The Daring Debutantes Bundle

by M C Beaton

  Sally shook her head miserably.

  “Then just go home, there’s a good child,” said Miss Fleming in a softer voice.

  Sally nodded dumbly and picked up her suitcase. She turned toward the door wearily. But the little imp who looks after budding journalists was not going to let her escape so easily. And somewhere at the bottom of Sally’s misery he planted a small seed of hope.

  Standing with her head drooping and her hand on the handle, Sally said in a low voice, “Well, one day I’ll make it. Miss Fleming, do you have relatives in London? If you will excuse the personal question.”

  Miss Fleming sighed and took off her hornrimmed glasses and patted her iron-gray hair. “No, child. I am one of the many businesswomen who fend for themselves. I live in a lodging house in Twenty-two Bryant’s Court, off Leicester Square. One small room and a gas ring. I would gladly throw it up for a home and a garden—even if that home was full of someone else’s children.

  “Good-bye,” said Sally meekly. “I will take your kind advice.”

  Miss Fleming looked at the small, elflike, tear-stained face, at the heavy battered suitcase, at the dusty boots. “Come back and see me when you’re in London again,” she said with a sudden smile, which lit up her harsh features. “I’ll treat you to an ice at Gunter’s.”

  “Thank you,” said Sally, smiling back. “I won’t forget.”

  Miss Fleming shook her head and went back to her typing. Sally trailed down by way of the stairs, not having the courage to operate the lift herself.

  She stood on the burning pavement outside, irresolute. Newsboys were already crying the evening papers’ headlines.

  That little spark of hope was growing into a flame. No, Sally would not give up so easily. She went up to a newsagent’s kiosk and bought a map of London and, standing on the hot pavement, looked up Bryant’s Court. She turned to look for a hansom, for although Leicester Square and its environs was within walking distance, her case felt heavier by the minute.

  But as she turned around toward the street the sunlight was shining on a small brass plaque at the side of a doorway in one of the courts that led off Fleet Street. Sally was immature enough to be superstitious, and she immediately felt that that plaque had been lit up expressly for some reason.

  She looked up at the name of the court—Haggen’s Court—and then walked forward, shadowing the plaque with her body so that she could read the name.

  HOME CHATS read the curly legend. THE FAMILY MAGAZINE.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. A steep flight of wooden steps led upward, and Sally toiled up it, bumping her suitcase against the walls. At the top she almost collided with an ink-stained young man. He took one look at her tear-stained face and schoolgirlish dress.

  “Agony,” he said obscurely. “Mrs. Hepplewhite. Through there. Don’t tell her I sent you.”

  There was a frosted glass door with a legend in black lettering: AUNT MABEL. LETTERS EDITOR.

  Sally shrugged wearily. It was a beginning. She pushed open the door.

  A little elderly gray-haired lady started in alarm and quickly thrust a bottle and a glass into the top drawer of her desk.

  “Yeees?” she said in a soft, genteel voice.

  “My name is Miss Blane,” said Sally, “and I want a job.”

  “Did you write to me?” asked Mrs. Hepplewhite, alias Aunt Mabel, peering myopically at Sally.

  “No,” said Sally flatly.

  There was a long silence. Aunt Mabel sighed. “I have no time to speak to you,” she said at last. “I have so many, many letters to deal with. So many sinners. Take this one.” She held out a piece of cheap notepaper covered with tear-blotched, illiterate scrawl. “This is from some housemaid who has become… er… tut-tut… pregnant. She wants my advice.

  “I shall tell her she must read two chapters of her Bible every day for the rest of her life and to report immediately to the Society for Fallen Mothers.”

  Sally thought privately that this was the most heartless piece of advice she had ever heard but nonetheless sat down, first because she had given up hope and saw Emily and the children looming closer, and second because she was tired.

  “Yes, yes,” dithered Aunt Mabel, looking slyly at Sally and producing both the glass and the bottle out of the top drawer again. “Medicine,” she explained, although Sally thought Aunt Mabel’s medicine smelled remarkably like gin.

  “Now, here’s another… yes… yes…” went on Aunt Mabel after fortifying herself from the bottle without resorting to the glass. “Young lady is being forced to marry rich neighbor’s son. Does not want to. Ungrateful girl! Shall tell her marriages are not made in Heaven but by sensible parents. Honor thy father and thy mother—hic!”

  Aunt Mabel began to search feverishly among the letters on her desk. “My spectacles. Now, where did I put them?” she demanded.

  Sally looked around helpfully. The room was cluttered with filing cabinets piled high with yellowing copies of Home Chats.

  Sally remembered the magazine now, for Emily’s cook took it for the recipes. It had a strong religious flavor and a very small circulation.

  There was a small gas fire and oak bookshelves on one wall, and various religious pictures decorated the other three, which were of the highly colored variety, in which a blond-and-blue-eyed Jesus divided loaves and fishes, walked on the water, and suffered the little children to come unto Him.

  Then Sally saw the spectacles on the dusty mantelshelf. “There they are,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’ll get them for you.”

  “No! No!” cried Aunt Mabel, springing to her feet with surprising agility. “I never let anyone touch my spectacles.” She took one tottering step toward the fireplace and then clutched her heart. She cast a look of watery eyed surprise on Sally, and then fell headlong, her head striking the black iron fender around the gas fire with a sickening crack.

  “Help!” called Sally desperately. “Help!”

  The frosted glass door was pushed open and a bluff, middle-aged man smelling strongly of beer came striding into the room.

  He brushed past Sally and bent over the fallen body of Aunt Mabel.

  “Dead as a doornail,” he grunted, “and she didn’t even write her column, and it’s got to go to press tonight. Well, got to get the doctor.”

  Sally sat in a daze as first a policeman arrived to take her statement, then a doctor, then a clutch of weeping relatives. Finally the body was removed, and the bluff man who introduced himself as the Editor, Mr. Barton, and Sally were left alone.

  “Poor old thing,” he said, shaking his head. “The gin did her in. Now, what am I to do? There’ll be no Aunt Mabel column this time.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Sally, feeling dizzy and strange after the shock of seeing the sudden death of Aunt Mabel.

  “You! You’re a schoolgirl,” said Mr. Barton.

  “I’m eighteen,” said Sally briskly, going round and sitting behind the desk and picking up the first letter. “And you haven’t got anyone else.”

  “That’s true,” he said wearily. “Oh, very well. Short answers. Tell ’em to read their Bible. Be back at seven o’clock for it, and if you can’t do it… well, we wouldn’t have an Aunt Mabel column anyway until I found someone else.”

  Sally worked on in a frenzy after he had gone. She answered all the letters in the manner in which she would like an answer to her own problems, delving into her vast knowledge culled in the Bombay kitchens of marriage and death and childbirth.

  She wrote rapidly in neat script, and when Mr. Barton returned at seven, she proudly handed him the completed manuscript.

  Fortunately for Sally, he read her first reply, which was fairly orthodox, and grunted his approval. “Pretty touch,” he said gruffly. “Pity you can’t have the job. Too young.”

  “I’ll call tomorrow for my money,” said Sally.

  “What money?”

  “The money you owe me for being Aunt Mabel,” said Sally patiently.

&
nbsp; “Oh… that. Oh, all right. G’night.”

  Sally picked up her suitcase wearily and walked down the stairs, out into the court, and out into Fleet Street.

  She flagged a passing four-wheeler.

  “Bryant’s Court,” she said.

  Miss Fleming leaned out of her window at the end of the cul-de-sac that was Bryant’s Court, trying to find a breath of air.

  She heard a harsh altercation directly below and looked down. A small figure in a crumpled sailor hat was arguing with the landlady, Mrs. Goody.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Goody,” called Miss Fleming. “I’ll vouch for her. She’s a working girl.”

  “Oh, very well, mum,” sniffed Mrs. Goody. “If you say it’s all right, but you ’as to be careful, some o’ ’em not bein’ what they should be an’…”

  Her voice trailed away as she led Sally into the lodging. Miss Fleming met Sally on the stairs and held out her hand.

  “Well, well,” she said. “Welcome to the club.”

  Sally grinned and then burst into tears.

  It was such fun being a working woman!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mr. George Bessamy shook out his napkin, picked up his knife and fork, and then put them down again.

  The children had been taken off to their rooms by one of the two housemaids. One of them was wailing out into the still evening air—but then, one of them always did.

  “My dear,” he said to his wife, who was pushing food into her mouth with single-minded absorption, “I was so carried away with the news of my illustrious client that I quite forgot to tell you about Miss Blane.”

  “Sally?” mumbled Emily vaguely. “What about Sally?”

  “Your sister walked into my office this morning, carrying a suitcase and asking me to sign a letter to some charity.”

  “Did she, dear?”

  “What charity?”

  “I couldn’t really say,” said Emily placidly.

  “She was not concerned about charities this morning. She said something about wanting that two hundred pounds so that she could go to London and become a newspaperwoman. Quite touching, really. At her age, I wanted to become a nun.”

  Mr. Bessamy glared at his uncaring wife and rose abruptly from the table and headed for the study. In a few moments he was back.

  “Mrs. Bessamy,” he said awfully. “Miss Blane’s bankbook is gone. I think she tricked me into signing a letter to the bank manager. I think the thankless girl has gone to London!”

  “Don’t be silly,” said the wife of his bosom with unimpaired calm. “Sally would never behave like that.”

  Gladys came into the room, looking flushed and agitated. “There’s a telegraph boy at the door, mum. Says he has a wire for you.”

  “Very well, Gladys. Mr. Bessamy, give Gladys sixpence for the boy, and, Gladys, bring the wire to me.”

  The maid went out, and Emily began to hum tunelessly between her teeth while her husband rapped his fingers nervously on the table.

  When Gladys came back with the wire Mr. Bessamy held out his hand for it. It was inconceivable that a mere woman should be allowed to read something as important as a wire, even if it were addressed to her.

  “Heavens!” he exclaimed. “This is monstrous!”

  Emily signaled placidly to Gladys to remove the plates and bring in the pudding, blind to the fact that her husband had not even started his dinner.

  Mr. Bessamy glared at his wife. “This is from your sister. She says she has found lodgings and a job. Monstrous!”

  “Oh, how clever of her!” said Emily.

  “She also says she drew out the whole of the two hundred pounds!”

  “Well, it is her money.”

  “Nonsense! That was for Peter’s school fees.”

  “But, my dear, how could you use Sally’s money?”

  “I should have asked her for it,” said Mr. Bessamy, breathing heavily. “Miss Blane owed us two hundred pounds for her keep alone!”

  “I suppose so,” said Emily. “What shall we do?”

  “Never, ever speak to her again!”

  “It certainly will be rather hard to speak to her, since she is in London and we are in Sussex,” said Emily, all mad reason. “She was not much help with the children. In fact, I sometimes think dear Sally did not like them, although I know that must be very hard to believe. I shall send on the rest of her clothes and things. I wonder if she wants her teddy, or should I let Marmaduke have it? She is really rather old for a toy, you know, but she was quite sentimental about it… my dear?”

  But Emily spoke to the open air. For Mr. Bessamy, with a great grinding of teeth, had removed himself to the solace of his study.

  Sally smiled weakly at Miss Fleming, who had supplied her with a supper of tinned salmon sandwiches and strong tea after she had sent a wire to Emily. “So you see,” ended Sally, who had been regailing her new friend with the story of Aunt Mabel’s death, “I don’t think I have the job. And how much money should I ask?”

  “If I were you,” said Miss Fleming firmly, “I would go to bed and have a good night’s sleep, and then, in the morning, I would simply turn up at Home Chats and start answering the letters. I would tell this Mr. Barton that in the heat of the moment he gave you the job. These Fleet Street men can never remember a thing from one moment to the next.”

  “I’ll try,” said Sally doubtfully. “Can I have a bath?”

  “If no one’s in the bathroom, yes,” said Miss Fleming. “You will need two pennies for the geyser, and you’ll find the bathroom at the end of the corridor. Now I’ll take you back to your room. You’re very lucky to get it, you know. It’s pretty awful, but it’s cheap and clean.”

  She said good night outside Sally’s door, and Sally went into the dark little cell that was to be her home. Tomorrow she would take in her surroundings but just for the moment she was too tired. She undressed, and putting on her dressing gown and slippers, she picked up her sponge bag and made her way along the corridor to the bathroom.

  The geyser, fed by two pennies put into the slot, went off with a terrifying bang. The gas roared horrendously, and then a thin stream of boiling water began to trickle out of the brass spout.

  Sally sighed. It would take at least half an hour’s time to fill.

  The bathroom was a long coffin of a place with a high ceiling on which flakes of paint and cobwebs moved in the hot air rising from the gas jets. The cork bath mat was crumbling at the edge, and there was no toilet. That was housed at the opposite end of the corridor. The bathroom was also full of signs: PLEASE LEAVE THE BATH AS YOU WOULD WISH TO FIND IT. EXTINGUISH GAS. USE YOUR OWN SOAP.

  Sally waited patiently while the water mounted slowly in the large old tub. The house was full of noises and voices. A woman clattered down the stairs, laughing shrilly and talking nonstop to a silent partner. Somewhere a couple was arguing fiercely, the words mercifully indistinct. There was the sad, pathetic wail of a young baby. There was a mixture of odors of gas, disinfectant, dry rot, mildew, baked potatoes, welks, baked beans, and sour milk. Each room carried the stern warning NO COOKING IN THE ROOMS, but according to Miss Fleming, no one paid any attention. They all used a little gas ring that pulled out next to the gas fire and on it cooked their suppers.

  At last the bath was ready, and by that time there were several impatient rattles at the door and cries of “Hurry up in there! Are you going to take all night?”

  “I’ve only just run the bath!” called Sally, but this only produced more furious rattlings at the door, so instead of having a long, leisurely soak, she had a hurried scrub, and, after cleaning out the bath, she opened the door to be confronted with six pairs of furious eyes, three male sets and three female. Sally blushed at being seen attired only in her nightgown and woolly dressing gown by the opposite sex, but the men were too impatient and would not have noticed if she had emerged stark naked.

  Once in the darkness of her room—NO GAS TO BE LIT AFTER 10 P.M.—Sally turned back the thin covers of
the iron bed and then went to lean out of the window.

  Below her in Bryant’s Court the ladies of the night were plying their trade. Sally raised her eyes instead and looked over the rooftops, where London lay spread out under an orange sky.

  The very air seemed to pulsate with raucous life. She sent up a prayer for the soul of Aunt Mabel, and then gave herself up to dreams of the future. She was in London and everything was possible. Good-bye, Emily.

  She would never go back.

  Mr. Barton, Editor of Home Chats, paused at the top of the stairs. He saw a shadow moving behind the frosted glass of the Letter Editor’s door and went forward and pushed it open.

  Sally, with her hair carefully piled on top of her small head, was going over the filing cabinets with a feather duster.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Mr. Barton crossly.

  “Don’t you remember?” said Sally sweetly, although her heart was hammering against her ribs. “You gave me Aunt Mabel’s job.”

  “I did?” Mr. Barton clutched his head. It had been a hectic evening, what with the old girl dying like that, and then putting the magazine to bed. He’d had a few more pints than were good for him, and so the evening before came back to him as a sort of gray fuzziness interspersed with bright flashes of total recall.

  He could remember the head printer laughing over the Aunt Mabel column and pronouncing it very good.

  He looked at Sally doubtfully. Had he offered her the job?

  She certainly looked less of a schoolgirl with her hair up. In fact, she looked very attractive indeed. Enough to make the Reverend Frobisher Entwhistle turn in his grave. The Reverend Entwhistle had founded the magazine some fifty years ago. The small profit from the journal went into a trust for his various dissolute offspring. Mr. Barton had held the job for the past twenty years. He had tried to storm Fleet Street as a young man with dreams of becoming a foreign correspondent burning in his eyes. But somehow he had become the editor of Home Chats instead. He had made no changes.

  Apart from Aunt Mabel, an office boy, and Mr. Barton, the rest of the contributors were free-lance, sending in articles on “How to Reprimand a Bad Servant,” “How to Raise Funds for Your Local Church,” “Parish Gossip,” and similar epistles.