Marking Time (22 page)

‘Well, you don’t have to have one. You can simply not marry.’

‘I could marry if I liked, and just not have one.’

‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ Polly answered consideringly. ‘I suspect there’s some kind of trap there. It’s all or nothing.’

‘Bet you’re wrong. Look at Mrs Cripps.’

‘The chances are she
isn’t
Mrs Cripps. Cooks are often called Mrs just to please them. Also, we don’t absolutely
know
she hasn’t had
children.’

Clary was silenced. They were walking up the fields to the shop at Watlington so that Clary could buy a stamp for her letter.

‘I think,’ Polly said, ‘that people often get more boring as they grow older. I agree that human natures are inferior at any age. I mean, even man-eating tigers only do it
because their poor teeth have given out or they have rheumatism and people are easier to catch. But Wills is very sweet. If he
could
build the card houses, that’s what he’d be
doing. As it is, he can only knock them down. I think it’s a bit critical of you to be so against people.’

‘I’m
not –
at all! You shouldn’t say that! It’s only babies I don’t like.’

‘You didn’t want Lydia coming on our walk, and if I’d asked you why you would have said
she
was boring.’

‘I should,’ Clary replied, ‘because she
would
have been!’ She burst into tears. Either she was having to look after people, or she was being criticised, she
sobbed. Nobody ever said
she
was sweet when she was a baby; they were all too busy telling her to make allowances for Neville because of his asthma.
Ellen
had frankly told her
that she preferred boys. And Zoë had come and taken up so much of Dad’s time that she felt she was just an appendage. And
now
, with him away for goodness knew how long, she was
supposed to look after Zoë
and
Neville, neither of whom was in the least grateful. Neville had said that a boy at school had told him that there was a society for getting rid of girls
or women except a few to be housemaids, like worker bees, and even though she could see that it would take them years as there were so many of them, it showed you how
against
women they
were. She’d spent her whole
life
without a single person on her side . . .

‘I’m on your side,’ Polly said. They had stopped walking and Clary was sitting on the ground with her arms hunched round her knees. Polly knelt down beside her.
‘You’re my best friend,’ she said. ‘It’s quite equal – we rely on each other. I’m sorry I criticised you.’

‘Did you mean it?’

Polly hesitated. ‘Yes, I did,’ she said. ‘But I know you have awfully high standards. I don’t think most people could live up to them. All the time. In the same way, you
can be critical and I still love you. I can’t help noticing it, but it doesn’t change my serious feelings.’ She looked at Clary’s anxious face and felt a surge of love for
her. ‘I really revere your honesty,’ she said.

They got to their feet and finished the last field of Home Place land, climbed the gate onto the road at the top of the hill to walk the last quarter of a mile to the shop. Its front garden was
full of aubretia and yellow tulips and forget-me-nots and two bushes of mauve lilac with the scent of pale honey, but inside it smelled as usual of tarred twine and bacon and oiled wool and
Wright’s Coal Tar soap. Mr Cramp stopped cutting coupons out of a ration book and went behind the counter at the post office end to serve Clary with her stamp, and Mrs Cramp finished
measuring three yards of elastic before finding the wool for Polly.

‘And how is Mrs Hugh keeping?’ she asked Polly, as she detached two skeins from an enormous hank.

‘She’s very tired. She has something wrong with her back.’

‘Like Miss Rachel. Those things runs in families,’ Mrs Cramp replied comfortably as though two bad backs were more comforting than one.

‘Have you heard from Peter?’ Clary heard Polly asking politely. Peter was Mrs Cramp’s son who’d worked in the local garage, but was now in the RAF.

‘You could say we have and we haven’t. He’s not given to writing – well, he’s never had any call for it – but he did give us a ring on the telephone two
Sundays back – or was it three? Alfie! Was it the Sunday before last that Peter rang on the telephone or was it the Sunday before that?’ But Mr Cramp couldn’t rightly remember
which it was.

‘Heard from your dad, have you?’ he enquired of Clary, and when she had said that she had, Mrs Cramp, lowering her voice to fit the subject, enquired after Mrs Rupert. Clary said
fine, she was having the baby next month. ‘Of course, she misses my father,’ she added loyally.

Mrs Cramp looked gratified. ‘She would do. Stands to reason. That’ll be three and threepence for the wool, Miss.’ She had put it into a weak paper bag, where, as there was not
room for it, it seemed to take on a writhing life of its own. Polly paid for it and Mrs Cramp asked if they’d fancy a Chelsea bun. ‘There’ll be no more call for them today, and
they won’t be worth the eating tomorrow,’ she said, as she popped two into another weak paper bag.

So on the way back, they sat on a bank by the wood and unwound their buns and ate them.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how being in the country isn’t a treat any more?’

‘Oh, well. Nothing is, if it goes on long enough.’

This fired Clary, and she immediately thought of the things she would never get tired of. ‘Being grown up for one thing.’

Polly didn’t agree. ‘But you don’t just get grown up. Almost the moment you’re that, you start getting old.’

‘I don’t think people notice that, as it’s happening all the time, and is so slow, I don’t think people realise what’s going on until it’s too
late.’

‘When they die, you mean? I should think they’d jolly well notice then. Tell me two good things about being grown up.’

‘Going to bed just when you want to instead of when people tell you. Well, actually doing anything because
you
’ve decided instead of other people. I shan’t ever get
tired of any of that.’

‘Well, I’m not tired of the country,’ Polly said. ‘When I’m grown up I shall have a little house with all my things in it and that will be in the country. I shall
have a library and a swimming pool and plenty of animals and a wireless by my bed and a separate room to play games in. You can stay with me whenever you like.’

‘Thanks.’ She noticed that Polly didn’t offer to have her to
live
there and it made her feel ungrateful. ‘If we don’t win the war you won’t be able
to.’

‘Stupid! Of course I know that. And Dad says that if they don’t get rid of Mr Chamberlain he thinks—’

‘We won’t?’

‘He didn’t
say
that. But I know he’s worried. He absolutely
hates
Mummy being in London and she hates being away from Wills, but she won’t leave him on
his own – sometimes I notice them very nearly quarrelling!’

They got up and started to walk home, and while Clary was noticing how amazing the young oak leaves looked with the sunlight on them, Polly said in a rather shaky voice, ‘Of course,
there’s always the possibility that we might get invaded during the week when they weren’t here. I couldn’t hide with Wills because he’d be bound to make a noise, and I
don’t see how I could escape to London—’

‘Polly! Shut
up
! I’m not going to let you get into a state about that! You know perfectly well that if they thought that they’d be
here
–
or
they’d take you somewhere else. The Hebrides,’ she added rather wildly. ‘Honestly, if Hitler was going to come here, he’d have done it by now. It will probably all happen in
France – like the last one. If it happens at all.’

‘Yes, they would, wouldn’t they?’ The paper bag burst, and she undid the skeins and hung them round her neck. ‘You’re a great comfort, Clary. I honestly don’t
know what I’d do without you.’

Concealing the intense pleasure that this last remark caused her, Clary finished loftily, ‘Just think of it as a pretending war, Poll – very boring, but nothing to worry
about.’

That afternoon – the rest of that unremarkable day – was the last of its kind, she thought, although she didn’t start to think it until the weekend, when the news said that Mr
Churchill was now Prime Minister. Everyone seemed very pleased, and she could see, from the photograph in
The Times
next morning, that he had a more optimistic face than poor droopy old
Chamberlain. The event was discussed at lessons the following Monday, and Miss Milliment explained about coalition governments and said that this meant that all the best people would be governing
the country. She then suggested (but really told) her and Polly that they should start writing a journal of what was happening. It would help them to understand things, she said, and would be very
interesting to read when they were older, ‘Or even for your children,’ she added. Lydia instantly said that she wanted to do it too, and before she or Polly could snub her, Miss
Milliment said, of course, everybody should do it. Miss Milliment had an awful cold and kept blowing her nose on the same rather grey, sopping handkerchief that really only seemed to make her face
damper, and Polly said that she thought Miss Milliment probably couldn’t afford enough handkerchiefs. ‘She hasn’t had any new clothes since she came,’ she said,
‘excepting the cardigan Mummy bought her for Christmas.’

They thought about this. Then Polly said, ‘Couldn’t you give her some of your dad’s?’

‘I don’t much
want
to.’

‘Well, we can’t afford to buy her any – they cost about threepence each. If you give people handkerchiefs, you have to give them at least six.’

In the end, they decided to apply to Aunt Rach, who always seemed to think of the right thing to do. ‘Are we going to put
this
in our journals?’ Polly asked.

‘Good Lord, no. It’s far too . . .
parochial
. You couldn’t call Miss Milliment’s cold a world event.’

She spent the afternoon wrestling with
The Times
and writing about people like Lord Halifax and Mr Attlee and someone with a lovely name, Lord Beaverbrook. They were to read the first
bits of their journals later in the week.

Lydia hadn’t got the hang of it at all.

And so on.

She and Polly sat rolling their eyes with contempt and putting their hands over their mouths to stop them laughing aloud, but Miss Milliment said – you could hardly believe it – that
Lydia had done very well. When everybody had read their bit, she talked for quite a long time about journals, and explained that they should not only contain events, but what the writer thought and
felt about them, which made her see that hers – and Polly’s – was actually rather dull. But it was annoying that Lydia seemed to have got it righter than they had when she was so
much younger. ‘A fluke,’ she said to Polly, but Polly simply said think how nice it was for Lydia to be the best at something for once, and she felt humbled by Polly’s
niceness.

That week, Clary wrote her journal every day.