Westwood

by Stella Gibbons

  His admiration for Hebe had subsided with a shock on the first occasion that he had heard her be really rude to someone, and he now regarded her with bewilderment and some disapproval.

  To relieve the tedium of the journey, Claudia and Barnabas (who seemed formed by nature to egg one another on) now set up an elaborate shivering and chattering of their teeth and demands for hot drinks when they got in, as they were sure they were starting colds.

  ‘Oh, are you, do you think, Claudia?’ said Margaret anxiously, having been warned that Claudia caught cold as easily as most people breathe. ‘I do hope not.’

  ‘Well, no, as a matter of fact,’ confessed Claudia handsomely. ‘I’m enjoying it; I like rain’ (lifting a face like a wet pink flower to the dripping heavens). ‘When me and Helen were coming home from games one day it was pouring, and we walked along very slowly drinking ginger-pop out of a bottle and having a good long talk and sucking Singers rolled in butter. It was heavenly.’

  ‘Singers? What are they?’

  ‘Little black sweets to do your voice good and make your breath smell nice. They aren’t on points. Your breath will smell like an angel, it says on the packet. We were going to have a picnic in some bomb ruins, only it rained.’

  ‘Who is Helen?’ inquired Earl, looking down at her with amusement.

  ‘She’s my friend in darling London. Oh, if only I were there!’ and she launched a kick at Bedfordshire.

  ‘Don’t you like the country?’

  ‘Like it? My dear, I loathe and abominate it!’ in an affected squeak. Margaret was wondering whether she ought to administer a mild snub when Claudia and Barnabas and Dickon rushed off down the road, shouting that they were nearly home. The rain had now nearly stopped and Earl smilingly furled his umbrella.

  ‘I don’t believe they’re so very wet after all, thanks to you,’ said Margaret, indicating Emma and Edna. Her earnest face, which was beginning to acquire a thoughtful, tender expression because of her constant longing for beauty, was framed in a scarlet handkerchief which showed her dark parted hair. That painfully acquired neatness, that straightforward yet gentler manner, that spirit in her eyes, were all in her favour; whereas a year ago she had looked an ordinary discontented young woman, she now looked an interesting one. To connoisseurs like Gerard Challis, she was still ordinary, but Earl Swinger liked her grave look and the gentle movements of her hands as she felt over Edna for possible dampness.

  ‘It’s kind of funny –’ he said suddenly, as he watched her, ‘when I came over here I was crazy about books and ideas. I was working on a theory of aesthetics of my own. Now, it all seems rather remote.’

  ‘What did you teach in America?’

  ‘Drawing and the History of European Art. Margaret,’ he went on abruptly, ‘do you like classical music?’

  ‘Very much. It’s one of my greatest pleasures.’

  ‘That’s grand, because I want you to come to a concert in London with me, soon.’

  ‘It’s awfully nice of you, Earl, I’d love to,’ she answered quietly, beginning to push the pram once more.

  ‘That’s a date,’ he said smiling. ‘I’ll call you up in a day or two.’

  While they were making these arrangements they reached the house, and soon they were putting the prams into the shed where they were kept and carrying Emma and Jeremy into the living-room. But here they found a group clustered about Seraphina and Hebe, and the former was wiping her eyes while Lady Challis looked shocked and sad: they had just heard – Irene said in a low tone to Margaret as she took Edna in her arms – a telephone message had come from Highgate to say that the old nurse, Mrs Grant, had passed over that afternoon about an hour ago.

  26

  By three o’clock on the following day – what with the arrangements for the funeral, and Barnabas’s questions, and the noisy grief of Zita and the silent grief of Cortway, and her mother’s distress, and her father’s scarcely hidden irritation, Hebe had had enough of it all; and she firmly parked the children upon Zita and, having previously stolen to the telephone and made the appointment as if with a clandestine lover, fled out of the house and away, away to the Maison Tel, to have her hair done.

  A haughty, exhausted voice at the other end of the line had at first said that It Was Impossible, but had then discovered that someone had just cancelled their appointment. Madame could therefore have that appointment instead. Whom did Madame usually have? Mr Fidele or Mr Bonaventure? Mr Fidele, and Miss Gloria. Oh, very good then, would Madame please come at three o’clock.

  Why do I come to this place, thought Hebe gloomily, at two minutes to three. It stinks like mad and all these little witches flipping about get me down, and she directed a glance at Miss Diana, who was floating past with a bottle of green stuff in one lily hand and her black curls cascading down her back, looking too beautiful to live. Honestly, they give me the sick, as Alex would say, thought Hebe, opening a door and entering a large, stiflingly hot apartment which smelt overpoweringly of green soft-soap solution, perfumed washes, scent and powder, and freshly washed hair. She looked about her at the patient seated figures; some with their wet heads, dripping and wretched, others slowly baking under vast metal hoods with no one paying attention to their cries, others merely huddled in corners, waiting, endlessly waiting, and turning over ragged copies of Post. At the reception desk was a lovely dark creature who kept pressing white fingers distractedly to her forehead, but doing little else. Fat little men in white coats with combs stuck in their pockets darted about; occasionally they tiptoed to one of the seated figures, lifted up the metal hood or carelessly pinched the waves under the net, and muttered, ‘Who did your hair, madam?’

  ‘Mr Fidele – or Mr Bonaventure,’ would reply the victim, on which the little men nodded mysteriously and glided away for another hour or so, leaving the patient baking or dripping as before.

  Hebe, having progressed so far as having her hair contemptuously washed by Miss Susan, who had a face like a very young pig that had managed to get hold of a lipstick, found herself dumped in a chair in an appalling draught, and waiting for a seat under a drier.

  It’s a hole, she thought, patiently dripping, but I must admit they do make your hair look all right.

  Presently the inevitable little man came up and bent over her and whispered mysteriously.

  ‘Who did your hair, madame?’

  ‘Miss Susan,’ announced Hebe, indicating the youthful porker, who had apparently gone to sleep in a corner.

  ‘And who usually sets it, madame?’

  ‘Mr Fidele.’

  The little man nodded and went away. (These inquiries were apparently purely ritualistic survivals, like Jack-in-the-Green, and led nowhere.)

  Upstairs, an alarming being who was very cross and all done up in a white jerkin like a doctor in an American film and who looked at your hair as if he hated it (which he probably did), prescribed for those whose locks needed rejuvenating, but Hebe had fortunately never had to penetrate so far.

  Presently the woman sitting next to Hebe was done. The porker woke up and came over to Hebe, and moved her into the woman’s place, and began to slam her hair into curls, but she had only done three of them when Mr Fidele, who actually looked and spoke like a human being, appeared in majesty and waved her away and began to do them himself. The drier was put over Hebe’s head and began to whirr, and she became sleepier and sleepier in its warmth. She tried not to feel miserable about Grantey and Alex, and endeavoured to make her mind a blank.

  Presently she became aware that someone was bending over her, and preparing (she supposed) to ask the inevitable question. She was just framing the answer, ‘Miss Susan,’ when a voice said, ‘Hullo, darling,’ and she opened her eyes and looked into the eyes of Alex.

  He was bending down with his hands on his knees and peering at her under the drier, and he was chewing gum, and Miss Susan and the other Misses and the nymph in the reception desk and all the little comb-and-jacket men were staring at him with almost as muc
h interest as if he had been a film star instead of a great painter.

  ‘Hullo!’ answered Hebe, beginning to smile in answer to his smile, and her happiness ran over her with warm delight because his eyes were full of love, ‘however did you get here?’

  ‘’Phoned your mother. How are you, darling?’

  ‘I’m all right. How are you?’

  ‘I’ve had a cold, but it’s nearly gone now. Hebe, The Shrapnel Hunters is finished.’

  ‘Gosh! You must have been working like stink.’

  ‘I have been. I’m dying for you to see it. Can you come along now? Get them to take this thing away, can’t you?’ and he tapped the drier with his finger-nail. ‘How are the children? How’s my Lady Hamilton?’ (This was his pet name for Emma.)

  ‘She’s all right. Alex, isn’t it bad about Grantey, poor old thing?’

  ‘I know; I’m awfully sorry. The Shrapnel Hunters is at Morris Korrowitz’s. I’ve got to get a frame for it. Can you come on afterwards when we’ve seen it and choose one?’

  ‘Yes. (Oh, blast them; will they come and get me out of this thing?)’ and she cast around her such a furious look out of her usually placid eyes that Mr Fidele himself glided forward and began to release her, protesting the while with an indulgent smile for love’s impatience that her hair was not yet dry.

  ‘It’s blazing outside. She won’t catch cold,’ Alex assured him, but Mr Fidele murmured that the Effect would be spoiled by taking off the net and removing the pins before the hair was dry.

  ‘It looks all right; it’s beautiful,’ said Alex earnestly, standing with his hands in the pockets of his corduroy trousers while Hebe paid her bill. She was carrying her soft little cap, and her brown curls, stiff and warm from the drier, shone like a spaniel’s.

  ‘Come on,’ said Alex, taking her in his arms the moment he got her out into the passage and beginning to kiss her.

  ‘How lovely you smell, I do love you, I’ve been so miserable this last week without you I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you telephone me then, you goat. I’ve been miserable too.’

  ‘How could I? We were down in the depths of Wales at this place of Gilbert’s and we were all drunk. I was sober once or twice, but as soon as I started to walk the five miles to the telephone we got as far as the local and all got drunk again.’

  ‘Hadn’t the local a telephone? It sounds quite a place. Never mind now, darling, let’s get a taxi.’

  On the way to Morris Korrowitz’s they held hands and both talked at once; about The Shrapnel Hunters and Jeremy’s new tooth; about the British Government’s suggestion that Alex should go to Italy next month as the official chronicler in paint of the fighting there; about the large half-ruined house which Hebe had found in St John’s Wood and which she proposed that they should buy and live in; and while they talked they lovingly, thirstily scanned each other’s faces, and Hebe held Alex’s massive, beautiful, dirty hands in her own.

  In the large disorderly room with a skylight which was the studio of Morris Korrowitz, The Shrapnel Hunters stood against the wall and in silence they stood and looked at it; Alex critically, and Morris Korrowitz with a torturing mixture of homage and envy, and Hebe with delight; the simple delight that she felt when the sunlight warmed her face on a spring day.

  After her first ‘Oh!’ she said no more until Alex said, frowning as he stooped to stare into the picture:

  ‘I still don’t feel quite right about this knee, Morris.’

  ‘It’s all right, Alex, do for God’s sake lay off it,’ said Morris exasperatedly, in a thin voice with a Cockney accent. He was a very tall young man with a shock of fair hair, who painted stiff pink flowers on vistas of sandy desert extending to an infinitely remote horizon, and he lived on an allowance from a widowed mother. Alex said that he had talent, but Hebe found his pink flowers in the desert tedious; this was the second time that she had met him.

  ‘It’s the best thing you’ve done, so far,’ she said at last.

  ‘Isn’t it, isn’t it, Mrs Niland?’ said Morris eagerly. ‘That’s what we’ve all been telling him.’

  ‘Do call me Hebe, won’t you?’ she said absently, still gazing at the picture. ‘Alex, what sort of a frame?’

  And they went off into a long discussion, only interrupted by their going out to have some food at a milk bar because Morris had none in his flat. When Hebe went back to Westwood about six that evening, Alex and The Shrapnel Hunters were with her in the taxi, and he was telling her about the murals he had painted on the walls of a low café in Cardiff and how he wanted to do some more work of the same kind. ‘Perhaps after all I’d better not take this Government job,’ he ended vaguely, staring out of the window, ‘unless they’d let me come back and paint Cassino and the Anzio beaches on the walls of the British Restaurants. Do you think they would?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. They said they wanted pictures, didn’t they? Hangable ones.’

  ‘I can’t remember. Anyway, I haven’t got to let them know for three weeks, so let’s enjoy ourselves,’ and he put his arm about her.

  It required a strong effort for Margaret to give the necessary attention to her work on Monday morning, for she had an excited expectation that her services would be more in demand than ever now that poor Grantey was dead at Westwood-at-Highgate, while they were still needed at Westwood-at-Brockdale. Then, too, there was Earl’s invitation to think about, and once or twice she had to reprove herself for romantic speculations.

  However, she was learning to command her self (that one kingdom which is given to even the humblest of created human creatures) and she did succeed in giving her full attention to her work and at five o’clock, as she set her face homewards, she had the reward of re-entering the world of personal relationships with a pleasure which was the stronger because of her abstinence. She forgot the school as soon as she left it.

  Her first duty on getting home was to get through some work which must be prepared for to-morrow, and when that was done, she telephoned Dick Fletcher. He seemed irritable, and admitted that he had had a trying week-end. The heat had been overpowering and Linda had missed Margaret.

  ‘We both miss you,’ he added laughing, and Margaret’s heart suddenly felt full of happiness.

  ‘And how is Mrs Coates?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I meant to tell you, she’s had a slight relapse. Nothing much, but her temperature’s up again and they don’t think she’ll be able to come home as soon as they thought.’

  Margaret said that she was sorry, but actually felt glad, and promised him that she would be there as usual tomorrow evening.

  As she dialled Zita’s number she was guiltily conscious of her mother, sitting in the drawing-room with a stony look on her face as she knitted. Reg had gone; gone without being able to say good-bye to his sister, because she had been with ‘those people’ in the country, and all Mrs Steggles’s grief and anxiety over his departure was expressing itself in bitter resentment against Margaret. Margaret herself had been touched by the fact that he had left a cheap lace collar and cuffs for her as a parting gift; all the more touched because it was the type of thing which she never wore; and she was vowing, even as she listened to the telephone-bell ringing in Westwood, that she would write to him every week, such letters as it would delight a soldier to receive; cheerful, affectionate, full of home news.

  ‘Hullo!’ said an unfamiliar masculine voice.

  ‘May I speak to Zita, please, Miss Mandelbaum?’ said Margaret, wondering who he might be.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll just get her,’ answered the voice, and she heard him shouting ‘Zita!’ as if he were a familiar inmate of the house.

  ‘Ach, Margaret,’ said Zita’s voice irritably, after a prolonged pause. ‘I was with the children and Mr Niland’ (with meaning emphasis) ‘had to come all the way for me upstairs.’

  ‘Oh was that Mr Niland? He’s come back, then?’

  ‘Yes. I will tell you about it later on. Now, how soon
can you come roundt? The children are being so notty; Barnabas keeps on worrying about Grantey. I shall be glad of help.’

  Margaret would have been glad to stay at home and do some necessary repairs to her wardrobe (which, like that of all the other women in England that summer, was rapidly and literally becoming a thing of shreds and patches), but she could not resist the temptation to go to Westwood; and, having told her mother where she was going and seen the information received in absolute silence and with no change of expression, she hurried out into the evening, where white may bloomed under the cloudless blue sky and the Heath was crowded with people walking idly with dog or lover through the long spring grass.

  Grantey was dead, and had been taken away; and now Mr Challis did not want to think any more about her, and he was going out to play tennis with some friends. He came out of the side door in his white clothes just as Margaret was walking up to the house. She glanced timidly, imploringly at him, all the self-command and self-confidence so painfully won by her broadened interests vanishing at the sight of him and leaving her an awkward provincial schoolteacher once more, with inconveniently strong feelings and the recollection of their last interview to make her dumb with embarrassment.

  But it was a beautiful evening, and there was another reason why Mr Challis felt almost kind towards the world. He smiled at her and said (remembering to keep his musical voice decently lowered because of the late Mrs Grant):

  ‘Isn’t this a wonderful evening? The light seems unwilling to leave the sky. Are you going in to see Zita?’

  ‘Oh yes – just to help with the children –’ said Margaret, her eyes fixed solemnly upon his face.

  Mr Challis hesitated, and moved the rackets under his arm. She continued to gaze up at him, slowly colouring under his look.