Saplings

  Lena had been arranging flowers and cleaning the silver. She had been round the house, the beds were made and the rooms tidy. She came into the drawing-room to find Laurel still working. She was touched. Splendid of her, she thought. She’s doing it on purpose to be helpful and kind. She gave her a light kiss.

  ‘Dad would be so proud, darling.’

  Laurel flushed and jerked herself away from Lena. She threw her duster to Mrs. Oliver.

  ‘Catch. I’ve done enough slaving for today. I’m going out into the garden.’

  Lena stared after her, hurt and puzzled. Mrs. Oliver glanced at her, wondering if she should say something, but her cockney dislike of being nosey stopped her. She went on with her work.

  Mustard was a nimble old man. In his stolid way he got through an immense amount of work. He could do most things but he had clearly defined limits as to what he would do and, the limit reached, said ‘ ’Taint my job,’ and, having said that, no person or situation could persuade him to do the work in question. Although his life seemed to be ruled by doing those tasks that fell under his eye, he had, in his own way, an exactly planned day and knew how to fit a boy into his scheme. In no time he had discovered that he was unlikely to get consecutive work out of Kim, but he took a fancy to Tony and put him to work, as he said, ‘b’long side o’ me’. Mustard had spent all his life working in gardens, as had his father and grandfather before him. He looked upon a garden as an enclosed place in a savage world. The weeds, rabbits and squirrels, which came in from outside, were the besieging army which nothing but relentless sentry work kept at bay. On that first morning he was repairing a gap in the fence and he let Tony share in the work.

  ‘It’s the same as they say in the Bible, “Watch and pray”. If I take my eyes off a fence what’s weak, one of they little grey varmints will be scoutin’ round and back he goes to the others and before you can say knife he’s said “quick march”, and there they are inside and not a lettuce left.’

  This view of the life outside the garden charmed Tony. He did not so much see himself as taking part in a siege, but more as St. George standing on the ramparts flashing a sword.

  ‘We’ll beat them, Mr. Mustard. You and me together, and I expect we could get Laurel to help, and even Kim.’

  Tony and Mustard were repairing some nets to go over the raspberries when Lena joined them. She smiled at Mustard.

  ‘Is he being useful?’

  Mustard considered, and then said what had always been his seal of approval on a likely gardener’s boy.

  ‘He’ll do.’

  Lena ran her hand over Tony’s hair.

  ‘I know you’ll give all the help you can, won’t you, Tony? That’s what Dad would have liked, wouldn’t he?’

  Tony froze, his face scowling and sullen.

  ‘Where’s Laurel?’

  ‘I’ve come to look for her,’ Lena explained. ‘I saw her run down the garden.’

  Tony gazed around, he saw a glimpse of Laurel’s frock. He dashed off towards it.

  When alone the children were exceptionally united. Each one had something to gain from a corporate life. Laurel was once more the protective elder sister. It was solace to be needed. She enjoyed fussing round the others, seeing that they did not get their feet wet and the walks were not too long for Tuesday, a hundred and one little motherly things that made her feel warm in her heart. She knew of Tony’s nightmares. Quite often his screams woke her, but she knew too, by intuition, that they must never be mentioned, and that long days out of doors made him better. He looked less strained and difficult when he came in.

  For Tony life was divided into two halves. There was the dreadful indoors half when at any moment Mum might say things, or you had to go into her bedroom and there, though you tried not to look, was Dad’s photograph, and at once it started. The tight feeling across his front, the beating of his heart, he would remember the tap tapping as though he could still hear it. The other half was filled with rather insecure happiness. There was Mustard. Impossible to exaggerate the comfort he brought. He talked, in what Tony called to himself, a safe way. To him there always had been gardens and there always would be gardens, and there always had been wild things to fight, and there always would be wild things to fight, and that was natural and nothing, as he said, ‘to be upsettin’ of ourselves for’. Wars, and all that were attached to them, were passing inconveniences, but they did not change the pulse of his world.

  ‘Oh goodness, do look, Mr. Mustard,’ Tony would say. ‘There’re simply hundreds of Spitfires going over.’

  Mustard would obligingly cock an eye skywards, then he would be back at his seedlings, or whatever it was, merely remarking, ‘Ay, there’re a lot of they.’

  From Laurel Tony got immense comfort, but this did not give him the same satisfaction as working with Mustard. He let Laurel fuss over him and he agreed to play what to him were rather girlish games, for he found her company soothing. Because of his bad nights he was often tired, and thankful to take the line of least resistance; but at the back of his mind he had the thought that he was being a bit sissy for somebody who would be twelve in November. He did not look at the thought clearly, because that would mean thinking of Dad and he was not ready for that yet. Now and again, when the sky was blue, and the trees glittered, incredibly green, and the scent of young bracken filled his nostrils, he forgot everything except the glory of the day and the fun of being alive.

  Kim got least out of the family life, but he needed the steadying effect of that summer. For him there was no fear in talking to Lena, for he did not mind his father being mentioned. He accepted him in the past tense. He could no longer see him clearly. He had, however, suffered from shock, and running about the countryside, mothered, and, because it made for peace, rather spoilt by Laurel, was just what his health needed. He was the ringleader in games, his was the imagination which saw that a glade was full of Red Indians, how an overhanging tree could be turned into a house, and it was he who filled a disused sandpit with brown bears. He found too another way of satisfying his ego. He was far and away the sharpest of the children, he loved to set problems. Who was the person who said ...? If you add this and this, what’s the answer? Now and again Laurel and Tony would tell him, more often they did not bother to listen, and quite possibly would not have been able to answer if they had. Kim would bounce about bursting with eagerness. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. I’m younger than either of you, but I know.’

  For Tuesday the arrival home of her brothers and sister brought undiluted happiness. From being with them day after day she got just that sense of continuity and security that she needed. Because the house was isolated, her family were always about, there were no visits to shops or cinemas, she was with them all day. She knew that Nannie went off on the bus to do the shopping but she did not see her go, and usually, by the time she went to look for her she was to be found in the kitchen saying, in her usual placid way, ‘Well, my lamb?’ By degrees the nervous habits of the last months left her. Within a week of her brothers and sister coming home she had no more trouble with enuresis. She stopped biting her nails and her movements, which had been jerky, became normal. If she was out of sight for a moment and the others should wonder where she was, they would say, ‘Stop speaking everybody, and we’ll hear her humming.’

  Lena put up a fine struggle. At first she refused to notice Laurel’s and Tony’s off-hand ways and rudeness. Then, trying to think fairly as Alex would have done, she examined herself. Was it unkind to ask the children to help? Were they resentful? She knew what Alex would have said. With labour so short the children must help, and he would have told them what he thought of them if they had grumbled. Lena’s policy with her children had always been that they should be charmed by her. A mother to admire, who was a little apart from the humdrum side of life. It was entirely foreign to her but at last she screwed herself up to speak to Laurel and Tony. She gave great thought to what she should say, trying to use Alex’s mind and not her own. She s
aw the two children together.

  ‘Darlings, I know you don’t mean it, but sometimes you answer rather rudely. I know it’s hard to be asked to help but we’re at war and everybody, even children, must do their bit.’

  Laurel, conscious of happy mornings assisting Mrs. Oliver, and Tony, cherishing the hours spent with Mustard, stared blankly at their mother. They did not mind working and they supposed she knew they did not. What was she getting at? Tony looked sullen. Laurel prayed silently: ‘Oh God, please don’t let her talk about Dad, please don’t.’ Lena saw their strained, sullen faces, and suddenly it was more than she could bear. Was it not enough that she should have lost Alex? Was it not enough that she should struggle every hour of the day to appear gay and to look nice to please the children? Only she knew the agonies of tears she shed when they were safely in bed. She fought, but loneliness and self-pity engulfed her. She put her face in her hands, her shoulders shook with sobs. Laurel and Tony gazed at her with scarlet faces. This was worse than anything they had imagined. Pity and love rose in both children. Laurel would have liked to have flung her arms round Lena and said, ‘We do love you, Mum, we do,’ but horror kept her silent. Suddenly she rushed to the door and flung it open. Her voice rose to a scream.

  ‘Nannie. Nannie, do come, Mum’s ill or something.’

  Then, not waiting to see what Nannie did, the two children raced out into the garden, pushing each other about and howling with laughter.

  It was a losing fight for Lena. Her loneliness ate away her strength. Every day she gave way a little more to self-pity. For her children she found excuses. ‘Tony doesn’t sleep very well.’ ‘It’s that horrible school that’s changed Laurel. I shan’t send her back there in the autumn.’

  The children had been home about two months when, waking one morning after a few hours’ jumpy sleep, Lena reached a crossroad. She spoke out loud.

  ‘I can’t face the day. I simply can’t.’

  It was as she heard her own voice that she thought of her brandy flask. She sat up in bed and drank a good three fingers of brandy neat. Wonderful! How much better she felt. For the first time since Alex had been killed she came down to breakfast. Clear headedly she tackled three problems which should have been dealt with weeks ago. She wrote to the Board of Trade. She had lost clothes when the London house was hit. Clothes rationing had now started and she must claim coupons. She wrote to Miss Brownlow and said that she would not be sending Laurel back next term, and, by the same post, wrote to her sister-in-law, Dot, to ask what she thought of the school to which she had sent Alice and Maria. She rang up the doctor and asked him to come and see Tony.

  The doctor came that afternoon. The effect of the brandy had worn off and Lena was feeling flat and exhausted. The doctor had a look at Tony who, since he hated his nightmares discussed, was monosyllabic and off-hand. When he dismissed Tony, though he was busy, he stayed for a talk with Lena. While he chatted about Tony his experienced eye took her in. He saw unmistakable signs of the storms of tears which she was shedding. He saw that she was carrying on her existence with nothing but will-power. She had not called him in about herself and, in a case like hers, it was dangerous to say much. Take away her will-power and she would just fall in a heap as if she were a doll with the stuffing out of her.

  ‘I’d like you to get this made up for the boy. I want him to have a tablespoonful the last thing at night, followed by a cup of milk or cocoa or whatever you can get. I don’t think he’s my case. I should say that we may have to send him to a psychologist. Let me know if there’s any improvement and, if not, I’ll come up and see him again.’ He was rising to go. He spoke gently and with sympathy. ‘What about yourself? You don’t look as if you were sleeping very well. I’ll give you a prescription for some tablets. How about a tonic?’ He paused to smile at her. He knew that she must know that a tonic would not help. ‘I dare say you could do with a bit of stimulant.’

  The doctor drove away feeling dissatisfied. He had not done much for the poor woman. What the devil could you do? No such thing actually as a broken heart, but there was a state of being that was very like it, and all the drugs in the world would not help.

  Lena, standing on her doorstep looking after the departing car, was more comforted than the doctor knew. He had shown her sympathy. Isolated from the outside world, sympathy was a quality which she had not been receiving. It cheered her. Then, too, he had mentioned a stimulant and said that it would do her good. Of course it would. Stupid to get in the habit of drinking, just as it was stupid to get into the habit of taking sleeping tablets, but just now she needed something. She looked down at the sleeping prescription in her hand, unconsciousness all night, and a good nip of brandy when she woke, perhaps with those aids she could face the coming days.

  Dot wrote that Alice and Maria were immensely happy at their school. ‘If I were you I should send Tuesday as well. It’s time she started lessons and they’re very good to the little ones.’

  Elsa had over-persuaded Dot. Alice and Maria had not gone to a convent, but to a very large day school which took a limited number of boarders. Lena was pleased with herself for thinking of sending Laurel to school with Alice. The two girls were friends. It was bound to be nice for Laurel. However, she did not tell her immediately. Laurel was so difficult she waited until she had a good day. She now made all her efforts in the morning. It was wonderful what brandy on an empty inside did for you.

  Laurel was making the beds with Mrs. Oliver. Lena called to her.

  ‘Darling, come into my room a moment.’

  Laurel started and flushed. Mrs. Oliver gave her a friendly push.

  ‘Hop along. Your Mum’s calling you. I’ll get this one finished while you’re gone.’

  Laurel stood in her mother’s doorway looking thoroughly disobliging.

  ‘What is it?’

  Lena, warmed by brandy, could pass over that expression and that tone.

  ‘I’ve heard from Aunt Dot. You know she sent Alice and Maria to a school called Greenwood House. Well, I hear they’re very happy there, and so I’ve decided that you shall go there next term.’ She saw the startled look on Laurel’s face and spoke almost pleadingly. ‘You’d like to be with Alice, wouldn’t you?’

  Laurel stared at her mother, her world reeling. Not go back to the Abbey School! Not go back to Miss Brownlow! When she had left so suddenly Miss Brownlow had said: ‘It won’t do you any harm, Laurel, to have a holiday. I know it seems long but next term will soon be here, and we shall be waiting for you, very glad to have you back.’ Miss Brownlow had become the most important person in Laurel’s life. Since that day in the car she had never spoken to her about Alex, yet Laurel knew Alex was the person she was thinking about. It had been a short time since that day in the car and Grandfather fetching her away, but even in that time Miss Brownlow had made plans. She had begun to make Laurel see that just being part of the school was not enough, that you had got to find your way to being a useful bit of it. Already she had fired her to make special efforts. It was one of these efforts that came to her mind now.

  ‘I must go back to the Abbey School next term. I’m going to try for the junior jumping cup.’

  To Lena all schools were a bore and the Abbey School a menace. It had made a gauche, bad-tempered child of her daughter.

  ‘I hate you going to school at all, darling. Stupid places. I’d much rather keep you with me, but you must be educated, that’s why I’m sending you to Greenwood House with Alice.’

  It was only then that Laurel realised that Lena really intended to remove her from the Abbey School. Desperate, she raised her voice.

  ‘I must go back. You shan’t take me away. You shan’t.’

  Shouting and talking rudely were, to Lena, Abbey School legacies. Her gentle Laurel was not to blame. She refused to quarrel with her. She spoke quietly and firmly.

  ‘Be quiet, darling. You are going to Greenwood House and there’s an end of it.’

  The scene that followed was so fore
ign to Laurel it felt as if it was tearing her to pieces. The basis of it was fear. There was little enough security in her world, and what there was was being wrenched from her. She screamed, she beat on the door with her fists and, finally, sank on the floor in a heap, crying.

  Mrs. Oliver stood in the passage listening. Trouble about a school was natural enough. Children often got a fancy for one school or one teacher and there it was. She was in no way shocked or surprised at Laurel’s behaviour. ‘Do her good to let off a bit of steam, poor little thing,’ was her reaction. What she was watching for was Lena. She alone, of all the household, knew that Lena had taken to brandy. ‘If there’s been spirits used, even as much as a cork passed through the room, my nose gives a twitch,’ she was fond of saying, and it was true. Though it was many hours after the brandy flask had been opened, the moment she came into Lena’s room, that first morning, she had smelt brandy, and she had smelt it ever since. ‘Don’t blame her, po’r thing,’ thought Mrs. Oliver. ‘You have to take your comfort where you can find it.’ She stood in the passage as much for Lena’s sake as for Laurel’s. She did not mean to interfere, but you never knew what any one would do when they had a drop of drink in them.

  Nannie, in the kitchen, raised her head. She listened to Laurel crying. Without putting her thoughts into words she accepted that the cries were genuine. Intuitively she knew fear and misery lay behind them. She hurried up the stairs. She put her arms round Laurel. She spoke as if she were once more her baby.

  ‘You come along with Nannie, my lamb. Come along. Come along now. Nannie’s here.’

  XXX

  Clothes rationing was not a system Lena grasped. In theory she knew that clothes were now unobtainable without coupons but some part of her rejected the idea. When she was near a shop she would remember that she wanted a dozen pairs of stockings, or she would see some crêpe-de-chine she fancied, and she would go in and order the goods and be really surprised when she was asked for her coupons. When she looked at the ration books the coupons seemed to stand between her family and semi-nakedness. ‘We must be very careful of these and, when we have to use them, only buy the best of everything so the things will last.’