Myra Carrol Read online

  “Is he going to die?” “Not immediately. With care he may last for years. Anyway, he wants to come here; you’ll understand that.” Myra was silent again, then she said crossly: “Well, what’s the fuss about? Aren’t I going to do my lessons this morning?”

  Lessons over, she called Fortesque and ran to the river. In the shed where she kept her fishing things she put on some waders. She did not take a rod but splashed her way to a bend carrying Fortesque, who hated to get wet. The bank overhung and under it lay a little beach covered with grey stones flattened and smoothed by the water. There she sat down and tried to face the future. Her father ill, perhaps in pain, certainly looking awful. She could not quite imagine him like that. He had always been so gay and well. Whatever would her mother look like? It had always been her mother who had been taken care of; she couldn’t quite see her taking care of someone else. She forced herself to think clearly about her mother. So pretty, and well dressed and gay. She was now on the sea hurrying home, knowing. Myra kicked a stone into the river. It relieved her feelings. How awful to be her mother. Always watching, always imagining. Then she thought of herself. How was she going to bear it when the house, always, so cheerful and glad to see you back, was a place you were frightened to go into? She would be frightened, she knew she would. Suppose something really awful happened like her mother telling her. Or suppose her father died and she had to be with her mother when it happened. She shivered. Fortesque, trapped by the bank behind them and the water in front, gave a whine. Myra pulled him to her. He wriggled on to her knees. She hugged him.

  “Even you aren’t safe. You’re eight. Quite old. If each year of your life is seven of ours you’re fifty-six.” She hugged him so that he squeaked. “Sorry. I was just thinking I couldn’t live without you. Do you know, I love you so much I almost wish I’d never been given you.”

  There was no telegram to announce Uncle John’s next visit. Myra was at her lessons when his car crossed the bridge. She ran outside as usual and met him half-way up the drive. The gradient was steep and the car going slowly, she jumped on the running board and hung across the window.

  “How simply heavenly! You can’t think how glad I am to see you, and Fortesque will go scatter mad.” He turned and gave her a smile. He said nothing but something in his face terrified her. “What is it?”

  “One moment, my dear. Let me park the car.” The garage was outside the back door. He parked the car there and put his arm round Myra and led her to the front of the house. “I’ve bad news, old lady. A U-boat got the ship.”

  “Do you mean they’re drowned?”

  He had most sincerely loved his sister. The thought of her death, especially its form, was agony. Try as he would he could not prevent himself from seeing all its more horrible possibilities. He was unable entirely to steady his voice.

  “Yes.”

  Myra could not take in what he said. She could only repeat “drowned.” Connie came out to meet them. She could see something was very wrong. They stood on the terrace. Uncle John repeated his news. Connie, as if her knees had given way, moved to the parapet and sat down. They all stared into the valley. It was a wretched day, grey and lowering. Myra had a sudden knowledge that she would always have this scene with her. The stuffiness before the storm; the low-hanging clouds, the dimmed out valley, and the three of them hopelessly staring. Uncle John, so old and sad that it frightened her to look at him. Connie, who had hurried from the schoolroom with her glasses still on her nose, thoroughly upset, blinking to hold back her tears, and failing. Her lenses misted, furtively she wiped them clear. Herself, in her green linen frock with its scarlet belt, trying to feel anything at all and failing. She pictured the scene on the ship, there would be a crash, her mother . . . she could not quite imagine how her mother would have looked, extra white perhaps, but, of course, calm, she wasn’t the screaming sort. Her father would have put his arm through hers in that way he had, would they have said anything? Most likely not, perhaps the ship sank quickly; she betted her father had managed to be near her mother in the sea. What would it be like to drown? She only knew the sea in summer holidays, blue and flat, nice to bathe in. She was still feeling nothing, still there was the awful silence draped in unhappiness. She got nervous and fidgetty, scared Uncle John or Connie would talk to her and say things she would hate to hear. To break up this horrid clinging picture she spoke. Her voice came out high and unnatural.

  “No good us all standing here. I’m going down to the river.” She shouted to Fortesque and went bounding down the drive.

  She did not go to the river, but turned into a copse.

  She was unnerved, and for comfort hugged a tree trunk, pressing her face against the bark. How hateful everything was! People would whisper and tiptoe and be queer for weeks. Why did people have to make a fuss, even when dreadful things happened? They wouldn’t be half as dreadful if people behaved exactly the same as usual. How was she to behave herself? She would be expected to cry, and everybody would watch her to see how she was. She turned round and leant against the tree. Fortesque, half down a rabbit hole, gave wild, joyous, muffled barks. “Why can’t everybody be like Fortesque? Of course he doesn’t know what’s happened, but just being himself he’s so nice. Why don’t I cry? People ought to cry whose mothers and fathers are drowned. It’s expected. Don’t I care? Think you’ll never see them again. Never. No presents. No letters. Mummy won’t ever say, ‘You are ridiculously pretty, darling.’ Daddy won’t . . . ” She wrenched away from her thoughts. “I believe I’m almost glad. I can’t be. I can’t be as hateful as all that. I might just as well think the truth. I am glad. I’d have loathed to see him ill. It’s not mean, really. They’d both have hated it. Nobody must know I don’t mind. Nobody.” She threw herself away from the tree and lay down beside Fortesque’s rabbit hole. She crushed her thoughts with shouts. “Dig, old man. Go on. Good boy! Dig. Dig. Dig.”

  Myra succeeded in keeping her mind from the household. She was really in a nervous state, shame of herself weighed down her spirits. She was continually on the jump lest anyone should pigeon-hole her and talk and, perhaps, probe. There was a memorial service, and she was tortured by the kind eyes of her neighbours. The vicar had been up to see her and had embarrassed her almost to frenzy point by telling her that although God took people from the world because he loved them, nevertheless he quite understood that those left behind were bound to feel loneliness and grief. Uncle John was worst of all. He minded so much himself it was hard to fool him. Besides, in a way it was not fooling. If they had been coming back as usual with her father well she, too, would be minding, it was just she would rather anything than have him ill. Uncle John stayed in the house for two weeks, a very long visit for him, and for the first time Myra wished he would go. He was sorting letters and papers. He liked Myra to come for her usual walks with him, and he told her about her mother as a child. It seemed to comfort him to talk about her, but Myra hated every moment of it. Just before he left he talked about the future.

  “Things will have to go on as they are while the war lasts.”

  “How do you mean? Why only while the war lasts?”

  “You’ll be growing up soon. We shall have to make plans for you. You don’t want to spend all your days here.”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t want anything different.”

  “I’ve been talking to Miss Fogetty. She thinks as soon as the war’s over, if you aren’t grown up first, you ought to go to a finishing school. Not France as things are, perhaps, but we thought Switzerland. I’m going to make enquiries.”

  “I can’t go to Switzerland because Fortesque would have to be quarantined for six months before he could come back.”

  “I don’t think, lovable as he is, that you can have your life guided by Fortesque.”

  “What about Foggy, and Miriam? I’m not going to leave them behind.”

  He was evasive.

  “The war’s not over
yet, nowhere near it. Still, no harm in having Switzerland at the back of your mind.”

  With Uncle John’s departure the house returned more or less to normal. Connie had been considering sending for the doctor for Myra for what she called “her jumpiness”, but with Uncle John gone the need disappeared. She was still apt to be snappy at the slightest sign of anyone suggesting anything out of the usual had happened. Connie had only to say “I dare say you don’t feel much like doing this or that,” to be countered by a rude “Why on earth not?” Cook had only to suggest that something would tempt her appetite, to hear “That’s funny! My appetite wanting tempting. Since when?” Bertha, heavily tactful, closing what had been her parent’s bedroom door with softness and a downcast look, would be pushed aside, the door flung open and Myra would say “I hate all the doors shut, it looks simply awful.”

  Miriam was the one person who needed no explanations, who never said the wrong thing. From the first evening her attitude had been perfect. She had laid out a frock for Myra to wear for supper. Myra looked at it, and then at Miriam.

  “Uncle John won’t change.”

  “It’s only an every day,” Miriam pointed out. “But it’s clean. It’s just acting ordinary to be clean.”

  How soothing those words had been? It was the nearest Miriam came to mentioning the tragedy.

  Uncle John came down several times during the following year. He was in the house on Myra’s sixteenth birthday. She did no lessons to celebrate the occasion, and went out riding. He made the excuse of a touch of rheumatism to stay at home and have a talk with Connie.

  “We’ve got to have a chat about things. At Myra’s age she ought to be getting about and meeting people. Not live shut up like a nun.”

  “I always said she should have a different sort of education at about this age.”

  They were sitting in the schoolroom. He gave her hand, which lay on the table, a friendly pat, a gesture which meant a lot coming from him.

  “You mustn’t underrate yourself. You’ve done capitally.”

  “All the same I feel my limitations. I wish that finishing school abroad had been possible.”

  “So do I, but things have never looked blacker. Might be years yet. I think though it wouldn’t be a bad thing if we prepared her for changes.” He came to the point abruptly. “This house has got to be let, ought to be sold really if we could get a good offer.”

  Connie had been looking at the table. Her head shot up.

  “No!”

  “Afraid so. My brother-in-law’s affairs weren’t as good as before the war. Then death duties, you know.”

  “It’ll break her heart. She’s never contemplated such a thing.”

  “Can’t be helped. Besides, it would have to have come sooner or later. She can’t spend all her life here.”

  “No.” Connie got up and went to the window. “This place gets a hold on you. It has on me and, naturally, I shall miss her.”

  “Miss her! Why? I’ve heard of a finishing school at Eastbourne. Splendid I believe for domestic work and all that sort of thing. We might take a small house there and she could go for daily classes.”

  “She’s not really fond of domestic work. Don’t you think perhaps London?”

  “No.” The word exploded out of him. Connie turned from the window staring. He was embarrassed. “I don’t think London’s the right place for a girl of her age, I mean, she’s such a good-looking little thing.”

  Connie puzzled a second over this statement. What difference could a face make in London? However, she had no time to spend on that train of thought for what was in the forefront of her mind was Aunt Lilian. There, in London, was Uncle John, who adored his niece, and there was that truly shadowy, but nevertheless existent woman, Aunt Lilian. If, because of the war, Myra must be finished in England, what could be more suitable than that she should stay with her relations for the finishing? Old friend rather than governess though Connie was, she did not feel she could say right out what was in her mind, but she could say what she felt about herself.

  “I feel, I’ve always ‘felt,’ that when the time came for a break it should be a clean break.”

  “Why?”

  Faithfully Connie followed the trail of her thought.

  “Clothes. Your sister was always very nicely dressed. Myra doesn’t care a bit how she looks; I’m afraid that’s partly my fault. I’ve always tried to teach her to look neat, not very successfully; she has such a lot of hair, and curls never settle as straight hair does, but now she is sixteen she should, I suppose, be taking an interest.”

  “If she’s her mother’s daughter we needn’t trouble about that.”

  “Then there’s languages. Of course she took extra French before the war, then the classes finished and she’s had to fall back on me. French was never one of my subjects.”

  “No one can learn a language really well unless they learn it where it’s spoken.”

  “I can see I’m not being clear. I’ve always taught girls, small girls. I’m not qualified for the growing-up stage. Myra has been almost like a child of my own. As long as I’m about she won’t grow up. I made up my mind years ago that I must judge when it’s best for me to leave her. I couldn’t foresee, of course, this situation, but I did see that I might be kept on too long. People get used to one being about, you know, and dislike changes. We all do.”

  He took his pouch out of his pocket and filled his pipe.

  “I have stirred up an unexpected hornets’ nest. I never for a moment contemplated you leaving her. Even if she is boarded at a school she will want somewhere to go for the holidays.”

  Aunt Lilian, from the way Connie peered at her, might have been sitting in the room with them. How awkward wives were, Connie thought; you might risk criticising a child to its parents, if you did it very carefully, but nobody could criticise a wife to a husband. So odd because, after all, most women were wives and many of them not very nice, and nearly all of them could stand a little criticising. It looked very much as though Aunt Lilian needed criticism. Clearly Uncle John, who loved Myra, would like nothing better than to have her in the house and, knowing her home was going, he must have suggested it. It was Aunt Lilian who was refusing to have her. All her love for Myra flamed in Connie and she was furious at this insult. Why should Aunt Lilian try and get out of her responsibilities, taking a dislike to a child she had never seen?

  “Even if I made a home for her now it can only be temporary. Her mother and father planned to have her presented, and all that.” Uncle John lit his pipe.

  “We needn’t concern ourselves with such things just yet. Myra’s only sixteen to-day. Even if the war were over we have two years before we need worry about them.”

  Connie could not think of such things at all because she had the dimmest idea what they comprised, but she was convinced that she would be very much out of place keeping house for one taking part in a London season. Besides, once more Aunt Lilian. Connie seldom felt vicious about people, but she did about Aunt Lilian. It was one of those mixed emotions, she so hated parting with Myra herself that it eased her hurt to be angry with someone. A crusading flame lit in her. Not a magnificent fiery flame, but a low-spirited flicker, which, when described in words, meant “I’ll see Aunt Lilian does her duty if it’s the last thing I ever do.” To Uncle John she said firmly:

  “Of course, any arrangement you make in regard to her education I will fall in with, but I don’t feel a lot of moves are good. We ought to contrive something permanent.” As she finished speaking she looked in a meaning way at Uncle John. He had his pipe bowl in his hand, and was poking at the tobacco; his head was, of course, bent so she could only see part of his face. He seemed somehow to have become remote, as if her old ally had gone and there was a stranger in the room. She repeated the gist of her first sentence. “Any arrangement you make I will fall in with.”

  He ra
ised his head and gave her what she thought was an odd look.

  “I count on that.”

  When the Armistice was declared they were still in Devonshire carrying on as before. In her bath, and in church and at other moments suitable for holding imaginary and unlikely conversations, Connie told Myra that the house was in the letting market, but she never brought herself to tell her in words. It was a bad time for letting and she excused her weakness by deciding it was a pity to make Myra unhappy before she must.

  Myra might have seen into the future, so intensely did she live the rest of that spring, and the summer and autumn. With Fortesque beside her she missed not one of the especial charms. She was at the place where the wild lilies-of-the-valley grew to see the first buds shaping, and saw the first flowers open. She missed no popular nesting place, watching as she had not done for years every egg through from laying until the baby birds flew away. She waded up and down the river visiting each favourite spot. She came home in distress when, as summer arrived, the hedges, neglected for lack of labour, did not produce what she expected. “Imagine, Foggy! Not a dog-rose in that lovely place where they’re always first. All that stuff’s grown over it and it’s just dead.” She was pleased to help the farmers. “I like feeling I’m helping to get food out of our valley. The hotter I get the more I feel I’m giving me.” She was the most enthusiastic of all the workers who built the victory bonfire on the hill above the house. All day she trudged up and down carrying faggots. “Of course I’m not tired. Foggy, and I don’t mind my hands being blistered. Fancy, it’s our very own bonfire! Our faggots, to show the whole valley is glad!”

  Uncle John came down a few days after the Armistice. He learnt from Connie that she had not even hinted what was coming, so he decided on a quick, clean wound. It was one of those winter days when, if it were not for the dripping leaves, you can imagine yourself back in August. He hooked his arm through Myra’s and took her out on the terrace.

  “I’ve got some news for you, old lady, that you won’t like. It’s necessary to let this house.”