Echoes of Yesterday

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘You’re forgetting something, aren’t you, old scout?’ said Polly.

  ‘Yes, of course, so I am,’ said Sir Henry. ‘He was sightless for four years.’

  ‘He didn’t know the woman, Cecile Lacoste, had had his child. If he had, that would have made things difficult for him. As it was, I imagine he made the very reasonable decision that a blind man had absolutely nothing to offer a woman. And in any case, when the war ended he was already married to Emily.’

  ‘Who took him on without knowing he would recover his sight, Polly.’

  ‘My God, don’t you think I would?’ said Polly.

  ‘Polly, all these years—’

  ‘I know,’ said Polly, ‘I know. I should have found someone else. Well, I haven’t been able to do that, have I? I’m an idiot, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not to me, Polly,’ said Sir Henry. ‘You’ve stuck to your guns, by George.’

  ‘Some guns,’ said Polly, ‘they haven’t fired a single shot, old love. The target’s always been out of range. My God, Emily’s still got him, and Cecile Lacoste had him, and how has that left me? Deprived.’

  ‘Boots cares for you, Polly, damned if he doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s the swine of it,’ said Polly. ‘Why the devil didn’t he do to me what he did to Cecile Lacoste when we were both in Albert at that time? Ye gods, old sport, we were almost within touching distance. Now I have to tell him what happened when he placed himself within definite touching distance of Cecile Lacoste.’

  ‘And what will he say, I wonder?’ mused Sir Henry.

  ‘Oh, he’ll say something like “Is that a fact, Polly old girl?” And I daresay he’ll then ask who’s going to tell Emily while he catches the boat train to France. If I know him, it’ll be something like that, but of course it won’t represent what he feels. He’s got this devilish ability never to give anything away. If I ever stood on Putney Bridge and threatened to jump into the river unless he became my lover, I think he’d say, hold on a tick, Polly, while I take my shoes off, and then I’ll jump in with you, it’s a nice day for a swim.’

  ‘I doubt if he’ll react quite like that when you tell him he has a daughter in France,’ said Sir Henry.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Polly, ‘but I’m suffering all the sarcastic prejudices of a woman livid with jealousy, so I have to speak like one, don’t I?’

  ‘Understood, Polly. But you and Boots share a very special friendship. Don’t tear it up. When will you speak to him?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ said Polly. ‘Emily always goes shopping on Saturday afternoons, and I need to speak to Boots alone.’

  The family had been back a week from Salcombe, and, after Saturday lunch, Emily and Rosie departed for the Streatham shops. Tim went out to play cricket for his school team, Mr Finch took a walk to the Herne Hill hardware shop, and Boots began to mow the lawn.

  Chinese Lady answered the doorbell.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Miss Simms,’ she said. ‘My, don’t you look nice and summery?’

  Polly, in a cool white linen dress and a light brimmed hat that circled her head, smiled and said, ‘Hello, Mrs Finch, did you all enjoy Salcombe?’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Chinese Lady, always well aware that Emily considered Sir Henry Simms’s daughter a threat. She herself considered the threat could be yoked by maintaining close ties with Polly, who had indeed become a long-standing friend of the family. Closing the door as the visitor stepped in, Chinese Lady said, ‘Well, I must say Salcombe was nice. I used to like Margate and still do, but a change is good for all of us, I always say. But that Boots and the sailin’ boat he hired, well, you never saw such a hullabaloo day after day with all the young ones, and that son of mine in the middle of it with me husband, and even takin’ his shirt off at times, and of course he wasn’t wearin’ any vest. Em’ly spoke very strict to him once about the way he was showin’ himself off, but you know what Boots is – it’s like talking to a puff of air. Oh, I forgot to ask what you’ve called for and if I can ’elp.’

  ‘Is Boots at home, Mrs Finch?’ asked Polly. She and Boots’s mother had a strangely compatible relationship. Chinese Lady, always very admiring of Polly’s war record, couldn’t help liking her. And Polly, who saw Chinese Lady almost as a caricature of a cockney Victorian, nevertheless held her in almost affectionate respect. And why not? Polly had no social prejudices, and she recognized without reservation that Boots’s remarkable mother had brought up three sons and a daughter in a way that had made them assets to the world.

  ‘Boots is in the garden,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘he’s mowin’ the grass. Oh, lor’, if he’s got his shirt off—’

  ‘I’m very broadminded, Mrs Finch, and I shan’t run for cover,’ smiled Polly.

  ‘Well, I suppose it could be a bit hot out there, but all the same it’s not what I like, men takin’ their shirts off in public. Of course, a garden’s more private, but there’s still proper ways to behave. I’m sure you wouldn’t ever do what you know wouldn’t be proper.’

  ‘I could be trusted not to take any of my clothes off in public, Mrs Finch,’ said Polly, who knew, of course, that that wasn’t what Boots’s mother meant.

  ‘My, the very idea, I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ said Chinese Lady. ‘You’re a born lady, Miss Simms, and you always behave like one. You can go through.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Polly, ‘I do have something I need to talk about with Boots.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Chinese Lady, who could keep an eye on things through her kitchen window if she felt she needed to.

  Boots, running the mower over the lawn, had indeed taken his shirt off. The August afternoon was very hot. Polly, emerging from the kitchen on to the flagstones, saw him in the golden light in just a pair of old brown slacks and shoes. His dark brown hair, thick at the temples, needed a brush. His bare chest was brown from the Devon sun and sea air, his long legs executing a kind of lazy amble behind the mower. Polly winced. There he was, a man smug with self-satisfaction, no doubt. Smug, though? No, that was her sour grapes surfacing. No-one could ever call him that. But he did at least always have the air of a man who never allowed problems to disturb him. They might rack other people, but not him. Well, perhaps for once he would be racked.

  ‘Boots?’

  He stopped pushing the hand-mower and turned.

  ‘Hello, Polly old girl, where did you spring from?’

  Ye gods, the casualness of him.

  ‘From a French cowslip,’ she said.

  ‘French?’ said Boots, picking his shirt off a garden chair on his way over to her. Slipping it on, he said, ‘Have they got cowslips in France, then? I can’t remember seeing any.’

  He stood before her, a half-smile on his face, his eyes trying to read hers. He was very brown. So was she. They had both been in the sun.

  ‘You’re a devil, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I suppose there’s always something wrong with most of us,’ he said.

  ‘Well, how about doing wrong for a whole weekend, a whole year?’ said Polly, her piquant looks favouring her thirty-eight years. ‘Say in a country cottage?’

  ‘Happy thought, Polly. Shall we sit down? Then you can let me know why you’re here.’

  ‘You’re not going to like it,’ said Polly.

  ‘Why, are you going off to Africa again?’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘No, I damn well can’t. It’s too bloody boring.’

  ‘Who’s been upsetting you?’ asked Boots.

  ‘You have. You specialize in that.’

  ‘How have I managed it this time? I haven’t seen you for nearly a month.’

  ‘I’ll tell you. Yes, we’d better sit down.’

  ‘Would you like a drink, Polly?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Polly, ‘but I think you’d better help yourself to a large whisky, I think you’ll need it.’

  ‘I’ll make do without it,’ said Boots, as they sat down at the garden tab
le. ‘In any case, I fancy my mother will produce a pot of tea in ten minutes.’

  Tea. Cecile Lacoste had watched him make it in her parents’ farmhouse kitchen.

  ‘Listen very carefully, Sergeant Robert Adams,’ said Polly, and began to recount the events of her recent weeks in France. In painful control of herself she told him how she had attended the funeral of an old friend in Amiens, and that afterwards she had given in to a need to visit the silent places that had once known the hideous clamour of the war. She explained how she had arrived at Trones Wood. Boots, listening with interest, but with a slight frown, searched her face. ‘Don’t say anything, not yet,’ she said, and went on to describe what Trones Wood was like now, and how it had affected her. Boots shook his head. Polly went on, explaining quite clearly and in fine detail how she had finally arrived at an estaminet in Albert run by Jacques Duval. During the war, she said, his daughter Helene helped him. Now, she said, a niece of his worked and lived there. Her name was Eloise, and she was the daughter of a Frenchwoman who had had a mad, reckless and brief love affair with an English soldier.

  ‘Not uncommon, Polly,’ said Boots, but his eyes were very searching now. He knew she was not recounting all this merely to pass the time.

  ‘No, not at all uncommon,’ said Polly. The girl’s mother had died a year ago, she said, and her father had died on the Somme according to original casualty reports. Eloise had tried many times to find his grave in one of the Somme cemeteries, but without success. She wished to find it, to visit it and take flowers, because her mother had loved him very much.

  ‘Polly, what are you up to?’ asked Boots.

  ‘I speak with feeling,’ said Polly. ‘That English soldier never made love to me, never gave me the chance to have his child, never even troubled to meet me.’

  ‘Who the hell are you talking about?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Are you sure you can make do without a whisky?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Boots.

  ‘Eloise showed me a framed snapshot of the man, one her mother had taken before he left for the Somme.’

  ‘Polly?’

  ‘My God,’ said Polly, ‘how could you do it to me, make love to that Frenchwoman when I was close by, in the town itself, waiting for you, waiting to meet you?’

  Boots was silent, remembering. When had he last thought of Cecile Lacoste, the young French widow? A month ago. After he had dreamt of the Somme for the first time for many years. An engaging, teasing and attractive young woman, eager to have him make love to her. As Polly had said, it wasn’t an uncommon thing, not in that world of the dead and the dying.

  ‘Polly, are you telling me the girl Eloise is my daughter?’

  ‘What else? Boots, oh, the hell of it, sitting there, listening to Eloise, with that snapshot of you in front of me.’

  ‘Polly, you should long ago have found someone suitable.’

  ‘I don’t want someone suitable. Suitable? Ye gods, how boring. I’ve settled for friendship, haven’t I? And I’m not going to lose that. Why aren’t you up on your feet, pacing about and rending your garments? You’ve got a daughter, a flower of France, who thinks you’re dead, and you’ve got a wife and a son, and Rosie too, and they’ve all got to know about Eloise, because you can’t keep her out of your life now, can you? Do you still not need a whisky?’

  ‘No,’ said Boots.

  ‘Well, d’you want to see what your natural daughter looks like?’

  ‘Yes, Polly, I do.’

  Polly looked at him and saw the dark greyness of his eyes, and the memories there, and the ghosts of the Somme, the ghosts that were hers too. During the fourteen years she had known him, he had never in her presence let those ghosts surface. He had always kept them hidden, always told her it did no good to live in the past. She knew now that, like herself, and so many other men and women of France and Flanders, he could not forget all that the war had meant, the mud, the slaughter, the guns, the comrades, and particularly, perhaps, those who had been outstanding: men like his company commander, Major Harris.

  ‘Boots darling, I’m sorry. Oh, I’m such a bitch, aren’t I?’ She put her hand over his and pressed. ‘I’m so sorry, but I was shattered and so damned jealous. Did you love her, the Frenchwoman?’

  ‘I made love to her, yes,’ said Boots, still remembering, ‘but I don’t think I was madly in love with her. Had I been, I should have thought about her a lot more than I did, and written to her. As it was, I came out of the Somme not much good to any woman. Emily, fortunately, didn’t see it like that. As for the town of Albert, how was I to know you were there when I hadn’t even met you?’

  ‘You should have known, you should have had a feeling, you should – oh, it’s all perverse ifs and buts, isn’t it? There, the worst is over, dearly beloved, for you know now, and I shall show you a snapshot of your charming young daughter.’

  From her handbag Polly extracted the snapshot, given to her by Eloise because they’d become such good friends. She passed it to Boots, and he examined it, seeing a girl with the same engaging prettiness as her mother, but fair where her mother was Latin-dark. A smile peeped at him.

  ‘I see,’ he said, and she thought that a typical understatement of what his real feelings must be.

  ‘You can be proud, darling, she’s a lovely girl, and fun,’ said Polly.

  ‘Is that a fact, Polly? Well, someone’s going to have to tell the family, aren’t they, and I’m going to have to slip off to France, aren’t I?’

  Polly stared at him, then laughed.

  ‘Boots, oh, you old darling, what woman would want anyone else if she could have you? I knew you’d say something like that.’

  The kitchen door opened and Chinese Lady appeared.

  ‘I’m just makin’ a nice pot of tea,’ she said, ‘would you both like a cup?’

  ‘Very much, Mrs Finch,’ said Polly, ‘and I know Boots would.’

  ‘Would he? Well, yes, he does like his tea. I’ll be pourin’ in a bit and I’ll bring it out. And I must say I’m pleased you haven’t taken your shirt off, Boots, seein’ we’ve got Miss Simms visitin’. Well, I’ll be out again in a minute with the tea, then I’ll be doin’ me Saturday bakin’.’

  Chinese Lady, holding back her curiosity, disappeared and the kitchen door closed.

  ‘Your mother’s always herself,’ said Polly. ‘Boots, when will you go to France?’

  ‘I’ve already thought about that,’ said Boots. ‘I’ll catch a car ferry on Tuesday and head straight for Albert.’

  ‘Then I shall go on Monday,’ said Polly.

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Yes, I must. Eloise must be told first. You can’t simply land on her doorstep, darling. She must be given time to prepare herself for your arrival. After all, it’s going to be very emotional for her, and she’ll need all of twenty-four hours to think about what it will mean. You’ll want to bring her home with you, you’ll want her as part of your family and to have her adjust to English life. I thought myself that that was what she’d want too, but since returning, I’ve had second thoughts. Boots, you have to face the possibility that while I know she’ll be very happy to see you, she may feel she’d rather stay in France with her Uncle Jacques and his wife. She has very deep feelings about you, because of her mother, but you’ll actually be a stranger to her. So I must go in advance of you and talk to her again. Perhaps if I can catch a ferry tomorrow, I’ll go then and not wait until Monday.’

  ‘Do that, Polly, and thank you.’

  ‘Darling, I’d do anything for you, don’t you know that? Except tell your family. That’s your cross.’

  Chinese Lady brought the tea out then.

  Chapter Seven

  Mr Finch came back from his little excursion, and, later, Emily and Rosie returned from their shopping expedition. Boots then asked everyone to gather around the garden table, as he had something to tell them. Only Tim was absent. He rarely got back from his afternoon cricket match before six-thirty. Gathered
together, then, by what Emily said was the summons of their lord and master, she and Chinese Lady, as well as Mr Finch and Rosie, all gazed at Boots in expectation. Rosie’s little smile was showing. Whatever Boots was going to say, she was sure it would be either entertaining or eye-opening.

  ‘What’s this about?’ asked Chinese Lady.

  ‘The family,’ said Boots. He was over his ghosts. He never let them linger. They were best kept in limbo. He was purely concerned with Eloise. ‘We’re one short,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Tim’s not here,’ said Mr Finch, ‘but I thought you mentioned you’d speak to him by himself.’

  ‘I think I should, he’s only young,’ said Boots.

  ‘Then why did you say we’re one short, Daddy?’ asked Rosie, eyeing her father with a sudden certain feeling that something extraordinary was going to be expounded. She could read Boots better than anyone except perhaps Mr Finch.

  ‘We may stay one short, Rosie. It depends on very personal feelings. Or we may have an addition. You’ll have to forgive me, all of you, if what I tell you isn’t easily acceptable, and I’d rather tell you all together than one at a time.’

  ‘All right, lovey, get on with it,’ said Emily, ‘I just hope you’re not talkin’ about that woman with the posh yacht who kept bumpin’ into you at Salcombe. She’s got wrinkles.’

  ‘It’s a little more personal than that, Em,’ said Boots, and told them about his time on the farm before the battle of the Somme and his meeting with a young French widow called Cecile Lacoste. Chinese Lady began to look darkly suspicious. Emily sat up. Mr Finch’s eyes flickered. Rosie gazed in a kind of mesmerized fascination at Boots, who could do no wrong in her eyes. He spoke quite candidly about his feelings for this young Frenchwoman, feelings affectionate but short of actually being in love with her. Even so, it led to him making love to her.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Chinese Lady, ‘I knew goin’ to France wouldn’t do you any good. I mentioned a hundred times that Frenchwomen don’t ’ave any respectability, I said to all our neighbours that they’d lead our soldiers on.’

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that, old lady,’ said Boots. This particular Frenchwoman, he said, spoke of waiting for him, of waiting for him to come back to her after the war ended. But how could he? He hadn’t committed himself, he hadn’t proposed to her, and he was blind, anyway. There was no point in going back to her. And the fact was, of course, that Emily was the only one he needed, and Emily came up trumps.