Phoenix and Ashes (38 page)

It
was not exactly pleasure-reading. She had to reread most paragraphs several
times, and then pause and think about what she had just read before she went
on. She didn’t manage to get through more than a couple of pages at that
speed. So when teatime approached, she packed up her basket with a sense of
reprieve.

Even
if he’s not there
, she thought, as she walked bare-headed in the
beautiful May sunshine,
I’m staying out for a while, as long as I
can. Who knows when I’ll get outside the garden again once Alison returns
?

No
one paid any more attention to her today than they did any other day, but as
she made mental comparisons between her new clothing and that of the other
girls she passed, she was pleased to see that it held up in the comparison. Of
course, this was nothing like the nice frocks she used to have—and as for
the wardrobes of Alison and the girls—you might as well compare a head of
cabbage to a hothouse rose.

Reggie
would not be impressed, she suspected. Not unless he was seeing her in anything
like the kind of clothing the girls of
his
set wore, and that was
about as likely as being able to fly. But at least she wouldn’t be
looking like a beggar or a gypsy.

More
like a poor governess
, she thought, as she reached the outskirts of the
village, and sighed.
But then, it isn’t as if I have any hope of
—She
resolutely turned her thoughts away from hopes of any kind. She was spending
time in the company of someone who was intelligent and friendly and
knew
who she was
. That was enough. It had to be enough. It was all she was
going to get.

And
I might not get that today
, she reminded herself, as she reached the
border of the manor lands, and made her way through the trees, and through
grass that seemed longer today than yesterday.
After all, what am I to him
?
Nothing more than someone his mother isn’t trying to get him to marry
!

And,
maybe, a friend.

I
want to be his friend
, she realized, with an ache of longing. Surely that
much isn’t too much to ask for…

And
how much of a friend could someone be, who probably hadn’t said more than
a few hundred words to him over the course of a decade? Oh, she could be
his
friend, readily enough, but why should he be hers?

No,
he probably wasn’t there. He had no reason to be. She was someone
pleasant and intelligent to talk to, but he could find that in any of his old
friends from the University.

If
any of them are still alive…

But
to her undisguised delight, he was waiting for her at the usual spot, reading
something, as she came up through the last of the trees.

He
looked up with a start as a twig broke under her foot, his head jerking wildly
as he scanned the trees for the source of the sound. He recovered quickly, and
waved at her, but that first reaction made her furrow her brow as she
approached him. What on earth had caused that?

Was
he seeing some of those wretched goblins?

But—no,
if there were any here to see,
she
would be seeing them.

But
his expression was affable enough as she approached, and as she got near to him,
wading through the calf-high grass, he flung himself down on his knees, and
looked up at her in imploring mockery.

She
bit her tongue.
Oh dear. Now what is he about
? She was afraid he was
making fun of her. But on the other hand, it made her smile to see him doing
something silly. How long had it been since he’d felt easy enough to be
silly?

“Oh,
gentle maid, forgive, forgive!” he cried out melodramatically, holding
out a bouquet of cowslips and primroses that he must have picked while waiting
for her..

“Forgive
what
?” she demanded with a giggle, taking the bouquet.
“Don’t be so ridiculous, you’ll get grass-stains on the knees
of your trousers!”

He
clambered to his feet. “Forgive that I wasn’t here
yesterday,” he said in a more normal tone of voice. “I completely
forgot that I had obligations to deal with yesterday. I should have remembered,
and I should have told you.”

She
felt a thrill of delight, at his words—he
had
thought about
her!—but shrugged. “Oh, that! I wasn’t here either. I heard
you were giving the prizes at the school treat and I know how these things
go—it isn’t just prizes, it’s speeches and the Maypole and
all of that, so I knew you’d be busy all day, and I didn’t bother
to come.”

“Sensible
girl!” he said, relieved. “And so I was. I’ve brought things
to make it up. Real bottles of lemonade, the fizzy kind, and some only
slightly
squashed tea-cakes, and jam.
And
—” he paused
significantly. “Chicken sandwiches. That’s the great benefit of
being the lord of the manor, you see; no pesky officials coming around to count
how many chickens you’ve got, and whether one’s gone
missing.” He shook his head. “And if you think I am going to feel
guilty about depriving some poor PBI of a tin of chicken paste with my
scandalous and unpatriotic behavior—”

“Actually,”
she said, “I doubt very much if you’re depriving anyone of
anything. Most of the villagers have rabbit hutches and unreported hens, and I
know for a
fact
there are unregulated pigs in the woods. No one is
feeding any of the contraband animals any rationed grain; they’re living
off what they can scavenge, and I suspect that’s true for what went into
your sandwiches.”

He
regarded her thoughtfully. “I expect that’s probably true. My cook
has an odd pen on wheels full of birds that she moves over the vegetable
garden, and I’ve never seen her throw any grain to them.”

“Exactly.”
She smiled at him. “The chickens are eating bugs, seeds, and weeds, which
is saving manpower in the garden, too. They’re probably roosters, or at
least, capons, which would have been culled anyway as chicks. So no one is
being deprived of anything.”

“You
salve my conscience as well as my easing my mind.” He sat down on the old
blanket he had brought and patted it. “Come feast with me, then.”

Perfectly
happy to, she sat down across from him. Truth to tell, she was rather glad that
he had brought most of the tea this time. Without Alison around, there
wasn’t much bread left, and she had given the old women the last of the
cakes yesterday. Her offerings were a bit scanty.

“So
how was the school treat?” she asked, conversationally. “Were the
children absolute demons?”

“They
were rather decent, actually,” he replied. “That might have been
because we thought of a few more things to keep them out of trouble this year.
Swings in the trees, rides in my motor, that sort of thing.”

“That
was rather kind of you!” she exclaimed, a bit surprised that he had done
any such thing with his fast motorcar.

He
shrugged, but looked pleased. “Oh, it was just to the gates and back. But
they seemed to like it. Played the very devil with my bad leg though. I forgot
how much work there would be, what with all the gearing changes and braking. By
the end of the day—”

He
broke off, a little flushed. Embarrassed? It could be. There were those who
would think that, because he wasn’t lacking an arm or an eye, he was
malingering. “What?” she supplied, trying to sound casual.
“You could hardly walk?”

He
looked shamefaced. “Something like…”

“Then
I suspect it’s a good thing you found that out driving the children up
and down to the gates, and not some other way,” she said, trying not to
be too specific. “It does seem to me at least that your doctors are right
about taking a long time to heal.”

“Well,
I think you’ll be happy about one thing, anyway,” he said, sounding
as if he was changing the subject. “Listening to the speeches, one of
them was—well, rather better than I had any expectation. So Mater and I
decided that we’re going to put up a scholarship for the village boys to
go to Oxford. Father always intended to, so now we shall.”

At
first, she was irrationally pleased. How many clever boys had
she
known who could have done very well at university if only they’d been
able to go? But then, she thought,
All very well for the boys, certainly
,
but felt a twinge of resentment thinking about the number of equally clever
girls who ended up just like their mothers, birthing lambs and babies at nearly
equal intervals. “What about girls?” she asked aloud.

“What?”
He stared at her as if she had said something startling.

“I
said, what about girls?” she repeated, firming her chin stubbornly and
daring him to look away. “Why only boys? Don’t you think girls from
the village ought to be able to go if they’re clever enough?”

“But—but—”
Now he
was
really staring at her. “But what are they going to
do
with a university education? A boy can teach—become an engineer, a
scientist, a doctor, a scholar—”

“And
a girl can’t?” she retorted, now feeling
quite
angry with
him. “What about that lady doctor you were always talking about? Why can’t
a girl become an engineer or a scientist?”

He
looked at her as if she had suddenly begun speaking in Urdu.
“But—but—”

“
I
was going to go to Oxford
,” she reminded him. “
What’s
more, you told me I should, and that I shouldn’t let anyone dissuade me
!”

“Yes,
but these are just village girls, farmer’s daughters, with no
expectations!” he said, then continued to make his situation worse with
every word. “It’s not as if—I mean, you’re not the same
class as they are—I mean—”

His
mouth snapped shut as she flushed, as he realized he had just said something
horribly rude. She looked down for a moment at her handmade skirt, then looked
defiantly up into his eyes,
daring
him to make the comparison between
the class she was supposed to be in, and the one she was apparently in now.
“Maybe they have no expectations because no one ever let them think that
they
could
,” she said bitterly. “Maybe, if someone
bothered
to show them that they could
have
dreams, they might be able to dream
them. Mightn’t they? Just because they’re shopkeepers’ girls
and farmers’ daughters doesn’t mean they don’t have minds.
Some of them have very
good
minds. And I think it’s a shame and
a sin that all they’re thought good for is tending babies and putting up
jam.”

His
eyes looked miserable. But she was very angry now. And she wasn’t going
to let him off the hook.

“Besides,”
she pointed out, with coldly, poisonously perfect logic. “
Someone
had better start helping ordinary girls to do things like becoming doctors and
teachers. Because thanks to that
bloody
war, there aren’t going
to
be
any doctors and teachers otherwise. And I don’t see the
pretty young ladies of
the proper class
rushing off to university to
fill the void! Do you? Of course not. It wouldn’t be
ladylike
.
It wouldn’t be proper.”

He
made a strangled little sound in the back of his throat, and looked away.

I
shouldn’t have said that
, she thought. And then thought,
rebelliously,
But I’m right. And I’m not going to apologize
.

“You
are a truly horrible young woman, you know,” he said, very slowly, as if
he was weighing and measuring each word, still looking away from her.
“Only the truly horrible and the young would dare to tell that much
truth.”

“Only
someone who doesn’t have any room for illusions anymore would dare to
tell that much truth,” she corrected, as the anger slowly faded and
cooled to an emotion that was darker and bleaker than that flare of temper.
“I can’t afford illusions; they are altogether too expensive to
maintain. There are a great many of us in that position now.”

“Yes,”
he replied, turning back, slowly. “There are.”

They
stared at one another, and he finally heaved a great sigh. “That was a
very stupid thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“It’s
that whole
game
,” she said, the bitterness back, redoubled.
“That whole game of class. It’s not going to work, you know! If
this wretched war is ever over, it’s just not going to work anymore, the
whole construction is just going to go smash!”

“Like
it did in Russia?” he replied. And managed a wan smile.
“You’ve been listening to Mad Ross Ashley.”

“I’ve
been reading,” she retorted. She didn’t say anything more, but she
was thinking a great deal.
I don’t know what’s going to happen,
but—well, just look
!
Even fifty years ago, you had rich American
girls with piles of new money coming over to marry a lord with a name but no
prospects, and rich tradesmen’s boys getting themselves blue-blooded
wives out of the Royal Enclosure that were desperate to get themselves out of
tumbledown Tudor manors and into a nice London townhouse in the West End
!
It
can’t go on, can’t you see that
!
You can’t go on
playing that silly game of
we
and
they
and by now you should
know it
!

But
she didn’t say anything. She’d already said more than enough,
actually. If he couldn’t see this for himself—

But
he passed his hand over his eyes, as if his head hurt him.
“It’s—” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I
don’t even know if we’re going to see an end to this, not even with
the Americans coming in. Sometimes—” He took his hand away, and
looked past her, into the distance, his voice flat. “I don’t know
if anything matters anymore, because all we are ever going to see is that
Juggernaut grinding on and on until there isn’t anyone left to
fight… so what’s the point of anything anymore? Why bother trying
to change anything, when there isn’t going to be anything left to
change?”