Mothering Sunday

by Noel Streatfeild

  Jane deplored weakness, and illness was a weakness: but she also deplored that in herself which made her unfair about something that Peter could not avoid. As a result of this disapproval of her own intolerance her treatment of Peter wandered between impatient briskness and impatient overcarefulness, and she trusted herself in neither mood. At the same time she made herself responsible for Peter’s welfare, and resented interference from Simon because it backed her own opinion of herself that she was not fair-minded where illness was concerned. She went to an infinity of trouble to discover specialists who were trying new cures for asthma, and took Peter to them all, and followed their instructions blindly and lost her temper when Simon queried the wisdom of anything suggested. When Peter was quite small the specialist of the moment—a great believer in self-mastery—had said a boy with asthma was better educated at home and that plans for a boarding preparatory school and later Winchester should be abandoned. “Let him grow up at home where he can treat his attacks himself. He is improving, but he may never entirely outgrow the complaint, and if he is accustomed to looking after himself he’ll find his weakness far less of a handicap.” “That wants thinking over,” Simon had said. “I don’t like giving him a different education to the one we’re giving Alistair and will give Andrew, unless we are absolutely convinced we have no choice.” Jane, furious to think she had a son who was too delicate to go away to school and furious with herself for being furious about it, lost her temper. What did Simon know about asthma? Obviously the specialist knew what he was talking about; it was his subject just as the law was Simon’s. What earthly good would it be to Peter to be sent away only to spend half his time in the sick room? Simon, as was his way, let the subject appear to drop, merely observing that there was no need to do anything drastic yet. “Let’s see how he goes on.” Unfortunately for Peter he got on so well in the next years that Simon accepted the fact that he would be better as a day boy than sent to the boarding preparatory school to which he had sent Alistair, but he did not intend to give in about Winchester without a fight. Alistair’s death came just at the time when the final decision about Winchester had to be made, and the shock of it blunted Simon’s will to argue with Jane. By the time he got back to somewhere near normality Peter had been entered for a famous London day school and unwillingly he let the arrangement stand.

  Though Peter’s health did appear to improve, what suffered without any one noticing it was his spirit. Trained to think it incompetence on his part if he had an attack of asthma which care could have prevented, and idiocy if he allowed an attack to get out of his control, he grew skilled at handling his complaint and no one knew what a fight he put up or that the fight was not made any easier because he was unhappy. He hated his London day school. He appreciated it was snobbish of him, but he could not help himself. He believed with all his being that he would have been glad to put up with more frequent, and more violent attacks of asthma just to be able to say, as Alistair had said and as Andrew would say, “I’m at Winchester.”

  Saturday morning was homework morning. Books were piled round Peter and paper was before him and a pen in his hand. He had been doing homework, but was allowing himself what he honestly believed to be a five minutes’ break, but which actually had been taken for nearly an hour, to draw a model. When Andrew, the lower half of his face obscured by a grubby blood-spotted handkerchief, poked his head round the door Peter’s heart missed a beat.

  “I thought you were Mother. How’s the tooth?”

  “Out. I felt awfully peculiar while I was having gas.”

  “For goodness’ sake don’t put blood on the door. Mother’s already pinned my ears back this morning for mucking the paint.”

  Andrew inspected the place where his fingers had been.

  “It’s all right.” He came into the room. Peter showed sympathy for the extracted tooth by pushing some books off a chair on to the floor. Andrew sat down. He spat into his handkerchief and examined the resulting spit. “It’s still bloody. I’ve been bleeding for hours and hours. Can you bleed to death for a tooth?”

  “Shouldn’t think so. Anyway it’s nearly stopped, it’s only pink.”

  “Mother didn’t believe I felt sick after the gas; she said I imagined it, but I was in the taxi. The taxi driver was foul about it; you’d have thought I did it on purpose. I’m supposed to be lying down.”

  “Are you going to be sick again?”

  “No, but the dentist said all that about not getting in a draught. If I was my mother I wouldn’t want to send me back to school to-day.”

  “Better not let her catch you in here.”

  “She won’t, she’s in the drawing-room sending out notices about one of her committee things. They were on the hall table when we came in and Mother said, ‘Oh, my goodness, I’d forgotten about those. They must go this morning. How I’ll ever get off this afternoon I don’t know.’”

  Andrew was a serious-looking child, his earnest expression enhanced by spectacles. His intimates, which included his sisters, brother, Mary, Annie and occasionally his father, knew that behind his grave face was a nice sense of humour which, amongst other ways, expressed itself in cruelly exact imitations. Peter gave an appreciative giggle as he heard his mother’s rather high, permanently authoritative voice with its undertone of a never outgrown eagerness.

  “Did you ask her if you could stay till to-morrow as you’d been sick?”

  “’Course. But she said matron would look after me, which just shows she doesn’t know our matron. She said I could have stayed only she and Dad will be away and that you were to see me off this afternoon.”

  “Foul luck. Tell you what, if you’ve stopped feeling sick we’ll start early and I’ll take you to the newsreel at the station.”

  Andrew pulled his chair nearer to Peter’s.

  “I’m not going to stop feeling sick, at least I’m going to eat my lunch first and then start feeling sick again directly they’ve gone. I’ll lie absolutely flat on my bed with my eyes shut and one of you will fetch Mary and Annie and they’ll say I can’t travel and will telephone school and explain.”

  Peter listened to Andrew admiringly, though his admiration was mixed with envy. Andrew would do just what he said. He probably had arrived in London with his day at home planned. Andrew was like that. Anthea, Lucia and himself were always getting together contriving methods to attain what they needed, or not to do things they did not want to do, but Andrew worked by himself. Perhaps it was because he was away so much at school and the rest of them were always at home, or perhaps it was because he seemed scarcely to remember Alistair and therefore did not know what sort of person he was being compared with; whatever the reason he was self sufficient and somehow detached. Snubs could not touch him as they touched the rest of them; he seemed to need no show of affection but went his own way, and by some means or other got his own way.

  “It won’t be much fun for you, for if you fool Annie and Mary you’re all that ill, you’ll have to stop in bed.”

  “I’ve thought about that. If I eat an ordinary lunch and then feel sick Mary might make me have just Bovril and toast for supper and no proper tea. What I thought was, Mary thinks you know all about medicines. Could you give me something you said would make me all right by tea time? Doesn’t matter what it is as I shan’t be feeling sick, but you’ll have to make up something and let Mary give it to me.”

  “Seems an awful lot of fuss for one night. You’ll have to go back to-morrow morning anyway.”

  Andrew got up. He came round the table and looked at Peter’s model.

  “What’s it for?”

  “Tobacco drying.”

  “You going in for that? Where you going to have it?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll decide to-morrow, It’s a good day to have the whole lot out. With Dad and Mother away, and Annie and Mary go out in the afternoon.”

  “If I don’t go back till th
e afternoon I could help.”

  Peter knew he was being tempted to be an ally in some plan not yet mentioned. His sisters and Andrew knew all about his model farm, and from time to time contributed to it. They had grown up with it and it was almost as real to them as it was to himself. They knew that on the few occasions when every one was out of the way and he could unpack the entire farm from the boxes on his wardrobe and lay it out on the floor, he loved one of them there to talk things over with. None of them queried his opinion on farming matters. As far as his pocket money would stretch he had a good library on modern farming. Once he had settled where to grow his tobacco crop, in their various ways they would help. When drying time came round the girls would make him miniature leaves. If any of them saw something on tobacco growing in a paper or magazine they would either show it to him or copy it out for him. In spite of the fact that it was accepted by his parents and relatives that Peter was to have some sort of sedentary job because of his asthma, his brother and sisters knew he would farm. The alliance of the children to hide Peter’s ambition from prying adult eyes sprung from an incident when he was fourteen. He was in bed with bronchitis and Jane, both over-careful and yet angry with him for being ill, fussed in and out of his room, loading him with intelligent books and papers so that his time in bed should not be wasted. One afternoon, supposing her to be out, he got Anthea and Lucia, who had looked in to visit him, to get out of one of his boxes a collection of rabbits he had made in cardboard, for he had decided to have some Angoras on his farm as a sideline. With much advice from the two girls he was painting the rabbits when Jane unexpectedly returned. She had run into a friend who had told her of some cough mixture which had worked a miracle cure in a case of bronchitis. Peter’s cough distressed, frightened and infuriated Jane; she could not bear to hear it and yet could not keep away. With the miracle cough mixture in her hand she turned for home and at once was gripped by one of her nervous, fussing spasms. As her imagination worked her steps quickened. Nothing could have been less like the scene her imagination painted than what met her eyes as she opened Peter’s door. Anthea hanging over Peter, Lucia sprawled on the bed across his feet, all their eyes fixed on a cardboard rabbit. Annoyed with herself for having been frightened Jane lost her temper. “Really, Anthea, you ought to have more sense than to hang over Peter like that. Bound to make him cough. Lucia, get off the bed at once. Really, Peter, one would think you were a child, I shall have to buy you a painting book. Anthea, take that paint water out of the room and the paint box; you go too, Lucia.” She swept up the cardboard rabbits and threw them on the fire. “Now, Peter, I want you to try this cough mixture.” Peter had minded the affair of the rabbits far less than Anthea and Lucia. He knew he could make some more and he could see how upsetting it must be for his mother, who did not know that the rabbits were not a childish game, to see him, in what had been Alistair’s bed, doing what seemed to her a silly thing Alistair would never have done. Anthea suffered as if she had been hurt bodily “Oh, God,” she had prayed, “if I have children—and I hope I’ll have lots—don’t let me be unkind to them.” Lucia was furious. She told Andrew about it. “. . . beautifully cut out rabbits too. Burnt them! Of course he’ll make some more, and we must help. Never again must any one see any of his farm. Not a fence, not even the smallest of those little trees Anthea made him.”

  “I don’t see how you could manage to stay until the afternoon. Mary and Annie will be in a pretty good flap keeping you for the night when Mother said you weren’t to stay. If you want me to do that medicine stuff you’d better tell me what’s up.”

  Andrew drew his chair even closer to Peter’s.

  “You know they’re all supposed to be going to see Grannie because of Mothering Sunday. Well, that’s not the real reason.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. It’s to talk about Uncle Tony.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Actually, I didn’t need telling, I guessed, but it was Paul who thought what we ought to do.”

  “Is Paul up to-day, too?”

  “No. Uncle Henry and Aunt Carol have taken him and Helen to lunch at The White Hart.”

  “What’s the good of talking about Uncle Tony? No one knows where he is.”

  “Paul says that Fitch—you know that man who cleans cars and things at their house—says it’s only a matter of time. He says having been in prison the police have got his fingerprints and things.” Andrew’s whisper became horrific. “The net is closing in. He’ll have to come to someone for help. Where will he come? To Paul and me.”

  “Cut out the B.B.C. stuff. Why on earth should he go to you and Paul?”

  “To who else? He couldn’t come here. Dad just might help him, but Mother wouldn’t. She’d most likely ring the police. He couldn’t go to Uncle Henry. A man like Uncle Henry always has somebody looking at him. He wouldn’t dare go to Aunt Felicity and Uncle George because Aunt Felicity would be sure to forget he was a secret and tell everybody. He certainly can’t go to Grannie because she absolutely hates him now and would be certain to give him up.”

  “If he goes to anybody he’ll go to Aunt Margaret. She’ll help him, and there’s miles of ruins round her to hide him in.”

  “Yes,” Andrew agreed regretfully. “There is her, but Deptford is full of police and the sort of place where they might be looking for people. But who would look in a school?”

  “What’s Paul think you ought to do?”

  “He says criminals on the run always need disguises. When Paul knew about my tooth he saw at once what I had to do. Shops in the Edgware Road are open on Saturdays. I’ve got a list here of things to buy.”

  “Where are you going to get the money?”

  “Paul always has masses, and to-day he can get lots more. He says whenever he wants anything he has only to slop a bit over Aunt Carol and he can have it—that is if Uncle Henry isn’t about, but he’s fixed it to-day with Helen to take Uncle Henry for a walk before they go back to school.”

  “What are the things you mean to buy?”

  Andrew, after a search in his pockets, found a grubby half page of an exercise book.

  “I’ve drawn them all so if this paper falls into the wrong hands it won’t arouse suspicion. This is a false moustache. That’s the stuff actors make beards of. There was some at school when we did As You Like It. We think it was called grape hair. Anyway you buy it at a place like Boot’s. Then there’s greasepaint to make up eyebrows and a pair of black glasses, and a cap and two sorts of hat, and either workmen’s overalls or, if there’s enough money, some sort of coat or mackintosh.”

  “Those need coupons.”

  “I’ve got coupons. Paul got them from Fitch. Fitch says they are finishing soon so they’re quite easy to get now and have come down from half-a-crown each to sixpence. Paul says Fitch can get anything because of working for Uncle Henry; he says people trust members of Parliament, especially Conservatives.”

  Without realising it Peter had become part of the scheme. His voice had caught a little of Andrew’s conspiratorial tone.

  “You better go and lie down now. I don’t believe you ought to eat much at lunch; if you could look sort of sickish it would help. Dad might say you better not go till to-morrow. I’ve got a little money. I’ll buy you some buns and things. If the medicine trick doesn’t work with Mary . . .”

  “It will.”

  “But if it doesn’t I could get the things for you.”

  “You couldn’t get them to me. No parcels are opened at school without a master about.”

  “Does anybody else know the plans except you and Paul?”

  “Most of our school. Everybody knows about Uncle Tony of course and hopes he’ll turn up. If he does they all want to help. Then Helen knows. She means to dress him as a woman if he comes to her school, but she says he’d never risk it. Any man there people would notice. They’re not even allowed to b
e taught by one unless there’s a mistress snooping about. You might tip Anthea and Lucia if you get a chance. It would be a great help of they talked about me looking green.”

  “Not Anthea. Mother’s sure to put her in charge while she and Dad are away, so she mustn’t know you’re shamming.”

  Andrew was at the door. He opened it softly and peered out.

  “No one about.” He looked back at Peter and gave a graphic imitation of being sick into his handkerchief. “Poor Andrew’s going to lie down.”

  Anthea was laying the dining-room table. When she heard her father’s key in the front door she ran into the hall to meet him. As she gave him a hug she whispered:

  “Come into the dining-room a minute. I’ve got something awful to tell you.”

  Simon came into the dining-room. He looked at his daughter with approval. He liked the way her hair curled. He liked the direct honesty in her grey eyes. He thought she looked ridiculously young for nineteen but he liked that too. His voice was warm and yet amused.

  “What awful thing?”

  “Miss Burdock sent for me this morning. She says I’ll never make a first-class secretary.”