A kind of war, p.9
A Kind of War, page 9
What pass have we come to, she thought, when something exciting, wonderful is happening to him, every day and night in his heart – and yet I’m honoured that he should sit with me and criticize his own mother? This is it indeed. We have really come to this.
Our hold on each other: my hold on him, is so custom-based, so meaningless. What sort of bond is it anyway? It’s not bed, that’s evident, and it’s not board (not the way I cook). It’s just that I’m here and might as well stay. What’s the real objection? One man, one wife, one mistress – a serviceable, satisfactory way of life, left unquestioned for centuries. An arrangement after all. And at Edward’s death-bed didn’t Alexandra send for Alice Keppel? Now though, we are not supposed even to feel jealous. And yet I haven’t really seen any better solution. Nothing in the ‘sixties or ‘seventies so far seems to me any better answer. No solution that appeals.
He got up, coming over and filling her glass. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I shall have to be out this evening. It’s a meeting about the St Matthew. The idea is to have it ready for Easter. Ivor Atkins’ version – not German unfortunately. But the arrangements for the professionals are through, more or less, bar the Evangelist.’
‘I shall be there,’ she said.
Looking across at her, he smiled. It transformed his face completely. She would have thought – if she hadn’t by now been so wary – that the smile was for her.
All those evacuees … At any rate that was the excuse, that Easter of 1943, for putting on a show for them in the village. The organization began messily with a host of unrelated ideas: too many people, and not all of them the right ones, wanted to be in on it. Within days the project had been taken over by Muff.
Having drawn up a plan, she issued a few directives and then, with complete confidence, delegated. Stan Barraclough, the local auctioneer, was to be master of ceremonies and entertainments officer. Miss Thackray, music teacher, would do all the serious accompaniments while Mike, playing by ear, would vamp for the choruses.
Rehearsals were held in the draughty village hall where there was a piano, seats and a stage of sorts. Stan, hands in pockets, would stand there, slightly aggressive. Dressed always in Home Guard battledress, he looked at least half ready to stave off the invasion. He and Mike were to do a comic turn together, with patter. Later they were to be Flanagan and Allen, singing ‘Down Forget-me-not Lane’. Tessie had a number with Mike too. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney again. ‘Our love affair, will be such fun, ‘twill be the envy of everyone …’ She wasn’t shy when she sang with him. She sang in a talking, shouting sort of voice: Stan said she was rather good, including her in his praise of Mike who he said was the backbone of the whole show.
Several turns however were obviously so terrible that it was questionable whether an audience used to more rollicking fare would tolerate them. ‘We’re not Works Wonders, you know,’ Stan would mutter warningly as an elderly bachelor moved heavily to ‘The Floral Dance’. There was a feeling sometimes that the evacuees were to be there by Royal Command: Downstairs, forced to watch Upstairs home theatricals. The query was whether they’d extend to them the same tolerance and admiration factory workers obviously felt for each other’s performances.
Then at the last rehearsal but one, towards the end of the afternoon, Barney strolled in, nonchalantly; under his arm a bound music book.
‘Squire’s son,’ Stan said. ‘Oh my God.’ Tessie and Mike had just finished their turn. Barney acknowledged them distantly. ‘I thought I might perform,’ he said, carelessly, to Stan.
‘Oh yes?’ said Stan, eyebrows lifted. But Barney, ignoring him, went straight over to Miss Thackray; leaning forward he explained something to her courteously; for a few moments their heads were bent together over the music. Then he walked back again.
He said to Stan: ‘I should think I would come about sixth on the programme. Preferably after – or just before something light.’
Mike picked up the list and began glancing down it. Stan, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, looked Barney up and down with a mixture of insolence and diffidence.
‘What exactly are we being honoured with?’
‘Bach. From the St Matthew. Mache dich, mein Herze rein – ’
‘Mark Dick. Who’s he when he’s at home?’ He pulled a face. ‘That won’t do much for the War Effort. Can’t we have it in English, eh? The townies, they’ll never stand for Jerry’s lingo.’
‘Oh God,’ said Barney languidly. ‘Lloyd George, thou shouldst be ruling at this hour.’ Then he said, very quietly, so that Tessie was a little frightened, ‘No, I think – German. Bach married the words rather carefully I fancy. I shall sing it in the original.’ He turned to Mike: ‘Time me – would you?’
His voice, which she’d never heard before, was assured, even in a piece so obviously ambitious. Miss Thackray, taken by surprise, was plainly still a little flustered. He stopped her several times, once about three or four minutes in, asking her to begin again. Stan walked up and down at the side of the stage – up and down – occasionally glancing across, as if something had happened to hold up the proceedings.
Two days later Barney was there again, for the dress rehearsal. She heard him tell Mike that he had to report to Catterick in a fortnight’s time. He seemed in a jaunty mood almost: didn’t seem to mind that Stan had moved him to the last item but one, to come after Flanagan and Allen and before the singsong. He ran through his aria twice. There was a long introductory piano passage, another in the middle. Miss Thackray hadn’t got it quite to his liking: ‘Faster, Miss T, faster!’ Blushing, agitated, loving it, her grey curls tossing, she made the notes tumble over each other. Stan, sitting with arms crossed, yawned ostentatiously.
The day of the show was very warm. The audience, restless and enthusiastic by turns, applauded Mike and Tessie. Miss Thackray, playing Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary Study’ – all flying elbows and emotion – went down well; so did Mike and Stan’s comic patter.
She and Mike were sitting at the side of the stage, when last but one Barney came on. The aria, which she’d heard three, four times by now, had a familiar sound, an expected rhythm. She feared for him though, knowing the audience. She was surprised too to see his mother wasn’t there. But as he sang, she marvelled at his assurance. Someone called out, ‘You’re not in church, sonnie,’ then a moment later, from the back: ‘Give us “In a Monastery Garden” – ’ Several people took up the chant. Stan, marching down the centre aisle, waved a baton. ‘Hey there – you at the back!’
Tessie looked across to where Barney was standing. And it was then that it happened. One moment he was singing, in German (a language of which she knew only the rudiments), an aria in which she wasn’t really very interested. The next, everything had changed. She could see, hear the restive scraping of chairs, the subdued giggles. ‘Lass Jesu mein!’ As he called so tenderly upon his Christ: may it never end, her heart said, for suddenly she was bound to him with hoops of steel.
Then a toddler stumbled down the aisle, wide-legged, two inches of damp nappy hanging one side, and began to cry. His mother ran after him, hissing angrily just as Miss Thackray trilling her grace notes played through the final passage. Barney, bowing a little, acknowledged the polite applause.
The moment, for all its intensity, was gone. But it had been one of those indelible, if later scarcely believable experiences. At some point in the pattern, in the finished picture, in the rag-bag that was past, present and future, she was irrevocably fixed, part of him for ever.
Straight after it was the singsong. They sang ‘White Cliffs of Dover’, ‘Roll out the Barrel’, ‘We’ll Meet Again’. After someone had led the applause for Stan, Mike got three special cheers and an encore. In the wings afterwards Tessie hugged him with pride.
Polly didn’t have to wait long for an answer. She was telephoned the next evening.
Peter, his voice unpleasantly rasping (although not quite so bad as she’d remembered so that she felt guilty – a little), said, almost patronizingly as if she were a naughty child: ‘So you are free, après tout! I absolutely flipped when I heard …’
The party was sooner than she’d realized – that was why he’d phoned. It was tomorrow evening. He hadn’t the address on him but she was to come to his place, his pad, because it was nearby. ‘If you don’t mind? If you want to go – ’ he added ominously, suddenly in command. Which after all he was.
I have to go, she thought. I must go. Sam must go too. Oh my God, my God, my God, he must be there.
At Harrods that Christmas of 1913, there’d been a Norwegian ski expert in the travel department to give advice. Muff herself hadn’t been interested; some friends though, keen on winter sports, spoke well of him. For no good reason the detail had stayed in her mind. Like the visit to St Petersburg: something perhaps she regretted?
It had been the end of Con’s first term at Oxford. At one of the Sunday evening Balliol Hall concerts he’d met an enthusiastic violinist and now in the vac had asked him to stay. They both wanted to make music it seemed, most of the day. Or Con did. Invited out to luncheon he would never be ready on time: battling with Schubert’s Rondo Brillante he would have to be dragged reluctant, from the piano stool. David, accomplished, fiery sometimes, was far more sociable, took his much greater talent very lightly: was prouder really of his cricketing accomplishments, lying now in mothballs with his flannels.
A lot of the time she felt moody, discontented. Christmas was in the air and now and then, seeing the decorations about London, she would feel a vague excitement, faint anticipation. The weather, grey, damp, sullen, didn’t help. Contrary, a little bored, she was full of a restless, nameless dissatisfaction.
She didn’t see enough of Con. To be with him more she would sit in the library while they practised – even though music meant little or nothing to her. David she supposed was pleased to see her there, since he looked over at her often, smiling, sometimes even pulling amusing faces. He was fair like her, but more of a red-gold; both his hair and his moustache were luxuriant and, since his face was never still, it seemed to her sometimes as if he were on fire. She felt always very alive in his presence. Sometimes, just sitting there, she would be aware suddenly of the touch of her own fingers on her arm, electric. A humming. The heavy warmth of the library, the light casting shadows, the thick-curtained door. Once she met him in there alone; it was late after tea, she was just going up to dress for dinner, wanted something to read.
‘I came in search of a stodgy novel. Harrods have sent nothing suitable. I suddenly thought I’d read George Eliot –’
‘Shall I find one for you?’ He walked towards the shelves. ‘What do you like usually?’ he asked; his voice was mocking, affectionate. ‘Problem novels? Suffrage novels? Tell me.’
There was a screen in the library. He beckoned her. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said: he was laughing. When she followed him behind he laughed more, then as she raised her eyebrows, began to question, he kissed her roundly on the lips, seeming to lift her body as he did so – or was it that she floated from the ground a little? Then, as suddenly, he let her go and laughing still went and found Middlemarch for her.
The day before he left to go home for Christmas she was alone with him again, a few moments, in an upstairs corridor. Stepping to one side, moving behind her, he cupped his hands over her breasts. She thought that she might faint-at once so alive and yet, where to run, where to hide? ‘Shall you tell?’ he asked then, laughing, his hands resting a moment on her waist.
Con hoped that she liked him. ‘You do like him, Muff?’ Worried: ‘I wanted you to, so much.’
Me, she thought, my body: that no one told me of. How could I have searched so carefully, penetrated so much speculation, surmise, gossip, hearsay – discovered so much – and known so little? Now she saw the towers, the turrets of an unknown city. They rose from the sea.
A secret. ‘Shall you tell?’ he had asked, laughing.
What to wear for the party with Peter? What sort of party was it? What paint should she put on? Decisions took so long that in the end she had only ten minutes for the whole operation. In her crayon box the most needed colours were broken, worn or just plain missing; Christopher had borrowed them at half-term. Trying to be quick she grossly overdid it: her eyes staring out at her surprised and too thickly ringed; and wanting to keep the orange silk blouse clean of make-up, putting it on at the last moment, she seemed in the artificial light to flare up, to dazzle vulgarly.
‘You’ll have to do,’ she said despairingly.
On her first tentative push of the bell Peter hurried down the stairs, taking them at the double it seemed, arriving breathless and looking as before at once critical and reproachful: ‘Quite an improvement. Only fifteen minutes late. We have the time for a drink before take-off.’
He sat her down. His flat seemed quite wrong: where she’d been certain it would glitter in chromium, all whites and oranges and moulded plastics, it was dark and oaken, heavy Jacobean furniture and flocked wall-paper. This threw her immediately. She’d seen herself managing, coping with the ordeal against or amidst bright noisy colours.
It was a horrible sofa. She sank far far into its knobbly depths. He pointed to an ornately carved corner cupboard: ‘Lo I have everything. Please give your order.’
‘God, I don’t know-I usually just get something pressed into my hand – ’ She pointed to a bottle of Strega because she liked the colour. He lifted his eyebrows: ‘Now?’
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘not now. Look, I’m flustered. Armagnac then –’
‘Lost your cool, have you?’ But Armagnac wasn’t what she felt like. She would have liked apple juice. ‘Have you any apple juice?’
‘I hadn’t thought-are you one of those nature freaks, is it? You’ll hardly be in the mood, you know.’ Without consulting her further he mixed her a brandy and ginger ale. ‘Relax,’ he kept saying, so that very soon she was all tensed up. ‘Now, music. You say what you’d like. No way-out tastes, I trust. There’s nothing exciting here – nothing to turn us on, take us for a trip.’
‘Oh dry up,’ she said into her brandy. He didn’t hear. He was over by the record player, putting on Delius’ ‘Walk to the Paradise Garden’. He brought his own drink over and sat near her on the sofa, stretching out one leg, showing a gap of shocking-pink sock. He rubbed his foot against hers.
‘My tights,’ she said. ‘Last pair –’
‘Ah,’ he said, then ‘ah,’ looking at her, head on one side. The drink was having an effect on her: from having been ill at ease, not sure what to expect, now she felt caged inside. She knew that they must hurry. (Already the people were gathering. Sam had looked in – could stay only a few moments. ‘Sorry, everybody…’ Once round the room, a couple of drinks – then as she arrived, he would be leaving – had already left: his receding back to be seen turning the corner out of sight, gone for ever, lost…)
Tights,’ Peter said. ‘Tights. Do I sigh alone for suspenders?’
‘Of course not. Lots of girls wear them – lovely lovely belts. I just haven’t got round to any. I’m always late – just grab whatever’s nearest.’
‘Tell you what – I’ll grab whatever’s nearest. Grab – ’ His hand ran expertly up her skirt then over to the inside of her thigh. From terribly near, he leered.
‘It’s worse when they get ripped at the top,’ she said in what was meant to be a warm voice but which came out cold, and small. I must be fair, she thought. After all I’m using him. ‘Because then you’re tempted to go on wearing them all grotty. So if you could be careful.’
‘Careful? You’re in a hurry – we’re not that far yet. Of course I shall be careful. When the time comes.’ His other hand slipped down her silk blouse then, as he pressed his mouth on hers, she thought, we are never going to go at all. I shall never for the rest of my life see Sam.
Peter’s smell was not right: it was some scent or after-shave, over-spiced, not acid enough. She tried to think of the familiar reassuring smell of Patrick as they sat together day after day; anything to distract herself. But too late. Her body had already in its unconscious flinching betrayed what no words would now excuse.
‘I feel sick –’
‘Cool… Why so cool? You just play it that way – do you?’
She leaned back on the sofa. ‘I’m terribly sorry, I just suddenly felt sick. Perhaps, the brandy – I don’t know.’ The party seemed suddenly very far away, very unreal. ‘We ought to go though, we ought to be off. I feel fine. Honest.’
‘Stop here,’ he said a little later. ‘This is the house.’ He pushed her towards the steps. There was a burst of sound as the door opened, babble, music; smoke seemed to be floating down the stairs. The first person to speak to them said: ‘Tim and Amelia have disappeared. I think they’ve slipped out for reinforcements – about double the number they thought they asked …’
‘Success.’ a voice said behind them. Peter said: ‘I’ve brought along Polly Willingham.’
‘Polly, how super. There aren’t enough girls. Polly, do you sing? Gareth’s looking for altos, sopranos. Let’s find Gareth. Drinks. Christ, there aren’t any.’
A dark-haired girl said to Peter, ‘Darling, take mine. Take it all. I don’t deserve any more.’ She lurched forward, spilling some on to her shoes. ‘Oh shit.’ She looked vaguely at Polly.
‘Who’s she?’
‘Some have had too much, some not enough. What a capitalist party,’ Peter said.
‘Here come Tim and Amelia – lots of lovely drink …’ They moved into a crush. A second later and oh delight – she was separated from Peter.
‘And who have we here? No, but really, I’m sober. I’m Rod. You spoke to me when you first came in. Let’s go and break some earnest group up.’
‘I was supposed to be finding someone called Gareth – ’ ‘Oh Gareth, is very serious tonight, darling, very serious – ’ There didn’t seem to be an earnest group to break up. She was pulled round, still without a drink; he stopped at each gathering. ‘No, no, no.’ The room seemed enormous. And no face yet was his face, Sam’s (pray God she didn’t run into Peter again). But in fact there was another room. She was in it now. It wasn’t so crowded. A group stood over by the piano: a man with his back to her, shaggy headed, bent listening to a girl in a lemon crochet dress. A small rotund man was laughing, his head thrown back. Rod said, ‘That’s Gareth.’ Then he said, ‘Gareth, this is Polly. She’s come to say she’ll sing for her supper.’
