Red Sky at Sunrise: Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, A Moment of War (29 page)

Now the last days of my family, too, drew near, beginning with the courting of the girls.

I remember very clearly how it started. It was summer, and we boys were sitting on the bank watching a great cloud of smoke in the sky.

A man jumped off his bike and cried, ‘It’s the boiler-works!’ and we ran up the hill to see it.

There was a fire at the boiler-works almost every year. When we got there we found it a particularly good one. The warehouse, as usual, was sheathed in flame, ceilings and floors fell in, firemen shouted, windows melted like icicles, and from inside the building one heard thundering booms as the boilers started crashing about. We used up a lot of the day at this, cheering each toppling chimney.

When we got back to the village, much later in the evening, we saw a strange man down in our garden. We studied him from a distance with some feeling of shock. No one but neighbours and visiting relations had ever walked there before. Yet this ominous stranger was not only wandering free, he was being accompanied by all our women.

We rushed down the bank and burst roughly upon them, to find everyone crack-jawed with politeness. Our sisters cried La! when they saw us coming, and made us welcome as though we’d been round the world. Marjorie was particularly soft and loving, the others beamed anxiously at us; Mother, though not smart, was in her best black dress, and the stranger was twisting his hat.

‘These are our brothers,’ said Marjorie, grabbing two of us close to her bosom. ‘This is Jackie and Loll, and that one’s Tone. They’re all of them terrible bad.’

There was nervous laughter and relief at this, as though several dark ghosts had been laid. We smirked and wriggled, aped and showed off, but couldn’t think what was going on. In fact, the day of that boiler-works fire marked a beacon in the life of our girls. It was the day when their first young man came courting, and this stranger was he, and he was Marjorie’s, and he opened a path through the garden.

He was handsome, curly-haired, a builder of barges, very strong, and entirely acceptable. His name was Maurice, and we boys soon approved him and gave him the run of the place. He was followed quite quickly by two other young men, one each for Dorothy and Phyllis. Dorothy got Leslie, who was a shy local scoutmaster, at least until he met her; Phyllis in turn produced Harold the Bootmaker, who had fine Latin looks, played the piano by ear, and sang songs about old-fashioned mothers. Then Harold, our brother, got the infection too, mended our chairs, re-upholstered the furniture, and brought home a girl for himself.

At these strokes our home life changed for ever; new manners and notions crept in; instead of eight in the kitchen there were now a round dozen, and so it stayed till the girls started marrying. The young men called nightly, with candles in jars, falling headlong down our precipitous bank; or came pushing their bikes on summer evenings, loitering with the girls in the lanes; or sat round the fire talking slowly of work; or sat silent, just being there; while the sewing-machine hummed, and Mother rambled, and warm ripples of nothing lapped round them. They were wary of Mother, unsure of her temper, though her outbursts were at the world, not people. Leslie was tactful and diffident, giving short sharp laughs at her jokes. Maurice often lectured her on ‘The Working Man Today’, which robbed her of all understanding. Phyl’s Harold would sometimes draw up to the piano, strike the keys with the strength of ten, then charm us all by bawling ‘Because’ or ‘An Old Lady Passing By’.

Then there was cheese and cocoa, and ‘Good-night all’, and the first one got up to leave. There followed long farewells by the back-kitchen door, each couple taking their turn. Those waiting inside had to bide their time. ‘Our Doth! Ain’t you finished yet?’ ‘Shan’t be a minute.’ Yum-yum, kiss-kiss. ‘Well, hurry up do! You’re awful.’ Five more minutes of silence outside, then Marge shakes the latch on the door. ‘How much longer, our Doth? You been there all night. There’s some got to work tomorrow,’ ‘AH right, don’t get ratty. He’s just off now. Night-night, my beautiful bab.’ One by one they departed; we turned down the lights, and the girls heaved themselves to bed.

Sundays, or Bank Holidays, were day-long courtships, and then the lovers were all over us. When it rained it was hopeless and we just played cards, or the boyfriends modelled for dress-making. When fine perhaps Mother would plan a small treat, like a picnic in the woods.

I remember a sweltering August Sunday. Mother said it would be nice to go out. We would walk a short mile to a nice green spot and boil a kettle under the trees. It sounded simple enough, but we knew better. For Mother’s picnics were planned on a tribal scale, with huge preparations beforehand. She flew round the kitchen issuing orders and the young men stood appalled at the work. There were sliced cucumbers and pots of paste, radishes, pepper and salt, cakes and buns and macaroons, soup-plates of bread and butter, jam, treacle, jugs of milk, and several fresh-made jellies.

The young men didn’t approve of this at all, and muttered it was blooming mad. But with a ‘You carry that now, there’s a dear boy’, each of us carried something. So we set off at last like a frieze of Greeks bearing gifts to some woodland god – Mother, with a tea-cloth over her head, gathering flowers as she went along, the sisters following with cakes and bread, Jack with the kettle, Tony with the salt, myself with a jug of milk; then the scowling youths in their blue serge suits carrying the jellies in open basins – jellies which rapidly melted in the sun and splashed them with yellow and rose. The young men swapped curses under their breath, brother Harold hung back in shame, while Mother led the way with prattling songs determined to make the thing go.

She knew soon enough when people turned sour and moved mountains to charm them out of it, and showed that she knew by a desperate gaiety and by noisy attacks on silence.

‘Now come along, Maurice, best foot forward, mind how you go, tee-hee. Leslie! just look at those pretty what-d’you-call’-ems – those what’s-is –
aren’t
they a picture? I said Leslie, look, aren’t they pretty, my dear? Funny you don’t know the name. Oh, isn’t it a scrumptious day, tra-la? Boys, isn’t it a scrumptious day?’

Wordy, flustered, but undefeated, she got us to the woods at last. We were ordered to scatter and gather sticks and to build a fire for the kettle. The fire smoked glumly and stung our eyes, the young men sat round like martyrs, the milk turned sour, the butter fried on the bread, cake crumbs got stuck to the cucumber, wasps seized the treacle, the kettle wouldn’t boil, and we ended by drinking the jellies.

As we boys would eat anything, anywhere, none of this bothered us much. But the young courting men sat on their spread silk handkerchiefs and gazed at the meal in horror. ‘No thanks, Mrs Lee. I don’t think I could. I’ve just had me dinner, ta.’

They were none of them used to such disorder, didn’t care much for open-air picnics – but most of all they were wishing to be away with their girls, away in some field or gully, where summer and love would be food enough, and an absence of us entirely.

When the girls got engaged heavy blushes followed as the rings were shown to the family. ‘It’s a cluster of brilliants. Cost more than two pounds. He got it at Gloucester Market.’ Now that things were official, there was more sitting in the dark and a visible increase in tensions. The girls were now grown and they wished to be gone. They were in love and had found their men. Meanwhile, impatience nagged at them all, till in one case it suddenly exploded…

It was evening. I was drawing at the kitchen table. One of the girls was late. When she came at last we had finished supper. She arrived with her boy, which. seemed unusual, as it wasn’t his calling-night.

‘Well, take your coat off,’ said Mother. ‘Sit down.’

‘No, thank you,’ he answered frozenly.

‘Don’t just stand there – stiff as stiff can be.’

‘I’m all right, Mrs Lee, I assure you.’

‘Ma, we’ve been thinking –’ the sister began. Her voice was level and loud.

I always went still at the sound of trouble, and didn’t turn round or look. I just worked at my drawing, and each line and detail became inscribed with the growing argument. A pencilled leaf, the crook of a branch, each carried a clinging phrase: ‘Don’t talk so daft… You’re acting very funny… You don’t none of you know what I feel… It’s cruel to hear you talk like that… I never had a proper chance… Oh, come and sit down and don’t act so silly… It’s no good, we made up our minds… She’s just about had enough, Mrs Lee, it’s time she was out of it all…’ My pencil paused; what did they mean?

The other girls were indignant, Mother sad and lost, the argument rose and fell. ‘Well, that’s what
we
think, anyway. It’s a scandal, you coming like this. What about him? – he just walks in – who does he think he is? What about
you,
if it comes to that? Well, what about us? We’re listening. You think the whole place is just run for you. We don’t! You do! We never! Well, come on girl, I’ve had enough!’ Shocked pause, aghast. ‘You dare!’

I was listening with every nerve and muscle of my back. Nothing happened; words flared and died. At last we boys went up to bed, undressed, and lay in the dark. As we lay, still listening, the kitchen grew quieter, the trouble seemed to fade to a murmur… Suddenly, there was uproar, the girls screaming, Mother howling, and a scuffling and crashing of furniture. Jack and I sprang instantly from our beds and tore downstairs in our shirts. We found Mother and two sisters at the young man’s throat, bouncing him against the wall. The other girl was trying to pull them away. The whole was a scene of chaos. Without hesitation, and in spite of the congestion, we sprang at the young man too.

But by the time we reached him the battle was over, the women had broken off. The young man stood panting, alone in the corner. I gave him a shove, he gave me a swipe, then he bent down to look for his hat.

He had tried to carry off our willing sister and we had all of us very near killed him. Now, just as suddenly, everybody was kissing each other, weeping, embracing, forgiving. Mother put her arm round the young man’s neck and nearly strangled him afresh with affection. The whole party moved out into the dark back-kitchen,sniffing, and murmuring; ‘There, there. It’s all right. We’re all friends now, aren’t we? Dear boy… Oh, Mother… There, there’

A moment before I’d been blind with anger, ready to slay for the family. Now the rage was over, cancelled, let down. I turned in disgust from their billing and cooing; went up to the fire, lifted my nightshirt, and warmed my bare loins on the fire-guard…

The girls were to marry; the Squire was dead; buses ran and the towns were nearer. We began to shrug off the valley and look more to the world, where pleasures were more anonymous and tasty. They were coming fast, and we were nearly ready for them. Each week Miss Bagnall held her penny dances where girls’ shapes grew more familiar. For a penny one could swing them through Lancers and Two-Steps across the resinous floor of the Hut – but if one swung them entirely off their feet then Miss B locked the piano and went home…

Time squared itself, and the village shrank, and distances crept nearer. The sun and moon, which once rose from our hill, rose from London now in the east. One’s body was no longer a punching ball, to be thrown against trees and banks, but a telescoping totem crying strange demands few of which we could yet supply. In the faces of the villagers one could see one’s change, and in their habits their own change also. The horses had died; few people kept pigs any more but spent their spare time buried in engines. The flutes and cornets, the gramophones with horns, the wind harps were thrown away – now wireless aerials searched the electric sky for the music of the Savoy Orpheans. Old men in the pubs sang, ‘As I Walked Out’, then walked out and never came back. Our Mother was grey now, and a shade more light-headed, talking of mansions she would never build.

As for me – for me, the grass grew longer, and more sorrowful, and the trees were surfaced like flesh, and girls were no longer to be treated lightly but were creatures of commanding sadness, and all journeys through the valley were now made alone, with passion in every bush, and the motions of wind and cloud and stars were suddenly for myself alone, and voices elected me of all men living and called me to deliver the world, and I groaned from solitude, blushed when I stumbled, loved strangers and bread and butter, and made long trips through the rain on my bicycle, stared wretchedly through lighted windows, grinned wryly to think how little I was known, and lived in a state of raging excitement.

The sisters, as I said, were about to get married. Harold was working at a factory lathe. Brother Jack was at Grammar School, and his grammar was excellent; and Tony still had a fine treble voice. My Mother half-knew me, but could not help, I felt doomed, and of all things wonderful.