Then, when they had collected the crates of beer—ordered by the Brig for the servants to celebrate the peace when it came—and were driving home in the rain, Hugh had suddenly said: “What’s up with Poll, do you think?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, she seems in a funny mood. I wondered whether perhaps she’s fallen in love with somebody.”
He had waited: he had promised Polly silence, and she should have it, however many lies were entailed.
“I asked her what was the matter, and she said nothing, in the kind of voice she always uses when it is something. If I’m right, it’s clearly not going very well, and she hasn’t got Syb to talk to who would have been wonderful with her. I thought, possibly, she might have confided in you. Or you could have asked her.”
“Better not,” he had said.
“Oh, well. I want her happiness more than anything else, and it’s awful to have to stand by and feel so helpless.”
“I hope it’s not that bloody doctor she works for,” he said as they turned into the drive. “I mean, he’s foreign, for a start, and far older, and almost certainly married. Or if not, he certainly ought to be. Just thought I’d ask. I know she loves you.”
“Eh?” This had startled him.
“My dear old boy, we all do. You’re one of the family. In a way.”
He could see no way of saying anything at all to Edward that would in the slightest degree influence him. Better keep out of that.
Zoë had not appeared at lunch-time. She had a very bad headache, the Duchy said. After lunch, she had tucked her arm into his and asked him to come and look at her rock garden.
“Really I wanted to thank you for breaking that dreadful news to poor Zoë,” she said. “I’m afraid she is very unhappy. Of course I’ve known about the man—all those visits to London suddenly. She is so young, and she’s had a very hard time. It seems to me that something must be done about her state.”
“You mean—”
“I mean that she cannot continue indefinitely neither a widow nor a wife. Naturally, she will have a home here for as long as she wants—” She stopped speaking and walking and turned to look at him.
“Or do you believe,” she said unsteadily and in a voice that reminded him sharply of Rachel when she was moved, “do you believe that he still might come back to us?”
He looked at her, unable to say what she wanted to hear. Her gaze did not falter.
“There is nothing in the world that I want more,” she said. “But I was so fortunate in the last war with the other two coming back—”
He had said that he would find out what needed to be done or found out.
There had been some light relief. Lydia had buttonholed him after tea. “Archie, I have one extremely serious thing to ask you. It’s very small really—for you, I mean, to do something about—but for me it may well be life or death.”
“What now?”
“You say that as though I ask you things from morning to night. What it is is could you explain to my parents that it is absolutely essential for them to send me to a good school? I thought the one that Judy goes to, actually. I know she’s awful, but I don’t think that that is the school’s fault. She learns interesting games like lacrosse and hockey and they do ballroom dancing and a play at Christmas every year. And she’s got a pash for the geography mistress who is simply marvelous—and I know her mother told her it was only a phase but I’m not having a chance to go through it because it really isn’t possible to feel like that about Miss Milliment.”
“Why don’t you ask them?”
“I have, and Dad just says talk to Mummy and she says things like ‘we’ll see’—which means we never will. You could say that you were appalled by my ignorance,” she added.
“I could. But am I?”
“Also I’ve been through quite a lot of Who’s Who—it’s a kind of telephone directory only full of famous people you’ve never heard of—and it always says ‘educated at’—and then the name of a school.”
“Are you planning to be famous?”
“I don’t wish to rule it out. Oh, Archie, do talk to them: you’re one of the family now—they’ll listen to you …” And so on.
And then—and not at all light-hearted—Clary. This evening, which they had spent together beginning with supper in a Cypriot restaurant just off Piccadilly that she loved because it always had lamb chops and those little dumpling things fried in honey for pudding and thick sweet coffee. She had met him there and arrived looking unexpectedly smart in a black skirt and a man’s collarless shirt and dark red sandals and her hair glistening.
“It’s wet, I’m afraid,” she said when he kissed her. “I thought I ought to wash it for the peace and there wasn’t time to get it dry.”
“I like your shirt.”
“Zoë gave it to me at the weekend. The collar and cuffs are all frayed, so it wouldn’t be any use to him, but with the sleeves rolled up you wouldn’t notice.”
“You look very nice. Attractive.”
“Do I? I don’t look anything like Poll, though. She’s got a new dress, a yellow one—a kind of lemon peel colour—it looks super with her hair. She’s gone to the Reform Club with Uncle Hugh.” She had looked at him searchingly then and looked away when their eyes met. He had offered her a drink and she had said could it not be gin and lime? “I know it’s what girls all seem to drink, but I’ve always hated it, so I’ve decided to change.”
“What to?”
“What would you advise? Whisky tastes of rubber, if you ask me, and the only time I had vodka it was like an electric shock and I don’t know what else there is. Oh, I know. I like dark brown sherry. I really like that.”
“Did you go to work today?”
“You bet! Noël doesn’t consider that it is a particular day at all. They aren’t even celebrating. They are spending the evening reading somebody called H. L. Mencken aloud to each other. It is a very mature way of dealing with peace, don’t you think?”
“A bit dull, too, I should have thought.”
“Me, too. Are we really going to go to Buckingham Palace and wait for the King and Queen to come out? Will they, do you think? I’ve never actually seen them, except on news reels.”
“I thought we might. It is a night to remember.”
But by the time they’d had dinner (which he had thought they’d had quite early enough), the crowds were so thick that it took them ages to get anywhere near the Palace, although everyone was so good-tempered that it was possible to edge nearer by degrees. Showers of golden stars from rockets occurred in the lavender-coloured sky and the Palace was floodlit, and round the statue of Queen Victoria an enormous snake of people were dancing the hokey-cokey, singing and stamping their feet, and beyond, near the railings, people were chanting, shouting for the King. There were thousands of them, so many indeed and sometimes so tightly packed that they had held hands all evening in order not to get parted, and sometimes they had to shout to each other to be heard, but sometimes they simply sang whatever everyone else round them was singing: “Land of Hope and Glory,” “God Save the King” and bits of the hokey-cokey. When they had seen the Royal Family standing on the balcony and waving, he thought that perhaps they should call it a day, but she wanted to wait for them to come out again, and she was so excited that he had not the heart to refuse her. Eventually, long after it was dark, they did come out again—just the King and Queen this time—no princesses. “I suppose they’ve been sent to bed, poor things,” Clary said. After that, she agreed that they’d better start for home.
“You’d better come back with me,” he had said. “I live nearer than you, and we’ll never get a cab.”
At Hyde Park Corner, he said he would have to sit down for a bit, so they went into the bit of park that ran down to Knightsbridge and found an empty bench, and he smoked, and that was when she told him that she knew about Polly.
“It came up because I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t all spend this
evening together,” she had said. “Poor Poll, she made me promise not to laugh. As if I would about anything that was so serious to her. It’s a good thing she told me because I’d known for a long time that things weren’t all right, and tonight I reminded her that we’d made a pact—ages ago—to tell each other things that were important. And, of course, when she remembered that, she had to tell me. It’s funny, isn’t it? You can know that something is completely ridiculous, but if you see it isn’t to the other person, it almost seems not to be.”
“Is that how it struck you?”
“Well. Well, not that somebody shouldn’t be in love with you, but they ought to be more your age, oughtn’t they?”
He had opened his mouth to say a whole lot of things and then shut it again. “I suppose I seem incredibly ancient to you.”
“No, not incredibly, at all. In fact, you don’t seem to have aged at all since I met you.”
“Thanks for that.”
They could not see each other as it was now dark and the nearest street lamp yards away. After a short silence, she said, “Sorry.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know how, but I feel I’ve hurt your feelings. I did say to Poll that I thought you weren’t the marrying kind.”
“Did you?”
“Well, I mean, here you are not married to anybody. It was to help her get over it. Of course she will, but she doesn’t believe that. People do, don’t they?”
“Get over being in love?”
“If it’s hopeless.”
“Oh, yes, I should think they usually do. I’m really sorry about Poll. I’m very fond of her, you know.”
“She knows, but she says it’s the wrong kind of fond … I can see that. I can see that burning antagonism might be a better start.”
A moment later, she said, “You have got a funny croaky laugh, Archie.”
Without thinking, he said, “You have.”
“Have what?”
“Aged since I met you.”
“Oh,” she had said at once. “I see what you were minding. You were minding me implying that you were old. All I meant was that you were far too old for Polly.”
He’d suggested then that perhaps they’d better resume hobbling home.
When, at last, they had got back, she’d wanted to make some cocoa, so he told her to go to bed and he’d bring her some.
She was sitting up in his bed, wearing his pyjama jacket, her face looking as though she had scrubbed it with soap and water.
“I used some of your toothpaste and my finger,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
He put the mug into her hands and sat on the edge of the bed—to take the weight off his feet.
“Do you know what this reminds me of?”
“Of course I don’t. What?”
“When I was quite young—well, about thirteen—Neville had an asthma attack because he said I’d woken him up because I had a bad dream and went into Ellen. Well. Dad came in with a mug of hot milk and I didn’t want to drink it because of the skin, and he picked it off and ate it for me. That showed love, didn’t it?”
He looked at the crinkling top of her mug, put out two fingers, picked it off and ate it.
“There,” he had said. “You’re still loved.”
“Copycat,” she said, but her eyes sparkled with affection and pleasure. She drank some of the cocoa, then she put the mug aside on the table.
“There is something,” she said slowly, almost as though she wasn’t quite sure what it was, “something—about Dad that I wanted to talk to you about. Well—discuss, you know?” She drew her knees up and clasped her arms round them: holding herself together, he thought, as anxiety stirred in him.
“Right,” he said with an assumption of cheerfulness and calm.
“You needn’t be anxious, Archie. This is what it is.” She took a deep breath and said rapidly, “After the invasion last year, I thought, you see, that he would be bound to come back: I mean there would be no Germans to stop him. And then, when he didn’t I thought that probably he had got some sort of war job—I don’t know what, but something—which meant that he had to stay until the peace. And now, we’ve got that. So what I thought was, that it might be best if I made a sort of date, and if he hasn’t come back by then, I will have to understand that he never will. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and when Zoë tried to give me all his shirts last weekend, I only took the really worn ones, because taking the others would be like giving in. So I thought if I made a sort of pact with you, and set a date, that this would be sensible.” At the word sensible her eyes filled. She cleared her throat. “I thought as this would be an easy date to remember for both of us, a year from now?”
He nodded. “Good idea,” he said.
“It is odd. I used to mind about him so awfully because of me. Because I missed him so much. But it seems to have turned into something different. I do miss him, of course, but I mind it more for him, because I wanted him to have a good life and all of it—not be cut off. It isn’t that I don’t still love him.”
“I know. I know it isn’t. I think,” he said; he was finding it difficult to say anything, “that what’s happened is that you’ve grown up, and your love has grown up with you.”
“You mean, more adult?”
“More mature,” he said, smiling at her favourite word. “I’ve known quite a few adults who weren’t remarkable for their maturity.”
“Really?” He saw her savouring this new and clearly pleasing notion.
He remembered now how, when he’d suggested that he leave her to sleep, she had said, “After all, darling Archie, I’ve always got you,” and turned her face up to him to be kissed good-night—like someone not far off thirteen.
His leg ached—perhaps he was getting old: was he? With the war over, he could go back to the sun, to France and painting: would he? For so long he, like, he supposed, everyone else, had thought of the end of the war as the beginning of a new and wonderful life, or at least the resumption of an old and comfortable one. Now he wondered whether for most people it would be either. He thought of what Hugh had said about Edward, and tried to imagine how Villy would deal with being abandoned if that were to happen; he thought of the Duchy having to leave her beloved garden if they resumed living in London—and surely that house would be too large for them once the descendants had all gone back to their own houses? He thought of Zoë coming to terms with both her husband’s and her lover’s deaths: he had been moved by her courage, but then he thought that they were all a brave lot: the Duchy with her stoic acceptance of losing Rupert, the Brig with his gallant determination not to be beaten by blindness, Polly with her courage in telling him that she loved him and in her response to his rejection … and finally Clary, asleep next door, whose love, unquenched by time or reason, had transmuted from need and fantasy to some purer and more enduring substance that in its turn could only inspire admiration—and love.
Lying in the dark he made a pact with himself. If Rupert did not return, he would pledge himself to taking his place so much as was possible. If Rupert came back, however, he might embark upon a very different course.
He had refused the offer of a bunk in one of the two cramped little cabins below, and now sat forward with his back to the wheelhouse which protected him from the following wind. It had been dark when they left Guernsey (just as well, since he had no papers of any kind and it had been easy to slip aboard with the seaman who had befriended him). “Just keep your head down, and do as I say,” he had admonished. He had been stowed below until the boat sailed, and very stuffy it had been—he’d sat on the bunk, which was covered with a heavy damp blanket in pitch dark in the cabin that reeked of diesel oil, wet oiled wool and English cigarettes. They’d sailed at four o’clock in the morning and when they were well out of the harbour his friend rapped on the door and said it was all clear. It was good to get out into the fresh, salty air, and he watched the small yellow light in the harbour master’
s hut twinkle and recede and go out in the increasing distance. After about an hour one of them came round with thick white mugs of tea with milk and sugar in it—he hadn’t drunk tea for nearly five years. When he said that, they smiled: they’d treated him with a kind of patronizing protectiveness ever since he’d mentioned Dunkirk—he wasn’t sure whether they believed him, were sorry for him or thought he was mad. The seas ran slap on their quarter in strong, but not steep waves, and the small boat chugged and plunged steadily forward. Soon after it was light, he fell into a stupor: he had hardly slept since he left, which was thirty-six hours ago now; his skin itched with fatigue. They woke him for dinner at noon: some sort of stew with mushy peas much in evidence and a thick chunk of rather grey bread. The sky was overcast, although far away patches of sea glittered fitfully from distant sunlight. He slept again and woke in the late afternoon to a watery sun and a fresher wind. They had spread an oilskin over him and he realized that it had been raining—his hair was wet. He was ravenously hungry, and grateful for another mug of tea and a huge sandwich with some sort of tinned meat in it. They also gave him a packet of Weights to smoke. They watched him light his first one, and then one of them said, “E’s bin to sea all right. Wouldn’t only use one match else.” They had left him alone after that and he’d been grateful. He thought he wanted to think, to imagine what he was going back to, to envisage a little of the future but he seemed incapable of thought and his imagination ranged wilfully from Zoë’s face at his return to her face when he had left her—lying in the high carved old bed against the big square pillows that were cased in coarse white cotton—her long dark hair combed out after her labour, the baby tightly swaddled beside her. She had tried to smile at him as he stood by the door and that effort had so poignantly reminded him of Isobel when she had been dying after Neville was born, that he had gone back to her, to take her once more and for the last time in his arms. It was she, after kissing him, who had pushed him gently away, had propelled him into this future that he was embarked upon. She had kept her word, had not tried to make him stay: she had simply wanted him to see the child. Leaving had not been easy, and returning, although it had all the trappings of a happy ending, would mean the reunion with a number of people he loved, some of whom must have become strangers. Clary, for instance, would be nineteen? No, nearly twenty! A young woman—far removed from the little girl who had so passionately needed him. And Neville, he must now be at public school, his voice broken, his asthma perhaps outgrown. But Zoë—how would she be? Had she waited for him all these years, or had she succumbed to somebody else? He must not expect too much: and then he remembered that that was what he had always said to himself about her. She would still be beautiful, he was sure of that, but he had learned to discover beauty in other aspects. Would his parents still be alive? Could he bear to go back into the wood business—to the house in London, the dinner parties, the business entertaining, the family weekends, the occasional holiday abroad, to giving up the idea of painting for the second time in his life? She had found him some materials, to draw with, at least, and once a small box of watercolours that he had used until there was nothing left. He would have gone mad during those first years, when she had constantly to hide him and he could not go out or go far or speak to anyone, if he had not been able to draw.
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