But when nobody came he sounded the siren on the car.
They heard mummie rushing down the stairs, and in another minute she ran out.
“Tiger!”
“Hallo, hallo, hallo! How’s my woman?”
Julia turned away quickly, but she was just too late to avoid seeing uncle Tom put his arm round mummie’s waist while she threw her arms round his neck.
When I’m grown-up, thought Julia savagely, I shan’t let people maul me about like that — and in public too!
She couldn’t even look at Terry.
“My Lord, Daphne, what’ve they been doing to you? You’ve come back a perfect wreck!”
“I’ll be all right now, sweetheart. It was a bit grim, that’s all. You know what one’s parents are like.”
“I don’t, thank God!” said the Captain, and laughed very loudly as though he’d said something funny. “And what’s all this about the precious infants being here again?”
“Hush, nothing,” said mummie quickly. She looked round. To see whether they’d heard, Julia supposed.
She looked as unconscious as she could, standing on one leg and scraping it hard with the other foot.
“They both look pretty fit,” said the Captain, staring at them.
“Oh, they are. They’ve had a marvellous time altogether.”
“Well, they can hop it now. Go up to the Common or something. Come on in, sweet, and have a cocktail. You look as if you could do with a couple of strong ones.”
Off they went.
It was all just like it had been before. By the end of the first evening the whole feeling of living at “Rosslyn” had come back to Julia.
Quite soon she began to feel as though they’d never been away at all. Uncle Tom — coming and going, and always shouting for mummie as soon as he was inside the house — and mummie going out with him nearly every evening, and always saying there wasn’t time for anything, and worrying about having her hair set, and doing a lot of telephoning — and Norah sometimes being nice, but mostly cross — it was all just like it had been at the very beginning of the holidays — except, thought Julia with dismay and resentment, that the nice things — such as they were — had somehow become less nice and the nasty ones much nastier.
The worst thing of all — uncle Tom’s beastliness to Terry — seemed now to go on all the time. Terry’s face hardly ever lost its worried, miserable look, even when the Captain wasn’t there at all.
When he was there, Terry did everything wrong that he possibly could do.
He dropped things, and took hold of them by the wrong end, and jumped when he was spoken to and said “What?” and even when he’d heard, didn’t seem able to understand or answer. Once he actually began to cry because uncle Tom said he’d got to learn how to make a proper knot instead of a granny.
Julia saw that he was crying, although he’d bent his head very low and wasn’t making a sound.
She began to talk loudly and wildly about the first thing that came into her head, but she had an awful feeling all the time that uncle Tom knew why she was doing it, and knew that Terry was crying, and would sooner or later say something frightfully scathing about it.
Actually, he didn’t say anything that particular time — but almost immediately afterwards he did something much worse.
Terry and Julia were bicycling, for fun, round and round the little piece of grass that stood in front of the house. They hadn’t known that uncle Tom and mummie were looking at them from the doorway, till suddenly Julia caught sight of them and had the brilliant idea of showing off by taking both hands off the handle-bars and pedalling hard. She was obliged to put her hands down again pretty quickly — but still, she could do it, and it was an accomplishment of which she was very proud.
“That’s fine,” shouted the Captain. “I’ll give sixpence to whoever goes all round the plot without once touching the handle-bars.”
Julia’s first thought was: That’ll be marvellous fun. Her next, that Terry wouldn’t be able to manage it and that she certainly wasn’t going to do it if he couldn’t.
Then, to her horror, she saw Terry jump off his bicycle — the wrong side, too — and lean it up against a laurel bush.
“What’s up?” shouted uncle Tom.
Terry didn’t answer.
“Terry! Don’t you hear me?”
“I’ll do it,” cried Julia, choosing the lesser of two evils. “Look at me! Do look at me!”
But uncle Tom looked at Terry.
“Answer when you’re spoken to, my lad. Why did you get off?”
“I’m not going to ride any more.”
“Terry, don’t be silly, darling,” said mummie.
“Didn’t you hear me say I’d give sixpence to anybody who’d go round the plot without touching the handle-bars?” asked uncle Tom.
“I can’t,” said Terry, turning white.
“You don’t know whether you can or not if you don’t try,” retorted the Captain. “On you get, and have a shot at it.”
Terry simply shook his head and turned away.
Julia sprang off her bicycle and ran up to him.
“It’s frightfully easy,” she muttered, low and quickly between her teeth, so that only he could hear.
It wasn’t easy at all, and she knew that Terry wouldn’t be able to manage it, but if only he’d try. That was really all that uncle Tom wanted.
Terry turned a blank, dark look on her and didn’t say a word.
She heard mummie say: “Let him alone, Tiger, for God’s sake. Just to please me.”
The Captain, as usual, took no notice. He marched over to Terry.
“Look here, do you want me to think you a coward as well as a most arrant little ass?”
Terry stared up at him in silence.
“My God, don’t look at me like a stuck pig!” suddenly roared the Captain. “Do as you’re told! Get on that bicycle and have a shot at riding it without holding on. I don’t give a damn whether you can do it or whether you can’t. But you’ve got to try.”
“I know I can’t do it,” Terry said. “I don’t want to try.”
“Never mind what you want or what you don’t want. You’re going to do what I want.”
“Mummie!” said Julia indignantly.
Couldn’t she do something?
“Shut up, Julia. Tom — Terry doesn’t understand. Just let me tackle him. Listen, Terry — uncle Tom doesn’t mean you’ve got to ride the bicycle without holding on — he just wants you to try. That’s all. Never mind if you don’t succeed.”
Terry shook his head.
His face was green, and his eyes looked enormous and pitch-black.
Julia planted herself in front of the Captain.
“I tell you what,” she said in a loud, confident voice. “Let Terry and me first practise riding without handle-bars, and then you and mummie come and see us do it for a surprise. That’ll be more fun than trying now and just falling off.”
“Upon my word, you’ve got a nerve!” said the Captain. “God help the fellow you make up your mind to marry, one of these days. Now then — out of my way!”
He walked past Julia just as if she wasn’t anybody at all.
“Mummie!” said Julia again, stamping her foot and looking furiously at mummie.
“Oh, Tom, do leave him alone! I can’t stand this,” cried mummie.
The Captain turned round. He didn’t look angry or anything like that — only determined.
“You don’t have to stand anything, angel-face. You and Julia can hop indoors and leave the boy to me. I’m not going to hurt him. But he’s going to do as he’s told.”
Mummie hesitated and Julia went on glaring at her, feeling that if she could only glare hard enough, mummie would be forced to save Terry somehow.
But all she said, in a very fractious voice, was: “Oh, Tiger — darling! What does it matter? Leave the boy alone. I’ll see to him.”
“That’s exactly what you won’t do,” said the Captain, qu
ite in a good-humoured way, and he ran a few steps forward, picked up mummie quite easily and actually carried her, kicking feebly, into the house.
The next second he was out again.
Terry had pushed his way, as awkwardly as possible, into the laurels, but the Captain had him out by the shoulder at once.
“Pick up that bicycle,” he ordered, in a loud but calm voice.
Terry picked it up and stood — grasping the handle-bars.
“Get on.”
Terry didn’t stir.
“Get on, I said. You’re going to do it in the end, and it may just as well be first as last.”
Terry shook his head.
“Now look here, my boy. When I say a thing’s got to be done, it’s got to be done — and that’s that. I don’t in the least mind how long I wait but here we both stay till you’ve done as I say. It doesn’t matter if you fall off — it won’t hurt you. But onto that bicycle you get.”
“No” cried Terry in a high scream. “I won’t.”
Julia clenched her fists. But the Captain remained unmoved.
“You’re nothing but a disgusting little coward, and you’re behaving like a spoilt baby. What you need is to be thrashed within an inch of your life
— and I’ve a jolly good mind to do it, for your own sake.”
A red, murderous rage seized upon Julia.
In two bounds she sprang at the Captain. She butted him in the stomach with her head, kicking his shins as hard as she could and pummelling him with both her fists.
It only lasted for a second before she realized, with terrified astonishment, the fearful strength of uncle Tom. He got hold of both her wrists in one of his huge hands, and she couldn’t stir them. Then his other hand grasped one of her kicking feet and she felt herself being swung off the ground. She was utterly helpless.
As he half dragged and half carried her into the house Julia twisted her head round and snapped and bit at him — but her teeth mostly seemed to meet in the stuff of his clothes.
The Captain staggered into the drawing-room and threw her in a heap on the sofa and she heard him say: “My God, Daphne, you’ve got a charming pair, I must say! That little vixen regularly went for me.”
“Julia!” cried mummie.
Julia, having recovered her breath, began to scream at the top of her voice and to throw herself violently about on the sofa.
“Stop that bloody row!” shouted the Captain.
He sounded a bit breathless himself.
“What has happened?”
Julia stopped screaming to listen for the answer.
“She made for me like a young hell-cat. Upon my word, she’s got a pretty good spirit of her own, has that child!”
Uncle Tom was almost laughing!
Julia could scarcely believe it.
She lay still, panting.
“You shouldn’t have bullied Terry. Yes really, darling, you did. That’s what upset Julia. Tiger, honestly, you don’t understand Terry. He’s frightfully sensitive.”
“Bunkum, my dear. He’s nothing but a thoroughly neurotic boy. And if you go on babying him like this he’ll very likely go off his nut altogether. He’s half-way there already, if you ask me.”
“He isn’t!” shrieked Julia, sitting bolt upright.
All her clothes felt as if they’d got twisted the wrong way round.
“My God!” said the Captain, “is this a home for lost dogs, or a loony-bin, or what?”
Mummie rushed out of the room, and Julia hoped to goodness she’d gone to look for Terry.
The Captain seemed, for the moment, to have forgotten Terry.
He stood and looked down at Julia and, to her astonishment, he didn’t seem angry.
“Well!” he said at last, “and what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” muttered Julia.
“I should think not. You ought to be dam’ well ashamed of yourself.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Julia, who, now that her rage was spent, felt that this was what was expected of her.
“So you jolly well ought to be. You’d better learn boxing another time. Biting and scratching like a mad cat!”
Uncle Tom seemed to be examining his left hand and Julia craned forward to see.
There was blood on it.
“Is it — did I hurt you?” she asked, rather alarmed.
“What do you suppose?”
Julia struggled to her feet, trying, by twisting and wriggling, to settle her clothes into position again.
“I’ll get you the iodine out of the bathroom,” she said.
XIV
MUMMIE said, this couldn’t go on.
She said it after Terry, in floods of tears, had crept up to his bedroom and she’d told him to go to bed, though it was only seven o’clock. Julia hoped it wasn’t meant as a punishment — but even if it was, that was better than his having to face uncle Tom again. Mercifully, they were going out to dinner and a theatre that evening.
“It simply can’t go on,” mummie repeated. “My nerves won’t stand it. And Terry’s a wreck. He’s never been like this before.”
“It’s uncle Tom’s fault,” said Julia.
“You’re not to say that. He doesn’t understand, that’s all. But I can’t let Terry be made into a nervous wreck. I think I shall have to ring up your father.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Julia.
Mummie seemed to be talking to herself more or less. Julia listened anxiously.
“He wanted to see him anyway, and there’s this wretched school question to be settled. I wonder if—”
Julia waited expectantly, but mummie didn’t say any more.
So Julia did.
“Look here,” she began, looking importantly at the clock. “Why don’t you ring up daddy now? He’ll be back from the office and he won’t yet have started if they’re going out anywhere to supper. You’ll just catch him, I should think. And uncle Tom’s safe in the bathroom — I’ve just heard him go.”
“Yes,” said mummie. “You run up to Terry, Julia. I’ll see what I can do. This can’t go on.”
“If there’s no other way of managing, I — I don’t much mind sleeping at Mrs. Capper’s,” said Julia with a gulp. There’d anyway be the nice Annie, and it couldn’t be for very long because the holidays would soon be over now. Never in her life before, thought Julia, had the holidays seemed so long. It was because of all the different places they’d stayed at, probably. And now they were going to daddy again and after that, goodness only knew.
But they didn’t, after all, go to daddy’s.
It turned out that he couldn’t have them to stay, and all he wanted was for them to go over on Saturday afternoon to see him and Petah. They could arrive for lunch, and be taken somewhere for a treat, and sent back after tea.
Mummie looked a bit frantic as she explained this to Julia.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to keep you, God knows,” she kept on saying, “but we simply can’t go on like this. It’s so bad for Terry. And it’s driving me nearly mad.”
Julia felt rather sorry for her and wished she could think of something to suggest.
At last she said rather timidly: “I suppose Terry and I couldn’t go and stay at an hotel?”
She didn’t really believe this to be a very good idea but perhaps, as things were so desperate, it might be possible.
“Don’t talk like a baby. You couldn’t possibly stay in any hotel by yourselves, and I haven’t got anybody to send with you. Besides, who’s going to pay for it? Your father can’t, and I most certainly can’t.”
So that wasn’t any good, and Julia, feeling rather snubbed, made no more suggestions.
Presently uncle Tom came out of the bathroom and mummie went up to him.
Julia, listening hard, couldn’t hear what she said, but she distinctly heard uncle Tom’s answer.
“Settle it any way you like, old thing, but I’m not going to live in a bear-garden another day, and that�
�s flat. I wasn’t meant for a family man as I’ve told you all along. Either they go, or I do.”
“Tiger, darling sweet!”
“That’s very nice, angel-face, and I adore you, but I’m not going to have you going into a flat spin every minute over a pack of blasted kids. Let their father have ’em for a bit. His wench can look after them. Do her good, I should think.”
Mummie said something that Julia couldn’t hear, but the last words sounded like, “for my sake, Tiger! Be a good Tiger-man!”
Of all the soppy and disgusting ways of talking! Julia couldn’t blame the Captain for simply answering “Nope!” in a loud voice. Then there was a pause, and she heard him, to her surprise, remark in a considering kind of way:
“Look here, if you can get the boy fixed up, I don’t really mind the other one. You can keep her here, if you like. She’s a good kid, Julia. Got plenty of guts.”
If she hadn’t actually heard her own name, Julia could hardly have believed that the Captain was talking about her. Good was just about the last thing she’d been, surely! She knew, of course, that he quite liked her and thought her “spirited,” but really — considering the way she’d kicked him, and tried to bite him, and made his hand actually bleed — it did seem pretty odd that he should talk of her in such a friendly way!
However, Julia didn’t wish to feel grateful to the Captain after the way he’d behaved to Terry so she at once made up her mind not to think again of what he’d just said.
As soon as mummie and uncle Tom had gone into their room she ran upstairs to Terry and suggested that they should play draughts. Luckily Terry nearly always won at draughts.
There was some more telephoning, soon afterwards. Julia could only hear it going on very faintly, but she had a feeling that it was about her and Terry and what was to be done with them next. Well — it wasn’t any use worrying about it. Julia felt thoroughly tired, and as if she didn’t really mind about anything much. It was quite difficult to believe she’d been in such a frightful passion only quite a little while ago.
The draughts were not very successful. Terry seemed just as tired as Julia.
No one brought them up any supper and when Julia went down to ask for it, Norah said, in the most disagreeable way, that she wasn’t a nurserymaid and didn’t intend to become one.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 460