But Richard, their new brother, knew Meg now, and when she came into the room he smiled at her and he stared at her all the time and turned his head to look at her. Mother said that he noticed Meg more than the others because she was the nearest in size to himself. This was very gratifying.
Meg now slipped off her chair and rushed across the room (right in front of the opposing row of dancers, who shooed her on with impatient cries in their fresh, thrush-like voices) and pushed her face into Richard’s little soft one, where he sat within Nanny’s arm.
“Gently, now,” said Nanny, otherwise Mrs. Pakin, in her placid Yorkshire voice. “We aren’t a wild elephant, I hope.”
Meg rubbed her nose against her brother’s head, which was covered in down soft as the seed of a dandelion, and of almost the same silvery colour. He was a year old, and already very like his maternal grandfather.
“I’m taking him up now,” said Nanny. “He’s had a look at you all and it’s past his bedtime.”
She carried the baby across to Alda, and the aunts admired him and bade him good night, but were not encouraged to give him more than the gentlest of kisses. Then she bore him away.
“How pretty the tree looks, Alda,” said Alda’s mother, a comely and active lady in the early sixties who had dropped in on the party, “but what a business you must have had making all
those
presents, with everything else you have to do! Who began this fad that
all
the children at a birthday party must have presents? It’s something quite new and I call it nonsense. Pampering.”
“I don’t know, Mother. It started in the war. One does curse it, but everybody does it, so of course I have to do it too.”
Mrs. Norton did not snort but her expression did. Alda said no more, but watched the children with a contented air. It was of no use trying to explain the technique of contemporary living to her mother, who had passed the greater part of her married life, and experienced her motherhood, in the comparative safety of the early twentieth century. Mrs. Norton was generous with her own rationed luxuries, her fresh eggs and her bottled fruits, when there was a party at one of her daughters’ homes but she always sighed over
my poor grandchildren
, who had to put up with a chocolate biscuit apiece and jellies made from synthetic fruit juice. It was useless to tell her that what the tongue had never tasted the young stomach did not miss, while the Party Spirit crowned all.
Louise was dancing with the others, in a nondescript ruffled garment intended to represent the Queen of Hearts which unbecomingly revealed her lankiness. She had lost her Ice-Maiden look, and was now only thin and fair and rather plain, and retained that habit of gazing with her mouth open which called forth sharp rebukes. She read voraciously, and though she seldom spoke of the convent, and unprotestingly accompanied her mother and sisters to the church which Nortons and Lucie-Brownes had attended for years, Alda knew that she continued to correspond with Sister Alban. She also cherished a rosary. Alda anticipated that these tendencies would come to a head when Louise was about eighteen in a determined attempt to Go Over, which would then be thwarted by packing her off, if she could win a scholarship, to Cambridge, where her father had been. Louise was clever; far cleverer than the gay and vigorous Jenny, who was dancing into her teens with every sign of avoiding
completely
the awkward age, and was one of a group at Miss Cowdray’s known, because of their interests, as The Horsey Dogs.
The Lucie-Brownes have gone up in the world, thinks the Gentle Reader, with their satin-striped wallpaper and their Nanny for the new baby, but in fact these embellishments were less grand than they sound. Nanny Pakin was the mother of one of Doctor Norton’s poorer patients; a woman with a large but now grown-up family, who possessed a common and beautiful form of genius; the power to rear very young children. Having declined, several times and with vehemence, suggestions from local employers that she should enter what she roundly called their dirty old factories, Mrs. Pakin was happily installed in the large shabby comfortable nursery at the Orchard House for not much more than board wages. As for the satin-striped wallpaper, the old builder who had once decorated Alda’s father’s house for the homecoming of his new bride had just happened to have that particular piece by him.
Ronald Lucie-Browne now entered the room, and went across to the fire, rubbing his hands and appreciating the warmth after a walk home of several miles through cold, foggy, darkened streets. There was a strike of bus and tram drivers in Ironborough and street lighting had been reduced to save coal. He looked amused and tranquil, and in his head there lingered a line of Alfred de Vigny’s which he had quoted that afternoon during a lecture:
Marche à travers les champs une fleur à la main
.
It seemed to him that it was still possible to do this, even during a Time of Troubles. He believed that there must have been many families, unrecorded by history, who had contrived to live happy lives even in the darkest periods, until they were finally overwhelmed, and as he gradually reassumed civilian life, he saw more and more plainly that this was what he must lead his own family to do. They were helpless, but they need not be
unhappy
, for most of the great natural sources of joy were still open to them.
At this point his reflections were interrupted by his mother-in-law, who joined him to congratulate him upon the election of his sister as Labour Member for Ironborough South at a by-election, made necessary by the sudden death of the Conservative Member, and held on the previous day.
“At least,” said Mrs. Norton menacingly, “
now
we know who to complain to if we don’t get more biscuits into the shops.”
“You take a low view of politics, Jane.”
“And you? What’s your view of them these days? I thought there was some talk of
your
standing for Ironborough South as a Liberal, at one time?”
“There was, but Marion has more of the necessary type of energy and brains, and she got there first.”
“She is very clever and has worked exceedingly hard,” said Mrs. Norton, in a tone whose scrupulous justice did not in the least conceal the fact that she thought Marion a dead bore.
“Yes. I saw her this afternoon; she has commissioned me to hunt up Jean Hardcastle. She wants her for a secretary.”
“She thinks her money would be useful to the Party,” said Mrs. Norton instantly. “But Jean isn’t trained. Besides, Alda told me that she has completely lost touch with her.”
He held up a letter. “This is from Jean, I believe. It was sent to the college to-day. I suppose she hasn’t our new address. Alda will be pleased, I know.”
He crossed the room to where Alda stood by the tree.
“Hullo, lovey,” she said. “You’ve just missed Richard; Mrs. P. has taken him off. All these women will have gone in half an hour, and then we’ll have our supper alone.”
“So I should hope, but look here.” He gave her the letter. “Isn’t that from Jean?”
“The blighter! After eighteen months!” exclaimed Alda, snatching it. “I’m dying to hear what she’s been up to. What’s
the
odds Potter got away?” and she tore open the envelope. Almost at once she began to laugh.
“I say, do listen!” And she read aloud:
“Darling Alda,
“I expect you will be absolutely shattered to hear that I’m
married
. We’ve got an absolutely
smashing
son aged eight months exactly like Phil (
Phil? What does she mean? Potter
’
s name is Oliver!
) and I’m
terrifically happy
. As you will see by the address we’re living in Daleham to be near Phil’s family, they’re rather dim but awfully kind.
Do
write and tell me you aren’t furious with me for not having written for such
ages
. I’m sending this to the College and do hope it finds you. How are the girls, I expect they’re
enormous
by now, do kiss them all for me. We must meet
soon
. I’m dying to show you Alex.
“Tons of love,
“from
“J.”
“Then Potter
did
get away!” exclaimed Alda, looking up from the letter at the interested faces of Ronald, her mother, and two younger sisters who had come up to hear what was going on. “She married Phil Waite after all. No
wonder
she’s been keeping out of my way! She is the limit!”
“But I thought you wanted her to marry Waite,” said Ronald.
“So I did, at first, but only because there was no one else. As soon as Potter turned up, I was all in favour of him. Fancy his getting away after all!”
“Perhaps it was Jean who got away,” said Ronald.
“Of course not; she adored Potter,” said Alda absently; she was re-reading the letter. “Oh well, she does say she’s terrifically happy. I’m glad. Good old J., she hasn’t done so badly for herself after all. But not a word of thanks to
me
, you notice, and I arranged the whole thing!”
“Never mind,” said Ronald. “It’ll soon be time to start arranging ‘things’ for Jenny and Louise. Have you anyone in mind for Meg?”
Alda laughed, but in fact she did have the youthful sons of various old family friends in mind for all three, and her laugh was a little conscious.
“And then there’s Richard,” he went on. “One can’t begin thinking about these affairs too early, can one?”
Alda’s expression changed. It became graver, slightly cautious.
“Oh, that won’t need thinking about for quite twenty-five years yet,” she said, “perhaps thirty. With girls it’s different, of course, but I really don’t approve of boys marrying too young. It leads to all kinds of difficulties. Of course, I shall always welcome any nice girls that he likes to bring to the house and I hope he will bring them whenever he likes, but I should never
encourage
an early marriage where Richard was concerned—what’s so funny, Ronald?”
IT WAS AUTUMN
when Fabrio at last came home.
Across the south of France crawled the dirty, crowded train through the blazing sunlight of the year’s decline; stopping at villages still half-ruined, dead and silent in the brilliant light without a sign of human or animal life; then down the tranquil Swiss countryside, where girls came on to the railway platforms offering cherries in baskets lined with the green and golden leaves of the vine and the blue Rhône sprang along, rippling and glittering, beside the train, and far off snow peaks glistened in the haze.
Then, one by one, familiar scents began to be wafted to him, as he sat in the stifling compartment in a daze of discomfort, wedged between ten other Italian repatriates on their way home. Once, near the frontier of France where trees crowded down to the line’s edge, there came a breath, between the odours of stale
khaki
and garlic, from pinewoods warmed by the sun. When he got out of the train at a Swiss station and wandered past the open door of the stationmaster’s office, he smelt fresh beeswax from the polished floor. Then, after they had actually entered Italy (but he was asleep, jerking miserably to the movement of the train with his head against his neighbour’s shoulder, when that sacred moment passed) he touched and smelled and tasted grapes for the first time in five years.
A
signora
gave them to him, and to every other man in the carriage, together with a drink of fresh water mingled with wine; a real
signora
, with white hair under a decent black hat and wearing many sparkling rings and golden brooches; and as she and her elderly maidservant offered the fruit and water, they made the Sign of the Cross and blessed the returning prisoners. Some of the men blessed them gratefully in return; but others, as soon as she and her maid had left the station to return to the large car and chauffeur which awaited them outside it, hastened to sell the large bunches of fresh yellow grapes to the rich English and Americans on the train.
Fabrio ate his bunch down to the last seed and skin; then he smelled the big fading leaf, mottled with amber, which was still attached to the brown crutch-shaped stem, and bruised it between his fingers to bring out its scent, and lastly he put it away into the worn notebook where he carried the papers that proved he was a human being.
In this wallet he also carried the money that he had saved while working for Mr. Hoadley and the farmer with whom he had passed the final six months of his captivity (for his request to be transferred to another farm had been granted, supported as it was by Father Francis and Mr. Hoadley himself). This sum amounted to nearly nine pounds in English money. It seemed a fortune to Fabrio, and had done much towards sending him home in a confident, forward-looking frame of mind.
He
was not like the dirty, penniless, feckless creatures with whom he shared the carriage and with whom he had handled the same
greasy
pack of cards throughout two stifling days and a night. Some, despite their long sojourn in England, could hardly speak a word of English, and others quickly lost in gambling the few lire that they had, while one continually related a disgusting story of cowardice and disease. Some were bad, others were merely fools, but not one of them could read the copy of
Post
that Fabrio (who had always had a weakness for that journal) had brought with him; he was the only one with well-blacked boots and a rag in his pocket with which to dust them, a comb, and in his wallet a fortune in lire! Truly, he was returning home with a higher heart than the one he had set out with as an unhappy boy, nearly eight years ago.