Lost in the Flames (6 page)

‘Talking to yourself again, are you, Jacob?’ said Webster.

‘No, Webster. I’m just thinking,’ he said. ‘You should try it some time.’

And Norman laughed and Jacob smiled at the man and felt the sunlight on his face and the warm glow of having made Norman happy again and it occurred to him that he probably loved Norman, like a brother, or a father, or something in between. Whatever it was, it did not matter, it was there, that was all.

When they came back at lunchtime they found Vera speechless in tears in Brailes’ sitting room. The pig-man and Brailes were in the kitchen, poised on opposite chairs.

‘What’s going on here, then?’ said Norman.

‘This bloody bugger’s been bothering Vera,’ said Brailes in the quiet steady voice of fury. ‘Put his foot in the door and wasn’t taking no for an answer until she whacked him in the bollocks with a rolling pin.’

‘Outside,’ said Norman and he felt something lurch up in his chest, then a heavy rush through his arms and a noise in his head, the kind of thing you might hear in a barn.

The pig-man followed Norman out as he marched across the yard. Jacob hurried after them and caught up with Norman and said his name, a tug on the sleeve, a distraction. But Norman could not see the boy who shadowed him now – this would be man’s business, no room for boys, no room for kindness now. He stopped by the stone trough in the centre of the yard and turned and looked at the pig-man, this shape that had threatened the only thing that had ever been his own, and he saw the pig-man at the end of a long tunnel now, his mouth somehow moving without making a sound, and Norman realised that the words were consumed by a roaring in his head. He thrust out his massive hands and seized the pig-man by the neck and rammed his head down into the water so hard that the top of the man’s skull struck the stone base of the trough and Norman held it there for several seconds as the water tinged red, then he hauled it up and out and down again and the water became redder, then up and out and down again, another smack of red against the stone, and then Norman heard a noise to one side, a bellow from Brailes who was pulling at his arm, and the roar in his head suddenly snapped away into silence and the noise that Norman himself was making hammered around in his skull and he finally let go and the pig-man fell to his knees and flung back his head and coughed
up the water and muck that had entered his lungs.

‘Are you trying to flippin’ kill me?’ he screamed as the blood streamed down his face.

‘Clear your things out of the cottage and sod off,’ said Norman quietly, suddenly tired of the noise. ‘If you’re still in there in fifteen minutes, I’m coming in after you.’

Then he turned and saw Vera beside him now, tugging at his arm, and the look on her face, something like horror, something like fear, and he whispered an apology and was about to say ‘I did it for you,’ but he thought better of it and he knew deep down he had done it for someone else, for the lost little boy that he had once been, strapped to a plough, cast out in the fields, the lost little boy that Vera had saved.

Ten minutes later, the pig-man was half-way up the lane, the few things he owned in the bag in his hand, and Norman’s lost little boy stepped back inside himself, hid himself away again inside the man he had become.

That night Webster moved back into his old room and Vera stripped the bed in rubber gloves and laid out fresh clean sheets for him to lie on, perhaps Rose too.

Rose passed Vera a cup of tea and a cracker topped with a wedge of hard ewe’s cheese. The cheese crumbled as she bit into it and the dog snapped up the unintended offering as it touched the ground.

‘Oh, Dickie, do learn some manners,’ said Rose, toeing away the little terrier with the tip of her shoe. The dog sat on its haunches and quivered. Rose sat on the bench next to Vera and they looked down the slope of the garden and across the valley to the Worcester Road. Across the lane to their right they could hear Alfred sorting out the pigs, considering which of his prime ministers would be next for the out-house beam.

‘So then, Rose, what’s the story with Webster?’ asked Vera.

‘Webster?’ said Rose.

‘Yes,’ said Vera, raising an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you want to tell me?’

‘It sounds like you know already.’

‘Not the juicy details.’

‘Well, he’s quite nice, isn’t he?’

‘I think so. Norman thinks so too.’

‘Yes, very sweet. But …’

‘But what? Won’t you see him again?’ asked Vera.

‘Maybe.’

‘I think you might.’

‘Meaning?’

‘He’s back at the farm.’

‘What?!’ Rose bit sharply into her cracker and the dog scavenged about again at her feet. ‘Oh Dickie, you little beast!’

‘Yes, really. Won’t you see him?’

‘Yes, but it’s complicated. Alan’s keen as well.’

‘Alan? Who’s Alan? I didn’t know about him.’

‘Recent news. Hadn’t had a chance to tell you.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘What a pickle. What should I do?’

‘Come by and see him. Why not this Sunday? I’ll make lunch for the four of us.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘He wants to see you.’

‘I bet he does. He didn’t come back just for me, did he?’

‘I think you’ve probably been in his thoughts.’

Sunday lunch was served in the kitchen at Norman and Vera’s. Rose talked continually, her back to the fire, warming her up, and Webster watched the orange glow intensify around her darkening silhouette as the autumn dusk crept across the fields and the room slipped into darkness. Norman lit a candle and they finished the meal with an apple apiece, and then it was time for Rose to go home.

‘I’d better get out and check the sheep,’ said Norman.

‘I’ll do the dishes,’ said Vera.

‘I guess you’d better walk me home, then, Webster,’ said Rose.

‘I can’t invite you in,’ she said at the top of her road. ‘My grandmother’s a liberal type, but she has her limits.’

She left him at the gate with a kiss on the cheek.

‘See you soon,’ she said, and Webster went back home and slept until Norman shook him awake for work at dawn.

‘She won’t be any good for you,’ Norman finally said after ruminating on the thought for most of the morning. ‘Rose, that is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s not the constant type. It won’t last, it won’t do you any good.’

‘Let’s wait and see.’

‘You can’t change her, Webster, no one will. She’s set in her ways like that. It won’t come to any good, no good at all.’

‘She’s still better than anything I’ve had before.’

‘She’ll take your heart and split it in two, that’s all. I’ve seen her do it before. She’s a nice enough lass, but one fella’s never enough. You’ll go in one end and come out the other, like wheat through a shredder, and someone else will have to put you together again.’

‘I’m in pieces already, Norman. I’m starting right down at the bottom anyway.’

‘But you’ve got this place,’ said Norman.

He swung his arm around in a panoramic arc before the fields in front of him where the cows stood with their noses to the sweet green grass and a pheasant rang out its staccato call from somewhere down in the copse by the pond and an automobile rumbled along the top road towards Kingham.

‘And you’ve got me,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you right, Webster, don’t you worry about that. Old Brailes will be retiring soon and he’s got me lined up to take this place over. The landowner’s agreed, it’s just a matter of time, Vera and me will be in the farmhouse and you can take over cottage number one, no problem at all, you’ll be my main man.’

Webster nodded. ‘That sounds too good to be true, Norman. I might just take you up on that.’

They ate their lunch out in the fields, cheese sandwiches in wedges so thick they could barely get their lips around them, and when they reached the yard again at the end of the day Rose and Vera were chatting either side of the cottage door.

‘Look who it is,’ said Rose, smiling at Webster. ‘Been out milking the sheep?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Webster. ‘You can help me milk the cows tomorrow though, if you like.’

The next morning Webster squatted on a three-legged stool, squirting milk in thin streams into the galvanized metal pail between his knees. He sensed Rose behind him before he saw her. She squatted down beside him.

‘Let’s have a go,’ she said.

She pushed and pulled the teat and the milk squirted into the pail and then Webster took over again and Rose followed him from cow to cow and when the last one was done she took Webster’s hand in hers and raised it to her face and breathed in the rich scent of warm milk and cows’ udders that he wore like an invisible farmer’s glove. She kissed his hand and squeezed it in hers and then pulled him towards her and kissed him hard on the mouth, a long lingering kiss as the cattle steamed in the cold air around them.

‘Let’s go up to the barn, Webster.’

‘I can’t, Rose. Norman will be looking for me soon. The work’s never done and he never stops and I can’t leave him to do it on his own.’

‘Brailes will help him.’

‘Brailes is old. He can’t do much heavy work now.’

‘Come on Webster. I won’t keep you all day …’

‘Really, I can’t.’

‘Tonight then?’

‘I’ll come and get you. You can’t walk here in the dark.’

‘Meet me at the top of my road at seven.’

‘Yes, Rose. Yes,’ he said, and she was gone, out of sight between the steaming cows.

That night, they walked down to Pool Meadow and the water was still and dark and cold and the coots called to each other in the night, and Rose and Webster talked until the cold drove them back into town and suddenly it was too late to continue on down to Elm Tree Farm and instead they stood and spoke in whispers at her gate until she saw the light in the front room go off and she kissed him goodnight and slipped inside before her grandmother retired for the night.

The next time they met they went straight to Elm Tree Farm and beneath the heavy quilt in Webster’s room they reacquainted each other with their bodies, this time without a veil of alcohol to deaden their memories, and when Webster lay alone in bed later that night his thoughts returned to Norman’s words and he knew that it was already too late, that he had stepped off the cliff and was falling and the only thing that lay between him and the valley bottom was the very thing that had compelled him to hurl himself off the cliff in the first place, and he no longer knew if she was still up on top or waiting to catch him down below, and he would not find out for sure until he hit the ground
or his fall was arrested by gravity turning against itself and holding him in the air forever.

But gravity can only be what gravity is, and Webster’s fall could not be slowed and the ground suddenly rushed up to meet him, as the ground rushes up in the end at those falling beneath parachutes spun only of hope, falling from planes struck up high in an exploding sky. And when Webster struck the ground all went black.

‘I’m sorry, Webster. That’s just the way it is. I told you from the start, that’s the way I am. Wild Rose. I told you, remember, I can’t be tamed. I told you, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you told me.’

‘I was honest with you, Webster. You’re not the one and you never will be.’

‘Yes, Rose. You were honest with me. I know.’

Within a month, Webster was gone.

‘What will you do?’ Norman had asked him.

‘I’m joining the Army.’

‘What the bloody hell for?’

‘It’ll keep me out of trouble, and there’ll be plenty to do. There’s going to be a war again soon, isn’t there? It’s obvious, he’s not going to stop is he, that Hitler bloke?’

‘For God’s sake, Webster, you don’t have to do that. It’s because of Rose, isn’t it?’

‘That’s a part of it.’

‘That’s all of it.’

‘Don’t blame her, Norman, it’s not her fault. She’s a good girl, really. Really she is.’

By Easter, Brailes had gone too, retired to a new semi-detached house along the Burford Road where he spent his days watching the sparrows clustering in the forsythia at the end of his small garden and wondering where the last fifty years had gone.

Norman and Vera moved into the farmhouse and Norman recruited a pair of keen young farmhands to help around the place and they occupied cottages numbers one and two, and Jacob came down regularly to spend time with Norman, and spring turned to summer and summer turned to autumn, life slipping by on rails just like it had before.

The brakes gripped the wheels, the train lurched and stopped, the doors crashed open as dark thunderclouds rumbled overhead, and the hum of several hundred voices floated over the station roof and the up the hill to where Alfred Arbuckle was munching swiftly through an apple he had plucked from a tree in his orchard.

‘They’ve arrived,’ he yelled through the open door, and Elizabeth stuck her head out of the dormer window high above.

‘Gosh, it’s the longest train I’ve ever seen,’ she said. ‘There must be a whole army of them.’

‘Yes, more than yesterday, more than a thousand they say,’ replied Alfred.

‘Poor little blighters. I wonder what ours will be like.’

‘He’ll be fine. He’ll love it out here in the countryside, away from that filthy city.’ Alfred had been to London only once and had hastened back, swearing never to return. ‘I bet he’s never even seen a pig before.’

Down at the station, in the shadow of the tweed mill, children squabbled about on the platform, others stood in tight solemn little sibling groups, and the Red Cross nurses moved among them like big-bosomed galleons in a restless sea. The evacuees were led up the hill into town clutching their gas masks in small cardboard boxes, and at the cinema they were passed through the bureaucratic machine that sent them away in little groups behind a nurse with a bar of chocolate in their pocket and a bundle of food under their arm. Billy Bampton hurried along in the wake of his brother and sisters as they were led out of town along West Street.

‘Come on Billy, you little tosser!’ called his brother Bobby. ‘Catch up, will you?’

‘Sod off Bobby!’ yelled Billy and he thrust his hands in his pockets and scowled at the passersby.

‘Yes, sod off Bobby,’ said their older sister, Helen. ‘You’re always picking on him.’

Their other sister, Sarah, hurried back, grabbed Billy by the arm and pulled him along as he glowered at her.

‘I’m only trying to help you, you little bleeder,’ she muttered under her breath as they caught up with the others.

Alfred and Elizabeth heard the little group of evacuees before they saw them, squabbling and bickering their way down the dirt track towards the house.

‘Morning, Mr Arbuckle, Mrs Arbuckle,’ said the nurse.

‘Morning Mary,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Which one of these little darlings is ours?’

‘Which
one
?’ said the nurse.

‘Yes, we put ourselves down for one. A boy, we said.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the nurse. ‘There must have been a misunderstanding. These ones come as a job-lot, four for the price of one.’

She scratched her brow and made a pained sooner-you-than-me expression.

‘Well we haven’t got room for four,’ said Alfred.

The four of them stood clustered around the nurse.

‘We’re only little, mister,’ said Billy. ‘We won’t take up much room.’

‘Shut up, Billy,’ said Bobby.

‘How old are you, son?’ asked Alfred.

‘Twelve,’ said Billy. He jerked his thumb at Bobby. ‘He’s fourteen but he acts like a ten-year-old.’

‘And you two girls?’ said Elizabeth.

‘They’re sixteen,’ said the nurse.

‘What, both of them?’

‘Twins,’ said the nurse. ‘Can’t you tell?’

‘We can’t be separated, mister,’ said Billy. ‘We told our mum and dad we’d look out for each other.’

‘I’ll go and see Vera and Norman,’ said Alfred. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’

‘Please be as quick as you can, Mr Arbuckle,’ said the nurse. ‘I have to get back to collect another lot.’

Elizabeth sat the four of them down on the settee and brought each of them a glass of barley water and a biscuit.

‘I’m flipping starving,’ said Bobby.

‘Eat some of your chocolate, then,’ said Billy.

‘Eaten it already.’

‘Pig.’

‘Did you see those fat pigs outside?’ said Sarah.

‘Stink like pigs,’ said Billy.

‘Course they stink like pigs,’ said Bobby. ‘They’re bleedin’ pigs, aren’t they?’

‘Sod off, Bobby!’

Elizabeth stood out of sight in the kitchen and exchanged raised eyebrows with the nurse as they listened to this vaguely familiar form of conversation, reminding Elizabeth of Jacob and William at the Bampton boys’ age. She came in and sat opposite the children.

‘Now listen,’ she said. ‘This is my house, and if any of you are going to stay here you’ll have to learn to behave a lot better than you’re behaving at the moment.’

‘Sorry, miss,’ said Billy. ‘It’s Bobby, he’s always like this.’

Bobby bit his lip and regarded Billy with unbrotherly eyes while the twins attempted to recover the situation by asking Elizabeth about the town and the neighbours and what she thought would become of them if the war really did progress as expected and the Germans sent airmen to drop their bombs on London.

Then Alfred and Norman walked in, and Jacob too, covered in dirt from the fields where he had been helping Norman with the weekend jobs.

‘Let’s have a look at you,’ said Norman, sizing up the newcomers. ‘All right, then,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘Vera and I will take the boys. If that’s all right with you, nurse?’

‘Thank you, Norman,’ she said.

‘But we promised we’d stay together,’ said Helen.

‘It’s for the best, love,’ said the nurse. ‘You two boys will be fine with Norman. His farm’s just a short walk down the road so you can all see each other every day. And you’ll be at the same school during the week anyway.’

‘Are these dogs yours, mister?’ asked Bobby.

Norman nodded.

‘Come on then, Billy,’ said Bobby, getting to his feet. ‘I like the sound of living on a farm.’

Billy stood up and Norman took their suitcases and the others
watched them set off up the lane towards Elm Tree Farm.

Jacob smiled at Helen and Sarah.

‘Do you want to come and see my birds?’ he said. ‘They’re just round the back, in the out-house.’

‘What kind of birds?’ said Helen.

‘Pigeons. Half a dozen.’

‘Ugh,’ said Sarah.

‘What’s wrong with pigeons?’ said Jacob.

‘Dirty things,’ she said, looking Jacob up and down, her eyes lingering upon the filthy state of his trousers.

‘Pigeons aren’t dirty,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, they’re one of the cleanest of British birds. Haven’t you ever seen them preening?’

‘Seen them what?’

‘Preening,’ he said. ‘Like this …’ and Helen laughed at his imitation of a cooing, nuzzling bird.

‘I think I’d like to see them,’ said Helen, smiling at Jacob, and he took her round to the out-house to show her what was inside

Down at Elm Tree Farm, Vera was waiting at the gate, peering up the hill as Norman and the boys came down, two small figures traipsing along in their jackets and their shorts either side of the massive man in whose hands their toy-sized suitcases appeared entirely incapable of transporting the contents of their lives from West Ham to Chipping Norton. Vera held a bundle of her own in her arms, Daphne Miller, born two years earlier, two years after the wedding, just as Norman had promised Alfred. Daphne began to cry, then settled, and as Vera laid her down in her cot in their bedroom overlooking the fields at the back, Norman showed Billy and Bobby up the next flight of stairs to the top room beneath the eaves.

‘What do you think?’ asked Norman. ‘All right?’

‘Is this all for us, mister?’ asked Bobby. ‘The whole room?’

‘The whole room.’

‘Flipping ’eck, Billy,’ said Bobby, looking around the room and then out of the window at the front and across the yard towards the pond and the copse beyond.

‘Are there fish in there, mister, in that pond?’

‘There are a few, but you’ll do well to catch them. They’re old and wise, and very, very big.’

‘You’re fucking joking!’

Billy stared at his brother. ‘Watch your mouth, Bobby, we’re not at home now.’

‘Listen lads,’ said Norman. ‘There’s a rule on this farm about swearing, has been as long as I’ve been here and for a long time before that too. The old bloke who ran this place before me would only ever permit two swearwords within his earshot. Bloody and bugger. They both begin with B, so they’ll be easy enough for you to remember.’

‘Bloody and bugger,’ said Billy. ‘Like Billy and Bobby.’

‘Yes,’ said Norman, smiling. ‘Just like Billy and Bobby.’

‘So, mister,’ said Billy. ‘Bugger me! That’s all right then? That’s allowed?’

‘Yes, that’s all right.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Bobby, and they both laughed.

‘It’s not so bad out here in the country,’ said Billy.

‘Unpack your bags, lads. And keep your voices down, the baby’s asleep. You can put your clothes in that chest, and bring your shoes downstairs – they stay in the hall. Be downstairs in ten minutes, I want to show you round the farm.’

As Norman’s heavy footsteps descended the stairs, he could hear the boys’ voices as they rushed about the room.

‘Fuck me, this place is all right,’ said one.

‘Watch your bloody language, Billy.’

‘Bugger off you stupid … bugger.’

‘Bugger you too.’

‘Look at all those fucking cows.’

‘Where?’

‘In that field.’

‘Oh, yes. They’re quite small, aren’t they?’

‘That’s because they’re a long way off, you idiot.’

‘Bugger off, you bugger.’

Then the sound of them falling about laughing and unpacking their bags, hurling drawers open and bickering over who would have the top one and on which side of the large shared bed each of them would sleep, and all the while trying out in ever louder tones various combinations of the authorised expletives. Down in the hall, Vera looked at Norman and cast her eyebrows towards the sky as the racket the boys were making set Daphne off in her cot, her cries lifting slowly up into a wail like the slow steady rise of an air-raid siren.

‘Cut them a bit of slack, Vera,’ said Norman. ‘They’ve been through a lot, the poor little lads.’

Norman took them around the farm, first through the yard and the barns and round the pond, then up across the fields and through the woods and down into the shaded valley where the stream ran and the hares scuffed up the grass as they writhed in their traps, then up the far slope and around the main wood and home again along the perimeter fence that ran closest to the Churchill Road. They got back to the farm late for tea and worn out from hours on their feet in the fields.

‘Tired, boys?’

‘Bloody knackered, miss,’ said Billy.

‘Shoes off, lads,’ said Norman. ‘They stay in the hall.’

The next morning, when they came downstairs after a night of wakefulness beneath the creaking beams, they found their shoes in the hall, shone to a mirror shine by Norman during the night.

Up the hill at Mill View Cottage, Jacob and William left together to walk into town to get the newspaper for Alfred.

‘What do you think of those two, then?’ asked Jacob as they walked. ‘Helen and Sarah – all right, aren’t they?’

‘Not bad. Can’t tell them apart, can you?’

‘Helen’s the prettier one,’ said Jacob. ‘She’s got that little mole on her top lip, just here.’

He poked himself in the approximate position of Helen’s distinguishing feature.

‘I prefer the other one,’ said William unconvincingly.

‘That’s all right, then.’

‘Anyway,’ said William. ‘Rose is going to be the girl for you, isn’t she?’

Jacob felt his cheeks redden. ‘Rose?’

‘Yes, dear brother, Rose. She’s always talking about you. Vera told me. And the way she looks at you, haven’t you noticed that, with her mouth nearly hanging open?’

‘Shut up, you clot. She’s old enough to be my mum.’

‘She’s only twenty-four.’

‘And I’m only sixteen.’

‘Don’t let that stop you, Jacob, it wouldn’t me. And anyway, when you’re old and grey, what difference will a few years make?’

When they got home with the paper they were still debating the
relative merits of Helen and Sarah, daring each other to attempt increasingly ludicrous means of familiarisation. They pushed noisily in through the door.

‘Shut your mouths and shut the door!’ said Alfred, slumped in his armchair with a hand to his brow, Elizabeth next to Vera and Helen and Sarah on the sofa, and Norman leaning against the frame of the kitchen door, their faces all hung with silence. As Jacob and William cut their noise they heard the radio in the background, Neville Chamberlain’s solemn dry voice already delivering dread words.

‘… speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany …’

Alfred said something unintelligible and Vera twisted her handkerchief around her fingers and bit her lip and when Jacob looked at Elizabeth he saw her gaze flitting between him and his brother.

‘… what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed … to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland. But Hitler would not have it …’

When Jacob looked at Norman, Norman was looking at him too, unnerving him with his stare.

‘… we have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe had become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.’

And then silence, followed by a heavy animal sigh as Alfred looked at his sons, eighteen and sixteen, and Elizabeth stood up and hurried out of the room and into the garden with her hand at her mouth, gasping for air.

‘Here we go again,’ said Alfred. ‘Here we bloody go again.’

That afternoon, air raid sirens brought Jacob and William out into the street to see what German planes really looked like and whether
they would be dropping high explosive or poison gas or both, but it was a false alarm and the planes did not come and the sirens wailed down into silence and Jacob found himself wondering if this was what modern war would be like.