Coming Home (91 page)

By the middle of October, six weeks into the war, nothing very much had happened; no sort of an invasion, nor bombing, nor battles in France. But the horrors of the destruction of Poland kept everybody glued to their wireless sets, or else following the terrible accounts that appeared in the newspapers, and alongside the appalling suffering and carnage that was taking place in eastern Europe, the small inconveniences and deprivations of everyday life were almost welcome, stiffening spines and giving a sense of purpose to the most trivial of sacrifices.

At Upper Bickley, one of these was that Mrs Lapford had departed, to labour in her factory canteen.

Biddy, in all her life, had never even boiled an egg. But Judith had spent a good deal of time in kitchens, watching Phyllis make semolina puddings and fairy cakes, mashing potatoes for Mrs Warren, and helping to dish up the enormous teas that were so much part of day-to-day life at Porthkerris. At Nancherrow, Mrs Nettlebed had always welcomed a bit of help with the jam and marmalade-making, and was grateful if one offered to stand and beat the sugar and eggs for an airy sponge cake until they were the colour of cream. But that was the limit of Judith's experience. However, needs must when the devil drives. She found an old
Good Housekeeping
recipe book, tied on an apron and took over the cooking. To begin with, there were a good many scorched chops and underdone chickens, but after a bit she began to get the hang of it, and even accomplished a cake, which tasted not bad, despite the fact that all the raisins and cherries had sunk, like lead, to the bottom.

Another inconvenience was that the Bovey Tracey tradesmen — the butcher, the grocer, the greengrocer, the fishmonger — all ceased to deliver. It was the petrol rationing, they explained, and everybody understood and bought enormous baskets and string bags and humped their shopping home. It wasn't too much trouble, but it all took an enormous amount of time, and the climb up the hill to Upper Bickley, laden like a pack-horse, was exhausting to say the least of it.

And it was beginning to get cold. Judith, having spent so much time at Nancherrow, where the central heating was never turned off until the warm spring was well on its way, had forgotten about being cold. Being cold out of doors was all right, but being cold indoors was misery. Upper Bickley had no central heating. Two years ago, when she had come for Christmas, there had been fires lighted in the bedrooms, and the boiler kept going, full-tilt, all twenty-four hours of the day. But now they needed to be parsimonious with fuel, and only the sitting-room fire was lighted, and then never until after lunch. Biddy did not seem to feel the cold. After all, she had happily survived Keyham Terrace, which Judith remembered as the coldest place in the world that she had ever been. Colder, perhaps, than the Arctic. As winter closed in, Upper Bickley would probably become just as icy. Standing on the hill, it faced the teeth of the east wind, and the old windows and doors were ill fitting and let in every sort of draught. Judith looked forward to the long, dark months without much enthusiasm, and was grateful that Mary had sent her, from Nancherrow, a huge dress box (labelled ‘Hartnell's’) filled with her warmest winter clothes.

Saturday, the fourteenth of October. Judith awoke and felt the frosty air on her face flowing in through the open window, and opening her eyes saw a sky that was grey, and that the topmost branches of the beech tree at the foot of the garden were already gilded with russet leaves. Soon they would start dropping. There would be much sweeping up and burning, and eventually the tree would stand bare.

She lay in bed and thought that if things had gone as they should, and there had been no war, and she had not had to make that enormous decision, then right now, at this moment, she would be in a P & O liner in the Bay of Biscay, being tossed from one side of her bunk to the other and probably experiencing the first nausea of seasickness. But still, en route to Singapore. For a moment or two, she allowed herself to feel dreadfully homesick for her own family. It seemed that she was fated always to live in other people's homes, however hospitable, and sometimes it was really lowering to brood over all that she was missing. She thought of steaming through the Straits of Gibraltar into the blue Mediterranean and a forgotten world of perpetual sunshine. Then the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, and each evening the Southern Cross rising a little higher in the jewel-blue sky. And she remembered how, when you approached Colombo, there came a smell in the air, long before the smudge that was Ceylon appeared on the horizon, and the smell was of spice and fruits, and cedarwood, blown seaward on the warm wind.

But it was unwise to imagine, unthinkable to regret. Her bedroom was cold. She got up and went to close the window on the dank morning, pausing for a moment to hope that it would not rain. Then dressed, and went downstairs.

There she found Biddy already in the kitchen, which was unusual because normally Judith was always down first. Biddy was bundled in her dressing-gown, and boiling a kettle for coffee.

‘What are you doing up so bright and early?’

‘Morag woke me, whining and wheeking. I'm surprised you didn't hear her. I came down to let her out, but she just did her wees and then came straight in again.’ Judith looked at Morag, slumped in her basket with a soulful expression in her mismatched eyes. ‘You don't think she's ill, do you?’

‘She certainly doesn't look her usual cheerful self. Perhaps she's got worms.’

‘Don't even suggest it.’

‘We might have to take her to the vet. What do you want for breakfast?’

‘There doesn't seem to be any bacon.’

‘In that case, boiled eggs.’

Over breakfast they discussed, in a desultory fashion, how they were going to spend their Saturday. Judith said that she had to go down to Bovey Tracey to return a book borrowed from Hester Lang, and that she would do the shopping. Biddy said good, because she intended to write letters, and she lit a cigarette and reached for her pad and pencil and began to compose the inevitable shopping list. Bacon, and dog meal for Morag, and a roast of lamb for Sunday lunch, and lavatory paper, and Lux…

‘…and would you be a dear and go to the wool-shop and buy me a pound of oiled wool?’

Judith was astonished.

‘What do you want a pound of oiled wool for?’

‘I'm sick of my silly tapestry. I said I was going to start knitting again. I shall make seaboot stockings for Ned.’

‘I didn't know you could knit stockings.’

‘I can't, but I found a wonderful pattern in the newspaper. They're called spiral stockings and you go round and round and you never have to turn a heel. And then when Ned wears a great hole in them, he just has to twist them round and the hole ends up on the top of his foot.’

‘I'm sure he'll love that.’

‘There's another pattern for a Balaclava helmet. Perhaps you could make him a Balaclava helmet. Keep his ears warm.’

‘Thanks, but at the moment I've enough to do practising pot-hooks. Write “wool” down on the list and I'll see if I can get some. And you'd better have a set of needles as well…’

Saturday morning in Bovey Tracey was a bit like Market Day in Penzance: filled with country people from all around, come in from remote villages and moorland farms to collect the week's supplies. They crowded the narrow pavements with baskets and push-chairs, stood chatting at street corners, took their turn in butcher's and grocer's to be served, the while exchanging gobbets of gossip and family news, and only lowering their voices to speak of illness or the possible demise of somebody's Auntie Gert.

Which meant everything took a great deal longer than it normally did, and it was eleven o'clock before Judith, burdened with bulging basket and string bag, made her way to Hester Lang's house and rang the front-door bell.

‘Judith!’

‘I know, it's Saturday, and I'm not here to do shorthand. I just came to return the book you lent me. I finished it last night.’

‘Lovely to see you. Come in and have a cup of coffee.’

Hester's coffee was always particularly delicious. Judith, smelling its fragrance, fresh and wheaten, drifting from the kitchen, needed little persuasion. In the narrow hallway, she dumped her baskets and took the book from the capacious pocket of her jacket. ‘I wanted to bring it back right away, in case it got dirty, or Morag chewed it.’

‘Poor dog, I'm sure she'd never do anything so wicked. Go and put it back in its place, and choose another, if you want. I'll be in with the coffee in a moment…’

The book she had borrowed was
Great Expectations,
one of a complete set of leather-bound volumes of Charles Dickens. She went into the sitting-room (even on a grey morning it felt light and cheerful), and slipped it back into its place, and was contentedly reading titles and trying to decide what she should tackle next when, from the hall, she heard the telephone begin to ring. Then, Hester's footsteps as she went to answer it. From beyond the door, which stood ajar, Judith heard her voice. ‘Eight-two-six. Hester Lang speaking.’

Perhaps not Dickens this time. Something contemporary. She took out
The Mortal Storm,
by Phyllis Bottome, and began to read the blurb on the inside of the book-jacket, and then to browse, haphazardly, through the pages.

The call continued. Between long silences, Hester spoke, and her voice was dropped to a low murmur. ‘Yes,’ Judith heard her say, ‘yes, of course.’ And then another silence. Standing, alone, in Hester's sitting-room, Judith waited.

Finally, when she was beginning to think that Hester would never return to her, the call was abruptly finished. She heard the single ring of the receiver being replaced, closed the book and looked towards the door. But Hester did not come at once, and when she did appear there was a stillness about her, a deliberate composure, as though she had paused to arrange herself in some way.

She didn't say anything. Across the long room, their eyes met. Judith laid down the book. She said, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘That was…’ Hester's voice shook. She pulled herself together and started again, this time in her usual quiet and level tones. ‘That was Captain Somerville on the telephone.’

Which was bewildering. ‘Uncle
Bob?
Why is he ringing you up? Can't he get through to Upper Bickley? The phone was working yesterday.’

‘It has nothing to do with the telephone. He wanted to speak to me.’ She closed the door behind her and came to sit on a small upright gilded chair. ‘Something perfectly terrible has happened…’

The room was warm, but Judith felt, at once, chilled. A sense of doom dropped, like a weight, into her stomach. ‘
What
has happened?’

‘Last night…a German submarine breached the defences of Scapa Flow. Most of the Home Fleet were at sea, but the
Royal Oak
was there, in the harbour, at anchor…She's been torpedoed, lost. Sank so quickly. Overturned…three torpedoes…impossible for anybody below decks to escape…’

Ned's ship. But not Ned. Ned was all right. Ned would have survived.

‘…about four hundred of the ship's company are believed to be safe…the news hasn't broken yet. Bob says I must tell Biddy before she hears it on the wireless. He wants me to go and tell her. He couldn't bear her to be told, by him, over the telephone. I have to go and tell her…’

For the second time, Hester's voice faltered. Her beautifully manicured hand came up to brush away tears that had not even fallen. ‘I am touched that he thought of me, but yet I would rather he had asked any other person in the world…’

She had not wept. She was not going to weep.

Judith swallowed, and made herself say it. ‘And Ned?’

Hester shook her head. ‘Oh, my dear child, I am so dreadfully sorry.’

And it was not until then that the truth — lying in wait, always there — finally pounced, and Judith knew that what Hester Lang was telling her was that Ned Somerville was dead.