“Good Lord!” said Mr. Hancock.
“It’s the children. I expect they’ll go in, in a a minute. I’ll tell them, another time—”
But it was useless.
Mr. Hancock thrust his head out of the window and shouted:
“Go and make that noise somewhere else!”
There was a silence.
Then Dinah’s voice called up boldly:
“Good-morning, Daddy. Isn’t it a glorious morning?”
“Pretty fair. Do you know you left a whole lot of toys and things out in the garden, last night?”
“Did I? Where?”
“Near the swing. I brought them all in, but next time you do that I shall take the things away and you won’t see them any more.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“I ought to have reminded them,” muttered Mrs. Hancock automatically, to her husband’s broad back.
“Get off that flower-bed!” shouted Mr. Hancock. “Billie! do you hear me? There’s the gong now, you’ll all be late.”
He withdrew his head from the window.
“That was the gong, Fan.”
“I’m quite ready, dear.”
He opened the door, and she preceded him down the narrow staircase of the cottage.
Millie came out of the spare room, and the sisters kissed. Fan thought how wonderfully young and pretty Millie looked in that little frock of flowered georgette, and how well it suited her to wear her shining brown hair in curls.
“Did you ever see such a day?” said Millie. “This is the heat wave all right.”
The long, low dining-room was flooded with sunlight. Roses and raspberries glowed in the midst of the homely blue and white china on the table.
The two little girls, Dinah and Isobel, were in cotton frocks, and wore no stockings, and Billie’s white flannel shirt was open at the throat, and his sleeves rolled up as high as they could go.
“Don’t they look nice and cool?” said Millie delightedly.
The children beamed.
“A morning like this,” said Mr. Hancock, taking his seat at the head of the table, “makes one thankful — get out, will you!”
Billie’s cat, an enormous tabby, had jumped in at the open window.
Mr. Hancock, unfortunately, did not like cats. He often said that a dog was One Thing but a cat was Another, which was, indeed, incontrovertible.
“Oh, do let me give him some milk. He’s hungry,” said Billie, between whom and his cat an unreasonable affection existed.
“Hungry! He was fed from the kitchen not an hour ago. I saw him out of the window. Put him out. I will not have animals in the dining-room at meal times.”
Billie reluctantly put the cat out of the window, with whispered endearments. He sat down with his rosy face slightly clouded, and his mother, whose favourite he was, also looked grave.
But the others were all smiling.
“What are we going to do to-day?” asked Dinah hopefully.
“Isobel and Aunt Millie haven’t been to Starmouth Cove yet. Aunt Millie and Isobel, I mean.”
“Could we bathe?” said Isobel, under her breath. Her own home was in London, and she adored the sea. “Oh, bathing would be glorious. How far is the cove?”
“Only twenty miles by road. We could take picnic things.” But even as Mrs. Hancock made the suggestion that she knew was in all their minds, she saw, out of the corner of her eyes, the stealthy, sinuous black form approaching, once more, the open window.
Quite absurdly she shook her head, and frowned violently at the cat. As might have been expected, Tarzan paid no attention to this intimation of his unwisdom.
Mr. Hancock’s back was to the window.
Mrs. Hancock looked at her son and saw that he, too, had observed Tarzan’s return, and was — most short-sightedly — inclined to be amused by it. He was screwing up his face in the way that meant he was trying not to laugh.
Tarzan, with soundless elegance, jumped gracefully on to the window-sill and stood there, waving his tail backwards and forwards.
“It’s lucky for you young people that you’re not compelled to live in a town, as you very well might have been,” said the unconscious Mr. Hancock, in oblique allusion to the avuncular legacy of house and money that had enabled him to retire from business at the early age of forty-five and become a country gentleman. “Imagine a day of this kind in London!”
“Oh, it would be lovely anywhere,” said Millie. Her three years in America had wrought in her a strange oblivion as to the way in which unmarried and visiting sister-in-laws are expected to receive the opinions of their host and brother-in-law. Mr. Hancock raised his eyebrows, and Mrs. Hancock asked Isobel for the marmalade, in order to create a diversion, and at that moment Tarzan jumped.
“Either that cat stays outside, or I do,” said Mr. Hancock, flinging his table-napkin at the spot where Tarzan had been about a quarter of a second earlier.
Since no one seriously expected the fulfilment of the second alternative, Tarzan was again ejected, Dinah picked up her father’s table-napkin and returned it to him, and Mrs Hancock signed to Billie to shut the window.
“This room is like a hot-house,” said Mr. Hancock immediately. “Why are we all to stifle, just because the dam’ cat doesn’t know its place?”
“Just open it half-way, darling,” murmured Mrs. Hancock in the spirit of compromise.
No one pointed out that it would still be just as easy for Tarzan to get in as it had been before.
“Well,” the head of the family said, still with benevolence, “the plan for to-day is a picnic, is it? Starmouth Cove?”
“Oh yes, please, daddy! A picnic lunch, and bathe in the afternoon, and tea at that little place on the cliff.”
“You don’t want the whole day out. It’ll be quite long enough if we start at two o’clock.”
The children looked disappointed, and their mother said:
“Really, dear, I should be rather glad to leave the house for the whole day. It would give the maids a rest, and—”
“Now that’s the way to ruin your servants, making yourself a slave to their convenience like that. Those two girls haven’t got a thing to do, and yet you’re for ever — Oh, damn that cat!”
Mr. Hancock personally flung Tarzan out of the window, slammed it to, and curtly told his children that they’d finished their breakfast, and had better clear out.
The post was brought in and distributed.
There was twopence to pay on an understamped letter.
“Give it back to the postman,” said Mr. Hancock firmly. “I’m not going to pay for other people’s carelessness. I don’t care what it is, it can go back to the sender.”
“But Harry — who is it for?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Back it goes.”
“Just let me see it, dear.”
“Take it away,” inexorably said Mr. Hancock to the maid.
His wife sighed. She knew that the understamped letter would go no further than the kitchen, when the cook would pay the required sum and where it would await her own arrival, but she did not like her sister to be a witness of Harry’s unreasonableness.
Immediately after breakfast, Millie walked out into the garden, lit a cigarette, and lay down at full length under the weeping willow on the lawn with a library book.
“Do come, Fan, it’s lovely!” she called out.
An extraordinary inclination to obey the call came over Fan. It looked so cool and shady, under the willow, and being with Millie always made her feel like a little girl again, ready to laugh about nothing.
“I want this laundry question settled once and for all,” said Mr. Hancock. “Why on earth is it that when I send my collars to the wash on Saturday I can’t get them back again before Monday?”
Why, indeed?
Mrs. Hancock rushed into the question of the collars, heard all that her husband had to say about them several times, and by the time it was all over had forgotten about Millie under
the willow, and had become quite incapable of laughing about nothing. In fact she could far more readily have cried about nothing, for she found that she had, by a process imperceptible to herself, become both very hot and very tired.
She went quite wearily into the drawing-room — a room of which she was particularly fond — and carefully drew the blinds half-way down, so that the sunlight should not fade the ancient, but precious, carpet, and the old carnation pattern chintz.
Millie appeared at the window with a glass in her hand.
“Lemonade,” she said. “It’s really for the picnic this afternoon, but there’s plenty, and I thought you’d like some now.”
“Now? But it’s quite early.”
“It’s nearly eleven, as a matter of fact, but even if it was five o’clock in the morning and you felt you’d like it, I can’t see why you shouldn’t have it,” said Millie extravagantly.
The habit of years caused Mrs. Hancock to reply, “Oh, that would be absurd,” but at the same time a dim recollection crossed her mind of a time when she would have agreed with her sister, and would have felt that small absurdities and extravagance, that did no one any harm, were part of the fabric of life. Married life, with Mr. Hancock, had damped all that.
It wasn’t that Harry didn’t want to enjoy himself, and to see other people enjoying themselves too, she reflected. It was more that he felt obliged to hedge occasions of enjoyment round with so many prohibitions, and conditions, and precautions, that it ceased to be spontaneous.
“Drink the lemonade, darling,” urged Millie. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” said Fan, smiling, and really thinking that it was nice to hear ‘darling’ again, like that. She said it herself to the children, but no one ever said it to her. Naturally, at her age.
“Do come under the willow. It’s lovely and you look tired.”
“Where are the children?”
“Playing by the stream in the orchard. They’re quite all right.”
The sisters sat down under the cool green tent of the drooping willow branches and Millie began to talk very earnestly about a frock, with Russian coloured embroidery, that she had seen in London and that was to be sent down to her on approval.
“And I told them to put in a few more, and one or two of the children’s smocks, just in case. They really are lovely, Fan, and so inexpensive. And Dinah’s my godchild and I want you to let me give her — Oh dear, what’s that?”
“That” was Mr. Hancock, advancing through the branches like a briskly moving elephant.
“What an extraordinary place to choose,” he ejaculated, obliged to bend nearly double in order to avoid hitting his head. “You’d be much more comfortable in the summer-house, Fan. Though really, I should have thought the drawing-room the best place.”
“One can sit in the drawing-room any old time,” said Millie flippantly. “When a day like this does happen, it’s madness not to take advantage of it and be out of doors.”
“A day of this kind is a gift from Heaven,” Mr. Hancock replied, balancing himself backwards and forwards on his toes, and sketching faint demonstrations as of the morning exercises with his arms.
The children’s voices, inaudible up to then, sounded from the garden.
“I thought they were at the stream,” said Mrs. Hancock.
“I told them to come up here. If they’re going to be at the sea all the afternoon they certainly don’t want to be playing with water all the morning as well,” declared their father, with a voice and manner of such assured common sense that it made his statement sound almost reasonable.
Almost, but not quite.
“Still, I suppose that as they went to the stream, it meant they wanted to be there,” Millie remarked coldly.
Mr. Hancock looked down at her, his expression one of astonishment rather than resentment.
His wife hastily interposed.
“What time are we starting this afternoon? I think I’d better go and see about the sandwiches.”
“I want green stuff, not that beastly yellow jam.”
“I’ll put in plenty of lettuce, dear.”
“Don’t go and forget the salt.”
“No.”
“That’s all very well, but you know you did last time.”
“Yes, I know. But I won’t this time, really,” protested Mrs. Hancock, and indeed the number of references, semi-joking and semi-serious, that had been made to this solitary lapse of hers had been sufficiently numerous to make it seem unlikely that she would ever repeat it.
“I’ll help you with the sandwiches, Fan,” said Millie, getting up.
“But I can manage quite well, really. You want to go on with your book.”
“What’s she reading?” demanded Mr. Hancock, picking up Millie’s library book. “Some trashy novel or other. I’ve never even heard of this. Fancy starting at this hour of the morning.”
“I’ll take it in now,” said Millie and she made a decisive movement, regaining the book, that in one of the children would have been called a snatch.
Whilst they were cutting the sandwiches, and collecting sponge cakes and chocolate biscuits, the sisters talked about America. Just before the one-o’clock dinner Mrs. Hancock carried the picnic hamper, tightly packed and covered with a damp white cloth, into the porch, followed by Millie with the two big thermos flasks and a large basket of fragrant yellow raspberries resting amongst cabbage leaves.
Mr. Hancock was just coming in.
“Have you remembered the salt?” he shouted humorously.
His wife smiled, although her eyes remained grave and tired-looking.
“Yes, I’ve remembered the salt, Harry. This time.”
“Have you ever seen a more glorious day? You ought to be out in the garden, enjoying it, both of you. But women are the most restless creatures — never content to remain quietly in one place. Hallo, hallo — what’s all this?”
The children came up, rushing.
“Now then, now then, you young savages, that’s not the way to come in. Billie, my boy, don’t you know better than to push past your sister and her guest like that? Go back, all of you, to the gate and come in again properly.”
“But I’ve got to get something upstairs before lunch,” screamed Dinah, who was excited.
She made a swift dive under her father’s outstretched arm, and he grabbed at her — quickly, but not quickly enough. With a ripping, tearing sound, the gathers of her little cotton frock had given away. Mr. Hancock pulled furiously, Dinah stumbled, catching her foot in the front of the dress, and completing its destruction.
The next instant she was free of it altogether, flying upstairs in her pink knickerbockers and the top half of her frock.
Millie burst out laughing, Billie and Isobel, clutching one another, stood agape in the doorway, and Mrs. Hancock looked at her husband.
“That’s absolute defiance,” said Mr. Hancock, panting with mingled surprise and wrath. Did you see that, Fan?”
“I’ll go to her, and tell her—”
“Leave her to me, if you please,” said Mr. Hancock majestically.
“I must mend her frock, Harry.”
“She can put on another one.”
“No, my dear, she really can’t. She’s only got one clean one left, and I want it for Sunday.”
“This house is the worst managed establishment I know. Disobedient, disorderly children — no hot water — even the laundry is never there when one wants it....”
The maid came into the hall and beat the gong, and Mr. Hancock was obliged to shout louder and louder, in his endeavours to dominate its brassy reverberations.
Millie, picking up the abbreviated little skirt, ran upstairs with it almost unperceived. However, Mrs. Hancock saw her, and she also saw that Mr. Hancock had not seen.
Suddenly his attention was diverted. Tarzan, the cat, appearing from nowhere, raised himself up on his hind legs and with his front paws began affectionately clawing at Mr. Hancock’s whit
e flannel trousers.
“That ruddy cat — !” This was the nearest thing to a bad word that Harry Hancock ever permitted himself in the presence of his children, for he had principles.
By the time the explosion was over, and Billie had taken Tarzan away by the scruff of the neck, and Mrs. Hancock had hastily shepherded Isobel into the dining-room, Millie had mysteriously reappeared with Dinah, her Sunday frock protected by an overall.
“I’ll mend it directly after lunch — it won’t take long on the machine,” murmured Millie.
Mr. Hancock, fortunately, was still talking about Tarzan. Billie’s fair face was scarlet with distress as he heard his cat being threatened with immediate destruction.
Dinah, subdued and alarmed, knowing herself to be in disgrace, sat silent.
The little visitor, Isobel, looked startled and disturbed.
Mrs. Hancock and Millie, as soon as the tumult about Tarzan had subsided, began to talk to one another with forced calm and brightness, about America.
It dimly crossed Mrs. Hancock’s mind that it was well that America should be such a large subject, if they were to have recourse to it every time they wanted to avoid dangerous topics.
Outside, the sun shone, the bees hummed above the flower-beds, and Tarzan stretched himself to an immense length, and then lay down, comfortably and with finality, on a small rock-plant greatly cherished by Mr. Hancock.
Food, as usual, restored comparative calm to everybody, and Mr. Hancock, after saying that he had a very good mind to call the whole thing off, announced that the car would be at the door at half-past two punctually, and that he should wait for nobody.
Miraculously the children were made ready, their bathing things collected in the porch, Dinah’s torn frock mended and substituted for the Sunday one, and Billie secretly reassured by his mother about Tarzan’s fate.
(“Daddy didn’t really mean it, darling.”
“Then why did he say it?”)
At twenty minutes to three Mr. Hancock drove the car round to the door, and they all got in. There was a moment’s unpleasantness about the size of the bathing bundles, but it was averted by their being placed in the back of the car, under the feet of Millie, Mrs. Hancock, Isobel and Difiah. Billie sat in front, next to his father. The children always took it in turns to do so. They said, themselves, that this was fairer.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 584