The Skylarks' War

by Hilary McKay

  ‘I wonder what Peter and I would have called our mother,’ said Clarry, a little sadly.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Morgan. ‘That was sad, how you lost her. It was a great pity she was so frail.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘Well, of course she was. Not enough iron in her blood. Your father never accepted it, but there it was, anaemia, and nothing to be done to help, from what that Miss Vane told me once. It was all left too late for treatment, not that they can do a great deal. And I’m guessing that’s the first you’ve heard of it?’ she added, seeing Clarry’s shocked face and wide eyes.

  Clarry nodded.

  ‘White as paper, poor thing!’

  ‘I didn’t know you even knew her,’ said Clarry.

  ‘I wouldn’t say knew,’ said Mrs Morgan. ‘I scrubbed this house out when they first moved in (last proper spring clean the place ever had!) and I’d see her in church now and then. Looked like the wind could blow her away, but she hung on until you arrived. I used to think it was that which kept her going, wanting to see her new baby.’

  ‘Mrs Morgan!’

  ‘Now what have I said wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing! But I always thought, and Peter did too, that it was because of me she died.’

  ‘Nothing of the sort! It was because of you she lived, my girl. Now, stop it! Don’t take on like that! Now that’s no use at all to us! No, don’t use your sleeve! Nor that tea cloth neither! There’s a handkerchief, blow! Dear goodness, if this kitchen wasn’t damp enough without you adding floods to the mix! She was a very brave lady; you’d never have caught her dripping all over the kitchen table.’

  Clarry put her head on her arms and sobbed.

  Peter, hearing the racket, stuck his head round the door and demanded, ‘What’s the matter with her now?’ as if she were forever doing such things.

  ‘Nothing. Go away,’ said Clarry, without lifting her head, and when he had gone, closing the door rather hard, she said, ‘Don’t tell him, please, Mrs Morgan.’

  ‘Why ever shouldn’t he know?’

  ‘He should, but not now. It would change too much. I don’t think he blames me any more anyway, that was only when he was little.’

  ‘You’re a funny girl, you are,’ said Mrs Morgan, rather grumpily. ‘It wouldn’t hurt your brother to hear he was wrong.’

  ‘It would,’ said Clarry. ‘It hurts people very much to know they’re wrong. I’m better now anyway.’

  To prove she was better she got a cloth and washed her drips off the table and then peeled potatoes until Mrs Morgan said, ‘Stop! They’re getting scarce in the shops these days.’

  ‘What did they call it? An . . . something?’

  ‘Anaemia.’

  Clarry nodded. Anaemia, anaemia, she thought, to help her remember, and she found it in the dusty old dictionary in the living room. The pages were of tissue-thin paper, but it opened easily at the word, as if it had opened there many times before. ‘Pallor,’ it said, among other things, and ‘Lack of vigour’. Nothing about dying.

  Clarry was still sitting on the floor gazing at it when her father came in.

  ‘What’s that you have?’ he asked her, and when she replied, ‘Just the dictionary,’ he said, ‘I never knew we had one. Put it back when you’ve finished.’

  So it must have been her mother who had opened the dictionary so often that the pages remembered her touch. Clarry closed it carefully, but instead of putting it back she took it upstairs to her room. Until now she had had no connection with her mother. There was nothing in the house to show she’d ever lived except Clarry and Peter. And now, this book. Gently Clarry fluttered through the pages and as she did so she noticed that, once again, the dictionary was choosing its own place to fall open.

  Pushed tight against the stitched spine, on the first page of the Bs, Clarry found the reason for this. An oval of cardboard, a little photograph. A round, young, smiling face, looking out at her.

  Janey Penrose, 1901

  (Mother)

  – read Clarry on the back.

  Her mother’s face.

  Her mother’s handwriting.

  There were no more pictures hidden in the book. Clarry knew because she’d checked: all one thousand and thirty-eight pages of it.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Photograph

  It took a very long time for Miss Vane to overcome her mistrust of the girls’ grammar school, that racketing collection of the unfeminine and inky.

  ‘I always notice their stockings,’ she told her tortoiseshell cat (having few humans to talk to, she very often turned to this animal), ‘and their deplorable hats. Clarry will be spoiled.’

  By this she meant that Clarry would become noisy, opinionated and ‘rough’, Miss Vane explained to the tortoiseshell, who blinked in dismay.

  When this did not happen, Miss Vane said Clarry would ruin her health with overwork.

  This also turned out not to be true. In fact, away from the seeping carbon monoxide fumes from the Miss Pinkses’ paraffin stoves, Clarry flourished. None of Miss Vane’s other predictions came to pass either. Clarry didn’t destroy her eyes with reading, or begin arguing with her father, or take to eating buns in the street. Miss Vane, watching suspiciously from behind her curtains, could detect nothing concerning. Clarry seemed to be managing, all by herself.

  Miss Vane missed having Clarry as her perpetual Good Deed. She also missed having someone to appreciate her latest cat story, or admire her knitting, or chatter beside her on a walk along the front. And so she was very thankful, one grey afternoon, to see Clarry sneezing in the street as she fumbled for the key of the narrow stone house.

  ‘She will neglect that cold and it will turn to pneumonia!’ the delighted Miss Vane told her tortoiseshell cat. ‘I have seen it happen time after time!’

  Galvanized by this improbable scenario, Miss Vane turned to her kitchen cupboard and, an hour later, when Clarry answered a knock on the door, there was Miss Vane bearing onion soup, a strip of red flannel to wrap warmly round Clarry’s throat, a large tin of mustard powder and such a smile of pure happiness that Clarry greeted her as if no crossness had ever happened at all.

  ‘You should shake a little dry mustard into your stocking feet on very cold mornings,’ said Miss Vane, quite husky with joy at her welcome.

  ‘I should never ever have thought of that,’ said Clarry, hugging her again.

  By these means, Clarry’s sneeze was banished, and she and Miss Vane became friends once more. Clarry was, as Miss Vane told the tortoiseshell cat, the same dear girl as ever. Still writing letters to the boys, still painting her butterflies, still tiptoeing around her father. Rather too confident about the safety of Zeppelin raids, and still hobnobbing with the rag-and-bone man.

  ‘But that is nothing,’ Miss Vane assured her cat, ‘compared to what I had feared.’ In her joy she unearthed a length of tightly woven blue-striped cloth that she had put away for curtains, and made Clarry a brand-new dress. It turned out to be her finest creation ever.

  ‘You are kind!’ said Clarry.

  ‘It has a four-inch hem and the gathers will let out,’ said Miss Vane a little proudly. ‘It really is almost your colour, you know. I don’t see why it shouldn’t last you for years.’

  Clarry rather feared this too, but she managed to smile anyway.

  ‘Your father will be pleased to see you in something other than school uniform,’ said Miss Vane.

  ‘I don’t think he really notices what I wear,’ said Clarry doubtfully.

  ‘Well, perhaps not,’ admitted Miss Vane. ‘I think that you are old enough to understand, Clarry dear, that your father has found parenthood difficult from the start.’

  ‘Has he?’

  ‘Why, after Peter was born, for instance, he was rarely at home, absent with his work, for weeks at a time.’

  ‘Weeks!’ exclaimed Clarry.

  ‘Naturally, as a neighbour, I took an interest. And your poor mother was plainly not well.’

&nbs
p; Here was Mrs Morgan’s news all over again. Clarry only just managed to steady her voice to ask, ‘Did she tell you that?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Vane, straightening her shoulders. ‘She told me nothing, and it was not my place to ask. I tried . . . I simply tried to be . . .’

  A tear rolled down her cheek, an honest, ungossipy, remembering tear.

  ‘Kind,’ she said, blotting it. ‘Oh, dear. I hope I haven’t said too much. Please don’t repeat it, Clarry. It was a sad time. Little Peter and his mama, and your father so silent. It brings it all back, remembering.’

  Miss Vane paused to smooth the folds of the blue-striped frock. ‘Since then, of course,’ she said brightly, ‘he has soldiered on wonderfully!’

  Clarry nodded, for a moment unable to reply.

  All that evening Clarry’s mind was a tangle of the shadowy past, and the uneasy present. She thought, I wish I had someone to talk to about Mother. And that illness, anaemia, that she looked up in the dictionary so often.

  Who could it be? Peter was away. Mrs Morgan had told her all she knew. Not Father, never. Not Simon the Bony One, who Peter said had once fainted on glimpsing someone else’s nose bleed. Vanessa! Sensible, loving, cheerful Vanessa, at present slaving away in her hospital for wounded soldiers in Southampton.

  ‘How did you begin all this nursing?’ Clarry had asked her friend once. ‘At school they are so surprised they let you. Everyone says you’re not old enough.’

  ‘Oh, well, I always was too tall,’ Vanessa had replied very quickly and briskly. ‘It’s rubbish for dancing but does make a difference for other things. I lied about my age, of course, and put up my hair and wore a dreary skirt and borrowed my great-aunt’s ancient blue hat. And I talked a lot about first aid and nursing and the training I’d already done—’

  ‘Had you?’ asked Clarry, astonished.

  ‘And Dad being a naval doctor – that helped enormously. Shut up! I know what you are going to say! Anyway, I work jolly hard!’

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘And I’m good at it! Surprisingly!’

  ‘Not surprising at all,’ said Clarry.

  The more Clarry thought about her friend, the more she wished she could see her. There was still some money left from the ten pounds her grandmother had given her when she first began school, and she decided to use it. So she sent a postcard to the hospital, bought a third-class train ticket to Exeter, and another to Southampton, and set off one Saturday morning with the dictionary in her bag.

  Vanessa was waiting at the station to meet her, bursting with questions.

  ‘Are you all right? You didn’t say hardly a word on that postcard! If you’ve run away, Clarry, you’ve done absolutely the right thing, and I’ll look after you!’

  ‘Oh, Vanessa! Of course I haven’t run away!’

  ‘Well, the offer’s there, and before anything else I’m going to show you how to find your way to my hospital in case you ever do!’

  ‘Then can we talk? I want to ask you something.’

  ‘Of course! Now come on, it isn’t far! Just a few corners and head for the sea. It’s so close I come outside on windy days to blow away the carbolic smell. Is it school, or Peter, or your father?’

  ‘No. None of them. Could we go to somewhere quiet for a bit?’

  ‘There’s a café, right here . . .’ said Vanessa. ‘There you are . . . Sit down! What’s the matter, Clarry? I know it must be something worrying to bring you all this way.’

  So Clarry produced the photograph and the dictionary that remembered where to open, and related the brief minor tragedy that she’d heard from Mrs Morgan. As she talked, Vanessa changed from her cheerful, hurrying questions to the practical kindness that made her so useful in the hospital.

  ‘Yes,’ she said steadily as she looked at the little picture, so much like Clarry. ‘People do die of anaemia. What bad luck for you all.’

  ‘Do you think she left the picture there for me or Peter to find?’

  ‘I’m sure she did. A message for you, on the right page too. B for “baby”! Maybe she guessed your father would never talk of her.’

  ‘Do you think perhaps Mrs Morgan was right?’ asked Clarry. ‘And it might not have been because of me that she died? Don’t be kind, Vanessa. Tell me the truth.’

  ‘It wasn’t because of you,’ said Vanessa, reaching out for her hand. ‘It was never because of you. I’m telling the truth. You have to believe it. I’m sure that’s what your mother would have wanted. You look so like her, Clarry!’

  ‘There’s nothing of her left anywhere in the house. We’ve searched and searched. Father got rid of it all. Nothing except this picture.’

  ‘You can get copies made of photographs, you know. I bet Peter would like one. I don’t believe for a second he blames you either. He’s much too decent.’ Vanessa yawned hugely. ‘Sorry, Clarry, I’ve been up all night. It’s sitting down and being warm that’s sending me to sleep! Look after your photograph. She was beaut –’ Vanessa yawned again. ‘–iful.’

  With that Vanessa’s head dropped, and she nodded forward and fell asleep on the table, scattering cups and saucers.

  ‘Five minutes,’ she murmured unrepentantly, snuggling down.

  ‘She’s a nurse; she’s been up all night,’ murmured Clarry to the waitress as she helped her clear the fallen cups, and the waitress said, ‘Ah!’ and the nearby tables also said, ‘Ah!’ and the café became very quiet as people shushed each other, and nodded kindly at Clarry, who sat slowly, allowing herself to believe what she had been told.

  It wasn’t her fault.

  It was just bad luck.

  She smiled at Vanessa when she woke up, rubbing her eyes and laughing at herself.

  ‘Whatever were you doing last night?’ asked the waitress, coming across with fresh tea.

  ‘Dancing,’ Vanessa told her, airily rueful, but to Clarry she said later, ‘Actually, I was sitting with a poor bloke who was dying and needed a bit of company. I always seem to get that job.’

  Clarry could understand why. Vanessa, with her warmth and friendliness and glowing chestnut hair must be as comforting as a candle flame through such a night.

  ‘I never can believe they’re dying,’ went on Vanessa. ‘Never! I think, well, you’ve got so far. Back to England. Safe in hospital, bandaged up. And they look too young, young hands and hair. No wrinkles. No grey. But still they go. Very unfair after all our hard work. How gloomy I sound! I’m not really. I’m tough. So are you, Clarry, stuck in that cold house alone with your father.’

  ‘I have Peter sometimes, and Simon almost every weekend.’

  ‘Good. Look after Simon for me, Clarry.’

  ‘I will,’ promised Clarry.

  When students at Peter and Simon’s school were over sixteen, they were allowed to go home for Saturday and Sunday if they applied for a weekend pass. Peter did this only very rarely. Not only because he was studying hard for Oxford, but also because these days he had hardly any spare money, for train fares, or anything else. The year before, his godfather had died, and so Peter had lost the small private gold mine that had been so helpful in the past. It was different for Simon. He wasn’t interested in studying, and he was never short of money. Almost every Friday evening he turned up on Clarry’s doorstep, asking, ‘Is it all right? Do you mind?’

  It was wonderful to see such a friendly face, and Clarry would pull him in at once. He always brought food: sausages or cheese or a pie.

  ‘Vanessa said I should,’ he would explain, fishing apples from his pocket. ‘Because everything’s so short in the shops. Peter sent another book for you. Have you heard from Rupert?’

  He always had a message from Vanessa and a book from Peter, and he always asked about Rupert the minute she opened the door.

  ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance,’ he said, one Friday evening, stumbling into the brass-topped table, dropping a parcel, and sending a vase flying. ‘Sorry, sorry! Is it broken? Gosh, I’m standing on the kippers!’
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br />   Clarry rescued the kippers, said they were meant to be flat, he wasn’t a nuisance, she had been feeling so lonely, and the vase didn’t matter.

  ‘It was cracked anyway,’ she said. ‘It needed breaking. A letter came five minutes ago. I haven’t read it yet.’

  Clarry, Clarry, send more gingerbread! And get your Miss Vane knitting socks. What’s the use of being a family hero if you don’t get constant luxuries in the post? I’ve got the grandparents on to it too. I am the golden boy in Cornwall these days, did you know? They say I have done the Right Thing and they couldn’t be more proud. They’ve gone all patriotic. And mad.

  Now, Clarry, I don’t want you to worry, and please understand that where I am is all right. Perfectly adequate for football, although it’ll soon be the cricket season and then we’ll have problems finding a decent wicket. The ground’s a bit bumpy round here.

  BUT LUCY WOULDN’T LIKE IT!

  Darling Clarry, make the grandparents see sense. Stop them sending Lucy here somehow. The fools. I’m shoving a few ten-bob notes in with this in case you need a train fare . . .

  Yours, with love and hope and faith, Rupe

  P.S. Don’t worry about the cricket pitch either. Just post me the garden roller from behind the shed in Cornwall. Love to everyone, R

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Simon, sighing with relief. ‘Who’s Lucy?’

  EIGHTEEN

  Horse Transport

  Nobody that Rupert knew wrote the truth home. The days of roast chestnuts and the little cat Mina were over, not that they had lasted very long. Not as long as the letters describing them, which was a pity, because Clarry, inspired by Miss Vane, a great cat lover herself, had sent a small patchwork blanket for Mina.

  I hope she likes it, Clarry had written. Miss Vane told me once that each of her cats has a blanket of their own to make them feel secure.

  Rupert had written back that any cat would be proud of such a mat and that it was the perfect colour to show off Mina’s beautiful blackness. He was very much regretting his cheerful early letters to home. Why, oh, why, he asked himself, had he told his grandparents that his unit had been busy building stables in France? How stupid had he been to describe the great care that he saw people taking of the horses?