The Green Gauntlet (25 page)

Simon’s marriage did solve part of her problem by supplying her desperate need for impartial advice inasmuch as, it brought Doctor Maureen back into the Valley.

Maureen Rudd, the first lady doctor the Valley had ever heard of much less attended, had married, late in life, the Shallowford agent, John Rudd, and stayed on after his death in the early ’thirties living in the lodge at the bottom of the drive. Early in the war, however, Maureen had pulled up stumps and gone off to Edinburgh to live with her only son and his wife and since then had not returned for she was getting on nowadays and did not care to face a long, wartime railway journey. The medical needs of the Valley, such as they were, were met by a young doctor called Truscott who had opened a practice in the greatly enlarged village of Coombe Bay. The newer families in the district got along with him well enough but Doctor Maureen, or ‘The Lady Doctor’ as the older generation still thought of her, had been an intimate friend of the family and had supervised the birth of all the Craddock children except Simon.

As soon as Claire received Maureen’s acceptance to the invitation she wrote begging her to stay on for a spell and when she arrived, surprisingly vigorous considering her bulk and seventy-odd years, Claire installed her in the big bedroom in the east wing that had once been occupied by Paul’s old friend, Jimmy Grenfell, the Valley M.R, who had spent his declining years with them. The old lodge, that Maureen and John had occupied for so long, was now uninhabitable and likely to remain so until after the war.

Looking into the big round face of Maureen, and hearing again her incurable but slightly suspect Irish brogue, Claire Craddock’s spirits lifted for the first time in months. She said, impulsively, ‘Why don’t you stay on for the duration, Maureen? Paul and I would love to have you. We’ve got this great barn of a place and only Mary and three children to share it with. It’s so empty sometimes that it gives me the jim-jams. There’s no hunting now and half the people in the Valley are strangers. Life isn’t in the least like it used to be and that isn’t because we’re no longer young and spry. We recaptured a lot of the old spirit between the wars but it began to wilt in that first dreary winter of this latest nonsense and after Dunkirk it seemed to lie down and die. Paul and I live in a kind of vacuum, waiting for something worse to happen. What I mean is, it seems impossible that the old rhythm will ever re-establish itself after the war.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t expect it to,’ Maureen said, with an encouraging fellow glumness. ‘I’m sorry I let my boy persuade me to retire and go north. His wife is a nice enough girl, but it never pays to move in with your family and I should have known a damned sight better than to do it. Ought to have stuck to my round until I dropped, like my John and most of the other old-stagers round here. And like Paul, your man. He knows a thing or two. There’s a man who’ll die with his boots on, I promise you.’

It was refreshing to hear someone talk like this again and the night after the wedding, with Maureen still in two minds whether to go or stay, Claire broke her silence and was astonished by the forthrightness of Maureen’s opinion. She said, after a pause that was not ransom to shock but considered evaluation, ‘Well, girl, there’s only one role you can play in a farce like that and I’m surprised you haven’t been rehearsing it ever since she told you. You’ve got a clear obligation to all three of them to get ’em straightened out before it’s too late.’

‘And how do I begin to do that? That girl is deeply in love with Stevie. If she hadn’t been she wouldn’t have dared come to me with such a story. And she isn’t bluffing either, I’ll swear to that. She’s found something in Stevie that doesn’t exist in his brother and she’s determined to have that baby. I wrote hinting that she had best pretend she wasn’t even sure whose it was—that she was blind drunk at a party and passed out, or something of that sort. I know it sounds horrible but not to them, not to people who have led such crazy, disorganised lives. They’ve always set such store on sophistication—well, here’s some kind of use for it. Let’s see how broadminded they really are when it comes to the crunch. All I know is that nothing matters so long as Paul and Andy never know the truth. Surely you can see that, can’t you?’

‘You can’t wriggle out of it as easily as that, girl, and anyway, it’s obvious that Margaret won’t take your damn silly advice. I’m just as relieved she didn’t rush off to one of those damned abortionists as soon as she discovered she was pregnant. They’re all crooks and most of them are charlatans. Did she reply to your letter?’

‘No, she didn’t, but later on—when the news was confirmed about Andy—I wrote again asking her to phone. She did and said she was looking forward to having the baby, that she had always wanted a baby but had come to believe she could never have one.’

‘And where does that leave us?’

‘I’m asking you, Maureen. I’m half out of my mind with the worry of it. I don’t know when Andy will come home but it must be soon. His wounds are practically healed and he’s being fitted with one of those gadgets to replace his hand. You surely don’t think she’s right to brazen it out, do you? You can’t think that, knowing how close those boys have been all their lives.’

‘I didn’t say I did think it.’

‘Then what? For God’s sake,
what?
’

‘I think she’s right to want to tell the truth but that’s less important than what happens afterwards.’

‘Afterwards? I told you—she’s going to ask Andy for a divorce, and then marry Stevie who is already getting one. He and Monica split up eighteen months ago. That was how it all began.’

‘It doesn’t matter a damn how it began,’ Maureen said obstinately, ‘it’s how it ends. She’s got to tell Andy the full truth and leave it to him.’

‘But won’t that amount to the same thing?’

‘Not if Stevie backs out. It’s him you’ll have to work on. You were quite right to keep it from Paul and if you take my advice you’ll always keep it from him. But I wish you had had the sense to confide in me before. As it is you’re pretty well on deadline, although there might still be time if you put your skates on.’

‘What do you mean? What more can I do at this stage?’

‘Where is Stevie right now?’

‘Serving on a station outside York.’

‘Then go and talk to him. Go tomorrow. Make some excuse, any excuse, but go there, and don’t come back until you’re sure in your own mind that he won’t marry Margaret, no matter what kind of pressure she puts on him. That’s the least you can do, girl.’

‘What about the child itself?’

‘The child will have to take its chance like the rest of us,’ Maureen said, savagely. ‘Right now, with half an arm and half a face missing, she’s got to give Andy a straight choice. She’s got to take everything coming to her, until he adjusts to his handicap. That’s not an old-fashioned notion, it’s common humanity. You’d owe that much compassion to a dog, never mind a husband. You see that, don’t you?’

Claire saw it clearly enough. Perhaps she had seen it when Margaret, wooden and matter-of-fact, had told her what had happened after Stevie went to her for help and found she needed help far more desperately than he did, but given the essential Tightness and urgency of what was expected of her Claire saw little prospect of achieving it, or not without Paul finding out.

She had reckoned, however, without Maureen’s long experience in the art of hoodwinking males. When she came down to breakfast next morning, and found Paul and Maureen gossiping over their second cup of coffee, she only just avoided giving herself away when Paul said casually, ‘Maureen has been telling me about you envying her trip to town. If you’d really like a change then why not go along with her, as she suggests. Do you good, old girl. You haven’t been out of the Valley in more than a year and you were always more taken with that Bedlam than me. Not that you’ll recognise much of it from all I hear, or find any brighter lights up there than you will in Coombe Bay. They have a blackout there the same as anywhere else.’

‘They’ve a better organised black market too,’ said Maureen.

‘I doubt it,’ said Paul, ‘in nylons and fancy goods maybe, but certainly not in food. However, if your son’s friends really can put you in the way of doing a bit of under-the-counter shopping, good luck to the pair of you. There’s never any bombing they tell me. We get it hotter than they do nowadays.’

It was easy as that, and when they were settled in the crowded London train, recovering their breath after unchivalrous competition with bumping kit bags, rifles and respirators, Maureen said, ‘He always was the easiest husband to diddle in all England. I suppose it’s because he’s so certain that you’ve never looked at another man in forty years.’ Claire admitted that this was almost true but not quite and was so relieved by her escape that she told Maureen of a wartime flirtation with an officer at the camp, something she had never admitted to a soul. It amused Maureen, who knew them both so well, and she chuckled all the way to Yeovil.

II

M
aureen saw her as far as Euston, giving her an address to call at on her return. ‘I can stall for about three days,’ she said, ‘but it shouldn’t take you that long and don’t look to me for a briefing! From now on you’re on your own. After all, you gave birth to the boy and it’s time you took your duties as mother seriously. The only two of the seven you ever bothered your head about was Young Claire, and that poor, demented Grace Lovell’s boy, Simon.’

And this, thought Claire, as an even more crowded train clanked out of Euston, was about the truth and she was now, she supposed, paying the price for having expended nine-tenths of her nervous energy on Paul in preference to the family. ‘All the same,’ she told herself, ‘I don’t regret it, and if I had my time over again I’d do just the same. God knows, one man is one woman’s work. She can’t be expected to do a good job on half-a-dozen.’

It was the first time the war had appeared to her as a global rather than a local event. Two things impressed her at once, the skeletal ruins of the suburbs that looked more like a series of rubbish-tips than the approaches to a capital city, and the presence of so many hard-bitten youngsters in uniform. Evidence of large-scale bombing was depressing enough but what was more, in Claire’s eyes, was the fatalistic glumness of the passengers. In the crowded corridor outside stood Dutchmen, Rhodesians and West Indians, forlorn strays identified by their shoulder flashes and all monstrously encumbered by the ugly accoutrements of war. Youth and gaiety seemed to have emigrated to another planet. The air in the compartment reeked of cheap tobacco and damp cloth, imperfectly dyed. The luggage racks sagged under the kit these youngsters seemed condemned to drag from one end of the country to the other and in the faces of even the British she fancied she could read strain and unutterable boredom, so that she forgot her own troubles and found herself thinking back to that other war when you would never have witnessed a uniformed young woman inhaling a cigarette like a man in a billiards saloon. Some of the girls, she thought, still looked pretty, even with their hair bundled under those awful caps, and all of them used make-up. In her young days only street-walkers carmined their lips and war had been almost exclusively a man’s concern. Now, it seemed, every living person was sucked into the vortex, participating in its dangers and shortages, its slang and its stale, unprofitable atmosphere. She listened, half-heartedly, to a desultory conversation between a bombardier and a sallow little W.A.A.F. but could make very little of it. So many of the words and sentiments were strange to her. The bombardier, it seemed, was returning to an outpost in the Hebrides, the W.A.A.F. to a bomber station like the one she herself was visiting. Both, it appeared, resented their lot but accepted it as a kind of purgatory separating their youth and whatever the future had in store for them. They talked laconically, like a couple of mercenaries reminiscing after a spell of sacking cities on the Continent. The bombardier had been in the Desert and said he was already regretting his home posting. ‘Too much bullshit back here,’ he complained, ‘even on a ruddy little rock doing Sweet F.A. most of the time!’ The girl had troubles of her own. ‘Our section officer is a bitch—give me men officers all the time! Girl in my billet was engaged to an R.G. who bought it. Went on parade the day after hearing with hair showing under her cap. Had a strip torn off her—don’t know where they find cows like that. Who did they chase from A to B before the war? Their skivvies I daresay, at five bob a week and keep!’

The bombardier murmured his sympathy but added, with a grin, ‘Well, you know what they say. Shouldn’t have joined!’ to which the girl replied promptly, ‘What do you take me for? I was pushed. Not quick enough off the mark, that’s my trouble. Got a kid sister making eight–ten a week in a Wimpey factory …!’ and so on, all the way to a stop that Claire could not identify for all the place names had been removed from the platforms as a precaution against an invasion threat now three years old.

As the long journey wore on she tried to rehearse what she would say to Stevie when she got there but nothing plausible suggested itself and she decided that she would have to play it by ear. The countryside grew more pastoral but the train became more and more crowded so that the acrid atmosphere of the compartment made her eyes smart. It was impossible to move along the corridor to the lavatory and someone who had managed it earlier told her there was no water in the taps. At another stop the bombardier unexpectedly produced a cup of tea for the W.A.A.F. and another for her and she sipped it gratefully, although it had the flavour of boiled swedes laced with soap. After that she was able, to some extent, to join in the conversation and asked the W.A.A.F. if she knew Stevie’s station.

‘Bomber Command dump? There’s lashings of them up there. Is he operational?’ and when Claire said he flew Lancasters the girl’s approach softened to a mixture of interest and sympathy.

‘How far is he on with his tour of ops.?’ she asked, and Claire said she had no idea, for he wasn’t much of a one for writing.

‘He wouldn’t say, anyway,’ the girl said, making Claire feel that their ages were reversed and that she was being gently patronised by her grandmother, ‘they live it up between trips and forget it when they’re not flying,’ and when Claire mentioned that, earlier in the war he had been with Fighter Command, the girl volunteered more information, saying, ‘He’ll have changed, I daresay. You can spot the difference right away. Bomber pilots are mostly—well, more serious if you know what I mean, and usually nicer. I’ve been in both Commands, as well as T.T.—Technical Training—but I’d sooner serve on a bombing station.’ Then, with a frankness that made Claire smile, ‘Is he married?’