‘You can’t wear it. You simply can’t’
THERE IS A very special smell that belongs to a birthday. Angus woke up early, sniffed and wondered for a moment why the morning smelt exciting. Then, in a second, he remembered and in one bounce was out of bed and hopping round the room.
‘Wake up, Paul. It’s birthday day. I’m eight.’
Paul rolled over, and would have told Angus what he thought of him for waking him up, but he remembered in time what day it was.
‘Many happy returns. I wanted to buy you some white mice, but Mum said you’d nowhere to keep them. But I’ve bought something I know you want, you’ll get it at breakfast.’
The thought of parcels on his plate made Angus hurry. He rushed out into the passage to see if he could be the first in the bathroom, but Jane had beaten him to it.
‘Sorry,’ she shouted through the door. ‘Many happy returns. You should have had it first, you’re a king today and can do what you like, but I didn’t know you wanted it. I couldn’t get up early enough on this gorgeous day. Imagine! The ballet and a new dress!’
The girls’ bedroom door was open so Angus walked in, for it was as good a place to wait for the bathroom as any other. Ginnie was sitting on her bed with her back to the door, very busy working at something, but she heard Angus come in.
‘Hallo, happy birthday and all that.’ Then she turned and made a this-is-secret face at him.
Angus tiptoed across the room.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sewing the flowers on Mummy’s frock of course. Imagine, Angus, I could only start last night, because she didn’t press it till yesterday afternoon, and I couldn’t start till she’d done that, or she’d have seen the flowers and the surprise would have been spoilt.’ Ginnie held up the dress. ‘Look, isn’t it gorgeous!’
Cathy’s dress was a very plainly cut black crêpe-de-chine. Ginnie had sewn the violets round the neck, the daisies on the cuffs, and was finishing sewing the last of the bright-red roses round the waist. Angus was full of admiration.
‘It does look gay! Won’t Mummy be pleased!’
‘I stayed awake simply ages to do it. I thought Jane would never go to sleep. I never would have kept awake only I stood up to sew, you can’t really go to sleep standing up because you fall over if you do. I’d better put it away now in case Jane comes. I’m hiding it behind our mackintoshes. I’m going to put on the last of the roses when Jane’s doing her dancing practice.’ Ginnie got up and opened the cupboard door and hung up the dress. ‘I simply can’t wait for this evening to see Mummy’s face when she sees what I’ve done for her.’
Jane came bounding into the bedroom.
‘The bathroom’s all yours, Angus,’ then she saw Ginnie beside the cupboard. ‘Has Ginnie been showing you my lovely frock? Mummy finished it last night, I think it’s too beautiful to be true.’
It was a charming frock of silk with little flowers all over it. Ginnie looked at it gloomily.
‘It’s all right for you, Jane, but each time I see you being fitted in it I shudder. I can see me in it in two years’ time. Unless my shape changes very much by then I’m not going to like me in it at all. I’m not the sort of girl to wear dresses that stick out and rustle.’ Jane closed the door behind Angus. Ginnie’s voice became muffled for the yard measure was across her mouth. ‘Still not swollen, thank goodness, but I knew it wouldn’t be.’ She rolled up the yard measure. ‘Mrs Gage says before you have mumps you feel proper rough, and your face pains you something chronic. I don’t feel rough at all, I feel very smooth this morning, and my face doesn’t hurt the teeniest weeniest bit.’
‘I should stop worrying about your face. Mrs Gage said yesterday she’d never seen a face less like having mumps.’
Ginnie put away the yard measure.
‘As a matter of fact this morning Miss Virginia Bell wasn’t worrying about her face. D’you know what I’d have done, Jane, if I had the tiniest feeling of mumps this morning?’
‘Gone to bed of course.’
‘Not me. What’d be the good? You’d have all had quarantine if I’d had it, and then nobody could go to the ballet. No, I’d have gone to the ballet, and I’d have spent all the evening taking deep breaths, and breathing them at Veronica.’
On birthdays the place of the birthday person was decorated. For Angus’s birthday Cathy had made a ring of early summer flowers, and in the middle was his pile of birthday presents. On birthdays breakfast had to be half an hour early, to allow time for parcel opening before school. Angus had some lovely presents. Esau always gave the same present, a birthday card marked with his footprint. There was a camera from Mumsdad and Mumsmum, a box of tools from Cathy and Alex, a torch from Paul, a platform for his railway from Jane, a magnificent magnet from Mrs Gage, a china goat and a little plaster rabbit from Ginnie, and a morse code buzzer from Miss Bloggs.
They were all full of admiration when they saw the buzzer, it really was such a good idea. Ginnie said:
‘I would never have thought Miss Bloggs was a morse-code buzzer sort of person. When she said an elf had told her what you wanted for your birthday, Angus, my bet was, that sort of hymn book that has tunes in it was coming.’
Alex tried to look stern-fatherish.
‘You children are very unjust to Miss Bloggs, she’s not got much money, and it seems to me she always gives you lovely presents.’
Angus was eating his breakfast with one hand and playing with the buzzer with the other.
‘Actually this buzzer is almost the nicest present I’ve had.’
‘Not nicer than Mummy and Daddy’s tools,’ Jane protested, ‘or the camera from Mumsdad and Mumsmum.’
Angus gazed affectionately at the buzzer.
‘This is a immediate nice present. I can take it to school. The tools will be nice for always, and so will the torch and the platform. The camera would have been more useful if it had come last week. It’s newer than Paul’s, so it would have taken a much better picture of Esau.’
‘One would think,’ said Ginnie, ‘that Miss Virginia Bell had not given Mr Angus Bell a birthday present, for he didn’t mention it.’
Angus looked gravely at Ginnie.
‘I’m pleased to have that little goat, and I’m glad to have the rabbit, but I can’t help knowing that you didn’t buy the rabbit, because I saw it come out of that cracker at Christmas.’
‘You’re a very ungrateful boy, Angus, isn’t he, Mummy? When Jane told me she’d bought you a new platform for your railway I said that I’d buy you a little goat, and I’ll not only buy him a goat but I’ll give him the rabbit as well. They can both stand on the platform as luggage.’
Cathy smiled at Angus.
‘So they can, darling, and even birthday boys must eat their breakfast.’
Angus took a mouthful, but he had not finished his argument.
‘Goats and rabbits don’t stand on platforms as luggage much.’
Ginnie turned to her father.
‘That a child of yours should be so ignorant, Daddy!’ Then she hissed at Angus: ‘In the country they do all the time.’
Before the family left for school Cathy said:
‘Now listen, darlings. Everybody is to be completely ready by twenty past six. Uncle Alfred’s hire car will be here at half-past, you know how fussy he is about punctuality.’
Usually, of course, there was a special tea with a cake on birthdays, but because of the party Angus’s tea and cake were saved for Saturday. Instead there was a high tea, with an egg each to keep them, Cathy said, from rumbling during the performance.
In the contrary way things like boilers always behave, that day the vicarage boiler chose to what Mrs Gage called ‘act up.’ She came to the tea table to warn the children.
‘Nothin’ for it, dears, if you’re to ’ave baths before you dress, same as your Mum said, you’ll ’ave to share the water. It won’t ’ot up more’n the once.’
It was decided that Angus, because it was his birthday, would have first bath. Ginnie, because she was slow, second, and Jane third. Paul was not home from school when the discussion started, so he was clearly the fourth bath-er.
‘Oh, Mummy,’ pleaded Jane, ‘must I have a bath? I want to feel gorgeous all over under my new frock, and I can’t all messed up with Angus and Ginnie’s dirty water.’
Ginnie was so indignant she choked over her egg.
‘I like that. Mr Angus Bell and Miss Virginia Bell are just as clean as Miss Jane Bell. As a matter of fact, when I get out of the bath nobody will ever know anyone has bathed in the water.’
Cathy laughed.
‘Painfully true as a rule, I’m afraid, but not on this occasion, because Mrs Gage is going to be in the bathroom seeing that every corner of both Mr Angus and Miss Virginia Bell is scrubbed.’ Then she turned to Jane. ‘If you come to my bedroom before you have your bath I’ll give you some of those eau-de-cologne bath crystals I had for Christmas. They ought to make you feel worthy of the new frock.’
‘Do you think I could take my morse-code buzzer with me to the theatre?’ Angus asked. ‘Then I could practise it if I didn’t like the ballet.’
Nobody refused requests, if they could help it, made by the person whose birthday it was, but Alex very quickly turned that suggestion down.
‘Certainly not.’
Jane saw Angus thought Alex was being mean.
‘But you could take the torch Paul gave you.’ She saw her father looked like arguing. ‘It’ll help you find the keyhole when we get in.’
Angus was glad he might bring his torch, but it was a poor substitute for his buzzer, so it seemed a good moment to present another idea. He adored a swop, but seldom had something really good to bargain with.
‘That camera Mumsmum and Mumsdad gave isn’t any use to me. I’ll get eight pennies a week now I’m eight, but I have lots of things to buy with it, so I could hardly ever buy a film.’
Pocket money in the Bell family was earned money. On the principle that the older you were the more help you should be, Jane, Ginnie and Angus had as many pennies a week as they were years old. Paul had more as part of his scholarship.
Cathy felt sure Angus was planning a swop.
‘There is a film in the camera, and I think in the summer holidays films for it can come out of the money box, because we all like family photographs.’ She saw Angus was going to argue. ‘Now run along, darling, and have your bath.’
Much barking from Esau announced Paul was home.
‘The only miserable thing about the day is Esau being left at home,’ Jane said. ‘I’ll hate seeing his sad little face when we leave.’
‘If we say “church,”’ Ginnie suggested, ‘he’ll think we’ll soon be back.’
Jane looked scornful.
‘Why should he think we were going to church, in an expensive hire car? He’s not a fool.’
Cathy looked at her watch and then at Jane and Ginnie.
‘You better go up, Ginnie. I shouldn’t think Mrs Gage will take long scrubbing Angus.’
Paul came in. Cathy gave him his egg, which she was keeping hot.
‘I’m going to clear all round you, Paul, and start the washing-up. Mrs Gage is bathing the family.’
Jane stopped in the doorway.
‘And you, my poor boy, have to have fourth used water. We have to share because it won’t get hot. I should think your bath will be pure mud.’
Paul and Alex, left alone, sat in companionable silence. They heard through the open door Mrs Gage at work on Ginnie in the bathroom. They heard a discussion carried on in a shout between Jane upstairs, and Cathy in the kitchen, as to the whereabouts of the eau-de-cologne bath salts, and another louder conversation between Angus and Cathy about a shirt. Presently Paul said:
‘What a fuss, Dad!’
‘Your mother wants her family to cut a dash. Anything said about your missing your cricket practice?’
Paul cut himself another piece of bread.
‘Nothing much. Just he hoped that it was the only Thursday I’d miss, as they’d got their eye on me. He didn’t say anything about my chances of course, but he did say they were on the look out for bowlers.’
‘Too early yet to tell your Uncle Alfred I suppose.’ Paul thought talking of something that might never happen a bragging sort of thing to do. He made a protesting noise. Alex nodded. ‘Quite right. Pity, though. He’d be interested. He was quite a bowler at school.’
Cathy, holding a steaming kettle, stood in the doorway. Her face was wearing the sort of despairing face mothers’ faces wear when the men of her family do idiotic things.
‘Look at you two! Talking about cricket as if you had all day before you. Do you know it’s well after half-past five?’
Paul hurriedly swallowed the rest of his tea. Alex, looking rather hang-dog, got up.
‘Sorry, darling. What’s the kettle for?’
Cathy tried not to sound irritated.
‘For you to shave. I thought you knew the water’d gone wrong. The children are sharing the only bath.’
Upstairs there was the gay rushing about of a family getting ready for a party. Angus, already dressed in a clean shirt and his best shorts, was hopping up and down the passage, tapping his morse-code buzzer. Alex caught hold of him to have a look at him. Mrs Gage had done a remarkable job. His hair, which usually stood on end, was beautifully parted and smoothed flat with water. His face, neck and ears shone as if they had been polished. His tie was neatly tied and pinned into place.
‘My word,’ said Alex, ‘I didn’t know you could look so clean.’
Cathy called to Paul.
‘See Angus doesn’t touch the caterpillars. He’s beautifully tidy and he’s to stop like that.’
Jane, in her dressing-gown, danced out of the bathroom.
‘Smell me, Mummy. Did you ever know anyone smell so gorgeous? I’m coming in to show you as soon as I’ve got my frock on.’
Mrs Gage, grinning, came out of the bathroom.
‘Look a bit of all right, don’t they? You seen young Ginnie?’
Ginnie came out of her bedroom.
‘I’m so clean I couldn’t be cleaner.’
Ginnie was always last, but now, except for her frock, she seemed dressed. Cathy was surprised.
‘How quick you’ve been.’
‘I hurried. Could I come and watch you dress, Mummy?’
Cathy, knowing no reason for Ginnie’s request, thought she meant to be funny.
‘Very interesting I’m sure, to watch me put on my old black.’
‘Please, Mummy.’
Cathy could not imagine why Ginnie was interested.
‘Goose. Of course you can’t. We haven’t much time, and Daddy has to shave. Thank goodness I did make time to have my hair set.’
Ginnie frowned at the shut bedroom door. It had been such work putting on the flowers, if only she could be there to see her mother’s face when she saw them.
In the bedroom Cathy was getting on with her dressing and Alex was shaving. Suddenly Cathy gasped.
‘Oh, Alex! Look!’
Alex looked. He saw Cathy at the wardrobe, holding what seemed to him to be a fancy dress.
‘What on earth’s that?’
Cathy spoke in a stunned voice.
‘My old black. Violets round the neck. Very, very tired roses round the waist, marguerites on the cuffs.’
Alex, his face all over soap, came across the room and examined the dress.
‘Who sewed them on?’
‘Must have been Ginnie. Angus can’t sew, and Jane would never be so silly. Oh, Alex, I do hate hurting Ginnie’s feelings, but they must come off. I’ll look like the Goddess of Spring.’
Alex was not thinking of the dress, but of Ginnie.
‘Would it have taken her long to sew them on?’
‘Ages I should think, and she must have done it in the night, for the dress was all right when I pressed it yesterday afternoon. Oh, dear, it’s meant to please me. What shall I say to her?’
Alex did not see the dress as a problem.
‘Wear it. It was a labour of love.’
Cathy gazed at him in horror.
‘Wear it! It’ll ruin the evening. Can you see the expression on your mother’s and Rose’s face if I walk into Covent Garden covered in flowers? Can’t you imagine the way everyone who looked at me would laugh?’
Alex thought clothes unimportant and hurt feelings, especially hurt feelings of a child, very important.
‘Does it matter whether people smile or not?’
‘Not to you perhaps, but it does to me.’
‘Well, wear a coat over it.’
‘Oh, get on with your shaving. The temperature has been seventy all day, and, as you very well know, I haven’t got a coat fit to go to Covent Garden in. Besides which it wouldn’t help. Ginnie would be very hurt if I covered this flower garden with an old winter coat.’
Jane banged on the door.
‘Can I come in, Mummy? My frock is scrumdatious.’
Cathy opened the door, shut it behind Jane, and watched her horrified expression as she saw the black dress.
‘Isn’t it ghastly! Ginnie must have done it as a surprise for me.’
Jane saw even more clearly than Cathy had done Aunt Rose’s and Grandmother’s faces. She could hear the giggles and see the nudges.
‘You can’t wear it. You simply can’t.’
Alex had finished shaving, he joined the group round the frock.
‘I’m afraid she must. You see, it was a labour of love.’
Jane did not care whether the flowers were a labour of love or not, she only knew her mother must not wear them.
‘I can’t help what they are, Daddy. Mummy simply couldn’t go to Covent Garden wearing them. It looks like a very, very bad fancy dress.’
‘Exactly.’ Cathy sat on her bed. ‘Oh, Jane, can’t you think of some way I could take them off without hurting Ginnie’s feelings?’
Jane fingered the weary-looking flowers.
‘If they weren’t three sorts they wouldn’t be quite so awful.’
Cathy jumped up.
‘Clever girl! I believe she’s got it, Alex. I shall tell Ginnie I can only wear one sort of flower. That vicar’s wives never wear three kinds at once.’
Jane did not see that one kind would help much.
‘But which will you wear? Those dreadfully flabby violets at the neck? Those dirty marguerites at the wrists or those ghastly roses?’
Cathy smiled bravely over Jane’s head at Alex.
‘Ginnie shall choose. I’m not going to hurt her feelings more than I must.’
Alex had been a little shaken by Jane’s horror when she saw the dress.
‘That does seem a solution. I do hope she understands, bless her.’
‘She will,’ said Cathy, ‘she’s a very sensible child. Oh, dear, I do pray she chooses the marguerites, my gloves will cover most of them. Call her, Jane.’
Ginnie had been waiting for that call. She bounded into the bedroom as if off a springboard.
‘Did you want me, Mummy?’ Then, seeing the frock in Cathy’s hands. ‘Are you pleased? They took simply ages to sew on. I had to do it standing up because I went to sleep sitting down.’
Cathy kissed Ginnie.
‘So pleased I could hug you to bits. But I’m afraid I can’t wear it quite like this. I’m afraid three sorts of flowers at once wouldn’t look suitable, and you know what Uncle Alfred is about things being suitable. Vicars’ wives don’t wear three sorts of flowers at the same time.’
‘You can’t wear it. You simply can’t’
Ginnie could not believe her flowers were to be taken off the dress.
‘But, Mummy, they took simply hours to sew on.’
‘I’m sure they did, darling, but you wouldn’t want me to go to a party unsuitably dressed, would you?’
Ginnie felt a great lump swell up in her throat. After all, wasn’t her mother pleased? Wasn’t it a lovely surprise? Her voice sounded as if there was a lump in her throat.
‘I don’t think you’d be unsuitably dressed. To me you’d look like a queen.’
Alex took a hand.
‘Uncle Alfred doesn’t expect Mummy to look like a queen, he expects her to look like a vicar’s wife.’
Cathy saw Ginnie was near tears.
‘Look, darling, you must accept that vicars’ wives only wear one sort of flower. The question is, which? You must choose.’
Ginnie gazed first at the violets, then at the roses, then at the marguerites. They had all taken so long to sew on. They all looked so perfect. It was dreadful to think of any of them being cut off again.
‘If it can be only one sort, then I know which it must be. The roses. I think they are the crimsonest roses there ever were in the world. You can see them for miles and miles.’