Simon wanted to say that he could not care less if she ever became a secretary, good or bad, but Anthea looked so serious he could see he must try and pretend he minded.
“Rather a sudden decision, isn’t it?”
“Not really. I haven’t said anything because I hoped I might improve, but I don’t. I even forget ‘The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog’ and ‘Now is the time of all good men to come to the aid of their party,’ and everybody who can type knows those. You couldn’t believe anybody could be as stupid as I am about shorthand. Worst of all, I can’t spell.”
Simon stroked her hair.
“Neither can I without a lot of help from the dictionary. Told your mother?”
“No. I’m going to after lunch just before you start. Remember to put on your surprised-father face. I thought if I told her then you could have a what-on-earth-shall-we-do-with Anthea talk on your drive to the hotel.”
“Where is your mother?”
“In the drawing-room. The invitations have come for that committee about the film première for Save the Children. She says they must go off before she leaves this afternoon. I offered to do them this afternoon but she says it’s less trouble to do them herself.”
“Andrew here?”
“He’s lying down. He was sick in the taxi after having gas. Mother says the taxi driver was rude.”
“So would I be.”
“Mother said to leave Andrew alone until lunchtime and then she thought he’d be all right. She thinks he’s putting on how sick he feels so that he can’t go back to school this afternoon, but I don’t see how he could have been sick if he was putting it on.”
Simon laughed. “I wouldn’t put anything past Andrew. What time are we starting?”
“Directly after lunch so that you get to the hotel first. Mother feels responsible and wants to see they haven’t muddled the rooms.”
“Wish you were coming.”
“I don’t. I’d be the only grandchild, and though I know I’m no longer a child I feel wormish when the Uncles and Aunts look at me. I especially would to-day after what Miss Burdock said. Besides, I’m going to the pictures to-night.”
“With somebody nice?”
There was a faint flush on Anthea’s cheeks.
“Just Caroline and a boy she knows. Oh, and Caroline’s brother, Jim.”
Simon was half out of the door. He stopped.
“How’s he getting on?”
“Marvellously. Of course having artificial legs takes him a bit of time getting into places, but otherwise he’s just like other people.”
“How does he get on with that car the Ministry of Pensions got him?”
“You wouldn’t know when he’s driving he wasn’t just like everybody else.”
Simon watched Anthea. To keep her face from him she had fingered a fork while she was talking. She moved him. The defiant note in her voice sounded as if she had to protest too often that Jim was just like everybody else. He came back to her.
“When I have this what-shall-we-do-with-Anthea talk to your mother, what does Anthea want to do? The secretarial college was your choice, remember.”
Anthea nodded. When she spoke she was swallowing tears.
“I know. They said at school it was a good thing to train as a secretary. It was something you could always do part time if you needed money . . .”
Simon dared not touch her. Was afraid even to speak. He could so easily have helped her out with “If you needed money after you married . . .” But Anthea must not be pushed into a declaration that she might not be ready to make or perhaps would never make. He knew and liked her friend Caroline Bury and what he had seen of her parents. He had not met Jim until recently. He knew the boy had a good war history with the commandos, and that on some raid he had lost his legs. It was not until he had seen that faint flush on Anthea’s cheeks that he had thought of Jim or any one else in connection with her. To him she had been still a schoolgirl.
“Yes, darling?”
Anthea ploughed on, dropping words slowly from half-formed thoughts.
“I do think every woman ought to have something they can do—I mean besides housework and—well, and everything—after all if—well, if a person married the man they married might not be rich—not every man can be—and it would be less worrying for him—I mean he wouldn’t be so afraid that he might be a flop if the girl he married had something she could do—not always of course, but if things went wrong.”
Simon did not need his professional skill to piece together the meaning of those statements. He was trying to remember what he had heard young Jim was doing. Some sort of travelling salesman, he thought. Poor little Anthea, she was in love all right. Was this Jim Bury scared of the future or stalling because he was not sure if he were in love? Whichever way it went it would not help Anthea to feel humiliated because she could not remember “The quick red fox . . .” bless her.
“Couldn’t agree with you more. But you know I never did think this secretary idea was much good to you.”
“Didn’t you! You never said so. Mother thinks it’s what I ought to do.”
“Why should I have said anything. If you wanted it, it was all right with me. Anything you wanted was. I was only so thankful you didn’t aim to be a film star . . .”
“A film star! Me!”
“Well, lots of girls do. What I thought you would do when you left Cadogan House was something domestic. You’re very nice around a house, you know. Now if I were a young man thinking of asking a girl to marry me, I must say I would like one who was clever with a house. Of course, if she was a first-rate cook I shouldn’t hesitate. Did you ever hear of a first-rate cook who was looking for a job?”
Anthea’s eyes were shining.
“A cook! Oh, Dad! And I like cooking. You simply don’t know how awful these last months have been—that ghastly typewriter.” Her face grew anxious. “But do you think you could talk Mother into liking the idea? You know how she hopes one of us will be clever like—like she was. Of course cooks are clever in their way but not the sort of clever she means by clever.”
Between them stood Alistair—Alistair who had been what every one meant by clever. Even now Simon could not with any ease think of him. But though he still could not face Alistair’s shade he was increasingly aware of his remaining children. It was over four years since Alistair had been killed and in those years he and Jane had let the other children go. He was trying to get back, but only with Anthea had he made much progress. Peter he could get nowhere with. Lucia was still a schoolgirl with the shyness of adolescence, but though she undoubtedly had her ambitions and wishes, they were not confided to her father. Andrew he had hopes of getting to know. He was the self-possessed type, but already an uncommonly good companion if only he would consent to being one. This talk with Anthea was a turning point. She was asking for help, help perhaps in the shaping of her life. He must not fail her. He gave her a kiss.
“Trust me. When we get back on Monday you will have finished for good with the quick red fox and be heading for a cordon bleu.”
MARGARET
Margaret hung a notice on her surgery door stating she would be away until Monday, and telling her patients to whom they should go in an emergency. Then, with deep satisfaction, she locked the door. She was a woman on whom the years in every way had little effect. She had not lost a childlike enjoyment of small things, and, because she was without artifice, let this quality sing out of her voice for all who had ears to hear. At her morning surgery those patients who did not already know she was taking the week-end off, and where she was going, and for what, noticed how happy she was. “Doctor’s cheerful this mornin’.” The knowledgeable eagerly explained. “Goin’ to see ’er mother. All the family are givin’ ’er a party. It’s Mothering Sunday to-morrow, she was sayin’.”
Margaret stood at the bottom
of the stairs.
“Finished, Dixon? We can start now. I tell you what I’ve been thinking. You know that glorious view, well, that’s where we’ll eat our lunch.”
Freda Dixon sat on the top step of the stairs. She and Margaret had been at college together. Freda had been brilliant and a wonderful future was prophesied for her. A nervous breakdown from which she had emerged without a shred of faith in herself would seem to have ruined her life. She had struggled with various careers, but abandoned each, fearful of imagined incompetence. At a moment when those who loved her were saying despairingly, “What on earth is to become of Freda?” Freda recrossed Margaret’s path. Margaret had gone quietly and unobtrusively ahead with her career. After six months as house physician at the hospital where she had trained she had known what type of person she wished most to serve. After a struggle she had attained just what she desired—a practice, mostly amongst the very poor, on the river front on the Greenwich and Deptford border. In Margaret, Freda found what she needed, someone steady, untemperamental and solid against whom she could prop herself, and to whom she could, when necessary, cling. To Margaret life was an uncomplicated business. You saw what you wanted to do and you did it. She had formed no close friendships at college, but she had liked and admired “Dixon,” as she called her, and she saw when she met her again that Dixon needed help. She recalled that at college, Dixon, from a hobby point of view, had been interested in chemistry, but it seemed to be one of the careers she had not tried since her breakdown. She took her in and packed her off daily to learn dispensing. Living with Margaret, Freda had in many ways recovered her brilliance, and in no time made herself valuable. She took over the secretarial work of the practice, dispensed the medicines and, as well, ran the house which, up to her arrival, had not been run at all. Margaret had employed a succession of sluts as cook-generals whose only qualification for the job was the appalling state of their own homes, which might possibly be improved if a little money were earned. Freda was as soignée as Margaret was unkempt. She could not live in a dirty house. It made her skin itch to think that the woman who cooked her food—if you could call it cooking—was certainly unwashed and more than likely bringing lice in with her. It was not possible to persuade Margaret into changing her way of life. She had decided one of her neediest patients should always work for her and that was that. Freda, who had regained, with better nerves, her sense of humour, accepted the situation up to a point. She paid a slut, but did the housework and cooking herself, until an epidemic of influenza struck down and carried off the current slut and kept Margaret too busy to notice what was happening in her home. By the time the epidemic had died down a Mrs. Pinter was established, whose need was such, according to Freda, that Margaret could not turn her out. “She’s a widow. She says the only good meals she has eaten since her husband died she has had while she has been with us.” This verged on the truth, for since her husband’s death Mrs. Pinter lived with a well-to-do sister who was a shocking cook but too house-proud to allow Mrs. Pinter, who was an inspired cook, inside her kitchen. Margaret, observing Mrs. Pinter’s cosy, old-fashioned loaf shape encased in spotless white overalls, was puzzled but allowed her to stay, for she was incapable of turning away the needy; it had been the sluts who gave notice. Margaret never observed what went into her mouth; if asked immediately after a meal what she had eaten she had no idea. The worst concoctions of the sluts tasted, therefore, no better to her and no worse than Mrs. Pinter’s succulences. Nor was she very conscious of the way her house was kept. She hated things in their wrong places and always put them away, and took a duster or mop to too visible dirt and dust, but the finer points of housewifery missed her. Furniture just dusted was the same to her as furniture beautifully polished. A bath without a rim of dirt was as clean to her as a spotless bath with shining taps. Sometimes, coming in from a round of visits, she would look at her home in a puzzled way. “It doesn’t seem fair we have so much luxury, Dixon.” Freda was ready for that. “You must be mad. What’s luxurious in a small house on a main road with trams rattling by in a rather remote part of south-east London?” Sitting now on the top of the stairs Freda gazed affectionately but ruefully at Margaret.
“Couldn’t you change?”
Margaret, as she climbed the stairs, glanced at her clothes.
“But this is my better coat and skirt. I got up in it this morning so as not to have the bother of changing.”
Freda followed Margaret into her bedroom.
“As you have them made alike it needs a sharp eye to distinguish between your newest coat and skirt and your oldest. But you must change your blouse. I’ve especially washed and pressed this one your American sister-in-law gave you last Christmas. The one she gave you the year before is packed, so don’t forget to put it on in the morning. I don’t want you disgracing us at the family gathering.”
“None of the family care how I look. Such a waste of time changing and everything. Just think how lovely it will be in the country!”
“There’s an early Easter present for you on the top of your case. For goodness sake remember to hang it up.”
Margaret, half out of her blouse, turned scared eyes on Freda.
“Not something to wear? Oh, Dixon, it is something to wear. You know I hate putting on new things and I’ll look ghasdy anyway, I always do.”
“You hadn’t a thing to change into for dinner.”
“What nonsense! There’s my black velvet. What’s the matter with that?”
“Everything. You bought it soon after I came to live with you and that’s about fifteen years ago. Then it was buried for those two days after we were blasted. It was not good velvet to start with, and now it looks like a dead mouse which has been lying in a water gutter for three weeks.”
“You haven’t bought me a grand evening-dress? You know I won’t put it on.”
“Of course not. You don’t dress in the evening in country hotels. It’s a good plain black wool day dress. It’s exactly your size. It fastens very easily. You’re to wear your pearls with it, and your black court shoes, and for goodness’ sake remember to change into your nylons. I don’t think you can forget because Mrs. Pinter’s sewn the parcel they are in on to the front of the new dress.”
Margaret was in her clean blouse. She looked in the dressing-table mirror.
“I don’t like this blouse. I hate bows.”
“It’s very smart. It’s not a bow so much as a fastening. Anyway it will please your sister-in-law to see you in it.”
Margaret shook her head at her reflection. She saw, peering at her from behind spectacles, a round, plain face with coiled plaits covering each ear.
“I don’t mind wearing it if it will please Carol for she’s been awfully good about getting food for my patients, but I simply hate feeling dressed up. You can’t make me look anything but dowdy, that’s how I am. Mother used to try, especially that time after the first war when Old Cousin Tom sent Henry to Oxford. Henry used to come home for dances bringing some of his friends with him. I was about sixteen or seventeen, anyway just old enough for dances. Mother used to take the most awful trouble dolling me up, but it never made any difference even then.”
Freda looked at Margaret and smiled. She had been eighteen when she had first seen her, and she looked much the same now. At sixteen or seventeen she would have been an only slightly younger edition of to-day’s Margaret, but probably at that age the plaits would have hung down her back. Lucky Margaret of the shining eyes, of the repose born of the contented heart. To see your road clearly before you and to be dedicated to that road—it was the Margarets of this world whom the gods must love.
The telephone rang. Margaret moved to answer it but Freda stopped her.
“Let it ring. It’s sure to be somebody asking you to do something. You don’t want to be delayed getting off.”
Margaret hesitated. Her inward eye turned once more to her lovely view. Then she shook her
head. In the insistent burr-burr of the telephone she heard a cry for help.
“It’s no good, Dixon. If I don’t answer it I’ll spoil my day worrying who it was.”
“Hallo, is that Doctor Caldwell?”
Margaret recognised the voice of the finest of the local parsons.
“Yes. How are you, Canon?”
“Glad I caught you. You’re off this week-end, aren’t you?”
“Just starting.”
“Well, this needn’t keep you, it’s a job for Monday. It’s the Boswicks.” There was a pause while Margaret’s sigh mingled with the Canon’s. The Boswicks were a family over whom she physically and he spiritually and both materially had laboured endlessly.
“They haven’t sent for me.”
“It’s not illness. It’s that eldest girl, Lily. You remember, she married an ex-choir-boy of mine called Leonard Wemers.”
“I was at the wedding. A sailor.”
“He was. Just now he’s a guest of His Majesty’s at Wakefield prison.”
“Wakefield! Oh! What for?”
“Stealing. To make things worse, he was armed.”
“Poor Lily! Where is she?”
“That’s the trouble. Turned up with her two babies at the Boswicks.”
“Oh!”
The Canon’s voice reflected the dismay in hers.
“Yes. We’ve got to do something or it’ll have to be an N.S.P.C.C. case.”
“Of course we must. I’ll go this morning.”
Margaret had forgotten her lovely view. As she climbed the stairs her mind belonged wholly to the Boswicks.
“Well?”
“It won’t take long. It’s the Boswicks.”
Freda knew the Boswicks only too well.
“Won’t take long! The time you and everybody else spend on them! And absolutely nothing to show for it.”
“The Canon says that he hopes the work we’ve put in there, even if it doesn’t show to us, shows to God.”
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