Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud Read Free Book Online

Horrod’s boy, Vic, is there, and Ron Sutton, the Spence brothers and Peter Girling who will have to take his nickname, Girl, with him to foreign shores. They aren’t in uniform, I’m disappointed to see that, but in their best suits, flat caps, shirts, waistcoats and ties, black boots re-soled and polished to a shine.
    We follow them on to Gun Hill, to get a last glimpse of the sea, before we head to the station. There must be a hundred of them or more, and each with their own flock of women coming along behind, feathers fluffed up like a pack of geese, while the men stand back and watch them, arms crossed, faces cracked with pride.
    I climb on to the station-house roof to get a better view and I see Mr Allard, stiff and awkward, and his wife, fighting back her tears. Their son Abb has his small boys gathered in his arms, while his wife looks on, a handkerchief pressed against her nose. Runnicles is there too, nodding and counting, and I imagine his fingers itching to set it all down in his book. There’s my sister Ann, standing beside Jimmy Kerridge, dark and neat, not much taller than she is, who is to be off a week on Friday with a group of navy reserves. He’s promised her that they’ll be married as soon as he returns. A winter wedding is what they hope for. Not that they’ve told Father. Instead they’ve been using every afternoon they have to walk along the lanes that lead into Hoist Wood, taking the narrowest paths that force them to wind their arms around each other and squeeze in tight so they won’t be snagged by brambles. At night in bed Ann twists and turns, the blood in her veins too hot for rest, and in the mornings, exhausted by the battle of her dreams, she drags herself up and sits by the cold fire.
    ‘Can I not move to the big bedroom?’ I hear her ask Mother. ‘Now that the Miss Bishops are gone?’ But Mother shushes her. That room is the one nice thing she has and she’d prefer it if no one ever stepped in there again. ‘Someone might want it,’ she says. ‘And Lord knows we need the rent.’ And she leaves the window open and a jug of flowers on the ledge, and the quilt she made before she even met my father, folded over the bed.
     
    Three days after we say goodbye to our recruits a regiment of soldiers arrive. They are on their way to Belgium but they stop with us first to prepare themselves for war. The Bedfordshires, they are. And for the most part they are billeted at Henham Hall, although a dozen or so are sent on up to Blyfield House where Mary tells us they have them sleeping on camp-beds in the ballroom.
    The Bedfordshires have been with us less than a week, when the Royal Warwickshires, and then the Hampshires arrive. Some of them move on fast, but there are always more. Soon the hotels and the guesthouses are full again, and at Blyfield House Mary must share her bed with the scullery maid, so that soldiers from the Royal Fusiliers can be billeted in the attic. She comes over to us on Sunday, full of news. How Cook has threatened to leave if she has to skivvy for sixty extra men and share a bed with Violet who snores. Father laughs, although he has been uneasy all week, not saying a word to anyone but customers. And Mother takes Mary upstairs to inspect the good room which she has made ready for two soldiers from the Welsh Fusiliers who will be arriving on Wednesday. Mother wishes they were from the Royals – Mrs Horrod has been boasting she has royalty in her house – but you have to accept who you are given, and not say a word about it.
    Southwold is full to bursting and our village too, but they keep on arriving. George Allard is right, we must have the biggest army in the world, because soon they are sleeping in the village hall, in tents up on the scrub, or out in the open, hard up against the new barbed wire that has been spun along the tops of the low cliffs.
    Every morning I check the beach. Check the inlets and the gulleys, the river that lies behind the dunes. For