Writing for Fun
February 2015
The Curious Incident of Being - Vivian Burdon
The gloriously silver-bright moon lit up our little back garden as it ran away into the broad sweep of grounds belonging to the big house. The chaotic low wooden fence, itself part of the landscape, was sufficient in all its disrepair to support scrambling runner beans and corral the newly arrived chickens. It's not really our garden. It, and the ancient gate house where we are billeted, belongs to the big house. We are staying here in return for work on the farm. We are two families and it's very, very cosy. Well I say families; can we still call ourselves that when we are without husbands, without fathers?
After work and a bit of supper, we have started to gather for shared quite time in the parlour, sitting in over-stuffed horsehair chairs and faded sofas with the curtains drawn a little, just enough to satisfy blackout but not enough to obscure the view. Tonight, we are bathed in moonbeams and soft lamplight. Elsie is teaching my eldest Jack to knit, her daughter Lizzie is darning socks and me and my little girl Sam are French knitting sausages of brightly coloured wool. 'I think bedside rugs will make it feel like home mummy,' Sam had whispered on our first mournful view of the bedroom. So that's what we shall have. We've also collected rags so we can make a patchwork curtain to hang up beside Jack's bed. Hopefully it will give the poor lad some privacy.
We sway between being wonderfully happy in this land of open space and wildlife far away from the bombing to being profoundly sad from longing and grief for absent fathers and husbands, and blitzed homes. So, we are digging for victory and making do and mending. Letting the days ebb and flow with harmony and tantrums, waiting for it all to end.
'That's a Fokke,' says Jack low and cold. Knit one pearl one forgotten, he is no longer on the home front, it's the front line and he scrambles low to the window. I tell him not to get so excited . . . the Germans have no need to bomb the middle of nowhere. 'It's not a bomber,' he snarls back at me, 'it's reconnaissance.'
'Even so . . .' The engine's roar drowns out whatever I might have said and a plane descends shockingly close over our roof and lands in an explosion of mud and grass in the land beyond our runner beans. 'What the . . .' Jack grabs Sam and Lizzie's hand and shouts 'Mum, Elsie, upstairs, loft hatch, roof, go . . . go . . . run. They are spies, three of them. Two men, one woman . . . in civvies . . . and guns . . . Quickly get up on the roof. Just go.'
We are breathing too loudly. We have our backs pinned to the cold parapet wall. My heart is banging and poor Sam's little hand is bravely squeezing mine. 'Damn it, they're coming up,' Jack whispers. We are sitting ducks. For some reason I find myself standing at the door, the necessity to see overcoming caution. I see the stern suited blond women appear around the bend in the spiral staircase, her gun hand leading the way. I retreat slowly to hide behind the open door and then I feel the sharp jolt of knowing. I know she has seen me through the gap on the hinged side of the door . . . I know it's over . . . our war, our lives.
Brrrrriiiing! . . .'I bet that's First Bank telling me my online statement is available to view. Why do they think I need to know that at 6.30 every Saturday morning?' Dave put his i- phone back on the bedside table. I emerge, dragging myself away from the terror of certain death. I squint at the sunshine streaming in through the window thawing my feeling of dread to mild confusion. Slowly I return. My heart is still racing with the emotional charge of lost love ones, of sons and daughters I don't have, and deep personal sadness for my own imminent death. The German spy's suite was fabulous though - fine tailored green Worcester - couture to die for! I smile wryly. That will teach me to rummage through charity shops all the time for vintage tea dresses and tilt hats. Dave leans over and kisses me. 'What are your plans for today my lovely?'
'Mmmmmm. Well it could start with a cup of coffee brought to me by my favourite man.' I stretch my arms above my head and touch the quilted patchwork wall hanging behind my bed.
I feel really strange, dislocated, like a voyeur in my own bedroom! It's not a mystery, the dream, the war. I have always felt it was my time, well the 40s really, not necessarily the war part. Is it natural to hark back to what seems like simpler times? When the world was understood and evil could be fought with moral certitude and by pulling together. So different to today's dilemmas, with its throw away technology no one can fix even if they wanted to. Famine and excesses. Them and us (whoever they are). And there is that feeling of being disempowered but being told 'we are all in it together'. I raise myself on my elbow and drink the hot coffee that has appeared at my bedside. The radio alarm comes on and tells me 'Philae has made a historic touchdown on Comet 67P'. We can be truly amazing when we want to. We just need to . . . This thought trails off into the enormity of what I need people to do. Is it simply just a case of love, understanding . . . Of doing the right thing, pulling together? I don't know. I suppose you can only really do right by your own small sphere of influence and hope everyone else does the same. The news switches to Aleppo and the sound of bombing and gun fire. I feel the same dreadful unease I felt during the cold war, the relentless march towards mutually assured destruction . . . only this time it will be slower with more barbaric pain.
Bang! . . . 'Good god! That was close. Looks like Mr Hitler doesn't want us to sleep again tonight. Come on love get up we need to get to the shelter.' This man, who I do know, passes me my dressing gown as I stumble into my slippers neatly placed on the French knitted rug. 'You were snoring and tossing and turning like a good 'un, my lovely.' I am stunned . . .
Where am I? . . . Oh hell . . . 'Tom . . . wait. Am I awake? Is this real? I . . . I don't feel right.'
Tom pushes me out onto the landing . . . 'If you don't get a move on you will feel more than 'Not Right.' I stumble down the stairs pass my hall stand hung with familiar coats and hats. Tom grabs them and bundles me out into the garden. 'Herr Hitler could have picked a warmer night . . . Come on honey get into the Anderson.' We sit quietly listening to the explosions and the shouts and our hearts.
I feel distressed, absent. 'We should have brought your handset then we could have called Jack . . . make sure he's ok.'
'Who's Jack?' my husband says to me.
'Our Jack!' I falter, 'Oh dear, sorry . . . I thought . . . I felt . . . we had a son. How silly of me?' Tom frowned. I stare at him . . . my head spinning 'You had a device, you held it in your hand - no wires - and you could speak to people with it, and we had other things, like a tiny radio that had a clock with numbers not hands and a machine like a car that landed on Halles Comet or something . . .' my voice trailed off to nothing.
'Darling you're talking nonsense.' I shake my head and Tom gave me a squeeze and whispered in my ear, 'I think you should pass on the cheese at supper for a while sweetheart.'
'Well, maybe, but It was so very real. The world was in such a mess'.
'Well you're right about that bit, the world is in a mess.' Tom held my hand. 'Come on honey, make me a cuppa it might calm you down. You're frightened, we both are. These air raids are hell on earth.'
I passed him the unread newspaper from last night. 'Here, read to me about the war,' I say, wanting to be grounded in one world at least. Tom talks of Churchill and crime that shouldn't even be thought about never mind committed in these awful times.
I listen distractedly until his words slice through my haze. '. . . near some posh pile in Hertfordshire apparently. What a brave little lad. Listen to this honey. Some young boy, an evacuee, has bagged himself three German spies. He saved two families apparently. They landed their Fokke in a field next to their garden. I bet that scared the chickens.'