Grace Hardie

by Anne Melville

  ‘I’ve never been hysterical in my life before,’ said her mother apologetically. ‘But the sight of this took me by surprise. And the lies made me angry. A quick death, they said! Get rid of it for me, Grace, please. Burn it, bury it – I don’t want to know what you do. I don’t want to think of Frank like that. He was such … such …’ For a moment she broke down again and the two women clung to each other, weeping as though they would never stop.

  ‘I’ll do it at once,’ Grace promised, drying her eyes. But first she helped her mother up to bed. Then, changing into her oldest clothes and heaviest walking boots, she collected up all the pieces of her brother’s uniforms.

  Frith and the boy who was now his only assistant had finished their work for the week by the time she reached the garden tool room. She pulled out a barrow and loaded it with the clothes and a spade and fork before setting out down the hill. Her destination was the wood. This was partly because anything buried there would be safe from accidental disturbance, but there was another reason as well.

  The wood had been Frank’s special territory. He had claimed it as his battleground in the first moment of his arrival at Greystones, and through all the years of Grace’s childhood took command of his brothers and sister whenever they went to play there. Whether the game was cowboys and Indians, Roundheads and Cavaliers, Robin Hood or any of his special inventions, it was always Frank who laid down the rules and chose the sides and told them what to do.

  It came as a new thought to Grace that the wood had been more to Frank than only a playground. It was his training place for life. Here, as a boy, he had discovered and enjoyed the talent which as a man he was able to develop only through the accident of war.

  Perhaps it was the memory of Frank as a boy which now caused Grace to carry the spade to a spot near Pepper’s grave. Frank had been in command on the day of that death, and it was an occasion when his discipline had slipped. It was not his fault, but he had accepted responsibility and organized the solemn burial.

  She dug a hole, throwing in the clothes and covering them with earth. Driven by anger that Frank was dead, and almost equally angry that he should so willingly have played his part in that world of killing and being killed, she did not pause when the ground was level, but continued to pile on earth, scraping aside the top layer of decayed leaves from the surrounding area in order to find soft soil. She made a hump and battered its side with the back of the spade until it was transformed into a pyramid. Cutting off the pointed top, she built up the earth to resemble a tower on a triangular pediment. Then she tossed the spade away and went down on hands and knees, moulding the tower with her hands; squeezing it in, building it up, only half aware that she was trying to form the shape of a man.

  The soil was too soft and too dry. In a few seconds the shape would disintegrate into trickling grains of earth, but before it had time to collapse of its own accord, she expressed her own need to destroy by punching it in the heart with her fist. Again and again. No doubt it was the same kind of gesture on her mother’s part which had brought chaos to the conservatory.

  Once her frenzy had spent itself Grace stood up, looking with surprise at her filthy hands and sleeves. The fallen earth had spread itself over the cat’s grave. Well, the grave itself could not be distinguished, but the two triangles of slate which Grace had placed as a headstone were still in place. She bent down to brush them clear. How carefully, as a six-year-old, she had chosen the shapes by which she would remember her pet – the shapes of Pepper’s pointed ears.

  I must make a memorial to Frank too, Grace told herself. Perhaps it would never be known where he was buried, but at least he could have a headstone here. Except that it would not be a stone. At the back of her mind was an impression of something which would be more suitable, but she needed a few minutes’ concentration before she could identify what she was remembering and where she had seen it. Loading up the barrow again with the tools, she left it there while she ran to the bank of the stream.

  Yes, there it still lay; the fallen branch of a tree which the boys had used as a bridge. Grace herself had always been too unsure of her balance to follow them, preferring to use the stepping stone further along. She tugged the branch towards her and stared at the sturdy piece of wood which forked into two arms, their fingers jagged where they had broken in the original fall. With some effort, not caring if her dirty clothes became even grimier, she stood it upright, leaning it against a tree and stepping backwards to stare.

  The proportions were right. The shape that she wanted for the memorial was already indicated by the present outline of the wood. A figure lifting its hands to heaven – in terror or agony or exultation? It didn’t matter which: the line would be the same. But through the heart she would cut a jagged hole, just as a fragment of a shell had cut through Frank’s chest.

  The figure would not look like Frank, because she lacked the skill to carve a portrait; and indeed, she came to realize, it must not look like a man at all. Yet it would somehow express Frank’s spirit, Frank’s courage and her own anger. As though she were cutting through the piece of wood with her eyes, she understood how it ought to appear. Whether she would be able to find the right tools and learn to use them was another matter.

  Common sense told her that she ought to try out knives and saws and chisels on some small block of wood, leaving this substantial branch to be carried nearer to the house – perhaps into her mother’s studio – when the gardeners returned to work on Monday. But she was seized with a frenzy, and too impatient to be sensible. Running up the hill to the house, she searched for suitable implements.

  There was a box of carpenter’s tools in the cubbyhole which had once been used as a store by the handyman, and Frith had a variety of saws for lopping and pruning trees, although he would not be pleased to have them borrowed. Best of all, Grace remembered that Kenneth had once been given a set of woodcarving tools by a godfather, and managed to find it in his room. Her eyes were bright with excitement as she carried her booty back to the stream.

  For a second time she stared hard at the branch. Her mother had taught her to draw, but she felt no need to make a design of what she hoped to produce. The design was there already. A long time passed in motionless study before she stepped forward, chose the tool she needed, and stretched up her hand.

  Her first touch was too delicate, as though she were gripping only a pencil: it made no impression. Starting again, she pressed on to the narrow gouger and pulled it downwards with sufficient force to make a narrow groove. This was the line, and already she knew how deeply it would have to be cut away and how the curve should roll from front to back and from side to side.

  For more than three hours she worked, stopping only when her mother appeared silently in the wood. Mrs Hardie, pale but calm, had washed her face and put up her hair again and dressed herself neatly. She stood amongst the trees without moving, careful not to disturb whatever it was that her daughter wasldoing.

  Grace, noticing her at last, looked up and smiled, acknowledging that she was tired. For a moment longer she stared at her handiwork. There was little to show for her effort, but she was not discouraged. The next day was Sunday. She would miss church for once. The whole day would be free. For her and Frank.

  ‘I’ll come now,’ she said to her mother, and bent to pick up the tools. There was nothing in her face to reveal that her life had been changed. How often in the past she had wondered what the future held for her, trying to envisage a husband, children, a home. These had all become of no importance. In this place where once Frank had shown by his boyish pleasures what kind of man he most wanted to be, Grace too had found her vocation.

  Chapter Ten

  Grace had started to work for The House of Hardie as an emergency measure, not expecting her help to be more than temporary. But just as the war was not, after all, over by that first Christmas, so too the shortage of men of working age continued. Her assistance, from being merely useful, became essential. She still refused to undert
ake any but the most simple accounts, claiming that the effort of balancing columns of money made her head spin, but she allowed herself to be educated in other aspects of the business.

  Mr Witney held none of the usual prejudices about female inability to judge wine. He remembered the generosity with which Grace’s grandfather had educated his own palate when he was not long removed from being an illiterate guttersnipe. The reason why so few women were capable of recognizing the difference between a good and a great wine, he told his new pupil, was that no one taught them what to appreciate.

  Grace was already familiar with the names which appeared on the firm’s list, and the general suitability of different wines for particular foods or occasions. Now, by tasting and making notes, she was encouraged to form more particular opinions so that she could advise her customers.

  This was all the more necessary after Kenneth’s conscription, when Mr Witney had to spend most of his time in London. Business was slack in Oxford. The young men who would normally have come straight from school to university were going into the armed forces instead. Most undergraduates were either medically unfit to join the army or had been invalided out of it, and there were few of the wild parties which had once been a feature of college life.

  Grace would not allow herself to be called a manageress. But she was a Hardie. It was inevitable that other members of the staff should ask her opinions and, in spite of her youth and inexperience, defer to them. She had not been brought up to take such responsibility, and the strain often seemed hard to bear.

  That was one reason why she liked to walk slowly up the hill towards Greystones at the end of each working day. Even in the darkest days of winter, when the old man who was The House of Hardie’s only remaining driver brought her home in the trap, she chose to be left at the gates so that she could approach the house on foot, feeling the day’s anxieties dissolve in the peace of being at home again. In summer, when her journey was made by bicycle, she dismounted at the same spot and pushed the machine up the long drive.

  In July of 1917, however, on the first anniversary of Frank’s death, she leaned the bicycle against a tree just inside the gates and made her way towards the memorial she had carved for him, now erected in a clearing of the wood which he had loved as a boy.

  She was pleased with her work. The original shape of the branch seemed to give it an inner power, and in many hours of patient application she had smoothed the surface which represented her brother in life and created a central jaggedness round a hole which stood for his death. Merely to look at the work made her feel strong in the way that Frank had been strong, for as well as honouring the memory of her eldest brother it was the realization of an unknown and unexpected talent of her own.

  In the past months she had made other wood carvings, working on a smaller scale. These were less successful, and she knew why. Her first piece had been inspired by the certainty that the finished carving somehow existed inside the wood already, needing only to be revealed. She had not felt the same confidence again.

  Nevertheless, these smaller works had provided useful exercises, teaching her how to produce particular effects. And Aunt Midge, noticing the pleasure which her niece took in this activity, had brought for Christmas a large pack of potter’s clay, together with the special tools to work it and a book of instructions. Now Grace could build up the shape of whatever subject she had in mind and then cut into it again as though it were another piece of wood, using her tools either to change the shape or to detail and decorate its surface.

  This new occupation filled her leisure hours to such an extent that she could not imagine how she had passed the time before. But Frank’s memorial remained the only achievement which brought her real satisfaction.

  Today, she noticed, her mother had been to the wood before her, plaiting an anniversary wreath of red and white roses round the wooden foot of the carving. Perhaps she had only just left, for the atmosphere prickled with life. As though someone were watching her, Grace felt. She turned her head with an abruptness intended to catch any spy unawares; but there was no one there.

  Or so it seemed at first. But when, with her moments of mourning completed, she began to walk back towards the bicycle, she experienced for a second time the feeling of not being alone. Someone was moving behind her, with a sound heavier and stealthier than that of an animal. Someone who came to a halt whenever she herself paused.

  For a moment she was uneasy. Even in July the wood was dark with shadows, and there would be no one within earshot if she needed to shout for help. But why should she be frightened? The intruder was probably a poacher, hoping to catch a rabbit. He would not want to reveal himself by attacking her. Shrugging her shoulders, she walked on towards open ground.

  Twigs cracked under the weight of footsteps. The sound followed her and came nearer. Grace turned back to search the wood with her eyes. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s only me.’

  The husky voice was unfamiliar and she was still unable to pick out its owner from the shadows. Could it be Andy, home on leave, ashamed to confront her yet unwilling to return to France without some kind of encounter?

  ‘Don’t be frightened, Grace. It’s Kenneth.’

  Grace let out the breath she had been holding and gazed at the dark figure now emerging from behind a tree. Had he not called his name she would indeed have been frightened, for this man, filthy and unshaven and with a dark scar across his forehead and eyebrow, was almost unrecognizable as her brother.

  ‘You did startle me,’ she confessed. ‘Why were you hiding in the wood, Kenneth? What have you been doing? You look like an escaped prisoner.’

  ‘That’s just what I am. I need somewhere to hide, Grace, and something to eat.’

  ‘Well, come up to the house and have a bath and a meal. You didn’t need to wait for me. Mother’s at home.’ She and her brothers had never formed the habit of kissing, but she put her arms round Kenneth to welcome him home with a hug.

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. They’ll be looking for me here. Probably they’ve been to the house already. They may have tried to persuade Mother that it’s in my own best interests that she should give me up. The servants will have been told to report me to the military police if I show my face here.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Who are “they”?’

  ‘Grace, I must have something to eat. And no one must know about it.’

  ‘The plant room,’ she said, postponing any attempt to understand what he was talking about. Andy and Philip had looked after Mr Hardie’s plant-breeding experiments when he left for China, but when they both joined up Mrs Hardie had instructed Frith to plant out all the seedlings and cuttings which might survive. The plant room and the glasshouse next to it had been closed. No one had been there for months. Taking care to keep out of sight of the house, Grace led the way there.

  The wooden shutters were already bolted across the windows; it was safe to light a lantern. Now Grace could see more clearly the truth of her brother’s claim to be hungry, for his body was emaciated and his face gaunt. In the year since she last saw him he appeared to have aged by a decade.

  ‘I’ll get some food,’ she promised. ‘And I won’t say it’s for you. Wait here.’

  It was not easy to raid the kitchen undetected. The cook would be preparing the evening meal, and even if she left the room empty for a moment would know exactly what she had in store and be quick to notice any theft. A confident lie had the best chance of success.

  ‘Mrs Charles, have you anything you could spare for a poor family? A jug of milk for the children, and some bread and cheese. And perhaps a cut off the cold mutton if there’s enough.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be any poor families nowadays,’ grumbled the cook, although the comment did not prevent her from opening the bread bin. ‘Plenty of work for everyone.’

  ‘The father has been wounded. He’s lost an arm. I suppose it will be a little while before he finds what he can do with only one hand.
I saw him looking for work in Headington Quarry, but with no success; so I told them to come this way.’

  Whether or not Mrs Charles believed the story, she cut the meat and the loaf generously, pressing together two thick slices loaded with pickles and adding others with cheese. For good measure she found a jam pasty for the children and tied the offering in a cloth.

  ‘Sarah will take it down to the gate,’ she said. The kitchen maid was already standing beside her, holding the can of milk.

  ‘Thank you, but I promised to return myself. I’ll wait while they drink the milk, so that I can bring the can back.’

  She hurried off before any other help could be offered, wondering whether her lies had been convincing. It would have been unwise to ask whether the servants had already been questioned about Kenneth and impossible to be sure that they would help to hide him.

  The plant room was in darkness again when she returned; but when she called his name Kenneth stepped forward from a corner, eager to see what she had brought. For a second time she lit the lantern and saw his eyes glistening with an unnatural brightness as he broke off mouthfuls of the bread and cheese and began to devour them.

  ‘You should save something for breakfast tomorrow,’ suggested Grace. Seeing that he was too ravenous, she pushed the jam pasty out of sight. ‘And drink the milk first.’

  Kenneth swallowed it as though it were a yard of ale, to be taken in a single gulp as a sconce. He handed the can back to her and returned his attention to the victuals.

  ‘I must leave you now,’ Grace told him. ‘Mother will be expecting me for dinner. But I’ll come back later, after she’s gone to bed.’

  ‘Don’t tell her, Grace.’ Kenneth interrupted his eating for long enough to stand up and put a hand on his sister’s arm. ‘I’ve deserted, you see. This is more than a game of hide and seek. If anyone gives me away …’

  ‘Your own mother! You surely don’t think –’