That leave had been exciting for Virginia. Never had she had so many treats or been allowed to stay up so late. In a way it was like Wales for her father and mother always wanted her with them. Nannie grew crosser and tighter-lipped every day, but nobody seemed to care so Virginia did not care either and behaved, even when with Nannie, with an independence and off-handedness which would have been impossible a few days before. To make her independence more complete, the moment her father’s leave was over she was sent to stay with Grandmother and, incredibly, Nannie, though she took her down and unpacked for her, did not remain but went back to London. That was the beginning of the new way of living. She was always being sent to stay with Grandmother and Grandmother became the most important person in her life and Grandmother’s the nicest of her two homes. Always at first Nannie took her down and fetched her back, but soon Miss Selby appeared to teach her lessons and after that the nursery became the schoolroom and Nannie stopped being Nannie, except for looking after her clothes and watching her get dressed and undressed and instead helped in the house. Later still, Constance Mills, who had been parlourmaid before the war, was invalided out of munitions and came back as house-parlourmaid, and not only took Virginia to stay with her grandmother but remained on to help Mrs. Conrad, who was new and had come to run the house. Nannie, Virginia knew, hated Constance going with her, for though it was explained Constance was going because she had broken down at munitions and the country air would do her good, Nannie put on an expression which said as clearly as words, “Don’t talk nonsense to me. I know what I know.”
Virginia loved going away with Constance. Constance took an interest in all that was happening and saw no reason why Virginia should not. There was no “It will all be Sir Garnet Wolseley” about Constance. Through Constance Virginia heard about Mrs. Pickering in the lunatic asylum, with no details spared and many additions invented by Constance. Through Constance’s eyes Virginia watched the slow approach to familiarity between her grandmother’s Mrs. Conrad and Mr. Pickering’s wounded ex-guardsman called Robinson and his wife, Mrs. Robinson. “No good being stand-offish when there’s no one else to know,” Constance said, “that’s real cutting off your nose to spite your face, that is.” Constance was at Grandmother’s in the spring of the year after the war finished, the spring when Uncle Tony was caught house-breaking and sent to prison. If it had not been for Constance’s belief that truth never broke bones, Virginia would never have known Uncle Tony was a deserter, or what a deserter was. Constance talked of him quite openly, not only to Mr. Robinson who, having been a regular soldier took a professional interest in deserters, and knew exactly what would happen to Uncle Tony if he was caught, but also to Miss Doe who, through her friend Emma who was matron of the Cottage Hospital, knew how people came to be things like deserters. Constance did not, until the day he was arrested, talk much about Uncle Tony to Mrs. Conrad, who believed Constance ought to be kept in her place. The news came just before tea. Grandmother had a telephone call from Uncle Simon. They all heard it because the telephone was in the hall and her grandmother had answered Uncle Simon in such a way that anybody who knew Uncle Tony was a deserter could not fail to know what the conversation was about. Grandmother said: “If it’s about Tony, please tell me, Simon,” and then, “I see,” and then after a long pause, “What could be the sentence for that?” and after another long listening, “Three years! As much as that? Even though it was only to take money and clothes he needed?” Uncle Simon replied to that quickly and Grandmother said, “Tony would not be armed, or if he was he would never have used whatever it was. You know that, Simon.” There was a long talk from Uncle Simon after that and then Grandmother replied, “Well, I leave everything to you, Simon. It was good of you to telephone and explain the facts to me so clearly.” Then she put down the receiver. Constance had just been about to lay for tea when the conversation started. She said to Mrs. Conrad, “Better wait until she rings, hadn’t I?” but before Mrs. Conrad could answer Grandmother called in a quite ordinary voice, “I think it’s nearly tea-time, Constance. Virginia dear, the rain has stopped for the moment. Shall we have a look at your bluebell glade before tea?” Perhaps Grandmother, though she never seemed to notice, thought Constance talked too much, but whatever the reason that was the last visit she paid. Grandmother said she thought that now Virginia was eleven she was old enough to travel alone, and could she come every week-end during the term time and most of the holidays? She would be a help and a companion.
Nannie peered into the wardrobe.
“What you putting on for dinner?”
“My blue.”
“That new red’s nicer.”
“I like the blue and anyway it won’t be a best clothes sort of evening as Aunt Margaret’s there, for she never has any best clothes. I wish Mummie would come in.”
Nannie took the blue dress off its hanger and carried it to the window to examine it for spots.
“No good worrying, dear. If she’s forgotten she’s forgotten.”
“I’ve reminded her and reminded her, and so has Daddie.”
“Your father’s remembered all right. Constance is packing for him now.”
“Daddie won’t come except to bring Mummie. Aunt Jane really wants the party to be Caldwells only, only it won’t be for Aunt Carol will be there, and Aunt Jane’s bringing Uncle Simon because he’s useful if they talk about Uncle Tony.”
Nannie could not outgrow her nursery standpoint that nothing nasty must ever be mentioned. She replied as if she had not heard Virginia say “Uncle Tony.”
“Wish we’d get good material back. No matter how often I clean your dresses they never look as they should. Still, I suppose it’ll have to do.” She laid the dress on the table and folded it over tissue paper. As the last fold was completed to her satisfaction she stated, with apparent casualness, “You haven’t told your father yet that you’re going, have you?”
“No. I’ve left it until I’m quite sure Mummie’s going.” Virginia’s eyes turned to the window. “Oh, Nannie, it’s such a lovely day, do cross your fingers it’s like this to-morrow. You remember me telling you about that rhododendron Mummie gave Grannie that I helped Smith to plant. I do wonder if it’s still alive. We gave it lots of leaf mould so it ought to be. I do hope it is; in the advertisement it sounded the most beautiful colour.”
“You say that old man Smith your grandmother has now is a good gardener so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be all right.”
Virginia, her eyes still fixed on the delicate blue of the sky, ran Slipper’s ears through her fingers.
“Slipper’s never seen the garden, have you, angel? I wonder if the bluebells in my glade are showing yet. You remember those, Nannie, you helped to plant them.”
Nannie looked at Virginia. No good speaking to her about anything important while she had that dreamy look on her face. Very like her mother she was, sometimes.
“Your eighth birthday. Will I ever forget it! The year we came back from Wales it was. That was the time that lady who worked with your Aunt Jane took us in that canteen.”
Virginia did not remember the canteen, but she had so often heard the story she thought that she did.
“Poor Nannie, there were no windows so you couldn’t see where you were going, and you thought every bone in your body was broken. It was all right for Mummie and me, we sat in front. Grannie made you lie down and gave you brandy.”
A picture of Anna, kind, sensible, all that a grandmother should be, was brought to life by Virginia’s words. It gave Nannie the push needed to say what, since she had started to pack, she had been looking for an opening to say.
“If I were you I wouldn’t tell your father you are going down.”
“Not tell him! But he’ll see me and Slipper in the car.”
Nannie thoroughly disapproved of Slipper being taken to an hotel, but she let that issue slide.
“I wouldn’t tr
avel in the car. I’d let me take you in a taxi to the station and see you off, and we’ll telephone for a car to meet you at the other end, and just to put my mind at rest you’ll telephone from the hotel like a good girl and tell me you’ve got there safely.”
“But why should I go in a train if the car’s going?”
“The grandchildren aren’t expected. Your mother won’t stop you, but your father knows what your Aunt Jane intended and . . .”
Virginia laid Slipper on her pillow and flung herself forward and hung over the end of the bed. Nannie was kneeling by the suitcase. Virginia’s eyes bored into hers.
“Nannie! Darling, Nannie! You want me to go.”
Nannie answered with troubled honesty.
“I was never one for deceiving people but this once I think it right.”
“Of course, it’s right for me to see Grannie, but I never thought you’d think so.” Virginia jumped off the bed and knelt beside Nannie and gave her a hug of unforced warmth such as for years she had been unable to give. “You want me to see Grannie, don’t you?”
Nannie made a slight pretence of pushing the girl away.
“No need to suffocate me. Nothing very strange in me wishing you to see your grandmother.”
Virginia laid her cheek against Nannie’s.
“Come on, you’re hiding something. It is strange, because the only time you ever stayed with Grannie you didn’t like it, and it’s no good your pretending you did.”
Nannie gently pushed the girl from her.
“How d’you think I’m going to get my packing done with you on top of me. I didn’t fancy it for myself. It wasn’t what I was used to, but things are different now. I know I’ll never again see what I was used to. I was brought up to good service, and though I’m not saying anything against that poor woman, whom I’m sure does her best, people like Miss Doe and such turn my stomach and always will, but I know what’s good for you. You’re fourteen, Virginia, and I think it’s right I should speak my mind.” She looked round the pretty bedroom and mentally stripped it of its delicate chintzes, pale carpet and satin eiderdown. “This was your night nursery before we evacuated to Wales. I can still see you in your cot in that corner as plain as plain. In those days you were as nicely brought up a child as I ever had charge of.”
Nannie’s voice was not exactly bitter. A career as a children’s nurse had taught her from her start as a nursery maid that no Nannie was expected to wish to have influence in the life of a nursling once that child ceased to be her care. Only over Virginia had she let herself suffer. She had not been a young woman when she came to her, and the period in Wales, which seemed as though it would never end, had led her away from what she knew, and she had permitted herself to think of Virginia as her own. She had paid for it, and knew that she was paying, enduring the acute suffering of seeing her child first draw away from her, and then become uneasy when with her. She had stayed on in the house partly because she did not know where else to go in the, to her, inexplicable post-war world, but far more to be there to help if needed; consoled in the lonely hours while she sat mending the household linen, listening to running footsteps which too seldom stopped at her door, by the hope that someday she would hold a baby of Virginia’s in her arms and be there to teach her the proper way to rear a child.
Virginia had no idea what Nannie was trying to say, but she was happily conscious that for some reason the barrier that had grown between them was dissolving as if it were ice.
“Dear Nannie.”
Nannie, having at last started to speak her mind, was searching amongst a stack of long assembled thoughts for the best to use to fit her child’s understanding.
“A growing girl needs order in her home. You haven’t order here, you know, dear. You twist that Miss Selby round your finger. Goodness knows what you are learning, for you just do what lessons you like. You used to go regularly to your classes for dancing, painting, music and such, but since your father gave you Slipper at Christmas I don’t believe you’ve attended one class.”
“I’ll start going again when Slipper’s older, but he’s little now and hasn’t learnt to sit quietly on Miss Selby’s knee. You can’t blame him, poor angel, it isn’t natural for a puppy to be interested in things like painting and dancing, and, as a matter of fact, he simply hates music and I think he always will.”
“It just shows how wrong things are when you say ‘I’ll start again.’ It’s not right for a girl of fourteen to say what she’ll do or what she won’t do. I’m not blaming you; considering everything you behave very nicely, but then you were brought up right, that I do know, and I always say a right start is what’s important. Then you’re too much alone for a girl of your age, and it isn’t healthy. Mooning about listening to the wireless or playing your gramophone. That’s no proper way for you to live. Nobody knowing who’s going to be in or when. No sitting nicely in the drawing-room of an evening with your father and mother, or going to church with them on a Sunday.”
Virginia giggled.
“Can you see Mummie and Daddie and me sitting in the drawing-room or going to church?”
“You should be able to see it, it only sounds funny to you because you don’t know how things should be, but you did know how things should be when you went to your Grannie’s, didn’t you?”
“Of course, I went to church with Grannie.”
“And you were never at a loose end.”
“Wasn’t I?”
“Certainly not. She saw your time was filled and very proper, too. You never came back from staying with her but you were full of all you’d done, and good, useful things they were too.”
“I’m never at a loose end at home, especially now I’ve got Slipper; as a matter of fact I never seem to have time to do half the things I want to do.”
“That’s because you’re always dreaming.”
“Is dreaming a waste of time? In that case Mummie wastes a lot.”
“At your age it is. Regular hours is what you need and friends of your own age.”
“I see Lucia whenever she’s free and I talk to her every day on the telephone.”
“Telephone! It all adds up to loose ends. You don’t understand, dear, because ever since we came back from Wales you’ve never known anything different, except when you stayed with your Grannie. In this house, unless there are guests, you never know when the gong goes for a meal, if all three of you are in or none of you. You never had that happen at your Grannie’s.”
“Of course, not. Grannie’s always in, or at least she always was in.”
Nannie’s voice dropped to a soothing nursery note.
“You don’t want to pay too much attention to what Constance has told you. She’s a good worker but a tatler, and I never held with tatlers.”
“Everything Constance knows was written to her by the Robinsons. The Robinsons are very fond of Grannie and wouldn’t make things up. Grannie does sound different.”
“She’s getting old like I am. We all change as we get old.”
“I saw Grannie just before Christmas and she was exactly as usual. I don’t see why she should get old suddenly, people don’t.”
Nannie, without being aware of it, replied in the stubborn tone she had used throughout her career when she wanted something for a nursling that obtuse members of the family were failing to provide.
“You’ve got to have a talk with your Grannie. I shouldn’t wonder if it was just some little upset. She’s never been one to wish to give offence, and maybe, for all she seems such a nice woman to you, that Mrs. Conrad wasn’t giving satisfaction. I wouldn’t put it past your Grannie to have made the excuse that she wanted to be more alone, so as to give her notice without hurting her.”
“The Robinsons’ letter to Constance said that Grannie had taken to roaming. Out all hours. I don’t see why she should be out all hours to make it easy to give Mrs.
Conrad notice. Mrs. Conrad’s gone so she won’t know what Grannie’s doing. Anyway, I don’t believe she wanted to give Mrs. Conrad notice, she liked her. She said she was good and unobtrusive and had green fingers.”
“That’s as may be, but you see her and try and get back to going there for your week-ends and holidays.” Nannie felt in her apron pocket and brought out an envelope. “Give this to your Grannie.”
Virginia took the envelope, holding it gingerly as if it might explode.
“What’s it say?”
“Nothing much. Just my respects. Give it when no one’s about.”
“You better pack it. I might lose it if I put it in my pocket.” The letter, of which she did not know the contents, was rebuilding the old barrier. To ease the situation, Virginia turned to Slipper. “I do hope you won’t be in a digging mood, my boy; you’re not going to be popular if you dig up Grannie’s bulbs.”
“You shouldn’t take him. Hotels don’t like dogs.”
Virginia hugged Slipper to her.
“More fools them.”
“You’ll do as I say and go by train. There’s a good one about four o’clock, I looked it up.”
Virginia absent-mindedly stroked Slipper’s head.
“I must tell Daddie, and I don’t believe he’ll stop me going. For all you say about loose ends he has to know where I am. Suppose Mummie’s forgotten about to-day and they don’t go, he’d be terribly worried if he found I wasn’t here. He’d probably go to the police.”
“So I should hope. You must leave him a note or telephone him when you get to the hotel.”
Virginia leant against the window apparently staring out, but she was unconscious she was by the window; her mind was on her grandmother. She and Lucia had discussed the family visit in the light of their suspicion of what was wrong, and her father had a place in her plans. She came to a decision.
“I’ve got to tell Daddie, but I give you my word of honour, whatever he says, I’ll see Grannie just the same and give her your letter.” She looked at Nannie and a wave of tenderness, born of their talk, swept over her. She had been going out of the room but she came back and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t fuss, Nannie, darling. You hold your thumbs, and it’ll all be Sir Garnet Wolseley.”
Mothering Sunday Page 12
