The Brontes Went to Woolworths

by Rachel Ferguson

  Les fleuves ruisselaient,

  Les oiseaux piroquaient,

  Et sur le gazon tendre et vert

  Les belles têtes émaillées des fleurs apparaissaient.’

  (Une marque de désordre!) Then, to herself, ‘That’s really dam’ good!’

  ‘If it’s Victor Hugo it’s much better than him,’ I agreed. We know by repute all of mother’s ex-mistresses, and imitate them nearly as well as she does, and once when we were reading our old exam papers we found two of ours and three of mother’s, and she said, ‘May 1874 . . . would those be yours or mine?’

  We set out at nine-thirty.

  ‘I suppose Mildred took all her stuff down in the car yesterday,’ mother said.

  ‘Yes. She had a tea the other day to show the Lalique, and sold quite a lot in advance.’

  ‘We’d better ask her to dinner afterwards, and tell her she must come just as she is, and can go when she likes.’

  ‘Better not,’ answered mother, ‘she’ll be dead tired and will want to go straight home.’

  ‘I wonder if Nicholls will be there?’

  ‘I’m certain he won’t. He couldn’t afford the prices.’

  ‘Oh, poor lamb!’

  ‘Toddy can tell him all about it,’ consoled mother, ‘I expect he’ll take him out to lunch.’

  Henry Nicholls is a dear, and Toddy is becoming increasingly fond of and dependent upon him. He has left him £250 in his Will. Nicholls does a hundred jobs for Toddy that don’t come within his duties, and seldom rushes off to snatch his own lunch before he has seen to it that Toddy is served with what he enjoys, and last summer when Toddy gave a lunch-party in his private room at the Law Courts and Mildred came to hostess it, Nicholls must have had only about ten minutes to himself, as he volunteer’d to shepherd us all and wait by us in the hall until we were all assembled when Toddy could come down the stairs to lead us up without loss of time and being gaped at. And Toddy said, ‘Are all my ladies here?’ and mother, who overheard, said, ‘Yes, all waiting for you to crack the snail for them,’ for we are always trying to wean him from alluding to us in the rooster manner. It’s purely old-world, but we find it dreadfully hen-coopy.

  When we had walked another half-mile mother said, ‘Well – to-morrow you’ll see Mildred. I’m longing to know what she’s really like.’

  ‘But, darling, come too – and buy some Lalique!’

  ‘Not much! This is your show. But you must tell me every mortal thing.’

  ‘She’ll probably be a crone in a bugled dolman,’ said Katrine, coming out of her Pipson trance.

  ‘Oh no,’ answered mother and I. After that we talked about revue.

  That was a wonderful day. One never guesses in the morning when one gets up that some days are going to be like that.

  10

  The Albert Hall bazaar was no sort of a job, professionally speaking, and one not a bit in my line. With that fact I tried to steady my nerves all through lunch, while Sheil stared at me with passionate concentration. To her, I knew, I had already taken on the quality of dream. I was merging into the saga, and she, fascinated, bewildered, was watching me fade . . .

  I didn’t feel any too real, myself, and Katrine and mother had caught it a little, as well, and we were all rather silent.

  On that occasion, Miss Martin was our safety-valve: our responses to her remarks came briskly. One heard them being admirably apposite.

  When I looked back, mother, as I knew, would be at the drawing-room window, watching me down the street. She called out, ‘My love to Mildred!’ At my feet fell a bunch of violets tied with cotton. The schoolroom window framed Sheil, her russet wig starting.

  Her shriek, ‘For darling Toddy,’ was half drowned by a passing motor.

  Inside the hall I was pestered in the usual manner by women who seem to think that a hideous cushion is pretty if it is sold for charity. I suppose my trouble is that I haven’t got ‘Press’ written all over me, or a clever way with nuisances. Somebody loomed up and I said, ‘Is Mildred here?’ and then I heard what I’d done and felt rather ill, and stammered, ‘I mean Lady Toddington.’

  I found myself being led in the direction of her stall.

  ‘That is Lady Toddington. In blue.’

  She was very much as I had expected, only smarter and a trifle younger. Her hair, instead of being dyed, as we had all arranged, was anybody’s brown rapidly growing grey. And she was business-like, which put me out of action, for a bit . . .

  I handed over my Press card. Somebody was explaining me. And then, I found myself let in for one of those hopeless conversations which are inevitable where one party has a lot to do and the other nothing. But that was only the stupid, obvious difficulty. The main trouble lay in the fact that I came to Lady Toddington aware: primed with a thousand delicate, secret knowledges and intuitions, whereas to her I was, I suppose, merely so much cubic girl, so to speak. I felt at once at an everlasting disadvantage and as though I was taking her friendliness under false pretences. A sort of Judas at the keyhole.

  How could I tell her that I had lunched with her and helped her dress her stall, yesterday afternoon, and that Toddy had come in after the Courts rose and given us both a cocktail? How convey the two years I had spoken to them both every day of my life? How blurt her own life to her, her daily round of dressmaker, telephone, at homes, and tiffs with Toddy. How describe to her her own secret difficulties: that she is privily aware that she is not his mental equal? That in the past there have been days when she would almost have welcomed his tangible infidelity as being a thing she could roundly, capably decide about, and no brains needed? That she has long ceased to love and notice him?

  And what would she make of that £250 left in Toddy’s Will to Nicholls? Or of Toddy’s mistrust of Saffy as a suitable friend for us?

  And what would she say to the mushroom story, in which her husband got a ‘naughty’ fit and refused one morning to go to the Law Courts and hibernated in a burrow, and, for more complete protection against discovery and interruption, fixed a mushroom to his wig?

  That sort of tale we recognise as fantastic. We know how to be reasonable . . .

  Meanwhile, there was the spadework of the situation to get through, and I wondered how long it would actually take to bring her up to the point at which I had arrived long since, so that we could all start level.

  One must curb impatience and be, if possible, careful. For the time, one must be ludicrously formal as though one said ‘How do you do’ to mother. I am rather good at that kind of thing. It’s a horrid bore, because it involves a lot of doing of things you dislike, tactical planning, personal adaptation and looking ahead.

  And thus, by dint of effacing myself behind her stall, wrapping awkward parcels in scanty paper, and fetching Lady Toddington a cup of slopped bazaar tea, and generally behaving like a lackey, I did that which I had set myself. She ‘took a fancy’ to me, asked me what paper I represented; and at that point I had to do another job and become slightly vulgar, as talking of one’s achievements always seems to me to be.

  She said, ‘It’s wonderful what all you girls are doing now’ in that comfortable sort of voice which non-combatants are able to use. And she called it ‘gurls,’ but then, of course, I had known she would . . .

  Towards the end of the afternoon, while she was counting up the wages of sin, I succeeded in saying, ‘Isn’t Sir Herbert going to look in?’

  ‘No. He’s going on to a dress rehearsal.’

  At this, I struggled with an insane impulse to exclaim, ‘Why wasn’t I told of it?’ or ‘He never said so.’

  Toddy at a rehearsal? A dress rehearsal? M’m . . . the Garrick Club . . . that might account for it. In my confusion I hardly realised the disappointment. But the idea of Toddy, sitting sternly among a crowd of actresses nervous to roping point and patting their curls all over him, was rather sweet. The family would adore it.

  I answered at random, ‘I love dress rehearsals,’ and indeed I have been to many
. I prefer life in its shirt sleeves. And then the absolutely incredible thing happened.

  She asked me home to dinner.

  Luckily, I go very white when in the least tired or excited, and this seemed to smite some maternal chord in Lady Toddington in spite of the lack of ‘s.’ or ‘d.’ as Who’s Who tersely describes offspring.

  I sat within two feet of the brass warming-pan, and for the first time saw the street from the right side of the window-boxes, and felt like Alice on the mantelpiece.

  We had iced consommé, salmon mayonnaise, vanilla soufflet and a pineapple, so that Toddy was evidently properly looked after, as far as creature comforts go.

  (To give Mildred her due, she does see to his comforts. Which of us had said that?)

  During the meal I put some of my cards on the table: told her about my visits to the Law Courts, which she took placidly, saying she thought they were dull and the ventilation ‘shocking,’ and just as I was going to put down another card a small dog trotted in and she hailed the creature as ‘my Mingy,’ and I thought, ‘That dog is born to be my curse,’ for he (or she) was the sort of dog that actresses bring to rehearsals.

  I said, ‘Is he your dog, or Sir Herbert’s?’ and she answered, ‘Mine, isn’t he, a boy!’ and to me, ‘Sir Herbert hates him.’

  I thought, ‘We’ll soon get you out of speaking like that, my woman!’

  ‘Sir Herbert.’ To me! To anybody, if it came to that. Oh. So Toddy hates him. He would, of course. And I glanced at her face for concealed resentments and found none; only a business-like acceptance. Well, they have been married for forty-six years . . .

  And then she garnered us all into the drawing-room and I said I admired it, which was the truth, and that I was enjoying my coffee, which was a lie. It was a good blend but servant-made. The room’s proportions are charming, long and high-ceiling’d, one of those Georgian rooms still left, thank God and beauty, in London squares. And the night was blue and very calm and warm.

  There was a crystal chandelier ringed with electric candles whose light fell on a piano, the lid of which was covered with silver frames and sundry other sins against the Holy Ghost, and Lady Toddington asked me if I played, and unfortunately I do, so that meant fifteen minutes reft from eternity while I deliberately soothed her with Co-Optimism and the more melodious refrains from current revues. I took a chance on the strong probability of the Moonlight Sonata being dismissed by her as Very Nice, and soon had her humming and tapping by a sentimental syncopation I had composed myself as parody of the popular trend.

  It was something in the air

  That made her do it.

  Something in the air . . .

  I rambled, with the full allowance of Jazz breaks. And then Toddy came in.

  Half an hour later, Lady Toddington was saying, ‘You must come to see me again.’ Always a crucial sort of remark, as it may mean anything or nothing. But she added, ‘Come to my next At Home. Thursday.’

  Sir Herbert opened the front door for me. He couldn’t know, of course, how many times he had escorted me to the top of the road, and suddenly I was aware of a faint sweetness, and it was Sheil’s violets begging to be remembered. I surrendered, appalled, and gave them to him. I said, ‘These are from Sheil, my sister. She is eleven and a great admirer of yours.’ (Faugh!)

  For a second he played true. His face relaxed its formality which I, of all people in the world, had been responsible for. ‘How very dear and charming of her. My most grateful thanks.’

  I have no recollection but one of getting home. That was that I drew my case from my bag and was taking out a cigarette, when the mental mist lifted, and I saw the policeman on point duty looking at me in an interested manner.

  I had expected mother and Katrine to fall upon me like vultures, but the essential improbability of the evening smote them to momentary silence. So might the family of Joan, ruminating over the evening meal of bread-soup and crêpes, greet her return after the angelic interview. Poor Sheil had long been asleep. I was all for waking her and serving her the cream of the news, but mother said no, which helped to bring us down to earth.

  ‘She’ll never forgive us,’ I warned. That was probably true, but the real reason was that I was in an agony of impatience myself. Sheil has often betrayed me into inveighing with her against the common sense of ‘the grown-ups.’She knows, too, so well! that there are some things one must have at once, and that to wait for them, even five minutes, spoils everything.

  I once bought mother a large pear, and, burning for her pleasure, rushed home to present it. She happened to be telephoning, and said, ‘Just a minute, darling,’ and left me there, deflated, thwarted, my pleasure gone. And when I told Sheil, years later, she said promptly, ‘I should have thrown it out of the window.’

  Sheil and I nearly always love the same things. This was at the root of her blind, advance adoption of Toddy in the weeks that followed the Jury summons. Sheil is not very used to seeing her familiars and playfellows in real life, and was enchanted at the extra bonus when allowed to pay a visit to the Law Courts with the governess. She sat, it seems, drinking him in, and horrified Miss Chisholm, the predecessor of Miss Martin, by unwrapping one of my photographs of his lordship in Court and frankly comparing it with the aloof, seated figure. Going home she said, ‘He is very pretty, and yawns like tiny jam tarts.’ And Miss Chisholm, who had seen an old, frail man in pince-nez, austerely putting people in their place, told her not to talk nonsense. Why must children have governesses? They trample, in their business-women’s shoes, upon a thousand delicate flowers a year, and sow such boulders in exchange. The Chisholm was a thoroughly good sort, and a perfectly deafening bore. After that, Sheil refused to admit that Toddy’s name was Herbert, and christened him Austen Charles. It was, she said, the right name for him with a face like that. And I agree. Mother said she hoped Sheil wouldn’t grow up to write novels of the type she calls ‘lofty leg-pulls.’

  And even that, said Miss Chisholm, was not all. When he whom she described as ‘the Judge’ had concluded his six minutes’ summing up Sheil had applauded heartily. That was my fault for forgetting to tell her that it wasn’t the same as a theatre. Sheil, if I know her, sensed the drama of it, just as I do, and she wanted, the dear! to support the old firm, but it was no good. Miss Chisholm was troubled at being made conspicuous, and sensibly dreading a repetition of that agony, she suggested that mother should ‘speak’ to Sheil.

  And when we three were alone and Miss Chisholm had retired to remove her business-like shoes, mother obliged. She hoisted Sheil on to her lap, gave me her spare hand and said, ‘Did Toddy say anything, or did he just look at you over his glasses? The old pet!’

  ‘I think he did that, but afterwards I expect he and Nicholls rushed away to grin in Austen’s room,’ answered Sheil.

  Katrine had come downstairs, too, to hear. I began to tell them, snatching about at random in a hurry, for I don’t talk or explain well, and never did.

  ‘Toddy is very like himself. I saw the top of his head for the first time. It’s only the tiniest bit bald and he looked very silvery and sweet and younger than in his gown, and he didn’t stay very long and talked about the rehearsal ’

  ‘Which one?’ implored poor mother.

  ‘(Oh, one he’d been to. I’ll tell you about that, later). And he seemed quite knowledgeable about the stage and I can’t see yet whether his teeth are false ’

  ‘(They must be, at his age.)’

  ‘(I don’t know. Look at Grandpa). Well, then he was rather funny about the bazaar, and said, “Aren’t they horrible?” and he was much more kind of all there than we make him.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t really expect the poor old dear to be quite the antick creature we say he is ’

  What I meant was that Toddy, from a negative, had developed into a print, and inevitably during our half-hour together he had spoken out of character, and shown himself to be possessed of his own personality as against the semi-fit that we had allotted him.
I had expected this, but the little shocks were no less real . . . Telling it all took a long time, and even then the real business only began when we dispersed to our bedrooms. Said mother from hers, in the Toddington voice, ‘Deirdre!’

  ‘Yes, Toddy darling?’

  ‘I was so pleased to see you this evening.’

  ‘Bless you, my pet! Has Mildred gone to bed yet?’

  ‘My wife?’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come to the bazaar, Toddy?’

  ‘How kind you are to be so informal.’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘I was at a rehearsal. Um . . . yes . . . ’ ‘Did they crowd round you, and make a fuss of you?’

  ‘I received every courtesy from those ladies.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Toddy!’

  ‘What do you mean? Who are you speaking to?’

  Katrine chipped in. ‘I expect the star sat on his knee.’

  ‘Who is this person? Introduce me.’

  Toddy is never at his happiest with Katrine. For months we have introduced them to each other laboriously every day. Whenever she annoys him he makes this request. Katrine loves baiting him, and he comes to mother and Sheil and me for redress and sympathy.

  By midnight it transpired that Toddy had set the entire company right upon a point of law, had been given a box for the first night, in which two chairs were to be sacred to mother and myself – we to dine first with the Todding-tons and then ‘go on’ in their car, and that he had been himself driven home by the leading man with whom he had made an engagement to play billiards on the following evening at the Garrick Club.

  After all, why not? Toddington must have done exactly that sort of thing dozens of times. The worst of it is that, when the evening comes and one isn’t dressing and the car isn’t outside, one is so disappointed that it is tiring.