At last. The sounds for which she was subconsciously waiting had begun. From the nursery, at the far end of the house, came distant yells. Either the boys were playing very happily together, or else it was one of Johnnie’s bad days, when he shrieked with temper at almost everything that happened.
Laura, who, although she would have denied it indignantly, lived in abject terror of these periodic attacks, felt her latent uneasiness increase.
Chocolate pudding — they’d had it so very recently; tinned fruit would be extravagant, and didn’t really do them any good, either; or —— No, she would not think of a pudding. That would come quite soon enough, when she had to go to the kitchen after breakfast. And after she’d spoken to Nellie about coming in late.
Her anticipation sank to still lower depths. Perhaps the post would bring letters.…
“Come in!”
Nellie entered, put down the little tray with the early morning tea, and performed her usual functions, and Alfred woke up. Although the separate items that made up the morning were most of them rather disagreeable than otherwise to Laura, she was eager to embark upon them. It was better to do the things than to think about them.
Just before the breakfast gong sounded she went to the nursery and kissed the children. Johnnie seemed all right.…Nurse said “Good morning” rather sulkily.…She was an excellent nurse, but sometimes she had injured feelings, for which no reason was ever forthcoming.
“I shan’t take any notice,” reflected Laura, as usual. “I daresay it’ll have passed off by lunch time, or perhaps it’s simply my fancy.” She went downstairs, racking her brains as to what could have offended nurse.
The post brought two bills, a circular, a postcard from Laura’s younger sister, who was in Italy sketching, and a letter. The letter, in a large, square, expensive-looking mauve envelope, might be interesting. Laura opened it.
The Manor House,
Quinnerton.
Dear Laura,
We should be so pleased if you and your husband would come over to tea on Saturday next, the 17th. Mr. Onslow, the novelist, and his wife will be staying here, and I should so like you to meet them. He has read some of your stories!!
Yours ever,
Gertrude Kingsley-Browne.
Except for the two exclamation marks, Laura felt pleased.
“Lady Kingsley-Browne has asked us to meet the A. B. Onslows, Alfred.”
“Good,” said Alfred, without elation, as without rancour.
“You know who A. B. Onslow is, of course?”
“No.”
“But, Alfred!”
“Does he write?” said Alfred.
“You know he does. You’ve read several of his books. You even liked them.”
“What is he doing with the Kingsley-Brownes? Are they trying to foist the girl on to him?”
“I have no doubt they would, if he didn’t happen to have a wife already,” returned Laura uncharitably. “I think Bay-bay is supposed to have literary tastes, too.”
Miss Kingsley-Browne, prettily called Bébée by her mother, was derisively referred to as Bay-bay by the Temples, in rather unkind mimicry of Lady Kingsley-Browne’s pronunciation.
“What do they want us for — lunch or tea?”
“Tea, unfortunately,” said Laura, in simple and sincere regret for the economy entailed by going out to lunch. “Saturday. I’ll say Yes, shall I?”
“All right.”
Laura began to think about her clothes, without much exhilaration.
“Hullo, mummie!” said Johnnie, at the open window.
“Hullo, darling.”
“Mummie, have I got to put my boots on?”
“If the grass is wet—”
“Of course it’s wet,” said Alfred.
“Yes, darling, put them on. And tell Edward to put his on, too.”
“He has already.”
“That’s splendid. Run up and get yours, darling,” said Laura, with entirely artificial brightness.
“Oh, bother,” said Johnnie ferociously.
“Hasn’t he got a nursery?” Alfred enquired coldly. He had but little patience with Johnnie at the best of times — and breakfast was the worst of times.
“Run upstairs, darling,” Laura repeated.
“Need I put my boots on?”
“Nurse will help you,” weakly said Laura, who had many times impressed upon nurse her wish that the children should learn to do things for themselves.
“I don’t want my boots on.”
“That’ll do; go upstairs,” said Alfred suddenly and severely.
Johnnie, muttering the nursery equivalent of curses, moved away from the window. Laura, out of the corner of her eye, saw him plunge morosely into the long, wet grass that fringed the tennis court. Her mind was divided impartially between the hope that he would not get a cold and the hope that Alfred would not notice. A great part of her life was spent in the endeavour to prevent Alfred from noticing what Johnnie was doing.
Had he gone?
Laura feigned absorption in Lady Kingsley-Browne’s letter. Fortunately, Nellie had forgotten the marmalade.
“Ring for the marmalade, please, darling,” said Laura.
“Not for me.”
“She must learn to remember things.”
“Mummie,” said Johnnie, suddenly reappearing, “can I have a banana?”
“Go and put your boots on,” Alfred shouted.
“Oh, don’t!” said Laura involuntarily.
Shouting, with Johnnie, was always fatal. It was incomprehensible to her that his father had not learnt this.
Instantly Johnnie burst into roars of tearless anger, and flung himself flat upon the ground.
A short scene, upon familiar lines, followed. Laura profoundly disapproved of coercive measures, both upon general principles and from experience of Johnnie’s peculiar reactions to a force of which he felt the tyranny, without being able to condemn it. At the same time, she had a thorough and genuine dislike of spoilt children, and a loyal determination to uphold Alfred’s authority with his sons.
It sometimes seemed to her that every principle that she had ever had, she sooner or later sacrificed, either to Alfred, to Johnnie, or to the servants. And yet life continued to be a thing of conflict, of difficulty, and of ill-success.
“He’s got to learn obedience,” said Alfred, appearing to think that Johnnie had taken a step in this direction when, resisting to the utmost, he had been propelled upstairs by the superior physical force of his parent. “What’s the matter with the child?”
“He gets like that, you know,” said Laura unhappily.
The face of Edward inopportunely appeared at the other window.
“Hullo, mummie!”
“Go and play in the garden, darling,” said Laura, with the utmost firmness, “or else up to the nursery.”
Edward, thank heaven, always did as he was told; at least, as long as he was in sight. Therefore Laura commanded him, where she coaxed and even bribed Johnnie.
“Hop it,” said Alfred, and Edward disappeared.
“There’s no peace in this house,” observed Laura’s husband, not unpleasantly. “Aren’t you going to eat that piece of toast?”
“I don’t want it, thanks.”
“Then I can ring.”
“Oh, please eat it, Alfred. Or else I will. Otherwise she’ll think she can send in less.”
Laura saw no absurdity whatever in this domestic manoeuvre, which she practised, in one form or another, almost every day of her life.
When she had eaten her undesired piece of toast, they left the dining-room.
The ten minutes most detested by Laura was close upon her. Instinctively she sought to postpone them by going up to the nursery, which she found empty, looking into the spare bedroom and opening the window there, and putting another log of wood on the drawing-room fire Then she had to go to the kitchen.
“Good morning, Gladys.”
“Good morning, madam.”
Gladys was twenty-six and Laura thirty-four. Gladys was the servant of Laura, paid to work for her. She had been at Applecourt only six months, and it was highly improbable that she would remain for another six. Nevertheless, it was Gladys who, in their daily interviews, was entirely at her ease, and Laura who was nervous.
“I’ll just see what we’ve got in the larder.”
The attenuated remainder of the Sunday joint was in the larder, with half of a cold rhubarb tart and a fragment of jelly.
“Better make the beef into cottage pie,” said Laura, “And what about a pudding for mid-day?”
As though these words possessed a magic, her mind, as she uttered them, became impervious to any idea whatever. Just as though the word “pudding” had the power to stultify intelligence.
Laura looked at the cook, and the cook looked out of the little barred window of the larder, entirely detached.
“It’s so difficult to think of a new pudding, isn’t it?” said Laura pleadingly.
Gladys smiled, as though at a small jest.
“We had chocolate-pudding just the other day, and besides, the weather’s getting rather warm. The children like jam-tarts.”
“I’m right out of flour, madam.”
“Oh. Well, the groceries will be here this afternoon, won’t they? But of course that’ll be too late for the pudding. Yes. It’s so difficult to—” Laura checked herself just in time.
“What about—” She searched her mind desperately. “What about — ? Have we any prunes?”
“I don’t think we have, madam.”
Laura didn’t really think so either. It had been a forlorn hope.
With a supreme effort Laura said, “We’ll have pancakes. There are plenty of lemons. Now what about dinner to-night?”
With the least possible assistance from Gladys, dinner to-night was outlined. A savoury instead of a sweet, as usual. Mercifully, Alfred never wanted a sweet at night. Feeling as though all food would be entirely distasteful to her for ever more, Laura left the larder and went to the kitchen. From the kitchen — where she saw Faunt-leroy eating cold bacon on the floor, and indirectly rebuked Gladys by sending him outside — Laura proceeded to the store-cupboard, and after a distasteful five minutes there, compelled herself to say: “Please send Nellie to me in the drawing-room as soon as she’s cleared the dining-room table.”
“I was wishing to speak to you about Nellie, madam.”
From an automaton, devoid of ideas, Gladys suddenly became a person of unsurpassed eloquence.
“I don’t want to make unpleasantness, I’m sure, but I don’t think Nellie and me can work together, not if she goes on the way she has done. It’s the same every time she goes out—”
“I know. Well, I’m going to speak to Nellie this morning, and I think you’ll find—”
“What I say is, it isn’t fair. And nurse’ll tell you the same, madam. If her and me can get in at ten o’clock, why can’t Nellie? What I say is, it’s not fair on nurse and I.”
“It isn’t fair on me, either,” remarked Laura, but this was an aspect of the case that did not interest Gladys in the least.
“No’m, that’s what I say; it isn’t fair on me and nurse. I’ve never had to speak like this about any girl that I’ve worked with before, but Nellie’s been queer-like ever since I came here.”
“Yes, well, Gladys, you’re quite right to tell me if things aren’t going well,” said Laura unhappily. “Send Nellie to me in the drawing-room. I think you’ll find things will be different.”
Gladys committed herself to no fallacious expressions of optimism, and Laura left the kitchen, feeling as though her own stock of vitality for the day was already exhausted.
She supposed that she must, beyond a doubt, be the worst housekeeper in England.
The door of the drawing-room flew open, and the two little boys came in, leaving muddy tracks upon the carpet.
“Edward, your boots!”
“Mummie,” said Edward earnestly, “do birds ever climb trees?”
Detachment of a high order is the reaction of the maternal mind to the inconsequence of childhood.
“Not exactly climb them,” Laura said. “Go and wipe your boots, darling. Birds alight on trees when they’re flying about, don’t they?”
“What is alight?”
“Tell him, Johnnie. And wipe your boots on the mat, both of you.”
“Alight is stopping to sit down,” said Johnnie.
Laura experienced the faint thrill of pride that Johnnie’s lucidity always brought to her.
“Is to-day Sunday, mummie?”
“No, darling, it’s Tuesday. The day before yesterday was Sunday. Your boots, Johnnie.”
Edward went outside and wiped his boots on the mat “Johnnie, darling, don’t make me say it so often.”
The house-parlourmaid Nellie appeared at the door of the drawing-room.
“Oh, Nellie —— Boys, go into the dining-room and wait for Miss Lamb. She’ll be here directly. Come in, Nellie.”
Laura seated herself before her writing-table.
“Mummie, why can’t I stay in here?”
“Because it’s lesson-time, darling.”
“Bother!” said Johnnie.
“Bother,” said Edward imitatively.
Laura’s exasperated nerves would have welcomed the relief of slapping them both. The instinct of civilised generations behind her, no less than the knowledge that violence would only result in breeding more violence, restrained her.
“Go away, boys; I really mean it. Edward, hurry up.” Her voice sharpened, because she knew that Edward could be easily intimidated.
He went out of the room.
“Johnnie, dear—”
“Mummie, Nellie knows a whole poem called The Wreck of the Hesperus.’ Isn’t she clever?”
He smiled up at Nellie, who laid her hand on his curls, looking apologetically at Laura.
All servants adored Johnnie, who gave them a great deal of trouble and seldom obeyed them — but never spoke to them otherwise than politely. Edward, who was obedient, had no such instinct. He made personal remarks, and the maids merely tolerated him.
“Very clever, darling,” said Laura. “Now run along.”
“When will it be Sunday?”
“In four days. There’s Miss Lamb. Run and open the door for her.”
“It is open.”
Laura knew that it was open, but had hoped that Johnnie didn’t.
“Well, never mind — go!”
To her great relief Johnnie went, and Nellie promptly shut the door behind him.
When she turned round again the smile and the apologetic look alike had entirely disappeared from her face. The expression that had replaced them was one known to Laura, both on the face of Nellie herself and on the faces of several of her numerous predecessors. It was compounded of defiance, obtuseness, and a determination not to be “put upon.”
“Nellie, you were very late again last night,” began Laura. She knew that her cause was just, but the knowledge did not seem to lend her any self-assurance.
The interview ended, as she had all along felt that it would end, in an announcement from Nellie that she “wished to make a change.”
“Very well, I will take a month’s notice from you.”
Now that the blow had fallen, Laura could be calm, and even firm. And anyhow, Nellie had always been unpunctual — a tiresome fault — and house-parlourmaids were easier to get than cooks-general.
She decided to write out an advertisement for the Morning Post, and to visit the Registry Office at Quinnerton.
“Very well. Thank you, Nellie.”
“Thank you, madam.”
Upon these empty courtesies Nellie left the drawing-room.
Laura got up and walked round the room, mechanically straightening the shabby mauve cretonne covers on the armchairs, straightening the piles of music on the top of the cottage piano, and shaking up the little striped purple bolster on the window-se
at — all the time rehearsing her interview with Nellie, and thinking out excellent and dignified utterances for herself.
Then she saw that the vases needed refilling, and fetched a little water-can out of the hall. A cold northeast wind blew in through the open door, making her shudder, and adding to her general sense of unpleasing surroundings.
Johnnie’s voice, in loud argument with his daily governess, reached her from behind the closed door of the dining-room.
Laura, physically and morally chilled, sat down before her writing-table.
Applecourt,
Nr. Quinnerton.
March 13th.
Dear Lady Kingsley-Browne,
Thank you so much for your kind invitation. We shall be delighted to come to tea on the 17th, and should so much enjoy meeting Mr. and Mrs. Onslow. I have always admired his work.
Yours affectionately,
Laura Temple.
Lady Kingsley-Browne’s note wasn’t even dated. Laura felt faintly comforted by her own superiority.
All the same, she hadn’t anything decent to wear on Saturday. It was a difficult time of the year for those who could afford only a winter wardrobe and a summer one, neither of which ever seemed to be wholly appropriate to the weather.
The kasha two-piece suit would be all right, but she had no really satisfactory hat to wear with it.
Laura drew a hat on the blotting-paper, frowned, and then wrote other letters.
At twelve o’clock she heard Miss Lamb go away and nurse call the boys for their walk. She felt impelled to go to the window and watch them start — sturdy little figures in their covert-coats, without caps or gaiters. Edward was bouncing a ball, and running to catch it. Johnnie was fitting a flower-pot on to Fauntleroy’s head. Laura smiled indulgently, but was relieved when Fauntleroy broke loose and nurse caught Johnnie by the hand. They disappeared through the white gate that led into the lane.
Laura then perceived that she had allowed the drawing-room fire to go nearly out. She was obliged to work at it with the bellows for some time.
Her husband, whose occupation was that of farming his own land, did not come in until one o’clock, when he slightly annoyed Laura by going upstairs to wash his hands exactly five minutes after the gong had been rung.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 281
