Mrs. Killigrew either knew or guessed most of what went on in Alice’s family. She had not been told in so many words that Avis had walked out of Judith’s life, but she had guessed, and her comment, which she had kept to herself, had been “good riddance”. She was a woman who should have had children of her own, but her newly-married husband had been killed in the first world war. She had tried, as she had often told Alice, to take to someone else, but as she put it: “When you’ve known the best you can’t fancy anything less.” Instead she had made a life for herself as part of Alice’s family, all of whom she knew as if they were her own. Often in the evenings she would sit with Alice, and the talk was always “Do you remember when Mr. Charles . . . ?” Or “That puts me in mind of that time Mr. Bruce . . .” Or “Miss Beatrice, as she was then, was a rare one for . . .” Or “I can see Charlotte as if it were yesterday . . .” But Alice’s children had not needed her, never known her really well, she was just one of the large household who ran their stockbroker Tudor home at Esher. Nor had Mrs. Killigrew felt affection for the children save as family, she was interested in their doings but no more. But Judith had been different, she had been, though she never thought about her that way, the daughter she would have liked to have had, a domesticated affectionate child, always wanting to help. At Christmas and for her birthday she had regularly placed a little gift in Alice’s parcel, and she had kept all Judith’s thank-you letters, together with Christmas cards Judith had sent, and a snap someone had taken of her in her bridesmaid’s dress. She had appeared quite unmoved when Alice had told her first that Judith was in England, and later that she would spend her summer holiday with them, but in her heart she was what she called “in a twit”.
Judith being so green in her memory Mrs. Killigrew saw, as soon as Alice did, that something was worrying the girl, but being a direct woman she had no intention of remaining silent. “Give her time,” she thought, “and I’ll hear all about it or my name’s not Killigrew.”
Outwardly Judith slipped back almost at once into the niche she had made for herself when she was twelve. She fed, brushed and exercised the dogs, she arranged the flowers, she helped with the housework, and on Thursdays she cleaned the silver. In time the quiet and affection that surrounded her, and the small duties she took over, had their effect, she felt less lonely and Lance appeared less angry. She wrote to him each day, long loving letters telling him of her doings and imploring for news, and each morning she waylaid the postman hoping for an answer. It was five days before she heard, and then it was only a scrappy note. Life was foul, he had nothing to do and nowhere to go, he couldn’t afford any shows, all grumbles but he finished up “Love Lance”. Judith was transported. Poor Lance, of course he was miserable alone with his Mother, who was horrid to him, but he was well, at least he didn’t say he was ill; he had written, and glory of all glories, he had used the word “Love”.
Mrs. Killigrew, watching Judith hurry off to post letters and waiting for the postman, saw the radiance that shone from her when Lance’s letter arrived, and with a twinkle in her eye thought “It’s a boy”. That was a Wednesday, the next day over the silver cleaning she got down to the truth.
“Who got a letter yesterday?”
Judith flushed.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t, but I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? I saw the sparkle, and I said to myself, ‘I know the look, it’s a boy.’ Who is he?”
It was an immense relief to Judith to talk about Lance. She had no wish to keep him secret, but there had been no one except Basil, whom she seldom saw, to whom she could talk. Except for the help she gave with money, Judith kept nothing back, but drew Lance as she saw him, and added to her portrait with imitations of Lance speaking. Mrs. Killigrew was a wonderful listener, she went on with her silver cleaning and appeared to be as interested in Lance as Judith was herself, but, though her lips never moved, query after query arose in her mind. When Judith at last ran out of superlatives, warning herself to go carefully, she asked her questions.
“What does your Aunt Beatrice think of him?”
Judith flushed.
“She doesn’t know I know him, but Uncle Basil does, and so does Catherine.”
“Haven’t you brought him to the house?”
Judith bent her head over the sugar basin she was cleaning.
“No. If I tell you something will you promise not to tell Granny?”
“Depends what it is, if it’s anything she ought to know of course I’ll tell her, if it isn’t I won’t.”
Judith, relieved, stopped working and looked at Mrs. Killigrew.
“Well, you won’t want to tell her this, because it’s about Aunt Beatrice. I couldn’t bring Lance home because she thinks . . . well, you know the sort of thing Aunts think.”
Mrs. Killigrew was startled.
“I don’t! Come on, out with it.”
“Well, Robert was reading me something . . . I can’t tell you what because it’s a secret . . . Aunt Beatrice found us and was terribly angry.”
“Found you where?”
“In his bedroom. There was nowhere else where we’d be sure to be alone.”
Mrs. Killigrew was sure Judith was speaking the truth. She threw a pitying thought to Beatrice. “Always looking for good to do, and missing what’s under her nose.” To Judith she said:
“You’re getting a big girl now, can’t expect people to treat you like a child.”
Judith went back to her work.
“Of course, but you do see that because she thinks I’m like that I couldn’t bring Lance, because she would think I was like that about Lance.”
“And aren’t you?”
Judith again flushed.
“Sort of, but . . .”
“And why shouldn’t you be? After all, you’re just on seventeen, you’ll be having dozens of boy friends I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Will I? I didn’t know it was correct for a jeune fille to have beaux. Catherine goes out a lot, but I don’t think she’s exactly got a beau yet.”
Mrs. Killigrew thought of what she knew of Avis, and what she knew of Beatrice, and had difficulty in holding back a smile.
“Catherine isn’t you, and you aren’t Catherine, you’ve started earlier that’s all.”
Judith looked up again at Mrs. Killigrew.
“I don’t think I’ve started anything in the way you mean, I don’t think Lance is what you’d call a boy friend, but everybody must have somebody to be fond of, mustn’t they? Lance is my person.”
Mrs. Killigrew was moved, so she spoke crossly.
“What a way to talk! You’d think you’d no one but that Lance the way you go on, just look at all the people who love you.”
Judith placed the sugar basin amongst the cleaned silver.
“I’m looking, but truly I don’t think there are many. There’s Granny, and you, and the dogs, and Simpsy.”
“And your Mother and Father, and all your Aunts, Uncles and cousins.”
Judith picked up a salt cellar and examined it.
“I don’t see Mother or my Father, and really I don’t think Aunt Beatrice is fond of me, I’m a duty that she’s taken on and doesn’t much like.”
“Well, there’s your Uncle Basil.”
“I like him, and I think he likes me, but he never says much, he’s afraid of Aunt Beatrice I think, and it’s no good telling me Catherine loves me because she doesn’t, I think she almost hates me.”
Mrs. Killigrew made shocked clicking sounds.
“What about your Aunt Mercy, you’re always speaking of her?”
Judith’s voice warmed.
“I adore her, but she’s a Stratford-Derickson and I’m all Winster at the moment.”
“But you see her?”
Judith began to clean the salt cellar.
“As a visitor, which
of course is all I am with the Carlyles, but somehow I didn’t feel so much one when I lived with Aunt Mercy.”
Mrs. Killigrew stopped working and leant on the table.
“Why don’t you tell your Granny about Lance?”
Judith thought that a silly question.
“How can I? She’d be sure to tell Aunt Beatrice, and she’d think hateful things.”
Mrs. Killigrew went back to her cleaning, and there was a long silence before she answered.
“I’m not so sure she would tell your Aunt. Tell you what, just talk about him natural, just as one of the students at your school. Presently, if I know anything, she’ll talk to me, and when she does I’ll tell what I think.”
“What’s that?”
“That she ought to invite him to stay . . .”
Mrs. Killigrew was going on to say “so that she can give him a look over,” but before the words were out Judith was round the table and she was being hugged.
“Darling angel Mrs. Killigrew, could you truly ask Granny that? It would be such heaven. You can’t think how marvellous he is.”
* * * * *
Lance arrived in Kent in the last week in August. Judith had done what Mrs. Killigrew suggested, and talked about him to Alice, and in time Alice spoke of him to Mrs. Killigrew, but arranging for him to stay had not been as easy as Mrs. Killigrew had hoped. “Perhaps,” Alice had said, but mentally she had added “Perhaps not”.
Her hope was that Judith would become such friends with the young things of the neighbourhood that she would lose interest in the possibly rather undesirable young things she met at that strange school in which her Mother had permitted her to be placed. Things, however, had not worked out as Alice had hoped. The young locals had grown up together, they had shared interests, and, though they liked Judith and found her amusing, she did not make close friends with any of them.
“They’ve got each other, Granny, they don’t need me,” Judith had explained.
“But, darling,” Alice had protested, “you mustn’t worry so much about being needed, you have fun with them, don’t you?”
Judith remembered a similar conversation when she was twelve.
“I told you once I was like Shem and Japheth, I need people to love me. I haven’t changed.”
Lance had gripped the invitation to stay with Alice as a sinking swimmer would grip any out-held hand. He was desperately anxious to leave London. But, eager though he was to get away, he did not forget that if his invitation was, as he intended, to extend until the term started, he must win over Judith’s Grandmother. So it was an exceedingly charming, correctly dressed young man who got out of the train, and Lance could be delightful on first acquaintance. He made no mistakes in dealing with Alice. Judith, he guessed, would have told her his story, in so far as she knew it, and so for once he found himself speaking the near truth. He did remove his Mother from the second-hand clothes’ business, which she had run since her husband’s death, and suggested instead a spoilt woman spending all she had on herself. As well he drew a fancy but moving picture of himself hearing that he had a faulty heart and could not do his national service.
“It was a shocking blow, I don’t mind telling you, Mrs. Winster. Apart from the fact that I hated being different, if you know what I mean, I was crazy to have a crack at the Navy.”
Alice, in spite of Lance’s charm, reserved judgment on him. She admitted she had started with reservations; Lance was at a theatre school, which, in spite of Judith’s ecstatic descriptions of his brilliance, seemed to her no place for an impecunious young man. As well, though she knew this to be prejudice, she was sorry that Avis’s daughter should have fallen at so young an age for a man, it was a pity she had not got a nice girl friend. But these were not, she knew, her real reasons for a vague disquiet, it was something in Lance himself, some quality on which she could not lay a finger.
Mrs. Killigrew was hoping to like Lance for Judith’s sake. Like Alice, she was suspicious of men who went to stage schools, all very well for those with more money than sense, but no place for a man who had his way to make in the world. Then, too, she knew, which Alice did not, that there were holes in the story of Lance as retold by Judith. Mrs. Killigrew accepted Judith’s reason for not bringing him to the Carlyles’ house, it sounded to her only too likely, knowing Beatrice as she had since she was a child. What she did not like were the accounts Judith sometimes gave her of the way she and Lance spent their spare time; it was altogether too extravagant a way of getting around if, as Judith said, the young man had not a couple of pence to rub together. But Mrs. Killigrew had, which was unusual for her, not spoken what was in her mind, for it seemed to her important that Judith should feel she could say what she liked to her, so she had avoided any word that might sound like criticism of Lance.
Mrs. Killigrew’s first feeling on seeing Lance was thankfulness. What a nice-looking young man, and what a mercy, it would have been difficult if he had turned out to be a nasty type, seeing it was she who had talked Mrs. Winster into having him to stay. But Lance had not been in the house long before she began to revise that first impression. Doing his room she saw things Alice did not, and she did not like what she saw. If Lance’s Mother was the sort he made her out to be it was odd she took the trouble she did with his clothes. Lance said he lived at home, and they had no help so no one but his Mother darned and patched. Mrs. Killigrew knew good needlework when she saw it, and as she washed a pair of Lance’s socks she thought: “No flibberty-gibbet did this darn, and only a good Mother took the tail off a shirt to tail and top it.” But if they were so poor that he had only mended things, how had he come by a new expensive suit? Mrs. Killigrew recognised good clothes when she saw them, and could tell by the feel good material; that suit was no reach-me-down, it had been made for him and no money spared. But these things alone would not have made her distrust Lance, it was what she called to herself his two-facedness. Serving the meals and bringing in tea or coffee she had to hear what was said, and her sharp ear spotted that Lance with Alice was a very different young man from the Lance who went about with Judith, and unless she was very much mistaken, was making her jumpy as a cat, or, if it came to that, the Lance who visited her kitchen. “I suppose seeing Judith is so friendly he thinks he can be friendly too,” she thought, “but what he doesn’t know is there’s friendliness and there’s taking liberties, and that’s where Mr. Know-all Lance makes his mistake.”
Judith had supposed that when Lance came to the house, staying with Grandmother would be unadulterated bliss. Lance had not been in the house an hour before, though she did not face the fact, his being in the house was more anxiety than pleasure. Of course Granny did not know Lance, and so perhaps she would not notice that with her he was not being real. Her sensitive ear for inflexions made her terribly conscious of the artificiality of what she came to call Granny’s Lance, and it distressed her that he found it necessary to tell so many silly lies. Why pretend he had masses of friends at the School when he had not, and why should he have if he didn’t want to? Why pretend he still knew those boys he had been at school with at Eton, and was out to dinner with them most nights, especially why say it in front of her who knew he never went out to dinner? Why did he talk to Granny about all the grand people he knew? He never talked about them to her. Then there was Mrs. Killigrew; he could not be shy, could he? People did odd things when they were shy, it must be something like that to make him so queer with her. He must know really Mrs. Killigrew was not the sort of person who liked being teased, that she hated being called “old Killy” and was shocked when Lance pretended to pinch her bottom. But outside the house and away from the two new Lances Judith was happy. It was like London really; being so happy alone with him, then getting that sinking feeling when she travelled back to Hampstead. She supposed that was what happened when you loved a person very much, things could only be perfect when you were alone with them. And how perfect! The
further their walks took them from the house the more wonderful Lance became, everything that he said showed that he needed her.
“Life’s been pretty bloody, I think I would finish myself off if I didn’t know you’d stick by me, Judith.”
Judith did not take the finishing himself off seriously, and indeed hardly took in what he had said, for his last words had made her so happy.
“Angel Lance. You know I want to be with you always.”
“Would you do anything that I asked you?”
“Of course I would if I could.”
“No matter what it was?”
Judith took his arm and squeezed it to her side.
“Absolutely anything. When people love you, you have to, don’t you, or they might stop loving you.”
Lance had arrived on a Monday, and was to leave on the following Monday. On the Friday, when he was alone with Judith, he said:
“I want you to tell your Grandmother I am to stay for the rest of the holidays.”
They were in the garden picking roses. Judith straightened up, a stricken look on her face.
“It’s no good, Lance. As you can guess, that’s what I hoped she’d say, and I have hinted to her, but there’s nothing doing.”
Judith Page 19