The Whicharts

by Noel Streatfeild

  Nannie fell weakly back on an old slogan of the nursery:

  “Them as asks no questions, won’t be told no lies,” she said severely.

  “Which means as you don’t know,” Maimie retorted.

  That night when the tired Rose had bathed, and was eating her dinner in bed, Nannie came in.

  “Can I have a few words with you, Miss?”

  Nannie poured forth her tale of woe.

  “An’ what was I to say? Maimie’s no fool, you can’t put ’er off all any’ow like you could a year ago. It’s my belief the only way is to tell them the truth.”

  Rose was horrified.

  “Surely not, Nannie. What can little children understand of such things?”

  “Little children isn’t what they was. And neither Maimie nor Tania’s ordinary children neither,” Nannie added proudly.

  On the following Sunday Rose decided to have a talk with the children.

  She was in bed. She sent for Maimie and Tania, who scrambled up beside her. They were full of conversation, and told her about their school. Maimie said she was very backward.

  “Imagine it, Howdy. Other children as old as me have read and written for years, and years, an’ years, an’ here’s me six an’ nearly two months an’ can’t read a word.”

  Tania joined in:

  “Yes, an’ me an’ Maimie in one form, there isn’t anyone else as big as Maimie in our form.”

  Maimie said:

  “Miss Jones said she never did see two sisters so unlike, an’ I said she should see Daisy as she’s unliker still.”

  “I like Miss Jones,” Tania added, “she called me ‘Brown Eyed Sue,’ an’ she asked me where I got my black hair from. But I didn’t say nothing, ’cos I didn’t know.”

  Maimie broke in:

  “Silly! You was borned with it of course.”

  “Wasn’t she, Howdy?”

  “Miss Jones meant,” Rose explained, “did you get it from your father or your mother.”

  “An’ which did I?” asked Tania, interested at once.

  “From your mother, darling. You are all much more like your mothers than your father.”

  Rose carefully accentuated the plural, but neither child noticed.

  “But you have your father’s eyes, Tania.”

  “Oh, Howdy!” Maimie exclaimed, “that does remind me. Are we orphans? I asked Nannie, but she’s silly; she doesn’t know. Are we?”

  Rose decided that the moment had come.

  “I want you both to be very big grown-up girls, and try and understand what I’m going to tell you.”

  She told them their history rather as though it was a fairy-story. Unconsciously she painted the

  Brigadier in vivid colours. He sounded like a fairy prince.

  The mothers were more difficult. Neither child would allow one mother to possess something the other didn’t.

  Rose said:

  “Your mother was very musical, Tania. Perhaps you will be some day.”

  Maimie burst in:

  “Mine was very musical too, I remember perfec’ly, played everything. Pianos, violins, drums, harps, barrel-organs, just everything.”

  “Your mother was a very lovely person,” Rose laughed. “You have very much her colouring. Maybe you’ll grow as tall as she was. She was very tall indeed.”

  “My mother,” said Tania gravely, ‘was a giantess. She was so tall she knocked her hat off on the trees. I remember perfic’ly.”

  “She wasn’t a giantess at all. Tania’s telling stories, isn’t she, Howdy?”

  Maimie beat the bed to gain Rose’s attention. “I’m the eldest, so I must have had the best mother, mustn’t I?”

  Rose hushed them.

  “Listen, darlings, you both had lovely mothers. I cared for them both. But this is what you’ve got to understand. Having a mother each isn’t usual for sisters. I don’t want you to feel unusual, or other people to think you unusual. So, except to Nannie, or to me, I don’t want you ever to speak of your mothers. Just say you are orphans, and—”

  “Our father was a great soldier, an’ died like a hero,” Maimie interrupted.

  Rose smiled. Nannie had taught her lesson well. “Run away now, darlings, I’m going to sleep.”

  The children ran out. Two seconds later the door opened again. Maimie poked in her head.

  “Howdy,” she asked in a hoarse whisper, “did Daisy ever have a mother?”

  Rose laughed.

  “Why, yes, of course she did. Everyone has a mother. I never knew Daisy’s. I was told she had been a dancer, and lived at Balham.”

  “I think,” Maimie said, as she shut the door,“Daisy looks the sort of person whose mother you wouldn’t know.”

  Their mothers as a topic for conversation interested the children for a very short time. For with the excitement of school, they soon drifted into the background.

  Once Tania said:

  “Betty Smith asked me why I hadn’t no mother.

  An’ I said it was a secret an’ I mustn’t tell nobody.”

  Nannie sighed. She couldn’t feel that Rose had helped the situation much.

  That autumn the war ended, Rose, after so many months of such strenuous work, felt like a watch must feel when its mainspring snaps.

  Even on the day the Armistice was signed, she was incapable of going mad with the rest of the world. Nannie went mad. The babies, waving flags, had a holiday, and went mad too. Cook for the first time in her life got roaring drunk.

  But for Rose the Armistice merely represented new difficulties. Of course she was glad it was over. That the awful fighting had stopped. But she would lose her job. Men would be demobilised by thousands. They would all want work. Rose had no particular talent. She was trained for nothing. The house was hers. But there were the three children to dress, and feed, and educate. Nannie and Cook to feed, and their wages to pay. And herself to dress and feed. And all to come out of four hundred a year. She must get advice. She must ask a man. Men understood money.

  She wrote to the Brigadier’s lawyers, through whom she received her income. They made an appointment to see her.

  Rose had never realised until she stood on the doorstep of the stupendously grand offices of Messrs. Bray, Hopkins and Bray, exactly how cheap she would feel. It was so long since she had been the Brigadier’s mistress. And during those years when she had bee n, she had been so cut adrift from the disapproving, that “living in sin” had become as it were natural to her. She had really felt quite good. Very like a wife must feel. But as her feet sank deeper and deeper into the pile carpets of Messrs. Bray, Hopkins and Bray, she suddenly realised what an outcast she was. For to the Brigadier’s lawyers, she must simply be the late Brigadier’s mistress. It was they who had bought her house in the Cromwell Road, and later legally tied it up on her. It was they who quarter by quarter sent her allowance, addressed in large type to Miss! Howard. No it was no good trying to present an innocent front to Messrs. Bray,Hopkins and Bray.

  “Young Mr. Bray” saw her. “Young Mr. Bray” was about sixty. Rose wondered as she looked at his grey hairs and bent back how old “Old Mr. Bray” could be. She knew there must be an old Mr. Bray, for the clerk who had shown her in had said “Young Mr. Bray” would see her, as Mr. Bray was busy with an important client, and could not be disturbed. Rose, flustered, had stammered, “Oh anybody, Mr. Hopkins would do.” The clerk had eyed her severely and said that “Mr. Hopkins had been dead these many years.”

  At first “Young Mr. Bray” did nothing to put Rose at her ease. He talked to her rather as though they were both at a funeral, and she the corpse. He spoke in the hushed tones of one in the presence of the dead. Looking timidly at the vast files in the shelves, she wondered that he spoke to her at all. For his life, judging by the names on the files, had been spent exclusively with the
great, the powerful, and the illustrious.

  “No wonder he makes me feel as though I were dead,” thought Rose humbly. “How wretched for him to have to waste his time on me.”

  But if “Young Mr. Bray” treated her like a corpse, his questions were skilful.

  Rose had merely meant to ask him if there was any way by which the Brigadier’s four hundred could become five hundred again. But before she knew where she was she had told him all her story. Her life with the Brigadier. The arrivals of Maimie, Tania, and Daisy. The munitions ending. All her worries.

  Then suddenly, and for no reason that Rose could see, “Young Mr. Bray” ceased attending a funeral. He lit a cigarette, and became rather like a father. Not like Rose’s own shocked and out­ raged father, but like a most kind, helpful, and understanding father.

  She stayed over an hour. In that time they planned to turn most of the house into furnished rooms. To herself assist Cook with the house­ work, instead of looking for a job outside And before she left, she promised “Young Mr. Bray” that whatever difficulties she had, she would always come and discuss them with him.

  As she reached the street, Rose found her eyes blinded with unexpected tears.

  “May I say,”

  “Young Mr. Bray” had said, “that I have the very deepest admiration for you, Miss Howard.”

  The spring of 1919 found Rose living in a bed­sitting-room. And three sets of boarders, all with bedrooms and sitting-rooms, living in the house. They managed very well, for Daisy was now three, and old enough to trot after Nannie clutching a duster and brush. She was, as Nannie proudly said, “A rare one about a house.” No longer tied to her nursery, Nannie could help Rose and Cook.

  “Young Mr. Bray’s” scheme worked very well.

  The Williams lived on the ground floor. A very nervy and irritable ex-officer and his young wife. He was looking for work. Meanwhile he lived on his gratuity. Rose hoped he would find a job quickly. Because his gratuity wouldn’t last for ever, and she could not see herself turning them out.

  On the second floor she kept the two friends, who were still wanted by the Y.M.C.A.

  The third floor was taken by a dancing­mistress. Nannie didn’t think much of the third floor, who was pretty, but a little painted.

  “Not quite our class. Let’s ’ope she pays regular. Looks easy come, easy go to me.”

  “Oh Nannie,” Rose scolded, “don’t be so uncharitable, she looks a nice little thing.”

  “Excuse me, Miss, you’re no one to judge, what your ’ead’s full of ’s ’eart.”

  The third floor was called Violet Grimshaw. She was a never-ending source of joy to the children, because she possessed a gramophone. The nursery toys were very simple things, presents for birthdays and at Christmas given by Nannie, Rose and Cook. They had never before had a gramophone in the house. Maimie and Daisy clamoured for it every time they saw Violet. Tania, though fond of music, seldom came in to listen; she never willingly went into the boarder’s’ rooms.

  She explained this to Rose.

  “I do hate all these strange persons about our house. It doesn’t feel as if it was our house at all.”

  Rose secretly agreed. But she said:

  “We are really very lucky to have them, darling. But for them you’d have no new clothes, and perhaps hardly enough to eat.”

  Tania replied gravely:

  “Of course I know, Howdy, that it’s got to be, but I hates it just the same.”

  Violet tried to teach Maimie to dance. She would put a dance record on her gramophone, and show the child simple steps. While Daisy sat on the floor and watched.

  One day Daisy insisted on dancing too. With much vigour, her flat little white shoes bobbing up and down, her red curls jigging with her, she gave a reasonably correct performance of the steps she had seen Maimie learning.

  “Bless me!” Violet exclaimed, “I believe Daisy’s going to make a dancer.”

  She watched the child for some weeks. Carefully teaching her easy little steps and exercises. Then she went to Rose.

  “I say! I know you have a bit of a job to make both ends meet. I see a way by which the children might help. I believe Daisy has the makings of a dancer. And Maimie’s not only lovely, but a graceful little thing. I don’t know whether she’ll be any good, but she could do troupe work. Tania I’ve never seen dance because she won’t come inside my door, but she’s got an ear for music, she hangs about outside if ever I play any of my high­brow stuff. Now what I suggest, dear, is that you let me introduce you to Madame Elise.”

  She looked expectantly at Rose, who looked quite blank.

  “Surely you’ve heard of Madame Elise, dear? Taught hundreds of dancers. Taught me! You send the kids to her, and in panto, and off and on, they could earn a bit to help. Not yet of course, they’re too young for a licence. After all the kids aren’t yours, why not let them learn to help themselves.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Rose said. “Poor babies, I should hate them to feel they had to earn anything yet. Time enough when they’re grown up.”

  Rose told Nannie of Violet’s suggestion. She expected it to be greeted with snorts of rage. To her amazement Nannie rather took to the idea.

  “It’s no good not facin’ fac’s. Earn their own livin’s they’ll ’ave to, an’ the sooner the better. I looks at Maimie sometimes, an’ I says to myself it’s to be ’oped she marries young, for fitted for anythin’ else she won’t be! She don’t work at ’er books. She ’ates ’ousework. She’s already thinkin’ a deal too much of that pretty face of ’ers. But I shouldn’t wonder if she could do the dancin’. As she’ll ’ave to earn ’er livin’ the stage might suit ’er fine.”

  “It’s Daisy who seems to have the talent,” said Rose.

  “Blessed lamb. Takes after ’er mother, I suppose,” Nannie spoke unbelievingly.

  “What about Tania? If the other two learn, she may as well. Do you think she’ll like the stage, Nannie?”

  “She’s a fonny one she is, spittin’ image of ’er mother. You remember ’ow proud ’er mother was, ’ow she ’ated admittin’ what was comin’ to ’er? If it ’adn’t been as it was plain as a pike-staff ’alf a mile away, she would never ’ave said a word, but ’ave ’ad ’er baby all casual-like, in a ’edge as like as not! That’s ’ow it is with Tania. She may ave a pain, but she never says so. I ’ave to watch that child like a cat watchin’ a mouse, or I’d never know ’ow she was. It’s the same with people, she’s that fond of Maimie, but she never shows it. But if Maimie says a rough word to ’er she turns as white as a sheet, but never a word. Life’s comin’ ’ard on ’er anyways. If the others learn the dancin’ she may as well.”

  “Nannie approves of your suggestion,” Rose said to Violet, “and anything Nannie approves of happens in this house. So will you take me to see Madame What’s-her-name?”

  Three days later Rose found herself climbing innumerable stone stairs, to where, on the top floor, a large wooden board proclaimed the fact that Madame Elise had an academy of dancing. They reached a dusty hall, hung with dozens of weather-beaten posters of pantomimes and music­ halls, in which the offspring of “The Madame Elise Academy” had appeared. There were “Madame Elise’s Little Wonders.” And “Madame Elise’s Dancing Dots.” And “Madame Elise’s Children’s Ballet.” And, “The children appearing in this pantomime are Madame Elise’s Wonder Mites.”

  “Does well, doesn’t she?” said Violet, giving an admiring nod at the posters.

  They came into a small and incredibly dusty office. The walls were apparently a pale dirty green, but were practically invisible, owing to the array of photographs with which they were covered. Some were large groups, evidently of pantomimes, and showed Madame Elise’s pupils in every variety of pantomime dress. There were children’s pierrot troupes, and groups from different ballets. Also large signed photographs of apparently
star performers, for they had printed slips stuck on the frames, saying, “Kiddy Kathie;” Or “Little Doris, the Child Wonder.” Or “Bubbles, of the Madame Elise Babies’ Ballet.” Each photograph signed in a round childish hand, “From Kathie, Doris, or Bubbles, to dear Madame.”

  Rose had scarcely time to get her breath, for such a galaxy of infant marvels startled her, when the door opened and Madame Elise hurried in.

  She was a strange scraggy figure. She looked as though when melted she had been poured into a dress of black velvet and allowed to set there. For it was obvious that never under any circumstance could that dress come off. Such black velvet, so coated and overlaid with the dust of years, that in some lights it appeared grey, and in others brown. She had a white face, and should have had white eyelashes and eyebrows. But when she remembered, and without ever looking in the looking­ glass, she painted on reddish-brown eyebrows, coal-black lashes, and a scarlet gash for a mouth. All these additions to her beauty owing to lack of time and looking-glass, slightly out of the straight, which gave her a curiously rakish air. On top of all this she wore a bright red wig. A wig which years before may have been brushed and dressed, but which obviously, since it became the property of Madame Elise, had been popped on without a brush or comb ever going near it. She was a tall woman. In the studio she diminished her height by wearing pink cotton ballet shoes, in ? she wore buff kid button boots.

  One thing she possessed that no curiosities of appearance could hide. A pair of very lovely and amazingly shrewd, kindly blue eyes.

  Violet explained about the children.

  “Where are they? Where are they? Where are they? Must see them. Must see them. Must see them.”

  Every time Rose met Madame, she was struck afresh by this curious habit of repeating everything three times.

  Violet explained. She spoke of the children as Rose’s wards. She said she thought she had dis­ covered a hopeful child in the youngest. Might Rose see the pupils at their work? Then she could fix a time to bring her three children along to be inspected.