Lorimers at War

by Anne Melville

  ‘Mother! Mother, what’s happened? Is it Robert? What’s happened to Robert? Is he dead? Oh God, don’t let him be dead.’

  ‘Prisoner.’ Margaret forced out the small lie in order to save herself from attempting the larger one.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Telegram.’

  ‘Where is it? I want to see it.’

  ‘I threw it away. No, wait a moment, Jennifer. Don’t go away. We must talk about it.’

  ‘I’ll come down again after Baby’s next feed. I’d like to be alone till then with her. We’ll talk afterwards.’ Jennifer’s face, always pale, was drained of all colour as she stood up; but her eyes were calm, almost blank. Still moving slowly, she went out of the library, leaving Margaret to indulge the same need for solitude.

  She was joined some time later by the monthly nurse.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, doctor, but I’m a little disturbed. Mrs Scott’s lost her milk.’

  ‘She’s had a shock,’ said Margaret. ‘Some bad news. The trouble may only be temporary. Have you tried making up a bottle?’

  ‘Yes, doctor, but Baby won’t take it.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. Will you go into the village and ask Dr Nelson whether there’s anyone who could act as wet nurse if it becomes necessary?’

  In the nursery the baby was crying. Jennifer had returned to bed. On the sheet in front of her was the War Office telegram.

  ‘I may have had to steal it from your drawer,’ she said. ‘But it was addressed to me. And it came more than a week ago.’

  ‘I felt –’ Margaret’s explanation was interrupted by the shrugging of Jennifer’s shoulders.

  ‘Yes, I can understand what you felt. I’m grateful. Thank you very much for those few days. But now it’s time to stop pretending, isn’t it? This says nothing about Robert being a prisoner.’

  ‘I’ve been talking to Lord Glanville. He’s made enquiries. The Germans took thousands of prisoners. It may be a long time before all the names come through.’

  ‘That’s not what it says. It says that he’s been killed.’

  ‘No!’ protested Margaret. ‘Nothing as definite as that. That telegram was sent when nobody knew. And since then – if he were dead, he would have been found.’

  ‘Death isn’t the existence of a dead body,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s the absence of a live one. Absence without end. That’s what’s happening now. It’s only just beginning. But it will go on for ever.’

  For the second time since the arrival of the telegram Margaret forced herself to close a part of her mind and to control the trembling of her body in order to provide comfort. In a curious way she found it easier this time. The first shock had been a general one. With no details of what had happened she had been unable to imagine Robert’s death and so what little hope she had been able to pretend was based on the belief that a son could not be snatched from the world without his mother experiencing some instinctive sense of disaster. Her recent conversation with Piers had given her a second shock which provided all too many details. It was easy for her imagination, feeding on them, to build up a picture of what might have happened, but the picture was so horrifying that neither her mind nor her body could admit it. As she sat down on the edge of the bed and held Jennifer tightly in her arms, she was not pretending any longer. Her demand for optimism was sincere. Robert must, must have been taken prisoner when the Germans captured the territory on which he lay wounded. She had asked Piers what alternative there could possibly be, and nothing that he had suggested was acceptable.

  ‘We must both hope for the best,’ she said. ‘And we mustn’t believe the worst when it isn’t certain. We’re lucky to have been given that much uncertainty, that much hope. I think he’s a prisoner, Jennifer. I feel it. You must feel it too. The war can’t last for ever. When Robert comes back, he’ll want to find you and Baby both strong and beautiful. Have a rest now, until the next feed.’

  As obediently as a child Jennifer slid down beneath the sheets and closed her eyes. Neither on that day nor on those which followed was she seen to cry.

  11

  Once it was recognized that Jennifer’s letter would never have reached Robert, there was no reason to delay the christening in the hope of an answer. Castle Hall bustled with activity as servants and family alike did their best to return, for one day at least, to peacetime standards of hospitality. A long white christening robe, finely pleated and delicately embroidered, had been taken out of its cocoon of tissue paper and ironed with the reverent care imposed by a garment already two hundred years old. Bedrooms had been prepared for the godparents who would be staying overnight and there would be a christening tea for friends of the family who lived locally. Precious sugar and jam had already been set aside over a period of several months to be squandered now in a single baking session. So much was going on that when, on the morning of the service, the wet nurse came to say that the baby was missing from her cradle, it took Margaret some time to discover that Jennifer likewise was nowhere to be found in the house.

  There had been a frost in the night and, although a pale sun was shining now, the December day was still very cold. Hurrying outside without a coat, Margaret shivered as she looked quickly round the garden. The hoar frost which whitened the lawn had been flattened by footsteps leading through the spinney. Margaret followed the track and came to the castle ruins.

  Jennifer was standing on the broken wall at its highest point, where it thrust out into the marsh and gave a view towards the sea. She had her back to Margaret, but the trailing end of a white shawl suggested that she was holding the baby in her arms.

  The situation made Margaret uneasy. For a moment she was tempted to dash through the tangle of nettles and brambles, taking the shortest line towards Jennifer. Or, moving faster round the circumference, to creep up from behind without a sound, giving no warning of her approach. Both these ideas she rejected, tutting to herself at the wildness of her imagination. Instead, she called across to tell Jennifer she was here and began to approach round the wall as though it were the most natural thing in the world to take a walk in her house shoes and best Sunday dress.

  It had come as a welcome surprise that Jennifer had succeeded in being brave and sensible. Margaret herself had emerged from the grief of her first shock persuaded that she was right to hope and that grounds for such hope existed. Piers had agreed that there would necessarily be delays before the full list of those who had been taken prisoner was known, and this had proved to be the case. Although Robert had not been mentioned in the first batch of five thousand names released by the Germans, more were being added to the list in a steady trickle every day. Every day Margaret encouraged Jennifer to expect good news and every day Jennifer, calm and dry-eyed, nodded her head and agreed that the nightmare must soon be over. It was not a pretence on Margaret’s part. She had genuinely made herself believe what she said and so she was sure that Jennifer must believe it as well. Or at least, believe that it was worth while to wait. And Jennifer would never hurt her own baby. The flash of fear at the sight of the motionless woman on the rampart had been irrational and unjustified.

  Nevertheless, it would be as well if Jennifer did not stay there too long. Margaret greeted her in a normal manner but suggested almost at once that the air was too cold for the baby.

  ‘In so many layers of wool she can hardly be conscious of temperature,’ said the young mother, and it was true that the little girl, although restless for her feed, showed no sign of discomfort. ‘I needed a little peace and quiet, and there isn’t much to be found in the house. With the christening this afternoon, I can’t put off the choice of a name any longer.’

  ‘I thought you must have decided already and that you were going to surprise us,’ Margaret said. ‘Have you made your choice, then? Will you tell me?’

  ‘Her second name will be Margaret, for you. I’m sure Robert would have wanted that. As for her first name, I shall call her Barbary.’

  ‘Barbara, you
mean.’

  ‘No. Barbary.’

  ‘But dearest, that’s not a name.’

  ‘It’s an old form of Barbara,’ said Jennifer. ‘If you look in the graveyard when we go to the church this afternoon you’ll see the tombstone of Barbary Anguish. She was twelve months old when she died in 1704. When I was a little girl I used to run out of the church sometimes because the sermon seemed too long. I’d sit on that grave and think about Barbary Anguish. The whole name seemed so sad, as though her parents had known even before she was born that she would bring them nothing but tears.’

  ‘But this baby is going to bring you great happiness, Jennifer.’

  ‘Look down there,’ said Jennifer, and Margaret followed her gaze down the steep cliff of the rocky outcrop and over the marsh, half flooded now by the tidal water which forced its way through the tall reeds. Not far away, in the deeper channel of the river, the surface of the water became more turbulent as the incoming tide fought against the current surging down towards the sea. On the further side of the water stood a row of windmills. The wind had dropped, leaving them for the time being motionless, which made all the greater the contrast with the life of the river and the marsh. Tern and crested grebe cruised over the water, curlews called from the meadow beyond, swans in formation flew overhead with the air screaming through their wings. A heron stood amongst the reeds as though made of stone and one by one the wooden posts which marked the river channel were occupied by sleek black cormorants which stretched their wings to dry and then crouched without moving, waiting until a fish should pass below.

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ said Margaret; but she shivered a little as she spoke, and this time with more than the crispness of the air. It was not a welcoming beauty but an alien one. Even as she watched, a low sea mist spread across the further bank of the river, swallowing the windmills one by one. If she had not seen them a moment earlier, she could not now have guessed that there was anything there. It seemed that her companion shared something of the same feeling.

  ‘The Romans built this castle,’ Jennifer said. ‘Everything inside it was safe. Part of the civilized world. Everything outside was hostile. Barbary. The barbarians came from the sea and destroyed the land. My own ancestors were amongst them. The castle walls survived for a little while and kept the people inside safe, but when they decayed the barbarians were waiting. They’re always waiting. In the mud of Flanders, in the mists of Norfolk. As we stand here, the guns are booming and men’s bodies are shattering into pieces. And there are more ways of ending a life than with a gun. The world is full of people who can only kill and destroy. There’s no refuge any longer. The whole world is barbary.’

  ‘For you, perhaps. But not for your baby. She has her own safe place, in your heart. And certainly she’s not one of the barbarians herself, to be given such a name.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ agreed Jennifer. ‘But she’s the daughter of anguish. I’ve made up my mind. I shall call her Barbary.’

  Her voice, although definite, was calm enough, but suddenly Margaret was frightened again. The wall was high and the white bundle in Jennifer’s arms was tiny and helpless.

  ‘We ought to get Baby back into a warm room,’ she said. ‘Let me hold her while you climb down. It’s a steep path – and it’s too soon, really, for you to be scrambling about like this.’

  Jennifer gave no sign, as she obeyed, that she had been looking for anything more than fresh air and a quiet place in which to reflect. But that did not prevent Margaret from drawing the nurse to one side as soon as the baby had been fed and tucked up again in her cradle.

  ‘Mrs Scott is very depressed,’ she said. ‘It’s natural in the circumstances. You should encourage her to rest as much as possible and to eat a little more. And for the next few days, until I speak to you again, you shouldn’t allow the baby to be left alone with her mother. Tell the wet nurse as much as you need to.’

  She saw the woman’s eyes open wide and was satisfied that her anxiety was understood. Later Margaret was to ask herself how she could have been foolish enough to channel her anxiety so narrowly. What she suspected might indeed have been in Jennifer’s distracted mind as she climbed the steep slope of the earthworks, but it was only half the danger.

  That afternoon the baby was christened in the little flint church to which so many members of the Blakeney family had brought their new-born and their dead. Still unhappy about the choice of name, Margaret hoped that the vicar might protest that it was not a Christian name in the literal sense: but he – presumably sharing Jennifer’s familiarity with the child’s name which had been carved on a tombstone two hundred years earlier – did not demur. Jennifer came calmly to the tea party which followed the service. Afterwards she claimed to be tired by all the excitement and went early to bed. The next morning her bedroom was empty.

  It was three days before her body was found entangled in the reeds on the river bank. Margaret, who did not sleep at all during that time, received the news with a numbness she could not explain. It was as though she had expended all her grief on Robert and had no tears left to shed. This did not prevent her, though, from feeling guilty at what she saw as a failure of sensitivity on her part. She had not wanted to act as a prison warder but realized now that she should have done so. Sitting with Mr Blakeney in a room which felt cold in spite of the log fire burning in the grate, she tried to express her regrets.

  ‘Jennifer was always highly-strung,’ he said. ‘She never found it easy to cope with difficulties. Perhaps she led too sheltered a life here. I know that she found her hospital work very distressing when she first went to Blaize, even though she had no personal involvement.’

  What he said was true. Margaret remembered her own earlier observation of the nervous strain induced in Jennifer by the need to take a difficult decision. But that was no excuse for her own shortcomings.

  ‘There’s the question of the baby,’ Mr Blakeney said. ‘When I die, she’ll inherit everything I have. And I shall make a settlement of part of it to take effect at once. It would be a comfort to me, once she’s a little older, to have her company sometimes. But I can’t look after a baby. I’m an old man. And not well. If she stays here, she’ll be brought up by servants. And even though she might learn to love me, she’d lose me before very long.’

  Margaret made no attempt to argue, and not only because she was too tired. At their very first meeting her trained eye had identified Parkinson’s disease in the trembling of Mr Blakeney’s fingers, and under the strain of tiredness and bereavement his hands were now shaking uncontrollably. In years he was not yet seventy, but the greyness of his complexion suggested that his estimate of his own future might not be far from the truth.

  ‘I’ll take her back to Blaize,’ she promised. ‘You must come to visit her there as often as you wish. And she can come here for holidays as well.’

  It could not be a permanent solution. Margaret was certainly in better health than her host, but she was not so very much younger. The war had made thoughts of retirement impossible, but she had already passed her sixtieth birthday. Like an old woman, she allowed herself a moment to remember all the other members of the family for whom she had at one time or another assumed responsibility. Robert, of course, had never been anything but a joy to her, while Kate and Brinsley had come under her roof when they were old enough to be independent to some extent. But Margaret could still recall the doubts she had felt on three other occasions when she had found herself in much the same situation as today. She had adopted Alexa without having any assurance that she could afford to support even herself, much less a child. When Alexa herself had become pregnant with no husband to support her, Margaret again had come to the rescue, relinquishing the care of little Frisca only when Alexa’s marriage provided a new home for her. And then the last year had seen Grant’s arrival, with Ralph’s increasingly confused letters making it clear that the boy would never be welcomed back in Jamaica.

  This case was different. Margaret felt sure
that she would have no difficulty in loving her granddaughter, but she could not count on living to see Barbary grow up into adulthood.

  It didn’t matter. No better arrangement suggested itself. And one of the curious effects of the war which had been going on for so long was that it distorted the idea of the future. Like everyone else Margaret habitually used the phrase ‘after the war’, but this was an unreal concept as long as no date could be attached to it. It meant ‘sometime’ but carried the connotation of ‘never’. Nothing could be less satisfactory than to live from one day to the next when every single day brought news of fresh unpleasantness; but it had become the only way to survive. All that mattered was that Barbary needed a home and a substitute mother today, and that for today and probably tomorrow, Margaret could provide her with it.

  ‘I shan’t call her Barbary, though,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the name and I don’t like the spirit in which Jennifer chose it. I can’t unchristen the baby, but I suppose I can call her what I like. Would you mind if she were to become Barbara?’

  ‘I shall leave every decision to you,’ said Mr Blakeney. ‘And I think that to be a good one. I’m very grateful to you. It’s a comfort. Thank you very much.’

  Neither of them could truly be comforted, but the decision at least served the purpose of reminding Margaret that other responsibilities were waiting for her and that it was time to pick up the threads of her own life again. Two days after Jennifer had been buried in the same graveyard where once she had sat out boring sermons on the tomb of Barbary Anguish, Margaret took her baby granddaughter back to Blaize.

  1918

  1

  Every night Margaret dreamed that she was drowning. Sometimes it was the reeds of the Norfolk marshes which entwined themselves round her ankles and tugged her under the water as she kicked and struggled. At other times it was the liquid mud of a battlefield crater which sucked her down, and then her body seemed not to resist but merely to stiffen as inch by inch it was drawn below the surface.