Complete Short Stories (VMC) (97 page)

My mother liked playing croquet and cards, and did both a great deal at St Margaret’s. I liked going across the orchard to Breezy Lodge. There, both cards and croquet were despised. We sat on the veranda (or, in winter, round an oil-stove which threw up petal patterns on the ceiling) and we talked – a game particularly suited to three people. Miss Alliot always won.

Where to find such drowsy peace in England now is hard to discover. Summer after summer through my early teens, the sun shone, bringing up the smell of thyme and marjoram from the earth – the melting tar along the lane and, later, of rotting apples. The croquet balls clicked against one another on the lawn, and voices sounded lazy and far-away. There were droughts, when we were on our honour to be careful with the water. No water was laid on at Breezy Lodge, and it had to be carried from the house. I took this duty from Miss Martin, and several times a day stumbled
through the long grass and buttercups, the water swinging in a pail, or slopping out of a jug. As I went, I disturbed clouds of tiny blue butterflies, once a grass snake.

Any excuse to get to Breezy Lodge. My mother told me not to intrude, and I was offended by the word. She was even a little frosty about my two friends. If for some reason they were not there when we ourselves arrived on holiday I was in despair, and she knew it and lost patience.

In the school term I wrote to them and Miss Martin was the one who replied. They shared a flat in London, and a visit to it was spoken of, but did not come about. I used my imagination instead, building it up from little scraps as a bird builds a nest. I was able to furnish it in unstained oak and hand-woven rugs and curtains. All about would be jars of the beech-leaves and grasses and berries they took back with them from the country. From their windows could be seen, through the branches of a monkey-puzzle tree, the roofs of the school – Queen’s – from which they returned each evening.

That was their life on their own where I could not intrude, as my mother would have put it. They had another life of their own in which I felt aggrieved at not participating: but I was not invited to. After supper at St Margaret’s, they returned to Breezy Lodge, and did not ask me to go with them. Games of solo whist were begun in the drawing-room, and I sat and read listlessly, hearing the clock tick and the maddening mystifying card-words – ‘
Misère
’ ‘Abundance’ – or ‘going a bundle’, ‘prop and cop’, and ‘
Misère Ouverte
’ (which seemed to cause a little stir). I pitied them and their boring games, and I pitied myself and my boring book – imposed holiday reading, usually Sir Walter Scott, whom I loathed. I pecked at it dispiritedly and looked about the room for distraction.

Miss Louie and Miss Beatrice enjoyed their whist, as they enjoyed their croquet. They really were hostesses. We paid a little – astonishingly little – but it did not alter the fact that we were truly guests, and they entertained us believing so.

‘Ho … ho … hum … hum,’ murmured a voice, fanning out a newly-dealt hand, someone playing for time. ‘H’m, h’m, now let me see.’ There were relaxed intervals when cards were being shuffled and cut, and the players leant back and had a little desultory conversation, though nothing amounting to much. On warm nights, as it grew later, through the open windows moths came to plunge and lurch about the lamps.

Becoming more and more restless, I might go out and wander about the garden, looking for glow-worms and glancing at the light from Breezy Lodge shining through the orchard boughs.

On other evenings, after Miss Beatrice had lit the lamps, Mrs Mayes, one of the regular guests, might give a Shakespeare recital. She had once
had some connection with the stage and had known Sir Henry Ainley. She had often heard his words for him, she told us, and perhaps, in consequence of that, had whole scenes by heart. She was ageing wonderfully – that is, hardly at all. Some of the blonde was fading from her silvery-blonde hair, but her skin was still wild-rose, and her voice held its great range. But most of all, we marvelled at how she remembered her lines. I recall most vividly the Balcony Scene from
Romeo and Juliet
. Mrs Mayes sat at one end of a velvet-covered
chaise-longue
. When she looped her pearls over her fingers, then clasped them to her bosom, she was Juliet, and Romeo when she held out her arms, imploringly (the rope of pearls swinging free). Always she changed into what, in some circles, was then called semi-evening dress, and rather old-fashioned dresses they were, with bead embroidery and loose panels hanging from the waist. Once, I imagined, she would have worn such dresses
before
tea, and have changed again later into something even more splendid. She had lived through grander days: now, was serenely widowed.

Only Mrs Price did not marvel at her. I overheard her say to my mother, ‘She must be forever in the limelight, and I for one am sick and tired,
sick
and
tired
, of Henry Ainley. I’m afraid I don’t call actors “sir”. I’m like that.’ And my mother blushed, but said nothing.

Miss Alliot and Miss Martin were often invited to stay for these recitals; but Miss Alliot always declined.

‘One is embarrassed, being recited
at
,’ she explained to me. ‘One doesn’t know where to look.’

I
always looked at Mrs Mayes and admired the way she did her hair, and wondered if the pearls were real. There may have been a little animosity between the two women. I remember Mrs Mayes joining in praise of Miss Alliot one day, saying, ‘Yes, she is like a well-bred race-horse,’ and I felt that she said this only because she could not say that she was like a horse.

Mrs Price, rather out of it after supper, because of Mrs Mayes, and not being able to get the hang of solo whist, would sulkily turn the pages of the
Illustrated London News
, and try to start conversations between scenes or games.

‘
Do
look at
this
.’ She would pass round her magazine, pointing out something or other. Or she would tiptoe upstairs to see if Muriel slept, and come back to report. Once she said,
à propos
nothing, as cards were being re-dealt, ‘Now who can clasp their ankles with their fingers? Like
that
– with no gaps.’ Some of the ladies dutifully tried, but only Mrs Price could do it. She shrugged and laughed. ‘Only a bit of fun,’ she said, ‘but they do say that’s the right proportion. Wrists, too, that’s easier, though.’ But they were all at cards again.

One morning, we were sitting on the lawn and my mother was stringing
redcurrants through the tines of a silver fork into a pudding-basin. Guests often helped in these ways. Mrs Price came out from the house carrying a framed photograph of a bride and bridegroom – her son, Derek, and daughter-in-law, Gloria. We had heard of them.

‘You don’t look old enough,’ my mother said, ‘to have a son that age.’ She had said it before. She always liked to make people happy. Mrs Price kept hold of the photograph, because of my mother’s stained fingers, and she pointed out details such as Gloria’s veil and Derek’s smile and the tuberoses in the bouquet. ‘Derek gave her a gold locket, but it hasn’t come out very clearly. Old enough! You are trying to flatter me. Why my husband and I had our silver wedding last October. Muriel was our little afterthought.’

I popped a string of currants into my mouth and sauntered off. As soon as I was out of sight, I sped. All across the orchard, I murmured the words with smiling lips.

The door of Breezy Lodge stood open to the veranda. I called through it, ‘Muriel was their little after-thought.’

Miss Martin was crying. From the bedroom came a muffled sobbing. At once, I knew that it was she, never could be Miss Alliot. Miss Alliot, in fact, walked out of the bedroom and shut the door.

‘What is wrong?’ I asked stupidly.

Miss Alliot gave a vexed shake of her head and took her walking-stick from its corner. She was wearing a dress with a pattern of large poppies, and cut-out poppies from the same material were appliquéd to her straw hat. She was going for a walk, and I went with her, and she told me that Miss Martin had fits of nervous hysteria. For no reason. The only thing to be done about them was to leave her alone until she recovered.

We went down through the Cherry Orchard and the scents and the butterflies were part of an enchanted world. I thought that I was completely happy. I so rarely had Miss Alliot’s undivided attention. She talked of the Townsends, and I listened as if to the holy intimations of a saint.

‘I thought you were lost,’ my mother said when I returned.

Miss Alliot always wore a hat at luncheon (that annoyed Mrs Price). She sat opposite me and seemed in a very good humour, taking trouble to amuse us all, but with an occasional allusion and smile for me alone. ‘Miss Martin has one of her headaches,’ she explained. By this time I was sure that this was true.

The holidays were going by, and I had got nowhere with
Quentin Durward
. Miss Martin recovered from her nervous hysteria, but was subdued.

Miss Alliot departed for Northumberland, wearing autumn tweeds. Miss Martin stayed on alone at Breezy Lodge, and distempered the walls
primrose, and I helped her. Mrs Price and Muriel left at last, and a German governess with her two little London pupils arrived for a breath of fresh air. My mother and Mrs Mayes strolled about the garden. Together they did the flowers, to help Miss Louie, or sat together in the sunshine with their
petit point
.

Miss Martin and I painted away, and we talked of Miss Alliot and how wonderful she was. It was like a little separate holiday for me, a rest. I did not try to adjust myself to Miss Martin, or strive, or rehearse. In a way, I think she was having a well-earned rest herself; but then I believed that she was jealous of Northumberland and would have liked some Townsends of her own to retaliate with. Now I know she only wanted Miss Alliot.

Miss Martin was conscientious; she even tried to take me through
Quentin Durward
.

She seemed to be concerned about my butterfly mind, its skimming over things, not stopping to understand. I felt that knowing things ought to ‘come’ to me, and if it did not, it was too bad. I believed in instinct and intuition and inspiration – all labour-saving things.

Miss Martin, who taught English (my subject, I felt), approached the matter coldly. She tried to teach me the logic of it – grammar. But I thought ‘ear’ would somehow teach me that. Painless learning I wanted, or none at all. She would not give up. She was the one who was fond of me.

We returned from our holiday, and I went back to school. I was moved up – by the skin of my teeth, I am sure – to a higher form. I remained with my friends. Some of those had been abroad for the holidays, but I did not envy them.

Miss Martin wrote to enquire how I had got on in the
Quentin Durward
test, and I replied that as I could not answer one question, I had written a general description of Scottish scenery. She said that it would avail me nothing, and it did not. I had never been to Scotland, anyway. Of Miss Alliot I only heard. She was busy producing the school play –
A Tale of Two Cities
. Someone called Rosella Byng-Williams was very good as Sidney Carton, and I took against her at once. ‘I think Dorothea has made quite a discovery,’ Miss Martin wrote – but I fancied that her pen was pushed along with difficulty, and that she was due for one of her headaches.

Those three ‘i’s’ – instinct, intuition, inspiration – in which I pinned my faith were more useful in learning about people than logic could be. Capricious approach to capricious subject.

Looking back, I see that my mother was far more attractive, lovable, than any of the ladies I describe; but there it was – she was my mother.

Towards the end of that term, I learnt of a new thing, that Miss Alliot was to spend Christmas with the Townsends. This had never been done before:
there had been simply the early autumn visit – it seemed that it had been for the sake of an old family friendship, a one-sided one, I sharply guessed. Now, what had seemed to be a yearly courtesy became something rather more for conjecture.

Miss Martin wrote that she would go to Breezy Lodge alone, and pretend that Christmas wasn’t happening – as lonely people strive to. I imagined her carrying pails of cold water through the wet, long grasses of the orchard, rubbing her chilblains before the oil-stove. I began to love her as if she were a child.

My mother was a little flustered by my idea of having Miss Martin to stay with us for Christmas. I desired it intensely, having reached a point where the two of us, my mother and I alone, a Christmas done just for me, was agonising. What my mother thought of Miss Martin I shall never know now, but I have a feeling that schoolmistresses rather put her off. She expected them all to be what many of them in those days were – opinionated, narrow-minded, set in their ways. She had never tried to get to know Miss Martin. No one ever did.

She came. At the last moment before her arrival I panicked. It was not Miss Alliot coming, but Miss Alliot would hear all about the visit. Our house was in a terrace (crumbling). There was nothing, I now saw, to commend it to Miss Martin except, perhaps, water from the main and a coal fire.

After the first nervousness, though, we had a cosy time. We sat round the fire and ate Chinese figs and sipped ginger wine and played paper games which Miss Martin could not manage to lose. We sometimes wondered about the Townsends and I imagined a sort of Royal-Family-at-Sandringham Christmas with a giant tree and a servants’ ball, and Miss Alliot taking the floor in the arms of Ralph Townsend – but then my imagination failed, the picture faded: I could not imagine Miss Alliot in the arms of any man.

After Christmas, Miss Martin left and then I went back to school. I was too single-minded in my devotion to Miss Alliot to do much work there, or bother about anybody else. My infatuation was fed by her absence, and everything beautiful was wasted if it was not seen in her company.

The Christmas invitation bore glorious fruit. As a return, Miss Martin wrote to ask me to stay at Breezy Lodge for my half-term holiday. Perfect happiness invaded me, remembered clearly to this day. Then, after a while of walking on air, the bliss dissolved. Nothing in the invitation, I now realised, had been said of Miss Alliot. Perhaps she was off to Northumberland again, and I was to keep Miss Martin company in her stead. I tried to reason with myself that even that would be better than nothing, but I stayed sick with apprehension.