‘How do you imagine this got here?’ she said, between tears and laughter. ‘What an extraordinary war. The Southern Railway people brought it just now and I signed for it, all as though nothing peculiar were happening – I don’t understand a word of it. What are you doing in London, darling?’
She seemed unaware of the fact that half an hour ago she had spoken to me, and indeed bitten my head off, on the telephone.
‘I’m with Alfred. He’s got to get a lot of new equipment and see all sorts of people. I believe he’s going abroad again very soon.’
‘Awfully good of him,’ said Linda, ‘when he needn’t have joined up at all, I imagine. What does he say about Dunkirk?’
‘He says it was like something out of the Boy’s Own – he seems to have had a most fascinating time.’
‘They all did, the boys were here yesterday and you never heard anything like their stories. Of course they never quite realized how desperate it all was until they got to the coast. Oh, isn’t it wonderful to have them back. If only – if only one knew what had happened to one’s French buddies –’ She looked at me under her eyelashes, and I thought she was going to tell me about her life, but, if so, she changed her mind and went on unpacking.
‘I shall have to put these winter things back in their boxes really,’ she said. ‘I simply haven’t any cupboards that will hold them all, but it’s something to do, and I like to see them again.’
‘You should shake them,’ I said, ‘and put them in the sun. They may be damp.’
‘Darling, you are wonderful, you always know.’
‘Where did you get that puppy?’ I said enviously. I had wanted a bulldog for years, but Alfred never would let me have one because of the snoring.
‘Brought him back with me. He’s the nicest puppy I ever had, so anxious to oblige, you can’t think.’
‘What about quarantine, then?’
‘Under my coat,’ said Linda, laconically. ‘You should have heard him grunting and snuffling, it shook the whole place, I was terrified, but he was so good. He never budged. And talking of puppies, those ghastly Kroesigs are sending Moira to America, isn’t it typical of them? I’ve made a great thing with Tony about seeing her before she goes, after all I am her mother.’
‘That’s what I can’t ever understand about you, Linda.’
‘What?’
‘How you could have been so dreadful to Moira.’
‘Dull,’ said Linda. ‘Uninteresting.’
‘I know, but the point is that children are like puppies, and if you never see puppies, if you give them to the groom or the gamekeeper to bring up, look how dull and uninteresting they always are. Children are just the same – you must give them much more than their life if they are to be any good. Poor little Moira – all you gave her was that awful name.’
‘Oh, Fanny, I do know. To tell you the truth I believe it was always in the back of my mind that, sooner or later, I should have to run away from Tony, and I didn’t want to get too fond of Moira, or to make her too fond of me. She might have become an anchor, and I simply didn’t dare let myself be anchored to the Kroesigs.’
‘Poor Linda.’
‘Oh, don’t pity me. I’ve had eleven months of perfect and unalloyed happiness, very few people can say that, in the course of long long lives, I imagine.’
I imagined so too. Alfred and I are happy, as happy as married people can be. We are in love, we are intellectually and physically suited in every possible way, we rejoice in each other’s company, we have no money troubles and three delightful children. And yet, when I consider my life, day by day, hour by hour, it seems to be composed of a series of pin-pricks. Nannies, cooks, the endless drudgery of housekeeping, the nerve-racking noise and boring repetitive conversation of small children (boring in the sense that it bores into one’s very brain), their absolute incapacity to amuse themselves, their sudden and terrifying illnesses, Alfred’s not infrequent bouts of moodiness, his invariable complaints at meals about the pudding, the way he will always use my tooth-paste and will always squeeze the tube in the middle. These are the components of marriage, the wholemeal bread of life, rough, ordinary, but sustaining; Linda had been feeding upon honey-dew, and that is an incomparable diet.
The old woman who had opened the door to me came in and said was that everything, because, if so, she would be going home.
‘Everything,’ said Linda. ‘Mrs Hunt,’ she said to me, when she had gone. ‘A terrific Hon – she comes daily.’
‘Why don’t you go to Alconleigh,’ I said, ‘or to Shenley? Aunt Emily and Davey would love to have you, and I’m going there with the children as soon as Alfred is off again.’
‘I’d like to come for a visit some time, when I know a little more what is happening, but at the moment I must stop here. Give them my love though. I’ve got such masses to tell you, Fanny, what we really need is hours and hours in the Hons’ cupboard.’
After a great deal of hesitation Tony Kroesig and his wife, Pixie, allowed Moira to go and see her mother before leaving England. She arrived at Cheyne Walk in Tony’s car, still driven by a chauffeur in uniform not the King’s. She was a plain, stodgy, shy little girl, with no echo of the Radletts about her; not to put too fine a point on it she was a real little Gretchen.
‘What a sweet puppy,’ she said, awkwardly, when Linda had kissed her. She was clearly very much embarrassed.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Plon-plon.’
‘Oh. Is that a French name?’
‘Yes it is. He’s a French dog, you see.’
‘Daddy says the French are terrible.’
‘I expect he does.’
‘He says
