We Must Be Brave. Frances Liardet

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

      ‘I wasn’t blaming you.’ He pushed away the pastry with his fork, politely, to show he had finished. ‘You were saddled with Pamela. By the way – was she playing with the telephone today?’

      ‘The telephone?’

      ‘There’s a crack in the receiver.’

      I remembered the bang it had made as it hit the wall. I hadn’t noticed any damage when I’d made my own telephone call. But then I’d been so flustered.

      ‘She shouldn’t, you know. It’s not a toy.’

      ‘I realize that. No, it wasn’t Pamela.’

      ‘Did you dash it to the ground in rage?’ He gave me a tired smile. ‘I wouldn’t blame you, if you were speaking to the Ministry. We’ll have to do another letter. It’s getting ridiculous.’

      The Ministry. Of course. We needed to replace the metal screen which stopped the flotsam of the channel from getting into the mill turbine. The screen was rusting, much patched with wire. The next split would be irreparable. But we couldn’t obtain a new screen without an order from the Ministry.

      ‘I haven’t yet. I’m so sorry.’ I picked up my plate and clinked the cutlery onto it. ‘I must have replaced the receiver clumsily.’ I stood up and took his plate. ‘I wasn’t saddled with Pamela, actually. We just set out too late. It won’t happen again.’

      Elizabeth and I carried the plates to the kitchen. When I returned alone he was sitting with his head in one hand. I sat down beside him without speaking. After a moment he lifted his head and stared at the curtained window.

      ‘I passed a house today,’ he said. ‘With its face torn away, only the gable remaining.’ His eyes wandered towards mine. ‘It reminded me of someone I met in the hospital gardens. Nothing left below the browline, yet somehow the man was alive. Bandaged, of course. With a tube for breathing.’

      Where had Selwyn been treated after the Great War? Somewhere in the North, I thought, a stately house of grey stone, viridian lawns, a cedar casting black shadow. He’d told me about it when we met, but the details had since escaped me. We were in peacetime back then. Why should I remember?

      ‘I didn’t realize there were any … I thought your hospital was only for nerve patients.’

      ‘It was.’

      The horror reigned inside me for a long moment. Then I opened my palm and put my hand over his and formed my lips for speaking. ‘Next time,’ I said, ‘I will go to Southampton. You know how much I like driving the lorry.’

      His own lips moved. ‘It’s no picnic. Slag heaps of rubble. And smoke.’

      ‘You’d better give me some tips, then.’

      ‘Practical girl.’

      Elizabeth came in from the kitchen bearing toast cut into fingers and sprinkled with a few grains of sugar. ‘Pudding,’ she announced.

      I put Pamela to bed without opposition. I said that it was her turn to tell me a story, and so she did, one about her imaginary donkeys.

      ‘Did you know, Mummy was killed in the bombs?’ she suddenly said, on the edge of sleep. ‘That’s what Donald said when we were doing snap with the cards.’

      I sat back down on the bed and clasped her shoulders. ‘I was going to tell you, darling, but I thought I would wait until you asked. You must forgive Donald. He doesn’t think before he speaks—’

      ‘All the boys said it.’ Her eyes were limpid, tearless. ‘They also said you can’t come back from Heaven. You can look down, though. Hawley’s grandpa’s looking down, he says. He went up there from drinking drinks, though, not from the bombs.’ She rolled away and put her thumb in her mouth.

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