The Chilbury Ladies' Choir(63)

The Colonel squashed himself into the armchair and asked Mrs. Tilling if she had a pen and paper as he may as well catch up with his correspondence. She flustered around the bookshelf, found some, and gave them to him without a word. I wonder why she doesn’t like him. He seems rather nice to me.

“Now, Kitty,” she said, “what do we have for you?” She bent down and looked over the bookcase. “Great Expectations? Have you read that? Or there’s Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which may be a little too old for you.”

Nothing’s too old for me, so I took the Anna Karenina from her and opened it on the first page. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It was all too strange. Chilbury the center of unscrupulous dealings, Proggett a dangerous spy, Venetia’s Mr. Slater a black marketeer. Obviously it’s a good thing that the Colonel’s people are on top of all this, but I confess I was slightly upset that my one and only offering to help the war effort had been trounced in a short conversation.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Our first air raid. Maybe the beginning of many, with bombs coming down on our houses, destroying everything we have. I listened hard, but the planes must have gone. And as the ticking of the clock dissolved into the background, I started feeling trapped by time itself. It was as if every moment had become both longer and shorter, more meaningful in case it’s our last, yet so fleeting and pointless. And all these moments join together to build my life, like it’s a patchwork quilt of different colors and shapes, good days and bad, that together make an uncomfortable, badly fitting whole.

Then the all clear sounded, a single siren call that somehow sounds comforting and friendly, even though it’s the same awful air raid siren but only played once. The Colonel looked at Mrs. Tilling, who stood up and brushed down her brown woolen skirt, turning to me, as if he weren’t even there, and saying, “Well, Kitty, I hope it’s not too late for you to be running home? You can always stay in the back room if you’d like?”

“Thanks, Mrs. Tilling, but Mama will worry about me.”

As she led the way back upstairs, I turned back to the large Colonel, still finishing his letter, and bid him good night.

“And good night to you,” he said lightly, looking up and smiling. “Thank you for coming.”

I said good night to Mrs. Tilling and hurried outside and up the road to the square. The moon lit the graveyard with a sinister glow, centuries of villagers buried beneath the ground, all those people rotting away until their gravestones are the only traces left of them—the marks of their death.

I ran faster, faster, until I was halfway up our drive, the mass of Peasepotter Wood on my left, when an ear-piercing gunshot exploded from the wood. I shuddered to a halt with fear, and within a minute another frighteningly loud shot sounded. Daddy has taken me hunting a few times, but the sound was not like that. It was louder, crisper, a dead bolt through the clear night sky.

I listened for further shots, trying to calm my breath, slow my galloping heartbeat, but nothing. After a few minutes of silence, I crept farther down the lane. As I turned the bend, I sensed something ahead of me, a movement in the shadows. I froze, glaring through the traces of light to see the hunched form of Proggett making his way through the thicket in the wood.

After a few minutes of silence, I crept on, then made a dash for the house and eased the side door open. I half expected everything to be in disarray, to be different.

But it wasn’t. Everything was strangely normal.

There were two fresh bread rolls under a glass dome on the table, so I pocketed them and headed for my bedroom. Mama met me on the stairs. Her eyes had that stare, like a frightened mouse unable to run. Daddy must be on the warpath again.

“Where have you been? Did you hear the sirens?” she whispered.

“I was at Mrs. Tilling’s house,” I said, trying to go past her.

“Did you see Venetia?” Her voice was like cracked ice.

“No, why?”

She seemed to look through me for a moment, then pulled herself together. “I wanted to ask her something, that’s all.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes, of course.” She smiled nervously. “Time for bed. Good night.”

I tramped up to my room, drew my curtains, and crawled into bed. I wondered what happened to Venetia to make Mama so scared. I suppose there’s always some drama or other with Venetia.

It’s probably nothing.





Thursday, 1st August, 1940

Tonight the Brigadier was very angry with Venetia. He came home late and shouted at her. He said she is pregnant. That means she will have a baby. Mr. Slater’s baby. It is bad. The Brigadier took her into his office and shouted bad things. Then he hit her. She screamed and ran outside into the night.

“I’ll kill him,” the Brigadier shouted. He went to get his gun.

I was scared. I ran out after her. But she was gone.

So I hid in my room. Then I heard Kitty coming up the stairs. And then the sound of a plane got louder and louder, low in the sky. I pulled up my blanket, scared.





IVY HOUSE,

CHILBURY,

KENT.


Friday, 2nd August, 1940



Dear Angela,

I am wholly exhausted, in every possible way. No doubt you already know that Chilbury was bombed last night. I was there when it happened—watching our world explode in front of me—but let me start at the beginning.