‘Who’s this?’ said Connie as barking from the yard alerted them to a visitor and woke up Stan.
‘Only me!’ said Doris, evidently unsure of her welcome. ‘Wondered if there was another letter from Cliff.’
Stan swore, or probably did; the gargled exclamation as he settled back down sounded ugly.
‘Nah. Nothing. Here, you in the truck? Give this one a lift.’ Connie pushed at Peggy, and John gave up and retired to a dark corner with Stacey, who was always available for collective melancholy. ‘Heard from your Jack, have you? Having an easy war, you Archers.’
Doris took a moment. Ignored Connie. The effort was visible. ‘Ready, Peggy?’
‘My other boy, my Vic,’ called Connie as she followed them out, ‘he’ll be eligible for conscription in two years. Something to look forward to!’
As Connie grew smaller in the rear-view mirror, Doris tried to evict the woman from her thoughts. Good housekeeping habits now extended to the inside of her head; sadness was the enemy, like dirt in her kitchen. Sadness slowed her down, and if Doris slowed down, well, where would it all end?
‘My Jack’ll be sorry to have missed you,’ she said to Peggy. Doris had a brief, forbidden thought: Our Janet would’ve been every bit as pretty as Peggy if she’d lived. There was no way to prove this, nobody to corroborate her bias. ‘Have you noticed he’s sweet on you?’
‘I’d notice from the moon. He’s a nice boy, your Jack. He looked me up when his unit came up to Bushy Park to, oh, I don’t know, do something in the mud; they keep the lads busy. He can’t hold his drink, that’s for sure. I didn’t tell him about my regular fella. He’s a big shot, Doris. Owns a factory.’ Peggy paused. The truck threw them in the air and caught them again in its scuffed seats. ‘D’you think Jack’d be jealous?’
‘Do you want him to be?’
They laughed.
‘I’ll scribble down his service address.’ Doris sensed a maturity in Peggy, a forced growing, like Walter’s rhubarb squeaking in the dark. ‘You could write to him.’ Doris fished an envelope out of her bag as they idled behind a trailer full of quizzical sheep. ‘If you like.’
‘I’m too busy to write to some boy.’
They set off again, with a toot on the horn for the sheep’s chauffeur, who Doris, naturally, knew. ‘First the air battles, now the Blitz, there’s always someone getting it, isn’t there?’ she said.
‘It was so funny, the other night.’ Every Londoner had their Blitz story, the one they trotted out, and this was the Perkins’. ‘Mum and me, we were just coming up out of my nan’s shelter and there was another explosion, a biggie, and I put out my arm like, you know, get back, and I got Mum in the nose. Blood everywhere. Mum creating. So Nan hands me a towel and I mop up Mum’s poor face and it’s only the towel we keep to wipe down the outside lavvy!’
‘No!’ Doris was grateful for the laughter. Jez might be gone, but he remained a surly, stubborn blot on the landscape. The Archers were out of pocket. They’d fed and housed him, and paid his wages in the expectation of being reimbursed. It’s my fault. Thrifty Doris felt responsible for every penny. Each time she mislaid something – a key or a comb – she thought Jez! But then she’d find it. She knew, in her bones, that he had taken some trophy with him, and daily she searched for a void, a lack, but nothing was missing.
That was only true until she disproved it.
She said now, ‘Awful about Balham tube station, though. Did you hear about it? A month ago now, it was. All those people asleep on the platform, sheltering from the bombs, and they weren’t safe at all.’ The picture had been on the front page: a double-decker bus face down in a crater. ‘A water main burst as well. Those poor, poor folk.’ Doris gasped. ‘Oh, Peggy, I didn’t think, it’s not near you, Balham, is it?’
‘No,’ said Peggy. ‘I’m the East End.’
‘Bet it’s lively!’
‘It’s lively all right.’ Peggy had a new habit. The morning after a raid she would leave the house early and jog a tour of her friends’ houses. She didn’t knock on any doors, she just checked that the houses were still there.
Death, she knew, was coming for her. She couldn’t keep eluding him, no matter how nimble she was on her feet. As Peggy picked her way over the smashed innards of fallen houses, over sideboards and sewing baskets and snatches of dress fabric, Peggy braced herself. One morning the tour must end in tears.
She’d fallen to her knees over a cat, its furry outline pressed into hot tarmac. She’d sobbed for that cat as if it was her nearest and dearest. It was just a cat. It was just another death.
Hollerton Junction. Peggy didn’t get out. Doris waited, but when the train arrived she said, gently, ‘Peggy? You’ll miss it.’
‘No. Yes.’ Peggy hugged Glen, who had stuck his big hairy head between the front seats. She stepped out, straightened her coat, and slammed the door. ‘Fresh air’s not so bad once you get used to it.’
Halfway back to Brookfield, glad of solid old Glen and his undemanding camaraderie, Doris noticed the scrap of envelope with Jack’s address on it was gone.
By the church she slowed down alongside Walter Gabriel. Where’s he off to in his Sunday jacket? ‘Need a lift?’
He shook his head. Walter was one huge scowl. He walked on. Or marched, rather, holding a piece of paper in his hand. All the way to Homeleigh.
Nance let him in. Accompanied him to her husband’s surgery door. Got no response to her small talk. ‘Walter for you, Frank,’ she said, and closed the door on them both.
‘You need to read this, I reckon, Dr Seed.’ Walter didn’t take the offered seat. He approached Morgan’s leather-topped desk and tossed a piece of paper onto it. Folded and refolded, it was limp.
Morgan pushed his chair back. He put a hand to his mouth.
He knew it was the missing letter. He had anticipated this moment time and again in his mind, and now it was here. ‘Walter,’ he said. ‘Your father was suffering horribly. He was struggling, and I—’
‘I suspected but I didn’t know for sure until I found that letter on Blanche when I nabbed her. You overdosed me dad, didn’t you? You nudged him over the edge. Mum couldn’t bear to watch him in his pain. I thank you with all my heart, I do, and you should count yourself an angel, Dr Seed.’
Morgan rose out of his chair and took the raw, red-fingered ham of a hand that Walter held out. He waited until the man had stopped sobbing. He saw him out.
He ripped the note into pieces.
DEAR FRIENDS
IF YOU HAVE A COUGH, GO TO DR SEED. OR A SNIFFLE OR A TUMMY ACHE. BUT OH DEAR KEEP YOUR EYES ON HIM AS HE DISPENSES YOUR TABLETS. OUR MEDICINE MAN HAS A HOBBY AND IT’S NOT GOLF.
IT’S MURDER.
JUST ASK JONJO GABRIEL. OH I FORGOT, YOU CAN’T. HE’S DEAD AND BURIED.
SIGNED
YOUR NEIGHBOUR
DECEMBER
Two weeks until Christmas.
Billy and John, who didn’t yet know what Christmas with the Horrobins looked like, foresaw plum pudding and stockings, and a merriment that lasted the whole day from getting up early to going to bed late.
The wood had shrunk back since the summer. They didn’t have to beat a way through. Their path to HQ was clear, an easy route through the trees. No mud today; that was a plus.
‘Keep up, John,’ said Billy.
John’s wellingtons were slightly too big. When he sped up they made a funny, sucking noise. Whump, whump, whump. ‘Stan’s being nice,’ he said, suspicious.
‘Yeah! He’s even not saying horrid stuff to Connie. Maybe it’s his birthday.’
‘No, it was his birthday before. He got really proper drunk, remember? He went to kick Stacey. Something’s happened. Something good. Good for him.’ Both boys knew that would entail a horrible downside for somebody else.
Billy said, ‘He was going on about being in the money soon.’ He stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Peggy!’ he said and began to run.
The clearing was different. The painti
ng of Peggy was face down. All her little accoutrements scattered about, and HQ leaning drunkenly over, its door caved in.
‘She’s gone, John!’
They roamed all day and shouted her name. It was no good. Their pig was gone. John, of course, cried, but so did Billy.
* * *
‘It’s like Morgan,’ said Agnes.
‘I shouldn’t laugh,’ said Frank, ‘not now he’s my son-in-law, but yes, you’re right.’
The poster above a box of foraged mushrooms imagined a cheery Father Christmas who exhorted Ambridge to ‘Make it a War Savings Christmas!’ He did bring Morgan to mind. The cheeks. The round glasses. The benign gaze above a hefty tum.
‘Any chance of an orange?’ Agnes knew the answer.
‘Some nice dates there.’ Frank pointed. His breath froze on the air.
‘I ’ate dates.’
Nance handed the box of Christmas cards to Doris who rifled through them and said, ‘All very flimsy. This wartime paper is just useless.’
‘More like blotting paper,’ said Pamela, who was carefully selecting her allotted eggs. She wore a stovepipe hat, velvet, brown. She was rarely seen in the shop, and there was generally an air of performance to her visits. As if she was an actress who had researched domestic chores for a role.
‘There’s some good news for Christmas,’ said Magsy. ‘Bigger rations of tea and sugar.’
Agnes was dour. ‘Whoopee, let’s have a party.’
‘I find I stretch my personal rations perfectly adequately.’ Magsy was pious. ‘Now that I don’t cook for Morgan.’
Nance blinked at the comment. Doris noticed. She had heard various similar remarks from Magsy. No malice in them, but still…
‘I heard from Denholm’s niece,’ said Pamela, rejecting an egg and examining another. ‘Patient’s doing well, apparently, and expected home by Christmas. A man like that really ought to remarry.’ She shook her head as if Denholm was, say, a bicycle minus a saddle. ‘Awfully thin-shelled, these eggs, Nance.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Pargetter,’ said Nance. The apology was reflexive. ‘Hello, young men!’ She greeted Billy and John. ‘Such long faces!’
The two boys were unusually subdued. They each wore two handknits, and John had worsted stockings on under his flannel shorts.
Magsy leaned down. Her fleshy nose wobbled near their own dainty frozen ones and made John shrink. ‘Aw, are you missing Peggy?’
Billy side-eyed John. How does the old bag know?
‘Yes.’ John’s word came out wet, on a sob. ‘She was took.’
‘No, no, she’s in London, dear,’ said Magsy.
‘Eh?’ John stopped crying in shock. ‘London?’
‘I heard,’ said Nance, leaning comfortably over the counter to talk kindly down to them, ‘Peggy has a job in a shoe shop.’
The boys forgot what Connie had sent them to buy and trailed out into the arctic street, keen to be alone and discuss this unexpected turn of events in the pig’s life.
They were in Alec’s way. He sidestepped them, glancing in at the shop.
Pamela raised her hand at him. Smiled. Alec didn’t break step.
‘Pamela, Pamela!’ Magsy pointed to the egg cracked in Pamela’s glove.
‘As I said. Thin shells.’
Pamela removed her glove, placed it tidily in her handbag and left.
When Agnes, too, pulled up her collar and left, Magsy spoke to Nance in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Any more trouble, dear? You know, the slogans, the breaking of the window.’
Frank answered for his daughter: ‘That’s all died down, thank you, Magsy.’
Doris recognized the full stop; Magsy did not.
As Nance’s cheeks ignited, Magsy said sorrowfully, ‘If I could turn the clock back and snatch that letter out of Dan’s hand I would. When I think of the trouble it’s caused.’
‘Yes, well.’ Doris was vigorous, brandishing her chosen Christmas cards at Nance. ‘It’s all done with. Blanche was caught, and stopped.’
‘We must all thank God for small mercies, as the vicar said on Sunday.’ Magsy seemed to remember something. ‘Were you at Eucharist, Doris? I missed you.’
‘No.’ Doris had run out of credible excuses, and just left it at that. She felt exposed by the innocent question, as if Magsy had seen how she winced at her children’s prayers. She patted her hair nervously; she’d taken to combing it over the bald patch, like a travelling salesman.
Doris had always fitted in. Always been a straightforward woman of her time and place; losing her faith made a guerilla of her. Her divorce from the genial God who kept Ambridge ticking over had left no mark that anybody could see, but still she feared them – the others – somehow smelling it on her.
She wanted a way back. She wanted to go home. She wanted to trust again.
* * *
It was like those puzzles in the newspaper: ‘What’s Wrong with this Picture?’
‘Where’s old Bob?’ Dan leaned over the scratched counter. Bob was ever-present within The Bull’s four walls. A little bald god always on hand to lay a beery salve on their wounds.
‘Bob!’ shouted Morgan.
‘Do come along!’ called Alec.
‘Get your arse in ’ere, Little!’ roared Stan.
Morgan tapped the counter. Schooled to notice such things in his patients, he had observed his own growing dependence on Bob’s medicine. The tot of whisky in the evening was looked forward to with carnal anticipation. This midday beer with his sandwich was less a habit than a sine qua non.
Nance had noticed, too. She was a noticer, his girl, and he loved that about her. That didn’t mean he answered her soft questions with any frankness.
Truth be told, they didn’t know each other terribly well. Despite his age and his experience, Morgan saw now that he had naively expected marriage to solve that, to flesh them out, reveal her to him, and vice versa.
It was a slow process. A lick of the finger and a turn of another page. And what was there for Nance – graceful, swan-necked Nance – to read about her ageing husband? Morgan had been duped by two fakers; he’d danced attention on Blanche and propagated the lie of Jimmy’s blindness. The best use of his skill was in dosing an old man to death. He should have told Nance. She deserves to know what kind of man she married. It’s tough to come up against one’s own cowardice, and Morgan called ‘Bob!’ again, his eye on a bottle of his favourite ale.
‘At last!’ Stan slammed down his tankard when Bob, shiny head bent, took his rightful place behind the bar. ‘Pint, and quick about it.’
With something approaching reverence, Bob lined up five squat glasses. He took down the bottle of Glenmorangie with both hands. Like a high priest he poured exactly the same measure into each glass.
The men were quiet. Church-quiet. When Bob raised his glass, they raised theirs. They were waiting. They were, though none would admit it, trembling.
‘To my boy,’ said Bob.
‘Your boy.’
They drained the glasses and put them down with a thump that felt appropriate.
Alec said, ‘When, Bob?’
‘Four days ago. Egypt.’
Morgan said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He didn’t look at Dan or Alec; he couldn’t. We made Jimmy join up, he thought, and it burned more than the Scotch.
‘He gets his sight back, and now…’ Bob poured another for them all. ‘Doesn’t seem right.’
Stan took off his cap. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Bob.’
Bob took a deep breath. ‘My only boy,’ he said.
WINTER 1940
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me
THOMAS HARDY
The Voice
The village was quiet.
Only if you were on foot, as you passed the houses, would you hear the clamour of everybody at table.
But why would you be on foot? Only the snow was on the streets on Christmas Day. Tradition resisted the war, and it ground on behind closed doors. Doors decorated with hol
ly wreaths.
A steady granular crunch was the only noise on the snow-muffled air. It grew louder as the figure drew nearer. A military man, in bulky khaki, only his eyes visible in the letterbox slit between hat and scarf.
He passed Woodbine Cottage without a glance for the candle in its window.
Within, Blanche saw him go by. She knew he wouldn’t knock; there had been no visitors all day. It surprised her. It led her to do something alien to her nature; she reappraised her situation.
It was new to her, this feeling of hurt. The timeline was awry; by now the neighbours should have begun to return. They were sulking, the fools. Blanche poked the fire, and felt her face smart from the heat. ‘That bloody Agnes,’ she shouted to the kitchen. ‘Taking the whole day off! Probably snowed in somewhere with that admirer of hers, cooing over her cheap brooch. My crow’s getting cocky, Jane, mark my words.’
Whether or not Jane marked Blanche’s words she didn’t respond to them.
Which didn’t stop Blanche. ‘I see Doris sent half a ham. She’ll be back, you’ll see. They’re waiting for me to apologize. Ha! They’ll have a long wait!’
From the kitchen came the ragtime noise of Jane’s cooking. The ticking of the gas and then its pah! flowering as a match was put to it. A pan set down. The tap running.
‘Oh, say something, Janey! It’s Christmas. You can’t keep this up for ever. Ah, here she comes, the cook!’ Blanche bowed to Jane, who brought in a roast chicken on a platter that only escaped from the sideboard this one day of the year.
Carrots followed. Bread sauce was scraped into a jug.
‘Bring the carving knife,’ bellowed Blanche, as if the kitchen was at the other end of a castle and not four steps away. ‘Although I could cut this scraggy bird with a butter knife.’
Jane wiped her hands and picked up the horn-handled carving knife. She turned it, studied it, and smiled. She untied her apron with one hand and let it drop to the floor.
Striding out of the back door, with its peeling apple-green paint, Jane flung the knife into the white square the garden had become. Her grey pumps turned darker with the icy dampness that soaked her stockinged toes.
The Archers Page 27
