“Good afternoon, Mr. Waite, I’m so glad that you could come. Oh—let me take that,” seeing him glancing doubtfully about for a place to put his hat, “there’s nowhere to put it here, I’m afraid, we must take it into the sitting-room. Do come in,” and she led him towards the parlour, his own contribution consisting of mutters and gestures with the hat.
A room cannot look completely unattractive when it contains three pretty young women and a bright fire, and even Mr. Waite, who had come prepared to be wooed into amiability, felt amiable sooner than he had intended as he surveyed the scene. After the presentations were over he seated himself in the most comfortable chair, and prevented a silence from falling (not that he noticed the threat) by staring round the room and exclaiming:
“What’s happened to all the furniture?”
“Oh, I suddenly couldn’t bear it another minute, so I moved it into the woodshed,” said Alda cheerfully, holding out the cigarette box, “but it’s all coming back this evening.”
“Into the woodshed? But from what I remember of the size of the woodshed here, and the amount of furniture there was in this room, you could hardly get it all into the woodshed. (Thank you.).”
“It was rather a squeeze, but I managed. (Have you a match?—Oh, Jean—your lighter—thank you.).”
“There were some heavy pieces, too,” pursued Mr. Waite, having acknowledged the offer of the lighter with a shake of the head at Jean, a mutter, and the production of one of those extremely large, heavy military lighters in yellow metal which suggest to the nervous the possibility of explosions.
“Not very heavy, if you made up your mind.”
“Quite nice pieces, as I remember them,” said Mr. Waite, reprovingly.
“Oh no, definitely nasty,” said Alda, who was beginning to feel slightly hysterical.
“‘Something nasty in the woodshed,’” said Jean. “Alda darling, shall I go and make the tea? The children will be in any minute.”
“Please, J. Er—are you lucky enough to have your own possessions at Meadow Cottage, Mr. Waite?”
“I took it partly furnished. There are some nice pieces there, too, but not so nice as here, as I remember them.” (He talks as if they were all dead and I wish they were, thought Alda.) “Well, if you are going to move them all back in here this evening, I must help you.”
“Oh no—it’s most kind of you—but really——”
“You cannot possibly move those heavy pieces of furniture by yourself,” said Mr. Waite sternly. “I must help you.”
“That will be kind of you; thank you very much,” said Alda brightly.
She opened her mouth to introduce the subject of her daughters’ first day at the convent school, when Sylvia, who had all this time sat in silence staring at Mr. Waite, said loudly:
“I don’t expect you remember me, do you, Mr. Waite?”
“I remember you perfectly,” answered Mr. Waite at once, turning upon her a disapproving look which proved that his ignoring of her presence had been deliberate, “but for the moment I did not recognise you.” His handsome gloomy eyes took in the raw steak, the pompadour and what Alda now only saw by the bright afternoon light: a sheen of blue upon Sylvia’s eyelashes.
“I expect I look a bit different from the way I do every day,” she said, colouring and looking annoyed. “You can’t make yourself look anything in those awful duds they make you wear, it’s a treat to get out of them.”
“It is not a becoming dress for a lady,” said Mr. Waite, and his audience felt that neither were mucking out cowsheds nor moving heavy pieces of furniture becoming occupations for ladies. He implied that somewhere there were ladies who did dress and behave becomingly; who wore tightly-buttoned, pale gloves and knots of sweet peas among their laces while they poured out the tea and listened to the gentlemen talking.
“Of course, I’m only doing this work temporary,” said Sylvia defiantly.
“Miss Scorby is going on the stage as soon as the Government releases her,” said Alda, now feeling that there were few things she would enjoy better than shocking Mr. Waite.
“A very hard life,” was Mr. Waite’s contribution.
“Oo, I shan’t mind that. My father was an actor—Sylvester Scorby—you may have heard of him.”
Alda glanced at her, then glanced away, remembering those remarks about “pretty ham,” but if the child wanted to glorify her father’s memory, that was touching and right.
Mr. Waite shook his head.
“A very hard life—especially for a lady,” he repeated, then stood up as Jean came in with a tray.
“I must help you,” he said with an awkward smile.
I wish he wouldn’t say he must help us, as if it were a sort of curse laid on him by Heaven, thought Alda, carefully not catching Jean’s eye, and observing that Sylvia had leant back and crossed her legs and was not going to help anybody except by displaying four inches of the petticoat.
“Oh, thank you,” said Jean, smiling up at him and letting him take the tray. All her diamonds, large and small, glittered in a late gleam of sunlight that had found its way through the screening laurels, and this accounted for his first definite thought about her: she must have money.
Soon the cups of tea were distributed, and everybody was eating bread and butter or a sandwich and Sylvia was dominating the conversation, as she always did where more than three people were present; only a tête-à-tête with someone who enjoyed eating, talking and showing off more than she herself did, could force her into the part of listener.
“—where I was trained, the Canonbury School of Dramatic Art, it’s three big houses; you know, regular mid-Victorian mansions, all knocked into one. Oo, we did have a wizard time there! I’d give anything to be back. On V.E. night, do you know what me and a lot of others did?”
Pause, while the eyes, positively darting sapphire sparkles of joy and mischief, roved round the circle of faces. Alda and Jean were sparkling a little themselves but were trying to look merely pleasant and entertained and Mr. Waite was looking extremely severe.
“Well, all us girls put on our trousers so’s not to spoil our good clothes (I had an awful old Lana Turner, too, miles too tight it was, it looked simply awful, so I pinched one of the boys’ coats, Benjy, a Jewish boy he was) and then we all went down into the West End. Crowds! You never saw anything like the people! And everybody dancing and singing and letting off crackers——”
“Highly dangerous,” put in Mr. Waite in a tone of melancholy satisfaction. “Easily blind anyone or cripple them for life.”
“—Oo I know, but that was part of the fun. Me and my friend Marie, she’s a Polish refugee, her people are rolling in money, not that that makes any difference to me, of course, I’m a Communist——”
Here Mr. Waite gave a sardonic nod. I knew it, said the nod; I was expecting it. Necromancy and the Black Mass to follow.
“—and she never has a dime anyway, they lost it all when Uncle Joe liberated Poland, she and I, we believe in living dangerously, you know, like Nietzsche said. Oo, we did have a lovely time! Do you know what we did? The boys got hold of one of those wooden carts the roadmen take round, and all us girls climbed on to it and the boys began to pull it downhill and it went quicker and quicker, and the boys couldn’t stop it, it was so heavy with all of us on it, and it began to run away! And did we scream! Oh boy, oh boy, we sounded like all the werewolves in Germany! And everybody was looking at us! Oo, it was lovely! And then what do you think happened?”
“The police arrived, I hope,” said Mr. Waite.
“No—I tore my trousers! They caught on something on the cart and I pulled and tried to get free and the next minute there was a r-r-r-r-r! and I nearly fell off the cart. It was simply flying down the hill now, the boys couldn’t keep up with it. And me with this awful hole in my trousers! Right on the seat!”
“Do have some more tea, Mr. Waite,” said Jean, holding out a white hand and a slender arm draped in a soft orange-coloured sleeve, for his cup.
He gave it to her and noticed that her eyes were brown, rather unusual, he thought, dark eyes and fair hair.
“And then what happened?” asked Alda, feeling that it was time that someone beside Mr. Waite commented upon the tale.
“Oo, we all jumped off before it got to the bottom of the hill. I didn’t half bruise myself. One of the girls lent me a safety pin to pin up the tear and I was all right. Oo—and then Benjy and me got on the back of a lorry! (It was ever so late by this time, nearly one o’clock, but there was still crowds of people about.) Well, this lorry’d slowed up for the traffic lights, and me and Benjy got on the back! The driver never saw us, and next minute he really got cracking and we simply flew off down the road! Ever so dangerous, it was!”
“It must have been fun,” said Alda, and meant what she said. Jean, in whom no tomboy had ever dwelt, merely looked amused.
“All the others screamed when they saw us go off, but we soon left them behind and there we were, flying along the deserted roads at one in the morning!”
“I thought you said there were crowds of people about,” said Mr. Waite; said it with actual disagreeableness, without a smile, and then he turned right round to Jean, so that Sylvia could see nothing but his back, and said loudly: “Do you know this part of the world, Miss Hardcastle?”
The snub was so crude that Alda felt ashamed for him and sorry for Sylvia, but the latter only made a lightning and completely unembarrassed grimace and, turning to Alda herself, went on with the tale, which grew more alarming as it progressed; Benjy nearly fell off; I nearly fell off; me and Benjy hung on to each other like mad; we didn’t half shriek, and so forth.
With the other ear, Alda could hear the decorous exchanges between Jean and Mr. Waite. All seemed to be progressing easily enough, but she did not detect a trace of that mutual absorption and discovery which means that two people are attracted. And what a lot she’s telling him about herself! thought Alda, slightly disturbed. She really ought to be more discreet. She certainly will be married for her money one of these days unless she and I are both very careful.
“It’s nearly dark,” she interrupted Sylvia suddenly, “the children ought to be in by now.”
“There they are!” exclaimed Jean. “I’ll go and let them in,” and she hurried off to the front door, where the loud, fierce, despairing attack upon the knocker seemed to indicate that someone was in a bad way.
“Well, duckies?” she cried, opening it wide, and there looked up at her two faces, one crimson and indignant and bearing traces of tears, the other pale and solemn and similarly marred.
“It’s awful!” burst out Jenny. “It’s been the most absolutely beastly day I’ve ever had in all my life. It’s like Occupied Europe! And the food’s simply filthy! Oh, what a heavenly smell of toast! Could we have some at once, we’re simply faint and starving!”
“Of course, you poor sweeties, in you come. Weez, you’re cold—let me take your hood off. Was it really so awful?” she asked in a lowered tone as Jenny flew off to find her mother, for in the family it was generally realised that while the practical Jenny was sometimes swept away by her feelings, the unpractical Louise was capable of taking a more detached view.
“Bits of it weren’t so bad but it’s not nice,” said Louise, standing within the circle of Jean’s arms and gazing seriously up at her. “The Sisters were quite kind to me but they were beastly to Jenny. They didn’t seem to like her.”
“Never mind them, the old trouts, they’ll get over it and so will you,” comforted Jean, leading the way to the parlour. “Here’s lots of hot toast and some of your favourite pink horrors from the Linga-Longa. So cheer up!”
Jenny was already seated by the fire eating steadily and holding the attention of the room, though Mr. Waite looked more disapproving than ever (he belonged to that small and fast-disappearing rearguard which holds that children should seldom be seen and never heard) and Sylvia looked bored. She had already smugly asked Jenny whether she had been a good girl at school; having herself so recently attained grown-up status, her rare assumptions of its soberer mannerisms were still largely imitative.
Alda was listening to her daughters with mingled satisfaction and dismay. But was the place really as bad as this? What would Ronald say, if it was? He had been so determined that the children must remain there for as long as possible.
“Where’s Meg?” demanded Jenny, interrupting herself to gaze round.
“Gone to spend the afternoon with the old lady at Pagets, they’re bringing her back at six. Go on, Jenny,” said Alda. (“You will excuse all this, won’t you?” smilingly to Mr. Waite.)
“—and we had four lots of prayers. And no sooner was the praying over than the bullying began.”
“What sort of bullying?” demanded Alda. “Now, Jen, don’t exaggerate.”
“I’m not exaggerating, Mother. They speak to you in such an unkind voice and they won’t let you speak at all. The child next to me knocked a book off my desk and Sister Peter accused me of doing it, and when I tried to say I didn’t, she got red in the face and said—‘You mustn’t say it—you mustn’t say it’—and simply glared at me.”
“That seems very unfair,” said Alda, trying not to sound pleased.
“Old cat,” said Jean placidly, in exactly the same tone that she had used of her own form mistress twenty years ago.
“Oh, but Roman Catholics are like that,” broke in Sylvia loudly, “I wonder you sent them to the place. Beastly holes, convent schools are, teaching the kids to be deceitful.”
“All forms of organised religion are the same,” said Phillip Waite. “Teach a child to recognise The God in Every Man and to keep In Touch With The Transcendent, and that’s all they need.”
“But that won’t teach Jenny and Louise French verbs and long division,” retorted Alda rather sharply, “and the education at convent schools is always excellent.”
“I’m in a very low form, with people of eight,” mourned Louise, “and Sister Paul said that my writing was like spiders, and she held it up so that everyone could see and all the children laughed.”
“I simply hate it there,” Jenny said, drawing a long sigh, “and the lunch was wet mashed potato and icy beetroot.”
“I thought it was rather nice,” said Louise, looking up from her place by her mother’s knee, warmed by the fire and cheered by much toast and three pink cakes. “The meat was rabbit.”
“Cat, more likely,” put in Sylvia with her noisy laugh.
“And we’ve got piles of homework to do; all about Henry the something; it will take hours,” sighed Jenny.
“I’ll help you with it later on,” said Alda soothingly, deciding that she would also defer the inquiry about those tearstains. “Go in the kitchen now, darlings, there’s a nice fire there, and get your books ready.”
No sooner had the door closed than Sylvia burst out:
“I say, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, you aren’t having them taught religion at that place, are you? all that stuff about the Virgin Birth and the rest of it?”
“Sister Alban, the head, said nothing about their being taught religion,” Alda replied coldly, “I suppose they teach them Bible history; all schools except the National Schools do, I believe.”
“Oh, well, the Bible’s different,” said Sylvia tolerantly.
“There is quite a lot in the Bible, and I don’t mind admitting it, I’m capable of seeing both sides of a question, I’m like that, but I do draw the line at all that Jesus stuff.”
“A great Teacher,” put in Mr. Waite approvingly, “perhaps the greatest that ever lived.”
“Jenny and Louise and Meg have been brought up as Christians and when they are old enough they will be confirmed,” said Alda with some irritation. Then she glanced at her watch. “Meggy should be here any minute, J.; will you put the oil-stove on in her room?”
“Honestly, though, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, are you bringing them up as Christians?” Sylvia went on. “It sounds awfully queer nowadays, sort of old-world.
Absolutely no one does. Why, I don’t even know any Christians.”
“I can well believe that,” snapped Alda—very severely, but her patience was exhausted. Sylvia looked surprised and hurt.
“It’s both interesting, and beautiful, the old faith, if only it were not marred by such hideous bloodshed and superstition,” said Mr. Waite. “And what are your views on Christianity, Miss Hardcastle?” suddenly pouncing upon Jean.
“Oh, help,” murmured Jean, who, not wishing to miss any of this conversation, had lingered to pile some plates upon a tray. “I’m bothered if I know,” and she went out of the room.
“Ah, there’s Meg,” exclaimed Alda, hurrying to the door. “Excuse me.”
When she returned she found Mr. Waite and Sylvia united in an unholy alliance against Superstition and Dogma, rolling the Pope in the dust, shoving the Church of England into the grave which its narrowness and timidity deserved, biffing the Saints and Martyrs all over the place, and hurling the missionaries into an outer darkness black as the converts whose primitive innocence they corrupted. She was just in time, had her irritation permitted, to hear them sailing off in separate clouds of glory, Mr. Waite towards The Transcendent and Sylvia towards the Classless World State.
“I must get the furniture back into this room, it’s beginning to snow again,” she interrupted smilingly.
“Can I stay and help wash up?” implored Sylvia, suddenly looking young and woebegone, “I haven’t got to be in until nine and it’s so deadly boring in that place.”
“Oh I daresay we can put up with you for a bit longer,” said Alda, exactly as she would have spoken to Louise. “Run along, the others are in the kitchen.”
Sylvia cheerfully blundered off, and Mr. Waite said that he must help her to get the furniture back.
“That is kind of you, this way, then,” she said, and led him down a dark passage smelling of coaldust. It was time that Mr. Waite came to somebody’s heel. If ever a man needed a woman’s touch, he did. Let him bump himself and starve his chickens while he helped her to move back the furniture, thought Alda; it would do him good.