Jubilee (6 page)

‘You’re up very early, girls,’ Evie said behind me. ‘I’ve got something for you. Look in the bread bin.’ It was a loaf of bread coloured red, white and blue.
‘Just a bit of fun,’ she said. ‘There may be another surprise later on, after the party.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘I thought we all needed cheering up.’

‘What is it?’ Jessamy cried. ‘Tell us.’

‘No.’ And she refused, even though we bombarded her with questions, and set us to work with various tasks. ‘No surprise unless these are done first.’ There were plates
and cutlery to count out into wicker baskets for transporting over to the village green. The morning passed in a haze of errands and panics over tablecloths and serving spoons. Meanwhile Evie took
a hammer and nails and a length of chicken-wire out to the hen house to mend a hole.

I went out into the yard and found her talking to Martha. Evie and Martha rarely spoke to one another more than was necessary for running the farm. ‘They’ve never got on,’
Jessamy had told me once. ‘Martha wanted to marry into the family, you see. But Robert died. And Mum married Dad. So there was nobody left for her.’

I moved behind the slurry bin, feeling shame and curiosity all mixed together.

Evie clenched the hammer. ‘I can’t deal with any more bad news.’

‘Don’t you want to look at these ewes?’

‘I’ll come up later.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m just praying that’s the end of this run of bad luck.’

‘Farming’s a tough life. I always told you that,’ Martha hissed. ‘I’m glad you’ve sorted that henhouse. I see the fox took two more chickens last
night.’

I hadn’t seen the bodies. Evie must have cleared them away.

‘Or was it the gypsies?’ Martha went on. ‘I saw them hanging around in the lane yesterday. You need to make sure everything’s properly locked.’

‘We shouldn’t blame them for every single mishap.’ Evie sounded weary.

‘They took that saddle last week, I’m sure of it.’

‘We don’t know that.’

Martha snorted as she walked away. I peered round the bin and saw Evie stand motionless for a few seconds. She put down the hammer and nails on top of a milk churn – unlike her not to
replace them in the work shed immediately – and walked very slowly back towards the kitchen, her face puckered up into an expression I couldn’t read. I ducked back into the shadows
behind the corn bin until she’d passed me, waiting there for a few minutes so there was no risk she’d know I’d been listening.

I meant to tell Jess what I’d seen but as I re-entered the kitchen Evie thrust a Pyrex bowl of strawberries into my hands. ‘These need hulling. Then there’s cream to be
whipped.’ And I was swept up into the maelstrom of Jubilee preparations.

The telephone rang about ten minutes before we left and Evie took the call in the farm office, so we couldn’t hear. She came back to the kitchen with a flushed look on
her face and a smile. ‘All according to plan,’ she said.

‘What is?’

‘You’ll find out.’

‘I almost don’t like surprises.’ Jessamy stuck out her lower lip. ‘It drives you mad not knowing.’

‘It’s only fun for the one who’s keeping the secret,’ I said.

‘I hate keeping secrets.’ For a moment Jessamy looked quite solemn.

For the party itself Jessamy and I both wore long white socks with our cotton summer dresses. Because our legs were skinny they often fell down around our ankles, revealing the
bruises on Jessamy’s leg that matched the one on her eye. ‘You look like you’ve been in a fight,’ I told her.

She laughed but then once again that strange expression passed over her face and was gone before I could comment on it.

Apart from the bruises my limbs seemed very similar to Jessamy’s but were actually inferior in all respects. Jessamy had never been beaten in a race by any girl her age in the parish and
few of the boys of her own age could run faster than she could. She never appeared big-headed, though, taking her athletic successes for granted but not referring to them. Lucky Jessamy, golden
girl, born with all the good fairy godmother gifts: pretty, fast, clever and popular.

‘I wish I was you, Jessamy.’ The words popped out now as I gazed at my cousin, fresh from her latest triumph in the egg-and-spoon race on the village green, where the party was in
full swing. Evie turned to me, her brown eyes anxious. ‘You always win everything.’ I went on, knowing I’d made a mistake, saying all this, but unable to stop myself.
‘I’d like to win just one thing, just once.’

Jessamy’s eyes narrowed but she said nothing.

‘I don’t understand why there have to be so many races at a Jubilee party.’ Evie sounded tired. ‘It’s supposed to be a day of fun, not an athletics contest. But
you’re a good runner, Rachel, too, just like your father. I remember how he could whizz up the hill behind the house. I could never keep up.’ She squeezed my shoulder and the soft
sleeve of her floaty dress brushed me. It felt like a butterfly wing against my arm. I’d already noticed people looking at my aunt today. People always did. This afternoon she’d put on
a silk smock dress, tied loosely round her waist, and swept her hair off her face using a thick hair band.

‘I might not enter the sack race after all.’ Jessamy spoke casually. ‘Horrible scratchy old bags. And I’m tired now.’ In fact she seemed so full of energy that it
was almost crackling round her.

I peered at my cousin but her face was closed. She dug at a daisy on the field with the toe of her white plimsoll. I wanted to ask her what was up but there wasn’t time.

‘Off you go then, darling.’ Evie smiled at me. I crossed to the starting line, where the ladies from the parish council were laying out sacks.

‘Jessamy not competing this time?’ I turned to see Martha standing beside me.

‘No.’

She turned to look at her for a moment. I was conscious of the concentration in her expression. ‘Shame. She always does well. The Winters were always good at sport and running.’

‘So was Aunt Evie. And my Dad.’ Martha blinked and looked away. There were five of us in the race, two big boys from the senior school in Wantage, a girl my age, and a smaller boy. I
looked at the older boys’ sturdy legs and didn’t rate my chances. But when the pistol fired and I started jumping I struck an easy rhythm, unlike my larger competitors whose legs were
too long to fit comfortably into the sacks. The finishing line raced towards me.

Evie beamed at me. Jessamy gave me one of her silent looks from underneath her dark lashes. I could tell she was really pleased for me. But there’d still be some part of her which wished
she’d competed and won.

‘Let’s go and look at the Jubilee cake before you run the relay,’ Evie said. We were both on the same team. Jessamy would be running first to build up a good lead and I was to
follow. There’d been long practices on the lawn back at Winter’s Copse, using some old bed legs as batons.

‘Hope I don’t drop the baton.’ Nervousness sent ripples through my stomach. Jessamy had been good about standing down from the sack race for me. If only I could repay her by
doing well.

‘It’s just for fun,’ Evie said again, sounding suddenly flat. ‘But you won’t drop the baton. Come on.’ She put a hand behind each of our backs and steered us
towards the tea tent.

A huge rectangular fruitcake sat on a silver-foil-wrapped platter, iced in white with the Queen’s coat of arms in different-coloured sugars. A photograph of the Queen in a silver frame
stood next to it on the table.

‘When will they cut it?’ Jessamy asked, examining the ribbons round the cake.

‘Not for a while yet. There’ll be a loyal toast first.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Like a kind of congratulations to the Queen.’

‘And then they’ll give us our mugs?’

Jessamy was obsessed with the silver-rimmed mugs showing the Queen’s head. ‘Let’s go and look at them again, Rachel.’ The mugs were stored in a cardboard box under the
table displaying the Jubilee cake. We knelt on the grassy floor to study them. Each mug nestled in its own cardboard square inside the box. Jessamy stroked their rims. I knew she was imagining hers
on the dresser at home. Not long to wait now. I watched the tip of her tongue as she placed it between her teeth, a sign that she really, really wanted something so much that she was almost scared
of admitting it.

‘Come on, girls, it’s your race soon,’ Evie called. ‘No, it’s not Zandra Rhodes, just something I ran up myself,’ she told a woman from the village, who was
touching the sleeves of her silk dress and cooing. ‘Hurry, you two!’ We walked to the starting-line, Jessamy brushing crumbs from her mouth. Nobody who didn’t know her as well as
I did would have noticed that her chin was now more firmly set. I crossed my fingers that the baton change would go well.

Jessamy left me to go down to the starting point and I stood in position facing her thirty yards down the track. She pulled up her socks so that they covered the bruises on her legs.

The starter fired the pistol and Jessamy seemed to blast from the starting line, ahead of the other four runners within four paces, increasing the lead all the time. She was nearly at the other
end of the course and I was standing, palm stretched out for the baton, my face muscles aching from the strain of concentrating. My fingers were almost clasped around the black plastic when the
baton fell to the grass. I scooped it up and managed to propel myself forward at the same time but the precious lead had been lost. The boy from the pub was breathing down my neck. I clenched my
teeth and pushed myself harder and harder, still just holding the lead, perspiration beading on my brow. I handed the baton over to the third runner and glanced back up the track. Jessamy’s
eyes were on the runner. The fourth girl had her hand outstretched. The change was smooth but the team beside us were already level now. Our fourth runner, a sturdy girl from a farm in the next
hamlet, threw herself up the track, arms pumping away. Her opponent was already an inch ahead. I closed my eyes. A cheer from the crowd told me that the race was lost. I joined in the clapping,
unable to meet Jessamy’s gaze until the other competitors started drifting away. I stole a look at her. She was smiling at the winners but I spotted the blankness in her eyes that changed to
something almost like confusion.

Evie was coming towards us. ‘Well done, you two!’ she told us. ‘Let’s go and get you both some orange squash.’

‘I’m not thirsty.’

‘Jessamy . . .’

‘I’m going to look at the mugs again,’ she called as she ran off.

‘I’m sorry,’ I shouted after her, not caring that people could hear, would know exactly what I was sorry for. Jessamy Winter’s cousin had let her down in a race.

She glanced over her shoulder. ‘. . . don’t know what to think any more,’ I thought she said.

Evie and I looked at one another. ‘It’s because I dropped the baton,’ I whispered. ‘She doesn’t know what to think about me any more.’

‘It’s just a village race,’ she said. ‘You ran well, Rachel. I haven’t seen you sprint like that before.’

‘I’ve been practising.’

‘It paid off.’ She smiled at me and I felt better. ‘I remember your father running up the hill one night.’ Her expression was dreamy. ‘I thought my heart would
burst trying to keep up with him.’ It was the second time she’d brought up this memory.

‘Why were you running up the hill at night?’

Evie didn’t seem to have heard me and steered me towards the drinks stand. ‘I don’t know what’s got into Jessamy.’ Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of my
cousin heading across the bright field towards the darkness of the tea tent. Perhaps Jessamy had decided she really did want another look at the mugs. Over the chatter of the crowd I heard her
laugh, just once. I wanted to run after her but perhaps it was better to wait until she came to me, when she’d worked out
what to think.

Then she was gone, taken up into the black interior with its trestle tables of Victoria sandwich, scones and buns and the big earthenware teapots borrowed from the village hall.

Evie found me orange squash at the stand, keeping up a stream of conversation all the time. Trying to distract me from my humiliation, probably.

‘Now I wonder where that cousin of yours is.’ She sounded more relaxed.

‘She went into the marquee.’ We walked across to it.

Evie peered at the crowds queuing for tea and buns. ‘She’s not here. Perhaps she’s gone outside again to play with her schoolfriends.’ She frowned. ‘Very naughty of
her to leave you out.’

I wasn’t surprised. I deserved exclusion.

‘I hope she’s not going to miss out on the loyal toast and cake cutting.’ Evie looked suddenly weary; unusual for my aunt, who generally never sat down except for meals.
She’d have been forty-seven that summer and now I noticed the lines around her eyes. For the first time it struck me how hard it must be for her: farming without Uncle Matthew. A neighbour
tapped her arm and she turned. ‘Yes, just the three reactors . . . Thank you. We’re hoping that’s the end of it,’ I heard her say. Those three slaughtered cows again.

As we left the tent to look for Jessamy I spotted three of the gypsy children peering out from behind the tea tent. They’d been invited to the party along with everyone else but preferred
to linger on the periphery, only occasionally venturing inside for currant buns and squash. Jessamy liked the gypsies, or tinkers, as some people called them, admiring their skills on horseback.
The older girl, Rosie, went to school with her. They didn’t look like what I imagined gypsies should be, being fair-haired and blue-eyed. ‘Irish originally,’ Martha said.
‘Riffraff.’

‘I like Rosie.’ Jessamy’s lower lip had stuck out. ‘She’s kind. Her dog’s got puppies and they let me play with them.’

I stayed by my aunt’s side for the rest of the afternoon, shadowing her as she moved from one group of friends and neighbours to another. Everyone seemed to have a word for Evie. She might
not have been born in the village but she’d come to live here at an early age and then married one of its oldest families. Evie Winter had a certain status.

We were summoned to the tea tent for the loyal toast in front of the Jubilee cake. ‘. . . God save the Queen!’ Mr Fernham, the chairman of the parish council, ended, the smile on his
face spreading across the park. The ladies from the choir launched into the National Anthem and we all joined in. I was thinking how Jessamy would have enjoyed watching plump Mrs Chivers’s
bosom quiver as she trilled. Mr Fernham’s sister wore a look of almost religious fervour on her thin face. He sang in more measured tones, as though contemplating the meaning of each
word.