The Foreshadowing Read Free

killed.”
    I didn’t hear Father’s reply.
    “Well, you explain it, then,” Mother said.
    “I don’t need to because it’s ridiculous.”
    Suddenly I heard Father walking to the door. It sprang open.
    “Alexandra!” he snapped. “Always watching, always prying!”
    He plucked his coat and hat from the stand and went off to work.
    “Father, wait!”
    He had left his armband behind.
    As soon as the war started he had been sworn in as a special constable of the Brighton Borough Police. He goes patrolling the streets two or three nights a week. What for, I don’t know, but he has to wear an armband to show his status.
    He looked at me and took the armband.
    “See if your mother needs help,” he said as he left.
    “With what?” I asked. The door was already shut.
    What with being a special constable and his work at the hospital, he is hardly at home these days. The New Grammar School was only open for a year before the war turned it into the Dyke Road hospital, which Father now runs. It’s not the only school that’s become a hospital.
    In the evening, while Father was still patrolling, I tried to talk to Mother while she sat doing needlework.
    “Mother,” I said, “are you all right now?”
    She stopped and looked at me.
    “What do you mean, Sasha?” she asked, smiling.
    “After the accident,” I said. “I thought—”
    Her smile disappeared. “We weren’t hurt, were we? Whatever do you mean?”
    “I know, but it was such a shock!”
    She looked away.
    “Yes,” she said, “we had a lucky escape. If you hadn’t . . .”
    She paused.
    “What?”
    She didn’t answer, so I tried again.
    “What? If I hadn’t told you I didn’t want to get on the tram? Is that what you mean?”
    “I’m busy, Alexandra. Don’t pester me.”
    The moment was lost. I wasn’t Sasha anymore, I was Alexandra. But I wouldn’t let it drop.
    “That’s it, isn’t it?” I said. “That’s what’s bothering you. How did I know we shouldn’t get on the tram?”
    “That’s enough!” she said. “You didn’t know we shouldn’t get on. I decided not to. We had a lucky escape. That’s all.”
    “But I knew!” I insisted. “I knew.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” she shouted, with sudden anger. “Now go to bed before your father gets home.”
    I was so amazed that she’d shouted at me that momentarily I stood motionless; then I ran upstairs.
    My room, like the sitting room, has a clear view of the sea, even from the bed. It’s the most wonderful thing I have, my view. I can see across the little gardens that belong to the whole street, then away over town to the sea itself. When we moved into Clifton Terrace I begged to have the room in the attic so I could see the sea, and though Edgar and Tom protested, I got my wish. I think it was the only time I ever made a fuss as a child.
    I sat on my bed, and wondered. I wondered about the war, and what it was doing to people. But can I really blame the war for the arguments between Father and Edgar, and Tom? Or for Mother’s shouting at me? Or are those things there anyway, but just not seen until now?
    Night waves washed along the summer shore, like a gentle thunder in some show of pretending. I gazed across the sea to the real night horizon, and felt the storms over the water. I knew the thunder rolling across the fields of France was no pretense.

97

    It was a bright and bone-chilling day today, a sign that winter is not so far away.
    I went out for the first time since the accident. A piercing wind sailed in off the sea and up Ship Street as I went down to the seafront. It cut right through me even though Mother had made me put on my warmest overcoat.
    It was on another sunny day, though a warm August one, that Edgar went away to join the army. He decided to put his training to become a lawyer on hold, and didn’t go back to Oxford that autumn. Instead, Father made some ’phone calls, and just as he said, Edgar got a commission. He had been on OTC camp; he