Mr Mac and Me (21 page)

Very carefully I lift the sheet of paper to reveal the one below. And I laugh. I’m so surprised. There must be nothing like this, surely, anywhere in the world. I turn to Mac again. ‘So you did win!’

‘
Das Musik Zimmer
. The music room.’ Mrs Mac leans over me. ‘Toshie’s idea was that you move from the dark hallway into this room full of light.’

The music room is sparkling. Windows high as the walls, pillars like a glade of trees leafing at the top with green. From the ceiling hang white lamps in squares, each side painted with a raspberry-coloured heart, and there is a cluster of king’s thrones in blue, with globes like drops of sky between each clutch of lamps. I want to go there, roll over its white floor, sit at the white piano on its bench for two and listen as music fills the room.

Mrs Mac lifts the next page, and takes me into a smaller room, with a white oval table, and a silver mirror, and two window seats tucked into alcoves, facing each other like a pair of doves. She leads me upstairs to the children’s room, and we stand there together and look out through the windows and I’m sure I can hear the seagulls calling, the same ones I hear now.

‘Is this house in Glasgow?’ I whisper, for Mac is still working, his breath shallow, his movements sudden as he dips his brush.

‘It could be,’ she answers. ‘It could be anywhere.’ She sends me a secret smile.

Mac stands abruptly. His face is dark. ‘It seems I didn’t submit the required number of drawings. They needed a certain amount of interior perspectives, and I only gave them . . . Well, they weren’t able to give us the first prize.’

‘Who did get it then?’ There couldn’t be a building more beautiful than this anywhere in the world.

‘No one.’ Mac paces the room. ‘Although there was a reward for a mock-medieval castle, perfectly acceptable, orthodox in every way. They’re sticklers for etiquette, these Austrians, well, the architectural society in general. But in Vienna everything must be done just so. Instead they gave us a special commendation. A consolation prize. To say “There, there”.’

‘No, Toshie.’ Mrs Mac looks pained. ‘A special commendation is not that at all. It means they commend you. They admire you. You know how revered you are in Europe.’

‘And to who did they commend me? To my own country? To my own city? Who still treat me with hostility and suspicion. So that these last three years I’ve not had a single commission.’

‘Kate Cranston still asks you to design the interiors for her tea rooms,’ Mrs Mac tries.

‘Yes,’ his eyes are bright with fury. ‘And happy as I am to do so, I’d rather be designing Liverpool Cathedral.’

I hold the book on my lap.
Deen Wettbewerb für ein Herrschaftliches Wohnhaus eines Kunst-Freundes
. I try the words again. And as Mac, the fire gone out of him, sits back down on his stool, I ask him what language they speak in Glasgow. ‘Same as you speak here. Give or take a few words.’ He looks at me, bemused. ‘Although my family was from the Highlands originally, and they speak Gaelic there. But it’s not me who’s good with languages. I can hardly write legibly in English, it’s my wife here who is the clever one. Speaks French, and German as if it was her mother tongue.’

Mrs Mac laughs and shakes her head. They’re friends again. It was as easy as that. And she moves to her easel and the twin women who are waiting there, and pulling on her white gloves, she lifts her brush.

‘How did you learn?’ I ask.

‘At school,’ she murmurs, ‘and my parents liked to travel.’ She steadies her eyes and I can feel her drifting, tunnelling back down into her work, until she is lost to everything but herself.

I look at each room again. The dining room. The music room. The library. There seems to be no drawing of the stairs. Is that the picture that was missing? But I’m on the top floor anyway, in the snowy softness of the bedroom. And I’m lying in the boxed-in bed, the feathers plump around me, Mrs Mac’s embroidered curtains at the window. My head droops before the fire, my eyes swim in the warmth of woodsmoke, and I’m kneeling by a sea of bluebells, snapping them up by the roots, tugging at their spongy stubborn stalks. There’s a sloe bush on the corner of the cemetery, whipped into white blossom, but then I must have taken a wrong turn because there is Runnicles, asking what is the capital of Moldovia, and when I don’t know, I’m jolted upright by the smack of his ruler as it slams down on my hands.

‘I’m sorry,’ my head jerks up. But Mrs Mac is before me, stooping to catch the book which has fallen to the floor.

‘It’s all right,’ she says. She has it clasped in her arms. ‘I’ve got it.’ And she carries the book across the room and places it in its position on the desk.

Chapter 42

I’m glad to see the Cheshires go. They are being called to the front. But first, and for the last time, Gleave tries to talk to Ann. He waits for her by the back door, and I hover in the kitchen to hear what he might say. ‘I’m sorry,’ he starts. There is no word from Ann. ‘For your loss.’ And I can feel him through the boards of the wood, struggling to go on. ‘I’ll think on you,’ he says, ‘when I’m out there facing the Boche. And if you would think on me . . .’ But just then the door flings open, nearly knocking me off my feet, and Ann comes running in. I wait there, my back to the wall, and after a few moments I hear the crunch of Gleave’s boots going away round the side of the inn.

‘Ann,’ I call up the ladder. I can hear the gasp of her sobs. But I’m due at school – I’ll not risk Mother’s fury again – and if I don’t start running Mr Button will have passed by with his cart.

Battle of Dogger Bank.

Battle of Bolimov.

Defence of the Suez Canal.

While Runnicles writes on the blackboard I make a sketch of the
Formidable
in the margin of my book. It’s not the many-sailed, wooden frigate, abandoned in watercolour on its board in Thorogood’s shed, but the real ship: the 15,250-ton pre-
Dreadnought
battleship with its gun holes and its chimneys and the lookout towers halfway up its masts. We know the story now. It was written in the paper. How calmly the men waited for the lifeboats to be lowered. How someone played a tune on the piano, while others started up a song. We read that the chaplain went below to find cigarettes for the men so that they could smoke while they waited to be rescued. And it was then the ship gave a tremendous lurch, and the captain shouted, ‘Lads, this is the last, all hands for themselves, may God bless you and guide you to safety.’ And then he walked to the bridge and, with his terrier on duty at his side, waited for the end.

The piano was thrown overboard. Boats smashed as they were lowered, or else they were swamped by waves and sunk. But we know now that it was not just one pinnace that got away, but a second, half full of water. One seaman sat over a hole in the boat from the time they started to the time of rescue. For rescued they were, but not until they’d seen dawn break out of sight of land, and been passed by a liner and eleven other vessels, as the sea pounded and waves as high as cliffs hid them from view. Night fell again. They were surely lost. But then through the blackness a light shone out from the shore, a red light, for two bright seconds, guiding them to land.

The boat was first seen at Lyme Regis, an outline on the horizon, by a Miss Gwen Harding, walking with her family along Marine Parade after dining out with friends. The alarm was raised. And so began the rescue. But by the time the pinnace was brought in there were only forty-eight men still alive, from a total of seventy, six of those that had perished still lying in the hull. Miss Gwen Harding, I repeat to myself. And although Jimmy Kerridge was not among those that were saved, I wish it had been me who’d been walking on Marine Parade. That it was me who’d seen the outline of that boat.

A shadow falls over my desk and Runnicles looks down. He sees the ship but he doesn’t raise his hand. Instead he shrugs and moves to the front of the room. On the board are a scrawl of facts about the history and construction of the local church. How it was destroyed and rebuilt in 1696, the year of our Lord King William the Third, by two churchwardens whose names are commemorated on a plaque on the north side of the ruins. ‘Copy this,’ he says and he sits at the table and bows his head.

The billeting officer calls round to inspect our room, and although he promises more soldiers, the weeks pass and none arrive. ‘What’ll we do now?’ Mother frets, for she’s come to rely on the money they bring in. But Father is on the run, his face scorched, his eyes roving, and he has nothing useful to add.

Mother treads around him, careful, shrinking with the effort not to rile him, while Ann keeps mostly to her room. She’s turned our bed into a nest of tears, and although I long to sleep at least one night in the good room I keep my place beside her. Ann needs me. She clings to my back through the long dark hours, and in the mornings when she wakes I’m there to hold her hair while she leans over the chamberpot and vomits. ‘It’s all the crying that’s ailing her,’ Mother says, and she blinks and turns away. ‘Just keep out of his sight,’ is what she advises. ‘And wrap yourself up well.’ And I’m glad sometimes that I’m not still turning the wheel for George Allard, so I can help Mother with the chores Ann leaves undone.

As winter edges towards spring Mac tries painting a snowdrop, dug up at the roots, and then a tiny sprig of violets, but they wilt before he can bring them to life. I find him a pinecone, newly fallen, springy with life. ‘This is a cultivated specimen,’ he tells me happily. ‘The nearest indigenous Scots pine are in the Highlands.’ And I think of Betty walking through woodland, the cones falling like rain about her head.

Thorogood’s shed is still too damp for working in, and Mac has settled himself by the back window of Lea House. I watch him closely. A north light is what he needs, while his wife is happy with the view of the garden. ‘Will you not start something?’ they ask, but my heart is still heavy with the failure of HMS
Formidable
. I’m fearful that by imagining her to be made of such fragile things as wood and rope and canvas I had a hand in her downfall.

‘Not today,’ I tell them, and I shake my head.

I’m at Southwold reading a poster that’s been pinned up outside the town hall.

Instructions:

For the guidance of the Civil Population in the event of Bombardment from the Sea or by Aircraft.

1. Inhabitants of houses should go into the cellars or lower rooms. If the houses are on a sea front where they are exposed to direct fire from the sea, the inhabitants should leave by the back door and seek shelter elsewhere.

2. Gathering into crowds or watching the bombardments from an exposed position may lead to unnecessary loss of life.

3. If an aircraft is seen or heard overhead, crowds should disperse, and all persons should if possible take shelter.

And that’s when I think I hear them, the whirr of the starlings. I look up, but there’s nothing there, and I’m still searching the sky when a regiment of cyclists wheels into town. ‘It’s the Royal Sussex,’ someone shouts, and every man, woman and child in the street stops and stares. At first it looks as if they’ll just keep riding. They’ll speed on up the high street, past the Lord Nelson and on over the promenade into the sea. But at the top of the road, outside the Sailors’ Reading Room, they stop. The crowd presses in on them. The Royal Sussex Cyclists. They’re dressed much like any other soldier, their trousers tucked into boots, their rifles resting on their handlebars. I push myself forward, wriggling between bodies until I’m at the front.

‘They’re here to do coastal patrol duty.’ It is the butcher, who’s beside me.

‘Dangerous work,’ a woman adds.

Behind us someone sniggers. ‘I don’t know what use they’ll be in France against the guns.’

The door of the Reading Room slams open and Danky comes out on to the steps.

‘Danky,’ I hiss across to him. I raise my hand and wave. But he’s pulled his peaked cap down over his eyes and he’s looking away from the cyclists, out over the sea.

Chapter 43

On Sunday Mary comes to us for lunch. Sir Bly’s two sons are captains now, and the news from the front is good. We sit and listen to her talk, and as I watch I see how cleverly she looks away from Mother’s swollen lip and the pallor of Ann’s face. ‘It’s quieter up at the big house now,’ Mary says, ‘without so many recruits.’ And keeping her eyes on the table, she tells us how she’d like to free herself from service and go over to the hospital they’ve made at Henham Hall, and train as a nurse for the Red Cross.

‘You, a nurse?’ Father snorts.

Mother, safe in numbers, flashes back at him. ‘And who was it who tended to me all those years when I was ill after the boys?’

Mary is quick to change the subject. ‘Have you heard news of the blockade? There’s to be nothing at all taken to Germany by boat, from any country, not even from the United States of America. Starve them into submission, that’s what the government is saying. Weaken them for the attack.’

We nod, and spoon up our stew. And I think of the Royal Sussex Cyclists surging through the ranks of the enemy, butting them with their high handlebars, slicing through them with their wheels.

‘So what are you saying?’ Father sneers. ‘That until now we’ve been sending them our finest goods? Crates of apple cider. Barrels of pigs’ trotters. Goose fat in screw-top jars.’ And Ann, bent at the middle, runs from the table and out through the back door.