Camomile Lawn

by Mary Wesley

  But when the holidays fell due Sophy travelled to London with her school to be met by whoever Polly persuaded to meet her, spend the night and catch the train to Penzance. By the time Monika met her at the station a metamorphosis would have taken place. She would arrive at the house on the cliff as shy and reticent as ever, finding it possible to talk to Monika and the Floyers but impossible to communicate with Richard. For his part Richard seemed to find this natural and would wait till she was back at school to resume the intimate terms they arrived at on paper.

  At the end of an Easter term it was Tony who met her train.

  ‘Hullo, Sophy. Polly is away, she asked me to meet you.’

  ‘Where has she gone?’

  ‘I don’t know, somewhere to do with her job. Walter is in London on leave, he’s very fed up at missing her. He was still asleep when I looked in before coming to the station. How is school?’

  ‘Horrible. I shall be glad to see Walter. How is he?’

  ‘Tired and fed up. Not only is Polly away but Calypso’s gone tripping up to Scotland, so he can’t see her either.’

  ‘Whatever for? She hates Scotland.’

  ‘She had all her windows blown in so she went up there while the workmen put them back. Said she had a job to do, something to do with Hector.’

  ‘She’d never put herself out for Hector.’

  ‘You know a lot for your age.’ Tony spoke reprovingly. Criticism of Calypso from this child, however apt, was galling. Arriving outside Polly’s house he put her suitcase on the doorstep and rang the bell. ‘You all right if I leave you? I have to be at my fire station in a few minutes.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Sophy watched him go, feeling ungrateful. Walter opened the door.

  ‘I was just going to get breakfast. Are you hungry?’ He kissed her heartily.

  ‘I had mine before leaving school.’

  ‘You could do with another. Did he tell you the girls are both away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Terrible. I get the first leave for ages and no sister, no cousin.’ He led the way down to the kitchen. ‘Like fried potatoes?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And a spot of bacon? Right, you sit down out of the way while I cook. D’you think they’d mind in Cornwall if I came down? There’s nothing for me here.’

  ‘They’d love it. I would, anyway. Monika will be pleased and Uncle Richard.’

  ‘Really think so? I don’t want to impose. Where is Aunt Helena, somewhere with Max, or don’t you know about them?’

  ‘Of course I know. I’m not a baby any more.’

  ‘No,’ said Walter, ‘you’re not, you seem quite a bit bigger. Right then, we’ll catch the night train. I haven’t been down since those last summer hols.’ He dished out fried potatoes and bacon. ‘You get stuck into that and then you can bring me up to date with all the changes down there.’

  The night train was unbearably crowded. They squeezed into a carriage full of sailors travelling to Plymouth, who filled the carriage with cigarette smoke and drank from beer bottles. Walter pushed Sophy into a corner and squeezed in beside her. The blacked-out train chugged steadily, stopping at dimly-lit stations where the guard shouted the names of the towns. Walter dozed while Sophy sat wakeful, watching the sailors and listening to their talk. She was too uncomfortable to sleep and there was not enough light to read. When she prised a chink in the blind she could see the moon with clouds racing across it. At Taunton more people crowded in, standing in the corridor, smoking, muttering, shifting from foot to foot. Posters in the dim light said, ‘Be Like Dad Keep Mum’. Walter fought his way out of the carriage to find a buffet. The train went on again and Sophy became anxious, fearing he had been unable to get on again. Her anxiety was reaching fever pitch when there was a jostling in the corridor and he appeared, elbowing his way, carrying a cup of tea in each hand, stepping over the legs of their fellow occupants.

  ‘Thought this might keep us alive.’ Sophy took the cup gratefully. ‘Afraid a lot’s slopped.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘Filthy stuff, really.’ He squeezed beside her. ‘It’ll be funny to be there without the cousins. We always came together.’

  ‘I’m your cousin.’

  ‘So you are.’ Walter put his empty cup under the seat. ‘You’ve always seemed too little to be a cousin.’

  ‘I’m larger now.’

  ‘Much.’ He put his arm round her. ‘That comfortable? It won’t be the same, no Oliver to boss us, no Calypso, no twins. Lovely times, weren’t they? Do you remember those last holidays before this began, d’you remember the Terror Run? Weren’t you bitten by a snake or something and crying in Calypso’s arms?’ He remembered Calypso’s expression of anxiety and exasperation. The reflected light from the sea had made her eyes quite a new colour. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I wasn’t bitten, it was something else.’

  ‘And that other game we were going to play, we drew lots. What was it? To kill somebody, something like that, one of Oliver’s barmiest ideas.’

  ‘He said all of us were capable of killing, but he cancelled it.’

  ‘Well, as things turned out we are at war and doing our best.’ Walter with his arm round Sophy felt dozy. Their companions in the carriage were snoring, mouths open, sprawling. Sophy gave a loud sob. ‘Hey, what’s the matter? Tell old Walter. ’Ere, ’ere, have a handkerchief.’

  ‘I tried to tell Polly but she didn’t take it in. I told her in an air raid, we were under the kitchen table. I don’t even know if she heard.’

  ‘Tell me, then, I’m all ears.’ Walter gave a colossal yawn, nearly dislocating his jaw. ‘I nearly dislocated my jaw. What did you say?’

  ‘I pushed him over.’

  ‘Pushed who? Pushed over what?’

  ‘The coastguard. He used to hide behind a bush on the cliff path. He had a pink thing—it looked like a snake—in his pocket.’

  ‘Oh.’ Walter was waking slowly. ‘A flasher.’

  ‘What’s a flasher?’

  ‘Never mind, go on, ears flapping. I’m awake, tell. Stop crying, do, you snuffle so I can’t hear. Jumped out from behind a bush, did he?’ Walter held her quietly, his eyes roving over the sleeping sailors.

  ‘He didn’t exactly jump, he just appeared from behind the bushes. You know where they are, near the rocks?’

  ‘Yes, go on.’

  ‘Well, that’s what frightened me when we did the Terror Run, and made me scream.’

  ‘I remember.’ He remembered Sophy hysterical, Oliver slapping her face.

  ‘When it happened again I tried to push past him and he went over.’ Sophy’s voice was almost inaudible. ‘He was found in the sea, I was ill and the police came and took Monika and Max off to be interned.’

  ‘What had they got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. Oh, Walter, what shall I do? D’you believe me?’

  Walter said nothing, holding her close while the train chugged slowly, the sailors slept and in the corridor a party of soldiers began singing mournfully but in tune.

  ‘They must be Welsh, they are singing in tune.’ He rocked her gently, his chin touching the top of her head. What silky hair. Polly said Chinese. He felt the tension slip out of her body and knew she slept. He wondered whether to say anything. The subject is beyond me, he thought.

  ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ Sophy spoke sleepily.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Polly didn’t.’ She slid back to sleep. Walter sat holding her as the train drew into Plymouth. The sailors woke, gathered their luggage and lurched off the train, their places taken by newcomers.

  The train carried on, stopping at every station through Cornwall, and still Sophy slept, until at last he heard the cry, ‘St Erth change for St Ives’, let up the blind and it was early morning. ‘Wake up, Sophy, nearly there.’ The sun sparkled on Mount’s Bay and St Michael’s Mount rose from the waves. ‘Wake up, wake up, yo
u are home. Gosh, I’m looking forward to this leave.’

  ‘Isn’t the sea lovely? I hope Monika’s there to meet us.’ Sophy combed her hair, tightened the laces of her shoes, looked out at the sea with her oriental eyes. ‘I could eat a horse,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Some people pull legs better than others,’ Walter muttered to himself as he lifted their suitcases off the rack. ‘A word with Polly is what I need.’

  ‘What was so dreadful,’ said Polly to Iris and James, driving to Max’s funeral all those years later, ‘was that I was in Portugal when Walter had his last leave. I never saw him again. If I’d known I’d have got out of it somehow and seen him.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t have known he was going to be killed,’ said Iris, who had heard her mother say the same thing so often she knew it by heart. ‘You couldn’t have had last words or anything, as you didn’t know.’

  ‘It taught me to treat everybody’s leave as perhaps the last. He might have wanted to tell me something. They said he had something on his mind. We only had each other, our parents had been killed by a bomb.’

  ‘I know,’ Iris had often heard this too, ‘and Helena and Max arrived with a taxi full of flowers from Covent Garden.’

  ‘I bore you as Uncle Richard bored us.’ Polly was resentful.

  ‘Oh no, Ma, you don’t, it’s just—’

  But drowning in the North Atlantic three weeks after his leave, Walter had a vivid recollection of Sophy weeping in the train. He opened his mouth to shout for Polly and drowned that much quicker.

  Twenty-four

  IT WAS CALYPSO AND Brian Portmadoc who were the first to hear about Walter. They had dined together. Instead of inviting him back to her house, as he had hoped, Calypso said she must go and tell Polly what she had been doing in Scotland.

  ‘Won’t it wait?’ Brian longed for Calypso’s bed with Calypso in it.

  ‘No, I have to see her.’

  They took a bus which crawled through the blackout. Calypso rang the bell and waited impatiently. ‘I must get her to give me a key, everyone else seems to have one.’

  The door was opened by a slight dark girl with curly hair.

  ‘Who are you?’ Calypso stepped inside, pulling Brian after her.

  ‘Elizabeth. I’m a friend of Walter’s. You must be Calypso.’ The girl was shy and awkward. ‘He gave me a key, he said Polly wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘She’s away somewhere. Walter said—’

  ‘And where is he?’

  ‘He’s gone back. He was on leave a few weeks ago but I—’

  ‘You a girl friend?’

  ‘Well, I was, I—’

  ‘What are you doing here if you’re a “was”?’

  ‘We made it up. We talked on the telephone, he said to come here to Polly. Anyway, what business—’

  ‘Oh, it’s no business of mine, I just want to see Polly.’

  ‘Oh.’ The girl called Elizabeth looked discomfited by Calypso’s hard tone.

  ‘Any clue as to when she’ll be back?’ Calypso began looking through a pile of letters addressed to Polly on the hall table. ‘What’s this telegram?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Might be urgent.’ Calypso opened the telegram and read it. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Oh,’ and looked at Brian and the girl called Elizabeth. ‘He’s been killed,’ she said. ‘Why him? Why not somebody nasty? Did you love him?’ she asked the girl, who gave a moan, turned and ran upstairs. Calypso watched her go.

  ‘Let’s find a drink.’ Calypso started down to the kitchen. Brian searched, she stood by the table.

  ‘Weren’t their parents killed?’

  ‘Yes. Buck up with that drink.’

  ‘So Polly’s alone?’ He found some whisky.

  ‘Not exactly alone but no family now. Thanks.’ She took a gulp of whisky. ‘How bloody, how absolutely bloody.’

  ‘That poor girl.’

  ‘She’ll find someone else. What’s her name, anyway?’

  ‘Elizabeth.’

  ‘Elizabeth what?’

  Above them feet pattered through the hall, the front door opened and slammed shut. They heard high heels clatter away in the dark.

  ‘We shan’t know now.’ Calypso swallowed whisky in a gulp.

  ‘Was Walter? Did you—’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Wish I had. Can’t now. Oh, bloody, bloody hell, why him? He never hurt a fly. I think you’d better go, Brian, I’ll stay here, she might get back any moment. Awful for her to be alone.’

  ‘Can’t I—’

  ‘No. Listen, if I give you my key will you fetch Fling for me? Bring him here. There’s a dear. Then I’ll be here if she gets back.’

  ‘But I hoped I—’

  ‘I know you did, but I wasn’t going to anyway. I meant to tell you but you were so nice at dinner. Please, Brian, just fetch my dog.’

  ‘Clothes?’ He swallowed, trying to conceal his disappointment.

  ‘I’ll manage with Polly’s.’

  ‘I’ve got to go away on a course tomorrow.’

  ‘I know, you told me. Not much luck tonight for either of us.’

  When he had gone Calypso re-read the telegram from the Admiralty. She noted it was dated four days earlier. ‘How bleak,’ she murmured, ‘how bleak. Already four days.’ She sifted through the letters and found a sheet of paper with a note in Walter’s handwriting. ‘I’ve given a key to a girl called Elizabeth, be kind to her for a night or two. Have been in Cornwall, remind me to tell you about Sophy. See you next leave.’ Near the letters the girl had left her key. Calypso put it in her bag. She wondered how many girls had loved Walter. He had been secretive about love affairs. She thought of him in Able Seaman’s uniform at her wedding, going off with Oliver, drunk. Where now was Oliver and what doing and for that matter Hector, what was he up to?

  When Brian came back she thanked him for bringing Fling.

  ‘Can’t I come in?’

  ‘Brian, no! Can’t you see I want to be alone?’

  ‘But you weren’t in love with him.’

  ‘He’s part of my life, my cousin. I feel robbed.’

  ‘But you weren’t in love, it’s not the same. That poor girl who ran off was.’

  ‘I don’t know what love is. Just go, Brian. Please. Leave me with Fling.’

  When he was gone she fetched some blankets, lit the fire in the drawing room and settled herself with Fling on the sofa. By the light of a table lamp the room looked dusty, deserted by her aunt and uncle snatched by a wanton bomb. In this room there had been parties, children’s parties with games, impromptu dances, the rugs rolled up, dancing in Walter or Oliver’s arms to the gramophone. She remembered laughter and cries of pain when the boys trod on her feet, cocktail parties as they grew older, windows open on hot summer evenings. Now it was dead and dusty. She would wait for Polly.

  Drawing the blankets round her, holding the dog close, she found herself wishing that Hector was there. He could help Polly, he would do it much better than she. She was surprised at her thoughts, and began to think back to the week she had just spent in Scotland and the friend she had made, of some of the things she had been told about Hector, aspects of his life he had been at pains to conceal. She had meant to spend the evening talking to Polly about herself, and was irritated that instead she must stand by for Polly’s grief, put her own needs aside. Sleepy, she tried to keep awake, wondering if it would have been better if Hector had been killed or Oliver or the twins. Oliver loved her, she enjoyed his adoration. Hector? She would have his money whether he lived or died. The twins seemed since the war to have lapsed in their adoration and Walter, too. She tried to think of Oliver dead instead of Walter and smiled sleepily, remembering him saying of Hector, ‘I hope he gets killed.’ She thought she could do without them all. Cuddling Fling close she laid her head back and closed her eyes.

  Polly was at her feet when she woke, holding the telegram. Their eyes met.

  ‘I stayed to be here whe
n you got back.’ She sat up.

  ‘Thank you.’ Polly was very still.

  ‘Where have you been? You are all sunburned.’

  ‘Portugal. Lisbon. It was lovely and hot.’

  ‘Your job?’

  ‘Yes. It won’t happen again. It seemed an opportunity. My boss needed me. I’m not supposed to talk about it.’