Cousin Rosamund (36 page)

‘I’ll leave the back door open, then,’ said Uncle Len.

‘I hope he’s not give her the rough side of his preaching tongue,’ said Aunt Lily apprehensively. ‘Queenie’s so sensitive, if someone spoke unkindly to her, it wouldn’t be hard to break her heart.’

Again I sought Mr Morpurgo’s eyes. But again he shook his head.

When at last I got to bed, I neither slept nor was awake, I was still split in two. Surely I did not sleep, for I could look up at my ceiling and see the cracks on the plaster that drew something like an outline sketch of Paderewski. I could look out at the. dark tracery the wisteria round my blindless window drew against the stars, and sometimes I turned on my light, and sometimes I turned it off. But I neither thought nor felt, I was a suspended intelligence conscious of nothing but the persistent ringing in my ears and this sense that something had been settled. It was the law, the law had been established, it would be maintained. When ordinary sleep came to me, that sense of settlement came with me into my dreams, and when I woke, it was to know that disputation was over. I had to get to town as quickly as possible, and I rose at once and washed and dressed, I did not know the hour, for I had left my wrist-watch somewhere during the previous day, I had thrown time away. But the morning had the pearly light, I could hear the vacuum cleaner going in one of the rooms. They would all be about, I would probably not be able to get the potboy to take me over on the ferry and slip away without breakfast. But I would try. I padded softly downstairs, with my bag in my hand, and let myself out into the stableyard, where the potboy would probably be at this moment.

But I found Uncle Len there. He was comforting Oswald, who was shuddering as if he were cold, and wearing a raincoat, though the day was fine and warm. He had not shaved.

‘Come on, young fellow my lad,’ Uncle Len was saying. ‘What is it that’s making you look so sickish?’

‘It is what my father has done,’ said Oswald.

‘Has he definitely been caught out doing anything?’ asked Uncle Len. The implication of his speech might have distressed a less distracted Oswald, so plain was it that neither Oswald’s wounded feelings, nor the allegation that old Mr Bates had shown an unworthy side of his character, worried Uncle Len very much. So long as there was no question of the police being called in he would remain unmoved.

‘It’s this,’ said Oswald, taking an envelope out of his pocket. ‘We found it on the mat this morning, and I cannot believe it.’

Uncle Len put out his hand for it.

Aunt Lily pushed past me through the doorway where I was standing. ‘Len,’ she called shrilly. ‘Queenie hasn’t been back all night.’

‘What goings on,’ said Len, looking down on the letter he held in his hand.

‘My God, what’s Os doing here so early in the morning?’ asked Aunt Lily, and her suspicion made her scream. ‘I knew it. Your bloody father’s preached at her, and the sensitive little darling’s made away with herself.’

‘Naoh!’ jeered Uncle Len. ‘She’s been a sensible girl and chosen a fate worse than death. Or sort of. Let me finish reading this.’

‘I can’t understand Nancy not minding,’ said Oswald. Almost weeping, he complained, ‘It’s so undignified, at their age.’

‘It’s so undignified at any age,’ said Uncle Len. ‘Listen, dignity’s hardly the object of the exercise. I’ll just give you the sense of it, and you can read it yourself at your own pace. It seems your sister and Os’s pa didn’t get to Nancy’s last night. He took her to the house of Brother and Sister Clerkenwell and they wrestled in prayer all night, and he won her for the Lord God, and they are going to marry. And so they are going to marry, is how he puts it. Though how the Lord God and their marriage mix in together I don’t know, but read it for yourself and work that one out.’

Lily could not take the letter. She supported herself against the doorpost. ‘You mean Mr Bates is going to marry Queenie?’

‘That’s what he says.’

‘But are you sure,’ stammered Aunt Lily, ‘that he realises just how - how high-spirited Queenie’s been?’

‘Oh, Lil, you are a worrier,’ expostulated Uncle Len affectionately. ‘Of course he knows all about that. Everybody does. And the matter would have been bound to come out during this all-night prayer-meeting, I would think. Though I’ve no experience of this kind of night wrestling between a man and a woman. But what’s eating you over this, young Os? Here, pull yourself together and take the letter, Lily. Psst. Os. Step over here for a minute. And you come here too.’ He drew us towards the opposite corner of the yard and casting an eye over his shoulder at Lil, said, ‘Here, Os, if you’re worrying about her doing it over again, your pa’s safe. She was a lot younger then and this man Phillips was a good chap, but soft, who didn’t know how to keep her down. Take it from me, she’ll be all right with your pa. They’re the same sort really.’

‘But it’s not right at their age,’ said Oswald, obstinately.

‘Milly!’ shrieked Lily. ‘Milly!’

‘Why not? You should be glad they have the health and spirits,’ said Uncle Len. ‘God, you’re young, Os.’

‘Milly!’ Lily shrieked again. ‘Milly!’

Milly came through the doorway with a feather duster in her hand. Lily handed her the letter, she read it, said, ‘What of it?’ and went away again. I had had no idea till then how oppressive her matter-of-fact mind had found Queenie’s dramatic quality.

But Lily sat down on a barrel and said to us, ‘But I can’t like it!’

‘Why not?’ said Uncle Len.

‘Why not?’ repeated Lily. ‘Well, what’s old Mr Bates to give her we couldn’t give her here? What’s she want to go off with him for? Though it makes her happy.’ She left us suddenly.

‘I hate this preaching,’ said Oswald suddenly, ‘when science has proved there isn’t a God. My father won’t sit down and learn anything. He sits and talks this rot about the Heavenly Hostages. And as for marriage, my mother ought to have been enough for him.’

‘Enough’s something you can’t be when you’re dead. Those racehorses I got pictures of, they were all enough for the sport of kings when they were alive, dead they weren’t enough for any but the cats to eat. It’s a horrid thing, eating,’ said Uncle Len, and suddenly lifted up his voice. ‘Milly! Breakfast ready?’

‘For how many?’ Milly replied from the kitchen window.

‘Bacon and eggs for four,’ said Uncle Len.

‘For five,’ said Mr Morpurgo from his window on the first floor. He had been leaning out of it for some time.

‘Not for me,’ said Oswald. ‘I couldn’t touch a thing.’

‘You’re squeamish over this wedding, aren’t you?’ enquired Uncle Len with clinical interest. ‘Try a nice fried egg and some real fat Wiltshire back.’

Oswald shuddered and said, ‘I got this taxi waiting. I’ll be late for school if I don’t hurry.’

‘Creeping like a snail unwillingly to school,’ said Uncle Len. ‘Well, ta ta.’

His hands on his hips, he watched Oswald go out to the taxi, then said to me, beaming maliciously, ‘Funny thing how you can turn up anybody that’s poorly by mentioning a fried egg. When I was in my first job as a bookie’s clerk I had a horrible boss, Hyams was the name. I could get my own back when he woke up with a hangover by saying, innocent as a lamb, “What, not a nice fried egg, Mr Hyams?” Now, I could eat a wolf this minute. I’ve always been one to make a good breakfast. And so have you, Rose. It’s been a great comfort, the amount you and Mary can put away. Come on and show us what you can do.’

As we sat down at the breakfast table we were joined by Mr Morpurgo. ‘Lovely smell, frying bacon,’ said Uncle Len. ‘That’s the smell I hope will come through the pearly gates as they swing ajar for me. I haven’t no use for a heaven where there wouldn’t be grub. Grub. And girls,’ he added, smacking Aunt Milly’s behind as she put his plate before him and passed on to me.

‘Be ashamed of yourself,’ she said, mechanically.

‘This is no day for shame,’ he said, ‘it is a marriage day! For Christ’s sake bring in Lily. She’s weeping over the sink, she always goes running over the sink, I’ll be bound, when she’s upset.’

‘Well, you can’t hear her if she is,’ said Aunt Milly.

‘But I can feel her,’ complained Uncle Len. ‘Dripping into the sink, doing the taps out of a job. I’m sick of weeping women. Rose was piping her eyes yesterday. I’d like a lot of busty cheerful women such as you might have blowing trumpets on music-hall ceilings, that’s what I’d like. Send Lil in, I mean it, Milly. And sit down yourself.’

In a minute Aunt Lily was with us, sniffling. ‘I couldn’t touch a thing,’ she said through her handkerchief.

‘Oh, go on, that’s what Os said. I wouldn’t have had you in the house all these years if you’d been the same sort of bleater as poor old Os. Here, you got some bacon and eggs for her, Milly? Drop your muzzle to that nosebag and don’t let me hear another neigh.’ Aunt Lily was so like a horse that Mr Morpurgo and I felt this admonition as an indelicacy, but she obeyed without protest. ‘That’s right,’ said Uncle Len, ‘and don’t you be a silly girl no more. Your sister Queenie wanted something to fill her life, and she’s got it.’

‘He’s an old bastard of a preacher,’ said Lily. ‘He’ll be bringing up you know what against her all the time, she’ll slip back.’

‘He won’t be bringing any you know what against her,’ said Uncle Len. ‘He won’t have time, he’ll be doing you know what to her as often as his years permit him.’

‘Len, hush yourself!’ said Aunt Milly.

‘Preachers are against that sort of thing,’ wept Aunt Lily.

‘You’re just simple,’ said Uncle Len. ‘Many of them become preachers because they are so much for that sort of thing that they get worried. I could tell you. I seen a lot of life in my time. But another time. Anyway, that old Bates, he’s keen on it all right. I can tell you.’

‘You’re being coarse,’ said Aunt Milly. ‘What Rose and Mr Morpurgo will think of you I don’t know, and, anyway, how could you tell if he was keen on it? We haven’t seen him except that time by the river and half a dozen times at Nancy’s, and he was hollering his head off about the Heavenly Hostages. How can you tell, Mr Clever?’

‘I can tell,’ said Uncle Len. ‘He knows the quality of a bit of skirt. When Oswald told him it was Nancy that was his young lady and not Mary or Rose the old man had a look on his face like a customer who’s been served with chicken and gets dark meat when he’s wanted white. So’d anybody, a man who cares about women, if it was a question of having Nancy or having Mary or Rose.’

‘Nancy’s a good girl,’ said Aunt Milly.

‘Of course she’s a good girl,’ said Uncle Len. ‘We’re not talking of that. We’re talking of -’ He put down his knife and fork, described the female form in the air, and then took them up again.

‘Well, if he’s just a dirty old man,’ said Aunt Lily, ‘what’s there in Queenie in that?’

‘There’s a lot to be said for being a dirty old man,’ said Uncle Len, ‘it’s a lot more fun than just being an old man. You’ve got ways of passing the time, and the time of whoever’s with you, and anyway who says it’s dirty? Os would and he’s always wrong.’ He bent enthusiastically to his plate.

‘You’ll excuse Len,’ Aunt Milly said to Mr Morpurgo and me. ‘He’s upset.’

‘I am not upset,’ said Uncle Len. ‘I’m glad. There was poor Queenie looking more and more like a waterlogged punt every day, and here she’s rushed off down the river like a smart motor-launch from one of those Maidenhead houses. Oh, Lily, sit up and be honest. Something’s happened to Queenie, and this in itself is a good thing. But you two.’ He put down his knife and fork, and stared at Mr Morpurgo and me. ‘You two were in it. You knew.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Maybe you didn’t. But Morpurgo there thought there was something. No use saying you didn’t, and I know you when you look as if you’d eaten the canary. Tell us what happened.’

‘Nothing,’ said Mr Morpurgo.

‘Must have been something.’

‘Well, obviously there was something,’ said Mr Morpurgo. ‘But it didn’t look like very much. She was coming towards our table, and he intercepted her, and after they had talked for a little they went away together.’

‘You didn’t hear what they said to each other?’

We shook our heads.

‘But you said they’d gone off to Nancy’s. What made you think that? They didn’t. They went to Brother and Sister Clerkenwell. God, ain’t that a shame. I’m sorry they didn’t get down to it at once.’

‘Len!’

‘Well, something tells me they didn’t. Even when I was a young man and set on it, and Rose isn’t a kid any more and anyway she needn’t understand me if she doesn’t want to, even when I was a young man, I’m saying, and I met a girl I fancied, I wouldn’t take her to stay with a couple who called themselves Brother and Sister Clerkenwell, and hope we’d feel any better in the morning.’

Aunt Lily said, ‘Yes, it all seems unnatural, doesn’t it? But they’re old. We’re all old.’

‘We’re not so damned old,’ said Uncle Len, ‘and Queenie and Mr Bates, in a manner of speaking, aren’t old at all. Oh, Lil, stop being silly. They’ll give each other an interest. I don’t know what he can manage now. It varies from all I hear. But if all he can do is kiss Queenie on Easter Sunday morning, his mind will be going further than that, and so will hers. They’ll have an interest.’

The telephone rang, and Lily sprang from her seat, saying, ‘It may be Queenie.’

‘Poor duck,’ said Uncle Len, looking after her as she went out, ‘it won’t be Queenie. A funny thing, the way, Lil not having been married or anything, she can’t understand. Rose here hasn’t either, but from what I gather your music tells you everything. But Lil can’t understand that male and female created He them. For what it’s worth. And anyway it’s worth a lot.’ He emptied his cup of tea, and lit his pipe, and, nodding over it, left the room, pausing at the door to say, ‘Hell it must be, to be the sort of man who feels up to the old rough and tumble with Queenie, who, let’s face it, is a terror, and who’s got Os for an only son.’

When he had gone Aunt Milly said, ‘I’ve never known Len so coarse.’

Mr Morpurgo answered, ‘He was sensible enough.’

‘But he doesn’t understand how well it works out,’ said Milly. ‘Nancy would never have got an upstanding chap like Len or old Mr Bates, but she can hope one of the children’ll be a throw-back. And Os will never know. But half the things in life people never know. Thank God for that.’ And she too left us.