The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  ‘Are you feeling ready?’ Miss Baxter asks.

  ‘For dinner? Or for conversation?’ My coat feels tight and my fingers are cold in my pockets, but she smiles softly at me and takes my arm.

  ‘Christmas itself, I suppose. That’s all I meant, my dear. Christmas has a way of coming even when all else is strange and cold. But goodness, the wind is dancing today. Just look at the white out on the water.’

  She offers to carry my bag full of packages and I let her and listen as she tells me about her breakfast of hot porridge and a celebratory fourth cup of tea.

  * * *

  Along with the rabbit, Muriel’s mother prepares baked celery with a cheesy crust, a recipe her mother used during the Great War. ‘Served elegantly as its own course, too. Just like the French. My mum liked fine manners.’

  ‘There won’t be much French about this feast,’ Mr Grant says. ‘The occupation’s done us out of all possibility of good postprandial brandy. Think we can muster some whisky?’ He winks at Muriel and she laughs.

  She is warmer than I expected. Friendly enough, as if I were the neighbour’s visiting relative to be cordially entertained. She says nothing about my condition and I wonder if she’s noticed. But all her talk is about the land girls and the work ahead. Come February, she says, she will be down in Drem bunking at a farmhouse there with two other girls. She’s looking forward to it. Her father says he’ll miss her and she kisses the top of his head. His thin hair, her close, soft cheek. I can’t picture the top of my father’s head.

  ‘I’m not gone forever, you know, old man,’ Muriel says. ‘Not even getting married. Just off to work.’

  ‘I know, I know. But I worry. And now, with your mother’s back, too.’

  ‘Och, you. I’ll be fit in no time. All this food is sure to strengthen my resolve.’

  ‘Ah, but.’ He stops and says no more, his hand reaching across the table to take hers.

  ‘Will you be getting another pig?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, now, we haven’t quite decided. We’ll need to evaluate what to take on without Muriel.’

  ‘Jane can lend a hand,’ Muriel says. ‘Easy as spit. Rosie practically raised herself with all the rummaging she managed under the orchard trees. All that is required is simple maintenance, really.’

  ‘I’m happy to help. Of course I am.’

  ‘That could be one answer, then,’ says Mrs Grant. ‘You’re such a helpful lass. I’m sure we’ll all manage together, won’t we?’ She smiles at me and fills our teacups, and we listen to the BBC broadcast from Coventry Cathedral. Amidst the ruins, the provost preaches restoration, pledging that after the war, he will work with those who have been enemies to build a kinder, more Christ-childlike world. I try to catch Muriel’s eye. She holds her teacup carefully.

  Towards the end of the meal, I begin to feel dizzy and have to excuse myself from the table. I step into the pantry and lay my hands flat against the cool marble shelf. Mrs Grant follows me and stands close.

  ‘You all right, my dear? Too hot in the other room?’

  ‘Yes. I’m … I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Would you like to lie down? Might be better for your head. You’ll be finding it harder to lean over to stop the dizziness these days, I imagine. It was like that with Muriel. Such a head I had! My mother was always telling me to stand up straight to make it better and to give the baby space, but I only ever wanted to set my head down on any table I could find, close my eyes and wait for the months to pass. But they will, you know. They will.’

  She lays a gentle hand between my shoulder blades and her voice is quiet and reassuring. ‘Waiting is always difficult, my dear, but difficult days do pass.’

  Later, she sends me home with a thick slab of cake and leftovers to feed an army. Miss Baxter is given a jar of marmalade and a bit of cheese for Basil and she thanks the Grants for their kindness. Mrs Grant stands at the door with her arms around Muriel and they both wear brave smiles as they say goodbye and Happy Christmas and joy of the season and goodwill to all and peace, peace, peace in the days ahead.

  Hogmanay comes and goes and I ignore it. Most do. The minister opens the kirk for prayer on New Year’s Day, and I watch cold figures pass my door on their way over the road, but I stay at home. I write to Stanley, as I do every week, and hear nothing.

  I grow fat. The winter grows still colder. There’s talk in the shops of farmers finding their sheep shorn and shivering and the foreign airmen are suspected of stealing the wool to stuff their palliasses. The butcher made a weak joke about Polish mattresses and local pale lasses and I pretended I hadn’t heard. In the newspaper, there are reports of considerable telephonic disruption due to wet and freezing snow clinging to overhead telephone lines. They can’t tell us where the bombs are falling, but they can conjure up all these careful images of weather. I imagine strange white snow birds like pale-feathered rooks, their frozen feet snapping the wires and all the broken words of our local conversations tumbling out like frozen eggs to shatter on the cold ground.

  Miss Baxter and I share tea most evenings now. She leaves Basil at home or out in the garden. Sometimes she watches him through the window, though mostly we sit together at the table, warming our hands around our cups. There’s been talk on the radio about parachutists on the south coast, and even sightings up here. You’d think that all the airfields would quell fears, but everyone is keeping alert and aware.

  ‘Ah yes, it’s parachutists this time, is it? There’s always something to watch for.’ Miss Baxter pulls at the cuffs of her cardigan, looking for a handkerchief. ‘And parachutists are a frightening enough prospect, but what about the clouds behind them? Is anyone talking about that, I wonder? What about the fear and the doubt that are crowding in? And all the suspicion, hunger and hate? And loneliness, too, and greed and decay. What about everything else that comes with war? We’re all too distracted looking out for parachutists to watch for any of that, aren’t we? We don’t notice the heavy dark clouds blowing in over Europe. And then it is too late.’

  ‘Stanley would like that,’ I say. ‘I think he’d say you understand.’

  ‘Maybe I do, a little. My brother was a conchie in the last war.’

  A pause and she doesn’t ask about Stanley.

  After a little while, she tells me about the men her brother met at his meetings. All kinds, she said. Some clever and privileged, coming from the right schools. But there were others, too, who were just regular boys like Mack.

  ‘Such courage, the lot of them. No one really recognized it. Because it takes courage to walk away. They had strong ideas about life and God and wouldn’t let anyone bully them into killing. Well, in the end, Mack was lucky and he was assigned non-military work. Of National Importance, they called it. But we had some hard times because of him.’

  I ask if the family understood his conviction.

  ‘No, not at all. There was nothing irregular about us. Regular Sunday school kids, and my father kept a bible on his bedside table all his life. But my brother picked up some new ideas. Met some older boys and said he’d learned to read the scriptures differently. Still, it wasn’t anything shocking. Perhaps a little more serious, that’s all. It was only when the war came that it made a difference. That war changed many things.’

  She doesn’t say more then, just watches the cat flicking his tail back and forth, and the sparrows flit from the wall to the paving stones, then back to the wall.

  Late in January, I’m feeling heavy and catch a bus along to the shops in Gullane. The weather is bleak again. Bleak and dreich, flat-skied and grey. When I say as much to the butcher, he says not to worry a jot as the days of Bride would be coming soon. My cheeks warm and redden. I know he’s only referring to the story of St Bride and the first days of February when the weather tends to warm, but it feels like a personal dig.

  The butcher asks after Stanley and I say I haven’t heard yet this week. As if he writes weekly. I wish he would.

  ‘He went last in May, didn’t he
?’ The butcher looks down as he asks the question, but I don’t.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He went south with the others at the end of the month.’

  Thick fingers wrap up my sliver of beef, then add a slice of fat on top. ‘That’s for the wee one. You’ll be wanting more meat, the both of you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Nothing said, nothing minded.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  I’ll mince the fat and mix it with tomato paste and breadcrumbs to fry up as faux sausages. Another idea from the newspaper, though the ladies around here all say fox.

  11

  THEN SPRING COMES BUT NOT WARMTH AND I STILL wear socks to bed. Mornings come earlier, with daffodils and taller grass in the kirkyard, and everything is filled by the wind. The front room. The trees across the road. Miss Baxter’s pillowcase on the laundry line. I, too, am restless. Muriel has been out at the Drem farmhouse for a month, or a little more. The geese left last week, wave after wave lifting from the sandbar, a pandemonium of honk-a-lonks and trumpets, Mrs Grant said, like half the world a-wing with the dawn. She had stopped by with a heap of old baby clothes she says she found put away in a drawer. I suspect she had been around the village and collected them from a few drawers at least – that, or Muriel had the most clothes of any baby in Britain. I’ll wash them today with my extra-ration maternity soap and pin them up on my end of the line. Every day now, the light is stretching and the days last longer. It’s easier to hope with this wind and strong light.

  Mrs Grant tells me that last week Mrs Scott had a letter returned by the censors. The franking read: RETURNED BY CENSOR, and on the back of the envelope there was a stamped note which read No permission to ask for parcels or rationed goods or rationed food from overseas.

  ‘She was terribly upset. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was doing anything wrong. She just kept saying why don’t they tell us these things? How can we do the right thing if we just don’t know? The poor dear, I don’t think she’d ever been scolded like that before in her life.’

  Miss Baxter gets a letter from her sister, franked with red ink. RELEASED BY CENSOR. Inside, the letter is scored through with black and hard to read. Together, we glean that her sister hasn’t been able to sleep, and that she is worried, but we don’t know what about – something she has heard in the night.

  ‘It must be terrible,’ Miss Baxter says, ‘for someone to take the time to cross all this through. Still, there has been no news of any raids in the north. I can’t think Stirling would be much of a target. Maybe further west. Glasgow? They might have had a bad raid. Do you think she’d have heard that in Bridge of Allan? Maybe that’s what she’s trying to say.’

  Still no word from Stanley. I’ve written to him again, and I said that I wouldn’t write again now until after the baby is born. It can’t be long now. The baby is heavy, sitting low and shifting awkwardly. When she pushes into me, I press back with my palm, prodding gently and breathing softly to give her space.

  One morning, I decide to take a walk. Fresh air and a bit of a stretch. A bit of shopping and then on the way home, I’ll stop at the Grants with bramble tea. It’s been a good week for drying things in the sunshine and I’ve read in my granny’s cookbook that bramble tea is a delicious change from the usual kind. She wrote this in the margin next to a recipe for orange pudding, which sounds so very nice. I slip a paper packet of dried bramble leaves into my net shopping bag and walk down to the bus. I mean to go along to Gullane where I’m registered at the shops. I have my ration book ready, and my money in my purse. I’ll buy a little sugar, some butter, some cheese. The coins for the bus sit in my hand and I mean to cross the street, walk down past the Mercat Cross and wait, but a bus is coming along just now around the bend in the high street and towards me, so I hold out my hand, flag it down, and it stops. A single to Edinburgh, I say without thinking, dropping the coins in the slot. I slide myself into a seat, and the bus pulls away, on to Longniddry, Port Seton, Prestonpans. In Musselburgh, I wonder if I might admit my mistake and go home. I’m not expected in Edinburgh. Only the driver knows I paid all the way into the city.

  When the bus turns into St Andrew Square, the city feels warm around me. People walk about in the sunshine, smiling as if summer may be around the corner after all. I cross Princes Street, and climb the Mound slowly, the hill a challenge, my pace slow past the bank and over the cobbled Royal Mile. Down in the Meadows, allotment gardens have been dug and potatoes and carrots grow in straight rows. I will need to plant some myself pretty soon, I think. Only six months or so until the baby weans and then the two of us will be needing our vegetables. Mum will give me advice, on both the planting and the weaning when the time comes.

  She meets me at the door with her sleeves rolled up. ‘Goodness, you shouldn’t have come. Just look at you.’ She doesn’t need to say anything at all; I can see she’s worried. I smile as strongly as I can and rub my belly.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum. I needed a change of scene. The bus was running anyway. And I wanted to see you.’

  ‘Oh my love, look at you. You’re …’

  ‘Full.’

  ‘Yes. And lovely. Let’s get you inside. You’ll be needing to sit yourself down. Goodness, all this way like that. Come in now.’

  The flat smells like vinegar and it’s quieter than I expected. I’d hoped for a crowd. The boys and their jokes, all my little sisters smiling, sitting as close to me as they could, smartly plaited hair and falling-down socks. But the kitchen is empty. Newspapers are spread out on the table, and Mum’s copper pans set out in a row.

  ‘I might have brought mine along with me,’ I say. ‘They could do with a good polish.’

  ‘Everything could, these days and I can’t find lemons for love or money. This takes a little more muscle to get anywhere near a reasonable shine. Here, sit down and rest those ankles of yours.’

  She pours me a glass of water and I take a sip.

  ‘Your da is sleeping now. His nights have been busy with fire-watching. He’s been taking his turn down at the high school.’ She tells me how he sits up on the roof tiles with sand and a stirrup pump, watching for incendiary bombs. ‘If they hit his roof, he has to be quick. Has to quench them before they take hold, you see. It’s hard work but he’s good at keeping wakeful.’

  As she speaks, she looks out of the window, her eyes soft and worried, and I imagine him, too, sitting there perched with the city at his balanced feet, his eyes fixed north to the sea.

  ‘He liked Roosevelt’s speech last month. When he wakes up, he’s sure to talk to you about it. Gave him a lot of hope, it did. Every help promised from the USA. Rather encouraging. Did you hear it?’

  ‘No. I’ve been focusing on other things. Trying not to worry.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. That’s the best course of action. And how is Stanley?’ She strains the words, which isn’t fair, but I see she doesn’t mean it to hurt. I tell her I haven’t a clue. ‘You haven’t heard from him? I thought he was only stationed in England. You haven’t … argued, have you?’

  ‘No.’ I swallow the story again. Not because it feels necessary this time. I’ve simply grown accustomed to hiding Stanley away.

  ‘It must be hard,’ she says, ‘being so far apart. So many people are these days. I think of that every time I pass the postbox. All those things you can’t say on paper. Yet people are always putting things in the post. It can’t be easy. Maybe that’s why we have children. Easier to talk to.’

  ‘He’ll write when he can,’ I say. ‘I have been writing to him. All about the baby and the village. About the birds, too. He is interested in the birds.’

  ‘A good habit for a pilot.’ The copper pot in her hands brightens, and throws the light onto the ceiling like a watch face. ‘It’s nice that you write. I had a letter from your father once. It wasn’t long before we were married and he was away down south, I can’t remember why. Something with his father, I think. That doesn’t matter. He’d been away from the street for a week o
r so when the envelope came for me. What a thrill it was. A clean, white envelope with my name written on so neatly. It wasn’t even my birthday and I didn’t ever know his writing, I didn’t, and still I knew it was from him in an instant. My father wanted me to open it up right away and read it out, but I didn’t and my mother backed me up. She scurried me outside, down all the stairs and out under the blue sky and I leaned on the railings with that letter in my hand. You know, I can still feel the scratchy brown wool of the jumper I had on that morning. And I think of that sky every March, I do. A sky clear as clear as March should be.’

  ‘Was it lovely?’ I asked, but she didn’t understand. ‘The letter, I mean.’

  ‘Not a bit, I’m afraid. Rather stilted and formal. He didn’t really say very much at all. Sent me his father’s regards and hoped I was keeping well. That sort of thing. Didn’t matter. It was the letter itself. That clean envelope and my name written on carefully. I’ll never forget that.’

  ‘Here. I brought this for you. Dried bramble leaves. They make a nice tea when they’ve been dried. Stretches the ration.’

  ‘Now, aren’t you a good girl? Even if you’ve made up your mind to live so very far away.’

  ‘Mum, I’m married now. It wasn’t—’

  ‘Yes, I know. Married and alone and pregnant and of course I worry about you. Let me. I’m your mother.’

  It strikes me then that Miss Baxter is going to worry, too, when she finds I’m not at home. That’s just what Aberlady needs – another lost Mrs Hambleton.

  ‘Can I use some writing paper, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, if you like.’ I go over to the table by the window and look among the papers there. ‘It should be in the drawer, I think. You’ll find a pen, too, and some ink if it needs it. Can’t remember the last time it was filled. Is everything all right? You look flustered.’