My Former Heart

by Cressida Connolly

  Ruth thought for a moment. ‘I don’t believe Granny wants to be dashing,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ said Iris, ‘yes.’

  Ruth’s uncle Christopher had come back to live with her grandparents for the duration. He was teaching science at the Malvern Boys College. Or at least he said he was, and it was true that he was a teacher. It was only years later that Ruth learned that he’d actually been involved in developing signals and radar, based at the evacuated school. He hadn’t been able to enlist because of his poor eyesight, although he was better at seeing things than anyone his niece knew: he could spot a buzzard from miles away, and tell it from a hawk. He knew the names of all the birds and wild flowers. Ruth liked birds, except for chickens. Soon after she arrived, Christopher began to take her for long walks on the hills at weekends. With her stumpy legs and her thick springy hair, she reminded him of a valiant little pony. He knew the secret places where you could drink the icy spring water straight from the rock, so clear that it tasted more like air – exhilarating, like sea air – than water. Christopher was an expert whistler, could whistle any tune, however elaborate. For some reason which Ruth did not understand this annoyed his mother.

  It was not yet spring when Ruth arrived at Malvern. That first night she pulled her bed away from the wall and wrote ‘mummy and daddy’ in her neatest writing on the wallpaper, below the line of the mattress, where no one would be able to see it. It was intended as a sort of spell, to make them come back.

  Gradually, over the weeks, the cold began to give way to thin sunlight. The early wallflowers in her grandparents’ garden smelled of watery marzipan then, as if the summer to come was hidden inside them. There was a tall monkey puzzle tree outside her bedroom window, and Ruth used to wish that she could find a real-life monkey and open her window and put it out on a branch, to see how puzzled it would be, or whether it would be able to climb down. When she ran her hands along one of the branches, little barbs at the end of each leaf stabbed at her fingers.

  Neither of her grandparents asked questions about her mother. They didn’t really ask questions about anything much: they didn’t interfere. They weren’t strict, except about manners, table manners in particular. The table was always laid properly. Everyone had their own big white napkin, rolled up inside a silver ring; and there were special little spoons made of mother-of-pearl for the salt; and spoons made of horn, with long handles, for boiled eggs. There were fruit knives with coloured glass handles, like polished beads, and in summer there were crescent-shaped salad plates. There were two pheasants made of silver as a centrepiece; or, as the weather improved, stiff flowers in a cut-glass bowl which had a mesh made of wire, like a stiffened hairnet, to keep them in place. In London, when it was just her and Ruth, Iris had got into the habit of doing without side plates, or napkins, or butter knives: she couldn’t see much point, since there wasn’t enough butter in the first place. She even put the jam on the table in the jar it came from the shop in, though not if there were visitors.

  Iris never wore a wristwatch, didn’t even keep a clock beside the bed, as if she could outwit time by refusing to keep an eye on it. There was only one clock in their house in London, a wind-up one, in the kitchen. But in the house in Malvern there were two long-case clocks, so that if you listened hard you could always hear ticking wherever you were, except in the bathroom with the taps running. Both clocks chimed the quarter-hours, and the smaller walnut clock in the breakfast room appeared to pause momentarily, as if drawing in its breath, before chiming always very slightly ahead of the bigger mahogany clock in the hall. In this house time was ordered, it announced itself politely and was made quietly welcome. Nothing was hasty.

  Ruth found the not knowing how long her mother would be away far worse than her absence itself. It was like not knowing whether you’d be staying somewhere long enough to unpack your suitcases properly and unfold all your things and put them in drawers: it made it difficult to settle. After the first two weeks her uncle Christopher made arrangements for her to attend a school further up the hill in the town. Most of the children who had come to Malvern to get away from London had gone home by then, but three evacuees were still there. Ruth was glad to hear their familiar London voices, but they were a tight-knit group, not looking to make extra friends. Out on walks, Ruth had seen the little African princesses who went to school on the other side of the hill. It was said that their father was the King of Abyssinia and that they were descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. She wondered if they were lonely, so far from home. In her class she liked a girl called Veronica, who had long plaits the colour of dust caught in sunlight. Veronica owned a pair of real tap-dancing shoes, which she sometimes allowed Ruth to try on.

  Every afternoon her uncle collected Ruth from the school gate and they walked home together, looking at trees and birds along the way. Christopher liked things that other people didn’t care for, as well as noticing things that other people didn’t even see. He told her about crows, how clever they were, how long-lived. People generally feared them, because they were ominous and ate carrion and cawed so loudly, but he enjoyed looking at their tip-tilting jaunty way of walking. He pointed out the flash of blue under a magpie’s wing and told her it was a useful lesson to remember: that even when things looked black and white, they could still surprise you. Magpies looked showy but they were thieves, they took songbirds’ eggs and they made a horrid noise that sounded like mockery. Plumage wasn’t everything.

  At half past four tea would be waiting for them: paste sandwiches, bread and butter spread with red jam; or sometimes, as a treat, extra thinly sliced and sprinkled with demerara sugar. Then there would be a piece of the sponge cake which was baked once a fortnight; only a small piece, because it used up such a lot of fat and sugar. It was a matter of pride to Ruth’s grandmother that there should be cake despite the shortages, as if she was not bowing to the Enemy by allowing standards to fall.

  A few chickens were kept in an outhouse behind the shrubbery, and once the warmer weather came there was never a shortage of eggs. This was meant to be tremendously lucky, but Ruth had secretly gone off eggs, since being given the task of collecting them, most mornings. She hated the sweetly rotting smell in the henhouse, and covered her nose with her elbow when she went in. She thought she detected something almost snakelike in the furtive sideways glances of the chickens. Once, she found a hen with a dead mouse in its beak, shaking the little corpse as if to loosen its skin, like someone impatient to take a damp overcoat from a guest. After that she found it hard to swallow the runny boiled eggs she was given for breakfast once or twice a week. An egg fluffed up and hidden in a cake was not so bad.

  And then two letters came from Iris. She was in Cairo, which gave Ruth a shock. One was addressed to her grandmother, who did not open it at breakfast, but went into her husband’s study with it afterwards, shutting the door quietly behind her. The other was for Ruth.

  Darling girl,

  It is all the greatest fun here with people from all over the place, New Zealand and Australia and goodness knows where else. I think I may be able to stay on and do my bit to help out, so I hope you will settle nicely with Granny for the time being and be a good girl. I know you will.

  One can find all sorts of things in the market, which they call a souk. Queer kinds of fruits like pomegranates and also great vats of powdered dyes in bright colours. Lots of odd-smelling spices in big sacks. Such a change from dreary old London! They drink a kind of tea which is made of mint leaves, rather good.

  I’ve seen several camels! Close to they have the longest eyelashes, and when they stand up they make a complaining noise, rather like an old drawer being opened.

  Darling, it will do you good, being in the country. I’m sure your uncle will teach you all about nature while you are there, so that you’ll have lots to tell me when I get home. On no account let him take you to watch cricket when the summer begins! It is absolutely deadly, tell him I absolutely forbid it.

&nbs
p; When you write, Granny will address the envelope for you to be extra sure your letter reaches me, I’ve sent her the poste restante.

  With lots of love,

  Mummy

  For the time being. What did that mean? Did it mean weeks, or months? She had mentioned cricket and the summer: did that mean Ruth might be here until the summer, or throughout the summer, until autumn came? What could she possibly be doing that would help the war? Iris could type and she was quick at things, but she hadn’t had a job in London. Ruth wasn’t sure that her mother had ever worked at anything. And most importantly she didn’t say whether she’d found Edward. The fact that she didn’t, Ruth reasoned, must mean that she had not. But surely that was why her mother had gone away in the first place, to look for him? So why was she staying on? Why didn’t she carry on travelling, looking for him? Or simply come home?

  Ruth didn’t like to ask her grandmother about these things because she thought, although her grandmother didn’t show it, she must have been fearfully worried to have a son missing in the war: so worried that it was never mentioned. Instead she waited until after school, when she was alone with her uncle Christopher. But unusually for Christopher, who was so good at explaining things, he offered no clarification. ‘I really couldn’t say,’ he told her. ‘I’m sure your mother has her reasons.’ Ruth felt a thin trickle of disappointment spreading down her body. It lodged in her chest, like a boiled sweet swallowed the wrong way. That night in bed, she curled the side of her mattress back, so as to reveal the words she had written on the wallpaper. She looked and looked at them, until the letters blurred.

  Chapter 2

  Even before she had opened her eyes, Iris could sense the brightness at the window, a weight to the light which could only come from snow. The room was cold, much colder than the nights in Cairo had been, but Iris didn’t feel the cold despite her slender frame. The old hotel had been quite empty when they’d first taken it over a few months earlier, hadn’t even had the benefit of electricity or running water. During the big snowstorm, before she’d arrived, they’d run out of kerosene for the lamps. But supplies had begun to arrive and the place was taking shape. They had furnished her room adequately, even if the furniture was shabby. There was a writing table in front of the window, which would do as a dressing table too; and a good comfortable chair with a footstool, set by a low table with a rather dingy lamp; and plenty of clothes hangers in a cupboard which smelled vaguely of cloves. Not that she had all that many clothes with her, certainly not enough warm things for up here in the mountains. She’d have to write to Jocelyn, the friend with whom she’d left a key to the London house, and get her to send some things out: jerseys and her tweed coat and perhaps a couple of dresses for the evenings. One of the things Jimmy was keen for her to do, once they got the place fully established, was to organise entertainments for the men, music and suchlike. It wouldn’t hurt to have a frock or two.

  Jimmy was a friend of Edward and Bunny’s, from Cambridge days. It had been pure chance running into him in Cairo. Iris had had no idea he was out in the M.E., although one came across so many familiar faces out here – people one used to run into, for ever ago, at London parties – that she hadn’t been the least bit surprised to see him. Jimmy had always been one for the most tremendous schemes, and mad on skiing of course. Terrifically good at it too. In Cairo he’d told her that he was recruiting for a mountain-training school in the Lebanon. It was just the sort of ambitious, almost foolhardy scheme one would have expected of him. When he mentioned that he was looking for someone to help with the office side of things – to go through lists of men with experience of cold-weather conditions, get in touch with them, order equipment – she at once proposed herself. ‘Done,’ he’d said straight away, grinning. He didn’t enquire as to the particulars of why or how Iris had got to Cairo, nor what she was doing there in the first place. He didn’t ask if she’d ever done this sort of work before, or any work. He wasn’t that sort of person.

  The Cedars was on a plateau surrounded by a horseshoe of mountains, all covered in snow. Far in the distance, six thousand feet down beyond the valley, was a glimpse of the Mediterranean. The old hotel took its name from a wood nearby, where some of the trees were said to be more than a thousand years old. There was a wall around it to protect the trees. If Iris had thought of the Lebanon at all before now, it would always have been in connection with the cedars which reached their long wide arms across familiar English lawns, shading the grass, their branches the colour of green baize. But here, in their homeland, nearly all the trees had been cut down, all but this small wood near the hotel. Great swathes of snow collected in their outstretched branches, then fell when the weight became too much for the trees to support. The sound was just like bombs, exploding in the distance. Iris had thought it was a raid the first time she’d heard it, until Jimmy put her right.

  Jimmy told her that you could spend the morning skiing up here and then drive down to the coast to bathe in the sea that very afternoon. Not that his notion had much opportunity to be tested, when he and the men were out for almost eight hours a day, sometimes overnighting in tents further up in the mountains, coming back exhausted and frozen. Iris did get down to Beirut every few weeks, but she didn’t bathe, although she’d have liked to. The women there didn’t seem to; there were only men with fishing nets and young boys playing on the beach.

  There were already signs of spring down in the city, the almond trees in blossom. It wasn’t so much fun as Cairo of course, but one could dine reasonably well and buy French scent and other treats, and go dancing if one was overnighting. Generally one or other of the officers took her to lunch at the French club, where they had heavenly food: there were even prawns in that delicious pinkish sauce, and sole meunière. Jimmy told her that he’d caused the most frightful embarrassment the first time he’d been to the club. British officers hadn’t been using the place then, but because he’d been doing some liaison for one of the Free French generals he didn’t see why he shouldn’t. He’d gone in and asked for a table, but once he was sitting down he noticed a deathly hush had descended. It turned out he was sitting in the Vichy half of the dining room. He’d been asked to move to the Free French side, and only then had conversation resumed at the other tables. Now the place was frequented by all the English officers. Some of them gave Iris to understand that they disapproved of the ski school. Why should Jimmy – and the Aussies he’d somehow managed to inveigle his way among – be allowed to create a private holiday camp in the mountains? Iris laughed. ‘You should come up,’ she told them. ‘Anything less like a holiday could scarcely be imagined.’

  True though this may have been for the men who trained there, to Iris the place did provide a kind of extended vacation, a break from thinking about what to do with her life. Not that she didn’t work, and work hard. There was a great deal to get done: wood for the skis to be ordered from Turkey, supplies to be organised, the men’s letters to send out, reports to be typed up. The whole building smelled as if it was constantly being polished – a familiar and comfortingly English church-hall smell of beeswax and paraffin – but the floors remained scuffed, for these ingredients were used only to make wax for the skis. The furniture was anyway too makeshift to merit polishing. One of the tasks which fell to Iris was to ensure that there were always adequate supplies to make the ski wax. Graphite was another ingredient, which it eventually became impossible to track down; in the end, she’d had to request a huge pile of gramophone records, which they’d ground down, to add to the wax mixture. To Iris this seemed a pity, a waste of music. One of the officers had a wireless, which picked up music stations from Germany and Italy, and before long Jimmy managed to obtain a gramophone from somewhere. When further boxes of gramophone records arrived, Iris kept back some of the better ones to play in the evenings.

  Iris often had headaches from spending so long at her desk. But she was glad to be tired and found that she no longer felt restless or on edge. She didn’t have to fret
here, as she had at home, about what would happen when Edward came back, how she would explain herself. And it was better for Ruth to be with her grandmother, away from the damp foggy city, in the fresh air; and away from the danger of the city of course. Several people – including her own mother – had let it be known that they’d thought it selfish of Iris to keep the little girl in London with her during the bombing raids.

  A couple of doctors had been imported to the school, since fractures and sprains were expected to be a daily occurrence, especially among men who’d never skied before. In fact hardly anyone hurt themselves: Jimmy’s theory was that it helped to actually climb up a mountain before you skied down it, because that way you were strengthening the muscles first. He believed that it was because there were no ski lifts here that people didn’t seem to get hurt as they did in the Alps. But they did get sunburn. Snow blindness too. The Australians in particular were averse to using protective cream or dark glasses. Sometimes at night Iris was kept awake by their horrible screams of pain from the hospital ward across the courtyard.

  One of the doctors, Digby Richards, had a friend nearby, a naturalist who was stationed down by the coast, collecting things for the Natural History Museum in London. Digby was going to meet this friend in Tripoli when he next had a day off duty: would Iris like to join them, he wondered, and see the crusader castle? Digby didn’t say much on the drive down, but his friend Michael turned out to be excellent company. The spring weather was a delightful contrast to the snow at the Cedars. Michael had arranged an exotic picnic for them: flat bread more like Bath Olivers than the bread at home, and salty cheese – which he said was made from goat’s milk, but which Iris liked nevertheless – and some olives, with a bottle of red wine from Cyprus. After they’d eaten Michael wandered off, head bowed, while Iris and Digby sat on the coarse grass and looked at the sea, smoking in silence. Within minutes Michael returned with a posy of flowers in his hands.