Authors: Esther Freud
Mr Mac and Me (17 page)
‘Who’s giving the orders, do you think?’ I ask, and Mac shields his eyes to stare up at the sky.
‘Aghhh.’ A dropping catches the peak of his hat, and as he wipes it clear, he sighs. ‘If our army was like that, we’d have nothing to fear.’
I look at him. I didn’t think we did have anything to fear. Not really. Not with our own prime minister, and our king, and the likes of George Allard and myself keeping a close watch on the sea.
Another dropping catches Mac’s shoulder. ‘They say it’s good luck,’ I tell him, but even so we stumble out from under the cloud and watch as the starlings draw together, as dense and shifting as a shoot of coal, and then with a pause as if preparing to amaze us, they swarm away in the shape of an arrow-headed kite, one tiny silver bird fluttering at its tip.
Ann has hopes that Jimmy Kerridge will be home for Christmas. She has seen his mother at the Monday market, and although she has no actual news, Mrs Kerridge tells her that is only because no one is allowed to know the exact whereabouts of his ship. They could be sailing the rivers of Egypt, or round the tip of Africa, but the information must remain secret in case it is intercepted and a submarine picks up the news. The town is still reeling from the men they lost when the
Aboukir
went down, her back broken by a single torpedo, two other ships destroyed when they went to her rescue. Fifteen hundred men lost in an hour. And our men, the ten that were from Southwold, their names are pinned up outside the town hall, and there’s talk of putting up a memorial to them in the market square.
‘Did you tell her Jimmy’s not written?’ I ask. But she scowls at me and slams out of the door.
Mrs Mac is back. I pretend to be surprised, although I know from Mac’s letters to expect her. He has worked hard to finish his painting of the harbour and I stop by the hut to see how it came out. He has an oil light lit and there’s a jar of holly on the table, and both he and Mrs Mac are drinking tea in their coats.
The picture is propped against the wall. ‘Can I?’ And I stoop down before it.
‘What do you think?’ Mrs Mac asks.
I keep looking. There are no people in the picture. Just the chain ferry in the middle of the river, too far away to make out who is on it, or to see the ferryman drawing it across. The tide is out and there’s the island at the mouth of the harbour, and the mud of the path, with its puddle, broken up by sky.
I look over at him. ‘You like it here,’ I say. And I smile because he’s painted the river as if it is his own.
Mac leans down to see what I have seen. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I suppose I must do.’ And he puts an arm around his wife’s shoulders.
‘And how have you been getting on?’ Mrs Mac asks me. ‘Toshie says you’ve been working hard, at school and at the rope-making, and hardly time to spare for your ship.’
They’ve been talking about me? And I force myself to lift out the big picture of HMS
Formidable
.
We look at it in silence. The outlines are all in, the boards and sails, the lifeboats and the cannons, but it sits stiffly, going nowhere on a bed of solid sea.
‘He’s got an eye,’ Mac nods, and I slide it away quickly before either one of them thinks it necessary to say more.
A week before Christmas our soldiers get leave to travel home. Gleave and his friends, without having even strayed from our coast, are heading north again. The night they go I find Ann in our room, unrolling a gift of sheer stockings up over her ankles. She stops when she sees me, one leg outstretched, like a cat mid-wash. And then she carries on, the blotched skin of her shin disappearing under silk. I sit on the bed beside her and feel for the moles on the back of my arm and imagine Ann and Jimmy’s wedding. Ann in a hat piled high with flowers, Mother in her good blue dress. Is Father there? I can’t see him, hard as I look. And so I will him to be there, his cap at an angle, his eyes straight ahead as if to say that he’s done nothing wrong. And it’s true. He’s been calm and quiet these last weeks with the Cheshires in the house. But now, as I sit beside Ann, watching her slowly roll the stockings back down her legs, and replace them in their box, I wonder what tonight will bring.
It starts quiet enough, although the wind is up and howling round the door. Mac and Mrs Mac come in for their tea. Mother gives them a stew of pork and beans and Father brings them up their stout. I listen while they talk: about the war, and then about the weather, wet and wild as it has been these last few days, with more rain lashing down. The Tilson brothers blow in. And James Ladd, and Mr Gory from Lowestoft. And Father tells them how he’s sure that the guns across in France are bringing down the rain. Shaking open the clouds, he tells them, angering the heavens, and the talk moves back to the war and how they’d better hurry up if it’s to be over by Christmas, and then just as I’m thinking of climbing up to bed, Danky bursts open the door, and shouts to us there’s been a wreck, the lifeboat’s out, and all the men from the Bell are down on the shore. I curse as I snatch my coat – if only Father had taken the lease of the fishermen’s pub when he came back to the village, for despite the name above the door, often as not the adventures of the sea go on without us.
‘Not you, my boy,’ Mother tugs at my collar, but I slip from her hands, and I’m out into the dark, Danky beside me, our heads bent into the rain. I glance behind, and I see our drinkers streaming out in the light from the front door, and Mother with them, and only Father standing coatless, a bottle of beer clasped by the neck.
We hurry towards the harbour, our boots splashing in the street. And when we get there we find most of the village waiting on the shore. The tide is in, the waves are high, and the lights of the wrecked ship are glinting at us through the storm. I wonder for a minute where our lanterns are, the ones we use to steer our men home. And I’m turning to Danky when I remember the enemy may be out there too, waiting for a signal, looking for a place to land. I stare out through the dark for a sighting of the lifeboat, but the water rises high and the moon is sunk behind the clouds. ‘Here,’ I’m scrabbling for a foothold, ‘help me,’ and I lock my feet against the wooden struts of a groyne and with one arm on Danky’s shoulder I hoist myself up. I’m glad I’ve been up here before, because the narrow ledge is less of a surprise to me, and I wrap my arms around it and steady myself before I stand. ‘Get down. Do you hear me?’ It is Mother, shrill, below, but I stare into the water, raking my eyes back from the dim lights of the ship until I see it. A shadow on the water. Our lifeboat, with Shrimp the coxswain crouching in the prow. I can’t tell if it’s coming back towards us or heading for the ship, for it’s moving sideways, its hull against the waves. And then the clouds fray, and the moon beams through, and I see the boat sheer up a wall of water, and as it tips towards me I make out the cowering heads of a cluster of people, dark against the sea. ‘They’re coming in,’ I shout. ‘They need a light.’ I don’t care anything for Dora now. Or the enemy who’d be fools to risk the sea on such a night. And as I shout, the sky meshes black over my head and I lose sight of the boat.
It is Mac who passes up his lamp. I crouch beside it, willing it to take, the wick flickering, small as a fly. ‘Go on then, boy,’ Danky calls from below and just then it blooms into a light. I stand, unsteady, and raise the lantern high. The boat is nothing but a black shadow on the sea. Lost and found again. Spray bursting over its sides. I hold my arm up till it screams. I want to shout and call into the wind but I know it’s of no use. Instead I wait, the rain soaking into my clothes, my hands red raw, the fingers stinging. The cloud breaks up again and I see the crowd of heads, their faces towards me. ‘They’re turned this way!’ I shout and there’s a cheer from below, and Mother’s lone voice demanding I get down.
Spray slams into my face, the wind catches at my clothes, and I switch the lamp to the other hand. I could stay up here for ever, my arms stretched to the sky, but the boat has reached the harbour mouth and I can hear the oars pulling below me. Slowly I lower the lantern, passing it to Danky who snuffs it out, and in the sudden blackness I jump down to the ground.
‘Foolish boy,’ Mother cuffs me, but I’m so cold I hardly feel it. Other hands tap me on the shoulder, pat me on the head. ‘Well done, boy. Well done.’
All night I dream the lifeboat’s coming in. I can see it, sliding on the steep slope of the waves, crashing and vanishing in the swell. Danky is there, telling me how once the fishermen of our village formed a human chain, more than thirty men, hands linked, to haul a lost man in. ‘If they’d had rope,’ George Allard is bellowing, but someone tells him, and it may even be me, that there are times when only a man’s hand will do.
I’m cold, out there on the shore, and I twist and turn and pull the blankets round me, meshed up in seaweed, the cool soft weight of it dragging me down. And then I wake. And Mother is leaning over me, her hand on my forehead, her face concerned. ‘You have a fever,’ she says and she strips the blanket off me. ‘Sit up now,’ and she peels away my wet shirt, and with no warning, pushes a flannel under my arm. The cloth is cold as blades, and all around it I am jumping with the shock. But she dips the flannel into icy water and splashes it against my back.
I’m dreaming again. Mac is swinging his lantern through the dark, his wife beside him, her red hair loose. ‘The boy has an eye,’ they say to each other. And they write the words on a shred of paper and with their joint signatures in a rectangular box – CRM MMM – they place it in a bottle and hurl it out to sea.
It’s Sunday morning before I’m strong enough to come downstairs. And even then I’m excused church service and told to stay by the fire. Father’s face looks bruised with drink. And the two smallest fingers on Mother’s hand are bandaged together in a splint. But they leave the inn, dressed in their best clothes, with Ann, head down, behind them. I sit in the big chair and stretch my feet out to the fire. My legs are thinner, my foot white as a root. I examine my knees, wide and bony, and lift my shirt to inspect the hollow of my stomach. A pure clean hunger flashes through me, and I imagine the first fat blackberry of autumn, and the sweet milk segments of a beech nut as I scoop out its insides. I could get up and search for something. But I can’t seem to move from my chair, so I sit there, breathing in the smell of our dinner cooking on the stove. Pearl-barley soup with nubs of mutton. Mother has asked that I keep one eye on it. And I wonder if this is what it feels like, to have been on a long sea voyage and finally come home.
I’m woken by the crash of a chair falling, and the clatter of a cup flying across the room. Mother has her hands over her face and Ann is crouching by the fire. ‘Get down,’ she whispers to me, and she takes my hand and pulls me to the floor. Father stands in the kitchen doorway. There is a dark, singed smell. ‘If you hadn’t stood about outside the church rabbiting like an old woman . . .’
‘The food is not ruined,’ Mother dares. And she takes the lid from the pot and peers inside. ‘It is only the base of the pan that’s burnt.’
Father turns his eyes on me. ‘And whose fault is that?’
But I don’t look at him. I will do. One day. I’ll rise up and fight him. But today my legs are trembling and my head spins and I stay crouched on the floor.
‘Let’s be grateful,’ Mother says, ‘that the fever has broken and the boy is well enough to come downstairs.’ He turns away from me and moves towards her, and I swear if she didn’t have the hot soup in her hands, he would have knocked her down. But she stands before him. The pot raised. And there is a silence before he slumps down in his chair.
‘Grateful,’ he says. And the fight goes out of him.
Mother sets the pot down on the table and ladles the scalded soup into bowls, spoon by spoon, until she reaches the thick burnt sludge. Ann takes it from her then and pours in water to lift the crust, and I pull myself up from the floor, and heave myself into my chair. But when the grace is said, and Father nods his head to show we can begin, I find for all my longing, I can’t lift the spoon to my mouth.
I lie in bed, the days tumbling by, darkened by the rain that falls outside the window. I am roused by Mother, spooning broth into my mouth. To please her I try and swallow, but more often than not I cough. ‘Try again,’ Mother urges, but eventually even she gives up and lets me be.
Ann sits and talks to me from the end of the bed. She has a letter. I’m not sure if it is the letter I’ve been waiting for, the one from Betty thanking me for the likeness that I made of her, asking me to wait through spring and summer for the herring season to start up, when she’ll be back. Her trunk is already packed, her kist she calls it, her gutting knife – the cutag – wrapped in her shawl, her apron and her boots ready to go in. Or is it a note from George Allard telling me he’ll have to find another boy if he’s ever to finish the line for his anchor? But as I watch Ann’s face I think that maybe the letter is not for me at all, but is word at last from Jimmy Kerridge, telling her he loves her, and the war is nearly done. He’ll be coming home to marry her. Is that it? Or why does she look sad?
Ann makes stars from strips of straw and hangs them across our window. ‘You need to eat,’ Mother’s eyes are dark, and from the shadow behind her, Mrs Horrod appears. It’s strange to see her curious face under my sloped roof, and she sits by the bed and feels my pulse and puts a rough hand on my forehead. ‘Peppermint and elderflower,’ she says. ‘And whisky for the heart.’ And later that day I twist and turn my head as the hot stinking liquor is pressed against my mouth.