Walcot

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘It’s a factor.’

  ‘It’s a bally nuisance,’ Mary replied. ‘Going to war with Germany like this. What does Ribbentrop think, I wonder? Valerie would have been terrified. Why can’t we let Hitler get on with it? What he does on the Continent is nothing to do with us, is it?’

  Your father replied, ‘I’ve always said that if Churchill and Lord Vansittart didn’t keep quiet, we would have to go to war again. Typical Tories … It’s a fine muck-up and no mistake.’

  ‘It is a mistake,’ Mary said. Her knitting needles clicked together in anger. ‘War again. We’ve only just got over the last one. People getting killed all over again.’

  ‘But different people this time,’ you said, attempting to console.

  Your parents were talking in the sitting room. Martin Fielding had bought a small mansion, standing in parkland on the outskirts of Southampton, and a car to go with it. The plane manufacturers had promoted him from head of the ‘heavy gang’ to an office job on better pay. He remained head of the trades union chapel. You had seen him come home with several yards of cable under his coat, together with electrical equipment of various kinds. You had heard your mother protest, to which your father had answered, ‘The bosses rob us men, so it’s fair we should take something back.’ And that settled the matter.

  When you had asked Mary if dad was a criminal, she’d told you angrily to be quiet about it.

  ‘Your father’s a Socialist, and Socialists share everything.’

  Your father’s knowledge of the past, as revealed in his remark about the convenience of having wars begin in September, stayed with you for some while. He was knowledgeable, yet in other ways so stupid, so insensitive to others. It seemed a puzzle. How vexing were parents. But then, you considered it ‘aristocratic’ to be puzzled.

  You had only one term at Birmingham University before you received a buff envelope. Inside was an Enlistment Notice saying you were required to present yourself at a nearby barracks for primary training. A postal order for four shillings was also enclosed ‘in respect of advance of service pay’. You were Called Up.

  Geology was forgotten, together with many other things. Your country needed you.

  The men of the family went down to their local pub, The Black Hind, with their friends, and held a council of war. The date was 15th May, 1940, only four days after Winston Churchill had been confirmed as prime minister. You were with your regiment in Catterick, preparing for embarkation overseas. While pints were being ordered, to begin the meeting someone repeated the opening of the Robb Wilton monologue, ‘The day war broke out, my wife said to me, What are you going to do about it?’ But that, in fact, was the subject of their meeting.

  Martin opened proceedings by announcing that he had already joined the Local Defence Volunteers. He advised all those over conscription age to join. Walter Pratchett, a young man working in a solicitor’s office, said he had volunteered for service in the Royal Navy and would be away shortly. Many other men had plans to defend their country against invasion.

  Claude Hillman, generally talkative enough, said nothing. He had been first in the pub and was drinking steadily. Martin asked him what the matter was.

  ‘Quote from a book I read recently,’ Claude growled. ‘“Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country.”’

  ‘You and Ada again?’ said Martin.

  ‘She was the apple of my eye, really the apple of my eye. Now she’s a crab apple.’

  ‘She’s borne you two children.’

  Claude managed a smile. He tapped on the table with an index finger. ‘Indeed she has, and mortal terrors they are. Her body – excuse me if I speak thus of your dear sister, Martin – her body was wild white winter, once upon a time. Now it has fruited and fallen back to autumn, season of yellow fruitlessness. War provides us with an excuse to get away from the womenfolk.’

  Wally Pratchett was recently married and violently dissented.

  Martin did not look particularly pleased, but other men seized on the topic of womanhood, saying that they hoped women – whom they termed ‘the good old girls’ – would play their part in the conflict. Which is what happened. While the Third Reich ordered its womenfolk to Kindermachen, confining them to the home to make future soldiery, British women went into industry and agriculture and many other jobs, to fill vacancies left by men who had become soldiers, sailors or airmen.

  When time was called in the pub, all had become intensely patriotic. They toasted Winston Churchill and staggered out into the spring daylight.

  For a while, the Second World War had made little difference to your family.

  After Emma the maid had fled, your parents employed a live-in maid, and a young boy who came in the mornings and did odd jobs. There was also a gardener, while a pony for daughter Sonia was installed in the paddock.

  Sonia was afraid of this frisky animal; she insisted that the pony disliked her hump. Sonia went to a local school for girls, but this was holiday time. Her imagined hump was one of the devices by which she brought her mother to heel.

  She taught Gyp to bark at the pony.

  In any event, she never rode the pony. You established friendly relations with it. It was a three-year-old gelding, which had been christened Beauty. You led Beauty out into the field and let it canter about. After a while, when it was time to take it in again, Beauty would play hard to get, no doubt dreading a return to its prison of the stable. At other times it would come up to you shyly, gently, almost in a maidenly way, to gaze upon you with its large moist eyes. You would fondle it. Its muzzle was soft, although, when it opened its mouth, a set of large teeth were displayed.

  Like every kind of animal with which man comes into contact, horses came into captivity. From Mary’s goldfish swimming mindlessly round its bowl, the canary in its cage, to higher mammals like horses and elephants, all animals become prisoners of humans. Only cats have never signed the contract; unlike their domestic rivals, the dogs, cats never submitted to leads or performed tricks, lounging about instead, in a very hands-in-pockets kind of way, and having naps in inconvenient places.

  ‘Why don’t you like Beauty?’ you asked your sister.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. P’raps, yes, p’raps because I’m expected to like her.’

  ‘It’s a he.’

  Poor Beauty was later sold. ‘Valerie would have liked a pony,’ said Mary, with a sigh. ‘Valerie was good to her mother.’

  ‘Well, I think Valerie was a horrid creep!’ Sonia retorted.

  Your two parents were sitting together one night, by a coal fire, for the early September evenings were becoming chilly.

  ‘I don’t know what Sonia will do,’ said Mary Fielding. ‘These wars are so awful. We’ve been through one of them. Now another.’

  She held a small handkerchief to her nose and attempted to shed a tear.

  ‘Don’t start that,’ Martin warned. ‘Wars are nothing to cry about. Got to be brave.’

  ‘I was thinking of my poor brother, Ernie. Killed in France, in the early days of the war. I must get a cardigan.’

  ‘Not France – the Somme. It’s in Germany, woman!’

  ‘Of all places.’

  ‘Never mind that, think about what we’re going to do now. This war is going to be worse than the last one, let me tell you that. For one thing, we are near the coast. We must consider what we should do in the case of an invasion.’

  ‘Oh, Marty, how terrible it would be to have a house full of Nazis! Sonia will be so scared when she hears about it, poor mite.’

  ‘We’re all equally in the soup. I’d like to know what the heck Hitler thinks he’s doing.’

  Mary Fielding rose from her comfortable chair and went to gaze out of the window, as if to make sure that no one in boots was coming up the drive. She said, ‘It’s so horrible to think of war. Once in our lifetimes was surely enough. Sonia will be so upset. You know how delicate her nerves are.’

&nb
sp; ‘I suppose we could keep it from her.’

  They began to discuss what they could do to deceive their daughter that peace still prevailed. The difficult question of the daily newspaper arose. The headlines would always be using the word ‘WAR’. The paper would have to be cancelled for Sonia’s peace of mind; but Martin enjoyed doing the crossword.

  ‘Surely it’s not much of a sacrifice to give up the crossword,’ said Mary. ‘Not when there’s your child’s sensibilities to consider.’

  For a start, they called in Jane, the maid, and made her swear that she would say nothing to Sonia about the war. The maid, familiar with Sonia’s outbursts, duly swore. Her mistress was watching her closely.

  ‘Jane, you are looking tired. Why is that?’

  Jane, whose real name was Henrietta – but all maids coming under the Fielding command were called Emma or Jane by turns – apologized and said there was a lot of work to be done.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mary, severely. ‘After all, you work in a house where we have no mirrors – so, no mirrors to polish. You’re very fortunate.’

  ‘I do understand about the mirrors, ma’am,’ said Jane, submissively. She knew the mirrors were banished by order of Sonia, so that she would never see her imaginary hump.

  Your parents, assisted by the maid, began an elaborate deception. The delicate Sonia was accustomed to listening to the wireless. Martin removed a thermionic valve from their set, so that it no longer worked.

  When Sonia begged her father to get the set repaired, he took it and hid it in the garage. As recompense, he bought his daughter a wind-up gramophone covered in red Rexine, and half-a-dozen records, with which he hoped to distract her. He secretly bought himself a new model Ecko wireless, which he concealed in his study, and on which he could listen to the news from the BBC. Sonia played the records. She quickly broke the one she did not like. The one she most enjoyed was called ‘Impressions on a One-string Phone-fiddle’.

  She liked to be taken out. Just along the coast was a teashop at which the family frequently stopped to eat cream teas. On one occasion when you had come home for a forty-eight-hour leave before proceeding to OCTU, your mother suggested a visit to the teashop for a special treat. Your mother was friendly, in a condescending way, with the two ladies who ran the teashop. ‘Of course, they’re just old maids,’ she would say of them. ‘Spinsters who could never attract any man to marry them.’ Martin would try, with equal condescension, to explain to his wife that the men who would have liked to marry those ladies when they were young were very probably buried in the mud of the Somme.

  So Mary Fielding rang the teashop before you set out. ‘Oh, Miss Atkins. It’s Mrs Fielding here,’ she said in her most refined voice. ‘I wonder if you would kindly assist us. Our dear daughter Sonia is so delicate we are forced to shield her from any knowledge of the hostilities with Nazi Germany. If my husband and I arrived at four o’clock, would you kindly ensure that no mention is made of those hostilities, either by your waitress or by the other customers?’

  She listened to Miss Atkins’ response. ‘I quite see my request may raise difficulties, Miss Atkins, but not insuperable ones, I trust. Otherwise Mr Fielding and I may have to decide not to patronize your teashop henceforth. Oh, are you? I am surprised to hear that. Such a lucrative little business you and Miss Everdale have been running. Pack up if you will, but I would judge you will find the Lake District not to your liking at all.’

  Mary put the handset down and turned to Martin. ‘I never did! Of all the cheek! Those two spinsters are going to close down next week. They are going to live with a distant niece of Miss Atkins, in Kendal of all places.’

  ‘It’s cowardice,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t do if we all buggered off to the Lake District. How will they scratch a living in Kendal, I’d like to know?’

  ‘Just because the Atkins woman has got an uncle up there.’

  You drove to the teashop in the car with Sonia, not without misgivings. A bell on a spring tinkled as you opened the teashop door. A warm, encouraging smell of hot scones met you – the smell of peacetime, never to return. Miss Atkins greeted you all with her usual courtesy. She was rather an ungainly woman, her hair scraped back and tied into a bun with a length of straggling pink ribbon. Her usual attitude in what repose was granted her was to stand with her hands clasped before her; the hands were red from constant washing up. She was wearing the perennial apron over her dress. It showed a picturesque village street, with hills in the background and a notice which read ‘Teas with Hovis’, outside a half-timbered building. A customer wearing a tricorn hat was riding up to the building on a white horse.

  ‘We are going to have to close down on Saturday week,’ said Miss Atkins, with a sad smile. ‘It is very inconvenient. You would like the usual cream tea, I expect, Mrs Fielding?’

  Sonia’s sharp eyes had noticed that bales of barbed wire were being unloaded on the harbour behind the teashop. ‘Is all the barbed wire going to spoil your business, Miss Atkins?’ she asked.

  Miss Atkins looked flustered and adjusted the bun at the back of her greying hair. ‘Barbed wire? Oh yes, they are going to do some repair work. They say it will take quite a long time. I’ll get your order.’

  ‘I heard they plan to extend the harbour,’ said Mary, in an artificially loud voice, staring loftily ahead as if gazing into the future.

  A man and his wife were sitting at the next table. Overhearing Mary’s remark, the man turned, licking his thumb, and said, ‘It’s not that, my dear, it’s the new defences –’

  ‘Oh, quite right, quite right, I had forgotten,’ Mary said. Extending her neck, lowering her head, she hissed across the table at Sonia, ‘Just a typical vulgarian. He shouldn’t be in here. Take no notice.’

  ‘But what defences does he mean, Mummy?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? A gang of local men have been trying to steal the boats in the harbour … Oh, here comes our tray. Good. I’m terribly peckish, aren’t you?’

  ‘Can we go afterwards and see them putting up the barbed wire, Mummy?’

  ‘We may not have time, Sonia, dear,’ said Martin. ‘Work is waiting for me. Pleasure must be sacrificed for duty, you know.’

  Sonia looked across the table at you, her lips forming the word ‘Shuggerybees’.

  Miss Atkins arranged the spread on the table. Brown pottery teapot under its cosy in front of Mrs Fielding, hot water jug next, then milk jug. Sugar bowl with sugar tongs. Plates before each person. Pretty plates with floral decorations, now destined for Kendal. A dish with a pile of crisp light brown scones, still warm from the oven. A little pot of strawberry jam, with accompanying spoon. A large pot of whipped cream with a Devonshire motto on the outside of the pot, saying ‘Goo Aisy on the Crame!’ in rustic brown lettering.

  ‘I’m sure we all will have to go easy on the cream in future,’ Miss Atkins found herself murmuring, with another of her stock of sad smiles. ‘Just one of the sacrifices we shall have to make.’

  ‘Shuggerybees!’ shrieked Sonia. ‘Why does everyone keep on about sacrifices?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Martin told her. ‘Remember where you are.’

  ‘Where am I?’ Sonia asked, looking about in simulated terror. She waved her hands in front of her. ‘Is it all a bad dream?’

  ‘Yes’, snapped Mary, ignoring her daughter, with a look to Miss Atkins which clearly implied, No Tip Today! ‘We had heard of the terrible cream shortage in Kendal.’

  ‘And not just in Kendal,’ added Martin loyally.

  ‘Where else?’ Sonia asked, excitedly. ‘Hunstanton? Are the cows dying?’

  ‘We export most of our cream to France. And elsewhere,’ said Mary. ‘Perhaps to Sweden.’

  ‘And Poland,’ you added, helpfully. ‘Because of the inv –’ You stopped just in time, to add instead, ‘the invalids there.’

  Miss Atkins looked sad when she said goodbye to you all, standing at the door of the teashop, wringing her hands in her apron – much to Mary’s annoyance.

>   On the drive home, progress was impeded by an army convoy of five-ton lorries travelling slowly along the road to the port. The troops in the rear vehicle shouted, whistled and gestured rudely at your family.

  ‘They’re laughing at my hump,’ said Sonia. She waved happily to the men.

  ‘Rubbish. They’re just rude young men, like all soldiers.’ Thus Martin, feeling uncomfortable about some of the ruder gestures.

  ‘What are they doing, pa?’

  ‘Doing? Doing? What do you mean? They’re soldiers being taken somewhere to have a nice summer holiday.’

  At last you arrived home. Gyp came out to greet you, wagging his tail. Sonia was still worrying about the soldiers’ vulgar calls.

  ‘I think I’m the prettiest hunchback in the world, ma. Why isn’t there a beauty contest for hunchbacks?’

  ‘Because you’d lose,’ you told her, exasperated by her fantasies.

  Mary told you both to be quiet and marched into the house, calling for Jane to get you all a pot of tea, despite the cream teas you had recently consumed.

  Her daughter followed her, complaining. ‘My hump is really pretty. The nurse told me so. She promised that when I die she will have me stuffed.’

  ‘Shut up, Sonia. Valerie never had a hump and nor do you. You know mummy sacked that silly nurse.’

  ‘She said that there were angel wings inside my hump and one day it would break open and then I could fly up to heaven.’ She paused. ‘I bet there’s going to be oodles of blood when it does break open.’ Pulling her little blue coat off and flinging it on the floor, she added, ‘Hope I don’t meet boring Valerie up there in heaven.’

  Mary slumped onto her leather sofa and regarded her little daughter. ‘That’s all pure nonsense. Valerie would never have said anything like that. In any case, there’s no place called heaven. Heaven is here in our nice home.’

  Sonia sat on the curled arm of a second sofa, this one covered in viridian green satin, put her feet together and clutched her toes, so that her folded legs stuck out like wings to either side, and made a goblin face at her mother.

  ‘If I haven’t got a hump, then why don’t we have any mirrors in this nice home of ours?’