Westwood (Vintage Classics)

by Stella Gibbons

  She looked at her watch. It was nearly five o’clock, and she set off quickly across the Heath in the direction of Highgate, whose church spire looked out at the spire of Hampstead’s church across the intervening small valleys and hills. Her shoes quickly became soaked in the long grass and the masses of black and yellow leaves, and the air grew cold, but she was so absorbed in the beauty of the scene, richly coloured as some dream of a Brazilian garden, that she noticed nothing else. She was a thin young woman of medium height in her early twenties, with a strong dark face, and untidy dark curls hanging about her shoulders. Her mouth was too full, and her brown eyes had an eager look.

  Presently she came out on the path below Kenwood that leads directly down to Highgate. There were allotments here with giant cabbages of a rich blue-green colour; the mist, and the dim blue of the sky, and the green of the grass caught up the colour and repeated it again and again almost as far as she could see, and the leaves were huge and beaded with water, for rain had fallen that afternoon. She hurried on with her hands in her pockets, still looking about her, but the colours were quickly fading now, and the greyness of evening was creeping over the fields.

  As she was leaving the Heath, between two wide lakes reflecting the last colours in the sky and the clumps of dark roseate osiers, she saw two tall men coming towards her through the mist. The elder wore a closely fitting dark coat and a black diplomatic hat, and carried a leather brief-case, and had eyes of so deep a blue that it was noticeable even in the gathering dusk. The younger wore looser clothes, and a black sweater with a turtle neck, and had no hat.

  ‘But Henry Moore isn’t –’ the younger was saying as the two passed her, and then he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and the rest of the sentence was lost. Both were walking fast, and in a few moments they had passed out of her hearing.

  But she turned once to look after them, attracted by their distinguished appearance and unusual height, and, as she did so, she noticed something lighter than the path lying a few yards away; a small, square, cream-coloured object. She approached it, and on stooping to pick it up saw that it was a ration book.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said aloud, looking first at it and then after the two gentlemen, who were by now almost out of sight across the misty fields. Her voice was deep, with a decisive note.

  It was no use running after them, she thought; besides, she was late now. She looked down at the name on the book. It was such an odd one that for the moment she thought it was foreign:

  Hebe Niland,

  Lamb Cottage,

  Romney Square,

  Hampstead, N.W. 3.

  Oh well, I can drop it in the post to-morrow, she thought, and put the book in her pocket and hurried on.

  It was almost dark by the time she reached Highgate Village. A figure in a mackintosh and beret rushed out from the shade of a shop door, crying reproachfully:

  ‘Well, you’re a nice one! I’ve been here for ages! What on earth happened to you? I’m frozen and now we won’t be able to go; Mother doesn’t like me out in the blackout, you know that as well as I do. You are the limit!’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, Hilda. I walked over the Heath and it was so gorgeous, I didn’t notice the time. But we must go; come on; if we hurry we’ll just be there before blackout,’ and she put her arm through Hilda’s, and strode away across the road towards Southwood Lane.

  ‘Oh well, p’raps we’ll just make it, and I don’t expect Mother’ll mind, as there’s two of us. Have you got the keys?’ said Hilda, pacified.

  The dark girl nodded and jingled them in her pocket.

  ‘What’ve you been doing all the afternoon?’ Hilda went on.

  ‘I went to the concert at the National Gallery, and then I walked about.’

  ‘Walked about? You are dopey. I say, Margaret, have you thought – there’ll be no blackout, so we shan’t be able to shine a torch.’

  ‘We shall be able to see all I want to see – if there’s a proper place for coals and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Of course there’ll be a proper place for coals! Those houses have only been up about ten years. You’re very lucky to get the chance of one.’

  ‘I know we are, and I don’t think it’s right,’ said Margaret, grimly.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Millions of people all over the world have lost their homes. Why should we have a new house?’

  ‘I don’t see that! It wouldn’t make it any better for them if you didn’t have one.’

  ‘People in England haven’t suffered enough.’

  ‘If you’re going to start about Russia I’m going straight home!’ cried Hilda, standing still in the middle of the road.

  ‘I wasn’t going to say anything about Russia particularly.’

  ‘That’s a wonder. Here, is this it?’ and she darted forward and shone her torch on the gate of a house which was one of a row. ‘Yes, number seventeen. Well, it’s still got a gate. That’s something.’

  She pushed the gate open and walked up the narrow crazy-paving path. The dim light of the torch shone on the tall weeds, fluffy with withered seedlings, that brushed against her skirt. Margaret followed, and the gate slammed after them.

  ‘Are all these house blitzed, I wonder?’ went on Hilda. ‘No, there’s a chink in your next-door neighbour’s blackout. Phew! Doesn’t it smell of bombs! Got the key?’

  Margaret was already shining her own torch over the narrow front door, which badly needed painting, and fitting the key into the lock. It was nearly dark. Something so enormous, round and red that for a moment it was hard to realize what it was, was rising slowly between the black houses. Hilda glanced over her shoulder and exclaimed:

  ‘What a gorgeous moon!’

  ‘Ominous,’ said Margaret quietly, pushing open the door, which was stiff on its hinges. A little hall and a narrow staircase were revealed in the faint light. The floor was covered with a white substance.

  ‘So what? Whatever’s all that muck on the floor?’

  ‘Plaster,’ said Margaret, stepping inside, ‘I expect the ceiling is down.’

  ‘Never mind, ducks; you said we haven’t suffered enough; you’ll be able to have plaster every day in your powdered egg. Shall I shut the door?’ And she did so, with a bang. Some more plaster came down, but when Margaret flashed her torch upwards the light revealed only a small hole.

  ‘It could easily be repaired,’ she muttered.

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t bother,’ said Hilda blithely. ‘What’s this? The dining-room? Oh, the ceiling is down here, Margaret!’ and she flashed her torch over a dismal mass of white on the dusky floor. ‘Gets better and better, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But it’s a nice little house,’ said Margaret, flashing her own torch over walls and fireplace. Her serious voice had a slight accent that was not London, nor completely southern.

  ‘Isn’t it wicked, though, ruining peoples’ places like this?’ demanded Hilda, going out into the hall again. ‘Look, here’s the drawing-room – oh, it’s got French windows into the garden – rather nice.’

  The increasing moonlight shone faintly upon canes of dead golden-rod, and clouds of feathery willow-herb gone to seed. A stone bird-bath stood up in the middle of the rank little lawn. Beyond the garden’s end a hill, covered in dim buildings and trees, ran up to a line of houses that were dark against the misty moonlit sky.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ said Hilda, leading the way. Their footsteps echoed all over the house.

  There were two fairly large bedrooms and a little slip-room over the front door.

  ‘One for your father and mother, and one for you, and a spare room,’ said Hilda, going from room to room and flashing her torch into corners and cupboards.

  ‘Mother and Dad have separate rooms and we shan’t be having anyone to stay,’ said Margaret, going into the bathroom. Hilda made a rueful face to herself in the darkness, as if she were sorry she had spoken, but the next instant said half defiantly, ‘People can be quite fond of each othe
r even if they do have separate rooms; my Auntie Grace and Uncle Jim do, and they’re quite a pair of old love-birds.’

  ‘Be careful how you flash that torch or we’ll have the wardens after us,’ was all Margaret said.

  ‘There’s a separate bathroom; good,’ said Hilda, opening a door and shutting it again. ‘Oh, Margaret – the kitchen! We must look at that; Mother says it’s the most important room in the house.’

  They went downstairs again. Moonlight was now shining in squares on the bare, dusty boards. The kitchen looked dismal, for the gas cooker had been removed by the outgoing tenants, and the ceiling was down, but there was a large larder (in the coolest part of the room, Hilda pointed out to the silent Margaret) and the sink was actually under the window.

  ‘Like they always have them in American films,’ said Hilda. ‘Oh, what an enormous spider!’ and she peered into the sink. ‘Do look, Margaret, I’ve never seen such a huge one. I suppose it is a spider?’ looking about for something to poke it with. Margaret made a shuddering noise.

  ‘Oh, I rather like them,’ said Hilda. ‘The only creepy-crawlies I can’t stand are earwigs. When we were at Bracing Bay the year before the war there was a boy always trying to put earwigs down the back of my bathing costume; honestly, I used to scream so you could hear me all over the beach!’

  ‘Listen!’ said Margaret suddenly. Far away to the east over the river’s estuary a faint ululation was beginning, and even as the two girls listened it was taken up close at hand.

  ‘There!’ said Hilda. ‘Oh dear, Mother’ll be having fits. What shall we do? There isn’t time to run home, I s’pose?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Margaret decidedly. ‘We’ll go and sit on the stairs,’ and she led the way back to the hall.

  ‘Gosh, isn’t it hard!’ said Hilda, sitting down gingerly.

  Margaret took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, and Hilda produced a paper bag.

  ‘Last of my sweet ration,’ she said, holding up a large round greenish object. ‘Sorry I can’t give you half.’

  ‘Can’t you bite it?’ suggested Margaret, with a reluctant smile in her voice, and they both laughed.

  ‘Oh, you are a dear old stick!’ suddenly said Hilda, looking up at her friend, as she sat on the stair above. ‘Doesn’t it seem ages since we were at school?’

  ‘Years,’ and Margaret sighed.

  ‘You’re different, you know.’

  ‘How do you mean, different?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just different. When I saw you at the station, the first thing I thought was, she’s different.’

  Margaret was silent.

  ‘As if something had happened to you to make you – sort of miserable,’ concluded Hilda.

  Margaret’s cigarette glowed in the dusk.

  ‘Is that guns?’ she said.

  ‘I expect so. Never mind them. What I mean is –’

  ‘Aren’t you frightened?’ asked Margaret seriously.

  ‘Me frightened?’ cried Hilda. ‘Whatever do you mean, Margaret Steggles?’

  ‘Well, how should I know? I’ve never been in a raid with you before.’

  ‘I’m not frightened of anything,’ announced Hilda. ‘And if you went about with as many Service boys as I do, you wouldn’t be either.’

  ‘Yes, I should,’ said Margaret in a low tone, staring across the dim hall to the pale square that marked the front door. ‘I’m not so frightened for myself – though that comes into it too, of course. It’s all the other people I think about, all over the world, when I hear that,’ and she jerked her head in the direction of the distant barrage that sounded like giants rapidly and furiously stamping.

  ‘They’re all right in South America,’ said Hilda.

  ‘Oh –!’ Margaret moved impatiently.

  ‘I mean, they don’t have air-raids.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it any better. You don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s you that doesn’t understand. It does make it better. I like to think of them having cocktails and all the chocolates they want and silk stockings. It cheers me up to think that someone can.’

  ‘I can only think about all the people who haven’t enough food, let alone cocktails and silk stockings.’

  ‘Well, don’t think about them. It doesn’t do any good. You always did take everything so seriously at school and now you worry about your old Russia all the time, and you’re always moaning about reconstruction. Honestly, Margaret, you get me down.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Margaret, politely and bitterly. ‘You make me sound a complete bore.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about being a bore,’ cried Hilda remorsefully. ‘You’re ever so much cleverer than I am; I couldn’t be a teacher to save my life, and you know how fond I am of you, you old mutt! It’s only that I don’t like to see you so browned-off and different.’

  Again Margaret was silent.

  ‘I’m sure something’s happened,’ said Hilda. ‘I do wish you’d cough it up, then you’d feel better.’

  ‘Do you always cough things up?’

  ‘Well, nothing ever happens to me. I mean to say, only with boys, and I can manage them. Mother and me often have a good old laugh about my boys. She says it makes her feel young again. Isn’t she a scream, though?’

  ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ asked Margaret suddenly.

  Hilda gave such an emphatic nod that all the smooth blonde curls on her shoulders danced, but all she said was:

  ‘I s’pose so. Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ said Margaret, feeling in her handbag for another cigarette. ‘I never have been, and as I get older it just gets worse and worse.’

  ‘Your father and mother don’t get on, do they?’ interrupted Hilda, bluntly.

  Margaret shook her head; her friend could just see the little movement in the dimness.

  ‘I always thought so, and so did Mother and Dad (of course, we didn’t chew it over a lot, but you can’t help noticing little things). Well, that’s enough to make you miserable – your parents not getting on.’

  ‘I suppose it was that to begin with,’ said Margaret slowly, ‘but it isn’t only that. I’ve just got an unhappy nature, I think. I take everything so seriously, and I mind it so much when things are ugly, and I worry about the mess the world’s in, and the war. And the year before last –’

  ‘I should think the All Clear’ll go in a minute,’ interrupted Hilda, ‘and the sooner the quicker; I’m starving, aren’t you? Go on, sorry.’

  ‘That time you came up to stay with us – I don’t suppose you remember a boy called Frank Kennett, do you? He was a friend of Reg’s.’

  ‘Short fair boy. Rather quiet. Nice manners,’ said Hilda at once, as if quoting from a private file. ‘He danced with you nearly all the time at that dance we went to with Reg’s crowd.’

  ‘That’s the one. But he isn’t short, Hilda, he’s a bit taller than I am.’

  ‘Well, you’re no giant,’ retorted Hilda, ‘and I distinctly remember thinking of him as a short fair boy. Never mind, go on. What about him?’

  ‘We used to go about together a good bit at one time. Boys never did take to me much, you know, I’m not like you’ – there was a smile in her voice again, and this time it was a loving one – ‘and we liked all the things – music and poetry and pictures – that the rest of Reg’s crowd didn’t like. Well, it wasn’t so much that they didn’t like them; they never thought about them; all they cared about was the pictures and dancing and getting enough money to have motor-bikes or cars of their own. They didn’t know about anything else; they were all as ignorant as pigs and as common as dirt, and I loathed and despised the lot of them,’ she ended savagely.

  ‘They didn’t seem too bad to me.’

  ‘I dare say. You aren’t like me; lucky for you you aren’t. Frank and I used to go to the concerts at the Corn Exchange, and that winter there was a repertory company at Northampton and we never missed a week; they d
id some really good plays, too; Shaw and Ibsen, and Shakespeare and O’Neill. That was the nearest thing to happiness I’ve ever had.

  ‘Did he kiss you?’ interrupted Hilda.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Margaret, without much expression in her voice. ‘Not very often.’

  ‘I said to a Raf boy I was out with last Sunday, “It’s a good thing I don’t want to kiss you as often as you want to kiss me,” I said, “or we’d never have time for anything else.” “Oh, Hilda,” he said, just like that. “Oh, Hilda!” with a kind of a sigh. I had to laugh. But he was a nice boy; I gave him one of my new Polyphotos for luck. “You be careful not to drop it over Berlin,” I said, “I don’t want to be one of Goebbels’s pin-up girls.” Go on, sorry.’

  ‘He worked in Sintram’s; you know, that big wireless factory outside the town; he was something to do with the research they were doing there on short-waves and he was clever. I did like him!’ she burst out resentfully. ‘We were friends.’

  ‘Were you sort of in love with him?’ demanded Hilda.

  ‘I don’t know. I just liked going about with him and having a friend who liked the things I did. It was all – kind of quiet and happy. And then Mother started.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, worrying me about getting married. She’s always been crazy about that; you won’t believe it, but she started dinning it into me how a girl must get married when I was a kid of twelve. I don’t know why, because she doesn’t think much of men really, or being married, but she’s very down on old maids.’

  ‘No pleasing some people, is there? You should worry.’

  ‘I don’t expect you would have, but she kept on moan, moan, moan, about it until she absolutely got under my skin. I got so embarrassed about it that I made excuses to keep Frank from coming to the house. I think Mother must have spoken to Dad about it, too, because he said something to me once about young Kennett having a good job.’

  ‘Did she ask you if he’d proposed?’