The Whicharts

by Noel Streatfeild

  Chapter 20

  TANIA awoke to find a rather feeble sun struggling through the Nottingham lace blinds. Mrs. Alfy came in with a cup of tea.

  “Good mornin’, dear. It’s ’ardly seven o’clock, but I thought you’d be wantin’ to make an early start seein’ as you’ve all that way to go. I’ve brought you a nice cupatea, an’ by the time you’re dressed an’ve ’ad a bit of a wash, an ’ve put your traps together, I’ll ’ave your breakfast waitin’.”

  When Tania arrived in the kitchen Alfy had finished eating:

  “I’m goin’ on down to the garridge,” he said. “I’ll ’ave a look over your car, you come along down as soon as you’ve finished.”

  Tania, much to Mrs. Alfy’s disgust, scrambled through her breakfast, for she was in a hurry to have her talk with Alfy. Maimie or no Maimie, she could not help feeling that if only she could persuade Alfy to take her on, a nice steady job in the garage was worth a dozen mothers.

  She arrived at the garage to find her car being filled with water and petrol. It was a grey and scarlet Morris coupe. She had forgotten how exquisite she was. She stood in front of her spellbound, trying to believe that such speed and elegance were really hers.

  “Looks a bit of all right, doesn’t she?” said Alfy, appreciating her abstraction.

  His remark brought her back to earth.

  “Alfy, in your letter to me you said you had a business proposition to talk to me about. What was it?”

  Alfy scratched his head:

  “I’m glad you brought that up, Tania, for I’ve been feelin’ badly about it, very badly I ’ave, seein’ as you might ’ave counted on it like. You see it was this way. When I wrote to you, I thought as maybe you’d like me to garridge your car, an’ pay ’er licence an’ all that, an’ use ’er for a bit of taxi work. Then odd times when you was free, there sne’d be for you to take for a run.”

  “Yes,” said Tania eagerly, “and me to drive her when she was being a taxi?”

  “No. Oh no.” Alfy sounded injured. “Tania work ain’t a woman’s job. I always told you there was no work for a woman in this line. No, what I thought was, that if I was to use the car like that you wouldn’t ’ave to sell ’er, an’ there she’d be for you to drive into the country an’ that of a Sunday.” Tania said nothing. Her eyes, looking into his, were tragic and very black. Embarrassed, he hurried on:

  “But now it’s this way. Times is that bad I can’t manage to run an extra car. This last month I ’aven’t picked up enough work to keep one on the road, let alone two. The city gents what comes back of an evening, used to take a taxi regular, but now they walks, or goes on a bus, it’s fair sickening to see ’em. They says times is bad, but it’s my belief that sort don’t know what bad times is, it’s us of the proletariat what knows that.”

  Tania didn’t answer. She was thinking that this settled it. Now she had no alternative, she must try and find her mother. She looked at Alfy, she ought to say something, but her outlook appeared so utterly gloomy it crushed her. To add to her depression it began to drizzle.

  Alfy gazed at the sky, and shook his head: “Dirty,” he muttered, “very dirty.”

  He came back with her when she went back to the house to pick up her suitcase. He wanted to see how she drove the new car. His only criticism was that she drove too fast.

  “Silly it is, downright silly. Some poor fool that can’t drive will run into you one day, an’ then where’ll you be? Down Queer Street I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tania apologised, “but it does seem so mean to hold her in, when I can feel her simply bursting to go all out.”

  Mrs. Alfy was on the doorstep when they arrived. She drew Tania into the parlour:

  “’ow much money ’ave you, dear?”

  Tania flushed:

  “Two pounds, three shillings, and fourpence halfpenny.”

  “Well, ’ere’s another pound what I’m lendin’ you, I don’t like you to start short.”

  A tremendous argument followed. In the end Tania, against her will, was forced to take ten shillings. Remembering that Alfy had owned that times were bad, she was only persuaded to take that much after Mrs. Alfy had pointed out that if all else failed she could sell her car to pay the debt.

  Both the Alfys stood on the doorstep as she drove off:

  “Mind you comes to see us the minute you’re hack,” Mrs. Alfy called after her. Tania nodded, put her foot on the accelerator, and vanished round the corner.

  In spite of the drizzle, and her most uncertain future, by the time she reached Barnet she was singing. It was impossible to keep a heavy heart while the car purred beneath her, and the miles flicked away behind her. She missed the thrill she had expected on the Great North Road, for she was some miles up it before she realised she was on it at all. She careered, singing at the top of her voice, through Biggleswade and Stamford, and dashed on to Newark, where the rain had ceased to be a drizzle and had become a steady downpour, but quite undaunted, and singing louder than ever, she sped on to Doncaster, and there stopped, suddenly realising that she was enormously hungry. A quick calculation showed her that two pounds, thirteen and fourpence halfpenny, large sum though it was, would have to be handled carefully if, as seemed probable, her mother didn’t want her and she had to come straight back. While her car was being attended to, she wandered down the road looking for food that was both cheap and filling. She ended by buying six doughnuts, remembering that she had felt extraordinarily fat on an occasion when she had eaten three. “How gloriously fat I shall feel,” she thought, “after I’ve eaten six.” She also bought herself an orange by way of a drink. As she paid the man at the petrol pump she thought with a sigh how m1.1.ch more expensive a car was to feed than a girl. On the other side of Doncaster she got out for a stretch, and to eat her buns. She was surprised to find that she could only manage five of them, they seemed amazingly filling, so she laid the last one on the back seat for her tea. Fortified she drove on. The rain had stopped, but masses of lowering grey clouds hung in the sky. The hilly road to Wetherby needed her attention, but she was singing again by the time she reached Bowes, where she paused for a cup of tea, and to eat her last bun. As she drove into Penrith the sun was sinking westwards in a glory of black and crimson clouds. She looked at the signpost, ‘Carlisle 18 miles.’ She drew a deep breath, and slowed down. On enquiry she learned that her destination was through Carlisle and out the other side. She found the house quite easily, but was appalled at its size; her mother must be very rich, she thought, to live in a house like that. She hadn’t the courage to go to the front door, but there was a lodge, and at this she knocked timidly. A sad-faced woman came to the door with a baby on her arm, by her accent Tania knew she was from across the Border, as in answer to her enquiry for Miss Lissen, she said:

  “Would it be the young leddy, or the auld one?”

  Tania was flummoxed:

  “I don’t know,” she said vaguely.

  “Weel, there’s Miss Grace, the auld Maister’s sister, and there’s Miss Tania, the auld Maister’s daughter.”

  “It’s Miss Tania I want.”

  “Weel they’re no livin’ here the noo. If you’ll bide a wee I’ll gie ye Miss Grace’s address. As for Miss Tania it would be hard to say where she’d be, for she’s aye stravaiging.” The woman went into the lodge and came back with an envelope. “Here’s the address. Miss Grace aye gies it me when she’s from hame.”

  Tania took the envelope. Her heart stood still, for she saw the word “Sussex.” The envelope faded as her memory swept her backwards, and she saw instead the grey-green striped downs, and felt in retrospect the glory of space. She thanked the woman, put the envelope in her pocket, and jumped into her car—“Sussex,” she whispered as she touched the self-starter. “Sussex.”

  She needed the spur of being Sussex-bound, for she was deadly tired, and rather anxious abou
t her money. Would it hold out, she wondered? If she ate almost nothing could she do it? What was she going to do if her mother wasn’t in Sussex? The woman had only said Miss Grace was there. As “The Auld Maister” presumably meant her grandfather, the Auld Maister’s sister would be her great-aunt. Did great-aunts count as great­ aunts when they were illegitimate? Anyway this one must be a very, very old lady; after all, she was her mother’s aunt, and a mother couldn’t be very young. Surely she must find her mother in Sussex? Surely the two old ladies would live together? Hopefully she visualised two figures by a fireside, for the expression “aye stravaiging” had meant nothing to her.

  She stopped at Penrith to feed herself, and fill up the car. She couldn’t face any more doughnuts, filling though they had undoubtedly proved to be, so she purchased half a pound of ginger nuts, and, wasting no time, ate them as she drove along. She planned to drive until she could drive no more, and then to pull up in a field or by the side of the road, for a little sleep, provided she could find a sufficiently isolated spot where the police were not likely to see her, for she was painfully conscious that she was driving without a licence, and wouldn’t be old enough to have one until next month. It was lucky, she thought, the Alfys hadn’t known her age, or they would never have let her start.

  The towns and villages through which she had dashed earlier in the day now appeared vaguely as a flurry of lights. She no longer sang, she needed all the energy she had left to drive at all. On she careered, going steadily south but frequently losing her road in the darkness, and fumbling for signposts to set her right. In the early morning when she should have been arriving at Doncaster, she found herself in a narrow lane. Where or when she had gone wrong she had no idea. It seemed to her hours since she had last seen a sign­ post. She got out to prospect. Her legs were so stiff that they almost gave way under her. She found, away from the safe shelter of her car, the country appallingly black and lonely, and apparently inhabited with queer beasts, for there were the most mysterious and terrifying noises. With her heart in her mouth she crept along, and a few yards further on found a widening in the lane where it seemed safe to park. With some manoeuvring she got her car there, turned off the lights, and with no thought of the police, rolled herself into a ball on the back seat and promptly fell asleep.

  She was wakened by a cheerful “Whoa there!” Sitting up, she found herself looking into a farm. Leaning over the gate she asked the farm hand who had wakened her, where she was, and which was the road to London. He appeared to be half­witted, for he simply stood and stared at her, but when she had repeated her question for the third time, he vanished into the farm and reappeared with a woman, who not only directed her carefully, but on hearing she had been lost and had slept in her car, insisted on her coming into the farm, and gave her tea and bread and butter, and refused to be paid for it. Warmed and heartened by this bit of good fortune, Tania took to the road again in grand spirits.

  It was nearly one o’clock before she reached London. As she crossed to the south side of the Thames, tired though she was, her heart sang. To be going back to Sussex, driving her own car, it seemed too good to be true. She couldn’t drive fast enough to satisfy the urge that was in her to see the downs again.

  It was late in the afternoon before she saw them, and at their first glimpse she clapped on her brakes, regardless of the furious words of a driver behind her to whom she had given no indication that she intended to stop. The downs hadn’t changed. There they were with their patches and stripes, and racing shadows, exactly as she had left them seven years ago. It had never struck her that there might be no downlands in the part of Sussex for which she was heading. The address said “Near Arundel, Sussex.” She had never been to Arundel, but the ‘Sussex’ was enough for her; if in Sussex at all, then there must be downs. Having soothed her soul with a long1stare she set off again, and outside Arundel she was directed to a winding lane, and was told she would find the house she wanted on the side of the hill. Her car climbed steadily upward, and suddenly round a bend she came to a white gate. The house lay some way back, it looked square and contented, with a cheerful front garden full of flowers. Unpacking her Bible, but leaving her suitcase in the car, she climbed out and opened the gate. She was so tired and hungry that the short walk up to the house seemed treble its length. The front door stood wide open, she couldn’t see a bell so she knocked. A tall gaunt woman appeared, dressed in a tweed coat and skirt, with an appallingly ugly felt hat precariously balanced on her thin grey hair. Tania smiled at this apparition, secretly hoping that this was not her mother. Surely her mother couldn’t look quite like that?

  “Are you Miss Tania Lissen?” she asked nervously.

  “No, I’m Miss Lissen. My niece has gone to meet you. I’m very glad to see you, for what we were going to do with the poor things if you hadn’t come, I don’t know, for one book says one thing and one another, and there are all those sacks of food, and whether the poor creatures like them all mixed together or served as separate courses, I have really no idea, and the books don’t seem to say, but now you are here I can safely leave them to you. Come along, I expect you are eager to see them, for I understand that people like you, who spend your whole lives with them, get quite fond of them, which I confess amazes me, for to my mind they seem not only stupid, but not quite nice, but maybe that’s my ignorance, and if we stay here long enough, which is most unlikely as my niece seldom stays anywhere for more than a day or two, I might get to understand them.” She stopped suddenly, for Tania, already exhausted to dropping point, was listening to this flow of apparently meaningless words with the most vacant stare. “Oh dear,” Miss Lissen went on, “I do hope, my child, that you are brighter than you look, for we need all your intelligence. AU,” she emphasised, as she led the way through the hall and out of a door on the other side of the house. She pointed to a field in front of them, dotted with white objects. “There they are,” she said.

  Tania now realised that all this conversation had been about chickens. To her eyes, seeing almost double with fatigue, there seemed to be all the chickens in the world gathered before them. She was not allowed long to look at them, for she was hurried across to a shed, which was full of sacks, boxes, empty bowls, bowls of repulsive­ looking leavings, bowls of crusts, weighing machines, tins of mustard, measuring glasses, wooden spoons, and jugs.

  “There!” said Miss Lissen triumphantly. “I really think you must find all you want, for I’ve bought everything the books mentioned, including those recommended for when the poor creatures are broody, which I trust none of them are, for it sounds a most distressing complaint, and the treatment seems most unpleasant, and I’ve bought some tins of mustard, for one of the books stated that it was a good thing to put inside the eggs if the birds should take to eating them, but really I don’t mind if they do eat a few, for we can easily spare them.”

  Still chattering, she wandered away, leaving Tania staring despairingly at the mass of chicken impedimenta before her. She went to the door and looked at the birds. They seemed a long way off—“I’ll feed the nearest ones first,” she said to herself. Feeling quite incapable of feeding even the handiest of the chickens before she herself had had something to eat, she chose one of the least stale crusts out of the basins, and furtively, with her eyes on the door, bolted it down. Slightly revived, she poured portions out of most of the bags into the bowls of refuse and bread, and nervously started out. She had never known chickens on this sort of personal footing before, in fact she’d scarcely ever met one face to face, and to her horror, at sight of her, these charged at her, looking at her most unpleasantly, she thought. She wondered if they always looked like that, or whether it was because they had seen her eating their bread. She couldn’t find any clean plates on which to serve their food, the various dishes standing about looked very dirty, and she was far too afraid of the birds to hunt about, so she popped the bowl of food on the ground, and retreating from the pushing and struggling that en
sued, went back to the shed for more. As she was stirring up another bowlful, she heard voices outside—a deep, rather lovely voice called: “Aunt Grace, here she is. Here’s Miss Jones.”