Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

It’s possible that Mum had made a huge moral effort at the beginning of the day, and had decided to give the Major the benefit of the doubt. Even if she had started out with an open mind, though, it would have snapped shut as sharply as her powder compact any number of times during the meal.

The Major did his best. When Mum brought the main course into the dining room, roast lamb, he had a compliment ready. Women at the time were known to live for compliments. Unfortunately the Major was a ‘man’s man’ without much talent in that line.

He said, ‘That looks absolutely delicious, Mrs Cromer, Laura I should say —’ And then his face went waggish, ‘— though to judge by your waistline, you won’t be eating much of it yourself.’ There was a slightly uncomfortable silence. He had said something a little too true, when we were expecting soft soap and flannel. Mum was always forgetting to eat. There was a stark contrast between the way she plied us with food and the amount she took in herself, and she was beginning to look too thin for her own good.

During the main course (while I ate my vegetables) Peter asked our guest if there was a Mrs Mad — ‘I mean a Mrs Major,’ he added, rather embarrassed.

The Major said, ‘Oh, I’m married all right — have been for years. Absolutely devoted.’ Dad looked distinctly startled by this information. The English eyebrow is a peerless instrument for conveying extreme states of mind. Then the Major went on, ‘The only thing is, I’m married to the skies! As a matter of fact, this book I’m writing, that’s what it’s going to be called. Married to the Skies . It has a good ring, don’t you think?’ Mum gave a little snort, disguised as a momentary difficulty with chewing. It was clearly her feeling that the skies were welcome to the Major. Who else would have him?

While Mum was clearing away our plates and preparing to bring in the next course, the Major was unwise enough to mention that his favourite pudding was the rum omelette to which he’d been introduced in Barbados during the Second War, which was served in flames. After that, there was no holding Peter and me. I don’t know which of us started it, but soon Peter was pounding the table with his spoon, and we were both chanting, ‘Burning pudding! Burning pudding!’ We were in an incendiary mood, and Mum’s trusty apple pie didn’t suit our mood.

The Major didn’t stay long after lunch. He may even have had some dim sense that he had not made a good impression. It’s unlikely that he realised he had blotted his copy-book on every one of its lines. He had sided with Dad and the pub against the sherry Mum had got in for the occasion (special glasses washed and ready). He had sided with her children and hilarity against her and decorum. He had failed to notice the starched compliment of her napery. He had sided with her figure against her food.

There was nothing he could do to reverse the trend of the meal. If he had brought someone back from the dead after pudding, Mum would have said he was just showing off.

She was sufficiently aggrieved to vent some of her feelings before the Major left. He was just starting up his car, and Peter was already jumping up and down, hoping for the earlier treat to be repeated. She leaned over his window and said, distinctly, ‘Major Draper, do you mind not offering Peter another ride on your running-boards? We prefer him not to be given treats that John can’t share.’ The Major looked off at an odd downward angle while this chastisement registered, and his crumpled old face wore a baffled frown.

‘Quite right too,’ he mumbled, as he slid the car into gear. I thought for a moment he was going to say, ‘Thank you for having me,’ the way we had been taught, even (or especially) when we’d had a very bad time indeed.

The ban on excitements I couldn’t share was a principle coined for the occasion. If it had been enforced, after all, Peter would have gone very short on treats — but Mum wasn’t above resorting to foul play when the situation called for it.

Dad must have seen that there were bridges to be mended, or he would hardly have volunteered to help with the washing-up. On this special occasion she washed and he dried. Normally he refused, by saying, ‘M’dear, if you use water of the proper temperature everything dries by itself. Why don’t we wash up turn and turn about?’ And Mum would reply, ‘You forget, Dennis, that I’ve seen the results of your washing-up. I’d rather do it myself and have some confidence in the results.’

Now he was humble as he rolled up his shirt-sleeves and picked up the tea-towel. The intention may have been to make peace, but as they did the washing-up together they had one of their few actual rows. Normally they shared the house without being together very much. They could both be in the garden at the same time, but each in a separate kingdom, Dad doing a bit of digging while Mum gathered herbs. Dad always had the refuge of the shed and the garage.

They could go for months without sharing a routine, but now they were locked together for the duration of the chore. Neither of them had the option of quietly moving off or pretending not to hear something. If in the course of conversation Mum chose to give him a good scrape, as if he was a plate encrusted with dirt, there wasn’t very much he could do about it.

‘Your friend the Major’, she said, ‘has a bit of a nerve talking about the War, I must say.’ It was true that the Major had referred to global conflict, but only as a backdrop to his activities, not really as a historical event in its own right.

‘What do you mean, m’dear? Kit served his country as much as anyone.’

‘Everyone knows he was practically a Nazi.’ She pronounced the hated word, as quite a few of her generation did, with a soft ‘z’, to rhyme with a word Dad sometimes used for the lavatory, and which she claimed to find supremely disgusting. The khazi.

‘You’ve got Kit all wrong — he was a double agent. He was pretending to sell aviation secrets to the Nazis but it was all above board. When they approached him he went straight to British Intelligence. It was all given the go-ahead by the head of MI5. Percy Sillitoe. The Top Man.’ That phrase still had a little residual power in our family.

She said, ‘So why did the Nazis think he’d help them in the first place? Why did they go to him? No smoke without fire. Oh, I remember now. Wasn’t it because the Major had already given lectures saying how wonderful they all were?’

Dad looked very uncomfortable. He rubbed away at the dish he was drying, looking intently at one spot, as if Mum might have left a speck. ‘That was in peacetime, m’dear. Honest mistake. Can’t hold that sort of thing against a fellow. He was short of cash at the time, and they gave him three pounds a lecture. He only did it for the money.’

His second family

He must have known he was serving the Major up on a plate, ready for carving. ‘All things considered, Dennis, I’d rather he spoke up for the Nazis because he believed in them. And as for money, some people will always be short of it.’

Mum herself was thrifty, and would ration her treats or even forfeit them if need be. Dad, though, regarded his pleasures as sacred, and had never been able to limit his consumption of cigarettes. Mum would often tell him he had smoked his way through a whole house. Sometimes she would bounce the comment off me — ‘John, your father has smoked his way …’ Turning a house into smoke was a rather mystical achievement, to my way of thinking, but I had enough sense to realise that Dad wasn’t being praised.

Now she returned to the attack. ‘I expected your friend the Major to be shabby, Dennis. I make allowances — but that man was actually rather dirty.’