Julia ran to the kitchen to ask Mrs. Strang for a tray.
But it was Mrs. Strang’s evening off. She wasn’t there.
Julia hunted about, found a tray, placed on it Terry’s supper and her own and took it to the schoolroom. Then she hurried upstairs.
The Captain was coming down.
“What the devil are you doing?”
“Taking supper upstairs, as you see,” replied Julia coldly.
“Well I’m damned,” said the Captain.
He let her pass after that, and Julia didn’t see him any more that evening.
Mummie came in, as usual in a great hurry, and kissed them both good-night and gave a sort of groan when she looked at Terry. Julia wondered very much if mummie had yet thought of a place where she could send them, but she didn’t ask.
Next day she was told.
Daddy had rung up again, and said that a friend of Petah’s had lent them a cottage in Buckinghamshire for a month, and that Terry and Julia could come and stay with them there.
“For how long?” Julia asked.
Mummie didn’t really answer that question. She just said that the holidays would anyway be over very soon now, and they’d see. But Julia noticed that all their things, except their school-clothes, were packed. Only the bicycles remained behind at “Rosslyn.” Julia thought it would have been more sensible to take the bicycles with them as they were going to be in the country, but she didn’t want to remind Terry of his bicycle at all, so she said nothing. And anyway, it was probably frightfully expensive to take bicycles by train.
The next excitement was that they weren’t going by train at all. They were to go by bus, and be met at the other end.
Never, thought Julia, had she heard so much fuss made about any journey. She was getting sick of journeys, and of moving about, and never really settling down anywhere, and things always being done in such a hurry. Still, she had to admit that it might be a good thing to do this in a hurry — before uncle Tom should take into his head to start badgering poor Terry again.
They didn’t say goodbye to uncle Tom, or even see him. He was on parade or something.
Just as well, thought Julia.
Mummie had said she was going to see them onto the bus herself, but she didn’t. Somebody rang her up, and there was a lot of talking about meeting at some shop or other — and in the end, Peggy Foster, turning up from nowhere, said she’d love to take them to their bus.
“I’ll see you next week, darling,” mummie said to Terry, when she kissed him.
When she kissed Julia, she was still partly talking into the telephone.
Peggy was rather tactful and intelligent. She didn’t ask what kind of holidays they’d been having or if they liked the idea of going to Buckinghamshire, and she didn’t seem to notice that Terry was perfectly and absolutely silent — though he helped to put the suitcases into Peggy’s car all right.
“Where are we going from?” Julia asked, when they’d started.
“Oxford Circus,” said Peggy. “Shall we go and have ices somewhere first?”
Everything immediately became slightly more cheerful. Peggy was even able to make Terry talk a little, when she asked about Chang.
Julia ate an extra large banana-split and listened to them talking about Chang, and thought what ages and ages it seemed since they’d left the Plás.
“I do wish Chang was going to be at this place we’re going to,” she thought.
Somehow she couldn’t feel that she was looking forward to this visit a bit. She couldn’t imagine what there’d be for them to do all the time. And Terry looked so pale and serious and worried, and not as though he was ever going to laugh or enjoy things again.
At last Peggy said they ought to be going.
She bought them sweets — Terry said, No, no: and Can you really afford it? — but Julia felt they were certainly going to need sweets or something to cheer them up, before they’d done, and made no protest whatever.
She also accepted with gratitude Peggy’s suggestion of buying them each a book, and they went into a book-shop where Terry chose The Light that Failed by Rudyard Kipling and Julia an omnibus Bulldog Drummond, after hesitating for a long time between that and David Copperfield.
Peggy didn’t seem to mind waiting, and told them to take as long as they liked.
She said, when they got to Oxford Circus and stood waiting for the bus: “I do wish you weren’t going away again. I wanted us to go for a supper-picnic with the little car.”
“I wish we could,” said Terry, in such a sad voice that Julia for a moment wanted to cry.
“We’ll do something next holidays,” said Peggy. “Here’s the bus — don’t forget, you get out at Crab Green.”
They climbed in, and the suitcases were bumped down by the conductor, and Peggy kissed her hand and waved, and they were off.
At first it was quite interesting looking to see what the other people in the bus were like, and watching the shops and the traffic.
Then the ticket-man came round, and asked Terry “Where to, sir?” and Julia had to say “Crab Green” in a loud whisper because evidently Terry had forgotten.
Soon however they were out of London, and the bus took to going much faster and lurching about from side to side, and Julia felt slightly sick and wished her banana-split hadn’t been quite such a large one.
Terry didn’t talk at all. He just sat still and looked out of the window.
Presently a voice in Julia’s ear said: “Wake up, miss! Don’t you want Crab Green?” and she realized with astonishment that she must have been asleep, and that they’d arrived.
Crab Green wasn’t as exciting as its name.
It was just a triangle of grass, in front of a public-house called the Plough and Horses, with a few little red-brick houses standing about.
“It’s raining!” said Julia disgustedly.
It was a cold, drizzly sort of rain.
“How are we to know where the cottage is?” Terry asked, in rather a terrified voice.
Julia hadn’t the least idea but she felt that it would never do to let him get really upset. It wouldn’t take much to do it, either.
“Oh,” she said confidently, “they’ll come and meet us or something. Let’s wait under that tree.”
They put the suitcases under the big tree in the middle of the piece of grass and sat down upon them.
Julia cast about for something to talk about that might cheer up poor Terry. Her mind remained an absolute blank.
Weren’t there any cheerful subjects in the whole world? she thought rather indignantly. It didn’t seem as if there were.
“Look,” said Terry uncertainly, “is that Petah coming along?”
It was. Petah, wearing a long pair of dark-blue trousers, and a black wool jumper with short sleeves and a high neck, and black sand-shoes with one lace coming undone. She was smoking a cigarette as usual. She didn’t in the least hurry when she saw that they’d seen her, but she waved the cigarette at them and sauntered along.
“Hallo!” she called when she was quite close.
“Hallo,” said Julia and Terry, and they picked up the suitcases and went to meet her.
After that it was all a good deal better than Julia had expected.
When one had been with Petah a few minutes one quite remembered her ways, and how she didn’t exactly talk, but just said things from time to time, using quite a lot of swear-words but never sounding in the least angry or excited or pleased. This time she called everything “amusing.” She said the cottage was fearfully amusing and that it had an amusing sort of tin bath and that Terry and Julia would find it quite amusing to sleep in the attics just under the roof.
Julia thought that really did sound as if it might be fun.
“Is the cottage far from here?” she asked.
“Christ, no. This is it,” Petah said.
It was a white cottage, standing back from the road in a very tangled kind of little garden with a wooden fence all round
it.
Inside, the rooms were tiny. There were two downstairs rooms, and a kitchen and scullery, and the stairs went straight up out of the kitchen. Upstairs were two bedrooms and — really under the roof — the two attics.
“Where’s the tin bath?” asked Terry.
“In the scullery,” said Julia. “I saw it.”
She gazed round the attics, which opened into one another and were very fascinating indeed. The ceiling was all made of rafters and in some places it came down so low that almost any grown-up person would have to go on all-fours.
There was one small window, rather cobwebby, very low down. Julia had to kneel on the floor to look out of it. When she did so, she saw that at the back of the cottage was an orchard and standing in it, a yellow caravan.
“Who does the caravan belong to?” she asked excitedly, hoping that it might be daddy’s and that she and Terry would be able to play in it.
“Some friends of mine,” said Petah.
“Oh,” said Julia, disappointed. “Are they staying here?”
“Yeah.”
Julia would have liked to ask if they were nice — but felt that it wouldn’t do.
“It’s only Basil and Arabella and Tim. They’re quite amusing sometimes,” said Petah. “Though personally, I find a little of them goes one hell of a long way.”
She walked away without saying any more.
They didn’t see anybody else till daddy arrived.
He seemed very pleased to find them and took much more notice of them than he’d done the time when they’d come to his flat.
He asked how mummie was, and if they’d enjoyed being at the Plás, and exactly when they were supposed to be going back to school.
Then Julia, in her turn, asked how long they were going to stay with him, but daddy said he didn’t quite know — it would depend on plans, and one thing and another. Anyway, this was Friday and he’d got the week-end before him and wasn’t going to think about anything except that he was thankful to be out of London.
So they settled down at the cottage. The caravan people came in for all their meals except breakfast. Basil and Arabella were married to each other, and they seemed to quarrel a lot, and Tim turned out to be a girl. She had very curly fair hair and Julia secretly thought her terribly attractive, but Tim never took the least notice of her, though she once asked Terry if he’d like a cocktail — just as though he was grown-up. Daddy and Tim got on very well together, and called each other “darling” quite a lot, to Julia’s slight surprise. Arabella and Tim and Petah did the cooking and got the meals ready, but Julia never thought there was anything like enough food and she got frightfully sick of eating olives and cheese biscuits while the grown-ups drank cocktails.
But on the whole it was quite nice at the cottage. She and Terry had plenty of time to themselves, especially in the mornings when nobody ever seemed to get up and they collected their own breakfast — milk and bread-and-butter and jam and a tin of sardines, usually.
Then, one Sunday afternoon, when they’d been there a week, daddy announced that he was going for a walk and was taking Terry with him.
“And me,” said Julia.
“Not this time,” daddy replied. “You stay in the garden.”
Julia didn’t like it at all. For one thing, she felt slightly jealous at being left behind; for another, she thought that Terry and daddy would get on together very much better if she was there to keep things straight and ward off dangerous subjects; and finally, she didn’t enjoy being left with Petah and her friends, who were sprawling about all over the house and garden, so that one couldn’t ever get away from them.
Taking Bulldog Drummond she went and sat in the orchard, outside the caravan.
Petah and Basil came out of the back door of the cottage and walked about a bit, and then they sat down quite near Julia.
“Where’s Alick gone?” said Basil.
And Petah answered: “Oh, don’t you know? Alick’s doing the heavy father. Poor sweet, his loathsome ex-wife has got the jitters about that boy.”
Julia jumped to attention. She sat upright and looked at Petah and Basil.
What did they mean?
They saw she was listening — at least, Petah certainly did — but they didn’t stop talking or tell her to go away.
“My dear,” said Basil — who talked exactly like a very affected girl in rather a squeaky voice— “if ever I saw a case for the psychies, that boy is one.
I’ve observed him with the utmost interest. Almost a text-book case, I should imagine.”
“My sweet, everyone knows that, even his olde-worlde grandparents. They’ve all been putting the wind up Alick. I’ve told him there’s only one thing to do, and that’s take the wretched lad to see Dubillier. Dubillier’s marvellous. A friend of mine whose child was too neurotic for words went to him, and he put her right without the slightest difficulty.”
“I’ve heard of him of course. A Freudian, isn’t he?”
“Not in the least. He doesn’t do analysis. It’s all psycho-therapy.”
These words defeated Julia, who ceased to pay attention. She guessed that Dubillier was a doctor, and that Petah thought he could do good to Terry.
Perhaps it was a good idea?
XV
JULIA, having almost ceased to be surprised at anything, wasn’t particularly surprised — although she was rather annoyed — when daddy, on Sunday evening, said that Terry was going with him to London for the day on Monday. Petah, it appeared, was going too.
She wanted to buy some pyjamas or something.
“Isn’t Julia coming?” asked Terry anxiously.
It was frightfully nice of him to ask, but Julia knew it wouldn’t be any good, especially if, as she guessed, Terry was going to be taken to see this doctor.
Then she remembered that he didn’t know about that, and decided to warn him.
Terry hated being taken by surprise.
She told him next morning before breakfast, up in the attic.
“I think — I don’t absolutely know — but I think — they mean to take you to a doctor. It’s someone Petah says is marvellous.”
“But why? I’m not ill.”
“Oh, I don’t know why,” said Julia, meaning that grown-up reasons hadn’t, as a rule, got much sense in them and were really hardly worth bothering about.
“I wish they wouldn’t,” said Terry wretchedly.
Julia felt dreadfully sorry for him.
“Perhaps you’ll go to some exciting place for lunch,” was all she could suggest to comfort him.
“I wish you were coming too,” said Terry.
“Breakfast!” shouted daddy from downstairs.
It was the first morning he’d been down early, and neither Terry nor Julia was nearly ready.
Julia scrambled into her clothes, poured a little water into the enamel basin that stood on the window-sill so as to look as if she’d washed, and gave her hair two or three desperate strokes with the brush.
Terry wasn’t even half dressed, and she knew how fearfully slow he always was. One couldn’t do anything much to help him either, except rush downstairs and say that he was just ready.
“We’re off in exactly ten minutes,” said daddy, eating his breakfast very fast.
Julia could only hope that either Petah would be late or the car wouldn’t start.
But two minutes later Petah, perfectly ready, drove the car round to the door from the shed where it lived.
Daddy stood at the foot of the stairs and shouted for Terry.
“What the devil are you doing? Come on!”
When Terry did come he looked scared and untidy. Julia saw that he hadn’t even brushed his hair. She thrust his breakfast towards him — it was only ham and a piece of bread-and-butter left over from supper — and tried to delay the start as long as possible by poking Petah’s green beret, that she meant to wear, behind the oil-stove and then pretending to look for it. But after two or three seconds of this Petah, very crossl
y, said:
“I’ll go without the bloody thing, that’s all. I don’t care.”
“Come on, then,” said daddy. “We’re late enough as it is. Get a move on, Terry.”
He sounded nearly as cross as Petah.
Terry — who’d had hardly any breakfast — got up, and stumbled over daddy’s foot, and looked more upset than ever.
Daddy pushed him into the back of the car and he and Petah got into the front seats and they were off.
Terry hadn’t had time to say goodbye to Julia but he turned round as the car started and waved his hand to her, and she waved vigorously back.
She felt rather flat at first, but afterwards realized that it was quite fun to have the place all to herself. The caravan people didn’t count, as they never got up till fearfully late and anyway wouldn’t take any notice of her when they did.
After wandering about for a little while Julia decided to build a dam across the little stream at the end of the orchard to surprise Terry when he got back. It took her the whole morning and was great fun. She got extremely wet and muddy, but there was nobody to make a fuss and tell her to change her frock and knickers, so she kept them on and they felt very wet and cold and sticky but quite nice.
She also lost one shoe, hopelessly and completely, and had to go about barefooted for the rest of the day.
When she went into the cottage for lunch nobody was there except a woman who sometimes came from the village to wash up and do some cleaning.
She gave Julia a huge helping of cold beef and as much anchovy sauce as she liked, and a plate of tinned apricots — and she told her the most thrilling and horrible things about an operation that had been done to her cousin in hospital. Julia shuddered, but couldn’t help enjoying it, though she was sorry to hear that the cousin died in the end.
It wasn’t till she’d gone out to her dam again that she realized that Basil and Arabella and Tim hadn’t put in any appearance.
Prob’bly they’d dashed off somewhere in Basil’s car, as they often did. Julia thought they might have had the decency to take her too, if it was a film or anything nice they’d gone to — but she soon forgot all about them.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 461