An Autobiography

  Though strictly forbidden to get out of bed by the nurses after she had come out of the anaesthetic, and they had left her to sleep, she rose from her bed and tiptoed to the pier-glass. What a disillusion. She appeared to be as stout as ever.

  ‘I shall never get over the disappointment, Clara,’ she said to my mother. ‘Never. I counted on it! It carried me through that anaesthetic and everything. And look at me: just the same!’

  It must have been about then that my sister Madge and I had a discussion which was to bear fruit later. We had been reading some detective story or other; I think–I can only say I think because one’s remembrances are not always accurate: one is apt to rearrange them in one’s mind and get things in the wrong date and sometimes in the wrong place–I think it was The Mystery of the Yellow Room, which had just come out, by a new author, Gaston Le Roux, with an attractive young reporter as detective–his name was Rouletabille. It was a particularly baffling mystery, well worked out and planned, of the type some call unfair and others have to admit is almost unfair, but not quite: one could just have seen a neat little clue cleverly slipped in.

  We talked about it a lot, told each other our views, and agreed it was one of the best. We were connoisseurs of the detective story: Madge had initiated me young to Sherlock Holmes, and I had followed hot-foot on her trail, starting with The Levenworth Case, which had fascinated me when recounted to me by Madge at the age of eight. Then there was Arsene Lupin–but I never quite considered that a proper detective story, though the stories were exciting and great fun. There were also the Paul Beck stories, highly approved, The Chronicles of Mark Hewitt–and now The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Fired with all this, I said I should like to try my hand at a detective story.

  ‘I don’t think you could do it,’ said Madge. ‘They are very difficult to do. I’ve thought about it.’

  ‘I should like to try.’

  ‘Well, I bet you couldn’t,’ said Madge.

  There the matter rested. It was never a definite bet; we never set out the terms–but the words had been said. From that moment I was fired by the determination that I would write a detective story. It didn’t go further than that. I didn’t start to write it then, or plan it out; the seed had been sown. At the back of my mind, where the stories of the books I am going to write take their place long before the germination of the seed occurs, the idea had been planted: some day I would write a detective story.

  VIII

  Reggie and I wrote to each other regularly. I gave him the local news, and tried to write him the best letter I could–letter writing has never been one of my strong points. My sister Madge, now, was what I can only describe as a model of the art! She could make the most splendid stories out of nothing at all. I do envy that gift.

  My dear Reggie’s letters were exactly like Reggie talking, which was nice and reassuring. He urged me at great length, always, to go about a lot.

  ‘Now don’t stay at home moping, Aggie. Don’t think that is what I want, because it isn’t; you must go out and see people. You must go to dances and things and parties. I do want you to have every chance, before we get settled down.’

  Looking back now, I wonder whether at the back of my mind I may not have slightly resented this point of view. I don’t think I recognised it at the time; but does one really like to be urged to go about, to see other people, ‘to do better for yourself’ (that extraordinary phrase)? Is it not nearer to the truth that every female would prefer her love-letters to exhibit a show of jealousy?

  ‘Who is that fellow so-and-so you write about? You’re not getting too fond of him, are you?’

  Isn’t that what we really want as a sex? Can we take too much unselfishness? Or does one read back into one’s mind things that perhaps weren’t there?

  The usual dances were given in the neighbourhood. I didn’t go to them because, as we had no car, it would not have been practicable to accept any invitations of more than a mile or two away. Hiring a cab or car would have been too expensive except for a very special occasion. But there were times when a hunt for girls was on, and then you would be asked to stay, or fetched and returned.

  The Cliffords at Chudleigh were giving a dance to which they were asking members of the Garrison from Exeter, and they asked some of their friends if they could bring a likely girl or two along. My old enemy Commander Travers, who was now retired and living with his wife in Chudleigh, suggested that they should bring me. Having been my pet abomination as a small child, he had graduated from that into old family friend. His wife rang up and asked if I would come and stay with them and go to the Cliffords’ dance. I was delighted to do so, of course.

  I also got a letter from a friend called Arthur Griffiths, whom I had met when staying with the Matthews at Thorpe Arch Hall in Yorkshire. He was the local vicar’s son, and a soldier–a gunner. He and I had become great friends. Arthur wrote to say that he was now stationed at Exeter, but that unfortunately he was not one of the officers going to the dance, and that he was very sad about it because he would have liked to dance with me again. ‘However,’ he said, ‘there’s a fellow from our Mess going, Christie by name, so look out for him, won’t you? He’s a good dancer.’

  Christie came my way quite soon in the dance. He was a tall, fair young man, with crisp curly hair, a rather interesting nose, turned up not down, and a great air of careless confidence about him. He was introduced to me, asked for a couple of dances, and said that his friend Griffiths had told him to look out for me. We got on together very well; he danced splendidly and I danced again several more times with him. I enjoyed the evening thoroughly. The next day, having thanked the Travers, I was driven home by them as far as Newton Abbot, where I took the train back.

  It must have been, I suppose, a week or ten days later; I was having tea with the Mellors at their house opposite ours. Max Mellor and I still practised our ballroom dancing, though mercifully waltzing upstairs was out of fashion. We were, I think, tango-ing, when I was summoned to the telephone. It was my mother.

  ‘Come home at once, will you, Agatha?’ she said. ‘There’s one of your young men here–I don’t know him, never seen him before. I’ve given him tea, but he seems to be staying on and on hoping to see you.’

  My mother was always intensely irritated if she had to look after my young men unaided; she regarded such entertainment as strictly my business.

  I was cross at coming back; I was enjoying myself. Besides, I thought I knew who it was–a rather dreary young naval lieutenant, the one who used to ask me to read his poems. So I went unwillingly, with a sulky expression on my face.

  I came into the drawing-room, and a young man stood up with a good deal of relief. He was rather pink in the face and clearly embarrassed, having had to explain himself. He was not even much cheered by seeing me–I think he was afraid I shouldn’t remember him. But I did remember him, though I was intensely surprised. It had not occurred to me that I should ever see Griffiths’ friend, young Christie, again. He made some rather hesitating explanations–he had had to come over to Torquay on his motor-bike, and thought he might as well look me up. He avoided mentioning the fact that he must have gone to a certain amount of trouble and embarrassment to find out my address from Arthur Griffiths. However, things went better after a minute or two. My mother was intensely relieved by my arrival. Archie Christie looked more cheerful, having got his explanations over, and I felt highly flattered.

  The evening wore on as we talked. In the sacred code sign, common between women, the question was raised between mother and me as to whether this unasked visitor was going to be invited to stay to supper, and if so what food there was likely to be in the house. It must have been soon after Christmas, because I know there was cold turkey in the larder. I signalled yes to mother, and she asked Archie if he would care to stay and have a scratch meal with us. He accepted promptly. So we had cold turkey and salad and something else, cheese I think, and spent a pleasant evening. Then Archie got on his motor-bike and went off i
n a series of explosive bumps to Exeter.

  For the next ten days he made frequent and unexpected appearances. That first evening he had asked me if I would like to come to a concert at Exeter–I had mentioned at the dance that I was fond of music–and that he would take me to the Redcliffe Hotel to tea afterwards. I said I would like to come very much. Then there was a somewhat embarrassed moment when mother made it clear that her daughter did not accept invitations to come to Exeter for concerts by herself. That damped him a bit, but he hastily extended the invitation to her. Mother relented, decided she approved of him, and said that it would be quite all right for me to go to the concert, but that she was afraid that I could not go to tea with him at a hotel. (I must say, looking at it nowadays, I think we had peculiar rules. One could go alone with a young man to play golf, to ride a horse, or to roller-skate, but having tea with him in a hotel had a kind of risque appearance which good mothers did not fancy for their daughters.) A compromise was made in the end, that he might give me tea in the refreshment room on Exeter station. Not a very romantic spot. Later, I asked him if he would like to come to a Wagnerian concert that was to take place at Torquay in four or five days’ time. He said he would like it very much.

  Archie told me all about himself, how he was waiting impatiently to get into the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps. I was thrilled by this. Everyone was thrilled by flying. But Archie was entirely matter-of-fact. He said it was going to be the service of the future: if there was a war, planes would be the first thing needed. It wasn’t that he was mad keen on flying, but it was a chance to get on in your career. There was no future in the Army. As a Gunner, promotion was too slow. He did his best to take the romance out of flying for me, but didn’t quite succeed. All the same it was the first time that my romanticism came up against a practical, logical mind. In 1912 it was still a fairly sentimental world. People called themselves hard-boiled, but they had no real idea what the term meant. Girls had romantic ideas about young men, and young men had idealistic views about young girls. We had, however, come a long way since my grandmother’s day.

  ‘You know, I like Ambrose,’ she said, referring to one of my sister’s suitors. ‘The other day, after Madge had walked along the terrace, I saw Ambrose get up and follow her, and he bent down and picked up a handful of gravel, where her feet had trodden, and put it in his pocket. Very pretty I thought it was, very pretty. I could imagine that happening to me when I was young.’

  Poor darling Grannie. We had to disillusion her. Ambrose, it turned out, was deeply interested in geology, and the gravel had been of a particular type which interested him.

  Archie and I were poles apart in our reactions to things. I think that from the start that fascinated us. It is the old excitement of ‘the stranger’. I asked him to the New Year Ball. He was in a peculiar mood the night of the dance: he hardly spoke to me. We were a party of four or six, I think, and every time I danced with him and we sat out afterwards he was completely silent. When I spoke to him he answered almost at random, in a way that did not make sense. I was puzzled, looking at him once or twice, wondering what was the matter with him, what he was thinking of. He seemed no longer interested in me.

  I was rather stupid, really. I should have known by now that when a man looks like a sick sheep, completely bemused, stupid and unable to listen to what you say to him, he has, vulgarly, got it badly.

  What did I know? Did I know what was happening to me? I remember picking up one of Reggie’s letters when it came, saying to myself, ‘I’ll read this later,’ and shoving it quickly into the hall drawer. I found it there some months afterwards. I suppose, deep down, I already knew.

  The Wagnerian concert was two days after the ball. We went to it, and came back to Ashfield afterwards. As we went up to the schoolroom to play the piano, as was our usual custom, Archie spoke to me almost desperately. He was leaving in two days’ time, he said: he was going to Salisbury Plain, to start his Flying Corps training. Then he said fiercely, ‘You’ve got to marry me, you’ve got to marry me.’ He said he had known it the first evening he danced with me. ‘I had an awful time getting your address and finding you. Nothing could have been more difficult. There will never be anyone but you. You’ve got to marry me.’

  I told him it was impossible, that I was already engaged to someone. He waved away engagements with a furious hand. ‘What on earth does that matter?’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to break it off, that’s all.’

  ‘But I can’t. I couldn’t possibly do that.’

  ‘Of course you could. I’m not engaged to anyone else, but if I was I’d break it off in a minute without even thinking about it.’

  ‘I couldn’t do this to him.’

  ‘Nonsense. You have to do things to people. If you were so fond of each other, why didn’t you get married before he went abroad?’ ‘We thought–’ I hesitated–‘it better to wait.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have waited. I’m not going to wait either.’

  ‘We couldn’t be married for years,’ I said. ‘You’re only a subaltern. And it would be the same in the Flying Corps.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly wait years. I should like to be married next month or the month after.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ I said. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’

  I don’t think he did. He had to come down to earth in the end. It was a terrible shock for my poor mother. I think she had been anxious, though no more than anxious, and she was deeply relieved to hear that Archie was going away to Salisbury Plain–but to be presented so suddenly with a fait accompli shook her.

  I had said to her: ‘I’m sorry, mother. I’ve got to tell you. Archie Christie has asked me to marry him, and I want to, I want to dreadfully.’

  But we had to face facts–Archie unwillingly, but mother was very firm with him. ‘What do you have to get married on?’ she asked. ‘Either of you.’

  Our financial position could hardly have been worse. Archie was a young subaltern, only a year older than I was. He had no money, only his pay and a small allowance, which was all that his mother could afford. I had only the solitary hundred a year which I had inherited under my grandfather’s will. It would be years at the best before Archie was in any position to marry.

  He said to me rather bitterly before he went: ‘Your mother’s brought me down to earth. I thought nothing would matter! We would get married somehow or other, and things would be all right. She has made me see that we can’t, not at present. We shall have to wait–but we won’t wait a day longer than we can help. I shall do everything, everything I can think of. This flying business will help…only of course they don’t like your being married either in the Army or the Flying Corps while you are young.’ We looked at each other, we were young, desperate–and in love.

  We had an engagement that lasted a year and a half. It was a tempestuous time, full of ups and downs and deep unhappiness, because we had the feeling that we were reaching out for something we would never attain.

  I put off writing to Reggie for nearly a month, mainly, I suppose, out of guilt, and partly because I could not bring myself to believe that what had suddenly happened to me could possibly have been real–soon I would wake up from it and go back to where I was.

  But I had to write in the end–guilty, miserable, and without a single excuse. It made it worse, I think, the kindly and sympathetic way that Reggie took it. He told me not to distress myself; it wasn’t my fault he was sure; I could not have helped it; these things happen.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s been a bit of a blow for me, Agatha, that you are marrying a chap who is even less able to support you than I am. If you were marrying somebody well off, a good match and everything, I should have felt that it didn’t matter so much, because it would be more what you ought to have, but now I can’t help wishing that I’d taken you at your word and that we’d got married and that I’d brought you out here with me straight away.’

  Did I wish also that he’d done that? I suppose
not–not by that time–and yet perhaps there was always the feeling of wanting to go back, wanting to have once more a safe foot on shore. Not to swim out into deep water. I had been so happy, so peaceful with Reggie, we had understood each other so well; we’d enjoyed and wanted the same things.

  What had happened to me now was the opposite. I loved a stranger; mainly because he was a stranger, because I never knew how he would react to a word or a phrase and everything he said was fascinating and new. He felt the same. He said once to me, ‘I feel I can’t get at you. I don’t know what you’re like.’ Every now and then we were overwhelmed by waves of despair, and one or other of us would write and break it off. We would both agree that it was the only thing to do. Then, about a week later, we would find ourselves unable to bear it, and we would be back on the old terms.

  Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. We were badly enough off anyway, but now a fresh financial blow fell upon my family. The H. B. Chaflin Company in New York, the firm of which my grandfather had been a partner, went suddenly into liquidation. It was an unlimited company too, and I gathered that the position was serious. In any case, it meant that the income which my mother had received from it, which was the only income she had, would now cease completely. My grandmother, by good fortune, was not quite in the same situation. Her money had also been left to her in H. B. Chaflin shares, but Mr Bailey, who was the member of the firm who looked after her affairs, had been worried for some time. Charged with the care of Nathaniel Miller’s widow, he felt responsible for her. When Grannie wanted money she merely wrote to Mr Bailey, and Mr Bailey, I think, sent it her in cash–it was as old-fashioned as that. She was disturbed and upset when one day he suggested to her that she should allow him to reinvest her money for her.