The Summer Before the War (5 page)

In the tiny bedroom, she rested her head against the cold, rough plaster of the wall and gave herself to the slack-jawed silence of a weary grief. She was conscious of a wish to shout at her father, who had abandoned her so absolutely. He would have found this funny—looking around the squalid cottage with his eyebrow raised as he gently pointed out that death had not been his first choice; that he had, in fact, been called away before finishing several important pieces of work. She imagined he would have a few words to say about her impetuous flight to Sussex and the entirely unnecessary choice to submerge herself in the grim world of salaried work. With her eyes shut, she felt a corner of her lip twitch at her own foolishness. The daughter of Joseph Nash, she reminded herself, did not succumb to self-pity. Her tiredness eased, and she opened one eye halfway and gave the cottage's bedroom a squinty look.

It had a bowed aspect, as if it were a cabin on an old galleon. The walls seemed to lean on each other above the sagging floor, and the ceiling had a slight convexity, like the underside of a large white dinner plate. The window, while smeared, had pleasant old speckled glass in leaded muntins and a deep ledge. The furniture was appalling. The bed's posts were spindly and pocked with wormholes. The dresser had lost half a sheet of veneer and two of its blackened brass handles. The rush bottom of the single chair mirrored the sag of the floor. Beatrice stirred herself upright and lifted a corner of the rag rug with the tip of her shoe. It was greasy with dust and smelled of what might have been men's hair tonic. It reminded her that other people had undressed in this room, sweated onto the hard mattress, and used the china chamber pot that sat in a wooden box under the bed. Beatrice felt a twinge of regret for the white-tiled magnificence of the water closet at Agatha Kent's house.

She stood up and gave a small bounce on the floor. At least it did not give. She walked to the window and looked at the deep ledge on the outside, which might hold a pot or two of fragrant mignonettes. The view was of the cobbled street and the front doors of the houses opposite. A pleasant Georgian door with white pilasters next to a low oak-studded Tudor one, black with age against freshly painted white daub walls. A window box of white lilies and a potted bay tree for the Georgian house, and a lead trough of scarlet geraniums for the Tudor, gave the street a gay, holiday aspect. The sun's reflections off red-brick walls and clay-tiled roofs warmed the shadowed street and cast a glow into the room. Outside the bedroom, a small nook on the landing held a window overlooking the rear courtyard. She thought it might be perfect for her writing desk, but she would have to do some work to improve the view, which was of the outdoor water closet shared by both halves of the conjoined cottages and Mrs. Turber's dingy sheets flapping on a line.

She could hear voices from downstairs, and as she descended the squeaky staircase, with its sticky baluster, she could tell that it was Agatha, speaking in a low, urgent tone to Mrs. Turber, whose voice was a suffocated squeak of indignation. Their conversation carried into the small room through a connecting door from Mrs. Turber's larger quarters next door.

“All I'm saying is that I run a respectable house. Mr. Puddlecombe never gave me no trouble about hot water, and as for opening all the winders to let in the dirt, well…”

“I assure you Miss Nash is as respectable as I am, Mrs. Turber, and I'm sure she will be amenable to discussing what services can be provided.”

“A bit too respectable for her own good, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Turber. “People will ask what's a girl that young doing on her own.”

“I have every faith that her being sheltered under your own chaperonage will still every wagging tongue, Mrs. Turber,” said Agatha. “Your name can surely never be associated with gossip.”

“Well, that's as may be,” said Mrs. Turber, and Beatrice could hear a hint of satisfaction in her voice.

“Who among us would deny a young woman the right to make her own living when she is cast upon the world by the death of her esteemed father?” added Agatha with a catch in her voice. “Lady Emily and I are so appreciative of your sanctuary, Mrs. Turber.” Beatrice thought this was going a little far, but the loud sound of Mrs. Turber blowing her nose suggested that some hint of empathy had been elicited. Agatha Kent, she reflected, was quite the politician.

“Well, I can't be asked to bring in hot water more'n once a week,” she said. “Orphan or no, I've got much to do and my legs won't stand for carrying them heavy jugs all day. Mr. Puddlecombe never bathed more than once a fortnight.”

“We will find a way, Mrs. Turber,” said Agatha. “You and Lady Emily and I, together we will find a way.”

As Beatrice stood grinning in the parlor, Agatha Kent appeared against the bright sunlight of the open back door and let herself in. Beatrice went forward into the small kitchen to greet her.

“Ah, there you are,” said Agatha. “If you're intent on staying here, I do hope you'll try not to ruffle Mrs. Turber too much.” She lowered her voice and added, “She's not the biggest gossip in the town, but she's probably ranked second or third, so best to keep on her good side.”

“I can boil my own bathwater if necessary,” said Beatrice. “I had no idea I was being difficult.”

“I have arranged to send Mrs. Smith, our chauffeur's wife, down to give the place a good scrub,” said Agatha, ignoring her. “She loves a challenge. Do you have furniture? I fear our lamented former Latin master, Mr. Puddlecombe, was not overly concerned with his comfort.”

“I have a small desk that was my mother's and the chair that my father insisted on toting with us wherever we went in the world. I must send for them.”

“Is that all?”

“We mostly rented furnished rooms,” said Beatrice. “My father was always being invited to lecture at universities or to help collaborate somewhere on a new journal.” She felt herself blushing. Somehow it had never before seemed poor to live in rented rooms. She had always merely seen to the unpacking and shelving of her father's library and stripped the mantels and side tables of excess gimcrack trinkets and doilies. They had lived mostly in Paris, in a succession of rooms near the Sorbonne, but in recent years had also made an extended visit to Heidelberg, spent two years in the romantic decay of a tall merchant's house in Venice, and finally, had inhabited the rambling wooden house of an absent professor in the precincts of a California university. She had understood that their peripatetic life was sometimes dictated by the moderate limits of her father's private income and might be partly the interior restlessness of an exile, but she had always felt rich in both her father's companionship and the fierce life of the mind that they pursued. With his absence, all seemed reduced to meagerness.

“Well, we have a small store of old things in the stable,” said Agatha. “I've told Mrs. Turber I'll be sending some pieces along. You must come and choose whatever you want, and if we are missing something, I'm sure Lady Emily would be glad to look through her attics.”

“Oh, I couldn't possibly trouble Lady Emily,” said Beatrice. Agatha stiffened at the note of anxiety which Beatrice was not able to conceal. Beatrice made a quick calculation and decided to offer Agatha the truth. “I met Lady Emily's son on the train.”

“Obnoxious young fool,” said Agatha. “Not half as much a man as my Daniel, or Hugh, but twice the income and prospects. A great trial to his dear mother.”

“So you understand that I'd rather not be indebted,” said Beatrice.

Agatha sighed and took off her hat. “My dear child, I fear we are all indentured servants of society. There is no escape. In your case, Lady Emily's seal of approval on your employment won over the school governors where I, also an appointed member of that body, could not prevail. I'm afraid your independence, and my efforts in appointed office, both depend on our titled friend and on her little monogrammed invitations.”

“I am grateful to you both,” said Beatrice.

“And we are to you, my dear,” said Agatha. “You will prove us right and raise the educational efforts of Rye with your superior learning. And we will bask in your knowledge, and your presence will be a tiny move towards a society of merit and honor.”

“Goodness me, that's a lot to expect for thirty shillings a week,” said Beatrice.

“Well, do try your best,” said Agatha. “Let's show them how much more they can get from a woman—and at less expense to the annual budget. Ah, I hear a cart outside. Must be your things.” She bustled out, leaving Beatrice a moment of privacy in which to consider that while she and her father had discussed the more abstract principles behind the pricing of labor, it was not at all pleasant to discover that, simply as a woman, one was to be paid less than Mr. Puddlecombe of the sticky floors and cheap hair tonic.

Under Agatha's direction, Beatrice's trunk was shoved and manhandled through the narrow front door and, after some discussion, was placed in the middle of the parlor, on the greasy rag rug, as it was too large to go up the narrow stairs. Her boxes and crates of books were stacked alongside, and Beatrice had to still a quiver of anxiety that she was to live, for the first time, in a place without a single bookshelf. Her bicycle came in last, and as she held the door for the man to wheel it through to the back garden, they all heard a muffled snort from the rooms next door that indicated Mrs. Turber was not an enthusiastic supporter of the sport of cycling. Agatha saw the men to the door and then paused as if reluctant to leave Beatrice alone in the cottage.

“Thank you,” said Beatrice. “It was very kind of you to come with me, but I shall be perfectly all right now.”

“I am sending Mrs. Smith this afternoon, and I don't want to hear about it,” said Agatha. “And you will come to dinner this evening. Just the family. Perfectly informal.”

“There's no need…”

“You won't say that so readily once you've sampled Mrs. Turber's rather basic fare,” whispered Agatha. “Come early and you can get a look at the boys Hugh has been tutoring. I believe they call on him at four in the afternoon.”

“I look forward to meeting them,” said Beatrice.

Agatha gave one last hesitant look around the dingy parlor. “I am not at all sure about leaving you here. When you come to dinner tonight you will tell me whether, upon reflection, you would not prefer to be found a room with a nice family.”

“Thank you,” said Beatrice. She looked at the two lumpy wing chairs, deal table, and tarnished brass fire screen, which did little to soften the empty room. “I think I'll be just fine, but I must say this cottage in its current state is almost enough to drive one into marriage after all.”

As the heat slipped
from the day, Beatrice found Agatha Kent dallying among the thickly planted flower borders in the front courtyard of her house, snipping hydrangeas and tossing them abstractedly into a trug. She wore a loose tea gown and a straw hat.

“Oh, goodness, is that the time already?” she said, waving as Beatrice walked in at the gates. “I must have missed the dressing bell.”

“I came early to meet the schoolboys I am to tutor,” said Beatrice, enjoying the pleasant cool of Agatha's garden after her stiff walk up the bluff.

“Oh yes, I had quite forgotten,” said Agatha, picking up the basket and dropping several hydrangeas onto the gravel. Beatrice bent to help her gather them. “It has been a little chaotic this afternoon as first Lady Emily telephoned and made it quite obvious that she wished to be invited to meet you straightaway and then our man of letters, Mr. Tillingham—well, I can't imagine how he even heard—but he wanted to come too, and I am just hopeless at putting people off so we are extra for dinner and Cook is being wonderful about it but I needed more flowers and another leaf in the table and Smith was nowhere to be found and…”

“You can't mean Mr. Tillingham the great writer?” asked Beatrice. Surely the American author widely described as one of the age's leading literary figures could not be coming to dinner with Agatha Kent?

“Well, he would certainly think so,” said Agatha. “I do hope you won't twitter and gush at him like so many of our ladies? We try to treat him as any other neighbor.”

“Of course not,” said Beatrice, trying unsuccessfully to quell her excitement. She was to meet the master whose work she had studied and even aped at first in her own stumbling efforts towards writing a novel. Even her father, who so despised the novel form that she had omitted to share her efforts with him, had grudgingly admired Tillingham in his peak years. She was dizzy at the sudden prospect. “May I help you?” she asked Agatha. “I can trim flowers.”

“Well, if it isn't rude of me, perhaps you can find your own way to the stable house. I think Hugh is up there—he has a workroom upstairs.”

“I think I can manage,” said Beatrice, who could see the stable building visible behind a large hedge at the edge of the courtyard.

“After you are done meeting the boys, do have a good rummage through the box room for furniture. It's behind where we keep the car. The key should be hanging under the stairs and Hugh knows where it is. And if you could discreetly remind him that we are dressing for company tonight.”

Two horses hung their heads over loose box doors and regarded Beatrice without much interest. She ducked into the cool, dark interior of the stable building, where a staircase to her right led to an upper floor. She hesitated, aware that it was silly to be intimidated by a piece of machinery but unwilling to step around the large motorcar. Upstairs looked sunnier, but she was reluctant to just walk up without an invitation.

“Hello? Anyone home?” she called, her foot on the lowest step.

“Who's there?” asked a man's voice, and Hugh appeared at the top of the stairs, a square of glass in one raised hand.

“Your aunt sent me,” said Beatrice. “To meet your pupils?”

“We are in the middle of making microscope slides,” said Hugh. A scent of formaldehyde wafted down the stairs. “I believe you said you were not delicate?”

“Oh, I'd love to come up and see,” said Beatrice, enthusiasm overcoming her intention to be reserved and polite. “My father and I made slides sometimes. I have quite a collection of insect wings.”

“Sectioning chicken heads is quite a bit messier,” said Hugh.

“I assure you I'm not at all squeamish,” said Beatrice, her stomach giving an unpleasant lurch.

“Come up at your own peril,” said Hugh. “Only if you faint, we won't be able to catch you without smearing brains on your frock.”

The room at the top of the stairs was set under heavy rafters and boasted a bay window overlooking the kitchen gardens. It contained a large worktable and several lumpy armchairs of mismatched and tattered upholstery. The late-afternoon sun was streaming in at the window, and two of Hugh's three pupils were bent with sharp knives over lumps of bloody tissue on the table, while a third was curled up in an armchair, chewing a pencil and leaning on a large book, sneaking glances at the open window. They stood up at her arrival and looked at her with frank curiosity. She smiled to cover her shock, for they were more unprepossessing than she had expected, with all the gangly knobbliness of boys who were no longer children but had not yet solidified into men. Though they were of different heights and faces, there was a uniform ugliness to their large ears, badly cut hair, and drooping socks. And despite evidence that they had combed their hair and washed before their lessons, they carried the unmistakable odor of young men, against which a weekly hip bath could make little impression. For a moment Beatrice quailed to think she would soon face a roomful of such rudely gaping mouths. She wondered how Agatha Kent had come to see any promise in three such grubby specimens.

“A splendid room,” said Beatrice, faintly.

“I was exiled here as a boy shortly after my chemistry experiments proved malodorous,” said Hugh. “Just give me a moment to finish this and I'll introduce you to the boys.”

To adjust her composure in front of her new pupils, she walked along the wall to view the glass-fronted cabinets and extra shelves propped up on bricks, which contained books, boxes, and a lifetime's collection of natural specimens. Skulls, rocks, fossils, feathers, half a dried bat, and a stuffed pheasant beset by moths seemed like a lost treasure. Beatrice was struck with a painful pang of jealousy that in this, the home of an aunt, a room bigger than her entire new accommodations would have been set aside for a visiting boy's hobbies. She touched her fingertips to the cool, dimpled surface of an ostrich egg and bent to peer at a tank containing two frogs. One of the frogs swam energetically against the side, and Beatrice could not help but pause to examine his mighty efforts to scrape his way to freedom through the glass.

“That's Samuel and Samuel, miss,” said the boy with the book. He was the tallest and wore boots of enormous size.

“We were going to call them Johnson and Pepys, but Daniel thought it sounded like a grocer's,” said Hugh, carefully plucking something thinly sliced from a cup of formaldehyde and transferring it with tweezers to a slide held close to his face. “That boy impertinent enough to speak to a lady without being asked is Jack Heathly.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Jack, his ears flushing red. “Sorry, miss.”

“Jack's father is one of our most respected local shepherds,” said Hugh. “And Jack's older brother is a sheep-shearing champion.”

“Gone all the way to Australia, he is,” said Jack, who looked both proud and wistful. “I keep all the stamps from his letters.”

“I think they are upsetting Samuel with their brain slicing,” said Beatrice, smiling at Jack. “Did Mr. Grange section the heads of all his brothers and sisters?”

“Only if they died of natural causes,” said Hugh. “I'm not too good about killing things up close. Our cook dispatches the chickens.”

“I'd kill stuff for you, Mr. Hugh,” said the shortest boy, sitting down at the table.

“Thank you, Snout,” said Hugh. “This fine if somewhat short fellow is Snout. His father has the forge down by the Strand.”

“How d'you do, miss?” said Snout. He did not look up but continued to slice with slow precision through a chicken head, his thin face creased into a frown and his tongue pressed between his lips.

“And this third fellow is Arty Pike, Miss Nash. No doubt you've seen Pike Brothers, the ironmongers in the high street?”

“Ironmongers and Haberdashery,” said the jug-eared boy, coming to attention. “ ‘All your needs and no fancy prices' is our motto, miss.”

“I shall be sure to open an account, Master Pike,” said Beatrice. Her magnanimity was met with a smirk that suggested he had already appraised the modest size of her business.

“Finish up, boys, and I'll introduce you properly to Miss Nash, who is going to be taking over as your summer tutor.” They must have been warned, thought Beatrice, for they managed to keep their groans as low as a mutter. They were not as enthusiastic to be taught as she was to engage in teaching.

“Can I finish up too?” asked the boy with the book.

“Only if you're done with your translation, Jack,” said Hugh. He looked up at Beatrice to add, “We have an agreement that Latin homework will be done each week if we want to help with the science experiments.” He smiled in a way that telegraphed he might have much more to communicate about the boys were they not in the room. She returned the smile, admiring that he could disguise scientific inquiry as a reward.

“Wot we learning Latin for, anyway?” Jack asked, chewing his pencil. He looked with gloomy despair at three lines of Latin text scrawled by Hugh on a large sheet of brown butcher's paper and returned to consulting the reference book.

“Jack's learning Latin and bowing and scraping so he can be a gentleman,” said Arty. “They're going to give him a top hat to wear while he's shearing sheep.”

“Better a working man than a sot, my dad says,” said Jack, putting the book away on a shelf as if it was all agreed that he was finished with his Latin. Arty's face went dark at the apparent insult, and Hugh intervened.

“Now, now, boys. Let's behave like gentlemen in the presence of Miss Nash.”

“I don't want to be no gentleman and I doubt a bit o' Latin is going to make 'em let us join anyway,” said Jack.

“I want to be a gentleman,” said Snout, handling his knife with the ease of experience as he sliced the last of his heads paper-thin. “You don't get laughed at for reading books, you don't have to let no one on your land, and you can kill all the rabbits you want and no one calls the coppers.”

“He's a poacher, miss,” said Jack.

“Say it again and I'll 'ave you,” said Snout, balling up his fists and screwing up his face so much Beatrice began to see the origin of his nickname.

“Come now, Snout, you must not rise to the bait,” said Hugh. “And, Jack, perhaps you should spend less time insulting Snout and more time learning from his superior Latin talents?” This did not seem to be welcomed by either boy. They both glared, and Beatrice was glad she had been educated privately and not in their schoolroom, where, she began to understand, talent might bring as much ridicule as respect.

“Latin is not just the language of the Caesars but also the language of the science you are studying,” she said. “And it underpins all medicine, law, and religion, so it's the key that unlocks many fields.” She stopped as they looked at her with suspicion. Her calling to teach was partly inspired by her father's view that education in general, and Latin in particular, should not be kept for the few, that it was wrong to divide the world and keep all success and distinction in the hands of a small elite. But perhaps his leanings towards such new ideas, and his wish to spread classical education to the people, would not be popular in the rural setting of Rye, she thought.

“There you are, boys,” said Hugh. “Miss Nash intends to make you as erudite and as wealthy as the ancients.”

“May I see what's under the microscope?” said Beatrice, hiding her blushes as she changed the subject. “I assume it is brain matter?”

“See, boys, Miss Nash really is not squeamish,” said Hugh, and Beatrice felt a flicker of satisfaction at her own stoicism. “Do come and look. It's a slice across the medulla.”

“
Medulla
from the Latin meaning ‘pith,' miss,” said Snout. “The black stain shows the paths where the brain sends messages to breathe and things.” He seemed to have forgotten to be shy, and his eyes, now raised to hers, reflected a sharp intelligence. “Silver chromate, they call it. Very poisonous, but the chicken was already dead, miss.”