She ran down to hug them, but they shrank nervously away and Boxer put his thumb in his mouth and began to suck it.
‘You can’t do that,’ said Trish. ‘You’re a big boy now. You haven’t forgotten me, surely.’ She was hurt by their reaction, and by the fact that Terry’s attention switched towards Grace as soon as the door from the studio opened.
‘I’m very sorry to disturb you, Mrs Faraday, but I wonder if I could have a word. Without Dan and Brian listening.’
‘Of course. Trish will look after them.’
But Trish, put out by the lack of warmth in their greeting, wanted to be part of the conversation.
‘They can go and explore,’ she said. ‘See if all the pigs and hens and things are still there. Off you go. You know where to look.’
Reluctantly they let go of Terry’s hands, but within only a few seconds could be heard shouting excitedly outside.
‘Come and sit down,’ said Grace. ‘Is this more than just a social visit?’
Terry nodded unhappily.
‘You’ll have read in the newspapers about the bombing.’
‘Of course, yes. It sounds terrible.’
‘Yes. I’ve been in barracks, out of it all. It doesn’t seem right that soldiers should be safe when civilians are getting killed. Well, our mum’s one of the casualties. She was hit the night before last. Killed outright.’ He swallowed the lump in his throat.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Very sorry indeed. The boys weren’t hurt?’
‘They were in a shelter when the bomb fell. There’s been a raid every night this week. According to one of the neighbours, Mum had settled them down for the night at eight o’clock, so that she wouldn’t need to wake them up when the sirens went. She went back to the house for something, since nothing seemed to be happening. I don’t know why she was still there when the raid started. But it got a direct hit.’
‘How awful!’ said Trish. ‘No wonder they look so miserable. Who’s looking after them?’
‘They spent yesterday in a school hall with all the other families who had lost their homes. I was given compassionate leave to decide what to do. There’s no choice, really. They’ll have to be evacuated again. They understand that, and they know they haven’t got a home any more.’
‘But they’re frightened at the thought of being sent away to strangers?’
‘Yes. And upset about Mum, of course.’
Trish could see what was coming, and so no doubt could Grace.
‘I realize that it’s an awful lot to ask, Mrs Faraday, but would you be willing to take them back again? It would be all official, if you would. You’d get the billeting allowance, just as if they’d been here all the time.’ He made a face, criticizing himself. ‘I shouldn’t ever have taken them back to London. I can see that now, but it seemed safe.’
‘What will happen if they don’t come here?’ asked Grace.
‘They’ll be sent off to Wales in a party leaving tomorrow. A lot of the kids drifted back to London when nothing seemed to be happening, but they all understand that they can’t stay any longer. It’s terrible, what’s going on there. And we’ve no family outside the area. It would mean a lot to me, Mrs Faraday, to know that they were here where they’ve been happy, where I could be sure that they were being kindly treated. But of course I do realize …’
His voice began to fade away into uncertainty. Until that moment he had spoken in the positive manner of someone putting forward the only possible solution to a problem. It was perhaps only now that he did indeed realize what he was asking.
‘I can guess what Trish will want,’ said Grace, smiling at her. ‘But I have a young nephew here already and I must have a word with Mrs Barrett before I give you an answer. It would be easy for me to say Yes, but I wouldn’t be the one to tackle the extra work. Why don’t you and Trish take the boys for a walk? You must all stay for lunch anyway.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ But he looked dejected as he followed Trish outside. ‘She’s going to say No, isn’t she?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘That business about asking Mrs Barrett. People like you don’t ask their servants: they tell them. That’s only an excuse.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “people like us”.’
‘Rich people who live in big houses, that’s what I mean.’
‘People like me who live in houses like this are treated as slaves!’ said Trish. ‘If you knew what I had to do before I go to school every day!’
‘Sorry. I didn’t realize you were one of the oppressed masses.’ For the first time since his arrival at Greystones he laughed without any trace of anxiety on his face and the natural liveliness of his eyes returned. Boxer and Dan came running to join them, already feeling at home again – proprietorial, even, as they introduced their brother to the animals and hens.
‘Dan and Boxer will be junior slaves if they come back here. I hope you realize that,’ Trish said to their brother. ‘We had them harvesting onions almost as soon as they arrived here last time – and there’s a new crop ready now.’ A thought struck her, and she turned towards the younger boy. ‘But perhaps you’re not Boxer any longer. Have you gone back to being Brian again?’
‘Boxer,’ he said. ‘I like being Boxer.’ He put his fists up to show that he had not forgotten how he and Trish used to spar. Terry, confirmed in his belief that his brothers would be happier here than anywhere else, was becoming more light-hearted with every moment that passed, but his anxious expression returned as he saw Grace coming towards them.
She was quick to put his mind at rest.
‘Mrs Barrett will be delighted to have your brothers back,’ she said. ‘I’ve just telephoned the billeting officer to make sure that there would be school places for them; there’s no problem there either. And apparently the WVS issue welfare bundles to people who’ve been bombed out, so we can apply for some clothes and even toys immediately. There’s a form which you should get filled in in London and stamped to certify that the house has been destroyed. That will help the boys to get new ration books and more clothing coupons. And you’ll need to register the loss of furniture even if you don’t propose to replace it straightaway.’
She was interrupted by the sound of a Red Indian war cry as Max was released from his grandmother’s boudoir. His period of imprisonment had left him full of energy and as soon as he reached the grass he did three cartwheels in succession before noticing the visitors.
‘This is Max,’ said Trish. ‘He’s an evacuee as well, but Grace is his aunt. Boxer and Dan are going to be living here too, Max, and this is their brother Terry, who’s brought them.’
Max’s expressive eyes indicated alarm and even resentment that other boys should have come to share his holiday, and there was a grudging note in his voice as he said ‘Hello.’
‘It’ll be nice for you to have someone to play with,’ said Trish, reassuringly. ‘I wonder if Boxer can do cartwheels as well as you. Have a go, Boxer.’
But the two London boys were shy. Perhaps they too had felt proprietorial on their return and now were equally resentful that the territory was to be shared. Grace interrupted the awkwardness with a brisk conclusion to what she had been saying earlier.
‘Anyway, we’ll be very glad to have you living with us again, Dan and Boxer. Do you want to have the same bedroom as last time?’
The two boys nodded.
‘Right. Go and collect your things to take up to it, then. Max, you go and help Mrs Barrett with her pastry. She’s making a big apple pie for us all, and I expect there’ll be enough over for you to cut out little tarts. Trish, open all the windows of the bedroom and give it a good airing, will you?’
‘Yes, ma’am. This moment, ma’am.’ She led the way indoors and upstairs, with Terry following behind. ‘You never saw their room when you came to take them away, did you? It’s an odd shape, because it was planned for twins, so they could each have a bed in these sort of alcoves and then share the mi
ddle of the room for playing.’
Opening the door, she made a face at the musty smell, and hurried to open the windows as she had been told.
‘When the house was built, there were maids to light fires in all the bedrooms,’ she told Terry. ‘But now there’s no heat upstairs at all and the rooms get damp if they’re not used. But we’ll warm the mattresses and sheets and things.’ She looked critically round the room. ‘It’s a bit shabby, isn’t it?’
‘Doesn’t look as if it’s been redecorated since the day the house was built,’ agreed Terry. He walked across to the window and tugged at a peeling tag of blotched and yellowed wallpaper. A long triangle of the paper came away from the wall, bringing with it lumps of plaster.
‘You’re spoiling it!’ exclaimed Trish indignantly.
‘Not much to spoil. It’s all damp. There’ll be bad trouble with the wood if you’re not careful.’
‘It certainly doesn’t look very cheerful. I could paint it, though. On top of the wallpaper, as long as you don’t make any more holes in the wall.’
‘Make things worse, that would.’ Terry took a penknife from his pocket and stuck it into the skirting board. ‘Not too bad,’ he admitted. ‘Tell you what, Trish. If your mother wouldn’t think it an impertinence. This time I’ve only got as long as it needs to settle the boys, but next time I get an ordinary leave I could come here, if you’d have me, and strip the walls down and replaster and put on an undercoat. Then you could finish off the painting – and add pictures, if you wanted to, like you did in that little room downstairs.’
‘D’you know how to?’ asked Trish. ‘How to plaster walls, I mean.’
‘I was apprenticed to a builder when I was fourteen. Only lasted a couple of years, because I got the chance of a market licence. So I didn’t finish serving my time, but I can turn my hand to most things around a house. Anyway, couldn’t look much worse, could it?’
‘Suppose not. Well, we’ll have to ask Grace. But I should think she’ll be pleased.’
She chose a private moment to put the question, because she had a comment to add on it.
‘It would be nice to have the room looking smart, wouldn’t it?’ she suggested. ‘And besides, I don’t suppose Terry’s got anywhere to go for his leave now that his house has been bombed.’
‘We can’t act as a welfare refuge for the whole of the East End,’ said Grace; but she did not say it as an objection.
‘It would be different for Terry, with his brothers here already and wanting to see him whenever they can. I expect that’s why he wants to do some work here, to feel that he could earn his keep.’
‘I was only teasing. Yes, of course he can come. And we shall be very glad of his help.’
As it turned out, he was able to write less than four weeks later to give the date of a forthcoming leave. Trish asked Grace for some money and took the boys down to the covered market in Oxford to choose material for curtains. On their return, she set them the joyously messy task of stripping the wallpaper off their room while she went to find Mrs Hardie.
‘I wondered,’ she asked, ‘whether you could show me how to make curtains.’
Mrs Hardie, who in recent months had grown vague and listless, looked at her more sharply than usual.
‘What you mean is, you wonder whether I would make curtains for you.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Trish. ‘Not for me, though. For Dan and Boxer. Because Auntie Sheila brought all the things to make Max’s room look bright and homey – the rug and counterpane, and curtains and the lamb for putting his pyjamas in – and he’s got his own toys. But Dan and Boxer haven’t got anything at all. I want to make the room a bit more cheerful.’
‘Have you got the measurements?’
Trish produced a drawing she had made of the window and the curtain rail. ‘I showed this to the market lady and she said how much I’d need, to allow for shrinking. There are blackout curtains hanging there already, which would do for lining.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ promised Mrs Hardie. ‘But you’ll have to thread the needles for me.’
‘Oh, thank you. And there’s something else. The walls are going to be painted this time, not papered, and I thought it would look more interesting if the two alcoves were a different colour from the rest of the room to make them look sort of deeper.’
‘A good idea.’
‘But the thing is, I don’t know which colours will make them look deeper and which will flatten them out again. And ought they to be quite different colours, or just different shades of the same thing?’
‘I remember soon after you first came here, I gave you painting lessons, and that was what I wanted to teach you – how to use colour to suggest distance or contrast and all that kind of thing. All you wanted to do was to slap pillar-box red around.’
‘I was only little then,’ Trish pointed out. ‘You were trying to show me quite difficult things and I didn’t understand. If you’d try again, I’d listen this time. Because I can see that some colours go together and some don’t – but only when I can see them, if you know what I mean. Mind you,’ she added honestly, ‘I still do like pillar-box red. If Terry has time to do the walls of my room when he’s finished the boys’ I shall paint the walls bright white with the outlines of black shapes on it – squares and circles and things – and clusters of little red dots inside them. I can see exactly how I want it to look, although I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it neatly enough.’
Mrs Hardie looked startled by the prospect of such a transformation of the house which had been her home for forty years, but raised no objection. Some of the old life returned to her eyes as on cold winter evenings she used her own paintings as illustrations of how colour could be mixed and used. Failing eyesight prevented her from any longer producing the detailed flower sketches which had once given her such pleasure, but she opened her paint box again to give her young pupil practical illustrations of primary and complementary and contrasting colours.
‘Did you know,’ Trish asked Terry when he arrived for the second of his leaves. ‘Did you know that shadows aren’t really grey at all? Or at least, not necessarily. If you screw your eyes up and look you can see that they’re a bit yellow and a bit blue and a bit of all sorts of other things.’
‘You painting shadows all over the walls, then?’
‘’Course not. Come and look at my room.’ He had left it, at the end of his previous leave, ready for her to decorate.
‘It’s not quite right,’ she said critically. ‘I wanted the white to be all smooth, with no brushstrokes showing, but I couldn’t get it like that. And there’s more black than I meant, because sometimes the brush wobbled and then I had to make the whole line thicker. But it’s not bad, is it?’
‘Not what I’d call restful,’ suggested Terry. ‘All those red spots. I’d feel as if I was sleeping inside a bad case of measles!’
‘Who wants to be restful now? Anyway, I can do it all again next year in different colours if I want to. You know what I’d like to do, Terry? I’d like to go right through the house making every room exactly the right colour for the person who lives in it. I mean, I’m a black and white with splodges sort of person. Grace’s room ought to be just white, plain white. Mrs Barrett is a cheerful orange and brown. Ellis is blues and greys. And Grandmother is pale pink and pale green.’
‘What about the house? Doesn’t that have a colour of its own?’
That was a new idea to Trish, who had been thinking only of the bedrooms which were a manageable size. She knew that even in the most slapdash manner she could not tackle the high entertaining rooms. She considered the point for a moment, recognizing that when moving from one room to another there should not be too many shocks to the eye.
‘They’re right already. My grandfather wrote it all down when he designed the house. Red for the dining room and the library. Pink and green for the drawing room and the morning room. I suppose that’s why I think those colours are right for Grandmother. It
’s just all the porridgy bedrooms that need changing.’
‘Sounds to me as though you’re going to be an artist when you grow up.’
Trish stared at him in a puzzled manner. There was something wrong with that remark, although it took her a moment to think what it was. Then she worked it out. In Rupert’s company, or Jean-Paul’s, she could not pretend to be an adult. They had known her since she was six, and felt themselves to be of a different generation. But although Terry also was a few years older than she was, she felt on equal terms with him. They were meeting on her territory, so that his self-confidence as a workman was matched by hers as a hostess. It was a shock to be reminded that he too might see her only as a schoolgirl.
‘I’m grown-up already,’ she said with a touch of indignation in her voice.
It was not true, of course. She just felt that it ought to be. If only the years would fly, fly, fly.
1944
Chapter One
‘How did it go?’ When Trish arrived home from school Grace, unusually, was waiting to welcome her. Dan and Boxer also came running to hear her news as she put her bicycle away in the coach-house.
‘Well,’ said Trish. ‘Considering that it’s inhuman to expect a person to spend midsummer day in an examination room and considering that it’s an extra form of torture if it happens to be that person’s eighteenth birthday and considering that it’s’ completely ridiculous that a person who only wants to go to art school should be expected to know all about history and Shakespeare and that sort of thing, it wasn’t too bad.’
Grace, who had been treated to her stepdaughter’s views on the Higher School Certificate at frequent intervals during the past two years, smiled in relief.
‘I think it’ll be all right,’ said Trish. ‘I’m only required to pass. No nonsense about credits or distinctions. Anyway, it’s all over. No more exams. No more school, even, if I happen not to feel like it.’
‘Will you stop going then?’ asked Boxer. At twelve, he had two more years of education to endure and would certainly leave earlier if he could.
The Hardie Inheritance Page 19
