Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  For a little while nobody comes. He takes me in his arms and says, “This is your villa, Kay, where we’re going to live” ... and kisses me ... and kisses me, ...

  “Well, are you awake yet?”

  Drowsy mumble; Susan stumping across the room with the tinkling tray; planting it down on the bed table, going to draw back the curtains. The rings clash, and the sunlight enters like a blow.

  “Oh no — it’s in my eyes!”

  “Chase the sand away.” But Susan moves the curtain just enough to cast a kindly shadow across the head of the bed. “Talk about the Seven Sleepers! Do you know you’ve been asleep — let’s see — nearly eleven hours?”

  “Oh no, I haven’t.” Fretful, languid, she allowed Susan’s firm arm to lift her up against the pillows. “I heard eleven, twelve, and one and two strike.”

  “I expect you were dreaming,” said Susan comfortably as she settled the tray across Kay’s knees. Those dark rings under the eyes weren’t healthy for a child of that age. “Now here’s your grapefruit; don’t get the juice on the sheet — here, let me fix your napkin for you.”

  “Oh, Soo-san —”

  “Now don’t say I’ve given you too much toast; you’re to eat up every bit of it, with that cream and jam.”

  “What sort of jam?”

  “Black currant. Your mother’s gone, and Jo’s just starting her practicing” — a reluctant tinkle of Matthay exercises came faintly from the floor below — “and I’ll be ready to go to the shops in an hour. So be sharp, and don’t keep me waiting — I’ve got to get a beefsteak pudding on for lunch.”

  Supposing he rang up while they were out? He had never done such a thing, but he just might, because of yesterday. He might have spoken to Mummy about school; he might have something to tell me; he might say we can go somewhere to make up for Sunday; he might ... A wild tangle of possibilities fluttered through Kay’s brain.

  “I don’t think I want to go to the shops this morning, Susan.” That was no use of course. What reason could one give? A headache would not do; not having finished one’s holiday work was not a matter that would carry weight with Susan, taking her cue from Bell.

  “Come along,” said Susan kindly. “You aren’t likely to have good nights unless you take some exercise. It’s a pity you can’t get your riding every day, now you’re missing your school games.”

  “I hate riding” — an observation sensibly ignored by Susan as she went out of the room.

  Of course one didn’t care for jog-trotting up and down the Row, with the groom in the middle, and Jo on a pony as fat and brown as herself, on the other side! What a good thing riding was so expensive in London that Mummy only made them go on Saturday mornings. Kay’s horse was not a nice one either: a silly, hard-mouthed thing with an action like a wooden toy. (But we ride together on wonderful horses; they stretch out like greyhounds along the broad green turf — one silver and one black as ebony; the silver one always manages to finish ahead, because it carries less weight. “You ride like Diana, Kay darling; I’ve never seen anyone ride so marvelously as you.”)

  Going to the shops! And what then? Come back, make our beds, and practice — that will take until about a quarter to one; and if I’m quick I might get in ten minutes’ reading before lunch — then lunch — and then?

  It was a great theory of Bell’s that the girls should have some definite occupation on each afternoon of the holidays. She did not hold with their drifting about, “slacking,” she called it, from morning to night. Even if it was only going with Susan to feed the birds in St. James’s Park, it had to be something definite. She did not take any particular interest in it afterward; attempts to describe visits to a cinema or exhibition were met with an absent, “Yes, deary — very nice,” and an inquiry of Susan whether Kay had had her malted milk at eleven. She was fond of saying, “I like the girls to have plenty of interests,” and honestly considered that, in providing the opportunities, she was doing all that could be expected of her. If weather, or some other unforeseen cause, interfered with the planned expedition, Susan, by instruction, took charge. “Kathleen, you’ve been poring over that book for an hour; why don’t you have a game of ping-pong with Jo?” “Now, you two, you’ve been at it quite long enough; sit down and do a bit of knitting for a change.”

  A change! A change! It was almost like being at school, except that the timetable was a vast, arbitrary thing against which there could be no rebellion — treating one person the same as another. Whereas Susan’s method seemed just to chop the day into restless little bits, because of some hazy notion that going on doing the same thing was “bad” for one! Oh, to be able to take a book and curl up somewhere, undisturbed, and read the hours away! The tears gushed to Kays eyes. She said aloud, with the tragic emphasis of youth, “I’m wasting my life!”

  It was one of Bell’s late nights: recently she had been booking more appointments in the evening, less in the daytime. A year ago she would have refused them, but she was shrewd enough to recognize that she had reaped the harvest of that particular tide and must cast her net elsewhere. The cases she was now getting were mainly business women who wanted treatment after their working hours; she charged them the same as she had charged her rich, gullible clients, and found them willing to pay, but more cautious about the expenditure of time than of money. If the head buyer of one of the principal West End stores booked a course of six treatments there was no question of persuading her to continue them for six months, a year — or until a fresh craze took her fancy. So Bell had to keep continually on the lookout for fresh “customers”; which, instead of depressing, stimulated and kept her “on the stretch.” In many ways she found her new connection more rewarding; the women who now came to her were intelligent and energetic, they co-operated and produced better results, a state of affairs which built up Bell’s confidence and her self-respect. For the cynicism with which she regarded her wealthy “time wasters” had not entirely sapped her interest in the work; and now and again an impressive result rekindled her enthusiasm and obliged her to take it seriously.

  Her last appointment on this particular evening was at a flat near Marble Arch, and when she came out it was dusk and for once she felt exhausted. She looked at the time. There was time to run into Flora’s for a quick drink before going home.

  In Plymouth Street, Susan drew the blinds and looked at the table, to make sure she had forgotten nothing. Imperturbable in herself, she had a vague idea it had been rather a trying day. Jo had developed a gumboil which made her fractious, and Kathleen had been more than usually “moony,” to use her mother’s favorite word. They had been to a “picture,” in one of the cinemas of the Kings Road, and it had been dull and, in any case, above the head of Jo. Susan had taken them down to the Embankment for “a breath of fresh air” before tea, and both had dragged and lagged until even Susan’s patience was nearly exhausted. Kathleen insisted on walking by herself and kept stopping to lean on the stone parapet and gaze at the water.

  It was a good thing, thought Susan, that the holidays were nearly over. It was no use pretending they had been a success — not even the three weeks up at Rhyl. A pity it couldn’t be some tiny seaside place, where the cost was much cheaper and the children could rush about by themselves and wear bathing suits all day. But Mrs. Timson did not agree with that; she liked them to be somewhere where “something was going on” — band concerts on the pier, minstrels, pierrots, fun fairs; she really loved, during her own holiday, to give the girls what she considered “a good time,” and except for the first day or two, which she usually slept away in a deck chair on the beach, she kept them all “on the go” and did not seem to care what she spent to make everybody jolly. Such a pity. There wasn’t a more generous person in the world, but she liked the generosity to follow her own pattern. She didn’t seem to understand that the sort of holiday which suited her, and perhaps grown-up people in general, was not quite the kind of thing for two little girls who wanted freedom and the kind of cheerful
, haphazard time that Susan remembered in her own and her sisters’ holidays.

  “If I go to bed at the same time as Jo, I suppose I can read until Mummy comes in?” Susan recognized the note of ultimatum and wisely took it in her stride.

  “I suppose that means you’ve got something in particular you want to read. Well, what is it this time?”

  “Oh, don’t read, Kay,” whined Jo, whose gumboil was really hurting her very much. “When you’re reading you always want everybody to be quiet! Tell us about Verney, Susan.” Jo, at thirteen, had still the small child’s love of “a story.”

  But Kay’s mood had mysteriously changed; she turned from the glass where she was brushing her hair, turned with her sweet, singularly cajoling smile, which transformed the habitual blankness of her pale little face,

  “I’ve told you everything by now,” Susan was saying.

  “Oh no, Susan! Tell us about the Court, and the time you went to the servants’ ball!” She Hung herself across Jo’s bed, where the latter was reluctantly pulling her petticoat over her head.

  Susan picked up the discarded garment, dropped it in the linen basket, and after a moment’s hesitation settled into the basket chair beside the empty grate.

  “Well — you know how they were.” One could tell, with Susan, that she enjoyed these occasions of reminiscence; her position and her voice both assumed the rather prim, careful style she brought to recitals of the past — as if, for the time, she went back into her girlhood, when manners were important and her schoolmistresses had taught her to frame carefully her answers to their questions. Kay, prone on the bed, gave a little flounce of pleasure; Susan, at her best and in her different style, was nearly as satisfactory as Mr. Dick.

  “There was a very large staff at the Court,” began Susan carefully. “And every year, just before the Christmas house party broke up, there used to be this big ball. All the servants from the houses around were invited, and the people from the estate, and the tradesmen and their families. The house party had early dinner, and when everything was cleared away the servants could get ready to enjoy themselves.” Brought up in the art of entertaining the young, Susan was conscientious about her detail. “The ball began at nine-thirty, and there was a buffet supper at midnight, which was served by waiters hired from town, so that the staff should not be obliged to interrupt their pleasure and wait on the company — which was a very large number indeed.”

  “A hundred? A thousand?” Jo, passionate for exactitude, broke in.

  “I couldn’t say, to a score or so.” Susan was scrupulous. “But as there were more than fifty employed in and out of the house, I dare say there would be between two and three hundred. It was quite like a public ball.”

  “Golly,” said Jo.

  “Go on, Susan.” Kay always found Susan’s formal, leisurely recitations fascinating in some strange fashion she could not express, even to herself. It was like reading an old storybook.

  “Well, you know there were nine of us,” said Susan placidly. “Eleven, counting Mother and Father; and the three youngest, who were of course too little to go to the ball. But even so, it was too many. Think of it: eight Claybornes marching up to the Court! It would have seemed like an army. We were all invited, because the elder Mr. Somervell — Mr. Dick’s father — was a very hospitable gentleman and would not hurt anyone’s feelings. But Father said five (counting himself and Mother) was plenty; so we six elder ones had to draw lots. He put about a dozen strips of paper into his top hat he wore on Sundays, three of them marked with crosses; and I was lucky enough to draw one of the marked ones.

  “Wasn’t I excited? I was only just seventeen, and I had never been to a ball in my life. Of course I hadn’t got a ball gown, but I had a white satin blouse, all ruched, with a beautiful guipure yoke, cut square, with gathered chiffon round the edge. I’d have liked to take the lace out and make it ‘low’ but Mother wasn’t having any of that. So off I went, in my high neck and my waist pulled in, with a black silk skirt of Mother’s about five yards round the hem. I frizzed my hair and pinned it in what they called a ‘teapot handle.’ I must have looked terrible!”

  “I bet you looked lovely.” Jo ceased sucking her gumboil to be complimentary.

  “I expect you looked just like one of the illustrations to Peter Ibbetson.”

  “Shut up about Peter Ibbetson; go on,” said Jo.

  “I had been told how these things went. When the band struck up the first tune Mr. Somervell asked the housekeeper to open the ball with him, and the butler went and bowed to Madam and asked for the honor, and those two couples made a complete turn of the floor before we joined it. It was Mr. Dick’s business to ask Mother, because we were supposed to be the most important family in the village; the oldest, anyhow — going right back to King John. Some of the tombs are in the churchyard — hardly thicker than paper; all worn away by the weather.

  “Well, it happened that very morning that Mother had had an accident with a kettle of boiling water. One of her feet was all bound up, and it had fairly tormented her on the way to the Court. So, although it must have disappointed her bitterly, she had to ask to be excused, and Mr. Dick said something kind and was just going to move away when Mother said, “I’m sure, sir, that one of my daughters would be honored to take my place.” It wasn’t that she wished to push either my sister Lucy or me forward; she was always for keeping us quiet and in the background. But I knew what was in the back of her mind. She was afraid Mr. Dick would ask the head gardeners wife, and she was determined his first partner should be a Clayborne, not somebody who was only a newcomer to the village — and no ornament at that!” The glow of an old internecine feud broke for a moment the calm thread of the narrative and heightened the red on Susan’s cheek.

  “Oh, now — this is the exciting part.”

  “So there was I (for, as I was the elder, the honor naturally fell to me), who hardly knew the waltz from the valeta, stepping out on the floor with Mr. Dick’s arm round my waist.”

  With his arm round my waist. Yes: with your arm round my waist. The slow fox trot is our favorite, isn’t it, Dick? With one of those funny, muffled tunes — and just a little bit off the beat. On a shining floor with dim lights — or the kind of light that flickers like a snowstorm all over the dancers.

  “It was a wonderful spectacle. I’ve told you about the great ballroom at the Court, with the diapered ceiling, and the lights hanging down in clusters, like diamond necklaces. All down one side there were tall bay windows — I forget if there were five or six of them. When there were summer dances, I’ve been told, these were open, and the young ladies and gentlemen used to stroll out between the dances and flirt on the terrace.”

  Me in a low gown, and you — perhaps you’d have a gardenia in your buttonhole; and you’d take it out and give it to me, and I’d wear it in my hair for the rest of the evening and keep it ... and keep it ...

  “Perhaps the men were not so smart, but the women were elegant. Those were the days when you held up your train with a little loop of ribbon, if you had a real evening gown. Most of us hadn’t, but our skirts were real silk, and the way they flew out and rustled like a grove of birch trees when we swung round was beautiful. Mrs. Bannerman, the housekeeper, was a most stately old lady; she wore a black brocaded satin, as good, I’m sure, as anything Madam had in her wardrobe. Being young and pretty confident of myself, I was quite satisfied with my magpie effect. I had a compliment from the head groom, too, who was supposed to be a very supercilious young man, who thought himself too good for the village girls. ‘I had no idea you were such a dancer, Miss Clayborne!’ he said to me. “I’d heard you were too bookish.”

  “You weren’t really bookish, were you?” suspiciously asked Jo.

  “Well, I’d been to boarding school, which was thought rather out of the way for people in our position.”

  “Tell us some more about the clothes,” Kay prompted.

  “There was a sky-blue, I remember — but the most striki
ng figure was the French maid. She was all in black and red — she had a very good figure, and the cut of her gown set it off to perfection. Like many Frenchwomen, she was very plain, and I suppose the stiff loops of black satin ribbon standing up from her shoulders, nearly as high as her topknot, did make her look rather ridiculous. The village was always ready to make fun of Mamselle, as we called her, and there was a lot of smothered giggling at her stylish getup and her exaggerated manners.”

  “Whose maid was she?”

  The eyes of Kay and Susan met. There was a barely perceptible pause before the latter answered.

  “Just one of the ladies in the house party. Well, we pranced about, and after the first dance or two the gentry sat on a sort of dais at the end of the room and watched us enjoying ourselves.”

  “Who were the gentry?” Kay persisted.

  “Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Somervell’s friends, and the vicar and his wife, and a few people from the next county —”

  “And Lady Cynthia? Was she there?”

  Susan moistened her lips.

  “What did you say?”

  “The French maid: I suppose she was Lady Cynthia’s?” Why should she suppose it? Yet it did not take Susan’s silence to satisfy Kay that her shot had found its mark.

  Susan’s expression had veiled itself, as if she was thinking. Jo sat cross-legged, blissfully unconscious, cleaning her nails with the point of a file. Kays heart thudded against the back of her hands, which were folded under her chest; motionless, prone, she lay like a little sphinx, her eyes fixed on Susan’s face, as though she would break from that polished forehead, those wooden, ruddy cheeks and little budlike mouth the secret they casketed. And the door opened, and Bell came in.

  Jo flung down the file and held out her chubby arms.

  “Hello, Mummy! Susan’s telling us about the hall at the Court —”