Myra Carrol

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Why ever, dear? It’s a pretty house. And Aunty and Bertha coming next week. Why, I never did; whatever next!”

  Myra pushed back her hair off her face.

  “Do you ever feel something is going to happen?”

  Miriam believed any fancy possible to those in Myra’s condition.

  “No, dear. Of course not.”

  Myra caught at her hand.

  “Did you ever know what was going to happen to you in the bungalow?”

  “Why whatever next! Of course I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t you or cook ever read it in your tea leaves?”

  “No. We read my tea leaves over and over time I was married, but there was nothing except a dark cloud Aunty saw and that might have meant a quarrel.”

  “Go and make some tea, and read my cup.”

  “What, now? Why, it’s nearly your lunch time.”

  “Never mind, please do. You can say I’ve got a fancy and they’ll think it’s because of my baby.”

  Miriam made the tea. She and Myra drank solemnly; tea at such an hour and for such a purpose was not for chattering over. As Myra finished drinking she spun her cup round and turned it upside down. Miriam took the cup to the window.

  “There’s a letter, and a stranger coming and . . .”

  Myra interrupted her impatiently.

  “I don’t want those things; isn’t there a cloud or something queer?”

  Miriam hesitated.

  “You don’t want to get fancies, Miss Myra dear, madam, I mean. There’s always things in tea cups that’s hard to tell exactly, but I can’t see anything here to trouble you.”

  The gong sounded. Myra sat down at the dressing-table and tidied her hair. Her voice had a frightened certainty in it.

  “All the same, I know something awful’s going to happen in that house. I just know it.”

  The nurseries, by the time John was born, were furnished in the best modern style. Lady Carrol went to exhibitions and wrote for brochures and attended lectures, and the result was described by everybody as simply delicious, and too charming for words.

  “So right,” Lady Carrol said, “for these modern children to bring up their children in the newest way. So splendid these rounded edges; my boys were always getting bumped on their nursery furniture, and I can still see them straining on the tips of their toes to reach the table or the shelves of the toy cupboard. So much better to have everything the right height for small children.”

  Myra and Andrew admired the nurseries but rather as an exhibit than a possession. Andrew said that as soon as the baby was old enough he would get his mother to let him have the rocking-horse that was in his nursery, but neither he nor Myra really saw it there; when rocking-horse time came it would be a new shining modern hygienic beast, probably not looking like a horse at all.

  Child-bearing made Myra placid, she was difficult to excite. She would sit for hours by the fire reading and dreaming. Lady Carrol had at first bought her white wool and soft materials so that she might sew for her baby, but she took them away when she found they merely lay about getting dirty. That Myra could not even sew was no surprise to her, and was just one more proof the girl was purely a beautiful toy. Cook, Bertha and Miriam did nothing to force Myra to take hold of her life and its responsibilities. To all three who had watched her grow up she was still a child, and now that she was about to have a baby and needed special watching over, she was back in their minds at the age when one of them was always having to keep an eye on her. Myra, unconsciously soothed and happy in this atmosphere, reverted to childhood’s pleasures. She grew hyacinths in tall jars and watched the white roots shoot, through purple glass. She bought an earthenware pig and the head of a man and grew mustard and cress on them. Andrew fell in with the general scheme and came home from his office with silly gifts. A pink teddy bear, and a woolly lamb with a black nose and feet. Their friends followed the house fashion and arrived with mechanical toys bought from street vendors and inanities from novelty counters. Lord Carrol, having with some care picked for Myra a book of sporting prints, was sent by Lady Carrol to change it.

  “My dear man, it’s no good taking her that, she won’t look at good pictures. Find her something with jokes or funny animals in it.”

  Myra came round from the anæsthetic and was shown John. He was taken away again almost at once and she was ordered to rest. She lay floating on a sea of happiness. Her baby! Her very own! He was a bit ugly now but he would outgrow that. He was perfect.

  “Why,” she thought drowsily, “I love him as much as Fortesque. How odd! I didn’t know I could love anything as much as I love him.”

  No one was to blame if, judging by Myra’s behaviour during the last months, they supposed her incapable of taking charge of her baby. Her very appearance was against her. Her hair had been cut short to follow the fashion, but she had not been to the hairdresser in the weeks immediately before John’s birth, so her corn-coloured curls reached to her neck, which gave her the appearance of a child. Everybody showered bed-jackets on her and in confections of satin and crêpe-de-Chine, mostly in blue to match her eyes, she looked so exquisite that even those most accustomed to her face had to gasp. It was unlucky that she proved to have insufficient milk to feed John. Had she fed him she would have had at least one hold over him on which she could have built; as it was, Lady Carrol, who had flowed with milk for her children, merely registered Myra’s milkless state as another of those inadequacies which, with a girl like that, one must expect, and she passed on her angle of mind to the monthly nurse, who gleaned from her tone that Andrew had not only married into a very queer family, which nurse, who read her papers, knew, but very much beneath him, and from that moment Myra was treated by nurse as a pretty cipher. It was all right having looked after her, there was a lot of interest taken in her and there were many who would like details of her; but none of her foolishness must be listened to; she could not be expected to know anything about a baby, much better leave him to those who did. So Myra sat in bed surrounded by flowers and chocolates and teddy bears, and wheedled nurse into letting her have Fortesque in the room. She wheedled Miriam into leaving her bedroom door ajar, and nobody, not even Miriam who knew her best, knew that Fortesque for the first time was not proving a wholly satisfying companion, or that the open door was not for Fortesque’s convenience, as was pretended, but in order that, should her baby cry, Myra would hear him.

  Lady Carrol, almost happy for the first time since her boys had been killed, decided that Myra looked peaky and needed a change. She rang up the friend who had given Andrew the job in the shipping office, persuaded him to grant three weeks’ leave, and arranged that he and Myra should go to Cannes.

  “It’s March, dears; you leave this horrible weather and run about in the sunshine, and while you’re away I’ll see to John’s Nannie taking over from nurse. It’s a tiresome job getting a baby used to somebody new and we don’t want Myra worried, do we?”

  Myra was horror-struck. She saw the light of happiness in Andrew’s eyes as the scheme was proposed; she knew he wanted her to himself, that the months of respite were over, and she knew there was nothing she wanted so little as to be alone with Andrew. It was no good saying she could not leave John; she was hardly allowed to touch him, so he certainly would not miss her; she took refuge behind Fortesque.

  “I’d hate to go. We couldn’t take Fortesque.”

  All arguments were smiled aside. She was a silly girl. Miriam was not going, and Fortesque was perfectly happy with her, as indeed he was with cook and Bertha. Besides, it was high time she visited her grandparents and introduced Andrew to them.

  Before they left Myra tried to make herself felt in the nursery. It was one afternoon soon after she was out of bed. She came into the day nursery with a pot of bulbs, whose green noses were just showing above the fibre in which they were planted. Although the nurse had been a good a
nd even a tender nurse, she made Myra feel awkward; her manner suggested that she thought her a foolish little creature. Myra knew she was foolish about a lot of things, but that was because they did not interest her; but just because she could not cook and allowed her cook to order the meals because she never could think what to eat, and could not sew or knit, it did not mean she could not look after her baby. John was in his yellow and white organdie trimmed cot; she leant over him adoringly. He was awake staring into space. Myra held out the bulbs.

  “Look, my poppet! Bulbs for your little bookshelf under the window.”

  Nurse was mixing a feed. She looked over her shoulder.

  “He’s too young to notice flowers, Mrs. Carrol.”

  Myra spoke politely but she was annoyed.

  “Of course, but I want him to grow up with lots round him. I had heaps in my nursery.”

  “All very well in the country but in a small London nursery you don’t want too many.”

  Myra put the bulbs down on the bookcase.

  “I wish there was a coal fire. I think all nurseries ought to have coal.”

  Nurse laughed.

  “Then you’ll need quite a different staff! Lady Carrol was very wise when she put electric in. It’s clean, healthy and makes no work.”

  “But you never see things in it like you do in flames,” Myra broke off. “I know what would make it better, a guard.”

  “Now that’s a thing you will need. I’m having all John’s little things washed by Miriam, but when his real Nannie arrives she’ll want a guard for airing on.”

  Myra was at the door.

  “We’ve got one. We’ve got mine. I’ll have it brought down.”

  In the attic there was a collection of furniture which might have been used in the house but so far had not been. There were most of Myra’s schoolroom things, including the angel; there was the schoolroom table, and there was the nursery guard of heavy black iron. As Myra looked at it she remembered staring through its bars, and Nannie saying:

  “Don’t look at the flames, Chickabiddy, and spoil your lovely eyes.”

  Enchanted at the memory Myra dashed downstairs and fetched Bertha and Miriam. Please would they come at once, John must have his guard this instant minute.

  The guard returned ignominiously to the box-room. Nurse was kind but amused.

  “It doesn’t fit in here, now does it, Mrs. Carrol? I’m sure you don’t want your baby looking at an ugly old-fashioned thing like that. You ask Lady Carrol to get you one; there’s very nice chromium ones about.”

  Andrew came back from Cannes without Myra. Myra had stayed on for a bit with her grandparents. Nobody thought anything of this. The change would do her good, and it was natural her grandparents longed to keep her. Had it been either of her elder boys Lady Carrol might have noticed something, an inflection, a hint of suffering, but she was not observant where Andrew was concerned. Miriam was worried that Myra had stayed away, but only on the ground that she had never trusted the marriage. Cook and Bertha grumbled and said it was a pity she didn’t come back and send her bossy old Ladyship hopping. It was for the stranger to scent that something was wrong.

  John’s Nannie was in her first place in charge of a nursery. She was a sensitive girl with a strong imagination and a tendency to fasten almost fanatical loyalty on individuals. She was a children’s nurse by vocation; she worshipped children and nothing was grudged which served them. John, the first baby to be her entire charge, immediately became all her life. She had in her years of training thought out little plans and ideas which some day she would try out, she looked forward to trying them on John, and in this the only person in her way was Lady Carrol. Nurse was young but she knew all about mothers-in-laws and humoured her, but she counted the days until her mistress came home. Very young she heard she was; she would not be likely to interfere and might be interested; it would be nice to have her watching to see how things turned out, and if John on her methods was a little more advanced than other babies they would share the pleasure together of knowing how it was done. A young mother with her first baby would have none of this “I found when my boys were little,” which her starchy Ladyship dished out.

  Lady Carrol was in the night nursery watching John have his bath when Andrew came home, so it was that Nannie was able to observe what was written on his face but not spoken.

  “There you are, my dear,” said Lady Carrol. “I hope the car met you all right. Where’s Myra?”

  Andrew kissed his mother and came over to Nannie and held out his hand. He was stammering badly.

  “How do you do? How’s my son behaving?” He leant down to John and held one of his hands which was lying out of the water; he spoke in a casual, almost off-hand voice. “She’s stayed on another week or two. She was still a bit slack and her grandparents were no end keen to have her.”

  Lady Carrol was delighted. Myra could not stay away too long in her opinion. She was of no use when she was here, except, of course, later on to produce another baby.

  “Very sensible,” she said brightly. “We are managing splendidly, aren’t we, Nannie?”

  Nannie knew now that Andrew was hurt and miserable, and she saw, too, that as he watched his son he seemed soothed. She gave him a friendly smile and picked John out of the water and laid him on her lap.

  “We’ve managed, but this boy wants his Daddy, don’t you, John?”

  Andrew answered to her kindness; he stammered less.

  “I say, he’s growing, isn’t he?”

  “You can almost watch him. I suppose you’ll be coming in about this time every day, sir?”

  Andrew had not thought about himself in relation to the nursery.

  “Yes, I suppose I will. I mean, it’s about now I get home.”

  “A little earlier and I have him on a rug; that’s his playtime really.”

  “Is it? Well, I ought to try and get home for that.”

  “Playtime is Daddy’s time, that’s what we say, don’t we, John?”

  Lady Carrol had never allowed her husband to interfere in the nursery; she thought it no place for a man, but then Andrew never had been much of a man. She spoke in the faintly amused voice which had always made Andrew wince.

  “We shall have you teaching him to write plays next.”

  Andrew did flinch but the edge was taken off her words by Nannie’s smile. She said nothing but “good-night, sir,” but her smile said, “I like to see the father in my nursery,” and he felt cheered for the first time since he had left Cannes.

  Myra at that moment was sitting on the veranda of her bedroom in her grandparents’ villa. She felt desperate in a hectic rather hysterical way. She and Andrew had enjoyed their time in Cannes. She had known that it was an unsafe sort of enjoyment, built on nothing that could be counted on to endure. She had enjoyed the sun, and the Casino, and the flowers, and above all the sensation she created. They had met people that she and Andrew knew, and these had produced more friends, and their bedroom telephone never stopped ringing, and they were doing something with crowds of people from morning to night. As well she saw Aunt Lilian’s friends. There was Rose, looking worse than ever in the bright sunlight, there was Henry Hinch, there was Pauline Silk and a dozen or so more; beyond a word in the Casino Myra scarcely spoke to them, but she was very conscious that they were there, and looking at her, and talking about her, and she felt excited. Andrew was happy; he was proud because Myra was so popular and so admired, and he came out of himself and was more social than he had ever been, and people said he wasn’t so dull as they had thought; anyway he couldn’t be or Myra would never have married him. As well Myra tried really hard to be nice. She made a great effort and when they were dressing or otherwise alone she let him talk about the new play he was writing. Already she was used to the sight of parcels of manuscripts on her hall table and knew they would have rejection slips in them, and
she took it for granted that Andrew could not write plays, and marvelled that he went on trying; but still it was his hobby and she was resolved always to be nice about it. Because she liked him, and hated to hurt him, she was very careful not even to suggest she was repulsing him when he made love to her. For some reason she could not fathom, Andrew became silly when he was feeling amorous. She thought that it was this she hated so. That if only he would make love in the sensible way he did other things she would not mind it. It was a mixture of floppiness and a begging manner which she found insupportable. She wanted to scream out, “For goodness’ sake get on with it and don’t flop.” It was not even that she disliked being made love to, often she enjoyed it, but she did not want all the love-making Andrew wanted; he wanted to kiss her every time they were behind a closed door, and often she had great trouble not to snap at him. Why had she failed when their holiday was nearly over? It had been a tiring day, they had gone with a party to Monte Carlo and returned late, but that could not have explained it. Was it just a matter of time? Had the day always to come when she just stopped trying and spoke the truth? It was such a little thing which started the trouble. He was incapable of really criticising her, but he said about a hat she had bought that she was too pretty to wear a silly thing like that. Myra became regal. She did not think it a silly hat, in fact, if she wore it, then it couldn’t be a silly hat. He became humble and apologetic, which jarred every nerve in her body, and then he put his arms round her and whispered in her ear, she dragged away from him and repeated what he had said and laughed at the words. As she stopped speaking it was as if the thin little scaffolding which held up their marriage broke under them. Andrew said, as if he were stating something he had always suspected but now knew for a fact:

  “You don’t love me.”

  Myra, hating herself for what she had done, tried to cover up the mess she had made.

  “I’m sorry; I’m tired, I think.”

  He caught her by her arm.

  “You don’t love me.”

  “I like you awfully.”