Sail Upon the Land (19 page)

She hadn’t been listening as she had stood in her slippers and quilted nylon dressing gown while Miss Smith tried to teach her about bathing, nappies, feeding and all the rest of it. She’d been blocking out the sound of her voice and anything to do with the future, living in tiny chunks of time.

After a while, the baby woke up and began to whimper. This bit was sort of automatic, although she missed Miss Smith’s calm positioning of the head, with chin tucked in, against her breast. She was able to slip the cup of the nursing bra down and allow Damson to suck. After a couple of minutes, the little girl came off the nipple and cried. Melissa searched her mind. Ah, yes, winding. She lifted the small limp body on to her shoulder and patted it tentatively. A small burp rewarded her efforts.

She put the baby back on the nipple and she sucked away. It was very quiet in the room. The electric fire glowed orange in the corner. Outside, the autumn afternoon was utterly still. There wasn’t a wind moving the trees, or any clouds to look at. Just sky, grey like the inside of Melissa’s head.

The baby drowsed off the nipple, and Melissa went on holding her without bothering to do up her bra again. She heard footsteps in the passage outside, and hastily pulled the cup up over her breast.

Munty knocked and looked around the door.

‘Hello, Melissa. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thanks. How are you?’

‘OK. Now Miss Smith said I must get Dr Murphy to you. Would you like me to do that?’

‘Oh no, I’m absolutely fine. Just getting used to not having Miss Smith. I’m seeing him soon anyway for my six-week check.’

‘It’s up to you,’ he smiled at her. ‘Nice to have you to myself again. And by the way, a girl called Pauline Hadaway from the village starts on Thursday. She’ll do the cleaning and cooking and so on. It would be best for you to have the time to rest and be with the baby. Meanwhile we can still manage with all that lovely food you made for the freezer.’

It had not occurred to Melissa that she would be required to do anything but she tried to smile and say thank you as it seemed to be expected. Dimly she remembered that Munty was a nice man.

‘And there’s a letter for you.’ He held it out and she recognised her father’s handwriting. ‘I’m not going to put the heating on but you can have the electric bar heater in here as much as you like,’ he said.

She looked at him. He seemed ghostly now, not there, his outline wavering. She was quite clear that he would never be allowed to come near her body again. That there was never going to be a ‘next time’. Not that he would want to, with the smell and awful leakiness never mind the ridiculous cartoon breasts.

‘Melissa? Are you sure you don’t want me to call Dr Murphy?’

‘No. Thank you.’ She hated Dr Murphy, his patronising laugh and habit of patting the top of her thigh. His attitude seemed to be that now it was all NHS there was no need for a bedside manner, although she had heard him sucking up to Munty with a ‘my lord’ this and that. No need to suck up to her, just a stupid girl, all disgusting and empty.

Putting the baby down, she opened the letter.

Dearest Melissa,

We have had a letter from Miss Smith this morning telling us that you are not completely recovered from the birth. After a month you should be feeling more yourself. As I always say to young mums, get up and about and you’ll soon feel better. I’m not at all keen on all this bed rest.

Also, I am so sorry but Mummy is still not well enough to come and help so soon after her flu. I am making sure she takes care of herself this time, and stays at home. Also, I would not want you to catch it. I don’t know if you remember, but she ignored the flu last time and took far too long to get completely better. Anyway, as soon as she is stronger, she says she will come and stay with you. She can’t wait to get to know your little Damson! Meanwhile, we both send you all our best love.

In haste,

Daddy

Oh dear, now she wanted to howl. Munty was still hovering, and he simply couldn’t be allowed to see the black vomitty stuff that was inside her head. She didn’t know where it had come from, but she was ashamed to have allowed it in. She couldn’t let it out or show it to anyone. It was nothing to do with her and she wished it would go away. At the same time she liked it. She wanted to be alone with it, lapping and lapping at her, pushing her down and down. Why didn’t Munty leave?

‘Thanks, Munty. I’m going to have a go at getting up. You go back to your study and I’ll try bringing the baby downstairs. OK?’

Munty looked relieved and backed out of the room.

Girls flooded through the passage that led from the cobbled yard out on to packed earth denuded of all grass by generations of small running feet. Damson trailed along behind, thumb marking the place in her book as she went.

‘Damson? Is that a book you’ve got there? You know the rules.’ Mrs Collins was kind, but could be strict. Damson was fascinated by her drawn-on orange eyebrows that sat at least half an inch above what must have been their natural position.

She turned back reluctantly. Then she returned to the door and, peeping out, could see that Mrs Collins had moved away to watch some girls skipping. So she scampered back quickly to go into the outdoor lav for a quick read.

Skittering across slimy cobbles, she let herself into the dark little lavatory under the arch that went through to the old stables. There was no lid on the wide wooden seat, so she perched on the edge, angling her book to the tiny, high-up window that let in a little dull autumn light. Then she settled back into sunlit ancient Byzantium with a sigh, oblivious to the suspicious puddle on the stone floor, the clammy smell and the cold.

Someone was trying to open the door. ‘Damn.’

‘Hurry up, I’m popping.’

Damson once again put her thumb in the book, then stood up and pulled the rattling chain to flush for authenticity before leaving. She would have to go outside and play now, there was nowhere else to sit and read in private.

Hilary Denning pushed past, her thumbs already hooked in her green woven knickers, shoving her out of the way. Damson went back into the cloakroom, pausing to fling her book up on to the top of the water tank in one corner out of sight.

There was a splash. Damn, the top had been removed since she last hid a book up there. Damson scrambled on to a bench in a vain attempt to save
The Road to Miklagard
, but it was sinking to the bottom of the tank, swinging and swaying in the dim light. She was miserable as she watched it disappear, taking with it her current world of Vikings. She wanted to be there, in that tiny wooden world, crossing seas. Not here, at Hartwood Grange, with bare knees and tight green nylon long socks, shrunken mauve jersey, two pairs of pants – white liners and green woven outers – and a green duffle coat so stiff it stood up by itself. Unable to escape except into books.

There were things she liked. Mainly the library, and Mr Sewell, the headmistress’s ancient husband who had taught chemistry at a boys’ public school in a former life. White coated, he’d gathered her class together, as he did every year’s Remove B, to see if they were worth his while teaching – as he could clearly be heard grumbling. He’d filled a glass bowl with water. With a penknife he scraped off a tiny piece from a white lump of what looked like putty. This he flipped neatly into the water where it startled everyone by whizzing fiercely around, fizzing and bursting into white flames. Some of the girls shrank back. Others giggled or didn’t seem to notice that anything interesting had happened. Damson’s hand was in the air before she realised what she was doing.

‘Anyone who has put her hand up come over to this end of the classroom,’ he said. ‘The rest of you can go.’

The other girls shuffled out. When they had gone, he said:

‘OK, do any of you know what that was?’

Damson shook her head. She was interested in most things, particularly practical ones like marauding Vikings, Roman legionaries and how your body worked, volcanoes and dinosaurs and archaeology. Bored of copying from textbooks, she was sure that Mr Sewell’s classes would provide something different that she would like. She didn’t know what it was that did that when it hit water, but she was desperate to find out. She wanted to do it herself, preferably with a large piece of whatever it was, so it would go on for longer.

Damson knew that Hartwood Grange had been Mrs Sewell’s family home until the war. Her brother had been killed, and she had set up a boarding prep school for girls to fill the financial gap. The food was all vegetarian. Mrs Sewell was a big fan of Bernard Shaw. Every year the girls would put on a Shaw play, directed by herself. She wasn’t motherly at all, and she and Mr Sewell had never had children of their own, but she was kind in her own way. Damson loved Saturday evenings when Mrs Sewell read out loud to the school in three groups according to age. Also there were ginger biscuits. For the permanently hungry little girls this was a treat, even though they had long since lost their snap.

She found it a bit difficult when the other girls were talking about their parents. Telling people that her mummy had died appeared to embarrass them. They didn’t know what to say, or how to treat her. Explaining exactly what Munty did, and why she didn’t call him Daddy, was also excruciating. When she had asked him once, he’d said with a laugh that he was a ‘Lord on the Board’, but he seemed to spend a lot of time in his study with his feet up on the fender, reading history books.

When the other girls were homesick, and cried in their beds at night, she was dry eyed. She missed Crumpet, Grandpa’s little old nondescript terrier, and Granny’s pug Toast, more than she missed Munty and her home.

On Saturday her grandmother came to take her out for a day’s exeat. As usual she was parked on the carriage sweep waiting for Damson at the earliest possible moment that she could be picked up, bang on nine o’clock. Damson had run down from dorm inspection knowing with joyful certainty that she would not be late – unlike Munty who always was. She jumped into the leathery front bench seat of the old Rover, leaned to kiss her grandmother’s cheek and receive the characteristic squeeze around her waist that went with it.

‘Now darling, we’re going to be at home this morning. We can walk the dogs and have lunch. Then Grandpa wants to take us to a film he likes the look of in the afternoon. Not sure if I fancy it,
Star Wars
it’s called. But you know how much he loves his science fiction. This Disney film about mice looked better, but he says you’re a bit old for mice. You and I will make something nice for tea, and then I’ll pop you back to school for seven o’clock.’

Only the last sentence was not so much to Damson’s taste, but she resolved not to think about it, to savour her grandparents’ uninterrupted loving attention for a whole day.

They drove through the sunken lanes that led down the hill from the school, and out on to the main road that led to Dorking, chatting all the time about the comforting minutiae of family life – the sewing, the patients, the garden and the dogs.

‘How is Munty?’ Granny asked.

‘He’s fine. Just the same.’

Damson heard her grandmother make the characteristic sound that she always made about her son-in-law. Something between a sucked-in sigh and a grunt. It didn’t bother Damson.

With her grandparents she could relax and the days flowed freely. It was different at home. Munty had set times when he saw her: for supper off trays in front of the television in the evenings, for breakfast in the kitchen every morning. At other times, she suspected that she was intruding if she went into his study to find him. He would look impatient, ask her what she wanted and tell her to ‘run along’ as he was ‘busy’. He never looked busy like Grandpa was busy with his patients.

Her grandparents never asked her what she wanted or made her feel unwelcome. She would sit on a footstool in Granny’s sewing room, with the dogs in a basket beside them, listening to Radio Three, Granny looking through her half-moon glasses as she stitched. Damson knew not to disturb Grandpa in his surgery during the day. After the last patient had gone home, she could go in and sit with him while he finished his notes and Nurse Thomas tidied up.

She had been quite clear from an early age that she wanted to do what Grandpa did when she was grown up. Better than sitting in the study as Munty did at home, reading
Flashman
books and writing letters. She didn’t know much about his London life, although she knew he went to church and had friends there. They didn’t come and stay at Castle Hey. Munty said it was because there wasn’t any shooting, and once let slip that he was ashamed of how tatty the house was.

Grandpa and Granny had also lost Damson’s mother of course, but they never seemed sad in the same way although she knew that Melissa was still very much in their hearts. But then Munty was alone and her grandparents had each other. For her father, she, Damson, didn’t seem to make up for Melissa’s absence. When she was small she used to hope he would marry Pauline. Pauline always laughed when she mentioned it.

‘Me? Not posh, dear. And you’ve forgotten about my Fred. Anyway he needs someone with enough money to mend the roof.’

Damson’s regular expeditions with Pauline up to the top floor to empty buckets that caught the drips were tedious. The roof clearly did need mending. She wondered what it would be like to have a stepmother. Apart from not having to empty the buckets, she couldn’t think of any other benefits.

Munty watched the Reverend Harold Griffin coming towards him accompanied by a small, good-looking blonde woman with two young girls in tow. Startled, he noticed that the girls were identical, dressed alike in long flowered cotton dresses with white lace collars, one blue and the other brown. They were slightly taller than their mother, slender as wands: both together would make up her substance. The sun shone through the windows, and he was struck by a sense of wonder at the light bouncing off all three golden heads so that they seemed to be haloed.