The Soldier’s Wife

‘Will I have my own room at Auntie Iris’s?’ Blanche asks me.

‘No, sweetheart. It’ll be a crush. You’ll probably have to sleep in the back bedroom with the boys.’

‘Oh,’ she says, digesting this. It isn’t quite what she’d hoped for. ‘Well, I don’t mind. It might be quite fun, really, sharing a room.’

‘What does London look like?’ says Millie.

‘You’ll love it,’ says Blanche. She relishes being asked this—she loves being the expert on London. ‘The women have beautiful clothes, and the trains go under the ground, and there’s a park with pelicans …’

I understand Blanche’s yearning for London: sometimes I long for it too, even after all these years away, remembering the thrilling hum of the city, the people so different from island people, so much more vivid and purposeful, the yellow lamplight on smoky streets, the slow brown surge of the Thames. I remember too the sense of possibility—of a world that’s freer, wider, more open than this island. I share her excitement for a moment, allowing myself a spark of hope—that there could be good things about this, in spite of the war. A new freedom.

‘Can we go and see Buckingham Palace?’ says Millie.

She has a Buckingham Palace jigsaw that Evelyn gave her for Christmas.

‘I’m sure we will,’ I say.

To my relief, the queue begins to edge forward. Then I see that the people at the front are going down the steps from the pier and over a gangplank onto the boat. The small boat. It can’t be. They can’t expect us to go in that, all the way to England.

‘What is it, Mum?’ says Blanche, urgently. She’s heard my quick inbreath.

‘Nothing, sweetheart.’

She follows my gaze.

‘It isn’t a very big boat, Mum.’ A little uncertain.

‘No. But I’m sure it will be fine. I’m sure they know what they’re doing …’

She hears the apprehension in my voice. She gives me a questioning look.

The queue inches forward, silently.

In front of me is a solid middle-aged woman. Round her neck she wears a fox fur, which has a glass-bead eye, a predatory mouth, a lush russet tail hanging down. Millie is intrigued: she stares at the fox. A smell of mothballs hangs about the woman; she will have taken her best winter clothes out of storage. Next to her is her husband, who seems rather passive and cowed. You can tell she’s the one who makes the decisions.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ I say.

She turns and gives a slight smile, approving of my children.

‘It was just that I was wondering—is that the boat?’ I say.

‘Well—that’s what it looks like,’ she says.

She obviously takes trouble over her appearance; she has plucked her eyebrows out then pencilled them carefully in, and her face is heavily powdered. Her hat is fixed with a silver hatpin like a pansy flower.

‘We’ll never all get on that,’ I say. ‘They should have sent something bigger. Didn’t they realise how many of us there would be?’

The woman shrugs.

‘To be honest—excuse my language—but I don’t think they give a damn about us, in England,’ she says.

‘But—you’d think they’d have sent some soldiers. I mean, there’s no protection for us. We could meet anything on the journey …’

‘We’re expendable, let’s face it,’ says the woman. ‘They’ve given us up for lost. Well, I suppose Mr Churchill’s got an awful lot of things on his mind.’

She’s sardonic, resigned. I wish I could be like that—perhaps it’s a good way to be: not to expect very much, not to struggle against what is happening. But she doesn’t have children with her.

She pulls out the pansy hatpin and fans her face with her hat. Sweat has made thin runnels in the powder on her face. She turns back to her husband.

Panic moves through me. Millie’s hand is so tiny and helpless in mine: everything feels so unguessably fragile, so opened up to disaster—the bodies of my children, the flimsy little boat. I have to protect my children, I have to keep them safe; but I don’t know how to do that. I think of the boat, packed tight with all these people, edging its way across the wideness of sea, all that shining waste of water between us and Weymouth; of the dark secret threat that lurks in the depths of the sea.

I’m scarcely aware of the moment of decision—as though I perform the action almost before I think the thought. I find myself pulling Millie out of the queue, dumping the bags down beside her.

‘Stay there,’ I tell her.

I go to grab Blanche’s arm.

She’s startled. She turns to me jumpily.

‘Mum. What on earth are you doing?’

‘We’re going back home,’ I tell her.

She ignores what I say, or doesn’t hear me.

‘Mum.’ Her voice is splintered with panic. ‘We’ll lose our place in the queue.’

‘We’re going home,’ I say again.

‘But, Mum—you said we had to go now, or we couldn’t go at all.’ Her eyes are wide, afraid.

Millie tries to pick up her carpet bag, but she’s only holding one handle. The bag falls open and all her things tumble out—her knickers and liberty bodices, her candystripe pyjamas, her beloved ragdoll—all her possessions, intimate, lollipop-bright, spewing out all over the grubby stone of the pier. She starts to cry—shuddery, noisy sobs. She’s frightened and cross, and ashamed that she made the things spill.

‘Shut up, Millie. You’re such a crybaby,’ says Blanche.

Millie, outraged, sobs more loudly. There’s a slight cold drizzle of rain.

I gather up Millie’s things and try to brush the dirt off them. Everyone’s eyes are on me.

‘Mum, you can’t do this,’ hisses Blanche, in an intense whisper. She’s torn—desperate to make me listen, yet mortified at being involved in such a public scene. ‘We’ve got to get to England.’

‘The boat’s too small. It isn’t safe,’ I say.

The rain comes on more heavily. Rainwater soaks my hair, runs down my parting, runs down my face like tears.

‘But nothing’s safe any more,’ she says.

I have nothing to say to that.