The Brontes Went to Woolworths

by Rachel Ferguson

  ‘Probably. But what is the principle? Now, here we are.’ She opened a bureau and slid a sheaf of Toddy’s portraits on to the sofa, and began to offer me various prints. I vetted the lot in no time, though I pored over the studio photographs.

  ‘Oh yes, that one was taken outside the Old Bailey . . . yes . . . the Barkston Gardens case . . . on the golf-links at Sandwich . . . thank you awfully, but I’ve got that one . . . yes, I remember this . . . that’s not one of my favourites, besides, I’ve got it.’ She looked at me in a bovine amaze, and we suddenly began to giggle.

  ‘If you’d just put the one or two aside you don’t happen ’ said Lady Toddington, and howled. I pointed with a trembling finger to three studio portraits.

  ‘Tha – tha – those . . . I can’t imagine how I came to overlook them, ha, ha, ha!’

  ‘I shall begin to suspect you of I really don’t know what,’ announced my hostess.

  ‘I do,’ I answered, blowing my nose, ‘but you’d be wrong, worse luck,’ and we roared once more.

  Lady Toddington began to remove her rings. ‘No, but have you really got a crush on him?’

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ I said, wiping my eyes. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that, you know.’

  ‘But –look at his age. It seems so unnatural.’

  She’d be sure to say that. Even the nicest women are apt to have Mrs Peachum minds. They would be horrified if one told them what they really meant.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ I answered, picking my words, ‘that it’s rather – bad luck on people to have to give up being loved because they’re old?’

  ‘Of course I do! But, a girl of your age . . . ’

  ‘I’m afraid that dog won’t bark, Lady Toddington. Look at Sheil. She adores him. You remember her?’

  ‘The little thing!’ . . . Lady Toddington went off at a tangent. ‘I like your family.’

  ‘Good chaps, aren’t they?’

  ‘You’re all happy together. One can see that. So few mothers and daughters seem to hit it off these days. It almost makes up for not having a girl of one’s own . . . to think of all the fights one’s escaped! Well, go on, tell me more.’

  ‘Well, Katrine – my other sister, is going into a revue and my father is dead and we’ve got a governess who cries into soup.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Hah! I don’t mean she really does, but the poor toad is homesick, and she’s got three of the usual sisters and a retrenching father in Cheltenham. And she keeps a stiff upper lip. And you can’t imagine, Lady Mil – Lady Toddington, how people who keep that sort of thing get at one!’

  She was listening like a child, sitting by me on the floor, her feet stuck straight out in front of her. ‘You see, I follow all her worries.’ I saw she made nothing of this.

  ‘Yes. I remember her. Came down for tea, didn’t she? Poor wretches . . . you’ve got a rather specially sympathetic nature, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not really, because half the time I don’t want to be.’

  Lady Toddington laughed and lit a cigarette. ‘Well, go on. Tell me more about Herbert!’

  There was a knock and she cried, ‘My Lord! and I haven’t begun to do anything! Come in.’

  Toddy stood in the doorway, and I tried, for the mass of photographs on my lap, to scramble to my feet.

  ‘Well, Herbert – you remember Miss Carne?’

  Miss Carne, clasping six of his heads to her bosom, shook hands with difficulty.

  ‘How do you do. Are you having a sale of jumble, Mildred?’

  ‘I know I’m not dressed and I know dinner is nearly ready and that the dressing-gong went ages ago.’

  His eye – I saw, for I was watching for it – twinkled at his wife’s instant exposure of his rebuke, but she had already begun to go slightly to pieces, it seemed to me.

  ‘It’s my fault, Sir Herbert,’ I said. ‘I’m one of those doorsteppers who never seem to go.’

  ‘But, please! And let me relieve you of all those encumbrances.’

  ‘You’d better not, Herbert. Those are pictures of the one slip I made in my girlhood.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He regarded her over his glasses so exactly as he does in Court that I laughed. Lady Toddington glanced at me. I am almost sure she thought I was going to be embarrassed and was ready, if so, to say something else which would put her wrong with him, but the answer I looked made her remark instead, ‘It’s all right, my dear. It’s Miss Carne’s boy-friend,’ and I shuffled the prints together, somehow, and she looked up at Toddy and said, as a baby might plead with its nurse, ‘Herb’, let’s don’t go out this evening. Can’t we all stay and have a nice cosy time at home?’

  He looked down at her, considering. ‘That sounds very charming, but it’s the Slingsbys, if you remember. But can’t

  Miss Carne stop to dinner, in any case? We needn’t leave until nine-thirty.’

  ‘Well, that’s an idea, too!’

  Dinner was a nerve-racking affair for me. There was our Toddy within touch, and it was Mildred who kept us going. She – for a course or two I haggled over the impression – was pleased I was there? And then, with the entrée, it came. She was showing me off to him, like a mother. And I wanted to play up, but was handicapped by the outrageousness of having to be the little stranger to Toddy. And Lady Toddington, by this time, knew just enough to enjoy the whole business, and began, metaphorically, to dig me in the ribs, and treat her husband and myself like a newly married couple. If she’d had a bag of confetti I swear she would have thrown it . . . and Toddy went on making one face after the other that I knew, and being charming, and it took me all I knew to keep upsides with either of them.

  One had got to get through to him sooner or later, so I said, ‘I like your Associate, Sir Herbert. He’s got an interesting face.’

  ‘Mathewson? Yes. He’s a very, very nice fellow. I should be quite lost without him. He told me once that he would have studied for the Bar, only – money, you know . . . ’ Well, that was being all right . . . though that part of it hadn’t occurred to us.

  ‘She adores the Law Courts,’ said Lady Toddington, getting ready for another dig.

  His face broke into its fine network of lines. ‘It’s a fascinating place, isn’t it? And offering scope these days for you ladies.’ I laughed inwardly and answered, ‘But the present lot of women barristers will never make a living. Their children may.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s true.’

  ‘Then, you’re in favour of them?’

  ‘Why not? The last word, you know!’ and the old wretch glanced at me with his sub-acid brown eye. ‘I must admit, though, that I think, perhaps, the Chancery Division offers more suitable ’ ‘Ah. You mean rude exhibits handed round on a plate,’ I said. And at that he shook all over.

  ‘Since you insist ’ ‘I believe you’d like to limit the ladies – God bless ’em – to droning about bressemers and hereditaments – by the way, what is a hereditament?’

  ‘It’s usually a waste of a good half-hour,’ responded Sir Herbert. ‘But, are you interested in them?’

  ‘Adore them! The last time I dropped in, you said hereditament five times, and I thought it a gorgeous word. I love words.’

  ‘So do I.’

  And then we began, via his cases, to talk about murder, and he seemed pleased because I remembered that Seddon lived at 60 Tollington Park and Crippen’s number in Hilldrop Crescent. From murders we inevitably worked on to the flood of books on the subject, of which I had read many, and from these to books in general. And from that moment Mildred began to fade out. One felt her personality withdrawing itself, and though I threw her one lifeline after another, it was no real use. And Toddy wouldn’t help me. It was early days to expect it, but I was definitely cross with him, for all that. Engrossed, peremptory, he danced me off to his study to show me some first editions and I wasn’t at my best with them, because of Mildred upstairs, feeling out of it. But before long the book-spell told, and we were swapping prejudi
ces and worships.

  ‘Whenever I happen to be alone for a meal, my book is Vanity Fair, and the parts I pick out to re-read are lunchy and dinnery. There’s a smear of tomato sauce over Becky casting the Dixonary into the garden, and gravy on, “And eh, Amelia my dear, I’ve brought in a pine for tiffin.” ’ He adjusted his pince-nez. ‘Ah. I’ve got chutney on, “When I stepped into the car’ge afther me mar’ge,” and tobacco burns right through the spontaneous combustion business.’

  ‘Bleak House? Can’t get through it.’

  ‘You must try again. As a matter of fact, I once discussed that episode with a doctor, and he says it is, medically speaking, impossible. I adduced the haystack, which ignites of its own fermenting poisons, but he said that while breath remains in the body that form of death is automatically debarred. But it’s a tremendous piece of writing, for all that.’ He selected a book from an upper shelf. ‘Are the Brontës beyond your interest?’

  ‘Only Anne, and honestly, Sir Herbert, I think she’s a perfectly crashing ass.’

  He gave me a wintry smile. ‘I know what you mean. The Brontë family has been, like Switzerland, too much stamped over, and virtues have been discovered in all their work which I, personally, won’t admit it always possessed. But what a family! Even if they’d never written a line, what a story! Isn’t it artistically complete that there isn’t a quotable line recorded of Anne? Wasn’t there a sort of fate which ordained that she, of all the family, should be buried away from home, dying, meek, futile, on that Scarborough sofa . . . and Branwell, drugged and drunk, dying, erect, in his best suit, out of bravado? “My nerves! my nerves!” . . . I always wonder where that poor boy got his red hair from. It didn’t seem to break out in any of the sisters.’

  ‘You think they were degenerates?’

  ‘No more than I believe the lady who published a book trying to persuade us that Emily was spiritually hermaphroditic. The Brontës were, to me, the perfectly logical result of their environment, parentage and diet! . . . You’ve seen the museum?’

  ‘No. We were in Yorkshire in the summer, but we never thought of going over to Haworth. We were too busy being miserable.’

  I looked at him, unreasonably hoping this would strike some chord, but then I remembered that Toddy had supervened wonderfully little, that fortnight, and as there was no telephone at the Inn he couldn’t ring us up daily. We like to be exact.

  ‘Miserable? Dear me. I am so sorry. I was at Sandwich.’

  ‘Yes. After the Bristol Assizes,’ I answered mechanically.

  ‘Yes. I was really enchanted by the parsonage. Emily’s desk as she had left it, with her housekeeping books . . . and that flower group on the wall over which Charlotte stippled her eyes away . . . and the pencil marks in the upper room recording their heights – the wallpaper had to be removed before those were found. Why one is so fascinated I can’t imagine. It’s such a little time ago, and yet, one is compelled to enchantment . . . when I was a barrister, I used to walk all over London finding addresses where Dickens’s characters lived, and I shall never forget the moment when I came down Kingsgate Street, High Holborn and found the bird fancier’s that Mrs Gamp lodged over.’

  ‘How heavenly! Do go on going on!’

  And he did; delicately pacing, sweeping off his pince-nez, tapping with frail little claws on covers, until the door opened and Mildred, who was now much more Lady Toddington, came in, a daunting figure in her hard, sparkling gown.

  ‘Well, you book-worms! It’s past the half-hour, Herbert.’ His face set, but it wasn’t at her entrance, though I guessed she believed it to be, but at the epithet. Mildred, of course, isn’t a clever woman, but she can strike for her own. She was summing me up; offsetting me against previous experience. ‘I don’t know many young girls.’ She thought that handicapped her. And then there was my three-years-old unfair advantage . . .

  I wanted, badly, to go to her – it seemed so natural – and put my arm through hers. I wanted to say, ‘Isn’t Toddy looking a dear!’ I wanted to tell them that mother sent her love and that they weren’t to forget they were having supper with us on Sunday sure of the instant response to which – I was so used: ‘Good-night, dear child. That will be charming.’ But there I stood, at a loss, and watched Lady Toddington.

  ‘The car is at the door, my lady.’

  She turned and followed the maid. I gave my hand to Sir Herbert and then Toddy said, ‘You must come and see her again, if you will. She would enjoy having something young about the place.’

  ‘I wonder?’

  He looked at me as he does at an overconfident barrister.

  ‘But I know.’ And then he gave me one of his lay smiles. I said, ‘You know, I’ve had a very wonderful evening.’ I’m glad I was able to lash myself into telling him that, and while he was folding his scarf and shrugging into his coat, I went to his wife in the hall, uncertain as to whom I should find there, and her first remark gave me no clue.

  ‘Well, how’s the idol?’

  ‘The idol’s a great treasure,’ I answered, ‘do you think it would ever come to see us?’

  ‘Ask him. You seem to have made a hit with him. He says I read nothing but Edgar Wallace. Is that considered to be very bad?’ She asked as she might have consulted with her milliner about the state of the fashions.

  ‘I’ll tell you one,’ I said, ‘he reads detective stories himself. I saw three on the bottom shelf.’

  Lady Toddington laughed aloud and became suddenly Mildred. ‘Well I never! I’ll hold that over his head in future.’

  I hadn’t told her that the books in question were masterstrokes of their kind in which sleuthery was subordinated to style; I was counting on her being the type that would classify The Two Magics of Henry James as a ghost story. In any case Toddy must really try not to be a literary snob. I think that Mildred had taken the Edgar Wallace remark absolutely literally. It would be very characteristic.

  She turned and put a huge envelope into my hand. ‘Don’t forget your young man.’ She had brought it down herself. Perhaps I looked what I felt, for she put her hand for a second upon my shoulder. ‘Come and see him again soon. I’ – she seemed to pause for a phrase, and then, I think, altered it – ‘I think he’d like it.’

  ‘And you, too?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I daresay you’ll find me putting down a saucer of milk for the cat! We’ll give you a lift, of course.’

  So I sat in the familiar car that I didn’t know was theirs, or hired, and the man who might have been Mitchell drove us.

  I couldn’t expect much sleep, that night, of course. I amused myself with turning over my albums of published work, and by dipping into my novel. I found that four years ago I had written three articles berating Mr Justice Toddington for sundry things he had said in Court. Evidently Binton had suggested the subjects. Heavens! How I had got home on Toddy! I compared him with my pet aversion, St Paul, and said that it was a pity that his biased private opinions should be aired in public. The affair appeared to be about the presence of women at murder trials. Mother heard me cackling, and came in in her dressing-gown. As she was leaving, she said, ‘By the way, aren’t I ever to be allowed to read your book?’

  ‘Oh mercy, darling! It’s all over advice and remarks from the last beast I sent it to. If you’ll give me time to rub ’em out . . . I remember which pages they were on.’

  She agreed instantly, kissed me and left me. I hunted for an eraser and turned up the pages. The pencilled comments weren’t there.

  Then I sat down and thought.

  13

  Katrine is rehearsing in a rather attractive pub in Maiden Lane; it is mid-Victorian and seasoned with beer smells and there is sawdust on the floor, and when you’ve walked through all that, upstairs is a large room with a piano so dreadful that it is funny, and girls dressed in jumpers and knickers, and some of them practise in bathing kit and look very boyish and gay. The piano has one note which is dumb, and I always wait for it not to function, and guess when it ought to be
doing so. It is A above middle C, and I never knew how important A was until the accompanist got started.

  I’m going (blank)

  To dreamy Hono (blank) lu!

  Katrine and Sheil and I always sing ‘blank’ now instead of the word or syllable when we practise the ensembles at home; and we did last Sunday, in church. We hardly ever go, because we believe in such a lot of things that aren’t in the official list, but we wanted to pray for the success of the revue, and however modern or sceptic or advanced one may be, there is something about a church more likely to make wishes come true than anywhere else.

  Two years ago I went to St Bartholomew’s to beg St Rahere that Toddy mightn’t die on circuit before I saw him again, and that his sheets mightn’t be damp in his lodgings, and when father was ill I happened to be passing a Baptist Chapel and went in, and although I shall never know about the sheets, because Sir Herbert won’t remember, father certainly became better, temporarily. I’m sure God likes small attentions, and I’m going to be nicer to him in future because of Toddy and Mildred, and Katrine thinks she will be, too, because of Freddie Pipson. So we sang

  Jesu, lov (blank) of my soul

  Let me to (blank) bosom fly.

  and we both think God would adore that piano, as we do. Katrine doesn’t know it yet, but she’s in for a hot time in the provincial dressing-rooms. I hadn’t been at the rehearsal five minutes before I picked out the company cats. I’ve never had much to do with them, but I’ve met more of them than Katrine has, and the type is rather prevalent and almost unmistakable. They are usually horse-faced blondes with rodent teeth, who tell all the dirtiest stories and generally have a grubby little pull with the management poor – brutes, and are always the first to go to pieces in a crisis. Pipson told me that in the air-raids that sort of girl used to lose her head entirely, and after saying God and Christ steadily upstairs, dropped down and prayed all over the stage when the bombs began to fall.