The Whicharts

by Noel Streatfeild

  Tania was engaged to understudy Daisy. She felt utterly crushed. She knew she would loathe touring. She would like the everlasting moving about, but travelling with all those people in the show! She’d hate that. She was humiliated by understudying Daisy. She knew that Daisy was a far better dancer. In fact, that she would never make a solo dancer at all. She could do all the steps, she had good technique, but she was uninspired, she had none of Daisy’s artistry, and abandon. She felt ashamed of herself at school, and at the academy. She kept telling herself, what did it matter anyway? She wouldn’t be dancing much longer; as soon as she was old enough, she’d get a mechanic’s licence, and work at something she really could do. But she couldn’t blind herself to the fact that it did matter, that they were all saying: “Oh, she’s no good, got to understudy her younger sister.” Then, as if this understudy business wasn’t enough, there was Mr. Williams going away. The only person who liked the same things as she did. The only person who could see how very little this dancing business really mattered, and could be relied on to make you see it too, when a combination of events robbed you of your sense of proportion. Oh, life was miserable, the things it did to you. Not just one thing at a time, but two or three awfulnesses all at once.

  Chapter I0

  THE musical comedy company left London on a Sunday morning. Maimie, Nannie, and Violet came to see their family off. Nannie very worried at losing sight of her children. She would have preferred to travel with them herself, leaving Rose in London. But Rose had insisted on going. She had no idea what touring might be like. She must see for herself what the conditions were.

  “Now take care of yourselves, do,” said Nannie, “and change into your woollies as soon as ever it gets cold. Gets cold before you can say ‘knife’ in them towns up north.”

  Maimie looked at them rather enviously. She had never been on tour. Never been away except for Sussex. It all looked rather fun. The carriages marked with their names. The fuss and bustle, such a lot of talking and laughing. Then all the journeys they would have. The places they would see. Different rooms. New ones every Sunday. They were even going as far as Scotland. Oh yes, they were lucky London wasn’t going to be much fun. That big house empty except for herself, Nannie, Violet, and Cook. People coming round to look at it all the time, and perhaps the trouble of packing for a move. And Dolly going to America almost at once. She wished he’d take her with him; she didn’t believe her show would run over Christmas. Dolly was funny lately; didn’t seem to think it would be a good idea. All the bother of looking for work. She hated bother. No bothers going on tour. She almost wished she were going with them. Still, the men didn’t look up to much; looked poor. No good knowing men who hadn’t got money.

  Rose took her hand and kissed her:

  “Take care of yourself, darling. Don’t stop up too late, and do everything that Nannie tells you.”

  Maimie returned the kiss.

  “Poor darling, she must be going ga-ga. How old does she think I am? Three?”

  The tour did well. Daisy enjoyed every minute of it. Her dancing was a great success. She was the pet of the company. She looked forward all day to the evenings in the theatre; this, in spite of the fact that she found the rest of the day fun. She did her lessons with the other children in the show. She liked that, because she was far ahead of them, and she didn’t mind Miss Dene, the governess who travelled with them, and looked after the other children. She liked the afternoons when Rose was well enough, and took them to explore the town, that was most amusing. Then after tea she had a rest. Even that wasn’t a bore, for Rose was reading the most exciting book to her. Yes, the stage was a gorgeous life. The conversation of the others hadn’t prepared her for what fun it would be. Maimie had always quite liked her work, especially at the beginning, but even she had complained bitterly at times. As for Tania! To hear her talk you would think it was the most awful work in the world. Daisy never reasoned things out, so she supposed vaguely that it made a difference being a principal, and perhaps tour was more fun than London. Of course Tania wasn’t really enjoying this tour. But that was because she was under­ studying; everyone said that was terribly boring work.

  Far from “really enjoying” the tour, Tania was detesting every minute of it. She so loathed the professional rooms where they stayed. And the little back streets the rooms were in. On Sunday evenings she would be so crushed by the woolly mats, the aspidistras, the enlargements of the land­ adies’ family, the curious smell of old food and dirty carpets, the shiny horsehair sofa with the stuffing coming out and all the springs broken; the unspeakable bathroom, the bedrooms with the wallpaper hanging in shreds, the sheets and blankets that needed a nervous examination before you dared get between them; the street outside, with its dreary row of equally awful little houses, the dirty paper blowing up the gutter, the noisy children playing over the drains; that, try as she would, she couldn’t hide it. When Rose, herself loathing it, tried to cheer her up, she could only say:“I’m sorry, Howdy. It’s because I can’t help hoping. All the day in the train I keep saying, ‘Oh, it can’t be as bad this time.’ Then we arrive. Same awful smell. Same awful landlady. Same awful photographs. I just feel I can’t bear it!”

  Rose was able to bear with the tour, knowing how convenient it was being. “Young Mr. Bray” had succeeded in selling the house. He got rather more for it than he had hoped, because a syndicate was buying it, and the two houses next to it, to make a small hotel. Rose’s was the middle one. She hated to think of her house as just the middle bit of a second-rate hotel, but there it was, off her hands for ever. She ought to be thankful.

  “Young Mr. Bray” had also found them a flat, not far from the Cromwell Road, close to South Kensington Station. Nannie wrote that she thought she had better come north, to take charge of the children, and Rose come south for the move, to decide which furniture she would keep, and which sell, and how she wanted the rooms arranged. But Rose was not interested in the move. The house in the Cromwell Road had been her home, her life. The flat was for the children. “I leave the choice of rooms and furniture to Maimie,” she wrote. “Store all the rest of the furniture till I come home.”

  “Young Mr. Bray” urged her in several letters to come south at least for a week­ end, to look the flat over before she signed the lease. But she answered, “No. If Maimie and Nannie think it will do, I shall think so too.”

  There was only one thing she would have liked, and that was to say good-bye to Cook. They wouldn’t need her in the flat, and certainly couldn’t afford her. She had been with Rose since the days of the Brigadier. She couldn’t visualise life with­ out her. And now that she was going, she couldn’t even say good-bye.

  They all wrote, Rose enclosing a cheque. Tania and Daisy sent a clock, which they had bought themselves out of their pocket-money. It was green enamel, and they thought it exquisite. So did Cook. She wrote to each of them, difficult, inexpressive letters, but one thing was clear, she refused to say good-bye. She should take a place in London, where she could come and look them up on her day out.

  As the tour went on, Rose’s health got worse. She said nothing about it to the children, but she gradually dropped the habit of taking them out in the afternoons, and handed them over to Miss Dene, who took them about with the other four children.

  Miss Dene was a thin little person, with such a passion to rise above the conditions of her rather dull life, that it amounted to a creed. She would have enjoyed being a Christian Martyr. “This,” she would have said with a bright smile, as she was stoned, or burned, or otherwise finished off, “may be unpleasant, but don’t let us complain, there is a jolly side to it if we only look!” Not having lived in the days of Christian Martyrs, she brought her bright smile and “jolly side” creed to the minor martyrdoms. She always smiled. The more devastatingly depressing the weather, or the town she found herself in, the brighter shone her smile, the “jollier” she found things. As the rain splashed o
n the railway-carriage windows, on a long Sunday journey with Wigan as its objective, or when one of the children was sick over her only fur coat, she glowed! She effulged! She tried to instil her attitude towards life into her charges. In order to prove how “jolly” even the most unlikely town could be, she insisted on their visiting the local beauty spots Whatever the weather she dragged them from castles to churches, and from churches to Elizabethan houses, and where there were none of these, she took them for a long tram ride, finishing with a “jolly” ramble in the country.

  The children one and all detested beauty spots.

  Their idea of a really good afternoon was to be taken to the pictures. Even Tania, who might have enjoyed the walks, and taken a cursory interest in the churches and castles, wilted before such enthusiasm.

  The long evenings in the theatre, which were a rapture to Daisy, were particularly trying to Tania. She was supposed to sit in Daisy’s room, reading or sewing. If Rose came with them, it wasn’t so bad, she brought a pack of cards, and they spent the evenings gambling for halfpennies. But Rose frequently left them to Miss Dene, especially when, as often happened, they all lived in the same street, and could therefore be dropped on the way home. On those nights Tania was a real example of the adage about “Satan finding mischief.” She found it difficult to read in the theatre; even the most thrilling flying aces and motor fiends couldn’t hold her attention. People kept talking to her, kept running in and out. Daisy couldn’t find her dresser, and wanted hooking or buttoning. So as she detested sewing, she got into the habit of lolling in a chair, yawning her head off, and driving Daisy and the dresser distracted by getting crosser and crosser as the night wore on. She was so bad-tempered one night that she reduced Daisy to tears, whereupon Miss Dene took her to sit in the other dressing-room with the rest of the children. This was a hopeless failure and caused so noisy a quarrel that an infuriated assistant stage-manager came up to complain. After that she was moved back again to Daisy’s room. Then quite by accident, and to everyone’s relief, she found a friend. Daisy tore one of her stage dresses, and Tania, glad of something to do, offered to take it up to the wardrobe-mistress. She had never met Miss Poll before, who was a person of great dignity and importance, and not one as a general rule to take an interest in any children who might be in the show with which she was connected, especially one who was only an understudy. But as it happened, on the night Tania brought up Daisy’ s frock, she was badly in need of a confidante. Her trouble was a leading lady.

  “Imagine it, dear,” she said, examining the tear. “’oo is she? That’s what I say. Pantomime boy as was. And now only playing second lead for all ’er airs. She sends for me to ’er dressing-room; and mind you, I’d never ’ave gone, only she sends Mr. Errol up for me. ‘Come quick,’ ’e says to me, ‘she’s in one of ’er worst!’ Down I comes. She says to me, ‘Did h’I or did h’I not tell you to make me new knickers for the second act?’ ‘You did,’ I says, ‘and when I’ve time I’m going to.’ With that she screams out, ‘You’ll make them now, you bitch,’ and she takes one leg in each ’and, tears ’er knickers in ’alf, and throws ’em on the floor before me face. Up I gets and walks out all dignified. No one could say I didn’t act genteel. ‘You Meadow Lady,’ was all I see. And I leaves the knickers lyin’ in two ’alves on the floor. Up I goes to my room, and two minutes later up comes Mr. Errol. ’e looks quite white, po’r fellow. ‘Oh Polly,’ ’e says, ‘for the Lord’s sake mend them knickers, for she’s ’avin’ ’ysterics, an’ says she won’t go on.’ I says, ‘Either she goes on with them legs split in ’alf or not at all, for not one stitch do I put in them to-night. Insulted I’ve bin.’ ‘Oh come,’ ’e says all friendly like, ‘I know she’s a terror, but you’re a dear. Sew ’em together. There’s a big ’ouse, and the understudy’s lousy.’ Well, I gives in an’ I sews ’em up. But I ’ope I made ’em that tight that she splits the seat on the stage. Dirty bitch!”

  Tania adored Miss Poll, who would talk by the hour, and she loved listening. Miss Poll had been for five years dresser to a musical comedy star.

  “Lovely job that was, dearie—Ruthie was a nice little thing—but I always knew how it would end. ‘Ruthie’s the girl for the Lords,’ I often ses to mother. And sure enough she snips one—’e sends up ’is card one night—would she join ’is party for supper? ‘Go down,’ she says to me, ‘an’ give ’im the once-over-if ’e looks all right say I’ll come.’ Down to the stage-door I goes—what a boy!—not so outrageous good-looking, but lovely eyes—I says, ‘Is you Lord ’enry?’ ‘Yes,’ ’e says, and pops a pound note in me ’and. ‘Tell ’er I’m all right,’ ’e says. Upstairs I goes. ‘You ’urry, dearie,’ I ses to Ruthie, ‘an’ if ’e ses snip, you say snap, and you’ll find yourself in Easy Street.’ Well, that was the beginning, but she took an awful while to make up ’er mind—then just as I thought she was going to do it, she ’as an offer for America, an’ believe me she took it! ‘All right,’ says ’is Lord-ship, ‘you go! I’m tired of ’anging about—been runnin’ about after you for a year, I ’ave—you go to America, an’ I’ll try an’ find someone who won’t take so long making up their mind.’ That done it! Broke ’er contrac’ she did! What a wedding! They gave me a ’ole new rig-out—pink it was—smart pink ‘at an’ all—an’ a nice little fur—an’ the Lord ’isself see that I ’ad a button’ole. At the reception ’e brings me a glass of champagne. ‘Polly,’ ’e ses, ‘drink our ’ealths, for you brought us together!’ Which in a manner of speakin’ I did—for if I’d come back an’ said ‘Na-poo’ that night ’e first sends up ’is card, she’d never ’ave seen ’im. They tries to get me to come as maid or somethin’ at one of ’is ’ouses in the country. But I wouldn’t go, I should miss the theatre, dear, I likes the smell of grease—paint of a night-time. Then I’ve me father an’ mother back in Deptford, they likes me to be at ’ome, I’ve only come on tour this once, just to oblige, an’ because they’ve promised me dressin’ in London at Christmas.”

  One evening, Tania discovered Miss Poll laboriously writing a letter.

  “It’s to my mother, dear. Almost ArmisticeDay, so I’m sendin’ ’er a bit to buy a wreath.”

  “A wreath?” Tania was amazed. Wreaths on Armistice Day meant somebody you were fond of had been killed in the war. She had never connected Miss Poll with any sort of tragedy, she was always cheerful and amusing; of course she got angry sometimes, but that soon passed over. “Had you a brother killed in the war?” she asked sympathetically.

  “Well, I ’ad, and I ’adn’t in a manner of speakin’.

  My brother ’e went to France in ’14—’ad a good job tailorin’ up till then. Smart ’e was. We used to laugh an’ call ’im a waxwork. Well, it turns out that the man ’e’d worked for been a German, nice little chap ’e was, an’ acourse ’e couldn’t ’elp what ’e was born, but for all that ’e ’ad to go. So when the war was over there was my brother without a job. ’e tried everywhere, but ’e couldn’t seem to get any work nohow. You see ’e’d grown that big in the army, none of ’is clothes seemed to fit ’im ’e was downright shabby. There wasn’t a job goin’ ’e didn’t try for ’e got little things sometimes—tempory—one year ’e was Father Christmas for one of the shops—’e didn’t ’alf ’ate that. Dad was only doin’ odd days then, business bein’ slack. Course there was my dressin’ money. We done what we could, never let ’im go out without a copper or two in ’is pocket, if it was only to ’ave somethin’ to shake. But ’e did ’ate bein’ that shabby—for ’e’d always been so smart. Didn’t seem right some’ow. Then one day ’e comes in­ very low ’e was. ’e sits down an’ takes off’is boots. I give ’im a cigarette I’d been savin’ for ’im. ‘Think I’ll smoke it in the yard,’ ’e says. ‘What!’ says mother, ‘you never goin’ out there without your boots!’ ‘Sorry, ma,’ ’e says, an’ pulls ’em on again. Outside ’e goes—an’ we ’ears a bang—I runs out, an’ there ’e’s been an’ gone an’ shot ’isse
lf. Mother took it bad. But she’s gettin’ better now. But she does like to put a wreath on the Cenotaph of an Armistice Day. Of course it ain’t got no right to be there, but what I says is, the other boys won’t mind.”

  Tania was startled; this story presented a new facet to life. Such an awful thing to happen, and yet Miss Poll took it in her stride, as it were. She’d never mentioned it before, it didn’t seem to over­ cloud her life, she was always most jovial. Could things like that happen to other people? To her for instance? Could the people you loved die, and after a time you be gay and amusing as though nothing had happened? She shivered.

  “Goose run over your grave?” asked Miss Poll.

  Sometimes Miss Poll would question Tania about herself. The two sisters were so unlike, they made her curious. They were so obviously a cut above the other children. Then Miss Howard, so very presentable a guardian. How did she come to have possession of e children? Very queer it all was.

  “You an’ Daisy do this for fun, most like?”

  “Fun!” Tania was staggered. Would anyone do it for fun? “I wouldn’t think it fun even if I was Daisy, but goodness knows, nobody would under­ study for fun. It’s the foullest job in the world.”