“If you imagine I didn’t hear, last night,” said Mr. Clark, smiling at her, “I did. All the children chattering in your room!”
2
For a moment Louisa was thoroughly disconcerted. Hadn’t she just decided to wait, before taking up the children’s battle?—but if the opportunity turned out as fair as it promised, it might have to be seized.—Just at the moment, however, she hastily threw Toby’s shirt into the suds as well, in order to have something unembarrassing to pull out.
“I must say I liked to hear it,” continued Mr. Clark. “Not of course as a regular thing, bedtime is bedtime; but just for once I admit it pleased me very much. It seemed to confirm an opinion.”
Louisa’s heart started thumping again. If the opportunity turned out as fair as it promised—! What if the opportunity was for her?—Mr. Clark overcome by sudden recklessness?
She found just enough breath to say she was very glad.
“I wonder if you can guess what I thought it sounded like?”
The suds rose in a sort of enormous meringue as Louisa, now unconsciously, added a pair of Paul’s pajamas.
“It sounded like the hum of a happy hive.”
Lunatically, Louisa tipped in some half pound of soap flakes. Meringue thickened to porridge.
“About the queen bee.”
By this time there were thick, glutinous suds not only all over the draining board, but also all down the front of Louisa’s apron. Probably there were suds in her hair. One at least Louisa wiped off her nose. But it was with as much confidence as though she’d just emerged from a beauty parlor that she at last turned to meet Mr. Clark’s eyes.
“What were they talking to you about?” asked Mr. Clark.
3
Reaping the fruit of her forethought, Louisa pulled out Toby’s shirt. It was so full of soap it felt like a chamois leather; however the mere attempt to wring it afforded her a moment’s grace. She needed one: the sudden shift of focus, from her own future back to the children’s, was peculiarly unwelcome. But the opportunity to speak for them—Mr. Clark stood waiting inquisitively—wasn’t so much offered as absolutely thrust upon her.
“Well, about their ambitions,” said Louisa nervously.
“Ah! In the publishing business,” nodded Mr. Clark. “Naturally it will be some years before the boys join me; but I’m glad to know they have ambitions about it! I dare say,” he added whimsically, “they’ve some rather revolutionary ideas?”
“Well, yes,” said Louisa.
“I fully anticipate so. Paul will probably want me to put out Primers of Russian by the Direct Method—whatever that may be!”
What the hell was Louisa to say next? Her impulse, on purely selfish grounds, was to cozy Mr. Clark on every point; moreover she sincerely found his attitude not only reasonable, but sympathetic. Wasn’t there an endearing parental pride implicit in his very jest at Paul the revolutionary? But Louisa had made a promise not to Mr. Clark but to the children; and she kept it.
“I’m afraid it’s a bit more revolutionary than that,” confessed Louisa. “They want to go and make jets.”
4
The sun still shone outside. The big kitchen, warmed by both sun and Louisa’s reckless use of hot water, was still warm as a greenhouse. Yet from some quarter blew a chilly wind. The big mound of soap suds slowly collapsed.
“So that was what they were talking to you about,” said Mr. Clark ominously. “I hope you gave them no encouragement?”
“I tried not to,” apologized Louisa, “only they seemed to have everything so worked out. And if they really can go to Rolls’s—”
His glance cut her short. It wasn’t definitely accusing, but it cut her short.
“That headmaster of theirs has much to answer for,” said Mr. Clark coldly. “I don’t blame my sons; but I shall see their headmaster today.”
“Honestly, I don’t believe anyone’s been influencing them,” persisted Louisa. “They’ve both got very strong characters—like yours. I believe it’s just that they both know exactly what they’re interested in; and it’s jets.”
“Machinery!” snapped Mr. Clark contemptuously. “Didn’t I give them their Vespas?”
“And how wonderfully understanding of you!” agreed Louisa eagerly. (If this was her private opinion, unshared by Paul and Toby, she was still firm in it. She didn’t speak to mollify. Louisa still refused to regard the boys’ Vespas, any more than Catherine’s horse, as a bribe.—The thought of Catherine’s treachery, yet to be revealed, made her almost quake; she hurried on to get the boys over first.) “In fact, what really worries them,” said Louisa—skipping several intermediate stages—“is that they’d have to go and live in digs.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Mr. Clark bitterly. “That the idea of leaving the family roof arouses at least some little worry. To me it’s simply unnatural.” He paused, and with an unexpected gesture dropped his hand—as he might have dropped it on Toby’s head—on Toby’s shirt. “Isn’t their natural place here with their father?” asked Mr. Clark sadly.
Louisa hesitated. She found both plea and gesture deeply touching; yet by some trick of memory what struck her most was Mr. Clark’s reference to himself in the third person. It was a locution she recalled of old—If you’d only show your aunt a little gratitude, or, Your aunt is only doing her best for you—and Louisa recalled also how extraordinarily irritating she’d found it. She did her best to put the memory aside.
“They’d be home quite often,” pleaded Louisa. “They’re looking forward to that already. All of them!”
“All of them?” repeated Mr. Clark incredulously. “All of them? Do you mean to say that Cathy too has some such preposterous notion—of leaving home?”
Whether because she’d just remembered Aunt May, or whether from sheer nervous strain, Louisa suddenly lost her head.
“But she’s told you about it herself!” cried Louisa impatiently. “Just as the boys have told you about Rolls’s! For heaven’s sake, you can’t pretend you don’t know anything!”
The hand on Toby’s shirt dropped.
“I am not aware of ‘pretending’ in any sense,” said Mr. Clark coldly. “All three of my children have, I agree, from time to time talked a great deal of rubbish to me; naturally I paid no attention.”
“That wasn’t very respectful,” said Louisa sadly.
Fortunately he misunderstood her. His look softened.
“I’m glad you agree with me there. I did, as I thought, end the whole foolish business—at least as concerned Cathy—so recently as on Saturday night; I’m only sorry she brought it up again to pester you with.” He smiled. “I see she got round you!” accused Mr. Clark. (Accused and forgave as it were in the same breath.) “My daughter Cathy is a very beguiling young miss. No doubt a nurses’ hostel seems very glamorous to her; no doubt she sees herself as a modern Florence Nightingale. But if you were as accustomed to handling a family as I am,” said Mr. Clark, now quite mildly, “you’d realize that there are times when to seem harsh is to be most truly kind.”
Louisa, she couldn’t help it, thought of birdlime.
“I dare say the boys got round you too,” added Mr. Clark forgivingly. “Young fools! Some day, naturally, they will leave the—”
“Nest?” supplied Louisa.
He looked pleased.
“I like to know that you think of it as that too.—When my sons are old enough to marry, and if they find nice suitable girls—not the sort who’d be content with mechanics!—I shall naturally expect them to leave. I shan’t even suggest splitting up this house—though it could well be managed—into self-contained flats. But until that day arrives, the place of all three is obviously here at home with their father.”
He looked confidently at Louisa for agreement. He was reckoning, and rightly, on her natural desire to take his side. He knew just as well as Louisa, did Mr. Clark, what was in the wind! But he reckoned without Aunt May.
“I do wish,” exclaimed Louisa u
ncontrollably, “you wouldn’t keep calling yourself their father!”
A last soap bubble rose and burst, as Mr. Clark’s brow grew dark.
“Since I am their father—” he began, ominously again.
“Yes, of course, but haven’t you ever noticed how irritating it is,” begged Louisa, “to the young? I mean, look at Hamlet; ‘Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet!’—one can’t wonder that he almost throttled her. I’m only trying to help,” said Louisa.
“You make it hard for me to believe,” stated Mr. Clark. He paused, regarding her, all too obviously, with fresh eyes. “In fact, what I’m beginning to believe, though with what disappointment I can hardly express, is that you would positively abet my children in their foolishness.”
It was at this point that Louisa, ever a realist, recognized herself in the position of one who may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
“Yes, I do,” said Louisa brusquely, “because it isn’t foolishness. I’ve never in my life met three such thoroughly sensible young people making such thoroughly sensible plans. I only wish you’d given birth to Hugo Pym—or any of the Pammies! Then you would have something to complain about!—But there’s another thing as well,” said Louisa, pausing in turn; “something that as an outsider I dare say I’ve no right to talk about at all. Only I must, because it’s so important …”
Mr. Clark waited—no more.
“They all want—Catherine and Toby and Paul—to be able to love you again.”
He didn’t flinch; he froze.
“It’s only your holding them back,” continued Louisa recklessly, “from everything they want to do—Paul and Toby from going to Rolls’s, Catherine from taking her training as a nurse—that’s made them stop loving you. They remember Guy Fawkes Night and—and everything. Can’t you see what a serious thing it is,” pressed Louisa, “to stop the flow of love?”
She made no more impression than the bird of legend brushing its wing across a granite pillar.
“A disappointment all the more bitter,” said Mr. Clark, going on from where he’d left off, “in that I had built, I admit, certain hopes. I had hoped that this week you’ve spent amongst us might have been but the first of many. I will be frank: I had hoped to see a united and happy family benefiting by your affection for many a year to come.”
“So had I,” said Louisa sadly.
“Instead of which it seems that your presence has been positively disruptive.”
“I suppose it was because I was here they felt they could get cracking,” admitted Louisa. “Because they felt you wouldn’t be left all alone …”
Cool as a hardened villain—in the circumstances—Mr. Clark lifted his eyebrows.
“They could hardly imagine your remaining after they were gone? That would scarcely I think be suitable. However, after all you have told me—and, more importantly, after all they have seen fit to tell you—the inmost secrets of our family life bandied with a complete stranger!—I begin to feel their absence almost preferable. Let my children leave me!” exclaimed Mr. Clark, with sudden vigor. “It is possible I may be less lonely than they expect! With no childish likes and dislikes to consider—”
For some reason the image of a Saxon head and ruddy cheeks flashed into Louisa’s mind. Could it be a reflected image?
“—I may even find the permanent companionship of a wife,” said Mr. Clark cruelly.
Then he did something Louisa was never to forgive. He sat down at the kitchen table, and took out his pen and checkbook, and wrote her out a check.
“I imagine five guineas will be sufficient?” said Mr. Clark. “For a week?”
“As I’ve had my keep as well, yes,” said Louisa.
He held his pen poised; as though he’d expected more gratitude for his liberality.
“You have also done a certain amount of laundry work?”
“Five guineas covers that too,” said Louisa. “Just sign on the dotted line, will you? Because when you get back tonight, I shan’t be here.”
5
She felt without seeing the children again either. She couldn’t bear to. She just wrote a note for Catherine. “Darling, I’m sorry I can’t help, tell the boys,” scrawled Louisa. “Try Lindy. And anyway try to love all the same …” She paused, and with mingled wryness and yearning signed “Your affectionate failed step-mamma, or Louisa.”
There was no love in her own heart, however, as she propped the note on Cathy’s dressing table, in that flowery bedroom of a young girl’s dreams; rather Louisa herself now saw its roses spoiled by birdlime …
In fact, lacerated as she was, Louisa bore away from Glenarvon far more substantial profit than five guineas. At last, she’d met a man she positively disliked. She was no longer indiscriminately fond of men. Moreover it may have been remarked that both her attention and her emotions, during that past week, had centered far more on the children than on their father. The male no longer, exclusively, filled her horizon.
In fact, it seemed as though she had come to a point where she could just take men or leave them.
Not without a pang, recalling each event of the two or three weeks preceding, she resolved to leave them.
—Not without a pang, but at least, after Mr. Clark, with the calm of final disillusion.
Part Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
1
“I must say you get around,” observed the milkman. “How was the grub this trip?”
With some surprise, Louisa realized that at Glenarvon she’d hardly noticed the food at all. Only one meal stayed in her memory: a picnic Sunday lunch …
“I suppose I ate,” said Louisa.
“But nothing tasty?” sympathized the milkman.
“Just plain family fare,” said Louisa.
“Well, why not treat yourself to a spot of cream?” suggested the milkman.
“Look,” said Louisa, “I may be what suffragettes chained themselves to railings for, I may be the femme sole with all her rights—”
“I remember you telling me,” said the milkman.
“—but all I’ve got out of it is that I can’t afford cream. So lay off the high-pressure salesmanship.”
“I’m not on commission,” said the milkman, hurt. “That go for yoghurt too?”
She hesitated.
“Keep it on till the dairy cuts up rough,” said Louisa. “At any rate I’ve got a profession.”
2
She still had a profession. It was a defeat, in a way, to subside upon it; Louisa was still intellectually convinced, on behalf of all femmes soles, as to the desirability of either rich or steady husbands—now with a family if possible thrown in. But each of her own three attempts in this field having failed, at least she had a profession to fall back on.
“Let’s face it,” thought Louisa. “I’m where I started. From now on, it’s the dogs …”
Which made it all the more a pity that she’d forgotten, that last morning at Broydon, to load her camera. The shot Louisa now visualized was an absolute world-beater. She saw Ivor and Ivan on the cover of Life. She saw herself getting a gold medal for it. She saw everything, in fact, but the actual print, which didn’t exist.
“Yes, and why doesn’t it exist?” thought Louisa grimly. “Because my mind, that’s why, wasn’t on the job.”
It had been on Jimmy Brown; or, in other words, upon matrimony: just as at Glenarvon she hadn’t thought to take a shot of Tomboy—the very subject for Pony Club Christmas cards!—because her mind had been on Mr. Clark. Louisa perceived that if she was to make anything of her profession at all, she’d better stick to it.
Mentally she burned her matrimonial boats; and being never one to do things by halves, immediately after a thin breakfast telephoned Hugo Pym.
3
“My dear Louisa!” cried Hugo warmly. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days!—How did he like it?”
It took Louisa a moment to think back—past Mr. Clark, past Jimmy Brown, to F. Pennon.
“It’s all off,” said Louisa baldly.
There was an incredulous pause.
“If you’re talking about the show, darling—” began Hugo Pym.
“No,” said Louisa. “I’m talking—”
“Because if you are, naturally it is. We’re a rep. company.”
Louisa took a deep breath.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m talking, believe it or not, about myself. I’m not going to get married after all. So if you’ve spread the news around, you might just unspread it.”
Again there was a pause. Louisa had known explanations would be difficult, and they were.
“My dear girl,” returned Hugo firmly, “I simply don’t believe you. It’s too ridiculous.”
“Not ridiculous. Sad.”
“I meant, fantastic,” Hugo corrected himself. “Good heavens, Louisa, only a couple of weeks ago there I saw you with my own eyes absolutely wallowing in devotion! Absolutely biting my head off at the least breath—! Are you sure,” suggested Hugo hopefully, “it isn’t just a lovers’ tiff?”
“Quite sure,” said Louisa.
“I mean, it would be a pity if I couldn’t put on my Aristophanes just because you’ve had a slight run-in with your intended.”
“Dear Hugo, I feel for you,” said Louisa. “I’m still not going to marry—”
She hesitated. It was an added distress that she had to hesitate between more than one name. Had she ever told Hugo F. Pennon’s? She couldn’t remember …
“—anyone at all,” finished Louisa.
4
Deliberately she burnt her boats. Her visit to Soho was at an hour deliberately chosen to encounter Mr. Ross.
“Keeping up on the job till the last?” joked Rossy.
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