by Fern Britton
I was confused. ‘But it’s summer.’
Mummy took David’s small hands and rubbed them. ‘Feels like winter.’
‘Does it?’
She looked at me kindly. ‘You don’t remember the hot summers of Penang, do you?’
‘No,’ I said, with a jab of resentment. ‘I suppose I don’t.’
She turned her gaze to Edward who kissed her cheek. ‘Morning, Mother.’
‘Good morning, Edward. Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
She looked at the table. ‘Doesn’t all this look lovely!’
‘I picked the flowers,’ I said immediately.
‘Did you? They are very nice, darling.’
Pleasure, and the smugness that comes from one-upmanship, coursed through me.
The door opened revealing Dora and Cook carrying two large trays of hot food.
‘And here comes breakfast,’ Grandfather looked relieved. ‘Take a seat everyone.’
I made certain that I sat next to Mummy. She made certain that David was on her other side.
‘Good morning, Cook,’ she said as Cook laid the bowl of kedgeree down followed by crispy bacon and grilled tomatoes. ‘So sorry I missed you yesterday. David and I were rather worn out by the journey down.’
‘Very good to see you again, Mrs Bolitho. And this is the little one, is it?’ Cook gave David a doting look which I didn’t appreciate. ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’
‘Say hello to Cook, David,’ Mummy coaxed.
‘Hello Cook,’ he managed.
‘And doesn’t he speak good English! Better than these two did.’ She looked at Edward and me. ‘It took a while before we all understood each other.’
‘I only began to teach him a little English, a few months ago. When I knew we would be coming back. Up until then he spoke only Malay,’ Mummy said this a little too proudly for my liking and went on. ‘I suppose Edward and Hannah have lost their Malay now.’
Grandfather shook out his napkin. ‘I am quite sure that they’d pick it up again quickly if necessary,’ he said kindly. ‘Now then, what have we got for breakfast?’
Dora laid down two full toast racks, a plate of butter and a bowl of marmalade. ‘What would Master David like?’ she asked.
‘Pineapple please,’ he replied, which flummoxed her and Cook.
‘No darling. We don’t have pineapple in England,’ Mummy said sweetly.
David’s face dropped. ‘Mango then.’
‘Or mango. But look what we have! Bacon, tomatoes, toast.’
Cook pointed to her dish of kedgeree, ‘And I have made something special for you. Your brother and sister’s favourite.’ She lifted the lid like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. ‘Kedgeree!’
‘Can we go home now, Mummy?’ David said.
As the week went on I got to really dislike David. He was awkward, demanding, and took up most of my mother’s time. I tried to make friends with him. I read him stories, pushed him on the swing or played games, but as soon as he grew tired of the story or a game, he would leave me in search of Mummy.
I was not as happy as I thought I would be. I wanted Mummy to spend some time with me, alone.
The adults seemed not to notice. They were in the small boy’s thrall.
Edward just shrugged when I tried to tell him how I felt. ‘Ignore it, Toots.’ He had got this new nickname for me from going to the pictures and watching American films. ‘I do.’
‘Yes, but you can go out with friends and do what you like. I have to stay in, like a child.’
‘Then stop behaving like one. David’s all right really. Just a bit spoilt, perhaps.’
‘A bit spoilt? How does he deserve to be spoilt when you and I haven’t ever been spoilt? We had to get on with things without Mummy running around after us every second.’ I began to feel the familiar hurt swell in me again. ‘It’s not fair. And why is everything such a secret? Why is he more important than us? Why hasn’t Daddy come to see us or even written to us for ever?’
Edward collected up his rugger boots. ‘I haven’t got time for this mewling. You need to grow up.’
He left his room and I threw myself onto his bed in a fit of anger, loneliness and tears. I heard him downstairs, yelling a cheery goodbye to everyone then slamming the front door. Not a single person came to look for me.
Eventually my bitter internal storm abated.
I was hungry.
Cook usually had the two hours after lunch and before dinner to herself, leaving the kitchen free for me to find a tasty treat. I came down the stairs quietly, hoping no one would hear me. The study door was closed. I stood and listened for a moment. Mummy and Grandfather were talking quietly. Good. That meant that David would be out with Dora, the only other woman in his life and somebody else I missed from my own.
In the kitchen I found some ham and made myself a sandwich. I put it on a small plate, poured a glass of milk and decided to take it to my room where I could sulk more comfortably.
Passing the study door again, I heard muffled tears and Grandfather saying something soothing. I put my ear firmly to the wood.
‘Oh, my dear Clara. Is there no alternative?’ Grandfather asked.
‘I have tried, Hugh. So hard. But the war and losing Bertie has changed him. I can’t stand him shouting at me any more. David is frightened of him and so are the servants. Socially he is as charming as ever and brilliant at work, but I can take the bullying no longer.’ She blew her nose. ‘The disappearing for hours – sometimes days – at a time without telling me where he’s going or when he’ll be back. I hear him at night, in his bedroom, shouting out. If I go to him he almost attacks me until he wakes and then he’s embarrassed.’
‘Poor Ernest.’
‘Poor David. He has had enough to cope with. You know how hard it was for him when he was born. So early and so little. Then the malaria. I nearly lost him several times. You know I miscarried two babies before him. I thought I’d never have another child. I was so happy, happier than Ernest. He had made sure Edward and Hannah came back to Cornwall to be safe, and now here I was bringing another child into a country that wasn’t secure, he said, for children. I would have stayed there but things got worse between us.’
‘Oh, my dear. You must always know that Cornwall and this house is your home for as long as you want.’
‘I don’t want to say these awful things about Ernest. He’s your son and my husband. But …’ Her voice thickened. ‘But, he began to get, not violent exactly, but he pushed me a little too hard and … hurt me.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ Grandfather said slowly. ‘I am so very sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Mummy sniffed. ‘It was the bloody war.’
‘You should have come sooner.’
‘It was hard to get the money for the tickets. That’s why we came by banana boat. Thank God I can play bridge. It meant we could at least have one hot meal a day on board.’
‘That cannot have been easy.’
‘Well, we are here now, and I can’t thank you enough for taking us in.’
The leather of Grandfather’s chair creaked as he changed position. ‘Edward and Hannah missed you greatly, and I think Hannah is finding it hard to compete with David for your attention.’
‘She’s so grown up, though. Not the little girl I left here all those years ago. I feel she doesn’t need me any more, whereas David does.’
‘She needs you as any daughter needs her mother. I wish you had let me tell them both about their little brother. But I promised you I wouldn’t and I didn’t.’
My heart began thumping hard in my chest. Grandfather had kept David a secret? I tried to still my shallow breathing, determined to hear more.
‘If David had died,’ my mother went on, ‘I wanted to spare them the grief. I couldn’t have done that to them. Better not to know they had ever had a brother than to find out he had died without them ever meeting him.’
‘I understand. But sometime
s a secret is even more of a cross to bear.’ The silence between them hung heavily for a moment. ‘So, what are your plans now, Clara? Do you intend going back to Penang soon?’
‘No, Hugh, I don’t. I have left Ernest.’
I stood stock-still, all this truth making me feel sick with anger. Would I never see my father again? How could all these adults that I had loved and trusted keep all these secrets?
‘I see. How do you envisage your future here with three children?’
‘I am not going to be a financial burden to you. It may be wrong of me, but I have been hiding a little money from Ernest over the years, perhaps already thinking of life without him. I’ve been wondering about opening a small shop, and I would like to buy a little car.’
‘Well, well,’ my grandfather said, ‘you are a doer. I think a drink might be in order. A small sherry, perhaps?’
‘No thank you. But thank you for listening. I feel a lot better. I am so sorry to burden you with all this. I have kept it all in for so long.’ I heard the rustle of her dress as she stood up. ‘Do you think Cook would mind if I made myself some tea?’
I ran, with the uneaten sandwich and undrunk milk, back to the kitchen.
I sat at the table, my breath coming too fast, just as Mummy came in. She started when she saw me.
‘Hello Mummy,’ I smiled brightly. ‘I just made myself a ham sandwich. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Hannah, Trevay
1938
My mother did as she said she would do. With a loan from my grandfather, and much searching for a suitable property, she leased a shop in Trevay and bought an old Austin 7 car. She drove very badly, either so slowly that people honked to get past her, or so quickly (sometimes on the wrong side of the road) that other drivers flung their motors onto pavements to avoid her. ‘I am a very good driver,’ she’d exclaim if any of us dared take a sharp intake of breath, the last before we surely died. ‘I have never had an accident!’
To which Edward would reply quietly, ‘No, but we’ve seen plenty behind us.’
Mum’s shop had been a wool shop before she took it on. The stock of wool left by the previous keeper stayed with us to keep the custom coming, but gradually, as she imported more of the Eastern silks, the customers remained with her and changed their tastes. Over time her shop became, in Cornwall anyway, rather famous. You couldn’t get better anywhere else in the county. Including Truro.
Trevay was a small fishing village some ten miles up the coast from Callyzion. The harbour front was built with rugged fishermen’s cottages and a pub, The Golden Hind. Beyond the harbour wall lay the open sea. Along the harbour wall was a jumble of fishing boats, large and small, and on its granite walls the men would land their catches and mend their nets. The Cornish accent here was broader than in Callyzion. It was hard to tune my ear to it, getting only one word in three or four, but as time went on my own accent grew the same. My mother was always correcting me. ‘Darling, please don’t use the Cornish vernacular. If it’s a rough day say it’s a rough day, not your other nonsense.’
She was right, I had begun to say ‘’Tis helluva hooley’ instead, because it was such fun. ‘Yes Mum.’
‘And when things are right, say so. Just using the word “ideal” will not do.’
Her shop was in the back street, behind the harbour cottages, in the middle of a short run of shops. There was a butcher, greengrocer, hairdresser, tobacconist-cum-newsagent, a baker who sold out of pasties every day by ten in the morning, and us. We were between the hairdresser and the greengrocer. All these buildings were built by the Victorians and so were well organised within. We had a dry cellar below the shop, a room behind the shop with a kitchen curtained off, and the next floor housed the four of us in two bedrooms – I shared with Mum – and two further letting rooms above that housing two lodgers. One was Mr Tomlinson, the St Peter’s Church verger. The other was Miss Penrose, a young woman who taught at the junior school.
Sometime in the mid-1850s the railway company built a branch line into the village, capitalising on the popularity of seaside holidays to quaint destinations. With the train came a hotel. An enormous edifice commanding a high point above the harbour. Mum loved to go there. They held a weekly bridge night and she was soon a much admired and respected player.
I was 14 and still at school. I could legally leave now but Grandfather had insisted I stayed until I was sixteen in order to take my General School Certificate.
Edward had been accepted at medical school in Bristol, and David, now seven, had developed into a much more easy-going boy. Miss Penrose, who taught him, said he was one of the brightest in the school. He was interested in all kinds of engineering, questioning every construction he saw and occasionally tinkering with the Austin. He was also very funny. I had managed to bury my initial jealousy and come to enjoy his company. He was still quiet at times but no longer afraid of us.
Of Dad we heard very little. His letters were succinct. He was well. Rubber prices were good. He worried about Mr Hitler, and he was glad Edward had got his place at Bristol.
I didn’t tell anyone what I had heard that afternoon in Callyzion. The things I had overheard about my father I put away, not wanting to hurt either of my siblings. If David remembered any of what he had seen or heard in Penang, he kept it to himself, and I never asked.
Mum was happy. Dad was doing well. We were OK.
I wouldn’t, couldn’t, ask for more.
Mum was doing so well that she took on a half-share in a teashop newly opened on the harbour front. The inevitable had happened and Mr Tomlinson and Miss Penrose had conducted a love affair under our noses and got married. The new Mrs Tomlinson gave up her work at the school and became Mum’s partner in the business. Our two letting rooms became their bedroom and sitting room. Mum insisted that she make the bride’s dress and organised the flowers for the church. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to be so involved, but I overheard a conversation between Mrs Emery, the hairdresser next door, and a customer that seemed to have something to do with it. It was a warm day and Mrs Emery had the shop door open to let the breeze in and the heat from the hairdryers out. Due to the noise in the salon she had to talk loudly to be heard. ‘I hear the teacher next door has to get married. How could Mrs Bolitho not know what was going on under her own roof? Never did like her much. Very pleased with herself, she is. What I’d like to know is, where is her husband? Hmm?’
She couldn’t see me from where she was talking, so I made my presence known by stepping into her eyeline and giving her a filthy look through her window. It shut her up but I would never forgive her for speaking about my mother like that. And what did she mean about Miss Penrose having to get married? She was in love with Mr Tomlinson and that was enough, wasn’t it?
Mum got rather overcome by the marriage service and shed a few tears. Poor Miss Penrose’s parents couldn’t come for some reason, so I suppose Mum felt as though she was standing in for them. She cried very rarely, and then only when she thought I didn’t know. Perhaps she missed Dad more than she let on.
In November of 1938, Mrs Tomlinson gave us some happy news. She was going to have a baby in the spring. I was thrilled and hoped it would be a little girl. ‘I can babysit for you,’ I told her, and she said yes that would be lovely but that she was going to keep the baby in a pram in the teashop so that all the ladies in Trevay could cuddle it while she was working.
Christmas was very busy in the shop and Mum let me decorate the windows with little snowmen I made out of bits of wool. There was a competition for the Best-Dressed Festive Window, and Mum went all out with her display of silks. She even made me an elf suit to wear behind the counter and a Mother Christmas outfit for herself. Mrs Tomlinson baked mince pies for us to give out to customers, and Mum had a small bottle of sherry to offer them too. ‘It’ll open their purses a little wider,’ she laughed, giving me a nudge. I loved it when she treated me like one of her grown-up friends, and she was right, purses were opening, very nicel
y.
Grandfather came to spend Christmas Day with us. He had retired by then and, apart from helping at midnight mass the night before, had no other commitments to the parish. Edward took the old Austin to bring him over while Mum and I made lunch and David laid the table. He and I had collected a Christmas tree the week before and garlanded it with paper-chains and cut-out icicles. Mum had made our fairy years ago by dressing one of my old baby dolls in a dress of white silk shot through with silver thread, and pipe cleaners bent into wings. It had always been my business to place her on top of the tree, with the top branch of pine needles scratching her little pink legs, but this year David wanted to do it. I was about to argue with him when Mum gave me one of her looks, and I was forced to capitulate.
‘Good girl,’ she muttered. ‘Fancy a sherry?’
‘Really?’ I had never been asked before.
‘You will be fifteen in a few months’ time and it is Christmas.’ She brought out the almost empty bottle that she’d offered the customers over the previous week and held it to the light. ‘Just enough for two of us.’
I poured it carefully and evenly into two small glasses with green bases.
‘Here’s to us.’ She raised her glass to me and I raised mine to her. ‘Happy Christmas.’
The sweet warmth filled my mouth and slid into my stomach. I laughed. ‘It’s heating me from the inside.’
‘Warming your collywobbles,’ she laughed back, then checked her wristwatch. ‘You’d better get the bread sauce on before your brother gets back with Hugh.’
‘Here we are,’ called Edward, opening the back door a few minutes later.
‘Merry Christmas,’ said Grandfather from behind, pulling the rain and cold in with him. ‘Edward drove very well.’
‘I am glad to hear it. Give me your coat.’ Mum took his wet coat and kissed him. ‘Happy Christmas, Hugh.’ Then set about giving her orders. ‘David, put Grandfather’s coat on a chair to dry, would you? Hannah, put the kettle on. Edward, could you reach up and open the latch window, it’s getting so steamy in here. It’s from the pudding boiling.’