Cathy, remembering with disapproval how Elvira had told her they formed a guard of honor, said aloud hopefully, “Perhaps it will all be over before the girls are home from school.”
“Four o’clock,” replied Elvira sourly. “Tea on arrival, and the conference and tour of inspection after.”
“I hope Christabel behaves herself,” said the housemother. Christabel had the habit of exploding like the cork from a too tightly stoppered bottle when her day’s lessons were finished, even though the lessons comprised only finger drawing or plasticine modeling.
“Yes, and Leila,” reminded Elvira. “All things bright are beautiful, Aunty Cathy.”
The children were dressed, fed and sent off to classes with the instruction to keep as clean as possible and not to be home late. “Special board meeting,” glowered Elvira.
“Cake afterward,” Cathy could not help encouraging. She put Avery and Christabel in the sandpit and came back to lend Mrs. Ferguson a hand with the afternoon cakes.
At eleven the boys arrived.
What is a boy, thought Cathy, listening to the din. Snips and snails and puppy dog’s tails, but fun and laughter and something oddly, infinitely tender as well, bless their cropped heads and little hard knees. She ran outside to greet them.
Out they poured, Robert, Douglas, Bill, Jim, Mike, Terence, a dozen others and a dozen newcomers besides. The last to get out was David Kennedy.
“Aunty Cathy.”
“Uncle David.”
“It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s good to have you here.”
They moved together to the boys’ building where Cathy helped with the unpacking and the allotting of cribs.
“Who has been giving the personal touch?” demanded David, glancing at the vases of flowers.
Cathy flashed him a smile. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Mind ...” For a moment she was aware only of the man in the room, of his gray eyes smiling into hers, his friendliness reaching out to her. There was a flicker of inquiry in that gray gaze, a sense of understanding. There was something, too, that was more than companionable, something that needed no declaration.
“Mrs. Ferguson has found time to make some candy.” said Cathy, a little disconcerted. “The boys are our guests for morning milk.”
“That’s good, because our own cook hasn’t arrived yet. Am I invited, too?”
“Tea, not milk. I wish I didn’t have to invite you. I wish we all ate under the same roof.”
“What a rumpus,” grinned Kennedy. “Never mind, Aunty Cathy, it mightn’t be for long. This separation, I mean.”
“In a little while,” nodded Cathy eagerly. “Perhaps even this afternoon. There’s a board meeting. Did you know?”
“I knew, but I wouldn’t bank on any alteration of brother and sister, I mean. That’s beyond the board’s control. It’s a ruling of some social act, and that, of course, entails Parliament.”
“It also makes it sound rather hopeless,” said Cathy.
David smiled. “Is this the girl who just promised ‘In a little while’?”
“I meant the tea,” she laughed back.
“Terry, Tim, Geoff, Rodney, boys, there’s a snack waiting in the girls’ kitchen.”
They greeted the announcement with whoops of joy mingled with yells of derision because it was the girls’ kitchen.
“Still enemies,” laughed Cathy.
“Beloved enemies,” said David.
“I sometimes wonder. Anne Bannerman and Shirley and Brenda Curtis had nothing tender to say about them when I made the announcement that their respective brothers were returning.”
David said abruptly, “I was not thinking of the children...”
He looked at her quietly, and she looked steadily back. We know each other, was what she was thinking, and knowledge is a very enduring thing. The realization gave her a sense of being no longer rootless, of having only things that were new and strange around her. She thought suddenly of Jeremy Malcolm and how the smallest issue set him off, blinded him so that his words were sharp and barbed and bitter. I shall never understand him, she thought with despair. I shall never know him—not as I know David.
“There are scones, too,” she said happily, “hot ones, though if we don’t hurry there won’t be any more.”
“Did you have to say that quite so clearly?” laughed David, indicating the suddenly deserted dormitory.
They descended the steps together and crossed to the kitchen. Elvira and Mrs. Ferguson were introduced to Uncle David, but their interchanges were perforce hurried. The smallest boy discovered the stairs and was having a fine time on the newly polished banisters.
“It will only give it an extra shine,” soothed Cathy to Elvira, then turning to the man, “Are uncles too afflicted with small Christabels?”
“This Christabel is named Ronald,” grinned David, “and uncles are afflicted. Hi, young fellow, one at a time.” He rescued the candies from Ronald, marshaled the boys, and led them back to their own quarters. “Until this afternoon,” he said to Cathy.
She nodded and grimaced in doleful anticipation.
“In a little while,” he reminded her with a cheery smile.
Mrs. Ferguson, thinking that he meant that the board were arriving in a little while, hurried back to her cake baking in a fine panic.
Cathy was given the job of smoothing over large quantities of icing and pressing in decorative cherries and nuts.
The girls arrived from school at three and were hastily slicked over with wet face cloths and dry towels and given fresh handkerchiefs. Christabel and Avery were parted protestingly from the sandpit in which they were playing and changed from jeans to dresses.
The cars began arriving. Some of them were big and luxurious, some small and utilitarian, some were taxis that departed, some were hire cabs that waited. One was a familiar long green convertible, and in it Dr. Malcolm brought old Mr. Grant and Miss Marriott, who last time had asked Cathy if the girls wore camphor bags around their necks. When she was told no she had promised to make some. The Reverend Mr. Flett and his wife walked to the meeting, Mrs. Flett endearing herself more than ever to the girls by winking mischievously as she passed through their guard of honor. The last to come arrived in a black car of really breathtaking proportions (Cathy kept an anxious eye on Leila, for the car shone like a mirror), and out of it stepped Fayette Dubois.
Fayette was dressed in a deceptively simple black suit. She wore no ornament, and Cathy wondered if this was because of past experiences with Leila or because anything extra would have gilded the lily. The party moved into the house; Mrs. Ferguson immediately poured the tea, and Rita, Janet, Gwenda and Paula proudly distributed it. This had been Cathy’s idea. She had even gone to the trouble of sewing a frilly apron for each and making a small becoming cap. She felt proud of her girls as they carefully manipulated their trays around the crowded room. Old Colonel Manning boomed, “Bless me, will this cost me a tip,” and everyone laughed and looked with indulgence on the young “maids.”
Then a clear, cool voice said, “I don’t know whether it is a wise idea—or should I say a kind one? After all, it is hardly encouragement to be faced this soon with the certainty of future domestic employment.”
Cathy flushed. “I had no such idea in my mind, Mrs. Dubois. The idea was more in the manner of play.”
“Really?” Fayette Dubois’s exquisitely penciled brows arched steeply. “And who, may I ask, provided the material for the aprons and caps or the time to make them?”
Cathy sat like something frozen. She felt a heaviness in her heart that seemed to suffocate her. She knew she could not have defended herself or the girls if their lives had depended on it.
Her only hope was a diversion of some sort to distract Mrs. Dubois’s attention. It came, but not in the manner she would have wished. Rita, who was old enough now to follow adult conversation, handed Mrs. Dubois her tea with rather unnecessary abruptness. Cathy would have s
worn there was only childish disapproval behind it and nothing else, but Fayette Dubois chose to interpret differently.
“You are a rude little girl,” she said distinctly, “or should I say a rude big girl. You must be nearly old enough to qualify for a position, but let me tell you now it would be useless your applying at my household for the post of maid.”
“I’m not being a maid and I wouldn’t work for you anyway.” Rita’s cheeks were flaming. One thing, thought Cathy in the abstract way one does think such things, Rita will only ever need lipstick, never any rouge.
She pulled herself together and said, “Rita!”
“I’m sorry, Aunty Cathy.”
“You must apologize to Mrs. Dubois.”
There was a silence.
“Rita.” Cathy said it again.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Dubois.”
Fayette accepted it with a graciousness that Cathy suspected was put on for the benefit of the assembly, but the spirit had gone out of the girls. And when Paula fell over and spilled the cake on the floor and Gwenda trod it into the rug helping her pick it up, she decided they had had enough. She dismissed them, and they went out sad and bewildered. They had tried to do their best, and everything had gone off well at first and the board had been quite jovial. Grown-ups, their expressions said clearly, were odd cattle.
The gathering adjourned to the assembly room, where seats had been placed around the big table and pencil and paper for notes scattered here and there for the members’ convenience.
Cathy took up a tray of used cups and was just hurrying kitchenward with it when a heavy hand was placed on her shoulder.
“No need to emulate your girls, housemother. Your place is in the assembly room, not the kitchen. Please take up your position.”
She looked up almost as sulkily as Rita had and met the ironic gaze of Jeremy Malcolm.
“I’d prefer not to, thank you.”
“It’s not a matter of preference, it’s a case, of what is expected of you. Come along at once.”
The hand was still heavy on her shoulder. It impelled her toward the assembly-room door. Cathy hastily put down the tray and obeyed. She had to. The hand did not leave her until she did.
As she entered the room Fayette Dubois came over. She was smiling.
“Do you know I’ve just realized who you are, Aunty Cathy. You are the Miss Trent Jerry introduced me to the other night. I must say—with a sweeping glance “—that you looked very different then.”
Cathy remembered the décolleté dress and tried not to look embarrassed. “I expect I did, Mrs. Dubois. Clothes do alter people.”
“Some people. Some would still look aproned even in mink ... You enjoyed yourself that evening, Aunty Cathy?”
“Very much, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, thank Dr. Malcolm. It’s very good of him always to take over the initial welcome to our new housemothers. Rather dreary from his point of view, if enjoyable from yours. But then duty is always a bore, isn’t it?” and Fayette smiled.
She gave a quick glance to Cathy, adding, “You realized, of course, that that was all it was, housemother?”
“Of course,” said Cathy.
Any more discussion on the topic of duty was prevented by the return of the doctor, who had been conversing with Colonel Manning.
“Please come and be seated, ladies,” he said. “You, Miss Trent, near Mr. Flett. You come with me, Fayette.”
“Anywhere...” She whispered it quite audibly. Her beautiful eyes were for Malcolm now. She turned her back on Cathy and locked her arm in his.
There was a scraping of chairs. The minister by Cathy’s side said a short prayer. The chairman, a Mr. Bell with a small mustache and big earnest eyes, opened the meeting and the discussions began.
They welcomed David Kennedy. Then they ran through his list of young charges and allotted them their future schools. David had one boy, Andrew, ready to begin a trade. They discussed the boy’s future at length, and Cathy sat thinking of another boy who had been discussed many years ago, a boy who had grown up to be a doctor, Jeremy Malcolm.
With a start she realized that Mr. Bell was asking her some domestic questions concerning the girls. She answered clearly and concisely, putting her views forward in the helpful manner that had been suggested to her in London. All the faces that were turned to her looked interested and sympathetic—all except Fayette’s. Mrs. Dubois was stifling a yawn with a beautiful white hand.
She finished, and Mr. Bell said, “Thank you, Miss Trent. I believe we have dealt with all the necessary business. Has anyone anything they want to say?”
Mrs. Flett, on Cathy’s other side, said, “Dare I bring up the old debate, Mr. Bell? Dare I venture the hope that we are still striving after smaller house units with whole, not partial, Little Families? With brothers and sisters kept together?”
Mr. Bell said unhappily, “We’ve gone into it so many times before, Mrs. Flett.”
“And will continue to do so, I trust. It’s only by fighting for a thing like this that you get anywhere.”
Cathy glanced expectantly toward Jerry. She was surprised that he had not jumped to his feet before this. Here was the thing nearest to his heart being discussed and all he was doing was listening rather detachedly between recovering Fayette’s dropped lace handkerchief and her long nylon glove.
He met her glance. He met it squarely. He met the open scorn in her eyes without any change of expression in his own brown eyes. Then he spoke.
“I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the esteemed lady beside me is still with us on that particular point. Is that right, Mrs. Dubois?” Dr. Malcolm turned to Fayette and flashed her a charming smile.
She smiled back at him and graciously inclined her sculptured blond head. “Most certainly I am with you,” she said.
The meeting was breaking up. Little groups were forming. Cathy could hear old Miss Marriott telling the chairman how she was a great believer in camphor bags for warding off chills.
“I don’t understand,” Cathy murmured to Mrs. Flett.
The minister’s wife was a perceptive person. She knew that Cathy did not refer to the camphor bags.
“Mrs. Dubois has tremendous influence,” she answered in a quick low voice. “As well as money, which is influence on its own, she has valuable contacts in political circles, influential friends in welfare departments. In short, Miss Trent, she holds us all in the hollow of her very beautiful hand.” Cathy glanced up at Mrs. Flett and was met with a sweet bland look. Too bland, thought Cathy with an inward quirk.
The meeting would soon be over. Cathy thought of Rita. Surely the tea-passing episode was sufficiently distant now for her to approach Mrs. Dubois concerning the girl’s lipstick.
She went over.
“Mrs. Dubois...”
“Oh, it’s Miss Trent again.”
“There was something I wanted to ask you. Not you personally, but as representative of the women members of the board. I have been told that most questions are so referred.”
“All question are so referred,” corrected Fayette airily, “dealing with boys or girls. What was it, Miss Trent?”
“It concerns Rita.”
“Oh.” The ejaculation was not encouraging.
All the phrases that Cathy had planned to say were slipping away from her. She found herself stammering as Rita might have stammered. She felt she could not possibly make sense, but she must have, for Fayette Dubois was answering her in a cool clipped voice.
“Certainly not, Miss Trent. I have never heard anything so absurd or in such bad taste since I have been coming here to Redgates. I know in answering so decisively that I have the rest of the board, man and woman, behind me. A lipstick for a child, indeed. And for a precocious badly trained child at that. I shall not go any further into the matter. Sufficient for Rita—and for you—that the subject is closed. You understand?”
For the second time that afternoon Cathy murmured, “Of course.”
She watc
hed Fayette go out, joined at the door by Jeremy Malcolm.
She watched her send off her chauffeur and get into the green convertible beside Dr. Malcolm instead.
She saw a look in Miss Marriott’s eyes that meant further discussion on camphor bags and hurriedly escaped. At the other end of the corridor David Kennedy was waiting to talk over the afternoon’s doings, but all at once she could not face even David.
But Rita had to be faced, and she had better get it over with. She went to the kitchen where the girls were still washing the afternoon tea things.
“Rita...”
“Yes, Aunty Cathy?” The girl had turned eager eyes to her. She had told Rita that she would ask this afternoon, and she knew that every minute had brought rising excitement.
“Come out to the garden with me, Rita.”
Rita did not move.
“Come, dear.”
“It doesn’t matter, thank you.”
“Rita...”
Rita had thrown down the tea towel and run out of the room. She had read the look on Cathy’s face, and her own face was streaming with disappointed tears. There was something else there beside the tears: anger, resentment, reproach and the sharp glint of reprisal.
Cathy ran after her. “Rita, dear...”
“Oh, go away. It was all right for you. You had parents who let you do things, who loved you...”
“I haven’t now, Rita. They were both killed in an accident when I was only five years older than you are now.”
Rita stood stiffly in the circle of Cathy’s arms.
“In a little while,” Cathy was crooning, “it will be all right.” In a little while—it seemed she was continually saying that.
“I wouldn’t have put it on thick, and I would have asked you first,” gulped Rita.
Suddenly the angry resentment went out of her and she leaned against the encircling arms.
“Oh, Aunty Cathy...” she wept.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The moment of breaking down in Cathy’s arms was Rita’s first and last.
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