CHAPTER VII

Whilst Mrs Green was sugaring her strong tea, Flossie Palmer was entertaining Mr Ernest Bowden. It was the first time he had been officially received in the family circle—Aunt being so pertickler. Flossie’s return after a mere twelve hours absence had not been at all well received. In sheer self-defence she had secured another situation, and the tea-party had been conceded by Mrs Palmer as a send-off. Not to anyone except that chance-met stranger in the fog had Flossie spoken of her headlong flight from No. 16 Varley Street. Her ordinarily voluble tongue became dry and silent under Aunt’s questioning. She hadn’t liked the place and she had come away, and that was all. For one thing, if Aunt knew she had been out all night, the fat would be in the fire. She bought herself another brush and comb, and said nothing about the hat, the night-dress, and the change of underclothes which she had left behind in the basement bedroom. Not for anything in the world would she go back and fetch them away. She came all over goose flesh at the mere idea, and by exhibiting an unusual amount of energy and securing a place as housemaid at Mrs Freddy Gilmore’s she stopped Aunt’s mouth, and was graciously permitted to ask Ernie to tea.

Ernie was finding the occasion rather formidable. He was wearing a high stiff collar which hurt his neck, and his best suit, which had not kept pace with his vigorous development. He was a large young man—a motor-mechanic by trade. He had advanced political opinions and a good deal of bony wrist and thick dark hair. Flossie’s aunt made him come over hot about the ears and moist about the hands. She kept a steely eye upon him, as if she expected at any moment to find him out in something he shouldn’t be doing, and she called him Mr Bowden at least once in every sentence. It was quite horribly daunting. During tea she talked about all the promising girls she had known who had married drunkards and declined prematurely into their graves. Even Flossie was subdued.

It was a little better after tea when the table had been cleared. He and Flossie were allowed to sit up to it side by side whilst she showed him the photographs in the family album, an immensely thick and heavy book with an embossed leather binding, gilt edges, and a portentous clasp. It was possible to hold Flossie’s hand when she was not turning a leaf. Mrs Palmer, knitting by the hearth, could only see the table-cloth and the heavy album tilted on an aged copy of Stepping Heavenward. She had stopped talking, and he gathered, to his immense relief, that it was now Flossie’s business to entertain him.

They lingered over the faded pictures of whiskered young men and chignoned young women, hairy old gentlemen with beards flowing down over their waistcoats, and old ladies, all shawl and cap and skirt.

“That’s Auntie’s grandfather,” said Flossie. “A builder in a very good way of business he was—wasn’t he, Aunt?”

Mrs Palmer’s needles clicked.

“And a life-long teetotaller,” she said.

Flossie trod on Ernie’s foot.

“Had a lovely house up in Hampstead—hadn’t he, Aunt?” she said.

“Took the pledge at five years old and never broke it,” said Mrs Palmer. She drew out a needle and stabbed it into the sock she was knitting. “And a pity there are not more like him, Mr Bowden.”

Flossie tossed her head.

“You needn’t think Ernie drinks, Aunt, because he doesn’t!”

“So he says,” said Mrs Palmer. She sat bolt upright in a chair with a leather seat and a curly walnut back, her firm, high-busted figure tightly cased in a black stuff dress with a high-collared front of cream net over white silk. A gold locket with raised initials hung down upon the front, and an agate brooch which was exactly like a bull’s eye fastened the collar. Her thick wiry grey hair was brushed tightly back from her forehead and temples and fastened in a plaited coil about half way up the back of her head. She had a high, fixed colour, sharp grey eyes, and practically no lashes. A formidable person.

Flossie passed quickly to the next page.

“That’s my mother,” she said. “D’you think I’m like her? I’m called after her, you know. I don’t remember her hardly at all. I’m Florence after her, but they called her Flo, and me Flossie. I like Flossie best—don’t you?”

The enamoured Ernie turned a deep puce in reply to this challenge. He squeezed the hand which he found conveniently near his own and said nothing. Neither of them noticed that Mrs Palmer had stopped knitting. Her lips were pressed together. She was frowning as if she had dropped a stitch. Presently the needles clicked again.

“My dad was killed in the war, you know,” pursued Flossie. “No, of course I don’t remember him! Coo, Ernie—however old d’you think I am? That’s my mother’s photograph we’ve been looking at, not me! See that brooch she’s got on? Ever so pretty it was—two hearts twined together, a white one and a blue one, pearl and turquoise. I had it stolen in my first place. Wasn’t it a shame? So now I’ve only got these old beads that I’ve wore and wore till I’m sick of them.”

“I like them,” said the infatuated Ernie.

Flossie tossed her head and fingered the beads. Her bright pink dress was upstairs in a drawer. She wouldn’t have dared to wear it under Aunt’s eye. She had on a dark blue jumper suit in which she looked very pretty indeed. It threw up her fair, bright tints and the whiteness of her skin. She looked down at the beads with discontent.

“They’d be all right if they were white,” she said. “I’d like a nice white pearl string—it’d suit me. I’d have thrown these old grey things away long ago if they hadn’t been my mother’s. Dingy, I call them. Look here, this photo’s slipped. I’ll have to pull it out or it won’t go in straight.”

The photo showed a buxom middle-aged woman in an outdoor coat and an excruciatingly unbecoming hat. The hat dominated the picture. It was trimmed with about a dozen yards of ribbon and a whole pheasant. Its forward tilt obscured the sitter’s features and gave the impression that it had just fallen upon her head.

“Coo!” said Flossie, giggling. “Who’s this Aunt?” She held the photo out, saw as she turned it that there was something written on the back, and read aloud: “‘Yours truly, Agnes Smith’. Who’s that, Aunt?”

“Why, your Aunt Ag of course. You ought to know that, Flossie, I must say. Flo’s own half-sister Ag.”

“Well, it says Agnes Smith. Ooh!” Flossie’s finger tightened on the old carte-de-visite. She turned it over and stared at the high-sleeved coat, the plump featureless face, and the hat with its load of millinery. She had a funny giddy feeling as if she were in two places at once, because whilst she looked at the photograph here in Aunt’s warm parlour, she had the cold taste of fog in her mouth and she could hear Mr Miles saying “‘Please send money for funeral expenses and my account and oblige yours truly Agnes Smith’.” It was really a very horrid sort of feeling.

“What’s the matter?” said Ernie in what he intended for a whisper.

Flossie caught her breath.

“Nothing. Aunt Ag’s name isn’t Smith, Aunt? It’s never been Smith since I heard tell of her.” She dragged her eyes away from the photograph and fixed them upon Aunt’s unresponsive profile.

Without looking up from her knitting, Mrs Palmer said,

“Well then, you don’t know everything, though I’ve no doubt you think you do.”

“Was her name Smith, Aunt?”

“For about twenty years it was—and a bad bargain she had. Had to leave him in the end and keep herself letting apartments. Then he died and she married again, and how she’d the courage, I don’t know. You’d think one man would be enough for any woman, let alone one like Jacob Smith. But there—she’d not been a widow a twelve-month before she married again. Put the photograph back tidy, Flossie, and don’t bend the corners.” Mrs Palmer’s needles clicked vigorously. “Why any woman born wants a man tracking dirt into her house, coming in all hours with muddy feet, and as like as not smelling of drink and tobacco, passes me.”

Flossie turned the page. She didn’t want to talk about yours truly Agnes Smith. She wanted to get away from her. She nudged Ernie with her elbow and said daringly,

“Ooh! What about Syd?”

Mrs Palmer’s face relaxed. She did not actually smile, but she came within measurable distance of it. The locket which reposed upon her cream lace front contained two photographs of Syd, one taken at the age of four, and the other on his twenty-first birthday a couple of months ago. In the former he had long curling fair hair and a white muslin frock. In the latter he had rather the air of a girl dressed up in her brother’s clothes. Mrs Palmer had brought him up as much like a girl as possible. He had studious tastes, which he was able to gratify, as he worked in a bookshop. She certainly never thought of him as a man. He was her Syd, and the core of her heart.

“Syd’s different,” she said, and with that the door opened and Syd came in.

He was not much taller than Flossie, and his complexion was almost as pink and white as hers. He came in now more quickly than usual and shut the door.

Mrs Palmer put down her knitting and looked anxiously at him.

“What’s the matter, Syd?”

“Haven’t you heard—about Ivy Hodge? Haven’t you heard anything?”

“Coo!” said Flossie. “She hasn’t broke it off with Billy again, has she? Anyhow, Syd, if she has, she won’t take you, so you don’t need to get all worked up about it.”

Mrs Palmer frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but Syd got in first.

“Haven’t you heard?” he said again in his rather high voice.

Flossie pushed back her chair and got up.

“Ooh, Syd—what’s happened?” she said. “Don’t say anything dreadful’s happened—not to Ivy!”

Syd nodded. He was still standing by the door, his face working and his colour coming and going.

“They found her in the river,” he whispered.

Flossie caught hold of Ernie, not because he was Ernie, but because he was there. She hadn’t ever fainted, but she felt as if she were going to faint. She heard Aunt say, “She isn’t dead!” And then Syd had tumbled into a chair and was sitting with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands and saying,

“They don’t know whether she’ll get over it. Mrs Hodge doesn’t think she will.” He began to cry in a gentle girlish way. “She’s got a knock on the head and she was nearly drowned. And the police have been asking where Billy was. Isn’t it dreadful? Poor Ivy, I always liked her. Mrs Hodge says she won’t ever get over it.”

Mrs Palmer bent over him, patting a heaving shoulder.

“Now, Syd, don’t you take on so. And don’t you talk to me about Mrs Hodge. Makes up her mind to the worst before anything’s happened—that’s Mrs Hodge. I haven’t patience! Where’s Ivy? In hospital? Then you’ll see she’ll be all right. Flossie, don’t you stand there holding on to Mr Bowden like that! It’s what I call right down forward. Now, Syd, Mother will make you a nice cup of tea and you’ll be quite all right.”

She went out to fill the kettle.

Syd pushed back his long fair hair and looked tearfully at Flossie.

“Isn’t it dreadful, Floss?” he said with a catch in his voice.

“Suppose it had been me,” said Flossie in a sort of horrified whisper.