by Annie Murray
‘I don’t have to have you here, you know – it wasn’t my desire to have you. They think ten and six is enough to make a person do anything. Huh! I didn’t want you in here, disturbing Ernest and me. You’ll have to fit in with Mr Paige and me, or there’ll be trouble. And listen to me . . .’
She grabbed Margaret’s shoulder so hard it hurt and her face was menacing. Margaret had to cross her chubby legs to stop herself spending a penny out of fright.
‘I don’t want any gossip, or there’ll be trouble. You’ll be sleeping out in the shed with the rats if I have a peep out of you. Not a word – d’you comprehend?’
Rubbing her shoulder, Margaret nodded. She didn’t know what ‘comprehend’ meant.
Mrs Paige straightened up with an apparent shift in mood. ‘But I’ll show you my house – and the sickroom, so you know what’s what.’
Margaret had still not met Mr Paige. She had wondered if he had already gone out to work, but now she realized he must be ill in bed.
She was already familiar with the back kitchen, with the dusty range that looked as if no blacklead had been near it for years. Mom had been forever cleaning theirs, when she was well. Mrs Paige didn’t seem to bother. It was the warmest room in the house, for which Margaret was grateful, as she slept there with only the thin blanket.
‘I don’t use this room.’ Mrs Paige led her to the front parlour through which they had passed in the dark the night before. Margaret walked into the middle of it and stood looking round. There was the front door and a window looking out onto the street. Two wooden chairs stood by the empty fireplace, and between them a worn-looking bodged rug. Apart from these, the room was empty.
‘I don’t come in here. I don’t want nosy parkers looking in on me and my life,’ was all she said.
The staircase ran up between the two rooms, its treads half-covered by a runner of faded carpet in crimson and black. At the top a narrow landing divided the two rooms.
‘I sleep in the small room at the back,’ Nora Paige said, pushing the door open just enough for Margaret to peer in. All she could see was a boxroom with a single bed and chair in it and pale-blue, cheerless walls. There seemed to be some dark curtains hanging each side of the window, but there was no covering over the floorboards, which also had a dusty look to them.
‘I let Ernest have the main bedroom – it means he can be comfortable and it’s the lighter of the two rooms. You see, Ernest fought in the Boer War and he got so used to the sunshine in the southern climes of Africa that he’s quite miserable without it. He thrives on sunlight.’
Closing up her room, she unlatched the door opposite. As she predicted, late-afternoon sunshine was pouring in through the front window, falling on the white sheets of a large bed. The bedstead was of carved oak.
‘There’s a lovely view of the fields,’ Mrs Paige proclaimed, going to the window. Her shoes were black, with thin laces, and very down-at-heel, and her brown lisle stockings wrinkled round her ankles. ‘Oh, I think we need a bit of this late-summer air in here!’ She unfastened the casement. ‘Come and see, Meg.’
Her voice was softer than usual now. Margaret stood on tiptoe to look over the sill. Between the bushes edging the other side of the lane she saw the gold of a recently harvested field stretching before her.
‘They’ve got those so-called Land Army girls working on the farm now,’ Mrs Paige said with contempt. ‘As if they’d have any idea what it takes.’
Margaret turned round slowly. The bed had thick pillows propped against the bedhead, and on the near side the covers were thrown back as if someone had just got out. The eiderdown was made of a cheerful fabric of tiny pink roses. On the little table beside the bed Margaret saw a pair of spectacles, a candle stub in a holder, a glass of water and a book. Fascinated, she also made out a set of false teeth. There was a chair near the bed with a pair of trousers hanging over the back and, beside it, a chest of drawers on which rested various objects of male toilet: a tooth mug, shaving brush and razor. In the far corner stood a dark-wood cupboard.
‘There we are. I keep Ernest nice and comfortable,’ Mrs Paige said. ‘You can see that, can’t you – have you ever seen a more comfortable-looking bed?’
Margaret shook her head, for that was the truth – she hadn’t. She wondered if Mr Paige had just popped out to relieve himself.
‘There, you’ve seen our abode,’ Mrs Paige said. ‘I keep it spick and span in here, as you can see. We’ll leave our Ernest in peace now – out you go.’
As Margaret went obediently to the top of the stairs she heard Mrs Paige ask very quietly, ‘Is there anything you need, dear?’ Then the door closed and she followed Margaret downstairs, seeming more cheerful than usual.
‘So,’ she said, putting the kettle on to boil. ‘That’s us. You see, don’t you?’
Margaret stared at her, then nodded her head. She wondered if Mr Paige had been hiding in the cupboard.
Nine
Fragments of memory kept firing through Margaret’s mind. They’d sent her home from the hospital, on a slightly lower dose of Valium than before, but she was not free of it – not by a long way. She felt despair at the thought that she might never escape it. Now that she was back home, it felt as if she ought to be able to take up her life again, humdrum and familiar, no more fuss. Just get on with it. Be the same old Margaret. It wasn’t as if Fred expected much.
But she couldn’t concentrate on anything. It felt as if her head had been plugged into the mains, with flashes of electricity sparking through it.
‘Maybe you need to rest,’ Fred kept saying. He was doing his best to be helpful. ‘If you need to go to bed, go. There’s nothing that can’t wait, is there?’
So most afternoons she found herself up in bed again, under the blue-and-white duvet, hearing noises from the street. It was all she could cope with – shutting herself away while her mind raced.
The alarm clock on her bedside table ticked loudly. She lay on her side watching it. She liked the way it broke through the endless silence. If she stared hard enough, she thought she could see the black minute-hand moving round.
And then she would move onto her back, close her eyes and the jolting assaults of memory would return like snatches of a film playing in her head. Certain images burned intensely in her mind: Mom clinging to the door that morning, with the last food she would ever give her children; the door of the shed slamming shut; Nora Paige’s eyes widening, then blinking convulsively. It happened, Margaret had learned, when a strong emotion was brewing in her, her thick body charging up with it.
These were memories she thought she had buried forever, the years of evacuation sealed in her as in an airless tomb. And now she couldn’t stop them. It was hard to set anything in order, confused as things had been by her infant mind; and now, in her half-waking state, she was powerless even to try.
‘She’s quite an educated woman, I believe . . .’ That was Miss Peters’ voice, half-whispered to another teacher when they were in the vicarage for their lessons. There was a blackboard with sums on it. ‘Or she was once. There are books in the house.’
There were: volumes with dark-red and black covers. Nora Paige sat by the range at night, squeezed into the straight-backed armchair that was pushed into the corner in the daytime, reading by the light of the oil lamp. She did not possess a wireless to break the silence. Margaret was expected to make herself invisible.
‘You sit quiet there,’ Mrs Paige would instruct her, pointing at the settle with its hard cushions. ‘Not a word, d’you hear?’
The aching boredom of those evenings! Somewhere, within a couple of days of arriving, Margaret had lost Peggy Doll, dropping her from her pocket, never to be seen again. There was nothing whatever to do, and no Tommy to make her laugh or invent games. Margaret would sit, sometimes with Seamus beside her, who would at least let her stroke him. Other times he was moody and lashed out with claws that drew blood.
Margaret would draw her legs up and pick at her knees, or at
a thread in her old grey skirt, or at the piping at the edge of the cushions. The clock ticked, round-faced on the mantel, its pendulum swinging, and she watched, half-hypnotized. Mrs Paige turned the pages of her book, cleared her throat, scratched her scalp, a finger questing delicately through the hairnet.
Earlier on in these endless evenings she always prepared food to take up to Ernest.
‘The poor man needs my company, lying alone up there all day.’ Only one plate of the thin stew would go up with her. ‘I have to feed it to him, you know,’ she would say.
As Margaret ate her own meagre ration of food, picking up the plate to lick off the last traces of gravy, she could hear Mrs Paige’s voice through the floorboards, though not what was said. She strained to hear Mr Paige’s replies, but could never make them out.
School was a pleasant dream in comparison: the warm bodies round the table at the back of the vicarage; the bustling vicar’s wife, Mrs Bodley-Fisher; the crackling fire in the grate. Had they been worried about her, she wondered now? There had been odd snatches of conversation that she overheard, their eyes fixed on her face as they talked with heads close together. But each day Miss Peters brought her from Nora Paige’s house to her classes, then took her back again. New billets were not easy to find.
Winter drew in and their breath was white on the air. She had worn out her pumps and the Birmingham Mail charity boots, which had once been Tommy’s, were still too big. She clumped along in them, her legs bare in all weathers under the old skirt and vest and royal-blue jumper. All the time she was hungry – so hungry.
One day, in the vicarage, during the mid-morning break, when they were each given a beaker of milk and a biscuit, Margaret had wolfed hers down in two bites. Joan was sitting next to her, taking tiny nibbles of hers. Margaret felt saliva rush into her mouth. Quick as a snake she leaned round, snatched the biscuit and stuffed it into her mouth. Joan set up a shrieking.
‘Whatever’s wrong, Joan?’ Miss Cooper asked. She was the tall redhead who stomped through the snow to fetch Joan to school each day.
‘Margaret took my biscuit!’
‘Margaret!’ Miss Cooper bore down on her. Margaret chewed and swallowed quickly, as if the disappearance of the biscuit could make it not have happened. Everyone was now staring at her. ‘What d’you think you’re doing, snatching Joan’s biscuit?’
Margaret stared back in silence. Her appearance seemed to aggravate people. ‘Well, say something, child.’
‘I dunno,’ Margaret said through her adenoids.
Miss Cooper clicked her tongue. ‘Well, don’t do it again. That’s greedy and it’s stealing. Now, Joan, there’s another biscuit for you. Eat up.’
Mrs Paige fed her less and less. Because Margaret was a sturdy child it took a while before anyone noticed, though Miss Cooper often urged her to buck up and listen. But one day soon after she arrived at the makeshift school, blackness suddenly closed down on her like a lid. She came out of the faint feeling sick and confused.
Then it started snowing. On the way to school Miss Peters coughed, bending over, eyes streaming.
‘Oh dear,’ she kept murmuring as she straightened up. ‘How am I to manage?’
Soon afterwards Miss Peters disappeared. Miss Cooper arrived the next morning in a great hurry, having already walked to collect Joan.
‘I’m afraid Miss Peters has been taken ill,’ she said, peering curiously in at Nora Paige’s cottage door. There was nothing to see: just the unlived-in parlour. ‘They’ve had to take her home – she’s developed pneumonia.’
‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Paige said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Her eyes widened, then blinked hard.
What did the teachers say among themselves about Nora Paige, Margaret wondered now? Did the vicar’s wife say, ‘Oh, she’s been a recluse since her husband died’? These things she only found out later. ‘TB, you know, soon after the war ended. He must have been dead fifteen years by now at least.’
‘Well, she’s an odd one all right,’ she heard Miss Cooper mutter as the door closed.
Margaret, cold and weak, her feet already so chilled that she could barely feel them, followed Miss Cooper through the snow. The wind bit into her cheeks. Each meal she had was smaller than the last. She was eternally hungry.
It was almost impossible to steal food. Everything in the low cupboard was in tins or jars, and the big meat safe with its mesh door, where Mrs Paige kept bread, cheese, meat and butter, was locked and the key removed.
‘Don’t think I don’t know your cunning,’ Nora Paige would say, slipping the key into her pocket. ‘I’m not having you taking the food out of my poor sick husband’s mouth.’
There were no more free apples, or blackberries in the hedgerow, now.
One evening Mrs Paige was standing by the table in her flat shoes, the beige wool of her sleeves pushed up her brawny arms as she spooned out a portion of food to take to Ernest. On a small plate she put a helping for Margaret – two morsels of meat, a spoonful of gravy, a mouthful of boiled potato.
‘You see, Meg,’ she announced, going to the door with her plateful. ‘What I have discovered is that death is a state preferable to life for some people. No more pain and suffering, no more cold and anguish. I believe Ernest finds it so. After death has occurred, once they have passed through the eternal portal, it’s so much easier for all concerned. I have come to the conclusion that this is how it is supposed to be. You’ll find it to be true, I’m sure.’
Margaret pushed the tiny meal into her mouth. She had no idea what Mrs Paige was talking about.
She didn’t know what devilment had driven her to it. It was a Saturday, a mild day during a temporary thaw. The two teachers who were left now that Miss Peters had gone had decided to gather their charges for an outing.
It was noon. Mrs Paige had given Margaret her midday meal – half a slice of dry bread – and gone out to the garden with a rake to gather up the skin of sodden leaves in between remaining patches of snow. Margaret watched her for a moment from the back doorstep and saw the movement of her sturdy calves, encased in a pair of man’s boots – perhaps Ernest’s? – across the grass, the rhythmic movements of the rake.
The air was damp and mild for late November. It was ages until the teachers were coming to collect her for the nature walk. Margaret wandered through the house and went to sit on the stairs. Much of the time now she was lethargic and hazy in the head. She never seemed to learn much at school. Mostly she just wanted to sink into the warmth and go to sleep. But they had all been cooped up and bored because of the snow, and the bit of bread had given her a spurt of energy.
Without willing it, she found herself climbing the stairs. She knelt on the last step from the top, looking from door to door. She didn’t know what to feel about Ernest. She believed that he was in there – every day he was given meals, his room was cleaned, his opinions sought. But she had never even so much as heard him clear his throat. How bored he must be too! Maybe he’d like someone to come and see him.
Listening carefully, she could hear nothing. He must be asleep. To her surprise she saw that the latch of the door was not fastened. She would be able to peep at Ernest, the way she used to peep at her father, Ted Winters, when he slept drunk by the hearth. She’d found a fascination with his sagging mouth and dark stubble.
She crept across the landing and pushed the door open, her heart thumping. Supposing he woke up and shouted at her, and told Mrs Paige what she’d done? Putting her head round the door, she relaxed, seeing that the bed was empty. Had he gone down to the privy? Was he hiding in the cupboard again? Perhaps he had heard her coming and was watching her. The door of the cupboard was shut tight, but this didn’t mean he wasn’t there . . .
Seconds passed and, as nothing happened, she crept forward. The best thing in the room was Mr Paige’s false teeth, grinning at her from the bedside table. She’d never seen any before and they held a fascination for her. Daring herself, she picked up the teeth and pulled them apart, then let the
m snap closed. The clacking sound and the sight of them made her giggle. After a few goes she held them in her hand and wandered round, picking up other things. The bristles of the shaving brush were stiffened by soap into a solid mass. She looked in the slanted mirror, saw her white, thin face, her dark eyes, one looking back at her directly, the other wandering to the side. Her hair was longer now and straggly.
Margaret went to the window. Now that the leaves of the hedge opposite had died back there was a clear view of the field, ploughed up for winter, a few lines of snow still caught in the furrows. She clacked the teeth between her fingers, staring out.
She didn’t even hear Mrs Paige. She was caught from behind by the hair and was swung around, with a burning yank on her scalp that made her scream.
‘What are you doing, you crossed-eyed little brat?’ Mrs Paige was demented with rage. ‘You monster! You filthy vermin! How dare you touch my things, my Ernest’s things? Out, you little rat – get out!’
The dentures fell to the floor and several of the teeth jumped out of them. Margaret was dragged downstairs by the hair, mewling and crying.
Mrs Paige shoved her out of the back door and the few steps across to the wooden shed behind the house . . .
She struggled, crying, begging. In with the rats, Mrs Paige had threatened. Desperate, she tried to pull away, to get out of the woman’s grasp, but Mrs Paige was so big, so enraged, that all Margaret could do was jerk and pull, crying, ‘No, no, don’t – not in there . . . No-o-o!’
‘Mom?’ The voice cut through her terrified rememberings. ‘Mom, it’s all right . . .’ A hand soothed her shoulder. ‘I think you’ve been having a dream – don’t worry.’
Margaret stared up at the face, the dark eyes like her own, the familiar voice. Of course, her own daughter, Karen! Here she was in her room. It wasn’t 1939 – it was now. She almost wept with relief.
