The Brontes Went to Woolworths

by Rachel Ferguson

  And then she began to open our presents.

  The end-of-term shows at the Dramatic School were so funny that my nose began to bleed, and I had to grope my way out and yell it off in the cloak-rooms. But mother, shuddering with giggles, sat it all out so as to be able to say what there was to say to Katrine. Her rôles included Polonius, and she’d just got to ‘costly thy habit’ when her beard came half off and swung like a pendulum for the rest of the scene, and in The Professor’s Love Story (Oh! what a bad play!) the gate stuck, and pinned that whimsical recluse to his own fence. And later on, mother told me, one of the girls (as a farmer) had to fill a pipe and smoke it, and she stuffed the bowl so full that a man in the audience said ‘Christ’ out loud, and of course it wouldn’t draw, and the girl pulled nearly all of it out again, and mother said, ‘The stage was knee-deep in shag. That girl ought to get on.’ And Toddington, sitting by mother, looked austere and tolerant, and said that these mishaps must be very trying, where all were working so hard. And afterwards, he drove us home in his car. Mitchell, his chauffeur, is beginning to know our address so well, now, that we have often noticed a slight tendency on his part to cough like a stage butler whenever it is mentioned, and once I told it as a joke to Toddy, and he was down on Mitchell like a ton of bricks. Toddy has a tongue like a whip-lash. It is only to be expected.

  My novel went off to a publisher a fortnight ago, and I am cold with excitement. Toddy thinks it ‘exceedingly good,’ and said I was a clever child, and took me to the Ritz to celebrate, and made rather a stir as so many people recognised him. Mildred wasn’t there. She is altogether a little unapproachable, and although she has ‘called,’ we all felt it was more or less to countenance her husband’s friends.

  But as time goes on – it is nearly a year, now, since the jury summons – she is gradually beginning to show us another side of herself. She drove me back, for instance, a week ago, to her house, and gave me a cherry brandy and had one herself, and suddenly kicked off her shoes and said she was sick of her life and whatever was the use of tiring oneself out in the season for a pack of people who didn’t care a dump for her? And mother said, ‘How Toddy would loathe her saying “whatever!” But I always told you Mildred wasn’t as top-shelfish as you think she is. After all . . . Brockley is anybody’s name.’

  Mother is so sane; she can always be trusted to come out with something reassuring. Bogeys hate her.

  I said, ‘Then why did Toddy marry her?’

  ‘Oh well, you know how it is. And he was only in his twenties. And I expect she was pretty.’

  And then I said, ‘Isn’t it rum to think that Toddy eats, and shaves and has tiny little liver attacks?’

  ‘But of course he does! I expect he takes pills by the spoonful! He looks what Mildred would call “bileyfied.” ’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t!’

  Mother pulled my chin. ‘I believe you think he goes about on a gilded elephant.’

  ‘Well,’ I countered, ‘can you see him in a train, or a bus?’

  ‘But of course I can! I bet he takes buses every day of his life.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see him doing it,’ I answered truthfully. And then I went into the library and had an inferiority complex. The season was still on, and cars were rolling by full of expensive people who were in demand; hard-eyed girls who do all the right things and don’t speak our language at all; who are so jolly sure of themselves, so positive about life, and whose highest tribute to joy is a drawled ‘Mahvellous!’

  I tried to explain it all to mother, once, and she said, ‘These girls have no shadows.’

  One doesn’t envy them, but one is alarmed by them, stupidity and all, and intimidated and impressed. And by they all went, doing Mildred Toddington sorts of things at times dedicated by everybody else to work. But, at the same time, from about this period I date the change in Mildred. She became more human, even less bred.

  And I began to read books about people whose spirits were even ‘lower’ than mine, for that is the only possible book for these occasions, and I took down Jane Eyre, and watched Miss Martin, in one of her quenched hats, taking Sheil out for a walk.

  But I couldn’t settle to anything, and I planned to take Katrine to a music-hall in the evening. We would go to an outlying hall because the turns are always better and more virile in those places, and we both love the twice-a-night atmosphere, and the sequins that are missing from the tabs, and the hurried overture with the band wiping the beer from its lips, and the advertisements of the local shops that the lantern in the family circle throws on to the screen . . . ready-to-wear trousers like drain pipes, and hats in which one wouldn’t be seen dying. And at one of the Empires there is a grocer called Soper, who always advertises, and when his slide comes we always applaud, because he is probably rather bald, and feeling his age, and bewildered by the competition of the chain stores, and because it is so terrible to have a surname like his.

  And sometimes we go behind and talk to anybody I know that may be on the bill. And Katrine is all agog, and impressed with me, and I pretend I’m not a bit, though the sight of a dress-basket and the smell of the stone passages always goes to my head. Katrine will grow out of her feeling because she is only stage-struck and inexperienced, and three weeks in the provinces will settle her illusions for ever, whereas I am not a bit stage-struck any more, but the trappings will impose themselves on me for ever, though I know them for what they are.

  We adore what we call ‘Hai – hup!’ turns; they are always active and all over spangles, and one gets plenty of them in the suburbs. Katrine is always sorry for the girl who only stands at the back of the set in tights and looks bright and interested, and catches things, and always wonders what her home looks like, and what she reads and really thinks about things. I don’t have to bother, because I’ve met her, and I know she thinks of nothing but the show, and clothes, and lucky charms and men, and that her home is a combined room in Kennington Road or Highbury New Park, with a cruet on the chiffonier. Comedians are far more elastic in their higher reaches, and think of plenty of things, and are apt to collect artistic objects far above their station, and are usually thoroughly good sorts and not a bit the ‘laddie’ type. And this week, Freddie Pipson was topping the bill, and I said to Katrine, ‘We’ll go and see him afterwards.’

  Pipson is a wonder. He is the only justification I know for that dreadful phrase, ‘One of Nature’s gentlemen.’ He has everything except birth, and if he ever marries, his wife will be a lucky and blessèd woman. He is earning two hundred a week and was born in the slums; his handwriting is awful and his relatives unpresentable, but I would trust my life, money, and daughter to him without thinking twice. And I thought of all that while the band blared, and Pipson marched in in a comedy uniform, sword and scratch wig, and sang his famous ‘I’m the Captain of the Loyal Kitchen Rangers,’ while the house roared. He told me once that it was his landlady that gave him the idea, years ago, when he was an obscure first turn, and he wrote the chorus on an old envelope and got a try-out at Islington, ‘And it went so big, Miss Carne, I never looked back, and I’ve been singing it, off and on, ever since.’

  We joined in the chorus with everybody, and Pipson suddenly saw me, and saluted, and gave that imperceptible sideways nod of the head that meant we were to come round after the show.

  I’m the Captain of the Loyal Kitchen Rangers!

  I lead the men to battle, in the rear,

  With dispatches on my cuff,

  By Jingo, I’m the stuff!

  And the foe for mercy shout

  When I pull my dampers out.

  People say, “Who is that handsome man

  Who’s standing by the butts?”

  And the privates always point me out to strangers.

  I’m the idol of the reg’ment, and I’m one of

  Derby’s nuts, I’m the Captain of the Loyal Kitchen Rangers!

  Pipson wrote it early in the War, when he had been rejected by three recruiting offices. He said t
o me that he had never been through such humiliation, and so he came home to find salvation on the back of an envelope. But the night he sang it to ‘real soldiers’ he nearly broke down. He gave half his salary to War charities, and gave up smoking altogether, and even now only has one drink after his work is over, though his dressing-room is like a bar, for visitors. So I nodded ‘yes’ to him. I met him first a few months ago when I was doing a series of music-hall impressions for Binton, and I couldn’t get him to talk about himself because he would talk about me. Katrine whispered ecstatically, ‘Oh, will somebody say “Pleased to meet you” to us?’ ‘All of them,’ I replied, ‘and what the answer is, I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s like when people say “God bless you”; one doesn’t know whether to say “Don’t mention it,” “Not at all,” or “The same to you.” ’

  And then, while Pipson hurried off to change for his next number, while the band played the chorus of the Rangers and then broke into the chorus of the number to follow, I fell into one of those mental maunders that noise always induces, and wondered why one mustn’t say ‘Pleased to meet you’ when it expresses exactly what one wants to convey, and then the back of the conductor’s head gave me the idea for a music-hall sketch, and the tune gave me the outline for a ballet synopsis why, I can’t imagine, as the music – was completely unsuitable for dancers, but lights and noise are like flame to gunpowder with me, and I once planned a problem-play through watching a turn rattle out William Tell on the xylophone. Theatres, halls and concerts have another effect, too; they stir me to re-living the past, and I have often come home from Queen’s Hall quite furious at disagreements I had with people, ten years ago, with whom I am really on the best of terms.

  I suppose that nothing, no emotion, no personality, ever really dies, but hangs about in the atmosphere, waiting for one to get into touch, again, through something quite extraneous – any medium. . . ?

  When we had got past the Sergeant, Pipson was waiting for us outside his dressing-room in a vest, a clanless kilt and a flannel dressing-gown. He had removed his wig of Caledonian carrot and his hair was brushed and sleek. He wrung my hands and said, ‘This is so kind of you.’ And I said, ‘I’ve brought my sister.’

  ‘I’m very glad indeed. Might I ask you both to come in? Mr Bagley, my seckertry.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ answered Katrine, and Bagley edged out while Pipson brought us cushions and footstools, and offered us whisky, brandy, port, gin and angostura and cigarettes, while his two dressers tried to take his spats off. ‘Now, never mind about the time, I’ll drive you home. Well now, how’s the work? I read your article on this Bastardy Bill with very great interest, and I’m with you, in the main, about everything you say. This class of kiddy . . . ’ Ten minutes later he flung a greasepaint-smeared towel aside and said, ‘I wish you’d write me a new number, Miss Carne. I’m not getting this Scotch one over.’

  ‘No. I noticed that.’

  ‘You did?’ He turned to Katrine. ‘I’m always grateful to people like your sister who’ll tell one the truth, Miss Carne. I went rotten to-night, and I know it.’ And to me, ‘Well, what about it?’

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t the touch. I should be either much too refined or so low you couldn’t sing it.’

  ‘What a joke, eh?’ He looked at Katrine with his sad, monkey eyes. ‘It may seem odd to you, Miss Carne, but I never sing or say a line I wouldn’t sing or say before you.’ And to me, ‘Well, dear, do think it over.’

  ‘Let’s write it now!’ said Katrine. Half a small glass of port and the proximity of Pipson were too much for her. ‘We’ll take a line each.’

  ‘I am going to ask you to forgive me while I change,’ and Pipson went into his inner room.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You begin, dear.’

  ‘Play fair,’ I objected, ‘You’ll have to do your bit, change or no.’

  I considered the rows of greasepaints on his dressing-table. ‘I’m engaged in shaving scooters for the pips they put in jam,’ I sang.

  ‘That’s torn it!’ called out Pipson, throwing his kilt through the door, and added, in his tenor,

  ‘And I chip the ice from mutton that I sell as English lamb.’

  ‘I’m a pillar of the chapel ev’ry Sunday, yes I am! ’

  ‘And whatever should I do without me conscience? ’ chirped up Katrine.

  Pipson put his head through the door, serious at once. ‘That’s a little controversial, Miss Carne, if you know what I mean. I’m Church of England, myself, but we’ve got to respect what other people believe in. So many people in my audience are Chapel, you’d be surprised.’

  I saw that in another second Katrine would explode, but luckily Pipson’s chauffeur looked in and intimated that he was due at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in half an hour, and Pipson crated us in his enormous Daimler as though we were glass, or a loan collection of Flemish pictures, and said, ‘Night, Hopkins,’ and ‘God bless you, dear’ to the Sergeant and a passing turn, and we drove to our turning, and he thanked and blessed us for our company, and in our hall Katrine was so overcome that she sank on to the settle and said she’d leave her home for Pipson. I had gone for the letters at once. The post always intoxicates me; everything it throws on to the mat is a magic square or oblong which may alter your life. We were both humming with music, light and well-being, and in these states anything wonderful may be awaiting one. I pointed to the one letter for Katrine and was lost to the world in my own mail when she gave a little cry that brought me to earth in a second. I picked up the fallen sheet and said, ‘May I?’

  ‘DEAR MISS CARNE,

  ‘The committee has followed your work with attention for the two terms during which you have been a student, and has come to the conclusion that it is not justified in advising you to complete the course . . . ’

  This was one of those bad moments which occasionally come to families.

  I had so much to say that I struggled to select any bit of it and failed, as I usually do; all I managed was, ‘Shall I go down and see them, myself?’ I can fight for other people. And in the end, as usual, Katrine and I went and told mother about it, and I left them alone. Mother has a knack . . .

  In my bedroom I walked about and fidgeted till two o’clock, addressing the committee in telling and acidulous phrases. It was money they were out for . . . if Katrine was so unsatisfactory a student it was their plain duty to have informed her after her first term . . . I hesitate to designate their action as a plant, but how could they square their treatment of my sister with the undoubted fact that students patently more unsuitable than her were not only retained but promoted? . . . Boiling, muttering, I prowled. I wrote it all down, for the written statement invariably calms me.

  How sorry and indignant and sympathetic Toddy would be when he heard! But Katrine wouldn’t be in a state, for a few days yet, for us to tell him about it at lunch or dinner . . .

  Would Mildred play up? Would the kindly Brockley in her come up trumps? I rather thought so.

  I stood in front of a photograph of Toddington leaving the Old Bailey, and said, ‘Oh, Toddy, we’re in such a mess!’ and then I cried, and then, in the odious way that these things intrude themselves, I began to dramatise the situation and to plan a story about it for The Rattler, and I wrote out the plot, crying all the time, and got into bed at three, and had no sleep till five o’clock.

  In the morning there was a letter by my plate refusing my novel.

  6

  In the schoolroom, Agatha Martin was writing to her eldest sister in Cheltenham.

  ‘DEAREST FLOSSIE,

  ‘I have not heard from you for a week, so that makes seven days without a letter.

  ‘I cannot tell you, tho’ you should know, after all this time, how one looks to the post, when one is with new families.

  ‘I think I am settling down very fairly well. Mrs Carne is, I think, a v. nice woman, though a little bit weird! Anyway, she is v. nice to me, they all are. The two elder girls v.
wellmannered, on the whole. They both do things. Katrine (eldest) is studying for the stage, but I think it may v. probably be only a hobby, tho’ she is v. pretty in the brunette style, and speaks her parts loudly and clearly. Deirdre is a journalist, as I have told you (?), and really gets taken, and Mrs Carne seems to let her go about to v. weird places alone. I don’t pretend to understand the modern girl. Sheil, my little girl, is a sweet kiddy to look at, but a v. weird child. A kiddy who says whimsical things every now and again I could understand and cope with. (Do you remember Kenneth Barlow who said that “King Henry died of a surfeit of lampshades,” and how heartily we laughed over it? He meant lampreys !!!) But Sheil isn’t amusing a bit, that way; she talks in such a silly way about things and people, sometimes. It’s perfectly harmless, of course, and I am sure I can get her out of it, in time, but one sometimes can’t make out when she knows she is “making up” and when she believes she is telling the truth. For instance, she told me yesterday that Crellie (their terrier) once thought he was the Pope, and had a procession to the Vatican, and he wore a cope, and just as the service was beginning, he was sick on the altar steps.

  ‘But I shall watch all that. And the only scrap of foundation for the whole thing is that the dog is always vomiting because he will bathe so in the Serpentine, and swallows it. And even the elder girls go on about him, and sort of intone “In Seculae Seculorum” sometimes when they see him, and call out “magnificats” whenever there is a Tom on the wall, and they say he “talks” with a cockney accent, and sometimes meals are a perfect Beldam (do forgive! I mean Bedlam, of course) of cockney, and of what Crellie “said.” It’s so ridiculous, and not funny, as I said. I love a joke, but this is v. wearing. And the latest seems to be about – of all persons in the world – Mr Justice Toddington; I fancy he was the Judge on the Poisoned Caramels case about three years ago? They are all silly about him, and talk in such a way that I can never make out how much is play and how much serious. They know him in private life, so I expect to meet him any day, now. He is certainly exceedingly generous, and I have often heard them talking amongst themselves of the presents he makes them on birthdays and at Xmas, so I await the next birthday with the greatest curiosity !!