by Lissa Evans
‘Lily wants to know, if you’re in films have you met Robert Donat?’
‘No,’ said Catrin, ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Or John Clements?’
‘No.’
‘Lily’s favourite’s Robert Donat and mine’s John Clements, and Lily likes Errol Flynn as well. We always go to the Corona on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Dad goes to Oddfellows, and sometimes we go on Sundays.’
Catrin smiled and nodded. If I leave now, she thought, and I’m lucky with a lift to Southend, I might still get back to London before the evening siren. She closed her notepad; Rose’s eyes followed the movement.
‘Will it be a film?’ she asked, and there was such raw hope in her voice that Catrin almost flinched. She opened her mouth to attempt an answer.
‘Because they change things in films, don’t they?’ said Rose. ‘And they—’ she broke off and both sisters turned their heads in synchrony. There was a tiny noise from the street, a scuff of feet on the doorstep.
‘Dad,’ said Lily, and she was on her feet and pushing Catrin towards the parlour door and along the passageway to the kitchen, and Catrin, infected by the panic that imbued the air like gas, had run halfway across the yard, and was struggling to find a gap in the vast damp barrier of pegged sheets, when there was a call from the house.
‘It’s not. It’s not him.’
She looked back, and saw Lily and Rose holding hands in the kitchen doorway.
‘It’s not him,’ said Rose. She was still a little breathless. ‘It was the Street Savings Committee woman, Mrs Gerraghty. She usually comes tomorrow.’
‘Oh . . .’ Catrin, feeling idiotic, let drop a section of sheet.
‘She’s collecting for a Spitfire.’
‘I thought it was Dad,’ said Lily. Red circles stood out on her cheeks, like stage make-up.
‘It’s all right, Lily,’ said Rose. ‘It’s all right.’
Catrin looked from one to the other. ‘What’s the matter? What would happen if he found me here?’
It was Lily who answered with an unconscious gesture, her hand lifting towards her damaged nose. Catrin found herself echoing the movement, and clamped her fingers together.
‘When did he do that? Was that when you got back from Dover?’
Lily shook her head. ‘No, it was last year.’
‘But—’
‘We shouldn’t stay out here,’ said Rose. ‘The neighbours might see you.’
In the kitchen, beside the unlit range, they formed a little huddle, Lily a step away from the others, keeping one ear cocked for the front door.
‘He won’t be back until dark,’ Rose repeated, but there was a pervasive feeling of urgency, as if the sisters were correspondents under fire, relaying news between shell-bursts. Catrin looked at Rose’s face, a foot from her own, at the mild grey eyes, at the white line, like a diagonal parting, that ran through one of her eyebrows.
‘Why does he do it?’ asked Catrin.
‘Well, he’s got a temper on him,’ said Rose, in the same tone with which she might have complained of smelly feet, or a tendency to snore. ‘If he gets angry then you have to watch out.’
‘What makes him angry?’
‘Burnt bits in food,’ said Lily, pulling at a button on her cardigan.
‘And singers on the wireless,’ said Rose. ‘And talking at table. And he won’t have strangers in the house.’
‘But you let me in,’ said Catrin.
‘We oughtn’t to have, really.’
Lily let out a little sigh, like a kettle taken off the hob. ‘But you’re in the pictures,’ she said.
‘I’m only . . .’ Catrin looked at Lily’s expression and couldn’t bring herself to admit the tenuousness of her connection.
‘And whistling indoors,’ added Rose. ‘And feeding crumbs to birds because that’s like throwing food away. And opening the windows at night.’
‘Hair curlers,’ said her sister, in a voice barely audible.
‘Hair curlers, that’s right. And he won’t take the smell of cabbage cooking, and we can’t have . . .’
Item after item, suffocatingly, the list uncoiled; Catrin felt her throat constrict. ‘But however in the world did you come to take the boat?’ she asked. It was a feat that suddenly seemed to her more courageous than a dash through gunfire.
‘Oh . . . well, the navy at Southend told all the cocklers they wanted boats with crews that could work the beaches, and our dad said he couldn’t go to France because the engine wouldn’t take it, and the other cocklers give him a bit of stick for that, so he went off and got a bottle.’
‘He got tight?’
‘Yes, and we knew he’d be asleep for most of the day, so we thought we could get there and back before he woke, but we was sure they wouldn’t want women to go, so we went separate from the other cocklers. We thought we’d follow them from a mile back, but then dad was right, he wasn’t just saying that about the engine, because we broke down, didn’t we?’
‘And what happened when you got back?’
‘Dad chucked a boot at me, but it missed and went through the front door. And then he chucked the other boot.’ She hesitated before touching her eyebrow, lightly.
‘But . . .’ There was, she realized, a part of the story still missing. ‘. . . what made you actually decide to go to France? You must have known that it would be terribly dangerous – in all sorts of ways.’
The sisters exchanged the look that Catrin had come to recognize as a simultaneous asking and granting of consent. As usual, it was Rose who answered.
‘Eric Lumb, what used to be Dad’s first mate, is over there.’
‘In France? With the BEF?’
Rose nodded.
‘And he’s a friend of yours?’
A pause and then another nod.
‘And did he get back safely?’
A smile, this time. ‘His nan got a postcard. From in Scotland somewhere.’
Lily leaned across and whispered something in her sister’s ear.
‘Go on, then,’ said Rose. ‘You get it.’ They both watched her disappear into the gloom of the hall.
In the silence, Catrin met Rose’s eyes. She didn’t ask the question aloud, but Rose answered. ‘We promised Mum, see, that we’d look after Dad.’
‘But . . .’
‘And he don’t lay a finger on Lily no more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because after she burned that chop I told him it wasn’t fair, because she’s not as quick as other people. And I said if he did ever chuck a plate at her again I’d push him over the rail next time we was out. He can’t swim,’ she added.
It took a couple of attempts before Catrin could speak. ‘What did he say, then?’
‘He didn’t say nothing,’ said Rose in that little Toytown voice. It was, almost, an admission of triumph.
Lily came back down the stairs with an envelope in her hand. She gave it to Catrin, and watched her face as Catrin extracted two tissue-wrapped publicity photographs.
‘Eric got them us for our birthday before he went to France,’ said Rose. ‘That’s Robert Donat in The Citadel and that’s John Clements in The Four Feathers. John Clements’s is signed.’
‘Signed,’ repeated Lily, her voice a sigh.
Catrin exclaimed, and admired, and exclaimed again, and held the photographs between her fingertips, as if they were beyond price.
*
In his room on the third floor at Baker Productions, Buckley read her report in silence, holding the paper in his left hand, and scraping his teeth with the nail on the little finger of the right, an activity that seemed to help him to concentrate. Catrin stood with her hands clasped, her shoulders taut with nerves.
She had sweated over the account, aiming for utter verisimilitude, taking as much of the sisters’ actual story as was fair and tactful, recounting something of the narrowness of their lives, of their parental burden, keeping their diffidence and their reason for going to Dunkirk, and then
filling the thirty-mile gap between engine failure and the French coast with a few understated and plausible phrases, adapted from newspaper reports (‘the beach was covered with soldiers and long queues led into the sea . . . As the troops climbed on board the Redoubtable, they came under fire from a German plane . . . After ferrying soldiers several times from the beach to one of the larger ships, the sisters were told to pick up a final load and head for home . . . Five miles from the British coast, the boat developed engine problems, and was towed to Dover by a passing steam tug . . .’ ). All she had done was to give an account of what should have happened, of the story that Rose and Lily deserved.
Buckley reached the end, and gave his incisors a valedictory wipe. ‘You haven’t described what they look like,’ he said.
‘Oh . . . they’re tall. Light brown hair. Identical. Well, almost identical.’
‘Almost?’
‘One has a scar on her nose.’
‘Can’t have that . . . And they’re shy?’
‘Yes. One’s shyer than the other.’
‘One shy, one chatty.’
‘No, they’re both shy.’
‘If they’re both shy, there’s no dialogue. Did you meet the father?’
‘No.’
‘Sounds a bit of a sod.’
‘Yes.’
‘What about the boat? Did you see the boat?’
‘No.’
‘Pity. Still, there’s a few useable nuggets to bounce off the MoI. Have a look at this, Parfitt.’ He reached across and slid the paper in front of his co-writer, a man with sparse grey hair and a marbled complexion the colour of brawn. Apart from a monosyllabic greeting when Catrin entered the room, he had neither spoken to nor looked at her, but had sat twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers and staring out at Soho Square, where a platoon of shirt-sleeved firemen was digging allotments beneath the leafless trees. Now he obediently turned his attention to the report, scanning it rapidly and jabbing a pencil at the odd line.
‘Yep,’ he said, cryptically, handing it back.
‘We can use the smuggled dog,’ said Buckley.
‘Yep.’
‘And the search for the boyfriend. Make him a fiancé.’
‘Yep.’
‘They’ll have to actually find him, of course.’
‘Yep.’
‘Injured?’
‘Yep.’
‘Bit of slop.’
‘Yep.’
‘Father?’
‘Don’t like him.’
‘Nor me, leaves a nasty taste. The drunken sailor aspect’s a nice touch, though.’
There was a moment of brooding silence.
‘Make him an uncle?’ suggested Parfitt.
‘That’s good, and less chance of the old bastard finding a lawyer. And maybe unc should be on the boat with the girls. Soused. Wakes up with a hangover at Dunkirk.’
‘Yep.’
‘Tells them to turn down the noise.’
‘Yep.’
‘Double-take when he sees the Stukas. See your way to a gag or two?’
‘Maybe.’
‘The stuff on the beaches is fine, needs a story for the way home. Getting a tow’s no good.’
‘Uncle mends the engine?’
‘Miserable sod comes good under fire?’
‘Yep.’
‘Takes a bullet, maybe. Honourable death, tears all round.’ Buckley turned to Catrin. ‘All right, we’ll work on it.’
‘But . . .’ She couldn’t quite believe the speed with which her carefully constructed story had been first accepted in its entirety, and then torn down and carelessly rebuilt. ‘But they did it all by themselves,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘There was no one on board with them. You’re giving credit to someone who doesn’t even exist.’
Buckley examined his fingertips. ‘It’s a film.’
‘But it’s supposed to be based on a true story.’
‘All right, let’s take a look at this true story.’ He picked up the sheet and pretended to re-read it. ‘Two spinsters who hardly talk. They go to Dunkirk. They come back. Nothing else happens.’ He glanced at Parfitt. ‘I told you she was keen on those French films.’
Parfitt made a revving sound which might have been a laugh.
‘But . . .’ She opened her mouth and then closed it again. But your version isn’t real; but you’ve made things up; but it won’t be the actual truth. She could say none of these things, she realized. She had momentarily forgotten, in her partisanship, that she herself had invented far more than either of these two men.
‘But what?’ asked Buckley, bluntly.
She groped for the nub of her argument. ‘But I wanted to show how awfully brave they were.’
‘Oh, I see.’ His tone implied that she might, at last, have said something reasonable. ‘We’ll be doing that, all right. That’s the whole point of it. Was that all?’
‘Yes. No. What did you mean by “bit of slop”?’
‘“Bit of slop?” It’s lovey-dovey stuff, isn’t it?’
‘Girl talk,’ said Parfitt.
‘Oh Ian, I thought you were dead,’ said Buckley, linking his hands behind his head and addressing the light bulb. ‘Oh Jacintha, I couldn’t die without seeing the cornflower blue of your eyes a final time.’
‘You’re not going to write it like that are you?’ asked Catrin, horrified.
‘Why? How would you write it?’
‘Plainer, I suppose. Less flowery. The way that people actually talk.’
‘Oh would you, now?’ He caught Parfitt’s eye for a second and then resumed his wooing of the light bulb. ‘Oh Ian, with your strong arms around me, I could travel to the ends of the earth and beyond.’
‘I’d better get back.’ At the office door, she hesitated. ‘So will it be a film?’ she asked.
‘Depends on the Ministry,’ said Buckley.
She thought of Rose and Lily, queuing at the Corona. ‘I do hope it happens.’
‘And after that the War Office has to pass the storyline. And the army and the navy and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. But if it does go ahead . . .’ There was a long, deliberate pause. ‘. . . we might need someone who can write us a bit of slop.’
It was a moment before she understood him. ‘Me, you mean?’
‘We tend to use a female for the slop side of things. Parfitt, what was the name of the Scotch one we used last year?’
‘Jeannie.’
‘Jeannie. Wrote wireless plays before the war. She wasn’t too bad. Just getting the hang of things when Baker’s had to let her go.’
‘Why?’ asked Catrin.
‘Bun in the oven.’ His eyes drifted across to Catrin’s. ‘Wouldn’t want that to happen again.’
She blushed on cue and Buckley grinned, apparently gratified. ‘You’d like to work on this film, then?’
‘Yes. Very much.’
‘You wouldn’t get a screen credit.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Temporary secondment to this office.’
She nodded.
‘Ministry pay.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘Fire-watching rota.’
‘Fine.’
‘Toilet-cleaning duties.’
‘What?’
Buckley smiled carnivorously. ‘She has her limits, Parfitt.’
Parfitt made the revving sound again. ‘We’ll test ’em,’ he said.
Ellis’s studio was flooded with winter sunlight, and full of tiny, early-morning noises: rustles and chirrups from sparrows in the rafters, a pan of size bubbling softly on the gas burner, the scrape of Ellis’s spoon as he devoured the cold macaroni cheese that Catrin had brought him in a biscuit tin from home.
‘And I’ve made you some sandwiches,’ said Catrin, setting the packet on the table. ‘Only meat paste, I’m afraid.’
He nodded, ate the last mouthful and set the tin down. He looked exhausted. There was soot in the lines around his e
yes.
‘Bad night?’ asked Catrin.
‘Mmm.’ He never told her anything – kept it, she supposed, for the paintings.
‘Oh, and I’ve brought you an apple.’ She took it out of her bag and polished it carefully on her skirt.
At the far end of the garage, Perry folded back the doors of the pit, and hopped inside, emerging a few seconds later with a canvas. There was no one else about. Call-up had almost emptied the studio.
‘Is there anything else you need? I can come back this evening.’
Ellis shook his head, ran a hand through his hair and shut his eyes for a moment or two, blinking as he re-emerged.
‘I’m tired,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘I’ll be better after a coffee.’ He brushed her cheek with a finger. ‘You’re all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘Anything worrying you?’
‘The new job, a bit. I keep thinking that Rose and Lily must have—’
He shook his head. ‘Anything serious, I meant.’
‘Oh. No.’
‘And you always sleep under the stairs even when I’m not there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Damn sight safer than that public death-trap they’ve flung up at the end of the road. One skin of bricks and a cement roof . . .’ He was turning from her as he spoke, swinging round towards the canvas he’d been working on when she arrived.
The composition was very nearly symmetrical, as if he’d set his easel in the middle of the cobbles. Ahead stretched a terraced street, empty but for a single, distant figure, the perspective forced so that the end of the road was a lurid dot in the middle distance. The long brick facade on either side was intact, but there was no roof above, and nothing behind the front doors but ochre rubble and a low black sky. It was like a vision from a nightmare, the colours heightened, the proportions distorted, and yet it was also, in another way, utterly real. Catrin dabbed at the thought, as if with a fingertip, and then shied away; she had been present at too many heated discussions on the nature of truth in art to feel confident about her own thoughts on the subject.
