Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  The tune of “Abdul the Bul-bul Ameer” rattled through the room again and again, and Martyn and Sallie and Alfred and Amy all sang it, and General Kendal boomed his usual accompaniment of some rather indeterminate monosyllable repeated over and over again. All the rehearsals seem to me now to have been very much alike.

  Bill Patch was always gay and light-hearted, and more or less distracted, and Mrs. Fazackerly was always good-tempered and obliging — and almost always untruthful, when appealed to on any question of conflicting opinions.

  Sallie Ambrey was always competent, and her acting was very clever. So was Martyn’s. Eventually, they made Bill Patch play the villain’s part himself, after Christopher Ambrey had declined it.

  “I’d rather turn over the pages for the orchestra,” said Christopher, and the orchestra smiled at him gratefully in the person of Mrs. Fazackerly.

  The Kendals almost always came to the rehearsals. I think Puppa had some idea that his presence inspired the whole thing with a spirit of military discipline. At any rate, he said “Come, come, come,” every now and then, when Bill or I had stopped the rehearsal in order to confer with one another.

  And Mumma, I feel sure, enjoyed watching Amy and Alfred on the stage, and Blanche and Dolly and Aileen amongst the audience.

  Claire was there, of course. From time to time she interrupted everything, in order to show somebody how to do something. Most of them were very patient with her, and Patch, in all simplicity, always thanked her. I daresay that the others didn’t see it as I did. I find it difficult to be fair to Claire. Mary Ambrey, I noticed, used to find a seat near her, and used to listen while Claire explained in an undertone that, funnily enough, she had a great deal of the actress in her, and other things like that. So long as one person was exclusively occupied with her, Claire was fairly safe not to make one of her general appeals.

  Mary Ambrey was to prompt, and during the first few rehearsals she had nothing to do, and could attend to Claire.

  “Why not do without prompting altogether?” said Alfred Kendal. “We can always gag a bit, if necessary. Topical allusions — that sort of thing.”

  “I couldn’t,” said his sister Amy firmly. “I’m sure you’d better have a prompter.”

  Mumma supported Amy. “Some of you are sure to get stage-fright and to break down on the night, and that’s when the prompter is useful. When someone gets stage-fright, you know, and breaks down.”

  Captain Patch asked me afterwards if it was absolutely necessary for General and Mrs. Kendal to attend every rehearsal. He said that Mrs. Kendal was breaking his nerve. And the General thought, and spoke, of nothing but his Hessian boots. Bill put in a song about them on purpose to please him, and Martyn — Ivan Petruski Skivah — sang it.

  Mrs. Harter did not attend any of the early rehearsals. She had nothing to do with the play, really, and was only to sing “The Bul-bul Ameer” before the curtain went up, and again at the end of the play. I think Nancy Fazackerly had made Bill understand that Claire would not welcome Mrs. Harter to the rehearsals.

  One day old Mr. Carey came. He made us all rather nervous, and his daughter at the piano lost her head completely.

  “Father is such a personality,” I heard her murmuring to Christopher — a phrase which she generally reserves for those who have had no personal experience of her father’s peculiarities.

  That was after old Carey had criticised a bit of dialogue which he attributed to his daughter’s authorship, and which afterwards turned out to have been written by Bill Patch quite independently.

  “I know nothing whatever about writing,” said Carey, who, like many other people, appeared to think that this is in itself a reason for offering an opinion on the subject. “In fact, I’m willing to admit that it seems to me a damned waste of time for any full-grown person to sit and scribble a lot of nonsense about something that never happened, and never could have happened, for other full-grown persons to learn by heart and gabble off like a lot of board-school children. However, that’s as it may be. What you young people don’t realise is that there are things going on all around you every day that would beat the plot of any story, or any play, hollow.”

  When old Carey had said this he looked round him triumphantly, as though he had just made a new and valuable contribution to the subject of literature.

  He also said that anyone could write, if only they had the time, and that reading novels was only fit for women, and that generally he had enough to do reading The Times every day, with an occasional detective story if he had nothing better to do.

  Mrs. Fazackerly looked unhappy, but Bill Patch was impervious to it all.

  He sat down beside the old man and listened to him quite earnestly, and presently I heard old Carey, evidently intending a concession, inquire whether authors thought of their plots first and their characters afterwards, or their characters first and their plots afterwards.

  I have often wondered whether there is any writer in the world who has escaped that inquiry.

  “I have often thought that I should like to write a book,” said Mrs. Kendal in a tolerant way. “I’m sure if I put down some of the things that have happened to me in my life, they would make a most extraordinary tale, and probably no one would believe that they had really happened.”

  I fancied that Amy and Alfred Kendal cast rather a nervous glance at their parent, at these implications, but the General remained entirely unmoved, and I found that instead of listening he was offering, in a rather uncertain manner, to drive Mrs. Fazackerly and Sallie into the town to choose material for the costumes that were to be worn in the play.

  “What is the use of having a car if we cannot help our friends out of a difficulty?” said Mumma, with her large, kind smile. “Let us all go in this afternoon — you and I, Puppa, and Mrs. Fazackerly and Sallie. The girls can keep Ahlfred company at home.”

  If Mrs. Kendal is obliged to go out anywhere without her family, she always arranges some occupation for the absent members of it. I think it gives her a sense of security.

  “The car holds four very comfortably, but more than four are bad for the springs, I believe. One has to think about the springs, especially in a new car. Springs are so important,” said Mumma.

  “If my Tin Lizzie can be of any use, I’ll drive anyone anywhere,” said Christopher Ambrey eagerly. “And in Lizzie’s case there’s no need to consider the springs, as there aren’t any to speak of. Look here, I suggest that if you and General Kendal can really find room for Sallie, I should drive Mrs. Fazackerly in, and — and then you can take, say, Patch. I’m sure Patch ought to be there to settle about the clothes and things — or Martyn. I should think Martyn ought to go, if anyone does, to make sure you get the right things for those boots.”

  “We’re only going to buy materials — not clothes,” said Sallie. “But still I daresay that Martyn could be quite useful.”

  “I think Bill had better go,” Martyn firmly declared.

  “I can’t. It’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Kendal, but my partner will do all that far better than I could.”

  He smiled at Mrs. Fazackerly, who was smiling back at him happily when the unexpected sound of old Carey’s voice suddenly and completely extinguished the brightness in her face.

  “Nancy can go with you, Mrs. Kendal, as you’re kind enough to propose it, and there are one or two things I want done in the town. Nancy can see to them.”

  Sallie’s clear, intelligent gaze went from one to the other of them. She sees a great deal, but she has not yet learnt how to look as though she didn’t see it.

  “If Martyn and I may go with you, Mrs. Kendal, we’ll sit in the back of the car, and rehearse to one another. (Yes, Martyn, we must — time is frightfully short, and you know how woolly you are about your words) and then Chris can take Nancy, and we can all meet somewhere for tea. What time, Mrs. Kendal?”

  Sallie is always so confident, and decisive, and resolute, that she can carry things off with a high hand. Old Carey subsided
again and Mrs. Kendal said, some seven or eight times, that as they always had tiffin early at Dheera Dhoon— “a reminiscence of our Indian days, I’m afraid” — she thought that they had better start at two o’clock.

  “Besides,” said Captain Patch to me, aside, “I believe it takes the General nearly an hour to do the ten miles.”

  At the last minute the whole thing was nearly wrecked by General Kendal, who suddenly observed: “Then I am to have the pleasure of driving you, Mrs. Fazackerly? I hope that you will not feel nervous. I am something of a tyro, still, but I believe I am a careful driver.”

  “Thank you — not a bit — but—”

  “I think Sallie goes with you, General,” said Christopher. “I will take Mrs. Fazackerly.”

  And I saw Claire look round, at the tone in which he said it.

  Then the rehearsal broke up. Sallie and Martyn disappeared, but Mary Ambrey stayed and had lunch with us.

  As soon as the servants had left the dining-room, Claire wrung her hands together and looked despairing.

  “Did you notice Christopher?” she asked, in husky misery. “Surely, surely he couldn’t?”

  Of course, both Mary and I knew what she meant. We had heard her say the same thing so often.

  “He only offered to take her in the two-seater. There really need not be any very great significance in that,” I pointed out, although I knew very well that, to Claire’s type of mind, events are of two kinds only: the intensely significant, and the completely non-existent.

  “I thought you wanted Christopher to get married,” said Mary calmly.

  Claire nearly screamed.

  “Why shouldn’t he marry Nancy Fazackerly? Not that I think he wants to marry her just because he offers to take her for a drive — but supposing he did, Claire, I can’t see why you shouldn’t be pleased.”

  “A woman whose husband used to throw plates at her head!” said Claire. “Have you forgotten that?”

  “Mary cannot very well have forgotten it,” said I, “as no one ever allows it to rest in peace. If I’ve heard that story once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. And I fail to see, Claire, why the fact that Fazackerly had an unbridled temper should be supposed do detract from the desirability of his widow.”

  I really did believe that Christopher was attracted by Nancy Fazackerly, and although I did not — as I believe women do — immediately begin to think about choosing them a wedding present, it had certainly crossed my mind that it would be a pleasant thing to see little Nancy happy. As for Christopher, I knew perfectly well that any nice woman, especially if she liked gardening and children, would make him happy.

  Claire, however, credited him with all her own exigencies.

  “Nancy Fazackerly is all very well in her own way, perhaps, but she isn’t the sort of woman I expect my brother to marry, Miles. It may not be her fault — I daresay it isn’t — but she has some very odd ideas. I shall never forget how she talked about taking in a paying guest, and whether he was to have second helpings or not.”

  “I imagine that Christopher could regulate the number of helpings that he required, at his own dinner-table, for himself.”

  “You know, Claire,” said Mary Ambrey, “if Nancy was away from her father she would be quite different. It’s only his endless nagging about expense that has infected her. You know how adaptable she is.”

  “I know that she is the most untruthful woman of my acquaintance,” returned Claire vehemently.

  “That must have been the plates,” I affirmed positively. “I am convinced that Nancy would not tell so many fibs as she undoubtedly does tell, if she could be brought to forget the outrageous Fazackerly and his plate-throwing. Don’t you agree with me, Mary?”

  “Yes, I do. And in any case, Claire, you know we really are taking a good deal for granted. At one time you were afraid it might be Aileen Kendal.”

  “Never,” said Claire, with a total disregard for accuracy that would have done ample credit to Mrs. Fazackerly herself.

  Christopher brought Nancy back to the Manor that afternoon for a very late tea.

  He was in excellent spirits, and they told us about their afternoon’s shopping.

  “We got in long before the others. The General positively crawls in that Standard of his. And Patch did turn up, after all. We met him, with Mrs. Harter.”

  “That Mrs. Harter?” said Claire.

  “We all of us got the things together, and we decided that Mrs. Harter ought to wear an Eastern dress, too, for singing the “Bul-bul Ameer.” She’s very clever at dressmaking and she and I can easily make the things ourselves. That’ll save expense,” babbled Nancy.

  “Why didn’t you bring Captain Patch back with you? I like Captain Patch. He and I have so much in common.”

  “He and Mrs. Harter were going to have tea together somewhere in the town.”

  Claire drew her brows together for an instant and then raised them, as though puzzled.

  “But how nice of him to be kind to Mrs. Harter!”

  “I think he admires her, if you ask me,” said Christopher easily. “They came in together by ‘bus to-day, from Cross Loman.”

  Then they began to talk about the play again. It was then, on that same day that Mary Ambrey and Claire and I had begun to ask ourselves if Christopher was falling in love with Nancy Fazackerly, that the first suggestion was made of anybody’s having noticed the friendship between Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.

  VIII

  AFTER that the two affairs in one sense ran concurrently, so far as the outer world was concerned. In that other world, of course, that I have called the inner life, they were on altogether different planes.

  As far as I know, Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter knew no hesitations at all. The day after that evening when they had gone up Loman Hill, he said to Mrs. Fazackerly that he could not come to the rehearsal, and that he wanted to be out all day. At nine o’clock in the morning he was at the house in Queen Street, where she was waiting for him.

  He saw her, as he crossed the road, sitting at the execrable little bow-window of the dining-room, her hands clasped in her lap, quite obviously looking down the street, waiting. When he reached the three steps she got up and opened the front door, and said to him: “Let’s get out of this!” jerking her head backwards at the linoleum floor and tiled walls of the tiny entrance.

  She was wearing her outdoor things, all ready.

  As they walked down Queen Street together, Mary Ambrey passed them. She stopped, with some question for Bill about the play. Mrs. Harter stood by, and after one look at her Mary suddenly remembered Martyn’s words —

  “That woman hard? I wonder what we were all thinking about!”

  Captain Patch, in a way, was always joyous, and that morning he only looked younger than ever, but to Mary’s perceptions there was something about them both that almost made her catch her breath.

  They looked, she said, somehow dazed. Mary never told me, or anyone else, about this brief meeting until some time afterwards, but then she said that whenever anyone condemned either or both of those two people who caused so much talk in our small community, she remembered that morning, and the strange impression she received of sheer, dazzling happiness.

  Captain Patch told Mary that they were going up to the moors — some twelve miles away. He never, either then or afterwards, attempted the slightest concealment of the fact that they went everywhere together. Neither did Mrs. Harter, but then she was not by any means on friendly terms with the whole of Cross Loman, as Bill Patch was, and her manner towards the people whom she did know always held the same semi-contemptuous reticence.

  It was only a very few days later that people began to talk about them.

  It began, I have not the slightest doubt, at Dheera Dhoon. The Kendals, like so many other people who are temperamently good, take an impassioned interest in those things and people which they consider bad. But, as a matter of fact, it was Lady Annabel Bending from whom I first heard about it.

 
“That is a nice youth who is staying at the Cottage with old Mr. Carey. But they tell me that he is running after that very common-looking woman who sings.”

  Lady Annabel never sees things from her bedroom window, or hears them over the counter from Miss Applebee, like the rest of us. She obtains all her information from a mysterious and unspecified source. “They” tell her, or she “is informed.”

  No doubt this is another relic of the Government House days.

  “Mrs. Harter must be a great deal older than he is, surely, and what can they possibly have in common?”

  “Music,” said I feebly.

  Not for one instant did I suppose that Bill Patch and Mrs. Harter walked twelve miles on a hot day in order to talk about music.

  Lady Annabel showed me at once that neither was she disposed to credit anything so improbable.

  “From what I have heard of Mrs. Harter, Sir Miles, I should think that music is the last thing to occupy her mind. I think I told you that a good deal is known about her, though it only reached me through entirely unofficial channels. But Captain Patch is a very nice young fellow indeed, and one can’t help feeling it’s a pity that he should be victimised.”

  “Perhaps he isn’t victimised. He may admire her.”

  “So much the worse,” said Lady Annabel in her lowest, gentlest and most inexorable voice. “Surely there are plenty of nice, innocent girls to choose from, without running after a married woman. The Rector’s position makes it difficult for me to speak about these things, as you know. But if you remember, I said some time ago that it was a most unwise proceeding to invite a person like Mrs. Harter to take part in your theatricals.”

  “She has, up to the present, come to no rehearsals, so the theatricals can hardly be held responsible for bringing them together.”

  Lady Annabel bent her head. I knew, however, and she meant me to know, that this was mere courtesy on her part — not acquiescence.

  She was not the only person to talk about Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch, of course. It is never only one person who talks: these things get into the air, no one knows how.