‘That is neither here nor there. It’s an invasion. Procrastination and dithering have been the order of the day for years. All the letters that have been exchanged, all the pieces of paper waved in our faces have done nothing. We were led to believe that any action would be unduly costly and that it would be far better to talk, to reach an understanding. The warmongers have hit upon the wrong enemy. They have failed to see the corruption at home and now it’s too late and those of us who see most clearly will be branded traitors!’
‘I am not sure whether you are denouncing our politicians or your solicitors.’
‘It’s much the same. There’s been no leadership and look where it’s brought us.’
‘The village has certainly suffered without someone of note residing at Mount Benjamin.’
‘Of course it has. We did not need some coarse American or flimsy starlet renting the place, breezing in for a long weekend here, a fortnight there, perhaps throwing some vulgar house-party out of season. Oh, I’ve heard some lurid tales from Mrs. Childs, make no mistake. And all the time, the dear place (I think of it as home, you know) slowly crumbling for lack of attention. Condemned by this wretched Trust. And now invaded.’
‘Requisitioned.’
‘The word is immaterial. There’ll be men, no doubt, with their feet up in the yellow boudoir.’
‘Only officers, I’m sure.’
‘Robert Kingsnorth tells me that the status quo will remain for the duration of the war. The army need their command posts and, while the troops are busy in Belgium and Holland, bases near the Channel are particularly useful.’
‘It is rather thrilling, surely you’ll admit. The “theatre of war”: that’s the phrase they use, you know. And really I find it perfectly apt. The curtain has gone up and the play has begun. So often, with Shakespeare and Shaw and the rest, one knows the plot already. One’s education has been so thorough. But, in this show, the ending is a complete mystery. All one hopes for is plenty of drama. Dr. Furnival tells me that there may be some Polish officers billeted in the area in due course. Now that will be exciting! Compatriots of Rachmaninov and Chopin will always be welcome in my drawing room.’
‘She’s back, I gather, in the South Lodge.’
‘Is it “music”? Is that the link your mind has made? Though I never heard Mrs. Cordingley play with the gusto of a Romantic. Yes. The South Lodge seems to be her home again. And Bertie Simmonds’ too.’
‘It is indecent. Don’t think I have not heard the stories. Why even my own sister has witnessed behaviour which she termed spooning. They were in Whitstable on the front where, no doubt, they thought they’d not be known. She had her arm linked in his, leaning together in a way that screamed “intimacy”. That’s what Lillian reported.’
‘Indeed? I try to keep myself above base gossip which is, perhaps, why nothing of that nature has reached my ears.’
‘I have no doubt that they’ll be very careful. But a servant’s eyes and ears, we know, are often sharp.’
‘They live quite simply, I believe. And privately.’
‘Well! There you are.’
‘It is extraordinary: the change in him. He seems a very pleasant young man when one meets him in the lane. He works, you know, at Mount Benjamin where they’ve established some nursery or other.’
‘To think that the estate should become some commercial enterprise! It’s enough to make my aunt rise from the grave.’
‘Now that would be one miracle too many for Hetty Jackman.’
‘Mrs. Furnival!’
‘My dear, forgive me. I intended no disrespect but one has to laugh at the poor woman who has really never been the same since that Easter years ago. She thought she had her moment, that everything would change and no one would mind her silly ways. Of course, it wasn’t to be. How could it? She had no plan or foresight.’
‘She had enough foolishness to wreak great havoc. She put the boy on a pedestal and pushed him in front of my aunt.’
‘But when she tried to climb up on the pedestal with him, she slipped off and found herself sprawling in the dust. Edward— the Reverend Jackman—has never forgiven her. He’s only kept her by him from his sense of Christian duty. It’s a great sadness. For a man in his prime needs a wife worthy of him at his side. You know, at times, I’ve half a mind to write to the Bishop and explain how better we’d all be with Hetty Jackman put out to pasture. I’m sure the Church must have some pleasant enough establishments on the south coast, in Budleigh Salterton (or Bournemouth for the less discerning), where wives or widows, who’d otherwise be embarrassing encumberances, can be left to wait their time. It would be a mercy and liberate the Rector.’
‘I had not realised you were such a supporter of the Church.’
‘My dear, I am an Englishwoman. I always think it important that Anglicans should cluster around the Throne.’
‘And does that woman ever go to church?’
‘Mrs. Cordingley? Never. Not these days. And I gather she seldom goes to Canterbury to her Quaker meetings.’
‘That’s not a religion. More a surrender.’
‘The Quaker sect?’
‘There is no litany. No words of any kind. They surrender to silence, free to be polluted by their own lewd thoughts.’
Chapter Ten
Thursday, 15 August 1940
Kenneth Southall waved the letter from Robert Kingsnorth at Bertie and Anstace.
‘They thought you were dead. The South Lodge was flattened by an aeroplane and they thought you’d been buried under the rubble.’
‘Did they mind?’ asked Bertie.
‘What do you mean, Kenneth? What do you mean, “flattened”?’ interrupted Anstace.
‘He just says “flattened”. It doesn’t sound good.’
‘Does he mean our home has been destroyed?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘How awful.’ She only took a moment to digest the news before she reached out a hand and covered Bertie’s.
‘But at least we weren’t there — inside.’
‘Of course we weren’t. We couldn’t have been. We had things to do.’ He smiled at Anstace.
There’s a conspiracy of sorts hatching, thought Kenneth Southall. Something’s definitely afoot. Bertie is one of the most guileless people I know and he is struggling to keep whatever it is that he and Anstace are sharing to himself. She’s almost as hopeless. The way she’s willing him to be less transparent is such a giveaway. No doubt all will be revealed in due course.
‘Mr. Kingsnorth says there’s been quite a fuss,’ he continued. ‘No one knows where you both are. He’s writing to me on the off-chance that I may have news. How fortunate that he had kept my address. He remembered we had corresponded when Bertie had the Trust set up for him by Lady Margery and he’ll have known you were at school at Winscot. I shall have to write immediately. Your father and sister, Bertie, will be dreadfully anxious. You must reassure them.’
Bertie turned his smile to Kenneth.
‘If you like,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure you understand.’ A touch of the schoolmaster had crept into his voice. ‘You can’t allow people to believe you’re dead when you’re not. It’s not fair. There are things which your deaths will set in motion which should not be … It’s a matter of social responsibility…’
He trailed off. Sound though his points were, they even struck him as rather lame. He tried again.
‘It’s a question of what we owe to others.’
And then Peggy interjected as wives (or this wife, he thought) are wont to do.
‘And what precisely does Bertie owe, and to whom?’
Kenneth turned to her with an exaggerated sigh.
‘Peggy, darling, I don’t think that is the point. There are social conventions of which you are fully aware. Bertie must learn what it’s right to do.’
‘Oh, Kenneth!’ she laughed. ‘There are no social conventions decreed as to how one should behave when one is dead.’
&
nbsp; ‘He’s not dead!’
‘He has been as good as dead to them for many a year.’
‘No metaphysical sparring please, Peggy,’ said Anstace. ‘Stop teasing Kenneth!’
‘Well, he shouldn’t be so stuffy. “Conventions” indeed.’
‘It may not have been the best word but it does not invalidate what I meant.’
‘What did you mean?’
‘Truth. We should behave truthfully. For these two to pretend to be dead would be a lie.’ He knew he was on firm ground and added confidently, ‘Bertie knows that.’
Peggy pursed her lips and refused to meet her husband’s eye. Anstace smiled to herself as she carefully rolled her napkin and pushed it into the hexagonal ring she had brought to the table, when they had first arrived. Again Kenneth Southall had the distinct impression that she was nursing private thoughts which ought to be shared, to throw a clearer light on things.
I do not like mysteries, he decided.
‘You do see, don’t you, Bertie?’ he asked. ‘You understand what I mean?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
The tone of Bertie’s reply now made Anstace laugh. He clearly did not care a jot and was humouring her cousin.
‘Poor Kenneth! Don’t look so put out.’
‘Of course I don’t want anyone to believe I’m dead. I’m not! You see!’ Bertie smiled and, pushing his chair back from the table, started to play the clown around the breakfast room, doing a sort of Charlie Chaplin walk, thumbs tucked under his armpits, a great Harpo Marx beam plastered across his face. The threat of disgruntlement receded.
‘Good. So I must reply to this,’ Kenneth Southall said, flapping the solicitor’s letter again, ‘and I think you, Bertie, should write to your father. Or telephone. And Anstace can write to whomsoever she chooses.’
‘This afternoon! This afternoon!’ Bertie shouted. ‘Because now I am taking Anstace for a walk up the combe.’
He pulled her off her chair and dragged her laughing out of the room.
Kenneth Southall heard the front door slam and watched them through the window as they turned right out of the gate into the lane. Anstace had evidently just time to grab a head-square which she was struggling to knot in the wind. Bertie was shrugging himself into a jacket.
‘Something’s not right. He’s been excited—over-charged somehow—ever since they arrived. Do you remember how he used to get before we discovered the exhausting properties of rugger? He’s like he was then.’
Peggy was pretending to be absorbed in the paper. Kenneth Southall huffed to himself, resenting the way that everyone seemed to be conspiring to make him feel dull-witted. He began to clear the table of the breakfast things and started by gathering their linen napkins. He was pleased that Anstace had started using her own ring again. He, though several years her senior, had held her in awe even when she was just a child of seven or eight. She was such a serious little girl and had a habit of staring at you just that little bit too long before replying to a question or saying something. He had never been able to make up his mind whether it just took her longer to understand, like a foreigner coping with another tongue, or whether she was aware of depths and nuances to their conversation which had escaped him. She had such a fathomless, unwavering stare as if nothing could ever surprise her. No doubt her acquaintance with death partly accounted for it. He would never forget that conversation she had with his mother. ‘What’s this?’ she had said, when Anstace placed her napkin ring to the left of her plate on her first meal with his family. ‘My napkin ring,’ she had answered. ‘The Canterbury aunts say I am to have lots of homes now so I thought I should keep my napkin ring with me so, wherever I am, I know I’m at home.’ It was something like that. It made his mother cry and it had moved him too.
Kenneth Southall turned the ring around. He noticed that initials had been engraved on four of the six sides. The RC was for her mother. There was AC and AC again, presumably for ‘Anstace Catchpool’ and ‘Anstace Cordingley’. But there was a fourth set of initials: AS, with the lines in the silver still too sharp and bright.
There could be only one impossible explanation. What could she be thinking of? He was furious. He was outraged. He rushed into the lane, still in his slippers, and bellowed after them.
‘Anstace! Bertie! Come back! Come Back! Explain! Explain! Anstace, come back! Come back! Come back!’
They were not to be seen and would be too far off to hear. Shaking, he allowed Peggy to bring him back indoors and sit him down with a fresh cup of coffee.
Later, when she had stroked his cheek and rubbed his shoulders, he simply felt duped.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice anything,’ she said.
‘Well of course I did,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know it meant this!’
‘He just glows whenever he looks at her.’
‘Did she tell you or did you just “know”?’
‘I guessed. She didn’t need to say anything. I imagined they’d tell us when they wanted to.’
‘But it’s outrageous!’
‘What about Lady Elgar?’ Peggy said, ‘Or Mrs. Disraeli, Marianne-whatever-her-name-was? She was a widow and old enough to be his mother, wasn’t she?’
‘That doesn’t help, Peggy. The fact is Mrs. Marianne-whatever-her-name Disraeli was not Dizzy’s mother whereas Anstace is probably the closest thing to a mother Bertie has ever had. And one doesn’t marry one’s mother. Not even the early Caesars did that.’
‘Are you sure? But no, they did far worse things. Darling, more men should marry their mothers. It would save them wasting a lifetime trying to mould their wives into their mother’s image.’
He gave her a quizzical look.
‘Yes. You should have married your mother,’ she said. ‘I’d still have married you once you’d been decently widowed, and we’d have been far happier. It would have made your mother ecstatic into the bargain!’
Kenneth Southall knew there was no point in getting stuffy when his wife had decided to attach herself onto an eccentric opinion. He could never counter her verbal extravagances. And besides, common sense never seemed sufficiently attractive in comparison.
‘What do you mean, “far happier”? I cannot imagine how I could have been happier than I am now. I don’t mean actually now because I am far from happy at this minute but I mean generally, with you. Are you less than happy? Is that what you’re telling me?’
Peggy smiled at him radiantly but she would not answer his question. It was one aspect of what she called her ‘system’ to keep her husband a little insecure and therefore on his mettle.
If Anstace has been a mother to Bertie, thought Kenneth Southall, I feel that I am the closest thing to a father he has known. He told me, when he left school, that his years here at Combe House with me and Peggy and the children had been happy. I remember him telling me that. We gave him that. He held my hand and simply told me. ‘Bertie loves too simply. That’s the problem.’ I said to Peggy and then she replied, ‘How can loving simply ever be a problem?’ I haven’t forgotten.
‘Is it all as simple as you seem to think?’ he said. ‘Are they just in love?’
‘Of course they’re in love. Why can’t it be that simple? They are both free.’
‘But aren’t they being too naïve?’
Peggy took off her spectacles.
‘He was twenty-one on the seventh of August. He has come of age. Whatever else Anstace may have thought, she’s thought of that.’
Kenneth tried to explain his concerns.
‘Bertie loved Anstace when he was a boy because she was the first person to show him any kindness when a child. And now he is a man, he has transferred that love onto her, presumably, as his wife. He may have done so freely, without any sense of taboo or convention, but I fear the whole thing is terribly tangled up in layers of complicated psychology.’
‘Why we love may well be complicated. That we love is not. Once we get to it, surely all we need to know is that we love … and are lov
ed. Simply.’
‘How can it be simple? A boy’s love and a man’s love are not the same, It would be foolish to pretend they were. We wanted to liberate him so that he would learn to talk freely and we taught him to trust in “the holiness of the heart’s affections”. I fear we did not teach him how to be discerning. If we had done so, he’d have known to be wary of this development.’
‘If the heart’s affections are holy, there is no need for discernment. Faith is enough.’
‘Is Faith enough?’ he asked.
‘What a question for a Quaker! Kenneth, we build our lives around contemplative silence, believing utterly that this is the medium for the voice of God. If you question that, then you have to face the consequences.’
‘Which are?’
‘That our Quaker silences may be no more than an opportunity to ramble freely through our own conceptions and listen to a god of our own creation. Religion is reduced to an art form and spirituality merely an aesthetic dimension.’
He could not think quickly enough to give her a reply. All he knew was that he was troubled for Anstace and the boy. Peggy pushed her argument further.
‘The fact that you chose a quotation from Keats to describe human love suggests you may have confused Christianity with Romanticism.’
‘And so I may. But is Bertie confused? It’s Bertie I want to understand. I really don’t need your sharp debating now, Peggy.’
Peggy put her spectacles back on so she could see his face. She knelt beside him.
‘No one has been hurt. Remember that. Some, who do not matter, will be shocked. There are worse things in the world today to agonise us than loving beyond the bounds of propriety. Perhaps Anstace’s moral anarchy is merely in tune with the times. We are living in an age of abandonment.’
He kissed her and wondered—not for the first time, nor for the last—what he had done to deserve such a wife.
I hope, God knows, that she is right; that it will come right.
This is the peak of summer, Anstace thought. The days are still warm enough to dismiss any thought of autumn. Not even the mornings carry that damp note of imminent decay. But the leaves hang heavily on the trees. The oaks in particular seem weighed down with the dust of August. There has been no rain for weeks. Even the sheep paths are devoid of mud: just rutted tracks, scattered with the dark olive-black droppings. The ground is iron-hard. Enough to turn my ankle unless I’m careful. I would have changed my shoes except he was so urgent.
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