Sons and Daughters

by Mary Jane Staples

‘Great Barnaby Bill,’ said Jenny, ‘that’s a genuine scorcher. Play you for five bob, then.’

  ‘I’ll take the bet,’ said Jimmy, chest a bit puffed up with pride.

  He played a good first hole, including a nifty putt, and claimed a half with Jenny. Jenny said he ought to be giving her a stroke on the long holes, seeing she was only a girl. Jimmy said that only a girl was a disinformative term. Further, she was experienced, and he wasn’t. Jenny, going to the second tee with him, said experienced at what?

  ‘I’m talking about golf,’ said Jimmy, ‘what are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m vague about that,’ said Jenny. ‘All right, no strokes, just a straightforward game for five bob.’

  She hit another scorching drive. Jimmy followed with a fairly decent one, and then his game fell to pieces. Jenny groaned with anguish, sighed with pity, and delivered some broadsides.

  ‘You’re all over the place with your swing, you dummy.’

  ‘I’m all over the place with everything,’ said Jimmy.

  A little later. ‘Stop bending your knees, you wretched man, and stop trying to hit the ball to God’s heaven.’

  ‘Be nice to it, you mean?’ said Jimmy. ‘That little white devil?’ He’d topped it and it had travelled a mere three yards.

  ‘Get rhythmic,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Rhythmic, right,’ said Jimmy. ‘Come on, rhythmic, where are you.’ He swung. The ball galloped and bumped for about the length of a cricket pitch. ‘Rhythmic failed me,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind, keep going,’ said Jenny. ‘You’re a trier, anyway.’

  He had a horrible time as a trier in a deep bunker, one of the few on the course. What made it horrible was that one attempt was such a clumsy miss that he lost his balance and fell over. Jenny shrieked with laughter.

  ‘You’re amused?’ said Jimmy, flat on his back in the sand. ‘I’m not. I’m livid.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Jenny. ‘You’ve forgotten all the pro taught you.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten it,’ said Jimmy, climbing to his feet, ‘I’ve just got human failings.’

  ‘Haven’t we all?’ said Jenny. ‘Never mind, it’s great to be out here. It feels like miles and miles from the madding crowd.’

  True. The views were vastly panoramic, the sky a clear blue, the sea a hazy blue, the course full of gentle sandhills covered with green, and the shades of green were varied, light or mild or deep. Here and there, other golfers were visible. Jimmy felt that none of them could be as hopeless as he was.

  However, he was a little better over the second half of the course, but in the end there was no denying the fact that generally his round had been another disaster.

  ‘I think I’ll go in for bowls,’ he said on the last green.

  ‘Bowls, why bowls?’ asked Jenny, golden-brown.

  ‘It’s the game old people play,’ said Jimmy, ‘and I feel as old as any of ’em. Ninety, in fact.’

  ‘Well, cheer up, you don’t look it,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I owe you five bob,’ said Jimmy, and paid her.

  ‘Fair?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Fair,’ said Jimmy. ‘Can we get a pot of tea and a slice of cake in the clubhouse?’

  ‘You can,’ said Jenny, looking at her watch, ‘but I have to dash as soon as I’ve handed in my bag of clubs. Me and my lovely lot are driving to Newquay for dinner this evening, and I need a bath before I put my glad rags on.’

  ‘Dash away, then, I’ll hand your bag in for you,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Good-oh, you’re a sport,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Thanks for the round,’ said Jimmy. ‘I think I’ll look at it as an education and forget what it did to my self-respect.’

  ‘If your self-respect feels wounded and I spot you on the beach tomorrow, I’ll find a bandage for it,’ said Jenny. ‘Bye now, and thanks for handing my clubs in.’ She gave him the bag and departed.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Jimmy to both bags, ‘that’s my last time on a golf course. I think I’ll take up knitting. After all, what am I if not an old woman?’

  ‘Knitting?’ said Susie over a quickly prepared supper of cold pork, sauté potatoes and a salad. No-one asked that she and Polly should use up hours of their holiday by spending unlimited time cooking. ‘Knitting?’

  Jimmy explained.

  Sammy said something had got to be done about falling down on a job. Golf isn’t a job, said Susie. Sammy said that wasn’t the point. The point was that their younger son was making a charlie of himself in the presence of a proud and haughty female girl.

  ‘Proud and haughty?’ said Paula, giggling.

  Sammy said that was what she would look like to suffering Jimmy, so what could be done about it? Jimmy said if anybody tried to do anything, he’d jump on them.

  ‘What would you do, Boots?’ asked Sammy.

  ‘What would I do if I were in Jimmy’s shoes?’ said Boots. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ said Sammy.

  ‘Jimmy’s himself,’ said Boots, ‘he’ll stand or fall by that.’

  ‘Quite right, old sport,’ said Polly, ‘Jimmy doesn’t need to mount a white horse and slay dragons to impress the young lady.’

  ‘Right, Aunt Polly, I’m standing or falling,’ said Jimmy. He let a grin escape. ‘Mind, I think I’ve already fallen. Flat on my bottom in a bunker.’

  ‘Help, that’s serious,’ said Susie.

  ‘Crikey,’ said Paula, ‘what a palaver over a girl.’

  ‘But we’re girls,’ said Phoebe. She was prepared, even at only twelve, to defend what she knew her dad would call the valuability of girls.

  ‘Yes, but we’re not soppy,’ said Paula, ‘and Jimmy’s girl must be soppy if she’s –’ She thought. ‘Yes, if she’s playing hard to get.’

  ‘Who said that?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Me,’ responded Paula.

  ‘Where’d you get it from?’ asked Boots.

  ‘From a play on the radio,’ said Paula.

  ‘What’s everyone talking about?’ whispered Gemma to James.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ said James, ‘it’s not about sandcastles.’

  Simply, of course, the families being what they were, close-knit, Jimmy’s problem with his golf and the photogenic young lady was everyone’s, even Polly’s. Polly, the one-time giddy flapper and Bright Young Thing, had metamorphosed into a complete Adams.

  As far as Jimmy was concerned, the collective interest was irrelevant, but he bore it good-naturedly, even though his personal interest in stunning Jenny Osborne was no light thing. Blow me over, he thought, I think I’m hooked, and I didn’t get that from any radio play.

  Monday morning.

  Paul, back from his week’s holiday, arrived at his little office in the Labour Party’s Walworth headquarters at the same time as Miss Lulu Saunders. She was wearing a brown beret, and with her curtains of hair and her glasses she looked not unlike Greta Garbo, the Swedish film star who wanted to be alone, except that Garbo was fair and her glasses were dark.

  Lulu, her long dress a muddy brown, said, ‘Hello, there we are, then. Had a good holiday?’

  ‘Very good,’ said Paul, brown-faced. ‘Look here, Saunders, didn’t I tell you to get your hair styled and make this place look pretty?’

  ‘And didn’t I tell you to grow a moustache?’ said Lulu. ‘You haven’t. Wouldn’t or couldn’t, I suppose. Anyway, don’t be personal about my hair. Or bossy.’

  ‘Put some curlers in it every night for a week,’ said Paul. ‘Now, any crises?’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Lulu. ‘All taken care of. Like one lippy bloke who came in binding about your leaflets. Pack of lies, he said. Asked who wrote them. The secretary, I said. So he wanted to know where you were. So that he could tread on you and dump you in a dustcart. Couldn’t find you, so he started on me. I conked him a oner. He left with a split lip.’

  ‘What was he?’ asked Paul. ‘A Young Conservative?’

  ‘No, a drunk,’ said Lulu. ‘I hope you don’t dr
ink.’

  ‘I’d get dehydrated if I didn’t,’ said Paul, opening the mail. ‘You can die of that.’

  ‘I don’t include tea or water,’ said Lulu.

  ‘Kind of you,’ said Paul. ‘Any more cases like the drunk?’

  ‘Loud cases,’ said Lulu. ‘Such as what the hell are the Young Socialists doing that’s useful. Things like that. I coped.’

  ‘How?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Calmed them down,’ said Lulu. ‘My soothing touch is well known.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Me and the beneficiaries,’ said Lulu. ‘All last week’s letters have been answered. You’ve come back to a tidy desk.’

  ‘My gratitude is enormous,’ said Paul, reading a letter.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Lulu. ‘Told you I was brilliant. I’ve been jotting down ideas for the next leaflet. And suggestions. I think they’re an improvement.’

  ‘On whose?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Yours,’ said Lulu.

  Paul took that like a bloke who knew there were times when the last word belonged to one’s opponent, or the crosstalk would go on for ever. So he gave Lulu best and changed tack.

  ‘By the way, include some punchy slogans in your notes for the next leaflet. Winston Churchill’s roaring like a lion again on behalf of the Tory opposition. He can see next year’s election as a chance to be Prime Minister again.’

  ‘Holy ghosts,’ said Lulu, ‘what a disaster. He’ll bomb the Iron Curtain and start a nuclear war.’

  ‘I don’t think my grandmother will let him do that.’

  ‘Your grandmother?’ said Lulu, taking her jottings out of her desk drawer. ‘I’d like to believe that.’

  ‘You can,’ said Paul. ‘Now, about a simple slogan? I quote. “Keep the Tories out.” Make it repetitive, and in bold caps, to be slipped in at regular intervals. I’ll look over your ideas and suggestions sometime this week.’

  ‘Hardly necessary,’ said Lulu, and began to pore over her jottings, while Paul went through the mail and made marginal notes where required. He smiled when he opened one letter from an enthusiast and found it contained a five-pound cheque for the group’s funds. There was a request for the donation to be used to start an independent fund, that of equipping every Young Socialist with the Red Flag. The signature was that of H.R. Trevalyan, the address The Lodge, Kennington Park Road, Kennington. The handwriting was neat enough to be that of a woman, and the name struck a faint chord in Paul. Now where had he heard it before?

  ‘Lulu,’ he said, ‘does the name Trevalyan ring a bell for you?’

  ‘No bells,’ said Lulu.

  ‘We’ve got a letter from someone of that name, wishing us good luck and enclosing a donation of five quid,’ said Paul.

  ‘Well, hooray,’ said Lulu. ‘But you’re interrupting my thoughts.’

  ‘The donation is for the purpose of buying Red Flags for our members,’ said Paul.

  ‘Waste of money,’ said Lulu. ‘We can always raid the offices of the Daily Worker and snaffle all the Red Flags we want.’

  ‘Borrow,’ said Paul.

  ‘No good being squeamish, said Lulu. ‘Can’t afford tea-party stuff. Iron hand, that’s the thing to turn the country into an efficient Socialist state. Socialist Republic, in fact.’

  ‘And what happens to our revered monarchs?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Give ’em a pension and a country cottage in Tooting,’ said Lulu.

  ‘Leaving out that Tooting’s not in the country,’ said Paul, ‘you wouldn’t suggest saving the cost of a pension and a cottage by guillotining them, would you?’

  ‘We’ll get Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle,’ said Lulu. ‘Don’t want blood as well.’

  ‘Would that be where the iron hand gets squeamish?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Is that a sample of your unequalled wit?’ countered Lulu, horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of her nose. ‘It’s pathetic. And you’re still interrupting my thoughts.’

  My own thoughts, said Paul to himself, make me wonder if her Socialist Republic will arrive in time to do away with all honours and squash the prospect of my grandparents becoming Sir Edwin and Lady Finch.

  ‘Well, Madame Robespierre,’ he said, ‘you can put your thoughts in your desk after lunch. We’re going to see H.R. Trevalyan, the writer of this letter and the sender of this cheque. It’s a Kennington address, and I think the writer’s a woman. I’d like to meet her, find out who she is and if she’s prepared to be a regular donor. We can do with all the funds we can get.’

  ‘Good idea, a person-to-person talk,’ said Lulu. ‘Very practical. You need me with you?’

  ‘Bring your brilliance along and put it to work on her chequebook,’ said Paul. ‘And make the coffee in half an hour.’

  ‘Your turn, not mine,’ said Lulu. ‘I made it every day last week, and the tea as well.’

  ‘For yourself,’ said Paul.

  ‘It’s still your turn,’ said Lulu.

  ‘I take responsibilities, you take orders,’ said Paul. ‘Or I’ll chop your head off.’

  ‘You’ll whatter?’

  ‘Use my iron hand,’ said Paul. ‘I’m not squeamish.’

  Lulu tried a sardonic laugh. It spluttered.

  And she made the coffee.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Boots and Polly were in the sea with the twins, staying in safe waters. Susie and Sammy were looking after belongings within the shelter of one of the many little coves of the bay. Paula and Phoebe were splashing about with teenagers, and Jimmy, having had a prolonged swim, was sitting close to the sea, letting his swimming trunks dry in the sun. The tide was out, the sandhills of Doom Bar emerging in the distance.

  ‘Hello.’ Jaunty Jenny appeared in one of her RAF shirts, and her white shorts. Both items looked freshly laundered, and the young lady herself looked a charmer, her round white straw hat on the back of her head, the slipped top buttons of her shirt making her very appealing to the eye.

  ‘Top of the morning to you,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Same to you,’ said Jenny, and sat down beside him. ‘I can’t stay long, we’re going yachting off Rock again in an hour.’ With the tide out, Rock could be reached by trekking over the sand.

  ‘Your father’s yacht?’ said Jimmy.

  ‘The same,’ said Jenny, observing him out of thoughtful eyes. ‘You’re going to ask questions?’

  ‘Yes, how do your friends like your beach hat?’

  ‘That’s a question?’ said Jenny, and laughed.

  ‘Is your father’s yacht large?’

  ‘It’s his pride and joy,’ said Jenny, ‘but he wasn’t born with it in his mouth, like a silver spoon, so to speak. He started out as an office boy with a City firm of stockbrokers at about ten bob a week, but by the time the war began he was the senior partner.’

  ‘He’s a smart old dad?’ said Jimmy.

  Jenny said smart enough, and that as he belonged to a City Territorial unit he saw service during the war, even though he was old when it started. Jimmy asked how old, and Jenny said thirty-nine.

  ‘That’s old?’ said Jimmy.

  Jenny said old enough to give her mother fits about him going off to fight Hitler’s gruesome lot, but he came home in the end with medals and the rank of major, so how about that as a self-made success? Jimmy said he liked it, it was a prime example of what initiative could do for a bloke.

  ‘Listen,’ said Jenny, ‘what’s your initiative doing that you’re only selling shirts and things?’

  ‘I’m like your dad, I’m starting at the bottom,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘At your age?’ said Jenny.

  ‘What age is that?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘You’re about twenty, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, about.’

  ‘And you’re at the bottom still?’

  ‘Any comments?’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Yes, that’s ridiculous,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Like my golf,’ said Jimmy, and Jenny laughed again. ‘Where are
you staying, by the way?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Barry and the rest of us rowdy lot are at the St Moritz Hotel, Trebetherick,’ she said. ‘Well, it saves us having to do our own cooking and make our own beds. My parents and my brother and sister are in a cottage at Rock, so that they can stay close to the yacht. My mother loves sailing as much as my father.’

  Jimmy asked if all her friends were working. Jenny said no, they were all at the art college in Kingston. She was there herself, doing fashion designing. That was what she wanted to be, she said, a fashion designer or an assistant to an established one.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘What do you hope to be? asked Jenny.

  ‘Happy,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Don’t we all?’ said Jenny.

  ‘D’you play your golf at weekends?’

  ‘There’s a club not far from our home in Surrey,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m a member, my father pays the fees, but women aren’t encouraged to use the course on Saturdays or Sundays, except after five o’clock. Stuffy old buffers explode if they spot a skirt before that time. Of course, our fees are on a reduced scale, but that’s not the point. The principle’s old hat and unfair. You wouldn’t explode, would you, if you saw me hitting a ball before five o’clock?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be there,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Don’t dodge the question,’ said Jenny. ‘Let’s say if you were there.’

  ‘I’d ask for a few useful tips,’ said Jimmy. ‘I don’t believe in stuffy old buffers, and I do believe in the right of skirts to be seen everywhere in moderation.’

  ‘What d’you mean, in moderation?’ Jenny seemed tickled.

  ‘Well, perhaps I meant not quite everywhere,’ said Jimmy. ‘On a golf course, yes, and on a bus or a tram, but not on a football pitch or a rugby field. That wouldn’t do, you’d get a broken leg.’

  ‘Idiot,’ said Jenny. ‘By the way, would you like Fiona’s phone number?’

  ‘Fiona?’

  ‘Yes, the one who thinks you’re a sweetie.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her lately.’

  ‘No, well, Roger’s making sure you don’t,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Good old Roger,’ said Jimmy. ‘And who’s Barry?’

  ‘A close friend with ambition and a high pulse rate,’ said Jenny.