by Dodie Smith
“Nobody minds a bit.”
His hand was quite damp. I was sure he was feeling awful.
The others had heard the shouts and come to the door.
Neil came running out to us with a torch.
“What, my old friend Stephen?” he cried.
“Are there any bears abroad tonight?”
“I don’t want to come in—please!” Stephen whispered to me. But Neil and I took an arm each and made him.
Thomas wasn’t minding at all—he kept choking with laughter.
“We had a squint at you at dinner,” he said, “and then you all disappeared.
We were just about to go home in despair when you came downstairs.”
Once I saw Stephen clearly, in the hall, I was sorry I had made him come in-he was scarlet to his forehead and too shy to speak a word. And Rose made things worse by saying affectedly (i think it was due to embarrassment) : “I do apologize for them. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
“Don’t mind your Great-Aunt Rose, boys,” said Neil, with a grin.
“Come on, we’ll go and raid the icebox.” I once saw them do that on the pictures and it looked marvelous.
I thought I would go along, too, but Mrs.
Fox-Cotton called me back.
“Who’s that boy, the tall fair one?” she demanded.
I told her about Stephen.
She said, “I must photograph him.”
“What, at this time of night?”
She gave a whinnying little laugh.
“Of course not, you silly child.
He must come up to London-I’m a professional photographer.
Look here, ask him—No, don’t bother.” She ran upstairs.
Neil and the boys had disappeared by then. I was sorry, because I was quite a bit hungry, in spite of the enormous dinner; I suppose my stomach had got into practice. I feared that if I hung about, Simon might feel he ought to dance with me—he was dancing with Rose again and I wanted him to go on. So I went upstairs.
It was pleasant being by myself in the house—one gets the feel of a house much better alone. I went very slowly, looking at the old prints on the walls of the passages. Everywhere at Scoatney one feels so conscious of the past; it is like a presence, a caress in the air. I don’t often get that feeling at the castle; perhaps it has been altered too much, and the oldest parts seem so utterly remote. Probably the beautiful, undisturbed furniture helps at Scoatney.
I expected to hear voices to guide me back to the gallery but every thing was quiet. At last I came to a window open on to the courtyard and leaned out and got my bearings—I could see the gallery windows. I could see the kitchen windows, too, and Neil and Thomas and Stephen eating at the table. It did look fun.
When I went into the gallery, Father and Mrs.
Cotton were at the far end and the Vicar was lying on the sofa by the middle fire place reading Mrs. Fox-Cotton’s book. I told him about Thomas and Stephen.
“Let’s go and talk to them,” he said, “unless you want me to dance with you. I dance like an india-rubber ball.”
I said I should like to see the kitchens. He got up, closing the book.
“Mrs. Fox-Cotton said that was no book for little girls,” I told him.
“It’s no book for little vicars,” he said, chuckling.
He took me down by the back stairs-he knows the house well, as he was very friendly with old Mr. Cotton. It was interesting to notice the difference once we got into the servants’ quarters; the carpets were thin and worn, the lighting was harsh, it felt much colder. The smell was different, too—just as old but with no mellowness in it; a stale, damp, dispiriting smell.
But the kitchens were beautiful when we got to them-all painted white, with a white enamelled stove and the hugest refrigerator.
(aunt Millicent only had an old one which dribbled.) Neil and the boys were still eating. And sitting on the table, talking hard to Stephen, was Mrs. Fox-Cotton.
As I came in, she was handing him a card. I heard her say:
“All you have to do is to give that address to the taxi-driver. I’ll pay your fare when you get there—or perhaps I’d better give you some money now.” She opened her evening bag.
“Are you really going to be photographed?” I asked him. He shook his head and showed me the card. It had _____ on it, under a beautifully drawn little swan, and an address in St. John’s Wood.
“Be a nice child and help me to persuade him,” she said. “He can come on a Sunday. I’ll pay his fare and give him two guineas. He’s exactly what I’ve been looking for for months.”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Stephen, very politely.
“I’d be embarrassed.”
“Heavens, what’s there to be embarrassed about his I only want to photograph your head. Would you do it for three guineas?”
“What, for just one day?”
She gave him a shrewd little look; then said quickly:
“Five guineas if you come next Sunday.”
“Don’t do it if you don’t want to, Stephen,” I said.
He swallowed and thought. At last he said: “I’ll have to think it over, ma’am. Would it be five guineas if I came a little later?”
“Any Sunday you like-I can always use you. Only write in advance to make sure I shall be free. You write for him,” she added, to me.
“He’ll write himself if he wants to,” I said coldly—she sounded as if she thought he was illiterate.
“Well, don’t you go putting him off. Five guineas, Stephen. And I probably won’t need you for more than two or three hours.”
She grabbed a wing of chicken and sat there gnawing it.
Neil offered me some, but my appetite had gone off.
Stephen said it was time he and Thomas rode home.
Neil asked them to stay on and dance, but didn’t press it when he saw Stephen didn’t want to. We all went to see them off-the bicycles were somewhere at the back of the house. On the way, we passed through a storeroom where enormous hams were hanging.
“Old Mr. Cotton sent us one of those every Christmas,” said Thomas.
“Only he was dead last Christmas.”
Neil reached up and took the largest ham off its hook.
“There you are, Tommy,” he said.
“Oh, Thomas, you can’t!” I began—but I didn’t want Neil to call me Great-Aunt Cassandra so I finished up: “Well, I suppose you have.” And I certainly would have fainted with despair if Thomas had refused the ham. In the end, I undertook to bring it home because he couldn’t manage it on his bicycle.
“But swear you won’t go all ladylike and leave it behind,” he whispered. I swore.
After the boys had gone we went back to the hall and found the others still dancing.
“Come on, Cassandra,” said Neil, and whirled me off.
Dear me, dancing is peculiar when you really think about it. If a man held your hand and put his arm round your waist without its being dancing, it would be most important; in dancing, you don’t even notice it—well, only a little bit. I managed to follow the steps better than I expected, but not easily enough to enjoy myself; I was quite glad when the record ended.
Neil asked Rose to dance then, and I had a glorious waltz with the Vicar; we got so dizzy that we had to flop on a sofa. I don’t fancy Rose followed Neil as well as I had done, because as they passed I heard him say: “Don’t keep on putting in little fancy steps on your own.” I guessed that would annoy her and it did; when the music stopped and he asked her to come out into the garden for some air, she said “No, thanks,” almost rudely.
After that, we all went back to the Long Gallery where Father and Mrs. Cotton were talking as hard as ever.
Mrs. Cotton broke off politely as we went in and the conversation was general for a while; but Mrs. Fox-Cotton kept yawning and patting her mouth and saying “Excuse me”—which only drew more attention to it-and soon Topaz said we ought to be going. Mrs.
Cotton prot
ested courteously, then rang for the car. There was a late feeling about the evening—just as there used to be at children’s parties (the few I ever went to) after the first nurse arrived to take a child home.
I picked up the ham as we went through the hall and tactfully kept it under the wrap Topaz had lent me-it was a most peculiar sort of bur nous thing but it came in very useful.
Simon and Neil went out to the car with us and said they would come over and see us when they got back from London-they were driving up the next day to stay for a fortnight.
And so the party was over.
“Great Heavens, Cassandra, how did you get that?”
said Father when he saw me nursing the ham.
I told him, and explained that I had been hiding it in case he made me refuse it.
“Refuse it his You must be insane, my child.” He took it from me to guess how much it weighed. We all guessed—which was a sheer waste of time as we haven’t any scales.
“You’re nursing it as if it were your first-born child,” said Father when it was returned to me eventually.
I said I doubted if anyone’s first-born child was ever more welcome. After that we all fell silent—we had suddenly remembered the chauffeur.
Even when we got home we didn’t all rush to compare notes. I got the feeling that we all wanted to do a little private thinking. I certainly did.
I began as soon as Rose and I had blown our bedroom candles out. I wasn’t a bit sleepy. I went through the whole evening-it was almost nicer than when it was actually happening until I got to the bit in the kitchen, with Mrs. Fox-Cotton asking Stephen to sit for her; I found I was furious about that. I asked myself why-why shouldn’t he make five guineas for a few hours’ work his Five guineas is a tremendous amount of money. And surely a photographer has every right to engage models his I decided I was being most unreasonable-but I went on feeling furious.
While I was still arguing with myself, Rose got out of the four-poster and opened the window wider; then sat on the window-seat.
“Can’t you sleep?” I asked.
She said she hadn’t even been trying and I guessed she had been going over the evening just as I had; I wished I could change minds with her for a while and re-live her evening.
I got up and joined her on the window-seat. It was such a dark night that I could only see the shape of her.
Suddenly she said:
“I wish I knew more about men.”
“Why specially?” I asked, in a quietly encouraging voice. She was silent so long that I thought she wasn’t going to answer; then the words came rushing out:
“He’s attracted—I know he is! But he’s probably been attracted to lots of girls; it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to propose. IF only I knew the clever way to behave!”
I said: “Oh, Rose, have you thought what marriage really means?”
“Yes, I thought tonight-when I looked at him to see if he was like that old painting. I suddenly imagined being in bed with him.”
“What a moment to choose for it! I saw you were pretty preoccupied.
Well, how did it feel?”
“Most peculiar. But I could face it.”
“Is it just the money, Rose?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, “honestly, I’m not—I don’t understand myself. It’s terribly exciting feeling men are attracted to you. It’s but you couldn’t understand.”
“I think perhaps I could.” For a second I thought of telling her about Stephen, but before I could start she went on:
“I like him-really I do. He’s so courteous he the first person who ever made me feel I matter. And he’s handsome—in a way, don’t you think his His eyes are, anyway, if I could just get used to the beard-his “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have Neil? He’s so very kind and he’s got such a nice clean face.”
“Oh, Neil!” Her tone was so scornful that I realized he must have annoyed her even more than I had suspected.
“No, you can have Neil.”
Honestly, that was the first time the idea had ever occurred to me. Of course I didn’t take it seriously—but I felt it deserved a little quiet thinking about.
“If only I could get Simon to shave,” Rose went on. Then her voice went hard.
“Anyway, what does it matter his I’d marry him even if I hated him. Cassandra, did you ever see anything as beautiful as Mrs. Cotton’s bathroom?”
“Yes, lots of things,” I said firmly.
“And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.”
“But I don’t hate him-I tell you I like him. I almost … was She broke off and went back to bed.
“Perhaps you won’t be sure of your feelings until you’ve let him kiss you,” I suggested.
“But I can’t do that before he proposes-or he mightn’t propose,” she said decidedly.
“That’s one thing I do know.”
I had a strong suspicion she was being a mite old-fashioned, but I kept my views to myself.
“Well, I shall pray you really fall in love with him—and he with you, of course. And I’ll do out-of-bed prayers.”
“So will I,” she said, hopping out again.
We both prayed hard, Rose much the longest—she was still on her knees when I had settled down ready to sleep.
“That’ll do, Rose,” I told her at last. “It’s enough just to mention things, you know. Long prayers are like nagging.”
We were restless for ages. I tried to invent something soothing for Miss Blossom to say but I wasn’t in the mood. After a while I heard an owl hooting and calmed myself by thinking of it flying over the dark fields-and then I remembered it would be pouncing on mice.
I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian. Rose kept flinging herself over in bed.
“Oh, do stop walloping about,” I said.
“You’ll break what few springs the four-poster has left.”
But again and again as I was dropping off she did a wallop. Godsend church clock struck two before I heard her breathing quietly.
Then I got to sleep at last.
IX
It took three days to describe the party at Scoatney-I didn’t mark the breaks because I wanted it to seem like one whole chapter. Now that life has become so much more exciting I think of this journal as a story I am telling. A new chapter happened yesterday which I long to dash straight into, but I shall resist the temptation and bring myself up to date first.
One temptation I didn’t manage to resist was that of letting my imagination leap ahead a bit. As Rose had said I could have Neil, I let myself just toy with the idea; I thought about it when I woke up the day after the party and imagined his proposing—I made it happen in the water-garden at Scoatney. I accepted him and Rose and I arranged to have a double wedding, and bought the most superb trousseaux. Then I dozed off again and dreamt I really was married to Neil. We were shut up together in Mrs.
Cotton’s bathroom in a terribly embarrassing way and Stephen’s face kept floating in the looking-glass walls. I was very glad to wake up and find it wasn’t true. Of course Neil never will propose to me now that I have let myself imagine it. Not that I mind.
I suppose he just might—in a completely different way, and not in the water-garden.
Topaz and I had a good gossip about the party while we made the beds. She was more and more hopeful for Rose, but depressed about Father—he had snubbed her when she asked him what he and Mrs. Cotton had talked about.
“All I got out of him was “Don’t be a fool, my dear—how can one repeat the details of a conversation his She’s a ‘highly intelligent woman and she can listen as well as she can talk.”
And then what do you think he said his That he’d placed her wrongly —her knowledge of literature wasn’t at all superficial; she’s very widely read.
“It just shows,” he told me, “that one shouldn’t generalize about nations on the strength of a brief acquaintance”—and you’d have thought from his ton
e that I’d been doing the generalizing.”
“How very annoying,” I said, trying not to laugh—I was so tickled that Father had taken to heart Mrs.
Cotton’s little snub about generalizing.
“Anyway, how is it he can discuss literature with her and not with me? I’m always trying to talk to him about books, but he never lets me.”
I blame Father for lots of things but not for that—because it really is agony to talk to her about books. When I was longing for a calm discussion of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, she said “Ah, it’s the overlapping dimensions that are so wonderful. I tried to paint it once, on a circular canvas”—and then she couldn’t remember who Natasha was.
I was most sympathetic with her over Father, but rather quick about it, because I wanted to write my journal. I only managed an hour before lunch but was able to work all afternoon, up in the attic. Stephen came to me there when he got back from Four Stones.
My heart sank as he held out a folded paper-I had been hoping he had outgrown bringing me poems. He stood waiting for me to read it.
After the first line I realized that it was his own work this time-it was about me, sitting on the stairs at Scoatney while the others danced. I was wondering what I could say about it, when he snatched it away and tore it up.
“I know it’s dreadful,” he said.
I told him it wasn’t dreadful at all.
“Some of it rhymed splendidly, Stephen. And it’s your very own. I like it much better than the ones you copied out.” I felt it was an opportunity to stop him copying again.
“I didn’t exactly copy them,” he said, not looking at me.
“I always changed words in them. I didn’t mean to be dishonest, Cassandra-it was just that nothing of my own seemed good enough.”
I said I understood perfectly but he must always write his own poems in future. And I advised him not even to imitate other people’s poems.
“I know you made up every word of this last one,” I told him, “but it was still a bit like Herrick-all that part about lilies and roses and violets. You didn’t really see them in the hall last night there were only white tulips.”
“I bet Herrick didn’t see all the flowers he wrote about,” said Stephen, grinning.