Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

  Too hot, thought Beatrice philosophically, going to switch it off. I shall know another time.

  ‘Why are you making toffee in here?’ asked Michael Randolph, suddenly appearing at the french windows.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, feeling hot and untidy. ‘Do come in.’ She swept a pile of garments into a drawer. Surely it was odd of him to come through the window without any warning.

  ‘I wondered what you thought about the news?’ he said, looking serious.

  ‘What news?’

  ‘Oh, Beatrice, surely you heard the ten-thirty news bulletin – Germany has started to invade Poland.’

  There was silence.

  Beatrice, she thought. It had been Miss Wyatt before. Then she suddenly realized what he had said.

  ‘It seems like war for all of us.’

  ‘It seems impossible on such a beautiful day … ’ She looked helplessly about her.

  ‘It may not be so bad … ’

  There was silence again.

  Michael took up the burnt vest from the ironing board and examined it.

  ‘Is this what was burning? I wonder if it is totally spoilt. Perhaps you could put a patch on it,’ he added helpfully.

  ‘Well, Beatrice, this is grave news,’ said a loud cheerful voice and Agnes, wearing a djibbah and sandals and looking almost radiant, came in through the french windows followed by Connie, who trailed rather resentfully behind.

  Does no one ever use the front door, thought Beatrice, feeling suddenly irritated.

  ‘Oh, hello, Agnes,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Grote,’ said Michael, still holding the vest unconcernedly in his hand. ‘It is, as you say, grave news.’

  Beatrice could feel Agnes’s eyes on the garment and saw her raise her eyebrows in surprise. It was perhaps an unusual situation in which to find a clergyman.

  ‘I’ve burnt a hole in my vest,’ she said lightly, almost merrily. ‘It smells just like treacle toffee.’

  ‘The Germans have invaded Poland,’ said Agnes in a loud clear tone as if Beatrice might not have known what the grave news was.

  ‘Yes. I must go now,’ said Michael. ‘The children and the teachers will be arriving soon. There will be a lot to do.’

  ‘Yes, it will be quite a change for you, won’t it,’ said Agnes bluntly.

  ‘Oh, Agnes, wasn’t that rather rude!’ said Connie, when Michael was out of earshot.

  ‘Well, we’ve all got to be busy now. We can’t afford to be idle for a moment,’ she added with a sharp glance at Beatrice.

  ‘I must see about getting our evacuee’s room ready,’ said Beatrice, resenting the implication that she had been idle. ‘And I must do something about the blackout curtains. Fortunately most of ours are thick and dark.’

  ‘Oh, we did ours months ago,’ said Agnes airily and inaccurately. ‘I saw this coming.’

  ‘Goodness, isn’t it awful? I can’t realize it.’ Beatrice pushed back a lock of hair from her face. ‘It’s going to make a lot of changes,’ she said inadequately.

  ‘It will affect all of us,’ said Connie with a hint of excitement in her voice. ‘We shall none of us be the same a year from now.’

  ‘Well now,’ said Agnes. ‘Do you want any help with your blackout?’ She examined the curtains critically. ‘I really don’t think these will be thick enough. Still, you won’t be using this room in the evening, so we can just take the light bulb out. I’ll do it for you now.’ And before Beatrice had time to protest she had climbed on to a chair and taken it out.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘You can take the one out in the downstairs lavatory too – that will be one thing less to worry about. Your mother’s room has very big windows, hasn’t it? We’d better go up and see what can be done.’

  Beatrice and Connie followed her out of the room obediently.

  ‘I hope your mother will feel equal to seeing us,’ said Connie timidly.

  ‘Mother is equal to anything,’ said Beatrice absently. Her mind was not on blackout curtains. I wonder if I will feel able to call him Michael? she thought.

  ‘Well, Mrs Wyatt, how are you?’ said Agnes in the bright, distinct and rather patronizing voice she reserved for invalids, children and tradespeople.

  ‘I am afraid there will be war,’ said Mrs Wyatt, as if she and not Agnes were the bringer of news. ‘I have listened on the wireless.’ She indicated a portable set beside her bed. ‘Beatrice, I think I should like a glass of stout and some biscuits.’

  Agnes was at the window. ‘These curtains should be thick enough.’ She sounded quite disappointed and then, brightening up, she said, ‘I think I will go and see how they are getting on at the vicarage. I believe they are having five children. I’m sure they will need a helping hand.’

  ‘They ought to have this border dug and planted with cabbages,’ said Agnes, as they walked up the vicarage drive.

  ‘Aren’t you going to the front door?’ asked Connie as Agnes marched boldly across the lawn and round to the side of the house, as she had at the Wyatts’.

  ‘I think I’ll surprise them,’ said Agnes, and this was, indeed, a habit of hers.

  She arrived at the french windows of the dining room to be confronted by the vicar’s legs at the top of a step-ladder. Mrs Palfrey was sitting at a table drinking coffee and their daughter Flora, a frown of concentration on her face, was carefully lacquering her nails with orchid-coloured polish.

  ‘Good morning!’ said Agnes brightly to as much of Canon Palfrey as she could see, but before she was able to say anything else, a pall of black casement cloth suddenly fell down over the window, blotting out the occupants of the room.

  ‘That’s not thick enough!’ said Agnes triumphantly. ‘They’ll have to use it double, unless they’ve another curtain they can line it with.’

  ‘Hullo, Agnes,’ said Jane Palfrey, pushing the curtains aside and coming out. ‘You find us as usual in absolute chaos. Isn’t this war sickening!’

  ‘Good morning, Miss Grote.’ Canon Palfrey came creaking down from the step-ladder. ‘Well, this is a business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Flora seems to be the only one who doesn’t find things any different,’ said Agnes acidly.

  Flora waved one hand in the air to dry the polish.

  ‘One can’t just go to pieces,’ she said. ‘One must be groomed.’

  ‘I was just having a cup of coffee,’ said Jane hastily. ‘Will you have one?’

  ‘No, thank you, I never take anything in the morning,’ said Agnes virtuously, before Connie could reply.

  ‘A cigarette, then.’ Jane produced a silver box and opened it hopefully. By some miracle there was one cigarette rolling about forlornly inside. Agnes took it.

  ‘As you see,’ said Jane, ‘we are busy trying to do our blackout.’

  ‘Do you think the German planes will get this far?’ Connie asked nervously.

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ said Agnes.

  ‘One rather feels,’ said Jane, ‘that if one does the front windows, the back ones don’t matter.’

  ‘Well, I just came to see if I could help,’ said Agnes, who had not actually made any such offer, ‘but I see you’re getting on all right.’

  ‘Oh, yes, we’ll muddle along somehow,’ said Flora wearily. ‘So far the most ingenious arrangement has been to use an old cassock of father’s to black out a sky-light.’

  Connie looked rather shocked.

  ‘Of course, we’re having four evacuees,’ said Agnes, ‘but I’ve got everything ready. Come along, Connie, we must get on with the shopping. They say there’s likely to be a shortage of bacon.’

  ‘I hear Sir Lyall and Lady Wraye are down here,’ said Connie, her voice taking on a reverent quality, as it always did when she spoke of their MP. ‘I suppose Edward will be going into the army.’ She looked archly at Flora, who said with an assumed air of nonchalance that she supposed he would.

  After Agnes had hustled Connie away, the Palfreys spent the rest of the day moving furnit
ure and making arrangements for the evacuees, so that by the evening they were so tired they felt they had actually been at war for months.

  CHAPTER THREE

  What a waste, thought Amanda Wraye, uncovering the silver dishes on the side-table and gazing at the scrambled eggs, kidneys and bacon which were revealed. She never ate more than a grapefruit and a piece of toast for breakfast and yet the servants, in spite of her vague instructions, persisted in cooking enough for several hearty breakfasts. They knew what was suitable to the household of a Member of Parliament even if their mistress did not. Oh well, she thought, if there is a war we will have to economize.

  Lyall Wraye came in briskly and sat down at the table. ‘Sunday Times not come yet?’ he grunted, looking around the table and even under it as if the servants might have departed from their usual routine.

  ‘It’s always late in the country,’ said Mandy helpfully. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day? One hardly seems to notice it in Eaton Square.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good thing you appear to be so fond of nature, since you are likely to be down here a good deal now,’ said Lyall, dipping his spoon into a grapefruit. ‘If we are to have these evacuees you will have to be here to supervise things or the servants will leave. I shall be going up to town tonight,’ he added. ‘I have to go to the House.’

  He went on talking and Mandy’s thoughts drifted to how different it was all going to be, when she suddenly heard him say, ‘Of course Eleanor will have to come here.’

  ‘Oh, Lyall, surely not. I mean, must we?’ Eleanor, Dowager Countess of Nollard, was Lyall’s elder sister and she and Mandy had never got on. Since her husband’s death she had had to give up her large house in Hill Street and live in a comparatively pokey flat in a new block near Bryanston Square. She was continually lamenting the change and recalling all the brilliant entertaining she had once done, the sort of entertaining that Mandy should be doing so that Lyall could become a Cabinet Minister.

  ‘Oh, Lyall, must we?’ she repeated. ‘After all there will be the evacuees and Edward will be here,’ she said hopefully, trying to fill the house with people.

  ‘Edward will be with his regiment.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Her voice trailed away as she thought of Edward. He had been such a dear little boy until he went away to school. And now he was a nice young man with charming manners who called her by her Christian name and made fun of her in an affectionate way and didn’t need her any more. Nobody does, she thought wistfully, not even Lyall. Certainly not Lyall, she added to herself as he got up purposefully from the table.

  ‘I have work to do and I don’t want to be disturbed.’

  ‘Don’t you want to hear the news?’

  ‘I can hear it in my study.’

  ‘It’s rather a historic occasion,’ said Mandy, her voice becoming rather shaky. ‘We didn’t have the wireless last time.’

  Lyall, rather surprisingly, put his arm round her and patted her shoulder. He looked as if he might be going to say something, but evidently thought better of it and went abruptly out of the room.

  They had breakfasted late and Mandy was in the morning room waiting to hear the eleven o’clock news when Rogers, the old parlourmaid who had been with them for twenty years, came in with the Sunday papers.

  ‘Sit down with me, Rogers,’ said Mandy, ‘and listen to the news. I expect you would like to hear Mr Chamberlain.’

  Rogers sat down rather uncertainly on an upright chair.

  ‘Sir Lyall is going to listen in his study,’ Mandy said, as if sensing Rogers’s uneasiness.

  They sat quietly listening, Mandy in her smart dress of black crêpe-de-Chine printed with small cerise flowers and Rogers very stiff and starched in her uniform. As Mr Chamberlain spoke, Mandy felt the tears welling up in her eyes and Rogers had turned her head away, so that Mandy would not see her weeping.

  ‘Jane Palfrey isn’t here.’ Agnes’s penetrating whisper irritated Connie. ‘I should have thought that she would have been here today of all days.’

  ‘I expect she wants to hear Mr Chamberlain,’ said Connie in a reverent tone, more suitable for conversation in church.

  ‘Aren’t you too hot in that fur?’ said Agnes, looking at Connie’s old grey fox tie. ‘I should take it off if I were you.’

  There was only a small congregation today. Canon Palfrey felt very bleak as he walked up the aisle behind Michael Randolph, three choir-men and a handful of choir-boys. Jane and Flora were still busily preparing for the evacuees who were due at any minute. He hitched his red hood over to the middle of his back and settled down to pray. The congregation was less critical today; their minds were on other things, evacuees, rationing, whether their sons would have to fight, if there would be air-raids. The vicar seemed to be just one of themselves this morning. They understood that there was not much that anyone could say, and the very ordinary things that he was saying, as well as the familiar form of the service, were somehow reassuring.

  ‘Not many people in church today,’ Canon Palfrey said to Michael Randolph as they walked along after the service. ‘I suppose it will be different later on.’

  ‘Yes, people will come now. And there will be all the evacuees. There will be great opportunities in this war … ’

  ‘Opportunities?’ Canon Palfrey turned over this rather novel aspect of the situation. ‘Yes, I suppose there will be. Sunday schools and all that sort of thing.’ He liked a comfortable Sunday afternoon, with a good sleep. He was not sure that he really welcomed these opportunities.

  ‘A good many of the children will be Roman Catholics, I hear,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Gladys looks upset,’ said Flora, after the maid had brought in the chicken at lunch.

  Jane sighed. ‘Yes, we will have to humour her. I’m afraid she may be difficult about these children coming.’

  ‘Oh well, you’ll just have to get someone else if she leaves,’ said Canon Palfrey easily.

  ‘But we shan’t be able to get anyone else,’ explained Jane patiently. ‘They’ll all be going into the forces or off to make munitions like they did in the last war.’

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s talk about it,’ said Flora, appalled at the thought of being stuck at home doing housework for as long as the war lasted.

  They went on eating their lunch quite calmly, although Jane kept putting down her knife and fork and saying, ‘Supposing they came now. What on earth should we do?’

  Canon Palfrey poked at the carcase of the chicken helplessly. ‘Not much there,’ he said.

  But the meal passed without anything happening and it was not until after tea that Flora came rushing into the drawing room with the news that a police van was going down the road shouting something. They all went to the front gate, but they could not make any sense of the booming, unintelligible sounds that it made.

  ‘It must be the children coming,’ said Jane. ‘It can’t be anything else.’

  Then Flora, who had been leaning over the gate, saw a troop of people in the distance, moving towards the vicarage like an invading army.

  ‘They really are coming,’ she said. ‘I can see them.’

  ‘Well, we’re all ready for them,’ said Jane, but there was in her voice, as there had been in Flora’s, a note of amazement. And they both realized that up till now they had never quite believed that the children would come.

  ‘The King’s due to speak in a few minutes,’ said Canon Palfrey quickly. ‘I think I’ll just slip into my study and hear him on the portable.’

  ‘Yes, there’s no point in you being here as well,’ said Jane soothingly. ‘They might be embarrassed if they saw a clergyman standing at the gate.’

  Her husband slunk gratefully away.

  Mr Bonner with a crowd of children and a few adults stopped at the vicarage gate. The children all carried gas masks and an assortment of luggage, satchels, little cardboard suitcases and cretonne bags, and Jane felt a sudden pricking of tears in her eyes.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ said Mr Bo
nner in a forced hearty tone. ‘Now you are taking five, I believe. Miss Stoat,’ he said, turning to a thin-faced woman with frizzy bobbed hair, ‘which five shall it be? Oh, this is Miss Stoat,’ he said, ‘one of the teachers. She is to be billeted with the Wyatts.’

  Miss Stoat read out the names of five children from her list. She had a mincing, refined voice. Poor Wyatts, thought Jane. Rather a thousand children than a teacher!

  ‘Well now,’ said Jane, when five children had been separated from the others and handed over to her. ‘I’m sure we’re all going to get along splendidly. They’ll soon settle down,’ she said to Mr Bonner, with an assurance she was far from feeling. Mr Bonner hurried on with the remainder of his flock, and Jane and Flora stood awkwardly in the drive looking at the five children. The evacuation had begun.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Agnes,’ said Connie Aspinall diffidently, standing in the drawing-room doorway on the morning after their evacuees – a mother and two children – had arrived. ‘Agnes,’ she repeated more loudly, trying to make her voice heard over the noise of the Hoover, which Agnes was wielding with great energy and enjoyment.

  ‘Yes, Connie, what is it?’ shouted Agnes impatiently, brushing aside a small table and pushing the Hoover relentlessly into a corner.

  ‘It’s the children,’ Connie shouted, her voice cracking with the effort.

  ‘What about the children?’ said Agnes with her back still turned.

  ‘I don’t quite know how to put it, it’s something not very nice.’

  Agnes looked interested but went on with her vacuuming.

  ‘They’ve got things in their hair.’ Connie was forced to say in a loud, harsh tone what she would have preferred to whisper confidentially.

  Agnes turned round with a gleam of triumph in her eye. ‘I knew it,’ she said snapping off the electric current with a decisive movement. ‘Lice,’ she added, with an emphasis which seemed to give the word a full and very sinister meaning.