Miss Clutterbuck meets me at Ryddelton Station. It is quite a small station and there are not more than a dozen people on the platform, most of them railway officials, so there is no doubt at all as to the identity of my employer. She stands near the bookstall, a solid figure in a Lovat tweed coat which is somewhat shabby but very well cut. She stands with her feet well apart and her hands in her coat pockets, a cigarette in a cherry-wood cigarette holder is stuck in the corner of her mouth. She is short-necked; she is hatless, her grey wavy hair is slightly tousled with the evening breeze. For some strange reason Miss Clutterbuck reminds me of Mr. Churchill, Mr. Churchill in one of his belligerent moods.
Miss Clutterbuck’s eyes fall upon me as I alight from the train, fall upon me and move on without interest (it is as if she said, No, that is not my new assistant) and this denial of me is so alarming that in a moment of panic I turn to climb back into the train . . . but the train only halts here for a few moments and already Major Elden is handing out my luggage to the porter so it is too late to change my mind. The whistle blows, the train moves on and I am marooned upon the platform.
Miss Clutterbuck, having glanced at the other passengers who have alighted from the train, and having decided that the young woman with the two small children is not her new assistant (nor the man with the fishing basket on his back . . . nor the aged female in the long black coat . . . nor the platinum blonde with the plucked eyebrows who has attached herself firmly to a member of the Air Force) advances upon me with a firm step. “You are Mrs. Christie,” she says.
I agree that I am no other.
“I thought you would be—different,” says Miss Clutterbuck.
As I know this already there is nothing to be said—nothing to be done, either. It is with difficulty I refrain from apologizing for being as I am; but I manage to refrain and follow her to the waiting car without further speech. Did she think I would be older—or younger? Did she expect her new assistant to be better-looking, or worse? Perhaps she hoped for a woman with a commanding presence to overawe recalcitrant guests.
“This is the car,” says Miss Clutterbuck. “It’s old, but it still goes. You can drive.”
“Yes. . . . Oh yes, I can drive.”
Fortunately she does not expect me to drive tonight. She cranks the car in a competent manner and off we go.
Grace said Miss Clutterbuck was alarming—and so she is. She alarms me so much that I am speechless and as Miss Clutterbuck’s attention is taken up with driving the ancient and somewhat temperamental car we accomplish the five mile drive in almost complete silence. In any other circumstances I should enjoy the drive for the country is lovely. The light is fading and the sky is pale, but there is a glow in the west which clothes the high, rounded hills with radiance. All along the valley there are little farms surrounded with fields . . . a man is ploughing a steep piece of ground with two horses . . . there are woods here and there, woods of closely growing conifers, and a narrow river winds along by the side of the road. Miss Clutterbuck, in a rare burst of loquacity, waves towards it with one hand and says “The Rydd,” and I now remember that Grace spoke of the Rydd and told me that it flowed through the town of Ryddelton.
Presently we mount a steep hill, turn in at a stone gate-way and roar up a drive through a park dotted with beech trees. This is Tocher, I presume, and I look about me with interest. The first thing that strikes me is that the place is exceedingly well kept, which is rather unusual in this period of post-war dilapidation. The drive itself has been re-metalled, the railings are in good order and painted dark green. Tocher House stands upon a slight eminence; it is a large rambling building which obviously has been added to at various times. I have a swift vision of windows flashing brightly in the evening sun, and the next moment we pull up with a jerk before the pillared doorway with its short flight of stone steps.
Miss Clutterbuck says, “Todd will see to the luggage,” and leads the way into her house with a firm step. The hall is large and airy, the lounge leads out of it to the right. I catch a glimpse of people sitting there, of a man reading a paper, and a woman knitting a scarlet jumper, as I follow Miss Clutterbuck’s broad square back across the hall. There are two women lingering here, and these show signs of a desire to converse with their hostess, but she ignores them completely and stumps up the stairs. We mount three flights in silence; we stride along a winding passage, mount three more steps to a small landing with several doors, Miss Clutterbuck opens a door marked 45 and shows me in.
“This is your room,” says Miss Clutterbuck. “It’s an odd shape because it’s in the tower. This is the oldest part of the house. I’d have given you a better room but the place is full of people. I’ve had to move up to this landing myself.”
I assure her that I am charmed with the room, and this is true, for it is extremely pleasant and comfortably furnished. Red rep curtains hang across the window, there is a red eiderdown on the bed and a large armchair stands near the dressing table . . . my eye falls upon an electric radiator and a small bookcase, containing books.
“It’s not bad,” agrees Miss Clutterbuck looking round. “You can sit here and read if you want to. The bathroom’s next door and there are two small rooms which will do for your children. I’m at the other end of the passage if you want anything.”
I express my gratitude for these arrangements in suitable terms.
Miss Clutterbuck takes no notice of my gratitude. It seems to bore her. She says dinner is at seven-thirty and goes away.
My luggage is brought up by a short stocky man with red hair—presumably Todd; he arranges it for me, says it’s a nice evening and goes away.
I sit down on the armchair and deliberate. I can’t stay here, that’s obvious. Miss Clutterbuck dislikes me and I am so frightened of her that I cannot open my mouth. Why on earth did I come? What malign spirit influenced me? But there is no time to brood over my predicament. I must unpack and change; the navy blue woollen frock will do.
The door opens suddenly and a tall gaunt woman appears. She is clad in black, with a white apron, and wears a starched cap perched at a rakish angle upon her somewhat scanty hair. She is so extremely proper that I feel conscious of being insufficiently clad, though as this is my own room and I am changing for dinner my embarrassment seems unreasonable.
“You’ll be Mrs. Christie,” says the woman dourly.
“Yes,” I reply, seizing my frock and diving into it.
“I’m Hope,” says the woman.
Hope seems a misnomer for my visitor, she looks more like Retribution, but as it is important to make a good impression upon the staff I endeavour to chat with her in a friendly manner and remark (as I brush my hair) that Miss Clutterbuck met me at the station, that the country is very pretty and that I am delighted with my room. Hope answers in monosyllables or not at all so we do not get much further. She has brought two towels with her (as an excuse for her visit which I am certain is prompted by curiosity and nothing more) and these she arranges upon the towel horse.
“You’d best not be late,” she warns me as she goes away. “Miss Clutterbuck likes folk to be there when the gong sounds.”
Thus adjured I hasten my preparations and run downstairs and, the gong sounding as I reach the hall, I march straight into the dining room and am conducted to a small table in the corner near a large bay window where Miss Clutterbuck is already seated.
The dining room is filling rapidly, every table seems occupied. I comment upon this circumstance to my companion who replies gloomily that it’s impossible to keep them away. She’d hoped the place would be emptier in the winter but it’s always full and she’s deived with letters arriving by every post, asking for rooms. She’s put up her prices twice but nobody seems to mind. . . . “You’ll have to deal with them,” she adds.
This seems a good opportunity to tell her that I have decided not to stay at Tocher House but I am too cowardly to take it.
“The trouble I have with them!” continues Miss Clutterbuck savagel
y. “They have no sense—that’s what irritates me. People come here for a week or ten days and then they find they can’t get rooms elsewhere, so they expect me to keep them on. ‘You wouldn’t turn us out into the street, would you, Miss Clutterbuck?’ they moan. It’s beyond all bearing. Where do you stay when you go to London?”
The question takes me by surprise when my mouth is full of macaroni. I swallow it hastily and reply that we belong to a private club, called the Forty Club, and can usually manage to get a room there.
“Why forty?” she enquires.
“It was started by forty people, I think.”
Miss Clutterbuck eats her macaroni in silence for a few minutes and then continues her previous train of thought. “You can take over the social side,” she says. “You can talk to them. I can’t talk to them. It dries me up when I think of them paying for their food.”
“Why shouldn’t they pay for their food, Miss Clutterbuck?”
“It’s my house,” she replies shortly.
I reflect upon this (it is easy to reflect because Miss Clutterbuck obviously sees no necessity to make conversation with her assistant) and come to the conclusion that she feels she is outraging the laws of hospitality by filling her ancestral home with paying guests. This is the only explanation I can find, but it does not altogether satisfy me for it means that Miss Clutterbuck has more sensibility and less horse sense than I have given her credit for.
“You can talk to them,” she says again after a long silence.
“Will they want me to?” I enquire.
Miss Clutterbuck does not reply. She has a habit of ignoring questions she does not want to hear . . . or perhaps she is slightly deaf, that might account for it.
“Bridge,” says Miss Clutterbuck suddenly. “You play, I suppose?”
I reply firmly that I don’t, and am about to add that if she would like to find somebody able and willing to make up a four when required I can easily leave tomorrow, but before I have time to formulate these sentiments Miss Clutterbuck continues.
“That’s a mercy,” she says firmly. “Miss Andover was forever playing bridge when she could have been better employed counting the linen.”
“But didn’t you tell her—”
“She was needed to make up a table. What could I do? Bridge seems a most extraordinary game,” says Miss Clutterbuck. “It brings out the worst in human nature. Mr. Whitesmith, for instance—” and Miss Clutterbuck indicates a man with very black shiny hair sitting by himself—“Mr. Whitesmith in his normal senses is quite an agreeable person, but sit him down at a small square table with three of his fellow creatures and two packs of cards and he becomes insane.”
I look round the room and wonder which of the diners are Mr. Whitesmith’s partners. There is a big-boned rangy-looking woman with lank hair—does she play bridge? There is a party of three at a round table, obviously mother, father and newly demobilized son; there is a large pale-faced woman, who has beside her a dog of mixed ancestry—a dog which requires more exercise and fewer tidbits, to judge from its bulging sides—and then there are the Americans, of course. Do they play bridge?
Miss Clutterbuck notices my wandering gaze and says in a hoarse whisper, “Americans . . . travelling together . . . from Connect-i-cut.”
“Nice-looking,” I murmur, “and refreshingly well-dressed.”
“No clothes coupons in America,” says Miss Clutterbuck.
We have an excellent dinner (to tell truth I have not felt so comfortably full of food for years) and immediately we have finished Miss Clutterbuck gets up and goes, leaving me sitting at the table alone. As she has given me no instructions I may consider myself free to do as I please so I retire to my room and write up the events of the day in my diary. Decide quite definitely that I will tackle Miss Clutterbuck tomorrow morning and ask her to find somebody else . . . her manners are outrageous.
SATURDAY, 2ND MARCH
Wake early and watch the grey light of dawn seeping into my room through the open window. In spite of my worries I have slept well and feel rested and refreshed. Last night I decided definitely to leave Tocher House as soon as possible, to beard Miss Clutterbuck in her office and tell her she must find somebody else, but this morning things look a shade less black. Perhaps it is because I feel more able to cope with them. Miss Clutterbuck is the snag, of course (in other respects Tocher seems quite bearable) but wouldn’t it be cowardly to run away from Miss Clutterbuck? Wouldn’t it be ignominious to run away with my tail between my legs and confess myself beaten? And what about Annie? Annie is coming here to be with me, am I to desert her?
Sir Walter Scott in his diary gives a description of his own feelings in times of stress. He says, “Nature has given me a kind of buoyancy . . . that mingles even with my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours. I have a secret pride . . . which impels me to mix with my distresses strange fragments of mirth.” His afflictions were a thousand times worse than mine, which are merely temporary, yet through them all his spirit was unbroken. What a fine man he was! As I think of him I feel a buoyancy rising in me; I, too, have a secret pride which I must draw upon to see me through. Having thus decided I rise and look out of the window and I find myself looking out over bare treetops towards high but softly rounded hills, clear cut against the brightness of the eastern sky . . . and, even as I watch, the light brightens and glows and the sun peeps over the hilltop and floods the scene with gold. Before, the land was painted in acid colours, but now a sudden transformation has taken place and the golden flood of sunshine runs down the side of the hill, gilding the walls and trees and strengthening their shadows upon the ground.”
Thanks to Sir Walter and the morning sun I have started the day in buoyant mood, and this buoyancy carries me down to breakfast and enables me to smile quite cheerfully at Miss Clutterbuck as I take my seat opposite her at the little table. There are screens round our table this morning, whether to hide us from the guests or the guests from us it is impossible to say, but the result is rather pleasant, giving an atmosphere of privacy, and as our table is in the south window we have a gorgeous view upon which to feast our eyes. The trees have been cut to give a vista of the valley and of the windings of the Rydd as it meanders down towards the sea. There is no sea in sight the distances are shrouded in delicate veils of mist—but somehow or other one has a definite feeling that the sea is there.
“. . . and of course you can write to them,” says Miss Clutterbuck.
I come to myself with a jerk (a spoonful of porridge halfway to my mouth) and gaze at my employer in alarm. Has she been enumerating my duties? Have I been daydreaming and failed to register a word?
“Write to them!” I echo feebly.
“Answer letters,” she explains, handing me a sheaf which have just arrived. “People don’t seem to be able to read my writing for some reason.”
“It is a little difficult,” I murmur with a sudden recollection of my own struggles to elucidate Miss Clutterbuck’s hand.
“Why?” she enquires bluntly. “It’s large enough in all conscience.”
As I feel unable to discuss the matter I change the subject hastily and enquire whether Lady Foreland can be given the accommodation she requires.
“No, she can’t,” says Miss Clutterbuck firmly. “She wants a large suite overlooking the garden, doesn’t she? Tell her she can have a double room facing east but her maid will have to sleep upstairs.”
“She wants a sitting room,” I murmur.
“Nonsense. I can’t turn the house upside down for her. You had better take the letters up to the office and answer them there.”
“How?” I enquire, looking at Miss Clutterbuck boldly. “I mean how can I possibly answer them until I know what rooms are likely to be vacant?”
“You can’t,” agrees Miss Clutterbuck. “I’ll help you of course. We’d better make out a plan of the rooms; it’s getting too complicated for me to keep the whole thing in my head. We’ll do it after lunch.”
The morn
ing passes in a whirl of activity. I follow Miss Clutterbuck round the house; I am sent hither and thither with messages; I am discovered by Miss Clutterbuck in the act of hanging clean curtains in a bedroom which is being prepared for a new arrival and requested to desist. “That’s Hope’s job,” says Miss Clutterbuck. “If I’d wanted another house-maid I would have got a woman from the Labour Bureau.”
“But I don’t know what my job is,” I cry in despair.
“You’ll soon find out, Mrs. Christie. It’s not hanging curtains, anyway,” says my employer in trenchant tones.
We tackle the letters after lunch. Miss Clutterbuck opens them and reads them out, interpolating instructions and remarks; while I, seated at the table pen in hand, endeavour to keep pace with her.
“‘Dear Madam,’” says Miss Clutterbuck. “‘I shall be much obliged if you will reserve three single rooms adjoining for the first half of May, for myself, my husband and my daughter who has just been demobilized’ . . . she can have number ten, it’s double, but the girl will need to go upstairs and they must leave on the twelfth because Mrs. Fairway is coming—tell them that. Oh, there’s a dog! Tell them there are two dogs already so unless they can keep it under control they had better not bring it. Here’s another. ‘My wife is very delicate but I have been told your hotel is comfortable. Have you box-spring mattresses and comfortable chairs? My wife must have milk puddings, she cannot eat anything fried or made up’ . . . Faddy!” says Miss Clutterbuck, tossing the letter onto the table. “Tell the man we’re full. Here’s a Miss Glass; she says, ‘My brother and I are going for a walking tour and a friend told us to be sure to stay at Tocher House. Can you reserve two rooms for us on the sixth of April for three nights?’ Let me think! Yes, the Americans are leaving on the fifth—say yes.”
Mrs. Tim Gets a Job Page 5