The Soldier's Wife (23 page)

Chapter 52

I
WALK UP THE
lane to Les Ruettes. It's a languorous August day; the meadows are drowsy, hazy with summer, and the air is rich with mingled scents, and there's a carnival of color in all the gardens I pass. Just for a moment I don't believe in the war.

We sit outside Angie's kitchen door, in two fold-up chairs she has put there. A warm breeze caresses our skin and ruffles the leaves of the elder, whose branches are heavy with berries, black and enticing as licorice. I wonder if Angie will pick them for wine, as she used to do when Frank was alive; but perhaps she won't have the energy, perhaps she'll just leave them to drop.

She has her knitting basket.

“Would you help me ball this wool up, Vivienne?” she asks me.

I hold out my hands, and she stretches a skein of wool between them and starts to wind the wool into a ball, expertly, very evenly. In the whispering elm trees around her farmhouse, hidden wood pigeons are idly turning over their song.

There's something new in Angie's eyes, something veiled and remote.

“You seem very quiet, Angie,” I say, hesitantly.

She smiles a small rueful smile.

“You notice things, Vivienne, don't you, now? You're right—there's something on my mind. Something Jack told me,” she says.

I feel a flicker of apprehension.

“He's still working on Alderney?” I ask.

She hears the uneasiness in my voice: she misinterprets me, thinks I don't approve.

“It's good money, that's the thing, Vivienne. You mustn't blame him,” she says.

“Of course I understand that,” I say. “I don't blame him, Angie.”

“There are some that say he shouldn't do it,” she says. “He's had a lot of trouble for it—people who think they can tell other people how to behave.”

“Well, people love to find fault,” I say.

She stops winding the wool for a moment, nestling the ball of wool in her hand, as though it is a fragile thing that has to be protected. I lower my arms, which are starting to ache. When she speaks again her voice is hoarse and hushed and secret: I have to lean a little toward her to hear. A slight movement of air shivers the leaves of the elder tree.

“They sent Jack diving down in the harbor,” she says. “They've got an anti-submarine boom there, in Alderney harbor. Jack says it's like a big net. It had got all tangled up, they needed Jack to sort it out. Well, there's nothing he can't turn his hand to. He's good at diving, is Jack. . . .”

Her face is very close to mine; her warm breath brushes my skin.

“He said the water was full of bones. Bones and rotting bodies. He can't sleep now, he told me.”

A thrill of cold goes through me. I don't say anything.

“They kill the poor wretches, they beat them or maybe they die at their work, the terrible work that they have to do, and they tip them into the harbor. It's all death down there, Jack told me—death and bones. All skeletons, and the bodies that the crabs and lobsters were eating. He can't get a wink of sleep at night for seeing the bones.”

We ball up the rest of the wool in silence.

Chapter 53

J
OHNNIE COMES TO
see me, with a bag of potatoes and some of Gwen's clover honey, and I show him around my garden. He lingers by my chicken run, looking over my chickens with a critical eye.

“Tell you what, Auntie. That one's a goner.” He points to one of my chickens that's been lurking in the corner, looking dejected, not eating.

“Yes, I'd noticed,” I say.

“Looks like it's getting pecked by the others,” he says. “There'll be carnage, Auntie. Chickens can be vicious. You need to get a move on. I'll do it if it would help.”

“Thanks, Johnnie. I know you would. But I'm going to do it myself. It's like you once told me, remember? You do what you have to do.”

His nose wrinkles up as he smiles.

“Well, Auntie, I'm impressed. I didn't know you had it in you.”

I'm happy when he says that: I like impressing Johnnie.

I give him a jar of my bottled plums for Gwen. He rides off, wobbling perilously, the glass jar rattling in one of the panniers slung from the back of his bike.

I choose a time when Millie's out playing—not wanting her to see. The chicken is tricky to catch. I don't like the feel of it on my skin, at once feather-soft and scratchy, and each time I think I've caught it, it fights its way out of my hands, as though it senses its imminent fate. The other chickens squawk and make a lot of frantic noise. Finally I corner it. I hold it in my left hand, grasp its head with my right. I close my eyes as I do it, hear the neat snap of the bone. Its wings go on flapping even after its neck is broken, and I feel a little rush of nausea, which I swallow down. Then finally it lets go of life and is limp and sad in my hand.

Later, I pluck and gut it, the way Angie taught me, feeling a quiet satisfaction that I have learned to do all these things.

I roast the chicken with some of the potatoes Johnnie brought.

“Mmm,” says Blanche, when she comes home from work. “That smells more like it. That smells
good
.”

“We're having a proper meal tonight,” I tell her.

She gives a knowing grin.

“Rapunzel?” she says. “She's been looking rather peaky.”

“I'm afraid so.”

“Don't worry, I won't tell Millie,” she says. “I know she doesn't like eating things that have names.”

I thicken the pan juices with a little bean flour I have left, to make a rich dark gravy. I lay the table properly, with napkins, the silver napkin rings, and some of our best china. I bring the bird to the table. The smell of the succulent meat hangs in the air like a benediction and fills our mouths with water.

“Here we are, Evelyn. It's that good roast dinner you wanted,” I say.

But Evelyn is staring at me. Her mouth is narrow, disapproving.

“Why are you carving, Vivienne? Carving's a man's job,” she says.

“It's a woman's job if there isn't a man here to do it,” I say.

A frown moves over her face and away, ephemeral as a trail of smoke.

“Mum, we ought to say Grace,” says Blanche.

So I ask Evelyn to say Grace for us, and she clears her throat, pleased to be asked.

“For what we are about to receive . . .” She hesitates, her face mists over. The girls join in and help her finish the prayer.
May the Lord make us truly thankful
.

We have such a happy mealtime, full of laughter and talk—like Christmas, like a festival. It's so wonderful to feel satisfied: there's a kind of peace that comes to you only when your stomach is full.

Evelyn puts her cutlery contentedly down on her plate. Her lips are shiny with grease. She blots her mouth decorously on her napkin.

“We ought to have chicken more often. Why don't we have more chicken, Vivienne?” she asks me.

“There's a war on, remember?” I say.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh. Is there, Vivienne?”

Once Evelyn has gone to her room, I clear the table. I put the remains of the chicken carcass in my food safe. I'll make a good filling stew with the scraps of meat that are left, and I'll boil the bones with sage and onions for a nourishing soup. It's so good to know where our next few meals will come from.

I sit in the living room with my darning basket. Blanche is staying in tonight; she has one of Celeste's magazines. She riffles through the fashion pages, gazing at the glossy, imperious women in the photographs, yearning for their ruched satin gloves, their flirtatious little veiled hats.

“Look at this, Mum. It's so lovely. . . .”

It's a Schiaparelli evening gown, extravagantly backless, clinging caressingly to the hips, then flaring full to the floor. I tell Blanche a story I once heard about Schiaparelli—how she made a hat like a birdcage, with canaries inside.

Blanche giggles.

“Mum, you're having me on.”

“No. It's true, I promise.”

Millie is kneeling on the floor, playing with her dollhouse. The gilded light of evening falls into our room, and the scent of lavender floats in, and a drift of rich, lingering perfume from the roses under my window. A sudden pride opens out in me like a flower in the warmth of the sun—pride in what I have achieved here: keeping my family fed and safe, my girls still smiling. I think, We are surviving. Somehow—in spite of everything—we are getting through.

Millie is busily rearranging the little dolls in the rooms.

“I saw the ghost again,” she announces, out of nowhere. The words fall into the quiet room like pebbles dropped in a pond, sending ripples through its stillness. “Ghosts are very, very scary.”

She has her head down. Her hair is untied, and swings forward and shadows her face.

Blanche exhales noisily.

“For goodness' sake. Not that again,” she says.

“They are, too,” says Millie.

Blanche raises her eyebrows. Millie can tell she isn't being taken seriously.

“They
are,
” she says again.

She fiddles with one of her dolls, trying to make it stand up, but the doll keeps tipping over. She's cross. She bangs the doll on the floor.

I kneel beside her and hold her head in my hands, wanting to get her full attention. Her face is very close to mine. I see the gold flecks that swim in the dark of her eyes.

“Millie, there aren't any ghosts. Ghosts don't exist. There's nothing to be frightened of.”

“But I'm
not
frightened. I'm not afraid of anything. I'm six now, and I'm not even afraid of the dark.” She slips like water from my hands. “The ghosts are very, very scary, but I'm not frightened at all. But
you'd
be scared,” she says to Blanche.

Blanche shrugs. She flicks on through her magazine, still lusting after the silk corsages and pastel, glimmery frocks.

“The ghosts are white and creepy and they're really, really sad,” says Millie.

“Why should ghosts be sad?” Blanche asks her, rather wearily.

“Of course they're sad. Because they're dead,” says Millie.

“Of course. Silly me,” says Blanche.

“Blanche, don't be provoking,” I say.

“They have very quiet feet,” says Millie. “They creep around very softly and you can't hear them coming at all.”

She stands up, tiptoes across the room, stretching out her arms in front of her, fluttering her fingers like a pantomime ghost. Blanche sighs an eloquent sigh and turns back to her magazine. Millie edges behind Blanche's chair. She puts on a whispery, sinister voice.

“They come nearer and nearer and then they go
Whooooo
.”

She shrieks in Blanche's ear. Blanche jumps and drops her magazine, though she must have seen this coming.

“Millie. For goodness' sake.” She's cross with her sister for startling her. “I've had more than enough of your wretched ghosts. Just grow up, will you?” she says.

Millie pays no attention. She goes back to her dollhouse, grave as an owl, all innocence.

“Mum, you've got to speak to her. She's such a little madam,” says Blanche.

“I told you you'd be scared,” says Millie, rather smugly.

WHEN I LOOK
in the food safe the next afternoon, some of the chicken is gone.

An impotent anger surges through me. I think of all the effort that went into making that food: rearing the chicken, feeding it, forcing myself to wring its neck, plucking it, and gutting it—all the things I have learned to do to make a good meal. And now a whole leg has been taken. Tears fill my eyes, and I try to blink them away.

I tell myself it's the cat. That must be the explanation—I left the door of the food safe open, and Alphonse found his way in. He's rather wild now, living on birds and rodents, because I don't have much to give him: he'd have jumped at the chance of some easy meat. But if Alphonse took it, why did he take just a leg? And why has the leg been neatly snapped? Why didn't I find the bones scattered?

MILLIE COMES RUSHING
into the house, eyes shining. Burrs are stuck to her jumper, and there is grass in her hair.

“We caught a stickleback,” she says. “In the stream in the Blancs Bois. He was really big, Mummy.
This
big.” She shows me how big with her hands. “Then we let him go again.”

She looks up, sees my expression. She frowns.

“What's the matter? Don't you believe me?” she says.

“Some chicken has gone from the safe,” I tell her. “Did you take it, Millie?”

I almost wish I hadn't asked. The happiness leaks out of her at my question. Her face is blank, a shut door.

She shakes her head.

“I didn't eat the chicken,” she says, in a flat, stubborn voice.

I kneel down in front of her, hold her face in my hands. Her skin is warm from running.

“Look at me, Millie.”

She looks. I feel her moth breath on my face.

“Are you really telling the truth?” I say. “Is that really, really truthful?”

She stares straight into my face. But her eyes are dull, giving nothing away.

“Yes, it is,” she says.

“You know how difficult life is, don't you? When we don't have much food?”

“Yes,” she says.

But I feel I'm not reaching her.

“We have to share it out fairly. This is really important, Millie.”

“I know that,” she says. “I know we have to share it fairly. I promise, Mummy. I didn't eat it at all.”

I'm left feeling uncertain. Perhaps she didn't take the chicken. I can't quite believe she'd lie to me so brazenly. But maybe I'm wrong—maybe I'm making too many concessions again. I have a defeated feeling. I wonder if I've brought up my daughters unwisely. I hear Evelyn's voice in my mind, rather pious, not quite approving of me. Saying something she's often said: “Children need plenty of discipline. You're storing up trouble, Vivienne, the way you're so soft with those girls. . . . Trust me, no good will come of it.”