“I knew you’d say that.”
“It’s the obvious thing to say.”
Sal called for her bill.
“Could we possibly offer her anything to help at all, with the expense? After all, she’s been with us from the beginning.”
“I should think we might,” Claudia said. “Anyway, I’ll try this afternoon. Poor wretch! It’s bad luck. I hope there’s nothing really wrong with the little girl.”
“I don’t think it’s terribly serious, from what Frayle said. Ingatestone will probably tell you about it this afternoon.”
“Apparently that’s exactly what she won’t do. Fool! I do think people might realize,” said Claudia, half laughing, “that one’s bark may be worse than one’s bite.”
“It’d be a lot easier,” Sal returned, “if you didn’t say things that you don’t really mean, just to live up to your own idea of yourself as an employer.”
3
“Never again,” remarked Mrs Ingatestone emotionally, “never again shall it be said in my presence that Mrs Winsloe is hard. She is not hard. No one could have been kinder, or more generous, or more of an absolute lady than she’s shown herself to me.”
“That’s good,” said Miss Frayle cheerfully. “I thought Saucy Sal’s example would tell in time. To say nothing of Collier’s and mine.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to desert you all for a week, but the very first minute I can, I shall be back again. How is this Mrs Ladislaw managing?”
“Oh, she’s O.K.,” Miss Collier conceded. “I say, does Diana like chocs? I’ve got some here for her, just to pass the time away.”
“That’s very kind of you — really it is. I do think you girls have been sweet —— —”
Miss Collier and Miss Frayle looked embarrassed, and the former said quickly:
“Actually, I shouldn’t offer my worst enemy chocs. There’s nothing like them for putting on weight. But if you’re a kid, it doesn’t matter. Aren’t they lucky!”
“They aren’t the only ones,” said Mrs Ingatestone. “My word, no.”
4
In a very few days Frances Ladislaw had begun to feel as if she had been at work in the office of London Universal Services for quite a long while.
She became attached to her — or Mrs Ingatestone’s — card-index, and enjoyed entering up particulars on the cards, and signalizing a completed transaction by the affixing of a red paper disc.
She liked Miss Frayle, Miss Collier, and young Edie — whose surname she never learnt. Quite soon Frayle and Collier forgot that Mrs Ladislaw was a friend of their employer’s, and behaved in her presence very much as they would have behaved without her, except that they referred to Mrs Winsloe only as Her or She. Miss Oliver they simply called, behind her back, Our Sal, or Sally in our Alley. The violent language used by the slim, baby-faced Doris Frayle ceased to surprise Frances. From time to time she took part, quite earnestly, in passionate discussions about Miss Collier’s weight.
As the weather turned colder, she fell more and more into the tea-drinking habit.
Much of her work, however, lay outside the office. She packed, washed underclothes, and mended, for agitated and often unreasonable women, she took small children to walk in Kensington Gardens or visit the Zoo — Frances liked the children and hated the Zoo — and she continually visited a small Servants’ Registry Office run in close connection with Claudia’s organization.
One day, to her surprise, Copper Winsloe walked into the office just as she was preparing to go out to lunch.
“Hallo, Frances! Good morning.”
“Good morning. It’s nice to see you — Shall I see if Claudia’s ready?”
“She isn’t expecting me. I came up by train after she’d left,” said Copper coolly. “Had to see a man.”
“We’ll ring through and let her know you’re here.”
Ringing through only revealed that both Mrs Winsloe and Miss Oliver had left the office a quarter of an hour ago.
“What a pity!” Frances cried. “I wonder if Edie knows where they were going.”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. They’ll be here this afternoon, won’t they?”
“Yes. We’ve got an inter-departmental conference.”
“What?”
“We meet in Claudia’s office for a sort of general discussion about the various jobs, and who’s doing what. It’s supposed to prevent overlapping and to give us all a chance of bringing forward suggestions. I think it’s a very good idea. Not that I’ve attended one yet. They only happen once a month.”
“You were just off to lunch, weren’t you? Come and have some with me. We’ll go to Simpson’s.”
Her impulse was to protest at the extravagance, but she checked it. Copper scarcely ever made any suggestion, if one came to think of it, and when he did so — at any rate at Arling — it was not usually successful.
“Thank you very much,” she said gently. “I’d love to come. What an exciting place!”
“I used to go there sometimes in the old days before the war,” Copper explained.
He took her to Simpson’s, expressing disapproval of the way in which London had altered, and they sat down to lunch.
“What cocktail would you like?”
She saw that he wanted her to accept the cocktail and, although with a foreboding that it would make her feel sleepier than ever between the fatal hours of two-forty-five and three-thirty, she chose a dry Martini.
When the drinks came, Copper said rather shyly:
“I want you to drink a toast. To a possible job!”
“Oh, I will!” cried Frances eagerly. “Copper, I’m so glad! Here’s the very best of luck.”
She drank excitedly, and choked at the taste, which she hated.
They both laughed.
“Do tell me about it, please.”
“That’s what I came up about. It’s not exactly settled yet — but with any luck it will be to-night, before I go home.”
“What is it? Does Claudia know yet? Is it a permanent job?”
“Claudia doesn’t know. I shall tell her this afternoon. As a matter of fact, it partly depends on her — I say, what are you going to eat?”
They discussed the question. Copper’s childlike absorption in the menu, and his anxiety that Frances should have what she liked, rather touched her. At Arling he had been sullen and very often disagreeable, although not to her.
Now, away from Arling and with a new hope in front of him, he had become again the Copper Winsloe that she had known in earlier years.
When the waiter had received his order, Copper leant back and drew a long breath, looking at his companion.
“I’ll tell you,” he began. “Sure you’re not bored?”
“Oh, Copper! Go on!”
5
The job, it appeared, had to do with a new country club, to be started outside a big midland town by an enterprising speculator and his wealthy wife.
“ — the woman, as usual, being the moving spirit and having most of the money,” Copper threw in with a grin.
Copper, whose name had been suggested by an old Ceylon tea-planting friend, had actually received a letter asking him whether he would consider taking up the management of the golf-house and club that were to form an integral part of the scheme.
Frances listened to him with absorption, uttering low ejaculations of excited comprehension from time to time. Copper was not, as a rule, an eloquent speaker, and even to-day he did not achieve more than articulateness.
But his face, and indeed his whole personality, were transformed.
“Decent of old Branscombe to remember me, wasn’t it?” he kept on repeating.
“It’s splendid,” said Frances. “I suppose they wanted a gentleman?”
“That’s the idea, I believe.”
“But, Copper — tell me some more — would it be residential? Is it permanent?”
“It’s residential, naturally, to start with. They’re only suggesting that I sh
ould do it for six months, to get the thing thoroughly started, and after that, I imagine it’s up to me. Old Branscombe didn’t seem to think there’d be much difficulty about getting in with them permanently, if the thing’s a success.”
“Oh, it must be!”
“It’s bound to be, isn’t it?” he agreed earnestly. “They’ve got any amount of money, and apparently the house and grounds and everything are all O.K. The list of members is as long as your arm.”
“Is it open already?”
“Opens next week. They want me to go up before that, naturally. Then — if I get the job — I can meet the people, the members I mean, when they have the opening show — Lord Mayor coming out as large as life, and all the local big-wigs. After that — carry right on.”
“It’s marvellous! How excited Claudia will be.”
“D’you think she will?” he asked wistfully. “Lord knows, it’ll be a change to have me earning some money. There’s only one snag about it, though. They want me to put a couple of hundred pounds into the show — just as a guarantee of good faith.”
“Would that be very difficult to manage?”
“Impossible, so far as I’m concerned. I shall have to have it from Claudia, I suppose. If she can’t, or won’t, I dare say I could borrow it. It’s worth it, to me, to get something to do again.”
“Oh yes, yes!”
“You must have another drink,” said Copper.
“No, really I won’t.”
“You must,” he insisted. “I’m going to. You must drink to the success of the job, now you know what it is.”
Her head was already swimming slightly, and a pleasant feeling of irresponsibility invading her.
“I shan’t be able to attend to anything this afternoon,” she murmured.
“You won’t have to, if there’s this what-you-may-call-it conference. Unless I’m mistaken, the talking will all be done by Claudia.”
Copper ordered two more cocktails.
He was happier than Frances had ever seen him since the early days of their acquaintance. She remembered, pleasantly sentimental, how much she had liked him then, and how disappointed she had felt at the change in him.
“When can you tell Claudia?”
“After this blessed conference, I suppose. Will it take long?”
“I don’t know. About an hour, I think the girls in the office said.”
“I tell you what, I’ll call at about four o’clock and take her out to tea or something. Don’t say a word, will you?”
“Of course not.”
He raised his glass.
“Well, here’s to it!”
“Here’s to it,” repeated Frances obediently.
She liked her second cocktail better than she had her first. It seemed less unfamiliar. Moreover, the agreeable sense of irresponsibility was increasing rapidly.
“I never, never,” she said with great earnestness and distinctness, “I never, never was so pleased about anything. I can’t tell you, Copper, how sorry I’ve felt for you heaps of times.”
“It’s been pretty rotten — and not only for me. I know I’ve been a brute, often,” said Copper Winsloe candidly. “I seem to have got into a bloody awful state when I couldn’t do anything but curse. I’ve felt a different man since Branscombe’s letter came.”
“When did you get it?”
“Two days ago, but I wasn’t going to say anything till I’d actually seen him. I didn’t even let Claudia know I was coming up this morning.”
“Is it actually all settled? Oh no — there’s the two hundred pounds.”
“There’s the two hundred pounds,” he agreed, “and one’s got to see the place and the people, and get the once-over. But Branscombe thinks it’s a certainty, all right, if I can produce the capital. They were quite prepared to take his recommendations. Save them the trouble of advertising and so on, I suppose.”
“Where would you live?”
“In the guest-house, to start with. They’ve got one, of course, for week-end visitors. I’d have a bedroom and an office there. Later on I suppose it might be a question of something more permanent.”
“Do you mean — living there altogether?”
“Well, I don’t know. But you see, Frances — it might be worth it. Supposing — just supposing — we were to sell Arling — mortgage and all — we could kind of start fresh, couldn’t we?”
Frances felt dimly that there was a drawback to this scheme, and that she ought to put it forward. The idea, however, eluded her.
She took another sip at her cocktail, hoping that it might clear her brain.
Copper was speaking — from rather far away, and without her having heard the beginning of the sentence.
“… and not only is Arling much too big for us, but it’s too expensive. It was a perfectly mad thing ever to buy it. But Claudia wanted it so frightfully.”
“She’s very fond of Arling.”
“It’s a nice enough place,” he conceded, “but not for people situated as we are. The fact is, Sal Oliver once put the whole thing in a nutshell. She’s a clever woman, Sal.”
“Oh, very, very,” said Frances enthusiastically.
“She said that what Claudia really wanted, was to see an extension of her own personality in the children. History repeating itself kind of idea, I suppose. That’s why she was so keen on Arling. Seeing herself as a child again, and a young girl — only it was Sylvia and Taffy and Maurice instead.”
“Repeating the pattern,” Frances elucidated, feeling proudly that this was indeed an admirable summing-up.
Copper appeared to feel it so as well.
“That’s exactly it. You’ve got it in a nutshell. Repeating the pattern. She wants to see herself again, living in her children. I suppose it’s natural enough. Still, they won’t be children much longer. Sylvia isn’t living at home and soon Taffy won’t be. Home’ll just be the place they come back to, for a year or two longer, and then after that they’ll make their own lives. What’s the sense of hanging on to Arling?”
“But Claudia —— —”
“Yes, I know,” he said impatiently. “But I’ve danced to Claudia’s tune all these years and I think it’s about time I had a say in things. Honestly — don’t you agree?”
“Yes, yes, I do,” Frances said solemnly.
She was aware, in a remote kind of way, that she would probably have qualified this statement in a more normal mood. Two cocktails, taken in the middle of the day after a very light breakfast of five hours earlier, had, she felt certain, impaired her powers of judgment.
A happy confidence enveloped her and seemed to vibrate glowingly between herself and Copper Winsloe.
III
1
It had been a day of hard work, rushed jobs and continual irritations. Thank heaven, thought Claudia, Ingatestone will be back to-morrow.
She had deliberately arranged to do a certain amount of Mrs Ingatestone’s work herself, and this addition to her own multifarious occupations added to the nervous strain under which she laboured.
Her head ached as she presided over the staff conference, and it seemed to her that Sal Oliver was argumentative, Frances Ladislaw half asleep, and the two girls unusually casual and inattentive.
Claudia’s self-command enabled her to keep these impressions to herself, but her manner grew more and more curt and peremptory, and as soon as the conference was over she slammed her door viciously and snapped on the red light.
A pile of letters to be signed lay on her desk. She read each one through, making an alteration here and there.
I shall have to stay at Sal’s flat to-night, she told herself. I can’t face that drive through the traffic, and I drive so badly when I’m tired. Claudia knew — it was one of the facts that she faced most fearlessly and frequently — that, although she was a careful driver, she was not a good one. Extra fatigue was always liable to make her movements rather slower, her judgment a shade less accurate, than was desirable.
Pe
rhaps it wasn’t altogether to be wondered at.
One couldn’t do everything — although one might try.
The inter-office telephone-bell rang.
“Yes?” said Claudia. She allowed herself to sound just as exasperated as she felt at this fresh demand upon her attention and energy. It was much better that the office should realize the tension under which she was living and working: otherwise they might become careless, and allow unnecessary interruptions.
Claudia’s “Yes?” therefore sounded, even to her own ears, not so very unlike a sharp bark.
“If you please, Mrs Winsloe, Mr Winsloe is in the office. Shall he come up?”
The children, thought Claudia. Which of them is it? Maurice …
“Please show him up at once,” she directed, and leant back in her chair.
Copper had never before come to the office except by appointment.
In the four and a half minutes that elapsed before Edie knocked at the door, Claudia had mentally lived through a good deal. With complete composure and presence of mind she had handed over one or two urgent pieces of work to Sal Oliver, had commanded Miss Frayle to sign the remainder of the letters for her, put a telephone-call through to Arling and given various instructions, sent Edie for a taxi, and stepped into it, directing the driver to go — where?
Was it Sylvia, or Taffy, or Maurice?
“Come in!”
It was Edie’s deprecating knock, but she did not appear. The door opened as though by an invisible agency, and Copper came in, wearing an unmistakable air of jauntiness and an unwonted flower in his button-hole.
Claudia instantly recognized that all her fears had been without any foundation at all.
“Copper!” she said sharply. “Is anything wrong with any of the children?”
“Good God, no! Why should there be?”
Claudia visibly relaxed in her chair.
“I’m sorry — it was silly of me,” she said very sweetly. “When I heard you were here, quite suddenly, I thought you might have come to fetch me because one of them had met with an accident or was ill.”
“Well, I haven’t.”
“I’m so glad.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 441