THE KITCHEN IS DARK. I PUSH THE BLACKOUT CURTAIN aside to let moonlight into the kitchen and a shadow walks up the garden path, hops onto the wall, pauses and licks paws before easing through Miss Baxter’s open window. I turn to the table and slice a thick wodge of dense brown bread, then a precious onion, too. There are still drippings in the pan from yesterday, so I scrape them out with the knife and slather them on the bread like glue for the onions. My stomach makes appalling noises. No end of indignities when blessed with child. But the sandwich tastes good and I eat it slowly, the onion sharp, sweet and crisp. We used to eat onion sandwiches with cheese, me and Stanley together out in the dunes before the war. We even believed the water was warm in those days, took off shoes and socks and waded up to our knees in the blue, blue water. Now the sea looks different with winter. A November sea is corpse-cold, hungry and grey as old pans.
There are never enough eggs in November. Not enough light so the chickens give up, and that means no cake. When my mother came to visit last week, she seemed surprised by this.
‘But you’ve all the farms out here,’ she said. ‘And all the garden space, too. Surely there must be many families in the village with a decent supply of eggs. Haven’t you been making friends?’
She wants me to come home and go back to being happy. I am not sure what she means. I told her about Muriel and her mother, about Rosie and the scraps and the sausages that followed, then about Connie and the minister.
‘Well, I am glad,’ she said. ‘It is good to have friends on hand. You’ll be needing them soon, won’t you? Are you getting your energy back, my dear?’
‘I’m managing.’
She smiled, because she understood. There were enough of us at home.
‘Of course. You’ll manage just fine. It does take time to learn, but I know that you will manage beautifully.’
Beautifully is hardly the word but she’s right. I am trying. Halfway through already and trying. And hungry. I can’t stop myself thinking about food. So much of my brain is occupied with food chatter. Egg and cake and onions. Mum brought me a gift from home: my granny’s cookbook – Everybody’s Pudding Book, by Mrs Georgiana Hill. The recipes are arranged seasonally, starting with January. Another eggless month.
‘The shelves of all good housekeepers should still be stored with a fair share of preserves of different descriptions, which, with the numerous farinaceous substances such as sago, tapioca, rice and others that are always readily obtained, our resources of festivity will be found to be most ample.’
Ha. To give her credit, she does note that it is also not the best time of year for milk, cream, or butter and, with that in mind, she gives the recipe for simple currant fritters without eggs. Half a pint of mild Scotch ale, flour, and currants, fried in a pan of boiling lard, then sugared and served with lemon juice. A thoughtful touch.
But not on the ration. Today, I resorted to the newspaper’s recipe suggestions which feature an ‘elegant eggless ginger cake’ recipe. I thought it would look nice on the blue cake-stand. Cheerful. But it was false and boring, even with the suggested mock cream on top, gritty goop that it was. Bland, false and boring and sweetened with flavoured gelatine. I wished Rosie was still in the land of the living because then I could donate the failed cake to her and that would mean more sausages for me.
I’ve been spending time copying out recipes onto careful cards, looking forward to the impossible tomorrow when they will mean something again.
Tonight, tea was only tea, but at least I slept afterwards.
I suppose that is one good thing about living alone. Stanley would be horrified to see what I’m eating. As would my mother, I was jolly well sure, if she looked past my brave face and tea-party sandwiches. But hell’s bells, if I am to stiff it out here alone in the wind, I might as well eat what I like, that’s for damned certain.
I need to sleep better. The aeroplanes are loud at night and it’s making me rather Anglo-Saxon, I’m afraid. My language is usually cleaner than this. I wonder if the baby knows. Can she hear me? I mean, all the unspoken bits. Thought vibrations, maybe? The energy of vulgarity passing through the womb walls?
Yesterday, she moved. So early and I thought I must be imagining it. How can she be big enough yet to feel? I’m too skinny, that’s what it is. Not enough meat on these wartime bones to give a bairn a cushion. But it was wonderful. Just a little flutter somewhere behind my navel. I was sitting by the window, trying to get into a rhythm with my knitting. I can manage, but the stitches all need to be so deliberate. I’ve none of Connie’s momentum, her clickity-clackity stitch-after-stitch-after-stitch. I need to think it through. So I sat there thinking, working the grey wool in my fingers, not too loosely, not too tight, wondering if Stanley was warm enough at night in the cottage. What a mothering thought, that, and then there they were. Bubbles in a glass of champagne.
When the war is over and Stanley is safely home to stay, we’ll drink champagne. Nothing but, and bucketfuls. It feels close to the end now, but the end of my tether or the end of the world, I can’t know. When the world does end, I want to be out in the dunes. Drinking champagne, yes, and with Stanley, of course. I want those ugly concrete blocks all swept away, the wind empty and strong around us, and the grasses to grow wild again. We’ll spread out a blanket on the sandy ground and there will be larks and rabbits and geese, too, out on the sandbar or flying over the waves in their family skeins and because it’s the end, there will be no more shadows, no planes overhead, no warships on the Forth. All that will be swept away and we’ll have time to be together just as we are, unafraid after all and love and love and love until the day is over. That’s how the end will be.
I’m not sure the minister or Connie would approve. These aren’t quite godly thoughts. I’m finding church hard now. The pews are uncomfortable and so is the lack of men. Old men come, but there are far too many women and and they stare at me. I’m sure they do. It’s far too early for them to tell, but I feel their eyes anyway. They know. Maybe they can see it in the way I walk or in how tired I know I look. Or if they don’t and I’m making it up, they’ll figure it out soon enough, anyway. A baby bump out of season. What will they be imagining? How on earth can I keep Stanley safe? Only one way, really, and though hard, it’s sure to work because Stanley grew up here and he’s their golden boy. And me? The suspect floozy. I won’t mind. I’ll carry that. And everything else I must keep hidden.
Miss Baxter is awake through the wall. I heard her close her window after the cat, and then the springs on her chair eased down again. I still haven’t gone round to see her, not properly. Only spoken with her during the raids, and when we’ve come up from the shops at the same time. She must be my mother’s age, but thinner. I’ll go round in the morning. I wonder if she’d like the eggless cake.
* * *
There was a suggestion in the newspaper about adding a grated carrot to a cake for moistness, and it’s not a bad idea, really. I think I’ll add it to the Christmas cake I’ve promised the Grants. I’ve been setting aside sugar for weeks now and Muriel says she will contribute an egg to the cause. She pops in to see me, gangly, awkward with her hair cropped shorter and uneven. She looks unhappy. She tells me her mother is planning a rabbit with bacon for Christmas Day.
‘Your pig is keeping us all fed these days,’ I say. ‘Makes the best dripping I’ve ever had.’
‘The butcher thought she was a bit too fat. He said we should have had her earlier. Mum said we’re all needing all the fat we can get these days.’
‘Me too,’ I say, but she doesn’t laugh. She fumbles a question about when Stanley’s coming home on leave. I tell her I don’t know. We find other things to talk about.
Muriel says that she’s candied some rosehips and offers some for the Christmas cake. I tell her I’ve dried some apples by the fire and have some sultanas saved, so that should do for dried fruit. I draw the line at turnip. I’m no good at this wartime housewife game.
Muriel refills our teacups and the second cup is stronger. The kitchen feels warm with two of us sitting there. I push up my sleeves and ask about her garden, her parents and then, after a while, I ask about Izaak. She fixes her gaze on the stained doily. When she does speak, it is slowly.
‘Well, I wouldn’t know how he’s doing, would I?’ The spaces between the words are precise and sharp. ‘Isn’t it you who keeps track of Izaak these days? You have some nerve sitting there, asking after him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘As if … as if you really believed I didn’t know about the notes you two sent back and forth. As if I didn’t suspect you’d been meeting. You could have told me. Should have.’ Muriel’s face is flushed and unhappy and I can’t help but straighten in my chair, though she isn’t being fair and she’s raising her voice now. ‘You’re married! You have some nerve.’
‘Muriel.’
‘No. Don’t. Please. I don’t want to hear anything else. It’s not worth fighting about.’
She doesn’t stay. At the door, I try to hug her but she is nothing but shoulders and elbows and my breasts feel sore when I try to reach around her. She shrugs me off and pulls her collar up against the rain. On the walk outside, she pauses for a moment and looks at me with a crumpled, angry face and it looks like she’s going to say something else, only she just jams her hat on over her ears and scuttles away down the deaf and empty street.
This won’t get any easier when my bump starts to show.
Half an hour passes and I hear the door again. I want to ignore it, but can’t. I’ll need to tell her something. Maybe everything. Can’t, I think. Can’t, can’t, can’t as I walk down the hallway, then the key turns slowly in my hand, the rain on the street, the sound of a cat.
‘Miss Baxter,’ I say. ‘Come in, please, come in.’
She stands on the threshold, her head tilted, her face soft. The cat in her arms dark, sleek and patient and the sleeves of her jumper catch the raindrops. ‘I wondered if you might need company on such a wet day.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That would be lovely. I have been meaning to knock on your door. I just …’
‘Well, now there is no need. Here I am.’ She wipes her feet on the mat and follows me through to the kitchen. I test the kettle to see if it needs more water, but she stops me. ‘No need for that, either,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you used plenty of tea when your friend was here.’ She sits down in the seat where I had been sitting, sighing a little as she eases herself into the chair. Her hair twists into coils over her ears, the moisture creating a soft halo around her small head.
‘Is it all right if I let Basil down? He likes to explore new places, but he won’t cause mischief. He’s very good.’
‘Of course. Make yourself at home,’ I say.
‘I call him Basil, you see, because when he was small he liked to sleep in a plant pot, so the name suited. Silly really, but there you are. He’s my company.’
I watch the cat walk the perimeter of the room on careful feet as if the tiles are untrustworthy, though I imagine it’s just the same tiles on the other side of the wall. He sniffs the small mat by the back door, the bristles of the broom propped up in the corner.
‘My sister thinks I’m daft to keep him. Recommends giving him sleep instead. Isn’t that a grisly way to put it? Sleep. But so many have done precisely that. My sister read about it in the London paper, and told me it would be a kindness. I could never. It’s not right. Not out here in the country. He’d never go hungry here, which is what they fear in the cities, I suppose. You can’t get rations for pets. Here, there’s no need and he copes fine with whatever mice and birds he finds.’
The cat weaves himself around me, the soft pressure of touch on my legs and I have to turn away, blinking. Miss Baxter reaches out and lays a gentle hand on mine. ‘There now, my dear. There now.’ Her voice is so gentle.
It doesn’t matter, does it? That I am not alone, that Muriel isn’t fair, doesn’t understand. It doesn’t matter that Stanley is gone and I can’t I can’t I can’t talk about it or tell anyone or he won’t be safe and I don’t know if he is safe at all these days or if I will ever find him again or
‘There now. You make as much noise as you need to. What a lonely stretch of coast out here. We must all be mad to live like this.’
‘I … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t …’
‘Shouldn’t say shouldn’t. Tears come. Let them.’
So I do. I let the room fill with tears, the table a raft that rises as a black line of weather covers half the sky and horror hovers like barrage balloons. Miss Baxter is a quiet hill and anchors the room as I rage.
‘And I’ve … I’ve … promised to spend Christmas with them. I can’t. I just can’t. Not knowing what she thinks.’
‘No? Mistakes shouldn’t matter so much. Maybe I should come along, too. Do you think you might ask Muriel’s mother if there would be room at the table for another poor lonely woman who can’t travel this terrible Christmas? If you would like the company.’
‘Would you? You’d come with me?’
‘Of course. Would it help if I mentioned that your husband had been home? What was it, four months ago that he helped me with my blackout curtains? Five? Such a nice young man. Handsome, too. Shame it was such a quick visit before he was reposted. Is that the word? I could tell all sorts of people about that. Or would that be the wrong information to spread? Which might smooth the way for you, my dear? You think about it.’ She sets a cup of water in front of me and I find I am thirsty.
‘You are so kind.’
‘It will be all right,’ she says. ‘Things settle. In a small place, they get stirred up easily enough, especially in difficult days. But they will settle. By the time your bonny baby is here, you’ll have dozens of offers of kindness again. I am sure of it. But then you might choose to move, too. A change might be good for you. And the baby.’
‘You mean somewhere away from the talk.’
‘Perhaps. It might be good to have some space around you. That would be nice. Oh, God bless you, child. You will find it, if that’s what you want. Or it will find you. Things turn up.’
‘And Muriel?’
‘She won’t ossify. There is too much life in her for that. She’ll soften again, I’m sure. You won’t lose her.’
A few days later, the wind is high and Miss Baxter knocks on my door again, asking for help with a rattling window pane.
‘It keeps me awake in the night and I worry it bothers the cat, too. Just a little noise most nights, but on days like this, it can be loud. A silly thing to bother you about with all the other noises in the night, but I thought perhaps you might have an answer?’
I find a scrap of cotton and tear off a small piece. Outside, the trees beside the kirkyard point their fingers to a pale sky, storm-broken and grey, and I think of Tennyson’s yew, which changest not in any gale – that was it, wasn’t it? And something about yews smoking with pollen when touched by wind. These rags of poems are the words in my head as I work the cloth between the frame and the glass with a blade and Miss Baxter sits on the edge of the bed, her cat curled beside her.
‘My mother once told me that men like the wind,’ she says. ‘Men like the wind, but women don’t. Do you think she’s right? I love the wind myself.’
‘Me too.’
‘It’s lively and so … so moving. It makes the world a lovely thing to watch.’
The snow comes in December. In the middle of the month, someone puts a shortened Christmas tree in the Anderson shelter and wreathes it with paper streamers. The week before Christmas, the tea and sugar ration is increased and I think about going home to Edinburgh after all, but there is a notice in the paper about a travel advisory – fuel conservation for the war effort. Well, Mum will understand that one, at least.
I am hungrier now, even with my maternity rations. I drink water to keep full and promise myself to forage the hedgerows come summer for more provisions. That and plant more onions, if I can find the sets.
There are no church bells this Christmas. Not here in East Lothian nor in Edinburgh, nor any city up and down the country. Since the summer, a ban has been instituted so that the bells might be reserved to signal a German invasion. And so it stands, even at Christmas. The silent bells hold both fear and joy, and I wonder how we’ll hear them when they do ring out again.
Mr Grant comes home from London with plans to stay for the rest of the winter. Mrs Grant slipped on the ice and has done something nasty to her back, so he’s concerned. I hear this from Miss Baxter who heard it at the kirk.
On Christmas Day, we go together to the Grants, Miss Baxter and I. The morning has been crackling cold and frost has iced every blade of grass, every yew needle and the stones of the kirk tower, too. Now the wind has sharpened and the walk to the house is cold. Beyond the trees, we hear the wild geese in farmed fields, gabbling among the precious winter wheat.
‘Are you feeling ready?’ Miss Baxter asks.
‘For dinner? Or for conversation?’ My coat feels tight and my fingers are cold in my pockets, but she smiles softly at me and takes my arm.
‘Christmas itself, I suppose. That’s all I meant, my dear. Christmas has a way of coming even when all else is strange and cold. But goodness, the wind is dancing today. Just look at the white out on the water.’
She offers to carry my bag full of packages and I let her and listen as she tells me about her breakfast of hot porridge and a celebratory fourth cup of tea.
* * *
Along with the rabbit, Muriel’s mother prepares baked celery with a cheesy crust, a recipe her mother used during the Great War. ‘Served elegantly as its own course, too. Just like the French. My mum liked fine manners.’
‘There won’t be much French about this feast,’ Mr Grant says. ‘The occupation’s done us out of all possibility of good postprandial brandy. Think we can muster some whisky?’ He winks at Muriel and she laughs.
She is warmer than I expected. Friendly enough, as if I were the neighbour’s visiting relative to be cordially entertained. She says nothing about my condition and I wonder if she’s noticed. But all her talk is about the land girls and the work ahead. Come February, she says, she will be down in Drem bunking at a farmhouse there with two other girls. She’s looking forward to it. Her father says he’ll miss her and she kisses the top of his head. His thin hair, her close, soft cheek. I can’t picture the top of my father’s head.
‘I’m not gone forever, you know, old man,’ Muriel says. ‘Not even getting married. Just off to work.’
‘I know, I know. But I worry. And now, with your mother’s back, too.’
‘Och, you. I’ll be fit in no time. All this food is sure to strengthen my resolve.’
‘Ah, but.’ He stops and says no more, his hand reaching across the table to take hers.
‘Will you be getting another pig?’ I ask.
‘Well, now, we haven’t quite decided. We’ll need to evaluate what to take on without Muriel.’
‘Jane can lend a hand,’ Muriel says. ‘Easy as spit. Rosie practically raised herself with all the rummaging she managed under the orchard trees. All that is required is simple maintenance, really.’
‘I’m happy to help. Of course I am.’
‘That could be one answer, then,’ says Mrs Grant. ‘You’re such a helpful lass. I’m sure we’ll all manage together, won’t we?’ She smiles at me and fills our teacups, and we listen to the BBC broadcast from Coventry Cathedral. Amidst the ruins, the provost preaches restoration, pledging that after the war, he will work with those who have been enemies to build a kinder, more Christ-childlike world. I try to catch Muriel’s eye. She holds her teacup carefully.
Towards the end of the meal, I begin to feel dizzy and have to excuse myself from the table. I step into the pantry and lay my hands flat against the cool marble shelf. Mrs Grant follows me and stands close.
‘You all right, my dear? Too hot in the other room?’
‘Yes. I’m … I’ll be fine.’
‘Would you like to lie down? Might be better for your head. You’ll be finding it harder to lean over to stop the dizziness these days, I imagine. It was like that with Muriel. Such a head I had! My mother was always telling me to stand up straight to make it better and to give the baby space, but I only ever wanted to set my head down on any table I could find, close my eyes and wait for the months to pass. But they will, you know. They will.’
She lays a gentle hand between my shoulder blades and her voice is quiet and reassuring. ‘Waiting is always difficult, my dear, but difficult days do pass.’
Later, she sends me home with a thick slab of cake and leftovers to feed an army. Miss Baxter is given a jar of marmalade and a bit of cheese for Basil and she thanks the Grants for their kindness. Mrs Grant stands at the door with her arms around Muriel and they both wear brave smiles as they say goodbye and Happy Christmas and joy of the season and goodwill to all and peace, peace, peace in the days ahead.
Hogmanay comes and goes and I ignore it. Most do. The minister opens the kirk for prayer on New Year’s Day, and I watch cold figures pass my door on their way over the road, but I stay at home. I write to Stanley, as I do every week, and hear nothing.
I grow fat. The winter grows still colder. There’s talk in the shops of farmers finding their sheep shorn and shivering and the foreign airmen are suspected of stealing the wool to stuff their palliasses. The butcher made a weak joke about Polish mattresses and local pale lasses and I pretended I hadn’t heard. In the newspaper, there are reports of considerable telephonic disruption due to wet and freezing snow clinging to overhead telephone lines. They can’t tell us where the bombs are falling, but they can conjure up all these careful images of weather. I imagine strange white snow birds like pale-feathered rooks, their frozen feet snapping the wires and all the broken words of our local conversations tumbling out like frozen eggs to shatter on the cold ground.
Miss Baxter and I share tea most evenings now. She leaves Basil at home or out in the garden. Sometimes she watches him through the window, though mostly we sit together at the table, warming our hands around our cups. There’s been talk on the radio about parachutists on the south coast, and even sightings up here. You’d think that all the airfields would quell fears, but everyone is keeping alert and aware.
‘Ah yes, it’s parachutists this time, is it? There’s always something to watch for.’ Miss Baxter pulls at the cuffs of her cardigan, looking for a handkerchief. ‘And parachutists are a frightening enough prospect, but what about the clouds behind them? Is anyone talking about that, I wonder? What about the fear and the doubt that are crowding in? And all the suspicion, hunger and hate? And loneliness, too, and greed and decay. What about everything else that comes with war? We’re all too distracted looking out for parachutists to watch for any of that, aren’t we? We don’t notice the heavy dark clouds blowing in over Europe. And then it is too late.’
‘Stanley would like that,’ I say. ‘I think he’d say you understand.’
‘Maybe I do, a little. My brother was a conchie in the last war.’
A pause and she doesn’t ask about Stanley.
After a little while, she tells me about the men her brother met at his meetings. All kinds, she said. Some clever and privileged, coming from the right schools. But there were others, too, who were just regular boys like Mack.
‘Such courage, the lot of them. No one really recognized it. Because it takes courage to walk away. They had strong ideas about life and God and wouldn’t let anyone bully them into killing. Well, in the end, Mack was lucky and he was assigned non-military work. Of National Importance, they called it. But we had some hard times because of him.’
I ask if the family understood his conviction.
‘No, not at all. There was nothing irregular about us. Regular Sunday school kids, and my father kept a bible on his bedside table all his life. But my brother picked up some new ideas. Met some older boys and said he’d learned to read the scriptures differently. Still, it wasn’t anything shocking. Perhaps a little more serious, that’s all. It was only when the war came that it made a difference. That war changed many things.’
She doesn’t say more then, just watches the cat flicking his tail back and forth, and the sparrows flit from the wall to the paving stones, then back to the wall.
Late in January, I’m feeling heavy and catch a bus along to the shops in Gullane. The weather is bleak again. Bleak and dreich, flat-skied and grey. When I say as much to the butcher, he says not to worry a jot as the days of Bride would be coming soon. My cheeks warm and redden. I know he’s only referring to the story of St Bride and the first days of February when the weather tends to warm, but it feels like a personal dig.
The butcher asks after Stanley and I say I haven’t heard yet this week. As if he writes weekly. I wish he would.
‘He went last in May, didn’t he?’ The butcher looks down as he asks the question, but I don’t.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He went south with the others at the end of the month.’
Thick fingers wrap up my sliver of beef, then add a slice of fat on top. ‘That’s for the wee one. You’ll be wanting more meat, the both of you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Nothing said, nothing minded.’
‘Of course not.’
I’ll mince the fat and mix it with tomato paste and breadcrumbs to fry up as faux sausages. Another idea from the newspaper, though the ladies around here all say fox.