Camomile Lawn (31 page)

‘He’s only missing, darling.’ Sarah spoke gently.

‘Believed killed,’ Calypso replied steadily. The two women stared at each other, then Calypso said brightly: ‘I’ve asked Sophy to stay with me. She can keep me company. Will you deal with her school, say she’s not coming back?’

‘Helena should deal with the school. Perhaps Sophy should go back, I don’t know why she left.’

‘I do,’ said Calypso, who had been told by Tony. ‘She can’t possibly go back. Why not leave it to me?’

‘But—’

‘They won’t know I’m only twenty, they won’t know it’s me. I can be awfully toffee-nosed. I will deal with them, tear them off a strip. I will enjoy having Sophy here, she will take my mind off things.’

‘If you think—’ Sarah began weakly.

‘I do, Aunt Sarah, I know. This will be good for us both. Sophy will care for me, won’t you, Sophy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, for the moment. Just for a short time—’ Sarah in her country tweeds looked worriedly at Calypso wrapped in a lace dressing gown which did nothing to hide her shape. ‘If I could have her I would.’ She stood up, feeling she must leave. ‘I shall talk to Helena and Richard.’

‘The bulge and I will be very glad to have her,’ said Calypso.

‘I’ll see you to the bus,’ said Sophy.

‘Can’t I get you to a taxi?’ Calypso kissed her aunt, mentally speeding her off.

‘No, a bus, Number Eleven.’ Sarah kissed Calypso. ‘Look after yourself, darling.’ She felt inadequate, shut out.

‘I will. And Sophy.’ Calypso was cool and firm.

‘I wish I knew whether I was doing the right thing.’

‘Don’t worry, Aunt. Don’t fail to tell us news of Oliver.’

‘I’m sure he writes to you oftener than me.’

‘Oh, no,’ cried Calypso, waving from the doorstep, ‘of course not.’ She waved again, then gathered the letters from the table where she had laid them, among them one from Oliver.

‘I bet he’s gleeful, the bastard,’ she muttered. Slitting the thin air mail letter open she read: ‘Now that you are a widow, my darling, we can start making plans for our future in case I survive this bloody fucking war. I calculate we can live very comfortably on your late lamented (not by me) husband’s money while I write my first novel, after which all will be plain sailing into the sunset. Talking of fucking, we are very deprived here in the desert so get set to make up for lost time when—’ She screwed up the letter and threw it onto the floor. ‘The shit,’ she muttered, ‘shit, shit, shit.’ She watched Fling pounce on the letter and tear it to shreds, growling and shaking it like a rat. Coming back into the house Sophy said: ‘What is he eating?’

‘A letter from Oliver.’

‘He told Aunt Sarah about Hector. I suppose he is pleased.’

‘Don’t sound so desolate. Oliver may get killed, and the twins, and that will be the end of our lot, not that Hector belonged—’ Her voice trailed.

Sophy asked: ‘Has Oliver really got boils?’

‘So Hector said. Let’s go and light the fire in the drawing room.’ Calypso led the way up the stairs. ‘I hope Mrs Welsh has laid it.’ She struck a match, held it to the paper, watched the flame creep and take hold. ‘Don’t tell me about school if you don’t want to. I can guess. Was Tony kind?’

‘Very, but he said I stank.’ Sophy described Helena’s bathroom, her soaps and scent. ‘I used too much. He kissed me goodnight.’ She touched her mouth unconsciously. Calypso smiled.

‘He will fall in love with you.’

‘Nobody will do that. The girls at school call me—’

‘What?’

‘Eurasian. They say none of their brothers—’

‘Bugger their brothers. You don’t need that kind of girl’s brother. Sophy, you are lovely, beautiful, didn’t you know?’

‘Me?’ Sophy stared at Calypso in astonishment. ‘You are just trying to be nice.’

Calypso grinned. ‘Nice is not a word much applied to me. I am going to dress. You read these while I have my bath, then we will go shopping and buy some clothes for you.’ She handed Sophy a batch of letters and left the room.

Sophy held the letters, turning them this way and that. Letters from Hector, written on air mail paper. She began to read, unfolding them carefully, refolding each one as she finished it. When she had read them she laid them on a side table and sat staring into the fire, where Calypso presently found her.

‘I wish someone would write letters like that to me.’

‘About trees,’ Calypso scoffed. ‘What was he thinking about, what did he mean by it? There’s nothing, absolutely nothing about the war or what he’s doing. The nearest we get is Oliver’s boils.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t want to think about the war. The letters are all about after the war and things he wants to do for you, with you—’

‘I haven’t read them properly.’ Calypso was defensive.

‘He wanted to plant a forest with your name spelled with wild cherry trees.’

‘You make it sound poetic. It is wasted on me. Let’s go shopping. I don’t want to talk about Hector, Sophy. He isn’t like that, he’s a tough who gets drunk and—’

‘So do Oliver and the twins, so does Uncle Richard, so did Walter.’

‘Was Tony drunk last night?’

‘No.’

‘You were lucky.’ If he had been drunk, thought Calypso, Sophy wouldn’t be sitting there looking so virginal. ‘It’s the war. Everybody’s drinking, even Aunt Helena.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, she is. People say it’s fear. I think it’s because people think there’s a shortage. They soup it up in case the next person wants it. The war’s driving us to drink. At the moment. It makes me sick. As soon as I am delivered of this lump I shall go on a bender.’

Filling in the time before the funeral Sophy walked along the cliffs in the wind, which stung her eyes. She remembered the time spent with Calypso while here in Cornwall Richard and Helena had cared for Monika, each solicitous for a different reason, Richard because he was truly fond, Helena because she wanted to get back to London. Max had travelled to Cornwall whenever he could leave London, deeply concerned for Monika. He would come and sit with Calypso, bringing presents of books or flowers, and talk about life in Vienna before the war and on rare occasions of Pauli, his son, hinting with perplexity at a stormily aggressive character who might or might not, if he survived, become an artist, a youth who somehow frightened his parents into an excess of guilt, giving the impression of some dire force which made him unlovable. Then he would pause, rub his hands together, shake his shoulders, laugh and change the subject. Similarly Calypso rarely mentioned Hector, and Polly, who came often after work, never mentioned the twins except casually and jokingly as the High or Hoi Floyers.

As she strode along the path, neatly signposted by the National Trust, Sophy remembered those months in London as months of happiness. Calypso taking her shopping, buying her pretty clothes, teaching her how to care for her hair and nails. Max, Brian Portmadoc, Tony Wood and other friends of Calypso and Polly came to spend evenings, talking, joking, cooking supper in Calypso’s kitchen, sharing bottles of wine which one or other would bring. They had all, Sophy thought, shied away from anxious subjects like Hector, Pauli, Oliver and the twins and turned to her as a person they could share communally in safety without awkwardness. They had taken her to the cinema and out to lunch. Once or twice Max had taken her to a concert, several times Tony had smuggled her into a pub. She walked Fling in the parks with Brian. It was generally understood, though not underlined, that presently, when Monika was well again, when Helena came back to London, Sophy would go back to Cornwall and help with the cow and the hens, go to day school perhaps. The attitude seemed to be that there was no hurry, things would work out, meanwhile forget beastly school, have fun, grow up. Ah, thought Sophy, walking over the short cliff grass in her green gumboots, those were the days when I grew up, when we chattered and gossiped and phoned occasionally to the old people, Helena, Sarah, Uncle Richard and Monika, none of them, except perhaps Uncle Richard, as old then as I am now.

They had discussed war news, shortages, the unexploded bomb which had lurked for months under Knightsbridge while the buses trundled over it, the flooding of London by the Americans, who got noisily drunk and were so helpful and polite, giving nylons to the girls, nylons, nylons. Sophy tramped over the cliff, hearing the gulls’ high-pitched crazy cry, as they had always cried over the grey sea. She tried to remember what Calypso had said to her school, that nightmare place, and failed. We were all in love, she thought, stopping on the headland, looking out to sea, Uncle Richard with Monika, Max with Monika and Helena, Polly with the twins, Helena with Max, I with Oliver. Oliver and all the men with Calypso, who said she didn’t know what love was.

Sophy wondered what Calypso looked like now she’d had a stroke, recovered, they said, except for her face. It was some years since she had seen her. She wondered whether she dyed her hair, and what she would look like with her face twisted, though someone had said it was twisted only a little. I remember, Sophy told herself, I shall always remember what she looked like when the news came that Hector was a prisoner of war and not dead at all.

T
URNING BACK TOWARDS THE
house, the wind nudging her along with threats of winter stinging her ears, she could see across the fields the church tower rearing above the squat little village, protecting as it had for centuries the bones of the dead, among which lay Uncle Richard, the Floyers and Monika, where tomorrow they would lay Max with whom she had spent the day that Calypso was given the news that Hector was no longer missing but a prisoner of war.

With the wind bringing colour to her high cheekbones, Sophy remembered that day, or thought she did, for she knew well enough that memory plays false, that mind and emotion build on memory. The picture which is not clear at the time becomes lucent with recollection.

Max had taken her to a rehearsal of Yehudi Menuhin. She had sat listening to the talk, watching Menuhin and other musicians, and then the unearthly sounds of Menuhin’s violin drew her up to a new plane of existence. She was aware that Max had left the hall to talk to a stranger. Coming back he sat beside her, held her hand until the music stopped, then said, ‘We must go’, and led her out. He had not said goodbye to any of the people. He had said, pushing her into a taxi, ‘Stay with me, try not to talk.’ On the way to Enderby Street he had held her against him, sitting taut, just holding her until they arrived, fumbling for money, paying the taxi, not speaking, pushing her ahead of him into Helena’s house. He had told her in the drawing room or Helena’s bedroom that in the concert hall the man who had access to information, no one knew exactly how, told him that Pauli had died in the concentration camp. ‘I have lost my son. What can I say to Monika? Why did we not stay? Why did we run away?’ He had rocked her in his arms, holding her against his bony body. She had responded, holding his head against her breast, consoling him with all the emotion set in train by Menuhin, and then Sophy delved back into that traumatic afternoon in Helena’s bed, to the tender love-making of a deeply sorrowful man. She had lain beside him as he slept, glad of what he had done. He had woken, kissed her. ‘Did I hurt you, child?’

‘Very little,’ she had said honestly.

‘I am glad you were there,’ he said, consoling her.

‘I am glad, too,’ she had answered, comforting him.

Sophy, remembering the comfort of Helena’s bed, the hardness of Max’s ribs, was glad that she had been there while he endured the agony of his loss—not unexpected, no deaths were unexpected. Later they shared the bath, using Helena’s bath essence, wrapping themselves in her enormous white towels with ‘H’ stitched on the corners in red. They dressed and walked from Enderby Street to Calypso’s house. Max had held her hand all the way. On the cliff-top Sophy smiled, for now he was dead she was the only one left who knew that they had been lovers. She had happened to be there at the right moment for him to reach for.

In the dusk they had stopped to stare at a bombsite, each noticing, neither commenting on the weeds growing in the cracks of what had once been a house. They had reached Calypso’s house as it grew dark, letting themselves in. Fling had rushed to greet them and Calypso had called from upstairs, ‘Is that you?’

She was sitting in the middle of the sofa, heavily pregnant, legs apart, holding the telegram. Sophy remembered Calypso’s eyes and she remembered Max’s face as he read the telegram held out to him.

‘What joy,’ he had said, kissing Calypso, who put her arms round him, laying her face against his. His eyes catching Sophy’s had signalled ‘No’, and neither of them had breathed a word about Pauli.

Max had said: ‘Bubbly,
nicht?’
being very keen on using what he called ‘English argot’. They had trooped to the basement to raid Hector’s precious cellar and Calypso had telephoned Aunt Sarah, her parents, Helena and Richard. Polly had come round with Brian Portmadoc, Tony Wood and a Frenchman who knew Hector. There had been quite a party. Probably, Sophy thought, it was the best thing for Max, who did not break the news until weeks later to Monika, waiting until she was quite well, no longer likely to throw herself over the cliff, as she had tried during the guinea pig scandal. It must have been about here, Sophy thought, peering over. There was the ledge she had fallen on. If it had been anyone other than Monika one would think she had known she couldn’t fall far. As she peered over, aware of the sea, the wind, the crying gulls, measuring the drop to the ledge, one of the many impertinent cliff foxes poor Ducks used to chase zigzagged along the slope. Sophy felt a rush of tears for the dog, for Max to be buried tomorrow, for her virginity given him so carelessly. Lucky, she thought, that she didn’t conceive a replacement for Pauli, and she remembered what she had long forgotten, Calypso’s glance exchanged with Max, the way they had smiled complicitly, then Calypso’s change of tone.

‘Perhaps he’ll stay long enough in prison to get the news that I am pregnant.’

‘You make him sound like a shop,’ Polly had said with implied reproach.