Part of the Furniture (13 page)

Robert sprang forward and took the bowl from her. ‘I am being selfish, please forgive me. Sit quiet for a little and we will talk about you. Take your time—’

Juno said, ‘But I have to go,’ half rising from her chair.

Robert said, ‘Sit down, you are not going anywhere,’ and sat down himself.

B
UT ROBERT COULD NOT
sit. He got up and, standing with his back to the fire, looked down at Juno sitting, knees drawn up, clasped hands close to her chin. She looked small in the armchair, her frame almost lost in Evelyn’s cashmere dressing-gown, an extravagant garment bought on a whim ‘because I like the colour’. Robert remembered his son’s voice and, too, the conversation that had followed, tracing men’s fashions back a century or more to the time when men did not only wear drab greys, blacks and restrained check tweeds, but peacocked shamelessly in bright colours. The dressing-gown was a rich raspberry pink; the shop man, Evelyn told him, had eyed him with caution, mistakenly suspecting him perhaps of belonging to the persuasion of Oscar Wilde.

‘Do you suppose if we live long enough we shall see the return of bright colours for men?’ Evelyn had queried. ‘Bright colours would be nice.’

And he, laughing, had said, ‘For you perhaps, for your generation or your children’s, but I shall be long gone.’

And Evelyn, putting on the dressing-gown, had said, ‘Then in my small way I shall start the ball rolling with this.’

And now the girl was wearing it and Evelyn was dead.

Robert cleared his throat. ‘Are you warm enough?’

‘Oh yes, thank you.’ Juno jerked upright. ‘This is lovely and beautifully warm.’

‘Finish your soup, to please Ann.’ Robert handed her the bowl. ‘It’s still hot.’

‘Thanks.’ Juno took the bowl, finished the soup, hesitated, said, ‘I—’

‘Yes?’ Robert took the empty bowl from her, put it aside. ‘Yes?’

‘Nothing. There is nothing.’ She stared at the fire.

Robert said, ‘I spoke abruptly just now. I would love you to stay—um—stay, but if you are not happy? I could, we could, work something out. Where would you like to go? What do you want to do? I will help if I can. Why else did Evelyn send you here?’ When Juno found no answer, did not look up, he said, ‘To begin with, should we not tell your family where you are? Or perhaps you have done that? Written or telephoned while I was away. They must be anxious.’

Shrinking back in the armchair, Juno said, ‘I have not written or telephoned.’

‘Your father?’ Robert persisted. ‘Surely he—’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘He went to prison.’ Juno sat up straight. ‘He was a conscientious objector in 1914.’

‘Bully for him,’ Robert exclaimed. ‘And your mother? Is she dead, too?’ He lowered his voice.

‘Canada, she’s gone to Canada, and she’s taken all my clothes with her.’

‘That sounds a bit extreme.’

‘That is why I was so offensive, so rude to Bert. I only have the coat he sneers at—objects to. I asked him whether he would rather I wore mink or sable. I was surprised at myself, I am not usually like that. I raged at him.’ (It had not been Bert, it was quite another pain, loss, fear. She had snapped.) ‘I snapped,’ Juno admitted. ‘I am sorry.’

‘I don’t suppose Bert knows what sable is.’ Robert grinned.

Juno said, ‘I am not sure myself.’

‘A sort of pine marten, the fur worn by the very rich.’

‘Thank you. And I think I shouted that I had stolen it, stolen the coat.’

‘And did you?’ Robert was interested; this girl of Evelyn’s was not at all like the others.

‘Yes, I did.’ Juno looked Robert in the eye. ‘I had spent my last coupons on a splendid houndstooth tweed, but my mother packed it with my other clothes and took it to Canada. She—’

Robert guessed, ‘Where you are supposed to join her?’

‘Where I do not want to join her. I can’t, anyway. I got the money back on my ticket and I just do not want to go, and then my Aunt Violet—’ Juno stopped abruptly.

‘So you have some family?’ Robert pounced. ‘An aunt at least.’ When Juno said nothing, he said, ‘But perhaps you do not like this aunt?’

‘I don’t. I should, but I don’t. She is bossy, and insulting about my father; she is ashamed of him. She tried to push me into one of the services to “do my bit”, “fight for my country”.’ Robert was laughing. ‘It’s no laughing matter. She also insinuates the man my mother is going to marry is German.’

‘And is he?’ Robert grinned.

‘He is Dutch or Nordic, something like that, but really Canadian. The name just sounds German.’ Juno flushed. ‘My mother hasn’t had much fun and he is safe, even if—’

‘Dull?’

‘You guess a lot.’

‘Your tone of voice.’

Juno breathed in. ‘Aren’t you shocked that I stole the coat?’ she enquired.

‘It shows enterprise. I suppose you were cold.’

‘I was, very cold. But the cap, I didn’t steal that. A sailor left it on his chair in the station buffet, so I—’

‘Appropriated it?’

‘Yes.’

‘That makes sense.’

‘I feel somewhat bereft of that commodity.’ Which of them had said that? ‘I am somewhat bereft.’ She tried to remember, could not, wracked her brain. Thinking back, which of them had said, ‘I am bereft’? She strained to hear their voices. Was it Francis? It might have been either of them.

Watching her, Robert thought, she is far away. Jerk her back, catch her attention, pin her down.

‘Why not,’ he said rather loudly, ‘stay here with Ann and me? Ann can fix you up with clothes. It is what Evelyn wanted, isn’t it? What he suggested in his letter? The letter you brought with you.’

‘But you have lost it.’

‘Yes, but I know what it said.’ Robert visualized the letter, the stiff white paper folded square, the square envelope addressed to himself: Robert Copplestone, Copplestone, Catchfrench, Cornwall, its message as always brief, for Evelyn was ever succinct. He could hear his son’s voice, ‘Someone you will like, who will help on the farm, who will love the place as we do, not a regulation landgirl like the one you tried, who stuck to the rule-book and didn’t know a thing anyway.’

Out loud he said, ‘Evelyn wrote he would find someone, man or woman, to help me now I am short-handed. He has already sent Anthony Smith to work in the kitchen garden. Did you meet him? He has been working, too, for Priscilla Villiers? No? He left today, you must have missed him. Jolly good worker, he will come again when he gets leave. He works, as you know, in the same Ministry as Evelyn, but perhaps Evelyn did not tell you about him. No reason he should.’ Juno shook her head. ‘Then, as I say, having found Anthony, he finds you at a loose end and dispatches you at once with the letter which you brought with you, and—’

Juno interrupted, ‘He can’t have said all that. I was with him; I saw him write it. It did not take long.’

Robert said, ‘Of course not, the bits about Anthony were months ago. I am running the two, the several letters into one for your convenience.’ Robert wondered whether what he was telling Juno was strictly true or merely careless. ‘What I am getting at,’ he said, ‘is this. Will you do what Evelyn suggested, what Evelyn wanted for you, what I would of course very much like, stay and help on the farm? You have already shown you can milk a cow and demolish Bert. You can pick up the rest as you go along, and if you are happy I can get you registered as my landgirl, or whatever. That should satisfy your aunt and your mother. You had better write and tell them pretty soon, to relieve their anxiety—’

Juno said, ‘I don’t think—’

And Robert said, ‘Oh, but you must. I always worry if I don’t know where Evelyn is. Oh my God, what am I saying! Oh my God, death is so bloody hard to accept,’ and burst into tears.

Juno watched him weep and, remembering his son, said nothing, for there was nothing consoling to say. Then, finding herself close to weeping too, she got up from the chair and stood beside him, waiting for the storm to subside. When Robert blew his nose and wiped his eyes, she still said nothing but was partially consoled when he said, ‘Evelyn said in his letter that I would find you rewarding, and I do.’

Perhaps this was the moment to tell this man, Robert Copplestone, how little she had known his son?

A matter of minutes? Hours, if you counted the time she had slept while, lying on his side, his arm across her body, he had wheezed out of life? Or tell him how she had freed herself from that chill embrace, tiptoed to the lavatory, slid down the banisters? Juno moved back into the armchair to stare miserably into the fire and chivvy her brain for suitable words, succinct phrases.

Robert blew his nose again and, bending, replenished the fire with logs, then sat too, quiet now, afraid he had rushed the girl, said too much. (Evelyn would have been more subtle, known what to say.) Deliberately Robert relaxed his legs, stretching them towards the fire, stifled a sigh and closed his eyes to blot out visual memory, uselessly of course.

Sneaking a glance at him, Juno thought, they are uncannily alike, but this one is taller, stronger, more alive, his hair thicker. He breathes easily, does not wheeze. I must speak. She opened her mouth.

‘You are not likely to keep body and soul together surviving on bowls of soup.’ Ann bustled into the room. ‘You must be starving, so please, sir, both of you, come along and eat the supper which is spoiling in the kitchen. I can’t be doing with all this waiting about and, by the way, I have brought those puppies down,’ she said bossily to Juno. ‘They will soon be crawling and I can’t have them messing the carpets upstairs. The kitchen is the place for them now.’

Obediently Robert rose to his feet and, holding out a hand to Juno, pulled her up from her chair. ‘Here we come.’ As they followed Ann towards the kitchen, he said, ‘Juno tells me all her clothes have gone astray, Ann, and that she has no clothes coupons. What miracle can you come up with?’

With her back to Robert, Ann said, ‘I can lend her enough coupons for working clothes, gumboots and overalls, and cut down Evelyn’s clothes to fit.’

In the semi-darkness of the hall Robert drew in his breath, winced.

Still with her back to him, Ann said, ‘What is the difference? She is wearing his dressing-gown. I can cut down shirts and trousers, can’t I? What is the use of having learned tailoring if I don’t use it? Tell her, sir, how I came to learn tailoring.’ She chuckled.

‘What a realist you are.’ Robert recovered himself and then, observing Juno bewildered and embarrassed, he told, as they sat at supper, of how when Ann married Bert many years ago she had discovered that she did not care for the rumpy-pumpy that went with that state, and removed herself to Bradford. There she studied tailoring for a year until, overcome by homesickness, she had come back to Copplestone House. This all came with many embellishments to the tale, which had Juno laughing by the time he finished and laughing even more when Ann added a full stop, ‘I came back on my own terms.’

Thus was Juno’s moment to speak put aside as they ate Ann’s steak and kidney pudding, parsnips, cabbage and jacket potatoes, restoring their physical and emotional energies. And Juno, munching, wondered what good it would do if she did speak. She weighed the pros and cons of her awkward situation and thought perhaps that it would be best to say nothing, for she hardly knew either the father or the son.

It was as they finished the meal that they became aware of the growling flight of German bombers, and almost simultaneously the thud of bombs falling in the valley.

Robert exclaimed, ‘The farm, they may hit the farm, scare the animals,’ and was out of the front door and running before either Ann or Juno got out of the kitchen.

Ann, moving fast, shouted at Juno, ‘Put some clothes on, don’t show a light or let the dogs out.’ Pulling on a coat as she ran, she slammed out of the door after Robert and thudded across the yard.

Juno nipped up the stairs to dress in trousers and sweater, lace-up shoes over thick socks, then she too ran outside but, running, heard the telephone peal and doubled back to answer it.

A voice was shouting, ‘This be Fred Pearse from ARP. Tell Mr Copplestone the bombs missed the village, but they was coming out your way, tell ’im that.’ Juno said she would and the caller rang off.

Outside in the yard she had to accustom herself to the dark. The horses in the stables were whinnying, agitated. She picked her way across to their boxes and said, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, nothing to worry about,’ stroked silky noses and patted necks. Then, leaving the yard, she strained her eyes downhill to the farm. A bomber was circling the valley, flying low. She watched its shadow cross the moon, then lost its silhouette against dark clouds as its engine growled and groaned, reminding her of London. From the farm she thought she heard voices and cows lowing, but could not be certain. Taking the short cut she began to run downhill, but tripping over a tussock fell headlong, winding herself and wrenching an ankle. Getting up, she trotted on in the direction of the farm, unaware that, favouring the hurt ankle, she was bearing away from the farm towards the wood. As she ran she was afraid and found herself muttering, ‘If there’s a raid take cover, take a taxi or better still the tube, you’ll be all right in the tube,’ and fumbling in her pocket for the ten-shilling notes. When the whistle and shriek of a descending bomb halted her in her tracks, she cowered down, hands over her ears as it crashed into the wood a hundred feet away.

When the rustle, pattering and creak of broken branches stopped she got to her feet to listen, and hearing panting and whining nearby, made out, as the quarter moon shone through the clouds, the shape of dogs knitted together on the grass ride. Curiosity overcoming fear, she approached the entangled animals and recognized Bert’s old and decrepit sheepdog with its penis trapped in the aftermath of mating inside a collie bitch. As she approached they came apart; the bitch shied away to bolt through the trees, while Bert’s ancient animal slumped exhausted, apparently dying.

As Juno crouched by the dog she realized that the bomb had crashed but there had been no explosion. ‘If there had been an explosion, I would have been blown away and so would you,’ she said to the dog lying gasping on his side. ‘Come along, it may go off yet.’ She tried to recollect what she had heard of unexploded bombs. ‘I don’t like it here. Get up, boy, come along.’ But the dog was spent and could not move.