Wine of Honour

by Barbara Beauchamp

  “So ought I. But we’ll just have these. Lord, how I hate having to gush to get a bottle of sherry. I suppose I’ll have to listen to a lot of talkie-talkie about her grandchildren when she comes back. Won’t it be nice when one can just go and buy things again without screwing oneself up to such an emotional pitch?”

  “What a perfectly beastly thing to say!” Laura exploded at last.

  “Don’t be so intense, Laura. You know I never mean a word I say. You wouldn’t either, if you were me.”

  Maggie Cobb had come back with the drinks, and the bottle of sherry was in a green shopping bag. Daphne said:

  “I couldn’t be more grateful, Mrs. Cobb. Father will be thrilled. Put it down to his account, will you? I’ll pay for the gins.”

  “No, I will, Daphne.” Laura brought out her purse.

  “Don’t be silly. I made you come here tonight. They’re on me. Here you are, Mrs. Cobb.” She handed the money over and then went on. “I must just go and say a word to the Prices over there, and then we’ll go, Laura.” She picked up her glass and left them.

  Laura felt uncomfortable. Daphne made it sound as though she, Laura, hadn’t wanted to come to the Cock and Pheasant—and in front of Mrs. Cobb too. And in any case all this business about the sherry was phoney. It wasn’t for Sir James Gurney at all; it was Daphne who wanted it. The fictitious guests at dinner next night—why did she have to lie? It was all so obvious and mean. Laura longed suddenly for fresh air. Maggie Cobb was still standing by the table. There was something clean and clear in the mere fact of her presence. Laura said:

  “Won’t you have a drink, Mrs. Cobb?”

  “Thank you, not at present, Miss Watson. I’ve only just finished my tea,” but she sat down at the table with Laura and her bright eyes took in everyone in the bar, which was now filling up.

  “There seem to be a lot of new people in Kirton,” Laura commented.

  “That’s just what I was thinking, Miss Watson. Lots of new faces, and many of the old ones gone. I was sorry when that Miss Worthing left us; always so cheerful and smiling she was. I hear she’s got a job with the B.B.C. in London?”

  “Yes, I believe she has.”

  “Doesn’t seem right somehow that a young lady like her should be off after a new job when the war’s over and done with. I always said to Mr. Cobb what a good wife she’d make for some nice young gentleman like Mr. Michael Cross or one of the Mr. Gurneys.”

  Laura wondered whether Mrs. Cobb was just very ingenuous or if, perhaps, she knew all about Peter Gurney and Angela Worthing. The grapevine telegraph system never seemed to fail the village.

  “I think she likes working, Mrs. Cobb.”

  “Or maybe she has to earn her living. The war’s done stranger things than that to people,” Maggie said briskly.

  “Oh, no. Miss Worthing’s very well off,” Laura replied and wondered why Mrs. Cobb always succeeded in making her gossip.

  “Fancy that,” Maggie looked genuinely surprised. “Now I wonder why that girl Madge hasn’t come down to the bar yet. It’s time Dick arid Elsie went off for their teas. We shall be busy later on, being Friday night.”

  “How are the grandchildren?” Laura asked, feeling hypocritical because of what Daphne had said earlier on.

  “They’re lovely, thank you, Miss Watson. Stevie’s walking a treat now and baby’s going to be christened on Sunday week; Rose Elizabeth. She’s the very image of Dick when he was a baby.”

  “Dick’s looking better, too. He seems to have put on weight.”

  “Yes; Dr. Townsend’s ever so pleased with him. He still has queer turns though,” Maggie lowered her voice confidentially, “Got himself into trouble over at Dimstone again last week.”

  Laura remembered hearing something about Dick Cobb going off on the night Elsie had her baby and not turning up for two days; she couldn’t remember the details, but someone said he’d gone up to London and got himself arrested.

  “What sort of trouble, Mrs. Cobb?” she asked awkwardly.

  “With the police again. He’s that quick tempered when they ask him about his ribbons. I’m tired of telling him they don’t mean any harm, but he can’t seem to understand.” Maggie frowned.

  Laura was puzzled. She could see Dick Cobb on the other side of the bar and noticed his disabled ex-serviceman’s badge on the lapel of his coat and the line of ribbons pinned across his chest: the M.C., the 1939-’45 Africa Star and Italian Campaign. They were put on crookedly and looked very bright against the navy blue of his jacket.

  “Why should the police bother about his ribbons?” she asked.

  “Pull him up, they do. It’s happened a score of times already. They make him look up at the sky and tell them what medals he’s wearing—from right to left. He always tells them, of course, quite politely, but once they’re satisfied he starts swearing at them, calls them all the names he can lay his tongue to, and then the trouble starts. That time in London, they shut him up for the night for insulting behaviour. Mind you, Miss Watson, it was partly our fault too because when they rang up here, we was all over at Elsie’s after the baby was born and Madge answered the telephone and she didn’t know anything about Dick being away from Kirton; so she told the police he was at home. Naturally they held him after that. He was pulled up in Dimstone again last week, when they were looking for a fellow who was pretending to be an ex-officer and wearing a V.C. ribbon. Dick told them if they couldn’t recognize a V.C. when they saw one it was time honest folk’s rates stopped being squandered on a lot of basket policemen. The Dimstone police don’t like being spoken to that way, Miss Watson,” Maggie added simply.

  Laura began to understand. Of course, Dick Cobb didn’t look like an officer; he looked like the lanky country lad he was, blunt featured and rough, honest and working class. Why hadn’t she thought about this before? Maybe at this very moment there were other people like Dick Cobb, suffering the insults of the ignorant, being doubted by their neighbours, mocked at perhaps—for doing what? For displaying the symbols of the service they had given to their country, the scrap of coloured ribbon which signified unbelievable courage and, for some, wrecked lives and health. In the army, in uniform, there had been officers of all kinds: voices and accents from all parts of the British Isles, accepted by all because of the jobs they were doing, the service they were rendering. Put them back on Civvy Street, dress them in a demob suit, a farmer’s corduroys, a white collar or a ‘Sunday best,’ and they became divided into social spheres, subject to a class-conscious scrutiny which disbelieved the possibility of an officer’s decoration on a navvy’s coat. For the first time in her life Laura sensed the burning indignation of injustice. It rose and choked the speech in her throat. Somebody ought to do something about this. If Brian Gurney had been here he would have known what to do, he’d understood Dick Cobb better than anyone else. Michael Cross could have written something about it. Helen—Helen Townsend would have had some suggestion to make; or Gyp, who felt so strongly about ex-service men and women. Only Laura, on her own, felt impotent, incapable of expressing by action or words the vehemence of her thoughts.

  “But it’s wicked, Mrs. Cobb,” she said in a low voice.

  “Not wicked,” Maggie bridled, “it’s just Dick’s quick temper. He’s the same with his dad, always arguing about something or the other. He just doesn’t seem able to control himself like other people.”

  “But I don’t mean that!” Laura was appalled at being misunderstood. “I mean it’s all wrong that Dick should be pulled up by the police for wearing the M.C. he won; that they should dare to hold him for telling them off when they’re entirely in the wrong.” It sounded muddled and not at all what she’d meant to say.

  “Oh well,” Maggie replied complacently, “you can’t blame them really. After all, Dick doesn’t look like an officer. It’s not his fault; it’s like what Elsie says, they shouldn’t ever have made him into a captain. Mr. Cobb was a sergeant-major in the last war and that was bad enough when he came hom
e. No, Elsie’s right, it’s the fault of the army. Mind you, I’m not saying we aren’t proud of all Dick did, getting his commission and the M.C. and everything, but it doesn’t make for an easy life afterwards. Maybe it would be different if he could remember it all happening. But he can’t. That makes him extra touchy about being pulled up.”

  Laura could find nothing to say and there was silence in the midst of the chatter from the bars. She felt unhappy because she was conscious of not being able to talk to people like Mrs. Cobb about the things that were important in their lives. It seemed there was something lacking in her which left a void where there should have been bubbling confidence and understanding. She continued to sit, twiddling her empty glass and worrying because she was already late in getting home to prepare supper for her father.

  Maggie Cobb was unruffled.

  “You’ll excuse me, Miss Watson, but I must go and get Dick and Elsie off to their teas,” and she made her way back behind the counters.

  Laura saw that Daphne Zarek was still talking to the Prices. She supposed she ought to tell her she was leaving. Daphne looked up as she passed.

  “Oh, Laura, I thought you’d gone ages ago? I’m staying on for a while. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Laura didn’t mind. All she wanted was to be away from the heat of the Cock and Pheasant and back in the familiar, peaceful environment of Vine Cottage.

  She slipped out into the street and let the cool night air soothe the turmoil in her mind.

  Behind the bar, Maggie Cobb said:

  “John, why haven’t you sent Dick and Else up for their tea now Madge is down?”

  “All in good time, mother; don’t you start fussing yourself now.” John Cobb patted his wife’s shoulder affectionately.

  “Maybe you didn’t notice we had custom, Mum, apart from those ropey sourpusses you were gossiping with in the corner?” Dick grinned at his mother.

  “Now then, Dick, I’ll not have you calling our old customers names.” The irritation in John Cobb’s voice was thinly disguised.

  Maggie said soothingly:

  “Else, take him off for his tea. Young Stevie was calling for him to say goodnight before I came down, and that must be well over half an hour ago.”

  Dick raised an eyebrow in the direction of his father and then winked at his mother.

  Elsie said:

  “Come on, Dick. I’m hungry.”

  “Oh you managing skirts,” he groaned, but he went off good-naturedly enough.

  Maggie moved across to the saloon bar, and John went on drawing pints and half-pints for the public customers. He stopped to chat with some of them and presently he drew himself a small mild, but not before he’d looked at the clock: he never drew his first drink until it had gone seven. It didn’t do to start in too early when you looked like having a full house, and Friday evenings generally saw the Cock and Pheasant crowded out. All the time he was thinking how much he missed his daughter Lily. Getting a letter today had started it all up again. The same thing happened every time Lil wrote, and she wrote regularly, same as she’d always done in the W.A.A.F. But John missed her more now than he had when she’d been away in the services. Perhaps it was her being married to Fred made the difference. She’d really left home this time.

  He remembered the wedding and the way all the village had turned up to stare when the photograph was taken outside the church. And young Tommy had worn his new white suit. Afterwards Lil and Fred had gone off for the week-end leaving Tommy with his grandparents; then they’d all three gone up to Yorkshire, leaving John with an aching void like a drawn tooth. Lil was happy enough—you could read that in her letters, and Fred Barrett was a smashing good fellow, but it didn’t make matters better for John. He was lonely for his daughter and each time he got a letter from her it seemed as if it were only yesterday she’d gone away.

  He kept picturing her in the bars, her neat, quick movements and the way their glances would meet across the glasses and beer engines if anything out of the ordinary happened. They’d never had to do much talking, him and Lil; it seemed as if when they looked at one another each knew what the other meant. It was always that way with Lil. With her gone, a part of himself had packed up too.

  He wondered sometimes if he was being disloyal to Maggie, and Dick and Elsie, when he thought like this about Lil. It was just that she was something special in his life, something quite apart from his wife and family as a whole. At the thought of his family, he frowned. The place was all cluttered up by Dick and Else and their kids. Funny the way he’d never seemed to notice any over-crowding when Lil and Tommy had been at home. Now there were babies’ nappies and bottles of milk and cots and prams all over the place. Maybe when Dick had settled down to the work it would be possible for him and Else to take on a cottage again and live out. But John realized that such a plan would never work. You had to live in a house to learn the trade and to run it successfully; there was a deal more work than people knew of in between opening hours. No, Dick and Else and their family would have to stay on in the Cock and Pheasant if they were to run the place on their own one day. Well, perhaps he and Maggie might retire in time and go and live in one of the cottages in Pilferer’s Lane. Smashing places they were if you knew how to fix them up inside. Yes, that was an idea; he and Maggie wouldn’t want to go on working the bars for all time. Then his face clouded again as he thought that any plans he made were dependent on Dick settling down to the trade. It was early days to tell yet. After all, he’d stuck Little Copse for over six months and then chucked it up just as they’d all got used to him being in regular work. He mustn’t start thinking about cottages until Dick was really settled.

  Maggie Cobb came across to her husband.

  “What’s the matter, Dad? You look tired like.”

  “It’s nothing, Maggie. Just a touch of liver, I think.”

  “Oh well, so long as it’s nothing serious . . .” she went off to take an order from an impatient man tapping the counter with a half crown piece.

  John continued to draw beer.

  Upstairs, Elsie Cobb helped herself to another piece of cake. Dick said:

  “It’s funny, Else, I remembered something more today.”

  “What, dear?”

  “Sitting by a roadside with a bunch of fellows and feeling my shirt sticking to me. Blazing sun it was, though it can’t have been midsummer ’cos there were a lot of little hills all round covered with grapes, fat green ones with some bluey powder stuff on the leaves and things. We were having a smoke, and a bloke came up on a motor bike, a Don R., and he saluted and handed me a message. Funny, I remembered it as clear as anything when I was downstairs in the bar just now and old Tom Cowley blew a bellyful of smoke across the counter. Lovely day it was, too, all blue sky and sun. Fancy remembering that. It’s good, isn’t it, Else?”

  She noticed that he’d started to rub his hand against his chest, inside his open shirt.

  “Ever so good, dear,” she said, “specially as it was a nice day. Ready for your second cup of tea, Dick?”

  * * * *

  “More tea, dear?” Lady Gurney reached across for her husband’s cup, “and then I’d like you to explain it all over again to me.”

  He bit into a thin sandwich, without answering, and then frowned.

  “What’s in this?” he asked, looking down his nose.

  “Meat paste, dear.”

  “Too salty.” He stretched his hand out for his cup.

  “It’s all we can get locally,” his wife replied.

  “We used to have jam sandwiches for tea,” he remarked.

  “We can’t now. You know the lot I made last year went wrong—all the fault of that awful recipe of Mrs. Cobb’s—and Ian has to have jam or he won’t eat a thing; and then the servants. . . . I can’t watch everything that goes on in the kitchen,” Lady Gurney’s face was etched with little creases of worry.

  “All right, my dear. I was only saying what we used to have,” her husband put in soothingly,
but her face remained puckered and anxious.

  “Now, James, please be serious for a moment and tell me again what you were saying before tea.”

  Sir James Gurney stirred his tea intently, then he tasted it; afterwards he put down his cup with quiet deliberation. At this moment Lady Gurney decided that her husband was the most irritating person she knew.

  He cleared his throat and said slowly:

  “There isn’t any more to tell, my dear. It’s as I’ve said, we can’t afford to go on living here.”

  So he does really mean it, Lady Gurney thought; sometimes he just says things for the sake of being perverse, but this time he is serious; he wouldn’t repeat himself unless he meant it. She felt herself flushing with apprehension.

  “You mean leave the Manor?” she squeaked.

  “Yes, Agnes. You see, we’ve been living above our income for a long time now, dipping into capital. If we continue doing so there’ll be nothing left at all in a few years’ time.” He sounded tired, and he wished his wife wouldn’t look so pert and inquisitive. He’d been through all this once before tea, but she didn’t appear to have understood what he meant; she’d always been childish about money matters—now she was being positively infantile in her apparent failure to grasp the plain facts he stated.

  “But, James, you said only a few weeks ago that the markets were looking up. You said there were plenty of opportunities for making money if one got out of Government-controlled stocks.” Like a bird, she kept nodding her head at him as she spoke.

  Sir James Gurney fidgeted. Why must she quote his words at him like that? Surprising she remembered them when he thought of her scatter-brained mind about most things.

  “It’s easy to make money when you’ve got money,” he said gloomily, forgetting that when they had married they were one of the wealthiest young couples in the county. ‘Money marries money’ the guests had whispered to each other at the wedding and had smiled contentedly at the rightfulness of such proceedings, showering expensive presents and good wishes on young James Gurney and his pretty, doll-like bride. But there had been two wars and a depression since then.