Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  Still, why not? You are only young once, and the money you spend on yourself as you get older does not make up for having to go short when you are young and gay. She rode and played golf and tennis and never seemed to have a moment to spare; dashed off to the continent now and again, dashed back, and was tearing up to town before her things were unpacked. But I knew she loved her home, and we used to have great confabulations now and again about the house and garden, and all of a sudden she would throw up all her social engagements and settle down to planning a new rock garden or redecorating a room, as if there was not another thought in her mind. She would generally fly off in the middle, leaving us to tidy up her loose ends, but she never did it without making an apology and promising, “if we would only leave it alone,” she would finish the whole thing. Bless her. The world was “so full of a number of things” for Kathleen; I did not blame her for not wanting to miss any of them.

  Jo, of course, was just the opposite. Steady as a rock, she was actually turning her dog breeding into a money-making concern. It was the death of Jo each time she had to part with a puppy, but she stuck to it, and Brockett spaniels began to have quite a name in the kennel world. No young man had a chance with Jo unless he was prepared to take her and her dogs together, and Kathleen once told me that Jo interrupted a proposal by looking at her watch and saying, “Look, I’ve got to walk these puppies; I’ve just been worming them.” I didn’t worry about Jo, but I often felt I would like to see Kathleen settled in a home of her own.

  Still, there was plenty of time. In these days women are still girls at thirty; and it was better she should take her time than rush into something she would regret later on.

  Mr. Somervell and Lady Emily came down to see us once. Kathleen could not have been more natural; if anybody was a little constrained it was Mr. Somervell; I caught him once or twice looking at Katie as if she puzzled him. Men never realize how a girl alters as she grows up and forgets about her schoolgirl nonsense. She made no comment after they had gone except to say — which was true — that Lady Emily looked a lot older. It struck me that Mr. Somervell had aged as well and that he had something of that resigned look that a man gets who has married with his head and not with his heart. All the same I am sure Lady Emily made him a very good wife and that she had balanced him in a way he probably had not realized he needed. I got a sort of feeling that there were no more wild parties for Mr. Somervell, and picking up unsuitable females like myself! And, rather surprisingly, I realized that although I had respected her very much I had never really liked Lady Emily, and I was a bit sorry for Mr. Somervell ...

  I don’t know what came over her, but that night, for the first time, Kathleen told me what had actually happened that day in her childhood on Tooting Common. She told it rather crudely, I thought, with a touch of bravado, as if she was seeing if I would be shocked: although there was nothing in particular to be shocked at, and I only wish I had known it at the time. Yes, my Kathleen was altering; she had lost the shy, fanciful, shrinking side and was down to hard earth at last. But they have to grow up sometime ...

  It was Jo who elected to drop the next bombshell.

  “Mummy, do you ever wonder what’s happened to Pop?”

  I had never known her to speak of Harry since the pair of them were little, and I hardly knew what to say. I did happen to know where Harry was, and I said I expected he was all right. I knew my solicitors had seen to that.

  “I think I’d like to look him up; would you mind?” asked the unaccountable Jo.

  Well, I could hardly say I did; after all, he was her father, and the girls, both of them, were old enough by now to draw their own conclusions. I told Jo she must do as she liked. She was going up to town the following day, about some business for the kennels, so I gave her Harry’s address, not very willingly, and I wondered what he would say when she turned up. I thought it might be a shock for both of them, but I knew Jo could take it, and I was not sorry, in a way, to think that my conduct of the last sixteen or seventeen years would be justified. Jo had quite enough common sense to see through Harry, and it was better she should work her curiosity out of her system, instead of feeling that I was keeping her and her father apart.

  When she came back she came straight to me in the greenhouse, where I was potting some seedlings.

  “I say, Mummy, do you know Pop’s married again?”

  I didn’t, but I realized I had no reason to be surprised.

  “And they’ve got two kids!” burst out Jo. “Our sister and brother! I must say they’re rather sweet.”

  That was Jo all over. She did not say much about Harry, except he seemed “a bit rocky,” whether financially or in health I did not gather; the new wife was “quite nice,” and it sounded as if she — Jo — had been made quite welcome. Not too welcome, I hoped; I did not fancy a tie-up between us and Harry’s new family. It is my private belief that Jo used to send her father money after that; I once found her checkbook, with all the counterfoils filled in, but every now and again, instead of a name, a cross. I could not grudge it; Harry would always be hard up, and perhaps he found it easier to accept money from Jo than from me. The calls on my solicitors ended, and if Jo was making up the deficit she could afford it. She never spent a penny on herself, apart from the kennels, and she was making quite a profit, now the expenses had been worked off.

  I liked Brockett; I liked the life we led there and the sort of simple dignity of our surroundings. I liked coming back there after my work, and having Cissie as my neighbor, and I liked the way Susan had settled into her position as housekeeper and the sensible way in which she ran the three servants. There was another thing too — perhaps it seems silly to mention it, but it meant a lot to me, because I realized what it stood for. Susan had given up calling me “Mrs. Timson” and always said “Madam.” It’s generally the other way round; people are inclined to grow more familiar when they have been with one a long time. But I knew this was Susan’s way of showing me that she respected what I had done and that she accepted me not only as her employer but as her mistress.

  In 1938 George died and left everything but a small annuity he had settled on Hetty to Kathleen and Jo. And I began to think it was getting time for me to retire. It was hard to believe it, but I had been working twenty-six years, and I had just had my sixtieth birthday.

  PART IV – Kathleen and Jo Timson

  Chapter I

  “HALLO,” said Jo, looking up from her occupation of grooming the spaniel puppy who, flat — or as flat as rotundity permitted — on its back, made lolling attempts to greet the newcomer. “Woo-hoo!” observed Jo. “You’ve had your hair done. A bit noisy — what?”

  Kay combed back a vivid crest with violent-colored fingernails.

  “I was sick of the old way; I thought I’d have a change.” Her thin, fine skin showed under the strong light of the window a hairlike tracery of lines about the eyes and the corners of the mouth; otherwise she might still have passed for a girl in her twenties. It was Jo who looked the elder now, with her ruddy, battered complexion, her cheerful neglect of personal grooming, and the rough fuzz of dark hair on which, she declared, she could not be bothered to bestow either time or trouble. Jo’s hairdressing consisted of a weekly shampoo with dog soap and chopping off the longer ends with a pair of manicure scissors; after which she usually got Kay to shave the back of her neck for her. But in spite of her indifference to her own appearance she took the deepest possible interest in Kay’s, and the grave attention she fixed on her sister’s head caused the latter to frown a little.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s very swell; but I was wondering if the color was a bit hard, for you.”

  “Oh, my God!” Kay laughed shortly. “Don’t you start telling me I’m beginning to look my age!”

  “Who says that?” Jo returned placidly to the combing of her spaniel.

  “Oh — Mother: more or less indirectly. ‘I like you best in hats with a bit of brim.’ I don’t care for
this halo style — it only suits girls in their teens.’ Wait till she sees me in a kepi!” She snapped her cigarette case and spun the wheel of her lighter viciously with her thumb — Bell’s trick. “It was a dogfight at Antoine’s today; half the girl

  gone and everybody scrapping for appointments for ‘perms.’ There’s a war on! And how.” She flung herself wearily into a deep chair.

  “See anybody you know?”

  “I met Cyril, and he took me to Lois’s. Drawing room packed with elderly young men clinging together like wilting daffodils and whispering about ‘assignments’ in Cairo and Cape Town and — Timbuktu!”

  “Lady Solness in form?”

  “She’s organizing an ambulance group — Solness is getting posted to the Middle East or something; they’re expecting to have trouble there. Lois means to go out too — she asked me if I’d like to join the party!”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I’d heard the B.B.C. and the M. of I. were the fashionable funk holes, and I’d probably get a job in one of them.”

  Jo chuckled.

  “You certainly go round making yourself popular. Oh well — look at young Tommy Beecham! Best of the litter — he’s a pippin, isn’t he?” Jo set the spaniel — great-grandson of Beech and Amber — on his feet, where he made a great business of shaking himself and flirting out his flounces.

  “Jo.” Kay paid no attention to the puppy; turned sideways in the chair, her thin hands locked on the arm, her darkened eyes looked intently at her sister. “What are you going to do?”

  “Me? What do you mean?”

  “You’ll have to join something.”

  “How can I? I’ve got my hands full with this chap and his sisters, haven’t I? Especially as Markham’s joining the Wrens. I can’t think what she wants to be in such a hurry for,” complained Jo. “She’s twenty-seven; they won’t be calling the twenty-sevens up yet awhile —”

  “I expect she wants to make sure she gets into the Wrens; it’s far the most popular service. Dog breeding isn’t a reserved occupation, and — Jo: you’re only thirty-three. I should be looking around if I were you.”

  A look of stupefaction blotted out the customary cheerfulness of Jo’s face.

  “But — the war’ll be over before they get to people of our age!”

  “Don’t you kid yourself.” But there was compassion in Kay’s voice. “They were saying at Lois’s that this wars going on for five — six — perhaps seven years.”

  “But it can’t!” whispered Jo.

  “That’s what they said about the last war; we were going to mop up Germany in twelve months. This war isn’t going to stop at Germany; the whole continent will be in before it’s over, and India, and America too, perhaps. It’s — it’s going to be a sort of Armageddon.” She dropped her head back against the cushion of the chair and closed her eyes. “Our good times are over; it’s the end of Europe. It may be the end of — civilization.”

  “I can’t think it’s as bad as that.” Jo had recovered. “There’s always a lot of pessimists when we start a war. I’ll have to make some plans of course —”

  “For God’s sake, don’t stick at making plans! Get yourself somewhere while you’ve got the chance. By the time the call-up reaches us the services will probably be full, and they’ll draft us into factories or canteen work,” said Kay drearily;

  “What are you going to do?” asked Jo after a pause.

  “God knows. I’m no good for anything.”

  “Rot.”

  “It’s not rot. I’m telling you: I’m no good.” A bitter little laugh jerked itself out of Kay’s twisted lips. “Mother’s seen to that.”

  Jo sat back on her heels, her face shocked and red.

  “You know you don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t I? Like hell I mean it!” She laughed again as she lit another cigarette.

  “Well, I think it’s a pretty rotten thing to say, considering all you’ve had done for you. Why, you were always the favorite.”

  “Yeah,” said Kay with irony.

  “Anyhow, I don’t suppose she’ll hear of your going into the services. She’ll say you’re not strong enough.”

  Kay projected a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

  “It will be a medical board, not Mother, that will make up its mind about me. What a joke! For the first time in her life Mother’s going to find herself up against something she can’t do anything about! That will be a surprise for her. And the very devil for me,” ended Kay on a whisper.

  “Kay. What makes you so beastly about Mummy?” Jo spoke uncomfortably, plucking hair out of the spaniel’s comb. Kay’s heavy eyes, half closed, came to rest on her sister with a curious expression, half scorn and half pity, under their lids.

  “Never mind ... You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I dare say I wouldn’t; but I’d like to know what you’re getting at. You’re always going on as if something’s biting you — as if you’d been — well, wronged in some way ... Jo’s brow wrinkled with the effort of analysis. The other sat up quickly.

  “For once you’ve found the very word. Wronged! Of course I’ve been wronged. What is it but wronging to take away a person’s powers of will and decision? To shut her away from every form of reality? The real world’s here now: coming at me like an express train — and I’ve got nothing to meet it with.” Her hands were clenched, and under the thin suit Jo could see the tautness of her body. “I’m thirty-five! And I’ve had none of the experiences girls ten years younger than I are supposed to take for granted. If ever I’ve started anything I’ve been stopped —”

  “Oh, for crying out loud! Be fair. You’ve done exactly what you liked ever since you left school!” indignantly said Jo.

  “Have I?” Kay leaned back in her chair with an air of abandoning the argument.

  “Well, since you were grown up, anyhow.”

  “By the time I was grown up I was tired of liking things. I was scared of liking them — for fear they would be taken and twisted and made different from the way I meant them to be. If I got an idea it was snatched and pushed and poked about until I ceased to recognize it as mine. It had to follow Mother’s pattern — not grow by itself. Oh, what’s the good of talking? Where is Mother, by the way?”

  “At the clinic,” muttered Jo. Kay got up and went to the window; she stood there looking out in silence for so long that Jo became uneasy. “She’ll be back in time for tea.”

  “I wondered if it’s occurred to her yet that we may have to give up Brockett?”

  “Give up Brockett?”

  “How can we stop here if there aren’t any servants? Susan can’t start working again, the way she did at Sutton. And if we aren’t at home Mother certainly can’t keep the place running by herself.

  Besides, what about her work? How’s she going to get up and down from town? ‘

  “Well, I suppose if they call up Judd I can fix things somehow so as to run her up in the morning —”

  “Run her up — in what? They’re talking of commandeering cars; petrols to be cut in any case — and you know the Rolls eats petrol.”

  “Oh, Kay. Even now — I can’t believe it ...”

  Kay turned; the bitterness had faded from her small face, which, as she smiled at her sister, was luminous with compassion.

  “That’s just it. You and I — we can’t believe it: because nothing has ever happened to interrupt our lives before. We’ve known nothing but comfort and ease and convenience all our lives. Yet scores of people have had to give up their homes already; hundreds are doing jobs they never dreamed of; thousands have seen their families broken up, are having to close down their businesses and break off their careers — while you and I have spent nearly six months in behaving as if the war’s got nothing to do with us. Can’t you see it’s fantastic? It’s simply not — human! Even Mother goes on as if the whole of the war consisted in moving Avenue House down to the country, in case they start bombing London: and turning the Regent’
s Park place into a casualty hospital for civilians! She even talks about running it herself. How does she think she’s going to do that from Brockett, when transport gets as bad as they say it’s going to be?”

  “Well, she’ll have to keep on with her birth control clinic down here,” pointed out Jo.

  “I wonder? She’s had half a dozen blazing rows with the council already, and birth control isn’t going to be popular in wartime; we’ve got to keep up the population — for the sake of providing cannon fodder for the next war!” Kay grinned cynically. “Incidentally, they’re supposed to be going to take contraceptives off the market. There’s no more quinine, anyhow, unless you happen to be lucky —”

  “Oh? Well, that doesn’t worry me.”

  “Or me, as it happens. I wonder what Mother would say if we asked her for some tips on birth control? For our own use, I mean.”

  “Throw a fit, I should think.” Jo smiled rather stiffly. “Do you remember her lecture on ‘the facts of life,’ before we went to the Towers? In spite of it I don’t believe she ever thinks we’ve got any ideas of our own on that sort of thing.”

  “That’s what she likes to think,” corrected Kay. “She knows perfectly well we know all about it; but she would go tearing mad if we ever took it into our heads to put our ideas into practice.”

  “I never have; have you?”

  “No ... Not exactly.”

  “I often wondered if you were a virgin,” said Jo simply.

  “What made you wonder?”

  “Oh ... most people of our ages don’t seem to be, and I thought, perhaps, with all your chaps —”

  “All my chaps!” scoffed Kay.

  Jo grinned.

  “Your old men, as Mummy calls them! What makes you so keen on men older than yourself? I must say I think boys are more fun.”

  “Oh — they’re such a bore.” Kay moved restlessly. “Honestly, if you went about as much as I do you’d think the men of our generation are a pretty worthless lot. The children of the last war: half of them are homos, and those who aren’t pretend they are, to be in the fashion. I’d sooner have the men who fought between 1914 and 1918; they mayn’t be so brainy, but at least they proved they were worth something, and they aren’t so utterly taken up with their own and each other’s brilliance as — for instance, the lot at Lois’s today.”