by Hilary McKay
So Clarry produced the photograph and the dictionary that remembered where to open, and related the brief minor tragedy that she’d heard from Mrs. Morgan. As she talked, Vanessa changed from her casual, flippant mood to the practical kindness that made her so useful in the hospital.
“Yes,” she said steadily, as she looked at the little picture, so much like Clarry. “People do die of anemia. What bad luck for you all.”
“Do you think she left the picture there for me or Peter to find?”
“I’m sure she did. A message for you, on the right page too. B for ‘baby’! Maybe she guessed your father would never talk of her.”
“Do you think perhaps Mrs. Morgan was right?” asked Clarry. “And it might not have been because of me that she died? Don’t be kind, Vanessa, tell me the truth.”
“It wasn’t because of you,” said Vanessa, reaching out for her hand. “It was never because of you. I’m telling the truth. You have to believe it. I’m sure that’s what your mother would have wanted. You look so like her, Clarry!”
“There’s nothing of her left anywhere in the house. We’ve searched and searched. Father got rid of it all. Nothing except this picture.”
“You can get copies made of photographs, you know. I bet Peter would like one. I don’t believe for a second he blames you either. He’s much too decent.” Vanessa yawned hugely. “Sorry, Clarry, I’ve been up all night. It’s sitting down, and being warm that’s sending me to sleep! Look after your photograph. She was beaut”—Vanessa yawned again—“iful.”
With that Vanessa’s head dropped, and she nodded forward and fell asleep on the table, scattering cups and saucers.
“Five minutes,” she murmured unrepentantly, snuggling down.
“She’s a nurse, she’s been up all night,” murmured Clarry to the waitress, as she helped her clear the fallen cups, and the waitress said, “Ah!” and the nearby tables also said, “Ah!” and the café became very quiet as people shushed each other, and nodded kindly at Clarry, who sat slowly allowing herself to believe what she had been told.
It wasn’t her fault.
It was just bad luck.
She smiled at Vanessa when she woke up, rubbing her eyes and laughing at herself.
“Whatever were you doing last night?” asked the waitress, coming across with fresh tea.
“Dancing,” Vanessa told her, airily rueful, but to Clarry she said later, “Actually, I was sitting with a poor bloke who was dying and needed a bit of company. I always seem to get that job.”
Clarry could understand why. Vanessa, with her warmth and friendliness and glowing chestnut hair must be as comforting as a candle flame through such a night.
“I never can believe they’re dying,” went on Vanessa. “Never! I think, Well, you’ve got so far. Back to England. Safe in hospital, bandaged up. And they look too young, young hands and hair. No wrinkles. No gray. But still they go. Very unfair after all our hard work. How gloomy I sound! I’m not really. I’m tough. So are you, Clarry, stuck in that cold house alone with your father.”
“I have Peter sometimes, and Simon almost every weekend.”
“Good. Look after Simon for me, Clarry.”
“I will,” promised Clarry.
When students at Peter and Simon’s school were over sixteen they were allowed to go home for Saturday and Sunday if they applied for a weekend pass. Peter did this only very rarely. Not only because he was studying hard for Oxford, but also because these days he had hardly any spare money, for train fares, or anything else. The year before, his godfather had died, and so Peter had lost the small private gold mine that had been so helpful in the past. It was different for Simon. He wasn’t interested in studying, and he was never short of money. Almost every Friday evening he turned up on Clarry’s doorstep, asking, “Is it all right? Do you mind?”
It was wonderful to see such a friendly face, and Clarry would pull him in at once. He always brought food: sausages or cheese or a pie.
“Vanessa said I should,” he would explain, fishing apples from his pocket. “Because everything’s so short in the shops. Peter sent another book for you. Have you heard from Rupert?”
He always had a message from Vanessa and a book from Peter, and he always asked about Rupert the minute she opened the door.
“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” he said, one Friday evening, stumbling into the brass-topped table, dropping a parcel, and sending a vase flying. “Sorry, sorry! Is it broken? Gosh, I’m standing on the kippers!”
Clarry rescued the kippers, said they were meant to be flat, he wasn’t a nuisance, she had been feeling so lonely, and the vase didn’t matter.
“It was cracked anyway,” she said. “It needed breaking. A letter came five minutes ago. I haven’t read it yet.”
Clarry, Clarry, send more gingerbread! And get your Miss Vane knitting socks. What’s the use of being a family hero if you don’t get constant luxuries in the post? I’ve got the grandparents onto it too. I am the golden boy in Cornwall these days, did you know? They say I have done the Right Thing and they couldn’t be more proud. They’ve gone all patriotic. And mad.
Now, Clarry, I don’t want you to worry, and please understand that where I am is all right. Perfectly adequate for football, although it’ll soon be the cricket season and then we’ll have problems finding a decent wicket. The ground’s a bit bumpy round here.
BUT LUCY WOULDN’T LIKE IT!
Darling Clarry, make the grandparents see sense. Stop them sending Lucy here somehow. The fools. I’m shoving a few ten-bob notes in with this in case you need a train fare. . . .
Yours, with love and hope and faith,
Rupe
P.S. Don’t worry about the cricket pitch either. Just post me the garden roller from behind the shed in Cornwall. Love to everyone, R
“He’s all right,” said Simon, sighing with relief. “Who’s Lucy?”
Eighteen
NOBODY THAT RUPERT KNEW WROTE the truth home. The days of roast chestnuts and the little cat Mina were over, not that they had lasted very long. Not as long as the letters describing them, which was a pity, because Clarry, inspired by Miss Vane, a great cat lover herself, had sent a small patchwork blanket for Mina.
I hope she likes it, Clarry had written. Miss Vane told me once that each of her cats has a blanket of their own to make them feel secure.
Rupert had written back that any cat would be proud of such a mat and that it was the perfect color to show off Mina’s beautiful blackness. He was very much regretting his cheerful early letters to home. Why, oh, why, he asked himself, had he told his grandparents that his unit had been busy building stables in France? How stupid had he been to describe the great care that he saw people taking of the horses?
Very stupid indeed, thought Rupert, furious with himself. Not that it wasn’t true. The horses were looked after, as far as anyone could—rubbed down, watered, fed (although food was always short and sawdust was mixed in with their rations to make them go a bit further). He’d seen people hug them often. He hugged them himself, breathing in the comforting smell of horse. There were hundreds of horses working out there. They dragged supplies, camp equipment, heavy guns, sandbags, ambulances, and each other’s dead bodies. There were corpses of horses rotting in spinneys, in ditches, and amongst the churned up remains of cabbage fields. If you got close enough you could see the pale bone around their eye sockets and along the length of their forelegs. Their teeth were always bared, as if their last thought had been to lunge in futile fury. Their barrel bodies were full of rats. Rupert, who had not prayed with any conviction since he was seven, now prayed, “Oh, God, not Lucy.”
His grandfather had changed his mind completely about war.
He was no longer furious, he was proud, glad that Rupert was not skulking in Oxford, hiding behind books. He wrote that the patriotism of the young men of today was the finest thing he had witnessed in his entire lifetime. He wrote that if he could, he would be there too, but since he co
uldn’t, well, perhaps Rupert could look out for a familiar bright brown pony coming up the lines! Of course, at fourteen hands, Lucy was a bit under what the army wanted, but she was a good sturdy pony and if she could not pull a gun, she could rattle along a canteen or a field ambulance, doing her bit. He was going to offer her anyway.
Your grandmother is not so keen, he had written. She says at Lucy’s age she is much too old, but I daresay Lucy and I will talk her round!
Fool! thought Rupert viciously, but he did not mean his grandfather.
The horses, as well as being always hungry, were perpetually uneasy. After all, they had been rushed to this miserable new existence as fast as the men, and without a word of explanation. It was best not to catch the look in their eyes. It was best not to think about them with any emotion at all, if possible. Rupert wished he had not asked the reason for the evening firing from the gunners. Ammunition was so short they could fire for only a few minutes a day. So they waited until just before nightfall, in order to target the German horse transport. . . .
Rupert was thankful Clarry didn’t know about that.
It was late spring now, nearly summer. The flies were dreadful. Along the front line the trenches were being reinforced with barbed wire and sandbag parapets, propped up with timber. The duckboards that made tracks were being repaired or replaced. Two hundred yards away, across the ruined landscape of no-man’s-land, the Germans were doing the same. Something big was going to happen very soon, everyone knew, and everyone wondered where they would be when it began. Nobody stayed in the front-line trenches for long. The pattern varied, but at present it seemed to be a week at the front, and then a few days back in camp, where they cleaned kit and drilled and caught up on sleep. There wasn’t much sleep at the front, even though there were bunkers now and then, dug into the sides of trenches. These were lantern-lit, earth-smelling caves, blue with the cigarette smoke that hung in the air. Everyone smoked. It was comforting and it covered a multitude of smells. There were unburied bodies in no-man’s-land, too far out to collect, and too long dead. They were slowly sinking into the earth, and they had been there so long that they were no longer shocking.
This time last year, thought Rupert, I was still at school, and now I don’t find unburied corpses shocking. I use them as landmarks.
He was still writing his letters home, with less and less to say.
He wrote to the thin girl (her name was Elizabeth):
I think of you every time someone’s hat blows off and goes rolling away, and whenever I hear an out of tune piano, and whenever we have lemon curd tarts for tea. You will be pleased to hear that in the whole time that I have been here I have never seen a single spider, and so of course I am quite safe. . . .
Elizabeth thought, He must be tired; he’s gabbling. And what’s more, he’s mixing me up with someone else. I’ve never minded spiders. I wonder how many girls he writes to. Not that it matters. She wrote back, with great compassion, Stay safe, Rupert, and sent him peppermints and chocolate.
Rupert wrote to Vanessa,
I meant to tell you about a place in a village we came through. We sold them tinned beef and tobacco and knobbly socks and they sold us red wine and very good sausages. “What’s in the sausages?” I asked, and the woman said, “Garlic, rosemary, sage, and pepper, and vilain garçons allemands. Naughty German boys!”
Is that funny? wondered Vanessa. I suppose it is; I’m just in a mood. I think he’s forgotten I’m working in a hospital full of men back from the front. I’ll remind him.
Drlng Rp, today 32 bedpans sluiced and scrubbed, 12 Mackintosh sheets as above, 3 stockings left unladdered (all different shades of black unluckily), 2 slices of Victoria sponge—jam very thin and no cream at all, 1 fall on BTM—slipped on wet floor in sluice room, 26 dressings changed, 3 marriage proposals, 4 hours’ sleep last night, 0 mention of spiders in your latest, thank gdness for that hd begun to dread opening. Simon and Clarry are up to something wicked. Gd nght, swt drms, may flghts of angls etc. VnSa xx
Last of all, Rupert wrote,
Wonderful Clarry, the rain here is wetter than English rain. I am getting severely trickled on. You might send me a small handkerchief for dabbing the drips from my neck. The other thing I would like, if you have a moment, is a magic carpet. Remember how you made one in Cornwall with the old landing rug, by stuffing the lining with feathers and flowers and setting fire to the corners? Baffling that it wouldn’t fly but probably for the best since you constructed it on a cliff top. I realize now that if you had sprinkled it with eau de cologne and a very small amount of gunpowder you would have had better luck. I would try to make one here, but unluckily no access to either eau de cologne or the right kind of feathers. Don’t let them send Lucy here, just don’t. And love, Rupert
Nineteen
THIS SECOND LETTER ARRIVED ON Saturday morning. Two letters about Lucy in two days. Clarry became very still as she read.
Simon, who had taken upon himself the Saturday morning task of cleaning the fireplaces, saw something was wrong and asked, “What is it?”
“It’s from Rupert,” said Clarry, and her father overhead and asked, “Rupert? Quite the family hero, I gather, these days. Is he well?”
“I think so. He says it’s raining. He mostly writes jokes.”
“Ah,” said her father, and hurried away, as if fearing he might have to listen to them.
“He’s written about Lucy again,” said Clarry, holding out her letter to Simon. “Look!”
“I’ve been doing the grates,” he said, rubbing ashy smudges onto his trousers.
“Never mind that. Just read it!” Clarry pushed Rupert’s letter into his red bony hands and noticed that they were suddenly trembling.
“He’s not telling you a lot of things,” said Simon, after a moment.
“I know. I know it’s not as nice as he pretends.”
“Nice,” repeated Simon, shaking his head solemnly. “No.”
“I think I’d better write back straightaway and say not to worry about Lucy. That would help.”
“Then what?”
“I’ve got a sort of friend who knows about horses. At least, he must, because he’s got a horse. Jester. I often see him about the streets. Mr. King, he drives a rag-and-bone cart.”
“The one who told you how to clean a chimney!” said Simon suddenly. “I remember!”
“Yes, him. Perhaps he would help. Perhaps there would be room in Jester’s stable for Lucy too. Then Jester could have some days off pulling. He’s very old.”
“But how would you get Lucy here?”
“Jester came from Devon in a horse box on a train.”
“You’d have to steal her first!”
“Not steal! Never mind that just now. The first thing is to write to Rupert. Wait!”
Clarry found a pen and writing paper and began.
Dear Rupert, don’t worry any more about Lucy. . . .
Clarry paused and looked up at Simon. “Are you helping?”
“Of course. Anything.”
Simon and I are going to Cornwall today. By the time you get this Lucy will be safe somewhere else. I will send you the handkerchief for the rain trickles next time I write to you. . . .
She looked up into Simon’s dark eyes. “That’s just a jokey bit so he knows we can manage,” she explained.
He nodded, understanding.
Simon sends his love. . . .
“You do, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
And so do I,
Clarry
“Can I write my own name?” asked Simon.
“Yes, of course.”
Simon C. Bonnington, wrote Simon carefully, and added Bonners in brackets.
“Give me the pen and I’ll do the envelope. I’ve done it so often I know it by heart. Wait!” She put kisses at the end of her message. “I always do,” she told Simon, offering him the pen.
“I’d better not,” he said, smiling a little. “Now, listen. You post th
at, and then go and look for your friend with the horse. I’ll go to the station and find out about tickets. Meet me back here as soon as you can.”
“Rupert sent some money. I don’t know if it will be enough.”
“I’ve got some too, and just in case I’ll . . . I’ll pawn Dad’s watch!” said Simon, and waited for Clarry to protest at such recklessness, but instead she said, “Oh, what a good idea! And I’ve got one too we could use.”
“Not like this one,” Simon said, fumbled in his pocket, and then held it out to show her, and Clarry saw that it was heavy and gold, a fat gold pocket watch on a brown plaited lace. “He gave it me to look after just before he went away.”
“Would he mind?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind if I were him. I’ll do it on the way to the station. Bring yours, though! We’ll need it for the train times.”
Clarry nodded, picked up her precious silver watch, and hurried after him out of the front door.
“Good luck!” she called, as he set off for the station, and she wasted a moment to watch him hurry away; great lanky clumsy strides, as if he wore badly fitting seven-league boots.
“Good luck,” he called back, half turning, before walking into a lamppost, staggering a little, and then vanishing around the corner.
Clarry didn’t have good luck. It was easy enough to find Mr. King, but to persuade him to look after Lucy turned out to be impossible.
“No, no, no!” he said, walking backward with his hands in the air. “Not ever! Not on your life! Them Sunday school prizes is one thing! The books had your name in, I could see they were yours. But nothing else! Not after the piano and the brass table! How’d I be sure the horse wasn’t stolen?”
“She would just be borrowed,” pleaded Clarry.
“Borrowed my hind foot!” said Mr. King rudely.
“Wouldn’t you like to have another horse to help Jester?”
“And have him standing idle with his hocks all swelled from nothing to do? Jester earns his keep on the streets, same as me, and that’s that, so good day to you, missy, and mind you keep honest!”
