your cousin?’
Jack, the elder of the two brothers and a russet boy, spoke for Donald. ‘He says we look like girls.’
Donald scuffed his feet by the range, his fringe in his eyes. Shorter, stockier and redder than Jack, he was a wayward Highland calf.
‘Really, Donald, dear. What sort of girl would have such a plain style?’
‘Mrs Parr, save your strength.’ Elizabeth scooped oats into a pan, her face creased with exasperation. ‘Donald won’t be told.’
The older boys sat down, their necks wet, the snipped hems of their hair still bearing the furrows of the comb. When I was fourteen, Elizabeth had cut my hair. She’d worked for Mr and Miss Dawes then, who looked after the children of the parish poor. I was older than these boys but I was nonetheless a parish child. So Elizabeth had clipped me and deloused me with gentle kindness.
I looked up, met her eyes.
‘I’ve never told Mr Parr, you know,’ I said quietly. ‘About my short crop.’
‘Of course not.’ She began to smile. ‘He doesn’t have to know everything.’
My corn goddess, Selwyn had said, when he unpinned my hair for the first time. So easy to worship you. He knew that Mother and I had fetched up in the Absaloms, but I had painted this era in broad brushstrokes, very broad strokes indeed. What corn goddess in her right mind would regale a suitor with stories of long-ago lice?
Just then Selwyn came into the kitchen. ‘Good morning, boys. I’ve been speaking to Cousin Hawley’s father. They’re all fit and well, although there’s no water and an awful lot of smoke.’
They were too proud to shed tears of relief but Hawley’s shoulders settled and Jack blinked rapidly. Donald gave a series of blowing breaths, a small bullock on a misty morning.
‘Donald won’t have his hair cut,’ I told Selwyn.
‘I know. The fearful row you made quite impinged on my telephone conversation. Donald,’ Selwyn commanded, ‘submit to a trim this evening and at Christmas I’ll take all you boys to Suggs’s in Waltham for a proper chap’s back-and-sides.’ He wagged a finger. ‘This is a gentleman’s offer, conditional upon meticulous obedience to Elizabeth. Is that understood?’
If the vocabulary was a little high, the gist was clear. ‘Yes, Mr Parr,’ Donald said, and the boys seated themselves with an awful scraping of wooden chair-legs on earthenware tiles and Selwyn sat down too. Elizabeth served the porridge while I kneaded my dough, rolling it and slapping it on the board. ‘My spoon’s jumping up and down on the table,’ said Jack. ‘Look. Bang the dough again, Mrs Parr. There!’
‘Pick your spoon up and start eating,’ Elizabeth directed him through set teeth.
The telephone rang again. Selwyn said, ‘Damn,’ and left the room.
‘Hawley’s only eight years younger than you, Mrs Parr.’ Jack started to inhale his porridge, speaking between and during mouthfuls. ‘Don’t you find that strordinary? That he’s already thirteen and you’re only twenty-one, but you’re completely grown up?’
‘She isn’t. She scrapes her porridge bowl like we do. Mr Parr, now he’s properly grown up. He’s forty.’
‘Donald, I shall tell Mr Parr how rude you’ve been about Mrs Parr.’
‘Really, Elizabeth.’ I rolled up my dough and put it back in the bowl. ‘It’s no more than the truth. I’m always starving. And Mr Parr is forty-one, to be exact.’
‘Yes, Mrs Parr. But Donald’s manner.’
Selwyn returned, unsmiling. The boys, seeing it, were quiet.
‘Who rang, dear?’
‘Sharp’s.’ He sat down again at the table. ‘The fire hoses did for the grain, nearly all of it, but there’s some dry wheat left. They’re sending for people to fetch it away and grind it.’
‘Oh lord,’ said Elizabeth. ‘They got Sharp’s.’
I rubbed dough from my fingers, awed at the knowledge that, in hitting the Southampton docks, the bombers had laid waste to the largest flour mill in the South.
I followed Selwyn out to the yard where the lorry was garaged. I tried to match my stride to his; we were both tall, but he was eager to be on his way. ‘Darling, when I dashed after the constable yesterday, I did mention that we’d be happy to hang on to Pamela for a while.’
‘We haven’t got much choice, have we, in the short term.’ He spoke absently, fumbling for his keys. We were approaching the garage.
‘What I mean is, she wouldn’t necessarily have to be with a family. People are so hard-pressed now. She might do better with us and the boys …’
Selwyn unlocked the door and snapped the padlock shut. ‘Sweetheart, these past few days we’ve all been through a great deal. You’ve been absolutely marvellous—’
‘I really haven’t. I simply did what had to be done—’
‘—but I think the experience has left us, perhaps, not quite in our right minds.’
The doors gave a rusty scream as Selwyn pulled them open. I followed him into the garage. ‘What do you mean, in our right minds? Selwyn?’
‘Darling, can we talk about this later?’ He was opening the cab door, swinging himself up into the driving seat. ‘It’s hardly the most apposite moment.’
‘Well, I’m taking her to Barker’s in Waltham this morning. For clothes. So I won’t get to the office till after lunch.’ My voice was rising. ‘But she needs some things. I can get her things, can’t I? While she’s here?’
‘Of course you can. Ellen, what’s the matter?’ He leaned down towards me.
‘Nothing. I’m perfectly all right.’ I shut my eyes. ‘And I’m certainly in my right mind.’
‘I do beg your pardon. That was a stupid thing to say.’ He smiled deliberately down into my hot eyes. ‘Take Pamela shopping and don’t worry about the office. Suky and I can dash off a couple of bills between us. I must go.’
‘Of course you must.’
He drove off, to Southampton, and Sharp’s, and the undamaged grain.
I went back inside. Stared at the slowly rising bread dough. Ate my helping of porridge, half-cold, from the pan. Then I went out to the hall and lifted the telephone receiver.
‘Waltham police station, please,’ I told the operator.
Pamela appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Miss Ell, Missis Ell!’
‘Quiet, sweetheart. I’m telephoning.’
She thumped her way down, hopping from stair to stair. Six steps from the bottom her foot slipped. ‘Pamela!’ She pitched forward and so did I, catching her as she fell against my chest and knocked
