Bewildering Cares

by Peck,Winifred

  It was the telephone, and though Arthur loves me, provides for me adequately, and would certainly die for me, it is an unwritten law that I answer the telephone for him. He is, says Dick, like most men of his age, really afraid of the beastly thing. I don’t mind the convention in the least now, as I am always convinced that it is a telegram from the War Office, saying that something is wrong with Dick. It always rings with diabolical cunning just about ten o’clock when I am warm and happy at last. However, this evening it was only a wrong number, so, by some wholly inconsistent mental process of my own, I felt absolutely reassured of Dick’s safety, and in spite of all the worries of the day, went off relieved to bed.

  IV

  Wednesday Morning

  There was a letter from Dick waiting for us when we got back from Early Service in a cold, grey mist, and Kate was waiting with it, beaming all over, in a way which makes it impossible for me to mind that she obviously hadn’t done the stairs, or means to wash the front doorstep. The delay is explained by the fact that he has had mild ’flu (“and ha! ha! who never guessed it?”), and is now “only suffering from what the medical profession call”—(I flung open the middle page in horror)—“that bloody awful feeling!” Arthur laughed at my face, but predicted that the regimental doctor will never, probably, become a leading ladies’ specialist.

  Dick’s next item of news was even more startling. “I took Ida Weekes to our local cinema last night. You know she’s cook in a camp near here? We were discussing leave, as we’d like to be at home together at the same time about Easter, and she’s pretty sure she can get hold of some petrol and motor me up.”

  The Weekes’ only daughter is just about nineteen, as I said, and having finished with Roedean, Domestic Economy and Paris, had just come home to have a good time and civilize her parents in September 1939. Then she had, I knew, gone off on volunteer jobs, but I hadn’t realized exactly what. She is a tall, golden-haired athletic girl, and I have always thought her charming and delightful; but Dick’s letter is startling because for the six years of our life in Stampfield he has consistently referred to Ida as a pie-face, and wriggled out of every invitation of the Weekes if he could possibly manage it. It is at these moments that one does long for a female friend to whom one can repeat one’s ejaculations and surmises ten times in slightly different words, and with whom one can discuss whether Brussels lace veils are still worn—for I have kept my wedding one so carefully—with whom one can go upstairs and have a good look at the drawers of baby-clothes. As it is, I was making the best of Arthur for these confidences, in spite of his placid remark that Dick and Ida showed no signs of anything but ordinary neighbourliness, and that he didn’t see old Weekes allowing his only daughter to have anything to do with a penniless subaltern, not just now at any rate.

  “But don’t”, he added, as he saw my face fall, “begin to weep at the prospect of a Montague and Capulet feud here, or imagine that poor Strang has wrecked two young lives. They can dispense with balconies and friars and vaults quite well, you know, and get married without any old Nurse in Colchester, if indeed, as I refuse to believe, they have the faintest idea of doing so.”

  The telephone bell rang and when, after an interval, Arthur returned, I was just deciding that Kate could be asked to do the nursery if Ida’s nurse wouldn’t mind carrying up meals for herself and the baby.

  So I certainly deserved to be recalled to ordinary life again.

  “That was Strang asking if he might preach instead of me at the Mid-day Service to-day,” Arthur said, rumpling up his nice thick hair. “He says he will undertake to explain his position and put an end to what he calls ‘the certain tension one feels about one’. I really didn’t know what to say! I can’t manage to see him, for I’ve got my class in the schools and my hospital visits later.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I’d let him have a line later. May Heaven forgive me for a want of charity, but I can’t bear to have him spluttering on the telephone again so soon. And anyhow he has to go to a call-box you see. I wonder—”

  “Whether I could leave a note?” I suggested, gloomily.

  “Well, I must confess that was rather my idea,” admitted Arthur.

  “But what are you going to say?”

  “Well, what? I should be quite glad not to preach because I gather Weekes and Co. are all going to look in in the hope of hearing me stand up and deliver a smashing attack on the enemy. I wasn’t going to, of course, but it would enable me to stand back and let Strang make peace on his own account!”

  “If he will!” I protested, hopelessly.

  “I had only meant myself to speak about tolerance, and respect for the point of view of one’s opponents, in such a way that both sides might take it to heart. It wouldn’t do any good, I know, and it might conceivably be better to let Strang try again. I wonder if by any chance you could just see him for a moment and try to hint—it wouldn’t seem too official, you know!”

  “He might think it officious!” I protested, though I knew, of course, that I would do anything to help Arthur. “Perhaps if I saw Mrs. Strang—”

  “I don’t suppose she bullies him as you bully me,” said Arthur most unjustly, with a beaming smile. “But if you don’t mind delivering an ultimatum! I was so taken aback by the suggestion on the telephone.”

  “Telephones weren’t meant for philosophers who always say ‘yes and no’,” I agreed. “It would save a lot of time if people didn’t ring you up. Write your epistle to Strang and I’ll deliver it with my truncheon, only agree I don’t bully you!”

  “Only for my good, Mrs. Proudie dear,” replied Arthur, meekly, picking up Dick’s letter again.

  I had to leave him, for loud thumps were coming from upstairs, and I ran up to discover, to my surprise, that Kate was turning out the drawing-room. It is one of my very minor regrets that we don’t use the room more, as it is the largest and pleasantest in the house. From the side bow-window you can catch a glimpse of a little orchard behind a nursery garden at the end of the street, and its white walls and (rather torn) matting on the floor give one a feeling of a country home. But the big windows and small fire-place make it almost uninhabitable in cold weather, even if Kate and I could spare time for the work which a third sitting-room on the first-floor entails. Kate, of course, approves of the idea of having a “best room” which is seldom used. I don’t know that she cares for the rather nice marquetry desk and chairs I inherited from my old home, and she thinks the three Indian rugs and old frail damask curtains might well be replaced by “one of them nice Ax. squares and something light in cretong” which she had in her last place; but as she loves an Occasion she invests it, I think, with a sort of respect, and was once heard to refer to my rather cracked old Coalport china as “airlooms” in a rebuke to Dick. She was busy balanced on a table with the feather brush when I looked in, and was evidently enjoying herself.

  “Is it worth doing the drawing-room to-day, Kate?” I asked. “I’m in rather a hurry, and we must do the beds now—and I hadn’t meant to use it this afternoon.”

  “Best be ready,” said Kate, leaping down with a heavy thud and preparing to follow me. “I thought I’d put a fire on in case Mrs. Weekes dropped in this afternoon. You’re in at tea-time, aren’t you?”

  “Mrs. Weekes?” I murmured feebly.

  “Yes. I slipped into Weekes’s last night for a minute or two to borrow a jumper-pattern. Of course, I’m not one to gossip, but I couldn’t help hearing the remarks passed. Well, in my opinion, I said, Mr. Dick could do better for himself, not but what I’ve always thought Miss Ida seemed pleasant-spoken enough, and the girls there always have a good word for her.”

  I resisted the temptation to inquire into the perfection of the espionage system in the Weekes’ household; it could hardly have been in ours, as I don’t believe Kate either could or would have steamed open Dick’s letter this morning; I merely said that anyone who married Miss Weekes would, I was sure, be a very lucky man.
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br />   “Yes, she’s a nice girl and handy about the house, they say,” agreed Kate, pleasantly. “But I said we’d look very high for Mr. Dick!”

  “What nonsense, Kate!” I protested, indignantly. “Sometimes I think that all that matters to a man is to marry someone who’s good-natured and knows how to cook.”

  “Better than the flashy kind or one of them typists,” agreed Kate. “When people go on clucking about these mothers of evacuees I always say it stands to reason that a girl out of a factory or shop or office isn’t likely to make much of a job of her house or her kids.”

  “No,” I agreed, glad to reach this safer topic. “They can’t have much experience of house-keeping.”

  “Not a wink, and worse than that if you know what I mean,” said Kate, tucking in the blankets ferociously. “With them at their jobs it’s all clock in and clock out, and then off to paint themselves up and go to the pictures or a dance. Very nice too, but stands to reason you can’t treat your husband or kids that way. There’s no clocking-off about a house, I says only yesterday to Private Jenkins. It’s work day in and day out for me here.”

  “But you do get some time off, Kate,” I said, with a sinking heart at this gloomy picture. “After lunch, for instance, and in the evenings, because we don’t take long over supper, and I always say you can wash up next morning.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m not complaining. I’m not a Lil Sime, thank Heaven! I takes my time off as I finds it. And I often thinks when I’m having a good sit-down with the Herald after lunch with my feet on a chair, that I wouldn’t like to be in Dykes’, saying ‘Change please!’ and ‘This yellow’s just the shade, Moddam’ with the Irish stew barely down my throat; the food they give those girls who live in is something chronic. I don’t make a song about only popping in and popping out as suits all parties, but it comes hard on these girls as have only worked by the clock, and that’s why their kids aren’t house-trained and get the itch and worse. It’s what Private Jenkins says to me; these business girls have never had to think of anyone but Number One, and a man would rather have a well-cooked bit of steak than see his girl working an hour to make her nails look as if she’d dipped them in blood. I tell him he’s proper old-fashioned, but there’s something in it if you know what I mean. That’s what’s wrong at Strangs’,” concluded Kate, collecting the hot-water bottles and shoes and turning to the door. “She doesn’t half make that poor little Doris of hers slave away, and if Doris asks as much as to pop out for a penny stamp she’ll say it’s not her time ‘Off Duty’ as is printed up on the kitchen wall above the boiler. Don’t give me time-tables in a house, says I! Give me plenty of give and take!”

  It was quite true, I thought, as I hurried off to the Curate’s, after a review of the kitchen, which showed that Private Jenkins and Kate together had certainly taken a good deal of my bread and margarine and cake last night. Business life is not the best preparation for a home-maker, though better, probably, than the busy pursuit of having a good time which was just as much a preoccupation of girls of my period as the much abused modern young. I am quite sure that in the impoverished world of the future every wise young man will look for a wife who can manage a home cheerfully and competently. Old incompetents like myself, with nothing to recommend us but a vague tradition of being ladies, must certainly vanish off the face of the earth very soon. Any girl of any class, with energy and a taste for bettering herself, has nowadays all the standards of personal cleanliness and toilet-care, of accent and good manners which were once the prerogative of one class only. And all that survives of birth and breeding as distinguishing marks are, on the essential side, courage, self-control, honesty and unselfishness (and plenty of “real ladies” are wanting in these) and in non-essentials, a whole set of taboos in manner and speech which vary from one generation to another. The other day I saw one of the tough, tweed-coated County girls who condescend to come into Stampfield for imperative shopping, run round a corner almost into the arms of Alice, Miss Grieve’s pretty, demure, fair little cook. Miss de Freyne only glared and whistled for her spaniel while Alice stopped and murmured, “Pardon me!” And yet, so ingrained are our silly prejudices that I myself, I suppose, and most of my friends would prefer the former to the latter as a wife for our sons; we should put down the stony glare to absent-mindedness, and we would hate to welcome someone who said, “Pardon me”, or “granted”. Let us hope any coming social revolution will end our follies, for there really can be nothing more fatuous than the tiny almost invisible caste divisions of old-fashioned England. Surely in the dark times of the future only the very best of the old ideals of ladyhood will survive, I told myself as I turned into Byng Butts. But I wish I hadn’t remembered, even before I reached Number 24, a story of a French aristocrat who climbed the guillotine-steps in a fury because a lawyer’s wife had had the pas, and lost her head before he did. (That was a story from a great-grandmother of ours who was only just rescued from the tumbril by an American friend and protector, but I hope it wasn’t really true!)

  The Strangs have a convenient but very tiny bungalow in this new little street. It must have been Doris’s time “On Duty” for though Mrs. Strang must have seen me from the window on one side, and Mr. Strang on the other, I had to stand shivering in the cold raw mist for five minutes before the poor breathless little maid appeared, very grubby except for the clean cap which Mrs. Strang had sent her to fetch, in a whisper which was quite audible to me outside the door. I was ushered into the dining-room, where Mr. Strang sat, trying to write, at a table still covered with breakfast things. The poor little man looked dreadfully cold and ill, I thought, and I feel miserably sure that Mrs. Strang does not give him enough to eat. As with so many girls who have lived in shops and offices, her values are all wrong. She looks on so many things for show as necessities which seem to me merely luxuries. In them I include permanent waves, a weekly visit to the pictures, cosmetics and cigarettes. She is so young and pretty that it is quite easy to understand, but I met her once at the hairdresser’s bewailing that she couldn’t afford a nice steak for Herbert on their income, and she had obviously spent the price of it on a set. But I rebuked myself severely for a critical, grizzled old lady when she came in now, delightfully fresh and trim, with her quite adorable baby, Pamela, of five months old. Needless to say, Pamela is being brought up on a modern system, infinitely superior to anything I ever knew, and has never given any trouble, by night or day, all her little life. Every mother should be glad to know that I repressed my vehement longing to say, “Wait till she begins teething”, and sat looking as old-world and incompetent as young mothers like.

  Pamela grinned and gurgled, and I should have enjoyed her if Mr. Strang hadn’t grown more and more like an Irish terrier (though a sick one) as he read Arthur’s letter, and anyone who grows pugnacious over my husband must be a confirmed case of militancy. Nothing would have induced me to offer him my opinion unasked, but Mrs. Strang was only too anxious evidently to gain an opportunity to present her own.

  “I do think it’s so wrong of people here, Mrs. Lacely, don’t you, to dare to criticize Herbert like they do? As if a priest hadn’t the right to tell his people of their duty!”

  “One often fails to find sympathy,” said Herbert, looking at me under his eyebrows pugnaciously. “I gather from this letter, Mrs. Lacely, that one is not to preach unless one is to consider oneself positively muzzled!”

  “I think my husband is very anxious to avoid any further strife in the parish,” I said, trying not to let myself dwell on the exquisite appropriateness of a muzzle for Mr. Strang. “You must see his point of view, as he’s nothing but a pacifist over all this.”

  “A pacifist is not one who makes peace with evil,” snapped Mr. Strang.

  “No, but peace can only be maintained by compromise, everywhere, I’m sure you’ll agree,” I said. “And I know it must pain you to realize that you hurt the feelings of those whose relations are serving their country.”

  “We are all serving
our country,” said Mr. Strang, austerely.

  The worst of the Strangs of this world is that when they air their views the listener suddenly discovers, welling up from his subconscious self, the Saint Crispin speech of good King Harry and the poems of Newbolt and Kipling set to the music of a Guards’ band and the waving of banners. However, instead of squaring my shoulders and saying, “’Pon my soul!” I replied mildly that in that case Mr. Strang must surely make allowance for capitalists and town councillors, and try not to spread the war all over the home front.

  “I don’t see why,” broke in Mrs. Strang. “I’m sure everyone here has a spite against my husband!”

  “Hush, dear one,” said Herbert, looking a little ashamed of his wife. “If it were true, I should only wish to return evil with good. One would never stoop to criticize others for their personal feelings. It is my cause alone for which I speak.”

  “Then you don’t feel you can preach to-day?” I asked, anxious to come to any conclusion.

  “I cannot accept your husband’s offer. No, I cannot. To tell you the truth, it surprises me that he should make it.”

  “You don’t look as if you should preach, anyhow,” I said, with a pang of pity for the little man as he collapsed into a chair. “You look to me as if you’d got the ‘flu, Mr. Strang.”

  “Herbert never spares himself,” said his wife, aggressively. “He was out till I don’t know when last night at the Boys’ Club.”

  “I thought everything shut early in the black-out,” I said, looking at the curate really apprehensively. He had gone terribly white and was shivering uncontrollably.

  “One was delayed getting home,” he said, his teeth chattering audibly, and I really felt rather alarmed.