by Hilary McKay
‘The Head’s. The Old Fish’s.’
‘What did he do with it?’
‘Oh, just went off for a weekend. He brought it back all right.’
‘Well,’ said Clarry, ‘if Rupert has to go to university, at least he’ll have someone good fun to go with.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Peter, but to Clarry’s surprise he seemed suddenly worried.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh.’ Peter shook his head irritably, as if shaking away an annoying thought. ‘That chap’s going into the army. Like his father. Silly fool.’
‘You just said he was very clever!’
‘For goodness’ SAKE!’ snapped Peter. His mood was not improved by the arrival of a postcard that same afternoon.
Having a lovely time, wish you were here, wrote Rupert. Lots of love, and DON’T WORRY!
Clarry and Peter were not having a lovely time. It was summer, as gold and green and blue as any summer they had ever known, but this year they were not in Cornwall. The grandparents, exhausted by Rupert and his stubbornness, had decided they had had enough of grandchildren and needed some peace. Vanessa had been whisked away by her mother to visit an aunt. Only Simon was about. He trudged across town every few days to ask, in the most roundabout way he could devise, for the latest news of Rupert, always beginning, ‘Vanessa said to ask . . .’
‘He’s having a lovely time,’ Clarry told him, the day after the postcard.
‘Yes, I know that,’ said Simon petulantly. ‘Sailing on the lake and all those dances . . .’
‘What?’
‘Well, that’s what he said, anyway. On a card that came for Vanessa . . .’
‘A postcard?’
‘Yes. Shamrock and a donkey. But it didn’t say anything about what he was going to do next. That’s what I . . . Vanessa . . . we . . . were wondering if you knew.’
‘Oh,’ said Clarry, so startled to hear about the postcard to Vanessa that she couldn’t think what else to say. ‘No. No, sorry, Simon. He hasn’t told us anything. Do you miss him?’
Simon stared down from his lonely, bony height at Clarry and asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘I miss him,’ said Clarry. ‘So I thought you might too. Is Vanessa all right?’
‘Yes. Staying with Mum at our great-aunt’s cottage. Drawing things. Dresses. And she says they speak French to each other all day to practise for when she goes to Paris. I mean, if she goes . . .’
Then Peter came down and he and Simon went off together, Peter with his hopping limp, and the Bony One with his bones, and Clarry returned to her books. In her high room at the top of the house she walked in private landscapes so vivid that the real world went by almost unnoticed, except now and then, when very startling things happened.
‘Rupert’s joined the army,’ said Peter. ‘So has his stupid Irish friend. I knew they would. I guessed they would. The fools, the fools, the fools!’
August 1914
TWELVE
Rupert in Uniform
It was 1914, Britain was at war with Germany and Rupert had joined the army. The grandparents in Cornwall acted like it was the end of the world. Peter was appalled. For the first time in his life, he and his father were in agreement. When Clarry tried to stick up for Rupert, they both snapped, ‘You don’t understand.’
It was true; she didn’t. At that time her life was almost blank when it came to news of the war. Peter communicated nothing; her father never left his newspapers about. Since she had so ungratefully deserted the Miss Pinkses, Miss Vane was icily distant. Rupert had vanished, or so it seemed, until one day in August there was a great banging on the front door and calling in the street, ‘Come out! Come out! Wherever you are!’ and there was Rupert, taller, broader, browner, eyes sparkling, laughing with delight at the sight of Peter staring from an upstairs window, at Miss Vane, hands clasped to her heart as she peeped through her curtains, at Mrs Morgan’s great bellowed ‘Ha!’ and most of all at Clarry’s flight to be the first to reach him. He swung her in a circle, kissed her on both cheeks, and said, ‘I’ve got two hours. Aren’t you going to let me in?’
They let him in, and then they gazed at him. He was in uniform, khaki brown, brass buttons, pockets everywhere. A flat-peaked khaki cap was pushed way back on his head. He looked wonderful.
‘I left my kit at the station,’ he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have kit. ‘We’re on our way to camp. Gosh, this is already better than school!’
‘Good thing Father’s not home,’ said Peter, and Clarry said, ‘Yes,’ in thankful agreement, without taking her eyes off this new, glowing Rupert.
‘I know, I’m the family disgrace,’ he said, grinning. ‘Hurry up! Don’t waste time! Where shall we go for lunch?’
‘What?’
‘I won’t see you both for ages. Grab a jacket, Pete! Clarry, stop worrying!’
‘But this dress . . .’
‘It’s fine. Blue. Is it blue? Quite all right.’
‘Shall I get my Sunday white? We’ve never . . . What do people wear for lunch? I’ve got a skirt Vanessa gave me.’
‘Clarry, you’re fussing! Come on! Get a hat or something. Ready, Pete?’
‘Money,’ mumbled Peter, his cheeks burning red with shame.
‘I’ve got it. We’ll grab a cab at the corner.’
‘A cab!’ protested Clarry. Cabs were for going to the train station, when you had more luggage than you could carry, but still, willy-nilly, she found herself being driven down the street, with Rupert in front and Peter beside her, and soon they were seated in the dining room of a large hotel, and she was being confronted with a menu as big as an atlas.
‘Hurrah, Cornish lobster!’ said Rupert, reading over her shoulder. ‘Iced soup, lobster salad! Lemonade, Clarry? Ginger beer? Raspberry? Beer for me. What about you, Pete? A beer for you?’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Peter, ‘but stop talking so loudly! And I don’t like lobster. I’ll have something plain.’
‘Ham?’ suggested Rupert, and ordered iced soup, ham, hot rolls, lobster salad, devilled chicken, minted new potatoes, raspberry fizz, two cold beers and Neapolitan ices with strawberries to follow.
‘Are you sure you have enough money?’ asked Clarry, as this appalling array of food was piled all around them. ‘What if you haven’t?’
‘We’ll leave you to wash the dishes, and me and Pete’ll run for it,’ said Rupert cheerfully. ‘Come on, tell me the news! Have you had any more parties? Has Mr Morgan taught you how to play his Spanish guitar? How is lovely Vanessa? Did they miss me at school, Pete, when I wasn’t there for Speech Day?’
But it was impossible to talk properly, impossible even to believe they were here, in this ridiculous hotel, and that here was Rupert, and that very soon, in less than an hour, he would be gone, and meanwhile he had bought them all this food, so how could they not eat it, and suddenly there was less than thirty minutes for him to catch his train, so here was another cab, lurching horribly at the bends, and Rupert would be leaving them at the station, and how could you say goodbye in a cab?
It was awful. He was gone. Clarry and Peter walked silently home together, parted without words, and spent the afternoon being clammily, privately sick.
Winter 1914
THIRTEEN
Over by Christmas
Clarry had to keep reminding herself that the thing that mattered most of all was that Rupert was happy. Every day, while her family complained, Clarry remembered the happiness of Rupert. The grandparents actually planned to visit him in his training camp, in an effort to intervene. They even demanded that Clarry’s father should go along with them.
‘I don’t see what I could possibly be expected to do,’ he said petulantly to Clarry. ‘It’s not as if we . . . the boy . . . Rupert and I . . . are even close.’
‘No,’ agreed Clarry, and wrote to warn Rupert:
The grandparents and Father are coming to see you. They think there still might be a way of getting you
back.
‘I think Rupert really loves being in camp with his friends,’ she said to her father. ‘Can’t you tell the grandparents not to worry?’
‘Not to worry about the waste of years and years of expensive education? Not to worry that there is a chance that their grandson will be going to war? Of course he won’t, he’s not even trained and it will be over by Christmas, but even so . . . No, Clarry, I don’t think I can tell them not to worry.’
He went off with them a day or two later, and came back in a temper.
‘Blasted boy turned up on a motorbike,’ he fumed. ‘Told us he was planning to buy a banjo! I didn’t hear an intelligent remark from him all afternoon, let alone a word of apology to anyone. He sent you his love, for what it’s worth.’
‘Did you give him that cake Mrs Morgan and I made for him?’ asked Clarry.
‘I didn’t go all that way to deliver cake!’ snapped her father, and stamped grumpily away.
Grandfather has gone to London to see a friend who might help him, wrote Clarry to Rupert. The friend is in the army. He still wants to get you out. What are you doing all this time in camp?
Lots of things! wrote back Rupert. Trick biking (I am getting really good at jumps). Cooking (once we roasted a whole pig), signalling with Morse code and field telephones, tremendous games of football, thirty players on each side, more sometimes, miles and miles of exploring. We make maps afterwards of villages, and orchards, and where to find mushrooms, and pubs with warm fires.
Clarry, who had no idea how much had been left out of this description, thought it sounded wonderful. Peter was back at school for the autumn term and so not able to share Rupert’s letter, but Vanessa read it. Vanessa said, ‘That poor pig, but I do love crackling! They did it on a spit, just like in the olden days.’
‘Did they?’
‘Well, that’s what it looked like. He drew a little picture in his letter to me . . . I think he’s enjoying himself. But what will he do next? Everyone except my dad says the war will be over by Christmas . . . Clarry?’
‘What?’ Clarry jerked herself back from the last words she had heard: In his letter to me . . .
‘I know he wants to be sent abroad . . .’
‘Does he?’
‘So he says. But there are awful casualties already. They bring them back on trains.’
‘Trains?’
‘From France.’
‘But there’s sea. How . . .’
‘Oh, Clarry, of course they put them on ships in between! I might be a nurse. A VAD. The VAD is the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Think how wonderful I’d be!’
‘But what about living in Paris, designing beautiful clothes?’
‘Well, obviously that’s off, until afterwards at least. I’m leaving school, anyway.’
‘Vanessa!’
‘Well, I’m a dunce, Clarry, let’s face it! My dad’s being recalled to active service in the navy. He was hardly retired for even a year. Simon’s away at school. So Mum wants to close the house and go and stay with her aunt, my great-aunt, that is. She lives in a village nine or ten miles out of town. And I’m bored with school. I’d rather do something real. I’d be a wonderful nurse; I can’t bear sick people! I’d have them better in no time, just to stop them annoying me!’
Clarry laughed and said, ‘But are you old enough?’
‘Probably, and I’m so tall I can look older if necessary!’
‘That’s cheating!’
‘Everybody cheats!’
‘What did your dad say about the war, Vanessa?’
‘Easier to start than finish,’ said Vanessa, suddenly serious, ‘and definitely not over by Christmas, this year or next.’
Vanessa’s father was right. Christmas came, with no Rupert returning. Vanessa was away training and Simon was with his mother and his great-aunt. However, on Christmas morning, Peter produced gifts for the first time in his life: a pencil box filled with pencils and a tiny knife to sharpen them with for Clarry, and a Christmas card for his father, a careful engraving of a big plain building surrounded by fields and beech trees.
‘Er?’ said his father, looking at it.
‘It’s school,’ said Peter helpfully. ‘The art master made Christmas cards to help raise money for the chapel roof. That’s the chapel. That’s my form room this year. That’s the door for staff and visitors, but we have to go in at the side. You can’t see where I sleep because the dorms are round the back. I thought you might be interested.’
‘Well, thank you,’ said his father. ‘Very . . . er . . . thoughtful. What’s this, then, Clarry?’
Clarry, who had hurried forward with her own presents before Peter made any more pointed remarks, said, ‘Open it! Happy Christmas, Father! There’s yours, Peter! Happy Christmas to you too!’
It was a scarf for each of them, knitted by herself, green for her father, striped dark and light blue for Peter.
‘That’s actually quite nice,’ said Peter, sounding very surprised indeed, and Clarry’s father said, ‘So that’s what you’ve been up to!’ as if he had been worried about far worse, and then completely stunned them both by producing two small packages of his own.
In each was a watch, an actual silver watch, ticking.
Peter was so startled that he let down his guard enough to exclaim, ‘Gosh! Gosh!’ while Clarry stared at hers with tears running down her cheeks. How often had she tiptoed down two flights of stairs from her room to check the time in the hall? Or raced across town, fearing she was late, pausing by shop windows, searching for clocks?
‘Thank you,’ she said at last. ‘A watch will help with everything! Thank you, thank you, thank you!’
And so, despite no Rupert and no party, the extreme toughness of Clarry’s roast chicken and the oddness of her Christmas pudding, it was quite a happy day in the tall, narrow house.
In the new year they had news from Rupert that he was being posted to France. He sent a jubilant letter to Clarry: Nothing could be better! Bonjour, la belle France, and goodbye, dusty old Oxford! Clarry, I rely on you and Peter to pass on all the gossip!
‘Hurrah!’ said Clarry. ‘The grandparents won’t be able to get him now, however many people Grandfather goes to talk to in London!’
‘Are you mad?’ asked Peter. ‘La belle France! I bet he doesn’t even know what he’s fighting for.’
‘He’s not fighting. He’s not a proper soldier,’ said Clarry. ‘He wants some fun, that’s all.’
‘There’s wanting fun,’ said Peter, ‘and there’s shooting people!’
‘Rupert would never shoot anyone!’
Peter looked at the photograph that had arrived with the letter. It showed Rupert in uniform, holding a gun. He had signed it: Love to everyone, et au revoir, mes amis! À bientôt!
‘He thinks he’s in France already,’ said Peter. ‘I suppose he won’t have to shoot anyone if he can get close enough. That’s a bayonet fitting on his gun.’
‘What’s a bayonet fitting?’ asked Clarry.
‘It’s a long, thin—’ Peter suddenly stopped. What use, after all, to frighten Clarry? He tried to speak more flippantly. ‘Rupert had better watch out for German boys. They might want some fun too.’
Peter’s voice trailed away. What right had he to be flippant? Even more than he hated the thought of fighting, he hated the fact that his own cowardly jump from a train meant he could never take part. It was hard to hide the despair he felt, for Clarry in this comfortless house, for ridiculous Rupert, for the summers that were so far away, for all the Ruperts and Clarrys caught up in this hardly understood war, and for himself, and his aching, stiffened leg that would always hold him aside. Presently he reached out for Clarry’s hand, and later he began to cry, and after a while Clarry whispered, ‘Does it hurt?’ and he said, ‘Yes. Yes, it does. I’m sorry.’
FOURTEEN
Tripe Sausages
The Christmas holidays ended, Peter went away again and Clarry took the Christmas cards off the mantelpiece. She kept
the engraving of the school by the beech trees and looked at it often. Rupert used to complain that it was a very long, wet walk from anywhere and she could completely see what he meant. And he wrote to her from France:
We are staying in an old farmhouse. There is an enormous hearth, you could stand six Clarrys in a line under the chimney! We light great fires there and roast chestnuts. A little cat comes to sit with us. Her name is Mina. We buy bags of chestnuts at the market and apple cider, and once, oh, Clarry, terrible shining pink sausages made of TRIPE. Here comes Mina just now with a mouse! Am I supposed to roast it with my chestnuts?
It sounded safe enough, as far as Clarry could tell. There was still no one to suggest otherwise. Vanessa might have done, but she was suddenly busy in a hospital at Southampton. She had deviously wheedled her way into it through a friend of her mother’s, and found herself swept away.
Nowadays, Vanessa seemed to be constantly exhausted and constantly in love.
‘Goodness, Clarry, it’s glorious!’ she told her. ‘Glorious and awful and exciting all together. So, so different from school! And I’m useful! I’ve never been useful before! I’m doing my patriotic duty! Hurrah!’
The war had brought new words and phrases, and that was one of them: ‘patriotic duty’. Mrs Morgan used it too. Mrs Morgan said she no longer had time to waste with such things as cleaning the front steps, or queuing to buy lamb chops for Clarry’s father’s dinner.
‘I should be doing other things,’ she told him when, pinchfaced with temper, he sent away his lentil soup. ‘I could be doing my patriotic duty and packing shells for twice what I get paid here, and more thanks too!’
‘Shells’: that was another word that became more often used. ‘Shells’, and ‘shellfire’. Always when Clarry heard it, her mind jumped to the fans and spirals and fragile treasures she had collected on the Cornish beaches, summer after summer. Pink and white and daffodil yellow. Pearl and indigo blue. ‘A rain of falling shells’: Clarry caught the phrase one day as she hurried home from school. It sounded entrancing.