When Freddy came on leave, the central heating was lit; at other times an intense cold settled into the house; it was a system which had to be all or nothing; it would not warm Barbara’s corner alone but had to circulate, ticking and guggling, through furlongs of piping, consuming cartloads of coke daily. “Lucky we’ve got plenty of wood,” said Freddy; damp green logs were brought in from the park to smoke tepidly on the hearths. Barbara used to creep into the orangery to warm herself. “Must keep the heat up there,” said Freddy. “Got some very rare stuff in it. Man from Kew said some of the best in the country.” So Barbara had her writing table put there, and sat, absurdly, among tropical vegetation while outside, beyond the colonnade, the ground froze hard and the trees stood out white against the leaden sky.
Then, two days before Christmas, Freddy’s regiment was moved to another part of the country. He had friends with a commodious house in the immediate neighbourhood, where he spent his weekends, so the pipes were never heated and the chill in the house, instead of being a mere negation of warmth, became something positive and overwhelming. Soon after Christmas there was a great fall of snow and with the snow came Basil.
He came, as usual, unannounced. Barbara, embowered in palm and fern, looked up from her letter-writing to see him standing in the glass door. She ran to kiss him with a cry of delight. “Darling, how very nice. Have you come to stay?”
“Yes, Mother said you were alone.”
“I don’t know where we’ll put you. Things are very odd here. You haven’t brought anyone else, have you?” It was one of Freddy’s chief complaints that Basil usually came not only uninvited but attended by undesirable friends.
“No, no one. There isn’t anyone nowadays. I’ve come to write a book.”
“Oh, Basil. I am sorry. Is it as bad as that?” There was much that needed no saying between brother and sister. For years now, whenever things were very bad with Basil, he had begun writing a book. It was as near surrender as he ever came and the fact that these books two novels, a book of travel, a biography, a work of contemporary history never got beyond the first ten thousand words was testimony to the resilience of his character.
“A book on strategy,” said Basil. “I’m sick of trying to get ideas into the heads of the people in power. The only thing is to appeal over their heads to the thinking public. Chiefly, it is the case for the annexation of Liberia, but I shall touch on several other vital places as well. The difficulty will be to get it out in time to have any influence.”
“Mother said you were joining the Bombardier Guards.”
“Yes. Nothing came of it. They say they want younger men. It’s a typical Army paradox. They say we are too old now and that they will call us up in two years’ time. I shall bring that out in my book. The only logical policy is to kill off the old first, while there’s still some kick in them. I shan’t deal only with strategy. I shall outline a general policy for the nation.”
“Well it’s very nice to see you, anyway. I’ve been lonely.”
“I’ve been lonely.”
“What’s happened to everyone?”
“You mean Angela. She’s gone home.”
“Home?”
“That house we used to call Cedric’s Folly. It’s hers really of course. Cedric’s gone back to the Army. It’s scarcely credible but apparently he was a dashing young subaltern once. So there was the house and the Lyne hooligan and the Government moving in to make it a hospital, so Angela had to go back to see to things. It’s full of beds and nurses and doctors waiting for air raid victims and a woman in the village got appendicitis and she had to be taken forty miles to be operated on because she wasn’t an air raid victim and she died on the way. So Angela is carrying on a campaign about it and I shouldn’t he surprised if she doesn’t get something done. She seems to have made up her mind I ought to be killed. Mother’s the same. It’s funny. In the old days when from time to time there really were people gunning for me, no one cared a hoot. Now that I’m living in enforced safety and idleness, they seem to think it rather disgraceful,”
“No new girls?”
“There was one called Poppet Green. You wouldn’t have liked her. I’ve been having a very dull time. Alastair is a private at Brookwood. I went down to see them. He and Sonia have got a terrible villa on a golf course where he goes whenever he’s off duty. He says the worst thing about his training is the entertainments. They get detailed to go twice a week and the sergeant always picks on Alastair. He makes the same joke each time: ‘We’ll send the playboy.’ Otherwise it’s all very matey and soft, Alastair says… Peter has joined a very secret corps to go and fight in the Arctic. They had a long holiday doing winter sports in the Alps. I don’t suppose you’d remember Ambrose Silk. He’s starting a new magazine to keep culture alive.”
“Poor Basil. Well I hope you don’t have to write the book for long.” There was so much between brother and sister that did not need saying.
That evening Basil began his book; that is to say he lay on the rug before the column of smoke which rose from the grate of the octagonal parlour, and typed out a list of possible titles.
A Word to the Unwise.
Prolegomenon to Destruction.
Berlin or Cheltenham; the Choice for the General Staff.
Policy or Generalship; Some Questions Put by a Civilian to Vex the Professional Soldiers.
Policy or Professionalism.
The Gentle Art of Victory.
The Lost Art of Victory.
How to Win the War in Six Months; a Simple Lesson Book for Ambitious Soldiers.
They all looked pretty good to him and looking at the list Basil was struck anew, as he had been constantly struck during the preceding four months, with surprise that anyone of his ability should be unemployed at a time like the present. It makes one despair of winning, he thought.
Barbara sat beside him reading. She heard him sigh and put out a sisterly hand to touch his hair. “It’s terribly cold,” she said. “I wonder if it would be any good trying to blackout the orangery. Then we could sit there in the evenings.”
Suddenly there was a knock on the door and there entered a muffled, middle-aged woman; she wore fur gloves and carried an electric torch, dutifully dimmed with tissue paper; her nose was very red, her eyes were watering and she stamped snow off high rubber boots. It was Mrs. Fremlin of the Hollies. Nothing but bad news would have brought her out on a night like this. “I came straight in,” she said superfluously. “Didn’t want to stand waiting outside. Got some bad news. The Connollies are back.”
It was indeed bad news. In the few hours that he had been at Malfrey, Basil had heard a great deal about the Connollies.
“Oh God,” said Barbara. “Where are they?”
“Here, outside in the lobby.”
Evacuation to Malfrey had followed much the same course as it had in other parts of the country and had not only kept Barbara, as billeting officer, constantly busy, but had transformed her, in four months, from one of the most popular women in the countryside into a figure of terror. When her car was seen approaching, people fled through covered lines of retreat, through side doors and stable yards, into the snow, anywhere to avoid her persuasive, “But surely you could manage one more. He’s a boy this time and a very well-behaved little fellow” for the urban authorities maintained a steady flow of refugees well in excess of the stream of returning malcontents. Few survived of the original party who had sat glumly on the village green on the first morning of war. Some had gone back immediately; others more reluctantly in response to ugly rumours of their husbands’ goings on; one had turned out to be a fraud, who, herself childless, had kidnapped a baby from a waiting perambulator in order to secure her passage to safety, so impressed had she been by the propaganda of the local officials. It was mostly children now who assembled, less glumly, on the village green, and showed the agricultural community how another part of the world lived. They were tolerated now as one of the troubles of the time. Some had even endeared themselves to their hosts. But everyone, when evacués were spoken of, implicitly excluded for all generalities the family of Connolly.