Camomile Lawn Read online

‘I don’t think you will.’ Sophy arrived beside them, scrambling up the last slope silently. ‘What time did I take? Flash the torch for me and shout, please.’

  Calypso raised her voice in a long cry, then said: ‘Why won’t he love me for ever?’ But Sophy knew better than to answer when Calypso used that tone of voice. They waited, flashing the torch and shouting up the cliff towards the lawn as Paul, David, Polly and Walter joined them. Then they sat for a while looking at the moon-path on the water.

  ‘Never again,’ said Polly. ‘This time next year where shall we all be?’

  ‘Under the sod,’ Walter grunted.

  ‘Lying in some distant field for ever England,’ misquoted Oliver, ‘like Uncle’s leg. I hate that poem. I prefer the one “and is there honey still for tea and crumpets with my strumpet”. Three of us had a bowdlerizing competition in a ditch a few months ago.’

  ‘Who drew spots and who drew blanks?’ Sophy, thinking of the new game to distract her mind from Oliver and Calypso, tried to catch them napping.

  ‘That would be telling.’ Walter rolled her over on the grass. ‘There were eleven of us, so eight will be innocent and most of the eleven wouldn’t know what to do if they did draw a black spot.’

  ‘Makes it very exciting. Did you say five years for a time limit, Oliver? That’s rather short for something so important.’

  ‘Make it ten,’ said Oliver grandly, ‘then Sophy, if she’s drawn a spot, can wait till she’s twenty.’

  ‘The war will be over by then.’

  ‘Or we shall be dead. Come on, up, up the cliff. Like a ride on my shoulders, Sophy?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘What will the old people do in the war!’ Polly climbed beside the twins.

  ‘Compare it with theirs,’ said Walter over his shoulder.

  ‘Watch and wait,’ said the twins, thinking of Pauli Erstweiler trapped in his concentration camp.

  ‘Mourn,’ said Calypso. ‘They know how to.’

  ‘No doubt we shall learn,’ said Oliver drily.

  ‘Uncle Richard wants a dog,’ Sophy exclaimed, apropos of nothing.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He is mourning old Farticus.’

  ‘Then we shall find him one. Helena won’t be pleased.’

  ‘It’s about time we stopped always considering Helena,’ said Polly. ‘She gave him a pretty hefty kick before dinner.’

  ‘He deserved it, he and his General. Down with all Generals, I say.’

  ‘And especially Franco.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s going to be awkward for the General,’ said David.

  ‘Why?’ asked Polly sharply.

  ‘Because when he was invited to the Nuremberg Rally, and introduced to Hitler by his Nazi friends, he came back to tell us it’s all a damn good show which puts a bit of backbone into the youth of the nation. He was full of it last year after Munich.’

  ‘The General told my father it would be a good show if the pansy youth of England were put into the Hitler Jugend.’ Calypso laughed. ‘That was because he thought all you boys needed a haircut and Oliver’s suede shoes got up his nose.’

  ‘He’s being very patriotic now,’ said Polly. ‘I hear he’s organizing air raid precautions and urging all his tenants to join up.’

  ‘Oh, blow,’ said Walter, ‘you put me off. When I’m in my submarine it won’t be for his sake, not bloody likely.’

  ‘It will be for the Pauli Erstweilers of this world, I know.’ Polly turned to Calypso. ‘What shall you do?’

  ‘Find a glamorous job where there are lots of rich men.’

  ‘I really think she means it,’ said the twins, laughing. ‘Won’t you comfort the troops?’

  ‘I shall do that, too.’ Calypso smiled sweetly. ‘Impartially,’ she added, looking sidelong at the twins and Walter. Did they too get erections? She must consult with Polly, who knew about sex since she had access to her father’s gynaecological books, without if possible betraying her own sexual ignorance.

  As they reached the lawn Polly called out: ‘Did Oliver win, as usual?’ but the elders were in the drawing room, an anxious group talking in low voices. Helena stood in the doorway white-faced.

  ‘It was your father,’ she said to Walter and Polly. ‘His hospital is to be evacuated tomorrow.’

  ‘War,’ said Polly. Nobody contradicted her.

  The fear in the room was tangible. Monika reached for her husband’s hand. Helena found herself exchanging a glance of despair with Max. Looking round at the young people she read on their faces fear mixed with a sexual combustion she was to remember later. Walter’s eyes were clouded. Polly stared questioningly at the twins, who held her gaze. Calypso looked up at Oliver.

  ‘Well?’

  Sophy tugged at Oliver’s hand: ‘What about the new game?’

  ‘Scrub it.’ He stared at Calypso, ignoring the child. ‘We’ve all drawn marked cards now.’

  Sophy muttered mutinously. Oliver shook his hand free.

  Richard limped into the hall to tap the barometer. ‘Weather’s set fair,’ he said cheerfully. The tableau melted.

  ‘We should be going,’ Monika said gently.

  The Erstweilers said polite goodbyes. The cousins and the twins went and sat on the lawn, staring out at the sea. Helena called from the house: ‘Sophy, go to bed. It’s long past your bedtime.’ The child trailed into the house without saying goodnight.

  ‘Shall we try and get through to Mother?’ Walter and Polly went to telephone.

  ‘We’d better go.’ The twins left sadly. ‘Shall we tell them tonight or wait till the morning?’ They considered their parents.

  ‘We’ve had a good time there.’ David looked back at the house standing square to the winds. ‘What an ugly house. I suggest we let them sleep and tell them in the morning,’ said David, feeling protective towards the innocence of good people. ‘They are as vulnerable as Sophy.’

  ‘Differently.’ The brothers exchanged a glance, each seeing his concern for their parents mirrored in the other, and their joint fear.

  Seven

  HELENA UNDRESSED, BRUSHED HER hair, cleaned her teeth, rubbed cream into her face, then sat on the edge of her bed listening to Richard going through his familiar routine in the dressing room.

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘Yes, my dear? A good party. Thank you for your trouble.’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’

  ‘Sorry I dropped a brick with those Jews.’

  ‘You made up for it. Richard, I don’t think I can sleep. Could we talk a bit?’

  ‘What about?’ Her husband stood in his shirt and trousers, his braces hanging down at the back.

  ‘The war.’

  He said violently: ‘It’s another false alarm. There isn’t going to be a war.’

  ‘The hospitals and doctors are being evacuated and the children too. Martin knows—’

  ‘It’s just another exercise. The General says—’

  ‘The General is killing the hounds.’

  ‘He hasn’t done it yet. Good God, Helena, there won’t be a war. Don’t be so panicky.’ Richard’s face grew scarlet.

  ‘I can’t talk to you.’ Helena was filled with bile.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t. If you deny what is happening how can I talk to you? All those children will be in it, all the horrors will happen again, only worse. Richard, I can’t stand your head-in-the-sand attitude. I’m going to London.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  Helena looked at him helplessly, unable to say ‘To get away from you’, which was her uppermost feeling. She said: ‘To do some shopping.’

  Richard closed the door of the dressing room. She heard him get out of his trousers, prop his leg against a chair, hop to the bed, scrabble into it, and the wheeze of the mattress as he lay down.

  Oh God! Helena changed her clothes, packed a case and left the house. This is the most terrible row we’ve ever had and noth
ing said. She carried her case to the car, got in and drove down the hill. When she reached the level road at the bottom of the hill the engine coughed, choked, moaned. She had forgotten to fill up with petrol. She laid her arms across the steering wheel, her head on her arms, and wept with frustration.

  In the warmth of the late summer night Oliver and Calypso lay on the scented lawn. Oliver held Calypso’s hand, lying on his back with his free arm across his eyes.

  ‘Now will you marry me?’

  ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘But war changes everything.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Of course it does. I must have you if I am to fight.’

  ‘You could get a safe job. They say there’s no need for so many men in this war. There are to be reserved occupations.’

  ‘I’ve got to fight. I’m committed.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Myself, you.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to fight. I didn’t ask you to rush off to Spain in that silly way. I’m not asking you to fight for the Jews.’

  ‘Against Fascism, against the Nazis.’

  ‘Oh, that. It’s just a tag. Some of them are awfully nice. All that lot we met skiing. I loved that lot in Kitzbühel.’

  ‘They liked you, I remember. Did you kiss them?’

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘Calypso, look at me. I’m serious. Will you marry me? At least let us be engaged.’

  ‘If I’ve said no once I’ve said it a hundred times. No. I will comfort you, as they say, but marriage, no. I’d only make you unhappy,’ Calypso snapped.

  ‘I’d risk that. I’m unhappy already.’

  ‘Well, then, you’ve a taste of what it would be like.’ Calypso stood up yawning. ‘I’m so sleepy, Goodnight, Olly.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to the comfort bit.’

  ‘You do that.’ Calypso drifted into the house.

  Oliver rolled over and lay on his face. Above him Sophy edged backwards along the branch, her pyjama trousers rucking round her waist.

  ‘Sophy, were you listening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You shouldn’t eavesdrop.’

  ‘I happened to be here. I often am.’

  ‘Come down. I’ll catch you.’ He held out his arms, catching the child as she jumped.

  ‘There. Let’s just sit for a while.’

  They sat with their backs to the tree, listening to the sea slapping against the rocks.

  ‘It’s high tide,’ she said.

  ‘War tide.’

  ‘I’m frightened, are you?’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘Worse than the Terror Run?’

  ‘Oh much, much worse. This is real.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘The noise, the smell, the filth.’

  ‘I shall run again in your honour.’

  ‘Funny little thing. You should be in bed.’

  ‘Let me stay a bit.’

  Oliver sat, his arm round the child. In the east the false dawn. He kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m going, Sophy.’

  ‘When?’ She was startled.

  ‘Now. The sooner the better. There’s nothing for me here. The war’s waiting.’

  Sophy looked at him, tears on her cheeks. She longed to say, ‘I am here, I am not nothing.’ She followed him into the house, watched him push his clothes into his rucksack, followed him downstairs and out of the door, hopping beside him barefoot across the garden. At the gate he stopped.

  ‘Say goodbye now and pop back to bed.’

  ‘I would comfort you,’ Sophy cried passionately.

  Oliver laughed and bent to kiss her.

  Sophy flung her arms round his neck. ‘Will you come back? Promise.’

  ‘Perhaps. Let me go now.’ She dropped her arms and watched him lope down the road, the pack on his back turning him into a monster. The first seagull of the day set up its wailing. She was cold in her pyjamas and wanted to pee. Her desolation was great.

  At the bottom of the hill Oliver found Helena in the car, asleep with her head on her arms.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He wondered what she was doing at this hour.

  ‘I’ve run out of petrol.’

  ‘I’ll walk on and get you some. The garages will be opening soon.’

  ‘Leave your pack with me.’ She asked no questions.

  He returned carrying a can. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘London.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I can drive you there, we can take turns.’

  ‘All right.’ He got in beside his aunt.

  ‘Are you staying with Mother?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought.’

  ‘She’ll be glad to put you up. If we stop for breakfast in Truro I will ring her up.’

  ‘Thank you, Oliver.’

  Forty-five years later, driving down the surgical motorway, Helena remembered with nostalgia the journey she and Oliver made. Breakfast at the Red Lion in Truro, bacon and eggs and marmalade eaten in silence in an empty dining room, reading the papers. Then on through central Cornwall, catching glimpses of the sea on the north coast, through Bodmin on to Bodmin Moor, past Jamaica Inn to stop in Launceston for a drink at the White Hart before lunching at the Arundel Arms at Lifton, where the talk at neighbouring tables was of the state of the river and the prospect of catching a fish. On through Somerset where farmers were cutting the corn, the machines clattering behind plodding horses, past Ilchester and Ilminster along the road bordered by stately elms, the late summer foliage dark green, to Mere where they stopped to dine at the Old Ship. Then the last hundred miles over Salisbury Plain, watching the moon swing into a cloudless sky as they came down into Hampshire where the corn stood waiting for the reaper. On through Andover and Camberley, past the Cricketers’ Arms at Bagshot, past Virginia Water and Egham, to be caught in a jam of traffic in Staines until at long last they reached the street where Oliver’s parents lived, within easy reach of Harrods and Peter Jones. What had they talked about that long day, she and Oliver? Speeding down the motorway Helena could not remember. What had they discussed? Not Richard, not Calypso. War? Books? Music, perhaps? Travel, very likely. She remembered describing Greece. Swimming in warm seas and clambering over rocky hills in autumn where yellow crocus sprang from the rock itself and pink cyclamen.

  They had also remembered the villages decorated with flags all the way from London to Penzance only two years before, when a party of them in different mood had fled London and the King’s Coronation crowds, driving through the night along deserted roads. That was a happy night she remembered, thinking, Of course he was happy, he was not in love with Calypso then.

  ‘You must be exhausted,’ Oliver’s mother called down to them from the balcony, leaning over the trailing pink geraniums. ‘I’m coming down.’

  Oliver lifted Helena’s case from the car. Sarah Anstey put her arms round Helena and kissed her.

  ‘Sarah, I had to come up. I hope you don’t mind. I can go to an hotel.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. George will be in soon. They’ve hustled him into the Admiralty, he’s terribly busy, overworked already. I am glad to see you.’

  ‘I can’t make up my mind in Cornwall. I never can.’

  ‘No, of course not. I understand.’

  Had Sarah understood? Of course she had not. She was fortunate, in love with George, always would be; worried of course about Oliver and the war, but how could a woman like Sarah, who always got everything right, understand Helena, whose talent was to get things wrong?

  She remembered, speeding down the motorway, Sarah had put her in the spare room on the floor above her own, had sent her maid, who later became something rather grand in the Wrens and called them all by their Christian names, to help her unpack, turn down the bed and make a welcoming fuss. Helena remembered a long soak in a hot bath and the relief of getting into a bed out of earshot of Richard.

  ‘I should have been ashamed,’ said Helena, speeding down the M4.

/>   ‘Ashamed of what?’ The driver of the car kept an eye on the road, driving in the fast lane.

  ‘Ashamed of myself,’ said Helena recollecting, ‘but I wasn’t. It was such a relief to be in London.’

  ‘When was that then?’

  ‘At the outbreak of war.’

  ‘Oh.’ He accelerated, overtaking a Lancia, making it swerve. ‘Pity about the elm disease,’ he said, making conversation as she appeared to be awake. ‘Must have been lovely once, this countryside.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t ashamed, I was just bloody relieved.’ Helena hoped to shock her driver and succeeded. ‘Oliver thought I was past it then,’ she added.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Forty years ago—more.’

  But she had been ashamed, for it was shame as well as pity for the animal which had caused her to buy Richard a puppy in Harrods’ pet shop a few days later.

  ‘How Sarah laughed.’

  ‘Who was Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah was Oliver’s mother.’

  ‘Oliver Anstey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was quite well known. I didn’t know you knew him.’

  ‘He’s still alive, very much so.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know. I’ve read his books, of course. Always seems to be looking for something, doesn’t know what it is.’

  ‘You are very perceptive. Would you mind not driving quite so fast? I am not afraid of death but I am afraid of being mangled in a pile-up,’ and the driver, who had offered a lift from kindness of heart, reduced speed, regretting his soft-heartedness. Another time he would know better, though on second thoughts his passenger looked frail and might not have many more times.

  ‘I thought you might be in a hurry to get there.’

  ‘Oh, no. I have never been in a hurry. Indeed at one time I came close to leaving altogether.’

  ‘Oh really, when was that?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  Helena’s driver pressed his foot on the accelerator.

  Eight

  ‘SARAH.’ HELENA SAT WITH Oliver’s mother at the kitchen table that September Sunday morning. ‘I am thinking of leaving Richard.’

  ‘I thought as much.’ Sarah felt no surprise. ‘Why did you marry him? We’ve always wondered.’

  ‘I don’t really know. Could it have been because he had known Anthony? Because I needed someone to look after? Because I was lonely? Pity? Because he was lumbered with orphan Sophy? It wasn’t love.’