‘What are you doing?’ she said by way of introduction.
The photographer was bemused. ‘Sorry?’
‘Off you go, now.’ She spoke to him as though she owned the place.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We don’t need your sort here.’
Then she turned to Dorothea who had emerged from the parlour, fox eyes gleaming, just in time to see her husband walk away. ‘Good day, Mrs Walker. I think it is time we went in for our tea.’
She was a housekeeper. They had a house. Three narrow floors of London property and a coal-hole, all in dire need of supervision. Not to mention a madwoman and a set of baby twins. The midwife had come good at last.
‘Call me Mrs Penny,’ she said, as they gathered around her in the kitchen.
‘Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.’ Dorothea laughed. The sort of laugh that made everyone stop and look at her, amazed.
‘That’s right, dear,’ said Mrs Penny, cutting off the laugh and steering Dorothea towards a seat. ‘Every penny counts.’
She wore an apron and gloves at the same time – for washing, for polishing, for making the fire. She could heave the coal while also rolling pastry. The family were bemused.
After she’d made tea in Dorothea’s china pot, flowers still dancing round the rim, Mrs Penny took the girls upstairs.
‘Let’s start with a rule,’ she said. ‘This far – and no further.’
Clementine, Ruby and Barbara stared at Mrs Penny’s finger as it sketched an invisible line on the floor. Mrs Penny was on one side of it, in the room that used to be their nursery, and they were on the landing in the cold. They gathered in the doorway while inside the room Mrs Penny laid her suitcase on the spare bed and snapped open the clasps. Click-clack and that’s that. She unpacked with the three girls watching, as though to show them how easily she could make herself at home.
Brown skirt, tick.
Fawn blouse, tick.
Stockings, tick.
Brown cardigan, tick.
She got out a tortoiseshell comb, a powder compact with a matching puff and a glass bottle with a blue lid. Innoxa, Complexion Vitaliser (for even Mrs Penny wanted to look good). Then she took out a brown nut with something scratched on its shell. ‘Have a look, girls.’ She held it in her palm for them to see. ‘But don’t touch.’ (Rule number 2.) ‘It’s the Ten Commandments.’
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother.
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Clementine gazed at the nut. She knew the Ten Commandments when she saw them. Just not scratched into the shell of a Brazil nut before. Little fingers twitched behind little backs, but it was Ruby’s that crept forwards first.
‘Now, now,’ said Mrs Penny tapping with one finger at Ruby’s grubby hand. ‘What did I say?’
Later that evening, with the twins pinned down beneath a tightly tucked sheet, Clementine dared to ask the question to which there would never be a satisfactory answer. ‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘Over the hills and far away.’ Mrs Penny was working her way around all the kitchen surfaces with a bucket of soap and a cloth.
‘Where’s that?’
‘Never you mind. Not your business.’
Though even then Clementine thought that perhaps it was. ‘But when will he be back?’
‘We’ll see.’ Mrs Penny always was a woman of few words. Though she made those few words count.
‘Can I write to him?’
Mrs Penny slapped her cloth back into the bucket of suds, flip-flap. ‘If he sends his address.’
‘Don’t you have it?’
‘Now why would I have it – ’ Mrs Penny pulled the cloth out again, wringing it between two large hands – ‘with your mother just upstairs.’
Clementine left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to peer at her mother through a crack in the door. ‘Mummy?’ she whispered. But just as always, there was no reply.
Clementine climbed on to the highest, furthest floor then and sat on the edge of the twins’ narrow cot instead. They were curled up like shrimps, one folded inside the other. ‘He’ll write,’ Clementine whispered into the coral of a tiny ear. ‘Just wait.’
But as far as Clementine knew, Alfred never did.
Two years later the Phoney War began with a list sent home from Clementine’s school:
Plimsolls, tick.
Pillowcase, tick.
Vest, socks, knickers, tick.
Also a spare handkerchief and enough food for twenty-four hours. The essentials for evacuation. Just in case. For the first time in a long while Clementine was happy. ‘Be prepared,’ she said to the twins as they stood in her bedroom doorway each sucking on a segment of orange. ‘You never know when they might arrive.’
‘What, Clemmie?’ A dribble of juice stained Ruby’s chin.
Clementine threw up her arms. ‘Bombs!’
Ruby shrieked and laughed. Barbara dropped her piece of orange onto the floor. She stared down at it, curled in the dust like a dead worm, all dirty.
Clementine darted back and forwards from her chest of drawers, piling everything she might need on a chair. Skirt, tick. Blouse, tick. Sanitary Towels (only recently acquired), tick. A small suitcase lay open on the bed, its insides clad in blue-and-white paper. She was nearly fourteen years old, the promised land suddenly within her grasp.
‘Where are we going, Clemmie?’ Ruby asked.
‘To the countryside.’
‘A farm?’ Barbara clutched a small pink pig in her fist.
‘Maybe.’ Cardigan. Nightdress.
Ruby slid her fingers round the doorframe, leaving five sticky marks. ‘With Daddy?’
‘Perhaps.’ Clementine stopped for a moment, frowning. Blazer, tick. Petticoat, tick. Hairbrush! She lifted a brush with a bone handle from the top of her chest of drawers and placed it next to the suitcase.
‘What about Mummy?’ Ruby poked at Barbara’s segment of orange where it lay rolled in the dust, then picked it up and popped it into her mouth.
Clementine turned to her sisters. ‘What about her?’
‘Will she come too?’
Downstairs Mrs Penny ironed vigorously and muttered, ‘It’s all going to hell in a hand cart.’ But she didn’t mean the impending war. She meant Dorothea Walker, who hadn’t got any better since Mrs Penny had arrived. Salts from the chemist. Daily doses of nettle tea. Crushed aspirin sprinkled on cold rice pudding. Despite Mrs Penny’s best efforts, Dorothea still behaved as though she existed in a parallel universe.
Every morning Clementine stood by her mother’s bed and whispered into her ear, ‘Mummy?’ Just in case. ‘It’s me.’ But Dorothea lay, hair spread about her like a shroud, murmuring, ‘My angels!’ as two grubby three-year-olds rustled and giggled on the landing outside.
Cod Liver Oil. Oranges from the grocers. Rosehip syrup from the Violet Melchett baby clinic, one careful dose measured out each week on a silver teaspoon with a tiny apostle attached to the end. Mrs Penny had calculated the latest bill in her household notebook, rows of neat pencilled figures, each one scored through as it came and went. Whichever way she added them up, it wasn’t looking good.
Clementine appeared now, standing by the kitchen dresser, small fists on small hips. ‘Is my tunic ready yet?’
Mrs Penny thumped the heavy iron upright on the table, covered now by a sheet and a blanket with a torn satin trim she had found in the airing cupboard halfway up the stairs. ‘Excuse me, madam, what’s the magic word?’
‘Bomb?’ Barbara stood behind Clementine, clinging to her older sister as though she might be the last thing she would ever see in this world.
‘Don’t worry, Barbara.’ Clementine removed her sister’s hand from her skirt. ‘We’ll be in the country soon. Then, when it’s over, Daddy will come and get us.’
Mrs Penny snorted. ‘Don’t be so sure about that.’ The housekeeper glanced towards an ol
d tea caddy standing on top of the dresser.
Ruby ran into the kitchen shrieking, ‘Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!’ A trail of biscuit crumbs and coal dust scattering behind her.
‘For goodness’ sake, Clementine,’ said Mrs Penny. ‘Take your sisters upstairs and keep them out of my way while I get everything sorted.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Clementine muttered, stomping back towards the door.
‘I heard that, young lady,’ Mrs Penny called after her. ‘Just because a war’s coming doesn’t mean we can’t keep our language clean.’
‘Now’s your chance, Mrs P. Get it all to yourself.’ Tony, the other new arrival (though not so new now), tipped his chair back and chuckled as he watched the Walker pantomime unfold from his seat by the stove. ‘Make a fortune in a war. All those soldiers.’ He watched Clementine’s bare legs as she made her way out into the hall. ‘We could call it the Penny Family Business.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tony.’ Mrs Penny continued ironing Clementine’s school tunic with a robustness its appearance didn’t deserve. But she knew there was something in what he said.
Tony (louche and loud and full of winks and smells) had arrived the day they crowned the king who shouldn’t really have been king. He’d appeared to find two babies sitting neat on upright chairs while Mrs Penny sang the national anthem, their mother upstairs in her bed singing too, but in a different key.
He’d come in the form of a whistle and a wheeze and a great big shout, ‘Hey, Mrs Penny, heard you had a new position.’ And she tried not to smile when she opened the back door. Mrs Penny had known Tony since her first-ever job. He had a way of conjuring the very thing Mrs Penny needed, even when she hadn’t realized she needed it herself.
The first thing Tony did was to sit down by the stove and light up his pipe. ‘You don’t mind, do you . . .’
‘No smoking indoors,’ Mrs Penny frowned. But she didn’t try to stop him, not that time, at least.
The next thing Tony did was dandle a baby on each of his knees. ‘Upsy-daisy.’ Barbara hiccupped. Ruby giggled. Tony liked children.
After dinner he said, ‘I thought there was three of them.’
Mrs Penny rolled her eyes. ‘The other one’s in the coal cellar.’
‘Why’s that?’
The housekeeper wiped her hands down Dorothea’s apron and took a packet of photographs from a drawer, delivered only that morning by a photographer with shiny buttons on his coat.
Clementine posing on the doorstep.
Clementine pouting in the doorway.
Clementine lounging on a green chaise longue.
‘She wanted these and I said she couldn’t.’
Tony looked at the photographs and laughed. A loud, booming laugh. ‘Did you pay for them?’
Mrs Penny sniffed. ‘I saw him off with the Ewbank.’
Tony laughed again, then put the photographs in his pocket. ‘I’ll deal with it, Mrs P.,’ he said.
‘What about these ones?’ Mrs Penny held out two more photographs, one baby after the other sitting on Dorothea’s lap amidst a tumble of white hair.
‘You can keep those.’
So Mrs Penny reached for the tea caddy that stood on the top of the dresser and popped the photographs in next to a slip of paper with an address in America.
Clementine had been inside the coal-hole almost every day since Mrs Penny arrived the week before. Despite knowing the Ten Commandments off by heart, she didn’t yet know how to honour and obey.
Tony shuffled along the passageway towards the coal-hole, hidden under the street. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said opening the door to a defiant girl, eyes flaring, face all black.
Clementine put down her two small fists. She hadn’t been expecting a man.
Tony beckoned to her with a fat index finger. ‘Come here, little thing,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ Clementine shuffled forwards, hair greasy with coal dust. The man held something out towards her, glinting in the darkness. ‘Would you like it?’
Clementine reached out, a small ghost in amongst the black.
Tony laughed and pulled the coronation penny away. ‘But come here first and tell Tony all about it.’
So Clementine did.
Two years on, and the build-up to the Week of Crisis continued apace. Mrs Penny was in and out all day getting things that might be needed if the worst came to the worst. Tins of condensed milk, of thick syrupy fruit, a whole sack of flour. She fought in the grocer’s over dried raisins and the very last jar of glacé cherries. Queued for darning wool and Cash’s name tapes at the haberdashery, small white strips with their names embroidered in red.
Ruby Penny.
Barbara Penny.
Clementine Penny.
‘But we’re Walker,’ said Clementine, standing with her unmarked school socks in her hand.
‘Waste not, want not,’ said Mrs Penny as she sewed the labels one by one into all of Ruby and Barbara’s clothes.
She made them queue at the local church hall for gas masks, itching and fiddling in the line, complaining about the stink of rubber. She bought string so they could carry the boxes around their necks at all times. She purchased two pairs of little blue slippers with zips up the front to keep the twins’ feet warm should they need to sit in a shelter outdoors. She bought a roll of heavy green fabric for the parlour windows and sticky tape to mark each pane of glass with an X. There were even luggage labels to tie to the buttons on their coats.
Label 1: Ruby Penny.
Label 2: Barbara Penny.
Label 3: Clementine Penny (scratched out).
‘But we’re Walker,’ Clementine protested again.
Mrs Penny made her write the label once more. ‘Wouldn’t want you to get lost, now, would we?’ Clementine pressed the pen nib into a fresh brown card, but the surname still came out as a blob.
Dorothea was building up to a crisis too. She languished in her bed, a constant keening rising and falling through every nook and cranny of the house. At night she kept them all awake with her wanderings. Up and down the stairs, creaking and swaying, calling out again and again as though searching for something she would never find. Tony slept with cotton wool in his ears. Mrs Penny with a scarf covered by a hairnet. The twins with small, sweaty palms pressed into each side of their heads. Only Clementine sat up in bed to listen, whispering her mother’s name in reply.
The doctors came and went and came and went too, shaking their heads about where it would all end. Everything in the world was shifting. Alfred’s whereabouts – unknown. Dorothea’s status – mad. War or peace – uncertain. Mrs Penny’s position – housekeeper, or perhaps something else . . .
It couldn’t go on.
The Crisis Meeting was Tony’s idea. ‘Be prepared,’ he declared. ‘Should anyone ask. It’s jurisdiction that matters.’ Tony liked living in the tall, narrow house. He thought it had lots of potential for the cataclysm certain to come.
Two days later all the women from the street crowded into the parlour, the first time they had managed to get any further inside the house since Alfred had disappeared. Mrs Quinn. Mrs Nolan. Mrs Jones. Staring at a plateful of scones studded with glacé cherries, the centrepiece of a table set for tea. The women were impressed. A person who got hold of things that no one else could, was someone worth cultivating. Especially at times like these.
Mrs Penny poured tea from a pot with flowers all around the rim. Mrs Fraser. Mrs Yates. Mrs Todd. Offering them each a pretty white-and-gold teacup before pouring her own. A war might be coming, but there was no need to panic. Then they began.
The cost of wool.
The filth of the ragman (and his horse).
The difficulty of getting any decent help in current conditions.
‘Really, it’s impossible.’ Mrs Jones touched a handkerchief to her lip. ‘No offence intended, Mrs Penny.’
‘None taken, Mrs Jones.’
Tony stayed in the kitchen to smoke and to belch. He had done his part just coming up w
ith the suggestion. All he cared about now was his pipe with its black insides and constant access to a bottle of the sweet stuff. Rum, that was his tipple. He was very good at getting hold of things too.
In the parlour Mrs Penny waited until the women had eaten every scone.
‘So light. So delicious.’
Spooned up the last of Dorothea’s jam.
‘You must let me have the recipe.’
And discussed each of their children in turn. Then she looked round the circle and said, ‘I wonder if you might be able to help with “my” girls now . . .’
The women glanced at each other then looked away. They all knew this was why they had come.
‘It’s so hard for them, of course. Their father gone overseas, no idea when he might return. And now, what with a war coming . . .’ The rim of Mrs Penny’s china cup blinked in the light as she lifted it to her lips.
The women peered down into the dregs of their own tea, all washy and brown at the bottom of their cups. Everyone understood what a war would mean. U-boats and convoys. Husbands and brothers and sons sliding into the abyss. Why would a man return across one ocean now, only to be sent over another sea to fight to the death?
‘And their poor mother . . .’ Mrs Penny raised her eyebrows to the ceiling. ‘Gone in another way altogether, I’m afraid.’
The women turned their eyes to the ceiling too, then to the door that led to the hall. They had never expected Dorothea to come to much and here was their proof. They all had their responsibilities. But none of them had madness snaking through their family. Not that they were prepared to admit to.
‘Those poor girls. Nothing better than orphans.’ Mrs Penny put down her cup. ‘Might need someone to take them on. If the worst comes to the worst.’
The women all nodded in a slow and solemn manner. Everybody had been considering the worst for several weeks now. They flicked discrete crumbs from their laps to the floor. They were still wearing their hats. Some were still wearing their gloves. None of them wanted to take on any extra burden, would avoid it if they could.
Mrs Jones stared at a small pink thing wedged down the side of the chaise longue. It was a tin pig from a farm set very like the one her youngest son owned. She frowned. Those girls. Nothing but thieves and wretches. Trouble from the day they were born. Shrieking and running, eating gravel right in the middle of the street. Still, everyone must do their duty. Mrs Jones cleared her throat.
The Other Mrs Walker Page 8
