Friends and Lovers

  And yet she did not look unhappy. Mrs. Lorrimer’s annoyance increased. We gave her every opportunity, and yet she is happy in a place like this, Mrs. Lorrimer thought bitterly. No sense of values whatever, if Mattie Fane’s letter carried any truth. Yes, it was the letter that had brought her to London. As she had said to Mr. Lorrimer, she simply had to see Penelope to set her mind at ease. Mr. Lorrimer agreed, with his usual keen legal perception, that smoke usually implied fire. Not that he thought much of that Fane woman, a silly, light-headed flibbertigibbet, but who was this Bosfield, anyway? “Bosworth... Father likes him,” Mrs. Lorrimer had said. Mr. Lorrimer had shrugged his shoulders. So Mrs. Lorrimer had set out for London, feeling the whole thing somehow was her responsibility, and she had a worrying journey, during which she mentally prepared several little speeches and various approaches. But now, as she sat here and looked round the little room, it was difficult to get started on any of them.

  “I see you have been doing some work,” she said, noting the untidy desk. If painting could be called work, she thought. Still, that was a good sign. The rest of the room was neat enough, but the desk was an eyesore. Really, Penelope ought to keep all these things in drawers and cupboards.

  Penny, who had spent a tiresome half hour at lunch-time making the desk neat, said, “Of course.” It was difficult to keep the note of surprise out of her voice. Had Mother really expected her to be doing no work at all?

  “How is the food here?” Mrs. Lorrimer asked. Penny looked up, her surprise increasing, as she finished arranging some biscuits on a Woolworth plate. Conversation had, indeed, been peculiar ever since the restrained meeting at the station. Brief comments, unimportant little questions, all made and asked in an atmosphere of cold gloom which had been both worrying and irritating.

  “Not particularly interesting,” Penny answered, with determined cheerfulness, “but no one has yet died of hunger.”

  Mrs. Lorrimer, watching the smile on her daughter’s face, had to admit, in spite of her determination to be critical, that Penelope was really becoming a most attractive young woman. Woman? Yes, she was older: she was thinner, she wore lipstick, and she had arranged her hair differently. All that made her look older. What ridiculous fashions were adopted by girls today, as if they wouldn’t be old quite soon enough without adding ten years to their ages now.

  “Why didn’t you write and tell me about this?” Mrs. Lorrimer gestured with a contemptuous arm as she looked round the room. Her eyes avoided the primroses which Penelope had arranged in a green bowl and the excellent reproductions with which Penelope had decorated the bare walls.

  “It would only have sounded like complaining,” Penny said. “Besides, you wanted me to stay here. It was one of the conditions attached to coming to London.”

  Mrs. Lorrimer had forgotten that, somehow, when she had first entered the room. Now her criticism of Penelope’s lack of money sense seemed levelled at herself. She said sharply, “I see you have been buying clothes. You shouldn’t wear black, Penelope. It isn’t becoming: makes you much too old.”

  Penny looked down with disappointment at her black crepe dress. “I saved some money,” she said defensively. And then, “I thought we might have dinner somewhere decent, and go to a theatre. After all, this visit to London does call for some sort of celebration.”

  “We shall have dinner at my hotel. I have a lot to talk to you about,” Mrs. Lorrimer said.

  Penny looked worriedly at her mother.

  “Is something wrong at home?” she asked. “Is Father ill again?”

  “Don’t be silly, Penelope. You talk as if your father were an invalid. There is nothing wrong with him that a simple diet won’t cure. We are all well and happy, a very happy family indeed. Except where you are concerned. You are the one we have been worrying about a good deal.” There, it was said. Mrs. Lorrimer took a deep breath. This was not the approach she had intended, but the opening had suddenly come, and she had taken it, and there it was—a beginning.

  But Penelope seemed to be determined neither to understand nor to be helpful. “Why, Mother,” she said, “look at me! Don’t I look well, even if I have got a cold? And that’s only because I thought spring had come last Sunday and wore a suit to visit Hampton Court. Apart from that, I’m in marvellous health. And I’ve never been so happy. Mother, I have the most wonderful news for you!” Penny halted her enthusiasm for a moment. Her mother was not sharing it. At the moment her mother looked almost on the point of tears. Never been so happy...perhaps that had been a tactless remark. Penny hastened to explain it. The note of gladness came back into her voice, and her eyes were shining. “It is about David, Mother, David Bosworth.”

  Mrs. Lorrimer almost dropped her teacup.

  Penny was saying excitedly, “He wants to marry me. He will soon be going down from Oxford, and he has a job, a wonderful job, and we could get married this summer.”

  The teacup fell. Mrs. Lorrimer did not even notice it, it seemed. It was Penny who picked up the pieces.

  “Why did you hide this from us? What have you to hide?” Mrs. Lorrimer asked, in sudden anger.

  “Why, nothing.” Penny was taken aback. Her delight in her news faded. Her voice became defensive again. “And we didn’t hide anything purposely. I tried to tell you at Christmas that we were in love. I tried to tell you in my letters that I saw David. But you never seemed interested.”

  “Isn’t it customary for a young man to make himself known to the girl’s family before he even mentions marriage?”

  “David was going to write, and he was going to go up to Edinburgh to see Father as soon as his Finals were over. Don’t you see, Mother, he had to wait until things were more definite, until he could say to you and Father—”

  “And I take it,” Mrs. Lorrimer interrupted, with withering scorn, “that you now count yourself engaged without the permission of your parents, without an engagement ring, without any announcement?”

  “Well, you can’t become formally engaged while you are still an undergraduate. At least, it isn’t much approved. And you can’t marry until you have finished your University career.”

  “I should think not,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, in an outraged voice. She paused for a moment to try to restrain her rising anger. She smoothed the skirt of her brown tweed suit, pulled at her beige chamois gloves, all with small, broken gestures. Her white face had flushed, her blue eyes stared at her daughter accusingly.

  “But,” Penny went on firmly, taking advantage of her mother’s inability to speak, “that doesn’t prevent men at Oxford from falling in love or making up their minds to marry the first moment that is possible.”

  There was no answer. Mrs. Lorrimer was searching for her crisp linen handkerchief in her brown leather handbag. Her lips were pinched and thin.

  “Really, Mother,” Penny said indignantly, “this can’t be so much of a shock... For one thing, you saw his letters on our hall table; you’ve noticed mine to him. And I did mention him in my letters home, and I did—”

  “I never imagined for one moment that things had gone so far. You are only a child, Penelope, and you don’t know how foolishly you are behaving. As for this David Bosworth, we know nothing about him. We don’t know his family, we don’t know one thing. He might be a Catholic, a Communist, or anything.”

  “They don’t often mix,” Penny said, and smiled in spite of herself. “Actually, if you feel any happier about it, he is Protestant and Labour. And as for his family, he has a sister who studies music and a father who was invalided out of the War. There’s no insanity, no drunkenness, no divorces, no prison sentences; nothing, in fact, that one might be ashamed of.”

  “There’s no need to be facetious,” Mrs. Lorrimer said.

  Penny took a deep breath. “Look, Mother, David and I had thought up a surprise for you.”

  Mrs. Lorrimer looked at her daughter almost wildly, as if to say that one surprise a day of such proportions was more than enough.

  “You are staying over
the week-end, aren’t you? David would like to have us for lunch next Sunday at Oxford. Mr. Chaundler will be there. Grandfather’s friend. And once you really meet—”

  “Have you been going to Oxford to visit this man?”

  Penny’s patience ended suddenly. “You will see on Sunday that there are a lot of people travelling to Oxford to spend the day. A lot of girls, too. What’s wrong with that?”

  “And he has been coming to London in order to see you?”

  “Of course. When people fall in love they want to see each other, don’t they? Our bad luck is that we get so little time together, what with geography and David’s work and my classes.”

  “It has got to be stopped.” Mrs. Lorrimer’s voice was staccato. Penny, who knew that tone and what it meant, half rose from her seat on the bed, and then sat down again. She knew what was coming, and yet she couldn’t believe it. She knew, and yet she wouldn’t believe. It is now, she thought; whatever and whoever I am to be, it is to be decided now. Her anger left her: a strange feeling, as if she were standing apart from this scene watching everything with critical coldness.

  “You must give me your word,” Mrs. Lorrimer was saying, “that you will see no more of this David Bosworth. You are both too young, the whole thing is folly, and if he has any decency he will wait for four or five years until you are old enough to know what you are doing.”

  “I know what I am doing. Age isn’t a matter of years, Mother. Some women at forty are sixteen mentally. My grandmother was married at eighteen. You were married when you were twenty. Did that—”

  “You are to see no more of him, Penelope.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is not the kind of man we want you to marry. You will understand that for yourself in a few years. I am only saying this for your own good, Penelope.”

  “And just what is my ‘good’? What good is there in anything if you are not happy? I am the one, surely, to judge what I want or what I do not want out of life. We’ve all different ideas about happiness, so how can we judge for each other? Moira’s idea of being happy would bore me to tears, but I don’t think she is wrong. I am just glad I am not Moira, that’s all.”

  “I wish you were half as thoughtful and sensible as Moira. It would have spared me this worry.”

  “Mother,” Penny said firmly, “it is you who are causing yourself this worry. If you only trust me, then—”

  “It is obvious that we can’t trust you. If you won’t give us your promise to stop seeing him, then we shall send you away from London. Not back to Edinburgh. We don’t want the embarrassment of inventing excuses why you had to come home so suddenly. You seem to have forgotten how people will talk, or you wouldn’t have given them so much reason for it.”

  “If people have nothing else to do but invent gossip, then that is their loss, not mine.”

  “Your father and I have decided to send you abroad for a year. We are willing to make the sacrifices to meet that expense. The School of Art in Munich is excellent, and you can stay as paying guest with Marcia Spiegelberger. You remember, she was at school with me and married that German professor? She has several young girls from England as paying guests. I had a letter from her at Christmas telling me all about it.”

  “Beating up trade,” Penny said dryly.

  “You always wanted to go abroad. A year in Munich would be delightful.”

  Yes, a year ago she would have leaped at this chance, but a year ago her family would not even have considered the idea for one moment. Even last summer they had refused to allow her to accept an invitation abroad with school friends. They had kept her firmly beside them, and it was beside them that she had met David. Now that she didn’t want to leave England, they told her to go. She wanted to laugh, but the look on her mother’s face checked her in time.

  She said, “You don’t have to bother with all this trouble and expense. Mother, let’s go out to dinner, and I can talk about David to you. And then come up to Oxford with me on Sunday, and meet him, and Mr. Chaundler, and see things for yourself. And, really, everything will fall into its right proportion. At present it is all distorted. You make falling in love sound a tragedy. It isn’t something to mourn over. You should be so happy, along with me.”

  “If you refuse to go to Munich,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, ignoring Penny’s words—in fact, Penny was thinking, she hadn’t listened at all for the last few minutes, and this argument was becoming a monologue—“then you cannot expect your father and me to go on supporting you. We shall not pay for your expenses in London. That’s decided.”

  “Then I shall support myself,” Penny said quickly. She was angry again. Don’t, she thought, don’t flare up. Keep calm. Argue. Don’t get angry. Argue.

  Mrs. Lorrimer gave a short laugh. “How?” she demanded. What a child Penelope was! She rose abruptly, gathering bag and furs and gloves with a hand that was now decided and sure. “I have a headache,” she said, “and so I’ll go to my hotel. I shall see you tomorrow, and we can discuss this again after you have had time to think about it.”

  “I don’t need time, Mother. I know the answer now,” Penny said. There was a hard, hot lump in her throat, and her eyes smarted as if they had been stung by salt water. She bit her lip. “Please come with me on Sunday.”

  “Neither you nor I go on Sunday. This entanglement with David Bosworth ends now. You are not in love with him: you are only infatuated by the idea of love. All girls are at the age of nineteen. I shall see you tomorrow at half-past eight for breakfast at my hotel. We can make arrangements then.” The dogmatic note left her voice suddenly. “Really, Penelope, you have been such a worry to us. You will never know how upset we have been until you have a daughter of your own.”

  Mrs. Lorrimer waited at the door, but Penelope did not run towards her to kiss her, to ask her forgiveness, as Moira would have done. Penelope had always been a determined, at times unmanageable, child. Now she had turned away and had walked to the window. She was saying in a strained voice, “I don’t have to come to breakfast to tell you what I have decided. I’ve decided that you are much more interested in your own peace of mind than in my happiness. You want to regulate my happiness so that it suits yours. You want me to choose the kind of man you would choose, have the same formal engagement and wedding that you had, have a house like yours, furnished like yours, have friends like yours or even share your friends, until my whole life becomes an echo of yours.”

  “Penelope!”

  Penny’s voice calmed down, but as she turned to face her mother her eyes were still angry. “I am sorry, Mother, that I had to speak that way, but you left me no choice.”

  “I never thought that any daughter of mine—” Mrs. Lorrimer’s voice broke. Then she quickly regained control of herself.

  They remained standing there, Mrs. Lorrimer nursing her hurt pride and wounded affection, Penny openly defiant. It was Penny who broke the uncomfortable moment.

  “This is really silly,” she said, and forced a smile. She came forward towards the door. “Look, Mother, come and have a cup of tea, and I’ll talk about what I feel, and then you’ll understand.”

  “You have talked quite enough already,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, her voice low but staccato once more, as she accentuated each word. “You are being both senseless and ignorant.”

  Penny’s anger surged back, and this time she did not care if she dealt a blow that hurt. “If David Bosworth were George Fenton-Stevens, would you raise the objection that I am too young to think of marrying him? Or that you did not know him well enough? Or would you refuse his invitation to lunch in Oxford?”

  “Yes, I should,” her mother said. But they both knew, as their eyes met, that it was not exactly the truth.

  * * *

  Mrs. Lorrimer had to walk several streets before she found the taxicab rank. This allowed her anger to cool sufficiently before she entered the musty cab with her dignity restored. Outwardly she was a tall, quietly dressed lady of middle age, who had achieved the ri
ght mixture of expensive dowdiness and colourless charm to prove her social position. Inwardly her emotions were so roused that she could not even think logically. It had been a long time, anyway, since Mrs. Lorrimer had tried self-analysis; so long in fact, that she had lost that gift.

  By the end of the journey to her hotel she had convinced herself that she had indeed only acted for Penelope’s good, that she had been wise and kind as well as right, and that Penelope had been unwise, unkind, and terribly wrong. I am not trying to arrange her life, Mrs. Lorrimer decided: I am only trying to prevent her from making any mistakes which she will surely regret. And I am not a snob.

  To prove that she gave the driver a gracious smile as she tipped him. The man responded with a pleasant good-day— she always got on well with servants. Her confidence was once more restored by the time she entered the hotel, even if the idea of a revolt against her authority still rankled. The way to deal with any revolt was with a firm hand. She had arrived in London just in time.

  * * *

  Penny was looking down gloomily at the bowl of primroses when Lillian Marston arrived. Marston, who had been invited to the tea party, had thought it would be a good idea to come late: by that time all the family news would be exhausted, and conversation could become general. There was nothing so boring, Marston considered, as to have to listen to news about people whom you didn’t know, unless it was the polite explanation of why they were worth talking about.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” Marston said, concealing her surprise at finding Lorrimer alone. “Had a good party?” She helped herself from the plate of chocolate biscuits. She chose the armchair, stretched her long, slender legs comfortably, and ate the biscuit thoughtfully. “I’ve had a rotten day,” she said. “Everything went wrong.” Then she noticed the small pool of tea near her feet. “The roof is leaking or something, I do believe. Have you any tea to wash this biscuit down, or did you spill it all on the carpet?”

  Penny turned away from the primroses and began to search for a piece of blotting-paper. Then she knelt on the floor— which was one good way of hiding her face—and, with her head bent, tried to mop up the damp circle on the carpet. “It seems to have soaked in,” she said in a stifled voice. She sat back on her heels and surveyed the stain. “Oh, what a mess!” she said, and threw the blotting-paper on the floor. “Oh, what a mess,” she repeated dismally.