by Rachel Malik
Waking to Leo’s crying in the middle of the night. Everyone said he was good as gold, but oh, how he cried, and sometimes he just wouldn’t stop. The next thing she remembered was standing in the doorway of Mum and Dad’s bedroom, the door wide open. They were sleeping peacefully, her mother’s hair spread dark over the pillow; everything was quiet. She stepped forward to close the door and saw that Leo’s crib was empty. There must have been terror but she couldn’t remember that, just standing frozen in the doorway. Then it was later and she was sitting at the kitchen table, watching Bertha by the sink, filling a pan; Leo was clamped to Bertha’s hip and bawling.
‘I didn’t want him to wake your mam. Jiggle him, will you, while I get the milk.’
The water had puffed and squealed through the pipes.
Later, it was Rene’s task to carry Leo back to Mum and Dad’s bedroom. She put the baby back in his crib as if he were a changeling.
The kettle was tapping and whistling. Out in the yard she heard the pony whicker. Elsie would rub his neck vigorously, Silly old thing, would I forget you, silly old thing. She was soft about Pickwick, whatever she said.
Tea made, bread sliced, jam put out. She tried again to pan for something to complete the little girl sitting on the bed with her suitcase, getting ready to run away. She hadn’t run away of course, not then. But now she wondered where she had been planning to go all those years ago with her map and her torch and her oversize gloves. To the station of course, always the station.
‘Rene. Rene, dear.’ It was Elsie’s voice, calling her back.
‘You were so still, I thought you must be asleep. Do drink your tea, and then we must go, or we’ll miss them.’
* * *
On 10 April 1941, a sharp exchange occurred in the House of Commons between the MP for Southport and the MP for Eye about the calibre of the nation’s farmers.
Rene and Elsie, meanwhile, spent the day idly, taking a long walk along the more salubrious parts of the old Wilts and Berks Canal. It was Elsie’s birthday. As is common when fates are being decided, the two women had no sense of gathering storm clouds.
Mr Robert Spear Hudson, MP for Southport (Con.) and Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, was bold about the pain that lay ahead. Britain’s agricultural economy was neither efficient nor productive, by wartime standards. The challenge had not been faced square, not yet. And it had to be, as a matter of urgency.
Mr Robert Spear Hudson had been made aware of numerous sensitivities. He knew that farmers did not represent a single interest. Smallholder and landowner, big farmer and small, old and new – all had their axes to grind, their furrows to till. There were too many kinds of old, too many kinds of new. Elsie would have agreed with some of this; she had a good memory for the changes. Elsie and Mr Hudson might have agreed on a whole range of matters, but Mr Hudson had no time for soliciting opinions, for niceties; these were new times.
Hudson had put his faith in the Agricultural Executive Committees – a challenging central vision, embodied in local know-how: his ideal. Men who knew what was what and who was who in the county – an enduring category when so much else had gone up in smoke. The membership was composed of locals for the most part: the people best placed to decide. Many of these committees ended up looking like the local hunt at work, and that was reassuring to many, certainly to Hudson. In Lambourn, Phil Townsend had squeezed his way in, not liked but tolerated, though some of his fellow committee members blenched at his manner, among them Harris and Cole, the two biggest landowners. Once bitter rivals, they were discovering more and more in common; new times. These committees had real power: they could lend a tractor, organize you a bit of labour, even stand security for a small loan. Controversially, they had the power to intervene if they decided the land wasn’t being put to best use. In extremis, they could evict occupiers.
But war didn’t change everything, not overnight. If Harris or Cole, or Hudson for that matter, had taken the bridle path running east of Sheepdrove early one April morning, a familiar and stirring sight would have greeted him: a string of horses, plunging across the gallops. As dawn broke, Rene and Elsie had taken that very path, continuing to the summit of Inkpen Hill, where they had watched. A magical sight. Thirty or more horses, paired and in various shades of dark, trotted down the slope to where the gallop began in earnest: a slow-rising curve of six furlongs. Too far away to see the minute adjustments of reins and stirrups, or hear the barked commands from the stunted trainer, Rene and Elsie moved closer, pausing at a newly fitted five-bar gate. The hooves drummed somewhere beneath their feet, and both fancied they could hear the steady light puff of the horses’ breathing in the cool air. Soon the horses were out of sight. Elsie called out something to Rene and strode on, past the gate.
Rene was still not used to this land; its hard-rutted intractability tired her. It had been dry all winter, the ridges and crackings of the ground looked delicate, but she was wrong, and drained already. They reached a stile and Elsie was up and over it in a moment; it looked as if she would just carry on, but then she turned. ‘Come on, keep up.’ She sounded brisk, but she stretched her hand back at the same time and Rene grasped it, tried to hop across deftly, nearly fell, recovered. Through it all and her final rueful laugh, she kept on holding Elsie’s hand, a casual gesture perhaps – many might reach a hand out to one tiring and ill-prepared. But one of them, perhaps both, kept the grip, till the path ran narrow once more: the approach to the canal.
At about ten, they paused at an old lock, resting briefly on the chill powdery wall while they took a drink of tea from the flask. Rene produced the chocolate bar from her pocket. The chocolate itself was disappointing, but the unwrapping, the occasion, the give of the thin wrapping, were pleasures enough.
‘Happy birthday again.’ It was the day’s chorus.
The canal used to run right through the valley, pressing close to the Kennet and the Avon. Parts of it were now beyond derelict, and dangerous besides: clotted and marshy, or treacherously slippery. At times, both water and mud were disturbed by various chemical foamings that usually settled into a yellow-grey milk, rumoured to be the residues of Huntley and Palmers. Other parts of the canal had sunk into oblivion: spun by ivy, dried up, tumbled down. There had been periodical protests to the papers about the dangers. Only last year a little girl had fallen from an old lock gate and drowned in the mud. Yet there seemed nothing to be done about it.
Between towns though, there were pleasing routes through the reedy stillness, passages where the water flowed freely, borrowing the natural current of a river or a busy stream.
On the powdery wall, they paused and drank their tea, trying not to shiver in the thin sun.
Elsie had known the canal all her life. It was already falling into disrepair when the Bostons came to Starlight. Now, for long stretches, the canal was a memory, an imprint: some overhanging branches whose shape suggested a curve below, a patch of bricked walkway or a sudden uneasy flatness in the view ahead; Rene could pick out the weeping willows. And then you came upon the soft red curve of a broken bridge, a sudden half-punched hole of black water, visible only for a moment.
In the early days, if the stream in the upper field ran dry, Elsie and Ruby would drive the cows along a short stretch of the towpath – a shady, slow walk in the summer heat – and over a narrow bridge to a marshy, half-forgotten, half-common field. In those early days, much of the land beside the canal was still open. Later came rumours of another railway, and although the speculation came to nothing it brought claims and boundaries. And one spring Sunday, soon after Alfred died, Elsie took a walk and found new fencing and a stile. Upset, and a little disoriented, she had turned for home immediately. She had been back since but it was never quite the same.
There were so many ways of owning the land: it was too symbolically rich, too literally empty. Governments turned to it time and time again as saviour and soother; and now, well now it was the national interest: the nation at war in full sacrificial cry.
‘Mr Granville has asked how you define a bad farmer. It is very simple really. There are three categories of farm, and three categories of farmer.’
The categories were always the same, good, fair and poor, and these judgements had consequences. The survey was already under way. In Suffolk alone, eighty tenancies had been terminated; evictions would follow.
And Rene and Elsie were neglecting their duties. They had paused again to eat their picnic, leaning over the bridge, watching the water. The raspberry bread was a great success: bright pink and soft and just a little tart. Spring pudding, Elsie called it.
Hudson wasn’t going to let pity intervene:
‘The only time a man is turned out is when, clearly, he is the sort of man who will not do the work, who will not obey the orders given to him, who will not make use of the resources. He is the hopeless fellow and rightly he is turned out.’
Hudson found, as many do, a ruthless pleasure in what emergency made possible. This was no time for elegant acres and picturesque groupings of deer. What was called for was the reassuring, patriotic and above all indifferent marks of plough and tractor in the monotonous turn of earth. More personally, Hudson also enjoyed the accessories of urgency and danger: telegrams (which he had once derided as a waste of time), special telephone numbers, authorization codes, the accessing of documents via silent processes of multiple special signatures, ringing heels, darkened corridors (he had not participated directly in any such ritual as yet). An older language also fed him and he took up the banner of a Burkean vision: the national landlord, however embodied, must bring his tenants to order. If they were found wanting, if needs must, they must be ‘turned out’.
Rene and Elsie had finished their leaning lunch; they were both watching a moorhen trying to tempt her chicks into the water. A marsh hen, Elsie called it, but it was the same bird: neat and dark with the bright red beak and stalky legs. The grey chicks were still fluffy, watching their mother from the bank, curious, as she glided this way and that, circled and returned. The chicks would not follow, but continued to observe her, till one lost interest and trod away, as if on stilts, in search of food. The charmed circle was broken, the group began to dissolve.
‘They like snails, you know, to eat,’ Elsie said.
‘Oh. Whole?’
‘I think they break them open on stones.’
There was a long pause, then she continued, ‘I remember reading once that the French like to eat snails.’
‘Whole?’ Rene was laughing now.
The chicks caught the sound; they looked up and huddled, curious.
‘No, no. They cook them on metal trays, with little dents for the snails. There was a picture. They give you a special fork, and a little pair of tongs to pull them out, and you eat them with butter and parsley. I always wondered what they would taste like.’ She laughed too.
‘Like cockles, like oysters.’ Southport. Out on the prom in the yellow-grey fog, Alan laughing, she laughing. So cold, hair scratching her face, the vinegar made her eyes water. Taste of the seaside.
‘But they’re pickled,’ Rene added.
‘No, I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t like vinegar.’
Elsie had never tried cockles or oysters anyway. She had never been to the sea.
‘But you like the sound of snails?’
They both laughed.
‘It’s different. They’re cooked, with butter, and you have a special plate and fork.’
‘You don’t like them in the garden.’
‘It’s my revenge.’
They started to pack up the remains of their lunch. Rene smoked a cigarette. The chicks had disappeared, only the hen remained; she swam up and down the bank a couple more times and then hopped back on to her nest in the reeds. The two women stood on the bridge watching, caught in the sunlight. The last few days had been warm, even the stone on the bridge seemed to feel it.
And then out of nowhere and without a glance in her direction, Elsie said:
‘Was your husband a bad man?’
Rene didn’t know quite what to say.
‘No, oh no, Elsie. He was very kind, very gentle.’
Elsie kept on looking down into the water. There was a long pause.
‘And you wanted to get married?’
‘At the time. At the time, yes, I did, but in the end I couldn’t make things suit.’
Cally and Ruby had been lucky to marry, Elsie had been told – because of the war.
They clambered down the steep bank, doing their best to avoid the nettles – it was the only way on to the path from here. They went quietly, trying not to disturb the moorhen in her empty nest. From here the water looked darker, oily. The path was very overgrown and they walked single file.
‘He had a good nature.’
Elsie sensed that a good nature wasn’t quite the same as good. She had worried that Rene’s husband wasn’t gentle. There were men with violent hands, women found with their necks bruised blue or broken at the bottom of stairs. She knew this from headlines.
Rene could hear Elsie thinking, wondering. She wanted to help but she didn’t know how.
‘He was very kind. He didn’t hit me, Elsie, never, never. And he didn’t rage. And he didn’t drink, not like that.’
But they were still in trouble.
‘He was a train driver.’ Rene didn’t know what else to say.
‘Oh.’
Someone else, another woman, would have asked what happened or what went wrong or even do you have a photograph, but these weren’t questions that Elsie knew to ask. No one had ever asked her, do you love him?
Quick he was, always quick, he came running along the street to help her when she skidded and fell in the snow. She had taken his hand, wary but so tired, Christmas Eve, too many packages, gloves lost, hands stinging, Dad dead and the tears pricking her eyes. His hands were so light and soft when he wrapped his scarf around her neck. He was going to whisk her away.
‘It was a good job, a good job in bad times. He worked hard. We were lucky. He got good money. We should have had enough …’
‘Was he a spiv?’ Elsie asked, turning back to look at her.
‘Oh no, nothing like that. Not like George Townsend.’
And Elsie smiled and Rene too; it wasn’t such a bad guess.
They walked on, still single file, but quicker now, the way familiar.
Not a spiv, but Alan had had his patter too, he could be funny, he could do the cheer-up talk – she had liked it at first. He brought flowers to the pub that first time, Bertha had nudged her, how she had blushed. Soon they would be leaving the airy cold of the Blue Elephant for Bertha’s little house in Judd Street. ‘You mustn’t think of getting a job yet, Rene, remember your mam, she can’t be left on her own, not now.’ Oh, Bertha thought of everything. When Alan arrived that afternoon with his flowers, Rene couldn’t wait to be away. She had promised her mum that she would return a book, so they took the tram up to the Free Library. The big reading room was full of people trying to get warm; she and Alan had wandered along the shelves, Alan twisting his head sideways to read the titles. They were nervous, giggling, an old man in one of the aisles shushed them loudly and they had rushed off, laughing the louder. The corridors smelt of carbolic; the library had been a hospital first, and Alan said he was sure he could smell ether.
Elsie had reached a wider part of the path. She paused for Rene to catch up and they continued side by side. Still warm but the sky above them was thick with cloud – it seemed to muffle the sound about them and the water so still. When Rene spoke again her voice sounded muffled too.
‘It’s not easy to explain about Alan. He never shirked, he was lovely with the children.’
Elsie said nothing but Rene knew she was thinking, listening.
‘He was a gambler.’
‘Oh.’
For a moment Rene wished she was talking to Lily or her o
ld neighbour, Hilda – oh, Hilda knew exactly, three children, just like her, a gambler for a husband, just like her. But this was Elsie and she so wanted Elsie to understand.
‘Horses?’ asked Elsie. ‘I never knew anyone who gambled.’
‘Mainly horses, yes.’
Alan’s horses were just slips of paper with silly names, Glow in the Dark, Jim of Diamonds, three to one on. So different from Elsie’s horses: the crotchety Pickwick, the handsome black Prince of her childhood, the White Horse, running down that hill. She must try harder.
‘Oh Elsie, things are so difficult to explain. He was a gambler. It sounds like something you do, doesn’t it?’ He’s a train driver, he’s a butcher, he’s a gambler.
‘Did he lose a lot of money?’
‘Yes, but he won a lot as well. He was lucky more often than some. (You have to say that, don’t you, Ren? I’m luckier than most, aren’t I?) It was his whole life … I never knew where I was. I could never be sure what was going to happen.’
‘Oh Rene.’
Something had struck a chord.
‘Sometimes, when I came back home, I’d wonder why the room looked different and then I’d see – something was missing of course, the lamp or the clock, all manner of things, things from the kitchen, even the wireless.’
‘Oh Rene.’
‘We got a good part of it back. He was always to and fro to the pawnshop but we lost a lot outright. It was so tiring. I was quite run-down with it all and the children.’
And of course Alan was hardly ever there when the bailiff came – he was at work. She was the one who had to let things go, the one who took receipt of the endless slips of paper from Mr Lemster – such a polite man, such a sad, regretful face. The children running rings, her head running circles. Half the original contents ended up in the surrounding streets, but she could never quite grudge the neighbour who had their carriage clock – a wedding gift from Bertha – or old Mrs Grey who had her mangle.
