Marking Time (10 page)

‘Well, that’s something,’ Neville said. ‘All our side has got to do is give all the Germans smallpox and they’d be too ill to fight. Can you die of it?’

‘People used to die of it, yes.’

‘You see?’

‘Don’t put your plum stones on the table, Neville,’ Clary said crossly; she could see that Polly became tense every time the war was mentioned, and perhaps Miss Milliment
noticed that too, because she launched into an account of Dr Jenner and his experiments with cow pox.

This impressed Christopher very much. ‘It must have saved thousands of people’s lives,’ he said, his spectacles misting up as his face became red with excitement. ‘I wish
I could invent something like that!’

‘Discoveries of that nature usually come about from sharp observance,’ Miss Milliment remarked. ‘There is no reason why you should not discover something, Christopher, if that
is what you most want to do.’

‘Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief,’ Lydia muttered. She helped herself to another plum, gouged out the stone with her spoon and went through the ritual again. ‘Rich
man!’ she exclaimed with artificial surprise.

‘I don’t do my stones like that,’ Neville said. ‘I do them quite differently.’

‘How?’

He screwed up his eyes and held his breath.

‘Engine driver, pirate, zoo-keeper, burglar,’ he announced at last. ‘I don’t cheat about stones like you, because I wouldn’t mind being any of them.’

‘You always miss the point,’ Clary said. ‘The whole
point
is that there are some things you wouldn’t like.’

‘Like being married to a thief,’ Lydia said.

‘I don’t know, that might be quite exciting,’ Polly said. ‘They’d come home in the evening with all kinds of things you’d never thought of. If it was a thief
with the same
taste
as you, you could furnish your whole house.’

Teddy, who had eaten his share of pudding, and there wasn’t anything else, said could he and Simon please go back to Home Place now as they were in the middle of something they had to
finish. ‘All these women and children,’ he explained to Simon as they ran back, ‘give me the pip,’ and Simon said he quite agreed. He didn’t actually feel like that
about the older girls, but he recognised that it was a bit feeble of him, and knew that it was only a matter of time before he’d feel like Teddy.

‘What are we in the middle of?’ he asked. He was worrying a bit about Christopher being left out of whatever it was.

‘You’ll see.’

They reached the end of the track and emerged onto the road. It was nearly but not quite dark. When they reached the drive to Home Place, Teddy did not go in but continued to run along the road
up the hill. Then he slowed down, and started to explore the hedge that bounded the little wood by Home Place. ‘There’s a place through here somewhere,’ he said,
‘Christopher showed me last year.’

‘It’ll be jolly dark in the wood.’ Simon began to feel a bit nervous.

‘No, it won’t. You’ll see. Ah! This is it.’ He plunged through a gap in the hedge and Simon followed, through brambles and old man’s beard and the rattling seeds of
old cow parsley. Just as he began to feel that he would rather be with Christopher looking through his collection of Peter Scott cigarette cards or feeding his owl, Teddy stopped.

‘Here we are,’ he said, and sat down. Simon sat beside him; they didn’t seem to be anywhere much. He watched while Teddy produced a night light and a box of matches. ‘You
make a flat bit of ground for it,’ he said, and Simon obediently scraped away at leaves and twigs until he’d cleared a small bit of ground. I hope it’s not going to be witchcraft,
he thought, but he didn’t say anything.

‘Now, then.’ Teddy next pulled out his bulky and businesslike penknife.

‘What are you going to cut?’ He was beginning to be afraid that Teddy might be going to cut them and mix their blood like Red Indians in pacts.

‘This.’ It was a rather battered cigar.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘Easy. The Brig left it in the ashtray. I think he’d forgotten it. It wasn’t stealing, it was just taking.’ He put the cigar on his knee and began sawing it in half.
‘I thought it would be more fun if we could both smoke at once,’ he said, and Simon was torn between pride at being included, and dread of what he was being included in.

‘You suck one end and get it really wet,’ he said as he handed Simon his half. Then he struck a match and lit the night light which lay between them. Simon could see Teddy’s
face which was hot from the run. ‘You light yours first,’ Teddy said, handing him the box of matches. Simon tried: he used three matches, but it didn’t seem to light, and the bit
in his mouth felt crumbly and like very old leaves with a bitter taste.

‘Here, I’ll do it for you. Give it to me.’

When he had handed back Simon’s half, now glowing, he said, ‘You’ll have to keep smoking or it’ll go out. Now, for the best of all.’ From under his flannel shirt he
pulled a small bottle. Simon could see the label that said ‘Syrup of Figs’ on it. He put it carefully on the ground and pulled out another bottle that Simon recognised as tonic water.
Then he produced one of the Bakelite picnic mugs.

‘We’re going to smoke
and
drink,’ he said. ‘And propose some toasts. That sort of thing.’

Simon felt immensely relieved: no witchcraft, no blood-letting.

‘Although actually,’ Teddy went on, as he poured equal quantities from each bottle into the mug, ‘it isn’t tonic water – I couldn’t find any, they’d
drunk it all. So I mixed up some Andrew’s Liver Salts with water. It’ll come to much the same thing.’ He lit his cigar, took a drag on it and was momentarily speechless. Simon
realised that his had gone out. While he relit it, Teddy took a deep swig from the mug, and handed it to him. ‘It’s a bit warm,’ he said, ‘being next to my chest and, of
course, I couldn’t manage ice.’

Simon took a cautious drink. It was nothing like as nice as orange squash or, indeed, any other drink he could think of.

‘I’m afraid the fizz has rather gone out of it,’ Teddy said. Simon couldn’t reply. He had taken a drag on his cigar which made him feel as though he was falling off
something.

‘Now. Here are the toasts. Death to Hitler.’ He drank, and handed Simon the mug. ‘You have to say it as well before you drink.’

‘Death to Hitler,’ Simon said. It came out like a croak, and it felt as though the first drink was surging up his throat to meet the second. He swallowed several times, and things
settled down.

‘Don’t we have to drink healths as well?’ he said.

‘Good idea. Strangways Major.’

Strangways Major was a prefect and captain of rugger, and altogether so exalted that Simon had never spoken to him.

‘You’re not taking very big swigs – go on, there’s lots more.’

He had another go, hoping he would have got to like it, but he hadn’t.

‘I think I’ll stick to smoking,’ he said, but Teddy said don’t be silly, took back the mug and filled it up again.

He went on with toasts. They drank to Laurel and Hardy, Bobby Riggs, Mr Chamberlain, Cicely Courtneidge and, finally, the King, but when they got to him, Teddy said that they must stand up,
which turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Teddy was swaying about and laughing. ‘I think I’m a bit drunk,’ he said. He helped Simon up, but the moment he let go of him, Simon
found himself sitting down again very suddenly and hard, and then he was terrifically sick which made his eyes stream although he wasn’t crying as he told Teddy. Teddy was wizard about it,
said it was probably something he ate, ‘The fish, I expect – it comes all the way from Hastings in a van,’ and that it didn’t matter in the least. ‘It doesn’t
matter anyway,’ he said. ‘In fact, I don’t think anything matters very much.’ When Simon felt better, they blew out the night light and went home.

‘It’s a funny old world.’ He sounded as though he was trying to be as nice about it as possible, but it was clear that he thought it could do better if it
tried. Mrs Cripps, who was never quite sure when he was referring to personal matters, about which she had fervent curiosity and interest, or world matters, about which she had neither, trod
warily.

‘Well, there it is, I suppose,’ she answered. She poured a little tea into her cup to see if it had stood long enough, and it had.

‘It isn’t as though they’re anything to do with the Empire, after all.’ He watched as she filled his cup; the dark liquid mixing with the creamy milk turned it the colour
of beech leaves. His chauffeur’s hat, a smart grey with a black cockade, lay on the table beside a plate of Bakewell tarts.

‘Mind you, I’ve nothing against Poles. As such.’

Her heart sank. What did he
mean
? There was a silence while he stirred three lumps of sugar into his tea – he always made a proper job of that; he never left any sugar wasting in
the cup like some.

They were in the very small sitting room off the kitchen, where she sometimes put her feet up in the afternoons. By common but unspoken consent, it was not used by the other servants, excepting
Eileen who sometimes took tea with her there. The dining-room dinner was over, and she could hear distant sounds of Madam’s gramophone and, nearer, the sounds of the girls washing up in the
pantry.

‘Would you fancy a tart, Mr Tonbridge?’ she said.

‘Seeing as it’s your pastry, Mrs Cripps. After you.’ He handed her the plate and she took one, just to be sociable.

‘Close was it, in London?’ she asked. It was London she wanted to hear about, and what had happened to him there.

‘In more ways than one,’ he replied before he could stop himself. He drank some of his tea – she did make a nice cup of tea – while he endeavoured to overcome the sudden
urge to tell her the awful things that had been going on. But no, he still felt too shocked and humiliated – tell her anything of that and it might be the end of her respect.

‘There’s no doubt we’re on the brink, Mrs Cripps, like it or not, that’s where our politicians have landed us – Polish Corridor or no Polish Corridor.’

The poles he had earlier alluded to now became people instead of something to prop up the hops, but the corridor defeated her. How on earth could a corridor have anything whatever to do with
starting a war? She composed her features to cautious concern. He’d been sent to London for the day to collect some things from the London house, and there’d been a rumour (gleaned from
Eileen waiting at breakfast) that he’d been invited to bring
her
and the child back down with him, but he hadn’t or he wouldn’t be sitting here now.

She fell back on one of his favourite statements. ‘It’s my belief, Mr Tonbridge, that you can’t trust politicians.’

‘Now there I agree with you.’ He moved his cup a fraction nearer to her, and she at once rinsed the tea-leaves out of it into the slop bowl and poured him another one.

‘And half the time, they don’t know what they’re doing.’

‘They do not, Mrs Cripps, and that’s a fact. They don’t tell us the half of it either, if you ask me.’ She pushed the plate of tarts towards him and his hand reached out
for one, but he paid no attention to it and therefore did not have to thank her. ‘But when, as they say, the balloon goes up, Mrs Cripps, who pays the tune?’

She flashed him a smile so that he could see her gold stopping, which, like other things about her seldom seen or not seen at all, he found definitely attractive.

‘You tell me,’ she said as she leaned towards him and her bust shifted slightly under her overall.

A fine figure of a woman, he thought – not for the first time either. ‘You have a remarkable mind. For a woman. And I tell no lie,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to tell
you
. You know it all. It’s a real pleasure to converse with you. Unlike some.’

This glancing, but gratifyingly uncomplimentary allusion to Mrs Tonbridge was the nearest she came to appeasing her curiosity, but from it she guessed that there
had
been a visit, and
that it had not turned out well. And if there was a war, which naturally she wasn’t in favour of in
itself
, it would mean that the family would stay down here, which in turn would
mean more work, but would also mean that Frank (as she privately called him) would be about. So it would be worth having a perm to her hair, she thought later, as she eased her aching legs between
the sheets – her veins were really bad at the end of the day with all the standing she did at work.

But Tonbridge, after he had hung his uniform carefully on the back of the chair in his dark little bedroom next to the gun room, unstrapped his leather gaiters, and unlaced his boots, found
himself standing in his vest and drawers by the small casement window after he had shut it for the night, frozen with the terrible memories of his day. Naturally, he’d done his work first,
hadn’t got to Gosport Street till well after two. The house had seemed very quiet, and he’d noticed that the curtains upstairs were drawn: it had struck him with sudden hope that she
might be away visiting her mother. He’d let himself in, but after he slammed the door behind him, he heard sounds from above. He’d started to go upstairs but the bedroom door opened and
there she was – not dressed – just pulling her dressing gown round her, her mules clacking on the lino. ‘It’s
you
!’ she said. ‘And what do
you
want?’ He’d told her straight of Madam’s kind offer for her and the kid, and she had launched into her sarcastic ‘Oh, thank you so very bloody much for condescending to
consider
me
’ type of thing and stood barring his way on the stairs. ‘What’s going on?’ he had said – not wanting to know but he had to say something.