Growing Up

by Angela Thirkell

  After dinner, Lady Waring with great skill managed to fence Colin and Lydia away into a corner behind her writing-table and begged them to excuse her if she wrote some business letters. Sir Harry then pounced on Philip to have what he called a good talk about Horace, so Noel went to sit by Leslie and discuss the work she was doing for him. Leslie answered all his questions, but in a rather distracted way.

  “I’m so sorry, Major Merton,” she said at last. “I’m not attending.”

  “Are you feeling poorly?” said Noel. “I do love the expression. My grandmother always used it.”

  “Not so much poorly as low,” said Leslie smiling. “It’s Captain Keith.”

  “If you will tell me exactly what he has done, I will have him out to-morrow morning and run him through the gizzard at once,” said Noel. “Word of a major.”

  “It’s not anything he has done,” said Leslie. “It’s just his being. It makes me think about Cecil, and it is so dreadfully long since I heard from him. Sorry. Don’t let’s talk about it.”

  “But do let’s, if that’s any help,” said Noel. “Lydia always says she feels better when she has talked about Colin, and better still when she has cried. You wouldn’t like to cry, would you? We are quite safe here. Lydia and Colin will gabble for ever if left alone and if my eyes do not deceive me your uncle is going to sleep.”

  This was indeed so. Although Sir Harry was, in Matron’s words, thoroughly enjoying his talk about Horace, which consisted largely in reminiscences of his undergraduate days at Oxford, where he had been better known as a lively member of the Bullingdon than a reading man and had narrowly escaped being sent down, his day in London, his dinner and an un wonted glass of sherry which he had produced in honour of the military, were too much for him. He suddenly, according to his peculiar custom, went to sleep bolt upright in his high-backed chair, looking so handsome with his fine face in repose that Lady Waring nearly got up to kiss the top of his head. Philip, catching Noel’s eye, came softly over and joined him and Leslie.

  “I do like your uncle, Miss Waring,” he said.

  Leslie said warmly that Uncle Harry was an angel. So was Aunt Harriet, she added, in a different way.

  Noel said Lady Waring was one of the seraphim and the General one of the cherubim; with reservations of course in both cases, he made haste to say.

  “I agree,” said Leslie seriously. “I can see Aunt Harriet with blue wings being good and wise and Uncle Harry with red wings being quite adorable.”

  The three then talked in low voices in a conspiratorial way, for though nothing was said it was tacitly recognized that Lydia and Colin must be given as much rope as possible, to which end Sir Harry must stay asleep. But on no account, said Leslie, must they whisper, as that always woke her uncle up at once. So what with the effort of talking in a quiet voice that was not a whisper and the discovery that Cecil Waring and Philip Winter had been at the same prep. school, Leslie enjoyed herself so much that she forgot how anxious she had been to talk to Colonel Winter in peace.

  Presently, Lady Waring, having finished her writing, collected some papers and went towards the door. Noel got up to open it. As she passed out she signed to him to follow her into the little dining-room.

  “I am so sorry, Major Merton,” she said, “that I can’t ask your wife’s brother to stay the night. Nothing would have given me more pleasure, but we literally have not a bed.”

  “It is more than kind of you,” said Noel, “but Lydia never expected it and of course she would of all things dislike to give you any trouble. And may I say how grateful I am to you for managing to get her this opportunity of talking to Colin. They are quite devoted and I am afraid he is going abroad at once.”

  “Poor child,” said Lady Waring. “Does she know?”

  “Colin has not said it in so many words,” said Noel, “but I am certain she suspects, and I suspect she is certain.”

  “I would be glad to do anything I could for her,” said Lady Waring. “It is so good for my husband to have young company and someone who loves the country. Leslie usually goes about with him, but with her illness and the dreadful weather we have had, she has not been up to it. Your wife has done her so much good too. In fact,” said Lady Waring, with one of her rare smiles, “I am getting almost reconciled to Captain Hooper because he sent you both here.”

  Noel said God forbid. Lady Waring went away to her room, telling him to make any arrangements that seemed good to him on Lydia and Colin’s behalf. Noel was moved by her gratitude and by her praise of Lydia, for Lady Waring, though a charming and considerate hostess, was fastidious in her tastes and conservative in her ways, and it pleased him greatly that his dear Lydia should have penetrated their hostess’s defences and been recognized for what he knew she was. The dining-room was comfortably warm, the less Sir Harry was disturbed the less likely he was to wake, so Noel fetched his dispatch-case from his room and sat down to some work.

  Meanwhile Sir Harry slept, bolt upright, looking like a handsome stone image of himself, and as he slept the hands of the clock moved on, ignored by Lydia and Colin in their eager talk of themselves, Kate and Everard, their elder brother Robert and his wife and children, their old home. Colin too had heard that the business firm which had taken Northbridge Manor might be moving back to London and he thought Robert would never really want to live there. The place had been bought by Mr. Keith when Robert was just leaving his preparatory school and had never been to him or to Kate the childhood’s home that it had been to Colin and Lydia.

  “I wish I could buy it from Robert,” said Colin. “Then when the war’s over I’d go and live there and keep pigs, and you and Noel could come whenever you liked and we’d have picnics on the river and go to Parsley Island.”

  “Oh, do you remember the picnic when Rose was so awful to poor Philip?” said Lydia. “And I never told you, Colin, that Twitcher found Philip’s ring that Rose threw at him and he dropped it into the pool. I brought it down to give Philip to-night.”

  She took from her bag the ring with its ruby and diamond flower.

  “What a day it was!” said Colin. “And you and Geraldine Birkett and Tony Morland cleaning out the pond. What a sight you were. What’s happened to Tony and those other boys?”

  Lydia said she thought Tony was a gunner officer now. The others she knew nothing about. There was a moment’s silence. If one has not heard of one’s friends for some time, one does not always quite wish to know. The news might not be happy, and on Colin’s last night one does not want sad things. Lydia wished she had not thought of a last night; very likely, she said to herself, he will have another night, and anyway people often get embarkation leave and then go on turning up till one almost wishes they had gone the first time. If only Colin could have an accident; not a bad one, but just bad enough to make him be fit for light duties only. Then quite suddenly the words, “light duties,” roused a memory, and with a pang of remorse she thought of Sergeant Hopkins.

  “Oh, Colin!” she said, “how dreadful of me! I had quite forgotten!”

  Full of contrition she sat staring at her brother.

  “I’m sorry you’ve forgotten,” said Colin. “But what?”

  “Sergeant Hopkins,” said Lydia. “He’s in the hospital here and he wants to see you and I promised I’d let him know if I heard from you. I wonder if it’s too late. I know Matron quite well. We might try. The quickest would be to ring up the night sister from the hall. Come on, it’s only ten o’clock.”

  Very quietly they left the sitting-room. Just as Lydia was going to take the receiver off, Selina came by.

  “I say, Selina,” said Lydia. “Have you any idea when the soldiers go to bed? My brother wants to see Sergeant Hopkins.”

  “Well, madam, I know the sergeant hasn’t gone to bed,” said Selina, her eyes shining at the thought of being able to help Mrs. Merton’s brother, “because he was in the kitchen just now. He’s teaching us all to play poker. Cook said not for money, because that’s gambling,
but Sergeant Hopkins said we’d play for buttons, so we all got our work-boxes out.”

  “Who won?” said Colin, amused.

  “I did, sir,” said Selina, “and I was so upset, because the sergeant hadn’t got any buttons of course, not having a workbox, so he cut off one of his own buttons, sir, off the shoulderstrap on his battledress, and gave it to me. He won’t have gone yet, sir, because Cook was just making a cup of tea and the sergeant said he felt quite on top of the wave to-day because of seeing the captain’s sister, and if the night sister wanted him she could come and fetch him. I’ll run down, sir, and tell him to come up and see you. Would you like to see the button, sir?”

  In her plump, pretty, though by no means smooth hand she showed him a bone button.

  “It’s an awfully decent button,” said Lydia admiringly. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Private Jenks says he can make a brooch of it for me, madam,” said Selina.

  “Oh, was he there too?” said Lydia, struck by the very crowded life that went on in the kitchen.

  “Well, you see, madam,” said Selina, her eyes beginning to brim over, “he’s got to go back to hospital for another operation. I was so upset when I heard. He won’t say what it is, though Cook and Baker teased him ever so, but he said if he had to go into hospital again he’d enjoy himself while he could. He ought to be in bed by nine, sir, so when he wasn’t there the sergeant came over to fetch him. I’ll tell the sergeant now, sir.”

  Lydia and Colin looked at each other and for the first time that evening laughed as if they were at home and the war had never been.

  “Do you mind if I stay here?” said Lydia. “I feel if I took my eyes off you, you might vanish.”

  Colin begged her to stay. Selina returned and delivered Sergeant Hopkins over to Colin. The men were soon well into talk about the regiment and the sergeant’s own affairs. Lydia, sitting swinging her legs on a big chest where rugs were kept, idly fingered the railway guide and watched the hall clock telling the moments. Presently a thought came into her head and she consulted the guide; with such concentration that she was startled by the sergeant’s good-bye.

  While the company were so dispersed, Philip and Leslie sat together in the sitting-room, continuing to talk about nothing very particular very comfortably. Philip had liked the voice of the girl whose suitcase he had carried in the dark. He had thought, as he walked back to the camp, that even if he did not recognize her by daylight, for the night had been too dark and wet for him to get more than an impression of her appearance, he would know her again by her speech. Now he found that he also liked her face and enjoyed her way of looking at things in general. He had heard from Noel about the work she was doing, he saw that her intelligence was considerable, and he vaguely thought that Noel was lucky to have such a delightful assistant, contrasting her in his mind, much to their disadvantage, with two young ladies in uniform in his office who were not remarkable for looks or brains, or indeed for anything except thick ankles and great punctuality in knocking off. Then the talk came round to her brother, and Philip was touched by her truly unselfish pleasure in Colin’s visit and said so.

  “Well,” said Miss Waring very frankly. “I would be jealous of Lydia if I could—no, not jealous, that’s a horrid thing, envious, I mean—but I simply can’t. In fact, next to having Cecil here, I can think of nothing nicer than having Captain Keith. I wish he hadn’t to go so soon.”

  “So do I,” said Philip. “Lydia does care for him so much. More than anything in the world except Noel, I think.”

  “I care for Cecil more than anything in the world that ever was, or is, or will be,” said Leslie, almost savagely.

  “I am sure you do,” said Philip, thinking of the seas, the nights, the storms that would lie between Leslie and her brother till he came safely home.

  “It isn’t only that I care for him frightfully,” said Leslie, impelled by the hour, the quiet, the peaceful room, to unburden her heart, even while she told herself that she must be boring Colonel Winter, who liked gay creatures like that Miss Birkett, very much indeed, “but he keeps me safe.”

  Philip looked questioningly at her.

  “You know. The place,” said Leslie impatiently, but always keeping her voice low for her uncle’s sake, possibly too for the sake of a conversation which must not be interrupted.

  “But I don’t know,” said Philip. “You mean he looks after things here when he is on leave?”

  “Of course he does that,” said Leslie, again with impatience, “but what I mean is that when Uncle Harry dies, which I hope will be never, all this belongs to Cecil. But if Cecil is killed, I am the only one left.”

  If Dr. Ford had come into the room at that moment he would have been seriously annoyed and probably sent her to bed and told Philip he was a fool to let the girl excite herself. But Philip was no fool. His years of schoolmastering at Southbridge had not included the psychology of war-wrecked young women, but it had included some patience and understanding for troubled youth; a patience and understanding developed against the handicap of his own naturally quick and suspicious temper till, except on very rare occasions, it had become his servant. Looking at Miss Waring, whose face had suddenly become small and peaked, he thought of the early autumn more than three years ago, before term began, when he had come back to the school in his Territorial uniform to visit Everard Carter, and young Holinshed, aged seventeen, had suddenly turned up, half-demented because he could not join the Army and be killed at once. He and Everard had let young Holinshed talk himself out, had convinced him that the best help he could give was to wait for orders, and after a huge tea had sent him away comforted and resolved to be patient. The look in poor Holinshed’s face he saw again in Miss Waring’s. Unfortunately he could not talk to her for her good, nor, so soon after a very good war-time dinner, would a large meal be of any use. But if patience could help, patience there should be; all that she needed.

  “Of course I adore the place,” Leslie continued, not looking at Philip, “but I have always adored it with Cecil. How could I live here without him?”

  Philip thought of a great many wise and sensible things that he might say, but every one of them sounded priggish. Sir Harry, perhaps reached by Leslie’s voice, though she had never forgotten to restrain it, suddenly opened his eyes and was wide awake. At the same moment Lydia and Colin came in, and then Noel, who had heard the noise, returned from the dining-room.

  Philip, looking at the time, said regretfully to Colin that they ought to go.

  “Will you say good night to your aunt for me, Miss Waring?” he said. “I shall write and make my excuses for not saying good-bye. Will you perhaps let me come again?”

  Leslie gave him her hand.

  “I would like it very much,” she said.

  Lydia now approached and took possession of Philip with her old impetuosity.

  “How is Colin going to-morrow?” she said.

  Philip said one of the camp cars was going to Winter Overcotes to catch the London train and Colin would go in it.

  “Then I shall go from here with Sir Harry,” said Lydia. “He always goes on the 8.25, which is direct to town. I can see Colin at the junction before he gets into the train. Oh, and here’s the ring. Remember your vow. And come again soon.”

  “Of course I will,” said Philip, putting the ring in his pocket. “I can’t hug you here, because it wouldn’t be seemly and I would hate Noel to kill me, but I will another time. I won’t tell Colin. Then if you can’t manage it he won’t know.”

  “But I will manage it,” said Lydia. “I always saw him off to school and college and I shall see him off to the war.”

  There was no answer to this. Sir Harry made the leave-taking easier by insisting on seeing Philip and Colin off himself, which was destructive of sentiment. Lydia and Colin made a grab at each other, kissed quickly, and the party was over.

  “I think I’ll go to bed,” said Lydia, a little too off-handedly. “Coming, Noel? Goo
d night, Leslie.”

  “Good night,” said Leslie. “I’m so glad I saw your brother. He is so like you and I liked him so much. I hope he’ll be here again very soon.”

  Lydia smiled her thanks, but did not see fit to speak. Leslie had a moment’s illusion that she had held her husband’s arm as if to steady herself, but she might have imagined it. Left alone, Leslie wandered vaguely round the room putting things tidy. It was no business of hers if Lydia gave Philip Winter a ring. It might be one that belonged to his mother if he had one, or his aunt if he had any, and Lydia had been getting it mended for him. She bore no malice against Lydia, for anyone who was so fond of her brother must be wholly admirable. But as for Philip Winter, she said to herself, tossing her head at his absent figure, it was a poor sort of man that took a ring from a woman. And though she knew she was being very foolish and unreasonable, she had a sudden wish that Philip was there so that she could tell him exactly what she thought of him and be very cutting and hurt him. At which pleasant thought she nearly cried, falling into a welter of self-pity for which she knew there were no grounds whatever. Then Sir Harry, having seen Philip and Colin off, came back, inquired for the Mertons and hearing that they had gone to bed said it was time Leslie went too.

  “What a nice boy Mrs. Merton’s brother is,” he said, “and I had a splendid chat about Horace with Winter. We must ask him here again, Leslie.”

  “Yes, do let’s, Uncle Harry,” said Leslie, much cheered by the thought of seeing the despicable creature again. A man who understood about Cecil so well must have a good side. She kissed her uncle good night.