The Dearest and the Best Page 4

  ‘Mrs Spofforth,’ grated John, ‘I don’t want a lad, strong or otherwise.’

  ‘He wants to do some war work,’ pursued the old lady, as though the matter were settled anyway. ‘He’s just hanging about otherwise. He was working with cows somewhere, but the cowman came home without fingers and then he was at the baker’s in Lyndhurst, but they said he made the bread dirty.’ She bent angularly, like a heron, and croaked confidingly: ‘And he’s all alone, you know, don’t you. They can’t find his parents in London. Vanished. Gone off and left him. Mrs Oakes looks after him, but he needs some employment.’ She straightened and her tone became challenging again. ‘It’s the least you can do. He can help you put your funny old ship together.’

  Defeated, John Lampard looked towards his wife and then at Robert, a pale appeal for some last help. It was not forthcoming. The boy was regarding him with smoked eyes from beneath the brim of the bowler. ‘Oh, all right then,’ he muttered. He looked up and fired a final shot. ‘But he can get a hat of his own. He’s not wearing my bowler.’

  Afternoon dropped like a gauze curtain over the garden and the house. The french windows were open and the wireless was playing ‘Begin the Beguine’, the music muted and mixing with the mumbling of bees and other warm insects. Wadsworth, the basset hound, lolled beneath the lilac, rolling a lazy eyeball at Harry as he stepped out. The young man walked under the trees to the wooden summer house where they had kept their outdoor belongings, the bats and the racquets and the fishing tackle, when they were boys. He and James had never been close friends, usually going their separate ways and sometimes fighting briskly, even having a battle one Saturday morning in that same summer house. It had been over the possession of a landing net and they had begun to grapple inside the shaky building, in the dry, smelly dimness, and then tumbled out on to the porch, demolishing one of the door jambs as they did so. The dogs, thinking it was playful, had joined in, Benbow and Humph then, the two spaniels, both now dead; Mrs Mainprice, the daily woman, who still worked there, had finally parted them on the grass, shouting that they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and pulling them off each other with surprising ease and a pair of thick working-class arms. Harry could still taste the blood smearing his mouth, these years on. He had ended up squatting on the lawn, trying to wipe the blood and the tears from his face. ‘Lousy bullying bastard,’ he had shouted up at the standing James, who posed triumphantly, legs astride like some thin centurion; typical James. Mary Mainprice had screeched with shock and James, ignoring her and laughing at him, said: ‘Keep your bloody landing net, pig,’ and thrust it over his head while he sat there. Mrs Mainprice, hands sheltering face, had rushed back towards the house howling: ‘Mrs Lovatt, Mrs L . . . these boys . . . these boys . . .’

  Now Harry stepped up to the porch of the summer house. The elderly wood bowed under his shoes. He touched the door jamb and smiled as he saw it was still loose. Their father had made them repair it and they had, unspeaking, done a slipshod job which he had inspected and then had made them take out and start again. It had been a better attempt the second time, but not much. He and James had never after referred to the fight.

  The house was late eighteenth century, russet brick and tiles, now half-concealed with expansive trees that had aged with it. At the back there was a lawn still edged with the final dying daffodils, the summer house and a worn wall that had, over the years, fallen down in places and been patched and rebuilt, and was now held together as much by its parasite creepers of ivy and wistaria as by its powdered mortar. That had been his place when he was a boy, in the sun or shade against the wall, propped up, reading through the afternoon. He could easily remember the books, indeed he still had them in his room. The Gorilla Hunters and Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne, Wulf the Saxon by Henty, Percy Westerman’s flying stories. Now he could still picture himself, like the ghost of another boy, trousers to the knees, socks rolled down, a grey flannel shirt. He could almost taste the apple he chewed as he read. He was like a boy from a book himself; he had played a part as he often played parts. The boy, the book, the red apple, all part of a scenario. He had taken off his uniform now and gratefully put on his grey flannels, check shirt and pullover and his old brogues; costumed for the part again, the sailor home from the sea. He walked over to the wall, touching it fondly, scraping a few puffs of dehydrated mortar away and worrying a spider from its hole.

  From that place in the garden he had a view around the side of the house to the front gate. There was a rattle on the rough track outside and through the entrance came a clattering pony and trap. He grinned and went around the flank of the house as Millie, his brother’s wife, hitched the reins and climbed from the back. They embraced fondly.

  ‘Amazing,’ she laughed. ‘You’re here and James is coming home tomorrow. He’s just telephoned from London. He’ll be on the eleven-thirty.’ She waited and her face lost its animation. ‘He’s been in Norway,’ she said. ‘I think he’s had a rotten time . . . and something, I don’t know what, has happened in London, so he has to stay tonight.’ She looked at Harry oddly. ‘He was phoning from the House of Commons,’ she said.

  They rode in the trap through the forest tracks, up over the May-green moorland where, knee-deep, the deer and the ponies grazed in their separate territories. At the highest point, a modest two hundred feet, of the Three Sails hills, they had a long view of the land, to where the distant trees and villages were settled in haze, to where the thin river rumbled over the steps and stones on its way to the wide tidal estuary. Up there there was a brush of wind from the English Channel.

  They had always liked each other. ‘No heroics, I’m afraid,’ he said when she asked him about his voyage. ‘We just sailed down through the Bay of Biscay and back again. Lot of drinking and suchlike. In Brest and those places.’

  ‘What suchlike?’

  ‘Oh, well, just drinking, really.’ He saw she was grinning frankly in his face.

  ‘Just a pleasure cruise, to be honest,’ he continued hurriedly. ‘Except we found three poor devils in a life-raft, dead. From some merchant ship.’ He had transferred the envelope with the identity discs to his flannels after her arrival for, typically, he wanted to show them to her. His small piece of the war. As they stopped at the height of the rise, the pony looking out over the view and snorting when he detected the wild horses grazing below, Harry took the discs out and laid them across his hand.

  ‘Thurston G., Smith D., Wilson N.,’ she recited sadly, looking closely at them and holding his hand. ‘Three men in a boat.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d like to end up as just Thurston G.,’ he admitted solemnly. ‘There’s not a lot of glory in it, is there? Can you imagine – Lovatt H. and that’s all.’

  Millie regarded him bleakly. ‘Don’t talk about it,’ she said. Then she smiled a little mockingly. ‘You’d want to have some glory, wouldn’t you, Harry? You’d be the boy who stood on the burning deck.’

  ‘Better than one of three men in a boat,’ he answered bluntly.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, wanting some glory.’ She had dark hair rolling over a pale forehead, gentle eyes and features. When they were at school she had been teased because of her roundness and she had never lost it. Her breasts lay bulky under the blouse. ‘You were always the romantic,’ she said. ‘Even years ago you used to be the Errol Flynn.’ He nodded sheepish agreement. She was a person from whom it was difficult to hide. Before he could stop himself he said, ‘The French chaps used to call me Loup de Mer – the Sea Wolf.’

  She exploded with laughter that floated away from the hill. She patted him fondly. ‘Remember that time when we were playing some game at the enclosure and that gamekeeper came along, Gates or whatever his name is? He had his gun and he was livid because we were in one of his rotten sheds. James and the others all wanted to go out with their hands up and apologize, but not you. You were all for barricading us in and fighting it out with the old misery. That’s yo
u all over. Show off . . . Loup de Mer!’

  He laughed his admission. ‘Shut up, will you?’ he pleaded. ‘God, those days seem like a million years ago, don’t they?’

  ‘They are,’ she answered.

  She sharply gee-ed up the pony and they went at a brisk pace over the dipping moorland track and, turning a corner, were confronted with two donkeys lying in the road. Millie was prepared and she pulled up the pony in good distance. When you had lived in the forest all your life you knew what to expect of roaming animals. The pair were lying down on the tarmac enjoyably getting the benefit of its heat, and two more, a mother with a foal the size of a small dog, were nodding up the road towards them.

  ‘Some things never change though,’ observed Harry, jumping down and shooing the obdurate animals out of the way. He climbed back beside her.

  ‘Perhaps they never will,’ she said.

  At eleven-thirty Millie was waiting at the station, the pony and trap hitched outside along with the village bicycles and a Southern Railway van. The station posters suggested Cadbury’s Cocoa as a nightcap, Andrews Sparkling Salts every morning, a Burberry mackintosh, and resorts which now boasted of ‘Sanctuary Hotels’. There was an invitation to a holiday camp on the Isle of Wight, and houses for sale in what was described as the ‘Safe Area’ of South London.

  Even waiting for the train Millie began to feel the apprehension she always experienced where James was concerned, as if she were afraid of his arrival. She felt ashamed of the sensation, as she invariably was, and she always managed to conquer it in the end, as she had on her wedding day two years before.

  The local train came importantly in, hooting vapour across the wooden platform, causing the calling porter, Ben Bowley, to vanish like the object of a conjuring trick. James came striding through the steam towards her. They embraced and kissed, and, arms linked about each other, went outside.

  ‘How long?’ she asked.

  ‘A week at least,’ he answered. ‘Perhaps ten days. Unless things get even worse.’

  Ben Bowley, whom they had both known since childhood when he regularly chased them from the line, was the second person to greet him. He told James the Germans would sue for peace by September. James did not argue.

  ‘I always knew Horace would come in useful one day,’ he laughed as they went into the station yard and climbed into the trap. ‘You’re driving, I take it.’

  ‘I certainly am,’ she smiled. ‘Horace is very particular who’s on the other end of the reins. He wouldn’t let Harry drive yesterday. Refused to budge.’

  They began to trot under the cloudy elms out of the station yard. ‘Harry’s home, is he?’ said James. ‘And charging about with my wife.’

  ‘Hardly that,’ she laughed. ‘I took him down to the village in this. He only got back yesterday. It sounds as if he’s been on a pleasure cruise. How about you? Have you had a difficult time, James?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered firmly. ‘I think that’s the word – difficult.’ As they drove through Binford, people waved and called to them. They waved back. ‘It’s all just the same, isn’t it,’ he remarked.

  ‘Just the same,’ she said, unsure of his tone. ‘That’s how you would want it, surely.’

  ‘I suppose so. It’s just . . . well, nobody seems to have any idea there’s a war on. It’s the same everywhere.’

  ‘Well, in Binford they try. They dash about forming ARP groups, collecting war savings and knitting for the troops and all that. There doesn’t seem to be much else they can do. The war is out of sight here. You can hardly expect them to be digging trenches.’

  She stopped abruptly because she realized with horror how easily they had begun to argue again. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she mumbled. ‘I should see it from your point of view, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s the only way I can see it now,’ he replied quietly. ‘I can’t tell you what a mess we made of the Norway business, Millie. It was bloody disgraceful. I lost six men. First time in action – they’d never seen a damned German before. If that’s the way we’re going to carry on we might as well say we’re sorry to Hitler right now, today.’

  Josh Millington, a pink old man who worked in gardens around the village, waved from his own fence. ‘How are the bees today, Josh?’ called Millie, half over her shoulder.

  ‘Buzzing, Mrs Lovatt,’ called the gardener. ‘Buzzing.’

  James and Millie drove out of the village under the newly leaved green arches of the lanes towards their house. ‘I’m not particularly proud of this,’ he continued quietly. ‘But there’s a revolt in Parliament. They’re going to bring down Chamberlain. The old fool is finished. And I’ve provided a lot of the ammunition.’ He laughed dryly. ‘It made up for our lack of ammunition in Norway.’

  She said: ‘That’s why you were with Philip Benson in London.’

  ‘Yes. When the time comes, it might be today or tomorrow, he’s going to vote against the Government – and a lot of others will too. The Birmingham undertaker has got to go. They want Churchill; at least he’s belligerent. Philip took me to tell my story to Attlee and then to that puffy little Herbert Morrison.’ He snorted in disgust and the pony answered him.

  ‘Things must be very serious,’ she muttered. ‘And, down here, we don’t realize it.’

  ‘Nor do people in London – or not many – but everyone will soon,’ he said. ‘We should be prepared, but we’re not. Or aware, or even afraid. Everyone carries on as if it’s no concern of theirs. I think they’ve got some funny idea that between us and the Germans there’s a few million Frenchmen.’ She released one hand from the rein and put it across his on the seat between them. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘How is everybody?’

  ‘Everybody is very well,’ she answered. ‘Your parents said they wouldn’t come down to the station because they wanted me to do the honours, which was sweet of them. But your mother asked us to go up to supper tonight, if you’re not too tired.’

  ‘I’m all right now,’ he smiled at her. ‘After my cross-examination by the politicians last night I was given an excellent dinner at the Ritz and a room at the Carlton Club. It made up for the snow a bit.’

  ‘Snow,’ she repeated. ‘It’s difficult to think of snow now. So you’d like to go there tonight?’

  ‘That will be fine,’ he said. ‘You’re very pretty, you know. I’d almost forgotten.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied with mock formality. ‘I was up at six washing my hair. After five weeks a wife can let herself go to pieces.’

  ‘All for me.’ He touched her dark hair. They were turning now on one of the dry, familiar paths from the road, running down into folds of the forest, at the end of which their small house stood. Their cat Bellows sat on the gate puffing himself out.

  ‘It’s still there,’ he said. ‘Our mansion.’

  ‘Still there,’ she said. ‘Our little morsel of England.’

  ‘But Morrison,’ muttered Robert Lovatt at the head of the table. ‘Morrison . . . what does he know about war? He’s only got one eye.’ His big bare head wagged unbelievingly.

  The family around the table looked at James who shrugged and said, ‘I didn’t choose him. It just happened that I was there to be chosen. Philip Benson didn’t like it either, but there you are. There are times when you can’t be too particular about your bedfellows.’

  ‘How will Chamberlain take it?’ asked his mother. ‘Poor man. He never did look the part of Prime Minister. He always seemed like a rather sad parrot to me.’ She was serious.

  ‘This country can’t afford too many people who come under the heading of “poor man”,’ chimed in Harry. They looked at him in surprise and he grimaced with pleasure. ‘Whatever they say about Churchill, nobody could ever accuse him of being a “poor man”. Chamberlain looks as if he should be selling matches in the street.’

  They laughed. James was regarding his brother with curiosity as though his remark were the first adult observation he had ever heard from him.

  Harry, encourag
ed by the attention, added: ‘We need younger men. People like Eden. This is not going to be a war for old fogeys.’ His father looked put out but he failed to notice. ‘Have you seen the photographs of the French generals and so on? You should hear what the French naval officers think about them. They call them the Waxworks.’

  Elizabeth and Millie rose to clear the dishes. Robert waved the wine around in his glass. ‘Of course, it’s all revived interest in the Great War,’ he pronounced, the three words ponderously spaced out. James and Harry caught each other’s eye. They let him continue as they would have done as boys.

  ‘Nothing of much magnitude has been happening in this one, so far.’ He glanced carefully at James. ‘Norway excluded, of course. But it has undoubtedly focused new attention on the Great War. Bond and Bond are very keen to publish a new edition of The Front Line: Personal Stories from the Trenches.’ He always referred to his book title in full, never as ‘the book’ or ‘my book’, sometimes even adding without embarrassment ‘By Major Robert Lovatt, MC’. The brothers were concealing grins. They had suffered hours of being taken through the bloodied pages of that volume, each eyewitness account explained and embellished by their father. Sometimes it had seemed that they themselves had campaigned through the long four years. ‘How I Rang the Bells of Ypres’, ‘How I Shot Down Three Hun Air Aces’, ‘How We Tunnelled Through Flanders’, and their favourite title, the intrepid story of an escaped prisoner-of-war entitled: ‘My Four Years in a Frenchwoman’s Cupboard’. This, for them, as boys, had become a sort of code phrase. It was difficult even now to keep sober faces when they thought of it.

  Harry, with a steady, challenging eye on his brother, intoned: ‘There were certainly some exciting chapters in The Front Line: Personal Stories from the Trenches.’ His recitation of the title in full evoked an acknowledging nod from his father who found it difficult to detect humour of any kind. Prudently James shielded his mouth with his glass.