The Happy Prisoner Page 5

  This ground-floor room that was now his bedroom had been his father’s library and study then. Mr. North had been a house agent. He had always been a house agent; he was a man who stuck like glue to anything on which he once embarked. Someone had told him that nobody could be a success who had not studied Real Estate in America, so, as he was a modest man who was always ready to believe that other people knew better than he did, he had gone to America. There he had met the plump and smiling Hattie Linnegar, best waffle maker for her age in Philadelphia, who had known quite soon that they ought to get married and had no difficulty in bringing it about. Soon after Violet was born, the two years’ grace which his English firm had allowed him being expired, he had come back to London to go on being a house agent in exactly the same way as before he went to America.

  He was a man who did not easily assimilate new ideas. He was non-porous to the changes of the world, and lived among them without absorbing them. Being country-bred, he had never absorbed London, and so, when the manager of the North Midland branch died, it was Mr. North who offered, without pushing himself, to go to Shrewsbury.

  The Norths had never worked the land at Hinkley. They had always rented the farm buildings and most of the property to a bad tempered man who had a stroke in the rick yard, and after him to Fred Williams, who had been to an agricultural college and had progressive ideas. As a boy, Oliver had wanted to be a farmer, but he grew away from the desire. Mr. North was quite ready to believe that his son knew better than he about not wanting to be an estate agent and had remained until the day of his death uncomprehending and slightly dazed by the job into which Oliver had slipped through one of his Oxford friends.

  “Do you remember, Ollie, when this room was Daddy’s study? What did he study, I wonder, when he shut himself away in here? He can’t have been writing his book on Shropshire Seats all the time, because there was hardly anything to show for it when he died.”

  “He probably wanted to get away from us.”

  The two sisters were sitting in Oliver’s room after dinner. Heather, in one of her qualms that she was not doing enough for Oliver, had brought in her mending, and Violet, looking in for a dog she had mislaid and sensing a promise of intimacy and comfort in the lamplit room, had stayed. She had put a cushion on the floor and sat with her head resting against the bed, her legs in a trousered position that was not doing the shape of her skirt any good.

  “His desk was under that window.” Heather bit off a thread, nodding towards the east window which looked out on to the rose garden, with the yew hedge and tennis-court beyond.

  “Wasn’t,” scoffed Violet. “It was between the fireplace and the wall. That table’s always been under that window.”

  “Don’t be more ridiculous than you can help,” said Heather, whose opinions were not tempered by the fact that she was invariably wrong about things like this. “I can see his desk under that window. And he had all his little pots of cactuses and acorns and things on the window-sill above it.”

  Violet snorted. “You are a futile ass.” Like her old clothes, she clung to the epithets she had acquired when schoolboy magazines were her favourite reading. “That was in London, in the dining-room. He never had his pots indoors here. What d’you think greenhouses are for?”

  “He did.” Heather, getting cross, sewed faster, pricked her finger, said “Damn”, and shook it, saw a spot of blood on the baby’s nightgown, said “Damn” again, rolled up the nightgown and stuffed it in the work-basket, took out a vest and made a face at it, selected a piece of wool and a needle that was too small, sucked fiercely at the wool, scrabbled for another needle, threaded it, sighed and started to darn with jabs. The mutter with which she had accompanied these actions rose to the surface. “How could you know, anyway?” she asked. “You hardly ever came indoors except when you smelled food. He had his desk under that window. When you came in at the door, you could see the back of his head, with that bald patch he used to brush the hairs across.” She darned in silence for a moment and then added challengingly: “That table was in this window where Oliver’s bed is now.”

  Violet let out a loud hoarse laugh, kicked her heels in the air and thumped them down on the floor. “That’s a good one! That table—this window— Oh, that’s rich!” Her tanned face became suffused with convulsive mirth.

  “What’s so funny about that? Don’t rock against Oliver’s bed like that, you jackass, you’ll hurt him. I don’t care what you say, that table was in this window, wasn’t it, Ollie?”

  “It wasn’t even in this room,” said Violet, prolonging her laughter beyond the limit of her amusement, and coughing. Sometimes, if she were having a good time with a joke, she would laugh until she became black in the face and choked. “Tell her, Ollie.”

  “What? Oh, I don’t know.” He had hardly been listening to what they were saying. He was lying looking out of the window, letting the familiar crescendo act as a background to his thoughts. His sisters’ arguments had been a background to his life ever since Heather was old enough to say “shan’t” and “isn’t”.

  They were both wrong about the table. He knew quite well that it had stood in the middle of the room, because he used to sit at it occasionally to fill in the stamp album which it pleased his father to see him keep up, but he had learned long ago not to interfere or take sides. It only prolonged the argument, which would otherwise peter out eventually in favour of another which one hoped would be less boring. His sisters’ squabbling dated from kicking the furniture nursery days. It had increased in intensity and shrillness as they reached adolescence and dropped off slightly as Heather grew up, acquired more interests outside the family and came to accept Violet as something that could not be helped, like an act of God. Either because she was at home less, or because she said it less, her exasperated cry of “Oh, Vi!” rang less frequently through the house. Lately, however, she had reverted. The sight and sound of her elder sister was like a rash which she had to scratch. And like a rash, the more she scratched it, the more it irritated. Mrs. North had to resurrect her nursery voice: “Let your sister alone!” because when Violet was goaded she became farouche and moody and would not come to meals and it was inconvenient to have her raiding the larder of tomorrow’s lunch after everyone had gone to bed.

  After the argument about the table had died down, Violet said (it was not always Heather who provoked the quarrels): “Why do we have to have that Black man to meals so often? Dinner on Monday and tea again today. Don’t they feed him properly at Ockney? He gives me a pain.”

  “You give him a pain, more likely,” retorted Heather. “You hadn’t washed your hands for tea and that horrible dog of yours slobbered all over his trousers. I thought he was very good about it, considering dog-spit never comes off.”

  “He’s pansy,” said Violet.

  “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  Violet guffawed again. “That’s a good one!” Heather darned faster than ever, her kissable mouth clamped like the two halves of a shelf. Violet lurched upwards and sideways, took a book at random off Oliver’s table and began to read, holding it an inch from her eyes.

  Heather kept darting irritated glances at her and eventually burst out: “Why don’t you wear your glasses? No wonder your eyes are getting worse.”

  “They’re not.”

  “They are. That’s why you knocked over that glass at dinner, and upset the salt. Even you can’t be as clumsy as all that. I know you hate yourself in them, but what’s it matter what you look like? If they’re helping your eyes, I mean,” she added in a half-hearted attempt to disguise what she obviously meant. “Don’t you think she’s silly, Ollie?” And when he refused to be drawn, she rounded on him. “Oh, don’t be so mild. You lie there so serenely, like some blasted saint—it’s enough to drive anyone mad.”

  “I thought you liked saints,” Oliver said. “Catholic ones, anyway.”

  “Not in the home.”

  “What would you like me to do?” he asked. “S
hout and scream and have a heart attack?”

  “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean that. Forget it. I’m a pig.” She put down the vest and fumbled in her sleeve for a handkerchief, sniffing. Violet looked round, interested, and Heather was able to recover her equilibrium by saying: “You’ve got cigarette ash all down the front of that blouse. How on earth do you manage to get in such a mess?”

  When Elizabeth came briskly in, it looked like a peaceful family scene. “Excuse me, I’m so sorry to disturb you,” she said, and was going out, but Oliver called her back. When she switched on the centre light, the family scene was disclosed as both sisters looking cross and Oliver with shadows under his eyes and his pillows slipped down so that his head looked as if it were dropping off.

  “I’ve been hoping you’d come in,” he said. “I’m damned uncomfortable.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me?” said Heather reproachfully. Violet did not say anything. It was an accepted fact that she was no good in a sickroom, and she would sooner wash up the glasses than touch her brother. Once when she had come in by mistake when Elizabeth was doing his dressing, she had been invited over to have a look. She knew they had thought her churlish for taking one glance and hurrying away as if she were not interested, but she was ashamed to let them see what the sight of his stump did to her.

  She was still very shy of Elizabeth, who was so deft with her hands that she made Violet drop more things than ever. She would have liked to make friends with her, for she had no real friends except Evelyn and Joan Elliot, the square and hairy dog girl at the kennels in the village, but she did not know how to begin. She had shown Elizabeth round the farm, and Elizabeth, although she had obviously lived all her life in towns and thought a heifer was a breed of cow, had seemed to like it and had shown a polite interest in the workings of the grass-drying plant, made incomprehensible by Violet’s explanations. Oliver had heard her offer to take Elizabeth riding.

  “Thank you very much, but I’m afraid I don’t know how.”

  “Teach you if you like,” Violet had thrown at her. Elizabeth had said that would be very nice, thank you, and there the matter rested until Violet could find the words to suggest it again. She was not sure whether Elizabeth wanted to be taught to ride, and on thinking it over, she was not sure whether she herself wanted to risk Brownie’s mouth.

  She scrambled up now as Elizabeth approached the bed, mumbled good night to her brother and went off with her skirt rucked up at the back, to see if there were anything in the biscuit tin.

  Heather also wanted to be friendly with Elizabeth. She welcomed anyone new. But, as she had said to Oliver: “She’s so unapproachable. You feel if you could chip off some of that polite plaster casing she walks around in, you might find a real girl underneath, but honestly, I’m beginning to doubt if there’s anything there. I’ve tried to get together with her, but she won’t let her stays out one notch.”

  “No girls’ gossips?” asked Oliver.

  “Gossip? She doesn’t know the meaning of the word. I’ve been into her room and asked leading questions about all her photographs, but she shut up like a clam as if she thought I were being nosey. So queer. Most people will talk for ever about their relations—especially nurses. Remember Sandy’s cousin Arthur in the Merchant Navy? God, how I suffered.”

  She picked up her work-basket and stood now, feeling useless, watching Elizabeth critically as she pummelled pillows and drew sheets taut. “You must think us an awfully helpless family,” she said, “not being able to look after our own brother ourselves.”

  “I don’t see why,” said Elizabeth. “Acute heart cases need very special treatment. They should really be nursed in hospital.” This was the first time she had vouchsafed even so indirect a criticism since she came to Hinkley. Oliver and Heather exchanged glances. “That’s one for you, my lad,” said Heather, her crucifix swinging forward against his chin as she kissed him on the forehead, and went out.

  “Oh dear,” said Elizabeth. “I do hope Mrs. Sandys didn’t think I meant to be rude. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “All the same if you did,” said Oliver cheerfully. “You’re quite right in theory. But you reckon without people like my mother. Hasn’t she ever told you how she snatched me from out of the jaws of hell? It was one of her finest achievements. What are you going to do now—not my dressing again?”

  “You know you have to have that cod-liver oil on four-hourly. It’s not been done since six.”

  “I wonder you don’t get up in the night and do it,” he grumbled.

  “I suppose I should really,” she said seriously.

  “If I didn’t know you so well already,” said Oliver, “I should think you were my devoted slave, but I’m forced to admit it’s my stump you cherish, not me.”

  “Tell me about your mother and the jaws of hell,” said Elizabeth, “and perhaps you could wind this bandage at the same time.”

  .…

  “As you know,” said Oliver, “I was wounded at Arnhem. The same shell that smashed up my leg left a bit of itself in my chest as well. We’d been in the attic of a house in the main street for four days, potting at a mobile gun that used to come up the street on and off to try and blast us out. Quite a lot of the chaps got hit, and I was sure I would soon—I was stiff with fright all the time I was in that attic. I should love to be able to tell you that I fell at my gun, firing to the last, and falling back with a cry of encouragement on my lips, but I’m sorry to say that I fell simply through greed.

  There were twelve of us in that house. Those who weren’t working the gun or sniping used to live in the cellar—the old man who’d owned it was a specialist in Hocks, but his red wines were like prickly ink. We lived mostly on stew, made in a bucket by an absolute wizard who’d been a cook at the Savoy or somewhere. He used to have the thing simmering all day and throw in everything he could lay hands on. We’d scrounge a chicken sometimes, and once someone out on patrol sniped at a Hun and got a rabbit. This particular day, when I came down from the attic, I went over to the bucket and had a taste out of the ladle to see what lunch was going to be like.

  “Not enough onion,’ I said to Willie. He was the man who made the stew.

  ‘I haven’t been able to get any today,’ Willie said. ‘Every time I start out for the kitchen garden, a Heinkel comes over and drops something down the back of my neck.’

  I said we couldn’t eat the stuff without onion. We’d become rather eclectic about that stew. I told him what I thought about the service in his hotel and went out myself to get some onions.

  The house had one of those long, narrow gardens, with flower-beds and what had once been a lawn first, then a kind of arbour and then the kitchen garden. I found the onions and put about a dozen inside my blouse. I was just turning to go back when I saw a little bay tree in a corner by the end fence. I remembered Ma and her bay leaves. She planted that tree in the tub by the front door, and when we lived in London, there was one in our Square and she used to send me out to pinch some while the gardener was having his tea. Willie, being a professional cook, would appreciate them.

  ‘Willie will be pleased,’ I thought, and that was the last think I did think, because the shell got me halfway to the tree.

  Willie must have found me when he came out to see what had happened to his onions. I don’t know. When I came to, I was being gently rocked; I thought I was a baby in my cradle. I swear it. I’m not just making that up because I’ve read that you get a subconscious mother-craving in extremis, though I did read that afterwards and was gratified to think I’d run so true to form. Actually, I was in a small boat. Our advanced dressing station was on the other side of a branch of the Rhine, and we had to take our seriously wounded across at night. There was a stiff wind blowing along the river and the boat was rocking against the little jetty. I was lying in the bottom, wrapped in a blanket like a cocoon. I thought at first that was why I couldn’t breathe properly. There were some hoarse attempts at whispering going on and a lot of
muffled oaths. People kept stepping over my head in muddy boots. It was damned cold and I couldn’t see anyone I knew.

  I knew one of the doctors at the dressing station though, a Scotsman with a little black moustache and a soft voice. He told me they were going to take my leg off before they moved me to the clearing station. I can’t remember minding very much. I think I thought that it was a good idea if it was going to make it hurt less. Everyone was frightfully amused when they bared my bosom to listen to my heart and found a dozen large onions nestling in there. Then, of course, they found the hole where the bit of shrapnel had gone in, so they took that out, and ever since I’ve heard nothing but heart, heart, heart, and you mustn’t do this and you mustn’t do that, and what a miraculous escape and you’re a fool to chuck it away just because you won’t do what you’re told.

  That was in the base hospital in England mostly. I was a bit of a pest there. The ward sister was very frank and man-to-man. She was the one who kept calling me a fool and promising me death. She favoured the direct rather than the humouring technique, and when they realised that my stump was not going to heal properly, told me so with great pride as though she admired her bravery in being so honest. When my dressing was being done and the nurse called her over to have a look, she would say: ‘What did I tell you? You’ll be here a long time yet,’ as if it were all my fault and served me right.