‘Your children would be a ghastly toss-up. They might be like us, but can you see a daughter with Freddie’s nose? She’d be apt to resemble him, you know, daughters are always supposed to “take after” Papa (you’re like father). How would he mix with our friends? He’s a darling and an angel and we would love having him, but what about them? Try and conceive Aunt Susan’s comments and Uncle Noble’s; and dinner-parties together.
‘Another thing: Freddie would almost never be home. He spends three-quarters of the year doing circuits, and you already spew on the provinces after only three weeks of them.
‘My best of pigs, it can’t be done! I’ve known Pipson longer than you have, and I’m just as fond of him as you are, and I don’t mind saying that if there weren’t so many Ifs about on both sides I’d have loved a week with him at sunny Bognor Regis, in the past. One would enjoy every minute of the day, though I sometimes have m’doubts about (shall we say) the rest of the evening. (Aren’t Modern Gurls orful?)
‘I know exactly what you’re feeling, and I think, I hope, I believe, as we used to say at school when struggling to define “doch,” it will pass along.’
There. I’ve made a Roman holiday of my dear little acquaintance, and I only hope I’m right. I could weather it, but there are mother and Sheil . . . one can’t have things touch them. But oh! what a gad to marry Freddie! But she mustn’t. Oh, what a husband and father and lover were there. I’m sure Toddy would agree with me about the latter aspects; he’s awfully fair, even away from the Bench.
‘I know you’re right, Deiry, curse and damn you. I’d thought out lots of what you say, but not all of it. It’s rum how trifles clinch things, but when I’d read your letter I suddenly saw “Sydney” on our lawn – downing whisky after soda and calling me K’treen. I know one must stick to gentlemen, but they’re apt to be doocid slow, aren’t they? Toddy sounds a live wire, and there was father, of course ’
I was so relieved that I raced Crellie all along our street and called out ‘Whoops, dearie!’ to him, and the constable at the corner said, ‘Terrible noise . . . ter rible noise.’
‘Bless you, K. All the creatures think you’ve done what Toddy would call “the prudent thing . . . m’m . . . yes,” and Saffy, who thinks he’s cuts above Freddie Pipson because he makes eyes in white and pom-poms instead of appearing with a scratch wig, is capering with indignation at “the fella’s” presumption in aspiring to you. We didn’t even tell Ironface. She’s so hopelessly crême de la crême that she couldn’t take in the mere possibility of such a mésalliance. On the French stage, all is canaille, unless one is a Sociétaire of the Comédie. It would be so like her to overlook the fact that she herself sang the Belle Mondaine at the Salle des Odalisques. The other day I said to Sheil, quite casually, “Suppose Katrine married Freddie Pipson,” and she said, “Won’t Austen Charles hate it!” Emily, by the way, treats it with a marble contempt, but Charlotte says that where one loves, one takes. (She’s evidently got her Héger on the Other Side). N.B. – Sheil calls him “Hagar” and seems to think he’s the Bible one, so we’ve put her on to Villette.’
The schoolroom is beginning to put on its winter manner and to be at its best. Lighting-up time is earlier, and the air smells of wood smoke. To-morrow, I’m taking Crellie through the Gardens and meeting Toddy on his way home. There’s only one fly, no bigger than a man’s hand, in the ointment, as father used to say. The new governess arrives the day after. Miss Ainslie.
‘It’s no joke trying to keep one’s hands off Freddie, and I think he’s finding it as bad as I am. It’s so difficult to think Sydney steadily when one sees Freddie suddenly in the wings, or on the stairs. I only know you’re right when I’m alone in the digs. Perhaps all this is a sign that I’m not really in love with him, but burn me! if it feels like it. The oddest thing is that I feel I couldn’t possibly marry anybody unless Saffy and Pauline and Ennis (and even Ironface) approved. And I don’t believe you could, either.
‘Howjer mean about Emily and Charlotte? Have they joined us, too? What a scream! I always thought Emily rather crazy, myself. How do we strike her?’
26
When Katrine came home, I took her straight off to the Toddingtons. She must share everything we’ve got. We had so much to tell each other that we could hardly get our breath.
‘What do we call her?’
‘ “Lady Mildred,” quite firmly.’
Katrine grinned. ‘Well I am blithered! To think it’s really happened ’
‘I know.’
‘And we like her, do we?’
‘Awfully. Besides, there is what she did for Sheil. That night, you know.’
‘And has she really got that bewildered respect for brains that’s always getting out of its depth, as we said?’
‘Yes and no. She’s no fool. I used to be afraid that Toddy didn’t appreciate her; it’s difficult for brilliant people to be tolerant. Their minds work too quickly, and none of us has a chance when he starts summing up at table, or closing his eyes and giving faint hisses of distress when Mildred or any of us drop bricks. Things like “under the circumstances” . . . sometimes Mildred briefs me for the defence but Toddy is apt to rout us both. I never knew how illogical my mind was, until I knew him. Mother and I chaff him, and when he loves me he calls me “dear child,” and when he’s cross, “Come, come!” ’
‘How perfect! I suppose you’re getting no end of data; peeps behind the scenes, and so on.’
‘Masses.’
The famous Sir Horatio Sparrow is one of the Toddingtons’ oldest friends, and he and Toddy are apt to begin the evening in a tremendous atmosphere of one-old-colleague-to-another, and end it by squabbles, placidly referee’d by Mildred, on the most inconceivable subjects. In squabble, Toddy becomes remote and forensic, while Sir Horatio flounces like a bantam and I shiver with giggles in a corner. And Sir Horatio’s peevish little face lights with the joy of argument, and his mouth becomes a puckered hole of exasperation.
He writes poetry. Lady Mildred keeps a visitors’ book in both her London and her riverside house, because her mother always kept one. Toddy hates the book, and she told me that he once said she had the soul of a landlady and indeed there is one entry which reads, ‘Hope to come again. Rooms most clean and comfortable, and attendance all that could be desired.’ This, from a clever, spankable little playwright, who had overheard the remark, and enjoyed the Toddingtons’ hospitality at Molesey for a week. Sir Horatio’s contribution (date 1889) contains a plenteous reference to the Thames, and begins, and it includes a lot of Latin and compares the sunset on Molesey Lock with similar manifestations over the Acropolis (‘Here might I find me peace, meseems’), and by the end of the poem Sheridan is left in his shirt sleeves. Toddy was looking on when Mildred showed me the book, and shook all over and said, ‘Poor Sparrow’s verses haven’t a foot to stand on,’ and I said, ‘Laughter in court,’ and he made one of his lips at me, and said he’d have me removed by the tipstaff.
Methought the shade of Sheridan was there, And Tilburina, with her naiad’s hair,
Sir Horatio sometimes kisses Mildred when he comes in, and Toddy looks at him over his pince-nez and says, ‘When you’ve quite done with my wife, Horatio’ and Sir Horatio says, ‘Haven’t begun with her yet, old boy. You must give us time.’ And last week Mildred said, ‘Time, you old terror? You’ve had twenty-five years!’
Lady Mildred and I often watch the two little creatures, toddling reunited to their club, and I say, ‘Aren’t they rather sweet!’ as the parchment-and-silver figures dwindle out of sight.
She has remembered about Crellie and the confessions at St Albans, Teddington, and when she discovered that we used to live near there, at Hampton Wick, she took me completely to her bosom. It is part of a past that mother says we are gradually living down, but for Mildred’s sake I hoist the skeleton from the cupboard.
My earliest memories are of expeditions filled with the desolate stink of scented rushes, and the sight of Pope’
s Villa from the towing-path; and the July paraphernalia of collapsible cups and squeaking tea-basket, and spring evenings in the Home Park, pale and malignant, like the eyes of a goat. Mildred’s girlhood was spent at Molesey, and her mother left her her old home, so it’s all fish to Mildred’s retrospective net, and in her eagerness to recreate the past, she sometimes asks me if I remember the Tatham boys, or the Freers – or other persons who were married and fathers when I was still in a high chair. And, by now, the Tatham boys are far more real to me than if I had ever met them, or received their kisses under the suburban lilacs . . .
She can’t understand it. We had, as usual, been deep in discussion of some riverside family her people knew, and I found myself coming out with odds and ends of things about them. There was, for instance, Malcolm Cotton, who slipped down his punt pole under Kingston Bridge into the water, and Mildred was on to that ancient cause célèbre in a minute. Then, ‘But, you say you never knew them?’
I said, ‘Look here, Lady Mildred, I can’t explain, but one can sometimes remember things one never saw just as it’s possible to be homesick for places one’s never been to.’
But here I struck a dead spot. I trailed off into, ‘If you’re frightfully interested in people, you begin to know things about them.’ She shook her head and said I was a funny girl . . . I often think that perhaps there is only a limited amount of memory going about the world, and that when it wants to live again, it steals its nest, like a cuckoo.
Mildred has told me how, as a young man, Toddy would ride over to Molesey from his rooms in Fountain Court, and spend week-ends, and she added, ‘Of course we knew everyone in Molesey society, and Herbert was wild with jealousy at my Sunbury young men,’ and Toddy, deep in the Athenoeum, gave a faint hiss, and I tried not to strangle with laughter. It seems that Mrs Brockley gave big lawn parties, and they had a punt and a small sailing yacht, and I can see it all. And so, in flannels, and I fear a straw hat and even a blazer, and to the accompaniment of tonkle-te-blips from the harps of passing steamers and the light and affable conversation that was current in the eighties, the rising young barrister proposed to Mildred Brockley.
We sometimes wonder who he would have married if
But I do love Mildred.
Katrine, her arm in mine, drank it all in. Then she suddenly looked round and said, ‘Here, hi! I’ve seen this Square before.’ We had been round it goodness knows how many times; had passed the Toddingtons’ door, talking.
Mildred called out from the drawing-room, ‘Is that my girl?’ and, ‘My dear, I was just going to ring you about those place cards from Barker.’
She accepted Katrine at once. (‘Can’t have too many of you nice things.’) ‘Well, Deirdre, how’s the passion for Herbert?’
‘Oh, immense, thanks, Lady Mildred.’
‘And Katrine? (I’m going to call you that sooner or later, so let’s make it sooner.)’
‘You must give her time – like Sir Horatio,’ I answered, and she giggled, took a cigarette and tilted the head of invitation at the box. ‘And Baby? I haven’t seen her for a week. Any news of the Brontës?’
‘Rather. Emily’s writing a new book called Swithering Depths.’
‘Oh my lord! that woman!’
‘And it’s coming out in the spring. Entwhistle, Lassiter and Morhead.’
For a second, Lady Toddington wavered.
‘Are they a new firm? Oh, I see what you mean!’
Katrine gave a little howl and said, ‘Oh, you are a dear!’
‘Just say it again. I must memorise it.’
We chanted, ‘Entwhistle – Lassiter – and Morhead.’
‘I like Lassiter,’ decided Lady Toddington, ‘he’s the brains of that firm. We’ll have him to dinner. Tell Baby. And now, tell me. The new governess ’
‘Miss Ainslie.’
‘How’s she shaping?’ Mildred looked at me keenly.
‘Well,’ I began, ‘I think she has a good heart.’
‘That means she’s a bit of an ass,’ said Katrine. ‘Is she an ass, Deirdre? When people say one’s got a good heart it usually means that, just as when professionals tell you your voice is a mezzo-soprano it’s only a polite way of saying you can’t sing at all.’
I had the usual mental struggle I experience in trying to define the governesses. ‘She’s younger than Miss Martin and has “up-to-date” methods. She’s got the sort of face that used to go with being called Gladys, mother says. A kind of blonde manquée. She’s Bright. She calls the verandah the “revandah” . . . you see, we’ve had such a lot of them, Lady Mildred. At Hampton Wick there was Miss Baines-King and Miss Easton, then Miss Chisholm, Miss Martin ’
‘There was Lukin, Mogley, Tipslark, Cabbery, Smifser,’ murmured Katrine. And then Toddy looked in, and I really did have to introduce him to Katrine at last. I could tell by the tiny, cocked glance of inquiry he threw at me that he wished to be cued as to how he and she stood in our scheme, and I said, ‘Toddy dear, this is my sister, Katrine. You quarrel, rather,’ and we all giggled. He adjusted his glasses.
‘A pity. I seem to be on such unhappy terms with so many of your circle.’
‘It’s only temporary breezes,’ Katrine explained, ‘I think au fond we are quite fond of each other. But I chaff you, and then you have to be introduced to me all over again.’
‘Ah . . . present me to this lady, Deirdre.’
‘Sir Herbert Toddington, Miss Carne. Sir Herbert is the famous judge, Katrine.’
Katrine inclined her head. ‘Indeed? A very interesting profession, I believe. You must quite find it takes up your time.’
‘Oh, not at all,’ responded Toddy acidly, ‘one must have a hobby.’
‘Perhaps you and Katrine will bury the hatchet now, Herbert,’ suggested Mildred.
He turned to her. ‘I should indeed be willing. But – would Sheil approve?’
We all considered this. Katrine said, ‘Perhaps we might have a very slight disagreement now and again, Sir Herbert.’
‘These sudden, suburban reconciliations,’ I murmured. And soon, we had to go, because Katrine’s company is playing at the Hammersmith Palace, and she has to have a terrible, sexless meal that’s too old to be tea and too young to be dinner at about five-thirty.
27
Helen Ainslie set out the last of her photographs, stood her golf-clubs in a corner, and sat down at the table by the window.
‘DEAREST MUM,
‘I am writing to you in my bedroom, which is quite a nice cheerful one, and the mattress is a spring one, because I’ve just poked it! I look out on the garden – what there is of it.
‘ “Sheil” is her name, not Sheila. It seems it’s a place in Skye where Papa (dead) was born; same with Katrine. My predecessor seems to have omitted any sort of exercises from the time-table, so Sheil and I do our “daily dozen” together. The child is perfectly killing, and I draw her out to get a good laugh. When I first came, I thought the whole family was quite mad, but I’ve sifted the whole business, now, and it’s all their fun. Joking apart, they quite made me believe in a Mr Baffin – or some such name, but when Mrs Carne saw I thought he was a real live person, she told me the facts, and I had a hearty laugh over that, too.
‘I think I am making a hit! Whenever I make a joke at table, they all simply roar.
‘There is to be a party on Xmas night, and would you believe it? Mr Justice Toddington and his wife are coming. Well, I wasn’t going to be had, so I said, laughingly, “Is he a game, too?” but he is coming, also possibly a Mr Mathewson and a Mr Nicholls, and a couple of girl friends of the Carnes – Charlotte and Emily Bell. When I remarked on this, and reminded Katrine that that was the name of the Brontës, she was highly amused, and agreed that it was a perfect coincidence. The Carnes are always full of them. They (the Bells) are friends of the Toddingtons, and I rather gather they met them through them (what a sentence!).
‘I suppose I must give each of the Carnes some giftlet at Xmas. It’s rather a tax as one has
been here so very little time, but they seem to make a tremendous business of Xmas, and the schoolroom is already festooned with paper chains and the tree has come, and we were hard at it with holly and mistletoe yesterday, and had a perfectly killing time, with valiant me on a ladder! I’ve put up a big bunch of m’toe in the hall, and told the girls (in fun) I mean to kiss Sir Herbert, and Deirdre said he’d have me up for indecent assault – for which I shut her up. Joking aside, she goes too far sometimes, but is quite a ripping type of girl, for all that, though I could wish they all read less and played some game. Still, the study of new types has always fascinated me, as you know.
‘I think I shall give Sheil Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens – I saw some reduced presentation copies in Boots the other day, and perhaps a shingle brush for Katy, and a box of chokkies for Deirdre. Flowers for Mrs Carne.
‘Yesterday, I came into the schoolroom and found Sheil wrapping up presents, and I saw she had actually addressed one “To dearest Mrs Carne from Saffy, Gabriel and Michael,” and when I burst out laughing she got perfectly crimson, so I made some little joke – I forget what, and said no more about it. It is, of course, a case for tact and a knowledge of child psychology, and I already have a planlet to win her confidence. “Always work with, not against” I found such a rippingly sensible rule at Pridhoe. I took it for granted the child believed in Santa, but, when I offered to be him on Xmas Day, Mrs Carne said they none of them ever had . . . ’
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