Walcot. Brian Aldiss
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World War had made little difference to your family.
After Emma the maid had fled, your parents employed a live-in maid, and a young boy who came in the mornings and did odd jobs. There was also a gardener, while a pony for daughter Sonia was installed in the paddock.
Sonia was afraid of this frisky animal; she insisted that the pony disliked her hump. Sonia went to a local school for girls, but this was holiday time. Her imagined hump was one of the devices by which she brought her mother to heel.
She taught Gyp to bark at the pony.
In any event, she never rode the pony. You established friendly relations with it. It was a three-year-old gelding, which had been christened Beauty. You led Beauty out into the field and let it canter about. After a while, when it was time to take it in again, Beauty would play hard to get, no doubt dreading a return to its prison of the stable. At other times it would come up to you shyly, gently, almost in a maidenly way, to gaze upon you with its large moist eyes. You would fondle it. Its muzzle was soft, although, when it opened its mouth, a set of large teeth were displayed.
Like every kind of animal with which man comes into contact, horses came into captivity. From Mary’s goldfish swimming mindlessly round its bowl, the canary in its cage, to higher mammals like horses and elephants, all animals become prisoners of humans. Only cats have never signed the contract; unlike their domestic rivals, the dogs, cats never submitted to leads or performed tricks, lounging about instead, in a very hands-in-pockets kind of way, and having naps in inconvenient places.
‘Why don’t you like Beauty?’ you asked your sister.
‘Oh, I don’t know. P’raps, yes, p’raps because I’m expected to like her.’
‘It’s a he.’
Poor Beauty was later sold. ‘Valerie would have liked a pony,’ said Mary, with a sigh. ‘Valerie was good to her mother.’
‘Well, I think Valerie was a horrid creep!’ Sonia retorted.
Your two parents were sitting together one night, by a coal fire, for the early September evenings were becoming chilly.
‘I don’t know what Sonia will do,’ said Mary Fielding. ‘These wars are so awful. We’ve been through one of them. Now another.’
She held a small handkerchief to her nose and attempted to shed a tear.
‘Don’t start that,’ Martin warned. ‘Wars are nothing to cry about. Got to be brave.’
‘I was thinking of my poor brother, Ernie. Killed in France, in the early days of the war. I must get a cardigan.’
‘Not France – the Somme. It’s in Germany, woman!’
‘Of all places.’
‘Never mind that, think about what we’re going to do now. This war is going to be worse than the last one, let me tell you that. For one thing, we are near the coast. We must consider what we should do in the case of an invasion.’
‘Oh, Marty, how terrible it would be to have a house full of Nazis! Sonia will be so scared when she hears about it, poor mite.’
‘We’re all equally in the soup. I’d like to know what the heck Hitler thinks he’s doing.’
Mary Fielding rose from her comfortable chair and went to gaze out of the window, as if to make sure that no one in boots was coming up the drive. She said, ‘It’s so horrible to think of war. Once in our lifetimes was surely enough. Sonia will be so upset. You know how delicate her nerves are.’
‘I suppose we could keep it from her.’
They began to discuss what they could do to deceive their daughter that peace still prevailed. The difficult question of the daily newspaper arose. The headlines would always be using the word ‘WAR’. The paper would have to be cancelled for Sonia’s peace of mind; but Martin enjoyed doing the crossword.
‘Surely it’s not much of a sacrifice to give up the crossword,’ said Mary. ‘Not when there’s your child’s sensibilities to consider.’
For a start, they called in Jane, the maid, and made her swear that she would say nothing to Sonia about the war. The maid, familiar with Sonia’s outbursts, duly swore. Her mistress was watching her closely.
‘Jane, you are looking tired. Why is that?’
Jane, whose real name was Henrietta – but all maids coming under the Fielding command were called Emma or Jane by turns – apologized and said there was a lot of work to be done.
‘Nonsense,’ said Mary, severely. ‘After all, you work in a house where we have no mirrors – so, no mirrors to polish. You’re very fortunate.’
‘I do understand about the mirrors, ma’am,’ said Jane, submissively. She knew the mirrors were banished by order of Sonia, so that she would never see her imaginary hump.
Your parents, assisted by the maid, began an elaborate deception. The delicate Sonia was accustomed to listening to the wireless. Martin removed a thermionic valve from their set, so that it no longer worked.
When Sonia begged her father to get the set repaired, he took it and hid it in the garage. As recompense, he bought his daughter a wind-up gramophone covered in red Rexine, and half-a-dozen records, with which he hoped to distract her. He secretly bought himself a new model Ecko wireless, which he concealed in his study, and on which he could listen to the news from the BBC. Sonia played the records. She quickly broke the one she did not like. The one she most enjoyed was called ‘Impressions on a One-string Phone-fiddle’.
She liked to be taken out. Just along the coast was a teashop at which the family frequently stopped to eat cream teas. On one occasion when you had come home for a forty-eight-hour leave before proceeding to OCTU, your mother suggested a visit to the teashop for a special treat. Your mother was friendly, in a condescending way, with the two ladies who ran the teashop. ‘Of course, they’re just old maids,’ she would say of them. ‘Spinsters who could never attract any man to marry them.’ Martin would try, with equal condescension, to explain to his wife that the men who would have liked to marry those ladies when they were young were very probably buried in the mud of the Somme.
So Mary Fielding rang the teashop before you set out. ‘Oh, Miss Atkins. It’s Mrs Fielding here,’ she said in her most refined voice. ‘I wonder if you would kindly assist us. Our dear daughter Sonia is so delicate we are forced to shield her from any knowledge of the hostilities with Nazi Germany. If my husband and I arrived at four o’clock, would you kindly ensure that no mention is made of those hostilities, either by your waitress or by the other customers?’
She listened to Miss Atkins’ response. ‘I quite see my request may raise difficulties, Miss Atkins, but not insuperable ones, I trust. Otherwise Mr Fielding and I may have to decide not to patronize your teashop henceforth. Oh, are you? I am surprised to hear that. Such a lucrative little business you and Miss Everdale have been running. Pack up if you will, but I would judge you will find the Lake District not to your liking at all.’
Mary put the handset down and turned to Martin. ‘I never did! Of all the cheek! Those two spinsters are going to close down next week. They are going to live with a distant niece of Miss Atkins, in Kendal of all places.’
‘It’s cowardice,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t do if we all buggered off to the Lake District. How will they scratch a living in Kendal, I’d like to know?’
‘Just because the Atkins woman has got an uncle up there.’
You drove to the teashop in the car with Sonia, not without misgivings. A bell on a spring tinkled as you opened the teashop door. A warm, encouraging smell of hot scones met you – the smell of peacetime, never to return. Miss Atkins greeted you all with her usual courtesy. She was rather an ungainly woman, her hair scraped back and tied into a bun with a length of straggling pink ribbon. Her usual attitude in what repose was granted her was to stand with her hands clasped before her; the hands were red from constant washing up.