The Distant Hours (30 page)

I’d reached the end of the first page but didn’t turn it over. I sat motionless, as if I were listening very carefully to something. And I was, I suppose; for the little girl’s voice had drifted from the shoebox and was echoing now in the shadow-hung hollows of the room.
I’m in the country now
. . .
they call him Daddy
. . .
there is a tower, and three sisters
. . . Letters are special like that. Conversations waft away the moment they’ve been had, but the written word prevails. Those letters were little time travellers; fifty years they’d lain patiently in their box, waiting for me to find them.

The headlights from a car in the street outside threw slivers between my curtains, tinsel shards slid across the ceiling. Silence, dimness again. I turned the page and read on, and as I did so a pressure built behind my chest, as if a warm, firm object were being pushed hard from within against my ribs. The sensation was a little like relief and, oddly, the quenching of a strange sort of homesickness. Which made no sense, only that the girl’s voice was so familiar that reading the letters was a little like re-meeting an old friend. Someone I’d known a long time ago . . .

London, September 4th, 1939

Meredith had never seen her father cry. It wasn’t something fathers did, not hers certainly (and he wasn’t actually crying, not yet, but it was close), and that’s how she knew for sure that it was wrong what they’d been saying, that this was no adventure they were going on and it wouldn’t be over soon. That this train was waiting to take them away from London and everything was about to change. The sight of Dad’s big, square shoulders shaking, the strong face knotted queerly, his mouth pulled so tight that his lips threatened to disappear, and she wanted to wail just as hard as Mrs Paul’s baby when he needed feeding. But she didn’t, she couldn’t, not with Rita sitting right there at her side just waiting for another reason to pinch her. Instead, she lifted a hand and her father did the same, then she pretended someone was calling her and turned around so that she didn’t have to watch him any longer, so they could both stop being so horribly brave.

There’d been drills at school in the summer term and Dad had been talking the whole thing up at night, telling them over and over about the times he’d gone down to Kent as a boy, hop-picking with his family: the sunny days, the campfire songs in the evening, how beautiful the countryside was, how green and sweet and endless. But although Meredith had enjoyed his stories, she’d also thrown a glance or two Mum’s way, and that had got the lump of foreboding roiling in her stomach. Mum had been hunched over the sink, all sharp hips and knees and elbows, exercising the same fierce attention to scrubbing pans spotless that always presaged grim times ahead.

Sure enough, a few nights after the stories started, Meredith heard the first argument. Mum saying they were a family and they ought to stay together and take their chances as one, that a family broken apart could never be put back together quite the same. Dad had spoken then, calmer, telling her it was like the posters said, that kids had a better chance out of the city, that it wouldn’t last for long and then they’d all be back together. Things had gone quiet for a moment after that, and Meredith had strained to hear, then Mum had laughed, but not happily. She hadn’t come down in the last shower, she said; if there was one thing she knew it was that governments and men in fancy suits couldn’t be trusted, that once the kids were taken God only knew when they’d get them back and in what sort of condition they’d be, and she’d shouted some of the words Rita got regular swipes for using, and said that if he loved her he wouldn’t send her children away, and Dad had shushed her and there’d been sobbing and no more talking and Meredith had put her pillow over her head, as much to drown out Rita’s snoring as anything else.

There’d been no more talk of evacuation after that, not for days, until one afternoon Rita came running home to tell them that the public swimming baths were closed and there were big new notices out front. ‘There’s one on each side,’ she’d said, eyes widened by the press of portentous news: ‘The first says “Women Contaminated”, the second says “Men Contaminated”.’ And Mum had knotted her hands and Dad had said only, ‘Gas,’ and that was that. Next day Mum pulled down the only suitcase they owned and any pillowcases she could spare and started filling them with things on the list from school – just in case: a change of knickers, a comb, handkerchiefs, and a brand-new nightdress each for Rita and Meredith, the necessity of which Dad had gently queried and Mum had justified with a fierce scowl. ‘You think I’m letting my children go with threadbare clothing into the homes of strangers?’ Dad had stayed quiet after that and even though Meredith knew her parents would be paying for the new items until Christmas, she couldn’t help taking guilty delight in the nightie, which was crisp and white and the first she’d ever owned that hadn’t been Rita’s first . . .

And now they
were
being sent away and Meredith would have done anything to take back her wish. Meredith wasn’t brave, not like Ed, and she wasn’t loud and confident like Rita. She was shy and awkward, and utterly different from everyone else in her family. She shifted in her seat, lined her feet up together on her suitcase and considered the gleam of her shoes, then blinked away the image of Dad polishing them the night before, setting them down when he’d finished only to wander the room a few idle minutes, hands in pockets, before starting the whole process again. As if by applying polish, driving it deep into the leather and buffing until it shone, he could somehow ward off the untold dangers that lay ahead.

‘Mu-mmy, Mu-mmy!’

The shriek came from across the carriage and Meredith glanced up to see a little boy, not much more than a baby, clinging to his sister and pawing the glass. Tears had snaked down his dirty cheeks and the skin beneath his nose was shiny. ‘I want to stay with you, Mummy,’ he cried. ‘I want to get killed with you!’

Meredith concentrated on her knees, rubbed at the red marks her gas-mask box had made as it banged against her legs on the walk from school. Then she looked again through the train’s window, she couldn’t help herself; peered up at the railing above the station where the adults were crowded together. He was still there, still watching them, the stranger’s smile still twisting up his normal Dad-face, and Meredith found it difficult suddenly to breathe and her spectacles were starting to fog, and even as she wished the earth would open up and swallow her so it would all be over, a small part of her mind remained detached, wondering which words she’d use, if asked to describe the way fear was making her lungs constrict. As Rita squealed with laughter at something her friend Carol had whispered in her ear, Meredith closed her eyes.

It had begun at precisely eleven fifteen the previous morning. She’d been sitting at the front of the house, legs stretched out along the top step, taking notes as she watched Rita across the road making eyes at that ghastly Luke Watson with his big yellow teeth. The announcement had come in distant strains from the wireless next door, Neville Chamberlain talking in that slow, solemn voice of his, telling them there’d been no response to the ultimatum and that they were now at war with Germany. Then had come the national anthem, after which Mrs Paul appeared on the neighbouring doorstep, spoon still dripping with Yorkshire pudding batter, with Mum close behind her, and householders all the way along the street doing the same. Everyone stood where they were, looking one to the other, bewilderment, fear and uncertainty written loud on their faces, as mutterings of ‘It’s happened’ began to pass along the street in a great disbelieving wave.

Eight minutes later, the air-raid siren clattered and all hell broke loose. Old Mrs Nicholson ran up and down the street in hysterics alternating the Lord’s Prayer with panicked declarations of their impending doom; Moira Seymour, who was the local ARP warden, got excited and started twirling the heavy rattle signalling a gas attack and people scattered in the hunt for their masks; and Inspector Whitely wove his bicycle through the mayhem wearing a cardboard placard over his body that read ‘Take Cover’.

Meredith had watched, wide-eyed, drinking in the mayhem, then stared up at the sky, waiting for the enemy planes, wondering how they’d look, how their appearance might make her feel, whether she was able to write fast enough to jot it all down as it was happening, when all of a sudden Mum had clutched her arm and dragged her and Rita down the street towards the trench shelter in the park. Meredith’s notebook had dropped in the rush and been trampled and she’d wrenched her arm free and stopped to pick it up, and Mum had shouted that there wasn’t time and her face had been white, almost angry-looking, and Meredith had known she’d get a tongue-lashing later, if not worse, but she’d had no choice. There’d been no question of leaving it behind. She’d run back, ducked beneath the crowd of frightened neighbours, seized her notebook – worse for wear, but still intact – and returned to her furious mother, face no longer white but red as Heinz tomato ketchup. By the time they got to the shelter and realized they’d forgotten their gas masks, the All Clear had sounded, Meredith had earned a smack across the legs, and Mum had resolved to evacuate them the next day.

‘Hey there, kiddo.’

Meredith opened moist eyes to see Mr Cavill standing in the aisle. Her cheeks warmed instantly and she smiled, cursing the image that came to mind of Rita leering at Luke Watson.

‘Mind if I take a look at your name tag?’

She wiped beneath her specs, and leaned closer so he could read the cardboard tag around her neck. There were people everywhere, laughing, crying, shouting, swirling round and round, but for a moment she and Mr Cavill were alone in the middle of it all. Meredith held her breath, conscious of the way her heart had started to hammer, watching his lips as he mouthed the words written there, her very own name, his smile when he’d verified they were all correct.

‘You’ve got your suitcase, I see. Did your mother make sure to include everything on the list? Is there anything you need?’

Meredith nodded; then shook her head. Blushed as words she would never,
ever
, dare to speak popped into mind:
I need you to wait for me, Mr Cavill. Wait for me to get a little older – fourteen maybe, fifteen – and then the two of us can get married
.

Mr Cavill marked something down on his paper form and capped his pen. ‘We might be on the train a while, Merry. Have you brought something to keep you busy?’

‘I brought my notebook.’

He laughed then, for he was the one who’d given it to her, a reward for doing so well in her exams. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That’s perfect. Make sure you write it all down, now. Everything you see and think and feel. Your voice is your own; it matters.’ And he gave her a chocolate bar and a wink, and she smiled broadly as he continued up the aisle, leaving her heart swelling as big as a melon in her chest.

The notebook was Meredith’s most treasured possession. The first proper journal she’d ever owned. She’d had it for twelve months now but she hadn’t written a single word inside, not even her name. How could she? Meredith loved the smart little book so well, the smooth leather cover and the perfect neat lines across each page, the ribbon stitched into the binding for use as a bookmark, that to spoil it with her own penmanship, her own dull sentences about her own dull life, seemed too great a sacrilege. She’d pulled it from hiding many times only to sit with it on her knee for a while, drawing great pleasure simply from owning such a thing, before tucking it away again.

Mr Cavill had tried to convince her that what she wrote about wasn’t nearly as important as the way she wrote it. ‘No two people will ever see or feel things in the same way, Merry. The challenge is to be truthful when you write. Don’t approximate. Don’t settle for the easiest combination of words. Go searching instead for those that explain
exactly
what you think. What you feel.’ And then he’d asked if she understood what he meant, and his dark eyes had been filled with such intensity, such earnest desire that she should see things as he did, and she’d nodded and just for a moment it was as if a door had opened up to a place that was very different from the one in which she lived . . .

Meredith sighed fervently and sneaked a sideways glance at Rita, who was combing her fingers through her ponytail, pretending not to notice that Billy Harris was making moon eyes at her from across the aisle. Good. The last thing she needed was for Rita to guess how she felt about Mr Cavill; thankfully, Rita was far too wrapped up in her own world of boys and lipstick to bother with anyone else’s. A fact Meredith counted on in order to write her daily journal. (Not the real journal, of course; in the end, she’d struck a compromise, collecting spare paper from wherever she could find it and keeping it folded within the front cover of the precious book. She wrote her reports on that, telling herself that one day, maybe, she’d broach the real thing.)

Meredith risked another peek at her dad then, ready to look away before she caught his eye, but as she skimmed the faces, searched for his familiar bulk, cursorily at first, then with rising panic in her throat, she discovered he wasn’t there. The faces had changed; mothers were still crying, some waved handkerchiefs, others smiled with grim determination, but there was no sign of him. Where he’d been standing was a gap that filled and shuffled as she watched, and as she searched the crowd she realized that he’d really gone. That she’d missed seeing him go.

And although she’d held it in all morning, although she’d schooled herself away from sadness, Meredith felt so sorry then, so small and frightened and alone, that she started to cry. A great rush of feeling rose from within her, warmly and wetly, and her cheeks were instantly drenched. The awful thought that he might have been standing there all that time, that he might have been watching her as she watched her shoes, spoke with Mr Cavill, thought about her notebook, and willing her to look up, to smile, to wave goodbye; that eventually he must have given up and gone home, believing that she didn’t care at all—