Days of Grace

by Catherine Hall

  Be Careful What You Say! Like Everyone Else, You Will Hear Things That The Enemy Mustn’t Know. Keep That Knowledge to Yourself - And Don’t Give Away Any Clues. Keep Smiling. There’s a Lot of Worry and Grief in the World - And You Can Lessen it by Being Good-Tempered and Considerate.

  So I didn’t ask anything about Mrs Rivers wanting the rectory to be bombed. And I didn’t tell Grace what I saw later on that evening. Reverend Rivers didn’t come to supper. After we had eaten, Grace went to take a bath and I helped Mrs Rivers with the dishes. When we had finished, she picked up her sewing and I pretended to be engrossed in Rebecca, which Grace and I were taking turns to read, keeping it out of Reverend Rivers’ sight. We had stolen it from a box of books donated for the village fête. Neither of us had read anything like it before. It was the only book I’d ever seen Grace pick up outside our lessons. She said she was in love with Maxim de Winter, the hero.

  I knew that Mrs Rivers wouldn’t notice what I was reading. She was distracted, making a few stitches at a time, then going back to unpick what she had done and starting all over again. Suddenly she caught her breath. I looked over at her. She had pricked her finger. Tears were swimming in her eyes.

  ‘Excuse me, Nora,’ she muttered, and hurried out of the room. I waited for a moment and then slipped out after her, following as she stumbled across the garden to the graveyard, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were trying to hold herself together. I ducked behind the hut, where I stayed, watching her closely. She stopped and looked down at one of the graves. Her legs seemed to give way underneath her and she fell to the ground.

  I wondered what it meant, if Mrs Rivers’ unhappiness was because of a lost romance that she had to keep hidden for always, if the rectory held secrets like the great house in Rebecca. When at last she left, picking her way unsteadily back through the graveyard, I went over to the grave. I was disappointed with what I found. The cross was bare, without an inscription, just rough grey stone, as bleak as Mrs Rivers’ face.

  When September came I thought Ma might come to visit for my birthday but the Blitz began, trapping her in London. Nearly three years would pass before she came to Kent. By then I was sixteen.

  Many things changed while I was waiting for her to come. Every day the wireless brought news and it was usually bad. For fifty-seven nights I listened to hear where the latest Blitz attacks had been, anxiously praying that Ma would be all right. When Germany invaded Russia, I borrowed books from Reverend Rivers to find out what Russia was like; thick, heavy books that described a very different sort of countryside to Kent. We spent less time in the fields and woods and more in the vegetable patch, digging for victory as we were told to, planting row after row of cauliflowers. One week there was a special collection for rosehips, and we gathered buckets of them from the hedgerows, taking them to the sour-faced woman in the village shop who paid us threepence a pound.

  There was never enough of anything and, as if our bodies were doing it to spite us and the ration books, we were both growing taller, filling out. Neither of us fitted into our clothes and finding shoes became impossible, so most of the time we went about in gumboots. Mrs Rivers helped us cut down her old dresses but Grace had no patience for sewing and my stitches were messy and loose. Our hems drooped and our seams fell apart as we dug in the garden.

  Books were the only things that weren’t in short supply. Reverend Rivers continued with our lessons and I liked them even more than before. I had lost some of my shyness, becoming quick to answer his questions and daring to come up with some of my own, as if I were building myself up out of the things that I read. Grace and I didn’t see much of the other girls in the village. She had never known them especially well because she had always gone away to school. Besides, there was a peculiar distance between the rectory and the people who came to the church every Sunday. We even sat in a different part of it, in the pews near the altar. But I didn’t mind. When I wasn’t with Grace, I was reading, finding new friends on the pages.

  Sometimes it was a relief to be alone. After Spitfire Summer, I had started to feel things, strange things that made me afraid. I didn’t tell Grace everything any more. I didn’t want her to know about the dreams I had, troubling dreams that jolted me awake at night. I would make out Grace’s shape under the bedclothes, rising and falling as she breathed, imagining myself drawing back the blanket, then the sheet, lifting her nightdress so that I could see her body’s new curves. I wanted to touch her skin. I wanted to press myself close to her, winding around her like the creeper that covered the front wall of the rectory.

  I knew that if I told her I would ruin everything. I followed the rules. I was careful what I said. But the rules didn’t say I couldn’t think about her. I thought about her all the time.

  The morning of Ma’s visit, I woke early. I tiptoed out of bed and pushed aside the blackout. Light was just beginning to creep over the treetops. It would be a sunny day, like when I had arrived at the rectory. She would come on the train like I had. I tried to picture Ma, sitting in the corner of a compartment, looking out at the same fields I’d looked at, the hundred shades of green.

  Taking care not to wake Grace, I slipped back into bed and reached into the drawer of the little table that stood between us. I took out the picture of the Virgin and Child that Ma had given me in the playground. I looked at it whenever I wanted to remember her. I lay on my stomach and traced the Virgin’s face with my finger, wondering if under her veil her hair was long and dark like Ma’s. Grace yawned in her sleep and shifted. I kissed the Virgin’s forehead.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ I whispered, and put the picture back in the drawer.

  I wanted to look nice for her, to make her proud. I wanted her to see how much Grace and I looked like each other. We were both tall now, taller than Mrs Rivers. The only difference between us was our hair. Grace’s was pale blonde like winter sunshine. I was dark like Ma. But apart from that we were each other’s mirror image. It made William laugh and clown around, pretending to mistake one of us for the other. The army hadn’t wanted to take him and so he had joined the Home Guard. He spent hours patrolling the orchards around the village, looking for Germans and practising his shots. He taught us how to use his air rifle, using apples as targets. They exploded in a dramatic, satisfying way, filling the air with the smell of fruit. But the day of Ma’s visit wasn’t the time for shooting apples. Grace and I wanted to look like ladies.

  She was almost as excited as I was. After breakfast, she made me close my eyes, then put something cool and smooth into my hands. It was her soap ration. Grace had started to care about being clean. It wasn’t like when I had first arrived in Kent, when she had never minded if she ripped her clothes climbing trees or got dirty running through the fields. Now she spent hours in the bathroom every morning, rubbing soap into her skin inch by inch and rinsing it off with jugs of water. Her ration was precious and I was touched.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  ‘There’s something else for when you’ve washed,’ she said. ‘Go on, hurry up.’

  Her idea was like all of her plans, thrilling but slightly dangerous. She wouldn’t listen to my doubts.

  ‘Come on, Nora,’ she said, taking my hand and pulling me after her. ‘It’s only a bedroom.’

  I found it difficult to imagine a man sleeping there. Everything about it was like Mrs Rivers. The wallpaper was the colour of primroses, flowered curtains hung over the blackout and the bed was covered with a pink counterpane made of a shiny material. I couldn’t picture Reverend Rivers sleeping under it. I couldn’t picture him and Mrs Rivers sharing such a small space, but this was the bed they slept in together every night, the proof. The thought of it made my cheeks grow hot and I turned away so that Grace wouldn’t see. When I turned back to her she was sitting on a stool at a dressing table that had three mirrors, like the paintings in church at home; a main one in the middle and two smaller ones at its sides. On the table were a silver hairbrush, a jar of face cream a
nd a tray that held a tangle of hairgrips and the string of pearls that Mrs Rivers wore on Sundays. Grace was holding a bottle filled with something golden.

  ‘Look at Mummy’s scent,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely. Come and smell it.’

  She shifted along the stool and I sat down next to her.

  ‘Let’s put some on,’ she said.

  I was beginning to feel uneasy. ‘I don’t think we should. You know it’s rationed.’

  ‘She won’t mind. And we won’t use very much of it. Your mother’s coming all the way from London to see you. You want to smell nice for her, don’t you? I bet you anything she’ll be wearing scent.’

  I didn’t think Ma had ever worn scent. I’d never seen a bottle like this in our house.

  ‘I’ll put some on your throat and your wrists,’ said Grace. ‘That’s what Mummy does. You can put some on me too. Come on, hold up your hair.’

  I lifted my hair and she squeezed the little pink bulb at the neck of the bottle. I felt a cool mist against my skin and smelled lemons.

  ‘Now you put some on me.’

  She held out her wrists and I squeezed the bulb. She rubbed them together then brought them to her throat.

  ‘Did you know that scent smells different on every person?’ she said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I believe you.’ I breathed in, feeling giddy.

  ‘Smell it on me,’ she said.

  ‘I can smell it already.’

  ‘You need to smell it on my skin. Here.’ She pointed to her throat.

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Go on, silly!’

  I pressed the tip of my nose to the hollow at the base of her throat, closed my eyes and inhaled. I smelled the same fresh scent that was in the air but under it, Grace’s own smell, heady and unsettling.

  The combined smell of Mrs Rivers and Grace stayed in my nose as I waited for Ma, standing on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of the bus. I gave myself a little shake. Ma was coming. As soon as I saw her, sitting on the back seat, peering out of the window, I felt as if my heart would burst with happiness.

  ‘Ma!’ I shouted, waving at her. I ran to the door of the bus and there she was, standing in front of me, my mother, whom I had wished for so many times as I laid in bed at night, my mother, who didn’t keep secrets and never shut herself away from me, my mother, who couldn’t play the piano and didn’t wear scent. My mother. Ma.

  We stood and looked at one another. She seemed smaller than when I had left her in the schoolyard. Then she had bent to kiss me goodbye. Now it was me who had to bend to kiss her. We held onto each other tightly and I breathed in a smell that I had forgotten, her smell: carbolic soap and sweat. When we finally let go, Ma took hold of both my hands.

  ‘Oh, Nora,’ she said quietly.

  When Reverend Rivers had asked me if I wanted to stay in Kent or go back to London I had still been angry with Ma for sending me away. I had fallen in love with the world of the rectory, a place where everything seemed possible. And so I had chosen my new family, the Rivers, over Ma. I had told myself that they wanted me and that she had not. Now I was ashamed. I smiled, a small unhappy smile.

  ‘Come and see where I live,’ I said, and turned towards the rectory.

  As we came close to it my stomach began to heave with anticipation. I rang the doorbell as if I were a visitor, suddenly shy. Footsteps sounded in the hallway and then Mrs Rivers was in front of us.

  I watched them look each other up and down.

  Mrs Rivers was the first to speak. ‘Mrs Lynch. I’m Evelyn Rivers. How do you do?’

  ‘Thank you for looking after Nora,’ Ma said.

  ‘We’re very fond of her. She’s a credit to you.’

  I looked at my feet, wondering where Grace was. The next minute she appeared behind Mrs Rivers, smiling at Ma. I felt like everything was all right again.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  I wondered if Ma found her voice lovely like I did. I said a little prayer in my head.

  Please God, let them see each other like I do.

  Reverend Rivers came out of his study to join us for afternoon tea. Mrs Rivers had been saving up our rations and it was like the first Sunday all over again. There were egg and tomato sandwiches with the crusts cut off, arranged on one of the plates with blue flowers around the rim. She had made scones and there was even jam to go on them, made with raspberries that we had picked from the garden. Best of all was the cake, two layers of sponge, dusted with sugar like morning frost.

  I saw Ma’s eyes grow wide as she walked into the dining room. I wanted to be alone with her, to tell her that I had thought the same; that I had found it hard to believe that there could be a whole room just to eat in. I wanted to warn her that there would be strange silences as we ate and that Mrs Rivers always pushed her food around her plate without eating very much of it. I wanted to tell her that Reverend Rivers came alive when he was teaching us and that Mrs Rivers could play the piano so beautifully that it made me cry. I wanted to tell Grace things too. I wanted to take her hand and run out of the back door, through the fields to the Forgotten Lake where I would tell her that in London my mother wasn’t timid and quiet like a mouse, that in London she could stand up to anyone. Instead, I was trapped in the dining room, perched on a chair, not knowing what to say.

  Ma’s skin looked as if a layer of dust had settled over it. Her forehead was crossed with lines that I hadn’t seen before and she had a new habit of pressing her lips together as if she were biting them. Her hair wasn’t the shiny black that I remembered, but smudged with grey, and dusty like her skin. She answered Mrs Rivers’ questions so quietly that it was difficult to catch her words. Her voice seemed out of place in the rectory, next to the polished furniture and fine china, and I began to feel uneasy. The feeling grew as I saw Ma looking at me with puzzlement in her eyes and I realized that just as her voice sounded strange to me, the way that I spoke now was odd to her. I remembered how Grace had giggled at the way I said roses. Since then I had tried to copy her, to make my voice like hers. As the afternoon wore on, I heard myself speak with Ma’s ears. I became lost in my sentences, caught up in the sound of what I was saying, knowing that Ma was trying to understand how I had become a stranger.

  It was during an especially long pause that Ma reached for the shopping basket that she had brought with her.

  ‘Nora love, I made you a birthday present. But you’ve grown. I don’t know—’

  She passed me a package wrapped in newspaper. I stared dumbly at the headlines, trying to put off the moment when I would have to open it, knowing that it would be something that would not fit into the rectory world.

  ‘Go on, open it!’ said Grace.

  I picked apart the knotted string and lifted back the folds of newspaper. My present was a cardigan knitted out of greyish wool, a cardigan made for a child. It was something I would have worn when I was still Ma’s little girl, when she was everything to me. I understood then that things would never go back to how they had been before the war. I tried not to look disappointed but I could see from Ma’s face that I hadn’t managed it. There was another pause and then Mrs Rivers was kind.

  ‘What a pretty cardigan!’ she said.

  ‘I’ll unravel it,’ muttered Ma. ‘I’ll make it into socks.’

  It was too late to pretend that things were all right. I hung my head in shame, wanting the visit to be over. When at last it was, I walked with Ma down the front path through the garden, carrying her basket with the cardigan stuffed back into it. I felt it bump against my leg like my gasmask when I had walked out of the schoolyard and away from her. I wanted it to hit me hard, to leave a bruise as a punishment.

  When the bus came, Ma turned to me. She lifted her hands to my face and held it for a moment, a strange, fierce look in her eyes.

  ‘You’ll always be my girl, Nora,’ she said. ‘And I’ll always be your Ma.’

  She pressed her lips to my forehead, then took he
r bags from me and climbed up the steps.

  Nine

  AFTER OUR LATE-NIGHT TALK IN THE KITCHEN, I AVOIDED discussions that could turn into more than an exchange of facts, talking instead about practical things. Rose did the same. The child was our main topic of conversation, our diversion from the complications of the past. She was our excuse for early nights, and we both withdrew to the safety of our rooms as soon as supper was over. We circled about each other like this for almost two weeks, separate and pleasantly polite. I knew all about keeping secrets, but I was curious. I wanted to know what had happened to Rose to make her hide herself away. If we were talking about her, I thought, then at least we would not be talking about me. One morning, as we were having breakfast, I came out with it.

  ‘Rose, who is Grace’s father?’

  She sighed, as if she’d been expecting the question.

  ‘He’s an academic. I met him in my first week at college.’ A flush stole across her cheeks. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly meet him. I went to one of his lectures.’

  I remembered girls from the university near the shop, coming with their reading lists, chattering loudly, their bags stuffed full of papers. I found it difficult to imagine Rose in that world. She was too quiet, too withdrawn.

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘History. The Second World War.’

  I shivered involuntarily.

  ‘I hadn’t expected lecturers to be like him. He wasn’t much older than us. And he was so excited about what he was saying. He didn’t even use any notes. I went to all his lectures after that. I took in a tape recorder, one of those small ones like journalists use, and I’d play it back at night in bed. It was like he was there with me. One day I went up and asked him a question. We got talking and he gave me the name of some books he thought I should read. I spent all week in the library so I’d have finished them by the next time I saw him. He seemed impressed that I’d bothered. We went for coffee. I couldn’t believe that someone like him was interested in anything I had to say. For the first time since I’d got there, I felt like I belonged.’