Myra Carrol

by Noel Streatfeild

“Oh, yes, queer like! One minute you’re happy as you are, don’t want to change, and then suddenly you’re just living for the next time you meet. Sometimes you’re so happy it’s like a bird had got inside of you and was singing so you could feel its throat throbbing, then another you get in a mortal fear. You get scared of going on, it’s like walking into a fire, but you got to go on; it’s as if something was dragging you.”

  Myra still scratched at the flour; she longed to ask a question but she was afraid that Miriam would cry. Miriam looked up from the boot on her hand.

  “What was it you were going to ask, Miss Myra dear?”

  Myra scratched industriously, her head turned a little sideways so that she could get a glimpse of Miriam.

  “Don’t you sometimes wish you hadn’t had to be in love?”

  Miriam stopped working. Her head was turned to that piece of wall which she had battered with her hands.

  “There’s many must be asking that. I reckon it’s this way, Miss Myra dear. So long as George was to be in the world then I would go through what I been through a hundred times just for a little of the time we spent together. But if you ask me whether I wouldn’t have been happier if George hadn’t never been born, then it’s yes.”

  Myra sat up.

  “I’ll marry somebody, won’t I?”

  “Sure to.”

  “Well, I like Mr. Carrol. I like him awfully, but not like you said, not even in the way I like you and Fortesque.”

  Miriam spoke firmly.

  “Then don’t marry him, dear; you got to marry because you love a man, or not at all.”

  Myra got off the table.

  “Give me my boots or I’ll be late.” She pulled them on. Then she stood up. “I don’t see how you know that. You married because you couldn’t help it. I’m not absolutely sure yet what I’ll do, but I think I know.”

  Connie, beaming happily on love’s young dream, and seeing at the same time a charming solution to the problem of what to do with Myra, by her very acceptance of the situation and her inability to see any other, helped make the result of Myra’s thinking what it was. Connie was only one link in a chain of people who pulled Myra along. There were her mother and father, and the memory of the fear she had felt when she had heard her father was ill; it would have been awful if he had died, her mother simply could not have gone on alone. Then there was Uncle John; however terrible she was to him he had been fond of Aunt Lilian. She shivered as she thought of Brian. Then Miriam and George. “No! No! No!” her mind protested. “I don’t want that. I would be much happier with Andrew.” She thrashed the thought out further on her rides and walks. “I want to be happy, not miserable. Fortesque is going to be eleven this year. That means he’s seventy-seven, as old as people in almshouses. His breath is getting short up hills, but nurse is lying when she says it smells; he smells like a buttercup.” She turned to watch him waddling behind her and folded her arms to push back the fear sitting on her like a pad. “I want to be happy. Loving people doesn’t make you happy; some day it’s going to be frightening. I’d rather marry Andrew. I like him but not too much.”

  Myra got up and shivered. She pressed out her cigarette with her heel. “I wish I’d never started on this damned barn,” she thought. “It makes me morbid.” She took the office list out of her pocket and studied it. “Tin tubs or baths.” She looked round her barn; could there conceivably be such things, or anything that could be used as such things? She wandered round feeling and peering, throwing her torchlight on labels, and as she moved she sang, “I saw three tubs go sailing by, sailing by, sailing by, I saw three tubs go sailing by in Myra’s barn in the morning.” She was humming this for the fifth time when she broke off. She had reached “in My . . .” and was by a large crate and on it was written in her own hand, “All the small things from the children’s rooms.” She did not need to unpack the crate, she could see inside it clearly. The conglomeration of ornament s, photographs, cases of butterflies, stamp albums, and all the rest of it which had been vital to the children at some period in their lives, and none of which had she dared to throw away without their permission. She had not allowed it to be unpacked, but she had given her word that everything was there and with that the children had been content. What waste of time packing some of the things had been. Objects floated before her eyes. John’s cup for running at his preparatory school, the other bigger cups that came later on. The stand they had stood on that he had made himself. The frightful school groups. The windjammer he and Andrew had carved. That first fishing rod that Andrew had given him. Jane’s lacrosse things, her skates and her skis. That bundle of travelling guides, absolutely no good to-day and ought to be paper salvage, but she would be furious if they were thrown out. That little globe Andrew had given her with the places she had been to underlined in red. So few places, poor darling; for all her efforts she had never been far. Nella’s stone cat off the mat by the fire, and that little music stand she had used when she was small and had kept as a mascot, the metronome that she and Andrew had bought when shopping together. She saw again the London house and the children’s rooms. Jane’s and Nella’s on one side of the passage, John’s on the other. John’s ridiculously had still the bars across the windows. Bars! That was when it had been the day-nursery. Of course it had been repainted and done up when it became a bedroom. How had those rooms looked as nurseries? Myra, dreaming, leant against the case. She was climbing the stairs. She was pulling back the bolt on the little nursery gate. It was all coming back.

  It could not be said that Andrew’s mother thought Myra an ideal wife for her son. Of course she had been very young at the time of that unfortunate business and might not have known what was going on, but she had been mixed up in the sordid affair, and no mother-in-law likes a daughter-in-law mixed up in anything sordid or otherwise; daughters-in-law should arrive at the altar as if at that moment they had come on the earth with no past and no relations, and certainly not relations who shot one another. Lady Carrol was good-looking in a big, aggressive, highly-coloured way, and she dressed to accentuate these qualities. Everything she wore, even her evening dresses, were built for her with particular regard to the chest line, which aimed at giving her the contour of Britannia. In an undemonstrative way she had loved her children. The boys would have been amazed had they known how soft her heart was for them, for outwardly she was rather a brisk mother. With scarcely an outward sign she was swollen with pleasure as the elder two shone, not only at their work but at games; she felt a rightness within herself because she had borne magnificent sons. She had not got that quality which lavishes affection on the weakling. Andrew was delicate, Andrew stammered, Andrew’s teeth always needed attention, Andrew was tiresome about food; she did all the right things for him, but she considered it a slur on her breeding ability that he had to be like that. When first her second and then her first-born son were killed it was as if a gale had launched itself against a tree. The eyes of her friends and relatives turned anxiously on her; could she take this appalling blast? Just as the tree shows no sign it is going until it cracks, so Lady Carrol showed nothing. She never cracked and only she knew what will-power it had taken to remain standing up. When at last the storm had been fought and she was secure, she fixed her eyes on Andrew, and found what she saw embittering. Had he died with the other two, the fact that she was the mother of a splendid type would have been history; with nothing but Andrew to show what she could do, the memory of the other two boys might dim in people’s minds, it might be supposed, coming from the same loins, they had been of his mixture. With the arrival of Myra in the family life, Andrew became of interest to his mother. Myra was, for all her frail build, a fine healthy girl and her beauty was, of course, astonishing. Could she and Andrew together breed fine children? Until Myra appeared on the scene Lady Carrol had moved around doing her duty, smiling, appearing normal, but each day was without light, lived through decently because unless you were fortunate en
ough to die you naturally went on, what else? With the coming of Myra her heart stirred again; this girl was probably flighty, and had certainly been wretchedly brought up, and was moreover a nobody, but she could give her grandchildren.

  Lord Carrol, on meeting Myra for the first time, knew that he must always have under-rated Andrew. Good God, the girl was a beauty, and with quite a lot of money too! Could have had anybody! Andrew was a dark horse; who would have thought he had it in him to pick such a peach off the wall! Damn it, he must get to know the boy better. Pity really he had sold Wych Hall. Girl like that who was a damn fine horsewoman was just the mistress for it. He made Andrew’s stutter worse, and finally drove him to silence, by digging him in the ribs and telling him he was a chip of the old block, and by making him sit with him after dinner and pressing cigars and port on him. He was puzzled at Andrew’s unresponsiveness to these efforts but told himself he never had understood the boy; all that play-writing nonsense, but a son who could pick a girl like Myra had his head screwed on all right.

  Myra was married in the autumn of nineteen-twenty and in the spring of nineteen twenty-two John was born. As a wedding present Lord Carrol bought his son a house in Chelsea. Lady Carrol chose it. It was a good-sized house to allow for a good-sized family and it had a bit of garden at the back, and there was as well a garden belonging to the square. The house was not ready for possession until the spring after the marriage and until then Andrew and Myra occupied the spare room at his home. Myra was quite happy with this arrangement; Lady Carrol, as she had but one use for Myra, allowed her to do exactly what she liked in the meanwhile, and smiled on all arrangements, booming out, “Dancing again to-night, dears,” or “Off to another theatre,” and willingly looked after Fortesque, partly because she liked all dogs, but also because she liked to please Myra; she was expecting great things of her and was prepared in the meantime to give in to her whenever possible. Myra and Andrew enjoyed themselves. There were not many private dances but they danced a lot at restaurants and clubs. Myra once more had the thrill of causing a sensation, and Andrew was so filled with gratitude and pride at being the husband of such a beauty that each day was to him a miracle. When the season started, her mother-in-law presented Myra at Court and gave a dance for her afterwards, and though Lady Carrol was still too battered for, even momentarily, complete happiness, she did feel a warmth running through her as compliments on her daughter-in-law were poured into her ears. As for Lord Carrol, beaming from the doorway against which he had propped himself, he could only repeat intervals, “Dark horse that boy of mine!”

  “Never thought he had it in him.”

  The move to the Chelsea house coincided with John’s conception. Myra suffered from attacks of sickness and Lady Carrol, charmed with the reason for these attacks, was delighted to undertake the whole work of the move. In the previous months she and Myra had been in and out of the house almost every day watching the decorators. Myra had very hazy views about what she liked, and Andrew almost none at all, so most of the ideas came from Lady Carrol. Myra disliked white paint because Fortesque would try and push open shut doors and then left footmarks. She did not want, she said, anything greyish. Lady Carrol had not known Aunt Lilian so she did not realise that Myra was objecting to anything which reminded her of Aunt Lilian’s grey-blue drawing-room. Andrew, when pinned down by his mother, said he had rather liked the colour the walls had been at home. Asked which walls he had stammered and said it had all seemed pretty all right. As much of the house in Worcestershire had been papered by Andrew’s grandfather, in the floral designs of the period, Lady Carrol smiled and wondered as usual how she had begat Andrew.

  At intervals since the wedding Lady Carrol had urged Myra to plan what furniture should go where. With the contents of two houses Myra had far more than she would need; she should decide what she would like to keep, what to store, and what to sell. Myra did give some thought to this problem, but she could not think of the Devon furniture as anywhere but in Devonshire, and she did not want ever to see Uncle John’s and Aunt Lilian’s furniture again, but since the Chelsea house had to be furnished this seemed a silly answer, so she said nothing about it, and as, in her rôle of spoilt pet of the household this seemed reasonable enough, she was not pestered.

  Lady Carrol went through the lists of Myra’s belongings very carefully, and furnished the Chelsea house with the best of the combined sets. Only the two rooms on the third floor she left empty, there seemed very little that was suitable for the nursery of her grandchildren. Amusing modern furniture was being made; Lady Carrol was willing to wait until Myra could come shopping with her to choose these important pieces; she did not doubt that she could persuade the girl into buying what she herself thought best.

  Myra, in her secret heart, did not want to move to Chelsea. There were compensations. Cook and Bertha were coming to her, she would like that and so would Miriam; there was a garden for Fortesque, but she was unwilling to take the step. Living with her in-laws was easy; she and Andrew were never alone, she could be all he expected with no trouble at all; he did not get home until nearly six and then it was easy to rush down the stairs and hug him and tell him to hurry or he would be late for this or that. It was easy while he was bathing to sit on the edge of the bath and tell him the small details of her day. It was easy on Saturday afternoons and Sundays to be all he hoped; they were very little alone, even breakfast was eaten en famille. It was Andrew who was anxious for the move. He was full of “When we move we won’t go out so much, will we? Hardly seem to see you.” “I say, when we move and the summer comes, I’ll write in that garden. It’ll be grand having you to talk things over with. I bet I write a success with you to criticise.” “I vote we do that bit of garden ourselves. I was always keen on gardening, weren’t you?” The more he said these things, the more enthusiastic he sounded, the more Myra dreaded that he would be disappointed. He was rather like Uncle John in that, he made you hope nobody would be unkind, and you wanted to look after him. All the same, she was doubtful of her own capacity to please. Already she knew what it was to hurt him. His love was so intense that he had only to be alone with her for his passion to flame. Myra did her best, she supposed she was born cold-natured, but coming in tired from a party or theatre she almost always wanted to be left alone. She learnt to dread the feel of Andrew’s arms round her and the husky way in which he said, “Oh, darling!” Sometimes she disliked his love-making so much that she lost her temper and snapped, “Oh, do leave me alone sometimes.” It was dark the first time she said this but she could feel him wince as if he had been hit, and she loathed herself but she still did not want him, and could not take back the words.

  Taking the rough with the smooth Myra, was glad she was going to have a baby. It was true she was often sick, which was rough indeed, but the baby pleased everybody, and she loved everybody being pleased, and above all it changed Andrew completely; he treated her as if she were made of flower petals, and scarcely ventured into her bed, and when he did she had only to sigh, and he retreated, humble, apologetic, but quite happy, to his own.

  Myra took a violent dislike to her house as soon as she saw it furnished. Her drawing-room, except that it had parchment-coloured walls, was a small edition of Aunt Lilian’s with two of the best pieces from the drawing-room in Devonshire popped in, which, because of their associations, looked like a couple of poppies in an orchid house. Myra’s and Andrew’s bedroom was pure Aunt Lilian, organdie and satin and all, the dining-room unadulterated Devonshire, and the spare rooms a mixture of the two, and the crowning horror, the library was Uncle John’s study. Lady Carrol sailed from room to room opening doors with a pleased smile, and Myra, rather green about the face with a wriggling Fortesque in her arms, wandered behind her. Lady Carrol had reason to be proud; the whole place was charming and she had forgotten nothing; there were late spring and early summer flowers exquisitely arranged and placed in each room, there were geraniums flaming in the window-boxes, it was
a home any girl ought to have loved, especially a girl who cared so little that she could leave her mother-in-law to do all the arranging. At the end of the inspection Lady Carrol said, not as a question but as one feeling it was time the tap of gratitude was turned on:

  “Well?”

  Myra put Fortesque on the floor.

  “I hate it.”

  Lady Carrol did not wish to lose her temper so she took a deep breath before she spoke.

  “Why?”

  “It’s all you and other people. Anyway, none of it’s me.”

  Lady Carrol made allowances for Myra’s condition, and her bad upbringing with Aunt Lilian, but she meant her voice to sound like an icicle.

  “It is a pity then that you allowed me to do so much work; if you knew what you wanted you should have seen to the furnishing yourself.”

  Myra was appalled. Whatever had come over her? It was true she hated the house, but why say so? She exerted all her charm. Lady Carrol was not the sort of person anyone could pat or caress, but Myra smiled her most moving and wistful smile.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that, I’m a cross beast.” Lady Carrol still looked icy. “I shall like it awfully when it’s altered a little. I think I don’t like it only because I feel rather sick.”

  Lady Carrol looked at Myra’s face. The girl had become very white. She hoped she was not going to be the type who grew nervy and fanciful when they were child-bearing; she had never been that sort herself. One thing was certain, the little creature must be treated merely as a pretty ornament; really, at nineteen, it was deplorable to be so childish, however, fortunately she could afford to be foolish with a good mother-in-law to look after her.

  Miriam found Myra face down on her bed crying. She flew for a sponge and eau-de-cologne and while mopping and patting asked what was wrong. Myra choked back a sob.

  “I simply hate that house.”