Bombs on Aunt Dainty (18 page)

“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 did 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.

Then she thought, I must never forget this moment. Because even if nothing good ever happens to me again, it will have been worth living just to feel as I do now.

It was a poor summer, but Anna hardly noticed. She thought only of John Cotmore and of learning to paint. The painting classes had been introduced on Fridays, so she saw him four evenings a week. At school and even at the café afterwards he treated her just like everyone else – well, of course he had to do that, she thought. But when they found themselves alone in a corridor or walking to the tube he would kiss her as he had kissed her at his studio, dispelling any doubts she might have had about his feelings for her. Afterwards he always reproached himself for his weakness which showed, thought Anna, what a marvellous person he was and made her admire him more than ever. She lived in a daze of happiness from Mondays to Fridays (with a little dip on Wednesdays when there was no evening class) and somehow fought her way through the arid desert of the weekends until Monday was once more in sight.

I’m in love, she thought. She had often wondered whether this would ever happen to her and it was satisfying that it had. If people only knew, she thought as she parcelled up wool and listed bits of uniform. If I suddenly said to them,
I’m in love with my drawing teacher! Then she thought, how corny – Victorian girls were always falling in love with their drawing teachers. But how witty of her to realise that it was corny. And yet, how strange that knowing it was corny made not a bit of difference to the way she felt! She hugged the whole range of complicated new feelings to herself, posting navy wool to helpless old ladies who had particularly stipulated only Air Force blue, and tried a different track. I’m in love, she thought daringly, with a married man!

Fortunately her new emotions did not affect her work at the art school. On the contrary, she seemed to have developed an added perceptiveness and her drawings and even her newly-acquired skills in painting improved almost visibly from week to week.

“You seem to have struck a very happy patch,” said Welsh William, and she smiled secretly at the aptness of the phrase.

Even the war was going better at last. The British Army had at last won the battle of North Africa, and in August the Russians began to push the Germans back towards their own frontiers. Quite a lot of people thought it might all be over in another year.

Only at home things were worse rather than better. Frau Gruber, who had always tried not to charge too much, had finally had to raise the price for board and lodging by five shillings a week. Anna could just manage this out of her wages, but for Mama and Papa it made solvency suddenly impossible.

In despair Mama asked her new boss for a rise. He was a refugee dress manufacturer with a modest workroom at the back of Oxford Circus. His English was poor and Mama not only typed his letters but corrected them. However, the business brought in very little profit and when she spoke to him about the money he spread his arms wide and said, “I’m sorry, my dear, but more I cannot!”

At first she consoled herself by laughing with Anna at this strange phraseology, but they both knew it was disaster. It meant that, yet again, every new tube of toothpaste, every shoe repair, would cause a major crisis and that, however much she scraped and saved, she would not be able to pay the bills at the end of the week.

“Do you think perhaps Max…?” said Anna, but Mama shouted, “No!”

Max had finally succeeded in getting transferred to operational flying and Mama was worried sick about him. He had persuaded Coastal Command to accept him, arguing that, even though RAF rules forbade him to fly over enemy territory, there was nothing to stop him flying over the sea. So far he was still in training, but soon he would be risking his life three, four, five times a week.

“No,” said Mama, “I’m not asking Max for money.”

In the end Aunt Louise came to the rescue as usual. She gave Mama twenty pounds, and as the weekly deficit was only a matter of shillings, this would last for many months.

“She really is a good friend,” said Mama. She thought it specially touching that Aunt Louise had asked, quite
diffidently, whether in return Papa would mind just looking at something the Professor had written. “It would mean so much to him,” she said, “to have the views of a great writer.”

Papa sighed and said he could not imagine the Professor writing anything, unless it were a medical book.

“Heaven preserve us if it’s poetry!” he said, and Mama said nervously, “Whatever it is, you’ve got to be nice about it!”

It turned out that the Professor was writing neither poems nor medical books but his memoirs. He was dictating them to his secretary in the country and so far they had produced two chapters between them.

“What are they like?” Anna asked Papa.

Papa shrugged his shoulders.

“He can’t write,” he said, “but some of it is quite interesting. I didn’t know, for instance, that the Minister of Justice under the Weimar republic had stomach ulcers.”

Even this did not sound very interesting to Anna.

“What will you do?” she asked.

He pulled a face. “I suppose I’ll have to go and talk to him about it.”

The Professor was filled with encouragement even by Papa’s careful comments. He listened only absently to Papa’s advice on keeping sentences short and adjectives to a minimum.

“Wait till you see the next two chapters!” he cried. “About my social life!” Many of his patients in Berlin had been famous and he had gone to all their parties.

“I’m afraid he’s going to write a lot of rubbish,” said Papa when he got back, but Mama said, “Well, where’s the harm in your just looking at it for him?”

The next two chapters must have taken the Professor longer to write, for no more typescript arrived for Papa for some time.

Anna went to the office and to her evening classes and dreamed about John Cotmore. She found it difficult to take an interest in her secretarial work, and once she caused a crisis in the sewing-room when she absent-mindedly put the cutting-out material in front of Miss Potter’s place instead of Miss Clinton-Brown’s. Miss Potter cut out three pairs of pyjama trousers before she could be stopped, with a total of six right legs and no left ones. When Mrs Riley pointed out her mistake she wept and had to go home to her budgie, and Miss Clinton-Brown was so outraged that she had to appeal to God for patience, with little success.

There was not much to do on the Officers’ Clothing side. Fewer ships were being sunk, and the sailors who had often needed to be completely re-equipped only rarely came now. In fact, there seemed hardly enough young men to occupy both Mrs Hammond and Mrs James, and rather than embarrass them with their joint attentions they came to a tacit agreement to take it in turns to help them. This meant that both had more time on their hands. Mrs Hammond used it to dictate more letters or to chat with the old ladies in the sewing room, but Mrs James seemed simply to shrink. She sat in her makeshift office, staring at the piles of
dead men’s clothing with her huge, empty eyes, and sometimes did not even notice Anna when she came in with a message or a cup of tea.

“I’m worried about her,” said Mrs Hammond, but as soon as a young man in need appeared Mrs James came back to life.

One day, Anna was taking down some notes in Mrs Hammond’s office. Mrs Hammond had just finished supplying a Flight Lieutenant who had lost his possessions in an air raid. He had been particularly grateful and Mrs Hammond wanted to write to his commanding officer, to offer help to anyone else who might need it. However, she had hardly begun to dictate the letter when the door opened and Mrs James appeared. She looked more grey and gaunt than ever and, ignoring Anna, she looked straight at Mrs Hammond.

“I don’t want to make a fuss,” she said, “but it was my turn to look after that young man.”

“But you looked after the Pilot Officer this morning,” said Mrs Hammond, surprised.

Mrs James just stood there, staring at her with her great eyes, and Mrs Hammond motioned to Anna to go back into the sewing room. As she went out Mrs James spoke again.

“The Pilot Officer only wanted a cap. He didn’t count.”

The old ladies had stopped machining at Mrs James’s appearance.

“She strode past those pyjamas just like Lady Macbeth,” declared Mrs Riley.

“Looking ever so poorly,” said Miss Potter, and Miss Clinton-Brown murmured, “Such an odd way to behave.”

They all strained their ears for sounds from the office but there was nothing to be heard above a low mumble of voices. Anna had just decided to put on the kettle for tea when one of the voices rose to a higher pitch.

“It’s not fair!” cried Mrs James. “I can’t work with someone who isn’t fair!”

The door suddenly opened and Mrs James ran out.

“Especially as the whole thing was my idea in the first place!” she shouted and made for the storage room with Mrs Hammond in pursuit. Mrs Hammond tried to close the door behind her but missed, and Anna could see Mrs James stop short at the sight of the uniforms and begin to finger them in the semi-darkness.

“I have to explain to you,” she said in a voice which was both reasonable and somehow alarming, “that far more young men have now died than remain alive. That’s why we have all these clothes which nobody wants.”

Mrs Hammond said something like “no” or “nonsense”, but Mrs James swept her aside.

“And since there are so few young men left,” she said in the same queer voice, “they have to be allocated very fairly. And the only fair way is for me to look after twice as many as you.”

Mrs Hammond had been making vaguely soothing noises, but this last sentence so astonished her that she cried, “For heaven’s sake, why?”

Mrs James turned and Anna caught a glimpse of her face which looked quite mad.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” she said. “After all you only lost one son, but I lost two.”

As Mrs Hammond stared at her, she added matter of factly, “I knew you wouldn’t understand. There is no point in our continuing together.”

Afterwards, Mrs Hammond told Anna that Mrs James was suffering from strain and that she hoped to sort things out with her when she was feeling calmer. But Mrs James never re-appeared in the office. A few days later the pug-faced man arrived with a letter explaining that in future Mrs James would run the Officers’ Clothing scheme by herself on different premises.

Since it had, indeed, been her idea, there was nothing anyone could do. He loaded up all the uniforms, shoes, handkerchiefs and shirts, the paperbacks and the odd golf-clubs and the writing cases which no one had known what to do with, and drove away, leaving Mrs Hammond alone in the empty store room.

Many weeks later she heard that Mrs James had become too ill to work and that her scheme had been taken over by a charitable organisation.

“What made her suddenly break down after all this time?” wondered Anna.

“Four years of war,” said Mrs Hammond. “And the news being better.”

When Anna looked at her without understanding she
said impatiently, “The thought of peace – when there’s no longer any point.”

Without the Officers’ Clothing scheme, the place was very quiet. For a while Mrs Hammond continued to come in every day, as though to prove that it didn’t matter, but there really was not much for her to do and gradually she stayed away once, twice and finally three or four times a week. The days grew long and dull again, and Anna found them hard to get through.

Only nine o’clock, she would think when she arrived in the morning. How could she break up those endless, pointless hours which stretched before her until she could go to her art class? Her lunch hour was the only bright spot and she could hardly wait for the old ladies to pack up their work and go, so as to get out of the place herself.

When the weather was wet she sat in the Lyons tea-shop, drawing everyone in sight, but when it was dry she would eat very quickly and then wander about the streets. She discovered some stables at the back of the Army and Navy stores where the mules that pulled the wartime delivery carts were quartered and spent several weeks trying to draw their gloomy, strangely proportioned faces. Once she saw some girls in Air Force uniform struggling with a barrage balloon in Vincent Square and drew them too. Sometimes she found nothing, or the drawings did not come out as she wanted, and then she returned to her typewriter guilty and depressed, and the afternoons seemed longer than ever.

Wednesdays were her worst days because there was not even an art class at the end of them and she only survived them by making small purchases – a pencil with a pre-war coat of yellow paint from a secret store she had discovered in a shop in Victoria Street, an ounce of unrationed sherbet powder to eat surreptitiously during the afternoon, a packet of saccharine for John Cotmore who liked his tea very sweet and found saccharine hard to get. Just having this in her pocket made her feel better since it was proof that she would be seeing him again soon.

One Wednesday when she came home she met Aunt Louise on the doorstep. She was saying goodbye to Mama and Papa and seemed in high spirits.

“I am sure,” she was saying, “that we shall all be very happy with this arrangement.”

Then she saw Anna who was wearing her old school coat over an ancient skirt and sweater because Wednesday was such an awful day that it wasn’t worth wearing anything better.

“Well, hullo,” she said, and her eyebrows rose at the sight of the dreadful clothes. Then she turned back to Mama. “It may help Anna as well,” she said.

“What arrangement?” asked Anna after Aunt Louise had climbed into her big blue car and driven away.

“Louise has asked me to revise Sam’s memoirs,” said Papa.

“They want to give us another twenty pounds,” said Mama.

Anna looked from one to the other.

“Are you going to do it?” she asked.

Papa said carefully, “I said I’d look at them.”

At supper that evening Papa was very quiet. To while away the time between the main course – turnip pie – and the pudding, Mama was trying to do
The Times
crossword. Miss Thwaites had introduced her to this, and not only was Mama very good at it but it also made her feel very English. She read out clues, announced triumphant solutions and every so often asked for advice, which Anna gave her, until she noticed how isolated this made Papa.