Right in the middle of the main street is St Mark’s Vicarage
THE THAMES IS a very twisting sort of river. It is as if it had to force its way into London, and had become bent in the process. First there is a big bend to the right, then a little one to the left, then a great bulge to the right, followed immediately by a smaller bulge to the left. In that smaller bulge to the left is the part of south-east London in which the Bells lived.
The people round where the Bells lived are not rich; mostly they live in small houses joined on to their next door neighbours. It is a very noisy part of the world. People shout a lot, and bang a lot, and laugh a lot. In the High Street there is an almost continuous street market of a very shouting sort, for not only are there the usual men calling out ‘Tomarrs ah ri’ for ‘Tomatoes all ripe,’ or ‘Whelks luv-er-ly whelks,’ but there are a lot of shops behind the market selling television and radio sets, and these are tuned in all day and blare music out into the streets. All day long buses flow like a slow red stream through the crowded roads, and as well there are lorries, tradesmen’s vans, private motor cars and many cycles, all trying to get along and all hooting at each other.
People who do not live in south-east London might say to themselves that it was a crowded, dirty, noisy place to live in, but the people who live there do not feel like that at all. They are as true Londoners as the London pigeons, they like roaring to make themselves heard, they like street markets, they like living so close together that they know each other’s business, they like the jostling gay life of the streets; they have lived in that part of London all their lives, and they would not move even if you offered them a flat in Buckingham Palace.
Right in the middle of the main street is St Mark’s Vicarage. It is not joined on to the houses next to it like other houses in the neighbourhood, but stands by itself with, quite close to it, the parish hall, and next to the parish hall St Mark’s church. When the Bells first came to St Mark’s Vicarage, Mrs Bell, Cathy as Alex Bell, the Reverend Alexander Bell, calls her, felt quite ill, the neighbourhood made her so depressed. Her father had been a country doctor, and she had been brought up with a big garden, and outside the garden plenty of fields and woods to wander in. When she married Alex he had been a curate, working not exactly in a country parish but in a not very built-up one, so she had not felt cramped.
St Mark’s Vicarage was an ugly Victorian building, with a lot of space wasted in passages. The front door opened on a long passage, with first the study and then the dining-room on the left, and on the other side an enormous sunless, chilly room, which the previous vicar had used as an extra parish room, to save himself going out on wet evenings, but which Cathy could see she would use as a drawing-room. The kitchen was a tremendous size; it was at the far end of the passage and must, Cathy supposed, have been meant to house a cook and several kitchen maids. With only her working in it she thought it would feel rather like cooking in St Paul’s Cathedral. Upstairs there were three quite nice bedrooms, a bathroom, a linen cupboard without any windows and yards more passage.
There never was a house, Cathy decided, that wasted more space than St Mark’s Vicarage, but it was not the house that depressed her, but what was outside the house. Whichever way she looked there were chimney pots, the gravelly scrap of earth round the house would never make a garden, there did not seem to be a tree within miles; perhaps it was there being no trees that gave her that sinking feeling inside. Alex was a very clergyman sort of clergyman, so he thought the place where he was most needed was the loveliest place to be, so Cathy knew it would be no use saying to him: ‘Oh, Alex, do tell the bishop we won’t come here,’ so she resolutely turned her back on the view outside the windows, and concentrated on the house.
At that time the old vicar, who was going to retire, was still living in the vicarage. He and his old wife were devoted to dark-red wallpaper, large mahogany furniture, Indian brassware and potted ferns. Cathy tried in her mind to strip the red wallpaper off the walls, turn out the furniture, brass and ferns, and put in their place their own shabby but much nicer possessions, and their nicest possessions of all—their three children. But it was not easy to do, and she was looking so depressed when she got into the bus to go home that even Alex noticed it.
‘Cheer up, darling, I’m sure we’re going to be very happy there.’
Cathy’s reply tried to sound hopeful, but only succeeded in sounding doubtful.
‘I suppose we shall. But, my goodness, Alex, what a lot wants doing.’
At that time there were three Bell children: Paul who was six, Jane who was four and Virginia who was two. Another baby was expected, of course Alex and Cathy did not know what sort of a baby it would be but they hoped it would be a boy, and in their minds they called him Angus. Most of the planning of what was done in the vicarage had to be by Cathy, for Alex was not at all a practical man. He had been born in a home with plenty of money, and had not been taught by doing without what money was worth. His father owned woollen mills, and it had been his idea that his two sons, Alfred and Alexander, should join him in the wool business. Alfred had joined him, and had been so successful that he not only managed the London end of the business but was director of several companies as well. Alex had known from the beginning that he was not a bit interested in wool, and was determined to be a parson. There had been a dreadful row when finally he told his father about it, and when at last his father saw that Alex had made up his mind he said:
‘You must be daft, lad, there’s not a penny of money to be made in the Church. If you make a fool of yourself and go into it none of my brass’ll keep you.’
Alex’s father had kept his word. He had sent him to Cambridge, and paid all his expenses until he was accepted into the Church, but from that moment on he never gave him another penny. Alex did not mind a bit, but then he never thought they were poor, which made it very difficult when it came to things like moving house. Not a great deal could be done to the vicarage. The Bells were helped by something called ‘Queen Anne’s Bounty,’ which lends money to make vicarages habitable, but that mostly had to go on things like drains, and a gas stove—dull but frightfully important. The red paper was of course stripped off the walls, but paint is expensive, and so are wallpapers, so what most of the vicarage walls got in exchange was a good coat of distemper.
Before the Bells moved in two very important people came into their lives: the first was Mrs Gage. Cathy had asked one of the churchwardens to recommend somebody to come and give the floors a good scrubbing before the carpets were laid. She came to see the house while the scrubbing was going on. As she opened the door of the vicarage she heard a strange noise, half-tune half-puff. It was Mrs Gage scrubbing the hall while she sang the hymn ‘Pleasant are Thy courts above.’ It was a cold, beastly sort of day, in what ought to have been the beginning of spring and wasn’t. Cathy was tired after a long bus journey and was looking blueish-greenish. Mrs Gage raised her face from her scrubbing brush, took one look at Cathy and said firmly:
‘What you want, dear, is a nice cuppa.’
Over that first cup of tea Cathy learnt quite a lot about Mrs Gage. Mr Gage was in a nice way of business in the vegetable line.
‘Always been in the veg line ’is family ’as,’ Mrs Gage said, ‘seems to ’ave a proper talent for it. If there’s a good line in celery goin’ Mr Gage’s nose will tell ’im of it from ’ere to Covent Garden.’
Cathy learnt that Mr and Mrs Gage had five children, all were married except the youngest, Margaret Rose, who was still at school. She learnt that the Gages had a little house not far from the vicarage, evidently beautifully kept, for when Cathy admired the way the house was scrubbed Mrs Gage said:
‘I’m treatin’ the vicarage like me own place. I’m always tellin’ Mr Gage you can eat off me floors anywhere, ’ceptin’ when ’e brings in ’is great dirty feet, without wipin’ ’is shoes.’
Mrs Gage learnt a lot about Cathy which Cathy did not tell her. She knew, because Cathy told her, all about Paul, Jane and Virginia, but she also knew, although Cathy did not tell her, about the new baby, which was expected in the summer. She thought Alex, ‘The Reverend’ as she called him, a very nice-looking gentleman, but though Cathy did not tell her, she found out there were drawbacks to being the vicar’s wife. It might sound all right, but when it meant running a largish house with very long passages on very little money, it could be more of an anxiety than a pleasure. Another thing she knew, though Cathy said nothing about it, was that Cathy had a great deal to learn about management. Cathy thought she had been brought up in a not very well off home, and so she had compared with Alex, but Cathy’s idea of not very well off and Mrs Gage’s were two different things. Mrs Gage knew what it was for every penny to matter, and she thought it would be something that Cathy would have to learn. She knew that Cathy would need someone to help her to learn to manage, and to help her run the vicarage, at any rate, for the first few months. So suddenly she said:
‘I’ll pop in for an hour or two to start with, dear. I don’t work regular, but I don’t mind now and again to oblige.’
Cathy said cautiously that she was afraid she would not be able to have Mrs Gage often, because they would not be able to afford it. Mrs Gage had a glorious roaring friendly laugh, she laughed now.
‘Don’t worry, dear, we’ll manage some’ow. If you can’t pay me, I’ll ’ave to pick Mr Gage’s pocket, and not for the first time neither.’ Then she added more seriously: ‘Tell you what, I’ve always been meanin’ to do a bit of good works like, so once a month I’ll give The Reverend’s study a good turn out. It’ll be me good deed like.’
Cathy knew that Alex, who was never cross about anything, got the nearest thing he could be to cross when people turned out his study, but even meeting her for the first time she had got very fond of Mrs Gage and certainly wasn’t going to hurt her feelings. So she only said: ‘That’ll be lovely,’ and hoped Mrs Gage would forget about her good deed, or at least be careful to choose suitable days on which to do it.
The second person to come into the Bells’ lives walked, or rather blew, into the house uninvited. He would perhaps have been shown out again, only the day he blew in was the day Alex had borrowed a friend’s car and brought the three children over to see the vicarage. Paul was the only one who was old enough to realise the house they were looking at was to be their new home. The home he had left behind had all their furniture in it, which, though old and shabby, he had always known and loved. This house had no furniture at all and smelt nastily of distemper. There was a garden round the house which they had left. Facing them across the road almond trees were in bloom. Paul’s face as he looked round the vicarage and out of its windows was revolted. He did not so much speak as words burst out of him.
‘Mummy! We can’t stop here, this is an awful place. I don’t never want to live here.’
Cathy thought Paul was so very right, for she did not want to live there either, that she had to think before she answered him. It was while she was thinking the stranger blew in. A small, wriggling red cocker spaniel puppy. There was a strong wind that morning, the front door had not been properly shut, it had flown open, and the puppy had blown in with all his fur going the wrong way. Jane was the first to get hold of him, she knelt down beside him and hugged him to her.
‘Look, Mummy, a fairy dog. He’s come to live with us, for ever and ever.’
Cathy did not want any more family just then. Moving was quite enough without a not-yet-house-trained puppy added to the party, but Fate was against her. The puppy was one of three belonging to a sidesman, he was looking for a good home for it, and thought nothing could be better than the vicarage. Being parson’s children the Bells were, of course, properly brought up on the Bible, and a suitable name for the puppy was at once thought of by Paul.
‘We’ll call him Esau, because Esau was a hairy man.’ Suddenly the vicarage stopped looking awful, and Paul stopped minding moving into it, he gave Esau an enormous hug. ‘Good morning, Mr Esau Bell, we’re very glad to have you in the family.’
When the Bells had lived at St Mark’s Vicarage for seven and a half years Paul won a scholarship to a very good day school. This was an important day in the vicarage, for Paul needed a special education, for he was going to be a doctor. From their first summer in St Mark’s Vicarage, when Angus was only a new baby, the whole family had been invited to stay with Cathy’s brother, Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim had taken over his father’s practice, and he and his wife, Aunt Ann, and their children, Ricky and Liza, lived in the rambling house with the large untidy garden, that Cathy had known when she was a child. Quite near them lived Cathy’s father and mother, whom the children called Mumsdad and Mumsmum. Mumsdad had mostly retired from being a doctor but he still did some work for the cottage hospital. Paul, aged six, driving round the practice with Uncle Jim, or waiting outside the hospital for Mumsdad, thought the most glorious thing that could happen to anybody was to become a country doctor and live amongst trees and fields, and not in stuffy, noisy, dirty south-east London. But, as the years went by, and he grew older, his ideas changed. First, though he would not admit it and still grumbled about them, he got fond of both St Mark’s Vicarage and south-east London. Secondly, he knew he did not want to become a country doctor, that he meant some day to be a specialist, and work in one of the great London hospitals. Being a specialist, or training to be a doctor of any sort, is a very expensive business, and Paul knew, without being told, that it could only be done with scholarships. So it seemed to him his first real step towards being a doctor when he heard he had won his school scholarship.
Jane and Ginnie, as everybody called Virginia, went to a school called St Winifred’s. St Winifred’s had been built out of money left by a rich old lady ‘to provide girls with a Christian education, and to give free education to the daughters of poor clergy.’ The free education for the daughters of poor clergy was too good an offer for Alex and Cathy to turn down, but there were disadvantages about St Winifred’s. The girls had to wear an absolutely hideous uniform: shirt blouses with ties, very bunchy navy gym tunics, absolutely atrocious black stockings, no socks after your eleventh birthday, and black shoes, navy-blue overcoats, and the most unbecoming hats, with the school ribbon round them, that anyone had seen. Miss Newton, the headmistress, did what she could to modernise the school, which had very old-fashioned rules, but it was uphill work for the board of governors liked the old-fashioned rules and tried to make the school stick to them. Jane’s great interest in life was dancing. There was a dancing class at St Winifred’s which, as the daughter of a poor clergyman, she attended free. The dancing mistress, Miss Bronson, had been well trained, and did her best to pass on her training to the girls, but you cannot do much with two classes a week, and large classes at that. She had done what she could for Jane, having at once spotted she had talent. Sometimes she kept her after a class to give her private lessons, and she taught her exercises to do at home every day. As well, though Jane did not know this, she had been to Miss Newton about her. Jane, she said, in her opinion had outstanding talent, and should be properly trained. Miss Newton promised to pass on the message, but said she held out no hope.
‘They’re desperately poor, I’m afraid, and not being a Government school we can’t get special scholarships for our girls, but I’ll tell Mrs Bell the next time I see her.’
Cathy, when she heard what Miss Bronson had said, looked miserable.
‘I know she has talent, bless her, but I’m afraid a dancing school is out of the question. It wouldn’t be only the fees, it would be special clothes, and fares, and goodness knows what all. My children do grow so, and clothes are so expensive, and something always seems needing doing at the vicarage, it absolutely eats money, that house. I do hate saying no, but it really is impossible at present.’
Jane was the sort of girl who always worked hard at anything that she did. It worried her to be behind in her class, it even worried her that she was no good at games, and she tried very hard to make up for not being good at them by sounding extra keen about them, which she was not. St Winifred’s was the sort of school where hardworking girls like Jane got on very well, so she was as happy there as she could be in any school which was not a dancing school.
Ginnie was the exact opposite to Jane. Jane was thin, small for her age and unusually pretty, with dark blue eyes and brown hair curling to her shoulders. Ginnie was almost as wide as she was long, so wide that sometimes when her family were feeling mean they called her Queen Victoria, because she looked the same sort of shape as Queen Victoria looked when she was an old lady. Nobody could call Ginnie pretty, she had greenish coloured eyes, and very straight mouse-coloured hair which stuck away from her head in two stiff plaits. The nicest thing about her appearance was her smile, she had the kind of smile that nobody could see without feeling they had to smile too. Ginnie was the opposite to Jane about work too. She never cared how badly she did.
‘It’s simply idiotic for Miss Virginia Bell to slave and slave to be at the top of the class. All that would happen would be that she’d be so dead from exhaustion by the end of the week she couldn’t work any more so she’d be bottom the next week.’
Ginnie thought dancing the most disgusting waste of time. She had to go to the dancing classes, but she never learnt much, for she spent most of her time in the back row, making her friends laugh by imitating the girls in the front row. Ginnie adored games, sometimes she dreamt of being games’ captain, but it was only a dream, for she was not really outstanding, and in St Winifred’s you had to be outstanding to be a champion at anything, for it was a big school with over seven hundred girls.
Angus was at a choir school; he had a really lovely voice and had recently been promoted to sing solos. Angus despised his voice, he thought nothing of being able to sing. His ambition was to own a private zoo. In the bedroom which he shared with Paul, as the thin edge of the wedge, there were always at least six boxes of caterpillars.
‘Once Mummy’s got used to seeing these caterpillars, Paul, I bet she won’t notice if larger things come. I could start with a mouse or two, work through to rats, and then quite soon something perhaps as large as a monkey.’
Paul was not enthusiastic about Angus’s daydream.
‘You don’t keep to your end of the window ledge as it is, and if you think I want a monkey scratching for fleas all night you’ve got another think coming.’