Something Light

by Margery Sharp

  “In the first place,” said Louisa, “I want you to tell me the truth.”

  “Well, of course,” said Catherine readily. (Louisa hoped she wasn’t keeping her fingers crossed; as children give themselves absolution in advance when about to tell a lie.) “What about?”

  “I don’t know if your father consulted you,” continued Louisa bravely, “before I came?”

  “No, he didn’t. At least, he told us at breakfast—but I don’t think one can call that consulting,” said Catherine, still readily.

  “It must have been rather a surprise?”

  Catherine reflected.

  “Not exactly. I mean, Dad loves giving us surprises. So that though things may be surprising in themselves, they’re not exactly surprising.”

  It was a rather neat piece of dialectic, but little help to Louisa. She pressed on.

  “Given that you weren’t surprised, how do you feel about the results?”

  Once again Catherine reflected.

  “Well, how long are you staying?”

  Louisa’s heart sank. She’d asked for the truth, now here it came!

  “That depends a good deal on what you tell me. In fact, on what you and Paul and Toby really think about me. If you could think of me as—well, as a permanency—” hazarded Louisa.

  The sentence was never finished. Catherine instantly seized its every implication. For a moment she simply stared. Then—

  “Louisa! D’you mean to say you’d marry our Dad?” cried Catherine.

  Ravished by delight and surprise as she was—

  “Don’t say it!” cried Louisa superstitiously.

  “But would you?”

  “If you and the boys—”

  “But, darling Louisa, there’s nothing we’d like better!” cried Catherine. “We just didn’t dare hope! We’re all for it!—If you’ve any doubts, just wait while I fetch Toby and Paul!”

  2

  “Step-Mamma, your health!” said Paul gravely. “We shall still doubtless address you as Louisa for the moment, but we may as well practice step-mamma too.”

  There they sat, the family of Louisa’s dreams, assembled dressing-gowned about her bed. Catherine was back on its foot, Paul occupied the dressing stool, Toby squatted on the rug. All had brought tooth mugs, Paul nipped down for a bottle of lime juice and a soda syphon; in which heady mixture (for so in the circumstances it was) to drink Louisa’s health.

  “Don’t say it!” repeated Louisa anxiously. “For heaven’s sake don’t jump the gun! He hasn’t asked me yet.”

  “But he will,” said Paul confidently. “We’ve seen it in his eye. It was only you we had any doubts about, dear Louisa. There must be more to our Dad than one suspected.”

  “I believe Louisa likes us,” said Catherine gently.

  “Well, I’ve always wanted a family,” confessed Louisa. (It wasn’t strictly true; she hadn’t wanted one until about a week ago. But now that she did, she wanted one so earnestly, the exaggeration was surely forgivable.)

  “So do we want a step-mamma,” said Paul warmly. “The fact is, dear Louisa, you’ve turned up in the absolute nick of time.”

  “In fact, if you hadn’t turned up,” said Catherine dreamily, “I dare say we’d have been found all laid out in sizes beside the gas oven.”

  “Being all, you see,” explained Paul, “practically poised for flight on the edge of the family nest. Only it happens to be smeared with birdlime.”

  “He means Dad,” glossed Toby.

  Louisa was so shaken, her fair picture of the Clark family life seemed to dissolve so suddenly before her eyes, all she could think of to say was, “You shouldn’t call your father birdlime.”

  3

  “I thought it a rather neat metaphor,” apologized Paul. “And it is, you know, exactly how he’s behaving.”

  “You forget how much Louisa doesn’t know yet,” said Catherine practically. “We may have given her quite a shock.”

  “Yes, you have!” cried Louisa, recovering her forces with a bang. “You ungrateful cubs! Good heavens, with a father who—” She cast about among Mr. Clark’s thronging parental virtues for just the most striking example. It was an embarras de richesses. However nothing had ever impressed Louisa more than that first sight of Tomboy in his stall. “—Who buys his daughter a horse—!” cried Louisa.

  Catherine sighed.

  “If you only knew,” she said gently, “how I hate that horse!”

  4

  Dismayed and astounded afresh, Louisa instinctively glanced at the boys for confirmation that she’d heard aright. But both nodded gravely.

  “It’s quite true,” said Paul. “She loathes its guts.”

  “I’m always feeding it, and grooming it, and cleaning up after it,” sighed Catherine, “and polishing acres and acres of leather for it, and then when I’m utterly exhausted I have to go out and ride it. Even if it snows, I have to come back glowing with healthy exercise, actually my feet are always frozen, and start feeding and grooming and polishing—”

  “But your father told me,” protested Louisa, “you were mad about horses!”

  Catherine returned a patient glance.

  “He’d read somewhere in a paper that all teen-agers were mad about horses. Just because I quite enjoyed hacking once a week didn’t mean I was mad about them. But that never occurred to him. Because he’s never thought of me as an individual. I was just a mad-about-horses teen-ager.”

  “She never asked for a horse,” put in Toby loyally. “It just came.”

  “As a lovely surprise,” agreed Catherine, with irony. “The day after I left school, there it was. Outside the front door. Lindy holding it and grinning all over her face.—And no wonder, because whatever Dad paid for it, he was rooked. It’s a horrible horse. But he went and asked her which was my favorite, and she palmed Tomboy off on him …”

  “Well, that was when you should have said you didn’t want it,” said Louisa sharply.

  Catherine looked at her again.

  “If you found a horse outside the front door, and your father bursting with glee because he was giving you such a wonderful surprise, could you have said you didn’t want it?”

  “Perhaps not,” admitted Louisa.

  “People talk about children being ungrateful,” said Catherine somberly. “They don’t know what children go through, not to be ungrateful. Then Dad led me round to the old out-house—I knew there’d been some sort of alterations going on there, but I thought it was just for improvements—and there was this lovely little stable, for me to look after all by myself and ruin my hands.”

  There was a brief silence. Though Louisa was beginning to see Catherine’s point of view, her sympathies were still far more with Mr. Clark. He might have been in error, but wasn’t the imaginative generosity of such a gift something quite remarkable?

  “Wasn’t it still wonderfully kind of him,” persuaded Louisa, “to give you Tomboy?”

  “It was a bribe,” said Catherine sternly. “Like the boys’ Vespas. To keep me in the nest—because he thought I was mad about horses. What I want to be is a nurse—not a stablehand. That’s what the row was about, I don’t know if you heard, last night.”

  5

  Now they were back to really important matters. Not that the Tomboy-excursus hadn’t been useful in its way; as each young Clark realized, it had softened Louisa up.—She was in fact still recognizing an in the circumstances forgivable error: not horsewomanly, the neatness that had so struck her, the first time she saw Catherine, but a nurse’s; apt to meet with confidence the most formidable of Sisters’ eyes. Not a bowler hat were those neat braids designed for, but a nurse’s cap …

  “It’s quite true,” repeated Paul, in this fresh context. “It’s what she’s wanted to do ever since I can remember. She goes to the hospital here every day as an aide. She has to tie Tomboy up with the ambulances.”

  “Can you think of anything more respectable,” continued Catherine bitterly, “than nursing? Fr
om Dad’s attitude, you’d think I wanted to join the chorus of the Folies Bergères. Simply because I’d have to live in a hostel! As for the boys—”

  “Jets,” said Toby simply.

  “Jet engines,” corrected Paul. “D’you know, Louisa, we’re both of us such bright boys, Rolls would take us on as apprentices in the next batch? They’ve practically applied for us, through our head. What one means to say,” added Paul, pointedly echoing his sister, “is that one isn’t trying to join the Foreign Legion. One would simply have to go and live in carefully selected digs. Only being under age, we need Dad’s signature on the dotted line.”

  “Matrons want it too,” said Catherine sadly. “That was what the row was about.”

  “Couldn’t we forge it?” asked Toby suddenly.

  “A fat lot of good that would do,” retorted Paul. “He’d come and buy us out, or something equally embarrassing. Besides we now have hope. We have Louisa. As soon as she marries our Dad the whole picture changes, because we shall no more—to quote his favorite sickener—be leaving him all alone.”

  Louisa felt it high time to speak up on her own account.

  “Yes, but what about me?” she demanded indignantly. “You don’t seem to realize that what I want is a family!”

  They regarded her with their usual bright intelligence.

  “That’s what Cathy thought,” said Paul. “But surely it isn’t too late to start?”

  “Look at Sarah wife of Abraham,” encouraged Toby.

  “Thanks,” said Louisa. “What I’m trying to get into your heads is that I want a family now. It’s not fair, if I marry your father and you all clear out next day.”

  “Ah, but think how we’d come back,” said Paul swiftly. “With you here, Louisa, we’d be back whenever we could—rushing home to our step-mamma.”

  “Personally, I’d call it ideal,” offered Catherine. “Just think, Louisa—part of the time a blushing bride, then wham! a mother of three. If that isn’t having the best of both worlds, tell me what is.—Dear, dear Louisa, say you will!”

  “But I haven’t been asked!” cried Louisa.

  “Of course he’ll ask you. We know he’ll ask you. Then as soon as he feels safe and cozy you can talk to him about us—”

  “Only she mustn’t leave it too long,” put in Paul anxiously. “We want our applications in.”

  “Louisa must handle it as she thinks best. Of course there’s no question of her going after just a week—and I dare say our Dad needs a little time.”

  “Yes, but before June the thirtieth, or we’ll have to wait another year.”

  “Well, that gives her nearly a month. That ought to be loads. Then the gates will open—”

  “The nest will fall—”

  “No more birdlime!”

  Louisa looked from one radiant face to another; at something in her glance the children paused.

  “We aren’t rushing you, are we?” asked Catherine anxiously.

  “No,” said Louisa. “But aren’t you fond of your father at all?”

  6

  It was as though she’d thrown a cloth over a bird cage. Louisa deliberately allowed the silence that followed to prolong itself, while the children’s attention concentrated.

  “He’s fond of you, you know,” said Louisa.

  They looked at each other. Tacitly, the word was left with Paul.

  “But that’s just what we don’t,” stated Paul thoughtfully. “Quite honestly, we think he’s just got a thing about families. We think that if we weren’t his children, he’d probably rather dislike us.”

  “And no wonder,” said Louisa indignantly. “But you are his children, as he’s your father. Aren’t you fond of him at all?”

  Almost unexpectedly, a little catspaw of uneasiness ruffled their calm. As they looked at each other again, Louisa thankfully recognized at least an attempt to be fair.

  “When we were little—” began Catherine uncertainly. She broke off, evidently recalling as might a centenarian the days of her youth. “When I was really little, he once made me a Noah’s Ark with a gangway.”

  “When I was about ten, and had mumps, he read Kipling to me,” acknowledged Paul.

  “He used to be pretty good about fireworks, on Guy Fawkes’,” recalled Toby.

  For a moment, while Louisa held her breath, rockets burst above the roof of a homemade Noah’s Ark; a boy sat up in bed listening to the tale of Mowgli …

  “If you think we don’t mind, not loving our father,” said Catherine abruptly, “you couldn’t be more mistaken. It’s not just that we worry, quite enormously, over what sort of complexes we may be building up; we’d much rather love him. Only when he just clamps down like birdlime on all our absolutely vital projects, it makes him very difficult, to love …”

  Louisa sat back against her pillows and let a tide of happiness flow over her. How earnestly had she longed to do something, for Catherine and Toby and Paul! Now a gift greater than she’d ever contemplated lay within her power: by setting them free to fly, she could give them back their love for their father.

  “All right,” said Louisa, as lightly as she could. “I’ll do my best. And I promise you not to marry him until he’s signed on the dotted lines!”

  Catherine kissed her first; then Toby, then Paul.—It was like having a litter of puppies on the bed, thought Louisa; only they weren’t puppies, they were a family.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  1

  Breakfast next morning was even pleasanter than Sunday’s. Warm as the sunshine that streamed through the windows, the children’s affection streamed out towards Louisa; and now she had no fears of what the fair show might conceal. Moreover they were particularly careful not to embarrass her by any suggestion of complicity; and when Mr. Clark suggested that no doubt Cathy meant to profit by such a fine morning to take Tomboy out early, not one so much as caught her eye.

  When Louisa went round collecting laundry, she found they’d all made their beds.

  She left Mr. Clark at table; he for once was being unusually slow. “Would you mind,” asked Louisa, “if I didn’t stay to pour your second cup? I want to get on with the wash.”—She had a pretty shrewd idea that this wouldn’t offend him, and it didn’t; “‘Those who wash on Monday,’” quoted Mr. Clark humorously, “‘have all the week to dry—’” “On a day like this,” cried Louisa vigorously, “It’ll by dry by lunchtime!”

  She had the kitchen to herself, for Mrs. Temple, frustrated in clearing away breakfast, observed that all things being equal she might as well trot off to her own dhobi. (“In the washing machine,” observed Mrs. Temple; adding, “If you’re still at that lark in a month’s time, I’ll eat my old man’s hat.”) Louisa was perfectly agreeable; she had formed the daring project of attempting to iron a shirt, and greatly preferred to be free of the cynical and experienced Temple eye. She didn’t overestimate her powers; the shirts she was used to were the drip-dry variety; Louisa meant to start with one of Toby’s, and work up by degrees, through Paul’s, before so much as setting iron to tail on one of Mr. Clark’s.—It is almost impossible to credit; Louisa’s happy fancy actually envisaged starch; for stiff or evening shirts. But she was well aware that starch must lie in the future; and for the moment just picked out Toby’s worst. Even that she set aside until she’d done the woollens, she wanted to get them out as soon as possible in the good drying wind …

  “A month!” thought Louisa, echoing Mrs. Temple—and plunging half a dozen socks into blood-temperature suds. Why, years could pass before she tired of such delightful employment! It still pleased her that Mrs. Temple had said a month; a month was the latter’s general time-unit, the equivalent of indefinitely. Mrs. Temple no less than the children, it seemed, considered her as a fixture! And let but a week or two more lapse, thought Louisa happily, just going quietly on as they were now—che va piano va sicuro, softly-softly catchee monkey—and she was pretty confident herself that such would be her happy fate.

  Without i
n the least meaning to go back on her word, she had an idea that it might be wise to postpone her good offices on behalf of the children as long as possible—until Mr. Clark, as they’d said themselves, felt really cozy and safe.

  Happily Louisa soaked and squeezed and rinsed out socks. She had a dozen pairs out in the orchard before ten. Not one bird but a whole family were going tweet there. “Suet for Christmas!” Louisa promised them. “Pass the word!”

  It hadn’t occurred to her, all this time, to wonder what had become of Mr. Clark. Subconsciously, she presumed he’d taken himself off like the children. But just as she’d put in the third batch of woolens to soak, there at the kitchen door, coffee cup in hand, Mr. Clark appeared. In the other hand he held two more coffee cups, neatly piled on a plate.

  As the children had made their beds for her, so now their father was clearing the breakfast table. Louisa’s heart beat.

  —Rapidly she checked over the times when it had so beaten, at least recently, before. When old Freddy, recalled Louisa, suddenly rose from a game of chess; when Jimmy Brown, by candlelight, sat down beside her opposite a bamboo coffee table; neither moment could compare, for true romance, with this; as Mr. Clark bore in the washing-up …

  “I thought you were gone,” said Louisa inadequately.

  “So I should be,” agreed Mr. Clark. “So I shall be, in a few moments. I just thought I’d bring out these.”

  “Put them down, will you?” said Louisa. “I’ll wash up afterwards.”

  “What are you so busy at now?” inquired Mr. Clark.

  Actually what Louisa had in the suds at that moment were his own longs. What a delightfully intimate circumstance! But instinct warned her to suppress it. She suspected in Mr. Clark a more than maiden modesty about his underwear. And while she hesitated—