Phoenix and Ashes (15 page)

But
as she looked up and down the street—and just across the street from the
garden gate, where the largest of the village pubs stood—she got the
feeling that something was not right.

But
what was it?

“Wait—”
she said to Sarah, standing beside the garden wall, staring around her, trying
to identify what it was that made the familiar street seem so unfamiliar. There
were no children playing, but that was scarcely it; first of all, it was cold
again, overcast and raw, and second, it was a school day. Little ones
wouldn’t be outside on a nasty day like this. No, it wasn’t the
absence of children—

Then,
suddenly, as the postman came around the corner, and she saw, not trousers but
a
skirt
, a post
woman
, she understood with a hideous feeling
of shock what it was that was bothering her.

There
were no men.

There
were no men anywhere to be seen.

Not
opening up the pub, not making deliveries, not making repairs, not carrying the
post.

And
suddenly, all those notices in the papers that she read without really
understanding them became solid and real in her mind. Conscription age dropped
to seventeen. Conscription age raised to fifty. No deferments for only sons,
for fathers of young children, for students. No deferment for religious
objections. No deferments except for what the War Department considered to be
“vital work in the national interest” and severe physical
impairment. Go to War or go to prison: that was your choice.

England
was a nation of women now, sprinkled with old men, boys, and those whose wounds
were too serious, too incapacitating to allow them back into the army.

She
followed Sarah, numb, feeling a kind of cold chill creeping over her as she
passed the small street of the shops and saw
women
behind the
counters,
women
making the deliveries. And in the shops—the
butcher shop had hardly anything on display, most of the bread in the bakery
was the same, heavy, rye and oat bread that she ate, and there were more bare
places in the tiny grocery than there were goods. When she contrasted those
shelves with the ones in Alison’s cellar and pantry, she was appalled.
Where was Alison getting her treats? Not in Broom—

Everywhere
there was a kind of emotional pall that had nothing to do with the weather. It
was as if there was no hope anymore in Broom—

But
for all of that, the little talk that she overheard was not about the war, not
about the lost loved ones. That bleak December when her father had died, that
was all that anyone could talk about. Who had gone, where they were, that the
war would surely soon be over—hushed whispers about the slaughter at Mons
and other places, with glances over the shoulder as if to talk of such things
would bring disaster down upon one’s own loved ones, or as if it were
treasonous to even suggest that things were not going well. Teas and
entertainments were being planned for boys in training at nearby camps, there
was talk of volunteer work, of parties to knit scarves and roll bandages—

There
was none of that now. Just sharp-voiced complaints about the price of butter
and the impossibility of getting sugar—of having to make do on thin
rations, and the talk of further privations. Of the impossibility of getting
servants, of the only help at the farm being Land Girls. Of longing for spring
“when at least we’ll have our veg garden and won’t feel the
pinch so—”

Ordinary
talk, unless you heard the barely repressed hysteria or depression under the
words, the attempt to cover up hopelessness with chatter about nothing. She
ghosted along in Sarah’s wake, and now saw the signs of actual, physical
privation in some places, of sunken cheek and waistbands too large, and realized
she wasn’t just seeing the effect of lack of luxuries, she was seeing
real hunger.

And
if that were so, in the country, where people were likely enough skirting the
rationing by hiding pigs in the forest, geese and ducks on the farm-ponds,
chickens, pigeons, and rabbits in the garden, reporting less milk than their
cows actually gave—what was it like in the city?

She
felt battered, actually battered, by revelation after cruel revelation. She
couldn’t have managed to speak to any of these familiar strangers, even
if she hadn’t been walled off from them by appearance and spell. She
didn’t
know
them. These were not her people. They were some odd
breed of changeling that looked superficially like her old neighbors, but who
were mere shells, filled with despair, over which a cracking veneer of
commonplace was held in place by a fading will to pretend that everything was
all right.

Sarah
glanced soberly at her from time to time, but said nothing. She only led the
way to her little cottage, propped up on either side by larger Tudor buildings,
and opened the door to let them both inside, hanging up her plain brown wool
shawl on the peg beside the door.

Once
inside, Eleanor put her back to the wall and stared at Sarah incredulously.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she blurted, wanting nothing more
than to bolt back to the safety of her kitchen where the privations of the
years had not penetrated, and where she could pretend that nothing outside the
walls had changed.

“Would
you have believed me?” Sarah countered, stirring up the fire in her tiny
fireplace and putting another log on it. “Could I have told you in any
way that you would have believed? You’ve been seeing some of the papers,
now and again, I’m sure.”

Eleanor
collapsed into the old wooden chair that Sarah indicated, hands limply in her
lap. “But—” she said, helplessly. “But that
doesn’t
tell
you—”

“Because
no one wants the truth to be printed in the papers,” Sarah said cruelly.
“If they did, it’d be like Roosha all over again. Or so them
fellows in the government think.”

“How
many?” Eleanor asked, feeling numb.

“How
many what?” Sarah responded.

“I
didn’t see any men—” she began. Sarah nodded. “Most of
them—well; we think they’re still alive, though some haven’t
been heard from in a fair while,” she said, sadly. “But then again,
it’s one thing to come home on leave when you live in London or
you’ve ready in your pocket. ‘Tis quite another when all your pay
comes home, and you haven’t the money for a train ticket when they give
you leave.” She sighed. “I don’t know but what you’ll
not recognize the names—Matt Brennan lost a leg. Ross Ashley you know
lost his hand and Alan Vocksmith his eye. Michael Kabon—that’s the
butcher that came in after you were bespelled, finding we hadn’t
one—he’s all scarred up outside and in from gas. Jack Samburs lost
an arm, Eric Whitcomb his wits. Then the ones as won’t be home at
all—” She took a deep breath. “They’re on the monument
that got put up at the Church. Bruce Gulken, Thomas Golding, John McGregor,
Daniel Heistand, Jock Williamson, William Williamson, Daniel Linden, Harry
Brown the baker, and Sean Newton. Sean’s the latest; his mum just heard
last week.”

Each
name fell like a stone into the silence. So—it was Pamela Brown at the
bakery now, not her husband. Eleanor really hadn’t known most of them,
but Willie Williamson had been one year older and one of the boys who had
hero-worshipped Reggie Fenyx, and Sean Newton had used to ask her to dance at
village fêtes. Daniel Heistand had been another of Reggie’s devoted
followers, and had always frowned at her so fiercely when she was the one who
got to pull the wheel-chocks away…

Not
coming home. Or maimed so badly no one would put them back out again. Horrible.
Horrible. What was that, a third of the men between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-five in this village? Sean—Sean had been his widowed
mother’s only child. She shook her head; it hurt, even to think about.
“It’s never going to end, is it?” she asked, faintly.
“It’s just going to go on and on and on until there are no men left
in England—”

Sarah
only sighed, and closed her eyes, her shoulders hunched as if she found the
weight of it all too much to bear. “I don’t pretend to see the
future,” she replied, sadly. “But the present is nasty enough to
worry about. Even Mad Ross come home all grim and quiet. No more riding about,
hardly ever makes a speech, unless it’s in the pub and he’s had
some courage in him. The ones as came home, well, they don’t talk to
their wives and they don’t talk to their sweethearts, they just sit in
pub and stare at wall. Shellshocked, they call it. I call it that they’ve
seen too much to bear and stay entirely sane. They don’t talk about
tomorrows, either, and a man what won’t plan for tomorrow is a man who
believes he won’t see it. That’s what you feel on the village;
that’s what come home from the war with the ones that did come home.
Nobody thinks about tomorrow if they can help it. Nobody. Church and chapel,
they’re both alike. Stopped praying for victory, they have; now they just
pray for it to be over and have no faith it ever will. I s’pose
it’s easier to whinge about not having beef and the cost of butter than
it is to have hope.”

Eleanor
shuddered. “What is going
on
over there?” she whispered.
“What is it?”

“I
don’t know,” Sarah said, staring deeply into the fire on her
hearth, as if searching there for answers. “But I’ll tell you this
much. Whatever it is, it eats a man’s soul. They talk to each other, them
as came home, but never to the rest of us.”

She
had thought to walk about the village; now she couldn’t bear the idea.
“I’m going to see if I can get as far as the aeroplane field at
Longacre,” she said, standing up. “I’ll do it now, while the
spell’s still fresh.”

Sarah
just nodded. “Mind the wind,” was all she said. “You can
borrow that shawl by the door, if you’d like.”

Eleanor
hadn’t thought to bring a shawl when they left the kitchen, and for a
moment, she looked at the plain, shabby garment with the disfavor the old
Eleanor might have—

Oh,
who and what am I to be so picky
? she asked herself. “
Thank you,
Sarah, if it’s no inconvenience—
”

“I
won’t be going out before you’re back,” Sarah said with
certainty. Eleanor paused with one hand on the door.

“Sarah—what
is it you
do
?” she asked, bewildered. “For a
living?” She couldn’t bear it if Sarah was teetering on the edge of
poverty.

Sarah
laughed. “What, no one ever told you? I’m the district nurse and
licensed midwife! Never a doctor between here and Stratford almost, especially
now, so I do for all of those that need simple tending.” She nodded at
Eleanor’s silent “oh” of understanding. “It’s
what my sort does now. Hide in plain sight. People call me ‘witch,’
they’re joking—and I’ve license to cure as much of their ills
as I’m able. I do well enough. Better than some—most of my patients
are farm folk, and barter is better for them than money, so I get some of that
butter and beef no one else can find. And it’s a help to have enough of
the magic that I have a good sense of when I’ll be needed, and often as
not, where. So shoo—off with you, find out how far you can go.
Nobody’ll call me out until after dark, when
you
had best be
back in your kitchen.”

“Thank
you,” Eleanor told her, then wrapped the heavy shawl around herself,
pulling it up over her head, and went back out onto the street. It smelled
pleasantly of lavender, and was softer than it looked. No one gave her a second
look; she had the feeling this was part of the magic her stepmother had put on
her. People wouldn’t look at her, probably, unless they actually bumped
into her.

Well,
that was one thing working like a slavey all these years had done for
her—a walk she would have quailed at four years ago was nothing. She set
off up the road, heading for Longacre, to see how far she could get before she
was stopped.

The
village was tiny; five minutes, and she was off cobbles and onto hard-packed
earth, rutted by farm carts and marked by hooves, passing between farm fields
she had known all her life. Hedgerows showed a lack of tending that would have
been shocking three years ago. It was too early for planting, but the meadows
were full of cattle and sheep, the only creatures that looked to be prospering
at prewar levels. As she passed the Gulkens’
dairy-farm—Theresa’s now, alone—she heard Louis Blue’s
shrill whistle, and saw the cattle raise their heads and begin to amble in the
direction of the milking-barn. So Louis, probably around about sixty now, was
old enough to escape conscription; though she didn’t know Theresa except
as the supplier of butter and milk, she still felt an absent sort of relief.
Hard enough to find yourself a widow, but how could one woman keep up a busy
dairy farm by herself? Louis, however, she knew from her rambles about as a
child; always with a kitten in his pocket, for cats and dairy farms went
together like clotted cream and jam. He could never bear to drown the kittens,
and was always looking for homes for them. The thought of him going off to the
horror that this war must be was an obscenity, he, who couldn’t bear to
kill a kitten. At least he’d been spared that.

Beyond
the dairy-farm was the Scroggins’ orchard, and again, with relief, she
saw another bit of normality. Brian Scroggins was out, checking the apple
trees, with his wife Tracy in the next row, and Brianna and Zach picking up
every twig of fallen applewood they could carry. Everyone liked a bit of
applewood on their fire, and applewood-smoked bacon and ham were a treat; no
wasting in Brian Scroggins’ orchard. But he couldn’t be fifty. How
had he escaped being called up?
Oh
—as Brian plodded like a
donkey along the row of trees, head down, she remembered. He was so
short-sighted as to be almost blind; Tracy did anything that required reading
and writing. Just as well. If anyone dared to call up the maker of the best
scrumpy in the county, she didn’t doubt there’d be an uprising…