Marking Time (3 page)

They were in the stationery department of the book shop – rather a backwater since it only sold writing paper, and printed things like addresses on the paper, At Home cards and wedding
invitations, and sold fountain pens and pencils. ‘It’s very important to lick new nibs before you use them,’ Clary was saying, ‘but I expect you tell people that. Could I
try that Waterman – the maroon one – just to see?’ It cost twelve and six and Polly knew she would not buy it. She watched the man while Clary tried pen after pen, and he ended up
just looking into the distance. He was probably worrying about whether there would be a war.

‘What do you see,’ Polly asked him, ‘in your mind’s eye, I mean?’

‘I haven’t got a mind’s eye when I’m trying pens,’ Clary said quite crossly.

‘I didn’t mean you.’

They both looked at the assistant, who cleared his throat, passed his hand over his heavily Brylcreemed hair and said he didn’t know what she meant.

‘I don’t blame you,’ Clary said. ‘I’ll have the Medium Relief—’

‘That’ll be seven and six,’ he said, and Polly could see he was looking forward to being shot of them.

Outside they quarrelled mildly about what Clary described as Polly’s idiotic remark. ‘At the best, he thought you were patronising him,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t.’

‘He
thought
you were.’

‘Shut
up
!’

Clary looked at her friend – well, more of a cousin, really; she wasn’t
feeling
like a friend . . .

‘Sorry. I know you’re feeling het up. Look here, Poll. It could still be all right. Think of last year.’

Polly shook her head. She was frowning; she looked suddenly like Aunt Rach when she was trying not to cry over Brahms.

‘I know what,’ Clary said gently, ‘it isn’t just that you want me to understand you, you just want me to
feel
the same. Isn’t it?’

‘I want
someone
to!’

‘I think both of our fathers do.’

‘Yes, but the trouble with them is that they only count
our
feelings up to a point.’

‘I know what you mean. It’s as though our feelings were simply the size of our bodies – smaller. It is idiotic of them. I suppose they can’t remember being
children.’

‘Not at
their
age! I shouldn’t think they can remember more than about five years back.’

‘Well, I’m going to make a
point
of remembering. Of course, they cash in by saying that they’re responsible for us.’

‘Responsible! When they can’t even stop a ghastly war that might kill us all! That seems to me to be about as irresponsible as people can get!’

‘You’re getting het up again,’ Clary said. ‘What shall we do now?’

‘I don’t mind. What do you want to do?’

‘Get some exercise books and a present for Zoë’s birthday. And you said you wanted to buy some wool. We could have doughnuts for lunch. Or baked beans?’ They both loved
baked beans because Simon and Teddy had them quite a lot at school, but they never got them at home, as they were regarded as rather common food.

They had been walking towards the front. There were not many holidaymakers about although there were some on one bit of beach, sitting uncomfortably on the pebbles with their backs to silvery
wood breakwaters, eating sandwiches and ice creams and staring out at the grey-green sea that heaved back and forth in an aimless, surreptitious manner.

‘Do you want to bathe?’

But Polly simply shrugged. ‘We didn’t bring our things, anyway,’ she said, although Clary knew that that wouldn’t have stopped her if she’d wanted to. Further along
– past that bit of beach – some soldiers were hauling huge rolls of barbed wire out of a lorry, and positioning them at regular intervals along the shore where they could see that what
looked like concrete posts were sunk in a line at intervals half-way up the beach.

‘Let’s go and have lunch,’ Clary said quickly.

They had baked beans and toast and lovely strong Indian tea (they didn’t get that at home either) and a jam doughnut and a cream horn each. This seemed to cheer Polly up, and they talked
about quite ordinary things like the sort of person they would marry. Polly thought an explorer would be nice if he would explore hot parts of the earth as she loathed snow and ice and would
naturally accompany him, and Clary said a painter because that would fit with writing books and she knew about painters because of her dad. ‘Also, painters don’t seem to mind so much
what people look like; I mean, they like people’s faces for quite different reasons, so he wouldn’t mind mine too much.’

‘You’re fine,’ Polly said. ‘You have beautiful eyes, and they are the most important feature.’

‘So have you.’

‘Oh, mine are far too small. Awful really. Little dark blue boot buttons.’

‘But you have a marvellous complexion – frightfully white and then pale pink, like a heroine in novels. Have you noticed,’ she continued dreamily as she licked the last
remnants of cream off her fingers, ‘how novelists go on and
on
about how their heroines look? It must be frightful for Miss Milliment when she reads them, knowing she could never
have been one.’

‘They aren’t all beautiful as the day,’ Polly pointed out. ‘Think of Jane Eyre.’

‘And you’re tremendously lucky with your hair. Although coppery hair does seem to fade with age,’ she added, thinking of Polly’s mother. ‘It gets more like weakish
marmalade. Oh, Jane
Eyre
! Mr Rochester goes on like anything about her being so fairylike and small. That’s an ingenious way of saying that she looked charming.’

‘People want to know that kind of thing. I do hope you aren’t going to get too modern in your writing, Clary. So that nobody knows what is going on.’ Polly had pinched
Ulysses
from her mother’s books and found it very hard going.

‘I shall write like me,’ said Clary. ‘It’s no good telling me what to write like.’

‘OK. Let’s get the rest of our things.’

Lunch cost four and sixpence, which was more than they had bargained for, and Clary handsomely paid it all. ‘You can pay me back when it’s your birthday,’ she said.

‘I think Miss Milliment must be used to all that by now. Wanting to marry people wears off quite young, I think.’

‘Gosh! Does it? Well, I don’t suppose I
shall
marry, then. I don’t feel at all strongly about it now, and women over twenty age very rapidly. Look at
Zoë.’

‘Grief ages people.’

‘Everything ages people. Do you know what that drawly lady, Lady Knebworth, Aunt Villy’s friend, said to Louise?’ When Polly was silent, she added, ‘She told her never to
raise her eyebrows ‘cos it would put lines on her forehead. Quite a good thing for you to know, Polly: you’re always frowning when you try to think.’

They were outside the tea shop by now, and Clary said, ‘What shall I get her for her birthday?’

‘Aunt Zoë? I don’t know. Soap, I should think, or bath salts, Or a hat,’ she added.

‘You can’t buy people hats, Poll. They only like the awful ones they choose themselves. Isn’t it odd?’ she continued as they wandered back from the front towards the
shops again, ‘When you see people in shops choosing their clothes and shoes and stuff, they take
ages
– as though each thing they choose will be amazing and perfect. And then,
look at them. They mostly look simply terrible – or just ordinary. They might just as well have chosen their clothes out of a bran tub.’

‘Everyone will be wearing uniforms of one kind or another any minute,’ Polly said sadly: she was beginning to feel rotten again.

‘I think it’s an interesting observation,’ Clary said, rather hurt. ‘I expect it could be applied to other things about people – and turn out to be a serious
reflection on human nature.’

‘Human nature’s not much cop, if you ask me. We wouldn’t be in such danger of having a war if it was. Let’s get the wool and things and go home.’

So they bought their things: a box of Morny Rose Geranium soap for Zoë, and the exercise books, and Polly bought some hyacinth-blue wool to make herself a jersey. Then they went to wait for
the bus.

After lunch that Saturday, Hugh and Rupert had gone on an expedition to Battle armed with a formidable list of shopping. Rupert had volunteered for the job and then Hugh, who
had had what nearly amounted to a quarrel with Sybil, offered to accompany his brother. Lists were collected from all three houses of the many and varied requirements and they set off, with Rupert
driving the Vauxhall that he had acquired since joining the firm the previous January.

‘We shall look pretty bloody silly if it’s peace after all,’ he said.

After a short silence, he looked at his brother, and Hugh caught his eye. ‘We shan’t look silly,’ he said.

‘You got one of your heads?’

‘I have not. I was just wondering . . .’

‘What?’

‘What you had in mind.’

‘Oh. Oh – well, I thought I’d try for the Navy.’

‘I thought you might.’

‘It’ll leave you holding the fort on your own, though, won’t it?’

‘I’ll have the Old Man.’

There was a short silence; Rupert knew from his months in the firm that their father was both obstinate and autocratic. Edward was the one who could manage him; Hugh, when he disagreed with an
edict, confronted his father with direct and dogged honesty: he had no capacity for manipulation, or tact, as it was sometimes called. They had rows that ended, as often as not, in an uneasy
compromise that benefited no one – least of all the firm. Rupert, who was still learning the ropes, had not been able to be much more than an unwilling witness and this summer, when Edward
had been away on a volunteer’s course, things had seemed much worse. Edward was back, temporarily, but he was simply waiting to be called up. Rupert, whose decision to go into the firm had
been made just about the time that Zoë had become pregnant, still wondered whether it had been the right choice. Being an art master had always seemed a stopgap – a kind of
apprenticeship to being a full-time painter; becoming a businessman had turned out to preclude his ever doing any painting at all. The imminent prospect of war, providing the opportunity for
escape, excited him, although he could hardly admit
that
– even to himself.

‘But of course I’ll miss you, old boy,’ Hugh was saying, with a studied casualness that suddenly touched him: Hugh, like their sister Rachel, always became casual when he was
most moved.

‘Of course, they might not take me,’ Rupert said. He did not believe this, but it was the nearest he could get to comfort.

‘Of course they will. I wish
I
could be more use. Those poor bloody Poles. If the Russians hadn’t signed that pact, I don’t think he’d dare to be where he
is.’

‘Hitler?’

‘Of
course
Hitler. Well, we’ve had a year’s grace. I hope we’ve made good use of it.’

They had reached Battle and Rupert said, ‘I’ll park outside Till’s, shall I? We seem to have a hell of a lot to get there.’

They spent the next hour buying four dozen Kilner jars, Jeyes Fluid, paraffin, twenty-four small torches with spare batteries, three zinc buckets, enormous quantities of green soap and Lux, four
Primus stoves, a quart of methylated spirit, six hot-water bottles, two dozen light bulbs, a pound of half-inch nails and two pounds of tin tacks. They tried to buy another bale of blackout
material, but the shop had only three yards left. ‘Better buy it,’ Hugh said to Rupert. They bought six reels of black thread and a packet of sewing-machine needles. At the chemist they
bought gripe water, Milk of Magnesia, baby oil, Vinolia soap, Amami shampoo, arrowroot and Andrews’ Liver Salts and Rupert got a tortoiseshell slide for Clary, who was growing out her fringe
and spent much of her time looking like a faithful dog, he said. They picked up two boxes of groceries, ordered by the Duchy and Villy respectively that morning. They bought Goldflake and Passing
Cloud cigarettes – for Villy, again, and Rachel. Rupert bought the
Tatler
for Zoë, and Hugh bought a copy of
How Green Was My Valley
for Sybil – she loved reading
the latest books and it had been well reviewed. Then they consulted the list again, and realised that the shop hadn’t included the order for Malvern water for the Duchy.

‘Anything else?’

‘Something that looks like ships bras?’

‘Sheep’s brains,’ Hugh said knowledgeably. ‘For Wills. Sybil thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t have them once a week.’ So they went to the butcher, who
said that Mrs Cazalet Senior had just rung and wanted an ox tongue of which he happened to have one left and he’d only just put it in the brine so it wouldn’t need much soaking, tell
the cook. ‘If you don’t mind, sir,’ he added. He was used to Mr Tonbridge coming in for the meat if the ladies didn’t come themselves, which was seldom. If anything was
needed to make him feel that things were in a funny old state, it was gentlemen doing the shopping, he thought as he wrapped the brains in greaseproof paper and then brown. The boy was sweeping the
floor – they’d be closing soon – and he had to speak sharply to him not to get sawdust on the gentlemen’s trousers.