The Lie

by Helen Dunmore

  They got me into a dugout and I had tea with rum in it. I didn’t know why my clothes were rags on me. I was black all over, too, without knowing it. I could see the eyes of the man opposite, moving in his black face. I thought: He’s corked his face. I sat there until I started to shake so much I had to curl up like a sowpig. They laid me on a blanket. I’ve never felt silence like it, as thick as night, coming down over me. I tried to say that I wasn’t wounded, but I couldn’t hear my own voice. A sergeant I didn’t know bent over me and his mouth opened and shut as if he was drowning. I said your name but I couldn’t hear it. The sergeant’s face was close and then it was distant, and I put out my hand to stop him going, full of terror that he hadn’t heard me. I cried out your name again and again but it was like crying out in a dream where there is no sound. I could not wake myself, and the sergeant was already moving away, as if he knew everything that he needed to know.

  14

  The value of concealment cannot be overestimated.

  THE THING THAT stopped the furnace from lighting is simple, as it turns out. The cold tap that feeds the water tank has been turned off. Although the furnace is a warm-air-duct system, it also heats the water and there is a safety valve. It shuts down the system if the tank is empty, so that it can never boil dry.

  It was too complicated for Josh. The kind of system that a man with too much time and money on his hands would come up with, and leave behind for people who don’t understand it. I come on the cold-water tap by chance, and think it strange that it would be turned off, when the system was built to feed every hot-water pipe in the house.

  I shuffle myself out of that tunnel easily enough. I was making it out narrower than it really was, in my mind. Panicking. Of course Frederick was never there, but when I come out I feel different.

  I open the cold tap as far as it will go, and then set about lighting the furnace. I don’t know the proper way of it, but everyone knows how to light a fire. I open the bottom vent wide, to give it a good updraught, and lay the fire in order. The flame catches, such a thin blue thing that you wouldn’t think it’d come to anything, but of course it does. It licks all around the kindling, tasting it, then goes up with a roar you’d never hear from an open fire. I squat beside it, feeding it until its insides are red. When it’s safe to do so I close the vent and fill the furnace full of coke, enough to keep it going all night. How Felicia is going to feed and empty it, I don’t know. She’ll have to get Josh in more regularly, or else I’ll do it for her. At any rate, she’ll have her warm house, for herself and the little one.

  The smell in the furnace room changes. It’s warm and cokey now, with smoke in it. This is how it always used to smell, so that we’d creep in here for comfort on a cold day. The ventilation system is good. I check everything, as far as I am able. He was a proper engineer, Mr Dennis, one of those inventors who made the mines and the machinery that was in them. They made dynamite and pumps, steam engines and safety fuses. They made their fortunes too, out of their cleverness, or at any rate they made fortunes for the men who had the money to invest in their inventions. Maybe if the war had gone on another ten years, all our trenches would have turned into tunnels, deep underground, like the mining tunnels. There was plenty of work for engineers out in France. We could have lived there like rats, had our children like rats, watched them learn.

  The furnace will want riddling, stoking and filling night and morning. I make a note to come down and mend that chicken wire too, in case a bird flies in and does mischief. I have no idea what time of day or night it will be when I go up to Felicia, like a miner coming out of the earth.

  Felicia is studying in the kitchen, elbows on the table, hands cupping her face.

  ‘Jeannie’s having her nap,’ she says as I come in. ‘You’ve been down there a long time.’

  ‘I’ve got that furnace fixed,’ I say, and she actually jumps up, scattering her papers, and claps her hands together.

  ‘You haven’t!’ she says.

  ‘I have. Come here.’

  There’s no heating vent in the kitchen: it wasn’t necessary, with the heat coming from the slab. I take her out to the hall and hold my hand over the vent in the polished floor, in the corner. Sure enough, the air is starting to come up warm. Felicia kneels beside me, and spreads out her fingers to catch the heat.

  ‘That’s wonderful, Daniel,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d never get it going.’

  ‘Give it half an hour for the tank to heat through and you’ll have hot water too, as much as you like.’

  I have never felt so proud of anything, as if I’d invented the furnace, the ventilation system, the ducts and all of it. I look up and notice that the sun is flooding through the coloured glass in the fanlight over the front door. It’s a beautiful day. These spring days can be as good as summer, when the wind drops. I can’t help smiling at the thought that the furnace is working again, just when Felicia won’t be needing it. I look down at my hands and see that they are filthy. Most probably my face is, too.

  ‘You’ll need hot water to wash,’ says Felicia, and we go back into the kitchen. She swings the kettle off the range, unhooks it and hands it to me with a pot-holder.

  In the jollyhouse I pour cold water into hot. I look at my face in the mirror, almost believing that I’ll find it blackened, but there’s only a bit of dirt from the furnace. They have fine soap that smells of lavender. I work up a lather, then swill my face and arms and dry myself carefully on the roller towel. As an afterthought I wet my fingers again and comb my hair into place with them, before going back to Felicia.

  ‘Were you doing your mathematics?’ I ask her.

  ‘I don’t get on well, without a teacher. I need to go back to night school.’

  I think of the rows of night scholars at their desks, learning after the day’s work. They wanted to get on. They knew they could make something of themselves. I never joined them. Maybe I scorned to do so, out of some boy’s idea that if the world wouldn’t give me what I wanted, then I was damned if I’d snatch the crumbs from its table.

  ‘Why should you go to night school?’ I ask her. ‘It’s not as if you needed the qualifications.’

  ‘I want to learn. There’s too much in my head, going round and round. Mathematics is so cool and clear. Everything else goes away, when I’m thinking about it.’

  There’s a shout from upstairs. Jeannie. ‘I’d better get her up,’ says Felicia. ‘She can play in the garden. It’s such a beautiful day.’

  ‘Why don’t we take her down to Gwidden?’ I say boldly. ‘Let her run about on the sand.’

  It’s the first time I’ve walked through the town in broad daylight, instead of skulking against its walls like a thief at night, or taking the long way round. I walk with Felicia at my side, carrying her basket. Jeannie’s on her other side, held tight by the hand. I don’t look to right or left. I keep my face set ahead, for people to stare at if they want to. We go down the hill, through the mazy little streets, and down the long road where the cloth factory stands. Everywhere there are children, and women popping in and out to watch them. There’s not a face that I don’t know, but I feel safe walking with Felicia. She walks lightly, greeting people here and there.

  We go down the slipway and on to the sand. There are boys on the rocks as always, throwing themselves in and out of the water in spite of the season, but they’re a good way off. The tide’s on its way out, so the sand is packed and clean. Felicia takes off Jeannie’s shoes and stockings, for her to run about, and then she takes from the basket a child’s wooden spade, and a tin pail. They are scraped and battered. Jeannie runs to the water’s edge and stands there stock-still, watching the boys. Her pinafore blows about, and her hair too. For the first time I see something of little Felicia in her.

  It’s one of those days that could be the heart of summer. There’s heat in the afternoon sun, and the sea dazzles as if it’s been cut for diamonds. Felicia sets down a square of mackintosh, and I spread out my coat over it,
for us to sit side by side, looking out at the water. A lugger comes round from the harbour, then passes beyond the rocks. Inside the little bay, the sea is flat, with small waves turning over at its edge like shells.

  ‘I could never go away from here,’ says Felicia.

  ‘Not even to Cambridge?’

  ‘It’s a pipe dream, Dan. I study five hours a week if I’m lucky. I seem a bit clever, but that’s all it is.’ She looks sideways at me, and smiles. ‘They’d laugh at me in Cambridge.’ She’s wearing a jersey that looks like one of Frederick’s cricket jerseys. Her wrists are narrow inside its turned-back cuffs. She stretches her arms up above her head, then down. I see the line of her body show against the thick creamy wool, and then hide itself again. I have to turn aside and dig my fist into the sand. I am hot with confusion.

  ‘Isn’t this a beautiful day?’ she cries. Felicia was always like this. If we came down to the sea, she would sit as close to the water as she could and watch it for hours, while Frederick and I messed around fishing with bits of limpet on thread. Jeannie is edging forward into the shallows. She steals a glance behind, at us. ‘She won’t go far,’ says Felicia, and we watch Jeannie bend down and start to fling handfuls of sand and water at the horizon. My heartbeat settles.

  ‘She’ll be soaked through,’ Felicia murmurs.

  I get up, go to Jeannie and pick her up, swooping her on to my shoulders. She’s too surprised to protest. Her father would have done this, so would Frederick. I settle her, and run her up and down the water’s edge, giving her a horseback ride as I’ve seen fathers do. She laughs, and clutches at my hair. I like the sound of her laughing. It sounds reluctant somehow, as if laughter has been shaken out of her against her will. We gallop up and down the beach until I’m out of breath. Jeannie bumps forward, clutching my neck. Her breath is on my skin and she’s still laughing. I swing her round, wriggling. Suddenly, as quick as an eel, she flips herself and digs her teeth into the cushion of flesh at the base of my thumb.

  ‘You young limb,’ I say to her, ‘I’ll spifflicate you.’ She laughs harder, and ducks her head down to bite me again, but I don’t let her. I think she’ll be crying soon, if this goes on, so I put her down on the sand and walk her back to Felicia.

  ‘What was Harry Fearne like?’ I ask, as I sit down by her again. ‘Why did you marry him?’

  She takes Jeannie into her lap and holds her there, bending over her. ‘He was very nice,’ she says at last. ‘He came and said he wanted to marry me, and I was a bit surprised because it was so quick, but he wanted it so much. My father didn’t like it, but he couldn’t say anything. Harry had embarkation leave, and we got married.’

  She stops and turns aside, just as I did earlier. A slow colour comes up in her cheek. ‘He was nice, Daniel. You’d have liked him. You know how it was then, everything had to happen so quickly.’ The colour deepens. I think, for the first time: She isn’t a girl. She’s been married. Of course I knew it, but now I feel it and I blush, like Felicia, in a dark, painful tide like the blood coming back into a dead limb. It seems as if I’m seeing her body inside her clothes.

  ‘And now there’s all the time in the world,’ says Felicia. ‘Jeannie, don’t put that in your mouth.’

  I watch her as she busies herself with the child. She wants to change the subject and so do I.

  ‘I used to fish off those rocks,’ I say, remembering later times, serious times, not limpet on a thread but hooks and bait and the long struggle for fish to take home and make my mother smile.

  ‘I know. You and Frederick.’ She draws a ship in the sand, for Jeannie. ‘I used to be so envious. I wanted to fish more than anything.’

  ‘You did, surely.’ I remember her figure in the distance, heading for the rocks with her net and pail.

  ‘Not properly. You had fishing lines. You caught real fish.’

  ‘Me more than Frederick. It was play, for him.’

  ‘You let me bait up your line once, do you remember? Frederick said I’d flinch, but I didn’t. When you brought the line up there were three mackerel hanging off it, and you jerked it – like that – to bring them over sharp on to the rocks.’

  ‘Gwidden Rocks is a good place for mackerel.’

  ‘You can make a fishing line for Jeannie when she’s older,’ says Felicia, getting up. ‘She’s hungry. We’d better go back.’

  ‘I’ll have to get back too. Got a goat to milk.’

  ‘Oh – of course,’ says Felicia, sounding startled, as if she’s forgotten about my life.

  As we walk up the long road I see a familiar figure. Dolly Quick. She’ll be coming or going from some Sabbath service. I’m carrying Jeannie, and I see Dolly’s sharp eyes go from me to Felicia, to the child, and back to me again. Her face doesn’t soften. Jeannie is tired and grumpy, and instead of smiling, she turns her head into my neck and hides her face. Dolly Quick pinches in her mouth.

  ‘Thank you so much for having Jeannie last night,’ says Felicia, over-effusive again and awkward. ‘She had a lovely time, didn’t you, Jeannie?’

  Jeannie says nothing.

  ‘Cat got her tongue,’ says Dolly grimly, staring at me.

  ‘Daniel has mended the furnace. It’s roaring away beautifully. There’ll be plenty of hot water for the washing tomorrow.’

  ‘I dessay.’

  Jeannie keeps her face buried in my neck. I can feel her breath snorting against my skin.

  ‘She’s tired,’ says Felicia. ‘She’s been running about on the beach.’

  Dolly ignores this. Instead, looking straight at me, she says, ‘They were saying after chapel, the doctor ought to go up to Mary Pascoe’s, or else send a nurse. It ent right, her up there alone, without a woman to do for her.’

  ‘I do everything for her.’

  ‘I dessay you do, Dan Branwell,’ she says, with a wealth of meaning in her voice. ‘You living in that cottage, tending her chickens, digging her vegetable plot.’

  ‘Daniel doesn’t live in the cottage,’ breaks in Felicia. ‘He lives in the outbuilding, don’t you, Dan?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What does she do if she wants something in the night, then?’ demands Dolly. ‘Say what you like, she needs a woman there, even if it’s only calling in. Or else be brought to hospital.’

  ‘I can go and see her,’ says Felicia, with her quick sensitiveness that knows I don’t want anybody else there.

  ‘And take that child where there’s catching illness? Mary Pascoe’s chest been bad all winter, you say. It could be she’s in a consumption. Taking the child, there’s no sense in it.’ She jerks her head at me and speaks with open hostility, careless of what Felicia thinks. She must know that Felicia needs her too much to fall out with her. ‘He should find lodgings in town, and let Mary Pascoe have proper care up hers.’

  I say nothing. I hold on to Jeannie, maybe too hard because Jeannie doesn’t like it. She wriggles and pulls away. Dolly Quick puts out her arms and Jeannie slides into them.

  ‘There you are, my girl. Why, you’re all wet. You feel her hem, Mrs Fearne, it’s sopping.’

  ‘I’ll change her when we get home.’

  ‘You got to go careful, this time of year. They can get a chill. I always kept mine in wool until May was out.’

  She is coddling Jeannie as she speaks, turning her away from me. ‘I can take her to mine if you want. It’s closer. I’ve got a change there and she can have a warm by the fire.’

  ‘No,’ says Felicia. ‘It’s very kind of you, but we’ll take her home now.’

  That’s it, I think. That’s torn it. I keep my face impassive. I don’t reach out to take Jeannie, I let her go to her mother. But as I walk away beside them, I don’t need to turn round to know how Dolly Quick is staring after us, nor to guess at the expression she wears.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ I say, when we reach the house.

  ‘You should get rid of that goat.’

  ‘She’s not mine to sell.’

  ‘You
should ask Mary. She might need the money from the sale.’

  ‘I can’t go bothering her with things like that.’

  ‘I will come up and see her,’ says Felicia, with sudden decision. ‘If she needs it, I’ll pay for a nurse. No, don’t argue, Dan. Dolly’s right, even though she means it wrong. If anything should happen to Mary, think what people would say.’

  15

  Every artifice should be used to mislead the enemy.

  YOU WOULDN’T THINK there could be such a run of mornings, each one finer than the last. The sea is flat, with a few boats working their way across the fishing grounds. I deal with the goat and hens, then walk up to the edge of the plot I’ve cultivated. Today, I’ll break the next patch, working my way slowly outward through land that’s been let go to bracken and brambles. No-man’s-land. Why shouldn’t I claim it back? I work with my back to the rising sun, and it’s almost hot. There’s a sharp smell from the crushed bracken and black soil. Every so often I take out stones that lie in the earth like potatoes, and fling them away. I want this land clean.

  Felicia intends to give Josh the job of looking after the furnace. He’ll be glad of the work, and besides, I couldn’t be there night and morning. It’s impractical. I have enough to do here. I could get more hens, as the egg money builds up. I could grow enough to feed myself, and more to sell besides. I could live here.

  It seems as if I’ve been half asleep all these months.

  She and Jeannie will be up by now. I wonder if they’re eating my eggs. The thought of it makes me hungry, and I leave my work, put one of this morning’s eggs into the little saucepan and balance it on the grid over the fire. When it’s coddled enough, I swill away the water and dance the egg as I peel it, so as not to burn my fingers. There’s no bread. I mash cold potato into the egg, and salt it. I eat fast, and wish I had more. The sun’s come round to the doorway now, so I make a mug of strong black tea and prop myself against the frame to drink it. All the sea eastward is shining now, too bright to look at. I close my eyes and sup the tea, which is why I don’t see the doctor’s hat moving along the furze, not until he hails me: