Marking Time (54 page)

‘I wonder what Dad’s friend will be like,’ Clary remarked with careful carelessness.

‘Well, he’s bound to be old.’

‘What do you mean “old”?’

‘Too old for us. Nearly forty.’

‘Really, you sound as though you’re considering marriage with him.’

‘Don’t be a fool. He’ll be married himself, anyway. People are, by that age.’

‘As a matter of fact, he isn’t. I happen to know that the person he wanted to marry didn’t want him, and Dad said that was partly why he went and lived in France.’

‘His life has been blighted, you mean?’ Polly couldn’t conceal her interest in that.

‘Probably. We shall be able to tell by looking at him. So keep an eagle eye out, and we’ll compare notes. Archie Lestrange. Archibald Lestrange,’ she repeated. ‘It sounds
like someone in a John Buchan. Archie would be the hero, and Archibald the villain.’

He was definitely Archie, Polly thought. He was immensely tall, with a dome-like forehead and fine black hair receding from it. He had heavy lids to his eyes and an expression
in them that looked as though he was either secretly amused, or wanted to be.

He’d been wounded and walked with a limp; he also had a slight stammer. The Duchy had put him next to her at dinner and was clearly rather fond of him. They talked about far-off days,
before this war, and, Polly thought, just after the war before that when he used to come and stay at the house she and the Brig had had at Totteridge, when he and Rupert had been at the Slade. He
seemed to know the family quite well, not only her grandparents, but Dad and Uncle Edward and Aunt Rach. He’d been best man for Uncle Rupert’s first wedding to Clary’s mother, and
he’d obviously met
her
mother and Aunt Villy, although he clearly didn’t know them so well. For dinner there was roast chicken and bread sauce and he said how wonderful it was
to have such lovely food. ‘In Coastal Forces,’ he said, ‘our ships were just too small to warrant a trained cook, and only the most gormless rating volunteered for the job. Great
haunches of lamb would appear either streaming with blood or black as your hat with unspeakable potatoes – all grey and shiny, like frightened people’s faces.’ Later he said that
he’d volunteered for the Trade, but they weren’t making submarines to fit people of his size.

Afterwards, when she and Clary were undressing for bed they swapped impressions.

‘He’s nice. I can see why your dad liked him. Funny-looking, though. Rather
cavernous
.’

‘He’s been
ill
. I thought he looked rather tragic. People often get a stammer when something terrible has happened to them.’

‘You mean his leg being shot?’

‘No, stupid. I mean the person not wanting to marry him. I should think that’s left him with an awful inferiority complex.’

Recently she had taken to attributing this state to nearly everyone, largely, Polly thought, because it was something difficult to disprove.

‘He didn’t seem to be particularly inferior.’

‘You don’t have to
be
inferior, you just feel you are.’

‘Oh, well, hardly anyone doesn’t feel that.’

‘It’s funny that, isn’t it? I mean you’re
with
yourself all the time, so you’d think you’d be clearer about yourself than about anyone else. I mean,
look at you, Poll. You’re terribly pretty, jolly nearly beautiful, and so kind and nice, and
you’
re always saying you don’t know what you’re for, and you’re
no good and things like that.’

‘So do you.’

‘Oh, well,’ Clary said, ‘my eyebrows are too thick and I’ve got awful legs that only bulge at the knees – no ankles like lucky you – and my hair’s too
fine, and I’ve got a hideous nature and a squashy nose and claustrophobia –
you
said that so don’t try to get out of it now – so I can’t see that I’ve
much
not
to feel inferior about.’

‘There you are!’

By now, Archie Lestrange was forgotten, and they embarked upon a very enjoyable half-hour’s competition to see who could run herself down the most, with the other one contesting every
point, until sleep overcame Clary which it always did without the slightest warning: she was talking nineteen to the dozen and then she was suddenly gone.

In the morning Clary said, ‘One thing about Archie – he told me to call him that – he seemed awfully shy with Aunt Rachel.’

‘She’s an unmarried lady. He probably feels shy with all of them, after what happened to him.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course he would, poor thing.’

The sad thing that happened in August was that it turned out that Angela wasn’t going to get married as she also turned out not to be having a baby. What was sad about this, Polly felt,
was that bang went her chance to be a bridesmaid, something she had wanted to be the whole of her life. The first part of this information came through direct questioning: did Aunt Villy think that
Angela would have her as a bridesmaid? No, because she wasn’t getting married after all. The second part arrived obliquely via Louise, home for the week while her theatre was closed for
essential repairs, who got a letter from Nora in which she said how shocked she was that Angela
wasn’t
having a baby.

‘Extraordinary,’ Clary said. ‘You’d think it would be the other way round.’ Louise refused to discuss it with them for the same old boring reasons that it
wasn’t their business and they were too young anyway.

‘How
can
one be too young for discussion of any kind?’ Clary shrieked. She hadn’t been at all interested until told that she should not be, then, at once, her
curiosity and suspicions were aroused. ‘I’m through with Louise. I’m really through. She has gone beyond the pale.’ She asked Zoë what she thought, and Zoë said
that she imagined that Angela must have had a miscarriage. ‘But the man she wanted to marry
was
married,’ she said, ‘so I expect it will be all for the best in the long
run.’ When Clary told Polly this, they both rolled their eyes and echoed ‘the
long run’
, and Clary said she was all for short cuts and this made them fall about.

It was odd, Polly thought as she picked runner beans for Mrs Cripps to slice and salt down for winter, how frivolous she was. She could make jokes with Clary, and play silly games with Wills,
and be fussy about her appearance and all the time the war was going on, and not going very well for the Allies as far as she could see. Hitler was making alarming progress in Russia and people
were saying that the Japanese were becoming offensively arrogant, and if
they
came into the war on Hitler’s side, it would either prolong it for ever or, worse, it might mean that
Hitler
would
win; they would be back to it being as frightening as it had been last summer, the threat of invasion, and all that.

Pursuing her policy of trying to do things to make other people’s lives nicer for them, she decided to talk to her mother about her going to London so that she could be with Dad.
‘You see, Mummy,
I
could look after Wills in the week for you. And you’d be coming down every weekend. And Ellen would help, I know she would. So why don’t you just
tell
Dad you’re coming? Or, better still, just go and be a lovely surprise for him when he gets back from the office? I don’t mean to be bossy,’ she added – she
didn’t actually think she was being that at all – ‘but I’m sure he
wants
you to be there – it’s simply that he is being unselfish.’

Her mother was sewing name tapes onto Simon’s grey socks and handkerchiefs for next term. ‘Darling, I couldn’t go when it’s Simon’s last week of the holidays. You
know how he minds going back.’

‘All right, but you could after he’s gone.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ Then she added, almost petulantly, ‘Oh, why can’t we just all be together? Simon having to go away to school, and Wills being so young and
needing me, and Hugh having to be in London! It’s too bad. I’m not much of a cook, you know. I don’t know whether I could make Hugh the kind of meals he likes.’

‘Oh, Mummy, you could do what Aunt Villy does when Mrs Cripps has her evening off. She reads Mrs Beeton and then she just does exactly what it says. Think of that rabbit stew last
week.’

‘Well, darling, I really will think about it,’ but she said it in tones that meant she would rather think than talk.

Well, Polly thought, she’d done her best. It seemed odd to her, if you wanted so badly to be with your husband, to make a fuss about the cooking.

Teddy and Simon went back to school. Dad took them up on a Sunday evening and out to dinner at his club, and then saw them off on the train the next morning. Teddy went off without a tremor; it
was his last two terms and as he hadn’t done too well in his exams in the summer, he was to retake some of them, and
then
as he told everybody interminably, he would be able to join
up and start learning to fly. But Simon was sick on the Sunday morning and didn’t want any lunch and wanted to be with Mummy all day. She played bezique and racing demon and chess with him,
but even his easy victory over her with the last did not cheer him much. Everybody tried to be very jolly and encouraging: ‘It’ll soon be Christmas,’ Polly said to him, ‘and
you know how you love that.’

‘I may have toothache,’ he said at tea-time. ‘I feel as though at any minute a tooth is going to start to hurt. It’s funny, but I’m usually right about things like
that.’

But it did not make – as she knew he knew – the slightest difference. When she had to wave them a smiling goodbye, her mother turned and walked slowly back to the house, and when
Polly was sent to fetch her for dinner, she said that she didn’t want any. She had been crying, her voice sounded indistinct and slurred, and she almost pushed Polly out of the room and shut
her door.

Term began for her too, and for Clary and Lydia, and Neville, who went back to his school quite cheerfully, Clary said, because he had learned to imitate Lord HawHaw perfectly and was looking
forward to showing this off.

Archie Lestrange, who stayed with them for a fortnight the first time, came back in September, and Clary got so worked up about this that Polly wondered whether she was in love. She suggested
this possibility to Clary, who got into a frightful temper – said she was mad and trying to spoil everything and she must have a horrible mind to think of anything so idiotic and horrible.
Then she sulked, and they had two days and – worse – two tense, silent, icily polite evenings going to bed and getting up in the morning. In the end she apologised in the most humble
language she could bring to bear, and Clary, having reiterated how idiotic she was to have thought of such a thing, forgave her. Later, when they were taking it in turns to have the small and tepid
bath, she said, ‘Actually, I can sort of see why you thought anything so mad. The thing
is
that I do
like
him awfully. And I think he looks nice and he makes me laugh
– like Dad does – and I respect him for his opinions on things.’

‘What things?’

‘Well, pretty well everything. Of course, we haven’t talked about
absolutely
everything, but he agrees that women should have careers and that writing is very important and
that people being worse than animals is really only saying how nice animals are – and he sometimes tells me things about my mother – he knew her a bit you see. You know my postcard she
sent me with her love on it? Well, he was
on
that holiday with her and Dad – he can actually remember her saying, “I must get a postcard to send to little Clary.” He told
me a
lot
of things. She used to wear blue a lot and she loved a drink called Dubonnet that they drank in cafés, and she couldn’t eat shrimps and prawns and things like that,
or strawberries, but he said it wasn’t the time of year for them so it didn’t matter. And do you know the best thing? One evening he asked her if she was happy and she said, “I
honestly think I’m the luckiest person in the world. The only thing I miss is not having Clary with me.” She must have loved me to say that, don’t you think?’ Seeing
Clary’s eyes – a true glass to her heart – and recognising the faithful love that neither time nor misfortune seemed ever to quench, Polly felt too much to say anything.

But when she had washed Clary’s back, she said, ‘I do see why you like him. I do anyway, but I certainly would even more if I were you.’

Her mother
did
go to London the following week,
and
she didn’t tell Dad so it was a surprise for him. Polly felt very pleased at having had such a good idea for them,
although she found afternoons with Wills surprisingly exhausting. He was at a really frightful age, she thought. He seemed only to want to do things that were dangerous for him, or destructive for
other people, and when thwarted, he lay on the ground, arched his back and howled. ‘I honestly think he may turn into a dictator,’ she said to Ellen after the second day.

‘He just wants his own way,’ she said comfortably. ‘Just let him lie and pay no attention to him. He’ll soon stop.’ He did, but he soon started again. In between
tantrums, he was very fond of her and gave her charming smiles. But she reflected gloomily that dictators were all supposed to be particularly charming when they chose.