Caroline England

by Noel Streatfeild

  Actually he had found Caroline infuriating during the move. She had been desperately competent, and her taste was admirable but she had worn the air of a pleased sheep-dog who is rounding a flock of rather temperamental sheep into a fold. John did not want to look on Swan as a fold because he was pleased with it, and he would not be if he thought he was being ‘folded.’ The place was charming, and ideal for entertaining. He visualised amusing evenings under the apple-tree, tearing the world to pieces. It was a nice house and Caroline had been clever with it, but he did wish she would not accentuate the word ‘home’ every time she mentioned it.

  He moved across to his largest book-case and suddenly pounced. Something had got shifted, a dictionary was out of place. He did not know where it should live, but certainly not there; he had not seen it for years. The dictionary opened at the fly-leaf: “John, from his Father. Christmas 1874.” Looking at it he had a violent flash of memory as clear as a photograph. He saw the breakfast table on Christmas morning. It was their first Christmas in the new home. His mother had cooked a dish of sausages. At all their places were the parcels. He had been wanting a dictionary since the spring and he saw his eye fall on a square brown parcel and could remember his mental ‘That’s it’ as he seized hold of it. He put the dictionary back in the shelf absent-mindedly. Was Caroline and her possessive qualities really at the bottom of his faint distaste at moving into this house?

  Was there a stab of conscience? Did the house and garden link to his memory of that other move?

  He had been born over the shop; it was a bit crowded up there but his mother was a good manager. Later, when they got on well, there had come the move. He was about Laurence’s age by then. How proud he had been. Every day, after school, he had taken parties of friends to see not only the house and the garden, which was big enough to grow their own potatoes, but, greatest wonder of all, the tiny bedroom of his own that his mother had somehow contrived so that her clever son could work in peace.

  John was not a bad son. He went home from time to time. He remembered Christmas and birthdays. He would have liked to have given monetary help, but they were quite comfortably off now. But he had grown away from them so. He had always been growing away. He could not remember a time when he had not felt cramped at Butterford not only by the place, but by everything his family and their friends stood for. In Butterford it was firmly believed that God called you to the station in life in which He intended you to stay. Mentally, he had always fought that creed. You lived in a state of life to which you belonged, and if you started in the wrong place, you rose to the right one as naturally as water finds its level. But, somewhere in his sub­conscious, was a wish that never was quite framed. A wish that he had not had to climb. That he had that ‘take-it-for-granted’ manner of the people who were born to the life he now led. That he had not found that his best armour was to ridicule his own beginnings. He had made people laugh about Butterford. His father and mother seemed quite happy that he should keep his worlds apart. They realised they did not belong where he now was. They would like to see the grandchildren, but seemed contented with photographs. John knew that this moment of sentimentality would not last, but there it was. To-night he wished that he had not cut himself off. That his father could come to stay and he could hear him say:

  “Aye, it’s a right nice little place you have here, John.”

  In the nursery Caroline was playing with James before he went to bed. She had him on her knee and was jigging him up and down.

  “A gee-gee and a gentleman

  Went out to ride one day.

  Sing horsey-porsey, walky-porky,

  trotty, oh so gay.

  But the horse to running took

  And the man with terror shook

  And they neither looked so happy

  At the ending of the day.

  “Sing horsey-porsey, trotty-wotty,

  runny all away,

  Instead of horsey-porsey, walky-porky,

  trotty, oh so gay.”

  Nanny was ironing at the table. She looked up and laughed.

  “That’s a funny rhyme, Ma’am . It’s always made me laugh. I remember the first time you sang it. Master Laurie was a baby. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘if that isn’t a caution. Walky-porky,’ whoever heard the like.”

  Caroline looked round smiling.

  “I don’t know where it comes from. When I was very small, my nurse Naomi used to sing it to me.” She frowned, looking back into the nursery at the Manor.

  She recalled a warm carbolicky smell and a big lap. “She went. I never knew why.”

  Nanny laid down her iron.

  “And so have you got to go, haven’t you, Master Jimmie?” She came over to the child. “What about bed for Nanny’s sleepy boy?”

  James swivelled round on Caroline’s knee and held out his arms.

  “Bed,” he agreed cheerfully. Caroline pulled him back.

  “What about a lovely good-night kiss for mummy?” James, with the air of a man interrupted on important business, turned back and gave her a wet, noisy kiss.

  Nanny took him by the hand.

  “Can I have all my ducks in my barf?” James enquired hopefully.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” Nanny agreed. “Though, mind you, there’s no ducks for a boy that bites bits out of his sponge.”

  Caroline looked at them with a mist in her eyes. “Oh, Nanny, if you only knew what it meant to me to see the children so happy with you. When I think of my childhood and theirs, I feel they are very lucky little people.”

  Nanny did wish Mrs. England chose better times to reminisce.

  “And very proper too,” she agreed vaguely, and led James into the night nursery.

  Caroline looked down at Helen, who, with tremendous absorption, was playing with her dolls on the floor in the corner. Caroline smiled; she thought playing with dolls was such a suitable little girls’ game. She had never played with them herself, but then she lived in the country and had a garden.

  “Are you putting Violet to bed, darling?” Helen looked up.

  “No, I’m dressing her for her wedding.”

  “Oh.” Caroline came and sat on the floor beside her. “Whom is she marrying?”

  “Well” Helen looked round the assembled dolls, “I’m not quite sure yet. There’s only kangaroo and my golliwog what you could describe as real men. It always has to be one of them.”

  “If you’ll tell me which one it is,” Caroline suggested, “I might dress him for you.”

  Helen lifted her knees and collected both the golliwog and kangaroo and put them under her.

  “Thank you, Mummy, I’d rather dress him my own self.”

  Caroline continued to sit on the floor, but Helen paid not the slightest attention to her, so at last she got up. “I’ll be along presently darling, to kiss you good night and to hear you say your prayers.”

  Helen made no reply. Mummy came every night and the affair seemed toner to call for no comment.

  Caroline went to the schoolroom. It was a lovely room looking on to the garden. She had decorated it charmingly with a mixture of those useful things that must be in a schoolroom, and gay chintzes and bright paint such as would amuse two little girls. When she came in Elizabeth was crouched over a copy-book. Miss Brown was sitting on the window-ledge looking into the garden.

  “Hullo darling!” said Caroline brightly to Elizabeth. “Comfy in your new room?”

  Elizabeth unwillingly raised her eyes from the page on which she was writing.

  “I’m quite comfortable, thank you. If I’ve got to have a schoolroom, I suppose this is all right.”

  “What are you writing?” asked Caroline quickly, unwilling to start on yet another discussion about schools.

  “A novel.”

  Caroline sat down beside her. “When is Mummy going to read it?”

>   Elizabeth went back to her writing. “Never.”

  Miss Brown looked round from the window. “That’s a very rude way to talk.”

  “Oh no,” Caroline shook her head. “Mummy quite understands. It’s one of those secret things, isn’t it darling, to be kept all to yourself?”

  “No.” Elizabeth bit the end of her pen. “As a matter of fact, I want to read it to Daddy if he lets me, but I don’t suppose he will.”

  Caroline was convinced that it was a mistake to let children feel even for a moment that you were out of sympathy with them. She made her voice very gentle.”Don’t you think, if Daddy is going to hear it, I might too?”

  “No.” Elizabeth pushed her hair off her face, and raised rather worried eyes to her mother. “You see it isn’t any good really, and if Daddy reads it, he’ll say so, but if you read it you’ll say it’s lovely, and I don’t want that.”

  “I shouldn’t say it was lovely unless I thought it was, darling.”

  Elizabeth sighed.

  “You said that pin-cushion I made for your birthday was lovely, and it wasn’t, it had some very bad stitches.”

  “I meant lovely to me because you had made it.”

  “Well, that’s just it. I expect you’d find my novel lovely because I’d written it.”

  Caroline exchanged a glance with Miss Brown over Elizabeth’s bent head. Miss Brown ’s glance was sympathetic. Caroline’s was meant to say ‘A mother always understands.’ Actually, it looked hurt. Miss Brown got off the window-ledge.

  “Well, whatever the novel’s like, it’s got to go away for to-night. It’s time for your supper.”

  Elizabeth closed the book and laid her pen on the ink­stand. Caroline bent and kissed the top of her head.

  “I’ll be up presently, darling.”

  As the door closed, Miss Brown came and sat down opposite Elizabeth.

  “You can be the most unpleasant child. You’re unpleasant to me because you would rather go to school. I think you’re an idiot. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with me that you’re not at school. It seems a bit unkind to blame me, but I let that pass. But why in the world be unpleasant to your mother?”

  Elizabeth got up and put her exercise book away in the cupboard. It was a specially contrived cupboard with ‘Betsy’ written on one side and ‘Helen’ on the other. There was a drawer in each half which Caroline had said was ‘For your very own special.’ Each drawer had a lock. Elizabeth had sniffed at the cupboard, but actually it pleased her to have something of her own with a key to turn in the lock.

  “I’m not unpleasant,” she said sulkily, “only Mummy does fuss so. I like being left alone.”

  “You’ll grow up as hard as a nail if you go on like this. You never think of anybody but yourself. Suppose you do like to be left alone, think of your mother’s side of it. She is a person who would like to hear sometimes that you are happy and enjoying some of the things she does for you.”

  “If she wants to do anything for me,” Elizabeth argued, “she can send me to school, then of course I shall say I am pleased.”

  There were footsteps in the passage and a sound of the chink of a teaspoon against a cup.

  “There’s your supper.” Miss Brown gave Elizabeth an amused smile and got up. “What’s the matter with you is lack of imagination. You can’t see that your mother honestly feels that you’re happier here.”

  Elizabeth set her lips.

  “I’d say it was Mummy who hadn’t any imagination. She can’t see I’d be happier at school.”

  John heard Caroline’s step on the stairs. He shot a mental warning to himself. “Now do be really nice. She has taken an immense amount of trouble. It’s not her fault you are feeling at odds with yourself.”

  Caroline looked at him anxiously as she came in. “Nothing was out of place, was it?”

  He smiled, noticing, as he had often noticed before, how much of his bad temper with Caroline was worked off in her absence. Now that she was in the room he had no inclination to be unkind.

  “You’re the most desperately efficient woman.” She put her arm through his.

  “Come and see the garden. It’s really looking very nice and I don’t suppose you gave it more than a glance, did you?”

  John examined the garden. It was looking very nice. He admired the two beds with the London pride, Canterbury bells, antirrhinums, nasturtiums and marguerites. “We had a garden when I was about twelve. I grew some stuff out of a Picket. Is there a flower called candy something?”

  Caroline nodded.

  “Candytuft. I used to grow it too. Would you like me to buy a packet? You can help plant them.”

  John drew her towards the seat under the apple-tree.

  “Do you know what I’ve been working on lately? A play. I’ve only messed about with the first act so far, but that name has given me my title. I shall call it ‘Candytuft.’”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He hesitated, then shook his head.

  “No. You shall come to a rehearsal. Better to see it acted.” He got up and walked eagerly up and down the little lawn. “Candytuft! That’s a perfect title.”

  In August, John decided to go to Annecy. He had never been there, but someone had told him about it, and he loved the name and decided it was the only place in which he could rewrite the second act of “Candytuft.”

  He got the idea just as he was dropping off to sleep one night. He woke up Caroline.

  “Would you like to come to Annecy in August?” Caroline pulled her sleep-sodden wits together. “Annecy!” For a moment he might have said Moscow or Peking, for all the geography it brought to mind; then she woke up.

  “Oh yes. It’s a splendid idea. So good for Laurie and Betsy. They can improve their French. I don’t see why Helen and Jimmie shouldn’t come too. Nanny can boil all their milk and water, I expect it will be quite safe and—”

  John rolled over and found her hand.

  “Stop making plans. Either you and I go to Annecy alone or I go by myself I am not moving en famille. I want to rewrite my second act undisturbed by Jimmie’s howls, or by hearing from Laurie how Smith Minor won the potato race.”

  “Darling,” Caroline’s voice was horrified, “you can’t mean to spend your holiday away from Laurie? He’s going to his public school next term. I do think we ought to see all we can of him.”

  John grinned into the night.

  “As the crow flies, or even as trains run, Marlborough is nearer than Bristol, and the terms are the same length as he has now. Do you think we need a leave-taking as though he were bound for a better land?”

  Caroline hated to hear death spoken of so lightly. She shivered.

  “It’s the end of his being a little boy. Somehow, going to a public school seems to start them growing up.” John turned over again and settled down to sleep. “I had not intended my mild suggestion of how we should spend a holiday to keep us awake all night. As for your last statement, it’s ludicrous. You’ve never known a boy of public school age. Your dear brother, Ellison, was not old enough to go to one until long after the Manor door had been closed to you. It’s only another stage of education anyhow, and not worth making a fuss about. However, I take it your motherly love will insist that you spend August with the children, so I’ll go to Annecy on my own.”

  Caroline went with the children to Hastings. She weighed the two alternatives very carefully, but remembering her own childhood she had a dread of leaving the children alone with a nurse and governess. She was sure Nanny and Miss Brown were kind; but then, her mother had presumably thought Nurse kind. She dreaded that her children should ever for a moment feel cut off from their parents. At any time they must be able to discuss a nursery or schoolroom grievance. Then, too, there was Laurence. He was at a difficult age, too old to be expected to obey Nurse, and Miss Brown he scarcely knew, and there
was no reason why he should accept her authority. A boy, by the system that he had to be away most of his childhood, surely had the right to expect his parents to spend his holidays with him? She tried to persuade John to change his plans. She used every argument she could manage, but he swept them away.

  “My dear, I’m fond of the children, but my work must come first. Honestly, I couldn’t get my thoughts clear with them all under our feet.”

  “But Laurie sees so little of you.”

  “He wouldn’t see much more of me if I went away with him. You know how many hours I’m working.”

  John tried to pretend to himself that to go off alone was just what he wanted. He was sick of domesticity. Actually, at this particular moment, he would have preferred to have Caroline. He felt it would be a help to be spoilt, to be the one person that mattered, to have her day built round him and his work. To be sure, after each day’s struggle, that she was about, waiting to hear how the play was going, and to do with him any amusement that he felt in the mood for. He ignored the fact that at no time was Caroline really interested in what he wrote. He fooled himself into thinking that, freed from house ties, she would change, that the children and the daily round would cease to be her main interest. He went off to Annecy disgruntled. A poor, ill-used, over­worked man, whose wife put her children first.

  Caroline knew that John felt ill-used and was miserable about it. She did not think she was doing wrong. In fact, she thought he was, but that did not alter the fact that he seemed to her like Laurence when he wanted something he could not have.

  It was Laurence who made Caroline enjoy the Hastings holiday. Elizabeth was no companion to anybody. Apart from her usual unsociableness, she was still writing, and was always crouched over an exercise book, or wandering about the beach alone, a wild look in her eyes. Helen and James were, of course, too small for him. He made various friends with whom he bathed and played cricket, but he was really happy with his mother. He entirely understood her. To him her raised eyebrows and rather hurt look, when he went off with friends, were amusing.

  He teased her about them.