The English Air

by D. E. Stevenson

“Horrid,” declared Dane with an elaborate shudder.

  “Why did you come home?” she inquired. “Was it because of Franz?”

  “I told you—I was homesick.”

  “Sophie was determined to have him.”

  “Why not?” Dane inquired. “There’s no reason why she shouldn’t have him.”

  “I wanted her to wait until you came home,” explained Wynne, “or at any rate until she wrote and asked you, but she said you knew his mother, too.”

  “Yes,” said Dane.

  “Of course we had to put off the refugee.”

  “Of course,” agreed Dane, raising one eyebrow in a humorous manner. “I am glad you had that much sense.”

  “Are you fed up about it?”

  “My dear lamb it won’t worry me,” Dane told her. “As long as I don’t have to listen to Nazi propaganda—”

  “Oh, but you won’t, darling,” Wynne assured him. “We needn’t discuss anything at all … he wants to learn English.”

  “He seems to know a good deal of English already.”

  “But he wants to speak like an Englishman,” Wynne said seriously. “He’s very thorough, you see.”

  Dane sighed. “Sophie has a very tender heart, but it’s you who will have to bear the brunt of entertaining him. You must tell me if it worries you, Wynne.”

  “I don’t mind,” she replied quickly, “honestly I don’t. I thought at first he was going to be a crashing bore but now I’m not so sure … there’s something rather nice about him,” she added thoughtfully.

  “He makes you laugh?” suggested Dane.

  Wynne did not answer directly. She said slowly, “He’s a funny mixture, Dane—so young and childish and solemn and elderly. He knows a lot of things I don’t know, but he’s frightfully ignorant about things that everyone knows.”

  Dane smiled.

  “All right,” said Wynne with some heat. “All right, you talk to him and see. Ask him something about history or geography … Heaven knows I’m no scholar, but even I could teach him quite a lot.”

  “Is he an intelligent pupil?” inquired Dane gravely.

  “Don’t be horrid,” Wynne adjured him. “Don’t be sarky, Dane. It doesn’t suit you a bit. I’m only going to teach him things he ought to know—after all he’s half English, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” agreed Dane.

  There was silence for a few moments and then Wynne said, “But I didn’t come here to talk about Franz.”

  “I hoped you had come for a nice little chat,” Dane told her. “After all we haven’t seen each other for about three weeks.…”

  Wynne shook her head.

  He looked at her, his lips grave, but his grey eyes twinkling with amusement. “Well?” he inquired, “well, what can I do for you, Madam?”

  “Tell me what you do?” she said, looking down into the smiling eyes. “I mean what sort of work. It’s funny that I don’t know, isn’t it?”

  “Not very,” replied Dane, “because I don’t work in the sense you mean. My father left me enough money to live on with reasonable comfort. It was extremely thoughtful of him, wasn’t it?”

  “But Dane—”

  “So I’m able to live like a lily of the field,” added Dane gravely.

  “Lilies don’t rush about all over the place like you do.”

  “They have roots,” he replied immediately.

  “I wish you’d be serious,” said Wynne, “I wish you’d answer properly—what do you do?”

  He laughed. “That’s rather a large question, isn’t it? Let me see … I eat and sleep and talk. Sometimes I listen to other people talking.”

  “Dane!”

  “Why this sudden interest in my doings?”

  “It was something Franz said,” she replied. “He asked what you did, what sort of work. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell him I encumber the earth.”

  “But it wouldn’t be true.”

  “No, it wouldn’t really. Anyone who has to look after you and Sophie has a full-time job. I suppose you want me to come and see Soot’s kittens, don’t you?”

  “Oh, Dane, you won’t drown them, will you?” she cried, jumping off the table and standing in front of him with her head thrown back. “Dane, promise … I won’t show you where they are unless you promise. Ellis said he was going to drown them and I told him he must wait until you came home.”

  “We can’t keep more than two …”

  “But if I find homes for them …” cried Wynne, “if I can find homes … and they’re so awfully sweet. Come and see them, Dane darling.”

  They went out together to look at the kittens, and Wynne did not remember until afterwards that her question had remained unanswered.

  Chapter Five

  The education of Franz, which had been undertaken so blithely by his cousin, proceeded smoothly and rapidly. Wynne had said that it would be fun to have someone “different” and she found that it was fun. She enjoyed showing him everything and hearing his comments, for his comments were unusual to say the least of it. Wynne advised him about his clothes, corrected his speech and ordered his goings out and his comings in—it was rather like having a very large child to look after. She had discovered that he was sensitive and easily hurt, and because she had a kind heart, this endeared him to her. He was so solemn himself that he was suspicious of the smiles of others and often imagined that people were making fun of him when they had no intention of doing so. If he happened to make a “gaffe” he was miserable for hours and would return to the subject again and again with apologies and excuses. Wynne took him to a cricket match and tried to instruct him in the intricacies of the game. He went with her to several tennis parties and acquitted himself very creditably. She introduced him to all her friends, taking care to explain beforehand who they were and so to smooth his path.

  The Corbetts lived next door at a house called Cherry Trees. Franz had not met Mr. and Mrs. Corbett, but he had seen quite a lot of the young Corbetts for they were constant visitors at Fernacres. Miss Corbett—or Nina—was a thin dark girl, very pretty and amusing, and Migs, her brother, was tall and dark with an olive skin and lazy brown eyes. On the other side of Fernacres there was a small but very attractive bungalow which was occupied by a young married couple called Winslow. There were the Audleys who lived in the big stone house which Wynne had pointed out to Franz on the way from the station, and there was Ian Sutherland, a stocky fair-haired youth, who owned a racing model and a large white bull-terrier with a ragged ear. There were other people besides these, of course. People who rang up on the telephone or drifted in; and there was Roy Braithwaite whose ship had come into Kingsport and who appeared suddenly and unexpectedly at irregular intervals and brought various naval friends to tennis and tea. All these people were very kind to Franz but he did not feel at home with them. They seemed so young; they were so childish and gay and inconsequent; they strolled through life as though the world were made for them—as though they had nothing to do but amuse themselves and each other. Franz was very grave and silent. He listened to their chatter but did not join in it. The fact was he could not make them out. He understood what they said but he could not understand their real meaning. It was not that they used long words (as Wynne had said, they used the shortest and simplest words possible) but the words as used by them seemed to have a different meaning from that given by the dictionary. This was very difficult for Franz and it puzzled him a good deal, but it was not his only difficulty.

  One day at tea Mark Audley announced that he was getting up a small dance—“just a few couples and the radiogram.”

  “Oh, Mark, how lovely!” exclaimed Wynne.

  Mark looked at her gravely. “But we don’t want you,” he declared in a perfectly serious voice. “I mean, we decided from the very beginning … I said to Claire, ‘we don’t want Wynne, do we?’ and she agreed that we didn’t. I’m awfully sorry about it, Wynne.”

  “Horrid of you,” declared Wynne. “Just simply
horrid … and I thought you were rather nice. No brains, of course, but rather nice all the same … but I don’t mind a bit about the dance. Franz will take me to the pictures, won’t you, Franz?”

  Franz replied at once that he would be delighted to take her to the pictures. He thought it was extremely unkind of the Audleys not to want Wynne, and he could not understand why Wynne was not offended. However, that was none of his business. He made up his mind to be as nice as possible to Wynne to make up for her disappointment. He would take her to Kingsport and they would dine together at the big hotel and go to the pictures afterwards—it should be a gala night and perhaps Wynne would enjoy it even more than if she had been invited to the dance.

  There was no opportunity to discuss his plans with Wynne that night, but the following morning he sought her out and issued his invitation. “It will give me great pleasure,” said Franz in a solemn voice, “it will give me great pleasure if you will dine with me tonight. I will telephone and order a nice dinner at the Grand Hotel and afterwards we will go to the Picture House. I see in the newspaper that Norma Shearer is there, and it says the film is very good.”

  “Oh Franz, how darling of you!” exclaimed Wynne, looking up at him with her friendly blue eyes. “How perfectly sweet of you to think of it and plan it all out like that—but we can’t go tonight, you know, because of the Audleys’ dance. They’d be frightfully upset if we cried off at the last minute.”

  “B-b-but you were not asked,” stammered Franz.

  “Not asked?” echoed Wynne in surprise.

  “You were not asked,” repeated Franz, flushing to his ears with embarrassment. “Mr. Mark Audley said … he said …”

  “Oh, but he didn’t mean it,” explained Wynne, laughing at the absurdity of the idea. “Poor Franz, did you really think he meant that he didn’t want us?”

  “He said …”

  “Yes I know, but that was just his way of asking us.”

  Franz looked at her in bewilderment. “But how do you know?” he inquired. “If Mr. Audley says one thing and means something else how do you know which he means?”

  Wynne found this question difficult to answer. “Well, of course they want us,” she said, “I mean—well—Mark wouldn’t have said all that if he hadn’t wanted us, would he? But it was really awfully sweet and kind of you to think of dinner at Kingsport. We’ll go another night, shall we?”

  “Yes,” said Franz in a dazed voice, “yes, we will go another night.”

  He was even more bewildered when, later in the day, he found that Wynne expected him to accompany her to the Audleys’ dance. “But they did not ask me,” he objected. “Mr. Audley did not mention me at all … he did not say I was to come or not to come and perhaps he will not want me. I do not like to come where I am not wanted.”

  “Nonsense,” said Wynne. “They know quite well that I wouldn’t go without you. Of course they want you to come—how could they possibly not want you, Franz, dear? Go and get dressed now or you’ll be late for dinner—just your dinner jacket and a black tie.”

  He went reluctantly and dressed as he was told.

  Contrary to his expectations, Franz enjoyed the Audleys’ dance very much indeed. He danced well in his solemn and somewhat stately fashion and he soon became aware that he was extremely popular. There were too few girls to go round but Franz always secured a partner.

  Wynne watched him a little anxiously at first for she did not want him to make any of the funny little mistakes which, to him, were neither small nor humorous, but soon she saw that there was no need to worry, her child was doing splendidly.

  “He’s so funny,” said Nina, as the two girls stood together for a moment. “He’s so serious and polite. It’s amusing to have someone quite different, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Wynne.

  “And he’s rather a dear, too,” added Nina, as she was whirled away in Mark Audley’s arms.

  Claire Audley had just come home from Munich where she had been studying music and she was anxious to air her German. She succeeded in catching Franz and bore him off in triumph to the little room which had been set apart for refreshments. Franz was quite pleased to talk German to this pretty girl who smiled at him so attractively, and once he had started he found it very easy to go on. Claire was older than the others and had seen more of the world. He understood Claire better than the others—much better.

  “It’s wonderful,” she was saying. “I have always wanted to study music, but I never expected to be able to go abroad and study seriously. I am going back again next winter, and after that I hope to get a post—a post in an orchestra—perhaps in the B.B.C.”

  “That is good,” declared Franz, “that is excellent. In my country, as you know, we think it right that everyone should have a career.”

  “I suppose you think that everyone here is idle?” inquired Claire.

  “Most of them are. They amuse themselves all day.”

  Claire shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she told him. “My sisters and Wynne and Nina and all of them are not idle in the way you think. In Germany all the social work is in government control, but here it is different. Britain is fortunate in possessing a large unpaid army of social workers.”

  Franz was interested; he inquired what sort of work was done, and Claire explained that there were Youth Movements here, much as there were in Germany, but that they were run with voluntary staffs. There were organisations such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides; there were clubs for mothers and babies, and the large charitable schemes had unpaid presidents and secretaries.

  “What does Wynne do?” asked Franz somewhat incredulously.

  “Girl Guides,” replied Claire. “She took them over from me when I went to Germany and she is doing very good work. The girls all love her. She has a tremendous influence over them,” added Claire earnestly.

  “Wynne?”

  “Yes, Wynne,” said Claire more earnestly still. “She is much better with them than I was—perhaps I was a little too interested in my music to make a good captain—Wynne is not such a butterfly as she looks.…”

  There was no time for any more serious conversation (and Franz was sorry for there were many questions he would have liked to ask) the refreshment room was suddenly invaded by a throng of people clamouring for “something cool to drink.”

  “Who’s finished all the hock-cup?” inquired Mark Audley, turning an empty jug upside down. “Claire, how could you?”

  “Not guilty!” retorted Claire, laughing at his disappointed expression. “Not guilty, Mark … Oh, Mark, you are a fool, you’ve got the wrong jug. There was water in that jug.”

  “Water!” he exclaimed. “What for? Somebody been having a bath?”

  “Not you, darling of course,” Claire returned.

  “What d’you mean—eh?”

  “Didn’t wash behind the ears, did you, my pet?” she inquired, and she seized her brother by an ear and examined it with an assumption of disgust.

  There was a scuffle and a good deal of laughter and shouts of, “Good old Mark!” and “Go it Claire!” as the guests took sides. For a few moments the room was like bedlam with Mark and Claire the principal maniacs … and then, quite suddenly the play was finished and done with and everyone had stopped laughing and was perfectly quiet and sane. Mark picked up a chair which had been knocked over and set it upon its legs and Claire produced her powder puff and a comb.

  “Oh dear, what a life!” she said, as she powdered her nose. “Who would have brothers?”

  “Who would have sisters if they could help it?” retorted Mark, taking Claire’s comb out of her somewhat unwilling hand and using it to arrange his own disordered locks.

  Franz had looked on and listened to the whole affair with amazement … once more he was left standing at the post. At one moment Claire had been a quiet, sensible young woman discussing her career, and dilating upon social conditions with a good deal of knowledge and acumen, and the next moment, without the slig
htest warning, she had changed into a boisterous school-girl … what could you make of people who behaved like that?

  “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” inquired Wynne, as the two of them walked home together arm in arm in the starry darkness.

  “Yes,” said Franz gravely, “yes, it was on the whole, a very enjoyable evening … I behaved myself rightly, I hope?”

  “I was proud of you,” declared Wynne, giving his arm a little squeeze. “You were a tremendous success, Franz.”

  Franz said nothing but there was a warm glow in his heart as he took the latch key from Wynne and opened the door for her … it was nice that Wynne had been proud of him.

  Chapter Six

  In spite of his mixed parentage Franz was endowed with a full measure of German thoroughness and industry, and, having decided that there was much more to learn about his new friends than he had imagined, he cast about for the best way to go about his task. He decided to ask the advice of Major Worthington and the next morning after breakfast he pursued Major Worthington to his sitting-room in the west wing and broached the subject without waste of time.

  “I wish to study,” declared Franz. “I could study for two hours every morning without interfering with the rest of the day. It is essential that I should make the most of my opportunities.”

  “Yes,” agreed Dane, hiding a smile. “Perhaps you’d like me to engage a tutor for you. We could probably get someone in Kingsport who would be glad of the job.”

  Franz considered this. “I do not think it necessary,” he said at last, “but if you would be so kind as to give me some books to read .…”

  “Books about the political situation?”

  “No,” said Franz, “no, I think I should study the mentality of the British people first. One should understand the mentality of a people before their politics.”

  Dane looked at him with some surprise, and his desire to smile vanished. “Why of course you’re right,” he said, “you’re absolutely right … it would save a great deal of misunderstanding if more of your fellow countrymen shared your views.”