by S C Worrall
Since he was a schoolboy, Whichert House and Aunt Dorothy, his father’s sister-in-law and as unlike him in her warmth and cosy domesticity as it is possible to be, have been the fixed points of his childhood: the only place in the world he thinks of as ‘home’. Tucked away down a shady lane, with gable ends and brick chimneys, it’s a family house in the true meaning of the word, built around the turn of the century, by Aunt D.’s husband, Charles Preston, a successful lawyer with a practice in London.
Whichert – ‘white earth’ — is the name for the mixture of lime and straw used in the construction of the outer walls, a method unique to Buckinghamshire, which gives it the feeling of being, literally, part of the landscape. In the summer, the garden is a riot of flowers as bees drunk on pollen move among the blooms and the cries of ‘Roquet!’ mix with the clink of crystal goblets filled with champagne or Aunt D.’s legendary elderflower cordial.
Martin is roused from his dream by a scratching at the door. He opens his eyes, looks at his watch, then clambers out of bed, pulls on his shorts and shirt, slides his toes into the sandals then opens his bedroom door. Scamp hurls himself across the room. ‘No jumping, Scamp! Down!’
Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Martin goes downstairs to the kitchen and fishes a stale loaf out of the bread bin in the pantry. He is home alone. Even Aunt D.’s termagant cook, Frances, is on holiday. He takes a knife and scrapes off a spot of blue mould, cuts a slice of bread, makes coffee. Black. Lots of sugar. Then he grills the bread on the Rayburn, slathers it with butter and Aunt D.’s home-made damson jam, then switches on the wireless.
The Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, is talking about the Sudetenland. Chamberlain has just agreed to Hitler’s demand for a union with all regions in Czechoslovakia with more than a fifty per cent German population. But many people believe the crisis won’t end there. Martin listens attentively, then downs his coffee, fishes a packet of Senior Service cigarettes out of his shorts’ pocket, taps it with his finger, turns it upside down, peers into it, pulls a face.
‘Fancy a walk, old boy?’ Martin asks the dog.
Scamp races along beside the bicycle, his stubby legs working frantically to keep up. At the tobacconist, Martin buys three packs of cigarettes and the Sunday paper. He puts the paper in the basket on the front of the bicycle, unties the Jack Russell and prepares to get in the saddle. But the dog stops abruptly, spreads his back legs and squats. Martin drags him onto the street. ‘Good boy.’
A bicycle passes. Martin swivels. It’s the girl with the chestnut hair. Serene in the saddle as a paddling swan. Martin yanks Scamp’s leash, starts to run after her, but the dog is still doing his business. The girl smirks. Martin sets off in pursuit, dragging the long-suffering pooch along on his backside. Up ahead, he watches as she dismounts in front of a bookshop.
Martin sprints along the pavement and stops beside her, panting. ‘Hallo . . . ’
She turns round. Fixes him with those limpid, blue eyes. ‘Oh. It’s you.’
‘Che bella fortuna di coincidenza. What a wonderful—’
‘I know what it means.’ She looks back into the window of the bookshop.
‘It’s Petrarch.’
‘Really?’ Her voice is mocking, mischievous. ‘So you speak Italian, Martin Preston?’
She remembers his name! But he pulls his face back from the brink of a far too excited smile, points into the shop window. ‘Poetry? Or prose?’
‘Poetry.’ She starts to go inside the bookshop. ‘And prose.’
‘Do you like Robert Graves?’ His voice is almost pleading.
‘He’s one of our finest.’
‘He’s my uncle.’
Her eyes flicker with curiosity. ‘Do you write, too?’
‘Badly.’ He grins. ‘Mostly overdue essays. You?’
‘Notebooks full, I’m afraid.’ She laughs self-consciously and holds out her hand. ‘Nancy. Nancy Claire Whelan.’
‘Can I, er, buy you that cup of tea, Nancy Claire Whelan?’ he stammers.
She studies him for a moment. ‘I think I’d like that.’ She smiles. ‘The books can wait.’
They find a tearoom in the Old Town, packed with elderly matrons eating scones and cucumber sandwiches. Martin and Nancy install themselves at a table by the window, so Martin can keep an eye on Scamp, who he has tied up outside. They order a pot of tea.
‘Shall we have some scones as well?’
‘Tea is fine.’ Nancy unties her hair and lets it fall over her shoulders. Martin watches, mesmerized. ‘Thank you.’
A waitress in a black and white pinafore sets the tea on the table. Martin pours.
‘It’s so amazing . . . ’ He checks himself, tries to sound less jejune. ‘Meeting you like this. Again.’
Nancy takes some milk. ‘Was it a coincidence?’
‘Well, sort of.’ Martin blushes. ‘I suppose I was . . . looking for you.’
Nancy smiles. ‘How old are you?’
Martin is caught off-guard by her directness. ‘Nineteen,’ he says, flustered. ‘Almost twenty.’
Nancy sips her tea. He notices how she talks with her eyes almost as much as her lips. If she is amused, her eyes narrow, like a cat’s. Surprise is communicated by a subtle raising of her eyebrows. When she laughs, her eyes flicker with pleasure. Each mood, the tiniest oscillation of emotion, is registered in those eyes, an entire semaphore of signals and reactions, which he is learning to decode.
‘How old are . . . ?’ Martin checks himself. Never ask a woman her age.
She glances over the top of her cup. ‘Twenty-two.’
‘Do you live here?’
‘Yes. My father is a civil servant. Inland Revenue.’ She puts her cup down. ‘How about you?’
‘My father . . . ’ He hesitates. ‘Died.’ Through the window Martin sees a lorry full of soldiers. ‘Last year.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Nancy looks out of the window and registers the soldiers. ‘What about your mother?’
‘She lives in Wiltshire.’ Martin butters a scone. ‘In a nursing home.’
‘So what brings you here?’
‘My aunt lives in Knotty Green. I’m staying with her for a couple of weeks before term starts again.’ He looks across at her, proudly. ‘Oxford.’
‘What are you studying?’
‘Law and Modern Languages. Teddy Hall.’ He grins sheepishly. ‘A minor in partying.’
‘First year?’ Nancy smiles.
‘Second!’ Martin insists.
Nancy stares out of the window, with a dreamy expression on her face. ‘I used to live in Oxford.’
‘Where?’ Martin’s face lights up.
‘Cowley.’ She pulls a face. ‘Not exactly the dreaming spires.’ Pauses. ‘By the Morris factory, actually.’
‘That almost rhymes.’
‘What does?’
‘Factory. Actually.’
Nancy laughs. ‘It’s a very nice factory. Actually.’
They laugh together, eyes meeting, then withdrawing, touching again, withdrawing. Like shy molluscs.
‘Where in Knotty Green?’
‘Whichert House?’
‘That Arts and Crafts house? Opposite the Red Lion?’ Nancy’s voice is animated.
‘You know it?’
‘I cycle past it all the time. I love that house!’
‘It belongs to my uncle, Charles, and my aunt.’ He arches an eyebrow. ‘Dorothy Preston?’
‘That’s your aunt?’ Nancy reacts with surprise.
‘Yes. Do you know her?’
‘My mother does.’ Nancy pauses. ‘From church.’
‘Small world!’ Martin smiles at the coincidence. One more connecting thread linking them together.
Nancy lifts the teapot and refills their cups. Martin watches the golden liquid flow from the spout. Looks up into her eyes. Holds them. Like a magnet.
They meet at the same tearoom every day for the next week or go for long walks around Penn. They are creating a story together, a n
arrative of interconnected threads and confessions, and each meeting adds a new chapter to the story. In between their meetings, Martin mopes about like a lovesick spaniel. He can’t concentrate. The books he is meant to be reading for the new term are left unread. His face takes on a distant, faraway look, as though he’s been smoking opium. But he is under the influence of drug far more powerful than opium: a drug called love.
One day, they take the footpath towards Church Path Wood.
Conversation has progressed beyond the mere exchange of biographies. Today, they are on parents. His mother’s ill health and depression since the death of his father. Her mother’s asthma. His special affection for his sister, Roseen. And how his parents farmed them out to boarding school when they were living in Egypt.
‘That must have been so hard on you.’ She squeezes his hand.
‘Aunt D. was more like a mother than my real mother,’ he says as they stop at a kissing gate. Nancy steps inside, Martin leans against the wooden rail. ‘Sent me socks and marmalade. Posted my books when I forgot them. Spoiled me rotten in the hols.’
‘And your father?’
‘He was the black sheep of the family: “a bounder”, I suppose you’d say.’
‘Why?’ Nancy’s eyes widen.
‘Not sure.’ Martin chews on a grass stalk. ‘Gambling? Drink? Whatever it was, he was barred from joining the family law firm.’
‘Which is why he ended up in Egypt?’
‘That’s it. High court judge. President of the Jockey Club.’ Martin pauses. ‘My father basically preferred his racehorses to his children.’ He pulls an ironic grin, which can’t quite disguise the residual hurt.
One of the few things Martin’s father did teach him, ironically, was to hate snobbery. Colonial life in Egypt was driven by it: that insidious, British snobbery that judges people by where they grew up and the school they went to. One of the reasons Martin is so fond of Nancy is that she judges people for what they are, not their social rank.
She points across the field: a shimmering band of colour stretches across the eastern sky.
‘A rainbow!’ Martin says. ‘It must be a sign.’
She turns, and he’s there. Her lips and his. Sudden and electric. Their first kiss. The kind you get lost in. Like exploring a labyrinth in a blindfold. A labyrinth of feeling and touch and passion.
So that’s the story, Aunt D. I can’t wait for you to meet her. All’s well here. I just got back from taking Mother down to her new nursing home, in Wiltshire. She is still walking rather poorly after the fall, though when I hid her stick for a few minutes she found she could walk surprisingly well without it. The nursing home is really pleasant. Views of the Quantocks, a fire burning in the grate. A large, cheery lady named Mrs Dodds runs it.
How is Scotland? I hope you won’t get fly-fishing elbow again, even though you must keep up your fame as a fisherwoman.
Yours, Martin.
He lights a cigarette and sits staring out of the window into the garden. A soft, autumn rain is falling. Scamp lies sleeping by the fire. It’s only sixteen days since they met. But it feels like a lifetime. His world has been split in two, like a tree struck by lightning. There is before NC and after NC. Everything he sees, everything he tastes or touches or hears, he wants to share with her. When she is not there, his world feels bleak and empty.
Sixteen days. And everything has changed.
14 OCTOBER 1938
Oxford
‘Forties, Cromarty, Forth.’ The shipping forecast crackles on the wireless. ‘Easterly or northeasterly 5 to 7, decreasing 4 at times . . . ’
Martin has fled his room at Teddy Hall to escape the drunken heartbreak of one of his friends, a hapless English student called James Montcrieff, who has broken up with his girlfriend. Martin offered him the sofa for a few nights. He’s been there two weeks. Drunk most of the time. So Martin has decamped to his friend Jon Fraser’s flat, in Wellington Square. Jon is a gangly second year student with a shock of red hair. Outside in the square, the last autumn leaves on the chestnut trees shine in the gaslight. Coals glow in the grate.
‘Could you turn that down, old man?’ Jon’s voice calls from the other side of the room. ‘I have to get this bloody essay finished by tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Sorry, Jon!’ Martin gets up and switches off the wireless. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Slowly.’ His friend leans back from his desk and stretches. ‘Have you ever read Valmouth?’
‘Is that the one about a group of centenarians in a health resort?’
Jon laughs. ‘Some of them are even older!’
Martin should be studying, too. Exams loom. But as Jon hunches back over his desk, he takes out her latest letter, lies down on the floor, his head cradled on a pillow, and lights a cigarette.
Dear Martin . . .
He has seen his name written by countless other people, on birthday cards or school reports; in letters from his mother; his sister Roseen or Aunt Dorothy. But seeing it written by her still makes his heart turn somersaults. The fluent, blue line of her cursive script is a river pulling him towards her. He already has a drawer full of her letters, each letter adding a chapter to the story they are creating. She has told him about her Dorset childhood and the books she loves; her favourite music; and her work in London; the places she dreams of seeing. No one has ever written to him like that. It’s not what she says; it’s how she says it. Her words ring off the page, as though she is right there, next to him, talking in that high, bright voice.
He gets up and pours a glass of vermouth, lights a fresh cigarette, takes out a sheet of writing paper embossed with the college’s coat of arms: a red cross surrounded by four Cornish choughs. Then lies back down on his stomach, smoothing the sheet down on the back of a coffee-stained copy of Illustrated London News. The cover photo shows German troops marching into the Sudetenland two weeks ago.
The talk at meals is all of war. But tonight he has only one thing on his mind. Unscrewing the top of his pen, he holds the gold nib in mid-air, searching for the right words. A ring of blue smoke hovers around his head, like a halo. He lays the burning cigarette in an ashtray, breathes in, then puts pen to paper.
Dearest Nancy,
I’m writing this on the floor of Jon’s little room in No. 11, Wellington Square. My own room has gradually become its old self of two years ago – a meeting place for many. My cigarettes disappear; the level of my vermouth drops and the table is covered with other people’s books. What I need is a hostess, a beautiful aide-de-salon.
He tells her what he’s been doing since their last tryst: hockey matches and motor cross trials; auditions for a play; parties he has been to; a film by a new director called Alfred Hitchcock; the latest college gossip. If only he had the eloquence of his famous uncle. But she’s stuck with him. He takes a drag of his cigarette, chucks back the vermouth.
I don’t know how to feel when you’re around. You turn me so inside out – no one has ever done it before. What is it about you? You are unparalleled. You leave me breathless. You are the most exciting thing in the world. I’m a little ashamed of writing what I needn’t mention really but occasionally my heart overflows with drops of ink for a letter to you. And I must write before the term begins in earnest. It is like offering up a prayer before going into battle. Though my prayer to you is only that you will understand how much I love you. When you are around, everything feels right. Your love is like a crown. If I could be with you right now I would frighten you with my passion. I can’t say more – you must feel it.
In the distance, the clock of St Giles strikes midnight. A group of drunken students pass under the window, shouting and laughing.
It’s terribly late now. I’ve wearied my right hand writing letters about hockey matches and things like that. Jon is writing furiously at his desk about ‘Ronald Firbank’. Not the actor. He has to deliver the essay tomorrow evening. Oxford is depressingly cold. Everyone else seems hearty and too pleased to be back here. Poor things
, they can’t have anyone to make their homecoming so desirable. I suppose we shall have the usual – muddy games, the usual tiresome duties, and work which one must settle to and then enjoy.
It’s strange and wonderful to know you so perfectly. I imagine myself with you the whole time. Feel your lips against mine. My hand touching yours. I can’t wait to see you again next weekend.
So very much in love and kisses in adoration, Martin.
22 OCTOBER 1938
Whichert House
The grandfather clock chimes eleven thirty on the landing. Martin looks at his watch, leaps out of bed, splashes water on his face from the jug and basin in the corner, then stands in his underwear, debating what to wear. Green and white check gingham shirt? Too old-fashioned. White dress shirt? Too formal. He throws both on the chair, rummages through the wardrobe.
It’s almost three weeks since he last saw Nancy. College work and organising hockey matches have consumed all his time. Today, he is back from Oxford and finally going to meet her parents. He can’t remember ever feeling so nervous. His stomach flutters like it used to when he had to get ready to go back to boarding school.
‘Don’t be such a girl,’ he chides himself, settling on a well-worn, blue cotton shirt; khaki twill trousers; an Irish tweed jacket; brogues from Church’s of Northampton. He studies himself in the mirror. Nancy once told him that, with his angular features, deep-set, dark eyes, sensual lips, and square jaw, he reminded her of a young Laurence Olivier. Not today. His hair is mussed up, his eyelids are heavy with sleep, his chin is shadowed with stubble.
He glances at his watch, takes his jacket off and covers his shoulders with a towel, then refills the basin with water, grabs his razor and some shaving soap, quickly shaves and splashes some eau de cologne on his cheeks. Then he lifts up his left arm, sniffs his armpit, and grimaces. With rapid movements, he unbuttons his shirt, sprays some cologne onto his right hand, rubs it into his armpit, repeats the process with his left hand, sniffs, then stands back from the mirror. He’ll have to do.