Long Lankin (32 page)

Mrs. Campbell’s turned up with some shopping and a great big steak-and-kidney pie for dinner. The pastry’s an inch thick. She said I had to wrap it up in tinfoil and put it in the oven on number five for half an hour. I’ve never put the flippin’ oven on. Do you just stick a match in? What if I blow the house up?

Everything’s messy. Dennis has left his cars all over the place. Mrs. Campbell said I should tidy up and do the dishes, but I can’t find the cloth, and why should I pick up Dennis’s rubbish, anyway? I thought I’d do the lino in the kitchen, but when I got the mop out, it had some dried sick on it, so I just stuck it back in the bucket in the corner. Mum’ll sort it all out later.

I shall have to take Cora and Mimi back to London myself, as soon as Mimi is up on her feet again, but will Harry be there? Cora says there is a public house called the Half Moon where the landlord will pass on a message to her father. I should have been connected to the telephone when I had the chance. Hugh Mansell would let me use his or, failing that, Geoffrey Treasure.

Just a few more years, that’s all it would have taken. Once I have gone, this house will sink back into the marshes where it belongs, from where it should never have risen up in the first place, and one day they will shut up the church forever. Nobody will come down to this wilderness again. He will not cross the water, and it will all be over — all be over.

Everything was all right until they came.

I couldn’t believe it when Cora turned up at the back door. She looked washed out.

“I couldn’t stay there a minute longer,” she said. “Auntie gave me this other letter to post to me dad. I did it on the way up. Oh, and she took Mr. Scaplehorn’s tin box.”

I poured us out some of Mrs. Campbell’s Lucozade.

“Blimey!” I said. “Was she cross with you?”

“Dunno,” said Cora. “She ain’t said a blimmin’ thing about it. She’s just going round looking miserable as sin. Mimi ain’t right yet, neither. It’s like a wet weekend in June down there.”

“That’s it, then, is it?” I said. “What are we going to do now?”

“Well, I was thinking on the way up. This Haldane Thorston bloke — do you reckon he’d tell us anything about it? What’s he like?”

“I don’t know really. He’s not like the other people down the Patches. He speaks with this posh voice. You wouldn’t think he’d talk like that just to look at him, you know. He’s got a big beard and old clothes and boots on, and he’s always doing his garden. I asked Mum about him once, and she said that she’d heard Mr. Thorston had had an uncle who’d made a lot of money in India and that this uncle paid for him to go away to boarding school, then to university. But Mr. Thorston didn’t do anything with all the stuff he’d learned. He just came back to Bryers Guerdon and married some girl and had loads of kids. Remember, three of them died in the First World War?”

“Yeah, rotten,” said Cora. “Anyway, why don’t we go and see him? There’d be no harm, would there? He can only tell us to push off.”

“Yeah, could do. You haven’t been down the Patches yet, have you?”

Pete came whizzing in, almost back to his old self again, not that he’d been really ill like everybody else — most probably stuck two fingers down his throat to make himself sick and get the attention.

“You going down the Patches, then?” said Pete. “Can I come?”

“Yeah, all right, mate.”

We found Mum on the settee in the sitting room, with her eyes closed and Pamela fidgety on her lap.

“Can we go out?” I asked her. Mum half opened her eyes and said Auntie Barbara was going to come later and get Dennis and Terry to go over there, so it was all right — she’d manage.

We went towards North Fairing. The houses petered out and the road narrowed until the footpath gave way to muddy banks on either side, forcing us to walk on the pitted tarmac. Above our heads, the treetops met in a high rustling arch.

A little way into this green tunnel, the right bank sloped downwards into a wall, the brickwork dotted with small purple flowers and the lacy fingers of tiny ferns. After twenty feet or so, we stopped in front of a pair of tall wrought-iron gates, standing open, a lovely garden spreading out beyond them. Three weeping willows cast their huge round shadows onto a lush green lawn that swept down to an elegant cream-coloured house, its walls almost hidden by cascades of pink roses.

“Close your mouth,” Roger said, “or you’ll swallow a fly. That’s North End, where Dr. Meldrum lives. You know, he was at the cricket with Mrs. Meldrum and Caroline.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Dr. Meldrum came to Guerdon Hall when I was out of sorts. I heard him and Auntie Ida talking in the room when they thought I was asleep. Did you know this is where the Eastfields lived, before Dr. Meldrum moved here — you know, Auntie’s husband’s family?”

“Well, I’ll be — blimey — I never knew.”

“Yeah, this was their house —’one of those families that always seemed to be bathed in sunlight,’ Auntie said. ‘A golden family’— how lovely. Fancy being a golden family, a golden family in a beautiful cream-coloured house. The father was a colonel in the army.”

“That Captain James Eastfield, whose name’s on the memorial in the church,” said Roger, “the one who was killed in the Great War . . . this must’ve been his home then. . . .”

We moved forward and found ourselves standing in the cold, dark shadow of the wall.

“Roger,” I said, “Auntie Ida said to the doctor she shouldn’t have married Will Eastfield. She said she only married him because he looked like his brother. That Captain James Eastfield — I suppose that was the brother she was talking about. It was secret. Nobody knew anything was going on between them.”

Rosalie and I are going up to town together. I am walking to North End, and then Hedley is taking us to Daneflete station in the trap. Rosalie is all set to buy a new hat at Rachel Byng’s in South Molton Street; then we will go on to the theatre before spending the night with Mother in Onslow Gardens.

It is all so delicious. I find I must keep biting my tongue to stop myself mentioning his name. Yesterday I couldn’t conceal a ridiculous grin when she talked about him coming home on leave — only another week — one more week — seven more days — one hundred and sixty-eight hours (give or take twelve hours or so for delays).

I am pretty certain Will knows. He gives me rather an odd look sometimes. I believe he may have seen us in the garden. He signed up the day after his birthday apparently — keen as mustard. Decided not to go up to Oxford until after the war. Starts training next month. It would be grand if they could be in the same unit together, and with Roland, too. That would be splendid luck. But of course, they may not put new recruits in with the chaps who have been out since Mons. I don’t know what they do.

I walk down the lane. There are bluebells among the trees near the cinder path. I bend to pick a small bunch for Rosalie and hear the creak of a bicycle as it comes towards me. The creak repeats again and again. I look up and see the boy from the Daneflete telegraph office. At least I see the top of his cap. His head is down, and he rides fast.

I drop the bluebells. They fall among the others, and everything swims together in a kind of haze. It really is far too hot for a coat. I should have left it at home — Agnes did say twice.

What an unpleasant job for a young lad like that to have to do.

Of course, there are several other houses on the way to North Fairing, not just North End. The Bendalls at Whitebeams have a son, Nicholas, in the army, and there are the Thorstons, of course. They lost George and young Hal within a day of each other on the Somme. Roland was their officer. He said he had to down half a bottle of whisky before he could bring himself to write the letter of condolence. Frank Thorston, the youngest, is still out there. Then there’s Walter Paget from Lamp Cottage. He’s in the navy. Who else? Ah, yes, Albert Hatton — no, he is in hospital and will be returning home soon.

I will be calm. One hundred and sixty-eight hours (roughly).

I walk on down the lane. The boy on the bicycle passes me and touches his cap but doesn’t look up. The creak repeats and repeats and fills my head, then fades, then there comes a moment when I think I hear it but possibly don’t. My legs feel a little hollow. I am dizzy, but it’s quite warm. I really should not have worn my coat.

My bag is heavy. Mother insisted I bring her the two books she left behind last time she was here. I lift my chin. The gateposts of North End are just a short way off. I deliberately keep my head up. I don’t want to look down and see the marks of bicycle wheels in the gravel. My heart is beginning to race rather too quickly.

I really, truly do not wish the Thorstons to suffer yet another loss, or the Bendalls, or Mrs. Paget; I truly truly do not, but . . .

He must know that I will say yes this time.

I stand at the gatepost, just about hidden from the house by the willows. I lean against it. The solid brickwork holds me up. I find I am biting my fingernail.

The parlour maid, Betty, stands between the pillars at the open front door with a small envelope in her hand. She waits for a long time, rubs her forehead with trembling fingers, then turns and calls into the house. A girl comes to the door, her glossy fair hair caught in a loose knot above the lace collar of her green silk dress — Rosalie. The maid points down the path and shows her the envelope. The girl’s hand flies up to her mouth. They stand there for quite a while before they go in.

Ten minutes, fifteen minutes go by.

One by one, the curtains are drawn shut and the light in the house goes out.