‘What a day to come and see us,’ Cynthia said with a little giggle. ‘We all overslept.’
Overslept! Mrs Josser drew in her lips.
‘I’m glad you could,’ was all she said.
She had gone over to the play‐pen by now and was stroking Baby’s hair. Thanks to Ted’s share in the child’s inheritance, Baby’s hair wasn’t going to be the same ridiculous colour as its mother’s. There were darker shades in it already.
‘What time did you hear?’ she asked at last.
‘Hear what?’ Cynthia asked her.
‘About the Germans.’
‘What?’ Cynthia asked, arching her eyebrows film‐fashion. ‘Have they signed an armistice or something?’
It was then – only then – that Mrs Josser realised the dreadful truth that Cynthia didn’t even know. And the realisation shocked her just as much as the unmade beds and unwashed dishes. It was everything that she had told herself that she mustn’t believe about her daughter‐in‐law. With Ted away and fighting for his life against the entire German army, Cynthia couldn’t even take the trouble to listen properly to the wireless and find out what was happening to him. It was monstrous.
‘They’ve attacked,’ she said tersely. ‘At dawn.’
‘Oo‐er.’
Cynthia gave a little giggle as she said it. But Mrs Josser could detect, however, that it was sheer nervousness. Perhaps the hysterics were developing. But somehow she had never imagined herself actually breaking the news. Only coping with it.
‘Where does it say so?’ Cynthia asked.
‘It’s in all the papers,’ Mrs Josser told her. ‘The man on the wireless…’
‘Isn’t it awful?’ Cynthia said.
‘It’s awful for the Belgians,’ Mrs Josser replied. ‘They’ve attacked them first.’
Cynthia squeezed her two hands together. They were thin delicate hands and the blue veins on them showed clearly.
‘That’s the way Ted always thought they’d go,’ she said simply. ‘Well, now he knows,’ Mrs Josser replied shortly. She paused. ‘They’re sending our army right up into Belgium,’ she added. ‘It said this morning…’
‘Sshh!’
Cynthia had turned her back on her and was addressing the play‐pen.
‘Quiet, darling. Granny’s saying something.’
She turned and faced Mrs Josser again.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Only I was afraid she’d break it.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mrs Josser answered.
She was offended and she didn’t mind if she showed it.
‘You break everything you get hold of nowadays, don’t you, Baby?’ Cynthia went on, over her shoulder, ignoring Mrs Josser completely. ‘You’re just Mummy’s naughty little smasher, that’s what you are.’
That decided it. Mrs Josser took one more glance round the room. Then she got up. It was only five minutes since she had got there.
‘Well, now you’ve heard, I may as well be going,’ she said. Cynthia rose hurriedly.
‘Oh, don’t go yet,’ she implored her. ‘Do stop and I’ll make some fresh tea. This is all cold.’
‘No tea for me, thank you,’ Mrs Josser answered. ‘I’m not in the mood for it.’
Cynthia’s forehead wrinkled up.
‘You’re not worried, are you?’ she asked.
‘Of course I’m worried.’
‘About Ted, I mean.’
‘That’s what I mean, too. He’s there, isn’t he?’
‘Oh dear.’
Cynthia’s whole face was puckered now. She looked as though she might be going to cry.
‘He’ll… he’ll be all right, won’t he? Tell me he’ll be all right.’ This was more than Mrs Josser could stand. She had been ready for it when she came in. But she wasn’t nearly so ready now. That was the trouble. She’d got herself all worked up in the meantime.
‘You know as much as I do,’ she snapped back at her. ‘He’s your husband. Not mine.’
And, with that, she left. It was no use trying to be nice to Cynthia. She saw that now. The girl was just a common usherette. That’s what she was. An usherette.
Back in the flat Cynthia was standing at the window with Baby in her arms. The breakfast things were still on the table and Cynthia’s hair, her wonderful golden hair, still tucked away in its hair net. She was staring vacantly into the street.
‘Ted’s mother’s a funny woman,’ she was thinking. ‘Coming over here like that and upsetting me.’
Then the thought of why she had come and what was behind it all, grew too much for her and she began to cry. Cried helplessly. Still holding Baby in her arms, she stood there, the tears trickling down her face.
Only by then, it was too late. Mrs Josser’s visit of consolation was over.
2
Altogether, as things turned out, it was Mrs Josser’s bad day. Even when Doris dropped in to see her on the way home from work, it didn’t improve matters. And that was because Doris said the wrong thing. Not about the war, but about something else. Said it quite casually, too, just before she was leaving. It was, indeed, the very casualness that Mrs Josser found so particularly wounding. Without so much as a thought for Mrs Josser’s feelings, she said that she’d been thinking matters over and had decided that she’d rather stay on with Cynthia than come down to live at the cottage. Cynthia needed someone to be with her, she said.
And when Mrs Josser tried to expostulate, it was too late. She wasn’t listened to, in fact. Doris had to rush away again. With the extreme cruelty of youth, she added that she had to go back so that she could write to Bill. She kissed her mother lightly and perfunctorily. And withdrew unaware of the agitation she had left behind her.
‘That settles it,’ said Mrs Josser firmly as soon as Doris had gone. ‘It’s just a white elephant now, that cottage.’
Mr Josser tried hard to reason with her. But it was difficult. And more than difficult. It was impossible. Mrs Josser had set her heart on having Doris with them and nothing else would satisfy her. She hadn’t said very much about it, she explained, because she was so sure that Doris would do what she wanted. And she added that she wasn’t the sort of woman who would go away into the country in times like these and leave her only daughter behind her.
‘I tell you flat,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to live there without Doris.’
‘She… she could come and stay,’ Mr Josser suggested.
He was being cautious and conciliatory in everything he said. He liked Conservatory Cottage. Liked it a lot. And he didn’t want to lose it before he had even had a chance to have it.
But Mrs Josser only shook her head.
‘Not her,’ she answered. ‘You can see she’s set her face against it.’ Mr Josser thought.
‘If Bill came home on leave, it would be nice to have somewhere for them both to come to,’ he said tentatively. ‘They haven’t got anywhere now, remember.’
Mrs Josser drew in her lips.
‘It was Ted I bought that cottage for, not Bill,’ she replied briefly. Then Mr Josser thought again. It was a happy thought this time. ‘Perhaps Cynthia and Baby…’ he began.
But that was altogether too much for Mrs Josser. She sat bolt upright at the suggestion.
‘That’s where I do put my foot down,’ she said. ‘We may have to live at the cottage ourselves without Doris just because we’ve bought it. But I’m not going to have Cynthia with us. Ted can take her down there if he wants to. That’s his affair. But I’m not going to share any house of mine with Cynthia, thank you.’
3
Not by any means that every one in London was taking the morning’s news so much to heart as Mrs Josser had done.
There were still plenty of people, the steady ones, who didn’t quite see where we came in so long as it was only Holland and Belgium that had been invaded. Or France for that matter. There was the Maginot Line, wasn’t there, a great subterranean fortress stretching from the Alps to the English Channel? And with ou
r army ready and waiting on the Continent, the same army that had won the last war, only, of course, fully‐mechanised this time – it didn’t seem likely that the Germans would be willing to risk another clash with it. May the tenth was admittedly a shock after all those months of inaction. But there was nothing actually dangerous about it yet. It wasn’t as though we hadn’t got a Navy and an Air Force.
Take a cross‐section of opinion. Take Mr Josser’s view of things, for instance. Though perhaps it’s not quite fair to compare him with Mrs Josser because he had the natural advantage of a man’s understanding of things. He didn’t personally pin his faith on the Maginot Line – he’d never had much faith in the French anyhow. But he did pin his faith in Lord Gort. It was from him that the Germans were going to get their lesson. Invading a few small neutrals was one thing. Coming up against the B.E.F. was quite another. So far as Mr Josser could see, it was going to be 1914 all over again. That was why he felt so sorry for Cynthia. Judging from the way things were going it would probably be years before Ted was home again.
But he didn’t really worry. Not much, that is. And that was because of another of those masculine advantages that he had over Mrs Josser. He had something else to think about. Rent collecting. The Germans unwittingly had chosen a rent‐day on which to open their offensive. And no matter what happened on the Continent – even if the Panzers drilled right through to Paris in one go – those rents would still have to be collected. Mr Josser was unassailable.
In this he was luckier than Mr Puddy. Admittedly, that Mr Puddy had his own job to occupy him. But the nature of the job was less protective. It left too much time for thought. And it had too much to do with what was happening. Reading between the lines in the A.R.P. pamphlets, Mr Puddy was practically front line already.
‘It’s cubbig,’ he told himself gloomily. ‘Idcediaries. Stirrub‐bumbs and shovels and everythig…’
Or, take Connie. Her moods had been fluctuating. Since she had first heard the news, she had experienced fear, horror, jubiliation and a profound relief. ‘Just think,’ she kept on telling herself. ‘Just think if I’d got that job with ENSA. I might have been on the board, in Brussels at this moment. Imagine me in my scarf dance with all those Germans raging outside…’
Or Mrs Vizzard. She was actually one of the lucky ones. In the desolate and abject misery of her betrayal nothing new could now impinge upon her. Gazing out from the ruins of her life she surveyed the staring headlines and went on thinking about Mr Squales.
4
And Mr Squales himself ?
He shuddered when he read the news. Shuddered and turned away. A man of peace, he asked nothing more of life than that it should cease to disturb him. Just when everything seemed to be going right at last it was irritating having all this happen. Because, after the strain of the last few weeks in Dulcimer Street, the quiet and calm of the past forty‐eight hours in Chiddingly had been delightful. An oasis. It had been like a dream, a smooth luxurious dream. Indeed, looking back on it, Mr Squales decided that in many ways those two days had been among the very happiest of his life.
Of course, his arrival at Withydean could have been embarrassing. Beastly embarrassing. But he had handled it so well – and Mrs Jan Byl had responded so handsomely – that even that had passed off easily and without a hitch.
‘You take me as I am,’ had been his opening words to her. ‘Penniless.’
And Mrs Jan Byl, not batting an eyelid, had replied, ‘The price of genius, my dear man. Don’t ever refer to it again.’
Not that it could really be dismissed as simply as all that. He had, of course, been compelled to refer to it again. He couldn’t go around with only two and three in his pocket like a schoolboy. But even that had passed off happily, too. As soon as she had realised that he really meant what he said, Mrs Jan Byl opened the formidable green steel safe which stood in the corner of her bedroom – as she did so, Mr Squales craned his neck a little to one side from sheer curiosity but she closed the massive door again before he could see anything – and removed ten one‐pound notes. Mr Squales’ face softened into a rich bland smile.
And some of the smile – the part around the mouth – remained there after Mrs Jan Byl had re‐counted the notes and popped half of them into her own handbag. She handed the other five to Mr Squales.
‘There,’ she said archly. ‘Now genius can be self‐supporting.’
Five pounds, admittedly, was five pounds. And he appreciated the readiness of her response. It was no use, however, concealing the fact that he had hoped for something more. Say a banking account opened in his own name. Or a big block of war‐bonds. A marriage‐settlement, in fact. But in the meantime, with all found, five pounds was very pleasant to go on with.
It had come as a bit of a shock at first when he found that Mrs Jan Byl wasn’t expecting to put him up before the wedding. He had been looking forward to the pink guest room with the inlaid light above the shaving‐mirror in the private bathroom. It had just that touch of home – Mrs Jan Byl’s home – that he relished. But apparently such glories were not yet to be. On the subject of having her fiancé staying in her own house she was adamant. It wasn’t the thing, she said; it might start the servants talking. Accordingly she had made arrangements for Mr Squales to stay as her guest at the little A.A. hotel in Chiddingly.
Her guest – Mr Squales heaved a sigh of relief when he heard the words. And he heaved another sigh as soon as he saw the place. It was a large modern road‐house, and the room that had been reserved for him had an inlaid lamp over the mirror just like the other one. Right up to the last moment when the car put him down at the hotel door he had been fearing something picturesque and old‐world with the light in one corner of the bedroom and the bed in the other.
As it was, he couldn’t really have been more comfortable. Mrs Jan Byl’s chauffeur brought the Rolls‐Royce round to the door at 10 o’clock each morning and deposited him back at about 11 o’clock at night. Not that it mattered within a few minutes either way. As a resident, he could get something sent up to his room whenever he wanted it.
Altogether, it promised to be a very pleasant stay in Chiddingly, a graceful interlude between the grey months of Dulcimer Street and the magnificence of Withydean. The banns had been read once already and it would not be long now before Mr Squales, supported at last by the rich wife that he had been looking for, would be able to devote himself entirely to himself. But, remembering how close he had run it, how for weeks on end it had been touch and go, he sweated. Fate and he had been seeing rather too much of each other lately.
‘Just one twitch of her cruel fingers,’ he told himself, ‘and I might have been another’s. I might have been sentenced for life to that flearun in Dulcimer Street.’
Then his face softened.
‘How she must miss me,’ he reflected. ‘I was everything she had.’
Chapter LXXXIII
1
Doris or no Doris, victory or defeat in Europe, Mr Josser had ordered the moving‐men for next Thursday. And unless he did something about it, they would be turning up round about 10.30.
The trouble was that he didn’t know what Mrs Josser really wanted. She had told him so many times to cancel the move altogether and then, at the last moment, had withdrawn the cancellation, that Mr Josser still had an uneasy feeling in his mind, not knowing whether he was going or staying. Thursday was simply a glowing question mark set in the uncertain future. At the moment, it looked like going. Mrs Josser had spent the whole of the morning turning out a cupboard and examining, with the peculiarly rapt expression of a woman who is planning something, the curtain lengths and odd bits of carpet that she found there. But he couldn’t be sure. It might simply be the apartments in Dulcimer Street that she was thinking of doing up a bit.
There was, he supposed, always the possibility that the moving‐men might solve everything. Simply by forgetting about it. After all, it was sometime now, over three weeks, since he had written to the firm – and in tho
se three weeks such a lot had been happening. Enough to put things like furniture removals out of anybody’s mind. And at this rate, Lord only knew what things would be like by the time next Thursday came along. There wasn’t a Holland any more. The Dutch C.‐in‐C. had simply given up. And Queen Wilhelmina and Princess Juliana were in London. Not that Belgium looked like lasting much longer. Or France for that matter. You could tell the way things had gone from bad to worse in those four days because already Mr Eden had spoken on the wireless and made an appeal for volunteers – Local Defence Volunteers. It was obvious that even the steady ones were getting rattled now.
And in the face of all this, Mr Josser had a strange deep guilty feeling about leaving London at all. It was too much like those people who had packed off to America at the beginning of the war. At this moment, there seemed something faintly disloyal and rattish about even going out as far as Essex. It was like walking out on your own family just when things looked as though they were going wrong.
2
Thursday had come. It was a question‐mark no longer. Mrs Josser had made up her mind – a night‐time cough of Mr Josser’s had been decisive – and they were going. The farewells had all been said and the loaded moving‐van was waiting outside. Mrs Josser, her hat on, was ready to depart.
Now that the moment for leaving Dulcimer Street had actually come, she was feeling completely flat and dispirited. She couldn’t imagine why she had allowed herself to be persuaded into this thing. The bare floors of what had once been the comfortable living‐room sent up echoes when she walked across them. And the discoloured shapes on the walls where the pictures had been, brought tears into her eyes. The whole business of moving seemed once more ridiculous, untimely, ill‐advised. For two pins, two pins, she repeated, she would cancel everything even now, send Mr Josser a wire, telling him not to stand about waiting at the cottage for her to arrive, and ask the removers to carry the stuff back upstairs.
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