But as the war dragged on, I noticed that the old girl was getting a little restless. In 1944 a letter reached me in the dried-out river bed beneath Monte Cassino. It began:
Darling Patrick—
Don’t know why I feel so blue lately, but I do. This empty house, the terrible loneliness in crowds of people. Of course I’m busy as can be with my work, but, oh, the impersonality of it. I know that woman’s first function is motherhood and …
That was all I read. There was a terrible rushing noise and a crash. The next thing I knew I was in a British hospital in Caserta with a wistful Tommy orderly who kept saying, “It’s a good job we saved yer leg, chum. Now ’ow about a nice cup of ’ot Ovaltine?”
It was May when the hospital ship docked at New York. I thanked all the ocean-going doctors and nurses, waived the services of a Red Cross ambulance, and hobbled off the pier. By acting a lot lamer than I actually was, I managed to flag down a wartorn taxicab and bounced off to Washington Square. I arrived at Auntie Mame’s big front door just as she was coming out of it, looking suitably ethereal in her Gray Lady costume.
“Darling!” she screamed. “Darling, darling boy!” She threw her arms around me and burst into tears. Then she dragged me into her empty drawing room and mixed two strong Cuban gins. “Hallelujah!” she cried, flinging a copy of Stendhal across the room. “I was going out to the hospital to read La Chartreuse de Parme aloud to our boys. But now that you’re home, my little love, now that you’re home, I feel that you’ll give me the strength to take advantage of the most wonderful challenge that has ever come my way. Oh, darling, this is a stroke of fate. Now, with you at my side—game leg and all—I feel that I can get off the periphery of la guerre and right into the thick of it.”
“What are you talking about? Are you going to enlist?”
“Oh, Patrick dearest, the most wonderful thing has just happened. Well, a terrible thing, really, but wonderful for me. La, it’s an ill wind et cetera. But here is the fate for which every daughter of Eve was born and now, with you by my side, I can go out and meet it.”
“What is this?” I asked.
“Well, my dear, just this morning I heard the news. There’s a Mrs. Armbruster out in Southampton—she’s a widow, like me, but years older—who’s taken in six adorable little English war refugees for the duration. And today my commanding officer in the A.W.V.S. called to say that poor dear Mrs. Armbruster had just dropped dead. Isn’t that marvelous!”
“It’s just great,” I said. “What did you have against her?”
“Oh, nothing darling. She was a perfect saint. But, Patrick, my commandant was wondering if I could take one … or perhaps two … of them, and I wanted to so badly. But something held me back. Now, however, with you here”—she fixed me with a glittering eye—“I know that I can provide a mother and a father for all six of them.”
“Hey, listen …” I began. It was too late. She was already at the telephone.
Auntie Mame could move fast when she wanted to, and in a matter of ten days she’d rented a large house out on Long Island, placed all of her servants at Sperry Gyroscope to do their bit—except for Ito, who was Japanese and suspect—and closed the house in town, bought a lot of country clothes and a secondhand station wagon for twice what it should have cost new. Then she resigned from all of her militaristic organizations to devote full time to being the little mother. I hadn’t even a chance to tell her that I wasn’t vaguely interested in raising six children before Ito was steering the station wagon up the drive of what was to be our home for the duration.
Auntie Mame never did anything by halves, and I must admit to being rather impressed by the place she’d leased. It was called Peabody’s Tavern, and it was an authentic pre-Revolutionary building of some twenty rooms. It absolutely stank with atmosphere. There were five plaques next to the front door proclaiming the treaties signed within, the remarkable age and state of preservation of the structure, and other notes of interest to the historian. It was beautifully landscaped, and the lawn looked like a giant putting green.
Miss Peabody herself, who told us four times that she was the tenth generation to live there, greeted us at the double-hung door. She was a bony old piece and a crashing snob. She didn’t allow a minute to pass before she told us that she was a Daughter of the American Revolution, a Colonial Dame, a Daughter of the Cincinnati, a Mayflower Descendant, and a number of other dreary things. She ran over the major historical events that had occurred in the tavern during the past two or three hundred years, described the annual pilgrimage which a lot of antiquarians made there every spring, and dragged out a bulky scrapbook filled with photographs of the rooms which had appeared in Antiques and House and Garden and Country Life and a lot of other fancy places.
Miss Peabody served us a very light and very bad luncheon on Lowestoft and then took us on a little tour of the house, pointing out the authentic Revere wallpaper, the authentic Windsor chairs, the authentic Copley portraits of bygone Peabodys, the authentic hewn beams and pegged floors. She touched each warming pan and pewter mug and hooked rug as though it were a bit of the True Cross. Auntie Mame, looking very much the country gentlewoman, all tweed and a shooting stick, stifled several yawns and expressed a counterfeit fascination with the whole place.
After impressing us for two solid hours, Miss Peabody handed us a copy of the inventory which set the value of the furnishings at just under one hundred and seventy thousand dollars and said for the fourth time that she’d never before dreamed of renting her house, but what with Auntie Mame being such a lady, and what with the war and the high taxes, she’d make an exception just this once. She was also sticking Auntie Mame five hundred bucks a month for rent.
“Isn’t this place kind of fragile for a lot of kids?” I began.
Auntie Mame shot me a dark look that meant Shut Up. But Miss Peabody was so busy pointing out the hand-blown glass in the fanlight that she hadn’t even heard. “Well, I’ll be running along now, Mrs. Burnside,” Miss Peabody said, drawing on her gloves. “I cawn’t tell you how happy I am to be able to give two true connoisseurs the opportunity of living here. Ta ta!” She got into her car and drove off.
Auntie Mame took off her tweed jacket, wiped her brow, poured two stiff drinks, and then flitted about the enormous rooms of the tavern. “Oh, darling, don’t you just adore this quaint old place! Not quaint like the Upsons’, but really old and authentic and homey. I just can’t wait to get over to the hardware and buy pots and pots of paint in heavenly soft shades—simply do this place over. You know how interested psychologists are in color therapy nowadays. And think of the balm to the war-frazzled nerves of those poor displaced little darlings when they romp through these restful old rooms.”
“What does Miss Peabody think of your repainting her museum?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Auntie Mame said, flicking an ash into a Worcester bowl. “I haven’t told her about it yet.”
“Don’t you think you’d better ask her?”
“I thought it would be more fun to surprise her, darling.”
“But is that going to be Miss Peabody’s idea of fun?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t be such a stick, Patrick. I can see the war has done little to soften you.”
“It rarely has that effect.”
“Well if you … Heavens,” she said looking at her watch, “we’ll have to fly if we’re ever to get to Southampton to pick up the wee ones. I told Miss Pringle we’d be there at three sharp. She’ll be all packed and so will the children. That should get us back here in time for tea. We must get into the daily teatime habit. It’s so important for those little Britons to be made aware of their country’s customs, torn up by the roots as the poor waifs are. Psychologically it’s very bad to have the behavior pattern interrupted during the formative years.”
It was almost four when we arrived at the saddened home of the late Mrs. Armbruster. It was one of those Stately
Homes sort of places, but as we got closer, it looked kind of seedy and rundown to me. I was surprised that this latter-day saint and social leader would have allowed her house to go to rack and ruin that way, but I chalked it up to wartime shortages. There were a lot of kids chasing each other around the lawn, and a wild-eyed woman pacing up and down the driveway with a kind of hunted expression on her face.
“Hello! Hello!” Auntie Mame called gaily. “Are you Miss Pringle? I’ve come for the children.”
“Thank God!” Miss Pringle said. “It’ll be paradise to get away.”
“My dear, I can imagine it will. How terrible for the little ones to dwell in a house of sorrow after poor Mrs. Armbruster’s, um, passing.”
“She had all the luck,” Miss Pringle said, but Auntie Mame wasn’t listening. “Well, I guess I’d better round ’em up. Hey, you kids,” she shouted, “come over here and step on it.” The children ignored her. “By God,” she snarled, “I’d like for just once in my life to call those brats and have them pay some attention. Hey, Edmund! Cut the horsing. Get that gang together and come on. Albert, you look after Margaret Rose. No, I didn’t say push her down, I said … Gladys! Damn you anyhow!”
“There,” Auntie Mame whispered, “is a woman who has no love or understanding of little folk. And a sorry sight it is. I must try to indoctrinate her with a few basic tenets of child psychology.”
“Maybe you’d better wait until she gets them into the car before you do any indoctrinating,” I said.
“Oh, the little darlings,” Auntie Mame cooed. “The pink and gold of the English complexion. So Yardley!”
Auntie Mame was myopic and too vain to wear her glasses, but my beady eyes were sharp enough to see that Yardley would have gone bankrupt generations ago if it turned out many skins like these. They were typical of the squat, knobby-kneed, rake-ribbed Cockney kids you see in London slums, and five years with the saintly Mrs. A. had done nothing to improve them.
Eventually Miss Pringle got the six of them lined up at the car. Auntie Mame smiled beatifically and spoke to them in her best Fairy Godmother manner. “Good afternoon, my little English cousins. My name is Mrs. Burnside, but you must all call me Auntie Mame.”
“Coo lumme,” the oldest said. The rest burst into peals of laughter.
Auntie Mame looked a bit startled, but she laughed, too. “Merriment,” she said in a brief aside to me, “is the best medicine, after all. And this,” she continued with a sweeping gesture toward me, “is my nephew, who’s just come back from being wounded with the British fighting forces.”
Someone made a rude noise.
“Now,” Auntie Mame continued, “as long as we’re all going to live together—till the lights go on again all over the world …”
“Aow, not that dreeery aold tune!” the eldest girl screamed.
“As I was saying,” Auntie Mame went on, a little louder, “since we’re all going to live together for a while, I shall be wanting to know your names. Now, you first,” she said cordially to the biggest boy.
“Call me Jack the Rippah, baby,” he shouted with a show of badly neglected teeth. The others were convulsed.
“How do you do, Jack,” Auntie Mame said.
“You’ll call him nothing of the kind,” Miss Pringle snapped. “His name’s Edmund Jenkins and he’s the meanest male ever born.”
“Jack or Edmund, I still like you,” Auntie Mame beamed brightly. “And your name?” she said, nodding toward an over-developed young girl.
“Oim Loidy Oiris Mountbattink, yore ’oighness,” she sneered.
Miss Pringle lost her temper. She stepped forward and cuffed the girl. “Gladys Martin, mind your manners, you impudent little trollop!”
“Please, Miss Pringle,” Auntie Mame said. “If she wants to be called Iris, I’m sure we’ll be happy to please her. And you?” she said to the next.
“Give your names and no funny business,” Miss Pringle growled.
“Enid Little, mum,” the child said.
“That was very sweet, Enid. You’re quite a polite young lady.”
Gladys/Iris snorted nastily.
“Moy nyme is Albut, mum,” a mincing little voice announced. “Albut Andrews, an’ this is me bybee sistah, Mogrut Rose.” Albert was a wizened brat with adenoids, and his sister, the youngest of the lot, was a pretty, large-eyed youngster of six.
“I’m happy to meet you both,” Auntie Mame said graciously. “And I know that Margaret Rose is going to be our little princess.”
“Grubby little bitch,” a voice said.
Auntie Mame turned to the speaker. “Why, you—the little boy with the beautiful red hair—don’t you like our little Princess Margaret Rose?”
“Naow.”
“Well, suppose you tell me your name.”
“Naow.”
“’Is nyme’s Ginger,” Albert simpered.
“I’m happy to meet you, Ginger. Shake?” Auntie Mame said, holding out her hand.
“Naow.”
“Very well, if you don’t really want to. Now, shall we go to our new house, so we can all have tea there?”
There was a general clamoring. Finally the kids got their luggage piled onto the station wagon and themselves into it. Miss Pringle sat in front with Auntie Mame, and I sat in the rear, next to Gladys/Iris, with the rest of the kids piled around us. I could have sworn Gladys was trying to play footie with me all the way back.
A quarrel started as we were driving through Quogue, but Auntie Mame avoided open warfare by calling out: “Sing, sing! What shall we sing?”
“Let’s sing ‘Igh Jig-a-Jig, Fuck a Little Pig,’ ” Edmund roared. Miss Pringle wheeled around with her dukes up, but Auntie Mame smoothed things over by saying, “I don’t believe I know that song, Edmund.”
“I do,” I said.
In the end we all sang “Begin the Beguine,” Gladys’ choice, during which she whispered, “This song alwys mykes me evah so passionate.”
We got back to the Peabody Tavern at six. Ito had done Japanese flower arrangements in all the vases, but after the kids had been there fifteen minutes it was obvious that his efforts had been wasted.
“Now children,” Auntie Mame said, a nervous edge in her voice, “first we must all choose our bedrooms. There are lots of them in this lovely old house. Don’t you all think it’s lovely?”
“Naow,” Ginger said.
“Well, Ginger,” Auntie Mame went on diplomatically, “perhaps you’ll get to like it. It was once a famous old tavern when our country was at war with … Well, it was a famous old tavern. Now I think we’ll pick our rooms.” She marched smartly up the stairs, the children thundering behind her. “Ladies first. Gladys, where would you like to sleep?”
“With ’im,” Gladys smirked, gesturing toward me.
“Oh,” Auntie Mame said. “Well, I’m afraid that Patrick has only one bed in his room.”
“Don’t moind,” Gladys said, giving me the eye.
Finally the rooms on the second and third floors were doled out. “Now,” Auntie Mame called, “all of you unpack and please wash, then we’ll have tea down in the library. Come along, Patrick. Come, Miss Pringle, let’s just give the darlings a chance to get acclimated.” We followed her downstairs. “Now, Miss Pringle, I’ve saved you a nice bed-sitting room on the ground floor so you can get away from the kiddies once in a while. Oh, didn’t you bring your bags in, Miss Pringle?”
“I certainly did not.”
“But, Miss Pringle, I don’t quite …”
“Listen, Mrs. Burnside, my distinct understanding was that you were going to take over. I’m going to New York.”
“But, Miss Pringle,” Auntie Mame said, “I was led to believe that you were coming along with the children as a sort of supervisor, just as you were for Mrs. Armbruster. Your salary is …”
“Listen, dearie, I wouldn’t spend another night under the
same roof with those Dead End kids for a million bucks.”
“But, Miss Pringle,” Auntie Mame said in pretty confusion, “who’s to look after the bathing, the dressing, all those details? I simply assumed that …”
“Well, I simply assume that I’m not. Look here, Mrs. Burnside. I understand your point of view. It’s very patriotic, unselfish, One World—all that sort of stuff. I had it myself a year ago. I’d just graduated from Hunter—a psych major twenty-one years old. Look at me now: gray hair! I’m the seventeenth woman on this job in five years. Girl before me had a complete nervous collapse. You should see her! But eight months with those hellions is enough for me. Now, you don’t have to bother with taking me to the station. You paid my salary just fine, and thanks. You didn’t know what you were getting in for and I’m sorry—truly sorry. But I’m going into New York tonight if I have to walk. Hell, I’d hoof it to Frisco to get away from them”—she jerked a thumb toward the stairs. “Good-by and good luck, I only hope you don’t end up on a slab like Mrs. Armbruster.” She marched out of the door.
So we were alone, just the two of us and Ito with six little savages screaming their lungs out. The English children hated tea—“No bloody cuppa muck fa me,” Edmund said—and insisted on Coca-Cola. The kitchen stove, also an antique, had an immediate aversion to both Ito and Auntie Mame, and she burned herself very badly. She also burned the soup and cut herself trimming the sandwiches. The oranges she gave the children had been a terrible mistake, and the authentic beams in Miss Peabody’s dining room dripped juice and seeds for many days. Ito was terrified of the children and cowered in the kitchen, too undone to be of any use that first night, so it was up to Auntie Mame and me to do the dishes.
“Now run into the other room and play, darlings,” Auntie Mame said with false brightness, “for just one hour and then off to slumberland.”
Auntie Mame Page 23