Mrs Lawrence was pouring thick noisy tea into the first mug.
‘I must get you straight,’ she was saying. ‘Which of you is …?’ She glanced at Stella, who felt the honour of being chosen first to reveal herself.
‘I’m Stella Sherwood.’ The breathiness of her voice was a private message to Mrs Lawrence.
‘And you?’
‘Prue Lumley.’
‘Prue. So you must be Agatha?’
‘Yes, but please call me Ag. Everybody does. Nobody calls me Agatha.’
‘I wouldn’t think they would, would they?’ said Prue, still smarting from the incident of the bantam.
Mrs Lawrence handed the girls the mugs of dark tea, told them to help themselves to bread and butter: she had arranged thick slices on a plate. Prue, suffering withdrawal symptoms on her first day for years without a chocolate biscuit, scanned the dresser. All she could see was a rusty old bread bin. She thought Mrs Lawrence was pretty odd, not offering them biscuits after their long journeys.
‘When we eat this evening my husband will explain the plan of duties,’ Mrs Lawrence said. ‘We eat at six thirty. I’ll take you upstairs, let you unpack, settle in.’ She paused, gathered herself to break difficult news. ‘I hope you don’t mind all sharing a room. We only have two small spare rooms, so one of you would have had to board in the village. I thought you’d rather be together … so I set to work on our attic, a lot of unused space. It’s nothing very luxurious, but it’s clean and comfortable. In the evening you’re at liberty to sit in the front room with us, of course. We have the wireless on, and the wood fire. It can get quite snug in there.’ She paused again, braced herself for another difficult announcement. ‘All I would ask is that you don’t try to engage my husband in conversation in the evening. He’s exhausted after his day. He likes to listen to the news with his eyes shut … You could always bring down your darning, the light’s better than in the attic.’
Darning
? Stella and Ag looked from Prue’s appalled face to one another.
Their mugs of tea finished – in Stella’s case only half finished – the girls followed Mrs Lawrence. The stairs were covered in antique linoleum, and led to a single passage with walls of stained wood. Its old floorboards, spongy beneath their feet, hollowed as if they had been carved, were covered by a strip of carpet worn to its ribs of fibre. The passage led to a bathroom similar to Prue’s in Manchester only in its small size. As she gazed at cracked tiles, the tail of rust from taps to plug in the bath, the scant mat on the linoleum floor, Prue was overwhelmed by the memory of fluffy pink bath towels and the crocheted hat which covered the lavatory paper at home. She felt tears rising again.
‘We all have to share this,’ said Mrs Lawrence, ‘but it can be done. Two baths a week, evening if you don’t mind, and easy on the water. Three inches, my husband says. Four if you cut it down to one a week. And please remember to clean the bath before you leave, and keep your towels upstairs. We’ll be through by four forty-five, so you can fight to wash your faces after that.’
Four forty-five
a.m
.? In her astonishment, the comforting thought of the pinks of home faded from Prue’s mind. Mrs Lawrence, sinewy arms folded under a flat chest, led them up a steeper, narrower staircase to the low door of the attic room.
It stretched the length of the house, a sloping roof on one side, with three dormer windows. The exposed beams had recently been limewashed: there were spots of white on the scrubbed floorboards and the few old rugs. Ag, with her observing eye, immediately appreciated how hard Mrs Lawrence must have worked to achieve such sparkling cleanness. As one who had spent five years in spartan boarding schools, it was all wonderfully familiar to her: the narrow iron bedsteads with their concave mattresses and cotton bed-spreads – these, Ag guessed, must have begun their days as dustsheets. She took in the marble-topped washstand with its severe white china bowl and jug, the two battered chests of drawers, the lights with their pleated paper shades. Each bed had a wooden chair at its side – at school there was an inspection of these bedside chairs every night. If clothes were not folded neatly upon them, there would be a black mark. Ag wondered how neat her companions would be. The room did not dispirit her. She liked it already. By the time each one of them had arranged her things, stamped her own corner with ornaments and books, and arranged photographs, it would be very agreeable as dormitories go.
What Ag would miss, she knew, was privacy. In her three years at Cambridge, her greatest delight had been in retreating into the solitude of her small, bare, cold room. Here, there would be nowhere to be alone. That, for her, would mean great
deprivation
. Somehow she would have to find an hour a day on her own – a walk, perhaps. She did not know the West Country but she had read her Hardy and was eager to discover it. The east coast was home. The house in which she had been brought up was almost unprotected in a plain of flat fields. She liked it best when the fields were planted with cabbages: she liked the way they clicked and chinked as you walked through the sharp frills of their stiff, silver-purple leaves. She had never understood why painters did not find cabbages as beautiful as flowers. Ag glanced out of one of the small windows. She would miss the Norfolk skies, too, and the nearness of the sea. All the same, she saw the job as an adventure, a chance she had eagerly accepted. One day, should she survive the war, she would enjoy telling her grandchildren what it was like to be part of the Women’s Land Army. ‘That first evening I wished there had been a bookshelf,’ she said to herself, as she took a pile of Penguins from her bag. Ag often found herself dictating her memoirs even as she led her life.
When Mrs Lawrence left the room, Prue picked up her case and dumped it on one of the two beds that stood side by side. The third bed was at the far end of the room, by a window.
‘If you don’t mind, you two, I’d rather be next to someone,’ she said.
‘I don’t mind where I am,’ said Stella. Wherever she was, she would be alone with Philip, so to her it didn’t matter. In her state of all-consuming love there was no such thing as physical hardship, only the pain of waiting.
‘Then I’ll go over there, if that’s all right.’ Ag sounded relieved. The extra distance from the other two would be some small measure of privacy.
Prue was pleased by this decision, too: she was not a one to bear a grudge, but it would be some time before she would get over the bantam incident. Instinctively, she didn’t fancy Agatha. Making a fool of her in public so soon: it was a mean thing to have done. She found herself sniffing again – stupid tears.
‘This your first time away from home?’ Stella asked.
Prue nodded. ‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I was sent away to a convent at twelve,’ said Stella.
At her far end of the room, Ag, piling up her Penguin copies of Hardy, gave a small acknowledging smile.
‘I never been ten miles from Manchester, myself, except for the training course.’
‘You get used to it.’
‘Hope so.’
Prue sat in the hammock-like dip of her bed, child’s legs swinging above the ground, a photograph clutched to her chest. She was extraordinarily pretty – the beguiling looks that come from a timeless mould, recognized in any age. Nothing original, but the kind of simple juxtaposition of features that makes prettiness look so easy when it’s before you – heart shaped face, curling lips that are halfway to pouting in profile, slanting eyes, tousled ash hair. Yellow-green tears glittered in her eyes. One of them spilt on to her cheek and instantly lost its colour.
Stella put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Show me your photograph,’ she said.
Prue held up a picture of the façade of a small shop.
Elsie’s Bond Street Salon
.
‘My mum’s hairdressing shop,’ she said. ‘If it hadn’t been for this bloody war I’d be almost under-manageress by now. I’d done eighteen months of my apprenticeship, shampooing and perming and that. I was just about to get on to tinting.’ She giggled. ‘Perhaps I can keep my hand in here. Be of service.’ She smiled up at Stella. ‘You’ve got nice hair. I’ve brought my scissors, my peroxide, my kirby grips.’ She nodded towards Ag. ‘I could give you a new style any time, too – you only have to ask.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ag.
‘Blimey: who’s the handsome fellow?’ Prue indicated the photograph Stella was holding. She handed it over: a large Polyfoto portrait of Philip. It had been taken in a studio in Guildford only a week ago – Philip the sub-lieutenant, stern in his uniform, defiant hair cowed by Brylcreem, mouth a thin line of serious intent, though Stella herself could perceive the tiniest upturn at one corner which privately indicated the other side of him.
‘Cor,’ said Prue, after a moment’s awed silence. ‘He’s quite something. You in love?’
‘Totally, hopelessly, absolutely.’ Stella laughed, pure happiness. ‘I can’t sleep for thinking of Philip, I can’t eat for thinking of him, I’ve lost half a stone.’
‘That’s going quite far,’ said Prue. ‘I’ve never felt like that. Have you, Ag?’
‘No,’ said Ag. She was wondering if the others would mind if she arranged her books on the top of one of the chests.
‘You’re right lucky, then,’ said Prue.
‘I am.’ Stella took the photograph back. ‘But then what’s the point of life if you’re not in love? I always have to be in love. I can’t imagine not being in love.’
‘Has it always been Philip?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ Stella laughed again, a delighted cooing laugh that Prue envied. ‘There’ve been lots of others, but Philip is the
real thing
.’
‘Marriage, you mean? Wedding bells?’
Stella touched the outline of Philip’s face. ‘We haven’t known each other long,’ she said. ‘But I think you know, somehow, when it’s … I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised, when the war’s over …
‘Anyone mind if I put my photo on the chest of drawers?’ asked Prue, standing up.
‘Course not,’ said Stella. ‘I’ll have Philip on my chair.’
‘What about you, Ag?’ Prue thought that if she tried hard enough she might eventually get the tall, snooty dark girl to loosen up.
‘I’ll put mine beside yours.’ Ag took a small double leather frame over to the chest. On one side was a photograph of her mother, who had died when Ag was two, taken in the 1920s. On the other side was a recent snapshot she had taken with her own Box Brownie: Colonel Marlowe, her father, gentle solicitor, outside his office in King’s Lynn.
‘Now
she’s
what I call a beauty,’ said Prue, snatching up the frame as soon as Ag had put it down. ‘Smashing, isn’t she? Just like Vivien Leigh. Your mother, is it?’ Ag nodded. Prue returned the photograph to its place. ‘Can’t say you’re much like her.’
Now their score was even, and Prue was full of regret. She wished she hadn’t said that. It was worse than the bantam, more hurtful. She hoped she would be forgiven. But she could not tell what Ag, so dignified, was feeling. Ag quickly returned to her bed. She searched for something in her handbag.
Prue felt in urgent need of a cigarette. ‘Anyone mind if I have a fag?’ She took a packet of Woodbines and a box of matches from her pocket.
‘Not at all,’ said Ag, so lightly it seemed she had not noticed Prue’s jibe.
‘I don’t mind anything,’ said Stella.
Prue went over to Ag. ‘Sorry I said that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it. You can’t tell nothing from a photo. Don’t know what got into me.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Ag.
‘But your mum
is
beautiful,’ said Prue.
‘Was,’ said Ag. ‘Hadn’t we better be going down for high tea?’ She looked at her watch. It’s almost time.’
Prue moved over to the single armchair, sat on an arm, inhaled deeply. ‘Just a quick drag,’ she said. ‘D’you suppose we’re going to have to eat whatever that terrible smell was in the kitchen?’
‘Rabbit and turnip,’ said Ag. ‘I’ll take a very large bet.’
‘Rabbit and turnip? Crikey, I’ll never get that lot down my throat. And do you think Mr Lawrence’ll find his tongue?’
‘He was very nervous in the car,’ said Ag.
‘Huh! What did he think we were?’
‘I wasn’t nervous,’ said Stella, ‘I was just thinking of Philip.’
‘’Course you were.’ Prue pecked fast at her cigarette. ‘You were just thinking of Philip. As for Mrs Lawrence, she’s a real old battleaxe.’
‘I like her,’ said Stella.
‘So do I,’ said Ag.
‘That makes two of you, then,’ said Prue. She swung her legs faster. ‘It don’t feel much like there’s a war, here, do it?’
The dining-room had a patina of gloom. It smelt of darkly polished furniture. The central light, whose shade was fretted with the abstract wings of dead moths, feebly illuminated a bleakly laid table: fork, knife, pudding spoon, and napkin in a bakelite coloured ring at each place, glasses and a jug of water. In the centre of the table, island in a brackish lake, was a stand of lacy silver which held cut-glass pots of salt and pepper. A gleaming silver spine rose between the pots, its apex twisted into a small handle. This fragile object, the single shining thing in the sombre room, made Stella smile. She wondered when Mrs Lawrence had time to polish it. She imagined it was important to Mrs Lawrence to make the time.
Ag, standing by the table – none of them was sure what to do, whether they should sit down – straightened a table mat, a gravy-spotted scene of rustic Dorset a century ago. In the awkward silence that had netted them all, the grandfather clock ticked – muted, insistent, its fine brass hands stroking their imperceptible way round the brass sun of its face.
‘Give me the creeps, grandfather clocks do,’ said Prue. She moved over to the sideboard to study a photograph in a cheap leather frame. It was of a stern-looking young girl, her flat hair rolled up in the same way as Mrs Lawrence’s. ‘
She
don’t look like much of a laugher, do she?’
Mrs Lawrence came in with a pot of stew. It was rabbit. She was followed by her husband who carried a dish of mashed potatoes and roast turnips. The girls exchanged private looks. Prue, behind the Lawrences’ backs, imitated someone being sick. But she took the piled plate Mrs Lawrence handed her.