Company in the Evening

by Ursula Orange

  “All artless and innocent, aren’t you, Vicky?” said Raymond impatiently.

  That stung. Like a fool I could not let it pass and go with a good grace.

  “Yes,” I said crossly, feeling just like an overtired child on the brink of tears because thwarted, “Yes, if you want to know, Raymond, my suggestion—and I still think it a very good one—was made quite artlessly. If you think there’s an ounce of—of flirtatiousness or coquetry or whatever you like to call it left in my attitude to you now, you’re just plain wrong. We’re past all that—thank God!”

  Furious with myself because I was almost in tears, I seized my coat and plunged my arms into it. My back was turned to Raymond, and so I could not see his face when he answered dryly, “We’re past all that, you say? I congratulate you, Vicky.”

  “Well, aren’t we?” I said, challenging him angrily.

  “Certainly, if you say so. All the same—”

  “All the same—what?”

  “All the same if being ‘past all that’ is going to upset us and cause scenes of this sort, perhaps we’d better not see too much of each other,” finished Raymond.

  I did not like that. I did not like it at all. I attempted airiness.

  “Nonsense, Raymond. Anyway, it wasn’t me who let the party down. I’m not ‘upset.’ I’m just cross, because you’re conventional and stupid.”

  “Exactly, Vicky. You’re not conventional, and so you just can’t be stupid, can you? Don’t forget your gloves. We must run for it.”

  We did. Fortunately Raymond found me a taxi quickly. During the journey to Paddington I was so occupied in wondering whether I should catch my train that I had no time to worry over this strange end to our evening together.

  I did just catch it; and then, of course, found I had nothing to read and nothing to do but meditate on what had just occurred. I did not feel I had come out of it all very well.

  First I had been silly over Sandra, and Raymond—damn him—had noticed it. Next, I had grumbled very rudely about having to go home. Thirdly, I had nearly cried over nothing at all and practically—horror of horrors!—made a scene.

  No, it was not a very brilliant exhibition from someone who was, in her own words, ‘past all that.’

  The funny thing was that I was really honestly speaking the truth when I had said that I was ‘past all that.’ I was—even if the sight of Sandra had hurt badly for a moment. Fundamentally, I felt perfectly settled. I had, in my life, two big things. Antonia and my work. I honestly did not feel the need for much else. Raymond I enjoyed seeing enormously—but in between times I forgot all about him.

  I did hope Raymond understood this. If I had not been so cross and tired I would have tried to get the idea across to him in a calmer way—although wasn’t really this idea implicit in our whole relationship? I had, of course, believed it so—and therefore how very unnecessary it had been to shout rudely at him those remarks about my casual attitude to him nowadays.

  Raymond himself had been anything but ‘casual’ to me when he had noticed the effect Sandra had had on me. He had been extraordinarily thoughtful on my account and saved the situation with the minimum of fuss. He had been thinking of me. But I had hardly been thinking of him when I made my get-away scene from the flat.

  No, I hadn’t been thinking of him, not for one instant, selfish pig that I was. That was a funny last shot of his, just as we were leaving: “You’re not conventional Vicky, and so you just can’t be stupid, can you?”

  Stupid? Me stupid? I nearly laughed out loud in the railway carriage at the incredulity with which I received the suggestion.

  Stupid, what about? Or did the very fact of asking myself what about convict me instantly of the fault?

  Oh dear, I was tired. Far too tired to go on thinking muzzily about who had been stupid to whom about what. Clatter-clatter-clang-clatter went the wheels. There was a button missing on the purplish-brown upholstery opposite me. Clatter-clatter-clang-clatter. To-morrow I must interview the butcher and ask him why he never seemed to keep any liver for me. Clatter-clatter-clang-clatter. Sandra had had a lovely fur-coat—was it mink? . . . Antonia wanted some new socks. How horrible these little black, cone-shaped lampshades over the carriage lights were. When peace comes (if ever) shall we have pink with frills? Clatter-clatter-clang-clatter. Life was made up of a million utterly incoherent details. (Damn that missing button. I might go to sleep if it didn’t worry me so.) A million incoherent details and the wonder was that anyone ever succeeded in making any sort of a sensible pattern out of it.

  Chapter 10

  *

  I really cannot go into detail about the next big row Blakey and I had over Rene. Even at the time the triviality of the whole thing infuriated me. Even at the time I saw the three of us as a group of undignified, idiotic petty women. Even at the time, while realizing all this, I knew that this storm in a tea-cup was going to have disastrous results.

  It did. The worst happened, and I sacked Blakey. I don’t know which of us was the more appalled at this disastrous culmination. Blakey, who had, I think, believed I would never really do such a thing. Rene, who said, Oh dear, I didn’t think it was all her fault, did I? Or myself, who had to face the, prospect of coping with the office and Antonia without my infuriating but utterly reliable domestic retainer.

  It happened about a month after my party with Raymond, and was of course led up to by Episodes, each one very trivial in itself, each one heightening the tension between the three of us a little more. There was the Episode of Blakey falling over Philip’s pram in the dark scullery and barking her knee—followed by the Episode of Rene presenting Blakey with a new pair of stockings in compensation and Blakey refusing them. There was the Episode of Rene turning out her own room to help Blakey one particularly busy morning, and Blakey turning it all out again grimly and thoroughly that very afternoon. There was the Episode of Blakey “not holding” with veal broth and nonsense of that sort for babies, and letting Rene’s bones boil dry on the stove and ruin a saucepan. There was (as a private sideshow for myself particularly) the Episode of Barry overhearing me give Rene an impatient little lecture on how to handle Blakey (“For heaven’s sake bully the woman back, Rene! It’s the only thing she understands!”) and hinting afterwards, oh! so gently and tactfully and idealistically that Rene was far too sweet a person to find that sort of advice comprehensible. There was—finally—the Episode of the Fireguard, of which I will merely retail briefly the bare facts.

  Rene left the sitting-room unoccupied one day when I was at the office, without putting the fireguard up. A spark flew out and burnt a rather nasty hole in the hearthrug. This hearthrug was not part of my landlord’s furnishings, but belonged to me. Blakey discovered the damage and took the line that Rene had endangered the lives of everyone in the house by her criminal carelessness, besides destroying irreparably one of my most valued possessions. (I never found out exactly what she said to Rene, but it was enough to reduce her to tears and to keep her sobbing, on and off, until I came home an hour later.) Secretly infuriated by Rene’s tears, and inwardly resentful of consolation and sympathy being required of me the minute I set foot inside the door, I went out to the kitchen to take the line it was all a ridiculous fuss about nothing and the hearthrug, which wasn’t a particularly nice one anyway, could easily be repaired. But Blakey, while I was in the course of establishing this as an Official Pronouncement, said so many intolerable things—(“Of course, if you don’t mind what happens to your things, it seems a pity I take so much trouble to keep everything nice,” and “There’s been twice the work since Mrs. Sylvester came here, and does she mean to live with you all her life, I should like to know?” were two fair samples)—that it very shortly became apparent to me that there could be only one end to this sort of discussion. A really splendid burst of anger swept me off my feet and made the actual pronouncement positively enjoyable.

  Both anger and enjoyment had, of course, completely ebbed away from me by the next morning.
I woke up early and put in a good hour’s worrying before breakfast-—an exhausting procedure that I can recommend to absolutely nobody. In the end, I got up half an hour earlier than usual, fished Antonia out of her bed and brought her into mine “for a treat.” The child, who was of course as bright and chatty as only children can be at seven o’clock in the morning, was enchanted. Naturally she had no conception of why I had suddenly had the excellent idea of requiring her company, and her artless pleasure and surprise consoled me considerably. Extraordinary how children can be simultaneously an awful problem and a tremendous consolation. Who on earth was to look after Antonia and keep house now on the days when I went to the office? Rene, I felt sure, was just not capable of doing everything. Even if she offered—and why should she, after all?—I would not let her—if only for Antonia’s sake. I felt very stranded and forlorn. However, I told myself that I must remember that to Antonia—and to Rene too—I was a rock, a refuge and a fortress in any Storm. And anyway, Blakey would not, I thought, leave me until I had found a substitute.

  On this cold cnimb of comfort, I finally got up to breakfast.

  The period that followed was, naturally, an uncomfortable one for everyone. I had vowed to myself that no word of reproach to Rene should ever cross my lips. Rene had evidently vowed that not more than half an hour should ever pass without the topic being apologetically and uneasily brought up by her. Blakey seemed to have made up her mind to show us what a treasure we were losing. We were all of us on our best behaviour; and really I almost preferred us when we were biting and scratching like fighting cats.

  I put an advertisement in the local paper and received three replies—one from an elderly Nanny who expected “the nurseries” waited on. Well, we hadn’t any nurseries, so that disposed of her. The next was from a girl of sixteen whose previous employer reported her to be “good-tempered and willing, but a little unreliable with soldiers.” I did not enquire too closely what that cautious phrase meant. The third was from a Welsh girl who said if I would forward her her fare from Aberystwyth she would come immediately for an interview. I didn’t.

  It did not make things easier that conscription of women was being foretold in all the papers about this time. Already ‘registration’ had begun.

  Once again I looked forward to my days at the office as a temporary escape from domestic worries. The fact that, as usual, Mrs. Hitchcock was totally uninterested in my private problems and that I never spoke at all about my home to her, was, once again, a considerable relief. Barry, to whom Rene of course prattled of our difficulties, attempted to talk sympathetically to me about the situation and got his head bitten off for his pains.

  I do not know quite why I have such a strong personal taboo against being sympathized with, but I certainly have. I suspect that while it was always dormant in me, it flourished and grew noticeably just after my divorce. Perhaps there are only two courses open to a woman who is left to run her life single-handed against a certain amount of odds; She may either become a bit of a ‘poor little thing’ (with a top-dressing of slightly bogus bravery and gallantry) or else she may go to the other extreme and become rather too self-sufficient and bossy. Finding the first course utterly detestable, I naturally inclined to the second attitude. I expect the psychologists would call it ‘over-compensation.’ The fact that I know a certain amount of their jargon and am quite good at standing a little apart from myself and thinking out my behaviour does not, I need hardly say, make it any easier for me to feel differently—a disappointing conclusion that always seems slurred over in the helpful little psychology books.

  I half-envied and half-despised Rene’s utter lack of any inhibitions against lapping up sympathy. It was either jealousy or scorn that made me be so horrid to Barry when he attempted to condole with me.

  “Rene’s told me all about the fix you’re in over Blakey going,” he said one evening when we were all three having coffee in the sitting-room.

  Rene gave a deprecating little cough. I knew, without looking at her, that she was now shooting a slightly nervous glance in my direction.

  “Blakey going?” I said, a little deliberately vaguer. “Oh yes. Yes. It is a nuisance, but we’ll soon find someone else.”

  When I was married to Raymond it was part of my code never to mention domestic worries of any sort to him. I thought that, since he had agreed so amicably that I was going to keep on my job, that was the least I could do in the circumstances—and I kept most resolutely to my vow. I suppose it was partly habit that made me speak so airily to Barry now. A moment’s thought might have shown me that Barry and Rene would probably prefer not to feel slightly squashed.

  “Oh Vicky, I’m so glad! I was afraid you were worrying. You looked so tired the other night!” exclaimed Rene impulsively.

  Silly ass, I thought ungratefully, can’t you see I’m pretending and why?

  “I do hope you do find someone really suitable, Vicky,” said Barry in his slow gentle voice, “It must be so important to have the right person to look after a child.”

  As if I needed telling that! As if I didn’t lie awake worrying about whether Antonia would be upset by the change! As if I didn’t have absurd nightmare visions that I laughed away regularly in the daytime about a new Person who slapped Antonia for no reason or let her run out into the road in front of cars.

  I said absolutely nothing. If they thought I was an utterly casual mother who didn’t care in the least who looked after her child, let them. I was, it may be observed, in an extraordinarily prickly mood.

  “Of course, you don’t necessarily need a trained babies’ nurse, do you, Vicky?” Barry continued, not, I think, at all perceptive of the ‘atmosphere’ I was surely radiating by this time, “because Rene’s always there for Philip.” He treated Rene to an approving smile. She basked. I swear, she perceptibly basked.

  “Yes, Philip’s got his Mummy,” said Rene smugly.

  “Yes, that’s very nice for Philip,” I said dryly. “Antonia has to put up with second-best.”

  They did not, I could see, know quite what way to take this. To be honest, I did not know quite where or at what I was hitting out myself. I would almost have liked to have said that Philip was lucky because he hadn’t got a Mummy who had to support the expenses of a home. Not that there would have been much meaning in this gibe—because Rene, of course, paid her expenses with me. My only real grievance was one I could never express—that Blakey and I had always got along well until Rene’s arrival. And even then I was prepared to admit that it was Blakey, not Rene, who had made mischief.

  “Well, one thing, Vicky,” said Barry comfortingly, “it must be a consolation to you to feel that Rene’s here to superintend things on the days when you’re at the office.”

  “Oh yes,” agreed Rene helpfully. “And, of course, Vicky, if you do get a young untrained girl I’ll be only too willing to help all I can. Blakey never would let me, you know.”

  “I know she wouldn’t. She was maddening,” I snapped. “But all the same I do want someone a bit better than a young untrained girl. I must have peace of mind while I’m at the office.”

  There was a rather nasty silence. I had time to reflect that, by implication, I had been extremely rude to Rene.

  Barry certainly saw it too. He shot a quick shocked glance at me, coughed, and said, “Of course, naturally you want the best for Antonia, Vicky. Everyone sees that. I was only suggesting that at least you’re better off than you would be if Blakey was going and Rene wasn’t with you.”

  I didn’t say it. I swear I didn’t say it, although the retort ‘Blakey never would have been going in that case’ nearly fell, of its own weight, off my lips. What I did say was ungracious enough. I exclaimed, “Oh, for God’s sake let’s drop the subject. It’s a very boring one, and why we’re discussing it I can’t imagine.”

  Barry got up. “In any case, it’s late. I must be off,” he said.

  “Oh do wait another twenty minutes!” exclaimed Rene. “Then it will be time to
get Philip up for his last feed and you can see him properly.”

  I really do not think Rene had noticed that I was, to put it mildly, in the beast of a temper, that evening. She was blessedly thick-skinned. In any case, the thought of showing off Philip to anyone was enough to drive all other considerations out of her head.

  Barry, I could see, thought this very charming and proper of her. I could also see that he was puzzled and upset about me.

  Well, if nobody was going to send me out of the room until I could behave myself (which was, I absolutely saw, just the treatment I needed) I had better send myself.

  “Yes, do stay, Barry,” I said quickly. “As a matter of fact, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and get in a quick bath now before other people want theirs. It’s a bit of a queue in the evenings, you see, because Blakey takes one too then . . . So, if you won’t think me very rude, I’ll leave you and Rene to entertain each other till Philip’s fetched.”

  “Of course, Vicky,” said Barry politely, “I think you’re very wise to get in an early night when you can. You look tired.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to sleep,” I said, perverse to the last. “I’ve got about six short stories to read in bed. However—good night.”

  “Good night,” they chorused politely.

  I went thankfully out of the room. I felt like a nasty schoolmistress leaving her class to a much-needed break. I felt like a sulky child who had refused to join in the other children’s jolly games. I felt simultaneously very old and very babyish. I felt nobody liked me, and I didn’t blame them particularly. I didn’t like myself.

  * * * * *

  The following week I got on the track of a suitable-sounding woman. She was a widow, aged forty, who had been a Nanny before she was married and seemed willing to undertake cooking as well as the partial care of Antonia. I wrote off to her, and felt better. Even though the Germans had entered Athens and on another front captured Sollum, even though there had just been another heavy air-raid on London, I felt better. Of such stuff are we women made.