your class, not a dunce like me. I’ve missed so much schooling…’
‘You make things with your hands. Enid can dance. Gloria can sing. Everyone likes her…’
‘Gloria’s a right little show-off.’
‘You don’t like her?’
‘She’s only a kid, OK as girls go,’ he said quickly. It didn’t pay to take sides between girls. He’d learned that one early after being bashed up in the first hostel near Leeds when he’d tried to stop a fight between two girls. ‘Look, here’s Mrs Plum coming to find you. She’s been worried.’
‘I don’t want to see her,’ Maddy snapped, darting behind the tree branches, spilling her drink and leaving a trail of milky cocoa for the dog to lick up.
‘Oh, don’t be daft, it’s not her fault…She’s doing her best to help. It is Christmas,’ Greg replied, not knowing what to say now.
He looked up at the tall outline of the trunk, how it branched from the base into a V shape, outlined against the whiteness. ‘Old Winnie would like this tree,’ he said, making his fingers into a Churchill V sign. ‘A proper V for Victory Tree is this. Come and see,’ he smiled, pushing his fingers in her face. ‘See!’
Maddy came down, stood back and looked up. ‘You’re right. It is a V shape. How clever of you to give it a name. It’s our Victory Tree now. I like that but it doesn’t change anything. I’ll never ever have another Christmas again…It’s all lies, isn’t it?’
‘Oh I don’t know, I did rather well from Father Christmas. It pays to keep an open mind,’ he smiled, thinking of his smart new blazer, long trousers and proper brogue shoes, his racing car annual and some shaving tackle.
‘But you said there wasn’t any Father Christmas. So if it’s true, why pretend?’
‘Because it makes grown-ups pretend and give us presents and treats, they play games and sing songs just for a few days in the year. It’s make-believe but we get a holiday and people get boozed up. This’s been the best one I ever had,’ he argued.
‘But it’s all lies, all of it,’ Maddy insisted.
‘I think some bits are worth keeping, with this war being on and all…’
‘I don’t understand you. One minute you say one thing and the next you change your mind,’ she snapped.
‘Well, that’s one thing I did learn in the orphanage…not to believe everything other people tell you. You’ve got to think your own thoughts and look after yourself. When it’s bad I do a bunk, when it’s OK I don’t,’ he replied. He’d been let down so many times by being shoved here and there, smacked for nothing, made promises that were never kept.
‘Was it really bad?’
‘Sometimes, and other times…’
‘There you go again, not giving me straight answers.’
‘I wish I could,’ Greg smiled. ‘Here comes your auntie, plodding through the snow. It’s time you went home before we all freeze to death.’
Poor kid, he thought, as the two figures walked slowly in front of him in silence. What a horrible Christmas present. He’d long ago stopped wondering why he was put in a home. He liked to think his parents were killed together and only he survived in a car crash. The thought that someone had just dumped him there and gone off and forgotten him…When he got wed and had kids he’d make sure his children were close by his side.
Grandma was sitting in the drawing room, knitting socks on three needles. She didn’t look up when Plum and Maddy entered the room. They sat down on the sofa together opposite her.
She paused with a big sigh. ‘Well? What is it now?’
‘Maddy’s got something to tell you,’ said Aunt Plum, squeezing Maddy’s hand to give her courage to say the hard words and not cry.
‘Mummy and Daddy aren’t coming here,’ she said, waiting for Grandma to put down that blasted grey sock and ask why.
‘What’s it this time? Theatricals are always so unreliable,’ Grandma said, and carried on with her knitting
Maddy swallowed hard, trying not to be cross with her. She didn’t know the news and it was Maddy’s job to break it. Aunt Plum said she would tell herself but Maddy had insisted. It made her feel very grown up.
‘They can’t come home because they got sunk in a ship. My parents are drowned.’ Maddy felt the tears welling up but she stayed very calm as the knitting dropped from Gran’s hand.
‘Is this true, Prunella? Arthur’s dead…another of my sons is dead?’
‘And my mummy too. I know you didn’t like them but they were my mummy and daddy and I’ll never see them again.’ That’s when her tears just burst out and she couldn’t stop them.
‘Oh dear God! The ship went down? Where?’
‘The week before Christmas, Mother. We received a call at the hostel. I said nothing until after Christmas to spare you both, but Gloria Conley blurted out something to Maddy. I had to deal with it but I did mean to tell you first.’ Aunt Plum had gone very pink.
Grandma sat very upright, staring into the embers of the log fire, shaking her head.
‘Arthur…he always was musical. Heaven knows where he got it from…not me. He was always Harry’s favourite…mentioned in dispatches in the Great War. Now Arthur’s gone. I don’t understand.’ She talked as if she was very far away from them. ‘We never got to say our piece,’ she whispered to herself. She suddenly looked very old.
‘It’s all right. Daddy wouldn’t mind,’ Maddy interrupted her reverie, hoping to give her grandmother some comfort, but it only made things worse.
‘But I mind! Things were said that can’t be put right now. I was hoping to sort out my papers with him.’ She paused and stared at Maddy as if looking at her for the first time. ‘I’m so sorry, Madeleine, sorry for your loss and your disappointment. You must be feeling very shocked. Come and sit by me.’
Maddy nodded and swallowed her sniffles as she crossed the great divide to sit by the old woman on the squashy sofa.
‘We must pray that they are at peace. It’s all we can do. Nothing I can do to put things right now, or say that will take the pain away, child.’
Grandma’s hand patted her own but it was like all the feathers had fallen out of a bolster. She sagged in the middle, a new grandma cut in half, all crumpled up.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ offered Aunt Plum.
‘Damn the teapot, fetch me a whisky, a stiff one and no water.’
Maddy had never sat so close to Gran before. She smelled of cigarette smoke and almonds. They sat in silence as the grandfather clock ticked in the corner.
‘I wasn’t always this old prune,’ Grandma sighed, pointing to the portrait on the wall. ‘I was quite the belle of the ball in my day, but the Lord gives and takes from every woman in turn. Beauty doesn’t last. I was hoping you would take after me or your mama. I hear she was quite something…we must do something about that eye for you.’
‘Will I have to go away now?’ Maddy asked.
‘Whatever for? You’re a Belfield, for better or worse, child. One day all th
is will be yours if Prunella and Gerald don’t get their act together…’
Maddy looked into the fire, not really believing this change of heart.
‘I can’t make my peace with your father, and I doubt if he’d have accepted it anyway. He was just as stubborn as me. We were too alike, too sure of our own rightness, but you’ll have to do. We’ll make a silk purse out of you yet, Madeleine. Things will be different. We have to make the best of such sadness.’
‘Will you plant a tree for Daddy?’ she asked.
‘Of course, and we’ll have a proper memorial service for your parents. It would be expected of us to honour their sacrifice.’
‘They’d like that,’ Maddy smiled, taking hold of the old lady’s hand. Her skin was like crumpled-up tissue paper. Her diamond rings sparkled on thin fingers flashing in the firelight. In that silence and sadness she’d have given the Crown Jewels to have her own mummy and daddy just sitting close beside her. It hurt so much inside she could hardly breathe. Tears dripped down her nose and Grandma produced a lace-edged hanky.
‘Blow your nose, child. We’ll just have to be brave soldiers marching on. Arthur sent you to us for a reason and now I know why.’
Maddy didn’t understand. She was beyond tiredness on this, the worst day of her life, but she sensed a strange shift in the air. Life at Brooklyn Hall would be different from now on. The sofa was still full of doggy hairs, the knitting basket was on the floor, the clock ticked and the fire smoked. Nothing had changed but everything was changed. From now on this would be her home, whether she liked it or not.
7
Nothing was the same after the news broke in Sowerthwaite that Maddy’s parents were lost at sea on a troop ship. Snowstorms were raging across the dale and playing out was too cold to be fun any more. Sid and Gloria were trapped in the cottage for days on end with nothing to do but fight and root in cupboard drawers for postcards to line up on the rug, imagining far-off places and examining the old stamps. The school was closed and Mrs Batty kept looking at her lodger as if she was a bad smell. It was freezing cold in the bedroom and the windows were iced over with Jack Frost. Gloria was in disgrace.