Camomile Lawn

by Mary Wesley

  For weeks after they left she worried and mourned in agony. Brought up in the conventional mould of her class, nothing had prepared her for the position in which she found herself. She grew thin and short-tempered, she made mistakes at work, she was sent for by her boss.

  ‘Are you ill?’ He eyed her with care.

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Worried by something? I don’t want to pry.’ He looked away.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Missing your parents, your brother, it’s hard for you—’

  ‘No, I’m glad they—I’m glad they are—well, they would only interfere—I—’ She looked at her boss with loathing.

  ‘I think you had better take some leave.’ In love with a married man, no doubt. ‘Go somewhere quiet. You like Cornwall, don’t you?’

  ‘Not there. God, no.’

  ‘Try Dartmoor. Do you know it? No? Well, go and walk on a bit that hasn’t got troops training in it. Walk yourself into a coma and see what your subconscious comes up with.’

  Polly permitted herself a brief expression of surprise.

  ‘Didn’t think of me reading Freud and Jung, did you? Well, go to Newton Abbot, take a taxi and—here, I’ll write it down—stay in this pub. Can you ride?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you’re tired of walking you can hire a horse, the landlord has several. I’ll bet you come up with the answer after ten days or so. Go tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She took the slip of paper and left him. He wondered whether she was pregnant, couldn’t quite ask her. Married men were just as potent as bachelors.

  Polly left the office, leaving her work mates jealous and irritated. ‘She’s his pet, he took her to Portugal. Why not me? I speak the language.’

  ‘Oh, shut up. She came back to find her brother had been killed.’

  ‘Really? She never said—’

  ‘Somebody who knows a girl friend of his told me, a girl called Elizabeth.’

  ‘Her mother and father were killed, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, earlier on. Bad luck.’

  ‘I don’t know, she’s got their money and house. Nice, in a way. I should like it—my family are always interfering with my life.’

  ‘My mother’s so busy she never bothers. If my bowels are working and I’m not pregnant she’s happy.’

  ‘There.’ Polly changed gear as they reached the top of the hill. ‘I love this view. The promised land—’ The rolling hills of Dartmoor lay ahead stretching to the horizon in the west.

  ‘Why don’t we take the road across the moor, and picnic up there?’ Iris leant over from the back seat. ‘Give the old boy a run.’ At the word ‘run’ the mongrel stood up on the front seat, wagging his tail.

  ‘It’s longer,’ said James, ‘but beautiful. Have we time?’

  ‘The funeral is not until tomorrow.’

  ‘We always miss the moor, we are always in such a hurry. Do you know it, Ma?’

  ‘Not really. I spent a few days’ leave there in the war. Walking and riding.’

  ‘Sounds nice. Where did you go?’

  ‘It was somewhere between Haytor and Manaton. I’ll try and find it. Sit down,’ she said to the dog. ‘I must concentrate.’

  Later, sitting in the sun, their backs to a rock, they ate their lunch, munching brown bread, cheese and pickles, gulping wine. The dog ran joyously in the bracken, leaping up to see over the golden fronds, bouncing high. They could see his tail in the waving fern. The autumn sun was warm on their faces.

  ‘This is lovely.’ Iris lay back, stretching her legs, lifting her face to the sun. ‘Why don’t we come here oftener?’

  ‘Always in a rush to reach Cornwall.’ James lay propped on his elbow, a mug of wine in his hand. Two years younger than his sister, he had much the same colouring: chestnut hair, but whereas Iris’s eyes were brown his were green like Polly’s. His teeth too were out of kilter.

  ‘Who did you come here with?’

  ‘I came alone. I was at a low ebb—’

  ‘Why?’ James looked interested. His mother seldom spoke of her private life.

  ‘When was this?’ Iris enquired casually, afraid of stemming any slight reminiscence.

  ‘I walked,’ said Polly in recollection. ‘I walked across these moors and clambered over that tor over there. I was trying to tire myself so that I would sleep. I had not been sleeping, it was in the war, I was worried. I had to make a decision.’ Brother and sister exchanged a glance. ‘I thought—’ Polly was speaking now as though to strangers. ‘I thought I had to give them up, that I could not marry one and leave the other. I thought that if one of them was killed the decision would be made for me. I was unhappy. Girls like me were brought up to be respectable. The atmosphere of the war shook that, but the shaking hurt. People like Calypso did not seem to worry, but I wonder. I’ve never known Calypso deeply, she won’t allow it. There were dozens of girls who went on being virtuous, but we broke out.’

  Polly put out a hand to stroke the dog who had come back to join them. ‘Good boy. Having a nice time?’ Iris and James said nothing, looking away from their mother across the moor, purple and brown in the distance.

  ‘Then I hired a horse and rode. I could get further into the moor. I rode right across there.’ Polly pointed. ‘I picked my way round that very rocky tor and not terribly far on the other side there was a moorland farm, green fields fenced in by stone walls around the top of a valley with a stream at the bottom. Emerald fields, blue sky, larks singing, I particularly remember the larks. Then suddenly round a corner came a herd of llamas, white against the sky. My horse reared up terrified, the llamas spat, the horse bolted, I lost my stirrups, the horse jinxed, I fell off.’

  ‘Llamas!’ James and Iris were laughing. ‘Llamas? Why did you never tell us? What were they doing there?’

  ‘Evacuated from the Paignton Zoo, I heard later.’ Polly stroked the dog’s head, her eyes on the distant tor, now in sunlight, now in shade, as clouds coming up from the west blocked the sun. ‘I was concussed. A farmer found me and brought me back. They put me in the cottage hospital where the people were kind. They didn’t know about the llamas, they thought I had D.T.s or something. The doctor found it was true, the llamas were there, only nobody knew, nobody could have foreseen me on a horse, could they?’

  ‘I should have thought—’

  ‘It was wartime. People were so tucked into their little lives they didn’t necessarily know what was going on in the next parish. That’s why I often think the Germans who say they did not know about the concentration camps may be telling the truth. Anyway—’ She gently pulled the dog’s ears as he gazed dreamily into her face.

  ‘Anyway?’ suggested Iris, almost whispering.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Polly, ‘I found I could talk to the doctor. I told him my dilemma. He was a nice man, kind.’ Polly thought back to the cottage hospital bed. Iris and James exchanged glances of exasperation as she paused. ‘He did not give me advice. He sat on my bed and talked about Nepal. He told me about polyandry, he had been on some expedition there. Then one morning he said I was well enough to go back to London and—’

  ‘And?’ Iris sighed, drawing out the word.

  ‘He shook hands with me and said, “What you are about to do is not illegal.” He had guessed that I would not give up either. So,’ Polly looked at her son and daughter for the first time since she began her tale. ‘So that’s how you two came about. Now,’ she said, standing up, ‘I must pee, then we must push on.’ She walked away behind some rocks.

  ‘I suppose it would be too much to ask which of us is whose child, or whether one or both?’ said James to his sister.

  ‘Much too much. There are permutations. I don’t believe she knows. We have discussed this often; we will never get any further. I too must pee.’ Iris waded away into the bracken. James collected the debris of their meal, packing the remains into the basket. Polly came back, casting her shadow acros
s him as he knelt. He looked at her and her heart lurched at how like he was to the twins. He stood up and kissed her.

  ‘Greedy.’ His voice was full of affection.

  ‘That’s what they all said.’

  ‘What did they say?’ Iris came back, pulling her sweater down over her lean hips.

  ‘That I was greedy and selfish.’

  ‘Good job, too.’ Not denying, Iris gave her mother a quick kiss on the cheek, adding, ‘We don’t think so.’

  ‘There’s a storm brewing, look at that sky.’ James pointed westward. ‘Funeral weather. I wonder who besides us will make it. I suppose,’ he said, ‘if you had married one of them you would have made everybody miserable.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s good of you to tell us even a little. I suppose you think now we are middle-aged it’s—’

  ‘Middle-aged?’ Polly protested. ‘Hardly.’

  ‘I’m nearly thirty-’

  ‘I don’t know when middle-age is. Look at Helena, nearly ninety, her middle-age must have come pretty late.’ Iris packed the picnic basket in among the luggage.

  ‘That generation was tough. Yours, too.’

  ‘Tough, greedy, selfish, all that,’ said Polly lightly. ‘We were under stress, people react differently under stress. We had an awful lot of fun—’

  ‘And funny adventures. Why did you never tell us about the llamas?’

  ‘It was private.’ Polly started the car. ‘Private,’ and they knew she was not referring to the llamas.

  ‘Was there a great hullabaloo among your stuffy relations?’ Iris had often wondered.

  ‘They did not notice for ages. Then it had been going on for so long when they did, other people were so much more interesting. Calypso captured attention, and Monika. Then there was the Rectory’s attitude and, oh, I don’t know, somehow or other they were all aware and used to it before it occurred to them to be shocked. Nobody was hurt, so why bother?’

  ‘I daresay it was your craftiness.’

  ‘Perhaps it was. Yes, quite likely it was that.’

  ‘A loner?’

  ‘In some ways. Mind you, Calypso is a loner and Sophy turned out a super loner. It was our rebellion against our upbringing.’

  ‘And you had fun.’ James, lolling on the back seat, enjoyed the view.

  ‘Yes,’ said his mother, ‘we certainly did.’

  ‘Look, lightning.’ Iris pointed ahead. ‘And it’s going to pour.’

  ‘Sophy used to tell us about autumn storms when we were young. The wind howling and waves crashing into the cliff and heavy sheets of rain. I hope we don’t all catch our deaths and join Max.’

  ‘Wasn’t he a great womanizer?’ Iris, brought up on a legend, sought the truth.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. In trouble some men reach for the bottle; Max reached for the nearest girl, and if the girl was in trouble he was a great consoler. No, I wouldn’t say he was a womanizer, just busy.’ Polly, driving into the storm, smiled reminiscently.

  ‘Did he ever console you?’ James dared question.

  ‘I didn’t say so.’ Brother and sister smiled at one another.

  ‘It will be interesting to see whether anybody turns up in this ghastly weather. Look at it!’

  The rain, slanting from the west, poured on to the windscreen. The dog got down off the seat and crouched under the dashboard while Polly, surprised, suddenly remembered a Sunday afternoon during the invasion of Normandy when Max, finding her alone, had led her to bed and made love to her, assuaging her pent-up anxieties with skill and affection. ‘I do this, dear Polly, for the twins’ sake. You worry and I worry for Monika and Helena. Worry makes me what you call randy with Monika and Helena. Alas they shut up shop. You open the legs, nicht?’ Polly, increasing the speed of the screen-wiper, laughed joyously in her sixties.

  ‘What’s the joke?’

  ‘I was thinking back to the Normandy landings—’

  ‘The twins were there, weren’t they?’

  ‘Indeed they were. I was worried sick.’

  ‘Cause for laughter?’ asked Iris, puzzled.

  ‘Max cheered me up. His genius was to make everybody feel better. You should know, you’ve been to his concerts.’

  ‘You weren’t laughing as though you remembered a concert—’

  ‘What else could it be—’ Iris muttered so that only her brother could hear. They smiled complicitly on the back seat, amused by their mother and her life.

  ‘And what was Max worrying about? His career rocketed during the war.’ Iris tried to visualize the white-haired old man, whose funeral they were about to attend, in bed with her mother.

  ‘He had plenty to worry about. His career went marvellously but the war was agony for him. He worried about Monika worrying, he was nagged by fear for Pauli. He hardly hoped he would ever see him again. He used to talk about him and what a pianist he would be if he survived.’

  ‘How much did people know?’

  ‘Rumours. News trickling through via neutral countries. If we’d known the size of the horrors we couldn’t have borne it. Refugees like Max used to hear things from people who got letters through Switzerland or Sweden. Max always played better when he’d heard some ghastly rumour. Sorrow fed his genius, his emotions went to his bow.’ Polly paused, peering ahead.

  ‘And his balls.’ James filled the pause.

  ‘To be honest, yes.’ Polly’s mouth twitched. ‘This is hardly a suitable recollection of the dead.’

  ‘You so rarely talk to us about your private self, we enjoy it.’

  ‘I thought we were talking about Max.’

  ‘In connection with you.’

  ‘We were all interconnected.’ Polly’s tone indicated the end of the conversation, such as it was. She kept her eyes on the road and the driving rain, thinking that tapes and records would never replace the tall thin man who had once played for her in the basement kitchen when he had news of the death of a great friend. ‘They say he died in a hospital, that is what they say, but I hear they are gassing thousands of people—’

  ‘I cannot believe it,’ she had exclaimed in disgust, ‘it is too revolting.’ He had taken his violin and played so piercingly sadly that she had wept for his friend, whose name he had not told her, and on that occasion it was she who had reached for him.

  ‘You sound a caring group,’ said Iris, Polly’s daughter, who concerned herself with good works to assuage her conscience, which had nothing to be guilty about, she having been born good.

  ‘Not caring enough, as was proved with Calypso. Not that it wasn’t her fault, a more secretive character it would be hard to come by.’

  ‘I wonder whether she will turn up by the grave?’ James spoke enquiringly.

  ‘Hamish is driving Helena down, so it looks unlikely,’ said Iris.

  ‘Hamish wants the glory of bringing the headmistress,’ said her brother, who had offered and been refused. ‘Besides, he has the best car.’

  Thirty

  HELENA LOOKED FORWARD TO the end of Richard’s dancing lessons. A gleam at the end of the tunnel of boredom now shaped her days. True, he despatched the empty hampers from Paddington and fetched back the full ones. True, he was out every day lunching at his club, where he watched men younger than himself now high ranking, men he had served with in the Great War. True, he stayed out most days until dark, but he always came back in time for tea at five and stayed in from then on to talk to her, if she would listen, to Max, if he was home, and tirelessly to Max’s musical friends, who frequently stayed to supper, sampling the pâtés, compotes and cooked meats with fresh vegetables with which Monika stuffed the hampers. Her ample supply of eggs and butter assured Helena of many a convivial evening, when all her soul longed for was to be alone with her lover.

  ‘You are impatient, my Helena.’

  ‘He’s got his new suits, he’s shopped for Monika, he should go home.’

  ‘He is enjoying himself. He is out all day, I am not. Why don’t you come nicely t
o bed now? I have a rehearsal about three, there is just time.’ Max held her against him, stroking her back, kissing her neck, glancing at his wristwatch over her shoulder. One forty-five. ‘Come, meine dumpling.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘You smell nice.’

  ‘He might suddenly come in. He comes back and goes out again.’

  ‘So he goes out again. Let me in.’ He pushed her back on to the sofa.

  ‘Max!’ Her token protest. ‘Really!’

  ‘Ja ,ja, relax and enjoy—’

  ‘There’s the telephone, oh—’

  ‘So let it ring, we make symphony to its ringing. The telephone has no soul but I try and conduct. There, that was good, nicht?’

  ‘For you.’ Helena wept with fury.

  ‘Du bist nervös.’ Gently he held her. ‘Where is your phlegm?’

  Helena pulled down her skirt. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that, it makes people laugh.’

  ‘People don’t know.’

  ‘Sometimes you forget and call me—er—call me that in front of your friends.’

  ‘Kleine. Jewish refugees do not know what it means. They think I call you heroine, they think phlegm is like spirit of Dunkirk or Rule Britannia or some such, nicht?’

  ‘All the same—’ Helena kissed his ear, relenting.

  ‘I must go. They will be waiting for me at the rehearsal.’ He kissed her briskly. ‘If I bring some few friends is there food? I make an omelette. Ludwig’s wife makes omelettes with dried egg, Eno’s salts to make the egg powder rise and salad dressing with medicinal paraffin. He has never been so healthy.’ Max smoothed his hair, straightened his tie, bent to kiss her while buttoning his flies.