A Postillion Struck by Lightning

by Dirk Bogarde

  “Won’t last long,” said Lally cheerfully. “The moths have been at it already, not to mention the wet.”

  The man agreed and said the winters there were really cruel but he thought that I’d be interested. And in a way I was. But I didn’t feel particularly happy about any part of the day really. It all had a Holy and sad feeling and it was so quiet and still that not even a bird sang. Suddenly we saw Amy walking alone down the little sloping path. I think she had had a good cry, for her eyes were rather red and so was her nose, but she was making a little wavering smile as she came across the rows of crosses to us, and had put her phrase book in her bag. The man with the wounded face wasn’t there any longer, so I suppose she’d found the grave and he’d left her to be private too. We all sat down on a stone seat, and waited for her to reach us, after we had said goodbye and thank you to the Herne Bay man.

  It was quite nice to sit down, and the stone seat was hot in the sun, but Amy was soon standing beside us pushing her handkerchief into her pocket.

  “Do you want to come and see him?” she asked.

  It was just another grave like all the rest. A white cross and his name, Peter Eric O’Shea, and a number after it.

  “What does Cpl mean?” asked my sister, and Amy said that he was a Corporal and very clever. “Is he really under there?” said my sister, and Amy said she hoped so. “As long as I know where he is, it doesn’t feel so bad,” she said with a sigh. She stood for a long minute looking out over all the crosses which surrounded us like a white sea. “Oh the grief, dear God,” she said sadly. “Oh the grief and the terrible waste of it all.”

  And then we started off silently down the path towards the gates with the cross on the top. We kept a bit behind the two of them, looking at the names and numbers and regiments, but just as we got near the bottom, I saw Amy’s head bow down and Lally slipped her hand into Amy’s arm and lifted her own head high. We walked down the road quite far behind them, scuffing the dust into white clouds all round us.

  There was no one to tell us not to.

  Chapter 8

  I was sitting under the elderberry bush up by the privy, which was where I always went when I wanted to have a good “think” with no one to disturb me, and Lally stuck her head out of a window, shook a rug very hard over the sill, and called down: “Don’t sit there like yesterday’s loaf, with a shopping list as long as my arm on top of the copper and a ten shilling note, and don’t forget the change. Also take the milk-can, should you see Mr Mitchell and get me a pint and a half and a small pot of cream which we’ll have with the gooseberries.” She slapped the rug a few more times against the flint wall, covered the garden in dust, and went back in. She always seemed to know exactly where I’d be when she wanted me, which was very aggravating.

  “I’ll come too,” said my sister, pulling on her Hate. “I’ll bring a bit of sugar for the pony if we do see Mr Mitchell, and if we don’t I’ll eat it myself.”

  We collected the milk-can, the list, the ten shilling note, and started off down the field to the gully. It was quite a long way to the village, easily two miles, so I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to have much of a “think” that morning, which was a pity. Because something was just beginning in my head when Lally called me.

  The poppies were nearly all over, and so were the buttercups; the long high hedge running down the field beside the gully was thick with Queen Anne’s lace and Campion. Summer, as Herbert Fluke would say, was getting a move on. But the sun was still high and hot, and the Downs fat and green, like the bellies of horses, rounded against the sky, glossy and rippling where the wind ruffled through the thick summer grasses.

  “You’ve got a mood on,” said my sister after a bit of a silence.

  “I was just having a ‘think’ when Lally yelled about this, and now I can’t remember what it was that I was thinking, that’s all.”

  She was skiffling along in the white dust of the path kicking empty snail shells about.

  “Was it about something lovely?”

  “No. Actually. It was about a Play.”

  “Oh! That!” and she lost interest. She always did. The moment I even said the very word she lost interest and went off on her own. This time she started picking a spot on her chin. I slapped her hand and she got such a shock that she dropped the milk-can and it rolled and clattered down the path and the lid flew into the hedge.

  “Look what you’ve done! Just look! You stupid fool!” She was furious because I had shocked her, not because she’d dropped the can, and she went scrabbling about in the grasses collecting all the bits together. I went on down the hill and heard her clonking along behind me.

  “It’s all full of dust and leaves and things, and you could have hurt me doing that! Hitting a person and giving them a fright. I might get something terrible on my chin now and it’ll be all your fault.”

  “You’re not supposed to pick spots, you know that.”

  “I wasn’t picking it. I was feeling it.”

  “Same thing.”

  “It’s not the same thing. Now I might get ringworm just because you’re in a mood.”

  I didn’t answer her, but started to run a bit so that she had to hurry to keep up with me. As I got to the old iron gate into the main road she suddenly made a terrible noise and I thought she might have been bitten or something because she was standing quite still just clutching her skirt with her face all screwed up.

  “What’s the matter?” I called.

  “You’re vile! You’re vile!” She dropped the can into the grass and started patting her stupid skirt with both her hands. “The sugar lumps!” she wailed. “I’ve lost them … you made me … you made me when you hit me. They’ve gone. Now I can’t feed Daisy. You’re vile!”

  I slammed the gate and crossed the road and left her there yowling away. But by the time I had reached the little bridge over the stream where we caught roach, she had got to me, all puffing and breathy, mumbling away about her rotten old sugar. I was glad she hadn’t been bitten because I really did like her very much when she was being all right, but when she wasn’t, like now about the sugar, I didn’t at all. So I just started whistling and took no notice. It was the only thing to do, because I had completely forgotten what it was I was thinking about up there under the elderberry.

  Mitchell’s cart was standing in the shade just as we got to Sloop Lane. It had two big wheels and was painted yellow and black, and had a big silver milk churn on top with brass letters spelling out MITCHELLS DAIRY—NEW MILK all round it, and silver ladles hanging in different sizes to measure the milk. We got the pint and a half and the cream, and my sister told the stupid fat pony all about the sugar, and Mr Mitchell said he couldn’t change a ten shilling note, and what did I think he was, the Bank of England? and he’d get it next time around. So we went on into the Market Square and over the cobbled road to the grocers.

  Wildes was in the middle of the square, next door to the Magpie Inn and opposite Woods the Butchers. It had two bulgy windows with lots of little panes of glass, and a front door painted black with golden letters over the top spelling the name.

  Inside it was cool, and dim, and smelled of bacon and paraffin, and fresh bread. On one side was a counter with tins of tea behind and barrels of apples and dried peas and corn and walnuts in front of it. On the ceiling hung dustpans and brushes with wooden handles, rat traps, lavatory rolls threaded like beads on loops of string, and bunches of enamel mugs and saucepans which jingled and jangled in the wind when you opened the door.

  On the other side was another counter with the scales, big brass ones with all the weights sparkling in a row from very big to very small like the Three Bears; and there were big blocks of butter, and white tubs of lard, and slabs of bacon and legs of ham hanging from the beams just above your head. It really was a very nice place indeed, and there was always such a lot to see that we never minded waiting about while Mr Wilde checked off the things on the list and stuffed them all into the shopping bag. At the ve
ry end of the shop, past all the barrels of apples and dog biscuits and things, there was another counter with a wire cage thing over it. This was the Post Office and Miss Maltravers, who played the organ, sat behind it looking like a ghost-lady with her wispy hair and white sleeves over her frock to keep it clean. She was always scribbling away at something, or weighing a parcel, or licking a stamp. She was very busy indeed.

  “There is some post for you if you don’t mind taking it up and saving the van a journey,” she called, and slid something under the cage at us. “One’s a postcard from your mother in France, says she’s having a lovely time and they’ll be home on Sunday, God willing, and the other’s something for Miss Jane from Debenham & Freebody, a catalogue by the look of it, which seems a long way to go for a coat when Seaford is on the doorstep.”

  She really was cheeky. But we didn’t like to say so because she was a good friend of the Vicar’s and was very churchy, what with her organ and doing the flowers and reciting poems at the Church Teas. So we just didn’t say anything; except behind her back.

  When we were crossing the river by the wooden bridge my sister said: “She really is the nosiest woman in the world. She spoiled our postcard! Fancy reading someone’s postcard and telling them everything in the middle of the shop! Like that time when she told Lally there was some sad news for her in a telegram and Lally went all white and she said, I’m afraid your brother’s had a little operation and he’s quite poorly.’ Do you remember? Right in front of everyone else and Lally nearly had a turn there and then. And anyway it was only his appendicitis or something. I think she’s nosy and mean.”

  The postcard was of a big white church and it said: “Having a lovely time. Home on Sunday evening. Hope you are being good. Love from Daddy and Mummy,” and that was all, but it was very nice, or would have been if Miss Maltravers hadn’t spoiled it.

  “I know what we should do,” said my sister, trying not to spill the milk as we scrambled on to the main road and across it up to the iron gate. “We should send her a postcard from Eastbourne or somewhere, and say on it ‘Miss Maltravers has dandruff and that’s why her hair falls down all the time.’ That would teach her a really good lesson. It would frighten her to bits, I bet.”

  It was cool in the kitchen and the table was all laid for lunch with a big jug of ginger beer waiting. Lally was very indignant.

  “Jerusalem! She is a nosy parker, what’s it got to do with her if I get a catalogue from Debenhams, I’d like to know? I’d like to give her a piece of my mind, I really would. Drat the woman, she really gives me the pip!” But she took her catalogue and went off up to her room to have a look at it, and presently we could hear her singing away “It Happened In Monterey” at the top of her voice, so we felt that she must have found something she liked, because she only sang songs like that when she was particularly pleased. That song was her next favourite one after “The Song Of The Dawn” and she only liked them because this John Boles sang them and she thought he had nice legs or something funny like that. We thought he was a bit soft-looking really, and rather like Fred Brooks, the bus conductor, when she took us to Eastbourne to see a Talkie at the Palace. It was very much forbidden to go to the Pictures and our Parents always said No, but this time, while they were away, Lally had longed to go and see John Boles singing and she had taken us as a treat.

  “It’s deceitful, I know,” she said in the bus, “and I shall get punished for my sins, but what else do I do? I can’t leave you both outside, can I? And I’ve set my heart on it and it is Perfectly Suitable because it’s all music and dancing and there is nothing in it to give you a fright. And it’s all in colour and you can hear it too. So we’ll pretend it’s a treat, but if you mention it by so much as a whisper, I’ll be sent packing and you’ll have someone else to run errands for.”

  It was very curious to sit in the dark and see all the colours and the lovely costumes, and even funnier to hear it like the wireless only much louder. But we didn’t think much of John Thingummy —except he was just like Fred Brooks which annoyed Lally very much.

  “If young Fred Brooks had legs like those and a voice like that he could carry me off tomorrow and I wouldn’t raise a whimper!” she said, putting her hand on her hip and doing her Haughty Look.

  A long time ago she had taken me to see a film in a Picture Palace in London, and it was all about a little boy who got stuck on a sinking ship in a storm. It was very thrilling and I was enjoying it very much until someone locked him in a cabin trunk just as the ship began to go down, and I got so frightened that I ate half the skip off my school cap and swallowed it. And was very sick later. “The child is bringing up tweed and cardboard! I wonder why?” said our mother. And then Lally confessed and got a ticking off. So our mother said Never Again because I was too impressionable or something. So Lally had to go alone on her days off, except this time at Eastbourne when we were deceitful. We never told of course, and we had rather a difficult time not talking about John Whatsisname and Mexico and how they got the colours on the screen to move and sing and all at the same time. But we managed in the end, although we all felt a bit guilty about having been anyway. It didn’t matter so much about the songs, I mean we could sing them quite easily all over the place because Lally had records of them which she used to play on her little black portable gramophone. So that was quite easy, and we knew all the words backwards because she only had eight records and we got very used to them.

  Sometimes, in the evenings if she didn’t feel like reading to us from A Peep Behind the Scenes, which was a terribly sad book and made us all sob like anything when it got to the part where the little girl’s mother dies in the caravan in the circus and only the clown is there to hold her hand, we used to have a Little Concert. We wound up the black portable and started off always with “It Happened In Monterey” and then “The Song Of The Dawn” and then one or two more and always finished off with “Spread A Little Happiness” which made us all feel cheerful. While we were listening to the concert, of course, there was a job to do. That was the trouble. You always knew when Lally said, “What about a little cheer up, a Little Concert?” And then we had to clean the lamps, cut the rhubarb for the rhubarb and ginger jam, shell peas or something like that. I mean you never just sat there and thought about nothing or anything like that. But it was very nice and sometimes, not always, we were allowed a special treat and we put on a record called “Laughing Gas” which was all about a man reading a Will and someone turns on the laughing gas and they all start laughing. It was terribly funny and we almost made ourselves ill. Sometimes we used to roll on the floor, it was so funny, and Lally said that we’d do ourselves a mischief but we only got hiccups. She didn’t let us play it too much for that reason.

  But whatever the concert was, we always ended with “Spread A Little Happiness” and that put us all in a thoughtful mood—until we both started remembering the Gas song, and started to giggle and got sent to bed sniggering and hiccuping.

  Having supper with our parents in the big room was very good. We all sat down together at the big round table. Our father did the carving and Lally served the vegetables or I did, or my sister did, and everyone was very happy and said what we had each been doing during the day.

  The room was whitewashed, like the kitchen, with an ingle-nook fireplace which had two big wooden seats in it on each side of the fire, a polished brick floor and lots of fat wickerwork armchairs with feathery cushions. The lamp with the honeysuckle hung over the table, and there was another one near our father’s chair where he could read more easily. There were lots of old jugs full of flowers, even in winter, and a clock with a boat in a storm on it and a slow swinging pendulum. This was really our Parents’ private place to be, and we were only allowed there really if there were friends to tea or something, or if they had dinner with us all, otherwise we all spent our time in the big white kitchen, with the copper-fire and Minnehaha, the cat, for company. We liked it better there because we could do what we liked and it was
difficult in the big room because people were reading or talking.

  When our parents came back from Paris we had a chicken from The Court, and stuffing and new potatoes from the garden, and our father had brought back two big bottles of wine, and some rather smelly cheese, which he liked especially, and some mustard. So it was quite French and even Lally had a little sip of wine and everyone was very pleased to be together again.

  “Hope you both behaved yourselves,” said our mother, not meaning it, and Lally said that we had been Treasures and very helpful, which always made us pleased although we knew she didn’t mean that either.

  “Because if not,” said our mother, “it’ll be a dreadful waste of two lovely presents from Paris.” And after dinner, when we had cleared away and helped with the washing up, we went back into the big room and there were the packages on the table, almost like Christmas.

  My sister’s package was, I noticed, a bit bigger than mine, but I had two to her one. And Lally had two as well. So it was all going to be fair. Lally got some stockings and a bottle of something which smelled of lemons and would make a bit of a change from Devonshire Violets; my sister had furniture for her dolls’ house, and I got a wind-up racing car, blue and red, with a driver sitting inside and a paperweight thing which was a glass ball full of water and the Eiffel Tower with a little flag on top, and when you shook it hard it made a terrific snowstorm. It had “Paris” written in blue writing on the base.