Damn Mrs. Willis.
What else was there to remember? Somehow, the late owners were still in the atmosphere. I felt them most strongly in the upper rooms, the floor most familiar.
I went into mother’s bedroom with hesitant expectancy. Its strange, sprigged paper twinkled at me odiously and put my mind’s eye out. I was so fond of the room, so sorry for it because mother had never cared for it as being of Evenfield and Addison, alienated a little from it and her by my obstinate affection, for can a place where you have been disposed on winter afternoons for a sleep at an unnatural hour preceding a party ever be nothing in your life but a bedroom?
The night-nursery looked absolutely unrecognizable. It had a ridiculous flocculent paper of red and gold and a gas-stove masking the small fireplace. I couldn’t strive against them, had never been able to remember what our wall-paper was like in that room, was so confused by the Willises aura plus emptiness which carries its own atmosphere that I sat down on the dusty floor and nearly cried. In every direction my thoughts were jammed: I couldn’t recapture epoch. I thought of Aggie Drumhead plodding about the room (past me, through me!) and could only see her as I had at her cottage; Mell had slept against the wall facing me and all I could manage about her was that she was now in India: mother had come in a hundred times to report dinner parties downstairs – I measured her track with my eye – and all my brain could produce was that she lived in Kensington Gate and was now in Switzerland. I knew that until I could sweep away every physical and psychical trace of alien ownership and recreate the whole house from cellar to attic as it was in our time I should never be at peace with myself or Evenfield. I wasn’t, in short, going to be done! If it comes to that, I wasn’t able entirely to lose even myself in the past, as fragmentary thoughts of our cook, Clifford, my Old Contemptibles, the face of The Guv’nor and the orchestra in full blast with Everybody Kept on Laughing briefly possessed my brain in turn and were chased away. I didn’t want them there, and went upstairs to the box-room floor (it was there that I realized that what had been Cuss’s room smelt of the Albert Hall, and that meant a tiresome two minutes with The Messiah).
It was perhaps going to be a good thing that one wasn’t quite able to afford to lease the house and use it for holidays and week-ends, my secret ambition. Even if I could there was the question of leaving Cuss, and I didn’t see him as being willing to come back! And it was all so impossible at present that I was positively relieved …
I said good-bye in a provisional manner to the day nursery; it had, as I suspected, evidently been a bedroom: unknown wall-plugs and wires sprouting from the ceiling hinted at electric light, in just that place was once a plaster rosette from which hung the chain of our oil lamp (to this day I don’t know why we never had incandescent light in the nurseries as there was in all the lower rooms). But at every turn there were Willis traces battling against me, trying to crowd out my set of personal associations. Sometimes they didn’t succeed, as I found on going into the backyard and seeing it looking singularly neat and Institutional – like an Ackworth-Mead party! But I was ready for them! They’d taken away the water-butts, cleared the further corner of my own familiar stinking dustbin. But sometimes they did succeed, as they had over the night-nursery and a shocking matter of bookcase shelving in the drawing-room, and I stood in the middle of the room and thought that time and affection ought to be able to rise above these trifles, that I was being monstrously deprived of my hour with the house by the chattels of others, for having put their confounded shelving in the drawing-room I couldn’t remember what was there in our time. Love should positively know its job better than this, I thought, given a willing heart to work with …
It was in the motor bus going back to Kensington that the phrase Love, give me more memories slid into my mind. A waltz-song.
I wrote it that night in twenty minutes, and as with the laughing number the theme presented itself to me on a plate. It was in what Mr. Field would term the serious-toshery manner, with swing and sweep and (I hoped) plenty of scope for the harp, which has always been the making of three-four time, to my mind, and, given favourable lighting, is so singularly beautiful to look at from the audience.
For it I was to receive several thousands of pounds which it was never worth, but there seems to be no proportion in these matters. It was composed thanks to three rows of built-in book-case, one gas-fire and two wall-papers that I resented. I was to hear it via the instruments of bandsmen and the whistling of errand boys until, initial elation over, I sickened. All I can plead is that the feeling which brought the thing into being was a very real one, and I suppose that always tells.
Cuss scored it for me.
CHAPTER X
1
I RETURNED home to find Cuss fuming. The Guv’nor had turned down our luckless Stammering which, as I wasn’t aware that he’d had it submitted to him, left me unmoved. But Cuss was seriously worried: he said that in his experience there was a rhythm in the success-scale and that once broken it was finished for ever: that to succeed and then be rejected was equivalent to beginning all over again, only much worse.
I’m afraid I was inadequate, that time, for I wanted to go all over the Kensington Gate house and tally up relics of Evenfield. Some of them I could place instantly, a wicker chair in Mell’s bedroom that mother used in the drawing-room, our nursery milk-jug that still survived in the kitchen quite incredibly unchipped through all the years and the removal from Addison, with its frieze of Greek dancers round the base; two chests of drawers, one in my room, another in the bathroom now full of spare curtains, packets of soap-flakes and bottles of ammonia, but once the repository for Aggie’s aprons, my dolls’ underclothes and a tea-set I never seemed to play with. But a child’s interest in and observation of furniture is unreliable; it takes things for granted and I wanted exactitude … I even rushed into Cuss’s den where, such was his extraordinary rancour, he was actually immersed in legal papers, to pick his brains about a doubtful washhand-stand in some bedroom, and the revolving book-case in father’s study, and the wall upon which that frightful steel engraving of the Flood which now hung in cook’s bedroom had hung at Evenfield. He was too oppressed to be helpful and I don’t think he’d have helped me if he could. It took the form of championing a picture I’d often heard him revile.
‘That engraving’, he informed me crisply, ‘is a proof before letters, and quite valuable.’
‘It’s a foul thing, but where did it hang?’
‘What does it matter?’
So it ended in a letter to mother who answered that it was on the staircase facing the hat-stand and that the curtains in father’s study were the old drawing-room ones from Evenfield, which seemed to me so remarkable that I broke off and ran down to look at them and didn’t even recognize them then. But there were (only one missing) still those hand-painted porcelain tea-cups and saucers rimmed with gold that mother used to wash herself. We used them still for afternoon tea every Sunday, and for visitors.
2
During the following year father grew weaker, I had about my first unhappy disagreement with Clifford, and Love, Give Me More Memories was scheduled for inclusion in the Guv’nor’s new revue and then capriciously transferred to his new musical comedy, which Cuss, a new man at this turn of our fortunes, said was a step up.
But I was concerned about father, infinitely more anxious about mother, and the thought that Evenfield might be let – betrayed – over my head was always at the back of my mind.
Mother had a new worry herself: finance. The cure was an expensive misnomer, she had no idea of the date of her own return (her way of putting father’s chance of survival) and so no idea as to whether to dispose of the lease of our London house, which was in any case now a bit too big for us. Another uprooting appearing inevitable, it made me cling closer to my hopes of acquiring the dear and the known …
Yet she was in her enforced inaction full of interest, immensely cheered by my waltz-song. Cuss made her a copy and she p
layed it on the hotel piano (‘… a beast! but the visitors and tatting hags and Cook’s brigade took to it at once, so if your Guv’nor doesn’t look slippy it’ll be a dead letter before it’s produced in England!’. She went on, ‘The words: you say they’re too sentimental, but I don’t agree. There’s a kind of genuineness at the back of ’em which is entirely missing in the slop-songs that usually get sung and I do trust doesn’t point to some “overtakement” going on in your life, poor pet …’).
Well, if she could keep a still tongue about her harassments so could I about my little bit of nonsense.
3
But at least in all the uncertainty of our future one thing was clear and established, the instant success of the waltz-song, and it was entrusted to the one musical comedy actress whose work I thoroughly liked and who is one of the few singers I know who doesn’t make unbecoming faces, or emit that tiresome bleating quality like the Vox Humana of an organ, on high notes, and she saw at once that the waltz mustn’t be ranted and over-stressed and marked and paused on and, generally speaking, torn to tatters, but, within the boundaries of its rhythm, given out as simply and selflessly as a bird sings, and the combination of her rather childish head, her artless fluting voice and extremely hardboiled knowledge of how and when and where to suppress her training was irresistible. Incidentally, she had her natural side off the stage as well, and once told me that on first and last nights if she had to make a speech she always smeared her gums and teeth with glycerine ‘because when I’m nervous my lips stick to my teeth and I can’t smile properly unless I start licking myself like a cat’.
If I was to find myself of some little consequence at rehearsals: if the producer came at last to ask me if I were satisfied or had any suggestions: if even the Guv’nor once shouldered through the darkened stalls to ask me if I liked the limes, I was also to discover that successful song-writing can be one of the most infallible ways of remaining anonymous that there is. Had that waltz number been a play or a book I should have been known in a week. Actually, though it sold as sheet music in its thousands, was included in most dance programmes, sung by professionals and amateurs all over the country, rendered on seaside piers, recorded for the gramophone and even broadcast, it is a literal truth that not five persons in a thousand assimilated the rider to the title, which was Barbara Morant. Ask anybody you like, to-day, who wrote, for instance, Tipperary, Home Sweet Home, The Lost Chord, The Rosary, or even Just a Song at Twilight and The Maid of the Mountains, and you will see what I mean. But I got my golden harp and plenty of it, and I got my shade of limelight (which was a most haunting silvery-lilac) and, as the comedian put it, to descend from the sublime to the gorblimey, cheques that made me open my eyes. I gave Cuss forty per cent, which he said was too much as the basic melody was mine as well as the words.
Mell sent me a cable on the first night. ‘I shall remember you all with affection tired as I am while I skip round the throne what fun damn India wish could be listening love Mell.’ Cuss calculated that it couldn’t have cost her less than three pounds four shillings counting the address. Days after the show had settled down to its run came a letter from Mr. Field.
‘… that’s what I call real toshery and most tuneful, and it isn’t Handel or even Gounod! My warm congratulations on your having entered the door of music by the tradesman’s entrance. The girls hum it till I could strangle them. We all thank you for the tickets, the family is writing to you now. When are you coming to see us slowpokes on our eyot?’
4
I suppose I was rather tipsy with money; I took taxis without realizing I was in them when a twopenny bus would have got me to my destination almost as quickly: I bought shoes that cost five guineas and food for Cuss and myself from Fortnum and Mason (one Devonshire Pie costing thirty shillings was so crammed with perishable goodness that it grew a beard and whiskers in the larder before we had got through a quarter of it). I even braved a frock from Worth, and paid for it in alarm and embarrassment at the business of fitting and showroom and my totally inept armoury of knowledgeable comment. I beat down this withering memory by sending mother a money order that would settle her hotel bills for three months ahead and arranged, with much advice, for six pedigree fowls and a cockerel to be delivered to Aggie, and had an amusing morning choosing patent luxury furniture for the chicks they might hatch. I scurried about Addison rounding up a builder for the Couchman lean-to bedroom, and sent the foreman in with a note to Hope saying he was a present from me and enclosing her money for the midday lunches of the men, and tips when the work should be finished. I drove up to Cumptons and swept off everybody at home (Mrs. Field, Clover and their old nurse) to Brighton and luncheon at a nice dreadful café because I thought Esther would be alarmed by the Metropole, and shopped half the afternoon instead of sniffing ozone to fill the car with boxes of chocolate, sports coats, and heaven knows what for them, and because Clover was torn between a brown and a green suede hat bought them both while Mrs. Field grew more protestant and rebukeful every ten minutes in her low voice so familiar to me in confidence and related catastrophe. But undoubtedly tipsy though I was with fairy-godmothering I wasn’t a complete fool; quite apart from the homilies of Cuss I have a strong streak of caution in me and was banking more than I spent.
In the hall of Cumptons I got Mrs. Field to myself for a minute while Clover and Esther staggered with dress and confectioners’ boxes into the drawing-room. ‘Let me have my fling, it won’t last’, I apologized, for the worst of lavish giving is that the recipient isn’t being heady and blinded too, but under the humdrum burden of unrepayable obligation; anybody can buy things, but the Fields have made me their presents, cutting into leisure and pleasure and reading, tennis and walks.
‘Oh Ara! We’ve never had such things! I don’t know what the others will say when they get in this evening … and to remember Esther and dear old Cookie …’ I was, as ever before her affection, tongue-tied. It may be more blessèd to give than to receive but it’s far more interesting: I was spending hey-presto cash for work that wasn’t intrinsically worth the rewards or proportionate to the labour involved.
CHAPTER XI
I
IT must have been on a Saturday that the telegram came, for Cuss was with me at luncheon. He glanced at it and when Florence left the room said as he slit the envelope, ‘This’ll be about father. I suppose he’s gone’.
I said, ‘Oh … poor old father’. But we were wrong.
Mother had met with an accident while on a walk. A guide had recovered her dead body two days later. The sender of the telegram was writing.
2
It must have been some considerable time later that Cuss and I spoke to each other, for we were in the drawing-room, the lamplighter was going his rounds and Florence drawing the curtains. What we had done in the interim I haven’t the faintest idea.
When the servant left us alone we sat there, victims of family reserve, eyeing each other as warily as ever we had in the early days of our friendship. Cuss said, ‘You know, I shall have to go out there. There’ll be bills to settle and the funeral to see to and endless red tape to cope with’. He thought, and burst out, ‘I wish to God I knew a bit more French, or German’. I laughed at that; it wasn’t a pretty sound and he looked apprehensive for a second, and then, as nothing appeared to be going to happen, he said, ‘I do admire the way you’re taking this’.
‘May we stick to business, please, Cuss? Lots of it, and dull, you know?’ He bit his thumb and nodded, but I don’t think he really understood.
It was typical that the effect of this news upon father occurred to neither of us at the time.
3
As we dined, Cuss said, ‘They’ll have to be told, I’ll do it’, and I heard his voice outside in the hall and strained my ears, for all I was longing not to overhear. (‘Florence, we’ve just had some pretty dreadful news’ – and then her shocked sibillating.)
‘And that’s that’, he remarked, ‘it’ll keep ’em busy and happy for th
e rest of their time here.’ They were like that, I assented. Afterwards, we sat together talking; every hour counted and I was thankful for the respite from solitude and bed. Cuss drew up a table to the fire and made notes of all we must do.
‘There’s Mell, you must cable her first thing to-morrow, Bunt. And phone the relations.’
‘They – won’t come and see me, will they?’ I stammered. He looked harassed. ‘Tell ’em you’re seeing nobody.’
It was perhaps then that I began to realize that for the future I could decide things for myself. Mother would have let them all in, trampling over her lest she give offence; it was only to the social life that she closed her doors.
‘Gimme some more whisky and have some yourself.’
‘I shall be tight.’
‘Do you good. My God, I wish I were … now, look here, the thing is this: what are we going to do with you?’
It was the first time I had ever heard that question. Mother would have known, and done it … she’d have begun by seeing me into bed and giving me a hot bottle, and now I was free to stay up all night … I had to shove my hands under a sofa cushion in case Cuss saw them.
‘We shall have to get rid of the house and you’d better give the servants notice. You can’t hang on here alone and I don’t know yet how we stand financially, with father’s expenses going on.’ He thought and drummed the table. ‘You wouldn’t care to go out to Mell in India, I suppose?’ I just shook my head. ‘Besides, she’ll be home on leave in a year or less’, I reminded him.
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