Love to Everyone Page 13

  Dear Rupert,

  Lucy is very well and has four sheep in with her for company. She does no work, but is only on grass so should be all right. I caught her on Saturday, brushed her down, and washed her face. She curled up her lip and jumped about a bit. She lost two shoes so we took off the others because she doesn’t need them in the field. Clarry had Peter’s old bike out when I got to her house. It had a low crossbar because of his stiff leg so when we got the chain on and the puncture fixed she could ride it quite well. Next time I go I’ll get there early enough to take her up to see Lucy. The roads are quiet that way and I’ll make sure she’s safe. I took six eggs in my knapsack. Her father said, “Good man,” when he saw them, and said I was welcome to stay the night. He asked about my dad, who was taken prisoner, and I told them we had had a card but only a few words: “All well around here in how-do-you-spell-it?” When Clarry heard she jumped and said, “Oh, that’s where he is!”

  I’d better not write the name, but very good to know and I didn’t stay the night but went straight back to tell Mum and my aunt. I thought Clarry was very quick and clever to understand, but she said it was your grandfather’s old riddle.

  I wish you all the best,

  Simon Bonnington (Bonners)

  “ ‘All well around here in how-do-you-spell-it?’ ” Clarry had repeated. “Oh! He’s in Constantinople! Or near Constantinople. ‘Around here,’ I suppose that means ‘somewhere near.’ Turkey! Goodness!”

  Simon had stared at her, astounded.

  “It’s Grandfather’s joke! His riddle! He used to ask us every summer. ‘Constantinople is a very long word, how do you spell it?’ And then we’d try and try and get muddled and he would say, ‘I-t. It!’ ”

  “Constantinople,” repeated Simon, shaking his head.

  “I saw it on a map last week! It’s not terribly far from Troy! Odysseus found his way home from there, Simon! Through the Greek islands.”

  “Dad’s sailed all round the Greek islands,” said Simon, brightening wonderfully. “He used to tell us about it when we were little. They would often see dolphins. I’m going straight back to let my mum know where he is. Thanks, Clarry! Thank you!”

  “It wasn’t me, it was Grandfather!”

  “It was you,” said Simon, smiling down at her.

  It had been wonderful news for Simon to take back to his family. His mother had put down the globe and hauled out an atlas, and found herself in familiar lands, the Aegean Sea that she and her husband had sailed years before. “First Odysseus, now your father,” she had said. “Now I know he’ll come safe home.”

  I wish I knew Rupert would come safe home, thought Simon. He read over his letter. Was it boring? Would Rupert remember his grandfather’s old riddle and understand? Would he care? Simon stared into the dark beyond the window, and in his mind he wrote the letter that he would like to send.

  Stay safe. There is no border nor battlefield, no empire worth your hurt. I remember your hand on my shoulder those times we sang at school. I looked at the sea yesterday, and I felt I could step over it. It didn’t look big, it looked small.

  Only a few weeks now, and school would be finished for ever. Good.

  Twenty-Five

  FOR RUPERT, THE FIRST TIME back in England had been terrible. A huge mistake to go to Cornwall; the questions from his grandparents had been impossible. He’d been so terrified he’d snap and answer them truthfully that he’d fled after one hideous day. However, he quickly found that everywhere he went afterward was pretty much the same. The pale, ridiculous English, secondhand heroes, proud of their silly ideals, proud of him too, patting him on the back. Once he had bellowed, “Don’t touch me!” and they’d leaped like they’d been shot.

  Not that shot people leaped.

  More crumpled. Or blurted out prayers and wanted their mothers. Or just plain fell apart.

  Vanessa and her friends had been the best. They’d made very good jokes. He hadn’t known girls could be so callous. If he came back again he’d stick entirely to girls, but he didn’t think he’d come home anymore. He preferred France. (Or Belgium. He couldn’t tell the difference.) He spent his odd days of leave in the towns and villages away from the front; he’d lost the banjo long before but he’d got hold of a motorbike again.

  Some people wrote diaries, or sketched, filling book after book. Some wrote poetry. Some had got up a newspaper. “Why?” he’d asked, truly baffled at all this papery toil, and they’d tried to explain that they thought this war needed recording, so people at home knew the truth.

  Rupert didn’t think this was right. Not the truth about the bad things, anyway. Not about the gas, for instance, or the way he’d seen people treated when they wouldn’t stop crying. He didn’t think people at home would want to read stuff like that. He wouldn’t. He’d rather never know it. As it was, he blanked it out.

  Rupert could blank things out almost as if they had never been, a trick he’d learned at boarding school. You faked it till it was true. Now in France (or it might have been Belgium) he’d managed his greatest blanking of all. He’d unacknowledged the war. He’d found a way to ignore it, and in achieving this he knew that he’d become safe.

  Blissfully safe.

  Disaster proof.

  Nothing could hurt Rupert. Explosions rocked the ground around him and left him standing unruffled. Bullets veered away from his head. All the minor problems that beset the others—sickness, bad feet, trembling hands, lice, sleeplessness, panic, bewilderment, grief—all those things did not touch him. He never saw ghosts, he rarely saw rats, he was not bullied, he hated no one. He cheerfully accepted boredom, deep mud, irrational orders, and strange-tasting tea. He enjoyed cheap red wine, silver flare light, the heat from a mug, the smell of wool blankets, woodsmoke, rum, and comradeship. He liked these things in a detached kind of way, as if he were hardly there. He rarely read letters from home, and gave away his parcels unopened. He had completely forgotten how he had worried about Lucy the pony, and Mina the cat. He’d stopped counting back to the time he was at school. He never deliberately thought of anyone in England, although once or twice, very rarely, a memory would catch him like a kick in the stomach. Not often, though. He couldn’t imagine the war ever ending, and he didn’t know what he’d do if it did.

  It was not something he thought about much.

  He was more or less content.

  Twenty-Six

  EVERY NOW AND THEN, IN the staff room of Clarry’s school, someone would ask, “How’s our DH getting on?”

  “DH” stood for “Dark Horse.”

  The Dark Horse was Clarry.

  From the very beginning of her days at the high school, Clarry had been watched, at first with amusement, and later with interest. Mysteriously, her family history had become known. Opinions were shared about her brother and her father. Even the Miss Pinkses were given a passing (uncomplimentary) thought.

  These days Clarry was being watched extra carefully. Cool, critical, intelligent eyes glanced at her, and glanced again. They thought she was rather a promising Dark Horse.

  “Excellent stamina!” said someone. “Never gives up.”

  “Heard her explaining some chemistry to a couple of youngsters in the library. Very clear. No wasted words.”

  “Shy?” asked someone.

  “Quiet, not shy. Thank goodness. A dreadful handicap, shyness.”

  “Do we fancy her chances?” asked a new mistress.

  “Best in the stable!” said Miss Fairfax, Clarry’s form teacher. “By a country mile!”

  Not long after this, extra training started. “Read this! You must read around your subject!” “Here is an interesting article. I should like you to sum it up in two hundred words. No, one hundred and fifty! Less if you can manage it. I want all the relevant points, mind, and you can bring it to me at registration tomorrow!”

  “Tomorrow?” asked Clarry, startled.

  “You must learn not to be fazed by a deadline!”

  In math s
he was constantly stretched. “The demonstration of that proof for us now, please, Clarry! Up at the front! Never turn your back on your audience! You must practice using a blackboard, it’s a skill. That’s quite nice. Could they hear you at the back?”

  “Could you hear me at the back?” asked Clarry, and when someone shook her head the math mistress said, “In that case, Clarry will show you once more!” and Clarry had to do it again, louder and clearer, juggling the difficult skills of blackboard writing, algebra, and noticing the people at the back of the class.

  “Quite nice, thank you, you may sit down now,” she was told at last, and immediately scolded, “Don’t flump!”

  For month after month it continued, “This essay really won’t do, whatever is happening at home!”

  “You must always quote your references! Always, without exception!”

  “This piece of work is a fail. I asked for five hundred words, and you gave me six. I have simply ignored the last hundred which has left you with no conclusion!”

  However, it wasn’t always so negative.

  “Clarry, on Saturday afternoon I’m taking you to a lecture that I think you’ll find interesting.”

  “I should like to show you my old college very soon. And the town. I wish I could show you it as it was before this BLASTED war, but it will end, it will end, it will end. The university has been there for more than eight hundred years! Have you visited Oxford before?”

  “No, but my brother has, often,” said Clarry eagerly. “His school is nearby. If he gets a scholarship he’ll go after the summer.”

  “And is your father happy about that?”

  “Oh yes. He went. So did Grandfather.”

  “Always the boys,” said Miss Fairfax with irritation. “However, it’s the girls’ colleges keeping things alive at the moment. So your brother won’t be enlisting?”

  “He broke his leg, years ago. It mended, but it doesn’t bend very well. It’s shorter than the other one too. He hates not being able to enlist.”

  “There are more productive things your brother could do than fight,” said Miss Fairfax acidly, for she did not believe in war. “I hope something will occur to him before much longer.”

  “I think it already has. He borrowed a bicycle and went into Oxford. He bumped into a man there. . . .”

  “Bumped into?”

  “Yes, with his bike. And when he got off to see if he was all right, the man noticed his hoppy walk and they talked, and it gave Peter an idea.”

  “Well, Oxford is full of ideas, good and bad,” said Miss Fairfax. “Was it any particular man that he bumped into?”

  “He was a professor. Quite old.”

  “They all are. Which one?”

  “Osler. Sir William. I think Peter said he was American.”

  Clarry’s teacher, Miss Fairfax, looked at Clarry through narrowed, considering eyes, and said, “He’s Canadian, and that was a very fortunate bump. Will you come with me to Oxford, Clarry, and see who you bump into there? You look worried!”

  “I’d love to,” said Clarry, “but . . .”

  “Do make an effort, Clarry!”

  “Of course I’d love to come. Thank you, Miss Fairfax.”

  “Whatever is the matter, then?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Clarry, which was not true. What was the matter was clothes.

  In her room that evening, Clarry went through her wardrobe. Her school skirt that had come from Vanessa. Her three school blouses, two of them also from Vanessa. Miss Vane’s blue striped dress that was, as had been predicted, going on forever. No, no, no, thought Clarry, remembering how Peter had burst out laughing the first time she put it on.

  What, then? She had a green velvet Sunday dress, bought by her grandmother two years before, no longer as green nor as velvety as it once had been, and very much shorter too. Two cotton summer frocks with flapping collars. Nothing at all suitable for either a visit to an Oxford college or (even harder to imagine) the speech day that was coming up at Peter’s school quite soon.

  “You needn’t worry,” said Peter, when Clarry asked about this event. “I’ve given up expecting Father to bring you along to clap. Don’t look like that! I don’t care!”

  “I do, though,” said Clarry, and the first chance she got she stopped her father in the hall to ask, “Please could we go to Peter’s speech day this year, Father?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he replied blandly. “What would be the point?”

  “It’s the last one ever and Peter should have someone there.”

  “Let’s not sentimentalize things, Clarry.”

  “He’s worked so hard. Aren’t you proud of him?”

  “Naturally I’m glad he’s worked, and I’m sure he’s done very well.”

  “He said you wouldn’t bother,” said Clarry rebelliously.

  “It isn’t a matter of bothering. It simply isn’t practical.”

  “Well, I’m going!” said Clarry.

  “I’m very glad to hear it,” said her father, smiling his empty smile. “This should cover the train fare,” he added, taking a ten-shilling note from his wallet. “And let’s have no more fuss!”

  Ten shillings, Clarry discovered, could hardly have been more accurate. It would pay for the train fare and leave four pennies to spare. Four pennies would not buy so much as a pair of stockings, never mind a new dress. . . .

  Mr. King refused to buy her silver watch but asked, “What about that bicycle?”

  “No!” exclaimed Clarry. “Never!”

  “You managed without it before.”

  “I couldn’t again.”

  Clarry’s world had opened up since Simon had got her riding. She kept the bike in Jester’s stable, away from critical eyes at home, and it had given her a new freedom. Now on weekends she could get out to the cottage to visit Lucy, and Vanessa too, if she was there. On weekday mornings she walked the ten minutes to the stable, strapped her books on the carrier, and was at school in a fraction of the time it had taken in the past.

  “Anyway, it’s my brother’s bike,” she told Mr. King. “Not mine, so I couldn’t sell it.”

  “Never bothered you before! Still got that brass-topped table, have you? Easy money, that could be.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Well, then,” said Mr. King, who had left school at nine years old and worked for his living honestly (and less honestly) ever since, “if you don’t want money got easy you’ll have do as other folks do, won’t you?”

  “What do they do?”

  “Get it the hard way!”

  “What’s the hard way?”

  “And you a clever high school girl!” exclaimed Mr. King, and went away shaking his head.

  Clarry consulted Vanessa, cycling out to the cottage when her friend was back for the night. Vanessa was more helpful than Mr. King, at least. “You needn’t worry about catching a train to Oxford!” she said. “You can come with us. We’re all going together to cheer on Simon. I’m driving Dad’s car.”

  “I’m driving Dad’s car!” corrected her mother, coming in from the kitchen. “It’s much too far for you. Lovely to see you, Clarry! Have you said hello to Lucy?”

  “Yes, she looks wonderful. Any news from Odysseus?”

  “How clever you were about Constantinople! No, not a word, but I’m not worried at all. I imagine he’s escaped. A boat over to Greece somehow, and then it’ll just be a matter of time. . . .”

  “And dodging Calypso,” added Vanessa.

  “Horrible girl, be quiet!”

  “All right! I’m taking Clarry off for a gossip. Come up to my room, Clarry! Absolutely you have to be there at speech day. It’s the last one ever for both of them. You can’t leave sweet P. with no one to clap him.”

  “No, I can’t,” agreed Clarry. “Vanessa?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “What do people wear?”

  “Posh as possible,” said Vanessa, who at the moment was gnawing an apple down to its core in a very
unposh manner indeed. “You can borrow something of mine. I’ve got a lovely cherry red thing I bought in a sale. It’s too tight, I knew it would be, but I couldn’t resist it. I fell for the swishy silk lining. We’ll turn up the hem and if it bags at the side you can just keep your elbows tucked in. Try it on!”

  Clarry tried it on, and although the silk lining was certainly lovely, it was much too big, whatever she did with her elbows. And also very red. Much redder than cherries . . .

  “All right, I admit it’s not you!” said Vanessa, when she had stopped laughing. “Especially with those stockings! By the way, I hope you won’t mind, Clarry dear, if I talk to Your Braininess about stockings for a few minutes.”

  “If you must,” agreed Clarry, hanging the red dress back on its padded silk hanger.

  “I must, I’ve been meaning to for months. Think of it as a tutorial. Take notes if you like. And while you are listening, help yourself to anything that catches your eye in my wardrobe.”

  “Thank you,” said Clarry, “but if you don’t mind I’ll just concentrate. I may close my eyes sometimes, like I do in Latin.”

  “Very well,” said Vanessa. “But this is much more important than Latin. Now, prepare to be amazed!”

  She was the kindest friend ever, thought Clarry, as she cycled home that night. And the funniest, and the most generous. And the most ridiculous. If I wore that red dress I’d be the reddest person in the room! And imagine it at Oxford! I’d be the reddest in the city!