We shall look forward to seeing you.
Yours sincerely,
Alda Lucie-Browne.
He carefully replaced the note in its envelope and arranged it on the mantelpiece before going upstairs to put on his slippers. His boots he had left in the porch.
Meadow Cottage, the house in which he lived, was another Prewitt perpetration, and even smaller, darker and more inconvenient than Pine Cottage. He had taken it partly furnished, and the peculiarly hideous pictures, and the ghastly shades (conjuring visions of vaults and crypts) of blue and pink favoured by Mrs. Prewitt were strongly in evidence, but the cottage was not dirty, because an old woman who lived on the Froggatt road trudged out every day, wet or fine, to take up ashes, lay fires, dust, sweep and scrub, impelled by that Victorian spirit of devotion to the male, just as a male, which lingers on in most women over sixty. (Its gradual disappearance from domestic life is the cause of that silent, bewildered grief, that sense of aching loss, felt by many men who do not realise what is the matter with them.)
In his icy, neat bedroom, with the large photograph of Mother and The Girls on the mantelpiece, he thought over the invitation as he put on his slippers. He wondered what she (this Mrs. Lucie-Browne) was Up To. She probably wanted something. Money? No, that was going a bit far; she looked a silly, excitable woman but she had, in spite of her shabbiness, an air of solvency. Advice? That was more likely; husband abroad, three kiddies to bring up, equally silly friend staying with her (oh yes, he knew about the friend; the man who delivered the groceries had told him); she probably wanted advice. What about? Might be anything from gardening to drains.
Eggs! Of course! Three growing kiddies to feed. Mr. Waite surely can’t want to send all his eggs to the packing station; he must have a few to spare for his friends. Let’s ask him to tea and try and get round him. Well, she would find that he was not so easy to get round. He stood up and took off his jacket, replacing it by the shabbier one he wore in the house.
There is always a sense of surprise in the beholder when a shapely figure and handsome face produce an unpleasing effect. Mr. Waite looked as if he walked perpetually in a cloud composed of suspicion, grievances and disapproval. The faces of Mother and The Girls, now looking out at the empty room through the lengthening spring dusk as their son and brother went heavily downstairs, offered no clue to the impression he gave. The girls were three in number; square, bonny women in the late thirties with cheerful faces and determinedly fashionable hair and surprisingly smart jumpers, while mother resembled a handsome rabbit. On the other side of the mantelpiece was Dad, a small but dynamic personality in horn rims.
Dad had been a self-made rich man, and when his only son was twenty-two Dad had lost everything; plant, capital, goodwill and all.
His son had expected to go into the business and had been trained for nothing else. He had had to leave Cambridge after only a few months there, and had returned to a home and a life in which there was no place for him. In the hearts of his mother and sisters there would always be a place, for he had been spoilt and loved from babyhood, but family life and some dull, badly-paid job naturally offered no attractions to him. His father died soon after the financial ruin, and while Mrs. Waite moved into a small house with the choicest pieces of family furniture and china and the daughters energetically set about training as typist, nurse and masseuse, the son roamed the surrounding dales and hills in the car he must soon sell, raging at Fate and developing that sense of grievance which had never left him.
His sight was defective. During the Second World War he had served as a clerk in the R.A.S.C., without seeing foreign service, and after demobilisation he had expended his gratuity, the pay he had saved, and a small legacy from a relative, upon the chicken farm where we now behold him.
Between the Wars he had tried other jobs; as traveller for an old-established firm of publishers, the selling of insurance policies upon commission, a clerkship in a well-known and prosperous firm of house agents in Bristol. None of these posts had been poorly paid or degrading but in none of them had he been either contented or successful. He had always had a grievance, and he had always wanted to be his own master.
Now he was his own master—(or thought he was; actually, the chickens had him roped and tied).
He had left Daleham because he could not endure that the old family friends and neighbours should see him in reduced circumstances; but the place still held his affections, and anything that reminded him of his former comfortable, careless life there had a charm for him. Alda’s invitation came in this category, and in spite of suspecting Mrs. Lucie-Browne of being Up To Something (in which he was quite right) he immediately decided to accept her invitation.
“It’ll be quite a riot for us, won’t it, having two people to tea on the first day the infants go to school,” observed Jean to Alda, on Tuesday evening.
“Oh damn, I’d forgotten,” said Alda irritably. “What a bore. Well, it can’t be helped now.”
They were sitting beside the fire in the little parlour, Alda with her knitting and Jean with one of those apricot or rose-coloured silk undergarments in which she was for ever inserting fresh lace or repairing minute damages. Before the Second World War Alda used to see her making new ones, in elegant designs cut by herself from expensive patterns, and fashioned from the finest stuffs with exquisite tiny stitches, and it had always irritated her; she called it pussyish. Her own undergarments were shabby and fresh like those of a well-kept, gently-bred child, and except to swear when something wore out or snapped she never thought about them.
Jean had now been at Pine Cottage for almost a month, and Alda liked having her there, for the slight annoyance which she experienced when Jean went up to London to see “the lawyers” or “the agents” or “a china-wallah” or “a carpet-wallah” was counterbalanced by the usefulness of having a guardian for the children when Alda wanted to go out by herself, and cheerful, efficient help with the household and catering duties. There were several offers under discussion for the remainder of the lease of the Hardcastles’ flat but so far nothing had been decided, and Jean hoped that Alda would put up with her until March, when Ronald would get his next leave.
“And to-morrow morning I’ll beetle off into Horsham and get the cakes,” she said now, glancing at the clock, yawning, and beginning to put her work away in tissue paper. “Isn’t it a relief those frocks are done!” She glanced at a side table where the two green dresses with their white collars made by herself were displayed for the benefit of the schoolgirls.
“Yes. You really are a brick,” said Alda, also putting away her work. “I’m sorry I’ve been snappy all day. The fact is, I don’t want them to go to school. I know they’ve got to, but I just don’t want it.”
“Oh, I expect they’ll adore if when they’ve got over the first shock. Infants all seem to love school nowadays. It’s different from when we were kids.”
“I didn’t mind school but of course the holidays were the thing.”
“I hated the holidays, except when I stayed with you.”
“Mother adored school,” said Alda. “She was a boarder at the North London Collegiate in the nineties. It was a jolly good school but they had no end of a time; it seems to have been a cross between a comic opera and a concentration camp.”
“All boarding schools are,” said Jean, who had been to five of them before settling, at twelve, in the school attended by Alda and her sisters. “It’s foully cold. Should you think the snow’s coming back?”
“I hope not. I don’t like the idea of those nuns driving a car on frozen roads.”
But the next morning it was snowing fast.
1 Bernard Berenson.
13
“HERE SHE COMES.”
“Shut up, Ann, leave me alone.”
“Yes, be quiet, everybody, we don’t want a row before prayers as well as after.”
The car, competently driven by the chilblained young hands and feet of Sister Benedict, slowly drew up opposit
e the group of children standing on the corner. The door opened, and a fresh and worried face framed in white and black looked out at them.
“Good morning, Sister!”
“Did you have nice holidays, Sister?”
“Good morning, Sister!”
Jenny and Louise kept to the back of the group, pale and silent.
“Good morning, children. Och, the roads are like glass this morning,” lamented Sister Benedict. “Now in ye get, quickly. Don’t ye begin the new term with pushing, Ann Cotter. And who are ye?” fixing her eyes, with this Biblical inquiry, upon the Lucie-Brownes.
“Jenny Lucie-Browne,” said Jenny, slightly encouraged by a smile, “and this is my sister, Louise. We’re new.”
“Och yes, ye’re in Sister Matthew’s form, I remember. Now don’t dawdle, in ye get,” and Ann slammed the door on Louise.
The trees and hedges were veiled in frost and the road slippery and treacherous under the ice, and Sister kept up a soft perpetual lament in her Irish voice: “Och, it’s nothing but glass, it’s terribly dangerous unless I go slowly and I don’t want to be after being late to school with ye all, och, it’s shocking, the snow and the ice.”
Alda had left her daughters to await the convent’s car, thinking that they might be embarrassed by the presence of their mother. But Louise and Jenny were not yet of an age to suffer this particular shame, and they were not yet schoolgirls; they were still children, longing for their mother when she was absent and delighting in her presence. Her departure was the last straw; Jenny was defiant and already in deadly feud with the lively Ann, and in Louise’s throat there ached a large lump which made her dread being spoken to in case she found that she could not reply.
Jenny, who was not shy, had been encouraged by the liveliness of the waiting group, but the other two had instantly banded themselves against herself and Louise and crushed snowballs down their necks with furious excitement, and their attempts at polite conversation had been met with giggles and whispers. They were bewildered and angry. These children were rough and horrid. The convent would be horrid too. It was all horrid.
Then, as soon as Sister Benedict appeared, a hush had fallen upon the other two. Long faces, lowered eyes, arms and legs well under control, transformed them. When Jenny ventured to pipe out a remark four eyes were turned upon her in exaggerated surprise and horror and Sister said absently:
“Ye must not talk, Jenny Lucie-Browne.”
Ann made a triumphant face at her, and as the car turned in through the iron gates, Jenny felt despairingly that it was entering a prison.
Bless them, they’ll be all right, thought Alda as she walked homeward; that nun looked so serene and kind.
Sylvia had only one idea about a party: you made yourself look as smart as you possibly could. Therefore, a full hour before the time she was expected at Pine Cottage, she might have been seen in her low chamber under the roof, earnestly rubbing rouge over her full pale cheeks and elevating the pompadour (freshly re-dyed the previous week in Horsham) to new and fearsome heights. Below this erection her blood-coloured mouth suddenly popped out at the beholder like a small piece of raw steak, but her lovely eyes, blue as love-in-a-mist, smiled out at the world, ready to enjoy anything and anybody. Some people find this attitude disarming. When she had zipped herself into a black dress with a high neck and much drapery over the hips and skirt, she looked ready for a cocktail almost anywhere. It was a nuisance that rubber boots had to be drawn over her only pair of silk stockings, but that was what life in the country was like.
Over at Meadow Cottage, Mr. Waite was frowningly replacing his black tie with red spots by a dark blue tie with grey spots. This duty to the conventions paid, he set out, glancing searchingly at the chickens as he passed between the coops. They in their turn glanced as searchingly back at him. This is all very well, my boy, they seemed to be saying, but how about our tea and supper? Off you go; enjoy yourself; we understand as well as anyone; but no forgetting Us.
“What are you doing, ducky?” Jean demanded mildly of Alda, coming down from her room to find her apparently engaged, half an hour before the party was due, in turning out the parlour.
“Can’t bear this beastly furniture another minute,” said Alda, lifting a flushed face as she steadily pushed an armchair down the passage. “I’ve taken down all the pictures and just put that enormous marmalade jar full of ivy trails on the mantelpiece and oh—you go in and look. It looks heaps better.”
Jean, whose taste ran to the amply curtained and upholstered, looked round the transformed parlour, forlornly bare in the spring light, and did not agree. The parlour was the type of room which looks the better for being filled up and covered up. But there is a lovely fire, she thought, and it was a good idea to cover the settee with that Persian shawl, it’s such a rich silky blue.
Jean was one of those women whom the rationing of clothing does not seem to affect. She was so slender, light on her feet, and conventional in her activities that she was not “hard on her clothes”; she always seemed to possess silk stockings; and in the winter she appeared, and had steadily appeared throughout the war years, in dresses made of the finest, lightest wool, occasionally even Angora wool, in soft hues of orange or turquoise or dove; materials and colours which ordinary women had simply forgotten about or only remembered in fevered dreams. With these, she wore diamonds: a diamond clip shaped like a feather, a diamond ring shaped like a smaller feather, and diamond earrings shaped like two smallest feathers of all. That was how she was dressed this afternoon.
“Are you going to change?” she now asked Alda, who was taking some ivy out of the marmalade jar.
“Shan’t bother,” glancing down at her old tweed suit, “besides, there isn’t time.” She suddenly cast a glance over her friend.
“You look very nice,” she said approvingly, and her eyes, her mouth, all of her, seemed to light up with mischief. “Good hunting,” she said, and dropped a light kiss on Jean’s cheek.
Jean returned the kiss with a quick embrace, but although her manner had the usual mingling of shy excitement and amusement which she had displayed during the past fifteen years, whenever Alda had introduced her to a new man, for the first time on such an occasion, she was neither excited, shy nor amused. Instead, she felt slightly bored. Upstairs on her bedside table there was Ethel Mannin’s new story and an unopened packet of cigarettes, and she would sooner have passed the afternoon in their company.
Precisely at four o’clock there came an impressive knock upon the front door. With some vague thoughts of Mr. Waite and military habits of punctuality, Alda went to answer it, and there, shining down upon her from a great height, was the pompadour.
“Oo, am I too early?” asked Sylvia, but obviously the question was rhetorical; it was not possible to be too early for a party.
“Of course not, do come in. I’m so glad you could come,” and she was leading the way to the parlour when at the foot of the stairs Sylvia paused.
“May I just run up and change my shoes? Look at these awful things!” displaying her boots.
“Of course. I’ll show you the way.”
After some eight minutes of powdering, patting and peering in front of Alda’s mirror, she disposed her coat and scarf upon the bed, changed into shoes with extremely high heels, and rustled (how does she manage to rustle? thought Alda, catching the unfamiliar sound) downstairs after her hostess. As she went, she breathed forth perfumes.
After being introduced to Jean, she sat down upon the edge of the settee, very upright, and smiled dazzlingly; she more than smiled, she wrinkled up her small nose in a monkey’s grimace as if the excitement of being alive were suddenly too much for her.
“Oo, it is lovely to be at a party again!” she cried, glancing round the room and then at the two ladies. “That’s the one thing I do miss down here, parties!”
“You look very nice,” said Alda, greatly amused, and attracted, as ever, by cheerfulness.
“Oo, this is my only really sm
ashing dress. I bought it from one of the girls at the school, ever so inexpensive, it was. And look!—” she slid up her skirt and revealed, first a large leg tightly covered in silk and bound by a blue garter, and next the crisp, shelly ruffles of a blue taffeta petticoat. Alda and Jean exclaimed with genuine admiration, and both were favourably impressed by the perfect freshness of the exhibits.
“My mother made it. Out of a piece she had by her.”
“It’s beautifully made,” said Jean, recognising the hand of an expert.
“Mum is a dressmaker, that’s her profession. She’s wizard at it. Dad died about four years ago and ever since then she’s done everything for us.”
“Are there lots of you?” smiled Alda. “I thought you came from a large family. So do I.”
“Eight,” said Sylvia, and laughed outright.
“There are six of us. Are you the eldest?”
“No, Bob, he’s the eldest. He’s twenty-six. Mum was married twice, see, and her first husband left her a little bit of money (of course, I don’t approve of that, being a Communist, but it came in very handy) and then she married Dad and had me and Shirley and Alan. Then there’s Hugo, and Iris, Lily, and Sybil, she’s the baby. All Communists,” she ended, beaming.
“What, even Sybil? Poor little Sybil!”
“Oo, she loves it. She’s nine. She goes out selling the Daily Worker on Saturdays. Not for money, of course; just to help the Party.”
Alda and Jean, who were hugely enjoying all this and congratulating themselves upon having secured such an entertaining guest, were here recalled to more sober thoughts by a deep, melancholy dab upon the front door; it had a distinct suggestion of the tolling bell, and they glanced at one another with the same thought: how would Sylvia go down with Mr. Waite? Well, it could not be helped now. I hope he isn’t a Blimp, thought Alda, as she hastened down the passage, but judging by that evening in the car, he may well be.