Casting Off (26 page)

‘You’ve always wanted to get away from things, haven’t you?’

‘Some things.’ He felt guarded.

‘Is it nice now that you have?’

‘I haven’t really thought about it. Shall I make us some hot chocolate? I get lots of milk.’

She said that would be lovely. He went out to fetch the milk and when he came back, she said, ‘What about the washing up? Can I do it if you tell me how?’

‘I’ll do it later.’ He took the kettle for washing-up water off the Primus and began mixing the chocolate powder in a saucepan. He suddenly felt crowded with things he wanted to ask, to discuss, to talk about, to find out what she thought about them.

‘Do you think one’s meant to be happy in life?’

‘What else do you think one should be?’

‘Oh,
useful
– er – helpful to other people. Trying to make the world better: that kind of thing.’

‘I think being happy
would
make the world better.’

‘You have to be quite clever to be it, though, don’t you? I mean, it’s not as easy as it sounds.’

‘No.’ She sounded sad; then she suddenly laughed. ‘I’ve just remembered Miss Milliment saying that when she was young there was a saying “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever”. It used to make her
furious
. She said even when she was ten, she couldn’t see why goodness should be an alternative to being clever. But it could be an alternative to happiness, couldn’t it?’

‘But if you had to choose,’ he said doggedly. He saw her white forehead marked by little frowns that came and went as she searched for her truth. ‘I was thinking of Nora,’ he said. ‘She’s given her life to looking after Richard – and other people.’

‘Well, hasn’t that made her happy?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think she looks at things like that.’

‘I suppose,’ Polly said, ‘that, in that case, what would matter was whether she was making things happier for the people she’s giving her life for.’

There was a silence, and he remembered Richard sitting in his chair at the party. He had not looked happy; indeed, his face seemed closed to any feeling at all, excepting the glancing animation of (mild) greed when Wills or Roly put little pieces of food in his mouth.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘one could always fail at whatever it is – goodness or happiness or anything.’

‘Not at our ages,’ Polly said. ‘I mean, if we get things wrong, we’ve still got time to try again.’

He searched for an unchipped mug for her chocolate, but he’d used it for her tea, so picked the next best one for her.

‘Drink out of this side,’ he said.

While they were drinking the chocolate, she asked him about his work on the farm. ‘Tell me your whole day.’

‘They aren’t always the same. It depends on the time of year.’

‘Well, now, then.’

‘Now is tomato time,’ he said. ‘Tom Hurst has two large glasshouses for tomatoes and the thing is to get them fruiting as early as possible. I’ve been potting up seedlings for the last week – hundreds of them. Before that I was mixing the potting mixture. In winter, I mostly do repairing jobs – like the chickens’ house – and then the cows are mostly in and have to have hay. We don’t have a lot of stock, just a few of each thing, but that’s mostly because he’s always had that. He makes his living out of the tomatoes and soft fruit and some salad things we grow in spring and summer. He’s got a few sheep – only about a dozen – but he hasn’t got the land for growing cereals. He’s getting on and they don’t have any children – his only son was killed in Burma. In fact, that’s one of my problems.’

‘You’ve become his son?’

He nodded. He loved how quick she was. ‘Yes. Marge, his wife, told me he wants to leave me the farm – the house and everything.’

‘And you don’t know whether you want it?’

‘I don’t. But if he
leaves
it to me, I’d feel awful if I just sold it and got out.’

‘Have you talked to him about it?’

‘God, no! I couldn’t do that. I’m not supposed to know, you see. She just told me. She thought I’d be thrilled.’

He got up to put the kettle back on the Primus. He still felt he had so many things to say to her, but it had occurred to him that he might be boring her: people who were used to living with other people probably didn’t talk to them so much – or, at least, not all the time as he seemed to be doing.

‘Do read a book if you want to,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to put our supper things in a bowl – you needn’t do anything.’

‘Where do you get your water from?’ She had watched him refilling the kettle from a tap over his small stone sink.

‘I’ve got a cistern outside. It takes the run-off of rainwater from the roof but I top it up about once a fortnight with a hose from the farm. I have my baths there and Marge said you were welcome to have one any time you want.’

‘She’s very kind, isn’t she?’

‘She really is. That’s what makes it so difficult to walk out.’

‘But why do you want to walk out? You like animals and the country and growing things.’

‘It’s not just a question of what I like. It’s – it’s – more . . . Well, this business of copping out – of being against things. Like being a conscious objector—’ He looked to see whether she remembered Simon’s word for his pacifism and she did. ‘I realized in the end that it meant other people doing the things that they might be just as much against as I was – the dirty work – so then I felt I had to go back into the Army. As it turned out, they wouldn’t have me, because of my being ill – that time when I couldn’t remember anything at all. But at least I tried, and that felt right. But coming here was a kind of copping out as well. It was getting away from – well, mostly Dad, I suppose, and not having to live in London with the family. But then when I saw Richard and Nora I thought, perhaps I ought to offer to go and help her. She’s got several other very disabled people as well, and she was saying it was really difficult to get staff and especially people strong enough to do all the lifting. What do you think, Poll? I really would value your opinion.’

There was a silence. Then she said, ‘Do you
want
to go and help Nora?’

‘It’s not a question of what I want—’

‘Oh, Christopher! It
must
be. In some way or other you have to
want
whatever it is or it simply wouldn’t work. I mean, even if you simply wanted a horrible time – that’s a kind of want. But you can’t just decide on something just because you think it ought to happen, or someone ought to do it. You’d do it awfully badly for one thing.’

‘Would I?’

‘Your heart wouldn’t be in it.’

‘So what can I
do
? I don’t – seem – to want – anything!’ Something about the way he said this made her laugh. Oliver, however, got to his feet, came over and leaned his head so hard against Christopher’s knee that he dropped the plate he was wiping and it broke.

‘I think Oliver is pointing out that you want him. Or you ought to.’

He put his hand on Oliver’s neck to scratch him gently behind his ear and Oliver gave a small moan of pleasure. ‘It’s mutual,’ he said.

‘Do you remember that day when Dad brought him?’ Polly said. ‘He was so frightened of everything. Excepting you.’

‘He still can’t stand a car backfiring or guns.’

They were back to reminiscence, and soon after finishing the chocolate, began preparations for the night. These took longer than when he was alone. He made Polly a hot-water bottle and explained her bedroom to her. ‘There’s a sleeping bag which you get into and then the blankets to go on top.’ He lit a night-light to put beside her bed, and offered her warm water poured into the large china basin for washing.

‘Where are you going to sleep?’

‘In here, in another sleeping bag in front of the stove. I’ll be fine. I often sleep in here in winter anyway.’ He gave her the torch for another trip to the privy.

‘Goodness! It’s lovely and cosy in here,’ she exclaimed again when she came back.

He took Oliver out for his pee while she was washing. It was a clear night, frosty – a few stars and the moon, like a piece of mother-of-pearl high in the sky. It was lovely having her to stay, and this was only Friday night: there were nearly two full days more.

On Saturday they went for a long walk in the woods and along the narrow steep-banked lanes that surrounded the farm. The day began fine, the sun like a tomato in a thick grey sky, and frosted cobwebs decorating the hedges that still had some berries left. They talked a bit about Angela – now on her way to America with hundreds of GI brides. Polly said she thought it was very brave to set off for an unknown country, leaving all her family and friends behind, and he said that he thought she’d been so miserable for so long that she was happy to have a complete change.

‘She’s been in love twice, and both times were awfully unhappy,’ he said.

‘Poor her!’ She said it in such a heartfelt manner, that he suddenly wanted to tell her about Ange and Uncle Rupert. ‘That must have been
awful
for her.’

‘It was. I found her being miserable one day and I didn’t know what it was. Of course he didn’t love her back. I think that must have made it worse – at the time.’

She didn’t reply, so then he said. ‘It was better in the long run. Because of his being married and all that. But, anyway, he was far too old for her – it was a hopeless idea, really.’

‘I don’t think he was too
old
for her at all. Less than twenty years – that’s nothing!’

She said it so vehemently that he looked at her, surprised. She was striding along, with her hands plunged into the pockets of her jacket, her face set in what was for her, he thought, a quite fierce expression.

‘Poll—’

‘His being married, of course, does make it hopeless. But his
age
has nothing whatever to do with it.’ After a pause, she said, so quietly that he could hardly hear her, ‘His not loving her back is the worst thing. The saddest for her, I mean.’

He opened his mouth to say that, anyway, Ange had fallen in love with someone else quite soon after Uncle Rupert, but it didn’t feel right to tell Polly that as she seemed unaccountably hostile, so instead he said, ‘Well, anyway, that’s all in the past. She’s going to be all right now.’

‘You never met him, did you?’

‘No. But she showed me a picture of him.’

‘What’s he like?’

He thought. ‘Rather
furry
. He looked kind. He’s much older than her, too.’ He hadn’t thought of that before.

‘You see? It doesn’t matter. I told you.’ But she seemed friendly again. Then she saw some spindle berries and wanted to pick them, and after that, she kept seeing things she wanted to pick. I don’t know nearly enough about people, he thought, and wondered whether, when you didn’t know, the thing was to ask, but then he was afraid that that might make her angry again, and couldn’t bear the idea.

They went back to the caravan and while he heated the soup she made a wonderful arrangement of the berries she had picked. He was afraid that she might be bored and asked her what she should like to do in the afternoon, and she said that she would like to go to Hastings. ‘I haven’t been there for ages.’

This meant borrowing the car again, but the Hursts didn’t seem to mind. ‘You enjoy yourself,’ Mrs Hurst advised.

Polly said that she wanted to go to the old bit that had the antique and junk shops. ‘I do love going round them. Is that all right with you?’

Anything was all right: he simply wanted to be with her, and look at her as much as possible when she wasn’t noticing.

In the car he asked her about her job. He couldn’t imagine what interior decorators did.

‘Well, what we do is listen to people about their houses or flats or whatever, and we go and see them, and then we suggest things, and in the end they sort of choose things and then they pretend they did it all themselves.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Wallpapers, or colours of paint for walls and doors, and carpets and curtains and loose-covers or upholstery for furniture – sometimes, even, all the furniture. Once we had to do every single thing for an extremely nasty house in Bishop’s Avenue – that’s sort of beyond Hampstead. I had to choose the china, a complete dinner service and candlesticks and little silver claws to hold place names. It was for some fantastically rich foreigner. I thought he couldn’t be married if he wanted all these things chosen for him, but he was. His wife simply wasn’t allowed to do anything about it. Gervase said that she was like a prisoner, hardly ever allowed out.’

‘Who is Gervase?’

‘He’s my boss. Or, rather, one of them. There’s Caspar as well. Caspar does the shop part, and Gervase does the designing – you know, curtain drapes or pelmets, and plasterwork and the layout for bathrooms and kitchens, that sort of thing.’

He didn’t know. It seemed extraordinary to him that people did any of that, and even more that there would be people who paid to have it done for them. ‘And what do you do?’

‘Well, I’m sort of learning, which means really that I do the dullest things – anything I’m told.’

‘Don’t most houses
have
kitchens and bathrooms anyway?’

‘Yes, but often they’re hideous – or there simply aren’t enough of them.’

She was very good at antique shops: found things, seemed to know about them, how old they were, sometimes, in mysterious cases, what they were for. She also bought some things: three silver forks, very plain and heavy. ‘George III,’ she said, although two pounds ten seemed a lot to him for three forks. Then she found four pairs of decorated brass hoops but with a bit open. She said they were curtain ties, ormolu, and that Caspar would be delighted to have them in the shop.

She found a small walnut desk she called a davenport that she said Caspar would also like. This was twenty pounds, and she said that she would telephone from London if the desk was wanted and would they keep it until Monday? Of course they would. She bought a small piece of green velvet that she said she would make into a table cover for her room. Then she absolutely fell in love with a tea service of pink and gold lustre with tiny green flowers on it. ‘Oh,
look
, Christopher, a teapot – perfect – and seven cups and nine saucers and two cake plates! The prettiest set I’ve ever seen!’