We Must Be Brave. Frances Liardet
and unused velvet curtains.
‘Pooh, this stinks,’ said Donald, and threw the curtain across the floor.
‘It may be a little musty,’ I said. ‘It’s been kept in a chest—’
‘Put it back on the mattress, Donald, you twit,’ said his older brother.
‘Shut your gob, Jack.’
The two boys fell into a frenzy of pulling, kicking and thumping, comical because wordless. Hawley folded his arms. ‘Oi. Lads. Do you want to sleep in the hen house?’
They went still. I looked at Hawley gratefully.
‘They need a tight rein, Mrs Parr,’ he said.
They came down for their supper, stopping short at Pamela who was still enthroned, dozing, on the hall chair. It was an ancient chair, with a low seat and a tall back, designed for kneeling on and praying: Pamela, pale, with her eyes sombrely downcast, could have been a child of the Middle Ages. I put my finger to my lips and the boys passed by silently into the kitchen. I went into the sitting room and invited three ladies upstairs to spend the night on the boys’ beds. ‘Mrs Berrow, I insist you come. I will find you a damp flannel for your eye.’
Obediently Mrs Berrow followed me, along with two others, up to the boys’ bedroom. I brought the flannel, told them where the bathroom was, and left them to sleep. None of them spoke. They were hungry, I knew, but their tiredness was of a kind to conquer hunger. They rolled onto the beds and lay like dead-weights.
I spread a slice of bread with the dripping and brought it to Pamela.
‘Pamela?’
She opened her eyes and regarded me, blinking. She took the slice of bread, dropped it on the floor. I kneeled in front of her and retrieved it and tore off a dusty piece. She chewed without haste, her jaw moving roundly like a small calf. ‘Excuse me,’ she said through her mouthful. ‘Are we in a village?’
‘Yes. A village called Upton.’
‘So is this village bread?’
I smiled. ‘I made it, and I’m a villager. So I suppose it is. It’s a little stale, darling, that’s all. My fresh bread is much softer.’
She continued chewing, eyes steadily on me, not the least reassured. The front door opened and Selwyn came in. He took his coat off, and smiled at me. ‘You look like a supplicant, and she your princess. It’s the high-backed chair, I suppose. What is there to eat?’
‘Bread, and a sausage. About three ounces of tea. Plenty of oats.’
Pamela had been looking from one of us to the other. Now she stopped chewing. ‘Horses eat oats.’
‘Yes, they do.’ Selwyn bent over her. ‘Are you warm enough?’ She nodded. He patted her on the head, absently, as if she were his good dog. ‘Now I think about it, I haven’t got much of an appetite. I’ll sleep on the little bed in the dressing room. You put her with you, in our bed.’
The buttons on the back of Pamela’s dirty little dress were tiny. One of them was broken, a shard which slipped under my nail and stabbed me. I pulled the puffed sleeves down off her shoulders. Her arms were as cold as china.
‘Didn’t Mummy give you a coat, Pamela?’
‘It was so hot in the hotel, she said, “Let’s take our coats and cardigans off.” So we did that.’
‘What hotel?’
She turned her head to look up at me. ‘The hotel that we were inside,’ she said patiently. ‘I want to keep my knickers on.’
She went to the lavatory. I found an old singlet and put it on her. It fell almost to her ankles, the shoulder straps drooping, the low neck leaving her chest bare. I knotted the straps to bring the neckline higher.
‘This is a funny nightie.’
‘Isn’t it.’
Our bolster made her head jut forward, so I fetched a flat cushion from my sewing seat. The bed creaked in the dressing room: Selwyn was retiring. I went in and found him sitting there in his pyjamas. He needed a good diet to keep his weight up, did my husband, and now he was beginning to remind me of my brother Edward. They both went lean in hard times, weathered and springy like the spars of a ship. Selwyn was naturally slighter than Edward, sandier, his blue eyes paler. A cleverer, more far-seeing man.
‘She says that she was in an hotel,’ I told him. ‘She doesn’t know which one.’
He nodded slowly. ‘We’ll think about it in the morning.’ He looked up at me. ‘Where’s your pearl brooch?’
With a jolt I remembered the bus, my first grasp of Pamela’s body. ‘Don’t worry. It’s in my jacket pocket, for safekeeping.’
Selwyn had pinned the brooch on this morning, deftly, and kissed my lips. It seemed like a week ago now. I went and sat on the bed next to him. My eye fell on a small, flat, brown-paper parcel. ‘You haven’t opened your present.’
Exclaiming, he reached for it. ‘Shame on me. My first gift of this kind, too.’ He pulled the knot in the string and removed the paper from a copy of Edward Thomas’s The South Country. ‘Ellen, sweetheart. This is so thoughtful.’
‘I found it in Bradwell’s. Now you really have the complete works.’
He gave a single laugh and put down the book. ‘I promise you one thing, Ellen. Not all our wedding anniversaries will be like this one.’
I put my arm across his back and pressed my face against his shoulder. He embraced me in turn so that we were encircled by each other’s arms. ‘I shall complain next year,’ I said, with my eyes shut, ‘if you don’t supply at least one busload of refugees.’
The brooch was there, in my jacket pocket. I put it into my jewellery box and hung the jacket in the wardrobe. Closing the door, I saw the child’s image flash into the mirror, a pale face with large, grave, light-brown eyes. I undressed and put my nightgown on, all the while feeling those eyes upon me.
She’d moved towards the middle of the bed. When I got in, one small, hard foot scraped against my calf. ‘Shift over, Pamela.’
‘But I was just on the way to my side.’
‘Oh. I didn’t realize you had a side.’
‘This is my side. The other is Mummy’s.’
What about Daddy? I didn’t say that. It was a question for tomorrow.
We arranged ourselves to her liking. She occupied her little space with self-possession, lying neatly on her back with feet together. I remembered sharing the coldest nights in one bed with Mother. Mother, and in the beginning with my brother Edward too. They had both been bigger than me. I’d never lain down beside such a small person.
‘My name’s Ellen.’
‘I know.’ Her head remained still; only her eyes darted towards me. ‘But you haven’t said if I may call you it.’
I smiled. ‘You may.’
How old was she? Her nose was still snubbed, a perfect curve, her cheeks round. I couldn’t ask her about her surname again, not now.
‘Will we find Mummy tomorrow?’
‘I’m sure we will.’
I was woken by a rising siren of wails, as sharp and sudden as if rehearsed. I slid out of bed and went out onto the landing. The boys were asleep – two had rolled off the mattresses and were lying legs tangled in the curtains, leaving the third uncovered. I picked my way among them and went down to the sitting room.
The women had pulled the blackout curtain away from the side of the window. They were all crowded around the slit they had made, crying out and clinging together as if they were in a lifeboat on a high sea. ‘How can they, how can