Something Light

by Margery Sharp

  “It’s all off,” said Louisa.

  In the very tones of Hugo Pym—

  “What d’you mean, it’s all off?” demanded Mr. Ross.

  “I’m not going to get married. I’ve changed my mind.”

  At least Rossy had no ax to grind. His concern was disinterested. It was nonetheless extremely irritating to Louisa’s current mood.

  “I remember you phoning me,” said Mr. Ross anxiously. “But if it’s just a matter of settlements—”

  At least, after her conversation with Hugo, Louisa knew at once whom they were talking about; and without a break skated over Jimmy Brown and Mr. Clark to do F. Pennon justice.

  “The settlements would have been all right. They’d have been fine. I just couldn’t stand,” explained Louisa, “the life.”

  Rossy’s concern simply deepened.

  “If there’s a door still open, I’d like you to talk to my sister. She had doubts herself—though I must say not many. Why don’t I get you together?”

  “I wouldn’t waste her time,” said Louisa, “though thank you all the same, Rossy dear. I’m back on the old stand: Datchett Photographer of Dogs.”

  5

  Datchett Photographer of Dogs still had her profession; but it was at low ebb.

  A peculiar mood of cheese-paring seemed to have settled over the entire dog world. No client old or new, during the days that followed, wrote or telephoned to ask Louisa’s services. Already grudging each penny, Louisa wrote or telephoned herself—without results. Even Supreme Champions were making do with last year’s photographs; even the famous York establishment let her down. (“Dear Miss Datchett, fine as the last lot were, we don’t seem to need anything fresh just now. Salaams and all the best.”) The Bow-wows to Baby check was the last to come in.

  What did come in were last month’s bills. The dairy’s was the worst, but even the lesser ones added up alarmingly. Louisa began to wake at four in the morning, adding them.

  It was a new thing for her to wake at all. All her life, hitherto, she’d put her head on her pillow and passed out for the next eight hours. She’d even thought it an inconvenience, that if she didn’t get to bed till three, she didn’t wake up till eleven. Now she woke regularly.

  Her chief liquid assets were the two bottles of brandy pressed on her by F. Pennon when she left Bournemouth. Carried round to a famous wine merchant in St. James’s Street, so astonishing, and authentic, their labels, they almost doubled Louisa’s capital; even so, it was under thirty pounds.

  When the thought of hocking her camera entered her mind, Louisa realized that the time was past for any false pride.

  After all, hadn’t she always photographed en plein air?

  6

  “Look, Rossy,” said Louisa, “outside Burlington House, do they ever have dogs with them?”

  Mr. Ross considered her with what had become a habitual expression of affectionate disapproval. (“Dammit, if I can get over three husbands, why can’t he get over one?” thought Louisa impatiently.)

  “Not that I recall,” said Mr. Ross. “It’s the quarantine.”

  “But just now and again?” pressed Louisa. “They can’t all be foreign visitors! Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a peke in Piccadilly! What I mean is, would the boys mind if I strung along?”

  “I’m not sure I quite see what you’re getting at,” said Mr. Ross uneasily.

  “Well, you say, ‘Take your picture, lady—’”

  “‘Madam,’” corrected Rossy. “Sometimes adding,” he admitted, “‘in that lovely hat.’”

  “Well, I’d say, ‘Take your dog?’”

  Mr. Ross hesitated. He had a genuine affection for Louisa; also strong business instincts. As the two emotions—the sentimental and the professional—struggled in his breast, he looked less and less happy.

  “It wouldn’t do,” he stated at last.

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve told me yourself about getting ’em to stand on tables—sometimes with a bone nailed to it. You couldn’t set up a table with a bone nailed to it in Piccadilly. The police wouldn’t let you.”

  “I don’t have to have a table. I could squat down.”

  “I don’t believe the cops would care for that either. You’d hold up the traffic,” said Mr. Ross firmly, “and get us all a bad name.”

  Louisa paused in turn. Rossy’s cooperation was vital to her. She made a final effort.

  “Look, Rossy,” said Louisa again, “this may be something really big for me. It may be a whole new career. I swear not to poach! Unless there is a dog, I’ll just be admiring the view. Just tell the boys to give me a chance—and you can remind ’em there’ll be no whip-round, now, for a wedding present.”

  It wasn’t her words that swayed him. The boys enjoyed giving wedding presents. They liked to feel the generous sentimental glow. What swayed Rossy was the expression on Louisa’s face.

  “Okay,” sighed Rossy. “I’ll tell ’em. Though you’d still do better, in my opinion, to have a word with Sis.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  1

  High-hearted nonetheless stood Louisa next morning outside Burlington House. Rossy’s word, however reluctantly given, had gone round. Josh and Manny grinned at her companionably, from the opposite side of the street Benny sketched a double-handed boxer’s salute. And if it took a certain courage, on Louisa’s part, so to decline to the pavement, she’d always been, if nothing else, courageous …

  She was there in readiness soon after ten. (Coffee-colored linen suit, beechnut boutonnière brushed free from mites, an appearance altogether as un-dashing as she could make it. She felt the beechnuts a particularly reassuring touch—for country cousins.) Until eleven, however, not so much as a schipperke crossed her field of vision. Mr. Ross bagged a brace of Texans, Josh, an Australian; Benny opposite, a turbaned Sikh. Loyally Louisa hung back, fingering the camera about her neck only as might any tourist; and as at last a dog appeared, loyally the boys hung back in turn; leaving her a clear field.

  Surprisingly, it was a Sealyham.

  The dogs proper to Piccadilly are poodles and Pekingese. Sighting a Sealyham, Louisa for one wild moment (she was a little over-strung) felt as though F. Pennon in person had come to her aid. The resemblance was indeed uncommon: thick, springy, brindled hair, bushy eyebrows, even F. Pennon’s keen and skeptical old eye, were so accurately reproduced in canine miniature, the collar and lead looked to Louisa like a collar and tie.—How thoughtful of old Freddy to wear them! There had been a slight, entirely amicable discussion on the point; any pooch actually carried—any peke, or poodle, tucked under arm—was to count along with its owner as out of Louisa’s field. (“They hold ’em up against their faces,” explained Josh. “And often a good thing too.”) But with the Sealyham, or F. Pennon, trotting on a lead, Louisa hardily advanced.

  “Take your dog, madam?” invited Louisa.

  Her prospects, anthropoid and quadruped, at least halted. Surprisingly again, the anthropoid wasn’t the regulation tweed-clad, county-type Sealyham owner, but a fluttering blonde. (“Dammit, it is F. Pennon!” thought Louisa wildly.) In Mrs. Anstruther’s exact voice—

  “Ducky, someone wants to take your picture!” fluted the anthropoid to her quadruped. “Shall us say yes?”

  Louisa was already down on one knee. Behind her she felt Rossy and Josh emanating waves of encouragement—all disapproving thoughts forgotten, urging her on to make good. The pavement was comparatively unencumbered, the sun was in the right place, and the moment practically historic as Louisa—the first canine photographer in Piccadilly—dropped to one knee and set her shutter at 1/300th.

  Unfortunately, the quadruped said no.

  With an absolute reflection of Freddy’s most ill-tempered glance—called to the telephone, so to speak, in the middle of a cigar—Ducky jerked free his lead and attacked a Western Union messenger. “Stop him!” shouted Mr. Ross. “Catch the b—r!” shouted Josh. “My poor frightened lamb!” wailed the blond
e. Ducky raced on, snapped at two more Sikhs in passing, and nipped a South African delegate to an economic conference.—The latter came out best; as Ducky plunged into the traffic, with all the élan of his ancestral impis he plunged after; and at least brought back news of where the culprit had gone to ground—down the Ladies beside Green Park.

  Meanwhile the pavement round Louisa had become quite crowded. If opinions diverged—all the foreigners agreeing with each other that all dogs were dangerous, all the British agreeing that it was a shame to frighten them—Louisa was equally censured all round. As a policeman approached, she felt the eyes of even Josh and Rossy fixed on her in justified rebuke …

  “Now then, what’s all this?” inquired the policeman.

  (“See what I mean?” sighed Mr. Ross.)

  “He was frightened by the horrid camera!” wailed Ducky’s owner.

  “Now he’s probably biting Ladies right and left,” said the delegate, rather jovially. “You’ll have to send for a policewoman …”

  Fortunately Ducky chose this moment to reappear. No one could have guessed from his demeanor that he’d just been whacked on the behind by a cleaner’s broom; he ambled back through the traffic with all the dreamy, dignified assurance of an absent-minded professor. The sight of the policeman, however, appeared to give him pause; with what Louisa couldn’t help feeling an absolutely cynical switch to pathos, he began to shake all over. “What a shame!” cried one and all—with the exception of a few foreigners—as Ducky crept back to his mistress’s protection. “He was frightened!”

  At least the policeman moved off. He wasn’t looking for trouble. His eye just registered the presence, at the scene of the riot, of Louisa and Josh and Manny and Mr. Ross.

  “See what I mean?” repeated Mr. Ross. “Dogs won’t cooperate. We’re on tricky enough ground as it is, and if one of the public got bit—”

  “Okay,” said Louisa sadly. “You needn’t go on.”

  “It’s not we don’t want you, it’s just that we can’t afford the risk.”

  “Okay,” sighed Louisa; and made the best amends she could by going straight home.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  1

  If at this point Louisa plumbed her professional nadir, there is always this about a nadir, that any subsequent motion must inevitably be upwards.

  Unless, of course, the pendulum has stopped.

  Louisa’s view was that it had. Perhaps this was because she wasn’t eating enough. The debacle in Piccadilly had thoroughly dismayed her; during the succeeding week, in a panic attempt to conserve her capital, she not only didn’t pay any bills, she ate less and less. Remorse kept her from sharing even a cuppa with Mr. Ross; if Hugo Pym had a spare sausage (which was unlikely), she wouldn’t have shared that either, at the price of being urged to make up a nonexistent quarrel with a nonexistent intended. Louisa was down to a steady diet of bread and margarine, she was very nearly pinching Number Ten’s yoghurt, before the pendulum swung up again.

  It hadn’t stopped after all. It had but paused to gather momentum.

  2

  “There was a letter for you,” said the milkman. “I brought it up.”

  “Does it look like a bill?” asked Louisa nervously.

  “No, stuck down,” said the milkman. “Very nice quality envelope.”

  “What’s the postmark?” asked Louisa—still wary.

  “Chesham Oaks,” said the milkman. “Best part of Bucks.”

  It was as a sort of propitiary libation that Louisa took, along with the envelope, a spot of cream.

  3

  She looked at the signature first: Sybil Fox. The name meant nothing to her, but below was typed the encouraging word Secretary. Also the paper itself was crested.

  Dear Miss Datchett (read Louisa)

  Lady Mary Tablet asks me to inquire whether you would be free to come down next Thursday the 11th, at three-thirty, to photograph her corgis? There is a good train from Baker Street at 2:36, and a bus from the station yard will drop you at Chesham Hall. (There is no need to bring any lighting apparatus, as the photographs will be taken out of doors.) I may add that Lady Mary was very much struck by some pictures of poodles you had in the Tatler—she thinks they belonged to some film actress, but cannot remember the name—and would rather like the same sort of thing. Will you kindly let me know if this date suits you, also your fee? Lady Mary suggests three guineas, to include the finished prints.

  Yours truly,

  Sybil Fox

  Secretary

  4

  Datchett Photographer of Dogs kept her head.

  The fee suggested, for half a working day, including prints, was outrageously low; and something told her it was all she could shake down. On the other hand, there is no world more snobbish than the dog world; the corgis of a Lady Mary Tablet would have their own built-in publicity.

  A more disturbing point was what Lady Mary intended by the same sort of thing. The film actress was undoubtedly that Italian star to whom Louisa owed her trip to Cannes; could Lady Mary possibly be contemplating a Rescue by Corgis from Ornamental Water? If so, it would probably take not half a day but half a week, with a few movie technicians thrown in.—Louisa made a hasty check, and gratefully recalled the famous Rescue by Poodles fake as appearing only in the local French press. What then had Lady Mary seen in the Tatler? Louisa searched about, but couldn’t find the issue; she must have left it at Broydon Court. After some thought, however, she remembered a previous shot taken in Green Park, of Coco and Cocotte affectionate to their mistress’s celebrated underpinnings. Louisa had suspected at the time that it was those ankles, rather than those pooches, the Tatler paid for; and was not discouraged. If Lady Mary herself had any ankles at all, if she wasn’t on absolute hockey sticks, something could be managed …

  Fortunately corgis are very low-slung.

  Louisa kept her head, but with increasing difficulty. It was her chance at last. A really good job done on Lady Mary’s corgis, and ankles, could put Datchett Photographer of Dogs into the very top class.

  —And how had it come to her, that chance? Through keeping her mind on her work. Inconceivable, in Green Park—before she’d heard from F. Pennon, before remembering Jimmy Brown, before encountering Mr. Clark—that she should have forgotten to load her camera! (“If I’d kept my mind on my work at Broydon,” thought Louisa, “I’d have syndicates bidding now, for that shot of Ivor and Ivan.”) It was astonishing, now, to remember how easily she’d let the rot set in: she’d just felt jaded one morning, had a talk with the milkman about Ibsen—was that really all, had no more than that been sufficient to arouse her so disastrous impulse towards matrimony? It seemed so; not otherwise, now, could Louisa account for her subsequent aberrations …

  “I was a fool, but I’ve learnt my lesson,” thought Louisa. “I’m not the marrying sort. But what I am is a damned good photographer of dogs, and here’s my chance, it’s all I ask, and I’m going to take it.”

  She answered Miss Fox, Secretary, by return of post. (To telephone, or telegraph, might look over-eager.) The three days that intervened before the eleventh she spent mostly in bed, conserving energy; also she dipped so far into her capital as to add to her diet of bread and margarine sardines and kippers.

  5

  Taking every possible pain with her appearance, on the crucial day, Louisa oddly enough found herself dressing for Chesham Hall as for the pavement outside Burlington House. (Discreet coffee-colored linen, spray of beechnuts on shoulder.) This time however, she added a hat, a practically county hat, a green felt porkpie once worn by Bobby at Cannes. Louisa stuffed as much of her hair under it as she could; her rowdy locks were always a weak point, when it came to inspiring professional confidence, and she was taking no chances.

  She was taking no chances. She was resolved to keep her mind strictly on the job, also not to waste an ounce of energy until she reached Chesham Hall.

  Before boarding her train she looked for a compartment without a man in
it—men in trains constituted a particular hazard. (All too often, getting out at their destinations, they told Louisa how much better they felt for talking to her; leaving Louisa flat as a pancake. Sometimes she even had to get out herself; once, and three stations early, to accompany a nervous juvenile to his audition at a local rep.; which was how she’d first met Hugo Pym.) At that hour, half past two in the afternoon, and headed out of London, the train was by no means full: on the other hand, this allowed the native passion for privacy full play; to each smoker its solitary occupant—the worst possible hazard—and past each Louisa’s experienced eye hurried her on. As she reached the last, doors were being slammed all down the train; Louisa nonetheless, perceiving again a solitary male within, hesitated. The young man looked cheerful enough, indeed uncommonly so; but appearances could deceive, and Louisa was taking no chances. Sticking her head through the door—

  “Are you in any sort of trouble?” asked Louisa forthrightly.

  As well he might, the young man looked surprised. But only for a moment. He was evidently a true child of his age.

  “Is it for the telly?” he countered interestedly.

  “No, just a private poll,” said Louisa.

  “Then put me in the opposite column,” said the young man—disappointed but still cheerful.

  Louisa entered and relaxed. The train drew out. With a whole side of the carriage to herself, she had plenty of room for her long legs. She stretched them comfortably out, and deliberately slackened every muscle; allowing herself to be swung with the train’s motion limp as a rag doll. If now and then there was a jolt, it didn’t worry Louisa; it merely kept her from dozing completely off. “An hour of this is just what I need,” thought Louisa. “It must be as good as Zen …”

  She didn’t exactly kick off her shoes, but she loosened her heels; the train did the rest. At eye level opposite an impression of Burnham Beeches pleased without exciting; rather soothed …