Running to Paradise (10 page)

7

‘Guy? How quiet you’ve been.’ Sophia’s voice on the phone, ringing to say she’d arranged the visit to Aunty Phyll. ‘You’re not sulking, are you?’

‘
Of course not,’ I said, feeling unreasonably irritated. ‘I’ve been busy, that’s all. Anyway, I thought you said you’d ring me. I’m sorry if I misunderstood you.’

‘
Ach!’ A distinctly odd noise came down the wire. ‘Don’t be so pompous. Next Sunday four o’clock, Aunty Phyll said. We could meet for a pub lunch and then go on from there — OK?’

Aunty
Phyll, once ‘jolly Phyllis Pratt’ and daughter of Con Osborn’s brother, Don, lived in a house just off Kensington Church Street. ‘She’s been there for about fifty years,’ Sophia said, lighting yet another cigarette. ‘Uncle Ronnie, that was her husband, bought the freehold for a song and now I suppose it’s worth a fortune.’ It was Sunday and we were seated on top of a Number 9 bus on our way to Kensington.

‘
Her husband’s name wasn’t Edward, then?’

‘
No, why?’

‘
It doesn’t matter,’ I said, feeling superior. Already I knew more about her family than she did: about Hubert and Gilles, and Edward in the Irish Guards; about that fly-ridden birthday party in Richmond Park when Phyllis Pratt and Edward Everett organised games for the little ones. I looked down at the thronged pavements of Kensington High Street; the garish boutiques, the video shops, the nose-to-tail traffic and general air of tawdriness and thought of the twelve-year-old Char. These streets would have been her playground. The bus stopped at the lights at the bottom of Kensington Church Street: a girl, no more than twelve, wearing jeans and a blue anorak, crossed the road in front of it, pulled by a large, black, hairy dog on a red lead. The wind blew her bright, brown hair in a halo round her head. She was smiling; alight with life. Char would have looked like that, I thought, seventy years ago.

‘
Come in, dears. Isn’t this jolly?’ Aunty Phyllis, a small, wizened figure, shoulders hunched with age, wearing purple trousers and an orange knitted jacket, greeted us at the door of the rather run-down looking little house in Peel Street. We trailed behind her up the steep, narrow staircase to a small, cramped sitting room on the first floor. Reggae music wafted down from above; there was a smell of curry on the air. Aunty Phyll pointed a shaky finger skywards. ‘My lodgers,’ she whispered. ‘Such a charming couple.’

Later,
sunk in the massive depths of a sea-green sofa that had seen better days, a Crown Derby cup and saucer balanced precariously on my knee, I tried to explain to my hostess my reason for wanting to meet her. She looked at me quizzically, her eyes behind the thick spectacles, shrewd and rather mocking. ‘Another of those researchers, are you, young man? Once one gets beyond eighty-five nowadays, one’s anybody’s property,’ and she gave a macaw-like shriek of laughter.

‘
Mum made Guy her literary executor, Aunty Phyll,’ Sophia came to my rescue. ‘She left all these papers, you see. He thought you might remember some of the people mentioned: Aunty Beth, Cousin Roo and there’s a playwright called Hubert Stokes.’

‘
I remember them all, dear, and especially Hubert; we all adored him, you know, including your grandmother, who was head over heels in love with him.’

‘
And Char?’ I asked.

‘
Char simply worshipped him. She was a funny little thing in those days — so intense. I remember when I was staying at Beth’s during the summer of ’14 — Char lived with Beth, d’you see, during term time. Aunt Con was too busy setting the world to rights and canoodling with Hubert Stokes to have much time for her daughter. Where was I? Oh yes, Char said to me: “If I can’t marry Uncle Hubert, I shan’t marry anyone, ever.” ’

‘
It’s odd,’ said Sophia, her mouth full of chocolate cake, ‘that I’ve never heard about Hubert Stokes before. What happened to him, Aunty Phyll; he’s not still alive is he? Mum never—’

‘
Killed,’ said Aunty Phyll laconically. ‘They all were, don’t you know, all our chums. The only reason they didn’t get my old Ronnie was because he had such rotten eyesight. But Hubert didn’t die in battle, he was a conchie. Just as brave as the other boys, I always thought. At least they died together; if you were a conchie you were on your own. They were treated quite dreadfully, you know, in our War. Hubert refused to help in any way. He was what they called an “Absolutist”, and of course he was sent to prison. He died of pneumonia in Wormwood Scrubs in the autumn of ’16, I think it was.’

We
were all of us silent for a moment. Then: ‘There’s an Edward Everett mentioned,’ I said. ‘I wondered if—’

‘
You have done your homework, young man.’ The old lady looked at me coldly. I felt suddenly ashamed. ‘And what, may I ask, do you know about him?’

‘
Only,’ I said hastily, ‘that he was the elder brother of Char’s best friend at school, Polly Everett.’

‘We were engaged: Polly and Char were to be bridesmaids — a grand affair at Holy Trinity, Brompton, with a reception at the Hyde Park Hotel. My wedding dress was so pretty; seed pearls round the neck and waist and my veil was Honiton lace.’ Aunty Phyll lit a cigarette, her hands, mottled with the brown marks of the aged, trembling a little as she struck the match. The reggae music from upstairs had changed to rock. It was almost dark outside. ‘Such a waste — Edward never made it d’you see. He was killed the day before he began his leave. Little Char was so disappointed.’ The house shook as a train rumbled underneath; I placed my cup and saucer carefully on the table.

Suddenly
Aunty Phyll leaned forward and took my hand. ‘Don’t be silly, dear. I don’t mind any more. In time, you know, everything passes.’ She shook herself. Now, Sophia dear, if you look in that drawer, you should find the snaps. They’re in a big, red album; some of them are really rather killing and it might interest Mr Horton to have a look at them.’

And
there they all were; much as I had imagined, strangely enough. Beth and Roo laughing under a window, clutching Mr Flinders. Hubert Stokes, boater tipped over his eyes, cigarette between his lips, looking darkly decadent. Phyll, herself, looking jolly, tennis racket at the ready. And Char, little Char, squinting into the camera, hair held back by a ribbon, the eyes as I had so often seen them, slanting with wickedness. Another one of Mr Flinders, this time on his own, all lolling tongue and whiskers. Cats, dogs, people, smiling away like mad, from punts, from the backs of horses, at the seat of monolithic cars — another time, another world — ‘Golden lads and girls all must...’

‘
Come on Guy, that’s enough now.’ Sophia was tugging at my sleeve. ‘Aunty Phyll’s tired. Mrs Mills will be here any moment to see her to bed. We must go.’

I
jumped up guiltily. ‘I’m so sorry, how thoughtless of me.’

Aunty
Phyll smiled vaguely, only half with us. ‘So nice of you both to come,’ she said. On an impulse I bent down and kissed her; the skin of her cheek felt like last year’s leaves.

We
were out in the street in the gathering darkness. ‘Each time I see Aunty Phyll,’ said Sophia taking my arm, ‘I wonder if it will be the last.’ There was no answer to this, so we walked in silence down the hill, the lights of Kensington High Street ahead of us.

That
night we slept together for the first time. I woke early, Sophia curled up like a puppy beside me, wondering whether someone some day would try to piece together our past. On balance, I thought not, and began to worry about what Sophia had for breakfast.

*

A letter or two, a tobacco tin containing some regimental buttons and a postcard on the back of which was scrawled: ‘All the best from Reckless Reg — Italy 1918,’ was all the evidence the green trunk could offer for Char’s War. No mementoes of poor Hubert Stokes, no cheery cards from P. E. Gilles, not even a newspaper cutting or a casualty list. Had Char, like so many of her generation, only wanted to forget those years when so many ‘chums’ had fallen and so much that had seemed so safe, had changed irrevocably — I don’t know.

Certainly,
those four years of War must, by any standards, have had a profound effect on Char. The ages between twelve and sixteen are pretty formative years, but in her case would surely have been cataclysmic, for not only did her parents’ marriage break up, but her adored ‘Uncle H’ was sent to prison for his beliefs, and subsequently died there. In so doing, and thereby showing her the brutal reality of how society dealt with all those high-flown ideals he had propounded to her so spell-bindingly as they rode their bicycles in Battersea Park in the heady days before the War, had he fallen from grace in her eyes? Or was his death to her just a re-enactment of that other death, the death of the vagrant poet, Henry Arthur Elliott on that summer afternoon on Bagland Common, years before? Again, I don’t know, but the fact that no letters from Hubert Stokes exist out of what by all accounts seems to have been a voluminous correspondence, and even Sophia, with her total recall, claims never to have heard his name mentioned by her mother, seems to point to the former. It’s strange that I who loved her never learned from her of those years, or of the desolation she must surely have felt at Hubert’s death and the disruption and fragmentation of her own family.

‘
Were the two connected?’ I asked Aunty Phyll, as we sat together in her over-crowded sitting-room. Outside the window an almond tree bloomed, its soft, pink flowers and brown branches making a lace pattern against the grey, windy sky. Above the noise of distant traffic, a blackbird sang. The house, for once was silent; the lodgers, it seemed, had gone to Lanzarote in search of sun.

Aunty
Phyll sipped her cocktail then placed it carefully down on the little mat with a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on it; mine had one of the Colosseum.

‘
You mean Hubert Stokes’ death and Dick leaving Con? Perhaps. Of course, things had gone from bad to worse ever since the baby died of pneumonia in 1911. But certainly, Con made the most frightful hoo-hah over Hubert’s death: didn’t seem to care who knew what they’d been to each other; even went into a sort of purdah, d’you see. Well, by that time poor old Dick had had enough. He sent a wire: “Gone to Paris with Edna — do your damnedest,” and Con did: to everyone’s surprise she divorced him. I didn’t see much of either of them at that time, I was out in France nursing. When I came home for good in Christmas ’18, the whole thing was more or less a
fait accompli
. Con had Char in that frightful little villa in Surrey and Dick had a flat in Chelsea.’

I
said I found it strange that although Char and I were close, she had never talked of these things with me. Her attitude towards her parents had always been that they were rather a bad joke. We’d often spoken of the First World War, but always its military aspect; she never mentioned she’d lost anyone close.

Aunty
Phyll surprised me then. ‘She was a hard woman, you know. Guts and brains when she chose to use ‘em and could charm the men — as you well know, young man — but there was a callous streak in her. You came up against it quite unexpectedly, and when you did, it was rather like stubbing your toe on a block of ice when swimming in the Mediterranean. Give me another drink, dear, I know it’s naughty, but I feel naughty tonight.’

I
filled her glass in silence, waiting for her to continue.

‘
I don’t know if you knew,’ she said, ‘that Char and I fell out in later years.’ I didn’t, and said so. ‘We used to be such chums between the wars. Although I was six years older, my Adam was the same age as her Ann, and we spent several jolly summer holidays together when she was married to Algy. We used to take a large house on the Norfolk coast and let the kids run wild. But later — I don’t know — she changed, or I changed, and I never could take George. He was good looking enough in his way as a young man, I suppose, but after Algy...’

‘
He’s married again already — George.’

‘
I heard,’ she said, and we left it at that.

‘
This callousness you mention,’ I said. ‘I never encountered it in her myself, but others have, I know. Do you think it may have developed in those years when she was growing up?’

‘
You’re a romantic, Guy Horton. Life isn’t as simple as that. Char was born callous, as a cat’s born to catch mice. What happened during the Great War must have affected her, I suppose. No one who lived through it was the same afterwards, but I dread to think what she’d have been like with doting parents and a happy home. She’d have walked all over the parents and the happy home would have bored her to death.’

‘
What about Hubert Stokes?’ I asked.

‘
Oh, there were always Huberts: those “heroes” of hers. “The thin bright faces” as she used to call them. She turned them into cardboard cut-out figures, no use to man nor beast.’

‘
I still think it’s significant she kept so much evidence of her past, but nothing for those years,’ I said, sticking to my guns.

‘
Come off it, dear,’ she said. ‘She probably lost the stuff, that’s all.’

‘
I must be going,’ I said huffily, rising to my feet.