The Fancy (23 page)

Her hair was tousled now by the ” said Edward. “It. bscarf she had worn on the drive, and she tidied it before she went into the drawing-room in case her mother should think it was meant to be like that and beseech her to go to a reliable hairdresser. Mrs. Blake herself came up to London twice & year for a perm, and at other times was shampooed and set by a man called I. B. Littlejohn in Worcester, whose sets, no matter what style he attempted, always came out looking the same. The ladies who patronised him in preference to Dorée Smart, whose assistants wore apple-green overalls and said “Righto, dear”, had heads which resembled both each other and the wigs in I. B. Littlejohn’s window. Mrs. Blake’s head was too large for the amount of hair she possessed, but I.B. managed to eke it out into his basic set : a side parting, showing a wide lane of pink scalp in her case, one deep scallop over the right temple, descending in gentle waves to a curl well forward over the ear, backed by a double row of curls in various stages of tightness or ravel, according to the age of the client’s perm.

Mrs. Blake had been, it was said, a handsome girl, and was now a fine woman, but, then, horses are fine and handsome, too. She had a square chin and a large nose with curving nostrils, red
inside
like a rocking-horse ; she carried her head high and her bosom well forward. She was always dusting things off her lapels, or shaking them up or hoisting and lowering her double pulley of pearls, unconsciously titivating this proud portion of her anatomy. When Sheila came into the drawing-room, she looked up and said “Ah!” and her husband, who had Sheila’s runaway chin and a pair of pince nez on a chain,
looked up and said “Ah!” too, and they both waited in their chairs to be kissed, as if they were not consumed with a degree of pride and affection which she had never suspected.

She had been full of things that she was going to tell them, oddments of news about the factory and the flat, but there was no need, because her mother started right in on local news. Her father went on listening to the wireless, sitting facing it, with crossed legs and a patent leather pump dangling from one toe, nodding approval if it said anything sensible. Sheila, with her coat still on, sat thawing on her own tapestry stool in front of the fire, and as the atmosphere of her home closed around her as familiarly as hot bath water, she was no longer the girl from London, David’s girl, whose life was hectic and blissful. She was once more the yawning girl in a plain expensive jumper and tweed skirt, sleepy from a too-heavy lunch, looking at magazines or playing with the dogs’ ears, passing the time until a stubborn parlourmaid should bring in the tray with the silver pot and the spirit lamp, hot anchovy toast and two home-made cakes.

It was no stubborn parlourmaid, however, but the herring-gutted Mrs. Geek who answered the bell when she rang for her dinner. David said that in the next world, by which he meant the world after the War, the people who pressed bells so confidently were going to find that nobody answered them. Sheila and he both agreed that this would be a good thing, but it did not prevent them from going to expensive hotels and restaurants whenever they could afford it and pressing bells without a qualm.

Mrs. Geek stood in the doorway in, a long, unbleached apron, like Death come for them all.

“My whisky, please,” said Mr. Blake.

“And Miss Sheila’s dinner,” added his wife. “She can have it in here on a tray.”

“I ’
ad
laid it in the dining-room,” said Mrs. Geek, implying the Herculean labour of transferring two knives, two forks and a spoon from the dining-room” said Edward. “It. b table to a tray.

“Yes-well, “said Mrs. Blake, “she’s going to have it in here.”

“And a fresh syphon,” said Mr. Blake. “There was barely enough at dinner time. I do wish you’d keep a full one always on the sideboard. I’ve asked you so often.” How dared they speak to her like that? Sheila wondered, as the door closed. Didn’t they know that if the Geeks chose to leave they would never get another maid? But her mother didn’t seem aware of these things. She was constantly being surprised in shops by being unable to buy hot-water bottles or lemon squash.

Sheila got up. “I’ll go and get my dinner,” she said. “I don’t see why she should bother.”

Her father looked at her, surprised. “We haven’t quite come to that yet, my dear,” he said.

“She really hasn’t got much to do,” said her mother. “We hardly ever have anyone to dinner, and most of the bedrooms are shut up.” She lowered her voice automatically, for the Billeting officer was her bogey.

“Why don’t you take off your coat, darling? D’you know, it smells terribly of oil or something? You’d better leave it down here and let me get it cleaned for you.”

“Sorry.” said Sheila, “I came straight from the factory. The fire draws it out, I expect.” She went to the back of the room, where it was cold, and hung her coat over the back of the only comfortable chair in the room, which was never sat in because it was so far away from the fire. Nobody had ever thought of bringing it closer.

“How is the factory?” asked her father.

“Oh, it’s all right. We’re working quite hard. We’re doing a new type of engine now ; it’s a lot more complicated.” She could never make it sound interesting or amusing, as she could when she talked about it to David. She could usually make him laugh, but when she tried to be entertaining at home, she could hear herself being a bore.

While she ate her dinner, her mother watched her, sitting with her thick legs well apart and her skirt high, showing grey silk directoire knickers. “You’re too thin, Shee,” she said. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“I like to be thin,” said Sheila. “Clothes look better.”

“You’ll lose your looks. I used to love you in that blue velvet. I’ve been keeping it in the landing cupboard in a moth-proof bag, but you could never wear it now ; you’d look scraggy.”

“I wouldn’t want to wear it now,’ said Sheila, “or ever again. It was a hideous dress.”

“Oh, no,” said her mother, with a smiling, grown-up shake of the head. “I remember you in it at that last Christmas party before the War. You looked a dream.”

“A jolly solid one,” said Sheila, with her mouth full, remembering and blushing for her bouncing, bulky girlhood. The blue velvet dress might have been all right once, but she had come a long way since then. Her mother and father didn’t seem to have progressed at all. They were still living, with minor unavoidable alterations, exactly the same life, when here before them at last was this wonderful chance to live differently. They didn’t seem to want to live differently. They thought that the next world—after the War—was going to be exactly the same as the dull, expensive, that leaves you to singke bprivileged one they had always known. Sheila knew it was not. David had said so. She wouldn’t tell them yet about communal feeding centres and no first class on trains and public schools open to East Enders, because it was no good upsetting them sooner than necessary. She wasn’t quite sure what would happen to solicitors. She would have to ask David.

“Enjoying your dinner, Girlie?”

“Yes, thank you, Daddy—I was starving.”

“What had you for lunch?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mummy—sandwiches or something.”

“Now, Sheila, you don’t mean to tell me that you only——”

“Oh, no—I remember, I went to the canteen,” she lied. She had actually had a stale cheese roll and coffee made with essence at a workmen’s café on the main road with Dinah. She was enjoying her dinner. It was roast mutton and cauliflower and rhubarb tart with the top of the milk, which was like cream down here. There was something to be said for having food brought to you under silver covers when you were hungry and tired, instead of having to clear up the breakfast mess and start opening tins and discover that you were out of milk.

Mrs. Geek brought in her coffee and picked up her tray as glumly as if it were a bedpan.

“I’ll wash up if you like to leave it,” suggested Sheila. “I expect you want to get to bed.” She wanted to have a quiet session in the larder to see what tins she could take home. Mrs. Geek’s lips tightened as if she knew this. She hated anyone in her kitchen, and if you went through with an order would stand and talk to you in the doorway so that you couldn’t get in.

“Thank you,” she said, “but Geek and I don’t go to bed just yet. We haven’t finished.” She went out, her long feet crushing the carpet like the treads of a tank.

The telephone rang surprisingly, with its continuous rural trill.

“Sandow about golf,” said Mr. Blake, without looking up from his book. He thought of a message to give. He had established the tradition that he never telephoned, which saved him a lot of bother.

“For Miss Sheila,” said Mrs. Geek, reappearing. “Mr. Fielding.” Sheila blushed scarlet, scrambled up and flew into the hall, banging the drawing-room door behind her, She was still flushed when she came back five minutes later, but shivering half with pleasure and half from the draught. The telephone was on a wall bracket in the kitchen passage, where people knocked into you with trays as you leaned either against the banisters or among the coats and ulsters on the other side. She had had to speak quietly because the kitchen door was open and she knew the Geeks were listening.

“Who was that, dear?” said her mother, pleasantly. She was writing a letter at her desk.

“Oh, just someone I know—someone in London.” Sheila sat down on her stool again and stared at the fire, smiling.

“Long call to make from London,” said her father. “He must be either very devoted or very rich.” He laughed his silent laugh, which went on inside his face without emerging from it. Sheila’s smile grew slightly rueful as she thought of her telephone bill. With David in residence, it was staggering. He was so used to being able to pick up a telephone in the office and get through to Glasgow or even New York
at will that he that leaves you to singke b thought nothing of trunk calls in the home. He always said “Let me know what it is, darling, and I’ll pay you back,” but, of course, she wouldn’t dream of asking him for the money.

“What did he want, dear?” asked her mother, whose life was so dull that even somebody else’s ’phone calls were interesting.

“Oh, nothing much. He wanted to fix up a date for dinner.” It would be lovely to be able to talk about David, just drivel on to somebody sympathetic, She indulged this craving sometimes to Dinah, but lately she had had the suspicion that Dinah, who was certainly was no prude, oddly did not approve. In any case, no one who didn’t know David could understand his perfection. They would never believe that any man could be quite all the things he was.

“You never tell me about any of your London beaux,” complained her mother, licking an envelope saver with a wry face. “I’m sure there must be somebody, because Timothy’s mother says you never write to him ; he’s told her so in his letters.” She sighed. “You know, I always thought you two would make a go of it. Perhaps you will yet, when this maddening War’s over. I must say I shall be glad when we can use proper envelopes again. I’m sure these sticky things are poisonous.” Sheila smiled indulgently, thinking of Timothy with his voice that urchins mimicked in the street and the thinness of his legs in riding breeches. How she ever could have even toyed with the idea! But she hadn’t known David then.

“By the way, he said—this man who rang up—to be sure and listen to the Midnight News. He couldn’t say anything over the ‘phone, but apparently something pretty exciting’s happened.”

Oh? And how does he know?” Her father took off his pince nez, raised his eyebrows and replaced the pince nez. “There was nothing on the Nine O’clock News.”

“Well, he’s on a newspaper, you see. They hear things at the office before they’re announced officially.”

“Journalist, eh? What’s his paper?” Sheila named it, anticipating the answer, which came : “That rag! Well, I hope he’s not as common as his paper, that’s all.”

“Don’t be silly, Daddy. Just because you don’t like the paper, it doesn’t mean to say that everyone on it is common. It’s owned by a Lord, as a matter of fact.” She nodded at him confidently, but he said “Newspaper Peers” and disposed of them with a snap of his fingers.

“Anyway,” said Sheila, who, true to her upbringing, had always scorned the paper until she met David, since when it had been her Bible, “I don’t think it’s a rag at all. I think it’s a very clever paper.”

“Oh, now, darling,” said her mother, whose greatest sorrow had been the passing of the
Morning Post
, “you can’t really think that Your father says it looks bad even having it for the kitchen, but the Geeks seem to like it. I think it’s a disgusting paper. It simply
encourages people not to be educated.” Sheila might have asked her how she knew what it was like, and discovered that she always read it if she found it in the pantry when she was doing the flowers, but she was too indignant to think of that. Her parents had both stopped what they were doing, and she sat between them with burning cheeks while they seemed to be goading her deliberately, almost as if they suspected something.

“I’d took a step nearer to her mother, it was see like to meet this man,” her father was saying. “After all, it’s bad enough for us to have you living all alone in London at your age, without thinking that you’re getting mixed up with goodness knows whom.” Mr. Blake would as soon have spoken a grammatical error as written one.

“Oh, Daddy, don’t be a
fool !
” said Sheila, with rising warmth, ignoring her mother’s ‘Ssh, you mustn’t call your father a fool’. “Why, I—I hardly know him. You talk as if I were having an affair with him or something.” She laughed unnaturally. “And, in any case, he
is not
common. He happens, as a matter of fact, to be very nice,” she finished airily.

“What is he—a man of about forty?”

“No, he’s quite young, about Geoffrey’s age—thirtyish.”

“Ah!” Her father took off his pince nez and leaned forward to make his point. “Then why isn’t he fighting for his country? I suppose writing filth for the illiterate masses is a reserved occupation? Wouldn’t surprise me!”

Sheila struggled to control herself, but tears were pricking at her eyes. How dared he talk about David like that? In what she hoped was a coldly biting voice, she said : “He happens to be medically unfit, and I don’t mind telling you that no one minds being out of uniform more than he does.”