Alfred and Emily

by Doris Lessing

  And Mrs. Tayler was noisily weeping over there, near the pitch, in a position where she had to be seen by everyone. Her Alfred, equably batting while people admired and applauded – he had been offered a variety of jobs by banks as far as Luton and Ipswich, not because of his aptness with the pen or with figures, but because they wanted him for their cricket teams. And he was good at billiards too, at snooker, at bowls – this young star was being competed for, his mother was as pleased as when her other son was chosen for his cleverness, but Alfred said, no, he would rather die than be a bank clerk, he had hated every minute of his two years in an Allied Essex and Suffolk bank. He was going to work for Mr. Redway, the farmer who yearly lent his field for this festivity. Bert Redway was his good friend, they had grown up together; Alfred had in fact spent his childhood playing with the farmers’ sons, along the hedgerows and in the fields.

  ‘He’s going to be a farmer’s boy,’ wept his mother. ‘He’s just like his father. They only care about making me miserable.’ And she had gone from kitchen to kitchen among the wives, complaining.

  Alfred had only said, ‘Mother, I am not going to be stuck in a bank, and that’s the end of it.’

  That morning he had emphasized his point by collecting the cow dung from all over the field, while the stewards, the supervisors of the children’s games, the men who were making perfect the cricket pitch watched and grinned, or laughed, when the mother couldn’t see. His father, briefly detaching himself from the church organ, had said, ‘Well done, Alfred. I wish I could do the same.’

  Mrs. Lane was sorry for Alfred’s mother, but convinced her own disappointment had to be worse. Alfred had been a farmer’s boy all his life: nothing new about that. But that her little girl, Daisy…Mrs. Lane sent to London every week a large fruit cake, a box of pies, all kinds of treats. Emily and Daisy slept in a room with six other probationers, scum from the East End, so Mrs. Lane thought and said. The parcels did not have a crumb left in them ten minutes after they were opened: all the girls were hungry. The probationers had very little time off, and when Mrs. Lane did see her daughter and Emily she was as shocked and grieved as she had expected. They were so thin, so exhausted. She had not exaggerated the hardships: she did not know how these gently brought-up girls survived.

  She was expecting Emily to give in, apologize to her father, go home repentant. She did not. When Mrs. Lane delicately enquired of her daughter if this might happen, Daisy said simply, ‘But she couldn’t do that. It’s her pride, Mother.’ And besides, Emily had never ever indicated that she felt she had made a mistake.

  Pride, scorned Mrs. Lane. It was stubbornness, it was sheer wrong-headed silliness. The girls’ hands were rubbed red and raw, they both looked like skivvies; they were skivvies. That was all they did in their work, empty bedpans, scrub, dust, clean, wash floors, walls, ceilings, at it from dawn to dusk, and when they did get an afternoon off they fell on their beds and slept.

  Mrs. Lane told her husband she was so mortified she would die of it, but if she could have seen into the future…Her fairy child, little Daisy ended up as an examiner of nurses, and a steely glance from those spectacles dissolved many a poor examinee into tears. She was known as a strict examiner, but just of course, just, and fair.

  Mrs. Lane, who had longed for grandchildren, never did get any, for Daisy married, rather late, an eminent surgeon and was busy helping Emily with her charitable work.

  But this afternoon, while feeling her heart would break, had broken, Mrs. Lane banished any trace of tears and sat waiting for the girls, who had an afternoon off. She had checked that the food on the trestles was plentiful. She knew Emily and Daisy would fall on it the moment they arrived. She had already had words with the trustees of several hospitals, with well-known matrons and schools of nursing. It was wicked and short-sighted to expect girls to do such hard work on such poor food. She was planning a letter to The Times.

  When the girls arrived, Mrs. Lane would not allow herself to comment on how thin and bad they looked. They kissed her and at once attacked the food.

  With laden plates they sat on cushions beside Mrs. Lane and ate. Mrs. Lane could not bear to look at those roughened hands: she literally averted her eyes.

  ‘We cannot stay long,’ said Emily and Daisy. They were both on night duty. Not probationers now, Mrs. Lane had to remind herself. They were in their second year, were actually nursing patients. How time did fly, they all agreed.

  Alfred, tea-time announced for the players, came over. He greeted Daisy, whom he had always known, but not Emily. He did not recognize her. He remembered Emily as a robust, tall girl – surely athletic: he had witnessed her leap over the fence.

  He said to Mrs. Lane, ‘One reason I’m glad not to be going of to Luton or somewhere: I like dropping in for a bit of your fruit cake.’ And his smile was certainly enough to win the heart of anybody at all who was not his mother.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t be in the bank. You know me.’

  ‘Yes, Alfred, and I’m so glad you won’t be going away.’

  Daisy did not hear this, or pretended not to: she thought Alfred did not know she would be even more glad.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll drop in and see you when I come up to London,’ said Alfred to Daisy.

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ said Daisy.

  Alfred was called back to the game; and soon the girls kissed Mrs. Lane and went off back to London.

  August 1907

  Emily and Daisy passed their finals well, and Mrs. Lane wrote to Mrs. McVeagh, the stepmother. She had thought of writing to John McVeagh, but that would have been too much of a confrontation. The stepmother returned a note. ‘Thank you for letting me know about Emily. What a clever girl she has always been. Yours sincerely.’

  Mrs. Lane was pretty sure John McVeagh would have been following Emily’s progress, stage by stage. Mrs. John McVeagh (that nasty old crow) had said ‘letting me know’. Not one to go against her husband, then. Mrs. Lane wrote to say she was giving a dance for her daughter, Daisy (whom of course they knew well as Emily’s best friend), and for Emily. ‘You would all be welcome.’ The father and the stepmother wouldn’t come, but there was Emily’s brother. Perhaps he would.

  Mrs. Lane could have killed John McVeagh with her own two hands. Not to mention the stepmother. Surely they might have reflected that Emily had no one to applaud her, let alone make a dance for her. And could not that old stinge at least have given Emily money for some clothes?

  On the nurses’ pay Emily could not have afforded to dress well; she had the most basic of wardrobes. And she ought to have a dress, a real one: would it have cost that pompous old fool (John McVeagh) so much to send her money for a decent ‘best’ dress?

  Emily would be dreaming of a dress, Mrs. Lane knew. Her daughter was. Wouldn’t any girl? Not since she was a schoolgirl had Emily owned a pretty frock.

  She’s got no mother, no mother, Mrs. Lane reminded herself as she planned a special dress for Emily. She had bought a bolt of sweetly pretty sprigged white muslin and she made Daisy (her little angel) a dress cut from one she had had herself as a girl. Puffed sleeves, ribbons, a fichu of lace. Having seen Daisy in it, she at once cut one out for Emily, having got Daisy to make sure of measurements.

  They all got dressed in Daisy’s bedroom, Mrs. Lane in her best grey satin, and Emily was disappointed, though she tried not to show it. Sprigged muslin, and she hated it.

  Emily was strong, lean and well muscled, after the hard labour of nursing, and she was rather brown, having played a lot of tennis that summer. Emily dressed, knowing she looked gawky and uncomfortable. She thanked Mrs. Lane, over and over again, because she knew that she loved her, and had done her best.

  The bank was lending the Lanes their boardroom, all shining dark brown wood and heavy brown velvet curtains. In this austere setting Emily seemed even more out of place, with her little puffed sleeves and pink sash. Daisy looked wonderful. Mrs. Lane was dissolved in love for her little flower and sic
k with shame because she had done so badly for Emily. All the young men who worked for the bank as far as Ipswich were there, and some of the farmers. Daisy was dancing every dance, a veritable whirl of flowery muslin and smiles. The men were queuing up to dance with her, Alfred more persistent than anyone. This was a high point in Daisy’s life and she never forgot it. She had passed her exams well enough, and now Alfred, her hero since she was a tiny girl, took her around the floor for dance after dance.

  Emily did not do so well. Alfred did dance with her but she was awkward and stiff, probably because she hated how she looked.

  A triumph, then, for Daisy, and something to forget as soon as possible, for Emily. That night, Emily wept silently in her bed, in Daisy’s room, and Mrs. Lane wept at what she had done, or not done for Emily, whom she loved so well. She cried until her husband stirred in his sleep beside her and asked her what was wrong.

  Mrs. Lane had made sure the local paper had sent someone to the dance, had instructed him in what to say, making a point of singling out Emily, and she sent the cutting to the McVeaghs.

  Heartless, horrible people. Cold and heartless and horrible, imprecated Mrs. Lane.

  In the morning, Alfred opened the Lanes’ kitchen door and saw Mr. Lane eating his porridge at the head of the table.

  ‘Oh, there you are, old son,’ said Mr. Lane. ‘Porridge? Toast? The tea’s just made.’

  Alfred dropped in at this time most mornings. It was really to see Mrs. Lane, though this morning he hoped he would catch Daisy before she left for London. He was always hungry: he had been up for hours. Today he was out by four. He had been thinking of Daisy, yes, but more on the lines of: I’ve known her all my life but only now do I really see her, what she is.

  Alfred ladled himself porridge from the black pot that simmered all night on the stove, which was burning merrily, having been well stoked.

  Mr. Lane, a father as well as a husband, had been thinking of how Alfred had flirted with Daisy all evening and wondered if he could expect Alfred to ask for her hand. If so, what should he say? Daisy was doing so well, and did he, her father, want her to marry a farmer? I will deal with that when I come to it, he decided, and went on eating toast.

  Meanwhile, in the bedroom, Daisy was singing as she brushed her hair, for she had been dreaming all night of handsome Alfred. But Emily, packing her case for London, could not bring herself to put into it the white frock that had caused her so much heartache. Mrs. Lane saw her and came over and put her arms around the girl. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘If you only knew how ashamed I feel…’

  ‘You are so good to me always,’ said Emily, and saw with relief that Mrs. Lane was going to take the frock – take it and, oh, burn it, hide it, I never want to think about it again.

  Mrs. Lane came first into the kitchen, greeted Alfred and said, yes, she would like some porridge.

  Almost at once Daisy came in, and she and Alfred began joking and flirting. Alfred loved flirting, and it became so noisy and outrageous that Mr. Lane had to laugh, and went out saying, ‘Well, better you flirt with my daughter than with my wife, I suppose.’

  And now entered Emily, and Alfred was thinking, Now, who is this bobby-dazzler, who can she be? And then immediately recognized Emily, who was as far from the flowery-muslin-frocked maiden as could be imagined. She wore a dark blue skirt, and a blouse of dark blue stripes that had a small white linen collar.

  She smiled at Alfred, hoping he would not remember her as she was last night, and said she did not feel like eating. Some tea, perhaps.

  Alfred thought she looked tired and sad: a contrast to the frivolity of the last few minutes.

  He said to Daisy, but it would have been to Emily too, ‘Shall I come and see you when I come to town?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Emily, being no more than polite.

  ‘We will probably find a little flat for the two of us,’ said Emily. ‘We’ve had enough of nurses’ quarters.’

  ‘So check with Mother,’ said Daisy, recognizing at that moment that her dreams of last night were only that.

  And at this moment Bert Redway knocked on the open door, pushed it half open and said to them generally, ‘I’ve come for Alfred.’

  This, too, happened most mornings.

  Alfred gave a little half-mocking bow to Daisy, went around the table to embrace Mrs. Lane, and to Emily said, ‘Well, perhaps I’ll see you when I do get up to town.’

  He and Bert strolled off down the path. Bert had a hay fork over his shoulder, and from the gate Alfred picked up another from where he had left it.

  The two young men went off, and Daisy and Mrs. Lane were at the door to watch them.

  ‘I love seeing Alfred with Bert,’ said Mrs. Lane. ‘They are so good for each other.’ She was not referring to Alfred’s special position with the Redways – ‘more of a son, really’ – but that Bert tended to be wild, sometimes drank too much, and Alfred steadied him.

  ‘Alfred’s like an older brother to Bert,’ said Daisy’s mother, embracing Daisy as she went by.

  ‘And it is time we left,’ said Emily.

  Again Mrs. Lane stood to watch two young people go off, but in the opposite direction to the men.

  The Best Years

  And now Emily and Alfred were at the top of their lives, their fortunes – of everything.

  ‘If only we could live our good years all over again,’ my mother would say, fiercely gathering those years into her arms and holding them safe, her eyes challenging her husband as if he were responsible for their end.

  ‘Yes,’ he would say. ‘What good times they were. Oh, what jolly times we did have.’

  Alfred, on the Redway farm, was where, really, he had been all his life. From a tiny boy he had played with the farmers’ sons and over the farms. The ditches, the hedgerows, the fields were his playground, and Bert had been his special friend, as he was now. The two young men were at work, supervising the hired men, or on their own until the light went every night, when Albert went with Bert to the pub – certainly a chief responsibility – and then home with him to supper. He lived in the Redways’ house, like a son. Alfred liked to look after the beasts; Bert supervised the crops. All summer weekends Alfred was playing cricket, and he competed in billiards and snooker matches. Bert liked going to the races, and Alfred tried to go with him, if there was time, for the big, ruddy, good-natured man with his black curls and loud laugh was known for his affability and, too, his tendency to get much drunker than an occasion needed. Alfred often took the tankards out of Bert’s hands and got him home before too late. He knew that Bert’s parents relied on him for this.

  He loved to dance, too, and if there was a dance big or small anywhere around on a Saturday, he might walk to it, several miles, and walk back, through the early morning.

  Alfred’s life was, then, hard work and hard play, but because of Mrs. Lane, who belonged to a travelling library, he read a good bit. Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Barrie – he discussed them with Mrs. Lane, and with Mr. Lane, who liked politics too. ‘I am a true blue Tory,’ Mr. Lane announced, partly to tease his wife, who had socialist and pacifist leanings. Alfred visited the Lanes when he could for the sake of some debate and to borrow books and magazines.

  He went up to London for the music hall, which he loved, and for plays. He might drop in on ‘the girls’, as Mrs. Lane called them. ‘Do go see the girls, Alfred, and come and tell me how they are.’

  The ‘flat’ they lived in – called that because it was modish, not to say quite daring, still, for girls to live in a flat and keep themselves – was really two rooms at the back of a workman’s house near the hospital.

  ‘I did like going to have supper after the show,’ he would reminisce, years, decades, later. ‘Oh, it was such fun, at the Trocadero, at the Café Royal.’ But then there was the problem of catching the last train back to Colchester. More than once he dossed down on the floor of the girls’ living-room, but the woman o
f the house, Mrs. Bruce, said she did not like a young man sleeping in unmarried girls’ rooms.

  ‘But, Mrs. Bruce, I’ve known them all my life,’ said Alfred; ‘they might be my sisters.’

  ‘But they aren’t your sisters, as far as I can see,’ said Mrs. Bruce, lips thin, arms held tight over a bossy bosom. ‘I simply don’t like it.’ And she would wait till he came in, the girls being there or not, and open the door suddenly, without knocking…

  ‘Mrs. Grundy,’ apostrophized my father, years and decades later. ‘Mrs. Grundy’, an exemplary moral lady, is to be found in novels and memoirs of the time. Who was she? ‘Mrs. Bruce was like my mother,’ said Alfred, even as an old man – well, as old as he got. ‘Never say a nice thing if you can say a nasty one. Mrs. Grundy sees dirt and filth where anyone else sees a nice clean floor.’

  Alfred did see Emily on his London visits, but not often. Daisy was more often in than Emily, and she would apologize.

  ‘You know Emily,’ she would say, ‘she’s such a goer. Often I hardly see her myself for days. She blows in and blows out. Well, rather like you do.’ For Daisy would have been happy if Alfred came more often and stayed longer.

  If Emily was a ‘goer’ then was not he?

  ‘If only I had Emily’s energy,’ Daisy would mourn. ‘Where does she get it from?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ Mrs. Lane might say, ‘sit down a minute, Alfred. Have a cup of tea. Look, here’s some of my cake that you like.’

  ‘The pigs need moving…I’ve got a cow due to calve, and it’s time to get the beet in off the top field,’ Alfred might say, while she put her two hands on his shoulders and pushed him into a chair.

  ‘I never see you enough, Alfred. And Daisy doesn’t seem to have time these days. As for Emily – perhaps she’ll come for the big day next month.’