Camomile Lawn

by Mary Wesley

  ‘Richard collected a hamper this morning,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Good. Auf Wiedersehen.’ On the doorstep he met Richard. ‘My dear fellow, would you be amused to come to my rehearsal? I go this minute.’

  ‘Delighted,’ said Richard, and turned to walk with him. ‘D’you know, I saw General de Gaulle in Piccadilly walking past the Ritz, looked lonely, poor chap, carries that big nose high.’

  Resentfully Helena watched them, heads together in interested talk until they turned the corner. It annoyed her that they were friends. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ she shouted in her empty drawing room. She plumped up the sofa cushions and went to unpack the hamper, arrange a cold supper. Max never came back from rehearsal without two or more friends. If he calls me ‘phlegm’ tonight I shall hit him, she told herself, or deny him my favours. She was laughing when the doorbell rang. She opened the door to her sister-in-law.

  ‘Sarah, my dear, how lovely.’

  ‘I telephoned. You must have been out.’

  ‘No, no, I heard it, we were, I was in the lavatory. Come in, come in.’

  ‘I was wondering if you were visible.’

  ‘What d’you mean, visible. Here I am.’

  ‘I meant busy,’ said Sarah, who had wondered whether Helena had been in bed with Max. ‘Are you busy?’

  ‘I was seeing about supper. Max has taken Richard to his rehearsal. Oh, Sarah, d’you think he will ever go home?’

  ‘Whyever not?’

  ‘He’s enjoying himself. He says he’s seeing the war at first hand.’

  ‘I thought he came up to see his tailor and shop.’

  ‘Can you stay to supper? He’s finished with his tailor, he’s done his shopping, he’s been to the cinemas and the Windmill, he’s nearly finished his dancing lessons but he shows no signs of leaving. I tell you he is enjoying himself.’

  ‘Isn’t that a good thing?’ Sarah, having followed Helena to the kitchen, helped her unpack the hamper. ‘What a lot of goodies!’

  ‘Monika’s clever. Doesn’t think me much of a cook, sends lots of cooked stuff. She’s right, of course. Could you carve those things and put them on a dish? I never know how many people Max will bring home. It’s a good thing the hamper came today. Richard fetches and sends back the empties, at least he does that chore.’

  ‘What are these?’ Sarah searched for a knife.

  ‘Chickens, rabbits, mix them up. There’s a pâté too. We are rather short of drink, though.’

  ‘I brought you a bottle.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, wonderful! So hard to get.’

  ‘What is the poor old boy doing then?’

  ‘Getting on my nerves. Just joint those things, here’s a dish. He goes to his club and counts generals. He knew a lot of them in his youth. Then he prowls the streets.’

  ‘What d’you mean, prowls?’ Sarah exclaimed anxiously.

  ‘He prowls about clubland, Sarah, and Whitehall, he’s like a child. He’s thrilled if he sees General Eisenhower or Brooke or Alexander, anyone in the news. This morning he saw General de Gaulle. I heard him tell Max.’

  ‘Seems quite harmless to me.’ Sarah looked relieved.

  ‘He’s your brother, you know he is harmless. It’s me that’s suffering. I want him to go home. He assumes that just because I bought these houses he has the right to live in them.’ Helena began to cry stormily. ‘I want to be alone with Max. God knows I seldom am, he’s dreadfully sociable, always asking people here. If I can’t be alone with him at night when can I be? Don’t laugh, Sarah, it’s not funny.’

  ‘It is, though. What about Monika? I thought Richard and she—’

  ‘So did I, but she sends all this food, she keeps the Cornish house going far better than I ever did and she seems very matey with the General, the Floyers and the village.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her to come up?’

  ‘God, no. Besides, she can’t leave the hens and the cow. No, Sarah, he’s got to go, he’s ruining my life.’

  ‘I’ll try and think of some ploy. By the way, I have to see Calypso. She won’t go near her parents, they are worried stiff.’

  ‘No need, she’s another who’s enjoying the war.’

  ‘She’s pregnant.’

  ‘Ceci n’empêche cela.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘From what I hear. Never in. Lunching, dining, dancing with French, Poles, Americans, Belgians, Australians. She was even seen with a Sikh, it will be a black man next.’

  ‘There are no black officers.’

  ‘Just as well. She’s no longer working so she has all the time in the world and that delightful house.’

  Parting with her lunch companion, a Free French officer with the pseudonym of a Paris Métro station, Calypso rode on the top of a bus towards Kensington noting, from her elevated viewpoint, Uncle Richard walking along Knightsbridge with Max, limping nimbly beside the violinist who was restricting his usual stride to accommodate the older man. The bus rocketed along Kensington Gore. She got out at the Broad Walk to give Fling his walk across the parks. The giant avenue of elms was touched by misty green almost invisible against the pale sky, still cold from winter. On the north side of the park barrage balloons bobbed sulkily. She headed across the grass past Watts’s ‘Physical Energy’ to the Serpentine, where the ducks hopefully congregated to be fed by nannies and children long since evacuated to the country. She appreciated the wide stretch of grass, bare since the outbreak of war, empty of pekinese, dachshund and poodle. Fling barked at a squirrel, sleepy from the long winter, exploring a paper bag. The gardens looked blousy and unloved, park chairs tipped over and in need of paint, restless bits of paper scurrying in the chill wind. Nostalgically she doubled back to the Round Pond but nobody raced toy boats, no model yachts sailed. Some vandal had thrown a park seat into the water; a row of gulls perched along the back. Here, once, Oliver had pushed her in. She had sat waist deep in icy water screaming, while Walter, infected, had pushed in Polly, then given her Nanny a shove as she leaned to the rescue, hoping not to get her feet wet. Calypso remembered the row when they got back to Aunt Sarah’s house, followed by hot tea and crumpets. The gulls rose shrieking and drifted west. A soldier wandered along, meeting no girl, having no tryst. She walked faster, making for the Dutch garden. There, pacing between the pools, peering to see whether coot or duck were yet nesting, busy in their tiny world of reeds, Fling leaned to catch sight of his whiskery reflection and jumped back barking. Hands in pockets, she turned back to the Serpentine to walk along the north side, watching mallard in pursuit of duck skitter along the water, then rise high in flight across to St James’s Park, their quacks diminishing in the evening sky. Down in the Dell she stood by the railings. A moorhen walked jerkily from the bushes and rabbits hopped slowly across the grass, impervious to the war. Hector had told her to be careful Fling did not squeeze in and give chase; he had once had a lurcher who had leapt the railings and caused havoc. She walked up to the Row, shabby and sad, robbed of its railings. Hector had been angry, asked questions in the House, unfashionably blamed Lord Beaverbrook for the desecration of London’s parks and squares by the uprooting of railings made from the guns of the Peninsular War and Waterloo. She thought of dancing with him in the ‘400’, held close against him, feeling his cock rise in desire against her body. Now, standing by deserted Rotten Row, she felt an answering pang. She stared in disgust at the growing mountain of rubble from bombed buildings heaped on the Guards’ football ground. Were there bones of people unaccounted for in the rubble, precious furniture, objets d’art? She crossed Hyde Park Corner dodging the traffic and, tired now, walked down past the Palace into the maze of streets round Petty France. Near the Underground she was amused to see Polly wheel her bicycle from an office building and pedal towards Knightsbridge. She looked at the ugly block which housed Polly’s secret work. Her own job had been two doors down. Both were sworn not to disclose the whereabouts of their offices. We could have met for lunch, she thought, and mockingly remembered the man
y documents marked Top Secret which often contained information equally available in the Daily Mirror.

  The telephone was ringing as she put her key in the door.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Hullo.’

  ‘Telegrams.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Calypso Grant Mrs?’

  ‘I am Calypso Grant. Yes, please read it—yes, I’ve got that. Yes. No—yes, a confirmation copy. Yes, please. Thank you.’ She replaced the receiver and bent to take Fling off his lead. In her haste to reach the telephone she had left the door open. In the street the plane trees dappled shadows on the pavement, a tug hooted on the river. She closed the door and listened to the silence in the house. Then she went into the cloakroom and was sick. She splashed her face with cold water and rinsed her mouth, expelling the haunting taste of bile.

  ‘What the hell was he doing?’ she said to the dog. ‘I thought he was safe in Cairo.’ She dried her face, looking round the cloakroom. Umbrellas, a shooting stick, Wellington boots, an old country hat, a Spy cartoon of his grandfather on the wall, a faint whiff of hair oil and tobacco. She sat on the bottom stair. Fling sat beside her, pressing his rough little body against her legs. She leant her head back against the banisters, waiting for strength to flow back. When she opened her eyes it was night. She felt a peculiar fluttering sensation in her belly. ‘Ah,’ she said grimly, ‘It’s you, is it? He won’t be here to welcome you and I don’t much want you.’

  Thirty-one

  ‘WHAT A GOOD PARTY.’ Sarah helped Helena clear the table. ‘Feeding nine of us. It reminds me of pre-war, delicious food.’

  ‘I couldn’t do it without Monika.’ Helena carried a tray to the kitchen, stepping carefully down the precipitous basement stairs. If the houses survived the war she intended a drastic remodelling. She navigated a chair in the passage where the men had heaped their overcoats, brushed past Ludwig’s cello case propped against the umbrellas. She cursed Ludwig’s instrument, also his wife Irena who had a way of sitting cross-legged on the floor which annoyed her. ‘Let someone else have the chairs, I am so small I take no room.’

  Sarah joined her in the basement. ‘That’s the lot. Let me wash up, you dry.’

  ‘All right.’ Helena reached ungraciously for a tea towel.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sarah turned on the hot tap.

  Helena did not answer but stood waiting for the wet plates.

  ‘Cough up. What’s the matter?’ Sarah handed her a plate.

  ‘It’s difficult to explain. I’d rather not try.’

  ‘Very well.’ Sarah washed the plates, stacking them to drip. ‘I have to telephone George. There might be a letter from Oliver. We worry. There’s been so much fighting in the Western Desert.’

  ‘The telephone’s in the drawing room. It will be a good excuse to get them to leave early.’ Helena brightened.

  ‘Don’t do that. They are enjoying themselves.’

  ‘But you want to talk privately.’

  ‘I’ll go back to Polly’s, it’s only a step. I don’t want to break up your party.’

  Helena sighed, wishing that Sarah would break it up, wishing the party over. She blamed herself for not objecting long ago to Max inviting his friends to eat her food, drink her drink, sprawl in her drawing room. When first she had bought the houses she had welcomed his friends, but now she felt differently. She did not grudge them the food, she grudged them the long hours they stayed, discussing their music, behaving, as many of them gratefully told her, as though they were at home in Vienna, Prague, Berlin or Budapest. They treated her with affection, apparently unaware that she wished them, their music and their laughter gone, so that she could have Max to herself, be in bed with him, feel his whip-thin body against hers and rejoice in the miracle which had befallen so late in life.

  ‘I’ll trot round to Polly’s, then. Back in a few minutes. Are you all right, Helena? You look funny.’

  ‘No, I’m not all right,’ Helena shouted.

  ‘Why not? Are you ill?’

  ‘No. I wish they’d all go. I never seem to see Max now Richard is here. I’m never alone with him. I thought—’

  ‘If you become possessive you will lose him. Try and be like Monika, let him off the lead.’

  ‘Like Monika?’

  ‘They’ve been married years. She never tries to change him. If you listen to those people you’ll find they are all her friends too.’

  ‘Then why isn’t she here?’

  ‘I should think that’s pretty obvious.’

  ‘Because I am?’

  ‘You and air raids. Although I don’t know her, I think she is doing what she can for him, taking care of Richard, sending up food, running your house.’

  ‘I wish Richard would go back to her.’

  ‘You’d still have all the friends.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Helena groaned.

  ‘They are his life, like his violin. You can’t have just the one thing—’

  ‘Bed?’

  ‘You’ve got to realize he is more than bed if you want to keep him.’

  ‘You mean go to all the concerts, listen to all his friends for ever?’

  ‘If you want to keep him,’ Sarah repeated.

  ‘I love him.’

  ‘Then think on it. I’m going round to telephone from Polly’s. Shan’t be long.’

  Helena sat by the kitchen table listening to the talk and laughter from the room above, trying to catch Max’s voice from among the many, hearing Richard’s laugh, sharp cries of appreciation from the women, feeling anguish. Could she ever fit in with this cosmopolitan crowd, she who was tone deaf? Was love enough? Irena found her. Irena so small, who took up so much room with her ebullience, her brilliance, her enthusiasm.

  ‘Helena, what you do sitting alone?’ she cried.

  ‘Nothing.’ Helena was ungracious.

  ‘Come up, we miss you, do not leave us.’

  ‘You don’t need me,’ she said grumpily.

  ‘But we do. You are our cement, we cannot do without you.’

  ‘I am tone deaf,’ Helena said to Irena in a hard flat voice, hoping to shock her into throwing her out of Max’s life, his music, his love. She felt at that moment that Irena or any of Max’s friends was capable of casting her out. She would go meekly to the square house on the cliff, back to her former life. She felt desperate facing Irena. Irena laughed.

  ‘You are ridiculous.’ She cried with merriment, not questioning Helena’s statement, laughing so that Helena laughed too, recognizing her curmudgeonly jealousy for what it was. They linked arms and climbed the stairs, jostling each other in the narrow space. In the hall they met Sarah coming back from using Polly’s telephone.

  ‘Any news?’ Helena asked, not caring in her happiness whether there was news or not.

  ‘George had a letter from Oliver. He read it to me. He says Hector—’

  At that moment the telephone in the drawing room rang and its news blotted out any news Sarah might have.

  Richard, answering the telephone, exclaimed: ‘Mildred old thing, you all right? Your voice sounds—’ The telephone crackled and Richard held it away from his ear with an expression of unbelief.

  ‘She wants to speak to you.’ He handed the receiver to Max. ‘Called me maladroit. I ask you, what’s got into her? Says Monika—’

  Max took the receiver. ‘Max hier.’ Everyone in the room listened, trying to make sense of Max’s responses. ‘When—where? The cliff—’ow did she? What pigs? We never eat pigs. The General he say that’? Crazy old Dummkopf! Where is she now? The coastguard—I come at once to kill that man. I get the first train.’ He replaced the receiver, eyes blazing. ‘She threw herself over the cliff,’ Max shouted, ‘my lovely Monika. Why have you left her so long?’ he yelled at Richard. ‘I have to work, you are my friend, you should look after her.’

  ‘Is she dead?’ asked Helena, bravely asking the question on everyone’s mind.

  Irena burst into stormy weeping and threw herself into Lud
wig’s arms. ‘Monika is tot.’

  ‘No,’ cried Max, ‘but I kill that swine General, that mother-fucking Nazi.’

  ‘What happened? Stop shouting Max, tell us.’ Helena peered up into his face, gripping his hands.

  ‘You bloody English!’ Max shouted, distraught.

  Helena smacked his face, reaching up on tiptoe. ‘Tell us what happened instead of abusing us, you great oaf.’

  ‘It is your hampers, your verdammt hampers of food. She puts in pigs.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ cried Helena, getting excited. ‘Chickens, rabbits, butter, eggs: you know perfectly well she has no pigs.’

  ‘Guinea pigs, my Phlegm, she has been breeding guinea pigs. We have been eating them and your swine General says Monika is a spy, a foreigner, a Jew, and eating habits in England do not permit guinea pigs—’

  ‘I kept guinea pigs as a boy,’ Richard broke in. ‘Charming little—’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Helena.

  ‘Wogs eat songbirds,’ Richard continued.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Helena. ‘Max, try to be calm and tell us.’

  Max sat down suddenly on the sofa, clutching his head.

  ‘And the Frogs eat frogs, but guinea pigs, I ask you, that’s a bit steep,’ Richard carried on.

  ‘Shut up, I tell you.’ Helena silenced him. ‘Now Max, please, try and tell us what Mildred—’

  ‘She said—’ Max took a deep breath. ‘She said some fool gave Sophy those pigs. She gives them to Monika, ja, und Monika breeds them with her rabbits which we eat, probably we eat them tonight?’ He looked round the room.

  ‘Delicious,’ said Ludwig calmly, stroking Irena’s shoulder, holding her as tenderly as he held his cello. ‘Delicious and original.’

  ‘And?’ Helena resented Ludwig’s interruption.

  ‘She gives this schrecklich old man supper. He asks what it is he eats, so gourmet, so unlike the filthy rations. Monika tells him and then—’ Max’s voice rose again, ‘this disgusting old man abuses her and Monika cracks, runs out and throws herself over the cliff.’