Something in Disguise Read Free

Clifford had pointed out, a baby was one of the cheapest
luxuries currently available. Then the war had pounced: a fine spring afternoon, and he had come back early – she heard his step on the linoleum stairs and ran to meet him trembling with
unexpected delight . . . Next morning he left her at five, a full lieutenant newly appointed to a frigate. She had sat in the tiny blacked-out kitchen staring at his half-drunk cup of tea and
wondering how on earth she could bear it. To be in love, to say goodbye for an unknown amount of time (weeks? months? years? she would not imagine further) only to know that he was to be put
professionally in danger somewhere, and that, worse, this was fast becoming the accepted, general situation, was the beginning of the war for her. She had sat in the kitchen hating men for
devising, allowing, lending themselves to this monstrous stratagem, which seemed to her then as evil and pointless and heartless as the origins of chess. Even he – she had sensed his
professional excitement, his pride in that wretched piece of gold lace, his complete acceptance that the Admiralty could, at a moment’s notice, break up his private life and send him anywhere
to fight and perhaps be killed . . .
    He hadn’t been killed for nearly another three years after that morning: the war had played cat and mouse with her: after three years of sharpening her courage by a succession of
these partings, of stretching her anxiety and loneliness to breaking point in the months between them, of informing her fears (it was impossible not to discover a good deal of the horrors and
hazards of convoy work in the North Atlantic and that was Clifford’s life), it pounced again. He never saw his daughter: he never even saw her, she had used to reiterate – a
straw of grievance which she clung to for months because even some kind of grievance seemed to help a bit – with the days, at least. So, like thousands of women and hundreds who had been
deeply in love, she settled down to the problems of bringing up two children without their father or enough money . . . When they were up, and before, she hoped, they had begun to think of her as a
responsibility, she had married again.
    Reminiscence was not thought: it couldn’t be, because it was so easy. Another interesting point the interesting man had made was that anything worthwhile was difficult; he had not actually
said that if you stumbled upon some natural talent, the talent would turn out to be inferior or unnecessary, but she suspected, in her own case, at least, that this was probably so. Obedience to
natural laws, he had said, was essential, if only you could find out what they were . Obedience and your own talents turning out to be no good had a ring of truth about it: the people who ran
institutions seemed always primarily concerned with the dangers of spiritual/temporal pride in their subjects; look at nuns and the Foreign Office . . .
    ‘Oh madam! Whatever are you doing in here on a day like this!’ It was Oliver doing his imitation of the horrible housekeeper who had ruled the colonel’s life until May had come
into it.
    ‘I’ll do it,’ he continued, looking into the bowl; ‘you haven’t got enough there to keep a lovesick Pekinese – let alone those two great witless sods in the
kennels. Give me another tin of what’s-his-name and go and be gracious somewhere.’
    ‘Thank you darling. Have you seen Alice?’
    ‘No. Should I have?’
    ‘I just wondered if she was all right.’
    ‘Why don’t you go and see, then? It’d be a kindness: that ghastly Rosemary’s been at her, and guess what she’s up to now?’
    May shook her head as she struggled out of the macintosh.
    ‘She’s made Liz iron Alice’s veil. Came to her and said she couldn’t find any of the servants to do it. “There aren’t any, my dear,” I said.
“What, in a great house like this!” she said. (Christ, this stuff smells like Portuguese lavatories!) “There’s