Saplings

  Laurel shuddered reminiscently.

  ‘Let’s hope Kim doesn’t want to come and then Mum and I can have a lovely time.’ She sighed. ‘This holiday is being so super it makes me all the time on the edge of being sad.’

  Tony never answered that sort of talk. He supposed Laurel had to say things like that because she was a girl. He knew, of course, exactly what she meant but such feelings were not for talking about. He turned his mind to his day’s fishing. It would not be just an affair of an afternoon. There would be the hiring of the boat. He and Dad would do that the day before. There would be fishing lines to arrange about, and bait. It was going to be a gorgeous day. He spoke ecstatically.

  ‘I should think Dad and I would get up awfully early and go right down the other end of the town to buy our bait.’

  VII

  ‘Do you think we ought to tell Laurel about her school? You heard what she said at tea.’

  Lena hated talking when she was dancing. They had circled half the room before she answered.

  ‘Not while we’re here. It would be a shame to spoil her holiday.’

  Alex chewed over this.

  ‘I suppose really our kids aren’t as dependent on us as we think. I mean, after they’ve got used to things they’ll settle down anywhere.’

  ‘It’s only a temporary thing after all, and they’ve got us.’ She looked up into his face. ‘Old fusser, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s stupid how one forgets. When I was a kid, did news come to me gradually or did I have a shock? I suppose, being a boy, I’d always known I was going away to school.’

  Lena smiled.

  ‘This is a heavenly tune, and I won’t let you spoil it by worrying about something that may never happen, or if it does happen, quite likely won’t upset Laurel at all. She’s like me, you know, in some ways. She has to be sure she’s loved; other things may look important but they aren’t.’

  Alex tried to keep to the subject of the children.

  ‘Bless her heart, she can be sure of that.’

  Lena spoke in a whisper.

  ‘Girls like I was, or like Laurel, store up love just waiting to be women to pour it out on some man.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s nearly midnight. Shall we go up and just peep at the children. And then bed?’

  VIII

  They could only look at Tuesday from the balcony, for though Nannie was snoring she would be unutterably shocked if she knew Alex had been in her room while she was in bed.

  The boys had beds side by side. Kim asleep was so beautiful that Lena hugged Alex’s arm.

  ‘He ought to be painted like that, the darling.’

  Her whisper, or perhaps the door opening, had stirred Tony. He half-opened his eyes. ‘Dad,’ he murmured happily. ‘Dad,’ and went to sleep again.

  Laurel lay on her side, her face towards the open window. She looked, in the mixture of street lighting and moonlight, frail and defenceless. Lena gently lifted a wisp of hair away from her eyes. Alex stooped and brushed her head with his lips.

  Out in the corridor Lena felt a sensation of escape. The children were enchanting but Alex was her life. She put her hand in his.

  ‘Shall we stop being heavy parents and have a little fun?’

  IX

  Colonel Wiltshire sniffed the morning. He had The Times under his arm, and his four dogs running round him. Sims, his head-gardener, seeing him, subconsciously noted that it must be close on nine. The Colonel had finished breakfast, had taken The Times with him to the lavatory and was now, as was his custom no matter what the weather, having a feel of the day.

  The Colonel looked across his lawn to his rose-beds. Wonderful show still. He saw that Sims had stakes and string, that would be to tie up the early autumn plants. Below where the lawn sloped out of sight the roof of his summer-house caught his eye. The thatch was almost hidden by honeysuckle. He turned back into his hall. As he passed it he unconsciously tapped the barometer. The official tapping and setting of the barometer took place at three minutes to eight on his way in to breakfast. The other taps, which took place every time he passed, were a habit arising from pleasure in his possessions. In the same way, though he had no idea of it, each time he passed them he ran his hand over the heads of the elephants holding a gong which he had brought back from India, stroked the side of the grandfather clock, and patted the Dutch chest.

  Elsa Wiltshire was still sitting at the breakfast table reading her letters. She never read them until after breakfast, a legacy from her training which had taught her that to read letters at table was bad manners and a novel in the morning immoral.

  ‘We’ll have to cut that honeysuckle back this year, Elsa.’

  ‘Nonsense, you and Sims can chop what you like about, that you plant, but any cutting that’s done to my things I’ll do myself.’ She spoke mechanically, she was merely standing by an established custom. ‘I think you’d better read Alex’s letter.’

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Lena, she’s finally refused to come here.’

  ‘She’ll have to if they start bombing London.’

  ‘I should think that quite possibly she’s brave.’

  ‘It isn’t a case of brave, my dear. If any of what they’re expecting happens any woman who’s not got to stay will be a nuisance. Government will probably order them out.’

  ‘Anyway, to start with, the children are coming without her. I consider it wrong and I shall say so. If there’s a risk she should be with her children, no point in their being orphans.’

  The Colonel fell back on an oft-repeated statement.

  ‘I’ve always liked the little thing.’

  ‘I know you have. She’s not my type but she loves Alex and up to a point she’s a good mother, and I hope I’ve always made her feel that I welcome any girl my boy chooses. Alex is doubtful what train he’ll get them on, he’ll ring up when they’ve started.’

  ‘That Miss Plant is coming up again this morning.’

  Elsa got up. She went across to the window and looked out.

  ‘I must keep a room for Lena. Nannie will need the nurseries, of course, then there’s Miss Glover. Tony can share Laurel’s room with Kim until his term begins, but I shall need a room for Laurel until her term starts.’

  ‘Laurel can have my dressing-room.’

  ‘I don’t know how the servants are going to take it.’

  ‘Can’t be the only ones to stand out.’

  ‘Miss Plant’s so vague about what’s coming. She thinks it’ll be expectant mothers, that’s so awkward with a house full of children.’

  ‘We must manage, my dear.’

  Elsa left the window.

  ‘But quite likely it won’t be expectant mothers. Great Pattenham expected two thousand unaccompanied children and they got three thousand mothers and babies. It’s not that I want to shirk our share, but I can’t bear every room to be occupied. I shall hate to think I can’t put up the girls if they want to come. It seems unfair on Dot, Sylvia and Selina that we can’t have their children because we’ve got Alex’s.’

  ‘Alex is the only one living in London. Anyhow, it’s a plain duty, my dear.’

  Elsa gave him an amused look.

  ‘I could see nothing but my duty if I had none of the arranging to do. You try telling Cook that she’s not only going to cook for perhaps a dozen extra people, but that some of them will be eating and living in the servants’ sitting-room.’

  ‘You’ll manage, my dear. You always do.’

  Elsa collected her letters.

  ‘I will, but this is not a question for me, it’s a question for the servants. If they won’t cope I can’t. It’s a mercy they’re sending Laurel away to school, it’s easier with the nursery age. I rather wish they could have sent her and Tony to an hotel or something with Miss Glover until their terms start. However, we must just do the best we can.’

  X

  Alex had dragged himself away from his work to spend their last evening at home with the children.
Already home, as the children had always known it, had become submerged. Their belongings were packed. The hall was full of trunks and suitcases. The household who were not packing were stitching at black-out curtains. There were beds in the cellar.

  Kim and Tuesday were in bed. Laurel and Tony wandered up and down the house as if they only partially belonged. A couple of fidgety ghosts. They fell on their father with delirious hugs. Alex looked round the hall.

  ‘Everything done?’

  Tony nodded.

  ‘Even labelled. Laurel and I did that.’ He pointed to the hall table. ‘And we’ve put labels on all the gas-mask boxes.’

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘Out,’ said Laurel. ‘She went to get the things to keep in the cellar like it says in the A.R.P. book. She said you’d be late so she’d go to the Savoy to say good-bye to the Van Meakens. They’re going back to America.’

  Alex put an arm round each of them.

  ‘Then we’ll go and sit in my study.’

  The black-out curtains were finished in the study. The organdie curtains had been removed and the black ones hung in their places. Alex and the children stared at them.

  ‘Not pretty,’ said Alex, ‘but I suppose we’ll get used to it.’

  Laurel smelt the curtains.

  ‘Come and smell, Dad. I think it’s paraffin but Tony says it’s bathing-suits-put-away-for-the-winter smell.’

  Alex sat in an armchair.

  ‘I can smell them from here, thank you.’

  Laurel sat on one arm of his chair, Tony on the other. Tony leaned against his father.

  ‘Dad, if the Germans don’t bomb us can we come home at Christmas?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s not a doubt they will, old man.’

  Laurel giggled.

  ‘Tony and I have been reading the A.R.P. book. I’d like to see our cellar if they use gas. Of course you’ll all have gasmasks on but even then, considering cook and all the other maids will be there, I should think you’d feel a bit public doing everything in one room.’

  Alex put an arm round her.

  ‘Conditions will be slightly primitive.’

  Tony hung on to his point. The excitement of the move and the general fuss had exhilarated him all day, but underneath was a wretchedness that, now bedtime was near, was rising to the surface. He could not explain how he felt so he hung his need for expression on to a recognisable grievance.

  ‘I’ll simply have to come here because of all my trains.’

  Alex remembered in his childhood trying futilely to put off a long stay with relatives during some epidemic on the ground that his rabbits would die, that absolutely nobody would feed them if he didn’t. He knew even as he answered that a solution of the train situation was not what Tony was asking.

  ‘It was hardly worth adding to your luggage taking them up now that your holiday’s almost over, but I think you can fix up with Gran to clear a space somewhere.’

  Tony believed this to be true and grew angry as his legitimate ground for being miserable was chipped away.

  ‘Who’s going to pack all the lines and everything? Nobody can do it except me.’

  Alex laid a hand on his knee.

  ‘I’ll see to it, old son. I promise every bit of packing shall be done by me, and I’ll bring it all up to you myself.’

  Laurel had alternated between tears and a kind of hectic pseudo-gaiety ever since the move to Gran’s and Grandfather’s was certain and her school-uniform purchased. She was scared. At eleven she understood what was going on around her. She had watched the hasty evacuation of other children. She had heard scraps of conversation. ‘They’re ready for thirty thousand casualties a night.’ ‘Those trenches in the Green Park are built from what they learnt in Spain, they found you get sickness and diarrhœa from fright.’ ‘They say they have bombs that kill everybody within twenty miles.’ Strung, as always, to live at extremes, she alternated between abject terror that this departure was good-bye to both parents, and when she shied from that, took refuge in the compensating picture of herself dashing about under bomb fire rescuing wounded, finishing with a flourish by her mother saying in a voice as proud as when people admired Kim, ‘Yes, we’re going to keep her with us. She’s more useful here than in a school.’ She believed in the worst and knew herself to be imagining the best. As a shield she made loud fun of all war precautions. Behind her immediate dreads there lurked the dread of school. That would come to the top nearer the beginning of term. It didn’t matter being the plain one at home, people were used to it. If only she had managed to be super at something, then she could have gone into the Abbey School carrying her ability like a screen. No one would say, ‘Who’s that plain girl?’ Everyone would say, ‘That’s Laurel Wiltshire who dives,’ or dances, or nurses, or whatever it was, ‘better than anybody else,’ and never think of her as a person at all.

  Alex hardly knew what he wanted of this evening. If only he had the words he might have found something useful to say, but he was hating everything too much. This home, which Lena’s gift for home-making had moulded into such a perfect place for the children, to be broken up. There were plenty of people to say the war wouldn’t last long. That Germany had gone hungry to make guns and wouldn’t have her heart in the business. That only a proportion of the people were behind Adolf Hitler. He had been frequently to Germany on business of recent years and had no illusions. He had not, of course, said so to Lena but across his board table he had prophesied a long hard war full of horrors as yet unimagined. It seemed unsatisfactory, believing these things, to have nothing memorable to say to your children whom you would possibly not see again, but there it was. His mind could only run to palliatives.

  ‘I expect Grandfather and Gran are planning no end of a good time for you all. I’ve asked Gran to see that you two get all the riding you can before term starts.’

  Tony discovered something else on which to hang his wretchedness. He drummed his heels on the chair.

  ‘I expect I won’t have anything in my box for school. Mum and Cook packed it last time and they won’t be there.’

  ‘Rubbish, old man, it wouldn’t surprise me if at this very moment Gran and her Cook were talking about your tuck box.’

  ‘Even if they are it won’t be the same as here. Mum and I went to Fortnum’s before last term and chose things.’

  Tony’s voice had wobbled. Alex knew that whether he felt like it or not he must find something to say that would help.

  ‘I know it’s tough for you two, but getting on with it all without a fuss is the bit of service everybody can give. We don’t want a war. The way we, as a family, feel now is how we feel as a nation. You two want life exactly as it is.’

  ‘Without us going to school,’ Tony put in.

  Alex gave the child’s knees an affectionate pat.

  ‘War or no war you’d go to school. But you want the house and all of us and everything in it just as it was, we’ll say, a week or two ago.’

  Laurel had a lump in her throat, she spoke with difficulty.

  ‘It was simply perfect.’

  Alex tightened the arm round her shoulders.

  ‘And that’s being said in hundreds and thousands of homes. I’m not going to point out that other people’s breakups are worse. You know for yourselves that you going to your grandparents is a different cup of tea to young Tom and Mary Smith evacuated with labels round their necks to strangers. I’ve explained to you before about Poland and national honour, I’m not bothering with that now. Instead, I want you to see yourselves as part of the nation. Everybody’s on the move and practically nobody wants to be. Sailors are joining ships. Soldiers their regiments. For a year now people have trained for wardens and so on and they’re standing by to go on duty. And children are being sent away from danger. What’s making all this possible without much excitement? Because nearly everybody, including the children, are doing what they have to do without fuss. People of other countries find us a bit difficult to understand just b
ecause we hate fuss, but in a time like this you can see for yourselves how useful it is. Tomorrow when you go off there’ll be no more fuss than when you went to Eastbourne in June. You may want to say or do a bit more but you won’t because by keeping quiet you’ll be helping things along.’

  The lump in Laurel’s throat disappeared. She saw herself standing quietly in the hall, probably holding Kim’s hand, while Dad and everybody got the luggage on to the car. She liked the words ‘part of the nation’. She could see herself being so splendid tomorrow that when the train went out Dad and Mum said to each other they didn’t know what they would have done if she hadn’t been there.

  Tony felt as if he were bursting. His love for his father, completely wordless, seemed to have swollen in his inside. Dad was grand. No flapping about but making things clear.

  Alex hoped what he had said had struck the right note, any way it was enough and better not be meddled with. He took out his note case.

  ‘And now we come to the burning question. How much pocket money do evacuated offspring want?’

  XI

  Alex heard Lena’s key in the front door. He went out to meet her. She looked lovely but tired. The door was open and Greville, the chauffeur, was carrying in armloads of parcels and piling them on the hall table. Lena spoke with an edge of excitement to her voice.

  ‘Food. Everybody says that things will get scarce at once, so I’ve got three months’ supply.’

  Alex looked at the ever-growing heap.

  ‘Looks more like a year.’

  ‘Some of it’s candles and things of that sort. People say that one of the first things that will happen when the bombing starts is that the lights will all fail.’

  Alex looked at Greville’s face. He too had a home but not the money to lay in stores for a siege. What did he think of all these preparations?

  ‘Did your children get off today?’

  Greville was stacking the parcels.