Gifts of War (8 page)

Sam wiped her lips with her napkin. “I know what you mean. We have two children in Middle Hill who are epileptics. It’s just an illness, but fits frighten young children. It upsets the whole class for the rest of the day when Alice or Barry has a fit. Poor tykes.” She swallowed some shandy. “I think we should teach more medical knowledge than we do.”

I cut into my food. “There were poor people who lived in our village too. They were called tinkers and we weren’t allowed to play with them, not officially anyway, but we knew all about them, especially how infrequently they washed, and how badly they treated their emaciated ponies.

“And we had a murder. The tinkers liked to trap animals in the woods with those metal contraptions that snap shut when you tread on them, and grip you in an iron jaw with zigzag teeth. They were always being told how dangerous the traps were but they didn’t listen. And then one day, or more likely one evening, a man stepped on one and a metal tooth sliced through an artery in his leg. He must have screamed and screamed but no one heard him and, overnight, he bled to death. At the trial the tinker pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not to murder—the local paper was full of nothing else for days on end. However, the Crown—the prosecution—wouldn’t accept it. They argued that the very fact of the trap being placed in the woods meant that the tinker intended harm of some sort. And indeed the tinker was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

“On the strength of it all, the children from our village became celebrities at school. And we became amazingly familiar while we were very young with the legal difference between manslaughter and murder. For weeks we discussed nothing else—that and the difference
between an artery and a vein. We had all been scared by the murder— though we would never have admitted as much—but we must have known more about first aid than any other children in the land.

“The tinker was hanged a few weeks later. I shall never forget the Tuesday it happened. Most people thought he should die, but our village lived that day in silence.

“Sorry,” I said after a moment. “That’s all a bit dark.”

She nodded, smiling. “I’d like to hear about your family, your parents.”

“Well, I was not especially close to my father but I respected him. My grandfather—who I never knew—had started a book publishing business and it had been very successful. Montgomery & Mann published novels, history, and science books mainly, and by the time my father joined the family firm the company had offices in Edinburgh and New York as well as in London.”

“Have you been to New York?”

“No. Not even Edinburgh.”

“I’d
love
to see New York. I’d risk those submarine things if I had the chance.”

“You
would?”

“I told you, I’ve got this … this wanderlust. I’m just sitting out the war. Once it’s over, I’m going to travel, travel, travel. But I’m interrupting again—sorry. You were telling me about your father—he
must
have been to New York.”

“Yes, a couple of times, I think. To see how the business operated there. He once told me he had had the idea in the back of his head to emigrate but then he met my mother and she hated the idea. So no move was ever made—my mother is quite unlike you in that respect.”

Sam smiled. “Go on.”

So I explained that when my father was about forty-five, and I was
fifteen—as I pieced the story together later
—his
father received an offer from a big conglomerate, an offer that was, as the saying goes, too good to turn down. “Six months later, my grandfather died of a heart attack and my father inherited the money. He stayed on at the firm for a while, although he didn’t need to work, but he gradually lost sympathy with what the conglomerate was doing with the company, and so, around the time I was in Germany, he left.

“He was, therefore, a bookish man. And he was, I think, more interested in ideas than in people. There were books everywhere in the house and for that reason, among others, he didn’t feel the need—as so many of his friends did—to send his son away to prep school. One effect of this was that Izzy and I had from an early age a life independent of our parents, making us self-reliant. At the same time, we had a content family life. Christmas, Easter, and birthdays were celebrated but not ostentatiously—one gift was enough for anyone, in my parents’ opinion. My sister and I were made to play outdoors in most types of weather but this wasn’t cruel, and when either of us was genuinely ill our parents were very solicitous.

“I did go away to boarding school when I was thirteen. But even then I didn’t go far off. It was at boarding school that my first interest in Germany began to form. One of my father’s jobs when he was still in publishing was to keep up with German scholarship, which was then the equal of—and in many respects superior to—both British and American scholarship, in history, medicine, engineering, and chemistry, for example. So I always took an interest in the German language, German history, and German science.

“I’m talking too much,” I said, suddenly noticing that Sam had long finished her lunch, whereas mine was eaten less than halfway through. “Sorry,” I added. “Why don’t you talk for a bit while I attack this fish.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “If you can run to another shandy.”

My glass was empty too. I waved to Maude, the waitress, and ordered more drinks.

“I’ll bet your life was more interesting than mine,” I said.

She bit her lip, in a way that I had noticed her do before. “Yours sounded idyllic, as family life should be, reserved but content, not disfigured by war. But I’m sure you left out lots of bits that weren’t idyllic.”

I shrugged, chewing. “Epileptic fits, gypsies, murder—it’s the best I can do.”

“I’m one of four girls,” she said after a pause. “A family a bit like your vicar’s. I grew up in Bristol. My father was in the merchant navy so he was away a lot. Maybe that’s where I got my wanderlust, but I’m not so sure. When he was home my father drank and we learned to dread it. He hit my mother. She never did anything in retaliation, not then. But one time, when he went back to sea and she knew that he would be away for weeks, if not months, she simply packed up all our things, and we moved out. We lived in a rented, furnished flat, so it wasn’t difficult. She took us to London, where she had a sister—we’re a family of women,” she sighed, with a smile.

“My mother was a seamstress and so was Ruth, my eldest sister, a good few years older than the rest of us, and they found work easily enough—we other girls were too young. We moved to a flat near my aunt and we were all much happier than we had ever been in Bristol. At weekends, we visited all the museums, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament. Then our mother was taken on as a jacket maker for one of the tailors in Savile Row in the West End—you know, where all the rich people have their clothes made. She used to go there, to deliver and pick up work, twice a week, and on one visit she met one of the customers. She was pretty, my mother, and this customer—his name was Mortimer Stannard,
Sir
Mortimer Stannard—was very taken with her. He started inviting her out for dinner, to the theater, even one time to the races. She made her own clothes and of course looked lovely.”

She paused. “You can probably guess what comes next.”

When I shook my head, she added, “Why don’t we continue this by the river? We’re missing the best part of the day and you are not getting the share of fresh air your parents would want.”

She was teasing me but she was right about it being the best of the day, so we skipped pudding and coffee, I paid the bill, and within twenty minutes we were strolling by the Avon. The river at Stratford is wide, the banks are flat, making the river seem wider still, and at that time of year the water meadows were choked with dandelions, like a vast spread of butter.

Because it was Saturday, the river itself was quite busy. Men and boys sat fishing, punts and rowboats chased ducks off the water, and there were even one or two hardy souls swimming. Compared with the Severn Bore it was all very tame.

After a few hundred yards, however, the fishermen began to thin out, the punters and rowers had all turned back, and, for the most part, and not counting the wildlife, we had the Avon to ourselves.

“That’s Luddington in the distance,” said Sam, pointing to a church spire showing above some lush trees.

“No,” I said, stopping for a moment and putting my hand on her arm. “I can’t guess what’s coming next.”

We resumed walking.

“Our father found us,” she said. “He knew where Mother’s sister lived and threatened her with violence if she didn’t reveal where we had all gone. He arrived, drunk as usual, in a foul temper, and set about my eldest sister because our mother wasn’t at home.”

Sam stopped again. “See that?”

I looked. On the river was a swan with two small, dirty brown
cygnets. We had chanced upon them and we were, in fact, a little too close for the mother swan’s comfort. Her long neck was lowered and she was hissing in our direction.

We eased away and the swan relaxed. Hadn’t Wilhelm said something about the swans at Stratford?

“People are no different from other animals,” Sam whispered, as if her full voice might disturb the swan all over again. “My sister, for instance. Ruth is not my mother. She is—or used to be—the tomboy I told you about. Anyway, when my father set about her she set about him back—with a kitchen knife. She cut him in the arm, that enraged him still further, he lunged at her and, being drunk already, clumsily stumbled on something—and fell onto the knife Ruth was holding. None of us knew what to do, and he bled to death on the kitchen floor.”

She stopped, bent down, and tugged at some long grass.

I didn’t know what to say. I could see why she thought I’d had an idyllic upbringing.

“My sister was never charged with anything. When Mortimer Stannard found out what had happened, from my mother, he was marvelous. He employed a lawyer, who took a statement from my mother’s sister, which confirmed that our father was belligerently drunk that day, had threatened my aunt with violence, and we sisters all testified that he had hit Ruth first and had fallen onto the knife.”

I wondered whether that part was true.

Sam threw the clump of grass she was holding into the air and the breeze took it away. “Anyway, our father’s death left our mother free to marry Sir Mortimer. She did, but not immediately and even then quite quietly, on a ship, and after he had paid for the three younger girls to be sent to boarding school, and from where I won a scholarship to teacher training college.”

“I’m relieved the story has a happy ending.”

She looked at me without blinking. I noticed that her eyes were watering. “My mother and Sir Mortimer were married by Captain Edward John Smith, master of the
Titanic
”.

Pause.

“You mean—?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

So much for a happy ending.

We had come to a fence, an iron fence with a kissing gate.

“Shall we turn back?” I said as softly as I could.

She nodded.

I gave her my handkerchief to dry her tears.

We walked most of the way back in silence. Halfway along the bank, however, she slipped her arm through mine. Now, what did that mean? Affection? Too early. More likely she just needed some human contact after the emotional effort involved in telling her story. I squeezed her arm with mine.

I didn’t say much until we were sitting in the train, waiting for it to leave Stratford station. “What happened between teacher training college and Middle Hill?”

“The college was in London, and in 1913 I came to a Shakespeare conference in Stratford.” She bit her lip again. “Shakespeare’s tragedies were my thesis subject at college. At the conference I met two teachers from the Middle Hill school, we got on, they mentioned there was a vacancy—and here I am.”

“So it’s your first teaching job?”

“Oh yes. I’m not… you know… that ancient.”

I grinned. “Do you like it?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then the whistle sounded, the train juddered forward, and we were leaving the station. Amid all the steam and smoke and fuss of leaving, my question was never really answered.

The train wasn’t so empty on the way back, it was difficult to talk about personal things, and we both dozed off for a bit. The sunny day was turning cloudy and my mind, even when I dozed, was fastened on whether or not I could risk kissing Sam on the cheek when we parted. Was it too soon? I didn’t want to be rebuffed.

I walked her home from Middle Hill station, but when we turned off the bridge on to the canal towpath, Sam actually
offered her
cheek to be kissed. It was a dismissal but I was thrilled, and didn’t attempt to go further.

“Will you be at church in the morning?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“How about a walk in the afternoon?”

She nodded. “I’d like that. I’ll meet you at two-thirty in front of the school.”

Once again she didn’t seem to want me to pick her up.

She turned and walked on down the towpath.

I touched the cheek where she had kissed me.

So, there we have it. I had not mentioned Wilhelm and now had no intention of doing so. I was, so far as I knew, in love with Sam and at that point would probably have concealed any inconvenient fact, told any untruth—any lie—to have ingratiated myself with her. To be honest, I didn’t go into the rights and wrongs of it all very much, not then. The war might last a long while.

The moment Sam and I parted, by the canal, that Saturday, I missed her. Though I had just spent hours in her company, I wasn’t sure that I remembered her features properly. Yes, I recalled her smell exactly and vividly, the characteristic way she bit her lip, the way her Alice band shaped her face, how she held her knife and fork, the way
the muscles in her throat moved when she swallowed her shandy. But I needed to see her face again, and soon.

The next day it rained. It rained as if it were winter, with a cold, insistent intensity, as if it were trying to stunt the growth of all the vegetation rather than make it possible. I went to matins, to help pass the time, because although I had no faith I still enjoyed singing the hymns I had been brought up with, and because I hoped that when the service was over the downpour would have ceased. If anything it was worse—low clouds, gray and somber as a German’s uniform.