We Must Be Brave

‘Keep the dripping for the little girl. We’ve got bread, that’s the main thing.’

When they’d finished their tea and toast we helped our guests arrange the sitting room to their liking. The young women drowsily accepted a blanket. Then I went upstairs to see the boys.

We had three evacuees from Southampton: two young brothers and their older cousin. They’d been with us a year and a quarter, since the beginning of the war. Very obedient at first, more unsettled since the September raid which had destroyed the Spitfire factory a few hundred yards away from their homes.

‘It was a big’un last night, wasn’t it, Mrs Parr,’ said Donald, the youngest boy.

They’d all slept through the bombing, but playground gossip had done its work, and his pudgy little face was pale. I wished, for the dozenth time, that his father hadn’t promised to telephone after each raid. I opened my arms and he shuffled over and sat close at my side – too grown-up, at seven, to clamber onto my lap.

‘Yes, Donald.’ I squeezed his shoulders. ‘I’m sure everyone’s quite well, but the telephone lines are down. Daddy might not get through until tomorrow or the next day. Now, tonight’s going to be a bit of an adventure.’ I addressed them all. ‘We’ve got visitors. I’m going to put three of them up here, in your bedroom, and you can make a bivouac on the landing, like Scouts do. How does that sound? And you’ll have to eat your tea very quietly in the kitchen – go in through the hall door. Whatever you do, don’t go into the sitting room.’

‘Why?’ asked Hawley, the cousin. ‘Are they spies?’

‘No.’ I smiled. ‘They just need peace and quiet.’

Under my direction the boys pitched camp, laying out some old bedding rolls and unused velvet curtains.

‘Pooh, this stinks,’ said Donald, and threw the curtain across the floor.

‘It may be a little musty,’ I said. ‘It’s been kept in a chest—’

‘Put it back on the mattress, Donald, you twit,’ said his older brother.

‘Shut your gob, Jack.’

The two boys fell into a frenzy of pulling, kicking and thumping, comical because wordless. Hawley folded his arms. ‘Oi. Lads. Do you want to sleep in the hen house?’

They went still. I looked at Hawley gratefully.

‘They need a tight rein, Mrs Parr,’ he said.

They came down for their supper, stopping short at Pamela who was still enthroned, dozing, on the hall chair. It was an ancient chair, with a low seat and a tall back, designed for kneeling on and praying: Pamela, pale, with her eyes sombrely downcast, could have been a child of the Middle Ages. I put my finger to my lips and the boys passed by silently into the kitchen. I went into the sitting room and invited three ladies upstairs to spend the night on the boys’ beds. ‘Mrs Berrow, I insist you come. I will find you a damp flannel for your eye.’

Obediently Mrs Berrow followed me, along with two others, up to the boys’ bedroom. I brought the flannel, told them where the bathroom was, and left them to sleep. None of them spoke. They were hungry, I knew, but their tiredness was of a kind to conquer hunger. They rolled onto the beds and lay like dead-weights.

I spread a slice of bread with the dripping and brought it to Pamela.

‘Pamela?’

She opened her eyes and regarded me, blinking. She took the slice of bread, dropped it on the floor. I kneeled in front of her and retrieved it and tore off a dusty piece. She chewed without haste, her jaw moving roundly like a small calf. ‘Excuse me,’ she said through her mouthful. ‘Are we in a village?’

‘Yes. A village called Upton.’

‘So is this village bread?’

I smiled. ‘I made it, and I’m a villager. So I suppose it is. It’s a little stale, darling, that’s all. My fresh bread is much softer.’

She continued chewing, eyes steadily on me, not the least reassured. The front door opened and Selwyn came in. He took his coat off, and smiled at me. ‘You look like a supplicant, and she your princess. It’s the high-backed chair, I suppose. What is there to eat?’

‘Bread, and a sausage. About three ounces of tea. Plenty of oats.’

Pamela had been looking from one of us to the other. Now she stopped chewing. ‘Horses eat oats.’

‘Yes, they do.’ Selwyn bent over her. ‘Are you warm enough?’ She nodded. He patted her on the head, absently, as if she were his good dog. ‘Now I think about it, I haven’t got much of an appetite. I’ll sleep on the little bed in the dressing room. You put her with you, in our bed.’

The buttons on the back of Pamela’s dirty little dress were tiny. One of them was broken, a shard which slipped under my nail and stabbed me. I pulled the puffed sleeves down off her shoulders. Her arms were as cold as china.

‘Didn’t Mummy give you a coat, Pamela?’

‘It was so hot in the hotel, she said, “Let’s take our coats and cardigans off.” So we did that.’

‘What hotel?’

She turned her head to look up at me. ‘The hotel that we were inside,’ she said patiently. ‘I want to keep my knickers on.’

She went to the lavatory. I found an old singlet and put it on her. It fell almost to her ankles, the shoulder straps drooping, the low neck leaving her chest bare. I knotted the straps to bring the neckline higher.

‘This is a funny nightie.’

‘Isn’t it.’

Our bolster made her head jut forward, so I fetched a flat cushion from my sewing seat. The bed creaked in the dressing room: Selwyn was retiring. I went in and found him sitting there in his pyjamas. He needed a good diet to keep his weight up, did my husband, and now he was beginning to remind me of my brother Edward. They both went lean in hard times, weathered and springy like the spars of a ship. Selwyn was naturally slighter than Edward, sandier, his blue eyes paler. A cleverer, more far-seeing man.

‘She says that she was in an hotel,’ I told him. ‘She doesn’t know which one.’

He nodded slowly. ‘We’ll think about it in the morning.’ He looked up at me. ‘Where’s your pearl brooch?’

With a jolt I remembered the bus, my first grasp of Pamela’s body. ‘Don’t worry. It’s in my jacket pocket, for safekeeping.’

Selwyn had pinned the brooch on this morning, deftly, and kissed my lips. It seemed like a week ago now. I went and sat on the bed next to him. My eye fell on a small, flat, brown-paper parcel. ‘You haven’t opened your present.’

Exclaiming, he reached for it. ‘Shame on me. My first gift of this kind, too.’ He pulled the knot in the string and removed the paper from a copy of Edward Thomas’s The South Country. ‘Ellen, sweetheart. This is so thoughtful.’

‘I found it in Bradwell’s. Now you really have the complete works.’

He gave a single laugh and put down the book. ‘I promise you one thing, Ellen. Not all our wedding anniversaries will be like this one.’

I put my arm across his back and pressed my face against his shoulder. He embraced me in turn so that we were encircled by each other’s arms. ‘I shall complain next year,’ I said, with my eyes shut, ‘if you don’t supply at least one busload of refugees.’

The brooch was there, in my jacket pocket. I put it into my jewellery box and hung the jacket in the wardrobe. Closing the door, I saw the child’s image flash into the mirror, a pale face with large, grave, light-brown eyes. I undressed and put my nightgown on, all the while feeling those eyes upon me.

She’d moved towards the middle of the bed. When I got in, one small, hard foot scraped against my calf. ‘Shift over, Pamela.’

‘But I was just on the way to my side.’

‘Oh. I didn’t realize you had a side.’

‘This is my side. The other is Mummy’s.’

What about Daddy? I didn’t say that. It was a question for tomorrow.

We arranged ourselves to her liking. She occupied her little space with self-possession, lying neatly on her back with feet together. I remembered sharing the coldest nights in one bed with Mother. Mother, and in the beginning with my brother Edward too. They had both been bigger than me. I’d never lain down beside such a small person.

‘My name’s Ellen.’

‘I know.’ Her head remained still; only her eyes darted towards me. ‘But you haven’t said if I may call you it.’

I smiled. ‘You may.’

How old was she? Her nose was still snubbed, a perfect curve, her cheeks round. I couldn’t ask her about her surname again, not now.

‘Will we find Mummy tomorrow?’

‘I’m sure we will.’

I was woken by a rising siren of wails, as sharp and sudden as if rehearsed. I slid out of bed and went out onto the landing. The boys were asleep – two had rolled off the mattresses and were lying legs tangled in the curtains, leaving the third uncovered. I picked my way among them and went down to the sitting room.

The women had pulled the blackout curtain away from the side of the window. They were all crowded around the slit they had made, crying out and clinging together as if they were in a lifeboat on a high sea. ‘How can they, how can they, the devils.’ ‘Bloody fucking bastards.’ ‘It’s vicious. It ain’t human.’

They’d left the lamp on. The light was shining out through the naked glass.

‘Replace that curtain.’ I spoke in a voice of steel.

One of them sobbed at me, ‘You should see it, dear, before we do.’

Darting to the table, I turned out the lamp. ‘You’ve broken the blackout. And you may also have broken the fastenings.’ I shouldered my way in among them and started lashing the blackout tapes back onto the hooks in the window frame. There it was again, the same rumbling, fleshy stain on the undersides of the clouds, punctuated by white flashes, that I’d seen last night rising over Beacon Hill. I tried to avert my face but with each flash I felt sicker.

‘Those are the flares,’ said one of the girls behind me. ‘They make it like daylight. So you can see the bomb doors, you see, you can see them opening up.’

The other girl burst out into noisy weeping, and several others joined her.

‘Please don’t wake our evacuees.’ My voice and fingers were shaking as I worked. ‘I can’t have them seeing this raid. Their families are in the city.’ The curtain secured, I fumbled for the lamp and lit it again, and saw Mrs Berrow in the doorway.

‘Mrs Parr’s right,’ she said. ‘And that light would have carried twenty mile in the blackout. You want their leftovers dumped on us?’ She folded her strong arms. ‘Now pipe down, and no more of that language, thank you very much.’

Chastened, the women began to settle themselves down, sighing and murmuring. Mrs Berrow and I left the room. Just as we reached the stairs Mrs Berrow spoke again. ‘Any whisper of that little girl’s mam?’

Her face was benign, expectant, in the shaft of dull light from the sitting room.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

At three o’clock I was startled by a sturdy punch in the back and a long, grinding grizzle.

‘Mummy. Mummeee.’

She sat up, eyes half open, arms outstretched. She wasn’t awake. I pulled her to me and her arms went tight round my neck, her hot cheek pressed against mine. Very small breaths she took, just puffs of air. Then I laid her down onto her small pillow.

*

I rose at six. Selwyn’s bed was empty. He had already gone up to the sluicegate. Our mill workers would be in at seven.

In the hall I met Elizabeth carrying a bucket of water to the lavatory, her face tight. ‘I know they’ve been bombed out, but a cistern still has to fill up before you can flush again, Mrs Parr, no matter who’s pulling the chain.’

The women were stirring in the sitting room. I knocked on the door and when I was admitted found them pulling off blankets, shrugging on cardigans in the lamplight. ‘We’re so grateful, madam,’ somebody said. ‘But we’ll get off home as soon as we can.’

As if they’d been banished by a burst pipe, or an overly bold family of rats. ‘Well, if you’re sure …’

‘Of course we are. You can’t feed us, dear.’

At least they realized.

I brought two full teapots, each with one spoonful of tea in it. They would simply have to make do with that. They took the teacups with both hands and passed them in a ritual silence. I untied the blackout curtains and drew them. One of the young women said, ‘We’re very sorry about last night, Mrs Parr.’ She had fresh lipstick on, defiantly at odds with the graze that slanted across her high, pasty forehead.

‘It’s all right. You were frightened, and with good reason.’

There was a silence, broken eventually by Mrs Berrow. She was sitting in the largest armchair. ‘There wasn’t any thinking,’ she told me. ‘We just covered our heads, and as soon as we could find a bus we cleared off without a backward look. We lost our nerve, dear, is all.’ She gulped the tea. ‘This is pure nectar. Where’s that little girl of yours?’

‘Upstairs … What happened to your friend, the lady who could only say Daphne?’

‘Oh, yes. Somebody did a whopper of a sneeze right by her head and she snapped right out of it. Never saw the like. If you brought the little girl down we could have a chat. Now that we’re in our right minds, or nearly.’

‘I expect she’s still sleeping, Mrs Berrow.’

I hesitated. There were thumps on the stairs.

‘That’ll be your lads.’ Mrs Berrow chuckled. ‘Not very likely, is it?’

They slept through the Second Coming, little children. That was what she’d told me. I almost pointed it out to her.

‘I’ll fetch Pamela.’

‘So we went into the hotel because Mummy said we had to get some candles for my cake. And then we were going to bed there. Gosh, your eye is like a thunderstorm, isn’t it.’

Pamela, in blanket, knickers and knee-length singlet, was standing in front of Mrs Berrow who, seated as she was, had acquired a faintly inquisitorial air.

‘Some candles,’ I repeated. ‘For your cake.’

‘Because I’m going to be six.’ She gave me a passing glance. I was much less important than Mrs Berrow. ‘My cake’s going to be pink.’

‘Could it have been the Crown?’ somebody said. ‘The buses stop right outside.’

‘It was mayhem there.’ Mrs Berrow nodded, remembering. ‘That’s where I live, see, opposite the Crown. So when you and Mummy came out, what happened next?’

A blended howl of outrage and mirth rose from the kitchen next door, along with a crash of cutlery and a thin cry of exasperation from Elizabeth. Pamela peered through the gap in the door. ‘What naughty boys you’ve got,’ she said to me.

Mrs Berrow sighed. ‘So when you and Mummy came out—’

‘Mummy was coming.’ Pamela sat down on the floor. ‘But she was so slow. She was talking to the cake-candle man. So I went out first.’ She crossed her legs and encircled her big toe with thumb and fingers. ‘This is how you comfort your toes, especially when they’re cold. And then I banged my head on the bus-stop pole, and after that I looked for Mummy. But all I could see was the top of her head in a bus window. Then the bald lady asked me if that was my mummy, and I said it was, but that bus was going. Then the other lady, the fat one, came, and they took me on their bus. And the bald lady laid me down under a blanket with a lot of tiny holes in because I was screaming.’

‘The bald lady?’

‘Yes, the one with the special hat. She wouldn’t wear that unless she was bald.’

Her face contorted and she let loose a single, keening, tearless sob. I kneeled down and grasped her. She leaned against my chest and sucked her thumb industriously.

‘There were two women,’ I murmured to Mrs Berrow. ‘Between them they got the idea that Pamela’s mother was already aboard one of the buses. They didn’t stop to wonder how she could have got on without Pamela. They just took Pamela with them on the next bus. I was stupid, I didn’t ask them which hotel they were outside.’

Mrs Berrow patted my hand. ‘Nobody was very clever yesterday, dear.’

Pamela stopped sobbing as suddenly as she’d begun. She broke away from me and clasped her feet again. ‘Your toes you can hold all at once in one hand, look.’ Involuntarily she rolled onto her back, where she rocked like an egg. We all laughed a little.

‘Them knickers need a change.’ Mrs Berrow’s voice was gentle. ‘That much dust and dirt, I’m surprised you remember what colour they are. Come here, lovey.’ Pamela obeyed her instantly and Mrs Berrow pulled down the knickers. She frowned. ‘There’s something crackling in here.’

I put out my hand. ‘I’ll take them to wash.’

‘Wait.’ Her old nails dug along the waistband. ‘Something’s been sewn in the seam, look.’

‘Yes, they are crackly.’ Pamela nodded. ‘Mummy said it’s because they’re new. I can do handstands in them.’

My hand was still reaching out towards Mrs Berrow. ‘I’ll take them upstairs. I’ve got sewing scissors in my bedroom.’

Pa … P … Plymouth.

Small, hasty handwriting, in pencil on a piece of greaseproof paper, mostly smudged away. I folded it in my hand and looked out of the window, at a loss. Downstairs the telephone started ringing. I heard Selwyn answering.

Then I remembered the dress. It was nowhere to be seen. I searched under the bed, then turned down the sheet and blankets and found it, crumpled into a grubby ball. Just under the little collar was a square of fraying cotton tacked roughly onto the yoke. I pulled the tacking out and freed the label. The ink was bleeding into the fabric but the words were legible. Pamela Pickering, 34 Newton Road, Plymouth.

Selwyn had finished his call. He was coming up the stairs. ‘Ellen?’

‘In the bedroom, darling.’

The door opened. ‘That was Colonel Daventry. Another bus has arrived.’ Selwyn went into the dressing room. ‘Where’s my scarf? The fog’s vile out there, raw.’

‘Darling, I found these.’

He reappeared, his scarf in one hand. ‘What?’

I held out my hand. He clasped it so that the pieces of greaseproof and cotton were crushed in my fingers. His hands were thin, cool and dry. Had he been a heavier man, a man whose palms were even just occasionally damp, I could never have married him. He pulled his hand away and I let the labels slip from my grasp.

He uncrumpled them, studied them. ‘Thank goodness. We’ve got something to go on, now.’ He put the scraps down on the bed. ‘Listen, I’m off to the village hall. There’s a chance her mother’s come to Upton. She might have found out that Pamela was taken away on the bus.’ He knotted his scarf with a series of brisk tugs. ‘Imagine it. Dashing out of your hotel, frantically looking for your child, and somebody says, “I saw a little girl, madam. Two women took her away on the bus to Upton.” Good God.’

‘I don’t think we can imagine it.’ I turned to face him. ‘The ladies downstairs think she might have left from the bus stops outside the Crown Hotel.’

‘You need to find those two women who put her on the bus. Why don’t you go up to see Lady Brock? She took a great crowd. Didn’t you say they were in the last group? I’m almost sure they’re at Upton Hall, with Lady Brock.’ He spoke hurriedly, crossing the landing ahead of me. ‘We’ll try to ring the police. Though the Colonel tells me you can’t get through to Southampton for love nor money.’

‘We could ring Waltham.’ Our nearest country town, it had a big telephone exchange. ‘I’ll take Pamela with me to Lady Brock. Elizabeth’s got far too much to do.’

‘If you want.’ He gave me a careful, wide smile. ‘Clever of you to find those little clues,’ he said, and led the way downstairs.

Pamela was sitting on the lavatory with Elizabeth in attendance. ‘And after church they gave us a biscuit,’ she was saying, ‘with icing on it, and I bit mine so I could see the biscuit and then the icing on top like a layer of snow. Snow,’ she repeated, rounding her eyes.

Elizabeth turned to me. ‘They’re saying they’re off home.’ She jerked her head towards the sitting room. ‘And there’s not even any water in the taps.’

‘But we only got one biscuit,’ Pamela went on. ‘I kept a piece in my pocket for a long time but then it crumbled up. Can you wipe my bottom? My arms are still too short, Mummy says.’

A slap resounded behind the sitting-room door, followed by a girlish cry of pain and fury. ‘That’s for ladderin my stockings, you little cow,’ said an older, husky voice. ‘I should put you over my knee, never mind how big you are.’

‘The poor devils.’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘But I shan’t mind if they clear off.’

‘Ellen, can you wipe my bottom?’

‘You see the ladies out, Mrs Parr.’ Elizabeth was firm. ‘I’m used to bottoms, with my nieces.’

I stood aside as the file of women came out of the sitting room, the older ladies scrupulously combed and buttoned, the young women’s hair slicked penitently against their scalps. As they passed they thanked me one by one. Phyllis Berrow was the last to leave. She peered over my shoulder at Pamela, who was coming out of the lavatory. ‘Any the wiser, dear?’

‘You were right. There was a piece of greaseproof. I couldn’t read it, but the label in the collar of her dress says Pickering. Of Newton Road, Plymouth.’

She mused. ‘Plymouth, indeed. Plymouth.’ She scrutinized me. ‘Lucky about that other label.’

I nodded. ‘Mrs Pickering was taking no chances.’

‘Would you, with a little sugar plum like that?’

‘I wouldn’t have let go of her hand.’

She smiled. ‘Sometimes you has to. Even if just for a minute. And you shouldn’t be punished for it. Take care, dear.’

‘Good luck, Mrs Berrow. Please come again.’ Which was absurd, as if she was an afternoon-tea visitor.

‘Yes,’ said Pamela. ‘Please come again.’

3

OUR BOYS TOOK a good look at Pamela, who held my hand tightly under their scrutiny. The two brothers, Jack and Donald, gave her an especially thorough once-over from beneath their fringes. Hawley, being older, was more discreet.

‘Why’s she still here?’ Donald asked me.

‘I’m waiting for Mummy,’ Pamela told him.

Hawley, sharp as a tack, held my gaze.

‘Take your cousins to school, Hawley, please.’

I washed Pamela’s knickers and dress and hung them over the range. She watched me while I rummaged in the chest in the attic. I pulled out a smock my old friend Lucy Horne had given me when I was waiting for the evacuees, before I knew they were all to be boys. The smock was beautifully made by old Mrs Horne, Lucy’s grandmother: I could easily picture Lucy in it, a small, pale, dark-eyed child. I would have liked to take Pamela to the Hornes’ cottage, show them the beneficiary of the smock, but this was unlikely to happen. For reasons I had yet to discover, Lucy hadn’t spoken to me for almost a year.

I sighed. There was nothing I could do about Lucy, especially today. I started to pull the smock over Pamela’s head.

‘This is brushed cotton, Pamela. It’ll keep the warmth next to your body.’

Pamela shut her eyes, and when she opened them again she was a small shepherdess, robed to the ankles. I gave her long socks and my smallest pair of drawers.

‘These are giant’s knickers!’

I pulled the elastic through a gap in the waistband and knotted it at her waist, or rather, the completely circular middle of her little body. ‘They’re like breeches for you.’

She beamed. ‘Mummy will laugh.’

‘Yes, she will. But we might not see her today. Mr Parr’s going to find out where she is. But we might have to wait another day or so.’

The smile vanished. ‘That’s not what the bus ladies said.’ Her eyes glistened. ‘I don’t know why she doesn’t come.’

I kneeled down and took her hands in mine.

‘Those ladies,’ I said, ‘are good ladies. They thought it would be an excellent idea for you to get on the bus, because it’s safe here for children. Very safe. Mummy’s safe too.’ My eyelids fluttered, I couldn’t help it.

She gave a small cry and stepped from foot to foot but she didn’t pull away from me. I let my thumbs stroke the soft backs of her hands. Her knuckles were dimples. ‘They were naughty.’ She sniffed. ‘They shouldn’t have said “We’ll find Mummy”, because they haven’t. Mummy was shouting at the candle man all night, you know.’