It was nine pounds, nearly two weeks’ wages, but he decided to give it to her. ‘I’ll buy that,’ he said, and saw her face cloud and then clear as she said, ‘Well, it is your turn,’ and turned her attention to an array of mugs. She bought two.
While the china was being packed in yellowing newspaper by the proprietor, she wandered round the furniture. ‘Look! A Regency supper table. Goodness, what an elegant sight! It’s rosewood.’ (Of course, she knew about wood because of her father.) ‘And look at the declivities for each plate and its charming legs.’
He was amazed at how much she knew.
They carted everything into the car. It was dusk and it had begun to rain.
On the way home, she said, ‘The last time I went to those shops was with Dad,’ and fell silent and he sensed some sadness.
This time tomorrow, he thought, I shall be driving back along this road without her.
Over supper, baked potatoes and a wing of chicken for her that Mrs Hurst had cooked and some roast parsnips, she asked whether he still drew. He hadn’t – for ages.
‘You used to be jolly good at it.’
‘So did you.’
‘Nothing like you. I especially remember your owls, how good they were.’
‘You were going to go to an art school.’
‘I did. All it did was make me see I wasn’t good enough. Do you mind if I eat my bone?’
‘Of course not. I live with somebody who eats his bones.’
‘If we were characters in a novel or a play,’ she said sadly, ‘one of us, at least, would turn out to be a frightfully good painter. And if it was a bad novel, both of us would. As it is …’
‘I’m a sort of farmer—’
‘And I work in a shop,’ she finished. She put down her chicken bone and licked her fingers delicately – like a little cat, he thought. He took away their plates and laid two Crunchie bars on the table.
‘Oh! How lovely! Is this our pudding?’
‘I knew you liked them. Do you remember that day when you were sitting on a wall outside the kitchen garden and you gave me some of your bar?’
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I don’t, actually.’
‘You wore a bright blue dress and a black velvet hair-band, and you offered me some and I took too much, but then you let me have the rest of it because I’d missed tea.’
‘Funny! I don’t remember at all.’
‘I hope you still like them.’ He felt dashed that she’d forgotten.
‘Love them.’
When he suggested making tea, she gave him the two mugs she had bought. ‘One for you and one for your guests.’
‘But I don’t have any guests,’ he said, when he had thanked her.
‘Never?’
‘You’re the first one.’
‘But don’t you have – any friends here?’
‘There are the Hursts, of course. And there’s a boy who works with me, but he’s not exactly a friend.’
‘And you have Oliver,’ she said.
She said it in a protective kind of way, which somehow made him feel worse (obviously she expected him to have friends and why hadn’t he got any?). ‘I suppose I do lead a rather solitary life,’ he said.
‘But you like it?’
‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’ He did now, though. This time tomorrow she would be in London, and he would be eating supper and struggling with his Greek. He was trying to translate some fragments of Menander – Mr Milner, one of his teachers at school, had been particularly fond of Menander, and he was one of the few people Christopher had ever been able to talk to. He had never told anyone about the Greek because he was afraid it would be considered absurd, or pointless, and that then he would not want to do it any more. And if that happened, he would have nothing. But he was dreading Polly’s departure – so much that he almost wished she had never come to stay at all. He went to sleep that night telling himself that it was stupid to wish any such thing.
In the morning he woke early, as usual, to hear the rain drumming down on the roof of the caravan, and wondered what he could do to entertain her. She had said that she wanted to see the farm, but it would be too wet for that to be much fun for her. The stove had gone out – too much rain down its chimney. He got up as quietly as possible, put on his boots and a mac and went to collect wood from the pile he kept under a tarpaulin outside. When he came back with an armful she was up, wearing her trousers and dark blue jersey with a roll collar, her shining hair tied back with a piece of blue ribbon. He explained about the fire and she said if he would light the Primus she’d make the porridge while he relit it.
It hadn’t gone out for some time, and badly needed cleaning. Clouds of wood ash rose in the air as he riddled and brushed the little grate inside. He got a bucketful of ash to take outside. Then he had to go to the farm to fetch the milk and Mrs Hurst most kindly gave him a small jug of cream. ‘You’re not getting the weather we could wish for and that’s a fact,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to bring your cousin over to dinner you’re welcome.’ He thanked her and said he would see what Polly wanted to do and let her know after breakfast. He was divided between not wanting to waste the time with Polly, and worrying that scrambled eggs would not seem much of a Sunday lunch for her.
When he got back she was not in the van. Making a miserable wet trip to the privy, poor girl. He looked round his home, seeing it this morning with different, outside eyes. It really did look a dingy, drab little place, with last night’s supper things still unwashed in the sink. She had taken the porridge off the Primus and put on the kettle.
When she returned, she looked really cold: her nose was pink and her hair was dark from the rain. But somehow, in spite of the cold and seeing how cold she was, she managed to change the scene: it stopped being drab and dank, and became all right. They had the porridge and she said what a treat it was to have cream. Then, while they were doing the washing up – the supper things and breakfast – she said: ‘As it’s raining, why don’t we spend the morning cleaning your house? I’d love to – I love making everything tidy and neat.’
He began to protest – it was too boring for her, and he didn’t mind doing it later – but she took his finger and wrote ‘POLLY’ in the dust on the shelf by the sink, and said, ‘You see? It really needs doing.’
So that was how they spent the morning, and it turned out to be a good idea in every way. She was not only very good at cleaning things, she had brilliant ideas about arranging them. She took all his books off various shelves and arranged them all on one single shelf where they were not only easier to find, but looked far nicer. ‘You have a lot of Greek books,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you could read Greek. What’s this one?’
‘It’s the New Testament.’
‘Gosh! Can you read that?’
‘More or less. I was having a go at translating it. Just to see if it came out the same as it does, you know, in the English one we all have.’
‘Does it?’
‘Not always, but of course I’m not very good at it. Some Greek words have several meanings, you see, and it’s a question of which one is what was meant. Sometimes it seems different to me from the published version.’
‘I didn’t know that about you,’ she said. She seemed impressed, and he hastened to tell her that he was only a beginner and just did it for fun in the evenings.
She did other arrangements: with his china, and his kitchen things. She got him to put up hooks on the wall for hanging his saucepans and frying pan. He’d bought the hooks ages ago and never used them. She actually washed the walls before he put the hooks in – something he had never done – and the place looked lighter. He was kept busy getting water and boiling it, and finding her a rag and scrubbing brush, and going over to the farm to beg another bar of soap and to explain that they would not be able to make it for lunch. However, some time after one Mrs Hurst appeared with a basket in which were two covered plates of Sunday dinner.
‘M
y! You have been working hard! Chris won’t know himself, will you, Chris?’ He could see she approved of Polly. She offered to take the piece of carpet, give it a good shampoo and dry it out in her kitchen. ‘Don’t let your dinners get cold.’
In the bottom of the basket was a small bottle that had obviously once contained medicine, but was now filled with a very dark red liquid and labelled ‘Sloe Gin 1944’. She was always making drinks of this nature, but usually he was only given a whole bottle at Christmas.
They finished the cleaning and fetched a bowl of fresh water to wash in. Her face was smudged with grime, and when he told her so she wetted the drying-up cloth and asked him to clean her up. ‘As you don’t seem to have a looking-glass anywhere.’
He took the cloth and rubbed the marks, at first so gently that he simply seemed to spread the dirt. Use soap, she said, and he rubbed his finger on the cake and massaged it into her delicate skin and then used the cloth again and she stood completely still with her eyes looking not at him, but straight ahead. In the middle of doing it, he had the most extraordinary feeling – that she was his dearest, oldest friend and the most mysterious, unknown creature he had ever encountered. His hand was trembling, he had to swallow to keep his heart down and to quell its knocking. In those few moments he changed and nothing was as it had been before he touched her.
They both tried the sloe gin; he didn’t care for it, and he didn’t think she did either. She said it was one of those drinks that she thought one was only supposed to have very little of ‘which stops it being a drink really – it’s more like having a very rich chocolate, they’re not meant to quench one’s hunger’.
They ate the Sunday lunch, which was by then cold: it was Yorkshire pudding and some roast beef with it for Polly; Mrs Hurst knew that he didn’t eat meat, and always provided him with extra vegetables.
Then she mended one of the leather pads on the elbows of his jacket. He tried to stop her, but she insisted. He made some tea while she packed up her things: her departure loomed.
In the car, she asked him if he ever had holidays.
‘Not really. I had one this weekend because you came.’
After a pause, she said, ‘It might be nice for you to have a change sometimes. Perhaps if you went for a visit to Nora, you’d find out whether you wanted to work there.’
‘I suppose I might.’ He answered mechanically. He was so preoccupied with her – with the duality of his feelings about her – that he almost wished she wasn’t there; when they talked she was his childhood friend – his cousin – when he looked at her, her beauty surprised, assaulted, overwhelmed him each time as though it was the first. Through lunch, and when she was saying goodbye to Oliver and then walking down the track to the farmyard, he had said things to the cousin; things like thanking her for helping him so much and sending his love to Clary and yes he would thank Mrs Hurst for the lunch, but to this new beauty, this perfect stranger, he could find nothing to say.
They got to the station early (how much he wished afterwards that they hadn’t; that there had only been time to carry her case and put it on the train for her). As it was, they stood for a few moments on the platform and then she suggested that they go into the waiting room where it would be warmer. ‘Unless you want to go,’ she said. ‘You can perfectly well leave me.’ Before he could stop it, he heard himself (as though he had nothing to do with it) saying, ‘I don’t ever want to do that.’
They went into the waiting room and sat down. There was a small coal fire that glowed in the grate in a subdued manner, and wooden benches against two walls. They sat on one of these in silence, and just as it was beginning to occur to him with a curious mixture of regret and relief that she had not heard him, she said, ‘What did you mean just now?’
‘We aren’t really cousins,’ he said. He wanted to be able to think, to choose his words with enormous, delicate care, but he couldn’t actually think at all.
‘Because you mean our parents aren’t related to each other? Well, I don’t think that matters. We’ve always felt like cousins.’ She saw his face, and stopped. ‘Sorry, go on.’
‘We could be married,’ he said. ‘Do you think that you could, by any chance, consider that in some way or other? I mean not immediately, but next year – or possibly in a few months? I’d have to think of the right place to live because I wouldn’t let you put up with the caravan – it’s nothing like good enough for you and you probably wouldn’t want to be married to a farmer so I’d have to think of something else. But I would, I promise you. We could even live in London if that is what you wanted. I’d do anything. It is because I love you so much that I want us to be married, if possible,’ he added, and then suddenly came to a stop.
‘Oh, Christopher! Is that why you asked me to stay?’
‘No! I only found out today – this morning – just before lunch. I would have told you.’ He thought for a moment. ‘At least, I suppose I would. But I didn’t mean to tell you now – it just came out. I know I haven’t put it very well, but I suppose it’s the sort of thing that’s so important that that wouldn’t make much difference. Would it?’ He turned to look at her.
‘No.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said quickly before she could deny him, ‘perhaps you don’t feel like it because you haven’t thought about it.’
‘It’s not that. I couldn’t marry you but it’s not because of you. I think you’re one of the most interesting and good people I’ve known. And I think you’re extremely brave – and kind – and …’ Her voice tailed away; she couldn’t think of anything else, he thought miserably.
She put her small white hand on one of his. ‘Oh, Christopher! I don’t want to make you feel miserable, but I am actually in love with someone else.’
He might have known. ‘And you’re going to marry them.’
‘No! No, I’m not. They don’t love me. So it will never be any good.’
‘So do you think you will always love them?’
‘I don’t know. It feels as though I will.’
His eyes filled with tears at her prospect. ‘Oh, Poll! I’m really sorry. I can’t imagine anyone not loving you.’
The waiting-room door opened and a couple came in with a child in a perambulator. ‘It’s not worth it,’ the man was saying, ‘train’ll be here in a minute.’ He was heaving two suitcases that he dumped by the fire. The child wore a pixie hat and had a dummy in its mouth. The woman rocked the pram and the dummy fell out of the child’s mouth on to the floor. It started to wail and the man picked up the dummy and crammed it back.
‘Think of the germs!’ the woman said. She rolled her eyes, including Christopher and Polly in her perfunctory dismay.
‘If you want to be right in front of the train, I think we’d better start moving,’ he said. He couldn’t bear his last few minutes with her to be shared with anyone else.
But in fact they had hardly walked the short way to the end of the platform before the train appeared and he had to put her into it.
She said she had had a lovely time, thanked him, kissed him rather uncertainly, and then he was out of the train and seeing her through the thick glass window that she tried to pull down, but could not. She made a little face, and with her dark blue eyes still anxious, blew him a small kiss. The whistle sounded, the guard got on to the train and it puffed slowly away, then gathered speed so quickly that he lost count of which was her window.
He waited until the train was out of sight, then walked slowly back to the station yard. The rain had stopped; a cold grey dusk had descended.
He drove back, parked the car, and trudged up the track to the van. Oliver was waiting for him with his customary, courteous enthusiasm. He lit the lamp and opened the doors of the stove, then sat in the chair that had been hers. Everything – his books, his china – everything in the van had been touched by her, had been transformed, as she had transformed him from extreme joy to his despair. If only he had not told her, had not blurted it all out in that senseless manner simp
ly because they were early for her train – if only he had not done that, he could have held on to his astonishing happiness, could have continued to feel the new and extraordinary sensation of love that might be returned. In the end, of course, he would have had to know that she loved some idiot who didn’t love her back, but to know it so soon meant that his pure joy had lasted hardly at all whereas he could see no end to his present hopelessness. For what had he got to offer her? All he had been able to say was that he would change things – live somewhere else, do something else, vague, weak promises with no substance to them. He remembered her saying, ‘But don’t you have any friends here?’ and realizing when she mentioned Oliver that she knew he didn’t. He hadn’t been living a proper life: he’d simply run away from things he couldn’t bear, and put very little in their place. How could anyone love that? He was twenty-three and he had done absolutely nothing with his life. He remembered her saying, ‘You have to want whatever it is, or it simply won’t work.’ Well, all he wanted was Polly, to love her, all the time and for ever, to live his life for her. ‘You can’t decide to do something just because you think you ought to – your heart wouldn’t be in it,’ she had said. In a sense, he thought, she had given him his heart – the fact that it hurt so much was probably not the point.
He became aware of Oliver, standing on his hind legs with his front paws on the arm of the chair, licking the tears off his face. When his vision cleared, he saw the cardboard box, with the pink lustre tea-set that he had meant to give her, by the door of the van, perfectly obvious, but he had completely forgotten it. If he gave it now, would she think it a bribe or an attempt at one? Then he thought it didn’t matter what she thought, he had bought it simply because she had loved it and he had wanted to give her something she loved. He would still give it. Oliver was sitting now, with his head resting heavily against him, brown eyes glowing with sentiment. People laughed at sentiment, always dubbed dogs as sentimental, but sentiment was simply a part of their love, he thought as, later, he eased himself into the sleeping bag that he had provided for her, and put his head on her pillow. Sentiment would be not good if that was all, but he knew now for himself, as well as from Oliver, that it was not.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 166