A Stone's Throw (2 page)

‘I’m going home,’ Will said to himself and he was off, onto the field. The ground was so flat, so clear, it was like running downhill. Animals had been across before him. There were rabbits’ prints, and birds, and the cloven prints of deer. Will laughed, a whoop of sound, and kicked up his knees, faster and faster, till he was nearly in the middle and he had the sun
on his shoulders.

‘Will!’ It was a shout. He glanced back. His father was bent forward, his bag thrown off his shoulder, one hand against a tree trunk for support.

‘Stop!’ His father’s voice was hoarse. ‘Stop. It’s dangerous.’

The boy slowed to a walk, then turned to face his father across the flat snow.

‘I’m going home,’ he called.

‘Will, you’re on ice,’ his father said, his voice high, pleading.

Will shook his head and walked backwards, one hand to his neck to touch St Christopher. He walked away from his father, surely, steadily, with the bearing of a child who knows what he will do.

His father stood straight, still breathing heavily, and walked to the edge. He spoke between breaths, keeping his voice lower now, calmer.

‘Please. It’s not safe. You could fall through.’

The boy waved and he made a little jig.

‘No!’ his father roared. He raised his arm. ‘Wait there. Don’t move.’

But seeing his father come towards him, the boy turned and ran again into the heart of the sun.

Meg sat upright in the tender and looked straight ahead. The waves were choppy and the boat bucked a little, so she had one hand on the seat to steady herself. With the other she made sure of her hat. Although the air had been dry when she arrived at the docks, out on the water there was a fine mist blowing in from the sea; by the time they reached the ship, you could be forgiven for mistaking the fret on her face for tears.

Although she didn’t know it yet, she was the youngest passenger to join the upper deck, and amongst those dozen or so watching her come on board, there was much speculation as to why she was travelling at this time.

From the lower deck, a crowd of soldiers watched her too. They were the same age, just boys, their fatigues still stiff and their hair newly shorn, and they were on their way to war. The wind jostled her and caught at her skirt. Somebody wolfwhistled.

She didn’t look at the soldiers, not even a glance. Held herself back from it. They probably thought she was stuck-up. She was the final passenger and as she stepped through the rail, people nodded a greeting and several introduced themselves.

Even before the steward had shown her to her cabin, the ship had weighed anchor and was on its way.

Once her trunk had been delivered, Meg locked the door, slipped off her shoes and lay down on the lower bunk. She
couldn’t feel the ship move, but her stomach swung as though she were on a fairground ride. Turning her head into the pillow, she shut her eyes. She was tired but the pillow smelt unfamiliar and she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Her stomach rumbled. There was a chunk of cake packed away in her trunk – her mother had wrapped it up in oiled paper – but it was for her wedding day; she shouldn’t eat it.

Leaving had been easier than she’d anticipated. Alice had cried every day for the last week and Joyce said that nothing would ever be the same, but Meg had felt detached, she didn’t know why. She had their friendship tokens in her trunk. Mr and Mrs Gilmer had asked Meg and her mother to tea on her last Saturday. Meg had gone alone, of course, and they had fed her fit to burst and sent her home with a big cheese, sewn tight into its cloth. It would feed her mother for months.

Mrs Gilmer had cried, tears dripping onto the cheese, and told Meg she was like a daughter. Mr Gilmer told her she had the best milking hands in the county and she’d be sorely missed.

Meg was happy not to walk there in the dark each morning, her body still asleep and the wind coming off the fields so bitterly. But she would miss butting her head against the cows’ warm pelts, and the clean, sharp sound of the milk hitting the bucket. And she would miss their smell.

At four o’clock she checked her face in the mirror. Tea was served in the lounge in cups and saucers of fine china and with plates of Rich Tea biscuits. There were perhaps thirty passengers drinking tea, though not many of them were women.
Meg stood at one side and looked from face to face. People smiled and nodded. The war was on, but this ship was sailing to somewhere else. Perhaps that was why they smiled. She turned to watch the thin line of England through the window, feeling better for the biscuits.

A young woman came over and introduced herself. She wore a wedding ring and was maybe five or six years older.

‘Margery Richardson. You nearly didn’t make it.’

‘Meg Bryan,’ she said.

‘Travelling alone in the war. How bold.’

‘My fiancé is meeting me off the boat,’ Meg said.

‘Family in Africa?’

‘Colonial service. Essential war effort work.’

‘Anyway, how sensible, not to wait.’

Meg blushed. ‘He said I should come. He said it was safe as houses in a convoy.’

‘Always another ship to come to the rescue,’ Mrs Richardson said. ‘That’s what they’ve been telling me. Accidents do happen, of course, but fingers crossed.’

‘Are you travelling with your husband?’ Meg said.

‘We’re going home. South Africa. Been in London and had enough of the Blitz. Rather have the heat and the natives than any more bombing.’

They sat down in easy chairs and Mr Richardson came over to join them. He patted his wife on the hand and looked Meg up and down, before going in search of more tea.

‘I should warn you, my husband’s a journalist,’ said Mrs Richardson.

‘Warn me?’

‘Lots of questions. He does it all the time, and he does know a terrible lot. More than ever I could.’

Mr Richardson returned and the two women listened as he told them stories and important facts about the war. Meg watched Mrs Richardson and wondered how often she had heard all these before. Mr Richardson didn’t ask Meg any questions. She nodded when he paused and she thought about the future. He reminded her of George and she wondered whether she would have to tend to George in the same way.

She’d met George in the town hall when she’d gone about her father, and he’d bought her a coffee afterwards. She hadn’t said very much. That she lived with her mother and worked in the village. He said he was doing exams and if he passed them, he would go and work far away.

‘To London, do you mean?’ Meg said. ‘I’d like to go to London. I’d like to go a long way away.’

On their second date George took her for tea at the Empire. He told her he was going to go to Africa, not London, if he passed his exams and he said he thought she was the wife he needed. He was going to establish himself and that meant leaving things behind. He needed a wife who understood that; who wanted that too, and he thought she was the right woman.

On their fifth date George said he loved her, and she thought he did, in a way. He said that they must have been intended for each another. He told her what to put in her trunk for Africa and he told her what to leave behind. She
left behind her mother and the village and her lost brother, though George didn’t tell her to. Anyway, she understood him because it wasn’t really love that had got her on this ship either.

Back in her cabin she unpacked her things. She put her bible on the dressing table and stood the photograph of George next to it, beside the mirror. It had been taken in a studio before he left and he looked out solemnly with his brand-new shorts and his white knees and his highly-polished shoes. The silk camisole and knickers, still wrapped in tissue-paper, she stowed in the top drawer. Alice had given them to her as a parting gift, a little smile like a shadow.

‘For your wedding night,’ she’d said.

The snapshot of her mother she put beneath her pillow. Along the corridor she found the bathroom. It was clean, though it smelt odd. She washed her face in warm, salty water and when she ran the water out of the sink, the sea seemed very close, as if it might rise up in there at any minute.

‘Don’t be foolish,’ she said to herself.

She started the letter to her mother.

Dear Ma
,

All is well with me. The train journey was a little long and I was glad of your bread. It kept me going. There were fresh eggs and butter in the guesthouse. I only got lost once, getting to the docks. Now I am on board the ship which is huge, you can’t imagine. There is plenty to eat, so you mustn’t worry on that score. Everybody is very polite. It is
smart as a hotel, with stewards asking if you’d like more tea, and so forth, which is nice but a bit tiring
.

I am sure I will get used to it in two weeks. There are soldiers on board too, on their way to the war. I don’t imagine their quarters are like a hotel
.

It was getting dark by dinner time and a steward knocked on Meg’s door to ask her to cover the portholes properly. She took her lifejacket with her to dinner, as instructed. Standing in the doorway, she looked across the room. The tables were set with starched linen, silver cutlery and several glasses at each place. Meg had only eaten in a restaurant once before and that was with George, the evening he proposed to her.

She was wondering where to sit, since most of the tables were full, when Mrs Richardson waved from the far side. George had advised her to mix on the ship because she might become acquainted with useful people, but it was only the first night and she was tired. If she sat with the Richardsons, she wouldn’t have to remember any more names.

There was Chicken Chasseur with rice, more than she could eat. She hadn’t seen this much chicken for years. Mr Richardson leaned towards her with his knife and fork.

‘If you’re not finishing it?’ he said.

She would write about Mr Richardson to her mother.

‘The thing about us journalists is we’ve always got a story to tell,’ he said. His cheek bulged with chicken. ‘Never short of a tale, so always in demand.’

Meg didn’t like Mr Richardson’s manners, nor did she like
Mrs Richardson’s kowtowing. But she knew they were what George called a certain sort of person and she could learn about serviettes and how to hold your knife. So she sat quietly and watched.

The war had distilled the passengers eating dinner that night into a particular kind of group. There were no frivolous travellers, though nobody was talking very much about the dangers. But every passenger had at least one good reason to risk this journey: marriage, family, money. There were no children, few women and, apart from Mr Richardson and a clergyman, all the men were over a certain age. Although they were deemed too old to fight, many nevertheless wore their years with an air of apology, stooping more than they might usually; and they were quick, that first evening, to mention former injuries, especially those received in any kind of line of duty.

‘You arrived too late to see the soldiers,’ said Mrs Richardson. ‘They were quite a sight.’

‘Really.’

‘Hundreds and hundreds of them.’

‘Five platoons, and some. Five hundred and forty-eight of them,’ said Mr Richardson.

Mrs Richardson shook her head. ‘I found it quite distressing. Funny, because I’ve seen enough parades in London. I think it was seeing them so close-up. They look so young and so unpractised.’

‘I’ve watched all the boys from my village leave,’ Meg said.

‘No one from your family?’

‘No. But I knew them all. Since we were children.’

Mr Richardson laughed. ‘One of them could be on this ship … I could probably find out … My sources.’ Meg shook her head. This was too near the bone. ‘They’re all fighting already. But are you writing an article?’

Mr Richardson sat back, his hands across his stomach. ‘I’m planning a piece about the ship. Our heroic lads, some statistics, what the ship was in peacetime. A few personal stories, like the girl willing to risk the U-boats to join her betrothed.’

He winked at Meg – ‘Need a whisky’ – and left the table.

‘I don’t want to be in a newspaper,’ Meg said. ‘And I’m sure George wouldn’t like it,’ though in truth she thought George might be delighted.

‘Do your parents approve?’ Mrs Richardson said.

Meg wasn’t sure what she meant.

‘My father is dead,’ she said.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ Meg said. But perhaps her face had given something away, because it was true that the shock of feeling still took her by surprise; grief and guilt, such old guilt, because maybe it was her fault he was gone; because how could she miss the man who’d made her mother so unhappy? Who’d taken her brother? And the tug she still felt in her body, not her mind: the longing for a solid feeling and a smell that was pipe smoke and shaving soap and something else she couldn’t describe but that she knew was her father.

‘It’s very romantic. Quite an adventure,’ Mrs Richardson said.

But her pa doesn’t want her to go on the adventure too. He doesn’t
want her to go out with Will. He shouts at her, and her ma shouts at her pa because Will hasn’t had any breakfast
.

Her ma is crying, so Meg says shush to her. She says it in her ma’s shush voice. ‘Shush, ma; shush now. It’s only an adventure. I’ll kiss it better
.’

Her ma holds something in her hand, she cries on it and she doesn’t listen. So Meg goes out of the room and up the steep stairs. She climbs onto the bed and reaches with her arm under the covers. It’s still warm where Will’s body and hers have been. She takes off her shoes, pushes her legs back under and lies still. Her pinafore skirt is runkled and her cardigan is bunched under her back. She moves her legs this way and that, to keep all the warmth, but just her legs aren’t enough, so she gets out again
.

‘My mother is very fond of George,’ Meg said. ‘She thinks him very steady.’

‘Brothers and sisters?’ Mrs Richardson said.

Meg had thought about this question; she had practised saying no, she didn’t have any; no, she was an only child. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

She saw Mrs Richardson’s raised eyebrows, and behind her, Mr Richardson returning from the bar, and she stood up. ‘I’m tired, and a bit chilly,’ she said. ‘Will you excuse me?’