At last, without saying anything more, he went away.
3
“I don’t think I’m coming up to London with you,” Sylvia said tonelessly to her mother two hours later. “I don’t want to see about that job after all.”
Claudia agreed quietly.
“Very well, darling. Stay here and look after Frances and the children.”
“But I quite see that I mustn’t just do nothing. Besides,” said Sylvia piteously, “I’d like to help you if I could. Only I don’t think I want to work in London. Will you think of something for me, Mother?”
“Yes,” Claudia said. “I will, my darling.”
As she wrote her letter to Paris later in the same day, Claudia reflected, with wondering thankfulness, on the complete trust reposed in her by Sylvia.
Copper — Frances — Sal — Anna — all of them were unjust, lacking in perception.
Whatever they might say, Claudia could reassure herself completely.
She had not failed to live up to her own ideals, her own high standard of motherhood.
It was they who had failed to understand her.
Part II. October In The Office
I
1
As she sat in the office in Norfolk Street, Claudia Winsloe became a different person.
She was, in her own phraseology, “on the job.” She instinctively discarded everything that impinged upon her conception of herself as a breadwinner.
Over the door of her private office was a fearful red electric-light globe. When this light was switched on from within the room it served as a signal that she was not to be disturbed.
Even Sal Oliver, whose own tiny room was on the top floor of the building unprotected from the assaults of interrupters, seldom disregarded it. Nobody else ever did.
From time to time Claudia forgot to turn off the red light and sat within in solitude whilst Miss Collier — agitated — or Mrs Ingatestone — infuriated — moved up and down the dark stairs, clutching to themselves urgent problems. Miss Frayle, the young, pert Miss Frayle, was neither agitated nor angry. She only muttered obscenities below her breath, and then drifted back to the downstairs office again, indifferent. She and Miss Collier both got through a great deal of work, drank quantities of tea, smoked innumerable cigarettes, and talked, in the intervals of work, about their employer, themselves, one another, how best to reduce (Miss Collier weighed eight stone, and stood five-foot-seven, and Miss Frayle — five-foot-eight — turned the scales at seven-stone-twelve), and about twice a week one of them told the other that she was going to leave, and allowed herself to be persuaded not to.
They were both of them objects of awe and admiration to young Edie, the messenger girl, who was fifteen, fat, and obliging, and whose duty it was to make herself useful to everybody in the office.
Mrs Ingatestone, in a more responsible position than either Miss Collier or Miss Frayle, but held by them to be of inferior social standing in private life, was agreeably condescending to them and to Edie alike, but had terrific outbursts of temper, attributed by herself to nerves, and by the imaginative Miss Frayle alternately to drink, drugs, and hereditary insanity. She was a widow with one child — a girl of twelve at a school near Dorking. It was in order to educate her daughter that she was obliged to work.
On Monday mornings the atmosphere in the office was always impregnated with the slight strain that is the result of a holiday which has been at once too short and too long.
Miss Frayle and Miss Collier greeted one another with modified enthusiasm.
“Hallo, Collier. Had a good week-end?”
“Lovely. I played badminton all Saturday and must have taken off pounds.”
“And ate sweets all Sunday and put them on again,” said Miss Frayle cynically. “I know, because it’s what I did myself. Except that I danced as well as played badminton.”
She danced almost every Saturday night, nearly always with a different man. Frayle, said the office, knew thousands of men. The question of her virginity was sometimes gloomily discussed between Miss Collier and Mrs Ingatestone.
“Winsome Winnie arrived yet?” asked Miss Frayle, languidly uncovering her typewriter. By this engaging soubriquet she sometimes referred to her employer.
“Yeah. The red light’s on.”
“Oh hell, it can’t be. It’s too early. What frightful affectation!”
“Well, there it is. Oliver hasn’t turned up yet.”
“Dirty slacker.”
Miss Frayle had a terrific crush on Sal Oliver, and of this the whole office was well aware, but she invariably referred to her in terms that were either slighting or abusive.
“Is there much in, this morning?”
“Edie hasn’t brought the letters yet. She’s getting them from Ma Ingatestone now.”
“When she comes, we may as well tell her to get a kettle going. It’ll do for eleven o’clock,” said Miss Frayle, glancing at her wrist-watch. It was just before ten o’clock.
It was not Edie, however, who brought in that selection of the letters known as “routine work,” but Mrs Ingatestone.
“Good morning, good morning,” she chanted, with a hasty breeziness that denoted that she was in a good temper but had no time to waste. “Now look here, I’ve got to go out to Streatham this morning to help that Lady Maitland who’s moving house. Miss Oliver’s dealing with the school for that child — what’s his name — whose parents are divorced. She’ll probably go out there this afternoon. You’re to go to her first, Miss Frayle, and take down her letters, and then to Mrs Winsloe.”
There were no unadorned surnames in the vocabulary of Mrs Ingatestone.
“O.K. But Oliver’s not come yet.”
“Yes she has. She arrived with Mrs Winsloe and they’re in her office together. She’s going to ring when she’s ready for you. Now Miss Collier, here’s the routine stuff.”
“O.K.”
“I shan’t be back in time to sign before the post, so you’ll have to take it to Miss Oliver.”
“O.K.”
“I must say,” observed Mrs Ingatestone, “you girls don’t look much the better for your weekend. As for you, Miss Frayle, you might have been on the tiles the whole of last night, from the look of you.”
“So I was. Didn’t you hear about it? Collier came and bailed me out of Vine Street Police Station at two o’clock this morning.”
“Vine Street nothing. More like Limehouse Street,” said Miss Collier.
A buzzer sounded sharply.
Miss Frayle muttered “How well I know that fairy touch,” and snatched up pad and pencil. As she ran up the stairs, she passed Sal Oliver.
“Good morning, Miss Frayle.”
“Good morning, Miss Oliver.”
“I hope you had a nice week-end.”
“Marvellous, thanks.”
Doris Frayle lifted her eyes for one moment, observed accurately and in detail everything that Sal Oliver was wearing, and went on to the room of her employer.
She knocked at the door but received no answer. That was part of Mrs Winsloe’s impenetrability. At the third knock she was told to come in. A wilderness of papers lay strewn about the table.
“Good morning, Mrs Winsloe.”
“Good morning. Take this down please. To the Manager of the Westminster Bank: Sir …”
“She’s off,” thought Miss Frayle. “And she’s in one hell of a mood, blast her.”
2
An hour later Miss Frayle was downstairs again with a sheaf of notes.
She began to type, rapidly and accurately, for she was a good worker. A cup of tea stood on the table beside her. From time to time she picked it up and drank out of it, holding it in one hand whilst she continued to type with the other.
Miss Collier sat at the other table, entering figures into a small ledger.
At twelve o’clock they spoke.
“Do you know, I haven’t touched a potato for over six months?”
“I haven’t touched s
weets — well, not to speak of. And I think bread’s pretty fatal too.”
They then said nothing more until it was time to go out for lunch.
“Are you coming, Frayle?”
“I’m meeting my aunt.”
“O.K. Where’s she taking you?”
“I’m taking her, worse luck. I suppose you couldn’t possibly cash me a cheque? I haven’t got time to get to the bank.”
“How much?”
“Well — a pound. I must get some stockings.”
“Oh, I haven’t got a pound,” said Miss Collier in rather shocked accents. “You can have three bob and pay me back on Friday.”
“Is that really O.K.?”
“Yeah. Young Edie may have something.”
“I won’t ask her, poor kid. She gets so frightfully little, and her mother takes most of it off her. I’ll see if my hairdresser’ll lend me fifteen bob, he does sometimes.”
Miss Frayle combed her blonde, waved hair, applied a stick of highly-expensive lip-stick, and tipped a tiny little black hat well forward on her head. Miss Collier did more or less exactly the same things, with less hair, a cheaper lip-stick, and a scarlet hat, and they left the office.
Doris Frayle took her aunt — a bewildered provincial spinster — to a small restaurant in the Strand, listened to her uninteresting chat about relations very nicely and politely, gave her a better lunch than she could afford, and put her carefully into the right bus for Kensington High Street.
Margery Collier ate sardines on toast at a Lyons Corner House and rushed to a lending library in order to change her mother’s book for her, and to a tobacconist for her father’s birthday present, and on her way back to the office spent eightpence on some pallid-looking roses because the woman who was selling them whined piteously and had with her a small child in a push-cart.
3
Young Edie sat in the office whilst her seniors were at luncheon. To this arrangement she had no objection whatever. Her mother always gave her cake or sandwiches to take with her, and she sometimes heated things out of little tins in an old saucepan over the gas-ring.
Moreover Edie was writing a novel, and this interval in the day’s work was her best time for getting on with it.
To-day, however, an epidemic of telephone-calls assailed the office. Edie wrote down the various messages and placed them on Miss Frayle’s desk.
Suddenly the buzzer sounded.
Edie, who had supposed herself to be alone in the building, flew upstairs. Either it was Her wanting God knows what but certainly something that Edie wouldn’t be able to do properly, or else it was A Murderer.
Edie’s thoughts frequently dwelt upon murderers, and in any emergency murder was always her first fear.
On this occasion the lesser alternative alone confronted her.
She sat at her desk, smoking a cigarette.
“I haven’t time to go out to lunch to-day. Do you think you could fetch me something?”
She was actually smiling and looking at Edie — almost for the first time in their association — as though she really saw her.
“Yes, Mrs Winsloe. Only — I’m on the telephone. Miss Collier and Miss Frayle have gone to lunch.”
“You can have the calls put through in here. Get me two or three sandwiches — anything will do — and could you make me a cup of tea?”
“Oh yes, Mrs Winsloe.”
Edie, with incredible speed, put on the kettle, arranged the best cup and saucer on a little tray — hitherto sacred to Mrs Ingatestone’s use — and dashed out into the Strand.
She was upstairs again in less than fifteen minutes.
“Down there, please. Not on the papers.”
Edie obeyed, gasped, and retreated as quickly as she could to the door.
“Thank you very much indeed. I’m so much obliged to you.”
“Don’t mention it, Mrs Winsloe.”
Raising her eyes, Edie again received a look of full recognition and a smile.
Dazzled, she went downstairs. Instead of writing her novel, she sat, eating caramels and thinking about Her.
4
Sal Oliver returned to the office at four o’clock. She had personally inspected the school destined for the little boy whose parents were divorced, had found herself satisfied with it, and had had a long conversation by telephone with the little boy’s father. She was to see him at five o’clock. There would just be time to sign her letters and clear up.
“If you please, Miss Oliver, would you go in to Mrs Winsloe?”
Sal nodded at the messenger girl.
She went in to Claudia.
“Look here, a frightful rush job has just come in. That American woman wants us to provide an escort for her child to Paris — get her clothes, see about passport and everything, and get her there by Thursday. Not flying — it seems she’s nervous.”
“Ingatestone must do it. We can manage without her for a couple of days, easily.”
“Ingatestone telephoned half an hour ago to say she’s gone to Dorking and will be away at least two days.”
“Gone to Dorking! Why has she gone to Dorking?”
“Because,” said Claudia in a low, furious voice, “she thinks, or pretends she thinks, that her wretched child is ill. It’s an absolute excuse, of course. And even if it isn’t, the school authorities can look after her, surely. There’s no question of her being in danger, or anything like it.”
“What’s it supposed to be?”
“I don’t know. Tonsilitis. Ingatestone got a message at Streatham apparently, and she must have rushed through the job there and gone tearing off to Dorking. They’re all alike — putting personal considerations before their job.”
“She’s never let us down before.”
Claudia struck the table with her fist.
“It’s perfectly maddening! This American job may be worth any amount of work to us. I’d go myself, but I’ve got that article to write, and the big cross-word before to-morrow. I simply can’t.”
“Of course you can’t. I’ll do it, Claudia. I can manage it perfectly.”
“Who’ll take your work?”
“Frayle and Collier can do anything that absolutely won’t wait.”
“One of them will have to deputize for Ingatestone. God knows how long she means to be away.”
“Not longer than she can help, I imagine.”
“As long as I live,” said Claudia, “I shall never understand the mentality of people who take on a job of work and then put every sort of personal consideration ahead of it.”
“I suppose if one of your children were ill — —” began Sal, and then stopped. What was the use of arguing the point?
“I can only tell you,” said Claudia arrogantly, “that, in six years of running this show, I’ve never found it necessary to let my private affairs interfere with my work.”
“Well, you’ve been dam’ lucky that’s all,” returned Sal, unmoved. “Now look here, I’ve got an idea. Get Frances Ladislaw here for a week. There are any amount of things she can do, and I’ll be responsible for showing her the work.”
“I don’t like amateur work.”
“It’s only for a week, or less. Till Ingatestone turns up.”
“It’s a bad principle,” Claudia enunciated slowly, “to try and combine friendship with work. It never answers.”
“There isn’t much friendship about you in this office,” said Sal drily.
They looked at one another for a moment in silence. Then Claudia, with one of the unexpected flashes of humour that enabled Sal Oliver to tolerate her autocracy, burst out laughing.
“I suppose you’re right. Very well. Tell them to get me Frances on the telephone. I’ll speak to her myself.”
“Right.”
Sal went out.
Why, she thought, didn’t Claudia want Frances Ladislaw in the office? She had only agreed to send for her because the pressure of work really was great, and this American job important.
Most likely, S
al thought, Claudia felt that it would be difficult to reconcile her office personality with that aspect of herself that she had presumably always shown to her friend hitherto.
5
Frances Ladislaw arrived on the following morning, pale with agitation and excitement, and — since Claudia’s red light was burning — was taken straight up to Sal Oliver’s office by Edie.
As they went upstairs, Miss Frayle cautiously opened her door without a sound and applied an eye to the aperture. With equal noiselessness she closed the door again and turned to Miss Collier.
“It’s the one who came in one day last August. Quite nice shoes and stockings, and utterly meaningless hat. Looks as if she might be a lady.”
“Really a lady?” demanded Collier sceptically.
“Yeah. A relic from Winsome Winnie’s palmy days, I should say.”
“Oh, she is. They were at school together.”
“God, Collier, how do you always get to know everything? What are we going to do with our Polish friend, now we’ve got her?”
“Polish?”
“Yeah. She’s called Mrs Ladislaw, and that’s a Polish name. I know it is because I saw a film once — Cossacks and dogs and all like that — and the chap was called Ladislaw. I thought it was rather sweet.”
“I say, Frayle, I honestly think I’m putting on a stone a day, if not more, I don’t know what to do.”
“Try handing me the duster for this bloody machine. I won’t half give young Edie hell for leaving it like this!”
Miss Collier threw the duster at her colleague’s head. Miss Frayle caught it neatly with one hand, waved it above her head, twirled round once or twice on the tips of her toes, said very gravely, “Nymph dancing naked in the woodlands,” and began to dust the cover of her machine.
“A nice fool you’d look if your precious Oliver had come in then,” observed Miss Collier dispassionately. “Has anybody heard what’s happened about Ingatestone?”
“The old bitch isn’t coming, Edie says. There was a telephone message or something. Her child’s got to see a specialist.”
“My God, how awful. Is she really bad?”
“Not frightfully, but Ma Ingatestone’s got the wind up. I’m sorry for the old hag.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 439