Above Us the Sky

by Milly Adams

  She laid her head on her arms, which she rested on the handle of her basket, and thought back to Sandy Morris’s talk to the WI about the correct way to pick and store fruit. She felt the weight of the apple she had twisted from the spur only this morning. She heard Jake’s laughter as he exercised Francois, the idle chat of her WI friends as they also twisted the apples, the guffaw of Mrs Carruthers after she had related a saucy piece of gossip. They had all placed their apples carefully into the bucket, which they had lined with hay. They had taken them to Miss F’s apple loft, on the back of the house. The apples might store well all winter, but would be checked regularly. With every week that passed they would become sweeter.

  She watched as another train came in, and now her thoughts were different, harsh, unforgiving. So, apple picking was the extent of her war effort? She was disgusted with herself and couldn’t sleep.

  When morning came she moved on as others did, toiling along the pavements, and stepping into the roads when her way was blocked. All the time there was the smell of death, charred wood, debris. She picked pieces of glass and brick from the tarpaulin on her basket, dropping it anywhere. What would a little more on the pavement matter? She clung to her basket, because she would leave it with her brother for his charges, and would really try to make her mother join her. Her fury had gone, only guilt and the remnants of terror remained.

  She followed the route that she remembered from her visits to her brother’s mission, passing people who were on their way to work, carrying handbags, shopping bags. One man held his briefcase in both arms as though it would protect him. There was a naked body by a pile of bricks, untouched it seemed, but lifeless. Was it the blast? Smoke was still pouring up into the sky the closer she drew to the docks. She turned left, then again. There was rubble to the left-hand side of these streets. The warehouses still crackled and burned alongside the river over to the south. The smell of molasses was carried on the breeze; a mass of sugar had gone up.

  She thought of the mystery of Miss F’s disappearing sugar and now her fury was for the complacent villagers, and for people who gained from black marketeering. She rubbed her forehead. The mission must be here somewhere. She had arrived at a crossroads and there, on the far corner, was where the mission had been. It was gone, there was just smoking rubble, but now she saw her mother, on her knees, scrubbing the remains of the tiled doorstep. Again and again she scrubbed.

  Phyllie crossed the road. ‘Let me help, Mum.’ She knelt with her, trying to take the brush, but her mother struggled, until, with one heave she pulled it from Phyllie. ‘I am the housekeeper now Mrs McBride has gone to her God. It is my job. And why are you here? It’s important than one of us stays safe. Do think sensibly, Phyllis. One of us—’

  She stopped and began to brush again, smearing the dirt, dipping it into the bucket of filthy water at the end of the step. She brushed again, nudging the rubble from one side to the other. There was the screeching sound of chalk on a blackboard, or debris beneath a scrubbing brush. Phyllie sat back on her heels, her stockings already torn beyond repair.

  She heard her brother’s voice: ‘Phyllie, you came.’ He lifted her up, and hugged her. She rested her head against his shoulder and the dusty black of his cassock. ‘I brought produce for your people. I’ll swap them for Mum.’ She smiled and felt the dust cracking on her face as she did. She lifted her head to look into her brother’s red-rimmed eyes.

  Her mother stood then. ‘Have you found us another house, Francis?’ she asked, ignoring Phyllie.

  Her brother nodded. ‘It’s the old clinic on Westbury Street, but I told you that I wanted Phyllie to take you to the country, today. I thought it would be a good idea, Mum.’

  Their mother shook her scrubbing brush. Grit and brick debris dropped from it, and filthy water. She stared at the step, and then chucked the brush onto the rubble. ‘Well, you thought wrong. Here I am, and here I stay. You, Phyllis, can run yourself back to where I expect you’re still sharing with that Isaac’s son, the—’

  ‘Mother,’ warned Frankie as Phyllie tensed.

  Her mother wiped her mouth. ‘We need clothes, toys, books. Provisions. Send them up. That’s all we need. Then, I ask as your mother for you to stay where you have a chance to survive. Look at you, you could have been killed. Are you hurt?’

  Phyllie shook her head. ‘Just a burn.’

  ‘Your brother should never have suggested you come.’ She began to kick the bricks to one side.

  Frankie took Phyllie’s arm. ‘She’s in shock, determined to be strong. Ultimately immovable, I’m afraid. I sometimes think that if she lets go for one moment she would collapse. Perhaps that is her fear too? And you? You look as though you’ve been in the wars? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. I found a shelter. But you two, night after night? Come away.’

  Her mother had knelt, reclaimed the scrubbing brush and was working on the front step to the non-existent presbytery again. It was madness. It was horror. Phyllie felt the wracking sobs begin, and gritted her teeth. Not now, not ever.

  For a moment she and Frankie watched their mother, then he said, ‘Now, how is Sammy? Safe, I trust, and Isaac?’

  ‘Yes, I heard from him. He found where I was and wrote.’ She looked at her mother, who had turned, and now held her gaze. She dropped the scrubbing brush into the bucket and rose, dusting off her skirt, making it even worse.

  ‘So, he found you after all, did he? What happens now?’

  Phyllie looked away from her mother, gazing instead across the desolation of the East End. What was the point of even raising the phone calls, or of being angry? She said, ‘I don’t know. I hope we meet, I hope we talk. I hope a lot of things.’ She was aware that she had stuck out her chin.

  Her mother was walking away, shouting, ‘Love is not all there is. Respectability, and responsibility, that’s what’s important, and someone who can afford to care for you. That boy aspires to nothing. He will become nothing. Life is not a game. I want you in a nice house, with a nice teacher, or a doctor.’

  Phyllie started after her, calling, ‘Oh, Mother, how can you? Sammy’s fighting for us. He will care for me, if … Well, he will.’ Her mother kept on walking.

  Frankie put his arm around Phyllie. ‘Mother’s wrong; you must follow your heart as I have. Love is everything and you remember that. Now, I must go after her, you know what she’s like. She could barge into an unexploded bomb and expect it to get out of her way. Thank you for coming. It was worth a try. Phyllie, she loves you. She can just never find the words. All I do know is she wants you to be safe, and to be proud of you.’

  With that, he was gone, swishing in his cassock, which was filthy at the hem, but she supposed the very sight of it gave succour to his flock, if there were any left. She still had the basket and a great sense of loneliness. Her mother and Frankie had always been an inclusive little gang, one that left her father and Phyllie hovering outside, peering in. Her father had once told her that her mother loved her, but that she had difficulty with emotion, and life. That people disappointed her easily, and appearances gave her a sense of security.

  She stood for a moment longer, watching them grow smaller, the dust and smoke blurring their outline, realising that her brother had fulfilled her mother’s hopes. Phyllie, however, had not, and probably never would. Just as her father never had. She nodded to herself as she called after them: ‘Goodbye, good luck, I love you both.’

  They didn’t look back. Perhaps they hadn’t heard.

  The train journey was much quicker on the way home, and as congested towns gave way to silver birches growing on scorched embankments, and these became freshly ploughed fields, she felt such relief, and then, again, disgust. The train drew in to Little Mitherton at three thirty. She clambered down, with her basket still full, her stockings still a disgrace, her skirt filthy, and her hair like a bird’s nest.

  Jake stood on the platform, in his shorts, his socks around his ankles, with Francois on his rope. Mr Hill, the s
tation master, had his hand on the boy’s shoulder as Jake scanned those alighting from the train. He spotted her and ran, hurling himself up into her arms, while Francois sat beside her, pawing her leg. Jake buried his head into her shoulder. ‘I thought you’d stayed. I thought you might be dead. Your mum isn’t with you. Are you sad? Is she dead?’

  He was sobbing, his face sweaty and hot. She held him close, the basket scratched his leg. ‘No, she’s fine. She wants to stay and help my brother’s congregation.’

  He struggled free, while Francois whined at her for a stroke. Jake took her hand, and dragged her along the platform. Mr Hill shook his head and waved away her attempt to give him her ticket.

  ‘You should have phoned,’ Mr Hill said.

  ‘There were such queues at the public telephone boxes, and an impatient train.’

  ‘Still, you should have phoned. People were very worried and thought the worst. No mother? All well there, I hope?’

  She nodded. Jake talked all the way home, starting with the man the Agricultural Advisory Committee had sent to advise on sowing kale. ‘Mr Joe said he was wet behind the ears, but Dan and I couldn’t see it. Mr Andy said the man was talking bloody nonsense and stormed off, but we didn’t take any notice. It must hurt, after all, we’ve decided, for a very long time when you have your hand cut off. It’s bad enough when you bang your knee. We just watched the man from the committee as he stood at the field and told Mr Joe to plough shallow first, as though he doesn’t know. Mr Joe swore a lot, and loudly, but he always swears so that’s normal too. Anyway, it’s mild enough here to overwinter kale, Mr Joe said, so we’ll all be helping to sow it next week. Tiny seeds, they are, Phyllie.’

  As they passed the pond, the ducks flurried up into the air and Jake pulled at her hand, making her stop. ‘We think there’re a few more drakes, Phyllie.’ Francois barked. Jake continued, ‘Miss F let me stay all day at the station. She gave me sandwiches. Tomatoes, and just a little bit of cheese, that’s all.’ He pulled a face. ‘She said that I wouldn’t settle until you came home. You really should have phoned. But like you said, there were queues. I expect there were some that were bombed as well. We listened to the news. It was the bombs that made me frightened. Anyway, Miss F said I might as well take my wriggly bum and put it on Mr Hill’s bench and keep it there while I watched for you, and she stayed by the phone. She tried to phone your mother, but she said the line was dead. I didn’t like the word dead.’

  He stopped to draw breath as they stared across the pond, to the fields beyond. To Phyllie it seemed so quiet, so open, but then Jake was once again in full flood. ‘Miss F said Francois and I were to be home by seven, if you didn’t come. But I thought you would. I think I did, anyway. Miss F was sure. She’s sure about most things. She gave me a note for Mr Hill, with her orders. Or that’s what he said. “Orders is orders,” he said.’

  Phyllie smiled and hugged him closer, realising how much she’d missed him.

  They walked on, ‘The country needs kale, the man with the wet ears said. You need a bath, Phyllie. I know it’s rude to say, but you’re dirty and you’ve got cinders in your hair, and you smell of smoke, and a bit of sweat. But I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come back, like Mum, or if you had died.’ He slipped his hand into hers, and gripped it tightly until they came to the edge of the village. Francois walked close to his heel.

  As they rounded the corner, Phyllie saw the children, village and evacuees, milling about, even Ron. The girls were skipping, with Miss F counting how many they managed to do without getting tangled up. Some boys were playing catch, and others squatted, playing jacks, with off-centre bounces as the balls caught edges of the hardened surface earth. The moment the children saw Phyllie they rushed at her. ‘Where were you?’ ‘Why didn’t you come back last night?’ ‘Miss Featherstone said there might have been a raid, so we thought you were dead.’

  The younger ones were hugging her legs and waist. The older ones were standing as though they didn’t really care, but sneaking looks at her, and grinning. Ron said, ‘That daft mutt has been waiting at the station all day, with Jake. They wouldn’t come to school. The station master phoned Miss Featherstone to tell her you had come. She came to the school hall where we were waiting, just in case. Like we waited yesterday.’ There was a challenge in his voice now, and anger, but he hadn’t called Jake ‘the Yid’, and he had waited too. It mattered, but not as much as it should, because her self-disgust was still so strong.

  Miss Featherstone clapped her hands. ‘As a surprise, the WI has released a little ham from the Pig Club, so there is ham salad, with Mrs Speedie’s tomatoes. Then, and only then, will our ration of jelly be served, along with stewed plums and honey. Remember, children, you must save some for our dear Miss Saunders, the returning waif and stray.’ She grinned at Phyllie. ‘Let’s feed you, and then you should wash, shouldn’t she, children?’

  They laughed, and ran ahead. Miss F and Phyllie followed. Miss F said, ‘I tried not to worry.’ She took the basket.

  Phyllie said, ‘The presbytery was bombed. All that exists is the front step. My mother and Frankie are safe. They are continuing their work. I need to move to London and do something useful, even drive a bus. I can’t hide here a moment longer. I am disgusted with myself.’

  Miss F slipped her arm through Phyllie’s and said nothing for a moment, but only a moment. ‘In war, we need to make sacrifices. Yes, it would be suitably noble and dramatic to battle the Blitz, and rush around doing good works, and possibly dying in the process. There are others, however, doing that. Your place is with these evacuated children who need you. You are the bridge between here and home. You are their constant. You came with them, you know them from before, and you know their lives and their parents. When you left yesterday they were insecure, frightened, on edge; surely you can see their need by the reception they have given you?’

  She had stopped now, by the village pump outside Mainspring Cottage. The pump still worked, and was often used. The stones at its foot were stained green. ‘Our job isn’t glamorous, Phyllie, or exciting, but who knows what’s going to happen? Those brave fliers are doing their best but one wonders if, at any moment, we could be invaded.

  ‘We could be experiencing more strafing from planes, fighting in our fields, have brutes strutting in their jackboots through our lanes. If you’re dead beneath rubble in London, who is to be the children’s source of strength then? Besides, while the war exists we need to educate these little monsters, or they will be short-changed. Their lives are disrupted enough; at least let’s provide them with the means to think properly, and to know right from wrong. They’ll need that if we’re invaded, or if we’re not, come to that.’

  She took the basket, and swung it as they arrived at the playground where the children were playing noisily. Mrs Symes waved from her garden. Old Mr Walker was digging his front garden, getting ready for kale perhaps?

  Phyllie sighed. ‘A clippie said I was running away. My brother and mother remain. Look at this lovely place.’ She swung her arm around. ‘I am, you know, running away, and the thing is, I want to stay, so what does that say about me?’

  Miss F smiled. ‘Oh, Phyllie, there’s a ghastly war on and guilt will be our companion for much of it, and for ages after. Trust me, I know from the last lot. So many ifs and buts. Look at me: should I have taken little Melanie to London instead of Catherine Harvey? Should I be driving an ambulance somewhere, as I did in the last war? If we let guilt take hold, we go mad or become foul like young Andy. We go where we’re needed, and that’s the end of it. Children are our future, there is nothing more precious. It’s so important to love them, to teach them the values we hold dear, because if we are conquered, we need them to hold fast to those values for as long as they live.’

  They crossed the playground, and waited at the double doors into the school as the children lined up. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we do something for your mother that might that make a difference? What does she n
eed?’

  ‘The people they help need clothes now winter is coming, and produce that’s off ration, books, anything really. When a house is bombed, everything is gone. Frankie could come to Waterloo to collect all we manage to send.’

  They opened the doors and the children filed in, and continued on into the school hall, with Phyllie and Miss F bringing up the rear. The smell of chalk and children said she was home. But was it enough?

  She could still see the smoke from the sugar warehouse, smell the molasses, see the damaged ships in the docks. And, for all Miss F’s fine words there was still that business with the bags of sugar that had gone missing from the corner cupboard. Was this the source of some of the headmistress’s guilt, her ifs and buts? And why ever should Andy feel guilty about being injured?

  Francois was in the staffroom, and barked. Miss F nudged her. ‘Time we stopped studying our navels, and putting the world to rights, and helped get the food ready. It’s so boring so much of the time, and that’s why they’re excited – nothing to do with their beloved Miss Saunders safely home from the city, naturally.’

  Chapter Eight

  September to November 1940, Little Mitherton

  THE KALE, GROWN for fodder, had been sown by the middle of September, and the children marvelled at the small seeds that would grow to such large plants. In the same month Miss F took to serving corncobs for tea. Jake protested the first time. ‘Mr Joe gives these to his beasts.’

  Miss F tapped him on the head as she passed. ‘Mr Bartlett to you, young man. I ate them in Africa in 1930 and we will eat them now. Rationing is really biting now, and life needs lifting.’

  ‘We’re not in Africa now, and Mr Joe said we were to call him Mr Joe, not Mr Bartlett because it made him feel old,’ he muttered, ramming a fork into either end of the corn as she had told him. Phyllie smothered a grin. Jake was so much stronger now, so much more alive, and perhaps it was because Ron was busy with Bryan and Eddie most evenings, though she had no idea what they were up to. Whatever it was, it hadn’t reached their teachers’ ears, so it was hopefully innocuous. Whatever, it left Jake in peace to play with Dan, and help out Joe when he needed it. It helped, also, having regular letters from his father, just as it helped her to have another from Sammy.