No Peace for Amelia (4 page)

‘Feels strongly about this war!' Mary Ann sniffed. ‘How could anyone feel strongly about this war? What's it about, can you tell me that?'

‘Oh yes,' began Amelia confidently. ‘It's about – well, it's about putting the Kaiser in his place.'

‘Putting the Kaiser in his place, is that it? I see,' said Mary Ann. ‘In other words, it's about the English being in charge of Europe, not the Germans.'

‘Well, yes, I mean, after all …' 

‘Oh, I see. So you think the English should be in charge of Europe, do you?'

‘Not exactly, no. But I think the Germans shouldn't be either.' Amelia had a sudden flash of inspiration: ‘We should all be in charge of our own countries.'

‘Aha! Like the Irish. In charge of Ireland, like?'

‘Certainly.'

‘So it's a nationalist you are now, Amelia Pim. Well, I never would have thought it!' Mary Ann sounded both amused and triumphant.

‘A nationalist, am I?' said Amelia wonderingly. She was sure there was something wrong with this assertion. ‘Anyway,' she went on, ‘I seem to remember you being very pleased when this war started, Mary Ann Maloney.'

‘Ah yes, but that's because England's difficulty is
Ireland's
opportunity,' said Mary Ann cryptically, throwing aside her skewer and coming to sit at the table opposite Amelia.

Amelia hadn't the smallest idea what that was
supposed to mean, but she was sure it wasn't anything very nice, so she gave a disapproving little sniff. Mary Ann misinterpreted the sniff.

‘Poor Amelia,' she said, with sudden sympathy. ‘You'll miss your beau, won't you?'

Amelia had been so busy convincing herself what a fine thing it was for Frederick to be going off to fight in this terribly important war that she hadn't allowed
herself
to think this perfectly simple thought at all. She had considered the idea of his being hurt or killed, and she had set that thought firmly aside. But now that Mary Ann put it so simply, she realised that she would indeed miss her beau, very much. She plonked her elbows on the kitchen table and gave a long, slow sigh.

M
ary Ann was up to her elbows in greasy water, washing up after an afternoon’s cooking, when the doorbell rang.

‘Bad cess to it, anyway,’ she swore, and gave the
cooling
grey water a vigorous, irritated slosh before lifting her arms out.

The bell rang again, imperiously.

Mary Ann ran cold water quickly over her forearms and grabbed a towel as she lurched to the hall door. She flung it open, the damp towel still scrunched in her hand, and her sleeves still rolled up. Of course it would be more than her situation was worth to snap at the
visitor
for ringing too loudly and peremptorily, but she fully intended to be distant and cool with whoever it was. As it happened, she was far too amazed by the words the person on the doorstep spoke to be anything but civil in return:

‘Miss Maloney,’ (that was the amazing part, and he swept off his hat as he spoke) ‘I do apologise. I wasn’t sure if the doorbell sounded the first time, so I’m afraid I rang it a second time, to be quite sure. I hope I didn’t startle you.’

The speaker was what Mary Ann called a fine figure of a man, but it was the amber lights in his remarkable eyes that caught her attention so that she hardly noticed for a moment his extraordinary attire. He was all decked out in what looked like rather uncomfortable khaki. But there was something about a uniform, however
colourless
and uncomfortable, that gave a man bearing, Mary Ann had to admit, and there were metallic bits that caught the afternoon sun and made him look nothing short of splendid.

‘Well, as a matter of fact you did,’ said Mary Ann, steadying herself against the doorpost. ‘You put the heart crossways in me, actually, Sir.’ Mary Ann’s respect for expressing the truth about her own reactions to things was as sound as Amelia’s grandmother’s regard for truth in all things.

Frederick – for it was none other – didn’t apologise a second time, but inclined his head in the most charming bow that Mary Ann had ever witnessed.

‘Oh, come in, come in,’ she said. What am I at? she thought in horror to herself, welcoming a soldier of the king as if he was the parish priest. ‘Is it Amelia you were wanting to see?’

‘Amelia Pim,’ Frederick confirmed, stepping into the hallway with his hat held over his heart in an awkward and endearing manner.

‘She’s above in her room, doing her home exercise,’ explained Mary Ann. ‘If you’d like to take a seat in the drawing room, I’ll get her for you now.’

Frederick smiled a polite smile and did another of his little bows that was more an inclination of the head and shoulders than a formal gesture, and Mary Ann couldn’t help admiring the way he stood so straight and bowed so neatly.

She slithered around him in the small hall and opened the drawing-room door. Amelia’s grandmother sat by a low fire, reading aloud. Edmund sat on a footstool
beside
her, listening.

‘There’s a person to see Amelia, Ma’am,’ gabbled Mary Ann to the old lady, and stood aside to let Frederick
enter
the room.

Then she turned and leapt up the stairs, two at a time. ‘Amelia! Amelia!’ she called urgently as soon as she reached the landing.

‘Amelia!’ she called again, and knocked at Amelia’s door. ‘It’s your young man,’ she said, when Amelia’s face looked sleepily out. She must have been snoozing, not doing her homework at all.

‘My young man?’ Frederick never came to the house like this, only to call for her on Sundays. He must be coming to tell her that he was going to the war. Well, she
must prepare to say goodbye to him. Her heart did
another
of its little leaps.

‘Young Goodbody, the soldier, God-forgive-him,’ said Mary Ann excitedly.

‘Yes, yes. Where is he?’

‘In the drawing room, of course.’

‘Oh, Mary Ann, not the drawing room!’

‘But where else would I put him? Guests are always shown into the drawing room.’

‘Yes, but Grandmama!’

‘What?’

‘Grandmama’s in the drawing room.’

‘Well, of course she is. She usually is, from the time the fire’s lit in the afternoon.’

‘Yes, but don’t you see? You can’t put Frederick with Grandmama.’

‘Why? She won’t eat him.’

‘She might. You know what her views are about
warfare
. Oh, Mary Ann!’ Amelia sat down hard on her bed and waved her feet agitatedly to and fro, occasionally scraping the toe of her boot on the floor.

‘Oh lawny!’ said Mary Ann, ‘I didn’t think of that.’ And she sat down beside Amelia on the bed and looked glumly at Amelia’s swinging feet.

‘There’s worse,’ she said quietly after a moment.

‘What?’ Amelia jumped up in agitation.

‘He’s in uniform.’

‘Oh!’ said Amelia. ‘Grandmama will surely give him
dreadful abuse!’ And she did a nervous little gallop to the window and back.

A soldier in this house, and in uniform! It was unthinkable!

‘But he looks gorgeous in it, I have to say,’ said Mary Ann slyly.

‘Oh!’ exclaimed Amelia again. ‘Oh dear! Oh, Mary Ann, has he got a gun?’

A gun in this house was even more unthinkable.

‘No, no. What are you thinking of? This is a social call. He wouldn’t bring his gun into somebody’s house, now, would he?’

‘No, I suppose he wouldn’t. Thank goodness for that much, at least.’

‘Well, come on, anyway,’ said Mary Ann.

‘What? Where?’ Amelia looked around desperately.

‘Downstairs. You’ll have to go down to him.’

‘Me? Why? Oh, Mary Ann, I don’t want to!’ Amelia wailed. ‘No, I do. I do want to see him, but oh!’ And she sat on the bed again and clawed at the counterpane.

‘Well, you’re going to have to see him. He asked for you.’

‘Did he?’ Amelia’s face broke into a beam.

‘Well, of course, you eejit, you. You don’t think he came to convert your granny to the cause of England’s war in Europe, now, did you?’

Mention of Grandmama wiped Amelia’s smile off
before
it really had time to establish itself.

‘Heavens! I suppose not. I’d better go. Is my hair all right?’

‘It’s lovely. Go on, now.’ Mary Ann gave her friend a gentle shove out of the bedroom door and followed her step by step down the stairs.

Frederick stood in the little bay window, looking out at the tiny garden, where daffodils and irises nodded knowingly to each other and did occasional little stately twirls when the breeze changed its mind and turned back the way it had come from. Grandmama was
reading
in a steady voice to Edmund: ‘For whatever you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me.’

Edmund usually paid attention when Grandmama did Spiritual Reading aloud in the afternoons. He liked being read to, and he didn’t much mind what the substance of the reading was. But this afternoon, although he sat still at Grandmama’s knee, he wasn’t paying the slightest
attention
. His eyes managed both to be focused on
Frederick
and to have a faraway look at the same time. He was small for eight, still delicate, and dreamy with it.

Amelia stood for a moment in the doorway,
wondering
what to say.

‘There’s a draught, child,’ said Grandmama, looking up from her Bible. ‘Come in and close the door.’ She spoke as if there were no-one but family in the room.

Amelia turned and shut the door. Mary Ann was still outside it, bobbing anxiously up and down. Amelia gave her an appealing look, but what could Mary Ann do?

Mary Ann stood for a few moments in the hall and looked at the closed door. She could hear voices, but they were so muffled, she couldn’t tell who was
speaking
. Well, she could hardly stand there and listen, like a common housemaid. She was a cook-general, and she had a position to keep up. She threw one last look at the keyhole, and sauntered off back to the kitchen.

As she swirled the last of the water out of the sink, Mary Ann wondered if she should make tea for the little party in the drawing room. It was nearly teatime anyway, and there was a nice bit of seed cake. It wasn’t that she wanted to know what was happening in there, of course, but Amelia probably could do with a bit of moral support.

She was just resolving not to make tea after all – for Frederick Goodbody was in disgrace in the Quaker
community
, and it might only complicate matters if she were to appear with a teatray, and in any case, Mary Ann
herself
didn’t condone the war, no more than the Quakers did, though for rather different reasons – when she heard Amelia coming running down the hall and the kitchen door burst open.

Amelia’s face was pink and her eyes were shining.

‘You needn’t bother with tea for Frederick, Mary Ann,’ she said. ‘He’s left.’

‘Aw,’ said Mary Ann hypocritically, ‘and he didn’t even get a cup of tea in his hand.’ And she tutted and clucked as if she were disappointed.

‘Oh, bother tea!’ exclaimed Amelia and strode to the window, where she fixed her eyes unseeingly on the coal-bunker in the little yard and fiddled with the tassel of the holland blind.

‘Yer granny didn’t eat him, anyway, did she?’ Mary Ann ventured after a bit, as she got on with making tea for the household.

‘Oh no,’ said Amelia, in a strained, high-pitched voice. ‘She simply ignored him completely.’

‘What!’

‘She never took the slightest bit of notice of him!’ Amelia giggled, somewhat hysterically. ‘He might have been a piece of furniture someone had inconveniently delivered.’

‘Ach, the poor lad!’ said Mary Ann, sorry for Frederick in spite of herself.

‘She just went on reading to Edmund, as if there was nobody in the room.’

‘But why would she do that?’

‘Well, I suppose she disapproves so much of what he is doing that she couldn’t say anything kind or friendly to him, so she must have thought it best not to say anything at all.’

‘Isn’t she the cute one!’ said Mary Ann admiringly. ‘She didn’t want to send him off to the Front with a flea in his ear, I suppose.’

‘It’s just as well she didn’t. Oh, Mary Ann, I was so afraid there was going to be the most fearful row, and
Frederick was going to leave thinking badly of me. After all, he might never come back.’

Amelia looked grave all of a sudden and gave the
tassel
of the blind such a distressed yank that the blind came down with a clunk. She yanked at it again
impatiently
, and the blind shot back up the window,
whisking
the tassel indignantly out of Amelia’s hand.

‘Don’t go upsetting yourself, now, pet,’ said Mary Ann, pouring the boiling water onto the tea-leaves. ‘Sure he’ll be back safe and sound, God willing.’

‘Oh, Mary Ann, isn’t he splendid!’ Amelia swung around to face her friend, swirling her skirts as if to shake her anxiety out of them and turning a glad face to the world.

‘Well, I have to say a uniform suits him,’ said Mary Ann cautiously. ‘Very handsome, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, but I mean, isn’t he brave! Going off to fight like that, leaving his comfortable home and defying his
family
and going to defend his country.’

Amelia desperately wanted reassurance, Mary Ann could see that. She wasn’t anything as sure about the value of this war as she pretended. But one thing Mary Ann couldn’t offer her was assurance on this point.

‘I didn’t notice anyone threatening this country,’ she said at last.

‘Well, the Empire, I mean, defending the Empire.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Mary Ann. ‘I can’t say I have anything against the Germans myself.’

‘Oh, the Germans aren’t the point,’ said Amelia
impatiently
. ‘It doesn’t really matter who it is he’s fighting. It’s just the whole idea of marching bravely and … oh, it’s quite, quite wonderful!’

Amelia really was pushing it now, Mary Ann thought, trying to convince herself.

‘Here,’ said Mary Ann acidly, arranging the teatray. ‘You march bravely up to your grandmother now with that. I’ve a dinner to get ready.’ And she turned firmly away from Amelia and made clattering noises with saucepans.