The Winter Ground (15 page)

In spite of myself, I was forced to agree that this made a great deal of good sense and with even greater grace than before I congratulated him.

‘And now,’ I said, looking up at my clock, ‘it’s time to go and collect an end to tranquillity. It’s waiting at the station for me.’

What I meant was that my sons were coming home from school for their Christmas holiday and I had volunteered to pick them up at Dunkeld (leaving their bags for Drysdale to collect later since I did not want the Cowley getting scratches on it). My offer sprang not, I told myself, from any wild maternal passion which could not restrain itself while they were brought the last few miles, but from a desire to hear the running jokes and slogans they had brought with them and censor them before they reached the ears of Nanny or, worse, Hugh. I was determined that this Christmas would be an harmonious one at Gilverton, without the shouting, ranting and helpless hot giggling leading to louder shouting which so often ensued when all three of my male relations were at home.

‘Oh yes, Christmas,’ said Alec. ‘What fun.’ He sounded rather doleful and I glanced at him hoping that he would not see me doing so. His mother had died since the Christmas before and his sister-in-law, or so I gathered, had quickly made the Dorset house, Alec’s childhood home, rather horribly her own. He must be dreading Christmas Day all alone at Dunelgar, with his staff resenting him and pitying him in equal measure.

‘Come to us, of course, darling,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘Barrow and the rest can have a holiday.’ Alec said nothing. ‘Although,’ I went on, ‘one could kick Dickens, if he were still here to be kicked. It’s his fault that the servants think they should loll around gorging on goose all day.’

‘Him and Her late Majesty,’ Alec said. ‘It’s her doing that one can’t just spend December the 25th at one’s chosen pursuits and have a cutlet at night without feeling tragic.’

‘Well, the boys will be delighted and you can talk to Hugh about fences and make his day too.’

‘Can’t, I’m afraid,’ said Alec, not looking at me. ‘It’s as I said. One is drawn in and swept along. I’ve been invited to Pess.’

Pess. The home of the Uvings. The home of Magnus Uving, a wonderful host with a wonderful gamekeeper whose forests and moors were jammed with plump birds, and his wife Lady Amanda Uving, a wonderful hostess with a wonderful cook, whose house rang with music and laughter all year long. No one could resist an invitation to Pess, not least for Christmas. Of course, with such delights to offer the Uvings could pick and choose their guests, and they had chosen Alec, a young bachelor of good fortune, even better breeding and the greatest of charm. For as well as Magnus and Amanda, there was it must be said Celia Uving, twenty-two, beautiful, clever and very choosy. Christmas would make Alec’s fourth visit this year.

‘Excellent!’ I cried, hoping that my face had not reddened. ‘I couldn’t be more pleased. I lie awake at night, you know, darling, thinking about you rattling around in that yawning great empty house all on your own. Three cheers.’

‘You’ll be the first to know, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘But it’s only Christmas for now. Let’s go and fetch the boys.’

What unprepossessing lumps they looked trailing along the platform towards me, dragging their trunks and hatboxes – for they had been trained by their father never to wait for porters like a pair of ladies back from shopping in town. Or not lumps exactly, for they had both shot up again since the summer, but no oil paintings either of them.

‘My God, two badly planted saplings after their first big storm,’ said Alec, hitting the nail on the head as usual. I snorted with laughter and leaned on the horn to tell them we were there, at which they broke into an ungainly and rather wavering trot causing sweet wrappers and tattered story-papers to fall out of pockets and from under arms.

‘Hello, Mother,’ said Teddy, which gave me a twinge: I had still been Mummy at half-term. ‘Hello, Mr Osborne.’

‘Boys,’ said Alec. ‘I’m sorry to be so predictable, but – as I was just saying to your mother – my, haven’t you both grown!’

I saved Cooke’s until they had finished telling their breathless and deadly dull news of football team places and piano prizes and had asked after their dogs and ponies, been given the news that the last of the childhood rabbits had finally died alone and unmourned in its cage in the stable-yard, and been warned not to tell Hugh that they would carry out some requested task ‘with a Dixie melo-
deeee
!’ or call him Toot-toot-tootsie whenever they said goodbye (some boy in their house had got an Al Jolson gramophone record and they had been playing it all term). When they had quietened down a little at last, I dropped the news into the lull where it went off like a flour-bomb.

‘Really? Really and truly? Are there tigers and elephants? Is there a strongman? Is there a flying trapeze?’

I told them that there were no tigers, elephants or even anything close and that I had no clear idea what the flying trapeze was and whether Topsy could be said to be it, but that yes, there was a strong man (for sixty, I thought but forbore to mention) and there were horses, acrobats, clowns and a monkey, and that both boys were welcome there any time to watch the performers rehearsing.

‘Golly,’ said Donald.

‘Only it’s just the circus you’re to visit, mind,’ I told him. ‘You can’t go traipsing around the castle because Mrs Wilson isn’t well.’

‘Mrs Wilson?’ said Teddy. ‘Is that the Miss Havisham lady with the mad husband?’ It was rather a garbled version, but close enough and so I nodded. ‘Wouldn’t catch me going in there then,’ he said. ‘I’d get bricked up in a dungeon and fed through the keyhole.’ Clearly, the Wilsons were as well known amongst the youth of the neighbourhood as amongst their elders.

‘You don’t get keyholes if you’re bricked up,
Swachekopf
,’ said Donald.

‘
Faxenmacher
,’ said Teddy.

‘And don’t speak German,’ I said. ‘Heavens! Al Jolson for Daddy rather than
that
.’

I had expected simply to ferry them there every morning that I was going and bring them home each afternoon again, fingers crossed that they did not in the meantime make such pests of themselves that I had to break off my work to remove them early, and I am sure that the boys harboured no hopes of any more fun than that, but on the first evening when they described the camp to Hugh over tea, almost whinnying in their excitement about the twelve liberty horses, the tin roof over the fire, the giant man, the intricacy of the rope knots in the dome – for they gave of their admiration rather indiscriminately, it seemed to me – Hugh surprised all of us by suggesting that they too might set up camp there for a day or two.

‘In a tent?’ I squeaked. ‘It’s December. It’s freezing.’

‘They can take my old army wool bag,’ said Hugh. ‘And a mackintoshed groundsheet. They’ll be fine.’

‘Yes! Yes! We’ll be fine,’ the boys chorused, unable to believe their luck.

‘Absolutely not,’ I said stoutly. ‘They’ll catch their deaths of cold and spoil Christmas.’

‘Never did me any harm,’ said Hugh. ‘You shouldn’t coddle them so.’

‘The circus people are camping, Mother, and you’ve never seen rosier cheeks than theirs.’

‘You caught pneumonia,’ I reminded Hugh. ‘And the circus people,’ I added turning to Donald, ‘are in wagons. Up off the ground in beds.’

‘What a bore you are,’ said Teddy, my wonderful gift of visits to the circus quite swept away.

‘Well then,’ Hugh continued, ‘they can take the shepherds’ hut.’ At this the boys’ ecstasy grew delirious and they abandoned tea to race down to the Mains to where the shepherds’ hut was stored in a byre over winter. I could see that this was a much better plan since the hut, itself very like a little living wagon, had a tiny paraffin stove and walls well baffled with fleeces, and although they would have to sleep on its floor it was a lot less likely to lead to lozenges and poultices all round. The shepherds, I told myself, lived in it for weeks at lambing time every year and early spring in Perthshire is far from balmy. Still, I was puzzled; Hugh’s usual role in the boys’ existence leaned towards the quelling of their desires rather than the surpassing of them.

‘It’s an awfully long way to trundle it,’ I said.

‘Nonsense,’ Hugh replied. ‘Jimmy Purves can take it over the hills. It goes practically that far to the black-faces anyway. Much the best thing all round, I should say, Dandy.’

Which remark, I thought, began at last to shed light upon the matter; perhaps not to the casual observer, but certainly to me. Because even two individuals as fully absorbed in themselves and their own pursuits as my sons might begin to wonder at my driving them there and back every day and might begin to ask themselves what I was doing there, but the notion that I flew to them every morning to tie their scarves tighter and hold my hand to their brows would be enough to keep everyone happy and unquestioning.

For the boys knew nothing of my exploits and Hugh was very keen to keep it that way. He was not alone in this, admittedly: I had no wish to have my curious little sideline bandied about the common rooms and playing fields to be carried home and relayed to the mothers of the other boys and served up to my face with a titter at parties for evermore. (As it most certainly would be, for was I not the unwilling recipient of such choice items of news as that Tenburgh’s father had written a play but could not get it performed at the local theatre in Derby even when he offered to pay or that the mother of all those endless little Sewells had been painting pictures of their aunt with no clothes on? ‘In the garden too. And the garden boys were caught peeping over a wall to see and got the sack until Mr Sewell said she had no authority to sack them and anyway what did she expect and gave them their jobs back again and now, Sewell says, they haven’t spoken for a month and Mrs Sewell has moved her bedroom to the far wing.’ So, perhaps the supply of new little Sewells had dried up after all.)

They survived their first night well enough and were sitting on the step of the hut with tin mugs of tea and ragged slices of rather blackened toast in their hands when I arrived in the morning. Bunty, who had been left behind with them as part guard dog part hot water bottle, was tied to the spoke of a wheel just like all the other dogs around the ground, but unlike them she reared up and began to plunge about when she saw me, causing the little hut to roll and wobble and the boys to clutch the sides of the steps and slop some of their tea.

‘Good girl,’ I cooed, tremendously pleased at the greeting. ‘Well, boys?’ They needed no further encouragement to regale me with how cosy they had been, what songs they had learned from Tommy Wolf in his wagon last night and how many Russian words Inya and Alya Prebrezhensky had taught them already. With offers of a piece of toast – and assurances that it was no trouble and they had bread to spare – following on behind me, I left them to it.

My plan was to revisit the Prebrezhenskys’ wagon that day. Stung by Alec’s scorn, I was determined to concentrate on hard facts. I had found Zoya charming and thought her artless, but the swing was in their cupboard, they might have good reason to think little of Ana, and I had not spoken to Kolya at all yet – glowering Kolya who wanted secrets kept unspoken.

And here, I thought to myself as I crossed the ground, was another of my less known quantities. Andrew Merryman was on his way back from the stream with two pails of water and headed straight towards me. He could hardly avoid passing the time of day with me, although his blush and the dip of his head revealed his discomfort as he did so. I should, I thought to myself, hate to be shy, but perhaps if one had gone through childhood getting more and more outlandish-looking until one turned into an Andrew Merryman one would have had no choice in the matter. He really was the most peculiar figure and appeared to be practically buckling under the weight of the water pails dangling from his long arms, although that might have been shyness too.

‘They m-m-might never come home again,’ he said, nodding towards the boys.

‘Oh, I should think I’m safe enough,’ I replied, quite heartily for some reason, as though addressing him in ringing tones would buck him up a bit or at least make him stand straight; it is always wasted effort for a beanpole of a person to fold himself up trying to look shorter. ‘They have absolutely no talents or skills to recommend them.’

‘Neither had I,’ said Andrew, and then blushed even deeper. ‘Although I had an e-e-extra incentive, obviously.’ I was unsure whether to pretend I did not catch his meaning or to nod sympathetically and agree. ‘I f-fit right in at Cooke’s Circus,’ he went on. ‘And I’d hate … I mean I couldn’t bear to think … Tiny says you’re trying to …’

‘I am. And you can help me, Mr Merryman.’

He looked startled at that.

‘Your perspective will be most helpful,’ I said. ‘You must be able to see them all with a clearer eye, from your position.’

‘That’s it, spot on,’ he said and he looked around the circus as though seeing it for the first time. ‘My position. All any flatty sees when he looks at me is circus. And all the proper circus see is a josser. Neither one thing nor the other, that’s me.’

‘Well, you are not alone,’ I said. ‘Ana and Tiny are jossers too.’

‘So you’re telling me I could be as happy and settled as Ana?’ He spoke with a great air of innocence and made me laugh, even though it was not funny.

‘Well, Tiny, then. He seems snug enough here in the circus.’

‘Tiny’s a braver man than I,’ said Andrew, rather cryptically. ‘He’s circus through and through now.’

‘Don’t run yourself down, Mr Merryman,’ I said. ‘I heard from Tiny – Mr Truman, I should say – about you checking everything over after you found the swapped balloons.’

‘If only,’ said Andrew. ‘We didn’t look at Topsy’s rope.’

‘But you saw the problem before anyone else,’ I reminded him.

‘And still I did nothing,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to draw attention to it. I don’t like trouble.’

‘You acted in time,’ I said firmly. ‘She was very lucky to have you there and I am sure’ – here I could not resist a matronly little hint; really I cannot believe the meddlesome old matchmaker I am turning into – ‘that she must feel most warmly towards you because of it.’ This startled him and he stood up quite straight for a moment.