One of the Family

by Monica Dickens

  ‘Dr Buckmaster said you were having too many sugary things.’

  ‘It isn’t for me, it’s for Laura.’

  He did not expect to be believed, and both children were allowed to take the little hammer and tap off triangular pieces of Palm toffee from a big block. Gwen bought Curiously Strong peppermints for herself, and the three of them took off their gloves and strolled home sucking and chewing, to deliver the cutlets for the Master’s lunch. With Dicky scouting ahead, the basket bumping awkwardly against his knickerbockers, and Laura’s sticky hand in hers, Gwen thought happily: This is what they mean by being fulfilled. The magazines she read told her she should be that, as a wife and mother. Her daughter Madge thought it jolly bad luck that she had never had a chance to do anything; but this was enough. Gwen forgot her world of servants and nannies, and exchanged a complicit smile with a fat breathless woman with a baby and two dirty toddlers: This is what we do.

  Back at No. 72, with the purchases sent down to the kitchen and Mrs Roach’s complaints about the size of the kidneys appeased, Gwen kept the children in the drawing room with her, so that it would look nice and domestic for Leonard when he came home. He loved his wife when she was feathery and frivolous, but also when she was cosily maternal. Just as he loved her to be dependent on him – ‘Oh Leo, you do that, I’ll never understand it’ – but also to sympathize when he was low – ‘Don’t worry, darling. Gwen will make it all right.’ People like her daughter, and her sister-in-law Vera who was here and there like a dragonfly, thought she did nothing, but she was quite busy being what was expected of her.

  Laura, who loved any game involving money, played with the old tin hussar who shot pennies into the gaping thick-lipped mouth of the blackamoor, once Leonard’s father’s toy. Dicky got the puff billiards from the bottom cupboard of the tallboy, and he and Gwen sat on the hearthrug by the fire to play.

  The front-door bell rang. Had Leonard’s latchkey come off his watch chain?

  ‘I’ll go!’ Dicky said, but his mother was still puffing at the ball from her side, so he had to go on squeezing the bulb of his blower, or she might score. They were both frantic with laughter when Flora opened the door and said, ‘Mr Taylor is here.’

  Mr Taylor? Oh heavens, the intriguing man at the musicale who had looked with such speculative pleasure at her and Madge. Before Gwen could say, ‘Show him in,’ he was in, walking past Flora at the open door.

  With no time to get up, Gwen sat back on her heels and held up an arm, seeing it rise pale and elegant from the fallen-back wide sleeve.

  ‘Mrs Morley.’ He took her hand. ‘May I?’ He tightened his hold to pull her to her feet, then changed his mind and loosed it to sit quickly down on the rug, as if he were not a stranger. Gwen was surprised at him, but not offended. He took a puffer bulb out of the box. ‘May I play?’

  Dicky thought he was topping, and Laura left the penny hussar and came to join in.

  Dicky pushed her away. Laura squared her mouth ready to cry.

  ‘She’s too young. She can’t puff.’

  ‘She can with me.’ Mr Taylor put his hand over the little girl’s and squeezed for her, to make a high score, and win. Gwen had the feeling that he invariably won at games, like Dicky, who shouted, ‘Fluke! Play again and I’ll beat you.’

  ‘No.’ Gwen was getting up from the floor gracefully. ‘We are going to have a glass of Madeira. Please fetch the tray.’

  Oh, pooh, Dicky thought as he brought in the decanter and small glasses from the dining room. They’re going to sit on furniture and be grown-up. He went upstairs. Laura asked Mr Taylor, ‘Have you got any pennies? I want to fill Sambo up before I empty him,’ and went back to the hussar.

  Bella had a throat. This was the first of the many colds she expected to have this winter. Her mother was out in her big fur hat, lunching with a friend who had once been lady-in-waiting to a minor Austro-Hungarian princess, and her father took no heed of any colds except his own, beyond telling Bella to stop clearing her throat in that exasperating way. When she had been deprived of her governess and sent north to a Spartan boarding school, she had ended up in the cottage hospital with pneumonia, because her father had not believed that she was ill enough to be brought home.

  Now she went where she always went in need: to No. 72. When she entered the drawing room with her face flushed and swollen and her throat on fire, it was embarrassing to find a strange man sitting with her aunt Gwen by the fire on one of the chintz chairs that were less elegant than the furniture at Ladbroke Lodge but more comfortable.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She felt clumsy. ‘I didn’t Know you –’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bella. Gome in and shut the door, you’re making a draught. My niece, Bella Morley. This is Mr Taylor.’

  ‘How are you, Miss Morley?’

  A rather stylish man in his thirties, clean-shaven, good-looking, though not as handsome as golden-bearded Gerald Lazenby, Bella’s touchstone of the moment. Mr Taylor was tall enough to have to bend slightly towards Bella as he took her hand, which luckily was still gloved. She had an ugly chilblain on it already, hardly fair in November.

  ‘I’m quite well, thank you,’ she fibbed.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He made two caressing syllables of it. His eyes were dark brown with amber flecks, concerned for her.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘I think you are not,’ Mr Taylor said kindly, and Aunt Gwen added, ‘You sound dreadful, dear. You shouldn’t have come out.’

  ‘My mother is not at home and I have no medicine. I wanted to ask you for some of your Mindeterer’s spirit.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Gwen reached towards the bell, but Mr Taylor raised an eyebrow and asked, ‘You put your faith in Professor Mindeterer, then?’

  ‘We do, yes.’

  ‘It makes your eyes water and the top of your head blow off steam, so you seriously believe it’s clearing the passages?’ Was he mocking them?

  ‘It helps me,’ Bella said huskily, and Aunt Gwen, who swore by Mindeterer’s, said hopefully, ‘We like the advertisements.’

  ‘I see.’ Mr Taylor’s voice had sharpened from being soft and sympathetic to a more authoritative tone. ‘If you have faith in it, it will do you good?’ His upward inflection carried a hint of a regional accent.

  ‘What else would you suggest?’

  Aunt Gwen was in danger of laughing lazily at him, but he anticipated her, and laughed himself. His teeth were almost as white and strong as Gerald Lazenby’s, but less prominent. ‘It would be pree-sumptuous of me to tell your niece what to do.’

  ‘Do you know?’ Aunt Gwen narrowed her grey eyes and curved up her closed mouth like a cat.

  ‘If it was up to me, I had rather see her simply take eight or ten drops of camphor on a lump of sugar every two hours.’

  ‘That sounds too harmless.’ Gwen preferred remedies that scoured and burned and tasted drastic.

  ‘I always get such dreadfully heavy colds, you see.’ Bella’s throat felt as if it had swallowed a horsehair bolster.

  ‘Every winter?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said thickly. ‘This is just the first.’

  ‘Then let it be the last.’

  He touched her arm lightly, felt that it was hot and moved his fingers down to hold her wrist.

  ‘Do you know how to take her pulse?’

  ‘Well ...’ Mr Taylor gave Gwen his charming tilted smile. ‘I am by way of being a medical man.’

  ‘A doctor!’ Aunt Gwen and Bella were impressed. Because there was so much illness, real or imagined, doctors were held in some esteem, even though they were often at best no help and at worst dangerously wrong.

  When the master of the house came in and Laura rushed to jump up and greet him, Gwen told him at once, ‘Mr Taylor is a doctor, Leonard.’

  ‘Of a kind. I hope you don’t object to my calling on you, Mr Morley. I believe it’s correct for the lady to call first.’

  ‘I never can remember,’ Gwen murmured.
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br />   ‘But I was afraid I might not see your delightful family again, and so ...’

  ‘How did you know our address?’

  ‘Discreet inquiries.’ Mr Taylor smiled broadly at Leonard and clapped him on the arm as if they were already friends. ‘How are the ironworks, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Very fine indeed, sir, very fine. May I interest you in any wrought-iron lamps today?’ The Assistant Manager caricatured his ‘Our Mr Morley’ manner.

  Flora Bolt came in and made questioning faces under her parlourmaid cap at Gwen, who said, ‘You will join us for luncheon, of course, Mr Taylor?’

  ‘You’re too kind. I have an appointment. I hope I haven’t held you up?’

  ‘Not at all. Bella? We can stretch the cutlets, I’m sure.’ She spread her arms vaguely.

  ‘I couldn’t eat anything. I think I’ll go home and lie down and – and...’ She looked at Mr Taylor. ‘And try the camphor.’

  ‘May I go and look for a taxicab?’

  ‘So kind of you, Dr Taylor, but Bella only lives a few yards up the road, in Kensington Park Gardens.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll be happy to accompany Miss Morley.’

  Although Bella liked No. 72 Chepstow Villas – square, unpretentious, welcoming – better than four-storey Lad-broke Lodge with its high haughty windows and imposing entrance, she quite enjoyed its effect on someone who brought her home for the first time.

  ‘Very impressive,’ Mr Taylor said dutifully. Bella ran her hand over the head of the left-hand black leopard, before he followed her up the wide marble steps.

  She did not have a latchkey, as Madge did. Her mother liked to know at what time she came home, and saw nothing wrong in keeping one of the servants up to let her in. The butler Hurd opened the front door and raised his circumflex eyebrows to see Miss Bella in such personable male company. Wait until he sees Gerald Lazenby when he calls for me soon with a formal request to be a guest at Heckworth House for the Lord Lieutenant’s Yuletide ball, thought Bella.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye.’ Tobias Taylor stood on the front step as Bella went past Hurd into the hall.

  ‘Won’t you come in?’

  ‘I should be off. Well . ..’ He was looking round the rather splendid hall with interest. ‘Just for a moment, then, just to make sure you are going to be all right.’

  ‘Come and meet my father.’ Dr Taylor and Hugo Morley might impress each other.

  ‘He is in the dining room, Miss Bella,’ the butler said. ‘He did not wait for you.’

  ‘Is he angry?’ No, Bella, no. Don’t demean yourself to this supercilious servant. Don’t let Mr Taylor see you are afraid. ‘I mean,’ she covered it up before Hurd could anwer. ‘He won’t mind if we disturb him?’

  Hurd opened the dining room door. ‘You’re late,’ Hugo Morley said at once. ‘Meals start on time in this house, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  Bella was glad that Mr Taylor did not retreat at this welcome, but stepped quite boldly into the room.

  ‘Father, this is Mr – Dr Taylor. He was visiting Aunt Gwen, and he walked me home.’

  ‘Good afternoon, doctor.’ Bella’s father stood up, still holding his napkin, to show that he was going to sit down to eat again in a moment.

  The men shook hands, and Hugo asked whether the doctor was in practice in London.

  ‘Since fairly recently. I have been working and studying abroad.’

  Bella was intrigued, but her father was clearly more interested in his cooling fricassee than in Tobias Taylor, who apologized for his interruption and stood back.

  Hugo Morley grunted and sat down. ‘Sit at the table, Bella. You’ll have to miss the soup.’

  ‘I don’t want any lunch today, Father.’ He accepted that without comment other than an instruction to Hurd about the sweet which kept the butler in the dining room, so that Bella was able to let Dr Taylor out herself.

  He turned back to her on the top step, looking protectively down on her, which was nice from a tall man. ‘Camphor,’ he said. ‘White sugar. Bed rest.’

  Briefly, she thought his eyes disrobed her into a nightdress. She shut the heavy door quickly and listened behind it to his brisk footsteps going away, and then the sound of hoofs and wheels and his assured voice calling, ‘Cabbie!’

  Dr Taylor, eh? Well, why not, if it pleased them? If Toby had not been so unfairly dismissed from the school of medicine, he would own that title by right. ‘It is an offence for anyone falsely to assume a title or description implying him to be a legally qualified medical practitioner.’ But he had never called himself Dr Taylor. The Morleys had done that.

  Nice family, the Morleys. Ordinary, middle middle class, comfortable, contented, the famous ancestor a flash in the pan. Miss Bella a misfit, for some reason which he might or might not discover. Her father, a bit nouveau, but riche as well, trying to be a tyrant, but perhaps no worse than thousands of other self-important fathers, whose daughters accepted a certain fear of them as a fact of life.

  Among the London people known to Tobias Taylor, both socially and as patients, he had several contacts of some note or glitter, and others at the more questionable end of the scale. He did not often get to know stable bourgeois folk like the Morleys. He had never been part of a family. How would he see them again? Mrs Morley had spoken of a large clan. They might not need him. He must offer them something attractive.

  *

  ‘If your throat was bad enough to put you off your food,’ Bella’s mother wanted to know, ‘why did you go out into the cold?’

  ‘I wanted to get some medicine from Aunt Gwen.’

  ‘Madge could have brought it round, or one of the maids.’

  ‘Yes.’ From her bed, Bella watched her mother cruise about the room, touching things as if she were taking an inventory, closing an open book, reading a half-written letter on the desk. Charlotte did not go into the subject of Dr Taylor, but she had received a full report.

  ‘With me not at home, was it appropriate to bring a strange man to interrupt your father’s luncheon?’

  ‘He is a friend of Aunt Gwen and Uncle Leonard’s.’

  ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of him. Who are his people? Your father thought him a bit of a bounder.’

  ‘Oh, Mother.’ Bella had been reading comfortably against the pillows in a warm flannel nightgown. Now she shifted about, restless and scratchy. The book dropped to the floor. ‘Father grumbles at me for not knowing any young men. When I do bring someone home, he’s got to find fault.’

  ‘Don’t speak against your father.’ This was one of Charlotte’s sayings, to ward off divided loyalty and comply with the duties of wife and mother. She was not cruel, as Hugo was. She was actually a fairly kind woman underneath the Victorian Teutonic snobbery, but too limited and cowardly to open any doors on truth.

  Bella looked so ugly, poor child, slipped awkwardly down in the bed with her hair all tangles and her big nose red and swollen. ‘If I was to have only one daughter,’ Hugo had recently asked the Almighty, ‘why this?’ And Charlotte had not even murmured, ‘Hugo – please,’ and glanced at the butler to see if he had heard. She had felt herself sitting there like a stuffed parrot. She had missed her opportunity. She was an accomplice by default, in something that was savagery. Because Bella had been there in the room.

  Remembering this with shame, she made an attempt to please her daughter by asking, ‘If you haven’t heard about the Yuletide ball yet, would you like me to get in touch with Mrs Lazenby?’

  ‘No.’ Bella scowled.

  ‘Why not? I could –’

  ‘Because I have heard.’

  ‘From Gerald?’

  ‘It’s all arranged.’

  ‘Splendid, dear.’ Bella knew that her mother knew she was lying. ‘We’ll have to think about the chartreuse taffeta.’

  Lies were easier than truth. Why didn’t everyone use them more often to deflect hurt? If you were caught out, you told another lie, and then another, if necessary, until the whole thing had beco
me so complicated that your tormentors were as confused as you were.

  ‘In any case,’ Bella said later to Sybil Crocker, the parlourmaid, ‘they don’t always believe me when I am telling the truth.’

  Charlotte and Hugo had gone out. Bella had not ordered any supper sent up, but when she woke after a sleep, she felt better. She had been tapping out ten drops of camphor every hour, to double the recommended two hourly dose. There, see – it had worked. Who was this Tobias Taylor?

  ‘Let it be the last,’ he had instructed her, as if you could control extrinsic, omnipotent things like colds and chills. The family doctor, Dr Buckmaster, ‘Little Bucky’, as he was proprietarily called, although he was of medium height, talked of illness as an attacker. ‘The enemy is storming the gates,’ he liked to say lugubriously. Bacteria were ‘foreign hordes’ against which you were powerless. What was this Taylor person talking about?

  Now that her throat was less sore, Bella was hungry. She could have rung the bell, but she was lonely, too, so she swung her sturdy legs down off the high bed, put on a dressing gown and slippers and went down to the servants’ sitting room.

  Sybil Crocker was her friend. Observing how Madge had made a friend of Flora Bolt, she saw that it could be done, especially with a parlourmaid who was more refined than slap-bang Flora. Sybil was an enigma, but Bella thought she was her friend. She wanted her to be. To that end, she sometimes made the mistake of spilling out confidences to the maid’s untrustworthy ear.

  Crocker fancied herself a ‘lady domestic’, of which there were known to be some below stairs, women of fairly good class who had fallen on hard times. If she wanted to maintain the fiction of having had to leave her neat suburban villa in Richmond when her husband had died young and left her nothing but his widowed mother, that was acceptable to Bella, who understood the need for fictions.

  The butler and the cook and the housemaid and the scullerymaid, and probably the chauffeur, too, subscribed to the tale as one of the legends that coloured downstairs life, like the background of Hurd the butler, whose indistinct past was respected. It was known that he had held some grander posts and knew of scandals in high places, which he could reveal if he chose. He did not talk much of his family, although there were hints of a mysterious relative in the badlands west of Clarendon Road, revered as a witch doctor, it was said, in Pottery Lane.