Читать книгу: «We Must Be Brave», страница 4
5
PAMELA KEPT ME AWAKE for a large part of the night, a sleeper in almost perpetual motion. At six o’clock I was in the kitchen starting some bread when the telephone rang in the hall, the bell immediately drowned by thundering feet on the landing and Elizabeth’s hopeless cry, ‘Donald, you’re a plain old-fashioned disgrace!’ I heard Selwyn say, ‘Children, stop this bawling,’ but they took no notice and crowded noisily into the kitchen, Elizabeth following.
‘Donald refuses to have his hair cut,’ she announced.
I was pouring warm water into my flour. I looked up to see the older two were freshly shorn, the black-haired Hawley monk-like under his pudding-basin crop. For the first time I noticed the faintest dark down on his upper lip. ‘Hawley, you look very dapper,’ I said. ‘Donald, don’t you want to be as smart as your cousin?’
Jack, the elder of the two brothers and a russet boy, spoke for Donald. ‘He says we look like girls.’
Donald scuffed his feet by the range, his fringe in his eyes. Shorter, stockier and redder than Jack, he was a wayward Highland calf.
‘Really, Donald, dear. What sort of girl would have such a plain style?’
‘Mrs Parr, save your strength.’ Elizabeth scooped oats into a pan, her face creased with exasperation. ‘Donald won’t be told.’
The older boys sat down, their necks wet, the snipped hems of their hair still bearing the furrows of the comb. When I was fourteen, Elizabeth had cut my hair. She’d worked for Mr and Miss Dawes then, who looked after the children of the parish poor. I was older than these boys but I was nonetheless a parish child. So Elizabeth had clipped me and deloused me with gentle kindness.
I looked up, met her eyes.
‘I’ve never told Mr Parr, you know,’ I said quietly. ‘About my short crop.’
‘Of course not.’ She began to smile. ‘He doesn’t have to know everything.’
My corn goddess, Selwyn had said, when he unpinned my hair for the first time. So easy to worship you. He knew that Mother and I had fetched up in the Absaloms, but I had painted this era in broad brushstrokes, very broad strokes indeed. What corn goddess in her right mind would regale a suitor with stories of long-ago lice?
Just then Selwyn came into the kitchen. ‘Good morning, boys. I’ve been speaking to Cousin Hawley’s father. They’re all fit and well, although there’s no water and an awful lot of smoke.’
They were too proud to shed tears of relief but Hawley’s shoulders settled and Jack blinked rapidly. Donald gave a series of blowing breaths, a small bullock on a misty morning.
‘Donald won’t have his hair cut,’ I told Selwyn.
‘I know. The fearful row you made quite impinged on my telephone conversation. Donald,’ Selwyn commanded, ‘submit to a trim this evening and at Christmas I’ll take all you boys to Suggs’s in Waltham for a proper chap’s back-and-sides.’ He wagged a finger. ‘This is a gentleman’s offer, conditional upon meticulous obedience to Elizabeth. Is that understood?’
If the vocabulary was a little high, the gist was clear. ‘Yes, Mr Parr,’ Donald said, and the boys seated themselves with an awful scraping of wooden chair-legs on earthenware tiles and Selwyn sat down too. Elizabeth served the porridge while I kneaded my dough, rolling it and slapping it on the board. ‘My spoon’s jumping up and down on the table,’ said Jack. ‘Look. Bang the dough again, Mrs Parr. There!’
‘Pick your spoon up and start eating,’ Elizabeth directed him through set teeth.
The telephone rang again. Selwyn said, ‘Damn,’ and left the room.
‘Hawley’s only eight years younger than you, Mrs Parr.’ Jack started to inhale his porridge, speaking between and during mouthfuls. ‘Don’t you find that strordinary? That he’s already thirteen and you’re only twenty-one, but you’re completely grown up?’
‘She isn’t. She scrapes her porridge bowl like we do. Mr Parr, now he’s properly grown up. He’s forty.’
‘Donald, I shall tell Mr Parr how rude you’ve been about Mrs Parr.’
‘Really, Elizabeth.’ I rolled up my dough and put it back in the bowl. ‘It’s no more than the truth. I’m always starving. And Mr Parr is forty-one, to be exact.’
‘Yes, Mrs Parr. But Donald’s manner.’
Selwyn returned, unsmiling. The boys, seeing it, were quiet.
‘Who rang, dear?’
‘Sharp’s.’ He sat down again at the table. ‘The fire hoses did for the grain, nearly all of it, but there’s some dry wheat left. They’re sending for people to fetch it away and grind it.’
‘Oh lord,’ said Elizabeth. ‘They got Sharp’s.’
I rubbed dough from my fingers, awed at the knowledge that, in hitting the Southampton docks, the bombers had laid waste to the largest flour mill in the South.
I followed Selwyn out to the yard where the lorry was garaged. I tried to match my stride to his; we were both tall, but he was eager to be on his way. ‘Darling, when I dashed after the constable yesterday, I did mention that we’d be happy to hang on to Pamela for a while.’
‘We haven’t got much choice, have we, in the short term.’ He spoke absently, fumbling for his keys. We were approaching the garage.
‘What I mean is, she wouldn’t necessarily have to be with a family. People are so hard-pressed now. She might do better with us and the boys …’
Selwyn unlocked the door and snapped the padlock shut. ‘Sweetheart, these past few days we’ve all been through a great deal. You’ve been absolutely marvellous—’
‘I really haven’t. I simply did what had to be done—’
‘—but I think the experience has left us, perhaps, not quite in our right minds.’
The doors gave a rusty scream as Selwyn pulled them open. I followed him into the garage. ‘What do you mean, in our right minds? Selwyn?’
‘Darling, can we talk about this later?’ He was opening the cab door, swinging himself up into the driving seat. ‘It’s hardly the most apposite moment.’
‘Well, I’m taking her to Barker’s in Waltham this morning. For clothes. So I won’t get to the office till after lunch.’ My voice was rising. ‘But she needs some things. I can get her things, can’t I? While she’s here?’
‘Of course you can. Ellen, what’s the matter?’ He leaned down towards me.
‘Nothing. I’m perfectly all right.’ I shut my eyes. ‘And I’m certainly in my right mind.’
‘I do beg your pardon. That was a stupid thing to say.’ He smiled deliberately down into my hot eyes. ‘Take Pamela shopping and don’t worry about the office. Suky and I can dash off a couple of bills between us. I must go.’
‘Of course you must.’
He drove off, to Southampton, and Sharp’s, and the undamaged grain.
I went back inside. Stared at the slowly rising bread dough. Ate my helping of porridge, half-cold, from the pan. Then I went out to the hall and lifted the telephone receiver.
‘Waltham police station, please,’ I told the operator.
Pamela appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Miss Ell, Missis Ell!’
‘Quiet, sweetheart. I’m telephoning.’
She thumped her way down, hopping from stair to stair. Six steps from the bottom her foot slipped. ‘Pamela!’ She pitched forward and so did I, catching her as she fell against my chest and knocked me to my knees. Behind me the telephone receiver cracked against the wall.
‘Be careful!’ I yelped the words as pain shot through my knee. Pamela, unhurt, threw herself on the floor and began to wail.
‘Good grief, Mrs Parr!’ Elizabeth was standing in the doorway.
‘We’re all right.’ I levered myself upright. ‘My dear, take her into the kitchen. I must telephone.’
Sergeant Moore excused himself for eating his breakfast. His thin voice worked its way through crumbs. ‘I daresay you’d be unopposed in this scheme, madam.’
‘I’d hardly call it a scheme. Just a wish. Of course I have thought it over. Let’s say, a carefully considered wish …’
Loud screams issued from the kitchen. ‘No! No! Not porridge!’
‘Do you have other children, Mrs Parr?’
‘None of my own, but we’ve got three evacuees.’ I pressed the receiver against my ear. ‘We’re used to looking after young children. We could be—’
The kitchen door opened. ‘I! Am! Not! Eating! Nasty! Porridge!’ Pamela screamed, and thundered up the stairs.
‘– like a family to her!’ I shouted.
‘Just so,’ said the thin voice, with a little clearing of the throat, as Pamela thundered down again, giving a long, roaring bellow, as far as I could see for the simple pleasure of doing so.
When I went into the kitchen she was sitting on a chair with her knees up and the singlet pulled over them. Elizabeth was stirring a pan on the range. ‘I’m just making some more porridge, Mrs Parr.’
‘I gathered.’ We both smiled. ‘I’m taking Pamela with me to Waltham to get some clothes.’
‘Look, I’m in a bag. I’m a bag girl.’
‘Yes, Pamela. Elizabeth dear, can you knock back the bread dough later?’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘I can. But you’ll have to hurry if you’re to get the bus.’
‘Let’s go upstairs, Pamela, and get dressed.’ I made my way to the door but she remained on the chair, pulling the singlet over her toes. ‘You’re stretching the fabric now. Get up.’
‘Bag girl, bag girl. I want porridge.’
‘Oh. Now you want porridge. Well, you will have porridge, but you need to get dressed first.’
‘No, porridge now.’
‘It’s not ready. You must dress while it’s cooking. Do you want to go shopping?’
‘Yes, but after porridge.’
Elizabeth was laughing. She lifted the pan from the heat. ‘You do what Mrs Parr tells you, young lady, or I’ll feed this to the hens.’
Pamela got off the chair.
Upstairs she raced into the dressing room and out again, squeezed herself under our bed. Her laugh was rattling, hysterical. I persuaded her out after three minutes or so. I brushed her hair and she seized the brush from me, tried to brush the back of her hair with the back of the brush, refused to surrender it. I pulled her nightwear off her and she lay on the floor bicycling her legs until I caught one hard little foot and then the other and forced them into the leg-holes of her clean, dry knickers.
Now we had a bare ten minutes to get to the bus. And now she didn’t want to go shopping. I sat her on a kitchen stool; she jumped down. I pulled her back up onto the stool with my hands under her armpits and she went slack, as if boneless, flopping sideways.
‘Pamela, we’ll miss the bus!’
A spoon of porridge went in, and then I pulled the flour-sack tabard over her head. ‘I don’t want to go shopping,’ she growled, her face pasty with anger.
‘I will carry you if I have to,’ I vowed.
I did have to carry her. She dragged her feet, stumbled to her knees, squatted down, all the while yanking at my hand, until I was forced to hoist her into my arms. Just as I broke into a clumsy trot, my shopping basket bouncing against my hip, the bus to Waltham passed by the end of the lane on its way to the stop. I called out, ‘Wait! Wait!’ without the remotest chance of being heard. Perhaps a passenger was alighting: we might still make it. But the bus roared on, flashing through the gaps in the hedge, and I hurried the last few paces to the junction only to see it vanishing heedless into the dip at the bend of the road. I set Pamela on the ground, absolutely winded.
‘There,’ I said. ‘Look what you’ve done. We’ve missed the bus.’
‘I know.’ Her eyes were dancing and a delicious bloom had spread over her face.
My own eyes stung with frustrated tears. I watched the bus emerge from the dip and rush on up the hill, through the bare trees and away to Waltham.
‘I was going to get you warm clothes and new knickers, Pamela, but I can’t now. You’ll just have to sit naked while I wash your old ones. Uncomfortable, and cold.’
In response she started her nasty, rattling giggle.
‘Stop it!’ I shouted, but the giggling sharpened, accompanied now by a knowing leer.
I shoved my hands deep in my pockets and breathed right to the bottom of my lungs. ‘Pamela. Please.’
Her face crumpled and she started crying, high and strident as a lamb. I crouched down and put my arms around her.
‘Mummy’s not coming. Mummy’s not ever coming again.’
‘No. Darling, Mummy won’t come back.’
‘Never come back.’
‘No.’
‘Mummy’s gone.’
‘Yes.’
She pulled away from me, her wet eyes clear hazel, almost round.
‘She didn’t go with the candle man, did she. And she didn’t go to Aunt Margie where the grapes are either. Those are just tellings.’
‘That’s right, sweetheart.’
She leaned back into me, her breath whiffling through her nose. Then she spoke again, her lips moving against my neck. ‘I bet you’re going to say she’s gone to Heaven.’
I held her tight but without clinging. More to stop her falling. ‘Yes, Pamela, I am going to say that. Mummy’s gone to Heaven.’
Smack – her small palm hit me squarely on the cheek. She sprang backwards out of my arms. ‘Nasty lady!’ she cried, and ran off down the road towards the blind bend. There was something coming the other way. The thunder of a big engine, filling the air.
‘Pamela!’ I dashed after her. ‘Pamela!’ I shouted again, as a tractor rounded the corner, pulling a huge, spined harrow that seemed to fill the road. I ran harder, flung my arm out and grasped hold of the flour sack, tugging her onto the verge at the very instant the tractor roared past us, the harrow bouncing after it, missing us by a foot. Pamela and I both fell down, she under me, screaming like a child in a collapsing building. She flailed at me but I grabbed her hands. She screamed higher: her palms were grazed.
I heard a shout, turned my head. The tractor had slowed down and was pulling into the wide field gateway opposite the bus stop. Then the driver jumped down and ran back towards us. A small woman galumphing in wellingtons. As diminutive, sallow-faced, black-eyed as ever, and the black eyes just now furious.
‘Ellen Parr, what the bloody hell are you up to?’ bellowed Lucy Horne. ‘I nearly crushed that child!’
6
‘WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?’ I clung hard to Pamela, who was thrashing like a landed fish. ‘I’m trying to take care of her!’
‘You’re makin a bloody awful job of it!’
‘I’m aware of that!’ I cried.
She glared back, panting, her almost permanent wheeze audible after the mad dash and the telling-off. Then I let go of Pamela and put my face in my hands.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We missed the bus.’
My cares came mounting one upon the other. It was the bus, and Pamela’s naughtiness, and her dead mother. It was the white flares over Southampton, and the smell of bombing in the people’s coats. And it was Lucy herself. I had no idea of the reason for her muteness, her ostentatiously blank stares, her turning of the shoulder at church or in the village hall. She’d been my bridesmaid, for goodness’ sake.
Well, she was certainly speaking to me now.
I took my hands away from my face. She was holding a dumbstruck Pamela by one hand, alternately frowning at me and squinting up the road towards the tractor. Then she gave an explosive sigh. ‘Bloody hell, Ellen.’
‘Yes.’ I got slowly to my feet and took Pamela’s other hand. The child, ash-pale, allowed it. ‘I won’t keep you, Lucy,’ I said. ‘I need to take Pamela home and get her warm.’
Lucy gave a short chuckle. ‘Darned if that’s not my old smock, under that flour sack.’
‘Yes.’
‘Glad it came in handy.’
Another pause, which Lucy filled with a long, ruminative sniff. Then she released Pamela. ‘I’ll just run that harrow into the field. I’m going home for my dinner anyway, so you might as well have a warm-up at my house. Harry Parker won’t know if I take a couple on the back.’ She gave me a dark glance. ‘If you was inclined to come, of course.’
We rumbled into the village, perched on the back of the tractor seat. Pamela gazed dully at the receding road. I pointed out the milk churns on the high stand at the end of the main street, and she blinked slowly in response but didn’t turn her head to look. What did she care for churns, motherless as she was.
Motherless, and in the charge, furthermore, of an incompetent, childless woman. Who would give a child to me? Perhaps she should go to a family after all. At least that way she wouldn’t end up under the wheels of a tractor. I twisted round in my seat, saw Lucy’s shoulders, hunched high and stiff. She’d been on the tractor six months now, and her dainty little hands were skilful on the wheel. She’d been a kennelmaid before the war, and I knew she missed the hounds now that the hunt was closed. She would be a kennelmaid again, she hoped, when the world dropped back in kilter. I knew about these feelings and hopes of hers because George Horne, her father, had told Selwyn of them, in the course of general conversation, and Selwyn had told me. That was how I learned Lucy’s news, these days. I wondered, now that the ice had been broken in such a spectacular fashion, what this invitation would lead to.
She parked neatly on the triangle of grass at the end of the street. I clambered off the machine and jumped Pamela down. She stumbled against me as she landed. We walked the hundred yards up to the Hornes’ cottage.
‘We took three of ’em,’ Lucy said, as we went up the street, and I knew she meant refugees from Southampton.
‘Wherever did you put them?’
‘On the parlour floor.’ In the old days she’d have said, Yes, Ellen, ain’t it amazing. Being that our house is no more than a bloomin hovel. But I felt more sharply rebuked by this measured, adult response.
Pamela tugged at my hand. ‘I want to do a wee-wee.’ We hurried the last few yards. Lucy’s cottage was set high above the road, up a flight of steps, and the privy was at the end of the garden.
‘Why do we have to go in this box?’
Lucy suddenly smiled. ‘It’s the lav, dear.’
‘Look, it’s got a heart in the door.’ It did, a heart-shaped hole cut out of two planks. They had cut half a heart out of each plank and then matched them. I’d known this privy for ten years and never noticed before how exactly the two halves fitted. Lucy went indoors and I led Pamela into the lavatory.
‘Do I just wee-wee into the hole?’
I found myself laughing. ‘Yes.’
Her face darkened. ‘Mummy hasn’t gone to Heaven anyway. She said, “Pamela, I’ll always tell you where I’m going.” And she didn’t say anything about that.’ Her eyes wandered upward, caught in the shaft of light from the cut-out heart, looking for a solution. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘even if she has gone to Heaven, she won’t be long. That’s the other thing she always says. “Won’t be long, Pammie.”’
She shut her eyes and pressed her lips together.
I washed my hands and Pamela’s at the kitchen sink. Lucy handed Pamela a slice of bread and butter. The food stemmed her tears but they began to flow again the moment she swallowed the last bite. Soundless this time. ‘Come, Pamela.’ I opened my arms. ‘Sit on my lap.’
But she didn’t move. Instead she addressed Lucy, jerking her head at me. ‘She’s a horrible lady.’
‘We won’t mind her,’ Lucy said steadily, looking all the while at Pamela. ‘Now, do you know what a tortoise is?’ Pamela nodded, tears dripping from her chin. ‘There’s one in the shed. He’s in a hay box. We can go and take a peek if you like, but we can’t disturb him. It’s not a normal sleep, you see.’
They went out into the garden. I remained sitting, suddenly too tired to move. Lucy came back in. ‘She’s havin a bit of a scramble on the apple tree. Not a tear. They turn on and off like a tap, that age.’
How did people know these things?
‘How come you’ve still got her?’ Lucy went on. ‘Where’s her mam?’
‘Dead.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Dead in the Crown Hotel.’ I told Lucy about the stampede for escape, the well-meaning women. ‘Her mother never made it to Upton. I’ve only just told her.’
Lucy whistled. ‘Blimey.’ She went again to the back door, and I stirred myself and followed her. We both peered out at Pamela. She was jumping, quite unperturbed, onto and off the apple tree’s ancient trunk which bowed like a camel almost to the ground.
‘I don’t think she believes it yet,’ I said.
‘Oh, the poor mite. Oh, lord.’ Lucy gave a sad little chuckle. ‘Explains why she don’t like you. I didn’t much take to the woman who told me my ma was dead. Old boiler of a night nurse.’ She pursed her lips into an O. ‘“I have some very grave noos for yoo, Miss Horne.”’
The hooting tone made me laugh in spite of myself. ‘She didn’t talk like that!’
‘She did.’
We went back to the kitchen and Lucy cut us some bread. She laid the slices on a familiar plate, the edge decorated with pansies which years of scrubbing had worn half away to leave the odd, faded, windblown petal and glint of gilt on the stems. Years ago I had eaten a pie off that plate, and even now it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
We ate now, Lucy breathing noisily, her eyes fixed on the table. No remark, no smile came my way. Finally I took my courage in my hands.
‘What’s wrong, Lucy? What have I done? Please tell me.’
Outside in the garden Pamela chirped like a blackbird in spring. A child used to her own company.
‘You’ve been forgetful,’ she said at last. ‘Forgetful of your friends.’
My mouth fell open. ‘When did I forget you? You were my bridesmaid!’
‘Yep, and you dropped me straight afterwards. Didn’t call by, didn’t chat. Months and months. So I assumed –’ she leaned on the word, using my voice to do so ‘– I assumed that it was my pay-off, the bridesmaid job, and Mrs Parr didn’t want anything more to do with poor little Miss Horne and her chest –’ she coughed theatrically ‘– and her teeth and all.’
Lucy was missing six teeth, many at the front. The teeth were long gone and her gaps were familiar to her friends but all the same she pulled her top lip down to smile, to speak to strangers. And she had coughed every day of her life.
‘I invited you to our garden party. You didn’t reply.’
‘Oh, yes. Your garden party.’
She spoke softly, as if to a silly child. I studied my clasped hands in sadness and shame. The invitation had been written on a card: Mr and Mrs Selwyn Parr, At Home. I hadn’t even popped my head round her door to ask her in person. Merely summoned her to mill about on my lawn with tea and cake, as if she were any one of my acquaintances instead of my oldest friend.
‘Mrs Parr was happy,’ I said after a while. ‘She wasn’t used to that. It made her clumsy.’ I looked up at her. ‘Lucy, please come and see us. We can bake you a potato, and you can share our parsnip stew. It won’t be as nice as yours, because I can’t cook like your nan. But we’ll spare no effort.’
She licked her finger and dabbed at the crumbs on the plate, gathering them up. I did the same thing at home after the children had finished. When she spoke her voice was gruff.
‘They do say you must forgive newly-weds. Their minds run on one thing. Though in your case it was Greek poems, like as not.’
‘Yes, it was. The Iliad. He was teaching me Greek.’
She burst into a cackle. ‘You pair!’
I laughed too. ‘It was fun. We’ve got no time for lessons now, of course.’
‘How’s it been, Ellen? What you expected?’
A mariage blanc, Lady Brock had said. Have you heard the expression, my dear?
The sheets of our marriage bed unfurled, heavy white linen. Is it the French for white wedding, Lady Brock?
No, my dear, it is not.
Lucy was gazing at me. How dark her eyes were. In the gloom of the kitchen I could hardly distinguish iris from pupil.
‘It’s been exactly as I expected,’ I said after a moment. ‘And I’ve honestly never been more content, Lucy.’
Pamela was still on the apple tree. The bark was fissured and slippery with moss but she was sure-footed, turning on her toe at the end of each pass. As she walked she raised a scolding finger. ‘No, no, you’re naughty donkeys.’ Her voice carried in the still air. So clear. She would sing well. Selwyn could teach her. She saw me and jumped down immediately, ran to me with her arms open, collided with my midriff. I clung to her and she to me, her arms bound around my waist, her head pillowed on my belly, all her animosity gone. The door creaked and Lucy appeared on the step, her face sallow in the low light. Pamela continued to cling. ‘Ellen,’ she said. ‘Ell.’
‘Did the tortoise wake up?’ Lucy called. Pamela buried her face in my skirt.
‘Pamela, answer Lucy.’
Pamela turned her head. ‘No, he didn’t, Lucy-Lou.’ She broke away from me and took Lucy’s hand. ‘Come on, Lou and Ell. Come and see my donkeys. They’re all tied up by the tree trunk.’ Together we went to the apple tree, Lucy and I, with Pamela between us. We pretended to admire the donkeys. There were a great many of them, all with complicated, mutable names. Pamela became lost, happily, in her naming.
‘Here’s some news,’ Lucy said. ‘Dan’s home for Christmas.’
‘Oh, how splendid!’
Daniel Corey was a friend from our childhood at Upton School. We hadn’t seen him since the summer when he came home on leave after Dunkirk. Then he was sent away into the east of England, there to transform the flat shoreline into a bulwark against enemy landings. ‘Think of all those concrete blocks,’ I said now. ‘Like giant sugar lumps, all along the beaches. They’ll stop a tank dead.’
‘That’s what Dan says.’
‘It’s true. Anyway, the Germans can’t bring an army across. Colonel Daventry says they haven’t got the boats.’
‘Let’s hope he’s right.’ Lucy stared for a moment into the middle distance. Then she sniffed. ‘Tell you one thing. If those buggers come up the high street, there’ll be trouble if they shoot me dead. I’m the only one who can start that bloomin tractor.’
I couldn’t help smiling. ‘How is it on the farm?’
‘Cold. The dogs, they worked up a good fug.’
The first proper grin of the old days.
‘I was thinking of that pie earlier,’ I found myself saying. ‘The first one I had from your nan. I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘Oh, yes. Nan’s flaky pastry.’ Her face softened. ‘You was so perishing hungry.’ She released Pamela’s hand, patting the back of it. ‘I’ve got to get back to that harrow. Stay and play with those donkeys a while, unless you want a lift back to the turning?’
‘No, we’ll walk.’
‘I’ll say ta-ta, then, Pamela.’ She went off towards the steps. ‘Shut the gate,’ she called back, ‘or Mary Wiley’s dog’ll come and have a go at Maurice.’
‘Who’s Maurice?’
‘The tortoise,’ Pamela said. ‘Ta-ta, Lou.’
Pamela and I made our way home, unprovisioned. We’d all have an early tea of potato pie if there was some lard. I hoped there was some lard. Beacon Hill was caught in pale sunlight. I wanted to take Pamela there and lie on the top as I had with my brother Edward when we were young. She hung on my hand, whining, dragging her feet. ‘That bread didn’t touch the sides, did it?’
‘Touch the sides of what?’
‘The sides of your tummy.’ But she didn’t really understand. I drew her onward down the winter lane to home, and found four loaves on a rack on the kitchen table. Quickly I put them away before she caught sight of them. Then I took her upstairs to get warm under the bedcovers. She stared at me as I moved around the room, so small and huddled in the bed. I was already cold and the sight of her, snug against the pillows, made me feel even colder.
‘I’ll get in with you, Pamela. Five minutes can’t hurt.’
She rolled away from me and started to breathe hard, in and out. I wondered for a moment if she was starting to sob, but I soon realized she was simply puffing and blowing for the enjoyment of it, like a small engine at rest. The rhythm soothed me, and I fell headlong into a deep sleep.
The slam of the front door woke me. The last boy into the house walloped it shut. Pamela was now crying quietly.
She elbowed me away. ‘No. I want to be on my own.’
I made some pastry while the boys, subdued and orderly, peeled the potatoes. ‘Pamela’s lost her mother,’ I told them. ‘She died in the bombing.’ I hated saying this, but they had to know. ‘Only speak about this if she does. Be as kind as you possibly can.’
Pamela came downstairs, and the boys fell into a deathly, unnatural quiet until Hawley lifted her onto a kitchen stool and gave her a slice of carrot. She ate it, and started to groan with hunger. I didn’t offer her any bread because it would immediately mean four slices off the first loaf, since the boys wouldn’t stand for being left out. When suppertime came she beat the boys to an empty plate, and Donald, used to being the youngest and hungriest, was aggrieved. ‘She’s as greedy as a dog, Mrs Parr!’
‘Donald, that is not kind. Pamela’s hungry.’
‘She’s going to eat all our food. Munch and gobble up the meat and everything nice.’
‘She’s got her own coupons. For that teasing, Donald, you stack the dishes. Hawley, please take them to the sink so Jack can start the washing-up. Pamela, darling, please don’t cry. There, there, darling. Oh, Donald, don’t start too, for heaven’s sake.’ The uproar drew Elizabeth from the vegetable garden. She clasped Pamela to her, and stood viewing me in the midst of my domestic straits. No help, no calming shushes came my way. Instead, unaccountably, in the face of the sobbing of the two younger children, the clattering of plates, the strewing of scraps of potato peel on the floor, the bullock-like jostling of the two older boys at the sink – in the face of this, Elizabeth succumbed to helpless laughter.
The boys took Pamela upstairs for a game of snap. Elizabeth, Selwyn and I tackled the remains of the potato pie. The dish was wholesome, with a dried sprig of mint snipped small and mixed with the potatoes. Elizabeth and I ate with relish but Selwyn left a slab of pastry on his plate.
‘I’m sorry we missed the bus, darling. I’d have made a better job of supper, if we’d been shopping.’
