by Hilary McKay
But the words that she heard most often were ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Over and over, when the post was late, or the streets not swept, or when the school-dinner fish was even less appealing than usual. There was a war on, and Clarry made herself consider it: actual war, armies, nothing to do with a rainbow shower of seashells. Fighting.
How did an army fight?
On the other side of the river from Clarry’s home the town was full of troops, but Clarry, closing the front door quietly in the early morning, or trudging home in the grey dusk laden with schoolwork, saw nothing of this. The only armies she had ever seen had been in the toy-shop window. Often she had paused to admire the soldiers there, armed to the teeth, arranged in patterns on a bright green cloth. Miniature horses, drummer boys, foot soldiers and captains under flags, bright and neat as scarlet paint could make them, lined up in squares and diamonds against another army, equally delicious, in silver and blue.
‘Charge!’ Clarry expected someone would cry, when all was arranged and the wind had caught the flags just right, and the horses were beginning to prance. Then there would be a great rushing forward and mingling of colours and the buglers would blow vivid encouraging notes and at the end the patterns would be completely rearranged on the bright green grass. The new patterns would show who had won and advanced, and who had lost and been pushed back, and that, Clarry supposed, was how a battle was fought, except with real people.
But even with real people, in Clarry’s mind, the event was essentially the same. The armies rested at night. The horses were taken care of. The green grass was as clean and crisp at the end as it had been at the beginning. That was Clarry’s understanding of a battle, and if someone had told her the soldiers did not fight on Wednesday afternoons and Sundays she would not have been surprised.
At school any war gossip was quickly subdued. Of course, in morning assembly they prayed for the army, except on Fridays, when, perhaps because it was fish for lunch, the navy had its turn. ‘For those in peril on the sea!’ sang the girls, and of course the seas were perilous, that was well known from poetry.
The numbers included in Those in Our Thoughts Today were slightly increasing, and from time to time a girl’s shoulders might shake when a particular name was read, but that was all. The no-fussing tradition was extremely useful in times of war. It was all very vague and distant. Rupert was in France, and Peter did not approve but, so far as Clarry knew, the only certain awfulness that her cousin had had to bear was the shining pink sausages.
‘What is tripe?’ she asked Mrs Morgan one evening.
‘Very delicate,’ said Mrs Morgan. ‘I do a tripe supper for Mr Morgan on his birthday with milk sauce and onions.’
‘Rupert had it in sausages,’ Clarry told her.
‘French?’ asked Mrs Morgan.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I dare say worse will come to him than tripe over there.’
‘What?’ asked Clarry fearfully.
‘Garlic,’ said Mrs Morgan, slapping a dreadful grey dishcloth all over the table. ‘Frogs! Snails! Wait till he comes to a plateful of snails! Move your elbows, I can’t wipe round you! There! I’ll be off. I’ve done you and your father a pot of broth to hot up. Mutton. Should last two days. Can you stew some apples for after?’
‘Of course,’ said Clarry.
‘Then I’ll be off and you stop worrying about your cousin. He’s the sort who can take care of himself.’ That was true, and that was how, through the silence of the people around her, the stoicism at school, the absence of newspapers and the terrible cooking of Mrs Morgan, Clarry remained almost entirely ignorant of what was going on in France.
FIFTEEN
Letters Home
Rupert was dealing with homesickness by writing letters. There were rules about this. They weren’t supposed to mention where they were, or details of what they were doing or who was doing it with them. Or even the weather, but everyone did write about the weather, and it generally got through uncensored. After all, should a German spy manage to get hold of the mailbag, would it really surprise him to discover that it had been another rainy day for the British? The armies were so close together that if the British were getting rained on then the Germans would be equally soggy.
Sending letters was free, and everybody wrote them. Rupert and his friends filled bagfuls every day. Rupert didn’t very much mind not being able to describe what they were doing, because so far it hadn’t felt like war. They’d been working on a new base camp, miles behind the front lines in Belgium and France.
So far, Rupert had spent his time unpacking stores; building a cookhouse, a dining room and a washroom; organizing a football team; and dismantling, cleaning and putting back together the battery’s new heavy guns. The guns would have been more exciting if they had had more ammunition. Then they could have practised firing them more than once a week, not that he would have been allowed to write home about that.
Clarry’s letters were the easiest. Chestnuts and the little cat Mina had been followed by his new skills at cooking, the eerie sounds of foxes in the middle of the night and the difficulty of getting hold of banjo strings. Vanessa had different information, in case she and Clarry should happen to share. Vanessa had the sea journey (because her father was in the navy), the marketplace and a goodbye in French (‘Bonne chance, bonne nuit, ma belle amie’; he and Vanessa always did silly goodbyes on their letters). The thin, lovely girl he had met in Ireland had a mixture of Clarry’s and Vanessa’s letters, with Vanessa’s ending. She was in England now, in London, where her grandparents lived. His own grandparents got a postcard telling them not to worry and sending his love to Lucy the pony. The girl with pink lipstick who had cheered him up at the station café got a postcard too, although he didn’t know her name. He drew a picture of her smiling face above the name of the café, wrote the station and the town, and hoped it would reach her. He thought it probably would.
Peter and Simon got a joint message in the form of a map of the top floor of the school. If they followed the arrows and lifted the floorboard he had marked in the trunk room by the back stairs, they would find three bottles of beer and a key to the cricket pavilion that he and his fiery-headed Irish friend had hidden there last term. The cricket pavilion was a good place to sit out a long cross-country run. Simon might use it. Rupert himself had had many a comfy nap among the nets while others were slogging around four miles of cold field boundaries.
After this, Rupert could think of no one else for his letters. Not one person whom he could tell about the two field ambulances they’d unloaded that afternoon and reloaded on to the train for the coast and then home.
Poor devils, he had thought, but the men from the ambulances hadn’t been sorry for themselves. One, pale as paper, flinching at every movement, gasped, ‘I got it in my guts. It’s nothing. I’m out of this now.’ Another had grinned and grinned, with his left arm ending in a great lump of bandage at his elbow. Everyone who came from the front agreed that these were quiet days, hardly a pop from dawn to dusk, the cold was the worst, and the perpetual wet that did for your feet. Nothing like before Christmas, when things had been rough. Nothing like what was to come, best not think about that. So Rupert rolled himself in two blankets, and stretched out on his camp bed, picturing scenes from home to see him off to sleep. Lucy pushing her muzzle into his pockets for sugar. The run across the moorland to where the cliff dipped down to the sea. Pretty girls. That sort of thing.
Easter 1915
SIXTEEN
Simon Comes to Stay
Easter came around. One afternoon, Peter came home from school, with no warning to anyone and Simon tagging along behind him. Clarry heard a sudden clatter in the hall, voices, and the thump of bags being dropped, and rushed down the stairs and there they both were.
‘Peter! Simon! Oh, how good!’
‘Hello, Clarry,’ said Simon.
‘Hello! Oh, Peter, what’s the matter?’
Peter had collapsed on to the
old wooden chair at the foot of the stairs, and sat rocking, his face crinkled with pain, rubbing his damaged left leg. ‘Couldn’t get a cab,’ he said, from between clenched teeth. ‘Walked.’
‘All the way from the station? With all those bags?’
‘Don’t fuss. Why’s it so cold? This house is colder than outside.’
‘The kitchen’s warm. Warmer, anyway. I’ve made some soup too. I thought I’d try. Come in there. Shall we help you get up?’
‘No,’ said Peter, wincing as he got to his feet again. ‘You and Bonners could bring the bags, though. Don’t want Father noticing them. When does he get home?’
‘Father? Not for ages. Not till I’ve gone to bed sometimes.’ Clarry held the kitchen door open for Peter and beckoned to Simon, now laden with a bag in each hand and another under each arm. ‘Come on, Simon! Come and get warm.’
‘Clarry,’ said Simon, hesitating for a moment and looking worriedly down at her. ‘Could I possibly stay?’
‘Stay?’
‘I’ve already said that you can,’ growled Peter from the kitchen. ‘There’s no need to ask Clarry. She won’t mind.’
‘Our house is shut up, you see,’ said Simon. ‘They’re still at my great-aunt’s, Vanessa and my mother. And she’s not keen on me. My great-aunt.’
‘Oh, Simon, we’d love to have you!’ exclaimed Clarry. ‘But there’s Father, he’s not very . . .’
‘Friendly,’ finished Peter.
‘Yes!’ agreed Clarry. ‘I mean, no! But I don’t know what he’d say. Why doesn’t your great-aunt like—’
‘Clarry!’ interrupted Peter sternly. ‘Stop it!’
‘Sorry! Sorry, Simon!’
‘It’s all right. I do seem to break things when I’m there. I don’t know why.’ He paused and stared humbly at his big, bony, purple, breaking-things hands. ‘She says I’m too tall.’
‘You are too tall!’ said Peter, warming up and more cheerful. ‘There’s nothing much to break here, and Father doesn’t matter.’
‘He might not even notice,’ said Clarry, taking heart. ‘I often don’t see him all day. Come and try the soup I made. It’s got barley in, and vegetables. And the fire’s hot; we can make toast. Oh, it’s lovely to have people!’
‘I can sleep anywhere,’ said Simon, knocking over a chair or two as he sat down at the table. ‘Floor or a chair or a sofa, anywhere.’
‘There’s a spare room with a bed,’ said Peter. ‘Rupe had it that Christmas.’
Simon, who had been holding his face over his soup bowl, gratefully breathing in the warm steam, looked up and smiled.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
He had a nice smile, like a great, long-faced, kindly giraffe. He was, Clarry thought, giraffe-like altogether. She had seen one once, when a travelling menagerie had stopped on the outskirts of town and Peter had insisted to their father that the two of them must go and, most surprisingly, had won. Clarry’s heart had melted at the great, lanky, puzzled animal, so clearly much too far away from home. Now here was one at their kitchen table, eating their soup and toast.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she told him, and reached out a comforting hand. ‘How is your leg now, Peter? Does it still hurt?’
‘Not much. It doesn’t matter. Is there any more butter?’
‘A bit. Save some for Father. It’s harder to buy these days. You have to go and queue. I don’t know what that room’s like, Peter. I haven’t been in it for ages and ages. Not since I got it ready for Rupe, and that was more than a year ago. I don’t think Mrs Morgan has either. She doesn’t bother with bedrooms much.’
‘It will be fine,’ said Simon shyly.
‘Freezing,’ said Clarry, ‘and I suppose the same sheets and things. I never thought of taking them off. I’d better go and look.’
They all went to look. At the dead, dusty ashes of the fire Clarry had lit for Rupert. At the rumpled bed, with the pillows still dented where Rupert’s head had lain. At the damp that had got in around the window and turned into a patch of mildew. It was freezing, and it smelt fusty and abandoned. Peter opened a window and let in a gale of wet, cold spring air.
Clarry said, ‘I’ll light another fire and find some different sheets and dust . . .’
‘No, no!’ protested Simon. ‘It’s perfectly all right! Don’t do anything! I didn’t want to be extra work.’
‘Yes, don’t fuss, Clarry,’ said Peter. ‘It just needed some fresh air. It’s not any colder than your room, or mine. We don’t have fires. Anyway, he can have one if he can be bothered to lug some coal up and light it himself.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Simon. ‘Please, no. Just perhaps a candle, for in the night?’
Clarry found a candle, soap and a towel, searched for clean sheets and concluded Mrs Morgan must hide them, took the pillow down to the kitchen to warm in front of the fire and promised herself she’d sneak up with a hot-water bottle as soon as she had a chance. Simon paid her back for this hard work by sweeping the kitchen floor, scrubbing muddy potatoes to bake in the oven, and going shopping for onions and triumphal sausages, which he cooked in the big frying pan. The days that followed were just the same. He was far more useful than either Mrs Morgan or Clarry at housework, scrubbing furiously at grime, mending loose doorknobs, window catches and dripping taps, and cooking exotic foods, such as omelettes and curry. It was the smell of curry that gave him away to Peter and Clarry’s father, who tracked him down to the bench outside the kitchen door, where he was industriously polishing the household’s boots, while Peter leaned against the doorframe, criticizing, and Clarry whacked dust from the kitchen hearthrug with an ancient tennis racket.
‘Peter, Clarry?’ he said. ‘Er . . .’
‘Oh, Father, this is Bonners . . . Simon,’ said Peter, briskly unruffled. ‘He’s at school with me. He’s come to help us out for a few days. Simon, you remember my father?’
Simon smiled nervously, held out a polishy hand, changed his mind, and said apologetically, ‘Sorry, better not,’ then half bowed instead over a boot, and added, ‘I was here one Christmas. At the party. Me and my sister. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘He’s made Mrs Morgan’s end of mutton into wonderful curry!’ said Clarry, hurrying over and standing protectively close to Simon. ‘Wait till you taste it! And he’s cooking rice too. His father taught him, but he’s away now and their house is closed up. That’s why Simon is here.’
‘He’s navy,’ murmured Simon. ‘Recalled. I needn’t stay, really. I shouldn’t. School’s open. I think perhaps I’d better go back.’
‘No, no, Simon!’ exclaimed Clarry. ‘Father’s nice! He wouldn’t want that, would you, Father?’
‘I . . . er . . . No, of course not. No. Very welcome,’ said her father, thus cornered into decency. ‘Do . . . er . . . stay. Well. We’ll meet again at dinner, perhaps?’
So Simon the Bony One was accepted into the tall, narrow house, not just then, but often afterwards. When Clarry saw an especially long shadow through the frosted glass of the front door she knew he was back again, hovering uneasily before knocking, apologetic and kind. He liked to hear the latest news of her life, and to talk of Vanessa (still working in her hospital) and the braininess of Peter and, most of all, of Rupert. They both had a good supply of Rupert stories – Simon from school, Clarry from her summers in Cornwall – and then there was always the chance that Clarry might have a letter to share.
‘Let’s send him a parcel,’ Simon suggested once, and showed Clarry how to make gingerbread. They cut it into careful squares, found a box, and posted it.
‘All of it?’ asked Peter, coming into the kitchen sniffing.
‘Yes,’ said Clarry and Simon in unison. ‘Of course all of it!’
Clarry was knitting a scarf for Rupert too, and once, to her astonishment, Simon sat down with it at the kitchen table and added several rows to its length.
‘I learned to knit when I was very little,’ he said, smiling at Mrs Morgan’s astonishment. ‘I was
stuck in bed with a bad chest and Mummy . . . Mum . . . taught me for something to do. My dad can do it too. Lots of sailors can knit.’
‘I dare say anyone can do it if they try,’ remarked Peter, who had been listening and watching. ‘You never let on you could knit at school, though.’
‘I’m not that much of a fool,’ said Simon.
‘Mrs Morgan can shoe horses,’ Clarry told them both. ‘That’s more surprising still.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Morgan, ‘I was a better lad than my brother ever was,’ and she looked quite kindly down at Simon, bent almost double over his wool, but when he had gone, suddenly clumsy, knocking over the hat-stand on his way out, she said, ‘Soft!’
‘He is not!’ snapped Peter, before Clarry could speak.
‘Well, to hear a lad as big as him call his mother that!’ Mrs Morgan was not daunted by Peter, nor ever had been. ‘Mummy! You can’t deny it!’
‘It’s just the way their family talk,’ said Clarry, also indignant. ‘Vanessa says “Mummy” too, when she forgets.’
‘It’s a bit different coming from a girl,’ said Mrs Morgan. ‘However, I’ll say no more. Doesn’t he get laughed at, at that school of yours?’
‘Yes, of course he does, and so do I,’ said Peter, still angry. ‘And so would Clarry and so would you, and so does anyone who isn’t a silly, grinning, sports-playing, book-hating, first-year-tormenting, prefect-grovelling, hair-parted-on-the-right—’
‘Eh?’ said Mrs Morgan.
‘I’m just telling you the rules!’ said Peter. ‘So you don’t get laughed at.’
‘Well, now, I’m sorry for what I said,’ said Mrs Morgan. ‘I was wrong. I’m sure your friend is a nice enough lad. Folk can’t help how they’re brought up, nor how they turn out.’
‘No, they can’t,’ growled Peter, and marched out of the kitchen, leaving Clarry and Mrs Morgan to make peace together.
‘All the same,’ said Mrs Morgan, ‘you might just drop him a hint, Clarry, or mention it to his sister. About calling his mother what he does. No need for him to go around asking for trouble.’