Post of Honour (67 page)

‘Oh, there’s time enough,’ she said carelessly, ‘they’re all young and healthy and girls nowadays want a bit of fun before they settle down the way we did in our day. I can’t say as I blame them, either. Everything has been so topsy-turvy since the war that one can’t see more than a few weeks ahead.’

One could not indeed, as Simon was not slow to point out when they had a quiet chat during the parade rehearsal on the morning of the grand final. The boy, he thought, was a great contrast to his splendid brothers, in his off-the-peg suit and weather-beaten trilby. He had some kind of job, he said, editing a left-wing paper in Manchester, and Rachel, his wife, who did not accompany him, brought in extra money as a lecturer for the Workers’ Education Association. Between them they had contested three by-elections and had emerged at the bottom of the poll at each of them but repeated failure to penetrate beyond the fringe of politics seemed neither to depress nor surprise him.

‘I’m living the kind of life I want to live, the only kind I could live, Gov’nor,’ he said, when Paul suggested he should swim with the tide until a real opportunity presented itself. ‘The fact is the whole damned lot of us are living on borrowed time but so few people seem to realise it. Take what’s happening in Germany. All pretence of freedom has disappeared over there and anyone who opposes that little bastard Hitler has his throat cut, or is slammed into one of his concentration camps. Nobody seems to bother. All that really concerns most people is how to make a fast buck, how to find the money for the new Morris Eight, or the down payment on ‘Mon Repos’ and ‘Shangri-La’. They’ll wake up eventually, however. They’ll have to or go under overnight!’

It was the first time Paul had considered Adolf Hitler as a potential menace and he could not help feeling that Simon’s obsession with the underdog had led him to exaggerate. He said, ‘I’ll go along with you, son, when you say things aren’t all they should be, and that the Government is the laziest, shiftiest bunch we’ve had for a very long time, but surely nobody takes tinpot ranters like Hitler and Mussolini seriously? From where I stand it’s ninety-five per cent blather!’

‘The Kaiser blathered,’ Simon said, and not for the first time of late Paul had the impression that, in his quiet way, his son had the same political prescience as old Franz Zorndorff, who boasted that he could smell burning powder half-way across the world.

‘What are the chances of a general turnover at the next election?’ he asked, remembering that since Jimmy Grenfell’s death he had lost contact with the political scene, apart from a perusal of leading articles and Simon said, ‘None! We’ll dodder on and on, doped by our football, films, greyhounds and the distractions that even dairymen go for nowadays. Then, one bright morning, we shall wake up and find the Fascists not merely on our doorstep but in bed with us, and chaps like Mosley and his Blackshirts hanging a “To Let” notice on the Houses of Parliament. That is, of course, providing Hitler doesn’t take a crack at Russia; if he does he’ll get all the backing he needs in the West.’

Paul wondered, as Simon said this, precisely how far to the Left his son had travelled in the years since the Slump and asked, bluntly, ‘Do you still look at Russia with starry eyes, Simon? Is it really any better than Fascism?’

‘No, I don’t go along with it,’ Simon replied unexpectedly, ‘it’s not the answer and never can be—people handing down decisions from the top. We have the real answer here if the mass of people would use the machinery got together by the pioneers, like the Tolpuddle Martyrs and old Tom Paine!’ He smiled, and added, ‘You see? Basically I’m just as old-fashioned as you, Gov’nor! At least, Rachel says I am.’

‘You and she seem to get along well enough,’ Paul said, more as a feeler than a statement, and Simon replied, ‘As people? Yes, we do; I respect her and she tolerates me, but she’s a Marxist and the trouble with poor old Karl was he never learned how to laugh.’

Somewhere near at hand trumpets brayed and ushers appeared to shepherd everyone to their seats. Paul regretted the interruption, knowing that in the scurry that followed the verdict he would have no chance to continue the discussion and it was so rarely these days that he had a chance to talk to the only one of his children whose intelligence he respected. Soon, however, he forgot Simon, being drawn, willy-nilly, into the vortex as the twenty finalists were whittled down to twelve, then seven, and then four, with Claire still in the running and his wife, daughter and daughters-in-law gibbering with excitement, and triumph still hidden behind the red and gold curtains where the survivors had retired to await the ultimate choice. The Pair, Paul noticed, although jubilant, were far more realistic than their womenfolk, Andy declaring that young Claire would forfeit the title on account of her age, Stevie trying to console his mother by saying, ‘Look here, she’s got this far, and holds the Devon title for a year! That’s something to be going on with, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not enough,’ Claire said, emphatically, ‘she’s got to win! She’s just got to win!’ and when Paul said, ‘Why, Claire? What’s so terribly important about it? And why is it so vital to you?’ the cold glance she turned on him reminded him uncomfortably of her recent moods. ‘It isn’t important to me but it’s terribly important to her! Why? Because it’s all she’s got, don’t you see?’ and to Paul’s astonishment Monica came out in full support of this astonishing verdict, saying, ‘I go along with that! I was a Claire, not as pretty maybe but with nothing to offer but a face and curves in the right places! I never had any real confidence in myself in a last year’s dress; no brains, no special skills, nothing but myself.’

‘And the pity of it is that it’s expendable,’ Claire added. ‘One loses a little of it every day after one’s twentieth birthday. Now a thing like this—public recognition I mean—is something one can look back on all one’s life without having to console oneself with a photograph album!’

As she said this, almost as though addressing herself, the cancer of the last year was suddenly revealed to him for he remembered how vain she had always been of her body, and her ability to keep pace with changing fashions, all the way from leg-o’-mutton sleeves and picture hats to the bandeaux and short skirts of the ‘twenties’, and the more feminine styles of today. It occurred to him then that she must always have thought of their partnership as something that owed very little to the shared adventures of three decades but hung upon factors like the weight of flesh about her thighs, the size and sag of her breasts and the clarity of her skin. Comprehending this for the first time in nearly a year he had an inarticulate desire to comfort her but at that moment the curtains swung aside and the Master of Ceremonies emerged with a slip of paper in his hand and announced, ‘The final decision of the judges, ladies and gentlemen . . . Miss Cheshire, fourth place, Miss Shropshire third place . . . ’ He saw Claire, then Mary and the others, rise in their seats and heard the Twin yelp with triumph. ‘Miss Kent, runner up . . . Miss Devonshire, Dairy Queen of England and Wales for the year 1934–1935 . . . ’

The orchestra crashed out and the applause stormed over their heads. He saw the other finalists file in, noting their glumness and pathetic attempts to smile as Claire was led to the central dais, moving with infinite grace, utterly composed as the silly little crown was placed on her head by last year’s winner, and beside him his wife looked so pale that he thought for a moment she was going to faint and caught her arm as trumpets blared and everyone rose to their feet, clapping. He said, with relief, ‘Well, there you are! She’ll have something to look back on after all!’ but the thought struck him that, at the age of sixteen, the salting away of memories was a macabre compulsion.

By the following day they had dispersed, the twins and their wives roaring away up the Great North Road, Simon, about some mysterious business in the East End and then to Euston for Manchester, Paul and Mary by taxi to Waterloo, with Claire left behind to stay with her daughter until Tuesday. At the last minute Schroeder, the Organising Secretary, came to them with a sudden change of plan. Arrangements had been made, he said, for the winner to fulfil her first public engagement at an Agricultural Fair, due to open in The Hague later that week but prior to that she had to be ‘groomed’, whatever that meant. Paul was anxious to get home. The harvest was late and in any case he and Mary had arranged to take part in a County Gymkhana but he would have waived Valley commitments if he had been persuaded that wife or daughter needed him. As it was, in the upheaval that followed the triumph, he was almost overlooked and when Claire said that she would like to stay on a day or two to help choose dresses, and that he would be bored by a two-day shopping expedition in the West End, he took the broad hint and said, ‘You don’t mind if I go back with Mary? I’m a droop when it comes to this kind of thing!’ she regarded him with her head on one side and replied, ‘You’re dying to get out of here and I must say you’ve been far more patient than I expected! Go along home with Mary and meet me on the three o’clock from Waterloo, on Tuesday. I can’t really leave her alone until she flies off and I have a feeling she’d sooner have me around than Mary!’

‘I’m quite sure she would,’ Paul said, ‘and I believe you’re getting an even bigger kick out of it than she is!’

‘Yes, I am,’ Claire admitted, ‘for it’s something I should have loved to have happened to me at her age, although I couldn’t have carried it off with her aplomb!’

‘I’m damned certain you could,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think your father would have stood for it for one moment!’

‘Neither would you! I can just see your face if I wiggled up and down in front of those latterday George Lovells in a tight bathing costume! Did you think of that old rascal when the judging was going on?’

‘Why yes, I did as a matter of fact,’ he admitted, surprised and pleased at this evidence of a return to their old-time jocular plane, ‘but I would have said it was the last thought to occupy your mind.’

She said, frankly but without looking at him, ‘It’s been a difficult time for you, Paul, and don’t imagine I don’t realise as much! But we’re over the hump now, I can tell you that! This has been a real tonic to me! Would you be interested in learning how, exactly?’

‘Yes, I would. Very interested indeed!’

‘Well, I suppose, up to the moment of young Claire winning the preliminary I was just plain envious—envious and resentful of their youth and high spirits, of the freedom they enjoy that we never had and of their good looks and expectation of life! I was even jealous of Mary’s tranquillity but now, well—now I’ve got the whole thing into better focus, just a matter of counting blessings I imagine! After all, we’re still solvent and in good health and Claire owes this triumph to the legacy of our health. But the really important thing is I’m still important to you! I’m convinced of that at any rate!’

‘Did you ever doubt it?’

‘Yes, both before and after John was born. Don’t ask me why but I did!’

‘I wonder what happened to all that famous Derwent commonsense?’

‘It evaporated the minute I knew I was pregnant. Maureen tried to explain it but she didn’t really get through to me.’

‘Or to me either,’ he admitted.

‘It’s partly a physical change, I suppose. I told her before I left that I’d try and put it on paper some time so that she could write an article for one of her medical journals.’

‘Don’t you do anything so damned silly,’ he said, ‘it’s one thing having a daughter displaying all her equipment in public, but quite another having one’s wife strip herself naked for the British Medical Journal! I’ll say good-bye to Claire and wish her luck,’ and he turned to go with a sense of enormous relief but as he reached the door he said, as an afterthought, ‘From now on it’s going to be us, Claire! They can bloody well fend for themselves, one and all! One thing Maureen said did get through to me—that the time we’ve got left could be the happiest years of our life. Did she say that to you?’

‘Yes and I didn’t believe her but I do now. That’s all that counts, isn’t it?’

‘It’s what counts with me,’ he replied emphatically and crossed the corridor to the room shared by the two girls.

Mary was in the lobby arranging about luggage but his youngest daughter was there and he was at once struck by her remoteness of expression which was something new to him, although she had always been a very self-contained person, far more so than any of his other children. She was so still and rapt as she sat by the window that she did not turn her head as he entered and he felt the curious embarrassment that had always plagued their relationship. He said, with assumed heartiness, ‘Well, Kiddo, you saw them all off and your mother’s bursting with pride! She’s staying until you take off at Croydon and I’ve come to wish you luck, I’m going home with Mary.’

The child looked at him as though he had said something she only half understood and again he caught the half-puzzled, half-anxious expression in her eyes, eyes a shade bluer than her mother’s and half veiled by long, golden lashes. He thought, ‘Well, here’s an odd turn-up! She isn’t as confident as all that now that she’s launched!’ and somehow felt closer to her than ever before, the shift prompting a protectiveness she had never seemed to demand of him.

‘Are you scared after all, Claire? If you are it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and if you want to talk about it I’ll listen.’

‘No,’ she said, in hardly more than a whisper, ‘I’m not scared, Daddy. I’m terribly excited but—’ and suddenly, against all probability, she seemed on the verge of tears so that he went across and put his arm on her shoulder, saying, ‘You can still back out if you want to! Nobody can make you go through with it. After all, it’s only a kind of advertisement, and apart from expenses you aren’t being paid for the job.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want that,’ she said, ‘I’d want to go through with, it, no matter what happens.’

‘But what could happen, Kiddo? Apart from pleasant things?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, uncertainly, ‘nothing, I suppose, but it’s queer—I had a feeling it was all—well—
bound
to happen, just the way it has! Just now, before you came in, it seemed—well rather
creepy
somehow. Does that sound stupid?’