by Chloe Mayer
And the victory itself seemed doubly pointless now that Hans had gone.
Reggie would come back, she supposed. And their life would carry on just as it had been before the war. She tried to force a smile onto her face as the Mitchells started jumping up and down on either side of her, before ushering her into the street so they could share the news with the other villagers, and celebrate with those who’d already heard.
‘I can’t believe it – my Teddy’s coming home,’ Mrs Mitchell was telling the small crowd gathering in the High Street.
‘Three cheers for the King!’ her husband cried. ‘Hip hip—’
‘Hooray!’
‘Hip hip—’
‘Hooray!’
‘Hip hip—’
‘Hooray!’
Mrs Mitchell still had her arm around Annabel. She suddenly vigorously rubbed her back. ‘I don’t think you’ve quite taken it in, dear! But your Reggie’s coming home now, you’ll see. He’s coming home!’
But a couple of weeks later Annabel received a letter from the army. Reggie wasn’t quite going to make it home to Bambury, after all.
She found the envelope sitting on the kitchen table where the boy had left it for her before school. She read it standing up.
Reggie had been shipped back to England before Victory in Europe Day, it said – and she could only assume the slow military machine was why she hadn’t been informed sooner.
He’d been diagnosed with shell shock and sent to a ‘clinic’ in Sussex. She took the letter through to the sitting room and sat down in her armchair to read it again.
Poor Reggie.
Eventually she forced herself to ring his parents to break the bad news. Ha! It was almost funny to think he was the one – not his poor, strange, weak wife – who ended up in an asylum in the end.
They were shocked at first, but then Moira rallied.
‘He’ll be all right, my Reggie,’ her voice told Annabel through the receiver. ‘What that poor boy has been through out there, I don’t even like to think about, but he’s home now. That’s the main thing. He’ll be all right now he’s home. Those army doctors will sort him out in no time. And we can help him.’
‘Of course, nobody is to know about this,’ Annabel heard her father-in-law say; he must have been standing next to his wife, crouched down with his ear pressed to the telephone between them. ‘We’ll just put it about that Reggie’s still in France, working with the army, helping sort out administration issues and rebuilding Europe and all of that.’
‘All right,’ Annabel agreed slowly. She heard muffled mumbles. And then Bill spoke again.
‘That’s what we’ll tell Daniel too, in case he accidentally blurts out the truth to somebody. We can’t risk people finding out. Reggie would be ashamed. And he might not be able to get his job back at the bank otherwise. And there’s no need for Daniel to know, anyway. No point upsetting him.’
‘Fine.’
She heard Moira take a deep breath. ‘Hopefully some rest on the south coast will do Reggie the world of good – and now the war’s over he’ll never have to fight again. He’ll be better soon and can come home and nobody will ever have to know about … well, whatever this is.’
32
‘I dare not tell my sorrows to anyone …’
From The Goosegirl
‘Are you excited about going down to Sussex, Daniel?’
I’d been watching the countryside glide past the car window, but saw now my grandmother had turned around in her front seat to look back at me.
‘Yes, Granny.’ I’d just been wishing the summer holidays would never end – it was September now and soon I’d be starting my final year at primary school. It was hard to believe a whole year had passed since … that thing. I didn’t know how I’d managed to get through it now. I’d started my fifth year just a week or so after … it all happened.
‘And a lovely day for a drive, isn’t it?’ Grandpa said.
‘Yes.’
‘Lovely day,’ Granny repeated. She bit her lip and looked at Mother, who was sitting on the back seat next to me. But Mother was staring out of the window, just as I had been. Then my grandmother looked at Grandpa, who kept his eyes fixed on the road, but nodded slightly, even though she hadn’t asked him a question.
‘Now,’ Granny said. ‘We’ve got a wonderful surprise for you! I know your tenth birthday was a while ago, but think of this as a belated present! It’s a secret though, so you mustn’t tell anyone about it.’
It was my turn to look across at Mother, but she still had her face turned to the window.
‘We’re not just going to the beach today. We’re going to visit Daddy!’
‘Daddy?’
‘Yes, he’s …’ she looked at Grandpa again. ‘He’s home from France. Isn’t that marvellous?’
‘We’re going to see Daddy? Today?’
‘Yes! Isn’t that exciting?’
I was so shocked I could only nod. I hadn’t seen Daddy for a very long time. ‘Is he coming home with us now?’
‘Ah, well. No. No, not just yet, dear.’ She glanced across at Grandpa again. ‘Now, there’s something we need to tell you. Daddy isn’t quite his usual self at the moment. That’s why he’s having a little holiday in Sussex.’
Excitement began bubbling up in my stomach. I was going to see Daddy! I let out a little laugh and tried to concentrate on what Granny was saying.
‘He’s been there for a little while already. Grandpa and I have already visited him with Mother – several times, actually. While you’ve been at school. But we thought as the school holidays’ll soon be over—’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Well, it’s what I was saying about him not quite being his usual self. He’s staying in a sort of … clinic. Remember that trouble he was having with his ears? Anyway, we thought it’d be best if we went to see him first. To try to cheer him up—’
‘Why is he sad?’ I had a sudden awful feeling Daddy was sad because he somehow knew about what I’d done in the woods.
‘Well, you know, he’s much better than he was and we thought it might do him good to see you.’
‘Why is he sad?’ I asked again, although I was dreading the answer.
‘Oh, he’s just sad about the war.’
‘But it’s over now!’
‘He’s just sad it happened.’ She turned back in her seat and faced forward again. ‘We all are.’
I looked around the car and could only see the backs of three heads.
Daddy was sitting on a wicker chair in the gardens with a blanket on his lap even though it was hot. As we approached him I could see his hands were shaking violently.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Grandpa bent down to say low in my ear. ‘He always does that. He’ll get better and grow out of it.’ I felt Granny squeeze my shoulder as we walked towards him.
But it was horrible to look at his hands shaking and shaking like an old man’s.
‘Hello Reggie,’ they all said in bright voices when we came up to him, and after a moment Mother bent down to kiss his cheek. I could see his face was rough with stubble like sandpaper.
‘Look who’s come to see you today,’ Grandpa said.
And, though he had been expressionless until now, I saw him try to smile at me. It was almost worse than the shaking, because I could tell that the smile had been a big effort for him.
I couldn’t smile back though, because clearly this man was not my daddy.
During the war, and after that thing, I’d always been hoping he’d come home. But now I didn’t want him there; this crumpled-looking man who didn’t look anything like Daddy. As I thought that, a sickly trickle of guilt ran down into my tummy.
Granny began talking about the squirrels she’d spotted over in the far trees, and was saying how relaxing it must be to enjoy the sun and watch the animals. It suddenly dawned on me that Daddy was ill. They were speaking to him like a child.
How could he come home to our
silent house in Bambury where he’d realise I was now just as far away as Mother? It wasn’t like it was before. She didn’t even read to me any more. We barely looked at each other, but we’d found a way of living that was working. We acted as though everything was normal when we were in the village and we kept the act up at home too. But I didn’t know how I could pretend with him there.
I looked at this strange person who used to be Daddy and knew at once our strange house had no place for him. I thought of the monsters who came to visit me at night while I was asleep, like demons from a story. And it was like Mother was haunted too. So she and I both had our own demons; we couldn’t help Daddy with his.
I glanced up at Mother, who had turned as though she was watching the squirrels, but I could see her eyes. She was hating this as much as I was. She wanted to be gone, too.
That helped me somehow. We were sharing the same feelings at that moment. It was almost like we were together. I wasn’t quite there myself any more – that’s how I knew how it was for her when she disappeared, even though she was still standing right there.
I don’t think my visit to the clinic had the effect Granny and Grandpa had been hoping for. I think they thought Daddy would jump up cured at the sight of me, like a miracle. And my horrified reaction to the whole thing probably wasn’t what they’d wanted either. So they didn’t offer to take me again and I never asked to join them.
And time passed and passed and went on and went on.
And still, Mother and I didn’t speak of it – that terrible day.
Instead, we pretended nothing had changed for either of us. In fact, we helped each other, in a strange sort of way, if either of us looked as though we were about to wander away from safe empty words. And sometimes I thought that she was a pretend-mother and I was a pretend-child and we were both pretend-people silently going about our business.
On the surface, nothing had changed at all. We still lived together in our little cottage in Ivy Lane and the men from the Home Guard still lived in the village. But it was easy enough to avoid people’s eyes if Mother and I happened to find ourselves in a shop queue or in the Post Office or on the bus with someone who knew part of what had gone on. Either she’d steer us away, or they’d suddenly appear to remember they had somewhere else to be and would hurry off.
One chilly day, not long after I turned twelve, we’d returned home to hear the telephone shrieking as we walked through the front door.
‘It’ll be Grandma,’ Mother said. ‘I’ve got a headache. Tell her I’ve gone to bed.’
I went into the sitting room and picked up the receiver.
‘She’s always got a headache when I telephone,’ Grandma grumbled when I explained. ‘Strange how it comes on every other week, on my day to speak to her.’
I said nothing, but listened to the crackles on the line.
‘Are you still there? Hello? Operator?’
‘I’m still here, Grandma.’
‘How are you, dear? Has your mother been … What did you have for dinner last night?’
And I described a stew with dumplings.
‘Hmm,’ she said. And was quiet for a while. ‘Has she been busy? With the housework?’
I looked around. The secret rooms of the house had always contained little patches of chaos. But the chaos had bred, and multiplied, and stretched. It began to trickle down the stairs. Papers and books and bottles began growing on each step. And then the sea of chaos spread into the not-secret rooms, bringing a tide of dirty cups and dishes. Sometimes I would attack the mess, and sometimes I couldn’t see the point. Once, when I was tidying my room, I found a glass filled with crusty brown gloop and a knife under my bed. With a shudder of shame, and embarrassment, and guilt, I wrapped them in an old pillowcase and threw them into the dustbin outside. It might have been after that I stopped trying to clean. Mother found ways to stop both sets of grandparents from coming to see us.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s always doing lots of housework.’
‘And how’s your father?’
‘He’s … getting better.’ I thought about it and realised it was true. ‘Mother went to see him again the other day. They let him use the telephone in the office sometimes. I speak to him. He’s, I don’t know, he’s cheering up.’
‘Yes, I heard he’s been using the telephone. That’s wonderful!’
‘Yes.’ He really did sound more and more like Daddy each time I spoke to him now. I had to try not to remember those horrible shaking hands and that horrible shaky smile and if I could forget that and just listen to his voice it was like he was normal again. But I still couldn’t decide if I wanted him to come home. Would it make things better, or worse?
‘It’ll be Christmas soon. You’ll have to make him a nice card. Grandad and I are so looking forward to you and your mother coming to stay with us. You haven’t forgotten it’s our turn, have you? You were with your father’s parents last year.’
I’d been trying not to think about it. Christmas was usually difficult.
It was Christmas-time just a few months after that terrible day, and it was strange and awkward at Grandma and Grandad’s house that year.
I think they knew something was wrong, but Mother had suffered with nerves when I was born, so maybe they thought it was that again. I’m not sure what they thought was wrong with me. Grandma tried to ask once but I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about. Over Christmas lunch, Grandad kept making jokes to try to make us snap out of it.
As I said goodbye to Grandma now on the telephone, I hoped this year would be easier. Mother and I were better now at behaving normally.
So the winter came, and Christmas, and it turned into a new year: 1947. And then the winter seemed to change; it became a strange winter that didn’t know when to stop.
At first, when I looked out of the sitting-room window at the bare magnolia tree stooped over the lawn, it looked pretty. The straggly garden looked as though it had been sugared – shimmering flecks of crispy white crystals coated branches and blades of grass.
But after the frost, the snow came. Layers upon layers of it kept falling and didn’t stop. Broadcasters on the wireless said it was the longest period of snow ever recorded in Britain; the coldest winter; the worst for three centuries. Snow was seven yards deep in the highlands of Scotland, but every city, every village, every town in the country was suffering. It was treacherous, they said. People would likely die.
It was the third winter since that terrible autumn day. And I tried not to think of him being covered by snow out in his hole.
33
The walls of the palace were made of snow, and the windows and doors of sharp winds …
From The Snow Queen
Annabel looked out of the sitting-room window and thought: It will be horrific.
She knew that. But what else could she do? They’d be trapped by tonight.
Outside was an alien landscape. The lane didn’t exist any more; instead, peaks and valleys of solid white almost completely hid the other cottages from sight. She might have been looking out of an Alpine hut.
She felt like she had spent most of her life gazing out of this window. It was an effort to suppress the memory of watching Hans arrive that sunny spring day nearly three years ago, and of looking out at the men on her doorstep who brought her a bloodied and brutalised boy while she’d been worrying over her missing lover.
She watched as the window briefly clouded from her breath. There were flecks of icy stars on the wooden rim of the sill and they looked like crystal spiders gathering there.
She’d just spoken to Moira, who had telephoned to tell her the doctors were discharging Reggie. He was ready to come home. Annabel no longer minded that the staff deferred to Moira; keeping Reggie’s mother informed of his progress rather than her, his wife.
The roads were impassable of course, at the moment, but after the thaw he would come back to Bambury. Moira said she and Bill would stay in their usual room above the pub to help
welcome Reggie home and settle him in. When they left, Annabel supposed life would be the same for her as it had been before the war. It would be as though Hans never happened.
She brought a cigarette to her lips to draw the smoke deep into her lungs, enjoying the crackle as the tip burned towards her. She tapped it over the ashtray she was holding in her other hand, letting the column of ash float down like confetti. One by one, people had stopped coming out of their houses. She’d heard that the RAF were having to drop food parcels in some parts of the country, whereas just a couple of years ago it was bombs that were dropping from the sky.
There was nothing to do but wait for the whole damned thing to pass. It had been snowing for weeks and it felt like the world was ending – being buried deeper and deeper, one day at a time.
She’d be shut up in this house as though trapped in a coffin. With Daniel. He’d trail round after her, following her movements with his doleful eyes. Wanting to talk to her. So desperate for something she couldn’t give him. Sometimes she shouted at him to leave her alone. He drove her to it. He made her feel uncomfortable. And he was getting so tall; he was twelve now. Impossible to imagine he lived inside her once.
It seemed to her as though the boy was constantly trying to create happy memories, which she found disturbing; disturbing and exhausting.
‘Do you remember that time Daddy opened the larder and all those tins fell out?’
‘Do you remember the time we helped Mr Finlay look for his dog?’
‘Do you remember the time we baked a cake in the middle of the night?’
Do you remember? Do you remember? Do you remember?
She wasn’t stupid. He was trying to take her back to the time before; before what she’d begun to think of as ‘The Incident’ – neutral calm words that could be used as shorthand in her own mind for the events of that awful day.
But she couldn’t go back. And frankly, things hadn’t exactly been perfect even before the war, and Hans, and that revolting tramp. No, she couldn’t go back. But equally, she felt just as unable to go forward. She was stuck in a day, in a moment, in a nightmare.
