The Archers

by Catherine Miller

  How am I suddenly in bed? Where did that little bit of time go? Where do all the little bits go? I keep losing time and I don’t like it, you shouldn’t lose time, it should just unroll nice and neat. ‘Who’s that? Who’s there? Show yourselves!’ Sounds like kiddies. These aren’t my hands! Good heavens, the wrinkles. ‘Who are you?’ What if they’re burglars? Is Janet all right? She’s such a light sleeper, that girl.

  This is peculiar. I didn’t walk here. I did not walk to this window. ‘You, boy, how did I…’ Oh, he’s Philip! My grandson. Doris’s middle one. ‘Did you sit me down here, pet? Well, aren’t you good to your old granny.’ The rain, all cool against the window, just lovely dripping off the branches.

  I’ll go and see what my Bill’s up to. My husband can’t find his head without his hands unless I’m there to help.

  ‘Get your hands off me, you little twerp! How dare you!’ Is that me screaming? Where’s my family? Where’s my mum? Why hasn’t somebody come to fetch me and take me home? I want to go home.

  * * *

  The amiable woman who ran the laundry in Loxley Norton sat to have her hair teased up into what Dottie imagined was a Tudor ‘do’. ‘Dead spit of Mary Queen of Scots, I am,’ the woman said, picking her teeth. She lowered her voice to speak treason. ‘Silly, ain’t it, having a full dress rehearsal? That Pamela Pargetter might have nothing better to do but the rest of us have lives to lead.’

  Jane, pitching in and holding hairclips because Agnes had refused to – ‘I don’t do nothing I don’t get paid for,’ she’d said – was pained. ‘Mrs Pargetter is a wonderful leader,’ she said. ‘And please don’t let her hear you.’

  Industry was the order of the day. The village hall hummed with women intent on their work. Talk of the letters was inevitable. The merest of glances passed between Kitty and Doris; alone of everyone there, they had read letter number four, and were braced for number five. Jimmy’s letter was sealed up inside them. They would never tell.

  ‘Happen you’re next for a poison pen, duckie,’ said Win Gabriel to some gentlewoman of generic appearance who featured in no gossip, no speculation. If she’d gone missing, the village would have been hard-pressed to give police her distinguishing characteristics. ‘Or you, Doris. Or you, Miss Gilpin. Could be any of us.’ Win Gabriel used her own spittle to position a beauty spot on a Woman of the Bedchamber. ‘Mark my words, one of they letters will cock up our pageant if your Dan doesn’t hurry up and put a stop to it.’

  ‘Him and Mr P,’ said Mary Queen of Scots. ‘They fancy themselves a pair of detectives.’

  ‘Defectives, more like!’ said Dottie.

  ‘They’re doing their best.’ Doris was mild.

  Pamela didn’t react. Her head was bent over a casket of Spanish treasure which stubbornly refused to hide its provenance as a child’s vanity case. She was all thumbs, hopeless at detailed work. She preferred broad strokes, delegation. She never cared to peer too closely.

  Her rabid desire for war news ran counter to her nature. Every fact, every figure, each analysis was leapt upon. Even when they robbed her of sleep. She had dreamed of the Luftwaffe hovering like vultures on the other side of the Channel, ready to swoop down and pick England’s bones clean.

  The stakes, too high, too hard to confront head on, brought back memories of Mayfair nights, when, too young to be up, Pamela watched her father bet her mother’s engagement ring on a spin of the roulette wheel.

  ‘Those Nazis take the biscuit,’ said Mrs Endicott, who would live to the age of one hundred and two and never forgive the bombing of Buckingham Palace. ‘Why doesn’t the letter writer pick on them?’

  Such questions can’t be answered.

  In the middle of the room, Nance coached fourteen-year-old Isabella Mackenzie in queenly deportment. Holding an orb, with a book on her head, Ambridge’s only juvenile redhead processed in a circle.

  ‘I don’t feel like a queen.’ She was whining. Close to tears. She was not a volunteer, Pamela had conscripted her.

  ‘Chin up,’ said Nance.

  ‘You’re doing so well,’ said Kitty

  On The Green, Eugene and Jez had arrived. They stood around, waiting to be activated by some woman’s word. They had also been conscripted. They would hoist the maypole. Again. ‘Or is it an Octoberpole?’ Eugene had asked, proud of his wit.

  Her raincoat thrown over her olde worlde finery, Doris told them where to find the pole and the rope.

  Eugene cursed, Jez did most of the work. Perhaps it was the audience that made him flex his muscles and exert himself in a way he never did at Brookfield.

  ‘Innee strong?’ Dottie moved Chaz from one arm to the other. Her son was fractious. A handful.

  ‘You know maypoles are just pagan phallic symbols?’ Eugene’s educated voice carried.

  ‘Ooh, not in front of the vicar!’ Dottie nudged Henry Bissett, who laughed as if copying a laugh he’d once heard from an adjoining room.

  ‘We’re all pagan at heart, aren’t we, Rev?’ Eugene waited for a response as he leaned back, pulling on the rope connected to the very top of the striped pole. Its damp ribbons were bound along its length.

  No response came apart from vanilla-flavoured mumblings that signified neither agreement nor disagreement. ‘What, no opinions?’ Eugene was all scorn. ‘Why don’t you people debate? Don’t you ever talk about feelings and life and death? The big things?’

  ‘Oi!’ called Jez. ‘Less chat and more pulling your weight, posh boy.’

  Doris backed him up; she and Jez were seldom in yoke together. ‘He’s right. Get that maypole up and then I’ll debate you a nice hot cup of tea.’

  Eugene made a disgusted noise in his throat as he strained and the pole rose. ‘It’s not religion that’s the opium of the masses in Ambridge,’ he said. ‘It’s tea.’

  There was applause when the pole took root. Jane, admiring its girth and height, said, ‘Such a marvellous symbol of Great Britain. No wonder God is on our side in this dreadful war.’

  ‘That’s exactly what the Germans think,’ said Doris. She saw the vicar hesitate, then carry on trudging back to the village hall. Henry wasn’t about to debate with her, either. ‘We can’t rely on God to see us through, Jane.’

  ‘No, no, Doris.’ Jane was keen to put her right. ‘Whatever else Jesus is, he’s always been a gentleman.’

  * * *

  ‘Our Peggy’s getting even fatter,’ said Billy.

  It was a heartfelt compliment; he loved to cuddle Peggy, and the fatter she got, the more comforting the cuddle.

  ‘That’s what pigs do,’ said John. ‘That’s their job. They get fat.’ He had wanted to name the animal Mrs Pink, but Billy had been so adamant he’d given in, and the pig was Peggy.

  Something between pet and tsarina, Peggy took up all their time. HQ had been refurbished to reflect her needs. Fresh straw beneath her trotters every morning. A small pencil portrait of her best side tacked to the planked wall. Fallen apples and contraband scraps in her stolen china bowl throughout the day.

  God, they loved her. Her bristly skin. Her smell, her noises, her merry eyes.

  ‘Look at her lashes!’ John exclaimed at least once a day.

  ‘Stan was flippin’ angry with Connie this morning.’ Never having read Freud on displacement, Billy didn’t know that Stan was transferring his impotent rage from its proper subject to another lesser target. So Billy simply hated him more with each thump of Stan’s knuckles on Connie’s poor body.

  ‘He was going like this.’ Billy stood up. His Stan impressions always went down well with his brother. Especially on days like this when they had fled one of Stan’s rages, when Billy had cried, and he knew John knew. ‘All my plans come to nothing, woman! That animal was gonna make us a fortune!’

  They managed to laugh at despicable Stan. They had no idea which animal he referred to. If only, thought John, I could get between him and Connie and knock him out flat!

  * * *

  Four days to go.

>   Life was a series of countdowns Jane must manage. The pageant. The next letter. The end of the war. At least she knew exactly when the pageant would be. And how it would feel; the war could end one of two ways, and if Britain didn’t prevail against those unspeakable Nazis would Ambridge be burned down? Would her greenhouse topple beneath a tank?

  Feet on the stairs were a welcome diversion. Lately, she and Blanche had talked less. She still kept a vigil at the side of the high bed, still handed Blanche her pots of hand cream and combed out her sister’s flossy fair hair. But distrust had burrowed in between them.

  ‘Dottie, dear!’ Jane jumped up, vacated the highest-status chair. ‘How lovely to see you and, um, little Chaz.’ Jane couldn’t look directly at the baby. The child’s blackness wrong-footed her. Was it rude to mention it? Was it rude not to mention it? He was a dear squeaky little thing. Never having been ‘blessed’ – her mother’s phrase – Jane found babies disconcerting. The jerky movements. The bodily fluids that exited their bodies without warning. The innocent eyes which nonetheless conveyed judgement of the adults around them. But she liked Chaz.

  ‘How’s your nerves?’ asked Dottie as she took a seat, settling her boy on her lap.

  ‘My nerves? They’re…’ Jane wasn’t sure how one described nerves. She was aware nobody believed in her spectral visitors, but the dead children had pit-pattered past her door again last night. ‘I’m well, dear.’

  ‘Good, good. Ladies, I’m here to say goodbye.’ Dottie waved Chaz’s mittened hand. ‘Bye-bye, ladies,’ she said in the high, fluting voice she gave her son when ventriloquizing. ‘I’ll miss oo.’

  Jane felt her throat constrict. Another loss. She didn’t approve of Dottie, nor even particularly like her, but Dottie had woven herself into the fabric of the village, and therefore Jane’s mindscape. Change must be resisted in the lanes of Ambridge. She felt panic nibble at the edges of the static bedroom.

  Blanche, from her bulwark of pillows, evidently felt the same. ‘Must you go back to London? It’s safer here for, um, Chaz.’

  Dottie didn’t speak French or Italian but she was fluent in Spinster English and she knew just what the ‘um’ before her son’s name meant. He was most definitely the first mixed-race visitor to Woodbine Cottage and possibly the last. ‘Yeah, it’s time. Me mum hasn’t even met this little hero yet.’

  Hanging around, Agnes stood most un-maid-like, arms crossed, lounging against the doorjamb. ‘How’s your old man feel about Chaz?’ She knew Dottie would understand the question. The boyfriend was a Viking; there was no Venn diagram in which he and the baby connected.

  ‘You tell me.’ Dottie shrugged. ‘I’ve written and told him, before someone else gets there first and does the job for me.’ She rubbed her nose against Chaz’s. ‘He can hardly complain, I mean, he’s married, so…’ As faces fell she howled with laughter. ‘What am I like?’ she asked, and nobody could tell her.

  Tears. Embraces. A pain in Jane’s chest and a pounding in her ears.

  Dottie left. Off to London and a different, harsher war. ‘You’ll remember me, ladies, wontcha? I’ll never forget you all,’ she said as she took up her bags. She was already spare again; she had ricocheted back into shape. She was indomitable. She was Dottie.

  Jane apologized profusely to Blanche, and even to Agnes. ‘Sorry, sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ She cried until teatime.

  * * *

  Stripped to the waist, Dan splashed himself clean at the deep old sink.

  A folding screen, once dark green, shielded him from view of his family. And from the cat, and from the men. Brookfield’s kitchen was chugging and hot, filled to capacity, throbbing even.

  Unravelling an old school jumper of Jack’s to make socks, Doris kept an eye on Lisa, who was cuddling Mother Cat and murmuring into the cat’s teepee ears. She kept an eye on Jez, who couldn’t be trusted around food. She kept an eye on Philip, whose cough troubled her. She could have done with more eyes.

  Mother Cat yowled and darted down from Lisa’s lap. ‘Christine, love, get Grandma to help you winding this yarn, there’s a pet.’ The gentle repetition of such chores helped Lisa stay calm. Today there had been only one ‘high spot’, as Doris called them. If she could steer her mother through the evening and off to bed without misadventure, Doris would consider the day a success.

  Winding, winding, Christine said, ‘How many hours in two days? That’s how many it is to the pageant. If Isabella Mackenzie gets sick, can I be Queen Elizabeth?’

  ‘She’s not going to get sick,’ said Doris. ‘And don’t remind me how little time I’ve got left to tick off everything on Pamela Pargetter’s blessed list.’ Just as Doris wondered what on Earth she’d found to worry about before the war, she wondered what she’d done with her time before the pageant committee.

  ‘Dan’ll wash himself to nothing behind there,’ said Lisa.

  ‘That he will,’ said Doris. Her mother was one of them tonight. She spoke of concrete things, not the fluff that lined her head.

  Dan whistled.

  Christine said, ‘Dad! We can’t hear the wireless.’

  ‘Doris,’ said Lisa. ‘That child’s too near the fire.’

  ‘Scooch up, Chrissie.’ Again, Mum was right. Mum was normal.

  Jez carried his plate to the sink, said ‘’Scuse me, guv,’ to Dan, and laid it on the draining board.

  When he and Eugene left it was just the family, all together while October came to a freezing end outside the back door.

  Even Jack was still safely bored somewhere they spoke English and ate proper food, and nobody was shooting at him.

  Lisa said, ‘Doris, have a look in on Janet, dear.’

  Christine’s head turned so quickly her ponytail caught her in her eye. ‘Mum?’ she said. As children do, she had long since raised her antennae at the current that ran through her mother at mention of Janet.

  ‘Not now,’ said Doris.

  ‘Not ever.’ Christine was sulky. She would stay sulky until offered hot milk, or allowed a biscuit.

  Only when the jumper had been reduced to a ball of grey yarn did Doris summon Dan to the parlour. Her breath formed shapes in the air. The parlour was too costly to heat in winter, and Lisa no longer sat in there. It had reverted to its chilly self.

  Doris walked up and down the rug that was too expensive for daily use, and sat finally on a good chair.

  ‘What’s all this, then?’ Dan was dressed again, in a jumper she had made for him. It itched, but he was a man of duty.

  ‘Janet’s my sister.’

  ‘You don’t have a sister, old girl.’ Dan sat too, on another of the high-backed, unfriendly chairs. He and Doris shared everything. Every triumph, and every little sin. She was the only other human being who knew about his caution for cycling drunk that May Day. He’d know if she had a sister.

  ‘I do. I did. She died when she was five. I was eight.’ Christine’s age; they both thought it.

  ‘But, why have you never… What did she die of?’ Dan sounded fearful, which in turn made Doris fidget.

  ‘Diphtheria. I was kept away, in case I caught it. She had a fever, she could barely speak.’ She described as best she could Janet Forrest’s long, slow, hard death. ‘It took just a few weeks, to end her.’ Her suffering in a short, narrow bed under the eaves had consumed the house.

  ‘Mum nursed her. You should have seen her, Dan. She was worn to a thread.’ Strenuous, magical, there had been an unspoken hope that Lisa’s love could keep Janet aloft, alive. ‘She looked like Mum. You know how I take after my dad? Well, Janet was all Mum.’

  ‘A little sister,’ said Dan.

  ‘When she died,’ said Doris, ‘we were kind of bunged up. Me, my brother, Dad, Mum. We were composed.’

  ‘That’ll be shock, love.’

  ‘I know that now. Back then I thought I’d been frozen.’ Talking about Janet didn’t feel the way Doris had assumed it would. Her mouth worked just fine. The words to describe her sister formed
easily. She didn’t choke. ‘We just got on with life. We didn’t mourn. We didn’t talk. The habit took hold. She – Janet, I mean – disappeared. Not as if she’d died, more like she’d never lived at all.’ Doris so rarely had tears in her eyes. They glimmered as she looked at Dan and said, ‘Janet. Janet, Janet, Janet!’

  ‘Janet!’ said Dan, in his nice woolly voice. He held her. She was good to hold, like a warm loaf.

  Still there, against him, Doris kept talking. ‘Dad used to fly off the handle if anybody mentioned her name. I had to do my little cries in private. It made him furious that I missed her. But I did miss her, Dan. She was so funny.’

  In Doris’s memory, Janet stomped about, alive, in her Start-Rite T-bars.

  ‘She had this cute hair. All curls. But oh, she was a minx. Spiteful, too, when the mood was on her. Used to pinch me under the covers, and her face angelic all the while.’

  ‘She’d be what age now?’

  Doris knew to the nearest month. ‘I’ve said happy birthday to her every fourth of June. She’d be married now, Dan. Her kids’d be big. Or maybe, listen, this is silly, but I have a fantasy she became an actress and went to Hollywood and made films with Fred Astaire.’

  ‘Not very likely, love.’

  They sat, her hand in his, at the gleaming table used at Christmas and when somebody died. ‘Don’t you tell this to a soul, Dan Archer, but when Mum had to come and live with us, I didn’t want her. When you’re a child you accept everything, don’t you? Like Christine looks up to us, I looked up to Mum and Dad, and did what they told me to do. I’m an adult now and, well, Dan, they were plain wrong.’

  God’s authority had been challenged and his famed compassion found wanting; it was a hop, skip and a jump to examine her parents’ omnipotence.

  ‘Now it’s too late to talk about her. Our Tom only came along after Janet died. Imagine that, Dan. My own brother doesn’t know he had another sister. It was cruel of Mum and Dad to silence me. Cruel.’