by Lizzie Page
‘That’s my boy!’ Nathan’s father keeps calling out and slapping him on the shoulder. Nathan says, ‘Shhh, Dad,’ and his father shouts, ‘I want the whole world to know how proud I am of you!’
Farmer Jones and his wife don’t know where to put themselves.
‘You’ve not still got that silly flannel, have you?’ Eleanor says suddenly to Pearl.
Pearl nods, flushing. Eleanor shakes her pretty head at me disapprovingly. I squeeze Pearl’s knee, say nothing.
Once we’ve all sat and even Keith and his footballing mother have stopped still, the deputy mayor taps his glass with a spoon and we all hush. He starts his speech. You’d think that Hinckley, Leicestershire, was the only place in the world accepting evacuees from the way he talks about us. It’s important to have some civic pride, as he calls it. ‘We’re a town with a big heart,’ he says.
‘And a big head,’ mutters Mr Shaw subversively.
* * *
The sandwiches, the C’s of cheese and curry, are all gone. No one is blasted to Mars. The apple cake is a great success; I see Mrs Burton standing beyond the hatch in the kitchen and she returns my sly wave. It’s strange to be on the in, and not on the out.
Eleanor Posner is a neat eater and unlike Pearl, she eats all her crusts. She takes the larger of the two slices of apple cake I offer her.
‘Ravenous,’ she says, ‘haven’t eaten since yesterday. Do excuse me.’
‘Go ahead,’ I say. I admire her honesty.
* * *
The gramophone is on. A few of the children are playing marbles under a table, but some of the girls can’t help but spin around to ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. Some of the parents have pulled up chairs to chat. I see the London mother of one of the girls who, Mrs Burton has told me, lost her husband and youngest son in the Woolwich bombings. She is crying silently as she watches the dance.
The deputy mayor likes the look of Mrs Eleanor Posner. I thought he might. He stands beside her, fiddling with his gold cufflinks, fiddling with his expensive blazer, and spends a while gazing down at her exotic red lips. I hear him telling her that we are all in the same boat. Eleanor doesn’t look entirely convinced.
Then he taps his glass again and Eleanor looks away, quietly amused. This time, he announces that in twenty minutes there will be a demonstration of country dancing.
‘The children have got awfully good at the do-si-do,’ he says. ‘Our heritage, our values…’
Pearl’s lip curls; she is not awfully good at country dancing. As the deputy mayor drones on, Pearl’s mother gently, but somehow with great authority, rests her dainty fingers on my arm.
She says, ‘I say, would it be awfully off, would it be a gross infringement if… I would dearly like to see where Pearl is living so I can imagine how she lives, you see?’
Pearl is delighted but I think, This isn’t the plan.
‘What about the country dancing?’ I ask and they both burst out laughing. Eleanor lifts her mouth to my ear and whispers conspiratorially, ‘I don’t think the do-si-do is Pearl’s thing.’ I take a look out of the windows, about to say something else, but Eleanor gets it in before I do. ‘I think the rain has stopped.’
* * *
Edmund is out, thank God. Pearl wasn’t wrong about him, however much it displeases me to hear it out loud.
Eleanor eyes the kitchen and nods at the pictures Pearl has done that I tacked up over the counter only this morning. Other than that, there isn’t much sign of life here, I think. I am almost ashamed at how tidy it is. I am tempted to put on the wireless to make some noise, but that seems a peculiar thing to do.
‘Do you want to show Mummy your room?’
Pearl nods delightedly. They troop upstairs together, Eleanor with the new baby in her arms, alarmingly, leaving me with the bigger child in the kitchen.
The little boy – is it Max or Leo? – crawls under the table. He just sits there, sulkily.
‘You can go upstairs if you like,’ I say, although I don’t know if he can do stairs. I don’t know if he can understand me either. I feel like I’m talking a foreign language. His lower lip juts out. I think of Mrs Burton’s box of tricks, but it is upstairs with Pearl and her mother and I have an inkling they don’t want to be disturbed.
I have an idea: I get the old coppers I keep in a jug on the windowsill. I say to him, ‘They can be an army… if you want.’ I need only say this once. He is delighted and grabs at several of them with his chunky fists. I sit under the table with him; I just about fit under there. I imagine he’s used to it, sheltering from the bombs.
‘These are Nazis and these are the British,’ I say, lining up coins in two neat rows.
‘I kill them,’ he snarls. He scrabbles his hand through my efforts. He looks very pleased with himself, so I forgive him.
‘That’s it.’ I stack them up into towers this time. Maybe he will prefer that.
‘This is a fort,’ I say. ‘You do a castle…’
I go to collect some more coins, because this is fun, this is working, I am entertaining the boy, but when I turn back, I see his face is pinky-white and his eyes are suddenly huge. His arms are going like he is a puppet pulled by strings.
‘What is it, Max? Tell Aunty Vivienne.’
Aunty Vivienne? He probably has no idea who that is.
He is coughing and spluttering. He can’t speak; I’m not sure, but I don’t know if he can breathe.
…He can’t have, can he?
‘Where did you put the coin, Max? MAX?’
He is turning redder and redder. He is red and round. His eyes are rolling back. Tears come down his chubby, heated cheeks.
I slap him hard on the back, once, twice, three times. Nothing happens. Did he put a coin in his mouth or am I whacking him needlessly: ‘Eleanor?’ I say, but not loudly enough to be heard; I am too timid, too confused. God no.
One more strike, I do it hard and fast, and to my horror and relief a coin flies out, then does a show-offy spin in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Thank the Lord.
Max coughs and coughs and coughs. I sweep up all the coins with my arm and brush the evidence away.
* * *
After about ten minutes, they still haven’t come down. Perhaps Pearl is telling Eleanor that she hates it here with me. I feel humiliated. She wouldn’t say that, would she? I remember that night that war was declared. ‘Mummy said just a few days!’
I trudge up the stairs, holding Max’s wet hands. I feel friendlier towards him now, even though he has returned to his earlier unimpressed-with-me state.
Eleanor is standing in the room, staring at Olive’s picture. She really is a beautiful woman and I imagine, even if she sings like a yowling cat, she must get a lot of tips in the Dog and Duck.
Pearl is sitting on the bed, with the new baby wrapped in a blanket. His eyes are closed and his mouth wide open.
Eleanor doesn’t turn away from the picture when I come in. She says, ‘This is how I know you.’
‘The picture?’
She nods. ‘Not this one though.’
Now she turns to survey me.
‘You don’t look very different. Remarkable.’
I laugh with nerves. I don’t know what she can mean. She takes Max, who seems entirely unaffected by the coin incident – thank goodness he doesn’t speak much – and rocks him to her.
‘I would have recognised you anywhere.’
26
1916 – Then
Since Olive’s leg had temporarily put her out of action, I was paired with Daisy – Daisy who liked to sing tunelessly and swore like a fishwife despite claiming she was a distant relative of Princess Mary! She was a strapping lass, twice the size of Olive, and twice as loud. Every week, she declared she had sworn off men but then she was always mooning after a stretcher-bearer, doctor or patient or another.
Olive laughed when she heard. ‘I can’t believe they’ve put you two together.’ Neither could I. Enid, Agnes or even Dorothy would h
ave been a better match. Daisy hated driving in the dark and I hated driving in the rain, so I said I’d do the dark, she could do the rain.
It didn’t rain once in the entire two weeks we were together. That was when I started smoking in earnest. One of the doctors told me it was good for stress relief.
* * *
The day before Olive was due to start her shifts again, I took her out for a short drive. We parked up near a railway station, then walked out to a field, where we ate a picnic of tinned peaches and crackers and I relieved my stress, cigarette after cigarette.
Olive and I were stretched out on the long grass, watching the clouds move. We were playing, ‘What can you see in the clouds?’, which was a game we used to play with Richard when we were young. Olive could always see old men with cigars, young girls in flamenco dresses, unicorns or a man doing a running race in profile. Richard could see cricket lawns and rugby balls or a face. Compared to theirs, mine were always so mundane:
‘A tree, that one looks like a tree, Olive!’
She sat up abruptly. ‘There, that looks like a plane.’
Such a rare thing to see a plane! I had only seen one three or four times in my life, and each time I had been overwhelmed by incredulity that it was managing to stay up there. This was definitely a plane, but it was making a buzz, a hum, of unnatural noises: it was a struggling plane. A wing on fire, actual fire. Was it a British plane or a German trick, a deceit? Olive almost laughed with surprise. She shook grass out of her hair. Transfixed, we stared skywards.
It took a few moments to realise we had to move – we had to move fast. The aeroplane was on its final descent, clumsily; someone was trying, someone was steering it. I felt the draught as it whooshed above us, and down, down. But Olive was glued to the spot. I can remember thinking, ‘Everything’s up in the air’ as I dragged her arm and pulled her twenty yards or so into the trees. It felt like the longest distance.
‘Wait,’ I commanded her fiercely. ‘Do not move, do you hear? Wait.’
And the plane was down now and I was running towards it, praying Olive was not behind me. The leg rendered her useless but mostly, I had a responsibility to our father to keep her safe.
I was scared about what I’d find, but I didn’t hesitate.
Pilot, smashed windshield – he’d been shot in the shoulder and made it back from goodness knows where.
The man behind him was dead.
I reached in and tried to free the pilot. He was British; it was not a trick. He cried out. ‘I’m stuck, I’m stuck, I’m stuck!’
His eyes set on mine and a sudden lightning went through me.
‘Leave me!’ he yelled. ‘Go. GET AWAY NOW. I order you, Nurse.’
I was all fat fingers, a thousand useless thumbs and clumsy hands – don’t paint them, Olive – I was clicking at a buckle, clicking at a harness, it’s stuck, he’s right…
He was pushing me off, shouting that the plane would explode. I ignored him. The belt was clicking. I juggered and jiggled, and juddered and juggled and fumbled, and pulled, and I heaved myself in, bit the frayed rope in desperation.
‘Save yourself…’
‘NO.’
And finally, he was undone but he still didn’t move. He was motionless, frozen, still stuck, and I was grabbing at his uniform, frantically, at all his limbs, his parts, his anything, trying to free him from this tight seat, because if we took too long – never mind the plane exploding – I knew Olive would be coming towards us.
And then I had him, I had him. He was out, and I clutched my arm round him. I couldn’t lift him. I was telling him to run but his legs were like jelly, sopping jelly legs – half pulling, half shoving him towards the wood.
I pushed him to the trees – that extra falling, frightening feeling – where Olive was standing, her hands over her wide-open mouth in a silent scream.
Do I go back to get the dead man? Save the body for his family? I knew what a difference a body made but in those two namby-pamby seconds, the wishy-washy hesitation, my question was answered by that feared boom, as the flames licked the petrol tank: it was all over.
* * *
We were surrounded by people. I didn’t know where they’d come from at first, but then I saw two ambulances had pulled up nearby. They must have followed the plane’s descent. Olive was right in front of me, thumping my arm. ‘You were amazing, Vivi, amazing.’ I couldn’t catch my breath. I thought of the man on fire trapped in there and I felt that I was as far from amazing as was possible to be.
Noise of explosions, people shoving and shouting. And throat-constricting smoke.
The survivor was put in our ambulance. Who was doing it? I wanted to be with him. Olive was peering at me.
‘Vi, you need to drink something.’
A rough grey blanket was wrapped round me. Someone was saying I was in shock. ‘I’m not in shock,’ I said, surprising myself with how loudly I spoke. ‘How is he?’
‘Go and sit over there,’ one of the men said, ordering me back to the trees.
I ignored him and instead crept into the back of our ambulance. You couldn’t keep me away from him. As someone – a doctor? – was giving him a going-over, I waited breathlessly. He too was wrapped in a blanket; we were dressed the same, like subdued twin children. He raised his eyes to me, smiling weakly.
‘It’s you.’
‘It’s me.’
‘You’re the one who saved my life.’
‘I’m so sorry about the other man.’
It wasn’t a doctor, it was another ambulance driver. He squinted dispassionately from me to him. Then he said to me: ‘We’re expecting several injured in on the next train. Could you wait for them?’
‘Wait?’ I felt discombobulated. ‘How long for?’
‘We’ll get them out to you quick as we can.’
I looked over at the poor pilot and his wounded arm. ‘We need to get him to the hospital.’
‘Won’t be too long. As you’re already here, it’ll be a good help.’
‘But he should be seen…’
The pilot shrugged, rubbed his cheek. ‘It’s all right with me,’ he said, his eyes lowered. ‘I’ll last.’
Olive poked her head into the back of the ambulance. She asked if I wouldn’t mind if she went and rested up front for a bit. Her ankle was still giving her gip. I said fine – we were being made to wait for more casualties anyway.
‘He’s all yours,’ the driver said to me as he jumped down.
* * *
After all the shouting, the frantic running, the flames and the explosions, it was just me and him in the quiet. He was shivering, and I was shivering. We smiled at each other; it was like an expression of recognition somehow. I poured him some water without him asking and he gulped it down greedily. Then he ran it all over his face, and he rubbed his cheeks, his nose, his lips. All the grime that had been there disappeared, and I could see him properly. It was like when you clean a window that has been all smeary. He was nothing like… he was nothing like anyone I’d met before. We couldn’t stop staring at each other.
Olive shouted back from the front of the truck. ‘Let me know if you need me, Vivi!’
‘I’m fine!’ I called back. I turned to him again.
‘I’m so sorry about your co-pilot. You must be devastated.’
He twisted his hands, then looked at me.
‘Can I tell you something? We didn’t get on at all. Not that I’m glad he died or anything like that, but…’ He stared into space. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me.’
‘I don’t.’
‘I’m a terrible person,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘No, no,’ I said, ‘you’re being honest.’ I racked my brain to try to change the subject to safer topics. ‘So, do you have any brothers?’
‘Two and a baby sister,’ he said proudly. ‘My poor mother.’
Him and me. Me and him. We talked for two hours while we waited. Life stories shared. I
didn’t know my own life story until I heard it coming out my mouth to him. How sad it was that my mother had died. How lucky though to have a nice Aunt Cecily. How terrible it was that Cousin Richard had died. How lucky I was to be so close to my sister. She was an artist and I was a… well, I played piano and worked for my father and here I was.
‘Here you are,’ he repeated incredulously. ‘And I’m very glad you’re here.’
He was a tailor before the war. A tailor! He loved art and music and writing too. If the war hadn’t happened, you know. He could have gone to night school. Maybe university. Who knows?
He had dark curly hair, even teeth and a smile that lit up the back of our dingy ambulance.
* * *
He had cigarettes in his top pocket. I said he could have mine, but he said he couldn’t take anything else from me. I got out the packet for him, because his arm hurt. He asked me for a light, I leaned over with my match. I had to cup the flame to keep it from being extinguished by the wind. The curtains behind us and the driving area opened, and Olive was there. Her dark eyes were on me, staring at us both. A look that contained something, I didn’t know what exactly… not concern, not pleasure or displeasure exactly, but something I hadn’t seen before.
She narrowed her eyes, then looked away again.
* * *
He said he wasn’t in pain, but he must have been. I told him that if he wanted to sleep, don’t mind me, but he said he felt too wound up. I understood that. He said he might just close his eyes, but I had such a beautiful voice, would I mind talking to him while he did? I had this wild thought that he had dropped from the sky expressly for me.