Saplings

  ‘Sorry, Tuesday darling, I’m so late. Have you had a nice day? Shall I read to you?’

  Tuesday wriggled free from Laurel’s arm. She was busy at her own things and had not at the moment time for an elder sister.

  ‘Don’t bother me now, Laurel. I’m doing something important.’

  It took several rebuffs before Laurel believed that Tuesday did not need her. As always with Laurel, her vision of what she intended had become to her a fact. She stood between Tuesday and a horrible world. Tuesday should be quite happy at school because of her. Tuesday should not be allowed to see how hateful a school Greenwood House was. Tuesday was depending on her for her happiness and she would never fail her. In the term, as well as in the holidays, Tuesday would be her baby, her especial charge.

  Laurel blamed Greenwood House for the loss of Tuesday. She had to blame something or someone. For the three weeks when Tuesday’s welfare had occupied her mind she had been almost happy. She had, too, practically achieved distinction. ‘Is that your little sister, Frog?’ ‘I say, Frog, your little sister’s sweet.’ ‘You ought to have dozens of children when you grow up, Frog, you’ll be a super mother.’

  Alice had showered common sense over Laurel.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother to hang around Tuesday all the time if I were you. I did a bit over Maria when she was new but they’re all right on their own really.’

  Laurel’s eyes shone.

  ‘Not Tuesday. She needs me.’

  ‘She doesn’t, and slopping over her all the time you’ve missed gardening twice and so you won’t be picked to have a piece of allotment this term.’

  Laurel loved Alice but she thought her regrettably mundane.

  ‘What does a piece of an allotment matter beside Tuesday being happy?’

  ‘Radishes for tea,’ said Alice. ‘You’re good at growing things, you were a fool to miss your chance.’

  The dawning of adolescence was no trouble to Alice. She accepted life and expected to enjoy it. She knew nothing of being tossed up to the skies and the corresponding drop into a well of despair. Laurel had been happy in her guardianship of Tuesday. She had in little felt the joy of motherhood. Her sensations were childish but there was sensual pleasure in being, as she conceived, so needed. There was satisfaction for her ego in her mental picture of herself. She broke away from Laurel, the unsuccessful schoolgirl, and became Laurel the mother. The pain, when it was forced on her that Tuesday did not need her, was very great. While she had established herself Tuesday’s guardian, she had spent her days in a state of exaltation. When the exaltation was torn away, and the stark fact that Tuesday did not need her was thrust into her mind, she knew that life held nothing more for her. Her schooldays lay ahead, year after year, bleak and undistinguished. The holidays were no longer oases. If Tuesday did not want her, then neither did the others. She tried to make Alice understand her agony.

  ‘I’ve nothing to live for, Alice. It’s different for you. You’re good at things. But here am I, fourteen, and not made a mark.’

  Alice had been brought up on the Just So Stories.

  ‘You ought to dig till you gently perspire.’

  XXXIV

  The bar was crowded. John, sitting at one of the small tables, eyed the swing doors anxiously. Would he recognise Ruth? He remembered her eyes, grey with everything that amused her stored up at the back of them, forbidden to reach the rest of her face. She had not been much in evidence when the Wiltshires lived in Regent’s Park. Sometimes she appeared with Laurel and Tony, and, if they were allowed down for lunch, she was of course with them. He had a memory of her, silent, attentive to the children and always those amused eyes. It would be difficult to pick her out in uniform, uniform changed women so, the wildest hair became neat and their faces took on a sameness. It was difficult to recognise even women you knew well when they had got themselves up in a uniform.

  Ruth had no difficulty in finding John. He always had been her idea of a sailor. Incredibly blue eyes with an appearance of permanently peering at the horizon. Not over tall, square with a balanced look as if to say ‘pitch and roll to any degree you fancy, but I shall keep standing.’ She had not before seen him in uniform. It suited him. She greeted him and sat down.

  The war had changed her, he noticed. She was the equivalent rank of a captain and, whatever she did in the Army, it was obviously more of a job than being a governess. The uniform suited her. She was one of those square-shouldered, narrow-waisted, no behind, long-legged types. Her eyes had not changed. They were looking at him as if they were having a good laugh. Had she any idea that he felt a bit awkward about the meeting? Of course, if he had explained to Lindsey, she would have been the first to agree that he ought to have a talk to Miss Glover, only it had seemed easier not to tell Lindsey anything about it. Lindsey was funny about leave, grudged any minute when he was out of her sight.

  He fetched the drinks and gave Ruth a cigarette.

  ‘I’m hoping to pop down to see Lena and the children tomorrow. My wife’s speaking somewhere for the Ministry of Information.’

  ‘Have you told them?’

  He could not explain to Ruth that it was a mistake to make plans. If Lindsey knew you planned to do something on your own, then she wanted you with her. She had always been like that, part of the artistic temperament, he supposed.

  ‘No, thought I’d trust my luck. Don’t want to make a song and dance about it. I judged from your letter young Tony needs careful tackling.’

  Ruth tapped her cigarette against the ash-tray, trying to find words to explain her letter and her anxiety.

  ‘You may find nothing wrong – Tony’s changed so....He was so different when his father was alive.’

  ‘It’s little Laurel I remember. Does she still have tow-coloured plaits?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s not so little. She was fourteen last May.’

  ‘No! Time does get a spurt on. When did you last see them?’

  ‘Just before Easter. I had seven days.’

  ‘Tony still worry you?’

  She paused, seeing Tony in her mind. How explain the disquiet and discomfiture she felt in his presence? If she used the words ‘mind’ or ‘mental’ she would give a totally wrong impression. Yet, that he had some illness of the mind she was convinced.

  ‘He doesn’t work. Kim’s in the form above him. Kim’s eleven this month and Tony will be thirteen in November. He looks ill, pale, not a good colour. He cares about nothing. He suggests “what’s it matter” about everything.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll do better when he goes to his public school.’

  ‘As he’s going at the moment he’ll not stay long there, he’ll be superannuated.’

  ‘Is his mother worried?’

  ‘I don’t know...I haven’t seen her...I suppose so... she must be.’

  ‘He definitely asked for me?’

  ‘Yes. The first time was in the autumn. Then, in the Lent term, he showed me your letter. I haven’t had leave to get down this term. Sometimes he writes. . . .’ she broke off.

  ‘What’s he say?’

  ‘Just that nothing happens, that it’s being a foul term.’

  ‘Wonder what he wants from me.’

  Ruth leant forward.

  ‘Quite likely if it was anything he won’t say; but if you could make friends with him. . . .’

  He looked at her eager face and thought that she ought to have children of her own, and that the man was lucky who married her. It must be very satisfying to have children and talk them over with your wife. Of course it was natural Lindsey had never wanted any. She had her work which had to come first, but he would have given a lot to have a parcel of kids. When they separated he asked Ruth if she could meet him again before his leave was up.

  ‘I ought to give you a full report.’

  Ruth said she could manage it. It was easy for her to get up and down to London. She gave him her telephone number. Travelling back on the train she thought about her meeting with John. She went
over in her mind what they had said. It would be interesting to hear how he found Tony and what he thought of Lena. Then suddenly she pulled her thoughts up and scrutinized them. They were there just as they had drifted through her mind, but there was an additional thought, far more vigorous than the others, and that was pleasure because she was to see John again.

  The children had accepted Walter with delight. He became Uncle Walter and was part of the household. He could not get down often but when he came he bulged with sweets, toys and chewing gum, and was prepared to spend his days at whatever occupation the children chose. For the sake of the children he almost quarrelled with Lena. He absolutely refused to come to the house while they were at home at Easter, as anything but the son of a friend of Mum’s-Mum. He also, since he knew his own and Lena’s weakness, refused to drink much during the holidays.

  ‘The kids are swell,’ he told Lena, ‘and I’m not cutting in on their vacation.’

  ‘But you won’t be cutting in. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay to dinner and go back on the late train. They won’t know anything about us.’

  Walter could not bring himself to put exactly what he felt into words. It was awkward, and would sound as if he were a preacher, but he had strong feelings on the subject. There was something lewd in a mother pushing her children off to bed so that she might be made love to on the drawing-room sofa. Fired though he was by Lena he appreciated that she was a problem. If he did not come down to see her she came up to London. That was all right once or perhaps twice a week, but more than that was thieving the children’s time. His coming down to see her was, though he got great pleasure from being with the children, an effort to keep Lena at home. He often felt as if she were a lovely but ferocious animal on a very frail lead. Physically he was immensely important to her, and with Lena that meant almost everything. She had soon learnt that she had been physically starved since Alex’s death, and that being loved was a better anodyne for loneliness, sleeplessness and grief than brandy. Not that she gave up brandy but she had found what was more effective, and the two together were making life almost endurable. What she did not know, but Walter did, was that she was coarsening. It had not been possible with Alex to give way utterly, it was easy with him for rapture to become revulsion. Walter was different. A good time was a good time to Walter and, while it lasted, it did not matter how good. The good time over, he forgot it, shook it off and thought of other things until he saw Lena again. Then Walter liked to drink. It was part of having a good time. He did not drink much except on a party, but when there was a party he believed that every available bottle should be emptied. But parties of any kind were out as far as Walter was concerned when there were children about. He tried desperately hard to make Lena see this in relation to the summer holidays.

  ‘Why, it’s not so long and it would be just terrible if they cottoned on to anything.’ ‘Don’t let’s have a drink. One drink leads to another and I’d feel dirty if the children saw us lit.’

  Even Walter, canny though he was, did not grasp that he was asking Lena for abstinence that she had weakened herself too much to achieve. Walter had given her something approximating to happiness; he could slide, once they had started on a slope, just as far as she could; she had never known that before. When he was not with her she was feverish with thoughts of next time. With Walter nothing was beyond imagination. By the end of July, when the children came home, she was as if addicted to a drug without which she could not live. When she found Walter really meant what he said she schemed to tempt him, and kept her spirits up with brandy. Only if she happened to wake in the night did she get a glimpse of the woman she was becoming. Then she saw herself with that ruthless perception of wakeful night hours, and shuddered. Her mouth would dry and she would whisper, ‘Oh Alex, Alex, if you’re anywhere come and help! I’m such a mess.’

  Nannie, Mrs. Oliver and Mustard drew together to shield the children. Mrs. Oliver would have liked to have talked things out, and indeed, did at home and round the neighbourhood, but there was no talking to Nannie or Mustard. From the appearance of either it was impossible to say for certain that they grasped what was going on. What did Nannie think happened behind the closed drawing-room door? What did she suppose, when, after she was in bed, footsteps crept up to Lena’s room? What did Mustard think of the empty bottles which, with a blank face, he buried? Only when the children came home an onlooker could have seen the watchfulness in the eyes of all three, and how each in her or his way tried to shield the children.

  With Mrs. Oliver it was extra talkativeness and shut doors when the girls were helping her.

  ‘Shut the door, Tuesday ducks, and while we’re doin’ the room I’ll tell you what ’appened to my ’usband’s sister, all from wearin’ an opal which, not being her month stone, was a terrible unlucky thing to do.’

  Nannie was nervous when the children were in the house.

  ‘It’s a lovely day. Run along out all of you,’ or, if it rained, she liked them under her eye. ‘I’ve got a bit of sugar and a half tin of treacle, you all come in the kitchen and make some toffee.’

  Mustard’s especial contribution was bonfires.

  ‘Beautiful to see they wild things burn. You children watch it and when the heart glows come to me and I’ll have some taters ready for cookin’.’

  The children saw nothing wrong. The summer holiday was the nicest they had known since Alex had been killed and, in many ways, the best since they had left London. Their own rooms and their own things were waiting exactly where they had left them at Easter. There were Nannie, Mrs. Oliver and Mustard, all part of home and pleased to see them back. Mum was much more as they had always known her. She wore bright-coloured clothes, and laughed a lot, and never sat looking sad. Best of all, she never talked in that awful special voice about Dad. Then there was Uncle Walter. When he came to the house it was as if bright lights were turned on. He was full of ideas of gay things to do, he liked being with them and they knew it. He enjoyed the things they enjoyed. After a Sunday visit when the outstanding occupations had been an elaborate funeral of a dead bird, or a picnic tea, he would say and mean it, ‘I’ve had just the best time.’

  Kim and Tuesday expected to enjoy their holidays, but to Laurel and Tony the placid summer days, though they did not heal or comfort, had a sedative effect and both grew easier daily. Laurel, who had come home edgy and difficult, prepared to hunch her shoulders and say that nobody wanted her, smoothed out. The others did want her, she became once more the guarding elder sister; Tuesday relied on her, Mrs. Oliver was delighted to see her, Mum was pleased that she was back, Uncle Walter called her his sweetheart. In the world of home nobody found her plain or dull, and it did not seem to matter that she was not especially good at anything. Tony slept better at home. He was glad to sink into home life. Running about with the others, doing what they did and making no mental effort. His attacks of fear grew less frequent. At school he would wake knowing that he was about to have an attack of fright. He saw the attacks as if they had shape. Huge, black and soft, ready to fall on him. Sometimes, from the time he knew an attack was waiting, it was hours before it came. In the waiting time he was lethargic, dulled by fright. When the attacks came they might last an hour, or drag on for days. First he felt a tenseness in his diaphragm, which got steadily worse till he was hard in front, as if he were made of wood. Then he had a sinking sensation. The people round him were still there but on a different level, beyond reach. At some time he had to get away alone and let the attack reach its climax. Then everything swam before his eyes, his heart beat quicker and quicker, there was thumping in his ears and he believed he was buried with his father, dying inch by inch.

  On the morning John came down Lena was alone in the house. Seeing nobody about he rang the door bell and, getting no answer, went round to the front and walked in at the open french windows of the drawing-room. The drawing-room was empty so he wandered into the hall. The door into the dining-room was wide open and at the sideboard he
saw Lena having a drink. He greeted her.

  ‘Hallo there!’

  The passage was dark. She swung round, her face glowing.

  ‘Walter! How on earth . . .’

  John came into the drawing-room.