‘Don’t say for afters, darling. Say pudding,’ said Phyllis. ‘And it’s not blackberry time, yet. There’ll be plenty of blackberry and apple, in due course.’ She felt tired from trailing around after Nina all day. Had she and her sisters been as hopeless as Julia and Frances were at keeping themselves entertained, when they were girls? She was sure not. But they had had the ponies to keep them occupied, and the woods to play in. Perhaps it wasn’t fair not to let her children ride; perhaps she could look into renting a paddock from some local farmer. But since they were going off to school in September, it would hardly be worth the bother. There was always Antonia, but her pony was sluggish and prone to kick. Could they ride with Venetia’s children from time to time instead, or with Sarita’s daughter Emilia? She resolved to find out.
At the camp-site the following morning Little Jim was waiting for them, ready to assign a task to Edwin.
‘Tell you what: you and Frank are going to be on milk duty today. Soon as you hear the horn you come up here and start ladling milk from that churn into them white jugs, by the tea-pots. See? We want it all lined up, ready, so folk can take their cup of tea with them to table, same time as they get their meal. We don’t want them milling around looking for their tea after they’ve eaten, or they’ll stop here all day and we’ll never get cleared up. Oh yes, and if you’re going to be official, you’d better wear one of these.’
Jim handed him a silvery badge engraved with the circle and flash. Edwin could not have looked more pleased if he had been given a pound note.
Julia and Frances stood about, fidgeting and looking awkward.
‘You girls go and join that table of Cadets, why don’t you? Then you can introduce yourselves during breakfast, in time for some games later,’ said Nina.
‘Those boys at the far end look rather rough,’ said Julia doubtfully.
‘They may well be,’ said Nina. ‘Not everyone here is fortunate enough to come from your background, you know. You’ll find they’re good-hearted fellows, once you get to know them. Everyone gets treated the same here.’
The girls trudged off.
‘Do them no end of good to meet some of our Cadets. Put some spirit into them,’ Nina told Phyllis. ‘Where else are they going to get the chance to mix with lads from Stepney, or Newcastle, or Manchester?’
‘We never had to play with children of that kind,’ said Phyllis. She felt indignant. ‘Didn’t do us any harm. And I don’t notice Antonia being forced to come away from Rose Green to mix with the hoi polloi.’
‘Quite,’ said Nina. ‘And look where it’s got her. Tubby and friendless.’
‘That’s a bit mean,’ said Phyllis. ‘She can’t help it.’
‘You’ve been complaining that the children are under your feet – you should be relieved they’ve got something useful to do here. Look how Edwin’s taken to it, already. The girls will be happy as sandlarks soon enough,’ said Nina.
And it was true. There was quoits in the morning and a tug-of-war after lunch, after which a great gaggle of the young rushed down to the shingly-sandy beach to swim. Phyllis didn’t set eyes on any of the children until after tea. It was the first day that she hadn’t heard so much as a ghost of a whine from them since they’d come back to England. For all Nina’s mutterings about the camp being an education, Phyllis was rather relieved to find that the morning study groups were optional. She had to admit that she was rather enjoying herself, too. Her sister seemed to know all sorts of people – it was fun going about the camp-site with her, stopping to talk and banter with various characters and checking things as they went: whether there were enough blankets and pillows, or whether they’d got in sufficient potatoes to last until Monday, or finding out how many had signed up for the talent contest scheduled for Saturday night and how many for the boxing competition.
‘Never a dull moment, is there?’ she said.
‘I thought you’d like it here, I’m so pleased,’ said Nina.
‘I didn’t say I liked it,’ said Phyllis. Sometimes it didn’t do to let Nina think she was getting her own way.
But Nina just grinned.
In London, Hugh too had been getting involved, having spent three days at what he now referred to rather proprietorially as HQ. Eric had asked Peter Heyward, whose Chichester speech Hugh had so much admired, to take him in and introduce him.
‘I think the best thing I can do is get my speaker’s licence, so I can be of active use as soon as possible. I’d have done an extra day if I could, but I had to go in to the company on the Thursday, to advise about association with northern European firms. Still, shouldn’t take many more days, the speakers’ training. The Leader is launching a peace campaign as a matter of the greatest urgency and naturally I want to help with that as much as I can. There are plenty of drivers and leaflet distributors and suchlike already: be a waste for me to do that sort of thing, quite honestly,’ he told Phyllis.
‘Do you have to have a licence, then, to speak? Surely you know how to speak already,’ said Phyllis.
‘To address meetings, yes. It’s procedure. Everyone does, however naturally able.’
‘We’ve all had rather fun with the campers while you were in town. We had a bonfire last night, and singing. Someone had a ukulele and it was priceless, because …’
‘Oh good.’ Hugh cut her off. ‘You’ve most likely heard that the Leader will come down to camp himself one day the week after next. The Sunday, probably. He’s really a man with the most tremendous magnetism. Never uses notes when he gives speeches, did you know? It’s all from memory, or off the cuff. Remarkable man. I don’t see how the hell else this country can remain at peace and come to any good. He’s all for putting our national and imperial interests first, unlike most of the current lot.’
‘He certainly seems to inspire immense loyalty. Nina says it’s always packed out, the day he comes. A lot of trippers, apparently, from London.’
‘Greville’s asked us to dine this Saturday, by the way,’ Hugh added. ‘I must say, he goes up in my estimation.’
‘Oh good,’ said Phyllis.
Phyllis, 1979
Quite honestly it was a blessed relief that my father was dead before I went to prison. I don’t think he’d ever have got over it. It’s what other people would have thought, you see, that’s what he couldn’t have borne. He had been something of a county big-wig, a JP, Master of the local hunt in his time, when Mummy still rode, all that. There’d been some talk of him standing as a Member of Parliament, at one time. Of course he was high Tory, through and through. He would have minded terribly about me. He was a bit of a stickler for form.
People were, then. One of my father’s cousins – a cousin he’d always particularly liked, they’d played tennis together, mixed doubles, when they were growing up – had an illegitimate child and he refused ever to have her through the door again. Wouldn’t even send her a Christmas card. That was absolutely typical of people’s attitudes at the time, even nice, gentle people like Daddy was.
My mother was still alive when I went in, but she was pretty gaga by then from the fall. Old Mrs Manville, who’d been with us since time began, looked after her in her final years. I don’t know if my mother ever really took it in, I certainly hope she didn’t. After I got out I never brought it up with her. What would have been the point? I hardly even saw her in the last year or two. It wasn’t really worth it, going to visit: she couldn’t seem to grasp who one was. Mrs Manville did all the talking for her, Mummy just sat there. And to be candid I didn’t much relish having to be in the same room with Mrs Manville. Relations with Mrs Manville weren’t of the best, not after the dressing-down she gave me. Not that it was any of her business, frankly.
You can’t imagine what it was like at Holloway. There were maggots in the food – it was crawling, quite literally – and cockroaches everywhere, and the stench was unbelievable. They put the lights out at five in the afternoon and that was it; we were in total darkness for the next fourteen hours or so,
at least we were in wintertime. It’s funny, because it was actually the end of May when I went in and there was a hot summer that year, but in memory it was always winter. In fact, the thing I remember most vividly about the time in Holloway was the cold. We had a grimy-looking pair of sheets and two blankets each, but there was no heat in them, they were thin and stiff, like worn felt. You simply could not shake off the cold at night, irrespective of the season. It always felt like the worst bit of the winter, like February; that sort of chill you can’t get rid of, the sort that feels as if it’s coming from the inside of you. We’d get terrible chilblains. And of course you couldn’t even have a bath, to get warm; there was never enough hot water. We only had a bath a week each, and that was if we were lucky and they hadn’t rounded up a lot of tarts. Mind you, it was fun when those girls came in, generally at weekends: they kept us entertained with their stories. They were in good spirits, usually, because they knew they’d soon be out, that they were there for the one night, two at the most. We did like them, but it was maddening the way they used up resources, all the tea and the sugar and the bathwater.
On Sundays we got a small jam ration to have with our bread. I don’t know why the bread always had to be stale. Perhaps they hung on to it, deliberately, until it was almost rock-solid; perhaps that was part of the punishment. The tea was just brown liquid, it tasted of metal and not tea at all. But at least it was hot. On Wednesdays there was sea pie – that was the one dish that was remotely edible. I forgot what butter tasted like, while I was there. We only had lumps of hard white margarine, like axle grease, once or twice a week. It may even have been lard. There weren’t enough knives and forks for all of us – Lord knows why not – so we had to take it in turns. The last food was given out at four o’clock: what would have been tea-time, in one’s old life. When we lived abroad I used to miss toasted tea-cakes and Garibaldi biscuits. You couldn’t call the prison food any kind of supper – greasy cocoa and bread with cheese, or what they called cheese. A lot of us got tummy troubles. There was a particularly nasty bout of gastric flu that left a lot of us very weak. It was difficult to sleep, one was so empty.
At first we weren’t allowed to get parcels. After a time they relented and people got cigarettes, and of course people smoked like mad because they were hungry. I hadn’t been a smoker, but I became one. Still am, as you see. It kept the pangs at bay and gave one something to do. There were nearly seventy of us, on the wing: a wonderful group of women. I shall never forget the courage of those women. If it hadn’t been for them I think I would not have retained my sanity. They were resourceful and always humorous. A tremendous bond of loyalty grew up among us. They were plucky. I think it would be fair to say that in their modest sort of way they were magnificent.
We kept in touch afterwards, after we got out. Letters, Christmas cards. And then in later years we would meet at the annual reunion in November. That dwindled too, of course, over time, although I always went. After we were released there were numbers of them I never heard from again, they didn’t want to be reminded. You can’t blame anyone for that.
5. Sussex and Buckinghamshire, July 1938
Phyllis took the three children to the camp-site every day. They had all made friends there: Edwin and little Frank were inseparable and Julia and Frances never now complained of boredom. Somewhat to her own surprise, Phyllis found that she, too, enjoyed the outdoor life with its routine and simple pastimes. It was so easy, not having to dream up things for the children to do every day, knowing they would be happily occupied. For her own part it was interesting meeting people from all over the country, sometimes joining study groups in the mornings, then spending the afternoons doing things she mostly hadn’t done since schooldays, playing rounders or badminton or sea-bathing. Helping Nina with the endless lists and supplies was oddly pleasurable; it was nice to be of use, part of a community. It had never occurred to her before how isolated she had been living abroad, although in her heart of hearts she had considered that marrying a man so many years her senior had sometimes made her lonely. Or perhaps it was less to do with his age than his temperament. Hugh had always been very much preoccupied with his own concerns, the company and his place within the company and the people he encountered on behalf of the company: she had simply followed the drum. They had never stayed long enough in one place for her to have established a real life of her own. At the summer camp she felt a lightness of spirit and a sense of easy camaraderie she had not known since she was a girl, running half-wild out of doors with her sisters, playing in the woods and fields around the Grange, where they’d grown up.
Sometimes Edwin begged to be allowed to stay at the camp-site and Little Jim said the boy was welcome to bunk with his grandson Frank, any time. Young Frank’s father kept a pub in Essex and could not get away, although he would be coming to join them for a couple of days towards the end of August. By the end of the second week Edwin was spending half his nights under canvas, while his mother and sisters generally went home before high tea was served, at five o’clock. On two or three occasions they had been persuaded to stay on for camp-fire singing or other entertainments, on evenings when Hugh was in London. Julia and Frances protested at the unfairness of their younger brother being allowed to sleep in a tent when they had to go home to a stupid bricks and mortar house every day, until Nina suggested that they could become proper campers for the special Cadet week. At twelve, Frances really belonged in the Greyshirt Youth group, but Nina was confident of being able to smuggle her in with the teenaged Cadets, provided fourteen-year-old Julia kept a bit of an eye on her and she didn’t do anything silly. Julia and Frances were billeted in a tent with two older Cadets, both girls of seventeen. It had been fine to visit the camp in their home clothes for the odd day, here or there, but now they would need uniforms so as to fit in with the other youngsters. The girls were especially delighted with the silver belt buckle with its dramatic insignia, which made them both look very grown-up. Frances liked the secret society aspect of the buckle, the fact that outsiders wouldn’t know what the symbol stood for. Julia tightened the wide elastic on hers, cinching the uniform in at her waist.
The Cadets holiday was to take place during the third week of camp. Phyllis decided that this would be a suitable time for her to make the much deferred visit to see her parents. Until now there never seemed to have been a spare day. She asked Hugh.
‘Can’t you get one of your sisters to go?’ he said. ‘I’m really rather caught up with things in London at present. Anyway, you’ll have the children to keep you company. Julia can help with the cases, if you can’t find a porter.’
‘I wasn’t thinking I’d take the children,’ said Phyllis.
‘Oh?’ said Hugh. ‘Surely the whole exercise is so that the children can see their grandparents. And vice-versa.’
Hugh’s own mother had died when Julia was a baby, before the other two were born. ‘I didn’t think there was much point,’ said Phyllis.
Nina would clearly be far too busy for the foreseeable future, so she approached Patricia.
‘Yes, of course, darling,’ said her sister at once. ‘We can get Hitchens to take us up. It’s such a bore otherwise, one has to change trains twice.’
‘Really? It isn’t too much trouble?’ asked Phyllis. She felt a rush of gratitude and affection for Patricia.
‘We won’t have to stay the night if we go by car,’ said Patricia. They both laughed.
As a girl Phyllis had been taken to her aunt and uncle’s house in Northumberland, a long journey undertaken in order for her father to offer some little succour to his brother, who had just received bad news. Everything in that house of grief had seemed motionless, as if under a spell. The only things that seemed to move were the flies which buffeted the glass of the bedroom windows and then lay dead, sprinkled like black confetti, on the windowsills. Her uncle was her father’s older brother. His only son, Timothy, had been killed at Arras. The boy’s mother was said to be inconsolable, a word which had made
Phyllis half expect to hear her shrieking and sobbing and stomping about in the attics, like the first wife in Jane Eyre. Instead she found her aunt had been effaced, the somewhat hearty woman who had gardened in all weathers replaced by a wraith who seldom emerged from her room and barely spoke. There was a quiet in the house which was denser than ordinary silence, as if it had been thickened with sorrow. On her way up to bed, Phyllis had tiptoed along the landing and stood in front of the door to Timothy’s room, daring herself to look in. But she had not been brave enough. She was frightened she might see his uniform, that there might be bloodstains on it, although when she told her sisters about this later they said she was being silly, and that his uniform would have been buried with him, in France.
Phyllis had not seen her cousin for some time – he was six years older and had been away at school on an earlier visit – but he had been a figure of interest and affection among the three sisters, the only male relative of their generation. When he’d last come with his parents to the Grange he had been kind to her, the pudgy youngest, asking her to be his croquet partner against her sisters. He was a dear boy. Patricia, closer to him in age, had taken it especially hard and was red-eyed for many days after they heard the news. It was a tragedy, everyone said so. Phyllis remembered her father saying that the name had died with Timothy and now there would be nobody to take it into the future. Hating to see her father sad, she had volunteered: ‘But I’m young, Daddy. I’ve got the same name, I’ll look after it.’ But her father had said she would marry and take her husband’s name, as would her sisters: it wasn’t possible for them to keep the name alive.
Now, as she crossed the familiar threshold of the Grange, Phyllis was taken aback by how unaltered the place was. Here, too, time appeared to have stopped. She felt almost as if she was no longer a married woman with three children of her own, but a girl; a young girl with tangled hair, still breathless with schemes and ideas for games, about to run into the house leaving the door open and call up the stairs to her sisters. She had heard people say that childhood places seemed diminished after a long absence, but it did not seem so to her. The Grange felt as capacious as ever, with its high ceilings and long flight of shallow stairs. The house had its own particular smell, waxy but with a slightly sour note, like the oil that their father used to clean his guns after shooting, mixed with the distinctive tang of old mackintoshes: a boot-room smell. The long-case clock continued to tick in the hall where old copies of Horse & Hound and The Field were still stacked on a round table. The passage of time was further concealed by each liver and white spaniel giving way to an almost identical successor, all with the same matted ears and doleful expression, as if the same dog had lived for many decades. The only changes were outside the house. The walled kitchen garden – once their father’s favourite part of the garden – produced more nettles and fewer vegetables with each passing year: buddleia took root in stony corners. They kept no horses of their own any more. After their mother’s fall their father had stopped riding and the stables were now occupied by a handful of mothy-looking ponies belonging to the huntsman’s daughter.
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