A Vicarage Family: A Biography of Myself

  ‘I can’t – I simply can’t wear this at a party,’ Victoria whispered to Isobel as they climbed the stairs. ‘I’ll have to get out of going.’

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ Isobel whispered back. ‘Of course you can’t wear it. It would be all our shame with those sleeves, imagine what people would say! I’ll think of a way.’ Then, as they neared the schoolroom, she added: ‘Don’t talk about it in front of Miss Herbert.’

  4

  The Party

  ‘Everything seems to be happening at once,’ Isobel said to Miss Herbert, ‘and it’s so strange because usually nothing much ever happens to us.’

  They were in the schoolroom. Isobel had been in bed for two days with asthma and had now reached the up-in-the-house stage. She was painting, Miss Herbert was packing some of the children’s books into a wooden box. She nodded.

  ‘Yes indeed. Altogether too much excitement, I’m afraid, and now the party on top of everything else. I am surprised your father is allowing you to go.’

  ‘He only is because we’re leaving and it would seem rude not to.’

  ‘Then after the party the boys will be home and then there’s Easter and then the goodbye party. Has it been decided what you’re going to do at that?’

  ‘Vicky’s going to do that waxwork thing with John like they did on Boxing Day. I think Mummy’s thinking of something for Louise and Dick. If Daddy says I must do something then I’ll introduce the others, but I hope I don’t have to.’

  ‘I shouldn’t count on that, dear. I’m sure the parish will expect to see you all. What are you painting, dear?’

  ‘Clothes.’

  Miss Herbert came to the table to look. Isobel had filled a page in her sketch book with designs for party frocks. All were in the most vivid colours.

  ‘Oh, fancy dress?’ said Miss Herbert.

  ‘No, ordinary dresses. When I can choose my own clothes these are the colours I am going to wear.’

  ‘You’ll be very conspicuous if you do, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?’

  In amusement Isobel watched Miss Herbert’s prim back walk to the bookcase. But the word ‘conspicuous’ lingered with her and gave her an idea.

  ‘Did you know we were to wear our Sundays at Joyce’s party?’

  ‘No, dear.’ Then Miss Herbert thought of the Sundays. Her criterion of good dressing was neat dressing and the Sundays fell far short of that. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s Lent, Daddy says we can’t wear party frocks.’

  Miss Herbert paused with The Cuckoo Clock by Mrs Molesworth in one hand.

  ‘We can’t expect your father to have noticed but Vicky’s dress really should not be seen outside the vicarage, those unmatching sleeves are most untidy.’

  ‘It’ll make her conspicuous, won’t it?’

  Miss Herbert sniffed.

  ‘And that is something which Vicky is likely to be anyway.’

  Isobel seemed intent on her painting.

  ‘Daddy said we weren’t to discuss what we wore any more, so we haven’t. But could you remind Mummy about the sleeves? Perhaps she’d let us wear our velvets?’

  Miss Herbert’s mind ranged over ‘the Sundays’.

  ‘And Louise’s smock is only fit for the house now. I was going to suggest sending it to the jumble this summer. Yes, dear, I’ll have a word with your mother.’

  The word was successful, so it was into their velvets that Isobel and Victoria buttoned each other on the Saturday afternoon of the party.

  ‘Let’s look in the long looking glass in the spare room,’ Victoria suggested. ‘When you are being offered up as a burnt offering it’s best to know how burnt offering-ish you look.’

  The spare bedroom was a lugubrious place. No member of the family had ever slept in the large mahogany bed so only visiting preachers knew of the horrid bumps in the mattress. The walls were papered with a brownish wallpaper, the dressing table, wardrobe and chairs, as well as the long looking glass, were all in the same heavy mahogany as the bed; in fact all the furniture had been inherited by the children’s father from a great-aunt. The carpet was old and faded and in places worn. On the walls were prints of engravings of Christ with the apostles – all fly walked. The curtains were dark green. The only live thing in the room was the clock, a heavy gilt affair under a glass dome with a furry purple snake round the base to keep out the dust; this ticked and chimed cheerfully for in common with the other clocks in the house it was wound and kept in order by the clock winder, who called every Monday.

  The girls were used to the room so, not noticing its gloom, they went straight to the looking glass and standing in front of it saw themselves pictured in the mahogany frame: Isobel, her fair hair held back in a green velvet Alice in Wonderland snood, her eyes huge in her thin face above the pale green of her frock; Victoria, lanky but with far more flesh on her than Isobel, her hair parted and held in place by a brown snood, scowling at the outline of herself in the clumsy brown velvet frock.

  ‘I think this is what Miss Herbert calls an unkind glass,’ Isobel suggested.

  Victoria scowled more than ever.

  ‘If it is it’s odd it’s much unkinder to me than it is to you. It’s no good pretending, Isobel, I look terrible, though I do see I’d have looked worse in my “Sunday”.’

  Isobel looked at their feet, on which were their stout walking shoes.

  ‘We’ll look more partyish when we put on our dancing slippers perhaps.’

  Victoria shook her head.

  ‘We won’t, nothing can make us look right for that sort of party. Two girls in my form are having new frocks for it. Joan’s is green silk with frills, and Diana’s is lace over satin – imagine!’

  It was too much. Without another look at the glass the girls left the spare room and went to their own room to put on their outdoor things. Even best coats were not allowed so each shrugged their way into their navy overcoats and dragged on their tam o’ shanters. Then Victoria picked up the bag with the shoes in it.

  ‘I feel like a Christian martyr being thrown to the lions.’

  ‘You’ll feel more like it when you see the tea and birthday cake,’ said Isobel, ‘and us just eating bread and butter.’

  Victoria put their birthday present for Joyce – a book done up in brown paper and string – in the bag with the shoes. Birthday present books were chosen by their father.

  ‘I’ll shove this under all the other presents. She’s sure to get lovely things, so I can’t see her wanting a book of religious poetry.’

  Joyce did not go to the same school as the vicarage girls but to a smaller, more expensive one, and so more than half the thirty-odd guests at the party were strangers to the children. In the large elegant spare room, where coats were to be left and shoes changed, all their worst fears were realized. The presents for Joyce were trimmed with bows, and many looked like chocolates. From under coats and wraps the most lovely frocks appeared, enough to give any girl dressed in dark, ill-fitting velvet an inferiority complex. To add to the girls’ suffering they felt nudges and looks as they joined the party downstairs, and though they could not know for sure what caused them they heard giggles.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s a specially good conjurer,’ Louise whispered. ‘Then we shan’t mind the shame so much.’

  Kind-hearted Mrs Sedman said to a friend who was helping her:

  ‘Look at the vicarage children! I know they’re poor but I can’t think they need look as dreadful as they do.’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ the friend agreed, ‘for the smallest one is a real beauty.’

  Mrs Sedman nodded in agreement.

  ‘I shall make a special fuss of them. Keep an eye on them for me and see that they have a good tea.’

  The tea table was loaded with all the food that in those days was called ‘party’. There was every kind of small iced cake and little cream buns and innumerable plates of fancy biscuits. There were jellies of all shades, some crowned with cream, crystallized violets and cherries, and others
with fruit inside them. There were half orange skins filled with orange jelly and made to look like baskets by the addition of handles of angelica.

  To crown everything, there was a huge pink and white cake with roses all over it and A happy birthday Joyce written in pink sugar on the top. There was not a suggestion of anything savoury – everything was pretty and sugary and the sweeter the better. This sweeter the better idea had even affected the bread and butter for, as an additional party touch, Mrs Sedman had sprinkled it with tiny brightly-coloured sweets called hundreds and thousands.

  Isobel was sitting with some girls in her form at school. Victoria, escaping from her school friends, sidled over to her.

  ‘Do you see what I see? Look at the bread and butter!’

  Isobel looked.

  ‘Daddy said only bread and butter.’

  ‘I know,’ Victoria agreed, ‘but is it our fault if it’s covered with hundreds and thousands?’

  ‘Where’s Louise? We better see what she’s going to do. She’ll tell if we eat it and she doesn’t.’

  ‘We can’t not eat anything, I’m starving.’

  ‘How about biscuits?’

  Victoria’s friends were calling her.

  ‘All sugar. Louise is sitting by Mrs Sedman, let’s do what she does.’

  ‘Well, Louise dear,’ Mrs Sedman was saying, ‘what would you like to start with?’

  Louise had not had Victoria’s chance to study the table.

  ‘Bread and butter, please.’

  Mrs Sedman laughed.

  ‘What a well-brought up little girl.’ She walked down the table and picked up a plate of bread and butter. ‘Here you are, dear.’

  Louise gave a gasp, then hungrily she took a slice, folded it and began to eat.

  At once higher up the table voices cried:

  ‘Bread and butter for Isobel. Pass that bread and butter please for Victoria.’

  Steadily the girls ate their way through all the bread and butter on the table. Luckily there was plenty. Then the moment came for Joyce to cut the cake. Isobel and Victoria had made arrangements with their friends for this moment, pushing their slices of cake on to their plates, but Louise had been placed amongst strangers.

  ‘Funny child,’ Mrs Sedman had thought, ‘eating nothing but bread and butter. I suppose it’s the sweets she likes,’ but to be sure the child made a good tea she placed an extra large slice of birthday cake on her plate.

  ‘Eat that up, chicken.’

  The temptation was too great, almost before she knew it a sugar rose was in Louise’s mouth then, as she chewed, she felt eyes on her and there was Victoria staring at her. Louise was appalled. What had she done? As usual when in trouble she took refuge in tears. At once Mrs Sedman was at her side.

  ‘What is it, dear? Did you bite your tongue?’

  Louise could not speak at first, then she whispered in an agonized voice:

  ‘I’ve accidentally done something.’

  Mrs Sedman wasted no time, she seized Louise’s hand, pulled her out of her chair and out of the room.

  ‘You can use the downstairs lavatory,’ she said.

  Louise, still crying, shook her head.

  ‘I don’t want to, thank you.’

  ‘Then what have you done, dear?’

  Louise let out a howl.

  ‘I think I’ve sinned against the Holy Ghost.’

  After tea they played charades. These were acted in the hall, the guessing side viewing the actors from the stairs. Isobel and Victoria were picked for the same side and it was while they were the guessers that Victoria, driven mad by the rustling of the silks and laces around them, started her own private game.

  ‘What a pity,’ she said loudly to Isobel, ‘we didn’t know it was this sort of party. We could have worn our blue silks, couldn’t we?’ She gave Isobel a nudge.

  Too well Isobel knew how easy it was to make Victoria behave worse if you tried to stop her so, instead of saying ‘What blue silks?’, she tried to help her.

  ‘Or our emerald green taffetas,’ she faltered.

  ‘Our accordion pleateds are nice.’

  ‘So are our yellows with belts made of rubies.’

  Victoria saw that Isobel was seeing the game as if she was painting the clothes. Belts of rubies was going too far. She tried to bring her back to earth.

  ‘I think some of our plainer frocks would be better, our lace frocks are nice.’

  But Isobel had forgotten how the game had started.

  ‘Or pure gold with bands of blue round the bottom.’

  Luckily at that moment the other side started their charade so the game had to stop. But not before many who had listened were exchanging glances. Poor Vicky! Who did she think she was fooling? As if they didn’t all know that Isobel and Victoria’s party frocks were pink voile with large collars of lace, or dotted muslin run through with velvet ribbon.

  The conjurer seemed to the girls, who had no standards to judge him by, wonderful beyond belief. Some of the more sophisticated of the audience said they saw how some of the tricks were done, but not Isobel, Victoria and Louise, who were so absorbed that it was quite a shock when the entertainment was over and they were back in the everyday world where there were such problems as having eaten hundreds and thousands and, in Louise’s case, a sugar rose, in Lent.

  After the conjurer there were more games, then suddenly it was eight o’clock and everybody was given a cup of soup and a biscuit to fortify them before they went out into the rather chilly night air. Then governesses or parents arrived, shoes were changed, overcoats pulled on, the proper thank-yous said while, at the same time, all three girls looked up and smiled. Looking up and smiling when you spoke to somebody had been almost the first lesson each Strangeway child was taught. ‘I should think we’ll all be looking up and smiling as long as we live,’ Isobel, aged eight, had said after a particularly large mothers’ meeting party, at which she had been ordered to speak to everybody. As it turned out her prophecy came true, none of the Strangeways ever forgot that early strict training.

  While most of the rest of the guests were climbing into either their own carriages with perhaps a jobbed horse, or into a hired fly, the Strangeways walked home with Miss Herbert. Isobel and Victoria moved ahead out of earshot.

  ‘Do you think,’ said Isobel, ‘we should tell Daddy about the hundreds and thousands?’

  Victoria swung the shoe bag.

  ‘I should think so. He won’t scold, even he can see we couldn’t sit there eating nothing.’

  ‘What about Louise’s sugar rose?’

  Victoria’s voice was gruff.

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with us, let her tell Daddy if she wants to.’

  ‘But if she asks us what we think she ought to do, what are we going to say?’

  Victoria was unwilling to decide things for other people for she resented it when other people tried to decide things for her.

  ‘I shouldn’t think she would ask, but if she does and she’s feeling bad inside about the rose, if I was her I’d own up. You feel much better afterwards even if there’s a punishment.’

  Back at the vicarage no owning up appeared possible that night for all three girls, after giving their mother a quick kiss, were bustled off to bed. Their father was out at a meeting.

  ‘We’ll tell Daddy about the hundreds and thousands tomorrow,’ said Isobel drowsily.

  ‘That’s right,’ Victoria agreed. ‘I wonder how all those handkerchiefs and flowers got into that top hat.’

  When the next morning Miss Herbert called Isobel and Victoria and gave them their prayer books so that they could learn the collect, she said:

  ‘Be very quiet when you go to the bathroom. I am letting Louise sleep on as she had a disturbed night.’

  ‘Was she sick?’ Victoria asked.

  ‘No, dear, something seems to have been on her mind. She got up when your father came in. I found her in the passage crying. She insisted on going down to speak to him.’
r />   Isobel and Victoria exchanged looks.

  ‘What did she say?’ Isobel queried.

  ‘I didn’t hear it all as she went into the study, but I did hear her say: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy daughter.” She looked so sweet standing there in her little blue dressing gown with Jackie in her arms. Now, Vicky, do try and get your collect learnt properly this morning. You know how it upsets your dear mother when you don’t know it.’

  When the door was shut again Victoria winked at Isobel.

  ‘You must say Louise does things in style. Our confession will seem very flat after that.’

  Isobel muttered.

  ‘“Almighty and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind …” Don’t talk or I’ll never know it.’

  Isobel and Victoria told their father about the hundreds and thousands after breakfast. He heard the whole story in silence. Then he said:

  ‘It was difficult for you. One of those hard decisions to make. I suppose the splendid thing to have done would have been to eat nothing and, when you were asked why, to have explained. I expect Mrs Sedman would have had some plain bread and butter cut for you. But I do see you didn’t want to cause trouble or embarrassment, but it was an opportunity lost to testify to your faith.’

  Victoria imagined the scene. Herself saying: ‘I can’t eat anything on the table because it is Lent and during Lent, as part of my fast, I eat only plain bread and butter.’ It was like something from one of those awful goody-goody stories Daddy had read when he was a boy.

  ‘It was bad enough as it was. Everybody was looking at us, and we did explain about Lent to our friends when the birthday cake came, we got them to eat our pieces, and it was a gorgeous cake with raspberry cream icing in layers all through it.’

  Her father smiled.

  ‘That was splendid for, as I suppose you know, poor Louise failed. I have told her to read the first nine verses of St Matthew, chapter four, which describes the devil tempting Christ when he was fasting in the wilderness. I think you girls might read it too. You’ll have time between luncheon and the children’s service.’

  In their bedroom tidying to go down for catechism Victoria said to Isobel: