The Skylarks' War

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Cold,’ whispered his friend, so Rupert dragged his own jacket off and tucked it round Michael’s chest. He thought his back was probably broken, as well as everything else, because of the way his legs were sprawled like a puppet with the strings cut. Right overhead a flare popped, greenish silvery light. Rupert felt his friend’s eye on him again. It seemed to take a long time for the flare to fade, and then there was another, but not so close, and a crump of explosion further down the line.

  ‘Cleaning the chimney,’ said Rupert, which was an old school joke from the time of Clarry’s great idea and Peter and Simon the Bony One’s rocket. He wished his friend would hurry up and die, but he was young and strong and so it took until morning. Then Rupert tried to pick him up, but he couldn’t, so he walked back empty-handed in his shirtsleeves, forgetting his jacket. He took no care walking back, but strangely nothing happened to him.

  The next day he wrote a letter to Ireland saying how lucky it was that his friend had died from a single bullet, instantaneously, never knowing a thing.

  It was only two years since they had both left school but it felt an awful lot longer.

  TWENTY-THREE

  How-do-you-spell-it?

  Peter, Clarry wrote, when you said about university for me, did you really mean it, or were you being nice?

  I don’t know what you mean, ‘being nice’, replied Peter, rather grumpily. What’s the point of pretending you haven’t a brain when you have? Obviously you will have to work. Like I do. You can send me your maths to correct, if you like, and any Latin translation you need looking at. Once you get there you can earn money tutoring during the holidays, enough to pay for somewhere to live, I should think. If I’m there too we could share and it would be cheaper. Last week I took the picture you found into Oxford to get it copied and I ran into someone there who gave me an idea . . .

  Vanessa said, ‘You’re always inky!’

  ‘Often, but not always,’ said Clarry, delighted to see her friend again. ‘How’s Simon?’

  ‘Bothered,’ said Vanessa, after considering the question. ‘Bothered, bony, doesn’t speak much, goes and visits Rupert’s Lucy, sits and draws her on the letters he sends . . .’

  ‘Letters to Rupert?’

  ‘Yes, letters to Rupert. And he reads about the war all the time. He collects those magazines in The Times – don’t say, “What magazines?” I can see you’re just about to!’

  ‘We don’t have a newspaper here any more.’

  ‘They’ll have The Times at school. They always did. Look in the library. Oh, Clarry, Clarry, Clarry, I hate this war, but I sort of love it too. Is that awful? Yes!’

  ‘It’s because you’re doing something useful,’ said Clarry.

  ‘Wise Clarry! You’re right. And I make them laugh – the boys, I mean. The boys in the beds, that’s what I call them, I kiss them like this . . .’ Vanessa kissed two fingers and planted them lightly on Clarry’s nose. ‘Dad’s ship was in a battle. He was taken prisoner. Simon knows. Did you hear?’

  ‘No!’ Clarry exclaimed. ‘No, I didn’t! Oh, Vanessa! Oh, I’m sorry! When? What do you know?’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Vanessa. ‘Don’t fuss! Are you or are you not a grammar-school girl? We don’t know anything except he’s alive. Or was. Don’t look like that! Make me weep, and I’ll slay you, Clarry! Do you notice I don’t smell of carbolic today? French perfume, that’s what!’

  Clarry sniffed and asked, ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘Clever Rupert brought it, last week when he was back . . . Clarry, you didn’t see him? Oh, stupid me and my big mouth . . .’

  ‘Rupert was back?’ croaked Clarry.

  ‘Only for a few days. In a very odd mood. Couldn’t get anything out of him except he’d spent a day in Cornwall and it had been awful. Clarry, don’t stare at me like that.’

  ‘Grandmother writes, but she didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Perhaps because it had been awful. He would hardly talk, just frantic rushing about on a motorbike with me hanging on the back for dear life. He looked wonderful, so don’t worry.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘Clarry, they often can’t be bothered with family much. The boys in the beds. Well, not can’t be bothered, but they don’t want the questions and the tears and . . .’

  ‘Fuss,’ said Clarry.

  ‘Yes. All right. Fuss. Can’t bear it. Neither can I.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t talk about Rupe. Don’t talk about Dad. How’s Peter? I do love him. So steady on his wobbly leg. So gorgeous and glum. He and Simon will be leaving school soon. Will you come to the speech day with Mum and me? We’ll have to clap hard, to make up for Dad. Oh, where is he? I went home and Mum was hugging the globe. Wailing. Fussing. She went to the wrong school, obviously. Now you’ve made me howl!’

  Vanessa sobbed, drooping against the wall, tears splashing on the brass-topped table. Then she sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve, said, ‘Adore you, Clarry, got to go now. Sorry about Rupert. Love to Peter. Peter the rock. My lovely dad, a prisoner, imagine! No, don’t! I’ve found some beautiful new shoes for dancing! Four straps, two on the foot and two above the ankle, red patent leather, shall I teach you how to tango right now?’

  ‘Yes, right now!’ said Clarry immediately, and so they did, up and down the hall and into the musty, cold dining room, and out back to the front door, and then Vanessa was gone.

  ‘I’ll write!’ she cried, and she did, a picture of her new shoes drawn on a postcard. Clarry wrote painfully back, dragging the words from the air one at a time and wrenching them grimly on to the paper.

  Your poor mother, worrying. And your dad. I’m glad you could cheer up Rupert. Those shoes, the heels are pretty. Miss Vane says to tell you to clean patent leather with old bread! I hope you smell nice today.

  Yours unfussingly,

  Clarry

  Simon thought that if the only way of being in contact with someone was by words written on paper, then those words must be both worth reading and true. For this reason, as often as he could manage, he made the long weekend journey by bicycle and train from school to his great-aunt’s cottage in order to check up on Lucy. After Lucy, it was a nine-mile cycle ride to see Clarry. Sometimes he stayed the night there, but often he went back to the cottage in the evening, caught a morning train north to Oxford, cycled from Oxford to school, and was back for five o’clock evensong. This weekend break was called an ‘exeat’. There were no exeats granted for those who missed evensong, but Simon never did. He would stand beside Peter in the choir, breathless and exhausted, but with something to write about that night.

  Dear Rupert,

  Lucy is very well and has four sheep in with her for company. She does no work, but is only on grass so should be all right. I caught her on Saturday, brushed her down and washed her face. She curled up her lip and jumped about a bit. She lost two shoes, so we took off the others because she doesn’t need them in the field. Clarry had Peter’s old bike out when I got to her house. It had a low crossbar because of his stiff leg so when we got the chain on and the puncture fixed she could ride it quite well. Next time I go I’ll get there early enough to take her up to see Lucy. The roads are quiet that way and I’ll make sure she’s safe. I took six eggs in my knapsack. Her father said, ‘Good man,’ when he saw them, and said I was welcome to stay the night. He asked about my dad, who was taken prisoner, and I told them we had had a card but only a few words: ‘All well around here in how-do-you-spell-it?’ When Clarry heard, she jumped and said, ‘Oh, that’s where he is!’

  I’d better not write the name, but very good to know, and I didn’t stay the night but went straight back to tell Mum and my great-aunt. I thought Clarry was very quick and clever to understand, but she said it was your grandfather’s old riddle.

  I wish you all the best,

  Simon Bonnington (Bonners)

  ‘All well around here in how-do-you-spell-it?’ Clarry had repeated. ‘Oh! He’s in Constantinople!
Or near Constantinople. Around here – I suppose that means “somewhere near”. Turkey! Goodness!’

  Simon had stared at her, astounded.

  ‘It’s Grandfather’s joke! His riddle! He used to ask us every summer. “Constantinople is a very long word. How do you spell it?” And then we’d try and try, and get muddled, and he would say, “I-T. It!”’

  ‘Constantinople,’ repeated Simon, shaking his head.

  ‘I saw it on a map last week! It’s not terribly far from Troy! Odysseus found his way home from there, Simon! Through the Greek islands.’

  ‘Dad’s sailed all around the Greek islands,’ said Simon, brightening wonderfully. ‘He used to tell us about it when we were little. They would often see dolphins. I’m going straight back to let my mum know where he is. Thanks, Clarry! Thank you!’

  ‘It wasn’t me, it was Grandfather!’

  ‘It was you,’ said Simon, smiling down at her.

  It had been wonderful news for Simon to take back to his family. His mother had put down the globe and hauled out an atlas, and found herself in familiar places, the Aegean Sea that she and her husband had sailed years before.

  ‘First Odysseus, now your father,’ she had said. ‘Now I know he’ll come safe home.’

  I wish I knew Rupert would come safe home, thought Simon. He read over his letter. Was it boring? Would Rupert remember his grandfather’s old riddle and understand? Would he care? Simon the Bony One stared into the dark beyond the window, and in his mind he wrote the letter that he would like to send:

  Stay safe. There is no border nor battlefield, no empire worth your hurt. I remember your hand on my shoulder those times we sang at school. I looked at the sea yesterday, and I felt I could step over it. It didn’t look big, it looked small.

  Only a few weeks now, and school would be finished forever. Good.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  More or Less Content

  For Rupert, the first time back in England had been terrible. A huge mistake to go to Cornwall; the questions from his grandparents had been impossible. He’d been so terrified he’d snap and answer them truthfully that he’d fled after one hideous day. However, he quickly found that everywhere he went afterwards was pretty much the same. The pale, ridiculous English, second-hand heroes, proud of their silly ideals, proud of him too, patting him on the back. Once he had bellowed, ‘Don’t touch me!’ and they’d leaped like they’d been shot.

  Not that shot people leaped.

  More crumpled. Or blurted out prayers and wanted their mothers. Or just plain fell apart.

  Vanessa and her friends had been the best. They’d made very good jokes. He hadn’t known girls could be so callous. If he came back again he’d stick entirely to girls, but he didn’t think he’d come home any more. He preferred France. (Or Belgium. He couldn’t tell the difference.) He spent his odd days of leave in the towns and villages away from the front; he’d lost the banjo long before, but he’d got hold of a motorbike again.

  Some people wrote diaries, or sketched, filling book after book. Some wrote poetry. Some had got up a newspaper.

  ‘Why?’ he’d asked, truly baffled at all this papery toil, and they’d tried to explain that they thought this war needed recording, so people at home knew the truth.

  Rupert didn’t think this was right. Not the truth about the bad things, anyway. Not about the gas, for instance, or the way he’d seen people treated when they wouldn’t stop crying. He didn’t think people at home would want to read stuff like that. He wouldn’t. He’d rather never know it. As it was, he blanked it out.

  Rupert could blank things out almost as if they had never been, a trick he’d learned at boarding school. You faked it till it was true. Now in France (or it might have been Belgium), he’d managed his greatest blanking of all. He’d unacknowledged the war. He’d found a way to ignore it, and in achieving this he knew that he’d become safe.

  Blissfully safe.

  Disaster proof.

  Nothing could hurt Rupert. Explosions rocked the ground around him and left him standing unruffled. Bullets veered away from his head. All the minor problems that beset the others – sickness, bad feet, trembling hands, lice, sleeplessness, panic, bewilderment, grief – all those things did not touch him. He never saw ghosts, he rarely saw rats, he was not bullied, he hated no one. He cheerfully accepted boredom, deep mud, irrational orders and strange-tasting tea. He enjoyed cheap red wine, silver flare light, the heat from a mug, the smell of wool blankets, woodsmoke, rum and comradeship. He liked these things in a detached kind of way, as if he were hardly there. He rarely read letters from home, and gave away his parcels unopened. He had completely forgotten how he had worried about Lucy the pony, and Mina the cat. He’d stopped counting back to the time he was at school. He never deliberately thought of anyone in England, although once or twice, very rarely, a memory would catch him like a kick in the stomach. Not often, though. He couldn’t imagine the war ever ending, and he didn’t know what he’d do if it did.

  It was not something he thought about much.

  He was more or less content.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Clarry the Dark Horse

  Every now and then, in the staff room of Clarry’s school, someone would ask, ‘How’s our DH getting on?’

  ‘DH’ stood for ‘Dark Horse’.

  The Dark Horse was Clarry.

  From the very beginning of her days at the grammar school, Clarry had been watched, at first with amusement, and later with interest. Mysteriously, her family history had become known. Opinions were shared about her brother and her father. Even the Miss Pinkses were given a passing (uncomplimentary) thought.

  These days Clarry was being watched extra carefully. Cool, critical, intelligent eyes glanced at her, and glanced again. They thought she was rather a promising Dark Horse.

  ‘Excellent stamina!’ said someone. ‘Never gives up.’

  ‘Heard her explaining some chemistry to a couple of youngsters in the library. Very clear. No wasted words.’

  ‘Shy?’ asked someone.

  ‘Quiet, not shy. Thank goodness. A dreadful handicap, shyness.’

  ‘Do we fancy her chances?’ asked a new mistress.

  ‘Best in the stable!’ said Miss Fairfax, Clarry’s form teacher. ‘By a country mile!’

  Not long after this, extra training started.

  ‘Read this! You must read around your subject!’

  ‘Here is an interesting article. I should like you to sum it up in two hundred words. No, one hundred and fifty! Less if you can manage it. I want all the relevant points, mind, and you can bring it to me at registration tomorrow!’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ asked Clarry, startled.

  ‘You must learn not to be fazed by a deadline!’

  In maths she was constantly stretched. ‘The demonstration of that proof for us now, please, Clarry! Up at the front! Never turn your back on your audience! You must practise using a blackboard – it’s a skill . . . That’s quite nice. Could they hear you at the back?’

  ‘Could you hear me at the back?’ asked Clarry, and when someone shook her head the maths mistress said, ‘In that case, Clarry will show you once more!’ and Clarry had to do it again, louder and clearer, juggling the difficult skills of blackboard writing, algebra and noticing the people at the back of the class.

  ‘Quite nice, thank you. You may sit down now,’ she was told at last, and immediately scolded, ‘Don’t flump!’

  For month after month it continued; ‘This essay really won’t do. Whatever is happening at home?’

  ‘You must always quote your references! Always, without exception!’

  ‘This piece of work is a fail. I asked for five hundred words, and you gave me six. I have simply ignored the last hundred, which has left you with no conclusion!’

  However, it wasn’t always so negative.

  ‘Clarry, on Saturday afternoon I’m taking you to a lecture that I think you’ll find interesting.’

  ‘I should l
ike to show you my old college very soon. And the town. I wish I could show you it as it was before this BLASTED war, but it will end, it will end, it will end. The university has been there for more than eight hundred years! Have you visited Oxford before?’

  ‘No, but my brother has, often,’ said Clarry eagerly. ‘His school is nearby. If he gets a scholarship, he’ll go after the summer.’

  ‘And is your father happy about that?’

  ‘Oh yes. He went. So did Grandfather.’

  ‘Always the boys,’ said Miss Fairfax with irritation. ‘However, it’s the girls’ colleges keeping things alive at the moment. So your brother won’t be enlisting?’

  ‘He broke his leg, years ago. It mended, but it doesn’t bend very well. It’s shorter than the other one too. He hates not being able to enlist.’

  ‘There are more productive things your brother can do than fight,’ said Miss Fairfax acidly, for she did not believe in war. ‘I hope something will occur to him before much longer.’

  ‘I think it already has. He borrowed a bicycle and went into Oxford. He bumped into a man there . . .’

  ‘Bumped into?’

  ‘Yes, with his bike. And when he got off to see if he was all right the man noticed his hoppy walk and they talked, and it gave Peter an idea.’

  ‘Well, Oxford is full of ideas, good and bad,’ said Miss Fairfax. ‘Was it any particular man that he bumped into?’

  ‘He was a professor. Quite old.’

  ‘They all are. Which one?’

  ‘Osler. Sir William. I think Peter said he was American.’

  Clarry’s teacher, Miss Fairfax, looked at Clarry through narrowed, considering eyes, and said, ‘He’s Canadian, and that was a very fortunate bump. Will you come with me to Oxford, Clarry, and see who you bump into there? You look worried!’