Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (21 page)

So occupied am I with my thoughts that I do not perceive the approach of a dirty man on a bicycle until he dismounts, and asks in a soft up-and-down sort of voice (quite different from the Westburgh whine), whether I am waiting for somebody or whether anything is the matter. I tell him about Cassandra's attack of paralysis, and he offers to see if he can put her right. In a few minutes he discovers trouble in the magneto, takes it to bits and puts it together again in a miraculous manner, and the engine springs to life at a touch.

‘Can you be driving her at all?' he asks thoughtfully. I reply that I can be, and offer him a shilling. ‘Och, it was nothing – nothing at all,' he says, with the gesture of a king refusing tribute, and is away on his bicycle before I have half thanked him for his help.

I spend some minutes turning Cassandra in the narrow road and then speed off after Tim. It seems miles before I catch sight of him; he is just entering a small garage in the outskirts of the first village to be seen. He is hot and dusty, and is not as pleased to see me as I could wish.

We agree that it is too late to think of visiting Cousin Ellen today – in fact if we do not hurry home we shall be late for dinner (an eventuality which cannot be contemplated with equanimity). As we near home and the hour advances, I beseech Tim to hurry. He replies indignantly that he will do nothing of the kind; why should we race home, jeopardising our very lives, for the sake of a cantankerous old woman (only he does not say ‘woman')? Do I realise – he says bitterly – that I am becoming absolutely under the creature's thumb? Reply that I do realise it. He then says why on earth don't I get rid of the brute? Reply that I am too frightened of her. Tim says the thing is absolutely preposterous, Cook must go.

Fortunately, we arrive just in time for dinner, and it is such an excellent meal that Tim's heart is softened, and he says we had better give her another chance, but I must take a strong line with her and stand no nonsense. Make no reply to this command as I feel in my bones I shall not be able to comply with it.

Sixteenth April

Tim's birthday today. Present him with the dressing gown for which he thanks me so effusively that I realise it is a complete failure, and suggest that he should change it at Parker and Simpson's. Tim at first scouts the idea, but afterwards owns that he would prefer one exactly like his old one. Have great difficulty in convincing Tim that I am not in the least bit offended, disappointed or hurt.

Betty gives Tim a bright green handkerchief bought at Woolworth's when she was in Westburgh with Annie. She explains that Annie got one just like it to send to Bollings which she evidently thinks will enhance its value in Tim's eyes. Bryan's present is a pencil also procured at Woolworth's.

There is a large parcel with a French postmark – decidedly Aunt Ethel. We open this and find three dozen wizened tangerine oranges and a letter from Aunt E. saying that she is sending Tim a ‘Breath of the Riviera'. She wishes she could be at Westburgh in person to wish her dear nephew All Possible Happiness on his Natal Day. She also refers to her recollections of his birth at which she appears to have assisted, and goes into intimate obstetrical details of same.

Tim does not care for tangerine oranges and discourses at length upon the stinginess of people with money – and leaves no doubt in our minds that he is referring to his paternal aunt.

Twenty-second April

Have great difficulty in finding material for my diary in this part of the world one day is very like another and is varied only by Cook's temper, of which the less said the better, and by household differences on the subject of milk.

Is there any commodity on earth more conducive to bad feeling than milk? (Query Why do we speak of the milk of human kindness? Why not water or barley or something less controversial?) At Loanhead we have either too little milk or too much, and I am forever ringing up the dairy to regulate the quantity. If there is too much milk, we are condemned to milk puddings for days on end; if too little, Cook forages in the nursery and robs Betty's private bottle of ‘Certified', which necessitates Betty having some patent food for her supper, and invariably leads to tears on Betty's part, and angry rumblings on Annie's.

Having written the above I pause for inspiration, and Tim comes up to bed. He asks unnecessarily if I am still writing my diary, and says he thought I had chucked it long ago. If I must write – Tim says – why not write something which might be published and bring in a little ready cash. Reply that I am aware that a historical romance illustrative of the August House of Coburg might be more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life as I deal in, but I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life – and if it were indispensable to me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.

Quotation entirely lost on Tim as I knew it would be – but so apt as to be irresistible. Tim says he never suggested a historical romance. If I
did
write one nobody would read it. But why not try my hand at a detective story – a thriller with a murder and buried treasure, etc. – he will help me with it if I like.

Twenty-fifth April

Mrs. Loudon rings up to ask if I will go and have tea with her and meet Mrs. Walker Young. We shall have tea in the dining room – she says – but I won't mind that.

Reply that I don't mind at all, but cannot help wondering why tea in the dining room should be necessary. Wondering also what Mrs. Walker Young is like; have mental picture of her evoked by her name. Tall, strong and fresh complexioned; perhaps we may go for walks together, she probably has a police dog that requires a great deal of exercise.

When teatime arrives I discover that Mrs. Walker Young is exceedingly old and has to be wheeled about in a Bath chair (hence tea in the dining room, the drawing room at Holmgarth being upstairs). Am absurdly disappointed in Mrs. Walker Young, and can't help wondering as I return home early whether there are any young people at all in Kiltwinkle.

Tim is polishing the car; he looks up and says, ‘There you are, Hester – always gadding about, aren't you? Another tea party, I suppose. Look here, I'm afraid that notice about you calling on the wives hasn't met with much success. It has been on the board for about ten days and there are no names down yet.' Reply that Tim had better remove the notice before it becomes indecipherable, and retire to the drawing room feeling depressed.

Twenty-ninth April

Am informed that Mrs. McTurk wants to speak to me on the telephone, and realise that this is Nora Watt's affluent sister at last. I have been expecting her to call ever since we arrived in Westburgh, but have lately given her up as a bad job. Her name recalls to me the almost legendary figure evoked by Nora's description of her cars, her fabulous wealth, and her ‘positively acres' of grass.

Voice (rather like Nora's only more so) asks how Nora was looking when I last saw her, and how we are liking Westburgh. Make suitable replies. Voice then says do we play tennis – oh splendid! – well, will I excuse a formal call – such a waste of time, isn't it – and come and play tennis this afternoon after tea? Voice makes it quite clear that we are to expect no sustenance either before or after our exertions.

Tim, furious at the news of the invitation, remarks that it seems a cheap way of entertaining your friends, and he supposes this is the far-famed Westburgh hospitality. Suggest soothingly that they may want to see what we are like before asking us to dinner. Chase Tim upstairs immediately after tea to put on his whites, which he does with manifest reluctance.

Pinelands – called so without arboreal justification – is a large square house surrounded by parks containing fat cows, and an enormous garden surrounded by laurels and rhododendrons. Two Rolls Royces stand at the door and several other cars of an affluent and shiny appearance. Cassandra seems to shrink in their company, and Tim parks her as far away from them as circumstances will allow. We are conducted to the tennis courts by a footman, and here we find about a dozen people, all of whom have obviously just partaken of an enormous tea. Our hostess greets us in a
dégagé
manner; she is easily distinguishable on account of her likeness to Nora, only the likeness is embedded in rolls of fat. Her legs fascinate me, they are the same thickness all the way down and are encased in silk stockings of a peculiarly bright pink. The rest of her is white save for a green eyeshade which casts an unbecoming shadow upon her dough-like face.

I sit out the first set near a thin woman in black silk who says – after the usual conversational opening
re
weather – ‘I would have called for you, Mrs. Christie, but I make a point of never calling for army people – it's really not worth while when they're only here three years.' My breath is taken by this entirely new point of view, and I am ‘dumb with silence'.

Another woman now chips in and remarks that she has just got a new car costing eighteen hundred pounds, and she has had to raise her head chauffeur's wages in consequence. She gives him five pounds a week, and she has got five gardeners who cost her fifteen hundred a year, and they have grapes from their own vineries practically all the year round. I can see that this puts the other woman on her mettle; her eyes blaze and she remarks that her son has just gone to Eton, and her daughter, who has just left the most expensive finishing school in Paris, is very anxious to buy a Moth out of her pocket money, but her father thinks it too dangerous, and has offered her four hunters instead. This conversation amazes me so that I feel like Cinderella at an Arabian Nights Entertainment. I have always been used to people who protested they were on the verge of bankruptcy, and the richer they were the more fervently did they protest. Am quite disappointed when a set finishes, and I am asked to play as I feel sure that the thin lady in black silk will wipe the floor with her opponent, Moth and all.

Am put to play with a left-handed man in glasses who warns me that he has ‘just star-r-rted to play after thir-r-rteen years', against my corpulent, black-haired host, and a sporty-looking female of uncertain age. Find that they are all exceedingly bad, but I am even worse. Hit every ball into the net and develop an inferiority complex which completely demoralises me. Am rescued at the end of the set by a short stout elderly person in coffee-coloured lace with a large black shiny hat trimmed with roses. She introduces herself as Miss Paul and suggests that she and I shall take on two very athletic-looking girls (with bare brawny arms and eyeshades), in a ladies' four. Am filled with despair at the prospect of abject defeat, but endeavour to smile bravely and follow my partner on to the court. Discover that my partner is a brick, and plays – or seems to me to play – like Helen Wills and Betty Nuthall rolled into one.

It is an awe-inspiring sight to me to see the coffee-coloured lace whirling hither and thither, and to watch the roses on the shiny hat nodding and dancing as she hits the ball down the side lines with strong and accurate forehand drives. Am so cheered by the exhibition that I begin to hit the ball myself, and we win a love set. Make some feeble remark anent my improved play to which my partner replies tersely, ‘R-r-rabbits beget r-r-rabbits.'

Tim has been absorbed into a men's four. I realise by his careless and erratic play that he is
not
enjoying himself, and decide it is time to go. We make our ‘adieux' just as the rest of the party is trooping in to dinner. Unfortunately, Cassandra is sulky and refuses to start; we are surrounded by people offering advice as to carburettor, plugs, magneto, etc. The woman with the eighteen hundred pound car offers to send for her chauffeur who is down at the garage as she is sure that he would know at once what to do. Finally we are pushed off down the drive by the united efforts of the men. Mrs. McTurk waves her tennis racquet and screams shrilly as we career out of sight.

‘And that's the last time I ever go there,' says Tim bitterly.

I marvel at his moderation.

May

First May

Tim says will I go with him to the parish church, otherwise he will spend the morning cleaning Cassandra's body, as cleanliness is next to godliness. Agree hastily before he has time to mention Romans. Church is full of very smart people in satin coats and new spring hats. The new minister takes for his text the controversial passage about the rich man whose entry into heaven is as impossible as the passing of a camel through the eye of a needle. He is exceedingly bitter on the subject, and I feel sure that the congregation cannot have come up to the scratch at the recent church bazaar, and marvel afresh at the meekness of people in church. After assuring his affluent audience that their hopes of heaven are negligible he goes on to speak with grisly gusto of the other place, whose doors are apparently wide and lofty enough for the entire congregation to pass, feathers and all. It is so long since I heard the nether regions referred to in the pulpit as a definite place, that I listen with horror. My backbone positively freezes at the lurid description of the torments in store for the unelect – a description which loses nothing by the rolling Rs and broad vowels with which it is bedewed. The congregation appears unmoved by the new minister's eloquence and joins with force and fervour in singing the last hymn – unknown to me – evidently chosen on account of its gloomy and terrifying nature.