They were noticeably beautiful children; dark, like Jennie, with a charming way of holding their heads. Jennie was, as she always had been, a sensible girl. She made nothing of their beauty, on which everyone felt compelled to remark. ‘As long as they behave themselves —’ said Jennie; and I thought what a pretty girl she was herself, and how little notice she took of her looks, and how much care she took with other people. I noticed that Jennie assumed that everyone else was inwardly as quiet, as peacefully inclined, as little prone to be perturbed, as herself. I found this very restful and was grateful to Jennie for it. Her husband resembled her in this; but otherwise, Simon was more positive. He was brisk, full of activity, as indeed was Jennie; the difference between them was that Jennie never appeared to be bustling, even at her busiest hours, while Simon always seemed to live in the act of doing something. They were a fine match. I supposed he had gained from Jennie, during their six years of marriage, a little of her sweet and self-denying nature for he was really considerate. Simon would stop mowing the lawn at once, if he caught sight of the old man next door asleep in a deck-chair, although his need to do something about the lawn was apparently intense. For Jennie’s part, she had learned from Simon how to speak to men without embarrassment. This was something she had been unable to do at the age of eighteen. Jennie got from Simon an insight into the mentalities of a fair variety of people, because his friends were curiously mixed, socially and intellectually. And in a way, Simon bore within himself an integrated combination of all those people he brought to the house; he represented them, almost, and kept his balance at the same time. So that Jennie derived from Simon a knowledge of the world, without actually weathering the world. A happy couple. And then, of course, there were the twins.
I arrived on a Saturday afternoon, to spend a week. The lovely twins were put to bed at six, and I did not see them much on the Sunday, as a neighbouring couple took them off for a day’s picnicking with their own children. I spent most of Monday chatting with Jennie about old times and new times, while little Marjie and Jeff played in the garden. They were lively, full of noise and everything that goes with healthy children. And they were advanced for their years; both could read and write, taught by Jennie. She was sending them to school in September. They pronounced their words very clearly, and I was amused to notice some of Jennie’s Scottish phraseology coming out in their English intonation.
Well, they went off to bed at six sharp that day: Simon came home shortly afterwards, and we dined in a pleasant humdrum peace.
It wasn’t until the Tuesday morning that I really got on close speaking terms with the twins. Jennie took the car to the village to fetch some groceries, and for an hour I played with them in the garden. Again, I was struck by their loveliness and intelligence, especially of the little girl. She was the sort of child who noticed everything. The boy was quicker with words, however; his vocabulary was exceptionally large.
Jennie returned, and after tea, I went indoors to write letters. I heard Jennie telling the children ‘Go and play yourselves down the other end of the garden and don’t make too much noise, mind.’ She went to do something in the kitchen. After a while, there was a ring at the back door. The children scampered in from the garden, while Jennie answered the ring.
‘Baker,’ said the man.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Jennie: ‘wait, I’ll get my purse.
I went on writing my letter, only half-hearing the sound of Jennie’s small change as she, presumably, paid the baker’s man.
In a moment, Marjie was by my side.
‘Hallo,’ I said.
Marjie did not answer.
‘Halo, Marjie,’ I said. ‘Have you come to keep me company?’
‘Listen,’ said little Marjie in a whisper, looking over her shoulder. ‘Listen.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She looked over her shoulder again, as if afraid her mother might come in.
‘Will you give me half-a-crown?’ whispered Marjie, holding out her hand.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what do you want it for?’
‘I want it,’ said Marjie, looking furtively behind her again.
‘Would your mummy want you to have it?’ I said.
‘Give me half-a-crown,’ said Marjie.
‘I’d rather not,’ I said. ‘But I’ll tell you what, I’ll buy you a —But Marjie had fled, out of the door, into the kitchen. ‘She’d rather not, I heard her say to someone.
Presently, Jennie came in, looking upset.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I hope you didn’t feel hurt. I only wanted to pay the baker, and I hadn’t enough change. He hadn’t any either; so just on the spur of the moment I sent Marjie for a loan of half-a-crown till tonight. But I shouldn’t have done it. I never borrow anything as a rule.’
‘Well, of course!’ I said. ‘Of course I’ll lend you half-a-crown. I’ve got plenty of change. I didn’t understand and I got the message all wrong; I thought she wanted it for herself and that you wouldn’t like that.’
Jennie looked doubtful. I funked explaining the whole of Marjie’s act. It isn’t easy to give evidence against a child of five.
‘Oh, they never ask for money,’ said Jennie. ‘I would never allow them to ask anyone for anything. They never do that.’
‘I’m sure they don’t,’ I said, floundering a bit.
Jennie was much too kind to point out that this was what I had just been suggesting. She was altogether too nice to let the incident make any difference during my stay. That night, Simon came home just after six. He had bought two elaborate spinning-tops for the twins. These tops had to be wound up, and they sang a tinny little tune while they spun.
‘You’ll ruin those children,’ said Jennie.
Simon enjoyed himself that evening, playing with the tops.
‘You’ll break them before the children even see them,’ said Jennie.
Simon put them away. But when one of his friends, a pilot from a nearby aerodrome, looked in later in the evening, Simon brought out the tops again; and the two men played delightedly with them, occasionally peering into the works and discussing what made the tops go; while Jennie and I made scornful comments.
Little Marjie and Jeff were highly pleased with the tops next morning, but by the afternoon they had tired of them and gone on to something more in the romping line. After dinner Simon produced a couple of small gadgets. They were the things that go inside musical cigarette-boxes, he explained, and he thought they would fit into the spinning-tops, so that the children could have a change of tune.
‘When they get fed up with “Pop Goes the Weasel”,’ he said, ‘they can have “In and Out the Windows”.’
He got out one of the tops to take it apart and fit in the new tune. But when he had put the pieces together again, the top wouldn’t sing at all. Jennie tried to help, but we couldn’t get ‘In and Out the Windows’. So Simon patiently unpieced the top, put the gadgets aside, and said they would do for something else.
‘That’s Jeff’s top,’ said Jennie, in her precise way, looking at the pieces on the carpet. ‘Jeff’s is the red one, Marjie has the blue.’
Once more, Simon started piecing the toy together, with the old tune inside it, while Jennie and I went to make some tea.
‘I’ll bet it won’t work now,’ said Jennie with a giggle.
When we returned, Simon was reading and the top was gone.
‘Did you fix it?’ said Jennie.
‘Yes,’ he said absently. ‘I’ve put it away.’
It rained the next morning and the twins were indoors.
‘Why not play with your tops?’ Jennie said.
‘Your Daddy took one of them to pieces last night,’ Jennie informed them, ‘and put all the pieces back again.’
Jennie had the stoic in her nature and did not believe in shielding her children from possible disappointment.
‘He was hoping,’ she added, ‘to fit new tunes inside it. But it wouldn’t work with the new tune … But he’s going to try again
.’
They took this quite hopefully, and I didn’t see much of them for some hours although, when the rain stopped and I went outside, I saw the small boy spinning his bright-red top on the hard concrete of the garage floor. About noon little Jeff came running into the kitchen where Jennie was baking. He was howling hard, his small face distorted with grief. He held in both arms the spare parts of his top.
‘My top!’ he sobbed. ‘My top!’
‘Goodness,’ said Jennie, ‘what did you do to it? Don’t cry, poor wee pet.’
‘I found it,’ he said. ‘I found my top all in pieces under that box behind Daddy’s car.
‘My top,’ he wept. ‘Daddy’s broken my top.’ Marjie came in and looked on unmoved, hugging her blue top.
‘But you were playing with the top this morning!’ I said. ‘Isn’t yours the red one? You were spinning it.’
‘I was playing with the blue one,’ he wept. ‘And then I found my own top all broken. Daddy broke it.’
Jennie sat them up to their dinner, and Jeff presently stopped crying.
Jennie was cheerful about it, although she said to me afterwards, ‘I think Simon might have told me he couldn’t put it together again. But isn’t it just like a man? They’re that proud of themselves, men.
As I have said, it isn’t easy to give evidence against a child of five. And especially to its mother.
Jennie tactfully put the pieces of the top back in the box behind the garage. They were still there, rusty and untouched, in a pile of other rusty things, seven years later, for I saw them. Jennie got skipping ropes for the twins that day and when they had gone to bed, she removed Marjie’s top from the toy-cupboard. ‘It’ll only make wee Jeff cry to see it,’ she said to me. ‘We’ll just forget about the tops.
‘And I don’t want Simon to find out that I found him out,’ she giggled. I don’t think tops were ever mentioned again in the household. If they were, I am sure Jennie would change the subject. An affectionate couple; it was impossible not to feel kindly towards them; not so, towards the children.
I was abroad for some years after that, and heard sometimes from Jennie at first; later, we seldom wrote, and then not at all. I had been back in London for about a year when I met Jennie in Baker Street. She was excited about her children, now aged twelve, who had both won scholarships and were going off to boarding schools in the autumn.
‘Come and see them while they’ve got their holidays,’ she said. ‘We often talk about you, Simon and I.’ It was good to hear Jennie’s kind voice again.
I went to stay for a few days in August. I felt sure the twins must have grown out of their peculiarities, and I was right. Jennie brought them to meet me at the station. They had grown rather quiet; both still extremely good-looking. These children possessed an unusual composure for their years. They were well-mannered as Jennie had been at their age, but without Jennie’s shyness.
Simon was pruning something in the garden when we got to the house.
‘Why, you haven’t changed a bit,’ he said. ‘A bit thinner maybe. Nice to see you so flourishing.’
Jennie went to make tea. In these surroundings she seemed to have endured no change; and she had made no change in her ways in the seven years since my last visit.
The twins started chatting about their school life, and Simon asked me questions I could not answer about the size of the population of the places I had lived in abroad. When Jennie returned, Simon leapt off to wash.
‘I’m sorry Simon said that,’ said Jennie to me when he had gone. ‘I don’t think he should have said it, but you know how tactless men are.
‘Said what?’ I asked.
‘About you looking thin and ill,’ said Jennie.
‘Oh, I didn’t take it that way!’ I said.
‘Didn’t you?’ said Jennie with an understanding smile. ‘That was sweet of you.’
‘Thin and haggard indeed!’ said Jennie as she poured out the tea, and the twins discreetly passed the sandwiches.
That night I sat up late talking to the couple. Jennie retained the former habit of making a tea-session at nine o’clock and I accompanied her to the kitchen. While she was talking, she packed a few biscuits neatly into a small green box.
‘There’s the kettle boiling,’ said Jennie, going out with the box in her hand. ‘You know where the teapot is. I won’t be a minute.’
She returned in a few seconds, and we carried off our tray.
It was past one before we parted for the night. Jennie had taken care to make me comfortable. She had put fresh flowers on the dressing-table, and there, beside my bed, was the little box of biscuits she had thought-fully provided. I munched one while I looked out of the window at the calm country sky, ruminating upon Jennie’s perennial merits. I have always regarded the lack of neurosis in people with awe. I am too much with brightly intelligent, highly erratic friends. In this Jennie, I decided, reposed a mystery which I and my like could not fathom.
Jennie had driven off next day to fetch the twins from a swimming-pool nearby, when Simon came home from his office.
‘I’m glad Jennie’s out,’ he said, ‘for I wanted a chance to talk to you.
‘I hope you won’t mind,’ he said, ‘but Jennie’s got a horror of mice.’
‘Mice?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Simon, ‘so don’t eat biscuits in your room if you wouldn’t mind. Jennie was rather upset when she saw the crumbs but of course she’d have a fit if she knew I’d told you. She’d die rather than tell you. But there it is, and I know you’ll understand.’
‘But Jennie put the biscuits in my room herself,’ I explained. ‘She packed them in a box and took them up last night.’
Simon looked worried. ‘We’ve had mice before,’ he said, ‘and she can’t bear the thought of them upstairs.
‘Jennie put the biscuits there,’ I insisted, feeling all in the wrong.
‘And,’ I said, ‘I saw Jennie pack the box. I’ll ask her about it.’
‘Please,’ said Simon, ‘please don’t do that. She would be so hurt to think I’d spoken about it. Please,’ he said, ‘go on eating biscuits in your room; I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
Of course I promised not to eat any more of the things. And Simon, with a knowing smile, said he would give me larger helpings at dinner, so that I wouldn’t go hungry.
The biscuit-box had gone when I went to my room. Jennie was busy all next day preparing for a cocktail party they were giving that night. The twins devotedly gave up their day to the cutting of sandwiches and the making of curious patterns with small pieces of anchovy on diminutive squares of toast.
Jennie wanted some provisions from the village, and I offered to fetch them. I took the car, and noticed it was almost out of petrol; I got some on the way. When I returned, these good children were eating their supper standing up in the kitchen, and without a word of protest, cleared off to bed before the guests arrived.
When Simon came home I met him in the hall. He was uneasy about the gin; he thought there might not be enough. He decided to go straight to the local and get more.
‘And,’ he said, ‘I’ve just remembered. The car’s almost out of petrol. I promised to drive the Rawlings home after the party. I nearly forgot. I’ll get some petrol too.
‘Oh, I got some today,’ I said.
There were ten guests, four married couples and two unattached girls. Jennie and I did the handing round of snacks and Simon did the drinks. His speciality was a cocktail he had just discovered, called Loopamp. This Loopamp required him to make frequent excursions to the kitchen for replenishments of prune-juice and ice. Simon persuaded himself that Loopamp was in great demand among the guests. We all drank it obligingly. As he took his shakers to the kitchen for the fourth time, he called out to one of the unattached girls who was standing by the door, ‘Mollie, bring that lemon jug too, will you?’
Mollie followed him with the lemon jug.
‘Very good scholarships,’ Jennie was saying to an elde
rly man. ‘Jeff came fourth among the boys, and Marjie took eleventh place in the girls. There were only fourteen scholarships, so she was lucky. If it hadn’t been for the geography she’d have been near the top. Her English teacher told me.
‘Really!’ said the man.
‘Yes,’ said Jennie. ‘Mollie Thomas; you know Mollie Thomas. That’s Marjie’s English mistress. She’s here tonight. Where’s Mollie?’ said Jennie, looking round.
‘She’s in the kitchen,’ I said.
‘Making Loopamp, I expect,’ said Jennie. ‘What a name, Loopamp!’
Simon and Jennie looked rather jaded the next morning. I put it down to the Loopamp. They had very little to say, and when Simon had left for London, I asked Jennie how she was feeling.
‘Not too good,’ she said. ‘Not too good. I am really sorry, my dear, about the petrol. I wish you had asked me for the money. Now, here it is, and don’t say another word. Simon’s so touchy.’
‘Touchy?’
‘Well,’ said Jennie; ‘you know what men are like. I wish you had come to me about it. You know how scrupulous I am about debts. And so is Simon. He just didn’t know you had got the petrol, and, of course, he couldn’t understand why you felt hurt.’
I sent myself a wire that morning, summoning myself back to London. There wasn’t a train before the 6.30, but I caught this. Simon arrived home as I was getting into the taxi, and he joined Jennie and the children on the doorstep to wave goodbye.
‘Mind you come again soon,’ said Jennie.
As I waved back, I noticed that the twins, who were waving to me, were not looking at me, but at their parents. There was an expression on their faces which I have only seen once before. That was at the Royal Academy, when I saw a famous portrait painter standing bemused, giving a remarkable and long look at the work of his own hands. So, with wonder, pride and bewilderment, did the twins gaze upon Jennie and Simon.
I wrote and thanked them, avoiding any reference to future meetings. By return I had a letter from Simon. ‘I am sorry,’ he wrote, ‘that you got the impression that Mollie and I were behaving improperly in the kitchen on the night of our party. Jennie was very upset. She does not, of course, doubt my fidelity, but she is distressed that you could suggest such a thing. It was very embarrassing for Jennie to hear it in front of all her friends, and I hope, for Jennie’s sake, you will not mention to her that I have written you about it. Jennie would rather die than hurt your feelings. Yours ever, Simon Reeves.’