The Chestnut Tree

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by Charlotte Bingham


  ‘I think she’s taken the pills that Father gave her, Judy!’ Dauncy looked both much older and much younger as he stared at Judy, white-faced. ‘I went in to take her a cup of tea, and I just can’t wake her.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you call an ambulance?’ Judy heard herself demanding, despite knowing at once that the look of anger on her face was frightening the younger boy.

  ‘I can’t, Judy, I couldn’t, because, you know, Gwen – she told me . . .’

  He looked over towards his mother’s maid, who nodded encouragingly for him to continue.

  ‘Gwen told me, if Mother has tried to do something, she’ll – you know – she’ll be put in prison, that’s what she said. You know that is the law, Judy. Even though she’s still alive, they will put her in prison if she’s tried to take her own life.’

  Judy stared at Gwen, embarrassed and grateful at the same time. My God, she had quite forgotten. Or perhaps she had never known. To make an attempt on your own life was a serious offence, a crime. She closed her eyes momentarily, putting out her hand to Dauncy’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, Dauncy, I am sorry. Of course, of course, you did quite right.’

  ‘She’s still breathing all right, that’s why I sent Gwen with the note, she won’t tell anyone. And anyway, she knew already. She knew what Mother has been like, not herself at all, just lying about upstairs, hardly eating, never coming down. I’ve been glad to go back to school, I tell you, I have.’ Dauncy’s tone was almost bitter.

  Judy followed Dauncy upstairs as he continued to relate the facts. Loopy was still breathing. Her pulse was slow. He just could not wake her, that was all.

  Judy went into the room. The curtains were drawn. The place smelt unaired, not at all like a room which the elegant and fastidious Loopy would inhabit. Not only that, but with Hugh’s bed still primly made, and Hugh spending more and more time in London, not coming home even at the weekends – perhaps wanted for his duties at the War Office but perhaps also trying to escape the utterly wretched sight of his wife falling to pieces with grief – it was as if Loopy was already widowed, which knowing the exigencies of war she might well yet be.

  ‘What shall we do, Judy? I tried to move her but I was afraid I might drop her,’ Dauncy told her, digging his nails into his hand with anxiety.

  Judy leaned over the bed. Loopy looked dreadful, her face un-made up, her hair dishevelled, all glamour gone, and there was a strange scent pervading the pillows upon which she lay. Judy leaned down, lower and lower, until she could smell the older woman’s shallow breath.

  ‘It’s all right, Dauncy. Your mother’s going to be all right. She’s not dead – just dead drunk.’

  It took many visits to the bathroom, much black coffee and continual dragging up and down the bedroom, forcing her to walk, but finally Loopy came to, and seemed able to understand where she was, and who they were, and so Judy and Dauncy, convinced that she was fully conscious at last, put her in a chair, and sat down themselves.

  Silence reigned. It was as if everything they had ever thought or said had escaped them, and they could think of nothing. All ways of expressing their emotions seemed to have finally flown from both of them. Besides, Judy thought miserably as she stared ahead of her, what was there to say?

  ‘Are you all right, Judy?’

  Dauncy was staring at her, a worried expression on his face, as Judy lurched forward suddenly, putting her head between her knees.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind fetching me a glass of water, please, Dauncy?’

  She wanted to shout, No, I am not all right! There is positively no reason for me to be all right. It’s almost a day since I have had time to eat, not that that would matter if I had not had to deliver a baby, and resuscitate my mother-in-law, so, no – I am far from all right, but instead she took the glass of water from Dauncy when he returned, sipping at it, still keeping her head between her knees, before finally straightening up and glancing towards Loopy.

  ‘Where am I?’ Loopy asked suddenly of both of them. ‘I’m not drunk, am I?’ Judy and Dauncy looked at each other.

  ‘No.’ They both told her at once, unable for some reason to bear to tell her the truth.

  ‘No, you’re not drunk, Loopy, you’re just lonely,’ Judy heard herself saying. ‘So. You and Dauncy, you’re coming to Owl Cottage to stay with me for a while. Gwen can keep the house dusted and looked after for you, but you both must come to me.’

  ‘I don’t want to come to you. I want to stay here, and wait for Walter.’

  Judy went across to her, and taking her hand she said, ‘Walter’s missing, Loopy, but if he should ever not be missing he won’t come back here, he won’t come to Shelborne, he’ll come back to Owl Cottage. That is his home now.’

  Loopy looked up at her daughter-in-law and tears fell from her large eyes.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, Walter’s married now, of course that’s where he’ll go,’ she agreed, sounding relieved and worried at the same time.

  ‘Which is why you are going to go there with me, you and Dauncy, and we’ll play the wireless, and make jokes, and try to do recipes with dried egg and that awful fish that everyone says no one, but no one, can eat, and all sorts, see if we don’t. And you and I, and Dauncy, just for a while, we’ll be a little family together, just until you’re better.’

  Judy turned away, but hardly had she finished speaking when she realised with a jolt that what she was suggesting was really all she needed. She actually dreaded the idea of Loopy and Dauncy’s living with her at the cottage, but she could not risk any more alarms and excursions. Besides, what she had just said was true. If Walter ever came back to them, he would go to Owl Cottage.

  Morning, although always welcome because it brought light, was less than usually welcome that day to Rusty. She had thought it strange that Virginia had not returned to Magnolias, blackout or no blackout, in her usual cheerful flamboyant manner, bringing the midwife in tow, but in war the disappearance of people – and indeed the reappearance of people – without explanation was completely normal. Communications being what they were, after the first months, after the so-called Phoney War, few people attempted to get in touch with loved ones who were gone longer than usual, any more than they expected to hear bad news via anything except the dreaded telegram.

  This morning there was no telegram, only the stoical expression of Judy calling in her WVS capacity to tell Rusty that Chick Mill had received a direct hit and that Virginia and all the Ripley family had been killed.

  ‘The pilot crashed. He was killed too, if that is any comfort.’

  Judy stared out of the window. Perhaps the pilot, like Walter, even if he was a German, had a mother, and a young wife. Perhaps, poor young man, he had gone to do his duty for his country, unable to do anything else, because that was war.

  Rusty knew not to cry publicly over Virginia. None of them did nowadays; it was just not on. Instead she turned away and she too stared out of the window to the inlet, and in her imagination from there to the sea. Her father was still in his bedroom, still in his pyjamas, despite the fact that it was mid-morning. She felt like running through to him and slapping his face, telling him to get up, that if they were all coping, so should he.

  ‘We hadn’t been friends very long, not like Mattie and Virginia, they’ve known each other so, well, for so long, but nevertheless we had a grand time, for the bit that we were friends. She was a one hundred per cent person, Virginia was.’

  Judy nodded. She had been to see Mattie already, and perhaps because she had just had a baby Mattie had given way immediately, crying into Judy’s clasped hand as if her heart would break. ‘Life will have a great deal less gaiety now that Virginia’s not here,’ she had said, remembering Virginia in the Anderson shelter making them all laugh, demonstrating how to put beetroot juice on their lips and then cover it with Vaseline.

  ‘I just wish there was some good news from somewhere, and then perhaps we could all perk up a bit,’ Judy said now. ‘Still, Mattie�
�s baby is fine this morning, you will be glad to know. So perhaps that is our fair share of good news after all. He’s feeding well, and looking far less crumpled. Despite everything that we could do to him, he appears to have survived. She’s calling him Max, by the way,’ she added inconsequentially.

  ‘Is war always this difficult, do you know, Judy? I mean Virginia; I’d only just got to know her.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. And yes, I think it is always this difficult, and the effects – well, they go on for centuries, at least that is what my mother thinks. Such muddles, and such bitterness, you know. But we just do know one thing, Rusty, we do.’ Judy clasped her gloved hands tightly in front of her and her words too seemed to be squeezed hard. ‘We – do – know – that – we – have – to – win this war, or all those lives, all the people we have known, everyone, all those pilots, they will all, all of them, have died for nothing. And we just can’t let that happen. We can’t let anyone, not one person we have known, die for nothing. We have to win for Virginia, for your brother Tom, for Mickey, if he’s still alive, for Meggie. We have to win for Walter, who may yet be alive, for little Max who is hardly a day old, for all of them. We just have to win, and if we give in, give way, to tears, to tiredness, to grief, or to sadness, if we get drunk or kill ourselves because we can’t stand the pain of it all, we will have lost. So, don’t give way. Be like you are now, struggling, but winning. Or . . . or . . . be like Virginia always was – laughing and pretending to be gay even though she knew there was nothing to be happy about. That is the only way.’

  Rusty nodded, and turned away. Judy was right, of course she was right.

  ‘Thanks for coming to tell me, Judy. Really, thank you very much.’

  Judy left, and Rusty watched her walking down to the path that led back to the main part of the village. From inside the house, from his bedroom, she could hear her father calling out in a feeble voice for a cup of tea. She sighed. Despite Judy’s fine speech, despite the fact that what she said was completely true, she still felt like slapping her father’s face. Worse than that, because of Judy’s speech she felt like slapping his face more than ever.

  What pulled Rusty through the rest of that awful day, walking belatedly to work past the now darkened hair salon, trying not to remember how Virginia had turned her from being what she called ‘a blasted tomboy’ to someone who could go dancing and be admired, was a telephone call to the Food Office.

  ‘Guess who?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Peter Sykes, remember me – in the garage?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Rusty tried to sound normal, and interested, and failed.

  ‘The thing is, I – er, I called on – er, Mattie Eastcott, I called on her, and, well, I never realised . . .’ He paused, obviously searching for some way of putting his shock at finding Mattie with a baby.

  ‘No, well, you wouldn’t – none of us did, not until lately.’

  Rusty waved goodbye to someone as she gripped the heavy black telephone receiver under her chin and continued filing at the same time. She was in a hurry to get home and make her father some tea.

  ‘She gave me your number at the Food Office because she said although she was otherwise occupied, you might not be. I mean would you fancy going out this evening, just for a drink at the Three Tuns?’

  ‘Thank you, yes, Peter, I would. I’ll – er, I’ll see you there.’

  Rusty replaced the telephone. Anything to get out of spending yet another evening listening to the wireless and reading to her father. She paused, frowning, before she started to lock up, last as always to leave the office, everyone else hurrying home to their tea and the news. She had known Peter Sykes all her life; she just could not remember exactly what he was like. She had never owned a car, but she had often walked past the garage, stroked his dog, passed the time of day. She remembered now that he had gone out with Mattie once or twice, because Virginia had told her, and she knew that his father had died in the bus that was hit on its way to Churchester. But other than that, really, Peter Sykes might just as well be a stranger. In fact she realised that having a drink with Peter could prove most embarrassing. She sighed. It could be more than embarrassing; it could be really awkward.

  Perhaps because of this, once she was home and had given her dad his tea, Rusty changed quickly into the blue dress that she had worn the night before. It would, she reasoned, give her confidence in herself the way that wearing slacks and a headscarf would not. However, leaving nothing to chance, as she was now becoming determined never to do, before leaving for the Three Tuns she sat down at her mother’s kitchen table and made a list.

  The restoration of Light Heart.

  That was a good subject for conversation, well away from the war.

  The birth of Max Eastcott.

  She sucked the end of her pen. She really could not think of anything else that might be cheerful about which they could talk. And then it occurred to her to suggest that instead of spending the evening drinking watery beer in the Three Tuns, they might go to the cinema. There were always queues a mile long for the cinema, far greater than before the war, not just because everyone in Bexham wanted to watch a film to take their minds off their troubles – even the Food Flashes and the Board of Trade fashion films being more interesting than staying at home knitting or talking – but also because of the news, which was always from somewhere in England. The film itself was much less important. And although ice cream was now banned, on Rusty’s last visit she had volunteered to try the jelly sweets of which the very new and very young projectionist was so proud. Of course they proved to be quite disgusting, and not even better than nothing.

  One last look in at her father, sleeping once again in front of two small pieces of dully smoking coke, one last look at herself in the hall mirror, and Rusty stepped out into the night, putting behind her the evening before when Mattie had still been a pregnant woman, and not yet a mother, when Rusty had set out wearing this same dress with her homemade coat over the top, when Virginia had still been alive, and they had all begun the evening laughing and talking at Magnolias.

  Judy was right, she told herself as she walked along, winning the war was about not giving in, about enjoying any snatched moment you could, about putting anything tragic that had happened behind you, before it swamped you, as Judy’s mother-in-law had been swamped, overcome by the loss of her beloved Walter. She walked into the Three Tuns thinking of all this, and not really thinking of Peter Sykes. After all, Peter had been out with Mattie, and if he had fallen even halfway for her, he could never be interested in Rusty. Rusty was from a different background from Mattie’s, and although war had made all that kind of thing a bit unrealistic, old-fashioned, stuffy, yet it was still a consideration, because, as Rusty well knew – which was why she had written out her list of suitable conversational topics in her mother’s kitchen – she was still not yet very socially adroit with the opposite sex. She had realised this during her ill-fated evening with Virginia and the American GIs, when, whereas Virginia had been the centre of attention, full of gaiety and fun, Rusty had been really rather the opposite. That was why she had always liked sailing so much. Once out on the briny there was no need for talk, just the sound of the water, the call of the birds, the boat tacking and tacking about. Words were superfluous.

  But now as she entered the Three Tuns it was not Rusty whose conversational flow failed her, but Peter Sykes, who, despite seeming a great deal better-looking than she remembered him, on seeing Rusty walking towards him, hand outstretched, had apparently become completely tongue-tied.

  ‘I – er – I – er . . .’

  He shook Rusty’s hand, the look in his eyes openly admiring of the change in her, but whatever his eyes said he still seemed lost for words as Rusty sat down beside him at the pub table.

  Rusty smiled.

  ‘The beer’s awful,’ he finally finished.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  Following his fetching her half a pint of what he
called ‘best watery’, Rusty realised that something had to be done or the silence between them might threaten to become eternal.

  ‘Shall we go to the cinema? I don’t know what’s on, but it has to be better than the beer.’

  ‘Good idea. Let’s do that, let’s go to the cinema,’ Peter agreed.

  As they queued and finally passed the cinema manager – the 85-year-old one with the shock of white hair and white moustache – Peter turned to look at Rusty.

  ‘What happened to Dennis the Menace who used to run this?’

  ‘Called up. Nowadays you’ll find it’s either the youngest Browning boy in charge – and don’t for goodness’ sake try his jelly sweets – or it’s Grandpa Appleby back there. Only the projectionist is exempt from war service, it seems.’

  They had barely settled into their hard won seats when the siren sounded. The rest of the audience, also barely settled, booed and hissed as despite the darkened auditorium the curtains failed to part. When Grandpa Appleby attempted to clamber on to the stage and warn that there was a bombing raid and they should take shelter, the audience in the now acknowledged tradition shouted, ‘We know, we know! Get on with the picture!’

  They did not know, of course, where the bombs were dropping, but the truth was the audience had all decided that they preferred to stay and watch the picture rather than be bothered to move. Cinemas had actually been found to be much safer than houses, with the result that some audiences had to be almost forcibly evicted, having shown a marked reluctance to leave at the end of the completed programme.

  As soon as the first of the Board of Trade films came up, Rusty became well aware that Peter’s eyes were more often on her than on the screen. After the first few minutes it was difficult to even see the screen, such was the smoke now rising from the audience, so she leaned forward in her seat and tried to pretend that she had not noticed that Peter, having lit a cigarette, had put his arm across the back of her seat, which meant that should she lean back it would be round her.

 

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