Miss Ellis had much to say on Monday morning about the beds of Mrs. Paley and Miss Wraxton. But her speculations were conducted without any help from Nancibel, who had caught sight of the truants on the cliff as she came to work and decided to hold her tongue. It was not safe to say anything about anyone to Miss Ellis.
‘Not touched since we made them yesterday,’ declared Miss Ellis. ‘Whatever does it mean? If it was only Mr. Paley I wouldn’t be surprised. He often sits up all night.’
‘All the less work for me,’ said Nancibel.
‘For us both. We’d better do Lady Guzzle.’
‘We can’t. She’s still in her bed.’
‘My patience! Where would this house be if I lay in bed all day?’
Pretty much where it’s always been, thought Nancibel and followed Miss Ellis upstairs to the Coves’ dormitory. This was a quick room to do as its occupants had neat habits. All the four beds were stripped and the sheets hung over the rails at the end.
‘Look at that!’ cried Miss Ellis in disgust. ‘Shows they don’t trust us, doesn’t it? Shows they think we just turn back the sheets.’
‘We do it at home,’ said Nancibel, turning the first mattress. ‘Our Mum always makes us hang the sheets over a chair. She says it’s a dirty habit to throw them on the floor.’
‘In a cottage,’ said Miss Ellis loftily, ‘that might be necessary. But here it’s an insult to the staff. Will you kindly look at their nightgowns? You’d think she’d be ashamed.’
‘Dressing three children costs money,’ said Nancibel.
‘She can afford it. She’s got plenty. The stories I’ve heard about her! I thought I knew the name. Cove! I said to myself. Where did I hear that name before? But I couldn’t remember till it came out the children were called Maud and Blanche and Beatrix. Then it all came back to me. She had these three old aunts, well great-aunts really, and of course she hoped for legacies …’
‘Would you mind,’ asked Nancibel, ‘sitting on a bed I’ve made? I want to turn this mattress.’
Miss Ellis changed her seat and resumed:
‘Of course she wanted a son because of the title. And wasn’t she wild when she only had daughters? And then he died before his uncle did, and the title and property went to another nephew. That’s how I came to know about her. They’ve a place in Dorsetshire—the baronet, I mean. The uncle. And I lived quite near there for a while. Well, I accepted a post as housekeeper in a small nursing home for a few months. And I got quite friendly with a Mrs…. a Mrs…. oh, what was her name? Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway she’d been a governess or something at the Court before she married, and the tales she told us about this Mrs. Cove, this niece, and her mean ways … they all used to laugh about it. And the last straw was that all the money was left to those children. She’s only got a life interest. Unless they die, of course. And they wouldn’t all die. Not likely! If they did people would think it funny. But she expected to get a big fortune and a title and this old family mansion, and when she didn’t get it she went on as if she’d been left without a penny. And all this scrimping and starving is just because she wants to make a purse for herself before those children grow up. Where are you off to?’
‘I’ve done all these beds,’ said Nancibel. ‘I’m going to the little boys’ room.’
Luke and Michael slept next to the Coves, and their sheets were scarcely turned back.
‘What’s the idea?’ said Miss Ellis, when she joined Nancibel, ‘giving us all the trouble of stripping the beds as well as making them. I never knew a family give so much trouble. Have you heard the latest? Lady Guzzle’s got to have coffee with an egg beaten up in it, in the middle of the morning!’
‘I can’t think,’ said Nancibel, ‘how she can eat all she does and stay so thin. She’s nothing but a skeleton.’
‘Ah! I’ve my own ideas about that. I shouldn’t wonder if she didn’t put on a lot of weight, one time, and got it off the Hollywood way. You know. Like the film stars do.’
‘No,’ said Nancibel. ‘I don’t know. What?’
She regretted the question a moment later, for she saw by her companion’s expression that the answer would be unsavoury. But she was not to be spared. Miss Ellis came round Luke’s bed and whispered two words in her ear.
‘No!’ cried Nancibel, turning pale. ‘No! I don’t believe it. How awful!’
‘They do,’ said Miss Ellis, nodding sagely. ‘I worked once with a girl who’d been a dresser in one of these studios, and she told me a lot.’
‘But how could they?’
‘In a little pill,’ sniggered Miss Ellis. ‘I daresay it’s not so bad in a glass of champagne.’
‘But doesn’t it make them terribly ill? Why … it might kill them.’
‘Of course it might. But they can eat all they want and not worry about weight.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ repeated Nancibel. ‘Nobody could.’
‘They have to. They have to keep their figures or go out on their ear.’
‘But she’s not a film star. She hasn’t her living to earn.’
‘I daresay she didn’t know what she’d taken. Somebody told her about a wonderful doctor who’d work a miracle for £500 and she took his pill and asked no questions.’
Miss Ellis chuckled and added:
‘I’d like to have seen her face when she found out.’
‘Well,’ said Nancibel, ‘it makes me urge. It does. It fairly makes me urge.’
‘When you’ve seen all I’ve seen of the seamy side of life,’ said Miss Ellis, ‘you won’t be so easily upset.’
They finished Michael’s bed in silence. Then Nancibel exclaimed:
‘It’s a pity you can’t say anything about anybody but only what’s disgusting.’
‘Are you speaking to me, Nancibel Thomas?’
‘Certainly I’m speaking to you, Miss Ellis.’
‘Then you’re a very impertinent girl, and I’ve a good mind to complain of you to Mrs. Siddal.’
‘O.K., Miss Ellis.’
‘This is what comes of talking to you as if you were an equal. You think you can take liberties.’
‘I’d ever so much rather you didn’t talk, Miss Ellis. If it was true it would still be disgusting. And I don’t believe half of it. Nothing but servants’ gossip, all said and done.’
‘I’ve never been so insulted in my life.’
Nancibel turned her back and stalked off to Hebe and Caroline’s bedroom, which was next down the passage. She had decided that she would make no further efforts to keep on good terms with Miss Ellis. But she did not like quarrelling with people, and made no answer when the housekeeper came to offer a piece of her mind.
‘I never expected to have to work,’ said Miss Ellis, standing in the doorway. ‘I was not brought up to earn my own living. My father was a wealthy man. We kept five servants; not rough girls out of cottages but nice, superior, well-trained girls. And it’s the bitterest of all to me, now, that I have to mix with low, common people who think they can insult me because I have had misfortunes and nobody to protect me. There’s nothing a certain type of person likes better than to see their superiors brought down….’
Nancibel picked up Hebe’s dressing-gown which was lying on the floor, and took it to the wardrobe. Her gasp of surprise, when she opened the cupboard door, checked the stream of Miss Ellis’s indignation.
‘Well … I never!’ she said.
‘What is it?’ asked Miss Ellis, hastening to look.
Inside the door a large notice was fastened with drawing pins. It was printed in capitals on a sheet of poster paper, and it read:
THE NOBLE COVENANT OF SPARTANS
| OBJICT. | To raise up a band of Spartans to rule England and eventaully to rule the world. |
| MOTTO. | Everything nice is Bad. Everything nasty is Good. |
TESTS FOR NEW SPARTANS
| (1) | Fear. Do something that frightens you. |
| (2) | Food. (a) Eat something that makes you sick (eg. chocolat eclare and sardine) and not be sick. |
| (b) Eat nothing for 24 hours. | |
| (3) | Smell. Smell a bad smell for 10 minutes. Eg. talk to Miss Rigby. wretching is not allowed. |
| (4) | Sight. Look at the annatomy pictures. |
| (5) | Hearing. A squeaky slate pencil, if you don’t like it. |
| (6) | Cold. Sleep one week on the floor without any blanket. |
| (7) | Touch. Lie still and let yourself be tickled. |
| (8) | Pain. Little ringer pinched. |
| (9) | A specially brave deed to be chosen by the Leader. |
| Really dangerous. |
When Junior Spartans have passed all nine tests they get their membership card and can be leaders. While they are passing they can attend meetings but not vote and use all the privylege of the society including the Spartan code. But they must obey all rules.
This manifesto so much astonished Miss Ellis and Nancibel that they buried the hatchet for a while.
‘It seems so unnatural somehow,’ complained Nancibel. ‘I mean it’s unnatural. Everything nice is bad! Fancy a kiddie getting an idea like that!’
‘P’raps it’s because of all the guzzling she sees going on,’ suggested Miss Ellis. ‘Supposing she knows something … well … like I said just now! A thing like that might give her an awful shock. Enough to start any amount of funny ideas.’
‘But she wouldn’t know. How’d she know?’
‘Might have heard servants talking. You mark my words: it’s something of that sort behind it.’
Steps were heard running along the passage, and Miss Ellis hastily shut the cupboard door. It was Hebe. When she saw them she paused in the doorway and said, with abrupt haughtiness:
‘Oh … Haven’t you finished?’
Turning and tossing her curls she ran off.
‘Someday,’ vowed Miss Ellis, ‘I’ll tell young Hebe Gifford just who she is and what she is. Gifford! Her name’s no more Gifford than mine is. They adopted her. She’s a love child, a servant’s child most likely. And I have to empty her slops!’
‘Porthmerryn is such a little place,’ said Mrs. Cove, as she hurried her family over the cliffs. ‘And full of extra visitors. If we don’t get in first with our points all the best sweets will be gone. So don’t dawdle. Blanche, can’t you walk faster?’
‘Her back is hurting,’ said Beatrix.
‘Walking is good for it.’
Blanche broke into a lopsided trot, helped along by her sisters. Their errand did not interest them for it was unlikely that they would eat any of the sweets thus promptly secured. Their mother had a habit of saving such things for a rainy day which never dawned. But they knew how important it was to possess goods which other people would be likely to want, since value depends upon scarcity.
At the top of the hill, just by Bethesda, Mrs. Cove paused for a moment to give final instructions:
‘We’d better split up. If we all go into the same shop they might see we were one family and make us take a mixed selection. I believe there are several shops. Blanche! You go along Marine Parade. Beatrix can do Church Street. I’ll do Fore Street. Maud can do Market Street. Here is half a crown for each of you, in case you can get turkish delight. Go for that if you can; it’s very scarce. If not, get marshmallows or fudge. Don’t get boiled sweets or bars; there are always plenty of those. And if there’s any nonsense about not selling to visitors tell them that you will report it to the Food Office. We’ll all meet outside the Post Office in half an hour.’
They separated and Mrs. Cove hurried down to Fore Street. But Blanche’s back had delayed them, and they were not first in the shops as she had intended. There was a considerable queue in the largest confectioners. She joined it and took her place just behind Robin Siddal and Sir Henry Gifford.
‘You’re early,’ she said sourly, when they greeted her.
‘I’m after marshmallows,’ said Gifford. ‘My wife charged me to get her some before they all disappear. They’ve got some here, I see.’
‘I want butterscotch,’ said Robin. ‘There’s none on the Parade. I saw Blanche there, Mrs. Cove, and she wants to know if she and the other girls can come with me to see a ship in a bottle that I told her about. I said if I saw you I’d ask.’
‘Where is it?’ asked Mrs. Cove.
‘In a cottage, just off the harbour. It’s Nancibel’s great grandmother’s, as a matter of fact. She’s got a lot of interesting old things.’
Mrs. Cove pondered and then said, rather grudgingly, that the girls might go if they liked; but they must be back at Pendizack by lunch time.
‘She’s a very old woman,’ said Robin, turning to Sir Henry, ‘and almost blind and they think she ought to go to the workhouse. She’s awfully upset about it. They all are. But there’s no room for her at the Thomas’s, and she needs to be looked after. I can’t help wondering if some of her old things mightn’t bring in a bit—enough to keep her more comfortably. Do you, sir, by any chance, know anything about black amber? You said you liked amber yesterday.’
‘I know a little about it,’ said Sir Henry cautiously. ‘It’s very rare.’
‘I think she has a piece. Her sailor son brought it home, ages ago. He’s been dead for years. He got it somewhere out in the East.’
‘What is it like?’ asked Sir Henry.
‘A little carved figure, so big,’ said Robin, holding his fingers about four inches apart. ‘It looks and feels like amber to me. She has it sitting on the dresser.’
‘But that would be worth at least a thousand pounds!’
‘I know. I know black amber is very valuable. If it was, she needn’t go to the workhouse.’
The queue moved up, but neither Robin nor Sir Henry noticed this. Mrs. Cove waited for a few seconds and then took the vacant place in front of them.
‘I didn’t tell her what I thought,’ said Robin; ‘I don’t want to raise her hopes. But I would like to get an expert to look at it.’
‘I should think it’s extremely unlikely,’ said Sir Henry.
‘I expect so. But it would be just worth finding out, and I don’t know who to ask.’
‘I could look at it,’ volunteered Sir Henry. ‘If that would be any help.’
‘Oh, sir! Would you?’
The queue moved again, and Mrs. Cove took her place at the counter.
‘Marshmallows,’ she said firmly.
Sir Henry and Robin looked round, surprised, wondering how she could have got in front of them. But they realized that it had been their own fault.
‘And if, by any chance, you’re right,’ said Sir Henry,
‘I could help her to sell it and see that she got a fair price.’
‘I say, that’s frightfully good of you. I’m going there this morning. Could you come?’
‘No. I can’t now. My wife expects me back. But I’ll go with you some other day if you like.’
The queue moved again and it was Sir Henry’s turn. But he could not get marshmallows, for Mrs. Cove had just bought the last. He bought nougat and Robin got his butterscotch.
‘That was a mean trick,’ said Robin, as they went out of the shop. ‘She pushed in front of us. Did you see?’
‘We let her. You know, if I were you I shouldn’t talk about that piece of black amber, if it is black amber, quite so publicly. Not in a Porthmerryn shop. Anybody might hear. And the sooner it’s put away safely, the better. Can’t you drop her just a hint to look after it carefully?’
‘I don’t want to disappoint her, in case I’m mistaken.’
‘Tell her it might be worth five pounds. It would probably fetch that, whatever it is. And get her to put it away.’
Robin agreed to do this, and they parted. He did a few errands for his mother and then went to the Post Office where the three little girls were waiting for him. They said that their mother had gone home and that they all wanted to see the ship in the bottle.
‘Come along, then,’ said Robin. ‘Have some butterscotch.’
He proffered a paper bag. But they all shook their heads, explaining, as usual, that they had none to give him back.
‘None?’ he exclaimed. ‘But you’ve all been buying sweets, haven’t you?’
‘Our mother has them,’ explained Beatrix.
‘Oh, I see. Well, have some of mine, anyway.’
Eventually they each accepted a small piece, without much enthusiasm. They would so much rather have dispensed bounty than accepted it. Had they been allowed to keep their sweets they would have run round Porthmerryn offering a free treat to everybody.
Robin conducted them towards the harbour by a side street, for he was not anxious to meet any of his cronies while he had these queer girls tailing after him. At moments he was astonished at himself for embarking on such an expedition, for he did not usually take notice of any little girls between the ages of seven and seventeen, and these were singularly lacking in charm. But the smiles of Blanche had involved him. She had such a radiant expression, when pleased, that it was impossible not to go on pleasing her. She had been gazing, in the purest delight, at some cheap little mass-produced boats in bottles, in a shop on the Parade. This delight had soared to ecstasy when he told her about old Mrs. Pearce’s boat. She was all radiance, all gratitude to him, merely because he had described it. Before he knew what he was saying, he had offered to show it to her, some day, and this offer so plainly carried her into the sixth heaven that he felt compelled to unlock the seventh and suggested they should go immediately.
‘This boat,’ he told them, ‘might be a hundred and fifty years old, for it was made by Mrs. Pearce’s grandfather. It’s a five-masted schooner and it’s in a long, thin bottle, not a fat one like the imitation ones. Here we are. Up these steps.’
The stone steps led to a green door on the upper floor, for the lower part of the house was a fish store. Robin knocked at the door, which was open, and ushered them into a room full of furniture, potted ferns and cats. Nancibel’s great-grandmother, a tiny old woman, was rustling and poking about on the hearth. She turned to look at them, rubbing her bleared eyes.
‘It’s Robin Siddal,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve brought three young ladies to look at your ship, Mrs. Pearce. May they see it?’
Mrs. Pearce chewed upon this news for some time and asked if it was the young ladies up to Tregoylan.
‘No. No. They’re from London.’
‘London? I don’t see so well as I used. The maids from Tregoylan, they come sometimes. But I don’t expect them in August month. London?’
Blanche moved forward and put her hand into the gnarled old fingers.
‘I’m Blanche Cove,’ she said, low but clearly. ‘And these are my sisters, Maud and Beatrix. We are staying at Pendizack with Mrs. Siddal.’
‘Staying to Pendizack, are ee? That’s a whisht old place, Pendizack Manor. My grandson, Barny Thomas, he lives up to St. Sody Church Town. But I don’t get up there now. Not since my old leg swole up so bad. Sit down, m’dears. You, Robin! Find chairs for the maids.’
The whole party sat down. Robin was struck by the good manners of the Coves who said no more about the ship though their eyes often strayed towards it, where it stood on the mantelshelf, as they made polite enquiries after Mrs. Pearce’s leg. After a time he explained the real object of the visit and this time the old woman took it in.
‘My ship? Oh my dear soul yes. The maids shall see it. Give it into my hand now. You know where it is? Over the slab?’
He gave it to her and she held it out for them to admire.
‘This little old ship,’ she told them, ‘have been on that very same shelf since the time you see written in the bottle. If you look sharp and close you’ll see a name wrote: Phineas Pearce. Which is the name, m’dears, of my old grandfather. And after the name you’ll see figures: one, seven, nine, five—seventeen hundred and ninety-five, which is the figures for the year the ship was made….’
Robin had heard this recital many times, and he strolled away to the dresser to have another look at the piece of black amber. He had seen it last on the second shelf, standing next to the bottle of ink. But it was not there now.
‘There wasn’t no Marine Parade in them days,’ Mrs. Pearce was saying, ‘nor there wasn’t in my young days neither. It was wholly a pull up for pilchard boats …’
‘Mrs. Pearce,’ he broke in,’ where’s the little black figure? The one that stood on the dresser?’
‘Inside the tureen,’ said Mrs. Pearce. ‘I put ’un there for safety when I were dusting.’
He looked in the tureen and found it. His heart stopped pounding.
‘Why,’ she went on, ‘I saw the railway come. I saw the first train that come to our town and the flags and the cheers and the band so sweetly playing. It was a feast that day in our Church Town. A feast for one and all.’
A thrill ran through the Coves. Maud asked if all the people came, and who had given the feast.
‘All gave it and all came,’ said Mrs. Pearce. ‘Every man, woman and child in the town was there, and the farmers from up along, they come too, for miles round. Some said it were five thousand, some ten. It were a great big old crowd, that I do know, being there; such a crowd as I never seen before nor after. And the station so green as a forest with boughs and garlands. And one would shout: Here she come! Here she come! I hear the whistle! And such a pushing and a shoving, oh my dear soul, like a herd of bullocks. And then another: That’s no train. That were me awhistling for my dog. And everyone laugh so loud as a clap of thunder. Such a laugh I never heard before nor after. But she come at last, all hung with garlands, and the mayor in his golden chain adriving of her. And the bands they struck up and one and all we sang Old Hundred.’
‘How lovely!’ cried Maud.
They took their leave reluctantly, with wistful glances at the little ship as it went back onto its shelf. And Robin, as he thanked her, ventured upon a word of caution to Mrs. Pearce about the amber, hinting that it might be valuable.
‘It’s worth more than a pound I b’lieve,’ agreed the old woman.
‘More like five pounds, Mrs. Pearce, so keep it safe.’
‘It’s safe enough in the tureen. Good-bye, m’dear. Good-bye, you maids. Any time you’re down along and like to come in you’ll be very welcome.’
Robin had to go round by the road with a message, so the three girls walked home alone over the cliffs. They went slowly, for Blanche was tired, and they had to drag her up the hill. Their heads were so full of feasts, trains and ships that they said very little. But when they got out of the fields, on to the turf and gorse of the cliff top, Maud began to sing in a tuneless chirp. The others took up the chant, their faint notes scattered by the salt breeze.
All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice!
When alone they were usually very happy, though their pallor, gravity and forlorn shabbiness gave them a deceptive pathos. They had so little, knew so little, had been to so few places and met so few people, their lives were so entirely bare that they had never learnt to want much. During the war their school had been evacuated to the country. But they had not gone with it, and their mother had taught them. She boasted, with some justice, that they knew more history, geography and mathematics and Scripture than they would have learnt at any school. But there had been no other children left in that neighbourhood, so for amusement they had learnt to rely entirely upon themselves. They never disputed or quarrelled and they seldom disagreed. Blanche was the most intelligent, but so much of her energy was absorbed in enduring pain that she was behind Beatrix in her lessons. Maud, the youngest, was the most worldly wise and the least content. Maud was sometimes naughty.
This trip to Pendizack was the supreme adventure of their lives. They were all a little stunned by it. It was as if a story book had suddenly become real. A week ago they would have thought it impossible that they should ever have friends like the Giffords. Now the barrier between possible and impossible things seemed to have disappeared.
‘Hebe will give us our specially brave thing to-morrow,’ said Beatrix, when they had done singing. ‘I wonder what she will decide.’
‘We’ve not done half the tests yet,’ said Maud. ‘We haven’t smelt a smell or slept on the floor.’
‘She says those can wait,’ said Beatrix. ‘I explained we couldn’t sleep on the floor here because Mummy is in the room.’
‘I hope it won’t be a train,’ said Blanche nervously. ‘Lying between the rails and letting a train go over us. I should be too frightened. I don’t think I could.’
‘Did Hebe do that?’ cried Maud.
‘No. They couldn’t, in London. You can’t get on to a railway line in London. But she thought we might.’
‘What did Hebe do?’ asked Beatrix avidly.
‘She stayed in St. Paul’s Cathedral all night. She hid, when they shut it up. She said she saw the ghost of Henry the Eighth.’
‘What a story!’ cried Maud. ‘St. Paul’s wasn’t built till after the fire of London.’
‘New buildings don’t stop a ghost,’ said Blanche. ‘There’s a house in London that was once a road and a man on horseback gallops through it. But if we have to lie under a train I really can’t. Just think of hearing it come roaring along!’
‘I don’t think it will be a train,’ said Beatrix. ‘Caroline says she thinks it will be swimming.’
‘But we can’t swim!’ protested the others.
‘I know. I told her. But Hebe says the Spartan way is to learn by jumping into deep water.’
‘But supposing we didn’t learn?’ asked Maud.
‘That’s what Caroline said. She told me that if Hebe makes us swim she will stop it.’
‘How can she?’
‘I don’t know. But she was quite angry. She said the Spartans is only a game, and we mustn’t take it too seriously. She said she didn’t do a brave thing. She only pretended.’
‘How very disloyal!’ said Blanche.
When they came within sight of the cove Blanche suddenly sank down upon the grass saying that she must rest for a minute. They all lay on the short turf, rubbing wild thyme between their fingers. Beatrix said dreamily:
‘If we had something to make small things big … a sort of magnifying glass, and took that ship out of the bottle, and made it big, we’d have a schooner.’
‘How would you get it out of the bottle?’ said Maud.
‘I would find out. Phineas Pearce put it in.’
‘Why not make the bottle large, too?’ said Blanche. ‘And crawl down the neck and live on the ship. If it was inside the bottle we could sit on the deck even if it rained.’
‘Where would you put it?’ asked Maud.
‘On the headland,’ decided Beatrix, ‘where it could be seen for miles … a huge bottle with a ship inside it. Great crowds would collect every day round the bottle, singing Old Hundred.’
‘But nobody would be allowed inside except loyal Spartans,’ said Maud.
‘And Robin,’ said Blanche. ‘And Nancibel. I do wish we could do it. Hebe would be so surprised.’
‘I think everybody would be surprised,’ said Maud. ‘But I suppose it’s not possible. There can’t be such a glass.’
‘There was a telescope once,’ asserted Beatrix, ‘and if you looked through it you saw the past.’
‘Beatrix! Was there? Who told you?’
‘In the Strand Magazine. A man looked through it at his house and it wasn’t there. So he focused it nearer to his own time and saw it being built.’
‘That must have been made up,’ said Blanche.
‘No. It said Science.’
Blanche looked unconvinced and tried to get up, for she felt it was time they were moving again. But her back hurt so much that she fell down again gasping.
‘Is it very bad?’ asked Beatrix anxiously.
Blanche nodded. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, a thing which hardly ever happened.
‘Shall we rub it?’
‘You might try.’
With an effort she got on to her face. Beatrix pulled up her cotton frock and pulled down her faded pants and began to knead her spine. But the pain got no better. All three of them were crying now.
Presently a voice said:
‘Has she hurt herself?’
They looked up to find old Mrs. Paley standing beside them on the path.
‘It’s only her back,’ explained Beatrix. ‘It always hurts. We rub it when it gets very bad.’
‘Let me try,’ said Mrs. Paley. ‘I’m rather good at rubbing.’
She knelt beside Blanche and began to massage gently. As she worked she asked questions. How long had this back been bad? Always, they said: but amended this to ‘ever since Blanche had diphtheria.’ Did their mother know? Yes, she knew. Maud volunteered that their mother thought it must be growing pains.
‘Did the doctor say it was all right to rub it?’ asked Mrs. Paley. ‘Some bad backs shouldn’t be rubbed.’
‘Oh, the doctor didn’t see it,’ said Beatrix. ‘It’s not an illness; only a pain. We always rub it when she can’t sleep at night.’
After a while Blanche declared that the pain was better and, between them, they got her to her feet. Going down hill, she explained, was especially difficult, but she could manage if the others helped her and she was sure that it must be late.
The three set off, Beatrix and Maud supporting Blanche, each with an arm round her waist. They seemed to be in quite good spirits again, and as they staggered down the cliff path they began to pipe once more their tuneless anthem:
O enter then his gates with praise!
Approach with joy His courts unto!
Mrs. Paley watched them anxiously until they got to the level sands.
Nancibel, going down to the garden to get some mint, thought she saw a stranger hiding among the loganberries.
‘Who’s that?’ she called.
He straightened up and came towards her, smiling broadly.
‘Why Bruce! Whatever are you doing here?’
‘I’m looking for the stables. What are you doing here?’
‘I work here. And this isn’t the way to the stables. Who said you could eat our loganberries?’
‘What do you mean … you work here?’ asked Bruce, with some agitation.
‘I’m housemaid.’
‘But I thought you lived up the cliff.’
‘I come in daily.’
‘Oh? I see.’
He looked relieved, and picked up a cardboard suitcase which was left on the path, adding:
‘I wasn’t eating loganberries because there weren’t any. Do you know where the stables are?’
‘Through the door in the wall. Why?’
‘Oh! You’re stopping here? Your people are stopping here?’
‘That’s right,’ said Bruce.
‘Funny! Mrs. Siddal never said anything, breakfast, about a new party coming.’
‘I don’t expect she knows. She was out when we came. The old man let us the rooms.’
‘Mr. Siddal! Well, I never!’
‘He’s an old boy friend of my … boss. So we asked for him at the door.’
‘Who opened the door then?’
‘A youth with adenoids.’
‘Oh him!’
‘Yes him! I’m glad you feel that way about him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t have to be jealous.’
‘Be your age. What happened?’
‘Well, we waited in the hall for a thousand years while adenoids went to wake Mr. Siddal. But at last he came and let the garden room to my boss. But there was no room for me in the Inn and so …’
‘Don’t be irreverent. You’ll be in the small loft, I expect. The Siddal boys and Fred have the other two.’
‘Lead me to it, then. Up the garden path!’
‘Lead yourself!’ said Nancibel. ‘It’s only through that door. You can’t miss it.’
‘Aren’t you glad I’ve come?’ he called after her, as she turned away.
‘Sure,’ she cried, over her shoulder. ‘I haven’t had a good laugh, not since Saturday.’
She ran off, hoping that she had not betrayed her pleasure in seeing him again. For she had thought a lot about him since Saturday night and had decided that he must really be very nice, in spite of his silly ways. Not every boy would take a telling off as good-humouredly as he had. And it would be amusing to have somebody young about the place: somebody lively, to make a change from Fred and his heavy breathing. ‘Nancibel! You are redundant!’ She would go bats if she heard that crack much oftener. And he’s a bit gone on me, she thought, which is good for my morale. All winter I haven’t cared if the fellows were gone on me or not, but I’m getting better now.’
She pranced into the house with the light step and bright eye of a successful girl. I’ll see you again, she carolled at the sink, whenever the Spring breaks through again!
‘Have you got to make that shocking row?’ asked Fred. ‘What you singing anyway?’
‘It’s a very old-fashioned song,’ said Nancibel. ‘My mum used to sing it.’
Miss Ellis came into the scullery, looking important.
‘There’s a new party come,’ she announced. ‘With a chauffeur. He’ll be sleeping in the stables. You’d better take out sheets and make up his bed, Nancibel.’
‘Yes, Miss Ellis.’
Bruce had found the small loft and was surveying it gloomily when she arrived with the sheets. It had wooden walls and ceiling, no rugs, and no furniture save a broken chair and a folding bed.
‘Austerity is our watchword,’ he said. ‘Am I allowed sheets on the bed?’
‘Yes. I’ve brought you some. And now listen! Don’t ever sit on that bed. If you do it shuts up with you in it, and it’s quite a job to get out. Fred had it at first and he got shut in it and if somebody hadn’t heard him yelling he’d be inside it still.’
‘How long was he there, actually?’
‘Oh … two or three days,’ said Nancibel, solemnly, spreading the sheets on the bed.
‘But how do I get in,’ asked Bruce, when they had both giggled a good deal, ‘when I go to bye-bye?’
‘You get in at the end and creep up it. You have to get out the same way.’
‘I’ll get into training. Tell me about the Siddal boys. There seem to be three, by the look of their room.’
‘Well, there’s Gerry. He’s the eldest. He’s very nice.’
‘Oh, is he? And good looking, I suppose?’
‘No. Nothing to write home about. Duff … that’s the second one … he’s a dream.’
‘Better looking than me?’
‘No. But he doesn’t shoot a line about Limehouse.’
‘Oh Nancibel! Must you bring that up? Is it fair?’
‘P’raps not,’ she agreed. ‘I won’t again unless you annoy me.’
‘Oh, I’ll never annoy you any more. You’ve changed my life.’
‘You don’t look a bit changed, to me.’
‘Oh, but I am. You can’t think.’
He opened his suit-case and began to take out his possessions.
‘I’ve been thinking about you ever since Saturday,’ he told her. ‘Wondering if I should see you again.’
‘What a lovely dressing-gown,’ exclaimed Nancibel.
‘Sweet, isn’t it?’
‘What’s all that typewriting?’
‘That’s part of my boss’s new book.’
‘Who is your boss?’
Now for it, thought Bruce, hanging his dressing-gown on a nail. But it might have come at a worse moment.
‘Mrs. Lechene,’ he said airily.
‘Mrs. Lechene?’
‘Yes. I told you. She’s an authoress.’
Had he told her? Nancibel could not remember. Surely she would remember if he had said he was working for a lady?
‘How did you get that job?’ she asked.
Bruce hesitated, and remembered his vow to shoot no more lines.
‘I was Boots in a hotel where she …’ he began.
‘Oh,’ cried Nancibel. ‘Like in your book, you mean? That boy, he was Boots in a hotel, wasn’t he?’
‘You remember a lot about my book, considering you didn’t like it,’ said Bruce crossly.
‘Well, it’s funny him being a Boots and you being a Boots.’
‘I don’t see. One has to use one’s own experience.’
‘And this lady …’
‘She’s nothing to do with the woman in the book. It’s not autobiographical.’
‘Pardon?’
‘It’s not the story of my life,’ said Bruce hotly. ‘That’s all I mean.’
‘Well. I should hope not.’
‘We’ve had that out before. And anyway that book’s no good. I’m going to burn it and write another.’
‘Good for the fuel shortage.’
‘I’m going to write a book about a boy who got shut up inside a bed. And nobody knew where he was, because he was too proud to yell.’
He paused.
‘Go on,’ said Nancibel.
‘I can’t. It’s so miserable. And you don’t like miserable books.’
Heavy steps creaked on the loft ladder and a voice called sharply. His expression changed.
‘Bruce,’ said the voice again.
A woman appeared in the loft doorway and stood there surveying them. Nancibel realized that this must be the lady authoress. An old friend of Mr. Siddal’s! Nothing surprising about that; boy and girl they must have been, sometime in the year dot. Authoress if you like, but no lady, poking her nose into the chauffeur’s room and staring in that funny way. What if she had caught him laughing with the housemaid? Ladies are careful not to notice that sort of thing. Mrs. Siddal never would.
The seconds passed and the stare became an insult. Nancibel lifted her eyes and looked full at Anna, obscurely aware that it would not do to mutter excuse me and slip out. She must stand her ground and vindicate her right to be there. Like a big old white slug, she thought. Only slugs have the sense not to wear slacks. I shan’t say anything. I’ll let her feel she’s the one to intrude. She can speak first. Let’s hope Bruce has the sense to keep quiet.
Bruce had not. He found Anna’s stare unendurable, as it slid, with meditative deliberation, over the curves of Nancibel. He broke in nervously:
‘We were just …’
The eyes slid round to him. The pale mouth smiled slyly.
‘So I see,’ said Anna.
Two can play at that game, thought Nancibel, and began an equally deliberate scrutiny of the enemy. No bra and no girdle, and if I had toes like that I wouldn’t wear sandals. We can play statues till the cows come home, duckie, if that’s your idea of fun and games.
‘Miss Thomas kindly …’ jabbered Bruce, ‘she brought my sheets.’
Anna’s slow gaze shifted to the bed.
‘I … I’d better put the car away, hadn’t I?’
‘No hurry,’ said Anna, ‘if you’ve got anything better to do.’
‘Nothing! I’ve nothing better to do,’ he declared.
Pushing past Anna, he rushed downstairs.
Nancibel had finished making the bed, but she thought it better to do one or two trifling tasks about the room before she left it, so as to emphasize the fact that it was her job to be in it. So she picked up the typewritten sheets which Bruce had spilled out on the floor and put them on the window ledge.
‘I’m afraid I interrupted,’ observed Anna. ‘Has Bruce been telling you the story of his life?’
‘Oh no,’ said Nancibel, smiling. ‘He told me that on Saturday.’
‘Saturday?’ said Anna. ‘Saturday?’
She crossed the room to sit on the bed, meaning obviously to get the whole story. But Nancibel saw that the moment for a strategic retreat had arrived.
‘Excuse me!’ she muttered, and rushed from the room.
As she scrambled down the ladder she heard a crash and an oath. Anna had sat upon the Pendizack booby trap and was now sharing Fred’s fate. But she can get herself out, thought Nancibel, scurrying across the stable yard. She’s not a little skinny thing like Fred. Gracious! What language! Whatever she is, she’s no lady.
Lady Gifford could not believe that a big place like Porthmerryn was really barren of marshmallows on the first day of a new ration period. She was sure that a thorough search might have produced them.
‘Did you explain it was for an invalid?’ she asked.
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference,’ said Sir Henry. ‘There just were none. I tried everywhere.’
‘I expect there were plenty under the counter. All you mean is that you saw none.’
‘I saw some at Saundry’s, but Mrs. Cove bought the last before I could get to the counter.’
‘Mrs. Cove! I’m not surprised. Why did you let her get in front of you?’
‘I’m very sorry, Eirene.’
‘No, dear. I don’t think so. If you were really sorry for me you’d try to make things easier instead of more difficult.’
‘I do all I can,’ he muttered.
She flushed, sat up in bed, and spoke with unusual energy.
‘How can you say that when you force me to live in this horrible way when we could be perfectly comfortable? I heard from Veronica this morning. She says there’s plenty of everything in the Channel Islands if you’ve got the money to pay for it.’
‘Eirene, we’ve been into all this before….’
‘You force me to live in these coolie conditions….’
‘They are not coolie conditions. You know nothing whatever about coolie conditions….’
‘Don’t shout, Harry. Please don’t shout. You know how any kind of a scene upsets me. Can’t we discuss this quietly?’
Sir Henry lowered his voice and stated that coolies eat nothing but rice.
‘Which we can’t get,’ said Eirene Gifford triumphantly. ‘So we’re worse off than coolies. I’m sure I should be only too glad to eat rice … I love risotto … but Mr. Strachey won’t let me have it because the workers don’t care for it. All my friends in America say they do not know how we manage on our rations. Everybody who can get out is getting out, except us.’
‘I’ve told you before, Eirene, that there’s nothing to stop you going to Guernsey if you want to.’
‘But it’s no good unless you come too. I’d have to pay income tax. We can’t get off income tax unless we both go.’
‘I’ve told you I’m not going, and I’ve told you why.’
‘You think it’s unpatriotic. You think patriotism matters more than your wife and family.’
‘Well … yes. I suppose I do.’
‘Then don’t pretend you’re sorry for me. If you want to see me starve for the sake of a government you never voted for … a Government that says you aren’t worth a tinker’s curse….’
‘It didn’t.’
‘Yes, it did. You aren’t organized Labour. Mr. Shinwell said that everyone who isn’t Organized Labour is not worth a tinker’s curse.’
‘Shinwell isn’t the entire Government.’
‘I’m not so sure. Mr. Attlee daren’t sack him, though he can’t get us any coal.’
‘Well, Eirene, if Shinwell called me his blue-eyed boy, would you be content to let me stay on the Bench and do my job?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Harry. You know he never would.’
‘I must admit it’s not very likely.’
‘And for the sake of these people, who only want to liquidate you, the children are to be under-nourished …’
‘I really don’t think they are.’
‘Of course they are. They’re only getting fifteen hundred calories when they ought to get three thousand.’
‘A day or a week?’
She was silent for a moment, and he was sure that she did not know.
‘They don’t look undernourished,’ he said. ‘Compared with the Coves …’
‘The Coves,’ said Eirene, ‘are apparently going to get all the marshmallows in Porthmerryn.’
‘Too bad. Did Shinwell arrange that or Strachey?’
‘Both,’ said Lady Gifford. ‘If the Conservatives had got in we shouldn’t have had these shortages. Look, Harry: perhaps Mrs. Cove might be willing to exchange. She might like some of my nougat instead.’
‘If she’d wanted nougat she’d have bought it. There was plenty.’
‘You could tell her how ill I am. But don’t worry. Just go on saying you’re sorry, and don’t make the slightest effort to help me.’
She fell back upon her pillows again and her eyes filled with tears.
Sir Henry hesitated and then stole out of the room. In a quarter of an hour he was back again with a bag of marshmallows which he put upon the table beside her bed.
‘Harry! Where did you get them?’
She took one and tasted it critically, wrinkling up her nose.
‘Mrs. Cove.’
‘She exchanged them for mine?’
‘Er … no. She sold them to me.’
‘Good heavens!’
‘They aren’t very nice. Did she offer or did you ask?’
‘I offered an exchange and she refused. Then she mentioned that her children don’t care much for sweets. They prefer books. She said they often sell their sweets to buy books. So then I offered to buy their marshmallows.’
‘How much did you give?’
‘Eight and six.’
‘But Harry! That’s fantastic. More than three times what she gave.’
‘I thought it pretty stiff, but she said they couldn’t get a decent book for less. And I knew you wanted the sweets.’
There was a tap on the door and Hebe appeared, also carrying a paper bag.
‘Why darling,’ exclaimed Lady Gifford. ‘Good morning! Have you been having a good time? What have you been doing? Give me a kiss.’
Hebe extended her cheek and, as she received the caress, her lips moved in the silent curse of the Spartans.
‘We went into Porthmerryn for our sweets,’ she said, putting her bag on the counterpane. ‘These are marshmallows. I got them because I know you like them best.’
‘Why … how darling of you! But I can’t take them, you know. Not your sweet ration.’
‘You always do,’ said Hebe coldly. ‘I don’t care for sweets.’
She gave a hard glance at the bag already in Lady Gifford’s hands, and ran off.
‘Hebe’s austerity,’ said Lady Gifford, ‘is really formidable.’
‘H’m,’ said Sir Henry.
The undisguised contempt in Hebe’s manner had shocked him.
‘Is she often like that?’ he asked.
‘Like what?’
‘So much … so very much with her nose in the air?’
‘She’s very reserved. Sensitive children often are.’
‘She’s not our child, after all. One wonders …’
‘What?’
‘If she’s all right … with us….’
‘My dear Harry! Where could she have got a better home? She has everything a child could want; or would have if we weren’t obliged to live in this God-forgotten country.’
Perceiving Guernsey once more upon the map he made his escape. Hebe’s expression still disquieted him. It was not right that any child should look so at her mother, or speak so either. Somebody ought to reprove her for it, and the obvious person to do so was himself. He had not wanted to adopt her, or the twins. He had done so merely to please Eirene. But he had signed papers and agreed to act the part of a father to them, and he could not feel that he had ever done very much to fulfil this promise.
He supposed that they were all bound, as they grew older, to criticize Eirene to a certain extent. He did so himself, and faults which were apparent to him could not be hidden from their sharp young eyes. But they must also learn, as he had, to tolerate and excuse her, or life would become impossible.
He went downstairs and wandered about the beach for a while, aghast at the discovery that life could really become more impossible than it was already. For nine years he had been resigned to the fact that his marriage was a disaster and had tried to make the best of a bad job. But he had thought of it as a calamity which could only affect Eirene and himself. He had never perceived that it might involve the children. Nor had it, as long as they were babies, tended by nurses on the upper floors of Queen’s Walk.
And babies they had still been when he saw them all off for the United States in 1940. Caroline had been five, Hebe three and the twins were little more than a year old. He had been a trifle uneasy over the adoption of Luke and Michael, in the Spring of 1939, foreseeing the outbreak of war in a near future and fearing a period of domestic upheavals. But Eirene had been set on it. An obstinate optimism was one of her strongest characteristics. She would never believe that anything unpleasant was going to happen; she condemned anyone who did. Her tranquillity remained unshaken until the fall of France in 1940 threw her into a corresponding panic and sent her scuttling across the Atlantic.
For five years he had lived his solitary life in the basement of Queen’s Walk, working as best he could, eating when and where he could, through the raids of ’40 and ’41, through the flying bombs and through the rockets. To some extent he had relished it. Release from the constant irritation of listening to Eirene compensated for a great deal of material discomfort. He was active in Civil Defence and enjoyed the grim good fellowship of the Wardens’ Post. In many ways he felt that his life was more satisfactory than it had been for some years past.
In the early months of 1941 he acquired a mistress, a step which he would never have been allowed to take had Eirene been at home. He was a little surprised at himself but was, at that time, discovering a great many other things at which to be surprised. She was a red-haired girl, one of the women wardens, and neither in the pre-war nor in the post-war world would he have found her attractive. Her name was Billie. She had a slight Cockney accent. He used to patrol the streets with her on noisy nights. Her stock of limericks was inexhaustible, and when a bomb fell she invariably told him a new one. He remembered her best in a tin hat, grasping the business end of a fire hose—a gallant trollop demanding nothing and giving what she had, with careless hospitality. After some months she joined the Wrens and vanished from his life. But in a very short while she taught him several things about women which he had never known before.
He realized that Eirene could never, at any time, have loved him. This, according to Billie, was probably his own fault. He had not, she said, ‘educated the poor girl up to it.’ She also told him that where the bedroom is wrong the whole house is wrong. She was a coarse creature, but he took some of her maxims to heart. Only he felt that, in his own case, the converse might be true: at Queen’s Walk the whole house was wrong and the bedroom, therefore, would never be right. A submissive husband cannot be a successful lover.
Gradually his bitterness towards Eirene melted away. He made resolutions for the future, vowing that when she and the babies came home he would make a fresh start. He would rule his wife and she would love him. In the excitement of reunion some tender link might be forged. For he expected them all to come back quite unchanged.
They returned in the summer of 1945, changed beyond recognition. The babies had become people—they asked questions, they had points of view. And Eirene was an invalid, feeble, emaciated, unfit for any normal life. She needed a nurse rather than a husband, and he was obliged to postpone his plans for a better life. There was some talk of her ultimate recovery, though nobody seemed to be able to tell him what ailed her.
On his way back from the beach at lunch time he encountered Hebe again. She was sitting on the terrace parapet, her cat on her shoulder. If she was to be reprimanded, now was the time.
‘Hebe,’ he said severely. ‘I want a word with you.’
She lifted her lovely eyes to him and waited.
He took her to task for her manner to her mother. Eirene, he reminded her, was very ill and suffered a great deal.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Hebe.
‘She … we aren’t quite sure. Unluckily they can’t find out.’
Hebe gave him a searching look and her expression changed. He could have sworn there was at last a touch of compassion in it, but he had the oddest impression that this pity was not for Eirene.
‘She’s loved you,’ he said, ‘ever since you were a little baby. She’s done everything for you.’
‘Who was my real mother?’ interrupted Hebe, with some urgency.
‘Eh … er … I don’t know her name, my dear.’
‘Don’t you know anything about her?’
‘I …we know some of the circumstances. You’ll know them some day … when you’re older.’
‘Why not now?’
‘We think you’re still too young.’
‘A child’s questions ought always to be answered honestly and sincerely or else it gets a compress.’
‘Complex. I am answering you honestly.’
‘Am I a bastard?’
Sir Henry was startled, but after a moment’s thought said:
‘Yes. But that’s not a word you should use. Where did you learn it?’
‘Shakespeare. Are Luke and Michael …?’
‘What they are is none of your business.’
‘Just tell me one thing. Did I belong to poor people? Working people?’
‘No.’
Her face fell.
‘I wish I had,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘I think they’re nicer.’
‘Often they are,’ he agreed.
‘But if I belonged to rich people, how did I come to be adopted?’
‘They didn’t want you. We did.’
‘Why didn’t they want me?’
He hesitated again, but decided she had better have it.
‘You’d have been in their way.’
She looked down at the flagstones and kicked her bare heels against the wall. He felt sorry for her. And he remembered that when they had taken her as a baby he had raised this point with Eirene: how would the child feel when she learnt, as she must learn some day, that her own mother did not want her? That it had been no case of necessity or hardship which had thrown her on the chance kindness of strangers? To learn this, at any age, might, he suggested, be a shock. But Eirene had assured him that she would never ask.
And now he had dealt the blow; dealt it carelessly, without any tender preparation. She had asked for it, but she was only ten, and he should have put her off. It was not to do this that he had sought her, but to act the part of a good father.
‘Was my mother a virgin?’ asked Hebe suddenly.
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Are you sure? How can you be sure?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. A virgin can’t have children.’
‘One did,’ said Hebe darkly, jumping off the parapet.
He could think of no reply to that and let her run off. He felt that she could give as many shocks as she got, and ceased to reproach himself quite so bitterly.
Evangeline Wraxton was coming on nicely. Her improvement was not apparent at meal times; huddled into a chair opposite her father she twitched and muttered as before. But she no longer sat in her room all day. She bathed with the Giffords and played rounders with them on the sands. She ran well and her laugh, heard for the first time at Pendizack, was pretty.
After tea she walked with Mrs. Paley up to the post office to buy stamps. They had scarcely left the house before she burst suddenly into all those confidences which had been left unspoken the night before. She poured out the whole story of her life with many exclamations and repetitions. When, for the tenth time, she announced that nobody would ever know how awful it all was Mrs. Paley cut it short.
‘Don’t keep saying the same thing over and over again, Angie. It’s a bad habit. And plenty of people can guess how awful it is. You’re not the only person with an odious father. Gerry Siddal, as far as I can see, has a stiff row to hoe.’
‘Yes. I suppose so. Er … have you spoken to him yet?’
‘No. I’ve not seen him to-day. But I will. Now tell me: how on earth did your father ever get to be a Canon? What do you suppose induced anyone to ordain him at all?’
Evangeline had no ideas about this. But from her vague reminiscences it emerged that the Canon had not always been so impossible. His ill-temper had grown on him. He had been a notable preacher and successful in any kind of controversy. The Low Church party had hoped to make use of him and the old Bishop, the Bishop who gave him the living of Great Mossbury, had admired him.
‘But he quarrelled with everyone,’ she said. ‘And at last nobody came to church. Nobody at all. For a whole year he read the services just to our family. You can’t think how awful … sorry!’
‘How many were there in your family?’
‘Oh, there were six of us; I’ve three brothers and two sisters. But he’s broken with all of them so I never see them. Well, so the parishioners asked the Bishop—the new Bishop—to get them another Rector. But Father wouldn’t resign, though they broke his windows and all sorts of things. You can’t think … You see I stayed at home, when the others went, because of Mother. I couldn’t bear to leave her alone. Well, so the Bishop sent for Father one day to the Palace, and Father found he had resigned. He’d flown into such a rage he didn’t know what he was saying till he heard the Bishop accepting his resignation. He said it was a trap and he wouldn’t go, and he barricaded the Rectory. And none of the tradesmen would sell us anything. It was in all the papers; the reporters stayed at the inn. They called it the Seige of Mossbury. I was twelve. You can’t think … well, so he gave in at last; I don’t know why. And he never got another living. Only luckily he had some money of his own, and he does locum sometimes in a parish. But we’ve never had a home since Mossbury. And he was forbidden to preach after one sermon he preached … that was all in the papers. Everywhere it’s been awful. You can’t … Mother died three years ago. She was ill for a long time. Always in pain. You can’t think … Mrs. Paley, it was awful and I must say so. And when she was dying she asked me to promise never to leave Father. I couldn’t refuse. It was the last thing she said. She was worried over what would happen to him. So you see!’
‘How could she condemn you to such a life?’
‘Well, you see, she had rather a gloomy idea of life. She thought we are all born to suffer, and the more we suffer now the less we shall hereafter. She thought it was wrong to be happy. I expect she worked all that out because she was married to Father.’
‘And you feel you must keep your promise?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Even if you end by going crazy or murdering him?’
‘Mother said God would give me grace to endure it.’
‘And does He?’
‘No.’
‘I thought He didn’t. Here’s the post office. Go in and ask for your stamps, just once, not several times. But try to be audible. The postmistress does not eat human flesh. Say: four twopenny halfpenny stamps, please.’
Evangeline obeyed and returned in triumph. On the walk home she told the whole story over again, in fuller detail, while Mrs. Paley let her talk and pondered upon schemes for freeing the girl from her rash vow. The most obvious would be that of the astute Bishop. Canon Wraxton, if sufficiently enraged, might be manœuvred into dismissing his daughter of his own accord. He might cut her off with a shilling and turn her out into the snow. But he must not do this until some refuge had been found for the girl. Some friend must be waiting in the snow who would snatch Evangeline away before the Canon changed his mind. And she has no friends, reflected Mrs. Paley, except me. She must have other friends. I must see to it, and I must do something about Blanche Cove’s back.
She had been worrying about Blanche Cove’s back ever since the forenoon. Yesterday she would have sighed and dismissed the matter as being none of her business. But to-day she was convinced that such pain must not be permitted, if anyone could do anything to relieve it. To-day she was a new woman, changed in the twinkling of an eye, between the fall of two waves. So far as her own problems were concerned she was still a helpless, hopeless being: the deadlock with Paul continued. But, in the case of Evangeline and Blanche, who were equally oppressed, her natural energy—frustrated for years—gushed out in a torrent.
She hobbled briskly down the hill, for sleeping in the heather had given her a touch of rheumatism, and went in search of Blanche’s mother.
Mrs. Cove was sitting, as usual, upon the terrace, knitting for dear life. But she looked a little less grim than usual, and almost smiled when Mrs. Paley came to sit beside her. It was not quite a smile, but the small straight line of her mouth relaxed a little and she said that it had been a beautiful day. Something must have happened to please her.
She made short work, however, of enquiries about Blanche and intimated plainly that she thought them impertinent. The pains, she said, were growing pains such as all children had. Blanche was tall for her age. She was not in the least disturbed, and she thought it a mistake to encourage complaints.
Mrs. Paley accepted the rebuff and spoke of Dorsetshire. Her father had known a Cove, Sir Adrian Cove, of Swan Court. Was he, by any chance, a connection?
‘My husband’s uncle,’ said Mrs. Cove.
‘Was he really? He’s dead now, isn’t he? Who has the place now?’
‘Another nephew. Gerald Cove.’
‘And he’s able to live there? So many people nowadays …’
‘I believe so,’ said Mrs. Cove. ‘But I really don’t know.’
The fate of landed proprietors was mourned for a while by Mrs. Paley before she hobbled away to look up Sir Gerald Cove in Burke’s Landed Gentry, which she had noticed on the bottom shelf of the lounge bookcase. She discovered that he had succeeded Sir Adrian five years ago, and that his wife had been a Miss Evelyn Chadwick, elder daughter of Guy Chadwick, Esq., of Grainsbridge. This was unhelpful, for she knew nothing of the Chad-wicks. But she could, at least, find out from the little Coves the Christian name of their father, and then, when next in London, she could go to Somerset House and look up any wills that might be relevant—his will and Sir Adrian’s will. She wanted very much to know how much money Mrs. Cove had got, and from whom she had got it. If she had none, and she presented every appearance of having none, an allowance from her husband’s relatives might be inferred. They might not, perhaps, give her enough to cure Blanche’s back. But if they paid the piper they could call the tune, and it would do no harm if they should come to know about Blanche’s back. The world is full of busybodies, of gossiping old ladies. It was not impossible that the tale of Blanche, groaning on the cliffs of Pendizack, might some day find its way to Swan Court.
If, on the other hand, it should appear that Mrs. Cove possessed an independent income the problem would be greater. Nobody can force a mother to cherish her children. Unless, thought Mrs. Paley, with rising spirits, it should turn out that the children themselves had been beneficiaries. Pressure might be brought to bear on their mother if she was mismanaging an allowance intended for their maintenance. There might be trustees or other guardians. She would find out. She would poke her nose into other people’s business and she would make an intolerable nuisance of herself, and she would go on and on doing this until a doctor had looked at Blanche’s back.
Her next task must be to tackle Gerry Siddal, while she was in this deedy mood. She had promised that she would, and he was nearly always to be found pumping water, between tea and dinner, since Pendizack depended on a well.
The pump was close to the drive, hidden in a clump of rhododendrons. She went to the front door and listened. She could hear it creaking, but not so steadily as usual. There were pauses, as though Gerry’s mind was not entirely on his work. And as she took the narrow path between the bushes she heard a burst of laughter. Two people seemed to be pumping; two young voices, a tenor and a treble, were raised in song as the creaking was resumed:
There was meat … meat … never fit to eat,
In the stores! In the stores!
There were eggs … eggs … nearly growing legs,
In the quar … ter … mast … er’s stores!
Peeping through the branches she saw Nancibel, who had just gone off duty, with a strange young man—a very handsome young man. They were enjoying themselves enormously, and Mrs. Paley would have retreated if Nancibel had not turned and caught sight of her. She explained her errand, and Nancibel said:
‘I think Mr. Gerry is chopping wood, Mrs. Paley. In the stable yard. We offered to do the pumping to-night.’
Mrs. Paley retraced her steps, glad to think that Nancibel had got such a well-favoured boy. Poor Gerry, chopping wood in the stable yard, had no lovely girl to sing with him. He smiled when he saw Mrs. Paley, but he did not expect her to speak because he did not know that she could. Few people at Pendizack had ever heard her do so. Changed she might be, but she did not look it, and to Gerry’s eyes she appeared as grey, as pinched, as unsmiling as ever. He was quite astonished when she came up and asked if he would do her a favour. Might she borrow two lilo mattresses from the garden shed for herself and Miss Wraxton. They were planning, she explained, to sleep out in the cliff shelter.
‘Of course,’ said Gerry. ‘I’ll take them up for you. Will after supper do?’
‘Oh no. You mustn’t trouble to do that,’ said Mrs. Paley, who had every intention that he should. ‘We can carry them.’
‘They’re quite heavy. I’ll take them. Anything else you’d like? Rugs? Cushions?’
‘We’ve taken up rugs and cushions. Mr Siddal … I think that Miss Wraxton is very much worried about staying here. Naturally she wants to go, but she can’t when her father won’t. I told her I was sure that you understood.’
Gerry looked sulky, for he had Evangeline on his conscience.
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘In her shoes I should go, whatever my father did.’
‘She has no money. Only half a crown.’
‘Oh!’ said Gerry.
‘She feels she ought not to have had hysterics, but one can’t wonder, can one? The shock of her father’s behaviour made a good many people behave … as they wouldn’t otherwise have done. Personally I think we should be grateful to her, for she did get him out of church, even if she was noisy. Nothing else would have got him out, and I hate to think what would have happened if he’d stayed.’
‘You mean …’ said Gerry, ‘she wasn’t laughing deliberately?’
Mrs. Paley opened her eyes.
‘But of course not. You’re a doctor. You must know hysterics when you hear them.’
‘I didn’t realize,’ he muttered.
‘You were some distance away. I was quite close.’
‘I’m afraid I was rude to her, yesterday afternoon.’
‘That doesn’t matter, as long as I can tell her that you—that you feel differently now.’
‘Oh I do,’ said Gerry. ‘Indeed I do.’
Mrs. Paley gave him her pinched smile and departed.
He went back to his chopping with a lighter heart. The memory of Evangeline’s stricken face as she crawled up the stairs would no longer torment him. Mrs. Paley had put it right. She might look like a sour lemon, but she wasn’t a bad old trout when you came to talk to her. He would take the mattresses up to the shelter for them, and he would make a point of saying something friendly to that unfortunate girl. Half a crown! Somebody ought to do something about a thing like that!
There had been no overt explosion when Mrs. Siddal came back from her shopping expedition to find that the garden room had been let to Anna Lechene. It had been done, as she well knew, to annoy her; but she held her peace and asked mildly where the chauffeur was to eat. With Fred or in the dining-room?
‘In the dining-room,’ said Siddal. ‘At a cosy little table with Anna. He’s a secretary-chauffeur. Very high class.’
‘Very refained, except when he forgets,’ said Duff, who had taken a dislike to Bruce. ‘And he looks like a bit part actor.’
‘He’s done all the pumping for us,’ said Gerry.
‘Well, that was nice of him,’ conceded Mrs. Siddal.
‘It was for love of Nancibel,’ said Robin. ‘He’s fallen for her in a big way. He peeled the potatoes for her this afternoon. And now she’s taken him home to supper.’
‘Has she?’ exclaimed Mr. Siddal. ‘But how intriguing! Where was Anna?’
‘She was in her room writing her book.’
‘What fun! I think I’ll join the company to-night and see how they are all getting on.’
Shaving always took Siddal a long time, and when he went to find Anna she was already established on the terrace, with Duff, Robin and Bruce sitting on cushions at her feet. None of them much wanted to be there, but she wished it and her will was stronger than theirs.
‘I’ve come to chaperone the boys,’ said Siddal, pulling up a deck chair, ‘and to ask what your new book is called, Anna.’
‘The Bleeding Branch,’ said Anna, in her slow, deep voice.
‘Thank you. It was the only detail I wasn’t sure of, and even that I should have guessed: There! Let thy bleeding branch atone, For every tortured tear! Shall my young sins … Now I know exactly what your book will be, as well as if I’d written it myself.’
‘Really,’ said Anna. ‘Then how does it begin?’
‘It begins with the innocent, or quasi-innocent (because you couldn’t depict true innocence, Anna) little Brontës carving their names on trees. I don’t know why they chose branches rather than trunks, but they did. It’s possible they then climbed the trees and sat in them, playing Gondals.’
‘Dick! What a devil you are!’
‘And it ends with a moribund and remorseful Emily hacking a branch out with an axe. And in between we have “a wildering maze of mad years left behind,” in which Bramwell writes Wuthering Heights and she pinches it and rewrites it. Bramwell’s was a far greater book, but she murders it because she can’t stand the Truth. She will not allow Cathy to be Heathcliffe’s mistress. She will not allow the young Catherine to be their daughter, palmed off on Linton. Young Catherine, of course, was the heroine of Bramwell’s book and her half-brother, young Linton, the hero. But Emily changed all that. She pushed him right out of the picture, because of course he was a self portrait.’
‘There’s plenty of evidence,’ began Anna.
‘Oh, plenty. The build-up of young Catherine in the opening chapter, for instance. But you see, my dear Anna, I know it all. I know exactly what poor Emily’s young sins are going to be, and you shan’t tell me about them.’
‘I blame her for nothing,’ said Anna sententiously, ‘except for murdering that book. If there is a Last Judgment she’ll have to answer for that.’
‘I do hope there will be,’ said Siddal. ‘I shall enjoy hearing you answering for your books, Anna.’
‘I know you hate them. At heart you know, Dick, you’re a bit of a Puritan.’
‘And what do you mean by a Puritan? enquired Siddal.
‘You hate Sex.’
‘No, I don’t. I think sex is very funny.’
‘That’s a sign of frustration.’
‘Maybe. But I don’t think food is funny, and I don’t get enough of it nowadays.’
‘We all talk about food a great deal,’ said Robin.
‘Oh yes,’ said his father, ‘we are immensely preoccupied with it. And sex-starved people are immensely preoccupied with sex. Much cry, little wool. I always suspect people who boast of their rich and various sexual experiences. I find myself doubting if they ever had any worth speaking of. Satisfied people hold their tongues. They know it’s an unlucky subject to discuss.’
‘What do you mean? Unlucky!’ asked Anna.
‘Terribly unlucky. When Psyche turned on the light, Eros flew out of the window. He’s a very touchy god and he can’t bear publicity. And that,’ he said to the three young men, ‘is why you boys will never be able to pick up much information at second hand. Those who know won’t talk. Those who talk don’t know.’
‘I talk,’ boomed Anna, ‘and I know. I’ve never rejected an experience.’
‘I never rejected a brief,’ said Siddal, getting up.
He shuffled over to the terrace parapet to look at the sunset on the water. The tide was half out and the sea as calm as glass, flecked here and there with gulls who seemed to sleep as they floated. In the wide tracts of wet sand the rosy sky was reflected. Nearer the cliffs, where it was dry, three figures crossed the bay. Gerry was staggering under a load of two mattresses, Evangeline carried a picnic basket, Mrs. Paley some pillows. They took the path up to the headland.
A cormorant came flying low over the water, its long neck outstretched. It flew inland, and Robin turned to watch it.
‘Look!’ he said. ‘It’s perched on the roof! There’s a whole row of them. Six or seven!’
But Anna was not interested in birds.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think your father would have been perfectly different if that affair with Phœbe Mason hadn’t ended so unhappily. He was so astonishingly brilliant, as a young man. Everyone thought he’d set the Thames on fire. And then, when he didn’t, you’d hear all sorts of explanations. People said he shouldn’t have gone in for the law, that it wasn’t the right profession, and he should have stayed in Oxford. But everyone knew it was that he couldn’t be bothered to do any work. Now why?’
‘Who’s Phœbe Mason?’ asked Robin, pop-eyed.
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘Never heard of her,’ declared Robin.
‘How queer! It just shows what a queer frustrated family yours is. Everything hushed up, I suppose. But that’s probably Barbara’s … your mother’s doing.’
Duff stirred uneasily on his cushion. He had at last made up his mind what he thought of Anna.
‘If only she’d had more generosity … more frankness … if she’d let the affair run its course instead of parting them….’
At this point Siddal returned from his stroll and passed them, observing:
‘Whatever you’re saying, Anna, it’s a lie. No. I overheard nothing, but I protest that I wasn’t and I didn’t. And if you write books about me before I die I shall sue you for libel.’
Monday. August 18th. 9.30 p.m.
I wrote nothing this morning, and I have been able to write nothing all day. Christina is to blame for this. Last night, when we were sitting in the lounge, she rose suddenly and went away. I did not see her again until eight o’clock this morning. I went to our room, at the usual hour, but she was not there. I sat up all night waiting for her. She did not return. She came in just before Nancibel brought our early tea. She did not tell me where she had been, and I did not ask. I dislike having to ask questions, a fact of which she is perfectly aware.
We went, with our lunch, to our usual place over Rosegraille Bay. She continued to act strangely. She left me for a while to talk to the Cove children who were crossing the cliff. And after lunch she lay down in the bracken and slept all the afternoon. She has never done so before. At four o’clock, our hour for return, I was obliged to wake her. Some pieces of bracken were caught in her hair which made her look very foolish; but she did not seem to mind this when I told her of it. She then said casually that she had not slept much last night because she had been on the cliff with Miss Wraxton. This was not said in any tone of apology. On the contrary: she gave me to understand that she means to repeat this performance again to-night.
I told her, quite plainly, that I don’t choose she should do this. It is an affront to me. Her place is with me, not with Miss Wraxton. Her reply was curious. I will try to report our conversation verbatim, as far as I can recollect it. But Christina is difficult to report. Her ideas are confused and her powers of expression are limited. It may be that I shall give her credit for better arguments than she really produced. I find it hard not to make some sense out of the silliest reasoning.
| Christina: | I cannot stay beside you, Paul, because I now believe what you have been saying for the last twenty years. |
| Myself: | And what is that? |
| Christina: | I believe that you are in Hell. You have often told me that you were, but I would not believe it. |
| Myself: | Wherever I may be, you are my wife. Your place is with me. |
| Christina: | My place is not in Hell. It is not my duty to be there with you. I used to think you were mad, and I was very sorry for you. But now I know that it is in your power to recover and you will not. |
| Myself: | Do I understand from this that you wish to leave me? |
| Christina: | I will do all I can to make life comfortable for you. And I shall be at hand if ever you want me. But I will not share your prison any more, for it is a bad prison which you have made for yourself. |
| Myself: | You have never understood. My integrity means more to me than happiness. |
| Christina: | You have none. There is no such thing. You are not a whole person. Nobody is. We are members one of another. An arm has no integrity if it is amputated. It is nothing unless it is part of a body, with a heart to pump the blood through it and a brain to guide it. You have no more integrity than a severed arm might have. |
This reply surprised me. She does not usually express herself so clearly. I told her that, by integrity, I mean self-respect.
I do not know how this will affect me. She has changed. I must have wished her to do so, since I have consistently rejected all her attempts at reconciliation.
We were late for tea.
The Pendizack booby trap shut up with a crash, and Bruce’s oaths rang across the stable yard. He had forgotten Nancibel’s warning.
The noise woke the occupants of the big loft. Robin sat up with a start to hear chuckles from Duff’s bed.
‘It’s the high-class chauffeur,’ said Duff. ‘He didn’t know … or else he forgot.’
‘But what time is it?’ asked Robin, looking at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘Why … it’s half-past four!’
‘Where on earth can he have been?’
‘I can guess.’
Robin reflected.
‘Not,’ he said at last, ‘… not with …?’
‘Of course. It’s obvious.’
‘Well! I call it pretty thick.’
There were violent bumps next door as Bruce extricated himself from the bed, opened it out again, and climbed in the proper way. Then there was silence.
‘It puts me,’ said Robin at last, ‘off the whole idea.’
Duff grunted non-committally and turned on his hard mattress. He disliked Anna, but he could understand her attraction and in part he responded to it. Her lure was that of Circe. In her company a man had leave to be as big a brute as he liked. She imposed no sanctions, asked for no loyalty, no delicacy, no tender considerations. She offered freedom of a sort. The brute in Duff yawned hungrily.
‘I say,’ exclaimed Robin, ‘where’s Gerry?’
‘Isn’t he here?’
Robin flashed a torch for a minute on Gerry’s bed. It was empty.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is a much stiffer guess.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Duff, ‘if he’s cleared out. He was in a black rage before supper. I expect he’s so furious he’s just gone.’
‘What happened?’
‘He had a row with Mother.’
‘Gerry did?’
‘Mother gets a bit tired of advice from Gerry. He’s always telling her what she ought to do.’
‘Tells all of us,’ agreed Robin.
‘He was trying to dictate about Father’s Law Library. Mother got a letter from the people in his old Chambers. It seems it’s still there, and they’ve been writing and writing to know what he wants done with it. But you know him. He never even opens his letters. So at last they wrote to her. It was none of Gerry’s business. Mother was livid.’
‘Do they want it moved?’
‘Yes. They’ve no room for it. He just left it there when he gave up practice. Mother’s giving orders to have it stored. She would before if she’d known anything about it. But Gerry wants to sell it. A good Law Library is very valuable nowadays, and it’s worth about five hundred pounds. Somebody did offer to buy it, apparently, but that’s off, because Father never answered the letters.’
‘Five hundred pounds would be very useful,’ said Robin.
‘If I go to the Bar I might like to have it myself. It’s no concern of Gerry’s. Infernal cheek of him to say what’s to be done with Father’s books. Mother told him she’s storing it for me, and he proceeded to go right off the deep end. Just because he gives her fourpence halfpenny a week out of his screw he thinks he’s got the right to boss the whole family. He said he should go to South Africa and never come back.’
Robin considered this, and then said:
‘We should be in quite a hole if he did.’
But Duff was growing sleepy again, and did not answer.
‘I don’t see why you should have five hundred pounds,’ said Robin more loudly.
‘Wha-at?’ said Duff, rousing.
‘If all this family has left is books worth five hundred pounds, I don’t see why you should get it all.’
‘I’ll have to have a library if I go to the Bar.’
‘What about me?’
‘You aren’t going to the Bar.’
‘How am I to get educated?’
‘Get a brain specialist to operate on you, I should think. Do shut up. I want to go to sleep.’
‘I think Gerry’s absolutely right.’
‘You take a flying …’
There were thumps on the wall from Bruce, who was trying to go to sleep.
‘Thump back,’ said Duff indignantly. ‘What blasted cheek! He wakes us all up falling about in his bloody bed.’
Robin thumped and yelled: ‘Shut up!’ through the wood partition.
‘Shut up yourself,’ came in a faint answering yell from Bruce.
Robin and Duff continued to talk in voices aggressively raised until Bruce, losing patience, got out of his bed. There was another crash as it shut up. Yells of laughter came through the partition. Gerry, who was cautiously climbing the ladder, thought that everybody in the loft must have gone mad.
But the noise died down when he joined his brothers. Duff and Robin stopped laughing and stared at him.
‘What is all this?’ he asked.
‘Bed fun,’ said Duff, indicating the renewed bumps next door, as Bruce once more struggled into freedom. ‘He’s a very restless sleeper, poor chap. But what about you? Where have you been? Africa?’
Gerry, who had switched on the light, sat down upon his bed and began to take off his shoes.
‘I’ve been up on the cliff,’ he said, ‘with Mrs. Paley and Angie.’
‘With who?’
‘Angie Wraxton. They wanted to sleep out, and I took up mattresses for them and then they made tea, and we stayed talking for quite a long time. And then, when they turned in, it was so pleasant I stayed a bit and fell asleep.’
‘Angie Wraxton? You mean the maniac?’ asked Robin.
‘She’s not a maniac. She’s a very intelligent girl.’
‘What in heaven’s name did you talk about?’ asked Duff.
‘About Africa. I told them about the Kenya opening, and they both thought it sounded marvellous. They couldn’t think why I didn’t jump at it.’
Gerry pulled his shirt over his head with a very well-satisfied expression. Never before in his life had he been allowed to talk so much about himself; and it had been pleasant to have two women fussing over him.
‘I told them I haven’t finally turned it down,’ he added.
Robin and Duff became pensive. They both knew that the African post—that of medical officer in a big district—would not bring enough to pay their school fees, though it had good prospects of future advancement. And for that reason the whole family had assumed that Gerry would certainly refuse it.
Neither of them spoke another word. Gerry finished undressing, put on his pyjamas, switched off the light and got into bed. Silence fell upon the stables.