Marking Time (29 page)

Then Polly remembered that her mother’s mother had died in India while she was at school in England. Perhaps if you had never, or hardly, known your own mother, you would find it difficult
to be one? But Mummy made it plain that she adored Simon as well as Wills. From the daughter point of view, it was a good thing that she had Dad. Then she thought of poor Clary who was, in all
probability, an orphan. She thought of the awful sign she had seen in London that ran the length of the building in letters about a foot high: ‘Home for Female Orphans who have Lost Both
Parents’. Think of having to live in a place that said that! Happiness, or rather
un
happiness, was clearly so relative, but this didn’t make it any easier to be grateful for
your lot if you weren’t enjoying it. She decided to have two serious conversations, one each with Miss Milliment and Dad, about careers for an ungifted person. Cheered by this, she tidied the
room, putting Clary’s possessions in quite kind heaps, and then she washed her hair.

‘Lorenzo!’ Clary jeered. ‘He sounds as though he’ll be wearing white tights and a pointed beard and
ear
rings! It will be quite exciting to have someone so
ghastly staying. What do you think his wife will be like?’

‘Terrifically arty, I expect. You know, with homespun skirts and huge birds’ mess necklaces slapping against her navel,’ said Louise, whose school had finished its term.
‘Mary Webbish,’ she added.

The other two pretended not to have heard her as they both thought she showed off about what a lot she’d read: ‘And it may not be all that much,’ Clary had once said crossly,
‘just different things from us.’

‘Actually, his real name is Laurence,’ Louise went on. She was painting her nails with dead white opaque nail varnish which Polly thought looked awful.

‘Oh, yes, I remember now! That’s just a name the aunts call him.’

‘Who told you that?’

Clary blushed. ‘I thought you did.’

Polly always knew when Clary was in a tight corner, so now she said, ‘If he’s really a conductor, I expect the Duchy will monopolise him. You know how she loves people to do with
music.’

‘I certainly do. She’s in love with Toscanini.’

Louise turned on her. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Clary.’

‘She is. “I’m in love with Toscanini,” she said; she said it yesterday after we’d finished playing the
Pastoral
– that’s the sixth
symphony.’

‘It was only a figure of speech,’ Louise said snubbingly. She was really getting too old for them, Polly thought then, and said afterwards to Clary, as they were getting ready for
supper.

‘I know,’ Clary said. ‘She’s always patronising or snubbing us.’

‘I suppose she’s bored. I am too, sometimes.’

‘Strewth, Polly! I’ve always thought of you as being so self-contained.’

‘I’ve thought of me like that too. But it’s beginning not to work. The truth is, I feel pointless.’ Without the slightest warning, a tear slipped out of her eye. ‘I
mean – I know it’s not very important how
I
feel when there’s a war going on and all that, but I still
feel
it. I simply can’t think what I’m
for
. I feel as though I ought to face up to what’s the point of life, but it also feels quite dangerous to think about it at all—’

‘How do you mean – dangerous?’

‘Well, as though there would be no turning back – as though I might know something that I couldn’t ever
un
know. I mean,’ she added, trying to sound casual,
‘supposing there
isn’t
any point?’

‘How do you mean exactly?’

‘I mean, supposing
nothing
matters? Suppose the war doesn’t matter because we’re just little objects that happen to move and speak – like fairly clever little
toys?’

‘Made by God, do you mean?’

‘
No!
Not even that! Not
made
by anybody. You see? Now I
am
thinking about it, and I don’t want to.’

‘Well,’ said Clary, breaking the teeth of her comb as she dragged it through her hair, ‘we can’t be just that because we have feelings. Could I borrow your vanishing
cream? Thanks. If you were just a clever toy you wouldn’t be feeling that it would be awful to be one. I grant you, we can have pretty
bad
feelings, but it’s not nothing.
Whether you like it or not you can think about things, and feel and choose a lot of the time.’ She rubbed her sunburned nose vigorously. ‘I think it’s just that you haven’t
made up your mind enough about what you want to do. What about your house? Doesn’t that matter to you any more?’

‘Not so much. Well, it
does
, but one day I’ll have finished it.’

‘So? Then you’ll be able to start living in it.’

There was a silence. Then Polly said, ‘I don’t know if I want to do that. I mean, I don’t feel it would be enough. By myself.’

‘Oh –
that
! You mean you want someone to live
for
.’ She sounded relieved. ‘I’m sure you’ll find them, Poll. You’re so pretty and
everything. Have you seen my indoor shoes?’

‘One of them is just under your bed.’

‘Oh, well. The other one’ll be further under.’ She lay on her stomach and fished it out. ‘I think it’s awfully difficult for people of our age. We need people to be
in love with, and we’re simply hemmed in by relatives and incest doesn’t seem to go with modern life. We’ll just have to wait.’

‘You really think it’s that? You can’t wear that cardigan with that dress, Clary, it looks awful.’

‘Does it? I’ll have to – my other one’s dirty.’

‘You can borrow my pink.’

‘Thanks. It’s funny how I’ve got no taste in clothes.’ She started to laugh. ‘If I really
was
just a fairly clever toy, you could dress me in a little felt
suit all sewn onto me and I’d never have to change.’

‘No, I couldn’t,’ Polly answered, ‘because I’d be a toy too.’ The exchange left her feeling both comforted and misunderstood.

In the end, the famous weekend with Castles and Clutterworths was postponed. Everybody seemed to produce a different reason for this: Aunt Villy, who was palpably cross, said that there had been
a muddle about dates; the Duchy said that Mrs Clutterworth was not well; Christopher said that his mother had told him that his father had made a scene in which he had refused to come and refused
to be left alone at home. He had added that he was jolly
glad
they hadn’t come, as he knew that his father would only have another go at him about what he was going to contribute to
the war effort. He and Polly had become friends again, which was a relief to her although she still felt wary and no longer liked confiding in him to the extent that she had earlier wanted to do.
She saw less of him as he worked all the mornings in the garden, and, as the dog fights continued above them, spent many afternoons watching for parachutes and bicycling off to rescue the airmen
– none ever fell so near them as that first time. The Home Guard, as Colonel Forbes’s and Brigadier Anderson’s posse were now called, said he was a splendid chap – pity he
was too young to join them. Christopher said they made him feel awful, as they all openly envied his youth and imminent chance to die for his country and he said he was too cowardly and bored by
them to admit his true allegiance.

‘Do you think part of believing something is that you
should
tell everybody?’ he asked her one hot August evening.

‘Not if you haven’t the slightest chance of converting them,’ Clary, who had overheard, chipped in before Polly could answer. This made Polly say that she didn’t know how
one could be
sure
that one wouldn’t.

Christopher said that there wasn’t an earthly chance of changing Brigadier Anderson’s mind about anything: ‘He’s one of those people who
always
thinks and
always
says and
always
does the same things,’ he said.

‘It would drive me insane if I was his wife,’ Clary said. ‘Do you think that was what Mr Rochester was like? I’ve never felt that the first Mrs Rochester’s madness
was properly accounted for.’

‘There
you
go,’ Christopher said at once. ‘“Never” and “always” come to much the same thing.’

Clary shot him a half admiring, half resentful glance.

‘I’ve never known a mad person,’ Polly said pacifically.

‘Yes, you have. Poor old Lady Rydal.’

She didn’t want to pursue that. Clary had given her such a graphic description of her visit and, although Aunt Villy, when asked by the Duchy how her mother was, had recently said that she
seemed much calmer and slept a good deal, she still dreaded the possibility of Lady Rydal getting the amount better that would mean she lived at Pear Tree Cottage and would have to be seen, and
might at any moment go completely mad again. I could never be a nurse, Polly frequently thought. I’d be too sorry for the ill people to be any use. But she did not say this to anyone, since
her two serious conversations – with Dad and with Miss Milliment – had both resulted in them suggesting that this could be a career for her. It was true to say that this had not been
Miss Milliment’s first choice. ‘I have always rather
wondered
,’ she said in her gentle, tentative voice, ‘whether perhaps you and Clary might not benefit from
university. It is the time when one can absorb most and I should like to think of you being exposed to really good minds, first-class teaching and the opportunity to meet many different kinds of
people.’ She looked enquiringly at Polly. ‘It would mean, of course, that you would both have to work very hard to prepare, as you would need to pass your school certificate and also
your matriculation exams before you could apply. I had been meaning to suggest this little plan to Clary’s father and your parents but circumstances have made that either difficult or
impossible in dear Clary’s case. But a university education could do so much to widen the possibilities of a useful and interesting career.’ She peered at Polly through her tiny, thick
steel-rimmed spectacles. ‘I do not sense very much enthusiasm,’ she said, ‘but I should so much like you to think about it. In the case of Clary, I feel it would provide her with
a goal, which at the moment could be most helpful to her. But perhaps you have set your heart upon an art school.’

‘Oh no, Miss Milliment. I know that I couldn’t be a painter. I’m just a kind of decorator really, and I really don’t want to be anything more.’ She noticed that
Miss Milliment’s long and distinctly odd piece of knitting had dropped from one knee and that stitches were slipping surreptitiously off the needle.

Miss Milliment clutched at the needle, but since she had her foot on the very end – or beginning – of her work, this simply precipitated all the remaining stitches into sly,
diminishing loops. ‘I think you are treading on it, Miss Milliment. Would you like me to pick up the stitches for you?’

‘Thank you, Polly, I should. Although I have thought that it will require a second sort of courage for one of our brave soldiers to wear a muffler made by me. I seem quite unable to
preserve the same number of stitches from row to row.’

‘What I really wanted to know is what I should
do
with my life, I mean,’ Polly said some time later when she had tactfully unravelled enough of the muffler to get rid of the
worst holes.

‘I understand that. But there’s time before you need make up your mind. And in the meantime, it is a good thing to consider how you may best prepare yourself.’

‘I expect I’ll have to do something about the war.’

Miss Milliment sighed. ‘That is quite likely. I have always thought that you would make an excellent nurse, whereas I can see Clary joining some women’s service as I think the
adventure would appeal to her.’

‘I’d be a
hopeless
nurse! I couldn’t be objective enough! I’d be sorry for all the wounded people instead of helping them!’

‘My dear Polly, I did not say that you
are
a nurse, I meant that you could become one. In any case, you will not be old enough to train for three years. But, of course, you would
not be able to go to university for three years either. But it is possible that if you were a student any war service might be deferred until you had obtained your degree. I think perhaps we might
discuss this with your father?’

But when Polly talked to him, he said that he didn’t see any point in her going to university. ‘A blue-stocking daughter!’ he exclaimed. ‘Quite soon I shouldn’t
know what to talk to you about. I’d far rather keep you safe at home.’ Which was relieving, though not in the least helpful.

‘I should think it would be quite exciting,’ Clary remarked about the university idea.

‘Well, Miss Milliment thought you ought to go too.’

‘Did she? Has she got sick of teaching us, I wonder?’

‘It can’t be that, because she said we’d have to work extra hard for years and years.’

‘Oh. Why don’t you want to go, Polly?’

She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think I’m worth it,’ she said at last. ‘I mean, I think it must be mostly for men and then a few fearfully clever girls. I think
it would just make me feel inferior.’

‘Oh, Poll! Anything makes you feel that. These days.’

‘What do you mean “these days”?’

‘Oh! You know what I mean.
These days
. These awful, bright, frightening,
going-on
days.’

‘Monotonous, you mean—’

‘Yes! You know, terrible things are happening every day – and then you have to go on getting up, cleaning your teeth, nothing happening to
you
– just brink after
brink. It takes
ages
to get grown up and do what you like. And then, there are all the things you don’t know . . .’

‘Such as?’

‘Oh! All the things they
don’t
tell us.’ Her voice took on a savage mimicry. ‘“Because we’re not old enough.” I’m old enough to know Dad
is missing. That makes me feel old enough for anything.’ She was crying now, but she took no notice of it. ‘Zoë thinks he’s dead, you know,’ she said. ‘She has
completely given up. You can tell that, because she doesn’t care about her appearance any more. And everybody else has stopped talking about him. When something is really worrying,
you’d think people would talk about it more, but not our family – they’re just a crowd of ostriches.’