Part of the Furniture (2 page)

‘Seventeen. I was seeing them off.’

‘Them?’

‘Jonty and Francis.’

‘Who are?’

‘Friends.’

‘Off to the war.’

‘How do you—?’ She turned her head to look up at him.

‘History repeats itself.’ He closed his eyes, leaning back, husbanding his breath.

‘So they won’t come back.’

‘I did not say that,’ he snapped. ‘I, for instance, came back from the last lot, and if it’s any comfort to you the casualties in this war may not compare with the last.’

‘But they will be just as agonizing.’

‘So you are determined to see the black side. Drink your whisky and tell me about yourself and this Jonty and Francis—brothers?’

‘Great friends, and they are also cousins.’

‘And you are in love with them?’

‘It feels like it.’

‘And they with you.’

‘No! No. I am a—a person who is, sort of, around.’

‘But they took you along to see them off. Drink up, Juno, you are neglecting your glass.’

Surprised by his use of her name she obeyed, swallowing hastily so that the whisky stung her nasal passages and made her cough.

‘Dry your toes.’ He pulled himself upright, reached for the whisky, sat back with a gasp, then carefully poured a shot into her glass before leaning back, eyes closed.

She stretched her feet towards the fire, watched her stockings steam; her Aunt Violet, she remembered, watching the steam rise, had told her that to do this engendered chilblains. She sipped cautiously at her drink.

Evelyn said, ‘Go on.’

She said, ‘They would not allow their families to see them off, they said it would depress them.’ (Boring, Jonty had said.) ‘But then suddenly, as a joke, they took me along.’ (‘Why not take her part of the way? As far as Euston? A last whiff of home.’) She tugged at the toes of her stockings, feeling their damp warmth. ‘We came up to London last night,’ she said, ‘and today they had some shopping, last minute socks and things. Then we went to a movie, Ingrid Bergman; have you seen her?’

‘Yes.’

‘We had lunch before the movie at Wilton’s, lots of oysters and brown bread and butter, they drank stout. I suppose you know it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, after Ingrid Bergman, we had an early dinner at Quaglino’s. I’d never been there either. I suppose you know it, too?’

‘What did you eat?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Go on.’

‘Then it was time to catch the train so—Uhh!’ She put her hands over her ears and shuddered back against his legs as a stick of bombs whistled and shrieked to fall nearby, then further and further away. ‘Gosh, it’s noisy.’

‘Not this time. Go on, you got to Euston.’

‘Yes. Well, that’s about it. They said take a taxi, they both did. They each gave me ten bob and they said take cover if there’s a raid, or better still go by tube, and they got into the train.’

‘Contradictory.’

‘They weren’t thinking, not really. In their minds they’d already left. I’ve seen them like that before, going back to school or university.’

‘You are half grown up.’

‘What?’

‘Have you a father?’

‘He died.’

‘Mother?’

‘Gone to Canada.’

‘Expecting you to join her?’

‘But I don’t want to.’

‘When are you going?’

‘I’m not. I don’t want to leave England, and I am scared of submarines, and—’

‘You want to stay as close as possible to Jonty and Francis.’

She did not answer, eased her toes in the nearly dry stockings. A fire-engine raged along the street, followed by an ambulance ringing its bell. The guns were firing still but further away; there were footsteps in the street.

He said, ‘So what
will
you do? Where will you go? Have you relations?’

‘No, no relations.’ No relations I can bear; only Aunt Violet, who is stuffy and conventional, kind and interfering. ‘No,’ she repeated, her tone obstinate.

He said, ‘All right, if that’s what you want, though relations are customary.’ He did not believe her. ‘So where were you heading to when you left Euston and were on your way to Paddington?’

‘Nowhere. I told them—I made up a cock-and-bull story, I did not want them to worry.’

‘Do you imagine Jonty and Francis will worry?’

Stung by the contempt in his voice, she looked up at him, furious. ‘Beast.’ She tried to stand up but the whisky affected her balance, it was better to sit. She fumbled for her handkerchief and blew her nose. She said, ‘Actually, I let them think I was going to Canada. They know my mother took my luggage with hers and that I have only a suitcase left. I shall collect the suitcase and cash my ticket, that will give me time to think what to do.’

‘Ah.’

‘I know,’ she said stiffly, ‘that they won’t write.’

‘M-m-’

‘They will not be allowed to, where they are going. They are both bilingual French and German, they will train—’

‘Jonty and Francis should not have told you.’

Jonty and Francis will not survive long, he thought.

‘Jonty and Francis did not tell, I eavesdropped,’ Juno articulated carefully. ‘I must be drunk, you shouldn’t have given me whisky. I’ve never drunk it before.’

‘How was I to know?’

‘Now I have betrayed them!’

‘Try not to be stupid.’ He was weary, closed his eyes, breathed carefully.

The gas fire popped in the grate; the raid was moving away across the city. Downstairs there were voices in the hall, doors opened and closed, a lavatory flushed, footsteps clattered out into the street. The front door slammed.

He said, ‘Gone dancing,’ got carefully to his feet and, moving to sit at a desk, drew writing-paper towards him, wrote, folded the paper, put it in an envelope, licked it, sealed it, came back to his chair. ‘For what it’s worth,’ he said, ‘I have written to my father. He will help you if your relations fail—’

‘But I have no—’

‘So you said, no relations, but should you get stuck, need help, take this, put it in your bag. Go on.’

Juno put the letter in her bag.

He said, ‘Now give me your hand, you are drunk and it’s time to sleep.’

He pulled her up and led her to the bed, where he lay down fully dressed. She felt dizzy and sat beside him, holding her head in her hands.

He said, ‘Lie down, you’ll feel better.’ She lay down. He pulled a blanket over them both, ‘Lie quiet, go to sleep.’

She knew she would not sleep, the room was swooping about. She cried out, ‘I—’

He said, ‘What is it now?’

‘Nothing, nothing.’

He said unkindly, ‘There will come a time when Jonty and Francis are just a bad dream.’

She shuddered away from him but he pulled her back, letting his arm lie across her body. She was drunk. She would wait until he was asleep then slip away, let herself out of the house and run. But when the All Clear sounded she slept on, breathing deeply and sweetly through her nose.

The cold woke her. Cold feet where the blanket had slipped. The chill weight of his arm across her waist and the chill pressure of his body along her back. She slid free, tiptoed to the door, crossed the landing to the lavatory, sat to relieve herself, listened to a surreal silence, raised the blackout curtain a fraction, saw daylight and snow falling, the street already white.

She went back into the drawing-room to find her shoes lying by the fire and put them on.

‘Evelyn,’ she said, remembering his name. ‘Evelyn, it’s snowing.’

She shook his arm; it fell slackly away from him. She touched his face with the back of her hand, held her breath, heard none of his, saw that he was dead.

Five minutes? Ten? A moment later? She tiptoed onto the landing. Listened.

The mahogany banisters led down to the hall. She leaned on them, lifted her feet, swooped, once, twice, sliding down into the hall, opened the front door and let herself out.

In the train Jonty leaned back in his corner seat and stretched his legs as the compartment emptied of uniformed figures, all bent towards the same camp. His destination and Francis’s was half an hour further on. They could talk now that the carriage was empty, Jonty thought. He leaned forward to open a window, let in some air, rid them of the smell of too many young men crushed into too small a space. ‘That’s better,’ he said.

On the seat opposite Francis was staring at nothing, pale eyes vacant, face expressionless. Could the thoughts crowding Francis’s brain be similar to his own? Would Francis mock if he suggested that it might have been better if, for their very first assay, they had found someone with experience? Would Francis admit to having had a fear, identical to his own, of mockery? To have been laughed at by some strange woman would have been horrible, and belittling; at least that pitfall had been avoided. They had managed without experience. But he was pretty sure Francis would agree that some degree of experience would have helped.

It was strange how silence seemed to enshroud the past twenty-four hours, making it difficult to talk; it was somehow not possible now to discuss their joint adventure. Surely one of the most important things that could happen to a man need not be private from one’s most intimate friend, one’s cousin? Yet it seemed to be so. Jonty sighed, opened his mouth to speak, closed it, crossed and recrossed his legs.

Perhaps Francis thought it had all gone well? Perhaps, in his opinion, they had not taken advantage? Or perhaps Francis assumed that, because she was in love with them, everything was all right, they had not gone too far? Was it possible Francis’s mind was not crammed with niggling regrets? Could it be that Francis was not afraid that their ignorance and clumsiness had put her off? Not that she had known how ignorant they were. No, Francis would probably say, were they to speak of it, that if they had managed to latch on to some experienced lady they would have risked a dose of clap; they had received so many warnings. It could be that in Francis’s opinion they had managed very well, their spur of the moment decision had been masterly. Anyway it was over now, what had been done was done, she was in love with them, wasn’t she? Jonty glanced at his cousin and glanced away.

On the opposite seat Francis muttered, stood up, made his way out of the carriage and along the corridor to the lavatory. Unbuttoning his flies he noticed that his penis was sore, and thought, ‘What we did was crude and rough.’ He made his way back to the carriage, said, ‘We shall be there in a few minutes,’ reached up to the rack for his luggage, was inspired to say something consolatory to Jonty, could find nothing. He would have liked to say, ‘She’s been our toy, but not any more. We should not have shared,’ but Jonty might think him sentimental. Jonty might laugh.

V
IOLET MARLOWE STILLED THE
clatter of her alarm clock and in the ensuing silence waited five minutes before getting out of bed. Last night’s raid had been fiendishly noisy, yet she had managed five hours’ sleep, a small but important victory to be savoured. She had, too, slept without stuffing her ears with cottonwool, another plus. It was amazing what one could get used to, given a bit of gumption.

On the floor above boards creaked as her lodgers padded about. Presently they would tiptoe downstairs, gather up their overcoats and gas masks, wheel their bicycles into the street, close the front door and pedal off to breakfast at their club on their way to their offices in Whitehall: John Baines, limping from a wound received on the Somme, to the War Office; Bill Bailey wheezing from mustard gas, the contact never clearly explained since he had served in the Navy, to the Admiralty.

Congratulating herself on their consideration and tact, Violet pulled back her curtains and, looking out into the snowy square, noticed the narrow lines which marked the bicycles’ passage towards the Brompton Road.

John and Bill, while not exactly boring, were certainly reliable; they had been friends of her husband Dennis, killed in 1918. Their wives were confident that, lodging with Violet, they would stay clear of mischief, while she for her part was grateful for unobtrusive masculine company during the raids. Though none of them was craven enough to shelter in the basement, should a bomb fall uncomfortably close, one or other might call out something along the lines of, ‘Bad shot, Jerry,’ or, ‘Close shave, that one,’ or even, ‘Anybody feel like a drink, hot or cold?’ should they be awake.

Running her bath, Violet remembered that both men had returned the night before from weekending in the country with their families, bringing garden produce not yet unpacked and put away; this she must do before setting off to her work for the Red Cross. With this in mind she bathed quickly, dressed in her uniform skirt and blouse and, carrying her jacket, went down to the basement. There, hanging her jacket on the back of a chair, she set the kettle to boil for coffee and examined the contents of the country hampers.

Both Eleanor Baines and Joan Bailey had sent eggs, Eleanor’s brown, Joan’s white; there were vegetables, sprouts, potatoes and beetroot, boring but seasonal, and surprisingly, since neither woman kept a cow, a luscious lump of yellow butter weighing a good two pounds. This, thought Violet as she stowed it in her refrigerator, hinted at hanky-panky if not Black Market, but ‘Who am I to question?’ she said out loud as she made herself coffee and sat to munch a bowl of cereal.

Hardly had she swallowed a mouthful when the doorbell rang. She exclaimed, ‘Blast!’, pushed back her chair, put on her jacket and went upstairs. ‘Goodness,’ she said on opening the door, ‘it’s Juno! What are you doing here? I thought you were in Canada.’

‘How smart you look in uniform.’ Juno stepped back, feeling unwelcome. ‘Did you have it specially made?’

‘Of course, I don’t believe in off the peg. But don’t just stand there, it’s been snowing, come in. Just look at your feet! Why can’t you girls wear sensible shoes?’ She drew her niece into the hall and shut the door. ‘You must be freezing.’ When had she last seen the girl? Ages. She looked white, tired too. ‘Come in,’ she repeated, leaning forward to kiss her niece.

‘I came’—cautiously Juno returned the kiss, noting her aunt’s scent, Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass—‘to see you, I … You smell delicious,’ she said.