Mr Mac and Me (27 page)

I’m glad everything is going well in London. And that your most recent tests are clear. I’m glad too that you are sending the
Larkspur and the Winter Stock to Homes and Garden; remember, any money that comes in is for you. I think that the Petunia
might be more suitable for the cover of a magazine. Or maybe B has decided he wants to buy them, framed or unframed. Did he say? I’d let each go for as little as £10 10s. But if he can’t give an answer what can we do? What can any of us do?

Sorry to talk so much of business and money, when it is only the three words I want you to hear.

Chesterton says, ‘Our wisdom belongs to the world – our follies to those we love.’ Browning puts it better – ‘We must have two faces, one to face the world with, one to show a woman when we love her.’

Do write again as soon as you receive this. You see I am very greedy for news of you – from you. Goodnight. YT.

PS Do not worry if you’ve not sold anything. Come home. Or write at least that you intend to soon. This house is too large without you. And my life too small.

Ann watches, glassy-eyed, while I seal it up again. I don’t use the rabbit-skin glue. I keep that hidden at the back of the cupboard in my room. It is hard and dry now. White as pebbles. And I wonder, as Mac does, what is keeping her away so long.

Chapter 49

At the start of June there is to be a sale on the green at Westleton.

Present Entries Include

40 Portions of the Wrecked Zeppelin

Old Coins, What-Not, Dining-Room Chairs, Smokers’ Cabinet,

Music, Pictures, Flour, Old China, Potatoes, Japanese Stick,

Tea Cosy, Jewellery, Fireguard, Wheelchair, Clothes-Horse,

Miniature, Pincushion, Tea Cloths, String of Pearls,

Stuffed Birds.

I heave up the mattress and count my money. What would my own miniatures fetch? I wonder. And I imagine exchanging them for a piece of the wreck. But instead I take a sixpence and I walk to the top of the village where after a minute or so Mr Button passes with his cart. He stops for me when I put out my arm and although it was winter when I last flagged him down and now it is almost summer, he doesn’t say a word. Instead we listen to the sound of his horse’s hooves, the echo as they hit against the patch of road, the dry thud as they move on to the mud of the lane. He had two horses when I first started riding with him, but since the war he manages with one, parting with the other when the recruits swept through the country. I glance at him now to see if he is sad. But how can you tell what a man like Mr Button feels when his face is covered with whiskers and his eyes are creased so small against the sun his forehead is a frown? Where does he go each morning? But I don’t ask because I’ve heard he works at Bulcamp, out on the estuary, where the madhouse is.

‘I’ll end up at Bulcamp,’ Mother has been known to sob when my father’s drinking, and the damp, and the rats, and the never-enough money, force her down on to a stool, her head in her hands, and on those days I stand with her and stroke her back, solid as a wall, and not a bit of give in it, and I promise myself that this will never happen, and how can it when I have a small stack of coins waiting for when she’s run out of luck?

The auctioneer is the same man as sells sheep over at the market square at Southwold. He scans the crowd and nods and calls, so fast I can hardly keep up. Potatoes. They are gone. Flour. Four hands are raised. But no one bids for the miniature, or even the stuffed bird, and I hold tight to the coin in my pocket and think how grand it would look at the inn, just like the eagle that sits under a glass dome in the Sailors’ Reading Room. It was rescued from the Norwegian barque two years before the war, and I remember how we heard the distress calls, ringing out at midnight, and rushed down to the beach, Ann and I, with Mother hurrying after with coats.

‘Gone!’ The clothes-horse is sold. But all I can see are the Norwegian crew being winched to safety high above the waves.

No one wants the pincushion. And I remember the next morning, how I took the ferry at first light, and stood with the crowds of people on the pier to see the strange sight of the barque lying high and dry like some black whale.

The smokers’ cabinet remains unsold. As do the dining-room chairs. But someone has raised their hand for the pearls. They are white and milky. The auctioneer holds them up. ‘Going . . .’ A short strand, they are, more like a choker. ‘Going . . .’ I crane to see. But no one else is bidding. ‘Gone.’ And they are sold to a man in seaman’s uniform. A small man. But I only see him from behind. ‘Yes!’ His fists are clenched. And he leaps into the air.

They are selling off the wreck of the Zeppelin now. I put my hand up. I don’t even know what for. But soon the bids are beyond me. And I put it down. The auctioneer starts with another lot. A zigzag of metal. My hand shoots up. Thruppence. Yes. He nods at me. And now my face is burning. But thruppence rises to fivepence and I daren’t go on. Some other fellow gets it. I try again. My face hot as the sun. Thruppence. Thruppence halfpenny. Fourpence. There are three others against me. And as it rises I forget about the smallness of my coin and I keep nodding. Sixpence, sixpence halfpenny. A shilling. Two shillings. Three. And it is mine. A twisted piece of metal. Tall as a small tower and charred at the top. I can hardly breathe. What am I to do with it? How am I to pay? And I look about as if I might find some pricey item on my person, an ebony cane or crystal monocle that I could quickly sell.

‘Tommy.’ I turn. I’m squinting. All I can see is a clothes-horse, held up like a rail. ‘How are you doing, lad?’ It’s George Allard. And I want to say, ‘What’s that for? Surely you can make one of those yourself?’ But I say nothing. I’m too busy waiting for a policeman to clamp a hand down on my head. ‘How is your sister?’ he asks.

‘Ann?’

‘And your ma and pa?’ He stands thoughtful, and my heart races. He’s about to offer me my job back. He must know I need it with things as they are.

‘Well done,’ he says, nodding at the wreck of metal, and lifting the clothes-horse higher he turns away.

The auctioneer has promised to keep my Zeppelin portion safe until I can come back with three more shillings. I leave my sixpence with him and walk fast across the edge of the heath. It is hot today, the flowers blazing, and white butterflies flutter by my feet. The air smells sweet of elderflower, and the sheep on the low field are fattening and content. If I don’t look east to where the barbed wire is coiled along the cliff, I wouldn’t know there was a war. I stop and listen for guns across the water, but hard as I strain my ears I can only hear the birds chattering, and the heavy drone of a bee.

Ann is in the garden, sewing, when I get home. I go straight to the well and pull up a bucket. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asks me. She is thin as a cat still, and pale, but her eyes have lost the cloud look they had when she first woke.

‘You’ll see,’ I say. I take a swallow, and another, and when my stomach is swooshing with the sweet, dank water, I haul myself upstairs. It hurts to separate my coins so harshly. They should lie together as they have done, growing these past years, but there’s nothing I can do now if I want to avoid prison, and I slide them into my pocket.

It’s not easy walking with a piece of Zeppelin. I have to stop and rest every few hundred yards. At first I grip it in my arms, then I hang it like a bow across my back, but my hands soon tire from stretching for it, and I balance it on my head. All the while I think of the look on Ann’s face when I present it to her. Her own Zeppelin. The one that brought her back to life. And I imagine Father pinning it horizontal to the beam above the fireplace so that everyone will see it as they come through to the main bar.

I rest for a while in Betty’s hollow. Betty Maclellan. I hear her voice as if she’s said it. And I snap up a stem of reed grass and whistle to her through it, counting the months till autumn when she will return. I lie back against the short warm grass. This is the day the world was made for. Sun. Breeze. Blue. Gold. And my body aches with the thought of sleeping. No, I tell myself, but I close my eyes, just for a moment, and when I open them again, the blue has darkened, and there is a sharp edge to the air. My Zeppelin! My heart roars as I thrash round for it. But it is there, lying by me, the zigzag of its metal brackets cool beside my arm.

I stagger up and homewards. The inn is in shadow, the sun catching on the trees of the Hoist. I push open the door. It is too early for first orders, but all the same there are voices drifting out from the main bar. I clutch my Zeppelin tight. It’s taller than me, and half as thin. The sharp edges of it dent into my arms. There’s a man’s voice. Stuttery. And a girl – Ann it is. And she is crying. Then Father cuts through with a cheer, the door bursts open and he rushes past me and down the steps to the cellar. I don’t move. There is silence from the next room. And then Mother begins speaking. Low. Soothing. A question, although I can’t hear what it is. Father is up again. A glass of beer, full-strength, frothing, splashing on to the floor.

‘Pa?’ I need to remind him he’s not drinking. But it seems the pint is not for him.

‘Don’t just stand there.’ He has seen me. ‘Come in and say hello.’

I keep hold of my Zeppelin, and I edge after him into the bar. But still I don’t see who it is, with Mother and Ann crowding so tightly in around the visitor who is sitting on a chair.

‘Here you go, boy.’ They part for Father to hand in the beer, and that’s when I see him. The man from the auction. The thin man in navy uniform who leapt into the air.

‘You’ll say hello to Jimmy, won’t you?’ Mother is all smiles. And I feel my eyes start back in my head.

‘But you . . . you’re . . .’ I have no good words to describe how the
Formidable
went down. ‘You’re drowned.’

Ann takes hold of Jimmy Kerridge’s hand. ‘Jim was just telling us what happened.’ And she looks at him as if he might begin again.

‘You tell.’ His sailor’s hat is lying on the table. And now that I am facing him I see he has a deep red scar down one side of his face.

Ann sits down and, grateful, Jimmy takes a long pull of his pint.

‘I couldn’t,’ she says. But she tries all the same. ‘On the night of the sinking,’ her voice is a whisper, ‘Jimmy was on deck when the first torpedo hit.’

‘Not that I knew what it was,’ Jimmy interrupts. ‘None of us did. Not at first.’

‘The second torpedo caused the ship to list to starboard.’ Ann’s memorised each word. ‘ “All hands muster on the quarterdeck.” That’s right, is it?’

‘That’s it,’ Jimmy nods.

‘The men started queuing for the boats. But Jimmy didn’t want to leave the ship. He had back pay, a gold sovereign, stowed away in his kit locker and he wasn’t leaving that.’

‘That’s it,’ Jimmy nods again. ‘I wasn’t going to lose that.’

‘It was dark between decks and the ship was rocking.’ Ann’s eyes are wide. ‘It took a long time to reach to the locker. Water coming in. The whole boat heaving. And when he did, it was a fight to get back on to the deck.’

‘And when I did,’ there is a pause, and Jimmy frowns, ‘there was no one there. The lifeboats had gone. Smashed up in the water. Although I could see one, quite close, I could make out the faces of the men in her. I shouted. But they kept on with their rowing, pulling hard as they could away from the ship.’

‘Jimmy was alone then.’ Ann is trembling. ‘And so he started praying, and then, as if in answer, there before him stood the ship’s own chaplain.’

Jimmy swallows and he hangs his head. And we bend our necks with him and wait till he’s recovered. ‘God heard my prayers.’ He rocks a little and then he looks up and smiles. ‘The chaplain knew what to do for the best. “Stay on the ship,” he told me. “As soon as they find we’re missing, they’ll be back.” And he explained how the first lieutenant was his brother-in-law. He’d been chaplain at his wedding. “As soon as he discovers I’m not with them, he’ll turn right around to pick us up. We’ll not be forgot.” I looked up at the stars. I thanked the Lord. And I promised that when I got home I’d use the sovereign to buy a present for my girl.’

A tear rolls down Ann’s cheek. And that’s when I see them, the same milk colour as her skin – the pearls, soft and warm against her throat. ‘But no one came,’ Ann says, ‘and the wind got up into a storm so that soon the ship was wallowing in rough sea.’

‘The starboard side was three parts underwater,’ Jimmy grips her hand. ‘We held on to the quarterdeck, but holding on was hard. So we waited till we dared and scrambled up to the guardrails, and from there on to the port side. But the ship turned turtle, and as it went, we pulled ourselves on to her bottom. We rested there and then, when there was nothing else for it, we struck out into the sea. The chaplain caught hold of a boom that floated by, and we attached ourselves to it best we could, and all the while air was rising from the sinking ship so that as we tried to paddle away it pulled us back. We gave up and lay still. I couldn’t feel my legs. And then, just like that, the ship slipped down under the water and was gone.’

We stood quiet in the inn. Our eyes lowered.

‘All our work now was to keep our heads above the water. And to keep ourselves awake. Shouting, praying, singing, waiting, cursing, hoping. Where was that blasted escort? We used worse language than that. I don’t remember how long we drifted. But I heard later it was fourteen hours before we were found. And when the rescue came I thought I was dreaming. A voice was shouting, loud, quite close. And I looked up to see three fishermen looking down at me from the deck of their boat.