Camomile Lawn (25 page)

‘Of course, Uncle Richard.’

‘That’s all right, then. The extraordinary thing is that I don’t mind it on Monika, actually like it, and she doesn’t shave her armpits like you girls.’

‘That’s Continental.’ Calypso began to laugh.

‘What are you laughing at?’

‘You, Uncle Richard, oh-oh-oh!’ Calypso wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Ah-ah-ah oh!’ she moaned. ‘Oh!’

‘I wish I knew what’s so funny. You children make a mock of me. I’m just a one-legged misfit in this bloody war.’ Richard suddenly felt rage. ‘I go to my club and it’s full of every conceivable ass in uniform and I am totally useless. Helena has a lover, a well-known violinist, she’s sick of her boring one-legged husband. I’ve never ever been able to make love to her, I ask you. I never liked women until—’

‘Monika?’

‘Yes. Why am I talking such tommy rot, it’s being in a train, what’s the matter?’ Calypso had moved to sit beside him, putting an arm round his shoulders.

‘You’re brave, Uncle Richard, you are contributing so much. Look what you’ve done to my morale. I was depressed. You are wonderful.’ Calypso was between laughter and tears.

‘No, no.’ Richard looked embarrassed.

‘Yes, yes, awfully brave. We all love you, you know we do.’

‘Rubbish.’ Richard grew red in the face.

‘It’s true,’ cried Calypso, making it true for herself at least. ‘Without you all our lives would be different. Think how you rescued Max and Monika from internment—marvellous.’

‘We are getting into the station, let’s see if we can find a taxi.’ Richard was embarrassed.

Calypso combed her hair and applied lipstick. When the train stopped she took Richard’s arm as he limped up the platform.

‘Will you be godfather to the baby, Uncle Richard?’

‘I don’t think I’d be much good. I’m not rich and don’t believe in God. Kind of you to ask, though.’

‘I mean it.’

‘In that case, thank you. I will think about it.’

‘Here’s a taxi, we’re in luck. Get in, quick.’

Richard scrambled in, dragging his leg. The taxi wound its way through dark streets and Richard sat silent. Then said: ‘Wish I’d been in those raids, a fellow feels a bit left out.’

‘I expect there will be more. Will you drop me at the next corner? I’m practically home.’

‘Tell the driver. Thank you for coming with me.’

‘I enjoyed it. Goodnight, Uncle. This will do.’ Calypso opened the taxi door.

‘Goodbye, my dear. She did offer to shave her, er, you know—’

‘What? Who?’ Calypso was half out of the cab.

‘Monika, her pussy, but I said—well, take care of yourself. Enderby Street, driver.’

There were two letters from Hector on the mat. Calypso shut the door and drew the curtains before sitting down to read. That he had not yet heard of the baby was clear. He wrote in his neat script of the people he knew now gathered in Cairo, an old school friend who drove a dog cart to save petrol, of swimming at the Gehzira club, tennis, visits to the pyramids, the ill-feeling emanating from King Farouk, the constant round of parties, the wives who had managed to join their husbands, his doubts as to whether it would be safe for her were she to wish to come. He wrote about the light and the smell and that some day he would love to bring her to Egypt. Then he wrote of his plans for peace and several paragraphs Calypso skipped, of his political views, how they were changing. Then rather stiltedly the letter ended, leaving Calypso wondering whether she missed this man, this political animal, a man as old as her father. At least, she thought, he is interested in women, not pining after little girls. Still in the second letter Hector had not heard of her pregnancy. She frowned. Hector wrote that he planned to buy land in England and plant trees.

Seeing all this desert makes me crave for trees. There was once a forest along the shores of North Africa. The Romans felled the trees and never replanted, hence the soil erosion which caused the desert in which we fight. I write metaphorically. My part in the fighting so far is from an office desk. Perhaps I can remedy this. Back to my dream. I shall plant woods of oak, beech, chestnut and among them flowering cherries. I will plant the cherries in curves and circles so that when some future airman flies over them he will see the name Calypso spelled out in blossom. I was in hospital with a fever when I made this plan. I met your cousin Oliver in a bar yesterday, on leave. He has desert boils, disagreeable but not fatal, love, Hector.

Calypso sat with the thin sheets of airmail paper in her lap. This was a Hector she did not know. There were few trees in Scotland. Pines, birches and rowans. It had been cold on their honeymoon, cold when she had travelled up to see Catherine. She had walked along the track by the river. Catherine, the ghillie’s daughter, had limped along, speaking in her lilting voice, stopping to point out the rock that Hector had bullied her into jumping from when he came home from school for the holidays, forcing her to leap so that he could catch her, boasting of his strength. ‘There,’ she had said, pointing with her sharp chin. ‘There we fell and my leg it was that broke.’

‘And left you lame,’ said Calypso, shocked.

‘Aye.’ Catherine smiled. ‘To remember him by.’

They had stood looking at each other, the older woman’s clear blue eyes looking into Calypso’s heavily fringed, greenish blue in the Highland light. Then, laughing, the older woman had closed the episode. ‘Yon Daphne was no leaper such as you, and our Hamish will love the glens, do not worry. He will stride the hills.’

Sitting alone in battered London Calypso thought not of Hector but of the mountains and rushing streams which were his background, the scudding clouds and driving rain which had turned to snow, of Catherine coming to stir the fire in her bedroom and put another eiderdown over her in Hector’s bed, where she felt an alien. She felt grateful that Catherine, like Hector, made no effort to make her love that savage beauty, accepting her as a Southerner, respecting her for not pretending like Daphne to acceptance by Hector’s people. By hints and casual references Hector’s people had made it clear that, though Daphne was still in God’s eyes Hector’s wife, in their hearts they regretted it.

Calypso telephoned Polly.

‘What are desert boils?’

‘No idea. Why?’

‘Hector says Oliver has them.’

‘Poor Oliver. Ask Aunt Sarah, she is due in London soon. Are you coming round? The twins are here.’

‘Not tonight, I’m quite busy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Nothing. It takes all my time.’

‘Are you all right all alone?’

‘I have Fling. I prefer to be alone.’

‘That’s not like you.’

‘Ah, well.’ She put down the receiver.

‘Pregnancy is making her unsociable,’ said Polly to David, who was peeling potatoes for their supper.

‘She was always a bit unpredictable,’ murmured the other twin. ‘A solo artist.’

‘Not like us,’ said his brother. ‘But we were fated, born as we were.’

‘After all these years I still don’t know which of you is the eldest.’ Polly paused in her task of laying the table.

‘Nor do we know,’ said Paul. ‘Our parents took the attitude that the first shall be last and the last first. Father living up to his churchy principles and Mother with her idea of fair play.’

‘Oh.’

‘Rather like you, darling. Will these be enough potatoes?’

Polly blushed, looking from one brother to another. ‘I think they are right,’ she said. ‘You give me a seed of hope.’

‘Will you go and see them when we are gone?’

‘Gone where?’

‘Overseas, darling. The way things are going we are bound to be posted. All the action is in North Africa now. One or both of us may find ourselves in Malta.’

‘Oh God, no!’ Polly burst into tears.

‘As bad as that, is it? We rather guessed.’ They faced Polly, who stood in her kitchen apron, an oven glove in her hand, tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘Don’t cry, sweetheart, think how good the sun will be for us.’

‘We can’t leave it all to the Pongos. Hector and Oliver have been out there for ages. Nothing has happened to them.’

‘Oliver’s got boils, Calypso told me.’ Polly’s tears seemed limitless.

‘And Hector has an office job, I know.’ Gently they held her, patting her, wiping her tears, stroking her brown hair away from her face. ‘There,’ they said, ‘there. Better now.’

Polly gulped strangled words against David’s shoulder, laying her head against him, reaching a hand for Paul.

‘It’s Walter.’

‘That was months and months ago.’

‘I know, but it’s still—’

The brothers exchanged smiles across her tangled hair.

‘Come, blow your nose. You may not have to weep for us.’

‘When are you likely to go?’

‘We have guesswork, that’s all. You probably hear more in your office.’

‘Hence the tears.’ Polly dried her eyes, trying to subdue her fear.

L
EFT ON HER OWN
in Cornwall Monika increased the production of food. To hens she added ducks, letting them stray round the flower garden to eat slugs. She bought two rabbits and put them on the tennis court where, wired in, they lolloped, oblivious of the fate in store. The General came and examined the pretty creatures.

‘You realize, Monika, my dear, that you have two bucks. You have been sold a pup.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You will never get young with two bucks. You must kill one of these and get a doe.’

The upshot was a rabbit stew such as the General had not imagined possible. He invited himself to come again, to the delight of the villagers who followed his every movement, as reported by Mrs Penrose. Bets were laid as to whether the General would entice Monika into his bachelor household before Richard returned from London or Max visited again. At the Rectory Mildred Floyer remarked to her husband that village gossip might have some foundation and that Monika was strangely naïve.

‘She is tormented by fear for her son. Anything that takes her mind off him is a good thing,’ said the Rector. ‘The W.I. should have gone in for rabbits. They should not wait for Monika to set an example.’

‘She is not a member.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she is a foreigner, not even of the English variety. Her delicatessens infuriate them.’

‘Dear God! Women!’ The Rector felt safe to protest to God in his own kitchen.

‘She will,’ said Mildred, laughing, ‘go too far. They are shocked by the fungi, disgusted by the garlic, furious that without a trace of black market she produces so much. They hope she will come to grief.’

‘Has she not enough grief?’

‘They hope that she will alienate the men as well.’

‘You are usually right,’ said the Rector. ‘Poor woman. We, at least, know more or less what our High Flyers are up to.’

‘More or less,’ said Mildred. ‘Though sometimes it seems to me they perch rather often in Polly’s house.’

‘They have known Polly all their lives. It was Calypso who struck me as a potential menace before she settled down.’

‘And how settled is that, one wonders.’

The Rector did not reply but went to struggle with his sermon, to preach peace which he believed in yet give comfort to the parishioners who had sons at war.

Sophy, home for the holidays, borrowed Mrs Penrose’s bicycle to go to Newlyn harbour where, although entrance to the quays was forbidden to anyone without a pass, she had found that a blind eye was turned to a child, especially if the child brought eggs to barter for fish.

Sitting on an upturned lobster pot above a Belgian trawler tied to the quay, having swopped her eggs for a langouste, she listened to the fishermen talking with savage glee of the night’s trawl in incomprehensible Flemish. Men drifted in twos and threes to join the group and slap backs, every now and then breaking into laughter. Willy Penrose, a second cousin of Mrs Penrose, came and sat on a bollard.

‘What’s going on, Willy?’

Willy glanced around, then said: ‘They made a funny catch last evening.’

‘Oh, what?’

‘Not for me to say. Ain’t you getting a bit big to be coming into the harbour?’

‘What happened, Willy?’

‘Cross your heart?’ He squinted at her.

‘Cross my heart, Willy.’

Willy bent forward, putting a cigarette in his mouth, cupping his hands round the match.

‘Jerry plane came down between Land’s End and Scillies. Jerry pilot bales out. Belgian picks him out of the drink, ties a rope round his feet then trawls ’im behind. The Belgians ain’t fond of Jerries.’

‘Oh, Willy!’ Sophy stared aghast.

‘Crossed your heart, didn’t you? No need to believe what I say, plenty don’t.’

‘Oh, Willy.’

‘You stop coming into the harbour where you don’t belong to be then. Take your lobster home and don’t come again. You’re a big girl now, too big to creep in.’

Sophy found her bicycle, put the langouste in the basket and half an hour later, obsessed by the picture of the pilot’s body trawling through the sea, skidded on a patch of cow dung and crashed, barking both knees. She was sitting in the road examining her wounds when voices from a nearby cottage drifted through the air. She limped to the cottage and knocked. When a woman opened the door she mutely pointed to her knees. She was led in, sat in a chair, had her wounds painfully bathed, was given a cup of tea and told she would be taken home as soon as Dad came with his car.

‘The bicycle.’ Sophy shivered from shock.

‘Our Tom, go and fetch it.’

A mutinous looking boy went out and clattered the bicycle, propping it against the gate.

‘Mrs Penrose’s bike, ain’t it?’

‘Yes, she lent it to me. Is it hurt?’

‘Nay.’ The boy sat angrily at the kitchen table, putting both hands protectively over a cardboard box.

His mother glanced at him and, continuing the argument Sophy had interrupted, said: ‘You take them straight back to that John.’

‘Can’t. He won’t give me back my knife.’

‘Do as I tell ’ee.’

‘I can’t.’

‘What you can’t is keep those things here.’ She looked at Sophy sipping her tea. ‘Tom’s swapped his knife for guinea pigs, proper pests. I’ll throw them out.’