Miss A. and Miss M. AN motorway had made a different landscape of that part of England I loved as a child, cutting through meadows, spanning valleys, shaving off old gar~ dens and leaving houses perched on islands of confusion, Nothing is recognisable now: the guesthouse has gone, with its croquet-lawn; the cherry orchard; and Miss Alliot’s and Miss Martin's week-end cottage. I should think that litle is left anywhere, except in may mind, Iwasa town child, and the holidays in the country hada sharp delight which made the waiting time of school term, of traffic, of leaflessness, the unreal part of my life. At Easter, and for weeks in the summer, sometimes even for afew snatched days in winter, we drove out there to stay— it wasn't far— for my mother loved the country, too, and in that place we had put down roots. St Margaret's was the name of the guest-house, which was run by two elderly ladies who had come down in the world, bringing with them quantities of heavily riveted Crowa Derby, and silver plate. Miss Louie and Miss Beatrive, My motherand I shared a bedroom with a sloping floor and threadbare carpet. The wallpaper had faint roses, and a powdery look from damp. Oil lamps or candles lit the rooms, and, even now, the smell of paraffin brings it back, that time of my life. We were in the nineteen twenties. Miss Beatrice, with the help of a maid called Mabel, a5THE DEVASTATING BOYS cooked deliciously. Beautiful creamy porridge, I remem- ber, and summer puddings, suckling pigs and maids-of- honour and marrow jam. The guests sat at one long table ‘with Miss Louie one end and Miss Beatrice the other, and ‘Mabel scutling in and out with silver domed dishes. There ‘was no wine. No one drank anything alcoholic, that I remember. Sherry was kept for trifle, and that was it, and the new world of cocktail parties was elsewhere. ‘The guests were for the most part mild, bookish people who liked a cheap and quiet holiday—schoolmasters, elderly spinsters, sometimes people to do with broad- casting who, in those days, were held in awe. The guests returned, so that we had constant friends among them, and looked forward to our reunions. Sometimes there were other children. If there were not, I did not care. I had Miss Alliot and Miss Martin. These two were always spoken of in that order, and not because it was easier to say like that, or more euphoni- ous. They appeared at luncheon and supper, but were not guests. At the far end of the orchard they hada cottage for weekends and holidays. They were schoolmistresses in London. ‘Cottage’ is not quite the word for what was little more than a wooden shack with two rooms and a verandah. It ‘was called Breezy Lodge, and draughts did blow between its ramshackle clap-boarding. Tnside, it was gay, for Miss Alliot was much inclined to orange and yellow and grass-green, and the cane chairs hhad cushions patterned with nastursiums and marigolds and fers. The curtains and her clothes reflected the same taste. 12 MISS A. AND MISS M. Miss Martin liked misty blues and greys, though it barely mattered that she did. She had a small smudged- looking face with untidy eyebrows, a gentle, even sub- merged nature. She was a great—but quiet—reader and never seemed to wish to talk of what she had read. Miss Alliot, on the other hand, would occasionally skim through a book and find enough in it for long discourses and an endless supply of allusions. She wrung the most out of everything she did or saw and was a great talker, ‘That was a time when one fell in love with who ever ‘was there. In my adolescence the only males available to me for adoration were suchas Shelley or Rupert Brooke or ‘Owen Nares. A rather more real passion could be lavished ‘on prefscts at school or the younger mistresses. ‘Miss Alliot was heaven-sent, it seemed to me. She was holiday goddess. Miss Martin was just a friend. She tried +0 guide my reading, as an elder sister might. This was a new relationship to me. I had no elder sister, and I had sometimes thought that to have had one would have altered my life entirely, and whether for better or worse T had never been able to decide, How I stood with Miss Alliot was a reason for more pondering. Why did she take trouble over me, as she did? T considered myself sharp for my age: now I see that I ‘was sharp only for the age I ved in. Miss Alliot cultivated me to punish Miss Martin—as if she needed another ‘weapon. I condoned the punishing. I basked in the doing, oft. Tmmed my own eyes from the troubled ones under the fuzzy brows, and I pretended not to know precisely what was being done. Flattery nudged me on. Not physi- cally fondled, T was fondled all the same. 153THE DEVASTATING BOYS Tn those days before—more than forty years before— the motorway, that piece of countryside was beautiful, and the word ‘countryside’ still means there to me. The Chil- tern Hills. Down one of those slopes below St Margaret's streamed the Cherry Orchard, a vast delight in summer of marjoram and thyme. An unfrequented footpath led through it, and every step was aromatic. We called this walk the Echo Walk—down through the trees and up from the valley on its other side to larch woods. Perched on a stile at the edge of the wood, one called ‘out messages £0 be rung back across the flinty valley. Once, alone, I called out, “I love you,” loud and strong, and “I love you” came back faint, and mocking, “Miss “Alliot,” I added. But that response was blurred. Perhaps T feared to shout too loudly, or it was not a good echo name. I tried no others. ‘On Sunday mornings I walked across the fields to church with Miss Martin. Miss Alliot would not join us. Tr was scarcely an intellectual feast, she said, or spiritually uplifting, with the poor old Vicar mumbling on and the ‘organ asthmatic, In London, she attended St Ethelburge’s in the Strand, and spoke a great deal of a Doctor Cobb. But, still more, she spoke of the Townsends. For she punished Miss Martin with the Townsends too. The Townsends lived in Northumberland, Their coun- try house was grand, as was to be seen in photographs. Miss Allfot appeared in some of these shading her eyes as she lay back in a deck-chair in a sepia world or—with Suzanne Lenglen bandeau and accordion-pleated dress— simply standing, to be photographed. By whom? I won- dered, Miss Martin wondered, too, I thought. 154 MISS A. AND MISS M. Once a year, towards the end of the summer holiday (mine: theirs) Miss Alliot was invited to take the train North. We knew that she would have taken that train at an hour’s notice, and, if necessary, have dropped every- thing for the Townsends. ‘What they consisted ofthe Townsends—I was never really sure. It was a group name, both in my mind and in our conversations. “Do the Townsends play cro- quet” Tenquited, or “Do the Townsends change for dinner?” T was avid for information. It was readily given. “T know what the Townsends would think of Aer,” Miss Alliot said, of the only common woman, as she put it, who had ever stayed at St Margaret's. Mrs Price came with her daughter, Muriel, who was seven years old and had long, burnished plaits, which she would toss—one, then the other—over her shoulders. Under Miss Alliot’s guidance, T scorned both Mrs Price and child, and many a laugh we had in Breezy Lodge at their expense. Scarcely able to speak for laughter, Miss Alliot would recount her ‘gems’, 2s she called them. “Oh, she said... . one can't believe it, lite Muriel... Mrs Price insises on it... changes her socks and knickers twice a day. She likes her to be nice and fresh, And ...” Miss Alliot was a good mimic, “‘she always takes an apple for recess’. What in God's name is recess?” This was rather strong language for those days, and Tadmired it. “[’s ‘break’ or...” Miss Martin began reasonably. 155