Marking Time (9 page)

‘I don’t think anyone works much at things that they don’t like,’ Villy remarked. ‘Look at Louise. I really think that all those years with Miss Milliment all she
did was read plays and novels. She has the most rudimentary idea of maths and Latin. And Greek.’

‘Does Miss Milliment teach them Greek?’ Rupert asked. ‘She is an amazing old thing, isn’t she? Who educated
her
, I wonder? She knows a hell of a lot about
painting.’

‘I suspect she largely educated herself. But I expect you know, don’t you, Mummy?’ Villy turned to Lady Rydal, who looked at her in some surprise before she answered.

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. She came from a respectable family, and Lady Conway said she had been very good with her girls. Naturally, I didn’t enquire into her personal
life.’

‘Well, I think whoever it is, it’s better for girls to be educated at home,’ Hugh said. ‘You hated your boarding school, didn’t you, Rach?’

And Sid, at once directed towards Rachel, saw her flinch at the memory before she said, ‘I did, rather, but I expect it was very good for me.’ She was almost too tired to eat, Sid
saw, and longed to say, ‘Darling, give up for the day – go to bed, and I’ll bring you anything you feel like on a tray,’ but it’s not my house, she thought, and she is
not supposed to be my love, or anything near it, and I have no power at all. After that, she could observe and think of nothing but Rachel. She realised that the Duchy was bringing Zoë into
the conversation, drawing attention to the centrepiece of roses on the table that apparently Zoë had done, but all the time she saw Rachel trying to eat what was on her plate – the
family did not approve of people picking at their food, and the Duchy deplored waste. She saw Rachel cutting off a sliver of veal and putting it into her mouth and then, eventually, swallowing it,
picking at the mashed potato with her fork, crumbling the piece of bread on her side plate and eating tiny pieces between sips of water. Rachel had not only had endless and arduous administrative
problems in moving her Babies’ Hotel, she had borne the brunt of her parents’ conflict about it, although that part of it had been considerably worse last year when there had been no
accommodation for them but the squash court. Practical considerations had not then, as now, impaired the Brig’s patriarchal generosity, but they had offended, and still to some extent did
offend, the Duchy’s sense of what was sensible and proper. Rachel, who hated conflict, had had the unenviable task of carrying messages about all this between her parents, softening them
en route
from the arbitrary and sweeping plans of her father and the awkward, not to say unanswerable questions from her mother, which, as Sid could see, suited both parties: the Brig
would brook no interference of his arrangements, and the Duchy would never actually oppose them; the presence of a daughter therefore enabled them to continue a bland relationship in public. But
this, as so much else in her filial life, was at Rachel’s expense, and in this case, it was
her
charity that was at stake and so naturally she was even more driven and dutiful. What
is to become of us? Sid thought, and could find no answer. At least Evie, her sister, was out of the way, safely ensconced in Bath, being the secretary for yet another musician she had fallen for
– at least, that was what it had sounded like the last time she had telephoned. But what was she, Sid, to do when the war finally started? She could not simply continue teaching music in
schools, surely? She should join some women’s service, but every time she thought of that, as she had been doing with increasing frequency in the last few weeks, she had also to think that
this would mean leaving Rachel, completely and for an unknown amount of time, a prospect so chilling and awful as to paralyse her. So far she had been able to retreat from this dilemma because it
still lay precariously in the future, a possibility, a last and uncertain resort, but since yesterday with the news that the Germans had invaded Poland, had knocked out the Polish air force and
immobilised their railways, she knew that it was on the brink of not being the future any more. She ached to talk alone with Rachel, if she needs me, she thought, but Rachel did not acknowledge
need in relation to herself of any kind, would only consider her – Sid’s – duty as earnestly and sincerely as she would her own. Anyway, tonight was out of the question. Tonight,
at the Duchy’s instigation, they were to play the
Pastoral Symphony
, her beloved Toscanini’s performance, on her splendid new gramophone. ‘I think we need that kind of
music tonight,’ she had said before dinner, the only allusion made by any of them to what lay in store. And after the Beethoven, Rachel would be utterly worn out, even supposing she stayed
the course. She looked across the table now to catch Rachel’s eye, but she was talking to Villy, and as she looked away, it was Zoë’s eye that she caught, and Zoë gave her a
small, hesitant smile – almost as one outsider to another, Sid thought, as she returned it. She had used to evade Zoë, distrusting the extraordinarily pretty but, she thought, vacuous
face, but Zoë’s habitual expression had changed: it was as though before she had known everything she thought she needed to know, and now knew nothing. The effect was to make her
mysteriously younger, which was odd, because Sid had thought that sorrow – and she had, after all, only recently lost her baby – made people look older. She had observed that the family
treated her differently from a year ago; they seemed now to have accepted her, as, in a way, they have me, she thought, but, then, that is only because they don’t know my secret, and she
looked at Zoë again, as the (bizarre, surely) notion that she, too, might have a secret occurred. What nonsense, she then thought, she simply looks a little lost because she has lost
something, but at least her deprivation can be known and acknowledged – it is a
respectable
loss, however severe.

They were on to the plum tart now, and Rupert, at the Duchy’s instigation, was telling his story of Tonks at the Slade. ‘He used to walk very slowly round the room, peering at each
student’s work in silence, until he came across a particularly inept piece of work – done by one of the girls. He would stare at it, and the silence became so awful you could hear a pin
drop. He would say, “Do you
knit
?” He was next to Villy and addressed the question to her, whereupon Villy who, of course, knew the story, instantly became the awestruck
student and, with the perfect nervous giggle, agreed that she did. “Well, why don’t you go home and
do that
?”’

‘How awful!’ Jessica cried. ‘Poor girl!’

‘He was a wonderful teacher, though,’ Rupert said. ‘He just couldn’t be bothered with people who were absolutely no good.’

‘He liked your work, though, didn’t he, Rupe?’ Zoë said.

‘Well, he didn’t ask me whether I could knit.’

‘Just as well, old boy,’ Edward said. ‘You’d make a rotten knitter.’

Here Flo gave one high-pitched little scream of laughter, and choked, whereupon Dolly hit her, quite viciously, on the back, with the result that some plum tart shot out of her nose onto the
table.

‘Edward, give her your handkerchief,’ Villy cried, as Flo stopped coughing and began to sneeze.

Edward felt in his pockets. ‘Can’t seem to find it.’

Raymond proffered his; Villy got up with a glass of water and ministered to Flo, whose face had suffused from mulberry to beetroot.

‘You’ll be lucky if you ever get your hanky back,’ Dolly remarked. ‘I’ve never known Flo return a hanky. In her entire life.’

‘At least I have some sense of humour,’ Flo returned between sneezes, ‘which is more than could be said for some.’

Rachel caught Sid’s eye then and winked; to Sid it felt like a caress. She winked back.

At dinner, or rather supper, in Pear Tree Cottage, however, the war – beside much else – was discussed with varying degrees of anxiety and cheerful abandon. In this
last camp were Teddy, Simon, Nora, Lydia and Neville (Lydia and Neville had wheedled themselves dinner in the dining room on the twofold grounds that it would be less trouble for the servants, and
that they hadn’t had a treat for weeks). Their presence was deeply resented by Polly and Clary who had only recently been promoted to supper downstairs and that not always. ‘They
haven’t got a shred of justice in their bodies,’ Clary had said earlier of her father and Aunt Villy. Christopher and Polly were united in their disapproval and dread of war; Louise was
poised uncertainly between all of them: disapproval of war was one thing, having one’s career utterly wrecked was another; on the other hand, it was all being, or feeling as though it was
going
to be, terribly exciting. Miss Milliment, who had earlier sensed that Villy would be relieved if she did not seem to expect to go out to dinner with the rest of the family and had
said how much she should like to have supper with the children, preserved an interested equanimity. She sat now in her dark brown stockinette skirt and cardigan – which she had that morning
discovered right at the back of her wardrobe; she could not have worn it for at least two years, and it had been casually attacked by moths, but fortunately only in places that did not show very
much – her small grey eyes glinting with amusement behind her steel-rimmed spectacles.

‘If only Hitler could have waited another three years,’ Teddy was saying, ‘I could have gone slap into the RAF and had a wizard time dropping bombs on
him
.’ His
voice had broken during the summer term, and now sounded too loud, Louise noticed.

‘I thought you said you wanted to be a fighter pilot,’ she said.

‘I do, really, but I might have to be a bomber.’

‘And what does Christopher want to do?’ Miss Milliment enquired; she thought he was being rather swamped by Teddy.

‘Oh – I don’t know,’ he muttered.

‘Christopher’s a cautious objector,’ Simon said.

‘You mean conscientious,’ Nora snubbed.

‘What is that? What do you do if you are it?’ Neville asked.

‘Object, of course, you fool.’

‘Don’t say “you fool” to Simon. I agree with him anyway, Miss Milliment.’

‘Do you, Polly? I didn’t know that.’

‘You mean you object to war? What an extraordinary thing to object to!’

‘It isn’t. You don’t know anything, Neville, so shut up.’

‘I think Neville is trying to find out,’ Miss Milliment said mildly.

‘Well, you could drive an ambulance, or something boring like that,’ Teddy said.

‘Or you could simply be an evacuee,’ Neville said. ‘We met some this afternoon.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Lydia and me.’

‘Lydia and
I
,’ Clary corrected him.

‘They were rather disgusting,’ Lydia said. ‘One of them ate a scab off his knee.’

Neville turned on her. ‘I’ve seen you do that,’ he said.

‘You never have!’

‘I certainly have. It’s not a thing I’ve often seen,’ he explained to Miss Milliment. ‘So I wouldn’t be likely to forget it, would I? In your
bath
!’

Lydia went pink. ‘I simply didn’t want it to fall off into the water and go back into blood,’ she said.

‘Who’s being disgusting now?’ Nora said.

‘It’s difficult not to be disgusting about things that are that,’ Lydia said.

‘If you simply weren’t
here
,’ Clary said, ‘we wouldn’t be talking about disgusting things. We’d be having a far more interesting
conversation.’

There was a silence while everyone ate their fish pie and runner beans.

‘When is Judy coming back?’ Clary asked at last. She didn’t much want to know but felt she had to show that other conversation was possible.

‘Dad’s fetching her tomorrow. She’s at Rottingdean with a school friend. She had her tonsils out at the beginning of the hols, and Mummy thought some sea air would do her
good.’

‘And Angela?’ Miss Milliment enquired.

‘Oh, she’s got some sort of job and she lives in a flat with a friend. We hardly ever see
her
. She simply hates it at Frensham. Mummy wanted her to be a deb now we’ve
got some money, but she wouldn’t.’

‘Do you call that interesting conversation, Miss Milliment?’ Neville asked.

‘One of the evacuees had worms,’ Lydia said, before Miss Milliment could reply. ‘And they had to have their hair cut because little animals lived in it. Medically speaking,
they weren’t much cop.’

‘They were a lot of cop,’ Neville said. ‘I should think doctors would far rather have a few people with a lot of things wrong with them than everyone with one wrong thing.
Supposing you got chicken pox and measles and mumps all at once,’ he added, warming to the subject, ‘you’d be so spotty you’d just be one large spot – they
wouldn’t show because there’d be no skin in between. And,’ he added, ‘the other good thing would be that then you could just be well for the rest of your life. If I was a
doctor, I’d give people all the things they hadn’t got—’

‘Shut up! I knew it was a mistake having them down for supper—’

‘That is the principle of inoculation,’ Miss Milliment said. ‘That is why people in this country, at least, do not get smallpox any more. You were all given a little dose of
smallpox when you were babies.’