Parson's Nine

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Mr. Browne,” she said bitterly. “Mr. Browne.”

  “Yes?” he exclaimed, swinging round to her, eager for more compliments.

  “What is being done about my music?”

  “Done!” He looked hurt. “Nothing, why?”

  “Charming, charming,” Mrs. Denvel murmured.

  “Why?” The dancing mistress’s eyes blazed. “Why? Because unless I am satisfied that it is right before I leave this house my children do not dance tomorrow.”

  Not dance! The actors huddled together like so many pricked balloons. Susanna looked at them. “How much they care,” she thought, “and what’s it matter, anyway?” But she went to the orchestra, who were busily wrapping up their instruments, and had fortunately not heard the argument.

  “Would you mind waiting a minute? Miss Edwards wants to go through her children’s fairy music with you.”

  The orchestra protested; they had trains to catch, and buses.

  “That’s all right,” said Susanna. “The car must make several journeys and take you all home.”

  She went back into the hall, to find Miss Edwards saying:

  “I’m sorry, but I have my reputation to consider; my children cannot do themselves justice with such an accompaniment.”

  “The orchestra are waiting to rehearse with you now,” Susanna broke in.

  “Now isn’t that charming?” Mrs. Denvel beamed on them. “And you’ll all stay to dinner, won’t you?”

  Susanna gazed in horror round the crowded hall.

  “Oh, we needn’t bother the cast, they’re finished with.”

  “But of course they must all stay,” Mrs. Denvel insisted. “Such fun.”

  As Susanna counted heads, and ran down to the kitchen with the alarming total, she was conscious Mrs. Bird would think it anything but fun.

  The weather the next day was kind; never once did it look like rain. From nine till midnight Susanna ran. She put up stalls, and helped to decorate them; she overlooked the seating for tea, and the play, and as she ran agreed at least forty times: “Yes, aren’t we lucky in our day?” She met the local bigwig on the doorstep, who had come to open the fête, and saw the bouquet for the bigwig safely into the arms of the small child who was to present it; she gave out programmes to the girls who were to sell them, and watched the play safely through to Puck asking the audience to “Give me your hands, if we be friends,” and to Mr. Browne bowing and beaming his thanks, first to the audience and then to his cast. She saw beer carried out at suitable intervals to the orchestra, and said goodnight as the last of them, carrying his bassoon, staggered through the gates. Then she looked for Mrs. Cary, and found her in the drawing-room with her aunt.

  “There you are, dear,” Mrs. Denvel beamed. “What a success! But really you can have no idea how exhausted I am, so I’m off to my bed.”

  As the door closed on her, Mrs. Cary winked at Susanna, and they both laughed till the tears rolled down their cheeks.

  “Now, is that an improvement or hysteria?” Mrs. Cary wondered.

  The next morning Susanna awoke in a worse state of depression than she had been in for weeks. She hadn’t realised how completely the fête was filling her mind and time until it was over. The day stretched before her, a long blank, and she felt she had nothing to do with it. Mrs. Cary, studying her after breakfast, sensed how she felt.

  “What are you going to do today?”

  “Oh, the fête accounts. There is still a little money to come in, and then I’ll come to the station and see you off, and then—oh, something will want doing, I suppose.”

  Mrs. Cary went up to her aunt’s room.

  “Can I take Susanna away tonight? You don’t need her any more, do you?”

  “Well—” There was a long pause, for secretly Mrs. Denvel was tired of Susanna, and was charmed to get rid of her so easily. People had been far too apt to say to her during the last few weeks, “Isn’t Miss Churston wonderful?” And even sometimes, “I don’t know what we should have done without her.” Irritating, aggravating remarks. “I might manage,” she said at last, “though it would, of course, inconvenience me. As far as the fête was concerned, I could have managed without her. I couldn’t trust her to do much, but she has saved my old legs by running messages and so on.”

  “Quite. But I think she looks tired; I’d like to take her back to town with me.”

  “Tired! Is she? Really, these modern girls have no stamina.”

  “Her brother’s death was a great shock; she gets easily depressed.”

  “She’s not very lively, I must say; I like a girl to be full of fun.”

  “Susanna was once.”

  “Was she?” Mrs. Denvel yawned. “Really too sad.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Mrs. Cary had a niece, Beatrice.

  “She’s a painted piece, and a little idiot,” she explained her to Susanna. “But she earns a lot one way and another. I expect she’ll find you something to do.”

  To Beatrice she said:

  “Find Susanna a job, and I’ll give you a frock.”

  “What sort of a job? And what sort of a frock?”

  “Any job that’ll keep her amused, and any frock within reason.”

  “Why do you want her to work? Is she hard up?”

  “Not really, but she thinks she is; she’s been told so for her good, and you’re not to disillusion her.”

  “All right, but she must be soft to let her family pull that tale across her; I’d see mine damned first.”

  “It was her mother’s doing. She told her she’d lost some money, as she thought she ought to go away.”

  “Why?”

  “She’d been knocked sideways by the death of her twin brother.”

  “A brother! How odd. If it had been some man that she was keen on I could have understood it. I’m quite fond of old Cyril, but I don’t believe I’d let it blight my young life if anything happened to him.”

  Mrs. Cary laughed.

  “Beaty, darling, I doubt your life being blighted by any man, alive or dead.”

  “I daresay you’re right.”

  As July came to an end, Mrs. Cary decided to shut the house.

  “Would you like to go home for August?” she asked Susanna doubtfully.

  “No.” Susanna shook her head firmly. “I’ll go to Judith, I think, if she’ll have me.”

  She obviously didn’t want to pursue the subject, and Mrs. Cary wasn’t surprised at her answer. “I expect she dreads the nagging reminder of all the familiar things, and feels the relief of having turned her back on them,” she thought. But all she said was:

  “I should write to your sister at once, then.”

  She herself wrote to Catherine:

  “DEAR MRS. CHURSTON,

  You will see me in August, but not Susanna. She has written to Judith to ask if she can go there. I hope she is coming back to me in September; I’ve put a young niece on to the task of finding a job for her. I’ll tell you everything fully when we meet.

  Yours very sincerely,

  ANNE CARY.”

  Judith was delighted to have Susanna. She wrote at once:

  “DEAREST SUSANNA,

  Yes, do come. I am ‘with child’ again, as you know, but not too unsightly. Harry will be home, but he does nothing but walk about and talk of fences and roofs to the peasantry—not very amusing for me. I shall be glad of your company here. Have you heard that Esther has Nanny for her boy? She wanted to come to me when Perdita was born, but I had to say no; she must be hopelessly old fashioned by now. I hear Tobit has been having more trouble with his leg; they must have cut it off very badly. Love,

  JUDITH.”

  Susanna had a peaceful holiday, but she had far too much time on her hands, which depressed her, and Judith had permanently too much on hers, which ma
de her restless and irritable. Their only social activity was driving out to tea with their neighbours, where they stood on damp grass, saying, “How well your gentians have done!” and “How clever you always are with your roses!” and then went indoors, and over tea discussed drains and water shortage. Susanna found Perdita entrancing when she was allowed to see her, but she was brought up on a very careful system; every moment of her day was accounted for, either with food, sleep, air or exercise, and only twenty minutes, ten in the morning and ten at night, were down as “Play with Mother,” and her Nanny was very strict and forbade anyone to come into the nursery at odd times. She said “It upset the routine.” Judith was taking an enormous interest in her baby, and was testing her during the twenty minutes she did see her, to find out in what direction her gifts lay.

  “I thought at first she was going to be an artist,” she told Susanna. “She was always asking me to draw things, and you know I can’t draw, and you wouldn’t believe it, but Perdita knew at once they weren’t good. ‘Not a doggy,’ she said, or ‘Not a pussy,’ whichever it was meant to be. But when I told Harry about her he was most discouraging, said he’d done a lifelike portrait of his nurse at two or something, and had never been able to draw since. That wouldn’t have put me off; but, as a matter of fact, I think her bent is perfectly clear. That baby is a musician.”

  “Is she? How can you tell?”

  “I put on the gramophone for her one day when she was down with me. I never had before as nurse doesn’t allow noise of any sort; says it will ruin her nerves; but this happened to be a soft tune, and she was cross, and I thought it would distract her, and it did. Do you know, she stood up on the drawing-room floor and began to conduct!”

  “What?”

  “It’s quite true, and since then I’ve tested her in other ways; she loves nothing so much as the piano, would go on banging at the notes for hours if she were allowed. Nanny and Harry laugh at me, but I’m not going to be put off, and she starts piano lessons next year.”

  “When she’s four?”

  “No, directly after Christmas; she’ll be turned three. I believe you can’t start too young.”

  “Well, I do hope she enjoys it.”

  Susanna went back to town in September.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” Beatrice told her. “You want a job, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, would you like to do mannequin work? I do a lot of it, special shows, you know: it’s marvellous what you can earn at the right time of year.”

  “Could I do it?”

  “Of course. All you need is a good figure, and you’ve got that; then you just walk.”

  “Ordinarily?”

  “Almost. I’ll show you if you think you’d like to do it.”

  “I don’t mind what I do.”

  “Well, it’s high time you did, if you don’t mind me saying so; you’ll get moss cropping up in your brain soon if you go on saying, ‘I don’t care. I don’t mind.’ How about trying ‘wanting’ something for a change?”

  For several days Beatrice gave Susanna lessons in the art of displaying clothes.

  “Just one foot in front of the other, and an expression on your face as though you found the rest of the world a bad smell; that part ought to come easy to you; it’s almost natural.”

  Every day, as well as coaching her, she dragged her round the agencies, and to see the magnificent costumières who were holding dress parades. To her unmitigated horror, Susanna found she was engaged for her first show without Beatrice. It was a small affair, only two girls were wanted—a tall and a short. Beatrice fell between the two stools, but she was kindhearted, and on the great afternoon escorted Susanna, who was trembling with fright, up a long, narrow flight of stairs, and left her outside some swing doors with “Lady Jane” painted across them in gold paint. Susanna pushed the doors open.

  “Lady Jane?” she enquired weakly of a terrifyingly soignée girl, who was smoking at the far end of a long room.

  The girl didn’t remove her cigarette from her mouth, but merely called out:

  “Jane, here’s the model.”

  Some curtains opened and a head was thrust through them, and a pair of eyes stared at Susanna.

  “Oh yes, the tall one,” said the head. “Show her where to go; I must shove on some things or I shall be late. I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the showroom.” The head vanished and the curtains swung together once more.

  The soignée girl said nothing to Susanna, but opened a door at the far end of the room and called up some stairs.

  “Miss Briggs, here’s the model.”

  Miss Briggs, an anxious-faced little creature with a squint, came flying down.

  “Well,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “I was just saying in the workroom, ‘Wherever are those model girls? We’ll never have them dressed in time.’ Starting with the tailor-mades?” The soignée girl nodded. “That’s right, I always say, ‘Keep the evening things till the last,’” and she bustled out of the room and up the stairs.

  Susanna, realising that the tailor-mades were obviously her concern, hurried up the stairs too, and found herself in a small room, with about fifty dresses, coats, and underclothes hanging on coat-hangers on pegs against the walls. Another anxious-faced little woman was in the room; this one hadn’t a squint, but she was lame. Miss Briggs began speaking urgently as she got inside the door:

  “I’ll dress this girl, Miss Jones, and you can do the little one when she comes. My word! some of these models are casual; she isn’t half late.”

  “What are they starting with?”

  “The tailor-mades.”

  “Miss Briggs,” the soignée girl called up the stairs.

  “There, that’ll be yours now,” said Miss Briggs. “You’d better go down and get her.”

  Miss Jones limped towards the door, but before she reached it, an extremely pretty girl flew in, snatched off her hat, displaying a marvellous mop of golden curls, tossed her frock on to a chair, and, dressed in nothing but a wisp of crêpe de Chine and lace, proceeded to make up her face.

  “These damned trains,” she said, as she blued her eyelids. “I waited a good ten minutes for one at Earl’s Court. I thought I’d be late.”

  “You nearly were, dear,” Miss Briggs pointed out. “Lucky you’re so quick when you do arrive.”

  She glanced reproachfully at Susanna as she spoke, who began hurrying out of her frock, and into the satin shoes Beatrice had told her to bring. The other girl having finished her face, also changed her shoes; she turned to Miss Jones and without saying a word held out her arms and was put carefully into a frock, then she looked at herself in a long glass.

  “Fair to lousy,” she remarked.

  “But has to be shown, dear,” said Miss Jones firmly.

  “Couldn’t she?” asked the girl, looking at Susanna.

  “Too tall,” Miss Briggs snapped, as she fitted Susanna into a creation of blue serge.

  “Smart that is,” sighed Miss Jones approvingly to Miss Briggs. “I always say, give me blue serge, right for every occasion, whether it’s a wedding at St. George’s or a bazaar in Mayfair.”

  The soignée girl interrupted them by calling sharply up the stairs:

  “Send down the girls, Miss Briggs; keep changing them as fast as you can, we don’t want any pauses.”

  The showroom was half-full of people, none of whom, as far as Susanna could judge, took much interest in dress; they seemed to be friends of Lady Jane’s who had come to a party rather than to buy anything. To Susanna’s surprise there were quite a lot of men present, and she felt glad that the underclothes had been hung on the other girl’s pegs and not on hers. Occasionally, something she wore attracted attention, and there was a low buzz of conversation about it. Once one of the women guests caught hold of her skirt as she walked by.

 
“Look,” she pointed out to her next-door neighbour. “This is the stuff Henrietta had her going-away dress made of; hideous, isn’t it? Of course, Henrietta looked better in it than this girl, but she looked foul all the same.”

  Another time, it was one of the men who stopped her. He held her by the wrist; it was the hat she was showing that interested him.

  “You see what I mean,” he said earnestly to a pretty woman who was sitting next to him. “These brims are nearly perfect for line; it’s difficult to see what I mean on this girl, as she has a hopeless profile for them, but on anyone else it would be divine.”

  The models were given tea, and they drank and chewed at intervals as they changed, until at six the last of the visitors left, and they were able to sink thankfully on to chairs and pull off their shoes.

  “My! I’m tired; aren’t you?” said Miss Briggs to Miss Jones. “I’ve put thirty dresses on her, counting repeats.”

  “That’s right,” agreed Miss Jones. “I’m done in, and I don’t mind betting you that none of that lot bought anything.”

  Dressed once more in her own clothes, Susanna came down to the showroom, and found the soignée girl leaning against the window, smoking.

  “Jane,” she called, “here’s the tall model. Shall I pay her?”

  Jane’s head popped through the curtains.

  “Yes, ten-and-sixpence. I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the showroom.”

  The soignée girl went to a desk and got out a ten shilling note and a sixpence. Susanna took it and went to the door.

  “Thank you. Goodnight,” she said, but she got no answer.

  She arrived home to find Mrs. Cary had a party.

  “Will you be too tired to go on and dance?” she asked Susanna.