And all round the porcelain handle on the pale green door were the marks of small dirty fingers.
“Ha! ha! young Deirdre got a last one in before she left, I see!” said Kenneth, pushing his chair back and holding up his cigarette case with an inquiring look at his sister and indicating the door.
“Yes, naughty little thing. (You may smoke, Kenneth, if you want to.) I only noticed that after Mrs. Archer had gone home this afternoon.”
“I’ll get the coffee, shall I?”
“Please, if you will.”
He went out of the room and across the octagonal hall about which the rooms were grouped, and into the kitchen. White and gold coffee cups were arranged with a patent machine on a tray, and he carried it back to the dining-room.
“Is Frankie coming down or shall I take it up to her?”
“She said she would come down.”
“How is she?”
“Oh, better, I think. As long as we don’t get another alert to-night——”
“Ah, here she is! And how’s Frankie this evening?” Kenneth, who had just sat down with his cigarette, got up again as the door opened and a small elderly woman in a pale grey dress came slowly in. She trailed across to Miss Fielding and gave her a peck, then trailed over to Kenneth and gave him a peck, and at last sat down, and gazed out of the window.
“What an exquisite evening,” she observed at last, in a low voice. “It is almost too much.”
“Ha! ha! only hope it keeps like it, I’ve got to sleep out to-night,” said Kenneth with his loud laugh.
“Did you get any rest this afternoon, Frankie?” inquired Miss Fielding.
“A little, thank you, Constance. But the house! So hushed, so quiet!”
“Delightfully quiet, Kenneth and I were just saying so.”
“I miss them,” said the lady in grey dreamily. “While they were here their presence and their laughter constantly jarred on me, but now they are gone there is a gap.”
“Well, do you know, I rather feel that, too,” said Kenneth, drinking coffee. “They were a confounded nuisance, but that little beggar Deirdre was cute. Full of gu—pep, I thought.”
Miss Fielding’s eyelids shuddered again.
“Well, I have quite made up my mind,” she said. “What emerges quite clearly from the past few months is that my special gifts must never again be wasted on dealing with the Rigbys of this world. We all have special gifts; I have mine; you have yours——”
“I did have mine … once,” the lady named Frankie corrected her.
“And you gave it to the world; it is there in black and white for all to see. But for the present my special gift, my talent for furthering international brotherhood by personal contact, must lie fallow. When one cannot even send a letter out of the country without its being read by coarse eyes, when there are barriers of hurtful wire (surely symbolic!) about our shores, when every mind is darkened and poisoned by hatred and suspicion and fear—how can my work go on? And it all seems so futile. Was that the warning?”
“No; only a car going up the hill,” said Kenneth. “But Con, you know, we can’t have those swine getting away with everything. I mean to say, I don’t want to contradict you or hurt your feelings—”
“We won’t discuss it again, dear old boy. We have argued so often before. We will just agree to differ. But if everybody would only love enough——”
“Ah, yes!” put in Frankie.
“—there would be no problems and the war would end to-morrow.”
“Well, as it doesn’t look like ending to-morrow and old Arkwright will be on my tail if I’m not on parade at 8 pip emma sharp, I’d better beat it,” said Kenneth cheerfully, getting up and patting the shoulder of Frankie, who looked up with a watery smile.
He went to the door, but just as he was opening it he turned round.
“Con, I was thinking—if you really don’t want the place overrun with evacuees again, how about filling it up ourselves? Getting some decent people of our own sort down to live here, I mean? You were talking the other day about having a refugee to help with the housework, and it ought to be easy enough nowadays to find someone else who’d come and fill up a bedroom. How’s about it? Good-bye, girls, I’ll be home to breakfast.”
He did not wait for her answer but went out.
They were watching him with an indulgent smile (mitigated in Miss Fielding’s case by the eyelid-flicker at “How’s about it?”) but no sooner had the door closed upon him than the smile vanished and the manner of both ladies changed completely.
Miss Fielding shut her large blue-grey eyes that ought to have been beautiful and were not, and said, “I can only hope that he does not know how the sight of him, in a uniform, in these rooms, where Our Mother spent her last years, makes me feel.”
“Yes, I often think of how grieved poor Aunt Eleanor would be if she could see him dressed like that,” replied Miss Burton in the same subdued voice, but with a noticeably more animated manner.
“I have no doubt that she does see him, Frankie. And that is my constant sorrow,” said Miss Fielding, opening the eyes again.
“He has nothing of that feeling, of course.”
“No. He is a very young soul.”
She got up and crossed over to the window and looked out. The sun was still shining strongly, and there were richly coloured caverns between the heads of pink phlox and love-in-a-mist and roses and pansies, and darker caverns full of sun rays and gauzy summer insects between the branches of the elms at the far end of the lawn. The air smelled hot and sweet.
“And all those expressions,” said Miss Fielding suddenly, “those cheerios and O.K.s and rippings—every one of them is like——”
“A drop of red-hot lead,” put in her cousin neatly, as she hesitated. “I know. Dear old Ken has no feeling for words, has he?”
“None.”
“To me, they are mosaic,” announced Miss Burton.
“But with all his limitations, one cares for him,” said Miss Fielding turning away from the window. “Shall we go into the drawing-room? Oh no—I forgot—we had better stay here, I think.”
The Rigbys had insisted upon sleeping for six months in the drawing-room, because they felt safer there. No one can sleep in the drawing-room for six months without its becoming obvious that they have done so, and that morning, as soon as the Rigbys had gone, Miss Fielding had entered and taken a good look round and pronounced it unfit for Fielding habitation until it had been done up, or, if that should prove impossible, spring-cleaned by Mrs. Archer.
The two ladies now drew chairs up to the window and sat down. Presently they would put away the bread and the remains of the salad and Spam, because they must not be wasted, but they would not clear away the dirty plates and wash up, because it did not occur to them to. Miss Burton was not strong, and her mind was occupied by Art, and the mind of Miss Fielding was occupied by even higher things.
Until the Nazi War came, Miss Fielding, who was fifty-three years old, had taken it for granted that there should be three maids—a cook, a housemaid and a parlourmaid—at Sunglades. It had been regarded by her as a natural law, like water finding its own level, and even now, after two years of increasing domestic experiment and difficulty, the remnants of that attitude of mind lingered on. Life being as unfair as it is, this calm assumption helped Miss Fielding to get domestic help where other women, less assured and less feudally minded, failed. Domestic helpers were usually willing to employ themselves with this prosperous, reliable-looking lady with her greying hair parted in the middle and her neat conventional clothes (Miss Fielding’s unusual theories did not extend so far as dress), but in spite of this she had no Treasures; servants who had been with the family for twenty-five years and identified their interests with those of the family, and this lack of Treasures was rather strange, because she seemed just the sort of mistress who ought to have had a Treasure or two.
CHAPTER 3
AFTER THEY HAD said a few more things about Kenneth whic
h lacked no interest to both of them because they had said them so many times before, Miss Fielding and Miss Burton were quiet for a little while, enjoying the calm of the evening, and the sunrays which were now long and sparkling and almost out of sight behind the elms.
“Do we want the news?” said Miss Fielding at last, glancing at the clock. “No, I don’t think we do, do we?”
“Oh, I don’t. Only this morning I opened the paper, and then I thought no. It is an exquisite morning; why should I spoil things for myself? And I shut it up again.”
“Ah, I wish I could do that. But I have to realize it all, and suffer. All this hate like a black cloud everywhere.”
And Miss Fielding waved her hand round and round in front of her face, rather as if she were a pussy washing it.
“Frankie,” said Miss Fielding, presently, “I want to ask your advice about something.”
“Of course, Connie. I shall be only too pleased.” Miss Burton leaned forward in her chair, looking immediately rejuvenated and important.
“Well, I shall appreciate it if you can help me, because I’m really undecided. Usually I am quite—luminous is the word I want, I think—about problems of this sort, but in this case I can’t”—Miss Fielding made more gestures in front of her face, as of one brushing away gnats—“quite see my way.”
Miss Burton nodded. “I know just how you feel. I get like that sometimes about my——”
She swallowed the last word just in time.
It had been “knitting.”
Miss Fielding knew, and Miss Burton knew that she knew, that upstairs at the bottom of Miss Burton’s chest of drawers was about fifteen pounds’ worth of Scotch Four-ply, Paton and Baldwin’s Fingering, Angora, Peri-lusta, Fairydown and all the rest of them, with patterns for vests and jumpers and gloves, and scores of knitting needles, all tangled together in an inextricable and Laocoön-like embrace from which only Miss Burton’s demise or a direct hit could release them. And further down still in this woolly Record of the Rocks were half-finished stool-covers and chair-backs and firescreens in gros-point with their accompanying twelve skeins of wool to each piece and their needles and frames. Miss Burton bought a new design or pattern for a jumper every time she went up to London but she always got in a muddle or bored with them and not one, except a muffler for Kenneth ten years ago, had ever been finished. She was far from indifferent to their plight; the thought of it often came upon her, as a painful contrast, when she was looking at some particularly peaceful landscape or tidy room and she made up her mind for the hundredth time to tidy that drawer up, and take out just one piece of knitting or gros-point work and finish it. But somehow she never got further than beginning to make a ball out of one of the wild tangles of wool and then lunch was ready, or it was time to go out in the car or (since the war) there was an alert and they all had to go down the garden to the shelter; and when she came back her fervour had ebbed. And the drawer remained as before.
Miss Fielding, who abhorred disorder of mind, body or drawer, knew of this lazar-house under her roof and deplored it. She seldom spoke frankly of it to Miss Burton, for although she often tackled people about their faults for their own good there were occasions when she thought it best to let the Good Principle work on people in its own way and this was one of them. But sometimes when she was a little longer than usual in getting to sleep at night she lay in bed breathing deeply and sending out thought-waves to Frankie about tidying that wool drawer. It was all good practice and in time, no doubt, it would work.
She now felt in her handbag and brought out a letter.
“It was really very strange Kenneth saying what he did about having someone to live here,” she said. “This came this afternoon.” She handed the letter, which was addressed in an unusually pretty writing, to Miss Burton.
Miss Burton glanced at it, then across at her cousin, with eyes widened in surprise.
“Betty,” she said.
“Betty,” answered Miss Fielding, nodding.
Miss Burton unfolded the letter.
Dear Connie,
I do feel awful for not having written for such ages, but you know how things are nowadays. How are you all? I hope you haven’t been having too many raids. It’s been pretty quiet in London lately and we don’t want any more.
Isn’t it fun; I’ve got a job at last with the Ministry of Applications who’ve been evacuated to St. Alberics, as I expect you know, and I’ve got to find somewhere to live near there. Do you think I could come and live with you?—as a p.g., of course. It would be divine if I could. How are Frankie and Ken? Give them both my love. Richard is still out on tour with the Dove Players, they’re doing Comus at Burslem this week. He seems to like it though of course he’d rather be doing his own job. He’s still rather seedy, too.
Do let me know if I can come. My lease of this flat is up next month so it all fits in rather well.
With love,
Yours ever,
BETTY.
Miss Burton carefully replaced the letter, and then the cousins exchanged a long look.
“Just the same,” said Miss Burton at last. “How long is it since you heard from her?”
“Oh, it must be over a year. She and Richard were on holiday in France and just got back before it fell.”
“Let me see, she must be—what? Forty-three?”
“Forty-five. She is eight years younger than I am.” (Miss Fielding never attempted to conceal her age, which she regarded—in the light of things eternal—as non-existent.) “But she doesn’t look it, or didn’t the last time I saw her. Nothing like forty-five.”
Miss Burton looked out of the window for a minute or two, and Miss Fielding waited for her to speak.
Miss Burton was tacitly accepted at Sunglades as the authority on Love. Miss Fielding was deferred to in any doubt about the age of people’s souls, Kenneth was allowed the last word on all aspects of vegetable-growing, and Miss Burton, so to speak, held the keys of Cupid’s garden. This was because she had once been jilted. She was not often consulted, because at Sunglades they rarely spoke of Love, but the thing will crop up sometimes, however conscientious you may be with the decontaminating, and when it did Miss Burton was always called in.
“He never mentions that affair, of course?” she said now, after a long pause.
“Oh, never. Well, I have heard him joke about her being an old flame, and that sort of thing you know, but never anything serious.”
“That may be bluff,” said Miss Burton knowingly.
“I don’t think so for a moment.” Miss Fielding’s tone was decided. “I flatter myself that if there is one human being I do know inside and out, it is Kenneth.” And she put back a bit of honeysuckle that was coming in at the window and smilingly pushed up her lips into her nose in the way she used to when she was a little girl and had triumphed over somebody.
Miss Burton looked at her. Ah, but Love has a way of lingering on in our poor human hearts, strive to dislodge him how we will, Connie, thought Miss Burton. And what do you know about Love, anyway? thought Miss Burton. You were never engaged to anyone for two years and got all your trousseau together and everything. Nobody ever told you that you had eyes like wallflowers. And as she was trying to memorize that bit about Love lingering on in our poor, etc., in order to write it in her Journal when she went upstairs to her own rooms, and also feeling curiously annoyed with Miss Fielding, as if she would like to take her down a peg or two, her tone when next she spoke was slightly absent-minded.
“I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” she said. “Have you shown the letter to Ken?”
“No, I thought it wiser not to. And I’m not really worried, of course. I’m sure Ken hasn’t thought about her in that way for years; certainly not since Our Mother died. But you know what Betty is.”
“A flirt.” Miss Burton’s tone made the pretty word seem to open in the air, as though a fan had clicked.
“Not consciously, Frankie. I used to think she was, but now I really bel
ieve she can’t help attracting people. I have seen her very upset about it.”
“She always seemed very cheerful to me,” said Miss Burton.
“Besides, she is forty-five and I haven’t seen her for two years. She may have Gone Off,” went on Miss Fielding hopefully. “People do.”
Not people like Betty, thought Miss Burton.
“And when it comes to actually having her in the house——”
“Well, you can always say you’re sorry, but you’ve half-arranged to have someone else here, and haven’t got room. I wouldn’t have her at all if you feel uneasy.”
“I am not uneasy, Frankie. It’s just that——” Miss Fielding did not finish her sentence, because there was no need to. She went on smoothly: “After all, it would be much nicer to have an old friend like Betty, who knew Our Mother, in the house than a stranger.”
“Aunt Eleanor never liked her,” said Miss Burton rather maliciously.
“Our Mother found her frivolous, which she certainly is,” retorted Miss Fielding. “I gave up years ago trying to get Betty to take an interest in anything except Richard and hats. That was why Our Mother was so thankful when she jil—decided not to have Kenneth after all.”
“I suppose that means Richard will be coming here too, to see her,” said Miss Burton despondently.
“We can’t refuse him house-roof if she’s here, Frankie—her own son.”
“He upsets me, I admit it. He is so rude and he doesn’t seem interested in anything except Spain.”
“I think he has the makings of a charming man.”
“The last time he was here he told me that his mother was not a type that appealed to him sexually,” said Miss Burton, looking down and smoothing her skirt, but speaking distinctly, “I don’t call that very charming.”
Miss Fielding gazed at her helplessly, then slowly blushed.
“He must have been funning,” she said at last. “These young things love to tease us oldsters.”