Читать книгу We Must Be Brave - Frances Liardet - Страница 13

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!’