The Summer Before the War (12 page)

“I'll bring it when I come for me lesson, miss,” he said, and paused before asking, “No reason Arty and Jack got to know anything 'bout it, though?”

“Silentium est aureum,”
she said. He was surprised into a grin, by which she knew he had understood her promise to be silent. He tugged at his cap and wheeled the bicycle away.

As Hugh flicked the horse on, Agatha turned to Beatrice and shook her arm. “I think you'd better come home with us,” she said. “We have hot water for a bath and Jenny to help you. You have some cuts and scrapes that should be swabbed with iodine.”

“I'll be fine,” said Beatrice. “I'm sure Mrs. Turber can spare me a kettle of hot water.”

“In case you haven't met my aunt, I don't think her invitation was optional,” Hugh advised with a laugh.

Beatrice felt she should further protest, but the thought of Agatha's gleaming white bathtub, the soft bed in the blue room, and a freshly cooked hot dinner seemed irresistible after such an exhausting day, and so she agreed with the politest of thanks.

They pulled into the driveway, laughing over the pungency of Mrs. Stokes's salve and Hugh's insistence that she also offered love potions, and claimed she could poison a pig without ruining the meat but said she never would. The front door stood companionably open, and a pleasant-looking man in shirtsleeves and tie was somewhat incongruously admiring the front gardens while smoking a cigarette.

“John, whatever are you doing home?” called Agatha. As the horse pulled to a standstill, he stepped to hand her down from the trap, and they embraced as if young lovers, he swinging her off her feet while she clutched for her hat. “Do put me down, for shame,” she said. “You will throw out your back again.”

“It would be worth it as ever,” he said. “But I will settle for a kiss.” She kissed him on his graying sideburns and he kissed her back and then he was shaking Hugh's hand.

“And this is Beatrice, whom you met in London, who has fallen from her bicycle,” said Agatha, and Beatrice found herself given a hearty handshake by John Kent.

“Do you need a hand to get her down, my boy?” said John, but Hugh assured him he did not.

“I think we have this down to an art now,” he said, and Beatrice subjected herself once more to being lifted from the trap and carried into Agatha's front hall.

“It is so good to be home and to worry about something real, such as a lovely young woman's injured ankle and the fact that Cook is not happy to have had no notice about dinner,” said John Kent, following them inside. “I swear it gives one faith that England will always stand.” He was smiling, but he rubbed his temple as if a very tired man.

“Why, John, it's not like you to wax lyrical in the middle of the afternoon,” said Agatha, taking off her hat and tossing it on a peg. “Whatever can be the matter?”

“I am just grateful to be home,” said John Kent, catching his wife by the waist and kissing her again on the cheek in a very firm manner. “You have no idea how grateful.” Hugh slowly let Beatrice down and held her arm as she balanced as little weight as possible on her bad foot. She was grateful once again for the pressure of his touch as John Kent looked gravely into his wife's face.

“What Uncle John is trying to say is that home and England may not stand always,” said Daniel, leaning against the drawing room doorway, a large glass held in his hand and his tie unacceptably askew. “So we are drinking to them now.”

“Why is Daniel drinking whisky so early?” asked Agatha.

“Is there bad news from London?” asked Hugh.

“I'm afraid so,” said his uncle. He caught Agatha's two hands in his and held them to his lips.

“Germany has invaded Belgium,” he said. “Tomorrow we will be at war.”

Agatha Kent tucked a strand of hair back into its roll and wondered if she should call Jenny to come and fix her hair more tightly. But she had declared that they were not dressing for dinner. John was exhausted, and while a note had been sent to Mrs. Turber's to bring fresh clothes for Beatrice, Agatha thought it easier not to request evening dress. She added a small hairpin, decorated with an emerald turtle, to the wayward hair and smoothed down the clean blouse she had added, happy not to have to exchange her loose stays for an evening corset. She always enjoyed the peaceful half hour before the sound of the dinner gong, and at her dressing table, the evening light coming in the window and the companionable sounds of John, changing his shirt in his dressing room next door, it was easy to believe for a moment that this evening was no different, that John had not come home for such a brief visit, and to give them such terrible news.

“Can you help me with this damned cuff link,” he said, wandering in with his shirt untucked and his feet in his favorite Moroccan slippers. He sat comfortably on the end of the bed and held out his arm. Agatha turned around on her dressing stool to oblige, and while she struggled with the stiff cuff, John sighed deeply and leaned his head forward onto her shoulder, tucking his cheek against her neck. Securing the cuff link, Agatha placed her hand on his back, and they sat a moment in an embrace of silent mutual comfort, which was, she often thought, the reward of those long married.

“We thought the Kaiser would compel Austria to show restraint in the east,” he said. “Instead they are turning on France. They are already in Luxembourg, and tomorrow they will rip apart Belgian neutrality.”

“You have done all you could, I'm sure,” said Agatha.

“We have been caught flat-footed by Berlin,” he said, raising his head and running a hand over his hair in weary frustration. “And as we refuse, above all else, to look publicly foolish, I fear they have left us no room to remain outside the conflict.”

“It does seem unimaginable that we would be enemies,” said Agatha. “What is Emily Wheaton's daughter to do? Her husband is such a lovely young man.”

“If she wishes to join him, she should leave immediately,” said John, standing up to use Agatha's dressing table mirror as he knotted his blue-spotted bow tie. “Travel will soon be impossible. All the railroads are to be commandeered for troops, and no one can be sure of having one's bank drafts honored abroad.”

“But as an Englishwoman, how can she be expected to go to Germany at a time like this?” said Agatha. She reached to adjust the tie with a practiced hand.

“Legally German now by marriage,” said her husband. “She may not find it altogether comfortable here if war is declared.”

“That just proves the whole idea is absurd,” said Agatha. “And they have a baby.”

“When I get back to London I shall be sure to pass on your opinion,” said John. “But first may I please have a family dinner at my own table and a stroll in my rose garden with my beautiful wife?” He leaned down to smooth a strand of hair from her face.

“Yes, but just because there's an international crisis, don't think you're coming down to dinner in that awful striped blazer of yours,” said Agatha. “We do have a guest.” His old college punting blazer was thin at the elbows, its stripes soft and fuzzy with age, and Agatha waged a quiet but seemingly eternal war over his urge to pull it out whenever she suggested the slightest relaxation of standards. He could usually be dissuaded by reason, and yet on the two occasions she had tried to send the offending coat to the ragbag, John had become seriously angry and had marched down to the linen room to retrieve it personally. None of the servants would now touch the thing, and it hung in the wardrobe attracting moths and brushing its fuzzy sleeves against all the newer clothes.

“But it goes so well with this tie,” said John. “And you said we're not dressing.”

“I said we would be informal,” said Agatha. “I did not say we would be eccentric. I'm going to check on our young guest now. Please do not show up in the dining room looking like a carnival barker.”

“I suppose I can't wear slippers either?” said John.

They did not talk of the crisis at dinner.

“We do not want to excite alarm among the staff nor have gossip spreading down the hill to the town,” Agatha said quietly to Beatrice as she helped her down the stairs. “In my husband's position discretion is of great importance.”

Instead they spoke of the weather, the progress of the kitchen garden, and how Beatrice enjoyed the town. John Kent wanted to know all the details of her arrival and settling in, and no member of the school governors, nor Mrs. Turber, was spared in his wife and nephews' retelling of events.

“And can you believe Mrs. Fothergill's nephew came inebriated to his interview?” said Agatha.

“It was a complete shock to all of us,” said Daniel. “The Fothergills are such an unexceptionable family.” Beatrice caught the two cousins exchanging a grin, and Daniel, seeing her stare, opened his eyes in exaggerated innocence so that she realized they had had some hand in the business.

“Well, I know the best candidate won,” said John Kent. He raised his wineglass to Beatrice. “You are a welcome addition to the town and to our family dinner table, my dear.”

“Thank you,” said Beatrice. She had been grateful to John Kent for personally taking time to see her across London to her train, but she realized now that she had been too tense to see him properly. He was a trim man of middling height and a quiet demeanor, which was perhaps the inevitable outcome of a long career as a civil servant. However his eyes twinkled in the same devilish way as his wife's. These were people who knew more than they said and who understood more quickly than those who talked more. They communicated to each other without words, and as they laughed and chatted, Beatrice caught the occasional raised eyebrow, quiet incline of the head, or tiny wave of a finger that hinted at their secret language. Beatrice had learned to read some of her father's expressions and anticipate his needs, but Agatha and John Kent seemed to enjoy a far deeper, more mutual understanding. Beatrice felt a momentary shiver of loneliness wash over her at the thought that her independence meant she would never know such a bond with another.

“How is the poetry, Daniel?” asked his uncle, changing the subject.

“I was published in a couple of journals,” said Daniel. “I brought Aunt Agatha some copies.”

“Some of those journals are quite scurrilous,” said Agatha. “I'm not sure your uncle would enjoy them.”

“It wouldn't be art if it didn't scandalize the average person,” said Daniel.

“Thus we are firmly put in our place, my dear,” said John to his wife.

“I didn't mean you, of course,” said Daniel. “Mr. Tillingham thought my poems moderately promising.”

“Thus are you put firmly in your place,” said Uncle John.

“Indeed,” said Daniel. “He insists on looking over my newest lines in order to prevent me from making, he says, the kinds of juvenile errors that marred those already published.”

“I believe that is quite high praise from the great man,” said Hugh.

“Miss Nash, I think you said you are also a writer?” asked his uncle, turning a friendly smile to her.

“A complete impossibility according to Mr. Tillingham,” said Beatrice. “I am to be dismissed out of hand as a female.”

“I think it is Mr. Tillingham's opinions that are often impossible,” said John Kent. “Yet society insists on finding the pronouncements of great men indisputable.”

“If Mr. Tillingham likes my newest work, I'm hoping he might be willing to write me a short foreword for a book of poems,” said Daniel. “I know a small publisher in Paris who might be very interested.”

“Publishers in Paris may have more urgent things on their minds for the next few months,” said John. “I would not direct any hopes in that direction.”

“Oh, but all will be resolved in a few weeks, will it not?” said Daniel. “The difficulties surely won't reach as far as Paris?” Jenny came in with a large sherry trifle and Smith followed with a platter of fruit. The family stopped speaking, and an awkward silence accompanied the serving of the dessert—Jenny knocking the large silver spoon against the crystal bowl, the trifle clinging stubbornly to the spoon, Smith offering the fruit in a whisper that rasped like a metal file.

Finally they left the room, and after a moment's pause, John Kent said quietly, “You will hear many declarations in the coming weeks, most of which are designed to put the best face on the situation and to reflect a proper sense of patriotism.” He paused to choose his words with care. “You will hear very little more from me, but I believe it will be impossible to travel on the Continent for the foreseeable future.”

“But I'm moving to Paris next month,” said Daniel, his face turning white. “Craigmore and I are starting a journal.” Beatrice could see from Hugh's reddened ears that he had known of this plan but that it was an unexpected pronouncement to Agatha and John.

“But I have secured you a place…” began his uncle.

“Oh, I'm so sorry, dear,” said his aunt simultaneously. The silence resumed, and Daniel seemed to inflate with some combination of anger and disbelief.

“It can't be,” he said in a clipped voice. “It is all arranged.”

“War does have a way of interfering with one's most closely held desires,” said his uncle. Beatrice detected a note of impatience.

“I'm going to Paris, no matter what,” said Daniel. “If you will excuse me.” He stood up abruptly, his napkin slipping to the floor unnoticed, and left the room.

“I'm sorry we have not minded our manners better in front of our guest,” said John to Beatrice. “Please forgive my nephew.”

“Daniel can't help his impetuous nature,” said Agatha. “He is artistic.”

“He is some combination of artistic and spoiled,” said John in a mild voice. “We have yet to determine the absolute proportions.”