The Clockmaker's Wife

by Daisy Wood

  ‘What are you up to, Pa?’ she asked, a flicker of affection softening the usual sense of unease she felt at the sight of him. His sparse grey hair was neatly parted at the side, and his navy-blue cardigan had been darned by Rose at the elbows with black wool.

  ‘Just practising my phrases.’ He laid down the cloth. ‘Halt! Hande hoch! Do you know what that means?’

  Nell hazarded a guess. ‘Stop, hands up?’

  ‘Yes, well, I suppose you’re already familiar with the language,’ he replied, shaking the tin of Brasso, ‘given your husband’s background. But if the enemy is shot down somewhere in this vicinity, I like to think we’ll be ready for him.’

  ‘I met Lord Winthrop this morning.’ She edged past him and laid the rabbits on the draining board. ‘He sends you his regards.’

  ‘Does he?’ Frank smiled, dipping his cloth in the polish. ‘Wonder what he was doing out and about so early. Off on one of his wild-goose chases, I expect – bird-watching, or hunting for Roman coins. If it was up to him, we wouldn’t be on parade till supper time.’

  ‘Just as well he has you to organise things,’ Nell said, retreating.

  She could hear Alice squawking indignantly as she ran upstairs. ‘All right,’ she said, lifting her out of the cot. ‘Come and help me tidy the loft room.’

  Upstairs, she sat the baby down with the wooden rattle that was currently her favourite toy, barricading her in place with a couple of pillows since she was crawling now and becoming increasingly adventurous. Malcolm had had a good night, Nell was pleased to discover; perhaps he was finally settling down. She smoothed his blanket and tucked in the sheets, then stood for a moment to look out of the small window set in the eaves. She could see as far as the High Street in one direction and the recreation ground in the other, with the church halfway in between. A gang of children were running around the rec; she could make out a flash of ginger hair among them. Nell opened the window and leaned out to look more closely. There seemed to be some sort of scrum with Brenda at the centre of it, alternately swallowed up by the group and spat out again as they streamed over the pitch, splitting and re-forming in a complicated pattern like a shoal of minnows. It didn’t seem long since she and Harry had been absorbed by those secret games, Nell thought nostalgically, drawing in her head and shutting the window.

  She turned around to check on Alice – to discover that Alice had disappeared.

  The pillow barricade had been pushed aside and her baby was gone.

  Nell looked around the room, her heart beating wildly. Alice couldn’t have vanished into thin air; the bedroom door was closed and if someone had come in to snatch her, she would have heard. Frantically, she tossed away pillows, pulled over mattresses, kicked through a heap of clothes. The contents of Janet’s nature table went skittering across the floor and, to add to the chaos, the indoor washing line collapsed, sending an array of vests, pants, skirts and trousers tumbling around her.

  ‘Alice?’ she called in despair amid the wreckage. ‘Where are you?’

  And then her ear caught a faint sound which seemed to be coming from somewhere deep in the loft. The low door leading to a storage area under the slope of the rafters was standing ajar. Damping down a rising sense of panic, she bent double to crawl through it and into the confined space beyond, jammed with packing crates and cardboard boxes. There, in the darkness, her daughter was burbling away to herself.

  ‘Alice, darling?’ she called, her voice catching in her throat as she fumbled for the light switch.

  A naked bulb hung from the rafters. Blinking in its glare, Nell saw Alice sitting a few feet away on the plank between two wooden joists. She was holding something which she waved at her mother, bouncing on her padded bottom with the particular chirrup she made when she was excited, like a small engine revving up. In her hand was a cylindrical metal object, rather like a pineapple, with a ring at the top. Nell had only seen one in a photograph but she recognised it instantly. Her heart lurched in terror.

  ‘Rur, rur!’ Alice chirped, raising the grenade to her mouth.

  Chapter Ten

  Oxfordshire, December 1940

  Nell kept her eyes fixed on Alice as she dropped to all fours and crawled clumsily along the joist. Later, she would find a rash of tiny splinters embedded in her knees and the palms of her hands.

  ‘What have you got there?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice calm. ‘Give it to Mummy.’

  Alice laughed and bounced again, holding up the hand grenade. At that moment she caught sight of the ring at the top; perhaps it reminded her of the ring on the dummy she was no longer allowed to have, because Rose thought pacifiers were common. She stared at it for a few seconds, flipped it back and forth, then clamped her gums around the knob holding the pin in place and gave it an experimental bite.

  ‘No!’ Nell shouted. ‘Stop that, right now!’

  Alice stared defiantly back at her. Looking down, she threaded her tiny fingers through the ring—

  ‘No!’ Nell shrieked, paralysed with horror.

  Startled, Alice dropped the grenade and screamed too as it rolled away. She set off immediately after her exciting new toy but Nell lunged forward and managed to grab her by the waistband of her nappy before she crawled out of reach. Clutching a wailing Alice with one arm, she edged backwards along the joist as fast as possible and backed through the doorway into the comparative safety of the loft room. For a second, she knelt there, her legs weak. Then, pulling herself together, she scrambled to her feet, ran downstairs with Alice and dumped the baby in her cot, closing their bedroom door firmly behind her. If she didn’t go back to the loft immediately, before she had time to think how dangerous it was, she’d lose her nerve.

  Edging along the joist a second time, she noticed in passing that various odds and ends were piled in the gaps on either side: dozens of spent cartridge casings, a grappling hook, lumps of shrapnel, various tins, a pair of what looked like wire cutters. She would have to think about this collection later. Retrieving the grenade from where it had come to rest against Harry’s old school trunk, she laid it gingerly in an upturned tin helmet lying nearby, crawled out of the loft, then down both flights of stairs, straight out of the front door and along the lane. She kept her eyes fixed on the helmet, not looking up until she had reached the Air Raid Precautions post next to the pub. The warden was sitting on a pile of sandbags, drinking tea.

  ‘Good God!’ he spluttered, leaping to his feet and spilling half the mug when he saw what she had brought. ‘Where the hell did you find that?’

  ‘In the wheat field up on the ridge behind the Manor.’ Nell laid the helmet carefully on the ground and stood back, one hand at her throat. ‘Can you deal with it now? I have to go, I’ve left my baby at home.’

  Without waiting for a reply, she turned and ran back the way she’d come. Brenda would have a few questions to answer when she came back from whatever mayhem she was causing elsewhere.

  When the Potts children trailed into the house that afternoon for their tea, Nell took Brenda into her father’s study. Frank was out on parade and it seemed the right place for a serious talk.

  ‘Where did you get a hand grenade?’ She gripped the girl by her shoulders. ‘Come on, I need to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if there are any more lying around, we should alert the police.’ She gave Brenda a shake. ‘Don’t you realise the risk you were running? Children have been killed playing with live ammunition!’

  ‘We weren’t playing with it.’ Brenda wriggled out of Nell’s grasp. ‘We were keeping it safe. I wasn’t to know you’d go poking around up there.’ To give her credit, she was holding up well under interrogation.

  ‘If my mother had found that thing, you’d be packing your bags by now.’

  ‘Are you going to tell her?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Nell should probably have talked to Rose already but she knew the trouble it would cause, and where would the Potts children go if they couldn’t stay
at Orchard House? Besides, she was growing strangely fond of Brenda: an unprepossessing girl in so many ways, with her pale face splotched with freckles and that mop of flaming hair, her shifty eyes and truculent expression. Yet one couldn’t help admiring her sense of responsibility as head of the Potts clan. The others all deferred to her, including Susan, who was older, and Timothy, who was taller and broader; if they were asked a question collectively, they would wait for Brenda to answer. None of the village children would pick on the evacuees with her around. She’d taken Malcolm under her wing, too, and Nell knew only too well that he was the sort of child who’d have been bullied otherwise. Brenda was stubbornly and uncompromisingly herself, unhampered by any sense of obligation or guilt.

  All the same, the girl had to accept there were limits. ‘I need to know exactly what you’re up to, so you’d better come clean.’ Nell waved the exercise book. ‘About everything, including this.’

  ‘That’s private property,’ Brenda began, but she quailed at Nell’s expression. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘I’m keeping an eye on the people round here in case anyone’s passing information to the enemy. Then when the Germans come—’

  ‘If the Germans come,’ Nell corrected.

  ‘—then, if the Germans come, we’ll know who to trust and we’ll be ready.’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘Resistance,’ Brenda replied, as though the answer were obvious. ‘We’re going to hole up in the loft and carry out acts of sabotage.’ She gave Nell a sideways look, daring her to mock.

  ‘Look, I understand why you want to be involved,’ Nell said carefully, ‘but fighting the Germans isn’t your responsibility. You must leave that to others.’

  ‘What others? Mr Roberts and that lot are doing their best but they’re far too old. We watched one of their training sessions and it was a shambles. Lord Drip Drop’s got no authority.’

  ‘Did you steal the grenade from the Home Guard?’

  ‘We didn’t steal it. We found it.’

  Nell opened the Observations book, turned to a particular spread and held it up. ‘In Dead Animal Wood, by any chance?’

  Most of the pages were filled with reports of the comings and goings in various streets but there were also a few hand-drawn maps, with landmarks identified by cryptic references: Angry Man’s House, Green Pond, Rusty Dump Field … Dead Animal Wood was labelled with arrows in various places pointing to smaller pictures, one of which looked like a small leafless pineapple.

  Brenda took a cursory glance and nodded, reluctantly.

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ Nell said, looking out of the window. ‘You can show me this wood tomorrow morning. Now go and wash your hands before tea.’

  Brenda stood her ground. ‘I know you think we’re just children, but there are things we can do and you ought to let us do them. We’re not going to sit back while a load of Germans march in and take over.’

  Nell could imagine herself and Harry taking the same attitude at Brenda’s age. She suddenly remembered her gun, lying hidden upstairs; it would be as well to store the ammunition separately in case Brenda stumbled across it. ‘I understand how you feel,’ she said, ‘but stay away from weapons, they’re too dangerous. If you find any more, you must leave them alone and tell the warden.’

  ‘All right.’ Brenda held out her hand for the exercise book, took it with averted eyes and sidled out of the room. Nell was left with the distinct feeling she had come off second best in the encounter.

  Frank came back from parade later that afternoon in a state of some agitation. Lord Winthrop had asked them all over for drinks the following morning after church – including Nell. ‘He specifically asked for you to be there. He must have decided to let bygones be bygones, which is jolly good of him.’ It was, indeed, a surprising invitation.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Rose said, jumping to her feet and then sitting down again to consider the implications. ‘What on earth can we give them? I’ve just made some apple chutney but it won’t be ready for eating yet. Nell, you can’t bring the baby. Susan will have to look after her.’

  A trip to Millbury Manor was not to be sneezed at. To set against Lord Winthrop’s lugubrious presence, there was always the thrill of seeing what Lady Winthrop was wearing, and what could be glimpsed of their unusual lives. Hermione Winthrop was as different from her husband as it was possible for a person to be. She wore brightly coloured stockings, embroidered Chinese jackets and voluminous frocks gathered at the hip in an old-fashioned style, and her long hennaed hair was constantly escaping from the combs and pins she jammed haphazardly into it. On fine summer evenings, she could be seen dancing barefoot over the lawn in the style of Isadora Duncan and rumour had it she swam naked in the river at the bottom of their garden. There were often artistic friends of Her Ladyship’s staying at the Manor, or fellow motor-car enthusiasts and pilots; they had even once entertained an entire troupe of Bavarian folk singers. Lady Winthrop kept goats and a parrot called Algy which flew about the house, shrieking like a banshee and often, according to the housekeeper, making messes on the furniture.

  Nell briefed Susan to take care of Alice the whole of Sunday morning, since she and Brenda had another important assignment to keep before the drinks party. They left the house early and walked down the lane, away from the village and past the Manor, then skirted round the edge of the field beyond and climbed over a gate. Nell vaguely remembered the coppice on the other side from her childhood. Brenda led the way along a narrow track, walking quickly over the frozen rutted ground, alert to every rustle in the undergrowth. No longer Brenda Potts, she was now a scout in enemy terrain. A member of the Maquis, perhaps, stealing through a French forest to bring news to her friends in the Resistance. Nell smiled to herself; she and Harry had played similar games.

  ‘Do the others come with you on these reconnaissance trips?’ she asked, when they had stopped so she could catch her breath.

  ‘Only Timothy,’ Brenda replied. ‘Sometimes we take Malcolm as a lookout but he’s not reliable.’

  They seemed to be heading back the way they’d come. When they had been walking for another fifteen minutes or so, Brenda turned and said over her shoulder, ‘Here we are. This is the place.’

  The path opened out into a large clearing about the size of a football pitch. Brenda was already crouching down to poke among the fallen leaves and branches; looking for more treasure, presumably. The place was deserted yet some kind of activity had been taking place recently: a row of rusty tin cans had been arranged on tree stumps, which explained the spent cartridge cases, and cigarette butts littered the ground beneath a rusty metal bench nearby.

  ‘Have you seen the animals?’ Brenda asked.

  Nell nodded. Several trees around the edge of the clearing were festooned with corpses: mostly crows and rabbits, but a couple of pathetically tiny moles and a huge decaying badger had also been strung up from the branches.

  Brenda walked over to join her. ‘Who’s done this?’ she whispered. ‘What are they for?’

  ‘It’s a gamekeeper’s gibbet. To prove to the landlord he’s doing a good job.’ Nell shivered, rubbing her arms. ‘I’ve heard about them but I’ve never seen one before.’

  ‘Who is the landlord?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Everything’s changed around here since I was a girl.’

  A wooden hut stood opposite, its door secured with a padlock. Nell walked over and peered through the cobwebby windows but she couldn’t make out much inside. It seemed a strange place to store supplies.

  ‘That’s where we found the grenade.’ Brenda pointed to a clump of grass beside the shed door. ‘It was just lying there.’

  The flicker of apprehension in Nell’s stomach was hardening to fear. She put her arm around Brenda’s shoulders. ‘You mustn’t come here again. You could get hurt or end up in serious trouble. The keeper might have set traps, for one thing. Will you promise to stay away?’

  Brenda’s face was paler than usual under its rash of freckl
es and her eyes were wide; she looked like one of Peter Pan’s lost boys. Nell bent down to her level. ‘I mean it. You must keep safe. If anything happened to one of you children, I don’t think we would ever get over it.’

  Brenda’s mouth dropped open. Clearly, this was such a startling idea that it needed mulling over. At last she gave a secret, crooked smile, as though it had been forced out of her, and said, ‘All right. We’ll steer clear, I promise.’

  ‘Good girl. Now let’s go.’ Nell took a last look around the desolate spot. It reeked of menace, of sadness and death. ‘You’ve never brought Janet here, have you?’

  ‘Not likely. She’d have nightmares.’ Brenda plunged ahead into the trees. ‘Come on, I’ll show you a different way home.’

  Nell glanced over her shoulder, unable to shake off the feeling they were being watched, but only the trees with their grisly offerings stared back. She and Brenda walked on, emerging eventually on the far side of the stream that ran along the bottom of the Manor house garden. The rolling lawn sloped downhill. Looking up, they could see the edge of a stone balustrade that bordered the terrace, although anyone sitting there would have been shielded from view.

  ‘Nice house,’ Brenda said, back to her solid Potts persona. ‘I like the towers.’

  Millbury Manor had been extended over the years without much of a plan, ending up as a rambling hotchpotch of chimneys, gables, Gothic arched windows, turrets and balconies that somehow suited its current owners. Did the Winthrops know what lay on their doorstep? Nell couldn’t imagine they’d approve.

  ‘Is that where you’re going later?’ Brenda asked. ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘No, it’s adults only. But you’ll get to see inside it soon, with a bit of luck. There’s a Christmas party every year for the village children. I expect you’ll be included.’

  Brenda nodded, satisfied. She took Nell’s hand and pulled her along. ‘Let’s get home. I’ll show you where to cross the stream. There’s stepping stones around the bend.’