Goodnight Sweetheart

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he announced to Katherine, after a minute or two, while she made sure to keep her expression serious. ‘“Walk the carpet – to be reprimanded, 1820.” Or, in another context,’ he held up his hand as if she had been about to interrupt him. ‘Or could be “bring on the carpet”, which was used to mean the start of a meeting, when carpets covered tables – yes, that was the sign for a meeting to commence.’

  ‘You’re so clever, Papa,’ Katherine murmured. ‘I knew you would know.’

  Anthony nodded, already preoccupied with such words as ‘carpet knight’ and ‘carpet dance’ and ‘carpet road’; also ‘carpet slipper’, which was nothing to do with beds and nightgowns, but, apparently, actually a naval term.

  ‘A “carpet slipper” was a shell that passed over the ship. Hmm. Well, you live and learn, you surely do. I wonder therefore where carpet slipper relating to footwear comes into the scheme of things; obviously much later, something to do with the Ottomans, perhaps … ?’

  Katherine left him to his book of etymologies, and slipped quietly and silently from her father’s study, her expression becoming grim the second she was in the hall. She had neatly sidestepped having to take the blame for feeding the blasted fox cubs, but that did not mean she herself was not going to carpet wretched Caro. She rolled up her sleeves mentally, and went in search of her.

  She found Caro in the Long Room, contentedly sitting on the bottom step of the ladders being used by Walter Beresford, who was busy with his mural.

  Katherine beckoned Caro from the door.

  ‘I’ll see you outside!’

  Caro shook her head, knowing that as long as she stayed at the bottom of the ladder within the protection of Mr Painter, not even Katherine would dare to make her do anything.

  ‘I can’t move, Katherine, really I can’t. Not when I’m helping Mr Painter here,’ she said, straight-faced, assuming a saint-like expression.

  Walter stopped in the middle of a stroke, brush in hand, and turned to see Katherine standing below him.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Garland,’ he said, using measured tones to counteract the increase in his heartbeat that just the sight of her brought about. ‘May we help you?’

  Despite her outwardly resolute air Caro was more than grateful that by saying ‘we’, Mr Painter had taken it upon himself to unite the two of them, that they had become a duo, conversationally at least, in front of Katherine, who now, it seemed, was at pains to be at her most stern.

  ‘Yes, you may help me—’

  ‘Oh, sorry, did I forget to say good morning, Miss Garland?’ Walter asked, lightly sarcastic.

  Katherine coloured a little. ‘Oh, yes, sorry. Good morning, Mr Beresford. Yes, it is a lovely morning, but I must have a word with Caro, if you don’t mind, really I must. It is quite urgent.’

  ‘Later perhaps. You might not have noticed, Miss Garland, but at the moment we are in full swing. As a matter of fact, just as well you did come in, because we were debating where might be the best place to put you.’

  Katherine hesitated. She wanted to haul wretched Caro over the coals about the fox cub feeding, which she knew must be down to Caro again, but now that her position in the mural was being discussed she found herself neatly distracted, as her father had been minutes before.

  ‘I would like you to put me, place me rather, somewhere there,’ Katherine stated, having studied the outlines on the wall. ‘By the water. I love water.’

  ‘Good, then so be it. By the water, and in your blue dress, the one that you were wearing last night, if you will agree?’

  ‘Oh, very well, if you think it’s nice enough to be on a wall.’

  ‘When will you be able to sit to me, do you think?’

  ‘Perhaps this afternoon – no, I am going out – no, perhaps tomorrow morning, if that would be congenial?’

  Walter did not answer for a few seconds.

  ‘Yes, tomorrow morning would be congenial.’ He looked down at Katherine’s perfect complexion. ‘You are not yet of an age when I would have to diplomatically postpone painting you until after midday.’

  ‘How very reassuring,’ Katherine said, shrugging her shoulders lightly.

  She quickly left the room, feeling that in some way Walter had got the better of her, and it was only when she was climbing the stairs to her bedroom that she realised that she had forgotten to give dratted Caro a wigging, but since she was now on the landing and she did not want to be late for David and his people, she disappeared into her bedroom to powder her nose. Really, Caro and her fox cubs could wait until tomorrow. What David was planning for them both was much more important.

  Downstairs, Caro stared up the ladder towards Walter.

  ‘Is that true? Do you really have to wait to paint older ladies after luncheon?’

  ‘After midday, certainly. They would not thank me for painting them after breakfast, I do assure you. Now tell me,’ he glanced down at Caro, ‘what was all that about?’

  ‘All what about?’

  ‘You know what I mean: the beckoning finger, the dark expression? Madam your sister was not altogether in a very good mood with you, was she?’

  ‘Oh, you mean what was that all about?’

  ‘Yes, what was all that about?’ Walter murmured, staring up at the wall, while silently marvelling that Katherine Garland looked quite as beautiful in the morning as she had the evening before. She looked as beautiful in her many-buttoned yellow linen two-piece, with its double collar of matching linen and dark velvet – a silk scarf of a startling green paisley tucked into the neck – as she had looked in her great silver-winged blue evening gown.

  ‘I am afraid that was all about Katherine coming in here to read me the riot act,’ Caro sighed, mock sadly. ‘I am just everyone’s dogsbody round here, really a martyr to the inner life of Chevrons.’

  Walter glanced down momentarily and laughed.

  ‘What then has the poor martyr to tell me?’ he asked, as he leaned forward once more to make a sharper outline on the wall.

  ‘I can’t tell you. It’s a burning secret. I don’t suppose, being a painter, you can keep a secret for more than one sitting, can you?’

  ‘To whom have I to tell your dreadful secret, except the wall?’ Walter murmured.

  ‘Well, between you, me and the wall, of course, I have been doing something which is absolutely criminal.’

  ‘Really? Shall I have to visit you in prison if you are caught?’

  ‘No, but you might have to go looking for me and find me at the bottom of the lake in the wild garden.’

  ‘Might I know why I shall find you at the bottom of the lake?’

  ‘Yes, but you still mustn’t tell anyone, not a soul, because it will be counted against me for the next six centuries.’ Caro dropped her voice. ‘I have been feeding foxes. Well, not foxes exactly, but fox cubs, although they are getting so big and fat now, they are beginning to look more like fox terriers than fox cubs.’

  Walter looked down at the head of shining dark brown hair, which was all he could see of Caro at that moment.

  ‘You are a minx, you know. You could be shot by your father’s neighbours for doing such a thing.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Caro agreed gleefully. ‘Shot at dawn, and my head hoisted up on a spike at London Bridge.’

  ‘And that would be the least of it.’

  ‘I know, I know, but the cubs were so thin, I had to help them. I hate to see animals, wild or domestic, looking thin and unhappy.’

  ‘I understand, but even so, you must not do any such thing again, you promise?’

  ‘I’ll try not to, but I can’t promise.’

  ‘In that case I will only try to promise not to tell anyone.’

  There was a long silence as Walter’s point finally sank in.

  ‘Oh, very well.’

  ‘Good. Now move your body, Miss Caro Garland, and let Mr Painter down from his height. I need some perspective, and not only that, I need some fresh air too.’


  They stood outside the long windows, enjoying the fresh air, and as they did so a car, being driven rather too fast, drew up in front of the house. Because they were on the back terrace they themselves would not necessarily be noticed through the tall, iron gates that separated the terrace from the front of the house, but they could see, so inevitably they watched with interest as the occupant stepped out.

  ‘That’s the Astley man, as my father calls him – David Astley,’ Caro said in a low voice, as Walter tried not to notice how Katherine Garland came galloping towards him, and how he, in his turn, put a guiding and, what seemed to Walter, a definitely possessive arm around her as he opened the door of his car.

  ‘Are they engaged, your sister and this David Astley?’ Walter drew on his cigarette, frowning.

  ‘Sort of, not really. Well, yes, if you really want to know. As far as they are concerned, yes, they are engaged, but as far as my father is concerned, no, they are not at all engaged, and never will be.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Caro looked embarrassed. ‘According to my father, David doesn’t quite fit the bill,’ she admitted after a pause. ‘My father, you know, is somewhat of a liberal, not a Liberal as in politics – I mean he’s not a sort of Lloyd George or anything – but he is, well, all the Garlands are just countrymen, I suppose you would call us. As my father says, we are the kind of people who believe in looking after our little bit of England, while at the same time hoping to goodness everyone else will do the same. Work is our rent for life, my father believes, and my mother too, although she is more bohemian. She had an uncle who lived in Camden Hill and painted, and another uncle who was a poet, but died young.’

  ‘As all poets must.’

  ‘Yes, exactly. So that’s why my father believes that David does not fit the bill, despite being the son of a neighbour and very good-looking. All that blond wavy hair, and the blue, blue eyes and so on does make him so very fascinating to girls, but it is Katherine whom he is besotted with, and has been since they were quite small, apparently.’

  Walter turned about, and they strolled down the garden towards the view, which was of gently sloping hills and the slim line of a river making a vaguely green-silver line through the fields. He threw away his cigarette and, after a minute or so, put a brotherly hand on one of Caro’s shoulders.

  ‘Tell me more,’ he ordered.

  For the first few yards, with Walter’s hand on her shoulder, Caro felt vaguely unsettled, but then, realising it was a compliment to their already easy friendship, she relaxed. Her father had always done the same thing when they walked along, talking, always talking, his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you any more,’ she admitted.

  ‘If I am painting you all, I need to know a little about you. Not too much, of course, but a little is helpful,’ Walter stated.

  Caro continued walking, stopping once or twice to pluck a piece of thick-stemmed grass, which she bit into, savouring the sweet fresh, familiar taste of early summer. After a while she handed Walter a nice piece, and they ambled along, once more separated, during which time Caro found to her surprise that she now missed his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I suppose you have to know a little about us,’ Caro conceded, after a judicious pause.

  ‘You can’t paint people you know nothing about, at least not a great many people in one piece, I need to know something in order to assess the weight I give to each character’s association with the house.’

  Caro frowned. ‘I expect that’s just painterly tosh,’ she told him after another pause. ‘I expect you’re just like the rest of us, a demon for gossip and innuendo.’

  ‘You don’t want me depicting cardboard cutouts, leaving posterity to believe the occupants of Chevrons were characterless, do you?’

  Caro realised that there had to be at least some truth in what Walter had just said.

  ‘Well, I dare say you will realise what a potpourri of people we are soon enough,’ she reasoned. ‘So there is not much use in my pretending that we are all plaster saints, when in all honesty we are rather far from being so.’

  ‘You are human beings, diverse, complex, fascinating, finally unfathomable.’

  ‘It’s not that Katherine and David’s relationship is exactly a secret,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just that it’s rather embarrassing.’

  ‘I am a painter, Miss Garland; I am not easily embarrassed.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that sort of embarrassing. Not life-class embarrassing, no, I meant embarrassing from a relative’s point of view. After all, Katherine is my sister, but she’s so unlike anyone else in the family now that she and David have taken up with each other. I mean, we have all known David and his brothers since we were born, but David too – particularly David – has changed so much in these last years, he’s become the sort of person none of us can really like, yet Katherine adores him, can’t see anything wrong with him, can’t seem to mind or care that he has changed.’

  ‘Now I really do have to know what is wrong with this Astley man. Come on, confess. You’re jealous of your sister. You want this Greek god for yourself.’

  Caro’s colour deepened. ‘No, of course I don’t want him,’ she snapped. ‘I could never ever even like, let alone be in love with a Blackshirt.’

  Walter stopped, removed the grass stalk from his mouth and threw it behind him.

  ‘He’s a … Blackshirt?’

  Caro nodded, turning away, and she too threw away her grass stalk, treading on it with her foot as if it was a stub of a cigarette, before continuing to walk towards the view.

  ‘Yes, David is as black as your hat, blacker than black. Well, your hat isn’t black, but his shirt certainly is. Yes, he is a convinced Nazi, and as fascist as anything you could wish for. So embarrassing to say it, to have to admit it, but he is a Black-shirt.’

  ‘You are teasing me, of course?’

  ‘Don’t you think I wish I was teasing you?’ Caro asked sadly. ‘Gracious heavens, we’ve all loved David for ever, and now this has happened: him falling in line with these beastly Mosley people, and going on rallies, and then taking Katherine down with him. It’s breaking my parents’ hearts, although they don’t say so. That’s why I thought it would be a good idea to have you here doing a mural, if you really want to know. I hoped that it would be a cheerful thing for them to see happening, take their minds off the Astley man and his bad influence over Katherine.’

  There was a long pause as they continued walking.

  ‘Well, yes, I do wish you were teasing me, but how sad for you and your family. Such a beautiful young woman to have her soul corrupted by something or someone so wrong-headed.’

  ‘Yes. The truth is that Katherine was just like us, a real Garland from head to toe, until she fell for David after he came back from abroad. Then she seemed to change overnight because, we have all had to suppose, she must have become convinced by him. He spent a great deal of time in Germany and Austria, and I think someone there influenced him, and now it seems he has influenced her. My mother says love changes people; and of course the fact that Katherine is so in love with David makes it even harder for my poor father to step in and try and convince her that her opinions are so misjudged as to be well … ludicrous.’

  ‘This is truly a tragedy, most especially for a family such as yours.’

  ‘Yes, and happily the twins and I can only imagine how difficult it is for my parents. We know they do suffer, although they would be the last to admit it. They don’t want to estrange her – or him, for that matter. My father feels that to do so will only drive them closer, so he and my mother just have to carry on with the show, all the while hoping that Katherine will finally see sense, which I actually don’t think she will, not for an instant.’

  ‘Don’t look sad.’

  ‘It is sad. If you really want to know, she has told me many times that she is convinced that fascism is the only way to make the world a better place, and that she and David are all for ge
tting rid of everyone they think harms this country. They say they are patriots – well, at least that is what they pretend – but to me that is just an excuse to drive everyone they don’t like out of England. I have tried to argue with her. I mean, I keep saying, what happens if they get a leader who wants to get rid of people with red hair? Or a new leader is elected, say someone who hates people who are over six foot, or who have big noses or small feet? And then yet another leader comes along who hates people who are musical, or have brown eyes?’

  ‘That would be me out, for a start,’ Walter agreed, sighing over-dramatically, before glancing down at Caro’s small feet. ‘And you too, Miss Garland, for I can see your feet are really quite small.’ He paused. ‘Could someone else perhaps persuade Miss Katherine Garland of the wrongness of her opinions, do you think?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. At least …’ Caro glanced up at him and then, having seen the look in Walter’s large brown eyes, she turned away. She had seen that look in other men’s eyes, other men who had fallen for her sister, only to have their hearts not so much broken as wrecked. ‘Well,’ she finished finally, feeling sorry for Walter for the first time, ‘I suppose someone else could try.’

  Walter brightened, because he dearly loved a challenge, but as his expression lightened, Caro’s grew despondent. It was no use trying to explain to people, particularly male people, about Katherine. They all thought that because she was so beautiful on the outside, she must be beautiful on the inside too, but the truth was that nowadays she just wasn’t. She was not only capable of pulling the wings off butterflies, given half a chance Caro was sure that Katherine would pull the blossoms off peach trees, or the fur out of a dog. She had become horrid beyond measure.

  David kissed Katherine goodbye, not the way he would have liked to have kissed her, but the way the other members of the Party, some of whom were still standing around the drive, would like him to kiss Katherine, a quick peck on the cheek. Happily Katherine knew this, for they planned their every move together before, during and after every meeting of the Party.