A voice in her ear. ‘Why the hell are you encouraging that Seed boy?’
Kitty turned. It was far more suspicious for Alec to talk into her hair than it was for her to face him. She kept her expression neutral as she snapped, ‘I was being friendly.’
‘Well, don’t. Give him the cold shoulder, Kitty. The fool’s half-cut at his own father’s wedding.’
‘Do you have the right to tell me what to do, Alec?’ Such words were risky; they would be pure gold in the hands of the poison-pen writer. ‘If either of us is permitted to be jealous surely it’s me?’ Ignored, sidelined, shameful little me.
Oblivious to mood, Jane approached them. She was bright. Too bright, like a candle guttering. ‘I was thinking, Kitty,’ she said, ‘about what you said. About Litha.’
‘Litha?’ Alec frowned.
‘I looked it up. The witches’ big midsummer party.’ Jane pulled her shoulders up to her ears. ‘Awfully spooky. Anything can happen during Litha. Mischief, death.’ She grinned, as if mischief and death were just the ticket. ‘Although we poor victims can ward off the evil eye.’ She raised her eyebrows and spoke confidentially. ‘But it’s rather risqué. One must jump naked through the flames of a fire!’ She tittered, delighted with her bad self. She recovered. ‘Not very Ambridge, of course,’ she said, and moved on.
As did Kitty. Nudging her way through the press of people, she felt Alec watch her. Her feet were not following orders, they had a life of their own. So careful to preserve her ties to him, she was testing these ties, and it made her dizzy.
By Lisa she stopped. Kitty didn’t know this lady, and it struck her that Lisa stood awkwardly against the timber strut. Doll-like. ‘Mrs Archer,’ she said discreetly. ‘I’m afraid you have a little stain on your dress. Would you like me to help you with it?’
Doris had heard. Her head swivelled like a bird of prey. ‘Where? Where?’
She was horrified, too horrified, thought Kitty, at the grassy smudge. It was not ‘little’, it was a broad stripe, hence Kitty’s decision to mention it.
‘Oh, Mum, how did you…? Kitty, what must you think of us?’
‘I think, well, I don’t think anything,’ smiled Kitty. ‘Sure, we all have little mishaps now and then.’ She went to take Lisa’s other arm; Doris was manoeuvring her away and it didn’t look easy.
‘Thank you, no.’ Doris’s face fell at her own sharpness. ‘Please, sorry, there’s no need.’
Comically lopsided, Doris and her mother lurched through the party.
‘Had one too many, Lisa, old girl?’ hollered Walter Gabriel, his face glowing red like Mars.
Doris’s laugh sounded horrible. She paused in her struggle to let Jimmy go by. A glass dropped from the tray he held. A hoot went up from drinkers, and Doris couldn’t bear it. She was inside out, finely tuned to the suffering that was suddenly everywhere.
It took her back to the months after her babies came. The exhausting empathy. ‘Come on, Mum,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up.’
* * *
‘You’ll never guess,’ Dan said to the neighbours clustered around him. Like him, they were the other side of a lot of beer. It was late. Nance had taken off her veil. Nobody wanted to leave. And yet, in what Pamela saw as an unforgivable breach of etiquette, the speeches had yet to be made. She was, in effect, a hostage to this interminable reception. ‘You’ll never guess,’ Dan repeated, ‘these so called labourers, this, um, Jez and Eugene, they’ve only gone and given barley to the horses and oats to the cattle!’
The men bent double. Dottie screwed up her nose: farm humour. She never got the jokes. She was bored. She was enormous. Her legs ached but sitting down didn’t help, so she roamed the bar, feeling out of place and teary. That internal spring that kept her going had failed; she was homesick. She missed her mum, which was unexpected as her mum was a trout of the highest order.
The only hint of khaki in the place belonged to Jack. He was back, on a special pass, and he was dancing to Frank Brown’s haphazard fiddle with a girl who worked in a dairy the other side of Lakey Hill. She smelled of cheese and, crucially, she wasn’t Peggy Perkins. There might be a kiss later, and a bit of a feel, if the cheesy mademoiselle was willing. When Jack asked after Peggy his mother had rolled her eyes and wondered why he was so interested in that stuck-up madam.
‘Because, Ma,’ he’d said, ‘she is a stuck-up madam.’
Shouts from the back room – now levitating in a marsh gas of cigarette smoke – drowned out the music. Stan Horrobin, on his feet and swaying like a reed, bawled at Jimmy, who stood, head down, taking it.
‘Why’re you here, useless and blind, when my clever son’s probably lying dead at the bottom of the sea?’
From nowhere, Alec appeared. The voice of reason. The posh voice of reason. ‘Now, now, Stan. It’s not Jimmy’s fault. Let me buy you a drink.’
‘That’s what it takes for you to drink with the likes of me, is it?’ Stan was never so eloquent as when he was drunk. ‘My boy dying?’
‘Stan, the flotilla will collect Cliff. They’ll look after him.’
Stan tugged an imaginary forelock. ‘Thanking you kindly for your interest, lord of the manor, but do you think I’m an imbecile? The likes of Cliff don’t matter.’ His fist on the table made the pewter dance. ‘Nice to see the Archer boy home again.’ He nodded at Jack, who stood behind Alec, shoulder to shoulder with his father, a male phalanx against what might be about to happen. ‘Having a tough war, aren’t you, Jack?’
It was Doris who stepped forward. ‘You ought to be at home, looking after Connie. Off you go, Stan.’
He swayed some more, until he seemed about to topple. Jimmy darted over, and slung Stan’s arm about his own shoulders.
‘Come on, let’s sit you down outside for a bit.’ Jimmy steered Stan out to the yard. The fiddles struck up again. Jack cold-shouldered the dairymaid. Doris went back to Lisa. Mrs Endicott was helped to a seat. Glen the sheepdog lapped up spilled ale.
Caroline rammed her hot little head into Kitty’s knee. ‘Mama,’ she said, perturbed.
‘S’all right, chicken, the men are playing nicely again.’ As Kitty took the girl’s hand, George Seed took Kitty’s other elbow.
‘I need some air,’ he said.
She was moving, she was walking. Caroline also needed some air, so Kitty let herself be steered by George. It was only when they stepped out into the dim, balmy night that she saw how flushed and hectic he looked.
‘Here. Over here.’ He herded Kitty and her daughter as if he was a border collie, and they recalcitrant lambs. They stood to the side of the pub, beneath an overhanging gutter. The blackout curtains made the pub a blank box, out of which music leaked.
‘Jaysus, that Stan’s a beast of a man,’ she said.
Caroline recovered. She twisted her hand out of Kitty’s and teetered off to peer at God knows what on the ground.
‘Kitty.’ George stared at her. ‘Kitty.’
‘George.’ She mimicked his accent and his deep voice.
He didn’t laugh.
‘You know, I really should get back.’ Kitty cocked her head towards the door. Only feet away, it seemed distant.
‘I want to tell you what I do. For the war effort.’
‘Oh. Right y’are.’ One eye on her meandering daughter, who seemed to be speaking to a weed she’d found, Kitty assumed a listening face.
‘You’ve heard of Watson-Watt.’
‘No.’
‘Yes you have. Man’s a genius. He heads up my team. We’re developing a way of detecting aircraft using radio.’
‘Goodness,’ said Kitty, as she was clearly expected to.
‘Where’s my medal, though?’
‘Ha ha! Where’s mine, come to that!’
He still didn’t laugh. Perhaps he couldn’t hear her. Perhaps, thought Kitty, I’m just an enormous, anonymous ear. She nodded along to George’s story. She kept a little distance. His drunken self-pity reminded her of Noel.
> ‘Anthony’s a hero, even though he walked into his own side’s bullets. No church service for me, Kitty. No sombre toast at Sunday lunch. I just drink alone and muse on God’s sarcasm. I mean, why would my father’s favourite son fall so early and the also-ran carry on living?’
‘I’m sure Morgan doesn’t—’
‘Oh, Morgan does.’ George put his face close to hers, so she could smell the whisky on his breath. ‘But it doesn’t matter now, does it? All the family dosh will go to the new lady of the house anyway.’
This maudlin man needed to be shaken and refolded, but Kitty didn’t suggest he pull himself together. Life with an alcoholic had taught her not to waste her breath. ‘Caroline!’ she cooed. ‘Here, chicken, we’ll go in.’
‘Please.’ George reached out and circled Kitty’s thin wrist with his fingers. When he said ‘stay’, it was with desperation.
‘No, I really should go in.’ She was calm. Nice. She saw Caroline wander a few feet further away.
‘Everybody leaves me.’ George was angry.
‘My wrist, George,’ said Kitty. ‘Please.’
As she pulled away, he moved his hands to her shoulders and pulled her hard towards him.
She made a tiny mew, but capped it. ‘Listen,’ she said, sweet and persuasive, suddenly so close to this stranger. ‘The speeches are starting. They’re always gas. Let’s go in, you and me.’ She smiled. She encouraged. She could see George wanted to cry.
His mouth crashed down on hers. His teeth caught her lip. His arms, as if motorized, snaked around her and jammed her body against his. He bent her painfully backwards until he found the hem of her dress and yanked it upwards.
She saw, over the bulk of his shoulder, her little girl crouch to draw shapes in the earth with a stick. She struggled without taking her eyes off Caroline. Willing the little one not to turn around. She made no noise; she mustn’t scare Caroline.
They tussled. It was unequal. He dug his fingers into the flesh of her behind. An insistent shape dug into her front. Her face was wet with his saliva.
The door of The Bull opened. Noise and light and Jack Archer spilled out. He didn’t see them as he crashed back against the wall and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He didn’t see Kitty grab the split second he bought her. She wrenched away from George and picked up Caroline, barging past Jack and having to steady herself as she landed back in the bosom of the wedding.
People. Noise. She checked her dress was decent. She wiped her face. She hushed her startled daughter. She didn’t cry. She didn’t draw attention to herself.
Dan stood on a chair, holding a sheaf of telegrams and letters. He was laboriously reading a pun-heavy message from some Seed cousin. Kitty scanned the faces – so good-humoured, so unaware of the primal scuffle that had taken place just feet away – and found Alec’s.
She started forward. She stopped. He might blame her. He might punch George. Kitty pretended to listen to the telegrams, aping the reactions of the others as she stood, stunned, hot and cold and numb.
‘And this one’s from Mr Ronald Furneaux esquire, MP.’ Dan waited for the theatrical ‘Ooh!’s to die down. ‘To Morgan and Nance felicitations on this day stop I hope to see you both as soon as duties allow stop I wish you a long and happy life together stop.’
Alec threw Pamela a look that told her so. She ignored him. She checked her watch.
‘Now we have a letter.’ Dan shook out a sheet of paper. Perhaps if he hadn’t lifted that last half pint he’d have recognized the handwriting and gone no further. But he was surfing on the good spirits in the room. ‘Dear Friends, as you enjoy this wedding feast and toast Morgan Seed and Nance Brown, here’s a puzzle for you.’ He broke off to say, ‘I love a puzzle!’ The crowd was expectant. Somebody yelled, ‘You are a puzzle, Dan Archer!’
‘Question: when is a Brown not a Brown?’ All looked at Frank. Frank, alone of everyone, was not gay. ‘Answer,’ read Dan. ‘When it’s a Braun.’
‘Eh?’ shouted Dottie.
Nobody got it.
Dan carried on reading out the letter. Until he didn’t. ‘Achtung! The father of the bride was born among the swastikas in Berlin. What fun to have Germans living in Ambridge…’ Dan dropped the letter as if it was hot. Those who passed it around later were able to read the rest of it.
WHAT FUN TO HAVE GERMANS LIVING IN AMBRIDGE WHILE OUR BOYS ARE BUTCHERED ABROAD.
SIGNED
YOUR NEIGHBOUR
There was puzzlement and laughter, before silence worked like a virus through the guests. One after the other, they fell silent, and looked at Frank, and then at Nance, and then at each other.
Frank was the colour of his daughter’s dress. ‘It’s not true,’ he said. ‘How could we be German? It’s a lie.’
Morgan blinked. Nance’s hands went to her face.
‘No!’ Blanche sat up and shouted. ‘No, this is all wrong!’
‘The first two weren’t true!’ said Frank, with desperate spirit. ‘And this one’s not true either.’
Billy goose-stepped across the floorboards. ‘Heil Frank!’ he shouted.
A clip on the ear from Walter Gabriel put a stop to that. And to the wedding party.
Kitty, Caroline cradled in her arms, pushed roughly out, and was the first to hit the night air.
* * *
Like a mahogany Stonehenge, the big old wardrobe and dressing table loomed in the dark of the Archers’ bedroom. Cosy, hiccupping beneath the quilt, Dan watched his wife move about in her slip.
He liked doing this.
Doris was going about her solemn, stately end-of-day routine. A drawer opened and closed. A small glass bottle was set down on a surface. She rubbed something into her neck.
A loud creak.
‘Was that Mother?’ Doris turned her head.
‘No. Get into bed, woman, will you?’ Doris would warm up the cold sheets. The wonderful furnace of the marital bed. He wasn’t imaginative; Dan didn’t envisage the Seed marital bed, and so didn’t wonder if Nance had stopped crying and if Morgan had rediscovered his wits.
Some of the women had whispered superstitious twaddle about witches and a sabbath. He’d been quite sharp with that Agnes, from Woodbine Cottage. It wasn’t black magic, it was some nasty human being, someone they all knew. ‘Doris,’ he said, gently.
She sat regarding herself in the oval mirror. The bedroom set had been their first purchase when they married. Doris remembered standing, awestruck, in the furniture shop, stroking the polished wood. She had been half afraid the debt would land them in the poorhouse.
Lovely arms, my Doris, thought Dan. He liked the soft lushness of them. The gentle arabesque – not a Dan word, not exactly what he thought – as she lifted her hair from the nape of her neck and took up the heavy hairbrush.
We haven’t had you know what for an age. There had been a drought. He’d learned to weather them; in fact, the lean periods were often of his own making. Was it the beer, or the peril, or the sight of Doris’s arms that moved him to woo? ‘Fancy a spot of rumpy pumpy, love?’
‘Go to sleep, Dan,’ said Doris.
* * *
It’s noisier than you think on the forest floor in the small hours.
Wee things wake up and go about their business. Foraging is efficiently carried out, sex is had, murder is done.
The moment shimmers.
Up the road in Ambridge, flames flicker in the dry garden of Noon Cottage. Kitty feeds a small bonfire with twigs. Her tears are violent and loud as she tears off her dress and flings it into the fire. His dirty hands were on the lovely chiffon, on the flesh beneath it. She is not safe here. She is prey, and vultures circle. She pulls down her silk camiknickers and they follow the dress.
Up a tree, one of the hornbeams that march in formation through Lower Loxley’s grounds, Gerald sits and regards the sleeping valley. He can’t work out if he wants to fight or cry. He lets out a loud howl which bounces off the hills.
Communing with her reflection in the ch
eval mirror, Doris brushes her hair, taking out the curl. A hank leaves her scalp and sits in the brush. She stifles a sob and checks to see if Dan has heard. He’s fast asleep.
The hotel bed is so correctly made that Morgan isn’t sure he can insert either himself or his new wife between its starchy covers. She is still crying. The tears seem to be in inexhaustible supply. He takes her hand. ‘Let’s try and get some sleep, Mrs Seed.’
* * *
Alec will notice as he passes her door that it is open. A mere inch or so, but he will recognize the cue. Pamela arranges herself against the pillow. She hears his tread along the hallway. Hears him pause. She tenses. He gently closes her door and his footsteps continue to his own room. Pamela takes up an eye mask, pleasantly weighted and embroidered with lily of the valley, and puts it on.
The rooms above the shop feel empty without Nance. Frank pulls up the floorboards beneath his bed, cursing how well he nailed them down in the first place. He is light-headed with anxiety. He reaches into the small suitcase stashed among the cobwebs and he weeps. The feel of it, the memories it carries, the loss it implies. Frank takes out the small cloth book, a children’s tale with beautiful illustrations, typical of its time. He remembers the story. Aloud, he croaks the title. ‘Aschenputtel, Scholz Künstler-Bilderbücher.’ He whispers, ‘Cinderella’.
By the side of The Bull, two figures merge into one. Agnes giggles. ‘Get off, we shouldn’t!’ she says, but pulls her partner deeper into the dark.
Naked, Kitty balls her fists and leaps through the fire.
* * *
The sun was out.
The village green was a perfect island of grass. Birds sang and children played. Dunkirk was done with. The boys had come home; they were not boys anymore. If anyone privately felt that the nation had been humiliated, that the war had been almost lost as soon as it began, they kept quiet about it; Britain had lived to fight another day.
Frank Brown rinsed out a rag in a bucket of scalding water. Magsy stood by and watched as he wiped manure off the store’s window. The ‘B’ of Brown was indeed brown.
The Archers Page 16
