Sensible Life

  Cosmo said, “Tell me about it. What is it like being a servant?”

  She said, “There isn’t much to tell.” How could she explain to him that as a servant she was distanced from people, that she watched them as though they were characters rehearsing a play, and that this distancing made her secure.

  “Did you, for instance, wear a cap and apron over your black dress?” He would lead her as he led witnesses in court.

  “In the afternoons I wore black, in the mornings pink, like Molly and the other servants at Coppermalt.”

  “What did you do on your days off?”

  “I walked my employers’ dogs in the park.”

  “And?”

  “Sometimes I went to the cinema.”

  “And?”

  “Museums, galleries. I explored London, rode on buses.”

  “Alone?”

  “Mostly.”

  If only he had known where to find her. “I can’t get over your being just round the corner from Mabs. What did you do for money?”

  “I had my wages. Then there were tips. Visitors leave tips on the dressing table when they leave; some are quite generous,” she said.

  “What else?”

  “When I had enough money I went to the theatre. Once, from the pit, I saw Tashie and Henry. Tashie was wearing a green dress.”

  “Oh, darling.”

  “Mrs. Fellowes sent me to the Cordon Bleu cookery school. I learned to cook. She is a kind person.” She had been in the company of debutantes sent by their mothers to learn something practical. They had sized her up, tried to place her and failed. “Why all these questions?” she asked.

  “I am trying to fill in the ten years during which I lost you.”

  “Nothing much happened to me, Cosmo. I like the Fellowes, I like working for them. I was damn lucky to get that job. I fell on my feet. They made me feel safe.”

  “Safe?” He considered safety. It was probable, he thought, remembering her parents, that to feel safe would be a novelty. “What else besides safe?”

  She said: “I suppose the word would be content.”

  “I have not been content; how could I be content without you?”

  Flora laughed. “Oh, come on. You were forging ahead with your career.” She mocked him. “I bet that’s what you were doing. Putting Cosmo first.”

  Leave my career out of this, thought Cosmo. “So now you are a Land Girl,” he said. “Do you enjoy it? Does it make you content?” He long to wrest her contentment away from her. How dare she be content?

  Flora said, “I like the work. I can ignore the war.” I have found a niche, she thought; how can I explain that? “I fit into village life,” she said. “I seem to be accepted.”

  “You must be cleverer than I’d imagined,” said Cosmo. “That’s quite a feat.”

  “I like the people.”

  “And they you?”

  “I hope so.”

  “And men? Have you lots of boyfriends? Lovers?”

  “That’s none of your business.” Flora looked out at the countryside. I have the lovers I have always had, she thought. I have had trouble shaking them off and here is one of them in R.A.F. disguise sitting beside me.

  “It is my business. Tell me about them.”

  “No.” She would not tell him of the men who wanted her. They had nothing to do with Cosmo, and precious little, she thought, to do with me. “There is nothing,” she said, “to tell.”

  Cosmo felt like slapping her but the Royal Marine Major had opened an eye. “Are you happy?” he asked.

  Ah, thought Flora, happiness. “I live a very busy sort of life,” she said.

  “With cows, geese, and pigs?”

  “Dogs, too, lots of dogs, and there are of course cats.” She was making fun of him. “And ferrets.”

  “But are you happy? When can you remember heights of happiness?”

  “I was happy several times that year in Dinard,” she answered simply.

  “And?”

  “When I stayed with you at Coppermalt.”

  What a meagre ration. “But in Aix-en-Provence with Hubert you were happy?”

  “That was different.”

  “I’ll say it was. Hubert your lover, your great great love,” said Cosmo bitterly, “rushing off, stealing a march. Damn him getting in first, I can’t bear to think my best friend, the sod.”

  Flora said, “Don’t be silly.” She turned away from him. Hubert and Aix-en-Provence were long ago, a lovely period of fun, good food, sunshine and loving, but over, as was Felix. She shivered, thinking of Felix.

  “You always loved Hubert best,” Cosmo heard himself say.

  Flora got up, struggled through the carriage and battled her way along the crowded corridor to the lavatory. Cosmo thought, I am unwise to bring Hubert up. When she came back he said, “When do you find time to read The Times?” (Try some neutral ground.)

  “When it’s a day old, after Mr. Fellowes has finished with it.”

  “All those years,” Cosmo heard himself saying nastily, “you must have longed for love, for Hubert.”

  Flora stared at him. “Don’t be so cross,” she said, her voice rising. “You two were all for sharing me as though I was a thing, an object, somebody who didn’t matter, a sort of plaything, a tart,” she shouted. Several people in the carriage looked up and hastily looked away. Flora found herself glaring at the French officer; he had stretched his legs while dozing. The movement of the train jogged them against Flora’s. She kicked his shin with her toe.

  Waking with a jerk he muttered, “Je vous derange, Mademoiselle.” He drew his legs away. “Pardon.”

  “Vous ecoutiez—” she accused.

  “Mais non, Mademoiselle.” He suppressed a smile.

  “He was asleep, poor chap. About the only one who wasn’t listening,” said Cosmo, choking with mirth.

  “I am getting out at Taunton. I think it’s the next stop,” said the Major in the Royal Marines, clearing his throat.

  “Exeter for me,” said another officer.

  “I go as far as Plymouth,” said a third, coughing nervously. “Look how you’ve embarrassed them,” said Flora meanly.

  Cosmo was reduced to simmering silence.

  When the train stopped at Taunton two people got out and their places were taken by a couple who had been standing in the corridor. The carriage rearranged itself yet again at Exeter. Cosmo thought, We are wasting precious time. He caught the Frenchman’s eye and looked away.

  “How do Mabs and Tash manage for clothes?” asked Flora conversationally. “They must be hampered by rationing.”

  “They foresaw the shortage and bought bolts and bolts of cloth. They stocked up for years. Mother was rather ashamed of them and said it was unpatriotic, but I notice she wheedles a dress length from one or another of them quite often.”

  Flora laughed.

  Cosmo said, “I’m sorry I made you angry.”

  Flora said, “I should not have snapped.”

  Cosmo said, “Tell me about your life.”

  Flora thought, If I were counting times of happiness, I would rate this train journey pretty high. She said, “What you tell me about Mabs and Tash explains why Irena Tarasova is kept busy.”

  “So you see her?”

  “Occasionally. I got in touch with her after some years; she was kind to me when I was a child in France.”

  “I remember, the Tsar and Tsarina, the noble officers.” Cosmo smiled. “The silk clothes.”

  “It’s all our King and Queen now, she is more British than the British and wears wool.”

  “Her husband?”

  “Alexis? He appeared among the French who came over with de Gaulle. Irena tried to push him into an English regiment but he was not welcome; last heard of he was with the Free French in Djibouti.”

  “Your life—tell me.”

  She told him about her work, how she tended Jersey cows, loved the different seasons: haymaking, harvesting, threshing, being out of doors. It
was much more enjoyable than being a housemaid, she said. Was she aware that what he wanted to know was: was there a man in her life, someone else she was in love with, someone other than Hubert he might lose her to? “Have you got a lover?” he asked. “Or many lovers?” Somehow it would be better if she filtered her emotions among the many rather than just one.

  Flora countered, “How many have you?”

  He said, “All right. Sorry. What right have I to ask? you say. I apologise. You are content.”

  I was content, she thought. I suppose I was content in the fog this morning trying to find my way to Paddington. I had done all the things I had to do in London. I was looking forward to getting back to the farm, to getting away from the war. She said, “Perhaps, and you?”

  “Not at the moment. I am mad with longing. I want to make love to you. I am prevented by this crowd of people. It is abominable that Hubert was able and now I—”

  “That was long ago,” she said, turning towards him, “and you have something else on your mind.” She slipped her hand in his. “I can smell it.” She held his hand.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said, taking both her hands in his. “It is not something one should talk about. It is not right to tell you about it, but yes, it is simply that I am afraid.”

  “Ah,” she said, “yes,” and, “of course you are,” remembering Felix’s fear. “This hateful war,” she said.

  “I am afraid of the flight I have to make to North Africa; I am afraid of being a passenger. I am afraid of death,” he said, involved with the war.

  “Ah,” she said, “yes.”

  “Stay with me until I go. I haven’t long.”

  “But—”

  “Please.” There might be a few minutes when he could get her alone; there might be a delay. If there was a delay, would it not be possible to spend the night with her in an hotel? He longed to be alone with her to make love. “I do so want,” he said, “to break through this barrier of chastity.”

  “My knees,” she said, “would hurt in any position.”

  “Oh God,” said Cosmo. “What a selfish bitch you are.”

  “Don’t let’s start squabbling again,” said Flora. “Where do you leave the train? I get off at Truro.”

  “Come on with me to Redruth.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Give the cows a miss, please.”

  “I shall have to telephone,” she said. “But I don’t like getting so close to the war; you are involving me. Normally I shut it out.”

  “You will be safe with me,” he said obtusely, “perfectly safe. No raids there.”

  “Don’t you see,” she said, “that I am afraid now I have seen you? I have lost Felix, I am afraid to lose you.” She did not mention Hubert.

  “For me?” Cosmo was dubious.

  “Of course,” she said. “Naturally.”

  Cosmo said, “Oh good, that’s lovely. If only we could spend the night together.”

  “Try and be cerebral,” she said, more lightly than she felt.

  “My brain still tells me that you are in love with Hubert,” he said jealously. “Sorry, I am stupid. I thought you were as glad to see me after ten years as I am to see you. You don’t mean it when you say you are afraid for me. Oh God, my head goes round and round. You had better be shot of me and get out at Truro.”

  “I shall come on to Redruth,” she said. “I will telephone from there and tell Mrs. Fellowes that I got carried away. I don’t think I am doing the right thing, but I will do what you want.”

  At Truro the French officer got out. He was going to Falmouth, he said, adjusting his kepi. “Bonne chance.” His space was filled by an American Air Force Colonel who was talkative, smoked Lucky Strikes and held forth about his home town in Texas and the war in the Pacific. Cosmo gave up trying to talk and Flora, leaning against his shoulder, surreptitiously eased knees which, bruised and stiffening, hurt. She was content on this last lap of the journey to memorise what she could of Cosmo, his voice, the smell of his hair, his long fingers.

  Sitting uncomfortably in an American bomber en route to North Africa, Cosmo reproached himself. He should have let her get out at Truro, he thought, instead of dragging her on with him to the R.A.F. base at St. Evel. At St. Evel there had been a loud party going on in the officers’ mess, a mix of American and British. Flora was the only civilian girl among the few WAAFs. There had been a lot to drink and he, with pre-flight nerves, had not stinted himself. He had, too, talked loud shop with the R.A.F. to bolster his fear and then, when a man asked Flora to dance and she accepted, seeing her with a stranger’s arms round her he had exploded and made a scene. “Your knees don’t stop you dancing, I notice. You could perfectly well have made love,” he had said, as though there had been somewhere to go, a snug bed in a cosy hotel, warmth and privacy, when of course there was no such thing. She had not snapped back at his outburst, not pointed out that he had not asked her to dance, not said she was bored, which she must have been, by the noise and the ballyhoo, mounting decibels, baying voices of fighting youth, all strangers to her. Rather her expression had been as withdrawn as he remembered it when he saw her sitting on a bollard on the quay at Dinard, before he asked her to go with him to buy his father a revolver in St. Malo. Their parting had been bewildered and stiff.

  Now, high above the Atlantic, mentally composing a letter of love and apology, searching his pockets for the address she had given him, he found he had not lost the piece of paper she had written on but used it to write his own unit, rank and number, his own address in North Africa. He could see her put it in her bag as he swilled his last drink. “I will write the moment I get there,” he had said.

  When meeting Hubert in Algiers a month later Cosmo told him of this catastrophe. Hubert said, “People only do things like that in books,” and laughed immoderately.

  PART FIVE

  FIFTY

  IN HER LATE SIXTIES, having come to terms with widowhood, Milly began fussing about Cosmo. She had moved back into Coppermalt, reducing its now unmanageable size by turning the top floors and back premises into flats which she rented to grateful couples. The long battle to get planning permission and builders to do the work kept her occupied for years and also, as her son-in-law Nigel said, out of everyone’s hair. But now the contests with bureaucracy were over she had time for other things, as she said to Felicity Green who was on what had become, since the war, an annual visit.

  “It is time I did something about Cosmo. Do you realise, Felicity, that Nigel and Mabs’ children are practically grown-up and Cosmo is not even married?”

  Felicity did not answer this rhetorical question but waited for Milly to go on. The practice of listening had come in useful in her profession of novelist; while her better self hoped Milly was not about to make a fool of herself, her novelist self hoped she would. She had often put bits of Milly into her increasingly successful novels and supposed, since her novels lay on the bed tables in Milly’s spare rooms, that the bits she had used were sufficiently camouflaged.

  “Cosmo should marry,” said Milly firmly. “Even his flighty friend Hubert has settled down and has children.”

  Surely, thought Felicity, the term “flighty” is only applicable to girls? “Has Cosmo ever been engaged?” she tested.

  “No.”

  How does one ask a woman like Milly Leigh whether her son is homosexual? “Perhaps he enjoys being a bachelor?” she suggested. “Does one still use the term ‘eligible bachelor’?”

  “He has had lots of girlfriends,” said Milly.

  “Well, then.” (Not homo.)

  “But it is time he settled down,” said Milly.

  “Does he know?”

  “How would I know? Honestly, Felicity.”

  “Shall you tell him?”

  “Angus would have if he were still alive, the poor darling. Angus would have come straight out with it.” (Felicity raised doubting eyebrows.) “Angus would have told Cosmo that it was his duty to marry and have ch
ildren. He will inherit Coppermalt. I don’t really want it to go to Mabs’ boy, he doesn’t wash and that long hair is a bit much. You may doubt it, Felicity, but I know what Angus would have done. By dying he passed the responsibility on to me.”

  “Oh.” Felicity the writer was pleased. “Well,” she said, “has Cosmo ever been really in love?”

  Momentarily baffled, Milly said, “He’s had affairs, I’m sure he has. I’ve met some of the girls. He’s a normal man.”

  “Yes, of course—but love?”

  “There speaks the novelist in you,” exclaimed Milly. “I had a long talk once with Rosa, a Dutch friend of ours, such a sensible woman. She married off five plain daughters. She was in favour of arranged marriages; apparently they last. There is far too much divorce these days, it’s dreadful.”

  “Was yours arranged, your marriage to Angus?”

  “Of course not. Ours was a love match, wonderful; no quarrels, no jealousies, no doubts. But our marriage was exceptional, one in a million. I can’t expect perfection for my children. You should see Mabs and Nigel. They quarrel as much now as they did before they married, yet they thrive.”

  “Um,” said Felicity. “I seem to remember a row; it was at dinner. I was shy, I had a stammer in those days, quite useful in a way. Yes, I remember your husband turning them out of the dining-room—”

  “What a bark he had!” Milly remembered fondly.

  “Wasn’t Cosmo interested in that girl you had staying almost the first time I stayed here? You got me to give her a lift down to London.”

  “Oh, that girl,” said Milly. “She was only fifteen.”