Octavia (36 page)

‘I would have said they’re here already, given how much unemployment there is.’

‘It’s worse in Germany and that’s going to be the powder keg this time round.’

His sombre tone alarmed her. ‘You’re not talking about another war, surely to goodness.’

He reversed neatly and changed the subject. ‘Your Dora looks well,’ he said. ‘Love suits her.’

She’d have liked to have heard more about what was happening in Germany but the subject was rather too obviously closed so she agreed that both her nieces were blooming and danced on, surrendering herself to the double delights of the waltz and his proximity.

The afternoon passed in a drowse of rich food, unaccustomed wine and unexpected pleasure. It was quite a shock to Octavia when the bandleader announced the last waltz and she saw Emmeline signalling to her daughters that it was time to change their clothes. So soon? she thought. Surely not. And then she felt guilty because she’d danced the afternoon away and neglected her guests.

‘I must circulate,’ she said to Tommy as they walked from the floor. ‘I’ve hardly said a word to the other parents since they arrived.’

They were remarkably forbearing. ‘You were enjoying yourself,’ Mrs Erskine said when Octavia apologised for her neglect. ‘And why not? That’s what weddings are for. Is that your husband you were dancing with? If you don’t mind me asking. He
did
introduce himself but we’ve forgotten what name he gave. Haven’t we, Jim?’

Octavia explained that, no, he wasn’t her husband. ‘Just an old friend of the family. I haven’t seen him for years. We had a lot of catching up to do.’

‘He looks like a nice man.’

‘Yes,’ Octavia said. ‘He is.’ And now I must say goodbye to him and we probably won’t meet again. But there was no time for regrets for when she’d done the rounds and talked to all the people she’d been neglecting, the brides reappeared in their going-away suits and everybody rushed outside to wave them off to Wimbledon Station – travelling in two separate cars and blowing kisses to their guests until they were out of sight – to catch trains to wherever they were going for their honeymoons.

And then it really was all over bar the leave-taking.

Tommy was almost the last to say goodbye. ‘It’s been so good to see you again,’ she said to him and, although she spoke lightly and properly as befitted a hostess, she meant what she said.

‘We will meet again soon,’ he promised. ‘I have to go to Berlin in a day or two but I will telephone you when I get back.’ And he took her hand and kissed it in the old, hearttugging way.

And that was that. The wedding was over, the dancing done, he was walking away and she had to return to the light of common day.

‘Time we were all getting home,’ J-J said to Emmeline and Algy. ‘It’s been an eventful day.’

‘You can say that again,’ Algy agreed. ‘It’s been a real bonza.’

‘Oh, Algy,’ Emmeline said, taking his arm. ‘You sound so Australian.’

‘I am Australian.’ Algy laughed. ‘I’m your long-lost brother from down under.’ And that gave him a fit of the giggles. He laughed all the way back to the house and was still laughing when Emmeline led him upstairs to show him the room where he would be staying for his three month sabbatical.

He said it was a bonza place and didn’t mind in the least that it had been the room of his two nieces. ‘Makes a nice change from the bush. I can tell you.’

‘You don’t live in the bush, do you?’ Emmeline asked.

He laughed at that. ‘Don’t I just! I haven’t slept with lace curtains at the windows for more years than I can think about.’

‘Come out into the garden and tell us all about it,’ Octavia said. ‘It’s a gorgeous evening. Much too nice to waste indoors. We’ll sit by the fish pond. It’s pretty down there.’

So they sat by the fish pond in their wicker chairs and listened to him as the goldfish circled lazily beside them and a blackbird sang in the may tree at the end of the garden and the evening sky soothed towards dusk. It was a fascinating story, for he seemed to have travelled all over southern Australia and tried all manner of jobs before he settled on sheep farming.

‘Best thing I ever did,’ he told them. ‘Out in the fresh air all day. Sleeping under the stars. You never saw such stars as there are in Oz. So bright you wouldn’t believe. Champion shearer I am. Known for it.’

‘Oh, Algy,’ Emmeline said. ‘It’s so good to have you home.’

But Octavia, watching him as she listened to his tales, her senses sharpened by her extraordinary afternoon, wondered why he hadn’t mentioned a wife. Had he given up hope of being married? Or never entertained it. There’d been a girl in
London before he went away. Emmeline had told her that. Worked in a dance hall didn’t she? And now here he was looking so fit and well with that tanned face and those strong capable hands, it seemed odd that he hadn’t found someone to share this new life of his. Dare she ask? Probably not. Although she was intrigued, to say the least.

‘Three whole months, Algy,’ Emmeline said happily. ‘All through the school holidays. We’ll take you around. Show you all the old places. Where would you like to go first?’

‘Upstairs,’ he told her, laughing. ‘For a bit of shut-eye.’ How Australian he sounded. ‘I’m dead on my feet.’

The next two months passed in a series of visits and excursions. Two days after he arrived, Algy hired a car and from then on there were outings every day, back to Highgate to look at the old house and walk on the heath, up to London to drive through the West End, where he found the new traffic lights very confusing, down to Eastbourne to stroll along the pier and sit in the grandstand and recall old times. For the first five weeks of his stay, Octavia and Johnnie were at school, and he and Emmeline were at home with J-J, so naturally he took the old feller along with them, disregarding him when he said he’d be quite happy to stay where he was and potter around.

‘Can’t have that, Uncle,’ he said, and added with surprising tact, ‘We need you to show us the way.’

Octavia was glad to see her father occupied and she was delighted by the change in Emmeline. She was bustling with energy and there was a glow about her that Octavia hadn’t seen for years.

‘It’s having my baby home,’ she explained when Octavia
commented on it. ‘Oh, I know it sounds stupid because he’s hardly a baby now – he’s thirty-four for heaven’s sake – but he was when he was little, if you know what I mean. He was my first baby to all intents and purposes, so having him here is wonderful. And it stops me missing the girls.’

Although, as Octavia noticed, when Edith and Arthur came back from their honeymoon and their first shy postcard arrived inviting them all to tea, she answered by return of post.

‘It’s all tea parties in this family,’ Algy said, as they squeezed into his car. ‘I never knew such a lot. Good job we don’t go on like this in Australia. You’d never get your nice lamb chops if we were always taking tea.’

‘Never mind lamb chops,’ his sister said. ‘Shift your great feet. I can’t get in.’

Tea parties, first in Edith’s flat, admiring her china and then in Dora’s, admiring the curtains she’d run up on her mother’s sewing machine and the shelves John had put up in every room. ‘No shortage of shelf space here,’ he said proudly. ‘She only has to ask and she can have ’em wherever she wants.’

They have so little, Octavia thought, looking at the cheap lino on the floor and the rag rug in front of the fireplace and comparing it with the luxury of her own fine house, and yet they’re so happy. We’ll have to see what we can do to help them. It will have to be done tactfully. We mustn’t make them feel we’re offering them charity. I shall put my mind to it. But at the moment her mind was occupied in wondering when Tommy would come back from Berlin and whether he really would telephone when he did. It was probably just polite talk, she told herself, as the weeks went by. The sort of thing you say at a party. I don’t suppose he meant it.

The outings continued and grew more and more far-flung. Driving long distances didn’t seem to bother this Australian relation of theirs. He took off one warm Saturday in July and drove all the way to Leeds just to see a cricket match, taking Johnnie with him ‘for the experience’, explaining that it was Australia versus England and that Don Bradman was playing. They came home fizzing with excitement because the great man had scored 334 runs and set a new record.

‘Superlative playing,’ Algy said. ‘Wouldn’t you say so, Johnnie?’

Johnnie was still enraptured by what he’d seen. ‘Poetry in motion!’ he said.

They went to witness more poetry on several occasions that summer and, by the time the new school term was approaching, they were firm friends and promising to write to one another when Algy went back to Australia.

‘Although I’m not much of a one with the pen these days,’ he explained. ‘Sheep shears are my weapon of choice. Or a telephone maybe.’

And as if it was shrilling on cue, the telephone rang in the hall.

‘A dinner party!’ J-J said, his eyes sparkling at the thought. ‘What a splendid idea, Tavy! It will be like old times.’

Octavia felt impelled to correct him. She was in the most peculiar mood, and not at all sure what she felt about this invitation. She’d been so pleased to hear Tommy’s voice she’d given it almost carelessly. Now she was full of doubt, aware that it was going to make a lot of work and that she might not be up to it, afraid that it might turn out to have been a mistake. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘In the old times, we had Mrs Wilkins to do all the cooking and at least two servants to help her with it
and
extra staff from the agency to serve at the table. This time it’ll just be Em and me.’

But he wasn’t listening. ‘Our newlyweds will join us, naturally,’ he said, happily planning, ‘and if you were to invite one of your friends from Roehampton, Tavy, we could be twelve to table. Elizabeth perhaps. I’ve got a lot of time for your Elizabeth. We could have chocolate Bavarois. Do we still have those pretty cups? And roast lamb perhaps. I do so enjoy a good roast. You’d like lamb, wouldn’t you, Algy? Oh, it will
all be splendid. I shall go down to the off-licence and order the wine this afternoon.’

‘I haven’t seen him as happy as this since your mother died,’ Emmeline said as she and Octavia were washing the tea things. ‘You’ve quite perked him up.’

‘He likes a good dinner party,’ Octavia said, drying the plates. ‘Always has.’

‘Then we must make sure this one is special,’ Emmeline decided. ‘He shall have his chocolate Bavarois for a start. I shall look out Ma’s recipe book.’

The book was found, the menu planned, the wine delivered; two agency maids were hired to assist in the kitchen and wait at the table; Elizabeth Fennimore was invited and said she would be delighted to come; Dora and Edith offered to come over and help in the morning providing they had time to get dressed in the afternoon; the place names were beautifully written in J-J’s painstaking copperplate. The designated day began with sunshine and frantic activity.

And then it was eight o’clock and the guests were arriving, the newlyweds on foot and in their best clothes, Elizabeth in her little black Ford, and finally Mr and Mrs Meriton, who purred into the drive in his Silver Cloud, looking every inch the diplomat and his wife.

Octavia went out onto the step to welcome them – and to take stock of her rival. An elegant woman, that much was obvious from the minute she emerged from the car – oh so gracefully – her long legs stretched before her. She was beautifully dressed in a pink silk gown – bias cut, naturally – with a white fur cape around her shoulders and pink shoes on her feet. Oh yes, Octavia thought, taking her in detail by detail, she’s just right – pretty in an unassuming way, not too
much make-up, a perm but not one of these new aggressive ones, expensive pearls, everything about her understated and classy. He found exactly the sort of wife he needed. She could imagine her standing beside him on formal occasions and always saying the right thing, presiding over his dinner parties without putting a foot wrong, bringing up his children sensibly.

‘I’m so glad to meet you, Elizabeth,’ she said, stepping forward, hand outstretched. ‘I’m Octavia Smith.’

‘I would have known you anywhere,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You are just as I imagined you would be. I’m very pleased to meet you.’

‘And I’m her father, for my sins!’ J-J said walking out to join them. ‘Come in and meet the family. Hello, Tommy. Good to see you.’

Coat and cape were taken by one of the maids, they walked into the parlour to join the rest of the party, introductions were made and apéritifs served. Octavia and Tommy hadn’t said a word to one another after their first greeting, although Octavia was acutely and rather uncomfortably aware of him. She made hospitable small talk for nearly half an hour until Emmeline arrived to say that dinner was served and they all progressed to the dining room. Then he was holding her chair for her and sitting beside her and smiling at her and she relaxed and decided that she was going to enjoy this dinner, come what may.

‘It’s like old times,’ he said, leaning towards J-J who was sitting on the opposite side of the table. ‘Back with this family again.’

‘Exactly what I said to Tavy when she told me about it,’ J-J said. ‘Didn’t I, Tavy?’

‘Endlessly,’ Octavia agreed. ‘So how was your trip to Berlin?’

‘Interesting,’ he said, and regaled them with a story about a dinner party he’d attended there at which the guests got so drunk that one of them had to be carried away from the table.

He’d set the tone to perfection. Soon they were all telling stories. Emmeline told Elizabeth what a dreadful wait they’d all had at the girls’ wedding and how the poor darlings had had to drive round and round the church for hours with everyone waiting and what a knight in shining armour Tommy had been; Algy entertained them with tales of the eccentric characters he’d met in the bush; Elizabeth Fennimore described the day an entire school had moved from Hammersmith to Roehampton; Dora told them the story of her favourite toy, ‘a lovely little camel. You bought it for me when I was a toddler and you were Uncle Tommy. Do you remember? It’s really tatty now but I’ve still got it.’ Even John Erskine joined in, telling the story of a carpenter whose work was so ham-fisted that the roof he was building caved in before it was finished. And Elizabeth laughed with all the others and seemed to be enjoying the party as much as anyone.

‘I feel so at home here,’ she said to J-J and Octavia. ‘As if I’ve known you for years.’

‘I’m very pleased to hear it,’ J-J said, warmly.

‘I suppose it’s because Tommy’s told me so much about you,’ Elizabeth said, smiling at them both. ‘He never stops talking about you. I don’t think we’ve got a single friend or acquaintance who doesn’t know all about the famous Miss Smith.’ And when the famous Miss Smith looked at her rather quizzically, she elaborated. ‘He keeps a file of the newspaper cuttings about you and your school, you know. I shouldn’t think there’s a single one he’s missed. He dines out on tales of
your family. How he went to school with your cousin, and how you all took your holidays together in Eastbourne and what a wonderful family you were.’

‘I hope you take him with a pinch of salt,’ Octavia said.

‘Oh yes,’ Elizabeth said, this time smiling at her husband, ‘I always do that.’

They’re happy together, Octavia thought, and the thought made her feel bleak. But how foolish! What a dog in the manger she was being. Why shouldn’t they be happy together? They were man and wife and she was the famous Miss Smith. There was no need for envy.

When the chocolate Bavarois had been admired, remembered and eaten, and the coffee and port had been served and enjoyed, Octavia suggested that they might all take a turn in the garden. ‘It’s a lovely evening,’ she said, ‘and it’s rather pretty now the roses and honeysuckle are out.’

So she wrapped her shawl round her bare shoulders and Elizabeth wore her cape and they strolled into the garden in the diminishing light of early evening, to the fish pond patterned with the circling orange of its drowsy occupants, the garden seats shadowy beside the herbaceous borders, the curve of the long rose arch she’d planted when they first moved in, and beyond them, the bordering shrubs and trees that enclosed the place with deepening green. My home, she thought, standing still for a moment to admire it, my home and my garden and she was proud that it looked so well.

Tommy was walking towards her across the lawn. ‘I see you’ve still got your shawl,’ he said.

For a moment they were on their own together in the half-light. ‘It’s an old friend,’ she told him.

‘Like its donor?’ he asked and there was the old trick of turning his head, the familiar hopeful smile and the old, young, handsome Tommy was back in her mind and her memory. Oh, Tommy, my dear, I have missed you.

But she spoke to him calmly. ‘Of course,’ she said.

‘I’ve thought of you every day, you know.’

‘So your wife says,’ Octavia smiled. But to be realistic she knew it would actually have been whenever he saw news of her.

‘Are you happy, Tavy?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘And you?’

‘I suppose so. It’s not something I think about. Keep pretty busy. Always something on at the FO. And then there are the children, of course.’

‘How many have you got?’

‘Three. Two boys and a little girl. One day with a bit of luck she’ll be a pupil at your school.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Six,’ he admitted.

‘Then I can’t enrol her just yet,’ she laughed. ‘That will have to wait until 1936.’

He sighed.

‘You’re like Pa,’ she said, misunderstanding the sigh. ‘He didn’t want
me
to go to school. He worried about it for months. Don’t worry. She’ll be safe with us.’

‘It’s not that,’ he said. And paused. ‘The thing is,’ he went on, ‘there are bad times coming.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you told me at the wedding.’

He sighed again, looking across the lawn to where his wife was walking through the rose arch with Emmeline and her daughters. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t really tell you. I wanted to
but it wasn’t the time or the place. The fact is, Tavy, I think there’s another war coming.’

‘Oh, dear God!’ Octavia said, thinking of Cyril’s letter and the gas that had crippled Algy and all those dreadful, dreadful casualties. ‘Not again. Haven’t we had enough?’

‘There’s a dictator in Italy,’ he told her, ‘and another in Russia and if I’m any judge there’ll be a third in Germany before the year’s out. Herr Hitler has enormous popular support. The National Socialists will win in Thuringia come September. I can’t see anything to prevent it. And after that it will be the whole of Germany.’

She tried to be reasonable. ‘Will that be such a bad thing? It’ll be a democratic election and if it’s what the Germans want…’

‘It will be the last democratic election they’ll get,’ he said soberly. ‘Once he’s elected he’ll get rid of any opposition. That’s how dictators operate. They have to be the supreme and only power. And when that’s done he’ll start empire building. He’s promising to do something about the unemployed and that’s what he’ll do. We think he’ll be after the old Austro-Hungarian empire.’

‘But we have the League of Nations this time. Surely they’ll…’

‘The League has no army, Tavy, and empires are built by military force. Once he’s in power he’ll tear up the Treaty of Versailles and increase the German armed forces and take what he wants. If that happens the League will be powerless and we shall be the only nation strong enough to stop him.’

The aspens were shivering in the evening breeze, the roses scattered along the distant arch were moon pale and Elizabeth, drifting beneath them in her beautiful pink gown,
was insubstantial as a wraith. It seemed to Octavia that Tommy was watching out for her with some anxiety. ‘Does Elizabeth know all this?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to worry her with it yet.’

But you told me, Octavia thought. And was proud to think that they could still be truthful with each other.

‘There’s one other thing,’ he said.

She knew it was important by the tone of his voice. ‘Yes?’

‘If there is a war, it won’t be a stalemate in the trenches this time, it’ll be quick and brutal and it’s quite possible that open cities will be bombed.’

‘London?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘In fact, there’s a working party already considering the possibility. If war comes the children in all the major cities will be evacuated with their schools. Which is another reason why I want my baby to go to your school. I’ve always wanted her to be educated by you. That’s partly why I’ve been following your progress. But if war comes…’ He paused, smiling at her sadly. ‘She’s very precious to me,’ he said. ‘The boys are at Dulwich prep and they’d have one another, if it came to it, but she’d be on her own. It would take a weight off my mind if I could know she was going to be evacuated with you. You’d look after her, wouldn’t you?’ It was a direct appeal and very touching.

‘As if she were my own,’ she said.

He took her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it, just as he’d done when they were both eighteen and the world was young and innocent and war was a trumpet-blowing
sabre-rattling
nonsense that happened inexplicably at the edge of the empire. ‘My dear, dear Tavy,’ he said, ‘you can’t promise anything better than that.’

They stood side by side in the descending dusk and for a second they were lost in their thoughts, two old warhorses who knew what was coming and knew too that if it came they couldn’t avoid it.

From the further side of the garden four smoke-grey figures emerged from the rose arch and walked towards them across the darkening lawn. Their families were returning to them.

‘Not a word to Elizabeth,’ he warned.

She smiled at that. ‘Your secrets are safe with me,’ she said.