‘Your trunk. I found it at Redbury.’
‘Oh, good. Don’t unpack something done up in green paper in the corner at the bottom.’
‘All right.’
‘Just leave it there. Don’t touch it. Promise.’
‘I promise.’
‘Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye—I’ll be along soon.’
‘If you can’t find us, you’ll know we’ve gone to look for Puffles.’
Injunctions, dissuasions rose to her lips. She suppressed them, and replaced the receiver. Captain Moffat was still standing in the same position, on the same piece of carpet, holding his plate. She thought irritably: ‘Try a squib—why not?’—and said:
‘It’s very queer about young children: they telephone to you from half a mile away to ask if they can stay to tea, and their voices sound so sad and lost, they might be telling you they’ll never never get home again. What happens?’
His withered face, immature and inexpressive as a youth’s, contracted, wary: he worked the muscles of his jaw like a stammerer. In the rigid moment before his eyes left hers, she saw something wriggle, scurry in the two dark holes … Consternation of a wood-louse, crawling from a hole in the kindled log, scurrying to escape the hot threat.
Then he said, and his smile was quite friendly, quite engaging: ‘Can’t think how all you parents put up with it—all that gang of young toughs in and out all day. But I suppose you enjoy it. How d’you keep them fit on the rations, the rate they grow?’
‘It’s quite a job. But I do enjoy it.’
Carrying the dish of potato, she accompanied him down fifty yards of road to his Tudor cottage, with its tiny leaded panes, thatched roof, wealth of oak beams, sagging ceilings and other disheartening old-world features. He went before her into the kitchen, and said ruefully, acknowledging the forlorn debris of his breakfast—loaf, cup of tea, scrapings of the jam pot—still unwashed on the table:
‘I’m afraid I’m awfully helpless.’ With a faint shy smile he added: ‘This is the first time my wife and I have been separated since the day we married.’
He turned his back on her in his embarrassment, opened the door of the frugal store-cupboard and looked in. She saw his straight athletic back and shoulders, the frail young-looking nape into which his brown hair tapered; and, between ear and temple, the twisted hollow of the wound through which, twenty-five years ago, the life spirit of Captain Moffat had been blown out of his head into limbo.
She said: ‘I do love your wife.’
He turned round again and said emotionally: ‘She’s the kindest, best, most unselfish … No one knows what that girl does for others … And expects no thanks for it.’
‘I know. She’s so good. Her face is so good. I love it.’
The innocent plain face of Mrs. Moffat, lined, framed in grey hair, so ungirlish, hovered between them. Feeling, what with Captain Moffat’s loneliness and the intimacies of domestic service to him, on the brink of deep waters, she nervously switched on the electric stove and went to hunt in the larder for a bit of fat.
‘She’s a saint,’ he declared, when she came back.
She was his girl, he was her boy, her precious husband. It was having to counter, for so many years, the questions in his sunless head: ‘What’s the use of going on? Why not put an end to it all?’; the proof that must be given him over and over again that it was all worth while, they were together; it was the labour of driving foundations under him, of trenching him, roofing him, that had given Mrs. Moffat the drained look, the arrested smile of a face in an old photograph. But they enjoyed gardening, and taking long walks together, playing bridge, talking to their cats, listening to Tommy Handley and the Brains Trust; and Mrs. Moffat said serenely to her neighbours that nobody who had not suffered from nerves could understand them. Mrs. Moffat would see to it that she didn’t die first.
‘Tell her when she rings up,’ she said, placing the chop on the grill, deciding to commit herself, ‘she needn’t worry about you. Mrs. Plumley and I will see you’re fed as long as she’s away. If you don’t feel like joining our noisy meals, we’ll pop round with the rice pudding.’
Mrs. Plumley would undoubtedly feel her shoulders broad enough for this. Her opinion might be that the Captain ought to pull himself together and not put it all on his wife; but he was a man and helpless: her disapproval was mere lip service to the arid theory of women’s rights. He didn’t need to go down like he did, like we all could if we let ourselves; but when he was up you saw he’d been a nice-looking beggar with a bit of devil in him once. There’d be no harm in doing a bit of cooking for him.
‘It’s most awfully good of you,’ he said, without any stiffness.
‘I know she’d do the same for me,’ she said, cheerful, over the potatoes, keeping the pitch down. ‘That’s one good thing that’s come out of the war—at least for me. I mean, people like us really being neighbours. Knowing we can call on one another in a tight spot.’
Half an hour later she went along the lane that made a short cut through the fields to the Carmichaels’. The good turn done to Captain Moffat made her feel light-hearted. She had left him sitting down to a well-grilled chop and a crisp fry of potatoes, grateful, cheerful and perfectly equal, he said, to the washing-up. He had talked to her about sailing in a small craft to Norway when he was a boy. He would not come in to supper because he was expecting a call from Molly—yes, she had become Molly between one moment and the next—but he would look in about seven-thirty for a portion of macaroni cheese. She looked forward to the expression on the children’s faces when she announced to them that she had been with Captain Moffat, cooking his lunch. The antipathy was mutual: they called him ghastly. But all that would be changed now: he would soon be saying: ‘Jolly children you’ve got, Mrs. Ritchie (or even Margaret?). They would be saying he wasn’t at all bad when you got to know him. He would offer to give them riding lessons … and one thing leading to another—new interests—old pleasures and activities resumed … Mrs. Moffat would confess to him her secret longing: to adopt a baby. ‘By all means, dear; by all means. High time we had some young blood in the house.’ Or better still, hey presto, Mrs. Moffat pregnant—why not?—only forty-two—one late last sprig, just not too late: Mrs. Moffat’s woman’s life fulfilled, the Captain’s hope and pride given back to him. ‘And all through you, dear.’ All through friendship.
She checked her step sharply, and said aloud: ‘Really, you’re revolting.’ Still this sickening self-indulgent daydreaming, this perpetual wash of emotional flotsam, blocking the channels of the clear flow of reason. No ideas, no intellectual progress, none. No wonder, perhaps, that Charles her husband had left her years ago, transferring his suitcases, his typewriter, his notes for a book on Marxist aesthetics and his affections to a clear-browed female research student in physics.
Spangled, studded with cold lucent buds, the hazel and elder bushes enclosed her path. Wild arum thrust in the banks; the ditches smelt of spring.
She opened Mrs. Carmichael’s front door and saw Mrs. Carmichael in the hall, in the act of hanging up the receiver. She said: ‘Margaret! Hallo, darling. I’ve just been talking to the conjurer.’
‘You haven’t!’
‘Yes, truly. I’ve tracked him down, I’ve engaged him. He seemed awfully taken aback.’
‘You sound rather doubtful about him.’
Mrs. Carmichael’s eloquent brown eyes widened, dubious, wistful.
‘He seemed so drowsy.’
‘Perhaps he’s just starting his summer sleep. I expect conjurers do the opposite of hibernating. I hope he won’t muff his tricks.’
‘He sounded—sort of old.’
‘How old?’
‘Very, very old.’
‘It hadn’t struck me, of course all the younger conjurers would be in the Forces?’
‘It hadn’t struck me either.’
�
�What a pity.’
‘His name is Feakes—Mr. Cyril Feakes …’
‘Have you definitely engaged him?’
‘Quite definitely. Oh, yes …’
‘Good for you. That’s one load off our minds, anyway.’
‘I think,’ said Mrs. Carmichael, ‘he was drunk.’
‘Do you really?’
‘Of course the line was bad … But he seemed to say something I didn’t like the sound of.’
‘What was it?’
‘He said—I’m almost sure he said he’d start with twenty minutes’ vent.’ Her eyebrows went up, almost into her widow’s peak. ‘Can he have said that?’
They stared at one another, aghast. Then suddenly: ‘Oh! Ventriloquism!’ cried Mrs. Ritchie.
They collapsed in laughter, leaning against the wall.
‘My brain!’ wailed Mrs. Carmichael. ‘It just doesn’t function any more. Don’t you think it’s some vitamin deficiency—or the lack of fresh fish? John brought along our play this morning, and honestly I have tried, I took it up to my bedroom for an hour before lunch, but I simply cannot concentrate with all these animals going wrong, and the noise the children make.’
Struck by the silence of the house, Mrs. Ritchie listened, and said: ‘Where are they?’
‘The children? Oh, my dear …’ Mrs. Carmichael put her little ringed hand to her forehead. ‘They’re all out, I think.’ She looked vague, thoughtful, conscience-stricken. ‘And we want to rehearse, don’t we?’
‘Where have they gone?’
‘I’m afraid they’ve gone to look for Puffles. Meg got so worked up about him, and it seemed such a pity for them to stay indoors this lovely afternoon … To tell you the truth, I was so sick of the thumping on the piano, and that endless rolling about and knocking the furniture to pieces—what do they call it?—mobbing—I was only too thankful … Darling, you look tired: very nice, but tired. Let’s sink down for a few minutes. They swore they’d be back by half-past three at the very latest.’
In the long, comfortable living-room with its sunny bay of glass and its attractive chintzes, they sank into armchairs, stretched their trousered legs out before them and closed their eyes.
‘One cigarette,’ sighed Mrs. Carmichael, ‘then we might go through our parts? Perhaps if we read them together a few times it would seep into my head subconsciously? And to think I once recited “The Falls of Lodore” at school without a single mistake. Does your head always ache these days?’
‘Always.’
‘So does mine.’
‘Does the conjurer know how to get here on Saturday?’
‘I’ve told him to take that last bus out from Brading. But getting him back is another matter. If we could get him down to Redbury he could catch a train—if there is one. I wonder if Turnbull would come and fetch him. I suppose I’d better find out at once.’
She went away to telephone, and shortly returned saying: ‘Mr. Turnbull says he’d oblige if he could but it’s his fire-watching night, and if it turned out to be the—you know—the night, and he was to be absent from his post even for half an hour, you can imagine the results. How comforting it is when powerful things like garages and coal merchants don’t refuse you with gloating glee. It sets one up almost as much as if they’d said yes.’ With a return of her natural buoyancy, she examined her pretty face in a pocket mirror, re-decorated her mouth and said: ‘Oh, well, if the worst comes to the worst, one of us will have to put him up. I wouldn’t really mind, would you? He might be so interesting.’
‘I’d mind terribly. And so would he. I’m sure it would be against the rules of the Magicians’ Union. And don’t you dare even hint such a possibility in front of the children, or we shall get no peace. Come on, we’d better run through our parts before they get back.’
They read through the sketch together three times, trying out varying shades of pitch, tempo and emphasis. Really, they agreed, there was no need to worry: the mere fact of seeing them on the stage would be rich comedy for the village, the crouching on hands and knees would cause a roar, and when it came to their both announcing their age as twenty-five, the house would come down. Mrs. Carmichael had the very thing, she remembered, in the way of an Edwardian straw hat of her mother’s in a box in the attic; furthermore, she almost thought there was an old hip bath somewhere in the loft. With growing feelings of optimism and mutual affection they closed the book: the time was ripe for a proper rehearsal. They must practise the business, they would work at it till it came pat, and the words—the words would come of themselves. Should one break down, the other could prompt.
They retired to opposite corners of the room. Mrs. Carmichael advanced towards the fireplace for her first tricky piece of soliloquy. She started with dash, reversing the order of the sentences, hesitated, dashed on again, stumbled and was lost.
‘Never mind; we’ll go straight on. Begin at: “Ah, my parcel!”
‘Ah, my parcel!’
‘Pretend you see it on the table.’
‘Ah, my parcel!’ Mrs. Carmichael’s hands sprang forward, hovering in space a few inches above the table. She lifted nothing, put it down again, laid her hands flat on the table, bowed her head and shut her eyes.
‘Never mind. It’ll come. Now I knock at the door and come in.’ She rapped sharply on the panelled wall and advanced. ‘You say: “Ah, the new lodger, I presume?”’
‘Ah, the new lodger, I presume?’
Mrs. Ritchie stopped. Mrs. Carmichael fixed her with a smile of maniac formality.
‘All right, go straight on.’
They went straight on.
‘Ah! I see my parcel has arrived before me. Now you say: “Excuse me, that is my parcel.”’
Giving her all to the expression, Mrs. Carmichael said it. They went on for half a minute.
‘I’ve forgotten which my name is. Oh, yes. I am Miss Arabella Browne.’
‘No, no, that’s my name. You’re Angelina. Let’s go back to: “Excuse me, you will see that it is addressed to Miss Browne.”’
They went back; and almost at once dried up. Paralysed, they gazed at one another, their hands weakly clutching at nothing over the table.
A sound of whimpering at the garden door came to their ears; then a series of short sharp barks mounting to a piercing climax.
‘Puffles!’ Mrs. Carmichael flew to the door. Puffles, a stocky Cairn, came in, voluble, hysterical, mud-caked, straws in his hair. Rolling one eye on his mistress, he dragged his guilt along the floor.
‘Oh, what a bad bad naughty boy! And a good good boy to come home before dark. Does he want his dindin?’
Mrs. Carmichael flew to fetch it for him. Wagging frenziedly, he devoured it, then, still wagging, took a hearty draught of water from his bowl, and retired to his basket to lick his paws.
‘He gets his poor paws so sore,’ said Mrs. Carmichael. ‘That beastly Airdale he goes hunting with makes him do all the digging. What’s the time? Half-past three already.’ She looked thoughtful, went to the window and scanned the open landscape of wood-girt ploughland. ‘I can’t see a sign of them … You know, darling, I think I’d better go and look for them. They’re probably going in circles in the wood, calling and listening down all the rabbit holes. You know what Meg is about Puffles. I must relieve her mind … Puffles stay in his beddy and have a nice long rest.’
They left Puffles composing himself for a nice long rest, went out through the garden, across the rough, flinty field—empty, as Mrs. Carmichael sorrowfully pointed out, of the form of Conker—and plunged into the beech-wood that flanked the Carmichael property.
‘I’m much nearer to knowing my part than you think, darling,’ said Mrs. Carmichael. ‘I know I am. I’ll be word perfect tomorrow and we’ll have a whole day of concentrated rehearsing.’
Treading down beds of brown beech leaves, part crisp, part sodden,
avoiding the fresh-sprung drifts of sorrel, wood-spurge, bluebell leaves, caught by wreaths of floating bramble, they reached the grassy, deep-rutted ride that ran, set with primroses, down the whole length of the wood. Flutingly Mrs. Carmichael sent her voice forth this way and that, calling her children’s names. No reply. The blackbirds went on carolling and whistling in liquid riot high out of sight.
Talking of marriage, love, children, the war, they walked through insubstantial shafts, walls, columns of green light and violet shadow. They passed the place where, in 1940, a stray bomb, jettisoned, had fallen; where splintered tree-trunks, smashed branches, charred and jagged, still stuck up stark in a tumultuous crater of crushed chalk and lacerated roots: war’s eye, sterile, violent and dead, staring even here, through fringes of milky shoots and the wildfire mesh in the locks of living branches.
Mrs. Carmichael called again; then Mrs. Ritchie called, then gave the family whistle. There was no answering coo-ee or whistle.
‘They can’t be here,’ said Mrs. Carmichael. ‘Bother, oh bother them.’
They came to the strange dyke, object of speculation to antiquarians, which ran through a section of the wood, slithered down it into a green cascade of bluebells, and clambered up on the farther side. Now they were standing on a higher terrace, where the tree-trunks were taller, closer, wider in girth. They stood still. The thick light had an odd quality, as if a white brilliance, like snow, were reflected in it from above.
‘Look!’ said Mrs. Carmichael.
They looked up and saw that, high above their heads, the crowns of six vast cherry trees in blossom intermingled with the roof of branches, pierced it, shot great luminous rockets through it into the sky. They could just see the tips of the boughs exploding in incandescent star-clusters against the blue.
‘How could I have forgotten it was their time?’ murmured Mrs. Carmichael, awestruck.
‘Look!’ Mrs. Ritchie put a warning hand on her arm.
They looked before them down a straight aisle, and saw, under the largest of the cherry trees, the back view of two brilliantly-clad figures, stretched out full length side by side on the ground. Their hands were clasped behind their heads, their feet were crossed, and each had a bunch of primroses and anemones on its stomach.
The Gipsy's Baby Page 14
