Sensible Life

by Mary Wesley

  “There she is.” Mabs appeared, running through the gate marked Exit. She was wearing a pale green cotton dress; Flora could see shadowy legs scissoring under the thin skirt as she ran. Behind her a figure in pink followed at a canter. They came to a halt beside Flora. “There you are! It is Flora, isn’t it?” Mabs was flushed with running. “Gosh, how you’ve grown! Look, Tash, she’s as tall as us. Is this all you’ve brought? You do travel light. I saw you get out of the train as we came over the bridge, then stand alone and forlorn on the platform as we jostled past Mr. Ticket Collector and here we are. I bet you were wishing you’d stayed on the train, never got out, never got in, perhaps?” Mabs wore a large smile. She was hatless, beautiful, elegant, confident. “You were thinking better of it,” she said.

  Flora found herself smiling.

  “She was thinking better of it, she was,” exclaimed Tashie, smiling too. “I can see it, look, she’s blushing. We’ve caught you out, you are a recalcitrant visitor. We shall have to cure your recalcitrance, shan’t we? We’ll make her enjoy herself, won’t we, Mabs?” Mabs and Tashie stood beaming at Flora.

  The porter, advancing with leisurely tread, picked up Flora’s suitcase. “In the back of the car, Missie?” he addressed Mabs.

  “Yes, please,” said Mabs. “Got your ticket, Flora? He’s ticket collector, too. We can’t get out of here unless you surrender your ticket. He’s dreadfully strict.”

  Flora, walking between Mabs and Tashie, followed the porter down the platform and into the station yard. As she walked she felt in her purse for a shilling. The porter put the suitcase onto the back seat of an open tourer. Flora handed him her ticket, which he punched and returned with a grin. As Flora got ready with her shilling he said, “You got platform tickets, Miss and Miss?”

  “How strict you are, what a bully.” Mabs handed him a shilling. “No, Flora, no, I’ve done it. You haven’t seen us, Mr. Ticket Collector,” she said.

  “Then I can’t give you the box the General was expecting off the train, can I?” said the porter, straight-faced. “That will be fourpence each.”

  “What a tease you are.” Mabs produced the money. “There. Father would skin me alive if I forgot it; it’s his port. Is that it over there?” She gestured towards a wooden case. “Can we get it onto the back seat, I wonder?”

  “Put that away.” Tashie indicated the shilling Flora was holding. “One of Mrs. Leigh’s rules is that no visitors are allowed to tip.” Then, as Flora looked doubtful, “Really, it’s true.”

  Flora stood with Tashie watching the porter manoeuvre the box onto the back seat of the car, while Mabs re-stacked a collection of parcels.

  “Right we are,” said Mabs. “There’s room for us all on the front seat. In you get, girls. I say, Tash, look at her narrow, narrow hips. Aren’t you lucky, Flora, with your gorgeous figure. Off we go then.” She started the engine and put the car in gear. “With Father’s port in the back I mustn’t drive too fast or I’ll joggle it, so easy does it, no Brands Hatchery.”

  “It’s five years, isn’t it? We worked it out at dinner last night.” Tashie sat sideways so that she could look at Flora. “I recognised you at once. Bet you thought we never noticed anybody except ourselves,” she said, “and it’s more or less true but we remembered you. We saw you watching us buy hats in St. Malo, little sly boots. We thought they were terrific, cloche hats worn low over our noses—”

  “D’you know how we found you?” asked Mabs. “Felix, of all people, told Mother where you are at school. He found you via la Tarasova; she said you kept in touch, that you wrote. You know she’s in London now? She makes my clothes and Tashie’s. We’ve told all our friends about her, she’s marvellous. She made this frock. D’you like it? No, I’m wrong, Felix told his mother, who told mine, so that’s how Mother was able to invite you to stay. I can’t tell you how pleased we all are. What did you think when you got her letter? Father has never forgotten the langoustes you produced for the picnic and Cosmo and Hubert are absolutely delighted that you are coming, as you will see presently. We don’t call Hubert Blanco quite as much as we did now he’s at Oxford, and only occasionally Lord Fauntleroy, your clever name for him. Have you seen Madame Tarasova since she came to London?” Flora shook her head. “Well, you must, she’s dying to see you like everyone else. By the way, have you brought your bathing suit? When we’ve deposited our junk, we are joining the others; they’ve gone ahead with the picnic tea to the river. It’s so hot, we thought swimming—you can swim, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Flora.

  “Golly, she can speak!” exclaimed Tashie. “She’s got a word in, Mabs. Well done, Flora, that’s quite a feat.” Tashie and Mabs laughed joyfully.

  “Isn’t this fun,” said Tashie. “Isn’t Mabs a rattle?”

  Mabs and Tashie then began to speak about two people called Nigel and Henry. Flora gathered that Mabs and Tashie were engaged to these two, Mabs to Nigel, Tashie to Henry (later she would know them as Nigel Foukes and Henry March). The conversation was about clothes for both girls’ trousseaux, some of which would be made by Madame Tarasova. She would meet these two characters shortly, Tashie said. They had gone ahead to swim with Cosmo and Hubert. Stunned by the volume of talk, Flora would have been content to remain silent but neither Mabs nor Tashie allowed this; they interrupted their discussion of clothes to shoot questions at her. Did she like their engagement rings? They held out their hands for her to admire diamond and sapphire clusters. Did she like school? Was she happy there? Was this the first time she had been away in the holidays? Had she seen Felix again? Was she fond of tennis? Could she ride? Did she still like dancing? They remembered that she had danced at the picnic. Did she still love dogs? They remembered that comical dog on the beach. Did she like the way they had their hair cut now? It was better than the shingle of five years ago, wasn’t it? Softer than a shingle. Hers, they exclaimed, was looking wonderful, so thick, they said enviously, it made theirs look positively scrappy. Would she have recognised them if they hadn’t shouted her name? Did she think she would know Cosmo and Hubert? Had she recognised Felix that time he came and took her out? They had been quite jealous when they heard about it; it was before Nigel and Henry, of course. Several years ago, two at least.

  While they chatted and questioned they exchanged amused looks as Flora answered, “Yes” and “No.” She was not to know that, remembering that if she spoke at all it was in monosyllables, someone at dinner the night before, probably Cosmo, had proposed a competition to make Flora talk freely. Tashie and Mabs had betted that they would turn her into a chatterer like themselves. General Leigh had said, “God forbid. Two of you is more than enough.”

  “I have counted eight yesses and three no’s. I am keeping score,” cried Tashie exultantly.

  “We are having a party; have you brought your party dress?” asked Mabs.

  “No,” shouted Flora, “I have not.”

  “Stop the car,” exclaimed Tashie, “she’s crying!”

  Mabs jammed on the brakes.

  “I haven’t got a party dress. I’ve never needed one. I’d like to go back to school. Please take me back to the station,” Flora screamed. She felt she would choke. Her nose had begun to run with her tears. She wished herself back at school. However boring and horrible, she could cope with its drear familiarity.

  Mabs drew up beside the road and pulled on the handbrake. The road stretched ahead, swerving gently up a hill through fields bounded by stone walls. In the crevasses of the walls there were ferns and cushions of pink and yellow stonecrop; in the grass verge beside the road pink campion and blue scabious and the loud sound of grasshoppers.

  Mabs said conversationally: “What a wonderful opportunity, Tashie. If you will let us, Flora, we would like to lend you a dress. You could choose, We are the same size as you. We would so love it if you would borrow a dress or two, wouldn’t we, Tash?”

  “Absolutely,” said Tashie. “It would be doing us a kindness.” Mabs and Tashie’s
voices had dropped an octave; they were quiet now, sitting on either side of her, serious.

  “I couldn’t,” said Flora through gritted teeth, “possibly.” She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, enraged as tears plopped off her cheeks onto her chest.

  “Of course you may not like our frocks,” said Tashie. “It isn’t everybody who approves of our taste.”

  “Well, I don’t know, she might find something,” said Mabs hopefully, “which would pass muster.”

  Flora made a sound between a grunt and a hiccough.

  “Mabs and I swap clothes the whole time,” said Tashie. “It’s between friends.”

  “And you are our friend,” said Mabs reasonably, “so—”

  “I am not,” said Flora.

  “Then please be, start at once.” Mabs was brisk.

  “Absolutely,” said Tashie, equally brisk. “Give it a try.”

  “Oh.” Flora looked from one to the other.

  “I do wish I had your eyes.” Mabs produced a handkerchief.

  “I would be content with her mouth or her nose.” Tashie took the handkerchief and dabbed at Flora’s cheeks. “The trouble is, Mabs, she will look far better in our things than we ever shall.”

  “Can’t be helped,” said Mabs. “We shall have to put up with it, won’t we?” Then she said, “I think your mother is the most Goddam awful, selfish, thoughtless bitch I have ever heard of.”

  “And I,” said Tashie, “can’t wait for something really mean, humiliating and awful, something really sordid to happen to her, the bloody cow.”

  “There!” said Mabs and Tashie. They had grown red in the face and looked much younger than they were. They sat staring at Flora, gulping their breath as they prepared to apologise.

  Thinking of that moment in later years, Flora would remember the sensation of coming out of a long, lonely, foggy tunnel into an atmosphere of affectionate delight, but at the time, sitting on the front seat of the car beside an empty country road between the two girls, all she could do was burst into delighted laughter.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WHILE FLORA, IN A state of anguished delight, was trying on Mabs’ and Tashie’s frocks, Felix in London lay on the chaise longue in Irena Tarasova’s workroom in Beauchamp Place. It was a hot afternoon; he had taken off his shoes and his jacket hung over the back of a chair. The rooms, reached up an early Victorian staircase with a mahogany rail, the treads carpeted in powder blue, were agreeably cool, the decor elegant. The contrast between this new establishment and the small stuffy room over the horse butcher in Dinard was sharp. Both the back room, where she worked, and the front room overlooking the street, where she received her clients, had plain white walls, blue and white striped curtains matching the covers of the chaise and the small sofa and armchairs in the fitting room. There was a vase of roses on a low table, a copy of Vogue, a bolt of yellow silk on an upright chair.

  In the back room Irena sat with her back to the light tacking a sleeve into the armhole of a taffeta dress. The taffeta rustled as it received the pricking needle, hissed as she pulled the thread through; out of sight pigeons chortled and cooed on the roof. Sun, slanting through the open window, lit the colours on bolts of silks and velvets stacked on shelves along one wall and highlighted the white strands in Irena’s hair. She stitched, her mouth full of pins, lips pursed in concentration.

  “I am only in London for three days,” said Felix, answering a question. “I was invited, but it is too big a rush to travel up north for one night. I am not sufficiently interested. I have been once. The girls have changed. They are grown up, both engaged to be married, did you know?”

  Irena said, “M-m-m—” nodding, “and Cosmo?” letting the name Cosmo escape through a gap in the pins.

  Felix ignored the reference to Cosmo. “Is this the chaise you had in Dinard?”

  “I bought it in the Portobello Road.”

  “I thought it was more comfortable.” Felix stretched, arching his back. “And Alexis? Your husband, still in Paris?” Irena nodded, her eyes on her work. “I have a hole in my sock.” Felix spied along the length of his leg at the sock.

  Irena removed the pins from her mouth. “I will mend it for you presently. If you had joined the house party, you would have found Flora Trevelyan staying there.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your mother persuaded Mrs. Leigh to invite her, I heard from Mabs and Tashie. I make some of their dresses. Were you thinking of taking her out from school again?”

  “No-o-o.”

  “Was it a solitary impulse?”

  “It was not a successful outing.”

  “From what you told me she was unwell.”

  “A disgusting cold.”

  “She writes to me, too. I understand it developed into measles.”

  “My God, I might have caught it. I have never had measles,” said Felix, shocked.

  “Give me the sock.”

  Felix leaned forward and removed the sock. “My elegant toes poke through all my socks.” He handed the sock to Irena, then lay back contemplating his feet. I have very white skin, he thought, for a man with dark hair. He arched his instep, admiring a blue vein. Sunlight, slanting through the green taffeta Irena was working and reflecting onto his skin, made his foot appear drowning in an arctic sea.

  “You should wear yellow socks.” Irena searched for a matching colour to the sock.

  “Yellow? A little outré, dear Irena.”

  “Narcissi are frequently yellow.” Irena stuffed her fist into the sock, preparing to darn.

  Felix stood up and wandered round the room, placing his feet with care to avoid pins lurking invisibly in the blue carpet, fingering the texture of materials, draping a length of velvet over the headless, armless, legless dressmaker’s dummy which Irena used for her work, letting his fingers trail across the cold wheel of her sewing machine. Then he stood at the window, staring at the backs of the houses in the parallel street.

  “Don’t stand in my light,” said Irena, darning. Felix returned to the chaise longue.

  “They were amusing as adolescents five years ago, and the child had a curious quality.”

  “Love.”

  “Love?” Felix frowned.

  Irena’s needle darned intricately across the hole in the sock. “Silk socks are all very well,” she said, “but not strong.”

  “Did the beautiful officers and noble nobles of St. Petersburg and Moscow not wear silk socks?” Who was it at Dinard who had—

  “I know nothing about their socks.” Irena was unsmiling. “But I hear King George wears wool, the finest wool.”

  “Of course,” said Felix, “it would be the finest. They go into almost instant holes, but it would not matter for the King, would it? How d’you learn these fascinating details?” He was laughing.

  Irena smiled. “People talk. He is, after all, cousin to the murdered Tsar, and I hope to become English.” Then, since memories of five years ago still came haunting, she said, “You must know that each of those girls dreamed of marrying you.”

  “Ah,” said Felix sombrely. “Marriage. I get a surplus of hints from my mother. Don’t you start. In any case, the Misses Leigh and Quayle are bespoke. Is that the right word?” Of course, he thought, it was Flora who had told him about Irena’s father being the court tailor; he remembered the little girl skipping up the street, her hand in his. “Do you write to the Trevelyan child?” he asked.

  “When I have time. Every few months perhaps.”

  “And you have not much time?”

  Irena shrugged: “Less than you. She writes to me about her school, the dressmaking class; I shudder to think what the clothes the poor child makes must be like.” Some day, thought Irena, the child might become a client, as Mabs and Tashie had done. The occasional letter was not only a kindness but an investment; she must write again.

  “You should visit her,” said Felix. “I did.”

  “It would take me a whole day,” Irena prevaricated.

  Irena i
s just as selfish as I, thought Felix, watching, but why not take her down to that awful boring place in the car, take the child out to lunch? With Irena there things would go well. But no. He lay back, relieved. She is staying with the Leighs so the question does not arise.

  “She must be fifteen by now,” said Irena. “She might suit you very well in two or three years’ time.”

  “Ach.”

  “No dot, of course, there is that disadvantage.” Irena had finished the darn. She cut the thread, replaced the needle, poking it into a cushion and handed the sock to Felix. “Voila! How hard does your mother press?”

  “Hard enough; gentle, remorseless, systematic. I am twenty-five, the correct age, apparently, for matrimony.”

  “Aie!”

  “Thank you, that is a beautiful darn.” Felix put the sock on. “I wish I could make as good a job of my nature.” He glanced at Irena sitting now, looking down at hands loosely clasped in her lap, unresponsive. “It must be nice working with all these lovely materials.” He picked up a length of velvet and, throwing it across his shoulder, admired himself in the cheval glass. I wonder, he thought, whether I am like my father?

  Catching his eye in the glass, Irena said, “Mrs. Leigh asked your mother whether her husband Jef was your father; they were having tea at Gunters. Your mother said no. I could see what you are thinking,” she said.

  “How do you know?” asked Felix, staring at Irena’s reflection, “that Mrs. Leigh—”

  “Women sometimes develop an intimacy with their dressmakers, as they do with their hairdresser. It is like talking to animals. English women tell everything to their dogs, and quite a lot to their dressmakers. Mrs. Leigh was appalled at what she had asked your mother. She said it ‘just popped out’. Apparently,” Irena was smiling now, “Mrs. Leigh was paying for the tea and your mother kept offering her cakes as though she was the hostess; it is these little things which create chaos in life.”