Careful, He Might Hear You

by Sumner Locke Elliott

  Vanessa’s eyes had begun to flick and Lila said, ‘Oh, look over there. Rain’s coming. The birds were right.’

  Vanessa stood up and said, ‘I must think about running along.’

  Mrs Grindel said, ‘Come on, Winnie. PS can come over and play with you after tea.’ Heaved herself up. ‘That your car outside, Miss Scott? When I seen it coming up the street, I sang out to Mrs Andrews next door, “Look; Mrs Baines must be havin’ dinner with an undertaker,” I says, “or else she’s havin’ a bit of hanky-panky with the Duke o’ York behind George’s back.” Oh, well, if you didn’t have a bit of a laugh now and then you might as well cut your bloody throat, eh? Pleased to have met you. Ta-ta.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Lila followed Vanessa into the house.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ness. Nuisance her coming in like that. Well, I mean, they’re just ordinary working people but she was kind to Sin.’

  ‘Uhuh.’

  ‘And the little girl brings him home from school to save me going—’

  ‘I see.’

  PS had wandered into the bedroom behind them. He sat down on the double bed and watched-Vanessa while she put on lipstick.

  Lila said, ‘When are we going to talk again?’

  ‘After Ettie and I get settled in the house.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘I expect by the end of the month.’

  ‘Ness, I’d like to have some idea of what you have in mind.’

  ‘Well, I hadn’t really thought, to be honest.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch with you.’

  ‘Vanessa, George and I would like to know now just how you propose we’re to share the—arrangement. School starts a week from Tuesday.’

  Vanessa turned from the mirror, putting on her hat, and said quietly:

  ‘PS, would you go out of the room for a moment?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m asking you to, very nicely.’

  ‘We’re talking about the lovely surprise, pet.’

  He got up, resentfully, unused to being asked to leave rooms, trailed out and hung about in the hall until Vanessa crossed the room and closed the door.

  Lila said quickly, ‘Oh, don’t. We never close a door on him. He got frightened once and thought he’d been abandoned and ever since then—’

  ‘It’s only for a moment, Lila. Don’t baby him.’

  And, thought Lila, don’t give me orders in my own house, you and your Pommy accent and looking down your nose at us and snubbing the neighbours.

  She took a step to the door but Vanessa blocked the way and suddenly Lila felt that she was back in the dark, stuffy hall in Waverly. (‘Give me the key, Lila!’)

  Vanessa said, ‘I don’t know why on earth you should treat all this so dramatically. I haven’t come back to change anything. He’s still going to live with you and George. I wouldn’t dream of changing the rhythm of that. But I think that at first—until we see how things go—he might come to me, let’s say every second weekend and part of the school holidays if that’s agreeable to you and George.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lila. ‘That would be agreeable.’

  ‘And I hope you wouldn’t be offended if I want to help out a little financially.’

  ‘Oh, George and I wouldn’t think of taking money from Cousin Ettie.’

  The wrong thing to say, for Vanessa’s mouth tightened.

  ‘I have my own allowance, Lila, and also I have income from stock that Ettie settled on me years ago, so I’m not hard up and I can’t imagine why you’d want to be priggish and deny me the right to buy some of his clothes occasionally. I’m certain Sinden wouldn’t have denied me.’

  ‘No.’ Lila felt squashed, felt the room growing smaller and shabbier by the minute.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Vanessa in her low voice, gently chiding the housemaid, ‘I don’t know what you’re worrying about. I’m not out to usurp your authority. But it’s quite evident that you and George have had a struggle to maintain PS alone, without a sou from Logan, which of course is disgraceful of him.’

  Lila said, ‘Well, George has a good job now with the unions and we’re not exactly on the dole, Vanessa. Of course the house is small and so on, but the landlord’s promised to paint—’

  ‘Lila, don’t apologise.’

  The door opened and George, home from work, said, ‘What’s going on? Why is he shut out in the hall?’

  PS’s insulted face peered at them around George’s leg.

  ‘We were talking,’ said Vanessa, and picked up her red silk umbrella, tightly rolled, never to be unrolled even in rain.

  ‘We don’t ever shut him out,’ said George and, ‘It’s all right, old chap,’ to PS.

  ‘Just going,’ said Vanessa, and passing George, touched him lightly on the arm. ‘How are you, George? Lila gave me a jolly nice luncheon. Thank you so much for waiting, PS.’ A pat on his head and an imitation kiss on Lila’s cheek. ‘Cheerio, Lila, and don’t be a worrier.’

  The three of them watched her go down the little path and, leaving the gate open, she allowed the chauffeur to help her into the car. A wave from a white glove and she was gone.

  ‘Pomp and circumstance,’ said George, closing the gate.

  ‘She didn’t take me,’ said PS, sounding offended.

  Lila said, ‘She will, darling.’ And not just for a weekend either! For all time, if she can possibly get her way, which so help me God, she won’t, so help me God!

  She said aloud, ‘Crumpets for tea.’

  As they pushed open the iron gate and stood in a circular red-gravel driveway, looking up at the house, Lila thought that in an extraordinary way it looked like Vanessa. It had her look! Remote and withdrawn, it sat on a rise of ground, admiring itself, rearing up with sharp tiled roofs and tall chimneys, in dark-red brick; the windows, hooded by canvas blinds, expressing nothing but mild surprise at the gall of this woman and child daring to come up the drive; defying them to come a step farther. So they went on bravely up the path, looking at the wide lawns and the shivering yellow poplar trees in silence.

  A house in which everyone had died suddenly and quietly by gas. So quiet that as they stood uncertainly on the stone porch outside the half-open front door, the steady tick of a grandfather clock could be heard in the dark hall beyond. Lila rang the bell and they waited, she, smiling falsely at him, keeping up the desperate pretence of this ‘treat’ and he, smiling up at her, nervous but pleased at this outrageous adventure.

  Then, nothing happening, Lila began to worry that perhaps the bell was out of order and what should they do? Blunder into the house? Would that start things off badly and annoy Ness? Or would their waiting outside to be found distress her even more? What was the protocol? They were so used to banging through kitchen doors shouting, ‘Coo-ee. Anyone home? Here we are.’

  She rang again, her mouth working nervously now and the prepared feeling of calm deserting her, thickening her legs, turning her hands to wriggling crabs that fumbled with her bag, nearly let go his little suitcase.

  At last footsteps sounded far away in the depths of the house and quickened until a breathless, red-faced girl appeared on very large feet, wearing her white cap a little askew on rat-coloured hair.

  PS put out his hand politely, but Lila laughed and said, ‘No, pet. She’s the maid,’ and smiled at the red-faced girl to apologise for imposing this undemocratic formality.

  ‘I’m Mrs Baines,’ said Lila, adding unnecessarily, ‘I’ve brought my nephew.’

  ‘Yes; good-oh,’ the girl said in a heavy Australian accent, and led them inside. She seemed to be as inexperienced at the whole procedure as they; clumsily took Lila’s umbrella and PS’s suitcase, smiling and revealing artificial teeth embedded in bright pink gutta-percha. She tiptoed across the wide parquet hall to the foot of a staircase and, clearing her throat, called:

  ‘Misscot. Visitors!’

  They heard a door open upstairs, the sound of
quick high heels, and then Vanessa was coming downstairs, fastening her beige silk dress with a dazzling clip, no more dazzling than the smile which preceded her down the stairs, beamed at them from the landing, lighting up the dim hall.

  ‘Hello, hello, hello! Welcome. Aren’t you a bit early or am I late? Never mind.’ Creak, creak. Now at the bottom and her tan-and-white shoes flashing across rugs, straightening them as she came, so that even her walk created a function.

  ‘Diana, put the umbrella in the rack for which it was created and take Master Marriott’s suitcase up to his room. Tell Mrs Bult that Mrs Baines is here.’

  ‘Yes; good-oh.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Scott.’

  ‘Yes, Misscot.’

  Diana flew upstairs and Vanessa led the way into the drawing room, saying:

  ‘I don’t know how long she’s going to last. She’s bristling with inefficiency and can you imagine naming a lump of a girl like that “Diana”? “ ‘Di’ for short,” she says, but that makes me shudder. I’m used to maids having proper, sensible-shoe names like Annie or Maude. But she’s eager, poor thing. Well, here we are. Things are still in rather a mess. We had to wait until they got their furniture out (awful, by the way) before we could get ours in.’

  Lila said, ‘Oh, it’s lovely, Ness.’

  ‘Yes, I like a huge drawing room. I crave space and I rather like what they’ve done with those vines outside; keeps the room so cool in summer.’

  Thick wisteria vines clung to the columned side porch and gave the drawing room an eerie, marine light which touched the walls and ceiling with a greenish tinge and, moving in the breeze, created rippling pools of shadows where light and shade moved like seaweed over the carpet, glimmering and darkening so that the room could have been underwater and they divers, exploring a sunken liner.

  ‘But won’t it be very dark in winter?’ asked Lila.

  ‘Ah, but in winter the nicest time of the day is shutting it out. In London we always drew the blinds at four o’clock and turned on the lamps in time for tea.’

  As she spoke, Vanessa turned towards the high fireplace and touched a switch. Light sprang on beneath a gilt frame and Sinden looked suddenly down at them.

  ‘Well, goodness me. It’s the portrait that Walter Hatfield did of her.’

  ‘But it was lost. Even Walter didn’t know what had become of it. How did you find it, Ness?’

  ‘Ernest had it.’

  ‘All this time?’

  ‘Yes, he gave it to me in London and I had it framed.’

  ‘Mmmm. She never liked it. Something about the mouth is wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘She said it made her look as if she’d just had bad news.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Look, pet, it’s Dear One.’

  ‘It’s your mother,’ Vanessa corrected.

  He looked at it a moment, glanced away, disinterested, and Vanessa switched off the light.

  She led the way to the large, sedate dining room with its towering sideboard and long mahogany table around which were grouped, in perfect symmetry, eight stiff Regency chairs, awaiting a conference of foreign ministers, and then through a door to the oldfashioned butler’s pantry (and Lila said gaily, ‘Look, PS, as big as our whole kitchen’), then into the kitchen itself, as big and white as a small hospital ward and twice as clean, where Diana, flustered at their sudden entrance, rattled cups and the axe-faced cook nodded at them when Vanessa said, ‘Tea right away, Ellen. Mrs Baines has to get back.’ ‘Yes, Miss Scott.’ Through a green-baize door into a sombre book-lined study, choking with leather chairs and an upright piano and then back into the hall where they collided with Ettie, who embraced them with little fluttering cries of delight and declarations of her gratitude to them for coming in all this heat, pronouncing them lambs and dears, and finally back to the underwater drawing room for tea, pale-green cucumber sandwiches and thin slices of a very white cake. Vanessa seemed tired by her tour. She retired into silence and twice looked at her watch, leaving Lila and Ettie to flounder through a languid discussion of roses.

  In the hall, pulling on her gloves and seeing that his face had grown long, Lila bent and whispered:

  ‘Remember, darling, it’s only till Sunday night. Then George will come and get you and bring you home. Now don’t forget what I told you, that if you feel a teeny bit lonely, all you have to do is look out the window across the harbour and there we’ll be, waving to you.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘Why, over there.’

  ‘But I only see trees and things.’

  ‘Well, we’re over there anyway and don’t you worry. We’re not going to escape while you’re gone:

  She kissed his folded face.

  ‘But I don’t like this house.’

  ‘Shhh. Shhh. It’s a gorgeous house. Oh, what a time you’re going to have.’ Lila kissed him again as Vanessa came up.

  ‘Thank you for bringing him, Lila.’

  ‘Well, I thought the first time it would be better for you not to send a car. It might f-r-i-g-h-t—’

  ‘Yes. Sure we can’t get you a taxi?’

  ‘Oh, it’s no distance to the tram. Goodbye, Ness. His pyjamas and everything are in the suitcase and—’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Bye-bye, PS.’

  Lila quickly descended the front steps and walked down the drive, trying to ignore the sudden feeling of wrenching loneliness that had swept over her at leaving him for the first time in her life. At the bend in the drive she looked back. He was standing on the steps so she waved and blew kisses but he didn’t respond, simply stood there without moving, a great distance away from her, until Vanessa appeared and guided him into the house, closing the door.

  Now, it seemed, he must learn to sit up very straight in one of the tall hard dining room chairs, exactly at the centre of the table, while Vanessa sat at quite a long distance at one end and Cousin Ettie far away at the other. He must learn to serve himself from the dishes that Diana brought to him, being careful not to spill peas or potato on the snowy-white tablecloth and not to begin to eat until both Cousin Ettie and Vanessa had been served, which seemed foolish because the food became cold. Although it was still bright daylight, someone had lit candles in the tall silver candlesticks. Vanessa explained things to him in her quiet, low voice, beginning with his serviette, which as usual he tucked into his shirt collar.

  ‘No, that goes on your lap.’

  ‘But I always put my serviette here.’

  ‘It isn’t a serviette. It’s a table napkin and table napkins go on laps. Only tradespeople tuck their napkins in their shirt collars.’

  What were tradespeople? Was George tradespeople? He always tucked his serviette into his collar and why was it suddenly called a napkin? A napkin was something they put on babies with a safety pin.

  Cousin Ettie seemed to understand how he felt because she smiled and nodded at him, her diamond heart twinkling in the candlelight. But when she started asking him about his school and what games he liked, Vanessa said rather sharply, ‘Ettie, let him eat his dinner, please.’ It wasn’t like home at all, where Lila and George chatted and included him. Most of the time it was silent, except when Vanessa said quietly, ‘Diana, wrong spoon,’ or ‘Diana, you may take the vegetables away.’ In between the courses, Vanessa rang a little glass bell and then Diana would come running from the kitchen and the serving would go on all over again.

  After dinner was over, Vanessa said:

  ‘Now then, how about a nice coolish bath and then you may have a story in bed.’

  He said, ‘But it isn’t nighttime yet.’

  ‘It’s bedtime though.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I always stay up after tea.’

  ‘It isn’t tea, it’s dinner. What time does Lila put you to bed?’

  ‘When it’s dark.’

  ‘Ah, but it gets dark so late in midsummer, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ He was pouting a l
ittle. ‘Not at home.’

  Vanessa gave a little laugh. ‘Oh, I see. Well, PS, while you’re here, this is home. Now say goodnight to Cousin Ettie.’ Cousin Ettie, laying cards on a table, leaned down, folded him in a lavender embrace and said, ‘Nighty night, lambkin. Do I get a kiss? Oh, what a lovely kiss.’

  Then he and Vanessa climbed the stairs to the second floor, where bedrooms seemed to open up from everywhere. ‘That big one down the hall is Cousin Ettie’s, this one is mine and this is yours,’ Vanessa said, opening a door, and he saw his room, blue carpet, blue curtains, big white bed with the mosquito netting over it, shelves filled with shiny new books. The only thing that looked real in it was his old school suitcase sitting on a stool. Vanessa said, ‘Now look.’ She opened a blue wardrobe and he saw rows of suits and blazers hanging up. ‘All yours.’ How could they all be his? Even George only had two suits, one for work and one for Sunday best. There were new sandals and shoes standing in a neat row on white paper and a pair of strange high boots. ‘For riding,’ said Vanessa. She pulled open the drawers of a dresser and showed him shirts, undershirts, underpanties, handkerchiefs and little gloves. All his? How could he possibly wear all these things in two days? Or was he going to be allowed to take them home with him on Sunday?

  Vanessa said, ‘Now look under the bed.’

  He flopped down and saw a bright-red cart, big enough for him to sit in and be pulled around by Winnie. Oh, that was lovely. But how would he get that home on the tram?

  ‘What do you say?’ asked Vanessa, high above him.

  ‘It’s a beaut,’ he said.

  ‘Beauty.’

  She did her little trick with the match, then, ‘Pleased?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Like your room?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Then, remembering his manners, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re pleased.’ She kneeled down to his level. ‘Would you like to give me a kiss then?’

  Oh, they always wanted that.