The Novel in the Viola (43 page)

‘He’s a dish,’ she said, admiring the picture of Kit. ‘When’s he home on leave?’

‘Bet he’s a smasher in uniform,’ said Sandra, a stout girl with brown eyes and mousy hair dressed in a permanent wave.

I resisted the urge to tear the picture out of their hands. ‘He won’t be coming home. And if Mr Rivers is a bit short with you, well, that’s why.’

Maureen replaced the photograph and the chatter dulled for a moment. She gave a small sigh that sounded almost like disappointment.

‘That’s a right shame,’ murmured Sandra, struck by the waste of such a handsome young man and clearly feeling cheated out of a romance.

‘Yes. Every woman fell in love with Kit,’ I said, noticing with a smile that they still did. ‘It’ll be a squeeze in here, but I’m sure you’ll manage. Dinner will be served at seven in the kitchen. Please don’t be late. And if you would give me your ration books, Mrs Ellsworth will take care of them.’

The girls handed me beige ration books with military obedience, and then those who did not have to get ready for their shift sprawled across the double bed and the low camp cots set out on the floor.

‘And I must ask you not to smoke in the bedrooms.’

They promised me most politely that they wouldn’t dream of it, and I retreated to the doorway and watched as they set to, making up their faces and thumbing through Diana’s old copies of
Vogue
and this month’s
Woman’s Own
with eager shrieks. I saw Margot and me laughing as we prepared for a party, me eyeing her enviously as she slipped into gorgeous lace underwear or a pair of Anna’s handmade high-heeled shoes, neither of which would have fitted me. Withdrawing, I closed the door and made my way downstairs. As I buttoned up my coat, ready to walk down to the farm, Mr Wrexham appeared in the hall, holding out a large brown package.

‘This arrived in this morning’s post. From America, I believe, Miss Land,’ he announced, as delighted as if he had fetched it from California himself.

I opened the parcel to reveal a large cardboard box, stuffed with presents all carefully wrapped in shredded newspaper. I reached in and pulled out a vast bar of Hershey’s milk chocolate. Attached to the silver paper was a letter. Discarding the chocolate, I tore open the envelope.

Darling Bean,

I hope this package reaches you. We hear nothing in our newspapers except how terrible things are in England. Our newsmen have you starving in the streets with no stockings and nothing to eat but radishes and potatoes and worst of all – no music! I hope you like the records (if they’ve reached you unbroken). I am sure you said that Mr Rivers had a gramophone. This music is all the rage here. All the young things dance to it (and old things too – no one can help it) – it’s called ‘Jitterbugging’. It’s not Dvorak or Mozart or Strauss but do you know? – it’s swell. And you remember little Jan Tibor? Well, he’s here in America and he’s a conductor. He’s gaining a reputation. I’ve put in his first recording – he was always sweet on you, he’d like to think of you listening.

And, I was not sure whether to send it or not, but I found in a second-hand record store one of Anna’s recordings,
La Traviata
with the Vienna Philharmonic.

I delved inside the parcel, drawing out several records. In a plain cardboard wrapper, I discovered Anna’s. I couldn’t listen to it any more than I could read the novel inside the viola but I was glad Margot had sent it. One day, I would listen. My rummaging was interrupted by excited voices. I glanced around and saw half a dozen of the WAAF girls dressed in their uniforms, all ready to go on shift.

‘Oh! Records! From America,’ said Sandra, actually jumping from foot to foot, as she saw the package lying on the table.

‘May I?’ asked Maureen, reaching for the box.

‘Of course.’ I smiled at her and she pulled out a record.

‘Glenn Miller, Billie Holiday
and, oh dear, this one’s broken.’

I took it from her, holding the two snapped sides together so as to read the label: ‘My sister and I’.

‘Never mind,’ said Sandra. ‘It’s the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Frank Sinatra I want to hear. And look, it’s perfect.’

She held up another for me to admire.

‘Can’t we have a dance here?’ asked one of the girls.

‘Oh yes, please,’ added Maureen and Sandra, their faces shiny with hope.

I paused, glancing at Mr Wrexham, both of us wondering what Mr Rivers would say. There was a cry of delight and then an awed hush fell over the assembled girls as Sandra pulled a small cardboard tube from the box.

‘It’s Elizabeth Arden,’ she whispered, in reverent tones. ‘Cherry red.’

‘There’s been none in England for two years,’ murmured Maureen, and for an awful moment I thought she was going to cry.

‘Come on,’ said Sandra, fixing me with a hard stare. ‘You simply must have a party now.’

The WAAF girls were right – we ought to hold a dance at the house. There had been more laughter and brightness in a single morning in their presence than through the entire winter. Mr Rivers might grumble but it would do him good. And all those new things did deserve a bit of a celebration. Margot had even sent me four pairs of nylon stockings and a new set of silk underwear, all wrapped up in cream tissue paper. The paper was almost as precious as the luxuries themselves – packing paper, even in the finest stores, was now quite illegal. Last month Mrs Ellsworth caught the bus back from Wareham holding two kippers by their tails, having forgotten to take her own newspaper to wrap them in.

I finished Margot’s letter and had half-memorised it before I left to clean out the hens. As I sprinkled fresh straw around the clucking bantams, I recited it in my mind.

Playing makes worrying about Anna and Julian a little easier. I imagine that I’m playing for them. That you are all in the front row in some concert hall here in California or else we’re at Frau Finkelstein’s again and I’m giving a recital as you sit squeezed together on one of her overstuffed pink couches. The great-aunts are there too and trying to disapprove of my performing in public, but then, when I finish the Schubert, I look at Gretta and see she’s wiping a surreptitious tear from her long nose. Everything I play, I play for Anna and Julian. I know it’s nonsense but I imagine that they can hear me somehow, even if it’s only in their dreams. One day I shall play for you all in a great concert hall. When the British have won the war and we are all back in Austria again, I shall play at the Opera House. You will all be seated in a box, Anna in her arctic fox fur, pretty as ever, and Julian will be white haired and handsome, and you, Elise, shall lead the standing ovation! It will all be grand, and afterwards we’ll go to the Sacher for dinner and neither you nor Anna will tell me the bits I played wrong. For now, my only audience is Wolfie. The dog sits beside me while I play – if I shut him outside for a minute he whines and thuds the door with his nose until I let him in. I’m sure it’s because I named him after Mozart. I don’t believe that golden retrievers are music lovers in general.

I hummed snatches of
The Magic Flute
to the cockerel, and tried to imagine returning to Vienna. I was glad that playing the viola helped Margot. I wore my worry like an old woollen jumper; it scratched and irked me, but I pulled it on every morning nonetheless, finding it almost comforting in its familiarity. I did my best to imagine being without it, but I couldn’t.

It was the final lines of Margot’s letter that I heard over and over again. I tried not to think about them, to think of something, anything, else, but they echoed inside me like a distant voice on the wireless.

Write soon, my darling. And kiss your Mr Rivers for me.

Kiss your Mr Rivers . . . your Mr Rivers.
Margot was quite wrong. He was not my Mr Rivers. He was not anybody’s. I would not pass along my sister’s love to him like one would to a father. But she did not mean like a father.

After feeding the chickens, I trudged through the mud-steeped ground leading to the eweleaze. The rams had served the ewes during the winter and I expected the first lambs at the beginning of April. On the high ground, patches of frost lingered in the shade and a bank of primroses lay half-buried in ice. I hastened up the slope, grateful to be wearing my new slacks. Mrs Ellsworth had run them up for me to wear while working outside, and they were so much more practical than skirts or frocks. The material had been recycled from Kit’s old sailing trousers and lined with one of his silk shirts. Mrs Ellsworth had ceased to complain at my perceived lack of sentimentality, finally throwing herself into the ‘make-do-and-mend’ spirit with religious fervour. She listened to the
Kitchen Front
broadcasts on the wireless every morning without exception, and for a fortnight she insisted on grinding up the eggshells so as to recycle the grit for the chickens to peck at, until I persuaded her that there was no shortage of either grit or dirt in the countryside.

As I reached the top of the hill, Mr Rivers was already stuffing hay into slotted feed bins as sheep milled around him, bleating and pawing at the frozen ground. The ewes were big with lambs, and grunted with the effort of moving, grateful to tear at mouthfuls of hay. Mr Rivers surveyed them critically.

‘Not long now,’ he said.

‘No. About a month. Maybe less for the pure-bred Dorsets.’

He nodded and then pointed to a hunched shape along the ridge. ‘Lost one in the night. Bloody dogs. From the army camp, I expect. Must have been scared off or it would have spoilt the lot. Bloody lucky really. The other girls seem all right. Still, she was having triplets. Criminal waste.’

A ewe nibbled my fingers, hungry for salt. I pushed her away and started to refill the salt lick container, trying not to look at the mauled carcass sprawled twenty yards away.

‘Your sister sent you a package?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. And a letter.’

‘Any news?’

‘Not really. This and that. And she sends you her–’ I paused, reaching for the right word.
Regards
. Far too cold.
Best greetings
. Not even decent English. Ought I to kiss him from her? Margot was always so good at this. A kiss bestowed by her would be the perfect blend of tenderness and sisterly gratitude. I realised that I was colouring with embarrassment, and Mr Rivers studied me with an odd expression.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Yes. Margot sends you her . . . best.’

‘And send her my warmest regards when you reply.’

Warmest regards.
Of course, that was the correct expression.

‘Yes, I shall,’ I said, but I was thinking that if I ever kissed Mr Rivers, I wanted it to be from me, not my sister. I seized the container of salt and turned away so that he would not see my face.

‘Art’s got hold of some paint. I’m going to patch the barn this morning,’ continued Mr Rivers, helping me pour the salt crystals.

‘I’ll help, just as soon as I’ve checked the fence to see how the dog got in. I might walk down to the army camp, have a word.’

He gave a curt nod and then tucked my scarf back into my coat from where it had come loose, and brushed stray flecks of salt off the wool and from my cheeks. His fingertips were coarse on my skin.

‘There,’ he said with a smile, satisfied.

We’d fallen into an easy rhythm over the last months, working contentedly side-by-side. We didn’t chatter like the WAAF girls, or even talk as I used to with Kit. In fact we were mainly silent, but I liked his company. I liked it better than my own. He started to walk down the hill.

‘Don’t be long,’ he called, ‘I shall be glad of your help. And don’t let those army buggers give you any gyp.’

I laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I shan’t. And Daniel, I think we ought to have a dance up at the house. For the WAAF girls. It’s terribly dull here for them. I shall invite some of the “army buggers” too.’

Mr Rivers smiled. ‘Whatever you want, Alice.’

That afternoon, I felt rather pleased with myself. The officers at Lulcombe camp were delighted to be invited to a dance the following week. They also promised to discover the offending dog and shoot it. I felt no regret for the doomed animal, not after seeing the mutilated ewe – meat was scarce enough without such wanton waste. I hurried back to the house to collect my and Mr Rivers’ lunch as usual. The wind had picked up and the daffodils trembled beneath the lime avenue, while the taut barbed wire fence hummed a melancholy tune. My skin had turned red, battered by the cold, and I was looking forward to the prospect of warming myself by the kitchen range for a few minutes before venturing out on the windswept hill in search of Mr Rivers. I paused in the hall, unfastening my gloves, when I noticed one of the WAAF girls standing on the bottom stair, watching me. I hadn’t seen her among the others this morning, and I turned to her with a friendly smile, holding out my hand.

‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Alice Land.’

‘Yes. I know who you are,’ she said.

Instantly, I lowered my hand. ‘Juno.’

‘Yes. I didn’t think you’d be terribly pleased to see me.’

I didn’t reply. She looked well, dressed in her smart green uniform, strawberry blonde curls slick beneath her little cap. I despised her: elegant, perfectly at ease and superior. Then, very deliberately, she stepped down from the bottom stair. Since she was a good few inches shorter than me, when she spoke she was forced to look up at me.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘Just so sorry about Kit. It’s simply too awful. I don’t know how you bear it.’

‘Thank you.’

She gazed up at me with violet eyes, a shade softer than her sister’s, and I realised that they brimmed with water.

‘I don’t want your tears,’ I said.

‘Oh they’re not for you,’ said Juno. ‘Just because you got him, doesn’t mean the rest of us didn’t care frightfully about him too.’

Her snappish reproof made me dislike her a little less.