Rule Britannia (24 page)

She set forth into the rain with Ben at her heels, and Emma waited until the pair of them had disappeared under the trees. Then she sneaked upstairs to her grandmother’s bedroom to ensure she wasn’t overheard by Dottie or the two elder boys, and put through a call to Dr. Summers’s surgery. It was only after she had dialed the number that she remembered the telephones were tapped. Never mind. She must choose her words, that was all.

“Yes?” The secretary in the surgery had connected her at once, but she recognized the tone of his voice. “There’s a patient waiting to be examined, I can give you two minutes, but no more.”

“It’s Emma,” she said. “I think we may be in trouble.”

“Terry’s leg or your grandmother’s heart?”

“Both.”

“Well, you’d better drive them along to the surgery and I’ll have a look at them.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Perhaps you hadn’t heard, but all private cars are banned from today in and around Poldrea. Nor have we got any water. And this conversation is being overheard, the telephones are tapped.”

As she heard herself speak she could hardly believe it. She was amazed at her own audacity. I’m behaving exactly like Mad, she thought, this wasn’t what I meant to say at all.

“Hold on a moment,” said Dr. Summers, and the tone of his voice had changed. She heard him put down the receiver, and he must have gone to speak to the secretary in the office, for he was absent quite a few minutes before she heard him on the line once more.

“I was just checking, Emma,” he said, “and Terry has had his leg in plaster now a week tomorrow. He’s due to come out of it, and have a wedge in the heel of his shoe instead. I’ll arrange about getting him to hospital, it will only take about half an hour. If your grandmother’s heart will hold out I can prescribe for her at the same time.”

“That’s the trouble,” said Emma. “I’m afraid she may overdo it before tomorrow.”

“I see.”

He didn’t, of course, but he knew what she inferred. Mad was getting out of control.

“Has your father gone back to London?”

“Worse than that. He’s either in New York or in Brazil.”

“That’s very helpful. Right, Emma. I’ll be along sometime today, but I can’t tell you when.”

Then he rang off. In the meantime, she thought, he will surely find out what is happening to all of us in this area, and if he has any influence he will try and do something about it. Perhaps nothing very much could be done immediately, with the following day a public holiday; nevertheless, word could be passed from one district to another, and the fact that a small community was being punished for the death of one man, a death which had not been proved to be other than accidental, must eventually rouse somebody to action. And yet, and yet… If Dr. Summers turned up later in the day, must she tell him the truth? Would he take the line that punishment was deserved? She turned away from the telephone, suddenly despondent. Perhaps she had done the wrong thing after all in getting through to the surgery.

She glanced out of Mad’s bedroom window, and saw that Mr. Trembath’s Land Rover was parked in the plowed field beyond the garden wall, with the farmer himself at the wheel, and then, from the shrubbery, Joe emerged, and Terry on his crutches, making for the steps in the wall. She flung open the window.

“Where are you going?” she called.

“To the farm,” shouted Joe, turning his head. “Madam knows, it was all fixed last night. We’re going to give Mr. Trembath a hand, we’ll be away for the day.”

They grinned up at her, Terry waved his crutch, and they began scrambling down the bank to the Land Rover below. I’m no longer one of them, she thought, I’ve been cut out of it, told to mind my own business, I’m class-conscious, I don’t belong. She was isolated in a sort of no-man’s-land between her contemporaries and the aged; between Joe and Terry, and Dottie and Mad.

Her isolation became more complete when, sometime later, she saw the fir-cone party return from the wood, not two but three. Mr. Willis, a large sack bulging over his back, was walking by her grandmother’s side and talking volubly. No question of relieving him of the sack and bidding him farewell at the gate with thanks; Mad escorted her helpmate to the porch, told him to dump the sack inside, and called to Emma.

“Tell Dottie Taffy will stay to lunch,” she said. “He doesn’t mind what he eats as long as it isn’t flesh.”

Mr. Willis made his customary bow to Emma. “It sounds as if I expected the rest of you to be cannibals, doesn’t it?” he said, smiling. “And truly, to see people chewing meat can sometimes be offensive to a vegetarian like myself.”

“I don’t think you need worry today,” replied Emma. “It will probably be beetroot soup and boiled cabbage.”

“Full of vitamins,” said Mad. “Come along in and have a drink. You’re not going to refuse that, surely?”

“No, indeed.” Mr. Willis removed his boots, to expose yellow socks. “Take a little wine for the stomach’s sake—it was recommended by St. Paul to all of us. Though I wouldn’t say no to whiskey or even brandy.”

“If you like you can have all three,” Mad told him.

Emma disappeared to the kitchen to warn Dottie. “I’m afraid we are in for a lengthy session,” she sighed. “Sound the gong soon, or it will mean filling up glasses before and during lunch.”

“I don’t know why Madam had to invite him at all,” replied Dottie. “You never know what someone of that sort will bring in with him, living as he does in that old hut in the woods.”

When Emma returned to the dining room Mr. Willis was already standing by the sideboard, and at her grandmother’s instructions was drawing the cork from a bottle of Chambertin. He proceeded to fill a tumbler to the full.

“The same for you, ladies?” he asked.

“Just enough to drink your health,” said Mad. “Emma and I never touch wine midday.”

“It depends on your upbringing, doesn’t it?” replied Mr. Willis. “I was born and bred in a temperance society and I never had the taste for alcohol until I had turned twenty. I made up for it then, I can tell you, but it isn’t often I get the chance to imbibe these days.” He raised his glass to his hostess first, and then to Emma, sipped the contents like a client at a restaurant and nodded his head in satisfaction. “Delicious! What the experts call a full-bodied wine. I haven’t tasted anything like this since I worked my passage home from South Africa some years ago as steward in the first-class dining room. I like the fruity flavor,” he told them. “If you drank this twice a day for weeks on end you’d never need medicinal treatment.”

The gong boomed, and Dottie entered the dining room bearing the tureen of beetroot soup.

“I must drink this lady’s health as well,” remarked Mr. Willis. “I have not had the pleasure of making her acquaintance.”

“Mrs. Dottrell, Mr. Willis,” said Mad, gesturing towards them both. “Mrs. Dottrell was in the theater with me for years.”

“Indeed? Another actress? Truly, I feel flattered to find myself so surrounded by stars. The theatrical profession is the finest in the world, I’ve always said so. Were you in tragedy or in comedy, Mrs. Dottrell?”

Dottie placed the tray on the sideboard. Her mouth was pursed tight.

“I was in neither, though I saw plenty of both backstage. I happened to be Madam’s dresser for more than forty years. Luncheon is served.”

Dottie stalked out of the dining room, her head high. Mr. Willis turned to his hostess, glass in hand.

“Now that is an occupation that has never come my way,” he told her, “and more’s the pity. I’ve always had the wish to handle costumes.”

“You may get your wish yet, Taffy,” Mad said, “especially if the Cultural-Get-Together movement has its way. We’ll see you in doublet and hose pouring wine for the American tourists.”

“I’d see them in perdition first,” he replied, “unless I had the chance to doctor the wine. Which wouldn’t be likely, would it? Though if I had the drawing of the corks it could be managed.”

They sat down to the fare of beetroot and cabbage, which, at their guest’s suggestion, could be made all the more palatable by mushing them together.

“A spoonful of sherry too, if you have it,” he added, glancing at the sideboard. “Then it would make a dish fit for princes. Indeed, I feel myself a prince at this moment, sitting down here at the table with you both, and couldn’t wish for better company.”

Which was all very well, Emma felt, but Mr. Willis was getting tipsier with every mouthful of Chambertin, and what with the beetroot soup well laced with sherry she couldn’t help feeling that his inside, unused to such a mixture since his days on board the liner returning from Cape Town, might soon begin to feel the strain. She was right. Dottie, her expression more disapproving than ever, had hardly appeared with the second course, apple crumble—a milk pudding would have been wiser, to give bulk—than Mr. Willis rose unsteadily to his feet.

“You’ll excuse me, ladies, I’m sure,” he said, “but the penalty of increasing years is not only failing eyesight and the formation of wax in the ears, but a desire to pass water more frequently, if you will pardon the expression.”

“I know it only too well,” Mad replied. “Emma, show Mr. Willis where.”

Her granddaughter obliged, and the guest tottered out into the hall and beyond.

“Dear Taffy,” said Mad, refilling his glass during a rather long absence, “how your grandfather would have adored him. I wonder if he plays the piano as well as sings. We might get him to perform directly. The only trouble is the piano is out of tune, it’s so long since it was touched, and Dottie told me some time ago the mice had got into the felt.”

The absence became prolonged. “Darling,” said Mad, “I think you had better go and see what he’s doing.”

“I can’t,” exclaimed Emma. “Honestly, Mad, I do agree with Dottie, you should never have asked him back to lunch. Supposing he’s collapsed?”

“We shall have to send for Bevil,” replied her grandmother.

Emma was silent. She wasn’t going to say that Dr. Summers would appear anyway. Far better that it should come as a surprise, though the doctor might not be too pleased if he found he was expected to attend to a bucolic beachcomber. It was Dottie who finally showed herself at the dining room door.

“Your gentleman friend is lying on the cloakroom floor, Madam,” she said, her voice totally without expression.

Emma and her grandmother went to inspect the scene. The worst had not happened, or if it had the effect had disappeared in the right place and with the plug pulled, but the effort had obviously proved too much for the guest, who was lying full-length on the floor, as Dottie had warned them, mouth open, snoring loudly, his spectacles askew on his nose. Mad knelt down, loosened the collar of his jersey and felt his pulse.

“He’s all right,” she said. “We’ll put one of the coats under his head and let him sleep it off. What a shame, though. I did want to hear him sing.”

Folly, who had pattered after Mad to the cloakroom, sniffed at the recumbent figure on the ground and backed, hackles rising.

“Don’t be silly, Folly,” said Mad. “It’s only poor Taffy had a drop too much.”

“And when he does wake up?” Emma asked. “Will he be in a fit state to walk back to the hut in the wood?”

“He won’t have to,” Mad replied. “Jack Trembath is picking me up from the field in the Land Rover later, and Taffy can come with us to see the fun. That’s why I brought him back to lunch, so that I could explain it to him. He’ll enjoy himself all the more after a good sleep.”

It rained steadily the whole afternoon, and the mist thickened. Mr. Willis continued to sleep on the cloakroom floor. Dr. Summers did not appear. Emma tried to call the surgery but the number was always engaged. The younger boys returned from school carrying yet more USUK flags and talking loudly of the holiday that was to take place the following day. Emma, who had rushed to their quarters to prevent them coming through to Mad as they usually did, steeled herself to the clamor of three separate voices.

“We had history forever,” complained Andy. “Christopher Columbus, Pilgrim Fathers, George the Third, George Washington, Boston Tea Party—all piled one on top of the other, and I don’t know yet what the holiday we’re getting tomorrow is for.”

“I do,” said Sam. “It’s for union. Once they didn’t want to be with us and now they do. And we are supposed to be pleased. And that Mrs. Hubbard came to talk to us again, and she said in America they always eat roast turkey on their Thanksgiving Day and I told her we only had it at Christmas.”

“Well, I bet she doesn’t get it tomorrow,” said Andy, “unless they’ve had some flown in from America to the camp. The marines are giving a big lunch at the Sailor’s Rest and she’s going to be there, she told us. And I heard her say that they hadn’t liked to ask Madam because of her bad heart. Bad heart, I said? Cor, you ought to see the sacks of fir cones she brought in yesterday. Where’s Terry?”

“He’s down at the farm, and Joe,” Emma answered.

She looked around for Colin. Missing once more. Instinct led her to the cloakroom. Colin, Ben at his side, had his eye to the keyhole. He looked up as Emma tried to drag him away.

“There’s a man in there lying on the floor,” he said excitedly. “Has someone killed him?”

“Be quiet,” whispered Emma, “he’s not feeling very well. Stop it, Ben!”

She was too late, however. Ben had burst open the cloakroom door, and the noise had the instant effect of rousing the visitor, who sat bolt upright like a jack-in-the-box released from captivity and stared about him with wild eyes.

“It’s the beachcomber,” cried Colin, astonished. “Madam must have taken him prisoner and forgotten to lock him in. Hullo…” he addressed himself to the awakened guest, “are you feeling better? Would you like to come and see Sam’s squirrel?”

Mr. Willis fumbled for his spectacles and adjusted them, ran his fingers through his shock of white hair and rose slowly to his feet.

“I feel like Rip Van Winkle,” he said. “How many years was it that he lay on the mountain top, and when he came down the whole world had changed? These boys were not present at the luncheon feast.”

“No,” murmured Emma, “they’ve just come home from school. It’s nearly five o’clock.”