The Whicharts

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Come along. Come along. Come along.”

  Madame led the way into a large airy studio. At the far end was a piano, at which a fair-haired girl sat thumping. Her name appeared to be Connie, for every time she paused in her thumping, a roar came from the end of the studio, “And again, Connie dear, and again.”

  The roar came from a large black-haired woman, dressed in a purple pleated skirt to the knees, her top half most indifferently held together by a purple jumper. She wore dirty pink cotton tights, and pink ballet shoes. Occasionally she worked at the exercises herself, and whenever this happened, her bosoms inside the purple jumper flopped and jumped about in so alarming a manner, that Rose really feared one would fly off.

  All round the room, their small hands clutching a wooden bar, were hard-working little girls. Each child stood, for an incredible time, Rose thought, on the point of one toe, and with the other foot beat the ankle-bone of the wretched foot so perilously balanced. After beating one ankle about fifty times, they changed feet and beat the other. Occasionally a child paused, as though it would like to rest, but it was galvanised once more into activity by the roar from the black-haired instructress. “And again, Connie dear, and again.” When at last the children were allowed to stop, they raced to the other end of the room, seized towels, and vigorously dried their necks, which appeared to be wringing wet after their efforts. “No more bar,” shouted the roaring one.

  “Character work.”

  This seemed to be the signal for every child to throw down its grubby towel, and fly out of the room, only to reappear one minute later in different shoes. Little flat patent leather shoes with ankle straps.

  What followed left Rose speechless with amazement. All the children seemed to be made of India rubber. The way they somersaulted, and cartwheeled, and threw each other about, and landed on the floor with their legs in so awkward and stretched a position, she thought they must split in half.

  She turned to Madame.

  “It’s all very nice, wonderful in fact. But my children are quite ordinary little people. None of them could ever, ever do any of the things these children do.”

  “We shall see. We shall see. We shall see. Tuesday four o’clock, four o’clock, four o’clock.” Madame added to Violet.

  This was apparently dismissal, for with these words she walked into her office and shut the door.

  Chapter 5

  “I no think,” Rose said to herself, “that before deciding about this dancing, I should ask ‘Young Mr. Bray.’”

  She rang up his office. He spoke to her himself, he still sounded kind. Rose had been afraid he might have slipped back into his graveside manner. Yes, he would see her the next morning.

  Though naturally not quite the life they would choose, on the whole “Young Mr. Bray” thought the dancing a good idea. Obviously the sooner the children could earn the better.

  “You do know,” he said tentatively, “that your income dies with you. You can do what you like about the house, but you’ve no money to leave.”

  “Oh! I do hope I live till they’re all grown-up.“If I should die I can’t think what would happen.”

  Rose shivered at the vision of penniless and stranded babies.

  “Young Mr. Bray” said he had been thinking of that too. He suggested a scheme to her. He should be appointed guardian together with Nannie. Rose should make a will leaving the house jointly between the three children. In the event of her dying during their childhood, the house could be sold to educate them. Wills, Rose learnt, were not difficult things to make. He promised to have hers ready for her signature next week.

  The following Tuesday, Rose, Violet, Nannie, and the three children went to the Dancing Academy. They started badly. It was a hot day in May. Rose had decided that jerseys and knickers were as near as they could get to the correct dancing costume, a cotton romper, which she had seen worn by the pupils at the academy. Maimie and Tania had a scene about this in the nursery before they started. They would be too hot in jerseys. If they’d got to wear them they’d rather not go. They’d new cot on frocks waiting in a drawer, why couldn’t they wear them?

  If Rose had heard the argument, she would probably have given in. But Nannie was a strict disciplinarian.

  “I ’as me orders an’ I sticks by ’em.”

  Three times Maimie put on her jersey backside foremost.

  “’Tisn’t my fault, Nannie,” she said crossly, “this jersey hasn’t got no front.”

  Tania sat on the floor refusing to dress.

  “Fank you, Nannie,” she said as Nannie handed her her skirt. “On the whole I wasn’t goin’ this afternoon, it’s too hot.”

  Finally when they did reach the hall, it was to find both Rose and Violet upset because they were late.

  Daisy alone was supremely cheerful. She jigged up and down in her perambulator, her red curls bobbing.

  “Me goin’ to dance. Me goin’ to dance.”

  “Little Balham show-off,” muttered, Maimie to

  Tania.

  Tania said nothing. Her lips compressed with bad temper, she shuffled down the road.

  “Oh, lift your feet up, do,” Nannie exclaimed exasperated.

  “I won’t lift up nothing, never, never, never,” Tania whispered to herself.

  They arrived panting at the top of the academy stairs, and were at once hurried into the dressing­ room. On rows of wooden pegs hung grimy rompers. On the floor were piles of out-worn ballet shoes. Old cymbals and castanets lay about the room. The dust looked an inch deep.

  Nannie exclaimed loudly :

  “Give me your things to ’old, dears, there’s nowhere fit to put anything down ’ere.”

  In the studio Madame was waiting. Her shrewd old blue eyes took in Maimie’s beauty, and Daisy’s red curls.

  “What can they do? What can they do? What can they do?”

  The children started to laugh, so Violet said hurriedly:

  “Very little. Just try them with a few steps to see if they show promise. Then I should like a chat with you about them afterwards.”

  The children danced. Maimie graceful, but still bad-tempered, went sulkily through the few steps she had been taught.

  Daisy joyfully hopped her way through some simple exercises.

  Tania, her whole body rigid with dislike of the room and the whole situation, copied fairly accurately the movements she was shown by Madame.

  “That’ll do. That’ll do. That’ll do.” Madame beckoned Violet into the office, and shut the door. What was said there Rose never knew. But the result was that Madame offered to teach all three children for an incredibly low sum.

  “I must talk it over with Nannie,” Rose appealed to Violet.

  It seemed to her a desperate step, tying the children up like that. The contracts covered such a number of years. Talk of licences, and the London County Council, frightened her.

  She found Nannie waiting in the dressing-room with the children. She drew her to one side.

  “She will take them, and it won’t cost much. But oh, Nannie, I do hate it.”

  Nannie told Cook afterwards she hoped that God would overlook the lies she had told.

  “For there was Miss ’oward lookin’ that tired an’ worried—”

  “She ’as bin lookin’ thin lately,” Cook interrupted—“an’ ’er sayin’ to me,” Nannie went on, “‘I do ’ate it.’ An’ what was I to say? Acourse she ’ated it. Weren’t no place for our children. But why should she ’ave them all on ’er ’ands till they’re seventeen most like? No! ’T’wasn’t fair. So I says to ’er: ‘Now, Miss ’oward, don’t you be so silly. It may be a bit dirty,’ I says. ‘It mayn’t be what we’re used to,’ I says. ‘But theatricals is a trashy lot. If that Madam thinks as ’ow the children ’as talent ’tain’t right to ’old ’em back.’ An’ that done it! For on those very words, she t
urns round, goes back into Modom’s office, and shuts the door.”

  Rose signed a contract, for all three children, that afternoon. She never knew that Violet gave endless free lessons in the Academy, to balance the low fees.

  Maimie and Tania became very hard-working. The morning at school. Home to middle-day dinner. In the afternoon, if fine, a walk in the Park. Or if wet a visit to the Victoria and Albert. Home to tea. Then at five o’clock the Academy.

  It did not come so hard on Maimie. She enjoyed the Academy. The other children admired her prettiness. She liked wearing a checked cotton romper, white socks, and pink ballet shoes. The exercises were rather a bore, doing the same thing so many times. But the dancing, the lively music, she found fun. There was a certain gaiety about the whole thing. At no time in her life could Maimie resist gaiety.

  Tania hated the classes. She did not find the work hard. She was quick and very supple. But the place oppressed her. She loathed the other children. She disliked the dust. The musty smell in the cloakroom. Sometimes in the middle of a dance she would forget for a minute where she was, her legs would fly over her head, her spirits leap up. For one second she really danced. Then a greasy curl of another child touched her arm. Or her eye caught the pile of grimy towels lying on a bench in the corner. She grew stiff. All gaiety left her body. The real dancer of a moment before became an awkward little girl.

  Daisy learnt in the mornings. She was the show baby of the class. Very quick, very excited, very eager. Such simple steps as she was taught she picked up easily. She looked delicious bobbing about, a pleased smile on her round baby face, her red curls shining.

  Tania, in her baby way, felt rather at odds with life. She liked her school in a placid kind of way.

  She rather liked walking in the Park, only Nannie went so slowly they never got anywhere. There must be such lots more to see. By the time they had walked up the Cromwell Road, turned into Greville Place, passed Emperor’s Gate, and reached the Broad Walk, it was time to turn round and go home. The same with the Victoria and Albert. Always looking at those old dolls’ houses, when there must be lots more interesting things.

  “Let’s go on,” she would say tugging at Nannie’s arm.

  “You’ve seen all that’s good for you,” Nannie would reply. The truth being that she was convinced she would get lost if once she started wandering in that vast place.

  Rose knew very little about children, and Nannie had a firm conviction that rightly brought up children went out in the afternoons. So nobody suggested that legs of people of five and seven, those same legs that were expected later to do two hours of the most violent exercise, might perhaps be the better for a rest.

  Maimie, on returning from the Academy, would get half an hour in the nursery, or with Violet, before going to bed. But Tania was popped into her bath as soon as she got home, and after a glass of milk and two biscuits, expected to go happily to sleep. Her face grew rather sad-looking. She wasn’t conscious of disliking things as they were, only nothing nice ever happened.

  Then one Sunday in June, just before her sixth birthday, she found somebody. It was Mr. Williams, the ground-floor paying-guest. She was coming down the stairs, and she saw him in the hall on his hands and knees. He had an old motor bicycle. He had taken it to pieces and was re­ assembling it again. Tania hung spellbound over the stairs, and watched. She watched him for ten minutes, and he would never have known she was there, had he not mislaid a nut.

  “Blast the damned thing,” he muttered.

  She slipped down the stairs, delicately picked up the missing nut, and laid it on his hand.

  “God bless my soul, Tania! Are you a fairy?

  How did you know I wanted that?”

  “I’ve been watching you,” she explained. But he was still puzzled.

  “How did you know it was that nut I wanted?”

  “I know’d what you was doing.”

  This was the beginning of a great friendship, born of mutual tastes. John Williams adored machinery. It was his job, when he had one. It was also his hobby. Tania loved machinery, too. To screw things together, to find out why some­ thing wouldn’t go, was an absorbing game. All the week she was too busy to play at anything, so on Sunday mornings he always had something waiting for her. A clock that wouldn’t go. A toy engine in need of repairs. A sewing-machine that had stuck. They said very little to each other, but worked in that curious silent fellowship of the workman and his mate. But he gleaned fragments of her outlook on life.

  Once she said:

  “I do wish it was always Sunday.”

  “Why? Which is it you don’t like, the school or the dancing classes?”

  “The dancing.”

  “Pity you aren’t a boy, you could have got a job in this line.”

  “If I was a boy I’d learn to fly.”

  “Why?”

  “They goes so fast.”

  At Christmas the Academy woke up to violent activity. All three children became very un­ important. Their classes were cancelled. There was no room for them to work. Only people old enough to appear in pantomime mattered. Maimie was jealous of the older girls, it sounded to her a lovely life. Tania was thankful she was so young. The thought of appearing on the stage terrified her.

  “Six more Christmases before I’ll be old enough,” she thought joyfully.

  Chapter 6

  THE next few years were remarkably uneventful. A solid round of lessons and dancing for the children. A solid round of housework and ordering meals for Rose. But 1923 was a gala year. It started with measles.

  All the children caught it. Daisy very badly. Nannie had an exhausting time. Maimie was cross, and bored, missing her friends. Daisy was so ill she could hardly be left for a moment. Tania was the only one who was happy. She frankly enjoyed the disease. To her it was a heavenly, and most unexpected holiday. As soon as she was well enough John Williams appeared with books on cars and aeroplanes. They discussed makes of engines, and horse-power. They decided what cars they would buy, and how fast they would go. Maimie would listen to all this, hideously bored and, after John Williams had gone, grumble at TaniaTania.

  “My goodness! what can you see in those horrid dirty old cars. Pity you aren’t Daisy, ‘The Child Marvel,’ then perhaps you’d cam enough to buy one, and could drive me about.”

  This glorious thought would start the children off on their pet game. It was a good game for busy people, because it could be played anywhere, and in odd moments. They called it “Families.” Maimie as the eldest had first pick. She said how big her family was, and whether boys or girls. Tania had to have two less of each sex, and Daisy two less again. So when Maimie was bad­ tempered, and wanted to be annoying, she would say:

  “I’m playing ‘Families,’ and neither of you can play, ’cos I’m only having two children.”

  Maimie as the eldest had divine rights through­out the game. This often led to quarrels. For if she decided her children drove in a car, Tania’s children weren’t allowed one. When the game first started Tania checkmated this by travelling her children in an aeroplane. But Maimie soon put a stop to that by saying firmly:

  “My children will travel by car and aeroplane.”

  “’Tisn’t fair,” Tania would protest. “Mine will have to go by horse, and you do know how I hate going slow.”

  Daisy liked her family to ride on donkeys. Nannie had ridden one on some glorious occasion, and often told them about it.

  “Donkeys! She would!” The other two scoffed, and went on scornfully with the game.

  On recovering from measles, the children returned to work. Perhaps they were run down.

  For they promptly caught whooping-cough.

  The Cromwell Road is a most unsuitable spot to have whooping-cough. Nannie would try and hurry them into the Park, but they all managed to whoop before they got there, and were looked at with fury
by passing Nannies with small children and perambulators. Although the first one to catch the disease began whooping early in May, August found them still at it. Both the schools were shut. London stuffy, and dusty. The children looking like shadows.

  “We’ll go away,” said Rose:

  Afterwards the children always marked time by that summer.

  “It was before Sussex,” they would say. Or, “it was after Sussex.”

  They stayed at Friston, a village on the downs above Eastbourne. But Rose had said they were going to Sussex. From that moment the word ‘Sussex’ represented their holiday, and epitomised everything that was nicest in life.

  “Such ‘Sussexly’ chocolates. I do think my new frock’s Sussex.”

  They went to Friston, because friends of Violet’s lent them a cottage there. It was nobody’s real choice. Nannie fancied Margate, she’d always heard the air was wonderful, and she had spent a day there once as a small child, and had never forgotten its glories. Rose, too, wished for the sea, as she believed it would be the quickest way to get rid of the children’s coughs. But she would have chosen Folkestone or Bournemouth, where she had been herself taken to recover from childish ailments. The children had never been away before, so as long as they went somewhere, they didn’t mind where it was.

  They arrived at Friston about five o’clock on a gloriously sunny afternoon. Their cottage was away from the village, and looked out over the downs.

  Maimie gazed out of the window. She was silent with amazement. Such a lot of space. She slipped a hand into Rose’s:

  “I suppose it’s safe, but I wish there were more people about.”

  Tania ran outside. She stared at the grey rolling distance, with its stripings of coloured fields. At the low clouds hurrying by, making racing black shadows as they passed. She felt the wind blow against her body, it gave her a feeling of speed. She felt so uplifted, so terribly glad to be alive, that it hurt her physically, she had to lay her hand over her heart. Rose had followed her out.

  “Do you like it, Tania?”