“Never should have happened,” snapped Mrs. B., another member of the choir, all upright with traditional upper-class fervor, the insufferable next to the insupportable. Her full name is Mrs. Brampton-Boyd, and it exasperates her that everyone calls her Mrs. B.
As I came to the front, Mrs. Tilling sucked her cheeks in with annoyance. She’s never approved of me. I’ve stepped into her nursing territory, become too close to her village community. She may also have heard about some of my less orthodox practices. Or the payoffs.
“It’s so terribly tragic,” I said in my best voice. “He was taken so young.” Planting a closed-lipped smile on my face, I swiftly moved away to the side, standing alone, people glancing over from time to time to wonder what business I had there.
Just as I was thinking of opening a few doors and having a little nosy around, a hunched goblin of a butler directed me into the drawing room, where I was rather hoping to partake of some upper-class funeral fare but found myself alone in the big, still room.
The distant clang of someone banging out the Moonlight Sonata on a piano clunked uneasily around the ornate ceiling as I ran my fingers over the crusted gold brocade couch. Then I picked up a bronze sculpture of a naked Greek, heavy in my fist like a lethal weapon. The opulence of the room was dazzling, with the floor-length blue silk drapes, the majestic portraits of repulsive forebears, the porcelain statues, the antiquity, the inequity.
I couldn’t help thinking that if I had that sort of cash I’d do a much better job, cheery the place up a bit. It smelled like death, as old as the dead men on the walls, as fusty as the eyes of the disembodied deer watching from the oak-paneled wall, the settle of dust and ashes. I was reminded of the last war, the Great War, when all the money in the world couldn’t buy an escape from mortality. It was the one great leveler. Funny how things went back to normal again so quick—the rich in charge, us struggling below.
I pulled out my packet of fags and lit one, the sinewy smoke meandering into the drapes, making itself at home.
A gruff voice came from behind. “May I have a word?” A hand grasped my elbow, and before I knew it I was being pulled to a door at the back of the room. I turned to see the Brigadier, purple veins livid on his temples—he must have been at the Scotch late last night. He shoved me into a study, thick with male undercurrent, lots of leather chairs and piles of papers and files. The tang of cigars mingled unpleasantly with the dead-dog smell of rank breath.
As he twisted the key in the lock behind him, I knew this was going to mean money.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, surveying the surroundings, trying to cover up any trepidation. The Brigadier’s a bigwig, an overpowering presence, officious and rude and unlikable, yet powerful and ruthless. He’s one of the old types, the ones who think the upper class can still bluster their way through everything. The ones who think they can boss the rest of us around and act like they own the country.
“I knew you’d come,” he muttered in an irritated way, his voice slurring from drink. “Which is why I had Proggett put you in the back drawing room. I have a service for you to perform. Time is of the essence.” He sat down behind his vast desk, all businesslike, leaving me standing on the other side, the servant awaiting instruction. I considered pulling over a chair, but fancied this act of rebellion might lose me a few bob, so I just plonked my black bag on the floor and waited.
“Before I begin, I must know I have your full confidence,” he said, narrowing his eyes as if this were an official war deal, when I knew outright it was going to be nothing of the sort.
“Of course you have it, like you always do,” I lied, glowering at him for even doubting my integrity. He didn’t scare me with his upper-class military ways. “I’m a professional, Brigadier. If that’s what you mean? I’m never surprised by what is asked of me. And I always keep my mouth shut.”
“I need a job done,” he said brusquely. “I’ve heard you’re willing to go beyond the usual services?”
“That depends on what the service in question is,” I said. “And how much I’ll be paid.”
A gleam came to his eye, and he sat up. I was speaking the language he wanted to hear—more interested in the money than the nature of the deed. “A lot of money could be yours.”
“What exactly do you have in mind?”
By now I’d guessed he was about to come out with something big, something that would line my pockets well and good. My bet would have been another affair gone wrong (perhaps a high-profile woman involved, maybe someone from the village), so shocked doesn’t describe how I felt when he came out with it.
“Our baby must be a boy.”
There was a pause as I wondered what he meant. He took in my reaction, his eyes scrutinizing me, debating whether I had the requisite bravery, deceit, greed.
“Ours is not the only birth to happen in the village this spring,” he continued, acting like he was giving complex orders on the front line. “And ours must be a boy. If there were a way to ensure that this might be the case—”
The penny dropped. It was outrageous. He wanted me to swap his baby with a baby boy from the village, if his was a girl. I sucked in my lips, working hard to keep the ruddy great smile off my face. I’d take him to the bank for this! But I had to keep calm. Play it for all it was worth.
“I think it would be a tremendous risk, as well as an immense personal compromise,” I clipped.
He leaned forward, dropping his façade for a moment, his eyeballs shooting out, bloody and globular. “But could it be done?”
“Possibly,” I said elusively. But I knew I could do it. I have a vicious herbal potion that induces babies to come forth very promptly, and the village is small, you can get from one house to another in minutes.
“Anyone who could help that to occur would certainly be well compensated,” he said evenly, his fingers toying with his mustache as if it were a battlefield conundrum.
“How well?”
There was a scuffle from outside the door that made him pull back. “We can discuss that at another time and place.” He stood up and went to the window. There was a French door that overlooked a muddle of fields and valleys down to the English Channel, gray and churning like dirty dishwater.
“We’ll meet the Thursday after next at ten in the outhouse in Peasepotter Wood,” he said in a low voice.
“I’ll be there,” I whispered.
“You may leave now,” he added. Then his head shot round and his eyes dug into me with threatening revulsion. “And mention this to no one.”
Only too happy to get away, I spun round and bolted for the door, fiddling with the key in the lock and then closing the door gently behind me, before sallying out into the thronging hall. My stride widened as I swooped in and out of the black-clad mourners, the uniforms, the nosy neighbors. I marched straight out of the front door without so much as a by-your-leave. People were still arriving in the expansive driveway, so I had to refrain from skipping for joy as I trotted briskly back to the village.
Once I was at my drab little home, I gave a well-earned cheer, throwing my arms up into the air and laughing with utter delight. This is going to work.
I’ll show you that you can forgive me for what happened with Bill, and for taking the money when we ran off. How was I to know he’d grab the money and vanish as soon as he could?
We can be happy again, you and me, like when we were young. Funny, you never think how lucky you are until it’s all whisked away, first Mum dying, then staying with disgusting Uncle Cyril when Dad was in jail, shut in his attic like slaves. But enough of that. We’ll put the past behind us, Clara.
It’s time to gird our loins. There are two other women in the village who are expecting around the same time as Mrs. Winthrop. Droopy Mrs. Dawkins from the farm is on her fourth, so that should be simple. Less easy would be the goody-two-shoes schoolteacher Hattie Lovell, whose husband is away at sea. Hattie is chummy with that niggling nurse, Mrs. Tilling, who’s done the midwifery cour
se and sees fit to poke her nose into my birthing business. Every time I go round to Hattie’s, she’s there, hanging around like a superior matron, saying she’s going to be midwife at the birth. She doesn’t understand. This village is only big enough for one midwife.
I’ll write again after the meeting with the Brigadier. Who would have known such an upper-class gentleman could stoop so low? I’m going to tap him for the biggest money he’s ever known. I won’t let you down this time, Clara. You’ll get the money I owe you, I swear.
Edwina
Saturday, 30th March, 1940
They announced on the wireless that keeping a diary in these difficult times is excellent for the stamina, so I’ve decided to write down all my thoughts and dreams in my old school notebook. Nobody is allowed to read it, except perhaps when I’m old or dead, and then it should be published in a book, I think.
Important Things About Me
I am thirteen years old and want to be a singer when I grow up, wearing glorious gowns and singing before adoring audiences in London and Paris, and maybe even New York, too. I think I will handle the fame well and become renowned for being terribly levelheaded.
I live in an antiquated village full of old buildings that always smell of damp and mothballs. There is a green with a duck pond, a shop, a village hall, and a medieval church with an overgrown graveyard. The church is where we used to have choir until the Vicar decided we couldn’t go on without any men. I’ve been pestering him to change his mind, but he’s simply not listening. In the meantime I’ve been trying to set up a choir at the school. I used to go to a boarding school, but they evacuated it to Wales and Mama didn’t want me to go. So now our butler, Proggett, has to drive me five miles to school in Litchfield every day. It’s not a bad place, except no one wants to join my choir.
I have one vile sister, Venetia, who is eighteen, and I used to have a brother until he was bombed in the North Sea. We live in the big house of the village, Chilbury Manor, which is terribly grand but freezing in the winter. It’s not as pristine as Brampton Hall, where Henry Brampton-Boyd lived before he joined the RAF to fight Nazis in his Spitfire. When I am old enough we are to be married, and we’ll have four children, three cats, and a big dog called Mozart. We’ll live a life of luxury, although we’ll have to wait until old Mr. Brampton-Boyd passes away to inherit Brampton Hall, and since he prefers to spend his time in India, who knows when that may be. Venetia jokes that he only stays there to avoid his wife, bossy Mrs. B., and if I were him I’d be tempted to do the same.
About the War
This war has been going on far too long—it’s been well over six months now. Life has been insufferable. Everyone’s busy, there’s no food, no new clothes, no servants, no lights after dark, and no men around. We have to lug gas masks everywhere, and plod into air raid shelters every time the sirens go off (although they haven’t very often so far). Every evening we have to draw thick black curtains across every window to stop the light from alerting Nazi planes to our whereabouts. The crackling of the news broadcasts on the radio is interminable, with people forever shushing and banning me from playing the piano.
Daddy is a Brigadier, though I have no idea why as he never does any fighting, only occasionally going to London on what he calls “war business.” I think he’s trying to get into the War Office meetings, but they keep making excuses to keep him out. He has been especially cross, his horsewhip always at the ready to give one of us a reminder of our place. Venetia and I try to stay away from the house as much as we can. Mama’s petrified of him and also extremely pregnant, so no one’s around to watch us apart from old Nanny Godwin, and she’s far too old and has never been able to stop us from doing anything anyway.
Some of the papers say the war’s going to end soon, since there’s no fighting and the Nazis seem happy occupying Eastern Europe. But Daddy says it’s all nonsense, and the war is just beginning.
“The papers are written by fools.” He’s fond of picking up the offending newspaper and slamming it down on a table or desk. “Hitler’s taking his time in Poland, then he’ll turn his attention on us. Mark my words, the way this war’s going, France will fall before the end of the year. And then we’ll be next.”
“But it’s so quiet and normal,” I say. “My teacher is calling it the Phony War because nothing’s really happening. Half of the children evacuated from London have gone back already. He says our troops will be home by Christmas.”
“Your teacher is an imbecile who can’t see beyond his own four walls.” Daddy cut in angrily. “Look at Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland. Look at all the ships sunk, the submarines, and our own Edmund.”
We had to end the conversation there as Mama started crying again.
My Brother Edmund’s Death
The next thing I need to tell you about is Edmund, my brother who was blown up in his submarine. We’re supposed to be in mourning, and I feel dreadful for saying this, but I don’t miss him at all. He was a disgusting bully, and I loathed him. I’ve never forgiven him for shutting me in the well, the freezing water edging up to my mouth until Nanny Godwin found me. Or for the time he used me as a target in archery practice. Although he did promise to teach me to drive when I was older, which I suppose was quite nice.
Mama is beside herself and desperate for the new baby to be a boy, as is Daddy. He thinks girls are pointless, Venetia slightly less so because of her yellow hair. I am so utterly pointless I think he’s forgotten I exist, except perhaps when he needs someone to blame. Sometimes I go to Mama to see if she can stop him from being so horrid, but she can’t do anything. She only tells me to make sure I choose a decent, kind sort of man to marry. I wonder if she’s terribly unhappy.
Every evening, Mama has the maid set Edmund’s place for dinner, as if he’s about to come in any minute, sitting and stretching his legs in his usual arrogant manner, making some cruel joke at someone else’s expense, usually Venetia’s or mine. Then he’d let out a few breaths of laughter, smoothing back his hair, as if it were simply super to be him. Sometimes it’s hard to believe he’s just gone. It was his funeral last week, without a body to bury. It seems so strange. Where did he go?
Death is at the forefront of my mind again this week, as David Tilling is leaving for France and he may never come back, especially since he’s so hopeless at getting anything done. I heard Mrs. B. say yesterday that he was the type that a bullet would find faster than the rest, and I worry that she might be right.
I can’t believe the group of children we grew up with here in Chilbury are all suddenly scattering—Edmund killed, David on his way to war, Henry flying Spitfires over Germany, Victor Lovell on a ship somewhere, Angela Quail in London, and only Hattie and vile Venetia left. I’ll miss David especially. He was always the one waiting for me to catch up with the rest, a bit like a brother, only nicer. In a few weeks’ time he’ll be home after training, and everyone’s invited to the Tillings’ for a surprise leaving party before he heads off to the front. I know we’re supposed to be cheerful these days, even if we know someone might die, but it’s hard to forget that this could be the last time I see him.
List of things to make note of before someone leaves for war
The shape of their body—the blank cutout that will be left when they’re gone
The way they move, the gait of their walk, the speed at which they turn to look
The crush of smells and scents that linger only so long
Their color, the radiance that veils everything they do, including their death
People’s Colors
I like to see people as colors, a kind of aura or halo surrounding them, shading their outsides with the various flavors of their insides.
Me—purple, as brilliant and dark as the sky on a thundery night
Mama—a very pale pink, like a baby mouse
Daddy—soot black (Edmund was also black, but black like a starless sky)
Mrs. Tilling—light green, like a shoot trying to come up through the sno
w
Mrs. B.—navy blue (correct and traditional)
Henry is a deep azure blue, to match his eyes. I’m always reminded of the flawless July day during our school holidays when he spoke of marriage, a year ago now. The sky was an endless blue, the stream beside our picnic spot trickling with late-afternoon laziness. Henry had joined Edmund, Venetia, and me, and we were tearing all over the countryside, Mama never having a clue where any of us had got to. Of course, because it was all out of the blue, Henry didn’t have a ring, and we’ve never made it official. But he remembers, deep down in his heart.
I know he remembers.
My Beastly Sister, Venetia
In complete contrast to the rest of us, Venetia is clearly enjoying this war immensely, and not only because no one’s around to keep an eye on her. It’s shuffled everything around, made everyone more adoring, and Edmund’s death has promoted her to top spot in the family. Venetia’s color is a vile greenish yellow, like the sea on a tempestuous day, sucking the living daylights out of anything good around her, dragging down young men into her murky depths, spewing them out unconscious on distant shores.
I find it tremendously funny that she’s having trouble engaging the attention of the handsome newcomer, Mr. Alastair Slater. He’s an artist escaping potential bombs in London, like all the writers and artists desperate to save themselves. Daddy says they’re running away, avoiding their duty. Mr. Slater looks like Cary Grant—all groomed and sophisticated, unlike the boys around here. His color is a dark gray to match his debonair suits and formal standoffishness. He seems completely uninterested in Venetia, even though she’s parading herself around him day and night. I overheard her telling Hattie that she’s made a bet with her friend Angela Quail that she’ll have him eating out of her hand before midsummer, but the way things are looking, she’ll have to work a little harder.
The Chilbury Ladies' Choir Page 2
