The Ballad and the Source (31 page)

Nobody except an anxious aunt with sons at the front, or an occasional harassed elderly friend from London came to stay any more. A favourite uncle was a special correspondent in France. We had looked forward to his visit, in uniform; but it was clouded for us by his eating all the butter ration at one breakfast.

Round my father's armchair, they talked about the war, the war, the war.

4

One afternoon in Christmas week,
1916,
a motor-bicycle roared up to the front door, and a young man in khaki dismounted. From the schoolroom window we saw him run up the steps in a debonair way and press the bell. Who could this be, we asked ourselves, half aghast, so intrepid, so ignorant as not to know that nobody came so lightly to our door any more? Shortly afterwards Mossop appeared in the schoolroom, and announced a gentleman to see us in the drawing-room. To see
us!
… We blushed, ran combs through our hair, and in a twitter descended. A tall, fair, pink young man with sentimental blue eyes, an untidy mouth, and an expression of simple goodwill, stood beaming at us. It was Malcolm, in the uniform of a subaltern in the Gunners. He was just eighteen. At seventeen he had decided to leave school and join the army. A month ago he had got his commission, he expected shortly to go abroad. He had a few days' Christmas leave, and Maisie had hit on the notion of their wiring for Harry's permission to spend it at the Priory. So there they were: one wing had been taken out of dust sheets, and they were having a glorious picnic, with Maisie and Mrs. Gillman sharing the housework. There was a sort of party to-morrow night: some friends were turning up. Could we be persuaded to come to supper and stay the night?

My mother came in at this moment. I don't know how he did it, but, contrary to our forebodings, he persuaded her without difficulty. “Honestly, it'll be almost unbearably respectable,” he told her, laughing, coaxing, flirtatious. “Some old friends of ours, a married couple, to chaperon us. And Maisie's a proper dragon, I can tell you. It'll be lights out at ten, and no talking in the dorms.” He had a natural ease and expansiveness that would have overcome a far tougher resistance than my mother's. He stayed on and chatted gaily, giving her nearly all his attention, his eye dwelling only occasionally, with respectful appreciation, upon Jess. It was marvellous to be back in the old place, he said. He'd always hated to think of it shut up. Grannie and Harry had told them ages ago to think of it as home and go there whenever they wanted to, but Maisie had never cottoned on to the idea till now. Maisie?—oh, she was turning out a thumping good sort, brainy too—going to be head of the school, he understood—must have got her poor brother's share of grey matter on top of her own—jolly unfair. She still went about looking like a scarecrow, didn't give a hoot: pity, because she was turning out fair to middling in the face. Oh, rather, he was frightfully happy in the army. Oh yes, he heard regularly from Grannie: she was a marvellous correspondent, no one could write such good letters. She seemed to be getting along in France all right. She was a wonder. He hoped to see her before very long—first leave he got. Rather a good show having relations over there. Poor old Harry, he wondered how he was weathering this rotten war: hoped he still had a few bottles of good wine to see him through.

He offered to come and fetch us away to-morrow one by one on the back of his motor-bike; but my mother drew the line at that. The car should take us up, and return us on the following morning. Then he rode off with a roar and a wave of the hand; and we went back to the schoolroom and stared at each other and gasped and kicked our heels and tried to believe in this phenomenal turn of fortune, this transformation falling magically across our paths like a shower of red roses out of blank winter skies. To-morrow evening, instead of supping on lentil soup and baked apples, and reading for an hour in the library before bed-time, we would have unpacked our suitcases in the Priory spare room and be guests at a
dinner party.

Later, my mother said what a charming boy he had grown to be. Only eighteen, and going out to fight. …

“Let's hope—” she said, and stopped, sighing heavily. Jess and I agreed that, what with his becoming uniform and his well-knit figure and the large blue eyes in his healthy face, he was nearer to glamour than we could ever have imagined possible.

5

The night came down in a noiseless eternity of wet, part fog, part rain: a nasty night for the road; and horrors! our mother underwent a dubious period. The suffocation of our anxiety did not relax until we had climbed up and round the sweep of the drive. Then we were standing in the porch, prey to a clutch even more complex and acute; and the headlights, shafts of some silvery, half-solid substance, tunnelling with difficulty through a world of luminous midge swarms, wheeled away. We stood in blanketing dark with our suitcases, and heard the bell peal, and felt the damp stick to our hands, our faces. Then we heard steps coming with a run and a buoyant leap, the door burst open, Malcolm was before us, radiant, solid, reassuring under the five- branched wrought-iron lamp of the outer hall. Once more we stepped in over the blue and white mosaic paving into the body of Mrs. Jardine's house.

“Oh,
grand!”
He was voluble, hospitable, helping us off with our coats. “This filthy night—ghastly doubts were beginning to gnaw me. Do you want to go straight upstairs according to Maisie's instructions? No, you don't. You look as neat as a packet of new pins. Marvellous!”

We stood revealed in our long-sleeved velvets—Jess's sapphire blue, mine claret-coloured, cut by local Miss Midgley with more optimism, fitted and finished with more complacency than the results warranted. We wore our pearl initial christening brooches, and our gold lockets, and our long hair was tied back with wide, stiff,
moiré
ribbon to match.

“I'm butler-valet to-night,” he said. “There's no knowing
what
might happen. My hat, isn't this fun? I've got a gramophone, so we can dance. Maisie's cooking, she said to bring you to the kitchen, I hope you don't mind. We've all been chucking different things into the saucepans—you never saw such a mess. We thought we'd better send Mrs. Gillman home, she was beginning to look a trifle pinched about the mouth. She's presented us with an outsize in Christmas puddings she made last year, so we can always fall back on that. It's fairly stuffed with pre-war richnesses.” He led the way along the passage towards the back premises. His hair was a little dishevelled, his tunic unbuttoned, his face Leander pink. “I shot a brace of pheasants yesterday,” he said. “D'you suppose they'll be tough? Maisie
says
she knows how to deal with 'em. Actually we've torn them in pieces and bunged them into a giant's stew-pot, and Gil poured a bottle of red wine over them, so I don't know,” he said again, hilarious, “
what
mightn't happen … Maisie! Here they are.”

We stood in the kitchen doorway, assailed by what seemed to my giddy senses a roaring pantomime cavern of light and colour. Brilliance, decoration, steam, smells streamed towards us. The dresser was festooned with holly and evergreens, in the middle distance stood a vast table heaped with utensils, with bowls, bottles, loaves, apples, Brussels sprouts, and, surmounting all, a toppling, drifting pile of dark feathers. Over this extravagant composition a bunch of mistletoe tied on a string to a hook in the ceiling spread its chill, glistening, porcelain-­bead-studded convolutions. Beyond loomed a figure stooping over the range: a short stocky female figure swathed in a long cook's apron with a bib and cross-straps.

“Oh, hallo, you've come!”

She looked over her shoulder at us as we advanced towards her, and continued to stir with a wooden spoon in a saucepan. I had the impression of a pair of eyes focusing on me with an absolutely externalised vision: eyes designed solely for seeing objects. She shook her hair back and wiped her fiery face with the back of her hand. A smear of coal dust across her mouth and chin gave her an expression of comical grimness. “Good Lord, you're tall. I wouldn't have known you. Well, well, growing girls will be growing girls, I suppose.”

“Vertically if not horizontally,” said Malcolm. He gave her a whack on the behind.

“Mind you don't mess up those dainty dinner gowns,” she said, disregarding him and continuing to fix us with a sharp eye. “I knew you'd come looking like the maiden's prayer. But can you cook?” She raised the dripping spoon and wagged it at us. “A pretty face is all very well, but it takes you nowhere; a good cook gets her man every time. I got that straight from the horse's mouth. Just think, Malcolm, at this very moment your grandmother is in her apron, skimming the evening broth for Harry. It gave Gil and Tanya quite a come-over when I mentioned it. I wonder does the fragrance of this stew steal to her across the Channel?” She broke off, glared into the pot she was stirring, and hoisted up its contents on her ladle. “It looks rather unearthly,” she said, doubtful. “Continental cookery, I fear. Gil would have it so.”

“Where are they?” said Malcolm. He had seemed a little uncomfortable during her last speech.

“Dressing up. At least, she is. She's going to appear in an ancestral wedding dress.”

“Not really?”

“Really and truly. Her grandmother's, I believe. I suppose nobody likes to feel they're absolute orphan waifs when they get married. It's the time for family rallyings and blessings, isn't it?—and there does seem rather a dearth on both sides. She said her mother brought it from Russia in her trunks. It's about the only thing she had to leave her when she died—that and her silver necklace. She's hung on to it all these years to wear on her wedding day. It's rather upsetting. … As for me, I shall sit among you at the festive board just as you see me, my natural self, to remind you all of the shortest way to a man's heart. I'll give them half an hour more and then dish up. You'd better go and blow the fire in the drawing-room, Malcolm. Have you laid the table? And put out the candlesticks? Take these pretty dears with you, or they'll lose their appetites. No. Leave me
one.”
She looked at me and grinned. “You can leave me Rebecca,” she said.

Jess went away, demure, with Malcolm, and I was left with this eccentric girl.

She cleared a corner of the table, sat down on it, uncorked a large beer bottle, tilted it to her lips, and before my incredulous eyes poured a draught down her throat in great easy gulps.

“God, I'm thirsty. I've been at it since five o'clock. Cooking, I mean, not the drink. Have some?”

I refused politely.

“Don't you like it? There's champagne for dinner. How old are you? Fourteen? You must be careful. I don't like to see young girls drink, but this is a special occasion. You must drink their healths. I sort of suspect your mother may think we got you here on false pretences, but I did want this party to go. I wanted someone for Malcolm, to make him feel—to make him … He doesn't know many nice girls, and he likes them. He prefers them, in fact. He's going out soon.” She fell silent, staring at the wall. Her eyes stretched, gave a kind of flick. “How is your mother, Rebecca? She was very kind to me once upon a time. I ought to have written to her, but I never did, I'm no hand with the pen. I should have liked to come and see her, but I thought better not, in case of ructions with your father. He doesn't exactly share Sibyl's feeling about re-soldering old links, does he?”

“Do you call her Sibyl?” was all I could think of to say.

“I call her Sibyl.” She looked at me, nibbling her thumb. “You haven't changed much,” she said. “It feels rather nice to see you again.”

“You're the same too.” Gratified, I blushed.

“Oh, I'm always the same, only more so. Lots of freak-fair schoolgirls do a transformation scene round about my age. One evening they lay their nauseating forms down upon their truckle beds resigned to another hopeless dawn; next morning they wake up and hey presto! they're
mysteriously beautiful.
Now that'll happen to you, I shouldn't be surprised. Not to M. Thomson.”

“You're not—not plain,” I said, not falsely. “I think you're—”

“Wonderful” was the only word that occurred to me, and I could not utter it. Just as in former days, she riveted my eyes by the magnetic power she radiated. The blood glowed carnation in her bony cheeks; her large and brilliant eyes would never, I thought, open blurred and swollen as mine did in the mornings, her copper wire hair stood up on end electrically. Her features had emerged from her face with uncompromising prominence. The nose sprang out from a high bridge, then took a downward curve and ended in wide thick nostrils. The mouth also was wide and thick, grim in repose, but when she smiled, her whole countenance broke up and warmed with humour and geniality. Her big teeth were not only regular now but well-brushed and unusually white. Her figure, considered as a woman's figure, was disastrous: heavily square in the shoulders, thick waisted, her bosom a solid plateau, aggressive yet unpromising, the lower half of her squat and sturdy, with muscular thighs and calves like a footballer's.

Not a fine, not a feature recalled her grandmother; but all the same, each time I looked at her, a baffling echo of Mrs. Jardine brushed my senses. It was what Tilly used to mean when she would suddenly, at some trivial gesture of one or other of us, catch her breath and declare with a gasp that that was her to the life—her very identical way. It was Maisie's stance, feet planted, head thrown back on the short neck? … It was the way she sat herself down, back erect, knees a little spread?
…
or the thing her eyes did, fixing and dilating? Or the incisive edge she put upon her least remark?

“There's something,” she said thoughtfully, “that happens to girls that'll never happen to me. Don't look so bravely expectant. I'm quite a normal, well-developed female, as you may have noticed for yourself. No. I mean … it's something they put out, the real girls. … I always knew it wouldn't happen to me. I intended it shouldn't. And it never will.”