His friend replied, ‘Well done. How glad I am that from here we can almost freewheel to Whitehall. If only manipulating Violet were as easy. Let’s hope it works.’
But work it did, for Priscilla, caught off guard on the telephone, extended a pressing invitation and within ten days Violet found herself in the train heading towards the West Country.
Feeling apprehensive, Priscilla met Violet’s train and seeing her step out of a third-class carriage hurried to greet her. I am on my own ground, she reminded herself, no need to be frightened. ‘Violet,’ she cried, ‘how very nice this is.’
Violet, on best behaviour too, riposted, ‘Delightful.’ During the journey she had had second thoughts but, welcomed into Priscilla’s house, which was both larger and warmer than she had expected, she concluded that she was doing the right thing and did not even take exception to Mosley when he slobbered over her skirt, exclaiming that she ‘liked dogs’ when Priscilla besought the creature, ‘Get down, my precious.’
‘I had not realized your house was so large,’ she said, taking in the size of Priscilla’s hall, hung about with portraits of gentlemen in uniform or hunting pink flanked by ladies with bedroom eyes and deep décolletées. (Nor that Priscilla, so colourless at school, was quite so county.)
Priscilla said, ‘It’s a lot to keep up. Let me show you your room and then we will have supper, you must be tired.’ With any luck Violet would go to bed early, then she could get on with reading The Power and the Glory, which Anthony had just sent her from Hatchards. ‘Here is your room,’ she said, ‘come down when you are ready. Robert Copplestone brought me a bottle of Tio Pepe, we will have a drink before we eat.’
Violet examined her room; Colefax and Fowler chintzes, monogrammed sheets and towels. She bounced on the bed; she would be comfortable.
In the drawing-room Priscilla poured sherry. ‘I expect you are anxious to see your niece.’ That she was aware of why Violet had invited herself to stay should be made clear.
Violet said, ‘Oh. Yes, of course. I am anxious too to meet Mr Copplestone, see who she works for.’
Priscilla said, ‘Robert’s in London. I don’t know when he will be back.’ Violet could choke on her curiosity.
Violet said, ‘Is Copplestone far? Shall I be able to get over? I can perhaps hire a taxi.’
Priscilla said, ‘Don’t be silly, I will drive you.’ Not for anything would she miss Violet’s meeting with Juno. ‘They go by the names of Inigo and Presto,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Your great-nephews, Juno’s sons.’ She watched Violet go red then white, then swallow some sherry. ‘You did know, didn’t you? That’s why you are here, isn’t it?’ One had been dropped from the hockey team but here one was in one’s own house. ‘You did not expect me to be so uninhibited,’ she said. ‘Let me top you up, then let’s have supper. Mrs Hodge’s pie, she is my gardener’s wife. He’s away at the war but she, thank God, helps in the house and cooks too.’
Violet said, ‘A treasure, you are lucky. My maids joined up in nineteen thirty-nine, but I bumble along. We eat in the kitchen.’
Priscilla said, ‘And so do I, and they do at Copplestone too. Come and eat.’
At supper they discussed the progress of the war, Violet’s work with the Red Cross and Priscilla’s with the WVS. Violet praised the pie. It was too soon to discuss Juno. To both women’s relief they went early to bed, Priscilla to lose herself in Greeneland, Violet to take refuge with Inspector Poirot.
‘What an extraordinary garment.’ Violet stood at the top of the hill, watching Juno walk up from the farm. She was wearing the sheepskin coat and the black wool cap she had worn on arrival at Copplestone. She carried a basket slung on each arm and her cheeks glowed pink from the frost.
Priscilla said, ‘I am so envious, it’s the warmest thing I’ve ever seen. She must have just finished milking, it hasn’t taken her long to get back to work.’
Violet said, ‘I’d call it unsuitable for farm work. I wonder what she has got in those baskets.’ As Juno came within earshot, she waved and shouted, ‘Hullo! Juno, hullo!’ She was standing with her back to the sun.
Juno looked puzzled then, recognizing her aunt’s voice, cried, ‘Aunt Violet! What are you doing here?’ stopping dead in her tracks.
‘Tiny holiday—staying with my old school friend.’ Violet advanced.
Priscilla watched.
Juno said, ‘So you’ve come to snoop.’ She came forward. ‘Well, here’s what you have come to see. Have a good look.’ She deposited her baskets at Violet’s feet. ‘Your great-nephews,’ she said with what Priscilla would later describe as perfect aplomb. Then, standing back from the baskets, she muttered to Priscilla, ‘Your bright idea? A plot?’
Priscilla shook her head, whispering, ‘No, no, no, hers.’
Juno, disbelieving, said, ‘Ahem!’ and, with her eyes on her aunt, ‘I hope this won’t cause a heart attack.’
Violet stared into the baskets; it was later said that their contents stared back. She said, ‘No Marlowe ever had eyes that colour. Where on earth can those eyes come from? It might be blind.’
Juno said, ‘He.’
Violet said, ‘Sorry, he, of course. Should they be on cold ground?’
Juno said, ‘They are well swaddled up,’ but she picked up the baskets.
‘You had them with you in the cowshed,’ Violet stated.
‘I park the baskets in a manger while I work. There is a precedent.’ Juno grinned, and equably Violet replied. ‘So there is. A peck of dirt never hurt anyone.’
Then Priscilla, scenting a truce, suggested, ‘Why don’t we all get into the house, where it’s warm? Perhaps Ann will give us tea.’ They trooped into the house, where Juno put the baskets on the hall table while they took off their coats.
Then Violet, surprising herself, said, ‘You look marvellous, Juno. You’ve got your figure back. Your mother has put on two stone and is having trouble with her legs.’
Juno said, ‘Oh! I had not heard.’ She felt stricken and surprised.
Violet, her tone sharp, asked, ‘Hasn’t she written?’
And Juno said, ‘No.’
‘Not told you about your little sister? Not told you of the pearls and the bracelet from your stepfather? Not told you that he is totally enchanted?’
‘No.’
‘Have you written to her?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Why not?’ It was pretty obvious why not, but one asked all the same.
Juno said, ‘It would be a pity to mar her happiness.’
Violet, surprised to find herself warming to Juno, said, ‘Mar, such a good word.’
Juno said, ‘I read a lot while I was waiting to explode. It enlarged my vocabulary.’
‘While keeping your figure,’ Violet approved, ‘unlike your mother. One surmises that Mr Sonntag in his state of enchantment does not mind. Oh well,’ she said, ‘if I were you I’d be grateful to have the Atlantic between you. Twin sons, after all, trump one daughter, whichever side of the blanket. One can’t help seeing the funny side,’ a remark she would repeat ad nauseam to John Barnes and Bill Bailey. Then she reached a tentative finger to touch each child, murmured, ‘Not like any Marlowe,’ looked up at the walls of the hall and stairs hung, as at Priscilla’s house, with portraits, and scrutinizing Robert’s mutton-chopped great-grandfather, an eighteenth-century lady in wig with lapdog, and a Copplestone in ruff with hand on swordhilt and louche expression, she repeated, ‘not the remotest resemblance.’
Then Ann called from the kitchen, ‘Tea’, Inigo and Presto began to yell and the telephone to ring. The confrontation was over.
Driving presently back to Priscilla’s house, Violet broke a ruminative silence. ‘And what do you think?’
With her eye on the road, Priscilla asked, ‘About what, Violet?’
‘Will he make an honest woman of her?’
‘Who are we talking about?’ Priscilla hedged.
Violet snapped, ‘The
infants’ father, of course.’
Priscilla said, ‘And who would that be?’
‘One surmises your Copplestone friend, I was sorry not to meet him—lurking in London.’ She sniffed.
Priscilla said, ‘Dear Violet, your imagination is bolting. Robert is not their father, nor, when you get around to thinking it, was his son Evelyn.’
‘Then who is?’
‘I too have asked that question.’
‘Oh.’
‘And as far as I can see it is to remain unanswered.’
‘Does your friend Mr Copplestone not know?’
‘My dear Violet, he has not asked either.’
Violet said, ‘Then the man must be mad!’ And although Priscilla was inclined to agree, she stayed loyally silent.
FORTY-ONE
NOVEMBER TURNING INTO DECEMBER found Robert still in London. The leaves floated off the plane trees in the parks and eddied about unswept; there were no children to rustle through them, no-one to sweep them up and burn their fragrant heaps. Remembering his pleasure in them as a child, and Evelyn running with the dog Jessie of his day, Robert visualized Juno’s twins doing the same thing in five or six years’ time. ‘Inigo and Presto,’ he said out loud and a man overtaking him glanced at him queerly, then quickened his pace as Robert, correcting himself, said, ‘No, it’s Inigo and Felix.’
Telephoning home two weeks before he had, after giving Ann instructions for Bert, asked whether Juno had yet found a name for the second twin.
Ann had told him, ‘She’s calling him Felix.’
Curious, he had said, ‘D’you know why?’
Ann had replied, ‘She says she is happy and Felix means happiness, but between you and me, Sir, she calls him Presto and I think it will stick and the Felix just be official.’
He had laughed and before they were cut off, their regulation three minutes being nearly up, he had asked, ‘Anything else?’
Ann said, ‘Oh yes, she says to ask you whether it’s not time to let Eleanor free in the woods to eat acorns.’
He had said, ‘Yes, tell her yes.’
So now, shuffling through the leaves, he was reminded of Juno and his thoughts were back to revolving as unhappily as had become their custom during the last month, as he walked in the parks and visited what friends he had who were not too busy to see him, taking them out to dinner or to lunch-time concerts at the National Gallery, preferring the music to their frenzied talk of the war, the German army trapped in the snow in Russia, the American fleet bombed at Pearl Harbor, America’s entry into the war, bringing hope of ultimate victory; stirring stuff, which should by rights override any other preoccupation, but did not.
When he went to Evelyn’s house to finish dealing with what private effects he had left, he questioned the neighbour again and it became clear as clear that Mrs Hunt had not known Juno, and that for Evelyn she was the merest acquaintance, a girl he had helped get a job with a letter to his father, no more and no less. Juno herself had never hinted at anything else. Robert made a second appointment with his solicitor and instructed him as to his will.
Edwin looked at him over his half-moon spectacles. ‘All right, Robert, that is quite clear, but out of interest who are these children, Inigo and Felix Marlowe? They do not seem to be family. Is there a connection I should know about?’
Robert said, ‘I was present when they were born.’
‘Yes?’
How strange it had been, helping Juno give birth. She had been so brave. Shouted so loud! Intelligent, too, to demand a bath. And between spasms of pain those odd disjointed queries about ‘pleasure’; what was that about? He knew very well what that was about, it was sexual pleasure. What a time to ask! What possessed the girl? He remembered saying, ‘This is hardly the moment,’ pompously idiotic, for was her mind not obviously running on its consequences? And she had shouted, ‘It seems a very good moment to me,’ snubbing him at the full pitch of her lungs.
‘No,’ he said, meeting Edwin’s eye, ‘there is no family connection.’ Had he not been certain of this at first sight of the infants? No Copplestone eyes had ever been black or of palest blue. ‘None,’ he said, smiling at Edwin, ‘none at all,’ remembering the euphoria that that first sighting had engendered, for these infants of Juno’s were not, could not be his grandchildren, were not, as he had for months imagined, Evelyn’s. Who had fathered them was immaterial. The euphoria had not of course lasted.
Doubtfully Edwin had said, ‘I see. All right, I suppose. I take it you know what you are doing. I should be failing in my duty to you as a client as well as a friend, Robert, if I did not point out that this is rather irregular.’
He had snapped, ‘No. more irregular than an old lady leaving her money to a cats’ home or a donkey sanctuary. I have no relations, Edwin, my will seems perfectly sensible to me and,’ he added, ‘my business.’
And Edwin had laughed and said, ‘Very well, I will have it ready to sign in a couple of days. Send it round to your club, shall I?’
Robert had thanked him and, before parting, they had discussed the war—one of Edwin’s sons was in the Far East, another in Cairo—and talked of the bomb site next to Edwin’s office which had become a habitat for wild flowers; rosebay, buddleia and teazle, which attracted birds. A goldfinch had been sighted by one of Edwin’s clerks.
Two days later Robert signed his will and now, kicking through the leaves in Green Park, he knew that there was nothing to keep him in London. He must go back to Copplestone, to his farm, and face up to being too old to make himself ridiculous, too old to be in love.
FORTY-TWO
ROBERT PAUSED BY THE moor gate to look across to the farm and above it, nestling into the hill, his house, and felt the lift of spirit that he always felt on reaching home. It was stupid to have lingered so long in London. Here he belonged; there was nowhere else to go. It had been cowardly to delay his return.
The evening was still and frosty. Below him in the farmyard Bert came out of the cowshed, shut the door and stood looking up the hill. Robert followed his gaze.
Juno was standing in the dusk on the edge of the wood, wearing the sheepskin coat and woollen cap. She called, ‘Eleanor? Time for tea. Eleanor—’ Her voice carried across the valley.
Robert imagined the faint rustle of twigs in the top branches of the wood, heard the first screech of an owl, watched the girl wrap her coat tight against the cold. Would she call again? He imagined her filling her lungs but no, she had turned round, she was watching the wood. Had she heard a grunt? Eleanor would approach on delicate trotters, marshalling her litter home from their foraging, hopping and skipping, scuffling through the leaf-mould, emitting small squeaks as they quickened their pace, hurrying to keep up. Suddenly as if by magic the sow was brushing against Juno’s legs; surrounded by piglets she was patting the sow. He heard her voice, ‘All hams and sides of bacon present? Everybody there? One, two, three, four,’ she counted, ‘eleven, twelve? Right then, race you to your sty,’ and she turned to run down the hill with the sow and litter streaming behind her.
Still Robert watched.
‘You’ll run all the fat off ’em.’ Bert came to meet her. ‘I’ve mixed their meal for you.’
‘Oh, thank you, Bert, thank you. You should not have bothered.’ Their voices carried in the frozen air.
‘No bother.’ (Robert raised his eyebrows. Well, well.)
‘You need to get back to your own.’
‘They are safe with Ann. In you go, Eleanor.’ She held the sty door open; the sow pushed in, followed by the piglets.
‘Maybe, but Ann can’t feed ’em,’ Bert nagged.
‘They will still be asleep, they are always sleeping when I get in. We have this exchange every night, Bert,’ she teased.
‘Maybe so.’ Bert watched her pour the pigswill into Eleanor’s trough and shut the sty door.
Juno said, ‘Anything else?’ She looked round the yard.
‘No, you get along up.’
‘Goodnight t
hen, Bert, thank you, goodnight.’
Bert watched her go. ‘Goodnight, girl.’ Then he shouted, ‘Why don’t you take the path?’
Juno’s voice, diminishing as she climbed the hill, called back, ‘I prefer my short cut.’
You’ll trip,’ Bert called, ‘fall, hurt yourself.’
‘No, I won’t.’ She was laughing.
‘Bert.’ Robert came up beside the man.
‘Sir? You’re back? Didn’t hear no car. No-one said you was coming. Made me jump.’
‘The taxi was busy. I walked, glad to stretch my legs. Did I give you a shock?’
‘Was just packing it in for the night, glad to see you. That Juno just called the pigs in from the wood; they are after the acorns.’
‘I was watching.’
‘Got a touch with animals, that one. Didn’t allow so at first, but she has.’
‘Good. Everything all right here?’
‘Yes, sir, seems so, ticking over.’
‘Good.’
‘Very glad to see you back, sir.’
‘Thank you, Bert. Eleanor’s litter look fine.’
‘See a difference in them babies, too, sir. Quite plumping out, two fine little babbies.’
‘Oh yes, the babies, good.’ Since when had Bert been interested in babies? ‘You sound quite proprietorial,’ Robert said.
‘I sound what?’
‘Interested, Bert, you were never a babies man.’
‘Well, I am now, we all take a turn,’ Bert snapped. ‘’Tis nice for a change to care for something you ain’t going to eat.’
Robert said, ‘I had not thought of it in that way. You have turned philosopher while I’ve been in London.’
Bert snorted.
Robert said goodnight. Turning to go he added, ‘Where’s this short cut?’
‘You stick to the path, sir, or you’ll fall.’
Robert said, ‘I think I already have.’
FORTY-THREE
REACHING THE HOUSE ROBERT let himself in, took off his coat and breathed the familiar smell of wood fires, furniture polish and something new. There was a bowl of hyacinths on the hall table. He stooped to sniff; not since he was a child and his mother planted them had there been hyacinths. The library door was ajar. He went to put a log on the fire. There was another bowl of bulbs on the table by the window. A patter of paws brought Jessie and her puppies to greet him and from the kitchen he heard voices and a gust of laughter. Caressing the dogs, he was glad to be home.