Great Meadow (22 page)

But our mother had been jolly nice and decent that afternoon, and later, after supper and homework and all that, she came up to my room where I was reading and sat on the edge of my bed in her rustly Mandarin's robe and asked me if I was really pleased about the baby. So of course I said yes, remembering the awful time with the fish-kettle, and she was very pleased, you could see. She said it would be some time in July, so we wouldn't go down to the cottage right away, until she had had a bit of a rest.

Then she picked up my book and asked what I was reading, and I told her.
The Knights of the Round Table.
She said that was very suitable, and then she said, ‘Oh! That's a nice name! What a good idea. That's a
terribly
nice name. Shall we call him “Gareth”?' I said all right, but if it was a girl ‘Lynette' was a bit soppy. And she said yes, and gave me a kiss and went away. She was being very nice, you see, because I was eldest.

But that was all simply ages ago, and here I was sitting on the chalk bank watching our father rubbing away with the Mansion Polish singing and whistling all the time. He didn't actually speak much to me. Well, hardly noticed me really. Because he hadn't been very pleased with the report from my crammer, who had just written that I was ‘a charming companion without the least shred of any application'. So that was a pretty bad mark. And a pretty rotten thing to say.

He put our father in a very bad mood, and made our mother look fearfully worried, and Lally had to go and say, ‘Well, I
did
warn you!' which wasn't very cheerful, so I knew I was in the dog-house. Worse luck. It wasn't much fun, but nor was the awful ‘crammer', a very boring, fat old man with a celluloid collar and buttoned boots. He sat at the end of a huge table all covered in green baize stuff and droned away at us all sitting round with our books and things. The others put up their hands to ask questions sometimes. I never did, actually. I didn't have anything to ask. And they wrote questions down in their books, and sometimes when they were standing beside him and he was explaining something in the paper they had brought to him, I would see his hand patting their bums. I mean, pretty awful really, so I just sat on mine.

From time to time a tall thin woman, with grey hair and kirby grips, would come in quietly and sit in a corner with her knitting, smiling and nodding and clicking away. And no one went up for answers then. I expect she was really a spy of some sort. I never spoke to her, but she nodded at me. I bet she wrote that foul report about me which made my father so cross.

Anyway, I wrote a play. It wasn't bad. It was so boring just sitting there and listening to terrible talks about logarithms or, worse still, something they called another sort of'log', but this was about anagrams and word puzzles.

I mean, you do see? It was the wrong place for me. So that's why I was in trouble with our father, who suddenly got up, put the lid back on his tin of Mansion Polish and said, pretty rudely I thought, ‘Are you
still
there? Just sitting?' (Well! he could perfectly well see I was.) So I said
yes, but I supposed that he was a bit fed up about the crammer. And he said he wasn't actually cock-a-hoop, and neither would I be when I got up to Glasgow and the new school, because they were really strict up there, and I'd be ‘grounded in a decent education' whether I liked it or not. He just wished it was a boarding-school, to bring me to my senses. But I was too old because I was thirteen, and our mother had said no. (Thank goodness.)

Then he looked at his pocket watch, and told me to remember that this was my very last chance. I had three years left to pull myself together. He was chewing the side of his cheek, which was the bad sign, but all he said after that was to go up and tell Lally that he was ready to give her a lift to the village, and I'd better go with her to carry the paraffin can. Then he slammed the door of the Riley pretty hard and said, ‘Just remember that we are not expected to fail in this family.'

So I didn't say anything. I was a bit depressed, honestly.

Driving down to the village Lally sat in front with him, and they talked away about how nice the car was, and she said, ‘Remember the Salmson? Wasn't that a pretty car?' But all she really meant was that it had little glass vases in the back where you could put flowers if you picked them on a picnic, and she thought it was quite marvellous to drive along in a car with glass vases with
real
water and flowers in them. I mean, it was all pretty silly. But they didn't talk to me. I remembered the Salmson very well, and how he used to drive it round and round the course at Brooklands. A bit showy-off . . . but it was his passion. Anyway, he dropped us off at Waterloo Square, and drove back off to London. When I asked Lally why there had
been all the rushing and packing, she said that something had happened at
The Times
and Mr Hitler was now the King of Germany or something. She didn't rightly know, but she hoped that Fred the Fish had got some whiting or, perhaps better still, some cod for a fish pie tonight. Of course, it was Friday, so Fred the Fish was by the Market Cross with his stall and the scales and his little Morris van, which was rather bashed now.

There were one or two people I knew round his stall, and he was making them laugh a bit, all except Beattie Fluke, who was there in her black tammy, which looked green really, it was so old. And she was quite worried, not smiling as she usually did with her awful no-teeth-mouth. ‘I got a nice bit of rock salmon for Mr Fluke,' she said. ‘Although I don't know as he's got the stummick to eat it. Can't hold anything down, not with all the worry.'

Lally said, very kindly, while Fred the Fish was cutting her a chunk of cod, ‘You've got trouble? I am sorry.'

Beattie Fluke shrugged her woollen cardigan over her shoulders and said, ‘Haven't you heard then? It's all over. The Alefords are selling up. Off to Canada! So now what's to become of us? Mr Fluke was the best herdsman this side of Chichester. If they sell up, bang goes his herd. Then what? What happens to the cottage then? I been in that cottage all my married. If they sell the herd he'll get the boot. Then what?'

It
was
pretty worrying. After all that stuff from our father, now this. Even Lally looked anxious when she took her packet of cod, wrapped in newspaper, from Fred, and put it in the old red and black basket. ‘Now, Mrs Fluke, don't you fret yourself. I expect it's all just a rumour. You
know how rumours start in the summer, especially in the heat. Like fish going off. . .'

Beattie Fluke said that fish going off was no rumour. She knew that for a
fact.
It was not like the
real
rumour she had got hold of. And then she turned to Miss Annie from Baker's (who had got blown through the window with the bucket of petrol ablaze) and asked her if they'd heard any rumours in the shop? But Miss Annie just said she was like the three monkeys: see, speak and hear no rumours. So she didn't rightly know. Beattie Fluke just whispered that her poor head was still addled, and it was time for her ‘cup of tea'. We watched her go across to the Magpie and push open the public bar door, and Lally said she'd get a lot more rumour in there.

We walked back down the path to the river. I was carrying the paraffin can, which was pretty heavy and kept on clonking my knee, and Lally was swinging the shopping-bag very fast, from side to side, to frighten away any adders. She said that adders liked to lie in the dusty path in hot sun like today, and they would just rear up and snap at you unless you watched out. She always did this on very hot days, only this time I could see she was a bit worried about Mrs Fluke's rumour. So was I. It was a bit unsettling, especially after our father's mood, and Scotland, and the dreadful school in September.

‘I tell you what,' she said. ‘When you go down to Court Farm for the milk this afternoon, keep a sharp eye open for Len Diplock. He'll be in the yard somewhere. Mucking about with his harness and waggons. Getting polished up for harvest next month. Have a casual word with him. Act as if you didn't know, just heard it at the
Market Cross, ask if it was just gossip. Sure as sure he'll say yes. Gossip!'

‘But if I see Miss Aleford? What then? She's bound to be in the dairy, doing the skimming and everything.'

Lally shook her head and stopped swinging the bag, and we crossed over the little bridge up to the road. ‘Depends. If she is friendly. Depends. You'd have to go carefully. If it was true, about Canada and so on, I swear she'd have told your father. Said something.'

We started up the side of the gully. Skylarks spun up out of the tussocky grass of the meadow, and fat white clouds drifted gently down towards Cuckmere Haven. It couldn't be really true. Just a Beattie Fluke rumour. I hoped. I even crossed my fingers.

My sister said she couldn't come down for the milk because the baby might cry. I said it had been crying for weeks anyway, and there were two quart cans to carry on account of we used so much milk now, and she would have to come. And Lally said, ‘Shoo! Shoo! Get from under my feet, and bring me back a half-dozen eggs, I'll need some for the fish pie.'

So we walked down the hedge path with the cans and a basket, and I told my sister the bad rumour and she shook her head and said it couldn't happen. There was no Len Diplock in the yard, worse luck, and I couldn't see him in the cart shed, but I could hear Miss Aleford singing. In the dairy. That was a bit of a worry, so we pushed open the door into the cool, damp, milky-smelling place, and there she was, stretching big muslin squares over all the bowls and dishes to keep the flies off. She was looking quite all
right, in a cotton dress with little puffy sleeves like a real woman, and a big straw hat on top of her earphones, and tennis socks and tennis shoes. She was singing ‘T'was on the Isle Of Capri That I Met Him', but she petered out when she heard the door squeal open, and turned round quickly.

‘Heigh ho! Heigh ho! Goodness me today! Gave my heart a flutter, you did. Quite carried off . . . Milk? Eggs by the look of it, your basket an' all. And you know Miss Jane owes us one shilling and ninepence. I'll overlook the ha'penny,' and she put a bundle of muslin on the shelf above the slate ones covered with the milk bowls. ‘It's the Fresh, now, isn't it? With the baby an' all. My word, how the time goes. A week has gone before you can catch your breath.' She started to ladle out into our cans and told my sister to choose her eggs from the big crock by the door. ‘The ones with dirt and feathers on them are no fresher than the rest. They only
look
as if an old hen had just dropped one in the nettles five sees ago. Brought your money?'

I had, wrapped up in paper, and while she was closing the lids of the cans my sister said, quite suddenly without any warning, ‘Is it true you are going to Canada, Miss Aleford?' and Miss Aleford got such a shock she turned her head too quickly and her straw hat went all wonky. ‘Who said?' she said very crossly. ‘Where did you pick up that little nugget of misinformation, I'd like to know? Those Daukeses, I'll be bound. Gossip-mongers both. Live in the Magpie. There's more lies spilled in that bar than in the House Of Commons!'

So I said, pretty quickly, that no, it wasn't the Daukeses,
but just someone down at Fred the Fish's stall in Waterloo Square, I didn't know who. Miss Aleford pushed her hat back on her head, licked her finger with spittle, and wiped out ‘1/
d. Rectory' on the slate on the wall.

‘Well,' she said, pushing the cans across the big shelf, ‘we have it in mind. Not certain. Thinking about it. My brothers want to start over somewhere else. Not me. But
I'm
not asked . . .'

‘Where would you go?' said my sister. ‘Miles away?'

And Miss Aleford began to sort out her bundle of muslin. ‘Vancouver. There are some cousins near there, lots of opportunity.' So I said that was very far away, and when would they go to Vancouver, and she was snappy and said she was sure she didn't know, but after the harvest and before the spring sowing. People called the Wintle-Pughes were very interested in the land, but they didn't want the buildings, so they'd go up for auction. And my sister said what was that? Miss Aleford just said, ‘Now be off with you, I've got work to do. Any questions, you ask Stapleford's in Lewes, they are the agents, not me. Anyway,' she said when we started out of the door, ‘anyway, it's rumours. Just rumours. No need to fret. Yet.' And she started singing the Capri song again. We could hear her until we were quite far up the lane and then the singing faded away and all you could hear was our feet patting slowly along in the chalky dust. We didn't say anything to each other because we were both having a think.

‘Why do you call it Waterloo Square when it's the Market Cross? You always do.'

‘That's its real name. The soldiers who went to fight at
Waterloo were shut up in the cottages by the chestnut tree. And then they went to the ships at Newhaven. I wonder if our father knows about the auction business? Or our mother. It's very worrying.'