She broke off.
“Run up, Elsie, will you? The primrose dress, with the black lace, in the left-hand corner of my wardrobe....” Elsie went, envious of the new dress, and at the same time thinking mockingly of Mrs. Woolley’s mottled skin and the lines that ran from her heavy nostrils to her sagging chin. Dresses and jewellery ought to be for girls who were young and pretty, not married women, plain and stout, like Mrs. Woolley. When Elsie came down again the doctor had gone, and Mrs. Woolley was in high good humour.
“I’ll get some tulle to-morrow, Elsie, and we can freshen it up round the neck and sleeves. You’d better rip off all this old stuff. And look here — you’re handy with your fingers — you can take the lace off and put it on that old navy blouse of mine, that’s got no collar. You know the one I mean ... you can drape it a bit...”
Elsie assented rather sulkily.
“Doctor Woolley’s so generous,” said Mrs. Woolley complacently. “He’s for ever giving me things, me and the children. If you knew more of the world, Elsie, you’d realise how lucky a woman is when she gets a hubby like mine who’s never so much as looked at another woman since he married. Some men aren’t like that, I can tell you.
The tales I could let out, if I cared to, that I’ve heard from some! But if Doctor Woolley’s manner sometimes puts ideas into people’s heads, why, they’ve only themselves to blame is what I always say. He wouldn’t give a thought to anyone but me, not really.”
She looked full at Elsie as she spoke, and Elsie stared back at her.
The girl was puzzled and angry, not feeling certain that she knew whether Mrs. Woolley really believed her own words, or was using them to convey an oblique warning.
“If she really imagines that, she must be a fool,” thought Elsie contemptuously, only to veer round uneasily a moment later to the conviction that Mrs. Woolley had been talking at her.
It was the latter unpleasant belief that prevailed, without possibility of mistake, in the course of the next few days. Whenever the doctor was in the house, Mrs. Woolley made a point of remaining at his side, and during the hours when he was in the surgery she kept Elsie employed with the children, every now and then coming to look in on her with excuses that were always transparently flimsy.
The tension in the atmosphere pervaded the whole house. At last one afternoon, when Gladys and Sonnie were at school, and Mrs. Woolley in the drawing-room with an unexpected caller, Elsie and the doctor met upon the stairs.
She knew that she was looking her worst, strained and overwrought, and with the odd Japanese aspect of her eyes and cheek-bones intensified. Even her hair felt limp and unresilient.
She looked at the doctor rather piteously, envisaging to herself her own unprepossessing appearance, and wishing that she had at least powdered her face recently.
“Where’s Amy?”
“In the drawing-room, with a lady visitor.”
“Thank God! I’ve been hag-ridden for the last week. What the devil’s up, Elsie?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “At least, I know Mrs. Woolley’s been horrid to me lately, that’s all.”
“She has, has she?” he muttered furiously. “ Here — come in here.”
He drew her into the shelter of the nearest doorway.
“Elsie, I’m mad about you. This sort of thing can’t go on — it’s simply hell.”
“Oh, hush, someone’ll hear...”
“I don’t care who hears!” But he lowered his voice. “I haven’t had a kiss from you for days — quick /”
Their lips met.
“You dear little girl! Is she being a beast to you?” Elsie, in his embrace, started violently. “Someone coming upstairs!” she hissed.
He stood motionless to listen, waited a second too long, and then sharply shut the door.
“Florrie!” Elsie whispered in a frightened voice. “Did she see us?”
“No, no — not a chance. Or, if she did, she only saw me. She won’t think anything of that.”
“She’s gone upstairs — I must go.”
“No, don’t. I tell you it’s all right. Hang it, Elsie, when am I going to get a word with you again?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I shall go home again.” She was half crying.
“Elsie, d’you know Amy’s going out to-morrow night? She’s going to see her friend, that Williams woman, who’s ill.”
“What, the one that was at mother’s place?”
“Yes — yes — but they’re in their own house now. It’ll take her all the evening to get there and back, pretty nearly.” “She won’t go.”
“Yes, she will. I shall tell her I’m going off to a case at Roehampton or somewhere, and that I shan’t be back till late.”
“Oh, don’t. It simply isn’t safe.”
“It’s quite safe, you little fool. You and me have got to come to an understanding, I can’t stand this life another minute. Look here, we’ll go out somewhere together.”
“No, no I That’d be much worse. Sonnie always wakes up, and he’ll scream himself into a fit if I’m not there, and then Florrie would know”
“I forgot the kids. Elsie — Gladys sleeps in your room doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Elsie, suddenly flushing scarlet.
He laughed abruptly, scanning her face with hungry eyes. “I’ll have a fire in the surgery. We’ll go down there. Florrie knows better than to put her foot inside it,” said Doctor Woolley significantly.
V
It was two days later.
Florrie and Mrs. Woolley were talking in the kitchen. Elsie hung about in the diminutive passage, trying desperately to hear what they were saying. An awful intuition gripped her that they were talking of her.
Florrie’s voice was indistinct, almost inaudible, but snatched phrases rose occasionally from the angry monotone that was Mrs. Woolley’s.
“...My innocent children ... turn my back ... the gutter ... don’t you talk to me ... the gutter ... out of the gutter....”
Elsie tried wildly to persuade herself that Mrs. Woolley was abusing Florrie. Sometimes she lost her temper with her servants, and shouted at them.
On the evening that Mrs. Woolley had gone to see her friend Mrs. Williams, who was reported very ill, Elsie, in her best frock, had boldly gone into the surgery, where a fire blazed, and there was a sofa newly piled with cushions. On the table had been placed a bottle and glasses and a dish of biscuits. Doctor Woolley had locked the door behind her, in spite of Elsie’s half-meant protests, but at first he had been entirely jovial, using catch-phrases that had made her laugh, and drinking heartily.
She herself had begun to feel rather affronted and puzzled at his aloofness, before it suddenly came to an end.
The remembrance of her own surrender rather bewildered Elsie. She had never consciously made up her mind to it, but the doctor’s urgency, her own physical susceptibility, and an underlying, violent curiosity had proved far too strong for her feeble defences, based on timidity and on the recollection of certain unexplained, and less-than-half- understood, arbitrary axioms laid down during her childhood by her mother.
She supposed that that one half-hour in the surgery had made “a bad girl” of her, but the aspect of the case that really preoccupied her was her terror that Mrs. Woolley should have found it out.
She felt sick with fright as the kitchen door opened, and, turning round, pretended to be looking for something in the housemaid’s closet under the stairs.
She heard Mrs. Woolley brush past her and go into the drawing-room, slamming the door violently behind her.
Elsie, her knees shaking, went upstairs to fetch Gladys and Sonnie and take them to their kindergarten.
She dawdled on the way back, being unwilling to go into the house again, and alternately hoping and dreading that the doctor would be at home for the midday meal.
At one o’clock, however, Mrs. Woolley and Elsie sat down without him.
Mrs. Woolley did not speak to Elsie. She kept on looki
ng at her, and then looking away again. Her hard face was inscrutable, but Elsie noticed that her hands, manipulating her knife and fork, shook slightly. The doctor came in before the meal was over, jaunty and talkative.
“Hallo! Is this Wednesday, or Piccadilly, or what? Which I mean to say is, has the cold meat stage been passed and the rice pudding come on, or contrarywise?”
Elsie burst into nervous laughter, the strident sound of which caused the doctor to glance at her sharply, and Mrs. Woolley said:
“Nonsense, Herbert! The way you talk, sometimes! The girl has got your meat and vegetables keeping hot in the oven, and I’m sure you haven’t seen rice pudding at the table for a fortnight. There’s a nice piece of cheese on the side, too.”
The doctor ate in silence, voraciously, as he always did, and his wife presently said in a thin, vicious voice:
“Of course, you’ve nothing to say to your wife, Herbert.
It’s easy enough to talk and be amusing with strangers, isn’t it? — but I suppose it isn’t worth while in your own home.”
“What’s up, Amy?” he growled. He did not look at Elsie, who found herself fixing apprehensive eyes on him, although she knew it was a betrayal.
“Why should anything be up, as you call it? But as it isn’t very amusing for me to sit here all day while you eat, and as I happen to be rather busy, strange though it may seem, I think I’ll ask you to excuse me.”
She turned her head towards Elsie, but spoke without looking at her. “I’ll thank you to come and find that paper pattern for Gladys’s smock. The child isn’t fit to be seen.”
Mrs. Woolley pushed Elsie out of the room in front of her, making it obvious that she meant her to have no opportunity of exchanging a look with the doctor.
Throughout the afternoon she never let the girl out of her sight until Elsie had actually left the house to go and fetch the two children from school.
It was abundantly evident that a crisis impended. The atmospheric tension affected everyone in the house, and Elsie, her nerves on edge, became frantic.
She said, immediately after supper, that she was tired, and should go to bed, and Mrs. Woolley laughed, shortly and sarcastically.
Elsie went up to her room and cried hysterically on her bed until Gladys woke and began to whine enquiries.
It seemed impossible, to Elsie’s inexperience, that the horrors of that day should repeat themselves, but the next one was Sunday, and brought its own miseries.
The doctor, who did not go to church as a rule, announced his intention of accompanying his family, and they set out, a constrained procession: Gladys, in tight black boots and with fair hair crimped round her shoulders, holding her father’s hand, Mrs. Woolley, walking just a little faster than was comfortable for Sonnie’s short legs, clutching the boy’s hand, and Elsie slouching a pace or two behind, cold and wretched.
At the bottom of the Crescent they met an elderly couple who often came to see them, and whom Elsie knew well by name as Mr, and Mrs. Loman.
The encounter broke up the procession, and caused a readjustment of places. Mrs. Woolley was at once claimed by the sallow, spectacled Mrs. Loman, and the children, with shrill acclamations, ran to her husband, Sonnie’s godfather and the purveyor of many small treats and presents.
The doctor, after a loud and boisterous greeting, boldly joined Elsie, and both of them dropped behind the others. “Oh, I’ve wanted so to speak to you!” gasped Elsie. “Shut up — don’t make a fuss now, there’s a good girl. Keep a cheery face on you, for God’s sake, or we shall give the show away worse than we’ve done already.”
Mrs. Woolley turned round. “Herbert, Mrs. Loman is just saying that she hasn’t set eyes on you for ages. Come and give an account of yourself.”
She spoke in a thin, artificial voice, but her eyes blazed a command at him.
The doctor stared back at her, insolent security in his manner. “Thankee, Amy, but I wouldn’t interrupt a ladies’ confab, for the world. Go on about your sky-blue- purple Sunday-go-to-meeting costumes, and I’ll keep Elsie company.”
Mrs. Loman laughed and the doctor grinned back at her. White patches had appeared on the mottled surface of Mrs. Woolley’s face, but she made no rejoinder.
Doctor Woolley turned to Elsie again, the merriment dropping from his manner. “That’ll shut her up for a bit,” he said between his teeth. “Has she been giving you gyp, Elsie?”
“Oh, it’s been awful. I’m certain she’s found out.”
“How?”
“That Florrie, I suppose.”
“Damn Florrie and her mischief-making! Well, kiddie, the fat’s in the fire. I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it.”
“What?”
Why — why, my dear child, don’t you see for yourself — you’ll have to clear out of here. No use waiting for Amy to make a bloody row, now is there? If you simply say you’re going home again, she won’t have a leg to stand on. And if it wasn’t for — for the kids, I’d go with you.
“You wouldn’t,” said Elsie bitterly. “I may be a bit green, but I’m not green enough to swallow that.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Doctor Woolley. He slipped his hand under her arm, and at the contact, jaded and miserable as she was, her pulses leapt. His fingers squeezed her arm.
“We’ve had some happy times together, little girl, eh?” he murmured in a sentimental voice. “And don’t you see that when you’re on your own again we can meet ever so much more freely. I want — you know what I want, don’t you, Elsie?”
She did not respond. “What I want, is to know what’ll happen to me if I go back to mother and say I’ve left Mrs. Woolley. You don’t suppose she, and my sister and my aunts, aren’t going to ask what’s happened, do you?”
“Well, you can tell them something,” said the doctor impatiently. “A clever girl like you, Elsie, surely you can think of something. Besides, everybody knows that a pretty girl doesn’t always hit it off with a woman older than herself. There’s nothing wonderful in that. Damnation, they’re stopping!”
“Here we are,” said Elsie.
He withdrew his arm hastily from hers after a final pressure.
Mrs. Woolley and her friend were already standing at the church steps, and both of them fixed their eyes on Elsie and the doctor as they came up. Elsie saw Mrs. Woolley touch the other woman’s elbow, and guessed at, rather than heard, the words coming from between her teeth:
“Look at that, now — look at that.”
On Mrs. Loman’s face was an expression of mingled eagerness, curiosity, and disgust. It was evident that Mrs. Woolley had spoken freely of her wrongs.
Elsie spent her time in church in wondering whether it would yet be possible to blunt Mrs. Woolley’s suspicions, or whether she dared face her mother with a made-up story to account for her return.
She was still young enough to have a furtive dread that her mother must be omniscient in her regard, and she was afraid that Mrs. Palmer would somehow guess at her lapse and tax her with it.
Elsie had very often lied to her mother before, but not with any conspicuous success, and she felt just now strangely shaken and unnerved, physically and morally.
When they came out of church, the Lomans hospitably pressed their friends to return with them, share the hot Sunday dinner, and spend the afternoon. The children were specifically included, but Mrs. Loman glanced in Elsie’s direction, and then looked back at Mrs. Woolley, raising her eyebrows.
“You’d better go and see your mother this afternoon,” said Mrs. Woolley coldly. “Go home first and tell Florrie we shall be out, and she can lock up the house and go out for a bit herself. Tell her she must be back by five.”
“All right,” said Elsie lifelessly.
She turned on her heel, when a sudden shout stopped her.
“Post those letters of mine, will you?” said Doctor Woolley very loudly. “You’ll find them in “ — he came nearer to her— “wait in till I come,” he muttered almost inaudibly, a
nd rejoined his wife before Elsie had taken in the meaning of his words. It came to her afterwards, and the renewed sense of intrigue very slightly relieved the dull misery pervading her.
At No. 8, Mortimer Crescent, the hot joint was taken out of the oven and left to grow cold, but Florrie had made a Yorkshire pudding, and she and Elsie ate it for their dinner, and added pickles and bread and cheese and cake to the meal. Very soon afterwards, Florrie announced that she was going off at once.
“So am I,” said Elsie. “I told her I’d lock up the house. Mind you’re in by five.”
“That’s as it may be,” haughtily said Florrie, with a venomous glance. Elsie felt far too tired to quarrel with the maid, as she had often done before, and when Florrie was actually gone she went upstairs and lay down on her bed.
It was nearly three o’clock before a cautious sound from below betrayed the return of the doctor.
Elsie rose and automatically glanced at herself in the looking-glass. One side of her face was flushed, her eyes looked small and swollen-lidded, and her hair was disordered. She dabbed powder on her face and pulled her wave of hair further down over her forehead before going downstairs.
The doctor was hanging up his hat on the crowded hooks that lined one side of the wall in the tiny entrance lobby.
“Coast clear?”
Elsie nodded.
“Sure?”
“Absolutely.” She held out the key of the house door. “I’ve locked up at the back.”
“Then I’ll lock up at the front,” said Doctor Woolley, and did so.
“My God, we’re in a bloody mess,” he began, turning round and facing Elsie.
Desperate, she ran forward and threw herself into his arms, instinctively seeking the only reassurance she knew, that of physical contact.
The doctor suddenly buried his face in her hair, then forced her face upwards and kissed her passionately.
They clung to one another.
At last he released his clasp, only keeping one arm round her waist.
“Where can we go? We’ll have to settle something, and Lord knows when I shall get another chance of speaking to you, with that hell-cat on the warpath. I’ve had the deuce and all of a time getting here now, and we must both clear out of the place before she and the kids get back. Put on your hat and coat, old girl, and come along.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 260