The Skeleton in the Grass

by Robert Barnard

  He made it sound very unpleasant. Sarah immediately felt defensive.

  “I don’t think Mr. Dennis and Mr. Mostyn Hallam are particularly close.”

  “Not politically. I am talking about as a family.” He looked down at her confidingly, as if he were sharing a secret. “Did you know both gentlemen married cousins? No? That’s what I mean by being clannish. It’s not wise, you know. Not good for the racial stock. It will not have escaped your notice that our host is childless.”

  This was too silly for Sarah to let pass.

  “Whereas the Dennis Hallams have four children” she pointed out. “You can prove anything if you choose the right example.”

  “Ah—a quick-witted young lady! Exactly what I would have expected from someone employed at Hallam. Something of an intellectual hot-house, that establishment, you will find.”

  “The Hallams are intelligent people,” retorted Sarah. “That is a pleasanter way of putting it.”

  “Ah, you think I am being unpleasant about your employers? Well, there’s no denying we have a very different attitude to things. You see, to me they are essentially sterile—in their pathetic pacifism, for example. It’s very un-English, you know. It doesn’t go down at all well with the gentry around here, nor with the village people either. Fortunately the English countryside still produces a very sturdy, patriotic type of lad.”

  “I believe I know the English countryside and its people quite as well as you do, Major,” said Sarah. “Tell me, did you stop me just now simply to malign my employers?”

  “Malign?” he said, his voice soft and insinuating, his smile crooked. “Not at all, young lady. I am merely trying to make you more aware of the Hallams and their position here. They are very attractive, persuasive people. No doubt you have found them so, am I not right? That makes it so easy for them to infect—is that too strong a word?—”

  “Yes.”

  “I think not. Infect other people with their own craven, defeatist notions. I believe that people exposed to them should be on their guard—particularly a young person, and a young lady—”

  “Major Coffey, I am not feeble-minded.”

  “By no means,” he said, with a sketch of a bow. “You have a strength of mind I admire. I try to gather around me young people with spirit, with pride and patriotism. It would give me great pleasure to introduce you—”

  “I’ll not trouble you to make my friends for me,” said Sarah, her blood boiling, walking away quickly.

  “Remember,” the voice hissed behind her, “the Hallams’ notions are not liked. The people here are not lily-livered intellectuals. They may find ways of showing their feelings!”

  CHAPTER 3

  The next two weeks were a time of joy and discovery for Sarah. The only troubled moments were the comings and goings of Will, and the obvious anxiety of his parents.

  As the Republican government of Spain began to fight back, young radicals all over Britain began to organize themselves to go to their aid. That much, at any rate, was clear from Will’s conversation. But he was careful to confine himself to generalities—names were not mentioned, nor specific projects or plans. He was obviously afraid that his parents would make attempts to stop him if they knew what his intentions were, and who else was involved in them.

  “But I don’t see how we can stop him,” said Helen tearfully to Sarah. “We’ve always let our children make their own decisions, and he’s quite right that in all essentials he is of age. But if only he would think . . .”

  But Will’s mind was on action rather than on meditation.

  “This is going to be the testing-ground,” he declared one evening, when he had arrived home on a flying visit. “If all the anti-Fascist forces can get together, get themselves organized and fighting-ready, then we’ll be an unbeatable force. We’ll turn the tide. If we fail here, we’ll fail everywhere.”

  Dennis Hallam said nothing. In truth his efforts to organize international and non-violent opposition to the revolt were not having much success. It looked as though what Will had said about the people in government having only sympathy for the Spanish generals was proving to be nothing but the truth. In his heart Dennis had known that from the start. His fair, handsome face bore much of the time lines of worry, or near-despair.

  It was a little over two weeks after the revolt had broken out that Will paid a visit home that lasted all of two days. Sarah, and all the family, were conscious that a great deal of sorting and packing was taking place in his room. Large cartons of stuff were put out for the dustman, which had an unmistakable implication that the Hallam part of his life was over. He was thoughtful for much of the time at meals, but then made slightly forced attempts to behave normally—playing Snap with Chloe and backgammon with his father, doing both with boisterous high spirits that did not entirely ring true.

  When he went to bed on the second night, he stood up and said, with boyish awkwardness:

  “I’m catching the early train tomorrow, so I’ll say good night.”

  And he went up and kissed his mother and Elizabeth, and almost shook hands with his father and brother—then, apparently finding this smacked of the ridiculous, he darted from the room. Nobody was in any doubt what this meant.

  “I’m not going to cry,” Helen Hallam said. “I do feel this means that somehow we’ve failed Will, but being against war doesn’t mean you can’t salute bravery, and I think Will is very brave. Please God he comes back safely.”

  She didn’t cry, but Sarah was sure that when, soon after, she too went to her bed, it was to do just that.

  The house without Will, and without the prospect of Will returning, was a sadder and a quieter place. He had had a vitality and a force that none of the others had: he had lighted up the place, which now appeared dim, underlit. Sarah found her days centring on Chloe, which was natural. Her job, as Mrs. Hallam had explained when she had first been interviewed, was to bring Chloe out of the nursery and give her her first lessons. Chloe, though, was far from in the state of nature that one would have expected in a child of a more normal family of gentry. In fact, Sarah found that, as was natural in a household which revolved around books, Chloe had scraped a bit of tuition here, and a bit there, and could already read quite capably. Her writing fist was uncertain, resembling nothing so much as a punch-drunk boxer’s, still wearing gloves. But she was a naturally delicate child, and in a matter of days Sarah was registering an improvement. It was to be her task, she thought, to forward the education process without dampening the natural joyousness of this exotically beautiful young animal.

  How long she was to have charge of her Sarah did not know. “Certainly a year, possibly two, maybe even more,” Helen Hallam had said at the interview. Where she was to go to school was as yet unclear. The Hallams appeared unusually uncertain on the subject of education. Oliver had gone to his father’s old school, Wellington, but Will and Elizabeth had gone to day schools near Banbury, and this, Sarah gathered, was not from any financial considerations. It probably would turn out that Chloe would attend some similar sort of place, but meanwhile Sarah had the pleasure of supervising the first stages of her education. It seemed likely to prove a stimulating and pleasurable experience.

  “We wanted somebody young,” Helen said to her. “You can’t expect the other children to have much time for her, and the child of older parents can become so quaint, if one’s not careful. Mrs. Munday has been the principal person in her life so far, and of course she’s a dear, but she’s even older than Dennis and me, so we want you gradually to take her place.”

  Sarah did not see her job as being confined to the schoolroom, though a little room that had served for the older children was made available, and there were children’s books and school books galore around the house, many of which Chloe already knew. Sarah often took the child around the grounds of Hallam, teaching her about trees and birds and trying to arouse in her the first glimmerings of her own passion for the natural world. Any knowledge the child had picked up had
been at random, gleaned from the conversation of adults.

  Soon they went further afield, around the country lanes, and into the nearby villages. Here Chloe felt very much at home, and could draw on a great store of information.

  “That’s Mrs. Wicklow, and she’s got a parrot that’s fifty years old. She bought it from a sailor in Golden Jubilee year, and it has a terrible vo-vocab-ulary . . . That’s the Rectory, but the Rector’s very ill, and they’d like the Bishop to appoint a new one . . . That’s Mrs. Fallow’s Jim, who’s a bit wild, and she’s afraid he’ll go away for a soldier, and she won’t have any prop for her old age.”

  “Is he an only child, then?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Fallow hates the army because she had two brothers who were killed in the Big War.”

  “We usually call it the Great War, Chloe.”

  “Great War . . . And that’s Mrs. Widdicomb, who we get our eggs from. She has chickens in the back garden, and one of them is the best layer in all Oxfordshire . . . That cottage is Major Coffey’s. He’s a Fash . . . Fash . . .”

  “Fascist.”

  “Fascist, and we don’t talk to him if we can help it, though we are perfectly polite to him if we have to.”

  Most of Chloe’s knowledge of the villages, Sarah realized, came from Mrs. Munday, as did many of the old-fashioned phrases she used to describe people. The nearest village to Hallam was Chowton, but it formed part of a trio of small communities, the others being Hatherton and Willbury. They were close enough to each other to be able to share some amenities, the Senior School being in Chowton, the village hall in Willbury, the doctor at Hatherton. The best butcher was in Willbury, and the best greengrocer in Chowton. Chowton was also the prettiest, but they all had their charm, and occasionally in summer little knots of undergraduates came out, often in hikers’ gear, and stopped for beer and bread and cheese at one of the pubs. The local inhabitants favoured the bicycle as a form of transport, though the horse had not been entirely superseded, and small cars were eyed enviously.

  “That’s Mr. Cobham’s Morris Minor,” Chloe would announce. “He cleans it every Saturday morning, rain or shine. He bought it when his mother died, with the money she had stuffed in the sofa cushions in her best parlour.”

  So the walks became an enjoyable two-way process of communication and education.

  “That’s Roland,” said Chloe, pointing to a young back. Its owner was looking into the window of a toys and games and stationery and all-sorts-of-things shop—the sort of shop Sarah knew rather well from Derbyshire.

  “Who’s Roland?”

  “He’s nice.”

  Her confident definition, loudly delivered, had him swinging round. Sarah realized at once that she had, somewhere, seen him before. Of course—the young waiter at Mostyn Hallam’s “drinks.”

  “Somebody must be talking about me,” he said.

  “I only said you were nice,” said Chloe, loud and charming in self-justification. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking to see what I can buy my little brother for his birthday next week.”

  “How old is he?” asked Sarah.

  “Seven. I can’t remember what I liked when I was seven.”

  “Perhaps Chloe could help.”

  “I’m sure Chloe has very expensive tastes. She looks a costly young woman. She’d choose something that was way outside the range of things I could afford.”

  “No I shouldn’t. I know all about money, and I manage my own very well.”

  “Well, you go in and find out what you think he’d like, and how much it costs, and then come out and tell me, and I’ll decide whether I can afford it or not. That way I won’t be embarrassed by having to put it back.”

  Chloe smiled with a satisfied sense of her own importance, and went into the shop. They watched her climb the steps and reach up to the latch, smiling. Roland turned his square, humorous, countryman’s face to look directly into Sarah’s.

  “I sent her in so we could get to know each other.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, it’s not often we see new faces in these villages. I thought I’d go through the whole of the summer without seeing anyone I didn’t know already.”

  “What happens at the end of summer?”

  “I go back to Oxford. I’m at Oriel, on a scholarship. It enables me to live and eat, but not much more. The summer vac lasts very long indeed.”

  “Oh, I see. Hence the job waiting up at Cabbot Hall.”

  “That’s right. But unfortunately that sort of job is few and far between. Of course what I’d like is to get a regular job for two or three months, but what chance is there of that, with millions unemployed? Mr. Hallam—Mostyn Hallam—has been very good to me. He helped me with the scholarship application, and gave me a reference. There’ve been one or two jobs like the one you saw me doing, which help me to get by . . . I was rather glad Oliver Hallam wasn’t there, though.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re on the League of Nations Union committee together. Silly, isn’t it, not to want to be seen serving drinks? He knows perfectly well how I’m situated financially, yet I didn’t want him to see me . . . I’m ashamed of myself, but . . .”

  “You must be one of the few young men in the villages around here to have gone to Oxford. Here it all seems . . . Oxfordshire, but not Oxford, so to speak.”

  “That’s right. I’m the only one.”

  “Major Coffey was going on to me at the party about the sturdy type of village lad around here.”

  Roland twisted his mouth down in an expression of wry disgust, then laughed frankly.

  “That sounds like our local Blimp. I went to one or two of his gatherings years ago. I’m sturdy enough, but I don’t think it’s the right kind of sturdiness.”

  “Is he as nasty as he seems?”

  Roland considered. He seemed to dislike snap judgements.

  “Maybe. Or, looking at him another way, you could call him pathetic. He lives on myths and forgotten ideals. And he tries to order reality to fit in with his fantasies.”

  “But he is a Fascist?”

  “I suppose so. Maybe that’s what Fascists do: try to make their myths concrete. He had a small but flourishing group in London after the war: the British Empire Union. Patriotism and racial purity and all that stuff. When Mosley formed his movement, Coffey was dished, and he moved to the country. What’s happened has been that he’s just formed a local chapter of his old party here. At least he’s much less dangerous—even less dangerous—in Oxfordshire.”

  “You obviously don’t think he is dangerous.”

  “Not really. For example, I know lots of men around here of my age, and some of them went to his group for years. Then they grew out of it, and now they laugh about him over a pint in the Silent Swan. They’re adults, and they see it was silly.”

  “Is he—” Sarah hesitated. This was not something ever talked about in her vicarage, and she flushed even as she tried to phrase the question. “Is he . . . unnatural?”

  “Homosexual? I suppose so. But largely unconscious, I would guess. His whole life has been spent among men, remember. There’s a strong vein of cruelty there: he commanded a unit of the Black and Tans in Dublin after the war, and he talks of firing squads in France executing ‘cowards’ . . . Of course, you’re right: he is very nasty. But I don’t think one should make the mistake of taking him too seriously.”

  Chloe emerged from the shop.

  “I think what you should buy him,” she announced, looking up into Roland’s face, “is a lovely pack of Happy Families. They’re all coloured in lots of colours, and Mrs. Bunn the Baker’s Wife is the nicest I’ve ever seen. And it’s only a shilling.”

  “Good. That sounds like a sensible selection. I’ll go in and buy it.” Roland turned to Sarah. “I say, they have films twice a week at the village hall in Willbury. They have talkies even. You wouldn’t like to come some time, would you?”

  “Oh, do go,” said Chloe, dancing up and down. �
�It’s lovely. It keeps breaking down, and everybody talks about what should happen next, and sometimes they take bets. It’s much better than sitting through a whole film without a break. And you can get ice-cream, because Mr. Cubbins next door opens his shop when the interval is coming.”

  “It sounds irresistible,” said Sarah. “I’d love to go. I must see when I can get off.”

  “You do get time free?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I do. But we have a guest coming to Hallam tonight. A friend of Oliver’s from Oxford—an Indian student.”

  Roland laughed.

  “That’ll give ammunition to Major Coffey. But practically anything your Hallams do does that. It shouldn’t stop you getting away for the evening, should it?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll telephone you—”

  She stopped, flushing. Of course he was unlikely to have a telephone.

  “You can ring Matchett the Baker. He’s next door, and my mother works for him sometimes. Mind you do.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Roland watched them until they were well down the High Street on their way back to Hallam. Then he went into the shop and bought his brother a small cricket bat. It was a long time before Chloe found out, not till she was a grown up woman, but she called him “Faithless Roly” for the rest of his life, and said he was born for diplomacy and the civil service.

  Sarah went that evening with Dennis and Oliver to fetch Oliver’s friend. Helen said she had a slight headache, but Sarah knew she was still upset about Will’s departure. She also knew that when the guest arrived Helen would be the perfect hostess. The station was at Hatherton, and they took Bumps again. The train was late. Oliver said that the trains that stopped at Hatherton always were, except when you banked on their being so and arrived late to meet them. It was getting dark, for Oliver’s guest had had to go to a meeting in London, one calling for immediate Indian independence, before taking the train for Oxford, and then catching the connection to Hatherton. Oliver spoke to the station master about his children as they waited, and Dennis and Sarah walked up and down the platform. Dennis wondered aloud—he could not keep off the subject—whether Will was still in Britain, and how soon the international volunteers would get involved in the real fighting.