A Postillion Struck by Lightning (41 page)

The only person who wasn't altogether happy with the way things had transpired was Annie. Trailing about the country from one Army Camp to another meant that she hardly ever got to London, and when she did we only seemed to manage a grabbed lunch in a pub or, on one or two occasions, tea with Bill Wightman in his room in Swiss Cottage where we drank his hoarded Earl Grey's, ate digestive biscuits, and asked, constantly, his advice about the vexed problem of our Engagement. His advice one day, given with great care, was that we should both wait until I was twenty-one … or until the war was over, and until we had both gone a little further, one way or another, in our jobs. It would be restricting and frustrating now at this moment to get married, he thought, especially as my Call Up was imminent and who
could possibly tell how we should both feel, with so much before us, when Peace returned?

The astonishing thought that Peace would return, with Victory, at such a dark time of the war, was unquestioned. That evening, during a fairly savage air raid, and a pleasantly emotional supper at the Café Royal, Annie put her engagement ring in her handbag and replaced it with a Red Indian's Head in solid silver. As a token. We felt sad, brave, and both, I think, relieved. The next day she went down to Borden Camp and I went on to Wyndhams to continue with my A-One, A-Two, A-Three, TURN!

Whenever I could afford to, I went home to Sussex at the weekend to get a couple of nights relaxed sleep. The Air Raids were now becoming a fact of life, more and more frequent and disturbing. My window had again blown in, and was hermetically sealed with thick black paper, and Miss Hanney, one evening at supper, informed us all with relish that when the Private Hotel on the corner had been hit they found one of the maids stuck all over with knives, spoons and forks like a hedgehog. A weekend on the Common in my own house seemed desirable; there, in my room with the McKnight Kauffers and Nevinsons and Nashes pinned on the walls, the bits of Staffordshire I had started to collect from barrows off the Kings Road, my sombre library of war books and pamphlets on rearing everything from a Natterjack Toad to a Goat gave me a great sense of comfort and security. And the war, although constantly present with its red waning glow in the north sky beyond the Forest at night, seemed a long way off.

In spite of all the changes the Family were still very much there. The Evacuees had finally left, the eldest into the Merchant Navy and the younger, miserable and lonely without his brother, packed up to risk his life again in Finsbury Park. My mother was now in ARP as a Warden with a tin hat and full instructions on what to do in the event of a Gas Alert. She had also mastered the art of making Molotov Cocktails, and the shed near the garage was filled with her collection of bottles and fuses, plus a strong smell of spilt petrol. Since the Invasion Threat of the summer had passed somewhat, she now concentrated on splints, bandages and hot sweet tea for shock. She was really quite enjoying her War. Gareth was at a Dame school in Newick, wrinkled socks
and a satchel; Elizabeth groomed horses at Miss Umfreville's Stables; only my father was absent, sleeping as he did mostly at
The Times
if the Raids were too heavy or yet another reverse somewhere forced him to relinquish the security and peace of his own bed. Elsie wandered about the house mournfully, her alabaster skin dull, her eyes sad, her Mechanic in the RAF. Otherwise it was all much as it ever had been. And yet …

The cold, clear, December sun slanted through the dusty windows of my ramshackle hut up in the orchard. It was, predictably, called Trees and I had built it with my own hands from bits of junk picked up here and there, furnished it with a couple of chairs, a table, a marionette theatre of imposing size, shelves for books and a glass vivarium which had once contained lizards and a grass snake called Bill who ate them all.

Today it stood empty and forlorn. A smell of damp and rotten apples from a great tumbled pile of windfalls in a corner, mildew on the faded carpet, books curling limply, cobwebs draping the dusty curtains of the theatre, the vivarium cracked and empty. I picked up a forgotten copy of
Theatre World
for October '38, the pages glued together with wet, Marie Tempest and John Gielgud almost completely devoured by snails. Things weren't at all as they had been. My sister came wandering up through the lichened trees and peered through the dusty windows.

“I've been looking for you,” she said.

“What for?”

“Just looking. To see where you were, that's all.” She sat down and scraped some mud off her Wellingtons with a stick. “Doesn't it smell awful. All mouldy and horrid.”

“So do you. You smell dreadful.”

She laughed, and threw a lump of mud into the ragged garden outside. “That's horses. I groom three, you know, and do the saddles and things.”

‘It's dung,” I said. “DUNG …”

“spells Dung!” she finished. “Do you remember, Lally and the stallion?”

“Of course I do. I expect he was really quite safe, the stallion, it was only Reg who tried to frighten us out of our wits.”

“He was called Dobbin, wasn't he … so he can't have been all that awful.” She looked round the place. “Isn't it sad though? All this … I never come here now, you know, it's too sad and creepy.”

We sat for a while in silence looking out of the door down through the trees to the little stream and the bamboo break riffling in the cool wind. Presently she got up and went to the window, pressing her face against the glass.

“Do you think you'll get killed? In the Army, I mean?” The snails had eaten right up to Marie Tempest's neck.

“I don't know. I could just as easily get killed in the Blitz. A lot of people do.”

She was playing noughts and crosses with herself in the dust. “But the Army's different. With guns and things. I expect it'd be quick, wouldn't it? If you did get killed?”

“I hope so. Would you care?”

‘Mother would.”

“But would you too, I mean?”

She crossed out a game with a stroke of her finger. “Yes. I'd cry, I expect.”

“I hope you would. But you'd still have Gareth, wouldn't you?”

She wiped the game out with her fist in big circular movements. “He's too little.”

“But he wears a satchel now, he'll be grown up soon.”

“It wouldn't be the same because he doesn't remember the Cottage …” she pulled on a pair of woollen gloves slowly pushing her fingers to the ends “… or the gully or Great Meadow. Do you remember Great Meadow, wasn't it lovely then…”

“And Lally's ginger beer! Wasn't it so lovely then …”

“Except you were rotten to me all the time.”

“I was not! I liked you very much indeed.”

“When you stuck the knife in me …”

“Oh that…”

“Well, I've still got the scar. Lally said it will show in an evening dress.”

We wandered out of the damp studio into the clear hard light and, dodging under the branches, walked back to the house for lunch. I took her woolly hand and she looked at me with surprise. “I hope you don't get killed, that's all,” she said, “because when it's all finished you might become a Film Star or something, like Lloyd Nolan or Robert Taylor and then I could come and live with you in Hollywood and we'd have real palm trees in the garden.”

The idea suddenly cheered me up; she was being so silly that it
almost made sense. I pushed her suddenly and she gave a scream and slithered about on the muddy path.

“I hate you! What did you do that for when I was being so nice to you? I might have got this coat all mucky, and it's my school one too … but you don't care, oh no … you're just vile.”

We heard Elsie through the trees banging on a tin tray with a spoon to call us in for our meal, and Rogan our terrier came bounding up the path, tongue lolling, tail wagging. I put my arm round her neck and pulled her to me. “I'm sorry … I didn't mean it… really. I was just suddenly feeling happy again.” She shrugged me off a bit, but not much and we walked on to the house. “It's a funny way of showing it, that's all I can say,” she said. “It's stuffed cabbage today and there's no H.P. sauce. Oh this war! It
is
a bit of a nuisance.”

At the final run through before the dress rehearsal we heard the stick of bombs ripping down somewhere behind the theatre across St Martin's Lane. The final one, we felt sure, would hit us; on hands and knees under the Stalls we heard it, with gratitude, crash into the Hippodrome opposite. The lights flicked and went on again, we scrambled up from our graceless positions, Miss Evans straightened her hat and Peter raised his hands to catch a small disc of paper which came gently eddying down through the dusty air. He read it out aloud. “Do Not Accept This Programme Unless The Seal Is Unbroken.” We all laughed stupidly and the rehearsal finished. Tony Forwood, who was attending this performance before he moved, the next day, to Yeovil, suggested that we all clear off and find shelter somewhere, and that if anyone wanted a lift he had a car outside and enough petrol. Miss Evans said she'd like a lift to Albany where she had a flat and we left the theatre to enter an inferno in Charing Cross Road. The whole world seemed to be on fire, the sky crimson, dust and smoke like a thick fog, the glass canopy round the theatre shattered into inch long splinters, rubble, broken branches and fire hoses everywhere. The Hippodrome was burning fiercely, people cursing, coughing and running, wires looped across the street and everywhere belching heat and smoke. Five of us piled into the miraculously untouched car standing by the curb, but by the time
we had bounced and bumped to Leicester Square, past the ruins of the Café Anglais and the flaming roof of the Leicester Square Theatre, we knew that we were stuck. Wally suddenly remembered that there was a small Afternoon Drinking Club not far away in Orange Street, and rather than be buried alive in Tony's soft-top Mercedes, it was suggested that we make for its shelter. He was, he said, a member.

Streaked with dust and flakes of oily soot we clambered up a couple of flights to a discreet polished door, and were admitted, resentfully, into the calm of a dimly lit room. A thick carpet, a small bar in one corner, a white baby grand in the other. Soft, warm, safe. A pale young man in a blue angora sweater was playing “Our Love Affair”—he looked up with polite surprise but went on, his identity bracelets gleaming softly. At the bar, brushing down the dust and bits of glass, Miss Evans ordered an Orange Juice from the slender bar man with a sun-tanned face. The rest of us had something stronger and the young man at the piano rippled into “Run Rabbit Run” defiantly. Bombs fell intermittendy, shaking the room, making a glass tank of wax lilies jerk and wobble in the blast. Eventually Miss Evans decided that she must, simply must, get back to Albany, which was, as she pointed out “just down the road” and that she would walk since no traffic could move in Piccadilly. We went with her offering company in one form or another all of which she firmly refused, and the last we saw of her was her tall, determined figure, walking swiftly down the crimson street, until the swirling smoke and dust hid her from sight. She was back the next morning on the dot and “Diversion” opened to a packed house and great acclaim. Apart from the Windmill up the road, we were the only theatre open for business in London.

Dressing-room number four at Wyndhams was hardly palatial, but Peter and I settled down, one on each side, and started a small salon. Rather he did. I was far too timid. He had vast energy which astonished and embarrassed me, and although he had two numbers of his own in the show, as well as doing all the bits and pieces as I did, he still found the time to write another play which he handed, sheet by sheet, to an enraptured Joyce Grenfell who sat at his feet on the cramped floor in blue velvet. People were always dropping in to see him, to talk in varied languages, argue and drink tea. It was all very Russian. Vida brought lunch from the pub next door and we had picnics which seemed to last most
of the day. We were in the theatre most of the time anyway: two shows daily, three on matinees, all gauged exactly so that the audiences were well away by the time the Warning went, which it did regularly every evening between five-thirty and six. If it was hard and tiring I never knew. I was far too busy and far too happy. Although I had nothing much to do, a few lines here and there and the tag line of a not very good sketch, my days seemed filled to bursting, I was in euphoria. It came as something of a shock, therefore, one day to receive my Medical Exam Papers and a command to report at some obscure address in Brighton. A sorry undignified affair in a converted shop off North Street. Naked and ashamed, we shuffled along in a smelly line before white-coated, weary Doctors who prodded, lifted, and pressed various parts of our flinching bodies and passed us fit for duty. In one of the cheap restaurants where I cleared the tables, I had heard rumours from some of the Actors who made up most of the clientele, that the best thing to do before a medical was to drink endless cups of black coffee an hour before, thus increasing one's heartbeat, or else to swallow castor oil mixed with a certain amount of soot, which would make one cough and leave a warning sediment in the lungs for the X-rays. Neither suggestion seemed to me to be worth the risk, so I didn't bother. But that morning in Brighton in the cold, stone-floored shop, I almost wished that I had heeded my advisers. Too late. I was fit and well and returned to the show chastened but healthy.