The door was pushed open, and Charles came in with the cases. He put them down and put an arm round Judith.
“What are you dreaming about? Come along down, your Granny has a magnificent tea waiting for us.”
As the days passed Judith became a part of Grandmother’s household. She learned to work in the garden. She went shopping with Mrs. Killigrew, Grandmother’s cook-general who had come with her from Esher. She fed the dogs. She helped Charles paint the garden fence so that it was smart for the wedding. She enjoyed everything enormously, in fact she had never, though she did not accept this, been so happy before. The only worry she had was letters from Mother. Almost at once Father started asking about them.
“Funny you haven’t heard from your Mother. Are you sure she has this address?” Then to Grandmother. “Avis wrote almost every day to the hotel.”
Miss Simpson’s letters came regularly, but in Grandmother’s house there was no way of pretending they came from Mother. The post was laid out where everyone could see it, and it was no good saying an envelope with an Italian stamp came from France. Judith knew Mother loathed writing letters, and she told herself that when people were as fond of each other as she and Mother were letters weren’t needed, but a Mother who didn’t write evidently needed explaining.
“I don’t think I shall hear for a bit. You know she wants to get her book finished before I go back, so she can be free to do things with me. When she gets really tied up with her writing she forgets things like letters.”
“Fancy now,” said Mrs. Killigrew. “Funny she doesn’t send a postcard even.”
Charles was worried for Judith.
“Ought to let you know how she is. Never mind, pet, if you don’t hear soon you can cable.”
Grandmother refused to fuss.
“Avis realises if there was the slightest thing wrong we would let her know. I imagine writing letters comes very hard after a day’s work on a book.”
Judith found it easy to hide how seldom she wrote to Mother. Fortunately the stamps were the same for Italy as for France, and Charles thought it quite natural she should like to put her cards and letters to her Mother into the box herself.
“There,” he would say as his letter to Marion, and Judith’s to Miss Simpson, dropped into the box. “We know two people who are going to be pleased when those turn up.”
One of the things Judith enjoyed most was when Grandmother showed her the family photograph album. There were, of course, lots of photographs of Father and his sisters and brother when small, but what never ceased to interest Judith was the families as they were now, and as she would see them.
“That’s your Auntie Beatrice. It was taken in the war, that’s why she is in uniform, but she hasn’t changed a bit. Here she is with her husband, your Uncle Basil. He’s a very important man, I don’t know exactly what he does, but it’s something to do with paper. He’s an alderman, and some day may be Lord Mayor of London. Here are their children. That’s Catherine, she’s pairing with you at the wedding, she’s fourteen. That’s Robert, he’s twelve, and that’s little Cynthia, she’s eight.”
There were lots of photographs of the cousins. Judith had never known many children, she had met a few on ships, and sometimes had made acquaintances where they were living, it seemed unbelievable that by next week she was not to be the only child in the family. She half dreaded and half looked forward to it.
“I do hope Catherine will take to me.”
Grandmother was amused.
“Why shouldn’t she? And let’s hope you take to Catherine, she’s been looking forward to meeting you for months.”
That really did surprise Judith. She had never heard of Catherine until the other day, why should Catherine have heard of her for months?
“This is your Uncle Bruce,” said Grandmother, “and that’s Auntie Daphne, and that is little Hugh and that’s baby Helen.”
Judith peered at a younger edition of Father, and a pleasant-looking young woman, and two small children. A phrase of Mother’s sprang to her mind.
“Too utterly British.”
Father, who was in the room, roared with laughter. Grandmother was not amused.
“Just like you, darling, and me, and your Father, we’re all utterly British. So, incidentally, is your Mother.”
Judith gasped. When Mother or the Uncles said someone was utterly British they meant it in a criticising way, and certainly it never meant themselves.
“I don’t think Mother is what you’d call utterly British.”
Charles was going to agree, but Grandmother gave him a warning glance.
“She has lived so much abroad she has probably picked up foreign ways. But, you know, I am glad to notice you seem to have been brought up just like any other English child. You have, however, been a great deal with grown-ups, and so have caught some of your Mother’s expressions. What is charming and amusing when a grown-up is speaking often sounds foolish when repeated by a child.”
Charles, when alone with his Mother, expostulated.
“I find the way she quotes Avis amusing, why do you want to stop her?”
“She strikes me as being altogether too much obsessed by her Mother. Judith is twelve and it’s time she was herself, she mustn’t grow up a second-hand edition of Avis.”
“God forbid!” said Charles. “Though, mark you, Avis must have changed. You know how intense she always was, and never cared for anything but highbrow amusements. Well, now she seems to enjoy fooling round with Judith like a kid.”
“Does she?” said Alice.
Charlotte came home two days before the wedding, and the next day the family began to arrive. Every spare bed in the neighbourhood was borrowed. Judith, as she had been warned, had to leave the dressing-room because little Hugh was to sleep there. She had taken the news calmly, because she had supposed she was going with her Father to the village inn. But the day before she had to move out Grandmother told her that she was going to a farm, and would be sharing a bedroom with Catherine.
“I am putting you children together. They can let me have three rooms. You and Cathy will have one, Robert another, and little Cynthia is sharing with Edward’s niece Rosebud.”
Judith had, when Grandmother stopped her, been flying off to cut daffodils. She was excited by the wedding preparations. With Charlotte home, tissue paper crinkling in every corner, and wedding presents arriving by each post, a feeling of rush and tear had come over the house, and she had caught the fever. The English air was suiting her, her hair shone and she had more colour, but now, at Grandmother’s words, it seemed as if life drained out of her.
“I thought I was going with Daddy to The Iron Man.”
Grandmother chose her words carefully, but she spoke with deliberate casualness.
“I’m putting the men in the inn. I believe it’s the custom for the bridegroom to give an all-male party the night before the wedding. I don’t know what Edward and his friends would say if you turned up.”
Judith gripped the flower basket so tightly her knuckles were white.
“But I don’t know Catherine. And who’s going to look after me?”
Grandmother put one arm round Judith’s shoulders, and led her towards the daffodils.
“Mrs. Branscombe, the farmer’s wife, has had ten children, and is more than competent to look after you five. A farm is fun, and although the wedding day will be delightful, the grown-up gatherings before and after will be boring for you children. Mrs. Branscombe will love having you, and will see you have sensible suppers, and breakfasts at suitable hours, which is more than Mrs. Killigrew and I would be able to promise you here, and something you will certainly not get at The Iron Man.”
“But please I’d rather go with Daddy.”
Grandmother stopped by a tulip bed.
“Won’t they be lovely? I hope the wedding guests won’t tread
on them.” She took the scissors from Judith’s basket and snipped a daffodil and passed it to her. “You must have been very frightened to come to England, weren’t you, Judith?”
“Yes. You see, I didn’t know Daddy then, or you, or Mrs. Killigrew, or Charlotte.”
Grandmother cut another daffodil.
“Very alarming to be sent off alone to meet a Father you didn’t remember, but I gather you appeared quite composed.”
Judith laid each daffodil as it was cut in her basket.
“You’ll never know how souffrante I was inside. Leaving Mother was terrible, and saying good-bye to Simpsy, Miss Simpson I mean, agony.”
“I can imagine, but, as I say, you apparently carried the occasion off very well. Why then, when I tell you that you will sleep in a farm a mile from the house, and share a bedroom with your cousin, do you look as if you were suffering from eating unripe gooseberries?”
Judith tried to remember her meeting with her Father.
“It was most unexpected. I had pictured a formal meeting, so imagine my surprise when I find myself being hugged and called Judy.”
Grandmother held out an enormous daffodil.
“And immediately you ceased feeling anxious, knowing whatever happened your Father would look after you.”
Judith nodded.
“That’s exactly how I felt, Granny.” Then her eyes grew beseeching. “You do see why I’d rather go to The Iron Man. I promise I won’t be a nuisance.”
Grandmother snipped a few more daffodils before she answered.
“I can’t let you go to The Iron Man, it would be a most unsuitable arrangement, and, as a matter of fact, there’s no room, Edward’s friends are even sleeping in the bathrooms, but if I could arrange it I wouldn’t. You’ve never been with people of your own age, and you’ve no idea what fun it’s going to be. Nor, darling, does a girl of twelve need to be looked after. Everybody has to learn to look after themselves in the end, and the sooner they start the easier it is for them.”
Judith thought that over.
“Some people never have to. People like you. Once there was Grandfather, then there was Charlotte, now there’s Mrs. Killigrew.”
Grandmother laughed.
“None of them looked after me, I’ve always been able to walk on my own path. Now, stop worrying. It’s not necessary, but I’ll drive you over to the farm after lunch and introduce you to Mrs. Branscombe. I can’t tell her you are afraid to stay at the farm without your Father to look after you, because she would think you were such a goose, but when once you’ve met her you won’t feel a stranger.”
Judith saw it was no use arguing, and she did not want to give trouble, nor did she want Grandmother to be ashamed of her.
“I’m sorry to be so silly, but, you see, there’s always been somebody, Mother and Miss Simpson, and now there’s Daddy . . .”
“I know, and you’re not silly, it’s the way you have lived. But I want you to feel that there is a Judith who is a responsible young person, quite able to stand on her own feet.”
Judith laid a daffodil in her basket. She did not reply to Grandmother, but an inner voice answered: “I don’t want to be a responsible person. I’m a child. Children are always looked after. I don’t want to grow up, I want to be looked after for ever and ever.” Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Father.
“Daddy,” she shouted, “Daddy. I’m here picking daffodils.”
* * * * *
Catherine, Robert and Cynthia were a devoted trio. None of them had much of their mother in them. Only those who remembered Basil Carlyle as a very young man could see in what way his children took after him. They could sometimes peer behind the apparently slightly pompous, running-to-fat Basil of to-day to look at a lean eager young Basil who was in two minds whether or not to throw up his inheritance of paper mills in order to travel and write. The lean eager Basil had met and fallen in love with Beatrice, and that was the end of his dreams. Beatrice had been eighteen when she married, she looked like an English rose. In character she was nearer an oak tree. At her boarding-school, almost from her first term, she had been the type of girl on whom those who teach depend. “Beatrice is such a reliable child.” She spent her schooldays rising from rung to rung, the youngest prefect, the head prefect, she captained both tennis and lacrosse, finally she became one of the best head girls the school had ever known. Beatrice, when she thought about it, intended her adult life should be as much like her school life as possible. The same basic rules should govern both. “Letting down the school” had been to her one of the lowest crimes a girl could commit. Those she admired most were enormously energetic, exceptionally clean-looking and had no nonsense about them. By no nonsense she meant everything, from crushes on older girls and the younger school mistresses, to doubts as to whether the Church of England was the one true faith. When she left school she plunged at once into enterprises which would help others not to let down England. She was an officer in the Girl Guides; she joined a society for the abolition of litter; she helped at a club which aimed, through boxing and gymnastics, to persuade children to attend church. It had been a shock to her when she met Basil and, as she herself described it, “became as sloppy as a girl in the lower fifth”. She had tried to snap out of loving Basil, but found she was as firmly in love as if she were a fly stuck to a fly-paper. “I say,” she told her parents, “it’s simply idiotic, but I do most awfully want to marry him.”
One of the qualities in Basil that wound him round her heart like the tendril of a creeping plant was his engaging uncertainty about everything. To her his dreams of travelling and writing, his searchings for the two sides to every question, his political and religious doubts were the tottering footsteps of a baby. Soon he would be able to walk, she would teach him. They were married in the autumn of ’34. Before war broke out in ’39 Basil’s feet were placed in the way they should walk. She took an enormous interest in his business. With the tact she had learnt from prefect to head girl she made friends with those in charge of the welfare of the girls and women employees, and slowly there were improvements. Her interest produced a spark from Basil, and soon he was giving his whole heart to the production of paper. Beatrice, from prefect to head girl, had learned who she could trust and who not. She talked Basil into asking his various heads of departments and their wives to dinner, and having summed them up made him see who should be given more responsibility and who less.
As war came nearer Beatrice made plans for Basil’s business, just as she would have made plans had she still been head girl, to see her school through a period in which the head mistress had to be away. Clearly Basil would be serving, presumably in the Air Force, as flying was his hobby. Some man old enough not to fight must keep the firm going while he was away. There were no brothers, and Basil’s Father was dead, but there was an Uncle who was a director. The Uncle preferred a country life, but he had been in the business, and could probably be made to look upon coming back as war service. The reason why Beatrice chose the Uncle was that he would not wish to go on working when the war was over, so Basil would have no excuse for not getting straight back into business. Beatrice considered it was morbid to admit Basil might be killed. When a stab of fright made her heart miss a beat she found something that needed doing, or took a liver pill.
Beatrice became a queen bee in London’s civil defence force. She lectured all day, and in 1940 when the bombs began to fall, inspected shelters all night. She was in her element and was superb. Even the most nervous took heart when they saw Beatrice inspecting their shelter, looking as if she was examining a hockey pitch before a game. It was to Beatrice as tiresome as being shut in the sanatorium with measles during important school events, when she had briefly to retire from her war service for Catherine to be born. Fortunately for Beatrice, her old nurse was living in the country, and was delighted to take charge of Catherine. Basil would have liked Beatrice to live in the
country with her baby, and tentatively suggested it. Beatrice made no pretence of her feelings.
“What nonsense! I should be bored to death. Anyway, they’re screaming for me to come back to my old job, I’ve been away too long as it is. Of course I know we want a family, but I think it’s foolish starting one in war time. We won’t have another till it’s over.”
Two years later Beatrice found she was expecting another baby.
“It really is too idiotic. All those years before the war when I had nothing to do I never started a baby, and now, when it’s hideously inconvenient, I have two.”
When Robert arrived he, too, with the minimum waste of time, was dumped on old nurse.
Beatrice tried to get down to the country to see her babies as often as her work would allow. But, as the pace of the war grew faster, and preparations for the freeing of Europe left little of the government’s time for considering the welfare of civilians, greater and ever greater responsibilities fell on her shoulders. Basil, too, tried as often as possible to see his babies, but a year after Robert was born he was put in command of a bomber station in the north country, and his leaves were few and far between. So when, in the autumn of 1946, Catherine who was rising five, and Robert aged three, were brought by old nurse to their parents’ house in Hampstead, both screamed to be taken home. By home they meant old nurse’s cottage.
Judith Page 4
