Chapter Twenty-One
It was now after five and Rona had lunched early; she had received a severe setback; she felt that she simply must sit down quietly and revive herself with tea. If she could find nobody to have tea with her she must have it by herself.
The tea tent was fairly empty by this time and Liz was not so busy; she spotted Aunt Rona and waved. Elizabeth was the best of the bunch, thought Rona, as she made her way between the tables toward her niece by marriage. Her heart warmed toward Elizabeth and warmed all the more when Elizabeth found her a secluded table and brought her tea and a plate of sandwiches and cakes.
“I’ll have some, too,” said Elizabeth, sitting down beside her. “The rush is over and I’ve earned my tea. The others can carry on quite well now.”
Yes, Elizabeth was much the best—and much the prettiest. Rona decided that when Elizabeth was married and Roderick went abroad (as he was certain to do) she would have Elizabeth to stay with her in London and give her a good time. Properly dressed, Elizabeth would be really beautiful and would make quite a sensation…Rona imagined herself presenting her to her friends. “My niece,” she would say. “My niece, Elizabeth Herd…”
They sipped their tea and thought their thoughts. Suddenly it occurred to Rona that Elizabeth was very silent. Rona looked at her, watching her closely. Twice Elizabeth leaned forward, as though about to speak, and twice she seemed to change her mind and leaned back. The third time she got a little bit further. “Aunt Rona,” she said—and then stopped.
“Yes, Elizabeth?” said Rona encouragingly.
“Nothing,” said Liz, becoming rather pink in the face.
“I think there is something,” said Rona, smiling archly. “I think you’re going to tell me something, aren’t you, Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” said Liz. “Yes—well—as a matter of fact—I was.”
“Something very interesting,” said Rona. “I wonder what it can be. Do you know, Elizabeth, I believe I can guess.”
“I don’t think you can,” replied Liz in a perfectly ordinary voice.
“You’re going to tell me something about you—and Roderick,” said Rona, smiling more archly than before.
“Yes,” said Liz, “I was going to tell you that there’s nothing at all between me and Roderick. We’re friends, that’s all. So would you mind not—not going on about us—as you do?”
“My dear! You’ve had a little misunderstanding. You mustn’t take it too seriously. People often have little tiffs—”
“No,” said Liz steadily. “We understand each other perfectly. We’re good friends. We always have been good friends. That’s all.”
“Not on Roderick’s side,” declared Rona. “I’ve had a great deal of experience in these matters, and I can assure you—”
“Roderick is engaged to somebody else,” said Liz firmly.
“Elizabeth!” exclaimed Rona in horrified accents. “How unfair of him to treat you like this!”
“He hasn’t,” declared Liz. “I mean he has been perfectly fair. He comes over to see us because he likes us. Why shouldn’t he come? It was you who kept on—kept on throwing us together—making something out of nothing.”
“My dear girl, I could see—”
“No!” cried Liz. “No, you couldn’t see anything, because there was nothing to see. You could only imagine there was something.”
Liz had hoped that Aunt Rona would be offended by this plain speaking, that she would be annoyed and lose her composure. It would be so much easier to go on and say all the other things she intended to say if Aunt Rona “lost her hair”; for the other things were definitely rude, and it is easier to be definitely rude to somebody who hits back. But Aunt Rona was unmoved. Aunt Rona was armored with the skin of a rhinoceros.
“I wish,” continued Liz earnestly. “I do wish you had not interfered. You made things uncomfortable for everyone.”
“Ah, now you are imagining things,” objected Aunt Rona in a friendly manner. “I certainly never interfered in any way with you and Roderick. It seemed to me, I must admit, that he was fond of your society.”
“Just as a friend,” said Liz quickly.
Aunt Rona took out her powder compact and proceeded to powder her face, peering into the little mirror and restoring her complexion with the greatest care. “I still maintain,” said Aunt Rona, dabbing her nose assiduously. “I still maintain that Roderick showed you marked attention.”
Liz laughed—in fact, she gave her usual explosive snort of laughter. “Oh, Aunt Rona!” she cried. “How absolutely Jane Austenish that sounds! You’ll be saying in a minute that Father should have asked him his intentions.”
“Jane Austenish!” exclaimed Rona, pricked at last.
“Yes,” said Liz, nodding, for now she had found the chink in Aunt Rona’s armor. “Yes, absolutely. All that has gone out of fashion years ago.”
Rona’s eyes flashed. “Nobody has ever accused me of being old-fashioned—nobody. I’m extremely modern in my ideas, and extremely broad-minded. I know the world a great deal better than you do. I have friends in London who defy every convention, they know they can depend upon me to understand; I have several very great friends who—who—”
“Who live in sin, I suppose,” said Liz, helping her out. “Well, to be perfectly frank, that wouldn’t appeal to me, but of course if you like them that’s your business. I shouldn’t dream of meddling in your business, so please don’t meddle in mine.”
“I don’t understand you at all,” declared Rona, in a voice that shook with rage.
“No, you don’t,” agreed Liz. “You don’t understand any of us. That’s why I think you should go away.”
Rona was stunned to silence.
“We don’t need you,” continued Liz, warming to her task. (It was undoubtedly one of those occasions on which plain speaking ceases to be a duty and becomes a pleasure.) “We’re—well, I daresay we’re a funny sort of family, but we got on much better by ourselves. In fact, we’re very happy indeed together and it bothers us and worries us to have people staying in the house—people like you, who don’t understand our ways. You think we’re dull, I know—but you’re wrong. We have plenty to say to each other when you aren’t there, talking incessantly about all your grand friends and giving nobody else a chance. So you see, it will be very much better if you go away—” Liz paused for breath. She had said more than she intended, but she wasn’t sorry.
“You certainly are a most extraordinary family,” cried Rona furiously. “I think you must be mad. I suppose it’s living in this frightful, god-forsaken place. I should go raving mad if I had to live here much longer.”
“You needn’t,” Liz pointed out. “You have hundreds of friends. Why don’t you go and stay with them?”
Rona gasped. She said thickly, “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t stay here a moment longer if you paid me. It may interest you to know I’ve already arranged to leave here on Tuesday.”
(A lie, thought Liz, looking at her, but never mind, as long as she goes…and she’ll have to go after this.)
“Tuesday,” repeated Rona viciously. “I suppose you’re glad.”
“Well—yes,” said Liz. “It wouldn’t be much good saying I was sorry, would it?”
Rona rose. She stood for a moment, her hand on the back of the chair, looking at Liz with blazing eyes. “You shall pay for this, Elizabeth,” said Rona threateningly. Then she turned and went away.
“Whew!” said Liz, whistling through her teeth in a very unladylike manner. “Whew! Likewise golly!” She took a cigarette out of her bag and lighted it—she had earned a cigarette, she felt.
“It is ’ot,” said Mrs. Bouse, coming over to the table. “I saw you were feeling the ’eat a bit. Gets stuffy in a tent, don’t it? I think you should just go ’ome, now, Miss Liz. Elsie Trod and me can easily finish…by the way, did that lady you was �
�aving tea with pay for ’er tea?”
“No,” said Liz…and then suddenly laughed. “As a matter of fact, she said I should have to pay!”
“Well, there now,” said Mrs. Bouse doubtfully, for it seemed a little queer. “Perhaps it was a joke, was it?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Liz. She took one and sixpence out of her purse and gave it to Mrs. Bouse. “I wonder if that will be all I shall have to pay,” she said thoughtfully.
“Why, of course!” exclaimed Mrs. Bouse, looking at her in alarm. “You get your tea free, being a ’elper. One and six is all it costs, no matter ’ow much you eat. You know that as well as I do, Miss Liz. You just finish up your tea and ’ave your cigarette quietlike, and then go ’ome. That’s the best thing to do.”
“Do I look awful?” asked Liz, touched at the solicitude.
“Not awful—just a bit flushed,” said Mrs. Bouse, nodding kindly. “It’s the ’eat, that’s what.”
And I feel flushed, thought Liz, as she watched the kind, fat woman bustle away, but I’m flushed with victory, not with heat, and it was fairly easygoing once I got started. I just told her the truth straight out—that was all—and the only pity is I didn’t do it before. And now there’s Sal (thought Liz), and I shall just go straight up to Sal and say I’m very glad about her and Roderick. Liz frowned a little at this point in her meditations, for unfortunately that would not be true. She couldn’t feel glad about Sal and Roderick—not yet—but perhaps it soon would be true; for, if you make up your mind firmly enough, there is very little you cannot accomplish—so Liz had found.
***
In spite of Mrs. Bouse’s injunctions, Liz stayed on at the tea tent and helped to clear up the mess, and then sat down with the others and helped to eat up the remains, so it was quite late when eventually she got home, and she found she was the last member of the family to arrive. The others were sitting in the drawing room—all except Aunt Rona—and discussing the day’s doings in the desultory, inconsecutive manner of the very tired, but in spite of their exhaustion they looked happy—there was a festive feeling in the air.
“Liz, she’s going!” cried Tilly. “She’s leaving for good on Tuesday. Somebody must have done something, we think.”
“I took the bull by the horns,” said Liz.
“Liz!” cried her two sisters with one voice.
“Somebody had to,” explained Liz. She glanced at William as she spoke and found William was looking his approbation.
“What did you say?” cried Tilly.
“What did she say?” cried Sal.
Liz flung herself into a chair. “It wasn’t very difficult. In fact, once I got a grip of the horns it was surprisingly easy. The bull isn’t as strong as she looks.”
“You must have been rough; the bull has gone to bed with a bad headache,” said Tilly, giggling.
Mr. Grace looked up from his paper. “Bull?” he said reprovingly. “I don’t think you should call Aunt Rona a bull.” (He had thought of her as one, but that seemed different.)
“No, darling, neither do I,” agreed Liz. “I can think of a much more suitable name beginning with the same letter.”
“Really, Liz—”
“Darling,” interrupted Liz, going over to him and sitting down beside him on a low stool. “Darling, you aren’t sorry, are you? You didn’t want her to stay?”
“No,” replied Mr. Grace. “She has been here long enough, but for the next two days—the remaining period of her stay—I think we should all be particularly kind and thoughtful. She has received a severe shock.”
“If we’re too kind, she’ll stay on,” objected Tilly.
“No, Tilly,” said her father. “She is aware, now, that there is no reason to stay on at Chevis Green, so we need not be apprehensive on that score.” Mr. Grace hesitated. He was uncomfortably aware that his daughters were looking at him with interest. He took up the paper and began to read.
There was a short silence. It was broken by Liz, whose eyes had fallen upon Tilly’s stockings.
“Silk!” she exclaimed, pointing to them.
“Yes, real silk,” agreed Tilly, holding up one leg and regarding it with affection.
“Tilly, how come?”
“Oh, well,” said Tilly, blushing. “They were a prize, really. I won it. A prize for the nicest ankles.” She had been aware that this moment would come and had gone out to meet it, half in fear and half in gleeful anticipation. She had known her sisters would fall upon her like a ton of bricks—and they did.
“Your ankles!” cried Liz, in horrified tones.
“They’re too fat!” cried Sal. “They’re much too fat.”
“Mine are far neater!” cried Liz and Sal in unison.
“You haven’t won a prize, anyhow,” Tilly pointed out, stroking one ankle in its new silken covering with a complacent air. “Neither of you has ever won a prize.”
“Neither of us has ever gone in for a competition,” retorted Liz.
“Why didn’t you?” inquired Tilly innocently. “Anybody could go in for it.”
“If we had, you wouldn’t have won,” said Sal firmly.
“I’m not so sure,” said Tilly in a thoughtful voice. “As a matter of fact, Wilfred would probably have thought your ankles much too thin. He said thin ankles gave him the willies—whatever that means.”
“Who—is—Wilfred?” asked Liz, regarding her young sister with a stern eye.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know their other names,” explained Tilly, and then she shut her mouth firmly for she had decided that the rest of the story was unsuitable for the ears of her family.
Mr. Grace looked up from his paper. “There were more than one, I gather?”
“Two,” said Tilly reluctantly. “Wilfred and Ted, that was what they called each other. They were very nice.” She caught her father’s eye and added hastily, “Neither of them was tall and dark.”
Mr. Grace chuckled. His daughters were a perfect nuisance. They worried him to death, turned his hair prematurely gray, and caused him intense anxiety, but they also caused him intense amusement—so perhaps it evened out.
“We still don’t know who Wilfred is,” Liz remarked in a pointed manner.
“Probably Wilfred Smith,” said Mr. Grace. “It seems unlikely that there should be two young men called Wilfred in Chevis Green.”
“The new people at The Beeches?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Grace, looking at his daughters over the tops of his spectacles. “Yes, Smith is the name. I met Mrs. Smith this afternoon and she wants you all to go and have—er—refreshments at seven o’clock some evening.”
“Supper?” asked Liz. “All of us? That seems a large order.”
“Drinks—that’s what she said. I imagine the Smiths must have dinner at eight.”
“How?” asked Tilly. “They haven’t a cook for one thing. Their advertisement is in the Wandlebury Times again this week—screeching for a cook and offering her the earth.”
“Custom dies hard,” said Mr. Grace.
Liz hugged her knees and looked thoughtful. “I don’t think I want to go,” she declared. “Mrs. Bouse says Mrs. Feather says when the Smiths get together, they rage furiously at each other all the time.”
“How funny!” exclaimed Sal, thinking of herself and Roddy (and of how much more profitably they could spend their leisure hours).
“Funny?” echoed Mr. Grace.
“Sal means funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha,” said Liz, smiling.
“Ah!” said Mr. Grace, accepting the explanation, but it did not seem funny peculiar to him, for in the days of David, the sweet singer, the heathen had behaved in exactly the same way.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was a cloudy afternoon. The Serpentine was pale silver in
the subdued light and so still that every tree was mirrored on its surface. Mirrored on its surface, also, were the people upon the opposite bank, children in bright summer dresses, dabbling in the water.
Sal walked slowly, taking everything in. She had felt reluctant to come to London (only a stern sense of duty had made her come—that and Mrs. Element’s tears) but now she was here she had a very pleasurable sense of freedom, and she was loving London as she always did. London was a friendly place even if you knew nobody; it was not the people who were friendly, it was London itself, the very stones. You felt, somehow, that the place belonged to you; it was the hub of the nation of which you were a part. Walking across the park, Sal looked at all the people; there were people everywhere, people hurrying, dawdling, talking, sitting on seats. There were people who looked full of business, full of cares, and people who looked as if they had nothing to do and were merely waiting for time to pass. There were hundreds of children running and shouting, or sitting on the grass in listless attitudes; there were hundreds of soldiers—soldiers belonging to every allied nation; there were girls in uniform and girls in summer frocks…Sal found it enthralling.
The streets were noisy and seemed full of traffic—it was slightly alarming to a country cousin like Sal—but as she was in no hurry, it was easy enough to wait at the crossings and cross with a group of more experienced traffic dodgers. The shops were fascinating, of course. Sal did some window gazing and bought a few things she wanted: a smart blue hat with white flowers in it, which sat on her head in a perky manner and went rather well with her navy blue coat and skirt, a blue silk scarf, and two pairs of thin, artificial silk stockings.
Addie’s flat was in a mews not far from Hyde Park Corner. She lived there with another girl—a school friend who was working in the same office as herself. Neither of them would be there, of course, because they did not get back till late, but Sal had been told to ask for the key at a greengrocer’s shop and to make herself at home. She found the shop with some little difficulty; it was very small (tucked away in a narrow lane blocked by a brewer’s dray). It seemed odd that anybody could make a living out of a shop like this, so small and poor and empty. The mews was cobbled and narrow and rather dirty; it smelled of gas fumes instead of horses, but when Sal climbed the stairs and opened the door of the flat, she was agreeably surprised. The girls had made a home out of the little flat…Yes, it had quite a homey atmosphere. Of course this might be due in part to the fact that at least half the furniture had come from the Vicarage…that comfortable chair, for instance (how odd to see it here!), and the small bookcase, and the well-worn carpet on the sitting room floor…Sal knew them all quite well, she had looked them out for Addie when Addie moved into the flat. Besides the sitting room there was a small kitchen and a bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which had a double bed. This was Addie’s room, and tonight Sal would be sharing the bed with Addie (and Addie had put clean sheets on the bed in honor of her guest, which was really rather decent of her, thought Sal). The flat was very small but clean and bright. It gave Sal a curious insight into the character of her youngest sister to see the way she had arranged it all. Addie was capable and artistic and in addition she liked to be comfortable…the flat showed all this and more.
The Four Graces Page 16