A Little Death (16 page)

Miss Louisa always asked after my family, how they were going along, but I didn’t tell her much—well, I told her about Mother and my brother Charlie, who’d gone to France, and my sister Winifred, but I didn’t want to say too much or it would upset her. Besides, I had my pride, I wasn’t going to tell Miss Louisa all our business. Because my family did have a bad time—a lot of the poorer ones did. My brother Charlie was still living with my mother in 1914; he brought home quite a good wage and he used to give most of it over to her for the housekeeping, so she was well provided for. But his firm put a lot of pressure on the men to enlist: ‘Enlist or leave!’ that was what it came down to, so Charlie didn’t have much choice. Besides, he wanted to do his bit, so he joined Kitchener’s army and went off for the training. I’ve still got the letters he wrote to me from the camp, the funniest things they got up to! They were sleeping in a field, Charlie said, ‘like sheep’ except they had some tents and boards underneath to lie on, only the ground was wet and water used to come up through the boards and soak into their blankets. And then they had to walk two miles every morning for a cup of tea
and a bite of breakfast! When Charlie was sent to France I was worried, but I didn’t know what was happening, just that they all had to go and fight for king and country. The king, the government, whoever it was, if that’s what they told you, that’s what you did, it was your country and it was right.

Charlie was killed on the Somme, and I still cry when I think of him. I pray we’ll meet again, ‘up higher’ as the soldiers used to say. All I could think, when I heard, was how could they kill my little brother? Because that was how I thought of him, even when he was a grownup man wearing a soldier’s uniform. I was only five when he was born, but I used to mind him for my mother. I used to carry him everywhere and he was nearly as big as I was. He was the next one after me because my mother had two that died before Charlie came along. After he died I started having these dreadful thoughts. If I saw a young man in his uniform, I had this terrible sadness inside: oh, he’s going to die, they’re all going to die. A lot of them did, of course. I used to like to see the soldiers before, some of them did their training on the Heath and I used to watch them from my window, but after Charlie was killed, I never wanted to look at them again.

There was another thing I used to think about— William. I couldn’t help myself. And in a funny way it made me feel better. I didn’t even know if he was in the war or not, I thought he must be, but I didn’t know for certain. I used to wonder what it would be like to be his wife, waiting for him at home. I’d tell myself to leave the subject alone till I was blue in the face, but I never listened. So I’d say to myself, you want the world and a handle to carry it, you do. It’s all nonsense what you think, he’ll have married some girl. Because he could
have had any girl he fancied, there wasn’t one who’d turn him down with his looks. And of course there was all that going on in France. The boys used to sing ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Hasn’t been kissed in forty years’—I don’t think! Forty seconds, more likely. But I thought, with William, there was bound to be one, an English girl I mean, that didn’t let him get away like I did. And then I’d wonder how it could have turned out different, perhaps if I hadn’t given myself to him, but then I didn’t give myself to him, not in the usual way of it. You always think you could have done things different, better, that’s human nature. But it isn’t true. All you could have done is what you did do, same as the poor boys that were fighting in the war. Oh, I don’t say I went against the war like some of them, but it was a terrible business.

But who wants to know about my life? People don’t want to hear about me, or only because of Miss Georgina. When you read books it’s always Lord This and Lady That, or it’s about Americans, like in the films. That’s who people want to know about, not me. Same with Charlie. All the ones that write stories about the war, they’re the leaders, educated people who can explain everything properly. Charlie used to collect cigarette cards: ‘VC Heroes of the Boer War’. The men on those cards, they were all Lord This and Sir That. A brave working man doesn’t count for so much—they don’t even give him so much of a medal, he only gets a little one. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t just as brave. Charlie was brave. I know in my heart he fought as hard as any of them.

That was my family, but we weren’t the only ones that lost. Miss Louisa’s brother was killed the next year and we had two gardeners at Hope House who never
came back, and there was a young lad that used to help them. He must have lied about his age or they’d never have taken him. Mr. Herbert the chauffeur came back, though. He always was a quiet man and I never did find out where he’d been or what he’d done in the war. You learned not to ask. It was always the ones who hadn’t done it that wanted to talk, but that’s the same with everything, isn’t it?

We got Master Edmund back, only he wasn’t the same as the one we sent. He wasn’t wounded badly in his body—that was something I never got used to, all those half or three-quarter men, one arm or one leg missing and some poor souls with no legs left at all. There was a lot of big houses they’d turned into convalescent homes near us and you’d see them all the time. But Master Edmund was more wounded in his mind. I don’t think it was the shell shock, because there was one nearby my sister Winnie’s who had shell-shock and he used to beat the air with a stick, his arm flailing up and down all the time and not able to stop it. Master Edmund didn’t do anything like that, it was just that he wasn’t like himself any more. I suppose you’d call it nervous trouble, I don’t know, but we—I mean the servants—noticed it right away. Because he’d always been so friendly and then, when he came back, nothing. Wouldn’t stop and talk, wouldn’t look you in the face, barely looked at you at all, come to that. The maids would tell me, ‘I said, ‘‘Good-morning, sir’’ and Mr. Lomax just looked straight through me as if I wasn’t there.’ Honestly, if I heard that once, I heard it a thousand times. I started to wonder about it myself, because before, Master Edmund had always popped his head round the door of my room to have a word: ‘How are you this morning’ or ‘What’s for dinner’ or something
of that sort, then suddenly he wouldn’t give me the time of day. Mr. Herbert knew I was worried and he said to me, ‘He’ll come round, don’t you fret. One minute he’s going over the top and the next minute it’s tea in the garden. He just needs time to make the adjustment, that’s all.’ Well, I should have thought that anyone would be glad to have tea in the garden after spending the best part of three years on a muddy old battlefield, but if Mr. Herbert didn’t know what he was talking about, then who did?

The one who surprised me, though, was Miss Georgina. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d never have believed that she had the patience to nurse Master Edmund like she did. Florence Nightingale couldn’t have done a better job. Master Edmund used to have trouble sleeping and she’d sit up with him all night if she had to, she’d never let anyone else take a turn. They asked the doctor for something to help him, but it can’t have worked because he often used to get up and walk around at night; the maids used to find glasses and cigarettes round the house where he’d been, and her with him, she was always with him. I didn’t always sleep so well myself and several times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and come down to the kitchen, and then I’ve heard them in the drawing room, talking. Once, I found them dancing together. It was three o’clock in the morning, they’d no music or anything, they were just waltzing across the floor. Not speaking, very solemn, both in their nightclothes, dancing a waltz.

I had to smile when I saw that, but I took care they never knew I was there as they might have thought I was spying on them. Because they became very close at that time, like two children with a secret, that won’t let anyone else have a share of it. I can look back and see the three of them, Master Edmund, Miss Georgina, and
Mr. James, just as if they were a picture hanging on my wall: after dinner, Master Edmund and Mr. James sitting in the drawing room in tall-backed armchairs side by side, Master Edmund smoking one of his cigarettes and Mr. James with his cigar. Miss Georgina’s behind them, leaning over the backs of the chairs, wearing the black-and-silver evening dress made by Madame Alix Gres with the long sweep behind. She’s got one arm on the back of each chair, telling them some story, and they’re listening and laughing, because it’s a funny one. But the queer thing is,
I
know she’s only talking to Master Edmund. Of course she’s talking to Mr. James too, but only because he’s in the room. If he was to get up and walk out, she’d carry on, whereas if Master Edmund went out, she’d keep mum until he came back. Because that was where her attention was, the whole time. On Master Edmund.

I was happy enough to see her looking after him, because I used to think it shows she’s got some proper feelings in her, to look after her brother so well when he’s poorly. Miss Louisa said to me, ‘I must say, I think Georgie’s doing a first-class job looking after Edmund.’ Poor Miss Louisa, she’d have been glad enough to do the same for Master Roland, if only she’d been given the chance. So, as I say, I thought it was a good thing for Miss Georgina, a proper thing for a lady to do.

Even though she was thirty by then, I’d never given up hope that she and Mr. James would be blessed with little ones. But I thought Miss Georgina might have done with being a bit more affectionate towards Mr. James, because they were shutting him out, really, the two of them. Well, I say the two of them, but it wasn’t Master Edmund’s fault. In fact, if Master Edmund had been in his right mind, I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened. Because they had this special language, he and
she. I think they must have been using it in private for years, but then they started doing it in front of Mr. James and that was the first time I heard it. I thought it must be some foreign language, although I couldn’t think what, because Master Edmund speaks French, but Miss Georgina doesn’t, so how come it was all jabber, jabber, jabber, all of a sudden? Then I started to pick up the odd word and I realised it was just English being spoken funny, words backwards and jumbled up, etteragic when they meant cigarette, that sort of thing. Then they had words they used to mean other than what they do mean. And it wasn’t like a normal language, where a word means the same thing every time you say it, because they’d take a fancy to a certain word and just keep using it, and it could mean anything, just like you might have a Joker in a game of cards. They were always funny-sounding words. Spelunk, that was one of their favourites for a long time, and then there was decorticate, and bandersnatch, and flolollopy. I used to nip into the library and look them up in the dictionary, but I think some of them were invented because I couldn’t find them. It was people’s names as well that they used, they’d start off with the name properly, then they’d mix up all the letters so it didn’t sound anything like. Pandit Nehru was one they had a few years ago, when you got a lot about India in the papers, and Reg Dixon that plays the organ in the cinema. And Stafford Cripps. He was good for hours of amusement, was Stafford Cripps. I thought they might show a bit more respect with him being in the government, but it didn’t make any difference. It was Miss Georgina mostly, doing all this. They both love playing word games, of course, but with her it’s one of the ways she has of having something that she knows and others don’t, to be that bit superior. Her very own special language, that
only he and she understand—and him not always because I’ve heard him say ‘What’s that when it’s in English?’ more than once. But I don’t hear much of it any more, not down here.

By the summer months of 1919, late summer, when Master Edmund got a bit more his old self, it used to remind me of the old days at Dennys, the two of them sitting in Master Edmund’s room, playing games and cards. If you went past the door you’d hear gales of laughter. I can picture that, too, the two of them in his room in the evening, with the smoke floating around them in the lamplight, sitting on the bed, heads together with hair the exact same shade of black-blue. They’d look up at the same moment and you’ve never seen two pairs of eyes so alike. They’ve always loved games and puzzles, and there was a lot of new ones after the war. Every fad that came along, they had to do it: mah-jong, the crossword puzzle, the Monopoly game, that one where it’s meant to give you a better memory, all of them. That’s not to say Mr. James didn’t have his own crazes—he did. He used to build radio sets. He used to sit at the end of the long table in the drawing room for hours fiddling wires around and Mr. Herbert used to help him. Mr. Herbert was just as mad about taking things apart and putting them together as Mr. James was, even though he was the chauffeur. ‘Like two big schoolboys,’ Miss Georgina used to say, and it was. It was funny to see Mr. James sitting there with the radio’s bits and pieces strewn all down that big table—the drawing room was done out to look like a room inside a castle and it was big enough for one, except that the ceiling was the normal height and I’ve never heard of a castle with french windows. I always thought a radio looked all wrong in there, especially the great monster Mr. James had, which nothing ever came out of but
crackles as far as I could tell. But the radio was only one of Mr. James’s machines, he always had the latest things because of his business and a lot of them ended up at Hope House.

I remember he got hold of an electric cooker, which drove every cook we had nearly off her head. And there was a great big refrigerator, one of the very first ones, that came from America. What a monster! The first time I saw it, I didn’t know what it was. I’d never seen one before, none of us had. The kitchen maids were scared of the noises it made so they used to put all the food in the pantry same as always. I believe Mr. James made quite a lot of money out of refrigerators, but I’ve never seen the need myself. The trouble was, Mr. James was always coming into the kitchen to see how his machines were doing. I think he almost wanted us to tell him that they were causing trouble, he and Mr. Herbert would have had their jackets off and the parts all over the kitchen floor in a minute if we had. But of course we always said, ‘Oh yes, it’s very good, very useful.’ If Mr. James had lived in different circumstances, I’m sure he’d have been one of those men that’s always in a shed at the bottom of the garden with their sleeves rolled up and mourning borders round the nails from tinkering with a lot of old iron.