By the time the plum tarts were entirely eaten, the younger members of the party longed to get down from the table: Simon and Christopher and Teddy because they couldn’t see the point of sitting at a table when you’d eaten everything on it; Louise and Nora, because they longed to resume their private conversation; and Angela, because she wanted Rupert to see more of her than he could when she was sitting down. The women, too, were ready to leave, since the Brig had embarked upon his distressingly lovely Stilton – Christopher thought it was unexpectedly kind of him to let the maggots go on eating at the same time – and his views about Mr Chamberlain whom he felt was nothing like so suitable a prime minister as Mr Baldwin, who should never have been kicked upstairs as he put it. The Duchy surprisingly said that she had never liked Mr Baldwin, but she certainly did not think that Mr Chamberlain was an improvement. Whereupon Rupert said. ‘Darling, you know you only really admire Toscanini and the great British public would never accept him for such a post, so you are doomed to disappointment,’ and before she could retort that even she was not so idiotic as that, the thunder that had been rumbling distantly at intervals suddenly crashed over their heads. Sybil started up to see if it had woken Wills, and this was a general signal for the women and children to leave the Brig and his sons to their port.
In the hall, they could hear the rain drumming on the skylight and a few moments later Louise and Nora, rooting about for macs they could borrow to run home in the rain, were met by Clary and Polly, drenched in their nightgowns. ‘Where have you been?’ asked Louise, but she knew really. Having a midnight feast somewhere or other, as she had done last year with Polly.
‘Having a midnight feast,’ said Polly. ‘Where are they all? We’ve got to get upstairs without them seeing us.’ She thought Louise sounded distressingly like them and easily might not help.
The rain stopped some time in the early morning and the day began with white fog. It was decreed not a day for the beach. Clary tried to whip the others into a state of indignation about this, but although there was a general agreement that it was jolly unfair, nobody seemed to mind enough to do anything. ‘Anyway, what could we do? We can’t drive cars,’ Polly pointed out. Aunt Rachel said that Mrs Cripps wanted a lot of blackberries for jelly, and whoever got the most would get a prize, so the seven older children set off with bowls and baskets. Bexhill had died in the night; Neville refused to believe Ellen, but Aunt Villy, when fetched to view the motionless white blob in the bath, said that she was afraid there was no doubt.
‘He wouldn’t have felt any pain, though, would he?’ said Judy earnestly. ‘Or would he?’
Villy quickly said that she was sure that he wouldn’t.
‘Then what happened?’ Neville demanded. ‘How did he simply stop being alive?’
‘He just gave up the ghost,’ Lydia said. ‘Died. It happens to everything.’ She looked rather frightened. ‘It’s a perfectly ordinary thing. Either you get murdered, or you simply die. You stop being around. You can’t do anything any more. You’re just like – breath.’
Those remarks were not reassuring anyone, Villy could see, so she suggested that they have a really good funeral. This seemed to cheer everybody up, and they spent the rest of the morning arranging it.
Mrs Cripps sat in her kitchen dispensing rock cakes to Tonbridge who had dropped in for middle mornings – his ulcer, enhanced by Mrs Tonbridge’s furiously fried breakfast, could only be assuaged by cake and a sympathetic ear. Mrs Cripps passed no remarks about Mrs Tonbridge but received the oblique information given about her with impassive interest that none the less contrived to show which side she was on.
‘It’s the quiet, you see. It gets on her nerves.’
‘I expect it would do.’ She spread the Sunday Express on her spotless table, CRISIS OFF TILL A WEEK TOMORROW, it said. NO SENSATIONS EXPECTED. She tipped a heap of runner beans out of the trug onto the ‘paper. ‘Do you fancy another cup?’
‘I wouldn’t say no.’
She went to the range and topped up the brown pot from the large iron kettle that sat there. She had a fine bust, Tonbridge thought with self-pity. Mrs Tonbridge’s bust had never been a salient feature.
‘I took her for a drink up the pub the other night.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘She said that was too quiet. Course, it’s not the same as the pubs in town.’
‘It wouldn’t be.’ Mrs Cripps had been to London once or twice, but she’d never been to a pub there, and with Gordon dead, there was nobody to take her to one at home. ‘What a shame!’ she added. She wasn’t one to pass remarks about other people, but the unpassed remark hung heavy and gratifying in the air. Tonbridge took the last rock cake and watched Mrs Cripps stringing beans. Her sleeves were rolled up revealing muscular arms as white as marble, in striking contrast to her hands which were not white at all.
‘She could go on the bus to Hastings. Look at the shops and that.’
‘She could.’ He left that suggestion in the air; he had already thought of it and discarded the notion. What he was hoping was that she would find it so quiet she’d go off home, back to town, and leave him in peace. He belched softly, and Mrs Cripps’s nose twitched, but she pretended not to have heard. She decided to change the subject to something that didn’t matter.
‘So what do you think is going on with Hitler and all that?’ she asked.
‘If you want my opinion, Mrs Cripps, I say that it’s all the newspapers and the politicians. A storm in a teacup; scare-mongering. There’s no cause for alarm. If Hitler did get above himself, there’s always the Maginot Line.’
‘Well, that’s something,’ she agreed. She had no idea what he was talking about. A line? What sort of line? Where? For the life of her she couldn’t see what a line had to do with anything. She fell back onto social law. ‘If you ask me, Mr Tonbridge, I think Hitler should keep himself to himself.’
‘He should, Mrs Cripps, but don’t forget, he’s a foreigner. Well,’ he got to his feet, ‘this won’t clean Mr Edward’s guns. That was very nice, I must say. A welcome change. Someone to talk to,’ he added, to make sure she realised that she was being compared favourably to some he could mention.
Mrs Cripps bridled and a huge kirby-grip fell onto the kitchen table.
‘Any time,’ she said shoving it back.
In the evening, a neighbour of Zoë’s mother rang up to say that she had had a heart attack and there wasn’t really anybody to cope. So the next day, Rupert drove her to the station. ‘I’m sure I shan’t have to stay,’ she said, meaning that she desperately didn’t want to.
‘You stay as long as you need. If it’s easier to look after her in our house, you could move her there.’ Since Zoë had married her mother had moved into a tiny flat. ‘Oh, no! I don’t think she would like that.’ The thought of having to deal with her mother and their empty house without Ellen to see to things appalled her. ‘I’m sure Mummy would far rather be in her own home.’
‘Well, give me a ring to tell me how things are going. Or I’ll ring you.’ He remembered his mother-in-law’s terror of toll calls. He got her suitcase into the ticket office and bought her ticket for her. ‘Got enough money, darling?’
‘I think so.’
He gave her another five pounds to be on the safe side. Then he kissed her; on her high cork-wedged shoes she reached higher above his shoulder than usual. They had had a row in bed the previous night about whether he should go into the firm or not. When she had found him truly undecided, she had tried to bully him and, for once, he had lost his temper and she had sulked until he apologised and then she had cried until she had got him to make it up in the usual way, but it hadn’t been as much fun as usual. Now, she said, ‘I know you’ll do whatever is right,’ and watched his stern, worn expression relax to a smile. He kissed her again and she said, ‘I know you’ll make the right decision.’ Luckily the train came in, and he did not have to reply.
But when she had gone and he had got back to the car trying to ban
ish an awful relief, he felt more confused than ever about the whole thing.
Sharing a room with Angela was driving Louise and Nora round the bend: she either behaved like a film star or a schoolmistress and really they didn’t know which was worse, so they decided to emigrate. And the only place to go was one of the attics, which you reached by climbing a steep little ladder that was concealed by a cupboard door. They went up and found themselves in a long room with a steeply sloping roof so that they couldn’t stand upright except in the middle. At each end was a small lead-paned window encrusted with dirty cobwebs. The place smelled faintly of apples and the floor was thick with dead bluebottles. Louise felt that it was not very promising, but Nora was delighted by it. ‘We’ll scrub it all out, and whitewash the ceiling and walls and it will be wonderful!’ So they did, and it was. They wore their bathing suits for the whitewashing because it was fearfully hot up there until one of the Brig’s men, who were always working for him on building schemes, came and made the windows open and shut. It was while they were whitewashing together that they had a conversation that actually, she felt, changed Louise’s life. She had been holding forth about her career to Nora who was a very good listener, and seemed suitably impressed with Louise’s current ambition to play Hamlet in London.
‘Won’t you have to go into a repertory company – you know in Liverpool or Birmingham, or somewhere?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. I think that would be boring. No, I’ll go to some drama school – the Central or RADA – and then I’ll get noticed when they do the end-of-term plays. That’s my plan.’
‘I’m sure you will. You’re awfully good.’ Louise had acted some bits of Shakespeare to her last year in the summer and her Ophelia had reduced Nora to tears. ‘Why particularly Hamlet?’ she asked after a silence. ‘Why not Ophelia?’
‘It’s such a tiny part. But Hamlet’s the best part in the world. So of course it’s my ambition.’
‘I see.’ She said it quite respectfully, did not argue or snub like most people.
‘Meanwhile, of course, instead of getting on with my career, I have to go on wasting time with Miss Milliment. And they won’t even tell me when they’ll let me go to drama school. It’s all very well for the others. Polly just wants to have her own house and put everything she’s collected into it, and Clary is going to be a writer, so it doesn’t matter what she does. I’ve done that bit. Let’s have a rest.’
They went and sat by the little window and shared a Crunchie. There was a peaceful silence.
‘What are you going to do?’ Louise asked idly: she did not expect a very interesting reply.
‘You promise not to tell anyone?’
‘Promise.’
‘Well – I’m not absolutely sure – but I think I’m going to be a nun.’
‘A nun?’
‘Yes, but not immediately. Mummy is sending me to a sort of cooking finishing-school place next summer, so I’ll do that first. I’ve got to because it’s Aunt Lena who is paying for it, and she gets awfully cross if people don’t do what she wants.’
‘But cooking – and whatever else you do at those places! What use will that be if you’re going to be a nun?’
‘You can do anything for the glory of God,’ Nora answered serenely. ‘It doesn’t actually matter a bit what it is. Why don’t you come too?’
At first it seemed an idiotic idea, but as Nora pointed out, Louise couldn’t be a world-famous actress if she went on being homesick and couldn’t ever leave home. ‘And if you come with me, we could share a room, and you wouldn’t feel anything like so bad. And I bet they’d let you, because domestic science is considered to be good for girls.’
‘I’ll think about it.’ She could feel her heart beginning to thud and the back of her neck getting cold, and resolved not to think about it then. She diverted Nora by asking her a lot of questions about what being a nun entailed.
On Friday morning Raymond telephoned Jessica to say that Aunt Lena had a chill and he was unable to leave her. This news, when he heard it, caused Christopher such relief that he threw up in the drive at Home Place on his way to collect Simon. It was wonderful: it meant that with luck they would have collected enough stuff to be gone before his father arrived, much easier than going under his nose. For he and Simon had decided to run away: Simon because he couldn’t face his new school, and Christopher because he could no longer bear life at home. They had spent four feverish days carting stuff to Christopher’s secret place in the woods – a small tent, since Christopher had given up the idea of trying to build a waterproof house, and any stores or equipment they could find about the place. They took things on the basis that once they were gone, they wouldn’t be costing anyone anything, so it was quite fair to collect what was needed, provided they could do so without being noticed. Mrs Cripps couldn’t think where the saucepan she used only for boiling eggs had walked to, nor the smaller kettle that was only used as a back-up to the big one. Eileen was missing cutlery – plate, thank goodness, not the silver – and two large tins that were used for biscuits and cake disappeared from the pantry. She had also noticed that however often she filled the sugar basins they were empty the next morning. Christopher made enormous lists of what they needed, and they crossed them off when they got the things. The worst blow had been the camp beds, which the Duchy kept in the gun room and which, just as they had been about to take them, had gone to Mill Farm for the girls’ blasted attic idea. They had found an old Lilo in the shed with deck-chairs, but it had holes and they had to spend a lot of time mending it. On the other hand, Simon had discovered a store cupboard in the kitchen regions crammed with jams, tins of sardines and corned beef, and every night, when Teddy was asleep – and luckily he slept like a log – he crept down and filled his new school laundry bag with these things. He got awfully tired because he had to stay awake for ages after Teddy dropped off and be sure the grown-ups had all gone to their rooms as well. The list never seemed to get any shorter, because they kept thinking of things that were or might be essential: tin opener, torch batteries, a pail – Christopher proposed milking cows in the adjoining fields very early in the morning before they were herded to the farm which Simon thought was absolutely wizard of him.
This morning they were going to get potatoes out of the shed where Mr McAlpine stored them. They both had rucksacks – admirable for the purpose, but Christopher warned that they would have to make several trips. ‘We’ll need them until we learn to make bread.’ Simon, trying to imagine life without bread, felt so hungry that they had to stop for a bit while he ate four apples. They planned to store Simon’s bicycle at the far end of the wood by the road, so that he could use it to get emergency rations if they ran out. The worst problem was money. Christopher had two pounds three and six, Simon only five bob. Taking money was stealing and Christopher was dead against it: they would have to learn to live off the land, he said, but Simon felt uneasy at the prospect. You wouldn’t get chocolate or fizzy lemonade off the land, but he knew that these were unworthy thoughts. ‘You have to be prepared to give things up,’ Christopher said, but he wanted to get away from his parents whereas Simon was rather dreading that he would never see his mother again, or Polly, or Dad – who, except for Wills, might easily be stricken with grief – or even Wills. ‘Supposing we have to go to the dentist?’ he asked.
‘If you were on a desert island, there wouldn’t be a dentist. We’ll just have to pull the bad teeth out. Better take some string for that.’ Simon thought of Mr York who only had three or four teeth – although they were extra long in his upper jaw – but then he was old; it would take them years to get like that.
‘What if there’s a war?’ he said when they had crammed the potatoes into the now crowded tent.
‘I shall become a conscientious objector.’
‘Wouldn’t you have to go to London to do that? I mean, how would people know, otherwise?’
‘Oh, I expect you just have to send in your name somewhere. I shall cross that brid
ge when I come to it,’ he added rather grandly. They had fallen into the relationship where he was the leader and knew everything, a role to which he was not accustomed, and he was enjoying it too much to want his authority eroded.
‘Perhaps schools stop if there is a war?’ Simon suggested as they trudged back.
‘I doubt it. Do you want to go through the wood today, or shall I?’
‘I will.’
In order to fox possible spies about their whereabouts, Christopher had decreed that they should return to the house separately and from different directions. So far as he could see, nobody seemed in the least bit interested, but Simon ran up the east side of the wood behind the house, sat on the stile that was its entrance there, and obediently counted to two hundred before he walked – slowly – through it. In the afternoon, he would have to play squash with Teddy who was beginning to notice that he wasn’t available for bicycle rides. Teddy did not very much like Christopher, whom he described as a bit weird; he was the person Christopher said must certainly have no idea of their plan. Simon had explained to Christopher that he couldn’t get out of playing squash and sometimes tennis, and Christopher said quite right, and spent those times making bows and arrows for them and reorganising the list. Actually, he enjoyed playing squash – which he would soon be giving up for ever – but today he felt that what he would really like would be to have two helpings of everything for lunch and then go to sleep.
Every morning when she woke up, Angela stood by the window of the bedroom that she now, mercifully, had to herself. By leaning out, she could just see the blue smoke that came out of the kitchen chimney of Home Place three hundred yards up the hill – she had carefully paced the distance. Then she would pray – fervently – aloud, but under her breath. ‘O God, don’t let her come back today,’ and so far God hadn’t. Five days ago, she had been a completely different person; now she had utterly changed, and would never be the same again. Now, sometimes, when absence and longing were locked together, she could almost sense the nostalgia of the old feelings of boredom, the endless weeks and months – years, even – she had been through of waiting for something, or attending to stupid little details because she could find nothing worth being serious about. The old, recurrent daydream where Leslie Howard, Robert Taylor or Monsieur de Croix (the French family doctor in Toulouse) had knelt at her feet, or towered over her, their undying passion wrenched from them while she sat in various romantic dresses that she did not wear in ordinary life, gracefully accepting their homage, bestowing her hand (her hand, simply!) whereupon the dream dissolved with their speechless, reverent gratitude – that old dream withered to a ridiculous and embarrassing myth. She could remember all that, and remember, too, that then she had eaten and slept and gone through her days in the tedious serenity of ignorance. She could not regret that infantile past when she had not had the faintest idea of what life was about. But now its whole meaning was feverishly clear; she existed for every second of every day in a trembling, humble delirium that she contrived, almost with brilliance, utterly to conceal. Jessica had noticed that – thank goodness – her eldest daughter had seemed to have stopped sulking and, at Home Place, where Angela spent as much time as possible, the Duchy found her manners and general desire to please quite charming. The first day she had walked slowly up the hill to Home Farm she had hung about on the front lawn, just waiting to see what might happen. Teddy and Clary and Polly were playing the overtaking game on their bicycles round and round the house. The third time round, Clary fell off trying to overtake Teddy.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 30