Ten Pollitt Place

by C. H. B. Kitchin

  She found Miss Tredennick in her arm-chair by the window, through which streamed a warm and misty sunshine. She looked formidably aristocratic, Dorothy thought, with her long fastidious nose, keen grey eyes and determined mouth. And what a lovely boudoir-gown she was wearing. People might laugh, but lace really suited old ladies. And those two rings, the sapphire and the diamond,—if anyone else was wearing them, you’d say they couldn’t be real. Dorothy felt as if she had been admitted to a queen’s levée and was enjoying a social elevation which was, if anything, enhanced by her dread that she might commit some breach of etiquette.

  After a few compliments on both sides, which included Dorothy’s birthday greetings, Miss Tredennick came to the point. ‘As you know, Mrs Fawley, I can’t get downstairs without causing such a commotion that I’ve given up trying. What I’m going to ask you, though I’m afraid it may put you to great trouble, is, will you be kind enough to do my Christ­mas shopping for me? Gwen Muller did it last year, but she bought such dull things. I think she has very little imagination and, of course, she has no experience. I hear you are so very clever at these things. . . . Now these are my lists.’

  Dorothy looked through them with a professional air and did her best to hide her excitement. What a huge vista of pleasures had opened up,—hours and hours of exploration in Garrows, and perhaps in those exclusive shops in Mayfair, where her investigations had hitherto been limited to peering into the windows. She almost regretted that she had promised to spend a fortnight with Susan in Brighton. But, as Miss Tredennick was at that moment telling her, there was no hurry. She could prolong her mission to the middle of December, if she liked, except for the Christmas-cards and one or two presents that were going abroad. Miss Tredennick summed up by saying, ‘If you’re in any doubt, just send a message by Gwen or Magda,—or come and see me, if I’m well enough. This is one of my better days, Mrs Fawley.’

  She smiled and Dorothy, while making her farewells, felt she ought to curtsey. When she had opened the door and was just going out, Miss Tredennick said, ‘Oh, Mrs Fawley, I do hope you and your husband are happy and really settled. It is a great relief to me to think that Gwen has such charming tenants as you both and Mr Bray. I should hate her to have to replace any of you.’

  Dorothy’s voice vibrated with enthusiasm as she replied, ‘We’re absolutely enchanted to be here, dear Miss Tredennick. I do hope we shan’t ever have to go.’

  Perhaps Miss Tredennick didn’t altogether relish the dear with which Dorothy had apostrophised her; for she made her final remark in a different voice.

  ‘I’m afraid that some day we shall all of us have to go. But I trust not just yet awhile. Goodbye, Mrs Fawley.’

  [2]

  Miss Tredennick had always loved the fifth of November, not only because it was her birthday, but because of its associa­tions with fireworks. A branch of the family business had made them and pyrotechnics had been almost a part of her education. In her younger days, whenever she saw a public display of fireworks, she judged the set-pieces, rockets, Roman candles and shells like a connoisseur, and could calculate how much the beano had cost the ratepayers. Even a simple bonfire gave her pleasure, and the burning of the guy symbolised to her not only the destruction of Popery, Guy Fawkes and Titus Oates (whom, incorrectly, she regarded as another Popish con­spirator), but of more recent villains, who in their various ways and at various times had threatened to disturb her peace and prosperity,—President Kruger, Lloyd-George, the Kaiser, Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and others still living, who shall be nameless.

  The Silver Jubilee of King George the Fifth stood out in her memory as the grandest social occasion in her life. Polvannion had been thrown open to three hundred guests, who had the entrée to the mansion, while a suitable part of the grounds was allocated to the general public so that they could watch the show while drinking the King’s health in free beer. A special coach on the train had brought the fireworks—alas, no longer made by Tredennick’s Explosives—and a band of experts to fix them and let them off. The night was warm and cloudless,—very different from the night of the party which the poor Penruddockes gave with misguided emulation two years later to celebrate the Coronation of King George the Sixth. (Talk about damp squibs!) There had been no accident, no kind of hitch, no tedious waiting. And if, as was later said locally, the fiesta had left a trail of illegitimate babies behind, what touch could have been more feudal?

  But those were times which would never come again. Those fiery fountains, those wheels of molten silver, those showers of coloured stars, those smoky lights, pink, green, blue, crimson, amber, which had transformed the clumps of camel­lias and rhododendrons into a vision of paradise, had burnt out never to be rekindled. Their extinction had marked the end of an era. Within a few weeks of the party, old Mr Treden­nick had a slight stroke. He rallied well, but his long and tedious dotage had set in. His habits became eccentric and often embarrassing. Those round him lived in a continual state of apprehension, and meanwhile the further horizon was dark­ened by the threat of impending war. Then all the lights went out for six years, and when at last they were switched on again, they glimmered feebly over an alien landscape.

  Yet life still offered a few shy consolations, and on this fifth of November Miss Tredennick was resolved to make the most of them. Chief of these was her Journal which was now becom­ing more like a diary, though she never lost sight of the pur­pose she had in view when she began it. As soon as she had got rid of Mrs Fawley, she made the morning’s entry:

  Saturday, 5th November. Slept well. Fine after early fog. Showed my Christmas-lists to Mrs F. who is delighted to do my shopping. Y. V. left No. 7 at 9.20, wearing her black hat and blue two-piece, and carried her large blue bag. She walked rather slowly towards the Crescent.

  Hurry up, girls, the men want their treat!

  Hurry up, girls, and get on to the beat!

  She seemed so much less jaunty than usual, I wonder if trade is bad.

  Then once more Miss Tredennick read the Journal right through from the beginning. She had to admit that the essential part, which she intended some day to copy out and present to the authorities, was, as it stood, too meagre to be impressive, and not for the first time she was strongly tempted to embellish it with details such as the following:

  A buck-nigger called at 5.30, another one at 6.10, two American sailors at 6.48. A fat, blond elderly man drove up in a Mercedes at 7.15. When the two sailors came out, he banged the knocker on the door.

  But if she gave way in the smallest degree to her imagination, gone were all her hopes of bringing respectability back to Pollitt Place. She must stick to facts. Already the line between fact and fancy was becoming a little blurred, and that way, as she knew from her experience of her father in Cornwall, lay lunacy.

  In the street, a very small boy threw a very small firework into the gutter, ran a few yards and waited for the bang. Miss Tredennick smiled indulgently from above. Mrs Muller had told her earlier that the Americans who lived at Number Nineteen in the Terrace were having a firework party that evening for their three children, and Miss Tredennick had said that she would like to watch it from her sitting-room, which had an oblique view of the little gardens behind the Terrace. She would have been glad for Hugo to come and watch with her, but she had already sent a line to Justin, suggesting that if he had nothing better to do, he might care to come and take a glass of sherry with her at half-past six, and she couldn’t suppose he would welcome Hugo as his fellow-guest. At the same time it really was a shame that the poor boy shouldn’t see the show. She had even thought of writing to the Ameri­cans, who she heard were very nice people, telling them that she had a small crippled protégé and would be most grateful if he could join them. Americans set no store by class-distinctions—or were said not to. Besides, Hugo’s manners were perfect. You’d never think his mother was a servant. But Miss Tre­dennick hated asking favours, especially if there was the chance of a rebuff.

  She wa
s still wondering what she could plan for Hugo, when Magda came in with her lunch.

  ‘By the way, Magda, have you or your mother made any arrangements for Hugo to see some fireworks to-night?’

  Magda answered shortly, ‘No, Madam, none.’ Then she added, as if forced to disclose something she would rather have kept hidden, ‘He did ask Mother if he could go up to the haunted room, as he calls it,—the box-room at the top of the little staircase—and watch the Americans from there. But of course Mother told him he mustn’t. I keep reminding him he’s not allowed above stairs except when you send for him.’

  Miss Tredennick smiled almost sweetly. ‘Oh, you mustn’t make me out such a dragon as all that. It wouldn’t do, of course, in a general way, for him to have the run of the upper part. One has to consider the tenants. But just for once, there couldn’t be any harm in it. Will you tell your mother this, when you have your midday meal? You won’t forget, Magda, will you?’

  ‘No, Madam. But I don’t think it’s very wise, if I may say so.’

  ‘Why, what harm could it do?’

  ‘Well, he might get into the habit of going up on his own.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. I’m sure he wouldn’t. And by the way, why does he call the box-room “the haunted room”?’

  ‘He says that when we were first moving in, one of the work­men told him it was haunted, and that somebody had com­mitted suicide there by hanging himself. My own belief is he made it up himself. He’s full of the silliest fancies.’

  Miss Tredennick laughed and said, ‘I sincerely hope it isn’t haunted, because, as I expect you know, it’s supposed to be my fire-escape. The Borough Surveyor made a tremendous to-do about the sky-light,—though I can’t think how you’d get me through it. However, just this once, Hugo shall go to the haunted room, if he wants to. I’m sure he’ll manage to exorcise the ghost.’

  ‘Very well, Madam, I’ll tell Mother what you say.’

  [3]

  By two o’clock the mist had a yellowish tinge and the sun was no more than a circle of dull luminous paint on a smoky wall. An hour later it had disappeared and the mist had quite definitely turned into a fog. The houses opposite became first smudgy then invisible. Traffic slowed down and almost ceased. The shoes of people walking on the pavement might have been bound round with cotton-wool and made vague vibrations rather than clear-cut sounds.

  Miss Tredennick, who had moved laboriously from the arm-chair by her bedroom window to a similar chair in her sitting-room, was bitterly disappointed. She had hoped to see the Americans preparing for their party,—pinning Catherine-wheels on boards, erecting some sort of stand for the jack-in-the-box, planting the Roman candles in wine bottles and attaching sticks to the rockets. But their little garden was a well of blackness. Once or twice, it is true, she heard voices which made it clear that so far there had been no change of plan. ‘No, Emerson, not quite so near the shed. . . . It shouldn’t catch the cherry-tree from here. . . . How far does this one spurt? Surely you asked the salesman when you bought it? . . . Oh, he wouldn’t know. . . . Just another couple of bangers for the guy’s feet. . . . Gee, Pop, look at Otis! He’s smuggling some indoors. . . . Now, sonny, if I catch you up to those tricks again . . . Emerson, come right down. . . .’

  Then there was silence,—a very long and tedious silence, which lasted till Justin, panting slightly from the effort of two flights of stairs, tapped on the door.

  ‘Oh, do come in, Mr Bray. You’re looking well. It’s such an age since I have seen you. And thank you so much for your very charming card of good wishes. . . . If you draw up that chair, you’ll have a good view, if there’s anything to see. This fog is too cruel. Now, tell me . . .’

  They chatted together like two very old friends of the same sex. Justin glowed inwardly at the thought that his presence could still confer a pleasure, and Miss Tredennick glowed too, because she could, at the age of seventy-six—no, seventy-seven!—summon distinguished authors to her salon. (O lone­liness, the nightmare of old age!)

  ‘It’s really wonderful what respect Americans have for our traditions. We have passed the torch of our civilisation to them, even though in our fog we can hardly see it.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve been most misguided to underrate them. After all, if it weren’t for them, you and I would be digging for uranium in Siberia.’

  ‘True,—sadly true.’

  (Why couldn’t the show begin?)

  ‘I suppose they’re all having a kind of tea indoors.’

  Justin said, ‘I always hated fireworks when I was a boy. I suppose I was frightened of them. Now I regret I didn’t enjoy them when I could.’

  Miss Tredennick answered, ‘How funny, I always used to love them—and still do. Ah, I think I hear something. Look, they’ve opened the french window leading into the garden.’

  The fog seemed to have lifted just a little, and they could see vague shapes trooping into the garden, and the darting beam of a torch. There was a rising hubbub of young voices, which suddenly sank to that special sound which is only emitted by those who watch fireworks,—a kind of ‘Ooaaah!’, like the backwash of a wave which has broken on a sandy beach. The first Roman candle had launched its first tiny star. Miss Tredennick thought, ‘How pitifully small,—but better than nothing, very much better than nothing’, while Justin sipped his sherry and regretted that he’d never assembled his Seven Silent Sinners round a bonfire, each guilty face shown up luridly by the blaze. (But even that wouldn’t have made the book a success.)

  Next came a triangle-wheel, which seemed to have been injudiciously sited; for a shrill female voice was deploring the danger to Mrs Anderson’s trellis, and a man shouted, ‘Dwight, Dwight—Dwight! Keep away. Do you want all your hair singed off?’ From the top floor of Ten Pollitt Place the danger looked very slight. Miss Tredennick murmured, ‘Of course, they don’t make them now, as we used to make them.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nothing. I was dreaming of my girlhood.’

  Their silence was broken by a very loud bang, followed at once by the sound of children crying. ‘Oh, Waldo, I said no really noisy ones. You’ll make our neighbours hate us. Now, Lorna, isn’t that pretty?’ A silver fountain shot up near the post which on Tuesdays held one end of the washing-line. ‘Ooaaah!’ Yes, that one was a real success. Then more Roman candles, then three Catherine-wheels let off simultaneously. A good touch, that. Miss Tredennick nodded with professional approval. Then a couple of crackers spat through the lower darkness, feet scuttled in a stampede, and among the shrieks a male voice shouted, ‘Otis, you wait! I’ll give you such a tanning when I catch you!’ Something about the words and the quality of the voice which had uttered them gave both Miss Tredennick and Justin an obscure masochistic thrill. (What a fine show it was!) Then came the jack-in-the-box, though when it exploded, it didn’t rival the crackers. More Roman candles, more Catherine-wheels, and then three timid rockets which hardly rose as high as the Fawleys’ windows. Then the voice which had threatened Otis with a tanning, said, ‘Well, I guess it’s time we had the bonfire.’

  There were movements, counter-movements and in the background a slightly impatient shuffling of feet. Then, with a roar the whole scene was lit up, revealing two hot adult males, three adult women still full of their transatlantic poise, and a dozen children, dancing and clapping and nudging one another and giggling at the crude face of the guy, whose outer covering was already aflame. ‘That’s Hitler, that is. No, it’s Stalin. No it isn’t, he’s dead. It’s ——, it’s —— or ——’ (The blanks represent candidates for the position of America’s Public Enemy Number One, and to fill them in might be no less indiscreet than to disclose Miss Tredennick’s pet political aversion of the moment.)

  The feet were the first to explode, then came the hands, then the heart (very loudly), then lastly the head which almost shook the foundations of Number Ten. Then a woman said in a deep-bosomed contralto, ‘Now, folks, as we’re in England and we may have upset some of our neighbou
rs, I think we ought to close—this being a vurry English festival—with God save the Queen.’

  While the assembly struggled half-heartedly with the National Anthem, came the real climax of the evening. A bright pink smoky glow spread slowly outwards from the top of Number Ten and hovered over the little gardens down below. Its calm radiance seemed like a thanksgiving and a benediction. The National Anthem broke off, and someone, perhaps a daughter of the house, cried, ‘Well done, Miss Trewallock!’, and soon a dozen eager voices, making the slogan into a chant such as one imagines might be roared out on the campus of an American university, repeated in unison, ‘Well—done—Miss—Trewallock!’

  Oh, if only her stiff knees were supple enough to allow her to bow her acknowledgments from the window! But how had it happened? Of course, it was Hugo,—dear Hugo, patiently watchful in the solitude of the haunted room, and judging, with a master’s precision, the time to let off his one little fire­work. He was a boy in a thousand.

  She turned to Justin and said, ‘You know, it was Hugo who let off that Bengal light. He’s in the roof,—in the box-room.’

  Justin said, with a courtly admiration, ‘What a perfect finale! How did you come to think of it?’

  Miss Tredennick blushed slightly as she replied, ‘But I didn’t. It was Hugo’s own idea. Well, everything’s over now. If you’d draw the curtains, it would be most kind.’

  She didn’t know that two days before, Hugo had asked his friend the dustman where he lived, and that the dustman had told him he had a flat on the topmost floor of a new council-building that towered in what had been a derelict area of back-streets just off the shabbier end of Parkwell Road. ‘It faces this way,’ he had said. ‘We can see the Square and the Crescent quite easily and I dare say we can see the backs of these houses, though it’s hard to know which is which. If you could get on the roof and wave a flag, we might be able to signal to one another.’ Then he looked down at Hugo’s leg and added, ‘But don’t you go trying any larks like that.’ Hugo asked, ‘Would it do if I waved from one of our top windows?’ The dustman said, ‘Yes, I should think so. Some day I’ll borrow a pair of field-glasses and make quite sure.’