Life After Life (33 page)

Izzie had chosen the occasion to turn up (‘Uninvited, as usual,’ Sylvie said) to offer her congratulations on Hugh’s six decades. (‘A landmark.’) Hugh’s other sisters had deemed the journey to Fox Corner ‘too challenging’.

‘What a parcel of vixens they are,’ Izzie said later to Ursula. Izzie might have been the baby but she was never the favourite. ‘Hugh has always been so good to them.’

‘He’s always been good to everyone,’ Ursula said, surprised, alarmed even, to find tears starting up at the thought of her father’s sound character.

‘Oh, don’t,’ Izzie said, handing her a froth of lace that apparently passed as a handkerchief. ‘You’ll make me cry as well.’ It seemed unlikely, it had never happened before.

Izzie had also chosen the occasion to announce her imminent departure for California. Her husband, the famous playwright, had been offered a job writing screenplays in Hollywood. ‘All the Europeans are going there,’ she said.

‘You’re European now, are you?’ Hugh said.

‘Aren’t we all?’

The whole family had gathered, apart from Pamela, for whom the journey was genuinely too challenging. Jimmy had managed to wangle a couple of days’ leave and Teddy had brought Nancy along. On arrival, she gave Hugh a disarming hug, said, ‘Happy birthday, Mr Todd,’ before handing him a parcel, wrapped prettily in old wallpaper scavenged from the Shawcross household. It was a copy of
The Warden
. ‘It’s a first edition,’ Nancy said. ‘Ted said that you liked Trollope.’ (A fact that none of the rest of his family appeared to know.)

‘Good old Ted,’ Hugh said, kissing her on the cheek. And to Teddy, ‘What a sweetheart you have here. When are you going to pop the question?’

‘Oh,’ Nancy said, blushing and laughing, ‘plenty of time for that.’

‘I hope so,’ a sombre Sylvie said. Teddy had graduated now from the Initial Training School (‘He has wings!’ Nancy said. ‘Like an angel!’) and was waiting to sail to Canada, to train as a pilot. When he was qualified he would head back here and take up a place in an Operational Training Unit.

He was more likely to be killed in an OTU, he said, ‘than on an actual bombing run’. It was true. Ursula knew a girl in the Air Ministry. (She knew girls everywhere, everyone did.) They ate their sandwiches together in St James’s Park and gloomily traded statistics, despite the dead hand of the Official Secrets Act.

‘Well, that’s a great comfort to me,’ Sylvie said.

‘Ow!’ one of the evacuees squealed beneath the table. ‘Some bugger just kicked me.’ Everyone instinctively looked at Maurice. Something cold and wet nosed itself up Ursula’s skirt. She hoped very much that it was the nose of one of the dogs and not one of the evacuees. Jimmy pinched her arm (rather hard) and said, ‘They do go on, don’t they?’

The poor ATS girl – like the evacuees and the dogs, defined by her status – looked as if she were about to cry.

‘I say, are you all right?’ ever-solicitous Nancy asked her.

‘She’s an only child,’ Maurice said matter-of-factly. ‘They don’t understand the joys of family life.’ This knowledge of the ATS girl’s background seemed to particularly infuriate Edwina, who was gripping the butter knife in her hand as if she were planning to attack someone with it – Maurice or the ATS girl, or anyone within stabbing distance by the look of it. Ursula wondered how much harm a butter knife could do. Enough, she supposed.

Nancy jumped up from the table and said to the ATS girl, ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk, it’s such a lovely day. The bluebells will be out in the wood, if you fancy a bit of a hike.’ She hooked arms with her and almost pulled her out of the room. Ursula thought about running after them.

‘
Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play
,’ Izzie said as if nothing had interrupted them. ‘Someone said that.’

‘Congreve,’ Sylvie said. ‘What on earth does that have to do with anything?’

‘Just saying,’ Izzie said.

‘Of course – you’re
married
to a playwright, aren’t you?’ Sylvie said. ‘The one we never see.’

‘The journey is different for everyone,’ Izzie said.

‘Oh, please,’ Sylvie said. ‘Spare us your cod philosophy.’

‘For me, marriage is about freedom,’ Izzie said. ‘For you it has always been about the vexations of confinement.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Sylvie said. (A bafflement shared by the rest of the table.) ‘You talk such nonsense.’

‘And what life would you have led otherwise?’ Izzie continued blithely (or relentlessly, depending on your viewpoint). ‘I seem to remember you were seventeen and on your uppers, a dead, bankrupt artist’s daughter. Heaven only knows what would have happened to you if Hugh hadn’t charged in and rescued you.’

‘You remember nothing, you were still in the nursery at the time.’

‘Barely. And, I, of course—’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ Hugh said wearily.

Bridget broke the tension (often her starring role at Fox Corner now that Mrs Glover was gone), entering the dining room bearing aloft a roast duck.

‘Duck
à la surprise
,’ Jimmy said, for, naturally, they had all been expecting a chicken.

Nancy and the ATS girl (‘
Penny
,’ Nancy reminded everyone) returned in time to be handed warmed-up plates. ‘You’re lucky there’s any duck on that,’ Teddy said to Nancy when he handed her a plate. ‘The poor bird was picked clean.’

‘There’s so little eating on a duck,’ Izzie said, lighting up a cigarette. ‘There’s barely enough for two people, I can’t imagine what you were thinking.’

‘I was thinking there’s a war on,’ Sylvie said.

‘If I’d known you planned a
duck
,’ Izzie ploughed on, ‘I would have sought out something a little more generous. I know a man who can get anything.’

‘I bet you do,’ Sylvie said.

Jimmy offered Ursula the wishbone and they both wished loudly and pointedly for a nice birthday for Hugh.

An amnesty was brought about by the advent of the cake, an ingenious confection that, naturally, relied mainly on eggs. Bridget brought it to the table. She had no flair for making an occasion of anything and dumped it in front of Hugh without ceremony. She was coerced by him into taking a place at the table. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ Ursula heard the ATS girl mutter quietly.

‘You’re part of the family, Bridget,’ Hugh said. No one else in the family, Ursula thought, slaved away from dawn to dusk the way Bridget did. Mrs Glover had retired and gone to live with one of her sisters, a move prompted by George’s sudden but not unexpected death.

Just as Hugh filled his lungs, rather theatrically, for there was only one token candle to blow out, there was a great commotion out in the hallway. One of the evacuees went out to investigate and ran back with the news that it was ‘A woman, and loads of bloody kids!’

‘How was it?’ Crighton asked, when she finally arrived home.

‘Pammy came back – for good, I think,’ she said, deciding on the highlight. ‘She looked done in. She came by train, three little boys plus a babe-in-arms, can you imagine? It took her
hours
.’

‘A nightmare,’ Crighton said with feeling.

(‘Pammy!’ Hugh said. He looked enormously pleased.

‘Happy birthday, Daddy,’ Pamela said. ‘No presents, I’m afraid, just us.’

‘More than enough,’ Hugh said, beaming.)

‘
And
suitcases, and the dog. She’s such a stalwart.
My
journey home, on the other hand, was a different kind of nightmare. Maurice, Edwina, their uninspiring offspring and the
driver
. Turned out to be a rather lovely ATS girl.’

‘Good God,’ Crighton said, ‘how does he do it? I’ve been trying to get my hands on a Wren for months.’ She laughed and hovered in the kitchen while he made cocoa for both of them. While they drank it in bed she regaled him with tales from the day, somewhat embellished (she felt it her duty to entertain him). What, after all, she thought, was there to distinguish them from any married couple? Perhaps the war. Perhaps not.

‘I think I’m going to have to join up, or something,’ she said. She thought of the ATS girl. ‘“Do my bit”, as they say. Get my hands dirty. I read reports every day about people doing brave things and my hands stay very clean.’

‘You’re doing your bit already,’ he said.

‘What? Supporting the navy?’

He laughed and rolled over and pulled her into his arms. He nuzzled her neck and as she lay there it struck her that it was just possible that she was happy. Or at any rate, she thought, qualifying the idea, as happy as was possible in this life.

‘Home’, it had struck her on the torturous drive back to London, wasn’t Egerton Gardens, wasn’t even Fox Corner. Home was an idea, and like Arcadia it was lost in the past.

She had already ticketed the day in her memory as ‘Hugh’s sixtieth birthday’, one more in a roll-call of family occasions. Later, when she understood that it was the last time they would all be together, she wished she had paid more attention.

She was woken in the morning by Crighton bringing her a tray of tea and toast. She had the Senior Service to thank for his domesticity rather than Wargrave.

‘Thank you,’ she said, struggling to sit up, still worn out from yesterday.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said, opening the curtains.

She thought of Teddy and Jimmy, although she knew that for this morning at least they were safely tucked up in their beds in Fox Corner, sharing their boyhood room, once Maurice’s.

‘What bad news?’ she asked.

‘Norway has fallen.’

‘Poor Norway,’ she said and sipped the hot tea.

November 1940

PAMELA HAD SENT a parcel of baby clothes that Gerald had grown out of, and Ursula thought of Mrs Appleyard. She might not have thought of Mrs Appleyard as she hadn’t kept up with the residents of Argyll Road since she left for Egerton Gardens, something she had rather regretted as she had been fond of the Misses Nesbit and often wondered how they were faring under the relentless bombardment. But then she had had a chance encounter with Renee Miller a few weeks ago.

Ursula had been ‘on the town’, as he put it, with Jimmy, who had a couple of days’ furlough in the capital. They had been stranded in the Charing Cross Hotel thanks to a UXB – sometimes she thought unexploded bombs were more of a nuisance than exploded ones – and had taken refuge in the first-floor coffee lounge.

‘There’s a rather tarty girl, all lipstick and teeth, over there who seems to know you,’ Jimmy said.

‘Ye gods, Renee Miller,’ Ursula said when she spotted Renee waving eagerly at her. ‘And who on earth is that man with her? He looks like a gangster.’

Renee was effusive, as though she had been best pals with Ursula in some former life (‘She’s a lively girl,’ Jimmy laughed after they’d escaped), and insisted that they join her and ‘Nicky’ for a drink. Nicky himself seemed less than enthusiastic about the idea but nonetheless shook hands and signalled to the waiter.

Renee filled Ursula in on ‘the doings’ in Argyll Road, although little seemed to have changed since she left a year ago for Egerton Gardens, except that the army now had Mr Appleyard and his wife had a baby. ‘A boy,’ Renee said. ‘Ugly little thing.’ Jimmy guffawed and said, ‘I like a girl who knows when a spade’s a spade.’ Nicky was rather put out by Jimmy’s personable presence, especially as by the time she had downed another watery gin Renee had begun to flirt (almost professionally it seemed) with him.

Ursula overheard someone say that the unexploded bomb had been dealt with and when Renee said, ‘Get us another round in, Nicky,’ and Nicky began to glower Ursula thought it might be politic to move on. Nicky refused to let them pay, as if it were a matter of principle. Ursula wasn’t sure she wanted to be beholden to someone of his calibre. Renee hugged and kissed her and said, ‘Come and see the old dears, they’d love it,’ and Ursula promised that she would.

‘Good God, I thought she was going to eat me,’ Jimmy said as they manoeuvred around rubble on Henrietta Street.

She made good on her promise to Renee, prompted by the parcel of Gerald’s old clothes. She reached Argyll Road not long after six, getting away from work early for once. She had not, after all, donned a uniform of any kind yet, as there seemed hardly enough time to eat and breathe between work and the bombs. ‘Your job
is
war work,’ Crighton pointed out, ‘I would have thought that you would have enough on your plate. How is the Ministry of Some Obscurity these days?’

‘Oh, you know. Busy.’ There was so much information to be logged. Each individual incident – what type of bomb, the damage done, how many killed or injured (the tally was mounting horribly) – streamed across their desks.

Occasionally, she would open a buff folder and find what she thought of as the ‘raw material’ – ARP typed reports or even the handwritten reports they were based on – and wonder what it was like to be in the heat of battle, for that’s what the Blitz was, wasn’t it? Sometimes she saw bomb-damage maps, once one that had been drawn by Ralph. He had signed it in faint, almost indecipherable pencil on the back. They were friends, she had met him at her German class, although he had made it clear that he would like them to mean more to each other. ‘Your other man,’ Crighton called him, amused.

‘How kind,’ Mrs Appleyard said when Ursula appeared on her doorstep with the parcel of clothes. ‘Please come in.’

Ursula crossed the threshold reluctantly. The previous smell of boiled cabbage now mingled with the more unappetizing smells that could accompany an infant. Sadly, Renee’s judgement on Mrs Appleyard’s baby’s pulchritude, or lack of it, turned out to be true – he was an ‘ugly little thing’.

‘Emil,’ Mrs Appleyard said, handing him over to Ursula to hold. She could feel the dampness of him through his rubber knickers. She almost handed him straight back. ‘Emil?’ she said to him, making a face and grinning at him with forced jollity. He stared back at her, rather truculently, his paternity not in doubt.

Mrs Appleyard offered tea and Ursula excused herself and scurried up the stairs to the Nesbits’ eyrie.

They were their usual benign selves. It must be quite nice to live with one’s sister, Ursula thought. She wouldn’t mind living out her days with Pamela.