The Blue Note

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know – what will happen when … ?’

  ‘What will happen when what?’

  ‘When, you know—’ Bobbie lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘You know, when Aunt Sophie finds your grandmother and – and she finds that, you know – that she is not Teddy’s granny, what will happen?’

  Miranda shrugged her shoulders, and then started to laugh. ‘Don’t matter if she finds my granny. Don’t matter two hoots.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cos my granny, she’s not all there, see? She lost everything – twice, first because of Grandpa’s losing all his money on the horses, and then when she lost both her cats and all her furniture ’cos of him – and now she doesn’t know who she is. That’s why I came here. And that’s why no-one’s come for us, ’cos Ted’s an orphan, and my mum and dad’s dead, and Gran’s going to be taken to an asylum, one of these days, so, don’t you see, no-one will ever know that Ted and I aren’t brother and sister? Not ever, eh, Ted? Because Ted knows if he tells, a policeman’s gonna come and take him away, don’t you, Ted?’

  She pulled him towards her and Teddy looked up at them and shook his head.

  ‘Don’t want to be your brother. I want to be Bobbie’s brother.’

  He pulled away from Miranda, trying to get back to the bush in front of which he had been standing picking everything but sheep’s wool.

  ‘Oh, blinking Ada, just look at his mouth. What you got in your mouth, you silly little squirt?’

  Miranda unceremoniously stuck a handful of fingers into her self-adopted brother’s mouth and pulled out some berries. They both stared at them.

  ‘They might be poison!’

  Bobbie shook Teddy. ‘How many of them have you eaten? How many berries have you eaten, Ted?’

  Miranda, who was taller, picked him up and started to carry him piggy-back across the grass.

  ‘Supposing he’s eaten poison? He might die!’

  Bobbie ran ahead of Miranda, but although she was running all the time she felt as though her legs were not really working, as though she was really just running on the spot.

  ‘Ted’s eaten poison berries and we think he’s going to die!’

  Aunt Prudence turned from the stove and stared at Bobbie.

  ‘Put him down on the chair, dearest,’ she told the panting Miranda, who gratefully discharged the small boy onto the oak chair at the top of the kitchen table where he threatened to slip straight to the floor. ‘No, hold him down, both of you. While I mix up an antidote to make him sick.’

  Triumphantly Aunt Prudence watched the results of her quick thinking flush away down the old lavatory, still proudly dedicated to its maker Thomas Crapper.

  ‘Well, that was good!’ Aunt Prudence smiled round at the two girls who were both making Phew! noises. ‘Do you know, Bobbie dearest, I have never known my home-made antidote to work so quickly? I really must make a note of it. Perhaps after the war I could even market it through Boots the Chemist, or some such? Now, Teddy, no more picking berries when you shouldn’t, dearest. We really don’t want to have to do that again in a hurry, do we?’

  Thoroughly confused by the uncomfortable sequence of events, Teddy nodded instead of shaking his head, but finally said in a clear ringing tone, ‘I promise always to be Miranda’s brother now. Promise!’

  For his pains he received a sharp, twisting little pinch from his ‘sister’, after which he started to cry again and had to be given some sponge cake freshly baked in the Aga and spread about with cherished butter and home-made plum jam. Miranda and Bobbie had the same, and as they sat on the old oak chairs a strange and marvellous peace settled around them. Miranda was thinking that whatever happened now nothing was going to take them away from the aunts, and Bobbie was trying hard to listen to the blackbird that was singing on the fence across the grass outside the windows, imagining as she listened that there was no more beautiful sound than that of a bird, not even Miranda singing ‘The day thou gavest, Lord, has ended’.

  That evening they all climbed up behind Tom Kitten and the sturdy little pony pulled them surely and fast, trotting into Mellaston, and so to the station, where they waited in some excitement for Aunt Sophie to arrive off the London train.

  It was only an hour and a bit late, which Aunt Prudence murmured with her usual stoicism was surely a first for wartime, but when Aunt Sophie was at last to be seen alighting from it, her small feathered hat slightly askew, the uneven hem of her dress trailing over her strap shoes with their black-eyed buttons set to the side, and her grey-pink stockings as always a little wrinkled, Aunt Prudence’s hold on Miranda’s hand tightened to a grip.

  ‘Hal-lo, dearest! Had-doh! Cooee! Had-doh, evellybody!’

  Aunt Prudence gave a quick look down at the two girls, and then, straightening her back, she walked up to her sister.

  ‘Too much cough mixture again, Sophie dearest?’ she murmured, taking her sister’s small overnight bag, and swapping her grip on Miranda to her sister’s arm. ‘Too much cough mixture does seem to make you drippy, doesn’t it?’

  Aunt Prudence nodded sharply at Bobbie who darted to the other side of Aunt Sophie and took her other arm.

  ‘What a business!’

  Somehow they managed to stuff Aunt Sophie, there was no other word for it, into the pony cart, and the children, sensing public embarrassment, scrambled in after her. With a flick of the reins and a ‘Yes, yes, yes, Tom!’ the pony trotted smartly out of the station yard, but not before the sharp-eyed Mrs Eglantine, seemingly ever present to meet her husband off the train, had seen Aunt Sophie’s head lolling helplessly back against the black leather of the old-fashioned trap, and her hat, with an almost audible sigh of relief, parting company with her head and rolling into the road where it was left, Bobbie thought gazing back at it without regret, looking as if it somehow still had her head under it.

  The next morning, to no-one’s surprise, Mrs Eglantine called at the old rectory on official committee business.

  ‘No sheets on the line, I see, so someone’s learning to control himself at nights, which is just as well considering his great age, I should say!’

  There was a long and ghastly silence as the two girls, and their two adopted aunts, stared at Mrs Eglantine from the other side of the rectory drawing room, hardly able to believe that anyone could be so catty and unkind to poor little Teddy.

  Of course Teddy, knowing at once that she was referring to his erstwhile bed-wetting, immediately turned scarlet and his eyes filled with reluctant tears. Miranda put her arm round his shoulders, while Bobbie stared in horrified hatred at Mrs Eglantine. Then, suddenly remembering something that she had heard someone’s mother say at the boarding school, Bobbie spoke.

  ‘What a vulgar thing to say,’ she commented, unconsciously mimicking the patrician tones of the lady she had overheard. ‘So vulgar. So terribly vulgar.’

  Miranda at once twisted her mouth into a bunny rabbit’s mouth and wiggled her lips up and down, trying not to burst into her usual fits of giggles. The aunts on the other hand seemed at first to approve, because they merely continued to stare at Mrs Eglantine, a bit like two owls, unblinking, but determinedly silent.

  The trouble was that Mrs Eglantine was so smartly dressed that she actually managed to look vulgar compared to the aunts in their faded pre-war clothes with their hair plaited and set over their ears in careful Anglo-Saxon knots.

  ‘What is your name, please? Oh yes, of course.’ Mrs Eglantine’s eyes hardened and she took up her pen and wrote ROBERTA very large, as if she was determined never, ever to forget it. ‘Well, Roberta, vulgar things do happen in wars, I am here to tell you. I am also here to tell your hosts – to tell you, Miss Mowbray and Miss Prudence – that alas the committee have come to the decision that they must, they really must insist that you keep only two rather than three evacuees. To be asked to look after three children is just not fair on either of you. The strain, I know, is telling on at least one of you.’ At this sh
e gave Aunt Sophie a we all know what state you were in when you climbed off the London train look, before continuing in her usual officious way. ‘And as the children grow older, doubtless it will tell even more, perhaps even on both of you, and then where would you be? I would therefore suggest that you keep the Darling children, and let me find a new placement for Roberta Murray. There are plenty of kind families quite willing to take on someone like Roberta, I know.’

  Mrs Eglantine looked pointedly over at Aunt Sophie, who was looking far from well since she was obviously nursing a quite terrible headache from too much cough mixture on the train.

  Bobbie, whose feelings of indignation and fury at this horrible woman’s having the beastliness to refer to poor Teddy’s bed-wetting were still boiling over, now found that they had turned to a cold and awful dread as she realized with dawning certainty that her prayers for Miranda and Teddy to stay at the rectory with the aunts were indeed going to be answered. They were going to stay at the rectory; it was Bobbie who was leaving.

  She saw the aunts’ eyes swivelling from Mrs Eglantine’s face to her own, and back again. She saw their doubts about the matter that was being put before them turning to compromise, and finally she heard Aunt Prudence say, reluctantly, ‘Well, I suppose, since Miranda and Teddy are brother and sister, it would be better if they stayed together here, and Bobbie went to someone else in the town. After all, once there is a school again to go to, they’ll see each other anyway, won’t they? Such a pity, its being bombed like that, but still, better the school than the cathedral, I dare say.’

  Before Bobbie was moved on to another home – whose location was yet to be announced, although it will still be in Mellaston – it seemed that they were all going to make sure that Teddy had a birthday.

  Miranda had announced this only seconds after Mrs Eglantine had been seen to the door by the Mowbrays, and during the time that the two sisters were heard to be talking in quick, low, urgent tones. To distract from the fear on Bobbie’s face and in her eyes, Miranda had said quickly and loudly, ‘It’s Ted’s birthday tomorrow. Let’s make him something.’

  Of course they all knew that it was not Teddy’s birthday tomorrow. Teddy actually had no idea when his birthday was meant to be, and sometimes felt that he might never know now. Nevertheless, once Miranda had announced that it would be his special day on the morrow, he smiled at once. Teddy had a strangely affecting smile, so gentle and kind that it always made Aunt Prudence go back and give him another hug after lights were out, which in turn made Teddy rub his cheek with the side of his pillow as soon as her back was turned.

  Next day there was a cake and candles, of varying sizes and quality, and they all sang, ‘Happy birthday dear Teddy’, and Bobbie gave him a drawing that she had done. It was Teddy standing by the old beech tree in the rectory garden with Aunt Prudence’s tame magpie, and everything was just as it should be, perhaps even more so because they all knew that very soon it would not be like that any more.

  Bobbie knew that it was useless to plead with the aunts that she did not want to go and live anywhere else in Mellaston. She knew this with all her heart and all her soul because she was an orphan. Orphans had no rights. They just got put where they were meant to be put, and they stayed where they were put until someone else came to get them, and then sometimes they were moved on and put somewhere else. There was nothing you could do about it, not if your parents were dead and you had few relations and no friends.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going to go, Bobbie?’

  That evening Miranda had waited until the aunts were downstairs again and then had sat up and relit the old, thick, yellow wax candle before lying back and fidgeting in her bed under the window, her legs moving restlessly under the covers.

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t care, really.’

  ‘I expect we’ll still see each other, Bobbie!’

  Miranda got up and came and knelt beside her friend’s bed, her pink bedsocks glowing against the old, dark, wooden floor, her eyes anxious.

  Bobbie stared up at the ceiling for a minute, and then turned, wordlessly, on her side so that Miranda was faced with her back, seeing only her dark head against the pillow, the outline of her shoulder under the yellow knitted blanket.

  ‘Once you get moved on, you don’t see anyone from where you’ve been before. ’Member I was at that place where they beat you, and there were lots of other children there, and they never heard from people, not once they’d been moved on. That’s what being evacuated is about, it’s about being moved on, and no-one really caring where you are, not really, because there’s a war on.’ Bobbie closed her eyes, shutting them tightly, blocking out the light, the room with its flowered wallpaper, the moth that was flying nearer and nearer to the candlelight. ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ she announced.

  Second later it seemed that she was, so Miranda blew out the candle and climbed back into bed. For once it seemed that even she had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. Bobbie was going.

  Aunt Prudence was speaking slowly and precisely, as if she was thinking out the whole matter as she went along, a bit like the way she invented knitting patterns as the garment started to grow.

  ‘How it is, Bobbie dearest, is that you’ll be able to cope better than the other two. You see, if we adopt the Darlings first, then we will probably be able to have you back. Because once the Darlings are officially ours, Mrs Eglantine can’t come round and tell us what to do. Then we can make a good case for taking in an evacuee, which can be you. But until then … well, as I say, dearest, you will be able to cope better than the other two. I mean you have already been to a beastly school, so you know that you can cope. And anyway I sense that you’re more resilient than Miranda and Teddy.’

  Bobbie did not know what ‘resilient’ meant, but she found herself wishing most heartily that whatever it was that she was meant to be more than the other two, she would really rather she had not been, given that this meant that she was the one whose number was well and truly up.

  ‘Besides, I am quite sure that they will send you to a very nice family in Mellaston. There are so many, many nice families in Mellaston. There will be – I mean to say, I am sure that – that – well, that they will have a good choice of places still, Bobbie. And let’s face it, you’re never going to have to go to a farming family. You’re too small and gently bred for a farming family to turn you into some sort of slave, there is no fear of that, Bobbie.’

  Useless to say something like that to Bobbie, because fear was precisely what was eating her up now, daily, hourly. Fear of missing Miranda and Teddy. Fear of not being able to go out looking for wool in the hedgerows that surrounded the old house, of not being able to watch Aunt Prudence at her Aga with the pans bubbling and the toast being made in the special wire thing that went under the lids and had to be turned double quick to stop the bread from burning. Fear was what caused her to have cramps in her tummy at night when she thought of the school where her relatives had left her which had seemed to be filled with grown-ups who would beat little children and then laugh at them when they screamed and cried from fear and pain. And now, of course, because of how she felt, the days flew by and there just was not enough time to do everything that had to be done that one last time.

  I will never ever run up to Aunt Prudence and give her flowers again, because I won’t be here. I will never ever see that sun setting just there ever again from this window, because I will never be here again at this age. I will never sit at supper and taste bread and butter puddings with cream and honey. I will never ever have a bath full of rusty water and steam that makes your hair curl, and a towel that is so big that it’s like a blanket. I will never ever again have Aunt Sophie play to me on the piano. Or Miranda sing to me. Or Teddy put his arms round me and hug me goodnight. It is all going to go away for ever and ever and never come back.

  And of a sudden the never ever time was over, and Mrs Eglantine was at the door, and smiling a sly kind of just you wait smile, because sh
e knew just from looking into Bobbie’s eyes that Bobbie was trying ever so hard not to look frightened and worried. So Bobbie put up her arms to hug Aunt Prudence, and they both smiled because it was better than crying. And then she put up her arms to hug Aunt Sophie, and again they both smiled, for the same reason. But when she turned to Miranda, she was gone. And only Teddy hugged her and whispered, ‘Come back soon, Bobbie.’

  After that she picked up her suitcase and marched bravely after the hated Mrs Eglantine, down the garden to the road that led back to Mellaston.

  They walked along in silence, Bobbie pausing every now and then to change hands with her suitcase, until eventually they reached the old market place where now Mrs Eglantine stopped every other minute to greet the people they passed, and make remarks about Bobbie.

  ‘Yes, of course, it was far too much for the Mowbray sisters. We, on the committee, could see what they could not, you know, so – yes, this is Roberta Murray and she is on her way to be placed. No, not with me, no, with the Dingwalls. It was the best that we on the committee could do for the poor girl. No, not entirely suitable, but there is a war on after all, and it is at least in Mellaston, we did promise them that. It was the best we could do, d’you see? The Brinkleys had offered to take her, so much more suitable, but the Mowbray ladies insisted she must stay in Mellaston, so the Dingwalls it has to be. One can, after all, only do one’s best, as we have all agreed.’

  Each time she stopped the conversation took the same course, although the words changed according to whom she was addressing. Sometimes the ‘Mowbray ladies’ were described as ‘cracking under the strain of taking in too many evacuees’, sometimes ‘Roberta Murray’ was a ‘poor orphan’, at others she was ‘a little evacuee child, lucky enough to be going to be placed in a Mellaston family’. Whoever was the recipient of Mrs Eglantine’s news, the words fell about Bobbie’s young ears in a sad clutter of tawdry excuses, and after each stop, having changed hands, Bobbie would pick up her suitcase yet again and trudge after Mrs Eglantine with a leaden heart, all the time wondering where it was that they were going, where exactly she was to be left.