She expected her children to return to her as they had left her. Peter from the navy, Brian from the army and Daphne from the factory to which she’d been directed after she gave up her job as a land girl on old Blaker’s farm.
Moreover she had visualized this return as a combined operation with herself and her husband meeting the afternoon train from London and the children hanging out of a first-class carriage window, eager to be the first to see them on the platform. It was a lovely picture, misted with her tears and rosy with the port Sir James would bring up from the cellar and decant for the first family gathering round the dining-room table. There would be flowers and a huge joint and, somewhere, in a hazy background, flags. There must be flags to welcome them home. Ever since Lady Gurney had seen Mrs. Murphy’s cottage bedecked with the standards of the Allies and displaying a bold, hand-painted notice ‘Welcome to Maurice’ above the door, she had secretly planned flags for the children’s return.
And the children themselves would step out of their uniforms and overalls and put on the nice clothes they always wore before the war and everything would be just as it always had been, carefree and gay.
But nothing happened as Lady Gurney planned. Daphne came back after ‘D’ day to have her baby, and Kurt—the stranger with the dark eyes and foreign accent who had so suddenly become a member of the family—was killed. More than a year later, Peter turned up, unannounced and a little drunk, saying he’d lost his home; and then Brian arrived, but only to go away again almost at once.
At the back of her mind she still saw three children playing on a green lawn, while the voices of Mary and Peter argued above the head of a small, strange child with dark eyes who splashed rice pudding. She felt a little breathless and very old.
After lunch, in her husband’s study, Lady Gurney pottered. She had so much she wanted to discuss, but somehow her tangled thoughts would not be translated into the right words.
She knew that she was irritating him. She could tell it from the way he hunched himself into his chair and dodged her glance behind the Financial Times. Sometimes, she thought, it was a pity James had neither profession nor career, which the boys could have gone into. Something for Peter to do now instead of lolling about the house. She supposed it was because she and her husband had too much money when they married. There had been no reason for him to work, they’d been rich then. Now they were poor—however much he juggled with the Financial Times.
They were very poor, almost uncomfortably so. Sir James had moved their capital about, like an amateur chess player, experimenting with the possibilities of his Knight, popping it into new ventures and far-away countries. The ventures had turned out to be misses and the countries either changed their names, ceased to exist, or were invaded by other countries which Sir James had overlooked.
It didn’t really matter for Sir James and Lady Gurney, because their lives were nearly over, but there’d be no inheritances for the children. What with taxes which nobody could afford and the high price of living, the Manor was already run out of capital. Then there would be death duties and so on, until there’d be practically nothing for the children to live on after she and her husband were dead.
Daphne would have what little remained because of Ian. Kurt had left her nothing. It was all very unsatisfactory.
Lady Gurney sighed. Thank goodness the children had at least been well educated. They’d been to the most expensive schools and Peter and Brian had both got their ‘blues’ at Cambridge. That was worth something—or it used to be.
She knew in her heart that she wasn’t worrying about Brian. It was Peter, with his vagueness and lack of energy, who kept her awake at nights trying to think of some nice job he could go into, or some kind friend who would give him the right sort of introductions. Sir James didn’t appear to know anyone who was important now and Peter himself, once so popular with his well-off friends, seemed to be disinterested and incapable of making any efforts for himself.
She sighed again, more loudly this time.
Sir James Gurney stirred uncomfortably behind his paper. He didn’t want to listen to whatever his wife wished to talk about. Not because he wasn’t fond of her but because she had a maddening habit of asking him questions he didn’t know the answers to. He felt weary and longed to be left alone, warm and quiet in front of the log fire. His wife always worried. It never did any good—life went on just the same whether you worried or not. But because he was soft-hearted, because he loved her and hated to sense her distress, he said:
“What’s the matter, old girl?” in his most off-hand voice.
“Oh, James, it’s Peter. What shall we do about him?”
He rose from the arm-chair and went to fill his pipe from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece. He stood, round-shouldered, pressing the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with a long, white thumb. Very careful, very conscientious, with legs apart and his head bent so that only the baldness on top showed, not the loose, wrinkled skin of his neck nor the Adam’s apple bobbing above his too wide, soft collar.
“Why have we got to do anything, Agnes? He’s all right. After all, he did nearly six years in the Navy. Not bad for a chap who was thirty-five when he joined up. He’s earned his spell of rest.”
Lady Gurney, who was much shorter than her husband, put her head on one side and blinked up at him, rather like a budgerigar, in her yellow knitted suit.
“But, James, it was you who said you must talk to him about getting back to a job again.”
“Well, so I will, so I will. All in good time,” he replaced the lid on the tobacco jar and began to scratch at a box of matches. “He can always go back to the city, you know, my dear,” he continued between puffing and sucking at his pipe.
“But he can’t,” she twittered. “He sold up his Stock Exchange membership, and he’d have to start all over again.”
“Nonsense, my dear, we’ll find something for him to do. Don’t you worry yourself about him. We’ve got to give him a chance to look round and find his feet again. Something’ll turn up all right. It always does.” He straightened his shoulders and let his glance wander above her head and out of the window.
He didn’t want to go on talking about Peter. He didn’t want to think about his eldest son. There were some things which made him feel awkward and one was having a middle-aged son living at home. Last night, for instance, when the boy had come in drunk. It wasn’t pleasant. Thank goodness his mother had already gone to bed. She wouldn’t have understood that Peter hadn’t really meant all he’d said about unsuccessful parents, blaming them for not providing security for their children. Just a lot of alcoholic twaddle, but hurtful because it came from Peter. Besides, it was in bad taste.
His wife seemed to have forgotten what they were talking about. She was staring at the photographs above the mantelpiece. He followed her glance and felt comforted. There was something very secure about the group of young fellows sitting, stiffly upright, behind a foreground of silver cup perched precariously on a spindle legged table. A faded and yellow print, but a fine set of whiskers and muscle. Those were the days.
“I’m glad,” said Lady Gurney, cheerfully, “that you got rid of that moustache, James.” And she went up and straightened the old photograph affectionately. “And I’m glad,” she went on, inconsistently, “that we’ve had this little conference about Peter. I feel much better now that I know you are going to do something about him.”
She went across to her husband and he kissed her, absent-mindedly on the head.
“Now you run along, old dear, and stop bothering your head about a lot of silly nonsense.” He picked up the Financial Times and settled himself in front of the fire again.
She said:
“We’re having tea early because May’s going to Dimstone to the pictures this evening, but I’ll come and tell you when it’s ready.” Straightening a cushion here and a chair there, she made her way from the room.
Back in the drawing-room, Daphne Zarek was staring out of the lo
ng french windows. She heard her mother come into the room but made no attempt to acknowledge her presence.
“Hello, darling. Not taking Ian out this afternoon?” Lady Gurney used the voice her daughter had learned to hate. It meant ‘Aren’t you failing in your duty as a mother.’ She replied, dully,
“It’s pouring with rain.”
“Then we might,” suggested Lady Gurney brightly, “get on with those chair covers. I’ll get the sewing machine out.”
“Oh, God!”
“Darling, what’s the matter?”
“I’m bored, bored, bored!” Daphne turned desperately from the window. “I shall scream if nothing goes on happening in this damn awful place.”
“Daphne, my pet . . .” Lady Gurney felt unable to cope with this outburst. It was so unlike Daphne not to be calm and silent about everything. Coming on top of Peter’s lethargy, it was almost more than she could bear.
“It’s no good staring at me like that, Mother. I am bored. Sometimes I feel I can’t breathe in this house. If only I could get away for a week—for a day even.”
“But there’s Ian and—”
“I know. Oh, God, I know. Don’t tell me it’s a lovely home for him. Don’t remind me that he’s got a beautiful nursery and a safe garden to play in and good country air. I know it all, and I know it’s true and that I’m lucky and he’s lucky and everything’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But that doesn’t stop me wanting to go away sometimes.”
“Well, you could go to Aunt Isabel for a change, darling, I’d look after Ian while you had a holiday,” Lady Gurney said placatingly.
“But I don’t want to go to Aunt Isabel. I want to live. I’m twenty-nine and I still want to live. I love Ian, better than anything else in the world, but that doesn’t stop me wanting life as well.”
There was a silence between them. Daphne, glowing and fretful, her mother hurt, but not defeated.
“And what, Daphne, are you proposing to do about it?” It was mean, it was the sort of question Lady Gurney would have hated to have been asked. She knew, as she said the words, that Daphne would go sulky. She watched the features on the young face set into well-known lines. She wanted to put her arms round her daughter and tell her not to worry, to go out and have a good time, to do what she wanted to do. But she didn’t. It wasn’t like before the war when it was so easy to give in to the children, to let them indulge in the things they enjoyed. Nowadays everything was difficult. It wasn’t just the question of money, but war had brought restrictions and responsibilities which could somehow not be got rid of easily. War had brought Ian to Daphne.
Ten years ago, Lady Gurney would have said to her daughter, “Go abroad for a holiday, go for a cruise, go where you want,” and she would have engaged a nurse for Ian and all would have been well. Those sort of things were no longer possible. Instead she looked at her daughter and said again:
“Well, what about it?”
Daphne shrugged her shoulders.
“Nothing. I’m all right, really. It’s just this eternal house, with Peter slopping ash all over the place and May looking daggers whenever Ian upsets anything or crawls over something she’s cleaned. And having no money and being completely untrained to get a job of any sort. Oh, just everything. At least during the war, we had the peace to look forward to. Now there’s damn all to look forward to. I suppose I’d better settle down to living in the past like Laura Watson. To hear her talk you’d think there’d never been a better life than the army.” She laughed in a mocking way.
Lady Gurney said:
“Peter will be getting a job soon, and May’s just overtired like a lot of other people are after the war, and Laura Watson’s very happy to be home again with her father, so let’s get on with those covers, shall we?”
Her daughter laughed, this time without bitterness.
“All right, Mother; thank goodness you at least haven’t changed. Where’s that damned sewing machine?”
And as they cut and tacked and machined the new covers for the drawing-room chairs, Daphne seemed satisfied to talk about Ian and how wonderful he was, but all the time, Lady Gurney was thinking, ‘I never thought the children being home was going to be as difficult as this. It isn’t a bit as I’d planned it.’
* * * *
For years Laura Watson had fought for freedom without ever having experienced it, either emotionally or by upbringing. But now she was, in effect, going to enjoy a week of it.
To be asked by the station-master on Kirton platform where she was going, for how long and whether she would stay with friends or at an hotel was something Laura was used to since the days she first went to boarding school. To a lesser extent, and subject to the station-master’s acute sense of security, it had happened when she was in khaki and departed from leave. That it was a violation of her privacy and an infringement of her independence never occurred to her, for she had been brought up to disclose to those in authority her everyday actions. In his own way, the station-master represented authority to Laura: he wore a uniform and had the power to question the validity of her railway ticket.
So she answered his questions as politely as she had answered them a hundred times before.
“Going no further than London, Miss Watson?” He swayed a little on his heels with the toes of his well-polished black shoes overlapping the edge of the platform.
“Not this time, Mr. Brent.” Laura wished he would not stand on the edge like that. It made her nervous, reminding her of her own childhood and her mother’s voice gloating on the awful fate which would befall anyone who overbalanced before an incoming train.
“Now let me see,” said Mr. Brent, shuffling his feet even further over until it seemed impossible that he should still remain standing on the platform, “this must be your first journey since you came out of the army?”
“Yes, it’ll be my first visit to London as a civilian,” Laura replied and watched, fascinated, as Mr. Brent performed an acrobatic volte face which brought his heels, this time, to rest on nothing, some two feet above the railway lines.
“You’re not leaving us for long, I hope, miss?”
“Only a week. D’you think the train’s going to be crowded?”
“Can’t tell these days. Depends whether there’s a draft of troops disembarked up North.” Even now, with the war a thing of the past, Mr. Brent could never bring himself to mention a port by name. He continued in a low voice, “As you probably know, Miss, they send all the lads to the dispersal centres nearest their homes to be demobbed. That’s why we get a full train to London when there’s a draft in.” He rocked precariously on his feet and Laura wondered, in a moment of panic, whether he had forgotten just how near the edge he was. But she kept silent. You didn’t point things out to people in authority.
“Going to stay with your relatives, I suppose?” Mr. Brent rubbed the slight stubble on his chin with a bent forefinger and surveyed, sourly, the efforts of a small boy to molest an empty chocolate machine at the far end of the platform.
“No. I’m going to spend a week at my club to do some shopping and see a few shows, I hope.”
The train was rounding the bend beneath the bridge and, to Laura’s intense relief, Mr. Brent stepped briskly forward and picked up her suitcases.
“I’ll see you’re fixed up with a seat, Miss Watson. Mustn’t neglect our old customers!” He laughed inordinately at his own wit and Laura followed him along the platform as the train drew up. It seemed suddenly that a great number of people were getting on at Kirton—probably they were from the Training Centre at Little Copse. Laura thought she saw Angela Worthing at the far end of the platform with a man who looked like Peter Gurney. The train was crowded, but Mr. Brent managed to find her a seat in a third-class carriage. He was so apologetic about this that she got the impression he must think she had a first-class ticket; she hadn’t, but somehow she couldn’t make up her mind to tell him this now. She went through an acute moment of embarrassment wondering whether s
he should tip him for helping her with her luggage; she only had a sixpenny bit and a ten-shilling note on her. Neither would have been justified and, just in time, she discovered that what she had thought was a florin in her pocket was really only a button off her coat. In a flurry, she couldn’t remember whether her father tipped the station-master or not. How stupid of her to forget a thing like that. Luckily Mr. Brent ended her discomfiture by touching his cap, wishing her a good journey and disappearing from the corridor in a combined operation worthy of a more appreciative audience.
Seated between a man in a neat blue suit and a harassed-looking mother with a baby and a small girl sprawling about her, Laura began to assimilate the other occupants of the carriage from behind the barrier of self-consciousness which always encompassed her in the presence of strangers. In the corner opposite was a W.A.A.F. in an incredibly faded and spotted uniform, her bleached hair carefully bunched above her forehead and straggling into untidy curls round her clean starched collar. She looked a baby behind a façade of lipstick and mascara and was identical with thousands of other girls of her generation, a monstrous regiment of maidens who had marched through six years of war: good girls, bad girls, clever girls and stupid girls, who remembered little before the reign of Bevin.
Laura sighed. She would have liked to have been the W.A.A.F. and to have begun the peace in her early twenties.
In the other corner was an elderly man in a city suit with an appliance for the deaf festooned between his waistcoat pocket and his right ear. Between him and the W.A.A.F. were two soldiers in battle-dress. They had sunburned faces and shrewd eyes. Healthy men with powerful limbs, they exuded an atmosphere of aggressive cheerfulness.
The man in the blue suit leaned forward and offered a cigarette to the W.A.A.F. She accepted with a smile that made Laura forget the affectation of the bleached hair and scarlet lips. The man pointed out of the window and said:
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