by Mary Wesley
Walking back to Slepe, Rose said, ‘I like them, but they are not as interesting as the Farthings. The Hadleys are open, the Farthings closed.’
‘I can’t say I find the Farthings likeable, but they do their job; everything is above board at the farm; the Farthings are different.’
‘That’s what I like,’ said Rose.
‘I hope you will not be bored when you are on your own.’
‘Of course not. I shall find plenty to do.’
‘You are only twenty-five miles from your parents.’
‘Yes.’
‘And five from the Thornbys.’
‘Yes.’
‘And ten from the Malones.’
‘I’m not madly sociable, Ned.’
‘I shall be able to get home whenever I get leave, so long, that is, as we are in England.’
‘Of course.’
‘There is talk, strictly between ourselves, of France.’
‘When?’
‘Soonish.’
‘France!’ (Mylo is in France. That parcel …) ‘How soon?’
‘Any time now, I fear. Damn, who is that over there in the drive waving?’
‘Emily Thornby.’
‘One would have credited her with more tact,’ exclaimed Ned, furious, ‘than to call on the first day of our honeymoon.’
‘You did say it was no ordinary honeymoon,’ said Rose unkindly.
‘Hullo,’ shouted Emily, advancing. ‘I was just passing, thought I’d stop and see how you are getting on.’
‘Very well, thanks,’ Ned said with chill.
‘I shan’t stay,’ said Emily laughing, ‘I can see I am not welcome.’ Her eyes danced brightly from Rose to Ned and back to Ned.
‘Come in and have a drink,’ suggested Rose.
‘Thanks. I’ve our wedding present in the car. Nicholas and I were late buying it, couldn’t make up our minds or raise the cash. Like to fetch it from the car, Ned?’
Ned moved off towards Emily’s car, grudging every stride.
‘Eventually we managed to charge it to Mrs Malone’s account,’ said Emily, grinning. ‘It’s all right, she’ll never notice.’ She watched Ned’s back. ‘How are you? What’s marriage like?’ Emily lowered her voice an octave. ‘Do you think you can manage?’ Her eyes swept over Rose from head to toe, then up again.
‘What’s the present?’ asked Rose, feeling herself flush.
‘A lamp from Peter Jones, Fortnums wouldn’t charge to Mrs Malone. It’s a Tiffany copy guaranteed to give a soft glow. Nicholas tried it, it’s quite sexy. Are you all right?’ she persisted.
‘Of course I am,’ said Rose, stung into replying.
Emily made a moue and giggled. ‘That’s good.’ She was watching Ned’s return with a cardboard box in his arms. ‘We hoped you would be, Nicholas and I …’
Ned put the box down beside Rose. ‘I’ll walk you to your car, Emily.’
‘Oh,’ said Emily. ‘Rose has just suggested a drink.’
‘Some other time,’ Ned had her by the elbow, ‘not today.’
‘Oho,’ said Emily, tossing her narrow nose upwards, ‘so that’s how it is.’
‘That’s right.’ Ned opened Emily’s car door and started pushing her in.
‘What’s she like then, Ned?’
Ned smacked Emily’s bottom hard.
‘Ouch!’ cried Emily.
‘Be off,’ said Ned, good humoured, and slammed the car door.
‘That’s better,’ murmured Mrs Farthing, watching from a window, ‘maybe he will do.’
‘What did you want to do that for?’ asked Rose as Emily drove off.
‘She had it coming,’ said Ned, rubbing his hands together. ‘I quite hurt my hand, she has a hard bottom.’
‘I thought men like you never hit women,’ said Rose, wondering why the curious little scene with Emily disturbed her.
‘It depends on the woman.’ Ned closed the subject.
‘I know I am very naïve,’ said Rose.
‘Bless you,’ said Ned. He put his hand, which still stung, around Rose’s waist and drew her towards the house. ‘Come indoors, it’s getting chilly. Your naïvety is part of your charm,’ he said.
As she walked towards the house, Rose wondered whether in similar circumstances Mylo would have smacked Emily. I do not know why Ned should want to hit her. She is irritating, but surely—and would Mylo? In the hall Rose stood still and suddenly she shivered. I must stop thinking of Mylo, stop making comparisons. It isn’t fair. I have promised Ned. Promised. She was hit by a wave of anguish. I must keep Mylo separate, or I shall go mad.
‘What’s the matter, Rose, are you cold? Are you tired? Why do you shiver? A goose, is it a goose?’ Ned, unnerved by Rose’s distraught expression, tried a joke.
Rose shook her head. ‘No goose,’ she said, ‘no grave. It’s nothing, perhaps I need a jersey.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Let me take it easy, Ned. I hadn’t realised how much there is to this marriage business. Your house, your possessions, your people …’
‘Well, dear …’
‘I will work it out, I will, I won’t let you down.’ Rose held her hand out to Ned. ‘I am being silly.’
‘Yes,’ said Ned, puzzled, ‘you are.’
She wondered whether he was being obtuse on purpose, whether he was trying to protect her as already she found herself protecting him. Last night, she thought, I tried to pretend it was Mylo; it didn’t work. There is no way being in bed with Ned could ever resemble being with Mylo. He is gone anyway, she told herself bitterly, all that talk of phoning was just eye-wash.
‘I think I’ll have a bath and warm up,’ she said.
‘You do that. Then come and join me in a drink.’ Ned moved towards the drinks in the drawing-room. We must shut up this room, it’s too big, he thought, stack the furniture, use the old man’s library for the duration. He let his mind snake through the rooms, deciding what furniture to move, what to store, which rooms to keep in use. He poured himself a drink, wandered back into the hall, shouted up the stairs, ‘Don’t take too long, I need you with me.’ Listened for Rose’s faint answer, wandered slowly back to the fireplace. I need to imprint my house on Rose, he thought as he stood listening for her return, but all he heard was the mocking clack of jackdaws coming down the chimney. He struck a match and bent to light the fire. ‘That’ll put paid to you.’ He watched the smoke curl up.
16
THE FARTHINGS WATCHED NED enjoy his honeymoon with detachment. It amused them to observe the satisfaction he derived fitting Rose in among his property. He manipulated her with the same care that he lavished on the Sheraton desk, the sofa table, the Regency commodes, the sofa, armchairs, bookshelves and rugs with which he furnished the room that had been his uncle’s library, moving and removing until he was satisfied that each piece was in an appropriate position.
He led Rose about, showing her every room, satisfying himself that she belonged in it, then walking her through his fields, showing her the boundaries of his property, bonding her to his land.
Just as they had noticed him adopt with his uniform a military persona, so, surrounded by his inherited possessions, they watched him cherish them and with them his appendage wife, making complete his role as landed gentleman. For a man who had until lately scarcely put foot outside London, they granted that Ned did not do too badly.
It entertained the Farthings inordinately when Ned took an almost womanly interest in his household, making lists of stores which could be hoarded prior to rationing and probable shortages, ordering, besides groceries, large stocks of coal and anthracite, arranging with the Hadleys to stockpile logs for winter fires. He even, much to Mrs Farthing’s delight, checked and criticised Rose’s meagre trousseau, telling her that she must as soon as maybe get herself more warm clothes, thick sweaters, trousers, fur boots to overcome the absence of decent heating at Slepe, a draughty house with several outside doors.
‘Thinks of everything,’ sa
id Farthing, laconic.
‘Grocery list as long as your arm,’ said his wife, extending her arm in sardonic gesture.
‘Knows it all,’ said Farthing.
‘Not quite,’ said Mrs Farthing and waited until Ned had come back with Rose from depleting the stocks in the market town, to suggest a fresh list of stores, without which she maintained the war could not be weathered. Olive oil, cans of golden syrup, rice and sugar.
None too pleased, Ned took Rose on a second foray and was even less pleased when she, entering into the spirit of things, added to the list lavatory paper, candles, dog food in tins, and Roget et Gallet bath soap.
‘But there is no dog …’ protested Ned.
‘There will be …’
‘She’ll grow up,’ said Farthing, taking time off from the garden to help his wife stack the stores in the pantry cupboards. ‘Fact is, her’s begun.’ Farthing liked to talk yokel on occasion.
‘My poor back!’ Mrs Farthing straightened up, groaning. ‘We’ll teach her when he’s gone to put butter down in salt and pot eggs and he’s made no provision for ham and sides of bacon.’ Mrs Farthing eased herself, her hand pressed against the small of her back.
‘A pig?’ suggested her husband.
‘Too soft-hearted, I’d say.’
‘Um. Farm pig, then?’
‘That’ll do.’
‘Who’s it all for? Won’t have evacuees.’
‘Wants to have his fellow officers to stay. Heard him telling her.’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘Yes, Ned, why don’t you. As though she’s not to live here herself.’
‘She’s only half here. Think she’ll settle when he’s gone?’
‘Dare say she will find her own way; hers is not his, that’s for sure.’
On the last evening of Ned’s leave he led Rose to an outbuilding in the copse behind the garages. ‘It’s in here,’ he said, unlocking a padlocked outhouse. ‘I will show you where I keep the key. The petrol is in those tanks.’ He showed her two large galvanised iron receptacles. ‘You will see, if you climb up those steps, the petrol is in the jerrycans stacked inside them, a hundred gallons.’
‘Golly!’ Rose peered down from the steps. ‘What a lot.’
‘I got one of the chaps from the regiment to help me put it there; the Farthings do not know, of course.’
No ‘of course’ about it, thought Rose, watching her husband lock the door.
‘You are only to use it in case of dire emergency,’ said Ned, ‘it’s not for joy-riding.’
‘What would dire emergency be?’
‘A German invasion.’
‘So I could hop it to Scotland?’ Rose was amused.
Ned did not care for her frivolity. ‘It’s more than a possibility, from what I hear from the War Office.’
‘Do you have a direct line?’ Rose teased.
‘One gets one’s information,’ said Ned.
Does one indeed? thought Rose.
‘Should I be posted overseas, I shall lay up my car; it eats petrol; I am getting you a small Morris of moderate consumption.’
‘Oh. How moderate?’
‘It’s a surprise. The garage will bring it tomorrow.’
‘I am surprised. Thank you, Ned.’
‘It’s not new, it’s second-hand.’
‘Good enough to bolt from the Germans in a dire emergency.’
Ned was not sure what to make of his wife’s tone. He looked at his bride sharply, trying to read her thoughts.
A dire emergency, Rose was thinking as she turned smiling eyes on her husband, would be if I had to rush to Mylo, but I cannot rush as I do not know where he is; I cannot rush into a void.
‘I am sad,’ she exclaimed with sudden passion.
‘I am only going as far as Aldershot.’ Ned misunderstood her. ‘I am, too, but I shall be home whenever I can. One gets leave. I shall bring people to stay. You will not be lonely long. I will ring up.’
‘You will ring up?’
‘Of course I shall. I shall telephone often, every day probably.’
‘Oh, Ned. Yes, of course. I had not thought of that.’ (And Mylo? When will he telephone?)
‘If you find you’re lonely, there’s your family. The …
‘I shall be all right, Ned, I am looking forward to being alone,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I don’t want …’
‘That’s nice!’ exclaimed Ned, hurt.
How did I let that slip? ‘You know I don’t mean looking forward to being without you. I mean that I am quite happy on my own, I am used to my own company. I am an only child, Ned.’
‘Dear,’ said Ned, ‘it’s my last evening.’ He put his arm around her. ‘Come to bed.’
Tomorrow, thought Rose climbing upstairs, when he is gone, I shall open the parcel. Perhaps it will tell me where Mylo is. There will be a message. There is bound to be a message. ‘All right, hurry up,’ she said to Ned to hasten his departure.
Ned took her hand and ran up the last few steps with her, misunderstanding. In the large rather lumpy fourposter Ned took Rose then, assuaged, lay sleepily considering his honeymoon which had passed so swiftly and busily. He was content as he reviewed the rearrangement of the rooms, the storing of the stores, the plans of what he had yet to do when he came on leave. ‘It’s wonderful,’ he said drowsily, ‘how well you fit in to Slepe, it’s as though you had been here for ever, you belong here.’
Rose gritted her teeth, biting back the rejoinder, I am not one of your Regency commodes. ‘I think one of the things I must do is get a new mattress for this bed,’ she said. ‘It’s bloody lumpy.’
‘It seems all right to me.’ Ned was nearly asleep (he must teach her not to swear).
Rose lay wondering what was in Mylo’s parcel. Perhaps there would be a message to come at once and she had already waited seven days to open it. Perhaps she would go in the car Ned was giving her, treating her flight as a case of ‘dire emergency’. But I cannot, I promised not to leave; promises cannot be broken. Had Ned, poor kind Ned, sleeping now, an inkling of what he had done by extracting that promise?
Do I like or loathe Ned? Rose asked herself, and unconsciously kicked her foot towards him, jerking as a dog jerks in his dream, withdrawing her foot in shame as her toenail grazed his calf. Ned did not stir.
In the morning when he had dressed in his uniform, buckling his Sam Browne belt, brilliant with polish, when he had jerked the tunic down to lie flat over his chest as yet bare of medals (those would come), put on with the uniform his military air, driven away in his car to join his regiment, and with it after many false alarms the war, Rose, barely waiting for him to be out of sight, bounded upstairs three at a time to take from where it lay hidden in a drawer under her nightdress Mylo’s parcel.
Mylo had sent her a Bonnard lithograph.
Tearing away the wrappings, turning it over, she found no message, no hint of an address.
She sat staring at the picture, disappointed. Then as she looked she became aware that there was no need of written word. The tenderness with which the lover in the picture encircled the girl with his arm, the way she looked down into his face told her all that was needed.
Thus we sat in that glade in Richmond Park, so we lolled on the lawns of Hampton Court, it was like that in the gardens of Kew, in the country round my home, so it will be, said the picture Mylo had sent her, for us two, for our lives, for ever.
Her promise to Ned must be kept, but it would in no way alter the love she had for Mylo.
Presently, carrying the picture, she went down to the kitchen to borrow a hammer and beg a nail from Mrs Farthing. Then to her bedroom to hang the picture where she would see it last thing at night and first thing on waking.
‘Looks happier now,’ said Mrs Farthing to her husband. ‘Don’t bring in all that mud, wipe your feet.’
‘Hang that picture?’ asked Farthing, aware as was his wife of everything new coming into the house.
‘Looks so,’ said
Mrs Farthing.
‘M-m-m …’ muttered Farthing, satisfied that his swift brain and x-ray eyes had deduced the content of the foreign parcel to be a picture.
17
THE PROSPECT OF EXPLORING her new home without Ned held considerable allure. There were parts of the garden where he had prevented her lingering, a room opening out of their bedroom she would like to turn into a sitting-room for herself and furnish with small pieces of the furniture he had covered with dust sheets; she would extract them from the sad mass in quarantine for the duration. There was also the Farthings’ pregnant cat to be visited.
When the car Ned had promised her was delivered she would drive up to London to choose a new mattress for the bed. I have nothing against the bed per se, she told herself, it is the mattress which is bloody awful. I want to be rid of the mattress Ned just fucked me on. (I will use words he deplores if I wish; he is mealy-mouthed.) All the same he is thoughtful to give me my own car, I should be more grateful. The sooner the car is delivered, the better.
As she waited for the car she wandered about the garden, then sat watching a pair of blackbirds gorging on fallen mulberries scattered like clots of blood under a tree. ‘What a mess,’ Ned had remarked disgustedly, ‘something must be done about that.’ The blackbirds were doing something.
The driver of the car hooted as it drew up at the house. Rose ran to meet it. She was disappointed to see Emily; she had expected a mechanic from the village garage. ‘Brought your surprise.’ Emily stepped out of the car which had been her father the bishop’s. ‘Ned’s present.’
Hard on Emily’s heels came Nicholas driving a shiny MG. ‘Hail the bride!’ Nicholas shouted, bringing the MG to a halt beside his sister. ‘Is Ned gone? Does the bride grieve for her groom? Actually,’ he said, stepping out of the car, ‘we know he is gone, we passed him on the top road.’
‘He looks very fine in uniform,’ said Emily. ‘Larger, somehow. Don’t you find him larger than you expected, Rose?’
