by Rebecca West
“Yes, yes,” said Cordelia proudly. “I have looked out of the window several times and he is lying quite quiet.”
“I wish your Papa had told us more.” She looked at the telegram and wailed. “He has not said where he is staying in Manchester. And he has not given the address of the new house. How will I be able to get the furniture sent on from the flat if I cannot tell the removal man where to send them? But he will write. Your Papa is always very much occupied, but he will write.”
We all knew that Papa would not write, yet for some days we believed that he would. It was the time when the heather flowered and the grey-green hills turned purple, and every hour a different purple. “It is like wine,” my mother used to say, her eyes strained upwards, Richard Quin running by her side and pointing and laughing. We grew neglectful of our work on the farm and ran up the footpaths to the moorland heights where we could walk and walk and see nothing from horizon to horizon but this flood of colour which was at once dry and resonant. Our hands could rub the heather to dust, it was poor starved fibre, yet the dyed field of it was rich like a bass chord sustained by the pedal. One day we took charge of Richard Quin as soon as our practising was over, and let Mamma go up and walk on the moors alone. She stayed up there so long that we grew frightened, but she came down through dusk, voluble with happiness, her hands full of strange grasses that we had not seen up there. Then we found a shoulder of moorland so low that we were able to get Richard Quin to it, and several times we took our lunch with us and lay on a purple ledge, pitted with a wet green circle where the bog-cotton was white like narcissus, and looked down on the checkered farmlands stretching north towards Edinburgh.
Once when we were all up there it was really hot, and Mary called to us, “We have not seen such sunshine since we left South Africa.” And Mamma, who had been bending over Richard Quin, giving back his laughter and tickling him with a stalk of heather, suddenly was rigid. At Durban she had not cared to hear us speak of Cape Town, and now we were in Scotland she did not care to hear us speak of South Africa. Without doubt, when we got to London she would like it better if we never spoke of Edinburgh. But were we going to London? If we did not know where Papa was we could not simply take a train to London and look for him, particularly in view of the possibility that he might, compelled by his strangeness, have stopped in Manchester. But if we did not go to him, what were we to do in Edinburgh? The flat would not be ours after the quarter-day, the landlord was taking it back, and somebody else was moving in; and anyway we would have no money. We lay on the ledge in silence, looking down on the plain, which in the strong noonlight looked insubstantial as a cloud, not solid earth at all, while Richard Quin kicked and laughed, and Mamma forced herself, stiff as a soldier, back to the game again.
One night about that time I woke and saw my sister Mary a white shape in the moonlit room, kneeling beside the door that led into Mamma’s bedroom, her ear close to the wood. I got up and joined her. We did not eavesdrop when things were going well, but there were times in our life when we had to know where we were. We heard the boards creak, Mamma was walking up and down, we heard her sigh. She muttered, “Dear Mr. Morpurgo, I wonder if you will ever—Dear Mr. Morpurgo, I do not think we have met, but I am sure you will forgive me if I write to you to ask—No. No. That is not the proper way. The great thing is to keep it light.”
We heard her pull a chair towards her. She settled into it and gave a little careless laugh. “Dear Mr. Morpurgo, You know that my husband is a genius. No. No. Dear Mr. Morpurgo, I know from your kindness to my husband that you must hold him in special esteem, and I dare to hope that, like me, you think him to be a genius. I dare to think that, like me, you believe him to be a genius.”
Now she was writing it down, that we knew from the way she spaced out the words. She was writing it in the half-light, so that she would not wake Richard Quin. It worried me very much that she must be doing what I was always being told I must not do, and spoiling her eyes.
“The ways of genius are not the ways of ordinary mortals, and so you will not be surprised to hear—” Now she spoke to herself. “Oh, why do I always have to bother, why is nothing ever simple. To think that there are women who when they move just have the things put in a van and go.” Now her other voice was used. “So you will not be surprised to hear that my husband”—she gave again that careless little laugh— “has gone to Manchester and has forgotten to send me his address, so though he constantly sends me telegrams I cannot reply. If you should know his address I should be obliged if—But it sounds so strange.”
She began to walk about the room again.
“Do I end ‘yours sincerely’ or ‘yours truly’? I cannot remember if I ever met the poor man. But anyway it sounds so strange. It will be dreadful if the people in the office know that he is strange before he starts. At least everywhere else it has taken them time to find out.”
Her whisper sounded as if she had a sore throat.
“Oh, I must leave it till the morning. And then perhaps a letter will come. Oh, I am like the children.”
When Mary and I got back into bed I was more worried about Mamma’s eyes and her throat than about our future. Indeed, I noted it against her, as a weakness which I looked on tenderly but had to recognize as a weakness, that she failed to realize that we were going to be all right. Cordelia might represent a difficulty. All teachers liked her, and that was ominous. Mary and I did not dislike school but we knew it was the opposite of the world outside, it was the grown-ups’ error of errors, they imagined they prepared children for life by shutting them up in a place where nothing happened as it did anywhere else. It might be hard for Cordelia to find her feet, but Mary and I would be all right. Only very rarely did we feel the panic we had felt on the purple ledge. The rest of the time we realized quite well that it was only a question of keeping going till we were able to earn a lot of money as pianists, and somehow we could manage till then. If Papa had not got us into the workhouse by this time, it was probable that he never would, and all that distressed us was Mamma’s failure to consider this cheering point, and her folly in sitting up at night, getting unhappy and spoiling her eyes by writing in the half-dark, probably with nothing over her nightdress, though she seemed to have a sore throat. I do not think I stayed awake very long. I know Mary fell asleep quite soon.
The next day it struck Mary and me, when we were carrying some hot tea up to some men working in a field below the pass, that it might be easier for Mamma to communicate with Mr. Morpurgo by telegram. It would at any rate cut out that adult nonsense about “yours sincerely” and “yours truly.” So at teatime we dropped some artless questions, asking Mamma how the removal man was to know where to send our furniture if she could not tell him our address in London. At that she sighed deeply, and Cordelia shook her head at us and frowned and hushed us, as well as kicking us under the table. It was like Cordelia to use both grown-up and childish means of expressing disapprobation, she was always on both sides if she could be. Afterwards she caught us in a passage and hissed at us, “Can’t you see poor Mamma is worried to death?” It was almost impossible to pull her hair, as her red-gold curls were so short and tight, and we knew all about the dangers of blood-poisoning, because Mamma’s brother had died of tetanus, so we never scratched, but practice had made us quite good at hitting her, and we got in several telling blows that time.
“And Mamma’s much too worried to be told we hit you,” said Mary unctuously.
“How mean!” breathed Cordelia.
“Isn’t it?” said Mary. “It is the sort of thing you would say.”
Cordelia made the gesture of despair which we had often seen her make before, and went away, saying vaguely, “I am the only one.”
The next afternoon Mary hung about Mamma, who was sitting in the garden while Richard Quin slept, till she heard the sound of the violin, and then said, “You know, Mamma, Rose is much the youngest of us girls.” We had thought it out together, so it was all right her saying that. �
��We all think of her being sensible, but really she is very childish in some ways, and it is showing now.” She went on to tell Momma that I was worrying about what was going to happen to our furniture. She said that I knew that we had given up the flat and that we could not go on living there because someone else was going to move in, and that I thought the removal man would just take the furniture to London and dump it down somewhere and that we would never find it. Mamma became agitated and said that she must speak to me about it and explain it was all right, and Mary said that that would not do because I had told her what was worrying me in confidence. Mamma accepted that. Mary and I had known she would. Also, passing her hand over her forehead, she said, “Besides, what can I say to the child?”
“Well, can’t you think of anything to do?” said Mary. “She cried all night, you know.”
“Oh, no!” wailed Mamma. “Oh, no! Not Rose!”
“Why don’t you send Mr. Morpurgo a telegram?” asked Mary.
“A telegram?” said Mamma. “Why, that would seem even stranger than a letter, and that will seem strange enough to Mr. Morpurgo when he reads it. But no. Why do I not try the newspaper office? Surely he will have told them where the house was when he took it. And I could say that the removal man wanted to know the address. And that I wanted plenty of time for them to turn on the gas. Yes. And the water. Then if they are in touch with your Papa they will tell him that I have telegraphed and we will know where he is too. And Rose will be all right anyway about the furniture. Yes, I will send the telegram today, I will give it to the postman. Answer prepaid. ‘My husband in Manchester has omitted give me address house he has taken please send must instruct removal man and gas and water immediately.’ Get me some paper and a pencil.”
When Mary brought them she began writing, then threw them on the grass. “This telegram would seem so much less strange if I could say your Papa was in Tibet.”
“Surely it would be strange if he was there, as the Tibetans don’t let anybody in?” said Mary, picking up the paper and the pencil. She really thought it was all being too much for Mamma.
“It is more difficult to communicate with your wife and family from Tibet than it is from Manchester,” said Mamma.
It all went very well, except that Mamma looked at me in bewilderment all that evening, and made Mary very uncomfortable by asking her if she was quite sure I had been crying at night, if she had not dreamed it all. “Oh, no, Mamma,” Mary said, her oval face as smooth as a silver teaspoon filled with cream, “I could not dream it night after night.” Of course it was no good, really. Mamma knew there was a lie somewhere. She knew the style of each of her children as she knew the styles of all the great composers. But at the same time she would never pose herself unnecessary questions about her children, any more than she ever cared to read much about the personal lives of the great composers. She judged us by our sum, and in any case the whole episode passed out of our minds the next day, when the postman brought the answer to the telegram. Papa had, it appeared, taken for us Number 21, Lovegrove Place, and Mamma need not see about the gas and water, for Mr. Morpurgo had given instructions that the house was to be cleaned and got ready so that the furniture could be moved straight into it. This news was supposed to give me back my unbroken nights, and it certainly did my mother that favour. She spoke of it every day. “But this is exceptional treatment. They did nothing like this for us when we came here, or when we went to Durban. Your father said that he did not think that Mr. Morpurgo wanted to see him. But that must have been a mistake. After what has happened at the Caledonian your father might well be sensitive. But he must be wrong over this, Mr. Morpurgo is being so very kind, and he can have no reason except that he is well disposed towards your father.” Absorbed in her development of this not unreasonable idea, she was no longer distressed by Papa’s continued failure to write to her.
There came a night when our story came true. I lay awake in the darkness and cried. But not because I was anxious about our fortunes. I had toothache. At first Mary and I were concerned lest this should be a divine judgment on me for deceiving Mamma, but as nothing had happened to Mary, and she had played the major part in the deception, we dismissed the thought. When we told Mamma in the morning she called me all the broad Scots pet names which always came from the back of her mind when we were ill or had hurt ourselves, and then she hurried out of the room and came back very quickly, for she moved faster than anybody I have ever known, stirring a bowlful of honey and hot milk. It was her panacea for every ailment, and it did in fact anaesthetize by distraction. She sent Cordelia and Mary down to breakfast, and sat down on my bed, and I enjoyed being alone with her, feeling the warm, invisible fluid of her love flowing out towards me, comforting me as the warm sweetness of the milk and honey comforted my mouth. She told me that she was sorry, she could not let me lie, I must soon get up and dress, for she had already arranged to hire the trap and we would drive down to the station and take the train to Edinburgh, and our dentist, who was sure to be back at work now it was September, would make time to see me.
“Your playing”—she sighed— “must just stand aside for the day.”
That was not what was worrying me. “Will this all cost a lot?” I asked.
“Oh, my poor lamb,” she answered, “what a thing for you to say! I talk too openly before you, I suppose. But do not think of that. An aching tooth is an aching tooth, and we will find the money for that. Do not think of the cost again. And indeed I will profit by this. The Australians left the flat last Monday, and I will take this opportunity to go in and see that everything is ready for the removal man. I would have gone and done this all alone, now I will have my lamb for company. How I wish I had smarter clothes, it is such a fine day! It will be nice for us when Richard Quin is grown, we will always have a man to go about with us. Though of course he will marry and we must let him live his own life. But you girls will have husbands by then, I hope. But anyway do not worry about the money, we have enough to get to London and a little over, and after that it will be all right, we will be better off than we have ever been before, as Mr. Morpurgo thinks so much of your father.”
I had slept so little in the night that I slept in the train, nuzzling against my mother’s shoulder. Though it was a mild autumn day she had wrapped me in a tartan shawl that was always brought out when we were ill. Milk and honey and that tartan shawl, they were our jujus, I had felt relief at the sight of it on her arm as she got into the trap. When we reached Edinburgh I awoke, feeling warm and babyish and contented, and the pain was so much less that I could hop with joy as we went along Princes Street, because of the splendour of the castle high on its rock over the trough of the green gardens, all the majesty of the city that lives more masterfully among its hills than Rome itself. But when I said, “Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it beautiful?” Mamma made no answer. She had always liked the two classical buildings that lie under the hill called the Mound which falls from the Old Town to Princes Street, the National Gallery and the School of Sculpture; she had once said that each was as neat as the new moon. I really did not know where I was. “Don’t you like the town any more?” I asked. “Don’t you think it’s looking beautiful today?” She answered meekly, as if I had accused her of a fault, “Oh, yes, Rose, of course it is beautiful. But you must excuse me, they have been so horrid to your Papa that I want to go away and never see it again.” I remembered she had not even liked going down to the beach during the last few weeks we were at Durban.
But she got better at the dentist’s. He liked her very much. We had all realized that long ago because each time we were shown into his surgery he was always standing in the middle of the room, well away from the chair, as if he were trying to look as unprofessional as possible, and his eyes always went to her face and never strayed to us. He always talked to her first, sometimes for quite a long time, and always laughed a lot, often repeating over and over again something she had said, although it did not strike us as funny and I usually found out after
wards that she had not meant it to be funny. And when we got into the chair he would always sigh as he bent over us and say, “Well, bairn, you’ll never be the man your mother is.” It struck me as a measure of my mother’s distressed state that for the first time she seemed to take pleasure in his company. It was as if she found it reassuring to be with someone who admired her. I supposed she was worried because her clothes were old. But she dutifully hurried him on till he had me in the chair, and when it was found that the source of my pain was an abscess under a tooth that needed just the faintest encouragement to come out, and I stood up, as well as I had ever been in my life, she thanked him and paid him his fee and took me out as quickly as might be.
She had, indeed, something on her mind. In the passage she bent down and kissed me and said humbly, “It must have shaken you, my poor lamb. You were very brave. But you must forgive me. I have not enough money left to take a cab all the way to the flat. We will have to take the tram up the Mound. Do you feel able for that? If you cannot do it we can rest here in the waiting room and take the early train back. Would you not rather do that? Tell Mamma.”
“I am all right,” I said, quite truthfully.
“You are sure?” she pressed me, and sighed with relief when I nodded. “I have to think of every penny,” she explained. “But,” she continued when we were out in the street, “you children must not worry. We will not starve, whatever happens. I promise you that. But just now I must scrape and save. It is difficult to explain, but you must trust Mamma.”
“Yes,” I said, “yes, Mamma.” But I did not trust her. I loved her. But I could see that she had been tripped by the snare of being grown-up, she lay bound and struggling and helpless.