The Archers

by Catherine Miller

  And he remembered Morgan blundering in on his clodhopper feet.

  ‘Room for a little ’un!’ But he reconsidered. ‘Dammit, too obvious, we’ll be found,’ he had muttered, and crept out.

  As if a starting gun was fired, Alec and Kitty made fast, no-frills love. Silent, careful, hectic. The wardrobe rocked only a little. He remembered her face as she came, and he remembered how it had felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.

  He had told her, as she told him, that it must never happen again. And it never had, until well after Noel’s death.

  Neither of them knew that night they’d made a baby.

  A Caroline.

  ‘I’ll, just, um, if I may.’ The man pointed upstairs with his pencil. He could have been a ghost for all the notice Alec took of him.

  The family knew; hence the cold shoulder.

  Dear God, Noel knew Caroline wasn’t his.

  Did he suspect Alec of being Caroline’s father? It was an ignoble thought, but it was Alec’s first. Maybe Noel hadn’t stood up in the boat to kiss the moon; he may have ended it all on purpose, knowing Kitty had been unfaithful.

  He must walk this out. But he couldn’t leave the cottage. He roamed it, avoiding the solicitor, who gladly gave him a wide berth.

  In and out of the rooms, not saying goodbye when the man left.

  He was angry with Kitty. Why didn’t you tell me? he asked her dressing table, as if it might reply.

  He should have guessed. He should have noticed the timing. He’d lived blind, staggering around, not even aware of his affliction.

  Kitty could have used Caroline’s paternity to force his hand. It would have worked; whatever happened to their love affair he’d have taken care of them both for ever. She wasn’t chasing a meal ticket; she had a meal ticket.

  Kitty had refused to play her ace.

  She’s stronger than me.

  As if seeing another person, some cardboard villain in a Yank movie, Alec heard himself refusing to tell Kitty, ‘I love you’. Avoiding it, as if the phrase was covered in germs. She had given him opening after opening, an opportunity every time they parted. She had told him, point blank, ‘You love me’. Still he persisted with his dumb game.

  Why?

  Kitty, come back and I’ll say it on the hour every hour.

  Alec had left her love hanging on the empty air. All he could do now was shout it to the chilly rooms. So he did just that, and Hero looked on.

  * * *

  It was quiet. The children were asleep, and so was Lisa. Her bedtimes ran to a toddler schedule, with much getting out and dashing away, and the constant threat of tears. Tonight, it had taken Doris half an hour to soothe her, to tenderly hoodwink her.

  Doris picked up her knitting – another blithering sock – and eased off her shoes. The fire was past its best but still warming. The only thing missing was Dan, and that would soon be put right. They would observe midnight and the passing of the year with a drop of something. They wouldn’t wake the children. Not this year. She didn’t feel like celebrating.

  Doris heard Dan’s tread in the yard.

  ‘Who was at The Bull, then?’ She asked her customary question as he came in.

  Without taking off his coat, or answering her, Dan pulled Doris out of the chair. She dropped her knitting and stumbled over a shoe.

  ‘Hey now, Dan!’

  He picked her up. Not without difficulty. With a grunt he swung her so he could carry her like a bride, across his arms.

  ‘Dan Archer, you madman!’ Doris put her arms around his neck, her cardigan rucked up, fearful of being dropped and her behind hitting the hard kitchen floor.

  He carried her up the stairs. She exclaimed all the way. He was red in the face, hoisting her awkwardly when his grasp failed. He threw her on the bed, which complained. Then he undid his trousers and kissed her, kicking the door shut with his foot.

  Mother Cat, licking her paw on the chest of drawers, gaped at the activity.

  ‘Well!’ said Doris afterwards, now only in her slip and the wrong way up in the bed. She wanted to laugh or shout or something. Or sleep, that was it. She wanted to sleep with Dan’s arms around her for forty-eight hours or so.

  Dan wanted something quite different. He threw on his dressing gown. Held hers out for Doris. Old tartan things with frayed frogging, not appropriate for their new Hollywood roles as lovers. ‘Come on, love, downstairs,’ he said, and she obeyed him, because it was turning out to be more fun that way.

  Midnight had trickled past, unnoticed, as they loved. St Stephen’s bell was gagged. Behind their backs, Ambridge had sneaked into the future, and it was cold in the bottom field, the ground black beneath them.

  ‘What’s going on, Dan Archer?’ Doris was still one big smile. She held her dressing gown tight about her throat, looking up at him.

  ‘I do listen,’ he said. ‘You’re so honest, but I haven’t been straight with you, old girl. I’m bloody playacting, aren’t I, with the War Ag? Letting you bear the brunt of the war, chasing your tail at the farm. I’m doing my bit, yes, maybe, but I should be fighting. I’m not an old fella yet.’

  ‘You can’t fight, Dan, you—’

  He talked over her. ‘Doris, love, this is my secret. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to shoot some German farmer, some German me. I’m a coward, I’m a shirker. There. That’s your husband, Doris Archer.’

  They were weathervanes. When Dan sank, Doris rose.

  ‘So you listen to me, do you, Dan? Well, listen now, fellow-me-lad. You’re no coward. You’re decent and you’re strong.’ Doris was on fire; she was necessary, she felt that, and she ran to meet the need. ‘You do what’s required, plus more besides. You’re wearing yourself out! And do you mind telling me what’s wrong with not wanting to fight? You tried to join up, you’d have gone if they’d had you. You’re a human, Dan, and it’s only human to be relieved.’

  ‘You don’t think less of me?’

  ‘Why would I, love?’ Doris believed in Dan. She said it now. ‘I believe in you.’ She took a step back. She laughed. Relief hit. She hadn’t lost her belief. She’d refined it. She believed in her flawed, obliging husband. She believed in people. And the mighty and reliable cycle of nature. She said all this, but it came out wrong. Doris wasn’t good with words.

  She was better with her hands, so Doris bent and dug her fingers into the soil, coming up with a clot of dark earth that spilled on her slippers. ‘That Eugene’s a fool, for all his reading. Ambridge is stuffed full of the big things. These are the big things!’ She closed her hand over the brown earth. It held life. She was grateful to it, and to Dan.

  They were loons, laughing like the children laughed at Laurel and Hardy shorts.

  Maybe there was a way back for Doris.

  ‘We’ve gone right off the rails, haven’t we?’ said Dan. ‘It’s this war, love, but we’re all right, aren’t we?’

  ‘All right? How dare you! We’re more than that.’ Doris kissed him, full on the lips, and forgot how cold she was.

  ‘I love you, old girl.’ Dan held her tightly, as if he’d just found her, and put away all thoughts of the conversation with Alec that had sent him dashing out of the pub and home to his wife.

  * * *

  ‘This’ll be our last beer together of 1940,’ Dan had said as the pub filled up around them. Walter was already unsteady in his patched boots. Elbows were bumped and pints were spilled.

  Bob was busy. He was in five different spots at once, and that, said Dan, was ‘good for him’. It would, he suggested, take his mind off Jimmy. ‘Listen here, Alec, I’m doing all the talking. Cat got your tongue?’

  Alec told him, then, about Kitty. The affair. The love; he used that word. He used it liberally. As Dan slowly put down his beer, and drew Alec to a high-sided settle – ears flapped all around them and Alec didn’t seem inclined to lower his clipped, carrying voice – Alec told him about Caroline.

  ‘She’s mine, Dan.’

  What to say?
Dan was profoundly shocked. He looked at the table, at its knotty grain, its colour spectrum of brown and brownish and browner. Dan was moral, unimaginatively so. Children belonged in houses with their families; they did not drift above the chimney pots waiting to be claimed by this chap or that. ‘But Noel…’

  ‘He knew. Dear God, how he must have hated me.’

  ‘He never showed it.’ Dan could deal with problems of supply and delivery, or anthrax in sheep. He could also deal with matters of morality. There was right and there was wrong. ‘Alec, I had no idea. You and Kitty.’ He shook his head. He judged Alec. He judged him as his grandfather would have done. Without appeal, no room for nuance.

  And it hurt Dan to do so.

  ‘Kitty had grit, Dan. She didn’t tell me about Caroline, but she should have, shouldn’t she?’

  Dan had no answers, and he wouldn’t pretend to. The break in Alec’s reliably upper-crust voice broke Dan, too. He heard the pain, and it pushed at centuries of conditioning. He saw a man, his friend, insofar as a farmer and a landowner can be friends, and he saw how hard that friend was trying not to cry. Good God, don’t blub, man. Dealing with tears was Doris’s department.

  ‘It’ll be all right.’ That’s all Dan had. He meant it, too, but then it’s easy to say. He patted Alec’s shoulder.

  Alec pulled away, as if Dan had punched him. ‘Who needs to listen to me whining on New Year’s Eve, eh? You should be home with Doris and the children.’

  ‘I should.’ Dan’s legs began to jiggle beneath the table. He wanted to run across the fields, leaping over hedges like he’d done as a boy. The road took too long. ‘But…’ He did it again. He scalded Alec with sympathy.

  ‘Go, man. Get on. Go.’ Alec laughed. Or the muscles in his face stretched his mouth over his teeth and a tinny ha ha escaped him. ‘Happy New Year, Dan. Let’s hope 1941…’ Alec had no hopes, he realized. He didn’t care about 1941.

  They parted company outside The Bull. Dan took off, overcoat flying behind him. Alec took the long way back to Lower Loxley.

  He passed a cottage and the outbreak of hollers told him he had walked right through the year and out the other end.

  As if taking in clouds massing on hills, Alec noticed details about himself for the first time. It had been a season of firsts since Kitty ran away. There was a hole revealed in Alec, one that had been stuffed with moss and twigs and family silver.

  Now he had coughed all of that up. The ground rose beneath his feet, taking him away from the huddle of houses which was, when it came down to it, all that Ambridge was. The moon lit his way like a sarcastic sun. It was a changed man who trudged into the third year of war, one who didn’t know he had never loved until he loved.

  He’d given love a wide berth; the barren will do that. Give them a stick and they’ll kill it.

  Now love prised him open. Gave him words, all the damn words, and there was a sliver of Alec that wished himself back to ignorance. That, though, would mean no Kitty. So he accepted his pain and his loneliness as the price. Not of love, but of stupidity.

  I could have her still if I wasn’t such a fool.

  And his little girl. He had never once looked at Caroline and thought yes, she was his. Never wondered about the shape of her eyes or the slope of her cheek. Her hair he remembered often, and he smiled every time, and patted his own cowlick.

  Ahead of him, Lower Loxley grew with each step. It was inevitable he must return, no matter how circular the path. Alec must take up his shackles again, lock himself in with a woman he didn’t understand. Had he ever tried to? That was a question for another night. There would be many nights, all of them long, and there was no hurry to index all the questions right now.

  He wondered, for the hundredth time, how Kitty was coping. How she was living. If she’d risk travelling to Ireland, or if such a thing was even possible. What would she do for money; what black magic deal had been struck with George Seed? Kitty had surely signed in blood, believing herself as worthless as Alec made her feel.

  She had compromised herself to get out of Ambridge. And it’s all my fault.

  And Caroline? How would the little girl know he loved her? Because he did. Alec was good at love, now that it was too late.

  * * *

  Nineteen forty-one is brand new. The moment shimmers.

  Walter Gabriel is sound asleep. He reeled home for midnight and rattled the roof with a shout of ‘And a happy new year to you all!’ Just like last year. Just like every year.

  But Walter is changed. His father is dead. Enemy planes have flown over his roof. His hangover clears its throat, awaiting its cue. For now, though, he sleeps.

  Above the shop, Frank is awake. He turns over, pulling the covers with a grunt. He knows he’ll dream of his father, and the old man will ask why he readily gave away his heritage for a country that will never truly accept him.

  The murkey wasn’t so bad. Eugene’s tummy is full and his brain is a bit sloshed and his foot is aching in that familiar way. He was too tired to read when he turned in, or maybe too drunk. He wonders how his mother spent Christmas Day, and if she raised a glass to him. He assumes not. He lights a candle and scrabbles about beneath his bed until he lays his hand on a book. He finds his page. Books have never let him down.

  It’s hard to sleep in a tube station, with an unwashed bloke on one side, and your keening mum the other. Peggy closes her eyes and imagines herself a child again. Her dad will walk in, any minute now, and sort everything out.

  Sitting in the faint light given by the embers in the grate, Jane reaches out her foot and sets the rocking chair going; a ghost would be company.

  Shall I see another new year? thinks Mrs Endicott as she snaffles the last fugitive violet cream from a box she keeps under the bed. My grasp on this life is so slender. She belches and lies back on a dam of pillows.

  Outside, not dressed for it, plunging through the night, Dan holds Doris’s hand. A new word he heard on the Beeb has snagged on a nail in his brain. Blitzkrieg. What if the empire has had it? What if we can’t stop the Germans? He speeds up, and Doris complains. ‘Nearly there, old girl,’ he says.

  Pamela has left her bedroom door ajar. Alec is blundering about down in the drawing room. She abhors his new habit of sleeping on the big old Knole sofa, a bottle lolling on the rug. She doesn’t blame Alec, she blames the girl. It’s all the girl’s fault. Standing in front of a cheval mirror in her best nightdress, that is, her briefest, she sees how meagre it makes her look. She tears it off and pulls a billowing cambric thing over her head, and closes her bedroom door with a bang.

  There is the bubble made by the Anderson shelter’s corrugated roof, and there is the bubble made inside it by Dottie and Chaz as they commune, nose to nose, in the chilly quiet. Her granddad twitches in his sleep like an old mutt, and her sister coughs on and off all night. Dottie murmurs to Chaz and he squeaks and sighs back and she is as happy, she thinks, as any human deserves to be.

  That floor needs a sweep, but Bob ignores the dirt and pours himself a Glenmorangie. It is his nightly treat now. A treat without which he can’t sleep. The silence after the singing and the carousing has his ears humming. He gets out the map again, rescued many times from the rubbish. He stares at Egypt. At Sidi Barrani. He drinks his whisky.

  The trucks follow one another out of the barracks. Jack bounces on the plank seat and leans over his mate’s shoulder to see the map. So that’s where Egypt is, in bleedin’ Africa. ‘We’re off!’ shouts someone and Jack cheers, bashing shoulders with his friend, his teeth a white flash in the darkness. ‘At last!’ he laughs.

  All very high-class, the hotel’s reception desk cows the girl. She minds her P’s and Q’s, trying to look as if blokes squire her to such establishments every day. Jez smothers a laugh as he signs a cheque that he knows will bounce with a splendid blue-lacquered pen.

  Out beyond the edges of Ambridge, a light burns at the Horrobins’. Connie has put the furniture back on its feet after Stan’s latest tantr
um. She has dried John’s tears with the edge of her shawl and tucked him back in bed. From time to time she risks a look at where Cliff sits in the sketchily drawn shadows of the room. She can only look at him for a few beats. She is slowly piecing her son together. The jaw. The nose. The ear. The lips. She can only bear them one at a time, as if he is a broken jigsaw.

  ‘It’s awful long to leave the children, Dan.’ Doris’s feet are damp. It isn’t an adventure anymore. She’s freezing. She fantasizes about what Lisa might be getting up to, in the nuddy perhaps.

  ‘They’ll be fine. In here.’

  ‘What? Why?’ Doris lets herself be led through St Stephen’s gate, and around the side of the church. She stubs her toe and could curse, she’s this close to it, when Dan stops.

  He strikes a match. She sees his silly, pleased-with-himself face in its flame.

  ‘And you an ARP warden, Dan Archer,’ she hisses. ‘No lights!’

  Then she sees it. A small plaque in the rough stone wall. It’s new, the letters crisp and black on milky white marble.

  In Memoriam

  JANET FORREST

  1903–1908

  She was loved

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The phrase ‘dream job’ is bandied about, but surely I have a right to use it. I’ve been invited to Ambridge to wander around and peek in its windows, to meddle in the history of a place so precious to so many.

  I hope I’ve done it justice. Escaping to Borsetshire – and 1940s Borsetshire, at that – from our present day was the sort of holiday that Covid-19 made impossible. I found parallels between the first uncertain days of the Second World War and the UK’s lockdown that enrich the story. It was a slender silver lining to a terrible time.

  This book was born in a torrent of love and enthusiasm. Everyone who heard the idea got the ‘tingle’ that editors and booksellers live for. Many, many thank-yous are necessary, and here are some of them.