by MARY HOCKING
‘We’ve been appointing a new warden,’ Judith said when she arrived. ‘I’m not sure we’ve got the right person even now.’ She kissed Grandmother Fairley’s cold forehead.
‘It sounds like a prison,’ Grandmother Fairley said, looking at Alice and Claire to see if they had appreciated her joke.
‘I sometimes think it looks like one, too. We really shall have to do something about the bedrooms.’ She looked at her daughters who were both watching her unsmiling. Their resentment of the fact that she was no longer always there when they needed her had not escaped her. ‘You wouldn’t like to have an uncomfortable bedroom, would you?’
‘Our bedroom is cold,’ Alice said.
‘And my bedcover’s frayed,’ Claire said.
‘Oh, the younger generation!’ Grandmother Fairley looked benevolently on the ungraciousness of her granddaughters, pleased to take their side against their mother. ‘But I do remember how important it was for me that my dear mother was always there when I came in.’
‘Did you ever wonder what she was doing while you weren’t at home?’ Judith asked.
‘She was resting, I expect. She had poor health.’
‘Well, I haven’t got poor health and I don’t need to rest.’
Aunt May poured tea and talked, contriving to agree with everything that was said, however contradictory.
‘What does Stanley think about all these meetings, then?’ Grandmother Fairley asked.
‘Daddy goes out a lot,’ Claire said. ‘He’s always at sea cadets.’
‘You are poor, neglected little things, aren’t you!’ Judith exclaimed, thinking how tiresome children could be, always letting one down when one least expected it.
‘I think perhaps Alice needs some brimstone and treacle,’ Aunt May whispered to Judith as they took their leave. Grandmother Fairley insisted on giving money to Claire and Alice. ‘That will help to cheer you up.’ She could not forbear adding, ‘And because I may not be here much longer.’
They walked to the bus stop in silence, neither enjoying the feel of the money in their hands. As they came into the main road, Claire linked an arm in her mother’s and said impulsively, ‘I shall put my money in the box for the Distressed Families.’
Alice said mutinously, ‘I shall spend mine on silk stockings.’
Claire wanted to sit at the front of the bus where there was only one vacant seat, so Alice sat with her mother. Alice said, ‘You tell us that you go out now because we are growing up.’ Judith waited, aware from the tone of voice that Alice had a bargain to strike. ‘Well, if I’m growing up, I ought to be able to please myself about some things.’
‘I suppose that’s fair enough,’ Judith said unwisely. Louise had recently had her hair bobbed and she thought that Alice was probably going to make the same demand, which would be a pity because Alice would not benefit from a closer comparison with Louise.
‘I don’t want to go to Crusaders any more.’ Alice spoke quietly, yet as though the words were the final summary of a long argument.
‘Why ever not?’ Judith thought of Claire, to whom Crusader meetings were so important and who would be unhappy going alone.
‘I hate them.’ Alice turned her head away and addressed her reflection in the bus window. ‘I hate the things they say.’
Judith could have slapped her. But she knew that her anger was caused partly by the guilty awareness that she had unsettled her family by turning her attention outward; so she merely said, ‘You can’t give things up just because someone says something you don’t like.’
Alice clenched her hands. As the bus passed the Drummonds’ house the look of anger in her face turned to something nearer to despair.
Alice had had a disturbing experience. Crusader meetings were held in a classroom at a private school. One afternoon in early January, while Alice was putting the chorus books away in the stockroom after the meeting, she had overheard one of the older girls talking to the leader of the group, Eileen Palmer. Alice did not know the girl in question, and had been surprised when during prayers she had prayed for Daphne and her family. Now, the girl was telling Eileen that her aunt had at one time been employed as a companion to Mrs Drummond, but had had to leave because the atmosphere in the house was unhealthy. ‘She said he paid too much attention to his elder daughter.’
Eileen replied primly, ‘I think you should be careful about repeating anything like that.’
The following Saturday Alice and Irene had spent the afternoon at the Drummonds’. Mrs Drummond had been in bed with a migraine. On arrival they went into the garden. Daphne produced tennis rackets and a ball. ‘We can’t play on the grass because the ball won’t bounce,’ she said. ‘I suggest I hit it against the wall and Alice hits it back before it bounces and then Irene hits it back.’ Irene looked at the racket as if unsure which was the business end. ‘I can tell you how long we shall keep that up.’
Daphne regarded her thoughtfully and then decided to ignore the remark. ‘I’ll start.’
Daphne hit the ball hard against the wall and Alice returned it well. Irene was not good at games. For one thing, she was not in the least interested and, for another, she had no ball sense. This did not, however, appear to give her any feeling of inferiority. Bright-eyed, red-cheeked with the cold, diminutive as a woodland creature and wielding her racket much as she might have done a wand, she darted here and there, first sending the ball spinning so high that if Daphne had not caught it, it would have landed in the garden next door, then edging it into the shrubbery, and then into the front garden.
‘It isn’t possible for you to hit the wall once in a way?’ Daphne asked after she had retrieved the ball from the Uxbridge Road.
By way of reply, Irene took a wild swing and, rather by luck than judgement, sent the ball crashing against the wall whence it rebounded into Alice’s chest.
So she continued until dusk, impervious to their annoyance. When the ball finally went into the garden next door. Daphne said, ‘We might as well stop now; it’s teatime anyway.’ She collected the rackets, and Alice and Irene waited while she carefully screwed them into the presses. It was nearly dark, and the trees at the end of the garden were no longer sharply defined. Irene, standing by the shrubbery, glowing with mischief, looked as though she might at any moment step back and merge into the undergrowth. Daphne showed them to the downstairs cloakroom and went to see about tea.
‘I enjoyed that,’ Irene said as she combed her hair.
‘That’s more than we did.’
‘If you don’t like the way I play, you should have done something else.’
‘It was two of us to one of you.’
‘I can’t be bothered about that!’ In the mirror Irene’s eyes looked at Alice, saying, ‘You didn’t know I could be like this, did you?’
Alice in her turn did not hide her irritation. ‘Anyone can tell you’re an only child,’ she said.
They felt they knew each other better after this exchange. Their sense of companionship was strengthened as they walked down the corridor. They were in a strange house which was dark and silent, and Daphne seemed further away than the distance between them and the drawing-room. When they came to the room, Mr Drummond and Daphne were standing by the fire, their backs to the door; he had one hand on the mantelshelf, the other teasingly ruffled her hair and then rested at the nape of her neck, shaking as one would shake a puppy by its scruff. His voice was teasing. ‘I hope you never ape Betty Barton and Company.’
Daphne said, ‘They are my friends.’
‘And will grow into worthy women much given to good works, particularly the ponderous Alice. As for the other one, if she’d broken one of my windows, I’d have had her breeches down and given her something to squeal about.’
Alice and Irene withdrew and tiptoed back down the corridor. Upstairs, Mrs Drummond called fretfully for one of the maids. Alice banged the cloakroom door, and she and Irene talked loudly and nonsensically as they again approached the drawing-room. Their exertion
s in the garden, together with the heat of the fire, adequately accounted for their pink faces.
Daphne rang for tea and a maid soon wheeled in a trolley. Mr Drummond took a packet of De Reszke from the mantelpiece and remained astride the hearth, keeping the warmth of the fire to himself. Neither Alice nor Irene had any inclination to talk to him, so they engaged Daphne in chit-chat about school. Irene talked about the coming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which she was to play one of the fairies.
When Alice had first visited the house she had been aware of a Daphne who was obscurely different from the Daphne she knew at school. She had thought this change a sign that Daphne was more grown-up than was she, more at ease with the different types of behaviour appropriate to different situations. In Irene’s company, this explanation no longer seemed sufficient. In the garden, Irene had had a spritelike quality which amply explained why she had been chosen to play one of the fairies; but now, sitting beside Alice on the sofa, talking amusingly and articulately about why she disliked Shakespeare’s fairy plays, she was crisp and sharp and very much the sort of person who would sparkle more brightly in a drawing-room than in a wood near Athens. Yet, in spite of this unpredictability, Alice still felt in touch with Irene, and quite able to accommodate the inconsistencies in her personality.
‘If I played anyone, I’d like it to be Helena; but it looks as though I’m doomed to be a fairy all my life because of my height.’
When Alice turned from Irene to look at Daphne, she saw a person with whom she seemed to have little in common. Daphne was speaking about school as from a distance, as though it was much further away than a bus journey up the Uxbridge Road.
‘Fairies!’ Mr Drummond interrupted the conversation. ‘Good God, is this what I spend all that money on fees for?’
Irene, who could not bring herself to look at him, let alone speak to him, occupied herself with a cup-cake.
A door banged at the back of the house, and after a few minutes footsteps sounded in the corridor. Cecily came into the room, dragging a satchel by its straps, spilling sheet music and leaving a welt on the carpet. Mr Drummond said, ‘What do you think you are doing?’ He seemed to welcome the intervention; his eyes were so bright he might have been laughing. ‘Go out of the room and come in properly.’
Cecily went out of the room and they heard the thud as she threw the satchel down. She remained in the hall, whimpering. Mr Drummond strode briskly to the door.
‘Come here! You heard me, didn’t you?’ He slapped Cecily lightly across the face with the back of his hand. ‘Then do as you are told.’
Irene and Alice sat as though turned to stone while Cecily walked stiffly into the room. Mr Drummond pointed, and she bent to gather up the sheet music. Alice had a piece of cake half-swallowed and prayed she might not choke. Daphne lifted the lid of the teapot and inspected the contents, then poured in more hot water. Mr Drummond pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down. I am going to the morning- room to read the paper in peace; and if I hear any more from you, my girl, I can promise you something to wail about.’
He went out of the room. As soon as the door closed, Cecily began to weep quietly. Daphne picked up the teapot and refilled cups.
‘He’s only talking like that because he wants to shock you,’ she said to Irene and Alice. ‘He never beats us.’
‘He hit me,’ Cecily blubbered.
‘Oh, don’t be such a baby. You can hardly have felt it.’
‘He’s always picking on me.’
‘You play up to him, that’s your trouble. When he twists my arm I make up my mind I won’t cry out and he soon stops.’
‘But he still does it.’
‘It’s just a game. He likes to test my spirit every now and again to make sure I won’t grow up like Mother.’
‘Don’t you hate him?’ It would have taken Alice a long time to get round to saying this, but Irene came out with it as though it was the most natural remark, which, in the circumstances, it perhaps was.
‘No.’ Daphne looked at Irene with dislike. ‘He wants people to stand up for themselves, like he does. But Mother is always ill, and Cecily is always crying. It’s awful for him.’
‘I think we ought to report him to the NSPCC,’ Irene said later as she and Alice walked along the Uxbridge Road. She said it because she needed to imagine Mr Drummond under threat, and this was the worst threat she could bring to mind. Neither girl had any intention of telling her parents. This, they knew instinctively, was the kind of situation to which parents would react by making matters worse. They would be forbidden to go to the Drummond house again, and something might even be said to teachers at school. They were not sure that they wanted to go to the Drummond house again, but preferred to be left with the option.
‘This is the second nastiest thing that has ever happened to me,’ Alice said.
‘What was the nastiest?’
Alice told Irene about the journey on the tube train with Katia. Irene, still shocked by what she had seen and heard that afternoon, was not impressed. ‘But we know Daphne and Cecily and their parents,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know any of those people who were pushing and shoving; they probably lived in Goldhawk Road.’ She herself lived a respectable half-mile away in Holland Park.
They waited for Irene’s bus, not talking much. When Alice imagined Daphne’s spirit being tested by her father, it produced an uncomfortable sensation in the lower part of her body. She wondered if Irene had the same feelings, but did not like to ask. She was ashamed, as though she herself had done something wrong. The unpleasant sensations persisted. When she went to bed, she lay thinking of Mr Drummond twisting Daphne’s arm, and she remembered the girl at Crusaders saying that the atmosphere in the Drummonds’ house was unhealthy. In fact, of course, it was wicked; wickedness, unlike sin, was something new in her life.
At the end of January Ben came to stay for the weekend. On the Saturday afternoon he suggested to Alice that they should go for a walk in Gunnersbury Park. It seemed to him she was not in the best of spirits. Where people of his own age were concerned, Ben was too busy fighting for dominance to be observant, but his judgement of people younger than himself was both kind and perceptive.
‘So, what ails you?’ he said to Alice as they walked towards the shrubbery.
Alice scuffed her feet among the dead leaves. ‘You know Dolly Bligh at our chapel?’
‘No. Tell me about her.’
‘She stayed with her husband in spite of his interfering with the children. They took the children away from her.’
Ben kicked a stone. ‘Yes, I suppose they would.’
‘A lot of people at the chapel think she shouldn’t come any more. But our Minister says if Dolly isn’t fit to come to chapel, he isn’t fit to be minister.’
Ben was silent. Answers came to Alice readily enough from most other sources, and this experience of talking to someone who did not answer you immediately, and yet was friendly towards you, was unique. When she was upset or had hurt herself, her mother or father would hold her in their arms. Ben gave her the feeling of being held because he took her words and held them.
‘At Crusaders,’ she went on, ‘we pray for people who have done . . . well, wicked things . . . like Dolly Bligh.’ She clenched her hands. ‘I hate Crusaders.’
‘Do you worry about Dolly Bligh, Alice?’ Ben asked, a bit out of his depth.
‘Well, in a way.’ She could not bring herself to tell him about the Drummonds.
They had come to the ornamental bridge over the lily pond. They stood together looking down at the still water. The pond had not been raked, and there was a mass of dead leaves at the bottom. Alice said, ‘I mean, it’s wicked, isn’t it?’ Ben was inclined to agree, but he did not think this would help Alice.
‘I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’
‘Not worry?’ Alice was taken aback. Her father unintentionally generated worry; the Winifred Clough Day School for Girls generated it on a considerable scale.
> ‘Worry doesn’t help people. It only puts another burden on them.’ Ben had burdened his mother and made her dying harder. Now, when it was too late, he regretted his selfishness. ‘Think of it as a bad habit, Alice. Then you’ll find it easier to give up.’
Alice felt that everything had been let go. All the worries and fears, the puzzles and muddles and stumbling blocks were running away from her, jumping and somersaulting and bumping into each other while she remained on the bridge, unscathed amid the confusion. ‘Not worry!’ she repeated in awe. This advice from someone of her own generation had a particular sound, an authenticity of tone which was sometimes lacking in her parents’ pronouncements.
‘If your mother tells you she’s worried about you, does it make you feel happy?’
‘It makes me feel I’ve done something wrong.’
‘There you are, then. If all you can do for a person is worry, you’d be as well putting them out of your mind.’
They walked on slowly and came out onto the lawn where the great cedar spread its branches. Chapel and Crusaders! Ben thought angrily. His mother’s illness might have forced him to learn a lesson or two about worry, but it had left a lot of anger in him with which he had yet to come to terms. He said, ‘Perhaps we should put God out of our minds if He worries us.’
Alice gazed at him as though the Emmaus Road ran through Gunnersbury Park.
Claire, at this time, was also having problems with God. She had found a new friend.
Heather Mason, like Maisie, came from a working-class home, but there the resemblance ended. Heather’s father was honest and hardworking, as firm in his beliefs and as caring of his children as was Stanley Fairley. Her mother was a capable, generous woman who made Claire and all visitors welcome. The family had been very proud when Heather won a scholarship to the Winifred Clough Day School for Girls. Heather’s joy had been in no way diminished after a month at school. Then had come a bitter blow. She was told that, in order to help her fit in better, she must have elocution lessons. Although she had submitted to this indignity, some demon of unacceptability had been roused in her, and from the time of her first elocution lesson her behaviour in class became more unabashedly exuberant, and she was rowdier than ever in the playground.