My Son, My Son

by Howard Spring

  *

  “MY DEAR FATHER,—I’m afraid this letter will disappoint you because it is to ask whether I may be permitted not to come home at all in the Easter holidays. You know that Pogson is leaving school when we break up for the summer, so this coming holiday will probably be the last when he will have much use for me. I mean, when he goes to Oxford he will meet older people, and after all he’s two years older than I am.

  His people have a place in Scotland, and Pogson would like me to go up there this hols. There would be no point in coming south first, as all Pogson’s people will be picking him up here and going on by car.

  The point is, Pogson’s people have a yacht up there in Scotland, and Pogson always goes up in the Easter hols, and helps to overhaul her for the summer because he’s a practical seaman and likes doing these things himself. It’s not as though he couldn’t afford to have it done for him if he wanted.

  I should very much like to be up there in Scotland with Pogson and to see this yacht and learn something from Pogson about overhauling a yacht. It’s a steam yacht, and I only know about small sailing and motor-boats. Pogson says we might even cruise a little in the yacht if the weather is fine and if his people agree.

  If you agree to this, would you be so kind as to have my dinner suit sent on when I give you the address, as Pogson says they dress for dinner, and you will know, of course, how much money you ought to send me, and you might give me a hint about the scale of tipping when I discover what staff Pogson’s people keep.

  There is one matter I am ashamed to mention, but must do so. I think I should take the gold cigarette case that you were so kind as to give me. Unfortunately, I pawned this during the Christmas hols, being rather short of money and not wishing to bother you. Do you think you could get it out and send it on? I should like to send you the money, but am rather short. You will find the pawn-ticket in an envelope marked ‘Pawn-ticket’ inside the cover of a book called Across the World for a Wife by Guy Boothby in the top left-hand drawer of the desk in my room.

  I gather from your last letter that it will be about the time of the Easter holiday that your first play will be going on in London. I should have liked to have been present to have seen it, but I have no doubt it will survive long enough for me to have that pleasure in the summer hols or even at Xmas.

  Well, that’s all except to say how deeply sorry I am about the cigarette case, but you will, I am sure, appreciate the importance of me having it.

  Love from OLIVER.”

  I was back in Hampstead when Oliver’s letter came. I went at once to his room and found the envelope labelled “Pawn-ticket.” Then I went to town and redeemed my cigarette case.

  *

  “MY DEAR OLIVER,—I shall naturally be disappointed at not seeing you during the Easter holidays, especially as I was looking forward to your being present when Every Street goes on. However, this seems an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. You will have a chance to learn something about engines and to be with new people. Both those things are worth while.

  I shall send on your clothes and some money. As to the tips, ask Pogson about it. There’s no need to make any pretence of being accustomed to staying in houses that keep large staffs. I have no doubt Pogson is an intelligent fellow and will understand.

  I have rescued the cigarette case from pawn, and you can have it any time you repay me the amount I paid to the pawnbroker. Let me make no bones about it: I was disappointed to find what had happened, though glad you told me. When you are short of money, let me know, and if the purpose for which you want it is intelligent, you know you can have it. And I’m not stingy, either, in interpreting the word intelligent. But don’t start borrowing, whether from pawnbrokers or anyone else. Meantime, I’m afraid you’ll have to imitate my degrading habit of offering fags from the packet. Alternatively, you needn’t, for some time, offer them at all.

  You see what a moralist and skinflint I am becoming! But there it is.

  I’ve had a very good time down at Heronwater, working on the play. Captain Judas came to breakfast with me on the morning I left, and impressed upon me at least a dozen times that I was to send you his love.

  Accept mine, too, and believe me always your devoted FATHER.”

  So that was how it was that the Easter holiday went by without Oliver’s knowing anything of my engagement to Livia.

  21

  We started early from Heronwater, and Martin was able to make better time than on the journey out. We were at home by four, and I at once rang up Livia. She asked me to call for her and to take her out to dinner. When I reached her flat she was dressed, all ready, and was sitting down at an open grand piano. She went on playing, and nodded to me to take a chair. Her face wore a deeply concentrated expression. Now and then she tried a phrase over again, and then again and again. Presently her hands dropped to her lap. “Composing,” she said with a smile.

  “Another of your accomplishments.”

  “Yes, but please don’t say it like that: as though it were something like the water-colour drawing that Victorian misses were taught. Polite accomplishments they were called, weren’t they?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well, this isn’t at all polite. It’s a song. I just thought of the phrase ‘When it’s with you, it’s wonderful.’ And now the tune’s coming. Don’t you think that’s a good phrase for a sentimental song?”

  And she began to play again, singing in a low, crooning voice:

  With anyone else it’s just comme-ci, comme-ça,

  I can take it or leave it, but when you are there

  It’s wonderful!

  When it’s with you it’s wonderful

  She got up brightly. “Well, that’s that! I’ll finish it some day. Perhaps I’ll sell it to Wertheim—let him make it the theme song of one of his big shows. And so the play is finished! Help yourself to a cigarette.”

  She waved her hand towards a silver box on the mantelpiece. Resting alongside it was a letter, addressed in Oliver’s unmistakable handwriting. It rather jolted me, seeing it there.

  “You’re still hearing from Oliver,” I said casually.

  “I shall be glad when he knows we’re engaged,” she answered briefly.

  I didn’t light the cigarette. I crossed the room and put my arm round her waist. She lifted her face to be kissed, as though she had just remembered it. I sat in a chair and pulled her down on to my knee.

  “You told Maeve that we were not in a hurry to get married. You asked in your letter whether I agreed. I don’t.” I kissed her on the eyes. “My sweet, what is there to wait for? Let’s be married soon.”

  She twisted the lapel of my coat in her fingers and shook her head slowly. “My dear, I’m so terribly afraid you’d be sorry.” She did not look into my face as she spoke.

  “Is that really the reason?” I asked. “If it is, put it out of your head right away. But is it?”

  “It’s one of the reasons.”

  “And what is the other?”

  “Oh, I want to be certain,” she cried, springing up. “I want to feel that there’s no doubt about it.” She had taken the letter from the mantelpiece, and on the emphatic word “doubt” she tore it across and threw the pieces into the fire. Then she came and sat on the arm of my chair and stroked my hair—very grey now, I thought, an ageing man’s hair. But she spoke kindly, as though to assure herself as well as me. “You can make me love you, Bill—can’t you—can’t you?”

  “My dear,” I said, taking the restless hand and holding it between my palms, “I can give you my love. That’s all. And I can wait till you’re ready to take it.”

  “You old darling,” she said, and slipped on to my knees and put her arms round my neck. “Let’s wait, shall we? I’m sure I’m going to be terribly fond of you. Where shall we have dinner?”

  *

  Maeve wrote to me. “DEAR BILL,—Congratulations on your engagement. Rehearsals of Every Street begin tomorrow. I suppose you’ll be there? If so, wo
uld you call for me and take me along? It’s only a sentimental idea, but I feel I’d like to take up my first stroke on your play in your company. After all, we’ve had this play in mind for a few years now, haven’t we? Besides, I want you to meet someone here at the flat. So come early. And I want you to meet the new flat, too! You’ll be surprised! I am, I assure you. I never expected to live in such luxury. I’ve had to take a five-years’ lease on the place. That takes us to 1918. Goodness knows what may have happened by then! But, as I have a twenty-first birthday not inordinately far ahead, Daddy has anticipated his present by furnishing the flat for me out of the most lavish resources of Messrs. O’Riorden’s most lavish Regent Street shop. Hence the dazzler you’re in for! But, anyway, shouldn’t the leading lady in William Essex’s gread play be living like a someone? Most certainly! And it is a grand play, Bill. I’ve been in plenty, and I know. Wertheim let me read the whole script, and I loved it. I love him, too! The dear man is risking twenty pounds a week on me! What do you think of that? And, like all my other blessings, it comes from you, dear Bill. Love from MAEVE.”

  I thanked Wertheim in my heart. But to him it would be just business. “How do you keep all your great stars?” I asked him once, knowing the legend that his players never deserted him. “Like this,” he said, with no smile on his big pale face, and jingled the coins in his pocket. Well, I hoped he’d find Maeve good value. I believed he would.

  Maeve’s new flat was in Bruton Street. I walked up two flights of stairs and found a door, painted a deep peony crimson, with the name “Maeve O’Riorden” on a neat brass plate affixed to it. I rang the bell, and stared, struggling with recollection, at the portly, rosy dame who opened the door.

  “Nay, don’t look like that,” she said. “Tha’s forgotten me, Mr. Essex.”

  “Just a minute,” I said, “don’t tell me—yes—why, Annie, I’d have known you anywhere, in a hundred years’ time. You haven’t changed a scrap.”

  Annie Suthurst smiled delightedly. How long ago was it since Dermot and Sheila had taken that house in Mauldeth Road? Oh, dear! It must be the best part of twenty years ago, and Annie Suthurst, a young widow who had gloriously lost her husband in the Boer War, was their first maid. She was with them right up to the time when Dermot moved to London, and that intimidated her. “London, nay, that’s a daft place. I’ll not go to no London with thee,” she declared firmly. “And now here I am, Mr. Essex,” she explained, leading me into a small hall. “Ah’ve coom after all. But on’y because Miss Maeve were so set on it. Ah wouldn’t’ve coom for anybody but her. An’ London’s nowt to get excited about when tha’s looked at it once. Ah reckon nowt to Oxford Street. It’s nobbut Market Street, Manchester, a bit wider.”

  So chattering with the delightful animation of an old hen glad to be back with a lost chick, Annie Suthurst kept me standing there, giving me time to look about at the fine carpet on the floor, the engravings on the wall, the hat-rack and seat for callers. A nice, useful little hall, with all the doors painted red like the one I had entered by, and the walls and carpet grey.

  Maeve came out proudly to meet me. “Isn’t it lovely?” she asked, and when I said that indeed it was, so far as I had seen it, she took me round to see all the rest. Her own bedroom, “with two beds so that I can put up a visitor,” and with just a little sideways peep over the garden of Berkeley Square. “Not much now,” said Maeve, drawing the deep-red quilted curtain to look at the bare trunks of the planes and the dun winter grass, “but how good that’s going to be for tired eyes when everything’s green!”

  “May Maeve’s eyes never grow tired,” I exclaimed piously; and Maeve said: “At least until they’re as old as Mrs. Bendall’s. You remember, Bill?”

  Oh, yes, I remembered all right. Mrs. Bendall was dead now, but I remembered the dear old lady and the tiny Maeve pouring her tea.

  “See,” said Maeve, and opened a drawer. There was a little cedarwood box inside, and in the box lay the dusty petals of a rose. “That’s the rose she gave me that night. And look at this.” She handed me a card which was lying under the brown shrivelled petals. “From Sarah Bendall to Maeve O’Riorden, with love.” In an old woman’s large staggering handwriting.

  “Do you think I had a cheek?” Maeve asked. “I wrote to her as soon as we got to Heronwater that time, and told her I should always keep her rose. So she sent me this to keep with it. I’ve never told a soul till now. It’s my good-luck casket. It’s been on all my tours with me. Sarah Bendall’s love in a little box. What a lucky woman! Sarah Bendall’s love, Mary Latter’s training, and Bill’s play to play in!”

  She shut the little box with a snap and replaced it in its drawer. Then we continued our tour. Annie Suthurst’s bedroom. “The only room in the house that hasn’t been new-furnished. Daddy tells me that when Annie first came to us in Manchester she brought her own bedroom furniture. She said, ‘That’s t’bed Ah went into when Ah were wed and that’s t’bed they’ll carry me out of to my coffin.’ She brought it all along again. She dislikes these distempered walls, so I’m going to give her a wallpaper with rosy wreaths.”

  We stood on the threshold and peeped guiltily at Annie’s lares. A double bed with brass knobs as big almost as pineapples at head and foot. Such a bed as Sairey Gamp must often have come across in the course of her professional sojourns. But there had been no need of a Sairey for Annie Suthurst. An enlarged photograph in a stout oak frame of the late Private William Suthurst—curling moustaches, curly-brimmed hat upturned at one side, a young face for ever fixed in its hopefulness while Annie went marching on—hung over the head of the bed. A plain white cotton counterpane. There were three books on a three-legged table by Annie’s bed, and I ventured to tiptoe in and peep, for I can never resist the temptation to see what people are reading. The Holy Bible, Charles Dickens’ Christmas stories, and Conan Doyle’s The Great Boer War. Great! Good Lord! How! Why?

  There was a fire burning cheerfully in Annie’s grate, for this was sitting-room as well as bedroom, with a sagging wicker chair alongside it, and a hassock on which, clearly, she would like to “put her feet up.” On the mantelpiece a clock, a magnificent clock, comprising both timepiece and a pair of rearing stallions in metal that was faked to look like bronze. A little plate at the base of the clock: “To William Suthurst, on the occasion of his marriage, from his friends on the warehouse staff, Heywood and Atkinson, Ltd.” On either side of the clock a blue china vase, containing faded paper flowers. The vases, I guessed, were wedding-presents, too. There was a sewing-machine under the window. Every Lancashire housewife liked to have a sewing-machine.

  “This room,” I said to Maeve, “would make me cry, if I didn’t know Annie.”

  “Yes,” said Maeve, “Annie’s wonderful. All her ghosts are tame now. She’s happy with them, and stronger because of them.”

  “You’re lucky to have her. I’m so glad. When you said in your letter that you had someone to show me, Annie was my last guess.”

  Maeve opened the door of her sitting-room. “Annie, indeed!” she said. “No. Here’s my surprise.”

  Rory came forward with a smile lighting his face, and farther into the room stood Maggie Donnelly.

  “Well, Rory, my dear boy!” I placed both my hands on his shoulders. It was easy to do. He had not very much grown upwards like Oliver, whose eyes now looked at me almost from the level of my own. Rory looked up at me. He had grown outwards, like a young oak, like a young bull. His shoulders seemed strong enough to batter down doors, his wrists were as thick as mine and his hands large and capable. The serious grey-eyed face had not changed much, except that it was, if anything, more serious, save now when the old shy smile set little crinkles fanwise about his eyes. I put my hand into the untidy tangle of his hair. It was like harsh wire.

  “This is Maggie Donnelly,” he said rather timidly. “You’ll not have forgotten her since she was at Heronwater.”

  “I haven’t forgotten her,” I declared, “but it would be small blame to m
e if I didn’t recognise this for the same young woman.”

  And that was true enough. She, too, had retained the old gravity that sat so well upon her as a child, that accorded so excellently now with her grey eyes and dark brown hair. But, like Oliver, she had grown upwards. She had a strong, resolute look, but was tall and beautifully feminine, with long legs and narrow hips and young swelling breasts, and a complexion that was full of sunny colour.

  “This is my first time in London,” she said, in a voice which I had not remembered to be so attractive. “Father sends you his love, Mr. Essex. He’s never forgotten Heronwater and Captain Judas and Captain Jansen.”

  “It was a good time,” I said wistfully. How far away it seemed! They had all been children.

  “I’m staying over Easter,” Rory said. “It’ll be grand meeting Oliver again. Now that I’ve got a job and am more or less self-supporting, we’ll have lots to talk about.”

  “I’m afraid Oliver hasn’t got so far as thinking about a job yet,” I said. “And what’s your job, Rory? You make me feel a very old man.”

  “Nonsense,” Maeve broke in sharply. “You’re one of the youngest men I know, Bill. Don’t get stuff and nonsense into your head. Don’t you think he’s looking beautiful and young, Maggie?”

  “He’s not a day older than Dad,” said Maggie, “and Dad can work us all and play us all off our feet, can’t he, Rory?”

  “Ay,” said Rory, with devotion in his eyes. “And shame us all with the risks he takes.”

  “Well,” I said, pulling out a cigarette case—it happened to be that gold one which Oliver had coveted—and offering it to Rory. “And what is this job of yours?”

  “I don’t smoke, thanks, Uncle Bill. Well, I shan’t begin working till this holiday’s over, and then I’m going in as a learner at the printing works, where Mr. Donnelly works. Printers are useful in Ireland just now—aren’t they, Maggie?”