Kitabı oku: «The Future Homemakers of America»
THE FUTURE HOMEMAKERS OF AMERICA
Laurie Graham
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction, and all names, characters, events, places and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, names, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006
Previously published in paperback by Fourth Estate in 2002
First published in Great Britain in 2001
Copyright © Laurie Graham 2001
Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover illustration © Rachel Ross
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
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Source ISBN: 9780007234073
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007393091
Version: 2017-03-30
Praise
From the reviews of The Future Homemakers of America:
‘A warm, life-affirming novel that offers its readers pure pleasure’
The Times
‘Graham has a sure-fire comic touch and a wayward invention…Occasionally compared to Alan Bennett, Graham exhibits precisely the same blend of toughness and sentiment’
Guardian
‘Superlative…the writing sparkles from first to last…the detail is delicious…A rich, many-layered portrait of Middle America in the second half of the last century. Where others have heaped scorn on the American Dream, or peddled dewy-eyed optimism, Graham simply tells it like it was – and tells it brilliantly’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Crackles with energy and snappy dialogue…Graham has always been good at catching and compressing how people speak, but here she has pulled off an absolute triumph; the voice of her sassy narrator, the redoubtable Peggy, never falters as she unfolds 40 years of friendship’
Daily Mail
‘An absorbing, funny, lively and sometimes moving story’
Sunday Times
‘A warm, witty and wise novel about female friendship…A feel-good book that can’t help but make you smile’
Hello!
‘A tenacity of voice and a deftly judged lightness of touch have always been Laurie Graham’s strengths as a novelist…a fast-moving and often funny saga’
ALI SMITH, TLS
Dedication
For my own hardy perennialsBridget, Liz, Rachel, Trish and Vivvy
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
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Keep Reading
About the Author
Also by the Author
About the Publisher
1
We were down at the commissary, just for something to do, me and Lois, pushing Sandie in her stroller. Breath puffing out like smoke every time we laughed and just hanging there in the air. The cold hadn’t killed the scent of the beet harvest, though. All my born days, I never knowed such a sickly smell.
‘I swear,’ she said, loud as you please, ‘this place is colder than a gravedigger’s ass.’ Lois always did have a mouth on her.
‘Uh-oh,’ she said, ‘here comes the Pie-Crust Queen.’
And sure enough, there was Betty running after us, flagging us to wait till she could catch her breath and tell us the big story.
‘Peggy!’ she said, gasping and wheezing and hanging on to my arm. ‘Have you heard the terrible news?’
When your husband flies F-84s, sitting up there on 3,000 gallons of jet fuel, cruising – now there’s a word – cruising at 510mph, hoping to get his tail waxed by some Russki so he can be Jock-of-the-Week back at the base, there’s only one kind of Terrible News, but we both knew, me and Lois, that it wasn’t that.
That kinda news comes quiet, on flannel feet. The base chaplain brings it to your door, and the CO’s wife follows through with a few brisk words about courage and dignity. After that, you better hope you got some friends. Some squadron wives to take turns answering your phone and feeding your kids and keeping you from falling into a thousand pieces.
When Terrible News comes to married quarters, there’s no pulling down of blinds. Military don’t hold with closing the drapes. Word gets round, but you’d never know, looking in from outside, that anything was happening, because heck, if air force wives went around yelling ‘Have you heard?’ the whole thing could run out of control. Next thing you know, every girl on the base’d be out there screaming, ‘His poor wife! His poor orphaned children! It’s so tragic. It’s unbearable. But I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s not me. Not this time!’ And that would never do.
Still, I guess we both missed a beat. Terrible news?
‘His Majesty King George of England,’ she said, ‘died in his sleep at Sandring Ham Palace.’
Betty always had a thing about royalty, clipping photos, pasting them in her albums, specially anything about that Princess Margaret, or the royal babies.
‘Princess Margaret had tea with General and Mrs Eisenhower,’ she told us one time. ‘She was fifteen minutes late, but it wasn’t her fault. They had angel-food cake and dainty little sandwiches, but the princess probably didn’t do cake, watching her lovely figure an’ all. She wore a yellow shirt and the cutest black dirndl skirt.’
‘Well, I’ll be dirndled.’ Lois was always taking the rise out of Betty, but she took it in good part. When you’re in a hole you gotta stick together and USAF Drampton was a hole, no two ways.
I knew Betty from way back, at Topperwein High, Class of ’42. I was captain of the softball team and she was president of Future Homemakers, stuffing toy bears for needy children and selling lunch-boxes for Healthful Living Week. We really didn’t run with the same crowd. But then she married Ed Gillis and I married Vern Dewey which made us both 96th Bomber Wing wives. By the time we were posted from Travis, Texas, to some frozen salt-marsh, East Anglia, next stop Siberia, we were blood-sisters, near enough. Never would have thought I’d be so glad of Betty’s everlasting cheerfulness. That’s homesickness for you.
‘He was found by a servant,’ she said. ‘That’d be a footman or a pageboy, taking him his coffee. Imagine. He’d put down the tray, all beautiful silver and jewels, and say, “Good morning, sire” and baboom, the king’s dead.’
Gayle Jackson was parked, waiting for us.
‘Y’all wanna come back to my place?’ she said. ‘Get a coffee or something?’ Time hung heavy for Gayle, poor kid, stuck out in a rental waiting for her darling Okey to come home.
Lois said, ‘Sure. You won’t mind if I bring along something, give it a little lift?’ She had a liquor bag hanging from the back of Sandie’s stroller.
Gayle’s face lit up. I guess there always was that weakness in her.
Betty said, ‘Honey, did you hear? About the king?’
‘He’s dead,’ Lo chipped in. ‘Ba-boom.’
‘Course,’ Betty said, ‘it had to be a servant found him, not the queen. They’d have separate bedrooms. Kings and queens always do.’
‘Jeez,’ Gayle said. ‘How come?’
‘Why, because they have such palatial homes, of course!’ We relied on Betty for that kind of inside information. ‘They have separate closets, separate everything.’
Sounded fine to me.
‘And poor Princess Elizabeth is thousands of miles away in Africa, having the news broke to her by her courtiers. She’s just going to have to pack her bags and fly right back here and get coronated.’
She leaned down to rub Sandie’s frozen little cheeks. ‘Hi, sweetie pie. Have I been ignoring you today? My, you’re so cold. Lois, is this child warm enough?’
Sandie gave Betty a big smile. ‘Told,’ she said. ‘Digger’s ass.’
So we all headed down to Gayle’s place, and Audrey came in from next door, for coffee and a little something from Lois’s bottle, just to warm us through and wish the old king God speed. Even Betty came along and that didn’t happen too often, on account of Ed keeping her on a short tether. Betty was allowed to go any place she liked, as long as it was the PX, the chapel or the school gate.
‘I’m just fine,’ she always said. ‘If Ed Gillis is happy, Betty Gillis is happy. Anyways, I don’t have time for gallivanting. My babies keep me busy. Caring for my home and my babies.’ Her babies were Deana and Sherry, but she included Ed too, for some reason we could never fathom, so that made three whining brats, leaving their skivvies for her to pick up and generally giving her the runaround.
Gayle and Audrey were off-base, on account of they didn’t have kids. The rest of us were in quarters. They weren’t much more than cabins, with flat asphalt roofs, but at least we had each other. At least inside that perimeter fence we were one Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.
Audrey didn’t seem to mind being outside. She was of a pioneering disposition. They could have put her in a mule wagon and she’d have made the best of things.
‘When in Rome,’ she always said.
Well, when in Rome, maybe, but not when you’ve been posted to the asshole of the universe.
Lois said, ‘Aud, you’re wasted here. Can’t they send you some place you’d have to live in a pup tent? I may just have a word to the CO’s wife. See if they got any mutinies need putting down. Any prairie fires need extinguishing.’
The rentals were just outside Drampton, in a place called Smeeth. It wasn’t a town. Just a couple of places growing sugar beet and a pumping station, supposed to keep the river moving along. It was called The Drain and it ran higher’n the roadway, which didn’t seem natural to me. I hoped and prayed that pumping station never broke down. Been me quartered there, I’d never have dared turn my back on it. I wouldn’t have slept nights for fear of waking up drowned.
Where they were, looked like one house but it was two, back to back, holding each other up but only just. Every house out there had that look about it, sagging in the middle, crouched down, like the sky was too much for it. They had a whole lot of sky in Norfolk, England.
Audrey and Lance were in one side of this broke-back house, Gayle and Okey were in the other, and oh how Gayle longed for a baby. A baby, and quarters, with steam heating and a Frigidaire.
‘Next year,’ Okey said, ‘next year.’
They seemed like a pair of skinny kids, playing house. Her with her ponytail and her bobbysocks. Him with his crewcut.
Gayle put on the coffee and Audrey fetched a kitchen stool from her place, Gayle and Okey not having much in the way of seating.
‘Right, this king?’ Lois said.
‘The king.’ Betty put her straight.
‘Whatever. They’ll have a fancy funeral for him, right? With a big parade and everything. And it’ll be in London, huh? Because he’s the king.’
‘Well, I guess.’
‘And where exactly is London?’
Audrey said it was in the south-east. Fact was, though, none of us had seen the sun since the day we landed, so that didn’t help much. Get to the base gate, we still wouldn’t know whether to turn left or right.
‘Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?’ Lois was looking excited, jiggling Sandie up and down on her knee. ‘We go, girls. We go. Find London, see the parade, then have some fun. See a new movie, or a show. Find ourselves some top-hole toffs, what-ho, treat a girl to dinner, dontcher know.’
Betty said much as she’d love to go and pay her respects, Ed’d never allow it. For starters, who’d look after Sherry and Deana? ‘And Crystal,’ she said to me, ‘who’d mind her?’ She was looking to me to stop her building up any silly hopes. When it came to playing the mommy card, showing how you just had to rein yourself in once you had kids, Betty always turned to me for back-up because you sure as hell couldn’t rely on Lois.
Gayle said, ‘I will.’ Her love of children extended even as far as Deana Gillis. Deana was in third grade. Sherry, Betty’s youngest, was in first grade, same as my Crystal. Well, they should have been, except nobody ever heard of grade school in England. In elementary school there they just had names like Miss Boyle’s Class, Mrs Warley’s Class, Miss Jex’s Class. Crystal’s reading and writing seemed to be coming along okay. Still, every night I prayed we weren’t ruining our child’s education. Wrecking her future just so’s her daddy could save their English asses from the Red Menace.
‘And what about little Sandie?’ Betty now felt she had a watertight case. I could tell because she wasn’t furrowing her brow quite so deep. ‘You can’t drag a tiny tot thousands of miles,’ she said. ‘Not even knowing where you’re going to. Do you realise, they don’t even have enough food out there? I’m sorry, Lois, but it’d be just too crazy for words.’
Audrey said, ‘Well, I guess that’s the kinda attitude opened up the West.’
She never had a lot of patience with Betty. Besides, even I knew nothing’s thousands of miles away in England. You keep going, it won’t be long before you run outta country.
Then Gayle piped up. She said, ‘I’ll look after all of them. I don’t mind not going. I never even heard of this king.’
Betty said, ‘No. It’s a wild and irresponsible idea.’
‘Hey…’ Lois was pepping up her coffee from the bottle. Those little red patches were breaking out over her cheekbones. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I could care less. You’re the royalty freak. I can go to London any damn time I please.’ And everything went quiet, ’cept for Sandie, crying with the hot-aches, thawed her little fingers out too fast against the wood-stove.
Gayle said, ‘Okey’s Mom mailed me the new McCall’s pattern book. Anyone want a look at it? There’s a real easy pattern for a bolero.’ And she ran upstairs to get it. I whispered to Audrey, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’
‘Mm-mm,’ she said, ‘and the dressmakers.’
I took Sandie on my lap, tried to rub her hands better, and Betty squared away the bottle of Jim Beam behind a cushion; hoping Lois might forget it, I daresay.
2
We were just finishing up dinner, Crystal wriggling in her chair, wanting to get down and play, Vern waving his fork around, last piece of fried potato getting cold while he told me about some new Pratt & Whitney turbojet that could take you to over 1,000mph, when the phone rang. It was Betty.
‘Now, listen,’ she said. ‘Here’s the latest. They’re taking the king to London on Monday, along the railroad, travelling real slow, so folks can pay their respects. And here’s the best bit: it’ll be going right by here, no more’n a few miles away, and Ed says I can go, just as long as I’m home in time for the girls. So, could you drive down, tell Gayle and Audrey, and I’ll call up Lois? I thought I’d throw a coffee tomorrow, so we can plan what we’re gonna wear?’
I said, ‘Betty, that’s easy. Unless there’s a sudden change in the climate I’ll be wearin Vern’s duck field-jacket and his five-buckle snow boots. Heck, I might just see if we still got an Alaska-issue comforter. Get myself sewed up inside it.’
‘Peggy Dewey!’ she said. ‘Shame on you! The queen’s gonna be looking right out of that train, and Princess Margaret. We have to do this thing right. I think just a touch of mourning. A little black hat, maybe, or a pair of gloves. Jeepers, we’re gonna be seen by royalty.’
Vern thought I was crazy. He was all wrapped round me, after lights out, trying to keep me warm and get what he figured he was owed seeing he was gonna be three nights away, standing the duty.
‘What you wanna do that for?’ he said. ‘Standin’ out there, ketchin yer death. Be a bunch a breeds there, too. You seen some of them locals? Bunch a freaks. Now, you gonna get outta that passion-killer so we can mess around a little?’
Messing around was Vern’s main interest in life, after his baby, with her static thrust of 3,750lb. And Crystal, of course. He loved throwing her up in the air till she screamed. Arm-wrestling with her, pretending to let her win.
‘Did you know kings and queens bunk down in separate quarters?’ I got to thinking about that again, after we’d messed around.
‘Jeez, Peg,’ he said, ‘I was just dozing off.’ He made himself cosy again, hogging all the covers. ‘Who cares?’ he said. ‘Bunch a throwbacks, sitting round in robes.’
First time I saw Vern he was dancing with a girl, couldn’t have been more than four feet ten. She was looking him in the belly-button and he was giving me the eye over her head. He did look cute in his Blues. Still, I should have known better. My sister Connie married the army and that was a five-minute wonder.
Soon as Vern knew I had fallen with Crystal he done the decent thing and my folks were happy to see the back of me, twenty-two and still no sign of any Hollywood screen-test. We were married in August, in the chapel on the base, his folks come down from Costigan, first and last time they ever left Maine, and we had an arch of sabres and shrimp hors-d’oeuvre and the whole nine yards. November he got orders to Ladd Field, Alaska.
Crystal come along in a big hurry, waters busted in the mall at Topperwein and my mom grinding her teeth every time I got a pain, telling me how this was only the start of my troubles. Nine pounds eleven ounces, she weighed, and she was the living image of her daddy, only he didn’t get to see her till she was nearly four months old.
We landed at Elmendorf and while I was waiting for the transport up to Ladd, looking for a place to warm the baby’s bottle, a girl come up to me, little newborn scrap in her arms and another one at foot, and she says to me, ‘Why, Peggy Shea! It is you. I’m not usually wrong about a face, but you’re carrying a few extra pounds these days.’
Last time I remembered seeing Betty Glick was when Future Homemakers catered a Mother-Daughter Spaghetti Supper for the Class of ’42, and she was in charge, in her sweetheart apron, giving her orders, little piggy eyes and a real homely face.
She already knew Ladd. They’d been on the base nearly a year and she’d just been back to Texas for the birth of little Sherry. So we were a marriage made in heaven, me not knowing what in the world I was going to and Betty never happier than when she was showing somebody the ropes.
Four years of marriage and motherhood had left its stamp on her. She’d lost her puppy fat and got herself a permanent too. She seemed real grown up, compared to the way I felt, but then, I think Betty was born grown up. And she was so proud of her Ed. I never thought he was all that. Everything about him was kinda hard and square, even his head. Lois reckoned he was made outta sheet metal.
‘I swear,’ she used to say, ‘Ed Gillis was not born of woman. I think they just punched in a few rivets and rolled him off the line at Boeing.’
Me and Vern were okay, when he was around – which wasn’t much. They were putting in long hours, training on the Superfortress, and then when he did get a 96 he liked to go off fishing. Now I think back on it, we didn’t hardly know each other.
‘Love ya,’ he used to say, when he was drifting off to sleep. ‘Whoever y’are.’
So I started hanging out with Betty Gillis, née Glick, picking things outta the Sears catalogue and clipping recipes for tuna bake and generally raising hell. Summer nights up there, when it never gets dark, if Vern and Ed were standing the duty, I’d go round to her quarters, tuck Crystal in with Deana and Sherry, and we’d sit out front, drink iced tea and wonder what became of all those other big shots from Topperwein High.
Audrey I met later on, when we rotated through Kirtland. She rang my doorbell, told me there was a coffee klatsch at the Officers’ Wives’ Club and signed me up for the Blood Drive. Wouldn’t take no for an answer on either score.
You could go to some of those wives’ clubs not knowing another soul and come away in the same condition, none of the in-crowd being inclined to get off their backsides and welcome a newcomer. But I’ll say this for Audrey: she had an open and friendly way about her. She’d stride across any room in her white bucks and make herself known to lonesome strangers.
She was married to Lance Rudman and they made a handsome pair. They were the kind of people knew where they’d come from and where they were going. Lois called them the Class Presidents.
Lo came on the scene while we were stationed at Kirtland too. She was married to Herb Moon. He was kinda dopey-looking, seemed slow on the uptake, except when he climbed into the cockpit of a B-50. Up there, so I heard, he was one cool customer.
‘Life’s a bitch,’ she said, when she found out we’d done a tour in Alaska. ‘Herb woulda loved that. All that rugged scenery and weather and stuff. ’Stead of all those cans of Dinty Moore I been feeding him, he coulda bagged himself a whole caribou. But no. He just had to go an’ draw Hickam Field, Hawaii. Heaven on earth, girls. You ain’t had a rope of Hilo violets hung round your neck, you ain’t lived. Papaya juice. Pineapples. Mangoes. I tell you something. Herb may not be no dreamboat, but that man took me to paradise, no mistake.’
‘Well, she’ll have to trim her cloth a bit different now.’ That’s what Betty said when Lois fell pregnant with Sandie. But she was wrong. Took more’n a little baby to slow down Lois Moon. They took her straight from the Aztec King Bowling Alley to the General Landers J. Hooverman Mother & Baby Unit and not a minute to spare. I heard language that night I couldn’t even begin to spell.
Course, didn’t matter what Lois said or did, Herb thought the sun rose and set by her, and seems like nothing since has made him change his mind. They were a pair a love-birds, in a manner a speaking, even though they didn’t always fly in formation.
Gayle and Okey were the real pigeon pair, known each other since the day they were born, near enough.
First time I saw Gayle she was hanging around in the laundry room at Drampton, didn’t know how to work the driers and too scared to ask. I thought she was somebody’s brat, till we got talking. I took her under my wing a little, after that, specially when Okey was away on assignment. There are lonely times when you’re married to the military. You gotta hope you can click with a few girls on your post, hang out with them. You gotta get through the days as best you can, waiting around for friend husband to come home from the pad.
Audrey used to pass her some of her story books, but Gayle was no reader, nor much of a homemaker neither, though Betty did try giving her a few lessons. I reckon Gayle lived on potato chips and Dr Pepper, and when Okey was home, they just lived on love. Planned on having a houseful of kids and living happy ever after. On an LT’s pay, best of luck was what I thought, but I never said it.
3
Gayle didn’t come with us that day. She said she’d sooner stay behind in Lois’s nice warm quarters and mind Sandie than wave off some old king, and that suited Lois just fine. ‘I’d go and watch for a freight train to go by,’ she said. ‘Anything to get off this God-forsaken base.’
I wasn’t so sure, myself. It was a raw morning, misty too, and there was some creature out in that fen making a unearthly noise. Vern reckoned the whole place belonged under the ocean. He used to say, ‘They took this place from the water, and one of these days that water’s gonna come and take it right back.’
He left me to answer the tricky questions from Crystal, such as would it come higher’n our house and how could fishes breathe?
Me and Betty took our girls to school, and I don’t know who was more excited, Deana and Sherry ’cause they got a extra Milky Bar in their lunch-pail, guilt candy from mommy, or Betty because she was getting out from under.
Then we picked up Lois and Audrey and there were sharp words, on account of Lois wearing a red windbreaker and Betty suggesting she could have showed more respect. I drove and Betty sat up front with me, and she never stopped yammering.
‘The Duke of Windsor,’ she said, ‘he’s come sailing in from New York. He’s got some nerve, I must say, running off with that home-wrecker, leaving everybody in the lurch. Ask me, he as good as killed his poor brother, and the queen, of course, the old queen, she’s not been seen. She’s at … hold on, here, let me get this right …’ She’d brought her newspaper clippings with her. ‘Marlborough House, that’s where she’s at. Must be heartbroken…’
Audrey, being no slouch, had been following all of this, but she said, ‘Whoa, Betty, just back up, would you? You just lost me. I thought the old queen was gonna be on this train we’re heading to see?’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see where you’re getting confused. Okay. At this time, they have three queens. There’s Queen Mary. She’s the one at Marlborough Castle. Then they have Queen Elizabeth, who was married to the king, just passed away. She’s the one we’ll be seeing.’
I said, ‘What about Queen Mary? Didn’t she get a king?’
‘Of course she did. He was King … something, I’ll remember it in a minute. Then, there’s the new Queen Elizabeth…’
Lois said, ‘Are we seeing her?’
‘No, no. She’s gonna be meeting the train when it gets to London. See, she’ll have had to stay there, attend to affairs of state an’ all. We’re gonna see, okay, the old Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. And they are…?’ She gave us time, see if we could come up with the right answers. We couldn’t. ‘…the mother and the sister of the new queen!’
Betty should have taught grade school. She was a natural.
I said, ‘Can you hear that? Like something…booming out there?’
Lois lowered her window. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s the Thing. Herb warned me about it. It hides out in these swamps, and when it smells prime American steak, it starts hollering.’
Audrey said, ‘Okay, so we’ve got the new queen and she’s waiting it out in London…’
‘Yeah, right,’ Lois said. ‘She’s smart enough not to come trailing up here. She’s sitting at home, trying on all her jewels, got the royal furnace turned up high as it’ll go.’
‘…so who’s gonna be the new king?’
Lois said, ‘Now, even I know the answer to that. His name’s Prince Philip, and he’s a doll.’
I said, ‘Lo, close up your window. I don’t like that noise.’
‘Sure,’ she said, ‘You worried that the Thing’s getting closer?’
‘It’s a bird.’ Audrey leaned forward to tell me. ‘I read about it. It’s just a big lonely old bird.’
Betty was handing round pictures. ‘Now, this is the Duke of Cornwall. He’ll be the next king, after his daddy. And this is little Princess Anne. Aren’t they cute? I just love these darling coats they wear. Gee, I hope Sherry and Deana are gonna be okay today. Deana looked a little sad when we dropped them off. And Lois…’ She turned right round in her seat, so Lois’d understand that what she was about to say wasn’t to be taken lightly. ‘…do you think little Sandie is in safe hands with Gayle? I mean, I’m not one to sling mud but she does suffer with the nerves and sometimes, well, I’ll speak plainly here, she takes comfort in alcoholic drink.’
I took a look at Lois in my rear-view mirror.
‘Betty,’ she said, ‘you’re right. You don’t sling mud. You just kinda creep up behind a person and smear it. Matter of fact, I think Sandie’ll be just fine with her Auntie Gayle. Way I look at things, anybody married to an airman needs a little something to get them through the day. Huh? Bottle a booze, photo album of Princess Margaret, the sound of Frank Sinatra’s sweet voice, it don’t have to look like a crutch to be one.’ And she dropped the pictures of the little Duke of Cornwall right back into Betty’s lap.
‘Why, Lois!’ Audrey said. ‘That’s almost profound!’
She was sitting forward, peering through the windshield with me, and I was driving like a real old lady, what with the mist and the ice and the fact that over there another vehicle was liable to come at you on the wrong side of the road. One minute they weren’t there, next minute they were, about ten or twelve of them, grey as the day itself, stamping their feet, hugging themselves in their poor thin coats, standing right there by the railroad crossing.
Audrey whistled through her teeth. ‘Well, look at that,’ she said, and they all turned together, like a herd of deer, sniffing for trouble. Like they’d never seen a DeSoto station-wagon in their lives before.
Betty said, ‘Okay, girls. Now remember. We are ambassadors for the United States of America, and this is a grieving nation.’
4
Nobody spoke.
Betty said, ‘Good morning, everyone! Y’all waiting to see the royal train go by?’
Still nobody spoke. I felt her pressing closer to me.
‘Peggy,’ she whispered, ‘let’s hand round some gum or something, show them we’re friendly.’
Audrey roared. ‘Jeez, Betty,’ she said, ‘anybody’d think we were in Sioux territory.’
There were people there wearing black armbands, and a woman carrying a Union flag, no stockings on, just zip-front boots, and her hair rolled up in a scarf, and her legs all wind-burned behind her knees. She kept looking our way.
I smiled and nodded and next time I looked she’d moved a bit nearer.
Audrey and Lois smiled and nodded, and she moved nearer still.
It was Lois made the breakthrough. ‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’m Lois Moon. You care for a stick of Juicy Fruit?’
Close up she was younger than she’d seemed. Thirty, maybe not even that. She just wasn’t making the best of herself. Matter of fact, sometimes she still don’t. Over the years, I have learned the average Englishwoman has scant interest in good grooming. She’s more likely to buy herself a new garden tool than get her nails done. But I’m running ahead of myself. That morning, back in ‘52, she was plain shabby. And she couldn’t take her eyes off Lois in her red jacket. She came and stood right next to her.
Betty found her voice again. She said, ‘Do you happen to know the estimated time of arrival?’
She took a while to answer. Or maybe just took a while to understand the question. ‘That won’t be long now,’ she said. ‘That’s only got to come from Wolverton.’
Betty said, ‘The funeral train? But I understood it was coming from Sandring Ham?’
She looked at Betty for the longest time. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘They’re bringing him from the house up to Wolverton, put him aboard the train and that’s a fair old step, along that lane. That must be three mile. Jim?’ She called across to a man in an armband. Looked like he didn’t have a tooth in his head. ‘Jim?’ she said. ‘That must be three mile from Sandringham to the siding?’
He didn’t answer. Just blew his nose and turned his back on us. Didn’t like her fraternising.
Lois whispered to me, ‘How come we’re getting the evil eye? I thought we were on the same side as these guys?’
Me too. In fact, my understanding was we were owed a little gratitude.
Betty said, ‘Well, we’re very sorry for your sad loss.’ She said it loud, kinda addressing the assembled throng. ‘Your royal family is the envy of the world. And the folks back home are just gonna die when they hear about us being here, so close to it all.’
Audrey said, ‘Well, I don’t know that die was the happiest choice of words.’
Lois said, ‘You guys see them around much? The King and Queen? They drive around in their carriage, waving and be-knighting people and stuff?’
I heard somebody say, ‘Bloody Yanks.’
Then things started to happen. First there was a humming in the rails, and then the ground started to rumble and people were pushing forward, craning and looking left. We could feel that something big was heading our way, bearing down on us, but we couldn’t see it. And then, out of the mist it came, real slow and heavy, a Standard Pacific engine and nine cars, dressed overall in black silk. Someone called out ‘God save the King!’ and every man there held his cap in his hand and bowed his head.
‘And the Queen,’ Lois’s new friend shouted. ‘Don’t forget her!’
I didn’t bow my head. I didn’t intend no disrespect, but we had driven there to see a princess at the very least. I looked long and hard as it passed us, but what with the steam and the mist, I couldn’t even pick out which car the casket was in. Audrey nudged me to look at Betty. She was standing to attention, eyes closed, with a kinda ecstatic look on her face. Then the train slid away, back into the mist, and the ground stopped rumbling and the rails stopped humming and Lois said, ‘Well, I didn’t see a darned thing.’
To her dying day Betty claimed she’d had the best view ever. The Queen, all veiled in black, and the princess, very pale and strained, in a little velour hat and a mink collared coat, who had actually given her a sad wave of thanks.
‘You didn’t see them?’ she said, when Lois started bellyaching and any time after that when the subject was raised. ‘Why heaven’s sakes, girl, what were you doing?’
Our friend turned and gave us a grin. I guess, even with lend-lease food, all that malnutrition must have just ruined their teeth. ‘May Gotobed’s seen them,’ she said. ‘She’s stood as close to them as I am to you. She’s been a backstairs maid, donkey’s years, since the old king was alive.’
Betty said, ‘Oh boy! A backstairs maid! You hear that, Peggy? Go on! Tell us more!’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘May was on her way up with hot water when they found him. She seen him Tuesday night. He was outside having a smoke. Wednesday, she was carrying water up for a lady of the bedchamber and word come, Dr Ansell been sent for. Nothing he could do, of course. King was long gone. And the Duke of Gloucester, he come over directly in his motor car. That’s a cheery shade,’ she said, stroking Lois’s sleeve.
People were leaving. Just walking away into the mist.
Betty said, ‘I just love hearing about all this. I am the biggest fan of your royal family. I have so many pictures, especially of your Princess Margaret. She just looks such a sweet girl. Do you know any stories about her?’
The old guy called Jim was still there, hanging back, watching us. ‘Time you were getting off home, Kath Pharaoh. Careless talk costs lives.’
‘War ended, 1945, Jim,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you heard?’
We offered her a ride, but she came over shy. Looked flustered and said there was no need, she didn’t have far to go. Audrey called to the guy. ‘How about you?’ she said. ‘We have room for a small one.’
‘Save yer juice,’ he said, and both of them disappeared, him in one direction and Kath Pharaoh in the other. And there we stood in the freezing mist, the four of us, feeling about as welcome as a pack of prairie dogs.
Betty gave me one of her pretty-please looks. ‘Oh, Peggy, let’s go catch up to her, can we? Get her number, at least? I’d love to talk with her some more.’
It was all one to me because I needed to drive on and find a safe turning place, highways in England not being proper highways at all.
Lois said, ‘Heaven’s sakes, Betty. She’s gone. Let’s find a bar. Get ourselves a little inner warmth?’
But we soon found her, stepping out at a real brisk pace. It was her flag we saw first, sticking out of the top of her shopping bag. Betty wound her window down. ‘Hi again! We seem to be going your way. Are you sure we can’t give you a ride home?’
She had a dewdrop hanging from the end of her nose. ‘Go on, then,’ she said, and she tried to open Lois’s door, just tugging on it.
Betty leaped out. ‘No, no, you ride in front,’ she said, ‘then you can tell Peggy which way to go. Lois, move over.’
She got in. I looked at her, waiting for her to tell me which way to go, but she just sat there, so I just kept driving.
‘Well now, we should all introduce ourselves.’ Betty was bubbling. She was so happy we’d adopted somebody who knew a servant who’d breathed the same air as a real king. ‘I’m Betty. This here is Lois, and Audrey. We’re from the United States. Our husbands are stationed at the air base.’
Kath nodded. She was tongue-tied.
I said, ‘And I’m Peggy. Guess I’m just the driver around here.’
She smiled. ‘Do you take Blackdyke Drove,’ she said, ‘you’d best go steady. That’s all frez.’
I didn’t know what in tarnation she was talking about, but I soon found out.
‘My name’s Kath,’ she said, ‘Kath Pharaoh. Ah. Now you’ve gone and driv past the turn. That’s easy done, when you’re moving along so fast.’
Blackdyke Drove was just a track, when we found it again. The ground fell away from it, either side, and disappeared into the mist, and the mud had a frosting of ice that crackled under the wheels. I never got out of second gear, but Kath held on to the dash anyway and once or twice her hand came across towards the steering column, like she wanted to guide me.
‘What make of car would this be, then?’ she asked me. She’d been peering down into the foot-well. ‘So, that’s the go-faster pedal and that’s the go-slower pedal,’ she said. ‘I reckon as I could soon git the hang of that. But how does the juice make the wheels go round? That’s a mystery to me. And what’s this?’ She hit the horn. ‘Oh, beg your pardon,’ she said, laughing, and gave me another good look at her poor English teeth. ‘That’s enough to waken the dead,’ she said. ‘That’s enough to waken him indoors. STOP!’
I felt the tail slide a little and I heard Audrey’s head crack against her window.
‘See? You nearly went past,’ she said, real accusing. And there it was. Another sway-back house, hunkered down low, just like Gayle and Audrey’s billet out at Smeeth.
I said, ‘This your place, Kath?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Your friend all right, in the back?’
Audrey said it was no more than a tap and her head was just fine, but Lois thought a little drink would be a good idea. Lois often did.
‘You could have delayed shock, Aud,’ she said. ‘Is there a bar, some place near? One of those thatched taverns?’
‘There’s the Flying Dutchman,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to go in there, though. That’s for men. I could make you a nice cuppa tea.’
Betty loved that idea. ‘Then we can keep Audrey under observation,’ she said. ‘Check she doesn’t have a concussion. And I would just adore to visit with a real English family.’
Lois said a Norfolk fen was the last place on earth she’d want to be with any kinda medical condition. She said she’d want to be right back where Uncle Sam’d take good care of her, but Betty was out of the car already, and Audrey wasn’t far behind.
‘Come on!’ she said. ‘It’ll be interesting. See how other people live. And, by the way, I do not have a concussion.’
Kath seemed kinda proud to be taking us home, like it was Sand-ringham Palace itself. Course, in those days she didn’t know what lovely homes American people had, and ignorance is bliss.
I’ve often thought, if that king hadn’t died when he did, I don’t suppose we’d ever have met Kath or gone driving up that frozen track. We’d just have stayed home and baked cookies, and then a whole lot of things would have turned out different.
5
‘John Pharaoh,’ she shouted, ‘we’ve got company. Come out here and see this fancy motor.’
We filed in, and Aud had to duck her head. Those ceilings were so low she nearly ended up with a concussion after all. It was dark inside. We pushed through a narrow passageway, old coats hanging on pegs.
‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to take us as you find us.’
I could see a wood-range, and a bed, with somebody on it, but my eyes were still getting accustomed to the gloom.
‘I seen the train,’ she said. ‘We give him a good send-off. Jim Jex was down there, said did you want a pup off of his fowling dog, I said no thank you, and these ladies kindly brought me home. They’re from Drampton, with the Yankee Air Force, and you should see the big fancy car they got, windows that go up and down and all sorts. Dear God, that smells like a old hoiley in here. John? You awake?’
First impression was, they only had one room. Later on, when I knew them better, I saw the place where he kept his eel traps. Another little room that could have been fixed up, for a bedroom or something, instead of them carrying on the way they did, sleeping in the kitchen.
That’s where he was, the first time we saw him, just getting up off the bed. Kath gave him the Juicy Fruit gum. She’d had it in her hand all the time, since Lois gave it to her.
‘Straighten that counterpane,’ she said, ‘we’ve got company.’
John Pharaoh was a good-looking devil. He wasn’t tall like Lois’s Herb or brawny, like Ed Gillis. He was soft-looking for a man, but there was something about him. Black curly hair. And a real winning smile. I guess it was the dimples. One of his eyes wasn’t quite right, though, and sometimes it gave him a crafty look, but it had a kinda awful fascination about it, drew you to keep looking at it. Then you felt sorry for staring at a person’s affliction.
He slid off the bed and he waved his fingers, like we were invited to sit down, only I couldn’t see where, there being just the one easy chair and that was occupied by a old yellow dog, size of a hog.
Kath was running around, still in her coat and her boots. She brought cups from a rack by the sink and extras from a cupboard, with saucers that didn’t match.
‘You’ll like these,’ she said to Betty. ‘Coronation saucers. King George the Fifth. A course, the cups have all gone west. Pull up a seat.’
There were three wooden chairs around the table, and my God, that room was cold. Either you stood close enough to the range to get scorched, or you froze. Betty gave me a brave little smile, this whole excursion being her idea after all. She was trying to show her appreciation, being a great believer in the importance of politeness, but there was one thing she did care more about than manners, and that was standards of hygiene, and I doubt those cups had ever seen hot water.
Kath made tea in big brown pot and pulled a woolly cover over it, so just the spout and the handle were free. There was no sugar, and the only milk she offered was Carnation, straight from the can.
I declined. Never did take to tea.
Kath said, ‘I can do you a Bovril?’ but I didn’t care for the sound of that neither. It made me realise Audrey was right. Travel gives you the opportunity to understand foreign ways of life. It can make a wiser person of you. And when I seen how those poor English lived, it made me want get down on my knees and give thanks for being born in God’s own country.
Kath brought out photos, from a drawer. They were faded and creased, but Betty loved them. Picture-postcards of some old king and queen, done up in their fancy orbs and sceptres.
Betty said, ‘Now, correct me if I’m wrong, Kath, but isn’t this Queen Mary?’
‘That’s right,’ Kath said. ‘She was Mary of Teck. And she was fixed up to marry one of the princes, but he dropped dead, so they passed her along to his next brother.’
I said, ‘That’s terrible. I wouldn’t have stood for that.’
Kath said, ‘Me neither. That’s like handing on a dead man’s trousers, still got a bit of wear left in them.’
‘Well,’ Betty said, ‘I guess you can’t let a princess go to waste.’
Lois was scratching the old dog behind its ears and slurping up that disgusting brew. ‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why that king had to go outside for a smoke. No wonder he caught his death. What kind of milquetoast was he, didn’t just light up any place he chose? All he had to do was pass a edict or something.’
John Pharaoh seemed disposed to find everything Lois said highly amusing. There were some snapshots of poor folk, too. They all seemed to be kin to Kath’s friend May Gotobed, or some kinda relations to the Pharaohs themselves, only it was too complicated for me to follow. There was one of them standing with genuine princes, posing in front of a mountain of ducks they just helped shoot, but you had to be in the know to tell which ones were which. When they’re not wearing their crowns those princes just look like any ordinary Joe.
Audrey had asked for the bathroom and Kath had taken her, to show her the way, but Aud came back alone, beckoning me from the doorway to come and see something.
Kath was in the car, making believe she was driving. She was sitting at the wheel, window down, arm leaning out, making revving noises like she was barrelling down Route 66, next stop the Rio Grande. She laughed when she saw us watching her.
‘I shall soon have the hang of this,’ she said. ‘You could go anywhere you pleased in a motor like this. You could go to Ely.’
‘You should see where I just went,’ Audrey whispered to me on our way back into the house. ‘It’s a seat over a bucket. And get this. There’s two of them, side by side. His ’n’ hers.’
Kath kept bringing things out to show us. Her best tablecloth, and a badge she got for fen-skating in 1936, and a magazine with pictures of Ava Gardner, and then more tea, though God knows none of us wanted any. She seemed so proud to have us as her guests.
‘You must be getting peckish,’ she said, when she’d run out of treasures to show us. ‘I could find you a bit of something. Slice of bread and butter? We’ve got a tin of pineapple, sent from Canada, only he’s gone and lost the opener. John? Do you look again for that tin-opener these ladies can have a bite to eat.’
But John Pharaoh was more interested in Lois’s legs.
Lo was always ready to eat, but I caught her eye, managed to stop her before she took their last crust. I don’t believe she ever heard of war rations.
‘No, Kath,’ Betty said. ‘We really have to be making tracks. I’d just have loved to talk with you some more, but we have our girls to pick up from school. But you know, you should come and visit with us some time. I have so many picture albums I’d love to show you. Princess Margaret is my favourite, and I’m just longing for her to find a beau.’
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