Westwood (49 page)

‘It looks all right; it’s beautiful,’ said Alex earnestly, standing with his hands in the pockets of his corduroy trousers while Hebe paid her bill. She was carrying her soft little cap, and her brown curls, stiff and warm from the drier, shone like a spaniel’s.

‘Come on,’ said Alex, taking her in his arms the moment he got her out into the passage and beginning to kiss her.

‘How lovely you smell, I do love you, I’ve been so miserable this last week without you I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you telephone me then, you goat. I’ve been miserable too.’

‘How could I? We were down in the depths of Wales at this place of Gilbert’s and we were all drunk. I was sober once or twice, but as soon as I started to walk the five miles to the telephone we got as far as the local and all got drunk again.’

‘Hadn’t the local a telephone? It sounds quite a place. Never mind now, darling, let’s get a taxi.’

On the way to Morris Korrowitz’s they held hands and both talked at once; about
The Shrapnel Hunters
and Jeremy’s new tooth; about the British Government’s suggestion that Alex should go
to Italy next month as the official chronicler in paint of the fighting there; about the large half-ruined house which Hebe had found in St John’s Wood and which she proposed that they should buy and live in; and while they talked they lovingly, thirstily scanned each other’s faces, and Hebe held Alex’s massive, beautiful, dirty hands in her own.

In the large disorderly room with a skylight which was the studio of Morris Korrowitz,
The Shrapnel Hunters
stood against the wall and in silence they stood and looked at it; Alex critically, and Morris Korrowitz with a torturing mixture of homage and envy, and Hebe with delight; the simple delight that she felt when the sunlight warmed her face on a spring day.

After her first ‘Oh!’ she said no more until Alex said, frowning as he stooped to stare into the picture:

‘I still don’t feel quite right about this knee, Morris.’

‘It’s all
right
, Alex, do for God’s sake lay off it,’ said Morris exasperatedly, in a thin voice with a Cockney accent. He was a very tall young man with a shock of fair hair, who painted stiff pink flowers on vistas of sandy desert extending to an infinitely remote horizon, and he lived on an allowance from a widowed mother. Alex said that he had talent, but Hebe found his pink flowers in the desert tedious; this was the second time that she had met him.

‘It’s the best thing you’ve done, so far,’ she said at last.

‘Isn’t it, isn’t it, Mrs Niland?’ said Morris eagerly. ‘That’s what we’ve all been telling him.’

‘Do call me Hebe, won’t you?’ she said absently, still gazing at the picture. ‘Alex, what sort of a frame?’

And they went off into a long discussion, only interrupted by their going out to have some food at a milk bar because Morris had none in his flat. When Hebe went back to Westwood about six that evening, Alex and
The Shrapnel Hunters
were with her in the taxi, and he was telling her about the murals he had painted on the walls of a low café in Cardiff and how he wanted to do some more work of the same kind. ‘Perhaps after all I’d better not take this Government job,’ he ended vaguely, staring out of the window, ‘unless they’d let me come back and paint Cassino and the Anzio beaches on the walls of the British Restaurants. Do you think they would?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. They said they wanted pictures, didn’t they? Hangable ones.’

‘I can’t remember. Anyway, I haven’t got to let them know for three weeks, so let’s enjoy ourselves,’ and he put his arm about her.

It required a strong effort for Margaret to give the necessary attention to her work on Monday morning, for she had an excited expectation that her services would be more in demand than ever now that poor Grantey was dead at Westwood-at-Highgate, while they were still needed at Westwood-at-Brockdale. Then, too, there was Earl’s invitation to think about, and once or twice she had to reprove herself for romantic speculations.

However, she was learning to command her
self
(that one kingdom which is given to even the humblest of created human creatures) and she did succeed in giving her full attention to her work and at five o’clock, as she set her face homewards, she had the reward of re-entering the world of personal relationships with a pleasure which was the stronger because of her abstinence. She forgot the school as soon as she left it.

Her first duty on getting home was to get through some work which must be prepared for to-morrow, and when that was done, she telephoned Dick Fletcher. He seemed irritable, and admitted that he had had a trying week-end. The heat had been overpowering and Linda had missed Margaret.

‘We both miss you,’ he added laughing, and Margaret’s heart suddenly felt full of happiness.

‘And how is Mrs Coates?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I meant to tell you, she’s had a slight relapse. Nothing much, but her temperature’s up again and they don’t think she’ll be able to come home as soon as they thought.’

Margaret said that she was sorry, but actually felt glad, and promised him that she would be there as usual tomorrow evening.

As she dialled Zita’s number she was guiltily conscious of her mother, sitting in the drawing-room with a stony look on her face as she knitted. Reg had gone; gone without being able to say good-bye to his sister, because she had been with ‘those people’ in the country, and all Mrs Steggles’s grief and anxiety over his departure was expressing itself in bitter resentment against Margaret. Margaret herself had been touched by the fact that he had left a cheap lace collar and cuffs for her as a parting gift; all the more touched because it was the type of thing which she never wore; and she was vowing, even as she listened to the telephone-bell ringing in Westwood, that she would write to him every week, such letters as it would delight a soldier to receive; cheerful, affectionate, full of home news.

‘Hullo!’ said an unfamiliar masculine voice.

‘May I speak to Zita, please, Miss Mandelbaum?’ said Margaret, wondering who he might be.

‘Hold on, I’ll just get her,’ answered the voice, and she heard him shouting ‘Zita!’ as if he were a familiar inmate of the house.

‘Ach, Margaret,’ said Zita’s voice irritably, after a prolonged pause. ‘I was with the children and Mr Niland’ (with meaning emphasis) ‘had to come all the way for me upstairs.’

‘Oh was that Mr Niland? He’s come back, then?’

‘Yes. I will tell you about it later on. Now, how soon can you come roundt? The children are being so notty; Barnabas keeps on worrying about Grantey. I shall be glad of help.’

Margaret would have been glad to stay at home and do some necessary repairs to her wardrobe (which, like that of all the other women in England that summer, was rapidly and literally becoming a thing of shreds and patches), but she could not resist the temptation to go to Westwood; and, having told her mother where she was going and seen the information received in absolute silence and with no change of expression, she hurried out into the evening, where white may bloomed under the cloudless blue sky and the Heath was crowded with people walking idly with dog or lover through the long spring grass.

Grantey was dead, and had been taken away; and now Mr Challis did not want to think any more about her, and he was going out to play tennis with some friends. He came out of the side door in his white clothes just as Margaret was walking up to the house. She glanced timidly, imploringly at him, all the self-command and self-confidence so painfully won by her broadened interests vanishing at the sight of him and leaving her an awkward provincial schoolteacher once more, with inconveniently strong feelings and the recollection of their last interview to make her dumb with embarrassment.

But it was a beautiful evening, and there was another reason why Mr Challis felt almost kind towards the world. He smiled at her and said (remembering to keep his musical voice decently lowered because of the late Mrs Grant):

‘Isn’t this a wonderful evening? The light seems unwilling to leave the sky. Are you going in to see Zita?’

‘Oh yes – just to help with the children –’ said Margaret, her eyes fixed solemnly upon his face.

Mr Challis hesitated, and moved the rackets under his arm. She continued to gaze up at him, slowly colouring under his look.

‘You mustn’t let them wear you out, you know,’ he said at last. ‘It is more than kind of you to look after the children, but they can be very exhausting – who should know it better than I!’ added Mr Challis, who encountered his grandchildren for perhaps ten minutes every evening, ‘and your profession itself is an exhausting one. Do you like teaching?’ he added abruptly, moved by a playwright’s interest in character but with a feeling that he must not let himself be drawn into a lengthy conversation.

Margaret shook her head. She could not speak.

‘Then get out of it, at all cost,’ he said vehemently. ‘It can be the most soul-destroying of all the professions. Have you private means?’

‘Oh no, nothing –’ she said, and a wild desire to laugh came over her. Private means! If he only knew! What sort of a home did he think she came from? But, of course, when she was not there, he never thought about her at all.

He shook his head. ‘That’s a pity. You are the type of woman who needs to ripen in the sun; do nothing for a few years; let your soul grow. But without money one can’t do that.’ He smiled and added kindly, ‘It’s a pity; money is a damned nuisance. Well – I shall be late. Good-bye,’ and he hurried away.

She walked slowly on towards the house. It was the most human conversation that she had ever had with him, but it had only fanned the fire of her discontent, ‘divine discontent,’ as it was called. In all his plays there was no fulfilment or ripeness or satisfaction, only yearning and the subtle joys which flowered from renunciation.

She stopped for a moment by the door and stood looking down at a little bed of radishes, which had caught her eye by the bright purple of their globes embedded in the earth; stout, large, juicy radishes, grown by Barnabas under the instructions of Cortway; each with a pair of rough astringent leaves and each with its rosiness fading away into succulent white flesh towards its tapering end. There’s something satisfying about those, she thought dreamily. They give me the same feeling as Emma’s cheeks and Dickon’s voice and the rain on my face yesterday … it’s silly, of course, compared with what he said.

Mr Challis’s eldest grandson was kneeling up in bed in his pyjamas and asking questions about Grantey. Would she go straight to Heaven? Would she be able to see everything he and Emma and Jeremy did now she was in Heaven? Would her ghost come and haunt them? Could he and Emma go to the funeral? – and so on.

Margaret sat beside him and, subduing her own instinct to give indefinite answers to these questions, told him firmly that Grantey’s spirit (‘the mind-part of her’) was met by an angel and taken straight to Heaven the minute she died. The angel was sent by God so that the soul should not feel lonely and surprised when it went away from the earth. No, Grantey would not be able to see everything that he and Emma and Jeremy did; she would be having a happy time, resting and being with all her friends and relations who were dead too. They would have lots to talk about, wouldn’t they?

‘Laughing?’ asked Barnabas.

‘Yes,’ answered Margaret decidedly, beginning to straighten the bedclothes.

‘And dancing about?’

‘I expect so, later on, when she’s used to it,’ said Margaret, laughing herself. Emma was standing up naked in her cot and slowly, silently dropping the pillow, sheets, blankets and her nightgown over the side, one by one. Jeremy was asleep in the next room.

‘Good night, Barnabas,’ said Alex Niland, slouching into the room in slippers and smiling ‘good evening’ at Margaret.

‘Dad!’ exclaimed Emma with a radiant smile and dropped the last blanket over the side.

‘Aren’t you a shameless wench?’ said her father, beginning to gather up the bedclothes. ‘Come on now, put it on,’ and he clumsily and tenderly drew the little nightgown over her head while Margaret finished tidying Barnabas’s bed. She was not nervous of Alexander now, for his personality barely inspired respect, much less awe. She wondered what was the story behind his reconciliation with his wife.

‘There! you notty boy,’ said Zita crossly, entering with some Bovril and toast. ‘Another time you will have a proper supper, I hope.’

‘Co-co!’ cried Emma with widening eyes, stretching out her arms towards the cup.

‘No, no co-co to-night, Emma must go to sleep,’ said Zita, trying to put her down on the pillow.

‘No, oh no!’ she cried, struggling up again and trying to pull off her nightgown.

‘Better leave her, she’ll go to sleep when she’s tired,’ suggested Alex, picking her up between his big hands and giving her a loud kiss, ‘She can’t get her nightie off; I’ve buttoned it up. Good night, Barnabas, my old companion,’ and he gave his son another loud kiss. ‘I want you to stay and read to me,’ said Barnabas rather plaintively.

‘Not to-night, I want to be with Mummy.’

‘What are you going to do? Have a nice time?’

‘We’re going to the local.’

‘Now?’

‘No; first of all we’re going to sit on the sofa together, and
then
go to the local.’