The Archers

by Catherine Miller

  Dan demurred. He was a demurrer of long standing. ‘They were doing their best, though, eh?’

  ‘Yes, I know that, but all the same. Janet has no memorial, no marker. It’s like she never existed and she did. I remember her, Dan! And now Mum’s reliving the nice moments, the boiled eggs and the bread and butter soldiers, and I’m glad, I really am, I’m glad for her.’ Doris stumbled here. Squeezed Dan’s calloused fingers. ‘But it brings it all back.’ Lisa kicked away the delicate scaffolding Doris had constructed around the forbidden subject. She didn’t go further. Didn’t tell Dan that it wasn’t fair that Lisa, who insisted on the silence, got to break it.

  I’m angry with the mother I’m losing.

  A row with Lisa, one adult to another, might clear the air. But how to argue with a child-woman? How to berate someone who depended on her so completely?

  ‘Doris,’ said Dan. Then he said it again, but differently. Sadly. ‘Oh, Doris.’

  Their muscular unspoken love stretched between them but Doris felt his helplessness. She also felt his need to help. Which helped. Words weren’t Dan’s strong suit. She didn’t expect a rousing speech.

  There was more. She felt her pulse pound in her ears. It was time to make confession. Because Dan must know her.

  ‘Dan,’ she said, and the dreadful majesty of what she was admitting made her quail. ‘There is no gentle Jesus, he’s not on our side in this rotten war. How would my Sunday School God let this happen?’ Earth, Doris now knew, was a football lobbed about the stars. Jesus did not have his eye on the sparrow. Hitler stood between Doris and the Almighty; she shivered in the eclipse of her personal sun.

  ‘I don’t believe that, silly billy, and neither do you.’

  ‘I’m going to hell, Dan,’ she whispered. A hell she didn’t believe in.

  ‘Nobody in Ambridge is going to hell, Doris.’ Dan seemed sure of this. He stood up, and bent to kiss the top of her head. ‘But I’ll tell you where I’m going. I’m off to stand watch over the maypole. Only two nights to go, and Alec’s convinced we’ll catch the bugger.’

  Doris settled Dan’s scarf, handed him a thermos, told him not to do anything daft. She watched him go and took a comb from her pocket. She always kept one stowed on her person these days, so she could tease her hair over the ever-growing barren patch of skin.

  He doesn’t understand, she thought.

  NOVEMBER

  There it was again.

  That hesitation, that moment of distance when Kitty held Caroline out for a goodbye. Alec resisted the child; as if she was infectious, as if he might catch love from her.

  Kitty brought him his coat. ‘It’s freezing out there tonight. You and Dan Archer’ll catch your deaths.’ She settled him into the coat, enjoying the proprietorial feeling, smoothing out the collar. ‘Will you swing by on your way home? Jump in with me, fella, and I’ll warm you up.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’ Alec’s hand was on the latch. He said, all earnest, ‘You know, even when I’m not with you, Kitkat, I am with you.’

  Excitement fomented in her stomach. The night outside was without colour, but hope blossomed and unfurled in Kitty’s head, where she lived the life that mattered. He was trying his best: this love stuff was new to him. ‘Be safe,’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’

  They both jumped at the sound of a high voice from the gate.

  ‘Got any scraps, miss?’

  ‘Is that Billy? And little John?’ Kitty laughed at the wan faces.

  Alec didn’t laugh. ‘What the blazes are you two doing out at this hour? Home with you, now.’ He turned his hawk’s face, disgruntled, to Kitty. ‘Connie doesn’t look out for those little chaps.’ He paused. ‘They won’t squeal on us, will they?’

  ‘That you were here? Why would it even occur to kids to talk about that?’ Kitty laughed and pushed him down the path. Pushed him and the reminder that their love was illegitimate out of the gate and turned her back on them both.

  * * *

  The enemy was defeated.

  Well, not defeated; seen off. The Luftwaffe had had their nose bloodied, if you were being polite, or handed their balls in a bag, if you were Walter Gabriel. The RAF had, with their stiff upper lips and their Spitfires, filled the sky with bullets and won the day.

  Alec, feeling like a buffoon in a brocade jacket, told Frank Brown, who wore a feathered hat, ‘Funnily enough, according to Ronald, a Polish squadron took most scalps. One hundred and twenty-six! Damn good chaps to have in your corner, the Poles.’

  ‘Do come on.’ Pamela marched ahead, staunch shoes squelching in the muck beneath her billowing gown. The dress swayed on a hoop made from sweet pea supports. She was tense, telling everybody, even Mavis, to come on, come on now, do come on.

  They all obediently came on, with their doublets and their corsets and their headdresses. Some costumes were laughable and last-minute, others, like Kitty’s amber velvet, a sensation. Doris had altered it, and taken great care over the fit; Kitty’s freshness did the rest.

  ‘Chop chop!’ shouted Pamela, moving among the villagers as if she, and not Isabella Mackenzie, were queen for the day. Her nose red from the cold, she accepted congratulations for the Battle of Britain ending just in time for the pageant as if she had personally sealed Germany’s retreat when she plucked the date out of the air.

  Only the weather dared disobey her. The day was cold and damp and drear, the bunting hanging limp like washing. But apples were bobbed and country dancers slithered stoically in the mud. Frank’s feather soon gave up the ghost as he oversaw the tombola out in the sleet. Nobody complained, not out loud, although there was a certain amount of naysaying over by Bob’s beer stall.

  And then the sun came out. It carved a space in the clouds and threw a rug of dim gold across the village green. A breeze titillated the bunting. Spirits rose. Frank’s feather dried out. Billy and John chased Wizbang through the crowd, and Nance tutored those who were interested in an Elizabethan court dance. The enormous Union Jack at the top of the maypole woke up.

  Kitty curtseyed to Dan. Beside her, Caroline clumsily did the same. ‘Good morrow, Sir Archer of Ambridge,’ she said. ‘Prithee, erm, whither thou, something, that’s all I can come up with.’

  ‘Verily,’ said Dan. ‘Forsooth!’ He ruffled Caroline’s hair and she scurried behind her mother; she didn’t like men she didn’t know. ‘Tell me, Kitty, does Doris seem all right to you today?’

  ‘Yes, why?’ Kitty drew nearer. Doris was the rock of Gibraltar; so long as she was in good working order no real harm could come to the village.

  ‘Oh, nothing, just, well, I’ve just lost her and, oh, there she is.’ Dan rocked onto his tiptoes, checking out his wife. ‘I’m being an old woman, but she’s not been tiptop.’

  Kitty was jealous. Suddenly and absolutely. She wanted a man who would worry about her wellbeing. Who would scan a mob and find her face and evaluate its expression. ‘You’re a good husband, Dan.’

  ‘That’s easy, love.’ Dan winked. ‘Getting yourself a good wife, now that’s the bit most chaps get wrong.’

  ‘Will tonight be your last night keeping watch on the maypole?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve given up hope of catching our poison pen, to be honest. Everyone knows what we’re up to and this character’s too bright to show up. But you know Alec…’

  She certainly did. But she couldn’t talk to him in public beyond a hackneyed greeting. Alec had returned the night before for that warm hour she’d mooted. Kitty’s thighs ached, hollow. He had taken her, and she had given, and then she had laid down the law.

  This was their pattern; the steps every bit as formulaic as the one, two, feet together Nance was demonstrating. Kitty looked forward to tonight’s mandatory reconciliation. The knock on the door, and then their secret sport, the sublime indoor game. There was glue in their lovemaking, she trusted it now.

  And Pamela? We’ll take care of her. She’ll want for nothing.

  * * *

  Behind the village hall,
screened from the hoi polloi, the queen’s float was finally ready. Just a cart that lugged milk from the Gabriels’ to market, it was festooned with gold boughs and bronzed leaves. None of summer’s slutty colours made it into the design, but the deeper, knocked-back earthy metallics made for a pleasing whole. If it was a poem it would be one of Hardy’s melancholy ones, written after his wife’s death. If it was a song, it would be the laments Kitty crooned after a whisky.

  ‘Looks smashing,’ was Walter Gabriel’s opinion. ‘Well done, Mrs P.’

  And Doris and Jane and Magsy and Kitty, thought Doris and Jane and Magsy and Kitty.

  Now that Kitty had pledged to look after Pamela, she could see her more clearly. Freed from guilt, Kitty allowed herself to dislike Pamela’s snobbery and hauteur. Arctic winds swirled around Pamela; Kitty shivered. Soon, soon, she and Alec would live… where?

  That was a happy game. The war was over, Alec was hers, Caroline had two parents, and they house-hunted in Ireland. Or America! Or maybe just down the road; there was Gerald to consider.

  They had come a long way, she and her man, since that game of Sardines.

  ‘One hour,’ said Pamela. ‘And then we start the procession.’

  Another countdown.

  A sudden brouhaha by the apple bobbing. The committee ladies toiled over in their upholstery fabric finery.

  ‘Denholm!’ Jane’s shriek was perhaps the first time that lady had raised her voice outside of Woodbine Cottage.

  He lay full length, letting out terrible noises. One leg lay awkwardly, weirdly, beneath him. His jowls were white.

  ‘He went down like a tree,’ offered Win Gabriel. She scolded Billy for laughing, and Billy, stung, said, ‘But he’s ’orrible, missus.’

  The huddle cleared for Morgan, who diagnosed a broken leg, and marvelled at how Denholm had accomplished it. This prompted colourful bystander re-enactments of the man’s fall, its speed, its spectacular nature, the role mud had played. Morgan ignored these, and organized a stretcher of sorts.

  ‘There, there, Denholm.’ Pamela’s solace had a perfunctory ring. ‘Can we move him before the procession, please, Morgan?’

  ‘I’ll come with you to the hospital, Denholm.’ Jane knelt at his side, ruining the needlework panel she’d made for her costume. ‘Take my hand, dearest.’

  ‘Ow,’ said Denholm. Over and over. And ‘sod it!’ and ‘God damn it to hell!’

  ‘I won’t hear of you missing the pageant, Jane.’ Morgan was avuncular.

  ‘But he shouldn’t be alone.’ For once life was matching Jane’s feverish daydreams. She envisaged a heartfelt rapprochement in an ambulance. ‘He needs me, Doctor!’

  ‘He’ll be fine. You’ve worked so hard, why let a little accident spoil your day?’

  Now covered in mud and disappointment, Jane slapped away the crow’s offer to help her up.

  The sun did its bit. Kept going, even if it sputtered, while the wind tried a little too hard. The maypole was the epicentre of gaiety, its ribbons knotting as bad boys danced in the wrong direction. Jez was one of them; he and the girl from the dairy seemed to have an understanding. They were absent for a short while; he sank a restorative pint afterwards.

  Eugene kept himself apart from the revels. He drank steadily and his face darkened with each pint, like a battery storing up energy.

  ‘Ladies of the Court!’ Pamela marshalled her committee. ‘Chop chop!’

  ‘That’s what Henry the Eighth said!’ Dan toasted Pamela’s retinue as they passed him.

  ‘Make that your last ale of the day, Dan Archer,’ said Doris over her shoulder. She would need him later; Lisa was making slow circuits of the pageant with Christine and Phil. Her mother was a UXB who could detonate at any moment. Always in her eyeline. Always constricting her heart and its chambers.

  Behind the hall, all was quiet industry as the worker bees buzzed about the float and their queen. The floral arch chose this moment to collapse. Doris heaved it upright, and glanced over at Isabella Mackenzie in her finery.

  Whenever Doris saw a little girl doing intensely little girly things – dressing up, playing with dolls, picking apart a fairy cake with her fingers – she had a stab of feeling that had a specific colour, a specific taste, a specific burst of sensation. They all added up to Janet, a mingling of all the imagined Janets in Doris’s heart. She had only known the girl, but a woman had been cocooned inside her. And buried.

  ‘Come on, queenie!’ called a voice from The Green. ‘Let’s be havin’ you!’

  ‘You ready, Isabella?’ Kitty put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. ‘Orb up, chicken, like we practised.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Isabella’s eyes pleaded with Kitty. ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’ Stepping in, blocking Kitty, her face close to Isabella’s, Pamela was brisk. ‘Hop up on the float, there’s a good girl, and don’t keep the village waiting.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Isabella’s face was plague-pale beneath the papier mâché crown. ‘Sorry. I. It’s. Sorry.’

  ‘She can’t do it, Pamela,’ said Kitty. She took the crown off the girl’s head. Reverently as if the Koh-i-Noor made from a painted pebble was a real diamond. ‘It’s all right, Isabella.’

  The girl fled, face in hands.

  ‘Oh, goodness gracious,’ said Magsy, looking to the others.

  ‘We need a new queen,’ said Doris. ‘Jane, go and look after Isabella. Jane!’

  The woman was off with the fairies. Pretty miserable fairies, by the look of her. She came to, and scuttled after the abdicating teenager.

  ‘Might I suggest little Gaye? Gaye Wallis.’ Magsy’s goddaughter was bow-legged but gung-ho.

  ‘Gaye hasn’t rehearsed.’ Pamela snatched the crown from Kitty and let it dangle from one long finger.

  ‘There’s not much to it,’ said Doris. ‘Just waving, really. And smiling.’

  ‘Kitty, you rehearsed the Mackenzie girl.’ Pamela held out the crown. ‘You do it.’

  Kitty’s shoulders flew up to her ears. ‘Jesus, no, I don’t think so, Pamela. It should be a proper villager.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Pamela lifted her chin. She narrowed her clever eyes. ‘Obviously, I am not suitable. I’m too old. You’re the only one young enough and pretty enough for the job, Kitkat.’

  Kitkat.

  Pamela knew what lay inside Kitty under lock and key. And Pamela was not one tiny bit scared of it. She used it. She was, as ever, on top, ahead, queen.

  Magsy bustled forward. ‘Here’s your cape, my dear.’

  ‘And your orb.’ Doris pressed the tarted-up tennis ball into Kitty’s hand.

  ‘And here, Queen Kitty, is your crown.’ Pamela let it settle on Kitty’s curls, then rammed it down.

  The crown cut into Kitty’s forehead.

  ‘Allow me.’ Pamela held out her hand, and supported Kitty up the step into the cart. It lurched. The pony was impatient.

  ‘Can I have a moment?’ said Kitty. ‘Alone? Just to gather myself.’

  ‘We’ll wait on The Green.’ Doris shooed away the women. Pamela went first, upright, not hurrying but covering ground. Doris said, ‘I’ll send the lad round to hold the pony for you.’ She looked a little closer at Kitty, and reached up to rub her arm. ‘Oh, Kitty, love, no need to look so woebegone! All you have to do is smile and let us cheer you as you go by.’ She gave the arm a squeeze.

  Alone, Kitty gave herself a talking-to. Lined up her thoughts. It wasn’t as if Pamela’s knowledge of the affair was anything new. Yes, the use of her pet name was masterly. Brava, Pamela. But what did it mean, really? It didn’t change a thing.

  She needed Alec, though. Just the shape and solidity of him, to rubber-stamp her confidence. He hadn’t so much as looked her way all day.

  When he turned the corner, his brocade jacket over his arm, she laughed. ‘I conjured you up,’ she said. She bent, not easy with the dress and the crown. ‘Quick! Give us a kiss before the pony boy appears.’

  Looking up at
her, Alec didn’t smile. That should have warned her. But no, she remained stupid, or naïve, or both.

  ‘Hop up,’ she whispered. Kitty didn’t like looking down on him from her regal cart. She didn’t want to condescend. She smiled at his hands gripping the side of the cart. She saw his blue cufflinks. She had always assumed the P stood for Pargetter. Might it stand for Pamela? He looked eerie, ironed, his face empty and heavy.

  Her father had looked like that when he told Kitty her brother was dead.

  ‘What? What, Alec?’

  ‘I can’t do this.’

  She looked away from him. She looked ahead of her. Threw the orb in the air and caught it. Her foot tapped maniacally against the wooden boards. ‘Where is that boy?’

  ‘Kitkat, it’s wrong. We always knew that. I never said we’d…’

  She looked at him. She had to because this was real. This was an ending. She needed a tray to put this sorrow on; it was so very heavy. She needed to leave it behind because no way could she carry it.

  He said, ‘Pamela and I, it’s not something I can just leave behind. It’s unconscionable to untangle a marriage. My son, he’s unhappy, too. Really, I’m thinking of you, darling. It’s for the best. Weren’t we always on borrowed time? It hit me last night, sitting out in the dark with Dan. We argue and argue. We know it’s not right, and it can’t… hold. Call me a coward if you like.’

  She didn’t like. Kitty took her seat on the wicker throne. She grew more and more stiff. She would be a fossil by the time he finished, if he ever did. And she waited for the one word that would make it better. Or maybe worse.

  ‘Truly, Kitty, this is the best option for you. You deserve a man who can take care of you. You’ll find somebody who puts you first. I can’t bear the thought of that, of course, but I don’t matter. I’m doing this for you, I promise.’

  ‘Ey up.’ The boy was tiny. He was farm-strong, and didn’t waste words on Kitty. It was all about the pony. ‘Come on, girl. Easy now.’

  The cart jolted. Kitty shot forward, then steadied herself. She braced her feet against the slats.