Frances Liardet - We Must Be Brave

Frances Liardet has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and studied Arabic at Oxford before traveling to Cairo to work as a translator. She currently lives in Somerset, England, with her husband and daughter, and runs a summer writing session called Bootcamp. We Must Be Brave is her second novel.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK:

My agents. In the US, heartfelt thanks to Deborah Schneider. In the UK, Jo Unwin, who uttered those thrilling words, Send me more! and whose hard work and wise counsel led to so many good things.

My editors, Helen Garnons-Williams of 4th Estate and Tara Singh Carlson of G. P. Putnams Sons. Perceptive, ingenious, patient guides on this exhilarating journey.

Sarah-Jane Forder, for copyediting. You and I know what you did. Thank you.

My friends Alison Clink, Nikki Lloyd, Crysse Morrison and Rosie Jackson. Talented writers all, sensitive critics, and generous companions in craft.

Robert, my husband. Attentive reader, tolerant of deadlines, caring parent. Love and gratitude.

Juliet, my daughter, four years old when I began this book, nine when I finished it. Beloved.

Juliets godmother, Kate Teale, for our forty years of friendship. An inspiration to me as a woman and as an artist.

My grandparents, Betty and Brendan OHagan, and Bill and Joan Liardet. For being brave.

The Game

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Unlike the village of Upton in Hampshire, the Upton of We Must Be Brave is an imaginary place, as is the town of Waltham and, for that matter, the hamlet of Barrow End. Southampton, of course, is real, as are its well-documented sufferings during the Second World War. While the global events described in the book are factual, the people described in the novel, and their joys and tribulations, are works of fiction.

S HE WAS FAST ASLEEP on the back seat of the bus. Curled up, thumb in mouth. Four, maybe five years old.

I turned round. The last few passengers were shuffling away from me down the aisle to the doors. Whose is this child? I called.

Nobody looked back. Perhaps the bombing had deafened them. Or maybe they simply didnt want to hear.

Please. Someones left a child!

But they were gone, making their way down the steps and joining the line of people straggling towards the village hall.

It was lucky I was there, checking every bus. Otherwise this small girl might have gone all the way back to Southampton. Everybody knew the city was still on fire. Wed seen the smoke from Beacon Hill.

She hadnt stirred, in spite of my calling. She lay senseless, a gossamer net of light-brown hair clinging to her forehead. Her puff-sleeved dress was a dusty mid-blue, the colour of the endpapers in the board books of my childhood. No coat or cardigan, despite it being the first day of December. Just a grimy white blanket tangled round her legs, the kind mothers wrapped their babies in, a special knit honeycombed with little holes.

I shook her small round shoulder. Wake up, little one. Wake up.

Her thumb fell out of her mouth, but she didnt open her eyes. I stroked back her hair. Her skin was warm and slightly damp. Her tongue was ticking against the roof of her mouth. Thumb or no thumb, she was still sucking.

Suppose she started crying when I woke her? I had no great experience of tearful children. Perhaps I should simply carry her into the village hall, and never mind if she was asleep. I took off my new brooch, a silver bar with a pearl, and put it in my pocket. I didnt want it to scrape the childs face.

I slid my hands against her hot sides, into her hotter armpits, and pulled her towards me. She was amazingly solid, made of denser stuff than the rest of the world. I got one arm round her back and the other under her bottom, and hoisted her up. Her head rocked back as far as it could go, forward again to bump against my collarbone. Then her whole body gave a series of jerks, as if a faulty electrical current was running through her. Perhaps shed been hit on the head during the air raid. I should get her to the doctor.

The dirty blanket fell down over my feet and I kicked it away and walked with a strange swinging tread down the aisle of the bus. You had to walk this way, I realised, with a child in your arms. There was a powerful odour of Jeyes Fluid in the bus but she smelled warm, salty, of new-baked bread.

Deirdre Harper came out of the village hall, forearms red to the elbow and dripping suds.

Deirdre, is anyone missing a girl?

She wiped her hands on her apron and delved in the pocket to produce a single wrinkled cigarette. Youre having me on, Mrs Parr. Now Ive seen it all. They cant even remember their own kiddies.

Im sure its not like that. Everyones in shock

Deirdre lit up and exhaled smoke with a wide, down-curving smile of contempt. In a funk, more like. Funk is all this is, you know. Look at them, scarpering on the buses instead of staying put in their shelters.

I didnt point out that not everyone in Southampton had shelters. Deirdre had lost her son at the beginning of the war, in the sea off the coast of Norway; she no longer cared what she said, and nobody took her to task.

Theyve got tea, anyway, I said.

Yes, the stockpile we were saving for the Christmas carols. She regarded the child sourly. Your Mr Parr will find that mother of hers. Trained for this, isnt he. Billeting officer and all.

Yes. I should go in, Deirdre.

Just then she sighed, and suddenly her eyes filled. Christ, poor bloody Southampton. Fifteen mile away, and such a glow off the clouds last night, it damn near lit me home.

I made my way into the village hall, carrying the child through the crowd of bedraggled, bewildered, noisy people, edging round overturned chairs, youngsters sliding through puddles of spilt tea. Whose is this little girl? I called out. Has anyone seen her mother? Nobody replied. I pushed onward past a squirming terrier, a camp of sleeping babies wedged among baskets and coats, a gang of dishevelled old men making free with a hip flask. Is anyone looking for this child? I called, louder this time.

Where are we, doll? said one of the old men.

Upton, I told him. The village of Upton. Do you know this little girl?

He shook his head. An odd smell was coming off his coat, a reek of something burnt. I moved away but the smell remained in my nostrils. I glanced up at the high windows of the hall and saw that the light was fading fast. We didnt have long until blackout.

Halfway down the hall I found Mrs Daventry and Miss Legg. Two pillars of our little community, they were standing by a table and picking hopelessly at the knot on a bale of blankets. I hitched my burden higher with one hand astonishingly, she had not stirred and with the other I grasped one loop of the knotted rope and prised it loose.