Camomile Lawn
Authors: Mary Wesley
A Novel
Mary Wesley
to James Hale
One
H
ELENA CUTHBERTSON PICKED UP
the crumpled
Times
by her sleeping husband and went to the flower room to iron it.
When she had suggested they should buy two copies of the paper, so that each could enjoy it in its pristine state, Richard had flared into rage and his accusations of extravagance had gone on for weeks, made worse when she had pointed out that it was her money that paid the paper bill.
Ironing the paper, a self-imposed task, she inclined to regret her period of widowhood after the war when she had read
The Times
whenever she pleased and not had to wait. Replacing the sheets in their proper order, she considered it ironic that any man could take so long reading the leaders and the Hatch, Match and Dispatches and reduce the paper to hopeless disorder. She looked round the flower room; it was far from tidy. Something should be done about it, but not now. Helena let herself into the garden, walked round to the camomile lawn, sat down in a deck chair and settled to read the paper. Richard would sleep for another hour before fussing as to whether he or she should meet the evening train, and to which bedrooms his nephews and nieces should be assigned, as though they did not always decide for themselves. Richard attributed his temper and fussiness to being gassed in the trenches. Turning the pages of the paper, Helena rather wondered. She laid the paper down and, closing her eyes, lifted her face to the sun. There was no good news these days and although Richard had touching faith in Mr Chamberlain it looked as though Calypso, Walter, Polly and Oliver were in for the next bout of gas. Sophy, too, of course. She tended to forget Sophy, so small, so quiet, so young compared with the ebullient others. Helena knew she should make an effort about Sophy. She had never had a child of her own, neither had Richard. Calypso, Walter, Polly and Oliver were Richard’s siblings’ children. Calypso was the only child of Richard’s elder brother John Cuthbertson, a dim country solicitor with a vapidly pretty wife. Polly and Walter were the children of his younger brother Martin Cuthbertson, a surgeon and rising star, and Oliver only child of Sarah, his elder sister, married to George Anstey, a prominent civil servant.
Richard resented clever Martin’s success, felt contempt for John, and was not only rather afraid of his sister Sarah but also jealous. Poor little Sophy was his half-sister’s child, an error which had killed the half-sister, leaving Sophy solo. Helena admitted to herself that had she known about Sophy when Richard had pressed her to marry him she would have thought twice. The others were all older and only came for visits, whereas Sophy of necessity was always there, though thank God fairly invisible.
Lying on her stomach along the branch of the Ilex tree overhanging the camomile lawn, Sophy looked down on her aunt. She was trapped until Helena chose to move. She had a foreshortened view of Helena, relaxed, legs apart, cotton dress riding up her thighs, lolling. A perfect view across the lawn to the cliff running down to the cove, and of the path winding along the contours of the coast a few feet from the drop to the sea, calm this hot August day. She wondered whether Oliver would have the Terror Run as he had for the last three summers and whether she would be old enough to join in. The Terror Run was run by moonlight along the path from the headland below the coastguard station. The first year Walter had sprained an ankle and last year Polly had been badly scratched by brambles. Oliver so far held the record. Calypso always came in unscathed, her exquisite face no pinker than usual, her breath only lifting breasts the better for the boys to gaze at. As Sophy watched the coastguard walk along the cliff path, going on duty, she wondered what it would be like to have breasts, what it would be like to be loved as Calypso was loved. Aunt Helena’s breasts were packed into a garment called a bust bodice which made Calypso and Polly laugh. They wore Kestos brassières.
The coastguard reached his station. Uncle Richard limped through the French windows saying ‘Ah, there you are’ in a surprised voice, as though his wife never sat on the lawn. Helena pulled down her skirt.
‘Would you like some tea?’ She wished he would not limp so obviously. There was no need.
‘Yes indeed, why not? Shall I ask Betty?’
‘It’s Betty’s day out. I will get it, it’s all ready.’
Helena sighed and rose to her feet. Above them Sophy edged backwards along the branch to her window.
‘I’d get it if it weren’t for my leg.’ Richard Cuthbertson always said this. The leg was somewhere in Flanders, a place he talked about with nervous affection.
‘You rest it.’ Helena always said this. Oliver had once been heard to say: ‘When I drove through the battlefields of Flanders with Mother the thought of Uncle’s leg double-trenched among the beet made me give up sugar with my tea.’ That Helena had overheard him he was unaware. Calypso had laughed her chuckling laugh.
‘Imagine in bed! Poor Helena! I mean, as they, well—as they—there it is, the false one, propped against the wall, as often as not still in his trousers. I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t.’
Oliver and Walter had laughed too and increased their laughter when Calypso had added: ‘They don’t, of course. It was twin beds and now he sleeps in the dressing room.’
When Sophy asked, ‘Don’t what?’ Walter had cried: ‘Sweet innocence of youth’, and Sophy had angrily blushed.
As Sophy eased herself over the sill into her room she saw Jack from the post office pop up the path leading to the lawn.
‘Telegram, Major, for you.’ She watched Uncle Richard tear the envelope with his thumb, read, then glare at Jack. ‘Damn the boy!’ he exclaimed, staring at Jack, who retreated a couple of steps and asked: ‘Any answer, sir?’
‘No, no thank you. Damned inconsiderate.’
Jack disappeared down the path to his bicycle.
Uncle Richard shouted, ‘Helena, Helena, I say.’
‘What is it?’ Helena came through the French windows, pulling a trolley. ‘I thought tea out here would be nice. What is it?’ she asked, bringing the trolley up to the deck chair. ‘I’ll get another chair,’ she added, as her husband sat in the one she had vacated.
‘It’s Oliver. Has an appointment in Harley Street, isn’t arriving until the midnight train. He is inconsiderate. It’s inconvenient, means meeting two trains. I ask you.’
‘Calypso can meet him, she can drive.’
‘Not my car.’ Uncle Richard helped himself to a scone. ‘Any cream?’
‘On your left.’ Helena poured tea. ‘She can take mine, then.’ Helena passed her husband his cup. She seldom allowed herself to refer to the fact that not only the car but the house and nearly all their possessions were hers. It was a pity Army pensions were so small, a good thing her first husband had left her well off.
‘Oliver has been wounded in Spain. I expect George wants to make sure he is all right.’
‘George is a fool. Why did he allow the boy to get mixed up with those dagos?’
‘I don’t suppose Oliver asked, he just went. They are lucky he has come back. The Turnbulls’ son has been killed.’
‘At least he was fighting on the right side.’
‘Do you mean right or Right?’ Helena spread jam on her scone.
‘If you are going to start up again with that attitude I refuse to discuss this—this scuffle in Spain. Where is that child Sophy? Should she not be here for tea? Sophy?’ He raised his voice to shout as he would have liked to shout at his wife if he had not been afraid of her.
‘Coming.’ Sophy wiped the tear she had spilled in disappointment, combed her hair and called again, ‘Coming.’ Perhaps Calypso would let her go to meet Oliver, although it was all too probable that she would be sent to bed long before midnight. That she loved Oliver with all her heart and always would was Sophy’s burden.
H
ELENA MET THE LONDON
train, taking Sophy, who seemed quieter than usual. Sophy was small, ten, and her appearance had a touch of the Orient, not what Richard would call the Tarbrush, but the Orient. Her cheekbones could be called Slav but not her eyes. Helena hoped that she would improve. She had never enquired precisely what and who Richard’s half-sister had been up to with or where.
The London train snaked into Penzance. Calypso, Walter and Polly sprang from it with zest, kissing Helena, hugging Sophy and crying, ‘Well, well, how are you? Isn’t this lovely? Isn’t this wonderful? What air after London!’ Let’s grab the luggage, find a porter. Where’s the car? How’s Uncle Richard? How’s his leg?’ Their anxiety always seemed to be addressed to the artificial limb, which indeed went wrong oftener than the active member.
Calypso was breathtaking. Helena was freshly surprised. At nineteen she was still gangly. Her dreadful red mouth and nails and excess face powder could not spoil her beauty. Walter at eighteen had broadened. He was a dark version of his father and uncle except for his nose, which he had broken when small. Polly, on the other hand, favoured her mother with a square jaw and startling green eyes with long lashes. Her teeth slightly out of kilter, like a false step in a chorus line, gave her smile a particular gaiety. At nineteen there was already beauty.
‘Did you hear about Oliver?’
‘Oliver is coming on the late train.’ Helena watched the young people pile into the car. ‘And nobody is to mention General Franco.’ She settled herself at the wheel.
‘Oh, Aunt Helena, you spoilsport. Here, Sophy, sit on my knee.’ Calypso clasped Sophy round the waist and kissed the back of her neck. ‘Nice to see you.’ She squeezed the child. ‘Come and meet Olly with me? May I meet him, Aunt?’
‘If you like, but Sophy should be in bed.’
‘Oh, Aunt, just this once.’
‘She’s a growing child, she needs her sleep. She can see Oliver tomorrow.’
‘Mother talked to Uncle George and he said Oliver had a near miss. The bullet grazed the side of his head.’ In the back with Polly, Walter leant forward to talk to his aunt, who was driving recklessly. ‘What do you think of the war, Aunt?’
‘Which?’ Helena jammed on the brakes to avoid a van. ‘What your uncle calls “the scuffle in Spain” or the coming one?’
‘The coming one. I shall join the Navy.’
‘But you are always sick.’ Polly closed her eyes as Helena increased speed. ‘Even in a dinghy.’
‘I shall get into submarines. You can’t be sick under water.’
‘You are too young,’ said Helena.
‘I am eighteen, I’ve left school.’
‘What about Oxford?’ Helena changed down and set the car up the steep hill out of the town.
‘Either it will have been destroyed or it will wait. Besides, I haven’t got a place like Oliver. I wonder whether he will go now.’
‘Uncle George didn’t at all like him using his waiting year to fight in Spain. He wanted him to learn German.’
‘He wouldn’t have liked Germany. I was there at Easter. It was vile. All those
Sieg Heils
and
Juden verbotens.
A filthy Brownshirt was rude to me in Munich because I was wearing shorts.’ Calypso flinched as Helena rasped the gears at the top of the hill.
‘Let’s not discuss politics or war. This may be our last summer holiday ever.’ Polly spoke with urgency. ‘We can’t stop it now.’
