Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “We are, a bit.”

  “You’re not earning anything at all?”

  “I can’t get a job.”

  “It’s such a pity you left that post with Uncle Ernest’s firm.”

  “I thought I was safe to get that secretaryship — it was promised me, in fact. I was absolutely let down over that — —”

  “I know, my dear boy, but — However, it’s no use crying over spilt milk. You threw up a perfectly safe job, that at least brought you in a small income, and you found yourself high and dry. Do you still get the income from mother’s money?”

  “I had the most frightfully bad luck over that. I was told of an absolutely safe thing — —”

  “My dear Wilfred, do you mean you reinvested your capital?”

  “Well — yes. You see — —”

  “And lost it?”

  “Yes — most of it.”

  “I see. How much is left?”

  “About three hundred was left, Joan. But of course — —”

  “Are you and Chrissie living on capital?”

  “We’ve had to. We’ve got to have a roof over our heads, and then the child — —”

  “Chrissie has a servant, hasn’t she?”

  “She has to. You see, the baby keeps her awake at night, and — —”

  “I suppose that costs you about three or four pounds a month. And her food as well. Are you and Chrissie in debt, Wilfred?”

  “Yes, we are,” he burst out angrily. “We owe money to the tradespeople, and they’re starting to dun us, and the Bank won’t let me overdraw any more.”

  “Have you any securities left?”

  “Only my life insurance policy.”

  “That’s mortgaged, isn’t it? Have you insured for the child’s education — one of those Educational annuities?”

  “No — we couldn’t have paid the first premium.”

  “Then you’re practically living on credit?”

  “Chrissie makes something by typing. I loathe her doing it, but what else — —”

  “She hasn’t anything of her own at all?”

  “Nothing. As a matter of fact, she’s even sold her jewellery, such as it was.”

  “You don’t get anything at all for jewellery. But, Wilfred — I thought you had a small car!”

  “I — we — I did get one on the instalment system, but I couldn’t keep up the payments.”

  “I can’t think how you could ever have thought yourself justified in getting one at all. And I must say, Wilfred, I don’t know how you can live, feeling that you owe money all round like that.”

  “It’s been pretty ghastly,” he muttered.

  She rose from her chair and went majestically to the writing-table.

  “What is your overdraft now, Wilfred?”

  “A hundred and thirty pounds.”

  “I’ll pay in a cheque to your account to-night that will put it straight. I don’t want you to repay me. The only repayment I ask is that you should keep out of debt in future. It’s utterly degrading to owe money.”

  “Joan, it’s frightfully good of you.”

  “You’d better let me have the bills, and I’ll look through them and settle with the tradespeople direct. I think Chrissie must have managed very badly. I’ll come and see you, and perhaps we can find out how she can economize.”

  “Chrissie does her level best — —”

  “I understand. That’ll do. Send me every bill, Wilfred. Do you know what the total is?”

  “About — about three hundred, if you count things like doctors and rent — —”

  “Then the two hundred you asked for wouldn’t have put things straight. I thought as much. Well, Wilfred ...”

  When he had thanked her again and again he went away. He felt curiously cold and weak, as though something vital had been drained away from him.

  The debts were to be paid, the overdraft at the Bank to be wiped off.... But there’d still be no job, and no income coming in, and he and Chrissie and the child would still have to find food and shelter and warmth somehow. Now that he’d asked Joan once, perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult to do it again another time.

  Horrified at himself, he felt the thought creep into his mind, slyly taking up a permanent corner there.

  THE WIDOW

  It’s queer, now Father’s gone, and I know it’s an awful thing to say, but in some ways I’m happier than I’ve ever been before.

  In all the five-and-twenty years I was married to Father, I wasn’t ever anything but tired, and I never had a bit of pleasuring. He was a good husband, but he just didn’t hold with my going anywhere without I went with him — and not much of that. If ever he saw me with a hat on, he’d ask where I was going and why I couldn’t bide home.

  And it was only the other day I was thinking that I never had a new hat, not in all the years I was married. Not a new one. People where I’ve worked have given me a hat, sometimes, and I’ve got one off the Jumble from time to time, but never a new one of my own. Once, when I’d gone out and done a bit of cleaning, I bought a new pair of shoes with the money, and Father flew into such a passion he couldn’t eat his dinner. And it was money I’d earned, too, but he thought it meant I wanted to go out somewhere, and that was a thing he couldn’t abide.

  He’d say, why couldn’t I be content home, like he was. But then, Father had his work, that took him out every day, and he could talk with the other men in the dinner hour. I didn’t see a soul most times, except the days that baker’s van called, from morning till night. Only the children, of course, and children make a lot of work in a cottage when they’re little, especially when there’s another one on the way — as there mostly was with me, for I’ve had eight altogether. Many’s the time I’ve said to Father that if the man had to have a child turn and turn about with the woman there wouldn’t never be no more than two in any family. And a good job, too. However, Father wouldn’t have none of that, and he said it was distrusting God’s providence not to believe that He knew best how many children a woman ought to have. It did give me a nice bit of rest, too, when I had to lie up, only it was over so quickly, and meant extra work as soon as I got about again.

  I don’t know that I’ve ever minded work, exactly, but I did use to feel that I’d like to get about a bit sometimes. I never went to a concert nor an entertainment until the Red Cross started in the village during the war.

  Father couldn’t go to the war, because he couldn’t pass his medical. They said his heart was all wrong. We hadn’t ever known there was anything the matter with his heart, but Father got ever so nervous after that, and I used to think what a pity it was he’d ever been told about it. And in the end he died of pneumonia after all — nearly a year ago now.

  Most of the children are earning, and my auntie’s taken the little one that’s got hip disease, and I can manage nicely with taking in a bit of washing at home and my widow’s pension. But this year I’m going to the panto if I have to die for it. The money isn’t so very much, and I haven’t been to a theatre ever in my life, and I’ve always wanted to — and I’m going to get a new hat, what’s more, to go in.

  He was a very good husband to me, was Father, and I haven’t nothing to reproach him with. He brought his money home to me regular, and never lifted a finger against me or the children, and I never knew him use language, nor saw him the worse for drink, and it’s not every woman can say that, by a very long way.

  But he didn’t ought to have made that fuss about me getting a pair of new shoes with the money I’d earned myself.

  END OF A HOLIDAY

  The Harpers sat in a third-class railway carriage — they had it to themselves, and no wonder, with two children and all that hand-luggage — and Mr. Harper slept — noisily, for he had caught cold on the boat — and Dickie Harper breathed on the window and then drew on it with his forefinger, and Patsey Harper, swinging her short legs against the opposite seat, sucked a piece of moist chocolate and whistled a tuneless air just below her brea
th. She had been whistling it, intermittently, ever since Dinard.

  Mrs. Harper, tensely and quite unconsciously clutching a magazine that she supposed herself to be reading, watched them all.

  She was watching, as she had been doing throughout the whole of the journey, and most of the holiday before that, for the moment when Mr. Harper should turn round and be annoyed about something, Dickie suddenly lose his temper in a spasm of nervous irritability to which nobody in the world, except possibly his mother, could assign any rational cause, and Patsey stop whistling, turn pale-green, and announce that she wasn’t feeling very well.

  The train shrieked and plunged into a tunnel.

  Mr. Harper shifted in his corner-seat.

  “The last lap now,” he muttered.

  He had said the same words when they went on board, and also when they landed, and his wife was aware that he would say them again when they reached Victoria, and perhaps also when they got into the taxi that would take them and all the luggage to Hampstead.

  It really would be the last lap then.

  Mrs. Harper’s mind, that resembled nothing so much as a highly-strung mouse in a very small cage, took a flying leap forward and anticipated the arrival at No. 9 Hill Walk.

  Had Cook received, read, understood, and acted upon the post-card about a hot supper? The post-card had been posted in France, and foreign postal services were unreliable.

  Would there — but of course there would — be a small pile of bills on the dining-room table awaiting Harold, and would it be possible to put them out of sight just for the first hour or two? It would make all the difference to the evening.

  Would Alice have remembered about getting the man to put a new battery in the wireless?

  About winding the clock.

  Ordering the newspaper to start again.

  Getting in some fruit for the children.

  Unpacking the parcel from the cleaners, and putting the clean covers on the chairs.

  Airing the beds thoroughly.

  Sorting the laundry, and having it waiting in the bedroom.

  (At the thought of the little piles of clean handkerchiefs, Mrs. Harper caught her breath. Everyone had run short of handkerchiefs, although they had all borrowed from her. She had washed and rough-dried a good many, but it wasn’t at all the same thing.)

  “Kin I have a drink please, Mummy?”

  Mrs. Harper, in one practised movement, signed to Patsey that the drink should be forthcoming, that she was on no account to wake her father, and that she was to hand her mother the basket from the floor.

  In the basket, taken from Hampstead to Dinard, and now in process of being taken from Dinard back to Hampstead, was a collection of articles, small in themselves, of which the aggregate weight mounted apparently into hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

  The basket was Mrs. Harper’s insurance against emergencies.

  It held books for the journey, eau-de-cologne and Mothersill in case of sea-sickness, a pack of cards for the children to play with if they became restless, a bottle of iodine, a roll of lint, a pair of scissors, plaster, a packet of biscuits, a horn mug, a bottle of lemonade, a bottle of Eno’s Fruit Salts, a change of socks for each of the children, and a large number of other things.

  The basket had disgraced them continually. Its handle had given way, and had had to be lashed with string; the mug had rolled out and been retrieved by a French porter with many ejaculations; on one occasion the current bottle of lemonade had broken, and odorous stickiness and broken glass had pervaded the belongings of the whole party for days afterwards....

  Altogether, the weight, appearance, and behaviour of the basket had rendered not altogether unjust the things that Mr. Harper had continually said about it.

  Nevertheless, in the opinion of Mrs. Harper, its presence was completely justified at such moments as the present one.

  Patsey could have her drink at once, instead of having to wait another hour and a half for it.

  “Are we nearly there now?”

  “Very nearly.”

  Mrs. Harper’s smile responded to Patsey’s, and there was a sympathetic note of eager anticipation, the echo of Patsey’s, in her carefully lowered voice. But the mouse in its little cage made another frantic dash forward.

  Unpacking.

  The dreadful scramble of getting the things out before the children’s bed-time — the necessity of throwing all the damp bathing things into fresh water, and rinsing them out, and hanging them up — the lugging of the empty suitcases up to the attic — even the sorting out of the soiled and crumpled linens and cottons that must go straight to the laundry, as opposed to the soiled and crumpled woollens that would have to be done, very carefully, at home — all oppressed her with a despairing sense of mingled fatigue and exasperation.

  She became aware that Dickie was moving.

  She knew that he would stumble over his father’s feet, and made a futile warning gesture — too late.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “Can’t you look where you’re going?” enquired his father — but despairingly, rather than with anger.

  “Hullo — we’re nearly in!”

  They went through the familiar motions of arrival, lifting down suitcases, stuffing mysterious accumulations of paper beneath the seats, looking round for elusive coats and hats and handbags.

  “Well, well, well,” said Mr. Harper. “Home again, thank goodness. And I only hope you children realize that a great deal of money has been spent on your pleasure and amusement, and it’s not every father, let me tell you ...”

  Dickie and Patsey were not listening, although they looked up at him so attentively. Their mother knew it well, and she tried to make up for their inattention, and still more to keep her husband from noticing it, by answering for them:

  “Yes, indeed. It’s been so good of you, Harold.”

  “I’m not asking for gratitude,” Mr. Harper returned, a little inaccurately, “but the children ought to understand that they’re a good deal more fortunate than most youngsters of their age. My word, think of it — a fortnight’s holiday in France!”

  “Why do people have holidays?” idiotically said Patsey.

  She meant nothing whatever. Her ear had caught the sound of the word “holiday”, that was all.

  Mrs. Harper rushed into speech, seeking to avert her husband’s attention quickly from his child’s tactlessness.

  “A really good holiday, a complete change, makes all the difference to the rest of the year,” she cried, grasping the basket for the last time.

  “That’s right,” her husband agreed.

  He hadn’t realized what Patsey had said.

  In the extremity of her relief, Mrs. Harper felt tears pricking behind her eyelids.

  The sensation passed in a moment, almost unnoticed, for it was many years since she had had either time, or a sufficiently relaxed nervous system, for tears.

  Besides, she saw that Dickie was just about to drop an armful of books, and that her husband was looking for coppers instead of crumpled and filthy five-franc notes.

  She had foreseen that need — there were plenty of coppers in her bag, if only she could get at it....

  THE MOTHER

  From the time when they were all little children Cecil was different. The younger ones would play together, and with the animals on the farm, and when one of them was naughty, it was mostly mischievousness, and soon over. But Cecil wasn’t like that. It seemed as if he couldn’t ever enjoy himself, or let himself be happy, like they were. Difficult, everyone called him. Only I knew that he couldn’t really help it. He was just different.

  People said I spoilt him, and that I thought more of him than of all the others put together. It used to make my husband angry. Dad was a hard man, in some ways, though he was always a very good husband to me.

  He was proud of the other children — Michael and Tony because they were strong and sturdy, and clever with the animals, and Mary, who could ride anything from the time s
he was two years old, and Rose for her prettiness. But Cecil used to make him angry, because he didn’t like any out-door things, and seemed to be afraid of the beasts, although he’d been brought up amongst them, the same as the others. And he’d argue with Dad, and contradict him, showing off how clever he was.

  They said school would make a difference, and we sent him right away to the Grammar School, on a scholarship, but he was very unhappy there, and I think it made him worse. After a time, he didn’t tell me things any more, like he’d done when he was little, and I couldn’t help him at all. That was the worst.

  Sometimes I used to think it would be better if he didn’t live to grow up, and have to suffer more.

  There were times, I remember, when I even used to feel angry with the other boys for being so good, and happy, and popular, so that people were always saying what splendid lads they were.

  Cecil ran away, when he was fifteen and a bit. He sent me a picture post-card of the Hoe from Plymouth, and then I didn’t hear anything more. I used to think of him, perhaps far out at sea, on stormy nights when the branches of the big walnut tree behind the house beat against the roof of the woodshed.

  Dad and I didn’t ever talk about him much. Dad couldn’t understand the way I felt, and he thought Cecil had disgraced us all, running away from his good home like that. Once, he said that the boy had never been anything but a misery to himself and us from the day he’d been born.

  I dare say it might seem like that, to a man.

  He couldn’t be expected to remember the time when Cecil was little, and how he was always ready to share his toys and his sweets with anyone, for all his temper, and how he spent the very first shilling anybody ever gave him on a blue mug that had a picture on it of St. Andrew’s Church, and gave it to me for a present.

  Cecil didn’t come home any more, but he wrote to me once, and asked me to send him some money, to some place in America, and I did. I took it out of the Post Office Savings. That was the only time I ever deceived my husband — except for the usual little things, for his own good, like every woman has to sometimes.

  Dad lived to see Tony take over the farm, and marry a nice wife, and Michael go into partnership with a big garage-proprietor, in Exeter, and do splendidly. He saw his eldest grandchildren too, for Mary and Rose both married early.