by Rebecca West
“Rosamund, came at once, your cousin Rose is here,” called Constance, and then, as a very loud crash came from the kitchen, went back into the house. I held my ground for a second, then turned about, with the intention of following her back to the kitchen and finding some way of getting Mamma to leave the house. But already Constance had closed the french windows with a kind, inflexible gesture. I began to walk slowly towards Rosamund, who was walking slowly towards me. She moved with a hesitancy so great, particularly when she had to follow a curve in the path, that I wondered whether she were blind.
We met halfway down the garden, where the lawn touched a vegetable patch. As soon as I could see her face my heart began to beat very fast. She was not blind. Indeed what I saw in her face was chiefly that she was seeing me and that she liked the sight. This I knew, not because she gave a friendly greeting, for it took her a moment to recall that this would be expected of her, but because her grey eyes rested on me with a wide, contented gaze, and her mouth, though hardly smiling, had a look of sweetness about it. She was not pretty like Cordelia, nor beautiful like Mary, but she was very handsome. Over her blue coat hung heavy, shining golden curls of the sort that hang to the shoulders of the court ladies in the pictures at Hampton Court, and her skin was white. She did not look at all silly, as grown-ups like children to be. She had a deeply indented upper lip, there was a faint cleft in her chin, and I knew from everything about her that she was in the same case as myself, as every child I liked, she found childhood an embarrassing state. We did not like wearing ridiculous clothes, and being ordered about by people whom we often recognized as stupid and horrid, and we could not earn our own livings or, because of our ignorance, draw fully on our own powers. But Rosamund bore her dissatisfaction mildly. There was a golden heaviness about her face, to look on it was like watching honey drop slowly from a spoon.
As we met I said, “I am your Cousin Rose,” and she said, “You’re one of the two who play the piano, aren’t you? I’m afraid I can’t do anything well. Except play chess.”
“Play chess? But isn’t that very difficult?” I asked. Papa played chess.
“No. I will teach you how to play if you like,” said Rosamund.
“No, no,” I said hastily. “Thank you very much, but I don’t like games. They make me feel funny.” In fact, they were a nightmare to me. I hated losing, but I could never win, because I felt an irresistible impulsion to throw the game away just as it came to its end, and then if I burst into tears at my odd folly grown-ups thought I was not being sporting.
Rosamund did not mind a bit. “Would you like to see my rabbits? I’ve got six. Three of them are brown and three grey. They’re very tame.”
She turned about and we walked towards the end of the garden, and presently she took a grey rabbit out of its hutch and put it in my arms, and while I realized its perfections, particularly the way it wiggled its nose, she said, “Bert Nichols gave me this and the doe. They’re the best of my rabbits. Bert was very nice. He was the son of our charwoman Mrs. Nichols, but she got frightened when a coal-scuttle chased her, and she wouldn’t come any more. You can’t blame her. But it’s horrid because we never see them any more.”
“Isn’t there any way you can see him?” I asked sympathetically. There was nothing we three children disliked more about our nomadic life than the way that people we had learned to like passed out of our knowledge.
“Well, he is a porter at Clapham Junction, and Mamma says she will take me there one day,” said Rosamund, “but of course we don’t know when he is on duty.” She turned her head very slowly as I turned mine very quickly because there had come from the house behind us a noise like a weakly and malicious factory hooter. We were in time to see the sashes of every window fly up and every pair of curtains flute into folds, as if a hand were wrenching them from their rods, then billow through the air down to the garden below. I wondered with the financial nervousness of a child bred in poverty whether they were insured.
Rosamund said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to put Sir Thomas Lipton back in the hutch. I must go and help Mamma start the copper. Oh, dear, it will have to be such a big wash. And of course nobody comes in to help us now.”
“You haven’t anybody?” I said, aghast. People of our sort had to be desperately poor to keep no servants in those days, and at home we thought of housework as something dangerous, like handling acids in a laboratory, because it spoiled our hands for piano-playing.
“Well, we never had anybody but a charwoman, this Mrs. Nichols,” said Rosamund. “Papa does not like us to spend much money. And since she went away we have had other people but they always get frightened, none of them stays.”
We were close to the house now, and we had come to a curtain lying right across the path. Rosamund bent to pick it up and I hastened to help her. I had thought that I was excited and not frightened, but I knew better when I felt the drag on the farthest corner. Surely I felt that. I know the hair stirred on my scalp, and surely Rosamund flicked the curtain from the grip of the invisible hand, and we stood face to face and folded it. “My Mamma will be very glad that your Mamma has come,” she said as our fingers met.
“Mine is always talking about yours,” I said.
“They met when they were about as old as we are,” said Rosamund. Her eyes met mine over the top of the curtain and then she turned aside, folding the curtain to a size easy to carry. Now I could be sure that she liked me, that she would always like me, as I was sure that Mamma and Mary and Richard Quin liked me and would always like me. I hoped that Papa liked me in this way too, but one could not be sure. I choked with gratitude. I began to make a promise to myself that I would always like Rosamund, but my head began to hurt. Thinking of her future I saw a summer sky ridden by shining clouds, space rising on space above them till the blue faded brightly into pure light. All the same I could not bear to let my mind dwell on it. I found myself content to stay in the present, although a pack of demons were skylarking within a couple of yards of me.
“There’s one thing,” said Rosamund, coming to a halt. “They never hurt us. They just break things and spoil things, so that we have to spend our lives mending and washing.” Thus she managed to say “Don’t be afraid,” without making it plain that she had noticed I was afraid, as for the last few moments, finding I had a mob of spectral monsters between my Mamma and me, I certainly had been, though not to the degree that an adult would have been. That was Rosamund’s way, I was to find.
So we went in by the back door, and before we reached the kitchen heard the din that possessed it. Mamma and Constance were sitting at the table, their faces contorted as by neuralgic pain, while a flour-dredger, a tin tray, and a spiky cloud of kitchen cutlery were thrown into the room through the other door, forks striking spoons, knives clashing on knives. But as soon as Rosamund and I entered the kitchen all this possessed ironmongery suddenly became quiet. Each fork, each spoon, each knife, the flour-dredger and the tray, wavered slowly downwards and softly took the ground, after the meditative fashion of falling leaves. There they lay and stirred no more, nor were ever to stir again in all the known history of that house. To drive out the evil presence it had been needed simply that we four should be in a room together, nothing more.
We let the silence settle. Then Constance said, “Rosamund, go and look out into the garden.”
At the curtainless window Rosamund said, “There is not a sign of anything.”
“Wait,” said Constance, “we will wait five minutes.” We all looked at the big kitchen clock.
Before the time was up Rosamund broke out, “Mamma, do you suppose we won’t have to go on mending things and knowing that they will be broken again at once, and washing what’s made dirty as soon as it’s clean?”
“I do not mind anything,” said Constance, “if only they stop pulling the bedclothes off you at night.”
“But, Mamma, it has done me no harm,” said Rosamund. “I am sure I feel quite well on it.”
“I
have been a foolish woman,” said Constance, turning to my mother. “I should have asked you here long ago, but I was ashamed, I knew you would never have let things get so out of hand—”
“As if one could help this sort of thing,” Mamma said warmly.
“And I lost my confidence,” Constance went on. “I was afraid it might work either way if you came here.”
“Well, so it might,” admitted Mamma, “and of course you didn’t want the whole place burned down.”
“Yes, but I should have known it wouldn’t work that way, not with you,” persisted Constance.
“Why should you think that a house would not go up in flames because I was in it?” asked my mother, so bitterly that I looked through her face at our home in Lovegrove Place and saw its blackened ruins. “But it hasn’t, has it?” I asked, aghast.
There was a moment of silence which Rosamund broke by pointing at the clock and crying, “Time’s up. Time’s up,” and Constance told us that not for three weeks had there been five minutes’ peace and since my mother had caused this peace she knew it would last forever. “Listen to it,” she said, piously clasping her hands. And we all listened to the silence.
“We must be the only people in London listening to nothing,” said Rosamund, and we all laughed and began to get our meal ready.
We ate in the kitchen, because all the other rooms were even more disordered. It was a very good meal, for all the Christmas things were still about. While I was eating my turkey soup I noticed that a packet of table salt on the mantelpiece had been overturned and was soberly voiding its contents in a thin white trickle which spread out into a fine spray as it reached the hearthstone below. Both Rosamund and I exclaimed in wonder, but without apprehension, for there was nothing violent or malicious about the staid little flow, but though our mothers looked sharply in the direction of my pointing finger, they looked away again at once. Rosamund and I thought they had not seen the salt and tried to direct their attention to it, but they kept their eyes on the tablecloth and asked us questions about our schools. It may be that they knew more than we did, that in setting the salt to pour out quietly on the hearthstone the defeated presences had performed a rite which was sad for them, and that, therefore, it was ungenerous for us, the victors, to spy on them. I can never be sure.
When we rounded off the meal with some almonds and raisins and marzipan our mothers sat down by the fire to drink tea, and Rosamund and I went off by ourselves. First we gathered up the curtains in the garden, and then I helped Rosamund to drag a tin bath into the middle of the scullery and fill it with hot soapy water, and we dropped into it as many of the curtains as it would hold. The coal-dust and greasy earth rode off them in specks and smears like ants and the trail of snails, and that set Rosamund and me wondering why God had made insects. After she had left them all to soak, and had put some broken cutlery and kitchen utensils in a packet for the knife-grinder to take away to mend, we wandered about the house. It was the ugliest house I had ever visited. The walls just met the ceiling, at mean intervals. But there was lovely furniture from Scotland, made of mahogany that was really red, red as some cows are. There were wardrobes so big that we could both hide in them, dressing-tables with mirrors so large that they doubled the whole room, heavy cupboards in which very clean things lay strewn with lavender bags. But all the clean things lay awry; the wardrobes had chalk figures scrawled on them; a cake of wet soap lay on a dressing-table and its spume had drawn a cross within an O on the mirror; and underfoot there was often a hard frost of powdered glass or a fall of whittled wood.
“Tomorrow,” said Rosamund, “we will clear up, and when we have finished, it will stay cleared up, and it will be because you and your Mamma came.”
“But they may come back,” I said.
“No, no,” said Rosamund, peering through the soap O on the mirror, as through a window, “they have gone too far now for them ever to come back.” She opened a drawer and took a handkerchief with a fine needle sticking into it and, sighing with contentment, hemstitched for an inch or two, then laid it down, and said, “Let’s go into the garden and give the rabbits some cabbage leaves.”
Each helped the other into her coat. Rosamund said, “You have a pretty coat,” and I told her that it had been Cordelia’s and that as I was shorter than both Cordelia and Mary I never had anything new. She said, “I always have to have everything new, being the only one, but it’s lonely. All the same, Mamma and I have nice times. We bought this coat at Whiteley’s. We spent hours in the shop. There is a menagerie, and you can have tea there, and they give you meringues.” Her talk was colourless as water, she never said anything funny. But it was as pleasant to listen to her as to lean over a bridge and watch a clear stream running by.
I saw what she meant when she said that the rabbits Bert had given her were much the best. She said it was quite natural, as Bert had taken many prizes at shows, rabbits were his great interest, and after that the accordion. Mrs. Nichols had told Rosamund that she thought it a pity he was so wrapped up in them, she believed it was the reason he had not married, and neither the rabbits nor the accordion would give her grandchildren.
A train puffed through the cutting; we looked at it over the ears of the rabbits in our arms. Two boys hanging out of a carriage window waved at us but we took no notice, though we would have waved back if they had been girls.
“I make up animals,” said Rosamund. “I don’t suppose you do. I do it because these rabbits can’t talk, and I get lonely. But you have a brother and two sisters.”
I said that all the same we made up animals. Papa had told us about three little dogs Grand-Aunt Willoughby had had, a black-faced mushroom-coloured pug with asthma, a toy spaniel, and a lapdog of a kind Papa could not identify, which looked just like a fawn fur necklet. We were always pretending they were lying about on the chairs, or jumping up on the beds, or out in the garden, though they were all so pampered that you couldn’t even pretend that they would be out in the fresh air except on the finest days. Richard Quin was very fond of them, and they were really quite nice old things, considering how spoiled they had been.
I asked what animals she had made up, and she said, “The most important one is a hare. He has always been here. He was here before they made the railway, he stayed on when they built these houses all round him. He isn’t very clever, you see. But he is very nice, I am really fonder of him than I am of the mice or the bear, and he is beautiful, I have his picture in a book, I must show it to you.”
We could not stay out long, it was so cold. On the way back along the path Rosamund stopped and gathered me some sprigs of mint and sage. Her Mamma had bought the plants at the greengrocers and she herself had planted them. They had done well, they were still growing, the winter had not killed them. I said, “We are not good at gardening. Papa and Mamma do not know anything about it, and sometimes we have tried to put in seeds, but nothing happened.”
She was puzzled. “Is there anything to know about gardening? Mamma and I put plants in, and they come up. We had some nice plants here, very nice roses, until those things tore them up.”
Indoors she showed me her dolls. She was at the same stage that we were, she was too old to play with dolls but she still liked having them about. Hers were not very pretty, though they were nicely dressed, and their names were not very interesting, but they all had pleasant characters. The things in the house had injured every one of them, but they had all been mended. There were a lady and her husband who lived near Clapham Common and were dolls’ doctors, Rosamund said. They had got interested in the case and had charged almost nothing for the repairs. Then Constance called us because it was teatime. It was good that she was Scottish, it meant that she gave us a good tea. Our family was still shocked by the nullity of Lovegrove bakeries compared to what we had become accustomed to in Edinburgh. Constance gave us hot oatmeal scones, which we spread with butter and golden syrup, and she had some homemade Scotch bun, the rich cake in a pastry case which is known as �
�black death.”
While we were still eating I heard noises which made me frightened in case the horrible things had come back. There was a slam which seemed to come from the front door, and someone wiped his feet on the mat, but with an insane amount of noise. There were two thuds, like an exaggeration of the sound people make when they take off their shoes and drop them on the floor; all these noises were not merely the sounds made by a person performing these actions; they were that and something more. They were meant to be heard and to distress. I looked at Rosamund with anxious eyes, and she answered, “It is Papa.” She did not show any surprise, or any distress, like mine, or any pleasure. Heavy steps clumped along the passage towards us, and finally the door was thrown open and a man put his head round the door. Rosamund did not look up at him. I was startled by the suspicion that though she was so calm a child she might have real trouble to bear. I did not consider the invasion of her home by demons to fall under the heading of real trouble, particularly now that it seemed to have been repelled. Real troubles were things like Cordelia’s being so cross and insisting on playing the violin when she could not, and Papa’s selling Aunt Clara’s furniture when Mamma wanted to keep it.
I at once saw that Rosamund’s papa was real trouble. His head, so long as he kept it sticking round the door, was very nice. His face was long and fair, and his temples were delicately indented; his nostrils were thin as paper and his lips were pursed as if he were keeping a secret. If there had been a fourth real poet at the time of Byron and Shelley and Keats, he might have looked like that. But as soon as he saw who was in the kitchen and brought his body round the doorpost he changed. He canted his head on one side and surveyed us with a wide-eyed leer, while his mouth gaped open, the lips drawn close to his teeth and lifted at the corners, as if he would have said something impudent and amusing but was prevented by a flow of saliva.