Kitty

by Beaton, M. C.

  Luncheon was a gloomy affair. Cold mutton followed by cold ham followed by cold pudding. Mrs. Harrison had tried to persuade the servants to serve hot food on Sundays, as they now did in the more fashionable households, but her small staff were underpaid and knew it. Although they were afraid of Mrs. Harrison’s bullying manner, they knew to an inch what they could get away with. And so unfashionable, cold food lay untouched in front of Mrs. Harrison’s jaundiced eye. She tried to tell her husband of her woes, but Mr. Harrison retreated to his study with his usual rejoinder, “Wish you had more money, don’t you. Well, you ain’t getting any.”

  Kitty suddenly remembered a summer’s day when she was ten years old and her father had taken her to Southend. What a jolly, affectionate father he had been then! How the sun had shone and the water had sparkled and the band had played. There had been another lady there, very young and pretty, who had enjoyed the day as much as Kitty. But by evening, her father and the lady had had some kind of disagreement and ever since, he had become the taciturn, withdrawn man, she knew now.

  Sometimes on Wednesday evenings there was the spark of the old Frederick Harrison. He always went out on Wednesday evenings without fail, resplendent in the glory of two waistcoats and a ruby pin and returned long after Kitty had gone to bed. Once, when she had crept down in the early hours of Thursday morning to get a glass of milk from the kitchen, she had met him coming home. He had been standing in the doorway of the hall, swaying slightly. He had looked at her in surprise as if he had never seen her before and suddenly taken an orchid out of his buttonhole and handed it to her. As she had stood there in amazement, looking at the beautiful flower, he had rapped out harshly, “Well. What y’ standing there for. Get to bed.”

  Fine snow was beginning to pile up on the window ledges of the dining room. “Perhaps we should not go to Camden Town today, Mama,” ventured Kitty. But Mrs. Harrison was still smarting from Lady Worthing’s snub and the only way to heal the wound was to enjoy her usual Sunday pastime.

  “I am so very cold, Mama,” said Kitty. “Can’t I put on something warmer?”

  “Certainly not,” snapped Mrs. Harrison. “We must always look our best before our social inferiors.”

  Kitty sighed as she thought of another Sunday afternoon with the poor Pugsleys, who lived in a crowded tenement in Camden Town, and who always seemed to have another baby.

  At least I will be warm, she thought, as she marched behind her mother carrying a heavy earthenware pot of soup. People like the Pugsleys knew how to keep warm in winter even if they had to burn the furniture.

  By the time Mrs. Harrison had delivered herself of her usual homily on the disease of poverty and the Pugsleys had accepted the soup with all the necessary resentful gratitude, it was growing dark. In an unexpected fit of generosity, Mrs. Harrison took a hansom home and warmed herself considerably with a spirited altercation with the cabby who wanted a whole shilling.

  As Kitty went to bed that night, she was haunted by a thin white face and drooping eyelids. Well, she would dream about him and pretend that he was her Prince Charming. Goodness knows, there was no one else.

  By Monday morning, the light snow had stopped falling and left enough to be uncomfortable and not enough to be dramatic. Mr. Harrison departed for the city and Mrs. Harrison, thinking that perhaps her daughter had charms that she had failed to perceive, sent her off to the drapers in the high street to buy brown-velvet ribbons to embellish that Sunday silk dress.

  The draper’s son, John Stokes, was busy stacking up bales of cloth as Kitty entered the dark shop. She was the only customer.

  John Stokes was a plump young man with a penchant for tight clothes. Everything he wore was tight, his waistcoat, his trousers and his gloves. When he wore his hat on Sundays, even it was so tight, it left a red ring impressed on his chubby forehead. Although only two years older than Kitty, he liked to play man-of-the-world whenever she came into the shop.

  “Do you know where I went last night, Kitty?”

  Kitty shook her head shyly.

  “Went to the music hall. I had the best time ever. What’s say you come along with me one evening this week?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” said Kitty much alarmed. “Mama would never let me go anywhere unchaperoned and she would never, never let me go to a music hall.”

  “C’mon, Kitty. What about Wednesday night? You’ll be safe with me. All you’ve got to do is say you’re staying the evening at a friend’s.”

  “I’m not allowed any friends,” said Kitty bitterly. “Unless you count having Lady Worthing’s daughters sneer at me.”

  “Why, that’s it!” said John. “Say you’re staying with Ann and Betty. Lady Worthing isn’t going to speak to your mother again. We all heard her on Sunday. She’ll gladly let you go and when Lady Worthing doesn’t speak to her next Sunday, she’ll just think she’s gone cranky again. Let’s go. You never get any fun. Think of it. All the music and lights and the people all dressed up.”

  The shop bell clanged and he turned away to serve the new customer, leaving Kitty with her thoughts. Somewhere in that other world of the heart of London was Lord Chesworth and, with the new Edwardian freedom, the aristocracy had been known to frequent music halls—even some of the ladies. John Stokes was a bit silly, but she had known him all her life and it would be just like going out with a brother.

  Kitty stared out unseeingly at the snowy high street. The little spark of rebellion which had been there on Sunday grew to a small flame. This might be her only chance to have some fun. She took a deep breath and after the customer had left, said firmly, “Yes, John. I would like to go with you very much.”

  “That’s the ticket,” said John. “I’ll pick you up in a hansom at eight. No! Not at the house. I’ll wait down at the corner.”

  Kitty lived through each hour until Wednesday night in a fever of apprehension. Mrs. Harrison had delightedly swallowed the story, but to Kitty’s horror, had bragged about her forthcoming visit to the Worthings to all and sundry. It was too late to retract.

  At eight o’clock precisely on Wednesday evening, Kitty walked out into the London fog and with rapid steps made her way to the corner, where the hansom was waiting under a streetlamp. Inside was John Stokes, tightly clad as ever, resplendent in an embroidered waistcoat and a small diamond pin. He smelled overpoweringly of cologne and his hair gleamed with oil. He carried a silk opera hat on his chubby knees and was bubbling over with excitement.

  When they descended from the hansom and into the full glare of the gaslight outside the music hall, John noticed his young companion’s appearance for the first time. “Couldn’t you have at least put your hair up, Kitty? You look like a schoolgirl.”

  Kitty replied with some spirit, “How could I, John? Mother would have known there was something up.”

  John gave her a sulky look. “Oh, very well, then. C’mon.”

  They entered the music hall and Kitty immediately wished she had not come. John led her to a table on the balcony and all around, in the glare of the gaslight, rose the raucous sound of male voices with their screeching female counterparts. “Time you got her home in bed,” screamed the woman at the next table, pointing at Kitty, while the men with her all roared with laughter.

  Kitty felt very self-conscious. Eyes seemed to be staring at her from every corner. Why? She could swear there were eyes boring into her back. She wriggled in the best silk dress, bravely embellished with velvet ribbons, and turned around to find herself looking straight into her father’s flushed and furious face.

  “Get out of here,” he snarled.

  “But I’ve paid for the tickets,” bleated poor John.

  “Get out!” screamed Mr. Harrison, raising his fist as if to strike. “I’ll deal with you, Kitty, when I get home.”

  The sorry pair made their way back out into the shivering fog. No cabby seemed to want to go to Hampstead and when they at last got one who said he would take them for double fare, John was too weary to argue.

>   In sulky silence he left Kitty at the corner of the road and, with a heavy heart, she returned home to parry her mother’s avid questions about her evening with the Worthings. Kitty knew at that minute she should confess all, but her small stock of courage had run out. She finally escaped to her room and lay staring at the ceiling with frightened, sightless eyes, waiting for the sounds of her father coming home. What on earth had her staid father been doing at a music hall? Perhaps he had been entertaining some of those business associates he always talked about.

  In the early hours of the morning she heard a heavy pounding at the street door. Frightened, she ran to the head of the stairs in time to see her mother going to answer it. As the servants would have said, their wages were not enough to make them want to get out of bed on a winter’s night.

  A policeman stood there with his heavy helmet under his arm.

  As in a dream, Kitty heard his voice. “Mrs. Harrison? There’s been sort of an accident, mum. Well, that is, Mr. Harrison… he’s dead.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The house of mourning lay shrouded in wait for the funeral. It seemed to Kitty as if winter himself had decided to move in. Everything was as cold and hushed and silent as the day outside. White-faced and grim, Mrs. Harrison moved about the rooms, bemoaning the cost of the mourning clothes, the price of the funeral meats, and the moneyless future ahead.

  “He always said we had no money in the bank,” moaned Mrs. Harrison. “Thank goodness he had the foresight to pay for his own funeral.”

  Before the cortège moved off to Highgate Cemetery, a brougham carrying four very expensively dressed men arrived. They had come to pay their last respects to “old Fred.” Kitty recognized them as being the men who were with her father that night at the music hall, but thankfully they did not seem to recognize her.

  Frederick Harrison had dropped dead of a heart attack outside the music hall. “He must have been passing. I mean he would never have gone anywhere like that,” said Mrs. Harrison.

  At the subdued funeral banquet, Kitty heard one of the men exclaim to her mother, “Surprised to see old Fred lived in such a style. Always thought he was a warm man.” But Mrs. Harrison took it as a compliment and wished heartily that the guests would leave so that the lawyer could read the will. Lady Worthing had not deigned to appear, to Kitty’s relief and Mrs. Harrison’s eternal disappointment.

  Finally, the last black-gloved and black-hatted figure had disappeared and the lawyer had arrived and was closeted with Mrs. Harrison in the study. Kitty sat at the foot of the stairs, a pale, frail figure in her new black dress, and reflected that it was ironic indeed that her father had to die before she could get a new dress. She could not really mourn the brusque, unfeeling man she had never really known, so she thought instead of her father as he had been on that glorious day at Southend and forgot the years in between.

  A scream from the study made her head jerk up. They must be ruined indeed. She scratched timidly at the door but only got a furious shout of “go away” from her mother. She returned to her seat on the stairs.

  At last the lawyer left and her mother called her into the once-forbidden territory of her father’s study. Mrs. Harrison’s eyes burned with an unnatural glitter and her hands were shaking.

  “Sit down, Kitty,” she said in a deceptively mild voice. She indicated a high-backed, red-velvet chair and as Kitty sat down primly on the edge, she pulled another chair close until their knees were nearly touching and taking a deep breath, she began.

  “Mr. Harrison’s lawyer has just read me his will in which he leaves everything to me. Everything! And we are rich, Kitty. Very rich. Rich in stocks and bonds and property. Rich enough to take our rightful place in society.”

  Her voice took on a harder tone. “Mr. Harrison expressed the wish in his will that we should live as thriftily as always.” Her thin bosom swelled and the edges of her corset stood out sharply against her mourning black silk.

  “Pah!” Kitty recoiled as her mother spat full on the papers on the desk. “Thriftily indeed! The old miser. Well, may he turn in his grave but we are going into society and you my dear are going to marry, a title. We shall have a house in the West End and the best of everything and may Lady Worthing rot in the suburbs till she dies.”

  Mrs. Harrison’s hairpins rattled on the worn linoleum as she jabbed her head backward and forward in excitement. Her pale eyes burned with ambition.

  “We shall have a carriage and—and—ladies’ maids and gorgeous gowns and—”

  Kitty was frightened. “Couldn’t we wait in Hampstead a little bit longer,” she interrupted, “just to get used to the idea?”

  “I am already used to poverty,” snapped Mrs. Harrison. “I do not intend to endure slovenly servants, cold rooms, and bad food for a minute longer than need be. I should have known you would snivel in that cowardly way of yours. Just remember, my girl, after all the sacrifices I have made for you, I intend to see you well-married as my reward.

  “And you will marry the man I choose.”

  Kitty bowed her head. The flame of rebellion flared up and died. Her mother sat staring into space, her lips moving soundlessly, as Kitty backed slowly from the room.

  She desperately felt the need of a friend to talk to. Hetty Carson had been her close friend at school, but, as Hetty’s father ran the local bakery, Mrs. Harrison had cut the “undesirable connection.”

  Coming to a decision, she put on her coat and hat and started to walk down the hill to the Carson home in Gospel Oak. A wild wind was rioting over the Heath as if blown in from some faraway summer country. Puddles were forming in the hard crust of snow and flocks of rooks wheeled and danced under the rushing clouds. Two children ran past her down the hill, bowling their metal hoops in front of them and leaving thin tracks in the slush. Another party of youngsters were sledging on the Heath. They all piled up in a heap at the bottom and fell into the wet snow, roaring and laughing, oblivious of the damage to their clothes. Kitty tried to imagine a household where children were allowed to arrive home wet and muddy, but failed.

  The Carsons’ trim, two-storied terrace house was ablaze with light in the darkening evening. Hetty herself answered the door and looked in amazement at her old schoolfriend.

  “Why, Kitty!” she exclaimed. “What is the matter, you poor thing? Your papa was buried just today. What are you doing here?”

  “Please, let me in, Hetty,” said Kitty. “I’ve got to talk to someone.”

  Hetty led the way into a little parlor in the front of the house where a fire was blazing cheerfully and refused to let her friend speak until the tea tray with its load of pastries from the bakery had been brought in.

  She was a plump, pretty girl with masses of shiny brown ringlets and a perpetual air of surprise in her wide, blue eyes.

  As Kitty unfolded her tale of how the Harrisons were going to be rich and live in the West End, a flicker of jealousy darted across Hetty’s eyes.

  “Honestly, Kitty. The things you complain about. I swear if you’d been told you had no money at all, you would have been happier.”

  Kitty desperately tried to catch her old friend’s sympathy. “But Mama says I’ve got to marry the man she chooses for me.”

  Hetty looked at the frail, delicate figure with some irritation. “With your mama’s ambitions, she’s likely to find you an earl or a lord. Why, you’re the luckiest girl in Hampstead.”

  Kitty sighed and began to collect her handbag and gloves, preparatory to leaving. Hetty obviously thought she was a fool.

  But Hetty was shrewd. If little Kitty Harrison was moving up to the West End, she had better hang on to the friendship. Hetty put her arms around the girl.

  “I see I haven’t really understood what’s bothering you, dear. Tell me about it all over again.”

  Kitty hesitated but the unaccustomed sympathy was too much for her. She took Hetty, step by step, through the events leading up to the reading of the will; her fears for the future, her dreams about Lord Cheswo
rth, and meeting him in the church.

  Hetty gasped and exclaimed appreciatively and Kitty felt soothed and at home. As she left, she hugged her friend. “I’ll never forget you, Hetty. I’ll always know I have one real friend.”

  Hetty smiled mistily and pressed her hand warmly. But as the door closed behind Kitty’s slim back, Hetty muttered to herself, “And don’t you forget it, Miss Kitty Harrison. I’m going to need you one day.”

  Kitty hastened toward home. The streetlamps were already lit and the freakish summer wind had fled the Heath leaving it still, white, and frozen, the slush lying in hard-packed, ankle-breaking ruts.

  There was a dark little shop next to Carson’s bakery which contained a fascinating jumble of the flotsam and jetsam of the recently-fled Victorian age. The shop was closed, but in the blazing light from the bakery next door, Kitty could make out the objects in the window. Various mementos of the Crystal Palace Exhibition rubbed shoulders with wax fruit entombed in cracked-glass cases. Heavy pinchbeck and paste jewelry winked in the light from the baker’s and a moth-eaten stuffed owl gazed out at the winter Heath with his huge glass eyes.

  In the center of the window was a picture. It was of two young children, a boy and a girl, running through a meadow of waving, green grass and poppies. The boy was laughing and waving his sailor hat in the air and the little girl was turning to look down at a Scottie dog that was tugging at the edge of her small crinoline dress. Behind them ran a young nurse, the streamers of her starched cap flying in the painted wind and beyond the sunny meadow peeked the roofs of a thatched cottage. To Kitty it represented the very essence of magical childhood. Peering closer, she could see a small price tag in the comer. Five shillings. She simply must have that picture. Surely now that they were so rich, five shillings was a mere trifle.

  She broached the matter at dinner, expecting a rebuff, but Mrs. Harrison was trying to break the habits of twenty-five married years of parsimony and gave her a whole pound note for herself. Not only that, she smiled—actually smiled—as she handed it over.