LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘I did, actually.’ He threw the words over his shoulder. ‘She says she wants to be with the children. The children and the pigs, she said.’

      ‘And the donkeys,’ said Pamela.

      ‘But you’ve got donkeys, remember?’ I scratched in my mind for their names. ‘Floriday, and the others?’

      She was contemptuous. ‘They’re not real.’

      We drove out of the village and up the lane shrouded in bare trees. The line of the hill travelled upwards along with us. I knew Speeds Farm of old, when I walked up there and Mr Speed drove the sheep down. After he died his daughter took the farm, and then she married a Henstrow. She had five children and now, with Pamela, she was to have another. To those that have, it shall be given. There were tussocks all the way up to the brow of the hill above Speeds Farm, where they’d chopped the trees down and left the stumps and the turf had grown over. When my mother and father were alive Edward and I used to take bread-and-butter picnics up there, and we’d sit down on the tussocks and look over at Beacon Hill across the valley. But that was long ago, ten years after the Great War, when nobody believed there could be another.

      When the gate was in sight Selwyn drew the car to a halt. ‘Here we are.’

      ‘Why don’t you go on up into the yard?’

      ‘I don’t like the look of those ruts.’

      Pamela and I got out of the car. Selwyn’s face was hollowed, slightly shiny behind the windscreen.

      Pamela and I walked the remaining distance to the frosty, deserted yard. A collie loped towards us. Pamela put out her hand. ‘Good dog, good dog.’ The dog gave a long, ripping growl and she snatched her hand back again.

      ‘Not all dogs are good, Pamela.’

      Mrs Henstrow appeared at the door. Her red hair was scraped into a round bun on the top of her head and her legs were bandaged, the crossovers running as neat as ears of wheat up the fronts of her calves. ‘My veins.’ She pointed at the bandages. ‘This is the best thing for them. My niece does it for me, she’s on her nurse training. Oh my lord, what a little one. I thought she’d be eight or nine. Let’s hope she’s not a gusher. I can’t abide a gusher. Keep clear of Tig, dear, he’ll give you a nasty nip. He don’t mean nothing by it, it’s his job.’

      Pamela wound her hands into the front of her skirt, her face pale, round, uncertain.

      ‘Mrs Henstrow.’ I spoke in as low and as steady a voice as I could muster. ‘Have you been told what happened to Pamela?’

      ‘Oh yes.’ Mrs Henstrow rolled her eyes. ‘Her ma copped it in Southampton, down in the cellar of the Crown. That’s it, dearie, in you go. There were a fancy man, weren’t there. Oh, I’ve got my spies. Just because I spend all my days up here turning the collars on shirts and feeding stock don’t mean I’m ignorant. He copped it too, the fancy man, didn’t he, so there is some justice. Have you got the coupons, dear?’

      Her kitchen was dark, clean, and full of male people. They all rose to their feet with many scrapes of boots as Mrs Henstrow said, ‘There’s John, Archie and Newton, they’re my three boys, and them two old lads are the Lusty brothers, the farriers. They don’t talk much. Come up for the shires today. The girls are out in the hayloft doing lord knows what. Gossiping, I expect. I must say, I thought she’d be nine or ten.’

      The young boys were different shades of their mother’s rusty red. Two elderly men, both with mouths that pushed forward and turned down like coal scuttles, nodded. Pamela squeezed my fingers.

      ‘The coupons,’ repeated Mrs Henstrow, with extra clarity, as if English were not my mother tongue.

      The kettle began to whistle. ‘I need to speak to my husband,’ I said above the thin wail. ‘He’s parked down in the lane.’

      ‘Didn’t fancy it, did he?’ Mrs Henstrow said, spooning tea into a pot. ‘Little ones can bawl so, can’t they, when things don’t go their way.’

      ‘Please, no tea—’

      ‘Don’t worry, madam, it’s not for you. I was going to get out some rosehip syrup, dear,’ she said to Pamela, who was standing dumb beside me and didn’t so much as nod. ‘Hmm. Another one with no manners. No syrup for those with no manners. Oh, no. We’ll have to do something about that.’

      I took Pamela by the hand and we left Mrs Henstrow considering what precisely she would do about Pamela’s manners. We made our way across the yard. She called after us, ‘You can leave her here, my dear, while you fetch her things,’ but I didn’t turn my head. Pamela skidded on an icy puddle and I tugged her upright before she fell, my legs shaking so much that I too almost lost my footing.

      Selwyn was waiting, huddled deep into his scarf with his hat tipped forward.

      ‘I’m not leaving her there, Selwyn.’

      He sat up, peered out at Pamela.

      ‘I don’t like that dog. But I like dogs. But that one is a dog, and I don’t like him. Even so, I do like dogs.’ She stood, trying to reconcile it, run through by deep shivers.

      Selwyn looked from Pamela to me. Then he got out of the car. ‘Get in and keep warm,’ he said.

      We waited four or five minutes. I showed Pamela the game with the folded fingers. ‘Here’s the church and here’s the steeple. Open the doors and here’s the people.’ She laced her soft little fingers at the knuckles and turned her joined hands over, and laughed to see a wiggling row of pink fingertips. Here were the people, praying on their knees. Here were the church bells, tolling for the invasion. They’d been silent since the beginning of the war, but when the time came they’d ring out over our streets and fields. At first we’d simply not believe it, and then we’d begin to believe it, and we’d start running, and shouting. We’d hold out our hands to each other, and start to speak urgently about the children. I fastened my arms around this child, though it squashed her a little, and then I too laced my fingers together to keep her in my embrace.

      Selwyn was making his way back to us. He got into the car without speaking and started the engine. As we jolted down the track he made a sort of flapping gesture to me with one hand. I interpreted it as best I could.

      ‘Pamela, you won’t be staying there. The dog was too nasty.’

      After a few minutes we ran out of fuel. The engine died and we coasted the rest of the way down the hill. The tyres tore quietly over the tarmac. At the bottom Selwyn stopped the car and went to fetch the boys from the house. Pamela began to cry. ‘Will I go somewhere else now, or can I go to bed?’

      ‘Sweetheart, you won’t go anywhere before morning.’

      Selwyn returned with Hawley and Jack. They pushed the car while Pamela and I steered. She sat on my lap holding the wheel, turning it and straightening it again with me until the car was back at the mill and safely inside the garage. For five or ten minutes we were absorbed in this task like a happy family. Elizabeth appeared and silently put out her hand to Pamela. The boys swarmed past her into the house. Soon Selwyn and I were alone in the hall.

      ‘Just because I couldn’t leave her with that vile woman—’

      ‘Doesn’t mean you won’t find someone else,’ I said. ‘A more kindly farmer’s wife. I know. You’ve already made yourself clear.’

      He shook his head. We stood in the dim light of the hall. He touched my face with his fingertips. Something I usually adored, but today my skin felt numb. I had to find something of him, grab some scrap of the man I loved, out of this wasteland.

      ‘Please play the piano, Selwyn.’

      ‘I haven’t the heart.’

      ‘For Pamela, then, if not for me. Please.’

      Pamela wanted ‘Jingle Bells’. It was only a few days to Christmas. Selwyn played it for her roughly three dozen times.

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