Nothing to Report, page 22
Although the Dowager Lady Merle’s new chauffeur was a stranger, Mary chose to sit beside him on their eight miles’ journey, and draw from him as much local information as possible. She thus learnt that Went Park Maternity Home was still functioning, and that Dick Harker, Tom Herring and Syd Crippen were all safe back from Dunkirk, but no news yet of Ted Squirl. It was a sad thing for Went, losing her Member, Captain Yarrow, a very nice gentleman, all said. Sir James Wilson had been much disappointed that he wasn’t the age for the Local Defence Volunteers, but attended every meeting in the Village Hall just the same. Mrs. Taylor had been to see the Bishop about the Reverend Taylor joining, and he had been the first at the police station when we got the Yellow Warning, Tuesday.
Mary had gathered, from the infrequent letters of her old neighbours, that the sudden and quiet marriage of Miss Pamela Wallis to the bereaved Rector of Westbury-on-the-Hill had caused much amazement in the district. She hoped against hope that Pamela, who had an excellent memory, had forgotten her own description of “little Taylor” as “rather a frightful little chap.”
“I wonder,” thought Mary, as the car came to a standstill to allow Cupp, the fishmonger’s van to pass between two sandbag barricades at the corner of the Highridge road, “I wonder whether Pamela has made him take down that notice about not throwing rice and confetti at weddings.”
In her sun-flooded double drawing-room, the Dowager was enthroned in front of a superb massed effect of innocent-hued Canterbury bells, which, she hastened to assure her guest, had been raised entirely without heat. She embraced Mary warmly, and said, holding her at arm’s length, “Mary, dear! You look very nice in your uniform.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Mary truthfully.
“And how,” asked the Dowager, “is the throat?”
“Quite well, thank you. Indeed I feel a fraud, taking a holiday just now,” said Mary. “But our medical officer said that until things got worse, as we must expect, he wanted us to carry on with leave as arranged.”
The athletic footmen had vanished, but the meal of which Mary presently partook was still served at record speed. The French chef had presumably also vanished, for the two courses were a plain roast chicken, with new potatoes and green peas, followed by strawberries and cream. On the other hand, the table still bore glittering Victorian silver and crystal, and not a detail in the decoration of this truly hideous room had been altered.
“It’s an odd thing how fond one becomes of familiar objects,” thought Mary, recognizing with pleasure the white silk, lace-edged mat, hand-painted with the likeness of a plover, reposing beneath her finger-bowl. It was extraordinarily soothing to be seated once more at the table of this commanding, shaky, hook-nosed old lady, faced by an enormous picture of Loch Maree, and with a docile spaniel rubbing against one’s legs.
After luncheon the ladies adjourned for coffee to garden seats, placed in the shade of a beautiful copper beech, but with a prospect of nothing but staring yellow gravel, ruby and purple petunias, and pink geraniums in hanging baskets.
“Now let me see,” said the Dowager. “Pamela and her husband are coming to dine to-night.”
“Lovely! How are they?” asked Mary.
“To tell you the truth,” said the Dowager, sipping her unsweetened coffee with a wry mouth, “I am beginning to lose patience with my grand-daughters and their families.”
“Families!” echoed Mary.
“Pamela, who is having one in September, is disgusted with herself,” said the Dowager. “She says it is what everyone will expect of a clergyman’s wife, and she only hopes she may not repeat her success annually. However, as I pointed out to her last night, by the time that I was her age I was already a grandmother. Her husband is concerned for her safety, and keeps on begging me to order her not to over-exert herself. They still have fifteen evacuated children at the Rectory, and as Pamela says she has quite enough to do running the parish and looking after the refugees, without opening a nursery of her own at this unsuitable time. They are happy. An excellent arrangement. Not the least of poor John’s many good qualities is that he has absolutely no relations. Pamela is going in to Valerie’s Maternity Home for the Event. The matron, my daughter-in-law assures me, is a fiend. I believe they fight day and night, and Valerie always loses. It will be nice for the child to be born at Went.
“My other granddaughter, Lalage,” continued the Dowager, “is an even worse case at present, coming down to breakfast with swollen eyes and sniffing about the house, looking like a ferret. Her trouble is that she is not having a family. Since she is just nineteen, and has been married for six months to a particularly fine young husband who has been on leave once, I suggest that she need not give up hope yet. I can’t have her in the room at night, when I listen to the nine o’clock bulletin, though. I listen once a day only. The least that old people like myself can do is to keep quiet and try not to worry the workers. This jersey is for a Merchant Marine. I have completed eleven. Lalage still goes to your First Aid Post every day, and was on duty during our raid on Tuesday, with Mrs. Bates.”
“You can’t mean Sally Bates, from the Green!” exclaimed Mary. “She’s crippled with rheumatism.”
“Her rheumatism has entirely gone,” explained the Dowager. “She says now that she has discovered it was a Subconscious Protest against a life of inactivity. As soon as everybody had no petrol, and couldn’t take her into Went to shop, she recovered the use of her legs and bought a bicycle.”
“Tell me about the Rollos. I’m to go to Crossgrove to-morrow afternoon, you said,” said Mary.
“To Crispin I have become quite attached,” declared the Dowager. “In fact, I think of all my grandsons-in-law he is my favourite. I wish that you had been able to get down for the wedding. Lalage looked really well, and I gave her My Pearls, which infuriated Valerie, who had always hoped for them. But it was a whirlwind affair, a real sailor’s wooing—only ten days’ engagement, and all arranged at the last by telegram. I had to take a car and go to his headquarters to make my son see reason. Lalage has very thick legs, and is his only child. As you know, my son has been with his unit since the outbreak of war. He has lost weight, and I believe is knowing peace of mind for the first time since he married. He gave Lalage away, and Sir Daubeny was able to be present too, so we had a good array of medal ribbons on both sides of the family. They had a small gathering at Crossgrove afterwards, as Went was unobtainable, and I still had the school-teachers here then. One of Lady Rollo’s many under-exercised dogs bit that stodgy woman, Mary Ogilvy, and the elder Rollo son arrived late, dressed in an oil-stained khaki linen mechanic’s costume. Elizabeth Rollo was not well enough yet then to be a bridesmaid. She lay on a brocade sofa in that theatrical white room, and held quite a little court, with her poor foolish mother fussing around her. I hear she’s blooming again now.”
“How do her parents like Elizabeth’s engagement to somebody old enough to be her father?” enquired Mary.
“He’s Crispin’s Captain, and scarcely looks his age, especially with his cap on,” said the Dowager defensively. “Her own father says that if she had considered his feelings, she would have made it an Admiral while she was about it. Lady Rollo, I hear, is pleased that her only daughter is marrying a sailor, because they are proverbially absent. There is no question of the wedding taking place for some time, one is told, but I have heard that story too often, nowadays. Now, my dear, I am sure that you would like a rest after your journey. Only a few people, whom you like, are coming to tea. Poor Dorothy Yarrow will be dropping in later. She has long since taken up her normal round, as far as duties are concerned, but does not go out much. With so many young children and only one nurse, I daresay she has no opportunity. Did I tell you that the girl twin received my Christian name? A handsome child. I have told Macnaughton to put Miss Masquerier’s new book in your bedroom.”
(ii)
The enemy staged an air-raid for Miss Morrison’s first night at Merle Dower House. She was awoken out of deep slumbers by a bang which caused her bedroom windows to vibrate. Overhead an aeroplane was droning on a deep periodic note. The bang was followed by a succession of cracking noises suggestive of a Guy Fawkes party of some pretensions. Mary, who had been shown the Shelter erected by the Dowager’s orders for the use of her staff, turned over onto her other side, and said to herself, “Thank heaven there’s no question of having to go on duty. I’ll get up if I hear anything more.”
The next thing she heard was a breakfast-in-bed tray being bestowed by a maid on the table by her side. She said, rubbing her eyes, “They did come again last night, didn’t they?”
The maid replied, “Yes, miss, but nothing like as close as Tuesday, and no lives lost, the milkman says. Her ladyship has told us that they’ll come, no doubt, every night at present. On the first night her ladyship dressed, and came down to the dug-out to set us the example. But her ladyship has now told Macnaughton not to wake her. ‘I’m eighty-seven and stone deaf in one ear,’ says her ladyship. ‘If this house gets a direct hit, the end will probably be painless.’ Will you be wearing the green silk, miss? It’s very warm out, this morning.”
The green silk which Mary donned an hour later was the same which she had worn at the Went Park sherry party and at Gold Cup Day, in 1939, Rosemary Wright, in South Africa, or rather Rosemary Wright’s husband, was proving a serious drain on Mary’s finances. As she looked at herself m the full-length mirror, Mary heard the sound of a car being brought round to the front door. Lady Merle had offered her guest the loan of the twelve horse-power saloon for the day, and said, as they parted last night, that they would meet again for dinner at eight p.m.
“Just ourselves to-night?” Mary had asked, foreseeing the possibility of being detained at Crossgrove.
“As far as one can ever tell, in these strange days,” had been the Dowager’s Delphic reply.
The morning was, as the housemaid had promised, very warm. Mary was conscious of a sense of complete unreality as she drew slowly towards a scene which she had last beheld in the grip of the glazed frost. On Westbury Hill she met little Dr. Greatbatch, who came striding towards her, and after shaking her hand enthusiastically, said in his fiercest manner, “Well, I daresay you’ll think not much has happened to us since you went away.”
“On the contrary,” said Mary. “I feel like Rip van Winkle. Last night, when I drove the Taylors home, I was stopped in Dead Woman’s Lane by a party of highwaymen headed by Major Mimms, who demanded to see my Identity Card and Driving Licence. Lady Merle, whom I have never seen before with a knitting needle in her fingers, has completed eleven of the very thickest grey fisherman’s jerseys you can imagine. Tell me about Florrie Squirl and her baby. No news yet of Ted, I suppose?”
“No,” said Dr. Greatbatch, looking solemn. “However, perhaps he’ll fetch up yet. Mrs. Harker came in to see me last week, to tell me that all the other boys from the village, in Dick’s regiment, were back, and she’d lain awake three nights. When I called at her cottage a couple of days later, to tell her the not very encouraging result of my enquiries from the officer in command at the barracks in Went, I found Master Dick hanging out his mother’s washing. He’d returned with the rest, and the populace had pressed hot drinks and fruit and sandwiches and cigarettes upon him, at port and railway station, and he’d written a letter to his mother to tell her he was alive. But as he had no English money and no stamps, he’d kept the letter in his pocket for three days.”
“How like a Harker!” exclaimed Mary. “But Ted wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“No,” agreed Dr. Greatbatch. “However, his wife has got the baby now. That was a very foolish affair! I mean her ‘keeping the baby dark,’ as Mrs. Potts expresses it. As Florrie was in a bad way when I got to her cottage, I sent for her mother. It turned out that Mrs. Potts had never known that a baby was expected. Odd thing, considering they live only five miles apart. It only proves what I’ve always known. Folk about here can keep a secret when they want. Florrie had been very close. It seems that she and her mother had had words about Ted throwing up his job and going off to fight for his country. Florrie had backed Ted up, and she and Mrs. Potts had not met or spoken since. Florrie told me that she had intended that the first Mrs. Potts should hear of her being a grandmother was from the postman. She said The Potts have a morbid strain. But as I didn’t know anything about all this foolishness, I just said to Mrs. Potts when she arrived, ‘My good woman you ought to have been here long ago.’ She didn’t let me see that she had received a surprise. She just pursed up that mouth and said, ‘So I see, sir, and they’ll be all right now. I left them all three howling happily together—baby loudest, and the cottage enveloped in blue smoke. Florrie had put something in the oven overnight, and forgotten it when her pains came on. Luckily I smell very little these days.
“Oh! Dr. Greatbatch,” said Mary sympathetically, “how sad never to smell a bunch of violets.”
“But think how few bunches of violets I smell, how many cottages,” chuckled Dr. Greatbatch, as he withdrew in nervous haste.
Mary’s next halt was at the Westbury Hill Post, where she found Mrs. Bates and Amy Squirl on duty, Muriel Bidding and Mrs. Mimms also present. Violet Jackson’s unbelievably plain and solid married daughter, who looked perfectly square in a khaki uniform, had called in to see if anybody here would volunteer to house two school-mistresses for the month of August, when her own spare-rooms required for her public-school nephews.
“Well, I think I could take ’em, so long as Johanna Pratt is not with me still then,” decided Mrs. Bates, busily flicking a duster around her shelves.
Miry, who had not thought of Johanna for months, was so much interested that she interrupted without greeting, “How is Johanna Pratt?”
When greetings had subsided, Mrs. Bates reported, “Johanna went with an ambulance to Finland, and returned through Norway. She had the most amazing escapes, but the day after she got back, broke her leg in the Black Out outside an Underground station. She’s been down with me for eleven weeks now. She’s astonishingly cheerful, considering that she now knows that she’s got a permanently shortened leg and a stiff knee for life. ‘Come on in,’ she shouts from the sofa, ‘this is not an Illness. It’s just an Accident.’ She’s paying for her own telephone calls, which are many, and I’ve taught her to sew. She’s hoping to get an office job. She’s not married yet. I must say I’m surprised, after Norah Hill finding a husband—quite a rising Glasgow specialist, I hear. I imagine you heard about the Heap children charging in here, and sticking Norah’s dachshund in one of my clean beds, dressed out in my sterile dressings as an Air Raid Casualty?”
“I hadn’t,” said Mary, “but I must confess that a load was lifted from my soul when Norah wrote to say that she wanted poor Otto back, and Marcelle telegraphed that Dr. Heap was sending her children to Canada.”
“I suppose,” said Lady Muriel in the voice of a drill-sergeant, “that you all got cables from my mother? She told me in her last letter that she was simply handing her address-book to her secretary, and telling the woman to cable everyone with English addresses, saying, ‘I will take your dear children for the duration.’”
“It was very kind-hearted, and just like her,” said Mary, “though at my hospital the one addressed to me caused some surprise.”
“That is what I came to see you about,” said little Mrs. Mimms to Violet Jackson’s daughter, in tremulous tones. “When your mother’s cable arrived at our house, it was literally an answer to prayer. I’m accepting. I’m sending them at once. My husband wants me to go too, but I’ve decided against that, though I shall never know a happy moment while I am separated from my children. Mrs. Bates, I came in to say that now I shall be able to come and help you here. But don’t ask me to do anything for several weeks.”
Mrs. Mimms, a piteous little figure, left the hut, attended by firm, khaki-coloured Lady Muriel.
“Humph!” said Mrs. Bates to a bottle of Dettol. “Don’t know that she’ll be much good up here.” Mary followed Amy Squirl into the Quartermaster’s store, and said to her, “Amy, I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve no news of Ted yet. I shall be passing through London again, on my way back to hospital next Monday. Would you like me to make any enquiries up there for you? There’s a department opened now, I know, for—for tracing people.”
“Something’s happened to our Ted, of that I’m sure, miss,” said Amy Squirl heavily. “Our Ted wouldn’t let five weeks pass without slipping a letter into the box, if ’e was able, not even if ’e’d got no stamp. ’E’d know ’is dear ones was listening for the postman’s knock. Would you like to see Ted’s last letter to me, miss?” asked Amy, feeling in the pocket beneath her apron. “I was the last to get a line from ’im. I’d sent ’im a wrist watch for ’is birthday.”
Mary took over to the light of the window the letter written in pencil on cheap, blue-lined block paper, much folded and creased. She had to stand at the window for a long moment after she had read the letter. The view was not particularly interesting, as it was principally composed of sheds, but Westbury church spire was just visible between two walls, on which some self-seeded snapdragons were flourishing. Mary had never known before that lads like Ted Squirl—twenty-five and married—still ended their letters to their only sisters with a row of hearty kisses.
“Well, I must be getting on to Willows. I’ve not been there yet,” she explained to Sally Bates a few seconds later.
“The painted chairs look very nice in your parlour,” nodded Mrs. Bates. “Wasn’t it thoughtful of Captain Hungerford to tell Wookey to remove them from Woodside before the military took it over? I saw him when he came down to say good-bye to Corisande, Lady Merle, on his embarkation leave. So amusing, and so full of life. She must be terribly anxious.”
