Saplings

  ‘Yes, sir. Wales it was thought.’

  Alex touched the parcels.

  ‘You’ll know where to come if you run short.’

  Greville grinned at him and Alex was warmed by the knowledge that Greville knew that all this ostentatious buying was not money but Lena’s way of planning for her husband. That probably Greville, in a lesser way, was seeing the same thing at home. That every penny Mrs. Greville could lay hands on was going on what in Mrs. Greville’s opinion would keep Greville in health. Greville added to this mental picture.

  ‘I was glad that the kids were safely off, for, as I said to Mrs. Greville, if you had to store stuff for them as well as us I wouldn’t get in at the door.’ He turned to Lena. ‘Under the stairs is what Mrs. Greville’s heard’s safe.’

  Lena was rummaging amongst the parcels.

  ‘People had told me that.’

  Alex smiled at her tense, concentrated back view.

  ‘People haven’t half been telling you a lot.’ He went with Greville to the door. ‘The children’s train leaves at 10.15. I thought we ought to leave here about 8.30.’

  ‘Better make it eight, sir. You never saw anything like the station when the kids went off. It’s not only the children, it’s troops and all that.’

  Alex closed the front door. He stood by Lena. He wanted an opening to tell her tactfully that the children had only a light control of their emotions and that casualness rather than extra affection was needed on this final goodnight round. He edged to his subject.

  ‘I’ll help move all that stuff when we’ve tucked up the children.’

  Lena went on rummaging amongst her parcels.

  ‘You can laugh as much as you like, but I’m not going to see you starve.’ She found what she was searching for. ‘Oh, here they are. Elva plums, the children love them. I thought two or three at bedtime as a treat would be nice.’

  As he followed her up the stairs Alex felt humble. Here was he thinking that Lena would need his advice, and yet Lena, without being in the house or seeing the children’s mood, had sensed just how they would feel and had picked on probably an excellent palliative.

  They met Nannie at the top of the nursery stairs.

  ‘Tuesday’s awake. She’s woke up crying and now she’s brought up her tea.’

  ‘Poor lamb,’ said Lena. ‘I suppose it’s excitement, but she’ll love staying with the grandparents.’

  Nannie opened the night nursery door.

  ‘Like animals, little children. Get in a tear when the boxes are brought down.’

  Tuesday lay on her back looking very small and pale. She was gripping with unnatural ferocity her Teddy-bear. Her mouth was under the sheet. Her eyes, peering at her parents, had a puzzled, scared look.

  Lena stroked her hair.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve been sick, pet.’

  Alex tried to think of something to get the child to relax.

  ‘Do you remember that puppy that Sims had last time you stayed at Gran’s?’

  Tuesday shook her head.

  ‘Yes. A sort of fox-terrier. You wanted to bring him home.’

  Tuesday’s hold on her Teddy-bear lessened.

  ‘Pincher.’

  ‘What a good memory! Well, if you ask Nannie, I think she’ll let Pincher go for walks with you.’

  ‘Can he come on my bed?’

  Nannie was in the doorway.

  ‘That depends on what Mr. Sims and your Gran say, but if they’ve no objection I shan’t have. Now kiss your Mum and Dad and then drink down this nice stuff Nannie’s mixed for you and we’ll all be Sir Garnet Wolsey in the morning.’

  Tony was awake and sitting up in bed looking clean and unnaturally angelic. Kim was asleep. Lena opened the box of plums.

  ‘You can have two, darling. I’ll put one by Kim for the morning.’

  Tony took his plums. He seemed suddenly unaware that this evening was any different from other evenings. He was so cool, almost off-hand, that Lena and Alex felt snubbed.

  ‘Good-night, my darling,’ Lena said giving him a kiss. Tony raised his face submissively.

  ‘Kim won’t know I ate two plums tonight so couldn’t I have one for the morning too?’

  Alex put a plum on the table by Tony’s bed.

  ‘You greedy little beast. Good-night, son.’

  Once more Tony raised an obedient cheek.

  ‘Good-night, Dad.’

  Lena and Alex paused by Kim’s bed, not so much to look at Kim as to give Tony a chance to say more. Tony spat out a stone.

  ‘I shall put the stones on this envelope.’

  ‘Good-night, darling,’ Lena repeated.

  Tony apparently did not hear her, he was busy with his second plum.

  Laurel had been crying. Her cheeks had a stiff shiny look. Alex’s heart was wrung. He wanted to sit down by her and tell her how gloomy the house would be without her. That of all his children she had more tentacles round his heart. That he detested packing her off to a boarding school. That every night he would look for her funny plain little face and brisk plaits and would mind afresh because they were not there. But he had never spoken to her like that and tonight, poor scrap, was not the night to start. One wrong word might start her crying again.

  ‘Look what Mum’s brought you.’

  Laurel took the box and pretended that which plums were hers was a matter for careful choice.

  ‘Where did you buy them, Mum?’

  ‘Fortnum’s.’

  ‘What else did you buy there?’

  ‘Just useful things, biscuits and sardines and things like that.’

  ‘Where else did you go? You shopped all the afternoon.’

  Alex thought of the early start. He gave one of her pigtails an affectionate pull.

  ‘It’s time you were asleep, old lady.’

  Laurel gazed fixedly at the plums. Then hurriedly put one in her mouth and another one on the table beside her. Lena stooped to kiss her. Laurel, awkwardly, almost angrily, jerked her cheek up towards her mother’s mouth. Always Laurel was demonstrative, it was natural to her to throw her arms round her parents’ necks, but now she was markedly unresponsive. Alex guessed she was afraid to speak. He gave her a quick hug.

  Nannie came in to the boys’ room to draw the curtains. Tony was still chewing.

  ‘How much is the railway fare from London to Gran’s and Grandfather’s?’

  ‘Not so much for you because you’re a half ticket.’

  ‘But how much?’

  ‘If I remember rightly, the full ticket’s something like one pound four shillings return.’

  ‘Is my school farther than Gran’s and Grandfather’s?’

  ‘What a Mister Want to Know! It is a bit but not much.’

  ‘Not more than a pound single ticket?’

  ‘Not as much. Now go to sleep and forget about tickets.’

  When the door closed behind her Tony felt under his pillow for his new and most cherished possession, a torch. He turned it on and got out of bed. On a shelf there were the things that were not going with them, and among these was a birthday present of Kim’s, some fancy note-paper and envelopes. Tony took an envelope and carried it to the dressing table, where he had put the two pound notes his father had given him as pocket money, one of the notes he folded and placed it in the envelope. He turned his torch so that he could see to write and printed on the envelope, ‘Fare home not to be used for anything else urgent important.’ He got back into bed and put the envelope under his pillow.

  He was just dropping asleep when the door opened. He sat up.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Laurel closed the door softly.

  ‘It’s me. I’ve brought you an Elva plum.’

  ‘I’ve had two and I’ve got one for the morning.’

  ‘Well, you can eat another, can’t you?’

  Tony took the plum.

  ‘Why don’t you eat it?’

  ‘I did try and eat one but something’s gone wrong with my swallow
so I had to spit it out.’

  ‘What an awful waste!’

  Laurel drew back the curtains.

  ‘Yes. I came to show you the searchlights. They’re catching an aeroplane. I thought we’d see better up here.’

  Tony was out of bed and on the window seat peering through the bars. Laurel knelt beside him. A plane was darting to and fro like a moth in a room full of lights. The searchlights, as if they were human, tried to catch it. The children gaped, both taking sides with the plane.

  ‘He’s got away all right.’

  ‘They’ve got him again but I bet he gets away.’

  Suddenly the entertainment was over. The searchlights vanished, the plane roared out of hearing. Laurel yawned and went back to her room. Tony got into his bed and, with his fingers touching his envelope, fell asleep.

  XII

  It was a relief when the train started. Breakfast at seven o’clock had been served for them all in the dining-room. Alex had determined to be down first. He was there calmly putting bacon and scrambled eggs on to plates when Tony came in, and just looked up and said ‘good morning, old man’. Tony had come down crushed with wordless misery, hoping he would not cry, patting at intervals the envelope in his breast pocket. He did not exactly picture himself using the money but it was good to feel it; if he simply had to see Dad he had the way to do it. Alex’s calm greeting made him feel better. Dad wasn’t fussing, and he would if he thought their not coming home was going on for long.

  Laurel had obviously been crying; that was over now and she had made a pact with God to prevent a recurrence. ‘Oh God, if you help me not to cry, at least until I’m in bed tonight, I swear I’ll listen to every word of every sermon I hear for the rest of my life.’ Fortified with this support she made quite a jaunty entrance into the dining-room, then, as she sat down, began to wonder if all her vowing had been necessary, now that she was with Dad it seemed such a much more ordinary day.

  Ruth, when she came in, was thankful and surprised to see both children eating a good breakfast. Alex was telling them a piece of news he had kept for this moment. Through the headmaster of Tony’s school they had learnt of the school for Laurel. It was sufficiently near for the children to meet occasionally, and when he or their mother came to see them they could have both of them out at the same time. Tony, in the superiority of a partly completed first term, told Laurel that if she was coming to his school she’d got to posh up. Laurel retaliated. There was for a few minutes almost gaiety in the dining-room. It was then that Kim screamed.

  The charlady was cleaning the stairs as Nannie brought Kim and Tuesday down for their breakfast. Kim, who was excited, stopped to speak.

  ‘Did you know we were going to live with Gran and Grandfather?’

  The charlady answered him, and then shook her head at Nannie, her eyes full of tears, and murmured:

  ‘Poor little innocent!’

  Kim was exalted. Tears for him! Head shakings for him! He had no idea what it was all about, he had heard there was going to be a war, though it meant nothing to him, but all his senses told him this was a prime moment to be the centre of the picture. He ran ahead of Nannie and threw himself across one of the boxes in the hall, screaming: ‘I don’t want to go away. I want to stay here with Mum and Dad.’

  The result of this display was beyond anything Kim had ever known. The charlady knelt beside him calling him ‘love’ and saying it was a shame. The servants ran from the kitchen and patted and cooed and told him to be a brave little boy, and they too said it was a shame. Lena rushed down the stairs and held him in her arms, whispering, ‘Hush, darling. Hush.’ Alex leapt out of the dining-room muttering ‘Oh, my God!’ but when he reached Kim, anxious for the sake of the others and because Kim, crying or not, had to be got on to the train, he said placatingly: ‘Shut up, old man. You come and see what there is for breakfast.’

  In the dining-room Tony and Laurel looked at each other.

  ‘Now he’ll scream all the way to Paddington,’ said Laurel.

  Tony finished his scrambled egg.

  ‘If nobody had listened or run he’d have stopped by now.’

  Ruth went to the door with a dim idea of getting Alex back and giving Kim the tip that his screams were impressing nobody, but one glance at the scene showed her that this was far from true.

  Nannie, as if nothing was happening, brought Tuesday to the table and tied on her feeder and put her breakfast in front of her. She spoke with a note of command that she seldom needed to use.

  ‘And not one bit to be left, and then there’s a stick of barley sugar to suck in the car.’

  ‘Can’t you stop Kim making that noise, Nannie?’ Tony asked.

  Nannie sipped her tea.

  ‘Miss Glover and I have other things to do, dear, than be troubled with acting-up.’

  Kim, having got his audience, held it. Unmoved by the scorn in Laurel’s and Tony’s eyes he allowed himself to be fed sitting on Lena’s knee. When it was time to leave the house his howls were so appalling that Alex carried him into the car. But it was at the station that the morning blossomed in its full glory for him. There was so much noise, so many processions of singing labelled children, that Kim’s senses warned him further screaming would not be effective. He had, moreover, long ago begun to believe in his own tears. He looked white and exhausted. Alex and Greville piled up the luggage and sat Kim on it. Kim at no time escaped stares, but pale, with tears on his cheeks, he was incredibly arresting. In no time the camera men, looking for evacuation pictures, had found him. Under various captions he wrung the hearts of half the nation the next morning. Kim, surrounded by kind men, felt better. He managed a watery smile. When the train came in he gave his best and, as it happened, his only useful performance. He screamed and struggled in Alex’s arms.

  ‘I don’t want to go away. I want to stay with you, Dad.’

  People gulped and made way and so it was that Nannie, with Tuesday on her knee, got one corner seat, with Tony in the corner facing her and Laurel next to him. Kim, still howling, was wedged between Nannie and Ruth. There was no opportunity for good-byes. With a quick wave Lena and Alex were gone.

  Nannie had the ability to make any place, even the end of a crowded railway carriage, her own. She laid a newspaper on Tony’s and Laurel’s knees, and as if this was now her nursery table, spread out some brown bread and butter and bars of chocolate, a form of food she called ‘Kings and Queens’.

  ‘You take yours, Laurel, the eldest sets the example. Don’t want any nonsense about not being hungry. Now you, Tony.’ She took Tuesday’s and folded the bread and butter for her. Kim, who was hungry, stretched out his hand. Nannie stopped him. ‘One minute, Mr. Snatch, are you going to behave yourself or else, before the train starts, I’ll ask Miss Glover to be so good as to step up to the Guard and ask if you can travel in the van along with the dogs? We’ve had enough noise all of us for one day.’

  Kim looked round the carriage. It was packed, people standing, everybody too thankful to have wedged their way in at all to have time to think of crying children. He knew Laurel and Tony were angry with him, he glanced furtively at Ruth, but though she knew of the black mood which would engulf him as a result of the morning’s excitement, she had not sufficient energy at the moment to struggle for him. He turned back to Nannie.

  ‘I’ll be quiet now.’

  XIII

  At the other end of the train Albert and Ernie Parker were travelling. They were part of a carriage full of noisy children being evacuated from South London. Albert and Ernie were noisy too, for being noisy was an antidote for fear. They had never been away from their parents for a night. It was their father who had said they must go. Their mother had been against it. She accepted that there might be bombs and gas, she did not know those dangers, but she did know the dangers which she had fought against since the boys were born. Picking up nasty ways from other children not brought up as carefully as she tried to bring up her own. Catching things in their hair from childre
n whose mothers were not so regular in having a look with a comb as she was. Above all she dreaded home-sickness. She had heard of a child who had been taken to a hospital to have its tonsils out, and, because it was separated from its mother, had died there of a broken heart. Her husband had laughed when she had told him this story, but she could not get it out of her head. Like the majority of girls brought up as she had been she spoilt her children. In Albert and Ernie’s case the spoiling was continuous, not varied by slaps and scoldings, as was usual in their neighbourhood. She believed beyond reasoning that everything should be sacrificed to give her kids what they wanted. Albert and Ernie had seen their mother cry as she packed their things. ‘There,’ she said with ferocity, ‘nobody can say your things weren’t nice.’ ‘If any one says you came with anything dirty you tell them to write to me. I’ll tell them it’s a lie.’ ‘Your Dad has signed to say you can go to the dentist and that, if they want to take you, but you stand up for yourselves. You tell them your Mum says to pull out your teeth, but no stoppings as you can’t take the pain.’ Albert and Ernie could not imagine a world that had not got Mum to run to, and Dad, in the background, to fight the family battles. They knew only their flat in an L.C.C. block and rooms at Margate, where they had stayed as a family for a week each summer. They had heard the expression ‘bein’ ’vacuated’ bandied about for days. But what was it? What was this world into which this train was whirling them, which Mum expected to be full of women who would be rude about their posh new clothes and toothbrushes, and who would want to have all their teeth stopped? But neither Albert nor Ernie showed their fear. Their mother’s spoiling had not been a shield from the tough world made up of the other children of their housing block and the surrounding streets. You had to hold your own there or be branded as a whiner and a tale-bearer. It was true Dad was around to knock down a neighbour or, if it came to that, a schoolmaster if they raised a hand to his kids; but there were lots of knocks it was better to take without telling Dad about them. No good being known as a sissy. Besides, though Dad might be prepared to have a hell of a row because someone had sloshed you, he could equally slosh you himself if he thought whoever had done the sloshing was right in thinking you needed sloshing, though not right in thinking they could do it to someone else’s kid.