by Dirk Bogarde
Anyway, I wrote a play. It wasn’t bad. It was so boring just sitting there and listening to terrible talks about logarithms or, worse still, something they called another sort of’log’, but this was about anagrams and word puzzles.
I mean, you do see? It was the wrong place for me. So that’s why I was in trouble with our father, who suddenly got up, put the lid back on his tin of Mansion Polish and said, pretty rudely I thought, ‘Are you still there? Just sitting?’ (Well! he could perfectly well see I was.) So I said yes, but I supposed that he was a bit fed up about the crammer. And he said he wasn’t actually cock-a-hoop, and neither would I be when I got up to Glasgow and the new school, because they were really strict up there, and I’d be ‘grounded in a decent education’ whether I liked it or not. He just wished it was a boarding-school, to bring me to my senses. But I was too old because I was thirteen, and our mother had said no. (Thank goodness.)
Then he looked at his pocket watch, and told me to remember that this was my very last chance. I had three years left to pull myself together. He was chewing the side of his cheek, which was the bad sign, but all he said after that was to go up and tell Lally that he was ready to give her a lift to the village, and I’d better go with her to carry the paraffin can. Then he slammed the door of the Riley pretty hard and said, ‘Just remember that we are not expected to fail in this family.’
So I didn’t say anything. I was a bit depressed, honestly.
Driving down to the village Lally sat in front with him, and they talked away about how nice the car was, and she said, ‘Remember the Salmson? Wasn’t that a pretty car?’ But all she really meant was that it had little glass vases in the back where you could put flowers if you picked them on a picnic, and she thought it was quite marvellous to drive along in a car with glass vases with real water and flowers in them. I mean, it was all pretty silly. But they didn’t talk to me. I remembered the Salmson very well, and how he used to drive it round and round the course at Brooklands. A bit showy-off . . . but it was his passion. Anyway, he dropped us off at Waterloo Square, and drove back off to London. When I asked Lally why there had been all the rushing and packing, she said that something had happened at The Times and Mr Hitler was now the King of Germany or something. She didn’t rightly know, but she hoped that Fred the Fish had got some whiting or, perhaps better still, some cod for a fish pie tonight. Of course, it was Friday, so Fred the Fish was by the Market Cross with his stall and the scales and his little Morris van, which was rather bashed now.
There were one or two people I knew round his stall, and he was making them laugh a bit, all except Beattie Fluke, who was there in her black tammy, which looked green really, it was so old. And she was quite worried, not smiling as she usually did with her awful no-teeth-mouth. ‘I got a nice bit of rock salmon for Mr Fluke,’ she said. ‘Although I don’t know as he’s got the stummick to eat it. Can’t hold anything down, not with all the worry.’
Lally said, very kindly, while Fred the Fish was cutting her a chunk of cod, ‘You’ve got trouble? I am sorry.’
Beattie Fluke shrugged her woollen cardigan over her shoulders and said, ‘Haven’t you heard then? It’s all over. The Alefords are selling up. Off to Canada! So now what’s to become of us? Mr Fluke was the best herdsman this side of Chichester. If they sell up, bang goes his herd. Then what? What happens to the cottage then? I been in that cottage all my married. If they sell the herd he’ll get the boot. Then what?’
It was pretty worrying. After all that stuff from our father, now this. Even Lally looked anxious when she took her packet of cod, wrapped in newspaper, from Fred, and put it in the old red and black basket. ‘Now, Mrs Fluke, don’t you fret yourself. I expect it’s all just a rumour. You know how rumours start in the summer, especially in the heat. Like fish going off. . .’
Beattie Fluke said that fish going off was no rumour. She knew that for a fact. It was not like the real rumour she had got hold of. And then she turned to Miss Annie from Baker’s (who had got blown through the window with the bucket of petrol ablaze) and asked her if they’d heard any rumours in the shop? But Miss Annie just said she was like the three monkeys: see, speak and hear no rumours. So she didn’t rightly know. Beattie Fluke just whispered that her poor head was still addled, and it was time for her ‘cup of tea’. We watched her go across to the Magpie and push open the public bar door, and Lally said she’d get a lot more rumour in there.
We walked back down the path to the river. I was carrying the paraffin can, which was pretty heavy and kept on clonking my knee, and Lally was swinging the shopping-bag very fast, from side to side, to frighten away any adders. She said that adders liked to lie in the dusty path in hot sun like today, and they would just rear up and snap at you unless you watched out. She always did this on very hot days, only this time I could see she was a bit worried about Mrs Fluke’s rumour. So was I. It was a bit unsettling, especially after our father’s mood, and Scotland, and the dreadful school in September.
‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘When you go down to Court Farm for the milk this afternoon, keep a sharp eye open for Len Diplock. He’ll be in the yard somewhere. Mucking about with his harness and waggons. Getting polished up for harvest next month. Have a casual word with him. Act as if you didn’t know, just heard it at the Market Cross, ask if it was just gossip. Sure as sure he’ll say yes. Gossip!’
‘But if I see Miss Aleford? What then? She’s bound to be in the dairy, doing the skimming and everything.’
Lally shook her head and stopped swinging the bag, and we crossed over the little bridge up to the road. ‘Depends. If she is friendly. Depends. You’d have to go carefully. If it was true, about Canada and so on, I swear she’d have told your father. Said something.’
We started up the side of the gully. Skylarks spun up out of the tussocky grass of the meadow, and fat white clouds drifted gently down towards Cuckmere Haven. It couldn’t be really true. Just a Beattie Fluke rumour. I hoped. I even crossed my fingers.
My sister said she couldn’t come down for the milk because the baby might cry. I said it had been crying for weeks anyway, and there were two quart cans to carry on account of we used so much milk now, and she would have to come. And Lally said, ‘Shoo! Shoo! Get from under my feet, and bring me back a half-dozen eggs, I’ll need some for the fish pie.’
So we walked down the hedge path with the cans and a basket, and I told my sister the bad rumour and she shook her head and said it couldn’t happen. There was no Len Diplock in the yard, worse luck, and I couldn’t see him in the cart shed, but I could hear Miss Aleford singing. In the dairy. That was a bit of a worry, so we pushed open the door into the cool, damp, milky-smelling place, and there she was, stretching big muslin squares over all the bowls and dishes to keep the flies off. She was looking quite all right, in a cotton dress with little puffy sleeves like a real woman, and a big straw hat on top of her earphones, and tennis socks and tennis shoes. She was singing ‘T’was on the Isle Of Capri That I Met Him’, but she petered out when she heard the door squeal open, and turned round quickly.
‘Heigh ho! Heigh ho! Goodness me today! Gave my heart a flutter, you did. Quite carried off . . . Milk? Eggs by the look of it, your basket an’ all. And you know Miss Jane owes us one shilling and ninepence. I’ll overlook the ha’penny,’ and she put a bundle of muslin on the shelf above the slate ones covered with the milk bowls. ‘It’s the Fresh, now, isn’t it? With the baby an’ all. My word, how the time goes. A week has gone before you can catch your breath.’ She started to ladle out into our cans and told my sister to choose her eggs from the big crock by the door. ‘The ones with dirt and feathers on them are no fresher than the rest. They only look as if an old hen had just dropped one in the nettles five sees ago. Brought your money?’
I had, wrapped up in paper, and while she was closing the lids of the cans my sister said, quite suddenly without any warning, ‘Is it true you are going to Canada, Miss Aleford?’ and Miss Aleford got such a shock she t
urned her head too quickly and her straw hat went all wonky. ‘Who said?’ she said very crossly. ‘Where did you pick up that little nugget of misinformation, I’d like to know? Those Daukeses, I’ll be bound. Gossip-mongers both. Live in the Magpie. There’s more lies spilled in that bar than in the House Of Commons!’
So I said, pretty quickly, that no, it wasn’t the Daukeses, but just someone down at Fred the Fish’s stall in Waterloo Square, I didn’t know who. Miss Aleford pushed her hat back on her head, licked her finger with spittle, and wiped out ‘1/d. Rectory’ on the slate on the wall.
‘Well,’ she said, pushing the cans across the big shelf, ‘we have it in mind. Not certain. Thinking about it. My brothers want to start over somewhere else. Not me. But I’m not asked . . .’
‘Where would you go?’ said my sister. ‘Miles away?’
And Miss Aleford began to sort out her bundle of muslin. ‘Vancouver. There are some cousins near there, lots of opportunity.’ So I said that was very far away, and when would they go to Vancouver, and she was snappy and said she was sure she didn’t know, but after the harvest and before the spring sowing. People called the Wintle-Pughes were very interested in the land, but they didn’t want the buildings, so they’d go up for auction. And my sister said what was that? Miss Aleford just said, ‘Now be off with you, I’ve got work to do. Any questions, you ask Stapleford’s in Lewes, they are the agents, not me. Anyway,’ she said when we started out of the door, ‘anyway, it’s rumours. Just rumours. No need to fret. Yet.’ And she started singing the Capri song again. We could hear her until we were quite far up the lane and then the singing faded away and all you could hear was our feet patting slowly along in the chalky dust. We didn’t say anything to each other because we were both having a think.
‘Why do you call it Waterloo Square when it’s the Market Cross? You always do.’
‘That’s its real name. The soldiers who went to fight at Waterloo were shut up in the cottages by the chestnut tree. And then they went to the ships at Newhaven. I wonder if our father knows about the auction business? Or our mother. It’s very worrying.’
My sister said she didn’t know what an auction was, so I told her the one who paid the most money would get the house or cottage, and that was worrying because our father kept saying he hadn’t a bean.
Our mother was sitting under the apple trees in the little orchard when we got over the fence, and put her finger to her lips because the baby was asleep just behind her in its pram. But she whispered that she didn’t know about the auction, but that she’d speak to our father when he came back next week.
Lally was in the kitchen lining a pudding bowl with slices of white bread for the summer pudding, and beside her there was a big bowl of gooseberries, blackcurrants and loganberries. And I knew jolly well what that meant. Topping and tailing, which was terribly boring and fiddly. And of course I was quite right. She took the milk and the eggs and told us to sit down and get to work while she started on the fish pie. It was all a bit annoying, because it was hot and sunny outside, and we had to sit topping and tailing. Anyway, you just couldn’t argue.
‘You want summer pudding, you have to work for it. Won’t get a single thing in this life, not unless you do a bit of work. Won’t enjoy it if it hasn’t cost you labour.’
But I didn’t say anything except about the auction and that really made her stop. It worried her, you could see that easily by the way she started to skin the chunk of cod. She was quite rough with it, and the knife was stabbing about. She pulled the skin off in strips and dumped them on a tin plate.
‘Well, you got that much out of the lady. Vancouver. Fancy. Almost halfway to Japan or as near as makes no difference. So that’ll be that. Give me a couple of old eggs from the lean-to, I can’t boil the fresh ones for the fish pie . . . and while I boil them, you might go down and pump me a couple of buckets for the washing-up.’
So I said, ‘What about the gooseberries?’ and she said Miss Fernackerpan could carry on with those. She’d need the hot water as soon as she’d got the fish on to boil. So I clonked down with the two buckets feeling a bit funny inside. The idea of the cottage going up for the auction was very frightening, especially with no money. And then I’d be up in awful school in Scotland, and perhaps I’d never know what had happened. I felt really mouldy.
In the kitchen Lally was banging about and things were boiling and she said ‘Drat’ once or twice, and my sister said she’d finished the fruits and she’d like to see the baby. If it was awake.
‘If it’s awake I reckon you’d know. It’s a proper little crier. Enough tears he sheds to float that Cunarder. You might be able to see that? Biggest ship in the world? September up in Scotland. That’s something to look forward to – Out of my way, this is a pan of boiling water!’ My sister just went off into the orchard. Lally set the boiled eggs on a saucer to cool. ‘This cottage needs a lot doing to it. A lot. No water, no taps, no electric light, no heat nor what we supply by logs, no telephone, and with a baby in the place you have to have those things. And that privy! I ask you! How ever is your mother going to manage if I have to leave . . . which I will one day, you know? Mrs Jane is really frail and Mr Jane as deaf as a post. They will need me one of these days.’
‘But you wouldn’t go? Leave us? You couldn’t!’
‘I would, my boy, if I had to. That privy, no light, no water, and, bye the bye, tonight I’ll thank you to take your spade up to the top and dig the hole for you-know-what!’
‘Already! I did it three days ago. Something like that.’
‘It’s nothing like that. Five people in the place now! Different when we are just three. Very different . . . But if my own flesh and blood need me, what do I do? You are going away, and you’re grown up now, you don’t need me. Your sister is getting on, too. And she’s got the baby to tend. I wouldn’t leave you until we had everything nicely settled here. But I do hope your father gives it a lot of thought when the auction comes up. He should get this place for sixpence with all that’s wrong with it. It’s a hovel, a real hovel, if you think about it. Now then, if the eggs are cool enough, peel them, in a bowl of water, can’t abide bits of shell all over my sink. Clogs the drains . . . And that’s just another thing! Drains!’
But I didn’t listen, she was making everything sound so terrible. It was like the end of the world.
It felt a bit better sitting round the table all together in the kitchen at dinner. The baby had been fed and was asleep in its basket, the windows were open, and the smell of the nicotiana was really strong, even though we had eaten fish pie. Our mother had a little half-bottle of white wine on the table, and it was very nice all being together, which is what made thinking about not being together make me feel so miserable. It came and went away like toothache. Lally and our mother were talking about all the things wrong with the place and what it was like in summer and in winter and now with the baby . . . They just didn’t say anything cheerful. My sister had a second helping of summer pudding and said she simply loved the baby and wasn’t it awful that they had to grow up? Lally said, in a jokey voice, well, only if they grew up to be as wilful and spoiled as me. But even if she didn’t mean it really, I felt it was perhaps what she actually meant. And my mother put her hand on mine, across the table, and said she loved me anyway. After all I had got the Second Chance now in Scotland, and she was sure I’d be sensible and please our father. Lally asked that if I had got my strength back, having eaten so much, to remember the spade was in the lean-to, and it was cool enough now. She would do the washing-up as soon as the kettles boiled. My sister said could she be excused from the Bindie Bucket this time, because she wanted to keep an eye on the baby. But Lally said that our mother and she had four perfectly good eyes, thank you very much, and ears too, and that boiling kettles was another thing that was wrong with the cottage. Drain, privies, boiling kettles and steeping nappies! It was getting to her quick as a dart. And our mother laughed, finished her glass of wine and started clearing the t
able.
So I thought I’d better go and dig the hole. I could get away from them all for a bit, but I wouldn’t be able to have a real think, because you can’t when you are digging a hole and the earth is dry, and there are tangly roots, and you have to be careful that the ground isn’t squashy where you had dug before. (That was a terrible bad mark.)
In the lean-to I heard our mother telling Lally that things had to change really. A growing family now, and that she was pretty fed up with going down to the Star to telephone and up the garden to sit in a hut with a view of the orchard and an inquisitive hare. And they both laughed together, and I heard the clatter and chink of the plates and forks, and wandered up to the top of the garden myself. With the spade.
After I had dug the hole, not very far away from the privy on account of all the carrying, I got the big pole ready and marked the place with a branch, so we’d be able to see it in the light of the hurricane lamp when it was dark, and then I wandered back to the cottage with the spade over my shoulder.
It was no good trying to have a think at that time. I was all a bit muddled anyway, and then suddenly, flickering through the high hedge running along Great Meadow on the lane side I saw something blue. Bright blue, with bits of silver twinkling in the last of the light. You hardly ever saw a car going up our lane. Only carts, or the reaper. But this was a very fast blue car!
I ran down the path and when I got to the little chalkpit place where the Riley had been I saw Ted Deakin coming up from the lane. He waved a piece of paper over his head. ‘A message, for your mother. On the telephone. Half-hour ago. Mrs Fry at the Star wrote it down. I was in the yard and she knew I were running in my motor. You want to see it? Blue. Very smart. Austin Ten. So she said nip up the top and give them this message. So I did. You want to have a look? I’m going to give Ron Daukes a ride down to the Magpie . . . If there is any answer . . .’