Sylvia even smiled a little at the remembrance.
Suddenly and irrationally, she felt convinced that her mother knew about the letter. She knew that Sylvia and Andrew belonged to one another, that they were bound by something that was essential to both and that could no longer be denied. Somewhere, she knew and understood.
Sylvia, wanting to believe this, for the moment did believe it so implicitly that she uttered a little low ejaculation of inarticulate thankfulness, feeling that her mother heard it.
Then, the tears shining in her eyes and her heart tremulous with sudden happiness, she wrote her letter to her lover.
6
The work in the Norfolk Street office continued.
No one sat at Claudia’s desk, but Sal Oliver had had her own table brought down to the larger room. Downstairs the conversation of Miss Frayle and Miss Collier continued intermittently, between their outbursts of strenuous industry.
“I found a bit about reducing exercises in the paper this morning. You can get seven pounds off in ten days, it says. Not that I think it’s true,” observed Miss Collier.
“It might be true if one kept it up,” Miss Frayle said, “but one never does. It’s quite difficult enough to get out of bed in the mornings at the ordinary time without making it ten minutes earlier so as to lie on the floor and try and touch the ceiling with your toes or whatever it is.”
“That’s what I say.”
“The woman Sarah has lost weight, if you ask me.” Miss Frayle by this mode of speech sought to give a great effect of detachment.
“Oh well, she had a bit of a shock last October. We all had, come to that.”
“Yeah. Life’s a pretty bloody show. Think of those poor kids.”
“Well, thank God she didn’t know she was leaving them. There couldn’t have been time.”
For the hundredth time they discussed the details of the accident, for the hundredth time Miss Collier shuddered and looked thoroughly sick, and Miss Frayle’s blue eyes grew dark and pitiful at the thought of Claudia’s children.
Edie came in with her tray and placed cups of tea on the table.
“Mrs Ing. wanted some,” she explained, “and I thought you might like it, the weather being so damn cold.”
“Edie,” said Miss Frayle, “if you said what I think you said, leave the room. What young girls are coming to, nowadays!”
Edie giggled.
“No, but Miss Frayle, really I mean, it is something chronic, the cold. Just look at my fingers!”
“Try soap and water, young Edie.”
Mrs Ingatestone bounced in with an open notebook in her hand. Her hair, which had received attention the day before, was the colour of a brass bedstead.
“Good morning all,” she cried gaily. “Sorry I couldn’t get down before. Miss Frayle, hop along upstairs dear, she wants you to take down her letters. And there’s a child to be met at Waterloo and taken to the dentist at twelve — I’ll do that myself. Miss Collier, she wants that lease for the house in Hertfordshire. You know — the people home on leave from India. They’ll be in this morning.”
“O.K.,” said Miss Collier.
“You get back to your telephone, Edie, there’s a good girl. If you want something to do, there are plenty of circulars to be got ready.”
“What about that novel of yours?” Miss Frayle enquired. “Where the hell’s my note-book?”
“Now, now, now!”
“O.K. I’ve found it.”
“Run along now, Edie.”
“O.K., Mrs Ingatestone.”
Upstairs, Sal gathered together the threads of the day’s work.
It was all going well enough, she thought, and if she could only afford to advertise a bit more it would go better still.
Perhaps something could be done with the weekly papers. She made a note of the idea.
Outside it was dark and very cold.
Miss Frayle’s light, decided fingers knocked at the door.
“Come in,” said Sal.
In the second’s interval between the words and the appearance of her secretary, she lost herself in a brief but radiant dream of taking a month’s holiday in the summer and going to the South of Spain.
Yes. She’d do that.
Definitely.
“Good morning, Miss Oliver. Utterly suicidal weather, isn’t it?”
“Quite. I think we’d better have the light on, Miss Frayle.”
“O.K.”
The work went on.
7
Copper Winsloe swung himself off the tram, turned up the collar of his mackintosh, and prepared to walk the last half-mile. Betsy followed him, obediently keeping at his heels and eyeing with some disgust the stream of cars that flashed along the high road.
Copper was rather glad that he’d given up the idea of a car. The trams were handy, and the exercise good for him. He felt better than he’d felt for years. Soon it would be Easter, although no hint of spring was in the raw atmosphere nor did the thorny hedges show any glint of green.
The Easter week-end would be a very busy one, with any luck. He’d be at the club all the time.
But if Frances Ladislaw came down she’d arrange something for Sylvia and Maurice so that it wouldn’t be too dull for them. Copper felt, regretfully but helplessly, that Sylvia didn’t have much of a time nowadays.
Sal Oliver wanted her to go and stay for a bit in London, next time Sal’s friend was away and there was room. Well, she must go. It was a shame Taffy should be having all the fun.
There’d soon be young Maurice’s Public School outfit to think about too. Copper decided that he ought to see about that himself. After all, he knew more about what kind of things a boy needed than any woman could.
And he’d take Maurice there himself, when the time came.
Copper reached the house and went up the little steps.
He hoped that there would be a letter from Frances Ladislaw. Somehow they’d drifted into a correspondence, and it had become by imperceptible degrees an important thing in his life.
I always liked her, he thought.
Dimly, at the back of his mind, a wistful hope was slowly taking form.
Putting his key into the door, Copper turned it and entered the tiny hall.
There was the letter from Frances on the table, waiting.
From the sitting-room where the radio stood floated a thin, stuffless, melancholy phrase in a minor key:
“Good — night — ba-by —
Sleep — tight — ba-by ——
Let’s — call — it — a — day”
Rhythm, slang and sentiment in the modern pattern, combined in an undeeded farewell.
THE END
NOTHING IS SAFE
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
DEDICATED TO CICELY
who doesn’t need convincing.
I
EVEN in what Julia now thought of as “the old days” — a year ago, and more — Terry had always minded things.
Whenever anything went even a little bit wrong he was almost certain to be fearfully upset. Sometimes he cried, even at twelve years old.
Daddy said Terry was a neurotic little ass.
Mummie said he was highly-strung, and that she’d been the same herself as a child.
Julia just thought that it was dam bad luck on Terry, being like that. And although he was two years older than she was she took care of him as far as she could and tried always to prevent the kind of things that he minded from happening. But now, thought Julia disconsolately, I really am done.
Terry always hated paying visits and meeting strange people and now — so far as Julia could see — they were going to do n
othing but pay visits, for the whole of their lives.
They couldn’t be at home, for the simple reason that home didn’t exist any more. First daddy had gone — to stay at his club — and then mummie had said the house was going to be sold, and that they wouldn’t live in Hampstead any more.
The fact was that mummie and daddy, after appearing to be just like other parents all their lives — well, all their lives ever since Julia had known them — had decided that they didn’t really love one another a bit, and didn’t want to live together any more. Looking back, as she sometimes did, to the enormously distant era in which they had just been a family — daddy and mummie and Terry and Julia and Chang — it sometimes occurred to Julia to wonder indignantly why she hadn’t been told that daddy and mummie were having a divorce.
In some queer way it was almost as though she’d been expecting something to happen for quite a long while, and couldn’t be surprised when she heard what it was.
Mummie had told them, one afternoon in the garden. Julia hadn’t paid very much attention at the time, partly because mummie was using the kind of voice that she hated — a smothered voice, Julia called it — and partly because she was watching Chang watching the birds. But all the same she must have heard some of what mummie said, even without listening much, because oddly enough she could still remember certain bits of it.
“It isn’t that daddy and I aren’t friends any more. We’re quite friends... I hope we always shall be. Nowadays, lots of people do what we’re going to do... it just means that they can have a second chance.... When you’re older, you’ll understand. You’d want me to be happy, wouldn’t you?”
Terry had said: “Yes.”
When Julia looked at him, he had on his frowning look and was fiddling with a piece of grass, staring down at it hard.
That was when she’d first realized that he was going to mind, very much, about this. Perhaps because of Chang? If daddy and mummie weren’t going to live together any more, which of them would have Chang?
This question had preoccupied Julia more than any other.
She could get no reply to it, although she asked mummie outright. Instead of answering, mummie had begun to explain that she and daddy were both terribly fond of Terry and Julia, and were going to divide the holidays between them, so that each of them would have the children for part of the time.
“But Chang,” said Julia in an agony.
Mummie had paid no attention.
She was watching Terry.
Julia was accustomed to this, and took it for granted. She would have to ask daddy about Chang.
Then — or later — she realized that it was quite a long while since she’d even seen daddy.
So he’d actually gone, already.
It was rather startling, in a way. One hadn’t realized that anything was happening. The only thing Julia could remember noticing was that daddy, for ages and ages, hadn’t called mummie by any name at all. He didn’t say “Daphne” or “darling” or even “dear.”
Just nothing.
If daddy had gone, then he wasn’t going to have Chang. So it must be mummie. But mummie didn’t in the least understand dogs, and she never went for walks, and Chang wouldn’t have any fun at all while Julia and Terry were away at school.
Oh, -poor little Chang.
Julia had thought of nothing else, for a long while.
But the very next holidays, she and Terry were sent to stay with grandpapa and grandmama at Chepstow — and there was Chang!
It was marvellous. More marvellous than the large house, and the Daimler, and the river, and the meringues on Sundays, although all these were things that Julia adored.
Even Terry quite liked staying at Chepstow and he was as pleased as Julia was when they found that Chang was living there “for the present.”
Grandpapa and grandmama, although fussy as ever in their old-fashioned way, were kind and arranged many treats. They were, Julia saw, for some grown-up reason of their own, sorry for her and for Terry.
Once she heard grandmama say to a visiting lady that it was all too distressing to be talked about. Those poor, sweet children! said grandmama.
The visitor replied that all the old standards, nowadays, had gone by the board. Julia, who had read many stories of Adventures by Land and Sea, immediately saw a clear picture of a tattered flag dipping over the side of a ship.
Except for the absence of mummie and daddy — mummie only came for two week-ends and daddy not at all — everything was much as it always had been, whenever they stayed at Chepstow.
Relations said: “How they’ve grown!” and asked them how they liked their schools, and Terry and Julia said: “Quite, thank you.”
The servants were as nice as usual, and told Julia that she had eyes like forget-me-nots, which was very pleasant, and made her not mind so much about being fat and with a face rather like a full moon.
Those were the short Easter holidays.
It was the following term that daddy came down to see Julia at school and brought with him somebody called Petah.
Julia, at first, was not very pleased about this. She knew only too well what the conversation could be like, when there were two grown-up people to one child. They pretended to be paying attention, but really they were only interested in one another.
Daddy, before, had always come with mummie, and once or twice by himself. Never with a stranger. Nor did he, at first, seem very cheerful.
Julia glanced at him surreptitiously once or twice as they went, all three, to the car left outside the school-gates.
She thought that he might, somehow, look different because so many things seemed to have been happening lately.
But he didn’t.
He wore his blue shirt, and his leather jacket, and his felt hat very much on one side of his head, and he rolled and smoked his cigarettes just as fast and as frequently as ever.
And when Julia politely enquired after his writing, he said — as usual — that the paper was all right, and the Editor a fiend incarnate.
It was in the act of eating a banana-split that Julia began to understand that daddy and this Petah person were, or soon would be, married.
“Do you like her?” daddy enquired casually, when Petah had gone to powder her nose in the Ladies’ place.
Aware that he wanted her to say Yes Julia obligingly said it, but added: “Why does she wear such funny clothes?”
“They suit her type,” said daddy. “And I dare say you don’t realize it, but she’s very young. Only twenty-two.”
“Gosh!” said Julia, really impressed. “Why, she must be years and years younger than you are!”
“Yes,” said daddy. “She is. You’re coming to stay with us in the holidays, when mummie can spare you. We’ve got a marvellous little flat in a mews, and Petah’s painted it all herself.”
“What colour?”
“Mostly blue and yellow. You’ll like it. We’ll go to the Zoo, shall we?”
“Or Madame Tussaud’s,” suggested Julia, who knew that Terry hated to see animals in cages.
“Anywhere you like,” daddy assured her. “I thought you liked the Zoo.”
“Well, I do, but Terry doesn’t.”
“Oh, we shan’t have room for both of you at the same time, I’m afraid. Terry can be with mummie while you’re with me — with us — and then change over. See?”
Julia saw, and didn’t like it at all. It would never do. She and Terry wanted to be together. And besides, she could see very well that this Petah person wouldn’t understand how to manage Terry at all. She’d worry him to death, and ask him questions, and make personal remarks — all the things that Terry most hated.
Julia’s mind instantly registered a cast-iron opposition towards any scheme for separating her from Terry in the holidays. When Petah came slouching back, she looked hard at her.
Straight black hair, cut in a square bob, and the reddest lipstick that Julia had ever seen, and no hat or stockings, and very tall and flat, and
queer, smudgy sort of eyes, and a red handkerchief tied round her neck. As for her voice, Julia had instantly decided that it was affected. It was deep and very drawly, and she said “Christ” and “damn” and “hell” every other minute.
Julia decided to try it on herself, amongst her friends at school, and see whether she could get away with it.—’
“Do you want to wash, Julia?” daddy enquired.
“No, thanks,” said Julia, wanting to see if he’d make her go.
“Eat some more,” suggested Petah, rolling her eyes at the depleted dish of cakes.
Julia shook her head.
“I thought they always ate and ate, at that stage,” Petah said in her drawly voice. “Not that I know anything about the young. You’ll have to teach me, Julia.”
“Okay,” said Julia, smiling politely.
She wondered what she ought to call Petah, and presently this question was raised and Petah said: “Oh hell, call me by my name, of course.”
“Okay,” said Julia.
She wondered what relation Petah and she were to one another, but didn’t like to ask.
A more disturbing problem awaited her in the near future.
Mummie, in a letter of such a number of sheets that Julia had only read parts of it before she lost it, announced that she, too, had married somebody else. Daddy wasn’t her husband any more. Captain Prettyman, whom they knew already, was.
“Oh Christ!” said Julia, in a voice as much like Petah’s as she could command.
Even the success of this splendid and unusual effort could not save her from feeling deeply disturbed and affronted by the news.
It made one feel such a fool, to have two fathers and two mothers.
Mummie, it seemed, was going to live at Wimbledon for a time, in what she said was a very nice house. It had a garden, and there would be a car, and Terry and Julia would like it all very much.
Terry! thought Julia helplessly. It was going to be awful for Terry, she felt perfectly certain. It’d be bad enough for her — but she minded most for him.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 447