‘As to that, it may be true, but I want the Saffyn business definitely stopped. It’s unwholesome.’ Agatha was beginning to enjoy herself. Freedom was in sight. ‘Just say to yourself that you never knew him, and that he is dead.’ Sheil laughed. ‘Oh, poor old Saffy! You hate him as much as Toddy does! He really is a live person, you know – I mean, not like Ironface. He has an office in Leicester Square. Deirdre’s seen it.’
Miss Martin took her opportunity. ‘Possibly, but the fact remains that he died in the summer of heart failure, following influenza. I saw the notice myself. And now, go to sleep, please.’
But Sheil had followed her to the door, and in that second of time she had seen. One wasn’t supposed to show things before visitors – especially before a friend of Miss Martin. The room was so black. If one turned on the light, Miss Martin would see it, and come in again. Sheil cowered. And look at and speak to one in a way one had never had, that made one’s inside cold. Mother and Deiry weren’t in sight, even. The street was empty, except for a wagonette – with a horse in the shafts, drawn up at the front door, and another lady getting out. Miss Martin was talking to the first one, but quite soon they went into her bedroom and shut the door.
Crellie! Perhaps he would come up before mother put him to bed in the library. In the hall, she heard his growl. ‘Crellie, Crellie! Oh, Crellie !’
There was a rustle in the hall.
‘You must learn not to bite,’ and a yelp.
Someone had hit Crellie, hard. His toe-nails rattled on the stairs. He joined Sheil on the landing, his hackles up, every tooth in his head showing.
19
What horrible things theatrical companies do! And Katrine was beginning to be one of them, so we stood very close to her on the platform and tried, that way, to postpone her loss. We pipsonised in self-defence.
‘Oh well, dear, we’re here to-day and gone to-morrow, as the saying is.’
‘Well, bye-bye, ducks, I’ll be popping off home now, an’ chance it.’
Then mother, with a line she had salved from Corney Grain, and that we kept for departures, ‘Good-bye, goodbye, dear. Tell mother I shan ’t want the skirt.’
We were bright, and rather awfully funny. The pinch of desolation comes before and afterwards, never at the time. I saw the company cat three carriages away; under the arc lights she looked like something found in the Thames, because her make-up had turned blue. Only one of the comedians had the heart to comeed at such an hour. He, poor toad, had a gag of his own, which he half sang.
‘I want to know when I’m dead!’
Then Pipson appeared, and the world became saner. He stood, bare-headed, talking to us. ‘What an hour, eh, Miss Carne! Why does one do it?’ then, to mother, ‘I’ll drive her to the rooms, Mrs Carne, you needn’t be in the slightest degree – you know!’ And mother did know, and they looked at each other, and the whole affair was suddenly an amusing jaunt.
I don’t know if I was making something out of nothing, but I got the impression that Pipson looked at Katrine in an extra way. It’s so difficult to say, with a nature like his that is gold right through, and would protect the plainest woman on earth if he thought she needed it.
‘Hullo, Boy!’
‘How’s the one and only Gladeyes?’
‘Good evening, Mr Pipson.’
‘I want to know when I’m dead!’
Mother had smiled her limit: she was giving little signs of restiveness. ‘Don’t you think we might ?’
I glanced at her and saw that it wasn’t the anti-climax of departure or the bad-luck business that was in question. She wanted to get home.
I said, ‘Yes, of course. Come on.’ She shook Pipson’s hand. ‘Well, I wish you a very great success, and may you both come back soon.’
‘We must both try and click, Mrs Carne, as the saying is. I tell her to look on this as only a beginning,’ and to me, ‘God bless you. Don’t work too hard.’
‘Good-bye, darling. Write soon.’
‘Oh, yes.’
But mother walked away quickly in spite of the minutes she might have had.
‘What’s the rush, lammy?’
‘Oh . . . I just thought we’d better be off.’
I knew that tone. It meant that mother had her reasons.
20
When we turned the corner into our street and saw a wagonette, mother stopped hurrying.
W ‘It’s no use, now. They’ve come.’
‘Who?’
She grasped my wrist, but gently. ‘It’s all right. Keep your eye on the door. We may never see them again. Quick. Look!’ A figure was on the step.
‘Emily, you have been behaving badly.’
‘The dog is spoilt, and at times his nature is ill-conditioned.’ ‘The family is not returned. Come, my ain bonny lamb.’ The light from the lamp-post showed us, for perhaps five seconds, a small woman, wearing the new long skirt, and a taller figure, badly dressed, with clumsy sleeves that bunched on her shoulders. They took their places, the former after a short-sighted peering.
‘Well . . . ’ breathed mother. She was white, but taut with excitement.
Of course, when we were in the hall, I should have known in any case that it had had strangers. The house was simply humming with alien personalities. I opened the library door, but father wasn’t there. Mother was already half-way up the stairs.
On the landing, Crellie advanced to meet us, smiling and dancing, as terriers do. I slapped his back heartily to congratulate him on our return, and noticed that he flinched. We made the only noise; there was no sound from the closed doors of Sheil and Miss Martin, and mother said, ‘Thank God.’
I followed her into her room, and we both had a whisky and soda.
She said, ‘It was Yorkshire, of course.’
I saw. It explained much.
‘Well, what’s your theory?’
‘Possibly to satisfy themselves that Sheil was better ’ I shook my head. ‘That doesn’t quite fill the bill, with me.’
‘What, then?’
‘My dear, I think they came after Miss Martin.’
We talked, I imagine, for about half an hour, then I left. In my bed was Sheil, and one glance at her hurt me.
‘Why, you unmitigated limb!’
She had been crying herself ill, and there were rings round her eyes. ‘Sheil, pippit!’
‘Is mother home?’
‘Yes. Want to see her?’
‘No . . . I don’t want her worried, so I promised myself I wouldn’t try and see her.’
‘I rather like you, Sheil. What kind of matter is it?’
‘Deiry, Miss Martin says that Saffy is dead.’
I boiled with fury, and that made it difficult to think quickly. I heard myself saying, ‘My dear, he is dead, in a way. He caught a bad chill, poor Saffy, and I expect it was coming off the pier with Pauline and Ennis.’
To my immeasurable relief, she took it quietly. ‘But, after all, it doesn’t really matter. He’s as much with us as when he was alive, Sheil. We never saw him in London, did we? And creations like Saffy don’t snuff out, do they? He says, “Heaven is awfully slow, and the dam’ angels are all playing old stuff on their harps, and hated it when I gave ’em Melodious Memories and Singing in the Bath-tub on my banjo.” ’ She bored her russet head into my shoulder. ‘And you mean he’ll go on coming in and telling us about everything?’ ‘Lord bless you, yes. And oh! won’t there be scrapping matches now between him and Toddy! Duels, no less, my sweet creature! And we shall have to step between them, in our taffetas and red heels and say, “Nay, Sirs, I protest I am not worthy of this unmannerly brawl. Come, put up your blades!” and things like that.’
‘Deiry, those ladies’ So she’d seen them? Staking my luck on the way she had taken the Dion Saffyn débâcle, I said, ‘Oh, yes. They’re rather like Saffy, you know.’ And then, an awful thing happened. She became small with fear; she seemed to grow thin before my eyes. All children, I suppose, are incalculable.
; ‘You mean – they are dead, too?’
‘They’ll never die, old darling. You see, they’ve made something that’s going to go on – for everybody, not only for us, as Saffy was’
‘Deiry, is everybody dead?’ It was a wail.
‘Not me or mother, or Katrine, or Toddy and Lady Mildred, or Freddie Pipson, or Crellie, the ones who love you best.’ An idea occurred to me. ‘What made you think the ladies were dead?’
‘She hit Crellie, and the other one – the spectacles one – called her “Emily” . . . will they come any more? Everything was being awful and angry, and the house felt all wrong, and then they came.’
‘How “all wrong”?’
‘Miss Martin.’
I boiled again: nerved myself for a few words with Miss Martin in the morning. ‘Then what happened?’
‘The spectacles one went into Miss Martin’s bedroom and they talked.’
(Miss Martin certainly hadn’t deserved this, confound her. ) ‘I see.’
‘And I didn’t hear them come. They were just there. Deiry, I think the Emily one was the one who hit Keeper.’
‘He probably deserved it. Look here, petty, would it amuse you to sleep in here, to-night? You’ll be much warmer for me than the hotwater bottle, and if you go off the boil, I’ll pour you back into the kettle!’
21
Half-Way through breakfast, I began to realise how peaceful we were being, and then the reason suddenly came to me. Miss Martin wasn’t at table. I was still raging, deep down, but how terrible it must be not to be wanted! Mother and I were played out, to judge by our faces, and Sheil had nothing to contribute at all. Katrine’s gap ached one.
I said, ‘Miss Martin’s awfully late,’ and then mother began to realise it, too. ‘Just give her a call, Sheil.’ But when she saw Sheil’s look she said to me, ‘You go, darling, will you? You’ve finished.’
I knocked, waited, and opened the door. The room was empty. I stood and took it all in. The bed was neat, but seemed to have been lain on because the centre was flattened. All the photographs were gone; the trunk, initialled ‘A. E. M.’, was strapped. Even then I stopped to wonder what the ‘E.’ stood for. Eleanor, probably. It’s just the angular sort of second name she would get. And now we needn’t have a scene! I was merely glad. The next business was how to tell mother, alone, but she was already outside on the landing.
‘She’s hopped it,’ I murmured, and threw open Miss Martin’s door again, ‘and I must tell you things.’
‘But, Sheil?’
I went downstairs and told her that Miss Martin had gone out; took her myself to the schoolroom. Sheil’s face was impassive. Oh yes, she would find something to do, thank you, Deiry. Then I re-joined mother in Miss Martin’s room and told her everything.
‘But, where’s she gone?’ Mother looked round the room. ‘Cheltenham?’
‘Do we wire her people?’
‘No. We must hear, soonish; there’s her trunk, you know.’
‘Are you sorry she’s gone?’
Mother hesitated. ‘Well, in a way, I suppose. There’s always the breaking in a new one.’
I laughed. ‘Poor La Martin! And that’s the best one can do for her’
‘I suppose it was pure funk,’ meditated mother, ‘and of course one sees the point of view . . . it was rather awful for her.’
‘And how like her to pack first! “With chattering teeth she wrapped the Daily Mail about her boots,”’ I jibed. But neither of us was amused. This sort of thing had never happened before, except sometimes in the case of cooks and house-parlourmaids, who, as a class, take staying out all night and even being turned out by policemen in their stride, but it struck one as almost incredible when it was a question of Miss Martin. And then, unpleasant aspects kept on presenting themselves. She might be one of those people whose brain became affected by the smallest psychic experience. Your materialist is apt to be always the first to buckle up.
‘ . . . and I wonder when she went?’
I shrugged. ‘Ask me another.’
‘Look here, darling, we’ll have to take on Sheil between us until we’re through all this.’
‘Of course. What do we tell her, mean-while?’
‘Until we hear, I think that Miss Martin is staying with friends’
‘Oh no! You’ve got it well and truly mixed. That’s divorces.’
‘Then, she’s spending the day with a friend who is passing through London.’
And so one went on, making second-rate fun for mother to protect her and watching mother being matter of fact and rather hard, that one mightn’t be perturbed.
22
There was a writing-table in the Common Room at the St Agnes Settlement, and Agatha Martin, cautiously peeping in at the door, sat herself at it, took a piece of the stamped note-paper, and pondered.
Canning Town was extraordinarily noisy, or was it by contrast with the Carnes’ house? Dear me . . . the letter was going to be a very awkward one to write, and it was, somehow, so difficult to fix one’s thoughts. Arthur had greeted her when she arrived, unheralded, at about ten o’clock this morning. Agatha viewed her recent action with sincere amazement. How had one found the courage to do it? The fear lest the servants should hear one leaving, or meet one on the stairs. Dreadful. But, Arthur had welcomed one warmly; one had, already, a place in his life. (‘It’s not Agatha! My dear girl, come in, come in! This is better luck than I’d dared to hope for!’) And, her hands in his, he had bent to her until she had almost thought
Then, that talk in his study. ‘You’ll be much happier here, you know. Work? I guarantee to overwork you, my dear soul.’
And it was he who had sent the telegram to the Pater; he who had arranged for a messenger to deliver the letter to Mrs Carne and fetch the trunk in the Settlement van that collected jumble for bazaars and clothes for his poor. He had gone into the money question, almost robbing the subject of embarrassment. ‘We aren’t able to pay our regular workers, usually. They get their board, cubicle and washing. But if you’ll take on the business of acting as my secretary, and generally bottle-washing after me – eh? Ha, ha, ha! – I could offer you ten shillings a week, as well. You’d be more than worth it, to me. And now go and write your letter, and then I’ll introduce you to your colleagues. Topping women, some of them.’ And then, with his hand on her arm, ‘It’s not an easy life, you know. It’s the going over the same ground that breaks one, at times.’
Didn’t she know it! Sheil . . . one put last night at the back of one’s memory, and it slid forward . . .
Agatha poised her pen over the paper. Should she conclude by dropping a hint to Mrs Carne that the maid had been shockingly negligent about that Miss Bell? She had been waiting in the library, so must have called while the Carnes were at the station. And Muriel had not informed one – Agatha had explained it all in her bedroom. That chilly library, with no fire!
A weird sort of woman, Miss Bell. Very downright. Her reply to one’s apology: ‘Miss Martin, in my experience the governess is little more than an upper servant.’ Evidently a friend of Deirdre’s. She had admitted that she wrote, a little. Agatha had had, at last, to ask her name, and she hadn’t liked that. Journalists were probably touchy. And the answer: ‘But, I am expected. Your employer informed me that I might visit her family.’ That would be Katrine’s departure putting everything out of their heads. But on the whole, a likeable woman. Quite sympathetic, when one drew her out; interested in Arthur’s and the Pater’s photographs. Pointing to Arthur: ‘Does he write to you often?’ ‘Well, sometimes.’
‘But not as often as you wish. Is the post hour a time of torment to you, too?’ Very presuming. Agatha had said, quite sharply, ‘Nothing of the kind,’ and offered Miss Bell some cocoa, which was civilly refused. They talked of teaching, and Miss Bell said, quite violently, ‘It is detestable work!’ and then she had looked closely at the clock and said she could wait no longer, and begged Miss Martin not to venture into the cold hall, and left.
Would Arthur consider that one had been unkind? It would be terrible to be unkind. One had, apparently, wounded, but what? A child like Sheil and a family like that were no fair test of one’s abilities.
‘DEAR MRS CARNE,
‘I have felt for some time, now, that I have not been making the headway with Sheil that I had hoped. She is, in some ways, unusual, and not, I find, easy to handle.
‘I have to tell you that I have accepted a secretarial and social worker’s post at the above address which was offered me, quite suddenly. I trust that you will overlook my leaving you, and beg that you will retain any salary due to me as some slight recompense for the inconvenience that, I greatly fear, I must have put you to.
‘Will you kindly allow the messenger to be given my trunk? (The name of the Settlement is on the van.)
‘A Miss Bell called last night’
One was going to be happy, here. Hard work for definite ends, with Arthur. The distempered walls being decorated by all of us for Christmas; making the wreaths of greenery bought from street barrows, and comparing notes round the stove.
23
When Miss Martin’s letter arrived in the late afternoon, mother was so relieved that she said, ‘Burn and sink the woman!’ and wrote her a cheque for the time, and even the fraction of days, that she had been with us. The letter that accompanied it was on the ‘Of course if you feel you must go’ lines, and hoped and believed and also felt . . . and she was Miss Martin’s very sincerely.
The Brontes Went to Woolworths Page 12