Something Light

by Margery Sharp

  6

  Mr. Meare was a bit damp about the trousers, but he’d changed his jacket; in place of leather-patched tweed he now sported, Louisa was touched to see, an ancient gunner blazer. He meant to cut a dash indeed, he meant to drive her to the station in style! With what looked like an old pajama leg he carefully dusted the car seats; turfed out a bundle of old newspapers and a dog-odorous blanket. He even gave a swift polish to the door handles and headlamps, before inviting Louisa to enter.

  Louisa entered looking as Londony as she could.—Casting her mind back to Cannes, she even tried to look cosmopolitan. (Or like a model; Louisa was so long-limbed, she practically achieved it—the elegant stretch of leg, the final loose-jointed subsidence.) A glance in the driving mirror confirmed her hat at a suitably cosmopolitan angle, and powder and lipstick both sufficient. As a final gesture of good will she impulsively got out her eyebrow pencil and drew a slight bistered streak up from the corner of each eye.

  “I say!” exclaimed Mr. Meare, in candid admiration. “I’ll feel I’m driving a film star! D’you mind if we slow down through the village?”

  “Not a bit,” quoted Louisa, “so long as I catch my train.”

  “There’s plenty of time, I’ve allowed for it,” said Mr. Meare. “May as well give the natives a treat! Sure you’re quite comfortable?”

  “Perfectly,” said Louisa.

  “Then I’ll just get Molly,” said Mr. Meare.

  Louisa heard him calling all up the garden. From the house, she heard his wife call some protesting reply. But whatever argument took place within, in a matter of moments Molly joined them.—Not in the least like a model looked Mrs. Meare, in her Panama hat, a woolly cardigan thrown hastily about her shoulders; but her beaming smile made her a very agreeable sight.

  “This is all wrong!” she complained happily. “How will anyone take Teddy for a wolf, with me in the back seat?”

  “You do our neighbors an injustice,” said Mr. Meare complacently. “They’ll think you have to keep an eye on me.—We’ll stop at the local on our way back,” he explained to Louisa. “It’s not often I get Molly out on the spree!”

  The parting at the station was genuinely affectionate all round. The Meares waited to see Louisa’s train draw in, and then draw out. Her last glimpse of them was as they stood waving vigorously—Mr. Meare to the left, his wife to the right; it had to be thus, because they were also hand-in-hand.

  7

  The train drew out. Louisa, alone in her compartment, sat reflective and—envious.

  She hadn’t envied, or not much, Mrs. Anstruther and F. Pennon. Louisa might have envied all the good grub going, but she didn’t envy the (prospective) Pennons in their personal relation. They’d probably do well enough—he acquiring a profile and an accomplished hostess, she a gilt-edged meal ticket; no doubt some slight festooning of sentiment, under Enid’s expert hands, would soften the transaction to acceptability. The Meares were something else. In the Meares, Louisa saw something she envied not with her appetite, but with her heart.

  They were just so damned fond of each other, Molly Meare didn’t even see how the paint was peeling. Ted Meare was so fond of his Molly, driving a Londony glamour girl to the station became an innocent domestic joke. (“Which is going to last them for years,” thought Louisa perceptively. For years Molly Meare would remind her husband of that wild excursion!) On a railway platform they stood as unselfconsciously hand-in-hand as a couple of teenagers—more so; with the Meares it was evidently a matter of habit. Louisa pictured them hand-in-hand still, at the local; sitting close together on a hard bench, having a devil of a spree over small sherries.

  “I’ve been on the wrong tack,” thought Louisa. “I don’t need a rich husband, I need a husband like Teddy Meare …”

  On either side of the line, now, small back gardens ran up to small houses. In more than one, a man was digging, or mowing the lawn; in more than one, a woman had come out to bear him company. Louisa fancied a breath of contentment rising up from them, as the scent of limes might have risen, the train running between an avenue of lime trees.

  “What do I want with a lot of money?” thought Louisa. “I can’t want it badly; if I did, I’d have collared old Freddy. It was my subconscious damn well right as usual,” thought Louisa, “I don’t want someone rich, I want someone steady …

  “Who do I know who’s steady?” thought Louisa.

  She had to think a long way back, all the way to Broydon, to the days when she’d skylarked about the evening roads with boys on bicycles. But it wasn’t one of these Louisa at last recalled; against the more sober background of the Free Library—sniffing again the mingled odors of dust, bookbindings, and her own Phul-Nana perfume—she saw the figure of Jimmy Brown edge shyly round from Ceramics to Biography, as she, from Biography, edged round to Ceramics.

  8

  Louisa was the only girl who paid much attention to him. She was already so fond of men, Jimmy’s gangling figure and pebble lenses didn’t put her off, they rather roused her sympathy; she quite often kept a date with him at the Library even if it wasn’t raining. Her reward was an earnest, awkward devotion, which if Louisa didn’t particularly value, she allowed no one else to make game of.

  Contemplating it, and Jimmy, now, she was more appreciative. He mightn’t have been much to look at, but he was steady as a rock.

  He had even, or very nearly (in Mrs. Anstruther’s phrase), people. His father was an optician, and on the Borough Council. His mother had been a schoolteacher. From the rare occasions when she visited them Louisa recalled an upright piano and bound volumes of the National Geographic magazine. She recalled also their quiet pride in the fact that Jimmy was taking a full-time course at the London Polytechnic. “He’ll be better qualified than his father,” said Mr. Brown, “when the time comes to take over!”

  “Louisa ought to go to the Poly too,” said Jimmy earnestly. “She’s got a very good brain, Dad; she has really.”

  But both elders looked at Louisa’s fiery hair and long legs.

  “Louisa’s found her career already,” said Mrs. Brown kindly. “How are you liking it, dear, with Mr. Hughes?”

  Mr. Hughes was the local photographer. Louisa, a sulky if not idle apprentice, said he was all right.

  “In my opinion, it’s still a waste,” stated Jimmy.

  “In my opinion,” said Mr. Brown heartily, “Louisa’ll find herself married to one of her many admirers before she can turn round!”

  Well, he’d been wrong. It wasn’t marriage that took Louisa away from Broydon, it was her own initiative. And after an interval of ten years, if Jimmy himself hadn’t married in the meantime, that same initiative was going to take her back.

  The conclusion was as swift as when she decided to marry F. Pennon; but it will be seen that Louisa, from that same disappointing episode, had learned a modicum of prudence. Jimmy Brown was in fact still a bachelor; but she made sure of it in advance.

  Chapter Nine

  1

  “Is that the optician’s?” asked Louisa, over the telephone.

  She’d already checked in the directory that it was listed under James, not Henry, Brown; fortunately Jimmy hadn’t been named for his father. (Was his father dead, or merely retired? In any case the circumstance was propitious.) Propitious too was the answering voice—not Jimmy’s, but evidently that of a female assistant.

  “Actually it’s Mrs. Brown I want to speak to,” said Louisa cunningly. “Mrs. James Brown. Could you possibly put me through to her?”

  “I’m afraid there’s some mistake,” said the assistant. “There is no Mrs. Brown.”

  Louisa thought rapidly. She had learned all she needed, but didn’t wish the conversation officiously reported …

  The voice sounded conscientious—and prim.

  “I suppose you wouldn’t be interested yourself, in a new type of foundation garment?”

  “Certainly not!” snapped the assistant, and rang off with her lips effectually seale
d.

  2

  Newly prudent, newly cautious Louisa! (Che va piano va sicuro; also softly-softly catchee monkey.) A night’s reflection had convinced her that this time she should not only look before she leaped but should also, so to speak, establish some solid base for unhurried operating. Steadiness has its limitations; however glad to see her, if she simply blew into the shop Jimmy was quite capable of letting her blow out again before he realized, too late, all of gladness the future might hold in store.… Only a semi-permanent relation (say a week) would give him time to get his hocks under him; and a week Louisa was fully prepared to devote.

  Fortunately she had an extremely accurate memory for dogs. (This not in the circumstances an irrelevance; far from it.) After leafing through only two back numbers of Country Month Louisa picked out Ivor and Ivan Cracarovitch, owner Mrs. Arthur Brent, of Broydon Court. The aristocratic address was misleading; even in Louisa’s day Broydon Court had declined to a residential hotel; Mrs. Brent was the proprietress.

  She lifted the receiver again.

  “Mrs. Brent? This is Miss Datchett speaking,” said Louisa, “Datchett Photographer of Dogs. May I tell you I think your borzois are quite magnificent?”

  A flattered unsuspicious babble answered her.

  “It’s just a shame,” continued Louisa, “that they’ve been photographed so badly. I’ve Ivan in front of me now; one doesn’t get the least idea of his quality.”

  “Oh, don’t you think so?” cried Mrs. Brent, distressed. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He looks like a camel colt.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t!” protested Ivan’s owner.—But she sounded shaken nonetheless.

  “Ivor,” continued Louisa remorselessly, “isn’t even standing properly. He’s carrying his tail too high. Really, one could weep.”

  “I didn’t think so very much of Ivor myself,” confessed Mrs. Brent. “But then of course I’m not an expert. I’m not breeding them, you know; I just want to sell them.”

  “That makes it worse,” said Louisa. “Have you had any inquiries?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Mrs. Brent. “I can’t say I have. All the same”—a slight suspicion had evidently infiltrated at last—“I’m afraid I can’t afford to have them taken again …”

  This was no blow to Louisa. What she was working on was the presumption that Broydon Court, as so often in the past, lacked its full quota of residents.

  “Look,” said Louisa, “I’m so impressed I’m not even asking a fee. What I would like is time. I’m prepared to spend if necessary a week—getting to know them, letting them get to know me, waiting to catch exactly the right moment. Then we’d have something really worthwhile.—And as it happens I’ve just got a week free; if you can put me up.”

  Mrs. Brent fell for it.

  3

  A certain caution informed all Louisa’s actions, that morning. She hadn’t seen the milkman; she’d been in the bath. She didn’t see Mr. Ross either; though she spent a couple of hours in his Soho hangout, she was there by ten and gone before he put in an appearance.—Not conscientiousness alone sent her there, she was sincerely grateful to Mrs. Meare for putting her on the right track, and wanted to have done an extra good job for Kerseymere Kennels; almost every negative promising success, she streaked back to Paddington with an easy mind.

  The only other thing that held her up was an unfortunate encounter with Number Ten.

  Louisa did her best to avoid it; perceiving his door half-open, she approached her own almost furtively. But he was evidently on the watch, and even as she slipped her key into the lock, emerged.

  “Miss Datchett!”

  “Hi,” said Louisa, “I’m in a blazing hurry.”

  “Only to say, Miss Datchett—”

  “Not now, d’you mind?” snapped Louisa—remembering amongst other things that Number Ten was due for the brush-off.

  He brushed off very easily. He didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything at all. He just stood there, dumb and humble—with the box of beechnut-jewelry in his hand.

  All arranged neatly on fresh cotton wool; six boutonnières, six brooches, and what looked like, however improbably, a sort of tiara or carcanet. Attached to each was a very small price tag, meticulously (and humbly) figured in green ink.

  The edges of the box itself had been lovingly bound with green passe partout.—The only thing lacking, thought Louisa bitterly, was the one label more: All My Own Work.

  Number Ten moistened his lips.

  “It looks nice, Miss Datchett?”

  Louisa swallowed a curse and lied.

  “I thought you might like to see,” explained Number Ten. “Not to bother you!” he added carefully. “There is no hurry!”

  It had been Louisa’s intention to reach Broydon Court by lunchtime and get in a first free meal; but she’d probably be late as it was …

  He made a little joke.

  “I do not suppose them waiting for these, at the shops!”

  Louisa spent half the afternoon peddling beechnuts. Fortunately she had no doubt where to offer them—only in the most homespun, the most arty and crafty of boutiques would they be so much as looked at. Louisa took a bus to Chelsea. Fortunately again, in each of the establishments she had her eye on she found a man in charge; Louisa with true nobility let it be assumed that her horrible wares were of her own fabrication. (Actually, against a swatch of tweed or hand-woven linen the boutonnières didn’t look so bad; the potential tiara or carcanet Louisa wisely wrote off altogether.) She returned with the box half-emptied and twenty-one shillings in cash; banged on Number Ten’s door, thrust remainders and takings into his hands, refused to be played to on the flute, and at last got down to filling, once again, her airline giveaway bags.

  Thus she didn’t get any lunch at all; and didn’t reach Broydon until nearly five.

  4

  It was a queer sensation, to Louisa, to be staying at Broydon Court.

  In her youth, the Court had been an ultimate symbol of luxury. Once a fine seignorial mansion, and still removed by the breadth of the Common from Broydon’s more commercial paths, the Court was widely believed to accept no inmate under the rank of retired colonel. (A genuine retired admiral set the tone.) To book a table for dinner there the local aspirant required certain influence. Naturally neither Louisa nor anyone she knew had ever set foot inside the place; its glories were bruited among the commonalty by such other infra dig characters as chambermaids or tradesmen, from whom a fascinated public learned that each bedroom had its solid mahogany suite, that the kitchen used a pint of cream a day, and that the cellars were kept full of champagne.—A gardener with a boy under him, too grand in the ordinary way for gossip, mentioned to his friend the chemist not only vineries, but pineries; and though this might be a harking-back to the past, the exotic odor of pineapple undoubtedly persisted, haloing Broydon Court with a quite uncommon aura.

  Thus to find the whole establishment slightly tatty was to Louisa at once a relief and a disappointment.

  “Miss Datchett? How prompt you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Brent.

  “I’m fitting you in,” explained Louisa.

  They passed through the lounge.—It was so large, and so gloomy, it reminded Louisa of Gladstone Mansions. But there are shades of gloom—the chiaroscuro of a Rembrandt, the murk of a bad family portrait; the gloom of the Broydon Court lounge definitely reflected the latter. Only one resident was visible, and she an ancient dame playing patience at a balding card table.

  “Haven’t you still got the Admiral?” asked Louisa impulsively.

  Mrs. Brent looked surprised.

  “Admiral Colley? Do you know him?”

  “Not well,” admitted Louisa. “I’d still like to see him again.”

  “So you will,” said Mrs. Brent, regarding her with new respect. (Perhaps things hadn’t entirely changed, at Broydon Court.) “Though I’m afraid you’ll find him,” she added, “rather inclined to say things he doesn’t mean. Rather silly things
, you know, about the food …”

  Evidently the grub had gone off too, thought Louisa regretfully; it would still be free.—There was mahogany in the bedroom all right. There was so much mahogany, indeed, Louisa had hardly room to turn round. But she recognized her slightly ambiguous status, and after all could have been put a floor higher. She was only on the third.

  “And as soon as you come down,” promised Mrs. Brent, “I’ll have Ivor and Ivan ready to meet you. You’ll find their kennel at the back—”

  “Splendid,” said Louisa.

  Mrs. Brent paused. Between the moment of Louisa’s telephoning, and the moment of her arrival, Mrs. Brent had had time to think; and like many other people who had anything to do with Louisa, had perhaps discovered a need for—fuller explanations.

  “Do you really,” asked Mrs. Brent, “need a whole week? Just to photograph two dogs?”

  Louisa smiled.

  “Just to snap them, of course not. What I’m after—besides of course the straights—is probably the most difficult damn shot on earth. If I can get your dogs in action, together—romping together—we can have a full-page spread in any paper you like. I’m not sure Country Month’s even good enough—”

  “I only thought of getting them in at all,” said Mrs. Brent, quite astonished.

  “I’m not sure they couldn’t be syndicated,” mused Louisa.

  “Syndicated?”

  “Which would do me a lot of good too,” said Louisa frankly. “And that’s why I’m prepared to give a week.”

  She pulled it off all right. Whether or not perfectly convinced, Mrs. Brent was at least silenced; Louisa had successfully established her base.

  5

  The next step was obviously to reconnoiter.—It must be said at once that Louisa had no intention of wasting the next precious hour on Ivor and Ivan. What she intended was to catch Jimmy Brown just before he shut up shop—say at ten to six; it was now nearly half past five, and she reckoned on a twenty minutes’ walk to the High Street. The situation presented certain difficulties, however; though she could probably avoid the kennels (at the back), what further fuller explanations would be needed, of her truancy!