A Postillion Struck by Lightning (15 page)

Lally called out and told us to be quiet and get to sleep or we'd all be sick in the coach with a good hiding. So we went to sleep; it seemed the best thing to do.

The Chesterfields were all sitting at the breakfast table when we got down. Amy was in a green frock but still wore her hat. She had a little book in her hand and was reading it very carefully through her shining glasses.

“Reading at table indeed!” said Lally in a pretending-stern voice and setting us all round the big table. Amy closed the book and took off her glasses.

“Not actually reading, just glancing through. The tea's fresh, they just brought it in, although it's as weak as dishwater to me.”

Lally poured us all a cup and helped herself to sugar.

“I have to agree with you, Amy, dishwater it is … however, remember that I've always got my little supply upstairs if you ever feel the need. Nice strong Mazawattee, and a ginger snap,
makes a great difference to the afternoon, I always say. What is your little book then?” You could tell she was very curious about the book because she had offered Amy her precious tea before she asked the question.

Amy picked up the book and put on her glasses again. “It's a French phrase book. It once belonged to my father, God rest his soul, and I thought it would be useful for the children if we learned a few things to say … like where is the Church please? Or can you direct me to the cemeteries … things like that, you know? Otherwise we'd be at the mercy of foreigners wouldn't we?”

“Well for dear-knows-whose-sake!” cried Lally. “You aren't going to take the children round all the churches and cemeteries of France, are you, Amy? There are lots of nice things to see! It's morbid.”

“It's what?” said Amy.

“Morbid.”

“Morbid to learn a few phrases, is it?”

“No … that's all right. But morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such.”

“I'm not
dwelling
on them, I assure you. It just so happens that I have a very dear brother in one of them.” She looked rather pink in the face. “And I've a notion to go and find him.”

Lally looked very uncomfortable and told my sister to take her elbows off the table which they weren't on. So we knew she was a bit flustered about the brother in the cemetery.

“I'm very sorry, I'm sure,” she said. “I didn't realise that at all. Is it here?”

“It's here,” said Amy. “Not a few miles away from this very town… he was hit in ‘17 and I just feel that I'd like to find him.'

Lally was spreading marmalade on a piece of toast. “Well, we'll just have to ask the Porter at the desk and he'll know and then maybe we could all go and help you. That is if you'd not object I mean to say?”

Amy seemed pleased at the idea and said she didn't relish the idea of going on her own and that one day soon perhaps we could make an excursion, it wasn't very far away and she also believed that Miss Cavell was buried in the same place and that would be very interesting for us all. We didn't know who Miss Cavell was so I didn't really see that it could be so very interesting to go and look for two people we didn't know and had never heard about
and who were dead. It was much better to be on the beach. But if Lally had offered then we had to go, for nothing would put her off once she had made up her mind or given her word.

“Fancy having to go and look at dead people when you are on holiday,” grumbled my sister when we were all standing in the lobby waiting for The Parents to come down and start the morning by going to the oyster beds. “I think it's very silly indeed. And we don't even know them so it won't even be interesting.” But she said it in a whisper to me so no one else heard and she knew I agreed because I nodded. But it wasn't going to be today, and with any luck they might forget all about it in time.

The oyster beds were quite a way from Wimereux, along a very pretty road running straight as an arrow through lovely flat fields which rolled away for miles and miles to the sky. It was a very hot morning, and sitting up on the top of the coach-thing I could see all round me as we clip-clopped slowly along behind a bony white horse. The coach was black, and the old lady driving the horse was all in black, with a floppy bonnet on her head. Angelica and I, being the eldest and tallest, had to sit on the top beside her, one on each side, while Amy, Lally, and the other three all sat squashed up inside. Our parents had gone on ahead in our father's big silver O.M. motor-car, all laughing and talking.

The sun shone down on the little streams and woods, and sent long black shadows from the tall trees along the road, across us like black bars. We could hear the birds singing, and the clip clop of the horses hooves and that's all, except for the creaking of the carriage which swayed about a bit and made Amy feel rather giddy.

Angelica sat staring ahead, holding onto the little iron rail round the seat, as if she was on a rather nasty thing at a fairground. I wished my sister was there instead because she would have much preferred it—she was very fond of horses, even the back part of them which was, sometimes, rather rude. Swaying about on top of the carriage, and feeling so happy in the sun and being so high up and looking forward to the oyster beds, I asked Angelica who the dead lady was with Amy's brother. Angelica gave me a
pitying smile and pushed her pigtails over her shoulder with the hand that wasn't holding on to the iron rail.

“Miss Cavell is nothing to do with Amy's brother. She's just been laid to rest in the same place as he has. That's all.”

“But who was she? I mean why does Amy want to go and see her grave?”

“She was a very brave lady who was a nurse and a spy and got shot by the Germans,” she said, all in one breath so that I could hardly understand her, what with the swaying about and the clip clopping and creaking and the old black lady wobbling about between us. “Was she really a spy?” I called out, wondering if I had heard her correctly.

“Yes. Yes, she was a sort of spy but she was a nice one because she was British, and the Germans hated her and shot her at dawn.”

The coach joggled about over a large pot-hole in the road and she grabbed the iron rail with both her hands and didn't seem inclined to say anything more on the subject. So I didn't say anything else either.

Suddenly the old lady made some noises to the horse, and pulled at the reins and we turned off the main road down a little rutted lane, which made the coach wobble about very alarmingly and even I had to grab the iron rail at my side lest I slipped off or fell into the old woman's lap. And then we were rolling along a quite high dyke which ran in a straight line down to the sea. On either side of us were huge square ponds, almost as big as tennis courts, and they shone and glinted in the bright sunlight like mirrors lying flat in the fields.

“The oyster beds! The oyster beds!” I cried but no one heard me inside the coach and Angelica had gone pale from the rutted road and didn't seem a bit interested.

It was very beautiful indeed. At the far end of the dyke there was a little clump of buildings like a farm, and I could see the sun shining on the silver of our father's motor-car, and streaking the sea with long lines of gold. It was very hot, and for once I was quite glad to be wearing my white cotton “hate”.

It was a farm, an oyster farm, and as we clattered into the yard the Parents, who were all sitting at a long wooden table drinking out of little glasses, waved and cheered as if we had arrived from Africa or somewhere. They were all very jolly and helped everyone out of the coach while Angelica and I started to clamber down the sides. Angelica said she must go first and I was to wait until
she got to the ground. She was just frightened that I'd see her bloomers or something. I was much too excited to see the oyster beds to bother about her old bloomers anyway.

We had a very nice time at the oyster beds, and were allowed to go with an old man who only spoke French to catch our own in a thing like a big wire shrimping net. The water in the beds was so clear, and so shallow, that you could see the oysters quite plainly, lying all over the sandy bottom, like fat buns. Some had green seaweed growing on them, some were very small indeed, and some were really very big. We carried them back to the table in a wooden bucket and the Parents cheered and seemed delighted and made us sit down together as if it was a sort of a party. Which in a way it was, all of us together and in the sunshine and so happy. Our father said that as it would be our first oysters we should be allowed a little glass of wine to have with them, and when Lally looked a bit put out, he said that it was a Celebration to have your first oyster and it was like launching a ship: you couldn't do it without a little wine.

So the glass jugs of wine arrived at the table, and lemonade for Paul, who was the youngest and didn't have wine or oysters yet, and then the big plates arrived surrounded with seaweed and piled high with the oysters all opened and sparkling in the sun. My sister went white when she saw them.

“They're raw,” she hissed.

“I know. That's how you eat them.”

“Raw?”

“Yes. Sometimes they get cooked.”

“Alive?” Her voice was almost a wail and Angelica and Beth looked at her with a start and then at the great plates of oysters before them.

“They can't be alive!” said Angelica. “It's like being a cannibal!” Then big bowls of cut lemons and bottles of vinegar were plonked on the wooden table and all the parents started to stretch out for the food. My sister sat shocked into silence while everyone except Lally and Amy raised their glasses in a toast and cried “Bon appetit!' No one took any notice after that, on purpose, and just got on with the eating part. Our father said to me to watch how he did it, with a fork, while Uncle John just took up the whole shell and emptied everything into his mouth.

“You don't swallow them like your Uncle,” said our father. “You just chump them up … that's the right way!”

Uncle John winked at me across the table. “All a matter of personal taste, my boy … you swaller them or you chew them up. Aren't any rules, just personal taste!” He quickly swallowed another one. “Food of the Gods!” he said. “Food of the Gods!”

Lally took her fork and speared an oyster from its shell which she politely offered to my horrified sister who shook her head from side to side and covered her mouth with both her hands, watching, with wide eyes, as Lally put it into her mouth and chewed it up happily.

Seeing Lally looking so cheerful I said, “It's the same as winkles, that's all.”

“Winkles are
boiled
.”

“Well, even if they are … they don't feel anything.”

“No, but I will! All crawling about inside me alive.”

“You just chew them up and then they won't.”

“Poor little things … that would be killing them then.”

“If our father does it it can't possibly hurt them.” She really was very silly. She stuck her fork hard into the wooden table and said:

“You haven't even
tried
one yet so how can you possibly know?”

I grabbed a fork from the pile beside me, took an oyster, put it in my mouth and ate it. Her face fell open like an old cupboard door.

“There!” I said.

“Oh, poor little thing … poor little thing,” she wailed; but it was the most lovely taste I had ever had. Salt, sea, slippery, sweet and cool. I chewed it with pleasure so that she would see and also so that it really would not flop about inside me. Because she had put me off a bit with that. But not off enough.

“It's lovely!” I cried to everyone as if they didn't know. “It's lovely … you must eat them, it's easy and they are beautiful.”

Our father was very pleased and raised his glass to me and so did our mother who was laughing and looking pretty and happy. I could have eaten the whole plate but Lally counted out five more and that was that, but I ate them as slowly as possible to make them last, and sipped my glass of wine just like our father.