“Oh, miss, are you awake? It’s goin’ on ’alf-past ten, and I thought— Oh, miss, have you seen the papers?”
Mouse opened one eye and stared sleepily at Mrs. Hodge.
“Somebody murdered someone?”
“Oh no, miss. It’s Miss Elk—Miss Virginia, I should say. Mr. Low’s sent round all the papers, his chauffeur brought them. Look, see this one, ‘Leon Low’s new find,’ and here’s another nice piece, ‘One of the loveliest girls that ever sprang to fame in a night.’ But there’s better yet—listen to this: ‘Looby ’erself was played by Virginia, a young girl of breath-catchin’ beauty, whether she could dance or sing I neither knew nor cared, it was enough to be allowed to look at ’er.’” Mrs. Hodge sighed. “Fancy wakin’ up to read that about yerself.”
Mouse turned the papers over.
“Dear, dear! Well, you better call the breath-catching beauty and give them to her to read.”
Mrs. Hodge gathered up the papers.
“You know if I was to read that about meself, it’d turn me head.”
“That’d be shock. These won’t upset Miss Virginia. I expect she’ll think they’re half-hearted.” She sat up. “Did you say it was nearly half-past ten when you came in? Hop along then, I’ve got to send a telegram, and when you’ve done your paper round, you might get us some breakfast.”
As the door shut she got out of bed and put on her dressing-gown, and rummaged round until she found half an envelope on which she had jotted down a telegram. ‘Please be at the flat two-thirty, I must see you. Flossie.’ She looked at it disapprovingly. It sounded a curt way for a daughter to wire to her mother, but she could not see how to improve it, so she picked up the telephone and dictated it. She went into the kitchen, Mrs. Hodge was just taking the coffee percolator off the stove.
“Is Miss Virginia awake?”
“Yes, dear, lookin’ a picture readin’ the papers.”
“Serve both breakfasts in her room.” She opened Flossie’s door. “Good morning. How’s Mother’s clever girl? You certainly have made a success.”
“Have I?” Flossie opened her eyes in a wide childish stare. “Do you really think so?”
Mouse sat on the bed with a bump.
“Don’t waste any of that big-eyed innocence. For an intelligent girl you are taking the hell of a time to grasp that your Auntie Mouse has you taped. Never waste a performance on me.”
Flossie wriggled into the sheets. “I don’t know what she means,” she said to herself; “of course she would be unkind this morning. Jealous, that’s what it is.”
Mrs. Hodge brought in the tray. She pulled up the table conveniently close to Flossie’s hand.
“Drink your coffee while it’s hot, dear, and eat a roll, they’re lovely and fresh, you need to keep your strength up; none of us stays young and beautiful for ever.” She turned to Mouse. “That’s right, isn’t it, dear?”
Mouse sighed.
“Must you address me in that personal manner, bringing a note of gloom into this morning of joy? But you’re right.” Mrs. Hodge went regretfully out of the door. It was dull in her kitchen; it would have been nice to have stayed in here and heard about last night. Mouse nodded at the tray.
“Pour it out, there’s a love.” She waited until she had her cup and then added casually, “Your mother’s coming here at half-past two.”
Flossie put down the milk jug so suddenly that the milk splashed over the tray. She felt as if a worm was taking a stroll in her stomach.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve asked her to come. You can’t go on like this. Do you realise the wretched woman doesn’t even know she’s not your mother?”
Flossie dropped her eyes and fidgeted with the corner of a paper. It was obvious that this day was coming, somebody had got to tell Mum the truth, but she had half hoped Mouse would do it. It was neither laziness nor cowardice which had kept her from speaking out, but inability to see how to begin. It seemed to her that if Mum proved unreasonable her whole new world would topple. She looked with honest anxiety at Mouse.
“I suppose you wouldn’t talk to her?”
“No, I can’t break in on the big scene, but I’ll be about.” She looked at Flossie. “Don’t make heavy weather over it. After all, this royal stuff wasn’t your idea, and it’s only been spread as a rumour. You can deny it at any time.”
Flossie thought for a second that Mouse was pulling her leg, and then saw to her astonishment that she was serious. Was it possible that she thought that she, Virginia, would make herself a laughingstock, and be condescended to, even by the chorus, by admitting the greengrocery in the Fordham Road? During the last weeks for moments together she had succeeded in forgetting it herself. Didn’t Mouse realise that she was quite conscious it was a background to be ashamed of, and forgotten as soon as possible?
“As a matter of fact,” Mouse went on, “deny it as much as you like, but you won’t find it easy to kill the story. It’s a thing you might bear in mind, because some day somebody may start a rumour that you won’t like. Don’t give people more chances to talk than you can help, because gossip’s easier than yawning to start, and it’s never ended because there’s always someone somewhere who believes it.”
‘Well, that’s a comfort,’ thought Flossie, but aloud she said:
“Awful how careful a girl has to be.”
Mouse looked at her and felt an overpowering wish to giggle, she never had a conversation of any length with Flossie without wishing somebody, preferably Jim, was there to enjoy the joke with her. She tried to save up the best things to repeat, but without Flossie’s expression, they lost in the telling. She did not want to hurt the child’s feelings, so she hid her smile by getting up for some matches for her cigarette. ‘I’ll never be able to be angry with her, whatever she does,’ she thought. ‘I could forgive anything to a person who handed me so many laughs. Yet everybody didn’t feel like that. How odd Jasmine had been. Fancy bothering to dislike anything so silly as Flossie. After L.L.’s party last night, waiting for the cars to take them home, the way she had whispered, “A minx, Mouse.” Of course, engrossed talking to Jim, she hadn’t herself been looking at the girl, but had Jasmine? Was her remark based on impression or study?’
Flossie looked at Mouse from under her eyelids. Was this a good moment to talk to her? From Friday next she’d earn a salary, and that meant that the arrangement that she was kept and fed while training was finished. Mouse hadn’t said anything, but he was she meaning her to live somewhere else? Careful thought had shown her that the present living arrangements could not be bettered. Dad and Mum approved of them. If Dad and Mum were to be told that there wasn’t a Flossie Elk, and since Virginia wasn’t their daughter they wouldn’t see her, it would be easier if they felt that she was under the guardianship of Mouse. Then there was the question of finance. Living with Mouse she had realised what a little way money goes; she knew just what dressing she needed; in her present wardrobe nothing, except the outfit L.L. had provided for the party last night, would do, as Virginia she needed clothes to live up to her story and her stardom. Her contract with L.L. started at ten pounds a week and rose five pounds each year for five years, so that when she finished it she would be earning thirty. In the meantime it was only ten and in her opinion most inadequate. Deep in her soul she knew that a girl like herself ought to be denied nothing. Enquiry had shown her that she was on to a good thing in Mouse’s flat; nowhere else could she approach its comfort for the sort of sum she was prepared to pay. Then last night at the party she had found the third and greatest reason for staying where she was. Mouse knew a Lord and Lady. Speaking of the Lord she had tried to deceive her into thinking he was an ordinary man by just calling him Jim Menton, but L.L. wasn’t mean like that; he had known she was the sort of person who ought to know Lords, he was very surprised to know they had never met before, and had said at once: “This is Lord Menton,” and to him, “I needn’t tell you that this is Virginia.” She had been so surprised to find he was a Lord that she had almost said: “Pleased to meet you,” instead of the off-hand greeting Mouse had told her was correct, but she had swallowed it just in time. There had been no more chance to talk to him, which was a good thing as she didn’t know what to call a Lord, but in this flat she was bound to meet him again, and she’d find out. She hadn’t liked the look of the Lady, she supposed if you liked people dark and not very young, you might call her beautiful, but she wasn’t her type. She seemed to be a friend of Mouse’s which she wouldn’t be if she knew how many times her husband came to the flat. She looked at Mouse standing in the window smoking. Except for a decided feeling of distrust she had never clearly defined her feelings about her, but now, having met the Lady, she was almost sure she disliked her; they both looked as though nothing mattered much and most things were funny when they weren’t. Flossie was not even sure that Mouse didn’t find her success funny. What a pity, she thought, that a girl couldn’t live with men; men were so much nicer.
Mouse came back and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“What have you been thinking about so seriously?”
This was an obvious opening. Flossie looked up with her sweetest smile.
“I was thinking how happy I’ve been, living with you, and wondering whether you’d let me stay.” Mouse’s face gave her no lead as to what she was thinking, so she tried a wistful note: “I don’t earn much money, of course, but I would pay whatever you thought right for this one little room.”
The question of Flossie’s departure had not troubled Mouse. The last months rent-free had made her clearer of debt than she had been for years, but that was not to say that further clearance would not be to the good. She had supposed that Flossie would want to stay on for a week or two, but this more or less permanent suggestion came as a surprise. She didn’t want the girl, but it seemed a pity to turn good money from the door.
“Three pounds a week, the arrangement to come to an end at any time,” she said briskly.
“Three!” Flossie’s face fell. “I thought two, or perhaps two-ten.”
“No, my dear Mrs. Rosenbaum, three pounds vos my terms.”
‘Oh, she’s ever so mean,’ Flossie thought; ‘three pounds. It isn’t as though I ate much; wants me to keep her, I should think.’ But aloud she said grudgingly:
“All right, three pounds.”
“The ghost walking on Friday nights, it will be paid on Saturdays, so ask them to pay you in notes and not by cheque.” Mouse got up and stretched. “Me for a bath.” She crossed to the dressing-table and looked at her face. “God, what a hag!” She turned to go, and as she moved her dressing-gown caught on to Flossie’s evening bag. It fell to the floor and opened, scattering a cloakroom ticket, handkerchief, lipstick, powder-box, and two five-pound notes at her feet. She stooped and picked the things up; she folded the notes carefully. Yesterday she had lent Flossie a pound to carry her on until Friday, for this week the ten shillings allowance paid to her while training had stopped. Where in the world then had she got hold of ten pounds? It was none of her business, but it put an entirely different complexion on this idea of the girl living in the flat.
Flossie watched Mouse upset her bag and study her notes. She knew she was wondering how she had got them. ‘It’s none of her business,’ she thought. ‘I suppose a little present needn’t make everybody nosy.’
Mouse put the bag back on the dressing-table and sat on the edge of it.
“If you stay on in this flat you’ve got to understand that you look after yourself. As long as you behave in the flat, it’s not my business what you do outside, though if you’ve any sense you’ll listen to my advice, because I know my world and you don’t. I shall explain this to your mother this afternoon, and I’ll write to your father.”
Flossie said nothing for a moment. ‘Oh, I do think she’s mean,’ she thought, ‘she knows what Dad is.’
“I suppose you’ve turned nasty,” she muttered at last, “because you saw a little money in my bag. I suppose you think you’re the only one who ought to have anything.”
“My dear girl, don’t be so silly, I don’t care if you’ve ten pounds or fifty, but seeing the money put it in my mind that it’s time I stopped acting as Nanny.”
Flossie pleated the eiderdown.
“As a matter of fact, since you’re so nosy, it was given me to buy a bouquet.”
“Yes? You ought to be able to get quite a nice little bunch with it.”
“It was that nice gentleman—man, I mean—who sat next to me at supper.”
Mouse looked at her almost with respect.
“What, old Ossie Bone?” Flossie nodded. “Do you know who he is?” The other shook her head. “Just owns about half the newspapers in the country. That’s all.”
“Well, he can afford it then.”
“He certainly can. I’ve always heard he’s mean, just shows how unfair gossip is.”
Flossie felt encouraged by Mouse’s manner.
“You see he said if he’d known just how pretty I was, he’d have sent me some flowers. So I said I was sorry he hadn’t. So he put his hand under the table,” Mouse’s eyes were goggling, “and gave me the money and told me to buy myself something pretty.”
“Well now, isn’t that a nice story? And he never suggested another meeting?”
“Yes, he did, he asked me to motor with him to lunch at Guildford on Sunday.”
Mouse looked at her. She looked as innocent as a daffodil.
“Look here, my sweet,” she came to the bedside. “I’ve always said your Auntie Mouse had you taped, but you’ve beaten me this time. Do you honestly think that a nice drive into the country is all that Ossie’s after?”
Flossie again pleated the sheet. She hated putting any card on the table, but it did seem as though this time she would have to. If Mouse meant to write to Dad, then it would be better if she thought that she could take care of herself. She looked up with half a smile.
“I think it’s all he’ll get.”