Saplings

  ‘Well, Mum, what d’you expect? Suppose Dad was killed, do you think Henry and Maria and I would slop over any man you married? Because you liked him it doesn’t say we would.’

  ‘You’re being very silly, Alice. You ought to be trying to make Laurel behave. She’s sixteen this month. In a couple of years she can get a job if she doesn’t like being at home.’

  Alice looked mulish.

  ‘Well, I side with Laurel. She’s says he’s a foul man. He talks about their house as if it was his and he paid for everything. Actually, she says he doesn’t pay for a thing.’

  ‘He’s going to give them riding lessons and buy them a pony.’

  ‘Laurel can ride. She did before the war. Neither she nor Tony will take anything he buys, even a pony. They won’t speak to him. Tony won’t even speak to Aunt Lena.’

  ‘Very silly and unkind, behaving like spoilt babies. A great girl of sixteen and a boy who’ll be fifteen in November. I’ve no patience with it.’

  ‘Well, it’s no good cursing me. As a matter of fact, I told Laurel he probably wouldn’t be such a hell-hound when she got used to him. I hope you aren’t going to talk about him to Laurel, it will be just a waste of Sunday if you do.’

  Mrs. Fellows was on the look-out for Dot.

  ‘I wanted a word with you before you left. I don’t see you so much now Maria’s in the lower school. It’s about Tuesday. I don’t know what’s the matter with that child.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When she first came to me she was rather a baby, she needed bringing out and she got on splendidly. She started to go backwards last autumn term. She moons about and daydreams, and talks to herself. She should have moved into lower school this term, but I had to hold her back, the mere mention of it and she started walking in her sleep. I’ve had the doctor to her, he says she’s in a nervous state. He’s worried about her, says she’s to be watched.’

  ‘You know her mother’s married again?’

  ‘Yes. I told the doctor. He says that might have something to do with it, but, as a matter of fact, as I tell you, I was first worried about her in the autumn. All these nervous tricks, twitching and jumping.’

  ‘He’s not bad, the stepfather. In the end he may produce just what Tuesday needs. Her mother being ill probably upset the child and what she wants is an ordinary home-life. He means to give them that.’

  Mrs. Fellows wondered if she should say more. Report how dissatisfied Miss Clegg was with Laurel. If her Viola looked as forlorn as either Laurel or Tuesday it would break her heart. She said nothing. After all, Mrs. Enden was only an aunt and a very busy woman, and she had her own children to worry about.

  In two terms Tony had not made many friends amongst the boys. This third term they noticed him because of his bad temper. He flared up and argued about anything. He even did it in class; one master after another said wearily, ‘Don’t let’s have an argument, Wiltshire.’ The boys sometimes baited him to see him lose his hair, most of the time they left him to himself. They christened him ‘Sour-puss Wiltshire’.

  Selina visited Kim at school. She listened sympathetically to his grumbles about his stepfather. They made a plan that in the summer he would spend quite a lot of his holidays with her.

  ‘I don’t know how we’re going to manage, darling. He’s a man used to having his own way.’

  Kim dismissed Charles with a grand gesture.

  ‘Him! What about me? I always get what I want and I always will.’

  LI

  The flying bombs upset all plans. The house stood against an awe-inspiring network of balloons. The crash of bursting bombs went on night and day. Their home was no place for the children. All through June and into July Charles struggled and pulled wires to get a house, or rooms in an hotel, for Lena and her family. Even his wires were not strong enough. The hotels in safe areas barely bothered to refuse his request for four single and one double or three double rooms. Nobody knew of a house.

  Long before Dot heard from Lena she had guessed what was coming. She took the blow lightly. The Wiltshires were almost off the family hands, and having some of them for the summer was nothing. The war in Europe was going well, it might be over before Christmas. She planned that once more they would parcel out the children between them. Selina, she knew, wanted Kim, Sylvia would love to have all or any of them, and Lindsey was damn well going to take Laurel.

  Sylvia rang Dot the moment she got Lena’s letter. She was stuttering and confused but her anxiety rang over the line.

  ‘I love him but he doesn’t like it with us. Could I have Tuesday, or Laurel, or both? I wish it could be Tony, but it wasn’t . . . Andrew. . . .’

  Dot intended to stick to Tuesday. Mrs. Fellows was not happy about her. She would have a talk with Maria and try and discover what was wrong. Lindsey was not to get out of having Laurel.

  ‘I’ll take Tony, I’ll be glad to have him. Henry’s been accepted for the Fleet Air Arm, but they are taking a long time sending for him to start his training. He is afraid the war will be over before he’s trained. He blames all of us. Tony will be company for him. But if I take Tony you’re not to tell Lindsey you’ll have Laurel. She’s too fond of getting out of things. Now, promise, or I won’t take Tony.’

  Lindsey rang up that night.

  ‘I say, it’s a bit thick. I had that lumping schoolgirl all last summer, now I really can’t. Apart from anything else John’s ill. Some sort of bug. He’s home on sick leave.’

  ‘Laurel will be a help. It’s much easier for you than for me. You’ve got a cook.’

  ‘It’s the most awful bore.’

  ‘You shouldn’t find girls a bore. They should be copy. You can write a book about her.’

  ‘Nothing interesting in her. Just an adolescent at the silly stage.’

  ‘Anyway you’ve got to have her, so give in gracefully.’

  To Tony, Kim and Tuesday the change of plans came almost as good news. Tony, in as far as he would like to do anything, was willing to spend his holiday with Henry. Kim was charmed to go to Selina. Tuesday had become scared of home, it was quite a relief to go with Maria. She knew the Endens, she liked the house and garden.

  Laurel was the sufferer. She had never done well at Greenwood House, but after the Easter holidays she was really bitter and difficult. She already had a name for being tiresome, now she was classed as a black sheep. She was unreliable, took no responsibility, answered rudely, was noisy, on the slightest provocation shrieking with mirthless laughter. In the mistresses’ common room, ‘Rather like Laurel Wiltshire,’ or ‘The same type as Laurel Wiltshire’ was an accepted description of a difficult girl. Even when she tried to behave she was suspect. Daily she heard, with a weary inflection, ‘Yes, Laurel?’ ‘Well, what is it now, Laurel?’ Miss Clegg was asked if some of her senior girls might give help at weekends to an understaffed evacuated nursery school. She asked for volunteers. ‘I only want those of you who will stick to the work, are willing to do anything, and are really fond of small children.’ Laurel offered. Her eyes shone. A whole house full of nothing but babies! What could be more lovely! Miss Clegg dismissed her offer with a half laugh, in which, by a glance, she invited the girls to join. ‘No, Laurel, I hardly think you would be suitable. If you have time to give away over the weekends, you can do some extra homework. Your form mistress tells me your work is deplorable.’

  Alice remained a friend. She was a prefect, games captain, and would one day be head of the school. Others would not have found it easy to stand staunchly by a scape-grace cousin. Alice did not find it difficult. Laurel was her friend, and nothing changed that. It was no good Miss Clegg saying, ‘I wish you’d talk to Laurel.’ Alice’s face became a blank, her eyes, through her glasses, gazed out politely but without interest. No girl criticised Laurel in front of Alice. Alice was not afraid to say what she thought.

  ‘You must feel pretty perfect if you think you’re the right person to criticise other people.’

  Alone with Laurel Al
ice was equally ruthless.

  ‘I can’t think why you make such an ass of yourself. No point in being rude to the mistresses, the poor old cows are paid to teach you. It’s no good taking it out on them because you don’t like your stepfather.’

  ‘Why you fool around with girls like Shirley and her lot I can’t think. They aren’t your sort. Letting them think you got love letters, and all that rot.’

  Ruth, through her letters, got some idea of Laurel’s state of mind. Since the liberation of Europe had started she had been unable to get leave. She did what she could by writing. ‘I’m sorry you have to go to Aunt Lindsey’s again as you hate it so much, but perhaps, as it happens, it’s better you should not go home until Christmas. You wait until I see you, I think you are getting things out of proportion about your stepfather. After all, you are nearly grown up and can soon take up a career if you want to. Be sure to work hard and get your School Certificate with enough credits for matric exemption. You’ll need it for a job and you’ll shame me if you fail. I don’t promise, but I might get leave this summer. If I do I’ll meet you somewhere, perhaps I can find an hotel where I could invite you to stay with me. Send me Aunt Lindsey’s telephone number. I have put mine on this notepaper. It’s our Mess number. About nine o’clock at night is the safest time to ring. It’s expensive ringing Scotland but if you can find a call box near Aunt Lindsey, and feel a talk will help, it will be worth the money.’

  Laurel was still small and childish looking for her age, but her body was deceptive. It housed a creature floundering in the mud and flowers of adolescence. From Lena she inherited the need to worship someone, and she had no one on whom to expend her need. She needed to come first with someone, and there was no one whose first thought was ever for her. From Alex came purity. She felt no connection yet between her heart and body. The fastidious side of her disliked what Alice described as ‘Shirley and her lot’. Yet she clung to them. They were an excitement, they lived in a continual surge of emotion. They revelled in each other, got pleasure in their own and each other’s physical condition. They came back each term with news of boy friends, they whispered of, and magnified, slight adventures. As the term wore on they needed something more concrete than memories. It was then they had passions and crushes for a girl, or one of the mistresses. It worried Laurel that she knew none of the thrills they knew. She had been able to put over Walter at the time, but she had never fooled herself. She knew he was Lena’s friend and thought of her as a child. She toyed with the idea of pretending she had a crush on one of the girls, but she was afraid of being snubbed. Shirley and her lot did not seem to mind being snubbed, but then they were not the butt of the school, called even by juniors The Frog. After Walter stopped writing she had ceased to be interesting to Shirley and her friends, and had been dropped. This term she had romantic interest. Her pallor, her moodiness and the fact that she was known to cry herself to sleep, brought her back into favour. ‘Poor old Frog, you have got it badly.’ Laurel played up, partly for the pleasure of being talked about and discussed. She could feel respect. She was the great lover. Still more, it was a relief to have an excuse for herself. She was behaving atrociously and knew it. Shirley and her lot spread the news. The Frog loved an American. ‘Have you ever seen anyone so changed!’ It was known that her mother had married again, but clearly that had not upset Laurel. All that was heard of Charles was a casual, ‘He’s all right.’

  When the news came she was to spend the summer holiday with Lindsey, Laurel broke down. They thought she must be suffering from a chill, and put her in the sick-room.

  There was only one other girl in with her. At night, when the lights were out and the girl was asleep, Laurel buried her face in her pillows and cried into the early hours of the morning.

  ‘It isn’t that I wanted to go home, not with him there. But packed off to Aunt Lindsey, who despises me. They push me about like a parcel. Nobody cares about me. Nobody at all.’

  LII

  Happiness was waiting for Laurel. She found it the moment she reached Lindsey’s house, and it grew with every hour. John was home. He was feeling ill and wretched. Lindsey liked having him under her eye, but she was impatient with illness. He had picked up some infection which had lamed him and stiffened one shoulder. He had spent two months in hospital, and was temporarily out to see whether a period at home would help. He needed encouragement and unending care. What he got was, ‘I think it would do you good to make more effort.’ ‘You mustn’t let yourself become a malade imaginaire.’

  Hannah and Miss Grigson had done what they could. Hannah, running after John with glasses of milk, and sometimes a beaten egg. Miss Grigson by giving her spare time to him. ‘Is there anything you want? I’ve my bicycle in the hall. I can get to the shops in no time.’ ‘How’s the crossword going today? I’ve brought the dictionaries down.’

  John was what Laurel craved. He needed love, he needed looking after. What they gave each other was as delicate as a wood anemone. It was bruisable, intensely fragile. Laurel, at one laugh, or even a wrong inflection, would have sunk back into the self-conscious, angular, bristly girl who came to the house. John had always wanted children, he had dreamt sometimes of how they would be. Laurel told her troubles, and even as she told them, because he did not find her plain or dull, the troubles began to evaporate. He laughed when she told him she was called Frog, and repeated it, pulling her plaits, and saying he had always liked frogs. She did not tell him about Walter, she would have liked to, but it might have worried him, as he would have thought her silly, and he was not well enough to be worried.

  Laurel provided the encouragement John needed.

  ‘Of course your foot’s stiff this morning, it’s raining. Mrs. Oliver, who isn’t ill at all, says she feels her joints whenever it rains, or even if rain’s coming.’

  ‘Do you know, we’ve been so long a walk I’m tired and you aren’t tired at all.’

  ‘Of course you’ll be well enough to go back to sea. I haven’t been in the house long and you’re miles better already.’

  She had the faith of her age.

  ‘You needn’t be a golf secretary again if you don’t like it. Think of something different. Such fun to start something new.’

  With no word spoken John and Laurel hid their happiness in each other’s company, from Lindsey. At meals and when she was about there were no confidences. Laurel tried not to run about anticipating John’s every need. John hardly spoke to Laurel. They both said as little as possible. Nevertheless Lindsey sensed John was fond of Laurel, and was jealous. Bitter words spewed from her.

  ‘Don’t fuss over that girl, John, it isn’t decent.’

  ‘Really, you two! Can’t you be a minute out of each other’s sight?’

  LIII

  Ruth came south for a course. She telephoned to ask if Laurel might make the simple journey to meet her. Lindsey was out so Miss Grigson asked John to take the call. John was delighted to hear Ruth’s voice again. Rather, of course. He’d bring Laurel over himself.

  Ruth’s course lasted three weeks. Whenever Lindsey was away lecturing John and Laurel went over to see her. They had picnic lunches, and sometimes, when Lindsey was away a night, picnic suppers. John and Ruth never let Laurel feel in the way, she was the reason for the meeting, all conversation was to her. They were glad to have her. The war had changed them both. Ruth, who had begun the war in her late twenties, had still considered herself a girl, and now recognised that Peace would find her beginning the middle years. That would need thought and adjustment, and taking happiness where you found it, came into account. John, through the years of separation, had given consideration to his marriage. It was a cold, fruitless, worthless thing. While Laurel chattered, John and Ruth stared at each other across her. They knew they were in love.

  On the day before Ruth returned to the North there was a final picnic. John sent Laurel to buy some lemonade. Alone with Ruth, he said:

  ‘Give me your address. I’ll write.’

&n
bsp; She said:

  ‘Here it is. Where shall I answer?’

  He had a card with his club address ready in his hand.

  LIV

  Laurel was packing. She did not cry, at sixteen you could not cry because you were returning to school. She was so depressed that she felt as if she were ill, her whole body ached. It was over. The lovely holiday. It was not as if there were another holiday to look forward to. By Christmas the flying bombs were sure to have stopped. She would go home to be ordered about and dictated to by Charles.

  Her door was open. John looked in, he closed it softly behind him. He held out a flat leather box. Laurel did not take it.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look and see.’

  She took the case and opened it. Inside was a string of seed pearls. She raised startled eyes.

  ‘Pearls! For me!’

  ‘Only seed. Put them on.’

  She fastened the clasp and went to her mirror, then turned and flung herself at him.

  ‘They’re heavenly. I shall wear them at school. No one will know, they’ll be under my frock.’

  ‘I wanted to give you something pretty. You’ve been a kind niece. I shall miss you more than I can say.’

  Laurel fingered the pearls.

  ‘Will you? It’s awfully nice to hear somebody say that.’ She raised her eyes. ‘When I mind things at school, and when I funk my School Certificate exam, I shall touch these, and everything will be all right. Mum’s given me lovely presents, of course, but this is the nicest I ever had. It’s just a fondness present, isn’t it? Not because you had to, because of birthday or Christmas, or anything?’

  ‘Yes, it’s just for fondness, and a little as a thank offering.’

  ‘What for?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’ll explain one day. Now put the pearls away. They’re a secret, you know.’