We Must Be Brave

6

‘WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?’ I clung hard to Pamela, who was thrashing like a landed fish. ‘I’m trying to take care of her!’

‘You’re makin a bloody awful job of it!’

‘I’m aware of that!’ I cried.

She glared back, panting, her almost permanent wheeze audible after the mad dash and the telling-off. Then I let go of Pamela and put my face in my hands.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We missed the bus.’

My cares came mounting one upon the other. It was the bus, and Pamela’s naughtiness, and her dead mother. It was the white flares over Southampton, and the smell of bombing in the people’s coats. And it was Lucy herself. I had no idea of the reason for her muteness, her ostentatiously blank stares, her turning of the shoulder at church or in the village hall. She’d been my bridesmaid, for goodness’ sake.

Well, she was certainly speaking to me now.

I took my hands away from my face. She was holding a dumbstruck Pamela by one hand, alternately frowning at me and squinting up the road towards the tractor. Then she gave an explosive sigh. ‘Bloody hell, Ellen.’

‘Yes.’ I got slowly to my feet and took Pamela’s other hand. The child, ash-pale, allowed it. ‘I won’t keep you, Lucy,’ I said. ‘I need to take Pamela home and get her warm.’

Lucy gave a short chuckle. ‘Darned if that’s not my old smock, under that flour sack.’

‘Yes.’

‘Glad it came in handy.’

Another pause, which Lucy filled with a long, ruminative sniff. Then she released Pamela. ‘I’ll just run that harrow into the field. I’m going home for my dinner anyway, so you might as well have a warm-up at my house. Harry Parker won’t know if I take a couple on the back.’ She gave me a dark glance. ‘If you was inclined to come, of course.’

We rumbled into the village, perched on the back of the tractor seat. Pamela gazed dully at the receding road. I pointed out the milk churns on the high stand at the end of the main street, and she blinked slowly in response but didn’t turn her head to look. What did she care for churns, motherless as she was.

Motherless, and in the charge, furthermore, of an incompetent, childless woman. Who would give a child to me? Perhaps she should go to a family after all. At least that way she wouldn’t end up under the wheels of a tractor. I twisted round in my seat, saw Lucy’s shoulders, hunched high and stiff. She’d been on the tractor six months now, and her dainty little hands were skilful on the wheel. She’d been a kennelmaid before the war, and I knew she missed the hounds now that the hunt was closed. She would be a kennelmaid again, she hoped, when the world dropped back in kilter. I knew about these feelings and hopes of hers because George Horne, her father, had told Selwyn of them, in the course of general conversation, and Selwyn had told me. That was how I learned Lucy’s news, these days. I wondered, now that the ice had been broken in such a spectacular fashion, what this invitation would lead to.

She parked neatly on the triangle of grass at the end of the street. I clambered off the machine and jumped Pamela down. She stumbled against me as she landed. We walked the hundred yards up to the Hornes’ cottage.

‘We took three of ’em,’ Lucy said, as we went up the street, and I knew she meant refugees from Southampton.

‘Wherever did you put them?’

‘On the parlour floor.’ In the old days she’d have said, Yes, Ellen, ain’t it amazing. Being that our house is no more than a bloomin hovel. But I felt more sharply rebuked by this measured, adult response.

Pamela tugged at my hand. ‘I want to do a wee-wee.’ We hurried the last few yards. Lucy’s cottage was set high above the road, up a flight of steps, and the privy was at the end of the garden.

‘Why do we have to go in this box?’

Lucy suddenly smiled. ‘It’s the lav, dear.’

‘Look, it’s got a heart in the door.’ It did, a heart-shaped hole cut out of two planks. They had cut half a heart out of each plank and then matched them. I’d known this privy for ten years and never noticed before how exactly the two halves fitted. Lucy went indoors and I led Pamela into the lavatory.

‘Do I just wee-wee into the hole?’

I found myself laughing. ‘Yes.’

Her face darkened. ‘Mummy hasn’t gone to Heaven anyway. She said, “Pamela, I’ll always tell you where I’m going.” And she didn’t say anything about that.’ Her eyes wandered upward, caught in the shaft of light from the cut-out heart, looking for a solution. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘even if she has gone to Heaven, she won’t be long. That’s the other thing she always says. “Won’t be long, Pammie.”’

She shut her eyes and pressed her lips together.

I washed my hands and Pamela’s at the kitchen sink. Lucy handed Pamela a slice of bread and butter. The food stemmed her tears but they began to flow again the moment she swallowed the last bite. Soundless this time. ‘Come, Pamela.’ I opened my arms. ‘Sit on my lap.’

But she didn’t move. Instead she addressed Lucy, jerking her head at me. ‘She’s a horrible lady.’

‘We won’t mind her,’ Lucy said steadily, looking all the while at Pamela. ‘Now, do you know what a tortoise is?’ Pamela nodded, tears dripping from her chin. ‘There’s one in the shed. He’s in a hay box. We can go and take a peek if you like, but we can’t disturb him. It’s not a normal sleep, you see.’

They went out into the garden. I remained sitting, suddenly too tired to move. Lucy came back in. ‘She’s havin a bit of a scramble on the apple tree. Not a tear. They turn on and off like a tap, that age.’

How did people know these things?

‘How come you’ve still got her?’ Lucy went on. ‘Where’s her mam?’

‘Dead.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Dead in the Crown Hotel.’ I told Lucy about the stampede for escape, the well-meaning women. ‘Her mother never made it to Upton. I’ve only just told her.’

Lucy whistled. ‘Blimey.’ She went again to the back door, and I stirred myself and followed her. We both peered out at Pamela. She was jumping, quite unperturbed, onto and off the apple tree’s ancient trunk which bowed like a camel almost to the ground.

‘I don’t think she believes it yet,’ I said.

‘Oh, the poor mite. Oh, lord.’ Lucy gave a sad little chuckle. ‘Explains why she don’t like you. I didn’t much take to the woman who told me my ma was dead. Old boiler of a night nurse.’ She pursed her lips into an O. ‘“I have some very grave noos for yoo, Miss Horne.”’

The hooting tone made me laugh in spite of myself. ‘She didn’t talk like that!’

‘She did.’

We went back to the kitchen and Lucy cut us some bread. She laid the slices on a familiar plate, the edge decorated with pansies which years of scrubbing had worn half away to leave the odd, faded, windblown petal and glint of gilt on the stems. Years ago I had eaten a pie off that plate, and even now it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.

We ate now, Lucy breathing noisily, her eyes fixed on the table. No remark, no smile came my way. Finally I took my courage in my hands.

‘What’s wrong, Lucy? What have I done? Please tell me.’

Outside in the garden Pamela chirped like a blackbird in spring. A child used to her own company.

‘You’ve been forgetful,’ she said at last. ‘Forgetful of your friends.’

My mouth fell open. ‘When did I forget you? You were my bridesmaid!’

‘Yep, and you dropped me straight afterwards. Didn’t call by, didn’t chat. Months and months. So I assumed –’ she leaned on the word, using my voice to do so ‘– I assumed that it was my pay-off, the bridesmaid job, and Mrs Parr didn’t want anything more to do with poor little Miss Horne and her chest –’ she coughed theatrically ‘– and her teeth and all.’

Lucy was missing six teeth, many at the front. The teeth were long gone and her gaps were familiar to her friends but all the same she pulled her top lip down to smile, to speak to strangers. And she had coughed every day of her life.

‘I invited you to our garden party. You didn’t reply.’

‘Oh, yes. Your garden party.’

She spoke softly, as if to a silly child. I studied my clasped hands in sadness and shame. The invitation had been written on a card: Mr and Mrs Selwyn Parr, At Home. I hadn’t even popped my head round her door to ask her in person. Merely summoned her to mill about on my lawn with tea and cake, as if she were any one of my acquaintances instead of my oldest friend.

‘Mrs Parr was happy,’ I said after a while. ‘She wasn’t used to that. It made her clumsy.’ I looked up at her. ‘Lucy, please come and see us. We can bake you a potato, and you can share our parsnip stew. It won’t be as nice as yours, because I can’t cook like your nan. But we’ll spare no effort.’

She licked her finger and dabbed at the crumbs on the plate, gathering them up. I did the same thing at home after the children had finished. When she spoke her voice was gruff.

‘They do say you must forgive newly-weds. Their minds run on one thing. Though in your case it was Greek poems, like as not.’

‘Yes, it was. The Iliad. He was teaching me Greek.’

She burst into a cackle. ‘You pair!’

I laughed too. ‘It was fun. We’ve got no time for lessons now, of course.’

‘How’s it been, Ellen? What you expected?’

A mariage blanc, Lady Brock had said. Have you heard the expression, my dear?

The sheets of our marriage bed unfurled, heavy white linen. Is it the French for white wedding, Lady Brock?

No, my dear, it is not.

Lucy was gazing at me. How dark her eyes were. In the gloom of the kitchen I could hardly distinguish iris from pupil.

‘It’s been exactly as I expected,’ I said after a moment. ‘And I’ve honestly never been more content, Lucy.’

Pamela was still on the apple tree. The bark was fissured and slippery with moss but she was sure-footed, turning on her toe at the end of each pass. As she walked she raised a scolding finger. ‘No, no, you’re naughty donkeys.’ Her voice carried in the still air. So clear. She would sing well. Selwyn could teach her. She saw me and jumped down immediately, ran to me with her arms open, collided with my midriff. I clung to her and she to me, her arms bound around my waist, her head pillowed on my belly, all her animosity gone. The door creaked and Lucy appeared on the step, her face sallow in the low light. Pamela continued to cling. ‘Ellen,’ she said. ‘Ell.’

‘Did the tortoise wake up?’ Lucy called. Pamela buried her face in my skirt.

‘Pamela, answer Lucy.’

Pamela turned her head. ‘No, he didn’t, Lucy-Lou.’ She broke away from me and took Lucy’s hand. ‘Come on, Lou and Ell. Come and see my donkeys. They’re all tied up by the tree trunk.’ Together we went to the apple tree, Lucy and I, with Pamela between us. We pretended to admire the donkeys. There were a great many of them, all with complicated, mutable names. Pamela became lost, happily, in her naming.

‘Here’s some news,’ Lucy said. ‘Dan’s home for Christmas.’

‘Oh, how splendid!’

Daniel Corey was a friend from our childhood at Upton School. We hadn’t seen him since the summer when he came home on leave after Dunkirk. Then he was sent away into the east of England, there to transform the flat shoreline into a bulwark against enemy landings. ‘Think of all those concrete blocks,’ I said now. ‘Like giant sugar lumps, all along the beaches. They’ll stop a tank dead.’

‘That’s what Dan says.’

‘It’s true. Anyway, the Germans can’t bring an army across. Colonel Daventry says they haven’t got the boats.’

‘Let’s hope he’s right.’ Lucy stared for a moment into the middle distance. Then she sniffed. ‘Tell you one thing. If those buggers come up the high street, there’ll be trouble if they shoot me dead. I’m the only one who can start that bloomin tractor.’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘How is it on the farm?’

‘Cold. The dogs, they worked up a good fug.’

The first proper grin of the old days.

‘I was thinking of that pie earlier,’ I found myself saying. ‘The first one I had from your nan. I’ve never forgotten it.’

‘Oh, yes. Nan’s flaky pastry.’ Her face softened. ‘You was so perishing hungry.’ She released Pamela’s hand, patting the back of it. ‘I’ve got to get back to that harrow. Stay and play with those donkeys a while, unless you want a lift back to the turning?’

‘No, we’ll walk.’

‘I’ll say ta-ta, then, Pamela.’ She went off towards the steps. ‘Shut the gate,’ she called back, ‘or Mary Wiley’s dog’ll come and have a go at Maurice.’

‘Who’s Maurice?’

‘The tortoise,’ Pamela said. ‘Ta-ta, Lou.’

Pamela and I made our way home, unprovisioned. We’d all have an early tea of potato pie if there was some lard. I hoped there was some lard. Beacon Hill was caught in pale sunlight. I wanted to take Pamela there and lie on the top as I had with my brother Edward when we were young. She hung on my hand, whining, dragging her feet. ‘That bread didn’t touch the sides, did it?’

‘Touch the sides of what?’

‘The sides of your tummy.’ But she didn’t really understand. I drew her onward down the winter lane to home, and found four loaves on a rack on the kitchen table. Quickly I put them away before she caught sight of them. Then I took her upstairs to get warm under the bedcovers. She stared at me as I moved around the room, so small and huddled in the bed. I was already cold and the sight of her, snug against the pillows, made me feel even colder.

‘I’ll get in with you, Pamela. Five minutes can’t hurt.’

She rolled away from me and started to breathe hard, in and out. I wondered for a moment if she was starting to sob, but I soon realized she was simply puffing and blowing for the enjoyment of it, like a small engine at rest. The rhythm soothed me, and I fell headlong into a deep sleep.

The slam of the front door woke me. The last boy into the house walloped it shut. Pamela was now crying quietly.

She elbowed me away. ‘No. I want to be on my own.’

I made some pastry while the boys, subdued and orderly, peeled the potatoes. ‘Pamela’s lost her mother,’ I told them. ‘She died in the bombing.’ I hated saying this, but they had to know. ‘Only speak about this if she does. Be as kind as you possibly can.’

Pamela came downstairs, and the boys fell into a deathly, unnatural quiet until Hawley lifted her onto a kitchen stool and gave her a slice of carrot. She ate it, and started to groan with hunger. I didn’t offer her any bread because it would immediately mean four slices off the first loaf, since the boys wouldn’t stand for being left out. When suppertime came she beat the boys to an empty plate, and Donald, used to being the youngest and hungriest, was aggrieved. ‘She’s as greedy as a dog, Mrs Parr!’

‘Donald, that is not kind. Pamela’s hungry.’

‘She’s going to eat all our food. Munch and gobble up the meat and everything nice.’

‘She’s got her own coupons. For that teasing, Donald, you stack the dishes. Hawley, please take them to the sink so Jack can start the washing-up. Pamela, darling, please don’t cry. There, there, darling. Oh, Donald, don’t start too, for heaven’s sake.’ The uproar drew Elizabeth from the vegetable garden. She clasped Pamela to her, and stood viewing me in the midst of my domestic straits. No help, no calming shushes came my way. Instead, unaccountably, in the face of the sobbing of the two younger children, the clattering of plates, the strewing of scraps of potato peel on the floor, the bullock-like jostling of the two older boys at the sink – in the face of this, Elizabeth succumbed to helpless laughter.

The boys took Pamela upstairs for a game of snap. Elizabeth, Selwyn and I tackled the remains of the potato pie. The dish was wholesome, with a dried sprig of mint snipped small and mixed with the potatoes. Elizabeth and I ate with relish but Selwyn left a slab of pastry on his plate.

‘I’m sorry we missed the bus, darling. I’d have made a better job of supper, if we’d been shopping.’

‘I wasn’t blaming you.’ He pushed away the pastry with his fork, politely, to show he had finished. ‘You were saddled with Pamela. By the way – was she playing with the telephone today?’

‘The telephone?’

‘There’s a crack in the receiver.’

I remembered the bang it had made as it hit the wall. I hadn’t noticed any damage when I’d made my own telephone call. But then I’d been so flustered.

‘She shouldn’t, you know. It’s not a toy.’

‘I realize that. No, it wasn’t Pamela.’

‘Did you dash it to the ground in rage?’ He gave me a tired smile. ‘I wouldn’t blame you, if you were speaking to the Ministry. We’ll have to do another letter. It’s getting ridiculous.’

The Ministry. Of course. We needed to replace the metal screen which stopped the flotsam of the channel from getting into the mill turbine. The screen was rusting, much patched with wire. The next split would be irreparable. But we couldn’t obtain a new screen without an order from the Ministry.

‘I haven’t yet. I’m so sorry.’ I picked up my plate and clinked the cutlery onto it. ‘I must have replaced the receiver clumsily.’ I stood up and took his plate. ‘I wasn’t saddled with Pamela, actually. We just set out too late. It won’t happen again.’

Elizabeth and I carried the plates to the kitchen. When I returned alone he was sitting with his head in one hand. I sat down beside him without speaking. After a moment he lifted his head and stared at the curtained window.

‘I passed a house today,’ he said. ‘With its face torn away, only the gable remaining.’ His eyes wandered towards mine. ‘It reminded me of someone I met in the hospital gardens. Nothing left below the browline, yet somehow the man was alive. Bandaged, of course. With a tube for breathing.’

Where had Selwyn been treated after the Great War? Somewhere in the North, I thought, a stately house of grey stone, viridian lawns, a cedar casting black shadow. He’d told me about it when we met, but the details had since escaped me. We were in peacetime back then. Why should I remember?

‘I didn’t realize there were any … I thought your hospital was only for nerve patients.’

‘It was.’

The horror reigned inside me for a long moment. Then I opened my palm and put my hand over his and formed my lips for speaking. ‘Next time,’ I said, ‘I will go to Southampton. You know how much I like driving the lorry.’

His own lips moved. ‘It’s no picnic. Slag heaps of rubble. And smoke.’

‘You’d better give me some tips, then.’

‘Practical girl.’

Elizabeth came in from the kitchen bearing toast cut into fingers and sprinkled with a few grains of sugar. ‘Pudding,’ she announced.

I put Pamela to bed without opposition. I said that it was her turn to tell me a story, and so she did, one about her imaginary donkeys.

‘Did you know, Mummy was killed in the bombs?’ she suddenly said, on the edge of sleep. ‘That’s what Donald said when we were doing snap with the cards.’

I sat back down on the bed and clasped her shoulders. ‘I was going to tell you, darling, but I thought I would wait until you asked. You must forgive Donald. He doesn’t think before he speaks—’

‘All the boys said it.’ Her eyes were limpid, tearless. ‘They also said you can’t come back from Heaven. You can look down, though. Hawley’s grandpa’s looking down, he says. He went up there from drinking drinks, though, not from the bombs.’ She rolled away and put her thumb in her mouth.

7

PAMELA DIDN’T BREAK my night this time. And when I woke early she was still asleep, motionless on her stomach, issuing soft snores, her arm flung over a pillow. I’d do better today. Get her some proper warm clothes – a coat, a nightdress, stockings. We’d have plenty of time if I went to the office early. Got the most important letters done before breakfast.

As I watched she rolled without waking onto her side and drew up her knees, giving the pillow a hearty kick.

‘Silly nonsense,’ she declared, and I almost laughed. Somewhere in her sleeping mind she’d found a place without grief and knowledge, huddled into it like a mouse into the bole of a tree. I encircled her with my arms for five minutes or so, and she smelled of warm, dry, brushed cotton, and something else, that somewhat salty aroma of newly baked bread I had noticed when I lifted her off the seat of the bus. What was it? Her heated skin, her hair at the nape of her neck? I didn’t know.

Stealthily I got up and dressed, and went to the mill before dawn broke. I climbed the stairs to the office, my feet finding their way in the gloom. The stairs were wooden, with two worn dips in each tread. We were to install a fine iron stair, fit for a century to come, but the war began and there was no metal for such vanities.

I lit the gas lamp and typed in my coat. I no longer had my book from the loft at the Absaloms, coated with dust and mildew and the frass of woodworm. Typewriting: A Practical Manual Based Upon the Principles of Rhythm and Touch. By W. R. Sedley. The back had been eaten half off but there had been a keyboard, a cardboard keyboard which folded out, and I used to batter this keyboard with my fingers according to the principles of rhythm and touch. I had no idea, half the time, whether I was right or wrong.

‘Darling, what are you doooing?’ came the worn cooing from the bedroom, and I would reply, ‘Homework, Mother. Just thinking out my arithmetic.’

I found my shorthand pad and wrote now to the Ministry, Selwyn’s voice in my ears and in the rhythms of my fingers. If the screen is regularly put out of action our stoppages will mount until we are unable to fulfil our orders. There is a certain truth, Mr Gresham, in the saying ‘spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar’. I considered this saying, and substituted another, more apt in my opinion. For want of a nail the shoe was lost. And I added: I am sure, sir, you are familiar with the final lines of this rhyme. Perhaps this was going too far. But the prevarications of Mr Gresham were wasting our paper, ink, typewriter ribbon, postage, not to mention the time and attention of our women. Perhaps I should add something about morale. Our own manager, a capable woman, reports that the constant repairs to broken machinery sap her morale—

As if by telepathy, Suky Fitch stuck her head around the door. ‘I’m closing the sluicegate, Mrs Parr.’