“De Wet, having been frequently routed by Lord Methuen, has succeeded in cutting the railway at three points”—and there was more in the same strain, sneers at our conduct of the war. Was this funny? I didn’t think so—I thought it unpatriotic, as perhaps it would be thought today. I always had a side, sometimes several sides, and now my side was England.
I was horrified, and, when opportunity offered, with due disgust I showed the offending passage to Lord Trimingham.
To my chagrin and surprise, he laughed and laughed. I did not presume to criticize him, but surely this was too much? He, a veteran of the war, to think it funny to be made fun of! To laugh when the side he had represented so gallantly and at such cost to himself was ridiculed! I couldn’t make it out.
But Wednesday morning did not bring a letter from my mother. I was not dismayed, however. On the contrary, I felt as if all the certitude that had been spread over the last twenty-four hours was gathering into a bomb that would explode at tea-time. Meanwhile, how should I spend the day? It was already very hot; my meteorological awareness, sharpened by practice into a sixth sense, foretold a record. Several times that morning I had to stop myself from going down to the game larder and nibbling at the unripe fruit of knowledge.
This would be my last day at Brandham, unless they wanted me to stay till Friday, as a compromise, in which case, I told myself, I might get the presents after all, though in a hole-and-corner fashion and without the glory of a cake. I rather hoped they would, for the thought of the bicycle still sometimes pierced the perfect armour of my made-up mind.
“Have you forgotten anything?” This was a question my mother always asked when I was going to school, or going anywhere, though I went about so little. “Is there anyone you ought to thank?” was another of her questions.
The people I ought to thank could all be thanked tomorrow or whichever day I left—Marian, Marcus, my host and hostess, and the servants. In imagination I saw myself thanking them, thanking them for having me. I might have to thank them for the presents, too. Thanks were something you kept till the last moment; they were the very essence of farewell, and thinking of them brought departure nearer. Good-bye, Brandham! Was there anyone else?
Then I remembered Ted. I didn’t think I had much to thank him for, but he had written me a letter, and it was on the cards that he was going to enlist. The thought of this still troubled me. I ought to say good-bye to him.
It wouldn’t take long, but how could I dispose of Marcus? I couldn’t say good-bye to Ted with Marcus there. I had an idea.
Mother had consented to my bathing, but I had never bathed because, soon after her permission came, the river above the sluice had sunk so low it was too shallow even for a non-swimmer. The men of the party still sometimes went down to the pool below the sluice; but shrunken though it was, it was too deep for me.
“Marcus,” I said, “il est très ennuyeux, mais—” French failed me.
“Spit it out in English if it’s easier,” said Marcus kindly. “It’s very boring, but—”
“Ted Burgess told me he’d give me a swimming lesson,” I said rapidly. This wasn’t true, but I had heard so many lies, and lying is infectious; besides he had said he would do anything to make “it” worth my while. I explained why I should need grown-up assistance.
“It will only take un petit quart d’heure,” I wound up, pleased with this.
“Would you desert me?” said Marcus, tragically.
“But you deserted me,” I argued, “when you went to Nannie Robson’s.”
“Yes, but that’s different. She’s my old nurse and he …” I didn’t know the epithet, but it sounded unprintable. “Well, don’t let him drown you.”
“Oh no,” I answered, poised for flight.
“I shan’t mind if you drown him,” Marcus said. He had a habit of speaking badly of people, especially those of a lower social status. It was a façon de parler, as he might have said, and didn’t mean much.
From the footman, who in a dour, discouraging way was always ready to oblige me, I obtained a length of rope; and armed with this, my bath towel, and my bathing-suit, I started for the river. My bathing-suit had only once before got wet: when Marian spread her dripping hair on it.
Mounting the sluice, I saw Ted in the field, driving the reaper. It was the last field left with standing wheat; in all the others the grain was gathered into stooks. Usually I went to him, but this was a last, a privileged occasion, and he should come to me. I signalled to him, but he didn’t see me; swaying and bumping on the seat of the “spring-balance,” he kept looking down to make sure that the blades were engaging with the wheat, and then up at the horse’s head. At last one of the men saw me and told him. He stopped the horse and slowly dismounted, and the man got up in his place.
I went across to the second, smaller sluice to meet him, but before we reached each other he stopped, which was most unlike him. I stopped too.
“I didn’t think you’d come again,” he said.
“I came to say good-bye,” I told him. “I’m going away tomorrow, or Friday at latest.” We seemed to be talking across a small but noticeable gulf.
“Well, good-bye, Master Colston, and good luck,” he said. “I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, I’m sure.”
I stared at him. I was not very observant, but I saw that the strangeness in his manner was borne out by his appearance. Once he had reminded me of a cornfield ripe for reaping; now he was like corn that had been cut and left in the sun. I suppose he wasn’t more than twenty-five. He had never looked young to me; young men in those days didn’t try to look young, they aped the appearance of maturity. But now I could see in his face the features of a much older person. Sweating though he was, he looked dried up, the husk of the man he had been. He had taken in his belt another notch, I noticed. I might have said to him, as he had said to me: “Who’s been upsetting you?” but what I said was:
“Is it true you are going to the war?”
“Why,” said he, “who told you?”
“Lord Trimingham,” I answered.
He said nothing to that.
“Did you know Marian was engaged to him?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Is that why you’re going?”
He shuffled with his feet as horses do, and for a moment I thought he was going to flare out at me.
“I don’t know that I am going,” he said with a touch of his old spirit. “That’s for her to say. It isn’t what I want, but what she wants.”
I thought this a cowardly speech, and still do.
“Look here, Master Colston,” he said suddenly, “you haven’t told anyone about this, have you? It’s only a business matter between me and Miss Marian, but—”
“I haven’t told anyone,” I said.
He still looked anxious.
“She said you wouldn’t, but I said: ‘He’s only a youngster, he might talk.’”
“I haven’t told anyone,” I repeated.
“Because we don’t want to get ourselves into trouble, do we?”
“I haven’t told anyone,” I said again.
“I’m sure we’re both very much obliged to you, Master Colston, for doing what you have,” he said, almost as if he was proposing a vote of thanks. “It isn’t every young gentleman would want to give up his afternoons to carry messages like an errand boy.”
He seemed to have become acutely conscious of the social gap between us. He was keeping his distance in more ways than one. At first I had been flattered by his calling me “Master Colston,” but suddenly I wished he wouldn’t, and I said:
“Please call me postman, as you used to.”
He gave me a rueful smile. “I’m still sorry I shouted at you same as I did on Sunday,” he said. “It’s natural for a boy of your age to want to know those things, and us older ones ought not to stand in your way. And it was a promise, as you said. But I dunno, I didn’t feel like it—not after hearing you sing. I’ll tell you now, if you like, and keep my pro
mise. But I don’t mind telling you I’d rather not.”
“I wouldn’t dream of troubling you,” I said, loftily and as I thought a grown-up person might say it. “I know some-one who’ll tell me. As a matter of fact, I know several people who will.”
“So long as they don’t tell you wrong,” he said, half anxiously.
“How could they? It’s common knowledge, isn’t it?”
I was rather pleased with the phrase.
“Yes, but I should be sorry—You got my letter, didn’t you? I wrote right off, but it didn’t go till Monday.”
I told him I had got it.
“Then that’s all right,” he said, and seemed relieved. “I don’t write letters much, except on business, but it did seem mean, well, after what you’d done for us, giving up your own time, which is precious to a boy.”
A lump came into my throat, but all I could think to say was:
“That’s quite all right.”
He looked towards the belt of trees behind which lay the Hall, his glance avoiding mine.
“So you’re off tomorrow?”
“Yes, or Friday.”
“Oh well, we may be seeing each other, some time.” At last he crossed the gap and hesitatingly held his hand out. I think he still thought I might not take it. “So long, then, postman.”
“Good-bye, Ted.”
As I was turning away, grieved to be parting from him, a thought started up in me and I turned back.
“Shall I take one more message for you?”
“That’s very good of you,” he said, “but do you want to?”
“Yes, just this once.” It could do no harm, I thought; and I should be far away when the message took effect; and I wanted to say something to show that we were friends.
“Well,” he said, once more across the gap, “say tomorrow’s no good, I’m going to Norwich, but Friday at half past six, same as usual.”
I promised I would tell her. On the top of the sluice I stopped and looked back. Ted, too, was looking back. He took off his old soft hat and waved it, shading his eyes and waving vigorously. I tried to take off mine and wondered why I couldn’t. Then I saw why. In one hand I was carrying my bathing-suit, in the other my towel; the rope was draped like a halter round my neck. Suddenly I felt exceedingly uncomfortable; my movements were cramped and my neck was sweating. I hadn’t noticed my encumbrances till now, nor apparently had Ted. I had forgotten what I came for and remembered something that I hadn’t come for. Swinging my dry bathing-suit, which now was warm to the touch, and with the halter chafing my neck, I walked back across the blistering causeway. What a fool I should look, I thought, if Marcus saw me.
20
ON THE TEA-TABLE lay my mother’s letter. The order of release had come.
I realized then how much I had been counting on it, and my relief was a measure of the insecurity that I had felt since Sunday. Since Sunday I had enjoyed a great many things, and with all my being, so it seemed, but, underneath, the foundations were still crumbling. At the sight of the letter various physical processes that unbeknown to me had been disorganized by the strain began to function normally; I talked a lot and ate voraciously. If I did not make an excuse to dart away and read the letter, it was partly to postpone the sense of flatness that I knew from experience would follow certitude, and partly because breaking the news to Mrs. Maudsley was the one task left to me at Brandham that I dreaded. I had seen many guests leave Brandham unlamented, and it might have occurred to me that Mrs. Maudsley would take my departure philosophically too, had I not been so much the centre of my own world and, as I thought, of hers.
But I reached my bedroom at last, and this is what I read:
My Darling Boy,
I hope you won’t be disappointed at not getting a telegram and I hope you won’t be disappointed by this letter.
Your letters both came by the same post, wasn’t it strange? It took me a minute or two to discover which had been written first. In the first you begged me to let you stay on an extra week because you were so happy—and I can’t tell you how I enjoyed hearing about the cricket and the songs, and how proud of you it made me. Then in the second letter you said you weren’t at all happy, and would I send you a telegram asking Mrs. Maudsley to send you back. Well, my darling, I couldn’t bear to think you were unhappy, and I needn’t tell you how much I miss you, at all times when you are away, and not only at your birthday, though especially then. So before I began my morning jobs I started off for the post office to send the telegram. But on the way it seemed to me that perhaps we were both acting in haste, which is seldom wise, is it? I remembered that only a few hours before you wrote the second letter you said you were happier than you had ever been in your life, and this hurt me a little, I confess, because I hope you have been happy here too. And I wondered what could have happened in a few hours to make you feel so different and wondered if you hadn’t exaggerated something a little—we all do that at times, don’t we?—it’s what’s called make a mountain out of a molehill. You said it was because you had to run errands and take messages, and you didn’t like doing that. But I seem to remember you once enjoyed taking them and besides, my darling, we can’t always do what we like. I think it would be ungrateful to Mrs. Maudsley after all her kindness to you if you were to grudge her this small service. [My mother quite understandably assumed that the “they” of my letter referred to Mrs. Maudsley.] It’s very hot here too, and I have often felt anxious for you, but you have always told me you enjoyed the heat, especially since Miss Maudsley gave you the thin suit (I’m longing to see it, and you in it, my darling, you do believe that, don’t you? though I’m not sure that green is quite the right colour for a boy). You have often walked more than four miles at home (once you walked all the way to Fordingbridge and back, do you remember?) and I am sure that if you took things very quietly and didn’t run, as you sometimes do, making yourself unnecessarily hot, you wouldn’t find the walks too much for you.
You said that what you were doing might be wrong, but, my darling, how could it be? You told me Mrs. Maudsley never misses going to church and all the family and the visitors go too, and that you have family prayers every day, which isn’t the case in all large houses, I feel quite sure (or even in small ones!), so I can’t think she would want you to do anything wrong—besides, what can be wrong in taking a message? But I do think it would be rather wrong, though of course not very wrong (you are a funny old thing!) if you even showed her that you didn’t want to go. She wouldn’t be angry, I feel sure, but she’d be puzzled and wonder what sort of home life you had had.
But of course, I do know that the heat knocks one up (it isn’t “grate,” my darling, it’s “great”—I never knew you spell that wrong before—“grate” heat would be something quite different) and I am sure that if you went to Mrs. Maudsley and explained things to her, and asked her very nicely if someone else could take the messages, she would say yes. You told me more than once that there are twelve servants in the house; surely she could spare one of them to go? But I expect she has no idea that you don’t like going—indeed, I rather hope she hasn’t.
My darling, I do hope that you won’t feel disappointed and hurt with me, but I do think it would be a mistake for you to leave so suddenly. They wouldn’t understand, and might think me a spoilt and unreasonable mother!—which I am, my darling, but don’t want to be in this instance. From what you have told me about them, they would be very nice friends for you in after life. I hope this doesn’t sound worldly, but we have to be worldly sometimes; your father didn’t care about social life, but I think he made a mistake, and since he died I haven’t been able to do much in the way of making friends for you. I should like to ask Marcus here—but I don’t know how we should entertain him—he must be used to such grand ways!
The ten days will soon pass, and so, my darling, I think we ought to be patient. I say this to myself as much as to you, for I long to see you and the sweetest part of your dear letter was where you sai
d you were looking forward to coming home. But we can’t expect to be happy all the time, can we? We both know that. Perhaps it wouldn’t be good for us to be. And you are like your mother, sometimes up and sometimes down. I remember only a little while ago you were rather unhappy because some bigger boys teased you for using a long word, but you soon forgot about it and were as happy as ever. I feel sure that by the time this reaches you, you will be feeling so much happier that you will wonder how you ever came to write the letter.
Good-bye, my darling, darling boy. I shall write again for your birthday and send you a little present; my real present I am keeping until you come back. I wonder if you can guess what it is.
With all my love, my precious Leo,
Your loving
MOTHER
xxxxx
PS. What a long letter! But I thought you would like to know exactly how I felt. I do think it would be a mistake if you left now. All this will be an experience for you, my darling.
Children are more used than adults to having their requests met by a flat refusal, and also less capable of taking the refusal philosophically. In spite of the reasonableness of its tone, my mother’s letter amounted to a flat refusal, and as such it not only blocked my mental view, it utterly disorientated me. I literally did not know what to do next, in the smallest particular: I did not know whether to stay in my bedroom or go out of it. I should have liked to talk to somebody about my plight, but instinctively dismissed this de-sire before it was formulated; I could talk to no one. To be a nonconductor was my function: I was a Tower of Silence on which lay whitening the bones of a dead secret—no, not dead in that sense, but very much alive and death-dealing and fatal.
Or so I thought. For with my mother’s letter cutting off escape, the perilous aspect of the situation again rose before me; it was, in fact, the only aspect I could see.
Soon from pure restlessness I left my room. Half hoping, half dreading I should meet someone, I wandered about the premises at the back, the wash-house, the dairy, the various outbuildings whose purpose I hardly knew but whose placid, normal functioning somehow reassured me; I even paid a half-hearted visit to the rubbish-heap. I tried to accustom myself to the feel of my new position, bring myself into harmony with it, as one does when wearing a new suit; but I couldn’t. Some servants passed me and smiled. I wondered how they were able to go about their jobs so tranquilly, as if everything was just as it had been and should be and no calamity was pending. From there I made my way towards the front of the house, furtively, keeping behind trees and bushes, until at last I heard the sounds of croquet on the lawn, and voices, too far away from me to distinguish the speakers. I wondered if Marian had come back.