Life after life

April 1940

A CAR HORN down in the street below broke the Sunday-morning silence of Knightsbridge. Ursula missed the sound of church bells. There were so many simple things she had taken for granted before the war. She wished that she could go back and appreciate them properly.

‘Why the horn,’ Crighton said, ‘when we have a perfectly good doorbell?’ He looked out of the window. ‘He’s here,’ he said, ‘if he’s a young man in a three-piece suit puffed up like a Christmas robin.’

‘That does sound like him.’ Although Ursula didn’t think of Maurice as ‘young’, had never thought of him as young, but she supposed he was to Crighton.

Hugh’s sixtieth birthday and Maurice had grudgingly offered her a lift to Fox Corner for the celebrations. It was going to be a novelty, and not necessarily a good one, to spend time cloistered in a car with Maurice. They were rarely alone with each other.

‘He has petrol?’ Crighton had said, raising an eyebrow but really it was more a statement than a question.

‘He has a driver,’ Ursula said. ‘I knew Maurice would squeeze the most out of the war.’ ‘What war?’ Pamela would have said. She was ‘marooned’ in Yorkshire with only six small boys for company and Jeanette, who had turned out to be not merely a moaner but ‘quite the fainéante. I expected better of a vicar’s daughter. She’s so lazy, I run around all day long after her boys as well as mine. I’ve had enough of this evacuation lark, I think we’ll come home soon.’

‘I suppose he could hardly turn up at home in a car without having given me a lift,’ Ursula said. ‘Maurice wouldn’t want to be seen to be behaving badly, even by his own family. He has a reputation to keep up. Besides, his family are staying there and he’s bringing them back to London tonight.’ Maurice had sent Edwina and the children to stay at Fox Corner for the Easter holidays. Ursula had wondered if he knew something about the war that the public didn’t – was Easter to be a particularly hazardous time? There must be so many things that Maurice knew that others didn’t, but Easter had passed off without incident and she supposed it was merely a case of grandchildren visiting grandparents. Philip and Hazel were very uninventive children and Ursula wondered how they were getting on with Sylvie’s rambunctious evacuees. ‘It’ll be horribly crowded on the way back, with Edwina and the children. Not to mention the driver. Still, needs must and so on.’

The car horn sounded again. Ursula ignored it as a matter of principle. How wickedly satisfying it would be, she thought, to have Crighton in tow, in full naval fig (all those medals, all that gold braid), outranking Maurice in so many ways. ‘You could come with me, you know,’ she said to him. ‘We just wouldn’t mention Moira. Or the girls.’

‘Is it your home?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You said, “he could hardly turn up at home”. Isn’t this? Your home?’ Crighton said.

‘Yes, of course,’ Ursula said. Maurice was pacing impatiently up and down on the pavement and she rapped on the window pane to get his attention and held up her index finger, mouthing ‘one minute’ to him. He frowned at her. ‘It’s a figure of speech,’ she said, turning back to Crighton. ‘One always refers to one’s parents’ place as “home”.’

‘Does one? I don’t.’

No, thought Ursula, you don’t. Wargrave was ‘home’ for Crighton, even if only in his thoughts. And he was right, of course, she didn’t consider the flat in Egerton Gardens to be her home. It was a point in time, a temporary stopping-off place on yet another journey that the war had interrupted. ‘We can argue the point if you want,’ she said amiably. ‘It’s just, you know … Maurice, marching up and down out there like a little tin soldier.’

Crighton laughed. He never looked for arguments.

‘I would love to join you and meet your family,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to the Citadel.’ The Admiralty was constructing an underground fortress, the Citadel, on Horse Guards Parade and Crighton was in the process of moving his office over.

‘I’ll see you later then,’ Ursula said. ‘My carriage awaits and Maurice is pawing the ground.’

‘Ring,’ Crighton reminded her and Ursula said, ‘Oh, yes, of course, I nearly forgot.’ She had started wearing a wedding ring when not at work, for appearances’ sake, ‘Tradesmen, and so on.’ The boy who delivered the milk, the woman who came in to clean twice a week, she didn’t want them thinking she was in an illicit relationship. (She had surprised herself with this bashfulness.)

‘You can imagine how many questions there would be if they saw that,’ she said, slipping the ring off and leaving it on the hall table.

Crighton kissed her lightly on the cheek and said, ‘Have a nice time.’

‘No guarantee of that,’ she said.

‘Still not caught yourself a man?’ Izzie asked Ursula. ‘Of course,’ she said, turning brightly to Sylvie, ‘you have – how many grandchildren now, seven, eight?’

‘Six. Perhaps you’re a grandmother, Izzie.’

‘What?’ Maurice said. ‘How could she be?’

‘Anyway,’ Izzie said airily, ‘it takes the pressure off Ursula to produce one.’

‘Produce?’ Ursula said, a forkful of salmon in aspic suspended on its way to her mouth.

‘Looks like you’re left on the shelf,’ Maurice said.

‘Pardon?’ The fork returned to the plate.

‘Always the bridesmaid …’

‘Once,’ Ursula said. ‘I have been a bridesmaid once only, to Pamela.’

‘I’ll have that if you’re not eating it,’ Jimmy said, filching the salmon.

‘I was, actually.’

‘Even worse then,’ Maurice said. ‘Nobody even wants you as a bridesmaid except for your sister.’ He sniggered, more schoolboy than man. He was, annoyingly, seated too far away for her to kick him beneath the table.

‘Manners, Maurice,’ Edwina murmured. How many times would he disappoint you in a day if you were married to him, Ursula wondered? It seemed to her that in the search for arguments against marriage the existence of Maurice presented the very best one of all. Of course, Edwina’s nose was currently out of joint on account of the driver, who turned out to be a rather attractive ATS girl in uniform. Sylvie, to the girl’s embarrassment (her name was Penny but everyone immediately forgot this), insisted that she join them at the table when she would clearly have been more comfortable staying with the car, or in the kitchen with Bridget. She was stuck at the cramped end of the table with the evacuees and was the object of constant frosty scrutiny from Edwina. Maurice, on the other hand, studiously ignored her. Ursula tried to read some meaning into this. She wished Pamela were here, she was very good at deciphering people, although not perhaps as good as Izzie. (‘So, Maurice has been a naughty boy, I see. Mind you, she’s a looker. Women in uniform, what man can resist?’)

Philip and Hazel sat passively between their parents. Sylvie had never been particularly fond of Maurice’s children whereas she seemed to delight in her evacuees, Barry and Bobby (‘my two busy bees’), currently crawling beneath the Regency Revival dining table, giggling in a rather manic fashion. ‘Full of mischief,’ Sylvie said indulgently. The evacuees, as everyone else referred to them, as if they were entirely defined by their status, had been scrubbed and polished into apparent innocence by Bridget and Sylvie but nothing could disguise their impish nature. (‘What little horrors,’ Izzie said with a shudder.) Ursula rather liked them, they reminded her of the small Millers. If they had been dogs their tails would have been constantly wagging.

Sylvie now had a pair of real puppies as well, excitable black Labradors who were also brothers. They were called Hector and Hamish but seemed to be known collectively and indistinguishably as ‘the dogs’. The dogs and the evacuees appeared to have contributed to a new shabbiness in Fox Corner. Sylvie herself seemed more reconciled now to this war than she had ever been to the last one. Hugh less so. He had been ‘pushed’ into training the Home Guard and had only this morning after Sunday service been instructing the ‘ladies’ of the local church in the use of the stirrup pump.

‘Is that suitable for the Sabbath?’ Edwina asked. ‘I’m sure God’s on our side, but …’ she tailed off, incapable of sustaining a theological position despite being ‘a devout Christian’, which meant, according to Pamela, that she slapped her children hard and made them eat for breakfast what they left at tea.

‘Of course it’s suitable,’ Maurice said. ‘In my role organizing the civil defence—’

‘I don’t consider myself to be “on the shelf” as you so charmingly put it,’ Ursula interrupted him irritably. Again, she experienced a fleeting wish for Crighton’s be-medalled, braided presence. How horrified Edwina would be to know of Egerton Gardens. (‘And how is the Admiral?’ Izzie asked later in the garden, sotto voce, like a conspirator, for, of course, she knew. Izzie knew everything and if she didn’t know it she could mouse it out with ease. Like Ursula, she had the character for espionage. ‘He’s not an admiral,’ Ursula said. ‘But he is well, thank you.’)

‘You do all right on your own,’ Teddy said to Ursula. ‘Contracted to thine own bright eyes, and so on.’ Teddy had faith in poetry, as if merely to quote from Shakespeare would mollify a situation. Ursula thought the sonnet he was quoting from was about being selfish but didn’t say so as Teddy meant it kindly. Unlike everyone else, it seemed, all of whom appeared quite fixed on her unmarried status.

‘She’s only thirty, for heaven’s sake,’ Izzie said, putting in her oar again. (If only they would all be quiet, Ursula thought.) ‘After all,’ Izzie persisted, ‘I was over forty when I married.’

‘And where is your husband?’ Sylvie asked, looking around the Regency Revival – both leaves extended to accommodate their numbers. She feigned perplexity (it didn’t suit her). ‘I don’t seem to see him here.’

Izzie had chosen the occasion to turn up (‘Uninvited, as usual,’ Sylvie said) to offer her congratulations on Hugh’s six decades. (‘A landmark.’) Hugh’s other sisters had deemed the journey to Fox Corner ‘too challenging’.

‘What a parcel of vixens they are,’ Izzie said later to Ursula. Izzie might have been the baby but she was never the favourite. ‘Hugh has always been so good to them.’

‘He’s always been good to everyone,’ Ursula said, surprised, alarmed even, to find tears starting up at the thought of her father’s sound character.

‘Oh, don’t,’ Izzie said, handing her a froth of lace that apparently passed as a handkerchief. ‘You’ll make me cry as well.’ It seemed unlikely, it had never happened before.

Izzie had also chosen the occasion to announce her imminent departure for California. Her husband, the famous playwright, had been offered a job writing screenplays in Hollywood. ‘All the Europeans are going there,’ she said.

‘You’re European now, are you?’ Hugh said.

‘Aren’t we all?’

The whole family had gathered, apart from Pamela, for whom the journey was genuinely too challenging. Jimmy had managed to wangle a couple of days’ leave and Teddy had brought Nancy along. On arrival, she gave Hugh a disarming hug, said, ‘Happy birthday, Mr Todd,’ before handing him a parcel, wrapped prettily in old wallpaper scavenged from the Shawcross household. It was a copy of The Warden. ‘It’s a first edition,’ Nancy said. ‘Ted said that you liked Trollope.’ (A fact that none of the rest of his family appeared to know.)

‘Good old Ted,’ Hugh said, kissing her on the cheek. And to Teddy, ‘What a sweetheart you have here. When are you going to pop the question?’

‘Oh,’ Nancy said, blushing and laughing, ‘plenty of time for that.’

‘I hope so,’ a sombre Sylvie said. Teddy had graduated now from the Initial Training School (‘He has wings!’ Nancy said. ‘Like an angel!’) and was waiting to sail to Canada, to train as a pilot. When he was qualified he would head back here and take up a place in an Operational Training Unit.

He was more likely to be killed in an OTU, he said, ‘than on an actual bombing run’. It was true. Ursula knew a girl in the Air Ministry. (She knew girls everywhere, everyone did.) They ate their sandwiches together in St James’s Park and gloomily traded statistics, despite the dead hand of the Official Secrets Act.

‘Well, that’s a great comfort to me,’ Sylvie said.

‘Ow!’ one of the evacuees squealed beneath the table. ‘Some bugger just kicked me.’ Everyone instinctively looked at Maurice. Something cold and wet nosed itself up Ursula’s skirt. She hoped very much that it was the nose of one of the dogs and not one of the evacuees. Jimmy pinched her arm (rather hard) and said, ‘They do go on, don’t they?’

The poor ATS girl – like the evacuees and the dogs, defined by her status – looked as if she were about to cry.

‘I say, are you all right?’ ever-solicitous Nancy asked her.

‘She’s an only child,’ Maurice said matter-of-factly. ‘They don’t understand the joys of family life.’ This knowledge of the ATS girl’s background seemed to particularly infuriate Edwina, who was gripping the butter knife in her hand as if she were planning to attack someone with it – Maurice or the ATS girl, or anyone within stabbing distance by the look of it. Ursula wondered how much harm a butter knife could do. Enough, she supposed.

Nancy jumped up from the table and said to the ATS girl, ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk, it’s such a lovely day. The bluebells will be out in the wood, if you fancy a bit of a hike.’ She hooked arms with her and almost pulled her out of the room. Ursula thought about running after them.

‘Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play,’ Izzie said as if nothing had interrupted them. ‘Someone said that.’

‘Congreve,’ Sylvie said. ‘What on earth does that have to do with anything?’

‘Just saying,’ Izzie said.

‘Of course – you’re married to a playwright, aren’t you?’ Sylvie said. ‘The one we never see.’

‘The journey is different for everyone,’ Izzie said.

‘Oh, please,’ Sylvie said. ‘Spare us your cod philosophy.’

‘For me, marriage is about freedom,’ Izzie said. ‘For you it has always been about the vexations of confinement.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Sylvie said. (A bafflement shared by the rest of the table.) ‘You talk such nonsense.’

‘And what life would you have led otherwise?’ Izzie continued blithely (or relentlessly, depending on your viewpoint). ‘I seem to remember you were seventeen and on your uppers, a dead, bankrupt artist’s daughter. Heaven only knows what would have happened to you if Hugh hadn’t charged in and rescued you.’

‘You remember nothing, you were still in the nursery at the time.’

‘Barely. And, I, of course—’

‘Oh, do shut up,’ Hugh said wearily.

Bridget broke the tension (often her starring role at Fox Corner now that Mrs Glover was gone), entering the dining room bearing aloft a roast duck.

‘Duck à la surprise,’ Jimmy said, for, naturally, they had all been expecting a chicken.

Nancy and the ATS girl (‘Penny,’ Nancy reminded everyone) returned in time to be handed warmed-up plates. ‘You’re lucky there’s any duck on that,’ Teddy said to Nancy when he handed her a plate. ‘The poor bird was picked clean.’

‘There’s so little eating on a duck,’ Izzie said, lighting up a cigarette. ‘There’s barely enough for two people, I can’t imagine what you were thinking.’

‘I was thinking there’s a war on,’ Sylvie said.

‘If I’d known you planned a duck,’ Izzie ploughed on, ‘I would have sought out something a little more generous. I know a man who can get anything.’

‘I bet you do,’ Sylvie said.

Jimmy offered Ursula the wishbone and they both wished loudly and pointedly for a nice birthday for Hugh.

An amnesty was brought about by the advent of the cake, an ingenious confection that, naturally, relied mainly on eggs. Bridget brought it to the table. She had no flair for making an occasion of anything and dumped it in front of Hugh without ceremony. She was coerced by him into taking a place at the table. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ Ursula heard the ATS girl mutter quietly.

‘You’re part of the family, Bridget,’ Hugh said. No one else in the family, Ursula thought, slaved away from dawn to dusk the way Bridget did. Mrs Glover had retired and gone to live with one of her sisters, a move prompted by George’s sudden but not unexpected death.

Just as Hugh filled his lungs, rather theatrically, for there was only one token candle to blow out, there was a great commotion out in the hallway. One of the evacuees went out to investigate and ran back with the news that it was ‘A woman, and loads of bloody kids!’

‘How was it?’ Crighton asked, when she finally arrived home.

‘Pammy came back – for good, I think,’ she said, deciding on the highlight. ‘She looked done in. She came by train, three little boys plus a babe-in-arms, can you imagine? It took her hours.’

‘A nightmare,’ Crighton said with feeling.

(‘Pammy!’ Hugh said. He looked enormously pleased.

‘Happy birthday, Daddy,’ Pamela said. ‘No presents, I’m afraid, just us.’

‘More than enough,’ Hugh said, beaming.)

‘And suitcases, and the dog. She’s such a stalwart. My journey home, on the other hand, was a different kind of nightmare. Maurice, Edwina, their uninspiring offspring and the driver. Turned out to be a rather lovely ATS girl.’

‘Good God,’ Crighton said, ‘how does he do it? I’ve been trying to get my hands on a Wren for months.’ She laughed and hovered in the kitchen while he made cocoa for both of them. While they drank it in bed she regaled him with tales from the day, somewhat embellished (she felt it her duty to entertain him). What, after all, she thought, was there to distinguish them from any married couple? Perhaps the war. Perhaps not.

‘I think I’m going to have to join up, or something,’ she said. She thought of the ATS girl. ‘“Do my bit”, as they say. Get my hands dirty. I read reports every day about people doing brave things and my hands stay very clean.’

‘You’re doing your bit already,’ he said.

‘What? Supporting the navy?’

He laughed and rolled over and pulled her into his arms. He nuzzled her neck and as she lay there it struck her that it was just possible that she was happy. Or at any rate, she thought, qualifying the idea, as happy as was possible in this life.

‘Home’, it had struck her on the torturous drive back to London, wasn’t Egerton Gardens, wasn’t even Fox Corner. Home was an idea, and like Arcadia it was lost in the past.

She had already ticketed the day in her memory as ‘Hugh’s sixtieth birthday’, one more in a roll-call of family occasions. Later, when she understood that it was the last time they would all be together, she wished she had paid more attention.

She was woken in the morning by Crighton bringing her a tray of tea and toast. She had the Senior Service to thank for his domesticity rather than Wargrave.

‘Thank you,’ she said, struggling to sit up, still worn out from yesterday.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said, opening the curtains.

She thought of Teddy and Jimmy, although she knew that for this morning at least they were safely tucked up in their beds in Fox Corner, sharing their boyhood room, once Maurice’s.

‘What bad news?’ she asked.

‘Norway has fallen.’

‘Poor Norway,’ she said and sipped the hot tea.