Theatre Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  Holly was wriggling her toes to keep them warm.

  “Could I get into bed with you, my toes are awfully cold? Well, that’s what I thought, so I wondered if we could buy just one and take turns with it, you one week, me one week, and Mark one week. That would be fair to Mark because he hasn’t got anything except his ten shillings.”

  Sorrel shuddered as Holly’s feet touched her.

  “Oh, goodness, Holly, your feet are cold! Whatever will Hannah say!” She made room for Holly and pulled the eiderdown round her. “It’s a very good idea about the attaché case, but I don’t know whether having one just for one week out of every three wouldn’t be worse than never having one at all. And then there’s who’s going to look after it? I mean, it’s bound to get scratched and marked—they do—and who’s going to be to blame?”

  Holly looked up at the felt doll which was on her side of the bed head.

  “I wouldn’t mind something like that if I can’t have an attaché case. Do you think you can buy them now? Or I’d like a white cat to put my pyjamas in just like yours. When we first came here and you let me have that white cat to sleep with me, the nursery was quite different. I’ve wanted a cat like that ever since.”

  Sorrel always laid the white cat on a chair for the night. She leant out of bed and pulled it to her by its tail. It was a nice-looking beast and she had grown fond of it.

  “Do you think I’m awfully mean not to give it to you?”

  Holly had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Why should you give it to me? I wouldn’t give it to you if it was mine.”

  Sorrel looked round at her blue chintz curtains and her pretty dressing-table with the silver dressing-table fittings, at her white furniture, and her carpet with pink flowers, her bedside lamp and the green frog, the picture of the cornfield, and her books.

  “It doesn’t seem quite fair, it never has since we’ve been here, that I should have everything and you and Mark nothing.”

  Holly, without knowing it, had been harbouring a grievance; and now you could feel it was a grievance, from the way she spoke.

  “I don’t see how you can say Mark hasn’t anything when you’ve given him your fourteen bears.”

  Sorrel wrestled with herself. It was not for herself that she wanted the things in her room, though she did want them, but it was because of the way they somehow made a picture of her mother. In the months they had been in the house she had felt that she knew her mother better every day, and not only as the girl she had been when she had this room, but as she had been when she had been her mother. She had felt that her mother had told her on the night before the matinée not to be a fool; that, of course, she could do it. She had thought that her mother had told her to worry and fuss less about the ordinary things that went on every day. If she had a bad day at the Academy and got into trouble, or was rude and cross to Hannah, or snapped at Mark or Holly, she had begun to feel that when she got into her bedroom and shut the door, somebody laughed and said, “Who’s got a black dog on her shoulder?” And then she felt quite different, and stopped wanting to be angry. Because of all these things that she would not tell anybody, she dreaded seeing anything leave the bedroom. These things were her mother’s; these things her mother chose, and if anything left she might stop being so real a person. On the other hand, it did seem pretty sickening for Holly. The one thing she really wanted was an attaché case, and she could not have that, and her next choice was to have things like there were in her mother’s room. It really was frightfully unfair if you looked at it that way, that she should have everything and Holly nothing. She gave the cat an affectionate stroke.

  “You needn’t buy a cat, you can have this one.”

  Holly gazed at her speechless for a moment, and then she flung her arms round Sorrel’s neck.

  “Darling Sorrel! I think this is the most beautiful thing that has happened to me ever.” She examined the cat with her head on one side. “What shall I call him?” Sorrel did not answer. So Holly answered herself. “When he’s got one’s pyjamas in him he’s fat, and when they’re out he’s thin. He really wants a sort of in-and-out name. I know, I shall call him Hannah-Alice. Hannah for the fat all-day part, and Alice for the thin all-night.”

  Sorrel was not really attending, but she managed to sound as though she was.

  “That’ll be very nice.” She pleated the eiderdown. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got ideas about my money. I want to buy a frock. You know what mine looked like on Christmas Day.”

  Holly stroked Hannah-Alice.

  “Pretty awful. It doesn’t look as though it could possibly button; it’s a surprise it does. And where it buttons it kind of pleats, and that makes your vest show, and the velvet looks as if it had been left outside all night, and it had rained; otherwise, it’s all right.”

  “What I’m afraid of is this first night of Grandmother’s. Did you notice when we were down last night seeing her, that she said something about our coming to the first night?”

  Holly bounced with pleasure.

  “Oh, goodness, I hope she meant it!”

  “It’s all very well for you, Holly, you’ve got all my party frocks passed down to you; and it’s all right for Mark if they don’t try and dress him up, and they can’t because they haven’t anything to dress him up in; but it’s absolutely awful for me. I know what’s going to happen. Grandmother will go pushing us about and saying we’re her grandchildren and there’ll be me looking a disgrace to any family, especially the Warrens.”

  “If you can’t get a frock for your money, you can have mine; and I expect Mark would give you most of his ten shillings if we had the coupons.”

  “If we had the coupons I don’t think I should need any extra money. I could buy a utility frock. That dress that Mary had for her audition was utility, and I thought it looked awfully nice.”

  Holly recalled Mary standing in the hall in something green and tailored.

  “It did. Much nicer than I thought Mary ever could look. How much was it?”

  “Less than two pounds.”

  Holly was giving her whole attention to Sorrel’s clothes.

  “I don’t think you wear things like that for first nights. When Alice told me about them she said all the ladies wore satin and velvet and diamonds and foxes, and all the gentlemen had top-hats and black tails. What do you think men wear tails for at a first night?”

  “Not the sort of tail you mean. It’s some black bits hung down at the back of their coats. Men wore them at parties before the war. Daddy had them, I remember quite well. What you said about satins and velvets is what’s worrying me. I don’t believe we’ve got many coupons left, and I don’t think Hannah will let me spend them on a real party frock.”

  “Couldn’t you get another velvet?” Holly suggested. “Only one that fits.”

  “I thought of that, and I could if they’re cheap enough; but I think Hannah will think it ought to be in a serviceable colour—a dark red or navy blue, or something like that. And what I think I need is a party frock; something really party that rustles and sticks out.”

  The door opened and Hannah’s face, with her nose red with cold, appeared.

  “I’ll rustle and stick out you, Holly. What are you doing along here without your slippers?”

  Sorrel held out a hand to her.

  “Hannah, darling, come and sit here a minute. Holly and I will do without my eiderdown, so it can all go over you and keep you warm. I wanted to ask you something.”

  Hannah sat down on the bed. It was a well-made, well-sprung bed, but sagged under Hannah. She could not really have been any heavier when she had not got her stays on; but in her red dressing-gown, with no stays, she looked twice as big as usual, but rather less like a loaf because there was nothing to tie her in.

  “Well, what is it?”

  Sorrel explained about her money and the first night.

  “You see, Hannah, I’d have to have a new dress anyway, wouldn’t I? I mean—that velv
et’s finished, even if it would let out, which it wouldn’t.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “Shocking it is. If we could get you something new, I’ll put it on one side; or maybe cut it up for a pair of knickers or something, later on. You haven’t enough coupons in your book, but you can have a few from young Holly and a few from mine; but you’ll have to buy something big with room for turnings, nice, solid, dark stuff that’ll last.”

  Sorrel leant against Hannah and looked up feelingly in her face.

  “Oh, Hannah, I knew you were going to say that; but it’s a party dress I want. That’s what I was saying when you came in, something that would rustle and stick out. Don’t you think we could possibly spare the coupons for that? After all, it wouldn’t be wasted, I could wear it to church on Sundays in the summer.”

  “There’s enough funny goings-on in this house,” said Hannah, “without my taking a dressed-up monkey that ought to be on a stick along to church of a Sunday.” But she did not say it with any conviction. She was obviously worried, and after a moment she added: “Something pretty in white you ought to have, with a sash; like the ones you’ve passed on to Holly.”

  “I’d have liked something a little more grown-up,” Sorrel pleaded. “Just think, Hannah! Suppose it could be yellow. Crêpe de Chine or silk net over taffeta.”

  Hannah got up. Her voice was cross in the way it was when she had to hurt and disappoint one of the children.

  “It’s no good talking like that, Sorrel dear; and well you know it. What with things you’ve got to have, like shoes and socks and warm clothes, and you all growing, I don’t know which way to turn for coupons as it is. Yellow silk indeed! You know we couldn’t manage it, so what’s the good of talking. Come on, Holly.”

  Sorrel did not give up the party frock easily. And Hannah, who was really very sorry about it, patiently went with her from one big store to another. There must have been hundreds of dresses, but not one that met even half-way between Hannah’s idea of sensibleness and usefulness and Sorrel’s of what she should wear at a party.

  A fortnight before Grandmother’s first night the children were officially told they were all going and that they were to sit in the stalls. Alice had told Sorrel that she thought they would sit in a box, and “If you do, dear,” she said, “there’s no one behind to see if your frock’s too tight.” There was no comfort like that about sitting in the stalls, and it was the very day Sorrel heard it was to be stalls that she gave up the search for the frock.

  “Don’t let’s try any more, Hannah. I’ll wear the old velvet. It’s silly to spend the coupons or the money on something dark and sensible, because I don’t want that kind of frock for anything. I’ll keep the money and buy something with it later on.”

  She said this so nicely that neither Hannah nor Alice grasped how despairing she was inside, though they watched her carefully to see.

  “I do hate to disappoint the child,” Hannah said. “But even if we had the coupons, which we haven’t, what could she do with a frock made of silk and that? I wouldn’t have minded if she’d wanted something white. We could have bought it far too big, taken it in and turned it up, and then when this first night was over, folded it away for her confirmation; but she wouldn’t hear of white. They wore white for best at that Ferntree School, that’s why Holly’s got two white frocks.”

  Alice was having such a time with Grandmother, she had not a great deal of time to spend worrying about other people.

  “I wish I could help, dear, I do, indeed; but we’re very nearly demented, if you ask me. To see us get up in the morning is a proper pantomime. Acting bits of scenes as we pull on our clothes, and when I’m doing our hair the brush is snatched away and the script shoved under my nose. It’s ‘Hear my lines, Alice. Start at the top of page so-and-so.’ Then we get a line wrong and I correct us and we say, ‘Don’t interrupt, don’t interrupt. How can I ever learn this part, you fool of a woman, when you jabber all the time?’”

  Hannah was clearing away the supper things during this conversation. She paused in the doorway with the tray.

  “Ever since I’ve been in this house, I’ve wondered how you stood it, Alice; and the more I hear the more I wonder. What you want to do is to take a place in a vicarage where there’s nice Christian goings-on and never anything more out of the way than a parish social.”

  The week before the first night the three children were asked to spend the day with Miriam. Uncle Mose was going on tour for E.N.S.A., and he had a week’s rest; and the moment he knew his holiday was fixed, he told Aunt Lindsey to settle a day and get Sorrel, Mark and Holly along. They chose to go on Holly’s birthday.

  It was a lovely day with a nip of frost in the air, and the sun caught the silver of the defence balloons and turned them into gigantic pink and gold fish. Most of the things the children thought they would do in London, and had been hoping were going to happen, happened that day. They went to the Zoo, and they went to Madame Tussaud’s. Uncle Mose said that he would have taken them to the Tower of London only you could not see it in wartime, and then he laughed and said that much though he would have liked to have shown them the Tower, in his opinion the Zoo and Madame Tussaud’s were enough for one day, and it was an ill war that did nobody any good.

  After tea, at which there was a cake with nine candles, they sat round the fire and roasted chestnuts. The Cohens had a lovely flat, all white paint and very shiny. The children had liked Uncle Mose from the beginning and they had always been fond of Miriam; but now they discovered how nice Aunt Lindsey could be. She had not gone with them to the Zoo in the morning, because she had to cook the lunch, nor to Madame Tussaud’s in the afternoon, because she had to get the tea; but now that there were no more meals to see to, she settled down in an armchair and talked in a friendly way as if she had known them always. She asked a little about Guernsey and a great deal about the vicarage. She and Uncle Mose laughed and laughed when they heard about Grandfather and the Bible animals, and then she began asking about living with Grandmother. Were they comfortable? Mark was busy with the chestnuts.

  “Sorrel is; she’s got our mother’s room.”

  “And you?” Aunt Lindsey asked.

  Sorrel managed to kick Mark to remind him that Grandmother was Aunt Lindsey’s mother. Mark looked over his shoulder and made a face at her to show that he had not forgotten.

  “Quite, thank you,” he said politely.

  Aunt Lindsey looked down at Holly.

  “Which room have you got?”

  Holly wriggled up to her Aunt and leant against her knees.

  “I think it was your nursery. Mark’s in the room next to me.”

  Aunt Lindsey turned to Uncle Mose.

  “He must be in the little room that the kitchen-maid had. I suppose Mother’s put them on that floor because that’s where Addie’s room was. Henry and Marguerite and I slept on the floor below.”

  “I daresay you did,” said Mark. “Those rooms haven’t any furniture in them now.”

  Aunt Lindsey laughed.

  “You can’t have lived in that house for quite a number of months, Mark, and think that; as you know, there’s hardly room to turn round for all the furniture Mother’s collected.”

  Sorrel was so afraid that Holly’s face, gazing up into Aunt Lindsey’s, would give her away that she pulled her arm.

  “I think your chestnut’s burning.”

  Miriam, by accident, led the conversation away from Grandmother’s house.

  “Do you know that Mum’s written to ask whether, as Dad will be away for Grandmother’s first night, you could all sit in the box with Mum and me? What are you going to wear, Holly? I’ve got a blue silk frock. Mum’s let it out and altered it, and it looks very nice now.”

  “I’ve only got white,” Holly explained. “But I’ve got the coral beads Aunt Marguerite gave me, and I’m wearing a coral bow.”

  “And what’s Sorrel wearing?” Aunt Lindsey asked kindly.

  There was an awful paus
e while Mark and Holly looked at Sorrel to see what she would say.

  Uncle Mose had his eye on Sorrel. He caught hold of her arm and pulled her to him, and made her sit on the arm of his chair.

  “Come on, what are they dressing you in? Something you don’t like?”

  The most awful thing happened to Sorrel. Because she really was so worried about the frock and the shame of wearing it, and because Uncle Mose was so nice, she suddenly found herself crying. Uncle Mose did not seem in the least upset by this. He pulled her off the arm of his chair and on to his knee, and found his pocket-handkerchief and mopped her face and said he would like to hear all about it.

  Sorrel had reached the cry and hiccup stage; but somehow she managed to tell the entire story, reminding him what the velvet frock was like, and about the shopping expeditions she and Hannah had been on, and what Hannah wanted and what she wanted, and the dreadful story of the coupons.

  When she had finished, Uncle Mose looked at Aunt Lindsey.

  Aunt Lindsey got up.

  “You come with me, Sorrel. If there was one thing I was extravagant about before the war, it was evening dresses, and I’m a very good dressmaker. Let’s see what we can find.”

  They did not find yellow, but there was a white evening dress made of stiff rustling silk, with bunches of yellow flowers embroidered all over it. Aunt Lindsey had piles of picture papers lying on the table in her bedroom. She kept turning these over until at last she came to a picture on the cover of one. It was coloured and showed a girl of about Sorrel’s age in a party frock with puffed sleeves. Underneath it was written, “It may be wartime, but Miss Adolescent wants her fun!”

  “There!” said Aunt Lindsey. “How would you like that frock?”

  Sorrel could not believe it was true. She kept fingering the stuff.

  “Do you mean honestly made of this?”

  Aunt Lindsey had whipped up a yard measure from somewhere and was measuring Sorrel. She stopped measuring for a moment and held Sorrel’s chin between her fingers and looked into her eyes.

  “Of course I mean it, goose; it’ll be fun. You’ll look a darling in it, but never let me hear of you crying and worrying about anything like this again. You come straight along to us; that’s what uncles and aunts are for. There’s no dressing-up at first nights these days, so I shall make you the smartest person in the theatre. You’ll see.”