I’ve written another letter to Harry, but I can’t even go and post it with the two of them sick. I’m going to have to light the copper and do the washing. I can’t leave that stinking stuff soaking until tomorrow.
There are flies everywhere. If only I could fling all the windows open and let the fresh air blow through the house, but even if I could do it — they’ve been nailed up so long — I wouldn’t dare. Not now.
I’m so angry with Cora — raking up the past like this. How dare she — making me go through all this — all over again.
Oh, God, it’s the photograph they put in the newspaper. Oh, Agnes … Annie was such a sweet child.
I’m so weary.
Mrs. Campbell’s turned up with some shopping and a great big steak-and-kidney pie for dinner. The pastry’s an inch thick. She said I had to wrap it up in tinfoil and put it in the oven on number five for half an hour. I’ve never put the flippin’ oven on. Do you just stick a match in? What if I blow the house up?
Everything’s messy. Dennis has left his cars all over the place. Mrs. Campbell said I should tidy up and do the dishes, but I can’t find the cloth, and why should I pick up Dennis’s rubbish, anyway? I thought I’d do the lino in the kitchen, but when I got the mop out, it had some dried sick on it, so I just stuck it back in the bucket in the corner. Mum’ll sort it all out later.
I shall have to take Cora and Mimi back to London myself, as soon as Mimi is up on her feet again, but will Harry be there? Cora says there is a public house called the Half Moon where the landlord will pass on a message to her father. I should have been connected to the telephone when I had the chance. Hugh Mansell would let me use his or, failing that, Geoffrey Treasure.
Just a few more years, that’s all it would have taken. Once I have gone, this house will sink back into the marshes where it belongs, from where it should never have risen up in the first place, and one day they will shut up the church forever. Nobody will come down to this wilderness again. He will not cross the water, and it will all be over — all be over.
Everything was all right until they came.
I couldn’t believe it when Cora turned up at the back door. She looked washed out.
“I couldn’t stay there a minute longer,” she said. “Auntie gave me this other letter to post to me dad. I did it on the way up. Oh, and she took Mr. Scaplehorn’s tin box.”
I poured us out some of Mrs. Campbell’s Lucozade.
“Blimey!” I said. “Was she cross with you?”
“Dunno,” said Cora. “She ain’t said a blimmin’ thing about it. She’s just going round looking miserable as sin. Mimi ain’t right yet, neither. It’s like a wet weekend in June down there.”
“That’s it, then, is it?” I said. “What are we going to do now?”
“Well, I was thinking on the way up. This Haldane Thorston bloke — do you reckon he’d tell us anything about it? What’s he like?”
“I don’t know really. He’s not like the other people down the Patches. He speaks with this posh voice. You wouldn’t think he’d talk like that just to look at him, you know. He’s got a big beard and old clothes and boots on, and he’s always doing his garden. I asked Mum about him once, and she said that she’d heard Mr. Thorston had had an uncle who’d made a lot of money in India and that this uncle paid for him to go away to boarding school, then to university. But Mr. Thorston didn’t do anything with all the stuff he’d learned. He just came back to Bryers Guerdon and married some girl and had loads of kids. Remember, three of them died in the First World War?”
“Yeah, rotten,” said Cora. “Anyway, why don’t we go and see him? There’d be no harm, would there? He can only tell us to push off.”
“Yeah, could do. You haven’t been down the Patches yet, have you?”
Pete came whizzing in, almost back to his old self again, not that he’d been really ill like everybody else — most probably stuck two fingers down his throat to make himself sick and get the attention.
“You going down the Patches, then?” said Pete. “Can I come?”
“Yeah, all right, mate.”
We found Mum on the settee in the sitting room, with her eyes closed and Pamela fidgety on her lap.
“Can we go out?” I asked her. Mum half opened her eyes and said Auntie Barbara was going to come later and get Dennis and Terry to go over there, so it was all right — she’d manage.
We went towards North Fairing. The houses petered out and the road narrowed until the footpath gave way to muddy banks on either side, forcing us to walk on the pitted tarmac. Above our heads, the treetops met in a high rustling arch.
A little way into this green tunnel, the right bank sloped downwards into a wall, the brickwork dotted with small purple flowers and the lacy fingers of tiny ferns. After twenty feet or so, we stopped in front of a pair of tall wrought-iron gates, standing open, a lovely garden spreading out beyond them. Three weeping willows cast their huge round shadows onto a lush green lawn that swept down to an elegant cream-coloured house, its walls almost hidden by cascades of pink roses.
“Close your mouth,” Roger said, “or you’ll swallow a fly. That’s North End, where Dr. Meldrum lives. You know, he was at the cricket with Mrs. Meldrum and Caroline.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Dr. Meldrum came to Guerdon Hall when I was out of sorts. I heard him and Auntie Ida talking in the room when they thought I was asleep. Did you know this is where the Eastfields lived, before Dr. Meldrum moved here — you know, Auntie’s husband’s family?”
“Well, I’ll be — blimey — I never knew.”
“Yeah, this was their house —’one of those families that always seemed to be bathed in sunlight,’ Auntie said. ‘A golden family’— how lovely. Fancy being a golden family, a golden family in a beautiful cream-coloured house. The father was a colonel in the army.”
“That Captain James Eastfield, whose name’s on the memorial in the church,” said Roger, “the one who was killed in the Great War … this must’ve been his home then… .”
We moved forward and found ourselves standing in the cold, dark shadow of the wall.
“Roger,” I said, “Auntie Ida said to the doctor she shouldn’t have married Will Eastfield. She said she only married him because he looked like his brother. That Captain James Eastfield — I suppose that was the brother she was talking about. It was secret. Nobody knew anything was going on between them.”
Rosalie and I are going up to town together. I am walking to North End, and then Hedley is taking us to Daneflete station in the trap. Rosalie is all set to buy a new hat at Rachel Byng’s in South Molton Street; then we will go on to the theatre before spending the night with Mother in Onslow Gardens.
It is all so delicious. I find I must keep biting my tongue to stop myself mentioning his name. Yesterday I couldn’t conceal a ridiculous grin when she talked about him coming home on leave — only another week — one more week — seven more days — one hundred and sixty-eight hours (give or take twelve hours or so for delays).
I am pretty certain Will knows. He gives me rather an odd look sometimes. I believe he may have seen us in the garden. He signed up the day after his birthday apparently — keen as mustard. Decided not to go up to Oxford until after the war. Starts training next month. It would be grand if they could be in the same unit together, and with Roland, too. That would be splendid luck. But of course, they may not put new recruits in with the chaps who have been out since Mons. I don’t know what they do.
I walk down the lane. There are bluebells among the trees near the cinder path. I bend to pick a small bunch for Rosalie and hear the creak of a bicycle as it comes towards me. The creak repeats again and again. I look up and see the boy from the Daneflete telegraph office. At least I see the top of his cap. His head is down, and he rides fast.
I drop the bluebells. They fall among the others, and everything swims together in a kind of haze. It really is far too hot for a coat. I should have left it at home — Agnes did say twice
.
What an unpleasant job for a young lad like that to have to do.
Of course, there are several other houses on the way to North Fairing, not just North End. The Bendalls at Whitebeams have a son, Nicholas, in the army, and there are the Thorstons, of course. They lost George and young Hal within a day of each other on the Somme. Roland was their officer. He said he had to down half a bottle of whisky before he could bring himself to write the letter of condolence. Frank Thorston, the youngest, is still out there. Then there’s Walter Paget from Lamp Cottage. He’s in the navy. Who else? Ah, yes, Albert Hatton — no, he is in hospital and will be returning home soon.
I will be calm. One hundred and sixty-eight hours (roughly).
I walk on down the lane. The boy on the bicycle passes me and touches his cap but doesn’t look up. The creak repeats and repeats and fills my head, then fades, then there comes a moment when I think I hear it but possibly don’t. My legs feel a little hollow. I am dizzy, but it’s quite warm. I really should not have worn my coat.
My bag is heavy. Mother insisted I bring her the two books she left behind last time she was here. I lift my chin. The gateposts of North End are just a short way off. I deliberately keep my head up. I don’t want to look down and see the marks of bicycle wheels in the gravel. My heart is beginning to race rather too quickly.
I really, truly do not wish the Thorstons to suffer yet another loss, or the Bendalls, or Mrs. Paget; I truly truly do not, but …
He must know that I will say yes this time.
I stand at the gatepost, just about hidden from the house by the willows. I lean against it. The solid brickwork holds me up. I find I am biting my fingernail.
The parlour maid, Betty, stands between the pillars at the open front door with a small envelope in her hand. She waits for a long time, rubs her forehead with trembling fingers, then turns and calls into the house. A girl comes to the door, her glossy fair hair caught in a loose knot above the lace collar of her green silk dress — Rosalie. The maid points down the path and shows her the envelope. The girl’s hand flies up to her mouth. They stand there for quite a while before they go in.
Ten minutes, fifteen minutes go by.
One by one, the curtains are drawn shut and the light in the house goes out.
We went back to the lane, where we found Pete balancing a beetle on a twig.
“If you keep going for half a mile or so, you get to North Fairing,” said Roger, “but there’s not much there, just the church and a couple of farms. The best thing, though, is Mr. Hancock’s bull. It’s in the field next to the lane, and it’s blinking huge. Sometimes it’s standing there hiding behind the hedge and it snorts when you go past and you get such a fright it makes you jump. I wouldn’t go in that field for a million pounds — well, I suppose I might for a million, but not for a hundred.” He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Well, maybe I might for a hundred, but not for ten.”
“Can I see it?”
“Yeah, I’ll take you later, or tomorrow.”
“Maybe tomorrow. My legs are still a bit wobbly. How far is it to the Patches?”
“We’re here.”
A grassy track curved off the lane to the left, just wide enough for a car, although it probably wouldn’t do the car much good.
There wasn’t a scrap of wind. We made our way along a well-beaten path, grateful for the shade cast by the tall bushes and overhanging trees. In clearings behind the high hedges were small wooden houses, many of them painted — green, blue, pink — some with verandas like the Jotmans’.
Each house was surrounded by a garden brimming with fruit, flowers, and vegetables — fat green pea pods ready to burst, tender runner beans hanging among masses of small red flowers twisting their way up wigwams of sticks, bunches of plump scarlet tomatoes shining on their bamboo canes alongside monstrous marrows, feathery carrot tops, bolting lettuces, and juicy red raspberries — while around and about, ignored by the birds, small squares of tinfoil and old polished cans hung limply from strings.
We stood and breathed in the sweetness. Pete wanted to nip in and pinch something, but Roger and I were scared someone might see. Instead we made do with the blackberries that grew along the path, black-ripe and soft.
Everywhere, flowers overflowed their beds, jostling with each other for the light, scrambling through trees or spilling over the tops of the hedges above us.
“Ooh, smell this,” said Pete, pulling down a branch tangled with yellow flowers and squashing it into his face. “Honeysuckle … yum, yum.”
An apple tree, bending under the weight of ripening fruit, was leaning out over the track.
“The apples in our garden are still tiny,” said Roger. “These are really early.”
We scrabbled about in the grass looking for windfalls and managed to gather a couple of handfuls. Most were small, hard, and sour, but a few were just about soft enough to eat. Roger said the really unripe apples were collected up and fed to pigs. We cut the maggots out with Roger’s penknife. You have to be careful with maggots. Once, when I was at Nan’s, she got one in her apple and spat so hard her false teeth shot out and landed in the fireplace.
In one of the gardens, two brown cows, tied up on long ropes to a tree, stood and stared at us, chewing nonstop, their mouths going round and round and round. I noticed their huge eyes were ringed with thick eyelashes, just like Cissie Bedelius’s when she spat into her little box with the mirror in and rubbed the wet black cake with a tiny brush and put it on to make her eyes look bigger.
“What sort of people live down here, then?” I asked.
“People came out from the East End of London between the wars and built these places for themselves,” said Roger. “We don’t see much of them in Bryers Guerdon. I suppose they’ve got everything they need here, really.”
“It’s like they escaped, then.”
“I suppose so.”
Dad told me that the chances are we’d have to move to one of the new flats eventually, when the Council had finished knocking down all the old houses like ours in Limehouse. I asked him where Mum would hang out the washing and where the dustbin would go, and whether we could still be in between Auntie Ivy and the Woolletts, but he didn’t know. Then, just after Easter, on my way home from school, I passed a huge iron demolition ball swinging on the end of a crane, and it was only a few streets away.
Now I decided that if the big ball came to our street, I’d tell Dad about the Patches — maybe we could escape like these people had done. Dad could build us a wooden house — I’d help him, and I wouldn’t have to worry about the men who made him have to go to the hospital and have stitches in his face, and maybe Mum wouldn’t go away so much. It would be nice to live in the Patches, and have a garden full of raspberries for nothing.
A large tabby cat twisted itself around our legs to be petted, then turned its tail and wandered off towards a green railway carriage under a tree. The brightly polished brass fittings gleamed in the sunshine. Lace curtains hung at the windows, and a crooked chimney, with a small steel hat like a Chinese coolie’s, poked out of the roof. Tethered to a post in the garden was an old white nanny goat.
“Is this where Mr. Thorston lives?” I asked, excited, but Roger pointed to an ancient thatched cottage on the other side of the track.
“He isn’t the same as these other people,” he said. “He lives there.”
Mr. Thorston’s cottage was like the picture on the lid of the huge box of chocolates that lay for months in Mrs. Prewitt’s shop window. It was much too dear for anybody around us to buy, even if they spent their Christmas Club all at once. One day the box was gone. I expect Mrs. Prewitt ended up eating the lot herself.
The place looked as old as Guerdon Hall. Tall purple and pink flowers reached the windows, and the huge straw roof hung down almost to the top of the frames. The thatch was a dirty grey colour and was covered with chicken wire. A bird with a tail like a V swooped out from under the roof.
Pete pushed the gate, and
it creaked open. We followed as he marched up the path between the tumbling plants to the low front door and banged loudly with the iron knocker. Nobody answered.
“I’ll pop round the back,” he chirped. Before we could stop him, he ran down the side of the house. Seconds later, we heard his feet thudding back. He turned the corner, hopping from one leg to another, holding his head and yelling, “Oi! Oi! Flippin’ heck!”
The front door opened, and an old face looked out, half of it hidden under a white bush of a beard.
“What the blazes is going on here?” the man called in a voice like the prime minister’s on the wireless, well spoken, deep.
“I don’t know,” said Roger. “Pete ran round the side.”
The man stepped out, and was so tall he seemed to unfold himself upwards.
“Idiot boy!” he scolded Pete, who was red and cross and crying. “You ran straight through my bees’ flight path.”
“How the heck was I supposed to know?”
“For heaven’s sake, come here,” Mr. Thorston snapped. “Get your hands down a minute. How am I supposed to help if you won’t let me see?”
The old man peered at Pete’s face. Then he pinched it a few times here and there, checking his fingers after each pinch.
“You’re a nincompoop,” he muttered. “You’ve killed some perfectly good bees! These black specks, they’re their poor little backsides!”
“I don’t care about their blinkin’ little backsides!” cried Pete. “Me face is on fire!”
“Come in, then.” The old chap bent and led us through his low front door. I decided I might have been better off in London after all, where we were unlikely to be troubled by bees. The only wildlife around us came out after the pubs shut on a Saturday night.
The front door opened straight into the sitting room. A few framed photographs, brown and faded, of young men in uniform stood on windowsills that must have been all of a foot and a half thick. I lowered my eyes, not wanting to look in their faces.
The brick fireplace was almost as wide as the end wall, and on either side was a deep flowery armchair, comfortable with cushions. In the chair on the right, I was surprised to see a thin, frail-looking old lady, fast asleep with her head bent over her chest, gently snoring. A ginger cat lay curled up on her lap, napping with her.
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