Camomile Lawn (14 page)

‘His claret!’ The girls shrieked with laughter.

‘You girls got hysterics?’ Tony Wood came in from the street. ‘It’s quite lively tonight.’

‘Aren’t you on duty?’

‘Just on my way, came to see if you were all right. What’s Sophy doing here? You all right, Sophy?’

‘Yes, thanks. My holidays have started.’

‘If we can find Aunt Helena you can travel down with her.’

‘I’d much rather go alone, thank you.’

‘Safer with Helena. Plymouth has raids too, you have to go through it.’

‘People always help. I’d rather be alone—’ They all cowered, listening to the sound of a bomb coming down. ‘Ouch, that was close.’

‘Somewhere near the Brompton Road.’

‘Wish I could leave my tin hat with you. Here comes another.’ Tony put an arm round each girl. They listened. Not far away an anti-aircraft gun fired, pom, pom, pom—pom, pom, pom.

‘And
another. What time are you on duty?’

‘In half an hour. Must leave you, I’m afraid. I brought you some whisky.’

‘How good of you. Do be careful.’

‘I’ll be all right. And another! I always think of Peter Pan—’

‘Captain Hook’s trousers tearing.’

‘Of course. Goodbye, girls, must be off.’ Tony kissed the girls. ‘Keep under that table.’ He was gone.

‘Nice of him to come, it’s out of his way. Lovely whisky.’

‘I wish Oliver was here. Have you heard from him?’ Sophy came as close as she could to Polly.

‘Aunt Sarah had a letter, he’s in the Middle East. Safer than Walter on the Atlantic run. He says it’s awful, sick all the time, non-stop.’

‘Polly.’

‘Yes?’ They huddled together.

‘You remember the Terror Run?’

‘Of course I do. Yes, let’s think of that. The sea, the moon, the camomile lawn.’

‘I’m scared. I wish—I must tell.’

‘It will be over soon. We will all be back there one day.’

‘Polly, on the cliff path I—’ The sound of a bomb very near drowned Sophy’s voice. It fell close by and Sophy finished her sentence on a high note of fear, ‘—so I—it was just a push,’ but Polly listened to the falling masonry and glass tinkling into the street and failed to hear what Sophy heard, the cry of a man, the sound of seagulls. She was concerned that Sophy wept and trembled in her arms. ‘Don’t, Sophy, that one was further away, it will be over soon. When the All Clear sounds I’ll make some tea and lace it. There may be people hurt out there, we must help them. Tony’s whisky will be welcome.’

‘I tried to tell you.’

‘Of course you did. Naturally. Listen. No guns, no planes. Ah, the All Clear. Pop up the steps and look, while I put the kettle on. I shall have to get hold of Aunt Helena if the telephone’s working.’

Later, leaving Sophy to dispense tea to an assortment of bombed-out neighbours with tales of lucky escapes, Polly managed to get through to the hotel in Liverpool where she knew Max Erstweiler was staying.

‘’Allo. Erstweiler
hier.’

‘Max, do you know where Aunt Helena is? I’m trying to get hold of her. Monika rang up from Cornwall.’

‘Monika?’ Max’s voice conveyed distrust. ‘What she want?’

‘She wants Helena.’

‘What for she want Helena?’ Max switched on the bedside light and prodded Helena, asleep beside him. Helena woke, saw Max’s finger to his lips, the other hand holding the telephone.

‘It is five in the morning.’

‘I know it. Can you find Helena? Monika says Uncle Richard is very ill. She and the Rector and the General think Helena should come.’

‘I find her,
ein Moment.
’ Max stuffed the telephone under the pillow. ‘It is Richard, is ill, you should go to him.’

‘Oh damn.’ Helena pushed her hair back and pulled a shawl round her shoulders. She held out her hand for the receiver. ‘Helena here. What’s the matter? I only just got to sleep. There was a raid after Max’s concert. It was a great success, the concert.’

‘Aunt Helena, Monika tried to find you, Uncle Richard is very ill.’

‘I knew he had flu.’

‘Well, now he’s got pneumonia.’

‘How did he get that?’ Helena listened to Polly’s voice shouting eerily from London, a garbled explanation.

‘His claret? Trying to save his claret? It is my claret. I thought we might run short, can’t get rice either now. No, not mice, rice. No.’

Polly’s voice suddenly sounded clear and angry. ‘While you are waffling he may be dying. I’m putting Sophy on the ten o’clock train. If you can get to Bristol you could join it at Exeter.’

‘Sophy?’

‘Yes, her holidays have started. She’s here but it isn’t healthy. I have to work. I can’t leave her in the house alone.’

‘I’ll leave as soon as I can. Can you get through to Cornwall? I can’t. I tried last night. Max wanted to tell Monika about the concert,’ Helena lied. She put the telephone down. ‘Why does one lie?’

‘Instinct.’ Max was watching her, pink, amply rounded, blonde, the type he liked. ‘You look like a Greuze.’

‘What’s that?’ Helena was angrily brushing her hair. ‘How inconvenient this is! Oh, do be of some help, find out about trains while I pack. Buck up. Just like Richard to rush out in the rain with flu. I bet all the claret was running down the gutter. Oh, why do I have to behave badly in times of crisis?’ Helena wailed with frustration.

‘Nimm deine Ihre Arschbacken zusammen,’
exclaimed Max.

‘What’s that?’

‘A coarse German expression. I will enquire for trains.’

‘I’d forgotten Sophy’s holidays, lost my head as well as my heart.’

‘You do not love me.’

‘Not at the moment.
Do
go and ask about trains. There will be some terrible cross-country connection. Hurry up and do it.’

Sophy from her corner saw Helena puffing from another platform at Exeter to join the train. She huddled back, hiding her face with a book, having no wish to endure Helena’s company on the train, which stopped at every station from Exeter to Penzance. She hid, even though she suspected Helena had no more wish for her company than she for Helena’s.

Crammed into an over-full carriage Helena reproached herself for neglecting Richard, all too aware that since the incident in the daffodil field she had discarded her former life, left the running of her household to her lover’s wife, the care of Sophy to a school, with help in the holidays from the Rectory. In her mind she saw herself and Max making love under a blue sky surrounded by golden daffodils, ecstasy in the midst of war. She ignored the truth, which was that the daffodil season had long been over, the leaves withered to a dull straw colour, that there were weeds among the bulbs and that while slipping off her knickers she had been stung by nettles. What was true was that the encounter with Max had produced the first orgasm she had ever experienced and in return she loved him with an aggressive devotion he found touching and useful. It wasn’t until now that Richard was ill that she considered his feelings and felt regret, tinged with guilt, about her new mode of life. She had no intention of changing it. Another woman, a good woman, would stand by Richard just because he was boring, just because he had lost a leg, just because he’d been gassed. ‘Not me,’ said Helena aloud, to confirm the course of her life. ‘Not for me.’ Her neighbour, a fresh-faced Wren, looked at her in surprise.

‘I said there’s no tea,’ said Helena, ‘no tea on this train. No.’

‘Oh. Shall I get you a cup at Plymouth? I get off there. There is usually a buffet, unless the station has been disrupted by a raid.’

‘It’s very kind of you, but I think not, no.’ The Wren went back to sleep. Helena planned ahead for her life in London. It was fortunate that Monika was terrified of raids and that Richard loathed London, only visiting it once a year to stay at his club for his regimental dinner, to meet his few remaining contemporaries. Now, with the war, there were no dinners for retired Majors, but opportunity for adultery for their wives. Helena considered the situation with wry amusement.

She had recently met Hector in the street and he had taken her into the Ritz bar. As they sat in the bar he had pointed to the people around them. ‘Look at them all, not one with a wife or husband. All hell let loose. War makes people fearfully randy. It may not apply to you, or does it?’ He had appraised Helena, sharp-eyed under his eyebrows. She had blushed. ‘Well, good luck to you, old girl. Now I’m in the Army Calypso’s out every night. She says she goes round to Polly but that’s all my eye. She’s picked up a friend of Polly’s, that’s true, Tony Wood, entertaining fellow, and she meets Oliver there. He’s in love with her.’

‘They were children together.’

‘Ceci n’empêche cela!
The poor chap’s crazy about her.’

‘She isn’t about him.’ Helena knew this in her bones.

‘Maybe. Then there’s Walter and those twins. Wouldn’t blame her there. What a handsome pair! If one had a brougham and they were horses—’

‘Those three are over Calypso.’

‘Really? Nice to know. But look at the choice she has. All the most enterprising Frogs, Dutch, Belgians, Poles, you name it. They’ll be around sniffing and God help us husbands when the Americans make up their minds. No, no, this is one hell of an opportunity for licence.’ Hector drained his glass and signalled to the barman, ‘Same again.’

‘No, thank you. You and I are not particularly licentious.’ Helena in her role as Max’s mistress heard herself making remarks she would never have made until recently.

‘No—though—well, what I mean is when I am overseas, as I shall be shortly, I’m not fool enough to imagine Calypso sitting at home, tatting.’

‘And what shall you do?’

‘I shall be propping up the bar with a popsy, as I’m doing now.’

‘Not with such innocence, I daresay.’ Helena’s martini had gone straight to her head.

‘You have your fiddler—’

‘How—’

‘News gets around, it gets around, good news and true.’

Helena wondered why she had made no denial and decided that she was proud to be pointed out as Max’s mistress. It was the only thing that got her through the intolerably boring concerts. ‘Are you fond of music?’ she asked Hector.

‘Yes, but not night and day. I bet you feel the same.’ He had stood up to leave, settling his Sam Browne belt at his waist. They had exchanged a glance before parting which Helena was to remember. It said ‘Were it not for Calypso’ and ‘Were it not for Max’. Sitting in the train on her way back to her husband Helena gave a little laugh. The soldier opposite her sized her up, thinking her a bit touched. He was very young, as yet unaware of the extremes a woman of forty’s pent-up sexuality could lead to. Helena had tried to conceal her ignorance from Max, but he had noted and played on it, enjoying her pleasure as one would enjoy a volcanic eruption. Not being at a safe distance added spice to his practised palate.

When at weary last the train drew in Helena roused herself, snatched nervously at her suitcase and stepped out on to the platform, half-consciously searching for her old self, her old preoccupations with Richard, her household, her garden, her friends in the neighbourhood. Ahead of her she caught sight of Sophy, a semi-familiar figure walking lopsided because of her suitcase, grown since she had last seen her almost into that stage which is now called teenage but which Helena termed awkward. She felt a spasm of anger as a young man in R.A.F. uniform overtook Sophy and took her heavy case, smiling down as Sophy looked up with laughing profile. Then she saw Sophy wave an arm and break into a run to greet Monika, holding the dachshund on a lead. Sophy and Monika embraced, the dog leapt up barking, the young man carried the case to the car, saluted and went on his way. ‘My car, what’s she doing with my car?’ Helena knew she was being unreasonable as she watched Monika question Sophy and Sophy shake a negative. Monika looked worried, got into the car and Sophy, holding the wriggling dog, followed. Monika started the engine. Helena called out loudly: ‘Hey! Monika!’

Monika looked relieved and jumped out of the car, leaving the engine running. ‘Sophy said you were not on the train. What a relief you are here.’ Sophy looked secretive.

‘I joined it at Exeter. I didn’t see you.’ Helena accepted Sophy’s help with her suitcase.

‘Nor I you,’ Sophy lied.

‘Poor Richard will be so glad,’ Monika said gently. ‘Perhaps you should drive, yes?’

‘No, you drive, I expect you can manage.’ Helena was ungracious, angry with herself. ‘And how is he? Much better?’

‘Not better, oh Helena he is not better.’

Helena sighed a sigh of exasperation. ‘We’d better be getting along. Can’t you keep that animal still, child,’ although the animal sat perfectly still in Sophy’s arms. Helena met its beady eyes and glanced away from Sophy’s black ones. Sophy smiled.

‘You must be so worried.’ Monika headed the car out of the town.

‘Of course I am. Max sent his love,’ she added cruelly.

‘He has so much.’ Monika, used to this kind of attack, rather enjoyed it. ‘How was the concert?’

‘Splendid. How lovely the sea smells.’ Her pre-war self was roused. She consciously tried to get back to Helena, the aunt by marriage of Richard’s nephews and nieces, churchgoer, member of the Women’s Institute.

‘That is where the bomp fell.’ Monika slowed the car as they drove through the town. ‘Poor Richard unt
der General
were very upset but no people hurt at all.’

‘All that lovely wine! I’d asked them to keep it for me. We will win this war, but think what the Germans will have drunk meanwhile. Any news of your son?’

‘No.’ Monika increased speed. ‘None,’ choking back her anguish.

‘Can I get out before we get to the house? I’ll give Duck a run.’ Monika stopped to let Sophy and the dog out. ‘She loves that dog and so does Richard. You are a good woman, Helena.’

‘Oh no I am not. No.’

‘Come, Duck, run.’ Sophy raced up the hill with the delighted dog, arriving abruptly on the camomile lawn. She ran round it, brushing the turf with her feet. It was the wrong time of year and the scent was faint. She stopped running and looked at the sea, rough and grey, sea horses turning into rollers to crash against the cliffs. She looked along the path, blocked by barbed wire, to the coastguard station once so bravely white, now camouflaged dirty green and brown. ‘It’s all gone,’ she cried miserably to the dog, who whimpered, feeling the wind sharp and cruel on his thin coat.