Mad Joy (19 page)

I would never have guessed it, but it seemed it was Howard’s idea to celebrate the advance into France with a party in the grounds of Buckleigh House. He let the Women’s Volunteer Service do most of the organizing, and it was to be held towards the end of June.

Although I liked the idea, I found myself becoming quite anxious about it as the day approached. I wasn’t cut out for this lady of Buckleigh House lark. Having to speak to people before I was spoken to wasn’t my thing at all. I felt increasingly uncomfortable about myself. I seemed to lack all social graces and even, at times, simple courtesy. I was clumsy and oafish whenever I was in the village. When I bumped into Miss Wallock I asked after her elder sister, only to find she had been dead two months; and I cooed with delight at Spit Palmer’s tummy, asking about the due date, when she had merely put on a bit of weight after her last baby. Celia would never have been so clumsy. Or if she had, she would have known how to wriggle out of it, or turn it to her advantage. It would all have weighed so lightly on her. Of course they wouldn’t have liked her any more for it, but they would have talked about her a lot less.

Maybe Howard saw my concern, for he said to me on the
morning of the party, ‘Do all the organizing you like, but this afternoon I don’t want you to lift a finger. Just stand at the front of the house and relax.’

The rain started, and it didn’t let off until three o’clock. Mrs Bubb ran around like a woman possessed, making last minute notices reading ‘Please Remove Your Shoes’ in case they all came in the house by mistake for the lavatory (which she had clearly labelled in the back porch).

People started to arrive, tiptoeing over the gravel and the sodden grass in their Sunday best. Mrs Emery was the first to appear, and I shook hands with her. She was surprisingly short for a woman who had inspired constant terror, and her husband, whose sleep we had so persistently disturbed, was a quiet red-faced man who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He came fully equipped with his Punch and Judy show. Normally terrified of his wife, as the animator of Punch he seemed quite happy to beat the living daylights out of her.

The brass band showed up next, and as soon as they started to play, the sun seemed tempted out of the clouds and everyone walked with a little spring in their step.

Everything was going well until I walked past the tea stands, which ran down the side of the lawn. One woman said, ‘Go and fetch a cloth, would you, love? Only this tea’s spilt all over and the cloth’s sodden.’

I was about to turn and go in search of one, when Mrs Tribbit, the grocer’s wife, piped up, ‘Go on, it’s no good pretending you’re too good to wipe a table, Joy Burrows.’

The other women nudged her as if she might have gone too far, but Mrs Tribbit pursed her lips defiantly. ‘Don’t think I can’t remember the filth that came out of
your
mouth, my girl. Once a gypsy, always—’

‘Is there a problem?’ It was Howard.

Mrs Tribbit flushed and looked down at the table. ‘I was just saying … We need a cloth.’

‘I see. Well, if you’d like to follow me into the kitchen, I’m sure Mrs Bubb will provide you with one.’ There was not an edge of frostiness in his voice. He smiled warmly, and for Mrs Tribbit there was nothing to do but attempt a smile also, and follow him to the kitchen. I was left with the other woman, who looked away and busied herself pouring tea. I walked awkwardly over to the ‘children’s area’ where Mr Emery was still setting up and Mr Mustoe was pretending to be a clown, squirting himself in the eye and sitting on hooters. The smaller children laughed outrageously, the older children stuffed their faces with sandwiches, and the very young looked utterly bewildered. I stayed there, smiling and clapping, until a suitable time had elapsed for me to pick my way back to the house and hide.

It was easier to make a quick exit towards the Victory Garden. No one was there, and I decided to make my way to the paddock at the end and find some solace sitting against the stone wall, hidden from view.

Just as I reached the raspberry bushes I heard a loud rustle behind the runner beans. I stopped in my tracks and listened. Another rustle. This time the bean poles swayed dangerously from side to side as if someone were uprooting them.

‘Who’s there?’

No answer.

‘Who is it?’

The movement stopped. The party and its noise were way behind me now, and I felt uneasy. Slowly I tiptoed forward, as noiselessly as possible. I peeped around the edge of the runner beans and there, looking very shifty, was a large ewe.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ I asked.

She shot me one of those ‘I know absolutely nothing I’m only a sheep’ looks and bolted past me with perfect timing, knocking me right off my feet. I followed her through the fruit orchard and up to the five-bar gate at the edge of it.

‘You lost?’ I asked.

She looked at me shiftily again and, having worked out she probably couldn’t leap it, she began trying to dig under the gate. I tried to stop her, but she kept on scuffling with her hooves and her nose, butting the gate manically until her face was streaked in blood.

I sat down beside her and talked to her as gently as I could. I could smell the iron-blood and the oily sweetness of her wool. I rested my face on her side and remembered the coarse softness of a sheep pillow. I had slept with sheep during my escape. I had spent nights under the black sky with them, sandwiched between them for warmth, quietly accepted as a human lamb.

‘That’s my bloody ewe, that is!’

Turning round I saw Farmer Witchall.

‘Sorry! I was just having a shufti round your land – see what you’re growing, and that. But that’s my bloody sheep!’ He walked right up to us and put his hands on his hips when I explained how I’d found her. ‘You know what, don’t you? She’s come
five
fields to get ’ere. Broken three fences most like, and two walls she’s probably damaged – ’less she jumped ’em. And she’s still got three fields to go!’

‘Go where?’

‘After them bloody lambs, ent she?’ He jabbed a finger at a hill on the horizon. ‘See them? That’s her lambs up there.’

I looked up at the hill. Hundreds of fat lambs were dotted in the distance, all weaned from their mothers that very week. ‘She’ll find ’em an’ all, if you let her.’ He had the ewe by the scruff. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have her in the cart in no time. I was on my way back soon anyway.’

He took her off to the road, and I watched the weary ewe waddle away defeated.

At six o’clock the wretched party was still going on, and Howard came to find me in my room.

‘I’d like you to do something for me,’ he said. He stood
awkwardly in the doorway, not sure what to do with his long arms. ‘Would you come with me and do me a huge favour?’

I followed him out to the front of the house, where he spoke in a very low voice to a man in a suit.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ boomed the man. ‘Ladies and
gentlemen
!’ he said again, waiting for silence. ‘Let us give a very warm thank you to our host and hostess!’

Then Howard did something he had never done before. He took my hand, led me on to the middle of the lawn, and in front of the entire neighbourhood, in front of Mrs Tribbit and Mrs Emery and Miss Wallock and the Women’s Volunteer Service and the Home Guard and my old teachers and the evacuees, he danced with me.

Somewhere off to the side a group of musicians were playing a slow, Celtic waltz, and looking over I could see Miss Wallock with a fiddle under her chin, smiling in our direction.

There was an ancient melancholy in the music that conjured up generations of couples swaying gently together at the end of the day: on quaysides, in pubs, in barns, under the stars. He was no mean dancer, leading me with astonishing prowess about the muddied lawn, but when I looked up at Howard’s face I could see the price it had cost him to appear confident and break his own mould. Droplets of sweat on his brow, and his cheeks rigid with smiling, he was unable to look anywhere but down. I felt his hand on my back and all the tender warmth of him and what he had done. It was the music of lovers, a cunning concoction of joy and lament, and I wanted to cry for him and Gracie and for lovers everywhere kept from loving each other. I wanted to cry for all the love that could have been, for this tall, gangly man who’d loved all through the trenches, and for all the wasted years.

People were clapping: distant popping in our ears. ‘Dance with Gracie!’ I whispered.

He smiled, and walked me back to the house. The lawn filled with couples dancing.

‘Dance with her,’ I said again.

He gave a breath of a laugh and went into the kitchen to find his pipe.

The following morning I helped the children stack up the remaining chairs on the front lawn, ready to be taken back to the village hall. I was just returning to the house when Donald, one of the evacuees, dropped his stack and gave a little yelp.

‘Who’s that?’ he shouted. ‘There’s someone there!’

Running towards him and following his line of sight, I saw someone darting through the orchard. I ran over to the far end of the orchard and the five-bar gate and waited. The ewe stopped a few feet away, looking hangdog and cheated.

Already, her face was coated in fresh blood, and her fleece was matted with bits of twig and leaves and dust.

We stood studying each other for some time.

‘You love them that much?’ I said.

I unhooked the rope from the top of the gate, and watched her great grey woolly behind as she bolted past me and trundled across the next field. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I do.’

All seemed well after that, or as well as it could be with James away and in unknown danger. July passed peacefully and with the happy little landmarks that children’s growing provides. So long as James came back safely, I couldn’t imagine anything rocking our boat again. But I hadn’t bargained on another visitor late in August: one who would pose a far greater threat to my happiness.

It was just beginning to get dark when I heard the slowly beating wings of a wood pigeon as it wheeled away, heralding the crunch of footsteps on the gravel outside. I looked up from my darning, head cocked, waiting. People continued to speak jauntily on the wireless as if nothing had happened. Howard must have let him in, because I heard voices in the hall and no sound of a bell.

‘Look who’s come to see you!’ said Howard, as he showed the visitor into our living room.

A foolish hope that it might be James – home for some unexpected reason – fluttered and then sank back into my chest. There was a burst of canned laughter from the wireless as I saw Philip Bird standing anxiously before me, and Howard went to turn it off.

‘Oh,’ I managed.

‘I’m sorry to intrude so late.’ He was flushed and troubled, and brought with him a waft of energy and manhood that the living room seemed unable to accommodate. I stood up to fetch him something: biscuits? Ovaltine? He declined all
refreshment
, but eventually took a small brandy handed to him unbidden by Howard.

‘How are you?’ I said at last, when he was settled on the sofa next to my armchair.

‘Oh, not too bad.’ He twirled his glass and frowned into it. ‘Well, actually, my mother’s very ill. That’s why I’m back this way.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ said Howard, playing the host far better than me. ‘Is it serious?’

‘Her heart. She’s had a couple of small attacks before, but this one was more serious. It doesn’t look as though she’ll … I don’t think—’

‘You poor chap. Is there anything we can do? Is she in hospital?’

‘No. The doctor’s been. Says she just has to rest.’

Howard was attentive, but I was aware that I was merely sitting there, unable to comprehend the reason for the visit, and wishing that he had not come unannounced. I would’ve liked to have heard the rest of the wireless programme.

He caught my eye, and apologized again for intruding. Then he glanced at Howard as if Howard were intruding. Then, scratching his head, he addressed me awkwardly:

‘You know I haven’t always … I’m not a very good son.’ He rubbed his hand over his face, as if he might wipe off the old one and reveal a new one. But he didn’t. ‘The fact is, I can’t stand being there. I just had to get away.’ There was the faintest hint of a sob in his last word. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.’

At this first show of emotion Howard was instantly
courteous
, but managed to find a reason to absent himself, secure in the knowledge that emotion was a woman’s business, and nothing for him to concern himself with.

As soon as he had gone I wished he hadn’t, for it was easy to see why I had once been so attracted to Philip. Despite the fat tears that now rolled down his cheeks, and the memory of his depression, he was to me an extraordinarily handsome man. I reached out a hand over the arms of our chairs, and he took it.

‘Is there someone with her?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes. A neighbour. She’s being well looked after. It’s just … I can’t stand being there. I know it’s awful, but I was wondering … I don’t know, if there was the slightest
possibility
I might stay the night? Just one night—’

‘Of course.’ I said it without thinking. He was clearly too distraught to go back tonight. And since he’d come by bus he would have to return on foot, or else Howard would have to get the cart out, and I knew he didn’t like using it in the dark. It was obvious he should stay now he was here.

‘How’s James? I still feel bad about the accident. Did he get over his injuries?’

‘Oh, that. Yes. He flew on the south coast for a bit, then got himself injured again. He’s test flying planes in India right now. Anyway, I’m sure that accident with you wasn’t
anyone’s
fault.’

‘I suppose not. There was some confusion over who had the control: him or me.’

The words hung in the air like a kestrel, absorbing more weight with each second of silence.

I could feel his hand stroking mine now. I pulled my feet up underneath me in the armchair and leaned towards him. ‘Tell me about it. You never really explained why you don’t get on with your mother.’

‘Ah! Families! Bloody families!’

I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. So I tried, ‘What’s your family like, then?’

‘My family? What’s my family like? Well, there’s a question …’ He shuffled himself towards me too, and I made sure not to look too interested in his reply, in case it stopped the flow. ‘My father died when I was eight. TB, he had. Survived the trenches, survived the flu, and died of a bloody cough!’ He paused, but still I said nothing, waiting for him to continue, hoping he would lead himself
somewhere
. ‘That left us all up the creek. Mum had no work and four children. She’d had five, but my little sister died when she was two – diphtheria, it was. Beautiful little girl …’ He rocked his head back and looked up at the corner of the ceiling, and I could almost see the little girl’s face he looked so wistful.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Broke everyone’s heart. Mum … she never got over it. Never. We were none of us any good after that. Especially Daisy …’

He broke off completely, and I seemed to have lost him.

‘Daisy?’

He swung his eyes round to look at me, as if I were a stranger who had just walked in the room. ‘Yes – Daisy. She got it worst.’ He rubbed his temples slowly, and I waited. ‘See, she came after Ivy. And no one could replace Ivy. Perhaps if she’d been a boy … But our Dad doted on Daisy – he loved her, and that seemed to make things worse. There was something not right about her, Mum said. Something not right about her, and that made Dad look after her more. But she wasn’t having any of it. She already had a son who was simple – Sidney, my older brother – and she couldn’t handle another one. And when Dad died that was it. She made Daisy go into a home. Just because she had one daft son already and because the poor little mite had
the bad luck to come after Ivy, and because she could never
be
Ivy, and because Dad wasn’t there to stop her. Only …’

I began to feel queasy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the ugly story of his family’s unhappiness.

‘… she didn’t take Daisy to the home.’

A huge wave of relief passed over me. I didn’t want poor Daisy in a home because of that foolish woman’s grief. I didn’t want the woman I’d met to be responsible for such a crime. Suddenly his head was bent forward and he was crying again.

‘I did,’ he whispered.

My mouth was suddenly full of saliva, and I couldn’t stop it coming. I felt I was going to be sick. I didn’t want to see him crying. I put my hand to my lips, but really I wanted to put it over his, too.

‘
You
did?’

‘She made me. Mum made me take her. She said I was to tell her I was taking her to a nice place for tea, and then I was to leave her. And I was eight. What could I do? She said we were poor and with Dad gone and us all too young to work we’d all starve, and Sid was fit for nothing, and another one like Sid would be the death of her. What could I do? I believed her. Though we all knew Daisy wasn’t like Sid. She wasn’t anything like Sid. But what could I do?’ He seemed to be asking me, but I could say nothing. ‘So I took her. I took her to Good Shepherd House and I left her there. And she screamed when I went. And the nuns said don’t turn back, so I didn’t, but I could hear her screaming, screaming …’ He closed his eyes. ‘I did what the nuns said, I did what my mum said, only they’re not the ones who can still hear her screaming. My own little sister, my dear, dear little sister, and I just walked … away …’ His voice by now was almost inaudible between sobs.

My agitated foot caught the base of a plant tub, and I stared down at it.

‘Perhaps … perhaps she didn’t know what had happened to
her. Perhaps she thought you hadn’t heard her, that there’d just been a terrible mistake, that you’d intended to come back and get her later. But that something had happened to you – something terrible – that prevented you from coming.’

He snivelled. ‘Maybe.’

‘Perhaps when you didn’t come, as the weeks went by, she thought that it hadn’t been a mistake after all. Perhaps she was terrified that her mother, her brothers – the people she relied upon to love her – had simply cast her out. And when she couldn’t understand why, she began to invent reasons for herself. She must be very bad, very, very bad and unlovable to have made this happen. And if she still didn’t quite believe it, the nuns made sure she did. They told her she was a wicked, wicked child and God was punishing her for not behaving, and nobody would ever love her if she didn’t brush her hair properly, clean the toilets properly, stop coughing, do what she was told.’ He stopped sobbing and looked at me. He swallowed hard.

‘And then one day, maybe she worked out that the bunch of keys which were always hanging behind the desk near the back door would magically open doors, and the two on a separate little ring would open the back door and the back gate, and that the scum who guarded them sometimes left them hanging there if called away to some trivial urgent incident like a child wetting the bed and needing six hard slaps. So perhaps in the time it took for six hard slaps, your little sister got the keys and tried them, and God was on her side because the second one fitted. Only she wasn’t quite as mad as they thought she was because she only took the two keys and closed the door quietly behind her, and so it wasn’t until morning that they noticed the child had gone. Perhaps she ran off into the woods and kept running … running …’

I had been getting louder and I had let go of his hand. I stood up now and ran from the room, knocking my darning off the
arm of the chair. I slipped on some shoes by the front door and grabbed my coat, and I ran from that house as I’d run all those years before. I headed for the road and the woods beyond, my breath heavy with panic, and I just kept on running.