Isobel's Story

by Jennie Walters

  By the middle of my second month, it felt as though I’d been living at Swallowcliffe for years. One Saturday afternoon, Gran sent me on an errand to the village shop and I decided to take Nancy and Julia with me for a treat since Sissy had the day off. Something about the shopkeeper, Mr Tarver, made me feel uncomfortable, so perhaps I wanted some moral support as well. He had cold eyes and a false smile, and he knew everyone’s business because he was an ARP warden. ‘Air Raid Precautions’, that’s what ARP stands for. I’d once seen Mr Tarver kitted out in an ARP armband and metal helmet, berating an old lady who hadn’t come to him yet for her gas mask. He’d even ridden up to the Hall and told Gran she should start criss-crossing the windows with brown tape in case they were blown in.

  ‘We must be prepared for all eventualities, Mrs Stanbury.’ He’d bared his teeth in a fearsome grin. ‘I trust you’ve begun measuring up for blackout material.’

  To be honest, I wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere near the village shop if it hadn’t been for the boy who helped behind the counter. The first time I saw him, I dropped my change all over the floor. There was something so startlingly vivid about his black curly hair, pale skin and sharp cheekbones that you couldn’t help staring. Gran happened to let slip that he was German when he delivered our weekly order one day, and that was mysterious in itself. What was a German boy doing over here when his country was at loggerheads with ours? And how had he ended up in Mr Tarver’s dark Aladdin’s cave of groceries? I wasn’t very good at talking to boys, but looking at him made a trip to the shop a lot more exciting.

  And then Julia spoilt everything. ‘We don’t like that boy,’ she announced in a loud whisper, pointing at him so there could be no confusion. ‘He’s a German spy.’

  Just like that, right in the middle of the shop! I could have killed her, except that would have drawn even more attention to us and I was hoping by some miracle that no one had heard what she’d said. Mr Tarver was busy with another customer - Miss Murdoch, the vicar’s sister - and you can bet she did; she has bat’s ears. I knew that because, the week before, she’d turned around from playing the organ and glared at two girls who were whispering at the back of the church. So I settled for frowning ferociously at Julia to stop her saying anything else.

  The boy was reaching down a packet of fancy tea with a long pole that had a hook on the end. Mr Tarver’s shelves were a work of art, with every tin, jar and packet arranged in intricate patterns, and the whole shop smelt rich and spicy as a fruitcake. It was even more crammed with goods than usual because the back storeroom had been cleared out and turned into a wardens’ post. There were maps on the walls, an electric fire and a kettle for Mr Tarver and Mr Williams from the garage to make tea when they were on official warden duty.

  The boy turned around with the tea in his hand, put it down on the counter and gave us a look. My face grew hot.

  ‘Will that be all, Miss Murdoch?’ Mr Tarver asked, a faint sheen of sweat glistening on his double chins. ‘Shall I have your order sent round to the vicarage, or will you take the items now?’

  The ‘order’ consisted of a paper bag of custard creams, weighed out from a large tin, and the tea. ‘I’ll take them with me,’ she said, stowing the shopping in her basket and getting up from the chair by the counter. ‘I only popped in because I happened to be passing. The body requires sustenance as well as the soul, Mr Tarver, and my poor brother is at home wrestling with a sermon.’

  ‘Oh, very good.’ He laughed as though she’d made the funniest joke in the world and reached for a large black book on the counter top. ‘I’ll add them to your account.’

  ‘When can we choose our sweets?’ Nancy asked in a piercing voice, tugging at my hand.

  Both Miss Murdoch and Mr Tarver looked round. ‘Patience is a virtue, Miss Nancy,’ Miss Murdoch said - which was clever of her, since Nancy and Julia are identical twins. Sometimes I find it hard to tell them apart, even now. They have the same grey eyes, the same dusting of freckles and the same explosion of curly fair hair that takes Sissy ages to brush in the morning. Nancy has a chicken pox scar over her right eyebrow, and that’s the only difference between them, so far as I can make out.

  ‘See you on Tuesday, Isobel,’ Miss Murdoch said as she went by. Gran had volunteered me for a first aid evening class in the village hall, run by the Women’s Voluntary Service, and Miss Murdoch took the register. I enjoyed the bandaging but now we were learning about the effects of different gases and that was horrible. I was considering pretending to be ill next week and coughed hollowly, hoping Miss Murdoch would remember that later.

  At last it was our turn to be served. ‘May I have two pounds of prunes, please?’ I could see the boy in the corner of my eye, wiping down the bacon slicer, and hoped he wasn’t listening. There was something embarrassing about prunes.

  Mr Tarver waited until the door had closed behind Miss Murdoch with a jangling of its bell. ‘Cash or account?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Account,’ I answered, stammering slightly. Gran hadn’t given me any money; Mr Tarver came up to the Hall at the end of each month for the bill to be settled and we were well into February now. Why did he need to ask?

  He made a great performance of flicking over the pages in the black book until he came to the right one. Then he ran one podgy finger down the line of figures, frowning, and shook his head. ‘Sorry, young lady. There’s money owing since before Christmas and I can’t give you any more credit. It’ll be cash only until this account’s paid off, I’m afraid.’

  Now I was blushing to the roots of my hair. Mr Tarver straightened up and stared at us unpleasantly, the striped apron straining over his chest. Behind him, the German boy stared too.

  ‘So, do you want those prunes or not?’

  ‘How much are they?’ I asked, feeling for the purse in my pocket and wishing I could fall through the floor. I had sixpence of my own money to buy Nancy and Julia some ha’penny chews and a blank exercise book for myself. (I’d decided to start writing a diary.)

  ‘Fourpence a pound.’

  ‘I’ll have a pound and a half then, please,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster. Gran needed the wretched things; Lady Vye was throwing a dinner party that night and she’d suddenly decided to serve devils on horseback as a savoury (which was prunes wrapped in bacon, apparently). I couldn’t go back to the Hall without them.

  Nancy pulled my arm again, sensing that something was wrong. ‘What about our sweets?’

  ‘Hush. We’ll buy some sweets another day,’ I told her, in a tone of voice that meant it’d be more than her life was worth to kick up a fuss. She narrowed her eyes and stuck out her lower lip but, thank goodness, nothing more.

  The prunes lay glistening like plump black beetles in a glass jar on the shelf. Mr Tarver took the jar down, put a square of blue paper on the scales and tipped out a clump of them, adding one and then another with a pair of tongs until he reached exactly the right weight. Then he folded the paper into a neat parcel and pushed it across the counter to me. ‘Will that be all?’

  ‘For today, thank you.’ I gave him the money, took the prunes and dragged Nancy and Julia out of the shop. I was never going back there again.

  ‘Why couldn’t we have our sweets? Why was that man so horrid?’ Julia demanded, dragging her feet along the pavement. ‘We’ve walked all this way … ’

  ‘… for nothing!’ Nancy finished the sentence for her, which was a habit of theirs.

  ‘You always have a walk in the afternoon,’ I said, ‘and it’s not even raining, so cheer up. And don’t scuff your shoes or Nanny will be cross.’ (Sissy’s known to them as Nanny, even though she is no more than a ‘slip of a thing’, as my granny puts it.)

  You might have thought my humiliation was complete, but worse was to come. I heard a call and turned around to see the German boy hurrying after us. ‘I don’t like - ’ Julia began.

  ‘Shh! We know that already,’ I hissed.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the boy began,
slightly out of breath. ‘Excuse me, but the little girl must give back the sweets.’

  It was an intriguing accent: soft, but very precise. I’d never heard a German person speaking English before. We’d seen newsreels of Hitler at the cinema, but of course he’d always been ranting away in his own language. (It would have given them all a shock if he’d suddenly started speaking English, wouldn’t it?)

  Still, this was adding insult to injury. ‘She hasn’t got any sweets,’ I replied stiffly. ‘We spent all our money on prunes.’

  ‘No, she took them,’ he said, pointing at Nancy. ‘Now she must give them back.’

  Nancy had turned bright red, but she didn’t say anything. ‘Nancy, tell him you aren’t a thief,’ I ordered. Not a word in response. And then I noticed that both her hands in their blue woollen gloves were clenched into fists. ‘Nancy?’ My stomach sinking, I gave her shoulder a little shake.

  We were all staring at her. Slowly, slowly, she uncurled her fingers - and there in the palm of each hand lay three fruit chews, their pink and orange wrappers glowing against the bright blue wool. Most of the sweets were out of her range in glass jars, but there’d been an open box of chews on the counter; she must have raided it while Mr Tarver had his back to us, fetching the prunes.

  I could hardly believe my eyes. ‘Oh, you naughty girl!’

  ‘I was going to share them with Julia,’ she said. ‘They weren’t all for me.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’ I took a deep breath, wondering where to begin.

  ‘You must tell her it’s wrong to take things,’ the boy said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I will.’ But that was only the start of it; Nancy would have to be marched back to the shop, made to hand over the sweets and say sorry to Mr Tarver. I could hardly bear to think how awful that would be.

  The boy held out his hand. ‘I will take them back, if you like. Mr Tarver did not see. But you will tell her, won’t you?’

  I hesitated, but only for a split second. ‘Of course. Thank you very much - that’s decent of you.’ He’d saved our bacon twice: once for not ratting on Nancy in front of Mr Tarver, and now this. But what must he have thought of me?

  ‘It’s all right. Enjoy your prunes.’ He smiled and suddenly the sun sailed out from behind a cloud, turning everything clear and golden.

  ‘You must know it’s wrong to steal,’ I said to Nancy as we trailed up the long drive to the Hall. ‘What do you think people will say? “There goes naughty little Nancy Vye, who takes things that don’t belong to her”?’

  She was stomping along with a pixie hood buttoned under her chin and a gas mask slung in its cardboard box around her neck - quite unrepentant. ‘No, they won’t. They’ll say, “There goes poor little Nancy Vye, who never has any treats or nice things.”’

  ‘Listen,’ I said, squatting down to her level, ‘you’re a very lucky girl. You have plenty to eat, and warm clothes, and lots of toys to play with. There are children in London who don’t have shoes to wear, not even in winter.’ At the school where Mum taught, they collected spare pennies through the year to buy boots for the children who’d go barefoot otherwise. Nancy ought to realise how hard times were for some people. ‘Anyway, there’s no excuse for stealing. It’s wicked, and if you carry on like this you’ll get into very bad trouble and maybe even end up in prison. I shall have to tell Stanny, you know.’ (‘Stanny’ is what they call my grandmother - Mrs Stanbury being quite a mouthful for a six-year-old.) There was no point threatening to tell Sissy.

  That hit home. ‘Oh, please don’t, Isobel! Don’t tell Stanny. I’ll never, ever take anything again, I promise - cross my heart and hope to die.’

  They love Gran; being allowed to come into the kitchen and help her make a cake or biscuits is a huge treat. In fact I didn’t really want to tell my granny what Nancy had done because she worried enough about the twins as it was. ‘They’re turning into little savages and Her Ladyship won’t take a blind bit of notice. A proper governess is what they need, not some village girl they can run rings around. See if you can keep them on the straight and narrow while you’re here, Izzie.’

  I think I’d managed to convince Nancy that a life of crime wasn’t worth the candle by the time we’d walked back from the village. We hung up our outdoor things in the downstairs cloakroom and I took the girls upstairs where Sissy was waiting with their nursery tea. Leaving the twins to their milk and bread and butter, I went back down to give Gran my shopping and tell her what Mr Tarver had put me through to get it.

  ‘The cheek of the man!’ She stared down at the parcel of prunes, lying innocently between us on the scrubbed wooden table. ‘How could he say such a thing? He was up here last week for Her Ladyship to settle the bill.’

  ‘Maybe she only gave him some of the money,’ I suggested.

  ‘Was there anyone else in the shop at the time?’ Gran asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Miss Murdoch had gone by then.’

  ‘We should be grateful for small mercies, I suppose. Don’t tell Eunice, whatever you do, or it’ll be round the village quicker than greased lightning.’ Eunice was the house-parlourmaid, who went home at the end of each day rather than living in - much to Gran’s suspicion. She sank into a chair and pushed the blue-paper package away from her across the table. ‘Dear lord! That it should come to this.’

  I wanted to tell Gran that Mr Tarver was a horrible old man and she shouldn’t take any notice of him, but she has firm views about young people respecting their elders and betters so I kept quiet, filled the kettle and put it on the hot plate to boil. Mrs Jeakes, the kitchen cat, glared at me from her warm basket next to the range. I picked her up, feeling her body stiffen in outrage at the liberty, but she consented to be tickled under the chin for a few seconds before struggling out of my arms.

  ‘The suppers and dances we used to have at Swallowcliffe before the war!’ Gran said, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘If only you could have seen the place then, Izzie, full of life and elegant conversation. All the ladies so beautifully dressed, and the gentlemen so handsome and charming: the very cream of society. Roaring fires in every room, and the dishes that came out of the kitchen would make your mouth water just to look at them. There’d be tradesmen queuing for hours to see the cook - it was a privilege to supply the Hall in those days. And to think that now we can’t even run an account at the village shop! Well, I shall have to speak to Her Ladyship about it tomorrow. No sense raising the matter tonight.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Gran, I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. Have you got time for a cup of tea?’

  She looked at the clock. ‘I should have, if you’ll be a love and peel some potatoes for me. Mind you wash your hands, though. Goodness knows where that cat’s been.’

  ‘So, what’s for dinner this evening?’ I asked Gran when we’d had our tea and I was wrist-deep in potato peelings at the scullery sink.

  ‘Leek and potato soup to start, then scalloped oysters, beef with a red-wine sauce and queen’s pudding to follow. Not forgetting the savoury, of course. I could live without messing about with devils on horseback, I must say, but Her Ladyship’s determined everything has to be perfect.’

  ‘Because she wants to impress a certain person, that’s why.’ Eunice, the house-parlourmaid, had suddenly materialised behind us. She often turned up unexpectedly like that. Suddenly you’d turn around and there she was, but looking so bland and inscrutable that you couldn’t possibly accuse her of eavesdropping. She reminded me of one of those wooden Russian dolls that nest inside each other: black hair parted in the middle, dark button eyes set in a round face and a comfortable, plumpish body - full of secrets.

  Gran refused to be drawn; she was made of sterner stuff than me. ‘Now then, Eunice, haven’t you got enough to think about without filling that empty head of yours with gossip?’

  ‘Who’s coming tonight?’ I asked, hoping for a clue, but Eunice was sulking so Gran answered my question.

  ‘Nobody much. A Dowager Duchess - sh
e’s the only title - along with some artist friend of His Lordship’s, and a few other couples to make up the numbers. One gentleman “in business” apparently, whatever that means. Trade, I shouldn’t wonder. Oh, and Major Winstanley, so Mr Huggins had better make sure the whisky decanter’s full. Have you seen Mr Huggins, Eunice?’

  ‘He’s in the dining room, finishing off the table,’ she said huffily. ‘Well, I’ve done the fires and tidied the drawing room so I’m going to have a sit-down for five minutes. We shall be up late and my chilblains are giving me gyp already.’

  ‘Run and find Mr Huggins for me, would you, Izzie?’ Gran asked. She put a china jug in my hands. ‘Remind him the Major’s coming, and could you ask for some red wine for cooking? Nothing too fancy. Don’t worry, nobody’s about - the Vyes’ll be changing for dinner.’

  I walked along the corridor past the butler’s pantry and servery, then scuttled out into the hall. Going outside the servants’ quarters usually made me nervous (it was the thought of bumping into Lady Vye unexpectedly around a corner) but the house was looking so beautiful in the gathering dusk that I couldn’t help loitering for a while to look around. The huge marble staircase seemed to float up through the gloom like some ghostly stairway to heaven and, far above my head, the round skylight window framed a circle of inky velvet. Daylight is too harsh for Swallowcliffe: all you can see is faded upholstery, dark shapes on the wallpaper where paintings used to hang, scuffed and peeling paintwork. When evening falls, lamps cast flickering shadows over cracks in the walls and the place becomes suddenly magical and mysterious.