'Who is it'?'
'It's me—Tim, and I've got a friend. Come down and let us in without wakening the house, there's a dear.'
'Goad bless us, is i' you?' The voice mounted on the last word in a swoop of amazement. 'Ay, well, stop you a minute just and I'll be down to you.'
It was less than a minute after that the light was switched on in the hall and the door carefully unbarred. It was opened by a little woman with her dark hair bundled hastily into a tight knot at the back of her neck. Barclay's 'old' must have been an epithet of affection, for she was not over forty. She seized both Barclay's hands and shook them endlessly while she gazed at him, but uttered nothing but one long low liquid 'Well!'
Barclay laughed at her under his breath and said: 'Well, Ailie, there'll be toffee-making to-morrow!'
Her big brown eyes twinkled at him. She smiled over his shoulder at Kif and led the way into a small dining-room at the back, a place of cream. walls, gleaming mahogany and shaded gold lights As she lit the gas fire she said:
'I doubt the bath wa'er won' be ho', bu' by the time you've had something to ea' i'll be all right.'
'Glory! Anyone staying? I suppose Mr Vicar can have the spare room?'
Kif wondered for a moment who Mr Vicar was. Someone else to meet! Then he realised with a shock that Barclay was referring to him. Mister! How funny! He, Kif Vicar, had suddenly grown up. Mister!
'Ooh ay,' she said, 'it's all ready. I'll away now an' see about yer food.' And she left them.
The fire, a large one of simulated coals, was already glowing. Barclay pulled up a chair and indicated one to Kif. Kif, following his host's example, added his belt to the heap of accoutrements in the corner and sat down. He regarded with a faint horror the indifferent way Barclay used the cream tiles as props for his army boots and refrained from following him so far. These were the things Barclay was used to, he thought; the kind of thing he had grown up with. All the years he, Kif, had been eating his meals off a rough table in a flagged untidy farmhouse kitchen Barclay had eaten his here. His eyes wandered over all he could see without moving his head. He gravely considered a framed piece of petit point that hung beside the mantelpiece, wherein two shepherdesses eternally toyed with a plump and ruddy swain over a stile. Was that beautiful? Why had they framed it? On the mantelpiece itself were two yellowish jars covered all over with a queer pattern, and another shepherdess whose bodice was not as modest as her demeanour, and a roughish blue and yellow bowl exactly like the one Simone kept her soap in in Béthune. What did they have that there for? And over the row of china there was a picture in a thin gold frame. The picture was so dark that it might as well not have been a picture, but it made a nice dark restful patch on the wall. The whole room was restful. The whole house. Beatitude filled him. Presently he would sleep in a bed.
There was a faint sound as of a breeze outside, and the door swung open. A girl in a dressing-gown stood in the dark oblong for an uncertain moment, and then came in to them with a glad cry of 'Tim!'
Barclay met her halfway and kissed her resoundingly.
'Hullo, Ann, old lady,' he said, 'have we spoiled your beauty sleep? We meant to sneak to bed and appear "the morrn's morrn", as MacIntyre says.' He turned to Kif, who was standing awkwardly by the fire, but before he could begin an introduction she had crossed the room with her hand outstretched.
'It's Kif, isn't it?' she said. Her handshake was firm, like a man's. 'It is nice to know you are not just an invention of Tim's.'
Her eyes went back to her brother and lingered on him, and Kif's lingered on her. The black silk garment that wrapped her writhed with sprawling dragons and contrasted oddly with the demureness of the smooth brown hair parted in the middle and coiled in plaits round her ears. Her hairdressing, in turn, contrasted with the aliveness and strength of her face; a piquant, short-nosed, wide-mouthed face with a low forehead, level brows and a stubborn chin. In this garb she looked about twenty, but was in reality twenty-two. Kif's eyes slid shyly away from her bare feet thrust into slim things of scarlet leather.
'Who is MacIntyre?' she was saying as she pushed her brother back into the chair from which he had risen, and seated herself on the arm of it.
'MacIntyre is a private of the line and a natural philosopher whose acquaintance I regret you may never make. When he says "morn's morn" you could grind a knife on the noise he makes. But his real métier is scrounging.'
'No, swinging the lead,' amended Kif. ''Member his broken toe?'
Ann was about to inquire further into the prevarications of MacIntyre when Alison returned with the beginnings of a meal and she said instead:
'Before you start eating I am going to tell Mother you are here. She'd never forgive me if I didn't waken her. Quite apart from missing a precious minute of you, she never approves of an act she's not on in, as you know. Father's in Birmingham for the night, by the way. I'll be back in a minute.'
'Little did I think I'd live to see the day that I should trail muddy boots over a carpet and not have Alison as much as glower at me,' said Barclay, stretching his legs to the glow again and giving the maid a sideways glance.
'Ay,' said Alison reflectively, laying forks and not looking at him. But there was a world of meaning in her monosyllable.
'Mother says would you go up to her, and would Kif forgive her if she doesn't appear till morning,' said Ann, returning. She shut the door behind her brother and settled herself down opposite Kif. 'I won't offer you a cigarette because Ailie thinks that anyone who will smoke immediately before a meal of her cooking is damned everlastingly. You're only having what she calls "cauld kail het again", but I'd rather have Alison's "cauld kail" than a Savoy luncheon.'
'And this'll be by way of asking me t' starch they belts you forgoat t' send t' the laundry,' remarked the maid as she departed to fetch another trayful.
Ann twinkled at Kif. 'One up to Alison. You haven't told me how you got here. It's pretty foggy, isn't it?'
Kif gave her the history of their arrival. It was wonderful to him to have this girl talk to him with the natural ease of a sister. She took him for granted so utterly. Not once did he catch a scrutinising look, an appraising glance. He had hoped for kindness, but he had not anticipated this. And when Barclay returned and they drew in to the table she helped Alison to bring the dishes and waited on their needs with such complete matter-of-factness that it helped Kif to resign himself to the strangeness of having a being like this, in a garment the like of which he had never seen, play waitress to him. When they had been supplied she sat down at the bottom of the table and drank weak tea while they disposed of Alison's 'kail'—fried sole that was to have been for breakfast, and stew tasting and smelling of all the flavours under heaven in just proportion, to which Alison had added leftover potatoes from last night's dinner.
The talk was all on the surface, laughing, bantering talk. To a stranger looking on it would have seemed that these three had come back from a theatre or a dance, and in the course of a belated meal were recounting the amusing incidents for the entertainment of each other. Only the uniforms spoke of war. Between them and the spearing reality of things as they were hung the armour of their British self-containedness. Where their Gallic allies would have laughed and wept and embraced till emotion was spent they covered up their vulnerable places with a protective shell of flippancy. It is not the prerogative of breeding or education, that play of not caring. It is due to the Briton's constitutional aversion to a scene, which is his fabled stolidness, his weakness and his strength.
'I have to be at the hospital at half past seven' said Ann, 'so I'm going back to bed. If you hump your kits upstairs, though, I'll see you settled in before I go. I have sent Alison back to bed.'
They followed her up the stairs, and on the landing Barclay tossed Kif for the first bath and won. There was no host and guest relationship between these two veterans. Barclay disappeared to turn on the water and Ann led Kif to his room.
'This is yours, Kif,' she said as she switche
d on the light. 'I hope you'll find it comfortable. We are not going to call either of you in the morning, so you can sleep till the day after if you like.' She shoved her hand between the turned back sheets to make sure that a hot-water bottle had been put in. 'If there's anything in the world you want that we might be able to supply, ask Tim for it when he has finished soaking himself. Sleep well!' and she was gone.
The quiet of the room flooded round him. He lowered himself gingerly on to the edge of the bed and considered it: primrose lights, daffodil curtains closely drawn, thick pale carpet—he moved his boots uneasily—and unpatterned pale walls warm in the glow that somehow filled the room. He slid contemplative fingers over the amber taffeta of the eiderdown and the cool uncreased bed-linen. Then his gaze went again to the carpet. He unbuttoned his tunic hastily and applied himself to the unwinding of his puttees.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Alison put down the tray and drew aside the curtains so that the noon sunlight invaded the room. She looked gravely at the still sleeping Kif.
'Save us!' she said. 'It's a bairn!' Her eyes noted the uncrumpled state of the bed; he had most evidently slept as he had lain down, immediately and continuously—and came back to the young face from which sleep had washed the last hint of sophistication. In spite of his size and the muscular arm protruding from the sleeve of a pair of Barclay's less hectically coloured pyjamas his youth was patent. Alison sighed as she wakened him.
'Here's a bit of breakfast to you. I've just wakened Mister Tim. Mrs Barclay said you'd probably be verray angry with her if she allowed you to sleep any longer.'
Kif smiled sleepily at the thought of his daring to be angry with his hostess for any reason whatsoever, and hoisted himself into a favourable position for attacking his first breakfast in bed. Alison seized his boots and was departing with them when he said:
'Oh, please, I'll clean them. I—'
'You'll do no such thing,' she said. 'This is yer holiday!' and the door shut behind her.
Kif looked at the poem in silver and gold which was breakfast as conceived by these people. The toast, the fillets, the marmalade, the butter, the pale yellow china all glowed golden among the shining purity of silver utensils and white linen. Delicately his long fingers slid among the crowded perfection, lifting and pouring and setting down. He had reached the toast and marmalade stage when Tim, radiant as to person and raiment, came in on his way to the bathroom.
'If you go vamping old Alison like this you'll be having her join the regiment as a vivandière or something. I hear she is dropping salt tears in the scullery over your boots and demanding "how a lad could be expected t' walk in they boots?" Now all she said to me was, "You'll no' be needin' so many pairs o' shoes nowadays, I'm thinking!"'
Kif grinned at the apt rendering of Alison's accent and manner. 'It's a bonza day,' he said, his eyes on the window.
'It is, my son, and we parade for luncheon at one-thirty. Ann has victimised someone into taking her place at the hospital for the duration of our leave, and the family is talking of taking us down to the coast in the afternoon, or anywhere else you'd like to go. So stir yourself. I shan't be five minutes in the bathroom.'
Kif made the best toilet that can be achieved with the British private's service uniform of the 1916 pattern. He had to rely for effect, in the absence of the wiggle of breeches or the swing of a kilt, on the brightness of his buttons and the degree of smoothness and polish that could be imposed on his thick hair in the process of brushing it back. (Hair was worn straight back in those days, you may remember.) But the ultimate result was fairly satisfactory. He took up a silver hand-mirror that lay on the dressing-table and proceeded by dint of several experimental positions to enjoy entirely new views of himself. He wished his chin had not such a straight up-and-down line; it would look so much better if it stuck out a little more, like Heaton's, or Travenna's. He wondered where Travenna was now and if he were alive. One stray letter was all that had ever reached him from that world's vagabond.
Dear Friend (it had said),
How are you? I hope you have managed to dodge boche bullets so far. At the moment we are in reserve near censored. That is all I can tell you. It is just about as bloody a place as all the other places in France . And Belgium is a whole lot worse. To think I used to like Antwerp and never guessed what was behind it. Well, how are you? I certainly hope you are well and not too fed up with this war. That was a good time we had in London. It would be a good plan to have another. What do you think?
Yours,
Jack Travenna.
The thought of Travenna made him deplore afresh the lack of zip in his attire. Solemnly considering his image he sought for any means of brightening his person that he might have overlooked. He had not nearly exhausted the possibilities of double reflection when Barclay came to fetch him, and he went downstairs reminding himself how nice Ann had been and hoping for the best.
Barclay ushered him into a living-room full of comfortable chairs, space, and the smell of a wood fire. On a sofa at the hearth sat a plump smallish woman whose wiry grey hair was parted in the middle and drawn to a loose knot at the back of her neck and whose broad shrewd face seemed to be composed of curves.
'Mother,' said Barclay, 'this is Kif,' and she rose and came to meet them.
Margaret Barclay's long suit was motherliness. She preferred mothering male things, but was always delighted to act as mother confessor, adviser, and on occasion Providence to any young girl. The only stipulation was that the recipient of her favour should be perennially conscious of her superior wisdom, surer instinct, and more complete knowledge of the world. Any failure to realise this, any evidence of a tendency to think for oneself, or advice sought and disregarded, was succeeded not by any lack of kindliness—Margaret Barclay was invariably kind—but by a subtle waning of interest. This acceptance of her infallibility was more common among men, a fact which probably accounted for her preference for them as members of her suite. She was exceedingly popular with her tradespeople and with all shop assistants. Her gracious and unaffected manner left them feeling somehow that they were in her debt since they had been allowed to serve her. Where she was a regular customer she took an unfailing interest in the various histories of the staff, and when illness or matrimony overtook one invariably marked the event in a practical manner.
As might have been expected, her son adored her unreservedly. Her daughter, who had inherited much of the hard practicality which was the basis of Margaret Barclay's being, recognised the quality in her mother. She had inherited also her mother's capacity for taking her own line, which did not tend to complete understanding between mother and daughter. Where they differed most radically was in the fact that Ann Barclay never desired to take anything or anybody under her wing, and the, to her, obvious pleasure of her parent in the admiring obedience of her followers roused in her a faint contempt. On occasions it almost nauseated her to see what she mentally characterised as 'grown men and women' sitting at the feet of a woman with no more brains or knowledge than they had themselves, but who had the courage of her personality. And yet that personality was directly responsible for the continuance of smooth relations between mother and daughter. It was not possible to quarrel with Margaret Barclay; to any assault she offered her impenetrable front of sweet reasonableness, her patience, and her tacit assumption of superiority.
'My dear boy,' she said quietly, 'we are so glad to have you. I hope everything has been as you would like it, and that Alison has been looking after you well? And that you forgive me for not coming down to welcome you last night?'
She had a very beautiful speaking voice, which she used with deliberation and very perfectly. Her pronunciation of the English tongue was what every purist and musician would have it be. She used slang now and then when the 'pally' attitude of the moment needed emphasis, and always with good effect. Kif fell at once. If the charm of her voice had not done it the obvious welcome she extended would have been sufficient to a boy who had hesitated so pain
fully over his possible reception.
'It is very good of you,' was all he could think of at the moment, but she seemed pleased with him.
Alison announced luncheon, and with a light hand on his arm she drew him into the dining-room of the night before, still talking deliberately and gently. As they seated themselves Ann joined them in her V.A.D. uniform. She acknowledged Kif's presence with a smile and a little gesture of her hand.
'If nobody minds but myself,' she said, 'I'll not change into mufti. Joy-riding even with troops on board is looked on askance, so the more uniforms we have to blaze at the great B.P. the better.'
They discussed the destination and route of the proposed joy-ride. The women naturally elected that the men should choose. Kif was eager to go to the coast, but, that granted, was indifferent where. Tim agreed to the coast, but stipulated that there should be cliffs. The conversation went via motoring through the commonplaces of roads, gradients, scenery, accidents, first-aid, artificial respiration, swimming, and the Channel. Some of it was witty, most of it was amusing, and all of it was light-hearted, and in all of it Kif managed to keep his end up without difficulty. He was habitually quiet but he was not slow-witted.
As soon as the meal was over Ann brought round the car—the Barclay clan's one extravagance, as Mrs Barclay said—and they set out for Birling Gap, Ann driving with Kif beside her, and Barclay and his mother behind.
Surrey and Sussex! What terms of week-end sophistication they are become! And even now, with the red rash of villadom creeping over them, there is no country in Britain so satisfying in its settled loveliness. Cold hills and windy skies of the north, sodden fields and smoky horizons of the midlands, even the little orchards and flowery meadows of the west, what can they put against this?—this little kingdom of forest, weald, marsh and down, with its ever-present sea. Nowhere are horizons so seductive and so generous in fulfilment. Would you have brisk heather and peaty turf, bracken and twisted fir-trees? They are here. Would you have thick hedges, and roadside farms that drowse in forgotten valleys? They are here. Would you have tall skies with a level land from edge to edge, etched with grey willows that attend slow streams? They are here. Or would you have high green hills of thymy turf that have blue distances for ever at their feet and have still on their brows some of the glory of the world's morning? They are here.
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