“How do you find the time?”
“I make the time, Mrs. Temple,” replied Mrs. Manners, not without superiority. “But of course, I’m not clever, like you. I know you write. Naturally, in the case of a gift like that, one hasn’t the same time to devote to one’s husband and children.”
Laura reflected that, whether the time was there or not, one did devote it to one’s husband and children, although ineffectually. It seemed impossible to do otherwise, in a small household. But, owing to the gift, it seemed that one got no credit for it.
“Now, please take your partners for the fox-trot.”
Miss King was at the piano, and the youthful and charming assistant teacher had taken her place in the middle of the room.
“Will you come and dance with me, dear?” she said, patting Johnnie’s curls.
Laura wondered whether this distinction was a tribute to Johnnie’s charms, or an indication that his steps required attention.
“Is that your other little one?” Mrs. Bakewell enquired of Laura benignantly.
“Yes, that’s Johnnie. He’s only five.”
Laura tried to say this in a matter-of-fact, indifferent voice. In reality, it seemed to her to be almost inevitable that anyone in the world, seeing Johnnie for the first time, should be struck by his good looks, his curls, his intelligence and his size.
“Miss Thompson is always so good with the less advanced ones. So patient,” said Mrs. Bakewell kindly.
“Long, short-short, long, short-short,” intoned Miss Thompson firmly, bearing Johnnie with her as she skimmed up the room.
“He’s really not doing it too badly, considering that he doesn’t attend regularly,” Laura remarked, trying to sound coldly impartial.
“Not at all badly,” Mrs. Bakewell agreed. And Mrs. Manners, on the other side, said that it really was a pity that Laura’s little boys shouldn’t attend the dancing-class regularly. The elder one — Edward, wasn’t it, was getting on quite nicely with his dancing.
Edward was dancing with Mary Manners, who was taller, older, and a good deal more skilful than he was.
At the end of the hour’s lesson, the class departed. Alfred Temple, in the two-seater, came for Laura and the children. The boys climbed to the little dicky seat at the back, and their mother took her place beside the driver.
“I just want to stop at the Home and Colonial and go to the greengrocer’s, Alfred — the one at the bottom of High Street, and change my books at the Library. You don’t mind, do you?”
“I don’t mind. But I should have thought, I must say, that you could have done your jobs while the boys were at their dancing. You’re not obliged to stay there the whole time.”
“You don’t understand, dear. I must. They’re not really old enough to trust by themselves. They’d take advantage of my not being there.” It was one of Laura’s most resolute convictions that her children behaved better when she was with them than when she was not.
(Many mothers cling to this theory, in spite of the immense inconvenience that it entails upon themselves.)
At the library, Laura encountered Lady Kingsley-Browne.
“You’ve come to get the new volume of the Life of Disraeli, I feel perfectly certain,” declared Lady Kingsley-Browne. “So have I. It only came out yesterday, but I couldn’t wait for it another day. Could you?”
Laura, who did not buy books, and was still waiting for the first volume of Disraeli from the Circulating Library, insincerely replied that she, also, wanted dreadfully to read it, but that she was only just changing the books, and could not contemplate any purchase.
“What are you going to get? Have you read this?” said her neighbour tiresomely, thrusting upon Laura’s attention a novel with a title that she disliked, by an author whose works she never read.
“Is it good?” said Mrs. Temple doubtfully.
“Delightful. I’m sure you’d like it. And have you read this?”
“Yes, I have,” hastily said Laura. “Have you anything on my list?” she added to the assistant.
“Only one, I’m afraid, madam. Would you care for this new detective story? It’s in great demand, and people say it’s excellent.”
Lady Kingsley-Browne uttered a faint, protesting cry.
“How truly dreadful! The Murder in the Old Mill — what a name! And to offer it to you, of all people, my dear!”
The flattering implication of Laura’s eclectic taste made it rather difficult to accept The Murder in the Old Mill, but Laura did so.
“Alfred always likes a good murder story,” she apologetically explained; aware that in this case her likings and Alfred’s were identical, but not having the moral courage to say so.
“Men!” ejaculated Lady Kingsley-Browne, in a tone of indulgence. “What about the Georgian Poems for your other choice?”
Laura did not get very frequent opportunities of changing her books at the Quinnerton Library, and from motives of economy she did not subscribe to a London one. She had no wish to take Georgian Poems in place of the many new novels that she wanted to read. Nevertheless she presently found herself leaving the shop with this unwanted addition to her stock of literature.
“Delighted to have met you,” said Lady Kingsley-Browne. “Do come out and see us again one of these days. The bulbs are quite nice just now.”
“We’d love to—”
“Bébée will be home in a day or two. She’s been having a wonderful time at Nice. You know she dashed over there for a flying visit with another girl — just the two of them. Really, girls do have the greatest fun nowadays! When I think of what our mothers would have said if we’d suggested doing half the things they do—”
Laura assented, hoping rather indignantly that Lady Kingsley-Browne realised at least approximately the number of years that separated them.
“You must come when Bébée’s at home.” And Laura repeated, with a final, valedictory smile: “We should love to,” and hastened with relief into the greengrocer’s shop. When she came out with one dozen bananas in a paper-bag, Laura found Alfred, the boys and the two-seater waiting for her outside.
She climbed in.
“That’s all. I’m quite ready now.” She turned her head. “Are you all right, darlings?”
“Mummie, look, I’ve got my overcoat on,” said Edward, who had had his overcoat on ever since the end of the dancing-class.
“I see, darling,” said Laura.
“Are we going home now?” Johnnie enquired.
“Yes.”
“We’re going home now,” Edward echoed. “Now we’re going home, aren’t we, mummie? Aren’t we, daddy? We’re going home, we’re going home now, aren’t we, daddy?”
“Ont-ils été sages?” hissed Laura at her husband as the car started.
“O wee,” said Alfred resignedly.
By the time they got home the second post had been delivered, and Laura found two letters waiting for her.
One was to say that the house-parlourmaid engaged a week earlier by Laura to enter her service at the end of the month had accepted another situation, and the other was a bill.
“That girl has failed me,” exclaimed Laura, with as much pain, indignation, and surprise as though no servant had ever done such a thing before.
“What girl?”
“The house-parlourmaid — the one I definitely engaged — from the Registry Office.”
“Have you any other possibilities?”
“Only the girl they wouldn’t keep at the Vicarage because she broke things, and had a fit or something in the middle of the night — (she sounded to me epileptic) — and the one who wrote from Stockport, and said she was willing to learn. She’s only eighteen, and asking thirty pounds a year, and it was a most illiterate sort of letter.”
“It’s a long way to get her down on approval. I suppose we pay the fare?”
“Oh yes, we pay the fare. And besides, now I come to think of it, I’ve had her letter nearly a week, because I thought I was fixed up with this J
ones creature — and she’ll probably have been snapped up by now.”
“I believe you’d do better with a married couple.”
“They’re much more expensive — and besides, Gladys is staying on as far as I know, and if I give her notice, we may find ourselves left without anyone. I wish I knew what to do.”
“How long before Nellie goes?”
“A week.”
“Then there’s time, still, after all. And worst come to the worst, there’s that woman — Mrs. Raynor.”
“Yes, we can have her. Only it’s unsettling for nurse and Gladys, and you know how they never will put up with anything nowadays.”
Alfred did indeed know, and Laura felt that it would be fortunate for them both if he received no further demonstration of the state of affairs that she deplored.
“I’ll go out to the Vicarage to-morrow and find out if that girl there is absolutely hopeless. There’s nothing else I can do.”
Nevertheless, Laura, as though fascinated, studied the columns in The Times headed “Domestic Situations Wanted,” and before she went to bed that night wrote three letters, in which she conscientiously set out the disadvantage of a quiet place, right in the country, with oil lamps, and every other Sunday afternoon and evening out, in turns with the cook-general.
Laura held to a theory that by means of this preliminary candour she eliminated the possibility of subsequent reproaches and discontent on the part of the servant engaged. But it discouraged her when none of them answered her letters, not even when a stamped addressed envelope was enclosed.
At the end of the following week, Nellie went, and Mrs. Raynor made spasmodic appearances in the passages and the bedrooms, and Laura “helped with the beds,” and Alfred changed the plates and handed the vegetable dishes at meals, and nurse said it seemed as though one pair of hands being gone put double the work on everybody else without getting it done, so to speak, and Gladys said it was unsettling and gave notice.
Then Laura, at great expense, secured a temporary house-parlourmaid, and by that time Gladys’s month was up and she went away.
Laura heard of a man-cook, an old soldier. The temporary house-parlourmaid said that it would be quite impossible for her to stay when there was only a man in the kitchen.
A possibly permanent house-parlourmaid, with whom Laura was negotiating, said the same thing.
The man-cook had to be relinquished.
The possibly permanent house-parlourmaid was very sorry, but if things were unsettled at Applecourt, she’d prefer not to take the place. She’d rather go to a lady at Bath, whose cook had been with her for five years and whose house-parlourmaid had only left to be married.
Laura felt that nothing in the whole world mattered, except the solution of the domestic problem.
She relinquished her resolution of not talking about the servants to her husband, and talked about nothing else.
The days seemed to be entirely occupied in small dustings and cleanings, and the evenings in lighting the lamps, drawing the blinds and the curtains, and clearing away the things from the dining-room table.
The cooking was done by Mrs. Raynor, in the middle of the day, and the food at night was cold. This, in itself, served to depress the atmosphere.
Then, as had happened before, just as Laura felt that even the unendurable can become endurable by mere force of habit, one state of affairs merged almost imperceptibly into another. Laura acquired two servants, a man and his wife.
They asked, and received, wages that Laura, six months earlier, would have said emphatically, and with perfect truth, that she and Alfred could not afford to give them.
The man cooked well, although extravagantly, and the woman was obliging, but unpunctual and untidy in her work.
“There’ll always be something,” Laura said, indicating a determination to be satisfied with any state of affairs that should imply the presence, and not the absence, of domestics. Nurse, who at one moment had shown grave signs of becoming unsettled, now became settled again, and Laura was able to turn her attention wholly to the children, the meals, and the question of expense, instead of dividing it between the servants, the children, the meals and the question of expense.
Life continued to be uneventful, full of slight harassments, trivial satisfactions, and harmless, recurrent anxieties.
Spring gave place to early summer.
At the end of May, Laura’s younger sister came to stay at Applecourt.
Christine was twenty-nine, but she looked much younger. Every time that Laura saw her, she looked younger. This time, her fair hair was bobbed — a thick, straight bob with a short fringe, that suited her square, boyish face and wide-apart hazel eyes.
Christine, when she was fifteen and Laura twenty, had been accounted plain, and indeed she was still plain. But she was now accounted pretty, and charming, and extremely amusing.
Laura was proud of her, and fond of her, and very often annoyed by her.
Christine was entirely independent. She, like Laura, had inherited a yearly income of two hundred and fifty pounds from their father, but, unlike Laura, she had only herself to spend it on. She earned money, too, by her writing. She lived in London, in a very small flat, by herself. Every year, and sometimes twice in one year, she went abroad.
Laura felt that it would be good for Bébée Kingsley-Browne to meet Christine, for Christine, also, knew many young men, and was inclined to talk about them a good deal, and Laura was forced to believe in the reality of their devotion, if only because of the number of letters that Christine received.
But there was always one — a different one every year — of whom Christine talked most, and from whom she heard oftenest.
This year it was somebody called Marmaduke Ayland, who was musical, and composed settings for other people’s songs.
“I should like you to meet him,” Christine said, on her very first evening at Applecourt. “If he’s anywhere in this neighbourhood, may he come over to lunch?”
“Of course,” said Laura. “Hark, was that one of the children?”
“I didn’t hear anything. You see, Duke wants to spend a week some time right in the country, where he can make as much noise on the piano as he likes, for this new musical comedy score, and not feel that he’s disturbing anybody. So I suggested this neighbourhood. He could lodge for a week at that farm — you know—”
“Yes, I know. Mrs. Sefton’s. We can go and see about it. I wonder whether — you know, Christine, I really believe Johnnie is going to be musical after all.”
“Oh, do you?” said Christine, and something in the way she said it recalled Laura to herself with a guilty start.
CHAPTER V
Having Christine at Applecourt was delightful, and she was a great help with the children, and her amusing conversation enlivened the evenings. But she made Laura feel very middle-aged indeed.
From sheer force of habit, Laura, who was no gardener, said something to her sister about the past glories of the bulbs, and Christine simply, candidly and unprecedentedly, replied:
“For pity’s sake, Laura, don’t talk about anything so deadly as the bulbs. I don’t mind looking at them, when they’re actually there, provided I don’t have to walk through wet grass to get to them, but I do bar hearing about them. Let’s talk about people — grown-up people, I mean — or books, or clothes or something.”
“Everybody talks about the bulbs here.”
“How very distressing! But I suppose you needn’t answer. Then they’ll guess you aren’t interested, won’t they?”
“They may or they may not. In any case, it won’t make any difference.”
Christine looked slightly awestruck.
“But aren’t there any people here? Besides the Kingsley-Brownes, I mean. Are they all bulb-fiends?”
“There are some new people at Marchland. I shall have to call on them. Shall we go while you’re here? Their name is Crossthwaite and he’s been with Melsom’s Publishing Company, and now he’s retired. Rich, I
suppose — Marchland is pretty large. They may be useful for tennis.”
“D’you suppose they’ve got an eldest son, or anything amusing?”
“Much more likely they’ve got three unmarried daughters, like every other family in this part of the world,” said Mrs. Temple with the cynicism of experience.
“Well, it seems worth trying. Aren’t you proud, Laura, to think you’ve actually had two boys and not any girls at all? I know it’s supposed to mean some sort of sex-complex, when mothers want their children to be boys and not girls, but whoever started that theory couldn’t ever have lived in England, in the country, or he’d understand.”
“Of course, it’s not as bad as it used to be, when unmarried daughters all lived at home together,” Laura pointed out. “I wouldn’t mind having just one girl, either.”
“I shouldn’t, darling, if I were you. It’s expensive, and you’d have to start a nursery again just when Edward and Johnnie are ready for school, and it would be a pity to risk spoiling your figure. Three often does.”
Laura wondered whether Christine was talking for effect. She knew, theoretically, but could not realise, that unmarried young women did talk like that. But not in the Quinnerton neighbourhood.
“I’m getting provincial, Christine,” said Laura abruptly and desperately. “I don’t know what it is exactly, but sometimes it comes over me suddenly, and I realise—”
“You ought to go away more.”
“It’s very difficult to move Alfred.”
“So much the better. Go by yourself.”
“I couldn’t leave him alone with the servants and the children. I know you think that’s absurd, of course.”
Miss Fairfield committed herself neither to assent nor contradiction.
“You don’t understand how absolutely necessary it is to be there all the time, in a small house, especially when there are children. Everything goes wrong immediately if I go away for any length of time.”
“Well, then, of course you can’t,” said Christine reasonably. “Let’s hope the Marchland people will be assets, and have amusing friends to stay with them. And I’m certain you’ll like Duke Ayland.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 284