“So’m I — and won’t she get hell from Winnie! ‘Putting personal considerations before the work! I can only tell you that in six years of running this job, I’ve never found it necessary to let my personal affairs interfere with my job,’ “ mimicked Miss Collier with appalling fidelity.
“I tell you what, Collier, let’s send the kid an aspidistra in a pot or a pennyworth of tomatoes, or something. Wouldn’t it be a gesture?”
“Yeah. Let’s. We’ll pop round to a shop at lunch-time. Poor little wretch — it’s a shame. And Ma Ingatestone works like a black, I’ll say that for her.”
“After all, it isn’t her fault if she looks like an overworked tart and weighs eighteen stone,” tolerantly observed Miss Frayle.
She looked at herself in the glass.
“Would you say I looked utterly repellent in this frock, or only just repellent?”
“Anyway, you don’t put on about six pounds every other minute like I do. I ask you, Frayle, have you noticed my seat lately?”
Miss Collier twisted herself into various attitudes in an endeavour to obtain a view that Nature had never meant her to obtain.
“I think you’re going batty, Collier. Truly I do.”
Young Edie came in.
“Please, Miss Frayle, will you go up to Miss Oliver?”
“O.K.”
Frayle skimmed out of the room and up the stairs. She moved with an almost incredible effect of speed and lightness. As she went out, she blew a kiss with the tips of her fingers to her colleagues, murmuring: “Exit ballet-queen, featuring as Cupid the Winged Messenger.”
Edie giggled.
“I don’t know whatever keeps Miss Frayle off the stage,” she gurgled ecstatically.
“Unless it’s the manager’s foot,” Collier agreed. “Now, you hop off and get the kettle going. I’d sell my soul for a cup of tea.”
“I can get you one in a minute, Miss Collier, if the telephone doesn’t ring and I’m not sent for.”
“You won’t be sent for. Don’t flatter yourself. Get a move on.”
“O.K. Miss Collier.”
Edie grinned and went out.
6
Miss Frayle, outside Sal Oliver’s door, assumed an air of preternatural discretion and went in.
“Good morning, Miss Oliver.”
“Good morning. Mrs Ladislaw, this is Miss Frayle, who deals with most of our correspondence, and has charge of all the personal files. I think the best plan would be for her to go through them with you and give you some idea about anything that’s got to be dealt with this week.”
Mrs Ladislaw shook hands, smiled rather nicely, and murmured that that would be very kind of Miss Frayle.
“Mrs Ladislaw is going to help us till Mrs Ingatestone can come back. Is there any news of the little girl this morning?”
“She’s to see a specialist. I don’t think she’s really much worse, but she’s always been delicate, and I think they’re afraid of glands or something.”
“Poor Mrs Ingatestone!” said Sal. “I suppose she’s frightfully worried.”
“Frantic, I should think. She’s crazy about the little creature. When I see what these mothers go through, it’s me for Marie Stopes every time. I hope that woman gets a monument when she dies.”
“I’ll put you on the job if we’re asked to compose the inscription,” promised Sal. “In the meantime, can you find a table for Mrs Ladislaw in your room? I think we’d better leave Mrs Ingatestone’s undisturbed as long as possible, don’t you?”
“I should think we better had,” expressively murmured Miss Frayle.
“I’ll ring down as soon as Claudia is disengaged,” Sal assured Mrs Ladislaw. “And — unless she’s already booked you? — do come and lunch with me somewhere, at about one o’clock, and tell me what you think of our bear-garden.”
Frances murmured acceptance and gratitude and followed her guide downstairs.
7
Frances had been downstairs for more than an hour before a message came summoning her to the presence of Claudia.
She had had a good many files shown to her and their contents briefly and clearly explained by Miss Frayle — whose sophisticated mannerisms disappeared magically when she was at work, and reappeared instantly whenever she was not — she had been given a cup of tea, with two biscuits in the saucer, by young Edie — and she had exchanged several amiable observations with Miss Collier.
Frances, inwardly, felt afraid of the two girls. They looked so young, so competent and assured, and their successful permanent waves, lip-stick and nail-varnish, all combined to give each of them an air of poise that she secretly envied.
They were very kind to her.
“Please ask me anything you want to know. You will, won’t you?” said Miss Frayle.
“I’ll type anything you want done, Mrs Ladislaw. Just say the word,” said Miss Collier.
At intervals one or other of them looked up and asked, “O.K.?”
And Frances always smiled and said “Yes, thank you.”
She heard them talking to one another — brief, ejaculatory phrases, in the intervals of work — and she guessed that her presence was making them self-conscious. Well, theirs, if they only realized it, was having much the same effect upon her.
She liked them, though — both of them.
Then young Edie came in and primly said that Mrs Winsloe would see Mrs Ladislaw now, and would she please come up?
Frances got up, and Edie held the door open for her.
“Won’t you show me the way?” said Frances. Edie, politely murmuring “Pardon me,” preceded her to the stairs, omitting to shut the door behind her.
Frances heard the unguarded voice of Miss Collier:
“Twee, isn’t she? I hope W. W. doesn’t reduce her to a nervous wreck within twenty-four hours.”
“My God, Collier, what a hope! If Ingatestone doesn’t turn up by to-morrow, we’re all for it.”
Mrs Ladislaw sedately followed the messenger up the stairs and to Claudia’s office.
Her mind, already sufficiently agitated by the number of new impressions confronting her, refused resolutely to take in, at any rate for the moment, the full implications of the light-hearted dialogue she had just heard.
II
1
The child of Mrs Ingatestone was declared not to be seriously ill, but she must, said the doctor, leave school at once and spend at least six weeks in the country, drinking milk and living as much as possible out of doors. At the end of six weeks he would see her again.
Mrs Ingatestone, whose home was a two-roomed flat with a bath-kitchenette in Bloomsbury, at once said that this should be done.
Splendid, said the doctor, much encouraged. Injections would be advisable as well.
Certainly, said Mrs Ingatestone.
She could not imagine how any of it was going to be done. But done it should be.
She had very few relations, and had quarrelled with most of them, and none of them lived in the country. Nor would it be in the least possible for her to take Diana away anywhere herself. If country lodgings, milk, doctor’s fees, and travelling expenses were to be paid for at all, it could only be achieved by continuing her work.
Since nothing in the world except Diana was of the slightest importance to Mrs Ingatestone, she would have had no hesitation in throwing up her job, at whatever inconvenience to her employers, if to do so would have benefited Diana.
But on the contrary. It would have cut off their sole income, and would have made even smaller the already small chance of getting another post later on.
Mrs Ingatestone, like most working women, found it easier to earn than to save. There was a small amount in the Post Office Savings Bank, and she paid regular premiums to a life assurance company. Everything else went on Diana’s school-bills, the upkeep of the tiny flat, and such minor self-indulgences as cheap cigarettes, sweets for Diana, visits to the cinema, and a yearly holiday by the sea.
For all these extrav
agances, except the last one, Mrs Ingatestone now blamed herself bitterly.
Not, however, for long. She was pre-eminently a person of action.
She rang up the office.
“Mrs Ingatestone speaking. … Is that you, Edie? Put me through to Miss Oliver, like a good girl. What? Thank you very much, Edie, she’s better, but I’m a bit worried … the doctor doesn’t think her any too strong, poor kiddie. It does seem a shame, doesn’t it? How are things going at the office? … Well, I know, dear, but it couldn’t be helped, not in the circumstances. As to when I’ll be back, I couldn’t say at all. See if you can get me through to Miss Oliver.”
There was a pause. Mrs Ingatestone could plainly hear the buzzing and whining noises that indicated young Edie’s efforts to obtain a reply from the telephone on Sal Oliver’s table.
“I’m ever so sorry, Mrs Ingatestone, I think she must be out. I can’t get any reply.”
“Damnation,” said Mrs Ingatestone, clearly and forcibly. And she added — to herself, for she knew how to keep subordinates such as young Edie in their places— “I suppose it’ll have to be Her Ladyship. Just exactly what I didn’t want.”
“Miss Frayle would like to speak to you, Mrs Ingatestone,” piped Edie’s attenuated voice.
“O.K.”
More buzzing. Then the familiar drawl of Frayle’s young, light voice.
“Oh hallo! It’s me. I say, how’s Diana?”
Mrs Ingatestone, irresistibly compelled to it by Frayle’s tone of deep concern, poured forth a concise history of her child’s illness, partial recovery, the advice of the doctor, and the absolute necessity of following it.
“Yeah,” said Miss Frayle at intervals. “Yeah. I see. Of course. Every time. She’ll be all right, Mrs Ingatestone. I knew a child exactly like her, only miles worse, and they sent her to Weston for three months and she put on stones, and she’s been as strong as a horse ever since. It’s utterly sickening for you, of course, and frightfully upsetting, but she’ll be O.K. directly you get her into the real country. You mark my words.”
Never, in the course of their office association, would either of them have expected for one moment that Mrs Ingatestone should think any words of Miss Frayle’s worth marking — unless of a sufficiently blasphemous or indecent nature to be curtly rebuked as “anything but ladylike.”
Now, however, Mrs Ingatestone gasped in grateful tones, “Do you really think so?” and Miss Frayle replied reassuringly, “Yeah, sure I do.”
“I’ve been sorry to let you all down, I must say. How have you been managing?”
“A friend of Mrs Winsloe’s has taken over for a bit, and Collier and I are helping out. It’s quite all right. We’re as slack as hell for the moment. I suppose you’re not likely to be back just yet?”
“I shall need a couple of days to get things settled and then I want to get right back to work,” Mrs Ingatestone declared vigorously. “Get Edie to ask Mrs Winsloe if I can speak to her for a minute.”
“O.K. Oh — Mrs Ingatestone! Would Diana like any books to read? I could lend her some detective stories and frightfully light novels and things, that we got last year for Mother when she was laid up.”
“I expect she’d love them. She’s a regular bookworm. It’s very kind of you indeed, and we’ll take every care of the books.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll send them along. By-bye. Love to Diana. I’m writing her a letter to cheer her up.”
“That’s a nice girl,” said Mrs Ingatestone emphatically to herself, as she waited for Edie to put her call through to Mrs Winsloe’s room. And she added, quite mistakenly, “I’ve always vowed and declared that, for all her disgusting language and immoral ideas, Frayle was a thoroughly good girl at heart.”
“Yes?”
Claudia Winsloe’s voice, crisp and decided, came across the wires.
“This is Mrs Ingatestone speaking. Good morning, Mrs Winsloe,” said her employee, very correctly.
“Good morning. I hope the child is better.”
“She’s better, thank you, Mrs Winsloe. I hope to be back at work by the end of the week — to-day’s Tuesday — say Friday morning — if you could possibly spare me till then.”
There was a silence that Mrs Ingatestone decided was an unfavourable one.
“I’m extremely sorry, but I’ve got to make one or two arrangements for sending Diana to the country.”
“Yes, I see. Well, of course, Mrs Ingatestone — I can’t say it’s very convenient to do without you just now — we’re as busy as we can be — but I suppose I must give you till Friday.”
“I appreciate that very much, Mrs Winsloe, and I can assure you that I fully intend to make up for lost time once I get back,” Mrs Ingatestone said, in tones of entirely false cordiality.
“Till Friday then. Oh, by the way — I suppose you couldn’t possibly look in here for half an hour some time this afternoon? I do want to ask you about one or two things — and it would be a great help to Mrs Ladislaw, who’s doing what she can with your work.”
“Certainly, Mrs Winsloe, with pleasure. About three o’clock?”
“Excellent, thank you. Goodbye.”
The click of the replaced receiver reached Mrs Ingatestone’s ear before she could utter her own goodbye.
“No time to waste, as usual,” she muttered and smiled rather grimly, and not without a certain admiration.
2
Claudia and Sal Oliver lunched together that day.
They did this from motives of expediency rather than from any special inclination for one another’s society, since it afforded them an opportunity for discussing minor points concerning the office and the staff.
It had been decided by Claudia, with a strange mixture of candour and autocracy, that Frances Ladislaw, so long as she worked in the office, had better not join them.
The restaurant they chose was a very small and modest one. They ate fish-salad and bread-and-butter, and finished with stewed fruit and black coffee. Claudia smoked throughout, nervously and almost incessantly — Sal not at all.
“Ingatestone rang up this morning, didn’t she?” Sal enquired.
“I was going to tell you. How did you know, by the way? Edie is supposed to treat all telephone-calls that come to me as confidential.”
“It’s all right, she’s been perfectly discreet so far as I know. Mrs Ingatestone spoke to Frayle. She asked for me first, but I was out. It was Frayle who came and told me about it.”
“We’d better find a little more work for that girl to do if she’s got time on her hands. Well, Ingatestone admits that the child’s more or less well again, but she wants to make some arrangements or other about her — heaven knows what — so I’ve given her till Friday. She’s to come in for half an hour this afternoon to clear up one or two things.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Frances is really doing a lot to help us, but of course she’s a complete amateur, and has to be told every single thing. It holds up the work quite a lot.”
“But it couldn’t be helped,” Sal pointed out.
Claudia looked at her in surprise.
“Of course it could have been helped. If Ingatestone put her job first instead of her private concerns, she needn’t have been away at all, for more than a couple of hours to take the child to the doctor. It isn’t as if she was very ill. She’s not. It’s the same old story. Private lives first, and the job second. Women are all alike.”
“Except you.”
“Very well, except me if you like. I’m not in the least ashamed of saying so. I always have thought that I was the only woman of my acquaintance, almost, to understand the meaning of hard work.”
Sal shrugged her shoulders.
“Wait till Maurice gets acute appendicitis, that’s all.”
“But that’s not the point, Sal! The Ingatestone child hadn’t got acute appendicitis, or anything else that meant a real crisis. I could understand if it had been that kind of thing. But this was just feminine fus
s, and nerves, and disregard of everything except her own personal feelings. Why on earth does she want to be away for the next two days, for instance?”
“What did she tell you?”
“Something vague about getting the child to the country. I told her she could stay away till Friday, and I only hope she understood what I thought of her.”
“I’ve no doubt she did. She’s heard your views on the subject of unnecessary absence quite often enough. I imagine that’s why she didn’t tell you any details. You see, I heard the whole story from Frayle.”
Sal stopped, and Claudia said: “Well, go on. I can see you mean to tell it to me.”
“Yes, I do. If Ingatestone hadn’t been terrified out of her senses at the thought of getting the sack, she’d have told you herself. Well, this child’s the only thing she’s got in the world. The husband was a bad hat, and drank, and he left her without a penny, having previously pawned most of the furniture.”
“I know all that — except about the furniture, which I believe you invented.”
“Very well,” continued Sal imperturbably, “the whole of Mrs Ingatestone’s screw goes on this child — naturally. I don’t know whether she has any relations to help her or not — anyway, none of them is in a position to take her now, and the doctors have ordered her into the country. The point of all this is that Mrs Ingatestone, between now and Friday, has got to find a suitable place and make all her arrangements. I suppose she means to take her there — wherever it may be — at the week-end.”
Claudia made a sound expressive of concern.
“Yes, I see. Why on earth didn’t the idiot tell me? Of course I should have understood.”
“How was she to guess that? She’s heard you say — the whole office has heard you say — that you’ve no patience with slackers, and people who are always putting their own concerns before their work. Naturally she thought you meant it, and that you’d probably sack her if she asked for more than two days.”
Claudia uttered an ejaculation, more expressive of impatience than of contrition.
“The woman must be a perfect fool. What a mercy she’s coming this afternoon. Of course I’ll tell her she can have a week or ten days — what-ever’s absolutely necessary — on full pay, while she gets the child settled.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 440