“They’re upstairs, in my case. It’ll do if I bring them down at dinner-time,” said Sal.
“Darling, do give yourself a rest,” urged Mrs Peel. “You’ve been at the writing-table all day long.”
That’s done it, thought Sal.
It had.
Claudia went straight to the door.
“I’ll bring down your case, Sal,” she said.
Copper Winsloe ejaculated “Oh my God!” in a disgusted voice and left the room.
Mrs Peel sighed, fidgeted, went to the window and then came back again to the deserted tea-table.
“What do you think of the children, poor little things?” she asked unhappily.
“They look extraordinarily well and cheerful,” said Sal—replying thus on principle, although the words happened also to be the expression of her true opinion.
“Yes, I think they do,” their grandmother agreed without, however, brightening very much.
“Sylvia grows prettier every time I see her,” said Sal encouragingly.
“Oh yes, poor little Sylvia, she’s very sweet. She reminds me of a miniature I have at home, of my mother. It’s most curious,” said Mrs Peel, “but there’s a very strong likeness. I don’t know why Claudia pretends not to see it.”
It was the unalterable conviction of Mrs Peel that anybody who disagreed with her was only pretending.
Sal, who thought she knew very well why Claudia did not admit the alleged resemblance, made no reply.
“You know,” said Mrs Peel abruptly, “she works too hard. It’s too much for her. I’m very worried about Claudia.”
“The holidays make a break.”
“She seems to me to work just as hard, only she doesn’t go up to London every day. Look at all she does! Her own housekeeping, and her writing, and the work she gets from the office, going on all the time. And the children.”
“They’re growing up, now. In any case there’s no need for her to wear herself out for the children. She ought to make them consider her”
“Of course. It’s what I’ve said all along,” wailed Mrs Peel.
She hadn’t said it all along—and if she had, it wouldn’t have checked Claudia’s impulse towards self-immolation on the altar of her ideal of maternity.
“Has Sylvia heard any more about her job?” Sal asked, in order to change the conversation.
“Oh, poor little thing! I can’t bear to think of it. But they say that girls all do, nowadays, and I’m afraid it’s more or less necessary. But she’ll marry, of course.”
Claudia returned, and gave Sal her case.
“Here you are,” said Sal, handing her the cheques in a little sheaf. “If you’ll give them back to me when they’re signed, I’ll send the lot off to Ingatestone. She’ll be back at the office on Tuesday morning.”
“I shall be there myself on Tuesday,” Claudia said, going to the writing-table. “I’m going up with Sylvia, about her job.”
“We were just talking of that.”
“Darling,” said Mrs Peel anxiously, “do you really know what kind of people poor little Sylvia would be thrown with? You can’t tell very much in one interview, can you?”
“One interview?” said Claudia, raising her eyebrows. “But it won’t be my interview, Mother. It’ll be Sylvia’s. It’s her affair, not mine. She’s going to see them by herself, and to tell me about it afterwards, I hope.”
“I thought you said you were going up to London to see about it.”
“Oh no. I’m going up because Sylvia asked me to, and because I’ve got to be at the office. She’s going up to see about her job. You know I’ve always made my children take their own decisions.”
Sal Oliver, for her part, knew that this attitude on the part of her daughter was one that always drove Mrs Peel into a frenzy of fretfulness. It implied a not very obscure reproach to her own entirely dissimilar methods of bringing up her daughters, and it also made clear Claudia’s complete indifference to her mother’s views.
Claudia sat at her desk and signed cheques clearly and rapidly.
Mrs Peel rustled—an accomplishment lost to any generation younger than her own—ejaculated, and uttered vexed and discursive sounds and phrases.
Sal Oliver picked up the newspaper.
Twenty minutes later Claudia also went out into the garden. A rather curious set of tennis was in progress. Sylvia and Maurice, screaming with laughter, were on one side of the net. On the other, Taffy partnered Quarrendon. Beside her rapid movements and odd, lanky grace he rather resembled a very slowly-moving battleship. When he did hit a ball, it was with a terrific and ill-directed force that invariably sent it out of the court.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Claudia called out gaily.
“Very much, thank you. I’m not sure about my partner though.”
Claudia sat down beside Frances Ladislaw.
Maurice was serving. His small, intent face was set. When he served a double fault, a not-quite-inaudible stream of maledictions came from behind his clenched teeth.
“How earnest little boys always are!” said Frances.
“I wish he wouldn’t swear,” Claudia admitted. “Is Quarrendon really all right, do you think?”
“Oh yes. He’s enjoying it. The girls are marvellous with him. Oh, well played!” cried Frances, indulgently rather than truthfully, as Quarrendon, grasping his racquet with both hands, scooped the ball over the net.
“Well played!” shrieked Taffy and Sylvia.
Claudia laughed.
“Come and sit in the old place by the stream. Do you remember how we used to take books there, ages ago, when you used to come and stay in the old days?”
“Indeed I do. It’s lovely to find you here again, Claudia.”
They strolled along, happily discursive.
“Do you remember the frightful clothes we used to wear—high collars and tight waists?”
“And hair tied up in two black bows?”
“Do you remember Anna putting up her hair, over a huge pad, for the first time? It was when I stayed with you, and you gave a dance.”
“And I was so cross because I wanted to wear a black frock, and mother said it wasn’t good style for a young girl!”
They laughed.
“Let’s sit here. It’s like old times,” said Frances —happily, though not accurately. “Tell me about Anna. It’s years since I’ve seen her, and I scarcely know her husband.”
“They spend a lot of time in America. They’re in London now, though. He—Adolf—is getting richer every day.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” said Frances, rather timidly. She had an intimate enough acquaintance with the inconveniences of poverty to respect wealth, although she neither envied nor aspired to it for herself.
“A very good thing.”
There was a pause, and Claudia turned her gaze on her friend. Her expression was mournful.
“I needn’t ever worry about Anna any more. D’you remember how I used to wonder what would become of her, and what she was going to do with her life?”
Frances remembered very well. She could remember also the frantic unhappiness and anxiety of the elder sister throughout the series of violent and disastrous love-affairs that had so thickly bestrewn the path of Anna’s youth.
“You don’t worry about her any more, now?” she hazarded.
Claudia hesitated—drew a long breath.
Then she spoke.
“I couldn’t say this to anybody but you, Frances —but you’re part of the past, Anna’s and mine. Frances—I’ve lost Anna.”
Her friend could only echo in dismay: “Lost her!”
“There’s nothing real between us any more. You know what she and I were to one another, all through our childhood and girlhood. Anna was the person I loved best in the world. She is still, in some ways. But she’s changed terribly, in the last few years.”
“Changed? But how?”
“She’s grown away from me altogether. I think it began wh
en she married. You see, I didn’t like Adolf. I’ve got to face the fact that I tried to bring pressure to bear on Anna. I tried to direct her life for her. That’s what she resents. She’s never forgotten it, and I think—I think she’s never forgiven it either.”
Claudia’s voice trembled.
“I’ve got to face it,” she repeated, with careful candour. “I’ve domineered over Anna all her life, more or less, and she resents it—and always will.”
“But, Claudia—not now. Surely not now, when it’s all over, and she’s got her own life, and you’ve got yours.”
“No one knows how deeply those things sink in,” Claudia said sombrely. “Anna’s resentment of my bullying was probably subconscious for years and years. It was only after she married, and got quite free from me, that she really understood what I’d been doing to her.”
“But Claudia——”
“Yes, it’s quite true. I’ve got to face it,” Claudia repeated.
Frances, deeply troubled and bewildered, could only look at her in mute sympathy.
“You’ve got Arling,” she ventured again. “I was so glad when you wrote and told me.”
“Yes. I wanted, almost more than anything, to see the children growing up where Anna and I grew up. They couldn’t have their early childhood here, as we had—though Maurice was still quite little when we came—but I think they love it.”
“How could they help it? And it’s all so wonderfully unchanged. Almost as if there’d never been the war or anything.”
“That’s what I feel. It’s a little bit like putting the clock back. Though, of course, it can’t be that, really. We haven’t got any of the land, you know. I could only buy the house and the park, and one field—the one between us and the farm—and it’s difficult enough to keep it all up as it is.”
“It must be, with things as they are now. Does—does Copper like it?”
“As well as he’d like anywhere, I suppose.”
Claudia was silent for a moment, and then she used a phrase that she had used before, that afternoon.
“I couldn’t say this to anybody but you. It’s almost impossible to make Copper happy, nowadays. He’s got nothing to do—that isn’t his fault, any number of men of his age are in the same boat —and he sees me earning all the money, such as it is—and the place is mine really, of course—though I try never to let him feel it. I don’t see how he can help minding. Only, it takes the form of making him ungracious—unkind even. I’m sure that somewhere, somehow, I’ve made some dreadful mistake in our relationship.”
“I don’t think you ought to blame yourself,” said Frances, startled. “Why should it be your fault? You work so hard—you’re such a wonderful mother to the children. Everything depends on you.”
“I know,” said Claudia sadly. “It’s quite true. The whole thing depends on me. Oh, Frances! what would become of them all if anything were to happen to me?”
“They’re growing up, though,” ventured her friend. “It won’t be so much responsibility—for you I mean—later on.”
“I know. And I’ve told them, from the very beginning, that they’ll have to work—to look after themselves. That’s why I’m spending all the money I can afford—and more—on giving them the very best education.”
“It’s all one can do for them, nowadays.”
“Yes, and to teach them to think for themselves. I’ve tried so hard to do that. I don’t want to make the mistakes with them that poor mother, with the best intentions, made with us.”
“How very little your mother has changed.”
“Physically, you mean. Yes, she alters wonderfully little. Mentally, of course, she’s been static for years. You’ll find that she disapproves utterly of the way I bring up the children.”
“But isn’t that the prerogative of grandparents?” Mrs Ladislaw asked smiling a little. She didn’t want to think that Mrs Peel too was adding her quota to the burdens borne by her friend.
Claudia did not respond to the lighter tone. There was something, even, a little portentous in her unsmiling reply.
“I don’t want my children to take their values from her in any way. I want them free from sentimentality—from her kind of sloppy, easy thinking. Mother—like all that generation—would like them to see everything couleur de rose. I don’t want that. I want them to face facts—as I do.”
“They will—of course they will. How could they help it? Claudia, do you know—I somehow never thought you’d be such a wonderful mother.”
Claudia smiled then—a quick flashing of eyes and mouth.
“But we don’t know that I am!” she cried gaily. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Sylvia is only nineteen, and the other two aren’t grown-up. Taffy might turn out—oh, anything.”
“But not sloppy or sentimental.”
“No. Not that, certainly. She’s got a funny, hard streak in her. I don’t really feel I understand her as I do the other two.”
“You don’t?” said Frances, bewildered by this strange candour. Never before had she heard a mother openly admitting that she did not understand one of her children.
“I don’t think I do,” Claudia repeated calmly.
“She’s not at all like you, is she?”
“She’s not like Copper or any of his family, either,” Claudia answered quickly. “Of course, I’ve got to face the possibility that she feels—antagonistic—towards me. A great many girls do feel like that about their mother, although very often they don’t know it.”
“But if so it will pass,” was all that Frances could say.
“Perhaps, and perhaps not. Most likely not, I should say,” Claudia returned judicially. “The thing that matters is that Taffy should develop along her own lines. Whether I’m to be the person she turns to or not, is really quite immaterial.”
“I don’t think I could ever feel like that, if I had a child. It’s very wonderful of you.”
“No,” said Claudia. “It’s just logic and common sense and, I suppose, my incurable passion for seeing things straight.”
Something in Frances Ladislaw’s mind at that moment rang a faint, immensely distant, note of warning. Just below the level of conscious thought was a latent fear, not quite sprung into life. She became aware—perhaps not more than half aware—that this frankness, this detachment of Claudia’s, awoke in herself something that was vaguely and quite indefinably apprehensive.
“You’re cold—you shivered,” cried Claudia. “Let’s come indoors.”
They rose and walked slowly towards the house.
Presently Frances said:
“Tell me something about Miss Oliver. I think she’s so attractive.”
“She’s attractive, and she’s very clever and capable, and we work together very well, and she doesn’t” said Claudia deliberately, “like me one little bit.”
“But Claudia—! Why doesn’t she like you? Why should she be your partner if she doesn’t like you? Why do you say such things?” cried Mrs Ladislaw breathlessly.
“Say such things?” echoed her hostess. “What things? It doesn’t matter if Sal Oliver has no personal feeling for me, so long as we make a decent job of working together at the office.”
“I can’t bear it—you’re so brave—so good, and I can’t bear you to be unhappy—lonely. Anna—and your mother—and Copper—and—and so much to worry you.”
“But it doesn’t matter,” repeated Claudia, quickening her pace a little. “I’m quite used to it all, and there’s nothing to be done about any of it. I’ve just got to accept the fact that it is so.”
But Frances Ladislaw, breathless and unhappy and bewildered, could by no means execute the necessary mental volte-face that Claudia appeared to expect of her.
Pity and sympathy had welled up within her and it disconcerted her deeply to find that, all of a sudden, they seemed to be rejected by the very friend whose words had called them forth.
III
(1)
They had finished play
ing tennis.
It was Taffy’s turn to put away the balls and let down the net. Sylvia walked slowly towards the house with Andrew Quarrendon.
“I’m afraid I was frightfully bad,” he said apologetically. “I never play games.”
“It was great fun,” said Sylvia placidly.
Quarrendon brightened.
“It was, wasn’t it? You know, that’s a thing one misses very much as one gets older. Nobody ever expects one to have fun—just plain, pointless fun. It’s all so serious.”
“It’s because you’re a don, I expect.”
“I expect so,” he agreed.
“We’ll play games after dinner, shall we? Paper games, I mean. I’m sure you can play those.”
“Yes, I can,” he admitted. “I’d like that very much. Do you know a great many?”
“A good many, I think. Mother’s very good at them, and so’s Sal Oliver. I don’t know about Frances.”
“Which is Frances?”
“Mrs Ladislaw. The one who was here when you arrived. She was at school with Mother, and her greatest friend. She’s my godmother. We haven’t seen her for years. Look out!”
Sylvia caught Quarrendon by the arm as he entangled himself with the ropes of the old swing that hung in a corner of the garden.
“Thank you,” he said meekly. “I’m very bad at seeing things, I’m afraid.”
“Because of your sight, or because of not being interested?”
“My sight is perfectly all right so long as I’m wearing my glasses. And I always am.”
“Yes, I see,” said Sylvia.
She liked the dryness of his implication, and the glint of humour that had come into his large, solemn face.
“But you’re interested in people,” she suggested.
“Oh yes. Always.”
“Even when the people aren’t interesting in themselves?”
“They nearly always are.”
Sylvia felt faintly relieved. In her heart was always the childish fear that she was, herself, utterly uninteresting. At school Taffy had always been the clever one, the leader, and at home of course one’s brilliant, hard-working mother was the only personality that really counted. As for being pretty, Sylvia considered that there were many days on which she was anything but pretty. Definitely repellent, she thought.
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