Something Light

by Margery Sharp

  “Aren’t you going to take it down?” inquired the young man.

  “Take what down?” asked Louisa thoughtlessly.

  “Why I’m in the other column.”

  Louisa continued to contemplate Burnham Beeches. Once again, she’d bought it; but this time she didn’t mean to pay. As the young man waited expectantly—

  “I don’t need to take it down, I’ve a trained memory. But fire away,” said Louisa—deliberately closing her ears.

  6

  It was still impossible that something shouldn’t percolate. The train had decided to run with uncommon smoothness, the young man leaned enthusiastically towards her. However unwillingly, Louisa picked up certain vital statistics: name something like Hally How, age twenty-something, National Service somewhere overseas, present occupation some sort of clerk. Dim, decent Hally How! Behind dropped eyelids Louisa’s thoughts wandered to the Meares’ dachshunds: so easy to photograph, decent little clerks of the dog world …

  “After which,” said Hally How earnestly, “we were finally able to get married.”

  … whereas borzois, in their skiing trousers, had always the air of being off to winter sports …

  “I don’t know if you’re married yourself?” pressed Hally How.

  Louisa shook her head. It would be nice for him if he thought she was memorizing, but really she didn’t care.

  “You ought to try it,” said Hally How earnestly. “I can’t tell you how—how smashing it is. Not just, if you’ll pardon the expression, how jolly in bed, but what self-confidence it gives a chap. Fr’instance, you must have wondered why at this time of day, when I work in London, I’m headed out of London.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” murmured Louisa.

  “I’ll tell you. It’s Marlene’s birthday. ‘I’ve a good mind to take the day off,’ I told her, ‘in celebration. Why don’t I phone and say influenza?’ She wouldn’t have it. Her mum was in the ATS—searchlights, a very picked bunch, I’ve heard tell—and brought Marlene up according. ‘Go along to the office, ask for the afternoon,’ said Marlene, ‘tell ’em why you want it, and I’ll have a smashing tea laid on for when you get back.’ Never doubting, d’you see, that I’d pull it off. Which is the whole secret,” said Hally How. “Mind you put it in.”

  “Sure,” murmured Louisa.

  “I set it up to the boss without a frill. ‘I would very much like the half-day off,’ I said, ‘on account of its being my wife’s birthday. In fact, I intended to take the whole day off,’ I said, ‘only Marlene wouldn’t stand for me having flu.’ And d’you know what he replied?”

  “No,” said Louisa.

  “‘Your wife’s made more of a man of you than the Army,’ he said. ‘Take her out shopping and buy her a new hat.’ As I intend,” said Hally How, “up to three quid. If any of this is immaterial—?’”

  Louisa shook her head; or rather the train shook it for her.

  “I’m glad, because I’ve often wondered how much is missed, when taking polls. (Rock cakes, now, I do see might be set aside. Marlene makes smashing rock cakes.) But as we’re getting to my station, I’ll just re-cap: what puts any chap in the okay column, nine times out of ten, is happy matrimony; and for women, of course, even more so.”

  7

  Louisa swung her feet up on the seat and stretched frankly recumbent for another thirty minutes of Zen.

  Not that she needed it. She felt indeed like a successful candidate after a particularly grueling examination. Such a build-up for matrimony, but a month before, would have thoroughly distracted her from the job in hand. But not now. Even the numinous word rock cake aroused but a vague feeling of affection for Molly and Teddy Meare …

  Louisa had settled for a profession. Beyond the stately portal of Chesham Hall beckoned solid fame, solid fortune. It was without either regrets or misgivings that Datchett Photographer of Dogs got out at the right station and mounted the waiting bus.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  1

  It was a stately portal all right. Louisa gazed appreciatively at carved stonework scrolling up to an escutcheon above, at a great oak door ajar upon squares of black and white marble, with beside it a brass bell-pull, beautifully polished. “Staff!” thought Louisa, as she pulled it; and confidently awaited the arrival of a butler.

  In the few moments’ interval that followed she noted, more practically, the excellent condition of all the paint. Chesham Hall, a rarity among stately homes, was as well kept up as Mr. Clark’s Glenarvon; moreover was not merely being kept up, was being improved—for Louisa sighted, on the south flank, what looked like an old winter garden under such scaffolding as suggested additions. Mentally congratulating the aristocratic owners upon either a transatlantic marriage or a successful bout with the income tax, Louisa congratulated herself too; it seemed out of the question that Lady M.’s check—such things had been known to happen—would bounce.

  A butler answered. He was so perfect a specimen, from his graying hair to shoes polished like the bell-pull, Louisa momentarily suspected he’d been hired from the local rep. But his reserved, inquiring glance, as he in turn surveyed Louisa, was surely the result of more than clever direction; reserved and inquiring as it was, it explicitly placed her—somewhere between a collector for charity and an ex-service salesman. Without rancor, but firmly, she enlightened him.

  “I,” said Louisa, “am Datchett Photographer of Dogs. I have an appointment with Lady Mary Tablet for three-thirty. And let that,” she added mentally, “teach you a lesson, my man!”

  Undoubtedly he looked more respectful.

  “An appointment did you say, madam?”

  “To photograph Lady Mary’s corgis.”

  “I will inform her ladyship you have arrived,” said the butler—exiting within.

  He still didn’t invite Louisa to follow, but if she were to wait anywhere on so fine an afternoon she rather preferred to be outside. Indeed the prospect before her, as she strolled a little way past the tall windows, and sat down on a stone bench, was of great beauty. On either side the drive—about five minutes’ walk long, even for Louisa—stretched a miniature parkland of lush grass and handsome trees. Clumps of oak or beech, rising like islands in a green sea, made each its stately point; each in turn led the eye on to the next; and over all lay the temperate sunlight proper to an English nobleman’s country seat.

  “This,” thought Louisa, “is the sort of place I shall come to often …”

  Why not? Her foot once within a first stately portal, how many other stately portals might not open to her? And remain open? No one knew better than Louisa the conservatism, as a class, of stately-portal-owners: until a favorite photographer of either their dogs or their children actually died or went gaga, to that same photographer they stuck with a loyalty Louisa now perceived as admirable. In her own field the doyen already touched seventy; Louisa sincerely hoped he’d get the O.B.E. before packing up, but when he did pack up, why shouldn’t she herself step into his shoes? (“Not that they’d ever give me the O.B.E.,” thought Louisa—leaping the next twenty-five years. “I’m not the right type.” It was a pity; the suffragettes would have been proud of her.) But even without any explicit honor in view, what rewarding week ends might not lie ahead, photographing ducal pooches behind stately portals!

  “All I’ll need,” thought Louisa, “is one really good dinner dress”; and determined to watch the Times personal column for the next Model Disposing of Balenciaga Wardrobe …

  The sun lapsed a degree while she contemplated grouse served by footmen. For the first time in her life it struck her as fortunate that she had a taste for game. It struck Louisa, and rightly, that the nobility no less than F. Pennon might like to see a woman eat. She saw herself as a more than acceptable, as a positively popular week-end guest—pressed by dukes to stay over Monday.

  “And I can do it,” thought Louisa—mentally up-ending a couple of boar hounds to support a coat-of-arms. She couldn’t help wishing corgis more heraldic;
but there was the glamour aspect as well (which had obviously appealed to Lady Mary); Louisa trusted that many a duchess, observing how Datchett Photographer of Dogs had glamorized Lady Mary with just a couple of corgis, would hasten to be superiorly glamorized with borzoi or peke. “It’s my chance and I’m going to take it,” repeated Louisa to herself. “I’m going to bleed and die and get the best shot since Gelert …”

  More time had passed then she realized, in these happy plans. It was nearly four o’clock before an elderly woman with an inherited face came loping towards her from the house.

  2

  She was so obviously Lady M., Louisa instantly glanced at the shins below the short tweed skirt. Though on the hockey-hardened, beagling model, there was a quite noticeable diminution towards the ankle.

  “Miss Datchett? You poor dear!” exclaimed Lady Mary remorsefully. “I’ve kept you waiting hours! Johnson couldn’t find me. I’m so ashamed I could die!”

  “That’s all right,” said Louisa. “The light’s fine. You do want them—your corgis—taken out of doors?”

  Lady Mary clutched her untidy gray head.

  “But that’s just what’s so awful! I don’t know how to tell you! They aren’t here! They’re in Scotland. They went up yesterday with the boys. I’m so madly sorry, but my secretary must have made a real bloomer. So I’m afraid there’s nothing for it,” finished Lady Mary brightly, “but to call the whole thing off.”

  It was an irrelevance that Louisa at this moment observed upon Lady Mary’s cardigan a spray of beechnuts matching her own. Could it be Number Ten who was going to get into the top class?—She pulled herself together.

  “I’m madly sorry too,” said Louisa formally. “The fact remains that I’ll have wasted half a day. Let alone my fares—”

  “But of course you’ll come again,” consoled Lady Mary, “when they’re back. My dear Miss Datchett, you mustn’t be cross with me! Be cross with poor Fox if you like—as I must say I often am myself—but you and 7 are just companions in distress!”

  Possibly because there is a solidarity amongst professional women, Louisa remained unconvinced. Herself and Miss Fox, felt Louisa, were what suffragettes had chained themselves to railings for—not herself and Lady Mary.

  “I’m not cross with anyone,” said Louisa. “I’d just like my three guineas.”

  Lady Mary started back as might a thoroughbred hunter before a knacker’s cart.

  “But my dear good creature,” she protested, “isn’t that perfectly—I’m sure you’ll see it is, when you’ve had a moment to think—absurd? I mean, three guineas just for nothing at all—!”

  Louisa looked at the scaffolding on the south wing. How much was that going to cost?

  “For a wasted half day,” she corrected stubbornly.

  “Ah, but what would you have been doing with it?” countered Lady Mary. “You’d have been having your hair done, or at a movie. I know what happens, with a spare afternoon in Town! Instead of which here you are in the fresh air, enjoying a nice little outing—”

  “I didn’t want an outing,” said Louisa. “And my fee is three guineas.”

  Lady Mary looked injured but resigned.

  “If you really insist—though I must say this isn’t the way one’s usually treated—I’ll tell my secretary to send you a check.”

  “If she’s as inefficient as you make out, I’d rather have cash,” said Louisa.

  Lady Mary brightened again.

  “But my dear Miss Datchett, I haven’t any cash! I never carry sixpence! I’m just at my secretary’s mercy! I do truly, don’t imagine I don’t, appreciate your position—but only Fox knows where to find my checkbook.”

  “Okay,” said Louisa. “Where is she?”

  “As a matter of fact, she left yesterday too,” said Lady Mary, “for a holiday in Athens. (Something poor I could never afford!) So until she comes back I’m afraid we’re really at a standstill. But I shan’t forget! And now I’m going to send Johnson out to you,” said Lady Mary kindly, “with a nice—”

  She paused; the kindliness twinkled to democratic bonhomie.

  “—with a nice cuppa!” finished Lady M.

  Louisa didn’t wait for it. Instead, with what she hoped was sufficient dignity, she walked out.

  Straight-backed, with sufficient dignity, she reached the drive’s end; and there outside the great gates, on the grassy bank behind the bus stop, for the first time in her adult life, sat down and cried.

  3

  When she’d wept in a Broydon attic, she’d been a child; and her tears all too natural—for loving if casual parents, for no more balloons brought back from a palais de danse. What she wept for now was the collapse of a career. After ten years’ work, after establishing herself (or so she’d fondly believed) as Datchett Photographer of Dogs, she hadn’t been able to squeeze three quid out of Lady M. She was so little established, anyone with a title could do her down.—Here Louisa was possibly in error. With a steak inside her, instead of sardines, the issue might have been different. But the upshot, whatever its cause; was as disastrous to her confidence and to her self-esteem as to her pocket. Outside the gates of Chesham Hall, on the grassy bank behind the bus stop, Louisa sat with unchecked tears running down her face.

  Only the wind, from time to time, dried them. No fellow traveler appeared, to rouse her pride, or even a spark of vanity: in addition to all else, she’d just missed a bus.

  —No wolf appeared either. The road was unfrequented; but Louisa sensed a deeper reason. Any number of men might have come by, without one stopping to make a pass at her. What attracted them of old (at a bus stop, outside a telephone booth, in any public place) was their recognition of her special gift for aid and succor. (Wolf out of work, recalled Louisa, wolf misunderstood by wife, wolf needing musical instrument getting out of hock.) Now that she plainly needed aid and succor herself, they’d hurry by. Louisa didn’t blame them, she wasn’t resentful; there it just was …

  She turned her back on the road, and wept anew.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  1

  In all folklore, the tear has its own and special place.

  Witches, for example, cannot weep; nor mermaids; or if they do, they lose their magic nature. Only a tear, in the legend of Little Gerda and the Ice Queen, had power to shatter the frozen palace-prison. Some principal constituent, in that dropping of the eye, modern science has even discovered therapeutic against the evil of the Crab. Thus Louisa, weeping, invoked stronger forces than she suspected.

  Sheer animal instinct for warmth had driven her into a last patch of sunlight; when the car stopped, and a man got out, she had her face half-buried in the hedge.—Her hat lay beside her, pulled off long since, or perhaps pushed off, by stiff hawthorn twigs; the declining sun turned her foxy head to gold.

  “You look as though you’re wearing a halo,” observed Andrew McAndrew. “Though I must say it’s no’ a thought that would have occurred to me at Broydon.”

  2

  So far as Louisa was concerned, this was the end. Of all men breathing, the last she’d have chosen to find her so disconsolate was Mr. McAndrew.

  She looked at him and hated him. Everything about the man—his calm and solidity, even his good car, his good clothes—pointed all too painfully her own vagabond dishevelment; the recollection of how she’d slammed him down at Broydon Court (and at Stack’s in the Strand) made the impossibility of doing so now—from a sitting position by the roadside, face and hands wet with tears—her very hat like a beggar’s cap beside her!—all the more humiliating. As a first move in the direction of dignity, she rose stiffly to her feet.

  “If it’s the bus you want, you’re previous,” remarked Mr. McAndrew. “There’s none due for an hour.”

  “I’ve been here an hour,” retorted Louisa.—To her extreme annoyance, reaching down for her hat she felt her knees shake: she had sat too long without stirring, while the heat of the day declined to evening chill. The support of a large warm h
and under her elbow, however, merely annoyed her more; she flinched back as from a viper, and took a grip of the bus sign instead.

  “They pass every three. It’s a very poor service,” said Mr. McAndrew. “Why not let me drive you where you’re going?”

  “Because there happen to be two things I enjoy particularly,” said Louisa—holding her eyes wide open to let the wind do its best. “One is fresh air, and the other is a nice bus ride.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” said Mr. McAndrew. “We’ll stop on the way for a drink.”

  “Do I look as though I needed a drink?” snapped Louisa—rather unwisely.

  “To be truthful, aye,” said Mr. McAndrew. “You’re shivering with cold.—Not that it doesn’t seem to be a habit with you,” he added censoriously. “I’ve not forgotten all that champagne yet.”

  “When you were so childish about your whiskey,” retorted Louisa.

  “Be your opinion what it may, you’re still shivering,” said Mr. McAndrew. “Will you get into the car, or do I lift you?”

  He was undoubtedly capable of it. (Also the only man Louisa knew who was. Mr. McAndrew weighed about fourteen stone, in good trim. He played Rugby football, Louisa almost guessed it, for the London Scottish.) It still wasn’t the threat of such a last indignity that swayed her. There was no bus for another hour. (However odious in other respects, Louisa felt Mr. McAndrew reliable about timetables.) And when she did get a bus, or if she walked, to the station, she had no idea when the next train was. Why cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face? Louisa got into the car.

  3

  Within a matter of minutes, she nearly got out again.