We Must Be Brave Page 17

  ‘Pamela, I think you know what I’m talking about.’

  Her eyes sparkled with guilt.

  ‘Don’t rise to it, Mrs Parr,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You’re a cheeky girl, Pamela. I would put you over my knee.’

  ‘I’d escape by springing into a forward roll. Bobby and Ruby and I, we’ve been practising. We can do it straight off a chair, like this.’

  There was no such thing as a single, unchanging child. They altered as fast as clouds across the Downs. A month ago she seemed a placid, moon-faced creature reciting her tables, the month previous elfin and fey. Now she was effervescent, particularly in the morning. The sunrise uncorked her and up she fizzed, this time to pitch towards the stone floor and lithely curl into a rolling ball.

  ‘Pamela! Careful!’

  Elizabeth and I cried out together, mindful of the glass. Pamela got up unharmed, rosy-cheeked from being upside down, and sat on her chair again. I glanced out of the window. ‘We’re going to see Mr Kennet this afternoon, Pamela.’

  ‘Oh, good, I want to borrow something from him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something.’

  Out in the hall the letterbox flapped. ‘Will you fetch the post, darling?’

  She hurried back, handed me a long white envelope. ‘What lovely stamps. Please may I have them?’

  ‘I expect so.’ I couldn’t see the stamps properly – they looked black in the gloom of the kitchen. I took the letter over to the window where I made out a grim silhouette of brown tanks mounting a dusty, identically brown escarpment. ‘I’d hardly call these stamps lovely, Pamela …’

  Suid-Afrika, they said. South Africa.

  So long I’d imagined it, this letter. Deep in a mailbag on an aeroplane droning its way north, fragile as an insect, casting a tiny wavering shadow over the veldt. And now it had come. I opened my mouth, thinking to call Selwyn, but my fingers were already fumbling at the envelope.

  Dear Mrs Parr,

  Thank you for your letter regarding the child you refer to as my niece.

  Please know that I have had no contact with my sister since her divorce. I know nothing of the father of this child, never having met him. My sister led a dissolute life and I have therefore consulted a solicitor, whose note I attach and who confirms that I am not liable in law for the child’s upkeep. My husband will arrange for the sum of £10 to be made available to you at Barclays bank. This is purely in recognition of your kindness and in no way constitutes an acknowledgement of future obligation. I now regard the matter as closed and any further communication from parties acting on behalf of the child will be treated by my solicitor as harassment.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Marjorie Lord (Mrs)

  That final viper’s bite, the forked teeth sinking into the ball of my thumb, made me drop the letter. There was another sheet beneath, the solicitor’s attached note, on blue paper. They both dimmed and descended as if into water, and the air around me darkened, teemed with sparkles, became unbreathable.

  Pamela and Elizabeth were looking down at me. She’s grown old, I thought of Elizabeth, as I noticed the folds around her mouth, the wiry grey hair springing from under her scarf. When on earth did that happen?

  ‘Jeepers, creepers, now you’ve opened your peepers,’ Pamela burst out in a tuneless chant. But her mouth was puckered in anxiety.

  ‘Darling, I simply fainted.’ I felt a stab in my scalp. ‘I’ve found a piece of glass. Quite a big one, I think.’ I gave a watery giggle.

  Selwyn appeared in the corner of my vision. ‘Good grief. Darling.’

  ‘Oh my lord, the toast.’ Elizabeth sprang away.

  ‘She fainted,’ Pamela told Selwyn. ‘She read a letter and fainted.’

  Selwyn bent down and took my hands. I allowed myself to be helped up into a chair. ‘I’m really quite all right.’

  He picked up the two pieces of paper, one white and one blue, from the floor. He read with his back to me. Pamela stood beside me, leaning against my side. A long, long while passed, and my head pounded. I felt the back of my scalp, retrieved a shard of glass the size and shape of a fingernail. There didn’t seem to be any blood.

  ‘Who on earth is it from?’ said Pamela to Selwyn.

  His eyes flickered from the letter to Pamela and back again. ‘A thoroughly cross and silly person. Nothing for you to worry about.’ He bent down to Pamela. ‘Don’t lean so hard against Ellen, sweetheart. She’s feeling faint.’

  ‘Selwyn …’ I said.

  ‘Sit still, Ellen. Let me – let me take this to my study.’

  He made to straighten up again but Pamela grabbed his tie and pulled him down. ‘Please will you give me a kiss on my parting?’ Elizabeth turned from rescuing the toast to see Pamela battened to my side, Selwyn tethered, kissing the top of her head.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Parr. For goodness’ sake, will you eat your breakfasts.’

  Elizabeth left the house soon after, for Judd’s in Waltham where she made shell nose-cones alongside a bombed-out company workforce from Portsmouth who ragged her for her country burr. She preferred Judd’s, she said, for all the teasing and backtalk, to looking after those ‘rapscallions of boys’, Jack and Donald and their cousin Hawley. They had gone home after the worst of the air raids, their mothers no longer able to do without them.

  That morning I took the lorry out to collect the orders from the farms, leaving Selwyn kneeling in a boiler suit and goggles, chipping at one of the Derbyshire peak millstones with hammer and chisel. The odd spark flew out unheeded, which always worried me, but, so far, I had never returned to black smoke billowing from the mill roof. I travelled at speed across the high land where the chalk came close to the surface of the soil and the sheep nibbled short tough turf. The mill was low-lying, tree-shrouded: I loved being able to see in every direction, the clouds in fleets all the way to the sea.

  I reflected on what to say to Pamela about Marjorie Lord. Pamela had never met her, nor even mentioned her since those first days with us. Good God, but the woman was monstrous. Could she have children of her own? Perhaps they hatched from eggs in her swampy lair, fully formed, with teeth. Pamela, dear, your aunt …

  The aunt she did not know, whom she did not remember, had repudiated her.

  I would not allow myself to venture any further along this path. I simply let the facts settle in my mind. They didn’t weigh heavy. Instead, a lifting sensation took hold of me, as if there were more air in the lorry’s tyres, more light among the clouds spreading away to the horizon.

  As the school day came to a close I went out to the garage for the bicycle. William Kennet had made us ropes of straw to fill our outer tyres. The original inner tubes were packed in chalk dust and kept for very long journeys, rubber being rare and costly now.

  Edward had written twice in 1942. The first time was in February. All the world has come dashing over the Straits, Indians, Aussies etc., Japanese hard on their heels, but we plan to blow up the Causeway and in this way raise the drawbridge. Fear not, drst Ellen, I’m a wharf rat of long-standing as you well know and have got myself out of any number of tricky spots.

  By the time I received it the Causeway had been destroyed, but this hadn’t stopped the Japanese. Singapore fell and there was no word from my brother. Then in April 1942, to my immeasurable joy, another letter had arrived, this one crumpled, filthy and water-stained. The only legible words were: … to Ringat in a terrible old … annot believe how they missed … Padang … Nurses … n Ceylon now … tea the best in the world. And after that more messages had followed, clearer ones, detailing his escape to Ceylon, his journey to India and thence to fight in Burma. Pamela, thrilled by these letters, plotted his progress in drawing pins on her map of the world. I was never wholly happy with this ritual, imagining the day when a distraught Pamela would climb onto the chair – because she would insist on doing it – and push in the last pin. But he’d told me, my darling Edward, he’d told me not to fear when he was fourteen, when he took himself far off
into the shocking dangers of hurricane seas and fever coasts. It was the least I could do to trust him again now.

  I rode to the school, collected Pamela. She climbed onto the makeshift back seat of the bicycle. The rolled sheepskin that served as a cushion was well squashed down now. I doubted it would ever recover. I strained on the pedals and she breathed in, as she often did, to make herself lighter, and we set off for Upton Hall and William.

  ‘You’ll have to pedal me, soon,’ I said.

  ‘Let me do it now, Ell.’

  ‘Wait.’ A rumble was approaching from behind. ‘Soldiers coming.’

  Two army lorries passed us at thoughtless speed, each one creating its own diesel-gust, making me weave. A parcel of eggs nestled in my wicker bicycle basket. Our ducks had been laying well and we were taking them to William in exchange for four young apple trees. I was to give two of the trees to Lucy. Her old apple tree, which kneeled down to the ground, produced only fruit the size of large marbles now.

  ‘Where are they going, all these soldiers?’ Pamela was clinging to my waist, creating a draughty gap beneath my jacket. I wished I’d worn my long coat.

  ‘To the camp.’ Which occupied the long narrow field under a wood known as Jeps Hanger, where sheepdog trials took place in happier times.

  ‘I mean all the soldiers in the camp. They aren’t on holiday, are they! They must be off somewhere. Ruby says it’s France.’

  ‘We don’t know, Pamela. Nobody knows, and we don’t talk about it.’

  ‘I bet you do, really.’

  We caught up with the lorries as they halted at the camp gates. The tops of Nissen huts and mess tents poked above the high new fence. People were starting once again to voice the unspeakable word: invasion. Only this time the tide had turned and the invasion was running the other way, from England to France. Gales were sweeping down the Channel and yet all those men had to be got covertly out, over the sucking bottle-green waters of the docks, in moonless secrecy, to face the chop of the open sea. The very idea sent nerves shooting down my arms.

  The driver of the first lorry was opening the wide gate. The men in the second lorry had pulled up the canvas shield at the back. Pamela cupped her hands to her mouth. ‘Got any gum, chum?’

  ‘Pamela! Really!’

  One of the soldiers, a black-haired boy, rummaged in his pocket and a tiny white package whistled across the road to land in the verge. Pamela leaped off the bicycle, pounced on the package. ‘Oh, gosh! Thank you!’ she yelled, and the young soldier grinned. They were all young, and all quiet, sitting obediently in two rows facing each other. Their hair was indecently short, the scraped skin of their necks pink, damp tufts sticking up from their crowns. The lorries moved forward into the camp, and the gates were closed behind them.

  ‘That is the most coarse way to behave, Pamela.’

  She climbed back onto her bicycle pillion. ‘Bobby does it all the time.’

  ‘I don’t care what Bobby Rail does.’

  Mrs Rail had produced so many children that her elder boys were grown up – Ernest and Stanley, who’d been thrown from their house when the burning hayrick set it alight. Stanley had come home from Dunkirk and was now waiting like these soldiers, in another camp somewhere in the south of England. Small Ernest, too frail to pass the board, was clerking in Southampton Docks. I feared for him as much as I did for Stanley.

  ‘Hey, ho, nobody at home,

  Meat nor drink nor money have I none.

  Yet will I be merry, merry, merry,

  Hey, ho …’

  Of all our songs it was this mournful little rhyme Pamela loved best. We sang it in a round. It had taken her weeks to learn to sing against my melody, and even now her voice would merge with mine from time to time. ‘No! Not that tune!’ she cried.

  I’d broken into the descant. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help it. Don’t you think it sounds nice?’

  ‘It’s nice but wrong.’ Her voice sounded mushy.

  ‘Are you chewing that disgusting stuff? Take it out before we get to the Hall, if you please. Hey, ho, nobody at home. Meat nor—’ The bicycle lurched and plunged.

  ‘Ell! You’re jolting the eggs! We must get off!’

  We were ploughing along the drive to Upton Hall, over ruts as deep as coffins. I braked and dismounted. I hadn’t even noticed. I always dismounted on the drive to the Hall, which was impassable on straw-stuffed tyres. And today we had eggs, of all things. No wonder Pamela slept so deeply: every incident of the daytime inspired an orchestral level of emotion. I had fainted; she’d got some chewing gum; and now I was about to smash the eggs. And it wasn’t yet teatime! I walked the rest of the way and Pamela rode. When I reached William’s shed I leaned the bicycle against the wall and, at her insistence, lifted her down. She clung, briefly, like an infant monkey, and the shock of delight was accompanied, as always, by a white flare of pain in my lower back. ‘This is ridiculous, darling, you’re eight years old.’

  Her eyes twinkled. ‘Yes, but extremely light.’ I set her down, kissed her cheek.

  William Kennet was in the small glasshouse with a barrow of compost and what looked like a hundred thumb-pots. He looked up, said ‘Hm’ in a mild, contented way and jerked his chin at a clutch of four larger clay pots, each with a thin lively stem and thrusting leaves. ‘Those are your pippins. I raised them from seed. Go slowly home. They won’t like to be rattled in the breeze. Don’t worry about Lucy’s trees – her dad will come for them.’ He speedily filled another dozen pots. ‘So, young Pamela, how are the onions progressing?’

  William was president of the Upton School Onion Club.

  ‘The little ones are such lazy weeders.’ Pamela pouted. ‘“Why should we grow onions to give ’em away to the sojers?” That’s what they say. May I borrow your Art of Prowling, Mr Kennet, please?’

  ‘You may not. You can read it while you’re here. A young child like you with a good memory, you can get it by heart if you try.’

  Pamela suddenly gasped. ‘Oh! Guess what happened this morning! Ell got a letter from a cross, silly person, and then she fainted! She did! And after she’d finished fainting there was a piece of glass in her head!’ Pamela spread her arms, triumphant, at the splendour of her story.

  ‘I dropped a dish, the night before.’ I was laughing.

  He broke into a broad smile. ‘That tale deserves a cuppa, and a toffee.’

  The toffees were the colour of polished walnut; fat discs, all of different sizes, with smooth, rounded tops and flat, glassy bottoms. Lady Brock stored up her sugar and her land girls made them, dropping them from a spoon onto a marble slab.

  Pamela took William’s pamphlet The Art of Prowling from a battered wooden box, flipping up the lid with an insolent familiarity.

  ‘Those are Mr Kennet’s things, Pamela.’

  ‘Don’t mind her, Mrs Parr. It’s just some bits of old rubbish, anyway.’

  ‘Liquorice isn’t rubbish.’ Pamela shook the tin. The fine lady was still there on the side, alighting from her carriage in a blizzard of dents and scratches. ‘Oh, Mr Kennet, you’ve restocked!’

  ‘You leave that be.’ William was stern. ‘You’ve got toffees today.’ He gazed past me, out through the open door where Lady Brock was walking on the path, followed by Nipper. ‘Out, damned spot! Out!’ she was saying.

  ‘They’re doing Macbeth at the Hall,’ William told me. ‘For the Canadians.’

  ‘I know.’ I thought of Macbeth’s ineluctable, prophesied defeat. ‘It’s hardly the most apposite story.’

  ‘No, my dear. The idea is, Macbeth is Adolf. Doomed.’ He smiled his square smile. ‘So you had a letter, then.’

  Pamela was creeping on hands and knees, or more accurately elbows and knees, out of the door and onto the path, glancing every few moments at William’s pamphlet which she was holding in one hand. ‘I did indeed, William.’ In a soft voice, one that merged with the hiss of the kettle on the stove, I told William about Marjorie Lord. ‘It really seems Pamela’s got no one,
’ I concluded. ‘Not a soul.’

  The hills of the morning rose in my mind’s eye, speckled with chalk, and the bare line cut the brightening sky, and peace broke out, and Pamela, aged ten, twelve, eighteen, strode up ahead of me with her skirts flapping in the wind.

  So you might get to keep her.

  I laughed. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Didn’t you speak?’

  ‘No.’

  I was sure I’d heard his voice.

  Beyond him the doorway grew bright: the sun had come out. Lady Brock was still striding up and down the path, rubbing her hands together. Pamela, unnoticed by her and by Nipper, crept along the flagstones in the lee of the greenhouse. William offered me a mug of tea. The thin enamel handle dug into my fingers. I raised the mug to my mouth and the rim burned my bottom lip.

  ‘Hold hard,’ William said. ‘It’s way too hot.’ Surprised that I should even try to drink yet.

  I blew on my tea. William blew on his, his eyes almost shut, eyebrows raised, mouth in an O. This gave him a somewhat angelic air. A rather careworn, older angel, just now a little fatigued, I learned, from a long night patrolling bridges and culverts along the railway line. ‘No chance of a brew-up, and brambles this high. All we saw was some Canadians coming back from banging their heads on the beams at the King’s Arms. We properly apprehended them. Why do they grow them so tall over there? It can’t be good for their brains. I’d get down to Southampton while you can, if there’s anything you need. They’re going to shut the whole coast off soon.’

  I felt a strong inward sucking at my sternum. ‘Oh, lord, lord—’

  ‘Bear up, Ellen.’

  ‘I suppose we can pray.’

  ‘We can. For the Canadians, and ours, and all of them.’

  I lifted my mug back up to my lips.

  ‘She still has got a father, though,’ William said after a moment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pamela. She’s got a father.’

  I gulped the burning tea. ‘Whoever he is, he’s not interested in fathering. He scarpered long before the war, remember? I’m sure I told you.’ I pictured Constable Flack in our kitchen back in 1940, running his finger under his chinstrap. ‘Anyway, we’ve hardly been dilatory – goodness, we’ve gone through the Forces, the police, Wounded and Missing, and no one’s come up with the right Pickering. Quite honestly, I don’t know what else you expect us to do.’