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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781785356247 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Top Hat Books |
| Publication date: | 12/08/2017 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 432 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
David Matthews was a teacher for twenty-two years and a head teacher for eleven. His play 'Under the Shadow of Your Wings' was professionally directed and performed in the summer of 2015, as part of Croydon's heritage festival. David divides his time between family life in Croydon and renovating a cottage in south-west France.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Monday, 12 August 1940
All day there had been dogfights high overhead. It was mid-afternoon when the rector's wife stepped through the French windows into the garden. Bullets spattered down through the trees, ripping the turf around her feet yet leaving her unscathed. This, the second miracle of her life, turned her wits.
In the same hour, Delia Simmonds was about to wring the neck of a young cockerel ready for the pot while her father, the retired schoolmaster, was sitting on the old oak bench, resolutely ignoring the combat above the clouds. The squawking of the doomed bird was drowned out as a stricken aeroplane came screaming down from the sky toward them. They watched as it roared above the roof of their cottage, skimming the tops of the trees before ploughing straight into the South Lodge on the other side of the wood.
They heard the crash, but neither felt compelled to hurry along the lanes to see where it had hit the ground. News would reach them soon enough. They had inhabited the fringes of village life for some years now. As an accumulation of barnacles and weed gradually renders a vessel unseaworthy, so the steady accretion of gossip and suspicion, which had attached itself to the schoolmaster and his family since the tragic events ten years before, had made his position untenable. He had bought a small parcel of land in the woodlands and had a cottage built there for himself and his daughter.
As it happened, it could not have been ten minutes before a child came running up the path to the gate.
'You'd best come, miss, sir. Plane's crashed into the South Lodge. They're saying your Bertie and Mrs. Cordingley's inside but it's all ablaze.'
For a moment, Delia froze, the limp bird in her hand, the basket for its feathers between her feet. Then she threw back her head and laughed and laughed.
The child fled.
'Pull yourself together, Delia. Have some self-control,' snapped her father. 'Get your coat. You'll have to see what's happened.'
'I'll pluck the bird whilst it's warm. There'll be nothing I can do.'
A plane has come screaming out of the sky like some vengeful angel and passed over us to strike at Anstace and Bertie. If this is retribution, laughter is the only response, she thought. She ripped out the bird's feathers in handfuls.
'We ought to find out if anything's happened to Bertie,' her father said some minutes later.
'Ought we? Very well. I'll go. I shall go.' She took the fowl into the kitchen and left it, ready for drawing, in a large earthenware crock. She washed her hands and threw a fawn-coloured cardigan over her shoulders before leaving the cottage and cutting through the woods toward the South Lodge, on the edge of the estate. She would not have expected to hear much birdsong during the heat of the afternoon but even so the woods seemed particularly, eerily quiet. As she neared the scene, though still muffled by the swaying canopy of leaves, she was able to hear the calling and sounds of urgency. Then the spit and crackle of the flames became audible and she saw the smoke billowing, grey and yellow. Its acrid scent caught the back of her throat.
There was a far larger crowd than she had expected. A detachment of soldiers from those billeted in the grounds of the Big House had arrived and an officer was taking control. Someone had found a pump and hose and valiant efforts were being made to quench the flames whilst the wreckage of the plane was perched above the structure like some ridiculously incongruous decoration challenging the pre-eminence of the Elizabethan chimneys; remarkably, they remained intact.
People began to notice her now, and although some of the village women stood back awkwardly, most gathered around her. They want to draw out the drama, Delia thought. They want to milk this bit of war on their doorstep for all its worth. The ghoulish urgency to their speech was at odds with any sympathy they might try to convey.
'Pilot's dead that's for sure. Poor lad. Some mother's son shot down by bloody Jerry. But were they ... would you know if there was anyone in the Lodge?'
'I'd heard they'd gone away for a few days.'
'The Sergeant says it's not safe to go in while it's still burning but he would if there was a chance ...'
'There's been no screams or cries for help and people were here as soon the plane hit.'
Delia just shook her head, refusing to engage and watched the men fight the fire as best they could. Someone pressed a mug of tea into her hand. Others grew more solicitous, taking her silence as shock and grief. Whatever the hostility which Delia and her family felt toward Mrs. Cordingley (that was common knowledge throughout the village), for all the gossip that had stuck to them since the suicide — and some of it really nasty, if truth be told — and it had cost Mr. Simmonds his job, in the end, make no mistake — the lad, after all, was still their kin. It would be unnatural to feel nothing.
'It's a shock to us all,' said one. 'It could've come down on anyone, blown the whole village to smithereens like as not. It's a blessing if the lodge was empty.'
'Act of God, that's what.'
'We'll see what the rector says.'
'Mrs. Jackman thinks it's a miracle. She's out in her garden now singing hymns on her hands and knees.'
'Even more doolally than before then.'
And so it went on. The purposeless chatter barely registered with Delia as she waited, watching her neighbours and the squaddies from the camp subdue the fire as best they could. In the end, an engine from Faversham arrived and the fire officers took over.
The priority seemed to be the dead pilot and identifying him. He was the only certain casualty. She was told that they'd assess the situation in the morning, when the building would still be smouldering but safe enough to investigate. If there had been anyone inside, they would not have survived; that seemed clear. They said she'd be better off going home and getting some rest. The army would guard the site, she was told. There'd be no looting, if that was a worry. They had to protect the plane from kids scrambling about for souvenirs, apart from anything else.
Delia did not take the most direct route back to her father. There was nothing urgent about inconclusive information.
She could not help wondering whether, even in death (if she had indeed been killed in the Lodge), Anstace had not also stolen some advantage. How fortunate to meet oblivion, swallowed whole by death in one great gulp, than slowly to be licked away, sucked dry in life's terrible maw. Such, she thought, was likely to be her own lot: left with her father, eking out a threadbare existence on his meagre pension in the same village where she had always lived, where every familiar hedge, every ancient wall hemmed her in with disappointment and loss. Had there been happier times? Of course. But her memory of them had no more power to move her than a box of faded sepia snaps, to be glanced at and turned over.
She would return to the South Lodge in the morning when the firemen would start picking over the ruins. They would, of course, salvage what they could. Perhaps they would make a pile of rescued items and stack them under the torn magnolia tree. Some Cordingley relation would be found to pore over them, sifting for anything of value before sending what remained to be knocked down under the hammer at some third-rate auction.
Perhaps it would be Anstace herself who would sort the debris. Perhaps she would rise from the ashes. Perhaps she was still alive.
Delia's slow return to her cottage took her past the rectory. There, on her knees, not praying but searching apparently for something in the grass, was Hetty Jackman, the rector's wife. She was paying no heed to either her husband or the doctor's wife who were both trying to encourage her to leave off her desperate business and go inside. She kept pulling free as they tried to get her to stand, and began scrabbling anew. Delia paused momentarily, allowing a smile to warp her lips.
If Hetty Jackman were to suffer that too would indicate some justice. So much responsibility for the unravelling lay at her door. Had hers been foolish interference or gross presumption? Delia did not really care now. There was no point in raking it all up again. But she would certainly feel no pity if Hetty Jackman had indeed turned 'even more doolally than before'.
Thursday, 22 August 1940
It was on the third day that Frederick Simmonds received a telephone call from Kingsnorth and Kingsnorth, Canterbury solicitors, to inform him that his son, Bertie, and Anstace Cordingley were alive. Most fortuitously, he was told, they had not been at home when the South Lodge was hit and, if Mr. Simmonds could be at home on an afternoon during the following week, Mr. Kingsnorth believed that a meeting would be in order. There were some matters of importance to discuss.
Delia was preparing to bottle the summer fruit when she answered the door to the solicitor. She left the preserving jars ranged in rows along the table, hanging her apron on the back of the door; it was a job which she could easily return to.
'Mr. Kingsnorth. I believe we met once before, years ago.'
'Good afternoon, Miss Simmonds. Yes, Robert Kingsnorth. Is your father, is Mr. Simmonds at home?'
'Why would he not be?'
'Indeed.'
She took his hat and overcoat, thinking him ridiculously overdressed for August, and led him into the back room with its view of the vegetable garden and fruit cage. It was where her father would invariably sit when he was not outside working the plot. She gestured to the solicitor to sit in the only other upholstered seat but drew up a ladderback chair for herself and waited. Outside, the dog, chained to its kennel, continued to bark intermittently.
Though now he had to be in his late seventies, Frederick Simmonds still struck Robert Kingsnorth as essentially a man in his prime. Tall, well-built, he seemed to have lost none of his strength with the passing of the years. He did not sit low in his chair but filled it, his shoulders snug within the wings of the chairback. Conscious of his own flabbiness, and the stretch of his waistcoat, Kingsnorth noted that there was no paunch or any suggestion of incipient corpulence about this old man.
'Good afternoon, Mr. Simmonds. Thank you for seeing me.' And then, when there was seemingly no reaction, 'You have a fine allotment here, I see. Very productive, I'm sure.'
Frederick Simmonds turned his head slowly and then rose to his feet to shake the solicitor's proffered hand.
So there has been some aging, thought Kingsnorth. He had expected the old man to have moved with more confident ease. His eyes too lacked the dark energy which had made such an impression those years before. It was as if this man were now powered by a weaker, smaller engine, which lacked the capacity to mobilise fully body and mind.
'You have something to discuss.'
'I do, Mr. Simmonds. I do. I am not sure if you are cognisant of ... are aware of what I have to tell you.' He paused. There was silence.
It was Delia who broke it.
'Neither are we, Mr. Kingsnorth, until you explain.'
'Indeed. The matter is this, quite simply this: they are married. Mrs. Cordingley ... your son ... married.'
The devastation of the South Lodge, and the news that they had escaped, were neither as explosive as this. Delia felt the room contract around her as if everything had suddenly shrunk and was squeezing her, sucking the air from her lungs and compressing every joint in her body. She found herself repeating what Kingsnorth had told them. Was she doing so aloud? She could not tell. She reiterated the words but they might have been alien phonemes from another tongue; they had sense, undoubtedly, but they carried no meaning. What could this mean? What further aberration was this?
Mrs. Cordingley. Your son. Married. Anstace. Bertie. Married. Simply.
'Simply?' she said. 'Simply? How can it be that? After everything, how can it be that?' She was shouting now. She saw Kingsnorth flinch. She also saw something in his face — was it satisfaction? — as he watched her react to his news. She felt herself grow ugly as the rage and bile began to build up inside her, twisting her features. She thought she was going to be sick. She would be sick if this man continued to stare at her. She wanted to be sick.
Frederick Simmonds spoke and drew Kingsnorth's attention.
'I do not think of him as my son.'
'Nevertheless.'
'You have told me nothing which you could not have told me over the telephone.'
'I thought the shock ...'
'There is no shock.' As Simmonds started to speak, Kingsnorth permitted himself to indicate Delia sitting, clenched, catatonic even, to his left.
'I have experienced no shock,' continued Simmonds, 'because there is no consequence of any moment. I told you this before.
You dabble around trying to find meaning, joining together this and that in your legalistic mind, trying to impose on others a system and a structure. One thing leads to another. Of course it does: cause, effect, cause, effect. But there is no meaning there. Small minds, Mr. Kingsnorth, small minds try to impose order to give everything meaning because they cannot accommodate chaos. Whilst I have learned to embrace it. I cannot speak for my daughter. She will take things as they come in her own way. But for me, though I may be interested in news of this and that, I am not moved. You can tell me nothing of Bertie or Anstace Catchpool —'
'I have always known her by her married name of "Cordingley", although I suppose she is "Mrs. Simmonds" now.'
Kingsnorth realised he had betrayed himself with this spiteful aside for the daughter broke in, preventing her father from continuing. Although her face was sweaty and a red mottling played upon her throat, his quip had jolted her out of her temporary debility. There was a tremor in her voice but it would not, he knew, stem from any weakness but from the sheer effort of suppressing a dangerous fury. When she smiled at him, and her words were squeezed through this mockery of pleasantness, he knew she had seen through his professional veneer.
'You have an interest, do you not, Mr. Kingsnorth? I am right, am I not, that your wife is the late Mr. Cordingley's cousin? I am right, am I not, that your wife's family has never accepted the terms of his mother, Lady Margery Cordingley's will? And no doubt I am also right that Cordingleys and Kingnorths are rejoicing in a development which they think might give substance to whatever claim they are hatching to appropriate the estate.'
'Miss Simmonds, I can assure you — '
'No, Mr. Kingsnorth, you can assure us of nothing. You are compromised. But even if you weren't, understand this: my father and I have no interest in Bertie's legacy. We are not involved. We never have been. Ever. Never. We made that clear before. And I think, therefore, that your only purpose in coming here this afternoon is to malign.'
She had risen from her chair and taken a step forward so that, even had he not still been sitting, he would have felt threatened. As he stood and tried to muster some advantage (holding onto his lapels as if to emphasise his sombre, professional attire, lifting his chin from the starched constrictions of his wing-collar), he knew that nothing he could say would have the slightest effect. I have crossed a dangerous woman, he thought. I doubt she is entirely sane.
'Sit down, man,' said Simmonds. 'You came out here presumably to tell us more than this. You would have expected us to hear of this — this marriage — in due course, without having to set yourself up as the bearer of the news. So out with it. Sit down and out with it.'
Simmonds is ignoring his daughter. He has no more control over her, thought Kingsnorth, than over a wild thing; and to think that he once was a schoolmaster with every child in the neighbourhood obedient to his instruction.
Delia had turned aside and was standing away from them. One hand was on her throat, trying to assuage the burning sensation she was experiencing. The other, Kingsnorth saw, hung by her side, the fingers splayed rigid, immobile, but ready, it seemed, to snatch or grab at any weapon for attack or defence. Her lack of any femininity, any graciousness, repelled him and this was licence enough for him to wipe from his mind the humiliating fear for his person which, for a moment, she had induced in him. He turned toward the elderly schoolmaster. He did not care if his face registered the contempt with which he now defended himself.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "That They Might Lovely Be"
by .
Copyright © 2016 David Matthews.
Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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