The Fancy (25 page)

It was after lunch that the day ceased to go smoothly. Sheila was in the drawing-room, wondering what to do until tea-time and wishing that there was a train to London before six o’clock. Her mother came in, in the purple jumper which was such good quality that it had lasted ever since King George V died.

“D’you know, Shee,” she said, “I think I’ll come up with you
tonight. I was going to Town impossible to believe.pa tomorrow in any case to look at sheets, so we might as well go together. I want to see the flat, too. I never have, you know. You could put me up, couldn’t you?”

“Oh, but there’s only one bed,” said Sheila, in a panic.

“But you’ve told me you had that girl from the factory to stay. Isn’t it a double bed? I wouldn’t mind sharing it.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t like it, Mummy, it’s—I don’t think you’d better stay. I mean, it’s an awfully small bed—it really isn’t a double bed at all.”

“Well, I could manage on the sofa, I dare say, or you could.”

“There—there isn’t a sofa.” Sheila’s mind was in a whirl. Even if David were not waiting for her in the flat tonight—which he would be—it would take her hours to clear away the traces of him before she could possibly have her mother there.

“Well, it seems a pity, Sheila, I would have enjoyed spending the night there with you. And as Barbara’s coming to tea and going to drop you at the station afterwards, I thought I might as well come, too. We could have taken up some tinned stuff and had a cosy little supper there together. I tell you what—I’ll ring up the Wigmore Hotel ; they’ll always let me have a room. Then I could still come up with you and see the flat and just go there to sleep after supper.”

“Oh, you’ll never get a room,” said Sheila, quickly. “London’s terribly full ; you’ve no idea.”

“I’ll get in there all right. The manager promised last time I was there. He’d always fit
me
in, he said.”

“Oh, but Mummy——” Sheila didn’t know what to say. Wild ideas to prevent the catastrophe were rushing through her brain.

“I hear your mother’s going up with you tonight.” Mr. Blake came into the room, still carrying the
Sunday Times.
It took him all day to read it. No one else ever got a chance until after dinner.

“Oh, no, I don’t think she——” began Sheila, but her mother was already saying : “I’m just going to ring up the Wigmore and see if they can let me have a room, as it seems that Sheila can’t put me up, after all.”

“I’ll do it for you, Mummy—let me,” said Sheila, getting up and hurrying to the door, meaning to pretend to ring up and find there was no room.

“That’s my nice girl. I’d love you to get through for me. The Exchange is awfully tiresome on a Sunday, but I’ll speak to the hotel. They know me.”

“They know me, too,” said Sheila, in the doorway. “I’ll speak to them.”

“No, I think I’d better. Call me when you’ve got through.”

Leaning up against the wall in the draught, while she waited to get through to London, Sheila made frantic plans. Her mother meant to come straight to the flat from the station, so there was no hope of going on ahead and clearing it up. She would have to ring up David and
explain—he’d be furious—and tell him to put all his things into cases and take them away and not come back until late that night. Could she telephone from here without being heard? The Geeks would listen, even if her parents remained safely shut in the drawing-room. It was risk that leaves you to singke by. She would have to talk quietly and be very cryptic, and the line was sure to be bad. David might not even be in, and if he were, would he realise the urgency of it? He was always saying : “Let me meet your parents, darling. I don’t see why you’re so furtive.” He never understood that it would absolutely be the end of the world if they found out.

But after her mother had finished with the Wigmore Hotel, who said : “But, of course … any time Madam wishes … only too glad … “and Sheila had firmly shut both the drawing-room and the kitchen doors, there was the sound of a car on the gravel outside and the cheery voices of her sister Barbara and her doctor husband who had come over to tea.

“Number, please?” said the girl at the local exchange for the second time, but Sheila hung up the receiver. She would have to telephone from the station ; that was the only chance. At least, there would be privacy in the ’phone box, but she would have to pretend that the clocks were slow so as to get them started for the station in time. What would happen if David were not in, she didn’t dare to think.

He was in, bless him—but the line, curse it, was terrible. She could hear him all right, but he kept saying : “I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Tell me when you get back,” and threatening to ring off. At last she managed to make him understand. He said, as she had feared he would : “Well, what about it, darling? Good opportunity to break the glad news to her. I’ll get the place tidied and make something nice for supper, hm?”

“Oh, David,
No
!” Any minute now the train would be coming. Her sister’s round, florid face was already mouthing at her through the glass of the box. At last she managed to convey something of her urgency to him. He grumbled, he protested, he offered other ideas. He was making it more difficult than it already was. Did he think she liked having to make him turn out like this? Did he think she wanted to miss their lovely Sunday evening?

“There’s the train!” she shouted, while Barbara thumped on the box with a fur-gloved hand. “You
promise?
” He promised. She felt physically exhausted as she picked up her gloves and bag and ran down the platform to where her mother was getting into a carriage.

“Come along—come along!” They all beckoned to her with wide sweeps of their arms as she approached. “Why on earth you want to telephone now——” said her mother. “Why didn’t you do it at home?” And her sister, who was still to all appearances Captain of Hockey at St. Brenda’s, Bexhill, said : “You are
mad
, Shee. You nearly missed the train.” Too breathless to answer them, Sheila sank
into her seat, while her mother blocked the window exchanging last-minute urgencies.

Sheila sat in suspense all the way to London. She could not relax until she had opened the front door of the flat and satisfied herself that all traces of David were gone. Would he remember his shaving things? And his typewriter? Even his books might give him away, but it was too much to hope he had taken them. She would have to say they were Kathleen’s. What about his gasmask? He had a Service one in the hall cupboard. There was no telling where her mother might be moved to look. Pipes? Even the smell of tobacco—he would never think to open the windows. She sat fidgeting, distraught, unable to read, and scarcely answering her mother coherently. If she had never felt guilty before, she felt now like a criminal. Living in Sin : she and David had laughed at that often enough, but impossible to believe.pa for the first time she felt that it was true.

They managed to get a taxi at the station. She was not sure whether she would rather put off the evil moment or get it over as soon as possible. Sitting well forward on the seat, tensed, while her mother sat solidly back and talked comfortably about White Sales, Sheila formed a plan between King’s Cross and Bloomsbury. It all hung on one thing : whether the night or the day porter were on duty at the flats. It was eight o’clock—just about the time they changed over.

It was the night porter. She could have hugged him. Lolling out of his hutch to see who it was, he winked at her as if he admired her brazenness in bringing her mother to her Love Nest. Looking him full in the eye and daring him to contradict her, she said to her mother : “I’m afraid you’ll have to walk upstairs. They don’t run the lift on a Sunday.” The porter raised his eyebrows and dropped his jaw, and seemed about to speak. Sheila winked at him with all the muscles of one side of her face, took her mother by the arm and propelled her towards the stairs. He played up. She had judged rightly that he would enjoy being in on a conspiracy. Looking back at him, she saw him laughing darkly. He had not shaved that morning or that night, or whenever a night porter did shave.

“That’s right,” he called after them. “Got to save fuel, you know.”

“I wonder you don’t turn out the light in the lift, then,” remarked Mrs. Blake, nodding towards the lift, sitting blandly inviting them with its doors wide open and its lights blazing, but beginning nevertheless to plod unsuspiciously up the stairs.

“It’s five storeys, Mummy,” said Sheila. “I hope it won’t kill you. You take it easy, and I’ll run on ahead and light the fire and do the blackout.” She darted up the stairs as if on wings. Amazing what one’s body could do in an emergency. She was hardly out of breath when she was at last outside her own front door and fumbling desperately
for the key. If only nobody rang for the lift now. The porter might stop them getting in downstairs, but he could not prevent them summoning the lift from another floor.

She burst open the door, shut it behind her and said ‘David!’ in an urgent whisper. Everything was dark. There was no one there, and she could admit to herself now that she had been afraid he would not even have gone away. How could she have thought that of him? Darling David, he hadn’t let her down. She rushed to do the blackout, and switching on all the lights, went frantically about the flat. He had done his best, poor darling, but you couldn’t expect a man to notice little things. His comb, one sock on the floor, a bottle of hair cream, some typewritten notes, all these and other oddments she hurled into a drawer, locked it and shoved the key under the chest of drawers. Thank goodness she had come up first! It would be all right now. The bed was unmade, but she could say she had left it like that on Saturday morning, and the same with the breakfast things in the kitchen. She gave one more quick, comprehensive glance through the rooms, tore his gasmask from its hook in the hall cupboard and buried it under some blankets in the linen cupboard, and was able to open the door, smiling, as her mother toiled up the last flight of stairs, with her hand on her bosom and her breath wheezing.

“Oh dear, oh dear——” she stood still for a moment to catch her breath and rearrange her lapels, “I can’t be as young as I was. I tell you what, Shee, my wind’s shocking. I believe your father’s right ; I do smoke too much.”

impossible to believe.pa“Come on in, then, Mummy, and sit down.” Sheila hustled her in, for on the floor above she heard a front door bang and a voice say : “Damn—I’ve forgotten my torch. Shan’t be a sec, George.” She had her mother safely inside her own front door before they could ring for the lift and start that tell-tale whine and hum.

Everything went off all right. Her mother, as she knew she would, poked all round the flat and discovered nothing more suspicious than a bottle of laxative, which let Sheila in for a lecture on not having needed anything like that in the country and not getting enough exercise. There was one tricky moment, when Sheila saw the Sunday papers lying in disorder on the bed, but her mother’s mind, not being sharpened by anxiety, never thought to enquire why they were not lying neatly folded just inside the front door.

They opened the tins which Mrs. Blake had brought, and had an amicable supper over the sitting-room fire. Relief had made Sheila happy and affectionate, and her mother found her so unusually willing to chat about all the things which usually seemed to bore her that she was loth to go back to the well-bred discomfort of the Wigmore Hotel. Seeing the bed, she had said : “But, darling, that
is
a double bed. I don’t know why you thought we couldn’t share that.”

“It’s not really meant for two people, though. The springs are
terribly weak—and in any case I kick like anything. Dinah says so. You wouldn’t sleep a wink.”

“The springs feel all right.” Mrs. Blake had bounced on them, and Sheila had said : “They won’t be if you go on doing that,” and made a joke of it to distract her.

At ten o’clock, she said : “Mummy, I think you ought to go or you’ll miss the last bus.”

“I’ll get a taxi.” Mrs. Blake leaned farther back in the comfortable armchair with her heather-mixture legs stuck out to the electric fire.

Sheila laughed. “Shows what a country cousin you are. Taxis simply don’t exist at night. You’ll never get one. Come on—I’ll walk with ought it did,

*

It was to be quite a little show. That was how Edward and Dick Bennett wanted it : just a few select classes for members of the Collis Park Rabbit Club only. If outsiders wanted to enter, then they must join the Club ; that was a ruse to get the new members they so badly needed. Three months after its foundation, the Club had a nice little kernel of members, but although some of these were experienced fanciers with interesting stock, others were no more than one-rabbit men or schoolboys with a pair of Utilities in a converted soap box.

However, they all paid their subscription, drew their rations of bran and dutifully sold half their young stock for flesh. The Club was also a market for their Breeding stock, which they bartered through the medium of Edward or E. Dexter Bell, who although he insisted that he was too busy to be Secretary, was not above dabbling in the more attractive functions of that office. Edward had to deal with all the correspondence, longhand, because the clacking of his old-fashioned typewriter set Connie’s nerves on edge, but Mr. Bell liked to feel that he was the master-mind behind it. Edward could hardly object to his supervision, as he paid, among other things, for the notepaper and stamps.

Dick Bennett sometimes annoyed Edward by remarking that if it had not been for Mr. Bell’s solid backing he didn’t know where they would have been.

“I reckon it was a rare stroke Where on earth have you been?pa by nowof luck getting in with him,” he would say, breathing heavily with a hero-worship which Edward could not share. Dick was all for making Mr. Bell President, but so far Edward had managed to avoid this. The three of them called themselves Joint Unofficial Presidents, or in Mr. Bell’s moments of sticky bonhomie in the Marquis of Granby, The Three Musketeers.

It had become an established thing for them to meet roughly once a week, either at Edward’s house, or at Dick Bennett’s (not often because the children were so noisy), or, in Mr. Bell’s sanctum on the first floor of “Uanmee”. They would hold a kind of informal board meeting, going over the correspondence and the pamphlets from Ministries, drafting advertisements, making plans or simply talking shop. Often they would talk far into the night, until the room was stale with tobacco smoke and Connie or fat, sloppy Mrs. Bennett or stylish Miss Bell had long since gone to bed.