Since she no longer had her own victory brooch to hold, she thought about Mrs. Hollidaye’s, pinned to the lapel of her hairy jacket. Its design, like Dot’s, was of crossed flags, but it wasn’t made of scratchy tin with rusting edges. Hers was shiny jewels, blue, red, and diamond bright, which twinkled when they caught the light.
“Gloria said you was ever so posh, bit like our king and queen. You don’t look that posh. Except you got them jewels. I ain’t never seen jewels like that before.”
“Yes, they are rather grand, aren’t they, my dear? The red duster, the white ensign, and the Union Jack.” Mrs. Hollidaye glanced down at her brooch and touched it like Dot used to touch her token. “My sons gave it to me. And d’you know, I’ve worn it every day since. It helps me think of them.”
“I knew Gloria got it wrong. I never thought you was that posh. You ain’t got no servants.”
“Well, my dear, we can all be servants, one to another, depending on the need, can’t we?”
What strange things she said. But now, lying in a cot while a nurse washed her all over and patted her dry, she saw what Mrs. Hollidaye might have meant.
A brown paper parcel arrived by special delivery. The other children on the ward didn’t get parcels by post.
“It’s for that little slip of a thing at the end.”
A nurse sat on Dot’s bed and unwrapped it and Dot knew it was from Mrs. Hollidaye.
“What in lawks name is this!” said the nurse, holding it up.
Dot wanted to say, “It’s one of Mrs. Hollidaye’s babies!” but because of her throat, the words stuck like plum stones. Instead, she managed to croak, “Eat it. Vegetable.” Or had it been a fruit?
The melon was boiled and brought to Dot next dinnertime with her chicken broth all around like a shattered building surrounded by deep trenches full of murky rainwater. Mrs. Hollidaye hadn’t said anything about cooking it. Slice the top off, scoop out the seeds, and a drop of Oporto, is what she’d said.
The doctors gathered round her bed. They measured Dot’s legs with wooden measuring sticks, and they prodded her ribs while a nurse stood by and held her hand. They didn’t usually speak to her, only about her.
They told Gloria, “This child is malnourished. She has anemia and first-stage rickets.”
An old man in a dark suit with a light strapped round his forehead like a rescue worker’s lamp came next and pushed wooden sticks down Dot’s throat.
He told Gloria, “The sooner we get them out, the better. But she’s got to be A-one. So we’re sending her home to fatten up. Liver, spinach, cheese, green leaf vegetables.”
“They want to do an operation, pet,” Gloria explained at visiting time. “Make you fighting fit again. Get rid of them nasty things down your throat what’s harboring the germs. When you’re asleep.”
When Dot was asleep was when the dreams came with limbless, fingerless, thumbless, faceless men marching through her head. She didn’t want them to do anything then. They must do things when she was awake.
“They can’t do that, ducky. That’s not how the doctors like it. It would hurt you too much. You have to be asleep.”
Gloria brought some clothes in a carrier. But Dot had changed, and so had the skirt and cardigan. They hung strangely, too loose, yet too short as well. Her wrists stuck out. Her legs were bare to way above her knees, and her legs felt cold and so thin, they’d hardly support her weight. She had to clutch on to Gloria’s arm.
“Here, put this on too,” said Gloria. It was a pixie bonnet. “One of them nice ladies at Mrs. P.’s, middle floor, knitted it up. Said I was to take extra care to keep your ears warm, specially with this wind. Unraveled one of her own woollies specially.” It was a mixture of strange colors and the knitted ties felt scratchy where Gloria knotted them under Dot’s chin. “You’ll have to say thank you.”
At first, Mrs. Parvis pretended to be pleased to see Dot.
“Oh, my! And hasn’t she grown tall! So that’s what lying in bed all day does for you. I should try it myself if only I had the time.”
But to Gloria she said, “She’s all skin and bone. If you looked at her sideways, you wouldn’t never see her at all.”
After that, everything was just the same, with Mrs. Parvis still complaining as much as ever.
“They gave us that big buildup. The new Britain, that’s what our boys been fighting for. Work for all, health for all, that’s what they promised.”
“And a good home for everybody,” Gloria agreed. Mrs. Parvis glared at her and carried on.
“And now look at us! Right back where we was. Noses to the grindstone. In fact, I’d say we’re worse off than what we was at the start of it. They can’t even tell us what to do with our gas masks. I’m sick to death of them cluttering up my hall like that. Reminding us of things we don’t want to think about.”
The gas masks hung on their pegs in the narrow hall. Inside each brown case waited the empty skull face, folded flat, with a flappy rubber nose and hard cylindrical snout, though they frightened Dot less now than they used to.
“At least we never had to wear them,” said Mr. Brown quietly. “We can be thankful for that.”
Dot had worn hers once during a practice. It was smelly inside, made you feel as though you were choking to death, and the eyeholes so small, you couldn’t see out properly.
They’d issued one for Baby, too, a gasbag like a cradle with a porthole on the top. It was too cumbersome to hang on a peg in the hall with the others. So Gloria had shoved it out of the way under the bed.
When Gloria went off to the Essoldo, Dot couldn’t go with her. She wasn’t allowed in crowded places where there might be germs. She wasn’t allowed to get cold. She wasn’t allowed to mix with other children.
“They say she’s very susceptible,” Gloria explained to Mrs. Parvis when she went to borrow an extra shilling for the meter to light the gas fire in the basement room. “She could catch anything that’s around.”
“Mollycoddling,” said Mrs. Parvis under her breath. “That’s what it is, she ought to be back in school, a big girl like that. Besides, what if all my lodgers was asking for favors? I’m not a lending bank.”
In the afternoon, when Gloria had left for work, Dot pulled out Baby’s gas mask to look at it again. It was covered in gray dust. Seeing it, and thinking of him safely in heaven with no risk now of being zipped into this airless rubber gasbag, made Dot start to cry. She didn’t understand why. She hadn’t cried about him before. She sobbed so much that Mrs. Parvis heard through the wall and came in and told her off. She made her get into bed and said she was sending for the blue ladies right away.
She must have told Gloria off too, for the very next day, Gloria said, “You got to go off to the country, ducks, health visitor says. For your convalescence.”
Dot didn’t know what her convalescence was.
“To get you in the pink. For your operation. Like the nice man said. We don’t want you hopping the twig.”
“I am in the pink,” said Dot, though she knew she wasn’t or she wouldn’t have allowed herself to weep the day before.
“Can’t you come too?”
“I dunno, pet. It’s dull down there. There ain’t nothing for me to do.”
“What if it’s all changed and they don’t know me no more?”
“Listen, pet, she’s said she’ll have you. So what more d’you want? Jam on both sides? I’ll put you in charge of the guard and you’ll be as right as rain.”
Dot felt she was an unwanted item of luggage being sent away.
14
Miss Spindle-Shanks
Mrs. Hollidaye met Dot at the train with the Ford drawn right up to the station exit.
“My dear, I won’t kiss you. Just in case of the germs. We’ve got to treat you like best bone china. But don’t mind the dogs. They’re just longing to see you. Dogs have different germs, can’t possibly harm you.” She was wearing her felt hat and her tweed jacket with the jeweled brooch pinned to the lape
l. Everything was just as it should be.
“I decided I really must bring the motor. And if that nosy old constable asks about petrol, I shall tell him it’s an emergency. And if he doesn’t believe me, well, we shall have to see what we shall see, won’t we?”
She bundled Dot onto the front seat with rugs up to the chin. The wool gave off a friendly smell of the dogs who had been lying on it.
“And here’s the hot water bottle for your feet, my dear,” said Mrs. Hollidaye. “And there’s a flask of tea if you need it. Though we’ll be home before you can say Jack Robinson. And Dorothy dear, I must warn you, you’re hardly going to recognize Miss Lilian! All new teeth! Top and bottom. That’s the new welfare. Do tell her how nice she looks, won’t you? Of course you will. Only she’s rather self-conscious at the moment.”
Loopy Lil’s new smile of regular gleaming teeth was the only change. Otherwise everything was reassuringly the same. The yapping of the small dogs, the smells of musty dampness, of jam and paraffin and welcoming wood smoke, the vase of flowers on a polished table in the hall.
“Now you’re not to lift a finger, my dear, is she, Lilian? Until you’re quite better.”
“I am. I’m fit as a fiddle!” Dot said. “Skinny as a whipping post, that’s what Gloria says, and sound as a roach.”
But the journey in the guard’s van like lost luggage had exhausted her, so she didn’t protest about going straight up with Loopy Lil, being changed into one of Mrs. Hollidaye’s pink flannel nightgowns and tucked into a cocoon of pillows with a hot stone bottle wrapped in a worn silk vest at her feet. There was a fire burning in the grate, and a china chamber pot painted with birds and flowers beneath the bed.
Her supper was on a tray, a plate of yellow buttered eggs, pink rhubarb with cream, a glass of milk, and a tiny glass vase of flowers.
“I’ll put the snowdrops just here,” Mrs. Hollidaye said. “So you can see them. I do like a person who likes flowers. I believe, my dear, that seeing beautiful things around does so help a soul to feel strong, wouldn’t you say? The Ministry did tell us not to waste effort growing flowers, but somehow one always felt they were not quite as right as they might have been on that one. Now you’ve found the chamber, haven’t you, under the bed, so you won’t have to go far in the night.”
Mrs. Hollidaye and Loopy Lil settled on either side of the bedroom fire with the dogs on the carpet between them. Loopy Lil gently smiled her new even welfare smile while Mrs. Hollidaye darned lisle stockings.
The wind was getting up, rattling against the wooden shutters, and forcing twigs to scratch against the window-panes.
“My dear, aren’t we glad we’re not on the high seas tonight!” said Mrs. Hollidaye. “Just think of those poor brave souls out there.”
Dot knew that she had everything she used so much to long for. If only she could will herself strong as a roach. But her legs hurt. So did her neck. A single spoonful of buttered eggs made her feel sick. The clotted cream on the rhubarb had curdled. Her disappointment turned to tears, which dripped into the congealing eggs.
Mrs. Hollidaye heard the sniffing. “My dear,” she said, “limited gray matter Miss Lilian may have, yet still she rejoices to be alive. Sore eyes I may have, but at least I am not blind and can still darn my own stockings. Aching head you may have, but at least you have a head to have aches in.”
She put aside her darning basket and picked up a book whose dark blue cover was patterned with gold leaves.
“In addition, my dear, you still have ears for listening, I trust?”
She began to read aloud.
Dot saw how the gold patterns on the cover caught the flicker from the fire and flared like Very lights. Mrs. Hollidaye’s voice was comforting as it rose and fell like the wind. By listening to the story, Dot found she had become brave.
On the breakfast tray the next day was a different flower, a single brilliant pink blossom with dark leaves so glossy, they seemed to have been polished.
“A camellia, my dear. D’you know, the tree hasn’t flowered properly for six years. Now it’s such a sight! Pink all over like an apple tree in May! They seem to shine out like lamps, specially on these gray days. I do wish you could come out and see. Maybe soon. In fact, my dear, we’ve brought out the old bath chair. From the back of the stables. Lilian’s given it a really good dusting down. We’ve oiled the wheels. And just as soon as you feel up to it, we’ll be taking you round the garden for some good lungfuls of God’s air.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Hollidaye revealed to Dot how many things were to be done without even having to move from bed. She hung a piece of mutton fat threaded on to string across the window for the blue tits. She showed where Dot must watch across the ragged grass for when the fox came slinking through the bracken toward the henhouse.
She had shown Dot before how to find pictures in the clouds. Now she pointed out how there were pictures in the trees.
The twigs of the beeches drew black pencil lines against the sky in which were hiding animals and flowers, faces and places. When the breeze rustled the branches, the pictures changed.
With a reel of linen thread and a hooked needle, Mrs. Hollidaye showed how to work a crochet collar. With two needles and a ball of wool, she showed how to knit. She gave her books to look at and explained how the printed letters beneath each picture made words that summarized the illustration. She gave her paper and colored crayons and showed her how she could draw. She taught her how to write her name, how to put the paper in an envelope to be posted to Gloria.
“That’s it, my dear. And she’ll be so pleased to have it. And put the X’s along the bottom and that tells her that you love her and you’re thinking of her.”
Dot hadn’t been thinking of her. If she thought about Gloria, then she’d have to start thinking about him, too. It was better that she thought of neither.
One evening Mrs. Hollidaye brought to the bedroom a long wooden box.
“A companion for you, my dear,” she said, sliding back the lid. “I had her when I was a girl.”
In the box under layers of tissue paper lay a doll, which Mrs. Hollidaye lifted out and placed in Dot’s arms. It had long white skirts.
“Ooh, it’s beautiful! I ain’t never played with a proper doll before. I had some paper dolls one time, but me landlady got rid of them, said they were messing the place up.”
“She’s rather old, so one has to be frightfully careful, but I know you will be. She’s made from wax. Just the face and hands.” Beneath the long lacy petticoats was a stuffed cotton body wearing a lace camisole.
“I was given two, and I was told by my nurse never to let them near the fire or they’d melt. Oh, what a naughty child I was! I wanted to see if it was true. So I placed one of them up against the fender, to see what would happen. And then her poor face melted like a candle into nothing, and how I cried at what I had done to make her lose all her features.”
Dot looked at the doll and thought of its lost companion with a face of dripping wax. Melting cheeks and disappearing noses was what had happened to brave airmen when they caught fire. Their skin burned, their features dissolved, and they were left faceless. Gloria met men like that at the airmen’s social club.
Dot hugged this doll whose face was still whole. She said, “It’s ever so real looking, like a person, except it’s so titchy.”
Baby had looked like this doll, as though nearly real, yet not quite, with a waxy pale skin, yellow-tinged, bright glassy eyes, and a dainty pink mouth. She remembered how she hadn’t been allowed to hold him for more than a moment before he had to go back behind the bars of his crib.
“Don’t sleep with her, my dear, will you, for though she would not melt, she would crack if she fell. Real mothers don’t sleep with their babies. They might overlay them. There was a village woman overlaid her baby last summer, such a terrible thing for everyone. Nurse Willow had already warned her to put it in the crib.”
Dot wondered, did Baby now look like this doll’s melted compan
ion, face and hands gone, only his white clothes left?
“When it’s time to sleep, why not set her here on the chair to watch over you?” Mrs. Hollidaye propped the doll on the chair.
So the wax doll sat all night with its eyes wide open staring ahead like a small dead child. And Dot considered her pigeon-hearted father and wondered why she could never recall his face.
Dot began to eat a little more each day. She dressed; she went downstairs to sit in an armchair. In the evening, Mrs. Hollidaye taught her to play Up Jenkins and dominoes and spillikins on a low table by the fire. Loopy Lil hadn’t a steady enough hand for spillikins and she couldn’t count up to more than three for the dominoes, but she seemed happy to watch and smile.
In the morning when the sun was shining through the mist, Dot was wrapped up to go out. She was surprised how bare the gardens had become, except for the lopsided apple tree in the lower orchard whose branches still carried a crop of apples shimmering like tiny brassy moons.
“I like to leave that one unpicked. For the birds. Otherwise what will they have to see them through till spring? I call it my bird tree.”
The prisoners of war had left the fields and there were different people who now gathered for elevenses round the kitchen range. There was the man demobbed from his regiment who came to do the garden just as he had before he was called to war. There was the young woman and her baby who had moved into the space above the coach house, and there was the noisy couple from Luton who had taken over the empty servants’ quarters up the back stairs.
“Poor dears, bombed out three times, didn’t know which way to turn. But at least they’re together now.”
The young woman from the coach house came in and helped Loopy Lil wash dishes in the scullery while her baby sat on the floor chewing on a bone. The baby was fat and red faced. It roared if anyone went near it. Dot didn’t go near. But she went everywhere else, and wherever she went in house or gardens, the grown-ups smiled and said, “Good day!” and asked how she was. Nobody told her to be off, or lay off, or push off, or not to touch, or to be careful. I’m getting sound as a roach, Dot told herself.
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