The Children's Hour (19 page)

Later that same morning, wheeling slowly, Nest progressed from the sunny courtyard along the mossy path that wound through the wild garden; crossing the small stone bridge, below which the stream flowed, and passing beneath the last of the tall, silky plumes of the pampas grass, spared as yet from Mina's secateurs. In summer, here in the shelter of the cliff, the feathery cream and the pink foliage of aruncus and astilbe tangled with tall green ferns and purple
loosestrife, whilst hypericum crept over their roots, carpeting the damp ground with its small round woolly leaves and yellow flowers. Early in the year, snowdrops and primroses grew amongst the roots of the tall beeches and, in late spring, lily of the valley and snake's-head fritillary bloomed amongst the coarse grass that bordered the stream.

Here, where the culvert carried the flow of water down into the valley, the umbrella plant spread its red and brown serrated leaves underfoot, thriving with the rheum and rodgersia amongst the ghostly, delicate boles of the silver birch, and, in a cranny of the cliff hidden by salix and wych-hazel, the pied wagtail built her nest. Pausing, turning her chair a little in the autumn sunshine, Nest watched a charm of goldfinches, dipping and fluttering with their dancing flight above a clump of thistles, and suddenly, further down the valley, a mallard broke into its hoarse, comical ‘rarb-rarb' cry. As she wheeled herself onward, she recalled the games that she and Timmie had played in this enchanted garden with its secret places and wild, dramatic setting. Could there possibly have been a more wonderful place on earth for two imaginative children? Few books were beyond their scope for re-enactment, although, reasonably, there had been an occasional disappointment due to a lack of vision on the part of the adults.

It is in the Christmas holidays of 1943 that Timmie is given his first Arthur Ransome,
Swallows and Amazons
, and, after the first reading, the beach is easily transformed into Wild Cat Island, although Mama refuses to let them have a sailing boat. In vain they plead: the currents on this north Somerset coast are much too dangerous to allow two small children to act out their fantasy stories to the limit and they must be content with the rock-pools, in which to swim, and the cliffs
to climb. After Christmas, once Mina has gone away to London and Timmie and her sisters have returned to school, Nest is left with Mama. Now, alone for hours at a time, she enters almost completely into the world of make-believe, her vivid imagination fuelled by the stories that Mama reads to her during the children's hour. Preoccupied with her own loneliness and anxiety, Mama has begun to read other things than the beloved story-books. Curled beside her on the sofa, before the fire, Nest listens to Alison Uttley's
The Country Child
, her heart beating fast as she passes, in spirit, with little Susan Garland coming home from school through the Dark Wood. She peeps fearfully at the Rackham illustrations as Mama reads
Goblin Market
– although she loves the picture of the children called to hear their mother's tale – and always, in Nest's mind, it is Mina she sees as the brave Lizzie who saves her sister from the wicked goblin men. She experiences a strange, yearning restlessness, a tingling of blood in her veins, when she hears for the first time the poetry of Thomas Edward Brown and O'Shaughnessy's
Music and Moonlight
, and the lyrical prose of Richard Jefferies.

All through that late winter and early spring she wanders like a small wraith, verses and phrases singing in her ears, images crowding in her mind, dazed by the glory of the English language, groping towards ideas she cannot, at nine, hope to understand. She misses Mina just as much as she misses Timmie; inexplicably touched by Mama's gentle melancholy, yet her soul on fire with a mysterious fusion of nameless, poignant longings and wild excitement. When the snowdrops show their delicate, drooping heads beneath the naked beeches in the wild garden and the lemon flowers of the winter aconite are scattered amongst the grass, Mama moves on to
Jane Eyre
and Nest falls in love with Edward
Rochester, whose tragic, romantic image becomes the receptacle for all of her unformed passion. As the March gales pile mountainous seas against the tall grey cliffs, and snowstorms sweep from the Bristol Channel across the moor, Nest stands at her bedroom window, listening to the restless surging of the waves as eagerly as though, at any moment, she might leap out to become part of all that elemental, untameable magic.

The Easter holidays bring her companionship again in the form of Timmie and, once again, they play out their small dramas, though, this time, they are enacted against the background of a perpetual battle waged between Henrietta and Josie. The two girls are locked in a rivalry that drives their mother to despair and fascinates their two young siblings. Henrietta, barely twelve months her sister's senior but as old as Eve, can generally run circles round the less complicated, more direct Josie. The two of them are invited to one or two parties and Henrietta is allowed to go to a tea-dance – with a school friend and her brother – which sends Josie into a sulk for several days. The brother, a sweet-tempered, naïve seventeen-year-old destined for the army in the autumn, is quite besotted by Henrietta's wiles yet is far too well brought up to ignore Josie.

The quick-tongued, clever Henrietta torments Josie with her conquest but Josie, experiencing the agony and the ecstasy of first love, for once refuses to be browbeaten into second place.

A tennis party sets the scene for a full-scale battle: Henrietta has avoided telling Josie that she is invited until the very last moment, guessing that it will be too late for her to go.

‘It's not fair, Mama,' cries Josie, near to tears. ‘My tennis things need washing and I haven't anything to wear. She's
done this on purpose because she wants to be with Lionel on her own.'

‘Oh, honestly!' Henrietta looks at Mama, round-eyed with amazement at her sister's apparent madness, inviting her mother's approval. ‘How can I be alone with
anyone
at a tennis party? And, anyway, it's embarrassing, Mama, to see her making sheep's eyes at him all the time. She's just a little girl, after all. He thinks it's a terrific joke.'

‘He does not! He likes me. It's you who plays up to him, draping yourself round him—'

‘That will do.' Mama, for once, is cross and the girls fall silent, biting their lips, waiting for her decision. ‘It was very wrong of Henrietta not to tell the truth about the invitation and I am almost inclined to refuse to let either of you go . . .' Josie puts out her tongue triumphantly and Henrietta turns white with fury . . . ‘except that Lionel will already be on his way to collect you. If this happens again, Henrietta, I shall forbid any more parties, and perhaps, Josie, it will teach you to keep your clothes in good order. This time, I'm afraid, you will have to stay at home.'

Henrietta flounces away, secretly overjoyed with her success, whilst Josie, frustrated and bitterly disappointed, flings her sister's newly whitened tennis shoes into the slimy depths of the water-butt. In the row that follows, even Timmie is frightened and Nest is in tears. Finally, Lydia threatens that if Henrietta and Josie do not behave she will tell Lionel the whole truth about their shocking behaviour so that the girls, flung together into an unwilling confederacy, stammer their way out of trouble as best they might. Lionel, puzzled by their confused explanations, insists that, of course, they must both go with him to the party. Shoes and a tennis-skirt, he tells them with youthful confidence, can be supplied by his sister. Besides, he adds as if
this clinches it, his mother is expecting them. Neither Henrietta nor Josie wishes to lose face before this innocent boy, who is just as charming to Lydia and Nest as he is to the two quarrelsome contenders for his affection, and, after this, the battle in his presence is waged with silent jabs and pinches or with furious glares, which slide into the sweetest of smiles when he glances their way.

The feud continues, gaining impetus, and the two Tinies stare aghast when, at the height of their passions, Henrietta empties a teapot half full of the dregs of cold tea over Josie's freshly set hair and, in retaliation, Josie slashes the skirts of Henrietta's best party frock. Tears and shrieks rend the peaceful cleave whilst Mama pleads and remonstrates in turn. Much though she misses Timmie, Nest is almost relieved when the summer term begins and she is alone again with Mama.

‘We miss Mina,' says Mama. ‘There's something
steady
about her.'

Fifty-five years on, Nest smiled to herself as she wheeled over the lawn and onto the gravel. Yes, beneath Mina's warmth and apparent agelessness there was a serenity that remained unchanged even when it was challenged by grief or despair. All the family, at one time or another, had leaned against it and drawn strength from it. As Nest had this thought, Mina appeared from the open doorway, Georgie behind her.

‘Lovely news!' she cried, making a fearsome face for Nest's benefit which denied the loveliness of the news and made Nest grin privately. ‘Helena and Rupert are coming to see us. Won't that be fun?'

Lyddie telephoned the local office of the courier service she used, asked for her parcel to be collected, and began to pack the completed typescript, along with her notes, style sheet and the letter to the editor, into the publisher's Jiffy bag, before putting that inside the courier's special plastic bag. She filled in the form on the top page of a book of blanks they'd given her and carried the parcel downstairs. Ever since a typescript had gone astray she hadn't trusted the Post Office and now she was obliged to wait for the delivery van. As she put the kettle on for a cup of tea, the Bosun watched her hopefully but she shook her head at him.

‘You'll have to wait until he's collected this,' she told him, showing him the package – and he heaved a sigh and settled down outside the door in the hall.

Lyddie huddled a little in her long green knitted coat as she waited for the kettle to boil. As winter drew on, her small room was increasingly cold – especially on sunless days. Perhaps, after all, some kind of heating should be
installed; the electric fire was out of the question, with the Bosun keeping her company, but a radiator of some kind might be the answer. In fact, the whole house could do with central heating. There was a very efficient woodburning stove in the long downstairs room, which was kept alight for most of the winter and helped to warm the small house, but their bedroom, next door to Lyddie's study, was very chilly.

As she made her tea, Lyddie had a new idea. Perhaps the money from the house in Iffley could be used to install central heating. It would add to the value of the house and make their lives more comfortable; surely Liam couldn't object to that? The kitchen was in a small extension at the back of the house, making an L-shape at the end of the long room, and the back door led into a tiny yard, which Lyddie had filled with pots and tubs of flowers. Now, she carried her tea into the other room where she could sit at the table and look out into this little area. The back wall and the wood-shed were washed the same creamy-pink as the extension walls and, with the chrysanthemums and hebes making a late, colourful display, it was a delightful little scene. In the summer, roses and honeysuckle climbed the wall and the wood-shed roof, but now, with November approaching, there was little left of their earlier glory.

Watching the robin pecking up toast crumbs, Lyddie wondered why she felt this very real need to contribute – apart from her own earnings. Why not just put the money somewhere safe, when it should come along, and save it for an emergency? Wrapping herself more closely in her long green coat, her hands clasped around the hot mug, Lyddie allowed herself to look at the situation dispassionately. The truth was that, even after two years in Truro, she had this odd sensation of unreality. Just occasionally she caught herself thinking: What am I doing here? or had an unsettling
feeling that she was waiting for something. Most of the time she was too involved in her work to be thinking of anything but the current typescript. Even with the lists she made, a great deal had to be held in her head as she worked, each and every line of typescript to be thoroughly checked for punctuation and spelling, every fact noted, so there was little time to brood on the state of her marriage. In one year she might work on thirty-five typescripts – the turnaround was very quick – so she couldn't accuse herself of having too many hours on her hands in which to magnify or distort her emotions. Yet there was this strange sense of expectancy; that this was temporary and something else was going to happen very soon.

Lyddie set down her mug and, pulling the long, soft wool about her, went to kneel before the stove. She opened its glass doors and began to lay the fire with some kindling and one of the firelighters from the box beside the log-basket. Soon she had a little blaze going and closed the doors so that the flames would pull up into a blaze. Sitting back on her heels she watched golden tongues licking round the scraps of wood, mesmerized for a moment by the curling, greedy fire, before standing up so as to wash her hands at the kitchen sink. She dried them on the roller-towel behind the door and went back to the table, picking up her mug again, frowning as she tried to analyse these sensations of impermanence.

Perhaps this feeling of unreality was because of the odd life she and Liam led. It was impossible, with The Place, to live as other young couples did: making supper together; going out for a meal or down to the pub; booking seats for the theatre or having an evening at the cinema. She was beginning to realize that the glorious day when Liam and Joe could afford a full-time bar manager, so as to relieve
them from their heavy work-load, would be long in coming. It was being borne in upon her consciousness that Liam, at least, had no desire to be free of his work: he loved it; it was his life. Because of her early readiness to adapt, to be content with spending evenings in the snug, she had allowed the future pattern of their marriage to be set. Yet what else could he have done? There
was
no bar manager to give them evenings off and – after all – would nagging have had any effect except to cause unhappiness and discontent?