‘This is a disgrace!’ Magsy told the empty lane; she knew curtains were twitching. ‘To treat a valued member of our community in such a way. Animals!’
‘It’ll blow over, Miss Furneaux,’ said Frank. He breathed through his mouth; the cloth stank. It was the second time that day he’d had to come out and clean the window. ‘The fiend will move on to his next victim.’ He rubbed at the raised letters of his name. ‘Some other innocent will suffer.’
Dottie bowled up on a bicycle.
‘Should you be exerting yourself like that in your condition?’ Magsy looked askance at the juxtaposition of bike and belly.
‘’Course!’ Dottie swung her leg, with some effort, over the saddle and propped the bike against the shop. ‘Fancy anyone mistaking Frankie boy for a Nazi!’ She chucked Frank’s cheek, then recoiled from the smell. ‘According to that blinkin’ letter writer Ambridge is a den of whatsit.’
‘Iniquity?’ offered Magsy.
‘That’s the thing.’ Dottie reeled off a list of Ambridge’s iniquity on her fingers. ‘First, posh old Pargetter’s having it off with some trollop or other. We don’t know ’oo. Probably not you, Magsy, eh? Then it’s Blanche’s turn for some ooh la la with the postman, of all people.’ Dottie loved that detail. ‘And now, apparently, the Browns are German! I’ve never met anyone as English as Frank. Whatever next? Am I from the moon? Are you a spy, Magsy?’
Affronted, Magsy said, ‘Why would you say such a thing? Me a spy! My family have only ever served this nation.’
‘That’s the point, duck, this letter writer says whatever comes into his head.’ Dottie turned to Frank and pointed a finger. ‘Now, don’t you dare tell me you don’t have no tea, or me and Mrs E will riot on The Green, I swear we will.’
* * *
It was a hot and dusty slog to the Horrobins’ place.
Doris was suspicious of sunshine; like so many Brits she’d been fooled by it before. Given in, bared her shoulders, only for it to retreat and leave her shivering. She tended to hang on to her comforting armour of foundation garment, thick hose, dress, pinny, cardigan and coat. Today she regretted the coat.
Her steps slowed. There would be no welcome for her at Connie’s. She had no official business today, but a suspicion had nagged at her, and pushed her out of Brookfield and away from her own concerns.
What if Connie doesn’t know Dunkirk is done with?
The Horrobin homestead stood apart, insulated not only by Heydon Wood, but by Stan’s belligerence and Connie’s distrust. It wouldn’t surprise Doris if Stan had smashed the radio, and surely nobody in that shack took a newspaper.
Crossing the yard, she heard Billy and John whooping somewhere. They should be at school, but Doris would leave that for now; tackling Connie was like moving a wardrobe – best to heave one side at a time. ‘Hello there!’ she called, with a brightness she didn’t feel.
The house looked burgled, as ever. Connie was in shadow, peeling turnips into a pail.
‘Connie, dear, have you heard the good news?’ No use expecting the elaborate Ambridge geisha rituals of tea and home-cooked this and that at Broom Corner today. ‘The boats are all home. The whole sorry business is over.’
‘Why should I care?’ Connie was peeling a turnip to nothing. ‘We had a letter. Official.’
Doris felt as if Connie had slapped her. ‘No,’ she said, pointlessly. ‘No, Connie.’
‘Cliff’s dead.’
The roof had fallen in on this family; Doris stood in the rubble. ‘I’ll fetch Henry.’
Connie grunted. ‘The vicar? Yeah, fetch him. When I lost my babby he told me not to be sad, I had other children. He doesn’t think Horrobins are human, so no vicar, Doris. I’m busy. I’ve got to get the dinner on.’ She dropped the sliver of turnip into the bucket, and picked up another one.
‘Come to the table, Connie, please. I’ll make us a pot of tea.’
Connie didn’t move. ‘I been thinking all morning of funny things.’ Peel, peel, peel. ‘When Stan took the boys out poaching…’ She stopped, aware she’d incriminated her man, then carried on; the worst had already happened and besides, Doris knew Stan poached. ‘The boys have to beat the field, see, so the rabbits panic and run towards Stan and his cosh. And same thing’d happen every night. I’d see Cliff come home on his own, down the back way. Stan’d send him back ’cos my Cliff wouldn’t join in with killing, not any living thing, not even a rabbit, and there’s hundreds of rabbits. And now look, Doris. Look at what they done to him.’
The letter lay on the table beside a sieve and an apple core and a salt cellar. Doris hated it. It was, in its way, another poison pen. ‘Did he finish David Copperfield?’ She remembered his voice, sonorous in the shadows. ‘It’s one of my favourites,’ she said, and she had an urge to keep talking, to keep at bay her urge to weep. Because this sadness was not hers to own, it was Connie’s.
But we all lost him, thought Doris. The piercing cruelty of it, the plucking, the turning to ash. It wasn’t fair; Doris, who had never questioned the natural order of life and death, now railed against it daily. It was the imbalance, the way death rudely turned up everywhere.
Yes, she should keep talking, she should pull Connie through these first hot moments. ‘Have you eaten, Connie? Got to keep your strength up. Cliff wouldn’t like you neglecting yourself.’ She paused. The envelope was unopened. ‘Have you read this, Connie?’ Doris picked it up.
‘No need. They all say the same thing, them letters.’
Greedily, Doris tore open the envelope. Connie can’t read! It was so obvious. No need to say it out loud in front of the woman. She imagined Connie realizing the envelope was ‘official’ and flinging it away from her as if it might burn her fingers. Doris unfolded the letter. Her fingers shook and so did the thin paper. ‘Connie, he’s alive.’
There was nothing from Connie. Then, ‘You’re lying to me, you wicked woman.’
Doris read out the stiff legalese. Cliff was injured but stable, and being cared for at Netley Military Hospital near Southampton.
‘You promise? You promise?’ Connie reeled out of the dim back of the kitchen. Her face in the light was a map of bruises.
‘I swear it, love. Your boy’s alive and well.’ Doris would have liked to fold up the beleaguered little thing. She would have liked to sway there all day, Connie in her arms; it would be sweet to help. But Connie was what Lisa called – or used to call – a Touch-Me-Not. ‘If there’s anything I can do, anything at all—’
‘Like what?’ Connie returned to form; repelling all boarders. ‘S’all right for you! There’s your son loafing about, doing sod all. Jack Archer’ll come to no harm learning how to march, will he?’
‘I know you’re upset, Connie, but…’ Doris went no further. Her saintly robes chafed, but she couldn’t fly at Connie. They were the same, really. It was the men who fought, but it was the women who waited and worried. It was a slow death she and Connie were enduring, of a thousand cuts. ‘I’ll be off,’ she said, curtly; the Ambridge equivalent of a slap in the mush.
* * *
Nance agreed with Morgan that yes, it was lovely, really very kind, of Magsy to have Homeleigh ready for them when they came back from honeymoon.
Every surface had been polished to a high shine, every painting straightened.
‘And my favourite dinner on the table.’ Morgan was all appreciation, all gratitude.
‘Yes, thank you, Magsy.’ Nance had always called her Miss Furneaux when she’d served her at the shop, and the childish Christian name was bulky in her mouth.
It was a relief to see Morgan cheerful. The letter had hung like an awning over their short, utilitarian honeymoon, blocking out the sun that tried in vain to bless them.
Nancy had hoped that the shyness that bound her up, stilled her tongue, inhibited her hands, would dissipate when she said ‘I do’. It had only deepened. She was restrained by shame, and borrowed shame at that. The disgrace belonged to the liar who had disfigured her weddin
g day. What a wild and despicable thing to say about my poor father. The depth of her hatred for this neighbour, and her desire to see them punished, was uncharacteristic. Her new husband had declared himself unsettled by it. ‘And look, fresh flowers on the table, too,’ she said. Nance really did try very hard to do the right thing. Even when, as now, she was dismayed.
Homeleigh intimidated her. Its fine detail. Its spare rooms, all of them painted and papered. It was too good for her, Nance thought. She might well be the lady of Homeleigh, but the role was bad casting, especially when compared to Magsy’s easy ownership of its kitchen and its many, many cupboards.
‘You sit, the pair of you, and tell me all your news.’ Magsy fiddled and fossicked. She shook out Nance’s napkin and set it on her lap. She scolded Morgan for suggesting wine: ‘And you a doctor!’ When the door knocker clapped, she said testily, ‘Now who can that be on your first evening home? Surely folk know you want to be alone.’
It was Frank. He refused tea, he apologized for interrupting their dinner. He stood, hat in hand, like a penitent, until Morgan said to his new father-in-law, ‘What is it, Frank? You seem troubled.’
‘Please listen to what I’m about to tell you,’ said Frank, ‘and don’t make me say any of it again.’
His parents came to London in 1887, he explained. ‘I was less than a year old,’ said Frank. He didn’t take off his coat. He mangled his hat with his fingers. ‘I grew up bilingual. English and German.’ He ignored his daughter’s ‘No, Dad!’ and said, ‘My family flourished here.’
Nance slumped as she listened. She changed as her father spoke; she was a different person by the time he finished and she didn’t recognize herself.
‘My father,’ said Frank, ‘was a violinist.’ Manfred Braun joined a small orchestra and played the halls. Frank’s mother sold haberdashery notions from their front room. They had enough, if not quite plenty. The house was quiet, industrious. Good neighbours on both sides.
‘We never, not once, visited Germany after we left.’
His parents, Frank said, and repeated, were patriotic about the new country that gave them such opportunity. In fact, the family joke was how very British Frank and his brothers were.
‘When the Great War broke out, we became enemy aliens overnight. All of us were sent to Mooragh on the Isle of Man. At least we were together.’
‘You were interned?’ Morgan sounded shocked.
‘Only for six months.’ Frank tried to describe the disgrace of not being allowed to fight. ‘They re-interned my father when he broke our curfew. Enemy aliens had to be indoors by ten o’clock, you see, but Dad went out to fetch a doctor for my mother. She was, well, she suffered with her nerves.’ Frank listed the restrictions. They needed permission to travel, their car was impounded, certain newspapers were forbidden.
‘But, Dad.’ Nance started forward. Her meal congealed in front of her. ‘I was alive then. None of this happened. I’d remember.’
‘We made out it was a holiday on the Isle of Man, love. We kept things from you. It wasn’t difficult. You were only five when the war ended. And your mum was so careful.’ No need to revisit the horror and revulsion Marian Brown had felt for her in-laws’ nationality. The spat insults, her new catchphrase of ‘Why did I marry you when I had my pick of proper English fellas?’ Frank said, ‘We changed our names the minute the war ended.’
The Browns were scrubbed clean. When Marian insisted that this rehabilitation must include keeping little Nance away from her grandparents, and their accents and their bowls of Eintopf, Frank had complied. Reluctantly, but that was what his new country, his ‘real’ country, demanded.
The tale petered out.
Magsy left.
Nance pushed away her plate and laid her head on the tablecloth.
Morgan managed a few words. ‘It’ll all die down, Frank, you’ll see. As you say, you’re as British as the rest of us.’
‘I should have told you. Before the wedding.’
‘It would have made no difference.’
Nance would turn that moment over and over in her head. She would analyse it until it fell to bits. She would wonder if Morgan could have been more fervent.
* * *
All civilized persons know it’s rude to shut the door in a dog’s face, but Hero meant Alec, and Kitty couldn’t face him.
Hero scratched at the familiar red-painted wood, and his master rapped and called Kitty’s name.
She hid. Curled over herself by the coat stand.
‘Kitty, Kitkat!’ One blue eye was visible through the letterbox. ‘It’s somebody’s birthday. Every little girl deserves a birthday present.’
‘Burpday!’ Caroline rounded the corner of the hall at speed. ‘My burpday!’ She screamed when a plump plastic hand poked through the brass slit of the letterbox. ‘Mine!’ she shrieked.
So in they all came. Alec, Hero and a massive doll in a tartan dress whose painted eyes were as flat and unresponsive as Kitty’s.
‘You can name her if you like,’ said Alec stiffly. Even when he tried his best he tended to address the little girl as if she was a board meeting. The days when he had held her and laughed with her seemed distant. ‘Oops, oh, mind out, Hero doesn’t like her.’
When he had managed to extricate the doll’s platinum blonde head from the dog’s mouth, he stood on the doormat as Caroline ran, tripped, rolled with her massive new friend. ‘Is it,’ he asked Kitty, ‘too big?’
He may have meant literally. She chose to answer as if he meant figuratively. ‘I’ll have some explaining to do. How a widow of limited means gives her daughter such a pricey toy.’
‘Just say, um, just say…’ Alec was marooned on the mat. ‘Look here, Kitty, can’t I come in? Can’t we talk? I don’t know what’s gone on between us since the wedding.’
She was bored, suddenly. Her heart had begun to pump when he knocked at the door but now she drooped, all apathy. The sameness of it. Nothing as she would have it. And now this gift that overshadowed the second-hand tin tea set she’d gone without to buy. ‘Come in, then, if you’re coming. I’ve no tea.’
‘I’m not here for tea.’ Alec followed her into the parlour and found himself halted by her outstretched hand, palm out.
‘Listen,’ she said, and he powered right down; despite her dejection, Kitty felt a start at the authority she had over the tall, debonair foreigner. His hawk face was set, worried, waiting. ‘Sometimes your stupid English reticence comes in handy. If you don’t ask me why I’ve been avoiding you since the wedding I won’t tell you. Is that a deal?’
‘Um…’ Alec never felt so dense as when dealing with women.
‘Just agree, Alec, and we can sit and, well, we can go right back to where we were. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
Alec sat. He beamed. He looked too young to have a moustache when he smiled like that, all teeth, and Kitty, despite herself, was charmed.
Perhaps his presence would help. Dull the din in her head. Kitty had jumped through fire but was still not clean. She had come across men like George before, one of them a trusted relative. She had shoved and sweet-talked her way out of worse.
The letter that arrived three days after the wedding had twisted the knife. She hadn’t known it was from George until she was two sentences deep in soggy apologies and self-justification. He had asked to make it up to her. He had asked her to let him know she forgave him. She had felt aggrieved that he was still asking things of her, and had washed her hands like Lady Macbeth until her fingers were wrinkled. Reading between the lines she sensed an ignoble offer being made. Of rescue. At a price.
‘Tell me two things,’ she said now. Noise would help. Chatter. And the knowledge that she was important to somebody. Not important enough to marry, never that, but important enough to make him buy a doll. ‘One nice thing and one grotty thing that’s happened to you since I saw you.’
‘Well, cripes, old girl, you and your orders.’ Alec leaned back, at ease. He took up so much of th
e room. ‘I know! I heard about my Dutch friend, you know, the chap I was worried about. The Nazis are going easy on the Netherlands, it seems. Comparatively speaking.’
Kitty mirrored his relief. Alec was an interesting man, and listening to him was one of her chief pleasures. She’d missed his stories, and this particular tale of how a chain of encounters brought news of this fella, she couldn’t remember his name, was new, positive, different.
She watched his face, so animated, and knew he was already recovered. His latest Kitkat emergency was dealt with.
Her interior monologue was particularly loud today, and it ran beneath Alec’s ‘grotty thing’: an injury to his thumb sustained when he fell down the stairs while helping his men move furniture. Phrases from George’s letter sounded in her ears, more perfectly recalled than her catechism. ‘If I overstepped the mark.’ ‘You’re a good-looking girl and you know it.’ ‘This war is hard on us chaps.’
This war was hard on them all, from Bella the tortoiseshell cat right up to the smug Pargetters behind their leaded windows. Kitty understood that the men left at home had guilt to contend with. She could imagine the impotence they experienced, and she despaired as she watched the war bend people out of shape.
But why must the women pay?
Kitty had underwritten George’s anger and grief; she had paid with her body, still defaced with his fingerprints.
Alec had stopped talking. Tentatively, he took her hand. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
She laughed. They were, by definition, wrong. His being on her sofa was wrong. ‘No,’ she said.
Her lack of status, her place in the pecking order somewhere above Hero but many leagues below Pamela, had meant Kitty could only stew in her stifling cottage. She hadn’t been able to call on Alec to mount his white charger and protect her from George. It was two-fold, this problem – he would have been unable to step in because then everyone would guess about their affair, or he would have belted George, which would have been yet another wrong piled on top of all the others.
The Archers Page 17
