Mr Mac and Me (14 page)

Ever since that day I’ve wanted to make a seal of my own. I’ll have it in gold, T for Thomas, and that night when I take the candle to my room I gutter wax on to the window ledge and press my thumb against it, but it must be a different kind of wax because it squelches and then cracks.

Betty’s picture is finished, and for all that I inspect it by daylight, and by firelight and even by the light of the candle as I carry it to my room, there’s nothing more I can think of to do. I’d like to show it to Mrs Mackintosh, for the kindness that’s in her, but there’s only old Mac sitting on his crate, trembling a little, using up all his energy on keeping his hand still. ‘Do you think it’s good enough to send?’ I want to ask him, but I’m fearful he’ll advise me to scrub the whole thing out and start again. Instead I set to work making an envelope to encase it. I use brown paper and mark out the address and for a long time I sit there, looking at the picture, before I write a message on the back.
Hello Betty. Here you are
. And I sign it fast as if she is watching me, laughing, as my ears turn red.

I take a penny from under my mattress and I go to Mrs Lusher’s for a stamp. I have to wait, for there’s a crowd of women already in the shop and they’re talking up a storm. It’s Mrs Cady – that’s what they’re saying, gawn and caught a cold after having her last baby. Too afraid she was to have it in the village, too close to the coast, what if the enemy were to land while she was pushing it out? And so she drove over to Wissett, to her sister’s, but she couldn’t stay there long because there were nine other children, needing her at home. The first thing she did, Mrs Gooch was saying, when she got home, was she went upstairs and checked on all those children lying in their beds. ‘Whatever would those poor children dew without a mother?’ she said when she came down. And now, a month later, she’s a corpse.

‘Caught a cauld-like on the long drive back from Wissett,’ Mrs Lusher sighs. And the others shake their heads and frown.

‘The husband weren’t no good to her either.’ It’s Mrs Horrod’s voice. I can’t see her but I know it’s her. ‘He were fond of other women, and she knowed it.’

‘That’s it,’ Mrs Kett agrees. ‘It took away her strength. Nothing left to fight the influenza. Left all them poor children. What’ll they do now?’

It’s hard to breathe in Mrs Lusher’s shop, and it takes me time to fight my way to the front and look in at her through the window of her wares. There’s nothing she doesn’t sell – even now, even with the war – bread, bacon, paraffin, lard. There are china ornaments, cures for the toothache, candles, soap. But it seems today she has no stamps.

‘Peppermints?’ she offers. ‘Owdacious strong they are.’ But I’m saving my money and I thank her and say no.

As I’m shouldering my way out, the peppermint, just the thought of it, burning in my cheek, I meet old Mac, coming in with a letter of his own. ‘You’ll have to come back Saturday,’ I tell him, ‘if you want a stamp.’ And he looks so stricken that I show him my own letter, and offer to take them both to Southwold where I might just catch the late post. Old Mac hesitates. I wait, as do all the women in the shop, to see what he will say. ‘If you’re sure?’ he agrees. And reluctantly he places the letter in my hand.
Mrs Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh
, it says on the front. And with the penny that he gives me I slide it into my jacket.

The sun is sinking fast over the woods, striping the clouds that hang above the sea. ‘Will there be time, do you think?’ Mac asks as we look up, and having given my word to do my best, I race towards the ferry. There’s a troop of soldiers waiting to get on, crowding the jetty, stretching up past the ferryman’s shed. And try as I might, elbows pressed against my side to sidle forward, there’s not a chance of getting on before my turn. I wait, my eyes fixed on the river, the ferry gliding across from bank to bank, until each soldier has been delivered safely to the other side. I’m at the front now, and I’m stepping on. But just as we’re ready to set off Sir Bly’s youngest son thunders up on his horse, and the ferry must wait, as he dismounts. But however he coaxes, the animal will not move. It keeps shying and neighing, he must lead it away along the jetty and turn it around, twice, until with a grand swish of its tail, it accepts defeat. I’ve only half an hour now before the last boat sails back, but even so as we pull out into the river, the water is so still and pink that I fall into a calm.

It will be quickest to run along the beach, I tell myself, and with the tide in I keep to the high ground and jump between the tufts of grass. But I’ve forgotten how fine the sand is on this side of the river, and every time I slip, it fills my shoes. With each bogged step, the shops are shutting up, and as I struggle on I remember why I never take this route. I stop when the lighthouse sends its first beam across the water, and I turn and squint back over the river and across the common to catch the time on our church clock. But everything is in shadow and the sun is just the slither of a yolk above the trees. I sit down on a high hillock of grass and take out my letter. Betty Maclellan. I imagine her face behind the brown paper, smiling out at me. Behind it is the other letter. Mrs Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. And on the back the address from where it was sent: Lea House, Rabbit Row, The Green. And I’m laughing. Rabbit Row! He’s made it up, I’m sure of it, for me, and I push the letters back into my pocket and turn towards the ferry. I’ll come tomorrow, soon as I’ve finished school, and I can only im­agine George Allard’s fury when I don’t arrive as I’ve promised, to turn the wheel.

That night as I lie in bed I watch my letters glowing on the window ledge. ‘What do you have there?’ Ann is beside me, brushing out her hair, and I tell her I’ve been entrusted with a job. To take Mac’s letters over to the post. I don’t tell her one of them is mine.

‘What do they say?’ she asks me.

I don’t reply.

‘Have you not looked inside?’ She sits upright, her eyes gleaming. ‘If I could see how a proper letter is written, then I’d know. I’d know what to say to Jimmy Kerridge. Then maybe he’d write back.’

I try to stop her. I take her arm. But she’s seized the smaller letter and she’s out, past our sleeping parents, so fast I can’t even catch the hem of her dress. ‘Ann!’ I follow, down the ladder and into the kitchen to where she’s setting the kettle on the stove.

‘You can’t,’ I hiss when I’m beside her. ‘It’s private property.’

Ann feeds more wood into the stove, and shuffles its inside with a poker. Even so the water sits like lead. ‘Let’s go back to bed,’ I whisper. ‘Come.’ But Ann is determined. ‘It’ll only take a minute more.’ And it’s true, the water is already beginning to stir.

As the heat rises Ann holds the back of the letter over it, so that with the steam, the sealed edges curl, and with some nudging they begin to peel away, separating out the words of Mac’s address. ‘Shh,’ Ann says when I protest, and she lights the lamp and we huddle together as she slowly inches out the damp warm sheet of paper.

My dear Margaret,

It’s been four weeks now since you went away, and much less I hope till you return. I have your letter, I only got it when I returned late from a walk, and it is of great comfort to know that you are well. I’m sorry to hear the trouble continues between Frances and MacNair. And that the boy, Sylvan, is suffering – as well he might. They are lucky to have you there. And I am even luckier that soon you’ll be back here with me. Today was grey and misty, but all the same I set off for our studio and managed to make some progress. I’m still working on the winter stock, the first is done, but the second is defeating me. I seem to paint so slowly and all the time I’m working I’m longing for it to be done so I can put it away and start on something new. I find I like that even more than saving money. Although if I don’t sell something soon there will be no money to save.

You see, my Margaret, this is what I do when I can’t come in to tea with you, I sit and write. For writing to you is how I best relax. I will write again tomorrow. Or maybe even tonight. Although there are only three important words that could take the place of all the rest. I Love You. I hope you find them here in every line.

MMYT

Ann, who has been reading, swallows, and tears start in her eyes. ‘So that is how it’s done,’ she says. And she laughs and a small sob escapes her. ‘I’ve been telling Jimmy how many apples we got from that one tree in the corner of the garden, and how poor Mrs Cady caught cold on the drive from Wissett and now her sister must move in and look after all ten children.’

‘What’s MMYT?’ I ask. And we say it together and apart, in different voices, quiet, loud, but we still can’t make it out.

Away from the steam of the kettle the envelope has curled and dried. ‘Now what do we do?’ I worry, and Ann mixes up a paste of flour and water and, matching the black edges of the words, smoothing the paper, she seals it up until it sets. ‘What do you think?’ and I have to admit it doesn’t look too bad at all.

Chapter 34

‘Maggs!’ A book slams down on my desk, and I look up into Runnicles’ red face. ‘The dates,’ he spits. ‘Do you know nothing?’ And I want to tell him that I may know something, but I’ve forgotten to listen for the question.

‘Napoleon?’ he prompts me. ‘Or have you been asleep?’

‘June the 18th 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo?’ I offer, for I have to give him something and I know this is one of the things Runnicles likes to hear. For good measure, and to cool his fury, I add, ‘As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain became the foremost nation in the world.’

With a sigh Runnicles moves off and I am left alone again to try and decide whether I will run over to George Allard’s to warn him I’ll be late, or go straight to Southwold with the letters and get them safely to the post. I imagine them travelling side by side to Scotland. The first stopping off at Glasgow, the other rumbling on by train to the Kyle of Lochalsh, where it will cross the sea by steamer to Lewis and arrive finally in Betty’s quick cool hands.

‘Maggs!’

I yelp as the book slams down on my hands, and there is Runnicles glaring at me again. ‘Lurkine doesn’t know the contents of the Napoleonic Code. Can you enlighten us with your superior intelligence?’ And even though I do know, somewhere, something about the code – is it to do with jobs going to the most qualified, rather than those of noble birth? – my fingers are throbbing so loudly my thoughts are mired, and I’m fearful that if I open my mouth even by a whisker tears will fall.

‘You will write out, one hundred times,’ Runnicles leans over me. ‘ “The Napoleonic Code has been the basis of European law for the last one hundred years.” And Lurpine too. By tomorrow.’

‘One hundred years, one hundred times,’ I stutter. And I close my eyes to seal in what he’s said.

I get a ride with the glazier’s son as far as Blythburgh and follow the estuary around until the saltmarshes sinking into mud drive me back on to the road. It’s a cold, clear day, the trees bare, the fields rough with stubble. My stomach grumbles for the meal I’ve missed, but if I walk fast I’ll catch the post office just as it opens after lunch.

They say that Suffolk is as flat as a board, but if it is, then why am I toiling up this long hard slope of road? Every dozen steps I glance behind, hoping for a cart to speed the last two miles of my walk, but the only sound is the roar of the train as it thunders across the common. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I could climb on board at Southwold, and ride it home, and my heart lifts and my feet quicken at the thought of blasting fearlessly across that bridge. And then I remember Fred Tilson whispering in the pub that our train is the same one used for bringing in the wounded from the front. They ship them home to Lowestoft and take them to London overnight, although what they do with them there I’m not sure. I think of the Miss Bishops settling into their seats and I try and picture the carriage full of soldiers, arms missing, legs blown off.

Just then, when I’d stopped listening for it, a cart pulls up. It is full of men in uniform and one leans down and grins. ‘It’s our little cripple from the inn,’ he says, and I recognise him. He’s from the Cheshires and he’s our most recent billet. ‘Can we haul him on, sir?’ he asks, and with a nod from their sergeant the man, Gleave, leans down and gives me his arm.

‘So where you off to in such a hurry?’ he asks, and I have to think fast if I’m to say something that won’t make him laugh. ‘I’m running an errand,’ I say. ‘For a friend.’

But Gleave laughs all the same. ‘Running, were you? I should say not.’ He looks at my foot. ‘How old are you anyway? Fourteen?’

I’m so pleased I want to lie, but the blood that is always waiting starts throbbing in my ears. ‘I’ll be fourteen at the start of January,’ I tell him.

‘Another few years and you’ll be about right to volunteer.’ He looks me over. ‘A chance to get fitted up with decent boots. Put a lift in while they’re about it.’

‘Another few years!’ The man beside him grasps his crotch. ‘Careful what you wish for.’

But Gleave opens up his chest and roars out across the blue water so loudly that a flock of gulls lift into the air. ‘Let me at them. However long it takes.’ And he prods me in the chest. ‘Don’t think a bit of a limp will see you sat safely at home, my lad. Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that.’

It is a brewing day in Southwold and the air is dense with the smell of malt extracted from the grain. The whole town reels with it. Even the horses look befuddled as they lift their heavy feet. There’s a stableblock behind the high street where the Punches go to rest when they’ve delivered their barrels, and I pause there to lay a hand against their muzzles and give them a scratch behind their ears. I think of our horse Kingdom, who we were forced to sell to the Grand Hotel one year when there was no other way to find the rent, and I run my mind over the weight of my money and think how much I’d have to save to buy him back.