“Yes.”
“How very odd,” said the old lady shortly.
There was a pause while she poured out tea with a very shaky hand, and gave the girl a slice of bread and butter. Gervase noticed that she took only very weak tea without milk or sugar herself, and a thin wafer biscuit.
“And which one is it that you are in love with?”
Gervase very nearly dropped her cup. This was worse than Pat Johnson. “I’m not in love with any of them,” she said warmly.
“Well, which one is in love with you?”
Gervase was silent for a moment. She did not want to tell lies to this unpleasantly direct old lady; moreover, she was by no means sure that she would get away with it if she tried. “Peter Marshall,” she said weakly.
“He is the officer—the captain?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to marry him?”
“I don’t know.” This was terrible.
“Well, make up your mind quickly and don’t keep him waiting too long. You can’t afford to dilly and dally in times like these.”
Deep down in her heart Gervase felt that it had been worth riding fourteen miles upon her bicycle to hear that said. But she was suddenly inarticulate and filled her mouth with bread and butter to avoid having to reply, colouring a little.
Very slowly and painfully the old lady raised herself from her chair and reached for an ebony stick. “My son thinks very highly of the Air Force,” she said. “I am going to show you a letter that arrived from him only last week, the last letter we have had.”
She moved very slowly across the room to a walnut escretoire, selected a key from a bunch that she took from a pocket at her girdle, and unlocked a drawer. From the same pocket she extracted a spectacle-case, and put them on. She picked a letter from the drawer, took it from the field service envelope, and stood reading it. “This is the one,” she said slowly, “all about a carpet. Such a funny word to use.”
She moved back to her chair before the fire and sat down again. She examined the three pages of the letter carefully, selected the middle page, and handed it to Gervase. “That is the part, I think,” she said. “Read that, child.”
Gervase took the sheet. It was written unevenly in black Italian ink, as if by a hand unused to writing recently, forced to use as desk the tail-board of a truck or a petrol-can. It said:
“The Air Force have been magnificent all through. We should never have got through the wadis except for their help. They laid what Tedder calls a carpet for us; all day, over and over again they came down to ground level ahead of us, shooting up everything they saw resisting the advance, and bombing all the anti-tank positions. It was magnificent, but it was very costly to them because the Germans have plenty of light flak. Over and over again in the last few days we have found crashed Hurricanes and Kittihawks in our advance, scores of them, some with the body of the pilot still in the seat. The Germans are resisting desperately; if we get through to Tunis it will be because of what these Air Force boys are doing to prepare the ground ahead of us and their self-sacrifice.”
Gervase handed back the letter gravely. “Thank you for showing me,” she said.
The old lady took the sheet and placed it in the envelope with the others and laid it carefully upon the table at her side. “I am sure if my son were here he would want to help you,” she said gently. “If fishing in the lake will really be some good to your crew, I do not think he would want me to refuse it. After all, the lake can always be re-stocked when you have taken all the fish out of it.”
Gervase said: “That’s terribly kind of you, Mrs. Carter-Hayes. We’d pay for the re-stocking.”
The old lady sat up. “Mind you, I am not going to have the whole Air Force tramping through my garden and upsetting everything. Write down the names of these men, the crew, and I will write a little note to invite them.” She passed a pad and pencil to Gervase.
The girl wrote down all the names and the addresses; the old lady took the sheet and studied it. “Sergeant Pilot Franck,” she said. “What an odd name. Is he English?”
Gervase said: “He’s a young Dane. A medical student before the war. He is the navigator—the most senior of them, next to Flight Lieutenant Marshall.”
“How odd.”
There was a short silence; Gervase began to think about going. But presently the thin old lady said:
“Have all these sergeants and corporals got rods for fly-fishing?”
Gervase said: “I don’t suppose so, because they’re only used to coarse fishing. But don’t worry about that—they’ll get them fast enough. They aren’t badly paid.”
“Somebody was telling me that it is very difficult to buy fishing tackle of any sort now. Are you going to fish with them?”
Gervase smiled. “I’ve only tried once or twice, and then the line was always getting caught up. I’d like to try again, if I might.”
The old lady reached slowly for her stick and struggled to her feet. “Let us go and see in the gun-room,” she said. “I know there are several rods there.”
She moved very slowly from the room out into the hall; Gervase following behind her step by step. She moved down the passage to a closed door, which she unlocked with a key from her reticule. They went forward into a little room, dim with a drawn blind; the old lady moved forward to the window and snapped the blind up, flooding the room with light. Gervase looked around.
On one side of the room were drawers and cupboards, covered with a thin film of dust. In the middle was a deal kitchen table. On the other side of the room there was a small iron fireplace, flanked on the one side by a glass case containing half a dozen guns, on the other side by a row of hooks from which eight or ten rods in their fabric bags hung suspended. The old lady moved over to these and began handling them.
“This is a trout rod,” she said slowly, “and this one. This—no, this must be a spinning rod, and those two are for salmon. This is another trout rod, I think.” She laid the trout rods one by one upon the table. “And the reels and the lines used to be in this drawer. Here they are.”
Gervase said: “It’s awfully good of you to take so much trouble, Mrs. Carter-Hayes.”
“If your friends have any difficulty in buying their own tackle they may borrow any of these things, my dear. Only they must keep them here and not take them away.”
“Of course,” said Gervase. “Are you sure your son won’t mind them being used?”
“Oh no—these are the rods he keeps here for his friends to use when they come and stay.” She bent painfully and opened a cupboard and pulled out a little leather case about four feet long and opened it upon the table. Inside upon a bed of red fabric there was a beautiful little rod with its reel. “This is the rod my son always uses,” she said. “If you want to fish yourself you may use this one. It’s very light. But I would rather that nobody else used it, except you.” She took up the butt joint in her gnarled old hand. “I used to fish with a little rod like this,” she said, “when I was a girl your age. A great many years ago.”
Gervase said: “Are you sure your son won’t mind me using it?”
“Oh no. It will do it good to be used.”
She turned to the drawers and began opening them one by one. “There are a lot of flies here somewhere, I know,” she said. “Not those—those are salmon flies. I think these must be the ones—oh yes, and here are the casts.” She turned to Gervase. “Everything is here in these drawers,” she said. “You may use anything you like. I will tell Dale, and she will let your friends in here when they come, and then they can go and fish as often as they like.”
She moved from the room out into the passage. “Now I am going to turn you out,” she said. “At my age one gets tired very soon. Thank you for coming to see me, my dear.”
Gervase said: “It’s terribly kind of you to do all this for us, Mrs. Carter-Hayes.”
“Not at all. If you decide to marry that young man, bring him in for me to have a look at.”
> Gervase laughed awkwardly, and left, and rode back to Hartley very pleased with herself. She went first to her office at Headquarters; on her table there was a message scribbled on a message pad asking her to ring up Mr. Ellison.
She sat down and called his number. He said: “Oh, look, Miss Robertson. I’ve been hearing a bit more about that Kingslake House. I wouldn’t go out there, if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“Leave it a bit. You know I said there was a son who was a brigadier in the Army? Well, he’s been killed out in Tunisia. The old lady only got the news yesterday.”
Chapter Seven
And it’s, buy a bunch of violets for the lady
(It’s lilac time in London; it’s lilac time in London!)
Buy a bunch of violets for the lady
While the sky burns blue above:
On the other side the street you’ll find it shady
(It’s lilac time in London; it’s lilac time in London!)
But buy a bunch of violets for the lady,
And tell her she’s your own true love.
ALFRED NOYES
Squadron Leader Chesterton went into the Wing Commander’s office. “I’ve been talking to that girl Robertson,” he said.
“Put the hard word to her?”
“It’s not quite so easy as we thought. She’s much more mixed up in the Robert business than I knew.”
“Mixed up in it?”
“That’s right. She says that crew will be all right from now on, because she’s got them some fishing.”
Dobbie stared at the older man. “That’s a new one,” he said slowly. “Let’s have the gen on that.”
Chesterton told him briefly what he had heard from Gervase; in the end he laughed a little ruefully. “So after that I piped down and let her go off on her week-end,” he said. “I thought you’d want to think about it a bit more.”
“You didn’t tell her that we wanted her to ask to be shifted away?”
“No, I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was still a good idea.”
Dobbie sat for a moment deep in thought. Whoever ran an air station successfully in time of war inevitably became an amateur psychologist; the Wing Commander was very well aware of the power of occupations and hobbies to keep his young men happy. It was perfectly true that Marshall and all his crew were keen fishermen; if this girl had got them fishing in the neighbourhood it might well be a real factor in the revival of their efficiency, which he ought not to disregard.
“I suppose the girl’s right in on this?” he asked. “No girl, no fishing?”
“Well, she’s the one who’s raced around and got it for them.”
There was a silence in the office. Dobbie sat staring out of the window at the wide reaches of the aerodrome, thoughtful. “She’s got us foxed,” he said at last. “If we push her back to Group they’ll lose this fishing, and they’ll all get bloody-minded about that.”
“I think she’s got us foxed all right,” said Chesterton. “If you’re going to try this fishing scheme of hers, you’ll have to let her stay.”
The Wing Commander lit a cigarette. “Where is this trout-fishing?” he asked. “If I let her get away with this, I’m going to have a smack at her trout.”
“Chipping Hinton,” said the Adjutant. “But look, what about Marshall? What are you going to do about him?”
“If she stays here she’s got to play fair with Marshall,” said Dobbie. “I’m not going to have him mooning round the mess like a sick cow.”
“That’s probably what’s in the wind,” said Chesterton. “She’s probably made up her mind she wants to marry him. That’s why she’s taken so much trouble about this fishing.”
The Wing Commander sat up suddenly. “If she’s going to marry him, I wish to hell she’d get on with it,” he said irritably. “I’m fed-up with her. If young women would just stop and think before they shoot the boy friend down, we’d have a lot more pilots.”
The old Squadron Leader nodded. “Girls have to be very wise these days,” he said.
“So do Commanding Officers,” said Dobbie. “I’m going to get a job as Aunt Ethel in Betty’s Weekly when the war’s over.”
There was a pregnant silence.
“What are you going to do, then?” asked the Adjutant. “Let things take their course a bit?”
“I know what I’d like to do,” said Dobbie viciously. “I’d take them both and lock them up together in a bedroom for a week, and feed them rations through the ventilator. I’m fed-up with this damned nonsense.”
“I’m afraid we might have trouble with the Queen W.A.A.F. if we did that.”
“Pity.”
In the end they decided to do nothing at all.
Gervase travelled up to London next morning, and got to Paddington before lunch. Marshall was waiting at the barrier to meet her; she greeted him rather shyly as he took her case.
“Hullo, Peter.”
“Hullo, Gervase. I got your letter. Look, what would you like to do? Would you like to go and have lunch at the Zoo?”
Her face lit up. “Oh, that’d be fun!” She had been apprehensive about this week-end, fearing that she was going to have to spend most of it fending off passion. This suggestion of the Zoo put matters on a different plane; if there was passion in the offing, at any rate there was a bit of fun attached to it.
“Okay. Look, shall we park your bag in the cloak-room and pick it up later on?”
She agreed, and they left her suitcase, and secured a taxi with some difficulty. It was bright and sunny and warm; the top of the taxi was down and they drove through the streets to Regent’s Park sitting fairly close together, but not touching. By the time they got there they were very happy.
They lunched in the restaurant by a window looking out over the gardens, Gervase a little thoughtful. She had to tell Marshall some time during the afternoon about the fishing; now that the time had come she was unsure, afraid that he would be angry with her for having meddled in his trouble with his crew. The more she thought of it the more difficult it seemed; constraint descended on them as the meal went on, and one or two long silences came which neither quite knew how to deal with.
It was a relief when the meal was over and they could get out to the animals. The elephant house did not seem to Gervase to be very suitable for finesse, nor did the atmosphere of the lion house engender confidences. The monkey house was fun but quite unsuitable for her purpose, and though the reptile house was quiet and dim, it was a little sinister. But then he took her into the Aquarium, and she took courage from the fish. This was the place, she thought, if anywhere.
In the semi-darkness they paused by a green translucent window of trout. Gervase felt that she would never get a better opening than this; she turned to Marshall. “I’ve got something to tell you about trout, Peter.”
He glanced down and met her eyes, and thought again how lovely she was. “About trout?”
She hesitated for a moment. “I was talking to Sergeant Phillips the other night,” she said. “He told me how bored he’d been when the fishing season stopped, and Gunnar Franck and Leech, too, hanging about the camp with nothing to do. And I remembered where we saw the trout that day in Kingslake Woods, and I went and asked the old lady in the house if she would mind if your crew went and fished for them.”
“What did she say?”
“She said they might. She’s got a lot of rods and things there, too, that they can use.”
“Am I in on this?”
“If you want to be.” There was a little pause; she raised her eyes to his. “You aren’t angry because I did that?”
Impulsively he reached down for her hand and captured it. “Of course not,” he said. “Whatever made you think I should be angry?”
She was relieved, both by his words and by the pressure of his hand, warm and friendly. “I thought you might be cross because I’d been meddling,” she said. “We could have talked it over if you’d been at Hartley.”
H
e had raised her hand to waist level, and now held it in captivity with both of his. “Did you really think that I’d be angry with you for meddling in my business?” he said. “Seems to me you haven’t got the right idea at all.”
She glanced up, and saw that he was laughing, and the tension was relaxed, and she laughed too. “It was only this once,” she said. “I’m not going to go on meddling in your affairs as a regular thing.”
He said gravely: “Of course not.” She looked up again and saw that he was laughing at her now, and she coloured a little and tried to remove her hand. But he had got it.
“Let me have a look at this,” he said. “I’ve never examined it before.” He looked down at her hand, slim and white and tapering in his own. “You don’t use nail-polish, do you?” he asked.
“No. I just rub them over with the little pad thing.”
“You don’t need varnish and stuff on them.”
“I just can’t be bothered with all that.”
“What’s this little scar?”
They bent over her hand together. “That’s where I cut it, cutting ham for mother. It bled all over the ham.”
“Made it a bit more tasty, I suppose.”
“Don’t be foul.”
“All right.” They stood together by the golden-green window; he was still holding her hand and she was content to let him do so. “Let me have a good look at you,” he said.
Gervase raised her eyes to his. “All right.”
He drew back a little, but still held her hand. She stood there looking up at him, feeling his gaze playing over her, noticing the firm line of his chin, the brown muscles at his neck. “You cut yourself shaving,” she said.
“I was all of a doo-dah this morning,” he said. He grinned down at her. “You’ve got just a little lipstick on, haven’t you?” he said. “Just a touch?”
She nodded.
“But nothing on your cheeks—no rouge or anything?”
“I seem to get by all right without it,” Gervase said. “All I use is powder.” She coloured a little, thinking how very peculiar it was that she didn’t mind being stared at in this way, that she was answering such personal questions. And thinking so, she decided that it was time to bring this to a close and go on looking at the fish, and so she glanced at the trout, and said: “Have you seen all you want to?”