by Francis King
That morning the headmistress had pinned up a list for volunteers for the bathing-party: some girls had not been taken out at half-term; a treat was to be arranged for them.
Miss Humber said: "Might I just borrow that pen for a moment? I want to add my name here."
"Well—I’m awfully sorry. It’s not mine, you see."
"I won’t press, I promise. It’s just to write my name. You can have it back in a second." She pleaded amiably, with flabby lips that sagged in a grin and eyes that squinted. "Oh, please."
Shirley handed her the pen and she began to write: "D. Humber" in a round, unformed hand. Her tongue ran round her mouth as though she were doing something excessively difficult.
"Shirley!" Miss Tree, entering at that moment, looked first at the astonished Humber, then at the girl, and then out of the window. Her sallow face was grey, she trembled with rage.
"I’m awfully sorry, Enid. It was just to write her name—"
In a harsh, loud voice she cut in: "I told you not to. I asked you not to. You betrayed me."
"But really—"
"Oh, don’t try to excuse yourself. What does it matter? What does it matter, anyway?" She picked up the book that she had come back for. She spoke with incisive bitterness. "When you’ve finished with it, perhaps you would be good enough to put it back on my desk."
As she went out Shirley noticed the colour of her hand as it touched the door-knob. It was blue, as though with extreme cold.
Miss Humber seemed uncertain how to take all this. She cleared her throat, pushed back her glasses, grinned tentatively. "What was all that in aid of? Was it her pen?"
Shirley nodded.
"But what a fuss! I haven’t hurt it! It was only to write my name. Why didn’t you tell her?"
She put the massive, gold-nibbed thing down before Shirley. The square point was flecked with ink.
Rain made a twanging noise, ceaselessly, on the corrugated-iron roof of the church hall. Outside were two six-foot posters. Shirley stood between them, in a green oil-cloth coat, her hands thrust deep into her pockets. She stared out at the blotched reflections of street-lamps in the road, diminuendo, circling into nothing. A car splashed by, holding, as though embalmed in amber, the curved figure of a woman in furs and evening dress. Shirley, stooping, ran a hand down her calf. The stocking lay like a poultice, water trickled into her shoes. Against her cheek stuck lank hair. In the distance, behind the door, was Miss Tree’s voice talking of Embargoes and Ricardo’s Law of Rent and Henry George, and Miss Tree herself, shivering a little in a tweed coat before a few rows of white faces. The electric light made it difficult for her to read her notes, and one of the boards creaked whenever she trod on it. Someone said, in a high, piping voice: "Could you please read those figures again? I didn’t quite catch." And fumbling the pages she began once more on the interminable list.
Shirley looked at her watch. At least another ten minutes. She couldn’t stand there for ever. Up to the war memorial and back; that should just cover it. And it would give her a chance to look in at Shine’s window on the way. She moved off slowly, her shoes squelching at each stride.
Inside each brightly lit embrasure were waxen models, staring outwards in ‘Six guineas, outsize’ or ‘Best quality Harris Tweed’. Their faces were curiously narrow, the features sharp. They looked like tribal gods. Next door were Kestos and Spirella in shiny pink satin, and some flowers made out of dyed leather. Then came Useful Gifts, a handkerchief satchet with a four-leaved clover embroidered on it, a triangular scarf, ostensibly ‘home-spun’, some belts, combs decorated with sealing-wax fruit, handbags with monograms. She looked at them all, thinking how warm and dry it must be there, behind the glass. No one else passed.
But suddenly: "Hullo! What are you up to?"
It was D. Humber, Call-me-Doris, with a man’s umbrella and a pair of goloshes, making for the bus park. Under her arm, wrapped in brown paper, was John Buchan. Her fringe lay in six or seven separate prongs. She came from the "Luxor", the de luxe kinema, where in the back stalls she glared ferociously at the vices of The Sign of the Cross.
Shirley said: "I’m waiting for Tree. She promised to drive me back in her car. She doesn’t finish till nine o’clock."
"Oh, I say! Then you’ve missed her."
"Missed her?"
"Well, I could have sworn I saw her at the toll bridge. She’s probably got off early." Doris was notoriously short-sighted. "You’d better come along with me. The last bus goes in a jiffy."
"Oh, no. I really think I’d better go back to the hall—I mean to say—"
"There’s no time for that. You’ll miss the bus. And then where will you be? I know it was her. She has that funny hooter. Come on!"
"But she’ll be—"
"Even if she hasn’t gone, she’ll know that in this rain no decent person can possibly be expected to wait. Oh, come on!" A moist hand grabbed her.
Shirley hesitated, drew back, and then gave in. The rain was coming through at her shoulders.
In the jolting bus Doris said: "It’s so difficult to teach some parts of biology. It’s embarrassing, really." She did not specify to what parts she referred. Then she said: "You ought to go and see The Sign of the Cross, I think Tree would enjoy it. She’s supposed to be interested in history and all that, isn’t she?" Then: "You’re shivering! Have my mack." She tucked Shirley in and wound a muffler round her neck. From her pocket she produced glacier mints.
Shirley hugged a hot-water bottle in bed. Her nose was blocked, she had to breathe through her mouth. Doris had made tea, and they had talked about cycling clubs and youth hostels. Now she had gone, leaving behind her some literature from the Oxford Group. In the darkness Shirley counted sheep, punched her pillow, tried to remember whether she had set French prep, to the Upper Fourths.
Suddenly the door was thrown open, the light flicked on. "Well, really!" Miss Tree dripped water on to the frayed rug. She clasped her umbrella horizontally, in both hands.
Shirley sat up, blinking. "Oh, I’m awfully sorry," she began. "Oh, really I am. I thought you’d gone, you see. I waited until ten to nine——"
"But we said nine."
"Yes, I know. You see, I walked up to the war memorial to pass the time, and then I saw Humber—"
"Humber!"
"Yes. And she said that you had passed at the toll bridge—and the bus was just going—"
"So she was behind it, was she? I thought as much." Her lips snapped shut. For the first time Shirley smelled damp tweeds and spirits. "I’m sick of it," Miss Tree began again.
"I’m sick of being played up like this. I don’t know why I stand it, I really don’t. I don’t know why I bother about you." She began to pace up and down the little room, still holding the umbrella as though she were about to break it across her knees. Shirley pressed the hot-water bottle hard to her breast. Her eyes began to prick with tears. "It’s simply not good enough. Don’t you see? You expect too much. It’s always want, want, want. You couldn’t really have thought I’d believe such a story. Why not admit it? You got cold—very well. You decided I wasn’t worth waiting for."
"Oh, no," Shirley protested. "Oh, no, no. That’s all wrong."
"Oh, Shirley, Shirley!" She sat down on the end of the bed. "You are a little fool. Such a blind little fool. Do you see nothing?"
"Nothing? What do you mean?"
"Do you never put yourself in the position of other people? Do you never think of their feelings? Have you no imagination?"
Then, for no reason, Shirley found herself shouting. She was tense with rage, she clutched at the hot-water bottle. "I don’t know what you mean," she shrilled. "I think you’re making a lot of fuss over nothing. Just a lot of fuss—"
"Fuss!"
"Get out! Leave me alone! Get out!"
Miss Tree rose from the bed. "Very well," she said, breathless but calm. "Very well. This is the end. Very well.
"
Shirley heard her walking slowly downstairs. Throwing herself on to the pillow she burst into uncontrollable tears.
For the next two or three weeks they said nothing to each other except when they met in school. Miss Tree ceased to be Enid, Christian names were forgotten. It was now D. Humber who helped Shirley choose her winter suit at Shines, and added up her marks for her, and made drinks at bed-time. Miss Tree took out the car almost every evening. No one knew where she drove to.
Sometimes, at night, Shirley heard her walking about in the room below, or there was the sound of her Wagner records. For no reason, then, she found herself wishing that the door would open and the figure in the camel-hair dressing-gown would come in, and murmur: "I say, I can’t sleep. Do you mind if we talk?" But those days were over now. And Miss Humber slept ‘like a top’—as she put it—her snores rattling aggressively beneath a widely flung window.
One afternoon there was a note on Shirley’s desk. It said:
"It’s silly for things to go on like this. Suggest you and Humber meet me and we talk the whole thing out. Reply by letter."
So Shirley wrote her agreement, and they all met in the Seventeenth-century Tea-rooms on a half-holiday.
The tea-rooms were not really seventeenth century, but like the station and the Boots Cash Chemists and the Crown Hotel had been erected in a sudden enthusiasm for Jacobean-Elizabethan. Some of the windows had stained glass in them, while others were leaded; there was a minstrel’s gallery where four ladies played selections from The Desert Song and No, no, Nanette; there were beams, and alcoves where lovers were obligingly put, and ceilings villainously low. Here came the farming population of within a radius of twenty miles for tea on market-day. There were six different sorts of tea—Devonshire Tea, and Salad Tea, and Sandwich Tea, and so forth.
Miss Tree ordered for the three of them. "China tea, scones, cakes." Shirley noticed that her hand trembled on the menu. The rouge on her cheeks was like a round incision: it gave a Petrouchka effect. Her eyes were violet-lidded, but not with paint. She smoked while she ate, using a small ivory holder.
None of them talked. Doris sucked cream out of éclairs like ice-cream out of a cone. Sometimes she looked round at the other guests and smiled, not patronisingly, but as one would at friends. Shirley masticated slowly, staring in front of her. Then when the last éclair had been gobbled by Doris, and nothing could be coaxed out of the tea-pot but a yellowish fluid, Miss Tree put both elbows on the table, pushed aside her plate, and said: "Well?"
Neither answered.
"We must get things straight," she began with a sort of weary indifference, her eyes roaming over stained-glass unicorns, a pre-Raphaelite girl with a basket of roses, and the illuminated crest of a firm of caterers. "We must talk it all out. At the moment we’re all in the dark."
"But I don’t really see what there is to discuss," Shirley said plaintively. "Is there anything?"
Doris nodded her agreement. "To tell you the truth—" she began, about to embark on one of those speeches which contrived to make mistresses’ meetings even more formidable than they would have been without her.
But Miss Tree had already risen to her feet, her eyes filling with tears. It was the first time that either of the others had seen her weep, and it shocked them profoundly. They gaped at her, the colour leaving their faces until they, too, were as white as she was. In a rasping voice she said: "Oh well, if you feel like that—then we’re wasting our time. I mustn’t keep you." She took up her bag and pulled out a ten-shilling note. "Here’s some money for all this." She looked contemptuously at the plates congealed with butter that had been hot, and then at the silver dish, plundered of all its cakes, and finally at the bitter sediment within her own cup. Pushing her way between the closely packed tables she disappeared.
Doris said: "My hat! Did you ever?"
The next morning Shirley came into the common-room and found Miss Tree behind an old number of Punch. It was a room which tried to create a ‘club’ atmosphere, but the attempt was too conscious; it lacked spontaneity. There were brown leather chairs, with brass ash-trays fixed to their arms, a green baize notice-board, and some rugs made by the handicrafts class. Two mistresses had stuck a dart-board in one corner; and another mistress always contrived to litter the table with her books. On the mantelpiece were plaster busts of Elizabeth Fry and a later Roman emperor, the one a crude piece of work, the other extraordinarily fine. Flanking a tumbler full of spills they made an odd contrast.
Shirley went up to Miss Tree. "About yesterday," she began. "I was awfully sorry to upset you so. I really didn’t mean—"
"But of course not," Miss Tree cut in, putting the magazine down on the floor. She spoke without irony, in a flat tone. "You were quite right."
"Right?"
"One should never have things out. It doesn’t work. Much better to say nothing... So you see—I apologise."
"But no," Shirley protested. "It’s I who—"
"Let’s say no more about it, shall we? And we will remain friends? I’m moody, I’m afraid... But you do forgive me?
Shirley nodded. "Oh, yes. Oh, yes, of course."
She was too bewildered to protest.
A note:
MY DEAREST SHIRLEY,—I always find it easier to write than to say things.
In case you misunderstood me this morning, I meant only that I was sorry for my behaviour and wished that we could be friends once more.
May we?
E. T.
As she read it Shirley found her face growing hot and cold. Each of these incidents disquieted her profoundly. But she could not tell for what reason. Something was wrong, it was all jerking out of control. She knew this, but was powerless to stop it.
This life which had seemed so fertile in promise was a disappointment. She felt its emptiness each morning as she and two other mistresses wrangled over who should go into the bathroom first. In chapel she felt it, and when she sat at the top of a long table at meals, and heard, rising and ebbing around her, the chatter of twenty shrill voices. It was nothing, nothing; and she was nothing, a shell, a husk.
Each incident with Miss Tree intensified this feeling to an unbearable degree. We are damned, she thought, we are doomed. We hunger for life, but it evades us. We are gesticulating shadows. We are Homer’s ghosts, who long to drink the blood of the living. But there is no blood to drink, and we wander, interminably.
One little happening, of no ostensible importance, disquieted her more than all others. It was customary for her and Miss Tree to change over their French classes half-way through the lesson, so that Shirley could do the oral training and Miss Tree could manage the literature.
One morning Miss Tree was late. Shirley, arriving at the classroom, could still hear her talking to the class. The voice rattled dryly, and for no reason, instead of going in she stood outside and listened, her mark-book under her arm.
Miss Tree was doing unseen translation. "Now, girls," she was saying. "What does this word mean? Mamelon. Roland est venu au mamelon. Who knows?" Someone said mammal, someone suggested house. "Wrong, wrong!" Miss Tree snapped. "Well—who knows the word mamelle?" No answer. "Oh, come, come! Mamelle means a breast. You must all know that. And from mamelle we get this word mamelon." She went to the blackboard. "Look!" With a quick stroke of the chalk she drew in a breast, with nipple "Now! There’s a breast. Well—what does it remind you of? ... A hill, of course! A hill!"
The duster erased the diagram. The class was over.
An intonation, an emphasis—what was it that made the whole scene intolerable?
Part of the summer holidays were spent with Doris in Norfolk. Mrs. Humber had been the daughter of a country parson and had married a farmer. The farmer was now dead; but with the help of a half-wit girl she still kept hens, some goats, and a small market-garden. Many of the fields had been let out; others were derelict, a place to pick blackberries in. Once the land had been g
ood; but it had been overworked, nothing had been put back, and now it was sour and unproductive. The house itself leaked upstairs; the top landing had been closed and there were damp patches on the walls. Grass pressed between the paving of the drive; many of the stones were cracked.
Mrs. Humber was as upright as when she had first ridden to hounds as a girl. But her whole life, all that lay behind that splendid carriage, had been devoured by one grievance. After her marriage the gentry had ceased to ‘know’ her: and even now, with her husband buried, she was still ignored. This was an intolerable burden, a cruel infliction of loneliness; for she herself, in turn, refused to know the market-gardeners and small tradesmen who had been her husband’s friends.
But Doris fraternised with all of them. When her mother said of one young man: "Isn’t he rather C.O.M.?" (which was her way of saying ‘common’), Doris flashed back: "He’s as good as father ever was." This made Mrs. Humber’s eyes fill with tears—of rage, rather than repentance.
Shirley was no more of a snob than Doris. But from lack of practice she found it difficult to make conversation to the country-folk. Mrs. Humber took this disability as a form of breeding. Shirley, she privately noted, was a ‘lady’. So dinner was substituted for high-tea, and the boiler was lit for baths nightly instead of once a week, and the Crown Derby tea-service, which she had brought with her from the vicarage over thirty years ago and had hardly used since, was now taken out for the half-wit girl to chip when she washed it up.
She never tired of asking Shirley about her English relations: and when she was not doing this she talked of her own. In the house were a few ‘pieces’ left to her by an aunt. It was plain, solid Victorian furniture: but Mrs. Humber would say: "Yes, Aunt Sophie had some lovely things. You can tell from those few heirlooms of mine. Sad to think of it all broken up among a dozen of us. In her big house ..."