The Novel in the Viola

by Natasha Solomons

  He looked past us both, fixing on some indefinable point in the distance.

  ‘The son and heir is dead. We must serve the last master of Tyneford with our very best, until the end.’

  I walked through the valley carrying Mr Rivers’ lunch. He’d left in such a hurry that morning he’d forgotten to take it with him, and despite her irritation Mrs Ellsworth handed me a neat wax paper parcel to deliver to him in the fields. It was a warm August day, and I wore my broad-brimmed straw hat and a short-sleeved summer dress, enjoying the sensation of the sun warming my bare arms. Everything had sprouted lush and green, the grass speckled with pink willow herb and ugly nubs of figwort. A family of wrens patrolled beside the path, churring at me, while a pair of clouded yellow butterflies landed on the dry-stone wall. It was hot work rambling through the valley bottom in the midday sun, and I was grateful when I spotted Mr Rivers. He stood upon a large wooden cart hitched to a team of working horses. The cart was piled with hay, and Mr Rivers stooped with his pitchfork to gather the dry grass into higher and higher peaks, as a pair of youths, barely men, tossed up more towards the cart, which Mr Rivers caught on the prongs of his fork. I paused at the edge of the field, leaning against the flint wall, and watched them. I remembered the haymaking during my first year in Tyneford when the new tractor had been used. Now, with petrol rationed, they had reverted to using the great shire horses. There was a steady rhythm to their motions, like the elegant whir and tick of the movement inside a clock; the back and forth of the boys throwing up armfuls of hay and Mr Rivers receiving them with the inevitability of a pendulum. I felt a sense of peace as I watched, a congruity of time like the bud and fall of leaves on an oak tree. Men had been haymaking in these fields, in exactly this way, for more than a thousand years. Birth and death, rain and sun, were simply part of the rhythm. One of the boys glanced up and saw me. He mumbled something to Mr Rivers, who stopped and beckoned me over.

  ‘I brought your lunch,’ I said.

  ‘You can set it down over there in the shade. On the wall, out of the way of the rats.’

  I shuddered at the mention of rats, and the boys laughed.

  ‘An’ he wis telling us that yoos are a country girl now an’ all.’

  I felt myself grow prim. ‘Well? No one likes rats.’

  ‘Stanton does,’ said one of the boys, a fair-haired youth, his cropped head almost the same colour as the downy dandelion clocks. He pointed at the small spaniel rolling in the cut grass, blissful as a pup.

  ‘Come. More to be done,’ said Mr Rivers, returning to work.

  ‘We needs some of them land-girls,’ muttered one of the boys as he bent over his shovel.

  I set down Mr Rivers’ lunch and returned to the cart. ‘I can help.’

  They surveyed me dubiously.

  ‘I’m as strong as any land-girl. Besides, they’re all pasty things from the city.’

  ‘Fine.’ Mr Rivers tossed me a rake. ‘Use that to tidy the stray pieces of grass into rows.’

  I caught it in my fist and started to comb through the loose strands that the horse-drawn rake had missed. Within a minute, the sweat rolled down my forehead and into my eyes. My cotton dress clung to my back. I could feel the muscles in my stomach and shoulders ache but I kept doggedly to my task, pulling the cut grass into neat lines. Here and there were strewn sundried wild flowers – camomile, buttercups and stinging nettles that prickled my bare legs. I found a lilt to my work, a rippling dance and saw in my mind the Brueghel landscapes in the Vienna galleries. I was like one of the peasant girls in those paintings, and I hummed a snatch of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. My arms burnt with tiredness, but I lost myself in the pulse of the work. From beneath the broad brim of my sunhat, I glimpsed Mr Rivers, shovelling, catching, shovelling, and I knew the physicality of the labour helped him too. The calm was pierced by a bark and a high-pitched scream, as the spaniel snapped its jaws round a fat, black rat and shook. The unfortunate prisoner squealed, a horribly human sound, its rope-like tail flicking back and forth in the dog’s jaws. Then quiet. The spaniel abandoned its victim beneath a hedgerow. The tiny corpse twitched and was still. The boys chuckled, and I reddened, realising I’d dropped my rake in horror.

  ‘Enough,’ snapped Mr Rivers. ‘Break for lunch.’

  The boys downed tools and ambled across to the far side of the field and the shade of a spreading oak. I hesitated, watching Mr Rivers.

  ‘Come. You can share with me. Mrs Ellsworth packs enough for half the village.’

  I sat beside him on the stone wall, taking the proffered bread and cheese. We ate in silence. My face was sticky with sweat, husks of grass clinging to my skin, and I sported painful blisters on my palms. I glanced over at Mr Rivers’ hands. His nails were encrusted with dirt and his once soft, gentleman’s hands had grown coarse. His skin had toughened from the work and blistered no longer. Apart from the empty, cadaverous look in his eyes, he looked healthy, a man in his prime exuding strength. He tossed scraps of bread to the spaniel which careered through the meadow in joyous pursuit. Clearing my throat, and studying to appear casual, I explained about dinners in the kitchen. He nodded absently, and said nothing. I wriggled, the stones of the jagged wall digging into me.

  ‘So you’ll come back tonight before supper?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I’ll come,’ he said, and turned to look at me.

  I was suddenly self-conscious about the husks congealed in my hair and the seed cases stuck to my skin.

  ‘Alice,’ he said, and I stiffened, still unused to my new name. ‘Why don’t you grow your hair again?’

  I shrugged and looked away, unable to meet his steady gaze. ‘I can’t. Not anymore.’

  Elise was the girl who had hair reaching down her back in a black python plait. Alice’s hair was bobbed below her ears, strands tickling the base of her neck, but cool and swishing as she raked in the field or walked along the sun-soaked hillside, watching the sheep in the swell of the afternoon.

  ‘That was before,’ I said, not managing to explain.

  ‘I like it this way too,’ he said. ‘Just makes you look older.’

  I smiled. ‘I am older, Mr Rivers.’

  We toiled for hours, until day mellowed into evening, and the chirping of the birds was replaced by the whining of the gnats and the whir and tick of the crickets in the uncut grass. My eyes stung and itched from the pollen, and I gave my nose a surreptitious wipe with the back of my hand. The men had inched around the field, the cart steadily gobbling up the lines of hay, but the lengthening shadows told me it was growing late.

  ‘Mr Rivers,’ I called. ‘I’m going back to the house. I need to help Mrs Ellsworth with the dinner. You’ll be back before eight?’

  From his position on top of the hayrick, he gave me a wave and resumed his task. I watched for a second and then turned for home. I dawdled along the dry valley bottom, tracing the route of the underwater stream, noting the dark green marsh grasses, fed from below. The sea glittered like a thousand mirrors, while a pair of fishing-boats bobbed in the mouth of the bay. In the distance I heard the growl of an aeroplane engine. It was odd. The bombers usually came at night, but the onslaught had increased over the last couple of weeks – Swanage, Portland, Weymouth and even Dorchester had been pounded, and I supposed day raids were bound to start. The papers no longer listed all the details – there were too many, and they didn’t want to give the Germans confirmation of what they had hit. Sometimes as I sat on the bottom rung of the shepherd’s hut, I saw the planes swoop along the valley below, engines screaming, wing tips appearing to brush the sloping fields on either side.

  The engine noise grew deafening, and I clapped my hands over my ears. I looked up, and saw not one but two Messerschmitt fighters dive out of the sun, wings and snouts mustard yellow, black crosses daubed beneath their wings. Fury bubbled in my throat. How dare they fly here? Under these English skies men and horses trawled the meadows, gathering hay for the winter. The skies belonged to the sparrow hawks
and greylag geese, not these dirty machines with their stuttering roar. The Messerschmitts rushed closer and closer, hurtling along the valley so low that their yellow bellies seemed to brush the blackthorn scrub. I was not frightened but angry. Hate pooled in my stomach like indigestion and I clenched my fists, fingers stiff with rage, and stooped to pick up a lump of flint. I drew my arm back and hurled it towards the first plane as it skimmed the valley.

  ‘Get out! Get out!’ I shouted.

  The pebble curled in an arc, and I felt a moment of exhilaration and triumph – I’m going to hit it! I’m going to get the bastard! A second later, the pebble fell to earth and landed impotently. I swore and bent to find another pebble. In my fury, I did not notice that the engine note had changed, and that one plane had soared in a loop and was now rushing back along the valley towards me. I watched for a moment as the black nose and yellow snout rushed at me, more interested and angry than afraid, until suddenly, as it neared me, the ground exploded with machine-gun fire. I was paralysed, open-mouthed with rage and surprise. Then I started to run. I ran faster than I had ever run in my life. The plane sprayed the valley with bursts of bullets. The hills rattled with gunfire and the staccato roar of the engines. It was a game. Just a game. I was its run, rabbit, run. I couldn’t feel my legs – I was a blur, a sweating, running thing. I was nothing. I was a hurry of speed and fear. I heard that silly hit of the previous summer playing in my mind – Run Rabbit Run . . . here comes the farmer with his gun, gun, gun. Bullets. Running. The purple head of a thistle flew off, decapitated. I was aware of everything and nothing. Only running. The record played round and round, my mind a spinning turntable. On the farm every Friday it’s rabbit pie day. So run rabbit run rabbit run! Run! Run! My tennis shoe came off. I did not slow. I sprinted, conscious of my skin slicing open on the sharp rocks and pricked by the nettles, but I couldn’t feel the pain, numb with adrenalin.

  The woods. Run to Tyneford Great Wood. Reach the woods. Hide among the trees and I am safe. I am Kit, running, running across the hills, fast as a roe buck. The tree shadow. Closer. Bullets clattering against the flint, strafing the eweleaze. Bang! Bang! Bang! Goes the farmer’s gun. A fence falls. Sheep running. I can’t look to see if they’re dead. Something red. Blood on wool. Nearly at the trees. If I reach this hazel, that post, then I’ll be safe. I’ll live. Run rabbit run run run! Don’t give the farmer his fun fun fun! I run into the wood. The planes growl above the trees. It’s angry, I can hear it. It’s driven its rabbit into cover. I fall into the leaf litter, warm and damp and smelling of earth and mould. It’s firing into the tree canopy. Bullets and twigs and leaves rain onto the forest floor. I’m on my hands and knees. I’m on my feet again and I’m running, running. The mud and muck flies up around me as the bullets spray, sometimes so close I have to breathe to check that I’m still alive. I am all fear and running. The big tree. I see the big oak tree. It has white arms and it beckons to me out of the green dark. I run to the tree and the arms grab me and pull me down, down into cool dark and quiet.

  ‘You’re safe,’ soothed Poppy. ‘Quite safe.’

  I lay in the gloom, listening to the quiet. Nothing moved. The beetles and ants and woodpeckers held their breath. The wind hummed through the ash leaves, and a larch rustled. Then a wood pigeon cooed, a rook cackled and shrieked, and the forests crawled to life once again.

  ‘How can you be sure they won’t come back?’ I asked.

  ‘’Spect they’re out of ammo for one thing. Less than ten seconds worth of solid gunfire. Not much fuel left either.’

  I sat up, picking leaves and moss from my hair, and an enterprising earwig from my cotton brassiere.

  ‘He played with me, Poppy.’

  ‘Here, drink this, you’ll feel better.’

  I grabbed the bottle from her and downed a hefty gulp of what turned out to be Scotch.

  ‘You don’t seem very hysterical,’ said Poppy, looking rather disappointed as I tipped out stones from my remaining tennis shoe. ‘I must say, I was looking forward to slapping you. It’s what you do with hysterics. Are you sure you’re not feeling even a little peaky?’ she asked with a hopeful smile.

  ‘No.’

  I took another swig of Scotch and surveyed my surroundings. We sat in what appeared to be an earthen cave, roots tangled above our heads. A bright hole of daylight led back to the wood, and a torch was slung from a root on a piece of string, angled to illuminate the recesses of the cave. Black guns glinted.

  ‘Best not look,’ said Poppy. ‘Top secret and all that.’

  ‘Bit late now.’

  I remembered the guns that I’d seen her hide in the Tilly Whim caves and Mr Rivers’ revolver. I wondered if Poppy and Mr Rivers were part of the same resistance group, but honouring my promise to Mr Rivers, I did not enquire.

  ‘So, you have these hides all round the coast?’ I asked instead.

  ‘Yes. Just in case.’

  ‘I want to help. Whatever you’re doing, I want to be part of it.’

  Poppy shifted and wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘Can’t, I’m afraid. British nationals only. We really are Top Secret you know. You’re not supposed to be down here, ’specially not since you’re an enemy alien, but seemed the right thing to do, since otherwise you would have been shot and all.’

  I crawled over to the disc of daylight and elbowed my way out into the wood. Dusting off my filthy dress as best I could, I stood up and glared down at her.

  ‘Enemy alien? How could you?’

  Poppy flushed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s beastly. It’s not me, it’s the wretched government.’

  ‘Just be quiet,’ I snapped. I kicked at the tree with my shoe and balled my fists. I was so angry I could spit. Without saying goodbye or thank you, I turned and walked away. It was not fair. I wanted to join the fight.

  I hobbled along the path, searching for my dropped plimsoll. An evening breeze drifted in from the sea and licked across the valley. The sheep grazed and curlews floated across the sky. I found my shoe and slipped it on. A flotilla of red admiral butterflies flitted around a patch of clover and, at the far end of the valley, the last combs of hay lay in curving lines. A pastoral idyll once again. Something glinted in the grass. I bent and scooped it up between my fingers – a fat bullet, glossy as a slug. On the hill at a distance from the rest of the flock, one of the sheep lay motionless. I clapped my hands and shouted. It did not move. Squinting, I realised it must be dead. I ought to send a message to the shepherd. The ewe was freshly killed – no use wasting good mutton. I noticed that at the far end of the field there fluttered a row of crimson flags, like a bleeding scratch across the skin of the meadow. I wondered what they signified. I suspected Poppy knew, but she probably wouldn’t tell me, even if I asked.

  When I reached the house, Mr Rivers was prowling the terrace.

  ‘Good God,’ he said, hastening towards me. ‘Are you hurt?’

  I was too exhausted to receive his concern with any grace. ‘No. Just in need of a bath.’

  He tried to take my arm as I passed. ‘Alice, I heard gunfire.’

  I shook him off. ‘Please. Leave me be. I’m quite all right. Tell Mr Stickland one of his sheep is dead.’

  I hurried into the house and up the stairs before anyone else could accost me. My terror had subsided. I was angry and exhausted and helpless. They’d shot at me and there was nothing I could do. In a few hours they would be back and the darkness would growl with enemies, metallic and sinister. Soon the horizon would simmer red, as Swanage or Portland or Dorchester burnt. I unbuttoned my frock and paced the room in my underwear. I waited for the stillness to be torn apart by an aeroplane’s roar. I didn’t really rest anymore. Not since Kit died. I saw him in my dreams; he was exactly the same as before, but even in my sleep I knew he was dead. In the mornings, when I woke, my grief choked me, thick as smoke. When I was a child, I imagined that if my parents died, or Margot, that I would die of grief; I’d cleave in two like an elm tree in a lightning strike. But I didn’t die. I
was hollowed out, scraped clean inside. I imagined myself to be like an empty Russian doll, filled with black nothing. Sometimes when I paced beside the sea, the shingles washed as the waves rushed and withdrew, I wondered whether I ought to slip into the tide. I could fill my pockets with pebbles and wade out beyond the black rocks, beyond the peak of Worbarrow Tout, until the saltwater trickled down my throat. It seemed a quiet, easeful death. Perhaps Kit waited for me beneath the waves, as he did in my dreams. It was an idle thought, brought on by misery and the sad call of the sea. That afternoon, when the Messerschmitts had chased me, I only wanted to live. I had not thought for a second that I ought to embrace death and join Kit. As I ran, sweating and feral with terror, I discovered that I was greedy for life. My instinct to live was as desperate as that of a bloodied rat caught in a dog’s jaws.

  Mr Rivers and I ate dinner in the kitchen, while Mr Wrexham waited upon us, resplendent in his white cotton gloves and pristine tails. Behind us, the ancient stove smoked and grumbled. I liked the kitchen; its warmth and the smells of simmering fat and carbolic soap, the clatter and bustle of Mrs Ellsworth, all reminded me of home. I sipped at my wine and toyed with the mashed potato. Mr Rivers frowned.

  ‘Alice, what happened this afternoon? Are you all right?’

  I recalled Mr Rivers mad with rage firing his gun. Determined not to incense him again, I spoke with studied calm. ‘There was a Messerschmitt. It let off a few rounds in the valley.’

  ‘Was it shooting at you?’

  His voice was low, but contained a coldness that I did not like. I reached across the table for his hand.

  ‘I am fine. Please. If you get cross, then I shall be upset.’

  A muscle pulsed in his jaw, but he said nothing more on the topic.