‘Can we go in the woods?’ demanded Barnabas suddenly. ‘Gosh, this is a boring road!’ and he swung on the pram and made it tilt.
‘Can we go in the fields, Margaret?’ demanded Edna, also swinging on the pram.
‘Claudia!’ called Margaret, waving to the long-legged figure straying a hundred yards away where the lane began to curve, ‘don’t get too far ahead!’
Claudia made elaborate signs, as of one who is anxious to hear what is being said, but cannot.
‘We can’t see Dickon now,’ remarked Edna, in the satisfied tone she always used for disasters or ominous signs. ‘Is he lost yet? Hadn’t we better wait for him?’
‘Claudia!’ called Margaret, just as Claudia began to drift round the corner, and so loud was her voice that the sleepy Jeremy opened his eyes wide and Emma stopped her song and looked up in surprise.
‘Sorry!’ said Claudia charmingly, skimming down the road with her hair flying, ‘Oh, didn’t you want me to go so far away? Mummy always lets me.’
‘No she doesn’t, Claudia,’ said Edna. ‘Your mummy gets in a fuss if you do. My mummy thinks it’s ever so silly.’
‘My daddy’s been in the Army longer than yours and so my mummy has had to bring me up by herself, and if you dare say she’s silly I’ll slap you down, so shut up,’ retorted Claudia.
‘That will do, now,’ said Margaret, interrupting herself in her calling of Dickon, who had vanished. The long lane, bordered on either side by low hedges of brilliant green thorn, stretched away empty. Stories of children snatched up by gipsies went absurdly through her head.
‘He always does this,’ remarked Barnabas, bored. ‘Let’s go on and he’ll catch us up.’
‘Does his mother let him do it?’ asked Margaret of Claudia.
‘Oh no!’ cried Claudia. ‘She’d be in an awful flap if she knew!’
‘No, she wouldn’t, Claudia, she always lets him, you know she does,’ said Edna.
‘Oh no, she’d be horrified,’ declared Claudia again, shaking all her hair round her face and smiling behind it.
‘There he is!’ yelled Barnabas, leaping about as a figure came leisurely into sight, swinging a bunch of wild flowers. ‘Come on, can’t you, we’re going to the woods!’
Dickon, thus lured, broke into a slow run and presently came up with them. His delightful face was red as an apple under his thatch of dusty blond hair and when he smiled his tiny white teeth suggested a row of hazel nuts.
‘Sorry,’ he said cheerfuly, ‘come on, let’s go to the woods!’
‘The woods, the woods!’ cried Claudia, springing in the air.
‘I’m afraid we can’t go to the woods,’ said Margaret. (‘Don’t hang on the pram, please, Edna.’)
‘Oh, why not?’ roared Dickon, all his cheerfulness gone in a flash and replaced by utter despair; even his bunch of flowers fell forward in his hand and seemed to wilt.
‘Because there aren’t any near here,’ said Margaret rather sharply. (‘Barnabas, don’t hang on the pram, please) and we’re going to Sharps Hill.’
Several members of the party gave elaborate imitations of being sick.
‘Sharps Hill! Enough to make you vomuate!’ cried Claudia.
‘I don’t know why you’re making all this fuss. You knew we were going to Sharps Hill,’ said Margaret, steadily pushing the pram down the long lane. Big purple clouds were rolling up languidly in the east and there was not a breath of wind. ‘It’s going to rain,’ she added.
‘Oh, goody!’ they all shouted, restored to good humour, and rushed ahead again, but soon the breathless heat and hush subdued them, and they gathered round the pram and walked beside it, complaining or silent. The Walk continued its unexciting course; curving round gentle bends into other lanes exactly like the last; passing gates opening on fields of young wheat or oats that looked startlingly green against the plum-blue thunder-clouds across the flat meadows; now crossing a stone bridge over the six-foot-wide Martlet with old willows growing along its banks and reflecting their yellow-green buds in the slowly gliding water; now including among its sights a completely flat and dry blackbird, the victim of a car, which threw Claudia into a passion of mourning; and at last providing a glimpse of the distant hill crowned by an oak which was the party’s goal.
‘There it is!’ said Margaret cheerfully, and paused to wipe her face. Emma had fallen asleep and was lying back with her fair little limbs uncovered and a dew of heat on her forehead, and all the children looked limp and tired.
‘Race you to it?’ suggested Barnabas, but half-heartedly, and no one accepted his challenge.
‘Now we’ve seen it, can’t we go back?’ suggested Dickon. ‘I’m starving.’
‘So am I,’ said several voices.
‘Can’t we go home, Margaret?’
‘Not until we’ve been up the hill. It’s only half-past three.’
‘I’ve got a stone in my sandal. It’s absolute agony.’
‘Take it out then, Claudia.’
‘Where shall I sit?’ and Claudia cast a scornful glance over the narrow grass banks of the ditches and the dusty road. ‘The worst of the country is there are always cows.’
‘There’s a nice patch of grass; go over there.’
‘Beastly country,’ grumbled Claudia, crossing the road. ‘How I hate it!’
‘Hate the country?’ cried Dickon, opening his eyes widely at Margaret. ‘How can she? She must be mad.’
‘Mad yourself,’ said Claudia, without looking round.
‘Hurry up, Claudia; I believe I felt a drop of rain.’
This led to much running up and down the road with uplifted faces to catch the first drops, but there was no increase in them until, Claudia having removed her stone, the party arrived at a stile which led across a meadow, covered in big daisies, to the hill.
‘You can go up the hill, children, and I’ll stay here; I can’t take the pram over the stile,’ said Margaret, glad of the chance to rest.
‘Oh, need we? It’s so boring.’
‘Go and pick some moon-daisies, then.’
‘I’m so hot.’
‘I’m starving. I should like six glasses of iced orangeade and twelve sardine sandwiches.’
‘The minute you’ve all been up the hill we’ll turn round and go home. Hurry now, there’s another drop of rain.’
They all climbed over the stile with much display of bare brown legs and shabby sandals, and struck out across the meadow; deep into the wilderness of delicate daisies and here and there a seven-branched buttercup, golden as rich candle-holders, among the silver and the green. Margaret arranged the pram under an elder bush, congratulating herself that Emma and Jeremy were still asleep, and presently climbed the stile and strayed into the flowers, steadily picking the finest until a bunch began to grow in her hand, with endless trailing roots where she had pulled up a plant by mistake, and that faint scent breathing out from all the pretty, uplifted flower faces which seems to hold in itself the very life of the meadows. The daisies looked unearthly white in the lowering light and the grass was a lurid green, and suddenly there was a flash, followed by a long, distant rolling sound. The party climbing the hill immediately turned and began flying down again, spurred on by Claudia, whom Margaret could hear crying: ‘Guns! Guns! I tell you it’s guns!’
Margaret made angry signs to her to be quiet, but she took absolutely no notice, and soon they were all streaming through the daisies amid the first heavy drops of rain towards the stile, shrieking, ‘Guns! Guns! It’s guns!’ At the same instant there came howls from the pram.
‘There, there, s’sh, it’s all right, Emma, Jeremy love, it’s only rain,’ soothed Margaret, hastily climbing over the stile. She helped the struggling Emma to sit up, and settled her comfortably, putting the bunch of daisies into her hand, and then patted Jeremy, who actually went off to sleep again.
‘Pretty!’ said Margaret, nodding and smiling at Emma as she put up the pram’s double hoods against the increasing rain. From
the stile came cries of, ‘I’m soaking!’ ‘It’s simply pouring!’ ‘We’ll all get frightful colds!’ and other encouraging prophecies.
‘Oo, look a dat,’ said Emma, holding up an unusually large flower to Margaret with a considering expression.
‘Pretty flower, yes.’
‘Oo, look a dat.’
‘Come on, come on,’ said Dickon, bustling up, followed by the others, ‘it’s going to pour, and we must get home as quickly as we can.’
‘Claudia’s sure to get a cold,’ said Edna in a satisfied tone, ‘she always does.’
Claudia gave a groan and Margaret sharply told her to hurry on with the others. She wheeled the pram out on to the road and hurried away through the rain which was now driving down in sheets. She glanced anxiously from side to side as she went, but it was useless; there was not a tree nor a thick shrub nor a barn in which they could shelter, and already Emma’s face was screwed up distastefully over the rain which drove between the hoods and fell on her bare feet.
‘No! Oh, no!’ said Emma, moving her toes uneasily.
‘It’s all right, darling, it’s only rain. It won’t hurt Emma,’ soothed Margaret, but when she tried putting the hoods closer together, Emma protested at being ‘all dark,’ and she had to open them again. The invaluable Jeremy continued to sleep.
‘What? What?’ Margaret shouted, in response to a distant yell from Claudia, who was lagging behind the boys with Edna, their grubby handkerchiefs spread over their heads in dismally inadequate protection against the wet.
‘Her legs ache! She can’t walk any further!’ shrieked Claudia dramatically, hopping in the puddles which were rapidly accumulating.
‘Oh, blow –’ muttered Margaret, wiping rain out of her eyes. ‘All right,’ she shouted, ‘come on, she can ride.’
This led to a halt while the pram came up with the party ahead, and much advice and confusion while the weeping Edna, whose hair hung in limp streaks, was put into the pram between Jeremy and Emma and covered with the mackintosh.
‘No! Oh, no!’ said Emma, frowning, but she was apparently so awed by the sight of an elder in tears that she said no more, only jealously drew her bunch of flowers away from Edna’s feet.
‘Now, perhaps we can get on,’ sighed Margaret. ‘Claudia, don’t do that! It will ruin your shoes. Come on, everybody, let’s see how soon we can be home.’
‘Let’s sing,’ suggested Edna, somewhat comforted.
‘All right, if you like. What shall we sing?’
‘He Who Would Valiant Be,’ from Claudia.
‘God Save the King,’ from Dickon.
‘No, no, Jesus Bids Us Shine,’ said Edna authoritatively, and forthwith burst out in a tuneless pipe:
Jesus bids us shine with a clear pure light.
None of the others knew the hymn, or if they did they preferred their own choice and each sang it, while Barnabas wandered from one song to another as the mood took him, and Emma enchanted Margaret, amid all her discomfort, by joining in with a tiny droning ‘Ner-ner-ner’ of her own.
On marched the dreary procession, with the rain soaking through their summer dresses and their bare legs disagreeably splashed, while every now and then a fresh shower of heavier drops made everybody wriggle and shriek. Jeremy was now awake and Margaret became alarmed at the loudness and passion of his crying. As fast as she crowded Emma and Edna up into one end of the pram to give him room, they slipped back and upset him once more, Edna singing all the while and Emma angrily trying to wipe the rain from her feet with the corner of her blanket. Claudia, Barnabas and Dickon continued to sing, pausing every now and then to compare notes on how wet they were and to wring rain out of their garments, and Margaret struggled on with the heavy pram, now seriously alarmed at the prospect of pneumonia for all her charges.
‘Here comes somebody!’ suddenly shouted Dickon.
‘Oh, where – is it a car?’ cried Margaret, peering through the rain in the hope of getting a lift for some of the party.
‘No, it’s a soldier with an umbrella and a pram,’ said Barnabas.
‘It’s Daddy!’ shrieked Claudia, and sprang away up the road towards the tall figure which Margaret could now see steadily coming towards them – only to falter, and pause, and turn slowly back again. ‘I forgot,’ she said in a quieter voice and hanging her head, ‘he’s gone by this time. Mummy said he was going last night.’
‘It’s an American soldier,’ announced Barnabas. ‘Has he come to meet us, Margaret? Can I go and ask him?’
The soldier was now quite close to them, and under the very large umbrella which he was holding over his head (while he competently guided with the other hand what Margaret saw was the second-largest pram at Yates Row) she recognized the cheerful face of Earl Swinger.
‘Hullo therr!’ he said pleasantly, as Barnabas dashed up to him. ‘You’d better come under this right away, son. Margaret, please accept my aparlagies for not giving you a saloot, I am otherwise arccupied, as you see. Now how about putting Sister into this carriage right away? And you, too,’ to Edna. ‘Well, this certainly is vurry different from the last time I had the pleasure of meeting you, isn’t it, Margaret? (Up you come, beautiful,’ to Edna, as he lifted her gently out of one pram and settled her into the other.) ‘Now, Sister.’
‘Oh, Mr Swinger, I am so glad to see you!’ cried Margaret, standing still and beginning to laugh. ‘How very kind of you to come! We’ve been having the most awful time and we’re nearly drowned, as you see.’
‘Lady Challis suggested I should come and I thought it a vurry good notion,’ he answered, settling the silent and staring Emma under the hood and tucking a mackintosh cover over her. ‘Here are two more umbrellas,’ getting them out from the side of the pram, ‘and here’s a waterproof for Margaret,’ he ended, putting it round her and smiling down at her rain-wet face.
All this was very comforting, and as she rearranged Jeremy and had the satisfaction of hearing his cries cease, she was very glad that it was Earl who had come to their rescue and not Mr Challis; the very thought of him approaching them through the rain laden with prams and umbrellas sent her spirits down once more, and when the procession moved on again, now cheerfully employed in managing their umbrellas and calculating how far they were from home, she was wondering what use Mr Challis would be in an everyday dilemma in which integrity and austerity were not wanted but cheerfulness and common sense were?
‘Is this your first visit to Yates Row, Margaret?’ inquired Earl, marching along amidst the scurrying children and the gliding prams with their silent occupants as if he had been doing it all his life, and holding the umbrella steadily over Margaret’s head.
‘Oh, yes. I came down on Friday with Mrs Challis and Mrs Niland and the children. Is it your first visit?’
‘No, I had the pleasure of visiting with Lady Challis six weeks ago and she kindly asked me to come again. There is a vurry delightful spirit in that house.’
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she answered eagerly. ‘I’ve been simply longing to tell someone how much I love it.’
‘Lady Challis is a lovely hostess. Vurry gracious.’
‘Yes, isn’t she,’ but Margaret was conscious that he had used a word which did not at all express the impression made by Lady Challis upon herself.
‘How is your friend, Mr – Levinsky, wasn’t it?’ she went on. (‘Claudia, dear, don’t do that; your shoes are soaking wet now.’)
‘Yes, but generally known to his friends as Lev. Lev is vurry well, thank you, but he has a grouch, as usual. Without wishing to tread on delicate ground, Margaret, I may say that Lev doesn’t like England.’
‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. Why is that?’
‘Well, there are a number of reasons and perhaps it would be better if I did not mention them,’ replied Earl, with a tact somewhat marred by the colour which came up into his fresh young face and the faintly wistful look in his eyes. For a little while they walked in silence, while Margaret wondered what could have so upset Lev a
s to cause his friend to blush, and Earl thought sadly about American girls; sweet-smelling, large-eyed, gay American girls, prettily dressed in frills and silk stockings, with tiny waists and little feet and shining hair. Certainly he was not going to confess to this pleasant British girl how desperately he and Lev, in common with all the other G.I.s, missed American girls and what a poor substitute he thought these little Britishers. In vain he had patiently explained to Lev that the British had already had nearly five years of war with the Germans less than a hundred miles from London; that their women couldn’t get the right lipsticks and stuff because it wasn’t being made in England any more, that all the good-lookers were in uniform (and what uniforms, groaned Lev) and the ones outside the Services couldn’t get silk stockings unless they went to the Black Market. Lev had heard all these arguments without being impressed, and all he would say at the end of Earl’s chivalrous defence was, ‘Maybe, but it isn’t what I’ve been used to.’ Earl knew how he felt, for he suffered from the same painful loneliness, and some aspects of the problem horrified him, but being a simple, serious and domesticated character rather than a lover of the hot spots, he managed to enjoy England more than his friend did. It was a poor, small, badly arranged, dirty place, but personally he had found the people very kind and he was fascinated by the orderly peace in some of the British homes he had visited, and by the miniature loveliness of the countryside. And their wheat! that was wonderful; twice as heavy in the sheaf as the wheat in the hundred-acre fields of his own State of Kansas; drooping with its load of big, hard, weighty ears. When he had been helping to pile the stooks in a Gloucestershire farm last summer, he had had to stop and rest every now and then, and to admit that this British wheat certainly was heavy on the arm muscles. But peaceful homes, and kindness, and wonderful wheat did not make up for American girls and the feeling, comfortable and unthought-of as an old shoe, of his own country, and under that pleasant, earnest, polite manner he was a lonely and homesick young American.