Mrs. Tim of the Regiment

by D. E. Stevenson

  Tim then opens another letter and finds that it is from Mrs. Strutts, the proprietor of Rokesby, containing a demand for the sum of £6. 4s. 21/2 d. for damages and breakages during our tenancy. (Feel that this has arrived at an unfortunate moment.) Tim says what on earth does this mean, he thought I had replaced all the breakages. Reply that I did so to the best of my ability, and that this must be for damages. Tim says ‘Damages be blowed!’ If Mrs. Strutts thinks she has only got to send in a bill like this for him to sit down and send off a cheque by return she will find herself mistaken. He won’t pay a halfpenny without a fully detailed statement. The whole thing is just a try on – and after we had that beastly drawing-room chair repaired at our own expense! Tim hopes that Mrs. Strutts will get someone like the Carters in her house next time, and then she’ll see the difference between damages, and fair wear and tear. Do I realise – Tim says – that we paid for fair wear and tear in the rent (which was high enough in all conscience for a poky little den like Rokesby), and that therefore she has no right whatsoever to charge extra for it?

  Reply that I do realise it, and that I agree with him but point out that she may have discovered for one thing that the leg of the small table in the morning room was broken.

  ‘You glued it on, didn’t you?’ Tim says indignantly. ‘Well then, what more can she want?’

  There are one or two other small items which I have been slightly uneasy about. I review them hurriedly in my mind, but decide not to trouble Tim with them at present.

  Tim now takes up the paper and reads aloud a long article about the financial situation of Britain and the possibility of the country being reduced to beggary in three years. Feel so depressed about everything that I refuse marmalade. Tim is astonished at this, as my fondness for marmalade is a family joke. He wants to know if I am ill, or only trying to save the country from bankruptcy. Reply haughtily that if everyone in the country gave up something, the saving would be considerable. Tim laughs, and says that is so like a woman – to throw away seven guineas on a perfectly useless dress and save a halfpenny-worth of marmalade at breakfast.

  Silence alone can express my injured feelings.

  Tim then turns to the Financial News, and reads that the Mo Sin Orange Grove – in which we hold a hundred shares – proposes to pass its dividend.

  A gloomy silence ensues, and is only broken when Maggie appears to clear away the breakfast. ‘Cook’s waiting on you, Mistress Christie,’ she whispers. I gather my scattered wits and sail into the kitchen with a fixed smile, where I am greeted by the remark that, ‘It is bad enough to get through the work without being kept back.’

  Am conscious that my hour for visiting the kitchen has been getting later and later owing to the increased terror and hatred which I feel for its denizen, but I merely smile more brightly and say, ‘Captain Christie and I were rather late for breakfast this morning, I’m afraid.’

  We start work on the day’s menu forthwith.

  Sixth April

  Mrs. Loudon rings me to ask me to go to tea this afternoon, an invitation which I accept with pleasurable anticipations. Unfortunately Tim arrives home just as I am starting, and says Why is it when I have the whole day to do what I like I must go out just as he gets home from his work? Reply mildly that I have been asked to tea with Mrs. Loudon, and that the usual hour for same is 4.30 p.m. Tim says it does not matter, he will spend the time greasing Cassandra. I know from this that Tim is really hurt at my desertion, as Cassandra only receives grease when Tim feels thoroughly neglected. Offer to forgo tea with Mrs. Loudon, but Tim says no, I had better go. No use to offend people to start off with, he will be all right, he ought to be used to being alone by this time, etc., etc.

  Mrs. Loudon is really pleased to see me, and asks what I have been doing. Tell her about my luncheon party, which I feel sure will amuse her. Mrs. Loudon laughs and says that Mrs. Porter always was a ‘crouse cat’. I realise at once that she must know Mrs. Porter, and feel that my account of the good lady’s hospitality has been rather too humorous to be altogether kind. Try to retract some of my more flagrant statements, but Mrs. Loudon will have none of it – ‘Never heed, Mrs. Christie,’ she says with a twinkle in her eye, ‘I can’t be bothered with people who never say an ill word about their neighbours. They’re as savourless as porridge without salt. Now as to that – other woman you met would that be Jean Horsburgh? I used to know her mother well, a homely body she was, with no airs and graces to her. The girls are of a different ilk, for the money came when they were young, and they were sent to boarding schools, where they got little enough in the way of learning but grand ideas galore. I mind the day that Miriam told me Addie was sharing a bedroom with a princess. It was only a German princess, of course, and they’re as thick as flies in August, but it was enough to turn the Horsburgh girls’ heads. I told Miriam I hoped the princess was clean, and she was black affronted.’ Mrs. Loudon laughs merrily at the recollection. ‘Jean’s not so bad as the others. There’s a substratum of sense in her, beneath yon silly talk of horses. I admit I have a kind of liking for the woman, especially if I haven’t seen her for a while, but the other two are foolish to the core. I wonder what Miriam would have made of it, poor body. It’s an ill thing to bear fools but why am I raging about the Horsburghs and letting you sit there with an empty plate before you? Have another scone, Mrs. Christie, or a piece of this cake it was only fired this morning, and it will be a real kindness to Mary to take a piece.’

  Thus adjured, I take a piece of chocolate cake, which tastes as good as it looks; Mrs. Loudon pours out another cup of tea, and continues, ‘That’s a dear wee lassie you’ve got, Mrs. Christie. I’ve seen her in the garden with her doll. You’re a lucky woman to have the two. My laddie is the light of my eyes, but I would have liked a girl as well – boys go away from you so early, and you never really get them back. It’s a queer thing to me that women are always craiking for sons – it’s the daughters who stay with you and remain your own, even if they marry. It’s the daughters who lighten the darkness when you’re left alone to sit by the fire, and the days draw in, and the night gets longer and sneller, and the light has gone out of your life. . . . Aye, that’s a dowie business, Mrs. Christie, but please God it will be many a long year before you’ll understand the meaning of it.’

  There is a little silence which I dare not break, and then my hostess continues, more as if she were speaking to herself than to me, ‘It’s a queer thing how your life can fall to pieces about your head in a few minutes. It happened to me like that – at one moment I was a happy wife, loved and cosseted, without a care in the world, and five minutes later I was – alone– ’

  A coal falls off the fire, and Mrs. Loudon jumps up and puts it back with a great clatter of fire-irons. ‘Gracious me,’ she says, smiling at me with dewy eyes, ‘I don’t know what you will be thinking about me, Mrs. Christie it’s not a habit of mine to be havering about my sorrows to every chance met body. I’m thinking you must be a wee witch with your bright eyes and your racy tongue.’

  I can’t help smiling at the reference to my tongue, which has been singularly idle except for its work on Mrs. Loudon’s homemade scones ever since I entered the house. ‘Oh! you wicked lassie!’ cries my hostess, who seems in some mysterious way to guess my unuttered thoughts. ‘You’re sitting there thinking you’ve not had a chance to get a word in edgeways with all my blether, but I’ve done now and it’s your turn for speiring – let’s hope you’ll be a bit more joco than the old woman.’

  We chat for a little while and I manage to get in a few words (edgeways as my hostess has it) until I suddenly realise it is nearly seven o’clock, and fly home to my deserted husband in a repentant mood.

  Seventh April

  Great excitement. Bryan is to arrive tonight by the late train. Have anxious moments all day wondering what he is doing and whether he will arrive safely. Tim says it will do him good to travel by himself and that no harm can possibly befall him. After Tim has said the same thing ha
lf a dozen times in different words with varying emphasis, I realise he is just as anxious about Bryan as I am.

  Betty’s holidays have started, and the garden is full of children playing and shouting at one another, and running across the vegetable garden where the gardener has been planting his seed. Reflect sadly that the local accent is unmusical, and send up silent prayer that Betty may not acquire it. Am about to sally forth and request my turbulent guests to refrain from utterly destroying the cabbage patch when Maggie appears with a feather brush which I bought the other day in Westburgh to dust the banisters. She holds it out for me to see without any remark. I ask faintly whether she thinks there are any mice in the housemaid’s pantry to which Maggie replies, ‘Maybe there are, but I never mind seein’ a moose that would eat feathers.’

  Just at this moment Betty is seen to run across the lawn pursued by two unknown children in Red Indian costume. I have time to notice, before all three disappear into the shrubbery, that Betty has made a valiant attempt to conform to the prevailing fashion. She is wearing a red tablecloth with a long fringe, and a headdress of feathers – I look at Maggie who nods gravely.

  ‘You’ll not be hard on Betty,’ she says with her customary lack of formality. ‘She’s a great wee kid, is Betty. A’ the ithers had their feather hats, but that wouldna’ pit Betty up nor down. Ye’ll not have her beat in a hurry. I’m telling ye, Mistress Christie, she’s a great wee kid.’

  This is all very well and I appreciate the encomium on my child, but the feather brush cost five and sixpence, and is now quite unfit for further service. Betty and I have an interview later in which I try to point out the enormity of her offence.

  ‘But Maggie doesn’t mind about the brush,’ says Betty brightly. Explain patiently that Maggie did not pay for the brush.

  Bryan’s train arrives at 11 p.m. Tim and I both go in to Westburgh to meet him and arrive at the station far too early. Pass the time by weighing ourselves and having our fortunes told by penny-in-the-slot machines. Tim’s fortune is to ‘Beware of a dark woman’, which he is sure must be Grace, and mine is ‘A long journey and a change of abode’. Tim says I am evidently going to leave him as he is dug in at Westburgh for the next three years.

  Bryan arrives looking small, and tired, and very sleepy. He assures us that he got on splendidly, and is scornful when Tim asks if he was sick. ‘Only kids like Betty are sick in the train,’ says Bryan grandly.

  As we drive out to Kiltwinkle I feel his warm little hand steal into mine and I wonder how I have been able to do without him all these weeks and how I shall bear parting with him at the end of the holidays.

  Ninth April

  Find Bryan wandering about disconsolately. He says Betty has gone off with ‘those awful kids’, and he doesn’t know how she can stand them. To begin with he can’t understand a word they say.

  This is a new difficulty, unforeseen by me, but now extremely obvious and threatening. If Bryan sets his standard by Nearhampton and Betty by Kiltwinkle (as is not only natural but inevitable), there is bound to be an ever-widening gap between the two children which time will merely increase. The reflection that both are young does not comfort me, for standards set in youth are solidly set. Can we possibly afford to send Betty away to a decent boarding school? I know we cannot. I know also that this is one of the difficulties which Tim will not appreciate, he will merely say that Bryan is a snob and that it will do Betty no harm to mix with Kiltwinklians for a few years.

  All this passes through my mind while Bryan is standing twisting the button of his coat (an annoying habit of his), and gazing dejectedly out of the window. I suggest that we should mow the lawn together.

  We are mowing the lawn when Mrs. Loudon looks over the fence and says, without any sort of formal greeting, ‘How did you get your house?’ Bryan stares at the apparition in amazement but I have become used to Mrs. Loudon’s abrupt manner and reply to her question with an account of our dealings with Munroe and Horder, and the peculiar business methods of that well-known firm. From this I drift naturally into a description of my adventures in the Old Manse of Pigspunkie with the red-haired man and his ‘Anty’, and their crying need for the Pied Piper.

  By this time Bryan has tired of the conversation and is mowing the lawn himself. Like all males he becomes easily bored with a conversation in which he cannot take part. Mrs. Loudon waits until he – has got to the other end of the lawn and then says forcibly ‘Aunt my foot! She’s no more his aunt than I am. Yon red laddie is her own child. Let’s see, now, he’ll be about nineteen years old by this time. I mind Mary McLoshary when she was a girl – a wise-like lassie. She was betrothed to a young man of good family, but his father was against the match, and his mother had no say in the matter though she liked Mary well enough. Mrs. McFarlane always put me in mind of Mrs. Weir – “a dwaibly body”. Well, the man went away out to Australia or some such place to make a home for Mary, by his way of it, and was never heard of again. The boy was born after he had gone – nine months to a day. I was sorry for Mary, there was no harm in the lassie. Men cause a weary lot of sorrow in this old world, Mrs. Christie. But here we are, havering about “Old unhappy, far-off things”, and I was minded to get some information out of you about house agents and such-like for a friend of mine who is coming to Westburgh for a while.’

  I give Mrs. Loudon all particulars that I think may be useful to her, but cannot help feeling sorry for anybody who has to tackle Munroe and Horder and go through all the troubles and trials that we did before we found Loanhead.

  Tenth April

  I prevail on Tim – Romans or no Romans – to accompany his family to the English church. The service is very pleasant and familiar, and the church prettily decorated with daffodils, but the sermon is dull beyond belief. Can see Tim becoming more and more restive, and wish I had not persuaded him to come. Am not surprised when he remarks, on the way home, that that will last him until Christmas – but feel glad that the children have run on ahead.

  Annie is out this afternoon, so I take the children for a walk. We explore various roads, and discover a park with a small pond, which Bryan says will be great for sailing his yacht. At the far end of the park (which is filled with fathers, mothers, and offspring of all sizes, in Sunday clothes, and uncomfortable shoes) we discover some German guns, relics of the war, lying about in a decrepit condition. Betty clutches my arm excitedly and cries, ‘Oh, Mummie, is this where they had the war?’

  I am trying to find an answer to this amazing question when Bryan saves me the trouble by replying scornfully, ‘Silly! Don’t you know the war was in France? What do they teach you at your rotten school?’

  This leads to an argument in which Betty hotly defends Miss McCarthy’s establishment and says it is much better than an English school anyway – and much more fun. Bryan says, ‘Fun? What sort of fun?’ and Betty replies, ‘Ragging Miss McCarthy is fun – you should just see her when she’s ratty. Her face gets purple.’

  Realise from this passage at arms that my fears of Miss McCarthy’s personal magnetism being too strong for the children’s good were unfounded, and decide that the modern child must be fashioned in a courageous mould since I can imagine nothing more terrifying on earth than the headmistress of Hillcrest School with a rage-empurpled countenance.

  Several aeroplanes are now seen which inspires Bryan to announce that he is going to be an ace in the next war. Reflect on the futility of all this talk anent disarmament in the face of the warlike spirit of the rising generation.

  Return home to tea, after which we play Ludo until bedtime. This game always reminds me of croquet on account of its irritating character. No sooner have you got your men in sight of home than they are taken by somebody and sent back to their base. When this happens to Betty for the third time she dissolves into tears at which Bryan remarks scornfully, ‘It’s no use to try to play a decent game with a girl, they are absolutely rotten.’

  Discover to my horror, on undressing Betty that her back is covered
with spots, rush downstairs and tell Tim that Betty has got measles and he must telephone to the doctor to come at once. Tim, quite unmoved by this catastrophic intelligence, says, well, what did I expect when I sent her to school? She will probably get whooping cough next and chickenpox after that. Am too worried and distressed to argue with Tim, but reiterate my request that he shall telephone to the doctor immediately. Tim says ‘What doctor?’ Reply that I don’t know, whereupon Tim says we had better wait until the morning as nothing can be done tonight. If a doctor did come, Tim says he would only tell us to put the child to bed and keep her warm and would probably charge at least half a guinea for the advice.

  Spend a miserable evening.

  Eleventh April

  Betty’s spots still in evidence, but no other symptoms apparent. Annie suggests we should ask Mrs. Loudon about a doctor, which we do, and are advised to have Doctor Ewing.

  Doctor Ewing is old, but has a twinkle in his eye. He pronounces Betty’s spots to be a ‘spring rash’, and orders magnesia and a low diet. Am tremendously relieved.

  Bryan and I revisit the park discovered yesterday and spend the entire afternoon sailing his yacht – a fascinating sport. Return home to tea damp but undefeated. Betty much better already.

  Twelfth April

  Sit down after dinner feeling very tired. Tim points out that I have done nothing all day to make me tired (which is true in a way). He continues that I have no business to be tired. I have not got a crowd of half-boiled soldiers to plague my life out from morning to night. Am surprised at this statement (as Tim has been very keen on his territorials up to now), but conclude that something must have occurred to upset him, and resign myself to listen and sympathise instead of starting Sheila Kaye Smith’s latest novel, which I have just procured with vast trouble from the library.

  Tim then asks if I have ever seen him sitting at a table with three men, playing poker, with his tunic unbuttoned, and a glass of whisky at his elbow. Reply hastily that I never have. Tim does not seem the least bit soothed at my reply, but goes on to ask gloomily how I suppose any officer can possibly keep his position with the men if he indulges in such behaviour, and whether I think it likely to be good for discipline. Begin to feel that the whole thing is my fault, but can only murmur weakly, ‘Something ought to be done about it.’ Tim says bitterly that he dares say something ought, but will I tell him what one man can do against a thousand – especially if the colonel refuses to say a word to the fellow simply because he happens to be his nephew by marriage? Say at once, ‘In that case, of course, nothing can be done about it.’ At which Tim replies – Oh – I think that, do I? Perhaps I think he ought to hobnob with the men too – stand drinks all round and get thoroughly tight with them. Perhaps I would like to ask them out to Kiltwinkle and hobnob with them myself. This may be a democratic country – says Tim with intense bitterness – but there are limits.