The Innocents (6 page)

2

Even before these started, however, there was another and quite important breakthrough. One morning when I returned from a solitary shopping round, what was my surprise to see Antoinette, whom any unfamiliar face had hitherto so alarmed, squatting peaceably in the garden with a total stranger.

Mrs. Brewer caught me at the gate to explain it was a Miss Guthrie, which was why. (I am used to Mrs. Brewer's shorthand way of speech: why the young woman had been allowed in to wait for me.) But what was a patronymic to Antoinette? I quite rejoiced that it meant nothing, and that of her own accord, and even in my absence, she had accepted a stranger as not necessarily menacing …

Janet Guthrie was of course not a complete stranger to myself. She was the young woman I'd sat beside at Tam's funeral, and I recognized her at once. Now she was taking a holiday in Suffolk, on foot, with a rucksack, rubbing brasses. It didn't surprise me. Obviously all Guthries—as indeed all Scots—were gluttons for education, so that even a holiday had to have its cultural aspect: a rucksack equating the traditional bag of oatmeal. However when I warned that our own church had no brasses of interest at all, she pleased me very much by saying she knew it, but had thought she'd pay me a call.

“I looked for you after the funeral,” said I, “but you'd vanished.”

“I saw you talking to the Rab Guthries,” said Janet. “They're the rich Guthries, like Tam; we're the poor ones.”

Since she seemed to regard this as sufficient and total explanation I didn't press the point—but what a complicated clannishness the words revealed! From her tone they might have fought on opposite sides at Flodden. I remembered also there'd been no mention of a Janet Guthrie in Tam's Will; still he'd put her through Veterinary College; so she came to his funeral …

All this time Antoinette sat cheerful and placid, actually upon, and digging her heels into, the rucksack; and as it suddenly occurred to me that she and our visitor were, however tenuously, blood-related, I identified her to Miss Guthrie as Rab and Cecilia's daughter Antoinette, and explained how it came about she was living with me in Suffolk.

“I hope I'm not making her shy?” said Janet. “So far she hasn't said a word.”

Quite with an air of putting her oar in, “Vermin, tureen,” pronounced Antoinette.

“Now you've heard her whole vocabulary,” said I.

Janet took this with such calm, I wondered whether she'd perhaps known another child like Antoinette; but if she had she didn't say so, and with good manners I appreciated let the matter rest.

Over the table—for of course I kept her to lunch—we had a most interesting conversation about her work as a vet, and the small house she'd found to live in just as independently as I did in mine, though even more quietly; for her practice was in the wilds of Caithness, where it was well to have bees to tell any news to, said Janet, if you wanted to keep the use of your tongue! But she was obviously flourishing there; admittedly with so many men away it had been comparatively easy to set up; and at first there'd been some slight anti-female prejudice. “But I wore it down!” said Janet cheerfully. “It took me a year or so, but I wore it down!”—and now she felt quite established.

I liked Janet Guthrie very much, and told her that whenever she was in Suffolk again she must come and have another meal with me. At that she suddenly cocked a sandy eyebrow and grinned.

“To be truthful, a meal was what I had in mind!” said she.

I didn't blame her, even, or because, she'd accounted for the best part of a boiling-fowl. I was still sorry when she went.—I particularly appreciated her behaviour over the incident of the rucksack. We had left it in the garden; Antoinette, allowed to get down before coffee, over which Janet and I chatted on a little, had emptied everything out and got inside herself. Janet Guthrie gently yet firmly (as she might have handled a young beast) hauled her out by the scruff and then patiently repacked a pair of pajamas, three or four pairs of socks, a textbook on diseases in cattle, a sponge-bag, a light mackintosh, a writing-pad and a first aid kit.

I was sorry to see her go, and even sorrier that she didn't come back; but let me proceed to Antoinette's riding lessons.

3

Our local riding stable is run by Honoria Packett, of whom personally I shall say little. I have never liked horsey women, and Honoria is moreover jocular—her loud Ha-ha! all too accurately imitating the sound of trumpets. But she managed her riding school very well, and even though it was now, owing to wartime restrictions, reduced to a string of children's ponies, they were reassuringly sturdy and well-shod. A further advantage was that with no adults' hacks at hire, she would now collect a child at its door, to be paced sedately on a leading-rein before gaining the open moorland or heath, and so came each Tuesday and Friday to collect Antoinette along with the three Cocker children.

I shall never forget my first sight of Antoinette on pony-back. It was a Shetland, the baby's mount. To begin with, such was her instant delight and affection she hugged it round the neck almost to the point of throttling; a pony being larger than a frog, she hugged it all the harder. Honoria detached her, I must say quite gently, and then lifted her into the saddle, and set her feet in the stirrups, and led her on the leading-rein; so quietly, I, on foot, easily kept up with them past the church and then up onto the heath.

The young Cockers were all older than Antoinette, also more experienced. “Now trot!” ordered Honoria. Off the three tittupped in a wide, evidently familiar circle, not bunched together but keeping at a proper distance so that Honoria could scan them individually for backs straight and heels down. Evidently they passed muster, for after about ten minutes—

“Now canter!” called Honoria.

The change of rhythm was like that from a jig to a waltz, and achieved, at least to my own inexpert eye, quite beautifully.—But not so to Honoria's. “John, you're letting Mustard break!” she shouted, to the youngest Cocker. “Rein in and start again!” Alas, John reined in so abruptly he lost a stirrup, and as his siblings (I fear contemptuously) gave him a wide berth, Honoria instinctively abandoned Antoinette to trot up to him.

Whereupon Antoinette, or perhaps rather her pony, decided to canter too. As if bored by so much walking, and then standing, the little beast, with Antoinette on his back, neatly nipped into place behind the two elder Cockers, and cantered after.

Antoinette at least didn't fall off. She hung on, it must be admitted, at first by his mane. But the second time round it was to the saddle she clung, feet feeling for the stirrups. “All halt!” shouted Honoria, herself dismounting and running to catch Antoinette's bridle and lead her back. “Terribly sorry!” she panted, as soon as they were beside me. “It shouldn't have happened, and I'll see it won't happen again. But she's certain got guts, your little dumbo!” neighed Honoria.

I always found her offensive. Antoinette's riding lessons were nonetheless a success. In the first place she enjoyed them, and in the second she for the first time established a normal relationship with other children. It remained slight, the young Cockers just said “Hello” to her, but after the fourth or fifth lesson Antoinette was saying “Hello” back, which I felt an important addition to her vocabulary. The Shetland's name was Pepper, so Antoinette learned that too. There were now four words she could pronounce perfectly: vermin, tureen, pepper and hello.

And suddenly, months after Janet Guthrie's visit, she surprised me with the far more difficult vocable “rucksack”; so then there were five. I strung them together to make a proper sentence for her:
“Hello; in my rucksack I have vermin, pepper and a tureen,”
and Antoinette learned it off and repeated it apparently with all the pleasure I myself should have felt in being able to repeat a chorus-ending of Euripides, which as yet I could not.—None of the texts from my father's bookcase had been much use to me, requiring as they did a fair knowledge of Greek already. I had difficulty in even identifying a chorus-ending from Euripides on the page. However the next time I was in Ipswich I found a modest elementary handbook, and began from the beginning with my alpha-beta.

That the young Cockers for their part, though accepting and tolerating, never took much notice of her, was rather an advantage. As I have said, anything new needed to be taken very slowly, with Antoinette, and young Mrs. Cocker had no reason in the world to apologize to me for not inviting her to birthday-parties.

It was still a sign of Antoinette's difference from other children that she had no conception of a birthday. To most children, birthdays are of such cardinal importance, almost the first question one asks of another is how old are you? Antoinette was in fact now six, but perfectly unaware of it, and even I might have lost count but for the birthday presents arriving each year from New York—and then indeed, owing to the war, often months late.

4

Cecilia otherwise wrote punctually, describing how busy she was with Bundles for Britain—(she organized concerts and balls for them)—and always ending with a few lines for Antoinette, such as,
“My precious, your mummy misses you so much, she thinks of you all the time,”
which messages put me in something of a quandary. Though Antoinette couldn't read, I might have read them to her; she still wouldn't take in any meaning, having no conception of a mother. I was no usurper: Antoinette's relation to myself, I believed, and was happy to, was essentially that of a young rabbit to a lettuce—source of food, shelter, and general point of repair. In the end I simply suppressed the messages altogether.

But soon a worse quandary arose.
“Isn't it surely time Tony wrote a letter to me?”
complained Cecilia.
“Tell her she must be a good girl and mind her book, so she can write to her mummy!”

Antoinette could no more write than she could read; but how to explain why—involving as it did the child's whole predicament—by letter? Not there to witness her daughter so obviously thriving, Cecilia must have been thrown into deep (and as I believed unnecessary) distress. She might have imagined a little idiot. So at last I decided to employ a subterfuge. I clasped Antoinette's fingers round a pencil, and guided them to trace in capitals DEAR MUMMY I HOPE YOU ARE WELL LOVE AND KISSES.

I had intended to make her sign,
Antoinette
, but though the ploy began as a game she soon tired of it, and was wriggling to get away at WELL. However Cecilia was apparently satisfied, for she didn't raise the point again.

Antoinette's father never wrote to her at all. He was obviously even busier than Cecilia, and I imagined better realized the inutility. I didn't blame him. In Mr. Hancock and Doctor Alice he had left the best agents he could to watch over his daughter's well-being under my roof. He couldn't know Doctor Alice departed for London—whence in fact she never returned; she lost her life in one of the last bombings.

So did Rab Guthrie lose his life in the war. In the summer of '44 Cecilia had graver news to report than a row of seats unsold at a Bundles for Britain concert: that she was a widow, her poor darling Rab having literally worked himself to death. I could well believe it; he'd always struck me as a worker, and I had seen what pressure the war could put on just a pig-man, let alone an industrial chemist. In a way I quite mourned him—particularly because he'd never seen his daughter on a pony. Cecilia for her part (she wrote) felt such an appalling sense of loss, her only hope of avoiding a nervous breakdown was to throw herself more than ever wholeheartedly into Bundles for Britain; that is until the war ended, and she could at last seek her only possible true consolation by coming back to collect Antoinette. Though it might be difficult to get an air passage quite immediately, she had several useful connections.

Even at the moment of reading such sad news, the word “collect” struck me unfavourably; it is a parcel, some inanimate object, one collects, not a child. But perhaps I was oversensitive; and with Cecilia's postscript,
“Perhaps no need to tell Tony?”
I thoroughly agreed. If Antoinette had no conception of a mother, no more had she of a father; and one learns to mourn soon enough.

So I kept the news to myself.

In the meantime we enjoyed such another exceptional spell of fine weather, Antoinette grew brown as a berry as we lived day after day in the garden. The very sunniness seemed to call for extra treats: extra strawberries, for instance, extra staying-up-lates to see the moon rise. Even Mrs. Brewer was affected; I remember her once taking it upon herself, at midmorning, while I sat knitting and watching Antoinette, to bring me out a glass of sherry—she who had never handled the decanter before. “Go on, haven't you earned it?” said Mrs. Brewer—I cannot imagine why; I still think it just because the weather was so fine. Even the old fig tree at Woolmers bore to ripeness three out of seven fruit, of which the Admiral (always up early), had one, and Jessie (of necessity up even earlier), the other two. Mrs. Brewer in relating this added that she was fond of a fig herself, she always considered a fig quite a treat—which in an obscure way made me appreciate all the more her bringing me out a glass of sherry.

I sipped it, made it last, with I confess great enjoyment. I had never seen my garden look prettier with alyssum and snapdragons, nor my artichokes handsomer: it was the moment when their huge cobalt-blue thistle-heads were at the very peak of blueness—though to say “moment” is to do the plant an injustice. There is nothing flash-in-the pan about an artichoke; they would swagger in full glory in a week or two more.

5

The war was already ending. At last it ended. The bonfire lit on the heath, even if several ration books were tossed into it all too prematurely, nevertheless symbolized the triumph of light over darkness. I was particularly happy that Antoinette, whom I kept up to see the glow at least (the occasion so historic), wasn't frightened at all, only surprised and pleased. Of course she was used to quite spectacular sunsets—
see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament
—but never before had seen the heath where she rode her pony suddenly and inexplicably ablaze.