Chapter 19 #2
‘I made a promise,’ Jenny said. Her jaw was set, and there was a stubborn look in her eye. ‘To someone I love. That I would take care of their son. I keep my promises.’
He stared at her, her vague, hazy gestures and her flowing loose dress and those eyes, burning with conviction.
He thought for the first time that he was seeing the real version of her, not dressed up, not anxious, not forcing herself into another role for which she was ill-suited.
Jenny bent and picked up his suitcase, turning towards the car.
‘Are you excited about finally being here, Tom?’
‘Hugely,’ Tom said, to be polite, though he really didn’t mind where they went; he just wanted to go to sleep. ‘Can’t wait to see it.’
‘Yes!’ Jenny was still fussing with the car door, her skirt, the gear stick. She said, ‘Edward, the ravens are back.’
‘No!’
‘Oh, yes! In the pine trees behind the house. Vast eyries, awfully high up. In winter, Tom, they loom over you; you can see them flying to and fro with twigs and food for the young – a nest fell out once. The eggs are a beautiful turquoise green –’ She paused to gather breath, and jammed the car into reverse.
His father said, ‘I don’t remember that. Perhaps I wasn’t there in winter.’
‘You know the saying,’ said Jenny. ‘Raise ravens, and they’ll gouge your eyes out.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Gordon,’ she said. ‘It’s Italian, or Spanish; he heard it from a soldier – don’t you remember?’
‘What does that mean?’ Tom said, peering at them both from the back of the car.
‘It means “Reap what you sow,”’ Jenny said. ‘Doesn’t it, Edward?’
‘It does,’ he said. ‘And its meaning is often misunderstood.’
They were both silent in the car; Tom sensed his father had bested Jenny. After a few moments, Edward said, ‘Do you remember the birds nesting in the chimney, though – the time that Easter, when someone lit the fire –’
‘Oh, of course. Starlings. Poor things. I’ve never recovered.’ She gave a great, ragged sigh, her shoulders slumping as if bowed down with the weight of memory, and turned the key in the ignition. ‘And that parrot, do you remember the parrot someone bought?’
‘A Gurkha – what was his name?’ His father turned to him, as Jenny drove away. ‘It was the place we all went, you see – not too far from Tangmere, or Charmy Down, where I was stationed, from where we launched our raids.
‘And Henry’s barracks, and Irene was at Hendon – bit further, wasn’t it, but she made it, didn’t she?’ Jenny said to him.
Tom had not been out of London for such a long time that he stared in wonder, his good eye straining to take everything in.
Fields, barns, two young women on bikes cycling slowly up the hill.
A normal, lovely September day, like something out of a film, or a Ladybird book in the library on the Countryside.
‘Is the gate still there?’ his father asked.
‘There’s a wall, runs along the road, and there’s a gate set into it – it was green –’ said his father to Tom.
‘And it was always open, to anyone, serviceman or woman, who wanted a bed for the night and a hot meal and a dance and a drink before they had to go off to fight, fly, drive, whatever it is we were all busy doing those days. Tom my darling – it’s still there, isn’t it, Jenny?
Once you were through that gate, you jolly well knew you were safe. ’ His voice broke.
‘Yes, Edward.’ Jenny put her hand over his. Tom, in the back, saw, through his half-veiled vision, the pain on her face, how she did not turn to look at him.
‘I miss her too,’ Jenny said. ‘Edward, I’m so sorry. For everything. If you understood it all –’
‘I don’t need to,’ Edward said. She gave him a strange look.
‘Raise ravens, Edward. Remember?’
‘Jenny,’ he said. ‘Irene is dead. Teddy is gone. The others are all gone. Whatever happened, Tom is here, and you are here, and me and – that’s all that matters.’
The blackberries and early sloes were thick on the hedgerows; freshly minted orange comma butterflies basked in the amber sunshine.
Edward helped his son out of the car and they stared together at the decrepit gate set into a high wall.
It had peeling green paint and a rusting latch; next to it, half buried in the earth, was a large stone.
‘Come on,’ said his father, and pushed open the gate.
It gave a long, slow creak like a scream.
The path they found themselves on ran alongside the wall.
To their left was an orchard, a tangle of ill-kempt trees with the boughs hopelessly overburdened with apples, many of which had already dropped.
They passed a tiny pond in which a battered little toy boat was wedged on to a rock; and a row of hollyhocks, raspberry-pink and wine-red, listing drunkenly against the lichen-dappled stone of the old cottage.
It reminded Tom instantly of his childhood home, the croft, and he stared at his father, who nodded – he understood.
But it was quite different, this place. It was bigger, with a second floor, and a large honey-coloured porch.
And it was gentle, and golden, and flecked with colour: self-seeded daisies that crowded out the space along the pathways and flower beds in front of the house; white anemones, nodding; fiery red and burnt-yellow dahlias. The plants thronged with bees.
‘On Midsummer morning the sun rises directly into the centre of the house,’ Jenny said.
‘Through the front door. Whoever built it – it is about five hundred years old, we think – built it to sit within the stone circle. A couple of the stones are missing. They might have been used to build the house. The back of the house is in shadow, so it’s as though the house is split in two, day and night, summer and winter. Sunrise, sunset.’
Jenny faced the valley, looking down to the overgrown garden, where Tom could just about make out two large, jagged stones five or so yards apart. Then she said, almost to herself:
‘Life is not about the line of time. You understand that when you come here. We see time as linear; we treat it as a progression. It’s not. It’s the repetition of the seasons. The cycle of the year’s route. Time turning over, a repetitive process.’
Beside the door was a huge bell-pull, a foot long or more.
Above it, the words SEVENSTONES half carved, half painted on to the yellow-grey lintel.
The old arched stone doorway was partially obscured by a rose that had gone to bright orange hips.
The window frames, like the gate, like the windfall apples, were on the way to being rotten.
‘In winter, at the Midwinter Solstice,’ his aunt said, picking off rosehips and tucking the overgrown shoots out of the way as her other hand fumbled in her pocket for the key, ‘the sun sets through the little round window there, at the back of the house.’ She unlocked the door.
‘Sunrise, sunset. Ah, it’s been so long.
So long, hasn’t it? Come in, dear. Edward, you too. Come in.’
‘By George, it hasn’t changed,’ Tom’s father said, stepping cautiously over the threshold.
‘I know,’ said Jenny quietly. ‘Most extraordinary.’
Inside it was dark, and small, and very warm, the late summer heat trapped inside, the scent of old, worn wood and faint log fires throughout.
‘There’s a cold room there,’ said Jenny, pointing towards the back.
‘Useful for gin, and champagne. There’s – oh, look.
There’s the record player, and the wireless.
Goodness, someone’s left a glove behind.
’ She picked up a navy leather glove. ‘Henry’s, I expect.
And there, look – you’ll be upstairs too, Edward.
’ She scrunched up the glove and threw it on to the windowsill.
She was quite different here, like the old Jenny he’d first known: brisk, efficient, eyes darting round the small space, assessing, shrewd, like a bird.
‘And that was the sitting room – see, there’s even some archaeological remains. Look, Edward, do.’
‘My God.’ Tom’s father followed her gaze. There were two champagne bottles balanced on a narrow shelf that ran round the wall on each side of the fireplace, and two more on the ground, the labels mottled with mildew.
Her eyes, half-moons of merriment, met Edward’s.
‘Tom, Harrods delivered, and Irene would bring up extra when she drove from Hendon or wherever she was posted. Daddy paid for most of it, bless his heart. He said it was for morale.’ Jenny pushed a messy tendril of hair out of her flushed face.
‘Edward – oh dear, the records are all gone, I suspect someone knows where the spare key is and they’ve been sleeping in here you know.
’ She peered through into the back room.
‘Well, if it’s kept someone dry what’s the harm. ’
His father was moving around, touching things carefully. He picked up an old captain’s hat. ‘Henry pretty much moved in after Dunkirk, didn’t he?’
‘He and that Dutch bit he had. Absolutely enormous bosom. I’m sure she was a spy. Hiding a microphone or something down there.’
‘Jen, you absolute devil.’
‘You were the one court-martialled over the business of the dance, Squadron Leader.’
Tom leaned against the door. ‘Court-martialled, Dad?’
‘Your father,’ said Jenny, dusting off a worn wooden bench with her scarf and gesturing for Tom to sit down, ‘took Irene to a dance in Wales – in Wales , no less, in a Hurricane he – ahem – borrowed from RAF Charmy Down. Around Midsummer, wasn’t it?
May I tell this story, Edward? Ah, he’s nodding, even as he blushes.
Listen, Tom. He arranged to meet her at Bath Station, drove her to Charmy Down, asked her if she liked dancing, and, when she said yes, he flew her to Wales for the dance, then drove them both back to Sevenstones so he could shave and present himself at base in time for orders.
’ She looked from Tom to Edward, who was bright red, even in the dull of the room. ‘That’s about it, isn’t it, Edward?’
Tom’s father acknowledged this with a nod of the head.
‘We arrived back having not slept a wink. Rather tired – you know, we’d danced for hours.
She was – a tremendous dancer. She never tired, never.
’ He scratched his chin, smiling at the memory.
‘And it was getting light – you know, it does for hours before the sun actually rises. I made Irene some coffee, and we both had a wash and I shaved, and we were sitting inside with the door open – it was rather chilly, you know – watching the morning arrive – and the sun rose, over the hill there. Shot straight into the sitting room, like a ball of flame. Woke up two WAAFs who’d bedded down for the night on the floor.
’ He shook his head. ‘Quite extraordinary. I looked at Irene, and I said: “Did you know this happened?” And she said, “All these years, and, no, I didn’t know.” We simply sat there, and we felt the sun pouring over us.
It was remarkable. As if everything were alive, as if we were part of the cycle of the world and all we needed to do was carry on.
Yes.’ He stood there, staring at the front door. ‘Navy silk.’
‘I remember the very dress,’ said Jenny. ‘Ah –’ She looked over then. ‘Tom, my dear, you look done in.’
Tom’s head was aching with the close warmth of the room and the sense that everything was, once again, utterly different, that the world had shifted. He nodded, and shrugged.
His father said, ‘Upstairs, old man. You can sleep as long as you want. There’s time for everything after you’ve rested.’ He looked around. ‘Jenny, I can’t believe we’re both here, my dear. Thank you.’
Nodding, Tom allowed himself to be taken upstairs but, while his father was fetching the suitcase from the hall, he picked up the blue glove. It was stiff, dried out, a soft worn label peeping out from the edge like a tongue. He peered at it.
Saks Fifth Avenue.
His eye stumbled over the strange words, which he had never seen together and which didn’t make sense. What was Saks Fifth Avenue, he wondered, and dropped back the glove. It wasn’t Henry’s anyway, whatever Jenny might say. It was too small: a woman’s glove.
He loved his room in the eaves upstairs, palest pink, with curtains the colour of iced lemon sherbet.
He sat on the edge of the bed, so tired he thought he wouldn’t be able to undo his shoes, but soon he saw that, from the window, you could see down the valley, all the way to the horizon many miles distant, where there was a white horse carved into a hillside, dancing, shimmering in the midday sun.
He rubbed his eyes gingerly, certain that he was now hallucinating.
But the horse remained, and is still there today, visible from the same window, along with the half-carved, half-painted name over the front door.