Harry and Bess went around to the stable yard and climbed into her car. ‘I think this war’s driving everyone off their rockers,’ she announced as the engine started. ‘Striped ponies, for God’s sake.’
Harry sighed. ‘Unbelievable, isn’t it,’ he agreed. ‘They painted them so they can be seen by drivers in the dark.’ She drove the car swiftly under the arch and into the street. Harry said seriously: ‘They only painted some. The stripes frightened the foals.’
Peevishly she accelerated down the smoky street. The inhabitants were all out of doors now, some sweeping up glass from the road and the pavement. Diners from the hall were helping the greengrocer pick up his apples and potatoes while his wife, elbows on the sill, watched from a window above the shop. ‘They’re all counted!’ she shouted ungraciously.
At the end of the town, where the forest road turned off, they came across the anti-aircraft officer leaning against the flank of his car. He waved them down. ‘Evening, sir,’ he said seeing Harry. ‘Everything all right?’
‘In the circumstances, yes, I suppose so,’ replied Harry carefully.
‘Where were you when all the hullaballoo was on?’ He smiled engagingly into Bess’s staring eyes.
Bess answered, ‘In the middle of the bombardment.’
‘Don’t they make a fuss?’ sighed the officer. ‘Don’t they just. Never saw such a display. Civilians! God knows what they’ll be like when this war really gets on its feet.’
The air was mild and cloudy as they drove across the night-bound forest, the thin slices of the car’s masked headlights scarcely picking up the road. People there always said ‘across’ not ‘through’ the forest, for much of it was exposed moorland of gorse and flattish hills; the trees mainly clustered beside cranky streams, in ordered plantations by the side of the road, gathered unofficially about a house, or in the hoof of a valley. Both had known the road since childhood and could measure it by the wooden bridges. The ground beside the bridges was often worn, sloping ground where donkeys, pigs and horses went to drink. Bess stopped the car and looked at him mischievously. ‘Want to look at the moon in the river, sailor?’ she asked.
Harry saw the frank look on her face. His anticipation began to stir. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then the lips, and he knew that she had not changed at all. In return he tapped her cheek with his fingers and they climbed out of the car and walked to the rail of the bridge. Below them the seams of the shallow stream glowed as they formed and reformed into noisy patterns over the stone bed. A worried night rat fell over itself to reach concealment.
Bess had walked to the bridge with her hands behind her back and now she faced him tautly, her face wry, her breasts pushed out. She remained like that, swaying a little, like a small girl who has done something bad but clever. She produced from behind her back a bottle of whisky. ‘Want a drink?’ she asked.
‘Where . . . where did you get that?’ asked Harry. The amber glowed a little even in that light. He realized. ‘You didn’t actually . . .?’
‘I did actually,’ Bess said proudly. ‘Pinched it. Pinched it from right under their noses in the bar, while all that silly fuss was going on.’ She smiled. ‘Technically, I suppose, that makes me a looter.’
He remained amazed. ‘Yes,’ he answered eventually. ‘I suppose it does, technically.’
She opened the top firmly and sniffed into the neck. ‘God, what a smell,’ she said. She lifted the bottle with a small jerk and said: ‘Cheers!’ To his further amazement she took a long swig and then another. She choked and coughed violently. His hand made a shape to pat her on the back, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Eyes watering, she held the bottle towards him. ‘Now you,’ she suggested. ‘Take a good one. It’s free. Sorry there’s no glasses, but us looters don’t use them.’
Slowly, feeling priggish and annoyed because of it, Harry took the bottle. Automatically he wiped the neck. ‘Thanks very much,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t do that after you’ve kissed me.’ She grinned and nodded towards the whisky: ‘What do they say about stolen stuff always tasting better?’
Harry took a modest drink. He was not used to Scotch and it roared down his throat. He eyed Bess with some admiration. Taking the cork from her he made to push it into the neck. ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ she protested. ‘It’s my turn now.’
‘Listen,’ said Harry gravely. ‘You’ve got to drive. It’s hard enough to see anyway.’
‘They should have striped all the ponies,’ she suggested inconsequentially. She allowed him to replace the cork. ‘All right, sir,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to bash up my nice new car.’ Abruptly she closed in on him, the Scotch bottle jammed between them, and began kissing him lasciviously. Several times she did so, on his lips, his face generally, and his neck. Her lipstick splashed all over her mouth, she withdrew to breathe and then said she had an idea. ‘Let’s . . . let’s take it to that summer house,’ she suggested, tight with mischief. ‘You know, where we were that time in your garden. Let’s take it there and finish it.’
‘Finish the whole bottle?’ Harry laughed nervously. Automatically he looked at his watch. It was still only eleven o’clock and his parents might have stayed up to hear the news.
‘Finish what we never finished before,’ she said archly. ‘Let’s have another swig and go.’
She took the bottle from his hands and lifted it for another drink. He thought she seemed quite accomplished at it. The summer house. Of course he wanted to go back to the summer house with her. If only he could keep her quiet; if only his parents had gone to bed.
Accepting the proffered bottle he took a token drink and then caught her held-out hand to go back to the car. She paused to lean dangerously over the wooden rail of the bridge, waving good night to her shadow in the stream. She insisted that he left his shadow with a similar farewell. Doing so he realized that he was going to have difficulty in keeping the situation in hand. It was a pity that his mother slept so lightly.
‘Can’t we go somewhere else?’ he suggested lamely as they moved back to the car.
‘Cowardy custard,’ she retorted, staggering a little dance on the road. ‘You’re just frightened of mummy.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Yes you are, sonny. If we don’t go to your summer house we’re not going any-bloody-where. I told you, I want to finish it off.’
He had to help her into the car, his apprehension growing. As he went around the back to reach the far door Bess started the engine and went bumping like a kangaroo down the narrow road, leaving him staring after her. She stopped at the next bend, a hundred yards away, and leaning precariously out bellowed: ‘Come on, Harry. I thought you were in. Hurry up!’
Sighing with dismay he began to lope after her, coming to a frozen halt when she suddenly put the vehicle into reverse and came charging backwards up the road to meet him. He had to leap aside into a forest ditch, fortunately dry, to get out of her path as the Standard careered by. She jarred to a stop and peered again from the window. ‘Oh, there you are. Why do you keep jumping about? Come on, get in, darling.’
Heavily he climbed in beside her. She smiled extravagantly in the dark and then reaching out pressed his face into her breasts. ‘Summer house, here we come,’ she laughed, starting the car forward again.
The excitement of the moment when he had his nose in her bosom was soon extinguished by the car’s maddened progress along the curling forest road. Harry hung on, horrified, as the small vehicle rattled crazily along the straights and skidded hideously around bends. Twice they missed the rails of bridges by inches, Bess shouting at the second escape: ‘God, I thought we’d been across this one already.’
‘Bess,’ he told her as eventually they turned down the track towards his house. ‘We’ve got to be quiet. If we’re going to do this. We’ve got to be.’
‘You’re frightened of your mummy,’ she taunted again, nevertheless slowing.
‘The whole village,’ he corrected. ‘For God’s sake,
shush up.’
Two hundred yards from the house she stopped the car in a space beside a thicket. ‘We’ll creep in from here,’ she plotted. ‘Mummy won’t hear us then.’ A little relieved and aware of his growing sexual anticipation, Harry got out of the car and closed the door silently in answer to her exaggerated hushing and her finger on her lips. She closed her door with extravagant care, but realizing that the whisky bottle was still within the car she opened it again and slammed it heartily. Frozen-faced, Harry looked at her across the low roof. An upstairs window in the house opened with a rattle, but then closed again.
‘Just having a final wee-wee, I expect,’ commented Bess looking that way like a scout. She crept around to him and suddenly pulled him down beside the car, rolling on top of him. Harry felt her breasts and stomach and thighs hard against him, the pleasure only slightly diminished by the knowledge that she was grinding his uniform into the grass.
Bess, panting, eased herself off. ‘There’s plenty more like that,’ she whispered. ‘Honest. Let’s get in the summer house. Come on Harry. It will be lovely.’
Their arms about each other they crept forward through the dark. Harry eased the ring of the front gate and with only a dull click it opened. He put his hand on her bottom, feeling the soft buttocks below the skirt, and pushed her forward into the garden. The summer house leaning against its supporting stays was directly ahead across the orchard grass, its miniature roof outlined. ‘Our own little house,’ she whispered, giggling.
They reached the squeaky porch of the wooden building and he pantomimed the need to cross it carefully because it sounded. She bent quickly and took off her shoes. Excitement was growing in his chest. He glanced over his shoulder at the house. All was solidly dark.
Now they were in the dry, sweet-smelling interior, in the blackness and standing close against each other. ‘It’s smaller than I remember,’ she whispered. She kissed him lushly, her hands slipping down against the front of his trousers. ‘The room I mean,’ she added.
She had placed the whisky bottle on the floor and now she bent to pick it up, knocking her hand against it and sending it bumping across the boards. Panic-stricken he tried to find it in the dark. Bess located it first. ‘We’ll have a noggin,’ she suggested. ‘It will calm our nerves.’ She pulled the cork and they each had a drink. ‘Don’t worry, Harry,’ she whispered. ‘Your old woman will be snoring by now.’
Even then he almost took issue with the affront to his mother, but Bess put his hands to the buttons of her blouse and then put hers to his navy fly. They began to unbutton each other. Bess finished first. ‘God, Harry Lovatt, that’s not too bad at all,’ she whispered exploring him. ‘I’m glad I waited until you grew up.’
Her lovely, full, pale breasts were before his stupefied gaze now, their skin like silk to his palms. From the house, Wadsworth, the basset hound, began to bark.
‘Damn,’ Harry muttered. ‘That bloody Wadsworth.’
‘Why do you call him Wadsworth?’ she inquired, exposing him fully and holding him in both soft hands. She began to tug gently. Harry had difficulty in speaking. Every sensation from drunkenness to ecstasy was coursing through his blood. His trousers suddenly rippled down to his ankles.
‘It was the middle name of Longfellow, you know, the poet, and he being a basset, the dog I mean, we thought it . . . Oh God, Bess, this is terrific.’
‘Harry!’ His father’s voice sounded into the garden from an open upstairs window. ‘Harry, are you there?’ A torch beam wagged around the darkness.
‘Oh Christ,’ muttered Bess.
‘Bugger it,’ agreed Harry.
‘Harry! There’s been important news.’
He could feel her staring like a challenge at him in the gloom. ‘I’ll have to go and have a word with him,’ he said miserably. ‘He’ll be coming down here otherwise. And my mother. I’ll just go and come back. I’ll tell them I’m going to see you home.’
‘That’s about all you’re going to see,’ she muttered crossly.
‘We shouldn’t have come here in the first place,’ he returned. ‘There’s all the bloody forest.’
‘Harry!’ The shout echoed in the garden trees.
‘Go on,’ she said, backing away from him. ‘Go to daddy.’
Sullenly he pulled his trousers up and straightened his jacket. He went out of the summer house leaving her standing in the dark with her breasts hanging out. With a half-curse, half-sob, she put them away. She went quickly out into the garden just as Harry was opening the side door of the house. She watched him go in and carefully close the door behind him. From the inside his voice came. ‘Hello, dad. Were you calling?’
Bess swore blindly. She bent, put on her shoes and took a running kick at one of the supporting stays that had leaned against the fragile wall of the summer house for years. It fell loosely away. She cursed again and took another flying kick. ‘And that’s for Wadsworth,’ she spat. The second stay clattered down. There came from the summer house a creaking, cracking sound and with what seemed like a relieved sigh the whole side wall fell away. The roof and the other walls groaned, shifted sideways, and leaned there crazily. Bess fled.
Within the house Robert Lovatt met his son at the top of the stairs. ‘What was that?’ he asked, hearing the crack and creaking of wood in the garden.
‘Nothing’, said Harry, pretending to listen. ‘Something in the trees, I expect. A pony probably. I was just coming in.’ Wadsworth appeared, red eyes revolving. Harry grimaced at him.
‘Ah yes, good,’ enthused his father. ‘Your mother was worried. We heard the gunfire. I rang Lyndhurst and they said it was all some fool false alarm.’
‘It was,’ replied Harry dully.
‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, son. There’s some good war news at last. Well done Churchill, I say.’
‘Oh yes, what’s that?’
‘We’re on the offensive, Harry. We’ve successfully invaded Iceland!’
Six
WHIT SUNDAY, 12 May, was the traditional, if often optimistic, British beginning of summer. Across the trees, coloured moors and hills of the New Forest the sun once more shone; the sea at the forest edge was buoyant and the towns and villages of the south basked in the early weather. Church bells, called the poor man’s music, tolled across the air.
On that Sunday morning James was not surprised that noticeably more people than usual were making their way towards the church of St Michael and All Angels, Binford. Rotterdam had been viciously bombed and on the English coast people said they could hear the guns in Belgium. As he and Millie alighted from the trap by the green and began to release Horace from the shafts, he saw the worshippers coming from many directions to walk below the lychgate and be greeted by the Reverend Clifford Pemberton with a smile and a clean white surplice blowing like a flag of surrender in the bright south-westerly breeze.
‘Nothing like a grave crisis to improve business for the Church of England,’ commented James as they walked up the slope towards the sixteenth-century door. ‘Old Pemberton can hardly believe his luck.’
They saw his parents with Harry, in uniform, walking from the village and they stood on the green, shaded by great horse chestnuts and waited for them.
Mrs Harriet Spofforth and Bess arrived in the Flying Standard. A short line of people waited to shake hands with the vicar and Harry coloured as he faced Bess. She was unworried. ‘Sleep well?’ she asked.
He looked about him and said: ‘Yes, very well, thank you.’
‘How’s Longfellow?’ she whispered.
‘It’s Wadsworth,’ he muttered.
Her grandmother, lace to the neck and a velvet hat sprawled on her head, was confronting the vicar truculently. Her gas mask swung in its tubular tin container. ‘You’re too high, you know,’ she accused, tapping on it for emphasis. ‘Miles and miles too high. Incense and all that Popery. Go any higher and you’ll disappear from view as far as I am concerned. You’ll lose my custom, for a start.’
‘
Oh dear, dear,’ said the vicar, studying her with controlled malice. ‘And what a pity that would be.’
James and Millie greeted their relatives formally, shaking hands and with kisses, although they had been with them only the day before. It was the sort of ritual performed unconsciously when meeting before going into church, the unspoken comfortableness of their English lives. Harry held his mother’s gloved hand as they walked into the arched coolness of the nave.
It was ten minutes before the service and there were few pews left unoccupied. Hob Hobson, the grocer, and his wife Dorcas left their seats and moved two pews further back so that the Lovatt family could sit together. Elizabeth smiled her thanks. They sank to their knees, as the people of that place had done on Sundays stretching over centuries, and prayed for God’s help and protection. Robert’s gas mask tin clattered on the frayed stone floor.
Mrs Gloria Arbuthnot, the clairvoyant, who sometimes called herself a soothsayer and some said was a forest aunt, a witch, crept into the church and sniffed around critically like someone walking into the premises of a rival business. The Reverend Clifford Pemberton, now within the church, eyed her with antipathy. She rarely attended, her only set and certain day being the Festival of All Souls, 31 October, the time of spirits and spells, when she wore a tiny black pointed hat. When the vicar had challenged her on this diabolical accoutrement, she turned a stiff smile on him and said it was her best Sunday bonnet.
The organ was pumped by Billy Sanders, the strong butcher’s boy, who wrestled the long pump-handle up and down as if hacking meat on a block, a violence translated into the quietest of music on the far side of the screen. It had even occurred to Billy that the harder he pumped the more serene the melody. By the time the organ had sauntered through its deft and echoing variations, fingered by Mr Frank Purkiss who was also the New Forest schools’ piano tuner, the church was full. Sunshine fell from the stained glass of the eastern window, seeming to Elizabeth as though it were part of the music itself and the music part of it. The housewife in her grimaced at how the same light illuminated the dust puffing from the hassocks now being tossed into their places on the choir stalls by the pimpled Willy Cubbins, the last of the evacuees.
The Dearest and the Best Page 10