Jubilee (8 page)

Robert

Camp at Nong Pladuk, Thailand, February 1943

Dear Evie,

I look at the city boys with their thin arms and hollow chests and know each sleeper we lay will cost a life. I thank God for those years of good food and physical work at home. The times
Matthew and I carried food pails to animals or drove in wooden posts. We have muscle and stamina.

When we worked at home there’d be a cool breeze blowing off the Downs. We’d bring a flask of tea or a stone bottle of ginger beer. Sometimes at harvest Mum would walk up with a
jug of cool lemonade for us. I wonder how my mother is now. She wrote to me before Singapore fell. You must have helped her write that letter, Evie, because I recognized your writing in places. I
lost what she sent me. But I still have that wonderful letter of yours, Evie. It’s about the only thing I didn’t lose on the journey from Singapore. Sometimes we see Thai kids playing
and I wonder what you’re doing at home. It’s strange to think of you sleeping in our old bedroom, playing with our old toys. But it’s a good thought.

A week later. We’ve been moved from the railway itself to a camp further up-river.

And there are new guards. They seem to speak a different language: perhaps they’re Koreans. On a brighter note (perhaps the only bright note) we have a pet! It’s a baby macaque, a
boy. Macgregor found him in the jungle and even his stern Scottish heart melted at the sight. He’s something we can look after and we seem to need this, even though it means we give him
rations (we’re allowed to trade what we are paid for our labour for food). Perhaps it reminds Matthew and me of the animals we’ve cared for at home. We’ve called him
Stanley.

Two nights later

Little Stanley has already earned his rations, Evie. When we came into the hut to sleep he started to shriek and would not stop shrieking. The men around us were cursing and
shouting at us to stop the bl..dy racket. He seemed to be staring at my mat so I pulled it up. Curled underneath it was a scorpion, couldn’t make out what kind as it was dark. Extra rations
for Stanley tomorrow!

Following night

I try, I try so hard, Evie, to keep the dark away, to concentrate on what’s good: the comradeship, the jokes, the conversations, but days like this make me wonder if
it’s worth the effort. Clinging on to the light seems too much.

Evie

Golden Jubilee, June 2002.

If Evie closed her eyes it could be twenty-five years ago. Or fifty. The Union Jacks. The marquee. The breeze picking up, making the bunting whirr above them and the children
shouting. Time passed. Years went by but they’d all come back to this part of the green to mark the Queen’s reign.

What did the Queen make of all the Union Jacks and balloons, the commemorative china and the cakes? Was she flattered, overcome? God knows Elizabeth II had had her share of family woes:
break-ups, flighty in-laws and cousins, fires. But she’d never lost a child; never that, so she could still be considered fortunate.

Lost. Once again Evie paused to consider the implications of that word. Lost suggested that you’d put something down and forgotten where it was. It suggested that the fault somehow lay
with you. Had she been at fault at the party twenty-five years ago? These days parents seemed to keep their children under closer scrutiny. It hadn’t been like that a quarter of a century
ago; not in this village, at least. Children had come and gone pretty well at will, subject only to school hours and household chores. And Jessamy had been at a village party, surrounded by
friends. She’d been ten, not three: old enough to remember repeated warnings about not going off with strangers.

As she had so many times before Evie ran through everything that Jess had done in the days and weeks leading up to the Jubilee. And there was nothing. Her daughter had been playing outside quite
a bit; but it was early summer, with long, light evenings. And Martha had been out on the farm, keeping an eye on things. Officially Martha was the shepherd, but the role had always encompassed
more than watching sheep. Martha helped with the cattle, the crops. She was everywhere. Too much so, perhaps. If it hadn’t been for the centuries binding the Winter and Stourton families
together Evie would have found a way to pay her off years back. But she had never been able to do this.

No, if there’d been strangers hanging around Jessamy, Martha would have noticed them. Nor could the gypsies have had anything to do with this. The afternoon after the disappearance police
had been seen leaving the caravans the gypsies lived in during the summer months. That night every pane of glass in the caravans’ windows had been shattered. Evie had walked past to see them
picking the shards off the grass. Her cheeks had burned and she’d wanted to tell them she was sorry. Rosie was helping her mother to pick up the glass. Her feet were bare. Suddenly
she’d squealed and held up her foot, a red drop of blood already forming where she’d stood on a shard. Evie had walked on.

Sometimes she woke from her sleep convinced she knew what had happened to Jessamy, had seen it all in her dreams, clear and distinct. But even as she grasped for the images they curled up round
the edges.

The wind scooped up paper plates and spun them over the lawn. It blew scraps of conversation, loudspeaker announcements and children’s shrieks out of earshot. Tablecloths fluttered as it
caught them. Evie felt on edge. But of course she did. They’d all been so kind to her, giving her tea and finding her somewhere more sheltered to sit, but it was impossible for her to settle
here this afternoon. She scoured the green, walking from group to group, looking, always looking, sometimes turning on her heel as though someone might just be slipping out of view behind her.
Perhaps a child eating a bun or the laughter of a group of young lads would trigger a memory. It could be anything, anything at all.

And if Jessamy were going to reappear this was surely where she’d come, to the same place from where she’d vanished twenty-five years earlier. A portal, that’s what this party
might be, a gateway to the past. Evie was proud of herself for having picked that word up from a children’s science fiction programme.

She pictured a parallel universe in which Jessamy had not disappeared, in which she was still at this party with her mother, organizing the sack races or pouring cups of tea, chatting to people
she’d known all her life. For the first years of Jess’s disappearance it had been easy to imagine that her daughter still moved beside her. Evie had seen her outline clearly. A quarter
of a century on, the details seemed to have blurred. Would Jess have worn her hair short? Would she have put on a dress this afternoon or would the cold wind have made her favour trousers?

Jessamy must be here, somewhere: by the face-painting stand, or looking at the display of Coronation photographs beside the marquee. It was just a question of willing her to appear, wanting it
hard enough so that the atoms would rearrange themselves into her form. Time was supposed to be relative so perhaps Jessamy’s ten-year-old self was still actually here. If only she could call
out to her daughter, warn her not to leave the park . . .

Enough.

Pilot wagged his tail as her gaze fell on the park gate. Dogs weren’t allowed on this fenced-off section of the green. That had changed since the Silver Jubilee party, when spaniels and
Labradors had accompanied their families to celebrate the monarch’s twenty-five years. The dog caught Evie’s eye and his tail thumped against the grass. She longed for his silent
company, his warm head against her sandaled foot, his breath comforting on her bare skin. As a group of latecomers pushed the gate open he raised his head and pricked his ears. Did he, like her,
check to see whether Jessamy was with them? But of course he wouldn’t have a clue who Jessamy was. Once, foolishly, Evie had given Pilot the still-unwashed nightdress her daughter had worn
the night before the 1977 Jubilee party. He’d sniffed it with his usual gentlemanly politeness. ‘Find, Pilot!’ she’d urged him. ‘Find her for me!’ But traces of
Jessamy would long since have vanished. He’d given his tail a single wag and dropped his handsome black head to the flagstones, confusion obvious in his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she’d
said. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

As though looking at herself from the outside she saw what others must see: a batty, ageing woman with foolish hopes, who held her grief behind a mask of control so that some probably considered
her reserved. She just couldn’t cry in front of anyone else, not even Freya.

The wind seemed to sharpen its edge and Evie could feel her cheeks burning in its rasp. She lifted her head to see if clouds were massing on top of the down but the sky was still clear. In this
light the hill was etched sharply and it looked like a wave about to crash down upon them, wiping away the flags and balloons, the cake with the Queen’s head on it and the children running
races, sweeping them all away in a morass of red, blue and white. She should warn them of the calamity close at hand. They wouldn’t believe her. She wouldn’t have believed it either,
twenty-five years ago. Despite the cool air, she felt perspiration glow on her brow.

Come back now, darling. Walk out of that tea tent with a plate of chocolate brownies or a scone and jam. It’s not too late.
She closed her eyes and opened them again. Nothing.

‘Evie?’ Freya stood beside her. ‘How are you coping, my dear?’

She managed a nod.

‘They were needing help in the tea tent. I said I’d find volunteers.’

She rose; she’d be no worse off in the tent. Why wouldn’t Jessamy come and find her in there? It had, after all, been the last place she’d been sighted before her disappearance
at the previous Jubilee.

Evie followed Freya across the field. Around them children whooped as they balanced eggs on spoons. Adults chatted. It all looked so innocent. Things in this village always did.

The hedge beside the tea tent rustled. Evie caught a glimpse of eyes, blue, mocking: the gypsy children, travellers, they were called now, standing out in the lane. The two smallest were
Rosie’s. Just like their parents all those years ago they wouldn’t come into the park. Perhaps they’d always regard themselves as outsiders, not part of the pack. Who could blame
them? Some in Craven would always blame them for Jessamy’s disappearance although they’d been questioned again and again and their cars and caravans checked for her fingerprints. With
nothing found.

Evie shivered again. Perhaps it would have been better to have stayed at home today. But it would have been cowardly. And part of her had been so sure something would happen here today;
she’d imbued the date with such significance, as though the celebration bunting and the gilded carriages in the Mall could magic Jessamy back to her.

She was aware of people looking at her as she took up her place in the tea tent. They must realize the significance of this date, too. Some of them hadn’t even been living in this village
when Jessamy had vanished, but knowledge of the disappearance had been passed on to them along with information about post office opening hours, where to find a cleaner, and the best place to buy
eggs and honey.
There’s that old woman up at Winter’s Copse, Evie Winter. Her daughter went missing. Never found.
She could tell when the newcomers had found out about Jessamy,
tell by the sudden interest mixed with awkwardness in their expressions when they met her in the post office.

Evie’s mind went back to her own arrival with Charlie, to how the villagers had come to examine the evacuee children in the village hall. The older children, especially the boys, had been
taken first. Useful on the farm. She and Charlie had almost been the last to be selected because they were twins and the teacher wouldn’t let them be separated. Not everyone had room for two
children. They’d stood in the hall and people had walked past them saying kind things but leaving them there. Evie had felt like an unfavoured animal in a zoo.

She sliced cakes and poured tea in the marquee for an hour until one of the young mothers from the new estate came to relieve her. She suddenly knew she had to go home. And immediately. As she
walked out of the tent towards the gate, Freya, now manning the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey stand, raised an arm in farewell. Freya would explain her disappearance to anyone who needed to know.
She’d already told Evie that she shouldn’t go to the party, that she should drive out for the day or go for a long walk, perhaps even go to France for the long weekend.

Martha sat on one of the straw bales set up around the edge of the field, watching the children playing football, a look of complete concentration on her face. Perhaps she too was remembering
Jessamy running races and playing with her friends in this very park. Evie continued towards the gate and untied Pilot’s lead. They walked up the lane towards the farm passing the houses with
their delicate brick – and stonework walls and thatched roofs. She passed the village hall, a modern structure on the site of the old hall where in another lifetime she and Charlie had
arrived as evacuees from London. As she always did she peered up the alleys in case Jessamy was standing there in the shadows. But why would a grown woman hide in the gloom?

As Evie walked the breeze seemed to pick up her foolish hopes and disperse them.

Robert

Camp at Nong Pladuk, Thailand, March 1943

Dear Evie,

I was a fool to hope things might be going better. I just don’t know how to tell you about what happened today.

A Korean guard came past the workshop where we were sharpening tools, Stanley the monkey was playing quietly beside us with some strips of bamboo. The guard stopped. I thought he was enjoying
the sight of the animal. Sometimes there are moments when you can see that we’re all fellow human beings. I bent my head down towards the bench. A shadow flickered over me. I turned just
quickly enough to see the sweep of the guard’s gun. He skewered the monkey on his bayonet. Stanley took one last gasp of air and looked at us. I thought I’d be safe with you, he seemed
to say. Then he gave a shudder, and some blood ran out of his mouth. I thought Matthew might strike the guard, I clutched at his arm.