A Kind of War Read online

  PAMELA HAINES

  A Kind of War

  Contents

  Part 1

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part 2

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  PART ONE

  Love is a kind of warre; Hence those who feare,

  No cowards must his royall Ensignes beare:

  Robert Herrick, ‘On Love’

  Chapter 1

  ‘Your teeth are like the stars – they come out at night…’ A joke of Christopher’s, his half-term greeting; and she supposed, at eleven, a satisfying remark to make to a grandmother.

  A milk float outside whined. Its whine had been part of her dream then it had woken her sharply, painfully. That was what she hated about old age, this sudden total waking. Any day was too long that began at six with the delivery of someone else’s milk (or was it just – any day was too long?). Now there was the sound of a dog barking, throaty, persistent, on and on. Someone else’s dog.

  This is London, she thought, in the dusty pointless year of 1973. She felt, feared, the tightening of her right leg, about to cramp. Quinine – had she taken it the night before? Both legs felt knotted, nowadays looked knotted. Legs that had once been perfect (she’d been glad, was still glad, of the return to long skirts. She had gone into them at once). The whole of her now a disaster area. Only good bonework, that remained. And at least she was not fat: so many slim beauties ended their days plump cushions – billowy not willowy. Her hair too. In a way that had been preserved. She was put in mind suddenly of the mammoth’s mane in the museum in St Petersburg – held for how many millennia in frozen Siberian earth? It had captured her imagination as a child.

  Ah then, she thought, why didn’t I go to St Petersburg that time – when I had the chance – that time in 1912, when the Harcourts invited us? Four weeks: every sort of introduction. Unbelievable that I said ‘no’. But it would have been in Theo’s company – how tedious, I thought then. It would be even more so now. We cannot choose our brothers (and if we could, would I have chosen Con?). But I thought at the time: I have hundreds more chances. I was immortal then.

  Milk bottles rattled, a crate clattered, then the whine again as the float started up. She tried to lie still but she had lost the art. Knew too that ahead of her lay the slow painful unstiffening of her hip. Soon she would have to get out. Her bladder no longer waited these days. She tried once more, forced herself to lie still.

  But she had become obsessed with St Petersburg, with the road not taken. It would be with her now in the bed until nine, until her daughter-in-law brought up her breakfast. (And what sort of treat is that? she asked herself. Teresa is quite insensitive to my wants, needs, my constantly patiently explained requirements.) She would not even see Polly today: Polly is my life line, she thought; she is more than Teresa or Barney deserved. (She is certainly all they have managed.) Christopher is a pleasant enough little boy – but with an adopted child one can’t know.

  The dog started up yet again and she drummed her fingers furiously on the eiderdown. Her legs knotted – with rage it seemed. Her bursts of anger these days frightened her. It was as if some controlling agent had gone, some censor no longer at the gate.

  And if I had gone to Russia – then that would have been four weeks less with Con. Was I not perhaps thinking of that, even then? Now, I don’t want really to go – I want only the choice again…

  A frustrated cry, too late? Time seemed to be accelerating: all those years in between – gone, raced by. Why then do my days drag so? How in God’s name can there be two sorts of time?

  I used to be such a doer, for so much of my life – after everything went wrong. Margaret Willingham, alias Muff: a woman of action. In those Yorkshire days – what ever got done that I hadn’t a hand in? It was always I who organized.

  Someone was trying to start up a motorbike: the engine just about to turn, then not making it.

  What shall I do with today? Oh my God, how shall I pass the day!

  When the alarm went Polly turned it off without moving her head, without really opening her eyes. A crammer’s – or coaching establishment as they liked to call it – was nothing to wake up for, not an excitement to make her leap forth.

  Her bed was too small – or she was too long. When she woke up her feet were always pushed out at the end or her hair up against the headboard. A restless sleeper (dormitory days and the bed all churned up, ‘look at Polly’s bed’, tangled sheets as if there’d been sexy fun and games all night).

  Probably it was stupid anxieties about tests. Thursday was always test day at Hatter’s. What made it such a fucking thorough crammer’s was the thoroughness of the tests. I don’t get enough daylight, she thought suddenly, I’m like one of those plants, my face all white. I wouldn’t like their bill for fluorescent tubes – you’d think a place like that, and Knightsbridge too, could have something up at ground level. And what a name … Hatter’s. (Was there ever a hatter’s there? Or even an Earl Hatter, Lord Hatter, Mr Hatter? They picked the name out of a hat, Patrick said … and that’s about the standard of his jokes.)

  Still, if you want ‘A’s and your school have had enough of you – then it’ll do as well as anywhere. It’s having to keep going till six though … and at the pace they set. We get to live for lunch time. Patrick and I must be known in The Grove. And then at four, that feeling desperate and shooting out for espressos and Danish pastries – all right for me who’s so spindly. Some though … But I haven’t really made friends there, except for the beautiful Patrick. What would I do without him?

  Just a little more sleep, she thought. Turn over a little. Too much thinking about Hatter’s, so drifting, dozing: into a dream. She is late; it’s night and the place is empty – all the lights burning. Papers, books everywhere. She and Patrick sit at desks far far away from each other. She said to him then, ‘I wish I loved you, I’d love to love you.’ He said airily, ‘All it needs is a little effort…’ But in the dream she was tired, tired, tired of it all. She said, in the dream: T think I’m going to have to wake up.’

  She sat up suddenly and saw that it was seven forty-five. ‘O God – I’m going to be late …’

  Today was the day she was going to get it right: she, Tessie Willingham, would by nine a.m. have tasks, one, two, three, all done.

  But a lot of time always got wasted arranging to save it. The paradox was: to get it all done in order, some sort of order was necessary first.

  The first step was to leave Muff’s breakfast tray almost complete before going upstairs. Then she’d only to see to the coffee and smooth The Times; fear of her mother-in-law was worse than carrying out any foolish chore.

  She would make the bed first. When she left it and then guiltily covered it over at five in the afternoon, it was a temptation all day. It cried out to offer more sleep. Everything about me, she thought, is like that: just one more cake, just another five minutes, just have a cigarette … She thought now, I won’t smoke till I’ve got it all done. But without a cigarette she felt not a complete person, almost a limb missing. Twenty years ago and newly married and suddenly finding herself even more socially inadequate than she’d realized – what do I do with my hands? Then at some party trying that and, surprise, it helped.
Now it was just a thirst, all the time.

  She lit up. My God it’s all hopeless. She saw herself at turned forty-three, not yet pulled into recognizable shape – physically, emotionally, morally, intellectually. The lot. As she climbed the stairs, she thought, I’d move more quickly if I lost some weight. She went off to weigh herself, just to see how bad it was.

  It was very bad. And already she’d wasted time. When she thought how many women worked, had a full time career; and all she had to do was take up her mother-in-law’s tray, do some cleaning and cooking (and not too much of either), work for some ‘O’ levels, and care for a daughter and a son and a husband who departed early for the City and didn’t appear again till seven.

  She made the bed, rinsed the basin and bath, tidied the towels. She remembered then a sports jacket which – a week ago, a month ago? – Barney had said should be cleaned; also some shoes he wanted repaired. She got them both out ready to take in the afternoon.

  Before tidying any further she went to fetch the transistor. It was always easier to do dull repetitive work (what else was she capable of?) with noise in the background. She twisted the dial and got a Waldteufel waltz; it sounded sickly and far away – then fading into fuzz it was interfered with by speech. German. It seemed to be a quiz of sorts but she couldn’t make out any of the questions. There was a lot of chattering and laughing; the programme was over. ‘Wie Sexy sind Sie?’ said the announcer. ‘Not very,’ she replied sadly, glad she hadn’t been in the quiz.

  Then she caught sight of the bedroom clock. Ten minutes later she knocked on Muff’s door.

  A peremptory ‘one moment, please.’ She knew what it was. It might have been better to stand outside and wait for the ormolu clock to strike nine. Yet she’d set the kitchen clock by Radio One.

  ‘I think your clock is a little in advance, Teresa.’ Enlarged knuckles beat on the linen sheet. Her own fine linen was not all she’d brought. The room – originally a second drawing-room – had once seemed enormous: in far-off days Tessie’d thought of making a studio of it. She was going to learn sculpture, learn oils; let other people use it. A music room for Polly and friends. Now it looked tiny. Crowded. Odd in someone like Muff who must in her time, as all her generation, have reacted against Victorian fussiness and excess. It was as if faced with x amount of space and y amount of goods there had been no choice.

  Hardly an inch of spare wall. Photographs, portraits, water-colours-many of them of Lough Corrib (always referred to by Muff as ‘Corrib’ – never the name of the house or village) where she’d spent so much of her childhood. Tiered miniatures of her grandparents, her father – killed in a railway accident – her plain, kind mother. Photographs of herself throughout her seven ages; of her husband Cecil, young then growing older; of her daughter Prue, and of Barney; Polly at all stages; people Tessie had never identified; one only of Muff’s brother Theo (tall pinched impossibly dry Theo, who had given them the house). An enormous portrait, dwarfing everything else, of her younger brother Con. Solemn brooding thirteen-year-old, he seemed to Tessie never to see her as she came into the room.

  Occasional tables crammed with ornaments; the huge brass-horned gramophone which was never played – except for Polly as a child; the pole screen with its Berlin-work panels; the giant tallboy, its lower drawers full of clothes no longer worn, and higher up, of letters, programmes, brochures, private treasures. The davenport at which straight-backed she sat to write letters of complaint to Harrods (alas that she seemed to have no friends left now, or had offended those she did have).

  ‘It looks cold – but quite clear,’ Tessie said, drawing the curtains back. She brought the tray over: ‘What did you think of doing today?’

  Muff froze. ‘What concern is it of yours how I spend my time? I cannot – Such intolerable intrusions – Have I no right to a private life?’ The ormolu clock struck nine. ‘You have surely been to your service?’ she said suddenly.

  Tessie searched wildly: the day, the month, the date?

  ‘To Mass, Teresa. Today. I have always had an excellent memory for these things. The first of November – All Saints’’

  Answer her with spirit at least. ‘I can’t, don’t want to go running half across London. I’ve homework to catch up with –’

  This was ignored. It was not in any case, she knew, taken seriously. How could it be? (‘Little Teresa, not very clever, but such a pleasant gel. Yes … delighted … Barney has chosen well – what would be more inappropriate than a blue stocking? Barney is well able to do any thinking required …’)

  ‘I hold no brief for your religion, Teresa, but at least the one thing I respect about it – respected your family for – was fidelity to obligation. A holiday of obligation as I think you call it – it obliges you, Teresa. An evening service?’

  ‘Polly and I were going to hear Barney sing – this choral thing, concert. I mentioned it –’

  ‘I shall happily use your ticket, Teresa. I think that is the end of the matter.’

  She had begun eating. ‘These grapefruit are extraordinarily acid, Teresa. Are you using barrows to buy your fruit?’

  ‘It’s that chain place, I forget its name. They’re South African.’

  ‘Thin skinned are preferable. The Florida pink, if in season of course. Perhaps you could remember when next shopping?’

  ‘Christ, awful, Polly. I mean – buried alive. How’s that for a nightmare?’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about it, not when I’m eating, it’s lunch, Patrick. Anyway I get dreams too, I dreamed about you.’

  ‘There’s hope then. But this, it could have been real, it felt real. Knocking like that on the box. I mean if you came round and knocked and no one heard –’

  ‘Terrible thing I read ages ago – a girl dying having a baby, it was a very hot climate so they buried her quick – it was a sort of crypt place and when they looked in it later she’d been running round, tearing at things, frantic … I’d rather be finished off properly. Chopped up in little bits –’

  ‘You do talk crap. Little bits … What about some more grub?’

  ‘Not hungry. I wish it was summer again – I like sitting out in Beauchamp Palace watching the world go by.’

  ‘When that happens we’ll be nearly through. Know what? Hatter’s may be one of those places parents pay fees by results – not that I’m going to let it get me down. School didn’t. I’m a failure of the public school system. Unlike you and your convent –’

  ‘They didn’t rattle me. I won every round. I left before they discovered I was laughing at them.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to have had much effect on you. Except that I can’t get you into bed.’

  ‘Someone’s listening –’

  ‘So what. If their own conversation’s so bloody boring they have to tune in to ours.’

  ‘Oh – you. I feel all spaghetti when I’ve sat with you.’

  ‘I’ll finish your beer. Free tonight? Any night?’

  ‘I’ve this concert – the one my father’s in the choir.’

  ‘Let me imagine a merchant banker singing. Very upright and correct – I’ve this idea for an operetta, no, a musical number, all to the tune of “We’re a Couple of Tramps” – “Cornhill Bankers are we, Debasing the currency, In November, December and – ”’

  ‘Stuff it – they’ll have you for slander. Anyway he’s got a gorgeous voice.’

  ‘May you enjoy it all then. Sounds to me more Bach than bite.’

  ‘Patrick:’

  ‘OK, OK. Read any good graffiti lately?’

  ‘That means you have –’

  ‘Yes, just now, in here – it’s castration day. “Stand a little closer it’s shorter than you think …”’

  ‘Patrick, Christ, get a bend on it – look at the time …’

  Tessie’s afternoons (if she could keep awake) were set aside for working at ‘O’s. It had seemed to her that, as she’d missed out, this was the minimum luggage she would need before embarking afresh. Or rather th
at was what she’d been told. ‘Get yourself something on paper,’ Barney had said, ‘and then we can discuss, possibly, the faint probability of your actually being able to do something …’

  She had not dared aim earlier than a year this December although she had begun classes already. Five subjects: and she wasn’t sure which she was worst at. She thought that what she would really like to do was teach adult illiterates to read and write. And when all this is over, I will.

  She set the ringer for forty minutes to do history. She had a list of Congresses after 1815-what they had achieved: she would read it carefully again and then try to jot down what she remembered because at classes that was how they’d told her to study. After that she would have a German session (thirty years ago, she’d been second in class for that).

  Three minutes into the Congress of Vienna and she was wondering if she wouldn’t have been better to do some cleaning. Plainly Sandy wasn’t coming. Help from Sandy was anyway a fluid arrangement, although usually they cleaned together, mornings or afternoons – as and when.

  Life without Sandy was unthinkable. As they sat chain smoking together she thought that often. ‘Sandy the Sin’ as Barney called her. ‘She wasn’t born,’ he’d suggested. ‘She just dropped off the back of a lorry…’ Everything had become if not easier at least possible since her arrival, miraculously almost, eleven years ago: when adopting Christopher had thrown everything out of gear.

  Appearing from nowhere it seemed – standing in the doorway of the kitchen, cigarette in mouth, mousy hair flopping, face like a small boy’s. Outside up on the pavement, an ancient pram with her baby – the father had made off or he was around and didn’t want to know: Tessie hadn’t heard which at the time. Terry, nine months, was sitting up making ‘Mum mum’ sounds. Looking at Christopher – lying awkwardly in Tessie’s arms, spluttering over the bottle teat – Sandy had said, ‘If I’d known, my love. He only just come off last month-I’m all flat again, look. I’d have nursed that one. Plenty for two. A quid a day – I’d have done it. Or ten bob and my grub …’