Flowers on the Grass (36 page)

Outside the front door, between the rosemary bushes, they looked at each other. What should they do—knock or call for him or what? It seemed silly to knock, when you were going into your own home, like.

“Go on in,” Sonny said. Nellie tried the latch and the door opened.

It was a long, low room with rugs on a tiled floor and beams not only across the ceiling but up the walls as well. There were spring flowers everywhere, oak furniture, chintz, a great open hearth like a cave, with logs burning. Nellie could not take in every detail, but it was like one of those English films that critics in the Sunday papers said was too oldeworlde to be true.

“Sonny, it’s—it’s-” But he was fuming outside, and rocking the chair dangerously in his impatience. She tipped
the wheels to go over the step, and deposited him in the middle of the sitting-room with a proud “There!” as if the cottage were all her own work.

“Gee, Nell, do we
live
here?” He looked round quickly, then raised his voice as Nellie could never have done in a beautiful house like this, or any house for that matter. She could not shout. Her voice did not run to it.

“Daniel!” Sonny yelled. “Where are you? Daniel! Hi, we’ve come!”

While he was shouting, Nellie noticed a bit of paper on the table by the door.
“Back soon”
it said.
“Make selves at home. Have tea”

“Should
we?” Nellie showed Sonny the note.

“Well, that’s what he says, isn’t it? If he says ‘Have tea’, he means ‘Have tea’, and it’s the one thing I want.”

“Me, too; but, Sonny, it’s his house, not ours.”

“You’re running it now, though.”

“Yes, but not to presume,” Nellie said. “Don’t ever forget, dear, he was here with his wife.” As she looked at the chairs by the fire, she saw it, with a saddened heart. “I mustn’t ever do anything to make him feel I was setting myself up to take her place.”

“Hey,” said Sonny. “You’re not his wife, you’re mine. Come here.” He wheeled himself towards her round the furniture. Deft, he was already in that chair. Sonny could always master anything mechanical.

“All the same,” said Nellie, as she straightened herself up from his boyish hug, “it’s his house, and we mustn’t ever do anything to make him feel sorry he asked us to share it. Why did he, anyway? Why
us?”

“Because he’s so damn nice,” said Sonny. “He can be murder, mind, if something gets his goat. You should have seen him on the ward. Poor old Fitt. I thought she’d take a stroke that time he called her a-”

“You told me once,” said Nellie. “There’s no call to repeat it.”

She helped him out of his wheelchair into the armchair by the fire, and left him chuckling while she went to find the kitchen.

At Camden Town the damp basement kitchen had also been the living-room, and Sonny’s family had a taste for fried food. It had been a dark and greasy inferno, always full of the smells of cooking and people, always a string of babies’
nappies steaming under the low ceiling. The windows were not cleaned from one fog to the next; the walls were spattered with grease, the worn-out carpet repatterned with spilt food and the stove coagulated with years of gravy boiling over. The whole place had got beyond cleaning long ago, and no one was going to embark on it now, even if it had ever been empty of people for long enough even to sweep the floor.

Before that, the kitchen at Nellie’s home where she had lived with her parents had been no more than a tin-roofed shack, stuck slightly askew onto the back of the house by the railway line. Every time a train went by, the little oil cooker teetered on its rickety table, and Nellie’s mother who had few subjects of conversation, remarked yet once more that they would all be burned alive one day.

There were coals in there and piles of boots and shoes, dead ferns, and two broken rabbit hutches that Nellie’s father had been going to mend for years. In summer flies were on everything and food and milk went off almost as soon as you bought it. In winter it was almost more than you could do to make yourself wash your face under the cold tap when you crept down in the dark morning to make the tea.

But the little kitchen at the cottage was like nothing Nellie had ever seen, except in magazines. White-walled, with a red-tiled floor, and the stove, sink, draining-board and work-table fitted round the walls with cupboards underneath. Pans, pots, lids, jugs, eggbeaters, painted canisters, were on hooks and shelves in a satisfying pattern of ornamental usefulness. Red-and-white-check curtains were frilled over the little square window, beyond which was an apple tree with the evening sun coming through to hit you as you stood at the sink. Who would mind doing nothing but wash up all day in a place like this?

It looked spotlessly clean. Mr. Brett must have got someone from the village to look after him. Nellie hoped she wouldn’t come back. That would be dreadful. She stood quite a time in the doorway before she dared go in.

When she did, she told herself, for she liked to savour such moments: This is the first time. To think I shall be in and out of here all day and every day! She turned on the stove, put the kettle on, and unpacked some of the things she had brought—milk, tea, bread, butter, jam—for she was going to be very careful about using Mr. Brett’s stores.

She opened a white-enamel door. It was a refrigerator! Instantly she saw herself making ice-cream for Sonny, and dashed in to tell him. He was reading one of Mr. Brett’s books.

“Oh, Sonny, ought you-” A piercing scream came from the kitchen, and he dropped the book and stared at her aghast.

“Silly,” she said, proudly domestic. “Have you never heard a whistling kettle?” She picked up his book and went back to make the tea.

She hardly liked to use Mr. Brett’s china, but if they were really living in the house it must be all right. Two coffee-cups and saucers were upside down on the draining-board. In the plate-rack there were two plates of each size, and when Nellie opened the silver drawer she saw two napkins rolled through rings. Mr. Brett must have a friend with him, and Nellie shrank from the thought that they might be staying here. It would have to happen eventually, of course. There would be visitors. Sonny would know how to talk to them and Nellie would just have to keep silent, but she didn’t want it to happen now at the beginning, when everything was strange.

When they were having their tea, however, on a table before the fire, it didn’t feel strange at all. She and Sonny might have been there all their lives. The fire crackled like a Christmas story. Outside, the wind was getting up, but in here they were at home.

“Isn’t this cosy?” Nellie kept having to say, and Sonny said it was a bit of all right and made her cut more bread.

“I do hope it’s all right,” Nellie said. “Do you think Mr. Brett would rather we’d have waited for him?” She looked in the teapot. “This will be dreadfully stewed. I wonder when he’ll be back? Shall I just go and pop the kettle on again so I can make some fresh as soon as Mr. Brett comes in? What do you think?”

“Don’t fuss, girl,” Sonny said. “And you’ll have to call him Daniel.”

“I know,” she said, “but not yet. That will come.” She was glad, although she knew she ought not to be, that they were alone just for this beginning. However nice Mr. Brett was, she was going to be shy of him. She could not say this to Sonny, because he was his friend. She could not tell him what, in the happiness of this tea-time, she couldn’t help
feeling: that she wished it could always be like this. Just the two of them alone here.

But what was she about, having a thought like that?. If it wasn’t for Mr. Brett they wouldn’t be here at all, would not have a home at all, might not even be together, for there would not have been room for the two of them at Camden Town. This was the most wonderful, impossible thing that could ever happen to them, and it just showed how the devil got into your thoughts uninvited if you could even for a moment wish for anything more than the heaven that had been given you.

Had the same thought come into Sonny’s head? No, because he was a nicer person than she. The devil was not able to put thoughts into the heads of people like Sonny.

“Either drink that tea or put the cup down,” he said. “What have you gone so broody about? Come and sit by us over here.” She sat on the arm of his chair and stroked his stubbly hair.

“Few weeks,” he said, “when these legs firm up, I’ll be able to have you on my knee. I asked the doc.”

“Sonny, you didn’t! Whatever must he have thought?”

“Said he wouldn’t mind having you on his knee himself.”

“He never did!” You never knew whether Sonny were having you on or not. He said these things with a dead solemn face. Never dull, you couldn’t be, with Sonny. He bad so many jokes. She was so proud of what the matron had said to her about him always having a smile for everyone, even in his worst time of pain. How Nellie loved him! Like a wife and like a mother and like a dependent child, all in one.

From where she sat she could sje now that there was a woman’s coat hanging among the mackintoshes and jackets behind the door. It must have belonged to poor Mrs. Brett. That made Nellie feel awkward. She was going to point it out to Sonny, when there were footsteps on the cobbles outside and Sonny’s face lit up as he cried: “Here he is!”

They came in together, Mr. Brett and a dark, graceful woman with a smooth, oval face. Nellie jumped off the chair, tweaked at her dress and put up a hand to her hair.

“Don’t get up, don’t get up,” Mr. Brett said. “You look wonderful like that. Just how I planned it.”

“I hope you didn’t mind us having tea-” Nellie began, but Mr. Brett did not hear, because he and Sonny were greeting
each other like long-lost brothers, and started kidding together, something about the hospital.

“Of course not.” Mr. Brett’s friend smiled at Nellie. “I’ll just go and make some for us before we go.”

“Before you-? Oh no, let me!” Nellie darted forward to take the tray.

“Sorry we weren’t there to greet you,” Mr. Brett said. “I was just saying goodbye all round the village, and we got involved in the story of Mrs. Langdon’s varicose veins. You’ll like her. She’s promised to look after you with milk and eggs and all that.”

“Daniel, what on earth are you talking about?” Sonny said. “Saying goodbye? You’re not going away?”

“Didn’t you get my letter? Damn, I was afraid I’d got the address wrong.”

“But you can’t,” Sonny said. “We can’t stay here without you. It’s your home.”

“You keep it warm for me,” Mr. Brett dropped back on the sofa and put his feet on a stool, mud and all. “You know me. I can’t stay in one place long.”

“It’s not right,” Sonny protested, leaning forward sharply, and grimacing at the jerk to his back. “You must settle down some time. Everyone must. What’s the matter with you that makes you so jittery?”

“Oh shut up,” Mr. Brett said. “I’m not. I’m calm as a ruddy mill pond. Don’t nag at me. You picked that up in hospital. Nellie, don’t let him. You don’t mind my not staying here?”

“Well, you know how we feel about being here at all,” she said, looking down at the tea-tray which she held before her. She could never find words for her wonder and gratitude. “Mr. Brett’s right, dear,” she told Sonny, who blinked, because she hardly ever disagreed with him. “We have to let each other alone. Everyone must live how they must.” Mr. Brett was delighted at this. She had said the right thing. She was not as shy of him as she had expected. He was different from what he had seemed at the hospital. It would have been nice if he had stayed on there with them. But—she and Sonny were going to live here together on their own! Inside her, this thought of joy was forming, growing, but she could not consider it now. Later she would go over and over it, think all round about it, and savour the dream come true of all the days that were before her.

She heard a clatter from the kitchen. “I’ll just go and see if I can help—er . .” She did not know who Mr. Brett’s friend was, although Sonny called her Valerie and seemed to know her from visitors’ days at the hospital. Nellie did not mind even if they had been staying here together. Her morals were strict, but somehow someone like Mr. Brett seemed to be outside the rules that you were taught in chapel.

Half-way to the door she had a cold, upsetting thought, and turned round with the tray. “Mr. Brett,” she said bravely. “I’m afraid-Is it because you don’t like the idea of living here with us that you’re going away? Because if you—”

“Hey, Nell!” Sonny said, but Mr. Brett laughed.

“Got it in one, Nellie. How did you guess?”

She went quickly into the kitchen, where Valerie was making toast, and asked her quite boldly: “Does Mr. Brett pretend things he doesn’t mean, to have you on?”

“Gracious, yes. If you accuse him of something, he’ll always take the wind out of your sails by agreeing, whether it’s true or not.”

“Why is he going away then?” Nellie set down the tray and began to put cups and plates into the sink, marvelling at the boiling water that came from the tap.

“Because he wants to go to Italy,” Valerie said. “Oh—and other reasons.”

“It seems like he must be unhappy,” Nellie said, looking out of the window, not turning round, because she was shy of discussing Mr. Brett like this. “Always to be so restless, never able to stay long in one place.”

“He was.” Valerie brought a cloth to dry the things that Nellie was washing. “This time, though, he’s going away because he’s happy.”

“I’m glad of that,” Nellie said. “I’d feel awful else, when he’s done so much for me and Sonny.”

“That’s why he’s happy, you idiot,” said Valerie, and then the whistling kettle suddenly began to shriek, so that Nellie could not be sure whether she heard her say: “And me too.”

TO HAL

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

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Copyright © Monica Dickens

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