There was a thin, gasping sound at the other end.
“There isn’t any mistake, is there?” the voice asked. “You did say you were Mrs. Privett, didn’t you?”
This time it was Mrs. Privett who gasped. They seemed to be right back at the beginning again.
“Yes, that’s me,” she answered. “It is Mrs. Rammell, isn’t it? I mean Mrs. Rammell of Rammell’s?”
Cornered, Mrs. Rammell had to admit it.
“Then you’re the one I want to see,” Mrs. Privett continued. “And I’d like it to be this afternoon, please.”
“But ... but what about?”
“About your boy and my Ireen.”
“My boy and your what?”
“My Ireen.”
Mrs. Privett heard the same, exasperated intake of breath at the other end.
“I’m afraid I still can’t hear. It must be the line.”
“Ireen,” Mrs. Privett repeated. “Ireen.”
She was getting annoyed herself now.
“And you want to see me about it?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind, please,” Mrs. Privett told her. “It’ll be better for everybody. Would four o’clock do?”
Mrs. Rammell glanced automatically at her diary. There was the Anglo-French Ballet lunch at the Embassy. And there was a private view that she had meant to go to afterwards. Then there was a cocktail party at six. Apart from that there was nothing. Nothing except for all that telephoning she had to do for next Wednesday. It was as though this strange, agitated woman at the other end had been secretly spying on her engagements.
“Yes,” she said weakly. “I ... I could see you at four.”
“Then I’ll be there.”
Mrs. Privett had a feeling as she said it that Mrs. Rammell wasn’t quite ready to ring off just yet. And she was right. Mrs. Rammell was making one last effort to collect herself.
“You are Mrs. Privett, aren’t you?” she asked “I ... I mean your husband is on Mr. Rammell’s staff?”
Mrs. Privett very nearly lost her temper at that.
“I told you,” she said. “I’m Mr. Privett’s wife. He’s my husband. And I want to see you about Ireen.”
When Mrs. Privett left the call-box she was exhausted. Even the palms of her hands were wet. She had to wipe her face all over with her handkerchief. But there was no turning back now. She had done what she intended to do. And she would have to go through with it.
But because she had never been to Eaton Square before, she miscalculated. She didn’t want to arrive at the last moment, rushed and breathless. And in the result she was nearly fifty minutes too early. By five minutes past three she had found Eaton Square—not too easy with Belgrave Square looking so much like it just beside—and she had located the house. And it was worse even than she feared. It wasn’t even one of the terrace houses. It was the big detached one over in the corner with the two carriage gates and the portico like a corn-exchange.
To pass the time, Mrs. Privett drank a cup of tea that she didn’t really want at a tea-shop right over by Victoria. Then she doubled back. And this time she only just made it. Four o’clock was actually striking as she made her way over the cobblestones of the crescent drive and up to the big front door.
Even though the maid seemed to know all about her, Mrs. Privett was a bit taken aback when she was shown into the drawing-room. There was no Mrs. Rammell. Simply a desert of large empty chairs and couches and rather a lot of expensive-looking flowers. Mrs. Privett couldn’t understand it at all. If anyone had telephoned to her about Irene she would have been down by the front door. Ready and waiting.
She was just beginning to grow angry at the delay when Mrs. Rammell came in. She looked unusually cold and distinguished.
“It is Mrs. Privett, isn’t it?” she began.
But there was no need to ask. She recognized her perfectly. “I’m afraid I must have been keeping you waiting.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Privett replied. “Not now that we can talk.”
It was not quite so easy, however. Because at that moment tea was brought in. The cup of tea that Mrs. Privett had already drunk at Victoria very nearly made her refuse everything. But though she intended to remain firm, she still wanted to appear friendly.
“No sugar, thank you,” she said. “I don’t take it.”
There was a brief pause.
“As I was saying we can talk now,” she resumed.
“But you still haven’t told me what about,” Mrs. Rammell reminded her.
“It’s about your boy,” Mrs. Privett said bluntly. “He’s been taking my Ireen out. And it’s not right. He never even asked us if he could. And she’s not his kind anyway. They’re quite different. She’s a good girl, our Ireen. But she’s not eighteen yet. And she won’t listen to reason. That’s why I want you to say something at your end.”
Mrs. Rammell had put her cup down and was staring hard at Mrs. Privett.
“Are you telling me that Tony is going out with your daughter?” she asked.
Mrs. Privett pursed up her lips and nodded.
“I am,” she said. “And I don’t approve of it. Some mothers might be pleased, but I’m not. It’s my girl that I’m thinking of. And I don’t think it’s good for her.”
Mrs. Rammell was still confused by this outburst. Numbed rather. She could not make out what exactly it was that this small intense woman opposite to her was trying so hard to say.
“You don’t mean that anything’s actually happened, do you?” she asked.
“I don’t like to think about it at all,” Mrs. Privett replied. “Not at her age, that is.”
It was then that Mrs. Rammell realized that it was she who would have to speak plainly. Not that the fact was altogether surprising to her. She had noticed before that women of Mrs. Privett’s class never would come to the point when it was a matter of mentioning anything unpleasant.
“You don’t mean there’s anything wrong?” she asked. “There isn’t a baby or anything?”
This time it was Mrs. Privett who spoke out.
“She’d never have let him!”
The reply was fairly snapped back. Mrs. Privett was sitting bolt upright by now. Simply perched there. Like an angry female kestrel.
“She’s not that type of girl, thank you,” Mrs. Privett said emphatically. “Not my Ireen.”
Mrs. Rammell was so much relieved to hear it that she leant forward and laid her hand on Mrs. Privett’s arm.
“I’m sure she’s not, Mrs. Privett,” she said. “It’s just that I wanted to know everything, so that I could help you.” She paused. “So that we can both do the right thing, I mean.”
Mrs. Privett was not, however, so easily placated.
“The best thing we can do is to stop it,” she said. “Our Ireen won’t listen to us. So perhaps you can make your Tony listen to you. There’s no good can come of it. Not with your son.”
This time it was Mrs. Rammell who stiffened.
“What’s wrong with my boy?” she asked.
She realized as soon as she had said it how ridiculous it was. At this rate she’d be down on her knees next begging the Privetts to have her Tony as a son-in-law.
And it made it worse, not better, that Mrs. Privett should be so deliberately polite about it. Because this time it was Mrs. Privett who leant forward.
“There couldn’t be a nicer young man,” she said. “There’s no complaints about him. It’s ... it’s simply”—here Mrs. Privett seemed to be groping for her words again—“that it isn’t right. They’re not the same sort of people. We’ve brought up our Ireen very simply. And your boy’s always been brought up to have everything. I don’t think they’d make each other happy. That’s all I’m thinking about, my Ireen’s happiness.”
Mrs. Rammell had recovered her poise by now. She was trying to enfold Mrs. Privett again.
“I think you’re being a very sensible woman,” she said. “I admire you for it.”
“So d’you think
you could get his dad to say something to him?” Mrs. Privett asked.
“I’ll make it my business,” Mrs. Rammell promised.
“And you won’t let my husband know I’ve been to see you,” Mrs. Privett asked.
“We’ll keep this entirely to ourselves,” Mrs. Rammell promised her. “There shan’t be a word of it to anyone.”
She had got up from her chair by now and was moving round the room arranging things. At the bowl of chrysanthemums she paused, tugging the big obstinate blooms into position. By now Mrs. Rammell was completely in possession of herself again. She addressed Mrs. Privett from across the flower bowl.
“I’m sure your daughter is a dear, dear girl,” she said. “I can see it in you. And my Tony’s a dear boy. But you’re so right. They couldn’t possibly make each other happy. And that’s why we’ve got to step in. We older ones can see it even if they can’t. They haven’t got anything in common—except being young, of course.”
Mrs. Rammell broke off because the door had opened. It was the maid again. She stood there as though determined to interrupt her.
“Miss Parkinson, Madam,” she announced.
And then Mrs. Rammell remembered. She had been certain all the time that there was something that she should have put in her diary. It was only because it was her own sister that she had forgotten. Somehow she always did forget her sister.
She rose hurriedly and went towards the door.
“Nancy, dear,” she said. “How nice.”
She broke off for a moment. Then she recovered herself.
“Come over here,” she went on. “You must let me introduce you to my friend, Mrs. Privett. Mrs. Privett, this is my sister, Miss Parkinson.”
Mrs. Rammell wished as she said it that Miss Parkinson looked a bit more probable for a sister. Not that it was her fault, poor dear. Things had always been difficult for darling Nancy. And she had been far, far too proud to accept assistance. All the same, that coat. And those shoes. Or rather, that coat and those shoes in conjunction with that hat. Poor dear darling Nancy, Mrs. Rammell reflected, might at least have tried.
A moment later, however, it was not about Nancy’s clothes that Mrs. Rammell was worrying. It was about everything else as well. For Mrs. Privett and Miss Parkinson were regarding each other with a kind of fixed fascination.
“Eileen!” Miss Parkinson said at last in a voice that might have been speaking from a tomb.
“Nance,” Mrs. Privett answered.
“You know each other?” Mrs. Rammell asked blankly.
But the answer was obvious. And horrifying. For Mrs. Rammell could feel the tentacles of her own past reaching out for her. She was no longer in Eaton Square at all. She was back in that dreadful little house in Streatham where they had moved after Papa’s last long illness.
It was horrid and degrading even to think about it. Because Mamma had been left so unexpectedly, disastrously poor in her widowhood. She had even been forced to let rooms to pay for her daughter’s music lessons. And Nancy, brave unselfish little Nancy, had taken a job in a draper’s shop over at Brixton. It had been the only thing to do. Because Mamma alone couldn’t afford to support both her dear girls.
Mrs. Rammell gave a little shudder as she recalled it. It was terrible, unthinkable, what Nancy had been through for their sakes. But also in a way unforgivable. Because she had never quite been able to throw off the experience. She had become stained by it. Even when Mrs. Rammell was still only engaged to Mr. Rammell she had been ashamed—yes, that was the only word, ashamed—of the sheer shoppiness of her own sister.
It wasn’t as though the Parkinsons had been brought up to retail trade. Far from it. Papa had been a general merchant in the City. And if Mr. Rammell’s father had been in a smaller way of business Mrs. Parkinson wouldn’t even have considered him. It was simply the scale of Rammell’s that had somehow purified, sanctified even, the inescapable retailness of shopkeeping. That had been what had made her so terrified lest Mr. Rammell, while still only in the engaged state, should discover that his fiancée’s own sister was a common shopgirl. Together with Mamma, they had concealed the whole shameful secret. And at the time oh how thankful she had been to think that, even if the journey was tiring for young Nancy, it was also sufficiently long for none of their neighbours ever to have seen Nancy actually serving ...
But already Nancy and Mrs. Privett were in each other’s arms. And worse than that. They had not merely embraced. They had kissed as well.
“It must be nearly thirty years,” Nancy was saying, her voice trembling on the edge of tears.
“Well, twenty-five anyway,” Mrs. Privett told her.
“I can’t believe it. Really, I can’t,” Nancy went on. “And do you ever see Emmie? You remember? The little pretty one.”
Mrs. Privett paused.
“Dead,” she told her. “Nearly ten years ago. And now her husband’s just going to get married again.”
“Well, I never,” Nancy replied. “Isn’t it wonderful the way time flies. It only seems yesterday ...”
Mrs. Rammell began to move over in their direction.
“Now, Nancy dear,” she said. “We mustn’t keep Mrs. Privett. She just came over to see me. And I know she’s got to be getting back.” She turned to her visitor. “I think we’d quite finished, hadn’t we, Mrs. Privett?”
It was Mrs. Privett now who was struggling with her past. While Mrs. Rammell was speaking she had been far away. She was young again. Young as the others were. Standing behind a counter over in Brixton between Nancy, who wore her pretty gold hair all piled up on top, and Emmie who wore her brown hair screwed securely into a bun. Mrs. Privett remembered suddenly that her own hair had been raven in those days. Absolutely raven and with a wave in it that defied even the rain ...
She jerked herself back into the present.
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Rammell,” she replied. “That is if ... if you’ll do what I asked.”
Mrs. Rammell was so relieved that she gave Mrs. Privett a real smile instead of her regular social one.
“I feel sure we understand each other,” she said. “Good-bye. And thank you again for coming.”
But even then silly, impetuous Nancy couldn’t take a hint.
“Well, I’m going as far as the bus with her,” she said. “Eileen and me have got such lots to talk about.”
Chapter Twenty-two
1
For Mrs. Rammell that untimely reunion between Mrs. Privett and poor sister Nancy had proved the last straw. It represented humiliation. Nothing less. She could never hold up her head again.
If only Mr. Rammell would have listened to her. If only he hadn’t been so brutally pig-headed about insisting that Tony should go into the shop at all. Couldn’t he have foreseen the consequences? Wasn’t it exactly what anybody might have expected with someone so young, so inexperienced, so fatally attractive as her Tony?
And because Mrs. Rammell was so angry, so inwardly seething, all her self-control went from her. She broke every promise of secrecy that she had made to Mrs. Privett. As soon as Mr. Rammell returned home that evening she blurted it all out to him.
“ ... and would you listen to me?” she asked. “Did you take the slightest notice of what I said? Do you ever listen to anything I say to you?” Despite her polite upbringing Mrs. Rammell had a distinctly vulgar side to her nature when disturbed. “And now see the mess that you’ve made,” she went on. “You and your father. I hope you’re proud of yourselves, the pair of you.”
Mr. Rammell poured himself out another whisky that he didn’t particularly want. Then he waited patiently for Mrs. Rammell to subside. If there was one thing that he hated it was talking to a woman who had red rims to her eyes and a catch in her voice that threatened a complete breakdown at any moment.
“All right. All right,” he said at length. “I’ll ...”
Mrs. Rammell had clearly reached the danger point. Logic, reason, argument counted for nothing any longer.
“It’s
not all right,” she said. “It’s just like you to think so. It’s all wrong. As wrong as it could be.”
“I was only going to say that I’d have a word with Tony,” Mr. Rammell replied quietly.
But it was no use. He had made the mistake of using his soft reasonable voice. Mrs. Rammell had always found even the mere tone of it maddening. It was as though he were trying to treat her as no better than a silly child.
“You can’t. Don’t you see?” she almost screamed. “He hasn’t come in. He’s out somewhere with her.”
Mr. Rammell, however, was not unduly concerned by the delay. Unlike Mrs. Rammell he had managed to retain his composure. He wanted to make a few discreet inquiries before saying anything.
He therefore avoided Tony altogether next morning. Simply didn’t appear at breakfast and sent down a message that he was not going into the office at the usual time.
When he did arrive at Bond Street, the first thing he did was to work through the shop. And in Haberdashery, he lingered. He remembered the girl perfectly. He knew for whom he was looking. And there she was. Younger and prettier than ever. Very neat, too, in the black Rammell costume with the white collar and cuffs. At the thought that she was the cause of all the trouble Mr. Rammell almost smiled. It was ridiculous. Like being blackmailed by an unusually attractive schoolgirl.
But his mind was made up. And as soon as he got upstairs to his room he sent for Mr. Privett. This was something that he wanted to handle personally. Besides, he rather liked Mr. Privett. He was so much a part of the place. When he came in, Mr. Rammell invited him to sit down as though he were an important visitor.
“Everything going all right up on your floor?” he asked.
Mr. Privett smiled contentedly.
“Oh, yes, sir, thank you. A bit on the quiet side. But very smooth, sir. Everything going very smoothly.”
Mr. Rammell paused.
“Now about that daughter of yours.”
It seemed to Mr. Rammell that Mr. Privett leant forward a little nervously.
Bond Street Story Page 21