He continued in bitterness and scorn to explain the scheme.
‘All right, Mr. Jebb. I’ll do it, with pleasure. Who else will be on the committee?’
‘Damned if I know. Thought I’d better tackle Mrs. Venables. She knows what’s what, I take it. But she’s a bit on the peevish side, eh?—between you and me. Don’t know if you hit it off with her. I can’t. Filthy tempered woman. Then there’s those Miss What-d’you-call-ems—that new lot, taken Flint Cottage—call themselves journalists, don’t they? Have you come across them? They’ve borrowed my roller. Take my advice, steer clear of ’em. Got up like streetwalkers. I suppose they know what’s what, but if you ask me, they’re not respectable. Then there’s Mrs. Jessop—she’s up to her eyes. Says her husband’s put his foot down—won’t let her take on anything more.’
‘I wish somebody’s foot would come down on me when I’m asked to take on anything more: I do seem to get awfully crushed without it.’
The receiver became totally silent; then started to caw and crackle as if in the grip of an electric storm. Spasm after spasm wheezed through it. He’d seen it, he’d got there. Rich, rich—that’s what it was: rich. Never know what the woman will say next.
‘Perhaps Mrs. Carmichael would help?’ she said when he grew calmer. ‘She knows what’s what.’
‘A bit harum scarum, Mrs. Carmichael. I’m not saying anything against her, but she’s a bit of a gad-about. Always on her bicycle—tearing in and out of Redbury. Don’t know what she does there.’
‘She makes camouflage nets three days a week.’
‘Oh, that stuff. Knew she was poking her nose into something. I say! she’s not what she was before the war, you know. I rather liked Mrs. Carmichael before the war … There’s that old fool Parkinson; he knows what’s what—he’s a classical man, like me. He’d bite my head off if I asked him to come on the committee. Then there’s Mrs. Moffat—she’s an obliging sort of woman, but she can’t take on anything more.’
‘Oh, yes, poor dear, she’s had to go to London to nurse her aunt, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes. Nasty long job—cancer. London’s bound to get it in the neck again, too—any moment. But I say!—between you and me, it’s the best thing out for Captain Moffat.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘He’s a different man. Hadn’t you noticed? Digging in his garden yesterday—quite spry. Squaring his shoulders up. She’s too soft with him, you know—coddles him. Makes him look a fool. I said to him yesterday: “I say! Where’s your bonnet and shawl? I’ll tell your wife on you.” Hach! Hach! Hach! This east wind touched you up anywhere? Be in the east now till the end of May. It’s touched up my knee again, but I keep on. Got to keep on till we drop. That’s what these Beveridge brutes are after, I take it: work us till we drop, then shovel us out and sit on our graves and twiddle their thumbs. I say! What d’you think of the Archbishop?’
‘Well … what do you think of him, Mr. Jebb?’
‘Off his head.’ He told her for three minutes what he thought of his Father in God.
‘I’m sure you’re right. Well, Mr. Jebb, I must—’
‘I say! Where’s the Luftwoffer? What are they up to with this Second Front?’
He told her for two minutes the strategic dispositions of the Allied generals, the nature of the secret weapon, and of the tactics about to be adopted by the German Air Force. Then he said abruptly: ‘Ta-ta, Mrs. Ritchie,’ and rang off.
‘You encourage him,’ said John.
‘I do not. I can’t discourage him: that’s quite another matter. You must learn to be more accurate.’
‘Shall you marry him, Mummy?’ said Jane.
She danced in a corner of the room, throwing her arms out in free, dreamy gesturings and revolving in her bedroom slippers with a fairly obvious intention of languorous grace.
‘No. I’m off now. Unless some clue seems to point me on to Paddington, Bristol or Penzance, I ought to be back about lunch-time.’
‘With my trunk?’ said Jane.
‘Who knows? If you hear a taxi stop outside the door, it’ll be me with the trunk. If you hear a bicycle stop, it’ll be just me again.’
‘Aha! I guess it’ll be a taxi. Don’t you, Mummy?’
Jane’s eyes rolled, illumined with prophetic ecstasy. She tripped across the room, spreading sunshine, flinging up her arms. Her smirched grey-belted front tautened over her expanding stomach.
‘Oh, Jane, you look like a hoarding that’s been rained on and scrawled over for six weeks. Why not wear those old grey flannels of John’s and his St. Michael’s football jersey?’
‘Oh, no! Not those awful braces again. I can’t!’
‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘Well, don’t you see … ? It’s that back bit. I have to unbutton them all round and then I can’t get at that back bit again, I simply can’t catch it to button them on again. So what I have to do is to undress completely, to my vest, when I go, every time, and then dress again, and last time at the Carmichaels’ when I spent the day I had to go once, and when you come out you get looks as if to say: “You’ve been a jolly long time.” It’s not very nice.’
A cracked hoot came sharply out of John. After a few moments he tottered to the arm-chair and collapsed in it, twisting and beating his head about. Dumb convulsions interspersed with gasps and whimpers shook his frame. He lay back on the cushions, his hair on end, eyes closed, face flushed, distorted and said faintly:
‘Oh, let me die. Take pity on me, someone. Carry me away.’
‘What’s the joke?’ said Jane, sombre, standing in front of him and pushing his nerveless heels about with her toes. Another spasm clutched him. He checked it with a groan, and murmured, wiping his eyes:
‘Why not call on Roger for assistance? He’s a helpful sort of chap.’
‘SHUT UP!’
Jane hurled herself and fell on him, pounding, clawing, savaging him. This time it would happen: arm-chair, limbs, torsos, heaving, grunting, interlocked, would break up all together and be dismembered on the carpet.
‘Not in that chair!’
At once their bodies slid to the floor. She went upstairs to tie a scarf round her head, hearing, from below, the violence batter round the room and thin out in familiar, progressive stages. Thuds. Screeches. Threats. Jibes. Giggling and grumbling. Twitters. Silence.
When she came down John was rummaging in his jar of screws and nails, Jane sunk in the current number of Sunny Stories. They looked placid and refreshed, starting the day with quiet indoor occupations: an agreeable picture.
‘Well, good-bye for the present,’ she said. ‘Can you reveal your plans? Just so that I don’t spend the next few hours in helpless anxiety.’
‘I’m starting for the Hall as soon as Oliver telephones,’ said John. ‘We’re going to get the stage up this morning.’
‘Meg’s coming over here,’ said Jane. ‘We’re going to hear each other our parts and finish the posters. But oh, I need my poster paints that are in my trunk. Oh, my trunk, my darling trunk! Oh, Mummy, my helpless anxiety! Oh, Mummy, Mummy, promise me to bring it back. Promise your little girl.’
She flung down Sunny Stories and floated towards her, arms outstretched in tender yearning.
‘Stage this morning. Rehearsal directly after lunch. Footlights after tea. Full day,’ said John. He let out a wild snatch of tuneless whistling. ‘Where’s my screwdriver gone again? What stinking hell-hound—’
The telephone bell rang. Roughly assembling his joints, he corkscrewed thunderously upon the instrument.
‘That you? O.K. Starting now.’ He was gruff, on the job. A loud gurgling sound as of flood-water bubbling in full spate down gutters cut him off. ‘Pipe down, can’t you? You tickle—’
‘That’s Oliver,’ breathed Jane, softly radiant. ‘Or Gerald.’
She picked up two c
hairs overthrown in his elliptical swoop and went out of the front door, up the path towards the bicycle shed, followed by Jane. The wind blew from the east, but the sun was brilliant. The thought of skimming downhill between cherry orchards consoled her.
‘You needn’t feel your tyres,’ said Jane. ‘I’ve pumped them up. You didn’t know, did you? It’s my good deed for the day.’
They hugged and kissed at the shed door, by the waiting bicycle.
‘Mind you learn your part and get those posters done.’
‘Of course. Roger might want to paint me this morning, though. What then?’
‘I suppose you might tell him you’ve got to learn your part and finish the posters.’
She mounted and wobbled out into the road. After a short delay the yell came after her.
‘I couldn’t say that!’
She waved without looking back and pedalled on.
Redbury Station was stretched out stiff with emptiness and silence. One boy, holding a notebook and a pencil, stood on the bridge, staring up the line; a tranced and fanatical figure. She tried the door of the parcels office and found it locked. She knocked on the door marked Station Master and put her head in. The young lady booking-office clerk was inside, enjoying a cup of tea with a friend; she said regretfully that she couldn’t think wherever Mr. Hobbs could have got to. He’d flagged out the ten forty-two some minutes ago; he must have gone off to see to something; he was bound to be somewhere. It wasn’t their busy time just now, but he was sure to be back soon.
She looked along the vacant platform and saw at the far end the form of Mr. Hobbs, in his frock-coat and peaked cap, bending over a mixed bed of tulips and broccoli. When she came up to him he straightened himself and said cordially:
‘Ah, it’s you. Good-morning. You’ve come about that there trunk.’
The confident, even triumphant, note in his voice caused a wild hope to shoot through her: the trunk had arrived, was waiting … ?
‘No, there’s nothing come yet. It’s a funny thing.’
‘It is a funny thing.’
‘I’ve been on the phone to Brading, but they haven’t clapped eyes on it. And a wire came from Shippenham this a.m. They sent it off all right on the twenty-fourth, according to that.’
‘Oh, they did send it off?’
‘Oh, they sent it off all right, no doubt about that.’
‘But they can’t trace it?’
‘Oh, they can’t trace it. That’s the finish of it for them when they’ve checked and despatched. If you care to come along, I’ll show you what they say.’
She went along beside him.
‘This is the twelfth day, Mr. Hobbs. Do you think I should give up hope?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t give up ’ope. No need. Not yet. I’ve known ’em take a month and turn up as cool as cucumbers. I ’ad a lady’s bicycle took six months.’
‘Things do get stolen quite a lot these days, I suppose?’
‘There’s that, of course. And then there’s the under-staffing. And the mislaying due to ignorance: the ignorance is shocking. But laying all that on the side, there’s a lot of funny things occurring on the lines just now. Heavy traffic. Priority. If you take my meaning.’
‘I do.’ She charged her voice with significant reserve.
‘Ah.’ His ginger mustache sprang forward, wary, sealing careless talk. ‘My boy’s ’ad ’is leave stopped. You can fancy what’s be’ind that. And what I look at in your little trouble is—it’s not known general, but I don’t see the ’arm in easing your mind if you keep it to yourself—you aren’t the only one to be in a bit of a ’ole, I shouldn’t be surprised. From what I ’ear, there was a rare lot of stuff sent off in advance booked passenger that’s gone goods these ’olidays. That being the case, you’ve no call to give up ’ope, not for another three weeks.’
‘Three weeks? The summer term starts in less than three weeks.’
He unlocked the door of the parcels office, saying:
‘You can take a look round just to satisfy your mind, but we got nothing answering.’
There was nothing in the parcels office except a corded papier-mâché suitcase, a child’s push-chair, two crates and a sack.
At his suggestion they returned to his office to have another go through the particulars.
‘Yes, that’s all correct,’ she said, depressed.
‘Oh, I’ve got the matter in hand,’ he said, bracing. ‘You leave it to me. I’ll keep on at them. The moment I hear, I’ll ring through.’
‘What I’m afraid of is,’ she confessed, abashed, ‘that the labels have got torn off and it’s just sitting on some platform between here and Shippenham.’
‘Oh, it wouldn’t have done that. It wouldn’t have got left sat on a platform. It ’ud ’ave got put somewhere pending inquiries and claim. Oh, yes.’
‘If it doesn’t come by the week-end, I shall start out and ransack every parcels office and every truck in every siding on this line—starting from London.’
At this the young lady clerk and her friend softly clicked their tongue, marking a sympathetic sense of desperation. She looked towards them, careworn, uncomplaining, and said:
‘Exactly what she stands up in. Not another stitch.’
‘Ah, they do grow,’ said the friend, a matron. ‘It’s a job these days.’
‘It’s a shame,’ said the young lady, single, but a mother type.
‘I’ve washed her underclothes out twice and dried them overnight.’
‘Ah, and you don’t like to do that too often,’ said the young lady.
‘Pore little soul, bless ’er,’ said the friend.
They were so kind, so compassionate, she could have cried. They knew how it was.
‘She’s got all her own belongings packed in it—that’s what’s worrying her. Her teddy-bear and books and paint-box … You know.’
‘All her little treasures,’ said the friend.
‘A trunk means such a lot to a child,’ said the young lady.
‘Ah, it’s the sentimental value,’ agreed Mr. Hobbs, a family man himself. He opened a drawer of his table and turned up some papers. ‘There’d be no ’arm in filling out a form to go on with. You can always claim against the company for loss, you know. Here you are. It’s all put out clear, see: state your items down this column, value of each—approximate to what you consider right—alongside each, down ’ere.’
With a further sinking of spirits she took the paper. He knew, then, in his heart of hearts, that it was lost. All that optimism was so much bluff to get rid of her. She said bitterly:
‘What about coupons?’
‘That’s where it is,’ said the friend.
‘Ah, that would be a separate form.’ He scratched his head. ‘That ’ud be more the Board of Trade, I fancy. I don’t rightly know what they’d say to a claim of this sort of a nature. There’s no ’arm in trying.’
‘It’s not so much the finance,’ crooned the young lady.
‘It’s the kewpons.’
‘And when you get the kewpons,’ said the friend, ‘you can’t get the value. Shoes … ! It is a job.’
‘Well, Mr. Hobbs, thank you for all you’ve done. I won’t bother you any longer.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. You leave it all to me,’ he repeated, still patient, but bored now, a little mechanical.
A notion struck her.
‘There isn’t more than one Redbury, I suppose, is there?’
‘More than one Redbury? Oh, yes, there’s more than one Redbury. There’s Redbury-on-Sea for one.’
‘It couldn’t have gone there, could it?’
‘Well, I don’t say it couldn’t ’ave done.’ Nag, nag, nag: these women. ‘That’s the Southern, of course. Tell you what I’ll do for you: I’ll send off a wire there, just on the cha
nce. That’s what I’ll do. But, mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it turning up this morning—or this afternoon, it might do. I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I’ll give you a ring if it should do.’
So don’t keep on with your blessed phone calls … She smiled bravely, wistfully, at them all and went away. Pedalling with urgency, she reached the fishmonger’s in time to get the last of the fish: a wedge of glutinous marine flesh, unidentified. Then to Bobbie’s Parlour for a cup of coffee essence. With sugar? Please, with sugar. Just a few grains. She lingered, smoking a cigarette. The road climbed uphill all the way.
A fearful compulsion began to grip her. Suppose, only suppose, one went back to the station … Suppose one looked over the bridge and saw on the platform one solitary grey fabric leather-bound trunk, dropped out by the twelve-four, waiting to be claimed? Suppose, on the other hand, the platform perfectly bare, Mr. Hobbs emerged that moment from his office, looking up to catch one insanely peeping? … But then one could simply move on with unflurried dignity, as if after a little rest … Back, back to the station.
She stopped on the bridge and looked down, and it was just as she had dreamed it. There, on the sunlit enchanted platform, one large solitary object, a trunk, a grey school trunk. Mine! Not mine! Mine! Nonsense. Calm now. Go forward decorously. It’s only another false dawn. Prepare yourself.
When she reached the platform a porter with a barrow was bending over the object, examining the labels. She came on.
‘It’s mine,’ she said without emotion. Her knees trembled.
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