‘You’ve got half-moons peeping out on your legs,’ said Lucy.
‘I know.’
‘You want to do them patches bigger. Or get yourself some darning wool like everyone else.’
If 2a equals 10 what is a? Clearly a is for asinine, Miss Yarnold. Can there be a person alive who cannot see that a is 5? But yes, there are such persons – John Blunden and Daniel Corey for two, and Lucy for a third, and others, who all cry in protest, ‘But, Miss. We’ve gone an’ learnt two fives was ten. And now you says it’s two a’s that make ten!’
I met Miss Yarnold’s eyes and saw a glint of tears.
Lucy nudged me. ‘Or you could try soot. It spreads better.’
One Sunday in autumn I left the house, leaving Mother unfolding three yards of calico on the kitchen table. There’d been a discount on five yards but we couldn’t run to five. Nonetheless she’d galvanized herself, taken herself to the haberdasher’s in Waltham, and she was going to make drawers for us: ‘The light’s good, darling,’ she’d pleaded, but I was too hungry to sit sewing. ‘I’m so slim now,’ she was saying gaily as I swung the door closed, ‘I can squeeze an extra pair in, I’m sure.’
That gay tone I hated even more than the pleading.
I went by the back lanes even though they were wet and my left shoe leaked. The clouds broke late in the afternoon and I stopped by a field in the low sunlight and leaned on the gate, the field a wet, vivid green, and a large, pale cow rocking her head by the fence halfway down the hill. Lucy Horne was in the next field, leaning on the fence watching the cow. Beside her was a boy with a shock of walnut hair. When he sprang up onto the fence I recognized him as Daniel Corey. Before I could move they saw me.
‘Ellen,’ Lucy called, ‘come here.’
I could have darted on down the lane, pretended I hadn’t heard. I would have been hidden by the hedge in a second. But I was lonely.
Daniel was at the top of the fence when I reached them. He was wearing an enormous pair of breeches, so long that the knee cuffs came almost to his ankles. He didn’t turn his head or say hello, just swung each leg over and sat on the top rail. ‘Dorc,’ he was saying. ‘Ready, Dorc.’
‘He’s going to get up on Dorcas, if she’ll let him.’ Lucy grinned at me. It was a sight. She had so many top teeth missing.
The cow stood, still rocking her head although there weren’t any flies. Daniel perched his feet on the rail below the top, leaped up into the air, where he seemed to hover for a moment before falling deftly with his knees each side of the withers of the cow, who did not move. Lucy squeaked. ‘Good Dorc,’ Daniel breathed.
Dorcas had deep folds on her pale neck. Her muzzle was the colour of the lining in my mother’s kid gloves.
‘She’s beautiful, int she,’ said Lucy.
‘What would the farmer say?’ I whispered. I didn’t want to startle Dorcas.
‘She’s Daniel’s. Well, his dad’s. Do you fancy coming to ours for tea, Ellen?’
Lucy lived at the far end of the village street, on top of a high bank. I had always known there were cottages up there, but had never mounted the brick steps that led to them. Now I followed Lucy and Daniel up, placing my feet carefully, for the light was going.
Outside Lucy’s door we took our muddy shoes off and went into a kitchen where a gas lamp fizzed on the table and a man and a woman were packing eggs into cones of newspaper.
‘Ellen, this is my dad and my nan,’ Lucy said. ‘Nan and Dad, this is Ellen.’
‘Three dozen and five,’ said the woman, without lifting her eyes. ‘Excuse us, dear. And six, makes three and a half dozen.’ She placed the newspaper cone into a wicker basket in the middle of the table. Lucy began a long, thorough bout of coughing.
‘George Horne,’ said the man, who was as slight and dark as Lucy, raising his voice over the noise Lucy was making. ‘How do, miss. And four dozen,’ as he added another cone to the basket.
Lucy’s cough tailed off into a deep sigh. ‘Oh, lor, oh lor.’
‘Do you want the linctus, dear?’ said her grandmother, without turning her head.
‘Nope. Don’t do any blimmin good.’ Lucy went to the oven and pulled out a metal tray, tutted at what she saw. ‘You didn’t turn them.’
‘We can’t think of everything,’ her father said. ‘And four and a half.’
I realized I had not returned their greeting. ‘Good evening, Mrs Horne, and Mr Horne.’ I was going to add some pleasantry but the pies were there in front of me, lying in rows, the back ones dark brown, the front ones pale. It didn’t matter; I was gobbling up the smell alone. My stomach fluttered, and I gasped through lips that were suddenly numb. As Lucy turned to look at me I grabbed the door handle and ducked out into the garden. By the path I retched, the dusk abruptly deepened and I sank to my knees. The stone of the path was cool and rough on my forehead.
A clink of knives and forks, and the gas light very low. Lucy and her grandmother were sitting near the stove, tea towels on their laps. Lucy was sewing. And I, I realized, was sprawled under a blanket, taking up the whole of the couch. The embarrassment was instant: I struggled into a sitting position and saw Mr Horne and Daniel Corey eating at the table. They’d been joined by another man with a square face in shadow. Daniel paused in his chewing but didn’t turn his head. Lucy’s grandmother held out a cup of tea. ‘Start with this, dear, and see how you go on.’
My eyes drifted to a lone pie, a golden unburnt one, on a plate edged with purple painted pansies. I couldn’t imagine getting it into my stomach.
Lucy noticed. ‘We could put it in a bag for you, Ellen, if you don’t fancy it now.’
The tea was hot, barely milked, and as sweet as syrup. I held it in my mouth, afraid that I would retch again, and swallowed it in tiny scalding increments. Lucy sat down next to me and continued with her sewing. Her grandmother took a jug of gravy to the table and poured it over the men’s helpings. They had mountains of mashed potato next to their pies and the gravy splashed over the crags and left high, steaming lakes. ‘Capital, Betty,’ the square-faced man said, digging his fork into the mash. He was holding the fork in a strange pincer grip between thumb and forefinger. He met my eyes and lifted the fork as one might a glass, in salutation. He was missing the remaining three fingers on his right hand. I realized also that he had no pie on his plate.
‘Evening, Miss Calvert,’ he said.
‘This is Mr Kennet,’ Lucy’s grandmother said.
I took another hot gulp of tea. ‘How do you do, Mr Kennet.’
The man gave one slow blink and returned to his conversation with Mr Horne. ‘Twin lambs.’ He shook his head. ‘Back last spring. Dead in their caul.’
‘And the pair weighing ten pounds,’ said Mr Horne. ‘I’d have shot that dog.’
‘The vicar’s lurcher, and all,’ said Mrs Horne.
Lucy was doing a needlepoint panel of a bird perched upright on a twig, with a bright black eye and a questing beak, and currently no breast. ‘It was going to be a robin but we’ve got no more red thread. I could make it into a wren now or wait till Nan goes to Waltham. What do you think?’
‘Do you enjoy embroidery, Miss Calvert?’ Lucy’s grandmother asked me.
I thought of the flowers, the white buds I’d stitched with Mother, the silk white on the rough white of the linen, which you could only see when the light fell on it a certain way. ‘Yes, Mrs Horne. But there are … so many things to do in the day.’
‘Nan sells her decorated linens at the Women’s Institute market,’ Lucy said. ‘Down the village hall on Thursdays. This one –’ she nodded at her work ‘– he’s going to market too.’
Daniel threw himself onto the couch beside us and wiped his mouth. ‘That’s the wrong shape for a wren, Luce. A wren’s a little tub with her tail cocked up.’