Westwood

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Not before lunch, then; I’m going to distemper the scullery.’

  Mr Challis was late for his appointment.

  * * *

  Zita and Margaret spent a pleasant hour before dinner in sewing and talking, and then Zita went downstairs to lay the table while Margaret prepared to go home.

  While she was putting away her work she heard voices outside in the corridor. Evidently someone had paused at the large cupboard opposite the Little Room door.

  ‘He was holding forth to Struggles,’ said Hebe’s unmistakable voice.

  There was a laugh.

  ‘Darling, need you call her that?’ said Seraphina’s voice. ‘It’s too perfect, but is it kind?’

  This time it was Hebe who laughed.

  ‘I wish you could have seen her. She looked like a dog waiting for “Paid for!”’

  ‘Sweetie, she has very nice manners, much prettier than yours,’ said her mother. ‘Here it is, I knew it must be somewhere,’ and voices and footsteps receded.

  Margaret was very angry and her admiration for Hebe was now definitely replaced by dislike. But how sweet Mrs Challis had been! how kind! And what a comfort it was to hear that her manners were approved! All the same, her cheeks were burning as she walked home.

  I needn’t let it make any difference to me, she thought. Hebe doesn’t live at Westwood and I hardly ever see her and she wouldn’t take the trouble to set her father and mother against me; she wouldn’t think it worth while. But how cruel she is! She has everything and I have nothing, and she only thinks I’m funny. She doesn’t appreciate what she’s got, and she encourages men to be in love with her, and she neglects her children. I hate her.

  17

  In the walled garden at Westwood a tulip tree was in bud. The olive leaves and the petals flushed with purple looked over the wall, and every evening Margaret strolled up to gaze at it and give herself refreshment before she slept. The grass of the oval lawn was growing so rapidly that it had to be clipped every two or three days by Cortway. He was frequently there when she walked past about eight o’clock, moving the mower to and fro over the lawn in long hurrying sweeps, keeping his head down and never looking up.

  The gardens were as old as the house, and in course of time their shrubs had thickened and spread and become sturdy tufted tyrants, casting a dense shade and discouraging the growth of flowers; there were Portugal laurel, myrtle, rhododendron and bay. The common laurels were kept closely cut, but their leaves looked as strong as veined green marble, and there was more than one pine and monkey-puzzler to add to the garden’s darkness. Scattered among these sombre, scanty-flowered bushes were beds shaped like diamonds or hearts or ovals filled in season with yellow and scarlet and blue flowers; but during the winter, when all the flowers were absent, the garden seemed most truly itself; as if its dark, grave spirit were released. The picture which it made was park-like and curiously lacking in the refreshing power of most gardens; the combination of darkness and brilliance was hard. When Margaret walked out one still, sunny evening with Zita and saw hundreds of large daffodils standing in yellow sunlight below the thick dark shrubs, she found the contrast almost unpleasant. But then she caught a waft of budding box from the tiny clipped hedges bordering the paths, and for a moment a feeling came to her as if she had encountered something very old; and of course she had; it was the idea of a garden that had belonged to an older England; the clipped bushes, the herbs and shrubs, and a few flowers of stiff and cultivated beauty. The garden’s darkness was increased by its lying in a hollow, and as only the low sparkling rays of evening or dawn sunlight pierced directly through the branches, it was most often illuminated by those strange transforming lights, its thick shrubberies protecting it from the glare of noon. It was an unusual garden, oppressive and quiet, but as the months passed and there were crimson roses under the glossy bushes of bay, she came to love it.

  The front gardens were less formal. The small one on the left of the gates, where the tulip tree grew, had honeysuckle climbing over its walls, and Cortway kept the beds filled with pheasant’s eye narcissus, tulips, wallflowers, nasturtiums and all the familiar glories. But beside the path that led to the side entrance of the house grew the feathery fern of the wild carrot, and all up one wall ran a tangle of the little pink convolvulus that has the scent of vanilla. Cortway never bothered himself with this part of the garden, for visitors were not supposed to see it and if it liked to grow weeds he did not care, but Margaret looked forward to going down the pebbled, narrow, mossy path in the lengthening twilight two or three times a week, and noticing what new tendrils and mats of flower and green were coming up as the tide of spring rolled forward over Europe.

  Meanwhile, the Steggles’s own garden had been transformed by hard work, and now had a lawn which, though still patchy, was green and healthy, and neat beds which would look less bare when the late summer flowers came, while there was a large bush of white lilac in full blossom under which Mrs Steggles sometimes sat. Dick Fletcher still came up on most Saturday afternoons, and on the last occasion had been rewarded with a large bunch of lilac, the first-fruits (Mrs Steggles told him) of his labours; later on there would be radishes and lettuces and runner-beans. He wrapped the lilac carefully in brown paper, showing none of the embarrassment men usually display at carrying flowers, and Margaret wondered if he would take it to his own flat or to the girl he went to see on Sundays.

  The slight awkwardness there had been between them at first had disappeared by now, and she took him for granted as he seemed to take her, never thinking about him when he was not there. He fitted in well with the household’s ways, seldom discussing any subject save those of general domestic interest and never arguing or holding forth. Sometimes he was silent or touchy, but the Steggleses were used to moods, and accepted them without comment. He seemed to like coming to the house, and Mrs Steggles kept to her decision to make him welcome whenever he did.

  Margaret was so used to taking him for granted that she was surprised to see a new side of him one afternoon when Hilda came to tea. He began by being unusually silent and watching Hilda sulkily as she sparkled away, but soon he was laughing, and said one or two charming things to her, flattering and absurd.

  ‘I like your dad’s friend,’ said Hilda, while she and Margaret were upstairs.

  ‘He isn’t usually silly like that,’ answered Margaret, feeling ashamed for him.

  ‘Who said he was silly? He’s a dear.’

  Margaret said no more, but she continued to think that compliments coming from Dick Fletcher were slightly undignified. She had yet to learn the plain woman’s lesson; that a pretty woman will always make men lose their dignity willingly and with pleasure.

  The weeks sped on pleasantly, for the long dull days of teaching were replaced by the holidays, with music, lingering light and flowers, and chance encounters with the delightful inhabitants of Westwood. She and Zita were now close, if not firm, friends; and they had made mutual plans that extended far into the summer and included a week’s holiday to be spent together in learning the beauties of Salisbury Cathedral and listening to its music. This was to be in August, and Margaret longed for August to come.

  It was at the beginning of the May term that she first realized that she was unconsciously looking forward to a time when she would no longer have to teach. For weeks during the winter term she had been preparing her work mechanically, and hurrying through the corrections of exercises in order that she might keep an evening appointment with Zita, and the end of the Easter holidays, during which she had been free to haunt Westwood as much as she liked and to make her own arrangements for pleasure during the day, came to her with a shock. The return to school was really hateful to her; the children seemed plain, uninteresting and stupid, and her colleagues prejudiced, uncultured and narrow, while her senses, fed richly on the beauty of Westwood, recoiled from the ugliness of the school buildings.

  She began to be afraid of the long years ahead in which she would have to go on e
arning her living by work which was growing increasingly distasteful. She had made one or two attempts to convey to her classes the more easily understood of her enthusiasms, but she had been irritated by the slowness of the girls’ understanding and had given up the idea; she had also suspected that some of the older pupils found her raptures ridiculous, and as she felt too deeply about them to adopt a cooler tone, she preferred to abandon the attempt altogether. She was still conscientious enough to attempt to pass on the joys which she had discovered to her pupils, who were less intelligent and fortunate than herself, but what could you do (she asked herself) with girls who remembered the tiniest detail about any film star, and could not be persuaded to show genuine interest in any other subject? She thought of their young minds as surfeited with a glutinous, oversweet fare and yet eager for more; fed on foam; growing up without a single quality making for solid contentment or one pleasure that would last them throughout their lives. She did not realize that theirs were still the imaginations of children, which do not see the real thing or the thing that adults see, but something beglamoured by that imagination, dazzling, dreamy and more satisfying than any solid mental food.

  Her classes continued to be orderly but they did not do well in the examinations at the end of the Easter term, and she was made to feel this by Miss Lathom’s manner. Miss Lathom was indeed surprised, for Margaret had begun well, very well, and her headmistress had not expected these poor results. Something must have happened in her promising new form-mistress’s private life to upset her work, and Miss Lathom had to make an effort not to be irritated by the obvious fact. She had little sympathy with people who took up teaching without a vocation, and she now suspected that Margaret, though possessing many of the qualities that make a first-class teacher, had been guilty of just this fault, and was now being attracted by other interests. Miss Lathom was intelligent enough to hope that at least they might be connected with a young man, but feared (thinking of Margaret’s looks) that they were not.

  One afternoon towards the end of the Easter term Margaret was told by another member of the staff that Miss Lathom would like to see her at once, and hurried to the headmistress’s room. Her heart was beating unpleasantly hard, for she feared that her class’s disappointing results in the examinations were about to be discussed.

  But when she opened the door in response to Miss Lathom’s ‘Come in,’ she saw two figures sitting by the open window among the bowls of spring flowers, and one was Miss Lomax, her former headmistress at Lukeborough. Miss Lathom benevolently watched the greeting between them, and after a little general conversation there was a pause. Margaret was in a dilemma; she knew that she ought to ask her former headmistress home to tea or at least suggest that they should spend some time together that evening, but she and Zita had planned a walk to Hampstead to look at the beautiful old parish church, and she had been looking forward to this all day. While she hesitated, Miss Lathom glanced at her watch and observed:

  ‘Well, Monica, I’m expecting a parent in three minutes, so I shall have to send you two good people away. That’s settled, then; you’ll have tea with me on Thursday. I expect Miss Steggles has a great deal to tell you,’ and she dismissed them both with a smile, having previously told her old friend of her recent dissatisfaction with Margaret, and asked her to try to discover where the trouble lay. She would hear Miss Lomax’s report on Thursday.

  Margaret and Miss Lomax walked down the long bare corridors, chatting about Lukeborough friends and life in London, with Margaret feeling more and more bitterly the sacrifice of her evening. Her feelings towards Miss Lomax had always been affectionate, but tinged with awe for Miss Lomax’s superior culture and strength of character. Now, as she looked down on the top of Miss Lomax’s good plain felt hat from her greater height, she still felt affectionate, but the awe had quite vanished: Miss Lomax’s manner seemed unnecessarily peremptory, rather than commanding, and her charmless clothes offended eyes used to those worn by Mrs Challis and Hebe Niland. The prospect of spending an evening with this emphatic little person was dismal indeed.

  ‘You will come home and have tea with me, won’t you, Miss Lomax?’ she asked at last, the very form of the invitation being different from what it would have been six months ago, and with sinking heart heard the reply.

  ‘I should like to very much, Margaret,’ answered Miss Lomax graciously; it did not occur to her that a junior mistress might have pleasanter occupations than the entertaining of herself. ‘I shall enjoy seeing your mother again, and I want a good long talk with you.’

  Nothing more of a personal nature was said on the bus-ride to Highgate, and during tea the conversation was general, though far from comfortable or entertaining, for Mrs Steggles, warned by telephone of the distinguished guest’s approach, had got out the finest lawn tablecloth and rushed up some little cakes, the baking of which had left her flushed and irritable. She kept referring to Miss Lomax’s kindness to Margaret and Margaret’s good fortune in having such interesting work with such pleasant colleagues, and succeeded in creating such an atmosphere of insincerity and strain that Margaret was heartily relieved to find herself at last walking up the hill with Miss Lomax in the late sunshine, the headmistress having expressed the wish to see Highgate Village and then take the bus along the top of the Spaniard’s Walk to Hampstead, where she was dining with friends.

  But when they reached the village she suggested that they should walk along the Spaniards and enjoy the freshness of the spring air. On either side of the road steep banks sloped down into tangles of white-flowered bushes, full of the sweet evening calling of blackbirds and thrushes, and the cool blue sky was reflected in pools of rainwater gleaming in the hollows. The broad, lifted highway ran straight between the two commons lying in their valleys and over it, smelling of new leaves and rain, pounced the gusts of April.

  ‘Why is it called the Spaniards?’ demanded Miss Lomax, marching along and sniffing the air.

  ‘It’s the Spaniard’s Walk, really: I don’t know why,’ confessed Margaret, recalling her attention with difficulty. She had telephoned Zita to cancel their appointment just before leaving the house, and Zita had sounded annoyed and hurt, and there would be all the tiresome business of soothing her.

  ‘You should make it your business to find out,’ laughed Miss Lomax pleasantly. ‘There must be a rich field for the amateur antiquarian in these two villages, Margaret, and I am surprised to find you know so little about them. Have you been indulging your weakness for romancing over what’s far away and out of reach, and neglecting the romance under your nose, I wonder?’ she ended, with a keen glance and a twirl of her umbrella. She liked tackling people about their shortcomings and backslidings.

  Margaret coloured so deeply that she was compelled to turn her face away in a glance over the valley, but it was not at what Miss Lomax said. Suddenly there had come into her disturbed, disappointed, weary mind a line of Alice Meynell’s:

  I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart,

  and for the moment she could not answer. She felt herself in Gerard Challis’s arms, her face hidden on his shoulder, and all sorrow calmed and soothed away. She so seldom allowed herself to indulge in such daydreams that the power with which this one enveloped her was all the stronger.

  ‘Have you?’

  Margaret shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Miss Lomax.’

  ‘Because that’s always been your danger, you know, my dear. You have no idea of what real life is like, in its ugliness and harshness. You have always been very sheltered, Margaret.’

  ‘Have I? I don’t feel I have.’

  ‘I don’t expect you do. All the same, it’s a fact. You have great powers for good, as I have always told you, but they aren’t yet directed upon anything real. Think of your blessings, your mercies. A good home, kind parents (I am prepared to admit that perhaps they don’t completely understand you, but they are kind) and congenial work under a wonderful Head. And yet –’

  ‘I haven’t said I was discont
ented, Miss Lomax,’ said Margaret, recovering herself and speaking with more force than she would have been capable of in her Lukeborough days. ‘I am perfectly conscious of my advantages, I assure you, and very grateful to you for all your kindness.’

  Miss Lomax said nothing for a moment. Margaret’s new tone slightly disconcerted her. She thought her protégée much changed, and not for the better, though it was hard to say exactly where the change lay. She decided to alter her own tone.

  ‘Well, there is something wrong, I am sure,’ she said, almost playfully. ‘What is all this I hear about poor examination results? After such a good beginning, too!’

  Margaret met her inquisitive glance gravely.

  ‘Yes, my class did do badly,’ she answered with composure. ‘It’s because my heart isn’t in teaching any more.’

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Miss Lomax, after a rather appalling pause, ‘that’s candid, at least! Do you realize what you’ve just said?’

  Margaret nodded. ‘It must sound very bad to you, I know, and especially after you’ve been so kind to me. I’m sorry to seem ungrateful.’

  ‘It isn’t that, my dear,’ said Miss Lomax seriously. ‘I have always thought that you had a real gift for teaching, as you know, and I have been glad to put you in the way of developing it. But I am really worried, and alarmed too, to hear you say so calmly that your heart isn’t in teaching. Where is it, then?’ she ended, on the playful note, bearing in mind Miss Lathom’s hint that there might be a young man in the case.

  ‘It’s not easy to say,’ answered Margaret after a pause. ‘Part of it is in Wolf’s and Schubert’s songs, and I’ve made some new friends – and –’

  ‘Ah! So that’s it!’ said Miss Lomax keenly, her eyes positively darting with triumph and the umbrella twirling like mad. ‘Now, who are these new friends?’