Hold My Hand (7 page)

What was that
?

The wind. It’s the wind. Stop it.

So much house. That long, long corridor, snaking from room to room. The shadowed attics. Anything could be happening and I’d never know. Anyone could be in here already and I'd never know.

You’ve locked the doors, Bridget. The doors to the outside and the doors that lead from the flat to the house. They’re strong, stout doors and you’d hear if anyone tried to get through them. Stop it.
Stop it.

Will I ever get used to this?

The clatter again, out in the yard. She jumps, bones rigid in her skin. Strains to hear. If I turn the light out, I might be able to see what’s out there.

And if I turn the light out I'll be in the dark.

Just stay here. Stay here where it's warm, and tomorrow it’ll be different. You’ll see. In the daylight. It’ll be fine.

Chapter Twelve

“They’re here.”

Tessa drops her copy of
We Met Our Cousins
and trots over to the window. Stands on the window seat and leans her elbows on the sill, beside her brother's.

Hugh smells of roast beef again today, she thinks. Strange how boys always smell –
meaty
. Like they’ve taken a bath in dripping.

“Oh yuk,” she says. “Vaccies.”

“Euugh,” he agrees. “If they think they’re coming in here they’ve got another think coming.”

“Perhaps,” says Tessa “they won’t be
so
bad.”

“Not so bad? They’re from
London
!”

“Oh,” says Tessa, “yes.”

Cornwall is full of Londoners in the summer – well, was before the war started. Tramping about eating fish and chips and leaving gates open. And both the children have had experience of them at school: frightful name-droppers, overly concerned with dirt and fashion, at least until they’re knocked into shape.

“Do you think we should go down?”

“Absolutely not,” Hugh declares. As both elder sibling and boy, his opinion counts for much in the Blakemore household. Even more so since Patrick Blakemore took his papers and went to join the war effort. “Let’s not set a precedent. They’re not guests. They’re evacuees.”

“Oh,” says Tessa. She feels a touch of disappointment. Rospetroc is isolated at the best of times – even more so now there’s petrol rationing – especially as their mother has quite clear opinions (mostly based on size of house and decades of ownership) as to which of the locals one mixes with, and the summer holidays hang quite heavy on her hands. A little bit of her had been looking forward to the house filling up with children, even strange ones from London.

“Cuckoos in the nest,” says Hugh, ominously.

“Look,” she says. “half of them’ve got their stuff in brown paper parcels. Haven’t they heard of suitcases?”

“Maybe their suitcases got blown up. There
is
a war on, you know.”

They watch as their mother emerges from the front door and makes her way up the path. She has donned her best tweed skirt and a twinset in alpaca, once yellow, now faded to a sort of
café-au-lait
sepia.

“Look at old Peachment,” says Hugh. “Do you think that's her best hat?”

“Can’t be, surely?”

“I don’t know. After all, it’s not often she gets to come down to Rospetroc, is it?”

Tessa glances at her brother. She's at an age where it’s beginning to dawn on her that her family’s assumption that it has been chosen by God and is therefore empowered to make any judgements it wishes on its neighbours might not actually represent the whole story.

Still, she thinks. Mrs Peachment is a frightful busybody. And she says ‘toilet’ and ‘pardon’ and ‘serviette’. And it’s an awful hat.

Silently, she cons her new housemates. Wonders if, despite the family’s misgivings, one might turn out to be a friend: a companion to take the boat out, dam the stream, go hunting for birds’ eggs in the hedges that form the boundary between the farm and the moor. Perhaps, she thinks, we’ll end up making friends for life, even if they are Londoners. You can have things in common with people, even if it doesn't look like it on the surface. Why, at school, I go on exeats with Susannah Bain when her mother comes down, and her father owns a brickworks in Manchester…

They don’t look like a hopeful bunch, red-faced in their winter overcoats even though it’s summer, their faces streaked with tears and the smuts from the train-stack. One is even crying, now. A stocky little girl with two thin plaits and drooping knee-socks, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeve.

“How pathetic,” she says. She didn’t cry when she went to school, not once. Well, not where anyone could see her, anyway.

Then: “Hang on,” she says, “weren’t there meant to be four?”

“Golly,” says Hugh. “You’re right. And look at the mater! Open the window! Hurry up!”

“No!” says Felicity Blakemore. “Absolutely not! No!”

Margaret Peachment has been expecting this response. She is also at her wits’ end.

“I'm sorry, Mrs Blakemore,” she says, “but there really isn’t anywhere else to put her.”

“Surely someone in the village…”

Mrs Peachment shakes her head. “Believe me, I’ve tried everywhere already. The entire village is heaving with evacuees. If there was anywhere, I’d’ve left her there.”

Were
anyone, thinks Felicity Blakemore.
Were
anyone. If you’re going to impose on me, at least remember your grammar. This war is ghastly: suddenly all the Women’s Institute-Mother’s Union bourgeoisie are climbing all over us, chuffing about the place with their well-ironed chest bows and the Robin Hood hats, bossing people in the name of patriotism.

“I’ll do my best,” says Mrs Peachment, “to find somewhere else for her as quickly as possible.”

Which means never, of course. Once I accept her, that will be it. A
fait accompli
.

“But the fact is, Felicity, that you’re the only one with the spare capacity. Tregarden’s been turned into an officers’ mess and Croan is a convalescent hospital. You’re just going to have to help me out.”

Spare capacity? What is she talking about? This is my
home
, not a tyre factory.

And I don’t remember that we were ever on first name terms, for that matter.

“Well, if we’re all supposed to be doing our bit,” she says, “I don’t see why you can’t take her yourself.”

Margaret Peachment sighs. She’s known that Felicity Blakemore would be difficult. At least we’ve managed to get here before lunch, she thinks. Everyone knows there’s no persuading her to do
anything
once the pre-prandials have started slipping down. “I think you know very well that I already have a family of Jews from Stuttgart. Where precisely would you like me to put her, in a three-bedroomed cottage?”

“I don’t know… surely you must have an attic…?”

Felicity Blakemore sneaks a look at the child. Lank mousy hair that clings in greasy tendrils to a sharp, foxy face. Her complexion is a pasty grey that speaks of underfeeding and lack of baths and her clothes... the only thing she can think of when she sees them is the furnace in the west kitchen.

There is what looks like a cold sore on her upper lip: the size of a farthing, cracked and suppurating. The child’s expression is a mixture of suspicion, indifference and – something nasty. Something which tells Mrs Blakemore that she's spent her life so far fighting for scraps with the ferocity of the viciously neglected. In contrast, the other arrivals look well fed, well cared for, despite their much longer journey. One of the girls is crying and all four clutch toys and teddy-bears as though their survival depends on it, but at least they seem to have come equipped with shoes and a change of clothes. This child seems to have nothing with her at all beyond what she stands up in. How on earth is she going to absorb someone like this into a decent household?

“This is intolerable,” she says. “Simply intolerable.”

The child, realising she’s being studied, suddenly comes to life. Turns ice-chip eyes on her putative hostess and holds her gaze. And then she smiles with a mouth full of grey, snaggled stumps.
Intolerable
, thinks Felicity Blakemore, and allows herself a quiet, ladylike shudder.

“Well I’m sorry about that,” says Mrs Peachment, “but we all have to make sacrifices at the moment. There
is
a war on, you know.”

Mrs Blakemore takes two steps to the side of the group, as though doing so will cast a blanket of silence around her. Whoops, thinks Margaret Peachment. I’m not so sure the sherry decanter hasn’t come unstoppered already. She’s not a hundred per cent steady on those feet, and it’s only just gone midday.

“
Don’t
tell me there’s a war on! Don’t you think I know, with my husband away fighting it? And not a scrap of bacon or butter or a gallon of petrol to be had for
weeks
?”

“Like I say, Felicity – ” Margaret adopts her best matronly tones. They work in the village, after all. In the village, she is Someone – “we all have to make sacrifices. And my own husband is at Biggin Hill, I would remind you.”

Privately, she thinks Felicity Blakemore the worst sort of snob, the sort that will be wiped out once this war is over and the new world order makes way for the hardworking salt-of-the-earth like herself. But in the meantime she needs to harness these qualities or be stuck with the problem. The entire village has found itself crowded out when faced with the prospect of this child of the Portsmouth docks. Even the vicar took one look and lost the milk of human kindness.

Besides, a small, ugly part of her wants very much to leave her here. It would serve Felicity Blakemore and her limited guest lists jolly well right.

She modulates her tones accordingly, realigns for a different angle of attack. “I’d’ve thought,” she says, “it was essential that the people who… the better part of society… would want to set an example. How am I going to persuade the rest of the neighbourhood to do their bit, if its leading inhabitants…?”

The question hangs in the air.

The dirty girl scratches at her scalp and stares at the two of them.

“I
am
doing my bit.” Felicity, knowing she is fighting a losing battle, summons her last shred of patrician dignity. “Four of them, I’m taking already. Four children and not
one
adult to help me with them.
And
the Glovers have handed in their notice.”

“Well, I daresay they can pull their weight,” says Mrs Peachment. “You can have them doing chores in no time.”

“Oh yes,” says Felicity. “They’ll certainly be doing that.”

The weeping girl’s next door neighbour bursts suddenly, and noisily, into tears as well. “I want my mummy,” he bawls. “Want to go
home
!”

“This is your home now, Ted,” says Mrs Peachment firmly. “And this is Mrs Blakemore. She will look after you until your mummy can come and get you.”

Felicity has never been the most demonstrative of parents. That, after all, is what nannies are for.

“Oh, do stop crying,” she says.

The volume increases. He punches at his eyes with clenched fists, draws streaks of train-smut down ruddy cheeks.

Felicity Blakemore, heart sinking, holds out a hand. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go to the kitchen. There’s lardy cake.”

“Good, well, thank you,” says Mrs Peachment. “Here are their ration books.”

Mrs Blakemore takes the documents, glances through them. Edward Betts. Pearl O'Leary. Geoffrey Clark. Lily Rickett. Vera Muntz. “Which one is that?” she gestures toward the unwelcome newcomer.

“Lily,” says the girl. “I'm Lily Ri'e'.”

The accent is a strange amalgamated West Country Cockney: her mother, prior to spreading the syph among the stevedores of the Solent, worked her way to Portsmouth gradually over the twenty-nine years of her life from Wapping, via Southampton.

“Right,” says Mrs Blakemore. Turns her back on her and commences leading them back toward her house.

“I don’t want you using the front door,” she tosses over her shoulder at the straggling crocodile that’s formed behind her. “You can come in through the scullery.”

“Eugh,” says Hugh. “Even worse than I thought.”