One of the Family

by Monica Dickens

  ‘In any case ...’ While the fat cook nodded off in her armchair, Bella ate bread and butter at the sitting-room table, which looked up through a barred window to the back garden and the railings of Ladbroke Square. ‘I do believe that I am invited to the Lazenbys’ at Heck-worth. Gerald has said as much. It’s just that he’s been so busy with his cubbing and all that, he’s forgotten to confirm it.’

  ‘Well, men are like that,’ the housemaid said.

  ‘Mine was not,’ Sybil Crocker reminded her sharply. ‘But then, of course, he was a gentleman.’

  ‘So is Gerald.’ Bella fired up with her mouth full, and coughed out breadcrumbs.

  ‘In love with him, eh?’ Crocker asked casually.

  ‘Oh yes, I think so.’ Bella knew she should not gush, but it was so nice to be able to let go in the fuggy air of roasted meat and the red hot fire and Hurd’s cigar, stolen from upstairs. So nice to let her tight, nervous self feel swoony about Gerald, who had made a surprise dive to kiss her, sitting out on the stairs at the Hamilton House ball. The kiss had landed on the corner of her mouth, wet and bristly. He had grabbed at her front in a way that had made her stand up quickly and run down the stairs, her whole body suddenly feeling naked, exposed, the blush scorching up her face to set the roots of her hair on fire.

  ‘That’s right.’ Crocker was quite encouraging. ‘It’s natural for a young healthy girl like you.’

  ‘Oh, wait till you see him, Sybil. He’s a real dazzler.’

  ‘I’m sure. So you shall go to the ball, Cinderella, and dance with the prince, and get spliced, and keep us a pew at the back for the wedding.’

  ‘Oh, stop.’ Bella blushed. ‘Stop teasing.’

  ‘No, we wouldn’t do that, Miss Bella.’ Leaning back in his chair, the butler watched her with cold eyes under the curiously dark brows which did not match his pale streaky hair. ‘We’d all like to see you wed.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t care if I never marry,’ Bella protested, as always, in case she never did.

  ‘Now you sound like your cousin Madge.’ Crocker pinched her cut-back mauve nostrils and pulled down her mouth.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Well dear, you two are close enough. I should have thought you would be aware.’

  ‘Aware of what?’ Bella could not help asking, although she knew she should not gossip with these people, only half known, for all they shared her life in this house.

  ‘Why did she cut her hair then?’

  The parlourmaid slid a glance at the butler. He took out the cigar, tapped off a perfect fat cylinder of ash and replaced it in his fleshy mouth as if he were going to swallow it.

  Bella pushed back her chair. ‘Because she likes it short. It looks just right on her.’ For no reason, Bella felt trapped. ‘It’s easier to manage,’ she gabbled huskily. ‘And she’s a – she’s a new kind of woman, you know. She’s progressive.’

  ‘Progressed a bit too far, you might say.’ Crocker had resumed her aloof look, eyes focused on the picture rail.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a new feminist.’ Bella liked to think she was one herself, if only on the fringe.

  ‘There’s another name for it.’ The maid spat out a word which was not familiar to Bella.

  ‘What do you mean, Sybil?’

  ‘You’ve not heard of it? You’re a bit behind with the latest topics, upstairs.’

  The butler guffawed. The housemaid grinned and wagged her head.

  ‘Women and women.’ The cook opened her pig eyes to whisper it.

  Bella had heard hints about such a perversion. It was one of the more desperate accusations aimed at the suffragists.

  ‘That’s disgusting.’ Bella stood up. ‘Madge has her friend Will Morrison, in any case.’

  Why argue it at their level? Madge did not need Bella to stand up for her. She tightened the sash of her dressing gown and made for the door, while the servants watched her.

  Chapter Nine

  At the Loudon Street Settlement, Madge’s job was mostly teaching the crowds of children, many of whom came from the workhouse and had never been to school. Tiny crippled Angel, jerking helplessly in her wooden cart, was brought in by a ten-year-old sister who sometimes forgot to bring her and sometimes forgot to collect her. Madge had not seen her for weeks when the low cart was pulled in one raw December morning. She hurried to wrap the shivering child in a blanket.

  ‘She hasn’t enough clothes on. Don’t you ... ?’ But the silent sister had already disappeared.

  Angel’s crumpled face was pale, except where it was blue and bruised under the dirt. But she tried to hold up sticks of arms, and settled on to the lap of Madge’s cotton smock like an old man in his fireside chair. Madge gave her some warm gruel from a jug, and the child coughed most of it back. She was listless and breathing badly, but it might be days before one of the volunteer doctors turned up.

  Madge tried to rouse her by talking about the Christmas party. One of her helpers, a slovenly girl training to be a nursemaid, said knowledgeably, ‘That won’t live till Christmas, that won’t.’

  Madge was sad today, and Will was expressively angry. His face and body were made for it, with his curly red beard and smouldering eyes and his short wiry physique – shorter than Madge’s – which could seem taller when he held himself erect and tense.

  He was angry with Jack Haynes, who was restless and moody, bored with his job as apprentice to a cabinet-maker. He had deliberately broken a tool in the workshop, and he had been seen by a policeman down under Blackfriars Bridge with some of his old gang.

  In the dusty attic room which served as an office, Will was haranguing him clearly and loudly. ‘You must work.’ He swung an imaginary hammer. ‘Your big chance. You must succeed now or you’re lost!’

  Jack stood woodenly, head bowed under the low ceiling, thick arms hanging away from his sides, face obtuse. You could not always tell what he was thinking, nor whether he had understood.

  ‘After all we’ve done for you,’ Will was driven to say. ‘Do something for us!’

  ‘But it’s his choice, isn’t it?’ Madge murmured, looking away from Jack. ‘You taught me your philosophy of help, Will. “No strings attached.” Now you sound like a social reformer, worse than Mrs Humphry Ward.’

  Will ignored her. ‘What about it, Jack?’ He was trying to do one of his electrifying tricks, but how could this poor bear of a young fellow commit himself to effort when he probably was not even sure what was being asked of him?

  Madge stepped forward to face Jack, so that he could hear and see what she told him.

  ‘I believe in you.’

  Jack’s jaw dropped and spread into its caricature of a grin.

  ‘Maddy.’ Will was angry with both of them now. ‘I’ve told you,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t always make it so Personal.’

  Madge turned to answer him, and Jack’s grin shut like a closed umbrella. ‘You talkin’ about me?’

  You had to be so careful with him. How could deaf people not be suspicious? They never knew more than one per cent of what was going on.

  Will had not liked it that she had taken Jack to No. 72 Chepstow Villas again, to experience the family – Gwen’s kindness, people in and out of the house, Dicky’s silly infectious jokes, Mrs Roach’s chocolate cake, a surrounding of talk, as well as signs and gestures.

  ‘Hand signs aren’t language,’ Madge had said. ‘Language is a living thing, not just a convenience. Jack does very well, but he has no emotional words, like laugh, joy, sorrow, love.’

  ‘I know what he needs.’ Will liked to be the instructor. ‘But not at your house.’

  ‘I can’t take him there just once and then not again. He would think he hadn’t been liked.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Will had said, ‘whether you credit him with too much sensibility?’

  Now in the low-raftered office, when Jack had rubbed up his bristly black hair and gone away, Madge wanted to put her arms round Will and hold him to his dream.
When she had first started to work with him at the Settlement, she had wanted him to be more practical. Now she wanted to hold on to his idealism. She knew that he was resisting pressure from his father to go back to his law studies. He was only occasionally sleeping in the dormitory these nights, but he was here every long day, disappointed with helpers who claimed exhaustion, but not able to see it in himself.

  ‘You’re tired, Will,’ Madge said tenderly.

  ‘Don’t make excuses for me. If you don’t agree with a woman, she always thinks there’s something wrong with you.’

  ‘I worry about you because we’re so close. I love you as my best friend.’

  She wished she could say just, ‘I love you,’ because she thought she did. The further they moved apart, the more she wanted him.

  By the laws of etiquette, it was now Gwen’s turn to call on Tobias Taylor; but before she got round to doing that, he came to Chepstow Villas again with an invitation to see Peter Pan with Gerald du Maurier and Nina Boucicault at the Duke of York’s Theatre.

  Looking very smart in one of the new dinner jackets with a brocade tie and waistcoat, he came in a hired motor car to fetch Leonard and Gwen and Madge and Dicky and Laura. He had invited Laura’s parents too, but Elizabeth was very near her time, and Austin wanted to stay at home with her.

  Tobias Taylor – ‘My friends call me Toby, so please will you?’ – was very good company for the children as well as the grown-ups. Most bachelors – if that is what he was – were irritated by children, or ignored them, but this Uncle Toby, as they began to call him, sat with Laura and Dicky on the little seats facing backwards, and went out of his way to make this a special evening for them. He told them some fascinating facts and fantasies about Peter Pan, and invented stories with them about people and places they passed on the way to the theatre.

  Neither child was shy, and they responded noisily. Leonard leaned forward to replace the plug in the speaking tube, so that the driver would not be distracted.

  ‘Bee-chums peelz!’ Dicky was reading out signs in a German accent, like his aunt Charlotte’s brother. ‘My mother takes those.’

  ‘They can’t do her any harm.’ Dr Taylor smiled at Gwen. ‘They’re made mostly of ginger and soap.’

  ‘Ginger soap!’ Dicky made a face as if his mouth was full of lather. ‘You shan’t make me take any of those, Mama.’

  ‘A good little Beecham’s’ was one of Gwen’s favourite cure-alls. ‘What would you prescribe for indigestion, then, Dr Taylor?’

  ‘Please call me Toby. We’re having a gay night out.’

  ‘To-by.’ Gwen drew out his name uncertainly. She was not used to making friends so quickly.

  ‘Probably something herbal. I’m by way of being a naturopathic physician, you see.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gwen, who didn’t.

  ‘I’m glad,’ put in Madge, who was looking lovely, Leonard thought, in a white undecorated dress, with her short hair burnished like the gold of her necklace. ‘There are too many humbug patent medicines, and I’m quite afraid of all these new chemicals.’

  ‘You should be.’ Toby’s eyes admired her. ‘A motor can’t run if there’s grit in the petrol. Nor can the bew-tee-ful body machine if it’s full of foreign substances.’

  ‘Tell me something funny,’ Dicky clamoured, to get his attention back.

  The seats in the front row of the dress circle were perfect for the children. Toby kept them keyed up with excitement until the curtain went up and they, like every other child in the house, every grown-up, surrendered to the old magic.

  Gwen, who was always carried away at the theatre, was in love with Gerald du Maurier, especially as Mr Darling. ‘He doesn’t really act,’ she dreamed in the car. ‘He just is himself.’

  ‘Not really,’ Leonard said. ‘He isn’t at all like that. I’ve met him in the store with his wife, and he seemed quite spoiled and impatient.’

  ‘I’m in love, too,’ Laura said sleepily. ‘With Peter Pan.’

  ‘Silly,’ Dicky jeered. ‘It was a woman.’

  ‘Wasn’t.’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Wasn’t ...’ Laura fell asleep with her head against Toby. He put his arm round her and asked Madge, ‘Who are you in love with?’

  ‘Nobody.’ She had told her father about her disagreement with Will Morrison. She told him a lot of things, though not, Leonard suspected, much about her inner self.

  ‘What about you, To-by?’ Madge asked, bold in the warm, leather-smelling box of the car. ‘Is your wife still abroad?’

  ‘My wife – why?’

  ‘All men of your kind of age are married, more or less. It makes it hard for us, in our early twenties.’

  Straightforward Madge did not often flirt. But when she did, it was very direct. Leonard thought she was too bold, and looked to see whether Tobias Taylor thought so, too. It was dark in the back of the car, but the light from a passing street lamp showed his handsome face unruffled.

  *

  After the successful theatre outing, Toby Taylor continued to see quite a lot of the Morleys. Gwen and Leonard visited the house in Egerton Terrace, South Kensington, where he saw patients on the first floor and lived in comfortable rooms above, graced with quite good furniture and pictures, some of beautiful women.

  ‘My weakness,’ he explained to Leonard.

  ‘The weakness of us all.’ Leonard smirked, as if he were a gay dog. He liked it that Toby treated him as a contemporary, and did not call him sir.

  The naturopathic doctor came again to Chepstow Villas and met more of the family, making a clever score of twenty-three in the season’s last stump cricket match on a mild December Sunday. He brought flowers to Gwen, talked about Society with Charlotte, went with them to the pantomime, joked freely about miracle cures with Leonard’s younger sister Vera and made up a running jest with her about a man whose electropathic massage belt lit him up like a glow-worm on embarrassing occasions. He was pleasant and polite to Aunt Teddie, paying attention to her boring, negative conversation from which most people slithered away.

  Edwina Wynn – significant that they defeminize her name to Teddie – is lonely, Toby thought. The family is tired of her. Her husband Ralph ignores her, even when he’s there. The young twin son has escaped into a sturdier world of his own. The skinny daughter Sophie is beyond her reach. She seems to suffer from persistent melancholia. One in every big family.

  Toby saw quite a few pessimistic and discouraged women like Edwina Wynn at his clinic, which, when he started to practise here six years ago, he had risked calling The Clinique to attract a good class of paying patients.

  Miss Grover, who came to him weekly, had never really recovered from the death of her adored mother. Adored? The old lady had been a tyrant, keeping at home her spinster daughter who was now unable to use her freedom to start a better way of life.

  Miss Grover had been to many doctors for her ‘nerves’ and chronic dyspepsia, which affected her whole digestive tract from her swallowing mechanism to the peristaltic functions of her colon. When she first came to Tobias Taylor, humanistic naturopath, she had been so scoured with fierce aperients and high colonic lavage that it was a wonder she had any intestines left at all.

  Toby was treating her with an aromatic tea mixture specifically prepared by the herbalist in Wales who supplied him with pills and draughts and salves, and a healthier diet than the overdone meats and heavy puddings favoured by the old cook at her mother’s house in Marylebone.

  His first triumph with Irene Grover had been to persuade her to retire the suet-pudding cook in favour of a younger woman who understood about vegetables and salads and would cheerfully brew the herbal tea, instead of throwing it away and substituting Mazawatee. His next would be to encourage her to sell the gloomy steep-roofed house and buy a small villa in the suburbs where she could keep the dog she had always wanted, but still thought of as taboo, as if her monstrous mother were still alive.

  To exercise her insides and get in trainin
g for the dog, she had to walk every day with head up and shoulders back and report to Toby something interesting that she noticed, and smile at a minimum of three people whom she passed in the street.

  ‘I walked all the way here,’ she announced when Mrs Drew, the housekeeper, showed her in to the consulting room, ‘although I was very tired. I saw a gentleman fall down in the street,’ she droned, as if reciting a school lesson. ‘He was having some kind of fit. No, I didn’t stop to help him. There were others more competent. What use would I be?’

  She sat on the edge of one of the comfortable cane and chintz armchairs that Toby had bought at Whiteley’s, and sighed and admitted that although she had felt too enervated to do more than cross to the other side of the street when the well-dressed, respectable man fell down foaming and making dreadful braying sounds, not having stopped had made her feel worse.

  ‘Could you have done anything, do you think?’

  ‘Yes. A young man had stopped and bent over him. He looked up and called to me to get help. I turned the corner.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it. You know what I’m like, Mr Taylor.’

  ‘I know you can do more than you think.’

  Miss Grover shook her head, sad under the bird’s-wing hat that had at last replaced the funeral bonnet.

  ‘But I should have,’ she whispered, looking at her boots.

  ‘There’s no should or ought. The word is could, remember?’

  ‘Thank you for giving me so much of your time,’ Miss Grover said when he went over to the bell pull, tapestried for him by a patient.

  ‘I never want to hurry our appointments.’

  ‘But there’s other people.’

  ‘None more important than you.’

  ‘I see them in the waiting room. They stare when I go out.’

  ‘Because they are thinking, “There goes a good advertisement for Mr Taylor. Look how she comes out smiling.”’