The Children of the King (21 page)

“But —”

“Now, please.”

“Hurgh!” Cecily pushed back her chair.

When she’d left the room and clomped off down the hall, Peregrine looked again at the evacuee. “Have you seen Jem this morning, May?”

“No. I’m sorry.” The little girl looked at the table, the bowls, the pots and napkins, the silver cutlery. “Has he gone?” she asked.

The wise lonely man looked at the wise lonely child, and answered honestly. “I suppose he has.”

He was gone. He had left, on his dresser, a note which Cecily carried downstairs at a gallop.
I can’t stand by and do nothing,
it read.
That is not noble. Please don’t worry about me
. Peregrine read the note with a soft smile.
“That is not noble,”
he mused.

Heloise, of course, had to be told. She emerged from her room like a wild witch, flew hissing to her son’s bedroom. She saw for herself that the room contained no fourteen-year-old boy. She glared again at the note crushed in her hand. It bore no time of writing, but the stillness of the room — the coldness of the grate, the closedness of the curtains, the very thin gap around the wardrobe’s slightly open door — testified he’d been gone for hours. He had waited until night was at its thickest before slipping into the dark. “Find him!” commanded Heloise; then, more like a mother and less like a witch, moaned, “Jem, you silly boy.”

That morning, Heron Hall seemed the roost of flighty birds. The staff went about their chores distractedly, with frequent stoppings to update their understanding of the situation. Cecily, May and Byron found a corner in the kitchen where they could go overlooked while remaining warm, fed and informed.

Within hours of the discovery of the note, certain facts were known. Jeremy had taken his coat, boots and money, as well as a change of underclothes which, carrying no suitcase, he must have stuffed in his pockets. The grounds of Heron Hall had been thoroughly searched by the staff, and no sign of the heir to the house had been found. Hobbs, the Hall’s driver, had gone to the village to make enquiries, and returned to report that no young man matching Jeremy’s description had bought a ticket or boarded a train. “So he’s on foot,” said Mrs Winter, leaving the house to keep itself while she sat down for mid-morning tea. “Wandering the road like a tinker.”

“The police will pick him up,” said Cook with satisfaction, as if the collection would be followed by Jeremy’s boiling in a pot.

“The police?” Cecily sat up. “Are the police looking for him?”

“Probably not
looking
for him,” said the housekeeper. “Probably got better things to do than hunt for a naughty boy. But probably they’ll find him. They’ll have to answer to your mother if they don’t, and if that isn’t a good reason to bring out the bloodhounds and track him even to the ends of the earth, I don’t know what is.”

Cook smirked. “Good luck to him. Enjoy his freedom while it lasts.”

“Isn’t freedom he’s after. He wants nobility, according to his letter.”

“Nobility? What’s that?
Nobility.
There’s nothing noble in this world anymore.”

“Wants to make a pest of himself, by the looks of it.”

Her brother’s escapade had initially astonished and hugely impressed Cecily; now, three hours later and cooling like gruel, it was shaming her. Jeremy had upset Mama and disrupted the house, and now the police were involved, as if he’d committed a grubby crime. She was quite certain he would soon be found and brought home, and then everyone would quietly laugh at him. He had done something foolish. Somehow, he had sullied Heron Hall, or at least the flawless memories she had of it. He’d be brought back and then sent to boarding school, and he had only himself to blame. Cecily was angry. “I agree!” she declared imperiously. “He’s making a pest of himself.” And looked expectantly at May but the girl was typically unforthcoming, as though her thoughts were rare jewels only she could admire.

By lunchtime Jeremy should have been sitting in his place at the table, but he wasn’t. Heloise tried to laugh, as if the situation amused. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing,” she said. “What is the point of it? What’s he trying to say, Peregrine? You were a boy once: what do you think he wants?” And Peregrine didn’t answer beyond smiling a cool smile, because they all knew what Jeremy wanted, even Heloise. He had been telling them since the day they arrived.

Midday dragged into afternoon. Hobbs had been away from the house for hours, driving the roads and laneways that the runaway might travel. Cecily and May played with Cecily’s dolls. Cecily did not speak about it, but she was somewhat concerned for her brother now. Evening was coming. The day, which had been mild, was growing damp and overcast.

At five o’clock Heloise decided to telephone her husband to tell him that his wayward son had escaped Heron Hall and was presumably making his way to the city. “It’s really very wicked of Jeremy,” she said. “Humphrey has enough to worry about.” Cecily eavesdropped on the conversation, which took place in an alcove where the telephone sat like a crown in a museum. “You’ll tell me the moment he turns up, won’t you?” she heard her mother ask, and there was a note of real worry in her voice when she said it, a note she had kept quelled so far.

By dinnertime there was despondency, although Cook had made a special effort to serve up something consoling. The fragrant courses on silver and china, the polished furniture reflecting the dancing fire, the curtains and paintings, the rugs on the floor only highlighted the emptiness of the night outside. Cecily thought it might be nice to talk of something other than Jeremy, if only to make everything, even her brother’s absence, seem natural: but Heloise brushed her attempts aside, her daughter an irritation, her world compressed around the figure of a single boy. “He’s going to London, of course,” she said, as if she hadn’t yet settled this assumption into her head. “If he walks all the way, it will take days. So presumably he won’t walk. Presumably a farmer or a lorry driver will pick him up and drive him to the city or to a train station somewhere.”

“Presumably,” said Peregrine.

“He’ll look like a tramp,” Cecily envisaged, “all shabby and smelly on the side of the road.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Cecily. That’s not how he’ll look at all. Really, that’s an absurd thing to say. Do try to think about what comes out of your mouth before it does so, please. Sit and be quiet, or leave the room.”

Cecily cowered as if whipped. May looked away from her friend’s embarrassment. Heloise had already forgotten her daughter. “I don’t know what he thinks he can do in London. Something
noble,
according to his letter. He
can’t stand by and do nothing.
He hasn’t thought anything through sensibly, of course. No one will want a boy wandering about, getting in the way. He’ll be no help to anyone. What can he do that’s of use?”

She shook her head many times, as if to shake out the vision of her fine-boned son smeared with soot. Perhaps the image dropped away, only to be replaced by another; something worse. “And London is so fearful at the moment, isn’t it. If he’s wandering the streets, the lights are out, the aeroplanes are coming, the bombs dropping, there’s no shelter close by . . .” She stopped, put a hand to her eyes. “What makes a boy want to do such a thing? What makes men create a world where a boy feels he must do such things?”

May glanced at Peregrine. He looked more like a warlock than ever. He answered with a word: “Power.”

Heloise smiled rancorously. “Ah yes, how could I forget. Idiotic power. So precious that a man will extinguish the lives of thousands,
hundreds
of thousands, just so he can hold it in his hands for a while. So precious that the life of a child is nothing to him — absolutely nothing.”

Peregrine reached for the carafe, poured the bruise-black wine. Cecily had leaned as far back from the table as her seat would allow. A feeling that everything was crushingly bad had descended upon her. She didn’t want to be in the dining room, or in Heron Hall, or in the countryside. She didn’t want to be anywhere. If she had the chance to be with her brother, she would not even be there.

Heloise took several sips from her glass. Her blade-edged gaze would not settle, but ran about like a starving rat. She said, “Remember how he spoke that day.
I could kill a man
. As if that’s what a mother wants her son to do. It isn’t. It never has been. Every man is another mother’s son.”

“Helly,” said Peregrine, which was a name Cecily had never heard him use, a name which made her mother’s panicked eyes swing to him and stop there. “You should rest. You’re tired.”

“I’m not tired, I’m not tired at all. I’ll sit up, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to be asleep when he comes home. Except I don’t suppose he’ll come home tonight, not now. It’s too dark, too late. He’ll hole up like a badger somewhere. He’s been so cross with me lately, but I’ve only wanted him to be safe. Now look what he’s done. Disappeared into thin air. Hardly
safe,
is it.”

“I’m sure he’s fine —”

“Are you?”

“What harm can he come to, out there? There’s nothing but trees and fields. And he’s a clever boy, Heloise. He can look after himself.”

“No doubt you’re right. He’s extremely capable. And he’s always been quite — rustic, hasn’t he? He’ll probably enjoy sleeping in a ditch.”

“Indeed. I shouldn’t worry.”

Heloise smiled quaveringly. She gave her spoon a slight cuff, so it clinked against her bowl. “It’s not the ditches which bother me,” she admitted. “You’ll say I’m being silly, but I can’t help feeling — you don’t think — you don’t think he’d try to —
enlist,
do you, Peregrine?”

Cecily felt the word as a thump to the chest. The idea of her pale, breakable brother signing up and marching onto a battlefield, becoming a soldier not in a game but in real and dreadful life, made her cry out, “Mama!”

“Helly. Be sensible. He’s a boy.”

“Yes, a boy who wants to fight! Who’s been taught that
heroes
fight. As if one boy’s death amid tens of thousands isn’t hateful and pointless but
heroic,
and, God help me,
noble
. . .”

“Mama!”

Peregrine said, “Jeremy’s young. He’s clearly a child. If he tried to enlist, they’d simply turn him away.”

“Good!” Heloise gave a crumpled laugh. “Let them turn him away! Let them send him packing. He doesn’t belong to the country. I won’t give him to those bloodthirsty generals and their army, their tanks, their shooting, their bombs. He isn’t yours to kill, Peregrine!”

“Mama!” Cecily bawled. “Is Jem going to France? Is he going to die?”

“No.”
Peregrine said it like a fist coming down. “Nothing will happen to Jeremy. He won’t become a soldier. He is just a
child.
”

“Just a child, that’s right! And children must be kept safe. We’ll pack them on trains and send them off to live with strangers who are good enough to take them in, anything to keep the dear things away from the enemy —”

“Heloise.”

“— but we’ll also teach them that war is necessary, and that dying for your country, when your whole life is ahead of you, is a good and honourable and glorious thing. And if that’s not delivering a child into the hands of the enemy, then I don’t know what is. Really, I don’t know what is.”

She pushed back her chair and rose like a spectre, wan and almost transparent. A churning turmoil had overcome her, visible for all to see: Cecily had never seen her mother so unravelled. “I’ll go to my room to wait,” she said. “I’m being silly, I know. Of course a bomb won’t fall on him. That’s a silly thing to think. Of course he can’t enlist. They’re very fussy about who they’ll kill.
Of course
he won’t get hurt: such things aren’t meant to happen to children, so of course they don’t. Bring him home, Peregrine. Promise me you will. It’s been a whole day now, and that’s long enough.”

Stunned, they watched her depart as a wave leaves the shore, drawn away by irresistible forces. She went up the long staircase to her room; and although she would rise the next day and every day for many years to come, Heloise Lockwood was never the same person after that night. She never recovered from the realisation that children are wilful people; she never trusted them again. Worse, she discovered that, when it counted, the world was immune to her wishes and commands. She who’d believed herself important found she was just an angry bee in a jar. She continued to buzz and batter at the glass; but from this night forward she always knew, in her heart, that her buzzing and her battering were nothing more than noise.

When her mother had left the room, Cecily turned a colourless face to her uncle. “No,” he told her again.

May was gazing at the door that had closed behind Mrs Lockwood. Eventually she looked at Peregrine. In a voice as meek as a mouse she asked, “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “Not here. But not where your father is, either.”

“All right,” said the girl.

That evening, in Heron Hall’s windows, lamps burned like wolves’ eyes, reaching into the dark to light a path for the missing boy. Somewhere across the chopping Channel, sons fought one another into the night, gunfire flaring orange and white, blood flowing more black than scarlet. In the city, fires burned around buildings that minutes earlier had been solid and standing yet now lay tumbled over the road. Somewhere in the dense sky flew aeroplanes, their stomachs stuffed with bombs; somewhere, underground, ears strained for the sound of these planes, the thrum that would stir a grinding fear. Somewhere, in secure strong rooms, stood those for whom this nightly misery was simply the war going as planned.