by Dodie Smith
“She always liked her suits to be well-pressed and brushed,” I said.
“As if it mattered to her now!” said Rose.
And then we heard someone coming upstairs.
I went icy cold from my heart up to my shoulders.
Then the fear got into my throat so that I couldn’t speak. I just stared at Rose, in agony.
“It isn’t, it isn’t!” she gasped.
“Oh, Cassandra—it isn’t.” But I knew that she thought it was. And I knew, in the way I so often know things about Rose, that she had been frightened ever since we entered the house, that the casual way she handled the clothes had been all bluff. But I didn’t know then that she was doubly frightened, that she thought if it wasn’t Aunt Millicent coming up the stairs it was a tramp who had been hiding in the basement —that he would kill us both and put our bodies in the trunks.
Oh, wonderful Rose! With both these fears in her mind, she flung open the door and said: “Who’s there?”
The lawyers” clerk stood outside.
“How dare you, how dare you?” she cried, furiously.
“Sneaking into the house, terrifying my little sister—” “Don’t, Rose!” I said in a weak voice.
The poor clerk apologized profusely.
“And I only came to do you a good turn,” he finished. Then he handed her a letter.
Rose read it.
“But we can’t pay this!”
I snatched it from her. It was a reminder that money was owing for the cold-storage of some furs.
“You don’t have to pay anything, I fixed that by telephone,” said the clerk.
“We’re your aunts’ executors so we get her bills, see his That was actually on my desk when you came in this morning but I hadn’t got round to reading it. Those are your furs now.”
“But Aunt Millicent never had any furs,” I said.
“She thought they were cruel to animals.” And I always thought she was right.
“Well, those belonged to her,” said the clerk, “and cruel or not, you’d better pop along and get them. Furs are worth money.”
I looked at the letter again. It didn’t say what the furs were.
“They must be good ones if she paid out all that to store them,” said the clerk. “Tell you what, you shove all this stuff in the trunks and I’ll take them down to the station—leave them in the Left Luggage Office for you, see his And you cut along for the furs.”
We bundled the clothes in hurriedly—I am ashamed to say I forgot about Aunt Millicent’s dead feelings. The clerk and his taxi-driver dragged the trunks downstairs; then he got another taxi for us.
“Wish I could come with you and see the fun,” he said, “but I’m due in the Courts at three.” His hair was oily and his complexion spotty, but his heart was kind. Rose evidently thought so, too, be cause she leaned out of the taxi and said she was sorry she had been so cross.
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
“I’m sure I’d have given myself a fright if I’d been you.” Then the taxi started and he shouted after us: “Here’s hoping they’re sables.”
We hoped so, too.
“They must be fairly new as she didn’t have them when we knew her,” said Rose.
“I expect her principles dwindled as she got older and colder.”
“They’ll probably be rabbit,” I said, feeling I ought to damp our imaginings; but I didn’t really believe Aunt Millicent would have worn anything cheap.
The taxi drew up at a wonderful shop-the sort of shop I would never dare to walk through without a reason. We went in by way of the glove and stocking department, but there were things from other departments just dotted about; bottles of scent and a little glass tree with cherries on it and a piece of white branched coral on a sea-green chiffon scarf. Oh, it was an artful place—it must make people who have money want to spend it madly!
The pale gray carpets were as springy as moss and the air was scented; it smelt a bit like bluebells but richer, deeper. “What does it smell of, exactly?”
I said. And Rose said:
“Heaven.”
There was a different scent in the fur department, heavier, and the furs themselves had an exciting smell. There were lots of them lying about on the gray satin sofas; deep brown, golden brown, silvery.
And there was a young, fair mannequin walking about in an ermine cape over a pink gauze dress, with a little muff. A woman with blue-white hair came and asked if she could help us and took away our storage bill; and after a while, two men in white coats came in with Aunt Millicent’s furs and dumped them on a We shook them out and examined them. There were two very long coats, one of them black and shaggy and the other smoothish and brown; a short, black tight-fitting jacket with leg o’ mutton sleeves; and a large hairy rug with a green felt border.
“But what ever animals were they?” I gasped.
The white-haired woman inspected them gingerly.
She said the brown coat was beaver and the short jacket, which had a rusty look under its black, was sealskin. She couldn’t identify the rug at all—it looked like collie dog to me. Rose tried the long shaggy black coat on. It reached to the ground.
“You look like a bear,” I said.
“It is bear,” said the white-haired woman.
“Dear me, I think it must have been a coachman’s coat.”
“There’s something in the pocket,” said Rose.
She drew out a piece of paper. On it was scrawled: Meet madam’s train 1:20. Miss Milly to dancing class at 3. The young ladies to the Grange at 6.
I worked it out: Aunt Millicent was Father’s father’s youngest sister. These furs must have been her Mother’s.
That made them-“Heavens!” I cried. “These belonged to our great-grandmother.”
A sort of manager person came and talked to us.
We asked him if there was anything valuable.
“You couldn’t get the beaver today for love or money,” he said, “but I don’t know if you can sell it for much. We treat furs so differently now. It weighs a ton.”
The shop didn’t buy second-hand furs and he couldn’t advise us where to take them. We felt that London was the most likely place to sell them in and wanted to leave them until we could get advice from Topaz; but he said that if they stayed any longer they would run into another quarter’s storage charges and Aunt Millicent’s lawyers probably wouldn’t pay any more. So we said we would take them over our arms—it seemed the only way. We signed things and then loaded up. On the way out, we looked through the archway into the department we had come in by. There was a woman buying pale blue suede gloves. She wore the plainest little black suit, but Rose thought she looked wonderful.
“That’s how we ought to dress,” she said.
We stood there staring at the scent and stockings and things-we saw one woman buy a dozen pairs of silk stockings—until I said:
“We’re like About when he sees birds fly past the window. At any moment we’ll let out wistful cat noises.”
Rose said she felt just like that.
“Well, let’s walk round the whole shop while we’re in it,” I suggested. But she said she couldn’t bear to, loaded up with furs; so I put my head through the archway and took one big sniff of the bluebell scent, and then we went out of the main door, which was close at hand.
Rose wanted to take the furs straight back to the City by taxi, but there wasn’t one to be seen and I was so ravenous that I persuaded her we ought to have something to eat first. We tottered to Oxford Street—those furs certainly did weigh tons—and found a place with nice white tablecloths and great round cruets.
It was a bit of a business getting ourselves settled; we tried folding the furs and sitting on them, but then found we could reach neither the floor nor our plates. In the end we had to dump everything down beside us, which was rather unpopular with the waitress. But I did like the restaurant; most of the people eating there were unusually ugly, but the food was splendid. We had ro
ast chicken (wing portion, two shillings), double portions of bread sauce (each), two vegetables, treacle pudding and wonderful milky coffee. We were gloriously bloat. By the time we finished it was getting on for four o’clock.
“We’ve seen hardly anything of London,” I said, as we drove back to the lawyers. Rose said she wouldn’t have wanted to even if we hadn’t been burdened with the furs, because it was no fun being in London in the wrong clothes.
After that, she was quiet so long that I asked her what she was thinking about.
“I was willing God to give me a little black suit,” she said.
Our friend the clerk laughed his head off at the furs, but he said it was a damned shame. He thought the beaver must have been a man’s travelling coat—it was too big for him, even-and that the beaver was the lining and the Scotch plaid was the right side. He gave us cups of tea and two squashed-fly biscuits each, but we were too full to eat them; so we put them in an envelope for the journey.
When we got the old leather trunks from the Left-Luggage Office, the man there asked if there were any bodies in them.
It was then Rose told me how she had feared that there might have been—ours. We had a compartment to ourselves on the train and, as it turned cold after sunset, I put on the beaver coat, fur side inwards. It felt wonderfully friendly. It was extraordinary, I had the most affectionate feelings for all those furs -no horror of them at all, as I had of Aunt Millicent’s clothes, though I knew they must all have been worn by dead people. I thought about it a lot, getting warmer and warmer in the beaver, and I decided that it was like the difference between the beautiful old Godsend graves and the new ones open to receive coffins (which I never can bear to look at) be that time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.
A year ago, I would have made a poem out of that idea. I tried to, yesterday, but it wasn’t any use. Oh, I could think of lines that rhymed and scanned but that is all they were. I know now that is all my poems ever were, yet I used to feel I could leap over the moon when I had made one up. I miss that rather.
I leaned back and closed my eyes—and instantly the whole day danced before me. I wasn’t merely remembering, it seemed to be trapped inside my eyelids; the City, the traffic, the shops were all there, shimmering, merging. Then my brain began to pick out the bits it wanted to think about and I realized how the day made a pattern of clothes—first our white dresses in the early morning, then the consciousness of what people were wearing in London, then Aunt Millicent’s poor dead clothes, then all the exquisite things in the shop, then our furs. And I thought how important clothes were to women and always had been. I thought of Norman ladies in Belmotte tower-keep, and Plantagenet ladies living in Godsend Castle, and Stuart ladies when our house was built on the ruins—and hoops and Jane Austen dresses and crinolines and bustles, and Rose longing for a little black suit. I had the most profound, philosophic thoughts about it all, but perhaps I dreamt them for they all seem to have floated away. When Rose woke me I was dreaming of the white branched coral on the sea-green chiffon scarf.
It was time to change trains. I felt frozen when I took the beaver coat off— I thought I had better because it not only looked peculiar, but trailed on the ground. I was thankful when we were in our little branch-line train and I could put it on again.
Rose put on the coachman’s coat and we each leaned out of a window to smell the sweet country smell-you don’t notice it unless you have been away.
We still had our squashed-fly biscuits so we ate them leaning out into the night; only I saved one of mine for Stephen who was to meet us with Mr. Stebbins’s cart to take the trunks.
And then it happened. As we stopped at Little Lymping, I looked towards the guard’s van to make sure our trunks didn’t get pulled out by mistake—the stationmaster is a bit daft. And there, looking out of the train, not six yards away from me, was Simon Cotton.
His hair and beard looked very black, the sickly light from the platform lamps made him seem very pale, and even in that quick glance I noticed the naked look of his mouth.
I dodged back and yelled to Rose.
I reckoned we had ten minutes to think in-we were five miles from Scoatney and the little train crawls. But, oh, I needed more time! I couldn’t make up my mind if I ought to tell Rose what the Cottons had said about her-I was so frightened that if I didn’t she might be silly again.
“Let’s be distant with them,” I said, while I tidied my hair in the glass between photographs of Norwich Cathedral and Yarmouth Beach.
“Distant his Do you think I intend to speak to them his After they’ve ignored us?”
“But we’ll have to say “Good evening,” won’t we his We can say it coldly and sweep on with dignity.”
She said we couldn’t do anything with dignity, dressed as we were and laden with furs like hearth rugs She wanted us to jump out of the train as it stopped and dash away before the Cottons saw us.
“But we can’t dash away without our trunks,” I said. Then I had an idea—”We’ll get out on the wrong side of the train and walk along the line to the guard’s van. By the time we get there, the Cottons will be out of the station.”
She thought it would work. We decided to keep the fur coats on, so that we should be invisible in the darkness at the end of the platform if the Cottons looked back while we were getting the trunks.
Rose turned up the huge bearskin collar to hide her bright hair.
“Let’s hope no train comes on the other line while we’re walking along,” I said. But I knew it was unlikely at that time of night, and they come very slowly.
“Anyway, we could push these little trains back with one hand,” said Rose.
I hoisted the collie dog rug over my shoulder, Rose took the sealskin jacket. The instant the train stopped we jumped down on to the line.
We hadn’t realized how difficult walking would be —the coats were so awkward to hold up and we kept tripping over things. The paraffin lamps on the platform gave a very weak light and there were no lamps at all so far along as the guard’s van. We couldn’t reach the doors on our side, so we went round the back of the train and climbed up on to the platform. The doors of the van were open that side, but there appeared to be no guard to put the trunks off.
The stationmaster usually helps with luggage but he is the ticket collector, too, and I was sure he would be busy seeing the Cottons off.
“We must manage by ourselves,” I said.
The van was so dimly lit that at first we couldn’t see the trunks;
then Rose spotted them at the far end, behind a lot of tall milk cans.
As we went over, we passed a big crate. The feeble little gas mantle was just above it and I saw on the label Cotton, Scoatney, Suffolk.
Rose saw it, too, and gave a gasp. The next second we heard voices and steps coming along the platform.
We rushed to the doorway; then realized it was too late to get out.
“Quick—get behind the trunks,” said Rose.
If I’d had time to think, I might have reasoned with her—told her we should look such fools if we were discovered. But she bolted to the trunks and I bolted too.
“They’ll never see us,” she said as we crouched down.
I didn’t think they would, either-the trunks were high and the light was so weak and so far away from us.
“But crouch lower,” I whispered, “your trunk’s not as high as mine.”
“Oh, we’ll manage it between us, sir,” said a man’s voice—it wasn’t the stationmaster’s so I guessed it was the guard come back.
I’ll help,” said Neil Cotton, jumping into the van. Then he shouted: “My God!” and jumped out again. The next instant the doors crashed together with such violence that the gas mantle broke, leaving us in blackness. “What is it, what’s the matter?” shouted Simon Cotton.
I couldn’t hear what Neil answered, but I heard the guard give a roar of laughter and say: “Well, that’s a good “un, that is.”
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br /> “Oh, Rose, he saw us!” I whispered.
“Rubbish-why would he slam the doors on us?”
she whispered back.
“No, it’s something else. Shut up!
Listen!”
I raised my head cautiously. I could just see the outline of the window, a little open at the top. I heard Simon Cotton say:
“Neil, you’re crazy.”
“I tell you I’m certain.”
“Oh, come, sir-I’ve been sitting in that van,” said the guard.
“But you left the doors open.”
I saw a faint blur moving in the darkness-it was Rose’s face coming up from behind her trunk.
“What is it?” she whispered desperately.
“Ssh,.”” I said, straining my ears. I think I shall remember that minute as long as I live-the stars in the square of window, the bead of light above the broken mantle, the smell of stale milk and fish. I heard Simon Cotton say he would get a flashlight from the car.
“And tell Mother to stay inside with the door shut,” Neil called after him.
Rose began to crawl towards the window. There was a hollow clang; she had collided with a milk can.
The guard gave a low whistle.
“Sounds like you’re right, sir.”
“Of course I’m right,” said Neil.
“Haven’t I fed them in Yellow stone Park?”
And then it dawned on me.
“Rose,” I said, “you’ve been mistaken for a bear.”
I heard her gasp.
“The idiot, the idiot!”
Then she clanged into another milk can.
“Well, seven eighths of you is a bear. And the Circus is at King’s Crypt—the tents were close to the railway line, the Cottons couldn’t have missed seeing them.” I began to laugh, but stopped when I heard her struggling with the doors on the far side of the van. She got them open and I saw her black against the stars.
“Come on, quick,” she said as she jumped down on to the line.
I got across to the doorway-and every milk can clanged into the one next to it. Above the din I could hear Neil Cotton and the guard running along the platform and shouting to the engine driver.
