The inner office door opened, and silence fell.
“Mrs Ladislaw, would you come in?”
The canary bowed Frances in, and closed the door discreetly behind her.
Mrs Ladislaw started eagerly forward, but it was a stranger who sat at the desk in front of the window, not Claudia Winsloe. A slim, upright, good-looking woman of six or seven and thirty, with a beautifully-shaped head, shingled hair like carved and polished ebony, and a smile that showed perfect teeth. There was an air of finish about her appearance generally that struck awe, as well as admiration, to the mind of Mrs. Ladislaw, so conscious of her own lack of poise and total absence of finish.
“Mrs Ladislaw? How-do-you-do? I’m Sal Oliver, Mrs Winsloe’s partner. She’s so very sorry, she had to go out on business unexpectedly, but she’ll be back as soon as she possibly can. She hoped you’d wait.”
“Thank you,” said Frances uncertainly. She thought that she must be in Miss Oliver’s way.
“Please sit down,” said Miss Oliver. Her voice, thought Frances confusedly, was much gentler than one would have expected.
“Will you have a cup of tea? I’m going to.”
“Are you really? If it isn’t too early, I’d love one.”
“It’s never too early for tea in an office,” said Sal Oliver. She twice pressed a little buzzer that stood on the table. “That means tea.”
The tea was brought by a small girl in an overall, to whom Miss Oliver said “Thank you, Edie.” It was nice tea, not too strong.
“Do put down your parcels,” said Miss Oliver gently. Frances became aware that she was slung, like a Christmas-tree, with small parcels. A pot of cold cream — a new sponge-bag — Lux — a little packet of milk chocolate for her landlady’s baby. … She put them all on the floor with a sigh of relief, and realized for the first time that her fingers ached from clutching them, and that the string of the Lux parcel had been hurting her wrist.
Miss Oliver opened a box of expensive-looking cigarettes and handed it across the table.
“Will you smoke?”
“Thank you.”
“Claudia,” said Miss Oliver informally, “was so sorry to have to go out. It was a very important client, and she didn’t feel she could send anybody else. She knew you’d understand.”
“Of course. I know she must be very busy. How are things going — the business, I mean?”
“Pretty well. Of course, nothing’s too good just now. But we do quite a lot, one way and another.”
“I’m not sure — I’ve been away from England for six years — I’m not sure if I quite know exactly what the business is.”
“Anything and everything, more or less. We find servants — when we can — and meet trains and escort children and invalids, and look for houses, and shop for people who live in the country. And Claudia’s very anxious to develop the literary side — a sort of literary agency, though we have to be careful about the real literary agents. She does a certain amount of journalism herself — oh, and crossword puzzles, and setting literary competitions in weekly papers, and all kinds of odds and ends.”
“I’m sure she works terribly hard.”
“She does work very hard,” assented Miss Oliver.
“She was always wonderful,” said Frances respectfully. “We were at school together, you know. How does she manage to do it all, with her children and her home and everything?”
“Well, she goes home every night, in the car — it’s only thirty miles — —”
“Thirty miles!” ejaculated Mrs Ladislaw.
“Sometimes she sleeps at my flat. And in the school holidays, when the children are at home, she doesn’t come up every day. She does some of the work at home.”
“But then, doesn’t that fall rather heavily on you?”
Miss Oliver smiled.
“Well, you see, I’m not the mother of a family. I haven’t got a house, or a husband — only three rooms in Bloomsbury that I share with a friend. Not that she’s ever there.”
“Never there?”
“No. She’s a professional dance-hostess, and when she isn’t in one of the big seaside hotels, she’s usually cruising. She’s doing very well.”
“How splendid,” said Mrs Ladislaw, looking extremely startled. She paused, and then added: “I’ve been out of England so long. Six years. And before that, I lived in Yorkshire, right away from things. I feel dreadfully out of touch.”
“Six years? I suppose you see quite a number of differences.”
“Oh, quite a lot. Even if one doesn’t count the traffic, and Park Lane, and things like that. Women — working so hard — and everybody talking all the time about expenses, and money — and having rather bad manners. I don’t mean just very young people, but one’s own contemporaries, which is such a shock. I’m afraid I must seem terribly old-fashioned and stupid.”
Miss Oliver shook her head but said nothing.
“I don’t at all want to be prejudiced. I think I shall get used to it all quite quickly — in fact I must, because I’m going to live here, I hope. Just now I’m going down to Arling to stay — I dare say you know. Wasn’t it wonderful, that they should have been able to buy Arling, Claudia’s old home?”
“It was Claudia who bought it. Not her husband. He hasn’t any money at all, of his own, has he? And no job.”
“No job?” repeated Mrs Ladislaw, half in dismay and half in hopeful enquiry. “He hasn’t found anything, then?”
“No, he hasn’t found anything.”
They looked at one another rather solemnly.
“Then Copper just — just lives at home, I suppose?” hazarded Mrs Ladislaw.
“Yes.”
The telephone bell rang.
“Please forgive me.” Miss Oliver picked up the receiver. “Yes? Yes, I’ll speak to him. Put it through, please. Yes — Miss Oliver speaking.” There was a long pause, while the telephone seemed to click and Miss Oliver listened, and made notes on the blotting-pad.
“I see. Yes, I quite understand. You want me to inspect the school personally and make the position clear to the head mistress, and then write to you. And make all the arrangements, when you give the word. Certainly, Mr Barradine. Either Mrs Winsloe or myself will go down there. I’ll ring up the school and try and fix it for to-morrow. We’ve got all the particulars. We’ll write to you. Not at all, Mr Barradine. Goodbye.”
Still scribbling on the blotting-pad, Miss Oliver pressed the buzzer.
One of the very young girls appeared. Frances eyed her incredible slimness with honest admiration, as she stood swaying in the doorway.
“Please bring me Mr Barradine’s file — Nursery Schools,” said Miss Oliver.
“Right-oh,” said the young girl.
Sal Oliver turned to the visitor.
“It’s a man who’s just divorced his wife. They’ve got one child — a boy of seven — and he’s supposed to be very difficult and nervous. We’ve got the job of finding the right school for him. As a matter of fact, we have quite a lot to do with schools, and I think I know the very place. He’ll be all right once he gets right away from his parents. These difficult children always are.”
“If the father and mother have been unhappy together, perhaps — —” said Mrs Ladislaw.
“Oh, always, I think. Whether they’re unhappy together or not.”
Mrs Ladislaw, unlike most women of her generation, had a peculiar faculty for giving due consideration to ideas that were unfamiliar.
After looking at this one, and remembering spoilt children, neurotic children, and naughty children of her acquaintance, she remarked thoughtfully that very likely Miss Oliver was quite right.
The girl from the outer office reappeared, put a file on the table, and said in a drawling, expressionless voice:
“Look, could Edie go off now? It’s nearly five, and Collier or I could take any telephone-calls. We haven’t got a thing to do. Collier’s knitting a jumper.”
“There’ll be plenty to-morrow
morning.”
“Yeah, I know. Is it O.K. about Edie?”
“I suppose so. Yes.”
“Right-oh.”.
She drifted out again.
“That’s our Miss Frayle. She’s actually a very efficient young woman, though I admit she doesn’t look it.”
“What does she do?”
“Secretarial. Takes all Claudia’s letters, and acts as her secretary generally. Miss Collier does the general correspondence, and the accounts. The one you saw — the older one — does most of the outside work — interviews, and shopping for clients, and finding houses and so on. Except what I do myself.”
“You must work very hard.”
“It comes in rushes. You heard what Frayle said. They’re slack to-night, but to-morrow they’ll probably be rushed off their feet. Especially if Claudia’s in the office.”
“I suppose she’s still tremendously energetic.”
“Oh, definitely. After all, one’s got to remember that she supports her whole family — Copper and three children.”
“It’s marvellous!” said Frances, her eyes shining with admiration. “And when I think how they were brought up — she and Anna. Do you know Claudia’s sister — Anna Zienszi, she is now?”
“I met her once, staying at Arling. She hasn’t been there for at least three years, though.”
“Not been there!” Frances echoed in ingenuous astonishment. “But I should have thought … They were always so devoted to one another — —”
A rapid footfall sounded outside, and, almost simultaneously as it seemed, Claudia Winsloe came in.
“Frances dear!”
“Claudia!”
They kissed affectionately, and then stood, looking at one another.
Sal Oliver slipped from the room.
“Oh, Claudia! you haven’t changed a bit. Well — except perhaps your hair.”
In Mrs Winsloe’s dark hair the grey showed plentifully. But her clear-cut, intelligent face had retained its well-defined oval, there were not many lines round her eyes — big and hazel — and her tall figure was slim and upright.
Impossible to say why she looked like a woman of forty-three — except that she was forty-three.
2
Sal Oliver from time to time went to Arling with her partner for the week-end, especially if there was any work that could be done away from the office.
She was going there now, and was pleased to think she would meet Mrs Ladislaw again. She had found her, though faintly absurd, rather charming and if certain aspects of present-day life eluded her, Sal felt as if they might be defective in significance, rather than Mrs Ladislaw in perception.
She wondered how Mrs Ladislaw would react to Arling.
Sal travelled down by train on the Friday afternoon before the August Bank Holiday.
Arling stood in a Kentish village, some miles from Canterbury. Sal, from the train window, looked with absent affection at the hop-fields, the glaring white patches of chalky ground, the cherry-orchards, dense with green, and the little black-and-white houses.
She was a Londoner born and bred, but she liked the Kentish countryside — though perhaps mostly, she admitted to herself, on account of its associations with David Copperfield.
A shabby, familiar old car, driven by Copper Winsloe, met her outside the station.
“Hullo, Copper!”
“Hullo, Sal. Nice to see you. It’s going to be glorious weather for the week-end. How was London?”
“Very hot, and very full, as far as I was concerned, of women screaming for impossibilities without delay.”
“The whole world is full of them” remarked Winsloe without rancour.
He was a tall, angular creature with thinning hair that had once been red and was now a faded rust-colour. The lines deeply-bitten into his tanned face, his slouching walk and listless movements always brought to Sal’s mind the word desœuvré.
“Frances Ladislaw is staying with us — she’s a good sort. I like her. And Claudia’s mother.”
“Oh God!”
“I know. And a chap of Claudia’s — a fellow called Quarrendon.”
“I know. I’ve met him at the office. An Oxford don, very clever.”
“I dare say,” said Copper without enthusiasm.
“He came in to ask us to fix up a journey to Esthonia for him. It seems that he can’t manage railway time-tables.”
To this peculiarity Copper Winsloe paid no tribute beyond a brief ejaculation expressive of scorn. He changed gear as the car approached a hill, and the noise that ensued made conversation temporarily impossible.
It was some little while before Sal spoke again. Then she asked:
“How’s everything?”
“The situation,” Copper said deliberately, “is as usual, serious. The school-bills are in — absolutely terrific — they’ve surpassed themselves — and Claudia’s working overtime, and all on edge.”
“It’s bad, but is it any worse than it’s often been before?”
“No, it isn’t. And she’ll manage, of course. She always does. My God, though, it was a fool’s trick ever to buy the house.”
“How’s the mortgage getting on?” asked Sal, as though enquiring after a familiar and longstanding ailment. Nor did the reply surprise her.
“It isn’t getting on at all, so far as I know. I haven’t asked Claudia, but if she’s done anything about it, she’d have said so. I suppose she’s paying the interest.”
“No hope of a job for you, I suppose?”
“I haven’t looked for one. What’s the use? Nobody wants a man of my age, not trained for anything in particular. The next war will give me my job. The whole world’s in a funny sort of mess, isn’t it? Not so much for you, perhaps — you’re younger.”
“Not so very much. But at least I’ve nobody dependent on me. And I wasn’t brought up to look on an income as something that was just there, as a matter of course. I always knew I’d have to work for my own living.”
“Everybody’s supposed to be brought up to that nowadays — girls and boys alike. I wonder what the kids’ll make of it all.”
“Living in a house like Arling, and going to expensive schools, and knowing well enough that they have more or less everything they want, regardless of the fact that it’s never quite paid for?” she said ironically.
“I’ve always wondered whether it was better to scrounge and save every penny and never let them have a taste of the fun one had oneself, or to let the future go hang — which it’ll probably do anyway — and at least give them a good time to look back on. Anyway — it’s Claudia that sets the tune. After all, she pays the piper.”
After that, a long uphill slope and the noise of the aged engine kept them silent.
Arling stood in a small park, consisting of rough grass-land and clumps of beeches. A shabby wooden gate, badly in need of paint, led into the winding drive and a little further on was another gate and then a gravelled square in front of the house.
It was a pleasant house, about a hundred and fifty years old, with no especial features. The french windows of the ground floor faced a long straggling garden, where a small stream ran along. by the bottom of the tennis-lawn, overhung by a giant pair of weeping willows.
Inside, it was roomy, shabby, and sparsely furnished. Of the ground-floor rooms, only three were in use — the library, that ran almost half the length of the house and faced south; a smaller room on the other side of the hall, traditionally called the smoking-room; and a square, cold dining-room at the back of the smoking-room.
The hall was also square, stone-tiled, and with a stone staircase leading to the floor above. Nine or ten bedrooms were inadequately served by two bathrooms.
It was a source of satisfaction to the Winsloes, and also to their guests, that Claudia’s parents had put both electric light and central heating into the house before the war. The intermediate owners of Arling, beyond repairing the roof and installing a separate boiler for the hot-water system, had done
nothing. They had, however, after twelve years, decided to go and live in the Isle of Wight, and this timely resolution had led to the reinstatement of the late Captain Peel’s daughter in the home of her childhood.
“I’m not coming in,” said Copper, at the open door. “I’ve got a job in the workshop.”
He spent a good many hours in his workshop, an outbuilding behind the stables. Sometimes he repaired small pieces of furniture or turned something on a lathe, but on the whole the visible results of the time he expended there were strangely inadequate.
Sal nodded without speaking and went into the house.
Her ears were at once assailed by a loud and hilarious outburst of community-singing in German. The wireless was, as usual, turned on full blast in the library, and the door into the hall — also as usual — stood wide open.
She paused for a moment in front of the round gilt mirror on the wall, took off her hat and ran a pocket-comb through her short satin-black hair, and then went into the room.
Sylvia was at the tea-table — auburn-haired, blue-eyed, and innocently pretty; Maurice — small, compact, and sandy, eleven years old — crouched upon the floor near the open window, surrounded by snapshots, a pot of paste, an open album, and innumerable sheets of blotting-paper; and Taffy sprawled gracelessly over an armchair, petting an old and moth-eaten black cat.
The children’s grandmother, Mrs Peel, sat in a sofa corner with The Times. At intervals she read aloud an extract from the news to which nobody paid any attention. Her slim, but undefinably elderly, figure was clad in thin tweed; her grey hair, piled high upon the top of her head, curled tightly into a neat little fringe on her forehead; and she wore steel-rimmed spectacles.
Standing next to Sylvia, with an awkward air of not knowing what to do next, was a man nearing forty, large and clumsily built, with an ugly, intelligent face and the habitual frown of the extremely near-sighted. This was Andrew Quarrendon.
Sal greeted them all adequately — Quarrendon obviously had no recollection of her whatever, although they had met several times — and sat down by the open window.
“Mother and Frances will be here in a minute. They’re only in the garden,” said Sylvia. “I’ve made the tea — we won’t wait.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 424
