Ronnie took in all of this, even as, briefly, he was being made an exhibit of himself. They all said goodnight to him and he managed to say goodnight to them, and the green of the table made him think of the name of this place he had come to and, though he was beginning to get used to it, the sheer astonishment of it all.
Things were not just all well at Evergrene, they were bloody fantastic. But to say this might (he was capable of perceiving it) hurt his mother, and it was not anyway in his interest to reveal that he was living the life of Riley. At the same time he strongly suspected that his mother’s ‘All wells’ were not exactly truthful either. How could they be if bombs were really dropping on London? (Were they?) And he could well recall how she’d once said a parrot had flown away when in fact she’d sold it for clean profit.
The postcards served their function: they knew each other to be alive. Ronnie was aware that both Mr and Mrs Lawrence themselves wrote to his mother and he couldn’t control what they said. Perhaps they were reporting on him. He knew anyway that for a while they’d had the idea that Mrs Deane might like to come and visit her son, might even like to stay. Might even like to stay for the duration. Wouldn’t that indeed be the best solution to everything?
These suggestions caused a cloud to hover temporarily over Ronnie’s generally euphoric existence and he’d felt a great relief when they were not taken up. It became gradually clear that his mother had seldom replied to Mr and Mrs Lawrence’s letters and never at any length. They wondered why.
Ronnie realised that though he was only a small boy he was in some things more versed than his vastly older hosts.
After a while the postcards were exchanged less frequently. An acceptance grew—was even allowed to blossom—that Evergrene was Ronnie’s home now. He was happy in it (he was happier than he’d ever been) and the Lawrences were happy to have him. Their loving-kindness enveloped him and they’d been diligent in testing its possible limits. Now it might simply prevail.
Wasn’t this the best solution of all? Even if one might fairly ask how could any of it be? How could you have had one life and then simply exchange it for another?
• • •
One instance of the loving-kindness Ronnie would never forget. In all this dizzying uncertainty as to who his effective parents were, it fell to the Lawrences to tell Ronnie that his real, his true yet so often unseen father was—no more.
How this news had been passed on to Eric and Penelope Ronnie would never know, but the couple clearly understood that they must be the breakers of the news and that, with no experience of raising a child yet with all their years, they must take on whatever this might entail.
They were surprised at Ronnie’s lack of response, his muteness, his containment, as if this thing might have had nothing to do with him or as if he had simply not registered it at all. It was all just shock perhaps.
Perhaps, and this might be their own fault, the poor boy simply didn’t know what to believe.
His father had been ‘lost at sea’. He was ‘missing’. These were the official phrases that conveyed yet muddled the truth. The Lawrences had wished, for considered reasons, to avoid any more definite words. So had any of it sunk in? Which was an unfortunate way even of framing the question.
It was only when that evening Eric Lawrence went to tuck Ronnie in and see if he was all right, that emotion suddenly spilled—surprising even Ronnie himself with its flow and force. Mr Lawrence had thought of Ronnie lying alone, having to make his own voyage through the night while understanding (perhaps) that his father would never voyage again. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Mr Lawrence had gone up and sat on the edge of Ronnie’s bed. Ronnie might have said, in one of those never-written letters, that it was a very nice comfortable bed with a pale-green bedspread, in a very nice big bedroom with curtains matching the bedspread, though they now took second place to the familiar blackout curtain. The window overlooked a huge garden.
Ronnie had never communicated any of these things to his mother and Mr Lawrence for his own part had no notion of the pokiness of the sleeping accommodation in Bethnal Green. But he’d wondered if Ronnie, apart from thinking of his father, had also been thinking of his mother and whether she too (this was October 1940 and the Blitz was in full swing) was able to get to sleep.
He put his hand on Ronnie’s forehead, cupping its smallness with his palm. It was a spontaneous gesture not intended, perhaps, to be fatherly and more like the action of a doctor feeling for a fever, but Ronnie realised that his own father had never done anything so tender, even though he might have been capable of it.
The hand on his brow had a strange tingling power.
‘You must go to sleep, Ronnie. It is the best thing. Just to sleep.’
Ronnie had almost at once felt his eyes droop, but Mr Lawrence had added, ‘I think perhaps that’s how you should think of it. That he is sleeping too, among the fishes.’
It was these words, the idea that both he and his father might just be sleeping, or it was the vision of lots of glittering fish, but there had sprung from Ronnie—though it was only when Mr Lawrence had kissed his forehead and crept out—a sudden convulsive upwelling of tears. He could not stop them, they went on and on, enveloping him till he fell asleep. So that his last thought perhaps was that his own tears were like the deep salt water, if only a tiny part of it,
