We Must Be Brave Read online

  ‘Doctor, please could you look at this little girl? I must get a bucket.’

  When I got back from the kitchen Pamela was lying on the floor while the doctor shone a small, narrow light into each of her eyes. ‘A mild concussion,’ he announced, as I started cleaning the mess. ‘There’s a bump under her hairline. She may be very sleepy. But I’m not uneasy.’

  I took the bucket outside. Selwyn was seeing off a group bound for the village houses. ‘We’ll be sheltering seven souls,’ he told me. ‘And I’ve washed up the cups.’

  I couldn’t help smiling at the expectation of praise latent in this last statement. ‘Well done.’ I emptied the bucket into the drain. ‘But it’s eight, not seven. The little girl. Her mother wasn’t on the bus.’

  ‘How on earth—?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  In a knot in the corner, our group waited, set-faced, to be led to our house. With the exception of a couple of tall, tear-stained girls of about seventeen, they were all women on the elderly side. Mrs Berrow, I saw, was among them. Her injured eye looked viciously dark now, and she was hanging her head in fatigue. I lifted Pamela up, and Selwyn took off his jacket and folded it around her.

  ‘Shall I take her?’ he asked.

  ‘No. She doesn’t seem so heavy now. I don’t know why.’ I followed Selwyn out of the hall, and behind me our people fell into step. Pamela leaned her head against my shoulder. I could hear the tiny chirp as she sucked her thumb.

  Then she took her thumb out. ‘The ladies said they’d find Mummy. They said. So I think they will.’ She put the thumb back in and shut her eyes.

  2

  I CARRIED PAMELA down the lane. The sun was sinking into the bare hedgerows and the air was sharper. Our people moved as a single clumsy mass behind us.

  ‘She got on the bus by accident,’ I told Selwyn. ‘Two women took her on board, thinking her mother was on the previous bus. But it now seems the mother wasn’t on any bus at all. She must be still in Southampton. Distraught.’

  ‘Where were these women?’

  ‘In the village hall, of course.’

  ‘No, I mean, where in Southampton?’

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  He glanced back at our followers. ‘They’re not with us, are they?’

  ‘No. They left with that last big group.’ I wasn’t even sure of that, now. ‘How silly of me.’

  His hand brushed my arm. ‘It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do about it today.’

  We heard a soft clopping on the road behind us, a rumble and a rattle. Colonel Daventry was coming up with a cart full of slumped figures: women and some small children. The Colonel walked beside the head of his horse Beeston, a peaceful bay with feathered fetlocks, and the cart was followed by a handful of silent men. ‘Mr and Mrs Parr, we’re on our way to The Place.’ He named his large house in the middle of Upton. ‘We can take a few up to your turning.’

  ‘Go on, Ellen,’ Selwyn said. I scrambled up and he passed me Pamela. Mrs Berrow and our other ladies climbed aboard. The occupants shuffled to make room for us – all, that is, save one woman who sat motionless, shawled in a length of sacking, her face half-covered in brick dust, while the baby on her lap kicked its bare foot in the frosty air. We were about to move on when an old man standing by the tailgate of the cart took off his tweed cap in preparation, it transpired, to speak.

  ‘My father worked here, at the big house. Upton Hall. For Sir Michael Brock’s father,’ he told us. ‘Put the locks into the front and back doors, and the coach house and all the outhouses. This was before the Great War.’ His eyes began to spill tears which caught the low sun as they fell, but he spoke on in a steady voice. ‘We made ourselves busy in the stable block, me and some boys from the farm. Filling hay nets. Scampering back and forth.’

  Then he put his cap back on, wiped his eyes, and turned to take up his journey again. The Colonel clucked at Beeston who leaned into his harness, and the cart moved off. We swayed in our seats. The woman pied by brick dust clutched her baby’s foot in her filthy hand.

  Colonel Daventry let us down at our turning. We began to walk along the embanked track that ran between two low fields to our mill. It was dusk and the people couldn’t see the mill – they hesitated, wondering if they were heading on a long trek out into the countryside. I encouraged them onward, and soon the mill was in sight.

  Elizabeth opened the door. ‘Oh, Mrs Parr. What a thing. Oh, look at that little mite.’ She glanced behind me at the crowd with an anxious housekeeper’s eye. ‘I’ve got all the rugs and cushions out. I hope they’ll be all right.’

  ‘Well done, Elizabeth.’ I stepped inside and set Pamela down on the hall chair. ‘Mr Parr’s following.’ Pamela drooped sideways against the wooden arm, eyes tightly shut. ‘This little one’s mislaid her mother,’ I told Elizabeth in a low voice. ‘We’ll put her upstairs, with us.’

  The women filed past us in a draught of icy air with gasps of relief. When they reached the sitting room the pair of girls lay down immediately, straight onto the floor, refusing offers of tea. One slipped off a single shoe, covered her face with her hands, and lay still. Now they were in an enclosed space I could smell the charred stink again, coming off their coats. I still couldn’t identify it. Perhaps it was something that wasn’t usually burned.

  Elizabeth and I brought tea, and cut a loaf of bread thickly to make dry toast. Those women still awake devoured it. ‘There’s a bit of dripping, but not enough for all of them,’ Elizabeth whispered.

  ‘Keep the dripping for the little girl. We’ve got bread, that’s the main thing.’

  When they’d finished their tea and toast we helped our guests arrange the sitting room to their liking. The young women drowsily accepted a blanket. Then I went upstairs to see the boys.

  We had three evacuees from Southampton: two young brothers and their older cousin. They’d been with us a year and a quarter, since the beginning of the war. Very obedient at first, more unsettled since the September raid which had destroyed the Spitfire factory a few hundred yards away from their homes.

  ‘It was a big’un last night, wasn’t it, Mrs Parr,’ said Donald, the youngest boy.

  They’d all slept through the bombing, but playground gossip had done its work, and his pudgy little face was pale. I wished, for the dozenth time, that his father hadn’t promised to telephone after each raid. I opened my arms and he shuffled over and sat close at my side – too grown-up, at seven, to clamber onto my lap.

  ‘Yes, Donald.’ I squeezed his shoulders. ‘I’m sure everyone’s quite well, but the telephone lines are down. Daddy might not get through until tomorrow or the next day. Now, tonight’s going to be a bit of an adventure.’ I addressed them all. ‘We’ve got visitors. I’m going to put three of them up here, in your bedroom, and you can make a bivouac on the landing, like Scouts do. How does that sound? And you’ll have to eat your tea very quietly in the kitchen – go in through the hall door. Whatever you do, don’t go into the sitting room.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Hawley, the cousin. ‘Are they spies?’

  ‘No.’ I smiled. ‘They just need peace and quiet.’

  Under my direction the boys pitched camp, laying out some old bedding rolls and unused velvet curtains.

  ‘Pooh, this stinks,’ said Donald, and threw the curtain across the floor.

  ‘It may be a little musty,’ I said. ‘It’s been kept in a chest—’

  ‘Put it back on the mattress, Donald, you twit,’ said his older brother.

  ‘Shut your gob, Jack.’

  The two boys fell into a frenzy of pulling, kicking and thumping, comical because wordless. Hawley folded his arms. ‘Oi. Lads. Do you want to sleep in the hen house?’

  They went still. I looked at Hawley gratefully.

  ‘They need a tight rein, Mrs Parr,’ he said.

  They came down for their supper, stopping short at Pamela who was still enthroned, dozing, on the hall chair. It was an ancient chair, with a lo
w seat and a tall back, designed for kneeling on and praying: Pamela, pale, with her eyes sombrely downcast, could have been a child of the Middle Ages. I put my finger to my lips and the boys passed by silently into the kitchen. I went into the sitting room and invited three ladies upstairs to spend the night on the boys’ beds. ‘Mrs Berrow, I insist you come. I will find you a damp flannel for your eye.’

  Obediently Mrs Berrow followed me, along with two others, up to the boys’ bedroom. I brought the flannel, told them where the bathroom was, and left them to sleep. None of them spoke. They were hungry, I knew, but their tiredness was of a kind to conquer hunger. They rolled onto the beds and lay like dead-weights.

  I spread a slice of bread with the dripping and brought it to Pamela.

  ‘Pamela?’

  She opened her eyes and regarded me, blinking. She took the slice of bread, dropped it on the floor. I kneeled in front of her and retrieved it and tore off a dusty piece. She chewed without haste, her jaw moving roundly like a small calf. ‘Excuse me,’ she said through her mouthful. ‘Are we in a village?’

  ‘Yes. A village called Upton.’

  ‘So is this village bread?’

  I smiled. ‘I made it, and I’m a villager. So I suppose it is. It’s a little stale, darling, that’s all. My fresh bread is much softer.’

  She continued chewing, eyes steadily on me, not the least reassured. The front door opened and Selwyn came in. He took his coat off, and smiled at me. ‘You look like a supplicant, and she your princess. It’s the high-backed chair, I suppose. What is there to eat?’

  ‘Bread, and a sausage. About three ounces of tea. Plenty of oats.’

  Pamela had been looking from one of us to the other. Now she stopped chewing. ‘Horses eat oats.’

  ‘Yes, they do.’ Selwyn bent over her. ‘Are you warm enough?’ She nodded. He patted her on the head, absently, as if she were his good dog. ‘Now I think about it, I haven’t got much of an appetite. I’ll sleep on the little bed in the dressing room. You put her with you, in our bed.’

  The buttons on the back of Pamela’s dirty little dress were tiny. One of them was broken, a shard which slipped under my nail and stabbed me. I pulled the puffed sleeves down off her shoulders. Her arms were as cold as china.

  ‘Didn’t Mummy give you a coat, Pamela?’

  ‘It was so hot in the hotel, she said, “Let’s take our coats and cardigans off.” So we did that.’

  ‘What hotel?’

  She turned her head to look up at me. ‘The hotel that we were inside,’ she said patiently. ‘I want to keep my knickers on.’

  She went to the lavatory. I found an old singlet and put it on her. It fell almost to her ankles, the shoulder straps drooping, the low neck leaving her chest bare. I knotted the straps to bring the neckline higher.

  ‘This is a funny nightie.’

  ‘Isn’t it.’

  Our bolster made her head jut forward, so I fetched a flat cushion from my sewing seat. The bed creaked in the dressing room: Selwyn was retiring. I went in and found him sitting there in his pyjamas. He needed a good diet to keep his weight up, did my husband, and now he was beginning to remind me of my brother Edward. They both went lean in hard times, weathered and springy like the spars of a ship. Selwyn was naturally slighter than Edward, sandier, his blue eyes paler. A cleverer, more far-seeing man.

  ‘She says that she was in an hotel,’ I told him. ‘She doesn’t know which one.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘We’ll think about it in the morning.’ He looked up at me. ‘Where’s your pearl brooch?’

  With a jolt I remembered the bus, my first grasp of Pamela’s body. ‘Don’t worry. It’s in my jacket pocket, for safekeeping.’

  Selwyn had pinned the brooch on this morning, deftly, and kissed my lips. It seemed like a week ago now. I went and sat on the bed next to him. My eye fell on a small, flat, brown-paper parcel. ‘You haven’t opened your present.’

  Exclaiming, he reached for it. ‘Shame on me. My first gift of this kind, too.’ He pulled the knot in the string and removed the paper from a copy of Edward Thomas’s The South Country. ‘Ellen, sweetheart. This is so thoughtful.’

  ‘I found it in Bradwell’s. Now you really have the complete works.’

  He gave a single laugh and put down the book. ‘I promise you one thing, Ellen. Not all our wedding anniversaries will be like this one.’

  I put my arm across his back and pressed my face against his shoulder. He embraced me in turn so that we were encircled by each other’s arms. ‘I shall complain next year,’ I said, with my eyes shut, ‘if you don’t supply at least one busload of refugees.’

  The brooch was there, in my jacket pocket. I put it into my jewellery box and hung the jacket in the wardrobe. Closing the door, I saw the child’s image flash into the mirror, a pale face with large, grave, light-brown eyes. I undressed and put my nightgown on, all the while feeling those eyes upon me.

  She’d moved towards the middle of the bed. When I got in, one small, hard foot scraped against my calf. ‘Shift over, Pamela.’

  ‘But I was just on the way to my side.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t realize you had a side.’

  ‘This is my side. The other is Mummy’s.’

  What about Daddy? I didn’t say that. It was a question for tomorrow.

  We arranged ourselves to her liking. She occupied her little space with self-possession, lying neatly on her back with feet together. I remembered sharing the coldest nights in one bed with Mother. Mother, and in the beginning with my brother Edward too. They had both been bigger than me. I’d never lain down beside such a small person.

  ‘My name’s Ellen.’

  ‘I know.’ Her head remained still; only her eyes darted towards me. ‘But you haven’t said if I may call you it.’

  I smiled. ‘You may.’

  How old was she? Her nose was still snubbed, a perfect curve, her cheeks round. I couldn’t ask her about her surname again, not now.

  ‘Will we find Mummy tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m sure we will.’

  I was woken by a rising siren of wails, as sharp and sudden as if rehearsed. I slid out of bed and went out onto the landing. The boys were asleep – two had rolled off the mattresses and were lying legs tangled in the curtains, leaving the third uncovered. I picked my way among them and went down to the sitting room.

  The women had pulled the blackout curtain away from the side of the window. They were all crowded around the slit they had made, crying out and clinging together as if they were in a lifeboat on a high sea. ‘How can they, how can they, the devils.’ ‘Bloody fucking bastards.’ ‘It’s vicious. It ain’t human.’

  They’d left the lamp on. The light was shining out through the naked glass.

  ‘Replace that curtain.’ I spoke in a voice of steel.

  One of them sobbed at me, ‘You should see it, dear, before we do.’

  Darting to the table, I turned out the lamp. ‘You’ve broken the blackout. And you may also have broken the fastenings.’ I shouldered my way in among them and started lashing the blackout tapes back onto the hooks in the window frame. There it was again, the same rumbling, fleshy stain on the undersides of the clouds, punctuated by white flashes, that I’d seen last night rising over Beacon Hill. I tried to avert my face but with each flash I felt sicker.

  ‘Those are the flares,’ said one of the girls behind me. ‘They make it like daylight. So you can see the bomb doors, you see, you can see them opening up.’

  The other girl burst out into noisy weeping, and several others joined her.

  ‘Please don’t wake our evacuees.’ My voice and fingers were shaking as I worked. ‘I can’t have them seeing this raid. Their families are in the city.’ The curtain secured, I fumbled for the lamp and lit it again, and saw Mrs Berrow in the doorway.

  ‘Mrs Parr’s right,’ she said. ‘And that light would have carried twenty mile in the blackout. You want their leftovers dumped on us?’ She folded her strong ar
ms. ‘Now pipe down, and no more of that language, thank you very much.’

  Chastened, the women began to settle themselves down, sighing and murmuring. Mrs Berrow and I left the room. Just as we reached the stairs Mrs Berrow spoke again. ‘Any whisper of that little girl’s mam?’

  Her face was benign, expectant, in the shaft of dull light from the sitting room.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

  At three o’clock I was startled by a sturdy punch in the back and a long, grinding grizzle.

  ‘Mummy. Mummeee.’

  She sat up, eyes half open, arms outstretched. She wasn’t awake. I pulled her to me and her arms went tight round my neck, her hot cheek pressed against mine. Very small breaths she took, just puffs of air. Then I laid her down onto her small pillow.

  *

  I rose at six. Selwyn’s bed was empty. He had already gone up to the sluicegate. Our mill workers would be in at seven.

  In the hall I met Elizabeth carrying a bucket of water to the lavatory, her face tight. ‘I know they’ve been bombed out, but a cistern still has to fill up before you can flush again, Mrs Parr, no matter who’s pulling the chain.’

  The women were stirring in the sitting room. I knocked on the door and when I was admitted found them pulling off blankets, shrugging on cardigans in the lamplight. ‘We’re so grateful, madam,’ somebody said. ‘But we’ll get off home as soon as we can.’

  As if they’d been banished by a burst pipe, or an overly bold family of rats. ‘Well, if you’re sure …’

  ‘Of course we are. You can’t feed us, dear.’

  At least they realized.

  I brought two full teapots, each with one spoonful of tea in it. They would simply have to make do with that. They took the teacups with both hands and passed them in a ritual silence. I untied the blackout curtains and drew them. One of the young women said, ‘We’re very sorry about last night, Mrs Parr.’ She had fresh lipstick on, defiantly at odds with the graze that slanted across her high, pasty forehead.

  ‘It’s all right. You were frightened, and with good reason.’

  There was a silence, broken eventually by Mrs Berrow. She was sitting in the largest armchair. ‘There wasn’t any thinking,’ she told me. ‘We just covered our heads, and as soon as we could find a bus we cleared off without a backward look. We lost our nerve, dear, is all.’ She gulped the tea. ‘This is pure nectar. Where’s that little girl of yours?’