by Jo Walton
“You know I can’t talk about my war work!” he said.
It was the last time she saw him alive. He was killed a few months later by a direct hit from a V-1, on the day she took the Oxford entrance exams. She went up to Oxford for a visit and was awarded an Exhibition to St. Hilda’s College, which would provide her with enough money to live on while she studied, without need for parental support. She called to see her mother on her way back to school, spending an uncomfortable night in her old room. There was very little for her to eat, and she had a long complicated train ride ahead of her. Her mother took the triumph of having been accepted and awarded the Exhibition entirely for granted. “They’ll be taking more women because so many men are out because of the war,” was all she said. After Patty’s obligatory words on meeting, her father was not mentioned.
Going upstairs early to bed, clutching a hot water bottle for warmth in the cold spring, she quietly opened the door to Oswald’s old room and found it stripped bare even of the furniture and carpets. Only the paler patches on the wallpaper where his photographs had hung showed that he had ever been there at all. In her own cold bed, where there was not enough light to read, she wondered how much of a mark Oswald had left on life. He had broken their parents’ hearts, and helped her grow up. (Almost eighteen and newly accepted at St. Hilda’s, she felt thoroughly grown up.) He had probably cheered his comrades in the RAF. She wondered if he had had a girlfriend. She had seen so little of him in the last few years, both of them away from home, and the war. And of course, though she didn’t like to think of it, he had thoroughly changed the lives of the people whom he had bombed. She thought of factories destroyed that would not make bombs that would not kill people the way her father had been killed. She thought of planes damaged by Oswald’s attacks so that raids took place later and killed different people, or didn’t take place at all. She tried not to think of houses in Germany falling and crushing their inhabitants like the bombed-out houses she had seen in Twickenham and Oxford. Oswald had done his best, as her father had in two wars now, while she had done nothing. She had been a child, but the war was still on and she was proposing more study, not war work.
The train journey the next day was even more gruelling than she had expected. The main line north had been bombed and not yet mended, so the train crept around by branch lines, last in priority after troop trains and even goods trains. At Rugby an American soldier got on and tried to flirt with Patty, who had no idea how to respond and stood frozen until he apologized and said he had thought she was older than she was. She was about to have her eighteenth birthday. She knew other girls her age flirted and joked and were at ease with men.
At Lancaster, which should have been five hours from London but which had been eleven, the train came to a permanent halt. She stood on the platform of the Victorian station, part of a group of stranded travellers. “There’s nothing going north tonight,” the guard said. “Not unless you want to go around by the Cumbrian Coast line. There’s a train just starting for Barrow, and it’ll go on up that way. But you’d do better stopping the night here.”
“Does it go to Carlisle?” somebody asked.
“Yes, all the way round the coast to Carlisle. It’s slow like, but it gets there in the end.”
Patty climbed into the little train which rattled along the rails. It was full of workers in overalls making for the Vickers yards at Barrow-in-Furness. One of them, a gray-haired man with a lined face, prodded his younger companion into giving Patty his seat. “Can’t you see the young lady’s tuckered out?”
Patty sat gratefully. “I am. I’ve been travelling all day.”
“Where have you come from then?” the man asked.
“London.”
“That’s a step! What took you there?”
“I had an interview yesterday at an Oxford college, and I spent the night with my mother just outside London.”
“Oxford!” The man was gratifyingly impressed. “An Oxford scholar! You must be a brainy one then.”
Patty smiled. “They’re taking more women because the men are off at the war. I’ve been wondering whether I should go even so, or whether I should be doing war work.”
“If you have the chance to better yourself you should take it,” he said, and though his manner was completely different he reminded her of her father. “I’m a fitter, and I’ve done as well for myself as I can. Now our Col who gave you his seat, he’s a fitter too, but he’s taking night classes and after the war he means to get on.”
“Your son?” she asked.
“My nephew,” he replied, and was silent a moment, then changed the subject. “Now, where are you going tonight? Are you going to school?”
“Yes, back to my school. It’s been evacuated to Carlisle.”
“Carlisle! You won’t get there tonight!” As if to emphasize his words the train slowed to a stop.
“The guard on the platform in Lancaster said this train went around the coast to Carlisle,” Patty said.
“Well, so it does, but not until tomorrow. I don’t know if we’ll be in Barrow before midnight, but whenever we get there the train will stop there until the morning and go on to Carlisle then. Tom, what time does the train go out to Carlisle in the morning?”
The man addressed had a little rabbitty moustache. He pulled a booklet out of his pocket. “Ten oh eight,” he said after a moment’s perusal. “Why’s that, Stan, what do you want with going to Carlisle?”
“It’s not me, it’s the young lady here. They told her in Lancaster she could get to Carlisle by this train, but it’s not so is it?”
All the men looked at Patty, who blushed under their attention.
“Well, whatever they told her she won’t get further than Barrow until ten oh eight tomorrow morning. You’d have done better to have stopped in Lancaster, lass,” Tom said.
“Don’t worry, you can stay with my Flo and me,” Stan said reassuringly. “Flo will make you up a bed in no time and find something for your supper too, as I expect you’re hungry.”
“I’m always hungry,” Patty said, sincerely, but all the men laughed.
She slept that night in a worker’s cottage in Barrow-in-Furness. She woke early to the sound of seagulls calling. She had not known Barrow was by the sea. She opened the blackout cautiously and saw gray waves by the gray daylight. It was just before seven in the morning. She dressed quickly. The room was a boy’s room with a carefully made hanging model of a Spitfire and framed amateur perspective drawings of birds. She wondered where that boy was, dead or away at the war? She remembered Stan’s face when he had said that Col was his nephew. She went downstairs. Flo was in the kitchen already, making up the fire. “You’re an early bird, Patty,” she said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“You’ve been so kind, and I would like a cup of tea, but I just saw from my window that we’re by the sea. I haven’t seen the sea properly since before the war, and I thought I might just slip out quickly for a walk now, first, before I do anything.” As she said it Patty thought she was being silly, but she remembered the clean-swept sand and the sound of the sea.
Flo looked skeptical. “It isn’t the proper sea, just the bay, like. You need to go around to Morecambe for the proper sea with a bit of a beach and things to do.”
“There wouldn’t be anything to do at this time of the morning anyway. I just want to run down and see it.”
“Well it’s right there at the bottom of the street, for what it’s worth,” Flo said.
Patty pulled on her coat and went out. The wind was gusting and the sky was brightening a little. The cords of an empty flagpole were clapping repetitively, a solitary empty sound.
As Flo had said, there was no proper beach. The waterfront was just a narrow shelf of stones and broken shells where the waves were breaking. Out across the bay she could see the shadow of the other shore. It couldn’t be more different from the blue sky and limitless horizon of Weymouth before the war. Yet still the waves ran in endlessly and com
fortingly on the strand. In and back, each a little closer, breaking in a rush of spray, and then the sound of the shingle being sucked back, drowned as the next wave came forward, each wave different and each the same. The sea was as new as the morning, and yet the same sea as when she had been a child and Oswald and her father still alive, and the waves ran in and back as they had been doing all the time since she had last seen them.
Above the seagulls circled and called. Nobody else was down by the water. Patty felt herself taking deeper breaths. There were other birds at the edge of the waves, not seagulls, black and white birds with sharp beaks.
She crouched down. It was too cold to consider sitting on the pebbles. She did not throw a stone because she didn’t want to hurt or frighten the birds. She watched them wading in the shallow water at the edge of the sea. It felt like a blessing being there and watching them. She remembered Mr. Price preaching from the pulpit they had built for him one of those summer Sundays, not the King Canute Sunday, and not the day her father had quoted “When Adam delved,” some other ordinary holiday Sunday. “You can always bring your troubles to Jesus, and you can bring him your happiness too. Jesus is always there for you. Jesus loves you, loves you, in your griefs and your joys. God is your father, everybody’s father. He loves you like a father. If you turn to him in your troubles, God can help.”
In recent years she had grown away from the simple piety of her childhood. In school many of the girls mocked at the way the teachers hypocritically mouthed religious sentiments, and some of that slopped over into mocking Christianity itself. And the war had lasted such a long time, and taken so much from her. But the sea was still here, and just like it God was still here, waiting patiently, although she hadn’t been paying attention. Jesus was there, and loved her, and the sea was there, endlessly going in and out. She had lost her earthly father and brother, but she still had her heavenly father. And of course they were not just gone, they were with God. In a sense she still had Dad and Oswald. She had the hope of seeing them again. Tears came to her eyes and she let them spill down her cheeks. There was nobody there but the sea and the seabirds. She felt as if she had been given a great gift.
Back in Stan and Flo’s kitchen they had breakfast just ready: Cumberland sausage and fried bread and strong tea with milk and sugar. “We’d give you an egg if we could,” Flo said.
“Sausage is more than enough. I know that’s from your ration,” Patty said.
“Sausage makes the meat go further,” Flo said.
Stan said grace unselfconsciously, as he had the night before. Patty’s “Amen” was less automatic and more heartfelt than it had been then, but nobody remarked on it.
“Did you find what you were looking for down by the sea, then?” Flo asked as she started to cut her sausage.
“More than I was looking for,” Patty replied as soon as her mouth was empty.
“More?” Stan asked.
Patty couldn’t speak.
“She said she hadn’t seen the sea since before the war,” Flo said.
“Reckon it might be a thing you could miss at that,” Stan said.
“What are those black and white birds with pointed beaks that run along the edge of the water?” Patty asked.
“Why, those would be oystercatchers,” Stan said after a moment’s pause. “Do you like birds then?”
“I don’t know much about them.”
Stan got up and went to the bookshelves above the big wireless in the corner of the kitchen. He pulled down a big green book and flicked through it to a sketch of the bird she had seen. “One of those, like?”
“Yes, that’s it!” she was delighted.
“Our Martin was very fond of birdwatching. It’s a nice hobby for a boy. Doesn’t cost much.”
“I can see this would be a good place for it,” she said. “And I’m sure my brother would have loved it, though Twickenham wouldn’t be so good.”
“You’d be surprised how many birds you can see in a suburb,” Stan said.
“That’s Martin’s room you were sleeping in,” Flo said. “He’s in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. We don’t hear from him half as often as we’d like.”
“At least he’s still alive,” Patty said. “My brother—”
“There’s no call to upset yourself,” Flo said, and put a hand on her shoulder.
“No reason birdwatching wouldn’t be a nice hobby for a girl too,” Stan said. “I think we have a beginner book here that our Martin grew out of long ago.” He pulled out another much slimmer book. “You take this, and that’ll be a start.”
“You’ve already been so kind,” Patty said.
“Now I have to get off to work, but you’ll find your way back to the station all right, won’t you?” Stan said, finishing up his breakfast.
“I will. And I can never thank you enough for taking me in, and the book, and … and restoring my faith in human nature,” Patty said.
“You think of us when you’re an Oxford scholar,” Stan said. “And we’ll think of you. And when Martin comes home we’ll tell him he had a girl in his bed when he was far away!”
4
Sculling: 1944–1946
When first Patty went up to Oxford she threw herself into the Christian Union and her newly rediscovered love of God. All her friends were drawn from Christian Union circles, which were happy to include her. Although she remained shy and awkward, for the first time in her life she felt she belonged. It was the autumn of 1944, the Education Act had been passed, and free and equal access to education for everybody was for the first time a reality. The invasion of Europe had begun in June with the Normandy landings, and although she was no longer so entirely riveted to the radio for news updates as things dragged out, it seemed finally possible to imagine that the war might one day be over. There was a spirit of optimism and the sense that a better world was coming. Meanwhile the petty daily inconveniences of the war ground on, with everything in short supply. Oxford was full of women and cripples—men injured in the war. Patty rowed both in the women’s eights and alone. She went on outings organized by the Christian Union. She read Milton and struggled with Old English. She worked hard. Her essays got unspectacular but good marks.
VE Day came and Hitler died in his bunker, and although the war with Japan ground on, there was a sense that everyone was more than ready to be done with the whole thing and move on. Then in the summer the Americans dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Patty heard the news on the old humming wireless in her mother’s house, and shared the sense of relief everyone initially felt. She went back up to Oxford feeling a burden had been lifted, though rationing was worse than ever and new clothes were impossible to find even if you had the coupons. A few veterans were in that year’s intake, and a few young men postponing conscription now that the war was over. There was an election, in which Patty could not vote, being under twenty-one, but in which she took a close interest. The Labour party under Attlee were elected with a massive majority, which she saw as a mandate for social justice and true equality for everyone, and rejoiced. In other ways, her second year was much like her first.
She acquired a boyfriend, an earnest young man called Ian Morris. He was a year younger than she was, one of the men who deferred his conscription to go to Oxford. He had not taken any part in the war, and it was hard to imagine him as a soldier. She found him profoundly unthreatening. The Christian Union might argue passionately over faith versus works or on the precise way to administer charity, but they were united on the subject of sex—they were against it. Rather, they professed to be for sex within marriage for the purposes of procreation, but for all of them that was for a distant future. Patty rarely thought about sex, and when she did she felt a vast apprehension and an equally vast ignorance. She knew almost nothing about it. Some men, and indeed some girls, she found sexually frightening. She felt safe with Ian. He occasionally put his arm around her shoulders when in company, never when they were alone. They agreed that they were “waiting.” He did not p
ress her. They danced together at Christian Union dances, and Patty pretended not to notice that she was taller than he was.
She had imperceptibly become aware that neither the Christian Union nor Oxford were as shining and perfect as she had initially thought them, and had become accustomed to making excuses for them in her mind when they fell short of what she felt they should be. She called this “being charitable.” She easily began to exercise the same slightly brisk charity with Ian. He never came into her mind when she read the Metaphysical poets.
It was towards the end of the Trinity term of her second year that Patty fell out with the Christian Union.
There were two girls who lived on her staircase in St. Hilda’s, Grace and Marjorie. Marjorie was in the Christian Union and as such was a friend of Patty’s. Grace she knew mainly for her extreme shyness and nervousness. She was reading chemistry and was reputed to be brilliant, though how brilliance in chemistry manifested itself Patty had no idea. She had long pale hair and large breasts and tended to scuttle, clutching her books to her chest, darting sideways glances if addressed. The first Patty knew of the scandal was when it was whispered to her by Ronald.
“Have you heard about Marjorie?”
“Heard what about her?” Patty had stopped in at Bible tea on her way back from the river. She’d had a ducking and her hair was dripping down the back of her neck, which made her rather impatient. The Bible tea was a regular event held in the house of Mr. Collins, a minister attached to the Christian Union. A group of them would meet in his house for tea and then a Bible reading and discussion—they were working their way through the Acts of the Apostles, and Patty generally enjoyed it very much. She was early today, and nobody was there except Ronald, who had an artificial leg and was reading PPE. PPE, the dreaded Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree, often seemed to attract know-it-alls, in Patty’s experience. Ronald was one of the members of the Christian Union toward whom she found it most difficult to extend charity, though she had prayed to do better.
