Mother looked slightly shocked.
“It seems a pity you engaged her, Vicky. It’s rather letting her down, isn’t it? Not that you can help it, of course. I suppose it wouldn’t be best to send her a telegram . . .”
“Oh no, surely I’d better have her for a month or two, anyway. I must have someone to help Rene while I’m at the office.”
“I’d willingly stay and look after Antonia,” proffered Mother.
“That’s very sweet of you, Mother. I’d love you to stay, but I won’t have you trying to do too much. Let’s have the Dabchick and you as well if you will—if you wouldn’t mind staying on in this hotel here and just helping with Antonia? She’ll love it, and it will be a weight off my mind to know you’re coping too.”
“Very well, Vicky dear. If you really think that’s a good plan, I’d love to. What’s Mrs. Dabchick like?”
“Not the sort of person I wanted at all really,” I answered promptly, and gave Mother a quick character sketch. “The one thing about her was that she was obviously a nice woman in her own style, so to speak, and that Rene and she got on together like a house on fire.”
“She’s a lady?” suggested Mother.
“Oh yes! Certainly. Not even a distressed gentlewoman. She’s got a bungalow somewhere and a little money of her own. She told me she wanted a home more than a job. Why?”
“I was only thinking—if Rene and she took to each other so much—and really Rene’s future is a problem Vicky, because I don’t think I can offer her a home with Maud and me. I know Maud wouldn’t care for the idea, and—”
“No, indeed. Why should she? Mother, whatever’s decided about Rene, you’ve done your share over her and can’t be expected to upset your life again. That’s certain.”
Mother frowned thoughtfully.
“Some provision must be made for Rene, Vicky. She has so very little money of her own. Of course, as far as money goes, I’ll willingly contribute . . .”
“Oh Mother! Why should you?”
Mother gazed at me, shocked.
“Vicky! Of course I must! She was Philip’s wife after all, and the baby—what a darling he is now, by the way, Vicky—is my own grandchild. Of course, I’ll make Rene an allowance. I’ve helped her already, you know, and I’ve promised to pay for Philip’s schooling and I’ll help her more in the future—it will have to be rather more naturally if she isn’t living with me or with you any more.”
“I’ll help too,” I said, a little rebuked by Mother’s utter and calm acceptance of family obligations.
“No, no. That’s not necessary, darling.” Hastily but firmly, Mother waved the suggestion aside. “I’ve plenty—really I have—and nothing much to spend it on now except my grandchildren. Rene and Philip won’t get anything that Antonia ought to have, Vicky, I can promise you that.”
“Mother!” I cried, shocked in my turn. “As if such a thought entered my head!”
“No, no. I wasn’t suggesting it had,” returned Mother unruffled. “I’m only just telling you, so that you may know it. Well—where was I?”
“Something about Mrs. Dabchick and Rene some way back.”
“Oh yes! I wondered if just possibly you could hand over the lease of the cottage to Rene—I’ll pay the rent—and let Mrs. Dabchick stay on with her—more as a companion than as anything else. I’m not suggesting Rene should employ her—more of a ‘sharing’ arrangement,”‘
I goggled at Mother, trying quickly to adjust my mind to such an altered view of the circumstances.
“Well! that’s an idea!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. It’s only the merest suggestion, of course but if she is, as you say, a lady with a little money of her own, and if she really wants a home more than a job, as you told me she said, and if she and Rene do like each other as much when they know each other better . . . Why did Mrs. Dabchick want to take a job, anyway?”
“Oh, because she got lonely, living alone.”
“So would Rene,” said Mother. “In fact, I don’t think she could, not if she’s so nervous about being alone at night. And yet it would be absurd for her to have a maid, Vicky, even if she could afford one. She’s awfully capable in the house you know.”
“And Mrs. Dabchick would love Philip,” I put in.
We gazed at each other round-eyed, and then burst out laughing.
“Well! We’ve certainly arranged Rene’s future between us!” I said. “It only remains to explain this splendid scheme to Rene and Mrs. Dabchick.”
“Oh, of course we must see, a little more of Mrs. Dabchick first,” said Mother cheerfully.
“One minute we’re going to send her a telegram telling her not to come,” I giggled, “the next—”
“Yes, but it was after you explained to me what Mrs. Dabchick was like that the idea suddenly occurred to me,” explained Mother, laughing defensively.
“Won’t it be rather awkward first of all giving Mrs. Dabchick orders and then suddenly transforming her into Rene’s bosom chum, who’s going to share, not be employed at all?” I suggested.
“Well, I don’t imagine it will be Rene who gives her many orders,” said Mother. “Rene wouldn’t know how—she’s never been accustomed to that sort of situation. Now don’t look at me like that, Vicky! I’m not being snobbish. I’m merely stating a feet.”
“Quite, darling.” I grinned, “It’s just the way you state it you know. However . . . I don’t think I shall give Mrs. Dabchick any ‘orders’ either then. It will save a lot of trouble.”
“Just treat her as a sort of friend,” assented Mother cheerfully.
“Quite. Rene wins in the end, so all the fuss was about nothing.” I could not help bursting out laughing.
“What fuss, Vicky?” asked Mother suspiciously.
“Oh—another long story. I’ll tell you one day.”
“Has there been more going on between Rene and you than you ever let me guess?”
“Yes, much more,” I answered frankly. “However nothing to what’s going on now between you and me. Oh, I do hope our lovely schemes come off! I shall be so disappointed if they don’t.”
“We mustn’t set our hearts too much on it, Vicky,” said Mother. “We must just keep it in mind and wait and see—if it does seem possible I’ll put the idea into Rene’s head and then she can suggest it tactfully to Mrs. Dabchick in due course. Leave it all to me. I don’t want anybody to get the impression they’re being forced into anything,” concluded Mother conscientiously.
“Of course not. Still, if I was Rene I’d jump at any scheme which meant I didn’t have to uproot myself again.”
“Yes. Moving round with a small baby can be very tiresome. And also Rene’s got some nice friends here—”
“Has she?” I interrupted, surprised. “Who?”
“Well, I was thinking chiefly of that nice schoolmaster who lives near. We’ve seen him several times while you were away, Vicky.”
“Oh—Barry! Yes. He and Rene are quite chums, that’s true.”
“You never mentioned anything about him in your letters, Vicky,” said Mother, a trifle reproachfully. “I had no idea he and Rene . . .” She paused delicately.
“Good heavens, Mother! What are you hinting at now?” I exclaimed.
“I’m not hinting at anything, darling. How could there be anything to hint at—yet?”
“Well, you’ve certainly put an idea into my mind which wasn’t there before,” I said.
Mother certainly had. My first impulse was to tell her flatly that she was wrong—that it was me Barry had been “paying attention” to, or whatever was the correct phrase. I did not, however, want to tell Mother that Barry had once proposed to me. I had told her nothing about it at the time, I had never even hinted of it to Rene, and I had an idea that Barry now considered that episode as finally closed as I did. It seemed unfair on him to rake up old history.
Particular unfair, of course, if there was anything in Mother’s hints about him and Rene now. I could hardly bel
ieve there was, and yet . . . I remembered how Rene’s face always lighted up as she talked to him. I remembered Barry saying to me in his grave voice, ‘She has such a very sweet nature.’ Even if one discounted the fact that Mother was incurably romantic, she might yet have stumbled on a possibility to which I had been blind just because of what lay in the past between Barry and me. And yet—as I had just reflected—that bit of past was over, and therefore Mother, coming in fresh as an outsider, might be seeing future possibilities more clearly than I, Or even Barry or Rene, could yet.
“I don’t say the idea’s definitely in anyone’s mind yet,” said Mother. “I only say Rene and he seem to get on very well together, and it’s nice for her to have a friend so close. I’m not suggesting for a moment that Rene’s beginning to forget Philip or anything of the sort. How could she in so short a time?”
“But you wouldn’t feel—hurt or anything—if she married somebody else one day?” I hazarded.
I could not imagine myself feeling hurt in the circumstances, but, knowing how Mother had felt about Philip, it seemed just possible that she might.
Mother however shook her head.
“Oh no, Vicky. Some day—not just yet of course—but some day, I should like her to marry again. I know Rene’s not exactly your type, Vicky, but nevertheless she’s a very sweet girl in her own way and would make a very good wife to some man. It would be much the happiest permanent—solution—for her.”
“Yes. I agree with you. And in that case the very best thing I can do is to remove myself from her, and let her work out her own destiny.”
I was thinking, as I spoke, of Barry and of how my presence might so easily have proved a deterrent to a budding romance between those two. It might turn out to be the happiest possible thing for Rene that I was going out of her life again as suddenly as I had come in.
I chuckled silently, amused at this novel point of view.
* * * * *
Two months later I married Raymond.
Extraordinary to relate, everything concerning Rene and Mrs. Dabchick fell out according to Mother’s plan, and was settled just as we had arranged. One could never quite tell, of course, but Mother and I both agreed that there seemed every chance of the scheme succeeding. It was perfectly clear to me, after a little of Mrs. Dabchick’s society, that the original plan of employing her as Mother’s Help would have been foredoomed to failure. She was not precisely incompetent—but a home was certainly what she wanted rather than a job. I quite liked the woman, but could not help being heartily glad that it was Rene who was to offer her the home, not me.
Raymond and I found a furnished house near Elstree. It was by no means a dream cottage and compared highly unfavourably with our miniature but carefully furnished first home in Chelsea, but neither of us cared a rap.
Blakey agreed to come back to us. She did not express much pleasure at the prospect, but, when I saw her, I knew she was secretly much gratified. The thought of being reunited with Antonia (even though Antonia would henceforward be a schoolchild) was enough to make her swallow her scruples over my recklessness in marrying the same man again. Mother, I believe, had a short talk with her and tried to hint to her that Raymond had never been the unworthy traitor she had so firmly believed. I doubt if Mother made much impression, but I did not worry. The future would, I confidently felt, show her that she had been wrong, and, until Raymond himself won her allegiance, she would, I knew, serve him dourly as a ‘gentleman’—however much of a swine—should be served. Best of all, Raymond and I could laugh over it all together.
On the night before I married Raymond I thought, as I got into bed, of the contrast between my first wedding-day and what lay before me on the morrow.
No trousseau this time. No orange-blossom and bridesmaids and reception. No honeymoon to the Italian lakes. Simply a short ceremony at a registrar’s office, a long week-end in a hotel in the Cotswolds, and then back to the rather ugly Elstree house and straightway into ordinary married life in the middle of the worst war ever known to history.
I smiled cheerfully, turned out the light, and went quickly to sleep.
THE END
About The Author
Ursula Marguerite Dorothea Orange was born in Simla in 1909, the daughter of the Director General of Education in India, Sir Hugh Orange. But when she was four the family returned to England. She was later ‘finished’ in Paris, and then went up to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1928. It was there that she and Tim Tindall met. They won a substantial sum of money on a horse, enough to provide the couple with the financial independence to marry, which they did in 1934.
Ursula Orange’s first novel, Begin Again, was published with success in 1936, followed by To Sea in a Sieve in 1937. In 1938 her daughter, the writer Gillian Tindall, was born, and the next year the war changed their lives completely. Their London home was badly damaged and, as her husband left for the army, Ursula settled in the country with Gillian, where she had ample opportunity to observe the comic, occasionally tragic, effects of evacuation: the subject of her biggest success, Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941). Three more novels followed, continuing to deal with the indirect effects of war: conflicts of attitude, class and the generations, wherever disparate characters are thrown together.
The end of the war saw the family reunited and in 1947 the birth of her son Nicholas. But Ursula Orange’s literary career foundered, and the years that followed saw her succumb to severe depression and periods of hospital treatment. In 1955 she died aged 46.
By Ursula Orange
Begin Again (1936)
To Sea in a Sieve (1937)
Tom Tiddler’s Ground
(1941, published in the U.S. as Ask Me No Questions)
Have Your Cake (1942)
Company in the Evening (1944)
Portrait of Adrian (1945)
FURROWED MIDDLEBROW
FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK
FM10. Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM11. Begin Again (1936) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM12. Company in the Evening (1944) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM13. The Late Mrs Prioleau (1946) ... MONICA TINDALL
FM14. Bramton Wick (1952) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM15. Landscape in Sunlight (1953) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM16. The Native Heath (1954) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM17. Seaview House (1955) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM18. A Winter Away (1957) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM19. The Mingham Air (1960) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM20. The Lark (1922) ... E. NESBIT
Ursula Orange
Tom Tiddler’s Ground
“Is Florence looking after the house all right? I thought it was rather touching of her to say she would like to stay and be bombed with you. Mind you put her underneath when you’re lying down flat in an air-raid.”
Caroline Cameron is charming and witty, no doubt—but also superficial, and a bit immoral. When we first meet her, at the beginning of Ursula Orange’s delightful novel of the early days of World War II, married Caroline is contemplating an affair with an actor. But then war intervenes, and Caroline and her young daughter evacuate to the quiet village of Chesterford to stay with school-friend Constance Smith.
The two women couldn’t be more different. Warm-hearted, generous Constance surprises the local billeting officer with her delight at welcoming evacuees into her home. But she has also made a catastrophic marriage to salesman Alfred. As they weather the storm of blackouts, shelters,
and village drama, it’s ultimately the women’s differences that allow them to bring out the best in each other and let peace (of a sort) reign again.
Tom Tiddler’s Ground is a rollicking, irresistible tale of troubles on the Home Front. This new edition features an introduction by Stacy Marking.
“Miss Orange’s very considerable gifts have all been requisitioned to make this a book not only of first-rate entertainment, but of literary excellence in its special light comedy genre.” New York Times
“The whole story is a sparkling piece of fun.” Daily Telegraph
FM10
I
“I am in a strange room,” thought Caroline in the moment of waking. She was right. The room was strange, and yet the things she saw on opening her eyes in the early morning light were all objects that had been familiar to her for all the eight years of her marriage. There stood the streamlined steel and glass dressing-table she had insisted on choosing as a wedding-present from her mother eight years ago. (“My dear, I am giving my daughter a surgeon’s trolley. It appears that that is what she really wants,” Mrs. Carruthers had told the family at the time, and Caroline of course had been faintly irritated as one was constantly being irritated at that age by the laughing indulgence of the elderly.) As a matter of fact Caroline now agreed with her mother and, if Mrs. Carruthers had still been alive, would not have minded telling her so. The girl who had married John Cameron eight years ago seemed to herself a totally different personage from the Caroline of July, 1939. She was quite ready to repudiate her past taste in furniture, together with most of her past opinions and ambitions. That perverted lamp-stand over there, for instance. That had been another horrible error of taste, and even John, who was not observant over such things, had said “My God!” when first it had risen from its wrappings in all its tormented, writhing, chromium ingenuity. (“Don’t you like it?” Caroline had cried, instantly on the defensive. Things like that—tiny things—had mattered so much in those days, perhaps because there was nothing big to worry about. Just as every one must have something to love, so every one needs something to make a fuss about.) However, tomorrow she would put the lamp-stand in the attic; and oh, what heaven to have an attic to put things in at last. Yesterday’s move had been exhausting, but how well worth while! Eight years in a modern flat, and now at last she and John were in a house with a glorious, a recklessly glorious, absence of all those amenities that had so intrigued her at first. No more central heating with those horrible radiators lurking under the window-sills, pretending invisibility while they dried up and cracked the shoddy woodwork. No more of those “off-white” (sometimes very off-white) net curtains over all the windows because their flat had looked across a well (or courtyard as the agents preferred to describe it) straight into the utterly similar rooms of her neighbours in the opposite wing. No more tiresome feuds with the porter, no more vindictive notes hastily scribbled and pinned on the front door (“Selfridges N.B. Please don’t leave sherry in hatch as somebody steals it. I am out, but Mrs. Clark in No. 10 is in and will take it in for me”); no more electric bars in the wall masquerading as fires, no more, in short, of that ridiculous attention to detail (inset soap-dishes, inferior refrigerators, let-down flap ironing-tables, chromium door-handles and the like) and that utter disregard of the real needs of two adults in a home—room to sprawl, room to be untidy, room to cook without catching your elbow on the table with every joggle of the frying-pan, room to keep a dog (yes, a barking dog if need be), room to keep a baby (yes, almost certainly a crying baby). Not that Marguerite (exasperating little devil, darling pet, rising two, the clever poppet) often cried now. Caroline cocked an ear for a moment, but heard, in the maternal phrase, “nothing”—meaning that she heard only a car changing gear in the road, an early train in the distance, three hoots from a taxi and a raucous barking from a sea-lion in the Zoo in Regent’s Park. (John had said that the Zoo might be rather noisy at night.) But perhaps in this house she wouldn’t hear Marguerite if she did cry. Blissful thought! Caroline looked at her watch—half-past five only—and snuggled down again. Nanny would be asleep, Marguerite would be asleep, Nanny’s sleep quite ordinary, Marguerite’s somehow slightly clever, touching and pathetic. Funny little thing, smugly asleep in her Viyella nightdress, so passionately individual, so supremely convinced of her own importance, and yet so hopelessly, utterly reliant on the world of grown-ups for absolutely all the necessities of life. Taking all the care and trouble lavished on her so completely for granted, taught to say “thank you” and yet blissfully devoid of the slightest inkling of the meaning of gratitude. Screaming defiance at one moment (“Don’t worry, Mrs. Cameron,” said Nanny, “they all go through this phase”), holding up her arms for comfort and reassurance the next, a minute later remote and withdrawn, all her being intensely concentrated on the task of trying to fit a red brick into a cup so obviously far too small. (“The child’s a half-wit, Caroline.” “Of course she isn’t, John. She’s just trying, that’s all.”) Every day exploring life, every day experimenting, mentally and physically—what would happen if I screamed and refused to have my shoes on? What would happen if I walked off the sofa? Watching, Caroline sometimes trembled aghast at the inexorable compulsion of life. Move on, move on, all the time like a policeman. Develop or die, no half-measures. Exhausting process! Fancy any one choosing to be a children’s nurse, Caroline would think, rushing to the sherry cupboard when Marguerite was at last safely in bed after Nanny’s day off. (That absurd, that awful battle in the park. Anything for the sake of peace, but you can’t let them take strange children’s golliwogs home with them.) Caroline turned over again in bed, chuckling at the memory of the golliwog battle.
Company in the Evening Page 26
