“Yes.” She fixed her eyes just to the right of the top of his head. “It’s you. The only person I should like to marry is you.” Anxious to prevent any response, she began speaking rapidly: “I’ve honestly thought a great deal about it. I’m completely serious. I know I’m quite a bit younger than you are, but people of different ages do get married and I’m sure it works out all right. I’m only twenty years younger and by the time I’m forty and you’re sixty, it will be nothing—nothing at all. But I wouldn’t consider marrying anyone else and you know me quite well, and you’ve said you like my appearance. I’ve been practising cooking and I wouldn’t mind if it was France or where we lived—I wouldn’t mind anything …” Then she couldn’t think of any more to say, and made herself look at him.
He wasn’t laughing, which was something. But by the way in which he picked up her hand and kissed it, she knew it was no go.
“Oh, Poll,” he said. “What a compliment. I’ve never had such a great and serious compliment paid me in my life. And I’m not going to hide behind all that crap about me being too old for you, although in some ways it may be true. I love you very much, I regard you as a serious friend, but you are not my love, and the awful thing is that unless you were, the whole thing wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“And you don’t think you ever could be?”
He shook his head. “It is the kind of thing one knows, you know.”
“Yes.”
“Dear Poll. You have your whole life before you.”
“That is what I was thinking,” she answered: it seemed interminable, but she did not say so.
“I suppose you think I shouldn’t have told you,” she said.
“I don’t think that at all. I do think it was extremely brave of you.”
“It hasn’t made any difference, though, has it?”
“Well, at least you wanted to know something and you asked.”
And moved from hope to despair, she thought, but again she did not say so. She did not know how to be without him for the rest of her life, and she did not know how to be with him now—trapped in this wretched punt miles from anywhere.
She was saved by a sudden heavy shower. The sky had been becoming greyer, and—hours ago it now seemed to her—they had wondered whether it would rain. Now, she could be occupied in packing up the remains of lunch, getting into her duffel coat, and untying the painter from the willow, while Archie wielded the punting pole. All the same, by the time they reached the boatyard, they were both soaked. The sun came out, but intent upon its appearance rather than its warmth, and Archie wanted to go to a pub to get a whisky to warm them, but the pubs were closed. There was nothing for it but to go back to the station and wait for a train.
Standing on the platform, she said, “I haven’t told anyone—what I told you. Not even Clary.”
“I wouldn’t dream of telling Clary—or anyone else,” he replied.
They had a carriage to themselves on the slow Sunday train that stopped at every station. He talked to her—about her drawing, about painting in general, about life at Hamilton Terrace, about anything but her confidence or her feeling about it. She felt he was trying to prop up her dignity and did not like it: it prompted her to efforts of her own.
“What I shall probably do,” she said, “after the war, that is, is to find someone who is building houses and be the person who does the inside of them. I don’t mean just the paint or wallpaper, I mean the inside architecture—doors and floors and fireplaces—” but then she found that she was starting to cry, so she pretended to sneeze and turned to the train window. “Oh dear! I bet I’ve caught a cold,” she said.
At Paddington, he asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she thought she would just go home. “Would anyone be there?” he asked, and she said yes, she was sure someone would.
In fact, she thought she knew that there would be no one, but she was wrong. She saw Louise’s coat flung on the hall table at the same moment as she heard her sobbing from above. Michael has been killed, she thought, as she ran up the stairs.
She found her in the small spare room lying face downwards on the bed.
At first Louise was incoherent with grief—or was it anger?, she didn’t know which—
“It slipped out!” she said. “Someone who came to lunch just said it—in a sort of what-a-pity voice … no warning! And they all knew and they never told me. She must have known! What a shock … I couldn’t stay after that. I just left the table and then I ran. Oh! Polly! How can I bear it! And it was supposed to be nearly the end of the war!” A fresh paroxysm overwhelmed her.
She sat on the edge of the bed and put a timid hand upon Louise’s arm. Eventually Louise became quieter, rolled over and sat up, arms clasped round her knees.
“It was ten days ago,” she said. “It was in The Times, they said, but she knew I didn’t know.”
“Who are you talking about?” she asked, as gently as she could.
“Zee! She hates me for it.”
She knew now that it wasn’t Michael.
“Are you talking about Hugo?”
She flinched as though his name had struck her. “I loved him so much! With all my heart. And now I’ve got the whole of the rest of my life without him. I don’t know how to manage that at all.” She looked up. “Oh, Poll! You are so comforting—to cry with me!”
The Family
April–May, 1945
Tonbridge got back from fetching Mrs. Rupert from the station in nice time for his elevenses with what he described to himself as “my intended.” He had tried to pass a few interesting remarks to Mrs. Rupert on their way back from Battle, but she hadn’t seemed interested. He’d mentioned the American President passing away and the Allies liberating Vienna—not that that could be expected to interest British people much, and he had added that it was his considered opinion that the war could not last very much longer, but Mrs. Rupert hadn’t really conversed with him about any of it. She had been looking very pale lately—peaky, Mabel had said when they discussed it—and he wondered whether she was not feeling herself but naturally he passed no remark about that.
Anyway, when he had carried her case in for her, and put the car back in the garage, he walked across the courtyard to the back door and through the kitchen to the servants’ sitting room, but although there was a tray set with some drop scones and two pieces of gingerbread and the miniature toby jug full of top of the milk, she wasn’t there. That was funny, because she hadn’t been in the kitchen either when he passed through.
He went back to the kitchen where Lizzie was up to her elbows washing spring greens in the sink. She was the kind of girl who always gave a start when you spoke to her and then you couldn’t hardly hear what she said. She didn’t know where Mrs. Cripps was. This was annoying, because he had something very important to tell her and he’d been saving it up for the appropriate moment of peace and hot tea that they usually enjoyed in the morning. He went back to the sitting room and sat down in his usual chair to wait for her.
Mrs. Cripps had been having a very unusual morning. Dr. Carr, who was paying his weekly visit to poor Miss Barlow upstairs, had been taking a look at her legs. They had hurt her something awful lately, and matters had come to a head after one of the morning sessions with Miss Rachel, as Mrs. Cazalet Senior was feeling a bit under the weather. She had stood, as she always stood with Mrs. Senior, while the day’s meals were discussed—not that there was very much choice these days, but Madam had always ordered the food and there was such a thing as standards, so she had stood as usual—taking the weight off her feet by leaning one elbow on the back of a kitchen chair. But that morning, when she had shifted to give the other leg a rest, the chair-back had given way, just splintered to the floor, and she had gone with it. This had hurt her so badly that she had not been able to help a shriek of pain, and what with that, and the fact that she couldn’t, at first, get up from the floor, she had altogether given way. She had cried, in front of Miss Rachel who had been ever so
kind as indeed she always was. She had helped her up and taken her into the sitting room and made her sit down with her feet up and told Lizzie to make a cup of tea, and it was when her legs were up on a stool with the cushion on it that Miss Rachel had noticed them. She was ashamed for anyone to see them, and she was only too glad that Frank had had to take the car to the garage for the morning and was safely out of the way.
Anyway, the upshot was that Miss Rachel said Dr. Carr must look at them, and meanwhile she had gone to Battle and bought her some heavy elasticated stockings that had been a great comfort. Dr. Carr had seen her in her own bedroom, as she had told Miss Rachel that the men might come into the servants’ hall at any minute and it wouldn’t be right. Dr. Carr had said that she should have come to him before, and she really needed an operation, and she hadn’t worried too much about that at first because, being on the Panel, she didn’t think they did them. But then, when Miss Rachel came in she had said that she would pay for it, and then she had felt really frightened, because the only time she had been to a hospital in her life had been when her father was dying. And then Dr. Carr had asked her how old she was, and telling him—fifty-six in June, she would be—she was suddenly overcome with shame, with remorse, because she had not told Frank this at all. She had told him that she was forty-two when he asked, and she’d stuck to it. He’d believed her, of course, in spite of her saying she was over ten years younger than she really was. Naturally, she wouldn’t tell a lie to a doctor, but telling him the truth made her suddenly feel that it was very wrong to conceal it from Frank. She’d been afraid he wouldn’t want to marry her if he knew—hadn’t even been sure whether he envisaged children, but when she had told him forty-two, he had said, “Well, it doesn’t sound as though our troubles will be little ones,” and he’d gone red when he said it, and they’d changed the subject. Well, she might have an operation in a hospital and die, but she did want to be married first, and she didn’t want to die with a lie on her lips to her husband. So she would have to tell him.
He was waiting for her in the servants’ hall—wondering where she had got to, he said. Then, just as she was going to tell him, Lizzie brought in the tea, and then, when she had let it stand and was pouring it out, he pulled a brown envelope out of his pocket and said that he had had a letter from the lawyers saying he had got a Decree Nice Eye, whatever that might mean. It was to do with the divorce, but it wasn’t the end of it, oh dear no. After the Nice Eye you had to wait for something called the Absolute. Then it was over. But that, he said, was only a matter of weeks …
She was opening her mouth to tell him, when he stopped her again, by producing a small box, pressing a little knob on the lid which flew open to expose a ring—two, what looked like diamonds, not large, of course, you wouldn’t expect it with diamonds, each side of a smaller dark stone.
“Rubies and diamonds,” he said, “and it’s nine carat gold.”
It was a real engagement ring and quite took her breath away, but when he tried to get it on her finger it was too small—wouldn’t go above her second knuckle. “I’ll have it enlarged,” he said, but she could see he was disappointed.
“It’s really lovely,” she said. “Frank, you shouldn’t have. It’s ladies that have engagement rings.”
“And you are a lady,” he said, “if ever I saw one.”
Perhaps it would go on her little finger, she suggested, just for the time being, but it wouldn’t even do that. Don’t put it away, she said, she wanted to look at it, and she laid it on the palm of her hand with the diamonds winking if you caught them right in the light.
“Are they real, then?” she asked: she did not think they could be, but he said of course they were.
“They must be ever so valuable.”
“Well, they’re not exactly … cheap,” he had answered in tones that showed he agreed.
She was entranced. It was the most valuable thing she’d ever touched in her life, and he’d gone and bought it for her.
“Oh, Frank!” she said. “Oh, Frank!” There were tears in her eyes, and she gave a series of short, sharp sniffs. “I’m so pleased! I’m ever so pleased. I really am!” And then she told him—quickly while he was on the crest of her gratitude.
He didn’t seem to mind at all. “I knew—really,” he said. “I mean—that you might not be quite the age you said you was. No self-respecting lady would tell a gentleman exactly her age.” He looked at her with his mournful brown eyes that were now far less mournful than usual—were almost glowing with satisfaction at his generosity. “For me,” he said, “you will always be young.”
He picked up the ring and put it back in its box. “It is only,” he said, “a small Token of my Esteem.”
After all the trouble that she had taken to get away to London at such short notice, Jack had only stayed for Saturday night; he had left to fly to Germany very early on Sunday morning. There was nothing new about this situation: it had been going on more or less ever since D-Day nearly a year ago. He was abroad practically all the time, returning only for the odd night, or sometimes two or three days, usually at short notice, although not as short as this last time when he had literally rung up on Friday afternoon to ask if she could come up that evening. In spite of the fact that he had come through these last months unscathed, she could not get rid of or in any way diminish her sense of anxiety about him, so that each parting had a kind of double-edged anguish about it. Their meetings were still charged with excitement and joy, and for the first few hours they could be entirely engrossed by each other; the world and the war seemed hardly to exist, but somehow, always, something—often small—happened that breached their magic circle and brought them back to a dreary, and to her nerve-racking, reality. In the winter after the invasion it had sometimes been the V-2s. Even when they fell miles away you could not ignore the explosion; it shook the stomach as no other bombs seemed ever to have done, although she had not experienced very many of any of them. Her association with Jack brought her face to face with the war in a way that nothing had, excepting Rupert’s disappearance, and that had happened so long ago now that it had become like a piece of sad history. Sometimes Jack would say, “I must call my office,” and listening to him talk to unknown people whom clearly he often knew well, but whom she had never met, made her realize that nine-tenths of his life was unknown to her.
She did slowly discover more about him. Once, a few weeks after the invasion, he brought her back a box that contained a set of exquisite embroidered silk underwear—a camisole, a petticoat and French knickers all in pale turquoise silk edged with creamy lace; she had seen nothing like it since before the war. “The shops hid them,” he said. “They kept them for when we would come.” But later that time, when they were having dinner and she had asked him about Paris and whether it had been fun to go there, he had said no, it hadn’t been fun at all.
He had been cutting up some meat before eating it with his fork and, feeling her attention, he looked up, and for a fleeting moment she saw a look of utter despair in his eyes—two black fathomless wells. This disappeared so quickly that she wondered whether she had imagined it. His mouth smiled, he reached for his glass and drank. “Never mind,” he said. “There was nothing I could do about it.”
In bed, when it was dark, she put her arms round him. “What happened in Paris? I really want to know.”
He said nothing, but just when she began to think she shouldn’t have asked, he said, “My best friend in New York—he was a Polish Jew—told me that if I ever got to Paris, I must look up his parents who had been living there since nineteen thirty-eight. They’d sent him to America, because he had an uncle there, but his sister had stayed with his parents. He wrote the address down for me, and I kept it, although I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance to use it. Well, I went to his street, to the house where they used to live, and they weren’t there. I asked around and I discovered that they’d been taken off to a camp a few months before the invasion. All three of them. They were col
lected one night and nobody ever heard anything more.”
“But if they went to a camp in Germany, you’ll still be able to find them, won’t you? I mean, we’ve nearly got to Berlin.”
It was odd: she could not remember what he said in reply, but the next day he had been withdrawn, in one of his unreachable sombre moods that she did not understand, and that made her feel vaguely frightened.
There came to be a kind of tacit censorship of what they talked about: once she had tried to find out about his marriage, but he had only said, “She wanted me to bully her, make all the decisions, order her about—no, correction, she wanted a rich bully and that bored me. We brought out the worst in each other. Will that do?” And after that Elaine, she was called, was never mentioned again. They never talked about Rupert, although he always asked after Juliet. They talked about their own brief past with each other but never, since that time on the bench by the Serpentine, about the future. They talked about books that he had given her to read, and films they saw, discussing the characters in these as though in lieu of the mutual friends that otherwise they did not have. Bed became the safest place. There was no censorship there: familiarity enhanced pleasure and the smallest discovery about the sensuality of either became an added joy. Sex was not so much taking off one’s clothes as getting into one’s body, she said to him one night.
A second Christmas apart. “Oh, I wish I could ask you home,” she had said, and had then been afraid that he might say why didn’t she? But he didn’t. He would be working then anyway, he said, “sending pictures of the boys at Christmas to the folks back home.”
After that, she didn’t see him for nearly a month. And after that, their times together became fewer and further apart. So that, in spite of the terribly short notice, she had managed to get Clary down to look after Jules and gone to London on the Saturday morning as early as possible, and they had spent the day and the night together. He hadn’t told her that he was going away on Sunday morning until after they had made love for the first time.
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