The Whicharts

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Ian, you are tiresome. What are you doing this end of the platform? You knew I should be late, you might have seen that our carriage was all right.”

  They hurried away to their first-class carriage at the other end of the train, Ian nervously and humbly explaining that his man was looking after it.

  Maimie looked at Phoebe’s indignant back. “My God! What was that?”

  “Mrs. Long,” explained Tania, who had seen the Lady in the distance when she had fetched her husband from rehearsals.

  “Oh Tania!” Maimie exclaimed. “I take it all back. I wish to God I was coming on tour with you. The other men may be poops, but Ian’s all right. As for that cow of a wife of his—I’d teach her—I’d have him off her.”

  As the train left the station, the last person Tania saw was Maimie, glaring after the fast vanishing Phoebe.

  Chapter 17

  TANIA discovered that touring with Ian Long’s Shakespearean Company was infinitely more pleasant than touring with a Musical Comedy. The life was too full and varied to admit of the unutterable boredom which had practically extinguished her on her other tour. And the professional rooms, though as repulsive as ever, coloured by Barbara’s wit became objects of amusement.

  To Barbara almost everything was amusing, and most things interesting. She lived so completely within herself, that she regarded the outside world and its doings with perfect tolerance. Rather as though she were examining the habits and customs of a country she was never likely to visit. She was amazed at the depths of despair into which Tania could be thrown by uncongenial surroundings.

  “Can’t you see,” she would protest, “how little all this matters? What if the landlady is dirty and has a sniff? What does it matter if you are staying in a back street in Manchester, or Leeds, or Wigan? It may be unpleasant, but it can’t touch the real you, the private, utter you that lives in here.” She would lay her two hands convulsively on her breast, as though defying Tania or anyone else to see into her Holy of Holies. “If only you’ll see life that way, none of this will mean more to you than things seen out of a window.”

  Tania struggled. But she was incapable of looking at life quite like that. But the mere fact of having Barbara about the place helped her to laugh at many things, which before she had found merely sordid. She grew really fond of the girl, in as far as it was possible to be attached to someone about whom you knew so little. For Barbara was one of those people with whom, however long you knew them, it was impossible to feel really intimate. Automatically Tania learned something of her mind, for Barbara could no more help shedding ideas than a tree its fruit. When not engrossed in learning a part, she was moulding her clay, and the action of digging into the clay seemed to urge her to similar action on her mind. While her fingers dug into the clay, she dug into her brain: A casual remark that the teapot leaked, or a more involved statement about a twist in someone’s character; off she would go. A dozen ideas would slip from her, grown from the seed of a leaking teapot, or a warped character. So many ideas, and all so elusive, that Tania, sort as she might, never picked up one clue that could lead her to say, “This is Barbara!”

  Barbara in her own way was fond of Tania. A fact which Tania never grasped, and which would have astonished her if she had. There Barbara would sit with her clay; modelling Tania, on her toes, her head raised, her arms raised, her whole attitude expressing upward flight. As she worked, she dissected her sitter. Tania seemed to her such a jumbled person. To have such a real love of machinery, that the commonest engine was an object of beauty. To want so passionately to master machinery until it served you to its utmost limits, and yet to be yourself so tied to people. To have the brain and spirit that should make a pioneer, anchored to such a hyper-sensitive soul.

  Tania altered on the tour. She expanded and throve in an atmosphere of admiration. For to the Shakespeareans who were incapable of the mildest jig, Tania’s dancing amounted to genius. She, who had always been the unsuccessful member of her family, found this attitude heaven. She realised that she was not a good dancer, and that nothing would ever make her so, even supposing she had the wish. But in her present milieu she was not only the best at her particular art among the people with whom she was thrown, but she was its only exponent. This gave her a position which she was quick to feel, and which had a decidedly tonic effect on her, after years of being utterly unimportant, in a world in which the majority of her fellow-workers excelled her. Had it not been that she felt the tour to be a shocking waste of time, she would have been comparatively happy. She got on well with everyone, as the youngest she was treated rather as a pet. But she was incapable of complete happiness away from her sisters. She worried about them. She was never able to forget that it was while she was away before, that they had operated on Rose, and she had known nothing about it. What might not be happening at home now? The letters she received were small comfort. Daisy’s were full of the Higgs’, never a pleasant subject to Tania. And Maimie’s, when she wrote, which was seldom, said so little of her doings that the very gaps made for nervousness.

  One afternoon, over their high tea, Tania, driven by acute anxiety, confided her worries to Barbara. Barbara had a copy of “Macbeth” propped up against one side of the teapot, and the little model of Tania leaning against it on the other. In a desultory way she was reading through the part of Lady Macbeth before that evening’s performance, but the larger portion of her attention was devoted to the clay figure, whose drying she was attempting to expedite with the aid of the hot tea-pot. There was only one way to distract her from these occupations, and that was to demand some more tea, which would automatically upset both—

  “I do wish I’d get a letter from home,” she said, accepting her refilled cup. She dropped the remark casually, but Barbara, who early in their acquaintance had grasped Tania’s lack of words, translated her remark into—“lt’s a week since I heard—please say something to make me see I’m a fool to worry.”

  “You’ll probably hear to-night,” she comforted, “but if you don’t, I should think of a plausible excuse, and ring them up. It won’t cost such an awful lot, and it’s worth something not to feel fussed.” She prodded the clay to see how it was drying, and catching sight of her copy of “Macbeth,” propped it up again against the teapot. “Fussing is a most remarkable time-waster,” she went on. “Luckily it’s a thing people have to do by themselves, because the moment they fuss in the open somebody’s sure to say—‘Why not do so-and-so-?’ or, ‘Try so-and-so’—and then the fuss is over. But millions of people spend all their lives fussing. Fussing that they’ve got cancer, when perhaps one visit to the doctor would prove that they’ve not. Fussing in case something should happen to the people they love, fussing lest they should die, when, for all they know, they themselves may be going to die first.” Her voice tailed away, and she returned to Lady Macbeth and her clay. There was a knock on the front door. The landlady showed in Beatrice and Phyllis.

  “We’ve no tea to offer you,” Barbara greeted them. “We had a haddock, but we’ve eaten it.”

  “We’ve been to the pictures,” explained Phyllis. “So as we had to pass the theatre, we called in for the afternoon post, there was nothing for either of us, but one for you, Tania.”

  “There you are, Tania,” Barbara said with a grin. But the envelope in Tania’s hand was not addressed by either of her sisters, it was type­written. She opened it. “Oh!” she gasped. She swayed forward, and gripped the table. The three girls gathered round her in concern.

  “What is it, old thing?”

  “Not bad news?”

  “Sit down, and tell us what’s happened.”

  “It’s not bad news. I’ve won a car in a raffle.” The story of Tania’s reception of good news was one of the Company’s stock jokes for weeks. Every member of the Company, with the exceptions of Barbara and Tony, advised her to sell the car. Barbara, who had recognised the gleam in Tania’s eyes since s
he had received her news, for the ecstasy that it was, hadn’t the heart to recommend so practical a course. While Tony felt that selling it was simply not to be considered. Obviously everyone was simply crazy to own a car. Why then part with it as soon as you got one? To Tania there was no question of selling. It was the most “Sussexly” thing that had ever happened.

  The world looked quite different. She woke up each morning with a curious lightness of heart, such as she had never felt before, even as a small child. She knew what she would do. She would run it as a taxi. Long runs, taking about Americans in the summer, that sort of thing. It wouldn’t bring in a tremendous lot of money, but it would pay her share in their home, and perhaps help toward keeping the others when they were out of work. In any case she’d be useful to them, for when she hadn’t a job on, she could drive them about. Maimie would like that, it might make her more keen on living at home. Daisy might find it handy too, and she wouldn’t always have to depend on those Higgs’ to drive her everywhere. She wrote to Richmond. She sent her raffle ticket to Alfy, and asked him to collect the car and garage it for her, and would he let her know what it would cost? Alfy replied with a most business­ like letter starting:

  “Yours to hand of the 16th inst.,” and it went on to say that he “had the favour of her esteemed order.” That he would fetch the car as requested and would garage same. He finished up by saying that terms could be discussed on her return to London, when he had a business proposition to put before her. He signed himself, “Yours faith­ fully, Albert Bristowe.” The only bit of the letter which sounded like the Alfy Tania knew was a pencilled postscript—“Me and the missus is very pleased at your good luck.”

  Tania did not write her news to her family. They would not only want her to sell her car, but would want to sell it for her while she was away. They would see no possible point in her paying to garage it during all the weeks she would be on tour, and the thought of her keeping it for good, and trying to make a living out of it, wouldn’t enter their heads. She felt mean not to tell them, for that week both Maimie and Daisy wrote rather despondent letters. Their revue was coming off, and the outlook was none too bright. Daisy had been offered a few weeks on the halls, but Maimie hadn’t heard of anything. She said in her letter that “things” were being difficult. She thought she needed a holiday, she hadn’t been away since Sussex. Perhaps if she went away it would bring everybody to their senses. She thought she might go to Brighton, she knew two nice men there with decent cars. But instead she might come and join Tania for two weeks; she wasn’t sure. She would let Tania know later.

  In the ordinary way Tania would have been delighted at the thought of having Maimie with her. But now she wasn’t sure. She remembered the way Maimie had looked at fan, and still better the way Phoebe had looked at Maimie. After all, Maimie would only stay for two weeks, so she wouldn’t care what damage she did, she’d think it fun. But Tania would have to live out several months’ more tour. Months during which she would most probably be in black disgrace, living down Maimie’s sins. When, however, a month later she received a postcard from Maimie merely telling her to expect her the week after next, pleasure predominated over any other emotion. The other girls were enormously amused at her anxiety for her sister’s comfort.

  “My sisters could sleep on the floor for all I’d worry,” said Phyllis.

  “You don’t know Maimie,” Tania explained. “She won’t stay if she’s uncomfortable.”

  “Then if she was my sister, she could go,” Phyllis retorted. “Rooms have been good enough for you for a good many weeks, surely it won’t kill your sister to live in them for two?”

  “You’ll understand when you see Maimie—”

  “From what you’ve told me of her, and from the glimpse I had of her at the station, I think you’ve got that sister of yours all wrong,” said Barbara. “I bet you’ll find the rooms won’t worry her at all.”

  “I hope so.”

  But Tania was worried. She remembered her own immediate reaction to depressing rooms. Maimie had never been on tour, didn’t know what it was like. Would she take one look at the rooms, and go home?

  Maimie turned up, and Barbara’s prognostications proved correct. The unattractive rooms meant nothing in Maimie’s life, what did matter to her were the amusements offered. Boredom was about the only thing of which she was really afraid.

  She was very popular with the Company. Not only with the men, but with the girls. She was always an amusing companion, and they found her clear-sightedness stimulating. Barbara told Tania that she had never met anybody with so few illusions.

  “She sees herself exactly as she is, no better, and no worse. She never throws sops to her conscience. I like her.”

  Phyllis liked her too, for she recognised in Maimie a ruthlessness that she would gladly have acquired herself. Maimie mixed the ingredient that made up her life, deliberately: She wanted money. She wanted men. As far as the money was concerned, she would have preferred have inherited it. But she hadn’t. Heaven hadn’t given her much of a deal. No .background: no money. But it had given her a face. A face and a figure which, if made the most of, would provide all she needed. Why then fight against it? It was obviously what was intended.

  “I wish I was like you,” Phyllis once said to her wistfully. “I wish I wasn’t so bloody respectable. Look at me! Poking round in a Shakespearean Company for five pounds a week. I couldn’t have as good a time as you do of course, I haven’t your looks But I could have a better time than I do. I think my upbringing’s cramped me. Father was a doctor. There was never a lot of money, but always enough. Then he died, and all the money there is belongs to mother. It’s a funny thing how much our parents must have changed from the days of their p rents. The generation that were parents to our fathers and mothers would never have dreamed of leaving their daughters unprovided for. I had the glorious illusion that so it would be with me. At least a life insurance, or something to keep one from actual want. I never thought one could just be left penniless. But I was. I am.”

  “But what about your family?” asked Maimie. “I thought that was the only point of a family, that they looked after you. Haven’t you any?”

  “Dozens of all kinds. But first of all they’re nearly all poor. And secondly they put their heads in the sand like ostriches. They hope by not looking they won’t see me starve. They know I have months and months out of work, but do they ask me how I manage? Not they! They‘d be afraid. I might say I was hungry, and then they’d have to help. Or if I was looking happy and well-dressed, they’d be more afraid still. They’d be terrified what I might say.”

  “And what would you say?”

  “I should love to say—‘Isn’t it nice? Such a nice man is looking after me. Aren’t you all glad to think that, for a time at any rate, I’m spared the everlasting nagging anxiety of having no money?’ That’s what I should like to say, and in honesty there isn’t a retort they could make. But it wouldn’t be true. I’m drearily, dully respectable, hoping that a nice man will marry me, and when I’m out of work living honestly, if thinly, by the sweat of my brow, here a day’s filming, and there a day’s charring. Pathetic story, isn’t it?”

  “People like you never get what you want,” said Maimie thoughtfully. “You think such a lot before you do anything, that nothing ever happens. I never think. I don’t sit down and say to myself, ‘If I let myself fall in love with so-and-so, will he give me money?’ But I just fall in love, and he does, and that’s that. You make such a song and dance about everything. So does Tania. You both make me feel like a half-crown tart.”

  In the middle of the first week of Maimie’s visit, Barbara and Tania gave a small tea-party to introduce her to the Company. The talk turned to the inexhaustible subject of the Longs. The latest stories of Phoebe. The Company to a man taking up the cudgels for Ian.

  “We shall be without our Phoebe next week,”

  Tony tol
d them during tea.

  They were interested at once. “Why?”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Ssh! don’t all talk at once, and the ‘copper’s nark’ will tell you where he got his information.”

  “Go on, Tony. Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  “Well, it was from Brown. Brown,” he added, turning to Maimie, “is Ian’s valet, dresser, spy, and guardian angel. Up till last night I thought him impregnable. I tried him with tips, I tried him with drinks, but it was no good. He accepted the tips, he accepted the drinks, but he remained the utterly discreet servant. ‘This isn’t normal,’ I thought. ‘The fellow must have a tongue somewhere. There must be something or somebody that makes him chat. He can’t go through life saying nothing but that dreadful royal “We.”—“We were very pleased with the house to-night.”—“We were not at our best to-night, we have a slight cold—”’Never a word about how Brown’s feeling, or what Brown thinks. I couldn’t bear it. ‘I won’t rest,’ I thought, ’till I’ve excavated Brown.’ And I’ve done it—I’ve found the real man—I’ve discovered his leitmotif. And how do you think I did it?”

  An amused chorus of “Hows?” greeted him. “White port,” said Tony seriously. “I never saw anyone have so little power of resistance, or get drunk so quickly, as Brown before a bottle of white port It’s a gift! Brown, who I’d given up offering drinks to, because I thought it was a waste of time. Waste of time, ye gods! If only I’d thought of white port before. For when he was drunk, stupid maudlin drunk, I discovered the big noise in Brown’s life, the power that makes his wheels go round. It’s hate!”