‘All the same,’ Polly remarked, ‘it does show how men actually
like
war, or at least get unduly excited by it.’
‘We wouldn’t have them if they didn’t. And then they go off to have a nice fight, and leave all of us prey to wicked invaders.’
‘Clary, I honestly don’t think that’s fair.’
‘It isn’t. I’ve just said it wasn’t. I mean – look at us. A whole lot of women and children—’
‘There are men here—’
‘The Brig is almost completely blind. McAlpine’s got such awful rheumatism that he can hardly dig for victory let alone do anything else for it. Tonbridge is so weedy that if a
German sneezed on him he’d probably fall over. And Wren is practically always over anyway and mad to boot.’ She had been ticking them off her fingers, and now finished with, ‘And
your precious Christopher doesn’t believe in war, so he’d probably simply sit back and watch us being raped or whatever it is they do. And if what stands between us and all that is
simply Teddy with his rabbit gun and Simon with a swordstick, we don’t have an earthly.’
She was sitting on top of the small steps they were using to reach the higher greengages. Now, having chosen two particularly ripe ones, she handed one down to Polly, and biting into her own she
said, ‘What I find peculiarly irritating is that nobody will say what rape actually
is
. If there’s a danger of it, I really do think we ought to have some idea of what
we’re in for. But they simply won’t say. It’s all part of this family’s determination not to talk about anything that they think is at all unpleasant. I think we should talk
about everything that
is
. But when I ask any of
them
, I get nowhere. Aunt Rach said I shouldn’t have such morbid curiosity, but it doesn’t seem like that to me.
It’s just curiosity. I want to know
everything
!’ She handed down the small trug she’d filled with fruit for Polly to put into the huge one perched on the wheelbarrow.
‘But you don’t, do you, Poll?’
‘Want to know everything? I wouldn’t have time for everything. In any case, nobody knows
everything
. The trouble is that, when you know things, you have to do something
about it.’
‘No, you don’t. You just know it, store it up in case it comes in useful.’
‘I can see it might for writing books,’ Polly said. She began to feel sad, as she often did these days when confronted with her lack of vocation. ‘Did you ask Miss Milliment?
She’s usually quite good about information.’
‘Miss Milliment doesn’t know the first thing about rape,’ Clary said contemptuously. ‘I asked her, and I could tell at once.’
‘How? She’s so old, I bet she does. How could you tell?’
‘You know how her face is that very pale lemony grey? Well, it started going the colour of dead leaves.’
‘Embarrassment,’ Polly said promptly. ‘I should have thought that showed she
did
know, but didn’t want to tell you.’
‘No. She knew it was something awful, of course, but she didn’t want to discuss it.
And
she didn’t really know. Of course that must be embarrassing for an older
person.’
‘Look it up in the dictionary.’
‘Good idea, Poll!’
The conversation came to an end then, because Clary picked a plum with a wasp in it and got stung.
As Polly wheeled the barrow back to the house to hand over the greengages to Mrs Cripps (Clary had gone back to the house to put vinegar onto her wasp sting), she thought how odd it was that
ordinary things had started to feel unreal. This must be because what she
didn’t
know – that hung over them, that they almost seemed to be waiting for – had begun to seem
. . . not only bizarre and melodramatic, but
more
real than what was actually going on. It’s all this waiting, she thought, to grow up, for the war to get worse or better, or be
over.
The next morning, Teddy said that a German bomber had dropped bombs over London. ‘It got shot down, though,’ he added. He and Simon had made a notice-board in the hall on which they
pinned the latest bulletins. Dad rang up Home Place and had a long talk with the Duchy, at the end of which she said that it had been decided that everybody in Pear Tree Cottage should move into
Home Place. This turned out to be partly because Emily, the cook at Pear Tree Cottage, had decided to go back to Northumberland to live with her sisters, but it was also, the Duchy said, because it
was thought better for everybody to be in one place. Feelings about this were mixed.
‘We’ve got to
move
!’ Clary cried. ‘We’ve got to give up our nice friendly room we’ve always had and move into that horrible little room with the
jiggly wallpaper.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. They’re going to turn our room into the night nursery for Roland and Wills. I can’t see why they couldn’t have the smaller room:
they’re
smaller
and they’re too young to care about wallpaper.’
But during lunch, Aunt Rach reminded the Duchy that Villy had said that Edward had said that Louise must stop staying with her friend in London and come home. ‘So you may stay in your room
and Louise will join you.’
‘We’d much rather move into the little room,’ Clary said at once.
‘I’m afraid you can’t. Neville and Lydia will be having that room.’
There was nothing to be done but grumble. ‘She’ll keep us up all night, painting her nails and talking about acting,’ Clary said despairingly, as they shifted their beds to
make room for a third and an extra chest of drawers.
‘It’s worse for me,’ Neville said. He had very quietly stood on his head to surprise them in the doorway. ‘I have to sleep with a
girl
!’ he went on as his
face slowly became scarlet. ‘I’ve marked the room in half with blackboard chalk and I’m going to
charge
her if she enters my territory.’
‘Neville, it is extremely rude to listen to other people’s private conversations.’
He eyed Clary unblinkingly. ‘I
am
extremely rude,’ he said.
She pushed him, and he collapsed easily on the landing against Lydia, who had just arrived from trudging upstairs with an armful of her possessions. This made a terrible mess, and Lydia cried as
boxes of chalks, weak envelopes filled with beads that she strung into endless necklaces as presents for everyone, her shell collection, two bears and the skin of a grass snake pinned to a piece of
balsa wood tumbled and rolled all over the place. Clary scolded Neville, who instantly disappeared, and Polly started to help her collect her things. ‘Put all the beads in my hat,’ she
said, as she retrieved the snakeskin, hoping that Lydia wouldn’t notice that it was damaged but, of course, she did. ‘My most unusual thing!’ she wailed. ‘It might take me
the whole of my life to find another one!’
‘It isn’t too bad, but I bet you Christopher could find you another.’
‘I want to find it myself! I don’t want anyone else’s findings.’
‘If you sit still, I’ll put some lipstick on you.’
That worked. Lydia sat on the floor holding up her face, rapt, as Polly dabbed her moist cherry mouth with the hard dry Tangee she hadn’t used for ages.
‘What’s unfair,’ said Lydia, ‘is that they make all of
us
share with whoever
they
like – they even said that if ghastly Judy comes to stay
they’ll put her in the room with Neville and me – but
they
don’t share. I mean, they could easily put Uncle Hugh in with Mummy when Aunt Syb goes for her
exploration.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She’s going for an operation so that they can explore her. I heard Mummy talking to her about it, and then when they saw me they said that French remark that means they don’t
want you to know what they are talking about.’
‘. . .
Poll!
For the
third
time! Do you want the bed by the window or not?’
‘I don’t mind,’ she said, lurched to her feet, and went blindly in search of her mother.
Autumn–Winter 1940
‘Of course I’ll drive you,’ Edward said, ‘don’t be silly. But we ought to get a move on if you’re to catch your train.’
She smiled bravely at him: she’d done her make-up in the bathroom while he was dressing, and one looked terrible if one’s mascara ran.
‘I’ll pop down and pay the bill,’ he said. ‘Give me your case.’
He stood in front of her, a case in each hand and his hat tucked under one arm.
‘I wish I’d seen you without your uniform,’ she said without meaning to.
‘Darling, you have. I couldn’t have been more without it last night. I’ll meet you at the car.’ The reception desk had embarrassed her so much when they had checked in
– Squadron Leader and Mrs Johnson-Smythe – that he didn’t want to repeat the experience. ‘Don’t be long,’ he said and went.
She looked round the room. Last night, it had seemed so romantic: the large double bed, the little pink silk bedside lights, the heavy silky curtains drawn and the dressing table with three
mirrors and a brocade-covered stool in front of it. Now, it looked desolate – untidy, even squalid. The bedclothes pulled back from the dented pillows, the wreck of their breakfast tray on
the end of the bed – all crumbs and greasy plates and coffee rings on the tray cloth – the powder she had spilled on the dressing table and the wet bath towels, one on the floor –
Edward’s – and hers on the stool. The curtains were drawn to show a clear but uninviting view of the car park, and she could see that the thick carpet she had enjoyed walking upon with
bare feet last night, was not, in fact, very clean. She knew he was married: he had been frightfully honest about that. She thought he was the most honest man she had ever met in her life; his blue
eyes looked at one so seriously when he said things, even when he found some of them – like being married – difficult to say. Just the thought of him looking at her made her shiver.
‘
Sure
you want to do this?’ he’d said as they drove to the hotel after dinner. Of course she had wanted to. She hadn’t told him that she’d never done it
before: she’d always thought she wouldn’t do it until she was married – that the first time would be her wedding night; she would wait for what the other girls in her company
called Squadron Leader Right. Now she could see that all she’d been waiting for was to be in love – nothing else really mattered. He’d been a bit shattered when he found it was
her first time: ‘Oh, darling, I don’t want to hurt you,’ he had said, but he had. She had loved him kissing her, and his touching her breasts had been really exciting, but the
rest of it had been quite different from what she had imagined. The third time it hadn’t hurt in the same way. She could see that in the end it wouldn’t hurt at all. It was being wanted
that was so amazingly exciting – or, at least, being wanted by someone as attractive as Edward.
She had been standing by the window with her compact mirror, trying to make a hard line of her mouth with lipstick, but she was so sore from his moustache that it was all red round her mouth and
that made the lipstick look blurred. She smeared round her upper lip and chin with the very white powder she used. That was the best she could do. Now, leave the room, go down in the lift, walk
firmly across the reception hall – no need to look at anybody – and out to the car. She twitched her tie, put on her cap, hung her bag over her shoulder and walked stiffly out of the
room.
He was putting their cases in the back of the car when she reached it.
‘Well done, sweetie,’ he said, and she thought how sensitive he was to realise that leaving the hotel was an ordeal for her.
‘Now, ma’am. Where to?’
‘Paddington.’
‘Paddington it is.’
In the car, she thought fleetingly how lovely it would be if her weekend leave was going to be spent with him, instead of with her parents in Bath where there would be nothing whatever to do as
all her friends were away at the war one way or another, with Mummy criticising her make-up and Daddy giving her patronisingly weak gin and limes.
On the Great West Road on their way into London, they got caught behind an immensely long army convoy and she lit them both cigarettes when he asked for one. ‘Happy?’ he asked her as
she handed him his. She knew he wanted her to say yes she was, so she did, but really she was struggling with panic at the thought of parting and the anti-climactic hours to follow until they met
at Hendon on Monday.
‘Have you just got the weekend, like me?’
‘That’s it. We just have to make the most of it.’
She wanted to ask him if he was going home, but there was no point because of course he would be. He had four children, she knew that, but when she had asked him their ages, the nearest she
dared get to her curiosity about his wife, he’d smiled and said, awfully old – except for the youngest. ‘I’m old enough to be your father, you know,’ he said. That was
another thing she admired about him: a great many men might have pretended they were younger than they were, but not Edward. In fact, when they reached Paddington, and he put her on the train, he
said to the aged guard, ‘Look after my favourite daughter, won’t you, George?’ and the guard had smiled approvingly, and said of course he would. Edward put her in a corner seat.
‘Have you got anything to read?’ but she hadn’t, so he went away and came back with
Lilliput, The Times
(which she’d never read in her life) and
Country
Life
. ‘That’ll keep you busy,’ he said; then he stooped down and whispered in her ear, ‘It was fun, wasn’t it, darling? The greatest possible fun?’
She felt her eyes grow hot with tears, and before she could even blink them back, he’d handed her his wonderful silk hanky that smelled so extraordinarily delicious. That was another thing
she loved about him: his thoughtfulness, as well as his generosity.
‘I’ll give it back to you on Monday,’ she said, still trying not to cry.
‘You keep it, darling. There’s plenty more where that came from.’ He took off her cap and kissed her mouth – one quick kiss. ‘Bye, sweetheart, have a lovely
leave.’ And he was gone. She dabbed her eyes and tried to open the window so that she could see him walking away down the platform, but by the time she got it open, she couldn’t see
him. She settled back in her corner; it was really thoughtful of him to go quickly like that. She blew her nose repressively, and soon after the train started, she fell asleep.