Jubilee (15 page)

‘I’ll do it.’ Robert sounded calm, controlled. He looked around the kitchen table. Evie made her shoulders relax and put a bit of toast into her mouth, where it sat like a slab
of concrete. Mr Edwards stared hard at the teacup in front of him.

‘If you prefer.’

Evie rose and started piling plates and saucers to take to the sink; pieces of crockery crashed together as she stacked them. ‘Careful with the china, Noi,’ Robert said.

She stared at him.

‘Evie, I mean.’

‘Who’s Noi?’

He pushed his plate away. ‘Just watch what you’re doing.’

‘Sorry.’ She plunged the plug into the sink and ran the taps so hard that all the crumbs shot off the plates and were lost in the suds. For the first time in months she was relieved
to go into school, even though it was double Latin this morning.

When she walked back into the farmyard that afternoon a trail of bloodspots led from the barn towards the track up to the Downs. ‘Hello, Evie.’ Robert leant against
the stable wall, watching her.

‘What’s happened?’ He shook his head. ‘Where’s the pig?’

His body seemed to stiffen. ‘He’s still alive. For now, anyway.’

She looked from him to the bloodstains on the ground. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘They look like rubies, don’t they?’ She realized he was looking at the stains, too. ‘Almost beautiful. I started to do it, Evie, but I couldn’t.’ The words
were almost hissed at her. ‘He got up and ran out. Edwards had to go after him with the shotgun.’

Evie put a hand to her own neck, as though she could feel the prick of the blade that hadn’t gone far enough into the artery. The one unforgivable sin, to leave an animal half dead,
suffering. Before he’d gone off to war she’d seen Robert pursue a fox he’d taken aim at and left with a smashed shoulder. He’d chased it for an hour and a half before he
could finish it off.

And this pig was valuable. They’d given him scraps that could hardly be spared. He was supposed to last all autumn and well into winter. Bits of him had been promised to neighbours in
exchange for sugar and tractor parts.

She heard the tramp of boots across the yard and Mr Edwards and Carlo came in, both bloodstained. ‘It’s all right,’ Carlo said. ‘He didn’t go far. Just the orchard.
He is greedy for those apples. We finish him there.’

‘Can we . . .?’ She felt bile in her mouth. She’d been going to ask if they could still use the meat in such circumstances, if it had been spoiled by the pig’s death in
the orchard, but she had to run to the kitchen sink.

Robert burst into the kitchen one Saturday lunchtime when she and Mr Edwards were frying lambs’ kidneys.

‘Throw me a bottle of beer, Evie.’

She sensed Mr Edwards stiffening as he turned the kidneys in the frying pan. She looked down at the crate beside the stove. Empty.

‘They’ve all gone.’

‘There was one there last night.’ He glared at Mr Edwards. ‘Did you take it, Edwards?’

‘I did. The first I’ve had for some weeks, I might add.’

Robert moved closer. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that I drank the last bottle of beer, yes.’ Mr Edwards nodded towards the table. ‘I think we’re ready, Evie. Let’s call Charlie in and serve up.’

‘Don’t try and brush me off.’ Robert was standing so close to him now that they looked like a pair of angry rams, sizing one another up. ‘This is still my home, you know,
Edwards.’

‘I do know that. I appreciate I’m really in the way here. In fact, my time at Winter’s Copse is coming to an end.’ Mr Edwards took the frying pan off the stove.
‘I’ve heard from the ministry about my next posting. Now you’re back there’s no need for me to stay. I’d like to spend some time with my father, too. He’s
getting on. And your brother’s starting to recover, isn’t he?’ A letter had come from Matthew in hospital, saying he could now walk on crutches. They hadn’t had to amputate
his infected left foot, a souvenir from the Japanese camp.

Evie felt panic wash over her. Mr Edwards might be dull, pompous at times, but he was kindly. He’d locked the back door every night and if the fox got into the chicken house he’d get
up with the shotgun and shoot it. She’d felt safe while he was at Winter’s Copse and the land girls came up every day. As though reading her mind he glanced at her as he handed her a
plate. ‘When does Matthew leave hospital, Eve?’

‘He’ll never be right again.’ Robert picked up a fork and stabbed at the wooden table. ‘Those fevers, those diseases. But I should have forgotten about the quinine. It
was a bad idea, Noi.’

‘We don’t know what you mean.’ Evie heard her voice sounding like a taut length of wire. ‘We don’t know who Noi is.’

His eyes were wide, pupils constricted. ‘Sorry.’ He forced a sickly smile. ‘Look at me. Scaring a good kid like you, Evie. Who’d have thought I’d come to
that?’

‘Eat your lunch, old chap.’ Mr Edwards spoke softly. ‘We don’t always know what to say to you. Or how to act. Be patient with us. Tell us how we can help.’

‘Sometime I feel as though I’m still out there. I can’t shake it off.’ He sounded very young, almost like Charlie. ‘I think they’re still here: the other
prisoners, the guards, the . . .’ He’d picked up his fork and was driving the prongs into the wooden table.

Mr Edwards placed a plate of kidneys and boiled potato in front of him. ‘It’ll pass. I know that’s precious little to say, but every day takes you further away from that
camp.’

‘I wish I could cut out the bit of my memory that keeps throwing it back at me.’ As he always did since his return, Robert stared at the dinner plate. He caught Evie looking at him.
‘Can’t get used to seeing so much food. And I know it’s not as much as we used to eat before the war, but compared with what they gave us out there . . .’

‘Who’s Noi?’ Evie asked again.

She thought he’d ignore the question.

‘A girl about your age in Thailand.’

‘Try not to dwell on the past.’ Mr Edwards handed him the dish of carrots with a frown at Evie. ‘Get some of these on your plate. Vitamin C.’

‘You grew those here?’ Robert gave an approving nod. ‘Carrots are hard on this soil. You must have added sand?’

‘We did. Carlo and I mixed it in. Helped with the drainage.’

‘I noticed today that you’d got him to thin out the woods.’

Mr Edwards’s hands tightened on the vegetable dish.

‘Nice job.’

How easily Robert could make a person beam. Even an ordinarily serious adult like Mr Edwards. There was still enough of the movie star charm in him to make you overlook the rapid changes of
mood.

Robert picked up his cutlery and stared at the knife and fork. ‘We used to eat squatting down, like natives. I even wore a loin cloth.’ He blushed. ‘Sorry, Evie.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said.

‘And I used my fingers to scoop up the grains of rice from the bowl.’

The days following that lunchtime were quiet. The last of the harvest came in. Robert spent his days out in the farthest fields. Checking fences, he said. The land girls
tripped up the lane in the high heels and dresses they’d swapped for their breeches and boots and kissed Evie goodbye, promising to write. She sat on the gate and waved at them until
they’d turned the bend.

Mr Edwards took the children aside one evening after school. ‘I don’t think you should stay here after I’ve gone.’ He spoke quietly and intensely. ‘Young
Robert’s suffering from some nervous disorder. Not surprising really. Conditions in those Jap camps were grim. Don’t know exactly what went on out there, but he’s obviously been
through something terrible.’

‘Robert would never ever hurt us,’ Evie said.

‘I don’t think he would do so intentionally. But he’s not right in his head at the moment.’

‘Where would we go if we left here?’ Charlie asked.

‘If your father hasn’t got a home for you I expect they’d find you something temporary.’

‘You mean a children’s home, don’t you?’ Evie stared at him. She’d heard about these places. Girls at school whispered about what happened to children who’d
been orphaned and had no families to take them in. Children’s homes were cold, bleak places. Usually they split up the boys and girls, made them leave school as soon as they legally could and
sent them out to work.

Mr Edwards blushed. ‘It wouldn’t be for long.’

‘No.’ Evie walked to the parlour window. She could make out the apples on the trees in the orchard. ‘This is our home. We can’t leave.’ A couple of leaves whirled
down very slowly. She clutched the windowsill.

‘Robert is a sick man, Evie.’

‘It’s not his fault,’ Charlie said. ‘It was what the Nips did to them out there on that railway. They’re war criminals. They should all be hanged, Martha
says.’

‘Martha?’ Evie felt her mouth curl as she spoke the name.

‘She spends a lot of time with Robert up in the field with the sheep.’

‘Indeed.’ Mr Edwards sounded dry.

If Evie and Charlie left the farm Martha would be left alone with Robert. Another reason to refuse to leave Winter’s Copse. Why she felt Robert and Martha should not be left alone Evie
could not say. It was almost as though the two of them were two chemicals that would ignite one another if left together in the same test tube. She turned from the window. ‘It’s kind of
you to be worried about us, Mr Edwards. But we’ll be fine.’

‘We’ll talk again,’ he said. ‘Before I leave. I can’t just leave you like this.’

‘Matthew will be home soon, anyway,’ Evie added.

Just saying the older Winter brother’s name made her feel happier. She’d met Matthew just once when he’d come back on leave before his posting to the East. She remembered a
quiet man, less handsome and vivacious than his brother had been, but kind.

They never had the talk with Mr Edwards because he left suddenly the next day while they were at school. ‘His father had a bad fall,’ Robert told them.
‘Insisted on going back to his bombed-out house in Portsmouth and fell through the floorboards or something. He’s very elderly. Edwards had to make a dash for the train. I took him to
the station on my bike.’

He put a hand round Evie’s shoulders. ‘So it’s just us three now.’

‘And Martha,’ Charlie said. Evie felt her cheeks heat. She hadn’t ever told her brother about that long-ago discovery of Martha and Robert together in the parlour.

‘I expect we’ll muddle along fine enough,’ Robert said.

And fine they were for the first week or so they were in Robert Winter’s charge. Evie didn’t think he was drinking as much; at least there were fewer bottles
stacked in the back of the barn. He’d finished the work on the motorbike and spent most of his time bartering vegetables and eggs for petrol. Martha came down to the house, always with
lipstick on. Robert seemed to treat her with no particular interest. Sometimes Evie spotted her on the down, or examining the field of turnips where the sheep would be folded in the winter. Often
Martha would stand completely still, a hand over her eyes, gazing down at the farmhouse.

Looking out for Robert, Evie thought. So she could spring out at him.

Charlie now spent most of his free time out of doors, taking sandwiches with him. He preferred to avoid mealtimes with Robert, when conversations could suddenly dry up in the middle of a
discussion of the hens’ laying habits and Robert would stare out through the dining-room window into nothing and they knew he was back in the camp again. She offered to play Monopoly with
Charlie and not to mind when he filled up Park Lane with hotels but he said it was no fun with just two. ‘Everyone knows the whole city’s bombed, anyway. When I leave here I’m
going to get a job building everything up again.’

‘Real hotels, not little red wooden ones?’

‘Why not?’ Charlie waved a hand towards the down behind them. ‘I’m getting sick of all this open space. Spaces should be filled. I want to build places where people go to
have a good time.’

Released from the watch of Mr Edwards Carlo worked less intensely. Evie came across him enjoying an extended break in the October sunshine, cap pulled over his eyes, back
against the warm barn wall beside a pile of empty food sacks and the milk cans waiting to be scrubbed. He gave a start at her approach.

‘Hey,
bella.
Where’s Mr Robert?’ He moved up so that she could sit next to him.

‘I don’t know. Shouldn’t you be doing something?’

‘I’m taking a break. It’s allowed, no?’ He took his lighter out of a pocket.

‘I suppose so.’

‘Mr Robert, he’s more relaxed than Mr Edwards.’

‘Is that good?’

Carlo shrugged. ‘He is . . . what you call it . . . not right here.’ He tapped his head. ‘He stays away from Martha, though. That is good.’

‘Why?’ She wondered whether he’d think the same as her, that the two were somehow unstable together.

‘She is also not right up here.’

‘Oh.’

‘For her, I think, it has always been so. But she encourages him to see things in the wrong way.’ He gave another half-shrug. ‘But he is a good man really. He give me these,
remember.’ He pointed at his boots, which he’d polished so they shone like new conkers. ‘My old ones leak but not these.’ The cigarette lighter wasn’t working. Carlo
muttered something in Italian and replaced it in his pocket. ‘Mr Robert says I can borrow his lighter.’

‘Won’t he need it himself?’

‘He hardly smoke these days.’

It was true; Evie couldn’t remember seeing him with a cigarette since his return; even that means of relaxation seemed to have failed him. She tasted a sour flavour in her mouth. ‘He
was so different before he went off to war.’ She remembered how he’d shown her how to feed the calves. He’d been patient with her and when she’d finally got the hang of it
and the calves’ tongues were slurping milk from between her fingers he’d smiled as though he was as pleased as she’d been.

Carlo stubbed out his cigarette. ‘You learn a lot about a country by the way it treat its POWs. Whatever happened to him out there must have been very bad.’

‘We haven’t been cruel to you in this country, have we, Carlo?’ She couldn’t bear the thought.

He shook his head. ‘Little boys throw stones at us once when we were working alongside a railway. And the food in the camp is terrible but here Mr Edwards and Mr Robert give me good food
and decent tools and I don’t work if I am ill.’