Spring came early. March was full of promise which April would not keep.
Ben and Angus Drummond were walking through Hyde Park. They had struck up a rather unlikely friendship, and when Angus was on vacation they met in town occasionally. It was early evening now and Hyde Park, in late sunlight, had that air of all things being new which March can give when not tearing itself to shreds. Both young men had been studying hard and Ben, in particular, coveted the pleasures he had had to forgo. He looked keenly at girls with gleaming hair half-hidden under little veiled hats, their exquisitely painted faces so cool, so insouciant, that to involve them even in dreams seemed audacity. ‘Now, that I’d like!’ he said, passing one such vision. ‘Just for the night, to find out what goes on underneath all the gloss.’
‘You wouldn’t get near her in one night,’ Angus said.
Youth gave Ben an utter assurance in the future, combined with an urgent sense that opportunity was being lost to him which would not come again. He said, ‘Why don’t we head back to town? I know a place in Denman Street . . .’
‘My mother is expecting me,’ Angus said. ‘I can’t let her down. She has a rotten time.’
They came out of the park opposite the Bayswater Road and turned towards Notting Hill. Soon they came to a cinema where there were long queues for Forsaking All Others. Angus saw the younger Vaseyelins towards the front of the ninepenny queue. ‘They won’t let you in,’ he said. ‘It’s an “A” certificate.’
‘I’ll get by,’ Katia replied scornfully. ‘I do it all the time.’ She was heavily made up. In make-up, as in other matters, she was not a neat person and had made a few heavy-handed daubs at her face, creating a patchy, garish effect. Angus thought she looked very Jewish. He could imagine her several years hence running a dress shop in Oxford Street, standing in the doorway, daring people to walk past. She had the dark, magnetic eyes which it is difficult to avoid. While they were chatting, he could not keep his eyes from her face.
A current of energy flowed from her. Perhaps she would not run a dress shop after all – she would do something remarkable. He watched her jogging up and down, every so often glancing at the head of the queue, impatient, demanding. A breeze, light but keen, frisked from the direction of the park. The people passing them seemed incredibly brisk and purposeful, moving towards assignations, whether good or evil, of the greatest significance. Angus had a sudden picture of himself with Katia in years to come, going to exhibitions, knowing the artist, going to theatre parties after the show, living in a world of remarkable people all full of driving energy.
She was saying, if you don’t think I’m old enough, what about taking us in? I bet you’re not doing much this evening.’
‘Joan Crawford!’ Angus made a fastidious face.
‘Who do you like, then?’
‘Someone with a bit more natural verve.’ He had very little idea what he wanted; he needed someone to be decisive for him.
‘Claudette Colbert?’ She lowered her eyelids and looked arch. ‘A bit of ooh-la-la?’
‘I’m afraid I’m just not interested in films,’ he said hastily, afraid of appearing ridiculous.
At this moment people began to come out of the cinema, at first in ones and twos, and then in large numbers. Katia said, ‘The big film’s over.’
Angus and Ben turned away and continued their walk. Light, delicate and tremulous, filtered through the trees. Angus was plagued by a sense of opportunity almost within reach and an awareness of the impermanence of all things.
‘How old would Katia be?’ he asked.
‘Fifteen, sixteen?’ Ben was hazy. Katia kept Alice company; if it hadn’t been for that, he would have accepted her as eighteen.
‘Ripe,’ Angus said. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’
It would not have been at all Ben’s way of saying it. He wondered how much experience Angus really had of women. ‘Katia is just a kid,’ he said. Emotionally, he did not think she was any more developed than Alice. ‘Now, what about Alice? She’d make you a splendid wife when she grows up.’
‘Alice? The plump one? You can’t be serious.’
As they drew nearer to Shepherd’s Bush, Angus began to talk about politics. He said he was thinking of joining the Communist Party, and mentioned a Cambridge don who had greatly influenced him. Ben, bored, did not listen, and as Angus was really rehearsing for his encounter with his father, he did not notice Ben’s lack of attention. They parted company outside the Drummonds’ house, Ben refusing an invitation to come in. He was going to a party at the Vaseyelins. Jacov had urged him to come early, because he was uneasy about the propriety of having a farewell party for Guy which consisted of himself, Guy and Louise.
‘I would not wish to do anything of which Mr Fairley would not approve,’ Jacov had said.
‘That’s going to narrow your life quite a bit,’ Ben had told him.
Ben turned into Pratts Farm Road. The gardeners were out, planting, staking, hoeing. Ben did not understand this urge to play some part in the cycle of the seasons, but he felt within himself the movement of a force over which he had no control. He decided to call on the Fairleys before going to the party. Jacov had asked him to bring a girl with him. There were several he might have asked, all pretty enough but none as lively as Louise. So he had come alone. He looked towards the Vaseyelins’ house. ‘In a few years, when she’s thickened a bit, she’ll have a jaw like her mother’s,’ he muttered. There were yellow and white crocuses in the Fairleys’ flower borders, and the path was spattered with pink blossoms blown from a prunus in an adjacent garden. As he walked towards the house a breeze stirred, idly floating a scent of hidden bloom more sweet for being untraceable.
Claire opened the front door. ‘There’s just me,’ she said, and he was to understand from her voice the tragedy of this. ‘Mummy’s upstairs washing her hair and Alice has gone with Daddy to the vet.’ Her face came apart as she spoke; tears rolled down her cheeks and she sat on the stairs, hugging her grief. ‘Rumpus has been run over.’
Ben sat beside her. ‘But he wasn’t killed?’ He could not imagine it would have taken both Alice and Mr Fairley to present the vet with the remains. In any case, a burial in the garden would surely have been more the way the Fairleys would handle this sort of event.
‘He hurt his paw. And the motor cycle went into a tree and the man had blood all over his head.’ She brightened as she recollected the latter.
The accident to the dog scarcely explained the passionate tears. ‘And how’s yourself?’ Ben asked. ‘No hurt paw, head unbloodied?’
The face crumpled again, her whole body knotted up as if she had cramp. ‘I went in next door to tell them about Rumpus. They’re having a party . . . for Guy . . . because he’s going away.’
‘Oh yes?’
Slowly, it all came out. As she left the house she had met Mrs Vaseyelin on her way to catch the Number 12 bus at The Askew Arms. Mrs Vaseyelin had told her that the back door was open, so she had gone round the side of the house and let herself in. There had been no one in the hall, but the cellar door was ajar and she could hear voices. Ben could imagine how intrigued she must have been by this party, how she must have longed for a sight of it. She had stood at the top of the stairs, probably aware that she was not wanted, plucking up courage just to go down a few steps. There was candlelight and laughter. She had the temerity to cast a shadow. Guy had come to see who was there. He had been angry. He had told her she was spying and Louise had shouted, ‘Send her packing, she’s an awful little tell-tale!’ A bad case of guilty conscience, Ben thought.
‘I wasn’t spying, I wasn’t,’ she sobbed.
He put his arm round her. Her little dignity had been badly bruised, but it was worse than that. He could see the episode had those recurrent elements of a bad dream: the moment when it is too late to turn back, the unbelievable about to happen, the being caught in forbidden territory. He was sorry for Claire, but not displeased to be given good cause for anger. ‘Forget about them. What would you most like to do? Tell me.’
She stared at him. It was a March evening, getting dusk; her mother was washing her hair; her dog was injured; and the older folk she so admired had turned on her. What was there to do? Then, suddenly, comfort came to her, warm and crisp, dripping with good sweet syrup. ‘You said you could make waffles!’
A minute later when Judith came downstairs with a towel round her head, Ben was alone in the hall. ‘Oh dear, I do hope that dog will be all right,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t think the paw is bad, but it’s the shock with a puppy.’
‘Mongrels are pretty tough.’
‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Claire called urgently from the kitchen. ‘Ben is going to make waffles!’
He looked uncertainly at Judith, but she was grateful for the diversion. They went into the kitchen.
Half an hour later the stretcher party arrived. The dog was wrapped in a shawl and dressed in a doll’s nightdress; a bonnet was tied round its head and only its long, brown nose could be seen.
‘The vet said we couldn’t have done better than to keep him warm like this,’ Stanley Fairley explained fiercely as though Ben had challenged his care of the dog. ‘He says he has a good chance of surviving.’ He went to the wicker basket and laid the dog gently in it.
‘Old Mr Ainsworth sent Mrs Peachey in with a little brandy “for the shock”,’ Judith said. ‘Should we, do you think?’
‘I don’t see why not. Rumpus hasn’t signed the pledge, has he?’
Rumpus drank the brandy and hot milk from a spoon, flicked his tongue appreciatively around his jaws, curled up and went to sleep.
The Fairleys settled down to eat waffles in the kitchen. Alice had had her hair cut and she had water-waved it.
‘It makes you look different,’ Ben told her.
‘She brought it back with her,’ Claire said. ‘You should have seen how much there was of it.’
Later Ben and Mr Fairley went into the sitting-room for a talk while Judith and the girls washed up and kept an eye on Rumpus.
‘What do you think about the stand of the Confessional Church?’ Mr Fairley demanded. Ten more pastors had been arrested. Ben said he could not understand why more people did not stand up to Hitler.
Outside, it was dark and there were lights in the houses across the road. Ben wondered whether Jacov had been in the cellar when Claire ventured down the stairs. If so, why did it have to be Guy who sent her packing?
Mr Fairley said that the pastors had been sent to a concentration camp at Sachsenburg.
‘That makes me savage,’ Ben said.
‘Some of these stories may be exaggerated, of course.’
‘I doubt that.’ There was no charity in Ben’s soul.
Louise came in soon after nine. Her mother said, ‘You’re early.’
‘I told you I wouldn’t be late.’ She turned away as she spoke and saw Ben standing in the doorway. Her eyes met his with a look of triumph.