The Trouble-Makers

by Celia Fremlin

  Oh, well, she reassured herself, most wives probably balance the domestic peace on a series of such evasions and subterfuges, you couldn’t always be worrying about these trifles, analysing your motives; and anyway, this Saturday it would have been more awful than usual because of its being Curfew’s birthday. She stole a cautious look at her husband. No; he was in no mood to be subjected to Curfew’s birthday. Bits of wilting lettuce were probably at this very moment being wrapped messily up in tissue paper on Jane’s eiderdown, while Flora lay reading comics in the adjoining bed, and saying “Shut up!” at intervals. And Clare, in the next room, would still be sound asleep. It was disgraceful, really, at a quarter-past nine in the morning.

  But of course it was worse when they actually came down; arguing, tramping about the kitchen, fishing about in cupboards for packets of cornflakes, warming up rashers of bacon and making toast at the cooker, where Katharine was already trying to put on a stew for lunch. And now Jane was wailing because the grape she’d left wrapped in silver paper ready for Curfew’s birthday had disappeared.

  Heaven send that Stephen didn’t hear her from the sitting-room, where he was now sitting scowling—Katharine could feel it through the solid wall—over the morning paper.

  At last even the late breakfast was over to the last scatter of toast crumbs, and what Katharine always thought of as the Saturday Hover began.

  “Mummy,” began Flora, hovering over her mother’s chair and helping herself to a sliver of carrot from the knife, “what are we doing today? Can we go out somewhere?”

  “I’m afraid not—at least I can’t take you,” said Katharine. “I’ve got to get this stew on, and do the shopping, and I must catch up with the ironing today.”

  “When can we start Curfew’s birthday?” demanded Jane, leaning over Katharine on the other side. “He’s getting terribly impatient. He——”

  “Not till I’ve got the stew on,” repeated Katharine patiently. “Not till this afternoon, really, Jane, because this morning I’ve got to——”

  But of course Jane wasn’t listening to what Katharine had to do this morning—nor, indeed, was Katharine herself, for even while she recited her list of tasks, she was simultaneously preparing to parry Clare’s request to be shown how to pick up the stiches for the neck of her jumper. It was a shame, really, not to be able to drop everything and help her at once; for Clare had been working for months and months at that piece of knitting: slowly, doggedly, without even any hope, apparently, of ever finishing it, she had been going on, and on, over every obstacle, like a tearful but indefatigable tank. It was a miracle, really, that she should ever have reached the point of needing to pick up the stitches for the neck. But all the same, the stew must go on—and any moment now Stephen would be wandering back into the kitchen, folded newspaper in his hand, and saying “Well, what are the plans for today?” All of them, one after another, dumping their week-end leisure in her lap like so many bundles of washing, taking it for granted that it was her job to deal with it.

  “Not till after lunch, dear” “Not till after tea, dear” “Not till tomorrow, dear”—could she extract from her harassed programme nothing but these negative responses? Katharine took refuge in her usual inadequate solution:

  “I’m going shopping in a few minutes,” she announced. “Would any of you like to come?”

  The response was exactly as she had expected. A long-drawn-out “Uughgh!” from Flora; a blank, slightly disheartened look from Clare as she let her knitting slither into a chair; and a squeal of joy from Jane.

  “Oh, yes, Mummy!” she cried, still young enough to see shopping as a magic gateway to unfathomable delights in the way of minor personal possessions; and her delight suddenly lit the morning for Katharine with familiar yet always unexpected radiance. Jane skipped about the house getting ready as if she was preparing for some wonderful holiday; and as the two of them set forth in the golden stillness of the October sunlight, Katharine felt herself sharing Jane’s mood. For her, too, Jane’s two sixpences shone like newly discovered planets shedding their glory even across the buying of six lamb chops and two and a half pounds of scrag end.

  There were four overdue library books to be returned, which together had amassed fines of 2s. 4d.; and as she fumbled for change, the Librarian gave Katharine that look which always made her feel that they should either raise the fines to a point where they actually enjoyed taking then in, and smiled over it, or else lower then to a point where you felt they were entitled to look as disagreeable as they liked. As things were, you seemed to be getting the worst of both worlds.

  Jane loved the library. She always darted instantly and incomprehensibly to the Reference section, dragged out some mighty volume apparently at random, opened it, and pored with catholic enthusiasm over whatever met her eye until Katharine was ready to go.

  It was a pity that today Jane should have picked on a particularly gigantic tome, with particularly tiny print, and that she should be positively frowning over it just as Stella came into the library and dumped her pile of books on the counter. None of them had fines, of course—Stella always said that to accumulate fines on library books showed an unconscious resistance to reading them at all; though it always seemed to Katharine that a conscious resistance to making a special trip with them in the rain had exactly the same effect financially.

  Stella watched Jane pityingly for a moment, and then hurried over to Katharine.

  “It’s funny how you can always tell the grammar school children here,” she whispered gaily and noisily into Katharine’s ear. “Their heads are always bent downwards, looking at books. It’s funny—the children from freer schools always have their heads up, looking at people.”

  It seemed to Katharine that here was a single accusation masquerading as a multiple one. After all, to read a book at all—particularly one of the size Jane had chosen—you would have to bend your head, unless you had quite extraordinarily strong arms for holding it in front of your face; and to look at people you’d have to look straight ahead, unless you were very strangely positioned, somewhere up in the rafters. But it would be difficult to get all this across satisfactorily in a hoarse whisper, so Katharine contented herself with murmuring that Jane wasn’t at a grammar school yet, and very likely (would Stella take this as modesty or boasting?) never would be.

  “Ah, but she’s on the treadmill already!” hissed Stella. “You can see it, just from the line of her shoulders! Now, when Mavis comes to the library——”

  “She chooses books from the two upper shelves, I suppose,” murmured Katharine pleasantly—and glanced anxiously across at Jane to see if she did look over-studious compared with other children. Was she going to be shortsighted, perhaps, peering and frowning like that, or was it just that the table was rather high and her chair rather low?

  “I’ve just been in to see Mary Prescott,” Stella was whispering eagerly. “She seems—don’t you think?—in a bit of a state?”

  There was an uncharacteristic hesitation in Stella’s manner; and it flashed across Katharine’s mind that perhaps Stella knew everything that Katharine herself knew—but wasn’t sure if Katharine did. Perhaps Mary was one of those maddening people who confide their innermost thought in absolute confidence to absolutely everybody, leaving a trail of gossip-hungry victims who have all promised faithfully not to breathe a word of it to each other, and yet who are all almost sure that each other already know.

  “Yes—it’s all rather a shock for her, of course,” replied Katharine, equally cautiously. Unless one of them definitely broke faith with Mary, this could go on for ever. Probably Auntie Pen had been told, thought Katharine crossly, annoyed with herself for having felt flattered at having been specially chosen as confidante from among all Mary’s friends. Yes, of course Auntie Pen would have been told: and Mrs Forsyth as well, very likely; and Mary’s daily woman…. Oh, well if Mary wanted to look for trouble …

  “The police were there this morning!” Stella was chattering on, in le
ss and less of an undertone as the interest of her revelations mounted “And it seemed to upset Mary terribly—I can’t think why. They’d only come to get a description from Alan of what this burglar person looked like, and Mary was really quite rude to them. Almost as if she didn’t want them to find out who he was. It does make you think, doesn’t it, about what we were saying the other day? I mean this idea that perhaps it was a boy-friend, quarrelling with Alan over Mary….”

  So Stella didn’t know the truth after all. Katharine felt her vanity restored, and she was also relieved on Mary’s account. Better, surely, that Mary should be the victim merely of these idle and quite unfounded speculations than that people should begin to suspect the truth.

  For Mary was no actress. Her odd and evasive behaviour over the whole business could not fail to rouse suspicions of one sort or another, and suspicions that are unfounded surely cannot do a fraction of the damage of suspicions based on fact.

  “I must go and see her,” murmured Katharine, non-committally. “But I can’t quite think when—I’m always terribly busy on Saturdays——”

  “Oh, she’ll be all right today,” Stella assured her. “I shall be there this afternoon, and I’ll stay as long as she likes. I wouldn’t let her down at a time like this.”

  I’m sure you wouldn’t, thought Katharine wryly; and nor would any other of Mary’s friends. While there was one single crumb of further gossip to be extracted from Mary’s cringing and evasive lips, so long would her friends rally round, sympathising, questioning, probing….

  Including Katharine herself, of course. Ah, but that was different! She was trying to help Mary. Perhaps that’s what all the others felt they were doing, too? Perhaps, indeed, that was what they were doing. For gossip, be it never so unkind, does at least serve to give one’s troubles a social framework. It embraces them, takes them to itself, and returns them perhaps a little unrecognisable, but nevertheless cared for, labelled—given some sort of positive status in the drama of the neighbourhood. And might not this be a sustaining sort of thing—a strength and a support whose value is only appreciated if it is at some time withdrawn?

  Katharine picked up the two books on which she would be paying 8d. fines around the beginning of December, dragged Jane out of her study of the boyhood of Savonarola—this had followed straight on, without pause or change of expression, from her investigation of the habits of the Australian Brown-footed Rat—and they set off home.

  It had been a busy morning, and it was natural enough that among all her other preoccupations Katharine had given little thought to last night’s disturbance. Certainly she had done nothing about implementing her midnight intention of examining the dustbin by daylight; and by now, of course, the dustmen had come and gone.

  CHAPTER XI

  “HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you

  Happy Birthday to you

  Happy Birthday, dear Curfew

  Happy Birthday to you.”

  Jane chanted the words softly as she sat cross-legged on the hearthrug, while Curfew crouched insecurely on her inadequate lap, staring with stupid, lustrous eyes into the flickering firelight. His fast-withering presents, mixed with wet tissue paper, lay neglected on the rug; but Jane didn’t seem to mind. He had had them—that was the main thing. What “having” them in this context could possibly mean, Katharine herself could not understand, but she knew that to a nine-year-old brain it was plain as plain.

  Nearly every member of the family had contributed to the festival; even Flora had condescendingly wrapped a slice of cucumber in a corner of blue laundry paper, and stuck it down with Selotape. And as for Clare, she had gone to a lot of trouble to carve a carrot into the shape of a doll, had wrapped it carefully first in silver paper and then in coloured crepe paper, and had adorned it with a huge postcard-size label saying: “To Dearest Curfew, With Much Love from Clare.” in eight different colours. Sometimes Katharine was touched almost to tears by Clare’s affection for her youngest sister, her readiness to enter into her childish interests. At others, she wondered if it was perhaps an expression of Clare’s longing for her own lost childhood; for the days before gerunds, and stockings, and brassières, and failing to get into the Middle School hockey team. Was it something to worry about rather than to delight in? No, of course it wasn’t … and now Clare was accompanying Jane’s song on the piano, improvising charmingly in the bass: and with sudden, furious longing, Katharine wished that she wished Stephen was there. She didn’t wish it, of course; in fact, at this very moment, she was listening nervously for the sound of his key in the lock—but if only she could wish it! If only he was the sort of father who would join joyfully in this sort of ridiculous scene—who would sit there with Jane in the firelight, teasing her, talking nonsense to Curfew, examining his presents with laughing admiration. Or—this occurred to Katharine for the very first time—if only she was the sort of wife who could have turned him into a father like that. Could it be she who had turned him, instead, into the sort of father who would scowl round the room, maddened by the disorderliness of it all, the idiocy, and the crowning impropriety of bringing a rabbit indoors when it ought to be kept outside in a hutch, if kept it must be?

  Heavens! There he was! As Katharine listened to the brisk, firm footsteps coming up to the front door, she was conscious of a physical shrinking behind her ribs. Now this lovely evening would be spoiled, if not by him (for after all he did sometimes restrain his irritation on such occasions), then by her own fear of his irritation—her tenseness—the bright, uneasy way she would speak to him as he came in.

  Scrambling over the muddle of greenery in her path, she hurried out into the hall to greet—or did she mean intercept?—her husband. But the footsteps outside were not followed by the expected sound of his key in the lock. Instead, there was a knock, and a ring, and another knock; and who could be thus urgently demanding admittance but Stella?

  “Oh—hullo,” said Katharine with mixed relief and annoyance; for Stella wasn’t an ideal guest at a rabbit’s birthday party either. Katharine felt almost sure that Jack and Mavis didn’t indulge in anything half so babyish, and it would turn out to be all something to do with going to grammar schools.

  So she kept Stella standing, rather inhospitably, in the hall and listened to her message, which came, as Katharine had half expected, from next door.

  “Mary says will you go in there for a few minutes, if you possibly can? She seems scared of being alone, poor thing,” explained Stella condescendingly. “And the others seem to be out. I’ve told her I can’t stay any longer … and actually, I don’t understand why she’s so frightened, do you? Do you think she can possibly be thinking that—whoever it was—might be coming back? I wonder if she——?”

  Stella had lowered her voice a little for the last few sentences, but evidently not enough, for here was Flora, rigid with interest, hovering halfway out of the sitting-room door. If only they’d learn to eavesdrop a little less obviously, reflected Katharine, they’d get away with it a great deal more often, and learn all sorts of exciting things.

  “Run away, Flora,” she ordered ineffectually. “And shut the door.” Flora, of course, did neither. It would have been necessary either to say it much more sharply or else at least twice if it was to have any effect, and Katharine did not want to do either under Stella’s assessing gaze. That was the trouble with Stella: whenever she was present, things which had merely been a nuisance before suddenly became a Parent-Child Relationship.

  “All right. Tell her I’ll come quite soon,” she said to Stella, as unilluminatingly as she could for the benefit of the attentive Flora. “Tell her I’ll try not to be long….” Hang it all, why should she be apologetic about it! What right had Mary to expect them all to dance attendance on her like this? Anyone would think she was the invalid, not Alan. No one seemed to be visiting him, or talking about him, or worrying about how he was. Did he mind? Or didn’t he notice? Or would he have hated it if people had made a fuss of him? Probably he would; whereas Mary lov
ed it. So it seemed to be all for the best, really, as injustice so often does.

  The Prescotts’ house was, as usual, bitterly cold. The sitting-room had plainly not been used all day, and Mary lit the gas-fire now for the first time as she brought Katharine in. Katharine sat down in the chair nearest the fire, and leaned towards the chilly blue flame, which as yet made no impact on the big, unwelcoming room. Why had Mary brought her in here, in this formal sort of way, like a visitor, instead of just calling her into the kitchen for the usual gossip over the ironing or the washing-up?

  The feeling of constraint increased as Mary seated herself in the chair opposite, with neither knitting nor sewing to soften the growing need for one of them to think of something to say. Desperately, Katharine searched for a subject that would not be so close to Mary’s anxieties as to seem inquisitive, and yet not so far away as to make it impossible for Mary to renew her confidences if she wished to.

  “So you had Stella for the afternoon?” Katharine took the plunge. “How’s she getting along?”

  “She seems all right,” said Mary unhelpfully: and then, suddenly, she came angrily alive:

  “She’s been going on and on at me about dark husbands with raincoats! Nobody in the whole neighbourhood seems to have married a fair man, except Stella herself, of course—she would be different! She seems to think that I’m playing Femme Fatale to the lot of them, and that they’ve been fighting Alan over me! Me!” Mary gave a short, bitter laugh. “A few years ago I dare say I’d have been able to break up one or two happy homes, but not now. Not after ten years married to Alan.”