Читать книгу Both Your Houses - Philip Gibbs - Страница 9

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Pamela came out of Ashleigh station on the afternoon following her meeting with Kit. After dumping her bag by the kerbstone she raised a finger at the driver of a small car. This happened to be Dick Barnes, late of the R.A.F. (ground staff) and now helping his father to run a garage in the village of Church Hampden, six miles away.

He touched his cap and grinned. He knew this girl. Before the War he had taught her to drive a car at great risk to his life because she let it rip, all out, along the winding lanes.

“Good afternoon, Dick,” she said, as he went forward to pick up her bag.

“Nice to see you again, miss,” he answered, taking off his glove to shake hands with her.

“Nice to be back,” she said. “Better than Berlin!”

“I don’t doubt it, miss. All starving, aren’t they?”

“Badly undernourished. In a terrible state.... Put that bag on the back seat. I’ll sit in front.”

Presently, after they had driven a mile, she gave an exclamation.

“How marvellous!”

“Marvellous?” asked Dick Barnes. He couldn’t see anything marvellous ahead of him. He could only see the same old leafless trees and the soggy fields. He knew every pothole in the road.

“To be in England again!” she explained. “After the ruins of Berlin. And it’s like a spring day with that glinting sunshine and that blue in the sky.”

“Lots of rain and more coming,” said Dick Barnes.

After the next bend in the road Pamela spoke again.

“How are things in Church Hampden?”

Dick considered his answer. He wasn’t one of those glib know-alls who spoke without thought.

“Not what you might call good,” he said, after that pause, and he gave a laugh in which there was a note of bitterness. “Filthy food and not enough of it. Nothing in the shops. No houses for ex-Servicemen. Not enough beer. Damn’ little petrol. No prospect of better times, as far as I can see.”

Pamela laughed at this black picture of England.

“People in German cities are living in cellars.”

“I’m living with my mother-in-law,” said Dick Barnes, darkly. “Worse than a cellar on your own.”

Pamela was amused by this old mother-in-law joke, which was no joke, it seemed, to Dick Barnes.

“A bit difficult, eh?”

“You’ve said it, miss.”

He passed a Green Line ’bus, avoided two boys on bicycles and then spoke again.

“I voted Labour last time. Now I wish I hadn’t. They’ve made a mess of it, as one must admit. No coal last winter and cuts in electricity during the worst spell. My little woman and I nearly froze to death. Now it’s everything for export and to hell with the home market. Cutting off the basic petrol has ruined a lot of little garages and a lot of road-houses into which ex-Servicemen put their money. Makes no blighted sense to me, if you’ll pardon the word.”

“That’s all right,” said Pamela.

“More austerities to come,” said Dick Barnes in a voice of doom. “That’s according to Sir Stafford Cripps who wallows in austerity. Sir Stafford Creeps I call him! It makes one’s blood go cold when one hears him on the wireless.”

Pamela smiled at this narrative of woe. Anything was better than Berlin.

“Have you seen my father lately?” she asked as though Dick Barnes might have dined recently with her noble parent.

“Round the village,” he told her. “Looking pretty bobbish. His lordship comes into the ‘Green Dragon’ now and then and has a drink with the chaps standing around. Of course, they play up to the Old Man—I mean his lordship. You wouldn’t think that any of ’em voted Labour in the last Election. It makes me laugh! Then he’s always talking to the village kids, the little devils! Gives his sweet ration to them. He’d do better to wallop them. Always up to mischief.”

He drove his car through open iron gates into a drive bordered by rhododendrons and tall poplars leading to a square-built Georgian house. Pamela had been born in it.

The door was opened by a white-headed old man in a black suit who received an affectionate greeting from Pamela.

“Hullo, Meggs, old dear! Anybody at home?”

The old man raised his hands in astonishment.

“Good gracious, Miss Pamela! Why didn’t you let us know the time of your train? We would have sent the car for you. His lordship is still allowed a drop of petrol.”

“That’s all right, Meggs. How are your old bones keeping? How’s the rheumatics?”

“Not too bad, miss, considering these horseterities, and economy in fuel. Now there’s a shortage of potatoes. Oh dear, oh dear!”

He coughed behind a transparent hand and then spoke again more cheerfully.

“It’s very pleasant to see you again, Miss Pamela, I must say, my dear. You’re looking bonny.”

“Is Father in?” asked Pamela going into the hall.

The old man coughed again and lowered his voice.

“The situation is a little difficult at the moment. The Bishop of Ashleigh has been waiting some time, but his lordship is in the study playing with Mrs. Bosanquet’s children. When I last ventured to look in he was pretending to be a tiger in the jungle. I’m sorry to say he told me to go to the devil.”

Pamela laughed at this statement of affairs.

“Just like Father. I’ll see what I can do about it.”

She went to her father’s study and opened the door. Lord Bramley, who had once helped to govern a great Empire now in dissolution, was crawling stealthily from beneath an oak table towards some long velvet window curtains behind which three small children were hiding with squeals of laughter at the sound of a tiger’s roar.

“Father,” said Pamela, smiling at this scene, “the Bishop of Ashleigh is waiting to see you. Hadn’t you better go?”

“Oh, blast the Bishop!” said Lord Bramley, irritably. But he rose to his feet clutching his daughter’s arm to steady himself. He looked remarkably like the caricatures of him in the papers, with a shock of white hair and a lean actor-looking face with a humorous mouth.

“Tiger! Tiger!” shouted the three children.

“No more tigers, my dears,” said Lord Bramley. “People will interrupt our games just as they’re getting exciting. You must all go now.”

Two small girls and a boy came from behind the curtains reluctantly.

“May we come tomorrow?” asked the small boy. “Will you play tigers again?”

“Not tomorrow, young man. I have to go to London to make a speech in the House of Lords.”

“Will it be in the Children’s Hour?” asked one of the little girls.

Lord Bramley’s humorous mouth twisted to a smile and there was a flash of mirth under his shaggy eyebrows.

“Just the place for it!” he said.

When the children had gone he turned to his daughter and put his arm round her when she kissed his cheek.

“We had your wire, my dear. So you’ve abandoned that unpleasant job?”

“Yes, Father. I’ve got my release.”

“You’re well out of it,” said Lord Bramley. “We can’t put Germany on her feet again for a long time yet though it’s costing the British tax-payer something like eighty millions a year.”

He held Pamela at arm’s length and his keen eyes searched her face. Then he laughed.

“You’re in for the deuce of a row, young woman. Your mother thinks you’re about to disgrace the family name. I’m not sure that she isn’t right.”

Pamela laughed uneasily.

“I know I’ve got to face the music, Father. But meanwhile the Bishop is waiting for you. Poor Bishop!”

“Oh lord, yes! I’ll have to ask him to dinner, I suppose. Perhaps I have asked him to dinner. See you later, Pam.”

He went out of the room, leaving the door open, his voice ringing out—that resonant voice which Pamela had heard in the House of Lords before the War and many times on the wireless.

“A thousand apologies, my dear Bishop. I was up to my neck in official documents. I have to give tongue in the House of Lords tomorrow. You’ll stay to dinner, of course?”

The drawing-room door closed on further conversation.