by MARY HOCKING
After the party, the Vaseyelins kept their place on the far side of the garden wall. Judith was pleased about this. She had been afraid that they might have expected to come and go more freely.
Then at Christmas the party invitation was returned. This was obviously an event of some importance, and Jacov felt it necessary to approach Mr Fairley.
Mr Fairley found himself in a dilemma. He was careful about the houses which his daughters visited. He had refused to allow them to go to one house, because the parents played tennis on a Sunday: ‘If they do that on the Lord’s Day, goodness alone knows what goes on on other days of the week!’ The membership of a social club, whether visited on a Sunday or a weekday, was an automatic disqualification for entertaining the Fairley children. The Vaseyelin household, however, kept its secrets, and all that Mr Fairley could with certainty pin on them was that they were foreigners and Russian Orthodox. Russian Orthodox was not as bad as Roman Catholic, but it was bad enough. ‘Foreigner’ was a different matter. Mr Fairley was a passionate believer in liberal values and, as a Methodist lay preacher, laid frequent stress on the rights of minorities and the needs of the underprivileged. He was aware that many people who would not have minded subjecting their daughters to the perils of an agnostic – or even atheistic – household, would not have wanted them to mix with the Vaseyelins because they ‘did not belong’. But on a matter of such importance, would he be right to redress the balance in favour of the Vaseyelins? Should he not be concerned primarily with his children’s well-being?
Jacov said, ‘I hope you will do us the honour to say yes.’
At this point something happened for which Mr Fairley was unprepared. Mr Fairley could have taught in a grammar school; he had a good London degree; but the Lord had called him to teach the underprivileged and the less able. He did not do this in a spirit of patronage. Mr Fairley cared about his boys. Now, he was surprised to see in Jacov’s eyes the same look he had sometimes caught in the eyes of a boy who is desperately afraid that – owing to lack of means – he will be left out of some longed-for treat, a sea cadet camp, or a day’s excursion to the coast. On such occasions, Mr Fairley would dig into his own pocket to help. It was not money that was needed now. This party represented something to Jacov – perhaps it was honour that was at stake, or the need for once to be a giver. Mr Fairley had no understanding of the workings of Jacov’s mind, but he did understand that the issue was an important one.
Jacov said, ‘I will myself be responsible for your daughters.’
Mr Fairley, squaring up to him solemnly, replied, ‘On that understanding alone, then . . .’
Mrs Fairley had sighed when her husband told her of his decision. ‘I think the boy is to be trusted,’ he said.
Judith Fairley did not believe that any human being, let alone a young male, was ever entirely to be trusted, but she saw no point in saying this.
So it was that at four o’clock in the afternoon of 21 December 1930 Alice stood at the dining-room window. It was cold, and the window was frosted so that she could not see clearly into the street; and in any case, the Vaseyelins’ hedge was so high that it was not always possible to see people coming to the house. So far she had counted three people and the postman. She breathed on the window pane, moaning with impatience. Louise took a long time dressing and Claire started late, so Alice always had to wait for them. Her mother told her she was in too much of a hurry for her pleasures, but Alice was convinced that some moment of enchantment would be lost if she was late.
Louise came in and said, ‘Anyone would think you had never been to a party before.’
Alice noticed that, in spite of being so casual, Louise was wearing the apple-green crepe dress which Grandma had made for her, and which she kept for special occasions. It was a lovely dress, and Alice looked forward to the time when Louise would have outgrown it. Outside in the hall Claire, who had been hurried, was saying, ‘I don’t want to go any more.’
Mummy said reprovingly, ‘Think how disappointed you would be if people stayed away from your party.’
‘I shan’t know anyone.’
‘You’ll be with Alice and Louise.’
‘They won’t stay with me.’
‘Yes, I will!’ Alice rushed into the hall and put an arm round Claire. ‘I’ll stay with you all the time.’
Their father came with them to the door of Number 17. He knocked. There was no response. Claire tugged herself free of Alice’s restraining arm and was about to protest, when they heard foot-steps crossing the hall. The front door opened. In the dim light of the gas lamp they saw Jacov, shabby in a frayed brown suit with a bow tie. Behind him, a flight of uncarpeted stairs disappeared into the gloom of the first-floor landing. There was a smell of gas and damp.
Mr Fairley said he would come at six o’clock to collect the children. Jacov bowed and waited at the door while Mr Fairley walked down the path. The children peered about them uneasily, and Louise was moved to place a protective arm around the shoulders of each of her charges. On the left side of the hall there were heavy brown curtains in a material which resembled sacking; the sound of voices and laughter could be heard beyond the curtains. Had it not been for this, the house might have been unoccupied, so little evidence was there of its being lived in. Jacov closed the front door and took Alice’s wrap from her. ‘How nice. Is it sable or ermine, the collar?’ He said this with no hint of mockery, as though sable and ermine were commonplace in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ Alice answered. ‘It came off a hat of Aunt May’s and it moults.’
Claire and Louise gave Jacov their shawls, and he put them on top of a pile of clothes hung over the banister post. Then he parted the curtains grandly, as though they were velvet. Alice saw that only a few people had arrived. They were playing a guessing game. Claire, who always got on well at parties once she had broken the ice, immediately joined in. Louise was greeted by the twins, who stood one on each side of her, Nicholas saying she looked pretty while Boris giggled and stroked her hair. Alice started to talk to Katia, but she said ‘Hush’, because she was doing well at the game; so Alice sat on a stool by the fire and looked round the room, which was large with a high ceiling. It looked as though at one time there had been double doors leading to the hall, but these had gone, and in their place were the brown curtains. The absence of the doors made the room cold and draughty. The furniture had been pushed against the walls, revealing the holes which the castors of the couch had made in the brown linoleum. Patches of damp discoloured the yellow wallpaper. In a corner by the window there was a shrivelled tree left over from a previous Christmas, with a candle burning on the top. There were no other decorations; nor were there any photographs – not even one of Jacov’s older sister, Sonya, who had died before the family left Russia. ‘My mother does not speak of her,’ Jacov had once said. Alice thought it was sad that there was no photograph of Sonya.
The wood fire was bright and made a pleasant smell, but it did not give out much heat. Alice was dismayed. In her own house she was surrounded by objects which had a history: the heavy Serpentine ornaments from Cornwall, one in the shape of a lighthouse, the other a buoy, which Daddy said must have belonged to Mummy’s wrecker ancestors; the armchair which could be extended into a day-bed and had been left to them by Great Aunt Mathilda, who had spent a great deal of her life lying on it; the wheezy grandfather clock which was always wrong, in spite of Daddy constantly ‘adjusting’ the swing of the pendulum by attaching weights to it; these things were as much a part of the household as the people themselves. This room looked just like the sitting- room of Number 29 had looked on the day of their arrival, before any of their treasures had been unpacked. There were no tatting chairbacks, no embroidered cloths for vases to stand on so that they did not mark the table; there was not even a rug by the hearth. Alice glanced guiltily at the green enamel clock on the mantelshelf. Ten minutes past four. In two hours she could go home. She straightened out the skirt of her voile party f
rock, and wondered what she would do if she wanted to go to the lavatory.
There was a knock at the front door. Jacov introduced new arrivals. Several were foreigners who did not seem interested in the Fairley children, but there were three English boys who were plainly glad to encounter compatriots in this strange house. The most noticeable of the English was a boy of about Jacov’s age. He had brown hair, thick and strong, falling in a tuft over his left eye and curling crisply at the back of his head and behind his ears.
His ears were big and laid against his head as though they had been pinned there, just as they should. Everything about him was as it should be. He had blue eyes, a wide, smiling mouth, a straight nose with just enough freckles to be attractive, and no spots. He was the most handsome boy Alice had ever seen. His name was Guy Immingham.
The room was crowded now. The children jostled, screamed, laughed and improvised treasure hunts, which they enjoyed passionately and then dropped in favour of another activity, such as imitating film stars. It was not like an ordinary party where everything is carefully organized so that all are included, and a watch is kept to ensure that no one is getting over-excited. It seemed very odd at first. Claire scampered about, pushing, tickling, doing somersaults. A big, clownish boy told Louise what a rotter Guy Immingham was and she pretended to be shocked, head hung down so that the long brown hair curtained her face, while Guy squatted on the ground to see if she was laughing. Someone fell over him and upset orangeade. Everyone laughed, and Jacov poured some more orangeade, and no one fussed with a mop. The younger children screamed louder and louder, and Claire did cartwheels.
Alice sat on the stool, blowing up a balloon. The fire was warm now. She tossed the balloon up in front of her and, as she looked after it, she saw a tall woman standing between the curtains. It was Mrs Vaseyelin. Her dress was black and her hair was black and there was no colour in her face; yet she looked rich, and behind her the curtains really seemed velvet now. Dark hair parted in the centre and drawn back from the perfect oval face was, Alice knew, a recipe for beauty, and she had seen it demonstrated in photographs of Sylvia Sidney. But Sylvia Sidney was young. It was a surprise to see that a face could still be beautiful when it had tiny dry lines scoring the forehead, and shadows which looked as though they had been burnt beneath the eyes.
Alice felt as she did in the assembly hall, waiting for the school play to begin, when curtains were drawn across the platform to give the illusion of theatre. But whereas what happened on the stage was never as strange as she had anticipated, here was strangeness where she had not looked for it!
The room was quiet now. Everyone was staring at Mrs Vaseyelin. She walked across the room, not looking directly at anyone, but seeming to gaze at something beyond them. She sat in a chair by the window, a little in shadow. The voices leapt up again. Alice patted the balloon. It soared up and then came gently down towards her, orange and mauve in the firelight.
A man came through the curtains and joined Mrs Vaseyelin. He was tall, stooping and shabby. Alice thought there was something familiar about him, but as he was standing in the shadows she did not have a clear picture of his face.
The children shouted, tumbled, laughed and screamed. Claire was having a coughing fit. Louise imitated Al Jolson singing ‘Sonny Boy’. Guy Immingham said, ‘Gosh, you ought to be an actress!’ and she said she was going to be, as though there was no question about it. The man and the woman watched without concern or interest. Every now and again fat, good-natured Anita lumbered in from the kitchen and shouted, ‘The sweets, Jacov; don’t forget to hand round the sweets!’ or ‘You must offer more ginger beer, Jacov.’ No one was concerned when a chair fell over and a side- table was overturned. You would have thought they were used to their possessions tumbling around them.
Then, at a signal from Anita, the twins began to carry in trays of food. A table was moved into the centre of the room. The food did not look very exciting. Jacov brought candles and placed them on the table, then he turned down the gas lamps. He struck a match and bent forward. As Alice watched him leaning towards the candle, she felt that, in the shadows beyond the flame, the room had become much larger.
She looked around her. First, she saw that Mrs Vaseyelin had a shawl across the back of her chair; it was worn thin and the colours were faded, but the material was soft and it glimmered in the candlelight. Then, she saw the wooden figures on the mantelpiece which she had failed to notice before. They stood on a round base, a ballerina in a pretty flowing dress and a baggy-trousered clown; he was kneeling before her, she turning away, hand outstretched for something just beyond her reach. They looked so strange there, standing next to the green enamel clock.
Jacov handed Alice a blackcurrant drink. As she looked down into the glass, it glowed deep crimson. The cakes were from a shop in Shepherd’s Bush High Street – not a very nice shop; they had a strange, spicy flavour. Alice said this to Claire, but Claire said she could not taste anything special, and anyway they were dry. Claire said she wished there had been some sherbet.
The candles flickered and shadows leapt on the wall, absurdly short, like a hunchback, and very long, like a beanstalk. Alice looked at Mrs Vaseyelin, who smiled pleasantly, but not as though she really saw her, and asked whether she would like another cake. Alice felt, as she watched the woman’s eyes, that someone had come into the room and was standing beside her in the shadows.
While everyone ate and chattered, Alice went up to the mantelpiece. She stood on a chair and took down the carving. She knew this was a bad thing to do, much worse than spilling orangeade or knocking over a chair, but she could not help herself. Even if she was never asked again, she must touch these figures. She sat on the stool and stroked the folds of the gown, and the sad clown’s face. The figures were mounted on a round base which had a key underneath; guiltily, Alice turned the key several times. Nothing happened. A voice said, ‘She used to dance once. But no more.’ Alice saw that Mrs Vaseyelin was looking down at her.
Alice said, ‘I would love to have seen her dance.’ She closed her eyes, and suddenly she was in a much bigger room; and in the centre of the room a girl was dancing and laughing as she danced. The curtains over the window were parted, and Alice was sure there was a glimpse of snow-laden trees. Then, as her fingers stroked the figure of the dancer, she heard the music of the dance – a long way off, but clear, like a music-box playing in another room. When she opened her eyes, Mrs Vaseyelin was still there, and Alice knew by something that flashed in her eyes that she, too, had heard the music.
Jacov came across the room. ‘You are quiet,’ he said to Alice.
He took away the wooden figures and gave her a jam puff. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m having a lovely time, thank you.’
When Mr Fairley came to fetch his children, Alice did not want to leave. Mrs Vaseyelin and the strange man came out to the hall to see their guests off. Alice heard her say to the man, ‘. . . like our dear Sonya sitting there by the fire.’ She stood on the top step and watched them go. It was cold, but there was no snow. In the yellow gaslight Alice saw that she was much older than she had imagined, and not in any way beautiful.
In the years since that party the Fairley children often saw the young Vaseyelins, but they seldom saw Mrs Vaseyelin, and they did not see the man again; although Alice thought she glimpsed him once walking down Acton High Street in the dusk, carrying a long case. Soon after the party, she had asked Katia, ‘Was that man your uncle?’ and Katia had shaken her head and changed the subject.
When the children described the party to their parents, they made much of Guy Immingham. It was then that they discovered that their father was acquainted with Guy Immingham’s father, and that the Imminghams attended the Methodist Chapel in Holland Park.
‘Why don’t we go to chapel in Holland Park?’ Louise asked her mother. ‘It’s no further than the Acton chapel.’
‘We go to the Acton chapel because your father teaches in Acton, and he does a lot with
the Acton sea cadets. There is no good reason why we should go traipsing off to Holland Park.’
Louise did not argue, and in this she was wise, because Guy Immingham began to visit the Vaseyelins quite often and it was no longer necessary to think of changing chapels in order to see him. Mr and Mrs Fairley thought him a likable enough boy, and a year later when the children had their own party no objection was raised to his inclusion.
It was as a result of her friendship with Guy Immingham that Louise was introduced to the St Bartholomew’s Dramatic Society. Jacov produced plays for the society, and it was he who recruited Guy. Guy was by then studying for his accountancy examinations, and it was hoped that he would go into his father’s firm; but like Louise he had leanings towards the stage, having played several leading parts in school plays with moderate success.
A few weeks after the audition, by which time Louise had been offered a part, Guy accompanied the Fairley family to chapel on a cold February evening. Mr Fairley was preaching and Guy had said that he would like to hear him. In spite of his quest for intellectual truth, which sometimes made him cavalier in his treatment of the pretensions of others, Mr Fairley liked praise. His wife – busy, practical and at times imperceptive – seldom met his needs in this respect, and was inclined to spoil his pleasure when others were more obliging.
‘I don’t think it is your words of wisdom that he’s interested in,’ she had said on this occasion, irritated that he should court Guy’s good opinion.
‘I see no reason to doubt his sincerity.’
Judith, walking with Claire while Louise and Guy followed some distance behind, reflected on man’s infinite capacity for self¬deception.
‘Your father couldn’t possibly mind your taking part,’ Guy was saying. ‘My father doesn’t object, and he’s a Methodist. There’ll be a fuss when I tell him I’m going on the stage, of course; but that’s different.’