by Ursula Bloom
Isobel had gone into the small kitchen. Jill, sitting opposite to him, propped her face on her hands and stared across the table. ‘Why not? You ought to have lots of games. They’re good for men.’
‘When I came to look at my trousers they were in holes.’
‘I’ll mend them for you.’
‘You can’t! The hole is in a most unfortunate place. Quite the worst place.’
‘I could put in a patch.’
‘Yes, and draw more attention to it! They’ll make good rags for cleaning my bike. After all, I’ve had them three years and they were miles too short.’
Jill drummed on the table with her fingers as she debated the question of the ice bucket versus trousers. It seemed a pity for Twit not to play, but the ice bucket might be so profitable. ‘You oughtn’t to miss the cricket because of your trousers,’ she said; ‘how much are new ones?’
‘Hill has them for eight-and-eleven.’
‘They can’t be good.’
‘I dunno. Good enough. Perhaps Grandma’s left me something.’
‘Rubbish! She hadn’t got anything to leave.’ Jill was opening the imitation leather handbag and fumbling for the shoddy little purse; she did not give Emily’s will a second serious thought. ‘It’s no good, Twit, banking on something wonderful happening. God helps those who help themselves.’ She dribbled the money out chinkingly into her lap. ‘There’s only six shillings, and it’s not pay day till to-morrow. There’ll be my tea.’
‘I didn’t ask you for the trousers,’ said Twit redly. Deep down in his heart shame was gnawing. Shame at having to take the money like this from Jill.
‘Don’t be silly. You must have them.’ She took up the two half-crowns. ‘I’ll pay the other three-and-eleven tomorrow.’
Isobel coming in with the egg in its china surround heard the last remark. ‘What’s that? What three-and-eleven?’
‘Twit’s wondering if Grandma left him a fortune.’
‘Emily never had a fortune to leave.’
‘That’s what I told him.’
‘You never know,’ said Twit sulkily, as he tapped the top of his egg. What a sell it would be for them both! He a rich man. After all, she must have lived on something, and he was the only grandson. He heard the postman’s tap and scrambled for the door. It might even be a telegram. It was a letter from George to Isobel.
‘Let’s read it before Effie comes,’ suggested Jill. ‘Hurry up, Mother.’
She was disturbed because she had seriously meant to get that ice bucket; it was an immediate necessity seeing that the heat wave was on. Later it might be useless. She had remembered her shoes, too, and there was Stanley’s present thrusting at her. Finance was problematical. Her mother opened the letter and fixed her pince-nez. She read and then said, ‘He’s in London for Emily’s funeral. She did not make a will, it seems, because there was nothing to leave, only a few debts.’
Rat-a-tat again on the noisy knocker.
‘That’s Effie.’ It was Jill who went this time.
Twit finished his egg moodily. They did not understand all that this meant to him. Another brilliant, shining dream smouldering in ashes on the hearth of his imagination. This flashing, nebulous fortune dispersed by a mere phrase in his father’s letter. And the disappointment was emphasized because Jill had been so sure of it. Jill so irritatingly right. In his pocket the two half-crowns were like coins of fire. He hated them. Jill, who tossed her bright, tawny head and gave her opinion as much as to say, ‘Contradict me if you dare!’ Arrogant, sure-to-be-right Jill. Here she was showing Effie in. Effie wore a drab coat and skirt, and one of the new black velvet hats with a tall feather sticking up in the front of it. Effie wasn’t smart but wanted to be, and sometimes believed that she had succeeded. Effie came in simpering. She was pulling off her cotton gloves and looking nervously across at Isobel. Twit jerked his chair back.
‘I’m going to the Technical. It’s time I made a start. It will be a late night for me, anyhow.’
‘I’ve frightened him away,’ said Effie, and broke into a little titter. ‘Fancy me frightening anyone! I didn’t know that I was that sort of a girl.’
He set his chair against the wall. ‘If I can get my lamp mended, I’ll bike back.’
Jill, clutching at her remaining shilling, eyed him with a little hostility. ‘What’s the matter with the lamp?’ she asked with a half-hearted interest.
Because he was cross, Twit snapped, ‘If I knew. I’d mend it, silly!’ and crashed out into the scullery.
He was still suffering from the very severe disappointment of Emily’s will.
III
Effie walked with Jill to the Hippodrome. If Mr. Cox were in a good mood, there was the chance that he might let a friend in free. Mr. Cox was none too philanthropically disposed, and it was always difficult. He had a rooted objection to giving away seats, preferring them to stand empty, but sometimes it could be managed. Jill was always hopeful.
They walked through the genteel suburbia of St. Laurence’s. The roads were carefully tidied, with their single trees at the pavement’s edge withering from the hot July sun. The gardens, with their stiff geraniums and petunias, were parched by it too. There were hedges of sweet peas, their greenness already yellowed and growing away from the plants in wisps, like a woman’s hair that has become untidy with the day. There were standard rose bushes, with piles of dying petals lying beneath them on the loose dry earthy beds.
‘It looks almost like autumn, eh?’ asked Effie.
‘The first shower will change all that. It’s wonderful how flowers recover.’
They walked on, and then Effie started again. She was voicing her thoughts out loud. ‘Your brother is a rum card, isn’t he? Not a bit gentlemanly. So gruff and funny. I don’t think he likes us poor girls, do you, dear?’
‘He was put out to-day.’ Yet she wondered why Twit had been put out. He had got the new trousers. Most men would have been grateful. He was an odd personality, and being so silly about Emily’s money, when he must have known that she had not a farthing, was mere madness. Jill had no patience with him.
‘You must be glad Stan isn’t his sort,’ said Effie. ‘Now, he is always a gentleman. I’m sure you are lucky. When do you think you’ll be married?’
‘Never!’
There! She had said it. She had known it for some time, but this was the first proclamation of it. She felt a certain sagging at the knees. Effie was horrified.
‘What? It hasn’t been broke off?’
‘Not yet, but it’ll come. He’s sick of me, Effie. What with Mother nagging and Twit making mischief and one thing and another. It can’t go on. Something will happen. Something has got to happen.’
‘I think you’re downright foolish,’ said Effie stubbornly. ‘Of course he isn’t sick of you. It’s just your imagination. I wouldn’t let my Mum bully me like that. I’d never break it off. Why, you might never get another chance; men are scarce, you know.’
Jill did know. She had thought of that herself, and she was not grateful to Effie for pointing it out to her. She was quite relieved that they were nearing the Hippodrome, with the commissionaire undoing the padlock on the gates that went across the entrance at night. Jill wanted advice, but, like most people who ask for it, she desired it to coincide with her own views.
‘I couldn’t marry a man who was sick of me,’ she volunteered.
‘He isn’t sick of you. Much more likely it’s your people he’s fed up with. Your Mum is so grand, and that brother of yours …’
Jill said hastily: ‘Twit’s a very good boy really,’ and hurried forward. She did not want Effie to start discussing Twit. It was difficult to remain loyal. As they went up the steps she cast a sidelong look at her friend and wished she could afford a hat like hers. Effie did not wear it properly, there were too many wavy, wispy ends sticking out round her small pimply face. A hat like Effie’s needed chic. It needed poise. Jill’s vanity was tickled, and she believed that she could wear it ve
ry creditably. But the matter of Twit’s trousers was still embarrassing her. To change the subject she said, ‘I like your hat, Effie; I wish I’d got one like it.’
Effie glowed with satisfaction. To admire another woman’s hat is practically the same thing as telling her that she looks well in it. ‘Three-and-eleven at Blundell’s. They’ve got dozens of them. I’ll fetch you one in the morning if you like.’
‘I couldn’t afford it this week.’
They climbed the shallow stairs leading from the foyer to the small landing above. This opened out into two wood-partitioned rooms. In one the chocolates were stored. In the other the girls who were employed there hung their coats and hats. It was nearly dark inside the larder-like room, for it had no window. Also Effie stood in the doorway whilst Jill groped for a peg. Effie was most persistent.
‘You get good money, I’m sure,’ she said; ‘three-and-eleven’s cheap as dirt. What do you do with it, I’d like to know?’
Perhaps it was lucky that Mr. Cox came up the stairs. He had a big desk on the landing to which he was constantly going. He eyed Effie suspiciously, so that Jill had to come forward as justification of Effie’s presence. ‘My friend,’ she said apologetically.
Mr. Cox was not in an amiable mood. He was an irritable little man, and he snapped at Jill:
‘I don’t like your friends being up here. They’ve no business up here at all. If this happens again I shall have to be severe ‒ most severe.’
The girls slipped down the uncarpeted stairs in embarrassed silence. In the hall Jill apologised.
‘I’m afraid he will never give you a free seat now.’
‘No, and I won’t pay for one. Not in his theatre. He’s no gentleman, speaking like that to two young ladies. You could have knocked me down with a feather.’
Jill wished that Effie would go. First Twit, then Effie, and now Mr. Cox. She was heartily sick of them all. They stood there gauchely, under the picture of Lily Elsie, neither of them speaking, until Mr. Cox was heard coming down the stairs again. Jill scuttled into her pay-desk and shut the door fast on Effie and the outer world. That was one good point! It might be stuffy, but you could keep it to yourself. It was your castle.
She was wondering whether she could say anything to Stanley. Could she sound him and see whether he really was sick of her? She hated the idea of separation, but she knew now that it had got to happen some time. She wanted some big explosive force to hurl her into it. Yet no explosive force would come. No explosion ever occurred in humdrum lives like her own. Stanley was common. He was almost as common as Effie, and she was dreadful. But these common people were kind. Even old Mrs. Buggins was kind, with her ceaseless toiling and moiling. And old Mr. Buggins, too, although he never wore a collar in the house. At ten, she locked the money away, still debating the problem within herself. Outside Stanley was waiting.
‘It’s come up such a fog,’ he said.
‘A fog? In July?’
‘Yes, like a thick river mist. I called in for your coat, as I guessed you’d come along without it. Your Mum give it to me.’
She wriggled into the cheap coat. It was one of the reversible kind that had been so fashionable in 1911. Unfortunately she had reversed it so often and got so used to its reversions that she was heartily sick of it. The cerise chenille tammy clashed with it. She had been tempted by the chenille tammy in Margate last year when she had gone on a day trip with Stanley. When she had bought it she had forgotten that it would for ever clash with the blue and grey reversible coat. The coat was the mainstay of her wardrobe and could not be dispensed with, so she had to abide by the clashing. Lately she had not cared much how she looked. Dreariness and monotony and the quarrelling about Stanley had dragged her down into inactivity of thought. She could not help it.
Outside the world was wrapped in a blanket of yellowish vapour. It hung in patches, so that here or there the wavy outlines of people’s front gardens and facades were to be seen, and in other places only the jaundiced blur of misted street lamps. Stanley tucked his arm inside hers.
‘Pull your coat up close round your mouth.’
‘Twit’s out in this.’
‘He’ll come to no harm.’
‘He was fearfully touchy at tea. Seemed to think that Grandma ought to have left him something. He is so silly that way.’
‘Winnipeg’s the best place for him, and a drop of work.’
‘It would break Mother’s heart. I’m fond of him too.’
‘Yes, but he’s no good of.’
‘No good, Stan,’ she corrected; and then: ‘Men aren’t like women. Men aren’t made of the same stuff, and Twit’s just a man. Why, even you, Stanley, you don’t care for me like you used to.’
‘I do,’ he vowed, ‘you know I do. It’s your Mum. She won’t leave me alone. Everything I do is wrong, and she isn’t none too right at times, for all her thinking that she is.’
‘She is very disappointed in me.’
‘She’s got no right to be disappointed. It is your own life.’ They walked along for a few steps with the fog drifting round them, and wreathing on the limp leaves of the limes at the road side. She had a definite desire to urge the argument to some final point. She said breathlessly:
‘All the same, I don’t believe we’ll ever marry.’
They came to a halt under a bubbling gas lamp. Here the fog was clearer. It had lifted, and hung in a whitish veil before the green faces of the trees. The truth struck him too.
‘I don’t believe so either,’ he said.
Jill was all feminine. Instantly her resolution was trampled under. She knew now that she could not cross the Rubicon. She clung to him. Now that he agreed to his dismissal she knew that she wanted him with a covetous demand; she wanted home, husband and sanctuary. She believed that she would find all of them epitomised in Stanley.
‘I can’t give you up. I love you so much, Stan. Don’t let anything come between us.’
They kissed again. They were two lone young creatures playing with a virgin emotion. The kisses and the clinging put fresh heart into Jill. She felt that, anyway for the time being, she still had him. The separation had not happened yet. They walked on hand in hand, with the fog coming and going fantastically, a white vapour that veiled and yet disclosed them. They came to the villa at the corner of the road looming large out of the mist. On the doorstep Isobel hovered, her face lined with anxiety. They could make her out behind the distorted foggy shape of the rowan tree.
‘Twit hasn’t come home,’ she said.
IV
They took her inside and sat down round the meal of sandwiches and cocoa that she had prepared. Jill lit the gas fire and drew the saucepan of hot cocoa towards it. It began to wallop pleasantly. There was the soft slur of the gas burning, and the pleasing jig of the cocoa dancing in its round aluminium saucepan. Stanley shut the door.
‘Of course Twit has been kept late,’ said Jill.
‘But he’s never as late as this … never! I feel that something dreadful has happened.’ Isobel had grown frantic with waiting.
Jill thought of the numerous dreadful things that had happened to Twit so far. The affair of the cricket ball, and measles, and the time when he fell off the kitchen garden wall and lay unconscious in the cucumber frame.
‘He’s too old for that sort of thing,’ she said; ‘he has probably gone home with a chum, and forgotten how time flies; besides, he will have to walk, he hadn’t a lamp.’
Isobel had grown thoroughly anxious. Oddly enough, in her perturbation she turned to Stanley. Maybe it was the natural turning of the female to the male for support, for she had made up her own mind that something terrible had happened to her boy. Twit might be nineteen, but really at times he seemed as witless as he had been at nine. They sat for over an hour, and every five minutes seemed like so many days. The effort at conversation became strained. They laughed too heartily at humourless witticisms; they talked too much. At a quarter past twelve Twit himself made a belated appearance
. Stanley heard him in the garden and went out, while Jill and her mother screamed agitated inquiries from the doorstep. Twit was carrying his bicycle. The front wheel was badly buckled and he was wearing the chain as a necklace. He and Stanley put the bicycle in the summer-house and came indoors. Then they could see that the trousers of Twit’s best suit were torn from hip to ankle, that his knee had been bleeding, and that he had done nothing to allay it. His face had been in violent contact with a muddy road and much cycle oil, and both had left visible traces.
‘Darling, what happened?’ implored Isobel.
Twit pushed his way into the dining-room and said gauchely, ‘It’s all right. I’m not hurt. I ran into a man and a girl.’
‘How?’
‘I dunno. I was hurrying to get home.’
‘But,’ said Jill, ‘you hadn’t a lamp. Mother told you not to ride, and look at your trousers.’
‘I’ll take my money out of the Bank for new ones, only don’t nag me. I knew you’d all be on at me.’
Isobel brought some water in a round white pudding basin and began to bathe his knee as he sat stiffly before the gas fire. ‘I hope you didn’t hurt anyone?’
‘The girl’s dress was torn. The man swore that he would take proceedings ‒ I’ll pay for that, too,’ added Twit savagely. If he had not been dreaming what he might have done with Emily’s legendary money this would not have happened. Emily ought to have left it to him. He considered the mere fact that she had nothing to leave a poor enough excuse. Jill was standing there very primly, and saying in a superior manner:
‘We closed your Post Office account in May when you bought the bicycle. This will mean a new bicycle and a new suit, and perhaps damages as well.’
‘That’s it! Make a song about it. Remind me that I am dependent on you all!’ He glared at her bitterly.
‘Well, why did you go riding without a lamp, and in a fog like this? We told you not to do it, but you will go your own way. You are dependent on me, and it’s your own fault that you are dependent. Why didn’t you stop in the Bank?’
‘Why was I ever born?’
