by Ursula Bloom
Kay joined the bandage-rolling class at Mainwaring hospital, where Frances Lester worked as an almoner. She started Red Cross sewing parties in the rectory, serving tea with cake in 1914-15, with biscuits in 1916, and just tea in 1917-18.
Edward accepted the war with no patriotic fervour, but was always convinced that it would be a near thing, and we might even lose it. He blamed the dancing craze for it all. If Alexander’s Ragtime Band had never arrived, he was sure that there would have been no war. It was the hand of God evinced against decadence.
The young men left in a solid army for France. Those who did not join up at once, found themselves furnished with white feathers, and when she thought about it, Kay wondered if Aubrey had come in for his share of these. But she wasn’t thinking of him very much, for there was so much to be organized and planned that her days were full.
Then one March afternoon she saw Aubrey as she was cycling home from the bandage-rolling class. He was walking towards Hayworth, striding out, his face to the wind and flushed with it. He stopped at once, and she knew instinctively that he had something to tell her.
‘Kay, I’m going away tomorrow.’
‘Going away? You’re not joining up?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Although his eyes were smiling she realized that he loathed the whole idea.
‘But, Aubrey, you’re not the type; you’ll hate army life. I don’t see why you should go.’
‘I know, but the truth is that I can’t go on like this, when everybody else is serving. Biggins was killed last week. He wasn’t a bad chap, we never understood one another very well, but he wasn’t a bad sort. The atmosphere of this war is getting me down. I am collecting a wonderful assortment of those infernal white feathers, and although I laugh about it, it hurts damnably inside me. Something has got to be done.’
She didn’t know what to say, because the white feather campaign had always sickened her. ‘Poor Aubrey! It’s a topsy-turvy war, and ought never to have been, but it is some small consolation to think that once the Germans are thrashed, that will be the end of all wars.’
‘Will it? I’m not so sure. How can war end war? I don’t believe in it.’
‘Do you mean that you’re a conchie?’
He had been going to deny it, knowing only too well the unfortunate consequences of ever admitting what he felt; then remembering that it was Kay, he stopped dead. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
‘Then, Aubrey, why in Heaven’s name don’t you say so? Even if it means prison? So much better to admit the truth than to go skulking off to follow a pattern of something you despise. Anyway, you’ll make a rotten soldier.’
‘Thank you very much for that. I’m afraid you’re right. If I did go conchie ‒ and I had thought of it ‒ it would affect Mother and Frances, and you know what they’d think. Anyway, I’d loathe withering on skilly in some prison. I’ve always felt that prison did something to one mentally, something from which one never recovers.’
‘I know. I realize that too, but truly your mother and your wife oughtn’t to come into this? You can’t let other people run your life and undermine your principles; that’s what it amounts to, you know. You want to be two people, one the kind that everybody likes, the other yourself. You can’t do it, Aubrey.’
‘Imagine you, of all people, Kay, urging me to go conchie. It is against everything you feel personally, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, it is. But if you feel that way, you feel that way, and there’s no escaping from it.’
‘You’re a queer person, you know.’
‘Not really. I wouldn’t want to influence your feelings; because I’m bellicose ‒ and I am, you know ‒ doesn’t mean I despise you for having your own convictions. I do wish you luck. You’ll let me have one of the B.E.F. postcards, won’t you? And don’t forget to cross out every detail that could be of any possible interest.’
‘Of course, and you’ll think of me?’
‘Yes, I’ll think of you.’
Aubrey said, almost as an afterthought, ‘I haven’t anyone else to ask this, but that boy of Alice Herrick’s, your godson ‒ and, Kay, I can never thank you enough for that ‒ I wish you’d keep an eye on the little chap for me.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘He’s awfully like me in lots of ways.’
‘I know.’
Months afterwards she received a short letter from Aubrey, who was stationed in India. He had been sent there in a clerical department, and, reading between the lines, Kay gathered that he had proved himself to be utterly unsuited to the army, so that he had been shunted into what he now found to be quite a pleasant backwater. He liked Simla. The pukka sahibs amused him, the natives enthralled him, and ‒ ‘would you believe it, I’m immensely interested in Yoga! There is a lot in it.’
He might find his feet out there, thought Kay, but somehow she doubted it. She didn’t know why.
At the rectory, staff had to be cut down to just old Emily. Old Emily was useless, but retained because she could not very well be dismissed, and therefore was in charge for the rest of her life. Edward was old-maidishly fussy about the way things should be done, and sometimes he tried Kay.
At the present moment there was so much of vital importance going on in the world, and she was kept busy at the hospital, and had too much to do. To add to the trouble queues had started, which made shopping more difficult. She had organized the rectory spare room for a Red Cross sewing party, which was held twice weekly. Old Emily, left alone, would neglect her duties, and then Edward would fuss.
‘You have no control over your servants, you ought to be much firmer with Emily,’ he said, sitting at the head of the table, thrumming it whilst there was some delay in the meal. She tried to keep her temper. War was hardest on old people, because, in a few weeks nations went on years. She doubted if they would ever return to the 1914 days, when maids were cheap and plentiful, and firmness was possible.
‘It isn’t as easy as it used to be, Edward.’
‘Nothing is if you don’t try.’
‘I do try, truly I do, but really there seems such an awful lot of work these days, and not the time to do it in.’
She was now arriving at the stage when she could only hope for a miracle; maybe the war would end suddenly, or the tide turn, or the rationing be made easier. Everyone was living on hope.
She saw a good deal of Frances Lester.
Frances was in the almoner’s office; she wore a white cap under which her plentiful hair was always beautifully done, but it struck Kay that these days her face had lengthened, and it threatened to become hatchety as her mother’s had been. She was an efficient almoner, in complete command of any situation, and she never allowed people to trespass on her sentimental emotions. She fulfilled her duty to the letter.
Old Lady Cousens had died suddenly in the spring of 1916. Unkind people said that it was super-tax that had killed her ‒ she had been furious about it ‒ and Kay admitted with a grin that probably they were right. Frances apparently did not grieve. Kay had known, of course, that she and her mother did not get on too well, but she disliked the thought that Frances could show so little warmth. Sometimes she went out of her way to talk to Frances, to ask after Aubrey, and Simla, but Frances never seemed to encourage such enquiries. He was still in Simla, she said, and liked it. She understood that he was getting to know some nice people.
‘I always imagine Simla to be made up of only nice people,’ laughed Kay, but Frances did not laugh.
So after a time Kay gave up asking after him, and just exchanged the time of day with Frances, asking no more. It was marking time towards some goal. Which goal? she asked herself quite often. The end of the war, of course, she would reassure herself. The end of the war!
One day she was walking along the field path, and she met a little boy pushing a pram. In the pram two sodden-looking babies sat, wearing incongruous bonnets, whilst another child walked doggedly beside his brother. The child pushing the pram was quite unlike the baby,
and instantly Kay knew who he was, and came to a standstill.
‘Hello, Kay!’ she said.
He pulled his yellow forelock and smiled quite fearlessly. ‘Morning, ma’am.’
‘Taking your little brothers out?’
‘Yes, ma’am, it’s Saturday, you see. I go to school now, I’m in the second form. Teacher says I’ll be in the third form soon, it’s ever so easy.’
‘You must be very clever.’
‘Oh no, ma’am, it’s just so easy. When do they teach you something difficult?’
‘Soon, I expect; can you read?’
‘Oh yes, ma’am, and write. And speak poetry. My gran teaches me poetry, she learnt it from a gentleman where she worked, and it’s exciting.’
‘What has she taught you?’
He lifted his small face to hers, pearly with youth on its rosiness, and smiling, he said:
‘What in me is dark,
Illumine, what is low, raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men.’
‘I don’t know what it means, but Gran says it is some sort of a prayer, and the words sound nice.’
Kay did not know when she had been more moved, for the child leaning on the broken handle of the tired pram had repeated it to her as a prayer, with hope in his eyes … ‘what in me is dark, illumine …’
All the way home she was thinking about it. She thought of the huddled babies who had looked out of that pram like young thrushes fond only of their food, and the walking child with his expressionless face. She thought of Aubrey’s boy, and immediately there swept through her an intense anger that he should have a brain and be left unillumined in his darkness. Edward would think her mad if she spoke to him about it. Frances and old Mrs. Lester were unapproachable. They would not understand. Aubrey ‒ if he never found his real self ‒ would not be strong enough to help. Yet somebody had got to help the little boy. Later on that month, she made a plan.
It was a very brave plan, for Kay, small and frail as her body might appear, was a very brave person.
The village schoolhouse was outside Fincham, a pleasant red house with an asphalt yard, and the headmaster’s home adjacent. Mr. Binns, who ran it, was a nervous little man with a twitching eyelid, and a small moustache soberly streaked in grey. He was an excellent little man, punctilious in all his dealings and very exact.
Kay called on him when the days were lengthening, and the school bell had gone silent for the night. The asphalt ground was clear of children and quite noiseless. She propped her bicycle against the fence and went to the side door, which was answered by Mr. Binns himself. He had just been sitting down to a late tea, spread out on a round table with bread and fish paste, and a couple of pikelets disposed on a little trivet before the fire. He seemed surprised to see her.
‘I came to poke my nose into business which isn’t my own,’ she said, ‘and that’s like a parson’s wife, isn’t it? But it is about my godson, the eldest Herrick boy.’
‘Oh yes.’ Mr. Binns stared with the twitching eyelid. He knew about young Kay’s antecedents, and thought it all very wrong, but naturally never mentioned such things.
‘He tells me he loves his lessons. I gather he finds them quite easy?’
‘Yes, yes, he does. Poetry comes easy as pie to him, you only read it once, and hang me if he can’t repeat it. Such a memory that child’s got! Maths are his weak point, but he’s most promising on everything else, well above the others in his class.’
‘I thought,’ said Kay, ‘it might be possible ‒ a little later on, of course, not yet ‒ for him to sit for a scholarship? It seems a pity to hold a bright boy back. Now there is Mainwaring grammar school.’
‘Yes, I spoke to his mother about it,’ said Mr. Binns, who was regarding his cooling pikelets with some trepidation.
‘Better get on with them, and don’t mind me. They’ll only spoil,’ said Kay.
‘Thanks a lot, yes, I think I will. That is, of course, if you don’t mind. They go a bit leathery when they cool. I spoke to the mother, but she isn’t clever, rather the stupid kind, and not interested. It’s a great pity.’
‘I could talk to her. She trusts me, and perhaps I could persuade her to let the boy sit for the exam?’
Mr. Binns eyed her from under his shaggy eyebrows, the eyelid twitched more violently than before. ‘The father isn’t interested in the boy,’ he said.
‘Perhaps that’s only natural.’ Kay met the gaze serenely. Mr. Binns was rather shocked at her remark.
‘That may be as may be,’ he said uncomfortably, and took a large mouthful of pikelet.
‘If I see the mother about it, and get her permission, do you think between us we could do something for the little boy?’
‘I’d like to see him get on. Most of them are not worth bothering about, but he’s different.’
‘I’d like to see him get on, too. Is that a bargain then, Mr. Binns?’
Mr. Binns went on with his pikelet, saying that it was a bargain; he discussed the exam, and finally let her out, returning to his tea in unembarrassed comfort. He sat back and thought about it. He really did not know why parsons’ wives always had to interfere in everything. The boy would be a ploughboy anyway, whatever they did for him, and it wasn’t any business of Mrs. Benson’s in spite of her being his godmother, but he supposed she couldn’t keep her finger out of other people’s pies.
Parsons’ wives were always the same. And no good ever came of it. Never, said Mr. Binns to himself.
Kay called in at the Herricks’ cottage on her way back. The children were playing in the garden mounding up little stones into small pyramids. Kay looked up at her.
‘Good afternoon, ma’am.’
‘Good afternoon, Kay.’
Inside the cottage the old woman was brewing a strong pot of tea, and Alice was sitting in a chair looking ill and tired. The girl looked a great deal older than her years; it was having all those babies so quickly, Kay supposed; really, something ought to be done about it. It was quite wrong letting poor ignorant young creatures go on in this absurd way. Oh, what a silly place is England! she thought to herself.
‘I’ve come because I want to be a good godmother,’ she said.
Alice smiled at her. She liked Mrs. Benson and trusted her, and she thought it ‘ever so kind of her’ to be interested in young Kay. Everyone said that he was clever, even that crabbed old Mr. Binns, who was beastly to young Harold, who was a dunce, and had awful trouble over his letters.
‘Well, would you mind if Kay tried for the grammar school?’
‘No, I wouldn’t exactly mind,’ said Alice, ‘but what good’d it do him?’
‘An education is always an investment,’ said Kay.
Alice didn’t see that. She said that lessons were a lot of silly nonsense. What she’d been taught at school had been no earthly good to her, and that was a fact, she added regretfully.
‘Yes, but that isn’t a really sound argument. They might help Kay. He’s a very clever child.’
Alice didn’t think that she held with cleverness. But, of course, if Mrs. Benson thought that it was the right thing to do, then that was that.
‘I do think it’s the right thing to do, Alice.’
The old grandmother listened from her corner and nodded her head. She was thinking of the time when she had worked for the poet, and all the burden of lovely words she had carried about with her since. She held with learning, she said.
Kay went out of the cottage again to where the children were still playing with the dust, and building up their little pyramids of stones.
What in me is dark, illumine! she thought.
The child Kay looked up at her as she passed, and as he did so the baby fell over, and began to roar, bringing Alice out of the house at the run, to slap them both.
As Kay walked away, her face reddening with indignation, she thought how dreadful it al
l was for the child, and how wrong. Something would have to be done to help him. But what?
Recently she had noticed how much Edward was ageing. He had always been narrow, but with the years his outlook was closing in on him. She had the feeling that this sterile life would go on for ever, hemmed in by the war. Once the parish had interested her, once she had in her own way loved Edward, and had hoped to find both security and happiness with him. She had found neither. If they had had children, how different everything might have been! But now she had no harvest to reap, and it appalled her.
She had not had babies because at first she wanted to be sure of the home into which they would be born. And, instead of being sure, she was dubious, and finally quite certain that it was wrong for them, so she had forgone the joy that ought to have been hers.
The Red Cross sewing party and the bandage-rolling at Mainwaring hospital were dull, becoming even a desperate grind. Her biggest interest now was carrying out Aubrey’s commission, and helping the godson to something better.
Kay Herrick won his scholarship easily, as Mr. Binns had predicted for him. He had to have an outfit of clothes, because he could not possibly attend in the ill-assorted garments which he wore at the cottage. Kay could not afford to buy him anything, for her personal income was fifteen pounds a year, alluded to rather roguishly by Edward as ‘the pin money’. He had his stipend, and the rectory ate into it all remorselessly. It had become a prison and they knew that they would never escape from it, for the horror of dilapidations and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners was for ever hanging over their heads. But in the thought of illumining Kay’s darkness, she had at last found her real interest in life.
One day at the dentist’s in Mainwaring, she remembered that he had a couple of boys attending the grammar school, and the younger one very little older than Kay himself. She begged some clothes, bringing them back to the rectory, and mending them carefully. Edward watched her, blinking, then he asked what she was doing.