The Summer House Party

by Caro Fraser

  With the advent of rationing, Sonia decided that the grounds of Woodbourne House must be put to good use to provide as much of the household’s needs as possible. She set Lobb to digging up extra land to grow more fruit and vegetables, and the greenhouse, where in previous years Lobb nurtured bedding plants for the summer garden, was given over to the cultivation of tomatoes and cucumbers, and pots of vegetable seedlings for the kitchen garden.

  Sonia worked alongside Lobb, planting and thinning out seedlings, tending the new vegetables, and keeping the beds weeded, while Domino and Rufus snuffled around nearby. For this she found her trailing frocks and bead necklaces impractical, and so she bought instead a few pairs of French linen trousers and workmanlike Viyella shirts, and wound silk scarves into fetching and practical turbans to wear while she toiled among the trenches of peas and rows of cabbages.

  One day in early summer, after a long afternoon spent putting canes next to the new tomato plants and tying them off, Sonia went indoors, unlaced her boots and padded through to her sitting room, where Effie had laid out tea. It was the one indulgence of the old regime which she permitted herself. Teatime for Sonia was a small, civilised landmark in the day, one which signified the proper order of things. The sight of her Meissen chinaware, with its filigree edges and delicate pattern of blue flowers, never failed to delight and reassure her. She poured a cup of tea, added milk, and put a slice of Mrs Goodall’s seed cake on a plate. Then she switched on the wireless, and while she waited for it to warm up she drew up a footstool and settled into her armchair, stretching out her legs. She listened to the news while she had her tea. It was all dreadful. The Germans had entered Brussels and taken Antwerp. First Holland, she thought, now Belgium. France would doubtless be next. Soon Britain would be all alone. The idea made her feel cold and afraid. The news was followed by a broadcast by the new prime minister, Mr Churchill. Sonia drained the dregs of her tea as she listened to his growling tones.

  ‘We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause… We shall defend our Island home, and with the British Empire we shall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure that in the end all will come right.’

  Sonia closed her eyes, and repeated the words in a murmur. ‘In the end all will come right.’ It was what everyone had to believe now.

  3

  SONIA’S SELF-SUFFICIENCY DRIVE continued throughout that year and into the next. In the autumn she had a chicken run erected next to the tennis court, so that they would have a plentiful supply of eggs, and in the spring of ’41 a pigsty was built near the orchard. She bought six pigs from a local farmer for fifteen shillings, and persuaded Daphne Davenport and a few other local householders to supply household scraps to fatten them, in return for a share of the ham and bacon when they were eventually slaughtered.

  ‘We shall have all we need and to spare, I hope,’ she told Mrs Goodall, ‘and if we can help others in the neighbourhood, so much the better.’

  *

  In the early years of the war Meg, too, made great strides in the management of the Hazelhurst household. With the aid of recipe books borrowed from Anna Kentleigh’s cook, and help from Lotte, she became a proficient cook, and she and Lotte managed all the meals between them, while Enid carried out the domestic chores. The vegetable garden which had been laid out three years earlier was now fully productive and Meg, like Sonia, enjoyed the hours she spent in it.

  To everyone’s surprise, Paul did not go into uniform. It was generally understood that he was being employed by the government in some capacity, but as it was all very hush-hush no one, least of all Meg, had any idea of the precise nature of his work, save that it took him away from Hazelhurst for long spells.

  The dog cart was Meg’s idea. She enjoyed having friends from London to stay – many of them were only too happy to snatch a week in the country, away from the blackout and the air-raid sirens – but often there wasn’t enough petrol for her to pick them up from the station, and Alderworth lay just beyond the ten-mile limit imposed on taxis.

  ‘I scarcely have time these days to ride Grisette much,’ she told Paul, ‘and she’s getting fat munching grass out there all day. Why can’t we use her to fix something up, like a pony and trap? Then the taxi can take people as far as the pub in Frimley, and I can trot Grisette out and fetch them.’

  Paul was dubious at first, but he asked around, and eventually procured a second-hand back-to-back cart from a local farmer. Dixon, who had yet to receive his call-up papers, managed to find a driving harness and taught Meg how to harness Grisette to the cart. Grisette, after a twitchy start, eventually took obediently enough to the novel business of pulling something, and soon the dog cart, with Meg at the reins, was a regular sight along the roads around Alderworth.

  One of its first passengers was Helen, whom Meg had invited to stay for a few days. She hadn’t needed much persuading. She was down to one cook-maid – and a not very good one, at that – and the constant bombing raids meant that life in London was grim. The food would be better at Hazelhurst, she reasoned; country people had the wherewithal to make up for the inadequacies of rationing. The beds were good, too, and she hadn’t seen her grandson for a while.

  Helen took care to buy a first-class train ticket, but even so, she found the journey trying. The first-class carriage was full, with no room to spread one’s belongings, and she was able to squeeze only her suitcase on to the luggage rack, and had to sit with her gas mask case on her lap, together with her handbag, which made reading her book difficult. The train was teeming with soldiers in their heavy boots and khaki uniforms, packing every corridor with their unwieldy kit, including that of the first-class carriage. They made such a racket that Helen had no peace at all on the journey. When she reached Ascot, she did as instructed by Meg and took a taxi to Frimley, and was deposited outside the Star and Garter public house. There she waited, and ten minutes later Meg came round the corner in the dog cart.

  Although Meg had mentioned this new form of conveyance in passing, Helen hadn’t expected to be met in it.

  ‘Heavens,’ she said. ‘Am I to get into this contraption? I thought you’d be meeting me in the car.’

  ‘I go everywhere in this,’ said Meg cheerfully, as she stowed her mother’s belongings and helped her up. ‘We mustn’t waste petrol, and besides, it’s a lovely way to travel now spring’s here.’

  Helen said nothing. It might be mid-May, but in her view summer had not yet properly arrived, and it was still too chilly to make travelling in the open comfortable. Besides, she didn’t feel entirely safe, perched aloft. After five minutes or so of bowling along the country road, however, she began to feel less precarious, and decided that riding in a cart was rather pleasant. She hadn’t done it since she was a girl. She took a deep breath of spring air and gazed around at the countryside, the bright, new green of the hedgerows, and thought how good it was to be away from London for a while. So peaceful. So clean.

  *

  During her visit Helen was struck by how casual life at Hazelhurst had become. It seemed to her that Meg’s relationships with Lotte and Enid were now unduly familiar; one would scarcely have guessed that they were the servants and she the mistress. Everyone seemed to be getting along in a most rough-and-ready fashion. Standards, she supposed, were bound to slip in wartime, but it seemed a pity.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother, I won’t expect you to pitch in,’ said Meg, when on the first night Helen expressed surprise that Meg should be in the kitchen peeling and chopping vegetables for their evening meal.

  ‘Oh, I’m only too happy to lend a hand. Everyone must do their bit,’ murmured Helen. ‘Though I suspect I might be better off catching up with my knitting than getting in your way in here.’ She added with a touch of pride, ‘I’m knitting service woollens. I’ve done five sleeveless pullovers in the past month.’

  ‘How splendid. I do wish I could knit as well as you. Perhaps when you have time you can
knit something for Max?’

  ‘I’d be happy to,’ said Helen. She inspected the ingredients Meg was preparing. ‘This all looks very nice. What are we having?’

  ‘Rabbit pie and spring vegetables. Dixon catches the rabbits. He’s shown me how to skin and butcher them. It’s quite easy.’

  ‘Really?’ murmured Helen faintly. ‘By the way, where’s Paul? I haven’t seen him since I got here.’

  ‘He’s away. He’ll be back tomorrow night.’

  ‘Still gallivanting off and leaving you here to fend for yourself?’

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of running Hazelhurst myself, Mother. And he’s not gallivanting, as you call it. He has government work to attend to.’

  ‘I should have thought he’d be more use in uniform. He knows how to fly a plane, and we need people with that kind of ability.’

  To this Meg said nothing. The suggestion that Paul was not doing his bit rankled enormously. The admiration and respect she felt for her husband, mixed with her fear and need to be protected, had formed themselves into a defensive version of love. This in turn was tied into her feelings about her country, her sense of patriotism. She identified Paul, and all he stood for, with England. She could not bear any implied slight regarding his loyalty. Seeing that Meg was not inclined to continue the conversation, Helen departed for the drawing room and her knitting.

  *

  A visit to Woodbourne House was planned towards the end of the week.

  ‘I hope you have enough petrol for the car,’ said Helen. ‘I don’t think I should enjoy going all that way by horse and cart.’

  ‘Of course we’ll take the car. That is, if we’ve enough coupons for the petrol. Paul’s been driving it quite a bit recently. I’d better go and check.’

  Meg went to Paul’s study and opened the desk drawer. Only two coupons remained for the rest of the month, which would buy a couple of gallons. Depending on how much fuel there was still in the tank, it should be enough for the trip there and back – just. As she was about to close the drawer, she glanced at the neat pile of buff folders on Paul’s desk. She often wondered exactly what it was he worked away at. Aware that she shouldn’t, she flicked open the top one, and saw a typed page headed Memorandum and stamped with the startling words Top Secret. She was about to close it when her eye was caught by a name she recognised in the first paragraph. The mysterious Mr Bettany, yet again. Feeling like a guilty schoolgirl, she scanned the memo quickly – it said something about the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, and then something else about penetration of German intelligence. At that moment she heard footsteps in the hall outside. Paul came into the study seconds after she had closed the folder.

  She closed the drawer. ‘Just checking how many petrol coupons we have. Sonia has invited us to Woodbourne House on Friday.’

  ‘The tank’s half full. You shouldn’t have any problem.’ Paul moved towards the desk. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you. I have to go back up to London tomorrow.’ He opened a cupboard in the desk, picked up the buff folders and put them inside, then locked it.

  Meg felt a momentary guilt. Had he seen her looking in the folder? No, she had closed it before he even opened the door. She had long ago dismissed Dan’s ridiculous allegations about Paul and Arthur Bettany, but there was evidently some connection. She told herself she must put it from her mind. She’d had no business looking in the folder.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ she said. ‘Never mind. I’ll give her your love.’

  *

  If Helen had been taken aback by the altered life at Hazelhurst, she was even more astonished by the changes at Woodbourne House, particularly Sonia’s functional new mode of dress.

  ‘You look quite the land girl, my dear,’ she observed, when Sonia came round from the kitchen garden to greet them. Sonia was wearing dark green overalls rolled to the knee, leather boots, a short-sleeved cotton shirt, and her hair was bound up in a fetching turban made out of a Liberty scarf, which perfectly matched her overalls.

  ‘All in the name of practicality,’ replied Sonia briskly. ‘One can’t plant potatoes in a frock and heels.’

  Helen accepted this mildly snubbing reference to her own smart suit and town shoes with a sisterly smile and a fond kiss. Sonia greeted three-year-old Max with rapture. ‘What a handsome boy you’re becoming! Would you like to see my pigs?’ Max nodded.

  ‘Pigs!’ exclaimed Helen.

  ‘Yes, I keep three Berkshires and two Oxford Sandy and Blacks. They’re quite docile breeds, which is important, since Lobb and I do all the work of looking after them. Pig-keeping can be quite a strenuous business, you know. Come along, I’ll show you our wartime improvements, and then we’ll have lunch.’

  ‘Good heavens, what’s happened to your lovely lawn?’ asked Helen, as the party made its way round the side of the house. The perfectly manicured lawn which had once stretched from the gardens to the edge of the tennis court was now a swathe of uncut grass rippling in the breeze beneath the chestnut tree.

  ‘It will be turned into hay for local horses in late summer,’ said Sonia, who was enjoying the moral superiority which came with her self-sufficiency; she and Helen had always been competitive. ‘I can tell Lobb is itching to get going with the motor mower. He was always so proud of his lawn, but I tell him that sacrifices have to be made.’

  When the pigs and chickens had been duly admired, everyone went inside for lunch.

  ‘I’ve closed off the dining room,’ said Sonia, as they went through the back of the house into the kitchen. ‘I decided there’s simply no point in trekking meals from one part of the house to another. We eat in the kitchen now. So convivial, don’t you think? And most of our food is en casserole. We are quite a by-word in simplicity, aren’t we, Mrs Goodall?’

  ‘Indeed we are, ma’am,’ replied Mrs Goodall.

  ‘Well,’ said Helen, as she regarded the dishes which Lily brought to the table, ‘you certainly live rather better here in the country than us poor folk in the city. Food rations go simply nowhere there.’ She was secretly relieved to see that Mrs Goodall and Effie did not intend to sit down with them. That would be taking things too far.

  After lunch Meg went for a walk with Laura and Max, while Sonia and Helen sat in Sonia’s drawing room and had a long talk.

  They drove back to Alderworth at teatime, Max asleep in his grandmother’s arms.

  ‘I know they’re absolutely vital, but all these new aerodromes do rather spoil the countryside,’ observed Helen, gazing through the car window. ‘How is Diana? Didn’t you say her husband is with the RAF?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a flight lieutenant. He’s somewhere in the Midlands. Diana’s staying at a hotel nearby. She goes everywhere he’s stationed. She can’t bear to be away from him.’

  ‘Of course, they’ve only been married a year or two,’ mused Helen. ‘But she should give some thought to taking a job. I think I might.’

  Meg glanced at her mother in surprise. ‘Aren’t you a bit old?’

  ‘I’m only forty-eight, Meg. Hardly ancient. As a matter of fact, seeing what you and Sonia are doing has made me realise that I’m just sitting there in London, neither use nor ornament – except for knitting a few jumpers – when I could be doing so much more. All my energy is going to waste, now that I don’t have a proper household to run any more. I think I shall join the WVS.’

  ‘Well, good for you,’ said Meg with a smile.

  ‘I rather pride myself on organising people and getting things done. I’m sure I can make a worthwhile contribution.’ Besides which, thought Helen, it would help to deflate her elder sister’s balloon of moral superiority, and show her that she wasn’t the only one who could roll her sleeves up and get stuck in.

  4

  DURING ONE OF his spells of leave, Dan decided to go round to his rooms in Bloomsbury and pick up a few items which he had been meaning to collect. He still had a key, and while he thought it unlikely that Arthur would be in at that time of day, it s
eemed impolite just to let himself in. He trotted upstairs and rapped lightly on the door, not expecting an answer, latchkey at the ready. A few seconds later Arthur answered the door. He was clearly surprised to see Dan and, although he made an effort to smile, not best pleased.

  ‘Ranscombe – what are you doing here?’

  ‘I just stopped by to pick up a few of my things.’ There was a pause. ‘I may come in, mayn’t I?’

  ‘Of course.’ Arthur stood aside.

  ‘Just my chess set and a few books—’ Dan broke off as he came into the living room. There, seated comfortably by the window in the red plush armchair, his pipe in one hand, a glass of Scotch in the other, was Paul. He greeted Dan amiably.

  ‘Hello there,’ said Dan. ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘I was just on my way back from the British Library when I bumped into Bettany here. He invited me up for a drink. Very decent set of rooms you have.’ Dan thought he detected a faintly patronising tone. Paul took a pull on his pipe. ‘Won’t you join us for a drink?’

  Dan hesitated for the merest second. The fact of finding Paul and Arthur Bettany alone together could have rekindled his old suspicions, but the lack of furtiveness or embarrassment, and the unforced, casual manner of both men, belied the idea that this was a sexual rendezvous. Nonetheless, it seemed curious.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ He took off his cap and settled himself in a chair, while Arthur uncapped the Scotch and poured out a measure. ‘Just a splash of soda, thanks.’

  ‘What’s your regiment?’ asked Paul, as Arthur handed Dan his drink and resumed his seat.

  ‘Middlesex.’

  ‘Much going on?’

  ‘Not really. I’m stationed down in Surrey at the moment, which makes it handy for getting over to Woodbourne House on the odd leave. I suppose it’s the closest thing I have to a proper home these days.’ Dan caught Arthur’s sharp glance. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not hankering to have the rooms back. Now that I’m no longer working in Fleet Street, I doubt I ever shall.’