The Blue Note

by Charlotte Bingham

  At last the news came, and it was not good. A bomb had fallen somewhere near the track in the early hours of that morning. There would be no train to Mellaston that day. Several of the older children burst into tears of sorrow at the news, and were led away by their host families to climb into the backs of dilapidated cars, or into dicky seats, or on to the seats of pony traps, and so be driven back to Mellaston and its environs to await another day when they might once more hope to catch a glimpse of their beloved relatives.

  Aunt Sophie was not given to being sentimental, but on hearing that there would be no train, and no mother coming to see Miranda and Teddy, she hugged them both to her suddenly, and promised them ‘double pudding’. Having dutifully allowed herself to be hugged, Miranda sang all the way home, and ate enough lunch for two, so hungry did she suddenly seem, while Teddy also found that he all at once had an appetite for the first time for many days. And after lunch they ran about outside in the rectory garden laughing and calling to each other as children will who have been let off some awful punishment.

  ‘Why don’t you mind your mother not coming to see you?’ Bobbie demanded after Aunt Prudence had heard their prayers, checked the blackout curtain was in place, and blown out their bedroom candle.

  There was a long silence, and then Miranda whispered, ‘Promise not to tell?’

  ‘Promise.’

  As always Bobbie felt her heart sinking when she was about to hear a secret, because somehow a secret was so frightening, and you knew that it might come popping out when it shouldn’t, or just when you thought that it might have stopped being one. But since she was six months older than Miranda, she knew she had to hear her secret, whatever happened. She could not be found to be a coward.

  ‘I don’t want to see my mother, because – well, she’s my mother all right, but, see, she’s not Teddy’s mother.’

  There was a terrible wartime shortage of matches, but if there had not been Bobbie knew that she would have had to light their bedside candle and look at Miranda. Instead she sat up and stared down at where she thought she might be, in the next bed, but so dark was the dark in the country that she could not be sure.

  ‘Why isn’t she Teddy’s mother?’ Bobbie demanded in a voice that suddenly was far from being a whisper. ‘Why hasn’t Teddy got his own mother?’

  Hearing himself talked about in such terms Teddy immediately burst into tears, which meant that Bobbie, whose turn it was, had to get out of bed before she could hear the rest of the secret and take him to the bathroom in case he had an accident.

  Back in bed, although Miranda had lapsed into a strange contented sort of silence, Bobbie could not leave things be. She had to know more, but as Miranda answered her puzzled and disbelieving questions, she could not help marvelling at her friend’s calm. She was as cool as Aunt Prudence’s pastry-making hands when it came to explaining their circumstances.

  ‘Well, when we was being evacuated, see, Ted, well he was in the orphans’ bit, at the school where we were all being kept before being labelled and evacuated by these teachers and people, and he was crying his eyes out. And so when no-one was looking, because all the evacuees was in such a muddle, all of us just standing around at this school, see, well I thought it was such a shame for him to be an orphan, and seeing as how I always wanted a brother. Well, that was it, see? I tore his label off of his coat, so when the lady came to take us down to the West Country she asked me who Ted was and I told her he was my brother, Ted Darling, because I always wanted one. And so – now he is, my brother, aren’t you, Ted?’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘And always will be, won’t you, Ted?’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  There was a short silence after that, and then Miranda said, with some satisfaction, ‘He knows I’ll knock his block off if he says any different, don’t you, Ted?’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘But supposing someone finds out, Miranda? Suppose someone gets to know?’

  ‘They won’t.’ Miranda slid down her bed and smiled in the darkness. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ she said, trying to mimic a well-known voice from the aunts’ wireless and laughing suddenly and pulling a pillow over her face to drown the sound.

  Bobbie stared ahead of her, but seeing only the dark, she quickly shut her eyes and thought of blue skies and the sun shining – things like that, things that were not dark, and made her feel warm and happy.

  After the initial shock of being told such a big secret she realized that it was good, really – Teddy not being Miranda’s brother – because it meant that she was now not the only orphan at the rectory. They were all ‘pretend’ brothers and sisters, so that now she too could share Teddy as a brother. He would be just as much her, Bobbie’s, brother as he was Miranda’s. This was such a cheery thought that Bobbie sighed with contentment, and before long was fast asleep, never even hearing the aeroplanes passing over the old rectory flying stealthily to ‘somewhere in Europe’.

  Chapter Two

  It was time to go to the Clothes Exchange, also run by the Women’s Voluntary Service. Bobbie found that she always dreaded these days, thinking that if only she was as pretty as Miranda it might be easier to find something to suit her, something that might not make Aunt Prudence sigh and shake her head before saying, ‘I think we’d better go up to the attics at the house for something for you, Bobbie dearest. There’s sure to be something there more suited to your looks, I feel.’

  Aunt Prudence minded far more about how the three children looked than Aunt Sophie, who was more concerned about how they occupied themselves. Aunt Sophie liked them to be helpful, collecting hips and haws, and harnessing the pony, not to mention singing and playing the piano. They could all read all right, but Aunt Sophie said their writing was ‘appalling’ and she taught them all their loops and tails, as well as how to add up and subtract with the aid of onions and potatoes while they were helping in the kitchen. Thus, for Bobbie at any rate, mathematics were forever and always associated with the smell of flour, with the old tins and jars, with meat safes and cold larders, and with sets of old scales and heavy weights.

  ‘Aunt Sophie likes to teach, I like to adorn,’ was how Aunt Prudence put it before stalking ahead to the Exchange, one arm each round Bobbie and Teddy, while Miranda skipped determinedly ahead, thinking that if she arrived first she would find some marvellous frock or cardigan. The truth was that Miranda liked clothes as much as Bobbie loved Tom Kitten and helping in the stables, not to mention collecting the hens’ and ducks’ eggs for which the Mowbray sisters were justifiably famous in the neighbourhood, having always favoured the old-fashioned breeds of poultry.

  Aunt Sophie had her own sort of walking prayer which ran: ‘Never pick a bluebell for the house, it will wilt worse than a vicar’s wife after the village fête. Pick rose hips for syrup, but leave the haws for walking the streets – well never mind anyway. On we go, more hips needed, ever more, and more again. There’s a war on you know!’

  Teddy was always being sick from eating too much of something, and just then, although he had not scoffed anything he should not, Bobbie could see that he might still be about to be sick, this time from the anticipation of swapping in his home-knitted jersey for another of a different colour. The excitement was almost more than he could take, coupled as it was with the humiliation of having his jersey taken off, publicly, and replaced with another, larger, one.

  Meanwhile, Miranda, having arrived minutes earlier, was holding up a pre-war silk skirt against herself and twirling happily. Because of its being in the middle of the West Country, and remote from other places, the Mellaston WVS Clothes Exchange was always full of the strangest garments, so many being donations sent from the larger houses which were scattered about the countryside outside the town. On a good day there was everything to be found at the WVS Exchange, from black crêpe evening dresses with diamanté embroidery to seamen’s sweaters made of oil-impregnated wool – and even, today, an old midshipman’s coat which Miranda took down
and stared at. It was made of doeskin and almost stood up on its own, as if it still had a person inside it.

  ‘Won’t cut down for Teddy, will it?’ she asked Aunt Prudence with a grin.

  ‘No, dear. But we will take it just the same, swap it in for my old fur wrap, and some of my pre-war shoes, because it will do very well for when Teddy’s older, wouldn’t you say?’

  Bobbie stared at the coat and then at Teddy. She could not begin to imagine Teddy growing old enough, or tall enough, to fit the dark, doeskin coat, and it gave her an odd feeling when she tried. It did not seem possible for Teddy to grow so tall that he could wear such a coat as Aunt Prudence was holding. She smiled at him, suddenly protective. After all he was her brother too, and so she had to look after him, make sure that he was not bullied too much by Miranda, because they shared Teddy now. He belonged to both of them, not just to Miranda.

  Aunt Prudence smiled down at Teddy.

  ‘That new jersey looks good on you, Teddy dearest. Very nice. Now let’s see if we can’t find you some sandals?’

  It was almost too good to be true. Aunt Prudence pushed three old but seemingly unworn pairs of sandals, once belonging to goodness knows whom and only recently unearthed in the attic, towards the lady behind the Exchange counter, and after taking down and replacing pair after pair she found two new pairs for Bobbie and Teddy, as well as a pair of party pumps for Miranda, which were made of the most beautiful bronze leather, and had straps which went across the instep.

  ‘They’re not for every day, Miranda dearest, just for special days and Sunday, but seeing that they fit, and with some room to spare, we might as well – yes, I think we might as well indeed.’

  Aunt Prudence smiled and watched as Miranda span round and round, her strange mixture of clothes looking odd and at the same time satisfyingly suited to Miranda herself. An old floral skirt, bronzed party shoes, a pink cardigan whose buttons were made in the shapes of daisies and ‘hand-painted’ the lady said – they all went into a parcel for Miranda, while Bobbie and Teddy walked ahead of her and Aunt Prudence, mesmerized by the sight of their new, secondhand sandals, and later by the patterns the sandals made on their bare feet when they ran about the fields and gardens over the following months, enjoying the gentle English summer. For them the war seemed hardly to be on, and had the aunts not switched on their wireless for the news the children might have indeed come to believe that the whole war was really somehow just some sort of grown-ups’ fantasy.

  In the event the longed-for train bearing Miranda’s mother down to see her daughter in Somerset never did arrive. Instead, at the end of that summer, came that most dreaded of arrivals, a telegram from the War Office regretting that Mrs Irene Darling was ‘missing believed killed while on active service’.

  Miranda burst into tears as soon as Aunt Sophie told her, and Teddy did too, because the shock of seeing Miranda, who never cried, sobbing her eyes out was too much for a small boy. But given that Miranda’s mother was meant to be Teddy’s mother as well, the two girls were only too relieved that Teddy did cry, because, as Bobbie observed later, it would have looked rather strange if he hadn’t.

  It would be years before Miranda would eventually find out that her mother, by dint of having, it seemed, spent part of her childhood in France with a Breton great-aunt, at the outbreak of war had been recruited to work in something called Special Operations Europe, the main headquarters of which was in Baker Street. French being her second language she had been dropped many times into France, and eventually killed on what was to be her last mission, taking vital information to the Free French. It would also be years before Miranda knew that she herself looked just like the dead young woman, tall, and slender, with blond hair and blue eyes and a way of suddenly laughing helplessly as if she could never, ever, stop.

  Now, with Aunt Prudence standing looking sorrowful and Aunt Sophie the same, Miranda did not find it difficult to cry for a strange woman whom she could hardly remember. She really could not help crying because the aunts looked so very sad, and they were so sweet and kind and went and fetched sugar which they put in a twist of paper, and a teaspoon of honey which was put into a cup of mild herbal tea to soothe her.

  ‘They are all orphans, now, and that being so we shall have to adopt them, dearest. It is the only way. And it being wartime, I am sure we shall have a good chance, because not many people want to adopt children of their sort of age, stuck as they are between babyhood and maturity. They are useful for nothing to anyone but ourselves – useless for anything, really.’

  ‘Except to be loved.’

  ‘Quite right, dearest, except to be loved.’

  Aunt Sophie volunteered to go to London to see Miranda’s grandmother, and find out exactly what should be done with Miranda and Teddy. She did not tell the children, because, as the sisters both agreed, if the Darlings’ grandmother refused to let them be adopted by the Mowbrays it might prove to be a bitter disappointment to them. Bobbie still had Lady Reading taking an interest in her, so they judged her particular situation to be a little less urgent.

  As always in wartime the journey was torture, and Aunt Sophie ended up travelling in the goods van, squashed between two Canadian soldiers and a fellow member of the WVS who was taking yet another small child back to London, but to who knew what fate, as her escort whispered to Sophie Mowbray.

  ‘But the Canadians were ever so jolly, dearest,’ she confided to Prudence on the telephone next day. ‘Gave me some chewing gum. Imagine!’

  ‘You didn’t try it, Sophie?’

  ‘No, dearest, of course not. Kept it for the littles when I get home. But London, dearest! It is just a sea of sandbags, but I have to say everyone does seem somehow better-looking, but perhaps that’s uniforms – so well cut. Quite noticeable.’

  At the rectory Prudence put down the telephone and frowned. She did so hope that she could rely on Sophie to conduct their business in London in an appropriate way. Really it should have been she who had gone to London to make their case for adopting Miranda and Teddy. Prudence realized that in many ways she was less shockable than the over-sensitive Sophie. On the other hand, the thought of leaving the rectory and the children in Sophie’s sole charge was enough to make even Prudence feel quite, quite faint.

  Sophie peered yet again at the piece of paper. The address in her hand declared itself to be in one of the poorer parts of London, and this was eventually confirmed when, having walked briskly through the narrow streets to reach it, she had to edge her way past miles of rubble, all quite carefully stacked, doubtless by the various authorities after the now all too frequent air raids on London. She walked on, bravely pretending that it was all in a day’s work to find herself, a tweed-clad country spinster, in such an environment, until at last the number on the nearest house, still luckily standing, matched the number indicated on the piece of paper.

  ‘Mrs Darling?’

  The woman, older than Sophie, smiled brightly but did not reply. Sophie repeated her name, but when the smile stayed as bright as ever and no reply was forthcoming, Mrs Darling’s visitor realized almost immediately that Miranda and Teddy’s grandmother must be stone deaf, and had hurried to meet Sophie at her open front door without remembering to put in her hearing aid.

  Sophie handed her a card which, since the Mowbrays had already written to the poor woman warning her that they might visit, must, Sophie felt, make some sense to the bird-like woman in the flowered apron with the much-mended thick lisle stockings and strangely shaped lace-up shoes.

  The woman looked up at her tall visitor but handed back the card with the same vague but agreeable smile, and promptly shut the front door. Sophie rang again and this time, with a polite smile, edged her way into the narrow, semi-detached house. The hall floor was covered in newspaper, the walls bulged with damp, and behind them, up the stairs, Sophie sensed there was someone very ill lying, quite alone. The old woman’s milky grey eyes were turned up to Sophie’s without the slightest comprehension in them.


  ‘You don’t know me, Mrs Darling, but I am here to offer to adopt your two grandchildren. Miranda and Teddy Darling.’

  The old woman smiled again and nodded and Sophie realized with relief that it was all a bit of a wild goose chase. The two children had no mother and no father, only this grandmother whose reason had been overwhelmed by loss who was already wandering perhaps in those areas of the mind that are only open to the dead or dying, where the soul is drawn towards the light, and away from the darkness of human existence.

  ‘I tell you what, I’ll write out the necessary instructions regarding Teddy and Miranda, and you sign your name if you agree.’

  In the end the old lady put a cross, and Sophie realized that the whole exercise had been a waste of time. As far as the authorities were concerned there was a war on, and they really could not have cared less what happened to Miranda and Teddy.

  Bobbie did not want Miranda and Teddy to be taken away from the rectory, but young though she was she suspected that once Aunt Sophie had found the Darlings’ grandmother – or rather Miranda’s grandmother – the authorities would insist on taking them both from the Mowbrays and putting them in different homes. In the middle of the night she even began to imagine that Miranda would be put in prison for pretending that Teddy was her brother.

  The following morning, while they were picking yet more sheep’s wool from the hedgerows for Aunt Prudence, and building up their appetites for a well deserved piece of home-made brown bread and thick cheddar cheese, followed by a crisp apple, which was their standard picnic fare, Bobbie could stand the tension no more.

  ‘What will happen?’

  Miranda looked at her nonchalantly and her cornflower blue eyes, large and falsely innocent, stared into Bobbie’s hazel-flecked orbs as she smiled mischievously.