Mr Mac and Me (5 page)
Authors: Esther Freud
Neither of us say anything, but I feel my mother’s heart, like mine, jittery with alarm. How will we manage when we hardly make enough to get by now? And the inn open from five in the morning until midnight if customers desire. The worst of it is that no man may buy another man a drink.
To buy a round of drinks is from henceforth prohibited
. I see Father’s face turn black with fury when we tell him the news.
My feet drag. Perhaps we can give him the other end of the list first. Show him it’s not only us who must suffer. Night fishing is banned. And the ringing of church bells is now illegal. As is the feeding of bread to chickens, and the buying of binoculars. I wonder if, like Mac, you already own binoculars, whether you must hand them in and if so to who? But there is one rule that is the most important rule of all. It is written many times, backwards and forwards and all round every way. And it is important Father knows it: no person must do anything that helps the enemy. No discussing of military business, or spreading gossip about the war, no signalling – with bonfires or fireworks, or even the strike of a match at night. And if this rule is broken it is punishable by death.
As we reach the harbour and push on to the ferry, I’m seized with fear that even now we are not being careful enough. What if there’s a spy among us, a German in disguise lying hidden in a skiff beside the jetty? But scour the river as I do, I only see Danky sitting outside his shed puffing at his tobacco. And one of the Mollett boys on his stomach fishing with a length of twine.
I have more time now that the Blue Anchor must close its doors for long stretches of the day and night and I use my extra hours to make an inspection of the coast. I creep down there at first light, to check nothing, or no one, suspicious has washed in, and when that is done I’m away over to George Allard to inform him we’re still safe. ‘Good lad,’ he tells me and we set to threading the machine, attaching the yarn to the three pegs so that when I crank the handle they twist together like a plait. ‘Got it?’ he looks at me, eyes lowered as if he’s giving me the gift of life, and I nod, serious, even though I know it’s not what I plan to do with mine. For whatever they tell me, and however it is done, I’m determined to get out to sea.
Mr Allard’s son, Abb, is joining up. He’s seen the posters, just as I have, one pinned up outside Mrs Lusher’s on the village green.
Young men of Southwold and District.
Your King and Country need you.
Another 100,00 thousand men wanted.
George Allard tells me that we already have the greatest army in the world and the most powerful navy. Our very own Suffolk Regiment has been in India, one thousand strong, crack shots the lot of them, and with hardly a casualty these last twenty years. But now there will be a chance for new men to join up. New men like Abb who lives next door with his wife and two small boys and works as a mechanic over at Rendlesham, mending the farm machines that have put so many men out of work.
Allard walks backwards through the wet grass, talking all the while, his voice growing louder as the sun strengthens above us and he approaches the gate. ‘I’d go myself if I wasn’t so damn old. But if they need me . . . I’ll have it be known I’m willing to give it a go.’ Often he’s still talking when he backs out into the fields, and I have to strain my ears for his words as I keep turning.
On my way home I make sure to walk past the Bell to check the landlord is sticking to the government’s new rules. It’s noon, and I’m half starved for my lunch, but I stop there all the same and try the door. It’s locked, that’s certain, but as I press my face against the windows, double-paned as they are with bottled glass, I swear I can hear voices coming from inside.
‘Bell’s all locked up,’ I tell Father, hoping to steady his mood, but I needn’t have put myself to so much trouble, because it’s clear he’s been drinking since early, his face heavy, his eyes greased. Sometimes I think Father’s only good for one thing when he’s on the run, and that’s avoiding. He sits in the small bar, supping on his own, and I daren’t ask, although I want to, whether he’s watered down his beer.
Mother sets lunch on the table, a pot of soup with vegetables from the garden, and a loaf of bread that’s still warm from the oven. We sit and bow our heads, even though it smells so good I have to stop my hands from reaching for my spoon, and we wait, but Father stays where he is. Maybe the drink has filled him up, it seems he doesn’t need to eat when the ale gets hold of him. ‘For what we are about to receive,’ Mother’s head stays low, ‘make us truly thankful.’ And I notice she has a bruise along her cheek, a bloom of purple, spreading up towards her eye.
I daren’t look at Father. My breath is coming fast, and I’m fearful I’ll run full tilt at him and knock him from his chair. I tried it once. When I was younger. And I’m still smarting with the memory of how he tripped me up and sent me to the floor. I look to Ann instead, but she’s not noticed. She’s fidgety and restless, and her lips move with Mother’s as if to hurry along the grace. ‘Jimmy Kerridge’s ship has docked,’ she whispers then, ‘so if anyone can spare me I’ll go across this afternoon to see how he has fared.’
‘Has he sent any kind of message?’ Mother frowns, but even though Ann has to admit that he has not, she darts her eyes across at me, and I hold her gaze and feel with my hand for the moles at the top of my arm to show I’ve not forgot.
‘What’s this I’m hearing?’ Father barks from his seat. ‘You’re wanting to be off chasing after sailors?’
Mother sits up straight. ‘He’s right, Ann,’ she says. ‘There’s no comfort to be found there, and anyway, we may not manage here without you this afternoon.’
Ann’s whole body is still. But when the bowls are cleared and she unbolts the door, there’s no crowd of customers pushing to come in.
We wait till Father has slumped over in a doze, and then I walk with Ann as far as the ferry. I hope the witch-woman is right and she does marry Jimmy Kerridge because then when he next sets off on a voyage, he can put a word in for me with the captain, vouch for the fact that despite my addled leg, I’m quick as a bird. I watch until Ann reaches the other side and steps off on to dry land, her white cap dancing, her face as bright as butter when she waves.
I walk along the river, eyes peeled for invaders, past Danky’s hut, and Mac’s, but both are locked, without a sign of life, so I keep walking until I’m at the railway bridge. I can see the church spire, but not the time on the clock, and I turn inland and take the track that winds across the common. The gorse smells strong today, sweet and heavy enough to eat, and I remember old Danky’s teasing:
When the gorse is in flower tis the season for courting
. And I hear the sound of his laughing, for the bright yellow gorse blooms most of the year. I walk as far as the churchyard and lean on the back gate, and even from here I see that Mother has placed a bunch of sweet william on my brothers’ grave. When did she pass by? A rise of envy leaps up in me, and I lift the latch and step through.
Almost immediately I’m calmed. There’s a different air in here, still and quiet, as if the hedgerows and the pebbled walls seal in their own time. I kneel by the grave and prod the pale-purple centres of the flowers. Fresh and breathing. They can’t have been picked more than a few hours since. I close my eyes and trace the shapes of my brothers’ names. William. William. James. William. James. And that other, earlier Thomas.
What would they have looked like? I wonder. Fair and blue-eyed like my sisters? Or nut-brown like me? But one thing I do know is that they would be standing straight and tall, all six of them, without my twisted limb. I asked Mother once and she said yes, they were all born perfect – just unlucky and called away too soon. I try to imagine them as they’d be now, standing in a row, the eldest in uniform and Father, proud as an army captain, with no need to be drowning his despair in drink.
William, William, James, William, James, Thomas. I whisper their names, adding my own as I lie down beside them, my back pressed into the grass. I look up at the church tower. The big hand of the clock is quivering towards the hour and I tense my body for it even though I know the bells won’t chime. Without the bells it is the starlings that I hear, a flock of young ones, racketing and chattering, fighting each other for a worm. I turn and watch them, brown-feathered, bandy-legged, and I laugh as the smallest one nips in and takes it. Indignant, the others raise their voices, sharp and wheezy, no sign of a song, and I sit up slowly. Hello, I say, counting. My heart squeezes so hard it hurts. I know who you are. And even though it is God who must have sent them, it is my brothers who have shown themselves to me. My brothers who have come. William, William, James, William, James, I name them, and there, that scruffy one, the one that took the worm, that’s Thomas.
I lie and watch them for another hour. Smiling. Feathered with softness. And even as I lie there in the grass I’m thinking of the next day when I’ll be back. And the day after if I can get away, and I wonder whether there will be school after the harvest, or maybe Runnicles will volunteer himself in some learned capacity. But surely he is too old for the war, and it seems to me that everyone I know is too old, or too young, and then I remember Jimmy Kerridge. Of course he won’t be able to take me with him when he next sets sail. He’ll be needed in the navy, he’ll be sent out to destroy enemy ships, sink submarines, and as I lie there in the churchyard, the clock striking silently above me, I curse the war, although I do it secretly under my breath because I know if anyone were to hear me it would be punishable by death.
Mother’s bruise is yellow, with a frilly edge of purple fading round the eye, but it doesn’t stop her coming into Southwold to wave goodbye to the recruits. There is a crowd in the market square, with our volunteers, the life nearly squashed out of them, pressed against the Swan Hotel. Mrs Horrod’s boy, Vic, is there, and Ron Sutton, the Spence brothers and Peter Girling who will have to take his nickname, Girl, with him to foreign shores. They aren’t in uniform, I’m disappointed to see that, but in their best suits, flat caps, shirts, waistcoats and ties, black boots re-soled and polished to a shine.
We follow them on to Gun Hill, to get a last glimpse of the sea, before we head to the station. There must be a hundred of them or more, and each with their own flock of women coming along behind, feathers fluffed up like a pack of geese, while the men stand back and watch them, arms crossed, faces cracked with pride.
I climb on to the station-house roof to get a better view and I see Mr Allard, stiff and awkward, and his wife, fighting back her tears. Their son Abb has his small boys gathered in his arms, while his wife looks on, a handkerchief pressed against her nose. Runnicles is there too, nodding and counting, and I imagine his fingers itching to set it all down in his book. There’s my sister Ann, standing beside Jimmy Kerridge, dark and neat, not much taller than she is, who is to be off a week on Friday with a group of navy reserves. He’s promised her that they’ll be married as soon as he returns. A winter wedding is what they hope for. Not that they’ve told Father. Instead they’ve been using every afternoon they have to walk along the lanes that lead into Hoist Wood, taking the narrowest paths that force them to wind their arms around each other and squeeze in tight so they won’t be snagged by brambles. At night in bed Ann twists and turns, the blood in her veins too hot for rest, and in the mornings, exhausted by the battle of her dreams, she drags herself up and sits by the cold fire.
‘Can I not move to the big bedroom?’ I hear her ask Mother. ‘Now that the Miss Bishops are gone?’ But Mother shushes her. That room is the one nice thing she has and she’d prefer it if no one ever stepped in there again. ‘Someone might want it,’ she says. ‘And Lord knows we need the rent.’ And she leaves the window open and a jug of flowers on the ledge, and the quilt she made before she even met my father, folded over the bed.
Three days after we say goodbye to our recruits a regiment of soldiers arrive. They are on their way to Belgium but they stop with us first to prepare themselves for war. The Bedfordshires, they are. And for the most part they are billeted at Henham Hall, although a dozen or so are sent on up to Blyfield House where Mary tells us they have them sleeping on camp-beds in the ballroom.
The Bedfordshires have been with us less than a week, when the Royal Warwickshires, and then the Hampshires arrive. Some of them move on fast, but there are always more. Soon the hotels and the guesthouses are full again, and at Blyfield House Mary must share her bed with the scullery maid, so that soldiers from the Royal Fusiliers can be billeted in the attic. She comes over to us on Sunday, full of news. How Cook has threatened to leave if she has to skivvy for sixty extra men
and
share a bed with Violet who snores. Father laughs, although he has been uneasy all week, not saying a word to anyone but customers. And Mother takes Mary upstairs to inspect the good room which she has made ready for two soldiers from the Welsh Fusiliers who will be arriving on Wednesday. Mother wishes they were from the Royals – Mrs Horrod has been boasting she has royalty in her house – but you have to accept who you are given, and not say a word about it.
Southwold is full to bursting and our village too, but they keep on arriving. George Allard is right, we must have the biggest army in the world, because soon they are sleeping in the village hall, in tents up on the scrub, or out in the open, hard up against the new barbed wire that has been spun along the tops of the low cliffs.