I Ordered a Table for Six

by Noel Streatfeild

  Letty was unrepentant. She knew just why Meggie was being brought up from the country. She had been with Adela for over three years, and in that time had taken down in shorthand, and later typed, enough letters to Millicent Penrose to form a book; a book which Letty told herself was nothing more nor less than a tissue of lies. The pages which had been dictated to her describing how Paul had taken a job in Africa. The pages since the war in which he had come back from Africa, and gone into the Army. He was always, in the letters, stationed somewhere far off where his mother could not see him, and always fretting at his inactivity; craving to go to Finland, Norway, France, and more recently Libya. “She’ll say he’s fighting abroad one day,” Letty told herself, for she would not discuss her employer with any one, even Jim, “and I shouldn’t wonder if she said he’d won a medal.” Because Adela could not find enough to write about Paul, she fell back on Meggie. Even in peace-time she had not seen much of her daughter, but she had seen practically nothing of her since the war started, and so she was able to invent the sort of girl she believed Millicent would admire. Sophisticated, full of smart sayings, and more on sisterly than daughterly terms with her mother. It was past Letty’s understanding how Adela could dictate such stuff without blushing. Of course she quite understood that to Adela a secretary was just a machine whose fingers worked but who never had private thoughts, and certainly not critical ones, and she sympathized in a way at her fairy tales about Paul. It must be awful to have a son like that, and perhaps if she had that sort of relation she would be tempted to do the same thing; but why invent Meggie? That was something Letty simply could not understand.

  Before the war Letty had often seen Meggie; she was brought to town for two or three days to be overhauled both physically and from the wardrobe angle. In those days Miss Jones had been with her, and Letty had only glimpsed the child now and again, and had barely exchanged twenty words with her. But since the war had started things had been different. Miss Jones had become too much of a prop and stay in the country to be spared for whole days; but, war or peace, Adela believed in regular visits to a good dentist, and such a being, in her philosophy, could not be found outside the Wimpole Street–Harley Street area. Though Meggie, in charge of the guard, could travel in a train alone, she certainly could not go about London alone, and so, since Adela could not be bothered with the tedium of railway stations and a dentist’s waiting-room, Letty was sent to look after her. Meggie had been up to see the dentist three times since the war had started, and each had been a day which stood out to Letty like a scarlet bead in a string of grey ones. The first visit Meggie, her eyes glowing, her hat crushed in one hand, had come streaking down the platform, and had made her fellow-passengers smile at her unaffected call: “Hallo, Miss Smithson!” The second visit it had been “Hallo, Letty!” and the third “Letty darling!” Even on that first visit Meggie had treated Letty like a lifelong friend; she had scarcely handed her ticket to the collector before she had her arm through Letty’s. “Did Mummy give you money for a taxi? Good, then we’ll go and eat it. Let’s have chocolate with cream on it, and then we’ll go to the dentist on the top of a bus.” Meggie had been just fifteen at that time, and her talk, which bubbled out of her throughout the day, had been of childish things, her lessons and classes, her pony, her dog, but no matter what she talked about, through her words ran the essence of her, which poured into Letty like champagne. Joyousness, radiant happiness, it was hard to find the exact word. At intervals what she felt burst out of her, and then she would clutch Letty’s arm: “Oh, isn’t life fun! Aren’t you glad you were born?” The next visit had found Meggie as radiant as before, but now the radiance had moments when it was partly obscured; then she would catch hold of Letty’s arm and stop in the full flood of what she was saying and turn up her blue eyes, which seemed dark at such times, and say: “Letty, they drove tanks over refugees. Old men, and women, even babies.” “Letty, they waited for ages on the beach and when at last they got on to a ship some of them were blown up and drowned. Think of it, Letty, the disappointment, after you thought you were safe.” Meggie was sixteen the next time she came to town. Letty had not known she was coming until too late to attempt to stop her, not that her attempt would have done any good but she would have made it. It was November. Letty got up early and as soon as there was enough light walked the route from the station to Wimpole Street and from Wimpole Street to Mayfair. It was difficult to get through even on foot. Endless roads were roped off and marked “Diversion.” She did finally select a possible route which showed less damage than some, but she had wasted her time. Meggie, in spite of the more fashionable clothes in which she was now dressed, still looked a child. She came hareing up the platform glowing, smiling, and her gay call put heart into all who heard it: “Letty darling!” As usual as she handed over her ticket she gripped Letty’s arm, but on this occasion she said: “What time’s the dentist? Twelve. Oh, bother, and the train’s late! Where can we go quickest where I can see places knocked down last night? I saw lots from the train, but they’d been cleared up. I want to see houses people lived in yesterday.” They did not have to walk far. They stood outside the barriers which roped off the street and saw what had been somebody’s home. Meggie gazed in silence and then tugged at Letty’s arm. “Come on, let’s get some coffee before the dentist.” She said nothing more about what she had seen until she and Letty were walking up and down the platform waiting for the much-delayed train which would take her back to the country. Then came that, to Letty, familiar break in the conversation and the grasp of her arm. “There was a picture still left over a mantelpiece, did you see? And that little bit of the room at the top must have been a nursery once, there’s some Mickie Mouses on that wallpaper. There were men still digging at the side. Did you see, Letty?”

  Adela, who out of the corner of her eye was watching Letty’s face, saw that she was going to be argumentative. At the moment she could not think of any further reasons she could produce why she should bring Meggie to London. The one she had given should be sufficient for anybody; though she registered that, since it did not satisfy Letty, the chances were it would be generally considered inadequate, and would need to be supplemented. The mulish look on Letty’s face made Adela wonder yet again however she put up with her. “And I wouldn’t,” she thought, “if I hadn’t got the patience of Job.” Thoughts like this frequently flicked in and out of Adela’s mind, but they were passing palliatives. Toy as she might with the idea of getting rid of Letty, all the reasoning ability she had told her she could do nothing of the sort. Not even to herself did Adela admit how important Letty was to the running of “Comforts for the Bombed,” but she did accept what a lot of tedious jobs Letty took off her hands, and how impossible it would be to train another secretary in her ways, and initiate her into the intricacies of running the charity. Because she knew these things, Adela had invented a method of circumventing her momentary flashes of temper. When she felt her cheeks beginning to burn, and Letty’s notice sliding up her tongue, she recited the Athanasian Creed. That Adela knew the creed was the result of being born with a silver spoon in her mouth. When a child she and her sisters had a governess who had been with less rich families, whom she had ruled with such punishments as extra mending and half-holidays spent tidying drawers. Adela and her sisters were so maided that such punishments were not only ludicrous but disapproved of both by the maids and the girls’ parents. The governess therefore invented a system of lines, and since the girls were unruly, and plenty of lines required, she had hit on the Athanasian Creed. Dozens of copy-books had Adela filled with it, resentment in her heart, but not daring to put an eternal or an incomprehensible wrong, because one mistake meant another ten lines; yet now those weary hours of her childhood served their turn. “Whosoever will be saved,” quoted Adela to herself, and went right on to “but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.” Then, calmed, turned a smuggishly serene face to Letty.

  “As I was saying, I shall bring Meggie up
. We will write to her to-night. I shall ask Mrs. Hill. She won’t come, but I’d like her to have the invitation.”

  Letty was side-tracked; too well she knew those long silences while Adela’s eyes took on a glazed stare. She wondered what went on in Adela’s mind during her silences. Did she make her mind a blank to keep her temper in check, or did she say to herself all the things she would like to say out loud? One thing was certain, once Adela had taken refuge as it were behind a silence, the subject which had forced her there was closed for the time being. She would not so much refuse to have it reopened as apparently become deaf to any remark concerning it; there was nothing to do but to wait for another opportunity. Letty determined she would be ready to pounce on that opportunity; her words would be wasted, but it should not be for lack of protest from herself that Meggie was allowed to spend a night in London. In the meantime she did her duty. She wrote on her pad, “Write to Meggie,” and under it, “Mrs. Hill.”

  “Which night is the party?”

  “Friday, if it suits Mr. Penrose. He’s staying at The Dorchester, but he says in his letter that he’s out a great deal, so you had better send a note round by hand straight away and ask him if that day will suit and to telephone a reply. We had better dine early, so suggest eight o’clock. I understand that the cabaret at La Porte Verte is at ten, so that will suit splendidly, and will mean we can all be home about eleven.”

  Letty got up. “I think I’d better try to catch Mrs. Hill on the telephone and ask if she would be free on Friday if the party is that night; she works so hard, it’ll do her good.”

  Adela bent her mouth into a smile, but inwardly she was aggravated. Of course it was a tragic thing Claire losing her husband, but after all it had happened nearly a year ago, and there was no need for everybody to go on speaking about her in the concerned voice Miss Smithson had just used; Claire’s was not the only tragedy in the world. In any case there was no need to stress to her that a little gaiety would do Claire good. Nobody could have tried harder to help the girl than she had, and really it wasn’t everybody who would take so much trouble over a niece by marriage.

  Letty went out to the workrooms. The four hundred pieces of striped material which would, when the machine got going, be the cut-out two hundred pairs of women’s knickers, pulled at her. The “Comforts for the Bombed” ladies raised their voices:

  “Miss Smithson, this is simply ghastly cotton. It keeps knotting, and when I give the knot a pull it breaks.”

  “Miss Smithson, I do hope you are not thinking of our making anything out of that very common striped material that I saw you arranging for cutting out. I don’t think we should lose sight of the great opportunity that war brings to elevate the taste of working people.”

  “Miss Smithson, I don’t like having to complain, but I’ve brought three pairs of scissors to this room since I have worked here, and where are they? I must insist, I’m afraid, on a search being made of everybody’s work-bag.”

  “Miss Smithson, I know I’m a naughty person, but I’m afraid I’ve got to run away now. I’ve got such a silly, tired back, and sitting for long makes me feel absolutely done in.”

  Letty marched through the room, her face glued into the intently sympathetic look she had found most successful with the “Comforts for the Bombed” ladies. Her lips said: “Nothing’s as good as it was, is it?” “I know, but nice stuff is so hard to get.” “Oh, dear, I am sorry. I’ll lend you a pair of mine until I find yours.” “I’m sure Mrs. Framley’ll quite understand. She knows you aren’t strong.” But her mind was not behind her words. She was thinking of the letter to Gardiner Penrose. Who was to take it? Mrs. Framley always talked as though she still had a house full of servants, instead of one easily angry cook, one refugee lady’s maid who, though willing, was so sure that sorrow had undermined her strength that she was apt to wilt at the slightest extra labour, and one stout-hearted housemaid who could not be spared from the house for a second. There was, too, Gills the butler, but even in war-time secretaries did not send butlers running round delivering notes, especially not butlers who had become more or less the gift of Mrs. Framley to “Comforts for the Bombed.”

  In her room on the third floor which, since the lower part of the house had been given to the charity-rooms, had become known as the flat, Letty sat down at the typewriter.

  “Dear Mr. Penrose . . .”

  Gills was busy hammering down a packing-case. He was over sixty and had, in his time, worked in the most august households. He worked for Adela because fewer people were keeping butlers, and he had to take what he could get, but he had never “held” with the house. “I’ve not been accustomed to trade,” he had once told Letty. “Well, it’s a nice clean trade,” Letty had replied, for Adela’s vast income was derived from soap.

  That little talk had somehow bound Letty and Gills together. Gills approved of Letty because, not being gentry, she never tried to pretend that she was, an unusual trait, in his long experience, to find in secretaries, governesses, companions, and other such half-and-half kittle cattle, who ate sometimes with the family, but more often by themselves off trays. Letty as usual took Gills, as completely as the discretion of a secretary allowed, into her confidence.

  “Mrs. Framley’s going to give a little supper at La Porte Verte for Mr. Gardiner Penrose. She wants it to be on Friday, and says I’m to send a note round by hand and get him to telephone his answer. It’s important to get a reply quickly, as I’ve got the other people to fix up.”

  Gills looked anxiously round the hall.

  “He’s in England, is he? Not a very good week for us. Several of our ladies away and all that. We’d better hold up sending out these things, hadn’t we? Mrs. Framley will be sure to like a nice show for him.”

  Letty appreciated that to Gills the honour of what he served, whether it was a household or a charity, must take first place in his mind, so she waited while he turned over little extra attentions that he would give to “Comforts for the Bombed” before Mr. Penrose saw his charity working. After a moment, as she knew he would, he had his plans clear and turned his attention to hers.

  “You’d better let Gerda go, Miss Smithson.”

  Letty sighed.

  “That’s the only thing I could think of, but it’s cold out, and we shall need her to feel well this week, with the party and all.”

  “I can’t go.” Gills’s voice was firm. “If Mr. Penrose is about it will be all I can do to get through.”

  “And I’ve got two hundred garments to be cut out; I must get those done, or the ladies won’t be working when he comes round.”

  Gerda was in her room darning, most exquisitely, a pillow-case. The Viennese, whom Letty had always understood were gay, seemed not only to lose all semblance of gaiety on becoming refugees, which was probably natural, for those whom she had met were Jewish Viennese, but to exude gloom so that British spirits drooped on coming in contact with them; which was surely going a little far in the oppo-site direction. Did the British refugees now landed on the Americans have the same depressing effect? Did just being a refugee and depending on the charity of others produce that necessity to heave deep sighs, and to suggest about everything that it might have been enjoyable once but now obviously any pleasure was impossible? Letty put on the brisk, matter-of-fact tone which was her armour against Gerda’s essence of grief.

  “Will you take this note to The Dorchester? Mrs. Framley wants it to go at once.”

  Gerda turned to the window her black eyes, which perhaps in Vienna had sparkled, but in London had that green look in their depths seen in the bottom of a dirty river.

  “Where is that?”

  “Park Lane. It’s no distance. You should walk up through the Park. The crocuses are lovely this year, sheets of purple and gold.”

  “It is wonderful they still live.”

  Letty purposely misunderstood this reference to bombs.
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br />   “Yes, isn’t it. The gardeners thought the stands for the Coronation might have finished them, but they only had a setback, and now they are better than ever.”

  Gerda went to her cupboard and took out a good Persian-lamb coat.

  “This I shall wear if it is Park Lane.”

  Letty had seen that coat and another almost as good too often to feel envy. In Vienna Gerda had been rich, and fur coats her portion. Sorry as Letty was for her, she did think there was a certain justice, always allowing that there had to be refugees, that they should be those who had known Persian-lamb days.

  Gerda dispatched, Letty returned to her cutting out. Two pieces of material face to face for each pair of knickers. One slip, one piece facing the wrong way, and there would be one pair of knickers ruined. Fortunately for Letty she was never muddled in anything she did, and was able to go on preparing her work with her mind roaming where it would. At the moment it was of yellow-faced Gerda battling against the cold wind towards The Dorchester, legs moving, brain functioning, but only a shell. Gerda infuriated and tore at the heart at the same time.

  “You’re looking very ferocious, Miss Smithson.”

  Letty liked Mrs. Brown more than most of the workers. She lowered her voice; it was only too easy to start a conversation in which half the room joined.

  “I was thinking about refugees, particularly Mrs. Framley’s maid Gerda. She’s an Austrian Jewess and she’s had an awful time; she was rich and had a lovely home, and now her family are scattered and she’s alone here, but however sorry I am I wish she’d make more effort somehow. It’s not that she grumbles, she doesn’t, but she seems so self-centred. After all, she is living in a country that’s got its own tragedy, goodness knows, and anyway she’s jolly lucky not to be in the Isle of Man.”