5. Mrs Endicott asked if the window could be opened as she was feeling stifled and her chest is at her.
6. Dottie went to fetch Doris who had spent rather a long time in the facilities.
7. Kitty dropped her handkerchief on the rug and we all had a good giggle because it looked for all the world as if she threw it! Pamela asked us to concentrate and Mrs Endicott apologized for being giddy.
8. Jane suggested we start an Ambridge Pig Club. Doris said her husband is kept busy tracking down illegal pigs and Kitty asked how can a pig be illegal and Doris said pigs have to be licensed by the SPKC and Pamela said there is a blessed organization for every silly little thing since the war began and this committee is not about pigs thank you so could we get on.
9. Kitty asked did we know that midsummer is a witches’ sabbath called Litha. (Note to self: check sp.) She said ‘Crazy things happen at Litha’.
10. Mrs Endicott came over queer.
The meeting didn’t end, it just dribbled to a standstill.
Doris was off like a goat, and Dottie followed with Mrs Endicott. Jane was still sitting, still bellyaching about Agnes’s failings, and Pamela was arranging her witty little hat in the mirror over Kitty’s fireplace.
It had been a mistake to host. The sight of Alec’s cufflink winking up from the rug had made Kitty want to throw up. The gilded ‘P’ glinting from its oval of indigo enamel had reared up, enormous, right by Pamela’s foot.
She felt she had made a good fist of pretending to drop her hanky. The cufflink sat fat like a smuggled gun in her pocket. That was close, she thought, still sweating.
The room looked shabby to Kitty. Why hadn’t she noticed that everything was too small. Too worn. Pamela’s svelte silhouette emphasized the sagging upholstery and the faded chintzes that argued with each other from every chair. Kitty couldn’t supply the little sundries that Pamela showered them with. No cake. No cordial. Her larder was barren. The bill at Frank Brown’s shop made her reluctant to go in and face his gentle, persistent query about when might she settle up.
‘Who are these lovely people in this photograph? Are they mother and father?’ Pamela spoke with a hatpin in her teeth, the hat cocked.
‘Yes.’ The Hennesseys, framed on the mantelpiece, were small and round and sheepish; they were unused to being photographed and it showed. It had never occurred to Kitty before, the tawdriness of the portrait’s black and white background. The limp curtains. The wallpaper marbled with damp.
‘They must worry about you, on your own with a little one, and the country at war.’ Pamela smiled at Kitty in the mirror.
‘They do.’ Kitty had never thought to be ashamed of her parents until this minute. Pamela would be baffled by the Hennessey home, a Georgian mansion of strict symmetry in the centre of Dublin. Abandoned by its colonial owners, it now housed fourteen families, each clan sharing a single room to eat and wash and sleep. Her own mother had long since burned the shutters, with their ornate carving, for firewood.
‘No doubt Noel’s people are good to you.’ Not a question. Pamela assumed the British did their duty.
‘Well, yes.’ The Dibden-Rawleses paid Kitty a tiny allowance to stay away from them. They imagined themselves generous, no doubt, as people removed from poverty often do. They didn’t know, as Kitty must, the price to the nearest farthing of children’s shoes.
A foreigner, and a low caste one at that, Kitty heard the whoosh of air in her ears as she fell through the cracks of English life. She felt misunderstood on a fundamental level – the way she walked, the way she spoke, what made her laugh and what caused her to retreat.
She only felt known when she was with Alec.
As Pamela took up her handbag and gloves, the former patent leather, the latter hand-stitched kid the colour of setting plaster, Kitty re-examined that thought. Surely, she and Alec were too early in their love affair for such depth. Does he know me yet? Were they still acting with one another?
The women were so slow, so careful with their goodbyes and their gratitude. Oh, just go! she thought, feeling second-rate. She had none of their bovine self-confidence; I am all need. She needed protection. Security, both financial and emotional. A father for Caroline.
‘We must be vigilant at the pageant,’ Pamela said, as, last of all, she took her leave. ‘Mustn’t let those naughty witches of yours use their sabbath to ruin our carefully laid plans.’
‘They wouldn’t dare!’ Why did I mention Litha? Everything Kitty said and thought and did seemed idiotic when Pamela turned her gaze upon it. Pamela and Alec were two of a kind. They needed nothing; they had everything already. And here’s me, scrabbling at the windowpane of their life.
If Kitty was going to win Alec she would have to fight for him. And Pamela looked like a woman who had never lost an argument in her life.
* * *
May, true to the adage, had come in like a lamb and was going out like a lion.
Clouds had been bullied away, and a determined, jolly sun shone on the clearing where Kitty sat on a torn and patched picnic rug sprung from her attic.
She was awaiting her… what? There was no title for Alec. Not one she could countenance, anyway. ‘Lover’ sounded thrilling only if you were European. ‘Fancy man’ made her imagine him in lace and velvet. ‘Husband’: this was one title he could claim.
He’s a husband, just not my husband.
Lying back, propped up on her elbows, she tapped her shoeless feet together, enjoying the pagan feel of it. She scanned the trees. It was secret, this patch. But not silent. Summer hummed in the grass. She fancied she heard a giggle, and chided herself for listening to Jane Gilpin’s ghost stories.
Which excuse, she wondered, would Alec offer his wife for today’s absence? She hoped he could get away; their trysts were by nature provisional. She had put on her best suspender belt. Washed her hair, with vinegar in the final rinse for the shine he always commented on.
Lower Loxley was the epicentre of pageant activity; the house would be a-buzz. Possibly he could slip out under cover of the melee; Pamela would be absorbed in banners and bunting, and besides, a wife who doesn’t suspect is less liable to ask questions.
The sordidness of duping Pamela, who trusted him and, if it came to that, trusted Kitty too, tended to suck the colour out of the day, so Kitty pushed, hard, with the small hands that could sew and soothe and arouse, until there was distance between herself and the beastliness.
Edicts had been issued from the big house over the past few days. Tasks and chores allotted, favours called in. Kitty had sewn bunting from old bandages. She had ferried cornflowers, sweet peas and blousy peonies for Elizabeth I’s headdress from Mrs Endicott’s garden to Brookfield. She had let out the smocking on Caroline’s best dress, or perhaps it was Caroline’s least bad dress; all the child’s clothes had lived a life before they reached Noon Cottage. There was nothing new for Caroline, nothing shiny.
A cracked twig made her sit up. Nothing. Nobody.
Kitty had spent much of the morning daydreaming about sex with Alec. It was different to sex with Noel, the only other sex she had to compare it to. For one thing, she was a willing partner with Alec, not cornered, not begged, not hectored. Alec didn’t sweat onto her face, and he didn’t cry afterwards. He didn’t tell her that she was the reason he was the way he was.
Noel had been drinking since he could get up on tiptoes and reach the family decanters. Kitty knew his thirst wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t, she repeated again. It took a great deal of repeating because Noel had worked hard to make his accusations credible. Where are you, Alec? His kisses would drown out the grim march-past of images that was Noel’s legacy.
He might pass her a few bob, too. The first time he’d done it she’d hesitated. Should she be insulted? What was he suggesting? The second time she saw it for what it was; he was attempting to look after her in the way a man like Alec looked after those around him.
She had taken the three shillings here, the odd pound there. It k
ept her the right side of the red line that meant no supper, no soap. And it helped her send money home to her parents. She didn’t tell Alec that. He wouldn’t understand why she had to do so; he had grown up in comfort, with money trickling one way only, down to the next generation.
‘Ow!’
‘Darling!’ Kitty leapt up. She was all energy. She vibrated. She laughed at him as he struggled through the hedging that ran, as if planted to protect Sleeping Beauty, all around the clearing.
‘Damn and blast it!’ Alec laughed with her as he faltered, hostage to the brambles. He freed himself and raced to her, almost knocking her flat, but instead sweeping her up and swinging her round in their magic circle where such behaviour was possible.
She was breathless. She tried to kiss him but he didn’t want to kiss. He wanted to hold her. His arms were tight, and he rocked, his head dug into her shoulder.
This urgency was familiar from Caroline, when the child woke in the night, or encountered some fearsome bug on the floor. Kitty let herself be held, and she held him back. She stroked his hair and felt him sink into her.
She wondered if anybody had ever stroked his hair before, and felt powerfully sorry for him. He had ebullient dark hair which he coerced into a glossy swimming hat. I would have you grow it, she thought. He would be a wild thing, with a head of black curls that moved in the wind.
They sat awkwardly, still entwined. They lay. She found a way of nestling into him that meant they were closer than close and could both watch the unrelenting blue of the sky.
Alec talked and talked and talked. Dunkirk. Retreat. ‘It looks bad. We’re on the run, Kitkat.’
‘Never,’ said Kitty. ‘You Brits, you win, that’s what you do. It’ll work out.’
‘They’ve asked for civilian boats. We’re on our bloody knees.’
‘Boats? What, to go over and, like, rescue the soldiers?’ That did sound bad. Making-do taken to extremes. Could wars be won with little boats?
‘I’ve offered my boat, of course.’
‘You have a boat?’
Yes, there was a family boat, of course. A ‘pleasure launch’, moored at their ‘summer place in Cornwall’. Kitty was alienated by the vast hinterland of experiences and things Alec shared with Pamela. ‘Lookit,’ she said, leaning over him on one forearm. ‘We’re on our own-io here. We have this wonderful spot in this wonderful wood. No eyes on us. Nobody scribbling notes to pin up in the middle of the village.’ Kitty undid his watch and laid it on the blanket. ‘Let’s steal one hour. I’ll time us. One hour when this hedge is a moat and nothing can get at us. We deserve it, Alec. Love deserves it.’
‘You deserve it, darling. Oh, you really do, Kitkat.’
‘No, we do.’ Kitty threw a leg over him. She leaned down and kissed him. His mouth was so familiar. She loved the way he leaned up, straining to kiss her harder. She sat back, as if he was a horse and she was not a transplanted townie and could actually ride.
He said, ‘I’ve sent one of the estate boys down to Porthleven. He may be able to—’
Kitty reminded him they were on their hour.
When the hour was up, and Kitty had put her torn nylons into her pocket, and Alec was rubbing at the grass stains on his trousers, he told her that Pamela had requested an emergency pageant committee meeting at the village hall. She was in a week-long terrible mood; the pageant always got her that way. She’d engineered a terrific row about, of all things, the cufflinks she’d bought him as an anniversary present. He couldn’t place them, and she’d been vitriolic, when it was most probably just some issue with the new housemaid.
Picking up his watch, Alec said, ‘And you’re late, darling.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘Obviously, we should get back separately.’
This tacit admission of the wrongness of what they were doing, of what they were, meant they didn’t catch each other’s eye as Kitty said, ‘We should come back here, it’s so private,’ and Alec agreed.
When they left, the clearing was returned to its natural inhabitants, the shrews and the mice and the midges, until Billy and John stole out from HQ beneath the camouflage of dry old branches and fresh greenery.
They stared at each other. John’s mouth hung open.
‘Grown-ups,’ said Billy, with a gurn of distaste, ‘are crazy.’
* * *
The maypole rose higher and higher above The Green. Painted a bright white, with a golden ball shining at the top, it wobbled as the beefiest male villagers heaved it up. Mrs Endicott oversaw matters. She was less use than Mavis the Pekinese, who gambolled leadenly through their feet.
‘Heel!’ Mavis ignored Pamela, who was striding across The Green to greet her husband. ‘Alec, at last. How do I look?’
Alec seemed confused by the question.
‘The dress, Alec, it’s new, and as that’s quite a rarity these days I thought, well, that you might…’ Pamela shrugged.
It was, thought Alec, a shrug both hostile and expectant. ‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘Yes, very nice.’
She stared at him for a long moment. ‘I can’t believe I’m begging you for praise,’ she said. She was angry with him; her face, always tight, shrank even flatter against her bones. ‘It’s only a dress, after all, just a damn dress.’ She turned and clapped her hands. Without preamble she declared the pageant cancelled.
Doris, the cloak in her hands and the bags beneath her eyes testament to how late she had stayed up trying to make the stupid thing’s collar lie flat, let out a much louder and much ruder exclamation than Ambridge was accustomed to from an Archer. ‘Hang on a blessed minute, Pamela, that’s not up to you! No, I mean, just… no!’
‘Cancelled is perhaps the wrong word.’ Pamela pivoted, so all the worker ants could hear. ‘The pageant is postponed. Ask yourselves, can we truly enjoy ourselves while so many British servicemen are standing on a French beach in mortal danger?’
‘But,’ said Kitty, just turning up, her passion tripping her words and mangling her meaning. ‘Pamela, hold on, I mean, aren’t servicemen in danger every single day? And everyone’s worked so hard and the children are looking forward to it and—’
‘I don’t think any of us has worked as hard as the brave men and women of the British armed forces, Kitty.’
Afterwards Kitty would scold herself for her bad mind; Pamela had not stressed the word ‘British’. Almost certainly she hadn’t.
Mrs Endicott was mumbling. ‘I suppose… with the awful news… perhaps it would be wrong to… frolic.’
‘I was looking forward,’ said Dottie, slumped behind her bump, ‘to a bit of frolickin’.’ She dropped the Union Jack she’d been mending to the grass where it lay in a heap.
Nobody else questioned Pamela. She raised her arms, rallying her serfs. Mavis did a terrible shit right by her shoe. ‘We’ll have our pageant on Guy Fawkes, make up for the fact that fireworks are banned this year. It’ll be marvellous. Same theme. Indoors if raining!’
And that was that. All that was left to do was for Pamela to click her fingers at the men to take down the semi-erect maypole.
Alec considered the metaphor rather heavy-handed.
31 May 1940
Dear All,
My fiancée and I have taken the decision NOT to postpone our wedding. As our brave boys make their perilous journey home across the Channel, let’s show Herr Hitler that Ambridge won’t be beaten!
Yours very truly,
Dr Morgan Seed
JUNE
The radio was on in the back room of The Bull.
As wedding guests filed through the front door, Stan, in his habitual Dickensian grime, sat huddled over the wireless. He had barely left his post since news came through that Cliff’s division was caught up at Dunkirk.
‘Keep it down!’ he bellowed, as villagers expressed noisy glee at being handed a glass of warm white wine the moment they stepped in off The Green.
‘Oi!’ Bob’s rebuke was gentle. He was tolerating Stan, despite the extra work the wedding mad
e for him. ‘Don’t make me chuck you out, Stan.’
‘He’s all right, he’s all right.’ Morgan’s face was pink with bonhomie. ‘Now, Stan, I’m sure Cliff will—’
‘You’re not sure of nothing.’ Stan stood up. He was taller than the doctor. Taller than everybody, really, and more accustomed to fighting.
Jimmy was there, suddenly. ‘Stan, Stan, come on now,’ he said. He laid careful hands on him, his eyes looking blankly at the floor. ‘Sit, friend, and I’ll sit with you.’
Stan fell into the chair, and Morgan backed out towards the front bar, where Mrs Endicott ambushed him to say lovely things about his lovely bride, which Morgan could only agree with. ‘I don’t deserve her,’ he said, and he felt the truth of it very keenly. There was something he should have told Nance before the knot was tied. Each time he’d approached the telling of it, he had suddenly felt it didn’t need to be said. Then, alone in his bed, he’d reproached himself, and braced himself to tell her the next day.
Tonight, for the first night in decades, he wouldn’t be alone in bed. But Nance still didn’t know.
Kitty crossed The Green in emerald chiffon that was a relic of one of Noel’s spending sprees and allowed herself to feel light, to feel young for once. Because I am young. Ahead of her Caroline was already a parody of a well-looked-after child, with berry stains on the smock that was just too short despite the hem being let down as far as it would go. But Caroline had flowers in her hair and she was giggling fit to bust; she’s grand.
Good humour is infectious. Dottie had caught it from Dan and she passed it on to Jane as they met outside The Bull, each unfamiliar in pressed pastels, each buoyed up by the ceremony they’d taken part in, each anticipating more lavish food than they’d eaten since last summer. Jane had made her peace with tripe, but she would never learn to love it.
The Archers Page 14
