Camomile Lawn (15 page)

Helena went upstairs, leaving Monika to manage the luggage. Richard lay passive, propped on pillows.

‘Poor fellow. How d’you feel?’ Helena bent to kiss his forehead. ‘You’ve got a temperature. What’s the doctor doing about it?’

‘Given me M and B.’ Richard’s voice was weak.

‘Hope it works. Who changed the room round?’ Helena looked disapprovingly at a change in the order of furniture.

‘Monika. Easier to nurse me. She is very good.’

‘She called me good just now.’ Helena laughed and Richard smiled a conniving smile. ‘You’ll be all right.’ Helena’s voice was confident.

‘Now you are here.’

Helena felt a pang of guilt. ‘Sophy was on the train. We didn’t see each other until we arrived. Polly posted her off from Paddington. I was in Liverpool with Max when I heard you were ill.’

‘No need for you to bother.’

‘Probably not. All the same, it wouldn’t look well if I didn’t come.’

‘What would the neighbours say? I ask you.’

‘Are you joking?’

‘Of course not.’ Richard’s voice was hoarse. ‘Must think of the General and Monika. Not that she cares.’ His voice dropped to a mutter. ‘She’s used to it. Used to it! I ask you.’ He began to cough.

‘Shall you get used to it?’

Richard nodded. He looked feeble and unattractive. Helena looked round the room for his leg and, not seeing it, caught his eye.

‘She put it next door.’

‘Oh.’ Helena experienced a rush of friendship for Richard, smiled at him warmly, then sat beside him holding his hand. She felt they had briefly exchanged the truth and grown closer. The dachshund scratched at the door.

‘There’s your dog. He loves you.’

‘Yes.’ Richard watched his wife walk across the room to let the dog in. Her walk was different.

‘I can’t bully you any more,’ he said, coughing.

‘You never really succeeded.’ Helena watched the dog jump on to the bed and settle its head close to Richard’s, looking at her down its long nose.

‘She’s moved the kitchen furniture and you are to sleep in the spare room.’

‘Oh.’ Helena was surprised into annoyance. ‘Why?’

‘You might catch my flu.’

‘And if I did?’

‘You’d stay longer.’ He laughed, then coughed, getting very red in the face.

‘So that’s how it is.’ Helena watched him cough, trying to speak between spasms. ‘What did you say?’

‘A straight swap,’ he gasped.

‘But it isn’t, is it?’ she queried.

‘No.’ He held the dog’s absurd nose loosely in his hand, its wet black tip showing between thumb and forefinger, its eyes peering across his veined fist. ‘But it’s all right.’

Helena was furious, insulted. He was her husband, he should mind.

‘You’ve got bronchial pneumonia,’ she said, wondering whether he would die, whether if he did she would mind.

‘Not dying, though.’ The bout of coughing stopped. He lay back.

‘Uncle Richard?’ Sophy came in, hurried up to the bed and kissed him, then stood back holding his hand, looking down at him.

Richard’s eyes lit up. ‘Sophy.’

‘Am I glad to see you!’ the child exclaimed. Helena was surprised. Sophy had never shown Richard affection.

‘Thanks for your letters,’ she said. ‘They make school bearable.’

‘Good,’ he said, holding her hand. ‘Good.’

He loves her, Helena told herself, loves her. Sophy sensed something and, turning to Helena, said: ‘He writes to me about the garden and the birds and what’s happening in the village and what the General thinks and the Rector and all that, so that I know it’s all here, that I’m not just homesick for an idea. I always end my letters, “Love to the camomile lawn”.’ She paused and looked at Helena. ‘You planted it, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Helena remembering. ‘They all said it wouldn’t grow.’

‘But it does.’ Sophy felt warmth for her aunt, for a brief moment they liked each other.

‘You’ve grown.’ Richard held on to Sophy’s hand. ‘One day—’ he began to cough again, a hard, racking cough. ‘Bugger this cough, got pneumonia too, doctor says “Being gassed didn’t help”. The Huns didn’t do it to help us. I ask you! Did it to kill us. Sloppy use of the English language.’

‘Time you stopped talking.’ Monika sailed into the sick room carrying an inhaler. ‘Swallow your pills and then you inhale, yes?’

‘Whatever you say, my dear.’

His dear! Helena raised her eyebrows.

‘He has talked too much.’ Monika dismissed Helena gently, Sophy too.

Helena followed Sophy downstairs. ‘He doesn’t write to me,’ she said.

‘You don’t need letters. You’ve got so much. Oh, how wizard!’ Sophy admired the new arrangement of the kitchen. ‘Uncle Richard said I’d like it. You like it, don’t you?’ She turned to Helena.

‘Yes.’ Helena looked at the transformed kitchen. ‘I admit I do.’

‘Much cosier than in Cook’s day, quite Viennese, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s enjoying the factory.’

‘Who? What factory?’

‘Cook.’

‘How do you know?’

‘We write. She’s engaged to the foreman, he’s called Terence and is a widower.’

‘You do keep in touch.’

‘I must. Otherwise I—’

‘What?’ Helena stopped staring at the unrecognizable kitchen and looked at Richard’s niece.

‘Nothing.’ Sophy patted a cushion which had appeared from another part of the house to soften an upright chair. ‘Otherwise I should get lost,’ she said to herself, ‘disappear.’

‘I
SHALL HAVE TO
stop to let Jumbo out.’

‘You can’t stop on the motorway, Ma.’ Iris and James spoke together, knowing best.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I can turn off at the next junction.’

‘Junction 17 is two miles on,’ James and Iris chorused.

Children! thought Polly. ‘Travelling in the war was quite different,’ she said. ‘There was no petrol except for short runs and the trains were full to bursting. People like Calypso managed to get sleepers. She used to press ten bob into the attendant’s hand, look him in the eye and say, “I am the Member of Parliament for Hogmanay” or whatever Hector’s constituency was. It worked even when she went to Penzance.’

‘He was an M.P. wasn’t he—Conservative?’

‘Yes.’ Polly turned off the motorway. ‘All right, Jumbo, I’ll let you out in a moment. When he went off to war some other member looked after his constituency. He came back to vote Labour and chuck politics.’ She stopped the car, let Jumbo out on to the grass verge. ‘Don’t take all day,’ she said to the dog. ‘Hector had more constituents in the Highland regiments than anywhere else.’

‘Charging across the desert with bagpipes?’ Iris watched the dog defecating. ‘He did want to be let out.’

Polly whistled. The dog, who had not finished, ignored her.

‘I can’t somehow see Calypso in the Highlands.’ James snapped his fingers at the dog, now scratching the grass, sending little clods of turf high.

‘She went once on their honeymoon and once just before Hector went overseas. Catherine came from his place, Hamish’s now, of course. Catherine had him up there when he was an infant and later for his holidays. Calypso found it dreary and isolated.’

‘Not her style.’ Iris pulled the dog into the car. It jumped on to the front seat beside Polly.

‘Not her style at all.’ Polly drove back on to the motorway. ‘Of course Hamish—’

‘Hamish behaves as though he had no drop of English blood,’ Iris agreed, ‘totally Highland.’

‘And yet he is Calypso’s child.’

‘If anyone had told me this would be enjoyable I would have told them to get their head examined.’ Calypso, held tight in Hector’s arms, rocked with the train. Hector held her, pressing his feet against the foot of the bunk.

‘I rather like the rhythm,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘It says, “Fuck fuck-fucker fuck fuck fuck-fucker fuck.”’

He turned his head to find her mouth. ‘Improper words.’

‘Not for a wife.’

‘Another go?’

‘Another go. Don’t fall out of the bunk.’

‘I’ll try not to.’

‘What time do we get to Euston?’

‘Just shut up for a while.’

When she slept he held her in his arms. The train roared south through the night. The engine shrieked eerily.

‘Are we nearly there?’ she said sleepily.

‘No, not yet.’

‘We are too big for this bunk.’

‘Do you want me to move to mine?’

‘Not if you can bear the discomfort.’

If I tell her how happy I am she will laugh, he thought, gritting his teeth against the agonies of cramp.

‘Oh, I must stretch, you are squashing me.’ She was suddenly fully awake, pushing him on to the floor. ‘D’you think there’s any whisky left in that bottle?’ She pulled a jersey on and sat up.

He had stood up, swaying with the train, to reach up, find the whisky, pour her a drink.

‘D’you think the puppy is all right?’ Calypso fumbled under the bunk to peer into a basket where crouched a small brindled cairn with a black face. It wagged its tail. ‘Yes, he’s all right.’ She closed the basket. ‘He’s a lovely present.’ She took the whisky from Hector, who watched her sitting swinging her long bare legs, wearing her jersey. Hector poured himself a drink and sat beside her, putting his free hand to cover her warm stomach, feel her hair.

‘I shall call him “Highland Fling” but “Hamish” for short.’ She tossed back the whisky. ‘It’s a family name, isn’t it?’

‘Not for a
dog,’
he shouted at her in sudden rage.

‘I didn’t mean the dog.’ He could not read her expression. ‘You are on embarkation leave, aren’t you?’

‘Darling—’ he stared back at her.

‘Yes. With any luck. It’ll keep me busy. Oh, Hector, do I see a tear?’

‘I can’t help it—I love you.’

‘Is it so painful?’ Her wry smile made him laugh.

‘Agony,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t know.’

‘Glad I don’t.’

‘Calypso had a dog in the war.’ Polly increased speed.

‘I thought she didn’t like animals,’ said James, who did.

‘She liked that dog, horrid little thing. It bit and was never properly house-trained. Hector gave it to her. It slept on her bed.’

‘Is that the animal that bit Tony?’

‘Must have been, she never had any other dog.’

‘So Tony isn’t telling tall stories when he says he slept with Calypso,’ James remarked.

‘Shooting a line, they said at the time,’ Polly agreed. ‘I hope we aren’t going to be late. It’s wrong to be late for a funeral. You wait for it all your life and when people are late it seems rude.’

‘He won’t know, Ma. It’s not as though it’s a concert. Anyway, the funeral is tomorrow.’

‘There was always another concert.’

‘Oh really, Ma! Try not to fuss.’

‘You can cough and sneeze and cry at funerals but you mustn’t be late,’ said Polly sadly.

‘Oh Ma, just drive carefully or we will be having a mass do.’

Calypso watched Hector pack.

‘Shall you grow a military moustache? It would make you very unattractive.’

‘Would you mind?’

‘I shan’t be there to see it.’

‘Calypso, darling, will you have Catherine?’

‘Who is Catherine? What for?’

‘You know perfectly well. Her father bred the puppy, she will look after the baby.’

‘And me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I don’t know yet whether I am having a baby. Shan’t know for weeks and weeks.’

‘If you do I want you to have Catherine.’

‘All right, I will, but only when it’s born. Why isn’t she in war work? Why isn’t she an A.T.T. or a Wren, is she wanting or something?’ Watching Hector pack made Calypso disagreeable.

‘She’s lame.’

‘Poor girl. Sorry. But I don’t want one of your people spying on me.’

Hector smacked Calypso’s face quite hard. ‘You fool, do you think I like going off like this, leaving you with no one to look after you? You won’t go to your parents because you’d be bored, you won’t go to Scotland, you’d be bored there, you insist on staying in London, you may get bombed. I worry.’

‘No need to hit me. That’s much more of a worry.’

‘Don’t let’s get sour.’

‘All right, I’ll send for Catherine if anything happens.’

‘Hector went off in a filthy temper.’ Calypso sat on the edge of Polly’s kitchen table swinging her legs. ‘All the rush of packing,’

‘Shall you miss him?’

‘I don’t intend to. It’s lovely having the house to myself, working when I want, going to bed when I want.’

‘With whom you want.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t, of course.’ Polly wondered who Calypso intended going to bed with, whether Tony had yet staked a claim.

‘If you get lonely you can always come here.’

‘Thanks. Any news of Walter?’

‘Not for ages and ages.’

‘The twins?’

‘They are alive. They come up when they get a night off.’

‘Always together?’

‘Usually one at a time. They get awful nightmares, Calypso. They scream.’

‘So would I if I were shot down. It’s hard to take in, though. Hector says you look up and if someone’s missing from breakfast in the mess it puts you off your nosh; you think it may be you tomorrow. That’s what Hector says. It may be quite different for the twins. Hector’s experience was in the last war.’

‘Like Uncle Richard. Funny that Hector is as old as that. They won’t let him near any fighting, will they?’

‘He’s awfully aggressive, he might be very good at it.’

‘Walter says they take ages to get there and they might be torpedoed.’

‘Thanks a lot, you’re very cheering. I don’t know where “there” is, Cairo or Crete or the Suez Canal. Hector won’t like being stuck on a ship, he hates inactivity. Polly, d’you hear things in your office, real news?’

‘You can read the papers, listen to the wireless.’

‘But can one believe one word? Look at Dunkirk. Hector says it was a shameful shambles.’

‘Does he? We thought so in our office but we didn’t dare say so. Goodness.’ Polly looked thoughtfully at Calypso respecting Hector. ‘My boss thought we’d be invaded by the end of June, he even knew the date.’

‘And what was that?’

‘June 24th. I remember because it was Midsummer Day. Why are you laughing?’ Polly was startled by Calypso’s giggles.