Miss Carter's War (14 page)

Tony hurried round the table, lifted her to her feet, and wrapped his arms around her.

‘My valiant little love, I’m back now. You’ve got me. We’ll “not do nothing” together.’

Chapter 13

After the night of the sharing of demons, Marguerite and Tony moved into a deeper relationship. She stopped trying to define it; they were more than friends, yet less than lovers, was the best that she could achieve. But was it really less? Life was a damn sight more pleasant with him than without him, she knew that.

She found out, through Pauline, that Irene had settled into her job, and that Elsie was going to have the baby, although she did not know whether Elsie intended to give it up for adoption. On Tony’s insistence, she did not pursue the matter further and jeopardise her job by defying Miss Fryer. As she had already learnt, it was pointless anyway; there was nothing she could do to help the girl. Best move on. Put it behind her.

Having discovered the other’s vulnerability, Marguerite and Tony were solicitous of each other. One of the ways this was expressed was through their mutual love of cooking, which Tony had been nervous of sharing with her before, lest she should think him effeminate; it was true he was the only man she had ever met who would set foot in a kitchen, or undertake any household chore. Judging that it was now safe to visit her flat without there being any sexual expectations he could not fulfil, he would don her pinny, and, Elizabeth David’s
French Country Cooking
in hand, conjure up fragrant dishes reminiscent of her childhood family holidays in Provence. His pièce de résistance was David’s coq au vin, which was produced on the few occasions they entertained. The nature of their relationship was never discussed, as everyone at school seemed to have unconventional partnerships, the definition of which was irrelevant. Their usual guests were Miss Lewin, History, and Miss Haynes, Domestic Science, ‘the plaited ones’ as they became, who holidayed together, and Miss Belcher and Miss Farringdon, English, who argued like an old married couple, but it was hard to put a label on exactly what they were to each other.

For the coq au vin they took it in turns to chat up the butcher for a chicken. They had to save up several weeks of their 6-ounce butter ration. The other ingredients were still difficult to obtain. The only olive oil available was a nasty, yellow medicinal version from Boots, and when asked for basil, the local greengrocer said he knew no one of that name. A trip to Soho was the only answer. With the help of some of the many women plying their trade from doorways, they located small shops that miraculously stocked Italian olive oil, fresh mushrooms, lemons, basil and a fine Châteauneuf du Pape red wine that Elizabeth David insisted was essential.

Marguerite could hardly bear to watch as a whole bottle was poured into the pot, especially as it followed a glass of fine brandy that had been used to set on fire the scraggy little bird. On top of the hunter-gathering, the actual cooking took hours, with a lot of flamboyant flambéing, glazing, and sautéing, whilst Marguerite rushed around washing the many utensils Tony used and generally acting as his commis chef.

Tony seemed to enjoy cooking in Marguerite’s kitchenette, even with the restrictions of the Baby Belling, with its tiny oven and hotplate. He bought her a pressure cooker, but she was much too frightened to use it lest it explode. Their fare was less ambitious when they cooked for themselves alone, Tony’s specialities being shepherd’s pie and bangers and mash and Marguerite’s her omelette and her mother’s cassoulet, with the occasional foray into a novel spaghetti bolognese; more appetising than had been the wartime whale meat and Spam fritters and in France an excess of wild boar, rabbit, even, one desperate time, mule.

Marguerite and Tony’s joint quest ‘not to do nothing’ led to occasional suppers with anti-bomb campaigners and other political activists. Coq au vin was not on the menu on these occasions, lest it be deemed too bourgeois. They usually settled for fish and chips from the shop round the corner, eaten on the knees, out of the newspaper wrapping and salted and vinegared in the shop – Tony did however add a northern flourish with his mushy peas concocted out of the newfangled frozen peas.

The discussions were intense; more so now the Labour Party was in opposition, the country having voted back the aged Churchill. Opposition suited them both, unleashing their aggressive instincts in the face of the foe. They both did their level best to show the electorate the error of their ways. They sought out any public meeting held by Margaret Thatcher, who popped up everywhere in her quest for political office. Another victim of their heckling was Edward Heath, the newly elected MP for Bexley. He was a bumbling young man who could very easily be reduced to satisfying red-faced rage. Whilst Tony went easy on Heath because of the constant jibes at his unmarried state, Marguerite felt a sneaking regard for Thatcher. She pointed out to Tony that the woman had managed to qualify for the bar four months after the birth of her twin children and written a series of articles headed ‘Wake Up, Women’ for the
Sunday Graphic
, about women being permitted to work. ‘Why not a woman Chancellor – or Foreign Secretary?’ Mrs Thatcher had posited, somewhat optimistically.

‘Anyway. We will soon have a woman in the top job after Elizabeth is crowned.’

Marguerite knew that mention of the planned coronation riled Tony.

‘All that campery. We can’t afford it.’

‘Oh shut up, Tony. You’ll love it more than anyone.’

‘You’re probably right. I can’t resist nice frocks and a bit of jewellery. Not to mention trumpets. I cherish a well-blown trumpet.’

On Marguerite’s insistence Tony rented a television set so they could watch the big event in his digs.

Tony lived in a boarding house run by a German. He liked and respected Mrs Schneider. When he told Marguerite the woman’s story, despite her instinctive reservations regarding all things German, she could understand why. Mrs Schneider had left Germany with her husband and two sons in 1937, when the children, who had been forced by their school to join Hitler Youth, were cross-examined about their Communist parents. They were not Jewish, and Mr Schneider was an eminent surgeon, but they could not bear to stay in a country that was in the hands of what they considered to be criminal lunatics, who were polluting their sons’ minds with Master Race claptrap. The summer camps, the rallies, the uniforms, the dedication to Aryan purity, the vows of loyalty to Hitler and the flag were exciting to young minds and the children did not want to leave their country. By forcing them to do so their parents saved their lives, for the indoctrinated members of Hitler Youth were being turned into fierce fighters, many of whom were decimated once the war began. A few of the survivors remained loyal to their vow, even when Hitler and his thugs were cowering in his bunker, before escaping through suicide or flight, leaving the children to be slaughtered by the invading Russians.

At the start of the war the Schneiders were interned in England. Mrs Schneider was released, but Mr Schneider was held at a camp for aliens near Liverpool where the appalling conditions contributed to his death. Mrs Schneider was left to bring up and support her sons alone. A wise and compassionate woman, she rented a big house and took four paying guests under her sheltering wing. Tony had told her about his sexuality and she was fiercely protective of him. In return he endeavoured to provide the boys with a father figure.

The tenants were a motley crew. Tony, for once, felt he was not the motliest. The others at 112 Blomfield Road seemed to have little contact with the real world. Miss Allum went once a week to have a shampoo and rigid set, with the occasional trim, at the local hairdresser, but as it was always exactly the same style, no words were exchanged with the lady in the shop other than ‘Good afternoon’ and ‘Thank you’. A cheery new girl once tried to engage her in the usual, ‘And what are you doing for Easter, madam?’ only to be silenced with a firm, ‘Nothing.’ Which was almost certainly true. The highlight of her day was settling in the one armchair in her room, a tray with a pot of Earl Grey tea, milk, sugar and two Garibaldi biscuits on the table beside her, to do the
Telegraph
crossword. No one knew or dared to ask what she had done with the previous, at a guess, sixty years of her life, the only clue being a small sapphire ring on her engagement finger.

Equally uncommunicative was Mr Humphreys. If addressed by anyone other than Mrs Schneider, whom he seemed to trust, he would mutter a reply and scuttle away like a threatened mouse. He always wore the same navy-blue three-piece suit, with a watch chain draped across the front, and a stiff-collared shirt and spotted bow tie, which would have been smart, but for the egg stains on the waistcoat and the button missing on the flies of his sagging trousers, which he constantly tried to conceal. Mrs Schneider once boldly offered to replace it, but he recoiled in horror at the thought of her handling his trousers. Every now and then, he shed the suit and appeared in a startling rambling outfit. Knee-length baggy shorts, Aran sweater and heavy boots with woolly socks. Where he rambled to no one knew, but it was almost certainly on his own. Every Monday night he went out somewhere, and Tony and Marguerite hoped he had a secret lover of either sex, but none but Mrs Schneider knew his destination.

The last, but in her own opinion certainly not the least, boarder was Moira Devine, the leading lady at the local repertory theatre. Rising above the tattiness of the company, Miss Devine was the epitome of glamour. In accord with the biggest stars of her profession, she believed it her duty never to let her public, in her case the residents of Dartford – or a few of them – see her less than perfectly groomed, with immaculate pancake make-up, coiffed red-gold hair with no black roots, pencil skirts or figure-hugging frocks and costumes, revealing nylon-clad perfect legs, with high-heeled, expensive court shoes. Her voice was attractively husky from the chain-smoking of the du Maurier cigarettes in an ivory holder that she wielded dramatically à la Bette Davis. They did a different play each week, rehearsing a new piece during the day whilst playing the current one at night. This demanded commitment which she gave selflessly for her ‘art’, and versatility, which was harder for her to come by.

She was more at home in sophisticated parts. Her only concession to characterisation of the lower classes would be a turban to hide her radiant hair and perhaps a pretty apron. The make-up and the voice remained the same, whatever age or type she was called upon to portray. But this was what ‘her public’ expected of her. Her rather scruffy band of admirers came every week just to see her. One of the attractions was her clothes – it was part of her contract to provide them for herself, which she did by toiling over her Singer sewing machine with the current script propped up so she could learn her lines while she stitched. The Royal Shakespeare Company or West End of London had no more dedicated actress than Miss Moira Devine.

When they occasionally did a good play, as opposed to the succession of Agatha Christies and Whitehall farces, one could glimpse the actress she could have been, had she been in the right place at the right time for that lucky break. In Noël Coward’s
Private Lives
, albeit with only one week’s rehearsal, she gave a performance of skill and enchantment. The critic on the local paper, who always gave her good reviews, on this occasion reached for superlatives, declaring her ‘one of the best actresses on the English stage, with whom the whole world will, one day, fall in love’.

She did not notice when she proudly read it out to Tony and Mrs Schneider that Mr Humphreys blushed and backed out of the room. One person at least was already in love with her, for, as only Mrs Schneider knew, Mr Humphreys was himself the unlikely theatre critic of the
Dartford Messenger
. The job suited him, as it was incumbent upon him to keep himself to himself so as not to let others’ opinions influence his reviews. He could therefore sit in the darkened theatre every Monday, doting on his idol, and that night, back in the privacy of his bare room, do his best to write something that would, over breakfast, light up Moira’s lovely face with happiness.

This was the little group of Her Majesty’s subjects who sat in front of the 14-inch black-and-white television that miraculously relayed the splendid crowning of their Queen to them and 27 million other awestruck commoners.

They all dressed up for the occasion. Even Tony dug out his suit and Moira was gloriously attired in a long white satin dress and diamond tiara that she had worn as the dowager empress in the play
Anastasia
. Miss Allum wore a lacy number that smelled of mothballs, and Marguerite looked, according to Tony, ‘fantabulosa’ in a red-satin sheath cocktail dress with a white-and-blue-feathered hat.

Mrs Schneider provided schnapps, and made a stollen cake, with ingredients she had been saving up for months, Miss Allum produced a bottle of sherry, Tony and Marguerite a bottle of champagne, and Moira, crème de menthe liqueur. Mr Humphreys presented a box of slightly grubby marzipan sweets, which he had made himself, with Mrs Schneider’s help.

To begin with the conversation was stilted, it not being something the residents were used to, but once the programme started, with the help of the eclectic mixture of drinks, the atmosphere became more relaxed.

The obligatory British rain poured down on all the nobility in their splendid horse-drawn carriages, and the thousands of ordinary citizens, many of whom had slept on the pavements overnight for a good view. The armed forces marched impeccably to their regimental bands, or lined the route in full dress uniform, putting behind them the horrors that many of them had seen in the war.