"What on earth are you doing?" Miriam came into the pantry, moving smoothly on the long, cool legs that seemed to insulate her against the day's heat. "Talking to yourself? That's a bad sign, they say."
"It means you're going mad, doesn't it?" Ellen asked.
Her mother nodded, reaching glasses off a shelf.
"Well, I wasn't," Ellen said. "I was reciting poetry, as a matter of fact."
"Rupert Brooke?" Miriam had given her the collected poems at Easter, and Ellen knew many of the sonnets by heart.
"Yes. Is it the hour?" Ellen asked eagerly. "We leave this resting-place made fair by one another for a while. Now for a God-speed, one last mad embrace; the long road then, unlit "
"Why don't you learn the less morbid ones, like: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming? What have you got in these jugs, darling?"
"Because the dying ones seem more like poetry. These are some flowers for Granny's room. You said I could do them."
"So I did. But I told you you could pick them from the garden."
"I know, but Granny likes wild flowers, you see. We study them. It's botany; though not pulling them to pieces with tweezers, like we do at school."
'Tes, of course. Well, they look very nice," Miriam said. It did not sound nearly as convincing as Ellen knew it would when her grandmother said it.
"How nice the flowers look!" Louise exclaimed, when Ellen went with her to her room. "You did them, didn't you? Our kind of flowers. There's a foxglove."
"They don't look quite as fresh as they did when I picked them," Ellen admitted. "But do you really like them?"
"Immensely. They're charming/* It would have been difficult to determine who was trying harder to please the other. Louise was trying to show her appreciation for the trouble the child had taken, and Ellen, though ashamed of the flowers, was trying to hide her knowledge that Louise was pretending to like them.
"How was it at Aunt Anne's?" Ellen asked, opening Louise's dressing case and laying out the dilapidated tortoiseshell brushes that had been Louise's wedding present from her mother.
"I enjoyed it. I worked all the time. Uncle Frank had an accident to his hand, and I had to run the farm all on my own for a few days." Louise always thought of it as a farm, although Miriam told her that it was only a smallholding.
Louise knew that Ellen was aware of some of the facts of life, for she had told her herself, since no one else appeared to have done so. She retailed, therefore, the tragic history of Daisy's parturition.
When they went downstairs, Sidney and Alice Cobb were there with cocktails in their hands. Ignoring them, for they were almost as frequent as the milkman, Ellen boiled over with the news.
"Did you hear about the pigs, Mummy? Didn't Granny tell you in the car? I'd have thought she would have."
'What? What?" clamored Simon. "What about the pigs?"
"Ellen, dear, not now." Louise put out a hand, but Ellen, trampling her feet and swallowing her words, had already embarked on the story.
The Cobbs were delighted, and filed it away in their gregarious minds for retelling. Miriam said, with an amused laugh: "Mother, really. Is that the sort of thing you go in for at Anne's?"
"It happens all the time," Ellen assured her. "You've no idea what it is with pigs."
Arthur pulled down his lip, as he had been doing all day in court with a witness he was trying to discredit. "That's enough,
Ellen. Your grandmother has been to Bedfordshire. That is enough, without dwelling on the sordid details/'
"She buried them, didn't she?" Simon asked Ellen. The originator of the story was forgotten now. It was Ellen's story.
"Yes. She carried them on a spade, the poor massacred corpses," Ellen gasped, drunk with the attention she was getting. "It was a holocaust. The blood ran like wine." The Cobbs were, as they afterwards said, in fits.
"Well, let's forget it, there's good kids," Arthur said, avoiding the heavy father role, which he only played when no one was there, and putting on the jocose parent. "A little less necrology, and a little more going to put away the bicycles which sprawl in the drive and hazard all comers. Mother—martini for you? Welcome back. We've missed you."
"It's nice to be back," Louise said, nodding politely over the delicately stemmed glass. It felt strange to be wearing her good silk dress again and not to be worrying about cooking the supper. Strange, and—a deprivation? Or was it a relief?
It was hard to switch your manners so quickly from one household to another. Only last night she had been padding about the kitchen in her slippers and the torn apron which she and Anne shared indiscriminately; and now here she was in her pearls and silk dress, sitting in a comfortable chair with a cocktail, while Arthur suavely dismissed the things which yesterday had been the centre of life.
Miriam had not forgotten about the new dress. She promised to take her mother to London to choose it, but with the holidays drawing to a close, there were so many children's functions that had been postponed earlier because of rain, that she could not find a free day.
There were horse shows, and Pony Club competitions, and fetes, and sports and pageants. Someone was always getting up something in and around Monk's Ditchling. The women were indefatigable organizers. Committee meetings and refreshment tents and loudspeakers in trees were the breath of life to them,
although they pretended that they only did it because: 'One must do something for the village/
The village people, who had heen here long before the Londoners came with their passion for uncovering bricked-up fireplaces, took little part in these revels. Their children were encouraged to join in by the democratic ladies of the committee, but most of the village children preferred to stand on the sidelines and jeer. Occasionally a farmer's son trotted hopefully into the ring on a fat, hairy pony with a rusty bit, and was mortified to find that his beloved steed hardly looked like a pony at all compared with the expensive, well-bred animals that were cantering smoothly round, or giving a hysterical ride to some iron-fisted child whose parents thought that it must be able to ride if only they spent enough money.
Miriam managed to avoid having any function on her property, since there were plenty of people only too willing to offer a lawn or a meadow; but she attended most things with Simon and Judy, and with Ellen when she could be persuaded to go. It was de rigueur for mothers to accompany their children, and gossip idly with their friends, or call shrill admonitions to their heedless young. It was also necessary to protect your child's interests, for the mothers waged such a subtle partisan warfare in the background that a child who came alone was liable to get left out of things, and to find himself going home without a prize.
"I don't see when 111 be able to get to town," Miriam told Louise. "Why don't you go up by train one day and get a dress on my account somewhere?"
"I couldn't do that. I wouldn't know what to spend. I don't want you to spend your money on me, anyway/'
"Oh, Mother, don't be so diffident. A present's a present. Don't quibble about accepting it."
That's all very well for you, Louise thought. You've never had to take things from people, except as your right, as a daughter or a wife. Wait till you're a widow and Ellen offers to
buy you a dress, and you want to say yes but would love to be able to say no. But of course, that could not happen to Miriam. Arthur would never be so careless as to die without making adequate provision.
Miriam finally had to tell her mother how much she could spend, which was a little embarrassing, and forced her to name a higher price than she would probably have paid if she had gone herself. Louise agreed to make the trip. She consulted her engagement book, which recorded only the Cobbs' garden party and tea with the doctor's wife, and told Miriam: "I think Fll go to town next Saturday, if you're sure you won't need me here/'
"You're not a servant, Mother. You know you're welcome to come and go as you like. We're going to a horse show on Saturday, but why choose a day like that which will only give you the morning to shop? Even if y
ou took an early train, you wouldn't have much time to look round."
"It won't take me long. I know what I like," Louise said, although she could never make up her mind when buying clothes, and invariably wanted to take the garment back and change it the next day.
'Til go on Saturday," she said firmly. "If you can't take me to the station, I'll get a taxi." She had her reasons for choosing this day, but she was not telling Miriam.
"Mummy," Ellen asked on Friday night. "Can I go to London with Granny tomorrow? It will save me having to go to the horse show."
"Which would be no loss," Simon put in from the floor where he was reading a comic paper, his nose touching the garish print. "You're always such a pest, wanting to go home all the time, and last time you ate all the sausage rolls while Judy and I were riding."
"You can't talk to me like that," Ellen said half-heartedly. "I'm older than you."
Tm a boy. That makes it even. And being older doesn't seem to give you any more sense/'
"Children, please!" Miriam sighed. "It's so boring. I don't see why you shouldn't go to London, Ellen; but does Granny want to take you?"
That had not occurred to Ellen. She looked so dismayed that Louise, who had been wondering how she could find a kind excuse not to take her, had to say: "Of course I want her. That will make it more fun."
There went her tete-a-tete lunch; but perhaps Mr. Disher would understand. Louise could not imagine him not being nice about children.
"Can we go to the cinema, Granny?" Ellen came over to stand before Louise and finger her skirt. "There's a film about Lassie on. I saw it in the paper."
"We'll see how we get on," Louise said, putting her hand over the child's thin, grubby fingers. "We'll have to see."
Miriam had begged her mother to buy a dress that was gay and unpractical; but Louise chose a safe black wool that would see her through the winter and could be worn in the evenings at Sybil's hotel, where she was scheduled to go in October.
"Where are we going now?" Ellen asked, as her grandmother took her into another store and went toward the lift.
"To see a friend of mine." Louise pulled Ellen's hat forward gently as they ascended, and tucked back a perverse strand of hair.
"Is it the fat man who sells beds?" Ellen asked, loudly enough for the lift-girl to turn round and raise her eyebrows, which were drawn in a slanting line that bore no relation to the natural growth. "How exciting. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Never mind now." Louise fussed, pushing Ellen out through the crowd of people who were trying to get into the lift, for it was nearly closing time. She had not told Ellen, because she did not want Miriam to know. Absurd though her
secrecy seemed to her—almost as though it were a clandestine rendezvous—it saved a lot of talk.
"Oh—beds!" Ellen cried, as they went through the archway to the sea of legs and mattresses. "Millions of beds!" She was a stubbornly unsophisticated child, in spite of her 'sensible' upbringing. Simon or Judy would have walked composedly through the department, talking in the hushed voices that Miriam had taught them to use in shops; but Ellen went prancing away in the outgrown skirt that left a long gap of skinny legs above her trodden-in socks, and began to sit on one bed after another, trying the springs. She was not unruly. It was just that she w r as expected to be so careful and grown-up at home that when she got away, she sometimes reverted to excessive juvenalia.
Louise saw Mr. Disher navigating slowly round the corner of a mound of mattresses, and left Ellen to go to him.
He was carrying a pillow ceremoniously in front of him, as if it had a crown on it. When he saw Louise, he clutched it to his stomach and beamed. "Hullo there 1 /' he said, with a boyish greeting of unaffected pleasure. "You're late," he added softly, his eyes saddening at the recent memory of how he had watched the clock and worried.
"Better late than never," Louise vouchsafed, and wished that she had not, because it might sound as if there had been a question of her not coming at all.
"So they say, but I was afraid you wouldn't come before I had to leave the department. We can go now. It's just on time." He had not yet seen Ellen, who was stretched out on a double four-poster, with her arms crossed over her chest.
Louise told him about the child and apologized. "Perhaps you and I could have lunch some other day," she said. "I'll be coming up before I go to the Isle of Wight. Ellen and I will go off now and get a snack somewhere. I'm so sorry to upset our plans."
"But you haven't," he said. "I'm glad to have the little girl too."
"Oh, no. I wouldn't dream of letting you. I'm just so sorry that It happened like this today, but you know how it is with families. It couldn't be helped/'
Tm glad to have her, I said/' he repeated, so firmly that Louise stopped apologizing and explaining. She called to Ellen, who ceased to be a dead crusader, swung her legs over the edge of the bed with a display of baggy knicker, and came toward them, hitching at her skirt.
Mr. Disher was even fatter than she had imagined from her grandmother's description. She stared at him as he shook her hand. He did not ask how old she was, which was all most grown-ups could think of to say. He inquired after her health, and how she found the beds.
"Very comfortable, thank you," Ellen said, allowing herself to smile, which she would not do until she felt it was safe to show a new person the ugly gold band on her teeth. "I think Til buy one with the knobs that unscrew and the blue mattress."
Til have it shipped for you, madam." Ellen looked at Louise, uncertain whether he was laughing at her, or sharing her game. Louise smiled at her and nodded.
Why! Ellen suddenly thought, I believe Granny's quite pretty. Can you be pretty when you're so old? She usually looks so worried, but now her face has a sort of dropped-down and smoothed-out look, like shaking out a wet handkerchief.
"We must go," Mr. Disher said, "or we'll be locked in here for the week end. You ladies go out the front way, and I'll meet you outside."
"Where are we going?" Louise asked.
"I was going to take you to a little place I go to sometimes in Soho," he said, as he guided them to the stairs, for the lifts had stopped. "But I think perhaps it would be better if we went somewhere like the Trocadero. That will be more fun for Ellen. Shell see more people."
"He's nice," Ellen said, tugging at her grandmother to walk faster down the stairs.
"I told you he was/' Louise said smugly.
"The Trod" Ellen marvelled. "Just wait till I tell that Simon. We've only been there once, when Uncle Bill took us, and Mummy won't let him take us out again, because he let us drink his beer. It was my fault for telling her about it. Simon beat me up; but I always forget what to tell and what not to. And you never know with Mummy. Sometimes she laughs, and sometimes she's cross about the same thing she laughed about before/'
While they were waiting for a table, Louise took Ellen into the ladies' cloakroom and told her that she must not comment on what Mr. Disher ate, because he was on a diet.
"For his figure?" Ellen asked. "It doesn't seem to have done him much good. Aunt Anne's the one who ought to diet. She looks awfully fat in that picture you took."
"Hush, dear." Ellen had inherited Miriam's clear, carrying voice. "She's going to have a baby. Oh dear—I wasn't supposed to tell you that. She doesn't want people to know about it yet."
"Well, I won't tell a soul. I just hope she doesn't roll on it like Daisy did with hers." The cloakroom attendant looked up from her knitting, startled, and Louise lost the courage to put a shilling into the pin tray and take out sixpence. She dropped in the shilling, and led Ellen .away.
Louise did not have to worry about Gordon Disher's diet, for he explained politely to Ellen why he must be careful of what he ate,
"It's all due to the pancreas, they say. That's a thing that lies under your stomach like a fish under a stone." He cleared his throat, looked at Louise and added, "If you'll excuse my mentioning it."
Ellen would have liked to hear more. Her mother did not t
rouble to give scientific explanations. She was usually too busy to answer a question with more than: "Because that's the way
no
nature made it," or "You wouldn't understand if I told you/' Her father, who liked to give information, would answer a question if he was sure it was not frivolous, but he quickly grew impatient if you did not understand at once ? or said something irrelevant
They had a cheerful lunch, and Louise was glad after all that she had brought Ellen. It solved the problem of what she and Gordon Disher were going to talk about. Ever since the lunch had been arranged she had been wondering whether they would be able to pick up again the same easy note of their conversation at tea in Fulham, or whether they would be shy of each other after three months.
You could not be shy with Mr. Disher, however. He was too uncritical He had a way of listening benevolendy, with a half smile, that made you feel that your silliest remark had some point to it. He had no small talk to keep them apart, and no special manner for children to embarrass Ellen. He did not try to press on her rich things she did not want and then laugh at her appetite when she was forced to accept them. He let her study the menu for as long as she liked.
"Liver and bacon with fried potatoes!" Ellen said. Td love to have that—if I may, please." She glanced at her grandmother to make sure that Louise noticed her manners. "Oh— but it costs four and nine. I'd better not."
"Money no object," Mr. Disher said, and ordered it.
"Can I take my plate out?" Ellen whispered to Louise when the food came.
"You're not supposed to, are you?" Louise whispered back. "Well then, perhaps, as this is a treat." Ellen took out the wet gold band and Louise wrapped it quickly in a handkerchief and hid it in her bag, Mr. Disher was very discreet and pretended not to see or hear.
In the cloakroom after lunch, Ellen said to Louise: "He must be awfully rich."
"I don't think so, dear." Louise looked in the mirror and was disappointed with her hat. She had bought it that morning to
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