Mr Mac and Me (20 page)

I stand by the well. There is a crescent moon, silver, hanging above the sea, the shadow of its rocky stomach lying in its lap. I listen for a whisper of them, my eyes closed, and then a bat soars past my ear, a tiny shriek from both of us splitting through the dark. Afterwards I laugh. The well is open, I feel the chill of its damp brick, and I stop myself from throwing my voice down into it.
Hello, lo, lo, lo, o
.

‘Where are they?’ I remember why I’m out here, and quiet as I can I walk towards the trees at the far end of the field. ‘Ann,’ I call, but there is silence, and then the muffle of a laugh, and as I stand I see the one black shape of them, tangled together against the arms of the yew.

The next day when I come in for my lunch Gleave is sitting by the fire, the newspaper spread out before him, while the other man, Booth, tall and awkward with a red, raw Adam’s apple, grunts as he leans forward to cover the front page.

‘What’s the news?’ I ask. I’m hoping it will be a call for rope production across the whole south-east of Britain but Gleave nudges his friend and the man, with his thick fingers, flips over the page. I move closer. There’s a picture of a ship. ‘What’s that?’ I say, straining to read, just as Ann comes in with a stack of bowls for soup. And I laugh. They’ve got it wrong. That can’t be HMS
Formidable
. That grey metal monster without a single sail? And it takes me a moment to catch the words beneath it.
More than 600 men lost.

I swivel round to look at Ann. ‘What?’ she asks. She knows my face too well. And she glances at the soldiers who have folded the paper into squares. Not one of us says a word. ‘Come on,’ she holds her hand out for the news, and when no one offers anything, she screams so loudly that even Gleave’s face goes pale.

Ann rushes the paper into the kitchen. ‘No,’ she sounds as if she’s being hit, ‘no, no, no.’

Gleave leans back in his chair and frowns. ‘Sunk in the Channel by a German submarine, although it does say seventy-one men were picked up by the skipper of a trawler.’ I wait for more news of what they’ve read, but when the men fall silent I slip out of the room and into the kitchen where Ann is crouched down by the stove. ‘Not all were lost,’ I whisper into her ear, but she is shaking, her eyes glazed, and I put my arms around her and I tell her, ‘Seventy-one were pulled out of the sea. Seventy-one, Ann, seventy-one.’

Father finds us like this on his way to the cellar. ‘What you two doing snivelling down there?’ he says and that’s when I know I’ll do it. One day. I’ll take a mallet and I’ll knock him into the ground.

Our soldiers never get their paper back. Ann takes it up to bed and reads over every word. ‘Yesterday.’ This is what most distresses her. The boat sank yesterday and she didn’t know.
‘In the early hours of January 1st . . .’
Her hands are icy and her body shakes. And I think of hens and how they can die of shock. ‘. . .
The battleship HMS
Formidable
was sunk by two torpedoes from a German submarine 20 miles off Start Point. The first torpedo hit the number-one boiler port side, a second explosion caused the ship to list heavily to starboard. Huge waves 30 feet high lashed the stricken ship with strong winds, rain and hail, sinking it in less
than two
hours. One pinnace with seventy-one men on board was picked up by the trawler
Provident,
15 miles off Berry Head. There are no other known survivors.
’

Ann falls asleep sitting up, the paper in her arms. I lie beside her trying to decide what could have happened to the other lifeboats. Would they have not been lowered, and wouldn’t men have leapt down into them? And I wonder, were they swamped by waves or did they cast about all night, looking for land? Are they out there now, with their captain, Loxley he was called, and the ship’s dog, whose name, apparently, was Bruce? And I picture Jimmy Kerridge bailing water with his cap, straining his eyes for a torch to guide him towards the coast, a beacon, or a candle, even the red-hot tip of someone’s cigarette.

Chapter 41

With Abb gone back to his regiment I try George Allard again, although he’s sent no word to me.

‘He’s busy just now,’ his wife calls when she finds me at the door, but I catch sight of him through the hall window, stepping backwards through his garden with the hemp around his waist.

‘Who’s he found’, my heart stutters, ‘to do my job?’ And I peer round her to see who is sitting at the wheel. But Mrs Allard spreads her arms to block my view. ‘That’s enough now. Best for you to go on home.’

‘Home?’ I’m having none of that, and I duck under her arm and I’m off round the side of the building to the garden.

But there is no one sitting at the wheel. There is no wheel. In its place is a small windmill and it’s standing out by the corner of the house where the breeze can spin its sails.

‘Good day to you,’ Mr Allard can’t help but look proud. And as he moves backwards the strands of the hemp twist together into twine. I nod but I can’t speak. I can see the pulley, polished to a shine, the pulley I once saw resting by his front door, and there are the shafts of wood he’s been collecting, and the strips of cloth, stitched and held, full of the days and weeks and months of work that must have gone into them. I stand there, my mouth open. Backwards he goes, the wheel turning without any human help, and I think of the three boys his father hired, the pride of it, and I wonder if maybe now he’ll find another job for me to do. If I stand here long enough maybe he’ll forget and tell me the story of the Saxon founder of our village, or how the Vikings sailed down the River Blyth in their canoes. He may tell me again about the church that used to stand in Chapel Field as long ago as 1400, and how it had been near as forgotten until the farmer Robert Gooch ploughed up its cemetery, raising the old worn names out of the ground. But George Allard has nothing for me today. His lips are set, and his tongue is still.

‘What if there’s no wind?’ I shout to him. But he shrugs his shoulder. ‘Then we’ll read about it in the
Gazette
, and take our tea, and sit down on the beach.’

I flush then. At the mention of the paper, and not a word to me about HMS
Formidable
. Although he must know that it went down.

‘You owe me a shilling,’ I say.

‘I can’t stop now. You can see that.’ He’s walking away. ‘But Mrs Allard will give it to you. Go round to the back door and tell her why you’ve come.’

Up in my room I untie the knot of my handkerchief, and drop the shilling in. The rent is due. I know it. Mother has been fretting all week. I dip my hands into the coins and run them through my fingers. I choose a sixpence which I shine against my cuff. I’ll hand it over, but I won’t tell her about the wind-powered wheel, not yet. Maybe I’ll find some other job before I do, and I stare into the faces of the miniatures and think of the work available to a boy with one lame leg. Apprentice clerk. That’s what Mother wants for me. But I’d rather go down to the brewery and offer my services as a bottle sniffer, checking each container that has been returned to see that it is clean. Or I could ask for work at the mill on Field Stile Road, sorting feathers into different weights. Someone must blow them up into the air and, as they float down, catch them and drop them into tubs.

They are advertising at the Homeknit factory on Pier Avenue. For a five-day week and a few hours on a Saturday they offer board and lodging, and a small wage, although, just like the herring girls, they ask their staff to sign an oath.
To faithfully serve the master, his secrets keep, his lawful commands everywhere gladly do
. I know they make underwear for troops – socks and vests and longjohns – but I know too that however glad I’d be to keep a secret, it is only girls they hire.

Ann is out. She has gone, on her unsteady legs, to visit Mrs Kerridge, and as soon as she is through the door Father begins griping. ‘What has the girl got to be upset about? It’s not as if she was planning to marry the lad. A sailor? I could have told her how that would end. War or no war. She’d be stranded like my brother Wilfred’s wife when his ship hit the sands at Happisburgh. Body never found. Now she’s taking washing in. If Ann’s looking for misery and danger, she’d be better off marrying a soldier.’

‘A soldier!’ Mother sits heavily beside me. ‘And where would that leave her, eh?’ And she puts her head in her hands and weeps.

I think of Gleave and his leering grin. And it takes all my strength to keep the secret of the witch-woman, and the lies that she has spread.

The next day I don’t go to school. I wait as usual for Mr Button to come by with his cart, but after I’ve jumped down, I turn around and cut back across the edge of Wenhaston Common, and on along the heath road towards Minsmere. That old witch-woman must live here somewhere. If I can find her I’ll ask what she meant by not telling us that the
Formidable
would sink. How can Ann marry Jimmy Kerridge if Jimmy Kerridge is lost? And I’ll shake my fist at her and pull her spindly beard.

But Minsmere is wide open and barren, and after tramping over the fringes of it for most of the morning, I follow a sheep track that leads towards the cliffs. The patrol boats are out again, I scan the waters for anything they might have missed, and climbing over the barbed wire, I slide down the chute of crumbling earth, until I’m on the beach. There’s no one here. The fishermen have headed north, if they’ve headed out at all, and eager to be useful, I search the tideline for anything that’s been washed up. An empty tin, the lid of a barrel, a leather boot, so soft and blackened you could burn the thing as peat. I’m not sure what to do now. I daren’t go home, or on towards the village, for fear that I’ll be seen, and so I hug the shoreline, peering into caves to see where they will lead, waiting until the cliffs smooth down to the level of the land, and then I scramble through the undergrowth to the cover of the Hoist. I spend the day listening for woodpeckers, tracking the echo of their drill, hoping to catch one hammering its beak against the bark.
Crrrrrrrrreek
. The sound is like a tree falling. Every time. And even though I tell myself it’s just a bird, I stand still and check there’s not an oak coming down towards me, its roots tearing up out of the ground.

Having missed one day of school, and not been punished, I decide to miss another. But today as I trudge across the marsh, a fog rolls in like water. I’d know which way to go with or without sight, but even so I stand quite still and pretend that I am lost. A bush becomes a mountain, the sedge a lake, and I close my eyes and let my feet lead me, over tufts and down worn, known hollows, so that soon I’m winding up Lea Lane from the coast. There is no one to see me. Not unless they stand by my side, and so I creak open the Lea House gate and walk up through the garden.

Maybe it’s because the Mackintoshes have no children of their own, but they don’t mention school. ‘Come in,’ they say when they see me. ‘Warm yourself.’ And they sit me by the fire. Mac is working on a stem of witch hazel, one flower snapped off and floating in the air. ‘Will you look at a book to keep yourself amused?’ Mrs Mac says gently. She knows about the
Formidable
. I can hear it in her voice.

‘Thank you,’ I say, and not wanting to disturb them further I head towards the desk where the large, blue, clothbound book is propped against a shelf. I rub my hands clean against my jacket, and careful as I can I carry it back to the fire. It’s tied with ribbons that must be unlooped and as it falls open I look up, startled by the sound of paper moving so loud in the quiet of the room.

The book is full of separate sheets. On the first is a picture of the outside of a house. It is white with tall windows, cut up into squares, and at one end the building curves like the prow of a boat. There are rose bushes set against a fence, their heads like bubbles on thin stems, and on the far side of the entrance, in the same leaf shape as Mrs Mac’s tall ladies, a row of poplars dis­appear off the page. The whole picture is made in black and white and green, with studs of raspberry for the roses, and I look at it so long I don’t notice at first the words in pen along the top.
Deen Wettbewerb . . . für ein Herrschaftliches . . .
I’m breathing hard . . .
Wohnhaus eines Kunst-Freundes
. It takes such effort to read these words that the stilted sounds come out aloud. I look up to find that Mrs Mac has looked up too. ‘Competition for a grand family house,’ she translates. ‘For an art lover.’

‘For an art lover.’ I blush. It seems somehow this phrase should remain private. And I glance over at Mac and I remember how much he loved to enter competitions. ‘Did you win?’ I ask him. But he is staring at his stick of witch hazel, a bright gold slick of paint quivering on his brush.

Mrs Mac comes to stand beside me as I turn to the next page. Here there is the dark interior of a dining room. A table long enough for knights, but with only two chairs, high-backed and cane-bottomed, and two vases, one at each end, both filled with heavy-headed roses. From the ceiling, which is domed and white, hang green bulbs of light, eight of them, fringed with feathery-tipped tassels. But most wonderful of all, around the walls, are Mrs Mac’s pictures, each one featuring a woman with a rose, or many roses, scattered across a cloak, tucked into a swirl of bright wild hair, wrapped around her women in a cocoon. ‘Made from gesso,’ she tells me. ‘Twenty-four panels.
The Life of the Rose
.’