Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  It seemed ages since she’d arrived. The people went on talking and drinking and smoking, and her eyes began to sting from all the smoke. Wouldn’t any of them ever go?

  At last one did — and then they all did.

  Mrs. Capper was the last, and she said:

  “Send the brat over when you like, and never say I’m not a good mother, Petah. I’ll be out, of course, but Annie can see to her.”

  “Too sweet of you, mummie. Good-night.” Daddy went downstairs with Mrs. Capper, and Petah and Terry and Julia were left in the big room which looked fearfully untidy, with glasses and cigarette-ends everywhere.

  “Please, where is the lavatory?” said Julia.

  “On the other side of the landing. Terry, you show her.”

  Terry took her to the door of a very small bathroom, where a lot of silk things were hanging on the edge of the bath, which was a geyser one. The outside of the bath was painted a very bright orange but all the white enamel was peeling off the inside. Julia wanted to lock the door, but there was no key to be seen.

  When she came out she said to Terry:

  “Don’t they ever lock the door?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Terry. “It’s disgusting, isn’t it? You can sit with your foot against the door. At least, I’m not sure if your legs would be long enough.”

  “And how do you manage when you have your bath?”

  “Well, I haven’t had more than one bath since I’ve been here. Petah always seems to want the bathroom for washing her clothes or something. And she has a bath every morning and every evening and stays in there hours.”

  “Gosh!”

  “She makes daddy bring her her breakfast in bed.”

  “Why doesn’t the maid?”

  “There isn’t any maid. Only a person called Mrs. Watson who comes in every morning. They don’t have any regular meals or anything. Just eat things, in the kitchen — except when they go out. I’m afraid you’ll hate it, Julia.”

  “Yes, I shall,” said Julia, feeling worse than ever. She actually thought with longing of “Rosslyn” and of the nice suppers that Mrs. Strang used to send up on a tray, and that she could enjoy while she read a book.

  “It isn’t a bit like ‘Rosslyn,’ is it?”

  “Oh no, not a bit. Where’s my room?”

  Terry looked dumbfounded.

  “I don’t know where you can possibly be going to sleep,” he said. “There’s only one bedroom, and that’s daddy’s and Petah’s. I’m on the divan in the studio.”

  “Is it fun?”

  He shook his head, and Julia remembered that Terry was afraid of the dark.

  “Perhaps they’ll make up a bed for me in the studio too,” she suggested hopefully.

  They went back into the studio, and daddy was there, and for a little while it was quite nice. He talked and joked with them, and said he’d take them somewhere for a treat next day. But presently Julia’s shoes began to hurt her, and she dreadfully wanted her supper but didn’t like to say so.

  An idea came to her.

  “Oughtn’t I to unpack my case?” she suggested.

  “I suppose so. Petah, where’s this creature to put her things? Have we an inch of room anywhere?”

  “Christ, no. Not here. She’s going to sleep at mummie’s. Don’t you remember?”

  Julia, horrified, gazed at Petah. Had she really got to go somewhere else, at this time of night, carrying that frightful suitcase, and was “mummie” the nasty Mrs. Capper?

  “I’ll take her across,” said daddy. “Come on, kidlet.”

  “Can I come too?” asked Terry.

  That cheered Julia up again.

  It was nice of him. She hoped daddy wouldn’t make him carry the suitcase.

  Petah didn’t say good-night or anything.

  She just lay flat on the divan, smoking.

  “Is it far?” Julia asked.

  “Almost opposite.”

  “Shall I,” said Julia, rather quaveringly, “have my supper there?”

  Daddy’s reply sounded much too casual to be really comforting.

  “I expect so. I say, Julia, do you know exactly when you two children are expected at your grandmother’s?”

  “Almost at once, I think,” Julia answered very decidedly — and only hoped it was true.

  Daddy had got the suitcase. Julia and Terry followed him down the stairs and into the street.

  It felt cold after the hot room, and it was raining. Julia shivered.

  They only went a very little way and then daddy stopped and rang the bell at the door of a tobacconist’s shop.

  “It’s a shop!” exclaimed Julia, surprised.

  “Mrs. Capper’s flat is over the shop. Nothing to do with it.”

  All the same, it was rather fun to be just over a shop. When a woman in an apron opened the door one saw the stairs, and a glass door at the bottom of them leading straight into the shop, which was all lit up, with a man leaning over the counter talking to a girl with fuzzy hair.

  “Well, good-night, old lady.”

  Julia, startled, said good-night, and daddy kissed her.

  “Take the suitcase upstairs for her,” he told Terry.

  The stairs were very short.

  “Good-night,” said Terry, and he added in a very gentle, kind way: “I hope you’ll have a nice room and be comfortable.”

  “I wish you were staying here too,” said Julia, as she kissed him good-night.

  When he’d gone, she noticed the woman in the apron. She supposed that this was Annie.

  Annie looked very nice.

  “Come along, my dear. You’ll be glad to get to bed, I dare say,” she said.

  With some surprise Julia felt that this, for once, was true.

  Annie was quite unlike Norah, or Mrs. Strange or any of the new people. More like a nurse they’d had ages ago when they were little, at Hampstead.

  She took Julia into a tiny room without much furniture in it, and undressed her, quite as though she’d been a baby, and reminded her to say her prayers, and then she gave her a cup of milk and some biscuits — not much of a supper, but Julia didn’t like to ask for any more — and brought the things for her to clean her teeth in bed. At intervals they talked, and Julia learned that Annie had been one of a family of fourteen children and had lived at a place called Redruth, in Cornwall.

  “What were the names of all your brothers and sisters?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow, my dear. It’s late now, and time you went to sleep. Good-night and God bless you.”

  “Good-night,” said Julia, curling herself up in the little camp-bed in the tiny room that hadn’t even got a wash-stand in it. And although the words were unfamiliar, she added politely, feeling that the kind Annie might expect it: “And God bless you.”

  VI

  STAYING with daddy wasn’t really staying with daddy at all. It was hanging about most of the time, doing nothing special, and being sent with Terry to a cinema practically every day — that was quite fun — and listening to a great deal of grown-up conversation that mostly seemed to be about money.

  It also seemed to Julia that she spent a great deal of time waiting for meals, which were rather unsatisfactory when they actually took place.

  Terry didn’t mind about that.

  What he minded was Mrs. Capper.

  She seemed always to be in Petah’s flat, and she was always talking about the children as though they weren’t there at all.

  She asked Terry all kinds of questions about his school, and one day she even asked him how he liked having two sets of relations.

  Terry turned white, and Julia distracted everybody’s attention by suddenly screaming out that the telephone-bell was ringing.

  The telephone was in the bedroom, and both Petah and Mrs. Capper were always using it.

  Mrs. Capper rushed to answer it, but there was no one ringing and she came back very cross. Julia, by this time, hated Mrs. Capper.

  Petah she didn’t min
d so much, especially as she never interfered with Terry.

  It was daddy who seemed to find Terry rather a nuisance. He was always asking him why on earth he hadn’t got a hobby, like other boys.

  “I do collect stamps,” said Terry. He had been driven to this years ago and, as Julia well knew, cared nothing whatever about his stamps. People gave them to him, and he always lost them, or passed them on to other people at school and forgot to take anything else in exchange. Sometimes Julia secretly stuck the stamps into his album for him, in case anyone should ask to see it.

  Daddy didn’t ask to see the album, but he looked at Terry in a very dissatisfied sort of way and said that he supposed hanging about in a London flat was the very worst thing for a boy.

  “It isn’t his fault,” muttered Julia.

  “Shut up. If you think you’re doing Terry any good by interfering whenever he’s spoken to, you’re making a great mistake. The very best thing would be for him to spend his holidays right away from you.”

  The threat reduced Julia to furious silence.

  It was extraordinary how often she felt cross nowadays. She’d always been supposed to be very good-tempered. But she was cross with everyone now, except Terry and the nice Annie. Much as she hated having to sleep at Mrs. Capper’s she couldn’t help being pleased at finding Annie there.

  Then, on the third evening, Annie wasn’t there. It was her evening out — and she slept at her own home, and wouldn’t come back till next morning.

  And that night Julia woke up with earache.

  At first she could hardly believe it. The pain wasn’t very bad — it would go off.

  But it didn’t. It got much worse. Soon she was crying quite loudly.

  No one came.

  Julia knew all about earache. It went on getting worse and worse, and one tried to go to sleep and couldn’t, and even when they dropped warm oil in, it only helped for a very few minutes. Now, there wasn’t even the warm oil.

  Holding her hand to her ear, Julia, hot and sobbing, got out of bed and ran into the kitchen in the wild hope of finding Annie there after all.

  It was empty, but the sitting-room opposite had a light showing under the door and Julia went in and saw Mrs. Capper sitting talking to a man.

  “I’ve got earache,” she sobbed.

  “My God,” said Mrs. Capper, staring at her.

  “Got what?” said the man.

  “Earache. I’ve been awake for ages and ages, and it’s getting worse.”

  Mrs. Capper got up and came towards her, and she looked so furious that Julia was frightened.

  But she only said: “If ever I have anything to do with a pack of kids again as long as I live — !

  Here, go back to bed and I’ll come.”

  As she went, Julia heard her say to the man: “What on earth do I do now? D’you know anything about earache?”

  That meant that nothing sensible was going to be done to stop the pain. Julia flung herself into bed and deliberately began to scream.

  “I want mummie!” she shrieked, and the louder she shrieked the worse her earache hurt her, and the more frantically miserable she felt.

  Mrs. Capper came into the room and dashed about, and cursed Annie for not being there. Then she came up to the bed and put her hand on Julia’s head and said: “My God, the child’s head is like a furnace. Here, shut up. You’ll make yourself worse.”

  “I want mummie.”

  “If you’ll stop that row, I’ll ring her up. She can jolly well come and look after you.”

  “Mummie,” sobbed Julia helplessly. “I know she’d make it better.”

  She felt sure that mummie would know what to do.

  “But my God,” said Mrs. Capper, “she’s gone to Paris, hasn’t she?”

  Julia burst into fresh tears.

  “Oh Christ! Look here, have you been like this before? What do they do for you?”

  “I want mummie,” sobbed Julia.

  She had ceased to understand anything else. And the earache was agony.

  Then in some queer way she dropped off to sleep for a few minutes, but when she woke up again the earache was still there.

  The light was on, and she could hear Mrs. Capper screaming into the telephone. She always screamed when she was telephoning.

  “But what am I to do? It’s not shamming, poor little brute — her head’s like fire.... Yes, but Annie’s out and I can’t get hold of Mark. He and Petah are at some bloody party.... What on earth she wanted to saddle herself with this nursery mess for... Oh, all right. Thanks. I thought you might know...”

  Julia lay and sobbed quietly, in utter wretchedness.

  She felt that she would die of misery if mummie didn’t come and take away this awful pain.

  Instead, Mrs. Capper came, and gave her a woolly scarf and told her to wrap it round her head and it would do her good.

  “It won’t,” said Julia rudely, and she threw the scarf to the floor.

  Mrs. Capper alternately scolded and coaxed her and at last she went away altogether.

  Julia knew that she had been frightfully naughty, but she didn’t care. She lay and sobbed and cried, and felt as if the throbbing in her ear was a huge red-hot hammer that wouldn’t leave off.

  Sometimes she slept, and woke again with a jump that hurt terribly, and sometimes she had the most awful dreams that she knew all the time were dreams, but from which she couldn’t free herself.

  Then, all of a sudden, daddy was there looking at her, and it was next morning.

  “My poor chicken!” said daddy.

  He looked fearfully worried.

  “It’s better,” said Julia feebly.

  But it was still pretty bad.

  She couldn’t help crying, though daddy brought her a hot-water bottle to hold against her ear, which was a slight comfort.

  He also said something about washing her face, at which Julia cried harder.

  Mrs. Capper said that Annie would be in at nine o’clock.

  Annie, when she came, made things better, and she heated some oil and dropped it into the ear, and presently gave Julia some tea to drink.

  All the time daddy and Mrs. Capper were talking in the next room, and Mrs. Capper’s voice sounded very cross.

  “I wish you’d been here in the night,” said Julia to Annie. “It was so dreadful.”

  “I know it was, poor little dear. Now, let Annie nurse you for a little bit.”

  So Julia, in her dressing-gown, sat on Annie’s lap and leant against her shoulder and Annie sang her a long song with a story in it, about two little girls dressed in blue, and it was very nice.

  Only too soon Mrs. Capper shouted for Annie, and Annie clicked her tongue and said, Dear, dear, she’d have to go — and put Julia back into the bed, which was now cool and tidy again, and told her to shut her eyes and she might get a nap.

  It was a queer day, very long and muddled. The earache got better by very slow degrees, but Julia still didn’t want anything to eat or drink — until she woke up, and found the pain had really gone and that it was tea-time.

  Annie came in to her smiling and said:

  “There’s a surprise for you. Somebody come to see you.”

  For a wild moment Julia thought it must be mummie, come from Paris. She still wanted mummie a little, though not anything like as much as she’d wanted her in the night. She sat up in bed and looked at the door, and it opened very slowly and in came grandmama from the Plás.

  VII

  “CHANG!” screamed Julia.

  And “Chang!” cried Terry.

  Chang sprang up and licked their hands and their faces, and rushed round and round, and then threw himself on the ground, and sprang up again.

  Julia couldn’t resist it. She made the peculiar hissing noise between her teeth that always caused Chang to break into frenzied leapings and barkings. When he barked it made her laugh and the more she laughed the more excited Chang became, and the louder he barked. The noise was terrific.

  Gr
andmama, who never approved of noise, put a stop to it — as Julia had very well known that she would. She wasn’t exactly cross because Terry and Julia had only just arrived, but she looked rather disapproving.

  It was lovely to have Chang again, and to be in the country, and to find everything at the Plás looking just the same as ever.

  Julia was not perfectly certain whether it had always been settled that they should start their visit to Chepstow so soon, or whether everything had —

  as usual — happened in a hurry because of her earache, and the fearful fuss it had created.

  She knew, although certainly nobody had actually told her so, that Mrs. Capper had been angry, and that daddy had been in a stew, and that Petah had come in once when she — Julia — was supposed to be asleep, and had said Christ! what a baby she looks like that — which had annoyed Julia a good deal when she came to think about it afterwards. A baby, indeed, at ten years old, and when everyone always said how tall she was for her age!

  Terry had told her that it was Petah who had suggested that grandmama should be telephoned to, in case she might feel like having them at once.

  “And if you ask me,” Terry had said, “daddy and Petah were most frightfully thankful when they found she was in London already. They didn’t seem to know what to do about you, and that awful Mrs. Capper kept on saying she couldn’t have anybody ill in her flat because it was too small.”

  “Mrs. Capper was a pig,” said Julia, “but Annie was nice. She gave me a silver pencil.”

  “Was it awful, being there?”

  “Pretty awful.”

  Julia didn’t really want to remember about her earache. She had an idea that she had behaved rather babyishly in crying and screaming for mummie like that when of course she’d known perfectly well that mummie was in Paris with uncle Tom and couldn’t come. Besides, she couldn’t really have cured the earache, even if she had been there. But it was funny how, when one was ill, one didn’t seem able to be sensible. One had absolutely and truly felt that if only mummie would come everything must be all right again.