All The Days of My Life (6 page)

Meanwhile Mrs Gates carefully conveyed Isabel Allaun's egg into its pan of boiling water. Mary, who had now found out about eggs from her brother Jack, still working on the Twining farm, made no remark. She ate her porridge, not asking for an egg, not even demanding a dribble of golden syrup, in the shape of an M, across her porridge. Mrs Gates disliked it when she asked for favours. Also, she had found out that many children in the village were not as lucky as she. On the whole, though, she felt very secure, more secure, in fact, with the imperturbable Mrs Gates than she had ever felt with Ivy Waterhouse, whose nervy London ways often led to a quick smack when she least expected one, or a sudden hug where a blow might have been much more appropriate.

By and large Lady Allaun, too, had coped calmly with the arrival of this grubby child, with her whining cockney voice – a child who had never slept in a bed, let alone a room, by herself, who had never owned a toothbrush, had never seen any bath other than the kitchen sink, or eaten, it seemed to her, anything but fish and chips, egg and chips or pie and chips, all washed down with cups of tea. But Mary, Lady Allaun recognized early on, was pretty, bright, adaptable and fairly quiet. The house was large and Mrs Gates was fond of the child and very capable. So Lady Allaun was content that she had set the necessary example in taking in one of London's threatened children and had not made too bad a bargain in doing so.

At Twining's farm Mary's brother Jack and his friend Ian worked like dogs but ate like hogs, slept in the beds belonging to the two Twining boys, who had both been conscripted, and one killed, and grew strong and healthy. They even helped to bring Mrs Twining, whose Donald's bones lay at the bottom of the Channel in the carcase of a Spitfire, back to the normal world.

Jim and Win Hodges, too, stepped into the places of the dead, for the Becketts, who ran a market garden a mile from the village, had lost two of their three children from diphtheria the previous winter. The
brother and sister became slow and ruddy, in the country style, as they worked between the rows of onions and sprouts in winter and culled the apples in the orchard in summer. Their sharp voices and quick city glances had gone. Like the boys at Twining's farm, they were soon children of the house.

Mannie Frankel, who had also taken to his new life, sleeping in the postman's loft and helping with the mail every day, was wrenched suddenly from a pleasant life by his brother Ben, who arrived while Mannie was hanging over the garden gate and dreaming quietly into the street, and took him immediately back to London. The family had come to the conclusion that with the Germans a bare forty miles away on the coast of Normandy, Mannie was in more danger at Framlingham than he would be in London, if there were an invasion. In London, they reasoned, they could move from place to place more easily and Mannie's distinctively Jewish looks would be less obvious than they were in Framlingham, where the rest of the population had a solid, Saxon appearance.

But as the other London children settled down, or were taken back by their parents for one reason or another, things went from bad to worse for Cissie Messiter and Peggy Jones at the Rectory. Cissie grew paler and thinner. Peggy became slower and slower, and more irritating to Mrs Templeton, who, herself, grew thinner.

Perhaps, out of all the evacuees at Framlingham, Mary Waterhouse was the happiest. She was the youngest, so that her earlier memories erased themselves faster. Her beloved Jack was just a short walk across the fields from her. She had the best conditions – she was, after all, the squire's evacuee. The Allaun fields, including those of the tenant farmers on either side, were hers to play in. There she walked in the late summer among rows of stiff and yellow wheat, plucking off the ears and rubbing them between her fingers, chewing on the hard grains. There were the meadows in spring. The sweet grass was hers to lie in and gaze up at the blue sky. The poppies in the summer cornfields were hers to pick, the shady copses were hers to wander in, the shallow stream at the bottom of the watermeadows was hers to dam, to paddle in, to float twigs in, pretending they were boats. She would lie there for hours wondering how long it would take her to get to the sea if she followed the stream until it became a river and the river until it reached the sea. In autumn she and Jack got the best conkers from the trees on the estate. Sometimes, lying dreaming in a summer field, she would see planes fighting in the sky, in the distance, over the orchards and fields
and hills. She would watch them spiral down in rolling columns of smoke but thought little about it, except to have a daydream about capturing a German airman and taking him to the village policeman. Sometimes she would pick up an extra large piece of shrapnel and lug it home for Jackie, who had the biggest shrapnel collection in Framlingham, but this, like the army trucks going up the main street or the burnt-out carcase of a plane growing among the ferns up on the hillside, was just another part of the landscape, no more interesting than the sight of a full moon moving silently among the clouds, or a sickle moon suspended above the oaks and the lakes in the grounds of Allaun Towers. Mary often stayed up at night in order to stare over the tiles at the darkness and the sky. She had to be very quiet or Mrs Gates, in the next room, would hear her. Their proximity, however, ended a year after she arrived, in an odd way.

Mary came swooping up the drive after school one day in September with her deliberately unbuttoned mac blowing away from her in the wind. Jackie had been telling her about Dracula and, with typical egotism, she had instantly assumed the role of Dracula, rather than one of his victims. Leaves from the trees on either side of the drive were blowing round her head as she whirled and swerved. She stopped suddenly when she saw a long, low, black limousine parked in the semi-circle of gravel in front of the house. Looking at the car Mary wondered if it belonged to the mysterious “Sir Frederick” whose visit was expected shortly. They were a funny family, Mary thought. They never came home. Lady Allaun had once gone to see this “Sir Frederick” in London, when he was on leave. Another time she had gone to see her son, Tom, in Yorkshire, where he was staying with his cousin, Charlie. But none of the family ever came here. There's enough room, Mary thought wonderingly, remembering for a moment the four small rooms at Meakin Street, where everyone was in the way of someone most of the time. Perhaps it was just too far to come, from where they were, she decided. But it would be a nice sight to see Sir Frederick in his soldier's uniform.

As she came through the back door she said to Mrs Gates, who was bending over to open the door of the kitchen range, “Is that Sir Frederick's car?”

“No,” said Mrs Gates, straightening up with a baking tray of scones in her hands, “but whoever it is he's important. Lady Allaun got a letter this morning and starts on about a proper tea, straight away. With cake – a proper tea, she says. She must think I'm Fortnum and
Mason's. What I had to promise Twining for a pat of butter I daren't tell you.”

“Is there a cake?” said Mary eagerly. “Where is it?”

“On the table, in there,” Mrs Gates said, nodding in the direction of the drawing room as she put the scones on a rack.

“Do you think they'll leave any?” said Mary. “Can I have a bit if they do?”

“A piece – you should say 'a piece',” said Mrs Gates. “I expect they'll leave some. Have to be fairly greedy to finish it all between the two of them.”

From the board above the kitchen door the drawing room bell jangled. Mary's game, when Mrs Gates and Lady Allaun were both out of the house for a little while, was to run all round the house, upstairs and down, pushing all the bellpushes in all the rooms, bedrooms, dining room, drawing room and library, and try to get back to the kitchen before any of the brass bells across the door had stopped vibrating. She had never managed it yet, even though the bell in the big bathroom was broken.

Mrs Gates went out of the kitchen to answer the bell and Mary opened the oven door to see what there was for supper. It was shepherd's pie.

Mrs Gates stood in the kitchen doorway, observing her. She said, without feeling, “I've told you time and again not to open that stove door without asking.” Mary looked at her guiltily. “Anyway,” said Mrs Gates, “you're wanted in the drawing room for some reason. Take that mac upstairs, put them wet shoes by the fire and go straight up and give yourself a tidy – change those socks, put your sandals on and brush your hair.”

“What am I going in there for?” asked Mary.

“I don't know,” said Mrs Gates, grimly.

“Will they let me have a bit of cake? Is it chocolate?” Mary asked excitedly.

“They might,” said Mrs Gates. “But don't go begging for it, mind. Wait till you're asked.” She stood on the flagstones, after Mary had trotted out to get ready, and said, “Something funny going on.” Then she started spooning jam into a cut glass bowl. As she did so she tried to work out why the evacuee was being summoned in to tea in the drawing room. At five years old. Perhaps Lady Allaun was trying to prove to some bigwig she was doing her bit for the war effort. But that theory seemed unlikely and, even with her sophisticated knowledge of
everything which might take place in the household, she could not imagine what the answer to this could be. The limousine, driven by a chauffeur in civilian uniform, had come to the house at three. A tall, middle-aged man, obviously, to Mrs Gates's experienced eye, someone of dignity and importance, had come in. Mrs Gates knew that Lady Allaun did not know him. At four the bell had rung for tea. At four-thirty, with a batch of fresh scones and a fresh pot of tea made, she had to prepare Mary Waterhouse to go in to the drawing room. Not
The Times
, interviewing the better class of home for evacuees, she thought. Not the police, come to say the Waterhouses had been killed in a raid. Had it got something to do with that letter from Mary's mother announcing the birth of a little sister? Not likely, thought Mrs Gates, that anyone so posh would arrive to discuss the birth of a Shirley Waterhouse, in the drawing room. It made no sense at all.

“So it's a big, front bedroom for you now, madam,” said Mrs Gates, who was on her knees, polishing the wood surrounds from the skirting boards to the edge of the faded green and gold carpet of the large bedroom. “Well – get your dusters and give us a hand then.”

So Mary went off and got the little pinafore Mrs Gates had made for her, the one with the pink rabbit on the front, and collected her dusters from her own corner of the cleaning cupboard and ran upstairs again to help. She liked the room. It was important. It was above the library. There was a big carved chest under one window. There was a dressing table, made of inlaid wood, for Mary to put her clothes in. There were two little tapestry chairs under the other window. The heavy, faded green velvet curtains had been taken down for a good airing. The dusty grey-green carpet had been vacuumed. She even had her own bellpush.

“I've got my own bell, now,” said Mary with satisfaction as she pushed her rag into the polish and smeared some on the floorboards.

“Woe betide you if you use it,” said Mrs Gates.

“I might get scared,” Mary said. “Why am I moving my room?”

“I told you – it must be to do with Tom coming home,” said Mrs Gates.

“Is he nice? Will he play with me?” asked Mary.

“He's a big boy. He goes to school with a lot of other boys,” Mrs Gates said diplomatically. “He might think you're too young.”

“He can play with Jackie – he's the same age,” said Mary as she polished the floor.

“Maybe,” said Mrs Gates.

“I'll ask him if I can borrow his puzzles,” she said vaguely. She very much wanted the piles of wooden jigsaw puzzles stored in Tom's room, at the opposite end of the landing from hers. She had once sneaked her brother Jack up to the room. Looking at the spotted rocking horse, the train set laid all round the floor, the Meccano, all Jack had said was, “Cor – this is like the King of England's place.” But Mary was forbidden to touch anything in the room.

Mrs Gates now looked at her dubiously. Hard as she tried to root out lightminded, egotistical and optimistic ideas from the golden head of her charge and to plant instead a few wholesome saplings of doubt, fear and humility, she was, like many a gardener, eternally defeated by nature. Mary's soil seemed unable to accept them. If one hope died, another automatically sprang up in its place. She sighed as she looked at the child energetically rubbing the boards with a yellow duster, got up and put a sheet of old wallpaper in a drawer, for lining. She had, she thought, seen many such girls in her time and few of them had come to any good. She had even had some, fortunately not much, of that spirit herself, but God knows, it had been quickly enough knocked out of her after she left service impulsively at seventeen years old to marry Gates, a printer. She had borne a baby which died of scarlet fever six months later, which was, perhaps, a blessing in the circumstances, for not long after Gates had run off without a word. Luckily the Allauns had taken her back. Luckily she had learned her lesson then. She hoped Mary would not have to learn her own so painfully – married to a charmer, bearing a child he could not be bothered to keep. She finished lining the drawers and bent over to wipe up the smears, which were Mary's mistakes in polishing.

Isabel Allaun's son Tom arrived a few days later. He was brought from the station by old Benson, the gardener, odd-job man and chauffeur now that the other two male staff had been called up. They had saved their petrol coupons for the trip so that Tom would feel welcomed on his first visit home for more than a year. Mary saw him from her bedroom window, sitting in the back of the Bentley with his mother. He was thin, small and very fair. Mary rushed downstairs and shouted to Mrs Gates. Together they took up positions on the front step. The boy who walked up the steps a little ahead of Isabel Allaun had hair so pale it was almost white, and lashes so pale there seemed to
be no edging to his very pale blue eyes. He wore a grey jacket, short grey trousers and a white shirt, with a school tie.