by Jane Gardam
‘She’s Ursula Fitzurse, and you call her “Lady Fitzurse”.’
‘But you call her Ursula.’
‘Of course. Not to her face. To her face she’s My Lady to me, and Lady Fitzurse to you. But she’s Ursula to everyone, for all that.’
‘What does she call you?’
‘She calls us Mr. and Mrs. Satterley, though she knew us in our bassinets. It’s based on mutual respect.’
Can you beat it! thought Hetty, washing in the hot soapy water from the brass can. She stood about thoughtfully and went down to the kitchen wrapped in a towel. She was getting to be rather at home at Betty Bank. In fact she’d never get away with this at home. She was decent of course but, still, there wasn’t much under the towel.
‘Oh, Mrs. Satterley, I was told not to dress—’
‘Were you thinking of going naked?’ (She pronounced it as a single syllable.)
‘No, but what does it mean? What do I wear?’
‘Oh, she’ll never notice. Just don’t dress up like lamb and salad. But you’ll need clean shoes. Give us them ’ere.’
‘But they won’t be clean by the time I get there. Through all the mud.’
‘No, but you’ll be walking-on there in clogs. You can tek mine. And your shoes go under your arm.’
Hetty dressed in a clean aertex blouse and a cashmere cardigan of Joyce Dobson’s and her grey school skirt. The only shoes were the gym shoes, which, though Mrs. Satterley had whitened them and hung them on the recken to dry, didn’t look much like footwear for a cocktail party. Hetty slid her feet into the clogs and went clumping over the yard, a gym shoe in either hand.
At the yard gate she turned and saw Mrs. Satterley looking non-committally at her through the window.
‘Ought I to be taking her something?’
‘It’s not done,’ said Mrs. Satterley.
‘Not a flower or anything?’ (She was her mother’s daughter.)
Mrs. Satterley disappeared from the window and then returned with a small soft parcel which she passed through. Hetty made for the table, and the hedge.
Hetty came out of the trees above the gap in the lane and looked down, expecting a mansion. She had imagined a pale stucco palace with a terrace, and tall Noel Coward people drinking martinis, conversing acidly in the evening sunshine. Nothing of the sort. Below her was a huge platform of lead roofs surrounded by several acres of weedy gravel below them, and the house was of grim grey stone, a tessellated tower at either end, all very much the worse for wear. Trees watched the house from the ridge from three sides. Above them, shining in her eyes, gleamed a yellow, ragged sunset.
She slid and stumbled down something of a path from the ridge and found herself beside a stack of milk churns and a broken field-gate. Inside the gate a miserably maintained drive swooped round a corner and down a further hill and there the sunset disappeared and it was quite dark. Down an even steeper drop there stood a medieval gateway, where chickens were running about, waiting to be put to bed. A string of buildings attached to either side of the gateway ran along for some distance, with boarded-up doors and windows, the slits in the walls sprouting tufts of hay. Nearby was a poor-looking little green car and some farm worker pulling sacks of pigswill towards it.
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for the Hall.’
‘Through you yat.’
Through the gate she came to what might be a chapel, but its stained-glass windows were patched here and there with cardboard, and some of the windows of the Hall itself looked suspiciously clear, as if the glass in them had long ago been ditched. But then, to her right, she saw an archway into gardens, and, beyond, other gardens, and she could make out trimmed grass paths between roses. Coming down one of these in the twilight and now stepping upon the gravel sweep was a small old woman carrying a washing-up bowl full of brambles.
‘My dear!’ she said. ‘My dear child, you must be Hester Fallowes! The Girl Guide. Who has won a scholarship to Queen Anne’s in London! How clever. How sweet of you to come. How my little granddaughter is looking forward to seeing you. Now, we’ll take off our clogs, dear, and—yes. Here are my bedroom slippers, and there, I see, are your nice white shoes under your arm, and you’ll meet Mabel. She’s longing to see you.’
Hetty felt surprise. The horse-girl could never be called Mabel.
‘Mabel,’ said Lady Fitzurse, ‘is not a very pretty name, but it is an old name in our family. An old Cumbrian name. The Fitzurses are all Vikings—but everybody knows that, and I’ve never known why it should be interesting. You probably know much more about Vikings than we do. Schoolgirls today know much more than we ever did. Now here we are—lots of Mabels!’
They padded across a marble chamber in their soft shoes. A stone staircase rose from it to a minstrels’ gallery that looked a bit like a Methodist chapel with faded coats of arms, and then to another great room, where the fireplace was almost the size of Hetty’s bedroom at Betty Bank. A giant dead animal lay collapsed upon the flagstones and heads of multi-horned hoof-stock with glass eyes observed them from the walls. Lord Fitzurse, the shepherd of the morning, was drinking whisky round the fireplace with several other people, and a child of about ten with the corners of her mouth turned down was slumped across a tartan sofa.
‘Awful tartan,’ said Ursula Fitzurse. ‘Not ours—we haven’t one, thank goodness—some dubious Scotch cousins (always say Scotch, dear, like the Queen. Never “Scots”. But of course, you know). They know we’re hard up, so it’s very kind of them really, sofas are such a price in the shops. Now, this is Mabel. Mabel, this is such a coincidence! Hester is going to school with you next term: she’s won a scholarship. So clever. And so young! Now, how old are you, Hester? Hilda Fletcher didn’t say—just that you are one of her Guides. But you and Mabel must be much— Well, you are very much taller than Mabel, but the Fitzurses have always been undersized.’
Mabel continued to lie on the sofa. After a moment a large pink bubble of gum ballooned from her mouth and popped.
‘It’s the Americans. She goes to the films. Get up at once, Mabel, and take Hester to play with the puppies.’
‘Grandma!’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Grandma—Ursula. Ducky. You’ve made a boo-boo, Grandma.’
And Hester saw the horse-girl undoing herself from a cushioned window-seat.
‘Grandma, look at Hester. How old is she?’
‘My dear, I haven’t the least idea how old anybody is. I forget at once. Myself too. Just when you’ve got it in your head, it changes.’
‘Look, Ursula, lousy Mabel is eleven. Look at this one. Is she eleven?’
‘Well, she is very tall. I said she was tall. But she’s not wearing make-up. And she is in school shoes.’
‘Grandma, could she be going to school at Queen Anne’s, Caversham, with Mabel?’
‘But isn’t Caversham London? I’m hopeless on the south. I’ve simply no idea. I’ve not been to London for years, and I never went to school at all. Neither did your mother; I made sure of that.’
‘That was quite obvious, if I may say so. Grandma, will you look at this girl and give her a double gin and tonic. Now,’ she said, turning to Hetty, ‘I’m Patsie. We’ve met already.’
The heavy Mabel vanished with a glass of orange squash.
‘So where is it you’re going with this scholarship?’
‘To the University of London,’ said Hetty.
‘Grandma! She’s probably twenty-eight and ex-service; three-quarters of students are ex-service this year. That’s why I couldn’t get in anywhere. She’s probably brilliant.’
‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry. Ex-service? Were you in the war? The ATS? I’m sure she said the Guides, but of course she may have said Red Cross, she’s a great supporter there. Tell me, dear, were you in enemy hands.’
‘No, I was at Shields East High School. I’m no
t eighteen yet.’
‘My dear! I was right. You are no age at all, though I have to say that I was married and pregnant before I was eighteen. But seventeen today is a strange age. It means that you came through the wars as a mere child. And always at home? It all seemed just fun, I expect, so long as you had no one in prison to worry about, of course. And Mr. Churchill to keep us going. And victory in the end. While my poor Patsie—now, I don’t know how old you are, Patsie, though you are my granddaughter, but—’
‘It wasn’t exactly fun,’ said Hetty. ‘The bombing wasn’t fun. Twenty-six people were killed in Shields East one night, down the road from us. It wasn’t fun. We knew everybody!’
‘Oh, and here we had nothing!’ said Ursula. ‘We were blessed, but we do sometimes feel guilty, you know. But we were stiff with German prisoners, of course. I’ve got some here tonight.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes. It’s one’s Christian duty, and they’re so useful about the estate. There’s not a Nazi among them and one of them went to Eton. It’s so strange that you never ever meet a German who was a Nazi. One wonders if . . . Well, would you like to meet a German?’
‘Oh, not much, actually, thank you.’
‘My dear!’
‘I’ve a great friend who’s a German Jew.’
‘My dear! How pink in the face you are. Please don’t be upset. I hope she is safe with us now? Now, we must get you something.’
‘Gin,’ said Patsie again. ‘She’d like three gins in one glass and so would I.’
Hetty saw the child Mabel watching her from behind a stuffed bear. The bear was holding a plate of cocktail titbits on a shelf between its paws.
The silly granny. The angry bear. The Good Germans. The nasty Patsie . . . Who would be Mabel?
Hetty went across to Mabel and said, ‘I’ll come and play with the puppies as soon as I can.’
At this, Mabel glowered and fled, leaving Hetty more mortified than before. They stick together, thought Hetty; you can’t woo them. These people. You can never join them. They only want their own sort really, although they hate one another most of the time. Her mother was wrong. The aristocracy do not ‘have something wonderful about them’. And yet she had felt mortified on behalf of the idiotic Ursula, so sorry for the demolition of the old woman by the unspeakable horse-girl that for a moment she had even thought of saying she was only twelve years old.
The horse-girl was obviously as vile as she had sensed at first. The horse-girl was a monster. To call one’s grandmother ‘Ursula’. And ‘Ducky’.
Hetty had been more than ready to dislike Ursula, because she had seemed to be the goddess of the feudal Satterleys—or of Mrs. Satterley, anyway. She had expected a bulging Lady Bountiful in Ursula. Instead here was a dotty little child of eighty, unself-conscious, unworldly, innocent, tolerant of both Patsie and Mabel, and unwise—or brave—enough to invite Germans to a drinks party with the war ended scarcely a year ago.
Maybe Ursula had been a Nazi sympathiser? They were thick on the ground among the aristocracy, or so the grave-digger often said. ‘The aristocracy and the working class,’ he said: ‘oh yes, they had the swastikas ready in Muriel Street, you know.’
But could Ursula ever have been clever enough to understand any ideology? You couldn’t see her reading Thomas Carlyle. Or hamming herself up. All that about having no education and mixing up schools and universities. All showing off. You could bet she spoke French. And German too—oh yes! Governesses galore, and finishing schools. But so pretty and nice still, at eighty. The comical nose. The giant eyes in the tiny face. The silk top worn over what looked like a woollen laundry bag and bedroom slippers, but oh so very correct, somehow.
Why, thought Hetty, are my gym shoes wrong and Ursula’s bedroom slippers O.K.? Why are Ursula’s innocence and sweetness delicious, when my mother’s innocence and sweetness make me squirm?
She pushed away the thought that her mother was herself, always. Then wondered whether Ursula was nothing but an actress, trotting round the guests, raising her loving face to them as she walked here and there, with her little plate of cheese straws. Such charm! Her mother’s charm was similar, but behind it all, here in this house, oh, the comforts of wealth.
On her feet Ursula wore old slippers, but upstairs were wardrobes full, no doubt, of tiaras and coronation robes and rings like rocks. Diamond necklaces hidden in the water jugs (Hetty had read romances). Ursula all her long life had had everything she ever wanted, and wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone who hadn’t. She wouldn’t believe in need. She would dispense nothing but gin. Totally self-centred.
Hetty remembered the small rather damp parcel that Mrs. Satterley had sent to the Hall with her, and brought it out of her skirt pocket now as Ursula came trotting up again, carrying in her little claw a brimming tumbler.
‘Oh, thank you. Actually, I’m terribly sorry but I don’t drink alcohol. Well, I never have up to now.’
‘Oh, do start some time,’ said Ursula. ‘But what is this? A present? Oh, let me put this down—you needn’t drink it, of course, but let’s put it behind something. There are those who might come upon it unawares. Behind the bear. Now—ah! From Mrs. Satterley? . . . Oh, my dear!’ She had torn apart the newspaper and was turning to left and right in reverent amazement, showing the contents to her guests. ‘Oh, no! Oh, how very kind! Oh, however do they do it up there? Look, look, Mrs. Satterley has sent us this beautiful piece of liver! Oh, how particularly kind! Now, Patsie, you must have it all for your supper. Now then, child, Esther, Hester, Eleanor, come through to the saloon and meet the rest of us.’
Hetty at last saw some very tall people standing together but they were not like Noel Coward, for they were almost silent. They stood in the bell of the lighted saloon, in the last moments of the day, and beyond them stretched another long room, exactly like the one she had come from. They were making desultory noises that were not particularly like words, but quite soothing, like a group of heifers at eventide.
‘Herbert,’ introduced Lady Fitzurse, ‘Hester Satterley. And George. And Edith and Freddie Er— This is Ethel Satterley—and now then, Lord Fitzurse you know, for he brought you your invitation to Betty Bank this morning.’
‘Actually,’ said Hetty, ‘I’m not a part of Betty Bank, I’m just a paying guest there. Good evening. Hallo. I’m not called Satterley.’
‘Hallo!’ The tall kine, way up near the ceiling, turned their backs on her almost at once, and went on droning. She could see up their nostrils. They didn’t look like German prisoners, but you never knew. Prussians, maybe, if there were still such things.
Lord Fitzurse was another matter and she turned back to where he was sitting by the fireplace in a shabby chair and shabbier smoking jacket. He nodded and said, ‘Nice to see you again. Good of you to come. Is there any news?’
‘News?’
‘About the cow.’
‘Cow?’
‘Trouble with the Friesian. The breech birth. Been lying there all yesterday and in trouble already two-quarters.’
‘Oh, I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘He’ll not try to sell her, you know. Lying there three days. Won’t have her slaughtered. Some would. Not Dick Satterley, he’s a good man.’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, he is.’
‘Got a glass?’
‘Oh, no. I’m all right, thank you.’
‘Met Rupert?’
‘Rupert? No. No, I don’t think so.’
‘Grandson. Patsie’s cousin. He’s about your age; you might like each other. He’s nearly thirty but not over the hill. Just approaching the hill. Rupert?’
‘You’re not very flattering, Grandpa. I’m twenty-six.’ The voice came from behind the archway of the saloon. There was the clink of a decanter.
‘Hester Satterley,’ said Lord Fitzurse. ‘Satterley’s girl.’
‘H
allo.’
‘No. No, I’m not. I’m Hester Fallowes and I don’t live anywhere near here at all.’
‘Don’t mind Grandpa,’ the voice called. ‘One person’s much like another unless they’re American or French and then we have to wheel him away and cool him off.’
‘I know good stock, though.’
‘Ah yes, you know good stock, Grandpa; that we won’t deny.’
A young man came round the side of the archway, carrying two glasses of wine. One he handed to her. ‘Rupert,’ he said. ‘Good evening.’
Hetty knew nothing of parties. During the war, as she grew up, there had been none. The word ‘party’ was therefore associated with childhood; with team games and jellies and frills and being taken home skipping with a present and telling your mother all about it. Later on there were the frugal school parties and the church socials with wet kisses with unknown boys, occasions that seemed to have a set of rules known instinctively to other girls but not to her. When these feverish gatherings broke up they drifted into cinemas and back-row kissing, even while the raids were on, and into languorous walkings-home, two by two, the snufflings on park benches, the uncertainty about rules. The word ‘party’ persisted, still recalled gramophone music and musical chairs and ring-a-roses, but it was a front now for something more threatening and exciting. Then, at sixteen, there had been the sherry at the vicarage and everybody very old, except fresh-faced Eustace. She never dared tell them at school about that party.
But the alternative had been to rebel and go in with the tortoise parties on the sand-hills, and this she knew she could not do. Or to find someone close, close to one’s soul, like Una and the bike-boy, and this she knew she had not yet done. She had observed all the other girls in their solemn embraces, and rather forlornly had returned to English literature.
She had sunk into books, she had wallowed in books, and when she occasionally met up with passion—the visitations of the vicar, her father’s mysterious peregrinations along the shadowy promenade—she had turned from them. To her a party would always mean being six.