Sensible Life

by Mary Wesley

  “Mabs and Tashie?”

  “Sharing a house in Wiltshire with a friend who has children the same age as theirs. They do all sorts of war work and get batches of Italian P.O.W.s to work in the garden.”

  “Nigel and Henry?”

  “Treasury and Ministry of Information.”

  “And Joyce?” She looked out at the fog, remembering Joyce.

  “Joyce is in London. She actually enjoys air-raids, hasn’t missed one. She’s very popular with our Yank allies, indeed with all our allies. As you may remember, she’s full of bounce. She extracts the maximum of pleasure out of everything she does.”

  “I don’t know,” Flora snapped.

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t.” Cosmo was amused. “Her elder brother was killed in the Dieppe raid.”

  “I loathe and detest this war. I want nothing to do with it,” said Flora violently.

  “And how do you manage that?” Cosmo teased. “Were you not called up?”

  “I don’t manage. I am in the Land Army, it’s the least of the evils.”

  “So you make hay, commune with cows.” She found his tone mocking.

  “And pigs and geese,” Flora shouted. “Yes.”

  “Nearly there,” said the driver, pushing open the partition. “This is Sussex Gardens.”

  “Jolly Good.” Cosmo looked at his watch. “I shall be in time for my train. But don’t think,” he said to Flora, “that this is the last you will see of me. I am taking you with me to where I catch my flight. You have yet to tell me why you ran away from Pengappah and where you have been since. You can tell me on the train.”

  “Why should I?” asked Flora disagreeably.

  “You owe it to me.”

  “I owe you nothing. You are as arrogant and pleased with yourself as ever; you haven’t changed in ten years,” Flora exclaimed. She felt a resurgence of the rage which had assailed her, standing over them slumped and drunk in front of the fire at Pengappah. “I bet you have grown as bossy as Hubert,” she cried. “As selfish as he is, as—”

  The taxi had come to a stop. A porter opened the door and snatched Flora’s case. “Which train, sir?” he said to Cosmo.

  “I’ll take that.” Flora reached for the case.

  “No.” Cosmo caught her wrist. “Stand still a minute, darling. How much do I owe you?” he asked the driver. “I have all my gear in the left luggage,” he told the porter as he fumbled for change with one hand. “We need the Cornish train. Eleven o’clock.”

  “Number one platform,” said the porter. “Very crowded today.”

  “Always is,” said Cosmo. “Stand still,” he said to Flora.

  Flora said, “Let go,” and kicked his shin.

  “I won’t,” said Cosmo, handing money to the driver. “Thank you very much. Ouch,” as Flora bit his hand. “Bitch!”

  “What a pair of love-birds,” said the taxi driver. “You should be ashamed,” he said to Flora, “him going off to war. He might get killed and be remembering your last words as he died,” he said, using the intimacy engendered by the fog.

  “Oh, shut up,” said Flora. “Please give me my case,” she said to the porter.

  Cosmo, still holding her wrist, said: “Darling, please—”

  Flora said: “All right, but let go of me, you are hurting.” She did not add that she was destined for the same train. She had her return ticket in her bag.

  Cosmo looked at his watch. “We have just time to find a First Aid place and do something about your knees,” he said, “and my bite. You’ve drawn blood.”

  Flora said, “I’m sorry,” but did not look it.

  FORTY-NINE

  SQUASHED IN THE CORNER of an overcrowded carriage, Flora was disgruntled and annoyed for letting herself be beholden to Cosmo who, travelling first-class as an officer, had insisted on paying the difference on her third-class ticket.

  The compartment was full of officers poisoning the atmosphere with tobacco smoke which, making her feel sick, added to her disadvantaged feelings. “Perhaps we could have a window open,” she suggested to the palpable horror of a Frenchman on the seat opposite.

  “Et le brouillard?” he protested, with an outraged sniff.

  Flora said, “Please,” in the voice Cosmo’s mother used when she would brook no No. A Royal Marine Major in mid-carriage stepped across the Frenchman’s legs and pulled the window open. Flora said, “Thank you very much,” warmly.

  The French officer, appraising Flora’s ankles, let his eyes rise to and rest at her sticking-plastered knees. Flora pulled her skirt down. The train began to move from the shadowy platform into fog.

  “Well, now,” said Cosmo, more briskly than he felt, “we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “We can’t talk here,” said Flora, looking round at their audience.

  “Darling, there’s nowhere else.”

  “Catching up on what?”

  “On what you have been up to these ten years.” Cosmo kept his voice low. “Are you married, for instance?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “No, and nor is Hubert. Not that that—where did you vanish to when you ran away from Pengappah? You were gone when we woke up. We were in despair. We searched the woods and cliffs, yelled ourselves hoarse and imagined you drowned, until we realised your case was gone. Your trail went cold at the station.”

  “You looked like rag dolls lolling there,” said Flora. “You discussed me. Dissected me. I was furious, livid. I heard every word from the kitchen,” she hissed. Then, leaning forward, she said, “N’ecoutez pas, monsieur; c’est une conversation privée.”

  “Et qui manque d’intérêt,” said the French officer, closing his eyes, turning aside and hunching his shoulders at the draught.

  Flora repeated in Cosmo’s ear: “I heard every word. You discussed me.”

  “Most lovingly,” said Cosmo, remembering the conversation. (Oh dear.) “What did we say?”

  “If you’ve forgotten, I shall not remind you. I am still furious.”

  “Darling, we were plastered. I remember the hangover; it was a humdinger.”

  “I wish you would not keep calling me darling.”

  “You did not object in the taxi.”

  “I had forgotten how angry I was—am.”

  Cosmo looked out at the fog and glanced round the carriage. Several people besides the Frenchman were trying to sleep, the rest deep in newspapers. “What’s this about reading The Times?” he asked.

  “At Coppermalt Nigel advised me to read The Times. I think he was shocked by my ignorance; he said I could follow what happens to people, deaths, weddings and so on, and get a grasp of what’s going on in the world. It was my last evening, the time that Mabs and Tashie, oh and Joyce, dressed me in black and your mother—Well, anyway, I thought about it and took his tip. I’ve been reading the papers regularly ever since.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve read some of your cases in the law reports.”

  “Really?” Cosmo was pleased to hear this.

  “And Hubert’s articles and despatches during the build-up to the war. He made me aware of a lot of things the politicians didn’t seem to want us to know. I learnt to distrust politicians and hate war. It’s filthy.”

  “It’s going on, we are all involved—”

  “As little as possible, me. I don’t want to kill anyone, it doesn’t help, or for anyone I love to die.” I don’t want you to die, she thought, or Hubert. “Look what’s happened to Felix,” she said, “a neutral murdered in a neutral country. What’s going on over there in Europe? I never really knew Felix and now I never shall.” (I loved but did not know him.)

  “And you would have liked to?”

  “Of course I should. And you, how well did you know him?” (She felt a fierce nostalgic hunger for the Felix of her childhood.)

  “He came to stay once or twice. Mabs was keen on him. What was there to know? He was the kind of person people talk about. That charm and good looks breed gossip, engender je
alousy. At various times I heard it suggested that he was (a) a womaniser or (b) a homosexual. It was even hinted that he was illegitimate. My father said that was rubbish, that although he did not look like old Jef, as Pa called him, he was in manner exactly like him. Pa sometimes made his old friend sound rather a bore, I admit. Felix was a good man, that’s all, and that’s enough, but above all he was bloody brave. Not many people choose to get themselves shot to shield some person or persons they don’t know. In theory yes, but in actual cold-blooded practice, that takes guts.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “I imagine so.”

  So he had stood up to be counted, she thought. But boring? Well, perhaps. He had not, come to think of it, been exactly sparkling company when he took her out from school. Had she been blinded by love when she blamed herself for the flop the day had turned out to be? And more recently in the Fellowes’ bed, what had he been like? A most unexciting lover, she thought bleakly. It would have been so much better to remember him as the marble persona of her childhood. “Felix was a charmer,” she said. “He took me out to lunch when I was at school. It was terrible. I was going down with measles. He was bored.”

  Cosmo laughed. He would laugh a lot louder of I told him I’d slept with Felix and was unmoved, she thought; if I let him know that in bed with Felix it was I who was bored.

  Cosmo said, “Poor devil. What hell.” He turned to look out at the fog. He was grown leaner. His large nose made him look hawkish and arrogant; his hair, once so fair, had grown darker than she remembered. He turned back to look at her. “You haven’t changed much in these last ten years,” he said. “If anything, you are lovelier.” Then, startling her with parallel thought, he said, “Cerebral love sticks; it’s impossible to get it out of your system. I do so want,” he muttered in her ear, “to make love to you.”

  “Are you suggesting,” she said, “that I am in your system?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want me out of it?”

  “I did not say that; cerebral and carnal can link very nicely.”

  “Oh look,” said Flora, “the sun.”

  The several occupants who were still awake looked up as the train moved from one moment to the next into sparkling sunshine. “Let’s shut the window; I am cold,” she said.

  Cosmo closed the window. Two fellow occupants got up to struggle along the corridor to the lavatory. “What happened to you? Where did you go,” Cosmo persisted, “when you disappeared?”

  “I moved where nobody would look for me. I changed class.”

  “What?”

  “I became a servant.”

  “What kind of servant?” He was disbelieving.

  “A housemaid. In Thurloe Square.”

  “But that’s five minutes from Mabs’ house.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve often walked through that square. I could have—”

  “You wouldn’t have found the person you were looking for.”

  “Are you that person?” Cosmo tried to see Flora’s eyes, but she turned away.

  “Look,” she said, “Maidenhead, the Thames,” in a bright voice. “That is the river Thames.”

  “Please, Flora,” he said, “tell me how you did it.” And, he thought, who you have become.

  She said, “Any fool can sweep floors, make beds, polish furniture.”

  Cosmo said: “How did you set about it?”

  It had taken from Truro in Cornwall to Maidenhead for her to make up her mind, on that flight from Pengappah. She had counted her money at least six times to see how much was there, each time forgetting in her pain the exact sum. Between Maidenhead and Paddington she devised a strategy for survival, and the manic panic which had bunched her insides for six and a half hours subsided to a manageable knot. She found a cheap hotel and set off next morning for Knightsbridge to find Irena Tarasova. In Beauchamp Place she ran into Alexis coming away from Irena’s establishment, recognised him, and he her. Supposing her to be with Hubert—for had not Hubert stopped in Paris on his way to Marseilles for a game of bridge?—Alexis enquired after Hubert in a sly and jocose manner. “I was afraid,” she told Cosmo, “that he would give me away, tell Hubert that he had met me, so I went with him for a cup of coffee and a bun in the Kardomah café in the Brompton Road.”

  “Did he make a pass?” asked Cosmo, suspicious.

  “Alexis? He was old and fat; at least forty-five.”

  Cosmo said: “Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”

  Over coffee, Flora said, she had made it clear she wanted none of Hubert or Cosmo, that she was on her way to ask Irena for help; she thought Irena might find her a job. Alexis advised strongly against this; he was returning next day to Paris. His own visit had been fruitless; Irena had refused not only to lend him money but had also, and this was heinous, refused to remarry him so that he could apply for British citizenship. He was sick, he said, of being stateless. He was brazen and unashamed. Irena, he said, grown selfish with success and security, was not in the business of helping anyone but herself. “She will make you clothes and take your money and that’s the lot,” he had said. “And what’s more,” he said, “she will betray you, talk.” Flora had realised later, she told Cosmo, that Alexis, having been refused help by his ex-wife, did not wish her to help anyone else. “You learn about people as you grow older,” she said with amusement.

  Cosmo said: “I suppose so,” wishing to learn the new Flora. “What happened then?”

  “Actually he came in handy.”

  “Oh?”

  “He agreed to post a letter to my parents from Paris. I wanted them to think I was in France. I wrote on plain paper, with no address. I gave him money for the stamp. I was trying to behave as decently as I could. I did not want to be with them, but equally I did not want them worrying about me.”

  “Did they get the letter?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned to face Cosmo, flinching as she brushed his knees with hers. “I thought it was my fault that I did not love them. I suppose I hoped for some vestigial bond. I was haunted by the family love I’d seen between the Shovehalfpennies and you Leighs at Coppermalt; you are so lucky.”

  “Did they get in touch?” Cosmo strove to understand.

  “I had given no address. But four years later, when I was twenty-one and felt safe, I wrote care of my father’s bank to tell them that I was all right and to congratulate my father. I’d seen his name in the New Year’s Honours.” The train was drawing into Reading. Few people got off, many more squeezed on. There was shuffling and jostling in the corridor; the officers near the door fended off intruders. “Full up in here, I’m afraid, try further along,” closing the door which had been hopefully opened, stretching their legs across the compartment. “Bloody hell, travelling these days.” The guard blew his whistle and the train moved on.

  “I got an answer that time,” said Flora, speaking quietly, “via a solicitor.” She stared at the French officer, who was temporarily awake; he closed his eyes.

  “What did the solicitor’s letter say?” asked Cosmo, puzzled.

  “The letter was to the effect that I am not my father’s child, that I am no concern of his. My mother was not mentioned.” In spite of herself Flora’s voice hit a high note.

  Cosmo said: “I call that absolutely splendid, terrific. Wasn’t it a great relief?”

  “Yours is a robust view,” said Flora drily. “I agree with you now, but at the time I felt I did not exist, that I was nobody.”

  “I think it’s wonderful.”

  “I am still my mother’s child.”

  “Put her out of your mind, forget her. Now, back to Alexis. Did you go to Irena, after all? Who helped you? Alexis?”

  “Actually,” said Flora grinning, “he did make a sort of pass. I—er—fended him off.”

  Cosmo felt fury. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. He may not have posted my letter, just pocketed the stamp money.” Flora laughed. “I went to Molly.”

 
“Who is Molly?”

  “Molly was your parents’ under-housemaid at Coppermalt; she left to work in London for Tashie. She was in love with your butler, the one who was a closet Communist.”

  “Gosh,” said Cosmo. “I never knew that! Gage!”

  “They are married now,” said Flora, “and have a tobacconist’s business in Wimbledon. He votes Conservative.”

  “But why didn’t you go to Mabs or Tash?” Cosmo was at sea.

  “They would have talked. They would not have been able to resist talking. Molly was my bridge.”

  “Bridge?”

  “From middle-class to working-class, to where it would not occur to anyone to look for me.”

  Cosmo took this in rather slowly. “Please go on,” he said respectfully.

  She had telephoned Molly, Flora said, when she guessed Tashie would be out, visited, and over cups of tea in the kitchen learned the hows and whys of becoming a servant; servants, she had noticed, got free board and lodging, something she badly needed. Much amused, Molly told her where, apart from The Times, to look for advertisements. “In the Thirties,” said Flora, as though talking to an idiot, “there was fearful unemployment, but a shortage of servants. People did not want to be servants, The Lady was simply full of pleas.”

  “I remember,” said Cosmo. “Constant fuss and worry among one’s aunts. Go on.” She had answered an advertisement for a housemaid in Thurloe Square, a Mrs. Fellowes. “I told Mrs. Fellowes that this would be my first job, which was the truth. I was nervous. I handed her my references; Molly had stressed that I must have references. They said that I was honest, hard-working, clean, tidy and came from a good family, that I had no experience but was willing to learn, and of good character.”

  “And?” Cosmo was fascinated.

  “Mrs. Fellowes read them. She asked whether I liked dogs. I said I did. Then she said, “Did you write these yourself, these, er, excellent references?” I had pinched a sheet of Tashie’s headed notepaper and, what I thought was rather brilliant, ventured into the Knightsbridge Hotel for a piece. Actually I wrote the references in the hotel lounge. So I said actually yes, I had written them, I was sorry but I’d thought it worth a try, and again that I was sorry and I would go now and not waste her time. She said, “Wait a minute, just tell me who,” and she looked at the references, “is Alexander Butler, Justice of the Peace? And who is Hubert Wyndeatt-Whyte, doctor of divinity?” I said, “I know a butler but he is called Gage, and that Wyndeatt-Whyte was dead, a friend of mine’s cousin.” I was frozen with shame, sitting on the edge of a chair like a dolt. It was awful. Mrs. Fellowes began to laugh. When she stopped, she said, “When can you start?” I’ve been with them ever since, as housemaid up to 1939, and from then on as a Land Girl at their place in the country.”