The Summer Before the War

by Helen Simonson

  “Why not give the matter some further thought, Miss Nash?” said Mr. Tillingham. “If you continue to feel strongly, I shall be happy to recuse myself and return your manuscript unread. If, upon further reflection, you think me the man for the job, why then I would be honored to use your drafted notes to augment my research, and perhaps I could find the time to look over one or two of your other pieces?”

  She said nothing. She had to quell a childish thrill that the famous writer might read her work.

  “And you would of course come to dinner and give me all your thoughts on the subject,” he added, rising with difficulty from the wooden bench. “Good day, Miss Nash.” He kissed her hand with his dry lips and went away along the high street with his peculiar shuffling walk, tapping with his silver-headed stick.

  As she watched him go, Beatrice knew she had been almost ready to put aside her anger for a seat at the great man’s dinner table, and she smiled to think how much closer Mr. Tillingham had come to bribing her than poor Mayor Fothergill with his ten pounds. She wondered how many other young writers and artists Mr. Tillingham had seduced so easily with his fame and his reputation. As she rose to continue down towards the lower street, she told herself that if she let him edit the book, it would be for the sake of her father’s legacy, not for the opportunity to be counted among the great man’s young protégés. But as she walked home, her desire was all to be welcomed into such a fortunate circle.

  —

  Out on the marshes, the sun was burning Snout’s back as he bent low to the burnished steel of the railway tracks. Heat radiated from the brown timbers that anchored the line to the ground, and sweat matted his hair and trickled down his chest. There was little shade. Only scrubby trees and rough thickets of bramble separated the railway from the fields. Rooks lived in some of the thickets and flapped about him, cawing in their angry language and pecking the ground, all the while holding their black wings aside as if trying to shed a wet mackintosh. Sometimes, when his bucket grew heavy, he would step aside under one of the scrubby trees, hawthorn mostly, with thin, shivering leaves, and rest awhile, smelling where flaming cinders blown from passing trains had burnt circles into the grasses and turned tree limbs to charcoal.

  He seemed to be the only one who collected the spilled coal and coke from the trains in the summer. He wondered at the short memories of those who only thought to scrabble along the line when the frost was on the fields and the price of coal went up. His father paid him a penny a bucket to add his foragings to the forge’s coal cellar. But Snout saved another third of every bucket for himself and stored it against the winter, when the town ladies who beckoned him from their windows were willing to slip him tuppence to empty his bucket into their scuttles. With the price of coal soaring he had some hopes of more this year. His storehouse was an old badger hole in a steep bank where the railway crossed a stream. A mat of brambles hid it, and as trains came only a few times a day, it was safe from passing eyes.

  Last summer he had employed two younger boys to pick with him, offering them a ha’penny a bucket. But they had proved to be lazy and prone to complaining. One of them, unhappy to be paid a ha’penny for the half bucket he had taken hours to fill, fetched his father, who threatened to box Snout’s ears if he didn’t hand over more. Snout had been quick to produce a shiny tuppence, but as he expected, the father gave him a hard punch to the side of his head anyway and threatened to fetch the railway officials.

  Such were the vagaries of business. Snout did not dwell on his failures but rather on his accumulating wealth, which he kept in a glass jar hidden beneath a loose board under his bed and known only to him and his sister, Abigail, who could keep a secret better than any grown man or woman. He did not play with the jar, or raid it for sweet money, or aspire to turn coins into gold buttons on a waistcoat like his great-grandmother’s people. He just regularly lifted up the board, and unscrewed the metal lid, to drop in more coins against the day when he might leave Rye.

  He had no intention of staying to follow his father, who had been taken in at the forge when he married Snout’s mother. His father had the best eye for horses in the county, and there was often a nice piebald Gypsy cob, with hairy mane and feathered legs, tucked in the large box stall behind the forge awaiting a sale. He had the knack of talking all horses into sweetness and all buyers into believing they were fine judges of horseflesh, and as he only sold good horses, they were never proved wrong. So they liked him and his reputation spread, but Snout saw how the recommendations sometimes came with a finger laid along the nose and a whisper of his father’s Romany pedigree.

  He also saw how his great-grandmother never came to their home. He would see her walking with her basket of lucky white heather, knocking on all the doors except the little cottage next to the forge. Not a cup of water or a chair in the shade was she offered by her grandson’s family. If Snout passed her in the town, he would step into the road to pass her and they would never look at each other. It was his own shame at this unspoken arrangement, more than the taunts of others, which made him yearn to leave.

  He had visions of owning a business in some prosperous town where he would be respected, and had even promised Abigail that she might come to look after him. But now Miss Nash had explained about scholarships, his plans had a new urgency that came from being possible. A train whistle sounded and the clanking black engine came rushing by, spewing steam and cinders, dragging its blue and scarlet wooden carriages, wheels shrieking and banging against the steel rails. When it was gone, he stepped casually across to the far side and picked up a rook, knocked senseless by the train. The rooks never seemed to learn their lesson. The train drivers would sometimes stop and pick them up, but today the train went on and Snout knew his father would not be averse to a rook pie for dinner.

  Agatha Kent was currently engaged in throwing open all the windows of Mr. Tillingham’s garden studio to air it out before the weekly meeting of the Belgian Relief Committee. As committee secretary, she made a point of coming early to supervise the arrangement of the sandwiches and tea urn. The other committee ladies claimed not to have the patience for such menial work as taking minutes and ordering sandwiches. They could not understand that such a position meant complete control over the committee, whether in the arrangement of the chairs or in their decisions and plans, all of which Agatha was at complete liberty to shade and direct in the small space between note taking and transcription into the public record.

  “That tall-backed teak chair with the carving should be moved to opposite Mr. Tillingham’s,” she said, directing Mr. Tillingham’s man to place the knobby throne, a relic of some previous owner’s trip to the Far East and the favorite perch of Mrs. Fothergill, as far away as possible. “Perfect, thank you,” she added, dropping her shawl on a chair to the left of the chairman’s seat, and a spare pair of cream-colored gloves on the chair to its right, for Lady Emily. Taking an atomizer of lavender water from her bag, she began discreetly to spray the curtains. The room, used every afternoon by the Belgian refugees as a clubroom, was always filled with the acrid smoke of their thick black pipe tobacco.

  As she looked out of the window, she could see several small groups of refugees still lingering in the garden. Young Celeste, who seemed to have swiftly taken upon herself the smooth running of the afternoons, was reading a story to some small children under a tree. Agatha admired the quiet grace with which the girl was always ready to read, to write correspondence for those who required a scribe, or to cross the lawn to refill carafes of lemon water and fetch stands of small cakes donated by the ladies of the town. When at rest, she seemed always to gravitate to the same low stool, set in close proximity to her garrulous father. The Professor ignored her presence to a degree that Agatha thought inexcusable, but the girl seemed perfectly content, quietly listening with lowered eyes and knitting hats and jerkins for Belgian children out of the kinked wool unpicked from old, donated woolens.

  Under the studio window, Mr. Poot and Beatrice Nash were s
itting at a table, finishing one of their interviews with an elderly refugee. Mr. Poot had been coming most afternoons, looking officious in his black suit and bowler hat, to bully the refugees for stories that would make headlines in the yellow press. Were it not for Beatrice having asked her help, Agatha thought, she might have put a stop to him already. As she watched, the elderly man banged his walking stick on the table and left with a well-rounded string of curses.

  “I’m not sure I can translate the last bit accurately,” Agatha heard Beatrice say. She was trying to look demure. “Did you get the gist?”

  “Goats again!” said Mr. Poot, lifting his hat momentarily to mop his forehead with a pocket handkerchief. “I’m trying to collect atrocities here and all they want to do is log the size of their goats for possible reparations.”

  “Apparently his was a very large goat with a good stud reputation,” said Beatrice.

  “It’s not funny,” said Mr. Poot.

  “No, it’s not,” said Beatrice. “I know it is not an atrocity exactly, but these people have lost everything. To you and me it’s just a few goats, but to them it represents all their wealth, all their income.”

  “Two nannies, one stud billy, four wooden chairs, three cooking pots, one cotton quilt, and a wooden crucifix,” said Mr. Poot. “Did I forget anything?”

  “No German hordes, I’m afraid,” said Beatrice, reading back from the notes she had written. They began to pack away their papers, and Agatha turned away to inspect the sandwiches one last time.

  As the Belgians departed, the committee began to arrive and Agatha moved to the open doorway to greet the procession of nodding hats coming up the path of Mr. Tillingham’s garden. A shadow at an upstairs window of the main house suggested that Mr. Tillingham was watching. He preferred to make an entrance after all were gathered. It seemed to Agatha that he delighted in making small talk and dispensing greetings when his interlocutors were encumbered by mouths full of cucumber sandwich.

  “I do hope you’ve made sure the tea is a little weaker today,” said Bettina Fothergill, sweeping up the steps under one of her absurd hats and frowning as if the tea were Agatha’s fault. “Last week it was far too strong and hot for the weather and I felt quite faint on the way home.”

  “Lovely to see you, Bettina,” said Agatha.

  “Strong tea flushes the veins and opens the mind,” said Alice Finch, coming in behind with her friend Minnie Buttles clutching her arm. “Stronger tea and looser corsets, Mrs. Fothergill!”

  “I have never heard such nonsense,” said Bettina Fothergill. She stared rudely up and down at Alice’s ensemble of narrow flannel skirt suit, striped waistcoat, and mannish straw boater before sweeping off to the tea table murmuring, “As if we needed looser women.”

  “I’m so glad you are both here,” said Agatha, shaking hands with Miss Finch and Miss Buttles. “I hear you are making great strides with your subscriptions.” Going door-to-door to sign people up to a weekly subscription towards Belgian Relief was a critical task, but one that had sent the other committee ladies scurrying for excuses. Agatha had invited the two ladies onto the committee for the sole purpose of irritating Bettina Fothergill, who sputtered in their presence as if she would like to denounce them for something but could not be sure what, but in taking on the subscriptions they had proved themselves two of Agatha’s most useful members.

  “People are very generous by the time we’re done with them,” said Alice Finch. “Though there are some who’d feign poverty to Saint Peter if they thought they could get away with it.”

  “I’m afraid some people might not be able to afford their own generosity,” said Minnie Buttles, looking worried as she twirled a bodice ribbon on her voluminous sprigged muslin tea dress. “The Misses Porter are already hosting the nuns, yet they insisted on signing at sixpence a week.”

  “I’ve had a long talk with Minnie’s father, so I’ve pretty much mapped out who has the income,” said Alice. She produced a folded paper from a leather folio and proceeded to open and smooth it out on a convenient side table. “A good vicar always knows who puts what in the collection plate.”

  “You don’t mean you have an actual map?” asked Agatha.

  “No competent general launches a campaign without scouting the battlefield,” said Alice. The map of the town contained arrows from most residences with tiny notations in the margin as to the occupants and their circumstances. “This afternoon we’re making a second foray up Rye Hill. Some of your neighbors are very astute about not being home, Mrs. Kent, but Minnie has made little pots of damson jam, which we shall employ as Trojan horses.”

  “Goodness, better not let this map fall into German hands,” said Agatha. “In fact, I’d suggest not displaying it to the entire committee. Its brilliance lies in its secrecy, does it not?”

  “I think you’re right,” said Alice, folding the document again and stuffing it away. “We shall remain modest about our contribution and silent on our methods. Shall we get a sandwich, Minnie?”

  “Yes, please,” said Minnie. “I shall ask dear Mrs. Fothergill to recommend a selection from the many she is now enjoying.”

  Lady Emily arrived with two dachshunds running about her ankles. She seemed hot and cross and drank a glass of cold water standing with her gloves on.

  “I am exhausted to the point of collapse,” she said to Agatha. “I came to get away and rest for a few moments.”

  “How are the plans for the hospital?” asked Agatha.

  “We are ready to receive patients now, but some puffed-up little inspector from Headquarters had the effrontery to tell me that they had a surfeit of officers’ hospitals,” she said. “He asked me to consider housing regular troops or perhaps Indian and other colonial casualties.”

  “I suppose we have an equal duty to all who serve King and Empire,” said Agatha.

  “Yet I see no reason why I should be unduly imposed upon,” said Lady Emily. “As I told Major Frank, the director, some of the ancient and drafty estates on the list are much more suited to those used to deprivation. I can only assume approval is coming.” She had taken off her gloves and now began peeling ham sandwiches apart, feeding the ham to her dogs.

  “And how is Eleanor?” said Agatha. “One feels for her.”

  “She is worried for Otto, of course, but we have assured her that no one will think this nonsense was the fault of such old German families as his.”

  “Quite so,” said Agatha, trying to quell a smile. “Here is Beatrice with tea. Will you have some?”

  “Where is Mr. Tillingham?” asked Lady Emily, taking a cup and saucer from Beatrice and dropping two sugar cubes into her tea.

  “Perhaps Mr. Tillingham is still writing,” said Beatrice. “I know from my own father that it is often difficult to keep track of time in the midst of the creative flow.”

  “We must give the great man the benefit of the doubt,” said Lady Emily. “Though I fail to see why art should not exist in harmony with good manners.”

  Mr. Tillingham made his entrance just after his housekeeper arrived with a platter of fresh sandwiches.

  “So good of you to come. I have rushed from my labors, as you see.” He wore a loose scarlet and blue cravat with his suit, flourished a large linen handkerchief, and displayed his hands as if they were stained with the ink of his profession. Since he dictated all his work to his lady secretary, his hands were clean and pink and the handkerchief was freshly starched and not at all wrung with a poet’s agonies. Still, the ladies pressed about him with eager faces as Mr. Tillingham graced them with a summary of his work in London in the national cause of Belgian Relief, for which he had received from their limited coffers several large stipends before Agatha had put her foot down and reminded them of their duty to their local refugees. It was with some difficulty that she called the committee to order.

  —

  The Belgian Relief Committee’s fundraising plans for a Grand Fete and Parade had grown into an undertaking not unlike a small wa
r of its own. The town Salts and cricket ground had been secured for the day’s events, which were to feature, in addition to the usual stalls, games, pony rides, and food, an entire military encampment. Two squads of Colonel Wheaton’s newest recruits were to display their skills at trenching and infantry drills, the Royal Army Medical Corps was sending a model field ambulance under Hugh’s command, and the local Boy Scouts were planning a display of camp skills as well as being in charge of the largest group of latrines ever assembled for one event in Rye. Agatha had taken the calculated risk of asking Bettina Fothergill to be in charge of the big parade. As the wife of the Mayor she would already have demanded a prime place in the procession, and putting her in charge had ensured permission from the council for everything from digging holes to serving beer and champagne in the tents.

  “And so after the town brass band, the scouts, and the horse-drawn steam engine, we envision long lines of schoolgirls all in white dresses and bare feet, wearing wreaths of white chrysanthemums in their free-flowing hair,” said Bettina.

  “Wouldn’t the schoolgirls prefer to march ahead of the horses if they’re going to be in bare feet?” asked Alice Finch, grinning.

  “Well, if you’re not going to take this seriously,” said Bettina.

  “Mrs. Fothergill can always adjust the order later,” said Agatha. “Or perhaps add Wellington boots?” Beatrice appeared to choke into a handkerchief, and Agatha gave her a severe look as she added, “I fear horses are not to be altogether avoided.”

  “Then we feature our dignitaries in motorcars, only I’m not sure whether they should play characters or just appear as themselves,” said Bettina. “Do you see yourself as Shakespeare, Mr. Tillingham?”

  Mr. Tillingham, whose attention had wandered, was completely put out of countenance by the question. “Well, it would not be fitting…I mean it is for others, not the mere writer…”

  “In the parade, Mr. Tillingham,” said Agatha, patting his hand. “Do you want to wear a ruff and tights in the parade?”