Coming Home (8 page)

It was Jess who came to her rescue.

‘Mummy.’

She looked up and saw her younger child peering at her through the banister rail. Jess, awake at last, but still in her long cream night-dress and with her curls awry.

‘Mummy!’

‘I'm coming, darling.’

‘I want to get my close on.’

‘I'm coming.’ She crossed the hall, paused for an instant. ‘You'd better go and have breakfast,’ she told Judith. She went upstairs.

Judith waited until she was gone, then pulled herself to her feet and went into the dining-room. Aunt Biddy was sitting there, in her usual place, and, down the length of the room they looked, bleakly, at each other.

Aunt Biddy said, ‘Oh, dear.’ She had been reading the newspaper. She folded it and dropped it on the floor. She said, ‘Sorry about that.’

Judith was not used to having grown-ups apologise to her. ‘It's all right.’

‘Get yourself a sausage. I should think you need it.’

Judith did as she was told, but hot sizzling sausages weren't much of a comfort. She carried her plate back to the table and sat down in her customary place, with her back to the window. She looked at the food, but didn't think that, just yet, she could eat it.

After a bit, ‘Did you hear it all?’ Aunt Biddy asked.

‘Most of it.’

‘It was my fault. My timing was rotten. I chose the wrong moment. Your mother's in no state to make any sort of a plan at the moment. I should have realised that.’

‘I shall be all right with Aunt Louise, you know.’

‘I know that. It isn't that I'm worried about your well-being, just the fact that, quite possibly, it won't be much fun.’

Judith said, ‘I've never had proper grown-up fun before. Not before this Christmas.’

‘What you're trying to say is what you don't have, you don't miss.’

‘Yes, I suppose that's it. But I would love to come back.’

‘I'll try again. A little later.’

Judith picked up her knife and fork and cut a sausage in two. She said, ‘Is there really going to be another war?’

‘Oh, my dear, I don't expect so. You're far too young to be worrying about that.’

‘But Uncle Bob's worried?’

‘Not so much worried, I think, as frustrated. Grinding his teeth at the very thought of the might of the British Empire being challenged. Roused, he can become a real old bulldog.’

‘If I came to stay, would I come here?’

‘I don't know. Keyham's a two-year appointment, and we're due to move at the end of the summer.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘No idea. Bob wants to go back to sea. If he does, I think I shall try to buy a little house of our own. We've never owned bricks and mortar, always lived in quarters. But I think it would be nice to have a permanent base. I thought, Devon. We have friends around here. Somewhere like Newton Abbot or Chagford, not too far from your grandparents.’

‘A little house of your own!’ It was a charming prospect. ‘Oh, do get one in the country. And then I could come and stay with you there.’

‘If you want.’

‘I'll always want.’

‘No. That's the funny thing. You mightn't. At your age, everything changes so quickly, and yet a year can seem like a lifetime. I remember. And you'll make new friends; want different things. And in your case, it's even more important, because you're going to have to make your own decisions and make up your mind about what you want to do. You won't have your mother around, and although you're bound to feel a bit bereft and lonely, in a way, it's a good thing. I'd have given the world to be shed of my parents when I was fourteen, fifteen. As it was,’ she added with some satisfaction, ‘I didn't do too badly, but that was because I took matters into my own hands.’

‘It's not very easy to take matters into your own hands when you're at boarding-school,’ Judith pointed out. She thought Aunt Biddy was making it all sound far too easy.

‘I think you must learn to precipitate situations, not be passive and simply let them happen to you. You must learn to be selective, about the friends you make and the books you read. An independence of spirit, I suppose that's what I'm talking about.’ She smiled. ‘George Bernard Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young. It's only when you get to be old that you begin to understand what he was talking about.’

‘You're not old.’

‘Maybe. But I'm certainly no longer a spring chicken.’

Judith popped a bit of sausage into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, ruminating over Aunt Biddy's advice. ‘What I really hate,’ she admitted at last, ‘is being treated as though I were the same age as Jess. I'm never
asked
about things, or
told
about things. If I hadn't heard you shouting at each other, I should never have known that you'd asked me to stay with you. She would never have told me.’

‘I know. It must be maddening. And I think you've got a genuine grievance. But you mustn't be too hard on your mother just now. At the moment, she's in a state of upheaval, and who can blame her if she does start twittering around like a wet hen?’ She laughed, and was rewarded by the beginnings of a smile. ‘Between you and me, I think she's rather in awe of Louise.’

‘I know she is.’

‘And you?’

‘I'm not frightened of her.’

‘Good girl.’

‘You know, Aunt Biddy, I've really loved staying with you. I won't ever forget it.’

Biddy was touched. ‘We've liked having you. Bob in particular. He said to say goodbye. He was sorry not to see you. Now…’ She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. ‘I can hear your mother and Jess on their way downstairs. Eat your breakfast and pretend we haven't been having a heart-to-heart. And remember, keep your spirits up. Now, I must go and put some clothes on…’

But before she reached the door, Molly and Jess had come into the room, Jess now dressed in a little smock and white socks, and with her silky curls smoothed by a hairbrush. Biddy paused to drop an airy kiss onto Molly's cheek. ‘Don't bother about a thing,’ she told her sister, which was the nearest she could get to an apology, and then she was gone, running up the stairs to the sanctuary of her bedroom.

And so the quarrel was swept away, under the carpet, and the day progressed. Judith was so relieved that the air was clear between her mother and her aunt, and that no bad feeling hung about in the atmosphere, that it was only when they were actually at the station, standing on the windswept platform and waiting for the
Riviera
to arrive to take them back to Cornwall, that she had time to regret the absence of Uncle Bob.

It was horrid going without saying goodbye to him. It was her own fault, for being so late coming down to breakfast, but it would have been nice if he could have waited, just five minutes, and said goodbye properly. And she wanted to thank him for so much, and thanks were never the same written in a letter.

The best had been his gramophone. Despite her mother's girlhood yearnings to go on the stage and become a ballerina, neither she nor Dad were musically inclined, but those afternoons spent with Uncle Bob in his study had awakened an awareness, an appreciation the existence of which Judith had never even suspected. He owned a huge variety of records, and although she had much enjoyed the Gilbert and Sullivan songs with their witty lyrics and catchy tunes, there were others which had lifted her heart, or made her feel so poignantly sad that she could scarcely keep the tears from brimming into her eyes. Puccini arias from
La Bohème,
the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's
Romeo and Juliet
music. And, sheerest magic, Rimsky-Korsakov's
Scheherazade,
the solo violin sending shivers down the spine. There was another record, by the same composer, which Uncle Bob referred to as the ‘Bum of the Flightle Bee, by Rip His Corsetsoff’, a joke which reduced Judith to paroxysms of giggles. She had no idea that a grown-up could be so funny. But one thing was certain, which was that she simply had to have a gramophone of her own, and then she could collect records, just the way Uncle Bob had, and whenever she wanted, play them and be transported, as though led by the hand, into that other and previously unimagined land. She would start saving up right away.

Her feet were frozen. She tried to stamp some life into them, marking time on the greasy platform. Aunt Biddy and Mother were chatting inconsequently, as people do, while waiting for a train. They seemed to have run out of important things to say. Jess sat on the edge of a trolley and swung her white-gaitered fat legs. She hugged her golliwog, that revolting toy she took to bed every night. Judith was sure it must be filthy, but because it had a black face it didn't show the dirt. Not only filthy, but full of germs.

And then something really good happened. Aunt Biddy stopped chattering, looked up over Mother's head, and said, in quite a different voice, ‘Oh, look. There's Bob.’

Judith's heart lifted. She swung around. Frozen feet were forgotten. And there he was, a huge unmistakable figure in his British warm, coming down the platform towards them, with his brass hat cocked, Beatty fashion, over one bristling eyebrow, and a great grin on his craggy features. Judith's feet stopped feeling cold, and she had to stand very still to keep herself from running to meet him.

‘Bob! What are you doing here?’

‘Had a moment or two to spare, decided to come and see our little party on board.’ He looked down at Judith. ‘I couldn't let you go without saying goodbye properly.’

She beamed up at him. She said, ‘I'm glad you came. I wanted to say thank you for everything. Especially for the clock.’

‘You'll have to remember to wind it.’

‘Oh, I will…’ She couldn't stop smiling.

Uncle Bob cocked his head, listening. ‘I think that's the train now.’

And indeed there was a sound — the railway lines were humming, and Judith looked and saw, around the distant curve beyond the end of the platform, the huge green-and-black steam engine surge into view, with its polished brass fixtures, its billowing plume of black smoke. Its approach was majestic and awe-inspiring as it crept alongside the platform. The engine driver, sooty-faced, leaned down from the footplate and Judith had a glimpse of the flickering flames of the boiler furnace. The massive pistons, like a giant's arms, revolved more and more slowly, until finally, with a hiss of steam, the monster stopped. It was, as always, dead on time.

A small pandemonium broke out. Doors were flung open, passengers alighted, lugging their baggage. A certain urgency prevailed, a flurry of departure. Then the porter heaved their suitcases on board and went in search of seats. Uncle Bob, with seamanlike thoroughness, followed him, just to make sure the job was done in a proper fashion. Molly, panicking slightly, lifted Jess into her arms and hopped up into the train, and had to lean down to kiss her sister goodbye.

‘You've been so kind. We've had a wonderful Christmas. Wave goodbye to Aunt Biddy, Jess.’

Jess, still clutching Golly, flapped a little white-furred paw.

Aunt Biddy turned to Judith. ‘Goodbye, dear child. You've been a little brick.’ She stooped and kissed Judith. ‘Don't forget. I'm always here. Your mother's got my telephone number in her book.’

‘Goodbye. And thank you so much.’

‘Quick. Up you get, or the train will go without you.’ She raised her voice. ‘Make sure Uncle Bob gets off, otherwise you'll have to take him with you.’ For a moment she had looked a bit serious, but now she was laughing again. Judith smiled back, gave a final wave, and then plunged down the corridor after the others.

A compartment had been found containing only one young man, who sat, with an open book on his knee, while the porter piled luggage in the racks over his head. Then, when all was stowed, Uncle Bob tipped the porter and sent him on his way.

‘You must also go, quickly,’ Judith told him, ‘or the train will move, and you'll be caught.’

He smiled down at her. ‘It's never happened yet. Goodbye, Judith.’ They shook hands. When she drew her hand away, she found, in the palm of her woollen glove, a ten-shilling note. A whole ten shillings.

‘Oh, Uncle Bob,
thank you.
’

‘Spend it wisely.’

‘I will. Goodbye.’

He was gone. A moment later, he and Aunt Biddy reappeared again, standing on the platform below their window. ‘Have a good journey.’ The train began to move. ‘Safe arrival!’ It gathered speed. ‘Goodbye!’ The platform and the station slid away behind them. Uncle Bob and Aunt Biddy were gone. It was all over. They were on their way.