We Must Be Brave Page 16

  And in the corner of my vision, the pillar of a man, grave, unspeaking. It was the secretary who said, ‘Take a seat, my dear,’ and I did so, unfolding the test to see a single fault, atmisphere for atmosphere, circled in red crayon. Right ring finger straying inward. How elementary.

  ‘You went to the Misses Spall and Benn, I gather,’ came the voice, after a long, quiet, light-filled expanse of time.

  ‘Yes,’ I said at last.

  ‘Take some shorthand, please. Miss Moss, give her the necessary.’

  A pad and pen were thrust into my hands and I seated myself on a stool indicated by the secretary.

  ‘“Much as I delight in your company …”’

  I stared wildly up at Mr Renfrew. A thin man appeared in the fog of sunshine: an ordinary middle-aged man, a head already doming through thinning hair, a pair of direct, dry eyes behind spectacles, a nose pointed at me.

  ‘Take the words down,’ exhorted Miss Moss, in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a hiss.

  I began my stenography, feeling a flush of perspiration on the sides of my neck and cheeks. I couldn’t help seeing, as he sat down behind his desk, a hairless white shin and a sock reminiscent of Edward, baggy, wrinkled. Edward as a young boy.

  ‘“Much as I delight in your company, I feel bound to let you know that I am nothing but a simple parson and not the rich nobleman I so insolently pretended to be. The time has come for me to be honest and truthful even if it means the confounding of all my hopes which, embarked on such a frail pinnace as this, by which I mean a pinnace constructed out of my own lies, could not but be dashed on the implacable reef of reality. With that, my dear lady, I must release you from your vows though it breaks my wretched heart to do so.”’

  My squiggles came to a stop. To my own great surprise, my shoulders were shaking with laughter. ‘Perhaps I can guess the outcome,’ I said. ‘She turns out to be a seamstress herself.’

  ‘Something like.’ He tittered. ‘I always use romantic novels for the new young ladies. It injects a lighter note into the proceedings. Now. Miss Moss, take a peek at those squiggles, please.’

  ‘I’ve been following,’ said Miss Moss, somewhat wearily. Perhaps she was tired of romance. ‘No errors.’

  Now Mr Renfrew was spreading a crackling paper on his desk, one long middle finger pinning the edge. ‘These are your terms. Your conditions and holidays. Miss Moss will show you where you can take your luncheon. All our new young ladies take luncheon after their tests.’

  At the word ‘luncheon’ Mr Renfrew’s person swelled and swam. I felt a soft, slightly warm handkerchief pressed into my hand. ‘Congratulations, Miss Calvert,’ he said, in his nut-dry voice. ‘Compose yourself. There’s nothing to fear.’

  *

  ‘Christ, it’ll be a hole in the ground at that price,’ Lucy said. ‘Porridge in the morning and potato pie at night, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  My new home was a hostel at the back of the town hall. It was described as a place for young ladies in the employ of the municipality whose home circumstances were unsuitable due either to remoteness from the workplace or to another cause. Supervision in matters of economy and welfare to be undertaken by Miss Moss – Mr Renfrew’s secretary – and an as yet unknown Miss Careless. The words ‘full board’ preceded a dotted line on which was written a figure in black ink, followed by the phrase ‘per calendar month’. It was this figure, the only part of the document which Lucy could understand, which had prompted her comment.

  ‘I shan’t mind,’ I said.

  I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. We were sitting by the range in her kitchen. Old Mrs Horne sat up at the table so that the window light could aid her sewing. Lucy was doing cross-stitch, neat and small. A linnet with a palest flush on the breast amid apple leaves. The needle seemed to emerge from the fabric into her small fingers as if by its own power.

  ‘Lucy, I’m sorry about our quarrel—’

  ‘It was me that started it.’ She sniffed. ‘I was in such a conniption that day.’ Her eyes were distant.

  I looked again at the cross-stitch fabric and reflected that the linnet was her favourite bird. She’d said so, or at least written it, asking me the spelling on my first day at Upton School. ‘You could come to the town hall, Lucy, and have tea with me in my room.’

  ‘Yep.’ She ducked her head. ‘I reckon I could.’

  Mrs Horne put down her embroidery. ‘You will still come to church, won’t you, dear? On the Sunday bus. You could eat your dinner with us afterwards, if you cared to.’

  I hadn’t thought what I would do on Sundays. But Mrs Horne had. ‘I can bring …’ I had no idea what I would bring.

  ‘They do lovely treacle tarts at Priddy’s,’ Mrs Horne said. ‘Wait till late Saturday afternoon. She’ll sell them at any price.’

  After tea I went to the door with Lucy. ‘You know, Ellen, if we could, we’d have you here.’

  ‘I know that, Lucy—’

  ‘Only we can’t get two beds in my room. Not even if Dad made a bunk. He’s measured and all. And it would cost you more in bus fares than your rent for your basement room. So that’s that.’

  I was unable to speak, so I touched her on the arm. She suddenly grasped my hand and squeezed it.

  ‘You were the only one,’ I found myself saying, ‘the only one who spoke to me.’

  ‘I told you about Vic Small, didn’t I.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘Just to het you up.’ She did a rattle of a laugh. ‘You was so easy to tease.’

  ‘Goodbye, Lucy—’

  ‘Give over, or you’ll start me. Go on. See you Sunday.’ And with a little push on my arm, she sent me off.

  It was time now to fetch my things from the Dawes’ and say goodbye. I had pressed some violets back in the spring and now I used them to decorate a card in which was written in copperplate: And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity. With boundless gratitude, Ellen Calvert, 15-xii-35. It crossed my mind to include instead the verse about God loving a cheerful giver, but I wasn’t a good Bible scholar and I couldn’t find it, and anyway, it would have been cruel.

  That afternoon I took my last journey out of Upton. The bus left the tree-lined lane and we breasted the first high bare hill on the road to Waltham. It wasn’t really my last journey, of course. I’d be back on Sunday. But I’d be a visitor then.

  Miss Moss took me to my room. A basement room, a long slit of a window at the top, where people’s feet tramped by on the pavement above, which I could open and close with a hooked pole. There was a bed, a desk, a chair, a chest, all diminutive. A mirror, even, and a rug on the linoleum floor. A thick red blanket on the bed, and a white pillow.

  I was led without delay to the kitchen. ‘Milk and so forth, any perishable extras you may buy, go in the cold cupboard in the wall there.’ Miss Moss pointed. ‘That cupboard is common to all. Put your things in a brown paper bag with your name written on it. Nothing spoils my temper like girls bothering me with accusations of filching.’ Across a tiled corridor there was a lavatory and a bathroom. ‘Be brisk in the mornings,’ Miss Moss continued. ‘There are four of you down here. We want you all at work on time, neat and presentable. There is a tendency to linger, due to the proximity, and then at eight o’clock what do we find? Girls dashing along the corridors with hairpins falling out. Have you a clock?’

  I shook my head, dismayed.

  ‘Tsk.’ Miss Moss showed two square front teeth. She had a thin, deeply freckled face, narrow hazel eyes, a narrow body. She looked as if she’d rather be in a woodland glade, a powerful place with blasts of magic and other elves as irritable as her. ‘Miss Careless will wake you, then.’

  We went back to the bedroom. She caught sight of my bag and my box on the floor. ‘When will the rest of your things arrive?’

  ‘Those are all my things.’

  She allowed herself a sigh. Then she said, more quietly, ‘I suppose you’re saving your good black shoes for work.’ She was
looking at my feet, in their boots.

  ‘I had to give those shoes back. They weren’t mine.’ I was gripped by a sudden fear that they’d take it all away from me: the job, the room. ‘I’m sure I can borrow some others.’

  She sighed again, this time a strong sigh of exasperation. ‘Lack and Son, in the square, will let you buy shoes from them at a small sum each week. Take your wage packet and sign in their book. I made this arrangement personally with Mr Lack Senior, for you girls. Please do not let me down.’

  Or I shall blast you with my faerie power. ‘No, Miss Moss.’

  ‘There are rules on the door, please acquaint yourself with them. Supper’s at six. Your time’s your own until eight o’clock tomorrow morning when I shall expect you outside my office.’ I listened to her patter up the stairs and let herself out of the street door. It slammed behind her surprisingly loudly. Perhaps caught by the wind.

  I shrugged myself out of my coat. Where was the heat coming from? There was no radiator. I unlaced my boots, kicked them off, and turned round in the small floor space. Everywhere was warm. The window pole was leaning upright in the corner of the room, so I took it and opened the window. Looking up, I saw the pipe. It was fat, painted white, and ran along the inner edge of the ceiling. I got up onto the bed and put my hand against it. It was hot, dry, smelling slightly of paint.

  I opened my door and peered out into the corridor, which was dark, swept clean, and seemingly deserted. Somewhere a bell rang. Shortly afterwards I heard footsteps, and a door at the end banged open to reveal a large woman in a crumpled apron who came hurrying towards me. ‘Are you on tea duty, dear?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m new.’

  She sniffed hard. ‘What’s the betting it’s Polly and Esme. If they were mine I’d put each one over my knee and spank them. Can you make pastry?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You girls. When I first came here I was flabbergasted, the amount of girls who didn’t know how to make a good pie-crust.’ She began to hurry off again and I followed her to the kitchen Miss Moss had shown me earlier. ‘It can’t be your brains, can it, since you’re all bright enough. You’d better start on the potatoes. You can peel a potato, I expect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Off you go, then. In the cupboard there. My name’s Miss Careless, if you haven’t already been told.’

  ‘I’m Ellen Calvert.’ I pulled a large earthy sack of potatoes from the cupboard.

  ‘Ellen. Good. I shan’t bother with the surname, dear, if you don’t mind. The rate you girls come and go. I’m not meant to be cooking at all, you realize. But you lot wouldn’t even get a pie in the oven unless I pitched in. Nowadays I even bring my own blessed apron, see? About a dozen, dear.’ She was cutting lard into a bowl of flour, and pointed with her greasy knife at the potatoes I was putting in the sink. ‘Never mind. I suppose it must be your home backgrounds. If you had good homes to live in, with mothers who brought you up to make a proper pie-crust, you wouldn’t be here, would you. Which room have you got?’

  ‘The one with the pipe.’ I ran the tap onto the potatoes. I was swaying, whether from sleepiness or plain dislocation, I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Oh, the boiler pipe. The new ones always get that.’ Miss Careless plunged her big pink hands into the bowl and began to smear the lard into the flour. ‘You’ll die in there.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I turned the tap off. ‘But I’ll die warm.’

  Miss Careless began to expel a series of billowing breaths. ‘You’ll die warm. Oh, that’s funny.’ She exhaled some more. ‘Die warm. Bless you. You’ll be all right, I think. Peel away, now, dear.’

  When the pie was made Miss Careless put it in the oven. I went back to my room to wait until suppertime. I let my knees go and slumped down onto the bed. My eyes felt swollen and sleepy. My bag and box lay quietly on the floor, patiently. They looked so dirty. We were thrown up at last on the beach, among tangled rigging and spars, with boulders for pillows. But this pillow was soft. It was all that counted.

  Ellen

  Early March, 1944

  14

  I WOKE, Selwyn beside me, a long form like a ridge of the Downs. I stroked the back of his head. He didn’t stir. I got up and went through to the dressing room. Pamela was soused in sleep, sucking her thumb.

  Eight years old now, and her emerging big teeth pushed out a little by this endless sucking; no good, no good at all. That perfect curve in her nose straightening but her eyes seemingly big as ever. The lashes trembled on her cheek. Freckles like those on a bird’s egg covered her nose and the tops of her cheeks. There was no crease in her wrists any more but her arms, especially when she raised them above her head to shrug off a singlet or blouse, were still babyish-smooth, the forearms rounded, the hands soft and stubby-fingered. I still brushed her hair as it straightened and thickened. The colour of it dry was the same as mine wet – gleaming dark honey.

  I pulled her blankets aside and dragged her sleeping legs to the edge of the bed. She obeyed me and walked, eyes tight shut, down the steps from the old dressing room into our bedroom. She followed me into our bed, still sleeping, and lay half on top of me, utterly senseless. I lay squashed, uncaring that I was squashed. Her cheek was hot and damp. Her thick hair at the back of her neck smelled heavenly. Hot, clean, slightly salty, like baking bread with a breath of clean linen. That was it: clean, dry tea towels covering loaves fresh from the oven. Or was it that? Was there more sweetness in it, something like honeysuckle nectar? Whatever it was, I could live off this aroma.

  Selwyn rolled over. I couldn’t see if he’d opened his eyes. ‘Unconscionable,’ I heard him say, with a smile in his voice. ‘What was that dream about? Going up the old battery with Bobby and Ruby?’

  I laughed. ‘She can’t help talking in her sleep.’

  ‘Well. She’s given herself away this time.’

  ‘There aren’t any guns up there any longer. Well, none that work.’

  ‘It’s still dangerous. Rusty barbed wire is not a plaything.’ Selwyn pushed himself into a sitting position, put on his spectacles. ‘I must go and look at the level. This soft rain is deceptive.’ He reached over me and ruffled Pamela’s hair. ‘Morning, parrot.’

  Pamela slurped, her cheek pressed against my neck. Selwyn got out of bed. I rolled her into the warm trough in the mattress left by him.

  It was early March, 1944. We were nearing the end of a mild dry winter, roaring blue skies that brought no rain. The previous winter had sent a brief flood, widening onto the water meadows by the church. But the mill still turned, and our house was a weatherly little boat that floated on the highest tide.

  This year, fine drizzle, and then clouds whipped away by the wind.

  Selwyn had relented at the end of 1940, a month after Pamela came. I’d expected him, after Christmas, to resume his search for a home for her. But he didn’t. ‘I don’t know why,’ he said, fingering his chin. ‘I think I’ve placed her in your charge. Mentally, I mean. I think you’ll know what to do.’ For I had told him all of it, every jot of my young life, a long, dogged account of all those days of cold and dirt and privation during which, at times, he closed his eyes. He did not say if there was a particular thing that had moved him. Edward’s departure, the death of my mother? Something small, like the frozen tap? Perhaps none of these things – I didn’t ask. At least now he knew I was the bucket in the well, the bucket Mr Kennet had mended for me after I’d broken it on the ice. I was made of old staves and tarred felt. Water poured from my seams when I was filled but I held enough, for long enough, to be serviceable. This knowledge made him gentler, which was touching, but unnecessary since my mends were sound. Cautiously he let his mind creak open, like an old sluicegate, to the idea that he need not remain obdurate for my sake, that he too could dare to love Pamela a little. Bad days still came to her, even now, when she lay motionless and speechless, embracing a pillow on our bed. Sometimes she tied my dressing-gown cord around the middle of the pillow to make a waist, and
laid her head on the upper part, which had become a bosom. Selwyn, if he found her like this, would take her small cold feet in his hands and rub them, saying, ‘There now. There now.’

  So had three years and three months passed: we began to mill barley flour along with the wheat, and then we had to mix potato flour with the barley, and Pamela was still with us.

  The wind was strong at seven o’clock, rattling the handle of the kitchen door. Last night I’d dropped a dish of steamed cabbage on the stone floor and there were still glass fragments, treacherously small, unfound. Nobody went downstairs in stockinged feet. Elizabeth and I had plucked a great deal of cabbage out of the larger slivers and served it without mentioning the incident to Selwyn or Pamela.

  ‘This is exactly why we need that soft brush back from Lady Brock, Mrs Parr.’ Elizabeth now spoke reproachfully.

  ‘I’ll ask her again. I’m sure it’s just slipped her mind.’ I had a strong suspicion Lady Brock had lost the brush.

  Elizabeth sliced bread and put it onto the range to toast. ‘And the hole in the bellows has got atrocious. I might just as well blow on the kindling with my own lungs.’

  I inspected the bristles of the insufficiently soft brush for glistening particles, gave up. We’d find them all in the end. Perhaps in six months’ time, in the soles of our feet. Then I let the brush drop, and rubbed my face. ‘I’ll look out those chammy leathers we had for the car. Pamela, put your slippers on your feet.’

  Because here she was, my heart, my joy, with her slippers on her hands like paws. ‘Are we going to see Lucy after school?’ She sat down to her unadorned porridge, poked it with her spoon. ‘I wish I lived in her house. She’s always got sugar.’

  ‘What’s this about going “up the battery”?’

  I said it artlessly, but she wasn’t gulled into telling me. No longer five years old. ‘What battery?’

  ‘You said it in your sleep.’

  She gave a delicious display of little and big teeth. ‘I expect it was just a dream then.’