The House at Tyneford (37 page)

“Witch-stones,” he called. “Ter stop witches catchin’ a lift.”

I said nothing. I thought that German Stukas would be more of a danger than witches. Burt appeared to guess my thoughts and grinned. “Aye. Well, better safe than sorry. An’ don’t have nothin’ ter ward off Germans. Least we know that witches won’t be no trouble.”

I could not tell whether he was teasing. I glanced from Burt to Mr. Wrexham. The old fisherman was dressed in his usual coarse brown trousers and much-darned sweater, and a week’s stubble, the colour of salt, sprouted on his chin. Mr. Wrexham was immaculate in his black tails and starched shirt, but their eyes were the same shade of blue, and as they slung the witch-stones over the
Lugger
’s bow, their limbs moved in unison, with the easy gesture of men used to casting nets and lives spent around boats. The butler was a fisherman still.

“It’s time,” called Mr. Rivers. “Help to cast off.”

The water lapped around her hull, but the
Lugger
needed to be carried out farther into the surf, and the fishermen swarmed around her, indifferent to the water soaking their shoes. Grabbing hold of her sides, they heaved the small boat across the pebbles, shoulders bent to the task, wooden hull grinding against the stones. I waded out with them, drenching my plimsolls and stockings. Mr. Rivers appeared beside me. He kissed me lightly on the cheek and took my hand in both of his.

“I’ll bring him home, I promise. We’ll see you in a few days. A week tops. I’ll try and wire. But you’re not to worry.”

I found that I was crying, and I splashed my face with seawater to disguise the tears. Mr. Rivers looked at me for a second and then pulled me close.

“I am so sorry that I couldn’t bring your parents to Tyneford. Sorrier than I can say. But I promise that I will bring Kit back to you.”

I felt the thundering of his heart through my thin blouse like the pulse of the waves. I thought he was going to speak again, but then he was letting me go and he was wading through the water and swinging himself into the stern of the boat. I watched him, but he was busy checking the charts and did not see me. I brushed my eyes and licked salt water from the back of my hand. Anna. Julian. Now Kit and Mr. Rivers.

Kit danced around the bow, holding the painter and swinging the
Lugger
about, so that her nose faced out to sea. Burt took the rope from him and Kit came over to say good-bye.

“Darling, I love you,” said Kit. “And I will see you very soon. You know I have to go—it’s Will stuck on those beaches.”

I nodded, my voice stuck in my throat. He kissed me, dipping me backward toward the surf like we were a couple in a moving picture, and the fishermen cheered from the beach. I flushed with sudden anger; he was acting like a hero in some adventure flick, playing it up for the crowd.

“Kit, please. You must be careful. I like Will very much. But I love you. I’m selfish. I don’t want you to die saving another girl’s young man. If that makes me wicked, then I’m sorry, but you don’t know what it’s like to be parted from everyone you love. I was alone. Then I found you. I don’t want to be alone again.”

He kissed me once more, but I knew he was impatient to be gone.

“Tosh,” he said. “No one’s going to die, darling.”

“Yes,Kit.Yes,theyare.And if it’s all right, I’d rather it wasn’t you.”

I knew I wasn’t being British. An Englishwoman would have kissed her boyfriend lightly on the lips and said, “Darling, I’m quite fond of you, you know. Try not to get into any bother,” and then waved politely, perhaps concealing a stoic tear in her handkerchief. Then she’d make herself a nice cup of tea and get back to darning socks. Well, I wasn’t British, I was Viennese, and continental women say what they feel. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the fact that Kit was fidgeting with embarrassment.

“Everyone I love in England is about to climb into that wooden boat and disappear across the sea. Sail carefully because you sail with everything I hold dear on this funny, damp little island.”

(I am almost sure that is what I said. In the years since, I have thought about that moment so often. If I did not, then it was what I wanted to say.)

Mr. Rivers waved from the boat, and Kit cupped my face in his hands, kissing me gently.

“Good-bye, my darling.”

I remained in the surf watching as the small boat skirted the shore before tacking toward the mouth of the bay and racing out into the open sea. The sun glinted off the bow and the brown sails soared across the waves like a peregrine falcon skimming for prey. In a minute the boat was toy sized and in another it was gone. I turned around and trudged back to the beach, perching on one of the flat rocks beneath the cliff. I knew that I ought to feel proud, exhilarated by the bravery of the two men, but I did not. They were rushing off to France to save men stranded on the beaches, but their gallantry was muddied. Kit was excited by the adventure of it all. The danger and the daring thrilled him, even if he claimed that he only sailed for Will. I adored Kit, but I knew Burt had been right when he called him brave and reckless. Mr. Rivers knew it too, and he went to France to make sure that his son came home.

I
tried cooking with Mrs. Ellsworth, but it was no good; I burned the pastry, spoiling half the week’s fat ration, and sliced into my finger while skinning a rabbit. I listened to the wireless for news, but the reports were vague and circumspect, careful not to compromise the ongoing rescue mission. Retreating into the small attic room (which I still thought of as mine despite my promotion to the blue room), I paced the bare wooden boards and pulled out the viola. I opened the little attic window, letting the salt air fill the room and drive away the sickly smell of damp and dust. Unfastening the instrument case, I took out the bow and a small clump of wax, which I warmed in my hands before brushing it softly along the bow hair. I slid the viola underneath my chin and pulled the bow across the strings. I played all afternoon—Vivaldi, Donizetti, Bing Crosby—not stopping for meals, nor to listen to the lunchtime news bulletin.

I spent the next few days either playing the viola or digging in the vegetable patch with old Billy. I tended the neat rows of lettuce seedlings, crushing up shells from the beach to drive off the slugs; sweat rolling off my forehead into the earth, I hacked furrows for a new crop of beetroot and chard. As I toiled, I heard the strange sound of the viola in my mind. It lodged inside my imagination like the sound of the sea in a dream, and I paced and hewed and dug and planted to its refrain
.
At dusk, I ambled down to the beach and sat with Burt on the lobster pots outside his hut. He packed his pipe with tobacco and we rested in amiable silence, watching the tide surge. The water rushed the beach, relentless in its constancy. At high tide it pounded the large flat rocks just beyond Burt’s cottage, turning the pale grey stone into glistening black and the cracked slime into green velvet. At low tide, the water drew back to the edge of the bay, and the pebbles dried to gold and yellow and russet in the setting sun. I knew that somewhere far away the beaches echoed with guns and shellfire and the screams of Stukas and men, but here at Worbarrow the sea licked the shore and the only cries were those of the gulls.

The sun slid behind the horizon and Burt’s pipe glowed in the darkness, like a second, red moon. There was the creak of footsteps on loose pebbles, and a fox streaked across the strand, the night air full of its sharp stink.

“Mustn’t worry, missy. Squire’ll keep young Mr. Kit out o’ trouble,” said Burt.

I reached for a smooth stone and sent it clattering across the beach.

“I want them both to stay out of trouble,” I said.

May turned into June and I sleepwalked around the house. I felt as if I carried a heavy string of witch-stones around my neck: two for Anna and Julian, and now two more for Kit and Mr. Rivers. I was dull and slow and wanted only to sleep, but whenever I did, I dreamed of torn sails and churning, bloody seas. The newspapers printed photographs of weary and bedraggled men, dressed in khaki rags, limping off endless ships and pouring onto the quays at Dover and Portsmouth. The wireless reports and the
Times
insisted that they were “tired but undaunted” and triumphant in defeat. Villages along the coast served twenty thousand rounds of sandwiches and thirty thousand cups of tea, and the nation was drunk with its daring rescue and the undashed spirit of its young men. I scoured the photographs for a glimpse of the
Lugger
or a snapshot of Kit or Mr. Rivers, but of course there was nothing. I heard the click as rescued soldiers slipped their penny into the telephone call box. I heard the shouts of other men’s mothers and sweethearts and grandpas. One of the farm boys returned to Tyneford straight from Portsmouth, hitching a lift on the dawn milk cart. I instructed Mrs. Ellsworth to send a bottle of celebratory port and a cigar to his father. I tried not to wish that it were Kit and Mr. Rivers who had returned safely and not this unknown boy loved by strangers.

In my daze, it took me two days to realise that in their masters’ absence the servants came to me for orders. The gardener wanted to know whether he ought still to plant sweet peas this year, or just shelling peas (I insisted upon sweet too, cheerful flowers being even more necessary during wartime), while Mr. Wrexham ironed the newspaper and left it for me in the breakfast room each morning. When Mrs. Ellsworth asked me for the dinner order, I informed her that I would eat whatever she was making for the servants.

“Mrs. Ellsworth, we’ve enough cooking to do between us without making something special for me. The master’s not here, and this does not constitute a slackening of standards,” I said firmly when I saw her ruddy cheeks blanch. “While the Misters Rivers are away, I shall dine in the kitchen with you. It’s silly having Mr. Wrexham wait upon me in the morning room.”

The housekeeper scowled and cleaned the already spotless kitchen table. “Mr. Wrexham won’t agree.”

But Mr. Wrexham did agree. The elderly butler was tired; he was undertaking the tasks of footman and valet as well as overseeing the household, and even for a man with the dignity of Mr. Wrexham it was too much. The week before Kit and Mr. Rivers left, I noticed that the firedogs had not been cleaned for a fortnight, while the evening silverware had vanished and we now used the luncheon silver at both meals. At first I tried to reassure him, saying, “This is very sensible, Mr. Wrexham. We can bring out the dinner silver again after the war,” but while he said nothing at the time, the following evening the dinner silver reappeared, perfectly polished. The evening after that I surreptitiously wiped a black smear of polish off my knife and onto the napkin. In another week, the dinner silver vanished again, and this time I was careful not to say a word.

It was strange taking my meals with the servants again. Mr. Wrexham and Mrs. Ellsworth insisted on serving me first, rather than themselves as they had in the past when I was only a housemaid. It was cosy, if a little stifling, sitting in the kitchen before the great black range.

“May I offer you some wine, Miss Landau?” inquired the butler.

“No, thank you. I am very happy with barley water.”

We ate in silence. I was glad of the quiet, but felt guilty at the restraint my presence now inflicted on the company. After dinner Mrs. Ellsworth refused to allow me to help with the washing up and I withdrew to the stillness of the library. I never sat in this room when Mr. Rivers was present—it was his domain, and yet perhaps that was why at that moment it offered me some comfort. It was a man’s room. Fumes from the whisky decanter mingled with the fusty aroma of the old books. His presence had seeped into the atmosphere and I could almost feel him, seated in his usual chair, half watching me out of the corner of his eye. There was an hour until sunset and I sat with the doors and windows thrown wide. I perched on Mr. Rivers’ desk, idly playing with his binoculars—the pair he used when out walking or hunting so as to get a better glimpse of the peregrines or buzzards. I trained them on the sea and watched a gull drift along the horizon. I blinked. It couldn’t be a gull. It was too far away to be a bird. I looked again.

It was a boat.

I dropped the binoculars and ran onto the terrace, shouting for Mrs. Ellsworth and Mr. Wrexham.

“A boat! A boat. Down to the shore.”

Without waiting to discover if they had heard me, I sprinted helter-skelter along the ragged path down to the sea. Dusk was drawing in and the shadows lengthened around me; tree outlines leered over the path and a thin smuggler’s moon hung above the surf, a cutout from a stage set. I heard the click and whir of the evening crickets in the blue sea grass like the tick from a thousand pocket watches. As I reached the highest point on the path, I halted and peered into the distance, scouring the bay for the boat. Yes. There it was: a small dark sail flapping and not properly trimmed. I couldn’t see how many figures were aboard. It crept along the mouth of the bay, turning in and hugging the black rocks. I scrambled down to the beach, skating on the scree. As I reached the strand, I saw that the fishermen were waiting, Burt and Art in their midst. They stood at the edge of the breakers, watching the fishing boat sail closer and closer. Nobody spoke. It tacked and headed directly for us. I heard the crack of the wind in the ripped foresail, until I realised, a moment later, that it was the boom of my own heart.