How lovely to be at home. Celia lay full length on the green grass – it felt deliciously warm and alive …
The beech tree rustled overhead …
Green – green – all the world was green …
Trailing a wooden horse behind her, Judy came toiling up the slope of the lawn …
Judy was adorable with her firm legs, her rosy cheeks and blue eyes, her thickly curling chestnut brown hair. Judy was her own little girl, just as she had been her mother’s little girl.
Only, of course, Judy was quite different …
Judy didn’t want to have stories told to her – which was a pity, because Celia could think of heaps of stories without any effort at all. And, anyway, Judy didn’t like fairy stories.
Judy wasn’t any good at make-believe. When Celia told Judy how she herself had pretended that the lawn was a sea and her hoop a river horse, Judy had merely stared and said: ‘But it’s grass. And you bowl a hoop. You can’t ride it.’
It was so obvious that she thought Celia must have been a rather silly little girl that Celia felt quite dashed.
First Dermot had found out that she was silly, and now Judy!
Although only four years old Judy was full of common sense. And common sense, Celia found, can be often very depressing.
Moreover, Judy’s common sense had a bad effect upon Celia. She made efforts to appear sensible in Judy’s eyes – clear blue appraising eyes – with the result that she often made herself out sillier than she was.
Judy was a complete puzzle to her mother. All the things that Celia had loved doing as a child bored Judy. Judy could not play for three minutes in the garden by herself. She would come marching into the house declaring that there was ‘nothing to do’.
Judy liked doing real things. She was never bored in the flat at home. She polished tables with a duster, assisted in bed making, and helped her father to clean his golf clubs.
Dermot and Judy had suddenly become friends. A thoroughly satisfying communion had grown up between them. Though still deploring Judy’s well-covered frame, Dermot could not but be charmed by her evident delight in his company. They talked to each other seriously, like grown-up people. When Dermot gave Judy a club to clean, he expected her to do it properly. When Judy said, ‘Isn’t that nice?’ about anything – a house she had built of bricks – or a ball she had made of wool, or a spoon she had cleaned – Dermot never said it was unless he thought so. He would point out errors or faulty construction.
‘You’ll discourage her,’ Celia would say.
But Judy was not in the least discouraged, and her feelings were never hurt. She liked her father better than her mother because her father was more difficult to please. She liked doing things that were difficult.
Dermot was rough. When he and Judy romped together, Judy nearly always got damaged – games with Dermot always ended in a bump or a scratch or a pinched finger. Judy didn’t care. Celia’s gentler games seemed to her tame.
Only when she was ill did she prefer her mother to her father.
‘Don’t go away, Mummy. Don’t go away. Stay with me. Don’t let Daddy come. I don’t want Daddy.’
Dermot was quite satisfied for his presence not to be desired. He didn’t like ill people. Anybody ill or unhappy embarrassed him.
Judy was like Dermot about being touched. She hated to be kissed or picked up. One good-night kiss from her mother she bore, but nothing more. Her father never kissed her. When they said good night they grinned at each other.
Judy and her grandmother got on very well together. Miriam was delighted with the child’s spirit and intelligence.
‘She’s extraordinarily quick, Celia. She takes a thing in at once.’
Miriam’s old love of teaching revived. She taught Judy her letters and small words. Both grandmother and grandchild enjoyed the lessons.
Sometimes Miriam would say to Celia:
‘But she’s not you, my precious …’
It was as though she were excusing herself for her interest in youth. Miriam loved youth. She had the teacher’s joy in an awakening mind. Judy was an abiding excitement and interest to her.
But her heart was all Celia’s. The love between them was stronger than ever. When Celia arrived she would find her mother looking a tiny old woman – grey – faded. But in a day or two she would revive, the colour would come back to her cheeks, the sparkle to her eyes.
‘I’ve got my girl back,’ she would say happily.
She always asked Dermot down too, but she was always delighted when he didn’t come. She wanted Celia to herself.
And Celia loved the feeling of stepping back into her old life. To feel that happy tide of reassurance sweeping over her – the feeling of being loved – of being adequate …
For her mother, she was perfect … Her mother didn’t want her to be different … She could just be herself.
It was so restful to be yourself …
And then she could let herself go – in tenderness – in saying things …
She could say, ‘I am so happy,’ without having to catch back the words at Dermot’s frown. Dermot hated you to say what you were feeling. He felt it, somehow, to be indecent …
At home Celia could be as indecent as she liked …
She could realize better at home how happy she was with Dermot and how much she loved him and Judy …
And after an orgy of loving and saying all the things that came into her head, she could go back and be a sensible, independent person such as was approved of by Dermot.
Oh, dear home – and the beech tree – and the grass – growing – growing – against her cheek.
She thought dreamily: ‘It’s alive – it’s a Great Green Beast – the whole earth is a Great Green Beast … it’s kind and warm and alive … I’m so happy – I’m so happy … I’ve got everything I want in the world …’
Dermot drifted happily in and out of her thoughts. He was a kind of motif in her melody of life. Sometimes she missed him terribly.
She said to Judy one day:
‘Do you miss Daddy?’
‘No,’ said Judy.
‘But you’d like him to be here?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Aren’t you sure? You’re so fond of Daddy.’
‘Of course I am, but he’s in London.’
That settled it for Judy.
When Celia got back, Dermot was very pleased to see her. They had a happy, lover-like evening. Celia murmured:
‘I’ve missed you a lot. Have you missed me?’
‘Well, I haven’t thought about it.’
‘You mean you haven’t thought about me?’
‘No. What would be the good? Thinking of you wouldn’t bring you here.’
That, of course, was quite true and very sensible.
‘But you’re pleased now that I am here?’
His answer satisfied her.
But later, when he was asleep, and she lay awake, dreamily happy, she thought:
‘It’s awful, but I believe I wish that Dermot could sometimes be a tiny bit dishonest …
‘If he could have said, “I missed you terribly, darling,” how comforting and warming it would have been, and it really wouldn’t have mattered if it had been true or not.’
No, Dermot was Dermot. Her funny, devastatingly truthful Dermot. Judy was just like him …
It was wiser, perhaps, not to ask them questions if you didn’t fancy the truth for an answer.
She thought drowsily:
‘I wonder if I shall get jealous of Judy some day … She and Dermot understand each other so much better than he and I do.’
Judy, she had fancied, was sometimes jealous of her. She liked her father’s attention to be entirely focused on herself.
Celia thought: ‘How queer. Dermot was so jealous of her before she was born – and even when she was a tiny baby. It’s funny the way things turn out the opposite way from what you expect …’
Darling Judy … darling Dermot … so alike – so funny – and so sweet … and hers. No – not hers. She was theirs. One liked it better that way. It felt warmer – more comfortable. She belonged to them.
Celia invented a new game. It was really, she thought, a new phase of ‘the girls’. ‘The girls’ themselves were moribund. Celia tried to resurrect them, gave them babies and stately homes in parks and interesting careers – but it was all no good. ‘The girls’ refused to come to life again.
Celia invented a new person. Her name was Hazel. Celia followed her career from childhood upwards with great interest. Hazel was an unhappy child – a poor relation. She acquired a sinister reputation with nursemaids by a habit of chanting, ‘Something’s going to happen – something’s going to happen’; and as something usually did happen – even if it was only a nurserymaid’s pricked finger – Hazel found herself established as a kind of witch’s familiar. She grew up with the knowledge of how easy it was to impose on the credulous …
Celia followed her with great interest into a world of spiritualism, fortune-telling, séances, and so on. Hazel ended up at a fortune-telling establishment in Bond Street, where she acquired a great reputation, aided by a little coterie of impoverished society ‘spies’.
Then she fell in love with a young Welsh naval officer and there were scenes on Welsh villages, and slowly it began to be apparent (to everyone but Hazel herself) that side by side with her fraudulent practices went a genuine gift.
At last Hazel herself found it out and was terrified. But the more she tried to cheat the more her uncanny guesses came right … The power had got hold of her and wouldn’t let her go.
Owen, the young man, was more nebulous, but in the end he proved himself to be a plausible rotter.
Whenever Celia had a little leisure, or when she was wheeling Judy to the Park, the story went on in her mind.
It occurred to her one day that she might write it down …
She might, in fact, make a book of it …
She bought six penny exercise books and a lot of pencils, because she was careless about pencils, and started …
It wasn’t quite so easy when it came to writing down. Her mind had always gone on about six paragraphs farther than the one she was writing down – and then by the time she got to that, the exact wording had gone out of her head.
But still she made progress. It wasn’t quite the story she had had in her head, but it was something that read recognizably like a book. It had chapters and all that. She bought six more exercise books.
She didn’t tell Dermot about it for some time, not, in fact, till she had successfully wrestled with an account of a Welsh Revivalist meeting at which Hazel had ‘testified’.
That particular chapter had gone much better than Celia hoped. She felt so flushed by victory that she wanted to tell somebody.
‘Dermot,’ she said, ‘do you think I could write a book?’
Dermot said cheerfully:
‘I think that’s an excellent idea. I should, if I were you.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, I have – that is, I’ve begun. I’m halfway through.’
‘Good,’ said Dermot.
He had put down a book on economics when Celia spoke. Now he picked it up again.
‘It’s about a girl who’s a medium – but doesn’t know she is. And she gets tangled up in a bogus fortune-telling place, and she cheats at séances. And then she falls in love with a young man in Wales and she goes to Wales and queer things happen.’
‘I suppose there’s some kind of story?’
‘Of course there is. I’m saying it badly – that’s all.’
‘Do you know anything about mediums or séances or things?’
‘No,’ said Celia rather stricken.
‘Well, isn’t it a bit risky to write about them, then? And you’ve never been to Wales, have you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, hadn’t you better write about something you do know about? London or your part of the country. It seems to me you’re simply making difficulties for yourself.’
Celia felt abashed. As usual, Dermot was right. She had behaved like a simpleton. Why on earth choose subjects she knew nothing about? That revivalist meeting, too. She had never been to a revivalist meeting. Why on earth try to describe one?
All the same, she couldn’t give up Hazel and Owen now … They were there … No, but something must be done about them.
For the next month Celia read every conceivable work she could find on spiritualism, séances, mediumistic powers, and fraudulent practices. Then, slowly and laboriously, she rewrote all the first part of the book. She did not enjoy her task. All the sentences seemed to run haltingly, and she even got into the most amazingly complicated grammatical tangles for no apparent reason.
That summer Dermot very obligingly agreed to go to Wales for his fortnight’s holiday. Celia could then look about for ‘local colour’. They duly carried out the project, but Celia found local colour extremely elusive. She took round a little notebook with her, so as to be able to put down anything that struck her. But she was by nature remarkably unobservant, and days passed when it seemed quite impossible to put down anything at all.
She had an awful temptation to abandon Wales and to turn Owen into a Scotsman called Hector who lived in the Highlands.
But then Dermot pointed out to her that the same difficulty would arise. She knew nothing about the Highlands either.
In despair Celia abandoned the whole thing. It just wouldn’t go any more. Besides, she was already playing in her mind with a family of fishing folk on the Cornish coast …
Amos Polridge was already quite well known to her …
She didn’t tell Dermot, because she felt guilty, realizing perfectly well that she knew nothing about fishermen or the sea. It would be useless writing it down, but it was fun to think about. There would be an old grandmother too – very toothless and rather sinister …
And some time or other she would finish the Hazel book. Owen could perfectly well be a rotten young stockbroker in London.
Only, or so it seemed to her, Owen didn’t want to be that …
He sulked and became so vague that he really didn’t exist at all.
Celia had become quite used to being poor and living carefully.
Dermot expected to make money some day. In fact, he was quite sure of it. Celia never expected to be rich. She was quite content to remain as they were but hoped it wouldn’t be too much of a disappointment to Dermot.
What neither of them expected was a real financial calamity. But the boom after the war was over. It was followed by the slump.
Dermot’s firm went into liquidation, and he was out of a job.
They had fifty pounds a year of Dermot’s and a hundred pounds a year of Celia’s, they had two hundred pounds saved in War Loan and there was the shelter of Miriam’s house for Celia and Judy.
It was a bad time. It affected Celia principally through Dermot. Dermot took misfortune – especially undeserved misfortune (for he had worked well) such as this, hard. It made him bitter and bad tempered. Celia dismissed Kate and Denman and proposed to run the flat by herself until such times as Dermot got another job. Denman, however, refused to be dismissed.
Fiercely and angrily she said: ‘I’m stopping. It’s no good arguing. I’ll wait for my wages. I’m not going to leave my little love now.’
So Denman remained. She and Celia did turn and turn about with housework, cooking, and Judy. One morning Celia took Judy to the Park and Denman cooked and cleaned. The next morning Denman went and Celia remained.
Celia found a queer enjoyment in this. She liked to be busy. In the evenings she found time to go on with Hazel. She finished the book painstakingly, consulting her Welsh notes, and sent it to a publisher. It might bring in something.
It was, however, promptly returned, and Celia tossed it into a drawer and did not try again.
Celia’s chief difficulty in life was Dermot. Dermot was utterly unreasonable. He was so sensitive to failure that he was quite unbearable to live with. If Celia was cheerful, he told her she might show a little more appreciation of his difficulties. If she was silent, he said she might try to brighten him up.
Celia felt desperately that if only Dermot would help they might make a kind of picnic of it all. Surely to laugh at trouble was the best way of meeting it.
But Dermot couldn’t laugh. His pride was involved.
However unkind and unreasonable he was, Celia did not feel hurt as she had done over the party episode. She understood that he was suffering, and suffering on her account more than his own.
Sometimes he came near to expressing himself.
‘Why don’t you go away – you and Judy? Take her to your mother’s. I’m no good just now. I know I’m not fit to live with. I told you once before – I’m no good in trouble. I can’t stand trouble.’
But Celia would not leave him. She wished she could make it easier for him, but there seemed nothing she could do.
And as day followed day and Dermot was unsuccessful in finding a job, his mood grew blacker and blacker.
Then, at last, when Celia felt her courage failing her entirely, and she had almost decided to go to Miriam as Dermot so constantly suggested she should, the tide turned.
Dermot came into the flat one afternoon a changed man. He looked his young boyish self again. His dark blue eyes danced and sparkled.
‘Celia – it’s splendid. You remember Tommy Forbes? I looked him up – just on chance – and he jumped at me. Was just looking for a man like me. Eight hundred a year to start with, and in a year or two I may be making anything up to fifteen hundred or two thousand. Let’s go out somewhere and celebrate.’
What a happy evening! Dermot so different – so childlike in his zest and excitement. He insisted on buying Celia a new frock.
‘You look lovely in that hyacinth blue. I – I still love you frightfully, Celia.’
Lovers – yes, they were still lovers.
That night, lying awake, Celia thought: ‘I hope – I hope things will always go well for Dermot. He minds so much when they don’t.’
‘Mummy,’ said Judy suddenly the next morning, ‘what’s a fair-weather friend? Nurse says her friend in Peckham is one.’
‘It means somebody who is nice to you when everything is all right but doesn’t stand by you in trouble.’
‘Oh,’ said Judy. ‘I see. Like Daddy.’
‘No, Judy, of course not. Daddy is unhappy and not very gay when he is worried, but if you or I were ill or unhappy, Daddy would do anything for us. He’s the most loyal person in the world.’
Judy looked thoughtfully at her mother and said:
‘I don’t like people who are ill. They go to bed and can’t play. Margaret got something in her eye yesterday in the Park. She had to stop running and sit down. She wanted me to sit with her, but I wouldn’t.’
‘Judy, that was very unkind.’
‘No, it wasn’t. I don’t like sitting down. I like running about.’
‘But if you had something in your eye you would like someone to sit and talk to you – not go off and leave you.’
‘I wouldn’t mind … And, anyway, I hadn’t got something in my eye. It was Margaret.’