When they reached the floor that sold material, her mother – most surprisingly – said, ‘Now, Polly. I want you to choose material for two woollen dresses, also one silk and one voile. I’ll get the stuff for Wills while you are choosing, and then you can show them to me, and if I think they are suitable, you shall have them.’
This was unexpected and delightful, and she chose and chose, and changed her mind, and agonised, and in the end, actually asked her mother to be the final judge.
After Liberty’s, they progressed down Regent Street. There was a slight altercation in Robinson and Cleaver, as Polly did not want to have vests bought for her – she had heard Louise say that they were bourgeois, something that Louise definitely thought it frightful to be, but her mother was adamant. At Galeries Lafayette Sybil bought her two skirts – a navy pleated one with a blazer to match, and an olive green tweed – plus three shirts and two jerseys, a petticoat with lace round the hem and a beautiful nutmeg brown winter coat with a mock fur collar. Then it was time to go to the Café Royal to meet Dad.
‘Somebody’s birthday, I see,’ said the old lady who took all their parcels. ‘Let me guess. You’re too young to be getting married, so it must be your birthday,’ and she blushed, because it did seem a tremendous lot, more than she had ever had in her life before.
‘We’ll get Daddy to take them home for us in the car,’ Mummy said, when they were walking down the staircase.
‘That won’t be till the weekend!’
‘Well, you’ll just have to bear it, darling. We can’t spend the afternoon carting all that around. There he is!’
Lunch was lovely. She had a glass of sherry and hors d’oeuvres and salmon with delicious mayonnaise and white ice cream with chocolate sauce – ‘You can have whatever you like,’ Dad said. ‘It isn’t often I have my two favourite women to lunch.’ They all had salmon but she noticed that Mummy left most of hers. ‘And what have you bought for yourself, my darling?’ he said to her when they were choosing their puddings.
‘I really don’t need anything. I’ll just have coffee,’ she handed her menu back to the waiter. ‘Honestly, darling, since I’ve happily lost some weight, I can wear all the things I had before Wills.’
‘I don’t think that’s right, do you, Dad? Just having things to wear isn’t at all the same as having a lovely new thing.’
‘Quite right. Mind you make her buy herself something really pretty and frightfully expensive this afternoon.’
‘I promise.’
But, in fact, it turned out not to be possible. After lunch, and after Dad had put them in a taxi, Sybil said, ‘Polly, I’ve got to go and see somebody quite near John Lewis where you can get your bras and the rest of your undies. Will that be all right?’
‘Of course. But where are you going? Shall I meet you there?’
‘No – there won’t be time. When you’ve done your shopping, take a bus back to Charing Cross. I’ll give you your train ticket, just in case. Oh – and yes – money to buy your things.’ She fished about in her rather shabby bag and gave Polly some notes. ‘Now, don’t lose them. Here is the list of what I want you to get. And catch the four-twenty, even if I’m not there which of course I will be. But if you think you are going to be late, take a taxi.’ It was twenty-five pounds – more money than she had ever had in her life. ‘Goodness! I won’t need all this.’
‘You can give me the change, but I want to be sure you have enough. Keep all the bills. And promise to catch that train.’
‘Of course I will.’ When the taxi had deposited her, she watched it drive off. She felt mystified and vaguely uneasy.
Her mother did not catch the train. Polly waited at the barrier until the last possible moment, but there was no sign of Sybil, and she left getting onto the train so late that she got into the nearest carriage which turned out to be first class. Walking down the corridor as the train lumbered slowly over the river she saw something very odd: Aunt Villy in a first-class compartment. Sitting opposite her, leaning forward and holding one of her hands in both of his was a small man with a great deal of dark wavy hair whom she immediately guessed was Mr Clutterworth. They did not see her, and she hurried on feeling uncomfortably certain that they would not have wished her to see them. Aunt Villy had said nothing about his coming to stay, but then her mother had said nothing about having an engagement in the afternoon. What was going on? She wished Clary was mere as she would have thought of a dozen (interesting and amazing) reasons for both of these mysteries. Aunt Villy and (presumably) Mr Clutterworth had been gazing at each other, but he had been doing all the talking. It seemed extraordinary that Aunt Villy should have somebody in love with her, but that was what it had looked like, which led her to wonder whether her mother had slipped off to meet someone for the same reason. But she discarded this idea as her mother did not seem to have made the sort of efforts with her appearance that Aunt Villy had. And anyway, her mother adored Dad – she would never do anything behind his back. She tried to think about all her new clothes, but her thoughts kept veering back to her mother and what she could have been doing that made her miss the train.
When the train reached Battle and she got onto the platform, she saw Aunt Villy walking down it towards her – alone. This also seemed strange: where was Mr Clutterworth – if, indeed, it had been him?
‘Where’s Sybuil?’ Villy called as she came closer.
‘She missed the train. She went off after lunch to see someone, and she told me to catch the train anyway, so I did.’
‘Quite right.’ Aunt Villy seemed unperturbed. Then Polly realised that Aunt Villy had known of the appointment. ‘I’m sure she’ll be on the next one. I expect Mr Carmichael kept her waiting. Those grand people often do.’
‘Who is Mr Carmichael?’
‘Didn’t she tell you? He’s a consultant. He knows all about people’s insides. I probably shouldn’t have told you. I know she didn’t want to worry your father.’ She glanced at Polly, and then said, ‘It’s nothing to worry about. Aunt Rach made her go – you know how she fusses about other people’s health. It was just to be on the safe side. I expect she thought it would be easier for you not to say anything in front of your father if you didn’t know. The best thing will be to say nothing about it. You won’t, will you?’
Polly’s mouth was suddenly dry. ‘All right.’
There’s Tonbridge. Did you get some lovely things? You don’t seem to have very much with you.’
‘We gave most of them to Dad to bring down in the car on Friday.’
Aunt Villy gave her arm a little squeeze. ‘I can’t wait to see them.’
Polly smiled. Fear, like a splinter of ice, had pierced her and she dissolved it in a surge of white-hot, silent rage: insincerity, patronage, how she hated them both; how awful people were who said what they did not mean, who thought that little girls (she was sure she was thought of as a little girl) could be diverted by pretty things, whose ‘protection’ was nothing more than their own ease … I could wipe the silly smile off her face if I asked her about the man on the train, she thought as she got into the front of the car with Tonbridge. All the way home, she hugged this piece of power to herself to blot out the rest.
‘God’s teeth! It’s extraordinary how devious they are!’ Clary said. She had borrowed Zoë’s tweezers, and was trying to pluck her eyebrows, which she felt were too bushy in the middle: ‘If I don’t do something about it, they might run into each other. Zoë said it would improve my appearance, but I really don’t think anything will, do you?’
‘Stick to the point,’ Polly said crossly. She felt that her news about Aunt Villy deserved a more awestruck response. I thought you didn’t care what you looked like, anyway,’ she added.
‘I don’t absolutely not care.’ She put down the tweezers. ‘Well, what I think is that she probably is in love with Lorenzo, but obviously she wouldn’t go about telling everybody. It isn’t what you do if you are having an affair. I strongly suspect that part of the exciteme
nt is other people not knowing. And, of course, if Uncle Edward knew, he might easily kill Lorenzo and obviously she wouldn’t like that. So it all seems fairly straightforward to me.’
She could be extremely irritating, Polly thought. ‘Don’t you think she’s a bit old for that kind of thing?’ she said.
‘Far too old in one way. But, on the other hand, that just makes it more pathetic. Mutton dressed as lamb,’ she added rather wildly. ‘One of her favourite expressions, come to think of it. But, of course, sleeping with people when you’ve got grey hair, borders on the ridiculous in my opinion. When is this famous weekend going to happen?’
‘I don’t know. Some time in September, I think. Lorenzo has concerts and things so he’s always travelling, I heard Aunt Villy say.’
‘Well, when it does, we’ll both have to keep a sharp look-out. “Mutton Dressed as Lamb” would be a jolly good title for a short story, don’t you think?’
Seeing Clary’s grin which somehow managed to be both cheery and rapt (lately she had been taking very seriously possible titles for works she would write), Polly felt, as she did sometimes, and always without warning, a kind of respectful and exasperated affection.
‘If you lie on your back,’ she said, ‘I’ll have a go at your eyebrows.’
In bed, much later, when they had cleaned their teeth, put out the light and opened the blackout because it was so hot, she reviewed the matter about which she had said nothing to Clary. Her mother had come back by the next train, had caught a cab from the station, had dropped in to Home Place to see her and apologised for not meeting her at the station. ‘I had to go and see someone and they kept me waiting and everything took far longer than it should. Did you get the right bras?’
‘Yes. Was it all right?’
‘Was what all right?’
‘Aunt Villy said you went to see a doctor.’
‘Oh. Yes, I did. Yes, of course it was all right. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want – to make a fuss with Daddy and spoil our lunch.’
So you made me worry more than ever, she thought.
‘It was fun, wasn’t it, darling? Quite an outing. The only thing I forgot to get you was a good mac, but I can do that next time I go up.’
‘When are you going?’ Sybil did not answer at once, so Polly said, ‘Couldn’t I come with you?’
And her mother answered immediately, lightly, ‘No, darling, not this time. Now I really must fly. I’ve got to give Wills his supper.’ And she went.
The main thing that emerged from this was that her mother hadn’t asked her not to say anything to Dad, and this, she concluded, must be because there was nothing to conceal. All the same, she was glad that she hadn’t told Clary, who had enough to worry about. This reminded her of something else she hadn’t told.
‘Are you awake?’
‘Of course I am. I don’t go to sleep like people in films – head touches the pillow, eyelashes flutter on the cheek once and boom!’
‘We were machine-gunned in the train this morning. I forgot to tell you.’
There was a silence.
‘Did you hear?’
‘Of course I did.’ There was another pause, and then Clary said resentfully, ‘I must say, you have all the luck. You didn’t tell me what you had for lunch either.’
‘Hors d’oeuvres, salmon with mayonnaise, and ice cream. And sherry first.’
‘H’m.’
‘Clary, you could have come!’
‘You know I hate shopping – especially for clothes. What did people do when they were machine-gunned?’
‘Nothing much. It was all over in a second, anyway. Then one of our fighters brought the plane down and everyone cheered.’
‘Right. Well, now you’ve told me.’ Polly could hear her humping the bedclothes round her in a sulky way. Then she said, ‘But thanks for doing my eyebrows. Although I must say if it hurts as much as that, I’m never going to do it again.’
‘You could put peroxide between them and have gleaming white fur in the middle.’
‘Polly, you don’t seem to understand. Not minding about my appearance is one thing, but turning me into a sort of mixture of King Lear and Groucho Marx would be quite another.’
Polly thought this was tremendously funny, and for a few minutes, choking with laughter, they vied with each other about what to do with Clary’s eyebrows. ‘I shall go about getting called middlebrow if I don’t do something.’
‘You could try cow’s urine like Botticelli’s ladies with their lovely smooth white foreheads – not a hair in sight.’
‘Imagine trying to get a cow to put its urine into something portable! And, of course, if I shaved it I’d have five o’clock shadow, like Uncle Edward.’
‘If you were a burglar it wouldn’t matter – the mask would hide it,’ and so on.
When silence finally fell between them again, Polly lay in the dark, listening to the distant drone of planes (the warning had gone hours ago as it usually did these days) and the occasional faint burst of anti-aircraft guns nearer the coast. She felt light with relief: that it had not been an Uncle Rupe in France night, that her mother was really quite all right, it had only been Aunt Rach fussing, and that at the weekend she would have all her lovely new clothes. It occurred to her how odd it was that she was in the middle of a war and could feel such simple things. Perhaps she had a shallow nature, but even that didn’t seem to matter very much as at the moment after this idea came up, she fell asleep.
Towards the end of the week, the war got much worse: the Germans kept on with bombing attacks all day all over the country. It was said that they were sending a thousand planes a day. ‘We’ve shot down a hundred and forty-four of their aircraft!’ Teddy announced with shining eyes.
‘But we’ve lost twenty-seven,’ Simon said.
‘That’s not much compared to a hundred and forty-four.’
‘It depends how many planes we’ve got.’
But the next day, the losses and gains were more ominously even. Uncle Edward rang in the evening and had a long talk with Dad, as a result of which he said that he thought he should go back to London to the wharf on Sunday morning.
Simon had managed to make his wireless work, and he and Teddy spent hours listening to news and anything else they could raise from it. The reception was crackling, and often the announcers sounded as though they were under water, but Teddy and Simon seemed impervious to that.
Sunday was the day Dad went back to London. It was awful when he went: everybody was trying to be rather breezy and kept thinking of what seemed to her rather useless things to do.
‘Their plan is to smash our air force and then invade,’ Teddy said at breakfast. He seemed exhilarated by the prospect.
‘How on earth do you know?’ Clary asked in her most crushing voice.
‘Colonel Forbes told me. He knows a lot about strategy. Anyway, we’ll know if they do because all the church bells will ring.’
‘Oh, good! That will make all the difference.’
‘It will, as a matter of fact. It will give us all time to collect our arms. I’ve got the gun Dad lets me use to shoot rabbits with. And Simon’s going to have Dad’s swordstick. Just you remember what Mr Churchill said about fighting on the beaches and everywhere. But if you don’t agree with that, at least it will give you time to commit suicide.’
‘What with?’
‘Oh, don’t be feeble, Poll. There are hundreds of ways of doing it if you really want to.’
‘Do you think we should commit suicide if the Germans come?’ she asked Clary. They had been sent to pick all the greengages that grew on the walls of the kitchen garden.
‘No. Teddy is just being silly. He can’t see the point of girls. He’s rather backward, if you ask me.’
‘All the same,’ Polly remarked, ‘it does show how men actually like war, or at least get unduly excited by it.’
‘We wouldn’t have them if they didn’t. And then they go off to have a nice fight, and leave all
of us prey to wicked invaders.’
‘Clary, I honestly don’t think that’s fair.’
‘It isn’t. I’ve just said it wasn’t. I mean – look at us. A whole lot of women and children—’
‘There are men here—’
‘The Brig is almost completely blind. McAlpine’s got such awful rheumatism that he can hardly dig for victory let alone do anything else for it. Tonbridge is so weedy that if a German sneezed on him he’d probably fall over. And Wren is practically always over anyway and mad to boot.’ She had been ticking them off her fingers, and now finished with, ‘And your precious Christopher doesn’t believe in war, so he’d probably simply sit back and watch us being raped or whatever it is they do. And if what stands between us and all that is simply Teddy with his rabbit gun and Simon with a swordstick, we don’t have an earthly.’
She was sitting on top of the small steps they were using to reach the higher greengages. Now, having chosen two particularly ripe ones, she handed one down to Polly, and biting into her own she said, ‘What I find peculiarly irritating is that nobody will say what rape actually is. If there’s a danger of it, I really do think we ought to have some idea of what we’re in for. But they simply won’t say. It’s all part of this family’s determination not to talk about anything that they think is at all unpleasant. I think we should talk about everything that is. But when I ask any of them, I get nowhere. Aunt Rach said I shouldn’t have such morbid curiosity, but it doesn’t seem like that to me. It’s just curiosity. I want to know everything!’ She handed down the small trug she’d filled with fruit for Polly to put into the huge one perched on the wheelbarrow. ‘But you don’t, do you, Poll?’
‘Want to know everything? I wouldn’t have time for everything. In any case, nobody knows everything. The trouble is that, when you know things, you have to do something about it.’
‘No, you don’t. You just know it: store it up in case it comes in useful.’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 74
