Caroline

by Richmal Crompton

  The smile faded from her lips, and something hard and bitter took its place. Her mind went back over her life. . . .

  Her father had been well off, and, as his only child, she had spent her girlhood in an atmosphere of luxury, petted and made much of by everyone around her. In those days she had never even contemplated the possibility of having to work for her living. Her father’s death had coincided with the failure of his business, and she had been left penniless.

  She had taken a post as companion to a wealthy old lady, looking upon it merely as a temporary expedient. She had decided to restore her fortunes by a “good match,” and she thought that her employer’s milieu would provide the necessary husband, who was, of course, to be a man of wealth, breeding, and personal attractions. But somehow her ideal failed to materialise, and, tiring of the old lady’s querulousness, she left her and took another post. She had never stayed long anywhere, and the years had slipped by till she realised that she was on the verge of middle age. Men had fallen in love with her (she had had several very discreet “adventures”), but never the right sort of men. Either they didn’t want to marry her, or, if they did, they were not rich enough to make it worth her while. The right sort of men had somehow—she didn’t know why—fought shy of her. And the years had slipped by. . . . She had hoped that in Bartenham she might find someone suitable. Her demands were no longer extravagant. They had, in fact, come down considerably in the last ten years. Wealth, breeding, and good looks were no longer essential. She would be content with quite a small establishment and a very ordinary husband as the condition of her freedom. But Bartenham seemed singularly devoid of middle-aged bachelors of independent means. She had even been driven once to consider Robert’s uncle—a dreadful old man with dyed hair and a pinched waist—but she didn’t think she would ever have considered him seriously even if the old fool hadn’t suddenly seemed to take fright. (He’d been as ridiculous in his terror of her—starting off like a timid gazelle at the very sight of her in the distance—as he’d been in his earlier admiration.) The half-witted sister would, of course, have complicated the situation too much. It might have been difficult to get him to agree to put the old horror away into a home—where she ought to have been years ago—though, once married to him, she’d have given him no peace till he did. But—the situation here was interesting. That little fool Effie had gone and wouldn’t come back. There were always plenty of men ready to snap up a juicy little morsel like Effie. She had been near the end of her tether when she went, and she would take readily enough to “consolation.” She must realise—just as Robert himself must eventually realise—that their marriage had been a failure. Evelyn felt that she didn’t know Philippa very well—she thought of her as the “dark horse”—but she had gathered from Caroline that Philippa had lived an immoral life and that Caroline was anxious about her influence over Fay. She had even, Evelyn had gathered, tried to vamp the respectable Richard, much to his disgust. Men always flocked round a woman of that type, however old she was. There would be plenty of them for Effie to choose from—Effie like a child out of school, sick of her life in Bartenham, full of secret bitterness and resentment against Robert. Oh, Effie would never come back. And Robert? Robert was fortunately neither subtle nor perceptive. He would soon get used to Effie’s absence. He would soon become so dependent upon her, Evelyn, that he would not be able to contemplate life without her. Like all men he hated having to arrange domestic details. He was intensely conservative and disliked changes of any sort. And—like all men—he was very dependent on his comforts. Yes, Robert would soon find out that he couldn’t do without her. She looked forward a year ahead, seeing Effie’s divorce safely over and herself Robert’s wife and mistress of this house. . . . She’d get on quite well with Robert. He was very easy to manage. Her chief feeling for him was, in fact, contempt because he was so easy to manage. And—the secret smile curved her lips again—she’d enjoy coming out into the open against Caroline after truckling down to her all this time. Oh yes, she had a good many grudges saved up against Caroline, and Caroline was going to pay for every one of them. She’d go about it in a very different way from the way that little fool Effie had done. . . .

  Robert looked up from the paper.

  “I’ve done all but two,” he said. He handed the paper across to her. “See what you can make of them.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  SUSAN lay back in the easy-chair by Philippa’s hearth and threw a slightly resentful glance round the room.

  Philippa had finally taken a “converted flat” in an old house in Hampstead and had spent an enjoyable month furnishing it. The result was, as Philippa said, unashamedly old-fashioned. The high spacious rooms made an admirable background for the Chippendale and Sheraton that she had picked up in sale-rooms with Richard’s help. There were cream-coloured walls, with curtains and chair-covers of glazed chintz. The carpet was deep blue, and on the Adams mantelpiece were some pieces of Dresden china that had belonged to Philippa’s grandmother.

  “It’s awfully restful,” said Susan. “I don’t know whether it’s you or the room.”

  “It’s the room,” smiled Philippa. “It’s old enough to have learnt not to fuss. New rooms fuss all the time. This one is, I suppose, about a hundred years old. It’s learnt to take things quietly.”

  “I wish it would teach me,” said Susan.

  Philippa looked at her quickly. Her lips were tight and bitter. Her eyes still wandered restlessly about the room.

  “You’d better not have Fay here,” she went on. “She’d go mad if she saw your piano. She can’t bear even to see one nowadays. Caroline was right, of course,” she added. “The kid used to waste hours over it. You can’t work for a scholarship and waste three hours a day over the piano as well.”

  It was strange, thought Philippa, how little friendship or understanding there seemed to be between the two sisters.

  “But if she was so fond of it,” she suggested tentatively, “why couldn’t she have taken it up professionally?”

  Susan shrugged.

  “I dunno. I expect Caroline went into all that. There isn’t much money in it, you know. A music mistress doesn’t get as much as a modern language mistress. They’re not eligible for posts of special responsibility for one thing. And anything else—concert work, I mean—is too precarious.”

  “Still—Fay loves it. It’s been a terrible sacrifice for her to have to give it up.”

  Susan’s face hardened.

  “Well, why shouldn’t she make some sacrifice? The rest of us have to. . . . I’m sorry——” she went on. “I sound a beast. I am a beast. I think I hate everyone and everything in the world.”

  “I don’t think you do,” said Philippa quietly.

  Susan had arrived unexpectedly. She’d come up to town to see about some books that she needed for her teaching and had finished her business earlier than she’d expected. She hadn’t wanted to go home and was too sick with misery to think of doing anything else. So when she saw a Hampstead ’bus, she got into it on an impulse and found her way to Philippa’s flat. She’d never been there before, and she had a feeling of guilt for having come now. It seemed disloyal to Caroline, who had been so good to her, to whom she owed everything. But—she’d felt better ever since she entered the room. There was something about Philippa—Susan didn’t know quite what it was. She was probably—she was certainly, Susan corrected herself hastily—all the things that Caroline thought she was, and yet she made one feel better somehow.

  “I suppose Effie’s still here,” said Susan suddenly.

  “Yes. She’ll be in to tea. She’s just gone out to do some shopping.”

  “How long is she staying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s left Evelyn cock-of-the-walk, hasn’t she?”

  “Has she?”

  “Oh yes. I called in with a message from Caroline the other evening. A tableaux of domestic bliss. Evelyn sewing and Robert reading bits of the evening pap
er aloud to her. Made one wonder where Effie ever had come in the picture.” She threw another restless glance about the room. “I like your curtains,” she added suddenly.

  “I think I’d have had dark ones,” said Philippa, “if I hadn’t remembered how charming the light curtains looked in your drawing-room.”

  Susan’s mouth tightened, but she said nothing.

  “It was a darling little house,” went on Philippa. “What’s happened to it now?”

  “Nothing, as far as I know,” said Susan shortly. She got up and went over to the open window, standing there with her back to the room. “Are those plane trees in your garden?”

  “Yes . . . but it’s not my garden. That’s the worst of a flat, of course. One doesn’t have a garden. I loved your little garden. There were two old apple trees in it, weren’t there?”

  “Yes,” said Susan stonily. “It had been an orchard before they built on it.”

  “There was something so—home-like about it all,” said Philippa dreamily. “I suppose that was partly because you were the first people to live in it. You’d made it, right from the beginning. These old houses have learnt not to fuss, as I said, but they’re detached and impersonal. They don’t care what happens to you. Your little house did care. It was part of you. You’d given it its life. It was interested in everything you did. Didn’t you feel it? Didn’t you feel it holding its breath when you tried a new recipe out of your cookery book? Didn’t you feel it waiting for Ken to come home in the evening and hoping he’d had a good day, wondering if——”

  Susan wheeled round. Her cheeks were flaming, her eyes bright with tears.

  “Can’t you leave me alone?” she burst out. “I wish I’d never come here. I——” She stopped. There was the sound of the opening of the front door of the flat, and almost immediately Effie entered, smiling, her arms full of flowers.

  Susan noticed at once that she was different. It might have been the new coat and hat she wore, but she seemed more poised, more sure of herself. She had lost her old air of a nervous sulky child. She looked better, too, physically. She held herself more erect. She had even grown a little fatter. The smile died from her face as she saw Susan.

  “Hello, Effie.”

  They greeted each other with that faint hostility that, Philippa had noticed, every member of Caroline’s circle seemed to show to every other member.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” said Effie.

  “Neither did I,” replied Susan ungraciously.

  Effie handed her flowers to Philippa.

  “I just couldn’t resist them,” she said.

  “Darling, how sweet of you! I’ll go and get some water.”

  She went out, leaving the two girls together. Effie stood by the fire, drawing off her gloves. Susan still stood by the window. Her eyes were dry and hard again now. There was a short silence, then Susan said:

  “Well, I suppose you want all the latest news of Bartenham?”

  “Not particularly,” said Effie.

  Their eyes met in a long slow challenge. The new serenity that hung over Effie seemed to deepen the pain at Susan’s heart.

  “You’re making quite a long visit here, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s nothing to hurry back for, of course. Robert and Evelyn are getting on quite well without you.”

  She was striking out viciously in a blind desire to hurt, as though by so doing she could dull something of her own misery.

  “So I gather,” said Effie quietly.

  Philippa came back, carrying the flowers in a tall jar.

  “Aren’t they lovely?” She touched the bell. “Now let’s have tea.”

  “I’ve just been asking Effie when she’s coming back,” said Susan.

  Effie turned to her.

  “If you really want to know,” she said, “I’m coming back when Evelyn’s gone.”

  Susan gave a short dry laugh.

  “You’ll have to wait till doomsday for that.”

  “Very well,” said Effie. “I’ll wait till doomsday, then.”

  “Have you told Robert?”

  “No. He hasn’t asked me yet.”

  The maid brought in tea, and the conversation drifted off to trivialities. Susan gathered that Richard was a fairly frequent visitor at the flat. It occurred to her that they had not seen him lately at Caroline’s. Oh well, Caroline wouldn’t mind. Caroline had always found him rather a nuisance.

  Caroline. . . . At the thought of her return tonight her heart sickened again into despair. How could she go on with it, day after day, day after day . . . teaching, correcting exercises, preparing lessons? She couldn’t tell Caroline how much she hated it all—Caroline, who was so sweet and tender and helpful, so eager and excited about the child. Caroline thought that she had forgotten Ken, that she was happy. She tried, for Caroline’s sake, to pretend she was, tried to pretend that she was glad about the child, while really the thought of it was like a nightmare. Her lips twisted bitterly when she remembered how she had once longed and prayed for a child. Oh, it would all have been so different if. . . . But Caroline was right. No woman with any self-respect could go crawling back to him after the way he’d treated her, the things he’d said to her. She hadn’t seen him since that horrible time when he had forced his way into the house and insulted her and Caroline. She’d had one letter from him, but, on Caroline’s advice, she’d sent it back unopened. She glanced at Philippa and, finding Philippa’s eyes fixed on her with a grave compassionate expression in their depths, looked away quickly with flaming cheeks. Did Philippa guess about the child? They hadn’t told anyone about it, except, of course, Fay, who had to know. Her figure showed no signs of it yet, but perhaps, even so, a woman as experienced as Philippa would know. She felt a desperate longing to confide in her, to tell her everything—about the child, about her unhappiness, about the secret tormenting love for Kenneth that she couldn’t tear out of her heart however hard she tried—but the old loyalty to Caroline restrained her. It was bad enough to have come here at all. She would never dare to confess to Caroline that she’d been.

  “I’d better go now,” she said, rising abruptly to her feet.

  She collected her things, took an ungracious leave of Effie, and went with Philippa into the little hall.

  “Isn’t it tiny?” smiled Philippa. “It’s a quarter of one of the original rooms. They made the cloakroom and kitchen out of the rest. I rather like a small hall myself. It’s so much more welcoming than a large one. Yours was a darling, wasn’t it? I loved that yellow crinkly sort of wallpaper you had there. Ken used to say that it looked as if someone had thrown custard at it, didn’t he?”

  Susan had a sudden vision of Ken hanging up his coat in the little hall, then turning to take her in his arms. She closed her eyes and dug her teeth into her lip. She couldn’t bear it. She hated Philippa. She was cruel. She only said things like that because she knew how much they hurt. Caroline had been right. She was a wicked woman. Oh, why had she come here? Wasn’t there anywhere in the whole world where she could find peace?

  It was dinner-time when she reached home. Caroline came into the hall to greet her as soon as she arrived.

  “Oh, my dear, how tired you look! You oughtn’t to have gone up to Town. It’s a good thing you’ve not much work tonight. I’ve corrected your French exercises for you.”

  “Thanks so much. But I’m not a bit tired, Caroline.”

  “Did you get on all right?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  She noticed suddenly that Caroline herself looked tired and worried.

  “Is Fay all right?” she said.

  “Yes. She had one of her crying fits after tea so I sent her to bed early. She needs rest, that’s all.”

  “What was she crying about?”

  “Nothing. She didn’t know.”

  Little fool, thought Susan savagely. Wh
at on earth has she to cry about? A child like that doesn’t know the meaning of trouble. Caroline has thoroughly spoilt her.

  “It’s nerves,” Caroline went on. “It does seem too absurd. This generation goes in for them to a most ridiculous extent. It’s a sort of fashion, I suppose. We never had them. It’s all a matter of self-control. I’ll speak to Fay really seriously about it when her exam.’s over. I can’t risk bringing on another attack before.”

  “I suppose she’s working pretty hard?”

  “She is, in a way. But she takes no real interest in her work. It’s very disappointing. I was as keen as mustard when I was her age.”

  Susan gathered that the day had not gone too smoothly at home.

  “Oh well . . . I’d better go up and wash,” she said listlessly.

  Caroline went into the drawing-room and stood by the fireplace, gazing into the fire with a frown. She’d had an exhausting day. She tried to be patient with Fay, but she couldn’t help feeling that with a little effort she ought to be able to master those nerve attacks. It was so absurd to cry for no reason at all, and very ungrateful, considering that everything was being done to give her a good chance in life. But something else was worrying her more than that. She’d been to see Evelyn in the afternoon, and there had been something in Evelyn’s manner that had never been there before. Thinking it over afterwards, she had come to the conclusion that it must have been her imagination, but still she could not quite rid herself of the uncomfortable feeling that the visit had left with her. There was nothing that she could actually point to as having been in any way different from usual, but the difference had been there. Evelyn had welcomed her effusively, had asked her advice, as she always did, on various household matters, had been as affectionate as ever, and yet behind it all there had been an elusive hint—though really the very thought was incredible—of mockery. The old sense of sympathy and understanding, the old happy confidence in Evelyn’s loyalty, had gone. And the monstrous thought struck her, making her heart beat unevenly—had it ever really existed? At that suspicion, the foundations of her kingdom seemed to rock beneath her again. The foundations seemed always to be rocking now, the foundations that had seemed so firm in the old days. Marcia’s disloyalty, Effie’s, Philippa’s, she took for granted. It did not trouble her. But Evelyn’s. No, she couldn’t believe it. . . . She couldn’t believe it. As if she hadn’t enough to bear just now with Fay and Susan! Fay with her “nerves,” her new strange sulkiness, her stormy fits of tears. Adolescence, of course . . . but to call it adolescence didn’t make it any less difficult to deal with. And Susan, with her listlessness, her lack of interest in things. . . . Oh well, she must just go on being kind and patient with them, as she’d always been, go on bearing her burden alone, as she’d always borne it. What would happen, she wondered with a wry smile, if she allowed herself the luxury of nerves and listlessness? What would happen to any of them without her? They relied on her for help at every turn, and—she squared her shoulders, drawing her slender figure erect—she wouldn’t fail them. They were her children. They belonged to her. She wouldn’t fail them. Beneath her weariness and depression surged again that deep, almost sensual, joy that the knowledge of their dependence on her always brought with it. Her thoughts returned to Evelyn, and she tried again to remember what exactly had given that impression of mockery, of covert hostility, almost of challenge. Words and tone had been as affectionate as ever, but—it had been there. Now that her confidence in Evelyn was shaken, she was feeling anxious on Robert’s behalf. The situation was unconventional, to say the least of it. She had hinted as much to Evelyn, only to be told by Evelyn, with that new mocking light in her eyes, that it was quite usual for the mother’s help to stay at home to look after the children when the mother went away for a holiday, that it was, in fact, her obvious duty to do so. Yes, the more she thought of it, the more certain she was that there had been a veiled hostility in Evelyn’s manner. Surely Philippa couldn’t have tampered with her loyalty—Philippa who, from a sheer perverse delight in interfering with other people’s business, had carried Effie off to London with her, Philippa whose disloyalty was spreading like a disease through the family. Her influence had stormed and taken citadels that she would have sworn were impregnable. How long was it since Richard had been to see her? No, she wouldn’t think of Richard. She couldn’t. It hurt too much.