Britannia Mews

by Margery Sharp

  On this generous note she skimmed away, moving really very gracefully, turned to wave under the arch, and was gone. Aunt and niece looked at each other.

  “And the damnable thing,” said Dodo, “is that if incendiaries do land in her beastly pink love-nest, I damn well shall have to go and put ’em out.”

  “However, all rational people are leaving London,” said Adelaide.

  Dodo, who did not feel the moment propitious for further argument, went rather wearily into the Theatre to prepare for the matinée.

  The work grew harder. Bartholomew was still with them, but the electrician, having influence, got into the army; Gerhardi produced an elderly compatriot who was clever but unreliable, and a theatrical agency sent a Punch and Judy man whom they had to train. (He brought with him a mangy Dog Toby; Adelaide took a liking to the animal, washed it with disinfectant, and carried it up to show Gilbert.) Dodo and Adelaide managed the box-office between them, and the former, as her aunt had prophesied, also did a good deal of scrubbing: all front-of-the-house duties, and many domestic duties as well, fell upon her shoulders. Adelaide could tidy the flat, and cook, but she was a bad war-time shopper, for she couldn’t bring herself to stand in a queue, and persisted in addressing tradesmen as though she were their social superior. “You don’t realize,” complained Dodo, “that the butcher has power.” Adelaide sniffed, and said she supposed the fishmonger had aristocratic connections. “No, darling; the fishmonger has glamour,” said Dodo, with a grin; and subsequently did the shopping as well.

  But relief was on the way. Miss Hambro rang up one morning to say that a furnished house had been found for herself and Treff, near the Bakers in Somerset, and there was room for the Lamberts as well: would not Adelaide and her husband go down with them in two days’ time? It was fortunately Dodo who took the call and she knew better than to give the message directly; instead she suggested that Treff should come up in person and apply fraternal pressure. Brother and sister had met once or twice during the intervening years, if not with enthusiasm, at least with decent affability; and family affection seemed to be in the air. To herself Dodo admitted only an outside chance of success, but she was ready to take any chance at all.

  Treff arrived. He hadn’t changed much since his first appearance in Surbiton; after looking older than his age for years, he now looked younger. It was evident that Aunt Ellen had taken great care of him, for he had all the easy assurance of the cockered male.

  “Of course Adelaide and Gilbert must come with us,” he announced competently. “We’ll pick them up to-morrow morning.…”

  With a first gleam of hope Dodo led him upstairs and put him into the flat (rather as one popped a ferret into a rabbit-hole) and almost immediately withdrew; she had an idea that Adelaide would find it easier to climb down without a witness. But she was working in the store-room next door, and their first exchange was distinctly audible.

  “My dear Adelaide, it’s the common desire of all of us—”

  “You’re not addressing a meeting,” said Adelaide.

  Dodo groaned, and dived into a stack of old sets (they were feeling the three-ply shortage) and began to go through them methodically. “When on earth did we do Cinderella?” she wondered, as a pasteboard pumpkin collapsed in her hands. But she couldn’t help cocking an ear, and presently Adelaide’s voice rose high and peremptory.

  “As you rightly point out, my dear Treff, we are not a service family; on the other hand, I never heard of the Culvers being notable for cowardice.”

  Dodo put her head round the door and said, “Treff isn’t being a coward. He’s simply being reasonable,” and went downstairs. There was plenty to do in the box-office, and she realized that it would be less trying to wait out of earshot.

  A whole hour passed; with every minute hope ebbed. When Treff at last reappeared Dodo felt it hardly worth while to put a question. But his manner was extremely agitated; and she felt bound (having summoned him on his bootless errand) at least to sympathize with its failure.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Dodo. “I’m afraid you haven’t been able to persuade her?”

  “No, I haven’t,” snapped Treff.

  “I never really thought you would. She’s so dreadfully stubborn—”

  “Stubborn!” Treff dashed his hat down on the desk and glared. “She’s a damned bully! She won’t leave herself, and now she won’t let me leave either! That’s so like Adelaide—”

  Dodo jumped to her feet.

  “What on earth do you mean? Of course you’re leaving!”

  “No, I’m not. I’m coming to live up here.” Treff glared crossly round the Mews. “Which is Number I, Dodo? Adelaide says I’m to have Number I.”

  “You wait here,” ordered Dodo.

  Almost beside herself with indignation she swung up the iron staircase and burst into the flat. Adelaide had retired to the inner room, where she was placidly engaged in amusing Gilbert, and educating Dog Toby, by teaching the latter to beg.

  “Aunt Adelaide, what is all this nonsense?” demanded Dodo. “Treff comes up to take you to Somerset, and now he tells me he’s going to stay in town!”

  Adelaide looked complacent.

  “I thought he’d be useful about the Theatre, dear. He can jelly the programmes. You know how short-handed we are, and Treff’s a great deal more capable than he looks.”

  “But he doesn’t want to stay in London! It—it’s positively cruel!”

  “Of course he doesn’t,” agreed Adelaide. “He’d much rather be a coward—and I will say this for Treff, he has no false shame about it. However, I don’t choose to have a coward for a brother.”

  As Dodo had realized, family affection was in the air; but this particular manifestation of it disconcerted her.

  “You’re talking,” added Adelaide blandly, “as though he weren’t a free agent …”

  Dodo at once flew downstairs again and turned her wrath on Treff.

  “For heaven’s sake stand up for yourself!” she adjured him. “All you’ve got to do is just go! Aunt Adelaide won’t come after you! You’re not locked up here! Haven’t you any will of your own?”

  “Not much,” said Treff disarmingly; and regarding him with extreme repugnance (for she already saw him as some one else to be rescued), Dodo saw that this was only too true. Already he was becoming reconciled to his lot; already his flash of temper had subsided. “And you know,” he went on, “to tell you the truth, Dodo, your Aunt Ellen can be a great bore. Your Aunt Ellen in the country might prove quite unendurable. I’m about ready for a change.”

  “But to come here! At this time!”

  Treff said irrelevantly, “After all, it’s where we used to live. I can remember as a small boy—”

  The wail of the siren drowned his last words. Dodo seized her tin hat and bolted for the Post. Nothing fell, however, in their area, and the alert was a short one; when she ran back she found Treff and Adelaide in Number I, making poor witticisms about the colour scheme.

  6

  Thus it was that Alice, meeting the train, saw her sister descend from the carriage alone.

  “Where’s Treff?” she cried at once.

  Ellen dropped a rug and a suitcase on the platform and replied dramatically:—

  “In Britannia Mews!”

  “Ellen!” Regardless of interested bystanders, Alice seized and shook her sister’s arm. “Ellen, what can you mean?”

  “What I say. He’s in Britannia Mews with Adelaide. He went to persuade her to come down here with us, and she persuaded him—or I should say browbeat and bullied him—into staying there. It’s sheer madness.”

  “You shouldn’t have allowed it!” cried Alice indignantly.

  “My dear Alice, I don’t remember that you exactly allowed Dodo to do exactly the same thing.”

  This was so dreadfully true that Alice could not answer. In silence she stooped and picked up Ellen’s bag, and Ellen picked up the rug, and they joined the stream making for the barrier. It was a sl
ow business; the train had been very full. When they had moved about a dozen yards Alice said suddenly:—

  “What is it about Adelaide?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ellen.

  In the minds of both was the same thought: that life was grossly unjust to good women.

  They moved on a few yards more. A small boy carrying a cat in a basket edged between them and rested his burden against Alice’s plump side. “Is that your pussy?” asked she—kind as ever even in distress. “No, it’s my mum’s,” replied the urchin. Alice looked at him with approval: what a good, helpful child!

  “Never mind, dear,” said Ellen encouragingly. “At least we’re all together here.”

  “And they’re all together in the Mews!”

  “I dare say even if Adelaide left, Dodo wouldn’t.”

  “That’s what Freddy says, but I don’t believe it. And I know Adelaide won’t leave. She gets her own way in everything, and always has done, simply by being as stubborn as a mule.”

  Ellen did not answer, and Alice knew why. There was at that time a conviction abroad that stubbornness had become a virtue. Was not the whole country drawing on its stubbornness, retreating into its old citadel of blind obstinacy? When to be clear-sighted was to admit defeat, thick-headedness offered an alternative. Moreover the country as a whole, making this choice, did not even see there was a choice at all, but felt itself to be following the only possible course; instinct took the place of reason; and as always when this happened with the British, they felt a deep, if unadmitted, sense of relief. Inside the thick heads certain racial memories stirred, all heartening; time was found to remark the peculiar beauty of that English summer. It was a wonderful year for buttercups. Each field was a cloth of gold, hedged by the upflung spray of hawthorn—as the island itself was moated by the sea. But if the sea, if its old ally the sea failed, the only defence was stubbornness. Already the great cities crouched under bombardment with no other shield. Stubbornness, in whatever manifestation, was not to be disparaged.

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER I

  1

  Four years later, in Britannia Mews, Adelaide lay awake listening to the barrage. She could identify three distinct sounds, like three instruments in an orchestra: a sharp plan, as of a finger flicked against taut parchment; an enormous fart; a rumble like a cartload of bricks being emptied—and then all three merging into great waves of noise, like the waves of the sea, as the barrage moved farther out. This pandemonium was very agreeable to her; like all other Londoners, she remembered nights when the only sound in the sky was the scoff-and-throb of Jerry engines.

  “Well, we’re still here,” thought Adelaide.

  She turned and glanced across the narrow space to Gilbert’s bed. He slept peacefully on his back, his short white beard pointed defiantly at the ceiling. In an odd way it made him look more lively asleep than he did awake; he had become a very old man, rarely leaving the flat, except when he crept down once or twice a month to watch a performance in the Theatre, and taking all his airings on the balcony. Even by day he snoozed a good deal; he could snooze through a warning, a stick of bombs, and an All Clear; his increasing deafness had its compensations, and Adelaide’s voice was always perfectly distinct to him. He took very little notice of any one else, and indeed very little notice of the war.

  They had been very lucky. Bombs had dropped all around, in Paddington, in the Bayswater Road, by the Marble Arch; the Albion Place houses had all their front windows blown out; but nothing (except of course shrapnel, and tiles, and a few chimney-pots) fell upon the Mews. The Puppet Theatre still flourished (in 1942 they had resumed evening performances, at six o’clock) and shared with the Windmill the proud motto, WE NEVER CLOSED.

  Adelaide became aware that the skies were quiet again; presently Dodo would come pounding back from the Post. At the thought of her niece Adelaide smiled in the darkness: good, brave, dependable child, how well she had turned out! Not that Dodo was a child any longer, she was in fact forty-seven, what some people might consider middle-aged; but she looked much younger, there was a sort of perennial girlishness about her—the girlishness of the woman who hasn’t married and doesn’t regret it. “Is Dodo happy?” Adelaide wondered for a moment … “Would she like to get married?”—and then shrugged the doubt aside as unimportant. “Dodo is stout-hearted,” thought Adelaide. “That’s all that matters …”

  For this was one result of the war: it had reduced life to first principles. If you weren’t stout-hearted, you didn’t matter. You might be rich, or beautiful, or clever, or industrious, but your courage was what you were finally judged by. There was no longer any need to keep up appearances, except the appearance of being brave.

  The All Clear sounded; Adelaide slept.

  2

  Day was breaking as Dodo re-entered the Mews. In the cold February dawn the little houses looked bleak and shabby: without their bright paint, without their tubs and window-boxes, they had reverted to type. But Cyclamen’s pink shutters still made a patch of pale colour, and on a sudden impulse Dodo went in to see if her uncle were awake. Treff always left the door on the latch, in case he needed rescuing: he had turned out quite as brave as could be expected, but he took precautions. Dodo at once looked under the stairs, and there he was, curled up in Cyclamen’s pink eiderdown, buttressed by pink pillows, like an earwig in the heart of a rose.

  At Dodo’s step he opened one eye, immediately closed it again, and burrowed into the pinkness. Dodo knew what he was doing, he kept his false teeth in a box under the pillow, and she waited politely till he re-emerged.

  “Rough night,” said Treff.

  “St. James’s and Pall Mall,” said Dodo. “Quite a nasty little blitz.”

  Treff worked himself partially out of his cocoon and clasped his skinny wrists behind his head.

  “Well, I’ve been very snug,” he remarked selfishly. “Seen Adelaide?”

  “I haven’t been in yet. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  Without waiting for an answer (Treff was a little mean about his tea-ration) Dodo put on the electric ring and set out two cups—one famille rose, one utility. All the furnishings were now in this piebald state; Dodo sometimes thought it fortunate that Cyclamen was in Miami. They knew this because she had sent Adelaide a Christmas card with a line on the back asking if any one had happened to find her charm-bracelet. No one had, though the early days of Treff’s occupation yielded a considerable harvest of minor pickings. Handkerchiefs, for example, turned up continually—five stuffed down one chair; Dodo sent them all to the wash and when clothes-rationing came in used them without compunction. Boxes of cigarettes abounded. The bureau yielded a quantity of note-paper, pink but high-grade: also a great number of telegrams bearing such messages as WITH YOU TO-NIGHT, or CAN’T MAKE IT DARLING, or THREE DAYS STARTING TUESDAY, all signed BIMBO. (Treff thought the preservation of these missives showed a tender nature; Dodo, untidy habits.) More important finds were two bottles of gin, half a bottle of French vermouth, and a decanter of whisky. They were long since consumed, but the character of a Tom Tiddler’s Ground continued to hang faintly about the place, and indeed after four years Dodo still found an occasional and invaluable hairpin.

  Treff was still deep in his cushions when she returned with the tea, but fully awake and ready for conversation. She said:—

  “There’s a journalist coming at eleven to interview Aunt Adelaide.”

  “Dear me,” said Treff. “Addie has become a personage.”

  “She always was,” said Dodo sharply. “But the point is she won’t see him. She says she can’t be bothered. So I’ll have to instead—”

  “Or I will,” offered Treff.

  But Dodo shook her head. Gentlemen of the Press were not rare visitors, for the dramatic critics who had turned to the Puppet when other theatres closed still came regularly; and Treff persisted in trying to sell them articles on Perugino. Adelaide paid for his services with a pound a week and his keep, so it was quite nat
ural, and even praiseworthy, that he should thus try to turn an honest penny; only it sometimes annoyed the critics.

  “No, thanks,” said Dodo. “I’ll see him myself. But I do need some facts about Aunt Adelaide’s early life. For instance, when did she marry Uncle Gilbert?”

  “If her memory hasn’t failed altogether,” said Treff cattily, “Adelaide can surely tell you that herself.”

  “I hate worrying her; she’s got such a great sense of—of privacy.” Dodo paused; her aunt’s reluctance to talk about herself was so very marked, one felt almost disloyal in going to other sources of information. But a theatre, of all enterprises, couldn’t afford to neglect the Press; and if the article were well done it would be valuable publicity. Moreover, what the Press wasn’t told it would guess at: far better to give a few facts correctly, and ask to read the proofs.… “Come along, Uncle Treff,” said Dodo briskly. “When did they get married?”

  Treff, divided between the desire to obstruct and the desire to show off his own powers of memory, appeared to meditate.

  “The year we moved to Farnham. Eighteen eighty-six.”

  “Didn’t they elope? Oh, dear,” said Dodo regretfully, “that’s so romantic, but I don’t think I dare use it. Anyway, Uncle Gilbert’s time in France must have come before that, because they’ve lived here ever since; so he made the Molière puppets—good heavens!—nearly sixty years ago. Do you know anything else about him?”

  “Only that he drank like a fish.”

  “Uncle Treff!”

  “You asked me, my dear.”

  “No one would employ a drawing-master who drank!”

  “I don’t imagine,” said Treff, beginning to enjoy himself, “that he habitually appeared in a state of intoxication. In fact I was away at school, I never even saw him; but it all came out afterwards. The twins apparently put in some detective work—they were your Uncles James and John, my dear; and there was a Mrs. Ocock whose daughter also took drawing-lessons: she came to Mamma with really hair-raising tales. He was dismissed from his post at a school—”