She left the room. Mavis waddled after her.
* * *
‘Like Piccadilly Circus in ’ere!’
Dottie fanned her armpits in Doris’s kitchen. ‘That’s in London,’ she told Chrissie. She explained no, it wasn’t a real circus. ‘Although there’s plenty of clowns.’
‘Dottie, sit down if you’re staying.’ Doris hovered with a huge pot of boiling hot stock. She couldn’t get by.
‘Sorry. I’m a nuisance, in’t I?’ Dottie took a chair and stuck her legs out in front of her.
‘’Scuse me, ’scuse me.’ Doris cleared a path to the scullery, through Jez and Eugene and Christine and Phil and Glen and Mother Cat. They were iron filings, and Doris a magnet. ‘Lunch in five minutes, boys,’ she said. ‘Shoo!’ she told Mother Cat, who looked insulted but didn’t move. ‘Glen, out,’ she said, and the dog was gone before she finished the word. ‘Phil, nip out and fetch Grandma. Christine, make Dottie a nice cup of tea.’
‘Just so you know, Dottie,’ said Christine, ‘I’m very bad at tea.’
‘S’all right, duckie. I have low standards.’
Jez swung his leg over a chair and sat facing Dottie. ‘Then you and me should get along fine.’
‘Get away,’ screeched Dottie. ‘I’m eight months gone. Don’t you flirt with me, you rascal.’
Jez dodged the flick of her scarf. ‘Still pretty, even though you’re up the duff.’
‘Jez!’ Doris was outraged. She was burning up with annoyance that had suddenly welled up from the rubber boots she’d forgotten to take off. ‘Some respect, please.’
‘Oops.’ Jez winked at Dottie.
‘How’d you put up with this one?’ Dottie winked back. Pulled in what should have been her chin with pleasure.
‘Dottie, it’s lovely to see you but I’m in a bit of a rush, what with the men’s lunch and all, so…’ Doris stood, knife in one hand, a cheese and potato pie in the other. It was the fifth cheese and potato pie in a row; she expected ructions.
‘Don’t mind me, you won’t even know I’m here.’
The labourers took their places. Phil could be seen going back and forth outside the window. Lisa could be heard saying the only thing she was saying today.
‘No! No! No!’
The pie was cut. Milk was poured.
Eugene said to Dottie, who sat like a swollen bud in the midst of them, ‘My sister had a baby last year.’ He didn’t usually talk to visitors, preferring to maintain a scholarly silence in the face of their humdrum preoccupations.
‘What was it?’ asked Dottie. ‘Girl or boy?’
‘Boy. Very difficult birth. Wrecked her uterus.’
‘Her what?’ Dottie recoiled. ‘No, don’t tell me.’ She flashed a look at Doris.
‘Not at the table, Eugene.’ Doris didn’t want reproductive organs discussed over her pie. She watched panic flood Dottie’s face; she remembered being that way when she was pregnant with Jack. The pretence that childbirth is nothing more than a room you will pass through. The refusal to imagine it. She sat, starving, and reached for the last slice of watery pie. Her hand stilled in mid-air, and she said, ‘Dottie, love, you hungry?’
‘No, not me, I’m fine, well…’ Dottie reconsidered. ‘I am eating for two so if there’s anything going, but don’t go to any trouble.’
Doris gave her the last of the pie.
Phil stood behind his mother’s chair. ‘Grandma won’t—’ he began.
‘That’s fine, love. Sit. Sit.’ Doris glanced out of the window. She could see Lisa pacing outside. The men were accustomed to the odd behaviours but Dottie wasn’t, and Dottie was a connoisseur of gossip.
It occurred to Doris she had never seen Dottie’s handwriting.
‘Uterus,’ said Eugene, ‘is not a rude word.’ He was huffy. He was hung over.
‘Shut your trap,’ said Jez. ‘Ladies present.’
Dottie said, ‘I’m sick of potatoes, no offence, Doris.’ She reached behind her and took Raleigh’s cloak off the dresser. ‘Thought this was finished?’
‘I’m adding to it. Pamela was, what was the word she used? She was underwhelmed.’
‘Well, I’m whelmed. I reckon you’ve done a top-notch job. Ow!’ She jumped and flung the cape away from her. A cedilla of blood showed on her finger. ‘Bleedin’ pins!’
Doris bent to pick up the cape. A paste jewel glittered. Outside Lisa chattered away. She called to Phil, to her dead husband, to Janet. She called most often, and most tenderly, to Janet. Doris passed a hand over her forehead. ‘Dottie, I can spare Eugene to walk you home if you like.’ She ignored his groan. She couldn’t spare him but if it meant evicting Dottie it was worth the sacrifice.
‘I’ll be fine on me own. I come over to ask you something, Doris.’ Dottie hesitated. ‘You can say no, I won’t take it bad.’
‘Go on.’ Doris began to clear the table. Jez helped. He had never helped before.
‘Mrs E said she’ll muck in when I go into labour, but, I dunno, I need someone a bit more… Doris, will you be with me when Baby comes?’ Dottie laid her hands across her stomach.
‘Dottie, I…’ Doris raised a hopeless hand. There was a dirty plate in the hand; there generally was. Her mother began to sing in the yard. Jez threw cutlery into the sink with a clatter.
‘Don’t matter, s’all right,’ said Dottie. She was hasty, making to go. ‘Honest, I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘I’d be honoured, Dottie.’
The table juddered as Eugene pushed himself up. ‘Everything here is so small,’ he said. ‘So drearily domestic.’ He put his hands to his head. ‘Doesn’t it drive you people mad living in this toytown? The smallness of it? I mean, where are the ideas? I’m accustomed to thinking about the big things.’
‘Who bit his bum?’ asked Dottie.
‘He’s a brainbox.’ Jez shrugged. ‘They’re different.’
‘I ain’t small,’ laughed Dottie. ‘I’m a bloody helephant!’
Doris agreed with Eugene; everything was small. She was a small woman in a small life and she was surrounded by small things. If they all rose up together they might suffocate her.
AUGUST
The harvest had a personality.
It was the yearly visitor who monopolized everyone. All shoulders bent towards the great work of cutting and collecting and binding into sheaves. Conversation never strayed for long from how dry the harvest was, or how meagre, or how bountiful. Cabbages were hoed and corn was stooked. A workers’ camp had set up over Felpersham way, bell tents full of city folk drafted in for a ‘holiday’ bending and cutting.
Everyone fell into bed exhausted.
Of course, not everyone. Doris and Dan might crawl upstairs like zombies at nine each night, but Pamela sat up until eleven playing solitaire. Alec looked in on the Lower Loxley chaps and leaned on a stile to chat about yields. Jane was quite worn out with finishing a needlepoint kneeler for St Stephen’s, and didn’t know what stooking meant.
‘Yes, love. Yes, love.’ Dan was nodding and smiling, smiling and nodding, as his wife leaned out of the pull-down window in the train door. ‘This isn’t my first harvest, I’ve lived on a farm all my life, remember. You’re not to worry about a thing, and you’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Do listen, Dan!’ Doris competed with the banging of doors and the conductor’s whistle. ‘Bring Mum her cordial, the blackcurrant not the raspberry, at noon sharp or she gets all funny. And keep Jez out of my kitchen. Make sure Christine clears out her chickens.’ Doris lowered her voice. ‘Mum’s started taking her clothes off, so, well, keep an eye.’
The train began to move. Sluggish, playing with them.
She regretted it now, the commitment she’d made to visit Cliff Horrobin. What had she been thinking of? It was like a general deserting his troops on the brow of a hill before the final surge. She should be in her rightful place, in the kitchen, the signpost sending everyone right, left, up, down. The harvest didn’t care about the Horrobins.
<
br /> ‘Will you miss me, Dan?’ Doris felt silly saying it out loud.
‘You bet I will!’ Dan waved his hat as the train picked up speed. Before it reached the bend he had turned to walk away, hands in pockets.
He’s probably whistling, thought Doris. It had been the devil’s own job persuading him to take a day away from his precious War Ag. Looking after the farm wouldn’t be the doddle Dan seemed to expect. Things had changed.
The borrowed copy of Stitchcraft was soon set aside.
She saw a headline on a discarded newspaper, and imagined the RAF slugging it out somewhere overhead. She thought of the rat she’d ended with a shovel just that morning. She thought of Jack, who had broken his finger on an assault course. She thought of the all-seeing eye of the letter writer and whether it had landed on Lisa yet.
Surely it’s the Archers’ turn next?
All the while the train burrowed south through a land floating in the heat.
* * *
The village shop was full.
Nobody was buying much; there was little to buy. The commodity being passed from hand to hand was news. There was no rationing that.
‘I, for one,’ said Mrs Endicott, ‘never pause to read the church notices anymore, just in case the next letter is pinned there.’ She dabbed her brow with an already soggy handkerchief. ‘This weather doesn’t suit my blood. The English aren’t bred for the heat.’
The boycott of Frank’s shop, feeble as it was, hadn’t lasted. It couldn’t; the nearest alternative was in Penny Hassett, and thanks to petrol rationing a wartime mile was longer than a peacetime one. There were whispers, the odd joke, but Ambridge had, apparently, healed over the wound.
‘It’s definitely a man writing these horrid notes, and an educated man at that,’ said Jane. She was rarely so assertive. Beside her, Agnes asked how so. ‘Because the spelling is perfect.’
‘We’re not in the Middle Ages,’ said Agnes, remembering to add ‘Miss Jane’ for propriety’s sake. ‘Most folk can spell nowadays.’ She gave Frank a hard stare before taking the wrapped sliver of bacon from him. ‘And an egg, if you have one.’ Agnes had a long memory; she would go to her grave believing Frank Brown to be a Nazi mole.
‘One egg, love!’ called Frank over his shoulder.
When Nance came out bearing just one perfect sand-coloured egg on a striped cloth, Mrs Endicott put her head on one side.
‘And how is married life treating you, my dear?’
For an answer Nance smiled and frowned at the same time.
Agnes giggled. She studiously ignored the pointed look from her employer; the crow had already been warned about her ‘suggestive’ laugh.
‘Think of the child, Agnes,’ hissed Jane, gesturing to Caroline who was being contained by Kitty at the end of the queue.
‘She’s too interested in her dolly to listen to us,’ said Agnes.
‘Very true,’ said Kitty, as Caroline, conscious she was being discussed, pressed herself against her mother.
The egg was examined. Sniffed at. Agnes looked dubious but eventually a buff-coloured ration book was handed over. It was a waste; there had been four eggs in the house when she went to bed last night, and this morning she had risen to find them splattered on the kitchen floor. Jane had blamed ‘the ghostly tots’.
An outbreak of ‘hello’s as the bell above the door tinkled. Alec and Pamela entered, all smiles, all largesse.
‘Kitty, Mrs Endicott, Jane.’ Pamela nodded at each in turn. Agnes neither expected nor received a nod.
‘Alkie!’ squeaked Caroline, running the length of the sawdust-strewn floor. She leapt at him. ‘Alkie! Alkie!’
There was much laughter. Much admiration of the sweet little thing’s friendliness, and much wry eye-rolling at Alec’s typically male ineptitude with her.
‘Yes, hello there, um, Caroline,’ said Alec, patting the girl’s head clumsily. He ignored the little arms stretched up to him.
‘C’mere, hen.’ Kitty doused Caroline as well as she could.
‘Bless her,’ said Pamela. She was all in white. Spotless. Her hair like a shining helmet. Her nails like knives.
‘I should get her home,’ said Kitty, backing out and pulling Caroline away from Alec like a bodyguard protecting a movie star.
‘See you at the pageant meeting, dear,’ called Pamela.
‘Mind out!’ Dottie, outside on the hard-packed summer earth, jumped out of her way, then took Kitty’s arm. ‘Where you off to in such an ’urry?’
‘It was so hot in there.’ Kitty pushed a sweaty strand of hair out of her eyes. She had been awake all night with her daughter. Some existential toddler fear had seen them singing nursery rhymes until the sun came up. ‘Lord, Dottie, look at you. You’re about to pop!’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Dottie. She chivvied Kitty’s hair with her hand. ‘Tell you what. I’ll nip over tonight and set your hair for you, yeah?’
‘Really?’ Kitty was touched. ‘It’s a long way to nip, Dottie, in your condition.’
‘I’ll take it slow, I like to walk, I get fusty sitting indoors all evening. Now, look ’ere, girl, just ’cos you’re a widow, no need to get like them older ladies, Doris and Jane and whatnot, all flat shoes and baggy coats. You’ll always be a beauty. You don’t give that up, girl.’
Traipsing home without the twist of sugar she’d come out for, Kitty yearned to graduate into flat shoes, tightly knotted headscarves, wrap-over aprons. I’m a show dog, prized for my looks. The eternal other woman, doomed to preen herself unto death.
Facts must be faced; Kitty had a short shelf life.
* * *
Alec knocked at the front door of Noon Cottage, but had no time to smooth down his hair or press on the ends of his moustache before Kitty opened the door and leapt into his arms.
He staggered backwards, and laughed, trying to contain her bounce.
She gasped, ‘It’s you! It’s you!’
‘Who were you expecting, old girl? Winston himself?’
‘I wouldn’t give that auld goat houseroom.’ Kitty pulled him inside and slammed the door and kissed him hard against it.
Alec rubbed his lips. Amused. Shocked. Happily scared. ‘I see. Like that, is it?’
‘It’s always like that,’ growled Kitty. ‘Caroline’s with Dottie and Mrs Endicott. Get in there. Go!’
He allowed himself to be shoved to the sofa. He was blown away, again, by Hurricane Kitty. They did it quickly, with the ease of old lovers and the ardour of new ones.
He sat up. His hair hung over his eyes. He was still panting when she began to talk.
Wriggling back into her zigzag-patterned dress, Kitty said, ‘God, wasn’t it awful at the shop earlier, when you came in with Pamela? I almost died.’ She pulled all the pins out of her hair and it fizzed around her narrow face. ‘She makes me feel so bad, even though she doesn’t know.’
Alec would later wonder just what had happened on his face. He’d thought he had it under his control. But Kitty paused, a clip between her teeth and her hands sunk in her hair.
‘Holy Mary Mother of God. Pamela does know.’ Kitty bollocksed her hair up any old how. ‘When did she find out?’
‘She’s always known.’ Best to be honest, he thought. A little late. Alec tidied his hair and his clothes. A button on his fly was loose. ‘Please, darling, calm down.’
‘Calm down?’
Only then did Alec recall that each time he’d told a woman to calm down they’d simply echoed the instruction back at him, louder.
‘Why are you always done up so tight?’ Kitty, so languorous a moment ago, sizzled with voodoo energy. ‘Even with me. Me!’ She beat her breastbone so hard Alec smothered her hand.
‘Kitkat, you’ll hurt yourself,’ he said.
She snatched her hand away. He felt a nail graze his palm.
‘We share, Alec. Or we should. We’re in love, that’s how it works. We talk. Otherwise what’s the point? I could be anyone!’ Kitty found her knickers and bal
led them up and threw them at him. ‘I’ve been feeling wretched about Pamela and now I’ll go back over each time we met, knowing she knew what we get up to, and I’ll feel ten times worse.’
‘That’s the Catholic in you.’
‘Why can’t it just be the human in me?’ Kitty let out a rasping, irritated sigh. ‘Guilt isn’t exclusive to Catholics, surely? I know you’re ashamed, at least I hope you are.’
‘Of course I’m bloody ashamed!’ Suddenly Alec matched her vehemence. He had never been angry with Kitty before. He saw her jump at his shout. ‘There’s no right way to go about this. We make decisions on the hoof. The thing is, the thing is,’ he said, struggling after his strong start, ‘that it’s all bad and all devious no matter what we do. The very first step we took condemned us to lie. I’ve tried not to lie to you—’
‘Thanks very much I’m sure.’
‘But I’ve been protecting you and scared you might end it and just, well, confused.’
He looked it. Kitty didn’t let herself feel sorry for him. They were galloping towards something and she wanted to see the view from there. ‘It’s simple, though. Shut up, shush, Alec, it is.’ She felt certain he and Pamela never had stand-up fights like this. She imagined a touch of sarcasm over their 7 p.m. martini, or a suppressed sigh at breakfast. Well, Kitty came from a family that threw rocks. ‘Do you not understand what’s happening here? We’re not playing, this isn’t sordid.’ Shouting her worst fears didn’t, it turned out, help with them. ‘Or is it?’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ Alec snarled at her. Even though he was reassuring her. ‘But your constant insistence on discussing it, well, it wears me out, Kitty. Because we’re both trapped, not just you. Do you ever think of me?’
‘The selfishness of you!’ She screamed now, not caring if anyone was passing the open windows. ‘The towering, epic, bloody self-regard of you, Alec. It’s me who’ll be ruined by this. Me who’ll pay. The woman pays, Alec, or have you not been paying attention?’
The Archers Page 19
