Stone Cradle (24 page)

I would like to tell you that it was then that my Lijah got forced into it, against his better judgement – but you’ll have worked out by now that
better
and
judgement
were words that were not often joined together when Lijah was around.

No, Lijah went all of his own accord. He told me later that he volunteered because he thought that if he waited any longer then the army would fill up and they wouldn’t let him in.

I was in their kitchen when he came back, that day. He hadn’t told nobody what he was planning, of course.

Rose and I were standing by the range. She had just said, ‘This coal we’re using is brittle. I don’t think it is Northamptonshire coal like the fella said.’

I was about to reply, when Lijah appeared at the back door. He stood there, framed in the light. In his hands, he was holding a
piece of paper. He held it out for us to see, proudly, like it was a rabbit he’d just caught, or a bouquet of roses. I couldn’t read what was written on the paper but I could see his mark at the bottom.

Rose took a step towards him.

‘What is it?’ I asked her, although I had a sinking feeling I could guess.

‘Oh Elijah…’ she said despairingly. ‘Could you not have talked this through with your own wife first?’

Elijah frowned. ‘They’re paying a shilling a day,’ he said. ‘You get bread and kippers for breakfast when you’re training. Square-bashing, they call it.’

‘You don’t like kippers,’ I said.

Then, he glanced over his shoulder, and tossed his head. Sidestepping neatly, already the military man, he moved to make space in the doorway.

Something terrible happened. Into the space Lijah had left, stepped Daniel. And he was holding the same piece of paper as his father.

Rose gave a small cry, then clapped both hands to her mouth. I thought she might collapse and was ready for it. Instead, she just looked from one of them to the other, and her gaze burned.

Daniel realised straight up he should not do the proud bit and avoided her gaze. He glanced at his Dad, then down at the step. ‘Mum, don’t take on …’ he said. I think it was the only time I ever heard him come close to arguing with her.

Lijah was looking deflated now. ‘Oh don’t make such a fuss, woman,’ he growled at Rose, although she had not spoken another word. ‘Everyone’s at it. We thought you’d be proud of us.’

We? I knew the real source of Rose’s anger. If Lijah wanted to go and get himself killed in Foreign Lands that was one thing – but he was taking her best son with him. Daniel was nineteen years old and had never been away from his mother. He was apprenticed to a sign-writer in Haddenham but still came home every night. He
had turned down a chance to be a bricklayer in Whittlesey because it would have meant moving away from home.

‘It won’t be that bad,’ muttered Lijah. ‘Crikey the trouble we get in round here, it’ll be a nice rest, won’t it, Dan?’ He nudged his son with his elbow.

He looked at me then, and grinned, expecting me to appreciate his levity. ‘I think you had better go off somewhere for a bit, the both of you,’ I said quietly.

Lijah glanced at me, a little surprised, for I hadn’t taken him to task on anything he’d done for a while. Daniel turned immediately and went back down the path. After a moment, Lijah followed his son.

When they had gone, Rose sat on an upright chair and took her hanky from her pocket. She did not cry, though her face was twisted. ‘Oh Clementina,’ she said, ‘what are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said and for once, I didn’t.

T
here was before the War, and there was after. It was like a door suddenly appeared in all our lives. You could go through it both ways, if you tried hard enough. If you really concentrated, you could think back to how it was before. The hardships you’d had seemed like adventures, looking back – rough, but liveable through. No one died, back then.

They did, of course. People died all the time. It just didn’t feel like it, before.

Then there was after. After was a different land. So many men gone, just disappeared, and nobody supposed to scream that no, they weren’t proud their best boy had vanished into thin air because they’d give up honour and all place in society to have him back, even if it was just a body to bury.

I went to church every Sunday when the War was on. I’d never been much of a churchgoer before, but during the War the whole
village seemed to go. I suppose we all needed it in a way we hadn’t before. Some of us might have gone for the right reasons, to pray for king and country and for the victory of our noble cause – but I reckon most people went for the same reason I did: to make their bargain with God. Send him back to me, just send him back, and I will do
this
or
this
or
this.
There wasn’t a thing we wouldn’t have offered.

Plenty of the people who went already knew their prayers would not be answered. I remember one Sunday, about a year before it ended. The church full, as usual. Clementina had come with me, and the girls. We were late, again as usual, and sat near the back.

The very front pew belonged to the Demoine family, who were the nearest we had to lords of the manor as they owned Middleton House a few miles out of the village. Sir James and Lady Demoine had been blessed with but one child, Charles, twenty-two years old when he was killed. He received the Military Cross posthumously, we later heard, after leading an attack on a German tank battalion.

This particular Sunday, Sir James and his wife were there, sat at the front as was their due, all alone in the family pew – childless now. They had had their son late and were getting on in years. It crossed my mind to wonder what would happen to the Demoine name and Middleton House when they passed on. Perhaps it would all end with them. It was not long after their boy had been killed, so I imagine there were quite a few people in church that day who were thinking the same as me. I wondered if the Demoines were aware of us staring at their backs and whether they were grateful for or hated our pity.

It was during the sermon. The vicar was saying something about Jesus’ noble sacrifice on the cross. He hadn’t even mentioned the War yet. Suddenly, in full view of everybody, Lady Demoine got to her feet. She raised her hand and pointed at the
vicar and in a trembling voice, she shouted, ‘Liar! Liar!’ The words rang out, as clear as anything, echoing around the church, up to the rafters.

I was on the end of our pew, so could see her quite clearly. She was shaking from head to foot – I could see it in the arm that was pointing. I could not see her face but I could hear the hatred in her voice.

Nobody knew what to do. We all just sat there, even her husband who was gazing up at her. He couldn’t have looked more shocked if the statue of the Virgin Mary in the alcove next to them had spoken.

Lady Demoine was breathing in great, heaving breaths. Her shoulders went up and down with the effort and the arm sank a little. Then she seemed to recover her strength.

‘Liar! Liar!’ she repeated, with an amazing amount of venom, still pointing at the vicar.

Her husband came to his senses at last, got to his feet and ushered his wife out of the pew. She made it to the end before she collapsed, weeping hysterically in great, howling cries. Her knees were gone and her husband had to hold her up and half drag her down the aisle. Not a soul moved to help him. They were the only people of quality in the whole church and it wouldn’t have been seemly for anyone else to lay hands on her. There was nothing we could do except stare straight ahead.

Normally, if a person of such standing had made an exhibit of themselves in that way, it would have been the talk of the village for weeks, but none of us mentioned it as we filed out at the end of the service. I saw a couple of men shake their heads in bafflement but the women knew – they knew why the vicar’s fine words had raged her so, and why she’d shouted
liar.
What woman hasn’t wanted to do that at the whole world at least once in her life?

We had been living in the village nearly fifteen years by then. Fifteen years. When you stay in one place, time goes more quickly, for some reason. Well, the days don’t go quickly – they drag and drag – but the years? They fly past.

There comes a point when you stop trying to fill the holes in your life. What a great relief that is.

Our cottage was right on the edge of the village, with a big vegetable patch at the back that looked out over the Fens; just empty farmland, stretching away from us, like a great ocean. Every afternoon, you could watch the slant of the sun.

It was right for us – a decent roof over our heads but a little bit separate from the
gorjers
in the rest of the village. I had come to feel our differentness, as a family, and to be happy that we weren’t slap bang in the middle of the village with everybody watching and judging us the whole time the way it had been when we lived in East Cambridge. We had been judged on Stourbridge Common, too, mind you. The judging never stops when you’re neither one thing nor another – I had learned that by then. In East Cambridge my kids got picked on for being
gipsies
and on the road they got picked on for being
half
’
n
’
halfs.
So from now on I wasn’t making any allowances for anybody, any more. We was us, and anyone who didn’t like it could
ife.

The cottage was pretty small – especially once we had five children in it. Clementina had her own little place in a neighbouring row of one-up, one-downs. I think they had been almshouses, once. Her vegetable patch was on a slight rise, so she had a better view than us. We had a ditch at the back and a damp problem in the kitchen. Right opposite us was the Forage Works and when they opened the chaff cylinders a cloud of foul vapours would drift across the street. But in comparison with living cheek-by-jowl with Clementina, it was sheer heaven.

When Scarlet was old enough to go to school, I started taking in
more sewing. I was fast and brought in a good little bit – and for the first time in my life I didn’t have to go pleading to Elijah to keep food in the cupboards. Elijah was still drinking sometimes and the horse business went up and down but between the two of us, we managed. We was settled.

I’m not saying we were well off or anything, or that I didn’t sometimes look at Elijah and curse the day he’d smiled up at me from the step of his
vardo.
Things always went a bit bad for us after each child was born, for some reason. He always wanted to disappear a bit then and of course that was the time I most objected to it.

We had a rum patch not long after Scarlet was born, I remember. She came out a wee bit early and needed a lot of feeding up. Elijah hadn’t done a deal on a horse for a while and the hawking was not so good, so he’d taken on a bit of rod peeling. Tuppence ha’penny a bundle, he got. He hated piece work and always came home in a foul temper saying they were trying to cheat him somehow or other. Sometimes, when he’d been paid, he took what little he’d earned and went straight down The Toll House. They had regular dice games at The Toll House, and there wasn’t a woman in Sutton unprepared to swallow those dice whole if she got the chance.

They always started the same, our arguments. He would come in looking all sheepish and boyish, and try to be affectionate – ‘Ah, my Rosie …’ That’s how I knew for sure he was drunk. Then, when I pushed him off, or asked him where his earnings was, he would start off with a bit of humour. ‘Oh, I’ve not
lost
the money, Rosie. I’ve just lent it to him ’til we play again!’

Ta-da!

I didn’t respond to the humour any more than I did the affection. It was all as thin as the ice on a puddle.

‘You’re a drunken fool, Elijah Smith, and when your children want feeding tomorrow are you going to make jokes to them, then?’

We weren’t exactly starving at that time, not like we’d been in Cambridge, but I liked to remind him we once had been and that it was his fault. That was when it would turn nasty.

‘Is it any wonder I’m off down the pub when all I get here is …’ On and on.

When you’ve been married more than a decade, then all arguments are the same arguments, really. The exact wording changes now and then, that’s all.

It always ended the same way, with me going upstairs for the spare blanket and dumping it on the settee.

Scarlet woke me at dawn, that particular day, wanting a feed. When I’d sorted her out, I put her on my shoulder and took her downstairs. Elijah was out flat. I pulled the blanket off him and told him in no uncertain terms to take himself upstairs before the children got down. Then I set to, lighting the fires and getting breakfast ready.

They all pounded down: Daniel all excited like he was each morning. He was fourteen and would be finishing school soon and starting his apprenticeship. He couldn’t wait. Mehitable – well, she was always surly of a morning. She wanted to finish school too but I wouldn’t let her just yet. Fenella had only just started and I would need Mehitable to take her and look after her a bit. Bartholomew was eight and would be going to school for a while yet but I didn’t trust him to keep an eye on his little sister for more than a minute.

There was the clamour and clatter of feeding them all and shouting at them to get their coats and shoes on, then they were gone.

Elijah didn’t come down all morning. I went and did my shopping with Scarlet and came back and there was still no sign of him. Mid-afternoon, Scarlet was in her pram in the garden and I was shaking a mat out over the ditch at the back, when I looked up
and saw him at our bedroom window, staring down at me. I knew that sullen stare. I knew what it meant, right enough.

I went straight to our little stable. Kit had his head bent in his straw. He raised and shook it. ‘Never you mind, Kit,’ I said to him, as I lifted his harness down from the wall.

Elijah was downstairs by the time I got back to the house. His pack was all bundled up and he was pulling on his boots.

Do we really have to go through all this? I thought wearily.

‘You’re not going nowhere,’ I said to him, arms folded. ‘Not on that horse, anyway.’

‘I’ll walk, then!’ he spat at me, without looking up from where he was tying his laces.

‘Stagger, more like,’ I spat back as I stepped past him into the house.

‘You’ll be sorry,’ he said, as he rose and hefted his pack on to his back, ‘when you get word I’ve found myself a nice little fancy piece and am comfy settled down in the Garden of Eden! You’ll be sorry, then!’

That got my attention all right. But by the time I’d turned, he’d strode off down the path.

When she first moved into her cottage, Clementina used a brick to prop open her door. She said she couldn’t sleep otherwise. Recently, she had acquired a conch shell, a huge, gleaming thing it was. Lijah must have got it for her somewhere, when he was out hawking. I always think it’s a bit strange how those things are supposed to be natural. The pink bit inside looks all wrong. For some reason, I had taken an instant dislike to this particular conch shell and it always annoyed me.

As I stepped up her path that afternoon, I glanced down at the conch shell, and felt cross, about everything in my life, really – her included. After all these years I was used to her peculiarities and sometimes we got along all right for months,
before something made me suddenly annoyed with her again.

She was sitting in her little kitchen, next to her table, on an upright chair. As I entered, she looked up without surprise.

‘What do you want?’ Only Clementina could make such a simple question sound so scornful.

I wasn’t in the mood to beat about the bush.

‘He’s gone,’ I said, and sat down on the other chair, even though she had not invited me to.

She drew on her little clay pipe and puffed out extravagantly. She knew I hated smoking and did not allow it in my own home.

‘He’s always going,’ she said lightly.

‘No,’ I said firmly, bending forward to lean weight on my words. ‘He’s
gone
.’

She paused in the act of raising the pipe again and looked at me keenly. I knew she was working out how serious it was. She frowned slightly. There was a smoke-filled silence that hung in the air. I had to make her understand.

‘He’s gone,’ I repeated, ‘and he isn’t coming back. I hid Kit’s harness and he just put his boots on and said I could do what I liked, he’d
walk
to Cambridge if he had to.’

When I mentioned Cambridge, she knew how serious it was. If he got to East Cambridge, back to his old pals there and his old drinking habits, she knew that would be it We’d never see him again.

Her gaze didn’t leave my face for a second. ‘What time did he go?’

‘About an hour ago. Scarlet was screaming to be fed. She’s asleep now. I had to put some potatoes on to boil before I came over. The others will be back soon.’

‘What are you cooking with the potatoes?’

‘Mrs Piggot gave me some goose fat and I’ve a bit of cured ham and an onion. Why?’

‘Go and fry the onion. He won’t be back before tea but you’d better save him some.’

I rose, mightily annoyed. Was that the best she could do? She put one finger in her mouth, then damped down the pipe with it, before laying it carefully on the table between us. Then she folded her hands in her lap. She looked down at them, composing herself, then looked back up at me, as if surprised I hadn’t gone yet.

‘Go on,’ she said.

At the door, I turned.