Celia’s child was born in July, and it was born in the same room where she had been born twenty-two years ago.
Outside the deep green branches of the beech tree tapped against the window.
Putting his fears (curiously intense ones) for Celia out of sight, Dermot had resolutely regarded the role of an expectant mother as a highly amusing one. No attitude could so well have helped Celia through the weary time. She remained strong and active but obstinately seasick.
She went home about three weeks before the baby was due. At the end of that time Dermot got a week’s leave and joined her. Celia hoped her baby would be born while he was there. Her mother hoped it would be born after he departed. Men, in Miriam’s opinion, were nothing more nor less than a nuisance at such times.
The nurse had arrived and was so briskly cheerful and reassuring that Celia was devoured by secret terrors.
One night at dinner Celia dropped her knife and fork and cried: ‘Oh, Nurse!’
They went out of the room together. Nurse came back in a minute or two. She nodded to Miriam.
‘Very punctual,’ she said smiling. ‘A model patient.’
‘Aren’t you going to telephone for the doctor?’ demanded Dermot fiercely.
‘Oh, there’s no hurry. He won’t be needed for many hours yet.’
Celia came back and went on with her dinner. Afterwards Miriam and the nurse went off together. They murmured of linen, and jingled keys …
Celia and Dermot sat looking at each other desperately. They had joked and laughed, but now their fear was upon them:
Celia said: ‘I’ll be all right. I know I’ll be all right.’
Dermot said violently: ‘Of course you will.’
They stared at each other miserably.
‘You’re very strong,’ said Dermot.
‘Very strong. And women have babies every day – one a minute isn’t it?’
A spasm of pain contorted her face. Dermot cried out: ‘Celia!’
‘It’s all right. Let’s go out. The house seems like a hospital somehow.’
‘It’s that damned nurse does it.’
‘She’s very nice, really.’
They went out into the summer night. They felt curiously isolated. Inside the house was bustle, preparation – they heard Nurse at the telephone, her ‘Yes, Doctor … No, Doctor … Oh, yes, about ten o’clock will do nicely … Yes, quite satisfactory.’
Outside the night was cool and green … The beech tree rustled …
Two lonely children wandered there hand in hand – not knowing how to console each other …
Celia said suddenly:
‘I just want to say – not that anything will happen – but in case it did – that I’ve been so wonderfully happy that nothing in the world matters. You promised you’d make me happy, and you have … I didn’t dream anyone could be so happy.’
Dermot said brokenly:
‘I’ve brought this on you …’
‘I know. It’s worse for you … But I’m terribly happy about it – about everything …’
She added:
‘And afterwards – we’ll always love each other.’
‘Always, all our lives …’
Nurse called from the house.
‘You’d better come in now, my dear.’
‘I’m coming.’
It was upon them now. They were being torn apart. That was the worst of it, Celia felt. Having to leave Dermot to face this new thing alone.
They clung together – all the terror of separation in their kiss.
Celia thought: ‘We’ll never forget this night – never …’ It was the fourteenth of July.
She went into the house.
So tired … so tired … so very tired …
The room, spinning, hazy – then broadening out and settling into reality. The nurse smiling at her, the doctor washing his hands in a corner of the room. He had known her all her life, and he called out to her jocularly:
‘Well, Celia, my dear, you’ve got a baby.’
She had got a baby, had she?
It didn’t seem to matter.
She was so tired.
Just that … tired …
They seemed to be expecting her to do or say something …
But she couldn’t.
She just wanted to be let alone …
To rest …
But there was something … someone …
She murmured: ‘Dermot?’
She had dozed off. When she opened her eyes he was there.
But what had happened to him? He looked different – so queer. He was in trouble – had had bad news or something.
She said: ‘What is it?’
He answered in a queer, unnatural voice: ‘A little daughter.’
‘No, I mean – you? What’s the matter?’
His face crumpled up – puckered queerly. He was crying – Dermot crying!
He said brokenly: ‘It’s been so awful – so long … You don’t know how ghastly it’s been …’
He knelt by the bed, burying his face there. She laid a hand on his head.
How much he cared …
‘Darling,’ she said. ‘It’s all right now …’
Here was her mother. Instinctively, at the sight of that sweet smiling face, Celia felt better – stronger. As in nursery days she felt ‘everything would be all right now that Mummy was here.’
‘Don’t go away, Mummy.’
‘No, darling. I’m going to sit here by you.’
Celia fell asleep holding her mother’s hand. When she woke up, she said:
‘Oh, Mummy, it feels just wonderful not to be sick!’
Miriam laughed.
‘You’re going to see your baby now. Nurse is bringing her.’
‘Are you sure it isn’t a boy?’
‘Quite sure. Girls are much nicer, Celia. You’ve always meant much more to me than Cyril has.’
‘Yes, but I was so sure it was a boy … Well, Dermot will be pleased. He wanted a girl. He’s got his own way.’
‘As usual,’ said Miriam dryly. ‘Here comes Nurse.’
Nurse came in very starched and stiff and important – carrying something on a pillow.
Celia steeled herself. New-born babies were very ugly – frightfully ugly. She must be prepared.
‘Oh!’ she said in a tone of great surprise.
Was this little creature her baby? She felt excited and frightened as Nurse laid her gently within the crook of her arm. This funny little Red Indian squaw with her dark thatch of hair? Nothing raw beef-like about her. A funny, adorable, comic little face.
‘Eight and a half pounds,’ said Nurse with great satisfaction.
As often before in her life, Celia felt unreal. She was now definitely playing the part of the Young Mother.
But she did not feel at all like either a wife or a mother. She felt like a little girl come home after an exciting but tiring party.
Celia called the baby Judy – as being the next best thing to Punch!
Judy was a most satisfactory baby. She put on the requisite weight every week and indulged in the minimum amount of crying. When she did cry it was the angry roar of a miniature tigress.
Having, as Grannie would have put it, ‘taken her month’, Celia left Judy with Miriam and went up to London to look about for a suitable home.
Her reunion with Dermot was particularly joyous. It was like a second honeymoon. Part of Dermot’s satisfaction arose from the fact (Celia discovered) that she had left Judy to come up to him.
‘I’ve been so afraid you’d get all domestic and not bother about me any longer.’
His jealousy allayed, Dermot joined her energetically in flat hunting whenever he could. Celia now felt quite experienced in the house-hunting business – no longer was she the complete nincompoop who had been frightened away by the efficiency of Miss Banks. She might have been renting flats all her life.
They were going to take an unfurnished flat. It would be cheaper, and Miriam could easily supply them with nearly all the furniture they needed from home.
Unfurnished flats, however, were few and far between. They nearly always had a snag attached to them in the shape of a monstrous premium. As day followed day, Celia got more and more depressed.
It was Mrs Steadman who saved the situation.
She appeared at breakfast one morning with a mysterious air of engaging in a conspiracy.
‘Apologizing, I’m sure, to you, sir,’ said Mrs Steadman, ‘for intruding at such a time, but it came to Steadman’s ears last night that No. 18 Lauceston Mansions – just round the corner – is to Be Had. They wrote to the agents about it last night, so if you was to nip round now, ma’am, before anybody Got Wind of it, so to speak –’
There was no need for more. Celia sprang up from the table, pulled on a hat, and departed with the eagerness of a dog on the scent.
At 18 Lauceston Mansions also breakfast was in progress. To the announcement by a slatternly maid of ‘Somebody to see over the flat, ma’am,’ Celia, standing in the hall, heard an agitated wail: ‘But they can hardly have got my letter yet. It’s only half-past eight.’
A young woman in a kimono came out of the dining-room, wiping her mouth. A smell of kipper accompanied her.
‘Do you really want to see over the flat?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose …’
Celia was taken round. Yes, it would do excellently. Four bedrooms, two sitting-rooms – everything pretty dirty, of course. Rent £80 a year (marvellously cheap). A premium (alas) of a hundred and fifty pounds, and the ‘lino’ (Celia abhorred lino) to be taken at a valuation. Celia offered a hundred premium. The young woman in the kimono refused scornfully.
‘Very well,’ said Celia firmly. ‘I’ll take it.’
As she descended the stairs she was glad of her decision. Two separate women came up, each with a house agent’s order to view in her hand!
Within three days Celia and Dermot had been offered a premium of two hundred to abdicate their right.
But they stuck to it, paid over their hundred and fifty pounds, and entered into possession of 18 Lauceston Mansions. At last they had a home (a very dirty one) of their own.
In a month’s time you would hardly have known the place. Dermot and Celia did all the decorating themselves – they could not afford anything else. They learnt by experience interesting facts about distempering, painting, and papering. The finished result was charming, they thought. Cheap chintz papers brightened up the long dingy passages. Yellow distempered walls gave a sunny look to the rooms facing north. The sitting-rooms were pale cream – a background for pictures and china. The ‘lino surrounds’ were torn up and presented to Mrs Steadman, who received them greedily. ‘I do like a bit of nice lino, ma’am …’
In the meantime Celia had successfully passed through another ordeal – that of Mrs Barman’s Bureau. Mrs Barman’s Bureau provided children’s nurses.
Arriving at this awe-inspiring establishment, Celia was received by a haughty yellow-haired creature, required to fill in thirty-four answers to questions on an imposing form – the questions being of a kind to induce acute humility in the filler in. She was then conducted to a small cubicle, rather medical in appearance, and there, curtained in, she was left to await those nurses whom the yellow-haired one saw fit to send her.
By the time the first one came in, Celia’s sense of inferiority had deepened to complete abasement, not relieved by the first applicant, a big starched massive woman, aggressively clean and majestic in demeanour.
‘Good morning,’ said Celia weakly.
‘Good morning, madam.’ The majestic one took the chair opposite Celia and gazed at her steadily, conveying somehow as she did so, her sense that Celia’s situation was not likely to suit anyone who respected one’s self.
‘I want a nurse for a young baby,’ began Celia wishing that she did not feel and (she was afraid) sound amateurish.
‘Yes, madam. From the month?’
‘Yes, at least two months.’
One mistake already – ‘from the month’ was a technical term – not a period of time. Celia felt she had gone down in the majestic one’s estimation.
‘Quite so, madam. Any other children?’
‘No.’
‘A first baby. How many in family?’
‘Er – me and my husband.’
‘And what establishment do you keep, madam?’
Establishment? What a word to describe one general servant not yet acquired.
‘We live very simply,’ said Celia, blushing. ‘One maid.’
‘Nurseries cleaned and waited on?’
‘No, you would have to do your own nursery.’
‘Ah!’ The majestic one rose and said more in sorrow than in anger: ‘I’m afraid, madam, your situation is not quite what I am looking for. At Sir Eldon West’s, I had a nurserymaid, and the nurseries were attended to by the under housemaid.’
Celia cursed the yellow-haired one in her heart. Why fill up a paper of your requirements and your household and then be sent someone who would clearly only accept a post with the Rothschilds if they happened to please her fancy?
A stern black-browed woman came next.
‘One baby? Taken from the month? You understand, madam, I take entire charge. I do not tolerate interference.’
She glared at Celia.
‘I’ll teach young mother to come bothering me,’ said the glare.
Celia said she was afraid she would not do.
‘I am devoted to children, madam. I worship them, but I cannot have a mother always interfering.’
The black-browed one was got rid of.
There came next a very untidy old woman who described herself as a ‘Nannie’.
As far as Celia could make out she could neither see, hear, nor understand what was said to her.
Rout of the Nannie.
Next came a bad-tempered-looking young woman who scoffed at the idea of doing her own nurseries, followed by an amiable red-cheeked girl who had been a housemaid but thought she’d ‘get on better with children’.
Celia was getting desperate when a woman of about thirty-five came in. She had pince-nez, was extremely neat, and had pleasant blue eyes.
She displayed none of the usual reactions when it came to ‘doing your own nursery’.
‘Well, I don’t object to that – except the grate. I don’t like doing a grate – it musses up your hands – and you don’t want rough hands looking after a baby. But otherwise I don’t mind seeing to things. I’ve been to the colonies, and I can turn my hand to anything.’
She showed Celia various snapshots of her charges, and Celia ended by engaging her if her references were satisfactory.
With a sigh of relief Celia left Mrs Barman’s Bureau.
Mary Denman’s references proved most satisfactory. She was a careful, thoroughly experienced nurse. Celia had next to engage a servant.
This proved to be almost more trying than finding a nurse. Nurses at least were plentiful. Servants were practically non-existent. They were all in munition factories or in the WAACS or WRENS. Celia saw a girl she liked very much, a plump good-humoured damsel called Kate. She did her utmost to persuade Kate to come to them.
Like all the others, Kate jibbed at a nursery.
‘It isn’t the baby I object to, ma’am. I like children. It’s the nurse. After my last place I vowed I’d never go where there was a nurse again. Wherever there’s a nurse there’s trouble.’
In vain Celia represented Mary Denman as a mine of all the virtues. Kate repeated solidly:
‘Wherever there’s a nurse, there’s trouble. That’s my experience.’
In the end it was Dermot who turned the scale. Celia turned him on to the obdurate Kate, and Dermot, the adept at getting his own way, was successful in getting Kate to give them a trial.
‘Though whatever came over me I don’t know, because go where there is a nursery I said I never would again. But the captain spoke so nicely, and him knowing the regiment my boy’s in in France and everything. Well, I said, we can but try.’
So Kate was secured, and on a triumphant October day Celia, Dermot, Denman, Kate, and Judy all moved in to 18 Lauceston Mansions, and family life began.
Dermot was very funny with Judy. He was afraid of her. When Celia tried to make him hold her in his arms, he backed away nervously.
‘No, I can’t. I simply can’t. I won’t hold the thing.’
‘You’ll have to some day, when she’s older. And she’s not a thing!’
‘She’ll be better when she’s older. Once she can talk and walk, I dare say I shall like her. She’s so awfully fat now. Do you think she’ll ever get right?’
He refused to admire Judy’s curves or her dimples.
‘I want her to be thin and bony.’
‘Not now – at three months old.’
‘You really think she will be thin some day?’
‘Sure to be. We’re both thin.’
‘I couldn’t bear it if she grew up fat.’
Celia had to fall back upon the admiration of Mrs Steadman, who walked round and round the baby rather as she had done round the joint of meat of glorious memory.
‘The image of the captain, isn’t she? Ah, you can see she was made at home – if you’ll pardon the old saying.’
On the whole, Celia found domesticity rather fun. It was fun because she did not take it seriously. Denman proved an excellent nurse, capable and devoted to the baby, and extraordinarily pleasant and willing so long as there was a lot of work to do and everything was at sixes and sevens. The moment the household had settled down and things were running smoothly, Denman showed she had another side to her character. She had a fierce temper – directed not towards Judy, whom she adored, but towards Celia and Dermot. All employers were to Denman natural enemies. The most innocent remark would create a sudden storm. Celia would say, ‘You had your electric light on last night. I hope baby was all right?’
Immediately Denman flared up.
‘I suppose I can turn on the light to see the time in the night? I may be treated like a black slave, but there are limits. I’ve had slaves myself under me in Africa – poor ignorant heathen – but they weren’t grudged necessities. If you think I’m wasting the light, I’ll trouble you to say so straight out.’
Kate, in the kitchen, used to giggle sometimes when Denman talked of slaves.
‘Nurse won’t never be satisfied – not till she’s got a dozen niggers under her. She’s always talking of the niggers in Africa, I wouldn’t have a nigger in my kitchen – nasty black things.’
Kate was a great comfort. Good-humoured, placid, and untroubled by storms, she went her way, cooking, cleaning, and indulging in reminiscences of ‘places’.
‘I’ll never forget my first place – no, never. A slip of a girl I was – not seventeen. They starved me something cruel. A kipper, that’s all they’d let me have for lunch, and margarine instead of butter. I got so thin you could hear my bones rubbing together. Mother was in a way about me.’
Looking at the robust and daily increasing plumpness of Kate, Celia could hardly believe this story.
‘I hope you get enough to eat here, Kate?’
‘Don’t you worry, ma’am, that’s all right – and you’ve no call to do things yourself. You’ll only muss yourself up.’
But Celia had acquired a guilty passion for cooking. Having made the startling discovery that cooking was mainly following a recipe carefully, she plunged headlong into the sport. Kate’s disapproval forced her to confine most of her activities to Kate’s days out, when she would go and have an orgy in the kitchen and produce exciting delicacies for Dermot’s tea and dinner.
It was in the nature of the unsatisfactory quality of life that Dermot should frequently arrive home on these days with indigestion and demand weak tea and thin toast instead of lobster cutlets and vanilla soufflé.
Kate herself kept firmly to plain cooking. She was unable to follow a recipe because she scorned to measure any quantities.
‘A bit of this, and that – that’s what I take,’ she said. ‘That’s the way my mother did. Cooks never measure.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if they did,’ suggested Celia.
‘You’ve got to do it by eye,’ said Kate firmly. ‘That’s the way I’ve always seen my mother do.’
What fun it was, thought Celia.
A house (or rather a flat) of one’s very own – a husband – a baby – a servant.
At last, she felt, she was being grown up – a real person. She was even learning the correct jargon. She had made friends with two other young wives in the mansions. These were very earnest over the qualities of good milk, where you got the cheapest Brussels sprouts, and the iniquities of servants.
‘I looked her straight in the face, and I said, “Jane, I never permit insolence,” just like that. Such a look she gave me.’
They never seemed to talk about anything except these subjects.
Secretly, Celia felt afraid that she would never be truly domestic.
Luckily Dermot didn’t mind. He often said he hated domestic women. Their homes, he said, were always so uncomfortable.
And, really there seemed to be something in what he said. Women who talked of nothing but servants seemed to be always having ‘insolence’ from them and their ‘treasures’ departed at inconvenient moments and left them to do all the cooking and the housework. And women who spent the whole morning shopping and selecting edibles seemed to have worse food than anybody else.
There was, Celia thought, a lot too much fuss made over all this business of domesticity.
People like her and Dermot had far more fun. She wasn’t Dermot’s housekeeper – she was his playmate.
And some day Judy would run about and talk, and adore her mother like Celia adored Miriam.
And in summer, when London got hot and stuffy, she would take Judy home, and Judy would play in the garden and invent games of princesses and dragons, and Celia would read her all the old fairy stories in the nursery bookcase …