I know quite well that she has been wanting to say this since before tea, and I am ready for it.
“Yes,” I reply, “he should reach England by the end of September. After that I suppose it will be a little time before he’s returned to civilian life.”
“But he’s coming back to the practice, isn’t he? Everyone’s awfully pleased about it. They don’t really like Doctor Rawlins, you know; he’s not sympathetic like Gyp; besides he lives out at Little Copse and they can’t get hold of him in the same way. Aren’t you getting frightfully excited, Helen?”
“I still can’t believe it, it seems unreal, after nearly five years,” I answer carefully. Is Laura really as naive as she appears? I know that she knows about Brian. She saw us in Dumfries. I have never spoken to her about it, naturally, but because she is probably the only outside person who does know about us, I am over-sensitive where she is concerned and horribly eager to read her thoughts.
The garden gate makes a noise and Laura looks up.
“Oh dear, it’s Lady Gurney, and the tea must be stone cold. Fill up the pot, will you, Helen? No . . . it’s all right, I will. No, you do it while I answer the door.”
I do as I am told, and compose myself to meet Brian’s mother. I see Laura’s unguarded glance in my direction as she follows Lady Gurney into the room. Of course Laura knows—not that I ever had any real doubts about it.
“My dears”—Lady Gurney is like an old-fashioned bathing tent in her striped dress—“I didn’t mean to intrude and I certainly don’t expect a cup of tea at this late hour. Oh, well, perhaps. . . . thank you Laura, dear. What a pretty frock Laura is wearing, isn’t she, Helen? But I must tell you my news. You’ll never guess. . . . He’s home!”
For a moment I feel physically sick. How silly, when Brian’s letter is in my pocket. My mind catches up with my racing pulse.
“Not Peter?” I exclaim joyfully and notice the sharp look Laura gives me. Peter is Brian’s elder brother.
“Yes, Peter, my dears. All the way from heaven knows where on the other side of the world, and for good!” She sits back, quite deflated after her sensational announcement.
Laura and I chorus together, “How lovely for you! Is he well? What a surprise! He must be thrilled!”
A shadow crosses Lady Gurney’s face.
“As a matter of fact, my dears, he isn’t.”
“Not pleased to be home again?” Laura asks, incredulous.
“Well, in a way of course he is, but he’s changed somehow. Mind you, he was very tired when he arrived and the silly boy hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours. He’d spent the night in London instead of coming straight down to Kirton; burning his boats or something, he said.”
“But he must be glad to be out of uniform,” Laura persists. I wonder whether she emphasizes the point because, subconsciously, she feels Peter ought to be glad; that everyone should be glad to be released. I have a feeling that, already, she is nostalgic for her own discarded khaki. Laura is going to live a great deal in the past, I fear.
Again my thoughts turn to Brian. It will be his turn next. We’re all back, or on our way back—like Gyp.
“Of course,” Lady Gurney is saying, “I think he’d been celebrating. You know what the Navy’s like. But he kept on saying he’d lost his home. ‘I haven’t got a home now, Mother,’ he told me. He said it at least ten times.”
“No home?” Laura says, puzzled.
“He meant his ship, though I admit we didn’t understand at first,” Lady Gurney explains, “I must say that after everything his father and I have gone through these years to keep the home going at all, I think it was a little tactless of him,” she adds with characteristic candour.
Laura is full of sympathy which is somewhat wasted since Lady Gurney is not seriously perturbed.
“And now, my dears, I must be off. Thank you, Laura, for my excellent tea. It is indeed nice to see things like currants and real eggs reappearing again. And you, Helen, I hear, are expecting Gyp back very soon?”
“Next month,” I reply and wonder, with slight hysteria, whether she is associating Gyp with a currant, a real egg or just Peter.
“How lovely for you, my dear, after all these years. Now, where can my gloves be? Ah, here, on my lap. I’m just going round to tell Mrs. Cross about Peter. She was so kind when her Michael was demobilized and I had no boys at home. I think she’d have lent him to me if I’d wanted. Good-bye, Helen dear. Don’t bother, Laura, I can see myself out.”
Laura accompanies her to the front door and I am left with the strange picture of Michael Cross on loan to Kirton Manor.
* * * *
People were apt to describe Mary Cross as a woman with a man’s mind. Less charitable critics even went so far as to suggest that she probably was a man. All of which was, of course, quite untrue for, behind a façade of tweed and tobacco, were the maternal instincts of a tigress and the ultra-feminine personality of ‘Aunt Jennifer’ of Women’s Chat, that successful monthly journal for wives and business girls.
‘Aunt Jennifer’ had been the material expression of the maternal instinct. After only three months of married life—during which time she saw her husband for exactly seven days and seventy-two hours respectively—Mary Cross had found herself a widow, an expectant mother and practically penniless.
After a brief period of apathy, the combination aroused her to an infuriated acceptance of the circumstances and a militant determination to overcome them.
Having given birth to a son whom she worshipped from the moment she first saw him being slapped to life by an over-worked doctor, she proceeded to censor letters for the government until 1918.
In 1919 she was writing copy for advertisements of gas cookers and in 1921 Cookery Notes for the Sunday Sketch. This led, almost uneventfully, to her Household Hints in the Daily News, and her column on Housewives’ Problems in Home and Hearth until, some fifteen years ago, she took over, at a generous salary, the considerable activities of ‘Aunt Jennifer’ on the permanent staff of Women’s Chat. No domestic contretemps, no lonely heartache, no marital tiff was too trivial for Aunt Jennifer’s sympathy and constructive advice. Apart from the published page, Aunt Jennifer had innumerable private correspondents to deal with, and had been instrumental in bridging numerous matrimonial breaches in addition to preventing a great many mésalliances.
The drawbacks to being Aunt Jennifer were that Mary Cross suffered, vicariously, but nevertheless quite sincerely, the misfortunes of her correspondents. Each letter brought to her—although in lesser degree—the mental stress of its writer, so that by the time went to press each month, Mary Cross would require a great many cigarettes and a number of whiskies before she could face up to the batch of new letters which must be dealt with before the next edition.
“But,” as she explained to interested friends, “if I didn’t feel like that, I should not have a postbag of over two hundred letters a week, nor should I be allowed a staff of two secretaries. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have kept my job at all.”
All of which had brought bread and butter and substantial helpings of jam for her son, Michael, a comfortable cottage at Kirton and a flat in London.
At the age of twelve, Michael had shown every sign of being spoiled and a mother’s darling. This so alarmed Mary Cross that she made up her mind, then and there, to concentrate on developing in herself the characteristics of the father Michael had never known. Against all natural instincts she stopped fussing about his health, spoke sharply to him when he cried and allowed him to be beaten up by the village boys, even in front of her drawing-room window, without rushing out to his assistance.
To foster confidence in herself in this new role of the father which she considered so important to a boy about to go to boarding school for the first time, she discarded the more fanciful garments in her wardrobe and took to shirts, tweed suits and flat-heeled shoes, which were not only much more comfortable for her spreading figure but also an economy—Michael being at
the growing stage when new outfits had to be purchased for him at the end of every term. This was, of course, before the days of ‘Aunt Jennifer.’
Michael was very fond of his mother. Whether this was due to the efficiency with which she fulfilled the dual role of father and mother or whether it was just because their personalities happened to blend harmoniously would be hard to say. The result, however, was that they found in one another a companionship which neither disparity of age nor the accident of relationship could disturb.
This appeared strange to some people for, outwardly, they were contrasts. Where Mary Cross was gruff, Michael was charming; where he argued, she was placid. In one thing only were they obviously of a single mind and that was in their mutual affection and admiration for each other. Michael respected his mother’s judgment on all things; in her eyes, he could do no wrong.
It was not surprising that the war hit Mary Cross hard.
By 1939, the memory of Michael’s father had grown even dimmer than the photograph of him in R.F.C. uniform which sat in an old-fashioned frame on the far corner of the piano in the Kirton cottage. Even if she tried, Mary Cross could not visualize Eric clearly; neither could she recall his voice, nor recapture, even for a second, any detail of their life together.
Michael was tall and fair, as his father had been, but there the resemblance ended so far as Mary was concerned. Unlike many widowed mothers, she had never been known to say that her son’s smile, or his mannerisms, or his character were like his father’s. Maybe she had known her husband so little that she would not have recognized likenesses, even had they existed. As it was, to her, Michael had never been anything but an individual—her son by some strange coincidence about which she remembered practically nothing, but a definite entity with a personality which owed nothing to anyone else, least of all to herself.
But September 1939 had stirred her memory. She remembered what war was like. That first air raid warning revived for her only too acutely the destruction of war. Michael was twenty-four at the time and working in Fleet Street.
All along Mary realized that he would go to war. They had discussed the prospects together so often during the previous year and she knew she wouldn’t try to stop him. The first time she saw him in uniform, it seemed as if not only her heart but her whole life had stopped. ‘Why, but why the R.A.F.?’ she asked herself again and again, but to Michael she only said:
“Well, it will give you invaluable experience if you really intend being a writer after the war.”
Michael trained in England—on bombers, as a rear gunner. They said he was too old to be a fighter pilot. During the Battle of Britain Mary wondered, for a brief moment, whether some kindly providence had perhaps guided him to Bomber Command. Later, she realized the irony of that thought.
The staff of Women’s Chat evacuated to the country. Mary let the flat in London because Michael preferred Kirton for his leaves. This meant a cross-country journey to her office where she would spend three nights a week in an uncomfortable hotel. Gradually the staff were called up or directed to more vital war work and Mary found herself editing the fashion section in addition to Aunt Jennifer’s page which became more and more pre-occupied with service women’s problems. In her spare moments she cooked and cleaned out the cottage at Kirton—domestic assistance being a thing of the past.
During most of the war, Mary Cross was overworked, but she would willingly have done twice as much again. Anything would have been better than lying awake listening to the R.A.F. going out, night after night, like some vociferous thunder storm, and then, in the early hours of the morning, returning one by one, limping like the uneven patter of summer rain.
However, she never complained. She never even talked about Michael unless she was asked first; but anyone with a son in the forces or a daughter away from home could come to her with their problems and be sure of sympathy and warm friendship.
To many it seemed almost a miracle that Michael Cross got through the war. Once he was missing for three months. Mary lived on the knowledge that his plane had come down over occupied France, and that every day R.A.F. crews were returning from there, via Spain, as Michael did eventually. Once he was wounded slightly. Mary could have wished it more serious. Then came a spell of training in Canada and eventually the Air Ministry.
“I’m too old for ops,” he told her, angry with the powers who could decree such nonsense, and Mary began to come alive again. He was demobilized quite soon after the cessation of hostilities with Germany.
Now he was back in Fleet Street, sub-editing and, in his spare time, writing like a maniac. Poems, short stories, a play and his first novel.
Mary gave him the flat in London, but would have been deeply hurt had he not spent week-ends at the cottage. Fortunately, it never occurred to him to do otherwise. Mary commuted to the office three times a week from Kirton.
The arrangements suited them both. Mary felt profound satisfaction that, so quickly, she and Michael had been able to resume the quiet flow of their lives, to seep themselves again in the richness of their companionship. She was aware that other people were less fortunate, that the acid of war had bitten deeply into too many lives. Even as ‘Aunt Jennifer,’ who now dealt almost exclusively with demobilization and re-settlement queries, she was sometimes startled at the problems confronting her readers. In some she detected a dangerous apathy to existing conditions and in others a too fanatic desire to go on fighting—anything and everything, without seeming reason or purpose.
Sometimes she became depressed because it seemed to her that the world, as she saw it, would never again appreciate the simple things of life. When the thought became too disturbing, she would withdraw into the security of her life with Michael and plant her feet more firmly in the soil of Kirton which was outwardly little changed by the war, being a village of simple tradition and no importance. Even the result of the General Election had not left its mark. The Conservative candidate for Dimstone was quietly elected.
“Besides,” she would tell her friends, half jokingly, “I’m getting to be an old woman now and if I prefer to walk backwards rather than in other directions, it’s really nobody’s concern but mine.”
It did, of course, occur to her at times that one day Michael would marry, and she was too cynical to imagine that a third person could enter their lives without unbalancing one of them. She did not welcome the thought. She knew she would no more like Michael’s wife than she had liked his girl friends, although she had approved of some.
As she sat, at ease, on the sheltered terrace bordering one side of the cottage, content because today was Friday and Michael would be at home this week-end, she tried to remember whether there was any girl he had gone about with whom she had instinctively liked at first sight. She was quite prepared to admit that her judgment of girls was poor—she’d always preferred boys—but even so she had to maintain that Michael’s choice had been on the whole rather appalling.
Luckily he hadn’t been very serious about any of them, and usually he let her know to what extent he was involved. Not that she imagined for an instant, that he’d told her about all of them or, for that matter, all about any of them. At a shrewd guess, she’d put her knowledge at about fifty per cent of the truth. It would only be dangerous when he kept ninety per cent to himself. Oh, well, perhaps it wouldn’t happen for a while.
The telephone rang and Mary went inside to answer it. It was Michael. She listened and said:
“No, dear, it won’t be any bother. I’ll expect you both about sevenish.”
Putting down the receiver, she thought, ‘That serves me right for harbouring uncharitable thoughts about harmless females!’ So Michael had run across Angela Worthing again, and now she was working at Little Copse. Mary hoped that he would not find it necessary to spend every week-end in her company, as he had once. She didn’t think he would. He’d worked Angela out of his system at least four years before the war started. It had lasted a year.
Mary remembered Angela a
s one of the girls she had definitely not approved of. For one thing, she was older than Michael, four or five years at least. He’d been in love with her, of course, and Mary could understand why. Angela was a very attractive girl with a lovely figure and waving dark hair which she wore in an untidy halo round her pale, oval face. She had good eyes, too, and a full, generous mouth. It would be interesting to see what the years, and the war, had done to her. Funny she hadn’t married.
The thought brought the scene back as if it had been yesterday. It was the one time she’d felt maternal towards Angela. Such an odd trio they’d made. Michael was getting over bronchitis in London at the time, and Angela a constant visitor at the flat. Mrs. Thrush had started it, of course—or rather, Mary had, by overhearing Mrs. Thrush’s comments to Mrs. Jones who did for the tenants in the flat above.
“That Miss Angela Worthing, she’s no better than she should be,” was Mrs. Thrush’s opinion, expressed very vocally one morning. Mrs. Thrush was Bloomsbury, with years of experience as daily woman in the neighbourhood.
Maxy was angry. She didn’t like hearing things like that said about Michael’s friends. Particularly by someone who obviously knew human nature as Mrs. Thrush did. Sitting on one side of Michael’s bed, watching him play picquet with Angela, Mary decided it was time someone told that young woman a few home truths for her own benefit.
In spite of the tweeds and tobacco, Mary could be as feline as any other woman. Once, after she’d been ill for a week, Michael said, “I was quite worried about you, Mother—you lost your tongue. It’s come back now, so I know you’re O.K. again.”
So she began, brightly, to discuss marriage. Angela had a number of men friends, but, apparently, no thoughts of marriage. The three of them were in the habit of bantering about the more serious of Angela’s admirers. Mary reviewed the current situation like an officer selecting a suitable candidate for promotion. Michael listened to his mother with amusement. Angela looked her most imperturbable.
Wine of Honour Page 2
