Saplings

  ‘Let’s be fair, they’re a brilliant couple. We’ve nothing like that to show.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t like Laurel to be like Fiona or me like Bertie.’

  Alex ran his hand through Tony’s hair and stood it on end.

  ‘You’ve no idea what I would like. Perhaps I’d like to see you with long hair like Bertie’s.’ He lowered his voice because they were within hailing distance of Laurel. ‘Now mind, not a word to a soul about what I’ve told you, especially Mum. She’s not to know I’ve spoken to you. Naturally it’s upsetting for her to have her home broken up. She knows it may happen and she’s being splendid about it, but it’s not a thing we talk about. Understand?’

  Tony was filled with pride. It was grand having Dad telling things to just him. There was nobody like Dad. He wanted to do something to show how he felt. He stepped back and butted his father with his head.

  ‘I would have laughed if I’d knocked you over.’

  Alex raised his voice.

  ‘Come and protect your poor father, Laurel. This brother of yours is turning into a goat.’

  IV

  Lena, lying on her back gazing at the sky through her dark glasses, felt at peace. She was sheltered from the wind and had put on her bathing dress in order to give her skin a chance to take on its first film of tan. She loved the sun. Warmth from the sun made her relax, which few things did, and content flow through her. She was still glowing from the memory of the morning. Darling Laurel, it was so easy to please her. It would have been so simple by other handling to spoil her day. If only everybody would realise that with a little effort bad moods could be soothed away. The trouble was, of course, that most people were so insensitive, they didn’t know what a mood was. The children should always know that she understood, and didn’t think being on edge was naughtiness. That sort of understanding was what mothers ought to give.

  Ruth came down the beach and sat down by Nannie and Tuesday. Drowsily Lena heard their conversation. They spoke in low voices so as not to disturb her. She liked that, it was sympathetic and added to her feeling of wellbeing.

  ‘Tired I should think, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, it was lovely. I’m just in time to help you lay tea. How’s the prawning been getting on?’

  ‘Tony and his father have kept stopping and putting things in those bags. Kim got cross because he didn’t catch anything, so I gave him some crumbs from the cake tin to throw on the water, I said that would bring them into his net.’

  ‘What are you going to say when he comes back without any?’

  ‘He’ll have a shrimp or two I shouldn’t wonder. He was too impatient, his net wasn’t in before it was out. Now I’ve told him the crumbs won’t act unless he counts twenty-five slowly before he picks his net up.’

  ‘I wonder how Laurel’s done.’

  ‘She’s not caring properly. Miss Live-in-the-clouds this afternoon.’

  Ruth rolled over on to her elbows.

  ‘Oh Tuesday, what dear little moulds!’

  Nannie’s voice was full of approval.

  ‘They were in a box of little things Gran sent for Christmas, weren’t they, pet?’

  Tuesday explained her work.

  ‘That sort with green seaweed are sugar cake, and that sort with brown seaweed have chocolate on them.’

  Nannie felt making cakes of sand was a most suitable occupation.

  ‘Gran always seems to send us just what we want, doesn’t she, pet?’

  Lena moved slightly. What a fuss everybody made of Alex’s mother. She couldn’t do the simplest thing without a chorus of praise. She was quite nice, considering she had led a dull domestic life. It was unkind really the way everybody kept building her up into something she wasn’t. It put people off her. You didn’t get a chance to like people who were held up to you as examples.

  Ruth had turned to watch the prawners.

  ‘It would be nice if the children could have their prawns for tea.’

  Nannie considered the difficulties.

  ‘We haven’t anything to cook them in. Besides, to crisp they ought to have a red hot poker put in the water.’

  Lena saw a picnic fire in her mind’s eye. Of course the children would love their prawns for tea. It was nonsense to say it couldn’t be managed. Somebody could borrow a saucepan, and somebody could make a fire.

  ‘We’re going to have a fire.’ She considered the labour problem. Finding wood would be tiresome, besides, if a saucepan had to be borrowed she was the one to do it, charm got that kind of thing. She saw herself smiling on a cottage doorstep, then she added Tuesday to the picture. She stretched out a hand for her frock and buttoned it on. ‘You two collect wood and get a lovely fire going and Tuesday and I will fetch a saucepan of water.’

  It was natural to Lena to intend that when she gave time to any of her children that time was made memorable. She had been brought up that way. Her mother had always been her ideal of all that was feminine and delicious. It had not hurt her as a child to be petted and exhibited one moment and to be shut away in her schoolroom or nursery the next. It had been understood that people as lovely as Mummie had to be shared. She had not got one unlovely memory of her parents when she had been a child, they never scolded, they were never out of temper before her, they left all of what her mother collectively described as ‘the drearies’ of upbringing to nurses and governesses. Mummie and Daddy were all charm, fun and happiness.

  It was no distance to the coastguard’s cottage from which they borrowed a saucepan filled with hot water, but Lena made every foot enthralling. She and Tuesday were butterflies. She had Tuesday shouting with excitement, darting from flower to flower.

  ‘Look, Mum, I’m sitting on a harebell.’ ‘Look, Mum, this butterfly is liking this little yellow flower.’

  Back on the beach a fire of driftwood was blazing and Ruth, who had been a Guide at her school, had a makeshift stove built so that the draught kept the fire going. Even so the fire needed watching and it was getting late, there was tea to lay, both Ruth and Nannie were busy. Nannie spoke firmly to Tuesday.

  ‘Sit down, dear, and make some more sand cakes.’

  ‘But I’m a butterfly and butterflies can go simply anywhere. You watch this butterfly jump in the tea basket.’

  Nannie’s voice was not raised.

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear. There’s a time for everything. You get back to your sand cakes or we’ll have tears before bedtime.’

  Tuesday turned to Lena. She had invented this gorgeous game, she wouldn’t want a butterfly to go back to making sand cakes. But Lena had seen that the boring business of unpacking the tea basket was going on, she threw the group round the fire off as if they were a frock she had worn in the morning and had changed out of for the afternoon. She strolled down the beach towards the rest of her family.

  Ruth, unwrapping packets of bread and butter, patted a piece of sand by her side. Whatever was offered was a poor substitute for Lena’s game, but she hated to see Tuesday brought quite so suddenly back to the everyday.

  ‘You lay the tea for us, and if we’ve time we’ll get some flowers to make the table cloth look pretty.’

  V

  The children’s voices rose and fell, now all four together, then Tuesday’s careful small notes, Laurel’s eager tone breaking in, topped by Kim, his words ripping over each other, or Tony’s rounder rather serious voice. It was the perfect picnic. What could be more glorious when you climbed up the beach with your catch than to find water boiling for the cooking! What a superb rounding off of the afternoon’s work it had been when Kim had caught the little lobster. The actual chasing of the lobster had been a family affair, but it was Kim’s net that had roused the lobster and, therefore of course, Kim’s lobster. They were all beside themselves. Surely nobody else had ever gone out to prawn and caught a lobster. Lobsters were things caught in nets far out. It was a miracle. Every angle of the whole affair was recounted. It was a song, a saga for evermore. ‘That day we caught the lobst
er.’

  ‘I do wish,’ said Kim, ‘we had crackers. It’s the one thing missing to make this the most perfect picnic that ever was.’

  Laurel’s tone was reproving.

  ‘Crackers, my boy, belong to birthdays and Christmas. We’ll have crackers next in August on your birthday.’

  Kim looked at his father.

  ‘Where are we going this August?’

  The remark fell like a breath of wind on the surface of a pond. The ruffle of the first thought spreading through the minds of the adults in ring after ring of anxious wondering.

  Even Nannie was disturbed. This holiday was very nice, but give her the rooms she knew, those two fine nurseries overlooking Regent’s Park, the boys’ bedroom at the back, and the little dressing-room for Laurel on the floor below. Of course it was all right at old Mrs. Wiltshire’s. The nurseries had been kept very nicely for the grandchildren, and the old lady wasn’t one to want ways interfered with; but what was all right for a holiday wasn’t all right for keeps.

  Ruth resented fear. You did not become adult with a life which was your own to handle, to have your vision clouded by fear. The mention of war made her feel she must toss up her chin and throw back her shoulders. All right, there is going to be a war, with gas, bombs and all the rest of it. Everything that could be done must be done to spare children from the worst of it, but adults should face it in their imaginations to the ghastly end, and then, no matter what came, they were armed. But nobody was doing that, at least the Wiltshires weren’t. Alex was in a way. This holiday was the proof of it but not in a good whole-hoggish way. All right, war is coming, and when it comes we will do the following things. We will prepare everything in advance so that the children feel there’s some order and arrangement in it all.

  Lena deliberately did not look at Alex. He must answer Kim. She didn’t want that silly argument re-opened. Go with the children to his mother indeed! The children mustn’t be separated from both their parents. How funny and dense he could be! He couldn’t really think she’d live apart from him.

  Alex grinned at Kim. Behind his grin was a wish to turn him over his knee and spank him for the way in which his six word query had driven straight to the middle of the subject that they were struggling to avoid. He had not got an answer for he had not any idea where they would be. If war hadn’t broken out he might pack them off somewhere, probably just with Nannie and Ruth. On the other hand, if it had started, they would, of course, be with their grandmother and he didn’t want to make a statement because one of the children would be sure to say, ‘Are you and Mum coming with us?’ Lena would never start an argument in front of the children, but he didn’t want to talk about the subject again, for he had managed to blunt her flat refusal by, ‘Oh well, it hasn’t happened yet. No need to make a decision today.’ It was a wretched shelving of the problem, but you had to shelve things when you dealt with Lena.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he answered Kim. ‘Where would you like to go?’

  ‘Abroad,’ said Kim. ‘I liked that time we spent with Mum’s-Mum at that Cannes.’

  ‘You couldn’t have really, Kim,’ Laurel protested. ‘She made a fuss all the time because she hadn’t the Pekineses because of not being able to bring them back to England.’

  Tony’s tone was heartfelt.

  ‘Thank goodness we can’t go there again, it was dress up, dress up all the time and I never understood a word anybody said.’

  ‘Shows how bad your French is!’ Alex pointed out. Laurel leant forward.

  ‘You know, I wouldn’t mind stopping at home.’

  There were protests from Tony and Kim.

  ‘In August!’

  ‘Nobody ever stays in London in August.’

  Laurel stuck to her idea.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit. Other people in the Crescent would be away and we could look through their windows without being rude, and there’s a lot of summer things I want to do that we’ve never done except on Saturdays, because we’re always away in August.’

  Tony reached for some more bread and butter.

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘I’ve wanted for simply ages to go to the docks on that river boat. Then there’s things at home. I want to move all my nicest books out of the schoolroom and put them in my bedroom. I’ve been meaning to and meaning to but I’ve never had time.’

  ‘Poor overworked girl!’ said Alex.

  ‘It’s true. With lessons at home and dancing, gym and special French to go to, and the concerts and going to look at pictures, I don’t get much time over, that’s why I wouldn’t mind a whole summer holiday at home, and anyway I’d always rather be at home than anywhere else on earth.’

  ‘What about this diving?’ Alex asked. ‘Have you thought of that in your sweeping statement?’

  Tony buried his prawn shells.

  ‘I know what Laurel means. Everywhere else is nice to come to but London’s different. I suppose it’s because it’s where we live.’ He turned to Laurel. ‘Of course, if the whole house and all of us could fly to somewhere like this beach, that would be different.’

  ‘I’d still rather it was where it is,’ said Laurel. ‘I like Regent’s Park and hearing the Zoo noises in the night. I think just where we live is the loveliest place to be.’ She swung round to her father. ‘That’s why I’m so awfully glad that you said you liked daughters to be at home and not sent away to boarding schools.’

  ‘I said it was old-fashioned of me.’

  Laurel was next to Lena. She patted her mother’s knee.

  ‘You wouldn’t let me go. You don’t even want Tony to be at a boarding school, do you?’

  Alex gave Lena no time to answer.

  ‘I said we might send you to one sometime, you know.’

  Laurel’s eyes twinkled at him while she quoted him.

  ‘Perhaps when you’re fourteen we may send you to a school for a year or two to teach you to mix. But I’m not fourteen for two years and eleven months, so we needn’t worry about that yet.’

  ‘If our house could fly,’ said Kim, ‘I’d fly it to a different place every month, sometimes I’d be here and sometimes with Mum’s-Mum in California.’

  There was the beginning of an absorbing family game here. ‘You choose where we go first, Laurel, you’re the eldest, only for this game you can’t keep the house where it is.’

  VI

  Nannie was putting Kim to bed. Tuesday was already asleep. Laurel and Tony were with their parents in their private sitting-room. Tony was sorting a packet of foreign stamps. Laurel was on a stool by her mother’s chair. She had a cape round her shoulders and Lena was brushing and combing her hair. Alex was reading out loud David Copperfield. Both the children and Alex were absorbed by the story. Lena’s mind was on Laurel’s hair. It was pretty hair. Wasn’t it rather a pity to keep it in plaits? She hadn’t much beauty, poor darling, it seemed a shame not to make the most of what she had. On the other hand it made a party occasion when she wore it loose. A girl couldn’t start too early making the best of herself, and when you got the gauche type, like Laurel, the best way to train them was to make them feel they looked lovely at a party. It would be rather fun to try how Laurel would look in leaf-green, awfully plain, nothing but the colour against her fairness. Moved by the picture, Lena stroked the hair in her hands. Laurel, though most of her mind was with David trudging to Dover, turned and rubbed her cheek against Lena’s knees.

  There was a knock on the door and the waiter came in to lay the table for the children’s supper. Alex finished the chapter and closed the book.

  ‘There, that’ll have to be all for tonight. Your mother and I must go and dress.’ The children protested. ‘Nobody could need all that time to dress.’ ‘Just one more chapter.’ Alex laughed and put an arm round Lena. ‘I’ll be lucky if I get Mum down before midnight as it is.’

  Lena leant slightly against Alex, happy to feel his arm. She blew the children a kiss.

  ‘We’ll be along to tuck you up
.’

  Laurel and Tony sat on the window seat.

  ‘We’re having supper alone,’ said Tony. ‘The Foxglove’s gone out.’

  Laurel swung the blind cord to and fro.

  ‘Do you know what I think? We ought to make lists of all the things we most want to do now Dad and Mum are here. All the time I’ve kept thinking I’ll save that until they come and now I’m afraid I’ve forgotten some of them.’

  ‘They couldn’t have been things you wanted to do very badly if you’ve forgotten what they were.’

  ‘It was not real things like going to the Circus or for a picnic, just things I wanted them to see, that place where all those harebells are on the downs is one.’

  Tony went to the writing table and got a sheet of notepaper.

  ‘Let’s write down two important things for each day and then we can add the little things in brackets.’

  ‘We ought to add in what the little ones want.’

  Tony drew a rough line down the middle of the paper. On one side he wrote ‘morning’ and on the other ‘afternoon’.

  ‘Kim wouldn’t agree to anything we suggested, but he’ll like what we plan all right if he doesn’t feel left out. Tuesday’s too little for real things.’

  ‘There’s that Circus, we’ll all like that, and most awfully I want to go to that fête that we saw the advertisement of.’

  ‘What on earth for! I call that a ghastly waste of an afternoon.’

  ‘There’s dancing by some girls, I want to see how good they are, and there’ll be hoop-la, you’ll like that, besides Mum’ll like it, it will be a dress-up occasion.’

  ‘I tell you what, let’s put that down the day Dad takes me out in a boat to fish. You won’t come because of being sick, and Mum won’t because it bores her.’

  ‘I hate missing an afternoon of Dad.’

  ‘You’ll hate it worse if you’re sick. That year in Cornwall when we caught mackerel you went on being half the next day.’