This Cold Country Read online

  Supper, that evening, was a meal that showed no member of Daisy’s family at his—or in this case her, since her father was a reliable known quantity—best. It was as though each were determined to play a caricature of herself. Daisy’s grandmother sighed during grace. Her mother was particularly, as Daisy and Joan had in childhood deemed it, “hen-brained.” It took her several harried trips to the kitchen to produce the pie and the Brussels sprouts and several more to bring in the junket—which surely she remembered both her daughters had, from childhood, loathed—and stewed plums.

  Daisy’s grandmother watched this domestic ineptitude silently, allowing pursed lips and the speed with which the chutney was being ingested to speak for her. Not for the first time Daisy wondered whether her mother’s inadequate housekeeping skills were partly a manifestation of her dislike for her own mother. If this were the case, Granny Cooper had a lot to answer for. Especially since she ate only breakfast and lunch with the family; supper, always a light meal, she ate on a tray in her warm room. When she moved into the rectory she had embarrassed Daisy’s father and enraged her mother by installing a separate, coin-fed, electricity meter in her room, where she supplemented Mrs. Creed’s cooking with small delicacies she kept in invitingly decorated tins. As a small child Daisy had spent many winter afternoons there, drawn by the heat of the electric fire and her grandmother’s supply of biscuits. These afternoons infuriated Daisy’s mother, thus presumably justifying her grandmother’s expenditure of electricity and sugar.

  A bottle of not terribly good wine had been produced to celebrate the engagement, but the atmosphere was far from festive. Her father’s reservations about the marriage were many and not unreasonable. Daisy hardly knew Patrick; she would, after her marriage, be living among strangers in another country and worshiping at unacceptably low Church of Ireland services. Daisy was his favorite daughter, and he could have seen the now often unnervingly coarse Joan move farther from home with fewer qualms.

  “Of course, one marries earlier in wartime,” her mother said, addressing one of her husband’s unspoken reservations, “or during a plague.”

  Patrick, who had been performing the delicate task of separating, with his fork, a piece of gristle from the more edible vegetal matter on his plate, shot her a startled glance. Granny Cooper closed her eyes briefly.

  “You know, like Dr. Munthe and the nun—in Naples during the cholera epidemic.”

  Daisy was the only one of her listeners who knew what Mrs. Creed was talking about; it had been to Daisy that Mrs. Creed had introduced The Story of San Michele. However, since no one at the table thought Axel Munthe had actually married a Neapolitan nun, they all pretty well got the gist of it.

  “More sons born in wartime,” the rector murmured, attempting to drag the conversation back on track without offering too obvious a non sequitur.

  “What Mother means—” Joan started, the note of truculence in her voice doing nothing to ameliorate the tense embarrassment around the table. Daisy wondered if the change in Joan’s nature was—like more males being born in wartime and her mother’s euphemistically vague point—itself an illustration of some natural law.

  “I think, Joan, we all take your mother’s point,” the rector interrupted mildly. “We are now, I think, moving on to practical arrangements, probably best decided by your mother and Daisy herself.”

  “As long as you don’t expect me to be a bridesmaid,” Joan said, not planning to be so easily subdued.

  “Nothing was further from my mind,” Daisy said lightly, but with absolute sincerity.

  The practical arrangements could hardly be simpler. A wartime wedding at short notice: a wedding dress, flowers, a service performed by her father, a reception, champagne, some food, a wedding cake. No bridesmaids, no wedding presents, no honeymoon. Nothing that couldn’t be decided that moment—if Joan could be held at bay.

  Two years older than Daisy, but less pretty, Joan was sullenly unhappy that her sister should marry first. She had learned to assert herself in the company of her fellow Wrens and the men with whom she worked. She had learned to curse and drink, but she had not learned to sit at her parents’ table and behave like an adult. There had been an awkward moment before supper when she had accompanied Patrick and Daisy to the pub in the village. Daisy, a reluctant social drinker, had asked for a half pint of shandy and Joan, who really needed a drink, asked for a gin and orange. Patrick had looked at her kindly and had said in a mild, almost amused voice, “I’ll get you a gin, or an orange juice—or even a glass of gin and a glass of orange, but I won’t order a gin and orange.”

  “Why not?” Joan had asked, not sure that there mightn’t be a moment of flirtatious playfulness to follow.

  “It’s a tart’s drink,” Patrick said, his tone purely informational. “It’s like ordering a port and lemon.”

  Patrick and Daisy had been alone for a moment before supper and Daisy, who thought he might have waited a little longer, at least until after the wedding, to embark on her sister’s social education, had instead, with most uncharacteristic weakness, found herself apologizing for her family’s eccentricity. Patrick had looked at her for a moment, puzzled, and then had laughed.

  “Wait until you see mine,” he said, when he finished laughing. Even so, Daisy wished it had been possible to accept Rosemary’s offer and that the wedding would take place at Aberneth Farm.

  Chapter 7

  THE GREAT WESTERN Hotel. Convenient to King’s Cross. Maybe too convenient, Daisy thought, touching the ring borrowed from Valerie, unfamiliar and unconvincing, on the fourth finger of her left hand. King’s Cross, gritty, damp, smelling of engine smoke and cheap tobacco; thinly coated with the smaller feathers and droppings of the resident pigeons, and the residue and debris of troops and tired travelers; did she really want to lose her virginity in the atmosphere of a railway station?

  It was Patrick’s next leave and—Daisy’s time off delicately orchestrated by Rosemary, the clandestine aspects advised upon by a pruriently sympathetic Valerie—the betrothed couple were in London for what Valerie insisted on referring to as “a dirty weekend.”

  Patrick had gone to take a bath; it seemed to Daisy he had been gone a long time. It took her rather longer than it should have, and threw her into a deeper state of ineffectual nervousness, to realize there had been a slight emphasis in the announcement of his bathing plans. Clearly she was supposed to—allowed privacy to—what? To wander about the room, to look at herself in the dressing-table mirror, to apply lipstick, and, on second thought, to wipe it off, to pull back the curtain and look out the window to find black-out material depriving her of further evidence of pigeons and grimy red brick. The bed she avoided, and she was sitting at the dressing table looking at her unconfident reflection when there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” she called, her heart pounding, imagining a hotel detective. As she turned toward the door, she saw in the mirror that her face was white. After a short moment, the knock was repeated, this time a little louder and with a brisk impatience.

  She rose and crossed the room, wondering if hotel detectives really existed or whether they were merely a convention of the comic novel; the possibility of being confronted by one an aspect of clandestine trysts unmentioned by the otherwise informative Valerie. Daisy wished Patrick were there to confront this one as she opened the door, and feared suddenly that his absence was hotel detective related.

  Patrick, wearing a camel-colored dressing gown and looking at her quizzically, was standing outside. He held his sponge bag in one hand and his uniform, folded neatly with no socks or underclothing showing, over the other arm.

  “I thought for a moment you weren’t going to let me in,” he said affectionately.

  “I thought you were the hotel detective,” Daisy said breathlessly, standing in the doorway, a hand on the knob.

  “May I come in now?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” And Daisy stepped back to let him in.

  She closed the door,
Patrick set his things down on a chair and looked back at her. Daisy did not meet his eye.

  “Were you scared?” he asked.

  “A little,” she mumbled.

  He took her by the arms and looked at her gently.

  “You needn’t be,” he said. “Look at me.”

  Daisy reluctantly raised her eyes to meet his.

  “Trust me,” he said, and looked at her kindly until she nodded. “I’m not sure there are such people as hotel detectives,” he added. “I’ve never seen one.”

  “That wouldn’t prove anything unless you spend a lot of time in hotel rooms with girls of dubious chastity.”

  “That is not the kind of question girls are supposed to ask,” Patrick said just as kindly as before, but quite firmly.

  Daisy was sorry to hear it. She understood that Patrick was behaving like a gentleman and also protecting both her and himself against the possibility of a sooner or later jealous scene, but she was more curious than jealous. She had hoped he was somewhat experienced; surely one of them, at least, should know how to proceed now.

  During the silence that followed, Patrick took her in his arms and held her close to him. Her evening dress left her arms and shoulders bare and she felt the comforting warmth of his dressing gown against her skin. One hand on her waist and one on the naked part of her back pressed her closer; Daisy began instinctively to draw away from him.

  “Trust me,” Patrick repeated, and Daisy willed herself to melt into his embrace.

  They had had few opportunities for physical intimacy and none in which Daisy had been so lightly dressed. The greater part of their courtship had taken place by letter. Since their engagement they had written letters every second day. These letters were difficult to write for Patrick, because he was not allowed to describe his daily routine at the training course in a country house outside London; for Daisy, because she knew so little of her fiance’s life. She had not—apart from the Westmoreland Nugents—met any member of his family. The letters served to emphasize how little each knew about the other, and neither had developed a knack for exchanging the small, telling details of everyday life, or developing intimacy through the written word. And an awareness of the censor’s eye was an inhibiting factor not to be discounted.

  “You’re so beautiful ... I love you,” he said before he kissed her.

  Daisy closed her eyes and felt, for a moment, a dreamy pleasure in his kiss before her body stiffened, not only in fear of the physical act so close at hand, but at his words. She knew she wasn’t beautiful; she was young, healthy, maybe even pretty. And how could he love her; they hardly knew each other.

  This was the fifth time they’d been in each other’s company. There had been the day the Royal Oak had been sunk, when she had stood, stocking-footed, in the library at Aberneth Farm, holding a ferret in one hand as they listened to the BBC. And then the visit to Bannock when she and James had disappointed each other. After a self-conscious exchange of letters, on a wet Sunday afternoon, in a teashop with rain streaming down the windows, he had proposed to her over weak tea and sandwiches made with margarine. And after the briefest of hesitations, she had accepted him. Then there had been the awkward day when they had told her parents of their plans; and now, the commitment she had made so casually, so lightly, was to have its first consequence.

  “I love you, too,” she said, knowing the words were necessary if they were to make love, sleep together, marry. She felt as though the war had taken time from its normal pattern and sequence and flung it into the arbitrary rhythm of a dream.

  Patrick, without loosening his embrace, had one-handedly unfastened the first button on the back of Daisy’s dress, when the siren sounded. Daisy had just felt the first twinge of desire—occasioned, she noticed with surprise, by the adept manner in which Patrick was beginning to undress her—when the air-raid warning threw her sense of time further into the random, formless swirl she had felt a moment before.

  Daisy had never been in an air raid before. She had watched the oil tanks in Wales light up the night sky, but she had never been the victim or the target of an enemy attack. Her fear seemed to be diluted by her inability to feel that anything was real. Patrick, who was not experiencing so many things for the first time, seemed calm. But, since he was an officer and a gent, she hardly expected him to panic; it was hard to tell how much danger they were in. Patrick was dressing quickly, getting back into his uniform.

  “Get something comfortable and warm; this may take all night.”

  A few minutes later they joined the crowd of hotel guests streaming down the stairs. Patrick, handsome and impressive in his uniform; Daisy, a little crumpled in the coat and skirt in which she had traveled. They carried his overcoat, dressing gown, and a couple of pillows and a blanket from the bed.

  Outside, the sky to the south glowed red through a dark haze; the clanging of fire engines, anti-aircraft guns firing in the distance, and, closer, a warden’s whistle contributed to an atmosphere of resilient confusion.

  “The docks,” Patrick said. “Those poor bastards in the East End have no luck. Come on.”

  Daisy followed, scampering to stay close to him in the crowd, to the steps of the unidentified underground station. Beside her, a pale young woman with circles under her eyes carried a sleeping baby; a little girl, in pajamas, bedroom slippers, and a dressing gown, held on to her skirt. The child was not fully awake; Daisy took her other hand to help her down the steep, metal-topped steps, and soon they were all on the platform.

  Underground it was quite light; there was noise but different from the one they had heard above. The sounds of sirens and gunfire were fainter, replaced by human voices, the grizzling of a sleepy child and, at the far end of the platform, singing. The wall sign with the name of the station had been removed, and Daisy did not know where they were. Daisy felt as she had as a new girl at school—wide-eyed at strange rituals familiar to everyone else.

  “Let’s find a place—as far as possible from what looks like quite a jolly party,” Patrick said, and Daisy followed him along the platform to the darker, quieter end. Once there, he spread out the blanket on the concrete floor and propped the pillows against the tiled wall. Daisy stifled a protest at the casual way he was treating hotel property, and sat down beside him.

  “What happens now?” Daisy asked, surprised by how quickly her fear was being replaced by a feeling of how inconvenient it all was.

  “This goes on for a little while, then when everyone is in, it gets quieter and people go to sleep until the All Clear. Most of them have got it down to a routine.”

  “Even the children?”

  “Look.” Patrick gestured at the little family who had come down to the shelter with them. The young mother, her baby, and little girl were already asleep. They lay in an uncomfortable nest of coats and blankets, the baby in its mother’s arms, the little girl snuggled into the small of her back.

  “Londoners,” Patrick said. “They can adapt to anything on their home ground. Rosemary’s evacuees didn’t last long, did they?”

  “In and out in two weeks. Rosemary couldn’t have been kinder—when they went she felt guilty but relieved.”

  “They could get used to bombs, rationing, noise, and danger, but they couldn’t deal with the horrors of fresh air, cows, and meals not wrapped in newspaper.”

  “They missed their homes and their families and friends, and they probably couldn’t get used to being looked down on or condescended to,” Daisy said, surprising herself with a sharp note of defensiveness in her voice. “I think it’s somewhat to their credit.”

  “So do I,” Patrick said, smiling. “I shouldn’t like to live somewhere that when I left, the best of them felt guilty but relieved.”

  “What would it be you couldn’t manage without?” Daisy asked, after a moment. The platform was filling with bodies, but it had already become a little quieter. She spoke in a lower tone.

  “Someone like-minded to talk to, I suppose. And you?”

>   “Kindness,” Daisy said, feeling a little silly. “It’s less lonely.”

  “So we both depend on other people to get through this—through anything, I suppose.”

  “My mother depends on books, silence, and privacy.”

  “Privacy is quite a usual one, I imagine. It’s probably one of the worst things about being a prisoner.”

  “Lack of privacy. And no control over noise. Or having the window open.”

  Patrick nodded; it went without saying that they were talking about aspects of imprisonment other than death, physical pain, fear, or starvation.

  “Music seems to be the main—the essential—comfort for an extraordinary number of people. People who didn’t seem to pay it much attention in peacetime. Any kind of concert is packed out. There’s a fellow in my regiment who sits by himself every evening and reads music. He doesn’t even hum; every now and again he nods as though acknowledging something. No one ever disturbs him.”

  “Tea.”

  “Tea and teddy bears and the BBC,” Patrick said, laughing. “Lie down, we’re probably going to be here all night.”

  Daisy, a little awkwardly, wriggled herself forward until she was lying down. Patrick lifted his dressing gown and spread it loosely over her.

  “You might want to take off your coat,” he said.

  Daisy sat up, took off her jacket, and lay back on the pillow. Patrick took off his shoes and lay down beside her.

  “Teddy bears,” he repeated thoughtfully, and put an arm over her body and drew her to him. “How little I know about you, my sweet Daisy. Are you afraid?”

  “No.”

  He did not reply; instead he tucked her shoulder under his armpit and slid his other arm under hers, taking her breast in his cupped palm.