Sons and Daughters (13 page)

‘Banked where?’ said Jeremy.

‘Well,’ said Bess, ‘from the time when he was about seven he saved every coin he could and kept them in his old socks in a box under his bed. When he finally came to disgorge it, he had twenty full
socks and what my Aunt Lizzy said was a small fortune.’

‘A saving guy with an eye to his future?’ said Jeremy.

‘Oh, I think he had his eye to his future when he put his first farthings into a sock,’ said Bess, and went on to detail some of Sammy’s achievements. ‘He and his brothers were all adventurous, they’re all in the business, and might have taken off for dizzy heights if my grandma, Chinese Lady, hadn’t kept them in order.’ Bess laughed softly. ‘And she still does, and everyone else in the family as well.’

‘Chinese Lady?’ said Jeremy. ‘Come again?’

So Bess had to explain how her paternal grandmother came to be called Chinese Lady. Jeremy laughed until he shook.

‘Mind, that’s only what I’ve been told by my dad and uncles,’ said Bess.

‘It’s still a hoot,’ said Jeremy, which made Bess think of brother Daniel’s wife, Patsy. Patsy used that expression.

Encouraged, she talked some more for quite a while, and Jeremy listened, liking the sound of her English voice with its little musical lilts. Eventually, she thought of Patsy again.

‘Oh, would you like to know I’ve an American sister-in-law?’ she said.

‘That’s a fact?’ said Jeremy, who had finished his Lancashire meat pie, and was making healthy inroads into a large wedge of cheese and some crusty bread.

‘Yes, it’s a fact,’ said Bess. ‘She comes from Boston and is married to my elder brother. She’s really very nice.’

‘Well, I sure wouldn’t go for her giving the rest of us a bad name,’ said Jeremy. ‘So if she’s pretty nice, send her my regards. Now carry on.’

‘I’ll probably get boring,’ said Bess.

‘I’ll take a bet you won’t,’ said Jeremy.

So Bess told him about Bristol University, where she was reading French, maths and English Literature because she wanted to be a school-teacher.

‘Wow,’ said Jeremy.

‘Wow what?’ asked Bess.

‘Schoolteachers get headaches and take pills,’ said Jeremy.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Bess.

‘My college fraternity took pills for breakfast and lunch.’

‘Probably because the students were devilish,’ said Bess.

‘As a teacher, what would you do with your devilish students?’ asked Jeremy.

‘Point them to their natural home,’ said Bess.

‘Natural home?’

‘Hell,’ said Bess, all diffidence having slipped away.

Jeremy shouted with laughter.

‘Bess, I sure am pleased to have met you,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ said Bess. Noting he had no flask, she asked if he’d like some coffee.

‘I was thinking of calling at the hotel and ordering a beer at the bar,’ he said.

‘How are you going to get there?’ she asked.

‘Hail someone in a boat,’ said Jeremy, ‘it’s how I landed here.’

‘Well, you can share my coffee first, if you like, and then I’ll row you back in my hired boat.’

‘You’ll do that?’

‘I’m game,’ said Bess, ‘and I have to join up with my friends in an hour, anyway.’

‘We’ll take an oar each,’ said Jeremy.

Which they did some time later, seated side by side, Bess a surprised young lady at how comfortable she felt in company with this easy-going American. She thought that was probably how women felt in company with Uncle Boots, the most easy-going man she knew. Grandma Finch had once said her only oldest son would have been a danger to even the most respectable women if he hadn’t been a properly brought-up family man who, being married, didn’t go in for anything unlegal. Bess felt that many of the male undergraduates she knew were too noisy and callow to be a danger to any discriminating woman. Some of them had begun to get on her nerves soon after her arrival in the Lake District with a group of both sexes. Her closest friend in Bristol certainly wasn’t a male undergraduate. It was Alice, Uncle Tommy and Aunt Vi’s daughter, who worked for the bursar.

Out on the sparkling surface of the lake that had been born amid surrounding green hills, the boat
zigzagged a bit. Jeremy suggested they weren’t pulling together.

‘Well, just look here,’ said Bess, ‘I’m pulling my share.’

‘I’ll call the tempo, shall I?’ said Jeremy. ‘Right, one – two, one – two—’

Bess caught a crab and fell backwards. Up went her legs, and her dress played about again. She shrieked. With laughter. And as Jeremy brought her upright again, she was still laughing, with not the faintest hint of a blush. She grabbed at the loose oar.

‘Don’t let me do that again,’ she said.

‘Fair and sweet young lady,’ said Jeremy, ‘the last thing I want is to have you fall overboard.’

Bess did blush then, just a little. Fair and sweet? Oh, help.

They rowed to the jetty, delivered the little craft to the boatman, and walked to the hotel, where Jeremy asked if she’d like to join him at the bar.

‘Oh, thanks,’ she said, ‘but I really don’t drink very much, and I’d better wait for my friends. They’ll be back soon.’

‘Let’s sit,’ said Jeremy, ‘and I’ll wait with you.’ They sat together on a bench looking out over the long, shining lake. Other holidaymakers ambled contentedly around. ‘What will you be doing after you’ve left the Lakes?’ asked Jeremy.

‘Oh, I’ll be going home mid-August to spend the rest of my vacation with my family before I return to Bristol,’ said Bess. In the distance she saw the
motorized tourist vessel approaching. Oh, blow, she thought, that’s a bit too soon.

‘Well, tell me if I’m being pushy,’ said Jeremy, ‘but may I call on you at your home?’

‘Pardon?’

‘No go?’ said Jeremy. ‘You’ve got a feller?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Bess.

‘Well, then?’

‘I’ll give you my address,’ said Bess.

‘I’m touched,’ said Jeremy, ‘since that’s going to mean you’ll be giving me a yes as well.’

Bess ripped a page from the back of her pocket diary, pulled out its pencil and wrote down her address. And, after a brief second, her phone number.

‘There,’ she said, handing the little page to Jeremy. Lord, she thought, what’s the family going to think, Daniel with an American wife and me suddenly with an American friend, a feller from Chicago? Not wanting her noisy group to gallop up and spoil the moment for her, she said, ‘D’you mind if I go and meet my friends at the jetty? If I don’t, they’ll come up and smother us.’

‘Whatever you want, Bess,’ said Jeremy. ‘Just let me say I’ve known a few English girls—’

‘I’m sure you have, since you’ve been in England since the end of the war,’ said Bess.

‘Right,’ said Jeremy, ‘and I’m now telling you I’ve played around with one or two.’

‘I know about GIs and English girls,’ said Bess, and thought again of Uncle Boots, and his brief time with a French farmer’s daughter just before
the first Battle of the Somme, which had resulted in the birth of Eloise. When she’d talked about it with her mum, her mum had said no-one with any understanding was going to say hard things about what the men of the trenches did with French girls, and that people ought to thank the French girls for giving the Tommies a bit of pleasure before they died. But Uncle Boots didn’t die, said Bess. For which let’s all say a happy Amen, said her mum.

‘In ’44, some months before our GIs and Brits sailed on that seasick trip to the Normandy beaches, I took a real shine to a redhead,’ said Jeremy.

‘I do understand,’ said Bess, eyes on the docking tourist boat.

‘Serious shine,’ said Jeremy, ‘but by the time I came out of hospital late in ’45, she’d skipped off to California as a GI bride of some other guy, taking a diamond engagement ring with her. The ring I’d slipped on her finger. I thought hard about that piece of chicanery and decided I was luckier than the other guy.’

‘You were,’ said Bess. ‘What a hateful and shallow person she must have been.’

‘Infatuation takes all common sense out of a man and makes a fool of him,’ said Jeremy. ‘It won’t happen again. Bess, thanks for our time together today, and for the rowboat ride. I’ll be in touch.’

‘That’s a promise?’ said Bess, little flutters, hitherto unknown, happily attacking her.

‘It’s a promise,’ said Jeremy. ‘Now go and
meet your friends. Goodbye, Bess. For a while.’

He touched her hand, that was all. Then he walked into the hotel, and Bess walked to meet her noisy, exuberant friends. For once their boisterousness didn’t irritate her. Something very nice had happened, something that put brightness into her eyes and her smile.

Mrs Kloytski, returning from shopping in the market, saw one of her very appealing neighbours, Mrs Cassie Brown. Cassie was putting a shine on her iron doorknocker.

‘Ah, you are the good housewife, Cassie,’ said Mrs Kloytski.

‘I’m not out here because of that,’ said Cassie, ‘I’m out here because it’s bedlam inside. Listen to my terrors.’

From the interior of the house came yells, bangs, clangs and thumps.

‘Heavens, what is happening?’ asked Mrs Kloytski.

‘Muffin and Lewis are playing at being a brass band,’ said Cassie. ‘Muffin’s using Lewis’s toy drum, and Lewis is using our dustbin lid and the kitchen poker. If you’d like to go in and watch them, you’re welcome.’

‘Oh, I think not,’ said Mrs Kloytski.

Pity, thought Cassie, if she went in the noise alone could injure her. Cassie had begun to actively dislike the lady. She didn’t trust her smile or her bold blue eyes, or the way she kind of sidled up on Freddy. Cassie treated herself to happy
thoughts of waylaying the buxom Polack in the dark and spoiling her looks with the dustbin lid.

Clang went the makeshift cymbal. Bong went the drum.

‘School holidays, I don’t know,’ said Cassie.

‘It is a youth organization they need,’ said Mrs Kloytski, ‘with good strong men in charge. Like sergeant majors, yes?’

‘Not for my cherubs, thank you,’ said Cassie.

‘Ah, well, goodbye for today,’ said Mrs Kloytski and walked on to her house where, once inside, Mr Kloytski put an immediate question to her.

‘Any danger signals?’

‘None,’ said Mrs Kloytski. ‘The woman at the stall—’

‘The peasant?’

‘Yes. No-one has asked her about me. I told her that if anyone did make enquiries, it would probably be someone who knew me and my family in Poland during the war and is trying to trace me. She said she’d be glad to let me know, and called me “ducks”.’

Kloytski, thoughtful, said, ‘It occurs to me that if the man you saw last Saturday did have suspicions about you, he’d have made enquiries before now. Therefore, he either had no suspicions or he could not place you in his memory.’

‘Perhaps because he could not see me in the atmosphere of a London market as he saw me at that first meeting,’ said Mrs Kloytski.

‘A very different set of circumstances,’ said Kloytski. ‘All the same, we’ll take no chances. Open
the door to no-one without first taking a look through the spyhole.’ He had fitted that several days ago. ‘If he should call, don’t let him in.’

‘I’m not a fool,’ said Mrs Kloytski.

‘After he’s gone, go and see the peasant woman again,’ said Kloytski. ‘Tell her you are now sure you once knew the man and would like to call on him. Ask for his address.’

‘She may not know his address.’

‘Ask her,’ said Kloytski.

Friday. Going-home time
.

‘Well, Saunders, I hope you can manage while I’m away,’ said Paul. He was going to do a week’s walking tour of the Yorkshire Dales with a Young Socialist friend.

‘I’m confident you won’t be missed,’ said Lulu, wearing a long loose ankle-length brown dress, which Paul thought Noah’s wife might have worn on the Ark, and which Noah, when the Flood receded, told her to put in a jumble sale.

‘Watch out that you don’t fall over your confidence and break a leg,’ he said.

‘I suppose you know women have to be twice as good as men if they want to be recognized,’ said Lulu, cramming a black knitted pull-on hat over her twin curtains.

‘Recognized as what?’

‘Bloody marvels,’ said Lulu.

‘Tuppence in the box,’ said Paul.

‘What box?’

‘The swear box. It’s new and I’ve just put it on
the window ledge. It’s to discourage unwelcome language when visitors are present. Also, I’m against women speaking like that.’

‘Why should it be exclusive to men?’ demanded Lulu.

‘Men are more uncivilized,’ said Paul.

‘And women are sweet, soppy and goodygoody?’ said Lulu. ‘Listen, Adams. There’s been an earth-shaking war. It’s changed things. Kicked conventions to bits. Made women look for independence.’

‘Don’t forget to answer every letter that arrives,’ said Paul, ‘and don’t forget to sign them on behalf of Paul Adams, Secretary.’

‘Do what?’

‘It’s an order,’ said Paul.

‘You’re too young to give orders,’ said Lulu. ‘Wait till you’re old and hairy.’

‘Get your hair cut and styled,’ said Paul. ‘Make this office look a bit pretty. So long now.’

She followed him out.

‘Grow a moustache,’ she said as they parted company on the pavement. Paul went off grinning, she went off like Boadicea looking for her fiery chariot.

‘They’re back,’ said Matthew over supper that evening.

‘I know,’ said Rosie, ‘I heard the vixen caterwauling in the night.’

‘I heard her too,’ said seven-year-old Giles, a slim boy with an unruly mass of dark hair.

‘Oh, was it the foxes?’ asked Emily, only a week short of six. She was as golden-haired as her mother, with a quick smile already cheeky. She had been named after Rosie’s late adoptive mother, Boots’s first wife.

‘It was, little chick,’ said Matthew, ‘but they did no damage, apart from trying to dig their way under the chickens’ wire fence. I suspect they’ll have another go tonight.’

‘Still, I like foxes, don’t we, Daddy?’ said Emily.

‘You can’t say I, then we,’ said Giles.

‘Mummy, I’m not,’ protested Emily.

‘I didn’t mean wee,’ said Giles. ‘Soppy date.’

‘Let’s have some improved conversation, shall we?’ said Rosie.