Lost in the Flames

by Chris Jory

  ‘Morning, Mr Arbuckle, Mrs Arbuckle,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Morning Mary,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Which one of these little darlings is ours?’

  ‘Which one?’ said the nurse.

  ‘Yes, we put ourselves down for one. A boy, we said.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the nurse. ‘There must have been a misunderstanding. These ones come as a job-lot, four for the price of one.’

  She scratched her brow and made a pained sooner-you-than-me expression.

  ‘Well we haven’t got room for four,’ said Alfred.

  The four of them stood clustered around the nurse.

  ‘We’re only little, mister,’ said Billy. ‘We won’t take up much room.’

  ‘Shut up, Billy,’ said Bobby.

  ‘How old are you, son?’ asked Alfred.

  ‘Twelve,’ said Billy. He jerked his thumb at Bobby. ‘He’s fourteen but he acts like a ten-year-old.’

  ‘And you two girls?’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘They’re sixteen,’ said the nurse.

  ‘What, both of them?’

  ‘Twins,’ said the nurse. ‘Can’t you tell?’

  ‘We can’t be separated, mister,’ said Billy. ‘We told our mum and dad we’d look out for each other.’

  ‘I’ll go and see Vera and Norman,’ said Alfred. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’

  ‘Please be as quick as you can, Mr Arbuckle,’ said the nurse. ‘I have to get back to collect another lot.’

  Elizabeth sat the four of them down on the settee and brought each of them a glass of barley water and a biscuit.

  ‘I’m flipping starving,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Eat some of your chocolate, then,’ said Billy.

  ‘Eaten it already.’

  ‘Pig.’

  ‘Did you see those fat pigs outside?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Stink like pigs,’ said Billy.

  ‘Course they stink like pigs,’ said Bobby. ‘They’re bleedin’ pigs, aren’t they?’

  ‘Sod off, Bobby!’

  Elizabeth stood out of sight in the kitchen and exchanged raised eyebrows with the nurse as they listened to this vaguely familiar form of conversation, reminding Elizabeth of Jacob and William at the Bampton boys’ age. She came in and sat opposite the children.

  ‘Now listen,’ she said. ‘This is my house, and if any of you are going to stay here you’ll have to learn to behave a lot better than you’re behaving at the moment.’

  ‘Sorry, miss,’ said Billy. ‘It’s Bobby, he’s always like this.’

  Bobby bit his lip and regarded Billy with unbrotherly eyes while the twins attempted to recover the situation by asking Elizabeth about the town and the neighbours and what she thought would become of them if the war really did progress as expected and the Germans sent airmen to drop their bombs on London.

  Then Alfred and Norman walked in, and Jacob too, covered in dirt from the fields where he had been helping Norman with the weekend jobs.

  ‘Let’s have a look at you,’ said Norman, sizing up the newcomers. ‘All right, then,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘Vera and I will take the boys. If that’s all right with you, nurse?’

  ‘Thank you, Norman,’ she said.

  ‘But we promised we’d stay together,’ said Helen.

  ‘It’s for the best, love,’ said the nurse. ‘You two boys will be fine with Norman. His farm’s just a short walk down the road so you can all see each other every day. And you’ll be at the same school during the week anyway.’

  ‘Are these dogs yours, mister?’ asked Bobby.

  Norman nodded.

  ‘Come on then, Billy,’ said Bobby, getting to his feet. ‘I like the sound of living on a farm.’

  Billy stood up and Norman took their suitcases and the others watched them set off up the lane towards Elm Tree Farm.

  Jacob smiled at Helen and Sarah.

  ‘Do you want to come and see my birds?’ he said. ‘They’re just round the back, in the out-house.’

  ‘What kind of birds?’ said Helen.

  ‘Pigeons. Half a dozen.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Sarah.

  ‘What’s wrong with pigeons?’ said Jacob.

  ‘Dirty things,’ she said, looking Jacob up and down, her eyes lingering upon the filthy state of his trousers.

  ‘Pigeons aren’t dirty,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, they’re one of the cleanest of British birds. Haven’t you ever seen them preening?’

  ‘Seen them what?’

  ‘Preening,’ he said. ‘Like this …’ and Helen laughed at his imitation of a cooing, nuzzling bird.

  ‘I think I’d like to see them,’ said Helen, smiling at Jacob, and he took her round to the out-house to show her what was inside

  Down at Elm Tree Farm, Vera was waiting at the gate, peering up the hill as Norman and the boys came down, two small figures traipsing along in their jackets and their shorts either side of the massive man in whose hands their toy-sized suitcases appeared entirely incapable of transporting the contents of their lives from West Ham to Chipping Norton. Vera held a bundle of her own in her arms, Daphne Miller, born two years earlier, two years after the wedding, just as Norman had promised Alfred. Daphne began to cry, then settled, and as Vera laid her down in her cot in their bedroom overlooking the fields at the back, Norman showed Billy and Bobby up the next flight of stairs to the top room beneath the eaves.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Norman. ‘All right?’

  ‘Is this all for us, mister?’ asked Bobby. ‘The whole room?’

  ‘The whole room.’

  ‘Flipping ’eck, Billy,’ said Bobby, looking around the room and then out of the window at the front and across the yard towards the pond and the copse beyond.

  ‘Are there fish in there, mister, in that pond?’

  ‘There are a few, but you’ll do well to catch them. They’re old and wise, and very, very big.’

  ‘You’re fucking joking!’

  Billy stared at his brother. ‘Watch your mouth, Bobby, we’re not at home now.’

  ‘Listen lads,’ said Norman. ‘There’s a rule on this farm about swearing, has been as long as I’ve been here and for a long time before that too. The old bloke who ran this place before me would only ever permit two swearwords within his earshot. Bloody and bugger. They both begin with B, so they’ll be easy enough for you to remember.’

  ‘Bloody and bugger,’ said Billy. ‘Like Billy and Bobby.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Norman, smiling. ‘Just like Billy and Bobby.’

  ‘So, mister,’ said Billy. ‘Bugger me! That’s all right then? That’s allowed?’

  ‘Yes, that’s all right.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Bobby, and they both laughed.

  ‘It’s not so bad out here in the country,’ said Billy.

  ‘Unpack your bags, lads. And keep your voices down, the baby’s asleep. You can put your clothes in that chest, and bring your shoes downstairs – they stay in the hall. Be downstairs in ten minutes, I want to show you round the farm.’

  As Norman’s heavy footsteps descended the stairs, he could hear the boys’ voices as they rushed about the room.

  ‘Fuck me, this place is all right,’ said one.

  ‘Watch your bloody language, Billy.’

  ‘Bugger off you stupid … bugger.’

  ‘Bugger you too.’

  ‘Look at all those fucking cows.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In that field.’

  ‘Oh, yes. They’re quite small, aren’t they?’

  ‘That’s because they’re a long way off, you idiot.’

  ‘Bugger off, you bugger.’

  Then the sound of them falling about laughing and unpacking their bags, hurling drawers open and bickering over who would have the top one and on which side of the large shared bed each of them would sleep, and all the while trying out in ever louder tones various combinations of the authorised expletives. Down in the hall, Vera looked at Norman and cast her eyebrows
towards the sky as the racket the boys were making set Daphne off in her cot, her cries lifting slowly up into a wail like the slow steady rise of an air-raid siren.

  ‘Cut them a bit of slack, Vera,’ said Norman. ‘They’ve been through a lot, the poor little lads.’

  Norman took them around the farm, first through the yard and the barns and round the pond, then up across the fields and through the woods and down into the shaded valley where the stream ran and the hares scuffed up the grass as they writhed in their traps, then up the far slope and around the main wood and home again along the perimeter fence that ran closest to the Churchill Road. They got back to the farm late for tea and worn out from hours on their feet in the fields.

  ‘Tired, boys?’

  ‘Bloody knackered, miss,’ said Billy.

  ‘Shoes off, lads,’ said Norman. ‘They stay in the hall.’

  The next morning, when they came downstairs after a night of wakefulness beneath the creaking beams, they found their shoes in the hall, shone to a mirror shine by Norman during the night.

  Up the hill at Mill View Cottage, Jacob and William left together to walk into town to get the newspaper for Alfred.

  ‘What do you think of those two, then?’ asked Jacob as they walked. ‘Helen and Sarah – all right, aren’t they?’

  ‘Not bad. Can’t tell them apart, can you?’

  ‘Helen’s the prettier one,’ said Jacob. ‘She’s got that little mole on her top lip, just here.’

  He poked himself in the approximate position of Helen’s distinguishing feature.

  ‘I prefer the other one,’ said William unconvincingly.

  ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said William. ‘Rose is going to be the girl for you, isn’t she?’

  Jacob felt his cheeks redden. ‘Rose?’

  ‘Yes, dear brother, Rose. She’s always talking about you. Vera told me. And the way she looks at you, haven’t you noticed that, with her mouth nearly hanging open?’

  ‘Shut up, you clot. She’s old enough to be my mum.’

  ‘She’s only twenty-four.’

  ‘And I’m only sixteen.’

  ‘Don’t let that stop you, Jacob, it wouldn’t me. And anyway, when you’re old and grey, what difference will a few years make?’

  When they got home with the paper they were still debating the relative merits of Helen and Sarah, daring each other to attempt increasingly ludicrous means of familiarisation. They pushed noisily in through the door.

  ‘Shut your mouths and shut the door!’ said Alfred, slumped in his armchair with a hand to his brow, Elizabeth next to Vera and Helen and Sarah on the sofa, and Norman leaning against the frame of the kitchen door, their faces all hung with silence. As Jacob and William cut their noise they heard the radio in the background, Neville Chamberlain’s solemn dry voice already delivering dread words.

  ‘… speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany …’

  Alfred said something unintelligible and Vera twisted her handkerchief around her fingers and bit her lip and when Jacob looked at Elizabeth he saw her gaze flitting between him and his brother.

  ‘… what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed … to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland. But Hitler would not have it …’

  When Jacob looked at Norman, Norman was looking at him too, unnerving him with his stare.

  ‘… we have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe had become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.’

  And then silence, followed by a heavy animal sigh as Alfred looked at his sons, eighteen and sixteen, and Elizabeth stood up and hurried out of the room and into the garden with her hand at her mouth, gasping for air.

  ‘Here we go again,’ said Alfred. ‘Here we bloody go again.’

  That afternoon, air raid sirens brought Jacob and William out into the street to see what German planes really looked like and whether they would be dropping high explosive or poison gas or both, but it was a false alarm and the planes did not come and the sirens wailed down into silence and Jacob found himself wondering if this was what modern war would be like.

  That autumn, the Durham Light Infantry arrived, billeted near the town prior to their departure for France. Jacob loved hearing them talk as he passed them in the street, like living in a town with a thousand men like Norman, and Norman became accustomed to hearing again the voices of his native north-east, uninvited ghosts from the locked room of his past, brightening the dead embers of a mother who had left him for Newcastle and a father who had left him temporarily at birth and again several years later under the wheels of a bus.

  The snow came early and by Christmas the fields were silent and white and a canopy of cloud kept the world at bay. Occasionally a plane passed overhead in the murk, droning away unseen into the distance until the hum of silence overcame the receding burr of the engines. The Bampton children were due in London for Christmas but the snow put paid to that, and instead they woke on Christmas morning still waiting for events in Europe to justify their semi-orphaned status. Norman and Vera set off for the Arbuckles’ with Billy and Bobby, and Daphne wrapped up in a bundle in Vera’s arms. The weather was too severe for the ageing Trojan, so Norman prepared the pony and trap and the cartwheels cut deep furrows in the snow as the horse pulled them away up the hill. At Mill View Cottage, Alfred fed the pigs and set the fireplace ablaze. The Edwardian glasses etched with leaves were taken down and as they all gathered before lunch a modest collection of presents was passed around in the half-light of the sitting room. By one o’clock the dining room table lay surrounded by the hungry horde, the fat turkey awaiting its fate behind the defensive ranks of potatoes and sprouts and a moat of gravy. Rose had been invited too and she sat opposite Jacob and he saw her peering into him as he looked over the rim of his glass. She looked slowly away, then quickly back again.

  Helen was saying something about Jacob’s pigeons.

  ‘… always preening themselves, you know,’ she was saying. ‘Like this …’ and she rubbed her chin against her shoulder and looked at Jacob and giggled and he smiled and then he looked at Rose. She was watching him still, testing his reaction to Helen’s display.

  ‘Cleanest of all the birds in England,’ Helen was saying now, and she smiled knowingly and Billy turned and made a vomiting gesture at his brother.

  ‘Of course they’re not, don’t be so ridiculous,’ said Rose.

  Her sudden interjection caused Helen to let a tower of peas tumble from her fork and they scattered across the tablecloth, leaving embarrassing slicks of gravy in their wake.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Helen, looking up suddenly from the little pulses of chaos she had caused.

  ‘I said don’t be ridiculous. Pigeons are certainly not the cleanest of birds. Who on earth told you that utter nonsense?’

  ‘Jacob did,’ said Helen smugly, sensing the wound.

  ‘Well he was pulling your leg, dear girl. And you fell for it hook, line and sinker. Still, it’s hardly your fault, is it? If you were never properly educated, I mean.’

  Helen looked away, and saw again the mess she had made around her plate and Jacob looked at her and noticed that she looked as if she might cry. Then he looked at Rose and she smiled at him and winked. She had done it again, he thought, and he knew she always would
.

  When the hungry horde were done, the turkey sat bare-boned and dismembered on its platter and Norman chucked the scraps outside for the dogs, and everyone turned their attention to the pudding that Elizabeth brought in on a plate lit with flame.

  ‘I guess France will be next,’ said Alfred to Norman, as he tipped a generous helping of brandy sauce onto his plate and transferred a towering spoonful of pudding to his mouth. He chewed and swallowed noisily and Elizabeth frowned. ‘And then it will be us.’

  ‘There’s not a lot to stop them,’ said Norman.

  ‘They’ll take William, and Jacob too before long,’ said Alfred in a low voice. ‘Just you wait. They’re just the right age for all this carry on, William out of school now and Jacob leaving soon. Jacob’s down for university, you know, but they’ll have him away too, you’ll see. Damn them all.’

  After lunch, William and Jacob sat in the window-seat and compared the books they had received that morning, William’s a guide to basic tractor maintenance to augment the knowledge he was acquiring in his apprenticeship at the garage in town, and Jacob’s a volume on the history of military aviation, including a hastily-written chapter on modern German aircraft and how to identify them – stark black silhouettes drawn to scale, top, bottom and lateral views of the aircraft that everyone feared would soon become all too familiar in the skies over England.

  ‘You’d better get used to those shapes if you’re going to be a pilot,’ said William.

  ‘I know them all already,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Their planes aren’t as good as ours, are they?’

  ‘They’re better.’

  ‘How are we going to stop them, then?’

  ‘We’ve got better pilots. And I’m going to be one of them.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait a bit, you’re not even seventeen. They won’t take you yet.’

  ‘We’ll see about that. I’m not joining the bloody Army, that’s for sure, and that’s where I’ll end up if I don’t volunteer first.’

  ‘I’m going for the tank corps.’

  ‘Tanks? William, are you mad? Riding round in a death-trap?’

  ‘A plane would be worse. At least I’ll have my feet on the ground. And they can’t shoot you in a tank, can they? Anyway, I always wanted to be a driver. It can’t be that different from driving a tractor, can it?’