Camilla read this letter about six times in rapid succession and then put it in the pocket of her trousers. She would have liked to slip it under her thick sweater but was afraid it might fall out at the other end.
Her eyes were like stars. She told herself she ought to be miserable because after all she had decided it was no go about Ralph Stayne. But somehow the letter was an antidote to misery, and there went her heart singing like a lunatic.
Mrs. Bünz had retired with her cider to the far side of the inglenook, where she sat gazing — rather wistfully, Camilla thought — into the fire. The door of the Public opened. There was an abrupt onset of male voices — blurred and leisurely — unforced country voices. Trixie moved round to serve them and her father, Tom Plowman, the landlord, came in to help. There was a general bumble of conversation. “I had forgotten,” Camilla thought, “what they sound like. I’ve never found out about them. Where do I belong?”
She heard Trixie say, “So she is, then, and setting in yonder.”
A silence and a clearing of throats. Camilla saw that Mrs. Bünz was looking at her. She got up and went to the bar. Through in the Public on the far side of Trixie’s plump shoulder she could see her five uncles — Dan, Andy, Nat, Chris and Ernie — and her grandfather, old William. There was something odd about seeing them like that, as if they were images in a glass and not real persons at all. She found this impression disagreeable and to dispel it called out loudly, “Hullo, there! Hullo, Grandfather!”
Camilla’s mother, whose face was no longer perfectly remembered, advanced out of the past with the smile Dan offered his niece. She was there when Andy and Nat, the twins, sniffed at their knuckles as if they liked the smell of them. She was there in Chris’s auburn fringe of hair. Even Ernie, strangely at odds with reality, had his dead sister’s trick of looking up from under his brows.
The link of resemblance must have come from the grandmother whom Camilla had never seen. Old William himself had none of these signs about him. Dwarfed by his sons he was less comely and looked much more aggressive. His face had settled Into a fixed churlishness.
He pushed his way through the group of his five sons and looked at his grand-daughter through the frame made by shelves of bottles.
“You’ve come, then,” he said, glaring at her.
“Of course. May I go through, Trixie?”
Trixie lifted the counter flap and Camilla went into the Public. Her uncles stood back a little. She held out her hand to her grandfather.
“Thank you for the message,” she said. “I’ve often wanted to come but I didn’t know whether you’d like to see me.”
“Us reckoned you’d be too mighty for your mother’s folk.”
Camilla told herself that she would speak very quietly because she didn’t want the invisible Mrs. Bünz to hear. Even so, her little speech sounded a bit like a diction exercise. But she couldn’t help that.
“I’m an Andersen as much as I’m a Campion, Grandfather. Any ‘mightiness’ has been on your side, not my father’s or mine. We’ve always wanted to be friends.”
“Plain to see you’re as deadly self-willed and upperty as your mother before you,” he said, blinking at her. “I’ll say that for you.”
“I am very like her, aren’t I? Growing more so, Daddy says.” She turned to her uncles and went on, a little desperately, with her prepared speech. It sounded, she thought, quite awful. “We’ve only met once before, haven’t we? At my mother’s funeral. I’m not sure if I know which is which, even.” Here, poor Camilla stopped, hoping that they might perhaps tell her. But they only shuffled their feet and made noises in their throats. She took a deep breath and went on. (“Voice pitched too high,” she thought.) “May I try and guess? You’re the eldest. You’re my Uncle Dan, aren’t you, and you’re a widower with a son. And there are Andy and Nat, the twins. You’re both married but I don’t know what families you’ve got. And then came Mummy. And then you, Uncle Chris, the one she liked so much and I don’t know if you’re married.”
Chris, the ruddy one, looked quickly at Trixie, turned the colour of his own hair and shook his head.
“And I’ve already met Uncle Ernie,” Camilla ended and heard her voice fade uneasily.
There seemed little more to say. It had been a struggle to say as much as that. There they were with their countrymen’s clothes and boots, their labourers’ bodies and their apparent unreadiness to ease a situation that they themselves, or the old man, at least, had brought about.
“Us didn’t reckon you’d carry our names so ready,” Dan said and smiled at her again.
“Oh,” Camilla cried, seizing at this, “that was easy. Mummy used to tell me I could always remember your names in order because they spelt DANCE. Dan, Andy, Nat, Chris, Ernie. She said she thought Grandfather might have named you that way because of Sword Wednesday and the Dance of the Five Sons. Did you, Grandfather?”
In the inglenook of the Private, Mrs. Bünz, her cider half-way to her lips, was held in ecstatic suspension.
A slightly less truculent look appeared in old William’s face.
“That’s not a maid’s business,” he said. “It’s men’s gear, that is.”
“I know. She told me. But we can look on, can’t we? Will the swords be out on the Wednesday after the twenty-first, Grandfather?”
“Certain sure they’ll be out.”
“I be Whiffler,” Ernie said very loudly. “Bean’t I, chaps?”
“Hold your noise, then. Us all knows you be Whiffler,” said his father irritably, “and going in mortal dread of our lives on account of it.”
“And the Wing-Commander’s ‘Crack,’ ” Ernie said, monotonously pursuing his theme. “Wing-Commander Begg, that is. Old ’Oss, that is. ’E commanded my crowd, ’e did. I was ’is servant, I was. Wing-Commander Simon Begg, only we called ’im Simmy-Dick, we did. ’E’ll be Old ’Oss, ’e will.”
“Ya-a-as, ya-a-s,” said his four brothers soothingly in unison. Ernie’s dog came out from behind the door and gloomily contemplated its master.
“We can’t have that poor stinking beast in here,” Trixie remarked.
“Not healthy,” Tom Plowman said. “Sorry, Ern, but there you are. Not healthy.”
“No more ’tis,” Andy agreed. “Send it back home, Ern.”
His father loudly ordered the dog to be removed, going so far as to say that it ought to be put out of its misery, in which opinion his sons heartily concurred. The effect of this pronouncement upon Ernie was disturbing. He turned sheet-white, snatched up the dog and, looking from one to the other of his relations, backed towards the door.
“I’ll be the cold death of any one of you that tries,” he said violently.
A stillness fell upon the company. Ernie blundered out into the dark, carrying his dog.
His brothers scraped their boots on the floor and cleared their throats. His father said, “Damned young fool, when all’s said.” Trixie explained that she was as fond of animals as anybody, but you had to draw the line.
Presently Ernie returned, alone, and, after eying his father for some moments, began to complain like a child.
“A chap bean’t let ’ave nothin’ he sets his fancy to,” Ernie whined. “Nor let do nothin’ he’s a notion to do. Take my case. Can’t ’ave me dog. Can’t do Fool’s act in the Five Sons. I’m the best lepper and caperer of the lot of you. I’d be a proper good Fool, I would.” He pointed to his father. “You’re altogether beyond it, as the Doctor in ’is wisdom ’as laid it down. Why can’t you heed ’im and let me take over?”
His father rejoined with some heat, “You’re lucky to whiffle. Hold your tongue and don’t meddle in what you don’t understand. Which reminds me,” he added, advancing upon Trixie. “There was a foreign wumman up along to Copse Forge. Proper old nosy besom. If so be — Ar?”