A Presumption of Death Read Free Page A

again more or less safe and sound. He’s got quite a good instinct of self-preservation, really. And he’s not stupid, which is a comfort, whatever Kingsley has to say about being good and letting who will be clever, though I don’t see how you can be clever just by willing. Peter always maintains that Kingsley said ‘can’, not ‘will’, and perhaps he did. I only hope he still has Bunter with him, though if he’s gone into any queer place in disguise I can’t think what he can have done with him, because if ever a man had ‘English gentleman’s personal gentleman’ written all over him, it’s Bunter. I had a letter from him yesterday, so discreet it might have been written from Piccadilly, and conveying the compliments of the season to all the Family, with a capital F.
    We’re looking forward to seeing you all for Christmas, germs permitting. I hope you won’t mind our being overrun with evacuees and children’s parties – Christmas tree and conjurer in the ballroom, with charades and games after supper – I’m afraid it will be rather noisy and rampageous and not very restful.
    Always your affectionate
    Mother
     
    PS: I’m sorry my English is so confusing. It was Bunter, not Peter, who wrote the discreet letter, and Peter, not Kingsley, who has Bunter with him – at least, I hope so.
    Lady Peter Wimsey to Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad. (extract)
    6th February, 1940
    . . . This is the coldest winter anyone can remember. The Pag has frozen solid, and all the children and the land-girls have been skating on the village pond, looking like a scene painted by Brueghel. There is no coal to be had for love nor money, which is more to do with the freeze-up than the enemy. Troops are being used to dig snow off the railway lines. I’m afraid the vine in the glass-house will die, but other than lining the glass with newspaper – it is already elaborately criss-crossed with sticky tape, as are all the windows of the house – I can’t think what to do about it. We have no fuel to spare for a heater; as it is we are carrying branches home from Blackden Wood, and spending most of the day in the kitchen, where Mrs Trapp keeps the range going splendidly, and it’s always warm.
    In all this chill we need a hot topic, and that is provided by the land-girls. Seven of them are working at Datchett’s farm and five at Bateson’s. John Bateson has lodged them in the outbuildings just beyond our kitchen garden, you know – the range that was the stable yard and tack rooms before this house was split from the farm itself. They all seem rather jolly to me, and incredibly hard-working. John Bateson seems rather hard on them: I heard him the other day saying, ‘You’ve come here to do a man’s job, and you’ll just have to get on with it!’ They have been kitted out for work with awful fawn aertex shirts, grey slacks and green pullovers but they wear silk stockings and lipstick when off duty, and have rapidly acquired a reputation for being ‘fast’, which has all the young men buzzing round like wasps at a honey pot. There’s no shortage of young men to buzz round, because we have two airfields between here and Broxford, and some sort of hush-hush military establishment in the Manor House, requisitioned from the squire, and full of youngsters in mufti fond of dancing and the flicks when off duty. This is all rather a lot to swallow for the older people, who shake their heads over it all till their necks must ache!
    The other big news is that the Anderson shelters have arrived – at long last; Broxford and Lopsley have had theirs for weeks – and of course the ground is frozen so hard that nobody can dig the holes in the gardens required to erect them. Mr Gudgeon – you remember him, the landlord of the Crown – has made his cellars available as a public shelter. It turns out the Crown is much older than it looks above ground; it has a warren of vaulted powerfully ancient-looking undercrofts, which