We Must Be Brave Page 14

  ‘I sold it to get home. Ellen, you’re weeping.’ He himself was half-laughing. ‘Now, for pity’s sake. A cup of tea, Maisie,’ he called. ‘A cup of tea with sugar, please, for my sister here.’

  There he was, a man, calling ‘Maisie’ off-handedly, though he must have known her not more than an hour. Of course, he knew how to make himself at home. He’d done so in all the seaports in the East. He pulled a chair out for me. I sat, the tears flowing down my chin. He proffered a handkerchief. I placed it squarely over my face and nearly choked with the effort of keeping the sobs from braying out. ‘I’m making a spectacle,’ I mumbled.

  ‘This is the Buck’s Head, not Bishop’s Tea Rooms. No one’s even looking.’

  He’d been crying for Mother on the boat, in the Channel, to leeward, convinced she had died already. ‘I don’t know if she’d want me to see her. The state you say she’s in.’ He looked into his tankard. His lip drooped further. It dawned on me that he was afraid.

  ‘She just looks like a thin little old woman.’ I was gentle. ‘Nothing more alarming than that. I expect you realize they’ve been giving her morphine. That’s a drug—’

  ‘I know what morphine is, Ellen, thank you.’

  We stopped at the butcher’s, another place I’d never seen the inside of. Edward fancied a stew; one like Cook used to make, he said, with everything melting. Then to the greengrocer’s: he was astonished to learn that I had no onions at home, that Mother and I had never put in a vegetable garden, that we had no stored provisions. ‘No wonder you’re about as fat as a hatstand,’ he said, buffing me on the elbow as we walked home with our meat and vegetables in a hessian bag slung over his shoulder.

  ‘You don’t look overly prosperous yourself.’

  ‘Pruss-press.’ He hooted. ‘That’s quite a burr you’re getting, Ell.’

  I was looking away from him when he spoke, and it felt for an instant as if my old young brother, the one I knew, was by my side. The voice a little lower, a little hoarser.

  ‘It’s this way.’ I pointed down Rule Street. ‘For the Infirmary.’

  He cried when he saw her, as I knew he would, shoulders rising like a bellows, a long series of breaths forcing themselves through his pursed lips. In return she rolled her head from side to side on the pillow, eyelids fluttering, blowing a little white scum onto the edges of her lips. I had to put a stop to this. ‘Try to be quieter,’ I said gently. ‘You’re upsetting her.’

  He collapsed sideways onto the chair, smearing the tears across his face. She continued to roll her head.

  ‘Take her hand, Edward.’

  He turned himself towards the bed. Her hand was on top of the covers. He gathered it in his own large brown hand, as careful as if it were a shrew mouse. ‘Where’s her ring?’ he muttered.

  I gestured at her neck, at a fine chain. ‘Her fingers are too thin.’

  Her head became still. She closed her mouth and the breath whistled through her nose.

  ‘Mummy,’ Edward said after a moment, ‘it’s me. Edward.’

  He bent his head to cross the threshold at the Absaloms. I followed him into the cave of the parlour. I’d made a great effort in recent days with the mould on the walls. He set the bag down on the floor, picked it up again, and stood motionless. I blew on the embers in the range, added kindling and coal, shut the door and opened the vent.

  ‘Did no one help you?’ he said at last.

  I took the meat out of the bag. It was heavy and damp in its greaseproof paper. ‘Mr Dawes – you remember him, the parish officer? – he’s been very helpful, he and his sister. Miss Dawes.’ I pushed the blunt knife through the tough outer layer of an onion. ‘We need some water. Will you go?’

  He cast about, looking for a tap.

  ‘Outside. Remember?’

  While the stew was cooking he wandered round the derelict garden. I saw him stand kicking the furrow where we’d found the turnips that first autumn when we came here.

  He gulped angrily at the food, lashing gravy around his mouth, wiping his face with the back of his hand. Belching. To reprove him I turned down the paraffin lamp so that the performance was not so clearly illuminated, and took dainty, soundless forkfuls. By and by I realized that it was tears he was wiping away. ‘I made fun of you, for being so thin. I called you a hatstand. I had no notion of … all this. It’s terrible. All a terrible mess. I should have done more.’

  The hollowness of his voice, the barely controlled sobbing, had an irritating air of drama.

  ‘You were young, Edward.’

  ‘But you’d have done it, Ellen.’ He sobbed again. ‘If you’d gone instead of me. You would have found a way, to raise more money.’

  ‘How on earth do you know?’ I placed my knife and fork together. ‘You have no idea what I’d have done. Gone to the South Sea Islands and lived on breadfruit, maybe. Stayed there until I was entirely tattooed.’ His weeping tired me. I stood up.

  ‘Ellen—’

  ‘I’m going to bed. You can take the lamp. Be very careful turning it down, or the screw will fall out.’

  I woke with my knees under my chin, aware of a strange ticking. I strained my ears, and the ticking became a scraping. I rolled over. The door was ajar, and I saw Edward sitting at the table in shirtsleeves, whittling a peeled stick with a flat blade. His scarred side was towards me and I could see how it vanished under his hairline. His knuckles were huge, gripping the knife handle. He glanced up: my eyes were almost closed but he knew I was awake.

  A sudden flurry of scraping. ‘There,’ he said softly. ‘A hawk for you.’

  He held it up. A perky upright bird with crest, wings and tail made of peeled papery curls.

  ‘How beautiful … That must be a sharp knife.’

  ‘It is. But this is balsawood. I learned it from a Japanese carver I met in Lantao. I didn’t have time to finish this one before I left. I’m going to ink in his eyes, and his body feathers—’

  ‘Edward, please stay. She won’t last much longer.’

  His face crumpled, as I knew it would. He set down the hawk and covered his eyes.

  ‘What can I do for her now?’ His voice quavered. ‘Having failed her completely!’

  The anger shot through me. ‘You can at least wait for the end with me, and go to her funeral! After everything else I’ve done, on my own!’

  He hurried to my side and embraced me. A mouse came into the bedroom. It paused to quiz us, its eyes drops of black dew. We began to smile at the mouse, and it darted away.

  Outside the air was like milk. We had these fogs from time to time. This morning it lay so low that Edward and I rose head and shoulders above it. As we walked out along the lane we saw some children in the field, bobbing up to see where they should go, like seals, and shrieking in delight.

  We went to Beacon Hill, as we’d done that first Christmas Day at the Absaloms. There was clear sunshine at the top and we sat and watched the fog melt away. We came back down through Pipehouse Wood where the beeches were in their full glory. He laughed as we plunged through the shadows. ‘I’ve dreamed of this, Ellen.’

  On the way home he said he was planning to set up his own company. ‘My friend Frobisher and I, we’ll be partners. Import–export, out of George Town, Penang.’

  ‘What will you import and export?’

  ‘That’s not quite clear yet.’

  ‘A minor detail. Do you have funds, then?’

  ‘That’s a bit of a stumbling block too. What about you, Ellen? What will you do now?’

  I came to a halt and so did he. He was smiling down at me, this brown boy, his eyes shockingly blue, teeth white. The chestnut hair bleached to a rich gold by a bigger sun than ours. He was just as handsome in spite of the scar, and just as young as he’d been when he clopped away in those wooden clogs. Perhaps the bright sea-light stopped one from growing old, from learning. He’d seen how we lived. Did he imagine we were just camping? That I could now jump up and choose my path in life?

  His smil
e faded.

  ‘I can typewrite, actually. I expect I’ll find a job typewriting.’

  The smile returned. ‘Capital.’

  That night we baked two onions and had them with bread, and gravy from the stew.

  She died on the fifteenth of May. We were there at the end, her children, but by this time she was nobody’s mother, not even a being. Merely a rickety machine, a pump and a pipe. On and on it rattled, while we took it in turns to hold her hand. Finally, that afternoon, a crack, creak, cough, and then silence.

  The coffin had been ready for a long time. Edward carried it, with Daniel Corey and John Blunden. The fourth man was the funeral director’s assistant, a young man by the name of Hedley Hooper who muttered ‘Hup she goes’ as they lifted her onto their shoulders. It began to rain but the vicar continued imperturbable, turning the page of the prayer book with a flourish of his surplice sleeve. The headstone read Susan Calvert, and beneath the dates the words A Loving Mother. These were extra but I had pleaded for them and Mr Dawes had paid for them out of his own pocket. As well as the Hornes, and Daniel’s family, William Kennet came bearing a sheaf of irises. ‘These weren’t her favourite flower,’ he told me. ‘But they’re abundant now, and Lady Brock said I should take all I want.’ I wasn’t sure if I had ever known what her favourite flower was.

  In the morning I walked with Edward to the bus stop.

  ‘I’ve got a twist of demerara sugar in my kitbag.’ He rummaged. ‘I’ve been saving it for you. I nearly forgot.’

  I took the sugar and put it in my pocket. I raised my eyes to his but hot tears were flooding out, obliterating him. I shut my eyes and saw a red hull and a bright-blue sea, and smelled salt and rust. ‘Let me come with you.’

  I felt his arms tight around me. I was almost rocked off my feet. His rough chin grazed my forehead as it had done before. ‘Ellen, Ellen. I’ll try to help you. I’ll – I’ll come back rich.’

  ‘Yes, darling Edward. Of course you will.’

  12

  MISS DAWES WENT before me up a long flight of stairs. She led me into a bathroom and drew a deep steaming tub. I was about to ask why I was having a bath in the middle of the day when she added some drops with a chemical odour to the water. ‘Please make sure to wash your hair, dear, and leave your clothes in that laundry bag.’

  It had been so quick. Mother was tucked into her grave, Edward set sail for the East – and the next day Mr Blunden had brought a cart to the Absaloms and taken my furniture away. His son John, my friend, had come too, and chopped up the chairs with a small axe, saying, ‘Sorry, Ellen C.’ Using my school name. ‘They’re only good for firewood.’ And now here I was in a strange scrubbed house, removing my clothes to order, stupefied by the passage of events.

  When I was clean and dry I put on the dressing gown Miss Dawes had given me. There was a knock on the door and I admitted a housemaid holding a black bottle. She bade me sit in front of the mirror while she examined my scalp.

  ‘Yes.’ The maid nodded. ‘I do believe you are lousy. No offence, my dear.’ She dribbled the black mixture along my parting and combed it through. Then she made another parting an inch away and poured the mixture along the furrow. Four, five partings she made, with a hard metal comb, plying it over my scalp, and with each pass of the comb I blushed deeper. She smiled at me in the mirror.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear. The black bottle will do for them. I’m Elizabeth.’

  ‘How do you do, Elizabeth.’

  She was tall, spare, dark, with down on her upper lip. I’d seen her sometimes in Waltham, pushing a wicker basket on wheels, but never in the village. ‘I didn’t know you worked here.’

  Elizabeth smiled. ‘Sixteen years. I was sorry about your ma.’

  The comb caught on a knot; my eyes filled.

  ‘Oh, you poor lamb.’

  ‘It’s just the comb. It tugs rather.’

  Elizabeth picked up a pair of scissors. ‘I don’t like to do this, dear, but Miss Dawes says.’ And before I could speak she began to snip until all my tresses fell away, leaving a boy-like creature with thick brows darker than my drenched hair. My face was pasty, spattered with freckles. A few black drops ran down my neck.

  ‘What time is it, Elizabeth?’

  She considered. ‘About eleven o’clock, I’d say.’

  I sat on the bed, my head in a towel. My face felt numb, my eyes salty and sleepy. After a moment I lay down sideways and closed my eyes. A knock at the door woke me from a heavy, uneasy doze. Miss Dawes was there holding me in a troubled gaze. ‘Your friends have come to visit you. Young Miss Horne from the kennels, and Harvey Corey’s boy.’

  I pushed myself upright and bound the towel around my head. I was convinced that the lotion smelled of tar.

  Daniel came in first. ‘By gum, Ellen. You look like the Queen of Sheba. Feel this carpet, Luce.’ He wriggled his stocking feet, his toes a seething mass of darns. I blotted my temples carefully with the edge of the towel, and then closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall. Instances of sleep visited me, each a second or two long, and after each one I came awake with a jerk.

  Finally I heard Lucy say, ‘We came to see how you was farin.’

  ‘John Blunden broke up our chairs.’ The sorrow wrung my heart. Two tears coursed down my cheeks.

  I felt Lucy’s hand take mine. Her hands were small, the fingers slender. I knew them well by sight but seldom felt this light, firm, tender clasp. I opened my eyes. ‘Lucy, did I ever tell you, you’ve got very pretty hands? And nails.’ Because they were, the nails: naturally oval and the colour of tea roses.

  She sucked her teeth, smiling. ‘Get away.’

  I closed my eyes again. I heard Daniel say, from the other side of the room, ‘Bear up, Ellen, bear up.’ He said it several times, in the same manner, unhurriedly, and so it was soothing, like a pigeon calling on a summer morning.

  I heard their voices distantly, bidding me goodbye.

  When I fell asleep I dreamed of my rocking horse. The pony-skin was bald around the neck and jaws where the red reins rubbed. In my dream I leaned my face against the horse’s neck and whispered in his ear, and he dipped on his rockers as if to answer me. I leaned and sucked my thumb, and stroked the bald patch. I turned my head and saw myself, a small child, and the rocking horse in the tall mirror. ‘I love Mummy,’ I told the horse, and wiped my thumb on his fur. The sunlight flashed in the mirror and my love was fixed in the bald patch, the fur, my wet thumb, the flash of light, for ever.

  The ham was so thin that I could see the pattern of the plate through it, a willow tree with puffy blue curlicues rendered violet by the overlaying film of pink. Even so, it was hard to insert this ham into my dry mouth, and thence down my gullet into a stomach that was shut like a clam. There were also potatoes to tackle, as inedible to me as boulders and similarly greenish on the underside.

  This was luncheon of the following day. I’d slept unmoving for twenty hours or so.

  Mr and Miss Dawes ate ruthlessly, quartering their potatoes and impaling each quarter on their forks, cutting their ham into strips of equal width.

  ‘Some sort of live-in position.’ Mr Dawes broke the silence. ‘You’re a clever girl and you sew well enough. With a little brushing up, you’d make a very nice companion.’

  ‘I want to stay at the school. I’m a good teaching assistant.’

  ‘The school can’t support you.’

  ‘I could live here with you.’

  ‘My dear, that’s not a permanent solution.’ Miss Dawes put down her knife and fork. ‘Now the first step is the Girls’ Home in Bitterne. A place falls vacant on Tuesday. They’ll teach you sewing, plain cooking. Every week I can take you to tea with Mrs Daventry for conversation. You’ve got good manners and a nice voice. Soon the world would be your oyster. I can quite see you with a quiet lady, or even a nice family in Southampton.’

  I thought of Southampton. A place of gunshots and ships and bright sea, and hedges whose leaves glittered in the wind. Sout
hampton had taken all of us.

  ‘You have a life to build, Ellen,’ said Mr Dawes. ‘You have everything before you.’

  I pushed my chair back and rose to my feet. ‘Apart from your kindness, I’ve got nothing in the world.’

  ‘But you will, dear,’ Miss Dawes said. ‘You’ll make something of yourself.’

  I wondered how on earth she could know. Could those stones of eyes see into the future? She’d just eaten a meal; thin ham and hard potatoes but a meal nonetheless. How could she tell me about what I would make of myself? ‘Thank you. I think I’ll go for a walk now.’ I left them sitting motionless at the table.

  I made my way to the front gate and strode, as fast as I could without running, down the village street. My chin and lips trembled as I panted. I left the village on the road to Beacon Hill. I would go there and lie down like I had with Edward on that mild Christmas Day before he left for the first time. ‘“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,”’ I said aloud, as sobs began to constrict my throat. ‘“From whence cometh my help.”’ But I could see no help, just the hump of Beacon Hill, the quiet line.

  The lightning started, planting itself here and there on the plain of fields below the hill, white and silent. A herd of cows, small in the distance and the colour of pale sand, ran this way and that. I strained my ears and caught their terrified lowing, a tiny, faraway sound. I started to low like an abandoned calf, for my father, my brother, my mother. But they were gone. I didn’t know where I would be, or who would know me, or who I would love, in the years and years to come. I lowed, like a sand-coloured calf, and my throat ached. ‘Oh, help me,’ I sobbed. ‘Help me.’

  It began to rain in earnest, leaden coins drumming onto my scalp and shoulders. I ran, heavy-footed now, up the lane towards the wall of a barn. The flints pricked my back as I cowered under the shallow eave. A lightning bolt sprang onto an iron gate five yards away. I screamed against the instantaneous crack of thunder, and turned round to embrace the wall. Crack, another bolt. I pressed myself against the wall, the flints hurting my cheek. The rain flooded from the gutter and drenched my back, bringing a sensation of such violent cold that I screamed again.