‘I asked the woman to tell you herself,’ Hamish said, quite unperturbed by the snapping anger that was being directed at him from the diminutive Sister Priestland. ‘But she wouldn’t wait. Said she’d been up all the night in the raids and had to be away home.’
‘That must have been one of the women from the canteen,’ Robin cut in eagerly. ‘If Ma couldn’t get through on the phone that’s what she’d have done, I’m sure of it.’
‘Aye,’ said Hamish peaceably. ‘Aye, that’s who it was, all right. A lady from the canteen.’
‘Well, Todd,’ Sister Priestland said. ‘What can I say? Why couldn’t you tell me or Nurse Meek?’
‘I thought she’d made a mistake, to tell you the truth of it, Sister,’ Hamish said, and caught Robin’s eye and then let his gaze slide away, almost embarrassed. ‘I knew of no Nurse Deveen, do you see, and she said to say that Mrs Deveen’s daughter would be late because of the trains and since there’s no such person here that I kent, I didna’ bother to tell you. Thought she was just another disturbed soul, confused after the raids, you know?’
‘Well,’ Sister said and seemed almost speechless for a moment. ‘Well, I never heard of such impudence! I thought you were a decent sort of man, Todd, in spite of your cowardice and refusal to serve in your country’s armed services when you’re needed. I certainly didn’t think you’d be as stupid as this!’
‘Well, there it is, Sister,’ Hamish said and suddenly smiled, and it lit his face up so that he looked like a wicked child, for all his bulk. ‘It seems you were wrong.’
‘Get on with the floor,’ she said furiously. ‘Go on! And take no more messages and make no more decisions about which you will and which you won’t deliver, you understand me? Nurse Bradman, I’m sorry I misjudged you. We’ll say no more about it. Away with you to your meal, now, and when you get back take the two cubicles over on the corner, until the others get back and can relieve you on one of them. On your way now.’
‘Thank you, Sister,’ Robin said breathlessly and escaped, heading for the door, but when she got there, she stopped and
looked back. Sister and Nurse Meek had disappeared, and Hamish was swabbing the floor of the cubicle not too far away; and she risked it, and went hurrying across to him.
‘How could you do that to me, Hamish?’ she said. ‘I mean, how could you not tell Sister? Even if you didn’t recognize the name, if you’d passed the message on someone would have sorted it out in the office. You really dropped me in it, didn’t you?’
‘Did I?’ he said and leaned on his mop for a moment, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Well, that was in no way my intention. Not after you stood up for me the way you did the other night.’
‘Stood up for you?’ Robin said and then remembered. ‘Oh, the business of the meal break. Well, for heaven’s sake, I was just – it seemed all wrong, that was the thing. There was no more to it than that.’
‘Well, mebbe not. But I was grateful all the same.’
‘Not grateful enough to deliver a message that could have saved me from a rucking,’ she snapped and then made a face. ‘Oh, drat, I suppose that’s not fair. If you didn’t know it was about me. Anyway, thanks for owning up in the end. They’ll be horrid to you over it, I dare say.’
‘It won’t be much worse than it’s been all along,’ he said equably, and started mopping again. ‘I can deal with whatever it is.’
‘Well, I just – well, all right,’ Robin said. ‘And I’m sorry it was you that got the – well, you know what I mean.’ And she turned to go.
Across the other side of the waiting hall, Staff Nurse Meek was watching with her eyes sharp and glinting a little in the brightness of the overhead lamps, and for some reason that Robin was never to understand she blushed hotly before hurrying off to get her midnight meal. Even though, somehow, she had quite lost her appetite.
‘Dear me,’ Mildred said. ‘This is a rare surprise these days,’ and she looked up at her daughter over her glasses and then returned with some care to her knitting. Her fingers were more gnarled then they had been, and it clearly caused her pain to move the stiff joints, Poppy thought as she bent and kissed her mother’s papery old cheek. She put herself through a lot to make those damned socks – and we don’t even know if anyone wears them. They looked dreadfully uncomfortable.
‘I know, Mama. Don’t be annoyed with me – you know perfectly well that I come when I can. But what with the business and the canteen it’s not always possible.’
‘You could telephone,’ Mildred said and Poppy laughed.
‘You sound like me having a go at Robin. I suppose it’s always the same with mothers.’
‘If you find yourself distressed because Robin doesn’t phone you, then you should understand how I feel when you fail to do so for me,’ Mildred said and then frowned slightly. ‘Robin hasn’t called me either, for some days now. It isn’t like her. I suppose all is well? I imagine I would have heard if it were not.’
‘Robin’s fine,’ Poppy said and sat down gratefully, sinking onto the comfortable sofa that was always there by the fire, but which Mildred scorned, feeling more comfortable in a high-backed straight chair on which she sat looking like a
Punch
cartoon, she was so erect. ‘And the reason she hasn’t phoned is the same reason I haven’t, and why I’m here now.’
Mildred looked up at her briefly. ‘Oh?’ and again Poppy laughed.
‘Really, Mama, I wish you wouldn’t put on this performance of being so acid. You aren’t at all really.’
‘Performance?’ Mildred said and managed a hint of a smile. ‘What else can I do at my great age but be the age I am?’
‘Heavens, you’re not that old,’ Poppy said bracingly. ‘Ten years from now, when you’re eighty-four, you can call yourself old. Not yet. Because when you are, I will be too, and I’m not ready.’
‘You were saying that the reason for Robin’s silence and yours –’ Mildred said, refusing to respond to any comment on her age. Clearly she did take a certain delight in being a typical old lady, and nothing Poppy had to say on the matter would have any effect.
‘Telephone damage,’ Poppy said. ‘They’ve been down for a longer than usual time. The main exchange building for the East End has been knocked out and they’re having all sort of problems getting it right. That’s why I can’t call you from the office, and why Robin hasn’t, I imagine. Not that I’ve seen her since she got back from Norwich – ’
‘You could call me from home,’ Mildred said. ‘My telephone here is working, so I imagine yours in Norland Square is?’
‘No, I can’t, even though the phone there is fine, of course. I’m hardly ever home what with the business and the canteen and when I am there you’re being an old lady and I’m not allowed to disturb you. You told me never to call you before ten in the morning or after six at night, so there you are! I can only phone you from the office and that one’s out of commission.”
‘Hmm,’ said Mildred, and turned her sock one needle on. The four needles shone a little in the morning light and the bony knuckles looked red and painful. ‘What was Robin doing in Norwich?’
Not for the first time Poppy was taken aback by her mother’s tenacity. No matter how little attention she might seem to pay to a minor comment, she never forgot it, and always needed full explanations of everything. Poppy, knowing it would be a waste of time to try to gloss over any of the story, launched herself into the tale of Joshy’s latest adventure and Mildred, her eyes firmly fixed on her khaki sock, listened and said nothing.
But when Poppy had finished she set her knitting down in her lap and took off her glasses. ‘You’ll have to start thinking hard about that boy, you know.’
‘I never stop thinking about him,’ Poppy said. ‘Or about Lee. I miss them dreadfully.’
‘Of course you do. So do I. But they’re where they ought to be, safe and sound. No I didn’t mean that. I meant his future.’
Poppy stared. ‘His future? Isn’t that why we’ve sent them both away? To ensure they have a future?’
‘Of course they will,’ Mildred said bracingly. ‘I saw the last war, my dear, and I know, just as you should know, that this one too will end and life will start again.’
‘I sometimes wonder. This is much worse – the trenches last time, the injuries – the gas – they were dreadful,’ and her voice drifted away for a moment as she remembered, because it had been gas that had destroyed Bobby. But then she picked up again. ‘But this time, with these awful raids in the East End, it seems much worse to me. You can’t imagine what it’s like, Mama. I just pray they never come this far. I can’t bear to think of you here – you ought to be evacuated like the children.’
‘I told you and I tell you again, I’m too old to be uprooted. Here is where I belong and here is where I stay. Besides, I couldn’t do it to Queenie. The poor old soul would pine away if she didn’t have this house to care for.’
Poppy smiled. Queenie was barely three years her employer’s senior, and Mildred persisted in regarding her as totally decrepit, and in some ways she was, for Mildred was far the better preserved of the two. But Queenie had worked in this house all her adult life, coming to it as a tweeny when she had been fifteen; to take her away now would indeed be an act of cruelty.
‘Anyway,’ Mildred went on, ‘we weren’t speaking of my situation. I want to speak of Joshy.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t. It reminds me too much of how miserable it is not to have him and Lee here.’
‘Nonsense. Evacuate yourself if you feel so deprived. Though you’d be a poor creature if you did. A little hardship never hurt anyone. But neglect of talent – that’s a different matter.’
‘Talent?’ Poppy was bewildered. ‘Joshy?’
‘He’s very gifted,’ Mildred said and picked up her knitting.
‘I know he’s bright –’ And Poppy launched herself into an account of his invention of a round runway to save space for aerodromes.
Mildred listened and nodded. ‘I know perfectly well the child’s highly intelligent. It’s more than that though. He’s musically gifted.’
Poppy shook her head. ‘Joshy? Hardly, Mama. When Lee had her piano lessons we tried very hard to start Joshy as well, and he flatly refused to pay any attention at all. I think this time that you’ve not got it quite – ’
‘Oh, piano lessons!’ Mildred waved a dismissive hand. ‘He isn’t interested in piano! But he can blow a trumpet.’
Poppy stared at her in amazement. ‘He can do what?’
‘He said it was a secret and I kept it willingly enough, but he was small then. Now I think perhaps I will serve him better if I speak of it. Just before the war sent them both away, when he was here after his eighth birthday party, you remember? He went up into the attics and he found a horn there that used to belong to your Uncle Wilfred. He’d been given it at some time when he said he was willing to learn, but he never did. So Joshy came down here and I was able to show him the most rudimentary use of the instrument. He showed a most remarkable aptitude – remarkable. We arranged he should come here to play whenever he wished, and so he did, and did quite well, with no lessons at all. Clearly a natural musician – ’
‘Mama!’ Poppy said weakly. ‘You amaze me! We tried so hard to find out what he wanted to learn – ’
Mildred shook her head. ‘It was simply the matter of the material. He dislikes the sort of music teachers make you play, he told me. He is interested in jazz. As indeed I am,’ Mildred finished amazingly, and again bent her head to her knitting.
There was a slightly stunned silence and then Poppy said, ‘Jazz, Mama? Where do you hear it?’
‘Oh, on my wireless from time to time. And I have my gramophone.’ And she nodded her head towards the instrument in the corner of the big drawing room. It all looked here much as it had for the whole of Poppy’s life; she had come here as a very small child to meet her step-grandmother and her uncles in 1900, forty years ago, and had thought the heavy sofas and chairs and cluttered tables oppressive; and still did. But they suited her mother well enough and so she had never suggested she should refurnish in a more modern manner, though she was well able to afford to do so. Now, looking at the gramophone, sitting somewhat incongruously on a corner table, Poppy wondered if she’d been right to keep so quiet. There were aspects to her mother she had never imagined.
‘I believe that Joshy could become an accomplished jazz
trumpeter given the chance,’ Mildred said then. ‘So I think you should be considering how to arrange his future education. He’ll soon be old enough for public school. I imagine you’ll be sending him to one?’
‘When the war’s over, I hope so,’ Poppy said. ‘It all depends on that.’
‘It needn’t,’ Mildred said. ‘You should choose a good school for him now, one with a strong musical feeling and one that does not sneer at the modern music, just because it’s different. It’s highly interesting and Joshy has the right to pursue it. I’d suggest you get the list of schools, when you can tear yourself away from the canteen and the business, and go and see them and choose one. I shall of course pay the fees. No, don’t look at me so. I have already decided it. I did little enough for my older granddaughter, and I regret that. She’s a highly capable girl. However, she is taking excellent steps for herself. But Lee and Joshy shall have better. I want you to choose schools for both of them, and I think Lee would benefit from one with an art emphasis. She draws very well and has a nice eye for quality – I dare say you and David could pay easily enough for them both, but I have the right, as an old woman, to spend my money while I am able, in the way I choose. I want to do so without undue interference from daughters who should know better than to object.’ And still she kept her hands busy over her knitting and kept her head down to watch them.
There was another silence and then Poppy said, ‘I’ll have to talk to David, of course.’
‘Of course. But he’s a sensible man. He won’t object.’
Poppy smiled then. ‘I don’t suppose he will, not if you say so. He’s ridiculously fond of you.’
‘Ridiculously?’ Now Mildred did look at her, and Poppy bit her lip.
‘I didn’t mean that as it sounded,’ she said. ‘It’s just that –’ And Mildred smiled.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s easier for him, though, you see. He isn’t my daughter is he?’ And Poppy smiled and nodded. The tensions between these two had eased a little over the years, but they were still there; their closeness made that inevitable, for Mildred had only had one child and adored her deeply and been bitterly hurt when Poppy had chosen later in adult life to be closer to her Aunt Jessie than to her mother. But David had
in many ways made up for that, and Poppy thought of the generous offer her mother had made and knew that it would be accepted. David could never oppose her, especially when his children would benefit from her actions. And why not? she asked herself then. Why should I feel a chill because my mother wants to be a generous grandmother? Because I’m jealous, a small voice deep inside her said, and she had to admit she was. Her children were hers and she wanted to share them with no other woman.