‘Well, everyone says so, don’t they?’ Joy thought she had said something quite safe and sensible. ‘I’ve always thought – ’
‘I shall look it up,’ said Mrs Drake and manoeuvred herself from among the chairs and tables, while male guests sprang up to offer sycophantic help, which they knew she would not accept. She was a great one for looking things up, and would frequently bowl away from the dinner table in mid-conversation to return with some enormous volume out of which she read facts dryly to prove someone wrong.
When she had returned from the library and proved Joy wrong now, she fell to reading in the hound book as if no one else were there. Her poor-relation attendant, Eileen Thom, who always sat on the outside edge of groups, came forward on tiptoe to give second cups of tea, for Mrs Drake would obviously pour no more and the Girls had never been allowed to pour out in that house. Eileen was not really allowed to either, but her solicitude outweighed the risk of Mrs Drake looking up. She could not bear to see anyone wanting something they could not get, and went through agonies sometimes at dinner because she saw the guest on Mrs Drake’s left looking wistfully at the salt which she had barricaded behind her right elbow.
It was a large and unexciting house party. There was a friend of Freda’s who had come for the shooting – a platonic friend, because her paramours were not the kind she could invite to the house. There was a square, polite couple, whose name Joy never got right during the whole week-end, a deaf old. Law Lord, who was inclined to pin you into corners with stories and beside whom General Drake, sopping cake crumbs in his tea, seemed quite brisk. There were a few of those clean girls and men called Freddie and Bunty and Lady Mary and Spike, who were handed from house party to house party like ballast, playing general post with their love affairs. Occasionally two of them would drift into marriage, and there would be yet one more house for the others to stay at.
The Girls were there, and Aunt Lily, and a few great-aunts and elderly second cousins to whom Astwick was a home of rest for tired horses. Joy wondered whether, in her time, she would ever be able to winkle the Drake relations out of all the little upstairs rooms in which they were ensconced like worms in an old beam.
There was no Bishop this time, but a Member of Parliament whom Joy steered clear of because he looked clever. However, he knew better than to talk politics in this house. When, answering a question from a guest not so well trained, he said yes, things did look pretty sticky and he might be recalled at any moment, Mrs Drake’s head shot up and the hound leapt to its feet with a yelp as she banged the book shut.
‘Don’t panic, Robert,’ she said. ‘If there’s got to be a war, there will be. Babbling about it won’t help.’ (Although no one had said a word about it yet.) ‘I’ll have no alarmist talk in my house,’ she said, and wheeled herself away like Queen Victoria not being interested in the possibilities of defeat.
After tea, Archie went to the stables to look at the hunters up from grass.
‘Shall I come?’ asked Joy.
‘If you like. Oh, yes, of course darling, do.’ He went off talking to Freda’s narrow-headed friend, so Joy went back with Aunt Lily to the Dower House, where she had a happy time going through the linen cupboard. All too soon, the dressing bell tolled across the Park and she had to go back, swishing her feet through the wet grass and thinking how lovely the country would be without people in it. It might be rather nice to be someone who camped, but she couldn’t see Archie in a tent somehow, or a caravan. He was too tall and he would always be wanting to have people in for drinks. He would find someone wherever they went. He always knew someone.
Even Mrs Drake could not ignore the headlines next day, but the talk was still more of cubs and coveys than of war. Mrs Drake had all the papers beside her at the breakfast table and only handed them out in dry weather when she was feeling mellow. Otherwise you had to be content with her reading out any bit of news that made her go ‘Ach!’ and wait your chance to pop out from behind a bit of armour later on and seize a paper the moment she left the room. She sat at the table from the beginning of breakfast at half-past eight until half-past nine, when the table was cleared whether everyone had come down or not.
After breakfast, to her great disgust, the Member of Parliament bowed over her hand and said that he had been recalled to Westrninster. He did not mind when she accused him of trying to be dramatic. Perhaps, thinking of what was to come, he was enjoying the drama while it was still bloodless. Driving away from the house, feeling anxious but pleasantly important, he saw a girl in a bright green dress sitting on one of the gateposts that divided the drive from the steep avenue. It was that pretty little red-haired girl of Archie’s, such an unlikely candidate for the great bunch of keys which dangled from Mrs Drake’s chair.
The girl jumped down with a swirl of her short dress and waved to him to stop. She leaned in at the window. Yes, she was extraordinarily pretty when you saw her close to. He had not really noticed last night with all those people there and Joy sitting in a corner being instructed in petit point by Mavis.
‘I wanted to say good-bye,’ Joy said. ‘I’m sorry you’ve got to go.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘So am I. I hope we’ll meet again. Will you ask me to stay at the Dower House when you’ve settled in – that is, if the Nazis haven’t settled in first?’
Joy caught her breath. ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you. Is there really going to be a war? I can’t believe it.’ Living with Rodney had not prepared her, for he was still convinced that someone would stage another Munich and everything would be all right again.
‘A war?’ he said. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘It’s terrifying.’ Joy held on to the side of his car, ‘but no one here will talk about it, not even Archie. He thinks I’m hysterical if I worry. I can’t understand why they don’t.’
He laughed. ‘You will when you know the family better. They’ve got a distorted view of the relative importance of things. It’s not that they haven’t faced the idea of war. They’ve done that, I expect, and put it in its place. When it comes, they know what they’ll do. They’ll be the backbone of the country, just as they were last time, and the old boy will go snorting back to the War Office and the old girl will run Astwick as a hospital again, and God help the patients.’
‘Will it be as bad as last time, do you think?’ Joy had never been able to believe all the stories Mrs Abinger told.
‘As bad? My dear,’ said the M.P., who could not help showing off a little before her attentive, dazzling eyes, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet. The last one was hopscotch compared to the holocaust Hitler’s got up his sleeve, but you’ll never get your future family-in-law to worry about that, so you might as well save the wear and tear on your nerves. They’re rooted too securely even to visualize insecurity. That old beech there – look, there’s his root at least ten feet away, and they probably go as deep. He doesn’t worry about whether he’ll be cut down. He can’t imagine the axe having any more power over him than the storms he’s stood up to for hundreds of years. Same with the Drakes. If the old girl were going to have her head chopped off by a storm trooper, I don’t suppose she’d worry until she actually felt the steel hit her neck.’
‘Yes,’ said Joy dubiously, and stepped back. ‘Well, thanks a lot. That was all I wanted to know.’
‘You’re welcome. Good-bye again. Let’s meet in town sometime.’
‘Yes, do let’s,’ said Joy. ‘I’d like that awfully.’ She waved until he had turned the corner, and walked back along the drive wishing he had not gone. She had nobody to talk to now, no one to tell her what to think about the war. Perhaps she ought to think like the Drakes, for had she not linked her life to them partly because of their impassive self-confidence? It was this same family assurance that all her life had attracted her to people like the Goldners, the Moores, the Grays, and made her try, by imitation, to find it herself.
She wished that Alexander were there, but he was not coming until the evening, and not then, if he tu
rned fey at the last minute.
When she got back to the house, the shooting party had gone off without her. ‘Mr Archie did look for you,’ the butler told her, as if this was an honour, ‘but you were nowhere to be seen. He left orders that you were to be brought on with the lunch.’
‘Oh dear.’ Joy felt depressed. ‘I hope he didn’t put it quite like that.’
‘I beg pardon, Miss?’
‘I mean, it sounds as if I were a cheese straw.’
‘Oh, I don’t think he meant it like that, Miss,’ said the butler, who was quite a kind man stultified by twenty years’ service at Astwick, ‘He thought it would be nice for you to go along in the brake and have the lobster and champagne, and the cold grouse pie that is such a feature of our shooting luncheons. Her ladyship is going. There will be no luncheon served here.’
Joy supposed he would have fainted if she had said: ‘Then I won’t go. I’ll have tea and a bun.’ She probably would not have got it. A six-course meal at the right time yes, but it was as difficult to get a cup of tea at the wrong time in this house as it would have been to get champagne at the Corner Stores, where a day without at least four cups of tea between meals was a cheerless one indeed.
‘I understand,’ said Mrs Drake’s butler, ‘that Sir Rodney Cope’s Mr Alexander is arriving to-day. Is that correct?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Joy. ‘Mr Archie thought you might like to have him to help you to-night with all these extra people. He’s coming on the five ten. Did Mrs Drake order a car to meet him? I asked Mr Archie to ask her.’
‘Madam has ordered no car,’ said the butler, as if he were about to sing ‘Miss Otis Regrets.’
‘Oh, but-’
‘There is a bus, you know, Miss, that meets the train.’
‘Yes, but it’s always full on a Saturday. You know that, and so does she, I bet.’
‘People have walked that two miles from the station, Miss,’ he said, shocked by her speech.
‘But he’s got bad legs! They ache terribly when he walks.’
‘Oh dear, Miss Joy.’ The butler came down to earth at once, reacting humanly as she had thought he would. ‘I am sorry to hear that.’ He had nothing against Alexander, who was an artist at his work and gave no trouble with the girls, although he had been a little tiresome about the ghost, which no one but an under housemaid had ever complained of seeing.
‘Well, can’t you get a car sent?’
‘Me?’ His eyes bulged. ‘It would be as much as my position is worth, even after twenty years.’
‘I don’t know how you stand it.’ Joy flounced angrily off to get ready for the picnic. She would have to go, but she would sneak away when they got back and take Archie’s car to fetch poor Alexander.
She sulked at the picnic, but nobody noticed. The General had peppered a beater and was in disgrace. No one would speak to him, so Joy went and talked to him to spite them, but nobody noticed.
Joy was glad to find that they were starting for home in plenty of time for her to get Archie’s car out again after he had put it away, and meet Alexander’s train. Mrs Drake was issuing orders about who should go in which car, from the arms of the chauffeur and footman who were carrying her to hers.
Archie, who had hardly paid any attention to Joy all day, now came and put his arm through hers. ‘Count us out, mother,’ he said. ‘Joy’s coming with me. I haven’t seen her all day, and I’m going to take her to Woodstock.’ He turned, expecting to see her look pleased, but her face had fallen.
‘Why, Archie?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to go to Woodstock.’
‘Not if it’s to go and see that mare I promised I’d try and get you? I’ve at last persuaded Higgins to sell. She’s an absolute little topper, darling, you can’t fault her for breeding or performance. She’s just what I wanted for you: hunts like a demon and hacks like an angel.’
‘It’s sweet of you, darling, but couldn’t we go to-morrow? I – I’ve got a bit of a head actually.’
‘I knew you would if you sat in the sun. You’ll be all right in the car. We can’t go to-morrow, because it’s Sunday. What’s the matter? You don’t look very bucked. I thought you’d be thrilled.’
‘Oh, I am, but – wouldn’t it be better to go when I’m dressed so I can try her?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I can try her for you. We don’t want to go all the way home now for you to change. Come on. Look, if you really have got a head, I’ll go on my own. I daren’t leave it, because he may let someone else have her. I know that old devil.’
She might as well go with him if he were taking his car, because she could not drive any of the others in the garage. ‘I’ll come,’ she said, ‘of course. Thanks awfully, darling. It’s sweet of you.’ Belatedly ashamed of her ingratitude, she gave him a quick kiss, and Mrs Drake, who had bidden her coolies pause while she listened to the interchange, spurred them on.
Alexander was furious. Although she had looked for him, penetrating as far as she dared among the roasting smells beyond the buttery screen, Joy had not seen him before dinner, but she knew, the minute she saw his hand come over her shoulder with a soup plate, that he was furious. The bus must have been full.
She tried to catch his eye, but he was being his most aloof, sailing about with his head in the air, carrying more plates than it was humanly possible for anyone not to drop. From what she could see of his face in the shadows beyond the candlelight, he might have been serving a repugnant swill instead of Sole Véronique.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she had to keep saying to her neighbours.
She would smile and talk animatedly for a moment without the slightest idea what she was saying, and then look for Alexander again. He would not understand that it was not her fault; that she could not order a car herself. Hadn’t he said that about the gravy? They had probably given him a horrid room and he would think that was her fault, too.
It was a grand, over-indulging dinner party, but the more Joy drank, the sadder she got. She had thought Alexander would be such a comfort to her, but he had turned out to be only an extra worry. He was hating it. He would certainly go home tomorrow, so she would have to find him after dinner, to ask him what he thought about the war, if he would talk to her at all after this.
To crown everything, with the entry of the ice pudding, the quartet in the musicians’ gallery struck up the ‘Londonderry Air’, the one tune that Alexander hated above all others.
When the ladies had chased after Mrs Drake to the other end of the room, she beckoned Joy to her chair. ‘You don’t look very happy,’ she stated. ‘Aren’t you enjoying yourself, Joyce?’ She would call her that although she had been told that Joy was a Christian name, not a nickname.
‘Yes, of course.’ Joy could not yet bring herself to say Mother, although that effort would have to be made some time.
‘Well, then, look like it,’ said Mrs Drake. ‘This party is being given for you, you know, as we’ve not yet had an official celebration of Archie’s engagement.’
First Archie indulging her, and now his mother. Were they trying to make her feel bad, or what? ‘You might have told me,’ Joy said, emboldened by the arrival of Alexander with coffee and a face that grew more cheerful as he got farther away from the quartet. ‘I can’t take everything for granted like you do, and get along without talking.’
‘I know that. You talk too much.’ Mrs Drake spoke too low for the other guests to hear, but Alexander heard, and Joy’s heart lifted at the look he gave her. Would he, she wondered, put a small white pill into her coffee?
They were all sitting in the garden when they heard about it. Joy had read novels about the last war, where, on August the Fourth, the family were sitting on the lawn, and someone came up stern-lipped, and said: ‘It’s war,’ and the mother cried a little and the boys looked, as if for the last time, over the rolling hills they loved, and the father made some brave quip.
It happened just like that at Astwick, except for the last part. They were all sit
ting on the great biscuit of lawn round which the drive circled in front of the house, waiting to go to church. The General came out of the house, and Mrs Drake was just opening her mantrap mouth to tell him he had kept her waiting, when he got in first with: ‘It’s war. I’ve just heard Chamberlain on the wireless.’
‘Oh!’ Joy’s gasp was more audible because no one else gasped.
‘What are you oh-ing about?’ asked Mrs Drake. ‘We all knew it was coming, didn’t we? You’ve been fussing enough about it’
Joy wanted to cry. ‘Pull yourself together, Joyce,’ said Mrs Drake, ‘or I’ll send for cold water.’
They all took it so calmly that Joy could have screamed. Her instinct was to herd into a crowd, exclaiming, conjecturing, bewailing, reassuring each other with large talk, sharing the dread that was too much for one person to cope with alone. But no one would herd. They remained sitting exactly where they were, tossing out casual comments as if the General had done no more than announce the winner of the Boat Race. If only Aunt Lily had been there, she at least might have fluttered a little, but Aunt Lily was laid low in her chintzy four-poster at the Dower House, having done herself too well last night. Eileen, who wanted to flutter, made some craven excuse about fetching another wrap and went indoors to do it.
True, Archie did come and squat before Joy on the grass, taking both her hands in his. ‘How will you like a soldier husband?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Archie, will you have to go?’
‘Will I have to go?’ he echoed, loud enough for his mother to hear. ‘What are you talking about, darling? I’m in the Guards Reserve anyway. I shall get my commission at once.’ People began talking placidly about what they were going to do. This one was going into the Navy, this one would be a nurse, that one would give his cars. Mavis was going to do what she did in the last war, the General would come out of retirement, Freda would give her horses. She too thought in terms of the last war.
It was just as the M.P. had said. They were so rooted in security that they could not visualize Armageddon. They did not think of the ghastliness. Why Joy, who had never known war, felt its horror more than they. Or was it because she had never faced anything like this that she could not do it now, not without a few emotional heroics to help her through? If you could not be emotional at a time like this, when could you?
Joy and Josephine Page 35