“That’s enough!” exclaimed Caroline, putting her foot down again.
“Oh, well, I was only warning you,” said Leda.
After that things went more smoothly, the subjects discussed were less controversial. Bobbie had received a letter from James who held out strong hopes of coming home in the Spring.
“He’s coming on Python,” said Bobbie handing over the letter. “Goodness knows what that means.”
“Python is a ship —” began Leda.
“No,” said Caroline (who had heard about Python already). “No, Python isn’t a ship, it’s a — it’s just a name for — for — I mean when men come home from FARELF after doing their three years they say they are coming home on Python. And if you want to know what FARELF means,” added Caroline cheerfully, “it means Far Eastern Land Forces.”
Her daughters looked at her in surprise. Bobbie put their feelings into words.
“You seem — you seem in terrific form, Mummy!” said Bobbie in puzzled tones.
*
Living with Harriet in the whirl of London there had been no time to write letters and Caroline had a sheaf of letters waiting to be answered. She must write to Jean and thank her for a parcel (which had arrived at Vittoria Cottage during Caroline’s absence) and of course she must write to James. The others could wait.
It was easy to write to James. Even when there was no news at all except tittle tattle from the village and the chronicle of everyday life at Vittoria Cottage her pen ran on and on, for she knew James liked hearing about all she did. When he was quite a little boy and she had been away from him for a few days she always had to tell him the whole story. “Tell me from the very beginning,” he would say. “Tell me all your ’ventures.” To-night Caroline had plenty of news for James and, unlike the famous Lady Bertram, she was fortunate in having the telling of it all to herself without any one else to spoil it. She could spread herself over Leda’s engagement and Sir Michael’s midnight visit — that would amuse him vastly — and then she could tell him about her visit to London and the play, and Harriet’s queer friends and various “’ventures” which had befallen her in the Big City.
It was late when she started her letter; the girls had gone to bed and the house was very quiet. The clock ticked industriously. Writing to James was almost like talking to him, it made him seem very near. She could almost feel his presence in the room … but he wasn’t in the room, he was thousands of miles away. What was he doing at this moment? Caroline laid down her pen and gave her imagination free rein. She had worked out the difference in time so she was aware that if it was midnight in England it was half-past seven in Malaya. James would be awake — he always woke early — perhaps he had wakened in his room at the base in Kuala Lumpur, or perhaps he had spent the night hunting bandits. She knew a little about the country, not only from James’s letters but also from books which she had obtained from the library; it was hot and damp, there were low-lying belts of land, mangrove swamps and rice fields, and there were mountains in the interior clothed with forests. She tried to imagine James in this sort of land … but somehow she couldn’t. It was impossible to imagine James in a place she had never seen.
Caroline sighed and took up her pen.
“The First Night was marvellous,” wrote Caroline. “I felt almost sick with excitement, waiting for the curtain to go up. It seemed hours — and then suddenly up it went when I wasn’t expecting it and there was Harriet on the stage, sitting at her desk, writing … and the odd thing was it was just Harriet, Harriet herself, looking exactly as I have seen her look a hundred times. All through the play it was the same — it was just Harriet, Harriet doing and saying Harrietish things, talking and laughing quite naturally. The others were not really so like themselves (of course I knew them all because, as I told you, they kept on coming to the flat at all hours of the day — and night — and throwing themselves into chairs and almost weeping and having to be revived with pink gin). Marcus wasn’t a bit like himself. You could see he was acting. There is one scene where he and Harriet have a duologue all about a rocking-horse, and there had been a frightful fuss about this because, at the very last moment, the producer wanted to cut it out (fortunately Harriet took a strong line about it and pretended to be annoyed so it wasn’t cut out). What happened was this: Marcus had bought a magnificent rocking-horse for his nephew and, at the same time, he had bought a hand-bag for Harriet, and the shop made a mistake and sent the rocking-horse to Harriet. (Of course they are called Eve and Freddie in the play but I just went on thinking of them as Harriet and Marcus.) Harriet unpacks the rocking-horse on the stage — it is all carefully packed in a crate and it was most amusing to see her unpacking it. She wonders why Marcus has sent it. Has it some hidden meaning? She gets on to the rocking-horse and rides it and sings, ‘Ride a Rock-Horse to Banbury Cross’ and Marcus comes in and watches her — and then suddenly she sees him and they have a conversation about it, all cross purposes and crooked answers. It sounds silly telling you like this but it really was very good and amused me a lot. I thought the whole play most amusing. Harriet (or I suppose I ought to call her Eve!) gets involved in all sorts of dilemmas; she has two admirers and can’t make up her mind which to have, and she also gets involved in a frightfully complicated Black Market ramp in home-cured bacon. It is even more complicated because one of her admirers is called Mr. Bacon and Harriet never knows whether they are talking about the man or the pig! But apparently other people didn’t like the play as much as I did. The reviews are poor and it may be withdrawn quite soon. It seems dreadful after all their hard work. Fortunately Harriet takes it philosophically and she says if the play is withdrawn she is coming to Vittoria Cottage for a long holiday. I have got more hens, now. We are all being told to Grow More Food so I thought I would grow eggs! It is rather a bother having so many but I feel I am doing something to help the food shortage. I think I told you about Mr. Shepperton in my last letter, he is still at the Cock and Bull and says Mrs. Herbert makes him very comfortable. I think you would like Mr. Shepperton, he is interesting and unusual and has seen a lot of the world …”
Caroline paused again. Would James like him? She found that she attached quite a lot of importance to this question … but why? By the time James came home — on Python — Mr. Shepperton would have gone. He certainly would not stay at the Cock and Bull for ever.
She took up her pen and finished the letter hastily — it was after one o’clock.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MR. HERBERT, the landlord of the Cock and Bull, was a round-about fellow and merry at heart; his nose was small — or perhaps it only looked small because his smile was so broad — his eyes were dark and twinkling; he was always ready for a joke and to him old jokes were best. The name of his inn was a constant source of amusement to Mr. Herbert. “Don’t you tell me no Cock an’ Bull stories ’ere,” he would say, chuckling. “This ain’t the place for Cock an’ Bull stories.” His favourite joke was to assert that he had married “the missus” because nobody could make a better apple-pie. “Nobody in England,” Mr. Herbert would say. “An’ that means nobody in the world, don’t it? That’s why I married ’er — see? Because of that, an’ because of the bed — a four-poster what belonged to ’er great-aunt Em’ly — that’s the most comfor’ble bed in England, that is.” He would begin to shake with internal convulsions, his whole ample girth would shake. “Ha, ha!” he would shout. “Ha, ha, ha — apple-pie an’ a comfor’ble bed — what more do a man want!”
Mrs. Herbert would smile quietly for she knew quite well why Herbert had married her. He had married her because she had made up her mind he was the man for her — he and no other. Apple-pie indeed!
In addition to the bed, Mrs. Herbert had brought some very nice pictures to the inn as part of her dowry. There was Drake playing bowls, with the Spanish Armada coming up over the horizon; there was a coach and four labouring in deep snow; there was a hunting scene with pink-coated horsemen and the hounds streaming before them
in full cry; there was young Queen Victoria receiving the news of her accession to the throne … and many more. Mrs. Herbert noticed that people liked her pictures, people would stand and look at the pictures while they waited for their dinner to be brought in. That was as it should be (so Mrs. Herbert thought), for pictures were painted for people to look at, and the more there was in a picture to interest people the better it fulfilled its purpose. Sometimes when strangers came to the inn she would point out the details of her pictures in case they should be overlooked.
The inn itself was an ancient building, old-fashioned and rambling. There were oak beams and wide chimneys and long passages leading nowhere in particular, and unexpected flights of steps. It was exceedingly difficult to manage, but Mrs. Herbert managed it admirably. Her staff consisted of a few very old, experienced servants and a few very raw young girls; there was constant friction between them and scarcely a day passed without “words.” Mrs. Herbert was always being summoned to arbitrate in some ridiculous quarrel … and occasionally she got so fed up with the whole thing that she would have liked to take the combatants by the scruff of their necks and knock their heads together.
Robert Shepperton liked the Cock and Bull; the food was good, the rooms were clean, and his bed — though only the second-best bed in the house — was extremely comfortable. His jovial host amused him a good deal and his hostess was a gem.
Robert Shepperton had come to Ashbridge as a refugee from the noise and bustle of London. He had hated London — it was so different from the London he remembered. He could not help comparing his present circumstances with the life he had led before the war. In those days he had had a wife, a son, a comfortable home with his own furniture round him; he had had his books, his garden, his friends, who lived near and with whom he could chat and exchange ideas. Now he lived in a hotel where nothing belonged to him, he had no books and no friends — there was not a creature who cared whether he was ill or well. It was little wonder that Robert Shepperton looked upon London with a jaundiced eye. Robert saw no graces in this post-war London. It seemed to him that there were no amenities, not even the ordinary little courtesies of everyday life. The houses were shabby and unpainted, there were ruins and rubble, there were crowds everywhere. It seemed to Robert that the difficulty of existing made existence hardly worth while … the difficulty of obtaining a decent meal, of buying a pair of shoes, of getting your watch mended … nobody cared whether you got what you wanted or not, take it or leave it was the general attitude. The difficulty of transport was even worse; tubes and buses were crammed to overflowing and people scrambled to enter them in much the same way as panicking people in a shipwreck might scramble for the boats. Sauve qui peut!
Robert had been very ill, and although he had now recovered he still felt wretched and miserable. His memories tortured him but he decided that he must face up to them — it was not his nature to run away — so he had gone and looked at his house, or what remained of it, and he had gone and looked at Chelsea Old Church, where he and Wanda had been married. Chelsea Old Church … there was not much of that left either.
I was a fool to come, thought Robert.
Perhaps he had spoken aloud or perhaps his attitude betrayed his misery and despair, for at that moment a girl, who happened to be passing, stopped and spoke to him. She was hatless and her hair was pure gold, like a halo framing her lovely face. She was carrying a large flat parcel under her arm.
“It’s no good crying over spilt milk, you know,” the girl said.
This girl was the first person in London who had taken the slightest interest in Robert, and although her words were somewhat crude her smile was kind.
Robert hesitated for a moment. “It’s difficult not to cry over spilt milk when you’ve no milk left,” he told her.
“None at all?” she asked.
“My house was bombed,” he replied. “My wife was in it at the time. This was the church where we were married.”
She did not say she was sorry nor commiserate with him, but somehow he felt her sympathy. “You should go away,” she said.
“Do you think so?” he asked. “I’m trying to face up to it —”
“What’s the use of moping about amongst ruins?” said the girl sensibly. “Turn over a new page. Go away. Go anywhere. Go to Ashbridge, it’s quiet enough there in all conscience.” She smiled at him and turned away and was lost in the crowd.
Robert had never heard of Ashbridge and there was no reason why he should pay the slightest attention to the words of a passer-by, but he was in a fatalistic mood. The girl had been kind; she had seemed to care what happened to him; she had listened to him and had taken the trouble to give him her advice. He went back to the hotel and looked up Ashbridge in the railway time-table; he packed his clothes, paid his bill and shook the dust of London off his feet.
At first Robert found very little solace in the peace of the country; it was almost worse than town, for he had more time to brood over his troubles, and the intense interest which he evoked in the village embarrassed him … and embarrassed him all the more because he could not return it. He felt isolated from life, as if there were a pane of glass separating him from his fellow-men and women.
Then he met Caroline Dering. Caroline and Vittoria Cottage seemed to possess the graciousness of life that he remembered. The house was not really run on pre-war lines, for its mistress did far more work, but the atmosphere she created was a survival from that other life, it was an atmosphere of peace and kindness and simple gaiety. You could almost forget the war when you sat in Caroline’s drawing-room. Robert had walked in a dream but now he began to awake, he began to feel life flowing round him. He began to take an interest in the place and the people. He had turned over a new page and was beginning to write a new story.
The story began with Caroline Dering, her name was first on the page, but gradually other people came into it — Mrs. Herbert, for instance. Mrs. Herbert talked to Robert and brought him her problems, and he discovered that the problems of the Cock and Bull were very like the problems of the Big World, only seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Here, in this old-fashioned rabbit-warren, the war of personalities and conflicting ideas was waged without ceasing; the Socialist and the Tory, the Idealist and the Materialist, the Worker and the Idler fought and squabbled and argued from morning to night. Mrs. Herbert poured oil upon the stormy seas or sometimes raised a storm on her own account and rode the hurricane.
One evening Robert strolled into the bar and took part in a game of darts, and he was so well amused that he went again and made a habit of it. At first he was a restraining influence (the talk died away when he appeared and the habitués were on their best behaviour), but soon they left off bothering. They decided Mr. Shepperton was a good sport; he was quiet and unassuming and fond of a joke, and he was always ready to stand a round of drinks to keep the ball rolling. He was neither very good at darts nor very bad, a circumstance that added greatly to his popularity. Young Mumper was the best performer, but Silas Podbury ran him pretty close — Silas was one of Comfort’s many cousins.
“You should see Jim Widgeon,” said old Mr. Coney confidentially. “Jim could beat ’em all left-’anded, but ’e’s married now and don’t never come no more.”
Mr. Coney had hardly finished speaking when Jim Widgeon walked in, looking a trifle self-conscious. He was received with shouts of welcome and jeers of derision from the assembled company. The assembled company wished to be informed what Jim did with himself in the evenings … various amusements were suggested. The humour was coarse and Elizabethan and quite unfit to record, but it did not offend the ears of Robert Shepperton for it was natural and unaffected and this was the right time and place for it. Young Widgeon took it in good part and returned measure for measure.
“Yes, I like Sue better ’n darts,” he declared. “What’s more, I like ’er better ’n beer.”
“Sue likes you better ’n toffee-apples, I s’pose,” jeered young Mumper.
“Better ’n you, any’ow, Tom Mumper,” returned Widgeon with a grin.
This brought down the house, for it was well known that young Mumper had been high up in the running for Sue until Widgeon had cut him out.
Widgeon had a few games of darts and several pints of beer, but he went off early, and as sober as a judge, saying he must fetch Sue from her mother’s, where she had been spending the evening, and escort her home.
“Changed, that’s what,” was the verdict of the company. “It’s marriage what does it.” “Sue’s got ’im under ’er thumb.” The younger men lamented the change in their boon companion, but the older and staider were loud in their approval.
Robert played darts if he were wanted, but he really preferred talking to the older men and hearing about things that had happened in Ashbridge long ago. Their memories went far back into the dim past and sometimes they told and retold stories of events which had occurred long before they were born and of which they must have heard from their grandfathers … and these events got muddled up in their ancient minds with events in which they had participated.
“Ah! Ye should ‘ave seen the bonfire we ’ad when Queen Victoria were coronated,” said old Mr. Mumper in his squeaky voice, which always reminded Robert of an ungreased wheelbarrow. “That there bonfire on Vee Jay Day weren’t a patch on it. Great logs, we ’ad, soaked in tar, an’ piles of brushwood fifty feet ’igh. That were a sight, that were. Squire lent ’is ’orses to pull the stuff up the ’ill an’ us young ones went from ’ouse to ’ouse collectin’ rubbidge. On Cock ’ill, it were. Up there by the gravel pit, it were, just above Vittoria Cottage. Well, that were a good place an’ not in nobody’s way. But then the wind got up an’ the bonfire got out of ’and — there it were, bleazing, like a furnace, an’ the bits of blazing wood went whirling down on Vittoria Cottage till I thought every minit the cottage would be set alight an’ a fine old bonfire that would ’ave been.”
Vittoria Cottage (Drumberley Book 1) Page 9