If the Invader Comes

by Derek Beaven

  ‘And this is Jack,’ Phyllis said, bobbing down to present the child. ‘Say hallo to Auntie Clarice, Jack.’

  The boy hung into the folds of his mother’s coat, and stared up at the new person.

  Clarice stared back, at the two of them, at the child’s dab of a face, and his short, wind-blown hair. Then she examined once more her cousin’s fine and skilfully emphasised features. She remembered the spiteful, grateful, tearful, buccaneering girl who’d bullied her in her own home behind the blind eye of her parents. She felt sorry for the kid. ‘I thought Vic was …’

  ‘Out of a job?’ said Phyllis. ‘Yes, I wrote first of all, didn’t I?’ She straightened up. ‘We had a rocky moment.’ She called over her shoulder. ‘Didn’t we? Darling.’ Then turning back to Clarice, ‘But everything’s quite all right now.’

  ‘Then who was that man I met … That other …’

  ‘Man? What man?’

  She was aware of the husband, watching her. He’d come round with the cases and set them down. She was aware of his body. It was like a threat. And Phyllis, too, was sharp, at point. Those tailored curves held an image of Clarice’s own mother, together with the same scent, attar of roses. She backed down. ‘Oh, well. Then I expect it was nothing,’ she said.

  THE CHILD WAS dressed in a brown corduroy cap and suit with leggings that buttoned all the way down the side. Clarice put out her hand to him. ‘Hallo, Jack. Goodness, what a smart boy you are. I wonder what you’d like to eat. Shall we go and meet Uncle Doc?’

  Her hand hung in the air like a lost limb. She was unused to children. Then, hesitantly, and somewhat to her surprise, the boy took hold of it. His small palm was warm, and there were soft, questing fingers. How disconcertingly he gazed up at her. The clasp tightened and she felt him consent. She liked the sensation.

  With a glance to the parents she turned to lead them all in. ‘It’s so nice to see you. Why don’t you come and meet Daddy.’

  ‘Daddy?’ said the child immediately. ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘My daddy, Jack. He’s the doctor.’

  Phyllis gave a strange little laugh. ‘It’s not such a grand house as I remember. I was almost disappointed for a minute when I saw it. I’d always thought you lived in a mansion. Not that it isn’t very nice, I’m sure.’

  ‘It’s been allowed to get a bit tumbledown. We’ve made progress, repairs, a few sticks of furniture – but there needs a lot more doing to get it back into shape. The change isn’t all in the mind’s eye.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose so. You’re looking very nice, of course. I can’t wait to see Stan.’

  Stan! Clarice was amazed at the liberty. Just beside the door there were daffodils in newly tended beds. They rocked slightly in the April wind. ‘How do you like my gardening?’ she asked.

  ‘Lovely, I’m sure.’

  ‘We didn’t actually know we still owned the buildings.’ She led the way in. ‘It was in Mummy’s name. When she died, Daddy thought it would have gone back to …’ She felt the embarrassment of the void she’d opened. ‘I don’t know, relatives.’

  ‘Yes?’

  She plunged on: ‘You know, reverted somewhere. Daddy didn’t much care. He thought he’d be in the East for good, you see. Since it’s turned out otherwise and we own this and nothing else, there didn’t seem to be much option. It’s hardly worth five bob, but here’s where we live, at least for the time being.’ She indicated the cramped panelling in the little attempt at a lobby, and then pointed to the oak door on her right. ‘Apparently, there was an old lady tenant all that time. She died and the upkeep was let go. I have to warn you, there’s no running water. We have the electric, but no main drains. That’s the country for you.’

  Clarice ushered them into the sitting-room. ‘Ethel Farmer’s making lunch. She “does”. I think it’s nearly ready. You’ve arrived just in time; and here’s Daddy.’

  The reuniting of uncle with long-lost niece appeared to have all the natural warmth missing from her own handling of affairs. Her father hugged Phyllis to his tweeds and picked up Jack. Then he shook hands warmly with the husband. The four were animated in front of the fire while Clarice was shut out.

  ‘I’ll see about lunch,’ she said, uncertainly. ‘And then I’ll show you to your …’ So busy making up for lost time, they failed to hear her, and she left the room unnoticed. Suddenly the effect caught up with her, and she doubted everything about herself. I expect it was nothing, she’d said. As she took Phyllis’s smart leather cases along the passageway and up the stairs, her eyes brimmed over. The first drops ran down her cheek and on to her dress. Then, mercifully out of earshot in the guest bedroom, she wept over the basin until the sobs hurt in her throat. She was crying again but it was nothing. What had she done or achieved? Nothing. She’d wasted her life in frivolous passages, in various passions and crazes – so they appeared to her now.

  She dabbed at her face with a hand towel and looked round at the shabby furniture, the old bed. Weak English light strove in through the imperfect glass panes above the pine chest. Her father was right, he hadn’t looked after her. Whatever life she’d owned had been taken away behind his back. Which was the true sham, the happy couple with their child, or the deluded girl with the ruined old man pouring what money they had left out of a black-market whisky bottle and down his throat?

  Downstairs in the dining-room, as soon as she was seated, the conversation lapsed – she knew her eyes were red, her powder a tell-tale of repairs. Everyone was pointedly not looking at her. ‘I’m really sorry about this beef,’ she said. ‘Ethel claimed she knew the ways of the range. She cooked and did for the dead Miss Lauderdale, you see.’ Her voice had a desperate ring.

  The husband contributed a polite chuckle. Phyllis remained as intimidating as ever. Dr Pike was insisting on finding her the reverse. Phyllis sat next to him and simpered. He engaged her in nostalgia. ‘You remember the gramophone, child.’

  ‘I believe I do.’

  ‘Still going. We had it out in the jungle. Hardly credit it, would you? Charmed the monkeys out of the trees. Done very well for yourself, Phyllis. I’d never have dreamed that slip of a lass would turn out quite such a dazzler. Great girl, eh?’

  ‘Oh, Stan. The things you say.’

  Clarice turned her attention to the husband. ‘Well, how good to see Phyllis after all these years. And to meet you too, Vic. Tell me, what line of business are you in?’

  ‘The shipping business, actually. We ship the goods in, and then we distribute them.’ The casual smile played again, a studied insincerity. They understood each other; he saw and enjoyed the fact of her tears, knew she was trying to fight back. The high stakes created an almost sexual undercurrent.

  ‘What sort of goods?’

  ‘All sorts, really. Anything we can get our hands on, so to speak.’ He laughed. There was a fascination about him. ‘We’re not fussy at Figgis and Rice. Old established firm, you see.’

  ‘Ah, quite,’ broke in her father. ‘So you’re in the City?’

  ‘More or less. Very handy for the port. The docks.’

  She steeled herself. ‘That would be the job at the … boatyard?’

  He didn’t even draw breath. ‘We do have a marine construction interest. What about you, sir? Going to set up practice again? Very nice part of the world. Constable country, eh?’ he grinned.

  ‘Oh, yes. But I doubt it, Vic. I doubt it, actually. The old trouble, you know. Malaria. Physician, heal thyself.’

  Phyllis told Jack to eat up his food. ‘He’s such a fussy eater. Do you still play the piano, Clarice? We were all expecting great things. After what we heard.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  The pudding was more edible. Lunch closed on a reminiscence of the old East, as her father mellowed. But Clarice looked up at the low ceiling’s plaster and exposed woodwork, and a deep curled presentiment of calamity stirred in her stomach. An ache the shape of the missing Victor Warren filled her heart. Where was he? What had
they done with him?

  SHE WOULD FIGHT. She was in her own kitchen, standing next to the ancient porcelain sink and looking out on to the garden hedge. Beyond it stood the trees at the edge of Appleby’s farm. In her mind’s eye, she could see Vic’s face, quite clearly. She could almost feel his arms about her.

  Recollections flooded in – of the few days they’d stolen together. Had Phyllis guessed? Among the Tyler family Clarice had felt awkward: posh, prissy and too well dressed, as though everyone hated her but were putting her on a pedestal. Her stay had been all too brief. Eventually, she’d had to go down to Southampton to catch her ship, the Mooltan. At Waterloo Station she and Vic had contrived to part. She could see his eyes now, shining, yet full of desperation.

  She returned to the dining-room. The two women cleared the table and then decamped with Jack to the drawing-room. The men failed to join them. Clarice excused herself once more.

  Back in the kitchen she caught her father refilling the decanter, and took the bottle from him in exasperation. ‘Daddy. No more. Just listen to me, please. How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t expect to keep downing it at the same rate over here. There’s nothing to burn it off.’ She gestured at the window. The wind was tossing budded branches on the other side of the hedge. ‘Whatever midday sun there might be out there won’t madden a fly. In England it costs real money.’

  ‘Thought I was being hospitable.’

  ‘You are. Of course you are. But …’

  ‘That young fellow seems to have a supply of good Havanas from somewhere.’ Dr Pike took a specimen from his top jacket pocket and waved it in front of her like a trophy.

  ‘That’s the point. It’s what I’m trying to speak to you about. We’re out of our league. Out of our depth. They’re lying. I can’t believing how brazen they’re being. This isn’t him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know Vic Warren. I … met him. Before I came out – the last time. This other … He’s an impostor.’ The word sounded puffed up.

  He fixed her with his eye; and then casually pulled a spotted handkerchief, also from his top pocket, to mop the bristles on his upper lip. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Daddy!’ How could she make herself understood? ‘It isn’t him! Why did we have to invite them … her? I’m frightened.’

  ‘Turned into a very presentable young woman. What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘Everything. I thought you’d had a letter saying Phyllis and her husband were on their uppers. Instead they arrive in a brand new Riley and he’s something in the City. Daddy …?’

  ‘Things change. As we know.’

  ‘But it’s not the right man. It’s not the Vic Warren I knew. They can’t be married.’

  ‘They look very much like it to me.’

  ‘But they’re not.’

  ‘D’you know that? For certain.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t … Not for certain. But it isn’t him!’

  ‘I expect she just met someone else. Many a slip, my dear. Should it matter, so long as they’re getting on together?’ His speech was slightly slurred. She hated the loss of him, of his judgement.

  ‘I just feel there’s something terribly wrong.’

  ‘About marriage it’s never done to enquire too deeply. A private realm. To be quite frank, none of our business. Eh? Couples go through all sorts of ups and downs. Why should it matter to us what they say or what they get up to?’

  ‘But what about me?’ She was insistent.

  ‘Can’t there be some charity here?’ Her father straightened up. He seemed to forget he was drunk and swayed slightly. ‘Doesn’t it begin at home? Phyllis was always – how can I put this – something of a refugee. Isn’t it up to us to make allowances? Well, isn’t it? She had an absolutely filthy time when she was a child. Did you know that? Absolutely filthy.’

  ‘So, I expect, did Hitler. There are always some people who parade their victimhood in front of you like a banner on a pole.’

  ‘Clarice, that’s a wicked thing to say! Wicked! Once upon a time I should probably have sent you to your room.’ He blinked at her as though he still might. ‘As it is, all I can do is recommend a little … well, yes, charity. There it is. And Phyllis has never made a song and dance about all that. You can just think about it, darling. All right?’ Blandly, he finished filling the decanter and began to accompany it back to the table. ‘I’ll bring him in to the other room, shall I?’

  Clarice stood briefly once more at the kitchen window, holding on to the sink. She bit her lip. The sleeping puppy, Bentley, mewed in its basket.

  In the drawing-room she sat with Phyllis on the loose-covered settee watching her father and the man in front of the fire. They stood with their backs to it in that way men did, marking their mutual territories with comments about sport and trade. The familiar, slightly lavatorial smell of cigars fugged the air. Jack was on the floor, absorbed with the clockwork train set she’d brought down from the attic. She wanted to scream. Phyllis wanted to talk to her, just loud enough for Clarice’s father to hear the sweetness of her voice.

  ‘I thought you might have been married yourself, by now. Not for want of offers, I expect,’ she said.

  Clarice replied, pointedly, ‘We haven’t all come across Mr Right, yet.’ She smiled to cover the sarcasm.

  Phyllis smiled back. ‘Ah, you always did know how to get the attention, though. In Malaya, I can imagine … Don’t they say those nice public-school boys out there simply worship a white woman?’

  ‘Yes. I expect they do. Do you recommend marriage, after all?’

  ‘Depends, doesn’t it?’

  ‘On?’

  ‘On the man.’

  ‘At least you’ve fallen on your feet.’

  Phyllis glanced at her partner. ‘Vic – he’s a diamond. Must be to put up with a nightmare like me, eh? Coming from where I come from. That’s what you think, isn’t it?’ She looked straight at Clarice. ‘You do, don’t you? Vic’s a good provider. He keeps me in order. But that’s the mark of a man, isn’t it? What he says, goes. Makes a woman respect him. Don’t you think? Not like some. Stop doing that, Jack.’ Clarice knelt down to help the boy mend the track of his train.

  Phyllis continued. ‘He’s come up the hard way, Vic. In fact we’re two of a kind, really, known each other all along. Down by the river. All down in those mucky little terraces. That’s what you think, don’t you? But that’s all we know, you see. We don’t know no better – as they say. That’s where you really learn what’s what. And here’s you coming home and finding you did own the property all along. Not so grand as we both remembered, maybe.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Hardly worth five bob really. But, my, that was lucky, wasn’t it? That it hadn’t – what was it –“reverted” somewhere. In the family. After all. Speaking of falling on one’s feet.’

  Later, the sun came out. They all strolled in the garden. More daffodils were blowing in the lawn, and a random profusion of hyacinths peeped through the vegetation which Clarice hadn’t yet had a chance to clear from around the edges.

  ‘Tell us about you starting up on the stage, Phyllis,’ her father said.

  Clarice added, ‘Yes, do. It sounds so much more exciting than anything I’ve been up to. Malaya’s lovely, of course, but there’s so little to do, when all’s said and done. Thoroughly routine if you’re young, to be perfectly honest. I’m dying to hear.’

  Strangely, Phyllis was reticent. ‘Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just to bring in a bit of extra cash. What with the kid and everything.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re being modest. Shan’t we be seeing your name up in lights soon?’

  ‘Not with this blackout we shan’t.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘I keep forgetting about that. It’s so unreal, isn’t it? Oh, Jack. That’s the well.’ Clarice held the small boy so that he could peer over the brick parapet and taste the fall of dank air. The circle of water far below reflected their two heads. ‘It’s very mysterious, don’t you think?�
�� she said.

  ‘You’ll fall in,’ said Phyllis.

  Her father continued, ‘But what roles have you been doing? Are you in rep?’

  ‘It’s musical shows actually. Singing and dancing. They’re what I do best. The acting is just something you add on as an extra. We like to give the punters what they want. Auntie Mattie was an actress, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she was.’ Charmed, pickled, Dr Pike seemed oblivious now to tragedies ancient or modern. ‘An unforgiving profession, dear. Just you watch out. You will, won’t you?’ He slipped an arm around Phyllis’s waist. ‘Watch it doesn’t do to you what it did to her.’

  Clarice heard herself gasp. She put her hand up to the twist in her hair. Then she smoothed down the skirt of her belted cornflower-blue dress.

  Little Jack brought Clarice a stick for the puppy. She looked at him intently. And I’m quite simply desperate to see young Jack. Now they gazed at each other, not child to adult, but almost, for an instant, person to person, and it seemed to her she read something in his small face, in his wide but guarded eyes, that understood the inexplicable disappointment in hers. Some resemblance to his father had attracted her, repelled her, frightened her.

  The husband pointed to the eastern sky. ‘This is where he’ll come. When he comes.’

  ‘I thought the Norway intervention was going to sort everything out. Once we’ve cut off Hitler’s supply of iron he’ll have to give in, won’t he? I mean, whatever happens, the French army, the British navy – between the two he’ll have the life squeezed out of him. Surely. And then you can go on with your trading. In the City.’

  The man met her eye. ‘You don’t believe all that, do you? I’m telling you this is where they’ll be wanting to land. When they come. All along this coast.’ He smiled.

  ‘Land? Invade? Oh, I don’t suppose so. Do you? He’s got his precious Lebensraum. Now he’ll be looking for terms, won’t he? Everybody says so. No one’s going to try to invade us, for heaven’s sake.’ Even as he tried to intimidate her, she found herself responding to him.