“I know, Frankie—I didn’t mean to be tiresome,” Betty soothed her, “I’ll break it to Richard,” and she hurried away.
“Good heavens,” said Richard, on being stopped half-way upstairs to his bedroom by his mother and informed that he was to have a stablemate. “But—good heavens, Betty.” He looked excessively tired, and had escaped from the now rather subdued revelries in the drawing-room on the plea of his recent illness. He gazed wanly at her.
“I know, darling. It’s tough——”
“Tough!”
“I’ll tell him you’ve been ill, darling.”
“Please don’t tell him anything. I am going straight to bed and when he comes in I shall be asleep. And tomorrow I shall go and look for a room in Blentley.”
“To-morrow’s Christmas Day, darling.”
“Well, on Boxing Day, then.” He resumed his ascent of the stairs. “I will not endure two nights of it.”
“Oh, Connie will have got the spare room ready for him by to-morrow night,” Betty promised, but even as she did so she remembered that Mrs. Miles was occupying the spare room.
The Kumfi-Slepe in all its nakedness was exposed in Richard’s room with sheets flung all over it. It was at the foot of his bed; he had naturally, whenever he looked at it, supposed it to be a chair. He now silently pushed it over to a far corner, where it looked very obviously isolated, and went unhappily to the bathroom.
Downstairs, a final drink was being had. The party was now definitely subdued, for Alicia had gone home, after wishing them all a Merry Christmas, Vartouhi and Miss Burton were collecting bedding, and Betty was getting out some pyjamas of Kenneth’s. Why (she thought, as she went into Richard’s room with them) has he got three out of the five women in the house waiting on him? We don’t wait on Ken or my poor Richard. I believe it’s because he takes it for granted that we shall. Wicked old man. I like him, though.
Mr. Fielding was alone with his three children.
He sat in the most comfortable chair and sipped his own whisky, and gazed rather glassily into the fire. Kenneth stood by the mantelpiece, also sipping, and Mrs. Miles and Miss Fielding sucked up their Ovaltine with grave faces.
Kenneth was embarrassed. He had always been fond of his father but even in his boyhood the expression of his affection had been influenced by the attitude of his mother and sisters, who disapproved of Mr. Fielding senior’s frivolous attitude to life, his lack of desire to improve the characters and habits of his acquaintances, and his lack of interest in his wife’s public work. The three strong-minded women kept up this steady attitude of disapproval without ever relaxing, and as a result Kenneth, a warm-hearted but not strong-minded boy, found his love for his father opposed to the admiration and fear he felt for his mother and sisters, and the affection was defeated, and forced to take refuge in his secret heart. He had kept in fairly close touch with his father since the old man had scandalized St. Alberics twenty years ago by leaving home for no apparent reason. He usually knew where old Mr. Fielding was, and what his latest plans were, and whether his health was good or bad, and sometimes he ran up to town for a week-end and visited, in company with his father, one or two of the night clubs the old man had promoted.
It may here be pointed out that there are night clubs and night clubs; there are the orchids of the night world and its deadly nightshades, and there are its gay pink camellias, sophisticated yet cheerful, scentless and shallow-hearted yet immediately pleasing to the man in the street. It was in the pink camellia class that the night clubs promoted by Mr. Fielding belonged; if you had to have night clubs, his were the best kind to have. Innocence we do not claim for them, nor spirituality, nor depth (whatever that may mean), but only an ass would look for those qualities in a night club, and they had gaiety and elegance, chic rather than chi-chi, and no one shot themselves or took drugs in their precincts. Mr. Fielding wanted people to enjoy the world they lived in. He, like God, found it good; he still found it good at seventy-eight, although its deeper joys had evaded him (his family would have said that he had evaded them) and as he had no taste or talent for improving minds or organizing bodies, he concentrated his gaiety, his sociability, his taste in wines and his love of women and pink lights, on the twenty-four square feet of parquet and the fifty little tables of the night club, and there, miniature and attractive, he let them sparkle.
Kenneth was embarrassed because he sympathized with his father, who had not been inside his old home for twenty years and must be feeling pretty bad. But affection does not necessarily bestow insight upon the person who feels it, and therefore Kenneth was distinctly shocked when his father roused himself, turned with a genuinely cheerful smile to Miss Fielding and said:
“Well, Connie! I congratulate you. A delightful evening—I never remember the house being so cheerful.”
“Yes, the atmosphere of Sunglades is very changed,” replied Miss Fielding sombrely, and Miss Burton, who now glided in to make her good nights, chimed in with something about “the old gracious ways being gone for ever.” No one could make out whether this applied to Sunglades or the world in general, and she said good night to them all rather effusively, anxious to show that she was on everybody’s side and understood everybody’s point of view. When she had glided away, Mr. Fielding resumed his congratulations.
“It’s delightful to see so many pretty faces. That Arkwright girl is very well turned out. And your little companion with the unpronounceable name is charming. As for Betty—well, Betty always was a favourite of mine and she gets prettier every time I see her. I do think,” he went on in a plaintive humorous tone, “that some of you girls might have looked a little older. But none of you have changed at all. You all look as young as you did the last time I saw you. You’re looking very well too, Kenneth.”
“Thankyou, Father. That’s the Home Guard. Soldiering always did suit me.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Mr. Fielding looked vague, as he always did when anything to do with the war was mentioned. “How do you come to have the house so full, Constance? and where are all your foreign friends? I made sure the place would be full of them. A splendid opportunity for you!”
Miss Fielding replied shortly that most of them were lecturing in America.
“But England is still full of foreigners,” said Mr. Fielding. “When you told me in your letter that the house was full, I made sure that you meant full of refugees.”
His goaded daughter replied still more shortly that she had had evacuees billeted on her for eighteen months and this had given her more than enough to do.
“No doubt you intend to extend hospitality to refugees at a later date,” suggested Mr. Fielding.
“I don’t think so, Father. The difficulties of catering and shopping nowadays are almost insuperable; I assure you I have my hands full from the moment I get up until the moment I go to bed.”
“Ah well, I wouldn’t know,” laughed Mr. Fielding. “One isn’t bothered with that sort of thing in hotels.”
“One is fortunate,” put in Mrs. Miles loudly.
“If you stay at an hotel where they’ve known you for years, it is possible to live quite comfortably,” pursued Mr. Fielding. “There is occasionally a limited choice of fish, but only occasionally. Even the question of alcohol; I hear people complaining of a shortage, but I must say that personally I have always been able to obtain what I wanted. When it is a question of obtaining supplies for licensed premises, of course, there are difficulties,” admitted Mr. Fielding handsomely. “However, like most difficulties, they can be overcome by money and tact.”
They were listening to him in silence, and while Joan and Constance were looking down their noses, Kenneth was looking sulky. His father had spoken of Constance’s letter. Then the girls had known the old boy was coming! Why the blazes hadn’t they told him? It was absurd. They all treated him as if he were still a schoolboy; even his father had written to Constance instead of to him. He was glad to have the old boy here, and would have liked to have gone to
the station to meet him. Never heard of anything so extraordinary, Father creeping into the scullery like a parachutist, he thought. But then of course that’s just what he would enjoy. I wonder just how hard up he is? He must be cleaned out or he’d never have come here.
The clock on the mantelpiece softly chimed twelve, and Mr. Fielding yawned and stood up.
“Merry Christmas!” he said cheerfully, smiling round on the glum faces of his three children. “I will go to bed, I think, Constance, if you will excuse me.”
“Of course, Father. You must be tired.” Miss Fielding spoke more kindly than she usually did to her father: the most upright and sensible of persons is softened by the chime of midnight on Christmas Eve. “You’re in Richard’s room—your old room—on the Kumfi-Slepe.”
“Excellent; Kenneth can help me move it into his room,” said Mr. Fielding briskly. “I sleep very little as I get older and am usually awake by five o’clock. I want a word with you, Kenneth, and if we are sharing a room we can talk more easily; I don’t expect there will be much chance to-morrow, Christmas Day is always a busy time. Are you having anyone in?” to Miss Fielding.
“Father, you can’t begin moving furniture at this time of night,” said Miss Fielding firmly. “No, I am not having anyone in. Mrs. Archer, my help from the village, very tiresomely refused to work on Christmas Day, and——”
“I meant friends; people; a party,” interrupted her father. They were all moving towards the door. “Oh, nonsense, Kenneth and I will do the whole thing in ten minutes.”
“You will awaken Betty,” warned Mrs. Miles, not wishing to refer to Betty in her bed, but feeling painfully certain that Mr. Fielding would be deterred from making a noise by the picture thus painted.
“Ah! Little Betty!” said Mr. Fielding, with his head on one side and only too plainly visualizing Betty nestling into her pillow. “No, we’ll be as quiet as mice. Come, Ken, let’s get it over.”
And he ran up the stairs.
Richard was just falling asleep. The door opened, a broad ray of light came across the room onto his face, and a voice said, not in a whisper:
“Ah, just as well we are going to move it. Surely you all remember I can’t sleep with my head to the east? and it gets worse as I get older. I’ll take the bedding, Kenneth, and you take the bed. I’d better put on the light.”
Richard slowly opened his eyes and expressionlessly surveyed the fatigue party. Kenneth grinned at him as his father went out of the room with an armful of bedding. Do that young prig good to be shaken up a bit—though he has been ill, poor blighter, he thought. Mr. Fielding nodded pleasantly at Richard as he went.
It must be wonderfully restful never to think about other people’s comfort or feelings, reflected Richard.
“Sorry to disturb you, my boy,” said Mr. Fielding, coming back for pillows. “We shan’t be a minute.”
“That’s all right,” Richard answered mildly: as so often happened, his scientific interest in people’s behaviour had conquered his indignation at its peculiarity. I should have been a biologist, not an economist, he thought.
Bump, bump, scrape, bump, scrape, went the Kumfi-Slepe across the landing.
“Oh dear, is it a raid?” called Miss Burton’s voice dismally from upstairs on her landing. “Whatever is the matter?”
On being told that it was only Kenneth and Father moving the Kumfi-Slepe into Kenneth’s room, she returned to her bed, and the household gradually settled down for the night. If Kenneth had seemed surprisingly calm over his father’s announced intention of having an important talk with him in the small hours, it was because he knew his father’s habits: Mr. Fielding’s belief that he was a light sleeper needing less sleep as he grew older was not supported by facts. He fell asleep at once like a baby and did not awaken until half-past eight on Christmas morning.
CHAPTER 20
VARTOUHI AWOKE AT seven o’clock as usual, for it was to be a very busy day for her. She cheerfully said her prayers, as she always did now, ever since she had first felt so grateful to God for her pretty bedroom. They were an inaccurate version of the formal sentences of praise that she had heard her older relatives use, and this morning she repeated them with even less fervour than usual because she was wondering, and had been from the moment she opened her eyes, what her present from Mr. Fielding was going to be.
Then she went downstairs into the warm dark house and made tea for everybody and took it into their bedrooms. The moon and stars were still shining and the ground was covered with glittering grey frost. She found Richard awake and reading, and he declined his tea and said he would come down and help her get the breakfast, which he did, while she examined the pastry and other things that she had prepared yesterday, and made an exotic stuffing for the two chickens which were to be eaten for the Christmas dinner.
“Avrybody is old in this house except you and me, Rich-ard,” she suddenly remarked while they were setting the breakfast.
“My mother is only forty-five,” he answered, wondering what was coming next and thinking how delightful it was to be alone with her like this, engaged in the ancient and simple tasks of boiling water and toasting bread, before anyone else was up.
“Is vary pratty, your mother. Is kind also, too. She gave me a drass with flowers on, all silk. Is too long for me but I sew it up. In my country the women with old sons like you, Rich-ard, would be old too also, and all wrinkle.”
“Yes, I think my mother is pretty, too.”
“You love her?”
“Very much,” he said, smiling down at her.
“How old Mr. Fielding is?” she suddenly asked, arranging cups on the table.
“Old Mr. Fielding? Seventy-eight, so I am told.”
“Young Mr. Fielding.”
“Oh—forty-seven or forty-eight, I should think.”
“Is old, forty-seven,” she murmured. “Rich-ard, will you make toast? I make porridge.”
“Right you are.”
Just before nine o’clock the older members of the party began to come downstairs and express mild surprise at Richard’s being out of his bed and domestically employed. I hope he hasn’t been proposing to her, thought Betty uneasily, gazing out of the window with a tranquil face at the pale Christmas roses in the still dusky garden.
At breakfast Vartouhi was busy helping to pass porridge bowls and make more toast, and hand milk and people’s sugar ration, but all the time she was wondering what her present would be, and whether she would have any time in the evening to work at her bedspread. She glanced round the breakfast table and hoped that to-day would be as cheerful as yesterday evening had been. Mrs. Miles and Miss Fielding were talking loudly about war savings. and the old Fielding and Mrs. Marten, who were sitting next to each other, were laughing over a funny joke. Only the young Mr. Fielding and Rich-ard were not talking. Both of them were looking at her, and as she slowly moved her gaze from Rich-ard’s face to the young Mr. Fielding’s, they both smiled. Is a good thing to have two men smiling at you, thought Vartouhi, and jumped up and began to collect the plates.
She was very busy all the morning, basting chickens and boiling potatoes and anxiously filling up the bubbling water in the pot where that pudding was boiling away; that pudding which must be holy, since the young Mr. Fielding had been cross about it with his sister, and said that they must have one, no matter what the difficulties were, since Christmas would not be Christmas without it. So many many things had gone into it! and it had a dark, rich, holy look like the inside of the great church at Ser which was now an anti-God museum. Miss Fielding and her sister walked all over the house shouting at each other about their families and the war all the morning, and the young Mr. Fielding went out to march with his soldiers, and Mrs. Marten made the old Fielding go to church, still laughing, and Rich-ard helped her to do the brussels sprouts.
Just before the chickens were put on their dish, while everybody else was listening to the one o’clock news, Richard came over to her where she stood at the sink,
dishing up potatoes, and said nervously:
“Vartouhi.”
“You speak as if you would touch my hand, Rich-ard,” said Vartouhi instantly, not taking her eyes off the potatoes. “I am busy with these potatoes. Go away from me.”
“No, I don’t mean that, really, it’s only that I’ve got a little present for you—not much, only I hope you’ll like it——”
Down went the potato saucepan, and Vartouhi turned round with a smiling, delighted face.
“A present for me! Oh, Rich-ard, thank you! What is?”
“Well, it’s—open it, and see,” and he held out a pretty little box covered with gilt sprigs of mistletoe and tied with green ribbon.
“So pratty!” murmured Vartouhi, and wiped her little damp hands on her overall before she began to untie the ribbon.
“Vartouhi! Vartouhi! It’s ten past one and we’re all starving!” came a distant roar from the hall, and footsteps were heard approaching.
Richard darted to the door and went out to face Miss Fielding.
“The pudding boiled dry but it’s all right. It’ll be ready in ten minutes,” he assured her, and managed to get rid of her.
When he turned back into the kitchen, Vartouhi, with a dreamy smile of delight, was holding his present up to the light. It was a bracelet of airy elegant links of chased silver, set with pale green stones that deepened to blue as the light changed, and fastened by a tiny safety catch.
“Is lovely!” Vartouhi was murmuring. “Is so pratty. Never have I seen such a pratty thing, Rich-ard. How good and kind you are!” And she lifted a glowing face to smile at him.
Richard, who had never touched her, lost his head, and the next instant had her in his arms. But he kissed her only once on the mouth before he instantly let his arms fall at his sides and said unsteadily:
“I’m awfully sorry, but you looked so lovely.”
Vartouhi did not seem very cross. She had struggled a little in his arms, but she was smiling, though surprised, as he stepped back, and she lifted the bracelet to the light once more so that the colour of the stones changed. She gave him a sidelong look out of her long eyes.