Patrick
BOLTON
I can’t get over it. Why has she let me into all this? It’s the last thing I’d expect from somebody like her, total trout face and iciest ice queen on the planet. There’s no doubt about it, Veronica McCreedy is not your everyday, common or garden grandmother. First disappearing off to Antarctica and then sending me her teenage journal. Why the hell would she do either of those things?
I can’t believe the withered old crone I know is the same person as this silly, pretty fourteen-year-old. Young Veronica was one hell of a snobby madam, for sure, but it looks like she had a big heart back then. She cared about animals at any rate, and she loved her parents. Seems like what she really needed was friends.
I don’t know what to make of it. All these feelings keep firing at me. Like the feeling that I shouldn’t be eavesdropping on this girl’s thoughts, even if the adult Veronica has OK’d it. And the feeling that I’m tuning in to her loneliness. And the feeling that I’ve been given some kind of rare opportunity . . . but I’m not sure what exactly.
There’s a letter tucked into the pages of the diary, written in spidery letters across old, browning paper. I pull it out.
Dearest Very,
We have such good news! You have probably already opened the package we’ve sent with this letter. Yes, it actually is what it says on the jar. Strawberry jam! I wish I could see your face now, Very! How long is it since you’ve tasted such sweetness? We knew you’d be pleased. Have it all to yourself or share it with your friends, whatever you want. It comes from my cousin in Australia. He sent it over when he heard about the sugar ration, a special treat for us all. He also sent a pot of black treacle. But I hope you don’t mind, I have kept that back for your mother. We are both well, but not getting as much sleep as we’d like. There is still antiaircraft fire through the night, but we take flasks into the Anderson shelter and tuck ourselves in with blankets. We play whist or ludo when it’s too noisy to sleep. We look after each other as well as we can. Mum is still loving her ambulance driving. She comes home with dreadful stories of people with missing limbs and blood spouting everywhere, then still manages to cook dinner. She’s discovered a recipe for glycerin cake. Not as bad as it sounds! I wanted to post you some, but she says it would be stale by the time it reached you. You know Mummy! Always practical!
ARP work is much the same. People take stupid risks sometimes but keep up their morale amazingly well when you consider everything that’s happening.
I hope you are keeping up your own morale, dear girl, and that the dance lessons are helping. Mum sends love and says she will write next time. We both hope that you are working hard and enjoying the almost-castle. We think of you every day, Very, and we look forward to hearing all your news. Do write soon.
Your ever-loving father
Fri, 4 Oct 1940
Dunwick Hall
Dad truly is the best dad in the whole world.
I’ve just ripped open the parcel and have the pot of jam in my hands. “Have it all to yourself or share it with your friends.” Typical of Dad to assume I now have friends. He can never grasp that I’m simply not popular. I’ll confess I’ve cried a little. I wish this stupid old war would end and I could go home.
I’ve just taken the lid off, stuck in a finger and scooped out a mound of sticky red paradise. I let it sit on my tongue, trying to make it last, resisting swallowing for as long as possible. The taste is exquisite. Strawberries and summer and pure joy.
But I mustn’t eat any more. I have a plan.
Sat, 12 Oct 1940
I was feeling light-headed as I jumped down from the milk float and ran to Aunt Margaret’s house this morning. Aunt M looked nonplussed when she answered the door. She didn’t even recognize the young lady in front of her. Then she suddenly did.
“What in the name of all that’s holy has happened to you?”
“I’m just keeping up with the others,” I said, brushing her cheek with a dutiful kiss.
My new haircut accentuates my high cheekbones and delicate jawline. My hair sweeps up from my brow in a great chestnut swathe and nestles behind my ears in short, glossy coils. Everyone says how much it suits me. It’s especially good when I complement it by staining my lips deep red. Lipstick isn’t available, of course, but beetroot juice is almost as good. They grow beetroots on Janet’s farm.
Yes: I have a friend. No: friends, plural! Janet, the broad-faced, upturned-nosed girl who sneered at me at the beginning, classifies as a friend now. So does her sidekick, Norah, the one with the freckles. I had to surrender most of my strawberry jam, but it was a small price to pay.
Janet says I make her laugh. She especially likes it when I play tricks on the teachers. Like when I put a blob of glue on Miss Philpott’s chair last Wednesday . . .
It was Janet and Norah who suggested the haircut. I somehow think they weren’t expecting me to come out of it quite so adult looking and alluring.
“What is the world coming to!” Aunt Margaret exclaimed on the doorstep. “I pray for you every night, Veronica, and look what you’ve gone and done to yourself!”
She believes that fashion and corruption go hand in hand; one is scarcely possible without the other. I tried to explain. “There’s nothing wrong with the way I look, Aunt Margaret. They were making fun of me before.”
They still do, actually, and they still think I’m a prig, but at least I fit in more than I did.
Before bed, Aunt Margaret made me go down on my knees in front of the wooden cross in the drawing room. She knelt beside me. She read a few prayers from her old black prayer book and finished, as always, with the Lord’s Prayer.
“‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.’ Think about those lines, Veronica. While your father and mother are working in London and our brave men are fighting in the fields, think about those lines. Think about them and stay away from bad influences.”
“Yes, Aunt Margaret,” I answered, good as gold. “Of course I will.”
Of course I will not.
Monday, 21 Oct
Hooray! I don’t have to go back to Aunt M’s every weekend anymore. Janet has invited me instead to her home, Eastcott Farm. It’s only three miles away. Norah already goes there every weekend. Like me, her home is some distance away, so she only goes back in the holidays.
First thing on Saturday morning the three of us were picked up by the farm cart at the park gates. I was so excited! The cart was pulled by a lovely dappled horse. Janet’s father and older brother are away, working in the air force, so the cart was driven by Janet’s other brother, Harry. He’s sixteen. He’s large and clomping, with the same wide face as Janet, but his nose is all right. His ears stick out too much and his skin is bad, but otherwise he’s quite nice to look at.
The route to Eastcott Farm winds through green pastures and hills dotted with sheep. The road eventually turns into a wide track with twisty hawthorns on either side. Harry was shouting at the horse and flicking the whip over its neck to make it trot faster.
“Don’t hurt it!” I shouted at him.
“I’m not. It don’t feel a thing,” he said. “C’mon, you lazy beast!” he added to the horse.
“Stop showing off, Harry,” Janet scolded. “We don’t need to get home any quicker. It’s lumpy and bumpy enough as it is!”
When we got off among a sprawl of farm buildings, Harry’s eyes were roving all over me. I stared right back at him.
Janet and Harry’s mother, Mrs. Dramwell, came out in her apron to greet us. She isn’t just broad in the face but broad everywhere else as well. Her hair is rather greasy, but she seems nice enough.
She invited us in and gave us mugs of hot milk but didn’t sit down herself. I know from Janet that things have been hard at the farm since her dad left. Two land girls stay there, and a prisoner of war is sent over daily from the camp just over the hill for the hard manual labor. Otherwise it’s just Mrs. Dramwell and Harry trying to keep the food production going. So we girls helped all we could. It was tiring but good fun. I’ve learned how to milk a cow! Dad and Mum won’t believe it when I tell them. I fell about laughing at those udders to start with (they were so huge and floppy), and I couldn’t believe I had to squeeze them to get milk out. But after Janet showed me how, I managed to do it.
Later she took us to see the pigs. I’d never seen an actual pig before. They were sweet but very, very dirty, all grubbing about in smelly muck. One piglet had fallen into a kind of rut thing and couldn’t get out. It was really upset.
“Poor little thing!” I cried.
“Why don’t you go in and get it out?” Janet said, amused that I cared so much.
I hopped over the fence.
“You can’t do that!” screeched Norah.
“Watch me!” I said. I worked my way through the sea of pig muck and hauled the little creature out of the rut. He squealed and wriggled. I gave him a big kiss on the snout and set him loose. How we all laughed!
I was in such a mess afterward. My shoes, my socks and the hem of my skirt were all encrusted with stinky mud. I had to scrub them and leave them to dry by the stove and borrow some clothes of Janet’s in the meantime. The piglet was happy, though.
Monday, 28 Oct 1940
I’ve just returned from my second weekend at Eastcott Farm. Janet’s brother, Harry, fetched us and took us back in the cart again.
“So, what do you like to do with yourself, Veronica?” he asked when I got down at the farm. He said my name with a slight sneer, but then Janet and Norah do that, too. It seems they can’t help it.
I told him I like drawing and science, but my chief love is animals. This didn’t seem to be the right answer. So I asked in turn what he likes doing.
“Well, when there’s time off from the farm I make models of airplanes,” he answered. “Just out of bits of old junk I find around.”
“He’s obsessed with them,” Janet told us.
“They’re all very good, very clever,” Norah added, keen that I should register she was here first. “Will you show us them again, Harry?”
Harry led us to a small back room that smelled of wood and glue.
“That one is a Wellington. It took me ages. This is the one I’m working on at the moment.” He picked up a model gingerly. “It’s a Spitfire. You can hold it if you like.”
I took it and held it up to the light. It was carefully cut out from old tin cans, matchsticks and nails bent to shape. I could appreciate the ingenuity, but it’s not really my sort of thing. I prefer pigs. I saw, however, that it was important to him, so I pretended to be interested. Janet pretended to yawn. Norah was pretending the hardest. She was pretending to be absolutely fascinated. I passed her the precious object. Norah looked as if she’d been given the crown jewels.
“Marvelous, really marvelous!” she repeated again and again. I’m laughing my head off right now, just remembering it.
Tuesday, 29 Oct
I can’t believe I was happy only yesterday. I’m so stupid, so clueless.
I’ll never be happy again.
I’d give anything to be back there, stuck in yesterday forever.
How can I face anything? How can I go on? This happens to other people. Not to me.
God, oh God.