“We’d better go and see Sonia and Alastair.”
“I haven’t been near them for years.”
“Come on.” Basil wanted someone to pay for the cab.
But when they reached the little house in Chester Street they found Sonia alone and packing. “Alastair’s gone off,” she said. “He’s joined the Army ? in the ranks. They said he was too old for a commission.”
“My dear, how very 1914.”
“I’m just off to join him. He’s near Brookwood.”
“You’ll be beautifully near the Necropolis,” said Ambrose. “It’s the most enjoyable place. Three public houses, my dear, inside the cemetery, right among the graves. I asked the barmaid if the funeral parties got very tipsy and she said, ‘No. It’s when they come back to visit the graves. They seem to need something then.’ And did you know the Corps of Commissionaires have a special burial place? Perhaps if Alastair is a very good soldier they might make him an honorary member…” Ambrose chattered on. Sonia packed. Basil looked about for bottles. “Nothing to drink.”
“All packed, darling. I’m sorry. We might go out somewhere.”
They went out, later, when the packing was done, into the blackout to a bar. Other friends came to join them.
“No one seems interested in my scheme to annex Liberia.”
“No imagination. They won’t take suggestions from outsiders. You know, Sonia, this war is developing into a kind of club enclosure on a race-course. If you aren’t wearing the right badge they won’t let you in.”
“I think that’s rather what Alastair felt.”
“It’s going to be a long war. There’s plenty of time. I shall wait until there’s something amusing to do.”
“I don’t believe it’s going to be that kind of war.”
This is all that anyone talks about, thought Ambrose; jobs and the kind of war it is going to be. War in the air, war of attrition, tank war, war of nerves, war of propaganda, war of defence in depth, war of movement, peoples’ war, total war, indivisible war, war infinite, war incomprehensible, war of essence without accidents or attributes, metaphysical war, war in time-space, war eternal…all war is nonsense, thought Ambrose. I don’t care about their war. It’s got nothing to do with me. But if, thought Ambrose, I were one of these people, if I were not a cosmopolitan, Jewish pansy, if I were not all that the Nazis mean when they talk about “degenerates,” if I were not a single, sane individual, if I were part of a herd, one of these people, normal and responsible for the welfare of my herd, Gawd strike me pink, thought Ambrose, I wouldn’t sit around discussing what kind of war it was going to be. I’d make it my kind of war. I’d set about killing and stampeding the other herd as fast and as hard as I could. Lord love a duck, thought Ambrose, there wouldn’t be any animals nosing about for suitable jobs in my herd.
“Bertie’s hoping to help control petrol in the Shetland Isles.”
“Algernon’s off to Syria on the most secret kind of mission.”
“Poor John hasn’t got anything yet.”
Cor chase my Aunt Fanny round a mulberry bush, thought Ambrose; what a herd.
So the leaves fell and the blackout grew earlier and earlier, and autumn became winter.
chapter 2 WINTER
Winter set in hard. Poland was defeated; east and west the prisoners rolled away to slavery. English infantry cut trees and dug trenches along the Belgian frontier. Parties of distinguished visitors went to the Maginot Line and returned, as though from a shrine, with souvenir-medals. Belisha was turned out; the radical papers began a clamour for his return and then suddenly shut up. Russia invaded Finland and the papers were full of tales of white- robed armies scouting through the forests. English soldiers on leave brought back reports of the skill and daring of Nazi patrols and of how much better the blackout was managed in Paris. A number of people were saying quietly and firmly that Chamberlain must go. The French said the English were not taking the war seriously, and the Ministry of Information said the French were taking it very seriously indeed. Sergeant instructors complained of the shortage of training stores. How could one teach the three rules of aiming without aiming discs?
The leaves fell in the avenue at Malfrey, and this year, where once there had been a dozen men to sweep them, there were now four, and two boys. Freddy was engaged in what he called “drawing in his horns a bit.” The Grinling Gibbons saloon and the drawing-rooms and galleries round it were shut up and shut off, carpets rolled, furniture sheeted, chandeliers bagged, windows shuttered and barred; hall and staircase stood empty and dark. Barbara lived in the little octagonal parlour which opened on the parterre; she moved the nursery over to the bedrooms next to hers; what had once been known as “the bachelors’ wing” in the Victorian days, when bachelors were hardy fellows who could put up with collegiate and barrack simplicity, was given over to the evacues. Freddy came over for the four good shoots which the estate provided; he made his guests stay out this year, one at the farm, three at the bailiff’s house, two at the Sothill Arms. Now, at the end of the season, he had some of the regiment over to shoot off the cocks; bags were small and consisted mostly of hens.
When Freddy came on leave, the central heating was lit; at other times an intense cold settled into the house; it was a system which had to be all or nothing; it would not warm Barbara’s corner alone but had to circulate, ticking and guggling, through furlongs of piping, consuming cartloads of coke daily. “Lucky we’ve got plenty of wood,” said Freddy; damp green logs were brought in from the park to smoke tepidly on the hearths. Barbara used to creep into the orangery to warm herself. “Must keep the heat up there,” said Freddy. “Got some very rare stuff in it. Man from Kew said some of the best in the country.” So Barbara had her writing table put there, and sat, absurdly, among tropical vegetation while outside, beyond the colonnade, the ground froze hard and the trees stood out white against the leaden sky.
Then, two days before Christmas, Freddy’s regiment was moved to another part of the country. He had friends with a commodious house in the immediate neighbourhood, where he spent his weekends, so the pipes were never heated and the chill in the house, instead of being a mere negation of warmth, became something positive and overwhelming. Soon after Christmas there was a great fall of snow and with the snow came Basil.
He came, as usual, unannounced. Barbara, embowered in palm and fern, looked up from her letter-writing to see him standing in the glass door. She ran to kiss him with a cry of delight. “Darling, how very nice. Have you come to stay?”
