The book was leather-bound, old and very battered, entitled Downland Flora. All the plants of the chalk downs were in there, the colour plates shielded by paper so translucent that the images beneath were visible as if through soft rain.
Mr Dawes called on us. He carried a box containing a pudding and three Christmas crackers. ‘My sister will come on Christmas Eve with a duck, Mrs Calvert. A few vegetables and you’ll do handsomely.’ Miss Dawes duly came and we gave her fulsome salivating thanks. Later that same evening, there was a knock at the door. I opened it but there was only darkness outside. Then I saw a paper bag, and in it a bottle of beer. As I picked up the bag the gate clicked, and I looked up to see Lucy Horne vanish behind the hedge.
That first Christmas Day we polished our shoes, brushed our coats and went to church. We weren’t going to sit in our hole like mice. We slid to the end of one of the back pews and stared straight ahead. Behind me Daddy’s strong voice rang out in the bass variation to ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’. O come, Daddy, O come. Edward sang the hymn loudly in Latin as he’d been taught at school. Adeste fideles, laete triumphantes. We left the church without looking back or stopping, even though Miss Dawes blurted, ‘Mrs Calvert, Merry—’ as we passed. We walked on down the lane, and when it came to the turn for the Absaloms we halted, all three of us. At the Stour House there’d have been dinner waiting for us, guests gathering in the hall. Cries of delight at our tree with its glass balls as big as a man’s hand and red as a man’s blood, its tiny brass bells, its lights glimmering through angel hair like stars through cirrus cloud.
Mother clasped her hands together. ‘I can’t go back to the cottage yet. Not today.’
‘No. A Christmas walk is in order.’ Edward was using his stout voice. ‘We can always have dinner later.’ And we strode on as if we were normal people, not creatures so clemmed that our stomachs were wringing inside us.
We went all the way out of the village to where the land spread out and up towards Beacon Hill. It was dry underfoot and Edward and I ran to and fro along the track, again and again, for the pleasure of being in the open, of being back on the hillside we’d known since we were able to walk. Edward inhaled lungfuls of downland air. ‘I don’t know why we didn’t come out here before, instead of staying cooped up in the cottage!’ But I knew. It was because so much had become forbidden to us. Even as we ran and panted and laughed, there was a sense of truancy.
We helped Mother over the stile. Her legs had got so thin that her stockings were wrinkled at the ankles. We held her hands and pulled her to the top. Edward sang, ‘Fal-de-ree, fal-de-ra, my knapsack on my back.’
At the top it was silent. We sat on a hillock that Edward said was made in the Iron Age. Then one by one we lay down on the soft springy turf among the dry rabbit droppings. We were warm from the climb, and the weather was mild. I tried to identify some of the downland flora but only managed buck’s-horn plantain, a humble rosette of pointed leaves. It was edible, according to my new book, so Edward and I nibbled like rabbits. Like bitter parsley, we decided. Then I rolled onto my back and stared up at the bands of still winter cloud that blurred into the blue. A long time of peace elapsed.
Edward touched my cheek. ‘Ellen. You were nearly asleep.’
In January I grew out of my boots. Edward put newspaper in his so that I could wear them to school. He found a pair of wooden clogs in the outhouse. When I came home we changed shoes. But soon it became clear from Edward’s pigeon-toed walk that his feet had grown too. He went to look in the cash box under Mother’s bed.
I went out into the garden. My feet slid over the ruts at the edge of the vegetable bed. I stamped and blew out a plume of white breath like a fire-eater. I tried to sing, but it turned into a sob. Edward came outside again. ‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘Oh, Edward.’ I knew something was going to happen.
‘There’s not enough, Ell, not for three of us to go on like this—’
‘Don’t leave us. We’ll die without you—’
‘Nonsense. You’ll do very well on the parish money, and then—’
‘Where will you go?’ I was crying.
‘Southampton.’
‘Oh, God—’
‘There’s a fortune to be made on the steamers, everyone knows that. And adventure. Who knows what I’ll send back? Come on, Ellen. You’ll live like kings.’
‘Edward. Oh, Edward.’
He turned away. ‘I must tell Mother.’
I wiped my face on my sleeve. My cheeks and eyes felt raw. I heard Mother give a broken sort of moan, a sound like a roosting hen.
In the morning I felt the first stubble on his chin graze my temple, his bony jaw and ear as he bent lower to whisper, ‘Keep Mother safe and study hard.’
‘Good luck, Edward. Don’t forget us.’
‘It’s for you I’m going, my dearest Ellen. So that’s hardly likely.’
He set off in his clogs down the lane. I watched him until he turned the corner. It was agony, but I had to, in case he looked back. He didn’t look back.
Three weeks later came a letter. With a stamp like a tiny stained-glass window, there were so many colours in it. Dear Ellen, it read, they used to call this land Darien. We have all been sick from the Atlantic swell. We are bound for Puntarenas and thence to San Francisco and then my hopes are for the Far East though it will lie in a westerly direction for me.
Mother seized the envelope, raked the inside with her forefinger. ‘How could he send no money?’
I handed her the banknote, five American dollars, which had been enclosed in the fold of the letter. ‘In future we can get it from the company. That’s what he says.’
SPRING CAME, hot and late, and then a cloudless summer. Mother and I walked to Waltham and took the bus to Southampton, and made our way, at two in the afternoon, to the shipping office of Raymond & Rose, where we sat on hard chairs in the blessed cool and dimness of the wood-panelled room.
‘So.’ The man behind the desk turned the pages of a ledger. ‘Edward Calthrop.’
‘Calvert.’ My mother spoke sharply. ‘He said his hopes were for the Far East.’
But I didn’t even know if that was true. I could imagine him in front of the mirror, thrusting out one leg, shading his eyes from an imaginary tropical sun, and saying, ‘Edward Calvert, who took ship for the Far East.’
‘Calvert, Calvert.’ The man turned another page. ‘Ah. Here he is. Siam, ladies. Bangkok, Swatow, Hong Kong. Rice out, general cargo on return. On our Queen of the Straits.’
My mother folded her hands together so that they could each comfort the other. She seemed unable to speak so I did it for her.
‘It’s simply that we haven’t heard from him for so long.’
The man nodded. He knew what it meant, for a seaman’s family, to hear from him. ‘I’m sorry. He gave us no authority to stop back a portion of his wage.’ He dipped his nib in the well, pecked at the page. ‘There,’ he said, with satisfaction. This had been an easy task. ‘A note. Family enquired. It’s all I can do.’
I inked the holes in my stockings but when I sat down at my desk the holes slid to reveal crescents of white skin. Like the clock face which showed the lunar phases; Daddy sliding the brass lever to make the moon wax and wane, wax and wane. Temporarily, perhaps just for ten seconds, my father had lost his wits. Shot himself in the heart and got out of everything. No more pain and certainly no hunger.
‘You’ve got half-moons peeping out on your legs,’ said Lucy.