Visions, or at least clear undimmed ones, are for those with time to spend viewing them, and minds, unclogged with other matters, to give to them. Fanny had neither time nor an unclouded mind. Her hours were spent in a harassed futile effort to keep pace with the days’ chores, and her mind was mostly focused on her inside which had an increasing tendency to go ’all of a drop.’ So from inanition her visions for her daughter gradually faded. There were, of course, moments when they revived, such as when Flossie came pink and gurgling out of her bath, or when she sat up in her cot in a clean nightdress looking more like a child angel than a human baby. At such times Fanny would feel as though somebody had taken her heart in his hand and given it a quick squeeze, and she would snatch Flossie up murmuring proud nothings. These occasions were rare: mostly Flossie was not looking like one to whom visions and proud nothings belong. She started the day clean, and finished it clean, but in the intervening hours she was as black as any baby would be, whose freedom is only bounded by the distance it can crawl, or toddle.
George, aware of Fanny’s dropped inside (as how should he not be, seeing it was a major subject of conversation both at table and in bed), did what he could to help. “Give us young Floss, shell be all right along of me.” He would pick the baby out of her high chair, the tray of which she was beating with a spoon, and carry her into the shop, and put her down on the floor. The floor of the shop, if not a hygienic nursery, was certainly an entrancing one, scattered as it was with bits of fruit and vegetables. Had Flossie not possessed an inside with unusual powers of resistance, she must have died from the over-ripe, dirty uncooked bits that she swallowed before her fifth birthday. Between customers, George did what he could to keep an eye on her. “Put that down! Dirty girl! Bad baby!” Very early Flossie learnt her first lesson in the art of handling men. For a little while she screamed when anything was taken out of her mouth. Then one day, George snatched a particular toothsome bit of overripe plum from her. The sun was shining warmly, a barrel-organ playing down the street, and the piece of plum a real find. For Flossie the moment was utterly golden, then suddenly, with the loss of her treasure, the radiance was gone. For once she did not scream, the transition from joy to grief was too abrupt; instead, she raised her blue eyes in hurt wonder that she could be so treated, and fixed them on her father, while they slowly flooded with tears. George was shocked at himself. One glance at those eyes, and he knew he was a bully and a cad. He still had the piece of plum in his hand, he looked down at it, but though conscience-stricken, he could not persuade himself it was fit to eat. Then he looked at Flossie, flung the plum into the gutter, picked her up, and carried her into the sweetshop next door, apologising for being a cruel Dad. This event repeated, soon sank into Flossie’s consciousness.
When Flossie reached her fifth birthday, she went to school. It was a cold day early in January. Fanny buttoned her into her little red coat, and pulled on her cap.
“Dad,” she called, “come and give a kiss to Floss, we’re just off.”
‘Fordham Road Infants’ was at the far end of the Fordham Road. With her head down to shield her face from the wind, Fanny, acutely conscious of her dropped inside, led Flossie up the street. She thought thankfully that as there were no crossings, and a lot of other children going, that soon Flossie could make her journeys to and fro alone. Flossie skipped, because her legs were not long, and it was a nice way to get about. She made a little song in her head on the word ‘school.’
In the hall of the ‘Fordham Road Infants’ they waited with the other mothers and new children. The mothers were younger than Fanny, because they had not waited eight years before having a baby; the new children, who were the tail-ends of a family, had not got mothers with them, they were merely pushed in at the door by an elder brother or sister.
Miss Green, the head teacher, taught because she liked children. She taught infants because she preferred children when they were little. Up to the age of seven she considered that all children, even the very dirty ones, had charm. Her fondness for children made her try to believe that all children always had charm. Sometimes, when she met Miss Elder’s ‘girls’ or Mr. Hale’s ‘boys’ on the stairs, she faltered in this view. Difficult to ignore a lack of washing when in bulk. She wondered whether children were more washed before they were seven, or whether after that as the size of the unwashed grew, so did the odour.
Flossie was looking at the floor when Miss Green first saw her. She had found a crack which had a hairpin in it, she tried to get the hairpin out with the toe of her shoe. Bent as she was, the back of a red coat, a cap of the same colour with some almost white curls clinging to it, and the crease at the back of a tiny neck, were all that were visible.
“This is Floss,” said Fanny. “Stand up, Floss, do, and say good morning to the teacher.”
Flossie raised her head regretfully from the hairpin. Miss Green stared at her.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Oh!”
One did not of course say in front of children, even very small ones, how lovely you thought they were, but she could not help an exclamation. The face looking at her was no ordinary pretty little face. There was such width between the eyes. Such eyes! A startling blue, and the lashes long and black. Then the nose, snubby though it still was, had a skin that seemed translucent. She took off Flossie’s cap, and stared at the breadth of forehead, and the moonlight-silver curls that tumbled out. She looked up at Fanny, puzzled.
“Is this your daughter?” She tried to keep a frankly unbelieving tone out of her voice.
“That’s right. Her name’s Flora, but me and her dad call her Flossie.”
Miss Green’s hand stole out, she could not keep herself from stroking those curls.
“Is her father very fair?” Perhaps here was the answer, there must be one to such a miracle.
“No, much my colour.” Fanny kissed Flossie. “Be a good girl now and do what teacher says, and Mum’ll be back for you dinner-time.”
Flossie did not in the least mind being left with Miss Green. But she had noticed that as the other mothers had disappeared, the children had howled. The howls had produced no effect beyond a “Give over, Freddie, do,” or “I’ll call a policeman,” from the departing parent, and a hurried handing over of the child to a lesser teacher, by Miss Green. Nevertheless, Flossie felt howling was the right thing to do. The result was not what the treatment of the others had led her to expect. Certainly her mother turned back with “Oh, for Gawd’s sake, Floss,” but Miss Green instead of handing her to somebody else turned eagerly to Fanny.
“Poor little mite. Don’t you worry, Mrs. Elk, I’ll soon cheer her up.” She led Flossie to her own room, and cheered her with a chocolate, and wiped away her tears, and gave her curls yet another stroke. “You’re going to be so, so happy at school,” she cooed.
She was quite right: Flossie was. Her career through the ‘Fordham Road Infants’ was not marred by a cross word. It was, in fact, a career of praise and pats. She discovered in her first fortnight that a slightly anxious frown on being asked a question, brought a horrified “Oh, Flossie, don’t wrinkle your forehead—now think.” Flossie had no need to think: the teacher, in her anxiety to keep frowns off that perfect face, was forming the answer with her lips.
Flossie, deprived of the leavings on the shop floor, found a method of getting other dainties. Little boys she learnt were generous. Scarcely a couple of sweets found their way into the school in the pockets of the small boys but Floss got one of them. The little girls too seldom owned anything good to eat, but Flossie got a share. She would see the apple, or the piece of chocolate, and a smile getting only a frown from the owner, she would move over to a teacher, and allowing her eyes to flood with tears would look up at her. The result was always the same: questions, Flossie’s whispered story that she had been promised a bit of the sweet or apple, an indignant sweeping down on the other child, and, always provided there was any left, her reward.
When Christmas came round, and the treat for the children was discussed in the teachers’ room, they were faced with the annual problem: Who was to have the fairy doll off the top of the tree? Miss Green hesitated only a moment and then said:
“It’s not favouritism, but I do think little Flossie Elk should have it, she has such a sad poor home.”
Flossie being one of the best dressed children in the school, the other teachers were amazed, but they all agreed that Flossie should have the doll.
On the day of the treat, the school benefactress who had given the fairy doll saw Flossie receive it.
“Comes from such a sad poor home,” whispered one of the school managers, who had heard it from Miss Green.
“Really.” They both looked at Flossie, and thought of adoption.
The other little girls had watched the bestowal of the fairy doll with fortitude. They knew when they were beaten.
Miss Green called on Miss Elder. She had her list of the children who were moving up. She made a few remarks about them, and then her finger came to rest on Flossie.
“A dear little thing,” she sighed, for in giving Flossie to Miss Elder she felt rather like a Christian mother handing its only child to a lion. “Comes from such a sad poor home.”
Miss Elder looked at the address.
“Fordham Road,” she said briskly. “Eighty-one. That’s the other end of this street. Nice little houses. Elk? That’s the greengrocer, got a nice business, pass the place every day. Why is the home poor and sad?”
“I don’t know,” Miss Green said feebly, “but it is, everybody says so.”
Flossie came up into the big school the next morning. It was the half-term. Miss Elder assembled all the girls in the hall, and gave them a short address. She spoke to them of the value of education, on the need for forming character, on acquiring a high ideal while at school, and trying to live up to it ever afterwards. Flossie listened for a moment, thought it all very dull, yawned, fidgeted, and turned round to look at the rest of the school. Then she made a discovery which shook her, there were no boys. The faces staring up at Miss Elder were all female. She ought to have known, for weeks now she had heard that she was moving up into ‘The Girls’ but somehow what it meant had never penetrated her consciousness. She was recalled from her gloomy thoughts on a boyless world by Miss Elder’s voice.
“Little girl in blue in the front row.”
Her next-door neighbour gave her a nudge. Flossie was startled.
“What’s your name?”
“Flossie Elk.”
The whisper was so minute that no one heard it.
“Come here. I can’t hear you.”
Flossie came gingerly forward. Her head hung down.
“Now. What’s your name?”
“Flossie Elk.”
“Oh.” Miss Elder looked at the face, and moon-coloured hair, and the neat little blue frock, and the well-fed body. ‘Comes from such a sad poor home.’ She recalled Miss Green’s sugary tone as she said it. “Sentimental fool,” she thought, “ought to be too used to children to be carried away by prettiness.” Flossie, puzzled by the pause, cautiously raised her enormous lashes and peered up at Miss Elder through them.
Miss Elder had a face like a horse, long and narrow, with a good deal of it given up to jaw. Her skin was red, and tight, her hair a wispy yellow, she was short-sighted, so pince-nez were clipped to the end of her nose, and to insure that good money should not be thrown away on repairing glasses, were also attached to her bosom by a fine gold chain. She had never possessed even the transitory prettiness of the small child, her face in middle age was as easy to look at as at any other period of her life. In self-defence she lived by a slogan ‘Beauty-is-the-cause-of-much-sorrow.’ ‘Oh-the-sorrow-I-have-seen-caused-by-a-pretty-face!’ She had never seen anything of the sort, but since she had her needs and longings like the rest of the world, she found a slogan a preventive against soaking the pillow with futile, idiotic tears.
Even as Flossie peered up at her, so Miss Elder gazed down at Flossie, and found herself looking for the first time in her life at real, incontestable beauty, and in that moment her Salvationist’s spirit swelled. Beauty could not be cured like a nasty habit, or a tendency to steal; but it was possible to see that a face like that was not let loose upon the world without its owner being aware of the danger of what she possessed.
“Wait here,” she said severely. “I will speak to you when I have dismissed the other girls.”
She took Flossie to her room. It was so like Miss Green’s room, even to its furnishings that Flossie looked hopefully at the drawer in which chocolates should live.
“My child,” Miss Elder paused effectively, “I have brought you in here for a little talk. You did not listen to a word of my address this morning. That was doubly wrong, first because it was bad-mannered — ‘A-child-always-listens-when-a-grown-up-is-speaking,’ and secondly because what I was saying was of particular value to you. Tell me, of what were you thinking, that was so much more important than my remarks?”
Flossie was so scared by the tone of voice used for this homily, a tone for which life in the infant school had not prepared her, that she took refuge in the only defence she knew. Her eyes filled, and she raised them to Miss Elder.
Miss Elder had a stiff fight with herself. She could not look into those eyes, tear-filled by her harsh words, and not feel a brute. But her common sense pulled her together, and showed her in a flash how right her slogan had always been. “What a danger,” she thought. “Why, even I was weakening.”
“Flossie,” her voice was sterner than ever, “of what were you thinking? When I ask a question I expect an answer.”
Flossie’s brain went round like a Catherine wheel. Of what had she been thinking? She was doing what she always did, letting thoughts run in and out of her head, none of them stayed long enough to remember. Her new blue frock recalled that she had moved up into ‘The Girl’s.’ Suddenly a light came into her face, she had remembered, all would now be well.
“I was thinkin’ that there weren’t no boys in this school.”
Miss Elder looked puzzled. What a curious answer.
“Naturally not. This is a girls’ school. You know that?”
“Yes.” Flossie looked down, a reminiscent smile at the thought of many sweets just curving the ends of her lips. “But I likes boys.”
Miss Elder, conscious of peering eyes behind curtains, walked into the shop. George was arranging apples, a polished pile, red cheeks to the window. He laid down the one he held, wiped his hands on his apron, and came forward with a questioning ‘Good afternoon.’ Miss Elder looked at the window, and at random ordered six oranges.
“Seven that is,” George corrected her, wrapping them up. “Seven for sixpence they are.”
“Quite.” She watched him swing the bag round till its corners formed two brown ears, and knew that in a moment, from his point of view, she should be gone. She gave a slight unnecessary cough. “I am Flossie’s head teacher.”
“Indeed, ma’am.” He handed her the fruit. “Anything more I can serve you with to-day?”
“No.” She did not take the bag. “I am so glad to have this chance of a word with you, Mr. Elk. I pass this way twice every day, and I so much admire your fruit.”
George looked disparagingly at the window.
“Don’t look so well just now. Just winter greens, though the apples and oranges make a nice bit’ter colour. But you ought to see it in May, ma’am, and June, that’s the time.” He nudged her with the paper bag. “You ever been ter Covent Garden when the stuff’s coming in?” She shook her head. “You should, it’s a picture. Peas, beans, tomatoes, lettuces, watercress, radishes, the ’ole bloomin’ shoot, put a name to anything an’ you can have it. And the fruit!” His voice trailed away, hushed by the glory of strawberries and raspberries seen in the mind’s eye.
It is pleasant in winter to be warmed by summer’s magnificence. It made Miss Elder forget her chilblains.
“And the flowers too, I hear they are wonderful.”
“Oh them.” With a gesture George dismissed all flowers to a limbo for the unedible.
The conversation was obviously finished as far as he was concerned. Desperately she looked for a new opening. “Curious,” she thought, “how omnipotent one felt with parents who came to the school, and how awkward and tongue-tied when one met them outside.” George politely held out the bag. To take it she felt was the equivalent to shutting the door; she must not let that happen, so undignified to set out on a mission, and instead, achieve seven oranges. She firmly pushed the bag back at George. “One moment, Mr. Elk, I want to see you, and to-day needing oranges––. I do think teachers and parents should work together for the good of the children, don’t you?”
George looked at his pile of apples–time he was getting back to them, he thought.
“Ah, it’s Mrs. Elk you’re wantin’. She’s only stepped up the road, be back any minute.” He wondered what the teacher needed, a confused jumble of requirements, school tunics, pencil boxes, a violin, formed in his mind. “Something you was wantin’ for our Floss? Anythin’ she needs that I can manage she can have.”
‘Comes from such a sad poor home.’ Miss Elder’s back stiffened at the ludicrousness of the description.
“No,” she said firmly. “It is not her bodily needs I am anxious about, Mr. Elk. It’s her spiritual ones. ‘Beauty-is-the-cause-of-much-sorrow,’ you know.”
George was surprised at the turn the conversation had taken, but at least it was a subject with which he felt at home.
“It’s a lure of Satan,” he agreed.
Miss Elder felt this to be a little strong. She managed an uneasy laugh.
“Well, I wouldn’t speak of Flossie’s face quite like that.”
George stared at her.
“‘Oo’s speakin’ of Floss?”
Miss Elder saw her road clear at last.
“I was, Mr. Elk. You have a remarkably beautiful child.”
“Now look ’ere.” George tapped her arm with his finger. “I do hope you won’t go sayin’ nothin’ of that kind to Mrs. Elk. She talked about Floss very silly for a time, very silly, but she’s forgotten all about it now, and there ain’t nothin’ gained by rakin’ it up.”
“Oh, but I––”
“I’m not blamin’ you, ma’am, ladies gets silly ideas, but I’ll tell you now, what I told her then, all I want for my Floss is that she grows up a nice sensible girl as’ll make a good wife for some man. A face is given us from on ’igh ter see with, smell with, eat with, and hear with, and makin’ a show of it is goin’ beyond what’s intended.”
Fanny came in by the side door, she left Flossie swinging on the gate. She went into the kitchen to put on the kettle, the door was open, and across the passage she heard George’s last words. She put down the kettle, and crept over and peeped through the shop door. Miss Elder was just taking her oranges. She felt she had been put in her place, she never allowed the children’s parents to put her in her place, so her voice became both frozen and condescending.
“Good-bye. I see we are in complete agreement. If I should––” Her pause on the word showed the improbability of such a contingency, “need any help, I shall come and see you again.”
George looked after her with a puzzled frown. “Queer woman,” he thought, and went back to his apples.
Fanny came in, she crossed to the shop exit, and looked after Miss Elder.
“That’s the teacher from the school.”
George rubbed an apple.
“That’s right.”
“What’s she want?”
“Oranges.”
“But I heard you talkin’, carryin’ on shockin’ you was. What was you talking about?”
“Faces.” He rubbed fiercely. “I told her and I tell you, all I want for our Floss is to grow up a good woman.”
“Oh.” Fanny went back to the kitchen, she picked up the kettle but instead of filling it, she carried it with her to the window, and put it on the ledge, leant on it, and stared out over it, through the grimy glass at Flossie, swinging on the rusty, iron gate. She stared at her until she became nothing but a blurr of scarlet and pink and gold, and with her went the Fordham Road and its mean little houses, years of toil done regardless of pain, shabby clothes, and worn furniture, and in their place were things seen in the theatre, read of in books and papers, and half imagined and dreamt. A world where houses were not cramped, and where rooms were large, and so built that neighbours could not hear each other, a world where other people did your work for you, where there were lovely clothes, even the underclothes beautiful, the world of motor-cars, scents, a world unimaginable, seen dimly, like a shape in smoke.”
“Fanny. Fanny. What about a cup of tea?”
With a start she was back in the kitchen.
“Comin’, George.” Mechanically she filled the kettle.