‘Does Nellie know?’
Anthea nodded. ‘She’s not happy about it. But it’s what Nickie would have wanted. I think.’ She turned to Lily. ‘I’m sorry I cried.’
‘No “sorrys”. We made that a house rule two years ago.’
‘When the war started,’ Anthea said, ‘I always knew that if Nickie joined up, it would be the Navy. He was so mad about the sea, wasn’t he? I think it started after our trip all together.’
Lily stared ahead.
‘Me and Nickie, we wrote each other so much when you left the States. Silly letters and stuff. I remember he was so excited to be on that boat going back to England!’
‘How did you hear? About Nickie, I mean. Nellie and I write all the time but I wasn’t the one who told her he’d been killed. I always wondered how she knew. And so quickly.’ Lily braced herself. Could she bear the pain of an unknown detail? But it had to be faced, whatever. She crushed the cigarette beneath her gumboot and crossed her arms over her knees.
‘Johnnie put through a trunk-call to Gran. He told her the news.’
Lily sat silent, looking straight ahead.
‘He said he thought it important she knew as soon as possible.’ The girl turned, unsure whether to continue.
‘Go on,’ said Lily, still looking ahead.
‘On the day Gran got the call from Johnnie, she came to find me at work. They took me into the manager’s office. Gran told me Nickie had been serving aboard HMS Ramses and that the ship had gone down and that he had been “killed in action”.’ The girl said the phrase very carefully. ‘Gran was so worried about you. Johnnie said, when you were told—’
Lily grasped Anthea’s hand. The girl stopped speaking.
When I was told. Lily stared up at the big dark trees and thought about that moment. The moment when the world went silent, the moment there was no sound. Except for me screaming. The scream that I wanted to go on and on. The scream that would block out all sound. All sound that would tell me again and again my son was dead…
But the scream hadn’t saved her. The pain had hit her and gone on and on and on – and with it always the thought, Why was I not with him? To protect him. My son. Why did I not die instead of him?
Always these same thoughts.
‘And yet,’ said Lily quietly, ‘somehow I have survived.’ She turned to Anthea. ‘It’s a mystery to me how it is so. But it is so.’
They sat and, out of her bucket, Lily drew a Thermos flask. She poured some tea into the plastic cup and gave it to Anthea. High above them, the rooks cawed. Lily lit another cigarette.
She said, ‘I keep looking for him. I can’t stop myself. I’ll be in the kitchen – or down by the stream, he loved it there from the first time he came to visit the farm as a little boy and Sam and Johnnie and him played mud-cakes. And I’ll be by the stream, and I think, If I swing round quickly enough, he’ll be there. I’ll catch him.’ She felt Anthea shiver. ‘Go on, drink your tea. I’ve put some sugar in as a treat.’
The girl drank.
‘Perhaps on Nickie’s ship they were allowed a tot of rum in their tea,’ Lily said. It was a new idea, a new piece of the jigsaw to hold over the puzzle that had so many gaps. And trivial as it was, the idea warmed her.
For weeks after the news had come through, she hadn’t been able to keep still, so much was unknown and she had become desperate for facts. ‘Plain facts, that’s what I wanted. Eventually I went to the Admiralty – Johnnie wangled it – to see what I could find out. Where the ship was when it went down. Where Nickie was on the ship. How he was killed. I thought, if I knew, it would help me to think about him. You see,’ she turned to Anthea, ‘I dream about him all the time. Or rather, I dream that I can’t find him. It’s always the same dream. I’m walking through a hospital ward trying to find him. He’s there somewhere, I know it, in one of the beds. Alive still.’ She stopped. Sometimes the strength of the pain amazed her. Not so much its strength but the fact that she could live through it. Survive it. Now she waited as the well-known surge lurched through her. Breathe, Lily, breathe.
Silently Anthea handed her the cup and she made herself drink. She made herself think about the new idea; the warmth of a tot of rum. A tot of rum before a battle. It encouraged her. She took another sip of tea and, tasting it for the first time, made a face. ‘Why does Thermos tea always taste of plastic? I thought the sugar might disguise it.’
‘Tea does you good, though. When I was a babbie, Gran’d make us drink tea if we were upset. Sometimes she’d give it us as a treat an’ all. With bread and marge and sugar. Me and Freddie’d spread spoons and spoons on’t bread.’ Lily heard marvelling in her voice. ‘Spoons and spoons. Later, I realised she couldn’t afford nowt else. It were a way to stop us children being hungry, like.’
At last, Lily heard the North Country accent clearly. ‘I miss your gran,’ she said. ‘I wish she were here now. She’d talk some sense into us, eh?’
Anthea nodded.
The sun climbed the sky and, slowly, as it reached over the kitchen wall, Lily felt the spring warmth ease up the length of her body. ‘I’m told dreams of looking for someone who’s died are quite common. If there hasn’t been a funeral. Or if you haven’t seen the body.’ She clutched Anthea’s hand. No, no, that thought hadn’t been dealt with yet, his body…
She closed her eyes; the sunshine spangled her eyelids.
After a bit, she heard Anthea say, ‘When Mam died, ’cos it was a fire, nothing was left – no building, no people. So me and Freddie didn’t know where Mam’d gone. Gran told us she’d gone into the air, like, in the flames and the smoke – and ’cos of that, she was all around us. Always. In the air and the clouds. So me and Freddie used to pretend we could wrap ourselves up in her, in her air. That way she would look after us.’ She turned to Lily. ‘There was a fire on his ship, wasn’t there?’
For a moment, Lily couldn’t speak, then she nodded.
Eventually she said, ‘You’re very wise, you know that? Just like your gran. I remember Nellie telling me, when we were on the Etoile how she’d had to learn to live with all that had happened to her. Losing her husband and then her children. I couldn’t understand how she’d managed to survive such terrible loss. “You’ve got to look after the living, lass,” she said, “And that means yourself as well.”’
‘Aye, well she were right,’ said her granddaughter stoutly.
My dear Nellie,
It’s early in the morning here, very still and peaceful, so I thought I would quickly write this and catch the first post.
Out of the study window I can see Sam going off to muck out the pigs and Mary’s banging about lighting the range in the kitchen. She’ll be out with the ash in a minute to put around her beloved roses. (By the by, she’s as strict as you are: no fires laid once the spring cleaning has been done!) And upstairs, fast asleep under the eaves, is Anthea. I can’t tell you how lovely it is to have her here. What a honey! She’s turning quite a few heads in our little town, I can tell you. It’s so strange how, one minute, she reminds me of you and then the next of Freddie. But for the most part I can’t see sight nor sound of that plump silent sad little girl I first met. You must be so proud of her; she’s grown into such a lovely young woman. Very much her own person – and for that, I know exactly who she takes after!
Thank you, dearest Nellie, for all our marvellous presents. They are glorious. My nylons will only be for ‘best’ but Johnnie lit up one of his Lucky Strikes immediately. I think he still secretly fancies himself in a Cadillac! And my scent – and the chocolates. Such goodies at such a time…
And what about your wedding photographs? You look so glamorous! As does your Lee; you make a perfect couple. I am so very pleased for you – I always felt he was the right man ever since you mentioned him in your letters last year. The minute this horrid war has ended we are going to be straight over to celebrate. God willing it will be soon.
Now, I have two bits of news. Firstly, the Slocombes have been ca
ught fiddling war bonds – and, what’s more, Johnnie was told at the War Office that they are going to have to stand trial in New York! Frankly, from what we all knew about Lavinia, it doesn’t surprise me one bit, just that it took so long for the authorities to catch up with her. I almost wondered whether Matilda and Henry Clairmont had anything to do with ‘turning them in’ but my brother, Hugh, ran into them in Cape Town (where he’s now living), and seemingly they have been tucked away ‘up country’ doing their good works for years, so I very much doubt it.
Secondly, I have seen Charles. I had to go to a funeral of an old friend, Dolly Barton, and he and Thelma were there. I must confess I got a terrible shock seeing him for the first time in years – he looked so very frail and thin, walking with the aid of a stick. I felt absurdly upset at one point but then I only had to think of how he cut Nickie off without a bean after the divorce – and then the awful silence after Nickie was killed – and my customary rage returned. Thelma looked very expensive, all in black Shantung silk and an enormous veil. Very ‘lady of the manor’. But I mustn’t be bitchy. I suppose, indirectly, I have her to thank for the fact Johnnie and I were able to get married and come home to England.
I have told Anthea to come and stay any time. I don’t think I realised how close she and Nickie were, almost like brother and sister. We sat in the kitchen-garden and talked and talked of him. I felt it was a relief for her even though it has been over two years now. But the pain never ceases, does it? Every day, every moment. She also told me how worried they all were about you with Barney in that POW camp. But do not lose hope, I beg. I just wish I could be there with you.
I pray for us all every night. For an agnostic, I seem to do an awful lot of praying at the moment! Strangely, I realise the worst of times have often turned out to be a prelude to the best of times. We just mustn’t give up hope; we must believe in that hidden dance around the corner…
To you all we send much love. And from me to you, a special hug.
Lily
She dropped the letter into the post-box and, after only a second’s hesitation, turned her bike away from home. She pushed it along the lane until she reached an old gate, here leaving the bike against a hedge. She entered a newly planted field and carefully made her way round the edge. Clambering over a stile at the far corner, she took a path that began to rise. Climbing, climbing, she reached the crest of the hill and stood, her breath coming heavily, gazing down at the bright countryside rolling away all around her.
At last, calmed, she looked up at the sky.
Fat white clouds, billowing and free, sailed swiftly along to the east. And Lily, all alone, high on the hill, held out her arms and let the air and the clouds wrap around her.
About the author
Susan Wooldridge is probably best known to the public for her role as Daphne Manners in the award-winning The Jewel in the Crown, for which she was BAFTA-nominated and won the ALVA (Asian Listeners and Viewers of Great Britain Award) for Best Actress.
Having trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and École Jacques Lecoq in Paris, Susan followed in the footsteps of her mother, the actress Margaretta Scott, and worked extensively on the stage both in London and around the country in repertory theatre.
She went on to become a well-known face on both television and film, winning the BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in John Boorman’s Hope and Glory.
Having appeared in the award-winning BBC drama Bad Company, about the Bridgewater Four, Susan became actively involved in the campaign to overturn this terrible miscarriage of justice.
Susan lives in London with her partner, writer and theatre director Andy de la Tour.
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