Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (13 page)

'Well, we'll think about it,' said Mary, taken aback at the assurance of her firstborn. 'I'll talk to your dad tonight and we'll see if we can hear of something.'

Meanwhile, Francis had called at the vicarage and had a few words with the vicar about his new headmaster. To tell the truth, the good vicar himself was beginning to have some misgivings about the new appointment, and agreed to speak to Waterman that week.

'I'm taking my two girls away as soon as I can arrange it,' said Francis as he said his farewells on the vicarage doorstep. 'And you'll find that other folk in Beech Green will be doing the same, sir, unless things alter.'

And the vicar, watching the thatcher's broad back vanish between the Wellingtonias that lined the vicarage drive, sighed heavily. He recognised righteous wrath when he saw it.

To Dolly, now twelve years old, that autumn seemed a time of upheaval and change. She was amazed to hear from her father that he was making plans to transfer her to Fairacre School next term. For her part, she quite liked Mr Waterman, though not with the ardour that the older girls felt for him. Already gaining the cool wisdom that was to be her mainstay in life, the younger child recognised the headmaster's folly as well as his good intentions, but felt sorry that his overtures were so rudely flouted by the boys. She enjoyed his lessons, appreciated his love of poetry and nature, and was beginning to wonder if she too might be a teacher one day.

She knew little of Fairacre except that the school was much the same size as Beech Green's and that it stood near the church. The headmaster had been there for a year or two, had a grown-up family, a jolly, bustling wife who took the needlework lessons, and shared her husband's passion for the local hunt. They always walked a pair of hounds, which frequently burst joyfully into the schoolroom, and on the days when the hunt met near Fairacre, the schoolchildren were allowed to follow on foot. It all sounded happy enough, but it was strange, and Dolly did not like changes.

From her father's manner, though, she realised that the affair was settled, and she made no demur. Ada was found a modest post in the draper's shop in Caxley owned by Jenny North's young man and his father. This stroke of good fortune was brought about by Jenny herself, who recognised a quick bright assistant when she saw one, and knew that Ada's pretty face would attract more business.

It was arranged that the girl should live with Francis's parents and walk daily to the shop in the High Street, not far from the school which she and Dolly had first attended. Sunday was the only day of the week when she could get home, and the grandparents promised to bring her in their old trap or send her with an obliging neighbour.

'But what I really want,' said Ada, eyes shining, 'is a new safety bicycle like Miss North's. Then I could go from here each day, couldn't I, mum?'

'Ah well,' said Mary indulgently, 'you save your wages and see how it goes. I reckon you're a lucky girl to have everything fall out so nice for you.'

The house seemed very quiet without Ada's boisterous presence, and little Frank was promoted to her empty bed in Dolly's room. Dolly was glad of his company, although he was usually fast asleep when she crept up at night, a pink and white cherub with tousled dark curls.

He woke early, and Dolly first discovered her ability to weave stories to amuse the little boy. He liked best one about a naughty child called Tom whose adventures continued in serial form for weeks on end. Years later, Dolly Clare revived Tom's adventures for the amusement of many schoolchildren.

Frank, at nearly four years of age, was increasingly dear to Dolly. She took him with her wherever she could, and was already looking forward to taking him to school at Beech Green after Christmas, when the ultimatum had been given about the move to Fairacre. Now someone else would have to be found to take Frank to school, for Fairacre was too far away for his short legs, and in any case, the teaching which he would get with Jenny North perfectly satisfied Francis and Mary. Time enough to think of Fairacre for young Frank, they told each other, when he was big enough to go into the headmaster's class.

'And if I knows anything about it,' said Francis, 'there'll be a different headmaster sitting in that chair by that time!'

Both parents thought a great deal about their son's future, and Francis was delighted to find that, young as the child was, he already showed an interest in the straw, the knives and hazel spars which one day, Francis hoped, would be the tools of his honourable trade.

They were all glad of the child's gay prattle during that period of autumn gloom, for, besides Ada's absence, other circumstances cast a shadow. The war, which had seemed all but won in September, now took a turn for the worse, and fighting flared up again, on a scattered front, and with renewed bitterness.

As Christmas approached, anxiety grew. On December 22nd it was announced that thirty thousand more mounted men would be sent overseas. Among them, this time, was young Albert Davis, and there was much sadness in the little home. It looked as if the Christmas of 1900 was to be as gloomy as the year before.

The sight of her friend Emily, her face mottled with crying and her eyes puffy and red, brought home suddenly to young Dolly the widespread wretchedness of war, in contrast to the excitement and glory which had so enthralled her a year earlier. She pondered on this new revelation of war's grim side one morning in the Christmas holidays, as she stood by the kitchen copper, watching the clothes boiling gently, the suds sighing up and down like someone breathing. Death was a fearful thing and an ugly one. She remembered the horror of the corpses in the butcher's shop at Caxley, and shuddered. Only that morning she had come across a squashed wren on the road outside their gate—a small round pile of flattened feathers with its tail neatly erect upon it. She had watched that wren, for many weeks, running up and down and in and out of the thorn hedge, and rejoiced in its perky two inches of feathered vitality. And now it lay, stilled for ever, a pathetic scrap, as neat and tidy in death as in life.

To think that men could set out to reduce each other to that dreadful condition made the child feel cold with revulsion, as she prodded the steaming linen with the copper stick. It was bad enough to have Christmas overshadowed, to have to endure the loss of Ada's company, to face the ordeal of changing schools, and to see the Davises—and particularly dear Emily—suffer so, without this final overpowering horror of death to torment her.

Later, she wondered if those black thoughts had been something in the nature of a premonition. For, before a month had passed, death was to come very close to Dolly Clare, setting a grim mark upon that little household which even time itself could never completely remove.

O
NE
morning in January 1901 Dolly awoke first. It was still dark and she could hear her father and mother moving about downstairs getting ready for the day. Usually, young Frank woke when they stirred and insinuated himself into Dolly's bed hoping for more stories.

But this morning he lay heavily asleep, drawing deep snoring breaths that at first amused his sleepy sister.

'Wake up, Frank,' she called at length. 'You're snoring like an old piggy!'

There was no reply.

Dolly began to whistle a tune that he called their 'waking up' song, a modified version of the army reveille, but there was no response from the sleeping child.

She climbed out of bed and padded across the cold ancient boards to peer at her brother. He seemed much as usual, as far as she could tell in the dim light, but when she put her hand on his forehead to push back his hair she found it hot and wet with sweat. Frightened, she ran downstairs to the lamp-lit room where the smells of breakfast rose from the stove.

'Frank's bad,' she told her parents, and followed them up the narrow staircase, shaking with cold and fear.

The candles were lit, and Mary and Frank leant over the bed. The child woke and smiled at them, and Dolly's heart was comforted.

'He don't look too bad to me,' said Francis. 'Keep him in bed today, my love. He's just got a bit of a chesty cold.'

'He will keep taking his scarf off,' said Mary anxiously. 'And it was that bitter yesterday when he was out in the garden.'

She looked at her son closely.

'D'you reckon we should get the doctor?' she asked hesitantly. Doctors cost money, and were not called unnecessarily to the Clare household. Besides, she did not want Francis to think her unduly pernickety, but Frank had never ailed anything before, and this seemed a severe type of fever.

'You let him he there today,' repeated Francis. 'I'll get home in good time, and if he don't seem to have picked up, we'll send for doctor then.'

He kissed his womenfolk, bade them cheer up, and set off for work.

Frank slept most of the day, making the same alarming noise which had woken Dolly. Mary Clare's fears were calmed by Mrs Davis, who assured her that her own children had often suffered such symptoms, and a day in bed usually cured them.

'Believe me, my dear,' she told the anxious mother, 'that little 'un's all right. You knows what children are—up one minute, down the next. It's because he's the only boy you're worrying so. You see, tomorrow he'll be fairly.'

But when Francis came home that night he thought otherwise. Dolly had spent most of the day by the bedside, shaken by doubts, and only half-believing the comfort given by Mrs Davis. When she saw her father's face, her terror grew even greater.

'You cut along and get the doctor, Doll,' he said. And Dolly fled through the darkening village for help.

Bronchitis was diagnosed, and the child was moved downstairs to a makeshift bed on the sofa, drawn close to the stove where a kettle steamed for two agonising nights and days.

Mary never left his side for the whole of that time. She sat white-faced and very silent, ministering to the unconscious child's needs, and watching his every movement with awful concentration. When she spoke to Dolly, it was with such tenderness that the child could scarcely bear it.

Dolly was thankful that it was the school holidays and that she could be there to help in the house and prepare the simple meals that, in fact, none of them had the heart to eat. Throughout the time that she worked, she prayed so vehemently that her head ached with effort. She tried to will God to make Frank better. Surely, she told herself, He wouldn't let him die! Not a little boy like that, who'd done nothing wrong! If men at war were killed, it was understandable, for they knew what they were doing, and God, she supposed, took some of them simply because men did die in wars. But there was no reason why Frank should be so sacrificed. Her distracted thoughts followed each other round and round in a demented circle, and all the time the prayers went up, and she saw them, in imagination, as an invisible vapour rising through the kitchen ceiling, and then the thatch, and finally the lowering grey winter clouds, spiralling their way heavenwards to that omnipotent Being in whose hands the life of little Frank was held.

On the third night, while Dolly slept above, the child slipped away, one hand in each of his parents'. He had never regained consciousness, but there was nothing to show that death was so close. He gave a little hiccup, and the harsh breathing which had dominated the house, quietly stopped. The silence had an icy quality about it, and for a stunned moment the stricken parents were powerless to move.

Then, across the motionless body of their son, their eyes met. Francis took Mary in his arms, and their bitter grief began.

The day of the funeral was iron-cold. A light sprinkling of snow whitened the churchyard, throwing the gaping black hole, awaiting the small coffin, into sharp relief.

In Dolly Clare's memory that day was etched for ever in stark black and white. The sad little family stood watching the coffin being lowered into the icy earth. A bunch of snowdrops trembled upon the lid, as frail and pure as the child within.
Clad in heavy mourning, Dolly remembered that other family she had pitied, so long ago it seemed, on the sunlit afternoon of the Diamond Jubilee. The bare black elm trees were outlined against a sky heavy with snow to come. Black spiked railings round a tomb nearby were tipped with snow, and from the church porch a row of footprints blackened the snow where the mourners' feet had passed. No colour, no warmth, no sunshine, no movement, comforted the spirit at that poignant parting, and Dolly remembered, with sharp intensity, the feeling of loss which had shaken her when she had kissed her brother's forehead, as cold and hard as marble, a few hours before. In the utter negation of death lay its chief terror.

In the weeks that followed, Mary Clare remained calm and unusually gentle with her family. After the first few hours of grief, she showed little sign of her loss. The neighbours shook their heads over her.

'She ought to cry, that she ought!' they told each other. 'That poor lamb's been buried over a week and she ain't shed a tear. 'Tis unnatural! She'll suffer for it, you'll see!'

There was certainly something uncanny, as well as heroic, about Mary's composure, but Francis was glad of it. His own tears were too near the surface for him to have endured his wife's emotion bravely.

It was perhaps as well for Dolly that her departure to Fairacre followed hard on the heels of this tragedy. Great was her joy when Emily told her that she too was starting at Fairacre School, and they could begin the new adventure together.

They set off through shallow snow on the first day of the term, Dolly clad in her mourning black and Emily, in gay contrast, in a bright scarlet coat which had once been her sister's.

They carried bacon sandwiches for their midday meal, and an apple apiece from Mrs Davis's store. The clatter of their strong nailed boots was muffled by the snow as they tramped along, and their breath steamed as they discussed what lay ahead.

'I knows about half of them anyway,' said Emily, seeking comfort. 'There's the Willets and the Pratts. I've played with them sometimes, and they said Mr Wardle's all right if you don't give him no cheek.'