Francie

by Emily Hahn

  “An American ought to know his way around everywhere,” said Pop. “We’ve got people from all over, in our country. They make up our towns and our schools and our churches and everything else. So we ought to be really understanding of the other fellow.”

  “But—”

  Pop swept on. “Now here you are, an American girl, who’s had all the advantages and opportunities possible. You’ve grown up in a nation that owes a great deal to other countries. And yet the first time you come bang up against one of these other countries you get surprised and hurt. Why? What did you expect? A whole world full of Americans? Americans still have many things to learn. Remember that. You can learn some of those things here—there couldn’t be a better teacher than England.”

  He paused and Francie hung her head, thinking it over.

  “Not just tolerance of other people, honey—understanding. Don’t forget, a lot of them are trying to understand us, too. Sometimes, I suspect, that makes hard going. There’s another thing. After you understand people, it isn’t long before you respect them, too. Try it on the English, Francie.”

  In the silence, Pop’s desk clock ticked loudly.

  “Getting along with the other fellow on his grounds—that’s good manners, Francie,” Pop said. “That’s the best kind of manners you can have. I suspect it’s something you need to learn—badly.”

  Francie blew her nose again, without comment.

  “Now the next question is how to get you back to your party,” said Pop briskly. “What time does this show of yours start? Two-thirty?”

  Francie nodded.

  “We’d better get over to that theater right now,” Pop said, pushing back his chair and standing up. “Come on. Your Miss West must be pretty worried about you. I expect she’ll be phoning here as soon as she gets the girls settled in. We’ll try to beat her to it. If you look at it from her point of view, she’s had a hard day herself.”

  “If you want to look at it from her point of view,” admitted Francie. “All right, Pop, since you feel that way about it. But I’m beginning to think that coat will have to be platinum mink.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Do let me take a peep,” said Wendy as she approached Francie’s sketchbook. The art class was out of doors for the first time that season, trying their hands at a scene with oak trees. The girls who attended this class were allowed an unusual amount of freedom; they talked at their work as the spirit moved them, and Miss Delvaux came to see them only once in a while, to offer her criticisms and suggestions. It made a very pleasant break in the day, an hour of quiet freedom and congenial work, for Art was not compulsory. For Francie it was an hour of pleasure. For the first time since she’d arrived in England, she felt like painting again.

  “You’re not too bad at this sort of thing, are you, young Nelson?” continued Wendy, inspecting the paper, and Francie felt appropriately gratified. It was silly to be susceptible to childish approval, she knew, but such things are contagious, and Wendy was an amiable character, generally respected by the other girls. She and Jennifer were prefects by virtue of seniority, though it was hard to think of seniority when one looked at her earnest young face with its snub nose.

  “Let me see,” cried Marcie Smythe. “I say, Francie, that’s not bad. Not bad at all!”

  “I don’t honestly see how you do it,” said Wendy, squinting earnestly at the water color. “I’d know that tree anywhere.”

  Francie said, “Oh, it’s not good. Not really. I’d like a chance to do a big thing one of these days—something with the sea in it, or a great sweeping hill. All of this scenery is pretty, but too enclosed. Now if only we were allowed to keep cars we could drive over to the coast.”

  “Cars? D’you mean the girls owning them themselves?” Marcie gasped. “But nobody would ever be allowed to drive one. Aside from the shortage of petrol.”

  “Why not? A lot of the kids at Jefferson had their own. One boy I know has been driving since he was fourteen, and I’ve got a driving license myself. They let you take out a license at fourteen in my state.”

  “Oh, that. But owning a car at school—” began one girl.

  Wendy and Marcie exchanged a glance, and Francie saw it. For a moment the incredulity she read in their eyes made her furious, but she remembered Pop’s words just before she said anything she might regret. “It would be the same for you girls over here,” she added quickly, “if it wasn’t for the petrol rationing. I quite realize that.”

  “Really, do you think so?” asked Wendy doubtfully. “Somehow I can’t see Mummy letting me drive or own a car however much petrol we could get. Perhaps my bro—but he’s a bit older of course, and he’d never let me go along on a joy ride. Do you mean to say you could go out with that boy in his car, any time you liked?”

  “Why, of course. All of us at school—”

  “I forgot; your schools are coeducational, of course.” Wendy hesitated, her forehead puckered. “I just can’t imagine it,” she said frankly. “Don’t the students hate it? Mixed games might be fun for the girls, of course, but at most boys’ schools here they simply hate it when they’ve got to arrange matches with us. I can imagine what my bro would say if you asked him to take out a lot of girls in a car. It wouldn’t bear repeating, I’m sure. And what most of them think of coeducational schools.…” She paused, her voice expressing an extreme she could not put into words.

  Francie painted silently for a little, busy with her thoughts. “Do all English schoolboys hate girls?” she asked at last.

  “Oh, not really, I suppose—not all of them, all the time. But mostly they do, yes.”

  “In the States we get over all that nonsense by the time we’re fifteen or so,” said Francie. “It’s just adolescent hostility. We outgrow it.”

  “Do you? We don’t.”

  “No doubt,” said Francie to herself, “but then you’re all mentally retarded. Babies, that’s all—just babies.” Most of her classmates were nice, she was willing to admit that, but it made her want to laugh when she heard them talking about playing their best for old Fairfields, as if they were all football coaches. They were always saying things she had thought were only to be found in children’s books.

  Francie was becoming firmly convinced that they were ten years late growing up, at least ten. On several occasions when mothers and fathers came to visit the school Francie had been invited to join the family party when it went out to tea in the village. She had spent a few hours with Mrs. Tennison and Jennifer like that, and on another afternoon she went along with Wendy when Colonel and Mrs. Hardcastle came by to see their daughter and give her a treat. Both of these experiences left Francie feeling lost and puzzled. It was one thing she didn’t feel like talking over with Penelope, who behaved just like the others. The girls had been so respectful, so childish! It was, “Thank you ever so much, Mummy,” and “Dear old Daddy,” and they maintained a generally sweet, subservient attitude that Francie simply could not understand. She remembered the cavalier treatment of parents that all her gang at Jefferson meted out. She seemed to have stepped onto a new planet.

  “When do girls grow up in this country?” she wondered. Among her short-skirted classmates she felt more than ever like a wise old woman.

  Summer vacation was casting its shadow before, and at home the Jefferson gang began to make their plans early. One day Francie received letters which she flew to answer.

  “Dear Glenn: That’s wonderful! I’ll be waiting at the station with a brass band. If you’ve got room in your bags, you might bring along Nellie Lutcher’s latest records which Ruth writes are …”

  “Dear Ruth: You were right; I got a letter this morning from Glenn and he and Bob Chapman are coming over about the first of July. They’re going on to Paris and Norway, he says, but if I’ve got any influence they’ll put off Paris, and I think I have. (That’s a gag.) What gives, though, with Gretta?

  “The brushes and paints and record album just arrived. Thanks for taking all the trouble. Now the
only thing I need is a phonograph! Pop says he’ll give me a little portable radio and phonograph for my birthday, and if I can promote him for it in advance I’ll be all set.

  “I’m sneaking time out to write this; the girls are all swotting for end-of-term exams. We get three sets of exams every year in England; this counts as second term and after the spring hols we go on for a third one, to the end of July. How do you like that? I hate it. But as long as I’m here I don’t want to look like too much of a dope, so I’m working hard.

  “You simply can’t imagine this place. Not in your wildest dreams. These girls are morons emotionally, but really. In hall, where we eat, we move around from table to table, every week, so every girl sits at every table with every mistress at least once. The big moment, I should add, comes when it’s your turn to sit next to the headmistress! And you can believe me or not, but they take it awfully hard. You and I have had our moments when we were very young, Ruth; there was the time you got Cary Grant’s autograph, for instance, and I guess that compares to the day I thought Joe di Maggio looked at me. Well, Grant and di Maggio are as nothing compared with Cressy, that’s the games mistress here at Fairfields. For a kind word from Cressy, girls allegedly our age are prepared to throw themselves off the Cliffs of Dover.

  “Pop says we’ve got to visit the Tennisons during the hols. You can just picture my delight at the idea of spending a week with Jennifer, but if I don’t it makes it awkward for him at the office, he says.

  “It’ll be nice to see Glenn, but it’s not quite enough. I’m counting the days until we start home.…”

  Francie paused and nibbled at her pen. She had written the usual phrase, but something about her surroundings, perhaps the shrill sound of a bird in a tree near the kitchen garden, made her stop to think. Was she really counting the days?

  She stood up and moved over to the window. It was a morning from the advance pages of the calendar, a summer day handed to England on a plate, as sometimes happens. The grass, which to be fair to it had been green all winter, looked suddenly fresher, as if new juice were pushing up from the roots. The sun was shining, actually shining; it didn’t glare, but it was there in the sky smiling down on Fairfields. The trees were still stark and bare, but Francie knew that in the thicket behind the stables there were dozens and dozens of snowdrops sweetly blooming. And in the air was a soft smell of something she could not put a name to, yet it was something she felt she had known far away and long ago; it brought an echo of some happy time all but forgotten.

  No, she said to herself; I am not counting the days before I can get back to Jefferson. I’m not counting anything. She went back to her letter and crossed out the sentence.

  The Tennisons lived in Surrey, about an hour’s train ride from London. Even though it was only Jennifer’s house they were going to, Francie felt pleased and excited as they set out from Pop’s hotel. Four days of London, though with theaters and picture galleries and shopping expeditions, had not been really enjoyable. She felt lost in the great gray city; she missed the sparkling newness of the shops and restaurants at home.

  “It’s terribly cute at first,” she explained to Pop, “with these poky little windows and all the stone buildings, but there’s nothing for a girl to do, once I’ve been to the newsreel theater. I haven’t got anyone to date, and I’ve got sort of used to being busy at school, I guess. I’m used to being regimented. At Fairfields every minute’s accounted for, so that I’m always wishing I had more time to draw or paint.”

  “I hope they’re not overworking you.” Pop studied her. “No, you look fine,” he decided. “I don’t know when I’ve seen your cheeks so pink. Is it genuine?”

  “Part genuine, but I’m afraid my hand’s lost its old cunning with lipstick,” said Francie. She had got out of the habit of putting on lipstick, because of course makeup was anathema at Fairfields. “It’s so nice to wear regular clothes again,” she said, settling happily into her train seat, in the corner. Pop grunted sympathetically as she gave herself an approving pat. She was wearing a new suit Aunt Norah had bought in Florida because, as she wrote, she couldn’t resist it, it looked so much like Francie. It was navy, with a blouse and other touches of bright red plaid.

  “There’s Jennifer,” announced Francie, peering through the window as the train pulled into their station. “There, the girl over there by Mrs. Tennison. See?”

  “That little girl?” asked Pop in surprise.

  “Little? She’s a month older than I am! You never can tell, though, over here, can you? They look the same until they’re married.”

  “Oh good,” said Jennifer, greeting them more pleasantly than Francie had expected. “You’ve brought your racket, I’m glad to see. Isn’t this spiffing weather?” Her eyes slid over the new costume and it seemed to Francie that their pupils narrowed vertically, like those of a cat. Jennifer still wore her school tunic, and Pop’s mistake had been quite natural.

  “So good of you to come this frightfully long way,” Mrs. Tennison was saying. “Did you have a pleasant trip? No luggage in the van? Then perhaps we can go straight along to our poor old car—lunch won’t wait very long, I’m afraid. And how was it in London? Wet? The girls will want to sit together, I suppose. Hop in, girls.”

  Chatting brightly about the weather in all its permutations she stowed the bags away, with Mr. Nelson feebly trying to help. It wasn’t exactly a poor old car, reflected Francie, it was just an unfamiliar shape to an American, high and steep for its wheel base. They rolled off, down the village street between a few shops and then cottages.

  “I hope you won’t find those parcels too knobby, Frances,” called Jennifer’s mother over her shoulder. “One does one’s marketing whenever one finds the opportunity.”

  “And the petrol,” added Jennifer.

  Francie felt shy and tongue-tied. Jennifer made no effort to break the silence between them, nor did her mother seem to expect any speech from the young people. Mrs. Tennison’s was the only voice heard between the station and the house, and this seemed to be the normal state of affairs in the family. About a mile from the station the car turned into a cheerful hedge-lined driveway and drew up before a chubby-looking gray stone house with a tennis court. A Skye terrier rushed out at them from the door, yapping shrilly. The Tennisons said, “Be quiet, Bonzo! Bonzol Bonzo! Quiet!” several times with no appreciable effect. They unloaded the car of parcels and baskets, as well as the Nelson luggage, to the noise of his yapping.

  “We can manage perfectly well,” said Mrs. Tennison in her bell-like tones. “No, really, Mr. Nelson, we can manage beautifully … It’s awfully good of you. Just put them down on the table, if you don’t mind. Coo-ee, Robert? Robert, are you there? We’ve arrived, darling.”

  They lived very comfortably, Francie reflected in surprise. It was her first experience of an English home, and she had expected to find a smaller edition of Fairfields, like a public institution in miniature. Hadn’t everyone at home warned her? She was relieved, yet felt she had strayed into the wrong book, or onto the wrong stage.

  The room they gave her was cheerful, with shabby chintz curtains at the large windows and a huge old-fashioned wardrobe. The whole house had a pleasant, lived-in look, she decided, thinking of the dining room where she had just lunched. There, all the family china seemed to be on display, plates propped on the molding against the wall, and cups and saucers in a glass-fronted cabinet. There was a lot of silver around, too; teapots and jugs and saltcellars and things, out in the open all the time. Bread sat on the breadboard, and cheese under a cover on the sideboard, with jam in pots. Francie thought of Aunt Norah’s house where the mechanics of eating were so carefully hidden away between meals. Yet after all, why should they be? They weren’t shameful symbols after dinner, any more than when the family was eating.

  Jennifer and Francie did the washing up after lunch, getting their hot water from a terrifying copper tank which Jennifer called a “geezer” but which was spelled “geyser.” Jennifer lit g
as under it, at a jet that popped and spit, and then the water came down quite hot. “It’s so much better since the Mater had this geezer put in,” she said to Francie, who was watching in frightened awe. “We’re on the town main now and all this is wonderfully simple. After our old boiler system for hot water, it’s heaven. That never worked.”

  It wasn’t exactly Francie’s idea of heaven, but she had no intention of discussing such matters with Jennifer this early in the visit. Several months before she would have been unwise enough to describe Aunt Norah’s plumbing, not as a boast but simply in a comparative spirit. She knew better now. The English were touchy. They were apt to take any mere statement of fact as a hidden insult. At any rate, Jennifer was.

  Back in her bedroom Francie took the spread off the bed, folded it carefully, put on woolen bed-socks, and climbed under the quilt. Mrs. Tennison had suggested that she take a little rest, and this was by far the warmest place for it. The house was comfortable in most ways, but it was cold, though the Tennisons didn’t think so. They had exclaimed all through lunch about the warmth of the day; it was all Francie could do to avoid her father’s eye, though by this time the Nelsons were getting accustomed to hearing how warm the weather was, in spite of all the evidence.

  Jennifer felt no need for a little rest, since she had not gone to the tremendous effort of making an hour’s journey by train. Francie giggled as she thought of it; Mrs. Tennison was certainly awfully kind, but she had some odd ideas about young girls. She had sent Jennifer on an errand on her bicycle, to a neighbor’s house. “In the country I feel no hesitation about letting her go alone,” she explained to Pop, as if an apology was in order. “Of course, London’s a different matter entirely; I never permit Jennifer to wander about alone in London. I’m sure you feel the same about Frances.”

  Pop had looked simply staggered. “She’s got to have a chaperone, you mean?” he asked.

  “Oh no. I’m not all that old-fashioned!” Mrs. Tennison laughed. “No, it’s quite sufficient, to my mind, if Jennifer’s accompanied by some young friend whenever she goes out. I’d feel no qualms about letting her go with Frances, for instance, the two girls alone. No qualms at all.”