A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  THE HANDBAG

  Dorothy Whipple

  (approximate reading time 19 minutes)

  Mrs West had been alone for the weekend, but there was nothing new in that. William was often away. He didn’t tell her where he was going and she would not ask. He merely said he wouldn’t be at home on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or at the weekend, or whenever it was.

  But Mrs West generally managed to find out where he had gone by going through the papers in his desk. He meant to keep the desk locked, but he often forgot and his wife took every advantage of that.

  William had plenty of opportunity of getting away. He was a Councillor; probably he would shortly be an Alderman, the youngest Alderman, and probably, too, the Leader of his Party. He was very anxious to secure these honours and his wife knew he was being careful to keep in with everybody.

  As a Councillor and a member of the Health, Education, Gas and other committees, William attended many Conferences. His wife used to go with him and she enjoyed them very much. They were always held at such pleasant places, at Brighton, Harrogate, Bournemouth for instance, and they stayed at the best hotels. The Corporation paid William’s first-class expenses and he used to manage to make those do for the both of them.

  That was all over now. William first took to making excuses for not taking her, then he went without her without making excuses, and now he did not even tell her when or where he was going. The higher William rose in public life, the further he pushed her into the background.

  She had discovered lately that he was making her out to be an invalid. People stopped her in the street to ask with sympathy how she was.

  ‘Such a pity you weren’t well enough to come to the Ball the other night,’ someone would say, and Mrs West was obliged to smile and accept her imaginary illness because she would not let it be known that William had never told her about the Ball.

  Dinners, luncheons, receptions, prize-distributions, William went to them all without her. She knew nothing of them until she saw an account of them in the paper, with Councillor William West prominently mentioned, or until such time as she found the desk unlocked and went through the discarded invitations. All of them were inscribed for Councillor and Mrs West, yet he never told her of them and she was too proud to charge him with them.

  She didn’t know precisely why he behaved in this way. She thought there must be several reasons. William had always been a vain man, but the older he got the vainer he became. He was forty-eight – she was the same age, but looked older – he was handsome in a dark, increasingly florid way and he fancied himself considerably on a platform. He liked to show off, but not before his wife. He felt she judged him. She cramped his style, she knew when he was not telling the truth. He felt freer without her.

  Mrs West also surmised that William was ashamed of her. She was plain, she had no taste in dress. She had done her own housework and economised for years, though they had maids and were prosperous now. There were no frills about her, she admitted, but she had made William very comfortable and had borne with his exacting, uncertain, often foolish behaviour for more than twenty years. She surmised, shrewdly, that William valued his comfortable home, his good food, but no longer wished to be seen about with the one who secured these things for him. He was ashamed of her. She wasn’t smart enough for him.

  If she had been Mrs Wintersley, now, it would have been different, thought Mrs West, sitting alone over the weekend. Mrs Wintersley was a youngish widow who had lately entered public affairs and taken her place on the Council. Mrs Wintersley was smart, there was no doubt about that. She had made quite a commotion on the Council and was in enormous demand at public functions: Prize Distributions, Women’s Luncheon Clubs, the openings of schools, bazaars and so on.

  Mrs West had seen Mrs Wintersley many a time, though Mrs Wintersley did not know who she was. Mrs Wintersley would probably have been astonished, thought Mrs West, to discover that the plain little woman sitting at the next table at the Rosebowl Tea Rooms the other day was the wife of the resplendent William West.

  Mrs Wintersley had heard Mrs West’s voice, because Mrs West often answered the telephone when Mrs Wintersley rang William up. Mrs Wintersley was always ringing William up. Mrs West supposed it was all right; they were both on the Council.

  At the Rosebowl Tea Rooms, Mrs West had enjoyed her obscurity and had taken the opportunity of observing Mrs Wintersley very closely. She didn’t like her, she decided. She was very well dressed and very well made-up, but she had a hard mouth and restless eyes, eyes always seeking for an audience. A person, Mrs West concluded, who could not live without limelight. She was afraid William was also like that.

  Mrs Wintersley, when Mrs West had seen her before, had generally been in black, but on this particular afternoon she wore becoming blue-green tweeds. Everything about her toilet was carefully chosen as usual and Mrs West noticed that even her handbag exactly matched her suit. It was made of the same blue-green tweed and as it lay on the table while Mrs Wintersley had tea, Mrs West observed it, as she observed everything else about Mrs Wintersley.

  Going through William’s desk in his absence over the weekend, Mrs West had come upon an invitation for Tuesday evening to the Speech Day at the Girls’ Grammar School. The Address and the Prizes, the paste-board announced, would be given by Councillor Mrs Wintersley and the invitation was inscribed as usual: ‘Councillor and Mrs West. Platform.’

  At the beginning of William’s public career, Mrs West had often been asked to give prizes and she had managed, she thought, rather well. At any rate, William used to congratulate her in those days, when they were both new to the platform together. But of course, Mrs West thought diffidently, William had left her far behind long ago.

  The invitation was for Tuesday and it was Tuesday now. On the previous day William had returned from wherever it was he had been; Mrs West had not been able to find out where this was, since there was no reference to any conference in his desk.

  William was now seated at the breakfast table, buried behind the paper. Mrs West had finished breakfast and was just about to leave the table when the maid brought in the morning post. William lowered the paper long enough to see that there was nothing for him before disappearing behind it again. For Mrs West, however, there was a parcel. She wondered what it could be. She rarely received parcels unless she sent for something from the London shops. Holding the parcel on her knee, out of the way of the breakfast things, she undid the wrappings.

  Within them lay, of all unexpected things, a green tweed bag.

  Mrs West stared uncomprehendingly. A green tweed bag?

  Then, glancing towards William and observing that he was still buried behind the paper and had seen nothing, Mrs West bundled the bag back into its wrappings and took it swiftly out of the room. She hurried upstairs, stumbling in her haste, and gained her bedroom. Locking the door, she tumbled the bag from its wrappings again. There was a letter with it. With shaking fingers she drew the sheet of notepaper from the envelope. It was headed: The Troutfishers Inn, Patondale, and was addressed to Mrs West, 3 The Mount, Lynchester.

  Dear Madam,

  We have pleasure in returning to you a handbag found in room number sixteen after you had left this morning . . .

  Mrs West went slowly to her bed and sat down upon it. The bag was Mrs Wintersley’s. She would have known it anywhere. But why had it been sent to her? Why addressed to Mrs West, at 3 The Mount?

  It took Mrs West several minutes to grasp the truth. William and Mrs Wintersley had spent the weekend at the Troutfishers Inn together. A flush of anger, humiliation and hurt rose in Mrs West’s faded cheek. She knew William was foolish, vain, unkind, but she had never thought, she told herself, that he would do this kind of thing. Never.

  She sat on the bed, her head low.

  What a fool he was! He was endangering the very thing he cared most about – his public career. Aldermen were not allowed moral lapses; at least they must never be found out. But William, fool that he was, ha
d registered at the inn in his own name. He had done that, she knew, because of his fixed idea that everybody knew him everywhere. He would think it useless to attempt to hide his importance under an assumed name. But he would suppose, and rightly, that no one knew his wife. No one did know her. He had seen to that. It would therefore be quite safe, he would think, for Mrs Wintersley to pose as Mrs West. But she had left this bag behind – there was nothing in it but a handkerchief and a lipstick with no incriminating mark of ownership on either – and they had sent it to the address William had given in the book.

  Mrs West sat on the bed, the bag beside her, turning things over in her mind.

  ‘William,’ she said at lunch. ‘I think I shall go to the Speech Day at the Girls’ Grammar School tonight.’

  William looked up.

  ‘I haven’t accepted for you,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Mrs West equably. ‘I rang up the Headmistress this morning to say I should be there.’

  William frowned.

  ‘Why should you go?’ he said. ‘It will be very boring.’

  ‘All the same,’ she said calmly. ‘I think I shall go.’

  And at eight o’clock she was there, in a moleskin coat and a straw hat with a blue rose in it, waiting in an ante-room with the rest of the ‘platform’ for the arrival of Mrs Wintersley. William looked put out. Mrs West knew it was because she was there, but she didn’t mind. She felt quite easy and comfortable; it was someone else’s turn to be humiliated now, she told herself.

  Mrs Wintersley arrived, beautifully dressed in black with a tiny hat, a floating veil and a bunch of lilies of the valley pinned under her chin. She was effusively greeted by everybody, including William. Mrs West stood apart, but when the Headmistress, in her Oxford hood, reading out the names of the guests and their places on the platform came to the name of Mrs West, that lady saw Mrs Wintersley turn sharply in astonishment. Mrs West felt her prolonged stare of amused surprise, but she herself continued to smile imperturbably from under her straw hat. Let Mrs Wintersley smile while she could, she thought.

  Mrs West found that she had been given a place of honour next to Mrs Wintersley, with William beside her. Nothing could have been more convenient to her purpose.

  ‘Shall we go?’ said the Headmistress.

  As they filed out, Mrs Wintersley fell back to speak to William West.

  ‘I left my bag behind at the inn,’ she said in an undertone.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he exclaimed. ‘How did that happen? I thought women never moved without their bags.’

  ‘It wasn’t the one I ordinarily use. It was the one that matches my tweed suit. There was nothing in it.’

  ‘That’s better,’ said William. ‘Well, I’ll write and ask them to return it to the office.’

  Mrs Wintersley’s face cleared. She advanced, amidst a burst of handclapping, to her place on the platform.

  Mrs West followed her. It was quite pleasant, she thought, to be at one of these affairs again. She liked the rows of young faces below her, the palms beside her, the flowers, the long table covered with a ceremonial cloth and piled with suitable literature, silver cups, shields and medals.

  Behind the front row of the platform there were other rows containing people of less importance, minor councillors, mistresses, and so on.

  The Press took flashlight photographs of Mrs Wintersley with Mrs West small beside her and William towering beyond. The platform then sat down and the school sang its opening song.

  The Headmistress came behind William and asked him, in the absence of the Mayor, to propose the vote of thanks to Mrs Wintersley later. William nodded importantly, exchanged a glance with Mrs Wintersley and began to make notes on a small card concealed in the palm of his hand.

  After the song, the Headmistress announced that she would read her report.

  While she read, Mrs Wintersley sat gracefully, conning her notes or smiling at the girls. Mrs West rather grimly regarded her. She did not hear a word of the report. It was over before she realised it and she had to hasten to join in the applause.

  There was another song. Mrs Wintersley received a few whispered instructions from the Headmistress. The address, Mrs West had long ago noted on her programme, was to be given next, before the distribution of the prizes.

  The song ended; the school sat down again. The Head-mistress rose to announce that she had the greatest pleasure in asking Mrs Wintersley to give her address. A few words in eulogy of Mrs Wintersley and the admirable work she was doing in the city followed and amid great applause, Mrs Wintersley rose.

  She stood there, waiting for the clapping to die down and Mrs West looking up at her, saw the confident smile and the sparkle in her eyes. Mrs Wintersley was collecting her audience; she was enjoying herself.

  At a sign from the Headmistress, the applause ceased. There was silence, a hush of expectancy. Mrs Wintersley, with a slight cough, laid one finely-gloved hand on the table and in her ringing voice began:

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Girls.’

  She inhaled a long breath.

  ‘I am very glad . . .’ she said.

  As if she were tired of holding it, Mrs West brought from under her voluminous moleskin sleeve a wholly unsuitable green tweed bag and laid it on the table beside the prizes.

  ‘I am very honoured,’ Mrs Wintersley was saying, ‘to have been asked to come here tonight . . .’

  Distracted by the movement on the table under her eyes, Mrs Wintersley, frowning in annoyance, glanced down. She came to a dead stop. Her voice dying on the listening air, Mrs Wintersley stared in as much horror at the green tweed bag as Macbeth at the apparition of the dagger.

  With an audible gasp, she put out a shaking hand towards it. The platform, the school craned in amazement to see what it was that had so affected her. The Headmistress stood with a petrified stare. William West half-rose to his feet, watching the approach of Mrs Wintersley’s hand towards the green tweed bag. But on the very point of touching it, Mrs Wintersley suddenly snatched back her hand as if something had burnt it. With a hoarse exclamation, she turned on Mrs West. But the sight of that lady smiling imperturbably from under her straw hat seemed to complete Mrs Wintersley’s strange collapse. She whipped round, turning her back on the school, presenting a convulsed face to the platform.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ she stammered. ‘I can’t go on . . . Something . . . I’m not well. I’m . . . Let me pass, please.’

  Plunging through the chairs, the occupants of which got hurriedly up to make way for her, tripping clumsily over the red drugget laid down in her honour, Mrs Wintersley rushed headlong from the platform. In the staring silence, her smart hat awry, her veil flying, her high heels rattling loudly over the wooden floor, Mrs Wintersley fled down the length of the hall, followed, to the astonishment of all, by Councillor William West.

  As they made their amazing exit through the door at the end of the hall, uproar broke out. Five hundred girls, their parents and the occupants of the platform burst into excited comment. The Headmistress, stern, drawn to her full height, struck on her bell. But silence did not follow. Confusion continued to reign. The Headmistress advanced to the front of the platform and with lips compressed struck the bell again and again and again. She struck until the tongues were still and all eyes upon her. Then calmly and coldly she spoke:

  ‘Mrs Wintersley is evidently indisposed,’ she said. ‘But she will be adequately taken care of and our programme must go on. There will be no address. We shall proceed at once to the distribution of the prizes. Er . . .’ The Headmistress faltered in her turn. She looked uncertainly behind and around her. Who could give the prizes now? Who was there important enough? She stood there, at a loss. Mrs West leaned forward from her place, smiling helpfully. ‘Shall I give the prizes?’ she said.

  SIGH NO MORE

  William Shakespeare

  (FROM MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, ACT 2, SCENE iii)

  Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

  Men were
deceivers ever;

  One foot in sea, and one on shore,

  To one thing constant never.

  Then sigh not so, but let them go,

  And be you blithe and bonny,

  Converting all your sounds of woe

  Into Hey nonny, nonny.

  Sing no more ditties, sing no more

  Of dumps so dull and heavy;

  The fraud of men was ever so,

  Since summer first was leavy.

  Then sigh not so, but let them go,

  And be you blithe and bonny,

  Converting all your sounds of woe

  Into Hey nonny, nonny.

  READING NOTES

  At the point in the story when Mrs West brings out the green handbag and places it on the table, a woman in a carers’ group stood up and cheered. Although the story is told in an amusing style, the group talked seriously about faithfulness in marriage which led on to an appraisal of the ways in which marriage has changed over the last hundred years. By the time it came to the poem, the lone male in the group said he was beginning to feel himself ‘thoroughly got at’.

  The Trouble with Pleasures

  A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS

  Kate Chopin

  (approximate reading time 12 minutes)

  Little Mrs Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie gave her a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years.

  The question of investment was one that occupied her greatly. For a day or two she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really absorbed in speculation and calculation. She did not wish to act hastily, to do anything she might afterward regret. But it was during the still hours of the night when she lay awake revolving plans in her mind that she seemed to see her way clearly toward a proper and judicious use of the money.

  A dollar or two should be added to the price usually paid for Janie’s shoes, which would insure their lasting an appreciable time longer than they usually did. She would buy so and so many yards of percale for new shirt waists for the boys and Janie and Mag. She had intended to make the old ones do by skilful patching. Mag should have another gown. She had seen some beautiful patterns, veritable bargains in the shop windows. And still there would be left enough for new stockings – two pairs apiece – and what darning that would save for a while! She would get caps for the boys and sailor-hats for the girls. The vision of her little brood looking fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives excited her and made her restless and wakeful with anticipation.