“Is that Emilio?” she gasped at last. “Gosh! fancy him being able to sing like that! Why, he ought to go on the air!”
“Emilio’s singing too but I think it’s Fabrio who’s making the most noise,” retorted Mrs. Hoadley, briskly folding the
Daily Express
into a neat packet and getting up from her chair. “Now, Neil, if you want me to go into Horsham this morning will you please let me have that list; I’ve got my chickens to do before I go.”
Sylvia ran across the yard, with the sunlight falling warmly on her laughing, excited face. The song had now ceased.
“Fabrio!” she cried, waving the hat she had snatched up, “congratulations! I didn’t know you could sing like that—didn’t know you could sing at all! You’re marvellous—you ought to go on the air!”
She halted at the door of the little shed where the two Italians
hung
their overcoats each morning, and peered in. All was damp and shadowy within and for a moment she was dazzled; then she saw Emilio’s face grinning up at her as he knelt to lace his boot. Fabrio stood and stared at her in haughty silence.
“I mean it!” she cried again, making an emphatic downward movement with the hat. “I adore music and you can take it from old Maestro Sylvia, you’re simply wizard!”
Emilio, who understood more English than Fabrio, turned and said something to the latter which caused him to look haughtier than ever; then suddenly a quick, childish smile lit up his face, his eyes—even his hair, glossy as a chestnut, seemed to take on additional sheen from the sunlight and his own pleasure. But the smile went in an instant, and after one glance at Sylvia, he turned indifferently away and began to arrange his coat carefully upon its peg.
She, after repeating vehemently, “I mean it, comrade,” lingered for a moment as if expecting him to speak, and, when he continued to be silent, turned away and walked aimlessly back to the house, feeling slightly annoyed that she had made advances towards him. What a sourpuss he is, she thought; I’m quite willing to be friends if only he would. I don’t like him much but I don’t see any point in going on like this; it isn’t my fault I’m an enemy alien—and, come to that, what’s he?
For she believed that his dislike of her was due to the fact that her country had defeated his own in armed combat. True, he was officially described as a collaborator and as working his passage, but that would not prevent him from expressing his hatred of the English by refusing to be pleasant to them, and this seemed highly foolish to Sylvia.
Before departing for Horsham, Mrs. Hoadley put her head out of the car window and called:
“Sylvia, take their milk up to the cottage, will you? They won’t be coming down this morning.”
The farmer’s wife had encountered Alda on the previous evening and learned that her friend had succumbed to influenza
just
as all the children were well enough to demand perpetual entertaining but not well enough to come downstairs, and she knew that Alda would not want to spend twenty minutes in going for the milk and bringing it back again. Although she was impatient of “that cottage lot,” her sense of justice compelled her to dispatch Sylvia.
Sylvia fetched the cans and went singing across the meadow. She had not seen any of the inhabitants of the cottage since the evening of her arrival, and from that occasion she retained a sense of grievance because they had not asked her into the house; she also dimly resented the peaceful slumber in which the cottage was presumably sunk on those black dawns while she tramped about with heavy trusses and buckets, but these feelings were not strong, for her lively animal spirits made her ready to be friends with anyone.
She clashed the cans down on the step with a ringing “Milk-o!”
Alda put her head out of the porch window and said: “Oh—thank you very much. I couldn’t have got down this morning: everybody’s ill.”
This announcement left small impression upon Sylvia, who was never ill, but she made the face which she tilted up towards Alda look sympathetic.
“That’s all right,” she answered vaguely, thinking how pretty Alda was, while Alda in her turn admired the eyes, the hair, and the complexion.
“How are you liking it at the farm?” Alda went on, with an interest half-motherly and half-inquisitive.
“It’s beastly work but somehow I don’t mind it, and the food’s marvellous, only I’m crazy to get back to my real job, of course.”
“What
is
your real job?” indulging an obvious desire to be asked.
“Acting. The stage. Oo, I just can’t wait to get started! I was training at the Canonbury Academy of Dramatic Art. My father was an actor.”
“Really ? How interesting. I wonder if I know his name?”
“Oh—I don’t expect you would, he was pretty ham, and only did tatty little parts in the provinces,” with an embarrassed laugh. “He did play once in the West End, though, with Dennis Eadie, just after the last war, in
Milestones
, for sixteen performances. Before I was born, that was.”
“And you’re very keen on it?” Alda ignored the slice of family history, upon which, indeed, no comment was possible.
“I adore it. It’s my life,” solemnly. “And I
know
I can act. I
feel
it.”
“It was bad luck your being called up,” said Alda sympathetically: she ought to have been carrying round washing-water to the invalids but she lingered, for the sun was pleasant and she found this hearty child amusing.
“Oh well, I wasn’t exactly called up, but I was scared stiff I would be any minute, so I chucked up the Academy and volunteered for the land, so as to be sure of not being shoved into a factory.”
“This is your first job, then?”
“Yes—
and
my last, on the land. As soon as H.M. Government takes the irons off my legs, I’ve had it. Well,” she grinned and pushed her hat further on to the back of her head, “I must get back. Bye-bye.”
“
Good
-bye,” said Alda—with emphasis: Ronald discouraged the translation of
God be with you
into the language of the nursery. “Will you come and have tea with us when we are all better?”
“Oo, I’d love to. Thanks awfully. I do get one afternoon off a week,” and she strode away.
What an overwhelming young woman, but rather attractive, all the same, thought Alda. I will ask her for the same afternoon as Mr. Waite. She’s too young and crude to queer Jean’s pitch; Jean will shine by contrast.
For the next week the invalids were occupied in recovering from influenza, languidly picking at the meals prepared by Alda (
who
mercifully did not catch the infection) and, in the case of Jenny and Louise, looking forward with apprehension to the day upon which they would go to the convent school.
The central-heating apparatus was being inspected and the mattresses from the dormitories were being hung out of the windows to air, after the custom at the mother-convent at Rouen in Normandy. The playground was emerging from the mantle of slush beneath which it had slumbered for the past month. There was even bustle in the convent; the airy, silent corridors with their tenderly smiling, life-sized statues in brilliant robes standing in every alcove and at every corner, were as peaceful on the day before the one hundred and fifty pupils returned as on any other day of the year, but perhaps the quiet pat-pat of slippered feet down the shining parquet floors was a little more frequent, and there were more conferences between the black-robed figures—“Yes, Sister. No, Sister. That would be it, Sister. Of course, Sister. That was what we heard, Sister”—in the hall and classrooms.
Sister Alban, the directress, was a sturdy middle-aged woman whose clear light eyes behind thick glasses were shrewd and secretive. She had a manner expressing great common sense and practical ability; she liked to lead the parents of prospective pupils through the large, light classrooms with their well-spaced modern desks, and to point out the view across the little lake and the groups of lime trees that in summer would waft down gusts of delicious scent and showers of creamy-green petals on the walks of the park. True, Sister Alban did not hold out these delights as an inducement to hesitating parents; she concentrated upon the advantages of spring mattresses and the lack of overcrowding in the convent, but such parents as were foolishly imaginative and open to the siren impressions of
atmosphere
, were ravished by those lime groves, those gleaming silent corridors with their fresh flowers and heavy curtains draped in graceful folds, that glimpse of the chapel with its snowy lace
and
crimson damask, and, beyond all, by the peace: the heavenly, refreshing, soul-sustaining and comforting peace breathed forth by all these objects, combining in harmony and united by the same spirit.
Alda was C. of E., with a very slight prejudice in favour of Low observances rather than High, due to those Dissenting forebears whom we have already mentioned. She was a little lax in her personal religious observances, as people described as C. of E. are apt to be, and she had never considered what might be the rewards of sacrificing the human Will; the rebellious, self-torturing, pride-scourged Will; but had she asked what were those rewards, the spirit that brooded in the convent could have answered her. There was the sacrifice: there was the reward. Side by side they existed, eternally opposed; the one perpetually struggling and the other perpetually incarnating peace, and if everybody on this planet liked peace, the conclusion would be foregone, but hardly anyone does like peace, most people preferring excitement, cigarettes, sex, drink, noise, danger, the pride of the body and fashionable hats.
“The children must be very happy here,” Alda observed to Sister Alban, in the course of the conducted tour.
Sister Alban replied, “Yes, they are happy,” but in a voice which did not completely satisfy Alda. Her tone was not emphatic and her expression was blank; Alda received the impression that she frequently had to reply to such comments by parents and assumed this poker-face in order to conceal her sentiments. I expect she’s wondering why on earth they should be happy, or thinking that if only they’re good, they will be, thought Alda.
However, the building was spotless, the nuns’ manner was kind, the fees were low and the teaching at convent schools, she had heard, was always excellent. She therefore entered the names of Jane Margarita Lucie-Browne and Louise Eleanor Lucie-Browne as day-pupils upon the register, having first warned Sister Alban that she might have to remove her daughters
at
short notice if her husband succeeded in persuading the local authorities to build a prefabricated house upon the site of their ruined home in Ironborough. In that case they would all return to Warwickshire to await his demobilisation.
Sister Alban was accommodating over the problem of school uniform, saying that while of course it was desirable that all the pupils should be dressed alike, many of the mothers found this impossible, and sent them to school in any plain dark clothes, but Alda had felt that Jenny and Louise, making their first entry into a large school, must have the help which a conventional appearance could give, and had at once sent an S O S to all the children’s aunts, asking for green skirts or frocks or coats that could be converted into the necessary simple dress with plain white collar.
The Lucie-Brownes were at once pleased and dismayed when a large parcel arrived from Father’s-Only-Sister-Marion containing two outsize (Marion was outsize) green dresses of fine wool, worn but far from shabby, and enough lawn to make each schoolgirl three collars.
Lucky for you that this is a favourite colour of mine [wrote Marion]. The collars, I thought, could easily be washed and they could have a clean one three times a week. Jenny ought to have riding lessons this spring; John is getting along splendidly and is going in for a jumping competition on Bumblebee at the gymkhana here in March. I enclose a cheque to pay for twelve lessons for Jenny. I noticed how envious she looked when John and Richard were talking about Bumblebee the last time we saw you.
Alda put the cheque away in her handbag with a compression of the lips, even as did Mrs. March under similar circumstances in
Little Women
. She thought that she would keep the promise of riding lessons a secret for the present; for, if days became very dark at the convent, a pleasant surprise would help Jenny to support them. Louise, of course, was sure to grumble and
weep
and despair over her first weeks at school because she always did over any kind of novelty or change.
“
SHE LIKES YOUR
voice,” said Emilio to Fabrio, with his face alight with mockery, as the lorry carried them to work the next morning. It was eight o’clock and the sun had not yet risen, but brightness was mounting steadily into the sky over the flooded eastern meadows; black grass blades shivered in the wind across sheets of radiant water, and billows of yellow cloud were dissolving before the sun’s approach. Fabrio sat among his brown-clad companions with his face turned towards the light, singing as loudly as the rest a chorus from a popular Italian operetta, and the driver, an English soldier with a resigned expression, bumped them along over the rutted roads.
Emilio felt refreshed and lively in the morning light and ready to tease,
but
Fabrio did not want to talk about that girl with a monkey’s mug and shameless clothes; better not to remember her eyes wide with admiration of his singing; she made him angry; she was not like a girl at all; she was like a tall boy with a loud voice; a boy who was a little, a very little, taller than he was. So in reply to Emilio, he only nodded.