We Must Be Brave Read online

  ‘Mother, I’ve had my birthday. It’s ages till the next one.’

  Her chin quivered with impatience. ‘I don’t care. I want to know if you remember this lace.’ Her fingers dug into the crook of my elbow. ‘Do you?’

  Her eye sockets were an alarming lavender. She was wearing a thick dressing gown over a draggling skirt. Her calves stuck out as thin as young coppice poles. As I looked, she belched surreptitiously and rubbed her hand over her stomach. She had been bilious frequently of late.

  ‘Mummy, I don’t think you’re quite well—’

  ‘It’s simply indigestion, a little bit of indigestion, that’s all.’

  She was far too prompt.

  *

  Dr Bell had large, hairless hands of the palest pink, with fingers so fat they appeared to have no knuckles. He laid Mother on his couch and placed the hands over her stomach. One by one, and then in pairs, the fingers gently dug until Mother gave a yelp and drew up her knees. The nurse produced a shining bowl and Mother raised her head to spit into it.

  The doctor patted her shoulder. ‘You may rest there on your side, Mrs Calvert, while I ask your clever daughter if she knows what the pylorus is.’

  ‘Sounds like a kind of snake.’ I spoke unsteadily. Here in the clean room, with its white-sheeted couch and shining bowls, Mother seemed far more wretchedly sick.

  ‘Ha, ha.’ Dr Bell smiled. ‘Not bad. The pylorus is a ring of muscle designed to keep the stomach closed. With certain digestive problems the pylorus, or pyloric sphincter –’ his fingers bunched like a hand of bananas ‘– goes into spasm, like so –’ the fingers rippled unnervingly ‘– and the result is … nausea!’ The last word spoken triumphantly, as if he’d performed a magic trick. His fingers were white where he had bent them.

  My mother was leaning her head on her hand, a whimsical smile on her face. As I watched, her lids fluttered: she was preening at the doctor. Even in these circumstances she had found a way to be embarrassing.

  ‘Mother, for heaven’s sake listen!’ I hissed.

  Dr Bell lifted his head. ‘Nurse, please fetch Mrs Calvert a cup of tea. Miss Calvert and I will sit next door for a chinwag.’

  ‘The mass is the size of a grapefruit,’ he said. ‘And she’s emaciated. How did it come to this?’

  I turned my shoulders away from him. ‘We aren’t big eaters,’ I said finally. ‘And we have to … we both wrap up warm. I couldn’t have seen anything. And she’s never complained!’

  Dr Bell sighed, then smeared his bulky fingers over his shiny black-clad knees. ‘Well. I’ll send her to the Borough Hospital in Southampton.’

  I had half a crown in my pocket, and nothing else until next week. ‘How on earth will we pay?’

  He soothed me. ‘There is provision at the Borough. A board, for funding cases like these. I must advise you to prepare your mother – and yourself, for that matter. We’re not miracle workers.’

  ‘Look at her. I can’t prepare her!’

  Dr Bell’s eyes were blue, watery and devoid of offence. ‘I’m sure you’ll do your best, Miss Calvert.’

  Mother became very excited at the prospect of the Borough. Immured in damp, cold and silence as she was, her main entertainment walking to a village where no one spoke to her and whose shops she had no money to patronize, the hospital represented cleanliness, warmth, bustle and, above all, kind people – people who’d take notice of her, care for her, and address her without sneering or poking their tongues in their cheeks. For my part, I was chiefly interested in the possibility of food. When I mentioned it, Mother licked her lips. ‘I’m quite sure they’ll serve liver,’ she said. ‘It’s so nutritious.’ She’d taken to rubbing the top of her stomach tenderly, with a certain amount of pride.

  ‘You won’t be able to eat before the operation, Mother.’

  She snorted, and I looked up. She was smiling at me, her proper smile, not the crooked smirk of recent times, and I saw for an instant the woman she had been years ago, when Daddy was our rock and mainstay and her true love. ‘Goodness, Ellen. That will make a change.’

  ‘Miss Yarnold wants you,’ said a classmate, a girl called June Broad, as we buttoned our coats to leave school for the day. June gave me the usual up-and-down stare that she and her friends had now perfected, as if to say: What an object. They were all growing busts, June and the other girls, and June’s overflowed the tops of her brassiere cups like dough rising from a bread tin.

  ‘Did Miss Yarnold say why?’

  June shook her head. Her curls were tight today, and they wobbled against her slabs of cheeks. ‘But she doesn’t look pleased.’ Looking very pleased herself. There was very little wrong in June’s world today.

  Miss Yarnold was sitting behind her desk, sideways on the chair, lacing her boots. She waited until the boys had gone before doing this, because she needed to flip her skirt up over her knees. Alone of all the women in the village, she favoured these voluminous skirts, full, of an uncertain length. She raised her head, cheeks pink. The room was now empty save for us. ‘Ellen, I hear that your mother’s ill.’

  I nodded. ‘The operation’s on Thursday. Dr Bell says there’s a mass.’ I hadn’t spoken that word to anyone. My eyes burned, and I closed them. I felt her hand on my arm.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my dear.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I blurted, and opened my eyes just enough to hurry from the room.

  I swung through the doorway and clattered down the path. I ran home, faster and faster down the lanes, sobbing and splashing through the puddles, until I was throwing open our gate, with a taste of metal in my throat from panting so hard, and Mother was at the door saying, ‘Whatever is it, whatever is the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I scrubbed at my eyes. ‘The wind was in my face. I went at a gallop!’

  And she suddenly laughed. ‘Oh, Ellen, honestly, you are a card!’

  We sat side by side in the front of the bus to Southampton. It was young Mr Staveley driving: he’d not long passed his test, he told us, and took a good run-up at the hills. It amused us, how he leaned into the corners as he turned the wheel. He was lame from birth, and put his whole heart into the driving.

  It was mild now and the blackthorns dripped in the sunshine.

  I thought of the last time Mother and I had come together to Southampton like this, in quest of Edward and his money. One of his recent letters had contained a photograph of a tall young man with the sun almost bleaching out his head and shoulders. ‘Like a sea god,’ Mother had said, and stroked the face. I didn’t care about the photograph. Edward was alive in every sentence of those letters. I took out the last one and read it aloud to her now.

  ‘Dearest Ma and Ellen,’ I read, adopting the usual slightly gruff tone for verisimilitude. ‘Today at five in the morning we went through the Sunda Strait. Steaming hot, needless to say. My cat jumped overboard after a flying fish, poor soul. Probably the best fate for him, since the Skipper has ordered a muster of ship’s cats at first light. He will line them up on the quarterdeck and keep the best three mousers. All others will be given their papers and sent ashore.’

  I stopped for Mother to giggle in her usual place, but she sat quietly, with a smile, staring out of the window. ‘Go on, Ellen.’

  ‘Where, no doubt, they will be either: 1. Captured and held to ransom by the local rats; 2. Satayed by the warehousemen and sold diced, on peeled sticks, to unsuspecting travellers; or 3. Made into the softest furry hats for those babies born in the three days of fresh breezes they comically refer to as winter …’

  We both laughed indulgently at this, veterans of winter that we were. General Winter, Napoleon had called him. I held Mother’s hand. Her fingers tightened around mine.

  ‘Will we see the sea soon?’ she said.

  11

  A SISTER WINGFIELD ushered Mother smoothly away. Forty-five minutes, she told me, ‘to give Mother a wash and brush-up, and for Mr Fairchild to see her. Have no fear, Miss Calvert.’ She accompanied me halfway down the corrid
or, adding, ‘Ladies get more upset when they have family present, so let’s spare her that, hmm? There’s a lovely view from the new garden.’

  I walked the length of a laurel hedge, pacing in what I took to be a mature, collected fashion, my hands clasped in front of me. I stood and sniffed the salt in the air, and wondered how I would get the money to wire Edward, and what I’d find to say. That would depend, of course, on the operation tomorrow. Dr Bell had told me that Mr Fairchild would ‘open her up and have a look-see’. What he saw, I gathered, would determine whether or not he would perform further surgery. Dr Bell had made to pat my hand again but I’d removed it hastily from my lap, diving for my handkerchief. ‘So we’ll have to play the waiting game for now, you and I, Miss Calvert. Ha, ha.’

  Mother was sitting bolt upright with her legs, shrouded in the sheets, straight out in front of her, her arms by her sides and her hair shockingly loose. ‘All neat and presentable,’ said the nurse. ‘Sister will be along to fill you in, and then you’ll have to start thinking about your bus.’

  I sat down beside the bed, and the nurse went out. Mother had her eyes closed, mercifully. Without opening them she said, ‘Oh, I think they gave me something nice in that tea. I do feel awfully woozy.’ A strand of hair fell across her mouth. Rather than lift her hand she blew it away. I reached out and tucked it behind her ear.

  Suddenly she opened her eyes. ‘Do you remember Edward and the sherry trifle?’

  She talked about this from time to time, how when Edward was four he’d gorged himself on sherry trifle in the kitchen while Cook was cleaning leeks with the tap running and didn’t hear him come in; and how he’d wandered unsteadily through the sun room where she and Daddy were having cocktails, saying, ‘Lay I down, lay I down and don’t bend I,’ before being heartily sick on the steps outside. I was a babe in arms at the time, and often told her so, but she always asked me if I remembered.

  I forced myself to smile. ‘Lay I down and don’t bend I.’

  But she just blew out another breath.

  Sister Wingfield came in and consulted her brooch timepiece. ‘Time for Mother to have a sleep. Mr Fairchild will operate first thing tomorrow and his secretary will telephone Dr Bell during the course of the morning. If you go to the surgery at twelve you’ll be able to speak to him before coming back.’

  ‘Mayn’t I just come anyway?’ I got to my feet. ‘And not wait for the call?’

  The Sister ushered me away from the bed and removed a pillow from behind Mother’s back. She lowered Mother onto the remaining pillow before hooking her arm under Mother’s knees and shifting her down the bed. ‘Ah,’ Mother sighed. ‘That’s comfy. Bye-bye, darling.’

  Sister led me to the door. ‘Wait for the call, my dear. Visiting hours are three till five.’

  I’d never been alone at the Absaloms before. For a short while after Edward left I feared that if Mother had to stay somewhere else overnight I’d be left among the brambles and nettles and the gaping sink in the kitchen. But I’d been young then. When I got home I put a small fire in and toasted the leftover bread, which I ate with an entire tin of sardines. Afterwards I typed for a while on my cardboard keyboard, leaving fingerprints of fish oil. Then I made tea and had it in bed, where I reread Edward’s letters, followed by Downland Flora. I fell asleep at horseshoe vetch.

  At a quarter to twelve the following day I got up from my desk and went to wash my hands. Lucy followed me to the cloakroom. ‘Miss says I can walk you to Dr Bell, if you need the company.’

  We met each other’s eyes for the first time that day. Her gaze was currant-dark, unreadable.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me as far as your turning?’

  We set off, our hands in our pockets, through the thin sunshine. There were spats of water shining on the road. Neither of us said anything until we got to the turning, when Lucy spoke. ‘Nan says you’re welcome at ours for your tea tonight. Or tomorrow night, if you prefer.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’ll be poached egg either way, so take your pick.’ She smiled, and set off, coughing merrily on her way. I never knew anyone so vigorous who did so much coughing. It was as normal to her as breathing. I kept waiting for her to grow, and get pink in her cheeks, but it never happened. She was who she was, it seemed. Small and high-shouldered, sallow in the face, and missing in the teeth, which you would never know if you weren’t familiar with her, because she only let herself grin and guffaw with those nearest to her. I was one of those nearest to her, and I counted it a privilege, because I could not ask for a better friend.

  The surgeon shook my hand and kept his friendly, piercing eyes on me as he spoke. ‘We need tea, Sister Wingfield. Tea for all of us, if you please, and a goodly supply of your delicious ginger parkin – what say you, Miss Calvert?’

  An orderly came in with a loaded tray. Mr Fairchild and the Sister distributed tea things with medical efficiency. Then the Sister sat down beside me. ‘You must prepare yourself,’ she began in a hollow voice, ‘for some very grave news—’

  ‘The growth can’t be removed.’ I swallowed. ‘That’s obvious.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister Wingfield.’ Mr Fairchild lifted his hand. ‘We’re a certain way beyond that, it seems. Yes, indeed. Miss Calvert’s ahead of us here.’

  ‘How could she …?’ My voice wouldn’t behave; it warbled up the scale. I cleared my throat. ‘How did it get this far?’

  ‘Well, now.’ Mr Fairchild stirred his tea. ‘This is a very sad matter. A gastric tumour produces no particular distinctive symptoms, do you see. A little indigestion, a little nausea, a little bloating: all everyday ailments, which is quite what your poor dear mother took them for. The cancer spread too far and too fast for me to produce any good result by taking it out. I’m very much afraid it is a case of comfort and solace, in the form of care and strong medicine for her, and for yourself, young lady, the consolation of your good friends in the parish.’

  The Sister leaned forward, put a hand on my arm. She began telling me how they would move Mother to the Old Infirmary at Waltham for her ‘last days with us’, a place ‘simple in the extreme’ but one more suited to her needs than our home, and where I could go to visit her whenever I wished. But I wished only that the Sister would shut her mouth. I clamped my knees and teeth together, trying to keep it away from me. But it was in vain. I was in it up to my neck. She’d been clean and young and beautiful and now look at her. Look at us, living in dirt and dreck with Edward gone and a carpet on our bed. Daddy wasn’t mad. He was just a wastrel and coward who had taken a coward’s way out after robbing us. Left us in our coal dust and our filthy worn linen and our dry potatoes. I stood up, and a huge sob escaped me.

  ‘He’s done for her,’ I cried. ‘He’s killed her at last.’

  They stood up too, but I pushed past them and ran down the corridor. ‘Mother!’ I cried. I reached her door before the Sister. The curtains made her bed a battle tent and she a shrunken general. I slapped my own cheeks and screamed.

  Sister Wingfield bound me across the chest with a heavy forearm. A nurse came and drew the curtain.

  *

  ‘Who’s to say if she’ll be alive or dead,’ Lucy said, as she sat with me by Mother’s bedside one Saturday. ‘By the time he comes, I mean.’

  For the first month or so Mother had spoken every day, swimming up from the depths to say ‘Good morning, darling’. But as March moved into April it took her longer to surface. Edward was on his way, but nobody could say how long his journey would take.

  I sighed. ‘Who indeed.’

  We were both doing embroidery, Lucy with unthinking facility and I with a laboriousness I welcomed, since something had to be done with my mind and fingers while I took a rest from reading aloud. I was working my way through Ivanhoe, which, Mother used to lament, she had never read.

  ‘Where did those biscuits come from?’ Lucy asked.

  The bag sat on Mother’s bedside cabinet, giving off a gorgeous buttery smell. My tongue was
already tasting the delicious crispness of well-toasted shortbread. ‘Mr Kennet. I didn’t see him – the nurse told me. I suppose he didn’t realize she was beyond eating. It was extremely kind of him, anyway.’

  ‘Ellen. For someone with brains … they’re for you.’

  I walked the five miles to Waltham, sat at Mother’s side for two or three hours, and then walked home again, reaching the Absaloms as the late April dusk fell. Mother began to sink more deeply into slumber. One evening Miss Dawes pushed delicately at the gate of the Absaloms. I was by the front door, having only just returned from Waltham.

  ‘Miss Calvert. I’ve come about the move.’

  I turned and went back to her. There was no question of her entering my house. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You can hardly stay here,’ she went on. ‘With no one to look after you.’

  I laughed. As if there’d ever been anyone to look after me.

  Her dry fingers closed over each other, twisting her heavy silver rings. One had a ruby which on that day was a dull black. ‘Miss Calvert, you can stay with us. And we’ll help you to consider your future.’

  ‘You’re terribly kind,’ I told her. ‘But I can’t consider moving until Mother dies. This is our home, you see.’

  Edward arrived on the tenth of May. I went to Waltham to meet him at the Buck’s Head. I entered into the gloom of the public bar, a place I had not visited in my life. There were no women, and no one sitting, for all that there were plenty of chairs and tables. As I made my way through the standing men one of them turned from the counter and said, ‘Ellen.’ I stepped back and put one hand to my face; I couldn’t help it, because he was six foot, walnut-brown, and endowed with a scar that ploughed across his cheek and pulled his lip down.

  ‘A cable parted.’ His voice was the same but deeper. ‘I was lucky it didn’t take my head off.’

  ‘Good God. Edward.’

  He laughed. ‘Would you care for a shandy?’

  ‘I certainly would not.’ I had no idea what a shandy was. ‘Where’s your belt?’ I demanded, because his trousers were held up by a piece of thick twine. ‘The one you made a hole in with the awl?’