Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus

by Beaton, M. C.

  Polly wanted to scream, “Where? What? How?” but the silence was almost religious as the old people, who could not remember their last decent meal, gazed with wide eyes on the glory and splendor of the feast.

  She silently took a tray of glasses of punch from her father and passed them around. There was a universal sigh of satisfaction as rum and sugar and lemon and boiling hot water seeped into old bones and frozen feet.

  Then it seemed as if everyone began to talk at once.

  Polly stood bewildered, listening to the incoherent babble. Some lord had thrown a handful of diamonds at her father. He had come in a gold carriage bedecked with rubies, and black servants had cleared a path through the snow for him with silver shovels. He had been wearing knee breeches and the Order of the Garter. (“Wot! In this weather? Garn!”) He had been dressed in scarlet and ermine. He had been wearing a crown. It wasn’t a lord but King Edward himself!

  The arrival of the goose silenced the company again and nothing was heard for half an hour but the chomping of worn teeth and gums. Overcome by all the excitement and having been accidentally handed a glass of punch, little Alf put his small head in his plate and went to sleep.

  Polly at last managed to ask her mother what it was all about as they began to clear away the empty and polished plates. She listened wideeyed as she heard of the marquis’s visit and of the gold.

  “’E’s either balmy or ’e’s in love with yer, Pol,” said Mrs. Marsh. “An’ I think it’s love. Yerse.”

  Polly blushed as the memory of the goldfish pond rushed into her mind. She felt obscurely threatened. She was frightened over the intensity of her feelings. Better never to see or hear of the marquis again.

  “Anyways,” Mrs. Marsh continued, “your father, saint that ’e is, says to me, ’e says, ‘Let’s give all them old folks a treat.’

  “Gawd ’elp us, Pol. We’ve got our ’ealth and strength to last this winter but not them.”

  After the last of the guests had gone, clutching their food parcels made up from the remainder of the feast and a little purse of money each, Polly climbed the stairs to her room and stood for a long time looking out at the frozen snow.

  To think of the marquis was wrong. All it ever brought was trouble.

  Oh, why couldn’t he have stayed away!

  The evenings grew longer but still the trees held their leafless branches up to the sky and still the iron grip of winter kept its grim hold on the land.

  The marquis was just indulging in a dream in which he had completely managed to forget both Polly Marsh’s face and figure. He was promenading along Jermyn Street on his way to his club in St. James’s when he almost collided with a trim figure emerging from the back door of Fortnum & Mason. “Sally Saint John,” he cried with surprise.

  A pair of roguish blue eyes twinkled up into his, reminding him of his salad days when he used to squire Sally to balls and go rowing at weekends with her brother, Jerry.

  “I’m not Saint John anymore,” she laughed. “You are out of touch. I’m married to Freddie Box.”

  The marquis dimly remembered Lord Freddie Box as being a slightly pimply youth in his form at Eton. He must have blossomed indeed to have snared the fair Sally.

  “And Jerry’s getting married too,” Sally bubbled on. “And to a little actress from the Gaiety!”

  “Good God!” said the marquis. “What has your mama to say about that?”

  “Oh, nothing now,” said Sally cheerfully. “But how she ranted and raved when Jerry first told her. So at last she had to meet the girl; Alice James is her name. Well, the fair Alice turned out to be a very proper young lady, with the manners and voice of a duchess, and Mama was so relieved she gave them her immediate blessing.”

  “It sounds almost too good to be true,” said the marquis gloomily.

  Sally observed him with interest. “My dear Edward,” she exclaimed at last. “You are not by any chance contemplating a mésalliance yourself! Not the fastidious Edward! Not the breaker of hundreds of hearts!”

  The marquis looked at her with some embarrassment. “The lady I am ‘contemplating’ is merely a young friend of quite low birth. She is however a very refined young lady. I do not intend to marry the girl or anyone else for that matter, but it does seem a shame that she should wilt away in the East End of London instead of enjoying some West End society.”

  “Like my salon, of course,” said Sally brightly.

  “Like your salon,” said the marquis smoothly.

  “I shall probably regret this,” said Sally gloomily. “Give me her address, Edward, and I’ll send her a card. You will be present of course?”

  “Of course,” said the marquis with a grin.

  But as it turned out, Lady Sally Box’s pretty salon was not fated to be graced by the plebeian beauty of Miss Polly Marsh.

  Sally handed the marquis a letter that he studied in silence. It said: “Miss Polly Marsh thanks Lady Sally Box for her kind invitation to tea but regrets that she is unable to attend.”

  The marquis swore under his breath. He would never see her again unless he hung around Westerman’s or visited her home.

  Hell and damnation! It looked as if he would have to marry her after all!

  Fortunately for the marquis, it was not Alf Marsh who was presiding over the dark, chilly shop but Mary Marsh.

  Mrs. Marsh wasted no time on social pleasantries. “Before you feels obliged to buy up the ’ole shop agin,” she said, her small eyes twinkling, “just gits to the point. Yer wants to marry Pol, doncher?”

  The marquis gave a stately nod of his head.

  “Well, yer can’t,” said Mrs. Marsh brusquely and then her voice softened. “Sit down ’ere, me lord, and I’ll tell you why.”

  A savage winter gale was whipping along Stone Lane and moaning around the gables of the old houses. Its mad, dreamy symphony of summer gone and love lost underlined Mrs. Marsh’s explanation. Polly should not marry out of her class, she explained. That sort of thing led to disaster. In vain did the marquis recite lists of his aristocratic friends who had married members of the lower orders; Mrs. Marsh remained adamant. His own mother could not have been more against it. Polly should eventually marry a nice boy in her own station of life. The marquis thought of Polly’s gentle beauty under the rough, red, beefy hands of some market trader and felt his temper rising.

  Never once had he dreamt of rejection. His fortune was large; his line stretched back into the mists of history. He was accounted handsome. And now he was sitting in some poky little shop in the East End of London being told, in effect, that his proposal of marriage was unwelcome. This is what came of not keeping one’s distance! This is what came of fraternizing with the lower orders. Damn this smelly shop, this smelly lane, this dingy environment where the very cobblestones screamed poverty and depression. And damn Polly Marsh! He gave Mrs. Marsh a bow as cold and chilly as the day outside and walked languidly to his motorcar—he had not wanted the carriage servants to realize the depths of his infatuation—with his head held very high and his aristocratic profile presented to the lower orders. He felt like a fool.

  • • •

  March came in like a lion and went out like a monster. The trees on Hampstead Heath threw down a quantity of branches in defeat. Winter had come to stay. Icy blasts all the way from the Arctic circle set the bare branches of the trees moaning and rattling like so many skeletons of the damned.

  Winter himself seemed to have taken over Bertie Baines’s heart. Somewhere outside the kingdom of his frozen and numbed depression he could hear his wife’s strident voice. Gladys had unfortunately recovered from the shock of her husband’s affair with Lady Blenkinsop and her voice rose and fell and moaned like the wind on the Heath outside. She had sacrificed the best years of her life to Bertie Baines and look where it had got her. He never took her anywhere. She had had more fun at her mother’s. Why? They had played bridge every evening. Would Bertie Baines play bridge? No! He would not!

  On and on it went
as Bertie crouched in his armchair, cracking his knuckles and remembering every look and gesture of Lady Blenkinsop’s and wondering sometimes if a chap could die from sheer misery.

  • • •

  Amy Feathers went out of her way to wait outside the office at closing time so that she could cut Bob Friend dead as he scuttled past.

  Sir Edward Blenkinsop was seen promenading with the cosy armful from the King’s Road on more than one occasion, and everyone vowed to tell Lady Blenkinsop so, but nobody did.

  A large tear fell on a photograph of the Marquis of Wollerton escorting the beautiful and dashing young Lady Alice Hammersfield to the opera. Polly closed the magazine with a sigh and stared unseeingly out of her window at the black and tumbling clouds. She had not been told of the marquis’s proposal. She had refused the mysterious invitation from Lady Sally because her mother had told her to, but she often wondered what would have happened if she had gone.

  April brought showers of sleet and hail to the frozen City and people shook their heads and said that the new Ice Age had arrived.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Polly Marsh opened her eyes on May the first and was dimly aware that something strange had happened to the world.

  Sunlight was flooding the room. She opened the window and leaned out.

  Sunshine! Blazing-hot sunshine! Blue sky stretched for miles and miles. Lazy wisps of smoke climbed from chimneys up high into the azure bowl.

  A group of jugglers and acrobats were setting out to entertain the streets of the more prosperous West End. The leading acrobat in his tawdry tinsel and faded pink tights suddenly stretched his arms wide and executed several handsprings down the street. Mrs. Benjamin, who lived directly across the lane, opened her window and put her pet linnet, Sammy, out in his wicker cage on the sill. The bird shuffled around ruffling his feathers and then began to pour out a whole song of gladness for the return of spring.

  Bernie at the fish-and-chip shop cranked up his new phonograph and soon the tinny, cheeky voice of Marie Lloyd was serenading Stone Lane with Bernie howling in accompaniment.

  “My old man said foller ’er van,” roared Bernie.

  “And don’t dillydally on the way,” caroled Mrs. Marsh from the kitchen downstairs.

  “Off went the van wiv ’er ’ole lot in it,” chirped Alf from the shop.

  “An’ I walked behind wiv me old cock linnet,” shrilled Mrs. Battersby from the tenement next door.

  “All tergither now,” shouted a trader from the street below, leaning on his handcart. And it seemed as if the whole of Stone Lane suddenly burst out singing:

  “But I dillied and dallied,

  Dallied and dillied,

  Lost me way and don’t know where to roam

  Oh, you can’t trust the specials,

  Like the old-time coppers

  And I can’t find my way ’ome.”

  The great winter weight of social humiliation, shame, and chilblains whirled around Polly’s head, rose up like an evil mist, and melted away in the sunshine.

  She took her summer dress out of the closet and shook out its folds. It was of navy-and-white-spotted organza with a high-boned collar and long tight sleeves. By the time Polly had placed a jaunty straw boater on top of her golden curls, she had mentally resolved to say something nice to Amy Feathers. No wonder Amy dislikes me, thought Polly. But I don’t care! I’m just going to go on being nice until she likes me.

  What a splendid walk to the City it was. Complete strangers shouted “good morning.” Message boys whistled as they went about their work, and a few stunted plane trees on the Kingsland Road had burst into delicate green leaf.

  The working masses who had trudged to work all winter in a scurrying frozen mass now sauntered gaily in the sunshine, the men flourishing and brandishing their walking sticks and twirling their mustaches as if the warmth of the sunshine had transformed them all into the gayest dashing blades.

  It was a Dick Whittington City of London. Everything was paved with gold from the very cobblestones to the gilded roof of St. Pauls.

  Polly stood on the threshold of Westerman’s, glowing like the morning outside. “Good morning everyone,” called Polly cheerfully, her light clear voice sailing into every dingy corner of the office like a summer song. And “Good Morning, Miss Marsh,” chorused the clerks with surprise, noticing for the first time that the stuck-up Miss Marsh was human after all.

  Polly sat cheerfuly down at her typewriter and waited for Mr. Baines. Suddenly, she was overcome with such a longing for the marquis that her hands began to tremble and she put them under the desk. How could she have ever dreamt that she could forget him? She had not cried over his photograph because she remembered her humiliation at the hands of his brother, but because, she realized, she was in love with him and she was jealous.

  • • •

  Mr. Baines wearily stood just inside his front door, the stained glass checkering his face with myriad squares of colored light. He looked like a particularly miserable harlequin.

  “And don’t forget,” Gladys was saying, “to bring home a barrel of oysters from Sweetings. Write it down, now.”

  “I don’t need to write it down,” said Bertie patiently.

  “Yes, you do! Yes, you do! You forget everything! Just write it down! Just write it down!”

  Mr. Baines meekly took out a small notebook and noted down “1 brl ostrs.” Gladys peered over his shoulder, her very curl papers bristling with irritation. “What’s that scriggle-scraggle? Write it proper…. Oh here, let me do it. I declare you need a keeper. And don’t forget, Mother is coming to dinner and we are making up a four for bridge whether you like it or not.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “And here. Let me straighten your tie. I declare if it weren’t for me, you’d go to that office looking like a real ragbag.”

  The memory of other fingers straightening his tie swept over Mr. Baines and he closed his eyes.

  “And just what do you mean by that expression on your face, Bertie Baines?” shrilled Gladys. “Just what do you mean?”

  “I’m tired, my dear.”

  “You’re tired! You’re tired! Haven’t you any idea of the amount of slaving and scrimping I have to do to see that we keep up a proper appearance? Not that you care for appearances. Ho, no!”

  And Mr. Baines opened the door.

  And Mr. Baines stood stock-still and stared.

  A sea of delicate green flowed from the edge of the Heath all the way to Highgate as the fresh young leaves moved lazily and gently in the warm breeze. The grass rippled and rolled and turned like the fur of some enormous green cat. Forsythia blazed in golden glory beside the garden gate and, on the edge of one of the heavy golden branches, a thrush sang away the memories of the long, dark winter.

  On the edge of this other world came the voice of Gladys Baines. “What are you standing there like a tailor’s dummy for?”

  Mr. Baines turned around and looked at his wife. He said, “Shut up, you frightful old bag.”

  He tilted his hat to one side of his head. He jumped over the garden gate.

  The startled thrush flew off to look for a more appreciative audience, and Gladys Baines went home to mother.

  Lady Blenkinsop sat bolt upright against her lacy pillows, the letter she had just finished reading, lying on the quilt. She reached a thin hand toward it and picked up her cup of coffee instead. After all, she knew every word by heart.

  It was from her old school friend, Hester Williams. Lady Blenkinsop had not seen Hester in years and could only remember her as a fat, gossipy schoolgirl, much given to sniggering in corners. The letter was to inform her “dear friend Jennie” that Sir Edward had been seen on numerous occasions escorting a certain Lily Entwhistle. Hester had felt it her unpleasant duty to shadow the couple—“just like Sherlock Holmes!”—and had espied them entering a flat in the King’s Road above a dressmaker’s shop. Diligent inquiries had revealed that Sir Edward was paying for the rent of the cozy flat, and
Miss Lily, herself, was an erstwhile barmaid from the Potter’s Arms. Hester felt sure that her dear Jennie would know just what to do!

  But I don’t know what to do, thought Lady Blenkinsop sadly. I might have known last Christmas, but now…

  She looked around the room. The curtains were tightly drawn and the only light came from a roseshaded lamp beside her bed.

  She leaned her head back against the pillows and suddenly became aware that the birds were singing and squabbling in the ivy outside.

  She moved from the bed with frail, tentative steps and jerked the heavy curtain cord.

  With her thin hand at the throat of her lacy negligee, she stared at the sunlit scene laid out in front of her.

  The lawns swept down to the edge of the sparkling river. A gaily-painted launch cut a swathe through the perfect mirror of the water, sending little creamy waves lapping against the incredible green of the lawn. Daffodils nodded in the gentle breeze, and pink and white daisies starred the rougher grass near the water’s edge. Two noisy whitethroats chased each other through the graceful, swaying branches of a weeping willow.

  Against the garden wall a magnificent horse chestnut held its tall spires of blossom to the warmth of the early sun, and a hawthorn covered with a white sheet of flowers brought memories of the winter blizzards.

  Lady Blenkinsop opened the window and the stuffy room was filled with the scent of blossom and the sound of birds and lapping water.

  She stood for a long time watching the river and then she turned and rang the bell.

  Her lady’s maid, Withers, answered the bell promptly and showed no surprise or indeed any expression at all when her mistress declared her intention of breakfasting downstairs.

  Sir Edward Blenkinsop was spearing the last grilled kidney with his fork when his wife marched into the room. He rose and tried to kiss her on the cheek but her very flesh seemed to cringe from his touch.