Ashbury’s friends had telephones of their own. Nonetheless, the telephone was regarded with an almost religious awe and visiting staff were always given reason to enter the foyer where they might observe first-hand the sacred object and, perforce, appreciate the superiority of the Riverton household.
It was little wonder then that the ringing of the phone rendered us all speechless. That the hour was so late turned astonishment into apprehension. We sat very still, ears strained, holding our collective breath.
‘Hello?’ Mr Hamilton called down the line. ‘Hello?’
Katie drifted into the room. ‘I just heard a funny noise. Ooh, you’ve all got champagne-’
‘Sshhh,’ came the united response. Katie sat down and set about chewing her tatty fingernails.
From the pantry we heard Mr Hamilton say, ‘Yes, this is the home of Lord Ashbury… Major Hartford? Why yes, Major Hartford is here visiting his parents… Yes, sir, right away. Who may I say is calling?… Just one moment, Captain Brown, while I connect you through.’
Mrs Townsend whispered loudly, knowingly, ‘Someone for the Major.’ And we all went back to listening. From where I sat I could just glimpse Mr Hamilton’s profile through the open door: neck stiff, mouth down-turned.
‘Hello, sir,’ Mr Hamilton said into the receiver. ‘I’m most sorry to interrupt your evening, sir, but the Major is wanted on the telephone. It’s Captain Brown, calling from London, sir.’
Mr Hamilton fell silent but remained by the phone. It was his habit to hold onto the earpiece a moment, that he might ensure the call’s recipient had picked up and the call was not cut off short.
As he waited, listening, I noticed his fingers tighten on the receiver. Can I really remember that? Or is it hindsight that makes me say his body tensed and his breathing seemed to quicken?
He hung up quietly, carefully, and straightened his jacket. He returned slowly to his place at the head of the table and remained standing, his hands gripping the back of his chair. He gazed around the table, taking each of us in. Finally, gravely, he said:
‘Our worst fears are realised. As of eleven o’clock this eve, Great Britain is at war. May God keep us all.’
I am crying. After all these years I have begun crying for them. Strange. It was all so long ago, and they were none of them family, yet warm tears seep from my eyes, following the lines of my face until the air dries them, sticky and cool against my skin.
Sylvia is with me again. She has brought a tissue and uses it to mop cheerfully at my face. To her these tears are a simple matter of faulty plumbing. Yet another inevitable, innocuous sign of my great age.
She doesn’t know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.
WINTER EDITION, 1998
NEWS IN BRIEF
Author’s Wife Dies: Inspector Adams Novels Halted
SAFFRON HIGH STREET
The rain is on its way. The bones in my lower back, more sensitive than any meteorologist’s equipment, have begun to throb. Last night I lay awake, my body aching: bone moaning to bone, whispered tales of long ago litheness. I arched and bowed my stiff old frame, hopelessly pursuing sleep. Nuisance became frustration, frustration became boredom, and boredom became terror. Terror that the night would never end and I would be trapped forever in its long, lonely tunnel.
I must eventually have slept, for this morning I woke, and as far as I can tell the one cannot be done without the other. I was still in bed, my nightie twisted about my middle, skin grimy with the night’s labour, when a girl with rolled-up shirt sleeves and a long thin plait that brushed her jeans bustled into my room and threw open the curtains, letting the light stream in. The girl was not Sylvia and thus I knew it must be Sunday.
The girl-Helen, read her name badge-bundled me into the shower, gripping my arm to steady me, mulberry fingernails burrowing into flaccid white skin. She flicked her plait over one shoulder and set about soaping my torso and limbs, scrubbing away the lingering film of night, humming a tune I do not know. When I was suitably sanitary she lowered me onto the plastic bath seat and left me alone to soak beneath the shower’s warm course. I clutched the lower rail with both hands and eased forward, sighing as the water rained relief over my knotted back.
With Helen’s assistance I was dried and dressed, powdered and processed, seated in the morning room by seven-thirty. I managed a piece of rubbery toast and a cup of tea before Ruth arrived to take me to church.
I am not overly religious. Indeed there have been times when all faith has deserted me, when I railed against a benevolent father who could allow such earthly horrors to beset his children. But I made my peace with God a long time ago. Age is the great mellower. Our relationship is easy now: we don’t speak often, but I know where to find him.
It is Lent, the period of soul-searching and repentance that always precedes Easter, and this morning the church pulpit was draped in purple. The sermon was pleasant enough, its subject guilt and forgiveness. (Fitting when one considers the endeavour I have decided to undertake.) The minister read from John 14, beseeching the congregation to resist the scaremongers who preach Millennial doom and to find instead an inner peace through Christ. ‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ he read, ‘no man cometh unto the Father but by me.’ And then he bid us take our example from the faith of Christ’s Apostles at the dawn of the first millennium. With the exception of Judas, of course: there is not much to recommend itself in the traitor who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver then hanged himself.
