Marking Time (41 page)

‘I suppose they do.’ She thought how wonderfully secret and safe it would be to have a jungle path or two herself.

‘You know, in spite of that huge lunch, I’d love a cup of tea.’

‘As soon as we get home, you shall have one. It is tea-time after all.’

Rachel looked at her watch. ‘Nearly a quarter to five. It certainly is.’

They parked outside the house and carried their shopping in just as the air-raid warning sounded.

‘Oh dear.’

‘We’re always having them; nothing much happens.’

But shortly after that they could hear the faint popping sounds of anti-aircraft guns.

‘Do they ever hit anything?’ Rachel asked, as they went down to the kitchen to make tea.

‘They must occasionally, but mostly I think it’s simply to keep the planes too high to be accurate about their targets.’

When they had had tea and chosen a theatre, Rachel remarked, ‘If we can hear the ack-ack, there must be an air raid somewhere.’

‘If there is, it’s a long way off. Let’s play a spot of Brahms.’

‘Oh, Sid, I’m rotten! Nothing like up to your standards.’

‘To hell with that. I love playing with you.’

So Rachel struggled through the sonata in G major and Sid was wonderfully patient with her mistakes. Then they decided to have a drink, and Rachel said she wanted to see Sid’s garden.
‘There’s nothing to see; it’s a wilderness, I’m afraid.’ But Rachel opened the French windows and started to go down the little flight of wrought-iron steps when she
called, ‘Sid! Come and look!’

And Sid shut her violin case and joined her. There was a gigantic cloud of smoke in the distance, rising slowly in the sky as they watched, like some vast balloon.

‘Where do you think?’

‘Well, that’s due east, so it might be the docks – the East End at any rate.’

The sun was setting and, as they watched, the blue-violet sky round the smoke balloon seemed to be tinged with pink. The ack-ack sounded more distinct out of doors – a pedantic little
yapping sound. They both watched and listened for a few minutes and then Rachel said that she could see the garden from there so she wouldn’t go into it, after all.

‘I’m going to mend your dressing gown for you,’ she said.

‘Oh, would you, darling? If you do that, I shall pay you in
gin
.’

‘What about our theatre?’ Sid said when she had been sent and returned with some primitive sewing things.

‘Well, I sort of feel that perhaps it would be nice if we stayed in after all,’ Rachel replied as she put the torn sleeve inside out to get at the seam.

Sid was delighted. She lit the fire and got drinks.

‘Dinner,’ she announced, ‘could be toasted cheese or a vintage tin of sardines. Or both, of course.’

‘Oh,
one
will be quite enough. I can’t see any more, darling. Could you do the blackout?’

Sid fastened the front shutters, and then went to the French windows to draw the curtains. She could no longer see the balloon of smoke, but the sky from there was an unearthly orange red. There
was no sound of gunfire.

Rachel sensed that there was something odd, since Sid was so still. She got up and joined her. Together they watched.

‘It’s as though the sky was bleeding to death,’ Rachel said. ‘It must have been a very bad raid.’

‘The All Clear hasn’t sounded. It isn’t over yet.’

As though to confirm this, they heard the guns opening up again.

‘It may be us this time,’ Sid said. ‘There’s an air-raid shelter in the next street. I think we should make some sandwiches and a Thermos in case we have to go to
it.’

But they didn’t have to. An hour later, when they turned off the lights in order to look out of the windows, the sky was still flaming, but against it, or within it, were not one, but
several great plumes of dark smoke.

‘Let’s turn on the news.’

‘My wireless is bust. I keep meaning to take it to be mended, but I haven’t. I’m sorry.’

They ate the sandwiches and drank the Thermos of coffee. ‘We mustn’t waste it,’ Rachel said. ‘I hate to think of you in London,’ she added.

‘I’m all right. I have a nice, safe, dull job.’

They played piquet, and Sid, who usually won, lost each game. The old adage rose to her lips, but she did not say it. By mutual consent, after one more awestruck look at the sky, they went to
bed.

The telephone woke Sid after she had gone to her own room, and even after she had fallen asleep. It was her ambulance station calling her out. ‘There simply aren’t enough ambulances,
or bloody well anything else come to that, so we’d like you to report at once,’ the voice ended.

It was half past four. She got into her boiler suit with a jersey underneath it. Then she went to tell Rachel.

The family were just finishing a late dinner, which had been put back because everybody wanted baths after the tournament, when the telephone rang. Hugh leapt to his feet.
‘It’ll be Sybil,’ he said. He had been trying to get through to the hospital ever since the first wave of bombers had flown over them.

‘I do hope that it is,’ observed the Duchy. ‘He has been worrying so much, in spite of the news.’ They had earlier heard that there had been an attack on London, and
various anxieties had ensued: apart from Hugh, Villy worried about Louise, who had rung to say she wasn’t coming down until Sunday as there was a play she simply
had
to see, the
Duchy had fretted about Rachel, and Edward had privately worried about Diana with whom he had spent the previous night, and who had announced her intention of staying on in London in order to shop
that day.

Hugh returned; he did not look relieved. ‘They’ve hit the wharves,’ he said. ‘A big raid on the East End and the docks.’

‘Which wharf?’ the Brig asked sharply.

‘All three of them, I’m afraid. The sawmills went up like a powder keg. All the sawdust. It was old George. He said he thought another attack was starting while he was speaking to
me. It wasn’t his night for duty, but he went to see. He was ringing from a box and he ran out of money, so that’s all we know.’

There was a silence. Then Teddy said, ‘Does that mean we’re ruined?’

‘Quite possibly,’ his father said. ‘Hugh, we’d better go to London.’

‘No point tonight,’ the Brig said. ‘There’s nothing you’ll be able to do tonight. Go tomorrow morning, first thing.’

Polly burst into tears. ‘Think of all the poor people! Having their houses smashed up and being bombed to death!’

‘Poll darling,’ Hugh said, sitting by her, ‘we’ll hope it isn’t as bad as that.’

But the next morning she discovered that it was, of course. Four hundred people had been killed outright; over fifteen hundred had been seriously injured, and thousands of people had found their
homes reduced to ruins of rubble and broken glass.

Autumn–Winter 1940

It was her very first really grown-up dinner party – not a family affair, which automatically relegated one to the shaky status of being only conditionally grown up, but
a party which, with the exception of Mummy’s friend Hermione Knebworth who had invited her, was full of strangers, all older than herself, treating her as an equal. Hermione – goodness
she was kind! – had invited her out of the blue, and more than that, had persuaded Mummy that she should come to London and stay the night. What she had actually said to Villy was,
‘Darling, I need one young girl madly – everyone else is as old as the hills and so
attached
, and it is time that Louise met some decent people instead of all that
greenery-yallery crowd at her acting place.’ But Louise did not know this. Her mother had simply said that Hermione wanted to speak to her.

‘Hermione? I don’t know anyone called Hermione – excepting Leontes’ wife, of course.’

‘Hermione Knebworth. Of course you know her.’ Villy had to shout because Louise had only got as far as the landing at the top of the stairs, and she was in the Brig’s study.
‘
Louise!
Will you please come at once. It’s a toll call.’

Louise had taken to doing everything (nearly) that her mother told her to but very, very slowly. Now as she wandered down the stairs, she was the picture of wounded dignity. ‘“Since
what I am to say must be but that which contradicts my accusation,”’ she murmured, ‘“and the testimony on my part no other but what comes from
myself—”’

‘
Louise!
’

Anyway, it had turned out to be an exciting invitation. Anything, in any case, was better than mouldering away at Home Place. The acting school had closed because of the Blitz, and although she
had tried to get a job in various repertory companies nobody seemed to want her. She had had a brief row with Mummy about what she should wear; she didn’t really have a decent frock, and she
wanted Mummy to lend her one, but of course she
wouldn’t
– said they would be too old for her, so she was reduced to her old coral-pink satin that she was absolutely sick of
and that anyway was a bit too short for her.

But when she reached Hermione’s luxurious flat in Mayfair, almost the first thing Hermione said was, ‘I expect you’d like to borrow something exciting to wear,’ and took
her to the shop – only five minutes’ away – and found her a heavenly blue chiffon with plaited chiffon shoulder straps so she couldn’t wear a bra, in itself a dashing
prospect. And Hermione
gave
her a box in which was a pair of french knickers and a petticoat – pale blue satin with creamy lace and a beautiful pair of pure silk stockings.

And now eight people were seated in Hermione’s midnight-blue dining room – pitch dark in the day, but she never ate lunch at home – with candles on the table, having an amazing
dinner that Hermione had had brought in from a neighbouring hotel: caviar, which she had never had before, and roast partridge and a chocolate mousse and pink champagne, and then a delicious
savoury of mushrooms and tiny pieces of fried bacon. She ate everything, but she didn’t talk much because the whole atmosphere was so new to her, and everyone was miles older and she
didn’t want to say the wrong thing. There were two couples, the men in army uniform, and their wives in evening dress, of course; one man who was not so old, but was extremely quiet and
seemed devoted to Hermione, although she took very little notice of him, and another not so old man in naval uniform, who sat next to Hermione and opposite Louise. He wasn’t as old as the
couples, but he was
old
, at least thirty, she thought. She sat between the army officers who were very nice to her in dull and courteous ways, asking her where she lived and what she did,
and Hermione interrupted, saying, ‘Malcolm, she’s Edward Cazalet’s daughter – you remember Edward?’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course I do,’ And Louise noticed that his wife looked at her with renewed interest.

Now they were all teasing Hermione about her conjuring up such a delicious dinner. ‘She could do it if we were all on a desert island.’

‘I am deeply grateful that we aren’t.’

‘I don’t know. A bit quieter at nights, don’t you think?’

‘I sleep at the War Office mostly. Underground, you know. Don’t hear a thing.’

‘Poor Marion can’t do that.’

‘Poor Marion spends most nights gambling wildly at an ARP post.’

‘That’s not true! We have incident after incident, now they’ve turned their attention to the West End.’

‘And Hermione,’ he went on disregarding her, ‘Hermione simply makes
frocks
.’

The silent man came to life. ‘That’s quite untrue,’ he exclaimed. ‘Hermione gets up at five every morning and works in a munitions factory.’

The other, less old man looked up from his partridge. ‘Really? Hermione – in all those hours we’ve spent together, you never told me that.’

‘She wouldn’t.’

‘Anyway, I shall probably have to give it up,’ Hermione said as though she didn’t want to talk about that any more.

But the silent man was now not to be silenced.

‘Do you know why? She found a way of doing her part of the job so much faster than anyone else, that she upset the whole line. Brought the factory practically to a halt.’

‘John darling, don’t go
on
about it! Offhand, I can’t think of a more boring subject.’ But she smiled at him with her clever grey eyes and asked him to light her
a cigarette and he subsided again into an amiable and total silence.

They didn’t actually talk about the war, but there was some gossip about personalities. General de Gaulle: ‘Awkward chap – very stiff, and none of that famous French
tact,’ the man who slept at the War Office said; and General Ismay who, it turned out, had been a prefect at the school the other chap had been to: ‘Charming feller – gets on with
everybody.’ Everyone seemed pleased about President Roosevelt’s re-election. ‘We stand a far better chance of help, tacit or otherwise with
him
than we would with a
Republican.’ The conversation became rather dully technical then with the men talking about a deal Churchill had made for fifty American destroyers. The women were talking about their
children: ‘Would you believe it, Jonathan
cried
because we didn’t have fireworks on Guy Fawkes night!’ and Louise was beginning to feel disappointed when the man opposite
her leaned over the table and said, so softly she could barely hear him, ‘You – are –
lovely
!’ and then held her eye with a look of such beguiling admiration that
she felt herself beginning to blush, and was quite unable to think of a reply.