So out of the costume box she got an old moth-eaten fur cape that came almost down to her feet. Underneath it she wore a red lace and sequined dress that only came down to her knees. She wore long earrings and false eyelashes and lots of makeup. Daddy wore a plain dark suit, but he borrowed the raccoon coat from Mr. Jenkins and wore Aunt Elena’s enormous fur hat, and said he’d be the chauffeur. Aunt Elena went out and bought a brand-new maid’s uniform. She was the only decent-looking one among us all—that is, from the neck down. From the neck up she didn’t put on any makeup and she powdered her hair and she found a pair of glasses frames in Mother’s costume trunk and put them on and she really didn’t look like Aunt Elena at all. As for us kids, we just looked like ragamuffins, and, as Mother said, that was easy. Rob wore red pajamas with the bottom hanging down, and Suzy and Maggy wore terribly old party dresses that needed ironing and had tears in them that had once been mine, the dresses, I mean, and were now too small for them, too. And John and I wore patched jeans and sweaters that were out at the sleeves. Of course, when we put our school coats on we didn’t look quite as bad, but our school coats were all second-year coats this year so we all, except Maggy, looked shabby enough to suit Aunt Elena. Maggy kept jumping up and down and saying, “Oh, what fun! How do I look? Do I look pretty?” And actually she and Suzy both did look awfully pretty, Maggy with her straight shiny black hair and Suzy with her soft light curly hair, and the party dresses way up above their knees. It started to rain just as we left for the station, and Daddy said he hoped the rain wouldn’t start to freeze.
The train was late and the rain kept on filming down and we all got terribly impatient. We played the Geography game till we ran completely out of A’s, as we usually do, what with America and Asia and Antarctica and Abyssinia, and so forth, and we played I Packed My Grandmother’s Suitcase and I Love My Love, and finally Rob cried out, “I hear it! I hear it!” and reached up his arms so Daddy could hold him up to wave at the engineer. The bell at the gate began clanging and then the train came round the bend, with its great eye shining and making a golden path with the rain slanting across it. Rob waved like mad at the engineer and the engineer waved back, and then Daddy put him down and said, “Remember, Robert, I am just the chauffeur.”
Uncle Douglas and Sally (he’d told us that’s what her first name was) got off almost first. Uncle Douglas saw us. He was standing behind Sally and he put his hand to his head as though he were in agony, and then his eyebrows shot way up, and then he just shrugged.
Mother swept forward in her mangy cape and kissed Uncle Douglas on both cheeks, and when she spoke she sounded all la-de-da and not like Mother at all. “Doug, da-a-h-ling, we’re so enchanted that you could make it! Wallace was detained, but perhaps he may be at home when we get there. And this is …” and she paused, archly, and held out her hand.
“Victoria, this is my friend Sally Hough. Sally, my sister-in-law, Victoria Austin. And these are her progeny.”
We all danced around her, leading the way to the car. Maggy nudged Suzy and me. “I know that lady.”
“What do you mean?” we whispered.
“I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere. Maybe she was a friend of Mummie’s or something.”
“Stay in the background, then,” Suzy whispered. “It would spoil everything if she recognized you.”
Daddy was in the front seat of the car, with Aunt Elena beside him.
Mother said, “Of course you remember Grooves and Olga, Douglas?” She turned to Sally. “We’re lucky to have such splendid servants in the back woods here. Grooves is so good at both chauffing and butling”—Uncle Douglas’s eyebrows went up again, but still he didn’t say anything—“and Olga is a perfect jewel, aside from the fact that she’s a ghastly cook. But she’s marvelous at fixing the plumbing.” We all piled into the station wagon, the five of us kids all over each other in back, and Mother and Uncle Douglas and Sally in the middle.
Mother, wrapped in her fur, said, “Grooves, open the window, it’s stifling in here.”
After a moment Uncle Douglas said, “I suppose you know it’s raining in on Sally and me, Victoria?”
“Oh, is it?” Mother asked graciously. “You may raise the window an inch, then, Grooves.”
Very carefully Daddy raised the window an inch.
Uncle Douglas said, “Grooves, shut the window all the way, please.”
Daddy did not move, and Mother said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Grooves is a deaf-mute, but he gets my vibrations. Are you really chilly, Doug da-a-h-ling?”
“We will shortly be too frozen solid with an inch-thick casing of this rain to move from your car.”
“These soft city people,” Mother said. “But we mustn’t forget our hospitality, must we? You may shut the window, Grooves.”
Daddy shut the window.
“How long have you had this sterling couple?” Uncle Douglas asked.
“Of course, you haven’t met them, have you?” Mother exclaimed. “We still had the O’Shaughnessys the last time you were here. But Olga and Grooves are such an improvement, don’t you think, Doug da-a-h-ling?”
“A great improvement,” Uncle Douglas said. “But almost anything would have been, wouldn’t it?”
I don’t know quite what we’d expected Uncle Douglas to do, but certainly not to go along with our gag the way he was doing. We’d thought we’d have fun and laughs at the station and then if we went on with it, it would all be just a joke, with everybody knowing about it. We turned up the road that leads to our house and Uncle Douglas exclaimed, “Victoria! What’s happened to the great stone gateposts?”
“Oh, Doug, we’re so distressed,” Mother answered. “They went down in the last storm.” Daddy let out an awful snort, then, but turned it into sort of a cough.
When we got back to the house Uncle Douglas sat back and let Daddy open the door and help him and Sally out, and Mother said, “You may take the bags to the blue and gray guest rooms, Grooves,” and Uncle Douglas, instead of grabbing bags under one arm and children under the other, offered his arm to Sally.
Aunt Elena said, “I will unpack and lay your things out for dinner, Madam.”
It was after nine by now, but Uncle Douglas always waits to eat till he gets to our house instead of going in to the dining car. Since it was Friday and John and I had brought home especially good school papers that week, we were to be allowed to stay up for dinner. When we got into the house Mother hurried upstairs with the little ones. Aunt Elena took Sally up to the guest room, which had never been called the blue room before, and Uncle Douglas went out to the gray room, also a brand-new name for the waiting room. John was going to sleep on the couch in the study.
We’d spent a long time that afternoon setting the table. Mother’d finally said we could use the best tablecloth, though she hates and despises ironing it, and we’d made it look as elegant as possible. Daddy was fixing something for the grownups to drink and Aunt Elena came down from the guest room.
“The girl’s a snob to end all snobs, Wallace,” she said. “She’s inspecting everything as though she were from Scotland Yard and asking me all kinds of questions about the family that only an ultimate snob would dare to think she could get away with. How Doug ever got hold of her I’m sure I don’t know, because I don’t think she’s ever been outside her own kind of people before. She’s never met anybody like you the way you really are, much less like this. She hasn’t the faintest idea what’s going on.”
“You mean she’s taking it seriously?” Daddy asked. “Oh, come, Elena, nobody could.”
“I don’t think she’s even stopped to ask herself whether or not she’s taking it seriously. She looked absolutely stricken by the time I’d finished unpacking for her. And nobody told me there was going to be a snake in the guest-room dresser.”
“I don’t think that was supposed to be part of it,” Daddy said. “Do you know anything about a snake, Vicky?”
“Well, John found a dead snake a couple of days ago,
” I said.
“Dead snakes do not belong in bureau drawers,” Daddy said. “I shall have to speak to John.”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t John who put it in the drawer,” I said. “He showed it to all of us.”
“We were both too scared to scream,” Aunt Elena said. “But I carried it off beautifully. ‘That’s perfectly all right, Madam,’ I said. ‘He’s a great family pet and hardly ever bites. As soon as he’s through with his wee bit of a nap I’ll get Grooves to take him to his bed.’”
“Your name is Olga and you talk about wee bits of naps?” Daddy asked. He handed Aunt Elena a glass. “Where’s Doug?”
“Probably changing to white tie and tails in the gray room,” Aunt Elena said. “Do you suppose he’s furious with us?”
“We shall soon see,” Daddy said.
Well, we didn’t see right away, because as Uncle Douglas came in from the waiting room, Sally came down from upstairs. And Uncle Douglas took up the game right from where he’d left off.
“Well, Grooves, dispensing hospitality? How about one for me and Miss Hough, please?”
I wondered if Sally hadn’t heard Daddy talking, but she just looked mildly shattered as she accepted the glass Daddy silently handed her. Now I had a good chance to look at her. I don’t know much about clothes, but I knew enough to tell that hers were fearfully expensive, and not very becoming. And most of Uncle Douglas’s girlfriends are young and pretty or, if they’re older, then they’re glamorous. Sally was certainly one of the older ones—she looked lots older than Aunt Elena—and there was nothing glamorous about her. She wore her hair like Mother, drawn back from her face into a knot at the nape of her neck, but while I think it looks beautiful that way on Mother (but maybe I’m prejudiced), it just made Sally look severe and cross and nobody you’d think Uncle Douglas could feel seriously romantic about.
Aunt Elena disappeared into the kitchen, and as soon as Mother came down, followed by John, Daddy went into the kitchen after Aunt Elena. Mother says Daddy has a noble faculty for always having a perfectly valid excuse for walking out on any situation that doesn’t meet his satisfaction. I could tell Mother wasn’t too happy with the situation, either. She accepted the glass Uncle Douglas handed her but she said, “If you two don’t mind hurrying a bit, I really think we should get on into the dining room in just a moment.”
“But, darling,” Uncle Douglas said, “Miss Hough understands perfectly that you never eat before ten.” Miss Hough, he called her. Yes, she was more like a Miss Hough than a Sally. “Or does the new couple like to get to bed before midnight?”
“Yes. By midnight, at any rate,” Mother said. “Stuffy of them, isn’t it? Servants are so difficult nowadays.”
“But shouldn’t we wait for your husband?” Sally asked, and we knew then that she really hadn’t caught on to the game—she didn’t know Daddy was Grooves or anything. I think she had a suspicion something wasn’t quite on the level, but she didn’t know what it was.
Mother blushed. She doesn’t blush often, but John and I both saw her turn pink. And it was Uncle Douglas who answered, “Oh, he’s probably off on a maternity case. Victoria will feed him when he gets home. I’ve seen her cooking bacon and eggs for him at three in the morning many a time.”
There was an awful silence and I thought Mother was going to explain that the whole thing was just a joke, but Sally said, not in an approving voice, “Well, it’s all certainly quaint, the house and the children and all the animals.”
Daddy came to the door then and clapped his hands three times. “That means dinner is served,” Uncle Douglas said, still taking over. “How becoming that dress is, Victoria dear. A new little number, isn’t it? I must paint you in it.”
“You have,” Mother said. “Ten years ago.”
Uncle Douglas’s eyebrows shot up again. We all love his eyebrows, and Daddy’s, too, of course, because they both have them, rather bushy eyebrows darker than their hair that can be raised (the eyebrows, I mean; this sentence seems to be getting kind of complicated) higher than you’d ever think eyebrows could go. They can also be lowered. When Daddy’s eyebrows lower we know it bodes no good. Mother says no matter how difficult a patient is being, if Daddy lowers his eyebrows the patient behaves. I guess we’re too used to Daddy to be frightened by it. I don’t think he’s ever frightened us, and I don’t think he ever scares children, but some of his grownup patients are supposed to be terrified of him.
After Daddy had clapped his hands, Mother stood up and we all went into the dining room. The dining room is really part of the kitchen and it’s one of the nicest rooms in the house. It’s a wandery room, it goes in three different directions, because it’s really several rooms knocked into one. Out the big windows we look down our hill to the village and then across to Hawk Mountain and the other mountains beyond. But now the curtains were closed and Aunt Elena and Daddy had lit the candles and the fire was blazing in the fireplace and Mr. Rochester was sleeping in front of it and Colette was asleep on her green velvet cushion in the red leather chair and looking perfectly beautiful; Mr. Rochester’s beautiful in his big, brawny way, but Colette’s glamorously beautiful, like Aunt Elena.
Sally said, kind of to make conversation, “Oh, what an adorable dog,” and went up to Colette, and Mr. Rochester got up from his nap by the fire and went up to Sally and growled very softly, as though he thought she was going to hurt Colette.
Mother said sharply, “Rochester! Down! Go back to bed, sir!” And Mr. Rochester growled again, this time louder, put his tail between his legs, and stamped back to the fireplace. Yes, he did, he stamped. Even Mother and Daddy said afterward that that’s exactly what it was like.
We all sat down at the table. Then a peculiar thing happened. We always say grace before meals. We have a special family grace that we say holding hands. And John and I looked at each other and when we talked about it afterward we found out that we were both thinking the same thing. We didn’t want to say grace. Not with Sally there and Daddy and Aunt Elena hovering behind our chairs being a peculiar butler and maid. We weren’t being us, any of us, and the people we were being weren’t gracey people. Mother didn’t make any move to start grace, either, and Daddy and Aunt Elena began passing the food, pot roast, which is one of the things that gets better if it has to sit and wait; Mother, being a doctor’s wife, knows lots of those kinds of recipes. It wasn’t the happiest meal we’ve ever had. It had all started out being so terribly funny and gay, but by now we were all feeling sorry for Sally, though we didn’t like her a bit more than Aunt Elena had expected we would, and we were willing to do just about anything if it would save Uncle Douglas from her. She sat there eating her pot roast and her nose was one of those noses that always looks as though its owner is smelling something bad. Of course, you can’t help the shape of your nose, but you can help its expression. Funnily enough, Uncle Douglas was the only one who seemed to be having a really good time. (He said afterward it’s because he’s a fatalist.) He kept asking Daddy and Aunt Elena, or Grooves and Olga, to pass us things. It was lucky they’d had something to eat with the little ones before we went to the station or they’d have been starved.
After we’d finished the salad, Uncle Douglas spotted a box of cigars a patient had given Daddy. Daddy doesn’t smoke, so they were just sitting there, and Uncle Douglas indicated it, saying, “Pass the cigars, please, Grooves.”
Daddy got the cigar box and handed it first to Sally, and she laughed her funny, whinnying laugh that didn’t sound as though she thought anything was funny at all, and said, “Oh, how quaint! No, thank you.” Daddy kind of shrugged and passed the cigars to Mother. Mother took one, bit off the end, and sat with it sticking out of her mouth, and this was really funny; both John and I almost burst into laughter, she looked such a riot sitting there in the crazy dress with the cigar between her teeth. She didn’t light it, but said conversationally to Uncle Douglas, “I think I’ve about decided that I prefer cigars to chewing tobacco,” and we knew she
was trying to make it so absurd that Sally would just have to catch on. But Uncle Douglas took a cigar and Sally didn’t say anything, though I’m sure she was beginning to suspect that it was more than just quaintness.
Mother had made a deep-dish apple pie for dessert, and Daddy was just getting it out of the oven when the phone rang. It was the house phone, but often people will call the house number instead of the office number in the evening. Aunt Elena went to the counter and picked up the receiver and answered it. Then she turned to the table and said to Mother, “It’s for Wallace.”
Daddy, in his white apron, put the pie back in the oven, held out his palms in a well-what-can-I-do-about-it gesture, flung up his eyebrows, and went to the phone.
“Yes … Yes … Is the swelling underneath the jaw or just on the cords of the neck? … Temperature? … Yes, I think it probably is mumps, there’s a good bit of it about right now, but I’ll look in on him in the morning.”
None of us looked at Sally while he talked. I think we were all glad it was over. It had gone too far—and that was partly Uncle Douglas’s fault—and we’d all been hoping she’d help us out by catching on, and then she could pretend she’d known all the time and had just been playing along.
Daddy turned back to the table and said matter-of-factly, “Well, Sally, now we can all take off our costumes. I hope you enjoyed our little play. Doug’s the best actor of us all. Is it all right if Elena and I sit down at the table?”
Meet the Austins Page 9
