Mr Mac and Me (4 page)
Authors: Esther Freud
It is a Saturday and there are three men in the bar. Old Tilson and his brother Fred. And Mac, who’d come in an hour before and is drinking one drink slowly, in that way I know, which means it has to last. The Tilson men look up. ‘You don’t say,’ their mouths are open. They lost a cousin in the Boer War, and before news could travel back his wife had named their child Pretoria May because the phrase was always on her lips: Pretoria May win.
‘We’ll best be off,’ the brothers say, and as they push open the door we hear the church bells ringing, loud and urgent enough for anyone at all to stop and wonder at them. Father pours himself a glass of Scotch, and when Mac looks up, he pours him one too.
‘Good Lord,’ Mother is by the open door. ‘They’re not wasting any time.’ And I go and stand beside her, and there, coming up the street, is a wagon loaded up with luggage, and on the box beside the driver, in a hat garlanded with flowers, sits Mrs Tilbury who spends her summers at the low house by the ferry. Three of her children sit behind with their nursemaid, and a wiry, white dog called Madam, and they wave at us cheerily as they pass by.
‘Where are they going?’ I ask, and Mother crosses her arms and shrugs.
‘Away from the coast.’ Father joins us, the smell of whisky hot on him. ‘Where they think it’s safer.’
Mac drains his glass. ‘I’ll be away then too.’ Pulling his cape about him, he steps out into the street.
‘Wait,’ I call when I see he’s turned towards the sea, ‘I’m coming with you.’ And although Mother clutches at my shoulder, I slip out of the door.
I’ve never walked with Mac before, only followed him, and I wince as our two crippled feet snag on the same uneven ground. We pass the Bell, empty of its men, and climb down into the scrub of land below the dunes. What will we see? I wonder as we climb through slipping sand, and as we come up over the ridge of the beach I expect to find warships already massing out to sea. But there’s nothing there. Just the
Belle
steamer gliding towards Southwold, and Danky in his corded cap and wading boots, throwing out a line.
Mac walks down to the edge of the water and stares out to the horizon. ‘We were thinking of travelling on from here,’ he says quietly, ‘to Paris, and Vienna, but now . . .’ he shields his eyes, ‘I’m not so sure.’
We walk on, following the line of the beach until it curves, treading in single file over the hard sand below the shingle, and then, as if it had been agreed, we climb the wall of stones and cross the top, and skelter down the other side towards the wooden bridge that crosses the flat river. Two swans live on this river, their reflections stretching white and deep, and here they are today, leading their young brown family in single file.
Mac stops when we come to the top of the marsh and snaps off a twig of hawthorn. He examines its crinkled leaves and the swivel of its thorns and slides it into the pocket of his cape. He stops again when we reach Hoist Wood. There are old trees here, ghost trees I think of them, so long have their trunks been stranded from the sun, but their tops are green where they stretch them, and some leaves grow in shafts of light.
‘If you’re still here in spring,’ I tell him, ‘I’ll bring you to this wood at daybreak, that’s when you hear the nightingale. At dusk too, if you’re lucky.’
‘I’d like that.’ He is gruff. But we both know he won’t still be here by spring. The summer visitors pack up every year at the first curled leaf of autumn and they don’t come back until the following July.
As Mac and I cut back across the common, stopping now and then while he examines a flower, we see a stream of people moving along the path that runs down from the church. They have trunks, and bundles piled on to prams, small children running alongside, and one old lady in a black bonnet, sitting on a cart. As we join them, I see the two Miss Bishops, who’ve rented our big room each August every year since I was small, hurrying along. Father is behind, red in the face and sweating, carrying their bags.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask them, quiet, so as not to rile Father who looks ready to spit blood. And they look at me, eyes wide with fear. ‘Home,’ they say. ‘To Wanstead. We have to get to safety.’ And they explain how they owe it to themselves and their one remaining family member, a niece who is not entirely well.
As they are talking we hear the train roar over the bridge, and all along the path people pick up speed. ‘Give us a hand, boy,’ Father says, his shoulder sagging, and so I take one of the bags from him and let him fall behind while I hurry on with the Miss Bishops to the station. ‘Thank you,’ the older of the sisters says. ‘I’d give you something for your trouble but we need every last penny for our fare.’
‘Honestly,’ the other shakes her head. ‘Declaring war on a Saturday when the banks are closed. We had to borrow money from Mrs Lusher at the shop. Poor woman, and we weren’t the only ones asking for a loan.’ She digs into her pocket then and brings out a packet of peppermints, and dipping her fingers into the bag she presents me with a round chipped sweet.
I slip it into my mouth. ‘Thank you.’ And I’m surprised to find how much I mind seeing their tweed-skirted figures climbing on to the train.
‘We hope to be back next summer,’ one tells me when Father has lumbered up with the last bag. ‘Indeed,’ the other one agrees, and she takes hold of my hand. ‘Thomas,’ she whispers, ‘I left a little sketch drying on the window ledge of our room. Keep it for me, will you? It’s just a sad old thing of geese on the green. Nothing much, but I’d be glad to look at it again.’
I nod. I know their ways. How they cluck and sigh over their efforts, cheering each other on when each piece is done. The younger Miss Bishop likes to paint animals – rabbits and horses and, more often than not, our hens – while her sister is only interested in the sea. Whatever the weather she sets up her easel in the dunes and catches the waves, using up her palette of colours on their browns and greens and blues.
The train hoots, doors slam, and with a wrench it steams out of the station, packed to bursting, faces pressed against the windows, regretful, excited, glad to have their holidays broken into if it means they are included in the goings-on of the world.
I stand and wait till the train is out of sight, until I can no longer hear the clack of its wheels as it steams on its way to Blythburgh. I turn, but Father has slunk away, so I walk back across the common, past the place where Mac was last seen inspecting a wall of gorse. He’ll be gone soon too. Even now Mrs Mac will most likely be packing up their things and I think how I’ve never had a chance to ask him if he’s seen the Millside ghost. I want to tell him how I saw it, Mother and I, although Mother will never admit to such a thing. And I promise myself that if I meet Mac again I’ll tell him how we were walking to the top of the village just as the light was turning grey – going to visit Mrs Horrod whose husband had taken ill – when I looked left into the mill yard and there she was, looming out of the shadows, half as tall as a barn. Mother reached for my hand and began to run. I turned my head for another glimpse, but Mother was rushing me along too fast and she didn’t pause or slow her step until we were outside Mrs Horrod’s door. ‘Why did you pull me along so?’ I asked her then, I could hardly get my breath, and she rapped hard on the wood and said she didn’t like to keep nobody waiting. ‘Or was it because you saw that lady in the yard?’ And she scowled at me and tightened her grip so that my fingers squashed and mashed up inside hers.
Mr Allard is wrong, men do need beer, more than ever now that we’re at war, and I spend my days running back and forth between his rope-making and the Blue Anchor to help with chores. Each night that first week regulars from the village crowd into the inn to talk, and Father keeps his place at the top of the cellar steps drinking with the best of them, ready and waiting to go down and bring them more. Men who’ve been in the Boer War, they are there, nodding and muttering, and young recruits with more to say than you’d think possible, about the type of man who doesn’t volunteer to fight. With each new voice Father drowns another pint and soon, as he crashes down the ladder, he’s sighing and staggering with the pain in his shoulder where he fought all those years ago on the village green.
‘Will these waters be safe to fish?’ someone wants to know, and there’s a hush as we imagine the men in the Bell weighing up their future.
‘Folks’ll always need to eat,’ an old man mutters, and I wonder if the Highland girls will come down for the season now to gut and pack the herring into barrels.
‘Thing is,’ Father raises a glass, ‘this is where the enemy’ll land, there’s nowhere nearer. We’ll need to keep a lookout night and day.’ And I glance over at his bleary face, the beer swimming in his eyes, and hope we’re not all to rely on him.
For a day or two I don’t see Mac, or Mrs Mac, and I fear they’ve gone back up to Glasgow. But one evening as I’m shutting up the hens, I catch sight of Mac’s black cloak, swishing along the track behind our land. I seize up the last chicken, a fat white bird that’s stopped on the ladder as if it’s had a thought. ‘Come on now, old girl.’ It always surprises me, the hot feel of a hen’s body below the cool feathers of its wings, and I hold her still a moment, her eyes spinning, her head cocked. ‘In you go then,’ I force her through the door, and as soon as her tail feathers are safely inside I slam the coop shut and race to catch up with Mac. But Mac must have stepped off the path, for when I come out into the field there’s no sight of him. I follow the track all the same, slip through the arch of blackthorn at the corner, and push my way along a tunnel of sedge, so high it closes above my head. My feet slip as I tread the narrow boards, threatening to squelch into the water lying still on either side, and I remember how I lost a boot in there one winter when I slid into the mire and Mother cried over the loss of it and beat me. But today I go slow, leaving Mac to fight his way through before me, and I breathe in the dry smell of the reeds, still warm with that day’s sun.
I find him on the other side, at the top of the dune, his back to me. ‘Mac,’ I call as I scramble up the shingle, but by the time I reach the top he’s dropped down to the other side. ‘Hey, it’s me,’ I try again, but he’s standing on the shore now, and the sea is in his ears.
I lie on my back and slide down the slipping stones of the bank, puffing up a cloud of dust as I go, and as I fall I think of my father and what’s he’s missing when he avoids the sea. If the
Irwell
docked today, and George Farthing was looking to offer an apprenticeship, I’d tell him the story of
Treasure Island
– Runnicles read it to us, four pages a day – and the pirate Long John Silver who only had one leg. ‘Story it is,’ my father laughed at me when I told him. ‘You need two good legs to be taken on board a ship. That’s the truth.’ And he laughed again and shook his head as if I’d invented the whole thing.
I get up and dust myself down and walk along the tideline, the water lapping in against my feet. Slowly, very slowly, I gain on Mac as he follows the curve of the beach, his feet like mine on the wet sand, his eyes never leaving the sea. The evening is still, with hardly a ripple; the sun, as it sets inland, striping the sky pink.
‘Listen,’ he calls over his shoulder, without ever looking round. I stumble to catch up with him, and when I do he hands me his binoculars, and as I raise them to my eyes, I hear the guns thundering across the sea from Flanders.
The next Sunday, after church, I go across on the ferry with Mother to Southwold. The town is half empty, the beach with its bathing machines and goat-cart rides deserted. We stand on the promenade where last week families strolled with dogs and picnic baskets, and stare at the pier, the longest in Britain, and the pride of the town, until today, when its wooden legs, creeping into the sea, look like they may be running out to greet the enemy. But we haven’t come to wonder at the empty town, we’ve come to read the declaration pinned to the wall of the town hall. And we’re not the only ones. We hover behind a crowd, subdued and whispering, and then, slowly, although we’ve heard the worst of it by now, we shuffle forward to see the words ourselves. Defence of the Realm Act. We read it together. 8th August, 1914.
His Majesty in council has power during the continuance of the present war to issue regulation for securing the public safety and the defence of the realm
. It seems these words are too important to read silently, and I listen to my own voice and the voice of my mother as we stumble from one phrase to the next.
Power. Duty. Admiralty. Safety. His Majesty’s forces . . . Regulations . . . Court martial . . . Punishment
.
The act
, I read this to myself, one word ahead of the rest of the crowd,
is designed to prevent persons communicating with the enemy, or obtaining information for that purpose. Or any purpose calculated to jeopardise the success of the operations of any of His Majesty’s forces, or the forces of his allies
.
I have to stop and breathe, and when I do I find my mother has fallen silent too. We wait there for a while, listening to others around us, counting up everything that, for the sake of the nation, is no longer allowed. But it is only as we walk home along the towpath that we speak the worst of it into the day.
Opening hours of all public houses will be from this moment on reduced.
Alcohol may only be sold from 12.30 to 3 and then from 6.30 to 9.30.
All beer must be watered down.