Part of the Furniture (12 page)

They told him.

Pointing, Robert said, ‘Go down that road, turn right at the first crossroads, turn left, then second right and you are on the main road. Go straight ahead.’

Brightly they said, ‘Crossroads, right, then left, then—Oh, could you write it down? Got a piece of paper? Sorry to be such a nuisance. Could you draw us a map?’ The man fumbled in his breast pocket for a pencil; the woman opened and closed her bag in exasperation. ‘Can’t find any paper, sorry.’

Quickly Robert drew a map on the back of an envelope. The rain was turning to sleet. The bereft father was miming to him to catch up, come to the house for a drink, give some comfort. ‘Don’t go yet, don’t leave us alone.’

He said, ‘There you are, follow that, go that way and you’ll be all right,’ and, thrusting the map at them, ‘Curse it, I shall miss that train.’ He broke into a run to catch up with his old friend. ‘Who are those boring people?’

‘No idea, come into the house. Press, I dare say, ghouls of some sort. Say something to Lizzie, something to the boys. We are all numb. You’ll know what to say. Oh God, isn’t this awful?’

Robert said, ‘Yes. Thank you.’ He could not refuse. He would miss his train; he must swallow his impatience.

His old friend said, ‘The vicar tried to help, said we are all in God’s hands—’

Robert said, ‘Terrible butter-fingers.’ His old friend yelped with laughter. Hysteria not far off, they went into the house.

The next day, at last on the station platform waiting for his train, Robert wondered what comfort he had been able to give and what he had received? He had drunk too much, talked about the war, wondered with the bereaved what was going on over there, across the Channel, in the rest of Europe? Agreed with Lizzie, the dead girl’s mother, that Lord Haw-Haw was tremendously funny, had quite the opposite effect of that intended, said that at home Ann was really annoyed if she missed hearing him, that Lord Haw-Haw and I.T.M.A. were the highlights of her day.

‘Don’t cry, Lizzie,’ he had said, ‘try to remember her happy. She had a great sense of humour, Evelyn always said so, a lovely, lovely girl.’ What lies one told in one’s cups; he had no recollection of Evelyn ever saying anything of the sort.

Then, lying awake in his friends’ spare room he had heard Lizzie break down and howl and his old friend, attempting to still her, say, ‘But darling, he understands, of course he understands. Hasn’t he just lost Evelyn? He knows what we feel.’

And Lizzie’s bitter reply, ‘It’s not the same thing. Evelyn’s been dying on and off for years. He could be spared, he wasn’t an only daughter.’ He hoped that the girl’s brothers, stumbling late up the stairs to their beds, did not hear their mother.

Poor fellows, Robert thought next morning waiting for his train, stamping his feet to keep warm, both in the RAF, both likely to get killed; would they want to spend their leaves with such miserable parents or would they go somewhere jollier, more cheerful, where there would be someone they could look forward to meeting? Someone to fall in love with between battles?

Then, as his train came hissing and trumpeting to a stop, Robert remembered that at home, when he reached it, as well as Ann and Jessie and her pups, there would be the strange girl Evelyn had sent him. He at least had something to look forward to.

And now, he thought, climbing into the train and settling into a corner seat, he really must see what, apart from the suggestion that she might be ‘rewarding’, Evelyn had had to say about the girl. He reached into his coat pocket and, finding it empty, cursed out loud, remembering the tedious couple who had asked the way, made him draw a map on the back of an envelope, the envelope which held Evelyn’s letter.

I
T HAD BEEN ALL
right helping Bert milk the cows on that first day, but not any more. There was now no ease as she sat on her stool, cheek brushing the beast’s soft flank, ear tuned to its rumbling stomach, the swish as it snatched hay from the rack, the odd scratch of hoof on concrete and the munching of cud.

Juno was conscious that behind her, astride his stool, Bert swore at the cow he was milking, exclaimed, ‘Stand still, you bugger,’ when it had not moved, scraped his stool along the concrete floor to bang it abruptly down by the next animal in line, that he muttered aloud as he tramped to the dairy with a full pail of milk, banged against the door of the box which held the cow with the calf so that the beast inside shuffled in apprehension. She guessed the man was waiting for her to empty her last pail in the dairy, shrug into her coat and leave him to finish the work he had grumbled was too much for one man. She was aware and tensely irritated.

‘Let me help.’ Juno took the broom before he had time to resist. ‘I am quite capable of sweeping out the cowshed.’

Bert exclaimed, ‘Nah!’, but she had the broom and had begun to sweep. He watched, aghast.

‘And give the cows their nuts and fill the hayracks.’

Had she not learned these things long ago on the Murray/Johnson farm, as the child who had hung about filling in time waiting for Jonty and Francis to come back from hunting or fishing or playing tennis? (Hanging about like an unwanted puppy.)

‘Mind your
feet
.’ She was shaking with sudden inexplicable fury.

Bert raised his voice in high-tenored surprise above the swooshing broom, ‘I can’t be having it, it ain’t fitty.’

Sweeping, Juno shouted, ‘You complained that eight cows were too much for you, I heard you.’ Briskly she swept cowpats and shovelled them onto a barrow. ‘And now, when you get help, you resent it.’ She wheeled the barrow to the dung heap and tipped it. Returning, she turned on the tap and began hosing the concrete between the cowstalls. Bert stood nonplussed and staring. She swooshed the water towards the drain. ‘There.’ She wound the hose and put the broom in its place. ‘There,’ she said viciously. ‘Done.’

Bleakly Bert repeated, ‘It ain’t fitty.’

‘What?’ Juno faced him. ‘What isn’t fitty?’

Searching for a suitable reply, Bert glared.

Juno said, ‘Look. I offered to help because it happens I can milk and you are short-handed. I like cows and I like milking. I promised Mr Copplestone I would stay until he gets back and that is what I am doing, filling in time while he is away. But while I am milking, you shout at your cows—“A-r-r-r”.’ Juno mimicked Bert’s voice and from its stall the cow with the calf mooed in protest. ‘You resent me but you take it out on your cows. And,’ Juno narrowed her eyes, ‘I don’t mind betting that as you make them nervous they are not letting their milk down as easily as they should. Right? You are not stupid, you must have noticed.’

Bert said, ‘I never,’ voice rising higher but eyes full of doubt.

‘So what is it?’ Juno asked. ‘What, apart from my being a girl, is making you so pestilential?’ She was angry with a consuming pent-up rage. The accumulation of her fear and emotion in London, the interminable wait at Reading, the desolate surreptitious visit to her old home. She could not stop herself; she shook with a terrible frightening fury. ‘What is it?’ she hissed, staring closely at the man’s bristly chin. ‘Tell me.’

Bert stepped backwards. ‘Gawd,’ he said later to Ann, ‘that little maid did frighten me. Her face was chalk white and she did not know she was crying.’ But he must not show his fear, he must make an effort, try. ‘’Tis your coat,’ he exclaimed, his voice cracking. ‘You come poncing into my farmyard in that—that thing—that coat, that’s what ain’t fitty. This ’tis a farm, ’tisn’t Piccadilly,’ he shouted, and in the corner of the shed, so old he was hardly noticeable, his old sheepdog yelped in sympathy, roused from its sleep.

Juno faced Bert for long seconds, then she said, ‘But it’s all I have.’ Her rage drained away, leaving her spent. ‘Perhaps I should have nicked mink? Would you have preferred that? Or sable?’ she suggested sweetly. Then she turned away and raced up the hill. She did not look back.

He hurried to the dairy, caught up the sheepskin coat and brought it up the hill and into the house to give to Ann. His dog, who usually rested his old bones in retirement, bestirred himself and tried to follow.

‘So we had explanations,’ Ann said on Robert’s return while he stretched his legs in front of the library fire, rubbed tired eyes and gratefully accepted whisky. ‘She said she was sorry, something had snapped; she was very rude to Bert. She has no other coat, no clothes other than the few in her case—’

‘What’s this got to do with coats? Clothes?’ Robert interrupted. ‘Sorry, go on.’

‘They are in Canada by now, there was a houndstooth tweed Bert might have approved of and, oh God, she would apologize.’

‘A great mistake. Go on—’

‘And be on her way as soon as possible. Those were her words, if you can make sense of them.’

‘On her way? Where to? Where is she now?’ Robert straightened up.

‘In the bath.’

‘I must talk to her, get to the bottom of this.’ Hastily Robert swallowed his whisky. ‘Damnation!’

Ann said, ‘I should leave her alone, if I was you. She was in a state, been crying, Bert said. She—’

‘But I am not you.’ Robert heaved his length out of the armchair. ‘Evelyn sent her to me. I’ve lost the bloody letter and now this happens! Explanations! I don’t notice much in the way of explanations,’ he was shouting as he made for the door.

‘Please, sir, take it easy.’ Ann watched him take the stairs two at a time. ‘She’s—’

‘Bugger easy!’ He had reached the landing and was heading towards Juno’s room.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Ann addressed the husband she had already sent back to the farm with a flea in his ear. ‘Stupid tactless old fool,’ she muttered. ‘If that poor child noticed you upset the cows so that they won’t let down their milk easy, what have you done to upset her?’ She had mocked him standing there hangdog and embarrassed, clutching the sheepskin coat. Now, in spite of herself, Ann experienced a spasm of amusement, remembering her husband’s description of the scene in the cowshed. ‘That girl struck home,’ she said out loud, savouring Bert’s indignation.

‘So this Juno knows one end of a cow from the other,’ she had teased, taking Juno’s coat from him, giving it a shake and hanging it carefully up. ‘And you are jealous, you silly old fool.’

Now she stood in the hall at the foot of the stairs half on tiptoe to hear better. Along the upstairs corridor she heard Robert knock and again, louder. There was apparently no response.

She heard him open the door and call, Juno, Juno? It’s me, Robert. May I come in?’ Then a scuffle and, ‘Oh Jessie, Jessie, yes, yes, I’m back, good girl, good dog. Go on now, down to Ann, go and get your dinner,’ and Jessie came hurrying and wriggling down the stairs, her toenails clattering on the polished treads, blocking out all other sound, her wagging tail banging against the banisters.

Straining her ears as the dog came to rest on rugs, Ann heard Robert’s raised voice, ‘I have to talk to you. Yes, now. Can you come down? Please.’

And Juno faintly, ‘I’m just out of the bath, I haven’t any clothes on—’

And Robert, ‘Then put on a dressing-gown.’

And Juno, ‘I have been appallingly rude to Bert. I can’t, I—’ And then faintly, ‘I have no dressing-gown.’

And Robert loud again, ‘Don’t prevaricate. Evelyn’s dressing-gown is hanging on the bathroom door. Put that on and buck up.’

Ann put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh!’ she said as Robert shouted again, ‘Buck up, put it on. I am waiting. Hurry up.’

There was no answer from Juno, but hearing footsteps Ann retreated to the kitchen from where she was able to call, ‘Yes, sir, of course,’ when Robert called from the hall, ‘Ann, could you be kind and bring Juno a hot drink? I think she could do with one.’

Putting Jessie’s dinner down on the floor, Ann remarked out loud, ‘Better be giving her some soup and him, too. They both look clemmed.’

In the library Robert, standing with his back to the fire, looking down at Juno sitting upright in an armchair, small in Evelyn’s dressing-gown, pale, her hair damp, pushed back from her face, said, ‘Idiot that I am, I have lost Evelyn’s letter, the one you brought with you, so you will have to tell me what was in it. Tell me about yourself. All I can remember, I was distracted when I read it, I had just come from London, from his funeral, I was not thinking straight; the little I remember is that he said I would find you rewarding. So it’s up to you to tell me what he said, what was in the letter. Oh! Here comes Ann with soup. Oh, Ann, for me too? Oh God, I am talking too much. Eat your soup first.’

Juno said, ‘I didn’t read the letter. He wrote it and licked the envelope and handed it to me. Sorry.’

She sat up in the chair and took the bowl of soup Ann was handing her. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you very much.’

Robert said, ‘Oh,’ nonplussed. ‘Thanks, Ann,’ he said, taking the bowl she handed him.

Juno swallowed some soup and said, ‘I was so rude to Bert. I am so sorry and it wasn’t really anything to do with him. It was dreadful of me.’

Robert said, ‘He has a thick skin. It will not have hurt him, will it?’ addressing Ann, who was on her way to the door.

Ann said, ‘Hide of a rhinoceros. Will there be anything else?’

Robert said, ‘No, thank you, Ann.’

Ann said, ‘Mrs Villiers brought Anthony back for his things and took him to his train, and John will be back at work tomorrow.’

Robert said, ‘Did she want anything?’

Ann snorted, ‘Nothing new! If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen.’ She left, closing the door.

Robert spooned soup into his mouth, his eyes on Juno. ‘Could you for instance tell me how—um—Evelyn seemed when you saw him last?’ He put the half-eaten soup on the table beside him.

Dead. He had been dead. She couldn’t possibly tell this man, Evelyn’s father, that she had not even paused to close his son’s eyes. She looked wildly at Robert and, in almost a whisper, said, ‘He was drinking whisky. He was wheezy, very wheezy, seemed exhausted—’

‘And?’

‘He gave me some because I was frightened. There was a big raid going on. I didn’t like it, but he said to drink it. I had never tasted it before.’ Juno began to shake, her voice tailing off. ‘Oh God, I am spilling the soup.’