Westwood (46 page)

Mr Challis, as he sat nursing his teacup next to a reasonably intelligent and attractive young woman, was congratulating himself that the first evening was nearly over and that to-morrow morning he could shut himself up on the plea of work. He always found the active, cheerful atmosphere of his mother’s home insipid, and the presence of so many young children, and of ungainly women who were about to have more children, affronted his aesthetic sense. There was never time at Yates Row for a leisurely conversation or for the development of subtle relationships, for every moment of the day seemed taken up with the toilet of the hordes of children and the preparation of the large, simple, commonplace meals; and in the winter there was wood to be hunted for and rehearsals for a play which always entertained the huge Christmas house-party, and Christmas presents to be made and reading aloud and sing-songs round the piano; and in the summer there was fruit-picking and picnics and haymaking and The Walk to be taken, and swimming excursions to the Martlet and tea in the garden; while in the autumn there was fruit-bottling and jam-making and nut-hunting; and in the spring everybody insanely gardened from morning till night, and looked forward to the summer. No one seemed to take any interest in those questions, both eternal and temporary, which are the proper study of Man, and which mark him off, by his restless pursuit of them, from the beasts that perish.

The sight of his wife and daughter and grandchildren gathered about him under the matriarchal roof made him feel as involved in family life as a Chinese and he longed to be back in London, occupied with adult interests and dissatisfactions, while Hilda’s face and form floated always before him with a faint, sweet pain.

Late that night Margaret went up to bed, making her way cautiously to her room through the other rooms where children lay asleep in varying stages of untidiness or cosy envelopment in the bedclothes. She paused to cover Jane’s fat legs, which were bare almost to what would one day be her waist, and to smile at Robert, who was slumbering, with his long eyelashes sweeping his pale cheeks, in as neat a position as when she had tucked him in three hours ago.

It was strange to stand at her window and look out across the orchard, where the apple trees glimmered in the starlight and Mars flashed low and red upon the horizon, to feel herself surrounded by that sleeping childish loveliness, and to realize that far out across the meadows and little woods and darkened cities of England, beyond the calm spring sea, men were fighting; that the game the children had played in the garden was a pantomime of the horror in Europe and Asia. Half the world, she thought, is fighting to-night; and yet there are still people who are going to bed peacefully, with children asleep near them and candlelight making shadows on the walls
and their beds looking comforting and quiet. And suddenly, for the first time in her life, she felt that she loved both the good and the wicked; she loved all her fellow-men.

She was awakened at six o’clock by Jane climbing into her bed and demanding to be made ‘warmdy,’ as her legs were cold; and in no time, it seemed, they were all seated at the breakfast-table, and spooning cereal and milk into their mouths. There was abundance of milk, for Lady Challis had a beautiful Jersey cow named Blossom, which was the admiration of all the babies, living in the paddock at the end of the garden, as well as a goat which was not quite so popular, and both were milked every morning and evening by Bertie. (There was some coffee for Mr Challis, which put him into a slightly better temper.)

Hebe looked even more placid than usual as she sat beside Emma and persistently directed the spoon, which the child was just learning to use, into her mouth. Although she professed to be bored in her grandmother’s house and to long for the pleasures of London, the atmosphere suited her, especially when there were other young people staying there with whom she could go off to the local in the evening and be her age. As her children were her chief interest, this house where the routine revolved about children was the natural place for her to be, and she only occasionally became bored with a diet of Irish stew, macaroni cheese and semolina pudding, and a conversation consisting of riddles asked and answered, ancient jokes of which no one ever wearied, questions, and shrieks of laughter.

But she was still angry with Alex and resented his inability to be satisfied with the life that satisfied her. She had had a postcard, apparently from Dunster, saying,
Hope you are all quite well. I am quite well. Love from Alex
, but that had been a fortnight ago and that had been all.
The Shrapnel Hunters
had been called for and taken away in an ancient car by two of his painter friends, and by that she supposed that he was going to finish it in the friends’ studio, and would not be home for some time, for it was only half-done. She had therefore decided that as soon as she got back to London she must try to find somewhere for them all to live. I’ve got all that money saved, she thought (for she was thrifty and had a good head for business) and that’ll start us off comfortably, and this time I’ll see that the house is big enough for all of us, blast him. She missed Alex every now and then, in painful bursts of feeling, but it is surprising how pain can be controlled if the sufferer refuses to give way to it and feels angry instead, and just now she was enjoying a relaxation from the cares of motherhood, while Margaret and the other women took some of her duties off her shoulders.

After her confidences to Margaret on the previous evening, she had decided that her debt had been paid and had said no more.
Struggles adored hearing about Grandpapa and Granny, with a bit about Pops thrown in
, she told her mother,
I thought it would do instead of thanking her, and I call it a cheap round
. She did not regard her family as sacrosanct, while poor old Struggles’s earnest passion for Pops amused her. It was bad enough having to love somebody when they made you, let alone having a crush on somebody who didn’t even try to make you, she thought, but Granny was always saying
People are so different, Hebe
, and she was too right.

Most of the day was spent by Margaret in the garden.

Her duties consisted chiefly in keeping an eye on the two babies who could just walk and carrying them off to ‘see Blossom’ when their interference with the games of the older ones became a nuisance. ‘
Will
you babies get out of the way!’ in an exasperated shout was the signal for her to drop her book and go to the rescue. After a noisy and cheerful high tea in the paddock, she got her charges earlier to bed than on the previous night, and passed the remainder of the evening peacefully with a book by the dining-hall fire, now reading half a page and then looking up to exchange a smiling word with anyone who happened to come in from the garden.

The young people had again gone down to the local but this evening Mr Challis had not accompanied them, and Margaret had declined (for fear of being odd man out) an invitation which she afterwards wished she had accepted; for it was just a little dull in the hall with a book, when her spirits were exalted by the beauty of the spring weather and the change of scene and the society of new and interesting people. Already Linda and Dick Fletcher and the house at Brockdale seemed very far away. She now had Lady Challis’s promise to think about, and its fulfilment to look forward to, and she watched her hostess admiringly as she moved lightly about, usually with a book, a gardening implement or a child in one hand, and marvelled that the mother should now mean as much to her as did the son, although they were such very different spirits. But it was the warmth of a tender heart and a loving nature that attracted her in Lady Challis, and she was already jealously sure that this spring, could she have the opportunity to drink from it, would never fail her.

She must give devotion to somebody, and as she was ashamed to indulge in those tender feelings for Gerard Challis’s person which she had so readily given to his spirit and his work, she resolutely tried not to look at him and looked at his mother instead.

Sunday, the day on which the party was to go home, dawned not quite so fair as the previous two days, but it was judged sufficiently fine for Margaret to take Emma, Claudia, Dickon, Edna and Barnabas for The Walk.

This walk was so particularized because there was only one true walk at Martlefield (as there usually is at any remote country place), and sooner or later everyone who stayed at Yates Row went on it, and surveyed the surrounding countryside from the fifty-foot hill, surmounted by a fine old oak tree, in which it terminated.

Meanwhile, in Highgate, Zita and Cortway were passing an alarming week-end.

On the Friday evening Grantey had seemed much as she had been for the last five weeks; maintaining a slow but steady improvement. The nurse no longer slept in the house, but came in every day, so that Zita and Cortway had no professional help when the latter was aroused in the small hours of Saturday morning by the prolonged ringing of the bell in his sister’s room. Putting on his dressing-gown as he went, he hurried in to her, and found her blue and gasping and pointing to the tablets which had been left her to meet just such an emergency as this. While he was crushing them under her nostrils and observing with deep thankfulness that they were beginning to relieve her, Zita came stumbling upstairs, half awake and very alarmed, and loudly lamenting. Her anxiety and grief were genuine, but she was not of much practical use, as all she did was to hover distractedly round the bed exclaiming, ‘Ach! mein Gott!’ and make occasional dashes downstairs to fill a hot-water-bottle or brew some coffee to help Cortway through the watch he insisted on keeping, and then, forgetting what she had gone down for, return to the bedroom to see how Grantey was.

Cortway at last impatiently packed her back to bed, and sat grimly wakeful by his sister’s side, trying to hear her breathing, and watching the darkness at the window slowly turn to the summer
dawn. Every now and again he glanced at his sister’s face. It looked very old amid the grey hair scattered on the pillow and yet in it he saw the likeness of the little girl who was one of his earliest memories.

Always together, he and Allie had been, and why she had ever wanted to marry that so-and-so Wally Grant beat him.
That
had all turned out wrong, and Allie had gone back into service again with the Braddons, where he himself was chauffeur; and that had been twenty years ago; and here she was, very bad, you could see that; and perhaps going for good this time.

His head nodded forward, and he dozed off, and when Zita came upstairs with a cup of tea at half-past seven he was asleep by his sister’s side.

While Grantey was still dozing, they held a conference and discussed whether they should telephone to Mrs Challis, but as she seemed better and her colour was more normal, they decided to wait until they had heard what the doctor said.

When he came about nine o’clock, he told them that there was no more cause for alarm than there had been for the last five weeks, although he thought that they had better let Mrs Challis know how matters stood, and they decided to telephone when Grantey finally awoke. But when she did, she was apparently so much better that their fears receded, and after she had had some tea and bread and butter and nurse had come in and washed her and made a lot of jokes, they decided not to let Mrs Challis know just yet, as there was no point in alarming her unnecessarily. Grantey asked for the
Daily Mirror
and her knitting, and Cortway left her with them and went downstairs. It was a beautiful day and the house was full of sunlight and rang with music played by the wireless for Zita’s entertainment. Grantey gently beat time with her spectacles, as she glanced through the pictures in the
Mirror
. Somehow she did not fancy putting them on this morning; they seemed to weigh kind of heavy on her face.

We must now return to Bedfordshire.

Jeremy had been added to Margaret’s party, so that meant borrowing the big pram belonging to William, who would spend the afternoon crawling about the garden, and putting Emma and Jeremy at opposite ends. Thus burdened, and declining the offers of Barnabas and Edna to assist with the pushing, Margaret set out after lunch down the long lane which was the opening stage of The Walk. Claudia ranged so far ahead that she had to be called to, in the first five minutes, not to get out of sight; while Dickon, who had his own ideas about walks, speedily fell behind. Edna and Barnabas kept so close to the pram that they had to be told not to get in the way, and only Jeremy was in repose, full of milk and peaceful, and Emma actually sang to herself as they went along.

‘Can we go in the woods?’ demanded Barnabas suddenly. ‘Gosh, this is a boring road!’ and he swung on the pram and made it tilt.

‘Can we go in the fields, Margaret?’ demanded Edna, also swinging on the pram.

‘Claudia!’ called Margaret, waving to the long-legged figure straying a hundred yards away where the lane began to curve, ‘don’t get too far ahead!’

Claudia made elaborate signs, as of one who is anxious to hear what is being said, but cannot.

‘We can’t see Dickon now,’ remarked Edna, in the satisfied tone she always used for disasters or ominous signs. ‘Is he lost yet? Hadn’t we better wait for him?’

‘
Claudia
!’ called Margaret, just as Claudia began to drift round the corner, and so loud was her voice that the sleepy Jeremy opened his eyes wide and Emma stopped her song and looked up in surprise.

‘Sorry!’ said Claudia charmingly, skimming down the road with her hair flying, ‘Oh, didn’t you want me to go so far away? Mummy always lets me.’