Gifts of War (14 page)

“Do you mean the stumps or the grass between them?” said Bryan Amery.

“Either,” said Blanche. “Both.”

“A stump would presumably be
Stumpf
,” replied Bryan.

Rollo shook his head. “Too literal. They use the word
Tor.”

“But,” I said, “doesn’t that mean
‘gate
’
?
Don’t they use it for ‘goal’ in football?”

Rollo nodded. “Yes, it’s a general-purpose word, but that’s what they say. And the grass between the wickets is
Spielbahn.”

“So what is LBW?” asked Blanche.

“What?”

“LBW—you know, leg before wicket.”

Rollo didn’t reply straightaway, so I said, “Literally, it would be
Bein davor Tor… BDT—”

“But,” interrupted Rollo, “the Germans would probably use the English expression—LBW. Hal’s right about
Tor
meaning gate and it being used for ‘goal’ in football, but they use the English word a lot too—‘goal,’ I mean. And ‘run,’ in cricket, is
run”.’

“So ‘wicketkeeper’ would be … ?” Blanche wouldn’t give up.

“Torwächter”
said Rollo.

“Umpire?”

“Schiedsrichter.”

“Silly mid on—?”

“No!” cried Bryan. “Spare us, please.”

“Shut up, Blanche,” said someone else. “Come on, let’s get back.”

We walked two abreast along the bank of the river and I found myself next to Rollo. “How come the Germans have all these terms for cricket, when they don’t play the game?”

“But you’re wrong, Hal. Cricket’s been played in Germany since the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly in Berlin. A German cricket federation was set up a couple of years ago.”

“I can’t imagine it’s very popular now.”

“You can say that again.”

We walked on. Germany never failed to surprise me. Cricket in Berlin! Hadn’t Wilhelm mentioned the game at the Front? I couldn’t recall his exact words.

We were just coming into Stratford when I felt a tug at my sleeve. I looked round, and there was Blanche. “Hal, can I have a word, please.”

We stood and let the others walk on.

“Yes, Blanche, what is it?”

“I can’t pay you back the pound I owe you. Not this week, anyway.”

“I thought—”

“Yes, I know, I said I would. But I can’t. I’m sorry.”

I had lent Blanche money two or three times. She had a sister in the hospital in Worcester and didn’t always have the cash available for the train fare to visit her. She had always paid me back before.

As gently as I could, I said, “When do you think you can pay me back?”

She looked at me and I could see there were tears in her eyes. “That’s just it, I don’t know.”

I gave her my handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, hard.

I thought for a moment. “What are you doing on Saturday night?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Nothing special, anyway. Why?”

“I may need a babysitter, for about three hours. If you could… it would pay off what you owe me.”

She brightened. “Oh, Hal, I’d love to do that. And would it really pay off my debt?”

I nodded and smiled.

She stood on tiptoes and kissed my cheek. “Thank you. You’ve made me feel
much
better. I thought you were going to be angry.” She held up my handkerchief, in a ball in her fist. “I’ll wash this and iron it and you can have it back tomorrow.”

The fact that Blanche was free to babysit was a godsend for me. The cycling trip to the Roman villa with Sam had been a great success, but I knew that Sam wouldn’t be easy to pry away from Will again, not for a cycling trip anyway. I had noticed, however, that in Stratford, on the following Saturday night, there was to be a performance of
King Lear
.

“Don’t be silly,” she had said when I had first raised the subject. “I can’t get away, not with Will needing to be looked after.”

“I’ve spoken to Maude, your friend at the Crown,” I replied. “There are two rooms free on Saturday, and a woman from my course has agreed to babysit. Come on, we can have a proper night out: theater, dinner, no rush to get home. A proper hotel breakfast the next day. Some people might call that civilized.”

I could see she was tempted.

“How long is it since you have been to the theater?
King Lear—
a tragedy, with daughters. It couldn’t be closer to home.”

We were walking by the canal in Middle Hill when the subject came up.

She paused, obviously turning things over in her mind.

“What would the sleeping arrangements be?”

I shrugged. “Two rooms. Will and you in one, me in the other. We’d share a bathroom. Think you can risk it?”

She ignored the last bit. “And who is this babysitter? I can’t leave Will with just anyone.”

“Blanche Brodie. She’s in her thirties. I lent her some money—not much—so she could visit her sick sister in the hospital and she’s having a problem repaying me. I’m doing her a favor and she’s doing me one in return.”

We walked on.

“If this woman, Blanche someone, doesn’t babysit, what happens to her debt?”

“I don’t know She will still owe me, I suppose.”

Sam agreed. The three of us caught the Saturday afternoon train from Middle Hill and were in the hotel by four-thirty. The rocking of the train sent Will to sleep almost straightaway, which meant that, as we left for the theater, just after five-thirty, in time for the six o’clock performance, he was wide awake and voicing his displeasure at the novel company he was being required to keep.

But Sam was firm. She liked what she saw in Blanche and shoved me out of the door right in the middle of one of Will’s crying bursts.

“He has to get used to the fact that the world doesn’t revolve around
him
,” she complained as we hurried downstairs and out of earshot.

“But I thought it did,” I replied. “For now, anyway.”

She punched me lightly on the arm. “Beast! In Middle Hill, it’s natural. But this is the first night out I’ve had since he was born. It’s new for me and it’s new for him. Am I being a bad mother?”

My answer got lost as we negotiated the lobby of the hotel and found our way to the theater—it was a fifteen-minute walk.

I had never been to King Edward VI’s school before, but Sam had and knew the way. The school consisted of some black-and-white timbered buildings, long and low, though the Guild Chapel looked more like a conventional Norman church, square and squat stone with a stocky cube for a tower, and stained-glass windows. It had room for about three hundred and was packed to overflowing.

Having safely descended the steps down from the chapel for the interval, we found the rim of a stone fountain to sit on and wait. “What’s your verdict so far?” I asked. “You’re the expert.”

“How I hate that word. But it is one of my favorite plays,” replied Sam. “It places such demands on the man who plays Lear. Although Lear is old, most old actors don’t take it on—it’s too draining.”

“Do you see anything of your family—your sisters—in Regan and Goneril?”

She smiled. “Oh no, we get on much better than they do. The psychology is different: we never had a kingdom to fight over.”

“What
do
you fight about?”

“Who says we fight?”

I had half a bottle of whisky with me and offered it to her. She shook her head. I took a swig.

“It was just a question. Most families fight about something.”

But she was shaking her head again. “My father was so awful, that drove us together. Solidarity. We were always watching out for each other. Our mother was
so
pretty, she and our father must have been in love at the beginning, before we girls came along. She had such plans for us. Meeting Sir Mortimer gave her hope for all of us, though she would never say bad things about our father, not after he—he died. ‘He gave me four lovely daughters,’ she would say.” Sam paused. “Three lovely daughters now and one black sheep, one tart. She would hate the way I’ve turned out.”

“Sam!” I said.

She shook her head. “You didn’t know her. She was pretty, bustling, busy, always moving, restless, like these new automobile things when they’ve been cranked into action—you know, the way they rattle, shake, throb with energy and power. Our mother had an engine inside her—but,
but, even
with Sir Mortimer, she didn’t… you know… they had to wait, until they were married. She told Ruth that she was looking forward to it, but that they had to wait till Captain Smith had married them, all legal. My mother would have closed up after I got pregnant. I would have been shut out, shut out of my own family; my life would have been colder, narrower, the color she brought to the lives of all us girls would have been gone for me.” She looked up at the sky. “I feel out of breath just thinking about it.”

“And your sisters? How are they? How have they been?”

She bit her lip. “Ruth and Faye were a bit shocked when I got pregnant—what I mean when I say a ‘bit’ shocked, is that they were very shocked. Shocked, upset, embarrassed, to be frank.”

“And Lottie?”

Sam thought for a moment. “Lottie was more understanding. This will sound harsh, Hal, but… Lottie is … well, she is the plain one among the sisters. I know I shouldn’t say that—it sounds cruel and arrogant all at the same time, and I would never say it to her face,
of course—
but… the fact is she rarely has had boyfriends. The fact is that Lottie loves it when Ruth and Faye have boyfriends—she lives through them, I suppose, enjoys the good times and suffers with them when they get thrown over. And she was the one who most kept in touch when I was pregnant. If she lived nearer she would have babysat tonight.”

Just then we were called back in for the second half of the play. I didn’t get a chance to follow up until later that evening when we were seated in the hotel dining room after the performance. Quite some time after the performance, as it turned out, since Sam had insisted on going upstairs to check on Will, who was fast asleep, with Blanche beside him, also fast asleep. Sam came down looking contented.

The dining room was quite busy—it was Saturday night, after all—and the service could have been quicker. But we were staying in the hotel and so were in no hurry. I ordered a bottle of wine and asked Sam what she had thought of the play now that we had seen all of it.

“Well, I’m glad they had the traditional ending.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ending of
Lear—
the king dies and his favorite daughter dies, after the other two have killed each other—was never very popular
in the early days, and used to be changed, so that Lear doesn’t die and Cordelia marries Edgar, who of course loves her.”

“But why?”

“Oh, history. English royalists didn’t like what happened to Charles I and then James—1688 and all that—and Lear reminded them too much of the harsh reality. The traditional ending wasn’t reintroduced until Victorian times. They were certain of their own monarch, so Lear’s ending wasn’t threatening to them.”

The wine was brought, and the menus, a handwritten card. There was no choice: it was fish, then chicken.

“You prefer Shakespeare’s tragedies to his comedies?”

She nodded her head and picked at some bread. “I suppose I do. Tragedy is more real, somehow. It’s not the only mood for the theater, but the dominant one, the most classic. What did
you
think of the play?”

“I enjoyed the acting. I can’t imagine Isobel or me ever falling out like Lear’s daughters do.”

“As I said, you don’t have a kingdom to fight over.”

“Does that make so much difference?”

Sam chewed some bread. “Land, money, power… it’s all the same. It corrupts. I’m sure that if my sisters and I hadn’t been so poor, we’d never have got on so well.”

“You were going to tell me about Lottie.”

“Was I? What was I going to say, I wonder?”

I refilled our wine glasses. “You said she was plain—”

“Oh yes! I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not a nice thing… I shouldn’t have said it.”

“Do you get on?”

“Oh yes … it’s more … complicated than that.”

The fish arrived. We sat back and allowed it to be served.

“How was it complicated?” I asked when we were starting to eat.

She chewed for a moment. Then: “Let me ask you a question. Are you your parents’ favorite, or is it your sister? Have you noticed?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“Then you are the favorite.”

“How can you say—?”

Sam’s eyes shone. She was suddenly fired up. “Trust me.” She separated some fish from the bone, chewed, and swallowed. The muscles in her throat moved back and forth. “Believe me, growing up in our family was a lesson to everyone.” She brandished her fork at me. “I’m going to be very honest now. Lottie never noticed it, but she was our parents’ favorite. She got all the little treats, far more than her fair share, anyway. She got more praise than anyone else, the best bit of meat at Sunday lunch—when we
had
meat; she sat next to our mother on the omnibus, and she was always given that extra something at Christmas. She was never punished as harshly as the rest of us. We used to steal her treats—and then it was us who got punished, for picking on Lottie! It was monstrous, but that’s the way it was.”