by Katie Munnik
‘You can’t let me forget about brambles,’ she said. ‘Mum’s been dropping heavy hints about some likely bushes down by the river. I must remember to go and take a look for her. And I’m to tell you that Rosie’s due for slaughter next week so there’ll be sausages for you, if you like.’
She props her bike against the stone wall by the church and rakes her fingers through her hair. ‘Anyone you know?’
She’s caught me scanning the street. Maybe I’m looking for Stanley. Maybe I’m just looking. There’s such a number of people walking up and down and it feels like ages since I’ve been in a proper crowd. ‘Not a soul. You?’
‘We’ll have better luck by the picture house, I should think. There’s always someone there to chat with.’
* * *
The picture house isn’t plush like the one in Morningside. No stained-glass peacock or Art Deco tower here. Inside, there are dozens of soldiers in the seats, mostly uniformed but you’d know anyway because anyone from a farm would be outside on a day like today. The weather is turning, but it hasn’t turned yet. Some of the soldiers have girls with them, East Lothian sophisticates, but mostly it’s just men. There are children, too, and five years ago, they would be clutching paper bags of sweeties, their mouths sugar-crammed and sticky, but not now. A few have carrot candy, instead, and they suck on it for a turn, then pass it down the line, all through the newsreel. Aeroplanes over London and footage of the streets. Churchill’s Few are praised and he’s playing Prince Hal for all he’s worth these days, but it seems to work. The soldiers clap and cheer, and the air feels thick with courage and the floor under my shoes is sticky. I can’t stop thinking about Stanley, that look in his eyes and then what he said about hosing out the plane. They don’t show that on the newsreels, do they? I’m on my feet before I know it, pushing past Muriel and out to the door, but I make it, just make it out to the street before I’m sick over the railing. The laughter of children, then the street is quiet, but I’m shaking and the tears come, too. I’m glad Muriel had fixed my hair, that it is out of the way, that I didn’t have any damned mascara to wear. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and try to stop shaking. There’s a hand on my back now, which must be Muriel, but when my breath returns and I can open my eyes, I see that it isn’t. It’s that blond soldier and he’s passing me a handkerchief.
‘Thank you.’ I straighten and turn away from the railing, holding the folded cloth in my hands. ‘I—’
‘Yes,’ he interrupts, then smiles. ‘You are welcome. It is for your eyes. The handkerchief.’
‘Of course. Thank you.’ I dab them with the cool cloth, and Muriel is through the door now, her voice loud and warm. ‘Goodness, Jane, that was dramatic. Must have been all the sun and cycling that did it. A first-class case of the collywobbles. How are you doing, duck?’
‘Wobbled,’ I say. ‘Glad to have got outside in time.’
‘It’s so warm in there, isn’t it? And the smell of all those men. That can’t have helped. You look absolutely grey.’
‘I’ll be fine. Really. I just need some air. I’ll come right in a minute.’
The soldier cleared his throat. ‘Some water to drink, perhaps?’
Muriel turns to see him and then she grins. ‘Izaak! Always the ideal gentleman. Jane, you picked the best rescuer of them all. Izaak is a real brick. The brickiest.’ She puts an arm around me and gives me a squeeze.
‘I think she might need a cup of tea.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’d like that. And I think I should probably sit down.’
They walk me down to the Italian chippy and find me a seat. I pass Muriel my purse so that she can pay for tea for three. As she steps up to the counter, Izaak leans towards me across the table, his voice soft and subtle.
‘We will talk later,’ he says. ‘About Stanley. Trust me.’
‘Did you find him? Did you give him the suitcase?’
‘Later. Not now.’
My face warms and I hear Muriel laughing at the counter, the woman there saying something and laughter again, but when she comes back to the table, she hands me a cup and looks at me oddly and I only look at the tea. It is weak, naturally, but lovely to know that my ration at home isn’t reduced by this cup. I sip slowly, and when I look up, Izaak meets my eye, smiling. Then he smiles at Muriel.
‘I wondered if you two ladies might know each other.’
‘I hadn’t realized you had met,’ she says.
‘Yes. We were out walking near the shore. I had to turn her away.’
‘I was getting too close to the defence lines. Twice.’
‘The area was closed to civilians.’
‘But it is safe, isn’t it? The shore, I mean. I … I wouldn’t have been blown up.’
‘Perhaps not. But you might have spooked the boys in the pillboxes. They are doing their best to keep a good eye on the coast. Best to stay away. As I said before, people shouldn’t be out there, no matter how pleasant it seems.’
Muriel digs in her pockets for a pack of cigarettes. ‘Jane, you are perfectly peaky. You should have said something. If you had, I never would have dragged you out here.’
‘How are you feeling now?’ Izaak asks.
‘I’ll be fine. It’s nothing.’
Izaak excuses himself and steps outside, saying he’s sure he will see us both later. Muriel grabs a menu and looks it up and down, chattering on about the lovely grub they do here, and I drink my tea.
‘Look,’ she says, suddenly. ‘There’s a dance coming up. Do you want to go? I need someone to go with.’
‘Won’t Izaak be going?’
‘I wouldn’t know. Haven’t a clue. I wish you wouldn’t tease.’
‘I’m not. I … No, I don’t think I could. Not without Stanley.’
‘Oh, it’ll be fine, really. He’s sure to be off dancing, too. Everyone is these days. Really, it’s a matter of morale. Civic duty to keep cheerful, don’t you think? Anyway, I’m sure there will be masses of people. Air Force and Poles and everybody. Lots of farm workers, too. And land girls. I’ve got half a fancy to sign up for that game myself. Listen, if I do, you could take over my garden, couldn’t you? That would be just the ticket. Rosie’s time’s up, but there might be another pig and Mum could help you out. Then I could go, and I wouldn’t be leaving anyone in the lurch. And you’d have work. Cure the waiting blues in no time at all. That’s all it is, isn’t it? You missing him?’
‘How did we get from let’s-go-to-a-dance to look-after-my-pig-and-potatoes-won’t-you? Muriel, you could talk anyone into anything.’
‘Part of my charm. Anyway, the dance is Saturday night. You’ll be feeling better by then, I should think. We could get the bus up and walk home again together, no bother. Take your mind from your troubles. Dance for victory and all that.’
‘I can barely get my mind around my shoelaces.’
‘I’ll come round your house to help you. The dance won’t start until ten, but it should keep going until two at least, if it’s a good band. They even muster midnight sandwiches sometimes. The Polish families bring them along. Call them sausage, but it’s only spread and rabbit from the dunes. Tasty as anything, though, especially with all the dancing. How are you feeling now? Still peely-wally? I think the tea’s brought back your colour. You ready for a choc ice?’
‘Not on your nelly.’
I say I’ll take a bus home and Muriel says she’ll come too, but I remind her about the bicycles. I ask if she thinks Izaak might be able to ride Connie’s bike home for me? That will give them a long time together to smooth things through. Muriel grins and squeezes my arm.
‘Might be for the best, really,’ she says. ‘Wouldn’t want you to have a wobble on the way back and end up in a ditch somewhere.’
She leaves me at the bus stop and says she’ll come round to check on me in the morning. All the way back to Aberlady, I watch the ditches and the hedgerows and worry about Stanley’s suitcase.
9
IT IS NOT UNTIL NOVEMBER THAT
IZAAK PASSES ME WORD of where Stanley is. I come back from the shops in Gullane to find a yellow square of folded paper slipped through the door.
Birthwood Cottage, Biggar.
I don’t know if he has been there long, or if he has only just arrived. But it doesn’t matter. He’s away from the coast now and out of the mine.
In the afternoon, I sit down and try to shape words on the page. My fingers smell like soap powder and the pen feels oddly weighted in my hands.
Dear Stanley,
Right off the bat, I got the address from Izaak. I assume that’s your first question, seeing my awful scrawl and wondering how I found you. Doesn’t that sound just like something they say in the films? Right off the bat, darling? I wish we could go to the films tonight, me and you. Sit in the dark, hidden away. And laugh. That would be nice.
Of course, I should tell you I am well and then spill all the local news, and I will, but I can’t yet. It’s you I want to focus on, not shift over to me. I want to know how you are and what it’s like where you are and what is happening. Izaak told me so little. We managed to chat at a dance last week and he told me about your sympathetic chaplain, but I imagine he doesn’t really know much anyway. The military is all rather need-to-know, isn’t it? Did he do right by you? That’s what worries me the most. Was I right to trust him? Because I did. He said this would be counted as a sort of leave for you. There must be some other category. Convalescence, perhaps. Izaak said it wouldn’t be detainment, but he couldn’t promise there wouldn’t be a trial. Oh, they don’t call it that, do they? All this military process and jargon and bloody– sorry, Stanley, but it is. It’s a bloody, bloody war.
No. I can’t do this. I should take a clean sheet and try starting this letter again. Write some cheerful words, all full of hope and charity, but I won’t. This, too, is the lie of the land and we promised intimacy, didn’t we? But you – I wanted to start this letter with you. Even if it can only be how I imagine you rather than how you really are. I know you’re in a cottage near Biggar, so I’ll imagine that and maybe sometime, you’ll manage to write to me and correct all my shoddy, poetic assumptions. The hills are lovely there, I think. Steep and rounded. I don’t think it’s rocky land, is it? What will you find to look at? But maybe the hills will do. You can imagine the glaciers that shaped them and the long years of wind sandpapering their slopes. The cottage will be stone, too, won’t it? A shepherd’s cottage nestled in the crook of the hills. You can lay your palm against the quarried blocks and dream of past ages. I like the name. Birthwood conjures all sorts of dreams. Trees, naturally, and the possibility of something new. It’s green, too, I’m sure, and green feels important these days. Even when everything is bleak and precarious, or loud with aeroplanes overhead, it feels important that there are still green things all about. Things with roots. Things that grow. It seems to me that the important things are not things that happen, but things that grow. Your walk home only happened. What grows from it will matter. Of course, it will.
And this is where you need to tease me out of my lecturing or remind me that this all sounds like nonsense to a geologist. But I’ll one-up you, my fine fellow. You won’t have guessed yet, but when you reread this letter, you’ll surely tell me I am no good at keeping secrets because every line has already been telling you my news. What I mean to say, what I can’t help but say, and by now you do know, is that I’m expecting. What a thing to tell a husband in a letter. But there it is. All being well, the baby will be born in the spring. Around the middle of May, I think. And all is well, so don’t worry about me. I’m hungry, which my mother says is a sign of health. At first, I wasn’t, and I could hardly manage a cup of tea, but I chalked it all up to worry about you. Took me far too long to understand the real cause, but when I did, I headed into the city and visited Dr Graham right away. He says I’m right as rain. Sound as a workhorse and would manage heartily, which hardly sounds ladylike, but I found cheering, and as he’s known me since day one, I’ll trust his words.
September and October have been busy. Muriel got me involved with the harvest. Nothing taxing because of my suspicions, though I hadn’t told her anything. Mainly, I have been hauling up vegetables, sometimes in her garden, sometimes elsewhere. The onion sets you planted here came up beautifully. You can’t find them in the shops now for love or money, so I’m not telling anyone about these beauties. I lifted them in September and they’ve been keeping well since then in the garden box you lined with those dried dune grasses. Do you remember the day we gathered them? All that sky above us. I would send you that day again, my love, if I could, and it might brighten these November rains. And I’ll send Lawrence’s stormy raindrops that cling like silver bees to the panes. And his child sitting under the piano, pressing the small, poised feet of his mother who smiles as she sings. That will be me. Imagine that, will you? East Lothian rain all down the window and me at the piano, singing, my feet tingling and longing to dance.
A pretty picture, I suppose. I want you to know that I am keeping up. I worry. I work. I find ways to be cheerful. Now that the harvest is done, I’m keeping busy with getting things ready for the baby. More knitting and I’m getting the hang of it. Baby things are so small they knit up quick as anything. As fast as lickitie, quick as hickitie, as my granny used to say, but my mother never did.
I don’t know anything about your grannies. What were they like? It occurs to me that this baby of ours is going to have twice the ancestors I do. Isn’t that wonderful? Every generation doubled, all those stories we might share, if only we knew them.
I’m sending you a book from the minister. He said that you would be interested and I think I agree. It’s all about local carvings, but older than Carrick’s. Did you know about the fragment of the cross found here at the manse? Seventh-century sandstone and carved with Celtic birds, all intertwined. It was found built into the manse garden wall, but it’s over at Carlowrie Castle now. Maybe we can see it after the war. Make it a long day on bikes and see if the people who live there will oblige. You could flash your university credentials and we could have a jolly day of it. But you’ll see there is a clever reproduction in the book. Reverend Thomson said he thought they were wild geese, an ancient symbol of the Holy Ghost. Something else I didn’t know, but you might.
I put in a few more feathers for you, too, in case you needed a bookmark.
Write to me, if you can. Tell me how you are. Tell me about the land, about your heart. Know that I love you and won’t stop. Ever.
Your
Jane
* * *
It’s a mess of a letter, but honest, I think. And it does raise the question: is spilling out on the page like this more honest than crafting something carefully? Is craft meant to conceal or clarify? I’m not sure I know any more. Where do the poets get with all their half-said thoughts, prettily arranged? Though, perhaps if they said what they really wanted, we’d all be fit to be tied. And if that’s so, what sort of critic might I be? I can’t even open my degree books these days. I just sit and read Lawrence and listen to the rain.
But I wish and even pray that this letter may speed its winged way to Stanley. Like hope itself, that thing with feathers, and thank you, Miss Dickinson, for that lovely image. Why didn’t I give Stanley that one, too? I think about adding it in, but annotation would spoil the flow and if the letter is to be honest, then let it be unpolished, too.
As a scientist, Stanley will appreciate the letter’s actuality. Not a news report, but a record of the weather. And somehow we’ll weather this. It was a strange wind that blew Stanley north, away from the barracks and almost to the sea. But the land caught him, the mine snared him and hid him like a rabbit in its heart, keeping him safe. I hope he is safe now. I hope that Birthwood Cottage, whatever else it may be, is a haven. Such a fairy-tale name. Rather fits with Stanley’s rooks who brought him presents. And the godly geese, too. All these feathered fables. Why do storks bring babies? Who first fancied that idea? Is it German? Germans are good
at fairy tales. I wonder if that’s why they’re good at war. They dare imagine darkness. But then, so do we. Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. Wild god-geese on the sandbar and selkies and kelpies and all of the saints. There’s a Scottish story, too, about a raven, although it might be a crow, who drops a gold ring into a goblet. I can’t remember if it’s for good or for evil. I’ll need to brush up on my fairy tales before the baby comes. The baby with mussel-shell eyes.
I went to the manse last week to talk to Connie about knitting patterns. When I first asked, she seemed pleased and talked about the poor orphans, so I had to explain that these wee projects were for the local home front. Cheeky, but she grinned, and then turned grave. When she didn’t ask, I knew she was counting.
I haven’t told Muriel yet, but I will need to soon. That feels like a decision I have to make. She’s asked me to spend Christmas at her house, too, and I think I will. Save Mum and Dad the worry of where to put me up at the flat.
I wonder about writing to the baby. Is it strange to write to an unborn child? Unlucky, maybe? But she’s no less real than Stanley. No less alive. Not having heard from Stanley for months now, I imagine that he can’t reply. That he is dumb, muted somehow, perhaps by the air in the mine, his voice gone underground, his thoughts in hiding, too. Like the child, he might hear me if I send out words his way, but perhaps like her, they will carry meaning only in tone, only in the shape of sounds, the mood of breath as the words pass through.
What water walls contain him now? Do the Scottish hills womb him round? Is the sky a mother’s tautness above? And what might he kick out against?
This isn’t helping. It was the child I was wondering about – or perhaps only my desire to connect. It is so easy to feel lonely these days. So here I go, I will give it a try and write her a letter. Her? That’s based on nothing. Only feeling. Or just hope. Because I might understand her better. I try to stay unconvinced. But then the quiet voice returns, saying she. I imagine it is the baby’s voice. She reaches out for me, sending certainties up through my jangling nerves, into the space that holds my heart. So I reach out for her.
