Peter came gradually into Celia’s life; Dermot came with a rush.
Except that he too was a soldier, no greater contrast could have been imagined between two men than between Dermot and Peter.
Celia met him at a regimental ball at York to which she went with the Lukes.
When she was introduced to this tall young man with the intensely blue eyes he said: ‘I’d like three dances, please.’
After they had danced the second, he asked for three more. Her programme was full up. He said:
‘Never mind. Cut somebody.’
He took her programme from her and crossed out three names at random.
‘There,’ he said, ‘don’t forget. I’ll be early so as to snatch you in time.’
Dark, tall, with dark curling hair; very blue eyes that slanted, faun-like, and glanced at you and away quickly. A decided manner, an air of being able to get his own way always – under any circumstances.
At the end of the ball he asked how long Celia was going to be in this part of the world. She told him she was leaving the next day. He asked if she ever went to London.
She told him that she was going to stay with her grandmother next month. She gave him the address.
He said: ‘I may be in town about then. I’ll come and call.’
Celia said: ‘Do.’
But she never thought seriously that he would. A month is a long time. He fetched her a glass of lemonade, and she sipped it, and they talked about life, and Dermot said that he believed you could always get everything you wanted if only you wanted it enough.
Celia felt rather guilty over the dances she had cut – it wasn’t a habit of hers – only, somehow, she hadn’t been able to help it … He was like that.
She felt sorry that she would probably never see him again.
But, to be truthful, she had forgotten all about him when on entering the house at Wimbledon one day she found Grannie leaning forward animatedly in her big chair, talking to a young man whose face and ears were rather pink with embarrassment.
‘I hope you haven’t forgotten me,’ mumbled Dermot.
He was by now very shy indeed.
Celia said of course she hadn’t, and Grannie, always sympathetic to young men, asked him to stay on to dinner, which he did. And after dinner they went into the drawing-room, and Celia sang to him.
Before he left he propounded a plan for the morrow. He had tickets for a matinée – would Celia come in to town and go with him to it? When it turned out that he meant alone, Grannie demurred. She didn’t think Celia’s mother would like it. The young man, however, managed to get round Grannie. So Grannie gave in, but she said on no account was he to take Celia anywhere to tea afterwards. She was to come straight home.
So that was settled, and Celia met him at the matinée and enjoyed it more than any theatre she had ever seen, and they had tea at the buffet at Victoria, because Dermot said that didn’t count.
He came twice again before Celia returned home.
The third day after Celia had returned she was having tea with the Maitlands when she was summoned to the telephone. Her mother spoke:
‘Darling, you simply must come home. Some young man of yours has turned up on a motor bicycle – and you know it worries me to have to talk to young men. Come home quickly and look after him yourself.’
Celia went home wondering who it was. Her mother had said that he had mumbled his name so that she hadn’t been able to hear it.
It was Dermot. He had a desperate, determined, miserable look, and he seemed quite unable to talk to Celia when he did see her. He just sat muttering monosyllables and not looking at her.
The motor bicycle was a borrowed one, he told her. He had thought it would be refreshing to get out of London and do a few days’ tour round. He was putting up at the inn. He had to go off tomorrow morning. Would she come for a walk with him first?
He was in much the same mood the next day – silent – miserable – unable to look at her. Suddenly he said:
‘My leave’s over, I’ve got to go back to York. Something’s got to be settled. I must see you again. I want to see you always – all the time. I want you to marry me.’
Celia stood stock still – utterly startled. While she had recognized that Dermot liked her, it had never entered her head that a young subaltern of twenty-three would contemplate marriage.
She said: ‘I’m sorry – very sorry – but I couldn’t – oh, no, I couldn’t.’
How could she? She was going to marry Peter. She loved Peter. Yes, she still loved Peter – just the same – but she loved Dermot also …
She realized that she wanted to marry Dermot more than anything in the world.
Dermot was going on:
‘Well, I’ve got to see you, anyway … I expect I’ve asked you too soon … I couldn’t wait …’
Celia said:
‘You see – I’m – engaged to someone else …’
He looked at her – one of those quick sidelong glances. He said:
‘That doesn’t matter. You must give him up. You do love me?’
‘I – think I do.’
Yes, she loved Dermot better than anything in the world. She would rather be unhappy with Dermot than happy with anyone else. But why put it like that? Why should she be unhappy with Dermot? Because, she supposed, she didn’t know at all what he was like … He was a stranger …
Dermot was stammering.
‘I – I oh! that’s splendid – we’ll get married at once. I can’t wait …’
Celia thought: ‘Peter. I can’t bear to hurt Peter …’
But she knew that Dermot could bear to hurt any number of Peters and she knew that what Dermot told her to do she would do.
For the first time she looked right into his eyes which no longer gave a glance and flashed away.
Very, very blue eyes …
Shyly – uncertainly – they kissed …
Miriam was lying on the sofa in her bedroom, resting, when Celia came in. One glance at her daughter’s face told her that something unusual had happened. Like a flash it went through Miriam’s mind. ‘That young man – I don’t like him.’
She said, ‘Darling – what is it?’
‘Oh, Mother – he wants to marry me – and I want to marry him, Mother …’
Straight into Miriam’s arms – her face buried on Miriam’s shoulder.
And above the agonizing beating of her strained heart, Miriam’s thought ran frenziedly:
‘I don’t like it – I don’t like it … But that’s selfishness – because I don’t want her to go.’
There were difficulties almost at once. Dermot could not override Miriam high-handedly as he overrode Celia. He kept his temper because he did not want to put Celia’s mother against him, but he was annoyed at any hint of opposition.
He admitted that he had no money – a bare eighty pounds a year beyond his pay. But he was annoyed when Miriam asked how he and Celia proposed to live. He said he hadn’t had time to think yet. Surely they could manage – Celia wouldn’t mind being poor. When Miriam said that it wasn’t usual for subalterns to marry, he said impatiently that he couldn’t help what was usual.
He said, rather bitterly, to Celia: ‘Your mother seems determined to bring everything down to pounds, shillings, and pence.’
He was like an eager child denied the thing it had set its heart on and unwilling to listen to ‘reason’.
When he had gone, Miriam felt very depressed. She saw the prospect of a long engagement with very little hope of marriage for many years to come. Perhaps, she felt, she ought not to have let them be engaged at all … But she loved Celia too dearly to cause her pain.
Celia said: ‘Mother, I must marry Dermot. I must. I shall never love anybody else. It will come right some day – oh, say it will.’
‘It seems so hopeless, my darling. You’ve neither of you got anything. And he’s so young …’
‘But, some day – if we wait …’
‘Well, perhaps …’
‘You don’t like him, Mother. Why?’
‘I do like him. I think he’s very attractive – very attractive indeed. But not considerate …’
At night Miriam lay awake going over her small income. Could she make Celia an allowance – however small? If she sold the house …
But, at any rate, she was living rent free – running expenses had been reduced to a minimum. The house was in bad repair, and there was very little demand for such properties at the minute.
She lay awake, tossing and turning. How to get her child her heart’s desire?
It was awful, having to write to Peter and tell him.
Such a lame letter, too – for what could she say to excuse her treachery?
When Peter’s answer came it was exactly like Peter. So like Peter that Celia cried over it.
Don’t blame yourself, Celia [wrote Peter]. It was my fault entirely. My fatal habit of putting things off. We’re like that. That’s why, as a family, we always miss the bus. I meant it for the best – to give you a chance of marrying some rich fellow. And now you’ve fallen in love with someone poorer than I am.
The truth of it is you feel he’s got more guts than I had. I ought to have taken you at your word when you wanted to marry me and come out with me here … I was a cursed fool. I’ve lost you, and it’s my own fault. He’s a better man than I am – your Dermot … He must be a good sort, or you wouldn’t have taken a fancy to him. Best of luck to you both – always. And don’t grieve about me. It’s my funeral, not yours … I could kick myself all round the town for being such a confounded fool. God bless you, my dear …
Dear Peter – dear, dear, Peter …
She thought: ‘I should have been happy with Peter. Very happy always …’
But with Dermot life was high adventure!
The year of Celia’s engagement was a stormy period. She would get a letter from Dermot suddenly:
I see now – your mother was perfectly right. We are too poor ever to marry. I shouldn’t have asked you. Forget me as soon as you can.
And then, two days later, he would arrive on the borrowed motor bicycle, take a tear-stained Celia in his arms, and declare that he couldn’t give her up. Something must happen.
What happened was the war.
The war came to Celia as to most people like an utterly improbable thunderbolt. A murdered archduke, a ‘war scare’ in the newspapers – such things barely entered her consciousness.
And then, suddenly, Germany and Russia were actually at war – Belgium was invaded. The fantastically improbable became possible.
Letter from Dermot:
It looks as though we’re going to be in it. Everyone says if we are it will be over by Christmas. They say I’m a pessimist, but I think it will be a jolly sight more like two years …
And then the accomplished fact – England at war …
Meaning to Celia one thing only – Dermot may be killed …
A telegram – he couldn’t get away to say goodbye to her – could she and her mother come to him?
The banks were closed but Miriam had a couple of five-pound notes (Grannie’s training: ‘Always have a five-pound note in your bag, dear’). The ticket office at the station refused to take the notes. They went round through the goods yard, crossed the line, and entered the train. Ticket collector after ticket collector – no tickets? ‘No, ma’am, can’t take a five-pound note –’ endless writing down of names and address.
All a nightmare – nothing was real but Dermot …
Dermot in khaki – a different Dermot – very jerky and flippant, with haunted eyes. No one knows about this new war – it’s the kind of war where no one might come back … New engines of destruction. The air – nobody knows about the air …
Celia and Dermot were two children clinging together …
‘Let me come through …’
‘Oh, God, let him come back to me …’
Nothing else mattered.
The awful suspense of those first weeks. The postcards faintly scrawled in pencil.
‘Not allowed to say where we are. Everything goes well. Love.’
Nobody knew what was happening.
The shock of the first casualty lists.
Friends. Boys that you had danced with – killed …
But Dermot was safe – and that was all that mattered.
War, for most women, is the destiny of one person …
After that first week and fortnight of suspense there were things to be done at home. A Red Cross hospital was being opened near Celia’s home, but she must pass her First Aid and Nursing exam. There were classes going on near Grannie, and Celia went up to stay.
Gladys, the new, pretty young house-parlourmaid, opened the door. She and a young cook now ran the establishment. Poor old Sarah was no more.
‘How are you, miss?’
‘Very well. Where’s Grannie?’
A giggle.
‘She’s out, Miss Celia.’
‘Out?’
Grannie – now just on ninety years of age – more particular than ever about letting injurious fresh air touch her. Grannie out?
‘She went to the Army and Navy Stores, Miss Celia. She said she’d be back before you came. Oh, I believe there she is now.’
An aged four-wheeler had drawn up at the gate. Assisted by the cabman, Grannie descended cautiously on to her good leg.
She came with a firm step up the drive. Grannie looked jaunty, positively jaunty – the bugles on her mantle were swaying and glinting in the September sunshine.
‘So you’ve arrived, Celia darling.’
Such a soft old face – like crinkled rose leaves. Grannie was very fond of Celia – and was knitting bed socks for Dermot, to keep his feet warm in the trenches.
Her voice changed as she looked at Gladys. More and more did Grannie enjoy bullying ‘the maids’ (well able to take care of themselves nowadays, and keeping bicycles whether Grannie liked it or not!).
‘Now then, Gladys,’ sharply, ‘why can’t you go and help the man with the things? And no taking them into the kitchen, mind. Put them in the morning-room.’
No longer did Poor Miss Bennett reign in the morning-room.
Piled inside the door were flour, biscuits, dozens of tins of sardines, rice, tapioca, sago. Grinning from ear to ear the cabman appeared. He was carrying five hams. Gladys followed with more hams. Sixteen in all were deposited in the treasure chamber.
‘I may be ninety,’ said Grannie (who wasn’t, yet, but anticipated the event as more dramatic), ‘but I shan’t let the Germans starve me out!’
Celia was taken with hysterical laughter.
Grannie paid the cabman, gave him an enormous tip, and directed him to feed his horse better.
‘Yes, mum, thank you, mum.’
He touched his hat and, still grinning, departed.
‘Such a day as I’ve had,’ said Grannie, untying her bonnet strings. She displayed no signs of fatigue and had obviously enjoyed herself.
‘The Stores were packed, my dear.’
Apparently with other old ladies, all carrying off hams in four-wheeled cabs.
Celia never took up Red Cross work.
Several things happened. First, Rouncy broke up and went home to live with her brother. Celia and her mother did the work of the house with the disapproving aid of Gregg, who ‘didn’t hold’ with war and ladies doing things they weren’t meant to do.
Then Grannie wrote to Miriam.
Dearest Miriam: You suggested some years ago that I should make my home with you. I refused then, as I felt too old to make a move. But Dr Holt (such a clever man – and enjoys a good story – I’m afraid his wife doesn’t really appreciate him) says my eyesight is failing and that nothing can be done about it. That is God’s will and I accept it, but I do not fancy being left at the mercy of maids. Such wicked things as one reads of nowadays – and I have missed several things lately. Do not mention this when you write – they may open my letters. I am posting this myself. So I think that it will be best for me to come to you. It will make things easier, as my income will help. I do not like the idea of Celia doing things in the house. The dear child should reserve her strength. You remember Mrs Pinchin’s Eva? Just that same delicate complexion. She overdid things and is now in a Sanatorium in Switzerland. You and Celia must come and help me to move. It will be a terrible business, I’m afraid.
It was a terrible business. Grannie had lived in the house at Wimbledon for fifty years, and, true product of a thrifty generation, she had never thrown away anything that might possibly ‘come in’.
There were vast wardrobes and chests of drawers of solid mahogany, each drawer and shelf crammed with neatly rolled bundles of materials and odds and ends put away safely by Grannie and forgotten. There were innumerable ‘remnants’, odd lengths of silks and satins, and prints and cottons. There were dozens of needle books ‘for the maids at Christmas’, with the needles rusted in them. There were old scraps and pieces of gowns. There were letters and papers and diaries and recipes and newspaper cuttings. There were forty-four pin-cushions and thirty-five pairs of scissors. There were drawers and drawers full of fine linen underclothes all gone into holes, but preserved because of ‘the good embroidery, my dear’.
Saddest of all there was the store cupboard (memory of Celia’s youth). The store cupboard had defeated Grannie. She could no longer penetrate into its depths. Stores had lain there undisturbed while fresh stores accumulated on top of them. Weevily flour, crumbling biscuits, mouldy jams, liquescent mass of preserved fruits – all these were disinterred from the depths and thrown away while Grannie sat and wept and lamented the ‘shameful waste’. ‘Surely, Miriam, they would do very nicely for puddings for the kitchen?’
Poor Grannie – so able and energetic and thrifty a housewife – defeated by age and failing sight, and forced to sit and see alien eyes surveying her defeat …
She fought tooth and nail for every one of her treasures that this ruthless younger generation wanted to throw away.
‘Not my brown velvet. That’s my brown velvet. Madame Bonserot made it for me in Paris. So Frenchy! Everyone admired me in it.’
‘But it’s all worn, dear, the nap has gone. It’s in holes.’
‘It would do up. I’m sure it would do up.’
Poor Grannie – old, defenceless, at the mercy of these younger folk – so scornful, so full of their ‘That’s no good, throw it away.’
She had been brought up never to throw away anything. It might come in some day. They didn’t know that, these young folk.
They tried to be kind. They yielded so far to her wishes as to fill a dozen old-fashioned trunks with bits and pieces of stuffs and old moth-eaten furs – all things that could never be used, but why upset the old lady more than need be?
Grannie herself insisted on packing various faded pictures of old-fashioned gentlemen.
‘That’s dear Mr Harty – and Mr Lord – such a handsome couple as we made dancing together! Everyone remarked on it.’
Alas, for Grannie’s packing! Mr Harty and Mr Lord arrived with the glass shattered in the frames. And yet, once Grannie’s packing had been celebrated. Nothing she packed was ever broken.
Sometimes, when she thought no one was looking, Grannie would surreptitiously retrieve little bits of trimming, a jet ornament, a little piece of net ruching, a crochet motif. She would stuff them into that capacious pocket of hers, and would secretly transfer them to one of the great ark-like trunks that stood in her bedroom ready for her personal packing.
Poor Grannie. Moving nearly killed her, but it didn’t quite. She had the will to live. It was the will to live that was driving her out of the home she had lived in so long. The Germans were not going to starve her out – and they were not going to get her in an air raid, either. Grannie meant to live and enjoy life. When you had reached ninety years you knew how extraordinarily enjoyable life was. That was what the young people didn’t understand. They spoke as though anyone old were half dead and sure to be miserable. Young people, thought Grannie, remembering an aphorism of her youth, thought the old people fools, but old people knew that young people were fools! Her aunt Caroline had said that at the age of eighty-five and her aunt Caroline had been right.
Anyway, Grannie didn’t think much of young people nowadays. They had no stamina. Look at the furniture removers – four strapping young men – and they actually asked her to empty the drawers of her big mahogany chest of drawers.
‘It was carried up with every drawer locked,’ said Grannie.
‘You see, ma’am, it’s solid mahogany. And there’s heavy stuff in the drawers.’
‘So there was when it came up! There were men in those days. You’re all weaklings nowadays. Making a fuss about a little weight.’
The young men grinned, and with some difficulty the chest was got down the stairs and out to the van.
‘That’s better,’ said Grannie approvingly. ‘You see, you don’t know what you can do until you try.’
Among the various things removed from the house were thirty demijohns of Grannie’s home-made liqueurs. Only twenty-eight were unloaded the other end …
Was this, perhaps, the revenge of the grinning young men?
‘Rogues,’ said Grannie. ‘That’s what they are – rogues. And call themselves teetotallers too. The impudence of it.’
But she tipped them handsomely and was not really displeased. It was, after all, a subtle compliment to her home-made liqueur …
When Grannie was installed, a cook was found to replace Rouncy. This was a girl of twenty-eight called Mary. She was good-natured and pleasant to elderly people, and chattered to Grannie about her young man and her relations who suffered from an agreeable number of complaints. Grannie delighted ghoulishly in the bad legs, varicose veins, and other ailments of Mary’s relations. She gave her bottles of patent medicines and shawls for them.
Celia began to think once more about taking up war work, though Grannie combated the idea vigorously, prophesying the most dire disasters if Celia ‘over-strained’ herself.
Grannie loved Celia. She gave her mysterious warnings against all the dangers of life, and five-pound notes. One of Grannie’s fixed beliefs in life was that you should always have a five-pound note ‘handy’.
She gave Celia fifty pounds in five-pound notes and told her to ‘keep it by her’.
‘Don’t even let your husband know you’ve got it. A woman never knows when she may need a little nest egg …
‘Remember, dear, men are not to be trusted. Gentlemen can be very agreeable, but you can’t trust one of them – unless he’s such a namby-pamby fellow that he’s no good at all.’
The move and all that had gone with it had successfully distracted Celia’s mind from the war and Dermot.
Now that Grannie was settled in, Celia began to chafe at her own inactivity.
How to keep herself from thinking of Dermot – out there?
In desperation she married off ‘the girls’! Isabella married a rich Jew, Elsie married an explorer. Ella became a school teacher. She married an elderly man, somewhat of an invalid, who was charmed by her young chatter. Ethel and Annie kept house together. Vera had a romantic morganatic alliance with a royal prince, and they both died tragically in a motor accident on their wedding day.
Planning the weddings, choosing the bridesmaids’ gowns, arranging the funeral music for Vera – all this helped to keep Celia’s mind from realities.
She longed to be hard at work at something. But it meant leaving home … Could Miriam and Grannie spare her?
Grannie required a good deal of attention. Celia felt she couldn’t desert her mother.
But it was Miriam herself who urged Celia to leave home. She understood well enough that work, hard physical work, was the thing that would help Celia at the present time.
Grannie wept, but Miriam stood firm.
‘Celia must go.’
But, after all, Celia didn’t take up any war work.
Dermot got wounded in the arm and came home to a hospital. On his recovery he was passed fit for home service and was sent to the War Office. He and Celia were married.