Carrie's War

by Nina Bawden

  Carrie said, ‘She must be stark mad to come in and let him see her like that. She knows what he’s like.’

  ‘She only did it to take him off you,’ Nick said. ‘To stop him bullying you on your birthday.’

  ‘Oh,’ Carrie said. And then, ‘How long will he go on, d’you think?’

  ‘Just till she cries. Then he’ll make her wash her face and we can have tea. You hungry, Carrie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m not either. I couldn’t swallow.’ He sat hunched up, listening to the steady roar from the kitchen. He said, ‘Getting used to things doesn’t make them any better, does it? He’s a horrible, disgusting, yakky hog-swine. What was he on at you about? What did he want you to tell him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do, then.’ Nick looked at her. ‘I could tell by your face that you did! So could he, I expect!’

  Carrie groaned. ‘Aaaaaaaaoooooooooow …’ shutting her eyes and stretching her arms out sideways and stiff till her shoulder blades hurt. Then she collapsed limply, put her head on her knees, and said, ‘I think he wants me to tell him something nasty about Hepzibah. Like she’s cruel to his sister. But that’s only part of it.’ She thought of the message Mrs Gotobed had asked her to take to her brother, and then, because it frightened her to think about this, said loudly and passionately, ‘I won’t spy for him, I won’t, I won’t. I won’t tell him anything.’

  ‘Keep your hair on, girl,’ Nick said in a mild, surprised voice. ‘You don’t have to, do you? I mean, he can’t make you.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Carrie said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Chapter Eight

  Carrie said to Hepzibah, ‘Mr Evans hates the Americans. Auntie Lou was going to see her friend yesterday but he wouldn’t let her because once when she went, she and this friend went to a dance with some American soldiers. I don’t see why he feels like that, do you? I mean it’s a good thing the Americans have come, isn’t it? To help us fight Hitler?’

  Hepzibah was ironing. She and Carrie were alone in the kitchen. As there was no electricity at Druid’s Bottom, Hepzibah used two flat irons, heating them in turn on the fire. When one cooled she picked up the other and spat to test it. She did this now and the spit sizzled on the iron. She said, ‘The Americans are better off than we are, that’s why. Mr Evans can’t abide that, people being well off and throwing their money about.’

  ‘Mr Evans is mean,’ Carrie said. Poor Auntie Lou, she had cried! The tears had run down her face as she stood at the sink, washing up after tea. Thinking about it made Carrie feel chokey inside, and helpless, and angry. She said, ‘Mrs Gotobed says he’s a mean, cold, hard man.’

  ‘He’s had a cold, hard life and it’s made him cold and hard,’ Hepzibah said. She was ironing one of Mister Johnny’s shirts and a warm, starchy smell filled the kitchen. ‘He saw his dad die down the pit and he couldn’t save him. He came up and swore he’d never go down again, it was no life for an animal! And he stuck to that. He got a job at the grocer’s shop, dogs-body work, sweeping up and delivering, but he saved every penny he could till he had enough to put down, with a loan from the Bank, to buy the place up. His wife was no help to him, she was a poor, sickly creature, and he had his young sister to care for beside his own boy. Mrs Gotobed would have taken the girl, but he wouldn’t allow it. The Gotobeds led a bad life to his strict way of thinking, gambling and travelling and pleasuring themselves, and he said Louisa should be brought up in the fear of the Lord.’

  ‘Poor Auntie Lou,’ Carrie said.

  ‘Who’s to say? I don’t know she’d have been better off here. Rich people’s charity can be a cold business.’ Hepzibah sounded as if she knew about this. She folded the shirt she was ironing and pressed the collar flat. Then smiled at Carrie. ‘Whatever the rights and wrongs of that matter, Mr Evans has had a hard, lonely fight and it’s made him bitter against those who haven’t. It’s what he’s got against Mrs Gotobed, when you come down to it. Her life’s been too easy.’

  Carrie said, ‘Auntie Lou said he was angry with her because she married the mine-owner’s son. She says they were bad owners and it was their fault his dad died.’

  ‘That was part, perhaps,’ Hepzibah said. ‘But it was mostly the other thing, that he’d had to sweat all his life and she’d never done a hand’s turn. She rose up in the world without lifting a finger when she married into the gentry and I daresay she let him feel the difference between them. When I first came here with Mister Johnny – he was only a little lad then and I wasn’t much older – the Gotobeds still had their money and they kept house in style. Butler and cook and parlour maids and a bailiff for the farm! Most of the groceries came down from a grand shop in London but she’d order perish able goods from her brother and then send a servant to complain of the quality. And he’d send messages back through his delivery boy! Never a word passed directly between them! They were two of a kind, people said. Peacock proud and stubborn with it, neither giving an inch. That’s the trouble now, really. She’s fond of him still, in her way, but they quarrelled all those years ago and it’s too late to mend it. He’ll never forgive her for the life she has spent and she won’t let him see what she’s come to at the end of it! Poor as a church mouse by her standards, and weak as a kitten!’

  It seemed a sad story to Carrie. She told Nick and said, ‘Don’t let’s ever quarrel like that.’

  ‘Why should we?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just let’s not.’

  ‘I won’t if you won’t.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Nick looked bored but he licked his forefinger and drew it across his throat.

  Carrie did the same. Then sighed. ‘I’m sorry for Mr Evans, really.’

  ‘You must be out of your mind,’ Nick said. ‘Stark raving bally-bonkers.’

  Two days later they were alone in the house when the shop bell jangled. Carrie went to open it and an American soldier stood there. He was very tall and very polite, taking his cap off before he said, in a soft, drawly voice, ‘Major Harper, Ma’am. Major Cass Harper. Is Miss Louisa Evans at home?’

  Mr Evans was at a Council meeting and Auntie Lou was at the Chapel, cleaning up for Sunday. Carrie said, ‘There’s just me and Nick at the moment.’

  Major Harper smiled and his eyes crinkled up. He was quite old, Carrie decided, looking at the creases in his pink, cushiony cheeks and the way his hair was going thin at the sides. He said, ‘Then may I come in and wait till Miss Louisa comes home?’

  No one ever came to the Evanses’ house to visit. Auntie Lou had friends in the town who asked her to tea sometimes but she never dared ask them back. ‘Once you let people get a foot in the door there’s no end to it,’ was what Mr Evans said. ‘Traipsing in and out, up and down, back and for, all day and all night …’

  Just to think of what he would say if he came home from a Council meeting and found an American soldier sitting in his parlour made Carrie’s stomach shrivel. She said, ‘Oh no, you can’t do that, I’m afraid. Mr Evans might come back first, you see.’

  Major Harper looked politely surprised. ‘Miss Louisa’s brother? Why, I’d be glad to get acquainted with him.’

  ‘He might not be glad, though,’ Carrie said miserably. ‘He doesn’t – he doesn’t like American soldiers. It’s nothing personal. I mean, I’m sure you’re awfully nice, it’s not that …’

  She was afraid Major Harper would be angry but he only smiled, blue eyes twinkling. I’m a very respectable American soldier,’ he said.

  He was nice, Carrie thought. So nice that it would be quite awful if Mr Evans were to turn up and start shouting at him. It would upset Major Harper and it would upset Auntie Lou, and all to no purpose because Mr Evans would never let her see him again.

  She said, ‘There’s no point in your staying, really there isn’t. It wouldn’t be any good at all. Even if you did see her, Mr Evans wouldn’t let you go out with her, to a dance, or the pictures, or anything. Mr Evans says dance h
alls and cinemas are haunts of the Devil and a frivolous woman is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.’

  Major Harper had stopped smiling. His plump, rosy face was very solemn indeed and so was his voice. ‘Miss Louisa is a lovely, gracious lady and I wouldn’t wish to be a trouble to her.’

  ‘You would be, I’m afraid,’ Carrie said. ‘He’d make her cry. He’s always making her cry.’

  ‘I see,’ Major Cass Harper said. ‘I’m obliged to you for explaining the situation. Perhaps you’ll say …’ He paused, as if wondering what Carrie could tell Auntie Lou. ‘Tell her I called,’ he said. ‘Just that. And that I’m real sorry I missed her.’

  Carrie watched him go up the steep main street. An Army car was parked outside the Dog and Duck and he disappeared into the pub without looking back. Carrie closed the shop door and Nick said, ‘Why, you rotten, mean …’ He was standing just behind her and his face was scarlet. ‘You rotten, mean pig. That’s her friend come to see her and you sent him away!’

  ‘I couldn’t ask him in, could I? Suppose Mr Evans came back?’

  ‘Mr Evans, Mr Evans, all you think about’s Mr Evans! What about poor Auntie Lou?’

  ‘There’d be a row and she’d cry,’ Carrie said. ‘I can’t bear it when she cries.’

  ‘You can’t bear it? What’s that got to do with her? Maybe she’d rather see her friend first, even if she had to cry after,’ Nick said. ‘I’m going to tell her.’

  And he pushed past her and opened the door and started running down the street towards the War Memorial Square and Ebenezer Chapel. Carrie hesitated, but only a second, and then she ran after him. She called, ‘Wait for me, Nick,’ and he looked back and grinned at her.

  It was cold in the Chapel, like going into a tunnel. Auntie Lou was on her knees scrubbing the floor of the aisle. She sat back on her heels, pushing her hair back with her wrist as they raced up to her.

  ‘Your friend’s come,’ Carrie said. ‘Major Cass Harper.’

  ‘Oh,’ Auntie Lou said. She just sat and stared at them.

  ‘He’s in the Dog and Duck. Hurry up, or he’ll go.’

  Auntie Lou got to her feet and put her hands up to her hair again. Her hands were shaking like red autumn leaves but her bright eyes were shining.

  ‘Don’t fuss with your hair, it’s all right,’ Nick said. ‘Just take your apron off, you’ll look all right then.’

  She unfastened her apron and folded it and looked down at herself. ‘Oh,’ she moaned, ‘my old skirt!’

  ‘He won’t mind that, he’s too nice,’ Carrie said.

  Auntie Lou wrung her red hands together. ‘I can’t – I can’t go into the Dog and Duck. Mr Evans …’

  ‘Won’t know if you don’t tell him,’ Carrie said. ‘No one else will, that’s for sure.’

  She hoped this was true. Nothing that went on in the town was a secret for long. And there were plenty of people who would be pleased to tell Councillor Evans that his sister had been seen in the Dog and Duck with an American soldier. Not to hurt Auntie Lou, everyone liked Auntie Lou, but to get their own back on him …

  ‘The floor!’ Auntie Lou said. ‘I haven’t finished the floor!’

  ‘We’ll do it,’ Nick said. And added, in a fair imitation of Mr Evans’s voice, ‘Get on if you’re going! Double-quick now!’

  They scrubbed the tiles and put the bucket and cloths away in the little room at the back of the Chapel where the flower pots were kept and the Minister’s clothes. Then they walked slowly back to the shop. There was no sign of the Army car outside the Dog and Duck but Auntie Lou wasn’t at home. Only Mr Evans, doing his accounts in his office. He said, ‘Where’s your Auntie?’

  ‘It’s a lovely evening,’ Carrie said. ‘She went for a walk up the mountain. I said I’d get supper.’

  She laid the table in the kitchen, putting out the bread and a big bowl of dripping, and then made the cocoa. The light was fading outside. Nick whispered, ‘D’you think she’ll come back?’

  Carrie took Mr Evans’s cocoa into the office. He sat back, rubbing his eyes. They looked red and sore and his mouth seemed to droop at the corners. ‘Figures, figures, figures,’ he said. ‘No end to it. No rest for the righteous!’

  ‘Must you work so hard?’ Carrie said, thinking of the things Hepzibah had told her, how he’d worked all his life and had no help from anyone, and he looked at her with surprise.

  ‘Sympathy, is it? That’s something I don’t often get!’ Then he smiled – not one of his tigerish grins but a perfectly ordinary, rather tired smile – and said, ‘No help for it, is there, with this old war on? Can’t even get a boy to deliver! But the only things worth having are the things you’ve worked hard for, and I’ll last out, I daresay, so don’t you worry, girl! Go and see to young Nicodemus and have your own supper!’

  Carrie lingered, partly because she felt so sorry suddenly, and partly because she felt guilty. She had told him a lie about Auntie Lou going for a walk up the mountain and Auntie Lou didn’t know what she’d said. Suppose she came back now and told him she’d been somewhere else? It would be dreadful to be caught out in a lie; dreadful at any time, but worse now, when he was being so friendly. She said, ‘Can I help you add up? I’m quite good at maths, it’s my best subject at school.’ That was another lie, and her cheeks reddened with the shame of it, but he didn’t notice because the shop bell had tinkled.

  The door opened and closed. Quick, light steps though the shop, and Auntie stood in the office. She was smiling and her whole face shone as if candles had been lit inside her. Like a turnip head at Hallow E’en, Carrie thought. She watched Mr Evans turn in his chair and look up at his sister and felt her chest tighten. What was it the air-raid wardens shouted when they saw a house with a chink of light showing? Put that light out! ‘Oh, put it out, Auntie Lou,’ Carrie shouted, inside her, and said, aloud, ‘Was it nice, up the mountain?’

  Auntie Lou looked at her vaguely as if Carrie spoke some strange, foreign language. Or as if she herself had just returned from another world altogether. ‘Don’t be stupid now, Auntie Lou,’ Carrie prayed, but knew it was hopeless. Mr Evans was bound to find out and there would be a terrible row. He would know she had lied to him, and be hurt, and never trust her again …

  She stood with her head bowed, waiting for the story to break over it. But all he said was, ‘Oh, it’s all right for some, isn’t it? Messing and humbugging about all hours of the night! Clear off and get your supper, the pair of you. Some of us have to work for our living!’

  Chapter Nine

  Carrie didn’t see Major Cass Harper again, but Nick did. Sliding the slag heap one day after school, he looked across the mountain and saw Auntie Lou and a soldier sitting on the grass by the side of a stream. An American Army car was parked on the road just below them. They didn’t see me,’ he told Carrie.

  ‘If I were you, I’d forget you saw them,’ she said. ‘Suppose Mr Evans starts asking us questions? Where she is, what’s she up to, that sort of thing? Best to pretend we don’t know.’

  Though they couldn’t help knowing. Auntie Lou was so happy. She sang all the time she was dusting and polishing and when Mr Evans complained, ‘Tweet, tweet, tweet, do you think you’re a bird, girl?’ she actually answered him back. ‘We’re supposed to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, aren’t we, Samuel?’

  Carrie was sure he must guess something was up but he seemed less suspicious than usual, perhaps because he was happier. His son Frederick had written to say he was coming on leave and Mr Evans kept busy, tidying the shop and getting the books up to date. ‘He’ll see I haven’t let things slide,’ he said to Carrie, when she was helping him put the shelves straight. ‘It’ll give him heart, see? Knowing he’s got a good sound business to come home to when this old War’s over.’

  Frederick came at the end of June, a broad, beefy soldier with a very big bottom. He looked very much like his father except that he was fatter, and red in the face where Mr Evans was pale. ‘Snow White and Rose Red
,’ was what Carrie called them, but Nick had a better name. Frederick ate his meals with Mr Evans in the parlour and they were both fond of meat, liking it juicy and rare. Nick saw them one day when the door was left open, sitting with their elbows on the table and chewing their chops in their fingers. ‘Blood running out of their mouths,’ he told Carrie. ‘They’re Carnivores, that’s what they are.’

  Frederick was on leave for a week. He slept a lot of the time, either in bed or sprawled in the most comfortable chair in the kitchen and snoring loudly with his mouth open. The day before he left was a Saturday and Nick and Carrie were going to spend it helping to harvest the small hay field at Druid’s Bottom. ‘Take Fred with you, why not?’ Mr Evans said, when they were about to set off. ‘Do him good to get off his backside for once!’ Fred groaned in protest from his armchair and his father looked at him sharply. ‘Might even do you some good in another direction, my lad! It’s a long time since you’ve put in an appearance, isn’t it? Paid your respects to your Auntie!’

  Fred groaned again but sat up, quite good-humouredly, and put his boots on. ‘Needs must when the old Devil drives,’ he said, winking at Carrie when Mr Evans had gone. ‘D’you mind if I come along?’

  They did mind, but not very much. When he wasn’t asleep, Frederick had been friendly enough, though he often laughed loudly for no reason they could see and said things there was no answer to, like ‘Wotcha, young Carrie, how’s tricks?’ This sort of behaviour was tiresome but bearable and, as they walked to Druid’s Grove, Carrie thought she quite liked him. He joked with them like a cheerful, older brother and sang one or two shockingly rude Army songs that made them both giggle. ‘Mr Evans ought to hear you singing those songs, he’d have your hide, wouldn’t he?’ Nick said, and Frederick roared with laughter and swung him up on his shoulder and ran with him along the railway line as if he weighed nothing.