“I’d be proud of you anyway. Lots of aeroplanes go over us in the country, and I think of that hymn, ‘May Thine angels spread their white wings around us.’ Don’t you like to think that all the little dots of people down below you, like me, are thinking of you as a guardian angel?”
“I never did.”
“No, but now I’ve told you, aren’t you proud?”
Andrew’s face had flushed again.
“Yes, rather. As a matter of fact, I don’t like to yatter about flying much. I’m an awful bore when I get started. Somebody’s always saying to me, ‘shut the hangar doors.’ That means I’ve been talking shop.”
“Why shouldn’t you if you want to? I like hearing about it.”
“People get browned off at too much of it. Besides, well . . . I don’t think other fellows see it just the way I do.”
Meggie glowed up at him.
“Go on.”
“I can’t. But it’s such a grand life. Such a chance!”
“Do you know what I think being in the Air Force is like to you?”
“What?”
“Being a Knight of the Round Table.”
“Gosh!”
“Do you ever read poetry?”
“Gosh, no!”
“I don’t either, but my governess thinks it’s good for me to learn elocution. I used to learn properly before the war, but now Jonesy just chooses poems for me to say, and I tell her she chooses them by length. One I had to learn the other day says what I mean. ‘All armed I ride, whate’er betide. Until I find the Holy Grail.’”
Andrew’s face could not get any redder.
“Oh, I say!”
“I think it’s nice for you I think about you like that. It’s about Sir Galahad. I should think you’d like to be thought like him. When you talk about flying you get different, in just the way I’m certain he did about going to look for the Holy Grail.” The music stopped and she gave a sigh. “Bother, I am sorry it’s over.”
During the dance, to calm herself, and to keep Gardiner from talking, Adela kept up a flow of light conversation.
“Claire’s much too thin. I know you Americans admire thin women, but really Claire looks nothing but skin and bone. She lost her husband at Dunkirk. She was upset at the time, I think, though she never says much, but I’m glad to see she’s getting over it now. It’s really a mercy in a way, for it was not a satisfactory marriage. She is the child of my husband’s only sister. Her father is delicate, and they lived a lot in the South of France, and Claire had rather a disorganized upbringing, but as soon as she had finished with school her parents brought her to London and spared no trouble or expense in launching her properly. Millicent was over that summer she came out, and she will probably remember my showing her pictures of Claire in her Court gown. Such a pretty creature she was, she might have married anybody, but what must she do but run off with an artist. Fortunately he had money, but Claire’s parents were very upset. A brilliant young man in the diplomatic was most attentive, and it would have been such a good match. Claire wasn’t even married properly. I think a nice wedding would have consoled my sister-in-law, but they were married in a registry office. Claire was only eighteen. She gave a false age, and if I had been her parents I would have had the marriage annulled. They led a very rackety life after the marriage, no real home. You know, Gardiner, sometimes what appear tragedies are really nothing of the sort.”
Gardiner listened carefully to what Adela was saying. He believed he had heard his orders, and was now awaiting instructions as to how to carry them out. Doubtless God would put words into Adela’s mouth which would give him a lead as to what he should say. Her final words were his clue.
“That certainly is true, though that young woman looks as though she had a heck of a way to go before she believes it. I was wondering when you were talking about Paul if that wasn’t just the thing you’ve missed.”
Adela stiffened.
“Please, Gardiner. Not that subject. I quite see you don’t understand, but you’re hurting me.”
“Well, yes, I do, but I see things this way. I’m only here on a short visit, and, though it certainly is a surprise to me, it’s maybe to talk to you about Paul that I was sent. I believe very little that we do happens without a purpose.”
The music had stopped. Claire and Noel had finished dancing near to the table. Adela hurriedly threw out what she had to say.
“I won’t discuss it. You’ve had an easy life. You’ve no idea what I’ve gone through.” She turned a bright smile on Noel and Claire. “Enjoyed your dance? The floor’s rather crowded, isn’t it? Claire, dear, we’ve been saying you’re too thin.”
Meggie sat down.
“Goody goody, ice pudding!” She took up her fork and then laid it down again. “Do you know, Mummy, I believe there’s an air raid.”
Adela beckoned a waiter to her.
“Has the siren gone?”
“Yes, madam, some time ago.”
Adela turned to Gardiner.
“So fortunate I ordered a car. It’s so difficult getting about in a raid.”
Meggie ate a mouthful of her pudding.
“I wish I could hear the guns. I never have.”
“Unless the Luftwaffe have changed their habits, you’ll hear them when we leave,” said Claire. “They’ll probably rock you to sleep.”
Meggie smiled at her.
“Aren’t you glad you aren’t on your canteen?”
Claire lit a cigarette.
“I can’t believe London can stand up to a raid without me.”
Noel copied Claire and left his pudding untouched, and lit a cigarette. He turned to Meggie.
“Will you dance the next dance?”
“Yes. I’ll hurry up with my pudding. It’s awfully good. It almost tastes as if there was real cream in it. Why don’t you eat it?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Aren’t you? I’m always hungry for nice things. Jonesy says it’s a bad trait in my character.”
“Don’t you listen to her,” said Claire. “You eat all you can lay hands on. Do you ever get any sweets?”
“Not many now. They don’t seem to come to our village, except for the soldiers. They buy them in their canteens.”
Claire tapped the ash off her cigarette.
“I can buy them in mine. I’ll send you some.” She turned to Andrew. “Smoke?”
Meggie looked at Andrew’s almost empty plate.
“He’s like me, he likes eating.”
“Even then he can smoke when he’s finished, poor fellow,” Claire remonstrated.
“I don’t smoke, thanks awfully,” said Andrew.
Claire glanced at Noel.
“I always bless the stars when somebody says they don’t smoke. I feel the day is coming when we’ll be rationed, and it’s the one thing I shan’t be able to bear being without. Will you?”
Noel lifted his glass.
“Drinks are what I dread. It’s all right when you know it can be had by just popping into the local, but it will be a nasty jar if you can’t have a nip when you need it.”
“I bet you drown your sorrows, or perhaps your shames,” Claire thought. Out loud she said to Andrew:
“Worse than what we’ve got to do without is what we may be driven to eat. Parsnips are my horror. They tell me you can eat anything in an emergency, but it’s going to be the hell of an emergency which sees me enjoying parsnips.”
Meggie looked thoughtful.
“I do hope it’s never cats. I believe they ate them in the siege of Paris. Fancy eating a cat you’d known and loved since it was a kitten!”
“I wouldn’t care to eat rats,” said Andrew. “I believe it’s been done.”
“We were awful fools not to take over one of the larger beasts in the zoo adoption scheme
,” Noel pointed out. “I could face the future without a qualm with an elephant behind me, as it were.”
“Or a rhinoceros,” said Meggie. “There must be joints and joints on them.”
Adela had given half an ear to the conversation. The band were playing again, and she had no intention of another tête-à-tête with Gardiner until she had a breather.
“Meggie, you must talk to Uncle Gardiner. He hasn’t had a word with you yet, and he wants to tell Aunty Millicent all about you.” She paused. Should she talk to Noel now and get it over? Instead she turned her back on Gardiner and gave Andrew a brilliant smile. “And I haven’t had a word with Andrew. I really can’t call you Mr. Bishop, you don’t look old enough.”
“Dance?” Noel asked Claire.
She nodded and got up.
“Let’s, but I feel a bit of a cad deserting poor Andrew. I’m sure he’d rather have a nice chat with a rattlesnake than with my aunt.”
Meggie struggled with herself as Noel and Claire moved away. How difficult it was being grown-up. Everybody did things they didn’t want to, and at a party where you would think you might do what you liked. Noel had asked her to dance, so he wanted to dance with her, and goodness knows she wanted to dance with him. The evening wouldn’t last all that long, and she had such a lot to say about Paul. She felt as if all her wanting to talk about him had been piling up inside her in the years he had been in prison, and now had to come out. Would the whole evening be spent making her talk to, or dance with, Andrew and Uncle Gardiner?
“I’m afraid you wanted to dance,” Gardiner’s voice was apologetic.
Meggie hoped her face had not given her away. She managed a brilliant smile.
“I’m awfully glad to talk to you. It was nice of you to invite me to America for the war.”
“We very much hoped to have had you. Your Aunty Millicent was terribly disappointed when the cable came.”
“I didn’t know much about it myself, not till afterwards. It was Uncle Freddie who stopped my going. He thinks I’d get worldly in America, and that bombs are better than that. Not that we’ve had any bombs really in our village, only two and they fell on a barn. Of course there’s invasion. Uncle Freddie’s got a revolver for that, but if the Germans got to our village Aunt Jessie says she could do more with a saucepan of boiling fat poured on them from the church tower. I think she’s right.”
“How about you coming back with me in, maybe, ten days’ time?”
“I’m sixteen. Between sixteen and sixty, nobody can leave the country. Quite right too. After all, when I’m seventeen I shall stop lessons and do all war work. As soon as I’m old enough I want to be a W.R.E.N. Just now I’m doing half lessons and half digging for victory. Of course I know food’s awfully important, but there are things I’d rather do than dig. Did you ever plant potatoes? You know, manure gets me down. Sometimes I dream about it.”
“It’s wonderful the work that’s done by the women of this country.”
“There’s nothing wonderful in helping in the garden, and there’s no use pretending there is. Claire does marvellous things, so do ambulance drivers, and firewomen, and all those, but there’s nothing like that wanted in our village. Digging and evacuees is what we’ve got. The paper said the other day that a high standard of courage was required from every man, woman and child in the country, but Aunt Jessie says that’s absolute rubbish; it isn’t courage that’s wanted but patience. Uncle Freddie says that the evacuee problem doesn’t exist if you do as the Bible says and love your neighbour as yourself.” She lowered her voice. “Though I know that’s true, it’s difficult sometimes. I think it’s more bearing with your neighbour you feel when they use your stove and your pots and pans for cooking, and burn the bottom out of your best saucepan, and more bearing with them when they walk up and down the village in silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, looking proud, while everybody else is working.”
“They’ve been through a hard time in the towns.”
“Oh, I know they have, and when they first came there wasn’t anything we all wouldn’t do. But don’t you think it’s difficult to feel loving and giving every day of every week when the people you have to be loving and giving to, take everything for granted; and often, when you’ve done everything you can think of, just get up and go home. Ours at the Vicarage did that. Uncle Freddie said we must pray for understanding, but Aunt Jessie said she only needed to pray, ‘Now thank we all our God.’”
“Don’t you ever get any fun? It seems a hard life for a child your age.”
Meggie laughed.
“I have a gorgeous time. It’s a simply heavenly village, almost everybody is nice in it, and Uncle Freddie says those that aren’t are learning, but he’s the only person who can see that at present. I’ve got a heavenly dog. Do you like red setters? Mine’s called Hardy. Jonesy brought him to the station to see me off, and, do you know, I believe there were real tears in his eyes. I’ve got a pony called Barnabas.”
“That’s a strange name for a horse.”
“Perhaps it is rather. Uncle Freddie gave him to me. He and Hardy came much the same time. I think animals are a great comfort, don’t you?”
“Why, yes, but at your age you shouldn’t need comforting. You ought to be finding the world a splendid place.”
“But I am. Do you know, every morning, even when it’s snowing or raining, when I wake up I feel as if I was swollen here,” she put her hands on her diaphragm, “with being pleased I’m alive.”
Gardiner was moved. There was no mistaking the ring in Meggie’s voice. She was happy, yet to him she was tragic. What a world for youth! He saw her as the representative of her age, in all crushed, battered, struggling Europe.
“What do you want to do when the war’s over?”
Meggie leant her chin on her hands, and turned eyes on him that had darkened.
“I don’t know. Of course I’ll be grown-up. I want to grow up, but I don’t want to stop feeling things less, and grown-ups do. Do you think if a person tried they could keep the being glad about things, and sad about things, always? The same as they had them when they were sixteen? I don’t want ever to get neat inside, like mummy wants me to be outside. I want to feel everything fearfully.”
Gardiner looked back over his life. He saw the patterns of joy and sorrow, and could mark the place where the colours ran together, where his capacity to feel had dimmed; and he had never been as alive as this child, whose vitality was such that it warmed you to sit beside her. Even allowing for the blunting of the years, he suspected she would always feel too much for happiness. He changed the subject.
“Your Aunty Millicent told me to buy you a present. Now, what shall it be?”
Claire looked at their table as she and Noel danced past it. She pressed her fingers into Noel’ s back.
“Take a look at poor Andrew Bishop.”
Noel glanced over his shoulder. He saw Andrew apparently struggling to get inside his uniform, head and all, his crimson cheeks, and his nervous swallowing. He laughed, but actually he was not amused. Andrew’s discomfort brought to him the thought that his interview with Adela was ahead of him. Somehow his talk with Meggie, in spite of the fact that it was about Paul, had put his purpose in having contacted Adela out of his mind. “Christ,” he thought, “it’s not so damn funny! That fellow looks like that, and probably the old bitch is being civil to him. Wonder how I’ll look when she’s done with me. I shall ask if I can see her and Meggie home. The air raid’s a help for that. She’s bound to ask me in for a drink. Anyway, she’s got to.” The tune was “Johnny Pedlar.” The band were whistling, and he whistled with them. Blast that two hundred pounds. This would have been a decent evening if he hadn’t got that hanging over him.
Claire drifted off again on the tide of her memories. She was doing it quite deliberately now. It was like opening a jewel case and picking out an emerald or a diamond. �
��I’ll choose this memory. No, I won’t, I’ll choose that. It’s the nicest of the lot.” They were in Rhodesia; she and Lin lying in deck chairs. Somebody was telling what they thought a funny story about a black mamba. She detested snakes, and had driven miles and was tired, and so was allowing Lin to do the being interested stuff for both. The sun baked down and shone on a crimson flower hanging on a nearby wall. A humming-bird darted out of space and hovered, its long, pointed beak driving into the heart of the flower. The bird, the flower, and the moment were so exquisite that Claire had caught her breath, and told herself, “You’ll never forget this,” and she had been sorry Lin was being social and missing it, and even as the thought came she felt his hand slide over the edge of her chair and his fingers wind round hers, and she knew he had seen what she had seen, and was feeling what she felt, and they were sharing the beauty together.
Adela was thankful when the band stopped. Really, Andrew was a most exhausting young man. He seemed only able to say three words: “Rather,” “wizard,” and” gosh!” She wondered how she could rearrange the party. She certainly was not going to have Andrew on her hands again. There would be the cabaret at ten o’clock; that would be a respite. She must have one dance with Noel, or, better still, be left alone at the table with him, and in the meantime she must manage somehow to keep the conversation general. As Claire and Noel sat down, she said:
“No more dancing until we’ve finished dinner, or you children will get indigestion. Has anybody heard any funny stories? You must have, Noel?”
Noel was usually a fount of stories, but, try as he would, he could not think of one which would do for anybody at the table except Claire, and presumably Andrew. He shook his head.
“Not for the jeune fille.”
“You can tell stories in front of me,” said Meggie. “I’m awfully stupid at understanding them. Quite a lot of the ones on the wireless don’t seem to me funny at all. There was one about . . .”
Claire disliked enfants terribles every bit as much as Adela.
“Don’t tell us, darling. Almost no joke of the B.B.C.’s will stand explaining.”
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