‘Better’n four hundred lambs so far Ned, d’ye hear me? And from less than three hundred ol’ muttons.’ Margaret Ashby bellowed it up the stairs the moment she caught sight of her grandson’s face at the top, and waved a casual paw at him before bringing the weight of her attention to bear on the luggage.
‘Not on the step, you lout; in here where I can see it, if you please. And where’s your hold-all, Helen? Confound it you have arms girl, haven’t you? It isn’t going to trot in on its own!’
She took charge of the house as she walked in, dispensing parcels, walking sticks and outer garments with equal vigour, pitching her voice to the upper landing. It was a formidably deep voice for a woman, and little of its natural force was lost on Simmie, nervously waiting to receive her.
‘Don’t worry, Simmie, her bark’s far worse than her bite,’ Ned had told her bracingly as the cab pulled up. But he had failed to warn her quite how terrifying the bark would be; and by the time Gladys showed Mrs Ashby into the parlour she’d already pictured a Wagnerian Brünhilde of a woman, complete with horns and breastplate.
The person who entered was more like a little totem than a Valkyrie; short, upright and blunt-featured; eccentrically clad in heliotrope figured silk with an unsuitable biscuit-coloured homburg hat.
‘Margaret Ashby,’ she boomed before Gladys could forestall her; and at close range the voice was more like a foghorn than ever. ‘You’re Miss Sims, quite clearly, and this little mawk behind me is my grand-daughter Helen. Say how d’ye do, Helen.’
‘How do you do,’ Simmie repeated, courageously extending her hand. ‘I’ve been so much looking forward to meeting you.’
‘Now that I find hard to believe.’
Mrs Ashby forced her way through the clutter to Simmie’s own armchair and seated herself heavily in it, motioning for the others to join her. ‘And I’ll thank you to stop “Oh Granning” me, Helen, and to find yerself a perch somewhere,’ she said severely. ‘I won’t mince words as well you know, and am sure Miss Sims here wouldn’t want me to start tryin’ at my age.’
‘Oh no, no indeed.’
On balance, Simmie felt that she might have preferred Brünhilde. She did feel sorry for the grand-daughter, however. Helen Ashby was a shapeless creature, even by schoolgirl standards, with round shoulders and thick ankles and a painfully obvious desire to efface herself from the adult world. ‘Poor little thing,’ Simmie thought compassionately, remembering the agonies of her own girlhood. ‘I wonder if there’s anything I could do to make her feel less of a lump?’
‘Shall we have tea?’ she said aloud. ‘I always think it’s such a help in getting acquainted. Don’t you agree?’
‘No, since you ask, I don’t,’ Mrs Ashby replied remorselessly. ‘But I’ll grant you it’s a middlin’ thirst-quencher; and while we’re waitin’ for the kettle Ned, you can take Helen up to see your room.’
‘Oh I don’t think she would find it all that thrilling, Grannie. It’s stack-full of books and essays.’
‘Kindly do as you’re told, young man.’ The measured, quieter tone was if anything even more daunting. ‘Miss Sims and I would like a little chinwag of our own, if y’don’t mind, without you two garkin’ at us like a pair of moon-calves.
‘An’ ye needn’t worry, boy,’ she added gruffly, ‘I’m not about to eat her.’
But she smiled almost indulgently as the door closed behind him. ‘Great grummut! He thinks that I’ll get waxy an’ demand that ye put your bed out of bounds to him, Miss Sims,’ she said. ‘An open book to me, that boy, an’ always has been!’
Her eyes as she raised them to Simmie’s in the reverberating silence that ensued were blue, a little darker and altogether more penetrating than her grandson’s.
‘Come now, Miss Sims, there’s no need to beat the devil round the gooseberry bush,’ she said. ‘You an’ I are both women of the world, I hope. We both know that a healthy young feller like Edwin is bound to form liaisons of one kind or another – an’ far better with a woman of your type, than with some undernourished drazel who’d take his money an’ very likely give him a dose of the French gout while she’s about it. Not a particle of sense in that.’
‘But how can she be so sure?’ Simmie thought from the depths of her humiliation. ‘How can anyone be so sure of their own judgement that they’re prepared to risk such a terrible mistake?’
That Mrs Ashby had been sure, was all too obvious from the way that her emphatic voice continued. ‘No Miss Sims, I can assure you it takes more than a casual peccadillo to shock me. So long as nothing serious eventuates.’ Ned’s grandmother allowed her inflexible blue gaze to rest on Simmie’s face. ‘I am firm on the point, you understand?’
Simmie understood, and with understanding came a renewed sense of shame. She saw herself that afternoon as the old tartar saw her, as a harmless, middle-aged woman making a fool of herself over a boy little more than half her age. She felt an insane desire to spring up and run from the room; to overturn the tea-table or pull down the mantelboard like Ned. But then harmless, middle-aged women simply didn’t do such things. So there’d been nothing for it but to incline her head with the best grace that she could – and ring for tea.
In the weeks following Mrs Ashby’s visit, Simmie found herself disenchanted with the male sex – grateful to the Easter holiday for sending Ned and both the others home; grateful to Robert even for failing to appear on her doorstep. His children, on the other hand, had been welcome visitors to Harpur Street from the Sunday afternoon she’d introduced them to the treasures of the British Museum. Meriel especially had proved enchanting. Without Ned Ashby to bring it on, her awkward social manner vanished, revealing her to be so vitally alive, so avid for new experience, that Simmie’s spirits lifted whenever she was there.
After the success of the museum tour, Meriel predictably came back for more, appearing at the door a few days later, with hoots of laughter, on a spanking new Premier Ladies’ Free-wheel bicycle – and insisting then and there that Simmie should unearth her own battered Raleigh and cycle with her to the zoo in Regent’s Park.
‘But I haven’t ridden it in years,’ Simmie protested, ‘I’m such a fool in traffic, dear. I’m almost certain to fall off.’
‘No you won’t.’ Meriel was already pumping up the front tyre for her. ‘Just pedal away for dear life like me and you’ll do famously, Miss Sims. You’ll see!’ And to Simmie’s own surprise she had done. During the next few weeks she’d wobbled behind Meriel, in and out of traffic, from the Tower of London to the Kensington museums, from Hampstead Heath to the Crystal Palace. She hadn’t fallen off, not once – and although her legs ached and her corsets chafed her thighs, she’d willingly have suffered worse for the pleasure of seeing Meriel discover London. The girl had been delighted with the palaces and parks, appalled by the foetid zoo, the city tanneries and black mud of the Thames. She’d been in transports over the Art Nouveau furnishings at Heal’s and the underclothes at D. H. Evans; had loathed the sooty hovels of Lambeth and Southwark; had laughed uproariously at the bad horsemanship and precarious top hats on Rotten Row – and pursued a coal-dray to threaten the cruel drayman with a taste of his own free-handed whip.
Watching Meriel get to grips with the metropolis, seizing her experiences with both hands, Simmie was reminded more than once of the little girl in Richmond Park reaching out so boldly for her father’s shiny hat. What’s more, she found that it no longer tortured her to think of Meriel returning home to Robert from their expeditions like a living link between them. Because from the moment Mrs Ashby had made her realise the depth of her own folly, Simmie had known that all of that was over, and for good.
The problem of poor Ned remained; and on the day that he returned to Harpur Street for the new term, Simmie beckoned him into her parlour, closed the door and bravely turned to face him with the worst. She’d steeled herself to be as forthright as his grandmother had been, convinced it was the only way – until he smiled that charming open smile of his, to make the whole thing far more painful for them both.
‘Ned dear, I wonder if you can guess what I am going to say?’
‘No, Simmie, I can’t, and I’m not sure that I want to try.’ He’d scooped up a brass elephant from the card table to shuttle it from one hand to the other.
Simmie took a deep breath. ‘Let’s just agree it’s run its course, my dear, and that it’s over. It was splendid to begin with, Ned – lovely. But now I’m beginning to feel ashamed, you see? And we couldn’t go on with me feeling that way, could we?’
‘I’m not ashamed,’ he told her solidly, ‘I’m proud of what we’ve done!’ But you don’t have to worry about Grannie, Simmie. Now she’s seen the place, I promise you she won’t be coming back.’
‘It’s not about your Grandmother. It’s me, my dear – I’m too old for the worry of it all. If Gladys should find out what we’ve been up to… I just couldn’t bear it, Ned. Please try to understand.’
‘You’re not too old!’ He tossed the elephant into the air and caught it. ‘But you think I’m too young. That’s it, Simmie, isn’t it? And all the time I’ve only ever been a kind of first reserve, for that snake Llewellen!’
There was no point in denying it, or telling him what she’d decided about Robert. So she let Ned toss the elephant about some more while he begged her to change her mind, and looked so hurt and tragic that for two pins she’d have relented to take him in her arms. Instead she crossed them firmly to make it clear she wouldn’t; had let him drop the elephant and pick it up and put it back; had let him leave her with an almost comically reproachful look in his young face, before she could allow herself to shed a single tear.
Afterwards she’d done her best to smile away that look whenever she detected it in Ned’s blue eyes. To cheer him up. To demonstrate that life went on. And in a day or two to show him where to find it – for Simmie was convinced that Meriel Llewellen’s youth and ebullience were just exactly what the poor boy needed to rebuild his confidence!
If only Meriel herself could be more helpful. She clearly thought that the sun rose and set behind Ned Ashby, and talked constantly of his good looks and gentlemanly behaviour. But maddeningly, as soon as Ned himself hove into view, the perverse child assumed a nonchalant, tea-hostess manner that was guaranteed to drive him in the opposite direction.
‘Just try to be yourself, dear,’ Simmie advised her one afternoon, when Ned had seized the excuse of exam revision to make a bolt from the tea-table to his bedroom. ‘To be honest Meriel, I do think that formal conversation is a little wasted on young men like Ned. He does so dislike any kind of fuss.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know!’ the girl retorted, flinging herself back in her chair in a deliberately inelegant attitude. ‘But don’t you see, Simmie, that’s the whole point. Men run like hares at the slightest sign of interest from a woman. Why, you practically have to walk backwards with a sack over your head to get them to look twice!
‘You should try it,’ she added as a tactless afterthought; leaving Simmie with no alternative but to stand by helplessly and watch her terrifyingly offhand assault on Ned. She buttonholed him doggedly at Harpur Street – in the parlour, at the front door, even in the street outside – ever eager to demonstrate a polite lack of interest in anything he might say or do. With Gareth, their portly mother or Simmie herself as chaperone, she pursued him to university cricket matches and Sunday outings; correct, blasé and apparently bored to distraction.
So it had come to Simmie as something of a relief when Meriel announced a midweek sightseeing expedition away from Ashby and his tedious exams, and far beyond the sooty confines of the city.
‘I haven’t seen anywhere near enough of the English countryside,’ she told Simmie, ‘and no more have you. We’ll take our bikes out with us on the train and make a proper day of it.’
In all her years of residence in London, Simmie had never even thought of taking her bicycle on a train; but now that she was forced to do so, found the idea quite exciting. Young Gareth Llewellen had recently been shipped off for his first term at the Redruth School of Mines in Cornwall, and Meriel’s elder sister Vicky never bicycled. So there’d be only two of them on the excursion. They would leave early, Meriel announced, and spend the whole day in the country!
‘And it’s my outing,’ she insisted. ‘If you bring the lunch, I’ll get the tickets and do all the rest.’
‘But where are we going?’ Simmie laughed. ‘You’ll have to tell me that at least.’
‘No I won’t. Just meet me with your bike at nine in front of the refreshment rooms at Victoria Station for the London and Smash’em Line– and try to bring a decent day with you, all right?’
The station was crowded to the point of lunacy with trains puffing in or puffing out of practically every platform. Smoke trapped by the glass roof swirled through the milling figures on the concourse; surrounding them with the important, coaly smell of stations the world over.
‘Here we are then,’ Meriel cried as soon as she caught sight of Simmie’s hat. ‘This way. The train’s just in!’
The platform by the guard’s van was in a state of pandemonium. Passengers and cabbies shouted instructions at the porters who were handling the luggage. The van itself was still disgorging trunks and Gladstone bags and objects parcelled in brown holland – to be stacked first on the platform and then transferred to waiting cabs, until the bicyclists had room to load their vehicles.
The train on the outward journey was less crowded, and aside from a stout party in a feathered bonnet, they had their second class compartment to themselves.
‘Ugh!’ Meriel lifted a glove from the sash window to show the smudges on its fingers. ‘Soot! Everything’s covered in soot. Honestly, the cities over here aren’t fit for chimney sweeps to live in!’
She was looking particularly fetching, Simmie thought, in a belted cycling outfit with a knotted tie and an outsize parody of a gentleman’s squashed motoring cap, secured with a large hatpin; the face beneath it reflecting every last shade of horror and delight at all that passed her window – from the squalid tenements of Battersea to the fields and woods of Mitcham and the open country beyond.
It was June. There were butterflies in the meadows. The pale discs of elderflowers and wild roses adorned the hedgerows. The sun was already high, and in the shade it cast beneath the oaks groups of cattle and horses stood nose to tail, swishing at the flies. On numbers of farms haymaking was in full swing, and Meriel waved gaily at the field workers as they paused to watch the train puff by; men in shirtsleeves, women in white aprons and Mother Hubbard sunbonnets. In some fields they were turning, laboriously with long-handled wooden rakes, in others tossing the hay up onto the wains.
Meriel exclaimed and pointed, constantly crossing from one window to another, alive with nervous energy; and watching her swift movements – her flying hands and the sparkling eyes – Simmie thought she had seldom seen anyone so attractive. If only Ned could see Meriel as she was now, he surely would be bound to feel the same. But Ned was already far away, languishing with his textbooks in the city they had left behind.
At Haywards Heath, the stout party had alighted with a feathery nod to each of them. ‘And thank God for that,’ Meriel said, kicking her feet up onto the seat opposite and helping herself to an extra-strong peppermint from a bag in her pocket. ‘Isn’t this a lark though, Simmie? Aren’t you glad you came?’
‘Very,’ Simmie replied truthfully. ‘But I might be even gladder if you’d tell me where you’re planning to set us down.’
‘I dare say you would,’ the impossible child said blithely. ‘But look, do look, Simmie!’ She indicated the great agricultural panorama rolling from the woods of Haywards Heath across a patchwork plain of standing corn and pasture to the long blue whalebacks of the South Downs hills. ‘It looks just like a painting!’
At Lewes, where the River Ouse cut through the downs, the railway plunged with magnificent abandon straight into the chalk spur on which the old town stood.
‘All change!’ cried Meriel, jumping up as they emerged from the far end of the tunnel. ‘It’s another train for our bit of the coast. Come on!’ And while they hurried down the platform to retrieve their bicycles, Simmie felt a funny little thrill of pleasure. Heavens, it was years since she’d been to the seaside!
The Seaford train was old and shabby, made up of two or three forlorn old carriages working out their last days on a branch line. Again they’d had to share a compartment; this time with a pungent odour of black shag tobacco and the antediluvian rustic from whom it emanated, sprawled in a corner with his eyes tight shut.
‘He looks like something out of Punch!’ Meriel whispered loudly pointing at the leather straps around the old man’s knees and the archaic frill of whiskers that rose above his collar with every intake of breath. ‘You don’t suppose that he’s called ‘Gaffer Jarge,’ do you?’ and she began to giggle.
But it would have taken more than one rustic character to distract Meriel for any length of time from the scenery outside the train, and in another minute she was urging Simmie to admire chalk cliffs and sprit-rigged barges, and water meadows filled with buttercups.
‘And look now, Simmie, do look! It’s positively prehistoric!’
In the lower Ouse valley, in the diked hayfields between the railway and the river, the wains were drawn, not by horses but by hefty bullocks yoked in pairs, six to a team; and here a number of the haymakers still wore loose working smocks of homespun linen in black or grey or butcher-blue.
‘Oxen!’ Meriel crowed. ‘And yokels in smocks – I don’t believe it!’
‘Wal p’raps ‘tis time ye made a start then, Missy,’ a sepulchral voice suggested from the corner of the carriage. ‘I’ll lay ye’d get the idea of a roundfrock soon ‘nough, with an ’ayseed or two ’neath yer gusset!’
Meriel looked at him sharply, to ask him if he thought that he was being funny?
He wasn’t; Simmie could see that at a glance. But Meriel laughed anyway, and went on laughing on and off all the way to Newhaven; where the old man stomped out in a cloud of disapproving black shag, muttering uncomplimentary things involving ‘ighty-flighty feymales’.
By then Meriel had turned her attention to the sailing vessels in the harbour, and the business of instructing her companion the important differences between a brig, a schooner and a windjammer – and as the train steamed on across the salt flats separating the working port from the prim holiday resort of Seaford, Simmie, who was feeling tired, began to think how far she was from home.
‘I must be mad to let her bring me all this way,’ she thought, ‘when we could just as easily have picnicked at Swiss Cottage!’
But it was not until they reached the finger-post at the edge of Seaford town, and Simmie read the name painted on it, that the full extent of her own madness dawned on her.
‘Sellington 2 Miles’.
How could she have failed to guess it at that first blue glimpse of the South Downs from the train? In the moment of her revelation, an all-too-solid vision of Mrs Ashby in a homburg hat strode purposefully into Simmie’s mind.
‘Well, why ever not?’ Meriel said defensively, taking off her jacket and strapping it to the back-stay behind her saddle.
‘Ashby’s always talking about it, isn’t he? I think it’s high time that we saw the place for ourselves.
‘I’ll race you down the hill,’ she added brightly. ‘Come on, it’ll be a hoot!’ And without waiting to see if Simmie would follow her, she launched herself over the brow in the direction that the sign was pointing.