The Flight of the Maidens

by Jane Gardam

  ‘Think of being here all yon time ago,’ he said. ‘Chanting music and never arguing and that. No women. Unbelievable.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Awful.’

  ‘And think of nuns!’

  She looked at him sideways and said, ‘Well, now it’s Physics.’ It was nice when he laughed. They began to fool and play like puppies.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’d best be off home. I’m on duty five o’clock.’

  When they reached the front door of Una’s house, however, it was still the early afternoon and there was a notice fastened in Vane Glory’s window saying: CLOSED FOR STAFF TRAINING.

  ‘She’ll be at the pictures,’ said Una. ‘She doesn’t mind it being Sunday. She says she has to go two or three times a week to study the Hollywood hairstyles.’

  ‘Is nobody in, then?’

  ‘No, but it’s O.K., I’ve got a key.’

  ‘Shall I come in with you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Couldn’t we go upstairs?’

  ‘She might come back. She often comes out before the end.’

  He looked resentful, and they stood looking down together at the pavement.

  But when she looked up at him next, she thought that maybe he looked a bit relieved.

  ‘Next weekend, then? I do want to, Una.’

  ‘Not High Dubbs again.’

  ‘No. There’s another one. It’s t’other side of the country. We’d have to start out early on the train with the bikes int van. I can work it out. There’d be no worries there, it’s the remotest hostel in England. Nobody goes there. Please?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like that.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  She had tears in her eyes, which mystified him, and he stood frowning as she ran into the garden, flung the bike on the grass, and slammed the front door behind her.

  Over the cat-scented hall she went, upstairs and upstairs again, up into the attic where she slept. Her narrow bed. Her desk. Her shelf of books. Her curtains, six pence a yard from Woolworth’s. (She’d bought them for herself. Blue gingham.) Scrubbed floor. Black empty grate never used. Photograph of the dead doctor. View of clouds racing. I have shared a bed all night long with a man, she thought and fell asleep immediately, alone.

  When she awoke it was still hardly dark and she heard the church clock strike six and thought, He’s on the station now in his uniform, and grinned. Some of her Science books lay on the shelf beside her with the letters from Cambridge and the local authority about her award. There was another letter from Cambridge she hadn’t yet bothered with. It was the list of recommended reading. ‘I’ll do something about that tomorrow, she thought, then slept again.

  Mrs. Vane, home from the cinema, had brought in the bike off the grass and now began to climb up through the house to stand at the foot of the attic staircase and listen. Cats were about her feet and one in her arms. She began to sing ‘I’ll Gather Lilacs’, and listened again. Silence from above. She wandered away, down to the kitchen, where she stoked the already overpowering fire and served out catfish to all corners.

  She thought, I’ve lost her. She’ll be different now. We won’t be all-in-all any more. Oh, I hope she doesn’t have a baby. I can’t have her hurt. Why couldn’t she have found a namby-pamby first beau? Like Hetty’s. That long-drink-of-water, Eustace, wouldn’t do anyone any harm. No fears there. He’s good for nothing, that one, but the church choir. Well, now he’s gone off with someone else. That Ray’s not good enough. He comes from Muriel Street. Well, maybe nothing happened. Maybe it’s all over for Unie too.

  ‘Hi,’ said Una, coming in, pink with sleep and uncertainty. ‘Nice pictures?’

  ‘The Prince and the Pauper. Ever so likely.’

  ‘Not many Hollywood hairstyles?’

  ‘No. But Hilda and Dorothy were there, so I got a laugh. Fancy, on Sunday! But they’re not religious except on Armistice Day, Oooh, they looked solemn. They tell me Hetty’s soldier’s backed off. Milk and water, he always seemed to me, but safe.’

  ‘Oh yes!’

  ‘They said that all you clever girls ought to be doing much better for yourselves by waiting. They said, “Think of the Duchess of Gloucester”.’

  ‘You’re making that up. You thought of that yourself. It’s a real Vane Glory joke.’

  ‘I may have done,’ said Mrs. Vane, eating a slice of bread and dripping, ‘but I’m a bit of a thought-reader, you know. I’m sure they are of my opinion. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think very much at all about the Duchess of Gloucester. I’m going to the library. Miss Kipling’s there on a Sunday night, dusting round.’

  ‘Yes. Oh . . . ’ Mrs. Vane said, following Una out of the house, ‘I forgot to ask you if you had a nice time.’

  ‘Fine, thanks. Bit of a storm last night up on the moors, but we got through. Got pretty wet.’

  ‘I hope you took care of yourselves.’

  She stood looking at where Una had been standing. Untiringly she stood, stroking the cat in her arms.

  In the library Miss Kipling, very pleased to see Una, took her over to be introduced to Anna Karenina, saying that in her opinion—was Una a fast reader? Good—it would be better to start here and then go on to War and Peace. ‘But don’t be daunted by it when you do begin. It’s three volumes, but the last one is all theory. A theory of history, and most people don’t bother with it.’

  ‘My boyfriend would read it,’ said Una.

  ‘Is that the railway porter?’ said patrician Miss Kipling.

  ‘No. My boyfriend is a trainee guard. And he’s very high up for his age in the Union.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘And when do you go up to Girton?’

  And so that night, the night of her long and beautiful day, Una lay reading Anna Karenina on her narrow bed, continuing it next morning without bothering to get up. Monday and Tuesday were passed in Moscow and Pokrovski, and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday morning too she spent with Anna and Vronsky, Levin and Kitty, at the balls and on the sledges, at the harvests and in the snows of all the Russias. On Thursday Una was back in the library for War and Peace.

  ‘Not yet, I advise,’ said Miss Kipling and handed her Madame Bovary. ‘And something modern? A little Jung, perhaps?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Una, and when Ray appeared at the gate at midday to talk of their next sortie she hung about in the doorway and did not look at his face. She called out from the doorstep, ‘Could we go another weekend? I’ve just found a whole lot of work I have to do for October. They’ve given me all sorts I never heard of.’

  ‘O.K. Fine.’

  ‘I’m getting scared,’ she said. ‘I’m ignorant. You were right about me.’

  ‘O.K., I’ve Union business, anyway. Another week?’

  He waved with a clenched fist as he rode off and she thought how much and how long she had loved him, but how, after Tolstoy, the love was now perhaps all draining away.

  I’ll find time to write to Hetty, she thought. I shan’t mention Eustace. She wouldn’t want it, she gets so hurt. But she’s ahead of me in so much, though she’ll never believe it. I’ll go round to see her Ma and hear how she’s getting on.

  But all that night she passed with Madame Bovary and suffered and suffered, not for love but for the helplessness of a woman in love. I shall escape that, she thought.

  It was Sunday morning again. Last Sunday she had been lying in the grass of the abbey ruins.

  His face.

  His hands.

  I was never so happy. And I could cope. I wasn’t embarrassed, not even by the egg-and-bacon woman. Now I just want to yawn. I’m shredded. I’m purged. God, what a way to behave!

  ‘You look wild of eye,’ said her mother and began to sing (but watching her daughter) ‘Oh, Margaret, art thou
grieving? Not worried about anything, are you?’ she asked.

  Una waited for her mother to say, Aren’t you seeing Ray today? but she didn’t.

  Una said, ‘All that worries me is what you’re going to do when I go away, Mum. Otherwise, I’m very happy. Very.’

  ‘“I’ll walk beside you”,’ sang Mrs. Vane, wondering at the sudden tears in Una’s eyes, ‘“through the lane of dreams”. I’ll kick up my heels and out with the castanets, you’ll see. I’m easily pleased. I like being by myself.’

  They did not meet each other’s eyes.

  Another mother and daughter might have hugged each other then, but fat Mrs. Vane and skinny Una, her wary, clever, honest daughter, did a little bit of heel-and-toe together round the kitchen. Later Mrs. Vane brought out an enormous bottle of crème de menthe and two goblets.

  18

  Mr. Satterley had been right about the weather at Betty Bank, and the rain and wind started about tea-time, blotting out the lake and tossing the trees. The storm began, and rain struck Hetty’s window like handfuls of gravel.

  ‘All right?’ called Mrs. Satterley. ‘Is’t comin’ in?’

  ‘Just a bit round the sill.’

  ‘Well, muff it up with a towel, will you? Ist’ ceiling right? We get this. It won’t submerge you.’

  All night the rain fell, and the morning looked exhausted by it, grey and soaked, too cold and dreary for anyone to find pleasure in going out of doors even while the room was being cleaned. Hetty took Biographia Literaria into the parlour, where she could have done with a fire. The paper fan was all that stood in the fireplace, bloated and spotted with sooty drops. The upright chairs round the walls were of horsehair, prickly to the thigh. She opened out Coleridge upon the mahogany table with its diagonal, cross-stitched table-runner and glass vase of paper roses. The marble-columned clock on the mantelpiece clanked on.

  ‘You can come and fetch your drink clocks-time,’ called Mrs. Satterley, ‘int’ kitchen.’ Hetty was the only guest this week.

  So, at ten-thirty, she went to the kitchen and was handed her tin mug of tea. Two men were sitting over the kitchen fire, its kindling branches sticking out a good three feet into the room, wagging their fingers at each other. One was Mr. Satterley and the other an ancient of gnarled aspect with a large nose and shabby clothes. Some shepherd. He rose courteously as she came in and bowed and sat down again.

  Hetty took her tea back to the parlour and after a time thought that she might try upstairs again and sat to her desk wrapped in the sheepskin rug off the floor. At midday when she went down to family dinner—the finding of her own lunch being forgotten—the old chap had gone. Maybe he was the postman, except that they’d said the post might not get up the Bank today in the rainstorm.

  ‘I never knew such a one for getting letters,’ said Mrs. Satterley. ‘Three more today and one delivered.’

  ‘Did he get here, then? The post? But weren’t they all delivered?’

  ‘The postie came, yes, and then there’s the one letter hand-delivered. They’re on the hall-stand.’

  Hetty took the four envelopes upstairs and never did Biographia Literaria look less tempting. Oh, so cold here! The towel under the sill was sopped through, and a great blister swelled in the corner of the wallpaper above her bed. She wrapped herself in the bed cover as well as the sheepskin and wondered however she came to be sitting in this place, all alone. ‘Girls of your age should be out with their boyfriends,’ the vicar had told her. ‘It would be more natural, Hester.’

  One letter was of course from Eustace, so she threw it under the bed, unopened, to lie with the others. The second was in her mother’s handwriting, so that followed it. The handwriting on the third, she didn’t recognise, and on opening it found a postal order to the value of ten shillings and a card signed enthusiastically by Dorothy and tidily by Hilda. Hilda had written on the back of the card in fastidious script (‘Hilda is well-connected, you know,’ said the Lonsdale café) that this was a small congratulatory gift on account of the scholarship and also to say how much she and Dorothy admired her for so bravely going off to study on her own. To her surprise, on reading this, Hetty found herself flushing with pleasure. Nobody until now had ever suggested that her adventure at Betty Bank was anything but affectation. Hilda also said that she very much hoped that she had not been intrusive, but she had written to a distant relative of hers who lived near Betty Bank and who might perhaps invite Hetty to a meal, just in case she felt like a little change. ‘Of course she may not be at home, or it may not be convenient, but we thought we should warn you, just in case. Dorothy and I do not want to interfere in your grown-up life. We saw your mother yesterday and she is bright and cheerful as ever, but had not then received more than the postcard from you telling of safe arrival. Sincerely yours, Hilda B. Fletcher.’

  The fourth, hand-delivered, letter was not stuck down, and thick as cardboard, with By Hand written across the top left-hand corner in spluttering violet ink. The writing paper inside was embossed with a coat of arms and the address said The Hall, Betty Forest.

  Who’s Betty Forest? she wondered. What a waste of lovely paper. It’s woven with linen threads. Oh no, it’s not a person! Betty Forest must be here. It must be near Betty Bank. And it’s from Urgle MacGurgle, whoever that is.

  My dear Hester (if I may?),

  Your Girl Guide captain, Miss Fletcher, has just written to tell me that you are staying with the beloved Satterleys, all alone, and we so very much hope that you will be able to spare a moment from all your homework to come to see us this evening at six o’clock. We shall be having a few people here for drinks.

  Now, how to reach us: Behind Betty Bank there is a LANE, which you may have found already. Along the LANE there is a TABLE, which you may already have noticed. It is often there in the care of my granddaughter Patsie, or her cousin Rupert, and is covered sometimes with all manner of things for sale in aid of the Red Cross, et al. It is my market-place, but pay it no attention. Turn your head to the RIGHT when you reach the table, and up in the hedge you will see a GAP. Go through the GAP and you will come to a small gate. Go through this gate and there we are, BELOW you, down the other side of the forest ridge. You will be looking down our chimneys, and once you have made your way down the slope you should find us in the SALOON. If the rain has stopped all the doors will be open wide. I think that I have someone here for you of about your age.

  Yours sincerely,

  Urgle MacGurgle.

  PS: Please do not dress.

  What a very curious document, thought Hetty, and reflected that the surest way to drain an introduction of any relish is to promise it will be with someone of your own vintage. She wondered at what age this reflection ceased and decided, never. ‘Eighty-two! My dear, how wonderful! You must meet my mother, she’s eighty-three!’ And so on. Well, if you’ve any sense you just don’t turn up.

  And there is no reason, she thought, actually, that I need turn up to this thing at all, since it is patently obvious I’m to meet sexy-square-teeth on the horse. Maybe Cousin Rupert’s the horse? And Urgle MacGurgle must be Ursula. Do I answer it? Not enough time, since it’s tonight. Well, I needn’t go. Forget it.

  But, hey, how nice of the Girls’ Guildry—ain’t they sweet? Ten bob. Dorothy and Hilda. I love them. Kiss, kiss. I’ll write back now. Well, maybe I’ll write to Ma first.

  Dear Ma [she wrote, straight off, from within the sheepskin rug wishing she had some gloves],

  Thank you for all your letters. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to write back but I’m reading my head off, morning till night. It’s fine here for work, though I don’t think they have a clue why I’m doing it. They keep trying to get me out climbing about the mountains like the other PGs, who are middle-aged and keep shops or drive public transport and come from Lancashire. There’s a new lot coming in on Saturday may be a bit younger but they’ll be mad on rock-climbing again
, which means that it’ll be nothing but hand-holds and chimneys and crampons and pass the salt. They are all intensely uninteresting.

  Mrs. Satterley is very obliging but rather noisy. Mr. Satterley’s a Quaker, which must be how the Stonehouses know all about it here. There’s no one else about much, but I’ve been asked somewhere tonight for drinks (don’t look like that) by a friend of Hilda Fletcher. She and Dorothy have sent me a ten-bob p. order. I hope you didn’t say I was short, or anything. You really ought to be careful. I’d thank you, actually, Ma, if you didn’t discuss me at all with your friends. You’d get more and better letters if I could trust you not to read them out. Some hope, I know. Love to Pa. I suppose he’d never bestir himself to write to me? He has plenty of time. Have you had any little billets-doux from EUSTACE lately?

  XXXX Hetty.

  She looked down at the unopened Eustace letters lying under the bed around the chamber-pot, quite a heap of them, all smooth and clean. Why did they make her heart groan? The mean little handwriting. They looked as though they were written by a mouse with the eyes of a watchmaker. Eustace the clockwork mouse. No question of his signature reading like Urgle MacGurgle.

  Oh, she thought, in real terms there are, today, no attractive men.

  ‘I’ve been asked out,’ she said, back in the kitchen for the next intake of nourishment. ‘But I don’t think I’ll go. I’d miss supper.’

  ‘You’ll not do that: we’re keeping it hot for you. You can have your can of hot water five o’clock for your wash and you’re due there at six.’

  ‘You know all about it?’

  ‘His Lordship brought your invitation this morning. He told us what it was, and you could never not go!’

  ‘I could if I was previously engaged.’

  ‘That wouldn’t please Ursula.’

  ‘But who is she? What do I call her?’