The Happy Prisoner Read online

  Evelyn gave Oliver a grateful glance. “D’you think the jointed snaffle, Vi, or that bar thing with the little wiggly bit for his tongue to play with?”

  “Not sure,” said Violet, and they moved away, talking gravely, like people at diplomatic lunches.

  Stanford Black came in soon, in a uniform that did not look like six years of war. He was a Squadron Leader, who had been stationed near Shrewsbury for the last year. He was not very tall, with a slight crinkle in his hair and a little moustache like two light strokes of a paintbrush. He had wandered in alone, for the front door at Hinkley was always open, but Mrs. North was hot on his heels, without her apron, fussing round him, pressing him to things, enquiring after the health of himself and his people, whom she had never seen. Her American blood was always stimulated by visitors. He chatted cheerfully and easily to Oliver, liking the sensation of looking down instead of up to a man.

  “When are they going to let you out, Stan?” Oliver asked.

  “Oh, don’t call him that,” said Heather, coming in with an effect of colour and distant sleigh-bells. “It sounds so common.”

  Oliver thought he was rather common. He did not like him very much, but he seemed to have a certain illicit glamour for Heather.

  Mrs. North spied first Violet, then Evelyn, then the dogs, and was horrified three times with increasing intensity.

  “But I’m still hungry, Aunt Hattie,” Evelyn protested.

  “Come and have some chocolate.” Oliver called her over and gave her a thick bar.

  “Not your ration—” she breathed, awestruck.

  “No fear. I’m not all that generous. It’s what your father sent from New York. You should have it.”

  “I hope he brings a lot over when he comes to fetch me. That’ll be the only thing I shall like about going there. Chocolate and chocolate all day long. And banana splits.”

  “You’re not old enough to remember banana splits.”

  “Aunt Hattie told me about them. She used to have Knickerbocker Glory, too, in the olden days. I think that’s very rude.”

  Violet had been shy with Stanford when he first came in, but she was even shyer when she came back, after an interval that was evidently not long enough for her to wash her face or comb her hair, in a badly fitting blue dress and low-heeled brown shoes. She felt wrong in skirts and she knew she looked wrong, and she sometimes stood in front of the mirror and wondered why, but there seemed to be nothing she could do about it. Mrs. North had done her best with her when she was first grown up. With shrugging dressmakers, she had planned campaigns on Violet’s hulking, flat-chested figure, but she had ruined all her clothes by screwing them into balls when she flung them off, which was as often as possible, to get into the comfort of slacks or an ancient tweed suit with leather on the elbows. She had once had a permanent wave, but the result, when modishly set, was so like Douglas Byng that it had never been tried again.

  When the war came and she started to work for Fred Williams at the farm, she felt justified in having her hair cut short, and it was obviously not worth wielding the powder-puff with which she had sometimes floured her face to please her mother. Heather had occasional spasms of trying to “Make something of Violet”, and the elder sister would stand patiently like a horse being harnessed while the younger tried clothes on her and hauled at her waist as if she were strapping up a suitcase. She would purse her lips while Heather applied lipstick; and lower her lashes to be mascaraed, peering in the mirror without being able to see the result.

  “Oh, Vi!” Heather would meet her half an hour later. “You’ve washed your face.”

  “Had to, before anyone saw me.”

  “But that’s the point. I want people to see you like that. Oh, what’s the use?” she would moan, and leave her alone for another few months.

  Stanford Black looked with interest at Elizabeth and made a few knowledgeable remarks about hospital. He always knew something about everything, and always had a friend who had done whatever anyone was talking about. Oliver was quite glad when they all went in to dinner. He looked forward to the evening gathering, but he still found that more than one person in the room at a time soon made him tired.

  His mother came in with his soup, on a lacy tray-cloth with a few wild orchids in the little cut-glass vase. He held it under the lamp to admire them. “From the wood?” he asked her.

  “Mm-hm. I had Heather pick me some when she was down there with the children this afternoon. I know how you like them.”

  “I do. Much better than the hothouse sort pinned upside down on a black-velvet bosom.” He grinned. “Remember that huge spray you had for Heather’s wedding? Green ones. Foully opulent in war-time.”

  She clasped her hands in her waist and narrowed her eyes to see into the past. Her pince-nez glinted as she shook her head slowly. “You bought me them. It was your first leave. I planned the wedding round that.”

  “Not round Heather, of course,” Oliver murmured, beginning to drink his soup.

  “Well, she could get married any time, couldn’t she—with John safely at home? I remember his father kept trying to make me have it earlier—some nonsense about the boy’s grandmother going to Scotland—but. I won.” When she smiled, the corners of her mouth disappeared up into her fat cheeks. “She didn’t leave John much money, anyway, which was a score off old Sandys, though they could have done with it. Heather might have been able to have a Nanny. I get very worried about her, darling, d’you know it?” She said this about every five days. “She’s so jumpy and excitable. I’ve been wondering lately if it might not be her glands. Too much thyroid or something.”

  “Not with her chubby shape.”

  “Don’t be silly, dear. Heather isn’t a bit too fat. She’s just right. I know you like ’em skinny, though. How is Anne, by the way?”

  “Oh, all right, I think. I heard from her the other day, but she writes such scatty letters, you can’t tell what she’s up to.”

  “Mm.” Mrs. North considered him, shifted her gaze six inches beyond his head and in her mind’s eye pictured Anne’s nonchalant face on the pillow beside him. “Well, I must go, or my dinner will be all haywire. I’m not taking soup these days, so I left them to it.”

  “No soup? This is something new.”

  “I sometimes get scared of putting on weight as I get older. It runs in my family, you know.” The old boards creaked under her as she went out.

  Elizabeth brought in his next course. “Mrs. North’s carving, so she let me bring this in,” she explained. He looked at her to see whether she were making a joke, but her face was quite impassive. She watched him ladling salt on to his plate. “Are you allowed so much salt?” she asked briskly. “Dr. Trevor said there was a slight tendency to oedema.”

  “Oedema, my foot,” said Oliver. “The one they threw into the pig bucket at that.” He relented when she was halfway to the door and said: “How’s the dinner? Enjoying yourself?”

  “Very much, thank you.”

  “Think you’ll like being here with us?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I shall, thank you.”

  It was going to be hard going if she did not relax a bit. The girl was buttoned up as tightly as a leg in a gaiter. Shy, probably, like that chap at Aldershot whom they all thought so rude until he confessed to somebody after the fourth gin that he nearly died every time he had to come into the Mess. But Elizabeth seemed too self-possessed to be shy.

  .…

  After she had kissed him good night, his mother came back again in her dressing-gown, as he knew she would, to ask him what he thought of Elizabeth. It was an apricot-coloured dressing-gown, very smart, with satin lapels, full skirt and wide sash belt. When she leaned forward you could see the dark expensive lace at the top of her nightgown. The clothes she used to buy before the war were good and most of them had lasted. She wore a pair of mules with swan’s-down pompons, rather shabby because she wore them for cooking the breakfast, and a length of pink tulle was tied in a bow round her head.
She had finished doing her hair. She had been figuring for quite a long time before she came in.

  “She certainly does seem a very nice person,” she said again and waited, as if half expecting him to contradict her. “Don’t you think so, darling?”

  “Oh yes, awfully. Takes a bit of getting to know, I should think.” Elizabeth had put on her white overall again when the washing up was finished and had made him very comfortable before she left him for the night. Persuasion leaned open against his crooked-up knee; his heart was beating quietly and unobtrusively, instead of in perceptible jerks, which made him gasp, as it sometimes did; a half-eaten bar of “ZAZZ, the Health and Energy Giver, made from finest milk chocolate, maple syrup, condensed milk, pecan nuts and 1% Dextrose, at our model Sweeteries in Detroit, Mich.” lay in its paper ready to hand.

  “She’s a good nurse? Tell me honestly, if there’s any little thing—”

  “She seems perfect so far.”

  “Yes, so she does about the house. I must say it’s going to be a great blessing to have someone who’s quick and efficient. Of course, I only let her do the routine things. I wouldn’t trust anyone but myself to do the cooking and things like that.”

  “You think no one but you can boil an egg, don’t you, Ma?”

  “Well, you know I like to think that.” She smiled indulgently at herself, and then, seriously: “And honestly, I sometimes wonder if they can. Remember that time Sandy hard-boiled all the breakfast eggs when I had migraine? If the hens hadn’t been laying so well at the time I’d have killed her.”

  “Why don’t you get yourself some proper domestics?” Oliver asked. “Pension off old mother Cowlin and get a decent cook and a maid, instead of half killing yourself to run the house?”

  “You know I don’t mind what I do to keep this house going. And we’ve got to save a bit if we are going to live here, until whoever decides the income tax comes to his senses. It’s not a cheap house to run—bless it.” She laid a caressing hand on the ledge of strap-work carving which ran round the dark panelling. “And we have to have Cowlin and the boy for the garden. I’m not going to let that go to seed. Anyway, you can’t get cooks or maids, so what’s the use of talking? We shall get on fine as we are, if it isn’t going to be too much for Elizabeth. I asked her tonight if she thought she could manage, and she just said: ‘Perfectly, thank you,’ in that funny, prim little voice.”

  “She’s not very communicative, is she?”

  “There’s something about her I’m not quite happy about.” She fidgeted with things on his bedside table. “She seems perfectly content and she’s very polite—a bit too polite for this house—but she’s so kind of—detached. Doesn’t seem to want to make friends.”

  “Perhaps she’s shy,” Oliver suggested, taking a bite of ZAZZ.

  “I don’t think so. She has a lot of poise. No, I asked her to come and play Vingty in the drawing-room after she’d finished settling you, but she said she’d rather go to her room. I thought she was probably tired, but when I went in quite a while after to see if she had everything she wanted, she was just sitting in the dark looking out of the window. I thought we might have a little chat, but she wouldn’t. Just stood up and answered me yes and no, so I gave up.”

  “Funny girl,” said Oliver.

  “I think perhaps I’ll just go in once more before I go to bed and see if she’s unhappy about anything. I like everyone to be happy in my house.”

  “I should leave her alone, Ma. After all, she’s only just come. She’s probably asleep by now, anyway.”

  “Would you, darling? Well, you’re usually right. I think I’ll go to bed then. I haven’t read the paper yet. Oh, Oliver, must you eat that sickly stuff after you’ve done your teeth?”

  “Yes, I must, I’m afraid.”

  “I shall write Bob not to send you any more. Let me get you the toothbrush and mug then, before I go.”

  “Oh, Ma.”

  “All right, don’t say it. I’m not going to fuss.” She gave him one of her scented kisses. “Don’t read too late, dear,” she said from the shadows by the door. She could as soon have left him for the night without saying this as a priest could have omitted the Ite, missa est at the end of Mass.

  Half an hour later, he had just thrown out the two top pillows and turned out the light, when she opened the door, and was going out again when he called: “It’s all right. I’m not asleep.”

  She saw the white shapes of the pillows on the floor. “Oliver! Your pillows—you know you’re supposed to have them all in.” She came and propped them behind his shoulders, not very comfortably, but he would throw them out after she had gone.

  “You’re very bad. I’m glad I came in. I just wanted to tell you that I did look in on Elizabeth after all and she’s sleeping quite quietly. So sweet, with the moon on her face. She’s really rather a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. So-so,” murmured Oliver. He knew that if he said yes she would lie awake half the night planning what would happen if he fell in love with his nurse.

  He could not get to sleep for a long while after she had gone. He saw the light on the lawn from her window click out, and much later, Heather’s light went on and he heard her moving about overhead, while he lay with the breeze on his face, breathing the faintly scented air and turning his mind over idly. He did not worry about not being able to sleep at night. He had all the day to sleep in if he wanted to.

  Chapter 3

  Hinkley was a small manor farm, four hundred years old in places. Oliver’s room, like most of the ground floor, was panelled in dark oak, with two blackened old beams crossing in the centre of the ceiling. It was not self-consciously period; it had never been restored or preserved or quainted up with spinning-wheels and wrought-iron lanterns. Since Tudor times, people had lived in it and furnished it according to the fashion of their day, but incongruities, as long as they were comfortable, did not spoil the atmosphere of the dark little parlour. Its chief charm was its air of sheltered relaxation and it could stand any furniture that was content to do its job without calling attention to itself. That tall tapestry armchair by the fireplace, for instance, looked nothing until you sat back in it and found yourself in a nest, coddled against draughts and disturbances. The footstool to which you instinctively raised your legs was a square of tough red leather, stretched tightly between stubby trestles. It was not beautiful, but the fact that it had stood up so well to the weight of the hundreds of feet which had scarred its brass studs had earned it its fireside pitch.

  The fireplace itself, a Tudor arch of the sandy Shropshire stone, with an iron basket inside and a chimney in which David could see the sky as through a telescope, was the only part of the room that had been tampered with. It had been half the size when the Norths came to Hinkley, with a painted mantelpiece, and a black hooded grate baring its teeth between glazed tiles. Mrs. North, far more attuned to Old England than her husband, had done a lot of tapping and listening and prodding her cushiony thumb into the plaster. When he came home from work one day, Mr. North found that she had torn away a whole panel of wood and crumbled off enough plaster and hairy felt to make it simpler to go on with the demolition than patch it up again. With cries of triumph, she had encouraged the men who pulled the Victorian camouflage down on to dustsheets, and when at last the wide hearth was exposed, wrote many letters to the States and one to the local paper in strains that would have done justice to the finding of a Roman bath, complete with skeletons. Mr. North did not say that it used twice as much coal, nor that he had preferred the wide mantelpiece to the ledge of beam which was too narrow to hold his photographs. When the fire was first lit, he did not complain of the smoke, but opened all the windows and sat in a draught, hoping that it would escape before it disappointed Hattie. Eventually, a lead cowl was fixed inside and the fire now burned well, consuming great quantities of logs from the osier basket, the refilling of which gave Cowlin an opportunity to see Oliver. One of the times when Oliver longed most
to get out of bed was when the fire needed poking and he wanted to kick the logs and send a fountain of sparks up the chimney.

  On the left of the fireplace was the door into the hall, which had heavy iron hinges and an old wooden thumb-latch. On a little shelf above it rested two Quimper peasant plates which were only taken down at spring-cleaning and never failed to surprise Mrs. Cowlin with the amount of dust they had accumulated in twelve months. On the other side of the fireplace, the room ran back into a shadowy little corner with cupboards built into the panelling and shelves for Mr. North’s sober textbooks which nobody opened now. Oliver’s books stood between the Dolphin book-ends he had had at Oxford along the back of the solid refectory table under the east window.

  All the features of this room combined to make it dark. Oliver’s bed itself held the light until the end of the day, but his pillows and the hump of the bedclothes cut off some of the daylight from the room; the small-paned east window was low and shadowed by the roof, which came, right down at this end of the house like an overhanging eyebrow. The ceiling was low and, for no apparent reason, on two levels, which corresponded to the fact that you had to go down two steps from the corridor above into the south bedrooms.

  But there was nothing gloomy about the darkness of the room, nothing sinister about the shadows which gathered there. It was a darkness like the cosiness of a cottage parlour, with a little window made even littler by lace curtains and potted plants. Oliver loved the sun, but he almost resented the freak summer of this October, which was postponing the time when his room would be lit every evening by his lamp and the fire,

  and he would go to sleep to the jigging pattern on the ceiling of the old nursery guard which Mrs. North insisted on putting there at night.

  Oliver liked his room. He had always liked this room, long before it became the cocoon inside which, like a grub, he must stay until his body was ready to try its wings in the outside world. As a boy of ten, when they first moved to Hinkley from London, his bedroom had been the odd little room up it’s own short flight of stairs, halfway between the first floor and the attics. It had the only west window in the house above the ground floor, a miniature oriel, supported outside by sloping timbers. House-martins used to nest in the angle between the joist and the wall on one side. They would never build in the other side, although he used to climb up the pruning ladder to bait it with bits of wool and felt. Back to this little room he had come from school and from Oxford and, not quite so regularly, when he was feeling his feet in London and Paris as the cocksure young representative of a firm who made wireless sets that looked like clocks, bookcases, cigar boxes—like anything, in fact, but wireless sets.