by Rebecca West
“Well, Papa has not written,” I said.
“I feel it’s that too,” said Mary. “But what I can’t understand is, why she ever thought he would.”
“Did you know he wouldn’t?” I asked.
“I thought he would probably forget.”
I did not like her having known better than myself what he was going to do.
“What I can’t understand,” Mary went on, “is that they never seem to get used to each other. Mamma is always surprised when Papa does things like not writing. And Papa is always surprised when Mamma wants to pay bills.”
“Yes, and Mamma minds so,” I said.
“That’s extraordinary,” said Mary.
But we were touching on a long-standing perplexity. We could see that Papa would take an intense interest in us, and that we would take an intense interest in him, because we belonged to the same family. And we could see that Mamma would take another sort of intense interest in us, and that we would give it to her back. But we could not see that Mamma and Papa could matter very much to each other, because they were not related.
“But, Mary, I have been rather wondering. What happens if Papa never writes?”
“If he doesn’t come back?”
“Yes.”
“I should die,” said Mary.
“So would I,” I said. I stood back from the beans and looked at the circle of green hills, which fused and wavered glassily through my tears. But they were there, they remained solid when I wiped away my tears. “But what would we do?” I asked.
“Oh, we could work, we could go into factories or shops or offices, or we could be servants, and between us we could make enough to keep Mamma and Richard Quin till he grows up,” said Mary.
“But I rather think there is a law forbidding people as young as us from working,” I said.
“We could cheat and say we were older than we are,” said Mary. “Everybody is always surprised when they hear our ages.”
“There is that,” I said.
“Anyway it will be all right,” said Mary. “Really all right. You see, we would go on working at the piano in the evenings and someday we would switch to being pianists, and after that it is going to be all right.”
“Oh, yes, of course, I’m not worrying,” I said, “and I think we have enough beans.”
Mamma had not seen us at work in the bean-row when she passed through the kitchen-garden, or she would not have looked desolate. Instead she would have looked as if she were a sick woman, posing for a photograph she meant to send to someone whom she intended to deceive concerning her health. She was thinking and staring again, but she smiled perpetually, she called out cheerful greetings to everybody she met as she went about the farm— “Another bright day again,” or, “Not so sunny, but we can do with a little coolness for a change”—often greeting the same person twice. The weather was calm around us; it was an unusually fine summer. The hills were calm around us; this was the highest farm on that spur of the Pentlands, nobody climbed to us, the August ramblers took a footpath that cut south of us to the main range, we saw them no nearer than the skyline. This calm made an unkindly frame to my mother’s restlessness, the people about the farm began to scrutinize her doubtfully again.
One afternoon I came out of the stable, a polished horse-brass blazing bright in my hand, and found her sitting on the stone dike that separated the paddock from the garden. The postman was due in about a quarter of an hour, and she was rocking backwards and forwards, not much, but more than would be natural unless she would feel herself abandoned if a letter did not come; I looked across the garden to the farm-house and thought I saw someone watching behind the lace curtains of the Weirs’ room. It was probably Mrs. Weir, who I had hoped would praise me for the brightness of the horse-brass. I was in part distracted by pity for Mamma, in part annoyed that things did not go easy with us as they did for other children and that I would not claim the thanks that I deserved. The great thing and the little thing were together in my mind, I wondered if I ought to be ashamed of that. I put the horse-brass down on the dike, and then, remembering how apt I was to lose things, picked it up and slipped it inside one of the knee-elastics of my knickers. I put my arms round Mamma’s neck and kissed her wild hair and whispered, “If you are worried because Papa has not written, why do you not telegraph to the newspaper offices in Lovegrove or to his uncles and people in Ireland? He must be at one of those two places.”
She whispered her answer. It was easier for us to pretend that none of this was happening if we did not speak aloud. “Rose, you are a thoughtful child.”
“Do you mean,” I asked bravely, “that we have not got the sixpence?”
“Oh, yes, we have the sixpence, thank God. But, you see, I do not want to let them know that Papa has not let us know where he is. They would think it strange.”
“Well, so it is,” I said.
“But not,” she contended hopefully, “strange in the way they would think it. Oh, there is nothing we can do, we must wait. And give him time, he will write. A letter may come this very afternoon.”
We kissed. She drew her lips away from mine to say, still whispering, “Do not tell the others.”
I was amazed at her simplicity.
Mary came out of the stable and looked across the yard and saw that something was wrong, and joined us. She said, “Mamma, do not wait for the post, it is Tuesday, nothing nice ever happens on a Tuesday,” and then stopped. Cordelia had begun to practise in her bedroom. We all three listened in silence while she played some scales. Then she broke off and repeated some bars of a melody. “It isn’t even like cats,” said Mary. “Cats don’t scoop.”
“Oh, children, children,” said Mamma. “You should not be so impatient with your poor sister. It might have been far worse, she might have been born deaf or blind.”
“That would not have been worse even for her,” said Mary; “she never would have known what was wrong with her, any more than she does now, and she would have gone to one of those big places with gardens for the deaf and blind one sees out of trains, and she would have been looked after by people who like being kind to the deaf and the blind. But there are no homes for bad violinists.”
“Homes for bad musicians, what a terrible idea,” said Mamma. “The home for bad contraltos would be the worst. People would be afraid to go near it at night, the sounds coming from it would be so terrible, particularly when the moon was full. And you children are unnecessarily unkind about your sister, indeed if I did not know you I would think you were spiteful. And really she is not so bad. She is not bad at all this afternoon. She is much better than she used to be. Heavens, how horrible that was! This is intolerable, I must go and try to help her, the poor child.”
She rushed up the garden path towards the farm-house, wringing her hands. A stranger would have supposed that so distraught a mother had just realized that her baby had been left alone in a room with an unguarded fire or a dangerous dog. Mary and I sat down on the dike, and when we began to swing our legs I became suddenly conscious of the horse-brass in my knickers. I found it had grown dim in its hiding-place, and I fell to rubbing it again.
“Listen, it is too silly,” said Mary coldly. There was sometimes nothing to listen to; Mamma could not play the violin, so she had to talk or sing her precepts. Between these patches of silence came Cordelia’s repetitions of her melody, always without improvement, but each time offering instead a new variation of error. “How can you laugh?” asked Mary through her teeth.
“Of course I’m laughing,” I said. “It’s funny when someone keeps on falling down on the ice, and this doesn’t even hurt Cordelia.”
I knew Mary through and through, I could feel her pondering over the possibility of scoring a point over me by pretending as she knew the teachers at school would have done, that she was too grown-up to think that someone falling down on the ice was funny, but I went on polishing my horse-brass. I could trust her to decide that that was not honest, she did think that som
eone falling down on the ice was funny, and anyway she did not want to score off me, not really much.
She said softly, suddenly, “Mrs. Weir is coming down the path. With that cousin of hers from Glasgow. They’re going to ask us questions.”
We knew that look. I kept my head down and went on polishing. Mary bent over me and pointed her finger at the brass as if she had just noticed the design. Mrs. Weir had to speak to us twice before we realized the two of them were there. “Excuse us!” we said, quite confused, standing up politely and simpering a little. We realized we were not the type which can dare to simper much, but what we could get of that particular advantage we seized.
“Your big sister’s a bonny fiddler,” said Mrs. Weir.
We said in sugared accents that she was.
“These bairns,” said Mrs. Weir, turning to her cousin, “are no so bad with the pianny. But they’re wee yet, they spend most of the time grinding away at exercises.”
All summer we had been infatuated with arpeggios. They dripped from our fingers, we had hoped, like oil.
“Maircy, do you let these bairns play your pianny?” asked the cousin from Glasgow. Her voice became hollow and alluded to the tomb. “Elspeth’s pianny?”
“Oh, they play well eneuch,” said Mrs. Weir. “I canna play the thing. Though I had lessons with Elspeth from the old body who cam oot from Edinburgh to teach the laird’s daughters, ma hands were aye like hams. Elspeth left me the thing well knowing that, just for a matter of sentiment. That,” she added, speaking as one who turns the knife in a wound, “and the apostle spoons.”
“She’d little else to leave that was worth having,” said the cousin from Glasgow sourly.
“I wouldna say that,” said Mrs. Weir. “I’m sure you think of the Coates shares she left every time you put a reel of cotton on your sewing-machine. But she left them neither to you nor to me but to poor Lizzie who had four bairns and a man killed at Omdurman.” Her eyes turned to the farm-house window from which Cordelia’s contention with her art was emitting an unsteady and polluted melodic line. “Has your Mamma wearied of waiting for her letter?”
We noted stoically that the consideration of Lizzie’s plight had immediately made her think of Mamma. We got into position, like two tennis players waiting for a serve, with knees slightly bent, racket held across the body, eyes ready for the ball. “No. She just went in to help Cordelia. Our music,” said Mary, smiling, “seems more important to her than anything.”
“But she’ll be fretting to hear from your Paw,” said the cousin from Glasgow, quite without finesse.
“Oh, yes,” we said carelessly. “Mamma,” I said, “isn’t used to being without Papa. He never goes away from home.” “Except,” said Mary, “to speak at political meetings, and then he is back the next day.”
“I wonder your Maw’s so anxious, then,” said the cousin from Glasgow.
We smiled again. “Well, she feels worried because she isn’t there to look after him,” I said. “He’s absent-minded, because he’s a great author.”
“Oh, your Paw’s a great author, is he?” said the cousin from Glasgow. “Tee hee. Tee hee. A great author like Robbie Burns?”
“No, like Carlyle,” said Mary.
“Im’hm,” said the cousin from Glasgow.
“I’ll explain how he’s like Carlyle if you would like to hear,” said Mary. This was a frightful lie, and I was terrified lest her bluff be called.
“No, it can wait,” said the cousin from Glasgow. “But he’s absent-minded. I see. So he’s not written to your Maw. Does he often not write?”
“Well, as he isn’t often away from home it isn’t us he wouldn’t write to, so we don’t know,” said Mary flatly, with the tired look of a child talking to a stupid grown-up.
“I must say we’ve never had a soul on the place that can get the horse-brasses so bright as these bairns,” said Mrs. Weir.
“I don’t know your Maw,” said the cousin from Glasgow, “but I’d think she was looking awful worried. About something.”
“Oh, she is worried,” I said. “She’s always worried about Papa.”
There was a silence, and Mrs. Weir began to say something more about the horse-brass on my lap, but the cousin from Glasgow said, with a grin dripping sweetness, “And why is your Maw worried about your Paw?”
“He is so terrible about money,” I said with the utmost simplicity. I felt Mary draw a deep breath, I felt Mrs. Weir stir uneasily, I kept my eyes steady on the eyes of the cousin from Glasgow.
“And how is your Paw terrible about money?” inquired the cousin from Glasgow, as light-hearted as might be, almost hilariously.
“Och, Jeanie, now—” Mrs. Weir began, but I cut in. “People send him cheques and he forgets to pay them into the bank. He leaves them all over the house.” I was not altogether lying. It had happened once.
“Or he does not open the envelope, and he puts it in his pocket, and there it stays,” said Mary. I felt great admiration for her. That had never happened. Not with a cheque.
“Once quite a big cheque came and Mamma found it in the wastepaper basket,” I said. “Papa had thought it was a circular.”
“A big cheque in the wastepaper basket! Losh save us! The puir woman!” said Mrs. Weir.
“A big cheque,” said the cousin from Glasgow. “Now how much would that be?”
“We wouldn’t ever know,” said Mary. “Papa and Mamma never talk to us about money. They don’t like being bothered with it. They think it’s vulgar.”
“Yes, they would like to give it away, if it were not for us,” I said.
Mrs. Weir and the cousin from Glasgow uttered cries of distress. “Give it away! Losh, what a fancy! And who would they give it to?”
“Why,” said Mary, again assuming the tired look of a child talking to a stupid grown-up, “to people who are poor.”
We had really done quite well, considering we had had no time for preparation. They hung over us in silent bewilderment, while I went on rubbing the horse-brass and Mary picked a long grass and sucked it and looked up at the white pillow clouds in the blue sky. Suddenly there was the whin of a bicycle bell and the two women exclaimed and wheeled about. We took a quick look while their backs were turned and saw that the postman had ridden into the yard. My eyes went back to the horse-brass, Mary stared up at the sky again.
“Oh, has the postman been!” Mary exclaimed when Mrs. Weir touched her on the arm and held before her a telegram addressed to my mother. We were careful to walk quite slowly with it to the farm-house, and we heard what the cousin from Glasgow said. “Well, a telegram costs sixpence and a letter costs a penny …” Her shrill voice trailed away, she could not think how to link on this consideration to the puzzling glimpse of our family which she had been given by two children who were, surely, too young to lie.
In the little bedroom Mamma was standing in an attitude of despair which struck me as excessive. Of course Cordelia could not play the violin, but Mary and I could play the piano. Surely that should be enough for her? But she was standing with her hands crossed on her bosom and her eyes staring wildly about her while she cried, “But anybody not an idiot must understand that tahatahatahahahahata is not the same thing as ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, which is what the composer wrote!” with a passion that would have been appropriate had she been a person in Shakespeare’s world declaring that she was going to tell the yet unknowing world how these things came about, so shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause. But her disorder was excused by the intact appearance of Cordelia, who was standing with her violin firmly held in her hand, a patient expression on her face. To her it seemed that she had been quietly practising in her room when Mamma had come into the room, and had been quite unable to understand what she was trying to do, for of course the composer would have preferred tahatahatahahahahata to ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, because it sounded prettier. I thought how nice it would be if I were a st
reet child and could take a piece of chalk and write on a wall, “Cordelia is a fool.” It would do no good really, but it would be something.
Talking through Mamma’s cries, Mary said, “Papa has sent a telegram.”
Mamma was instantly still. She did not move to take it from Mary’s hand. “How do you know it is from Papa?” she asked in a thin voice.
“There isn’t anyone else, is there, who would send us a telegram?” I asked.
“No, you are right. We are quite alone,” she said, and took the telegram and opened it, and, reading the first words, was flooded by radiance, by hope, by certainty. “He is well, he has found us a house, he likes the office at Lovegrove—but he has gone to Manchester to settle important business with Mr. Langham.” The radiance, the hope, the certainty receded, they were not there. “To Manchester! To settle important business! With Mr. Langham! To Manchester, when he should be in Ireland, seeing his family! How will they ever take an interest in you children? To settle important business, but it will come to nothing! And with Mr. Langham! With Mr. Langham!”
“Who is Mr. Langham?” we asked.
“A little, little man,” she said. Then radiance and hope and certainty came back into her face, and she cried, “But your Papa has found us a house! I do wish I could have taken that trouble off him, with all he has to think of! I wonder what it will be like! There are some very nice houses in the London suburbs, your Papa has very good taste.”
“What, nice houses in London?” one of us said. We thought of it as a black, geometric place. But we were happy, we knew that she would contradict us, that she and Papa had created another place for us, as they had created Cape Town and Durban and Edinburgh and the Pentlands, where we were.
“Why, of course there are nice houses in London!” she cried. “There are nice houses in Paris, in Vienna, in Copenhagen, you will see them all, but first we will live in a nice house in London. You must not be disappointed if the rooms are not as big as they are in the Edinburgh flat, it is different in the south, but the brick houses they have down there are very pretty. And it will be nice not to be in a flat but to be in a house, it will have its own garden or be in a square, and that will be so good for Richard Quin, he will be able to sleep out as he is sleeping now—Is he all right? I had forgotten him.”