The Skeleton in the Grass (23 page)

It did, indeed, seem ideal. Sarah wondered, though, whether Oliver shouldn't have been consulted before Hallam was assigned to his care. It was possible, after all, that he had other plans. And, try as she might, she couldn't get rid of the idea that this
was
terribly like running away.

“Y
ou will be coming with us, won't you, Sarah?” Helen asked, when they had all listened to the King's broadcast.

The previous ten days had been hectic, but that had taken their minds off their troubles. There was, in any case, the scent in the air of a new life ahead of them. Dennis had a solicitor friend in Oxford—a contemporary at Wellington—and he had been looking into possible houses to rent for the Hilary term, and also, very discreetly, into houses that might come on to the market in the New Year. Oxford dons died off pretty regularly, and he had sent descriptions of several highly suitable houses in North Oxford.

“I really think £2,500 should do it,” said Dennis. “Or at any rate £3,000. That's all to the good. Don't want to get into the hands of the moneylenders. And Oliver will need all the rents from the farms for the upkeep of Hallam.”

Helen was busy with household matters. Mrs. Munday and Pinner both preferred to stay with the house, though they were both devastated that the family move to Oxford might be permanent. Pinner said he never
had
found a pub in Oxford he liked, and Mrs. Munday said she was a countrywoman at heart, though she'd be very happy to go down to Oxford to cook for them at any time they had a dinner party. It would be a bit lonely until Mr. Oliver finished in June, but there was the Easter vacation, and—who
knew?—it might not be long before he found a young lady who suited him.

Elizabeth was telephoning, and going hither and thither arranging for her London Season. Coronation Year had been going to be exciting for the debutantes and their “delights” anyway, but everyone was deciding that a new king and a queen was an even better prospect than a bachelor king, particularly as there were the little Princesses, whom everybody loved. If the worst did happen, and Edward went, then the new king, whom smart society had for years dubbed as “dull,” had now been found to be handsome and dedicated. His queen was pronounced to be “so sweet and pretty.” It was going to be quite a season, a revival of past glories. Elizabeth made no secret of her intention of enjoying every moment of it.

Accommodation was not the only thing Dennis had on his mind.

“I think I'm going to write a book,” he said. “I marvel at my self-restraint that I've never done so before. It's going to be about the Emperor Karl's peace proposals in 1916. Think of it: here was the second of our adversaries coming up with ideas to end the war. Think of all the young lives that would have been saved if the ideas had been taken up. And what did the British and the French governments do? Nothing. They simply weren't interested, though they, if anybody, knew the scale of the slaughter. It could be a very timely book indeed.”

“You'll have to brush up your German,” said Helen.

“I've started already. Luckily going to Wagner as often as we do, and listening to Schubert songs, it's always there in the back of your mind. I'm surprised how much I've retained . . .”

As soon as Oliver got wind of the new plans, he came from Oxford for the day. Sarah thought that, in his Finals year, he could well have been spared such disruptions, and
spared the important decisions that were being thrust upon him. Then she chided herself for the thought. Nothing the Hallams did seemed to be right with her, these days. Of course Oliver came quite voluntarily.

When he arrived, driven from Hatherton station by Pinner, she found herself watching Bounce. It was absurd, of course. Bounce stood at the front entrance, barking and wagging his tail nineteen to the dozen. That's what he did every time a family member arrived home. It told her nothing . . .

When, in the seventies, Sarah visited the house with her grand-daughter, she said to the woman in the souvenir shop that she'd once lived and worked at Hallam herself.

Oh, how interesting, the woman said. She wasn't a local herself, she came over from Banbury every day, but she did know that the last occupant of Hallam was living with his family in one of the farms.

“Wilton Farm, I think it is. Ever such a nice gentleman, Mr. Oliver, so everyone says.”

“Yes, Oliver was terribly nice,” the 55-year-old Sarah said.

“I'm sure he'd love a visit from you,” said the woman. “For old times' sake.”

“I'm afraid I haven't time today,” said Sarah. “We have to rush. Perhaps next time I come . . .”

But she knew there would not be a next time, and that she would never go and visit Oliver Hallam. And she knew the reason was that she had suspected that generous, selfless man of the murder of Chris Keene.

When Oliver had greeted everyone and been to have a chat with Mrs. Munday in the kitchen, they got down to a real family council. Chloe insisted on being present, so Sarah was in on all of it, sitting with her in the window-seat, and helping her with her book.

Dennis told Oliver about Chan's visit, and his phone
call to the Master. He told him about the book on the Emperor of Austria's peace proposals, and the possibility—“more than a possibility, the Master says—” of a Fellowship.

“You don't think I'm running away, old chap?”

“No, of course not,” said Oliver.

Dennis explained about the house they would be renting in Oxford, and some of the possibilities if it came to their buying somewhere. He said that Oliver would have a good income from the rents of the farms with tenants, and of course the income from the bits they farmed themselves. With Mrs. Munday and Pinner staying on there would be no problems with running the house. Eventually, if things worked out as they hoped about the Fellowship, it would probably be a good idea to transfer the house to him by deed of gift, or something of the sort.

“Yes, I see,” said Oliver. “Well, I'll think it over.”

Dennis was visibly disconcerted.

“I say, old chap, have I been jumping the gun? We thought you'd jump at the idea—and you'll be so much better at running the place than I've ever been.”

“I probably will jump at the idea,” said Oliver. “But it's all new to me as yet. I'll need to go away for a bit and think it over.”

To cover the slight embarrassment, Elizabeth said:

“Have you seen this picture in the
Express
of the crowds outside Buckingham Palace? That really does look like Inspector Minchip, helping to control them.”

They all agreed it did. The crowds had not been large or disorderly, and the King had been at Fort Belvedere anyway, but at least Minchip had been on the fringes of history, as he had hoped.

“He'll be happy, anyway,” said Dennis. He turned to Oliver: “Now, you must do exactly as you please, old chap . . .”

Sarah had been delighted at Oliver's refusal to have his decisions taken for granted. It was a sign of his growing
up, she felt. But she was not surprised, a week later, when Oliver rang and told his parents that he was quite willing to take over at Hallam when he was through with his Finals.

That made Dennis and Helen happier.

“Even after all this, I'd have hated to have had to sell the place,” said Dennis.

That was on December 11th. In the evening the King broadcast—or Prince Edward of Windsor, as the meticulous man at the BBC called him. Chloe was in bed, but the rest of them, with Mrs. Munday and Pinner, sat around the wireless set, and as he talked the women's eyes brimmed with tears and spilled over.

“He was so good-looking when he was young,” said Helen when he had finished. “And I do think he meant well.”

“He's been brought down by the old men,” said Dennis. He looked around him and laughed at their damp cheeks. “Come on—don't take it so personally. It's not any worse because he's handsome, you know. We've got a new start ahead of us too.”

That was when Helen, turning to Sarah, said:

“You will be coming with us, won't you, Sarah?”

“Actually, I think I may not be,” said Sarah carefully. “I've been in touch with people at Kew Gardens, and they have this scheme . . . I think it might be just the thing to suit me.”

“Sarah! How enterprising of you!”

“It was Winifred Hallam put me in touch with them. Of course I'll come to Oxford for a few weeks to tide you over. But there won't be any problem finding a school for Chloe there, will there?”

“Oh no, that's quite true. There are lots of private schools at Oxford, some of them very liberal in their approach.”

“I imagine the State schools are quite good at Oxford,
too,” said Sarah, with malicious intent. People like the Hallams did not send their children to State schools.

“We must look into them too,” said Helen.

“So I thought I'd take a quick trip home for Christmas, to see if the arrangements I made are working out. I could come back on Boxing Day. Then I could help with the move to Oxford, see Chloe settled into school—” and see Roland, she said to herself—“and then, with a bit of luck, start at Kew.”

“We shall be awfully sorry to lose you,” said Helen. “Though in the nature of things Chloe was sure to want to go to school before long. She's a child who's made for companionship. And obviously we want what's best for you, Sarah, dear.”

So the first weeks of the new reign were to be her last weeks at Hallam. It should have been a time of sadness, but it was not. She sensed new horizons, new relationships ahead of her. And in truth the Hallam that she had come to on that day in July had vanished already. Later, whenever she heard the record of Dylan Thomas reading “Fern Hill,” she always shivered with recognition when he came to the bit about “the farm forever fled from the childless land.” She knew exactly what he meant. The Hallam that she had come to, bathed in sun and nestling in lawns and willows, had already disappeared. It had become a mere thing of bricks and mortar, a superb specimen, as Chan always said, of Tudor domestic architecture. She had lost her adolescent illusions. She had grown up.

T
he heat in the ambulance was intense, for they had been told to come as close as was practicable. Other fires, raging further down the narrow street, added to the heat and seemed likely to prevent their getting out that way. Sarah thought they would have to back into Berkeley Square, and then make their way as best they could through the cratered, lurid streets to Charing Cross Hospital. She sat in the back of the ambulance, hoping they would bring the wounded firemen out soon.

Normally, like most people involved in the emergency services, she could blot out thought. People in 1941 thought not about the progress of the war, what would happen in victory or defeat, but only about living from day to day: when they would next have food, when they would next have sleep. But in tonight's terror Sarah kept thinking: if I go my baby dies too. She kept wondering whether Roland had arrived in North Africa, trying to calculate when her letter might reach him. Perhaps in the life he would be leading a first baby would seem an unimportant matter. Sometimes it was even difficult for her, here, to think of the joy of it.

There seemed to be some movement from the blazing building. It had been the town house of some aristocratic family, converted into offices in the ‘twenties. Spacious, luxurious, heavy. The flames lapped from the windows
like the tongues of thirsty dogs. People kept comparing the blitz to pictures by Bosch, but Sarah had never seen any. She could only think of Milton. It was like awaking in Hell.

Yes, there was movement at what had once been the front door, now a gaping hole. Two stretchermen were manœuvring their way through, with a rough shape on their stretcher, covered with a blanket. Behind them came a fireman, clearly wounded, and walking unsteadily.

“One of them's a goner,” the first bearer shouted to the driver. “Or will be before long. I don't reckon he'll regain consciousness. The other'll be OK, but he needs to go to hospital.”

The driver nodded and started the engine, while Sarah helped to lift the stretcher into the back and slot it into place. This was going to be a long, slow, bumpy ride. As she checked the clasps the other fireman scrambled into the compartment and sank into a seat, and then the doors banged behind them. The stretchermen ran off down the road to one of the other fires, and the ambulance began to back hesitantly into Berkeley Square.

The fireman on the stretcher was certainly unconscious. As they turned into the square the ambulance was in near-total darkness, only the faintest of orange lights telling Sarah where anything was. They went forward, lurching and hesitant, for a few hundred yards, but then they were stopped by a small fire at ground level. Sarah busied herself with the unconscious man, though experience told her that he was, in the unsentimental phrase of the bearer, a goner. The whole of the bulky body seemed shattered. She busied herself with her kit, but anything she could do was cosmetic. When the ambulance started again she sank back into her seat by his side.

“It's Sarah, isn't it?”

She jumped and stared through the flickering gloom.

“The thing about this war is, one meets just everybody,” the voice went on.

She knew the voice. Oh yes, she knew the voice. And her eyes becoming accustomed a little to the darkness, she recognized with a shock that he had a nasty wound over the left eye. She imagined the red hair, the singed flesh, and the long mobile face of Will Hallam.

“It's the left side of the forehead. So appropriate,” said Will.

“I started when I saw it,” admitted Sarah, in a low voice. “That was my first body. You never quite get over it. Did they tell you about it?”

Will did not answer immediately, but he asked: