Saplings

  Alex climbed back on to the raft.

  ‘How’s the world’s champion diver getting on?’ She half got up to show him, he pulled her back. ‘I’ve watched. You’re coming along well. Going to represent the nation at the Olympic Games?’

  Laurel felt relaxed. How gorgeous Dad was! He didn’t exactly laugh at you, but somehow he made everything seem to matter less. She leant against him.

  ‘I’d like to be really good. Don’t you like being good at electrical things?’

  ‘I’m lucky, of course, my job’s my hobby and I was lucky, too, to have an uncle’s firm to step into.’

  Laurel hugged her knees.

  ‘But it’s the other people knowing you’re good. When you’re with other people who do the same sort of things, their knowing you are super at it.’

  ‘See what you mean, though you’ve got a very exaggerated view of your father’s position. What you’re trying to say is that in whatever field you choose, you want to be accepted as first-class.’

  ‘As absolutely the best that could be.’

  ‘Don’t want much, do you? If I thought it mattered if you shone or not I’d tell you that you were going the wrong way about it. In the last couple of years you’ve had a try at championship standard at tennis, golf and now diving; there was that Florence Nightingale patch and you were going to be an actress. Oh yes, and a singer.’

  She gave his arm a hug.

  ‘Don’t tease.’

  ‘I’m not, it’s true. What I’m going to get from all this energy is a daughter who’s a good all-rounder. I shall like that.’

  ‘Not at lessons I won’t be. I’m a dreadful disappointment to Miss Glover.’

  He laughed.

  ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? And I should have so liked a brilliant daughter.’

  She knew he was teasing but she had to probe.

  ‘But, Dad, wouldn’t you like to be proud of me?’

  It was in his mind to tell her how proud he was. How he loved her comic small face and her fair pig-tails, and her earnestness, and her elder sister ways which were such an endearing part of the family set-up; but he held back his thoughts. No good going in for a lot of chat, making her selfconscious.

  ‘Come on in, you’re shivering.’

  On the beach Nannie was handing out the buns and milk. Kim, with his swim safely behind him, was entirely above himself. He had succeeded and he was not now prepared to let it become an ordinary morning. Everybody had been looking and thinking of him and it had got to go on being Kim’s day. He talked too loud, he threw his bun about, he pretended to have sand in his eye.

  There were by now other families round them. The mothers looked at Kim and smiled at Lena. The smiles said, ‘What a lovely child!’ Lena could see herself, fair and slim, little Tuesday lolling against her and exquisite Kim playing around, and she knew what a picture they must look, and the thought amused rather than pleased her. There was nothing she liked better than to be envied and admired, but this was not the picture she wanted exhibited. That picture was of her and Alex. Of course the children must be there too, but as charming decorations, not interfering with the original portrait of two people.

  Alex and Laurel came splashing out of the sea. Lena noticed how happy Alex was with Laurel, and cared and was disgusted with herself because she cared. She held herself in check but she could hear the faint edge behind her voice.

  ‘Oh, there you are! Run along and get off that wet bathing dress, Laurel. She’s been in too long, Alex, she’s shivering.’

  Alex picked up the bathrobe he had left on the sand and put it on.

  ‘Yes, scuttle along.’ He sat down by Lena. ‘I don’t think she’s really cold, it’s grand in the water.’

  The edge left her voice. She ran her comb through his hair, she knew he hated that sort of thing but it put, from the onlookers’ view-point, their family group into the right perspective.

  Alex smoothed his wet hair with his hand to push away her comb, but at the same time, so as not to hurt her, he smiled up into her face.

  ‘Where’s Tony?’

  Kim pranced over and sat by his father.

  ‘He’s gone to buy Mum a magazine. I bet I catch simply hundreds of prawns.’

  Alex, because he did not always want to be squashing Kim, turned to Tuesday, who was leaning against her mother decorating her wooden spade with bands of seaweed. She looked the personification of contentment.

  ‘What about Tuesday? Are you going to catch a lot of prawns?’

  Lena shook her head.

  ‘She’s too small to drag over there. You’ll spend a lovely afternoon on the beach with Nannie, won’t you, pet?’

  Tuesday raised her eyes to her father’s. They were, he noticed, brimming with fright, but she said nothing.

  Nannie spoke without looking up from her work.

  ‘Tuesday’s expecting to have her treat with the others, ’m. Her rest’s fixed for before her lunch. Miss Glover’s walking over and meeting us there.’

  ‘Is she though?’ said Alex. ‘I wouldn’t mind the walk myself.’

  Tony, holding The Tatler, had joined the family in time to hear the last words.

  ‘Could we walk, Dad?’

  Lena held out her hand for the magazine.

  ‘No, you can’t because you’ve got a selfish Mummie who wants to have fun too.’

  ‘But we shan’t be very much behind you,’ Tony protested. ‘We could start earlier.’

  Lena seemed absorbed in her magazine.

  ‘I don’t mind sitting on a beach watching you all prawn, but I’d like to dance this evening and I don’t want a creaking, exhausted husband who says he’s too tired.’

  Tony lay down beside Nannie and took his bun out of her bag.

  ‘When do you get too old to dance?’

  Lena at thirty-three knew herself still lovely and could afford to laugh.

  ‘Not ever, I hope.’

  ‘You and Dad will look pretty comic bumping round when you’re old and fat.’

  Alex got up.

  ‘A horrible picture, Tony, I assure you we’ll give up long before then.’

  Lena, without looking up from her magazine, felt Alex leave her side. He would have gone to the tent to put on his things. When they were first married, or even a few years ago, she would have gone with him. She would not have missed those seconds in the hot tent, the flash of passion that would have come from the closeness of his cool, naked body. But he had got so self-conscious, always worrying about what the children were thinking. She had faced that. He wanted to switch things. He wanted to be a family man, bless him. The children were darlings, but she was not a family woman, she was utterly wife, and, if it came to that, a mistress too, and she meant to go on being just those things. It didn’t matter giving in to him occasionally, letting him be all father. When they were alone she would brush that away and have him where she wanted him.

  Laurel, in her shorts and shirt, came down the beach wringing out her bathing dress. She had tired herself diving and felt disgruntled and prickly.

  ‘Here’s your milk, dear,’ said Nannie. Laurel paid no attention to the proffered glass. Nannie glanced at her. ‘Too long in the water,’ she thought. She raised her voice slightly. ‘You have to drink it as well you know, so you may as well get it down first as last.’

  Laurel twisted her bathing dress.

  ‘Oh, shut up! I don’t want the silly old milk.’

  Alex had come back. He took the mug from Nannie.

  ‘Come on, my girl, throw it back.’

  Laurel hated herself for being bad-tempered but did not know how to stop. She snatched the mug.

  ‘Oh, all right. But it’s idiotic, it’s almost lunch time.’

  If there was one thing Lena understood it was feeling edgy for no particular reason, especially she understood such a mood in her own sex. She got up and held out a hand to Laurel. ‘Come on, darling. We’ll put some eau-de-Cologne in my bath and I’ll wash the salt off you. Th
en you’ll put on a clean frock for lunch.’

  ‘Oh goodness, not my blue!’

  Lena laughed.

  ‘Don’t be angry, you shan’t wear anything you don’t want to.’ She nodded at Alex. ‘I’ll meet you for a cocktail at half-past twelve.’

  Lena bathed Laurel and dusted her with bath powder. She went to the child’s room and fetched the blue dress. She was unutterably charming, Laurel was unable to withstand her. She flung her arms round her neck.

  ‘You’re the most absolutely gorgeous mother in the world.’

  Tony met Laurel in the corridor. He had found his clean blue shirt on his bed and been ordered to put it on. He was furious.

  ‘Dressed up monkeys just to eat lunch!’

  Laurel, soothed and stroked not only back to good temper but to the radiant happiness of the early morning, danced towards the lift.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind, we can get back into our beach things directly afterwards.’

  Tony looked at her bitterly.

  ‘Just like a girl! Dress-up – dress-up. You don’t care how often you change or what a fool you look.’

  Laurel reached the lift first.

  ‘You can press the button. It’s not that I like dressing up but it’s such an absolutely perfect day now Dad and Mum have come, I can’t let a silly old frock spoil it.’

  Tony was busy peering for the lift.

  ‘Well, one thing, Kim won’t be able to show off with Dad there. I tell you what, I’ll get the liftman to let me open the gates, and he just might let us work the lift.’

  II

  Ruth Glover was in her late twenties. The daughter of a parson who knew that after church teaching, his main parental duty was to see that his sons were well educated. He had four sons, and the two daughters who completed what he was fond of calling his quiver had been aided by what he described as the goodness of God, and less high-minded people called charity. The school the girls were sent to was for the daughters of poor clergy, and fees were settled by a means test. When the means test showed an exceptionally low state of finance there were no fees, and even clothes were provided. By the time the four sons had been sent to good preparatory schools, followed by Marlborough, there were no means left in the vicarage, so Ruth and her sister were dressed and educated free. ‘Nobody,’ the headmistress said, ‘knows what any parent pays, nor does anybody care. We are just one happy family.’ Ruth and her sister found this a grossly inaccurate statement. The sister, who was frail, staged an ill-health campaign and was removed after two terms to live at home, dimly educated by her father and, after school hours, by the mistress of the village school. Ruth remained. She was highly-strung and acutely sensitive and, to defend herself, drew away from her childhood, studying it with detachment, waiting patiently to be grown up. As a legacy of these bitter school years she possessed a profound understanding of children.

  Ruth’s grey eyes wandered round the table. She kept her eyes down, for she knew she was incapable of hiding the amusement which would flick across them. Such a pretty sight! Daddy and Mummy Wiltshire and the four fair blue shirted or frocked children. The solid good Nannie, and (she hoped) the suitable looking, suitably dressed governess. Lena was at her radiant best. She had been doing her ‘perfect Mummie’ act and was pleased with herself, and would glow on the children all through lunch. ‘Not,’ thought Ruth fairly, ‘that it’s an act while she’s doing it. She means every word of it. The truth is, of course, she’s all impulses. She knows so well herself what it’s like to feel fratchy and to want coaxing and petting back to normal, that seeing Laurel in that state she had an impulse to snap her out of it.’ Ruth glanced at Laurel, who was sitting next to her. The child was silent, with a secret look which Ruth knew meant she was hugging the perfect minutes, aware that she was happy and that it was a fragile condition, broken in a split second. ‘Poor little thing!’ thought Ruth. ‘I wish she was less vulnerable.’ She turned over a problem which was always at the back of her mind. Was Lena a good mother? There was no doubt that children were lucky who had parents, particularly a mother, whom they could show off. She had suffered too acutely from her own mother’s occasional visits to her school, not to know what shame a dowdy, unpolished mother could bring. The children were too young to care yet but in a year or two Lena’s well-groomed appearance and her flair for saying and doing the right thing would be highly valued, though probably casually taken for granted. Security mattered more than anything else to children, and in Lena they had the security of a mother who was always in the picture. The Wiltshire children would never offer secret prayers, ‘Oh, God, don’t let Mother wear that evening blouse like it is. It could be made to look better; do let her have it altered before she comes for the half-term concert.’ ‘Oh, God, don’t let Mother tell stories about us in a loud voice, especially don’t let her tell stories about our not knowing how babies come; I know she thinks it funny but everybody else just wonders why she hasn’t brought us up properly.’

  On other counts Lena was not so good. She never even pretended the children came first. But did that matter? Was that not out-balanced by the perfect love always before the children’s eyes? Ruth, helping herself to peas, knew one of her more noticeably amused flicks was crossing her eyes. Was it perfect love the children saw? Certainly Lena loved Alex, but perfect love in her philosophy was an ill-balanced affair, almost all body, the merest whiff of soul.

  As an employer Lena could scarcely be bettered; she stated what she wanted, and then withdrew. Nothing, Ruth believed, was worse for children from a character training point of view, than to have a second authority to run to. Lena liked her children prettily dressed, good-mannered and well tended, but when she was about she liked those who saw to these things to be as inconspicuous as possible. This lunch was turning out well from that point of view. Because the children were still thrilled by the arrival of their parents, it chanced they had not spoken to their governess, but if they did all the answer they would get would be a monosyllable. Yes, on points Lena worked out well. Her lack of maternal instinct fitted the family scheme, and yet nobody could be, when she felt like it, a more tender mother. Ruth placed tenderness, petting and cuddling, even when it was spasmodic, high amongst a child’s necessities. And how well Lena’s way of mind suited Alex. Did Lena know how firmly Alex held the reins of his children’s lives? Probably not, for he was far too shrewd to allow her to get jealous of her children. All his talks with herself and with Nannie were at carefully chosen times, when Lena was either out or too engrossed in something else to mind if he was in the nursery or schoolroom. It was one of those odd wordless arrangements. Ruth had never been told that she must discuss all she did for the children, and almost all she thought about them, with Alex, but that was what he expected and he expected something of the same sort from Nannie. Ruth had often wondered how Alex had arranged the engaging of Nannie for Laurel. The Nannie for the first baby would be engaged by the wife’s mother, if the wife didn’t do it. But Nannie was Alex’s choice. Lena would have liked, and had probably tried to get, a young Norland or the equivalent, looking smart in her uniform, and she would have seen that the nursery maid looked smart too. Yet Alex had felt, probably just because Lena was as she was, that his child must have somebody a little old-fashioned, solid, placid, and imperturbable, so he had acquired Nannie, who had engaged her own nursery maids and very much ruled her nurseries ever since. And what a success she was! She gave, unknowingly, a feeling of permanence to all in the house. Nobody could imagine the Wiltshires without Nannie. To the children, even as they grew away from her, she was unutterably important. She was always there, always the same, and seemed in her unchangeableness a shield to hold away the fears of growing up.

  Ruth looked across at Nannie and wondered what she would say if she told her the thoughts she had about her. Nothing probably, for nobody could discourage foolish chat more ably than Nannie. Or she might produce one of her convictions, which seemed to flow through her, uninterrupted by thought. ‘Children
like things just so, even the untidiest gets upset if his things aren’t in the place he expects.’

  ‘If it’s a decent day tomorrow,’ said Alex to Lena, ‘shall we go to church in one of the downland villages?’

  The waiter brought strawberry ice-cream. Lena, with pleasure, watched the exchange of glances between the children. They were not allowed to mention food at the table, but their expressions were sweet, especially Kim’s. If Kim kept even half his looks what a riot with the girls he was going to be. Sunday church was one of Alex’s things. He was quite ridiculous about it but he made such a point of it that she went en famille nearly every Sunday. She thought it a fearful bore and she let Alex know that she did, and his fear that she might stop attending was a little weapon in reserve. She was a hoarder of weapons.

  ‘I should have thought we needn’t go to church on a holiday,’ said Tony. ‘I have to go twice every Sunday at school.’

  ‘Fat lot of term you’ve had, my boy,’ Laurel pointed out.

  Kim looked up at his mother.

  ‘Tuesday and me will say our prayers on the beach with Nannie.’

  ‘Tuesday and you, if you don’t go to church in the morning, will go to the children’s service in the afternoon,’ said Nannie. She turned to Alex. ‘All together in the morning would be nice, sir, and take the little ones out before the sermon.’

  Laurel touched Ruth’s arm to get her attention.

  ‘Nannie’s magazine had an article on life at Sandringham. I knew she’d work it out on us.’

  Nannie, as Ruth hoped, answered.