Mothering Sunday

by Noel Streatfeild

  Felicity stepped out of the Jaguar. Had Jane been a dog, the hairs on her back would have bristled. Felicity was perfectly dressed. Jane was wearing a good coat and skirt, but Felicity’s tweeds were perfection, and without doubt dishonestly come by, for every strand shouted “Export only.” Behind her came George, beaming proudly, as if, in producing Felicity for her family, he had achieved a miracle. He looked so fatuously pleased it was all Jane could do not to say, “I don’t care a damn if Felicity is here or not.” As a final aggravation out of the back of the car came Virginia, not only apparently unaware of the enormity of her offence in being there at all, but adding to her offence by bringing her dog. It was, Jane knew, Felicity and George’s business to square the hotel about Slipper, but she felt, because this week-end was of her arranging, that an apology was due to her as well as to the hotel.

  “Hallo, Jane.” Felicity gave a vague, inclusive smile. “Hallo, Simon. What a divine day.”

  Virginia danced back to the car.

  “Imagine, Aunt Jane, we didn’t have to remind Mummie! Look!”

  The enormous bowed basket of fruit stood on the drive, looking exotic against the spring flowers and delicate young green of the garden. Jane stared at it, dropping her lids to hide the scorn in her eyes. What a ridiculous present! If their mother and Miss Doe stuffed themselves with fruit for a week they would never get through a great basketful like that. Besides, what place had a gold basket with pink bows in mother’s house? How much more sensible was her own present of some special South African jam, a cake, sardines and a tin of bacon.

  “Very grand.”

  Virginia, because she was away with both her parents and would see her grandmother in the morning, was radiant; her face glowed, her feet danced.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous! It’s much too gorgeous for Grannie, but Miss Doe will think it perfect and she’ll brag about it to the Matron of the Cottage Hospital. I expect Grannie will send it with most of the fruit to the Cottage Hospital; she always sends nice things when she can.”

  Simon and George slid away. They hung over the Jaguar.

  Simon, Jane felt sure, was going to spend the whole week-end slipping off examining cars, finding excuses for frittering away the time instead of helping her to make this family gathering an occasion for united action and clear-cut decisions. Her voice was sharp with annoyance.

  “I think you had better take Slipper in, Virginia, and make sure the manageress will have him.”

  Simon and George caught her words. Simon said:

  “Shall we go with her, George, and give her support? We’d better carry some of these cases in. The fellow who’s supposed to do it seems to have disappeared.”

  Jane could have hit Simon. She watched the men with Virginia and Slipper disappear round the side of the hotel. She could imagine, without hearing it, the conversation, how easily that manageress would be persuaded. She could imagine what Simon would say to George when Virginia had gone up to see her room. He would tip him off that Virginia’s arrival was unpopular; they would think she was making a feminine fuss about nothing; they neither of them realised or cared how Carol felt about her children.

  “It’s awfully awkward Virginia having come, Felicity. What made you bring her?”

  Felicity was gazing dreamily at the garden.

  “Virginia! Wasn’t she expected? Nobody told me. George never said anything when she got into the car.”

  “It’s Carol. She feels Mother never sees Helen and Paul. She’s family-minded, you must know that. We’ve got a lot of things to discuss this week-end, and we didn’t want the children around, so I told her none of the grandchildren would be here, now I’ve got everything to rearrange.”

  “Must you? Virginia won’t bother anybody, I’m sure.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing. Either this is a no-grandchildren family party or it’s all the grandchildren. I’m going to ring up Anthea and tell her to bring Peter and Lucia down, and I’m going to have plans cut and dried before Carol gets here for Andrew and Paul to connect up with Helen. I rather think if they make an early start they could catch the same train as Anthea, Peter and Lucia and that means only one car need meet them. George must go, you have the biggest car. I’ll go in now and see what time-tables they have.”

  “What a pity to waste this nice afternoon on time-tables. I shouldn’t. Come and look at the garden with me.”

  Without waiting for Jane’s answer Felicity drifted away. Jane, looking after her, unwillingly thought how pretty she still was and, at the same time, how easy it was for the Felicities of the world to keep their looks. Everything was smoothed out and made easy for them. George was like a soft carpet waiting to be walked on. Even the war had not touched Felicity. Of course, George was away and Virginia evacuated, and there was only part of the house open and a minute staff, but Felicity had never done any real hard war service; she had never been on duty for sixteen or seventeen hours at a stretch. She had been in London the whole time and so had put up with enemy action of all types, but always with a roof over her head. She had not had to throw herself into gutters to avoid blast from nearby bombs. Above all she had not lost an Alistair. Oh, God! Alistair! Standing in the garden, watching Felicity’s back, Jane’s eyes misted and she swallowed a moan. Alistair. Oh, Alistair! My magnificent, brilliant son!

  Margaret parked her shabby little car behind the Jaguar. It did not cross her mind to look for any one to carry her case. With it in one hand and the daffodils in the other she walked into the hotel lounge. The manageress saw her coming. “This will be the doctor sister,” she thought, and recalled and understood the phrase in Jane’s letter booking the rooms. “I shall also require a single back room. I gather from your letter your rooms are slightly cheaper at the back.” Funny how different members of a family could be. Who would think this was a sister of that smart, lovely Mrs. Wilson, or even a sister of Mrs. Betler if it came to that?

  “I’m Miss Caldwell. I think Mrs. Betler booked a room for me. Are the others here yet?”

  The manageress turned the register round to face Margaret.

  “Mr., Mrs. and Miss Wilson and Mr. and Mrs. Betler. They’re unpacking, I think.”

  Margaret had put her case on the floor. She held her daffodils under the manageress’s nose.

  “Aren’t they lovely? Don’t you like this sort with orange edges? They’re for my mother. It’s Mothering Sunday, to-morrow. We’ve always given her presents on Mothering Sunday. The others give all sorts of things, but I stick to daffodils. I’m very unoriginal.”

  The manageress had been feeling tired. There had been trouble all the morning; the laundry was late, the barman had muddled his orders the night before, a chambermaid had to be dismissed—ordinary hotel worries, but accentuated because of the fatigue from the feeling of spring in the air. Close to Margaret, her nose on Margaret’s daffodils, she received strength. Tiredness slipped from her as if it was an old coat that she had dropped on the floor, and with it went her worries. It was as if from Margaret she had drawn not only strength but serenity.

  “I’ll show you your room.”

  “Must you? Can’t I find it? Just tell me the number. You don’t want to bother to climb up and down the stairs when you needn’t. I know about stairs. I’m a doctor and half my patients live in blocks of flats with no lifts. I always try and do the top floors in the mornings before my legs give out.”

  The manageress came round from behind her desk holding Margaret’s key.

  “I’d like to take you up. Leave the daffodils here. I’ll put them in water in the cellar. They’ll keep fresh there for to-morrow.”

  Margaret hung out of her window. It looked down on the family cars and the wall of the garage. As well she could see a little of the garden. She gave a deep, satisfied sigh. So absorbed was she that she did not hear Virginia and Slipper come into her room. She only knew they were there when she felt
Slipper’s nose against her legs and Virginia’s arms round her.

  “Darling Aunt Margaret! It’s simply ages since I saw you. We’ve got rooms next to each other. I’m so glad. I don’t think there’s any one else sleeping in this passage so we can call to each other through the wall.”

  Margaret kissed Virginia and patted Slipper.

  “Isn’t that a heavenly almond tree, and I can see daffodils, too. How lucky our windows look out this side.”

  Virginia had been into her parents’ rooms. Their windows looked out on the castle and church and a distant wood. The castle grounds were yellow with daffodils. She had discovered that all the family rooms looked out that way except her own and Aunt Margaret’s. She had not cared for herself, but hearing Margaret say she was lucky made her feel protective and motherly. Darling Aunt Margaret, she was always so pleased with everything and she never got the best of anything. She rubbed her cheek against Margaret’s sleeve.

  “Shall Slipper and I help you unpack?”

  Margaret looked at her suitcase with distaste.

  “I hadn’t meant to unpack it. It seems such a waste of time taking clothes out and putting them away on an afternoon like this.”

  Virginia felt more protective than ever.

  “Have you brought another frock for this evening or are you going to keep on that coat and skirt? Of course, it’s an awfully nice coat and skirt, it will do perfectly if you haven’t brought anything else.”

  Margaret turned shamed, shocked eyes on Virginia.

  “My goodness! I almost forgot. Miss Dixon gave me a new dress especially to wear to-night.”

  Virginia knelt down by the case and unfastened it.

  “Is it nice?”

  “I haven’t seen it. She promised it was plain! I look very silly in anything grand. I’m to wear the pearls your mother gave me, and my black court shoes with it.”

  Virginia stood up shaking out a black woollen dress.

  “But it’s lovely, Aunt Margaret. My goodness, you’ll look posher than anybody. What’s the parcel sewn on to the front?”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten about that. It’s my nylons; I always forget to put them on so Mrs. Pinter, my housekeeper, sewed them on to the dress so that I couldn’t miss them.”

  Virginia hung the frock in the wardrobe. She went back to the case.

  “You needn’t bother to remember anything to-night, shall dress you. I’ll see you’ve got everything on and I’ll borrow some scent from Mummie as a final touch.”

  “Not scent, Virginia. I’m not the type for scent. I don’t really like dressing up but Miss Dixon didn’t want me to be the family disgrace. I told her it didn’t matter, that everybody expected me to look a comic.”

  Virginia emptied the suitcase. She put Margaret’s spare blouse on a coat-hanger.

  “I don’t think you look a comic. You look just right to me.”

  “That’s very nice of you, dear, but that’s not how I look to Aunt Carol or Aunt Jane, and as for Uncle Henry, he’s ashamed of me and you can’t blame him seeing how Aunt Carol and Helen always look.”

  Virginia laid Margaret’s still serviceable but faded, darned pyjamas on the bed.

  “I think Helen’s coming for the day, to-morrow. I think all the cousins are.”

  “How very nice. I don’t know why but I had got it into my head it was grown-ups only.”

  “So it was meant to be. Just all of you and the people you’ve married. But I came.”

  “I’m very glad you did.”

  “Aunt Jane isn’t. You know what she is about arrangements being upset. There’s going to be a lot of telephoning. I suppose you couldn’t talk her out of it, could you?”

  “Out of what?”

  “Fetching all the cousins along.”

  “Me! Your Aunt Jane would never care what I said. Besides, why shouldn’t they come?”

  Virginia was by the end of the bed. She rubbed a finger up and down the bed-head.

  “I’ve forced my way in, Aunt Margaret. Grannie doesn’t really want to see me, but I didn’t think she’d mind so much as you’re all going. I would have gone another day but I’ve never seen Grannie not wanting me. I couldn’t bear it. I thought I’d see her alone just for a minute to explain that whatever is wrong I don’t mind, but if all the cousins are there as well as all of you I won’t get a chance to be alone even for a minute, will I?”

  Margaret’s observant eye was on her niece. She noticed the nervous fingers rubbing the bed-head, the way the child’s words cascaded out. Virginia was anxious and it was no new anxiety. There was a little of the defensive air, and the scared animal twitch that she had noticed that morning when she was talking to Lily Boswick; but Lily Boswick had reason enough to be worried, poor girl, but not surely Virginia? Of course, she had treated her grandmother’s house as a second home and probably missed it, but she had so much else.

  “I expect, however many of us turn up, we can manage that you have some time alone with your grandmother. I don’t think though you are going to find anything the matter with her that you can see. I think whatever has made her change her habits, comes from her mind.”

  “There’s nothing the matter with Grannie’s mind. I saw her just before Christmas. That’s not very long ago. I went with her to the nurseries about some plants. Grannie told the man at the nursery that she was going to make a little bed under the kitchen window for begonias because Mrs. Conrad liked them and she had such green fingers. The man at the nursery was getting her catalogues about them. We went the same day to order red paint. I painted Grannie’s water butt red because I can’t see why everything should be green, and Grannie said she’d keep red paint in the house so that on the first dry day after Christmas I could give the butt a new coat. Mummie had given Grannie a very grand sort of rhododendron. Smith and I planted it with lots of leaf mould and Grannie said, ‘You’ll have to come down more often than usual, Virginia. I put that rhododendron in your charge.’ Then, just after Christmas when Mummie rang up to say I was coming, just like always, Mrs. Conrad had gone and Grannie said it wasn’t convenient to have me. Not convenient! Imagine that! She wanted to be alone. It isn’t true, Aunt Margaret. Something must have happened. I think, and so does Lucia, that perhaps it’s a skin disease. Most likely on her poor face.”

  Margaret listened to this story in growing distress. At all times she was too busy to see much of her mother, nor was Anna the kind of mother who expected constant visits. When she had learned that Anna had dismissed Mrs. Conrad and she who seldom moved far from her house and garden, was roaming the countryside for hours, she had worried and had both written and telephoned, but both had been answered fairly reassuringly. There was nothing out of keeping with Anna’s character in her wish, for a time, to be undisturbed. Fond as she was of Dixon, Margaret enjoyed those occasions when she had her house to herself. Besides, Anna had need of time to think. It was alarmingly out of character that she refused to speak of Tony, and should admit to a feeling of hate for him. In her years in practice Margaret had seen many cures both of the body and the mind which were not accomplished by medicine. It was conceivable that Anna had come to accept that her dislike of Tony was an illness of the mind, and, being the woman she was, and trained as she had been by that obviously splendid Miss Macintosh in disciplined thinking, it was likely enough that she was trying solitude with solid thinking as a cure. But Virginia’s story was disturbing. A woman like Anna did not come to sudden decisions. Margaret had supposed that bitterness because her once cherished Tony had turned out so badly had been slowly gathering in Anna’s heart, but that simultaneously there had been awareness of that bitterness and determination to cut it out. That she had planned for much of this year to be spent alone for that purpose. Now a new picture was drawn.