We Must Be Brave Read online

  Mrs Horne nodded. ‘Very acceptable, dear. Thank you.’

  After we washed the dishes we sat in the parlour as we usually did. I was secretly recovering from the sharp pain in my stomach which invariably came after eating so much delicious food, sharper today because of the impending tea. Lucy’s father sat outside on a stool with his pipe. Lucy and her grandmother embroidered. We enjoyed a spell of quiet, and then Lucy said, in a thick voice, ‘Ellen’s got to go.’

  ‘I know,’ Mrs Horne said calmly, without raising her eyes. I watched her deft, calloused old fingers stabbing and looping. An apple swelled in gradations from green to gold to deep pink. Lucy was talented but her grandmother’s work was glorious. The older her hands became, the more beautiful the result. I cleared my throat. ‘Lucy, would you care to walk with me to the Hall?’

  She shook her head. ‘I should get up to the kennels.’

  ‘You’re not wanted there till evening time,’ said her father from the doorway.

  ‘Go on, girl,’ Mrs Horne told her. ‘Get your sulky face out of my sight.’

  Selwyn met us at the door in the wall of the estate, where Lucy and Daniel and I had entered when we were young. Selwyn shook my hand and Lucy’s. I wondered whether she would suck her lip down over the gaps in her teeth, as she tended to do with strangers, but she didn’t this time because she said nothing at all, simply giving Selwyn a brief black stare as he said, ‘How do you do?’ and then turning away. We both watched her stiff back retreating. I was confounded by her rudeness. But Selwyn just said, ‘She’s a shy little thing.’

  We passed in under the high elms that were loud with rooks today and walked up the path towards Mr Kennet’s shed. Selwyn chuckled. ‘Bill gets up a tremendous fug in that hut, doesn’t he, with his charcoal stove. It must be the warmest place in Upton Hall. Do you want to look in on him?’

  ‘I think not today.’

  Two sparrows in the birdbath wriggled and flicked water with their wings. We walked on towards the house.

  17

  ‘NIPPER,’ shouted Lady Brock, as the dog flung itself to the end of its chain. ‘Nipper, for God Almighty’s sake.’

  We edged past the limit of the chain, Selwyn laughing. ‘Hello, Nipper,’ he said. ‘So nice, to be greeted this way by an old friend.’

  ‘He’s losing his marbles. He doesn’t recognize you. Everyone is new. Imagine that.’ Lady Brock gave me a wide grin. The hat was still roosting on her head. ‘Look at this thing,’ she said, following my eyes. ‘It needs to be put out of its misery. Come in. Mrs Hicks has commanded us to go into the sun room, since she burst a cushion in the drawing room and the air’s full of feathers.’ She took us inside and pointed across the hall. ‘Ellen, my dear, disport yourself in there. I shall go and order tea. Selwyn, would you be kind and play to Michael?’

  ‘It would be a pleasure.’ He mounted the stairs, glanced back at me with a smile.

  ‘He won’t be long,’ said Lady Brock. ‘Sir Michael’s been looking forward to some Chopin all afternoon, but he’ll only want a quarter of an hour or so. We moved the piano upstairs a month ago. It had to go through the gallery windows. Ted Blunden and Ernie Mount couldn’t budge it with their block and tackle, so we got the firemen over from Waltham and they inserted it in a trice. I have great confidence in them should we ever be ablaze.’

  She disappeared down the hallway. I went where she’d bidden me. The air in there was sunlit and shaded, cool and thick and green with the smell of earthenware pots of alyssum which were ranked, shelf upon shelf, along one portion of the rear wall. A cactus grew up the edge of the huge glass doors, metal-framed and the metal painted black, which led out to the steps and the garden. The wicker chair creaked as I sat in it.

  Dimly through the green the single notes came down from above, rounded, dropping. I hadn’t known that Selwyn played the piano. It floored me. He’d only told me words. I hadn’t seen or felt anything of his life, his world, until now.

  I couldn’t stay still. At the other end of the sun room was another set of doors. They led into a gloomy dining room where the curtains were drawn. And beyond that, through another doorway, the hall, and somewhere beyond, the clink of crockery. I followed the sound and came upon the kitchen where a woman was pouring boiling water from a kettle into a teapot, face set upon the task. ‘I believe you must be Mrs Hicks.’

  She glanced up, and down again. Her face mumping around toothless jaws. ‘And I believe you must be Ellen Calvert.’ She took a tea-strainer between thumb and finger and placed it on its pot. ‘I know about you. You and the Horne girl, pushing your dirty little bodies at my nephew.’

  She was surely raving. I opened my mouth to tell her, but she was quicker. ‘Samuel Pearce on the railway line. His ear and his neck scalded cruel. I wouldn’t serve you so much as a cube of sugar if it was up to me, so you’re lucky it ent.’

  She set down a white milk jug. The rim and spout and handle decorated with forget-me-nots. No, they weren’t. They were speedwells. I stood, once again pied with chalk and coal dust, stinking and trembling.

  Lady Brock came in. ‘Ah, Ellen. You’ve come to admire the copper. Good. Let me show you William’s. It’s better than his apprentice-master’s, though he would never agree.’

  I followed her silently into a buttery. I glared up at the shining pans and kettles hanging in rows from the ceiling. My hands were shaking, so I made them into one large fist and held them at my waist. ‘Those are most fine.’ I found my voice shaking too.

  ‘You mustn’t mind Mrs Hicks. She—’

  ‘It wasn’t even true. I did not push myself—’

  ‘She can be the most vicious animal.’ Lady Brock reached up, took down a pan. ‘Look. A fish kettle.’ She handed it to me and bent to a cupboard. ‘Here’s the drainer and the lid. Look at the handles, look how the lips are rolled.’ She turned the pan, letting the light play over the beaten, rosy gold. ‘William made that when he was sixteen. He’d barely been apprenticed a year. And then the Boche blew off his hand, or most of it.’ Her eyes met mine, her mouth in a level line. The top lip protruded as before. ‘I knew you came to William’s shed. With Lucy Horne and Daniel Corey.’

  ‘Yes.’ I still felt sick from the attack. ‘I used to do their sums and spellings for them.’

  She smiled. ‘William’s a sweet man, an unimpeachable man. Unlike some, gross people, who take advantage of good girls. Despicable people.’ She held me in a steady gaze, and Sam Pearce was condemned. ‘The worst of it is,’ she went on, ‘the good men must all carry on, even though the war did so much damage. William. My husband …’ She took the kettle from me and reached up with her long arms to suspend it from its hook. ‘Selwyn,’ she added lightly, turning towards the door.

  ‘Selwyn?’ I said to her back.

  ‘He never thought he’d come to the mill, of course. He wasn’t the heir, you see; it was his poor cousin Victor. But Victor and Henry both died at the Somme. Selwyn wanted to be a priest, but the war made everything harder. He abandoned his training.’

  She began to walk back through the kitchen, now empty of Mrs Hicks and the tray. ‘He went to Jerusalem, taught in a school. Oh, I missed him dreadfully during those years.’ We crossed the hall and travelled into the gloom of the dining room. ‘I was glad when his uncle died, because I knew it would bring him home.’ She came to a halt in the doorway of the sun room. Above us the notes of the piano continued to fall. ‘Ellen,’ said Lady Brock, ‘I’m telling you all this because you’re very young. Selwyn’s not a demonstrative man, but he’s very much in love with you—’

  I closed my eyes as a glorious golden blush washed from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. ‘Oh …’

  ‘He’s in love with you, and he’s never been properly in love before. His life has been – dreadfully dislocated. It’s left him …’

  I opened my eyes as the music came to a stop above us.

  ‘Somewhat damaged.’

  I shook my head, bemused. ‘I’ve seldo
m met a more … undamaged person.’

  She covered her mouth with her hand, as if to stem laughter, but I realized it wasn’t that. She was trying to keep words inside her.

  ‘Do tell me, please, Lady Brock.’

  But she turned and walked ahead of me into the sun room. She started pulling down the blinds at one end of the room, intensifying the green of the shade. ‘Don’t you adore alyssum?’

  It might have been chickweed for all I cared. ‘Lady Brock. Please. Whatever it is …’

  ‘Have you heard the expression mariage blanc, my dear?’

  I pondered the words. ‘Is it the French for “white wedding”?’

  ‘No, it is not, my dear.’ Footsteps sounded in the hall. Lady Brock bent to the tea tray as Selwyn came in.

  ‘Sir Michael wishes to sleep.’ Selwyn gave a wan smile. ‘He won’t have Nurse Fletcher give him his dose. He’d prefer his dear love, he says.’

  Lady Brock poured milk into each cup before standing up straight. She turned to me. ‘Come up with me, my dear. Sir Michael has a rather glorious bedroom ceiling.’

  I followed her up some dark stairs to an oak-panelled corridor with a door at the end. She took a few paces, then came to a halt. ‘Ellen, a mariage blanc in good plain English is a marriage without any breeding going on.’

  A hot blush rose up my neck. ‘Ah. Oh. I see.’

  Lady Brock shook her head. ‘Oh God, Ellen. I’ve said far too much. I’ll leave it to Selwyn …’ She trailed off with a sigh. ‘He’s such a bally fool.’

  She pushed open the door and a barrel-vaulted ceiling yawned above me, cross-hatched with heraldic beasts and symbols, a chequered pageant of the Middle Ages. In each square a sword, a griffin, a shield, a dragon, all wound about with leaves, rare lobed fruits, crested birds. I held my breath along with the curved in-breath of the ceiling. Reflected in a long mirror was a slanted shard of a man, a face white above dark bedclothes, lips dry and parted. ‘Darling?’ whispered the lips. Lady Brock patted my arm, and went in, closing the door behind her.

  When I returned to the sun room I found the French windows open and Selwyn sitting outside, on the third stone step, clasping his arms around his knees. I went and sat beside him. His fingers clenched and unclenched. He was a thin man; his wrists, where they came out of the sleeves, all sinew and bone. I placed one hand upon his clenching fists to stop him saying what he was going to say, but he spoke anyway. ‘Ellen, I’ve done something very stupid. I should never have asked you to tea. I’m sorry. I can no longer see you.’

  I took my hand away and fixed my eyes on the tops of the elms. The sky was blue behind the rooks’ nests, pale blue, and the nests straggling. It was astonishing, how much it hurt.

  ‘Is it something to do with breeding?’ My lips trembled as I spoke. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t understand what Lady Brock said. I mean, of course I know about that sort of thing, but …’

  He buried his head in his hands and laughed in despair. ‘It appears Althea has blundered in on my prepared speech. Pre-empted it somewhat. I don’t blame you for being confused—’

  ‘Can’t you explain it to me?’

  ‘Not now. It’s become a bit of a mess. I would need to write it in a letter.’

  ‘A letter?’ Anger seethed unbidden up the column of my torso. ‘What am I, a fainting maiden? Selwyn, I’m old enough for you to be frank.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of age.’

  I got to my feet and shook my skirt out. I took the remaining steps down with caution, as my knees felt unstrung. Even so, it was ungainly. His shoes scraped on the step behind.

  I turned back. ‘So we won’t meet again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let’s not prolong it. Please take me back to Waltham. I’ll send a note to Lady Brock and apologize for spoiling the tea.’

  He went into the house, spent five minutes there in conversation. Then he did as he was bid.

  He drove faster than before, running through the gears, his hands alive on the wheel. We barrelled through the light and shade of the lanes, and my anger and pain were lit up by the beauty of the day.

  ‘Ellen, you are absolutely splendid—’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’

  We screeched to the junction. He stared at me. A man who’d never in his life been told to shut up.

  ‘Be careful, Selwyn,’ I said with satisfaction. ‘That was a skid.’ I sat back in my seat. ‘My father used to skid the car on purpose, to make my mother scream. She loved it. Anyway, what you did was hardly worth the name. My father would have called that a mere wheel protest. I doubt you’re capable of a real skid.’

  He said nothing. Gave me a sudden white smile, and put the car into gear. We tore out onto the road to Waltham. The corner approached but he didn’t brake. A girl appeared, leading a donkey. Girl and donkey whipped towards us, the donkey skittering on the bank, the girl clinging to its halter. ‘I think that’s Dan’s sister, Esther Corey.’ I craned to look. Esther was mouthing, her face crimson. ‘Selwyn, you road hog!’

  In answer he put the handbrake on. The rear of the car swung round. My head brushed the doorframe. We curtseyed against the hedge and bitter smoke funnelled up into the window. I gave a ludicrous, wobbling scream of delight. ‘You’ll ruin the tyres.’

  ‘They’re my tyres,’ he said calmly.

  We set off in the direction we had come. I hid my face from Esther, who shook her fist as we passed. He took another turn. The road burrowed through the trees down to the river. Then a sharp right turn, and we were on a track above two sunken hay-meadows where the grass grew thick, and there, on a rise, was a cottage with a wall to one side and a great high building beyond the wall. We were at Upton Mill.

  He brought the car to a halt. A fine perspiration shone on his forehead. His eyes were once again bright blue. ‘Come on in and wash your face.’ He smiled. ‘We shipped a little dust during our antics.’

  The front door closed with a soft puff of air. ‘This door fits beautifully,’ I said. ‘What a silly thing to notice at a time like this.’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘You’re a sensible girl. A sensible girl who likes fast driving. This is Elizabeth.’

  And so it was, Mr and Miss Dawes’s Elizabeth, standing at the end of the hall.

  ‘Good heavens.’ I was embarrassed. ‘Elizabeth. How nice.’

  ‘Mr and Miss Dawes moved to Bournemouth.’ She smiled. ‘Too far for me.’

  I scrubbed at my face with my handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry, I’m in such a state …’

  ‘You was in a state the last time.’ She was still smiling. ‘I’ll show you where to wash and then I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘Take her upstairs,’ Selwyn said. ‘I’ll just be in the sitting room.’

  Elizabeth led me up to a spartan stone bathroom where I washed my face. My hair was coming out of its bun. I pulled out the clip and the combs and ran my fingers through it as it fell around my shoulders. I glared at my reflection, and my reflection glared back.

  When I came out Elizabeth was on the landing. She was carrying a large brown paper parcel. ‘I was just going to put these in the airing cupboard.’ She set the parcel down on a chest on the landing and untied the string. ‘We send them to Peck’s Laundry. They’re the best.’ Inside the parcel was a bale of four white sheets, the crispest linen. She pulled them out. I followed her to the airing cupboard and we passed a room with a half-open door, and inside it a mirror, and in the mirror a bed with a golden-brown polished headboard and a bare mattress. ‘I’ll do his bed this afternoon,’ Elizabeth said. She opened the airing cupboard and lavender washed out on the warm air, fresh and clean, and I was transported, a young child again in all my riches, sliding my hot summer legs into the scented cool of laundered sheets.

  Elizabeth put the new sheets onto the shelf. She tucked lavender bags, flat gauze pleated bags tied with a purple ribbon, between the fat folds. ‘I make them fresh every year. Smells nice, doesn’t it.’

  There were pillowca
ses too, ironed into squares. I wanted to bury my face in them. ‘It’s gorgeous.’ I took the sheets from the shelf. ‘I’ll do the bed.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Calvert. It’s hardly proper.’

  The lavender bags fell onto the floor. I picked them up. ‘You can tell him, Elizabeth.’

  The sheet floated out before settling four-square onto the bed. Even before our fall began I used to help Jennie, and Mother used to watch. Hospital corners, miss, said Jennie. I pulled out a sharp triangular fold and drove it deep under the mattress. The sheet was tight, a level plain of right-angled fields. Selwyn was in the doorway. I saw him as I straightened up, moving towards me, towards the bed. He was taking his glasses off. His eyes were wide, bright, haunted.

  ‘Ellen, my dear, I simply can’t—’

  ‘I’ve nearly finished,’ I said. ‘Don’t sit down on the bed. Don’t sit down. Selwyn, you’ve ruined it.’

  I wept, my hands on my wet cheeks. He held out his arms.

  There were so many things on a man, so many things to dig into one. Belt, braces, watch, cufflinks. Spectacles. And their heavy, iron-tipped shoes. Each and every one dug into me. He was warm, lean, lithe. He smelled of cotton, heated cotton. My heart pounded but I felt utterly safe. He pushed the hair from my face and smoothed it over my shoulder. ‘It’s astonishing. Like a sheaf of wheat …’

  His face, close up, was thinner, younger.

  ‘What did you want to say, Selwyn? What can you not do?’

  He swallowed, looked away at the window. ‘Ellen, do you know the story of Sarah and Tobias?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Tobias …’ he closed his eyes ‘… and Sarah … Well, the crux of the matter is that on their wedding night they remain chaste.’

  ‘Chaste.’

  ‘Chaste.’ His eyelids trembled. His shoulder pinned my arm. Soon I’d have to move. ‘They pray …’ he cleared his throat ‘… and then they go to sleep for the night.’

  There was silence. The headboard creaked as I began to tug my arm from beneath him. ‘I’m afraid I missed a lot of Sunday School—’