Mark Dunn - We Five

Lucille fabricated a smile as if to contradict her brother. “I’m happy and I worry. Isn’t that the way it is for everyone these days? Even our most pleasant moments are never without their dark edges of care and fear. It does make me sad to think of Ruth and those four special friends of hers. What a terrible time to be young and so full of life — only to have all the verve and spirit drained out of you by all the retched things men have shown themselves capable of doing to one another.”

“Do you mean men as representatives of mankind, Sister, or men as — well— men ?”

“Both, I fancy.” Lucille sat down upon the fat arm of the chair and placed her hand lovingly upon its occupant’s shoulder. “You spoke of men like Hitler earlier — those with a sickness that robs them of their humanity. Might there be men of similar infirmity — men right here in London of whom Ruth and her friends must take careful heed? I’m thinking of the girls in our congregation who found themselves — need I say it?”

“You needn’t say it,” said Mr. Mobry, patting his sister on the hand. “I’m rather glad I’ve retired from the ministry. ’Tisn’t a good time to be a shepherd among men. Far too many black sheep in the flock these days.”

“And what else is on the agenda for the evening?” asked Mrs. Hale. “I mean, besides approving which frocks you’ll be wearing Saturday night — which, may I just say, makes absolutely no sense unless you’re all hoping to go there looking like a colour-matched, fully-grown version of the Dionne quintuplets?”

“Mother, you’re a panic,” said Carrie. Mother and Daughter were sitting on Daughter’s bed amongst all the various pleated skirts and panelled skirts and straight skirts Carrie had been trying on. At present, Carrie was decked out in a pale green silk dress (her nicest one) for which the matching fabric-covered belt could not be found, and which, as it was, fitted much too tightly just below its sweetheart neckline. A long interval had passed since she’d last put it on, and during this time her breasts — which had already made Carrie the most mammarily blessed of We Five — had expanded to even greater proportions. “It’s really the entire package which we want to carefully put forward, Mother, and clothes are only a part of it. This is what Jane says. She says we should be careful when we make our appearance at the ballroom not to appear as either Bow’s Belles or Mayfair slummers. Jane would like us to stake out some spot in the cautious middle: girls without too terribly much money, but girls who are still capable of comporting themselves with taste and decorum. It’s not an easy thing to put over, Mother, so we’ll need to work at it.”

Carrie’s mother clasped her hands together in a show of cheery confidence. “You’ll be a credit to all those middling girls just like you. Why should only the very rich and the very poor have all the fun?”

“And you do want me to have fun, don’t you, Mother? Even though you’ll have to sit at home, rocking and knitting away with only the voices of the BBC for company?”

Sylvia Hale shook her head. “Do you fancy I’ll be lucky enough to spend the entire evening so indulgently? More than likely it will be me and Mr. Whiskers in the staircase cupboard. And if I’m very lucky, I’ll have Deloria Littlejohn crawling in beside me, so I’ll be treated to her unkind opinions of all the neighbours until blessed ‘All Clear.’”

“Why doesn’t she use her Anderson? I’ve seen the inside of it. It’s very nice the way she’s fixed it up.”

“Mrs. Littlejohn said she’d rather take rat poison than spend even an hour in such close quarters with Mr. Littlejohn. They don’t get on, or didn’t you know? At any rate, don’t go fidgeting yourself over me. You said on Monday that you and I — that we may have got a bit dull, even in the midst of this terrible war. And I’ve thought about it, and I have come to fancy there is some truth to it. We go round like lifeless twin automatons until the bombs fall, when we run all about like frightened children. And then when the sirens shut off and those nasty Messerschmitts disappear for the night, we’re back to tea and yawns and languid violin sonatas by Austrians, which we aren’t even supposed to be playing since the Anschluss. I want you to be happy, Carrie. You’re a beautiful girl and it’s time you met a young man who will appreciate you for your beauty — but also one who’ll be drawn to your cleverness and your winning personality.”

“You left out my various musical talents and my ability to stand on my head. You’re being a dear, Mother, but you’re being far too generous. Next you’ll say you’re troubled not in the least by the possibility that I may fall in love with a conscientious objector.”

“But it’s true, pet! If you love the lad — who ever the lad may be — I intend to respect your choice, because I’m confident my daughter will choose wisely. And by the way, conscientious objectors stand a far better chance of surviving this war than their counterparts in the service; it’s a simple fact. I’m being selfish, I know it, but I don’t want a young war widow for a daughter. I remember the last war, dear. Almost a million of our young men killed. Why else do you think I was forced to settle on your horrid father? You go to that ballroom on Saturday, my darling, and you bedazzle every young man there, conchie or not, and you come home and tell me every little thing about it. I’ll be your housebound girlfriend who lives vicariously through your breathless adventures.”

“Mother, one of these days you’re going to slip up and actually treat me like a daughter and not like your best friend in the world — and you’ll have to go looking for the sal volatile to revive me.”

Carrie got up, smoothed herself, and started to put all the skirts away.

“Let me do that,” said Sylvia. “You run along. The dress isn’t too tight?”

“A little, but we have until Saturday night to let it out, and I do want my sisters to see it tonight. Thank you, Mother.”

“Caroline?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“You don’t think — for just this coming Saturday night — that We Five might not become, well, We Six ?”

Carrie regarded her mother with surprise. “You’d like to join us?”

Sylvia Hale nodded.

Carrie smiled. She went up to her mother and kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t be silly. You know you can’t come.”

Sylvia’s look of excited anticipation over what could be Carrie’s answer vanished without a trace.

Carrie appended: “But I promise to rush right home and tell you every niggling detail. Breathlessly !”

This wasn’t much of a consolation to Carrie’s best friend in the world, but it would have to do.

___________

Jane stared at Lyle and Lyle stared back at Jane from across the kitchen table. Lyle had a blackened eye, for which he couldn’t account. “I fancy you won’t be going out tonight with an eye like that,” said Jane.

Lyle, having finished his tea, licked his fingers like a hungry man in a bad play. “It might stop me. It might not. I haven’t made up me mind yet.”

“Perhaps if you retrace your steps from last night, you’ll recall how you got it.”

“My guess is that I rattled some bloke’s cage and he punched me lights out.” Lyle grinned mischievously. “Oh I have it now. You want me out of the way so’s you can have the chickies here. I heard you talking to one of them on the Ameche earlier.”

“Maybe they are coming tonight. But I’ll not let you get anywhere near them. If you so much as wink or blink in their direction whilst they’re here, you’ll have to fend for your own bloody self for all of next week. You’ll have to take all your meals at the Fatted Pig, and just how easy will that be, when I don’t intend to give you a brass farthing to pay for them?”