The guest speaker was welcomed and introduced by Eric, and duly applauded. ‘He’s a terrific talker, you’ll see,’ whispered Nina.
‘I am not ashamed, Comrades, to acknowledge that our Island is indeed a nation of shopkeepers,’ he began. ‘Indeed, I would surmise that there are representatives of such businesses with us here this evening.’
There was a murmur of assent from several individuals among the crowd. ‘What I say is this: Shopkeepers of Britain, awake! Shopkeepers of Britain, your duty is clear! The time for action is here. For our small shops – lively going concerns run by local people for the benefit of their local citizenry – are threatened. Commercial travellers are threatened. Yes, threatened. That is not too strong a word. The distributive trades and all who work in them face a mighty menace! That menace is the menace of the chain stores, with their monopoly of manufacturing, and of wholesalers. Unless we act, and act promptly, this monopoly will take over the distributive trades and our small shops will close their blinds for the last time. Many of these shops are family concerns, passed down with pride from father to son over generations. Some of you may represent such concerns, indeed I would ask any such traders to raise their hands.’
At this, two dozen or so among the audience put their hands up and one or two stood.
‘You are blameless,’ the speaker went on. ‘You have done no wrong. You have served your customers loyally and well and brought up your families among them. But the time approaches when here in our streets we shall see enacted the battle of David versus Goliath. For these behemoths the giant chain stores have no use for you, the shop-owners; nor you, the trained assistants of the kind now employed here in Chichester, and in their hundreds of thousands in towns and villages along this coast and up and down the length and across the backbone of our land. No skill will be needed to put sixpence in the till: no training will be necessary to simply put a purchase in a bag. You trained and skilled assistants will be a thing of the past if the chain stores are allowed their sway. And so will your employers, the owners of the small local shops who have served their customers so loyally and so well.’
The speaker carried on, listing the big stores that were the culprits in this battle: Universal Stores, Debenhams, Marks & Spencer, Montague Burton, Lyons.
‘There is no such thing as a cut price! A cut price is a cut job!’ Heyward had gathered momentum and was shouting. ‘And, Comrades, I remind you that cut prices and sweated labour always march side by side. Since our paramount aim is to raise the standard of living in these isles for our own workers and their families, we will ruthlessly suppress these emporia of low prices, whose flourishing can only lead to a lowering of that standard. Under our rule, for the first time in history shopkeepers will have direct representation in Parliament. Tonight, Comrades, I call to you to join our Union: unite for Britain, and for British retailers’ jobs!’
The speaker sat down and was loudly applauded. Many got to their feet, still clapping. Those who were still seated felt outdone by their standing companions, and duly rose. A palpable warmth filled the crowd. It was the warmth of a shared belief passionately felt and a set of shared values in immediate peril: a mixture of piety and indignation that even Phyllis found heady.
‘Very sound. Very sound indeed,’ said Hugh, as the commotion died down and people began to make their way out of the room.
‘Isn’t he?’ said Nina. ‘I’ll have to greet a few people, make sure they’ve got everything they need. Why don’t you go ahead with Eric and the others, into the lounge bar?’
Hugh and Phyllis went out, along with three or four of the local organizers. One of the distinguished-looking men – Phyllis didn’t catch his name – fetched her a glass of sherry from the bar. Hugh was impatient to meet the speaker, Peter Heyward, but he did not appear straight away. The younger of the two women with the fox furs – her two female companions seemed to have left – sat beside Phyllis, bringing with her a corona of scent. It was a rich smell, as of flowers cultivated under glass: a hot-house smell of jasmine or stephanotis, but with something troublingly animal beneath it, as if there were a dead mouse somewhere under the flowerpots. The fellow who’d bought their drinks seemed to be her husband. The woman struck up a conversation. She announced herself as Venetia Gordon-Canning.
‘I don’t believe we’ve met before, have we? Are you a member, or did you just come tonight as a friend of Peter’s?’
‘Well, neither, really. I’m sort of here because of my sister. What about you? What brings you here?’
‘Oh, me. I’m not anything, really. We come sometimes when there’s a speaker. Show willing. My husband Andrew’s uncle – they’re very close, closer than he ever was to his own father – is a great advocate of it all. He’s rather a big-wig in the Movement, as a matter of fact. Is that your husband?’ she asked, gesturing in Hugh’s direction.
‘Yes. That’s Hugh. We’ve just come back from abroad.’
‘Lucky you. He’s frightfully good-looking.’
They both laughed. It turned out that Venetia too was facing the prospect of the long summer holidays ahead, with an eleven- and a thirteen-year-old: before the evening was out she had extended an invitation to Phyllis and the children, to lunch.
‘Nothing formal, we’ll eat with the children,’ she said. ‘This sherry’s rather gruesome, isn’t it? Sticky. Wish I’d asked for gin.’
At length, Eric and Nina brought the speaker into the bar and introduced him to everyone. Hugh spent a good twenty minutes talking closely with him. In the car on the way home, he was buoyant. ‘I’ve heard more sense spoken tonight than in any other quarter since we got back,’ he said.
‘I didn’t really follow all of it, but it certainly sounded as if he had a case,’ said Phyllis.
‘Heyward suggested I go along to Great Smith Street when I’m in town, meet a few of the more senior people. I’d like to help.’
‘Oh good,’ said Phyllis. ‘Well, I’m sure they’d be glad to have you on board.’ She did not quite see why this should be so, since Hugh had been a company man and not a politician, but the willed kindness of saying it made her feel for a moment almost noble.
‘I should’ve thought they would, yes,’ said Hugh. His sense of his own worth was something he had always borne gravely. He was not a man to be teased.
It was the first evening they had spent out of the new house and Phyllis found it delightful to return there. The drive was to the back of the property, and as they came to a stop at the end of its shallow curve their headlamps caught a glint of water, the deep colour of gunmetal in the softness of the summer night. The tide was in. Phyllis loved the changing tides, how the surging water altered the prospect beyond the windows from hour to hour. You could look out of the bedroom window and see little pools set into the rippled mud below, as still and flat as the artificial pond in the table-top gardens the children sometimes made, using the lipstick-mirror taken from its suede side pocket in their mother’s handbag. Then the morning could go by and the next time you glanced out it would all have changed: there would be water almost as high as the lawn, as if you could step straight from the end of the garden into a mysteriously waiting coracle and be carried far away, to distant lands. There would be tiny waves fringed with white, rising like the icing on the top of a cake, and the water would no longer be still but would swell and fall, gulls with folded wings bobbing on its surface. Living in this delightful place made Phyllis feel that luck was on her side.
4. Sussex, July 1938
At the camp-site Little Jim had with him a son of perhaps nineteen or twenty as well as a grandson of about ten, the first strikingly handsome and both of them surprisingly tall, given Jim’s stature. There seemed to be no women in their party. The son, who was the little boy’s uncle, was called Freddy; the grandson was named Frank. The child had a quick, slightly goofy smile which held the promise of mischief. Little Jim introduced him to Phyllis and Edwin, who had been persuaded to join in for the first day of the summer c
amp. The girls had been awkward and refused to come. They were sewing dolls’ clothes at home, sulking.
‘You like a laugh, don’t you, Frank?’ Little Jim looked very proud at this, his arm around the boy’s shoulders. He stood barely as high as his grandson. ‘He likes a good laugh.’
Edwin, slightly younger, took a great shine to the boy, giggling at his jokes and following him about the site. At lunch and tea Frank came to the cookhouse to help his grandfather and the catering volunteers spoon food on to people’s plates. Afterwards, while Jim enjoyed a quiet smoke, Frank collected up crockery and stray knives and forks. He called them irons. Edwin, who had never shown any inclination to help the cook at home, imitated his new companion. Freddy was to be in charge of blowing the bugle to summon campers to the cookhouse at mealtimes. Other than this he didn’t seem to be doing much to help, but stood about like a film star waiting to be called for his scene, smoking and narrowing his eyes, attracting glances from arriving females.
This year’s camp-site was on the saltings at Selsey, right by the beach. There were views across the Solent towards the Isle of Wight on one side and to the distant South Downs to the other; an old windmill marked the entrance and there was a row of coastguards’ cottages a couple of fields away. Neat lines of bell tents were at the front of the site, with latrines and showers to their left. In the middle was an open area with a flagpole roughly at its centre, where someone had already raised the Movement’s standard and arranged straw bales in a circle on the rough grass. The larger communal marquees, where everyone took meals or listened to talks, were towards the back of the site, along with a couple of smaller tents which would house a makeshift bookshop and a first-aid station. Beyond these at the north end were one or two wooden huts, which were reserved for the top officials and the Leader’s use.
Nina’s principal task was to check provisions three times a day, after meals. It wasn’t only a matter of food supplies: there had to be adequate stores of lavatory paper and soap, as well as wood and kindling for camp-fires, enough blankets to go round, and paraffin for the storm-lamps. Quantities of calamine lotion would be required in case of sunburn or stings. The first-aid tent must be equipped with iodine, aspirin and liniment, as well as bandages. It also fell to her to make sure that the laundry van came on time and that the latrines were emptied every day. Transport had to be arranged for those campers who arrived by train at Chichester. She carried a small lined notebook and several pencils with her wherever she went.
Showing Phyllis around, Nina paused and pointed towards some tall elms to one side of the camp-site. ‘Do you know whose house is over there? You’ll never guess,’ she asked her sister.
‘Umm … Laurence Olivier.’
‘No, you chump! Whatever made you think of him?’
‘I must have been reading something about him in the paper. I think it said he lives in Sussex, somewhere.’
‘Have another guess,’ said Nina.
‘I can’t. You tell me, I know I won’t get it, otherwise.’
‘The First Lord of the Admiralty, that’s who. Duff Cooper.’
‘Goodness. Is he there now?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. I don’t believe he comes down much, which is probably just as well. Wouldn’t be best pleased to wander to the bottom of his field and see us, camped next door. Our flag raised, within sight of his garden. So near, and yet so far, as they say.’
Phyllis laughed, to please her sister.
Away from Nina and Patricia, she was glad to be making friends of her own. Venetia Gordon-Canning had had Phyllis and the children to lunch and she in turn had invited them back to Bosham, one day when Hugh was in London. Venetia was cheery and outspoken, an amusing companion.
She smoked non-stop, the ends of her cigarettes stained the colour of cherries by her lipstick. Phyllis enjoyed her company, although she preferred Sarita, who was softer and didn’t make such bold personal remarks, as Venetia was in the habit of doing.
‘I hate it when one’s got the curse, don’t you? Such a bore having to skip games,’ announced Venetia one afternoon.
‘I don’t find it makes much difference, really,’ said Phyllis, who seldom played anything more strenuous than an occasional game of croquet on Patricia’s lawn, despite having been rather sporty at school.
‘Doesn’t it? Your Hugh must be jolly adventurous!’
‘What’s it got to do with him?’
‘Well, darling, the men don’t generally care for getting bloodied, not unless they’re out hunting. Andrew won’t come anywhere near me.’ Seeing Phyllis’s shocked expression, she laughed. ‘Oh Lord, you thought I meant actual games, as in netball. You really are a goose.’
Sarita never made Phyllis feel ridiculous. She was never glib, indeed Phyllis detected a trace of melancholy in her nature, for all that they often laughed together. Her first husband had been half-French on his mother’s side, and during that marriage she had lived for most of the time in Paris, which she now found she missed very much. Phyllis was surprised that Sarita had no nostalgia, though, for her childhood home. She said that Brazil felt like another world to her now, as remote as a place she’d read about in a book. She confided that she had always known she would come to Europe as soon as she was old enough to travel without her mother and father. She and her sister had been taught French and English from an early age and had had German lessons with their brother too, from when she was about twelve. There had been an atlas in their schoolroom which they had looked and looked at, touching the names of the great European cities with their fingers.
‘We used to lie in the garden at home and imagine what Europe would be like, how we would swing down boulevards under tall lime trees buying all sorts of things, the things we had read about in books. We imagined soft leather gloves with buttons made from pearl; and beautiful nightclothes made of silk and Brussels lace; and little books of the great European poets bound in calfskin with gilt edges. And then we would dream of cold afternoons, coming in from snow to dark cafés selling chocolat chaud and all kinds of strange cakes. Our German teacher used to tell us about Sachertorte and Hanoverian butter cake and the wonderful smell in the cafés of almonds and cinnamon; and at home the cook used to make sometimes rhum baba, so we thought there must be hundreds of things like this, different ones in each country, things that we had never tasted. Did you know there is a little cake in France called a financier? We saw that name in a book and wondered what it could be. We imagined everything we would try, once we got away. We never thought of other kinds of food, only pastries … And we imagined ourselves standing on ancient stone bridges arching across the Seine, the Thames, the Tiber … these names had a magic for us.’
‘There was a place in Belgium that did the most wonderful little cakes and things made of choux pastry, all in doll’s house sizes: we used to get them once a week for the children, as a treat. Eclairs the size of a baby’s finger. But was it all as you’d imagined, once you arrived?’
‘Oh yes. I was never disappointed. Paris is such a beautiful city, so much to see. The house, my husband’s house, was very comfortable, very elegant. We would go to the opera sometimes, the ballet. Yes.’ She looked wistful. Phyllis wondered if she should ask what had been wrong with the first marriage, but she didn’t like to pry.
‘And did your sister come with you? Did she stay in Paris with you, after you were married?’
‘No. My sister stayed behind. Rosanna …’ she broke off. ‘Everything was as I had hoped it would be, once I came to Europe. The one thing I didn’t imagine was the grass. The grass is much better here than it is at home. There the grass is different: thicker and coarse, it scratches your legs, your feet. Here the grass is soft, like fur. I never used to walk on grass without shoes at home.’
‘I love having bare feet. On grass, or sand; even wet sand. At Bosham when the tide’s just gone out I sometimes go down to the steps at the bottom of the garden where the water meets the sea-wall and take off my shoes, so’s to feel the
squishing between my toes. It feels cold, from being covered with water. It gets warmer after the sun’s been on it, before the tide turns. It’s not exactly mud, but it’s not quite sand either.’
Sarita smiled. ‘You are the nicest woman in England.’
‘I don’t think I really can be,’ said Phyllis.
‘Everybody else wants something,’ said Sarita.
Julia and Frances had not had a successful day of dolls’ dressmaking while their mother and brother were away. Both of them preferred cutting out to sewing, but they had been able to find only one pair of scissors and had squabbled as to who would have the use of them. The old nightdress their mother had provided as fabric refused to lie still on the table, but kept ruching; the scissors weren’t sharp enough. Then after their difficult morning they had been given luncheon meat and beetroot. Beetroot, imagine, with no salad cream! No one could be expected to eat beetroot without salad cream on it. For afters the custard on the rhubarb crumble had had huge lumps and they didn’t anyway like rhubarb, but preferred apple or better yet blackberry and apple. They had been made to rest after lunch when anyone could see that they were far too old to have a rest and then the afternoon had dragged on with nothing to do. They rather thought they would come to the camp-site with their mother tomorrow: it couldn’t be any worse than staying at home.
After the Party Page 5