Only what would Ted say? He didn’t like the idea of her working. He’d rather she just sat at home waiting. It was so unfair, this business of having to consider somebody else’s feelings, when it was her life that was affected. So unfair that she started crying again.
She cried for quite a long time. And then she felt better. There wasn’t any sense anyhow in just sitting there when she had got things to do. And it was gloomy with the electric light on and the daylight coming in through the chinks in the black‐out curtains. So she got up and began putting the room straight. When she pulled back the curtains, she shook up the cushions and pulled the covers into position. She wanted the room to look nice if Bill was coming.
A whimper – half cry half grumble – from Baby sent her running. Baby was sitting in her high chair in the kitchen where she had left her. She snatched her out of the chair and started cuddling her.
‘Mummy won’t ever send Baby to a creesh,’ she said. ‘Mummy loves Baby far too much for that. Silly Daddy made Mummy cry, but Mummy always got Baby to make her happy.’
All the same, it wasn’t much to ask – just to get out of the flat and see a decent film again sometimes.
2
Bill and Doris – Bill thoughtfully carrying a new doll for Baby – got back to Larkspur Road after lunch. Bill had wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon in the West End seeing a show. But Doris wouldn’t let him. She reminded him that, after they had been to Cynthia’s, they would still have to go round to the Jossers. Her mother, she said, would be waiting for them. It would look rude if they left it any longer.
But again Doris was wrong. Mr and Mrs Josser were entirely preoccupied. In their present mood they wouldn’t have noticed if Bill and Doris had stayed away altogether.
‘I never thought Henry would be the one to go first. It still doesn’t seem possible it’s happened.’
It was Mrs Josser who had spoken. And Mr Josser, paper in hand, looked up from the paper he was reading. There had been no preliminary conversation leading up to Mrs Josser’s remark. No bridge. It was simply one of those observations that occur suddenly, isolated and unannounced, as though a portion of the speaker’s mind has become detached and is drifting away into space.
Mr Josser considered the point.
‘Pneumonia’s a funny thing,’ he agreed at last. ‘You can never tell with it.’
As he was speaking he raised his eyes to the mantelshelf. All that now remained of Uncle Henry rested there. His ashes scattered, his business sold – even the name Knockell above the shop had been changed to Skyte & Son – his library of alarming yellow literature dispersed, the one monument to the man was contained in the large foolscap envelope leaning up against the presentation clock.
Not that it wasn’t an impressive sort of envelope. Mr Barks knew the etiquette in such matters and he used only the best law stationary. Getting at the letter inside was like ripping armour. It had come that morning, the letter, and Mr and Mrs Josser had both of them read and re‐read it. They had known all about it, of course. Even been expecting it. Nevertheless, now that it had come, they were dazed. Distinctly dazed. And in consequence they had done nothing about it. Mr Josser hadn’t liked to suggest paying the cheque into his account because, after all, it was addressed to Mrs Josser.
And it was such a thunderingly big cheque. It dominated everything. Despite all his Socialist views, Uncle Henry must have been steadily piling it on in the green‐grocery line for years. A half‐penny on the peas here and a penny on the Blenheims there – and it had all added up to something pretty terrific. The cheque that Mr Barks had sent to Mrs Josser was for more than a thousand pounds. One thousand one hundred and twenty‐eight pounds, six and four pence to be precise.
‘We ought to pay it in, you know,’ Mr Josser said finally. ‘Just supposing there was an air‐raid, for instance. We shouldn’t have anything to show for it if this house got hit.’
Mrs Josser drew in her lips sharply.
‘If that happened, we shouldn’t be here either,’ she observed grimly. Then she paused. ‘I haven’t done anything about it because I don’t like to touch it,’ she added. ‘I can see it’s silly, but I just don’t like to touch it.’
‘I know how you feel,’ Mr Josser told her. ‘It seems a pity poor old Henry didn’t get more fun out of his money himself.’
‘Henry had all the fun he wanted,’ Mrs Josser replied sharply. ‘It was just that he was made that way.’
The subject of Uncle Henry was still a delicate one, and Mr Josser didn’t attempt any answer. Ever since his death, Mrs Josser had defended her brother’s memory with fierceness and asperity. And in consequence the character of Uncle Henry was perceptibly changing. In retrospect he had become a kind of very nearly Christian saint with a flair for cycling.
‘It was a lot of money he left,’ Mr Josser observed neutrally.
‘Well, why not?’ Mrs Josser demanded. ‘He worked hard for it, didn’t he?’ She paused. And another, a new, aspect of her brother’s saintliness suggested itself to her. ‘If he’d wanted to,’ she added, ‘he could have had a whole chain of shops like that, instead of just one of ’em. He could have been like Waltons.’
Mr Josser got up and knocked the ash out of his pipe.
‘Think I’ll make a cup of tea, Mother,’ he said. ‘I expect we’d both like one.’
He was rather relieved that the incident of the tea provided an opportunity for changing the subject from Uncle Henry. He’d had rather a lot of Uncle Henry all day. And it wasn’t the Uncle Henry he recognised. He had a suspicion that Uncle Henry wouldn’t have recognised himself either.
When he got back with the tea, Mrs Josser was going round the room tidying up. This was always a sign with her. Whereas other people went for long solitary walks or wrote letters to the papers or retired to bed with a headache, Mrs Josser did an extra round of tidying. It was a sure indication that there was something on her mind.
‘We’ll drink the tea now it’s made,’ she said as Mr Josser entered. ‘And then we’ll go straight off to the agents. We’ll start looking to‐morrow.’
‘To‐morrow’s Sunday,’ Mr Josser reminded her.
‘Well, there are just as many cottages on a Sunday as there are on any other day, aren’t there?’
So that was it. Because of Mrs Josser’s reticence, he hadn’t like to raise the subject of cottages himself. In the circumstances it would have looked as if he were trying to spend her money for her. And it was always possible that she had changed her mind. For all he knew she might have decided to give the money to one of the societies to which Uncle Henry during his lifetime had devoted his activities. Already, he had half seen her as the patroness of the North Hackney Anti‐God Committee.
But there was no more doubt about it. Mrs Josser was decided. ‘We’ll go to the agents to‐day and then start looking on Monday,’ she announced. ‘And we won’t skimp ourselves. We’ll buy just the sort of cottage Henry would have wanted us to have.’
And this was strange. Because the only time they’d discussed cottages with Uncle Henry, he’d been opposed to them. They ought all to be condemned, he had said. Condemned, and blocks of agricultural workers’ flats put up in their place.
They were still talking about cottages when Bill and Doris arrived. It seemed to Doris callous and unfeeling to go on with such a topic when Bill was due to go overseas in twenty‐four hours’ time. But Bill seemed rather relieved about it. And he said something that brought Mrs Josser nearer to liking him than she ever had been before. What he said was that it was nice to think that if the air‐raids got really bad Doris would have somewhere out of London to go to.
BOOK SIX
The Cottage in the Country
Chapter LXXVIII
As a matter of fact, Mr Josser was rather relieved too. Only he was thinking of Mrs Josser. London wasn’t the sort of place in which to leave any woman these days.
Everything had been going so badly over on the other side. The rema
ins of our army in Norway – the one that had gone out complete with skis and white coats for warfare in the snow – had re‐embarked at Namsos leaving its skis and white coats behind it. And there were rumours – admittedly only rumours so far – about German intentions in the West. Belgium was to be the next one, people said. Not Holland, because the dykes would make fighting impossible. And whether it was true or not about Belgium, the Belgians themselves certainly believed it. Mr Josser had read in the paper that morning that all traffic on the Albert Canal had been suspended. Altogether, it seemed a funny sort of morning on which to go out choosing a country cottage. It was either very frivolous or only just in time.
It was getting on for ten o’clock when the Jossers finally emerged. And there was just a hint of peril hanging over the expedition. Mrs Josser kept on referring mysteriously to her feet as though they were a pair of scarcely convalescent invalids who, for better or worse, had decided to accompany them. If they let her down, she emphasised, Mr Josser would have to go on without her.
It was unfortunate, therefore, that Mrs Josser should have decided that they should make Crouch End their destination. She had been there once as a girl. And she remembered it, from that one afternoon forty‐eight years ago, with a sentimental enthusiasm amounting to nostalgia.
‘Don’t want to go and bury ourselves miles from anywhere,’ she explained. ‘There’s lovely country all about Crouch End. We’ll just go and look round.’
‘May have changed a bit since you were there, Mother,’ Mr Josser warned her.
But Mrs Josser would not hear anything against the place.
‘Not Crouch End,’ she said confidently. ‘You don’t know Crouch End.’
Nor did she when they got there. They took one look at the shops and the rows of houses and the buses, and decided to go on still further into the unknown.
There was something rather terrifying in having come so far only to find themselves still somewhere in the heart of London. So Mr Josser suggested a cup of coffee in a Lyons’s before they went on. The Lyons’s was an exact replica of the one at Kennington and this simple fact depressed them anew; it was as though they hadn’t yet even left home. While they were sitting there, Mr Josser kept muttering something about having told her so until Mrs Josser asked him sharply what he was saying. But as Mrs Josser hadn’t heard him properly, no real harm had been done. And a remark which she made quite casually changed the whole complexion of her blunder.
‘It must have been longer ago than I thought,’ she said simply. ‘I was sixteen at the time.’
The effect on Mr Josser was remarkable. He put down his cup, and leaning forward gave Mrs Josser’s hand a squeeze.
‘That was just before I met you,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d known you then.’
Mrs Josser went on drinking.
‘You’ve known me quite long enough,’ was all she said.
It was easy, however, to see that she was pleased. She looked at him sideways and gave him a little smile, and Mr Josser forgave her for Crouch End.
Then they set out again. Still in search of the undeveloped hinterland that Mrs Josser remembered, they penetrated further and further into an endless desert of identical little red houses. Even the names of the roads – Grove Road, Windermere Road, Alexandra Road, Hillside, Elm Avenue, Victoria Terrace, Balmoral Gardens – seemed identical, too. They were travelling on relays of bus by now. And when they reached Edmonton, it was time for lunch.
It might have been better if they had turned back from there. But Mrs Josser was in no mood for turning back. After the rebuff at Crouch End she now saw the whole expedition in terms of a challenge. With Mr Josser following, she pressed on. By three o’clock they were at Waltham Abbey. And, because in between the houses little patches of green had started to appear, their spirits rose. They went into every estate‐agents they could see and began collecting orders to view. It was a firm called Sprackett & Clutt which seemed the most promising.
Between them, Mr Sprackett and Mr Clutt seemed to spread a pretty wide net. Waltham Abbey was really only the beginning of things. The properties caught up in their mesh were mostly in the countryside behind Waltham. There was one in particular, Conservatory Cottage, Ditchfield, that the clerk recommended. It belonged to a Mrs Marble and had come on the market only that morning. He advised the Jossers to see it at once. He didn’t conceal that it was a pity that they had come to Waltham first because it was a roundabout way to get to Ditchfield. But he was a friendly, almost fatherly sort of man. He explained that when they actually lived in Ditchfield they would have a station of their own only two miles away.
As it was, the Jossers had to go by bus. It was a small single‐decker. And it did not hurry. It rumbled. It waited for people. It stopped at cross‐roads to deliver things. And by the time they reached Ditchfield they had been right across the steppes and tundras of Essex. As it was now after five, and they wanted tea. But Ditchfield did not seem to be the kind of village that provided teas. The hamlet – or as much of it as could be seen at a glance – stretched for nearly half a mile along a perfectly straight road. There was a public house, The Plough, closed as only an English public house at tea‐time can be closed; a petrol pump without a garage; a post‐office in a converted villa with an enamelled sign over the front door advertising HOVIS, and on the gate a poster of a sinking ship and a warning against careless talk. But it seemed a long way somehow from Ditchfield to the North Atlantic.
After the post‐office the houses petered out a bit. There was an elm tree with no branches, a small patch of grass worn threadbare like an old carpet, and a pond so low that it seemed to have a leak in it somewhere. In a field opposite rested the upper part of a small delivery van from which the engine and chassis were unaccountably missing. Altogether Ditchfield was a representative corner of unspoiled rural England. The sort of place that tourists miss.
The bus driver had never heard of Conservatory Cottage and by the time Mr Josser had finished speaking to him the other passengers had all disappeared. So they tried the post‐office. The post‐mistress was of the compassionate kind. She seemed worried at the idea that any one should want to walk as far as Conservatory Cottage. She agreed, readily, however, that there was no other way of getting there and came out to the gate to show him the way. It was not difficult. Straight on down the road would get them there, she said, and there were no turnings. It was the last house on the left, after the sand‐pit.
For the first half‐mile, they chatted as they walked along. Then Mrs Josser grew silent. Grim and unsmiling, she proceeded. She was peering anxiously ahead for what looked like a sand‐pit. But Mr Josser was enjoying himself. He was walking like a man in a dream. For the better part of half a century he had been awaiting precisely this moment when he and Emily should be passing down a country lane together, looking for a cottage. It was just such a day of heat and bright sunshine that he had always imagined. And now, magically, the moment had come.
‘Shouldn’t be long now, Mother,’ he said encouragingly.
Mrs Josser still said nothing. But it was obvious that she was in bad condition. In really bad condition. It wasn’t a trifling thing like her feet either. This was altogether more serious. The danger zone had shifted upwards. It was one of her headaches that Mrs Josser expected any moment to be getting. The way things were working out, Mr Josser judged that she wasn’t going to like Ditchfield.
And then came one of those magical surprises, those sudden transformations of which even the flattest of English countrysides is capable. The road behind them was as straight as a ruler, but the ground on either side had begun to drop away slightly. And through a gap in the hedge a view appeared. It was like coming on an open door in a long corridor. As far as they could see across the heat‐haze of the late afternoon, the green and brown pattern of the countryside was spread out before them. And it looked good.
Even the sand‐pit turned out to be beautiful. It was an old one. The notice‐board about ‘Truck‐loads to order:
distance no object’ was half covered up by branches, and the pit itself was simply a bowl of willow‐herb. Mr Josser would have liked to stop there for a bit and take a look at it but Mrs Josser made it quite evident that if she paused for so much as a single moment she would never go on again.
And then behind a little copse, Conservatory Cottage appeared. It was white and clean looking, and the hedge in front of it had been cut into a neat green battlement. A double border of flowers led up to a green front door.
Mr Josser stood for a moment at the gate appraising it all. But Mrs Josser urged him forward.
‘Just so long as there’s somewhere I can sit down, that’s all I ask,’ she said.
‘We don’t know if there’ll be any one in,’ Mr Josser warned her. ‘We didn’t say we were coming.’
But Mrs Marble was there all right. A large, vague woman in a flowered overall, she was standing in the window watching them. She came to the front door wearing a pleased, rather puzzled expression as though she were afraid that she must have invited them and then forgotten all about it.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting anybody so soon. If I’d known you were coming I’d have had things ready. But do come in. I’d better get you some tea.’
After the heat and glare outside, it was cool and dim within the cottage. Mrs Josser loosened both her shoes and said ‘Ah.’ A pleasant smell of bees‐wax and old furniture filled the room, and Mr Josser felt sleepy. There was no opportunity of any rest, however, as Mrs Marble kept asking them questions. She asked them twice how far they had come and was astonished each time to find that it was London. She told them that the station was really only half a mile away if you went across the fields. She asked whether they’d ever lived in the country before. She asked how they’d heard that the cottage was for sale. She asked if they’d like lettuce and then remembered that all hers had run to seed. She asked how far they’d come, and was astonished to hear…
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