The Dust That Falls from Dreams (31 page)

‘A revolver? You still carry revolvers?’

‘Or an automatic. You have to. In case of fire. If you can’t jump and you don’t want to burn. If you can jump, you unbuckle and turn the plane on its back.’

‘You commit suicide?’ asked Rosie, more horrified by the breaking of God’s law than by the thought of the deed itself.

‘Obviously,’ replied Daniel coolly. ‘Oh, and another thing, Fluke was a complete balloonatic.’

‘A balloonatic?’

‘Nothing he loved more than pipping a sausage. Used to come back with his bus completely sieved, and not a scratch.’

‘They’re just sitting ducks, aren’t they?’ said Christabel.

‘Oh good Lord no. They have motorised winding gear. The Boches got them downstairs in seconds, and if you tried to follow, you got peppered all the way down. And they ring them with archie because they know a balloonatic like Fluke is going to turn up, and more often than not there’s a couple of scouts hiding up in the sun just waiting to pounce. It’s about the most dangerous thing you can do.’

‘How many did he get?’

‘Ten, I think. He’d come back with his fabric in shreds and holes through his struts. He’d be up there looking for balloons every time we got a delivery of Le Prieur rockets or Buckingham rounds. If you crashed in Hunland and the Huns found those on you, they’d shoot you on the spot.’ He saw their looks of puzzlement and explained. ‘Incendiary ammunition.’

‘What does someone like him do in peacetime?’ asked Mr McCosh. ‘What does someone like you do? You’re not the kind of young men who are going to put on slippers, are you?’

‘Fluke’s staying in,’ replied Daniel. ‘I’m thinking of getting out.’

‘I’ve got an idea, my boy,’ said Mr McCosh, taking Daniel’s arm and leading him out into the conservatory.

‘Daddy’s got another plan,’ said Christabel, smiling a little sideways at Fluke, and widening her eyes.

After tea Sophie sidled up to Daniel as he smoked out on the lawn. ‘Daniel?’ she said ‘Yes, old girl?’

‘Would it be frightfully imprudent if I asked you a little something about your friend Maurice?’

‘Do you mean impudent?’

‘Gosh, how would I know? Words are such slippitty-slidey things, don’t you think? I am terribly cacoeptical. Anyway,
what I want to know is this…’ and she whispered, ‘Is he married?’

‘Sophie, what about Fairhead?’

‘I’m not asking for myself, silly. It’s Ottilie.’

‘Ottilie? Well, well. Wife and two children, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh,’ said Sophie sadly. ‘All these years of being hopelessly devoted to Archie…I really think she’s taken a fancy to this Fluke of yours.’

‘She’ll be all right,’ said Daniel. ‘Just you wait and see. One day she’s going to surprise us all.’

From inside the house there came the sound of glass shattering, and then Mrs McCosh’s voice raised in anger. ‘Let’s go back in,’ said Sophie, ‘I think there might be some fun going on.’

In the hallway they found Mrs McCosh berating her husband. ‘You’re just like Mr Toad!’ she cried.

‘I have only one craze,’ replied Mr McCosh. ‘Mr Toad has a great many, one after the other.’

‘How many times have I asked you – no told you – not to play golf indoors? Now look what you’ve done!’

‘I will get a new chandelier, my dear, an even nicer one.’

‘You’ve destroyed our best chandelier! How can we possibly afford another one? Look at all these pieces! There’s even one on the top of that portrait of your father!’

‘I was only taking some practice swings, my dear, as I usually do.’

‘And you’ve frightened the cat! He’s up on the pelmet again! And you’ve worn a patch in the carpet! It is threadbare from your divots! This must stop, my dear, or there will be me to answer to!’

‘My dear, I have never had to answer to anyone else quite as much as I answer to you. And I’ve never hit the chandelier before.’

‘That is a driver in your hand! What man of any brain would choose to take practice swings indoors with the longest club in the bag? You should never swing anything longer than a niblick inside the house! Where is your common sense?’

‘I had to abandon it, my dear, when I had the good fortune to marry. I was wise before I wed, and now I am otherwise.’

Sophie nudged Daniel with her elbow and whispered, ‘Best leave them to it. I’ll ring for Millicent and tell her to get her dustpan and brush.’

W
hen the telephone rang, Millicent was not in the vicinity to answer it, and as Rosie was at the foot of the stairs on her way to the drawing room, she picked it up herself. It was the kind where the mouthpiece is fixed to the apparatus on the wall, but the earpiece has to be detached and applied to the ear. It was an impractical design because it made no allowance for the height of the speaker, and this one had been mounted at Millicent’s height, since it was her job to answer it.

Rosie said, ‘Eltham 292,’ and a faint and distant voice said, ‘Is that you, Rosie? Rosie?…’ and then the connection was lost. Rosie depressed the hook several times, but it was not restored. She stood quite still for a few moments, and then replaced the earpiece. She felt a cold tremor run up her spine, and the urgent need to sit down and be alone.

She went to the morning room and sat at the window seat, remembering when she had been waiting for the cats’ meat man, and Daniel had turned up on his combination instead. Caractacus came by and chirruped as he sprang on to her knee.

She stroked the cat’s head absent-mindedly as she questioned herself about the voice on the telephone. It had been a bad line. Did it really have an American accent? Her head began to hurt, as if her brain had turned to lead. She felt hopeless. To whom could she speak about this? Fairhead, perhaps. She had resolved not to go back to Madame Valentine. She certainly could not tell Daniel. She might be able to tell Ottilie and Christabel, but she knew what they would say.

Just then the cats’ meat man went by, full of strength and ebullience, with a basket of horseflesh on his head, bawling his latest verse in his loud Irish voice

‘Cats’ meat, cats’ meat,

Make your cats fat meat.’

Everything was unbearably strange. The whole world was out of kilter. Rosie put Caractacus down and ran to get her coat and scarf and hat, and hurried down to the Tarn.

Sitting on the bench where she had once sat with Ash, and more recently with Daniel, she looked out over the water and thought about that poor old dead dog. She wondered what had become of the Romany girl. How strange that this small lake should have played so great a part in all of their lives. It had been everything to them: a place of recreation, a place for confidences, for being in love, for grieving, for contemplation. It seemed to have a consciousness of its own, oblivious to those who stood on its banks and walked its path, as if it knew something that they could not. Rosie wondered if, in a hundred years’ time, the Tarn would still be the same, with someone just like her beside it, revolving similar thoughts.

H
amilton McCosh was sitting motionless at his desk before the window, looking out over Court Road. Caractacus was sitting in the middle of his blotter, bolt upright like a statue of Bast, making work impossible, and he was playing with the cat’s ears. Outside it was raining heavily, and the tradesmen were hurrying by wearing shining mackintoshes, and sou’westers. The fingers of his left hand rested limply round a glass tumbler containing a dram of his favourite Bladnoch. He was, as it were, trying to listen to his own body, to attend to its machinery. He had been having pains in his chest fairly frequently, and thought it unlikely to be indigestion. That would not explain the bouts of dizziness that could fall upon him at any time. He was expecting Dr Scott to call in at any minute. There was a tap on the door, and Ottilie put her head round it. ‘Daddy, can I come in?’ she said.

‘Hello, lassie. Is it teatime?’

‘No, I just wanted to talk to you about something, now that Fairhead’s asked you about Sophie.’

‘It’s wonderful news, isn’t it?’ said Mr McCosh. ‘Couldn’t be better. I’m very glad about it, I’m bound to say.’

‘Daddy, I’ve had an idea and I wanted to see what you thought of it.’

He looked up at her. ‘Fire away, lassie.’

‘I’ve been thinking. It’s an horrendous expense to have two weddings one after the other.’

‘That has also occurred to me. I’d have to sell a lot of shares. It’s extremely worrying. Naturally I’d have to do them proud, and one wedding can’t be seen to be better than the other. Very worrying indeed.’

‘Well, it’s hard to say this, but one wedding is bound to be much happier than the other, isn’t it? I mean much more joyous. It’s going to be terribly obvious to everyone.’

‘I fear you’re right, Ottie bairn. But what can be done about that? We’re stuck with it.’

‘That’s the thing, Daddy. We’re not stuck. We could have a double wedding.’

‘A double wedding! Now there’s a thought! I believe you might be on to something. It’s not as if it’s never happened before.’

‘Well, if you think about it, it would be largely the same guests coming to both. And the novelty of it would be rather thrilling. And…well…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, the fact is that Rosie will be so happy for Sophie and Fairhead that it will make the day much happier for her too. She’ll get caught up in all that happiness, don’t you think? And that’ll make it happier for Daniel. It’ll help to give them a better start.’

‘I do wish Daniel and Rosie weren’t going ahead with it. It can’t come to any good.’

‘I think it could work,’ said Ottilie, ‘but it all depends on Rosie, doesn’t it? She’s got to cut the cord that drags the ghost of poor Ash along with her wherever she goes. But a double wedding’s a good idea, don’t you think?’

‘We’d have to talk to everyone and see what they think,’ said Mr McCosh.

‘I’ve already done it,’ said Ottilie. ‘Everyone rather likes the idea.’

‘Gracious me, Ottie, you could have been a diplomat. Or in business.’

Ottilie smiled and said, ‘Actually, I haven’t suggested it to Mama yet. I’m sure she’ll kick up about it, so I haven’t dared. But I do have a plan, if you’d like to hear it.’

Accordingly, Hamilton McCosh approached his wife as she made up her face before dinner, and was peering intently into the mirror. Her reaction to the idea was one of horror. ‘Why,’ she cried, ‘this has certainly never been done in my family before! It can’t possibly be! A thousand times no!’

‘A thousand times, my dear? That seems an unduly large number, when only a few hundred will do.’

‘I will not be mocked!’

‘Perhaps not, my dear, but I do have to tell you that two weddings would be unmanageably expensive. It couldn’t possibly be done without personal economies.’

‘Personal economies?’

‘Well, I’ve been scratching my head about this, and I’ve realised that we could do two separate weddings if you were to forgo your dress allowance for eighteen months.’

‘My dress allowance?! For eighteen months?!’

‘The sums work out very neatly, my dear. I’m sure you could bear the sacrifice, for the children’s sake.’

‘Well!’ she huffed. ‘I never…well, I never did!’

‘I’ll leave you to think about it,’ said her husband. ‘Now I must go and change for dinner.’

After dinner, when Mrs McCosh left the room to ‘powder her nose’, Hamilton McCosh said to the girls, ‘I think we might have pulled it off.’

‘I told her that the daughters of a Scottish duke had a triple wedding to three Montenegrin princes last year,’ said Christabel. ‘I think she was impressed.’

‘You lied to her?’ protested Rosie, amused but scandalised.

‘Only a little white lie.’ Christabel held up her hand with the forefinger and thumb half an inch apart ‘A tiny little white lie only this big.’

Sophie came over to Rosie and put her arms around her, kissing her on the cheek. ‘It’ll be the best day of our lives,’ she said. ‘I’m so pleased. I wish we could all be married at the same time. All Eltham would be agog. We’d be the gazingstock of Kent.’

‘Has anyone asked Daniel?’ said Rosie, over her sister’s shoulder, a little horrified. ‘We can’t possibly decide this without consulting him first.’

Ottilie put her hand up. ‘Exchange of telegrams. I said “
DOUBLE WEDDING QUESTION MARK HOW ABOUT IT QUESTION MARK
” and he sent back “
WONDERFUL IDEA STOP SO PLEASED NO QUESTION MARK STOP LOOPING THE LOOP STOP
.” ’

‘Honestly, Ottie,’ said Rosie, ‘what would we do without you?
You’re an absolute treasure, and we all really do love you.’

‘What on earth did we do in the days before telegrams?’ asked Christabel.

H
amilton McCosh had invented a new gadget called the Puttperfecto, which was not very different from a carthorse shoe. The idea was to place it on the carpet and use it as a target for putting practice. In its latest incarnation it was like three horseshoes stuck together, so that three people could use it at once, from different directions. He, Mrs McCosh and Christabel had been trying it out in the drawing room, with considerable success despite the disruptive attentions of Caractacus, and Mr McCosh had decided to try to sell it to the Army & Navy stores, who produced their own line of golfing equipment. He had had an idea for another improvement, in the form of a springloaded plate that would send the ball back, in the event of a direct hit.

He was therefore in very good humour when he went upstairs and came across Millicent, in tears, and employing a duster as a handkerchief. When she saw him she got to her feet, exclaimed, ‘Sorry, sir,’ and ran off down the stairs.

‘Dear me,’ said Mr McCosh to himself, and he went downstairs to the kitchen, expecting to find Millicent there. Instead he found Cookie, who was making Norfolk dumplings amid much sighing and puffing. ‘Good evening, sir,’ she said.

‘And a very good evening to you, Cookie. I must say, the kitchen smells very nice.’

‘As it ought, sir,’

‘I perceive you are in a huff.’

‘I am vexed, sir.’

‘Vexed, Cookie?’

‘It’s poor Millicent, sir.’

‘Poor? Has poverty descended upon her, in one of its many forms?’

‘Indeed it has, sir.’

‘And in which of its many forms has it descended upon her?’

‘Far be it from me to question the mistress,’ said Cookie righteously.

‘It has descended in the form of Mrs McCosh?’

‘It has, sir.’

‘Manifesting in what manner?’

‘She’s fined Millicent fifteen shillings, sir, over a matter of woodworm.’

‘Woodworm? Gracious me.’

‘It’s the dressing table in your bedroom, sir, the mahogany one. It’s got woodworm.’

‘I fail to see how this impacts upon the poor distressed Millicent.’

‘The mistress says that it wouldn’t have got woodworm if Millicent had been polishing it properly.’

‘That is true, is it not, Cookie?’

‘Nobody polishes a table on the underneath, sir.’

‘And that’s where it started?’

‘Yes, sir, but it’s got into the legs.’

‘That’s a valuable piece,’ reflected Mr McCosh.

‘Well,’ continued Cookie, ‘the mistress got in someone to look at it, and he says it’ll cost fifteen shillings to treat, and the mistress is taking fifteen shillings off Millicent’s wages, seeing as it’s Millicent’s fault. In her opinion.’

‘And not in yours?’

‘It’s not my place to question, sir. But nobody polishes a table underneath, sir, like I said.’

Millicent earned twenty pounds per annum, and Hamilton McCosh performed a swift mental calculation. ‘That’s nearly two weeks’ wages,’ he said.

‘The mistress said that seeing Millicent gets board and lodging, it ain’t much of a loss, sir, but it is, sir, ’cause what the mistress don’t know is Millicent’s got a sick mother what can hardly move any more, and that’s where she sends the money, sir, and that’s why poor Millicent is inconsolable, sir, on account of her mother what can hardly move.’

‘You realise that the master of the house cannot overrule the mistress of it when it comes to domestic matters? It’s very bad form, as I’m sure you know. One of the unwritten rules.’

‘Maybe it is,’ said Cookie sceptically. ‘But the master’s the master
in my opinion. And the mistress isn’t quite herself these days, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, ever since she got caught in that raid. I don’t believe she’d have dreamed of doing this in the old days. And she wouldn’t have got taken in by someone saying it would cost fifteen shillings.’

‘I dare say you’re right, Cookie, I dare say you’re right. We all have a lot to put up with. More than before, at any rate.’

Hamilton McCosh went to his study and took his cash box from the bureau. He removed six half-crowns, and then returned the box to its drawer. As an afterthought, he took it out again, unlocked it, and removed an extra florin.

He found Millicent in the morning room, still sniffling as she cleaned out the grating on her hands and knees. ‘Ah, I’ve found you,’ he said, ‘looking very like Cinderella.’

The maid got to her feet and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, leaving a streak of ash across her face.

‘Something has been troubling me, Millicent,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir,’ she replied.

‘Yes,’ continued Mr McCosh. ‘I have been fearful for some time that your Christmas bonus, was, shall we say, a little ungenerous?’

‘Oh no, sir, it was most generous, sir.’

‘Indeed it wasn’t. It has been a trouble to my conscience for some months, and I am anxious to rectify it.’

He put his hand into his pocket and removed the small, sealed brown envelope into which he had placed the six half-crowns. He then reached into his waistcoat pocket and brought out the florin, which he put into her hand. She gazed at it in wonderment. ‘Very happy Christmas last year, Millicent,’ he said, and walked quietly away. Just as he got to the far end of the hall he heard her small cry of joy as she opened the envelope and saw what was inside.

He went into the drawing room and looked out over the garden. As always his eye settled on the mound of Bouncer’s grave in the orchard, and he smiled. ‘Good evening, you good old boy,’ he said softly.

It seemed such a long time ago that one used to give a sick and dying old dog to the head gardener, to be hanged. Nowadays,
reflected Mr McCosh, one took them to a vet for a fatal injection. Some things change for the better, he thought, and felt a pang of guilt about Bouncer’s undignified death. Still, that used to be normal, like so many other horrible things.