Marking Time (30 page)

‘You can talk about him with me.’

But truthfully she dreaded it. Clary had made a map of the north coast of France, starting at St Valéry where her father was known to have gone ashore and continuing west through Normandy
and Brittany and round the corner until the Bay of Biscay. This she had pinned to one of the old cork bathroom mats and on it she marked the progress she imagined her father making, outlined
– and more – by her in a serial told to Polly at night. Her experience of France was limited to
The Scarlet Pimpernel, A Tale of Two Cities
and an historical novel by Conan
Doyle called
The Huguenots
. The Germans had become the Republicans, and the French, to a man or woman, the loyal underground that would assist an aristocrat to join his family in England.
Uncle Rupe was being passed along the coast by these brave and loyal people. He had many narrow escapes but, in the end, that is what they always were, and occasionally he got holed up in some
village for a week or two. This was happening more and more frequently, and Polly sensed that Clary did not want to get her father right to the west coast as then he would actually have to be got
home. It was true that his French was very good as he had studied and painted in France before his first marriage, so he could
pass
as French easily, Clary thought. He had been planning to
get a fishing boat to the Channel Islands but the Germans, of course, got there before him. He had been nearly burned to death in a barn where they had hidden him, had toiled for two days on an
ancient bicycle with strings of onions on it (she had seen this in London), had been taken in a cart for a whole day hidden under sacks of fish manure (‘They’re all farmers and
fishermen so they’d be bound to use old fishbones and heads and things like that’) so that he smelled too awful for his hosts that evening and they took all his clothes to wash while he
had supper wrapped in a blanket. Of course his uniform had gone long ago: he’d bought a complete outfit of French clothes with his gold watch. Sometimes he lived off the land: eating apples
from orchards (Polly forebore saying that they wouldn’t be ripe), and even stealing eggs from hens’ nests. ‘And he could milk the odd cow!’ Polly had once enthusiastically
exclaimed, but Clary immediately said that he had never liked milk. Kind people often gave him reviving swigs of brandy which they always seemed to have about them, and Gauloises which luckily were
his favourite cigarette. He had got very ill swimming across the Seine at night where it was pretty wide, but a kind old woman – a shepherdess – had nursed him back to health; she had
told Uncle Rupe that she was so rude to the Germans that they dreaded coming to inspect her farm.

Polly listened two or three nights a week to this saga of triumphant adventure – the outcome of which was not in question, according to the storyteller – but in which, although she
was frequently caught up in the tales told, she could never believe. Privately, she thought, as the rest of the family, that Rupert was dead, for if he had been taken prisoner – a notion only
the Duchy was known to cling to – why had they not been told?

Even the news that four hundred were feared dead when a French ship was torpedoed in the Channel did not have the effect upon Clary that Polly both dreaded and yet felt would be better for her.
‘It just shows that there
are
French ships about,’ she said, ‘and one day Dad will be on one of them. Perfectly logical,’ she added, ignoring the possibility that
he might have been on that one.

The days crawled by. The dog fights continued, and now Teddy and Simon were back from school and rushed about the countryside on their bicycles hoping to capture Germans. When this was
discovered, they were forbidden, but Teddy got round it by haunting the Home Guard headquarters where Colonel Forbes, who thoroughly approved of his attitude, gave him harmless and strenuous jobs
to do. Simon, who was now as tall as his mother and very spotty, was excluded from this on account of his age, which hurt his feelings – much more, Polly knew, than he let on – and
worse, left him at an unbearably loose end. Dad cleverly solved this by providing him with an extremely dilapidated wireless set about which he said, ‘The moment you have got it working
again, it shall be yours.’ So in the end,
he
was all right, Polly thought rather resentfully. Where, metaphorically speaking, was her wireless set? Lydia and Neville, who were
getting on better again, were patients for Aunt Villy’s first-aid classes that she ran twice a week. They lay on trestle tables while anxious careful ladies from the village wound yards of
crêpe bandage round assorted limbs. When they weren’t doing that, they played for hours in what was called the very, very old car – one of the Brig’s earliest vehicles that
had been moved out of the garage when the Babies’ Hotel had been evacuated and had sat ever since in a field beyond the orchard, where it was sinking slowly and majestically into the ground.
All things that she would have enjoyed once, she thought sadly; she seemed either too old or too young for practically everything.

In August, her mother took her to London for the day to buy clothes for the winter as she had outgrown nearly everything from the previous year. Aunt Villy came with them as she was going to a
National Gallery concert where the man who hadn’t come for the weekend was playing. In the train Aunt Villy and Mummy took the corner seats facing the way they were going, so she sat opposite
and pretended she didn’t know them – had never seen them before. Aunt Villy looked quite smart in a grey flannel suit with a navy blue crêpe-de-Chine blouse, silk stockings and
navy blue court shoes; her gloves and handbag all matched this outfit and her hat, perched on her wavy grey hair, had a white petersham ribbon bow at the back. She had make-up on as well: rouge on
her cheekbones and rather dark cyclamen lipstick that made her mouth look a bit cruel. All the same, looking at her, you could see a bit what she must have looked like when she was young and had
things in her life that excited her.

Mummy, on the other hand, wore no make-up and her gingery ash-coloured hair was in a straggly bun, with bits escaping and hairpins sticking out like the ends of paper clips. Her face was pale
except for the small flurry of freckles on her nose and forehead, and already, from just standing on the sunny platform, shiny with perspiration. She wore a dress of green and black and white
flowers and a cream linen coat that looked too large for her: it was already crumpled. Her stockings were too peachy; she had black shoes and white cotton gloves, which she was taking off as she
settled in her seat. Her hands, white and smooth with small fingers adorned by her emerald engagement ring beside the gold one, were the smartest thing about her, Polly thought sadly. It was
difficult to imagine how she had been when she was young; she looked now as though she had been born readymade middle-aged and had already been that for far too long. She was smiling at Aunt Villy
now, fanning herself with a glove, saying yes, do open a window. The smile went out as suddenly as the sun from a swift cloud, leaving a kind of wan, but anxious neutrality behind.

‘Galeries Lafayette do have some nice things for young people,’ Aunt Villy was saying. ‘In fact, you could probably do everything in Regent Street, and then you’ll be
handy for the Café Royal and lunch with Hugh.’

‘Oh, can’t we go to Peter Jones?’ Polly wanted to get her clothes at the same place as Louise, who said it was by far the best shop.

‘No, darling, it’s too much off the beaten track. I want to go to Liberty’s anyway to get material for Wills as well as you.’

She subsided. It was supposed to be an outing for
her
, and she wasn’t even allowed to choose where they would go. She wanted linen trousers like Louise had, but Mummy didn’t
approve of girls wearing trousers unless they were skiing or something.

At Robertsbridge a lot of people got on the train and by Tunbridge Wells it was absolutely full. An air-raid warning sounded there, but people went on reading their papers or staring out of the
window without taking much notice. Then they heard planes right over their heads, and suddenly one seemed to be right on top of them and there was a burst of gunfire. A man next to Polly put his
hand on her head and forced it down below the window. ‘Machine-guns – what will they do next?’ he said in tones of mild wonder.

But other people all looked out of the window and somebody said, ‘They’ve got him!’ and there was a sound of cheering all through the train. Polly straightened, cross to have
missed seeing the plane shot down, and then amazed at herself for wanting to.

Mummy smiled at the man and told her to thank him. ‘Thank you,’ she said and glared. He gave her a humiliatingly comprehending smile and returned to his crossword.

Charing Cross station seemed to be full of men in uniform with huge canvas kitbags waiting for trains. Their necks looked raw from the chafing of their rough bomber jackets; their black boots
were enormous.

Her mother wanted to walk up Regent Street, but Aunt Villy said that there was no point in her getting tired out before she’d started, and that they would all take a taxi; she’d drop
them at Liberty’s and take it on to her dentist.

The taxi was one of the very old yellow ones, with creaking seats and an ancient driver who took them slowly round Trafalgar Square and the huge buildings with sandbags piled against their
windows round Piccadilly Circus, past Swan and Edgar, outside which people waited to meet somebody else, past Galeries Lafayette and Robinson and Cleaver – where Mummy said she ought to get
more table napkins for the Duchy – and Hamley’s, a shop all children were supposed to adore, but Polly had never cared for – toys, she thought, as they passed, had always seemed a
dull substitute for the real thing – and finally, Liberty’s, which looked like a gigantic Tudor house.

When they reached the floor that sold material, her mother – most surprisingly – said, ‘Now, Polly. I want you to choose material for two woollen dresses, also one silk and one
voile. I’ll get the stuff for Wills while you are choosing, and then you can show them to me, and if I think they are suitable, you shall have them.’

This was unexpected and delightful, and she chose and chose, and changed her mind, and agonised, and in the end, actually
asked
her mother to be the final judge.

After Liberty’s, they progressed down Regent Street. There was a slight altercation in Robinson and Cleaver, as Polly did not want to have vests bought for her – she had heard Louise
say that they were bourgeois, something that Louise definitely thought it frightful to be, but her mother was adamant. At Galeries Lafayette Sybil bought her two skirts – a navy pleated one
with a blazer to match, and an olive-green tweed – plus three shirts and two jerseys, a petticoat with lace round the hem and a beautiful nutmeg-brown winter coat with a mock fur collar. Then
it was time to go to the Café Royal to meet Dad.

‘Somebody’s birthday, I see,’ said the old lady who took all their parcels. ‘Let me guess. You’re too young to be getting married, so it must be your
birthday,’ and she blushed, because it did seem a tremendous lot, more than she had ever had in her life before.

‘We’ll get Daddy to take them home for us in the car,’ Mummy said, when they were walking down the staircase.

‘That won’t be till the weekend!’

‘Well, you’ll just have to bear it, darling. We can’t spend the afternoon carting all that around. There he is!’

Lunch was lovely. She had a glass of sherry and hors d’oeuvres and salmon with delicious mayonnaise and white ice cream with chocolate sauce – ‘You can have whatever you
like,’ Dad said. ‘It isn’t often I have my two favourite women to lunch.’ They all had salmon but she noticed that Mummy left most of hers. ‘And what have you bought
for yourself, my darling?’ he said to her when they were choosing their puddings.

‘I really don’t need anything. I’ll just have coffee,’ she handed her menu back to the waiter. ‘Honestly, darling, since I’ve happily lost some weight, I can
wear all the things I had before Wills.’

‘I don’t think that’s right, do you, Dad? Just having things to wear isn’t at all the same as having a lovely
new
thing.’

‘Quite right. Mind you make her buy herself something really pretty and frightfully expensive this afternoon.’

‘I promise.’

But, in fact, it turned out not to be possible. After lunch, and after Dad had put them in a taxi, Sybil said, ‘Polly, I’ve got to go and see somebody quite near John Lewis where you
can get your bras and the rest of your undies. Will that be all right?’

‘Of course. But where are you going? Shall I meet you there?’

‘No – there won’t be time. When you’ve done your shopping, take a bus back to Charing Cross. I’ll give you your train ticket, just in case. Oh – and yes
– money to buy your things.’ She fished about in her rather shabby bag and gave Polly some notes. ‘Now, don’t lose them. Here is the list of what I want you to get. And
catch the four-twenty, even if I’m not there, which, of course, I will be. But if you think you are going to be late, take a taxi.’ It was twenty-five pounds – more money than she
had ever had in her life. ‘Goodness! I won’t need all this.’

‘You can give me the change, but I want to be sure you have enough. Keep all the bills. And promise to catch that train.’

‘Of course I will.’ When the taxi had deposited her, she watched it drive off. She felt mystified and vaguely uneasy.