Britannia Mews

by Margery Sharp

  “Then they must have very slipshod minds. But you are quite possibly right,” agreed Adelaide. “Treff is looking uncomfortable already.”

  “Not at all,” said Treff. “I’ve thought about death a great deal more than you imagine. We go where the flame goes when the candle’s blown out.”

  Adelaide looked at her brother dispassionately.

  “It’s wonderful how you make do, dear, with your words and phrases. Don’t forget the bourne from whence no traveller returns.”

  “But that’s true,” protested Dodo. “We don’t—”

  Her words were drowned by the noise of a second express train rushing overhead. The swing-doors clashed; Adelaide observed pertinently that in a few moments they might understand more of what they were talking about; but again destruction passed over, the explosion was well to the north. A peculiar instinct, however, like a weather sense, told them all it was going to be a rough morning, and Adelaide, after making her pointed remark, went swiftly upstairs.

  “If only she’d stay down here!” sighed Dodo. “Uncle Gilbert never even notices them …”

  “They wish to die together,” said Treff stiffly.

  “Well, I know that. But I wish I knew more of—of what is in her mind. It might be so helpful.”

  “Nothing else is in her mind,” said Treff, still in an oddly offended tone. “Adelaide is simply fortunate in having some one she wishes to die with.”

  Dodo looked at him and wondered. Was he yearning, after all these years, towards his abandoned Principessa? Was he being paid out, at long last, for his old heartlessness? A third time the doors clashed, and now the thunder overhead was louder and more menacing …

  “Never mind, Uncle Treff,” shouted Dodo. “We’ll die with each other!”

  “Pah!” ejaculated Treff—and since the engine at that moment cut out, his shrill voice echoed through the Theatre, taking them both by surprise. In the silence that followed they stared at each other with instinctive repudiation, aversion almost: they didn’t want to die together; they resented, each of them, having no one better with whom to share this supreme intimacy. Treff’s thoughts flew to a very different figure from his niece’s—a voluptuous magnolia shape, half mistress, half Madonna; as for Dodo, she knew only that whoever else might be her right companion, it wasn’t Treff.

  Death fell, but not on Britannia Mews.

  “I believe it’s Hampstead again,” groaned Dodo.

  “You can’t possibly tell,” said Treff crossly. “I think it was south of the Park.”

  3

  It was that same afternoon that Richard Tuke, after exchanging impressions of the morning’s work, said abruptly:—

  “I’ve got forty-eight hours from next Saturday. I’m going to my cottage. Will you come?”

  At another period Dodo’s immediate reaction would have seemed to lack sensibility. She said at once:—

  “I can’t be away Saturday night, I’m on call at the Post. And there’s a matinée besides. I can’t possibly get away on a Saturday.”

  “Then come down on Sunday morning.”

  “I’m on call Sunday night as well.”

  “Can’t you find a substitute?”

  Dodo reflected.

  “I dare say I could ask Mr. Birch. I’ve taken his duty before now, and he lives in Bedford Street.” She became aware of Richard regarding her with a rather quizzical expression. “Well, I have to think about it, don’t I?” said Dodo defensively.

  “Obviously, my darling. There’s a war on. Now think about me.”

  Dodo looked at him and did so. Compared with the calls of the Theatre and the Post, his suggestion appeared fairly simple. He was asking her to spend the week end with him, and at his cottage, where they would be spared all the shabby contrivances incident to hotel registers; her mind still working on this practical level, Dodo saw how easy it would be; she could go on Sunday for a day in the country, and tell Adelaide that if she were late back she would go straight to the Post. Never were circumstances more propitious; and she knew that much the same thoughts had already passed through Richard’s considerate mind. How nice he was! How more than nice, how dear! “I do love him,” thought Dodo. “I know I do!” The moral, or immoral, aspect of the thing did not trouble her in the least; had he asked her to marry him—and the fact that he did not was simply a tribute to her common sense—she would have been far more disturbed than she was. While she was thus trying to arrange her thoughts, he suddenly spoke again.

  “Aren’t we to have anything?” asked Richard abruptly.

  The question touched her to the heart. All around them boys and girls were billing and cooing as frankly as the pigeons; nesting too, probably, like the pigeons, when and where they could; and in her heart Dodo suddenly echoed Richard’s cry—“Am I never to have any share in this? Am I never to know love at all?” It was almost too late already, youth had slipped through her hands; if now, at the eleventh hour, love turned and called back to her, how could she not listen?

  “Yes,” said Dodo quickly. “I’ll come down on Sunday. I’ll stay. Yes, Dick.”

  CHAPTER IV

  1

  Saturday night was fortunately quiet: Dodo rose after seven hours’ sleep in good looks and with energies equal to whatever the day might bring. She dressed carefully, putting on a blue tweed suit made as recently as 1938; the big blue bag, which she so often slung from her shoulder, easily accommodated a night-dress and sponge-bag. Dodo put them in with a slight sense of unreality; but she put them in. Adelaide and Gilbert were still abed when she left, so that she had only to look round the door and say she was off. “Have a nice time, dear,” said Adelaide casually. “If I’m back late, I may go straight to the Post,” warned Dodo. “Anyway, don’t worry about me.” “I shan’t,” said Adelaide, with a faint air of surprise; and added, “You’re old enough to look after yourself.”

  Running downstairs, it struck Dodo that her unprecedented action in taking a day off was arousing remarkably little interest; for some reason she found herself thinking of the spectacularly white wedding which Alice had once, and with such enthusiasm, designed. There were to have been six bridesmaids, and a possible page. “I wonder what’s happened to Tommy?” thought Dodo, rather unbecomingly. She knew he was married; she would have bet that the wedding was white. In the train, however, she put these reflections out of her head to concentrate upon Richard; it was rather late in the day to examine her feelings towards him, and indeed she was not doing so, her feelings were fixed; she was rather recapitulating those qualities which had fixed them. His humour, for instance, his quiet sense of the absurd, so often directed at himself—never was a man less conceited; the closeness with which his mind followed her own, making all conversation intimate. “My dearest Richard,” said Dodo, under her breath. The words sounded very natural. She repeated them with growing conviction as the train ran out into open country. It was a bright morning, promising a fine day.

  2

  Richard was waiting. This was the first time Dodo had seen him in civilian clothes, and though his flannel trousers and tweed jacket were very old, he looked considerably neater than he did in uniform. There was even an odd, lanky elegance about him as he came striding down the platform, not obviously hurrying, but moving with great rapidity; the instant of their meeting produced a heightening of emotion, a heightened awareness of each other, as sweet as it was new. It’s going to be all right, thought Dodo; it’s going to be perfect.…

  He said:—

  “You’ve come.”

  “Didn’t you think I should?”

  “I couldn’t quite believe it.”

  He gave her a long, deep look; as they turned out of the station his fingers caught and twined in hers. Dodo returned the pressure gladly; a little shock of excitement sent the colour to her cheeks. They walked thus hand-in-hand past a few cottages, a few shops; the village was so small that it could have fitted into its own churchyard; the only modern building in sight was the Village Instit
ute with a war memorial in the tidy front garden. One could see at a glance there were no evacuées; this wasn’t a reception area; yet at even so short a distance from London, peace, it seemed, still dwelt.

  A bell chimed desultorily; only rooks answered; the congregation was still putting on its hats. But opposite the Institute Richard suddenly let his clasp loosen.

  “Damn,” he said softly. “Here’s Mrs. Vicar. We won’t stop.”

  But the Vicar’s wife was not easily avoided: with a beaming face she hurried down the path, calling greetings as she came.

  “Mr. Tuke—or do I say ‘Corporal’—no, I won’t! Mr. Tuke, how nice to see you again! Are you on leave? Are you coming in to see us?”

  Richard mumbled that he had a forty-eight.

  “And you’re honouring the village! Isn’t that nice!” The lady’s kind eye turned upon Dodo, and found her a most suitable object to rest on. As might have been expected, Mr. Tuke’s friend was a thoroughly nice person, thank heaven there was no need to be charitable or even discreet. “Have you come down from London?” asked Mrs. Vicar amiably. “You have? Do tell me, are these buzz-bombs very dreadful?”

  “Pretty nasty,” said Dodo.

  Lightly as she spoke, however, she couldn’t disguise her air of competence, and the other at once recognized it.

  “You’re not a warden, by any chance? You are? My dear, I can’t tell you how I admire you. We feel so out of it here—at least, not that exactly, but we feel we’re not doing our share. I think the London A.R.P. are perfect heroes—and what a blessing it must be to get out of it, even for the day! Mr. Tuke, if you want milk, or food of any sort, don’t hesitate to come to the Vicarage.”

  Richard replied that he would not, and moved a step or two on. But the Vicar’s wife, besides having taken a fancy to his friend, was also (as all good vicars’ wives must be) a great opportunist; she looked at Dodo longingly.

  “I wonder if I could ask you—no, I can’t! Only it just happens, Miss …”

  “Baker,” supplied Dodo.

  “… Miss Baker, that our A.R.P. actually has a practice this afternoon, and if you could just say a few words to them—we so rarely get any one with first-hand experience; in fact they get so little encouragement at all—I know they’d be thrilled to the core. Or is it asking too much?”

  In the circumstances (unknown of course to Mrs. Vicar) it really was rather a lot: with cheerful amusement Dodo wondered whether any other young woman, embarking on an illicit week end, had ever been similarly waylaid. She glanced at Richard to share the joke, and found he wasn’t looking amused, he was looking furious.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” said Dodo, “but this really is my first day off in years …”

  “Oh, dear, and you must be so tired! Still, wouldn’t you care just to have a peep at our control-room?” pleaded Mrs. Vicar. “Even that would be something.”

  Dodo shook her head. As a matter of fact, she wouldn’t have disliked doing so at all; she took a professional interest in all A.R.P. work, and had never seen how a country post was run. But Richard’s expression was becoming agonized.

  “Then I won’t keep you any longer,” said the Vicar’s wife regretfully. “I’ll just say this: If you should—in the course of a walk, you know—be passing between three and four, just pop in.”

  They got away at last. As soon as they were out of earshot Richard began to apologize.

  “My darling, I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but it was just damned bad luck. That woman’s intolerable.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Dodo seriously. “It’s awfully hard to keep a post on its toes when nothing ever happens. I wonder how they work their shifts?”

  He stopped and stared at her.

  “Good Lord, you don’t mean you want to go and give a ruddy pep-talk?”

  “No, of course not. I’d hate it.”

  She took his hand again, and with only a slight effort they recaptured their original mood in time for the great moment that was approaching. Their path now skirted a field, under a tall hedge; at a stile halfway along Richard stopped and, placing himself between Dodo and the gap, said rapidly, “The garden’s not in proper order, and it needs planting,” then stepped aside and let her look.

  There was his cottage. It sat squarely between a small plot and a small orchard, the whole fenced about with white palings. Wide flower-beds flanked the path—one side weeded, one still a solid mass of green; the front door was painted white, with a brass knocker. Structurally the place wasn’t interesting, it was an ordinary labourer’s cottage, but the neatness and completeness of its details gave it a demure charm. Dodo exclaimed in honest admiration.

  “My dear Dick, how perfectly adorable!”

  “It’s nothing much,” said Richard, with ill-concealed pride.

  “It’s perfect. I want to see inside.”

  They climbed the stile and ran—Dodo started running—towards the white gate and up the path between the odd flower-beds: Richard pushed open the door, as one did in the country—as one did, of late, in Britannia Mews—and again stood back with his air of proprietorship. Within it was just as charming as without. Dodo found it touching as well: everything spoke of a lonely man’s hobby, there was so much evidence of care and taste and economy, such meticulous groupings of china and brass.… Dodo pictured Richard standing now in the doorway, now by the fireplace, wondering whether the big blue bowl would look better here on the table or there on the window-sill; fiddling with the ginger jars, altering the furniture.…

  “Look!” said Richard.

  There were three blue cushions on the settle, a blue runner on the dresser: he whisked them all over, and on the other side they were red.

  “That’s for winter. And red curtains. It alters the whole room.”

  Dodo put her arms round his neck and kissed him. It was the first time she had ever done such a thing, and he turned to her with delight.

  “My darling, my dear girl!” he repeated. “It’s unbelievable! All these years I’ve been making this place, and I didn’t know it was for you!”

  “Show me everything!” commanded Dodo.

  With the greatest delight he led her upstairs and down, into the tiny bedroom (with flowers on the bureau) into the tinier kitchen, into a minute bathroom where the water ran out but not in. “When I bought it,” said Richard, “it was a pigsty. I’ve done everything myself.” Dodo praised all she saw, feeling fonder of him every minute; when they sat down to lunch at the gate-leg table, “This,” she thought, “is domestic bliss.”

  After lunch they took deck-chairs into the orchard. But the sun, though bright, had little warmth in it; very soon they both began to feel chilly. The obvious thing to do was to go for a walk; a walk was part of their programme. “The wood’s on the other side of the village,” explained Richard, “and we can’t get round without trespassing. However, it’s only half-past two.” Dodo knew he was referring to the gathering at the Institute, and experienced a curious sense of playing truant; but she silently acknowledged that he was right: one didn’t, in the circumstances, plunge headlong into local activities. As they recrossed the stile she spared a fleeting thought for Cyclamen, to whom such circumstances were no doubt the commonplaces of everyday life: Cyclamen would purr her way happily from one ambiguous situation to the next, spared all embarrassments by the fact that she was so obviously ambiguous herself. “I look too darned respectable,” thought Dodo crossly. “Darn it, I look my age …”

  What next occurred, however, was not her fault.

  By an extraordinary chance all the members of the local A.R.P. had on this occasion arrived for their practice not only on time, but considerably before it: there they were in the Institute garden—four elderly ladies, the Vicar, the postman, two Boy Scouts, and of course the Vicar’s wife.

  Richard seized Dodo by the arm and dragged her into the nearest shop—or rather into its doorway, for the day being Sunday, it was naturally shut. Dodo found herself nose to nose with a
Newfoundland dog on a calendar, while Richard fiercely regarded birthday cards.

  “Darling, this is absurd!” protested Dodo. “They’ve seen us!”

  “Wait till they’ve gone in.”

  Dodo stared at the dog for a full minute, feeling so much of a fool that it was rather a relief than otherwise when a now familiar voice sounded at her rear.

  “Those are the ones I was telling you of, dear, the ones with the dogs on them … Why, here’s Miss Baker!”

  “Don’t look round,” said Richard childishly.

  But the situation was impossible. Dodo immediately turned and said rapidly that she had been admiring the calendars because they were so much more attractive than anything one could get in London. Her glance took in Mrs. Vicar’s stooge: one of the elderly ladies, sixtyish, easily flurried, no earthly use in a blitz, but obstinately willing …

  “Yes, aren’t they nice?” said the Vicar’s wife. “This is Miss Rose, who takes incoming messages.”

  God help you, thought Dodo. Aloud she said, “I’m on the telephone myself. It can be dreadfully boring.”

  “Not in London,” murmured Miss Rose respectfully.

  It was appalling. The two Boy Scouts had already joined the group, the postman hovered on its outskirts: expectancy hung over them almost visibly, like a cloud. Richard said briskly, “Come along, Dodo, if we want our walk.” But the Vicar’s wife held Dodo’s eye and did not release it. She was apparently practising telepathy, for the words “five minutes” formed themselves distinctly in Dodo’s mind.

  “Could I come in just for five minutes, just to see your control-room?”

  At once a sort of sigh went up, the group parted, forming a lane. Feeling a traitor to Richard, a busybody, and a conceited impostor, Dodo allowed herself to be conducted into the Institute and shown the map of the district (water-mains traced in red, standing water coloured blue) the First Aid cupboard, the beds for firewatchers—“Though as it’s so near,” said Mrs. Vicar honestly, “we generally sleep at home”—all the modest paraphernalia of a least small link in the chain known as Air Defence Great Britain. Dodo voiced this metaphor aloud, producing universal pleasure; she also, without intending to, gave a description of one of the worst nights in Chester Street, and said a few smug words on the importance of being prepared. But these too went down well, and every one thanked her as though she had conferred some substantial benefit on them. A buzz of animated talk ensued; second-hand bomb stories, narrow escapes by near relatives, were eagerly retailed: in another moment (Dodo knew from experience) somebody would start making tea. With Mrs. Vicar abetting she made her escape, and in the little garden that lady thanked her again.