Amy

by Peggy Savage

  The butler showed them in. Lady Maddox was standing by her chair, her hands clasped in the long skirt of a grey silk afternoon dress. She was small, smaller than Amy, but she held herself so ramrod straight that she was still imposing. Amy determined not to be intimidated. This little woman lived in a different world, one where Amy was no longer at home, where perhaps she had never been at home. She met Lady Maddox’s direct gaze.

  ‘Mother,’ Johnny said, ‘may I introduce Miss Osborne. Amy, this is my mother, Lady Maddox.’

  Lady Maddox did not offer to shake hands. She indicated an upright chair. ‘Please sit down, Miss Osborne. Johnny, would you ring for tea?’

  Amy sat. Lady Maddox looked at her from guarded grey eyes. ‘I believe that I have to thank you for saving my son’s life.’

  ‘Twice,’ Johnny said.

  She inclined her head. ‘Twice.’

  Amy smiled. ‘I was very glad to be able to do it.’

  Lady Maddox sat down and regarded her carefully. ‘It must be very difficult for you young women.’ Her lips compressed in an expression perhaps of puzzlement, or perhaps of distaste. ‘The things you have to do now. Things you have certainly not been brought up to do.’

  Oh dear, Amy thought. There isn’t much doubt about her opinions. ‘We live in difficult times,’ she said.

  The butler brought in the tea. Lady Maddox poured it out into delicate china cups, a far cry, Amy thought, from the tin mugs and thick cups and plates she was now used to. The butler handed it round. ‘Thank you, Barnes,’ Lady Maddox said, and he left the room. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘we have all had to make sacrifices. Several of our servants have enlisted and two of them, sadly, have already lost their lives. So we are very short-handed. My elder son tells me that he has had to employ two women on the home farm. They belong to the Women’s Defence Relief Corps, apparently.’ She pronounced the words in capital letters. ‘Whatever that may be. Two young women from the East End of London.’ She made it sound like the end of the earth.

  ‘He tells me they are doing very good work,’ Johnny said. ‘Women are doing amazing things now, Mother. I think they’re splendid.’

  His mother glanced at him and then back at Amy, a look of quick suspicion, of interrogation, and thinly disguised disapproval. ‘One hopes,’ she said, ‘that the young women will go back to their normal lives and duties at home when the war is over. I’m sure they will be very glad to do so. Such things can surely not be tolerated for ever.’

  Amy glanced at Johnny, but he just smiled. She would not pretend to agree. ‘I think perhaps some things have changed for ever,’ she said.

  Lady Maddox sat up even straighter. ‘I trust not, Miss Osborne. I think that well-brought-up girls will be thankful not to have to see – not to have to do these things. One hopes it will all be forgotten.’

  It isn’t any good opposing her, Amy thought. She could not, or would not, understand what was happening. She glanced around the room, at the marble fireplace, the heavy hangings, the furniture of such varied periods that it must have been passed down in the family for generations. This woman was fixed here, part of the house, part of the past. She would regard it as her sacred duty to keep things as they were. She would not change.

  Lady Maddox smiled at her, a wintry smile. ‘I don’t think I know your father, Miss Osborne? What does he do?’

  ‘He is a schoolmaster,’ Amy said. ‘He teaches science at a boy’s school in Bromley, where we live.’

  Lady Maddox raised her eyebrows. ‘Science? Not the classics, then? I would have thought that he would teach the classics.’

  Amy smiled. She could, she thought, have predicted this attitude, that Greek and Latin were more fitting for a gentleman’s education. What would a gentleman have to do with science?

  ‘He thinks that science is the way of the future,’ she said. ‘That it is something that people should think about and understand.’

  Lady Maddox shrugged. ‘I should think that those things could safely be left to the tradesmen.’ She picked up her cup and looked at Amy over the rim.

  Amy could see Johnny raising his eyebrows at her from across the room. He shook his head briefly, but she couldn’t let this go by. ‘Science has given us so many wonderful things, Lady Maddox,’ she said. ‘Steam trains and electric light and motor cars and aeroplanes.’

  ‘Especially aeroplanes,’ Johnny said.

  Amy continued, ‘And all the advances in medicine and surgery.’

  Lady Maddox frowned, and carefully put down her cup. ‘That is something I prefer not to think about.’

  ‘It saved Johnny’s life,’ Amy said.

  Lady Maddox looked across at her son and for the first time Amy saw a real emotion in her eyes – a deep and horrified fear. She is human after all, Amy thought. She might be set in this aspic of out-moded habits and values but underneath that she is just like everyone else; she is a loving and frightened mother. She felt a deep connection with her. Deep down, suppressed and unacknowledged, they both had the same raw fear.

  Lady Maddox looked back at her, that fleeting look now gone, controlled. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No,’ Amy said. ‘I am an only child.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘My mother died a long time ago, when I was a child.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  For a few moments there was silence. I am being interrogated, Amy thought. Johnny’s mother would surely not be like this with girls that she knew, girls who fitted into the pattern. She would be smiling and relaxed, knowing how these girls lived, what they thought and felt and expected. Johnny had brought a possible cuckoo into the nest and she was worried and suspicious. A schoolmaster who taught science? What kind of a man was that? After all, he could well be a revolutionary.

  The thought of her father being a revolutionary made her smile and she hurriedly changed the subject. ‘You have a beautiful garden,’ she said. ‘A perfect English garden.’

  Lady Maddox relaxed visibly. ‘Yes, it is one of my greatest interests. Perhaps Johnny will show you around it before you go.’

  The door opened and Johnny’s father came in. He came directly to Amy and took her hand. ‘Miss Osborne,’ he said. ‘How very nice to see you again.’ His presence changed the atmosphere, made it lighter, more positive. He took a cup of tea and sat down next to her. ‘How are you? Are you still working in Paris? Still saving lives?’

  ‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘It’s all much the same.’ There was a guarded look in his eyes and he glanced briefly at his wife and then back at Amy. She understood at once. He didn’t want any real, factual discussion or description of the war or of the horror, or of the wounded. ‘Paris is a lovely city,’ she said. ‘Very well planned with the wide boulevards and pretty gardens. And the people are very’ – she almost said brave – ‘pleasant.’

  ‘I have never wanted to go to France,’ Lady Maddox said. ‘A very dirty country, I believe. No proper sanitation.’

  ‘The hotel we live in is excellent,’ Amy said. ‘Very modern. We are very fortunate in that respect.’

  There was another silence. ‘I was just saying to Lady Maddox,’ Amy said, ‘that the garden is lovely.’

  Sir Henry put down his cup. ‘Perhaps you would like to see it,’ he said. ‘I would be delighted to show you.’

  She glanced at Johnny and he raised his eyebrows again and gave her a quick smile. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I should like that very much.’

  He led her into the garden. She wondered what kind of conversation Johnny and his mother were having behind her.

  ‘Let’s go to the rose garden.’ Sir Henry led her across a trim lawn and past well-stocked herbaceous borders. An ageing gardener was piling weeds and clippings into a wheelbarrow and he touched his hat as they went by.

  They went through a wrought-iron gate in a mellow brick wall. ‘This is my wife’s special interest,’ Sir Henry said.

  The roses were a mass of colour and perfume. Amy breathed it in,
trying to capture the scent, to remember it so that she could bring it back to the wards and the operating theatre. She took a deep breath. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘My wife has done it all,’ he said. ‘She likes to develop new roses. Look at this one.’ The rose was flame red, exotic, springing free in a mass of blooms. ‘She has called this one “Johnny”.’

  She met his eyes and he smiled. ‘It’s like him,’ she said. ‘A free spirit.’

  He nodded. ‘She is very fond of him. His elder brother, James, is very different, very solid, very reliable, married to the daughter of a local landowner. Johnny was always a bit of a worry, climbing the highest tree, falling in the lake, riding slightly risky horses.’

  Amy laughed. ‘I can imagine it.’

  ‘She still feels that she has to protect him,’ he said. ‘I think she sometimes forgets that he is a grown man now, and must make his own decisions.’ He looked back at the roses. ‘I don’t think she quite realizes as yet how much the world is changing.’

  He is saying something to me, she thought. She remembered the intense look that Johnny had given her that day in the hospital when his father was there, the look that his father had intercepted, the look that must have told him something of Johnny’s feelings.

  Amy gently touched one of the flaming roses. ‘I imagine one never grows out of being a mother.’

  They walked on, through the massed colour and fragrance. The old house stood behind them, solid and secure. She could understand why Lady Maddox didn’t want anything to change.

  ‘She just wants him to be happy,’ he said.

  Looking into his kind, understanding face she felt a stab of conscience. She wanted so much to confide in this man, to ask his opinion and advice, but what could he tell her? The decision, if any were to be made, was hers, and Johnny’s.

  They strolled back to the house. He stopped before they went in. ‘Don’t forget, Amy,’ he said. ‘If I can ever be of service to you, you only have to ask. You have given us the greatest gift. I don’t know how my wife….’

  Impulsively she put her hand on his arm. ‘No!’ she said, more loudly than she meant. He seemed to understand. He smiled at her and patted her hand. As they went into the house she was thinking how much he loved and cared for his family, his sons and his wife. He also just wanted them to be happy.

  Johnny drove her home through the countryside in the soft, warm evening. They drove past fields of buttercups and daisies where lazy-eyed cows stood immobile in the late sunshine. They drove down narrow country lanes where meadow-sweet and purple vetch and red campion flowered in the hedgerows and the last petals of may blossom drifted from the trees.

  Amy watched it all go by with a painful nostalgic sadness. It seemed to her that a new kind of change, like a giant dark cloud, was gathering in the distance. Her country, and the world, had weathered storms and threats for a thousand years but were threatened again now by a war that was different from all others, and would change everything. The world was being ravaged in a new and terrifying way. New horrors blackened the future, new brutalities, new attitudes of cruelty and perverted power. How could they be defeated? This war could only fight horror with horror. There was no escape, no place for compassion or humanity. She looked out on the tranquil, beautiful English countryside and felt as if she were watching a dying old friend.

  They stopped at Maidenhead to have a drink at Skindles Hotel on the river by Boulter’s Lock – lemonade for Amy and half a pint of bitter for Johnny. They sat in the garden, watching the Thames idle by. The evening held that particular kind of opalescent light that seemed to be so special to late spring in England. A mother duck with six ducklings paddled out from the bank. A few punts, still out, came through the lock and were poled away down river, the girls in their summer frocks lying drowsily against the cushions. The moment seemed to Amy to distil everything that was beauty and peace, everything that was being so hideously destroyed.

  ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You could only get this in England.’

  ‘Nowhere like it,’ Johnny said. ‘Wherever I get to after the war I shall always want to come back.’

  Amy hesitated. She found that she needed courage to ask. ‘What will you do,’ she said, ‘after the war?’

  His face was eager, his eyes bright. ‘I don’t know exactly, but I’d like to see a bit more of the world. There’s so much out there. We’ve got an Australian pilot in the squadron and he has amazing stories. Do you know how big Australia is, Amy? How vast? They’ll need aeroplanes. There’s so much of the Empire, apart from anywhere else, Africa and India and Australia and New Zealand and Canada. Wild places, Amy. Just imagine it.’

  Wild, she thought. That would attract him, of course. Wild and dangerous. She said nothing, and looked away across the river where shadows were gathering beneath the trees and low screening branches trailed in the water.

  ‘I’m glad you met my mother,’ he said. ‘She’s quite a character, isn’t she?’

  The change of subject took her by surprise. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was glad to meet her too. She is rather – formal, I suppose.’

  He smiled. ‘Old-fashioned, perhaps. Set in her ways.’

  Amy paused, and then she said, ‘Do you think she knows? Do you think she really realizes what is happening in France?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘She thinks of war as battles, cavalry charges with sabres. Or brave regiments taking a stand at Rorke’s Drift.’ He took a swallow of his beer. ‘She doesn’t really understand what I’m doing in an aeroplane.’

  ‘Can anyone know?’ she said. ‘Anyone who hasn’t been there?’

  ‘Perhaps my father knows,’ he said. ‘He’s a thinking man, and he’s doing something at the War Office. He doesn’t say what.’

  The mother duck sailed calmly back again, the little ones almost running after her across the water.

  ‘Your mother seems to think that everything will go back to the way it was before,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t think it will. People are changing.’ She stopped, wondering whether to go on, but he was relaxed, watching the river. ‘Women are changing. They are doing so many new things. Many of them are not going to be satisfied to go back into domestic service, or even just to stay at home and be wives and mothers.’ She watched him, wondering how he would take that remark, wondering whether he would say how he felt about it.

  He didn’t seem to notice it. ‘My mother won’t change. She doesn’t think women should have the vote.’

  ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t mind women having the vote. After all, they’ll be bringing up the next generation.’

  ‘What about women working, having careers? What do you think about that?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better get on. I’ll take you home and then I’ll go to Town and stay at my club tonight.’ He smiled at her. ‘It’ll be easier to get to you tomorrow.’

  He led her to the car and helped her in. He hadn’t answered her question. She could quite believe that he had never thought about it. Women of his class didn’t work, didn’t have careers; certainly not careers like medicine, a life that was so contained, so absorbing. Women like Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell and Mrs Garrett Anderson were few and far between.

  He left her at the door of her house. He took her hand. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. He put her hand to his lips and sighed. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said again. ‘It’s my last day. Ten o’clock?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’ He got into the car, waved his hand, and drove away.

  She took off her hat and coat in the hall. Her father was in the sitting-room, reading. He put his book down as she came in. ‘Hello, my dear.’

  She went over to him and kissed his cheek. ‘Hello, Father.’

  ‘Come and sit down,’ he said. ‘What have you been doing today?’

  She sat opposite to him by the fireplace. The evening h
ad cooled and a little fire was burning, her mother’s screen moved to one side. ‘Johnny took me to have tea with his mother. They have a house in Berkshire.’

  ‘Meeting his mother? That sounds rather serious.’ He paused expectantly. ‘Is it serious, Amy?’

  She bit her lips. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you love him, Amy?’

  She nodded, her eyes filling. ‘Yes, I think I do, but his background is so different. If I try to ask him what he feels about women working he doesn’t really answer. I don’t think he’s ever considered it except as a kind of philosophical question. It’s not something that happens in that kind of family. Charity work, yes, but not a career. They would think that being a wife and mother was enough of a career.’ She sighed. ‘I know what his mother would think. She’d have a fit. She would want his wife to be there to support him, in every way, just as they always have been.’

  He smiled, and then the smile faded. ‘What are you going to do?’

  She stared into the fire, her hands clasped and her shoulders drooping. ‘Nothing. Wait.’

  ‘Put it off, you mean?’

  She sighed. ‘I suppose so. I really don’t want to bother him now. God knows, he has enough to think about – his flying, the war. I don’t want him to be disturbed by anything. We just have to get through this war day by day. I don’t want to distract him in the slightest way.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But you can’t have a successful relationship unless it’s based on honesty. Tell me, dear, has he mentioned marriage?’

  ‘No,’ she said. She thought suddenly of Dan, of his careful explanation of his attitudes. ‘I don’t think he would, under the circumstances.’

  ‘But he must feel something for you, or he wouldn’t want to see you.’

  ‘He does feel something for me, Father, I know that, but I don’t know whether his feeling for me is enough to overcome any prejudices or objections he might have.’ Her head drooped. ‘And I don’t know whether I could give up medicine. It would be like giving up most of my life.’