Daniel came in first. ‘By gum, Ellen. You look like the Queen of Sheba. Feel this carpet, Luce.’ He wriggled his stocking feet, his toes a seething mass of darns. I blotted my temples carefully with the edge of the towel, and then closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall. Instances of sleep visited me, each a second or two long, and after each one I came awake with a jerk.
Finally I heard Lucy say, ‘We came to see how you was farin.’
‘John Blunden broke up our chairs.’ The sorrow wrung my heart. Two tears coursed down my cheeks.
I felt Lucy’s hand take mine. Her hands were small, the fingers slender. I knew them well by sight but seldom felt this light, firm, tender clasp. I opened my eyes. ‘Lucy, did I ever tell you, you’ve got very pretty hands? And nails.’ Because they were, the nails: naturally oval and the colour of tea roses.
She sucked her teeth, smiling. ‘Get away.’
I closed my eyes again. I heard Daniel say, from the other side of the room, ‘Bear up, Ellen, bear up.’ He said it several times, in the same manner, unhurriedly, and so it was soothing, like a pigeon calling on a summer morning.
I heard their voices distantly, bidding me goodbye.
When I fell asleep I dreamed of my rocking horse. The pony-skin was bald around the neck and jaws where the red reins rubbed. In my dream I leaned my face against the horse’s neck and whispered in his ear, and he dipped on his rockers as if to answer me. I leaned and sucked my thumb, and stroked the bald patch. I turned my head and saw myself, a small child, and the rocking horse in the tall mirror. ‘I love Mummy,’ I told the horse, and wiped my thumb on his fur. The sunlight flashed in the mirror and my love was fixed in the bald patch, the fur, my wet thumb, the flash of light, for ever.
The ham was so thin that I could see the pattern of the plate through it, a willow tree with puffy blue curlicues rendered violet by the overlaying film of pink. Even so, it was hard to insert this ham into my dry mouth, and thence down my gullet into a stomach that was shut like a clam. There were also potatoes to tackle, as inedible to me as boulders and similarly greenish on the underside.
This was luncheon of the following day. I’d slept unmoving for twenty hours or so.
Mr and Miss Dawes ate ruthlessly, quartering their potatoes and impaling each quarter on their forks, cutting their ham into strips of equal width.
‘Some sort of live-in position.’ Mr Dawes broke the silence. ‘You’re a clever girl and you sew well enough. With a little brushing up, you’d make a very nice companion.’
‘I want to stay at the school. I’m a good teaching assistant.’
‘The school can’t support you.’
‘I could live here with you.’
‘My dear, that’s not a permanent solution.’ Miss Dawes put down her knife and fork. ‘Now the first step is the Girls’ Home in Bitterne. A place falls vacant on Tuesday. They’ll teach you sewing, plain cooking. Every week I can take you to tea with Mrs Daventry for conversation. You’ve got good manners and a nice voice. Soon the world would be your oyster. I can quite see you with a quiet lady, or even a nice family in Southampton.’
I thought of Southampton. A place of gunshots and ships and bright sea, and hedges whose leaves glittered in the wind. Southampton had taken all of us.
‘You have a life to build, Ellen,’ said Mr Dawes. ‘You have everything before you.’
I pushed my chair back and rose to my feet. ‘Apart from your kindness, I’ve got nothing in the world.’
‘But you will, dear,’ Miss Dawes said. ‘You’ll make something of yourself.’
I wondered how on earth she could know. Could those stones of eyes see into the future? She’d just eaten a meal; thin ham and hard potatoes but a meal nonetheless. How could she tell me about what I would make of myself? ‘Thank you. I think I’ll go for a walk now.’ I left them sitting motionless at the table.
I made my way to the front gate and strode, as fast as I could without running, down the village street. My chin and lips trembled as I panted. I left the village on the road to Beacon Hill. I would go there and lie down like I had with Edward on that mild Christmas Day before he left for the first time. ‘“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,”’ I said aloud, as sobs began to constrict my throat. ‘“From whence cometh my help.”’ But I could see no help, just the hump of Beacon Hill, the quiet line.
The lightning started, planting itself here and there on the plain of fields below the hill, white and silent. A herd of cows, small in the distance and the colour of pale sand, ran this way and that. I strained my ears and caught their terrified lowing, a tiny, faraway sound. I started to low like an abandoned calf, for my father, my brother, my mother. But they were gone. I didn’t know where I would be, or who would know me, or who I would love, in the years and years to come. I lowed, like a sand-coloured calf, and my throat ached. ‘Oh, help me,’ I sobbed. ‘Help me.’
It began to rain in earnest, leaden coins drumming onto my scalp and shoulders. I ran, heavy-footed now, up the lane towards the wall of a barn. The flints pricked my back as I cowered under the shallow eave. A lightning bolt sprang onto an iron gate five yards away. I screamed against the instantaneous crack of thunder, and turned round to embrace the wall. Crack, another bolt. I pressed myself against the wall, the flints hurting my cheek. The rain flooded from the gutter and drenched my back, bringing a sensation of such violent cold that I screamed again.
‘Ellen.’
I thought the voice was in my head. But there was a hand pulling at my sodden sleeve. I turned to see Mr Kennet in an oilskin, the rain battering the brim of his hat. ‘Come round the back.’ He sounded gruff and calm. ‘The barn door’s not locked.’
‘I can’t move.’ My teeth chattered. ‘I might get struck.’
‘You won’t get struck. Come—’ But the rest was lost in a white flash and a bang. The drainpipe at the end of the wall fell away into the yard. Mr Kennet seized my arm and pulled me round the corner and into the barn.
*
The rain roared on the tin roof. I sat on a bale of hay. Mr Kennet put his oilskin over my wet shoulders. The barn door was slightly open and through it I could see the walls of rain sweep up the line of Beacon Hill. I was still sobbing but my cries went unheard in the din. Mr Kennet stood with his back to me, doffing his hat and striking it lightly against the edge of the door to shake the raindrops from the brim. His hair was coarse, pale blond, like stubble in a field. The rain began to fall in large drops from the roof. I hugged my knees under the heavy oilskin, then rested my head on my folded arms. Great rhythmic shivers ran through me.
By and by I noticed that Mr Kennet was gazing upwards at the rafters, mouth half-open, chest rising and falling, slow blinks closing his eyes. Some kind of vagueness or otherworldliness seemed to be overtaking him, a strange, rapt solemnity.
‘What’s the matter, Mr Kennet?’
‘Wondering about those drips,’ he said after a moment. ‘I should tell Harvey Corey. It’s his barn.’
More light was beginning to shine in through the door. The rain had eased and the clouds were breaking up.
‘You looked as if you’d seen a ghost.’
‘Fair few ghosts up here on the chalk, I reckon.’ He gazed out at the hill. ‘Along with the flints and bones from those ancient people. And they all had their troubles too. There’s never anything so bad you can’t be soothed by that, Ellen.’
I disagreed, thinking that an empty belly put paid to all soothing. But did not say so.
‘Thank you, Mr Kennet,’ I said instead. ‘I think I was too frightened to move.’
‘Lucky it was my afternoon off. I always come up to take a look at the Coreys’ sheep for them.’ He smiled at me. ‘So who did that close crop?’
I blushed to the roots of it. ‘Elizabeth.’
The roof was silent. The rain had stopped. He stood up and pulled the barn door wide. I felt my tears rise again. ‘I’d much rather stay here.’
He laughed. ‘You’ll catch your death.’