Caroline

by Richmal Crompton

  She looked at the signature of her mother’s letter. Philippa Meredith. . . . Neither name nor handwriting awoke any chords of memory. Her father had never mentioned her, had been, she knew, deeply incensed and wounded by her desertion. But, still, this, she was sure, was what he would have wished her to do—to offer a refuge in which the woman he had once loved could end her days in peace. As she thought of her answer to the letter she seemed to feel again the glow of love and happiness that his approval had always given her.

  She heard the opening of the front door, the sound of Fay’s attaché-case being flung down on the hall table, then the door burst open, and Fay appeared, holding her school hat in her hand.

  Fay was tall and fair and slender, like Caroline, but there the resemblance stopped. Her features were not classical, her expression not austere. Her face was perhaps too small in proportion to her height, but it was an exquisite little face, the features delicately chiselled, so expressive that every passing mood seemed to show on it like reflections chasing each other over water.

  She was breathless as if from running, and her cheeks were flushed.

  “I’ve run all the way from the cross-roads,” she said. “Am I terribly late?”

  “No, darling,” said Caroline, smiling at her affectionately. “I mean, I knew you’d be late today. You’ve not had tea, have you?”

  “No. I’ll go up and wash.”

  “All right. I’ll order tea for you. Don’t be long.”

  “Rather not!”

  Caroline’s face wore an expression of brooding tenderness as she listened to the sound of the light footsteps taking the stairs two at a time. She’d always hated the thought of Fay’s growing out of the particular stage at which she was, but each stage, as she reached it, seemed more adorable than the last. At eighteen she was a fascinating compendium of all the stages she’d been through, with the addition of a delicious womanly gravity that peeped out occasionally through her childishness. She was clumsy, yet with an appealing childish grace; shy and sensitive with bursts of sudden confidence; tomboyish at one moment, at the next withdrawn and dignified; sometimes wistful and diffident, sometimes eager to come to grips with life. She passed from one mood to another so quickly that even Caroline, with all her understanding of her, found it difficult to follow. Yet in them all she was sound and sweet and loving, starkly honest and true. The thing Caroline wanted most of all in life was to keep from Fay everything that might harm her, and for the first time a slight doubt came to her mind as to whether her decision had, after all, been wise. She would never forgive herself if her mother’s presence clouded the child’s happiness in any way or sullied her shining innocence.

  When Fay came down she had changed from her school uniform to a pale green jumper suit.

  “You must be tired and hungry, pet,” said Caroline. “Come and have your tea.”

  Fay looked at the armchair by which the low tea-table was set.

  “Do you mind if I have it on the other side, Caroline?” she said, and moved it carefully over to the opposite side of the hearth.

  Caroline laughed amusedly.

  “What a funny child you are! Why?”

  “I like this side better.”

  “One would almost imagine you didn’t like looking at my lovely tallboy. Don’t you like it?”

  “Of course I do. It’s—oh, I like this side better, that’s all.”

  Her face had looked pinched for a moment, but it crinkled up in childish delight as her eyes rested on the tea-tray.

  “Oh, how lovely! Orange cake!”

  “It’s the remains of the party, but I got it because it was your favourite.”

  “How sweet of you! How did the party go off?”

  “Very well.”

  “I suppose poor old Aunt Maggie was all flustered with coming out to tea, and Uncle Charles had to keep soothing her down. People make fun of him for dyeing his hair and wearing stays, but he’s an awful pet to Aunt Maggie. Most people would get terribly irritated with her. . . . I thought perhaps Susan or Richard might be here still.”

  “Susan didn’t stay long. She’d promised Kenneth to be back for tea.”

  “I think Ken’s a dear, don’t you? He met us when we were coming back from the sports field the other day and stood us all ices.”

  “You shouldn’t take things from Kenneth, Fay.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not very well off, for one thing.”

  “Yes, but somehow it would have been horrid to refuse. It would have hurt his feelings. They were only threepenny ones.”

  “You shouldn’t have accepted them, all the same. More tea, sweetheart?”

  “Thanks. But why should you wait on me like this?”

  “Because I love to. What sort of a day have you had?”

  “Quite all right.”

  “Did you have your French prose back?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you get for it?”

  “Beta plus. I’d make some silly mistakes. You said I had when you looked over it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. You’d managed all the stiff parts beautifully and come down over the elementary bits.”

  “I’m always doing that.”

  “It’s carelessness, darling.”

  “I know.”

  “Did she go over the unseen—the one you did on Wednesday?”

  “No. She hadn’t time. She said she would tomorrow. She’ll probably forget.”

  Caroline went to her bookshelves, took down a book, and came back to the fireplace, turning over the leaves.

  “It was this one, wasn’t it? . . . Let’s just run over it. I remember the places you went wrong.”

  “Thanks.”

  Fay spoke listlessly. Now that the excitement of homecoming was over, she looked tired and depressed. She wished that Caroline wouldn’t always go over the day’s work at tea-time. One simply never got away from it. She hated it, anyway. She hadn’t been keen on it before, but, since she’d had to give up music, she’d loathed it. And Caroline wouldn’t leave it alone. . . . A hot rush of compunction swept over her. It was hateful of her to feel like that about Caroline, who did so much for her and worked so hard for her and loved her so tenderly. What would she have done without Caroline? What would she do now without Caroline? She’d made up her mind to go through with the thing, to try her very best to win the scholarship because Caroline wanted her to, and she spoilt it all by doing it grudgingly and unwillingly, by even resenting the help that Caroline gave so unstintingly, however tired she was.

  “You see, darling, you missed the point of the subjunctive there . . . and, of course, you got that piece all wrong, but there are some rather unusual words in it. Have you looked them out and made a list of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s an involved sentence, too. I’d split it up more in the translation.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a shame to worry you at tea-time, baby.”

  “Oh no,” said Fay, smitten again with a sharp pang of remorse. “It’s sweet of you, Caroline. I am grateful. You know I am.”

  “Of course you are, bless you! But we’ll put it away now. We can go over it again later in the evening. And you can help me correct some of my St. Monica’s papers.”

  Fay’s heart sank again. She hated helping Caroline to correct her St. Monica’s papers. She hated it chiefly because the “help” was only a pretence. It was just as much trouble for Caroline to go over her corrections as it would be to correct the papers herself in the first instance. But Caroline thought that it was good practice for Fay to correct other people’s mistakes. It was really a sort of test paper for Fay herself. It wasn’t fair. . . . Again the familiar compunction swept over her. What a beast she was to feel like that when Caroline was doing all she could for her!

  “I’d love to,” she said, and added, “Have you had a nice day?”

  “Quite, thanks. I was at St. Monica’s all the morning, you know. . . . They real
ly have got a phenomenal set of idiots in the Upper Sixth this year. They make the most ridiculous mistakes.” Fay bent down her head and dug her teeth into her lips. She couldn’t bear it if Caroline were going to tell her some of the ridiculous mistakes they made and ask her to correct them. But she didn’t. She went on, smiling. “I’ve got a piece of news for you that I think you’ll like, dearest.”

  Fay’s face lightened. She looked like an eager child.

  “What is it?”

  “You know they’re doing Midsummer-Night’s Dream next month at St. Monica’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Miss Frankson asked if you might play the piano in the intervals, and I said you could, if it didn’t need any practice. You see, I’ve promised that you shall go to the play, anyway, and as you’re there you may just as well——”

  Fay’s slender form had gone tense.

  “No, Caroline,” she said. “No . . . no.”

  “Darling, what’s the matter?”

  “I can’t play . . . I can’t . . .” said Fay breathlessly.

  She couldn’t even bear to think of it . . . playing for about five minutes . . . stopping and beginning again at a signal from behind the footlights. It would be like showing a starving man food and then taking it away from him.

  She would never all her life forget the night when Caroline had come into her bedroom and had sat on her bed and talked to her so kindly and earnestly, showing her that those hours she spent at the piano were a futile waste of time, that her love of music was a self-indulgence that must be conquered at all costs because it interfered with her real duty. In a state of emotional exaltation Fay had offered to give it up altogether, and Caroline had kissed her solemnly and said, “Darling, you’ve made the right choice, as I knew you would. You’ll never regret it.”

  But Fay hadn’t known that it would be as hard as it was turning out to be, hadn’t known what an emptiness it would leave behind, and that even the sight of the corner in the drawing-room where the piano used to stand would send a wave of panic and despair into her soul whenever she looked at it. And it didn’t get any better as time went on. . . . It got worse.

  Caroline was smiling at her tenderly. What a good little thing she was! Always so breathlessly eager to do what was right, to keep her promises in the spirit as well as the letter.

  “But, darling, it would be all right just to play in the intervals. I shouldn’t mind that at all. I——”

  “Oh no, Caroline.”

  “Very well, dearest. Don’t get excited over it. By the way, I had a long talk with Miss Frankson. She’s very much interested in you. She said that she wished I’d sent you to St. Monica’s instead of the High School. She said she’d have loved to have you.”

  “How nice of her!” said Fay dutifully.

  “We were talking about your career. She says that Miss Parker will be retiring the year you get your degree, and that she’s going to give Miss Sawyer Miss Parker’s post, and she practically promised to give you Miss Sawyer’s. It would be a splendid beginning for you, darling. You could go on living at home, and we could work together. . . .”

  Fay tried hard to feel as she ought to feel—grateful, excited, eager. Of course it would be lovely to live at home and work with Caroline, whom she adored, who was so good to her. Of course she’d like teaching. Caroline always assured her that she would. If only her heart didn’t sink down like this whenever she thought of it. . . .

  “Dearest,” Caroline was saying, “you don’t know what it means to me to feel that you’re going to—take on from where I left off, as it were. To do the things I meant to do. I remember that when I gave up my scholarship and chance of a career—you were only a baby then, of course—I thought: Perhaps Fay will do it instead—go to college and make a career for herself. And when I’d thought that I didn’t mind half so much.”

  A wave of unbearable emotion swept over Fay’s spirit.

  “Oh, Caroline,” she said, “you’ve been so sweet to me.”

  “Rubbish!” said Caroline briskly. “Have some more tea? You’ve eaten nothing. . . .”

  “I have. . . . Anyway, I’m not terribly hungry.”

  She had been hungry at first, and the sight of the cosy tea-table had been lovely, but somehow she wasn’t hungry any more. She didn’t know whether it was that hateful French unseen (she’d racked her brains over it for so long that the sight of it again had made her feel almost sick), or the thought of playing in the intervals of Midsummer-Night’s Dream at St. Monica’s, or whether it was—just nothing at all, but she didn’t even want to eat any of the orange cake that Caroline had bought specially for her. How angelic Caroline was! She was always doing things like that—buying one little presents, remembering the things one liked.

  The maid came in to take away the tea things.

  “I suppose I’d better start my home-work,” said Fay, but still lay back in her chair, inert. She felt unusually tired. She’d got that hateful German test-paper to do tonight. She wished she loved languages as the other girls who were working for the scholarship did. It was the school subject she found easiest, but she didn’t love it. She didn’t love anything except music. To cheer herself, she looked forward into the future, and tried to imagine that she’d actually won the scholarship . . . but somehow even that failed to cheer her. She’d go to college, get her degree, and—teach at St. Monica’s or some other school. . . . Her depression grew heavier and heavier till it became a sort of panic. She couldn’t bear it—years and years and years of it . . . a whole lifetime of it. She tried to imagine herself rallying her courage and telling Caroline that she didn’t want to go to college, didn’t want to teach . . . but she couldn’t. She couldn’t hurt Caroline as much as that—Caroline who had given up all her life to her, who was so proud of her, who looked to her to carry on from where she herself had left off. She set her lips grimly. No, she’d go through with it, because she couldn’t in decency do anything else.

  “Not just this minute,” Caroline was saying. “Let’s have a little talk first. . . .”

  She moved her chair to make room for Fay to sit on the hearthrug at her feet, as she loved to do. She ought to tell the child about her mother. She must do it very carefully.

  Fay rested her head against Caroline’s knees. She wanted to put off the moment of starting her home-work, but she felt that she couldn’t bear one of Caroline’s “little talks” just now.

  “Sybil’s got the sweetest kitten,” she said, in order to start the conversation, at any rate, on a light note. “She’s called it Smoke.”

  Caroline’s figure stiffened almost imperceptibly.

  “Sybil?”

  “Sybil Dickson. I called at her house with her on the way home.”

  There was a short silence, then Caroline said:

  “But, darling, I thought you’d come straight home from school.”

  “I wasn’t there more than five minutes. I had to call anyway, because she’d got the copy of Heine. Fraulein had lent it to her and told her to hand it on to me afterwards.”

  “I see. . . .”

  A faint resentment stirred beneath the listlessness and depression of Fay’s spirit. Why did Caroline always make her feel that she’d done something wrong whenever she went home with any of the other girls or even waited for them after classes or games?

  “I came home as quickly as I could after I’d got the book,” she said.

  “Darling, of course it’s all right,” said Caroline. “I had my party, so I was kept quite busy and occupied. It’s only when I’m by myself and have had a lonely afternoon that I begin to expect you the minute I know the four o’clock bell’s gone, and every second seems hours. I’m rather silly about my baby, aren’t I?”

  Once more that wave of loving compunction swept over Fay.

  “Oh, Caroline!”

  She couldn’t ask her about Friday after that. But she must. . . .

  “Caroline,” she began and stopped.

  It wasn�
��t going to be easy. But why shouldn’t it be, she asked herself impatiently. Why should she have this terrible feeling of guilt whenever she asked permission to go to tea with any of her school-fellows?

  “Yes?”

  “Sybil’s having her birthday party on Friday. She wants me to go to it. She’s asking all the Upper Sixth. May I?”

  “Friday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, darling,” Caroline gave a deprecating little laugh. “I’d just planned something for you myself for Friday. I thought I’d call for you at school and we’d take the train to Little Houghton and have tea there and see over the Manor. It’s a wonderful old house and it’s open to visitors on Fridays. I was going to spring it on you as a surprise, but you must go to Sybil’s party now instead, of course, dear. You’d much rather go there, I’m sure.”