Mona laughed.
“I wonder?” she said. “But perhaps I’m being indiscreet. I mustn’t tell tales out of school, must I, Mrs. Gunther? Although I’m sure I know nothing that you do not. Well, it’s been nice meeting you. Goodbye. Tell your husband that we hope he will drop in to the Priory for a glass of sherry one evening if he’s up that way.”
Mona nodded and started off down the street.
She was well aware that she had left Mrs. Gunther perturbed and uncertain, wondering if there was something going on that she didn’t know, wondering what Mona could have meant by “secrets”.
‘That type always wants to know everything,’ Mona thought to herself. ‘She’s just like Char Strathwyn, always nosing about, always frightened that she’s going to miss something.”
She walked past the church and took the right-of-way across the fields, then, as she neared the Priory, she thought she would go in and see Lynn Archer. She called most days to enquire about Gerry, who was better, although he had been in pain for forty-eight hours and was suffering now from shock and loss of blood.
She tapped at the door of the lodge and heard Lynn’s voice call out, “Come in.”
She found her alone, seated at her desk by the window, a pile of papers in front of her.
“Am I disturbing you?” Mona asked.
“No,” Lynn replied. “Come in. I am trying to write and I can’t. Why didn’t I choose any other profession? Even scrubbing floors would be preferable to sitting with a pencil in one’s hand and a persistently blank piece of paper to look at.”
“Where are the children?” Mona asked.
“Your angelic nanny has taken them for a walk,” Lynn replied. “Your mother came in this morning and said she thought I was looking tired, so Nanny came down after lunch and bundled the two babies into the pram and John has taken his tricycle.
“Oh, why haven’t I got a Nanny like that! They were all fighting and screaming and in two minutes she had calm and order, had buttoned them into their coats, pulled on their leggings, dared them on pain of death to take off their gloves again, and they were out of sight before they could get their breath. I feel a free woman, but still I can’t write.”
“What’s the matter?” Mona asked.
“It’s this country,” Lynn said with a gesture of despair. “It sounds absurd, I know, but I’ve always lived in towns, I’ve always had fun, excitement, noise and traffic round me. I can’t write when it’s quiet, flat and uneventful. People have said to me for years. ‘Lynn Archer, if you could go away for six months to the country you’d write a marvellous book.’ I believed it until I came here, and I know that my books are conceived on cocktails and parties and that unless there’s some sort of fun going on I can’t write so much as a postcard.”
“That’s a bit unfortunate!” Mona said.
“Unfortunate! It’s desperate,” Lynn replied. “Here, have a cigarette.”
She walked across the room, a vivid figure in her navy-blue slacks and cherry-coloured jumper.
“Am I boring you?”
“Of course you’re not,” Mona answered. “I like listening to other people’s troubles, it takes my mind off my own. Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“It’s a dull story,” Lynn said. “If I tried to put it in a book people would die of boredom and I’d only sell one copy and that would be to my old mother, and the plot can be explained in one word. A word that is, I suppose, one of the most common words in the English language, a disgusting, mean, crafty little word.”
“Which is?” Mona prompted.
“Debts,” Lynn replied. “Debts ... debts ... debts. Bill and I got married on debts, we’ve lived on debts and we’ve very nearly died on them, too, when the bomb came through the roof of our house in London.
“We’ve pledged everything we ever possessed to try and get straight. With any luck, and if Bill’s an Air Marshal before the end of the war, we may get clear by the time the grave is waiting for both of us – but in the meantime we have got to eat.”
“And to do that you must write?”
“Exactly. And I can’t, I tell you, I can’t. It’s just impossible. I got a letter from my publisher this morning asking for the blurb for my spring novel. Blurb! I haven’t begun to think out a plot. And where can I find one in this deadly place? Do you think people want to read about cabbages mating in the fields or potatoes committing adultery with the turnips in the barn? I tell you, I’m sunk!”
“Nonsense!” Mona said. “I don’t believe that books can be entirely dependent on outside influences. It must be something inside you and that’s still there. What we have got to do is to conjure up the atmosphere.”
“So easy, isn’t it?” Lynn said sarcastically. “Do you know, I haven’t seen a soul in months except your mother – who’s an angel – yourself, and Dr. Howlett. Bill gets home, three, perhaps four nights a week from the aerodrome, the rest of the time he’s on duty. They’re so madly busy that he can’t even bring the other officers along with him, and if he does we can’t really afford the drinks. Not that that would matter if they gave me something to write about, but most of them have nice, straightforward, charming characters and when you have used the adjectives ‘eager’, ‘enthusiastic’, ‘clean-limbed’, et cetera, et cetera, there’s nothing left to say.”
Mona laughed.
“Poor Mrs. Archer!”
“And for Heaven’s sake call me Lynn!” her hostess said sharply. “That’s another thing, this awful formality. I suppose if I live here another six years someone will call on me.”
“My dear, I’m sorry for you,” Mona said. “I’ve felt like this myself. I used to think of all the nice things that were happening in the world while I looked like being marooned here for ever. That was when I was seventeen and nothing dramatic ever happened except a choirboy fainting in church, or a cow getting loose in somebody’s back garden and destroying the flowers they were cosseting for the local flower show.”
“Well, you understand then,” Lynn said. “What can I do? I can’t go back to London with the children. You see, mad though I sound, I rather love my babies.”
“I’m not surprised. They are adorable. In fact they all three look as though they’ve stepped out of a story book.”
“You understand, then! The last time we were bombed was bad enough. Thank God, I had all three of them down in the cellar, but the next time we might not be so lucky. Besides, Bill’s here and I wouldn’t leave him for anything in the world.”
Lynn’s face lit up when she spoke about her husband.
‘She loves him!’ Mona thought.
“Well then, we’ve got to do something about it,” she said aloud. “The question is, what? Have you thought of getting to know some of the people here? There are stories enough in everyone’s life if you begin to look for them, even in a village like this.”
“What sort of stories?” Lynn asked half scornfully.
“I’ll tell you one, about the Vicar’s wife.”
