She heard the wireless booming unheeded in the great hall, and suddenly thought of the Portobello Road and what it must be like now. People would be clustering all down the street, wherever a wireless boomed from an open window or from a radio shop thrown open in spite of Sunday, just as they had for the King’s death and the Prince’s abdication and the Coronation, and now for Chamberlain announcing war. They would be milling round, shaking hands, crying, laughing, backing each other up, excited and exciting each other, friends and enemies welded in the shared emotion of crisis.
No one on the lawn at Astwick seemed to have come any closer because of the news which they had all heard. There was no one of her kind here, no one. Joy got up in a dither, and Mrs Drake’s terrible face looked round.
‘I’m going to church,’ she said. ‘Come along, Joyce; you can push me for a treat.’
‘No, no, I won’t!’ Joy cried, looked wildly round, and fled into the house.
The servants were all in their sitting-room listening to the wireless. She could hear it muffled through the baize with which their door was lined lest the crude noises of their relaxation should reach the other part of the house. When Joy flung open the door, they all looked round amazed, some of them chewing, and the butler stood up in silent reproval of her intrusion.
She hardly needed to look round to see that Alexander was not there. You could always sense him in a room, even behind your back. She ran away among the stone passages, in and out of larders, sculleries, cupboards, pantries, startling a girl scrubbing vegetables at a huge, archaic sink.
She could not find any bedrooms. He must be up on the tiny-windowed floor where the staff slept. She ran up the twisting back staircase and along a passage under a sloping ceiling, calling out for him, for she did not care who heard. She banged her way indiscriminately in and out of all the stuffy bedrooms and up a crooked stair to a long attic-room with six tumbled beds and six girls’ clothes overflowing from hooks and chairs on to the floor.
‘Alexander !’ Surely he would not go back to London without her? He must guess how she felt. Alexander always knew. The top floor of Astwick was like a rabbit warren; she could not find the backstairs again. Trying another way, by a ticking cistern, through a curtained door that sighed behind her as she passed, she came to an arched doorway set in the curving walls of what must be a tower-room. This was just the kind of place they would put Alexander, knowing that he was a person who saw ghosts. There was always a ghost in a tower-room; if not, Mrs Drake would order one.
Joy banged on the door. ‘Are you there, Alexander?’ and a voice, deadened by the thickness of the iron-bound door, said: ‘Yes.’
It was a round room with slotted windows that gave very little light. Alexander was lying neat as a corpse on a bed in the shadows. Oh, poor Alexander – they had given him something bad to eat, and no one had told her he was lying here ill needing her. She hurried close. He sat up with a jerk like a marionette, and it wasn’t Alexander at all, but an old, old something with a hooded head, that leered at her and put out a groping hand.
When at last she found Alexander looking for her in the other part of the house, she ran straight into his arms as if he were a father. It was no good him telling her that she had only seen an invalid great-aunt who was given that dim room because her eyes were weak. Joy knew that she had seen the ghost of Astwick Hall. She was still slightly hysterical when they reached London, where she had to be put to bed for several days with sedatives.
4
Autumn withered into winter, and Rodney did not think much of the war. He did try at first to join up, but those were the days when a man of his age could not get into the war without pulling more strings than was dignified. The first flush of his patriotism subsided. His old leg wound, always worse in cold weather, reminded him that he had done his bit in the last war. Everyone said that this one was going to involve the civilian as much as the soldier, so where was the dishonour in remaining a civilian?
He soon grew tired of being rushed underground every time a siren sounded. It spoiled all the pleasure of shopping. Although his wine merchant had offered him a place among the select company in the cellar should London ever become completely troglodyte, Rodney was seriously considering taking Ned’s children to Canada.
Ned, being younger, and having joined the Air Force Reserve last year when Rodney had put all thoughts of war behind him, was already in uniform. So was his wife Frances, in a bowler hat and a dark blue suit full of hips and bosom, for she, with equal forethought, had joined the Red Cross last year. The children were to go to her aunt in Ontario.
Rodney was in the gratifying position of being needed in two places at once. He could either take Ned’s place in the family office, or he could play nursemaid across the Atlantic. Ned, thinking of his office, advised the latter. Frances, thinking of her children, advised the former. Both offered him equal danger, for in London he might be bombed, and at sea mined or torpedoed, so it was just a question of which offered him the least discomfort.
Once in Canada, he might stay there and do propaganda for Britain; talks and so on, and cultural goodwill, and raising funds. He tried to make Joy go with him, and she refused. He tried to make Alexander go, and he declined courteously, and in the end Ned’s children also dug in their toes, so that settled that.
Alexander had tried to join up, but had been turned down on account of his age and legs. He did not tell Rodney this, and he only spoke about it once to Joy, and then shut up like a clam when she tried to sympathize with his disappointment. She had wanted to join up herself, but Rodney would not let her. He did not want her losing all the graces he had taught her on the barrack square, or ruining her lovely hands on tarry ropes. He did not approve of women in uniform, and what about her engagement to Archie?
What indeed? She seemed to have been forgiven by the Drakes for her behaviour on Sunday, September the Third, although Mrs Drake had declared that she was unstable and would have to be overhauled before she could marry her son. The wedding, however, was postponed, for Archie had been sent to Scotland. He wrote his usual friendly letters full of news about people she did not know, the sort of letters anyone might read. He telephoned her sometimes, but was never able to say much more than ‘Speak up, darling; I can’t hear a word you’re saying.’ He tried to make Joy go up to Scotland for the weekend, but she made excuses. She did not want to have to see him yet and commit herself one way or another. She did not know yet what she was going to do about him.
Life at the flat pursued its normal course. The phoney winter war set in and Rodney was no longer shoved below every time he put his nose into Fortnum and Mason’s. The office staff managed to discourage him from taking his locum fratris duties too seriously and soon he was not going there much more often than before. He resumed his pottering orbit around the clubs and restaurants and sale-rooms, still had Lady shampooed once a week and himself twice a week, although the manicurist who knew his quicks callously deserted him for the Land. There were still plenty of people in London and plenty of food and drink, whatever the gloomers prophesied. He still gave his perfect little dinner-parties, where martial friends could relax after the rigours of the Air Ministry or the War Office. He was proud to think that he and Joy were keeping up morale by preserving the things for which England was fighting.
When Joy grew restive, he let her go and work at a club which entertained the kind of officers to whom Archie could not object. The club also ran a canteen for Other Ranks, who did not use it if they could find anywhere else open, for the helpings were too small, the tea too weak, the wireless always on the wrong programme, and the whole atmosphere too rarified. Among the small folding tables which large men had to tuck on to their laps like trays, Joy and other exquisitely groomed girls passed unhurriedly, making muddles of orders and bills, squabbling in the kitchen with older and even more muddled ladies who pushed pans about in a wrought-up way and tried not to offend the professional cook.
A girl would then come out of
the kitchen with an empty tray and say: ‘I’m awfully sor-ray but I forgot what you said. If it was ham and beans, I’m awfully sor-ray but we’ve run out.’
‘Well, what else is on then, Miss?’
‘I’II go and see. I’m not sure, actually.’ She would drift away, perhaps get deflected into the adjoining officers’ bar, and forget all about the soldier. If he had a train to catch, he would go away hungry and warn his friends against the canteen.
One day, a soldier wanting ham and beans was Norman Goldner, in enormous boots, bullet-headed and broad as an ox with his Army hair-cut and battledress. He could not help a spontaneous delight at seeing Joy, but the sight of her diamond engagement ring recollected him.
‘Aren’t you married yet?’ he asked, with a crude kind of sneer which was meant to be nonchalance.
‘No.’ Joy wished he had not come. ‘My fiance is in Scotland. He’s in the Army too, like you.’
‘Like me, like hell. I don’t think,’ retorted Norman, becoming more common out of pique at her refinement. ‘What regiment?’
‘The Coldstream Guards.’
‘He would be. A ruddy officer, of course.’
‘Well, why not? Don’t be silly, Norman, someone’s got to be. You will be soon, I expect. What are you now?’ She frowned at his sleeve. It was fashionable in her set not to know about chevrons and badges.
‘No fear,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t take a commission if they handed it me on a gold plate. I got a good job where I am, working with guns and predictors – a real treat they are. Honest, I could laugh when I think I used to fancy myself working on them piddling contraptions at the Grand Metro. This is the real thing. I tell you, Jo,’ he leaned forward, forgetting himself, ‘we’ve got the finest equipment in the world. We can lick anyone with what we got. Talk about – ’
A girl called from behind the counter. ‘Oh Joy! Neville’s asking for you in the bar. Better go through.’
Norman shut up at once. His face darkened as all the hurt and jealousy she had caused him returned. ‘You’d better go.’ He jerked his head. ‘Why do I waste my time talking to you? We’re in different worlds. Joy indeed. It makes me laugh, honest, to see you haw-hawing it about in this mucking dump. I wish you joy of it. That’s a joke, see?’
‘But what about your meal? Oh Norman, I do wish.–’
‘I’ll go to the Y.M.,’ he said. ‘I prefer the atmosphere. You get better grub anyway than in this upper-class brothel.’ He picked up his respirator and pack and clumped out, the back of his head square as a Scotsman’s, the seat of his stiff trousers sticking out; laden like a mule and shod like a cart-horse.
Joy was haunted by this, possibly the last sight she might ever have of him. Ashamed, she went home early, threw her hat at Rodney and said: ‘I’m not going to the club any more. I’ve told Lady B. I want to do some real war work. I want to go and make a gun.’
Rodney shook out the evening paper where her hat had crumpled it and said: ‘Don’t be absurd, child. We had all that out when you were so hysterical at the beginning of the war. You’re much more use where you are, being decorative. What do you know about guns, anyway? You wouldn’t be any help.’
‘I could learn. Other people do. Julie Harman can weld. Her mother told me, that poor old dame who always burns the toast. People say machinery’s fascinating. I might get quite good at it, and think how marvellous if one was making something that our soldiers were actually going to use.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’ Rodney’s pained eyes looked over the paper. ‘You make me squirm with that Our Brave Boys stuff.’
‘I don’t care. It makes me squirm being at the futile club. I can’t think how I’ve stuck it so long. I’m going to the Labour Exchange to-morrow.’
‘No, no, you mustn’t do that! Do it the right way if you must do it.’ He knew Joy well enough to realize when she was going to be intractable. ‘I’ll get hold of someone and ask what’s the best thing for you to go into.’
‘I’m sick of always knowing people. Why can’t I find a job on my own like other girls do?’
‘Like the girl you used to be?’ he asked. ‘Don’t forget you came to me of your own accord. You wanted to be Joy Stretton, and you must go on behaving like her. You cannot eat your cake and have it, as the loathsome expression is.’
The least objectional thing he could find for her was to be a trainee in a Government engineering school, which was supposed to qualify you for a superior job. The place was clean and newly equipped. The idea of Joy learning to be a fitter was abhorrent, but at least it was not quite so bad as messing about in an actual factory.
At first, it seemed to Joy like an actual factory. She felt quite important. She enjoyed getting up in the dark and going off with a season ticket on the workmen’s train to Perivale. Alexander would not let her have an alarm clock. He insisted on getting up even earlier and waking her with tea, as impeccably dressed at six a.m. as he was at six p.m. Not that one could imagine Alexander in dressing-gown or dishabille. Once when he had flu, he had kept his bedroom door locked to everyone but the doctor and only crawled into the kitchen when the coast was clear to keep himself alive on hot milk.
He made her have a proper breakfast at the kitchen table before seeing her into the lift with his blessing, handing her her overall and packet of sandwiches as ceremoniously as four hours later he would hand Rodney his umbrella and Times. He approved of her going to Perivale. When she came home, he gave her an enormous tea, whether Rodney were back or not, and she would have a second tea when Rodney had his. She had not worked for a long time, and it made her hungry.
Not that they worked very hard. They were only there from seven until two, or from two until nine if they were on the late shift. Much of that seven hours was spent at the tea bar, or in the cloak-room, or fooling about. Sometimes they downed tools to listen to someone giving a talk on how they were being equipped to serve their country in her hour of need. You were exhorted to work, but no one made you work. It was rather fun really, and it was run by the Government, so Joy supposed it must be all right, although they did not seem to do much.
They did not make anything. They scraped away at small pieces of metal, measuring them hopefully with a micrometer to find that they had scraped away too much and must throw away the metal and start again. Even when you had achieved something that was passably the right size and shape, there was still nothing to do with it but throw it away, unless you took it home proudly and gave it to your mother. Everyone did this the first time; after that they lost their pride.
Joy worked at a bench with eight girls. They never stopped talking all day long, and there never seemed to be a minute of the day when you could look round and not see at least one of them doing her hair or putting on lipstick. The school issued butcher-blue overalls, but most girls preferred to wear their own, rivalling each other in the chic of their dungarees. Bettine Blair, who had been a film starlet, had a different overall for every day of the week except Saturday and Sunday, when, being a kind of Government department, the school was closed. Once, her publicity agent sent down a photographer, and she posed with file and hack-saw. Then she was taken to the welding section and was posed in a mask and gauntlets and had to. be shown how to hold the iron by the star welding pupil, who managed to get his face into the picture, although the photographer kept waving him away.
Two of the other girls were Army wives who talked a lot about their husbands, which was quite impressive until you saw the husbands’ photographs. Another was a mannequin, two were secretaries, one was a pilot’s wife, a fierce little thing who left soon because they would not let her work any faster, and one was another floating girl like Joy.
The class had all started together, and they all became disillusioned about the same time, when they discovered how long it took to get through the course and be allowed to go to a proper job. Then they all, except the pilot’s wife, became mildly cynical and settled down to draw their wages and get what fun they could out of the pla
ce.
Their instructor was called Rupert Hemingway. He was only called Mr Hemingway for the first day. After that he was Roop, and presently Darling, or Sucker or Honey according to taste. He did not care. He had answered an appeal for skilled workmen and having had through his hands six sets of girls none of whom, he could see, would ever be competent fitters whatever he taught them, he was now quite resigned to the waste of his skill. The idea of teaching these dolls in three months one tenth part of what it had taken him twenty years to learn in a fitting shop made him laugh, honest it did. When they would not pay attention, or giggled, or drew pictures of him while he was delivering his little lectures, he said: ‘O.K. Don’t listen. I don’t care. I’m paid to tell you about the gravity of metals. Well, I’ve told you.’
‘Isn’t it nearly tea-time?’ someone would moan.
‘Ten minutes to go, but it don’t make much odds. Scram, the lot of you and give us a chance to get a pipe going.’
They learned elementary mathematics in a proper class-room with rows of desks and a blackboard and a teacher with a walrus moustache and a pointing rod longer than himself. It was surprising how much one had forgotten since school. Much gusty sighing arose over fractions, and long divisions brought cries of dismay. Joy sighed and cried with the rest, and sucked her pencil, or wrote letters, while the little old teacher, his hand dry as summer earth from centuries of chalk and dusters, pottered and peered among them, and tied himself in knots trying to explain decimals to some girl who was destined to go into a factory and pull the same lever for the rest of the war without enquiring what she was making.
From time to time there were examinations. There was much agonizing beforehand, but on the day, no matter how lopsided your bevels, nor whether one could, as Rupert said, drive a bus between your male and female square, you passed, because taxpayers’ money had been spent on you and there must be something to show for it.
Joy and Josephine Page 36