‘Nothing wakes him when once he’s gone off,’ answered Hebe listlessly. Then, as if unwilling to admit by tone or pose that she was not her usual self, she sat upright, clasped her arms round her knees and said:
‘Well, how’s the b. war going?’
‘Don’t, Miss Hebe,’ murmured Grantey, reaching for her spectacles in their worn blue case. ‘I can’t make out what they’re doing in Burma.’
‘We should worry what they’re doing in Burma.’
‘Poor boys,’ said Grantey, arranging the spectacles on her nose. ‘It does seem hard – all this destruction and wickedness.’
She so seldom referred to the war that Hebe was a little roused by surprise. She drew up her knees closer within the circle of her arms and said:
‘Grantey, you know I don’t care a hoot about the war except for Beefy coming out of it all right, but – you believe in a God, don’t you?’
‘Now, Miss Hebe, don’t talk like that,’ said Grantey, with some of the severity of Hebe’s nursery days, and at last glancing up from the paper, ‘it’s not pretty or right.’
‘Well, but you do, don’t you, angel pet?’
‘Of course I do, Miss Hebe, and so do you, or you were brought up to.’
‘Oh – yes – but never mind that now. And you believe God is Love and all that, don’t you?’
‘I want to read my paper, Miss Hebe. I like to have you with me if you can be quiet, and we can both get a bit of a rest, but if you’re going to talk in that way, you had better go downstairs,’ and Grantey put down the paper and looked steadily for a moment at Hebe over her glasses.
‘All right, but I’m twenty-two, not ten,’ said Hebe, laughing but with another expression in her eyes, ‘and if I want to stay here, I shall. If you believe God is Love, how can He let the war go on?’ (And Alex behave like a cruel stranger that I’ve never seen before, and go off and leave me and the children and not say when he’s coming back?)
‘That’s men, not God,’ said Grantey briskly, but settling herself in the bed with a weary movement, ‘and it’s all part of God’s plan for doing away with war for good and all.’
‘How come?’ asked Hebe, still laughing. ‘You tell me.’
‘All these dreadful explosions and atrocities and secret weapons they keep on talking about,’ began Grantey, ‘and not knowing when you go to bed at night if you’ll be alive when you wake up in the morning – that’s all part of God’s plan. He’s letting it get worse and worse so’s it’ll destroy itself, like; it’ll get so bad not even wicked people’ll want it, and then it’ll stop. Not that I mind, for myself,’ she went on in a lower, more thoughtful tone, turning her head slowly towards the window and looking out into the fading light, ‘I never think about it much, I’ve got too much to do, but I do think about all those poor souls over there, in those concentration camps and all that, and that does upset me.’
Hebe said nothing. Her mouth was set in a hard line.
‘And then I think it’s all part of God’s plan to end war, and if we have to worry about the sufferings of others that’s our part in the plan – our share of the Cross.’
‘I expect that’s what it is, Grantey dear,’ said Hebe more gently, after a long pause.
‘When I was a little girl,’ Grantey began again, in a still lower tone, as if she were talking to herself, ‘Mother used to take Douglas and me away to the seaside for a week every summer to stay with her sister, our Auntie Belle. She and Uncle Frank lived in a little place on the east coast (Bracing Bay, it’s called now, it was Clackwell in those days, I’m speaking of over fifty years ago) and the sea was at the end of their road; on quiet nights you could hear the waves breaking on the shore. Mother would put me to bed in a little room with very high walls (at least, they seemed high to me), with a shiny striped wallpaper all over little bunches of flowers, very pretty, I thought it was, and texts hanging up in gold frames – God is Love, with red and blue birds and wild roses painted on them. Oh, it was so quiet and peaceful!’ She gave a long sigh, and lay still for a little while, remembering. Hebe remained silent. The room was filling with soft shadows.
‘Mother would leave me a night-light, and there I’d lie in the big bed, half awake and half asleep, listening to the sound of the waves coming up from the beach and watching the night-light, and the shiny stripes on the wallpaper and the little birds on the texts. They used to look so far away! – the walls being so high and me being so little, but I was never a bit frightened, it was all so beautiful, with God is Love watching over it all. I’ve never forgotten it. And that’s my idea of what Heaven’ll be like; just peace and quiet and a nice sound coming from somewhere far off, and flowers and birds to look at, and God is Love over it all.’
‘I’m sorry I was a pig, Grantey,’ said Hebe, after another long silence. She moved from her cramped position, stretched and yawned.
‘You’d better go and change your frock. Dinner’ll be ready in a few minutes,’ said Grantey, glancing at the clock and receiving the apology with a tiny, grim smile. ‘Though, goodness knows what Zita and Douglas’ll have got for you to eat between them. Is Mr Challis going to be in?’
‘I expect so. Shall I do your blackout?’
‘Douglas’ll do that when he brings up my supper. What time is this here nurse coming?’
‘After dinner, Mum said. I’ll bring her up to you, shall I?’
Grantey sniffed, and Hebe laughed and ran downstairs.
In the hall she found her mother, waiting for a taxi which Cortway had been fortunate enough to secure. Hebe fell into a chair and stuck her feet out in front of her with a long sigh.
‘Tired, sweetie?’ asked Seraphina.
‘Dead. Mums, it is going to make a difference having Grantey ill, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is. I don’t think any of us realized how much we all depended on her.’
‘Won’t Granny crow! She always says we don’t appreciate Grantey.’
‘She won’t crow, darling, but she’ll be very sorry and upset.’
‘Haven’t you told her yet?’
‘I couldn’t face it,’ sighed Seraphina, peering desolately at herself in a tiny mirror, ‘not that she fusses but –’
‘I’ll tell her, if you like.’
‘Will you? That’s very sweet of you,’ with a surprised glance. ‘Won’t that be dreary for you?’
‘I don’t mind that sort of thing. I’m stinking with moral courage,’ said Hebe gloomily, staring at the stubby toes of her little shoes.
This was true. She never minded what she said to anyone and never had; when they were children, it was always she who had told some unwelcome little guest that it was time he went home now, as it had been she who had braved the grown-ups when there was a row on; and now that she was grown-up herself, she would neither smooth out difficulties nor lie about them; the rough, loving nature that dwelt so unexpectedly within the shell of her placid beauty insisted upon complete honesty and a childish fair-dealing between herself and her husband and her friends, and although she made her tacit demand bearable because, unlike many women, she never discussed personal relationships and never analysed difficult situations, some people were incapable of fully meeting her demands. Apparently Alex was among them.
Her mother vaguely realized all this, but the relationship between herself and her daughter was tender and gay, rather than highly articulate.
Seraphina’s early married life had been so full of interest and the delightful experiences of motherhood, without any of those anxieties due to lack of money or an over-anxious maternal nature, that she had little experience of unhappiness and not much wisdom to deal with it. She had been amused at Mr Challis’s spiritual infidelities rather than wounded by them (although there was a growing, suppressed sense of injury now that both he and she were older, and he still showed the same romantic heart to everyone but herself) and she did not know what to make of Alex’s departure, or what to advise Hebe to do about it. Men were always rather
a nuisance, in Seraphina’s opinion; one liked them around, of course, and they were lambs and it would be a dull world without them, but, really, they were always either trying to make love to you or upsetting you by making love to somebody else, and the best thing to do was just to be nice to them and not take them too seriously.
She took out the tiny mirror again, glanced into it and sighed, and at that moment Cortway came to announce the taxi.
‘Good-bye, sweetie,’ said Seraphina, relieved at being able to get out of it all for a few hours but glancing uncertainly at her daughter, who was still sitting staring at her shoes. ‘Have a nice dinner, and don’t sit up half the night listening to whosit on the gramophone.’
‘Bartok.’
‘Well, don’t, anyway, will you? Cortway, have you got something really nice for dinner?’
‘There’s fish, madam,’ answered Cortway disapprovingly. ‘Haddock, Zita said, and she’s done it in one of those German ways. With herbs and all that.’
‘It sounds delicious,’ said Seraphina, trying to catch her daughter’s eye, but Hebe’s face remained sullen and pale, like a child’s who has been crying. ‘Good-bye, darling, I must fly.’
‘Good-bye, Mummy. Have a nice party.’
After she had gone, Hebe remained in the chair staring at the fading sunset. What had happened to her darling friend, Alex, with whom she had shared jokes and love and her quick angers with the children and her bear-like hugs for them when their sweetness overcame her? Alex had said that she and the children were a damned nuisance; all over him when he wanted to paint and getting on his nerves and in his way when he wanted to be quiet and read the paper. Hebe had set her soft mouth, after saying, ‘Don’t talk such –; it’s as bad for me as it is for you,’ and then said no more except: ‘All right, then, you’d better go,’ after he had said that he was going away for a while. She had neither cried nor made a scene, although this was their first serious quarrel.
Presently she went upstairs and washed her face and put on a fresh dress and came down to dinner, ignoring the sounds from the children’s room which suggested that someone was dragging someone else by the legs across the old wooden floor. Blast him, he’ll get splinters in her seat, thought their mother resignedly, going on downstairs.
There was not one shred of solacing romantic misery in her heart as she sat opposite to her father in the beautiful room full of rich shadows and peaceful evening light; such feelings only sustain the inexperienced or the eternally young in spirit, like Mr Challis, and are of no use to a woman who has had three children by a man. Her happiness is as real as her own body, and its loss is as uncomfortable as if she were suddenly to become a ghost. The only feeling which kept Hebe from being wretched was sulky, smouldering anger with her husband.
What with Alex and the dramatic critics, Mr Challis and his daughter dined in almost complete silence.
Far in the West of England there is a tract of country on the edge of the moors, soaked in frequent rains, its deep woods thick with hart’s-tongue and lady-fern and the rich green lace of bracken, and seldom out of the murmuring sound of a mild, long arm of the inland sea. Its hills are covered in pink heather, and upon the farthest horizon, like the dark threat of a storm that never breaks, are the mountains of Wales. Here there is one hill, lower than the immense, rounded bare hills that are the beginning of the moors, but far lovelier.
Ancient and enormous pine trees grow upon its summit, with massive trunks and matted, spreading branches of darkest green, throwing their dense shade upon the heavy, pale, unripe cones and the grey and white feathers of birds that lie scattered among the red pine needles on the ground. Below this hill roll away miles of valley filled in summer with fern, waist high, curled and stiff and fresh with sap from the rich and ancient soil whence it springs; the walker must wade through it as if through a heavy, motionless sea or follow the narrow tracks that wind through it; opening now and again upon a space of turf where tiny flowers grow, the pale yellow lady’s bedstraw and the deep yellow crowsfoot; where the stag leads his does to browse, leaping away into the bracken when the stranger approaches. Here are wider valleys, where beech trees climb the hills, every valley ending in the flat shore and pale purple or grey boulders of the inland sea; and here, in the moist sweet air, among glossy ferns which might be the houses of fairies, the legend of Arthur is rooted deep as one of the ancient pines, and yet it is also like the scent of wet fern and fox-lair on the wind; it is a spirit haunting the region; the spirit of old, green, wild England, lingering on, lovely and lonely and wreathed with mist, in the heart of the northern seas.
On this night in early summer Alex Niland was lying under the pine trees in a sleeping-bag with his mouth full of bread and cheese, watching the darkness come down, and not thinking about anything, except that he was rather sorry he had been angry with Hebe, and hoping that rain would not fall before morning. Tomorrow he would go on down to Minehead, where his father was a stonemason. The family had been in the trade, and that of building, for many generations, and there was a tradition that a Niland had been among the medieval workmen who had carved the rood-screen of Dunster Church. Afterwards, he planned to return to London and stay with a painter who was very poor and lived in one of the squalid turnings off Tottenham Court Road. He was not fettered by deep need of anyone or anything except by the need to paint, and when he felt that need he indulged it, not so much pushing obstacles aside as never noticing that they were there.
Above him was clear grey air, going up millions of miles to the trembling silver drops that were stars, and under his back, hard yet comforting, was the earth. The dim purple sea was below his line of vision; all that he could see was black foliage with stars darting between, and all that he could hear was the occasional long, soft sigh of the wind through the pines. The air smelled of warm earth and young leaves, and coolly touched his forehead and cheeks. Presently he shut his eyes, and soon he was asleep.
21
Margaret hurried home in a bad temper, disturbed by the fear that she might have lost Zita’s friendship and with it the precious privilege of visiting Westwood-at-Highgate. She suspected that Zita was likely to throw away a friend as easily as she would an old newspaper or anything else that had ceased to be useful to her; her moodiness and her jealous fits all pointed in the same direction, and Margaret (who was determined not to be thrown away) arrived home in a state of exhaustion, irritation and worry, anxious to arrange Dick Fletcher’s problem for him, and to be reconciled with Zita, and ready to quarrel with her mother on very slight provocation.
Within a few moments of her arrival they were quarrelling, for Mrs Steggles was so eager to hear all about Margaret’s day that she followed her upstairs, questioning and exclaiming. At last Margaret interrupted, and bluntly asked her if she would have Linda in the house for a fortnight?
‘What! Look after an idiot?’ exclaimed Mrs Steggles. ‘No, thank you, I’ve something better to do. I never heard of such a thing! I hope you didn’t tell him I would!’
‘I said I’d ask you. And she isn’t an idiot; she’s just backward,’ snapped Margaret, who was pulling off her dress and putting on a house-coat.
‘It’s the same thing. Ugh! I can’t bear anything like that. I’ve always thanked God that you and Reg were normal, bonny babies.’
‘I can’t bear it either, as a rule, but Linda isn’t like that at all; there’s nothing repulsive about her, and he does love her so, you can see it when he looks at her.’
Mrs Steggles shuddered. ‘Can’t he send her into a home, just for the time being?’
‘Mother!’
‘Well, I don’t see why not. They make them wonderfully comfortable at these places, so I’ve heard.’
‘I do think you might have her,’ said Margaret, tying her girdle tightly round her waist. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever asked you to do anything of the kind for me. We’ve got plenty of room, and Dad and I are out all day –’
‘A nice thing, your dad coming hom
e in the evening and finding an idiot slobbering round the place!’
‘She does not slobber, Mother. I tell you she’s almost perfectly normal.’
‘Well, I like people who are quite normal round me, thank you. It’s no use, Margaret, I won’t have her, and you’ll have to tell him I won’t. It’s like your cheek, anyway, taking it on yourself to say I would.’
‘Mother, I didn’t say so; I only said I’d ask you.’
‘Well, now you have asked me, and I’ve said no, so there’s no more to be said, is there?’
Margaret flung her head back so that the thick limp mass of her hair fell all about her flushed face. ‘I suppose not,’ she said bitterly at last. ‘But it’s going to make it very awkward for me.’
‘You should have thought of that before you told him. You got yourself into this mess, now you can get yourself out of it,’ said her mother, going out of the room.
‘Mother!’ (calling after her) ‘what excuse can I make? He’ll think it so horribly unkind!’ she burst out, flinging the brush on the bed and thrusting her fingers into her hair. She was trembling.
‘Say I don’t want the responsibility of it. Who would? I ask you! He’ll understand.’
But Margaret, struck by a sudden idea had darted out of her room and was already half-way down the stairs.
‘Oh, Mother, do let me get past – I’m sorry –’ she exclaimed, pushing by her mother to get to the telephone: ‘I’m sorry I was rude – I’ve just thought of someone who might –’ and she began agitatedly to dial a number. Mrs Steggles glanced contemptuously at her, still annoyed but also curious to know what she would get up to next.
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