Bombs on Aunt Dainty

  “Max,” she said next time she saw him, “could you lend me eight shillings and ninepence?”

  “What for?” he asked, and she explained.

  He pulled a ten shilling note from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “A gift,” he said, “not a loan,” and when she thanked him he sighed and said, “I’ve always wanted to be a patron of the arts.”

  They were sitting in the buffet at Paddington, waiting for his train to take him back to his RAF station. Nowadays he made frequent trips to London, often calling only briefly on Mama and Papa, and always seemed abstracted. She watched him nervously crumbling a bright yellow object described as a bun on his plate.

  “Are you all right?” she said. “Why do you keep getting leave to come to London? Are you up to something?”

  “Of course not,” he said quickly. “I come to London to see you and Sally and Prue and Clarissa and Peggy …”

  He had a host of girl friends, but she did not believe that was the reason.

  “All right,” he said at last, “but don’t tell anyone. I’m trying to get on ops.”

  “You mean you’re going to fly on operations?”

  Max nodded. “Only I’ve had half a dozen interviews so far without getting anywhere, so there seemed no point in talking about it.”

  “It would be an awful risk, wouldn’t it?” said Anna.

  Max shrugged his shoulders. “No worse than what I’m doing now.”

  “But Max!” she cried. It seemed madness to her.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’ve been an instructor long enough. I’m bored, and when I’m bored I get careless. The other night—” He stopped.

  “What?” said Anna.

  “Well, I suppose I nearly killed myself. And my pupil.” He suddenly noticed the bun in his fingers and dropped it on the plate in disgust. “It was a stupid mistake – something to do with the navigation. I thought I was approaching Manchester…Anyway, I almost flew into a Welsh mountain.”

  “What did you do?” asked Anna.

  He grinned. “Turned left,” he said. “Very quickly.” Seeing her face, he added, “Don’t worry – I’ve been very careful ever since. And don’t tell Mama.”

  Anna bought the brushes and paints the next day in her lunch hour. In the evening, at art school, she asked John Cotmore’s advice on how to use them. He told her how to set out the paints on her palette, how to thin them down when necessary and how to clean her brushes. By the weekend she felt she was ready to start painting.

  She had decided, since her first painting might not be very good (though one could never tell), that she would not waste her only unused canvas on it. John Cotmore had explained to her that she could paint over a used canvas and she had chosen one that was not too big. It must have been one of Mr Cuddeford’s aunt’s last efforts, she thought, for it was only half-finished. It showed a worried-looking stag peering out of a bush, and there had evidently been some intention of having a whole lot more stags leaping about in the background, but either Mr Cuddeford’s aunt had become discouraged or old age had gripped her. At any rate this part of the painting was barely sketched in.

  Anna picked up a stick of charcoal and, ignoring the stag’s reproachful eye, began to map out her design. She planned to paint a group of shelterers. Since the recent air raids, many of them had returned to the tube with their bundles and blankets, and the painting was to show not only what they looked like but how they felt. It was to be very sombre and moving. She quickly sketched out the shapes of three women, two sitting and one lying on a bunk above them, so that they just filled the canvas. Then she squeezed some colours on to her palette, and then she stopped.

  Were you supposed to thin the colours with turps or linseed oil? She was pretty sure John Cotmore had said turps, but suddenly felt it would be nice to talk to him before actually starting to paint. She flew up to the public telephone, looked up his number in the book, dialled and found herself almost choked with nerves when he replied.

  “Hullo?” he said. He sounded half-asleep.

  “It’s Anna,” she said, and he immediately woke up.

  “Well, hullo,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m just going to start to paint.” She seemed to have less than her usual amount of breath, so she added as briefly as possible, “Is it turps or linseed oil that you should use as a thinner?”

  “Turps,” he said. “Linseed oil would make it sticky.”

  There was a pause and then he said, “Is that all you wanted to know?”

  “Yes,” she said, and then, to make the conversation last longer, “I thought you’d said turps, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “Oh yes, definitely turps.”

  There was another pause and then he said, “Well, nice to hear your voice.”

  “And yours,” she said with infinite daring.

  “Is it?” He laughed. “Well, good luck with the painting.”

  After this she could think of nothing more to say and had to ring off.

  She walked back through the garden and it was quite a long time before she could compose herself enough to start work.

  She spent most of the day covering up the stag. It was impossible to see her composition properly as long as he was staring out of the middle of it, and in her hurry to get rid of him she quickly painted in the main shapes as best she could. The following morning she concentrated on improving them, and it was not until the afternoon that she began to have doubts. By this time she had painted everything except the bunk, which would be tedious, but the picture still did not look right. I’ll leave it, she thought. I’ll look at it again next weekend when I’m fresh.

  “How’s the painting?” John Cotmore asked her at art school the following week. It was the first time he had ever sought her out to speak to her alone.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  The following Saturday she was shocked when she saw it again. Now that the paint had dried not only did the colours look unpleasant, but the whole thing had gone flat. Also, due to some chemical process, the stag’s eye had reappeared and glowed faintly through one of the shelterers’ faces.

  Well, at least I know what’s wrong with it, she thought. There’s no light on it. She painted out the stag’s eye and spent the rest of the weekend changing the colours and putting on dabs of light in various places. It was difficult because, as she gradually realised, she was not at all sure where the light would come. At the end, the painting looked different but not much better – a speckled effect rather than a flat one – and she was very depressed.

  “I’m having a lot of trouble with my painting,” she told John Cotmore. “Could I show it to you sometime?”

  “Of course,” he said. Then he added casually, “It’s difficult to talk properly here. Why don’t you bring it round to my house? Come and have tea on Saturday.”

  She was at once thrown into confusion.

  Girls didn’t go alone to men’s houses…did they? On the other hand, why not? She looked at him, carelessly perched on one of the stools in the art-room. He seemed quite unconcerned, as though he had suggested something very ordinary.

  “All right,” she said with a curious sense of excitement, and he wrote down the address for her on a piece of paper. Then he added the telephone number. “In case you change your mind,” he said.

  In case she changed her mind? Did that mean it wasn’t so ordinary after all? Oh, she thought, I wish we’d always stayed in one country, then Mama would have been able to tell me what people do and what they don’t do, and I’d know!

  She worried about it for the rest of the week. She played with the idea of asking Mama’s advice, of ringing up at the last moment and saying no, but all the time she knew with mounting excitement that she would go, that she would not tell Mama, and while part of her mind was still inventing excuses for calling the whole thing off another had already decided what she would wear. On Saturday she told Mama, as she had always known she would, that she was meetin
g a girl friend from art school, and went.

  John Cotmore lived in a quiet road in Hampstead. It was the first warm day of the year and as Anna walked up slowly from the tube station she passed flowering trees, people working in their gardens and open windows everywhere. She was early and had time to make several detours before stopping outside his door. A notice above the bell said Out of Order and after a moment she used the knocker. Nothing happened and panic seized her at the thought that he might have forgotten and gone out – to be replaced by relief and a different kind of panic as the door opened and he appeared.

  “Hullo,” he said. He was wearing a blue sweater which she had never seen and was holding a spoon in one hand.

  “Just getting the tea ready,” he said.

  She waved her painting, wrapped in brown paper, like a passport and followed him into the house.

  It was bright and empty and specks of dust danced in the light of his large untidy living room.

  “Sit down,” he said, and she sat in a chair with the painting beside her.

  Through the door at the end of the room she could see his studio and there were stacks of drawings everywhere.

  “I’m working for another exhibition,” he said. “These are some of the ones I’ve done recently.”

  “Oh!” she said and stood up again to look at them.

  They were mostly figures and a few landscapes in pen and wash, all drawn with his usual perceptive precision. It was embarrassing to go through them while he watched, but she really admired them and so found various suitable things to say. There was one in particular, a wash drawing of trees and a wide expanse of sky, which had such a feeling of wetness and spring that she forgot all her careful phrases and cried instead, “It’s lovely!”

  He was looking at it critically over her shoulder.

  “You think I should put it in?”

  “Oh yes,” she cried. “You must – it’s beautiful.”

  He was standing quite close to her and for a moment she felt his hand on her arm.

  “You’re very sweet,” he said. Then he said, “Must put the kettle on,” and disappeared, leaving her alone and slightly light-headed.

  She could hear him clattering in the kitchen nearby – he must have found more to do than just the kettle – and after a while she began to look through another stack of drawings on the sofa. These seemed to be mostly unfinished or discarded sketches, but there was one different from the rest. It showed a man working some kind of machine. The man looked very strong and every bit of the machine, down to the tiniest screw, was carefully drawn and shaded. She was looking at it in surprise when she heard his voice behind her.

  “That’s not mine,” he said. “That’s my wife’s.”

  He sounded put out, and she dropped it as though it were red-hot.

  “I wondered why it was so different,” she said quickly, and to her relief he smiled.

  “Yes, amazing – all those nuts and bolts.” He replaced the drawing and threw some others on top. “But a lot of precision there. She’s very keen on social significance, whereas I –” He gestured towards his own work and Anna nodded sympathetically. It must be awful for a man of his sensitivity to be tied to someone so fond of nuts and bolts.

  “It’s easier since we live apart,” he said. “We each go our own way – quite a friendly arrangement.”

  She did not know what to answer, and he added, “You probably don’t know about such things at your age, but people make mistakes and marriages break up. It’s no use blaming anyone.”

  She nodded again, touched by his generosity.

  “Well then,” he said, “let’s have some tea.”

  The kitchen was even untidier than the living room, but he had cleared a space among the clutter of jugs and saucepans and unwashed crockery for a tray laid ready for two. She helped him carry it into the living room, suddenly less bright, for the sun had moved round a corner, and he lit the gas fire and moved two chairs up close to it. She watched him as he poured the tea into two cups of different shape and then they sat together in the pale glow of the fire.

  “I’ve been working flat out,” he said, and began to tell her about his work, about his frame-maker and the difficulty of finding the right kind of paper in wartime.

  Gradually the room grew warmer. She noticed how his sweater wrinkled at the elbows, how his stubby fingers fitted round his cup. A great contentment filled her. His voice droned pleasantly on and she had long ceased to listen to the words when it suddenly stopped.

  “What?” she said. She had a feeling that there had been a question.

  “What about your painting?” he said.

  “My painting!”

  She jumped up guiltily to fetch it.

  It looked worse than ever as it emerged from its wrapping and there was no mistaking his expression when he saw it.

  “It’s awful,” she said. “I know it’s awful, but I thought you could help me with it.”

  He stared at it in silence. Then he pointed to a misty shape which had appeared in the centre and asked, “What’s that?”

  “A stag,” she said.

  “A stag?” he asked, startled.

  Suddenly she was filled with rage and shame at having spoiled the afternoon with her awful picture.

  “Yes,” she cried. “A bloody great stag that was underneath and keeps coming through, and I don’t know how anyone can manage these impossible paints, and I think the only thing is for me to give it all up!”

  She glared at him, daring him to laugh, and he put his arm round her shoulders.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s not as bad as all that. There’s nothing wrong with what you were trying to do. Only you’ve got a lot to learn.”

  She said nothing.

  He dropped the painting onto a chair but left his arm where it was.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’ve been offered another evening’s teaching. I thought we might make it a painting class rather than a drawing class – what do you think?”

  It flashed across her mind that if there was to be a painting class she could have shown him the picture at school instead of coming to his house, but she pushed the thought aside.

  “It would be marvellous,” she said faintly.

  His face was very close to hers.

  “I just wanted to know,” he murmured, “what you thought.”

  And then, as she had always known he would, he put his other arm round her and kissed her gently, slowly and lovingly on the lips.

  I’m being kissed! she thought and was horrified to find herself looking past him at the mirror above the fireplace to see what it looked like. Her hands were clasped behind his neck and she hurriedly unclasped them and put them on his shoulders. But at the same time something she had never felt stirred inside her and the happiness which had filled her for so long rose to a climax. This is it, she thought. This was what it was all about. This was the marvellous thing she had always known was going to happen.

  After a long time he let her go.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  She found herself sitting down without quite knowing how she had got there.

  “It’s all right,” she said. She thought of adding, “I don’t mind,” but it seemed inadequate.

  He sat close to her in the other chair and for a long time there was nothing but the room and the fire and her own overwhelming happiness.

  “I must talk to you very seriously,” he said at last.

  She looked at him.

  “No, I mean it,” he said. “You’re very young.”

  “Eighteen,” she said. For some reason she could not stop smiling.

  “Eighteen,” he nodded. “And you’re quite happy. Aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Of course.”

  “Well – how shall I put this – I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”

  Why did he have to do all this talking? She would have been quite content just to sit. And what d
id he mean, disturb her? If only I was English, she thought, I would know what he meant.

  “Disturb me?” she said.

  “If I made love to you now …” He waited. “It would disturb you, wouldn’t it?”

  But it wouldn’t disturb her if he kissed her again, or held her hand. What did he mean, made love to her?

  To cover her confusion, she said carelessly, “Not necessarily.”

  “It wouldn’t disturb you if I made love to you?” He seemed very surprised.

  An English girl would know, she thought desperately, she would know exactly. Why couldn’t she have grown up in one country like everyone else?

  He was waiting for her answer, and at last she shrugged her shoulders. “Well,” she said in as worldly a voice as she could manage, “it didn’t disturb me just now!”

  He suddenly sat back in his chair.

  “Would you like some more tea?” he asked after a moment.

  “No.”

  But he poured a cup for himself and drank it slowly. Then he stood up and took her hand.

  “Come along,” he said. “I’m going to send you home.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Before she could recover from her surprise, he had fetched her coat and put it on her as though she were a child. Then he handed her her painting, back in its paper bag.

  “There,” he said. “You’ll just get home before the blackout.”

  “But I don’t mind …” she said, as he propelled her gently out of the room, “…about the blackout …”

  They had reached the front door and the rest of the words went out of her head as he kissed her again.

  “You do understand,” he murmured. “It’s just that I don’t want to disturb you.”

  She nodded, moved by the warmth of his voice. He seemed to expect something more, so she said, “Thank you.”

  All the way home on the tube she thought how wonderful he was. For he must have meant…But he loved her too much, he respected her too much. To take advantage of me! she thought, and the phrase seemed to her deliciously funny. Slowly she went over the afternoon look by look, word by word, gesture by gesture. He loves me! she thought incredulously. John Cotmore loves me! She felt that it must show on her somehow, that she must look different. She stared at her reflection, racing dimly down the tunnels in the window beside her, and was surprised to find it looking as usual. He loves me, she thought again, I am sitting here on the Bakerloo line and he loves me.