The Summer Before the War

by Helen Simonson

  Recovering her composure by pouring a last cup of tea from the teapot, Beatrice tried to think about her situation in a more objective way. It was a trick her father had taught her as a child when she was sad or angry. To analyze the problem in a larger, more empirical way would, he always said, improve her mood and her intellect at the same time. Though she now thought it possibly a very unsuitable response to a crying child, she often found herself rearranging her problems as if planning to present them in a small treatise.

  She had never been concerned with money, its acquisition or its excesses, and yet now that she had very little, and her dreams of remuneration through publication were to be dashed, she could appreciate at last how money had always been comfortably accessible. Her father had been proud of what he considered their modest housekeeping, and their ability to keep well within his annual private income. Yet they had been comfortable enough that when he had a yearning for partridge, or a desire to lay in a few cases of obscure but highly fragrant claret, she had simply arranged the matter and then paid the bill with a swift signature and a smile. She had considered it a virtue to sit down every month and see to the prompt payment of accounts, but she could see now that it had been in fact a matter of pride—and that pride was a sin for which she was now perhaps to be punished.

  The solicitor offered ten pounds—she removed a small black accounts book from the nearest of Agatha Kent’s charming Georgian bookcases and opened it to go over her finances one more time. In stark figures she could see that her small stock of accumulated money had mostly been spent in getting herself to Rye and in paying for her first two months of room and board. Her job, when it began, would pay Mrs. Turber with only a small amount left over—enough for sundry small daily needs, a modest donation to the Sunday church plate, and a few shillings put by for emergencies. She would no longer be able to afford books by subscription and she was not sure how she was to afford new clothing when the time came. If she was to write, she would also have to buy paper and ink, new pens, and stamps for the mailing of manuscripts—such things had seemed inconsequential in the past, but now she would be reduced to counting coins at the stationer’s and at the Post Office, like the old widows with their fumbling hands and threadbare gloves.

  Gloves were of immediate concern. She had offered two pairs to Celeste and now only retained three cotton summer pairs and two pairs of silk evening gloves. She had not remembered that one of her remaining cotton pairs had a sizable ink stain on the cuff. She was not willing to go about in the sort of cheap gloves that shop assistants wore on Sundays, and yet to buy another pair of quality would take a week’s extra money. She smiled to herself as she put away the accounts book. She understood now why some people—housekeepers, governesses, Mrs. Turber—might appear conservative and limited in their outlook. She had secretly thought it some character flaw to be disdained but now saw with rueful clarity that it might be the acute need to avoid any exuberance resulting in the spoiling of gloves or the ruining of shoes. For the first time, as her tea grew cold in the cup and her porridge gelled in its bowl, she saw what it meant to be of limited income. It was a noble concept for the church sermon or the pages of an improving novel, but a chilling prospect on a sunny Sussex morning.

  —

  Celeste came down to breakfast in an atrocious pink silk dress donated by Mrs. Turber. It swamped her small frame and threw a blush into her cheek that looked like paint. Beatrice could not restrain a slight start of shock.

  “I am wishing to ’ave a needle and some scissors,” said Celeste, fingering a large ruffle of linen cabbage roses at the waist. “If it is d’accord to make quelques changements?”

  “I think you might need garden shears, not scissors,” said Beatrice. “Have some breakfast, and then Abigail and I will help you do some trimming.” She rang a small brass bell, and Abigail, who brought more hot water and some toast, gave an openmouthed stare at the dress and said that Mrs. Saunders should be summoned.

  “Oh no, I must not agree,” said Celeste, a blush of her own adding to the glow from her bodice. “I must make my own repair and I am content.”

  “Mrs. Saunders will be glad to help,” said Beatrice. “It makes us all happy to contribute.”

  “I have already, how you say, accept too much pity?” said Celeste. She pressed her lips together and her fingers fumbled at the tiny gold crucifix around her neck. “This kind lady, she washed my lace and I cannot pay. I will not presume to demand her to make fashionable a dress.”

  Beatrice perceived a desperate pride, and she felt ashamed that not ten minutes earlier she, Beatrice, had been poring over her accounts with all the pride of a miser. She had regretted a simple gift of gloves to a girl with nothing but the ruined clothes on her back. She had not thought what it must be to have no linen, no shoes, not so much as a bar of soap or a tin of tooth powder to one’s name and to have to accept the sort of charity which girls of their background were used to giving out.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “We will manage together and make some small improvements.”

  “I would like to fix it this morning,” said Celeste. “I am expected next door this afternoon.”

  “Best chop it in half, miss,” said Abigail. “Happen we can make a walking skirt and a pair of window curtains from the lower half.”

  Beatrice abandoned another morning’s writing, and Abigail her morning tasks, so that they might all three cut, gather, and sew the dress into something more fitting. Beatrice and Abigail labored at the long plain seams, while Celeste proved swift and dainty with the needle, stitching some of Beatrice’s gray grosgrain ribbon into neat loops down the bodice and in a flat band around the hem. By midday the pink silk was tamed into a slender, quiet afternoon dress, and Mrs. Turber, who came screeching about dinner not being made, was so mollified to see how well her dress looked on Celeste that she only huffed about it being far too fine to wear for an ordinary afternoon helping refugees. Celeste merely pressed her hand and told her, in her most charming broken English, how kind she was, and Mrs. Turber was forced to retreat before the language barrier.

  Beatrice had the sudden thought that perhaps Celeste understood more English, and spoke it more fluently, than she professed. If so, she would not blame Celeste for choosing to protect herself behind the mask of foreign inscrutability. Beatrice had done the same in certain awkward situations abroad and once, to her shame, at home, fending off the advances of an incomprehensible and aged friend of Lady Marbely at a local hunt ball by looking the poor man in the face and saying quite clearly “I’m afraid I do not speak English” before retiring to the other end of the ballroom.

  After a cold luncheon of bread and cheese, Beatrice left Celeste next door, where Mr. Tillingham had made his garden studio available as a club for Belgian refugees, and slipped into Mr. Tillingham’s library, where she did not linger, for she hoped to maintain her privileges by being undetectable to the great man. With a new book in hand, she turned her steps to the graveled paths of the churchyard and a sheltered corner of a stone buttress which had become a favorite place to sit and read under the dappled shade of ancient trees.

  The gravestones were mossy and weathered amid the cool grass, so that it appeared as if no one had died in at least a century. Thinking that she might like to write a small observation on the incongruity of immutable gravestones recording the fragile brevity of life, Beatrice reached in her satchel for a pencil and notebook but instead pulled out her letter from Mr. Caraway. She was reading it for a second time, as if the act of reading might change the words on the page, when a shadow fell across the paper. She looked up to see a young officer in stiff khaki. It took Beatrice a moment to recognize Hugh Grange, for he was thinner, and altered by the uniform and more severely clipped hair, though pleasantly familiar in his blunt chin and frank smile.

  “Miss Beatrice, how do you do,” he said, removing his cap. She was much happier to see him than she could have expected and thought perhaps that the shock of the uniform inspired i
ts own empathy.

  “Just Beatrice,” she said firmly. “Formality, like many things, seems so silly these days.”

  “I am honored,” he said. “I hope my uniform did not startle you?”

  “There are so many men in uniform I did not expect it to feel so strange to see you,” she said. “Was your aunt very shocked?”

  “I fear I have caused her the sort of palpitations she despises in other women,” said Hugh. “My arrival yesterday was impossible for us both, even though my Uncle John had prepared the way. Daniel could not stop making humorous remarks in the worst possible taste, and my aunt said nothing. I found myself wishing you were at dinner just to break the tension.”

  “One longs to be invited where one is useful,” she said, but she smiled to soften her teasing because he was clearly too worried to have guarded his words and even now did not realize that he should have perhaps mentioned another young woman instead. She invited him to sit down.

  “I have mostly been hiding in my workshop today, and at last I escaped through a hedge, at great risk to the new uniform, to take a walk.” He examined his sleeves as if for possible leaf stains and ran a hand through his hair. A slight strain was visible on his face, and Beatrice imagined Agatha’s face pale and lined with worry. “I’ve only been in training for a couple of weeks,” he added. “I suppose the more one wears it the less of an impostor one will feel?”

  Beatrice wished she could say something of comfort to him.

  “Your aunt is the most sensible woman I know,” she said at last. “Her distress shows deep affection and conceals great pride. I am sure she will come around more swiftly if you stop hiding away.”

  “You are the second most sensible woman I know,” he said. “May I ask why you are hiding away in the churchyard?”

  “I am pretending to read, but really I am here to wallow in self-pity because my father’s publisher declines my talents,” she said. “Such concerns are set in their insignificant place by your arrival.” She handed him the letter, which had remained crumpled in her hand, and added, “At least my father’s letters are to be presented to the world in grand style.”

  Hugh read the letter with a serious face.

  “This is deplorable,” he said. “Your aunt has no business betraying your interests in this manner.”

  “I’m not sure she has done so deliberately,” said Beatrice. “But even if she has, I should thank her for doing my father’s legacy such a service.”

  “It is a betrayal,” he said.

  “It is perhaps I who sought to betray my father,” she said. “My efforts might have limited the project and thereby limited his legacy for the purposes of my own literary start.”

  “Anyone can toss off an introduction,” said Hugh. “No one could match the close insight you would bring.”

  “Of course, you don’t even know if I can write,” she said, his frown making her somehow much more cheerful. “After all, I am merely a woman.”

  “I take you at your word and assume a basic competence is open to both sexes,” said Hugh.

  “Your casual assumption is heresy to most,” said Beatrice. “As I say, it now seems much less important in the grand scheme of the times. I will of course help as I can, and my father’s legacy will no doubt be assured.”

  “Who do you think they have asked?” said Hugh, still frowning at the letter.

  “I can’t imagine,” said Beatrice. “My aunt only reads sermons. I think the great John Wesley is dead, so I can’t think who else they know. When I wrote to Aunt Marbely I had to explain to her who Mr. Tillingham was.” Even as she said the words, a great cold feeling of dread crept up her throat. She turned slowly to look at Hugh, and she could feel her eyes grow wide with a consternation she could not disguise.

  “You don’t think—?” he asked.

  “Do you think—?” she replied.

  “Surely Tillingham would have consulted you if he had been approached on such a project,” said Hugh.

  “Why would he?” asked Beatrice, her voice bitter. “I am invisible to him, especially when it comes to writing.”

  “We are merely being fanciful,” said Hugh. “It is impossible that Mr. Tillingham would agree to such a project when he barely remembered your father.”

  “That is true,” said Beatrice. “How incongruous that a moment of literary invisibility might turn out to be a saving grace.”

  “Mr. Tillingham is as ambitious as he is proud, and your father is hardly the sort of celebrated literary name with which he might look to gild his reputation. Quite beneath Tillingham’s notice, I should think.”

  “I believe my father to be quietly respected in the literary and historical communities,” she said, blinking away the sharp sting of a tear and trying to laugh.

  Hugh must have noticed, she thought, because he coughed and added, “I’m not the biggest acolyte of our Mr. Tillingham. I speak only of his faults, not of your father’s achievements.”

  “You speak the truth,” she said. “But my father was pleased with the modesty of his contributions and content to live the quiet life of a scholar.”

  “And such a life and work would have been well served by your own efforts,” said Hugh. “It makes me angry to see you pushed aside. We must think what is to be done.”

  “It makes me happy to have friends who would feel that way,” she said. “You cannot know what it means to me.” In the kind expression of his gray eyes, she felt as strong a sense of comfort as if he had put an arm around her shoulders.

  “One does not like to see injustice,” he said, patting her hand. His palm was warm and heavy on her skin. “You must not give up.”

  “I will not,” said Beatrice. A confusing warmth of feeling caused her to withdraw her hand. She stood up and retrieved her satchel. With some effort she met his eyes again and smiled. “But right now I must make my fortune tutoring certain boys whose previous tutor seems to have spent more time on science experiments than Latin translation.”

  “I trust they are not making your life too difficult?” he said.

  “I did not expect young Snout to have such an understanding of Virgil,” she said. “Of course he would rather die than display his interest in front of the others, so all three sigh through the lesson as if they were saints being martyred.”

  “As we discussed, Snout might make something of himself with a scholarship and a better attitude,” said Hugh. “But I’ve found that intelligence is often no match for the circumstances of life, Miss Beatrice. It takes an exceptional boy to fulfill such early promise.”

  “I hope a determined teacher might make a difference,” said Beatrice. “I can only follow my father’s example and give them the knowledge I have.”

  “I would come with you, but I fear I must go home and face my Aunt Agatha,” said Hugh. “I report back for duty on Monday. Let’s hope she recovers her usual sensible demeanor next week or I may have to spend all my future days off in London.”

  “That would be a great loss to your friends,” she said, and she held his gaze, though a flush in her cheeks threatened to betray her.

  —

  It was hot in the kitchen. The back door was propped open with a chair and all the windows secured on the furthest points of their long iron catches, but the breeze could not quite clear the steam from the large copper pans of peaches and plums bubbling on the stove and the glass preserving jars and lids jiggling about nicely in their baths of boiling water. Piles of runner beans as fat as baby eels lay on sacking in the scullery along with small hills of carrots, cauliflowers, and small, early beetroots thick with mud about the roots. Agatha, swathed in a voluminous white apron, with her hair tucked under an old mobcap that was a relic of her mother’s trousseau, was helping Cook to put up as much preserved fruit and vegetables as they could make against any further food shortages to come. Extra jars had been rescued from Hugh’s workroom and from various corners of the stable, amid some grumbling as preserved laboratory specimens and Smith’s collec
tions of screws and nails were summarily tipped into less suitable containers.

  If Cook wondered at the outsized effort, and Agatha’s insistence on working in the kitchen all day, she did not say, and Agatha was grateful for her unusual lack of inquisitiveness. Hard manual labor seemed to Agatha to be just the thing to keep her thoughts from racing and her heart palpitating at Hugh’s appearance in uniform. Though John had sent her a note to let her know Hugh’s intention, it had been a shock to see him step off the train with John, all nonchalant in his khaki, and brimming with talk of battlefield surgery.

  “My ability to serve has removed all my father’s and mother’s objections to my continued medical studies,” he had said over dinner as he and John discussed the details of the surgeon’s plans for specific head injury facilities.

  “I expect you Medical Corps chaps all have a signed doctor’s note in your pocket in case you need a quick escape to Blighty,” Daniel had added. “How will you feel about amputating your own leg if necessary?”

  Agatha had sipped her Earl Grey and tried not to feel sick. She had treated the war as another civic duty and had entered willingly into her many new commitments. She truly believed that all must serve to the best of their abilities, but the sight of Hugh in uniform, and the realization that his talents would send him to the battlefield, was like a physical blow to her enthusiasm.

  “We shall have to clean out the cellar properly this year,” said Agatha. “I fear we have become used to ordering from the high street whenever we wish.”

  “You’ll be needing us to send boxes up to town as well, then,” said Cook. “I wouldn’t want Mr. Kent to go hungry.” Cook had a country woman’s disdain for the town and was quite sure that there would be starvation in London where there were minor shortages in Sussex.

  “I expect Mr. Kent can always get dinner at his club,” said Agatha. “I’m not sure I shall be up in town much with all the work to do here.”