Kitty

by Beaton, M. C.

  “Now, Kitty,” said Mrs. Harrison, fixing her with a steely glare. “Has your marriage been consummated?”

  Kitty blushed and shook her head.

  “Good,” said her mother unexpectedly. “I have prayed night and day for forgiveness. When I think of my pure daughter in the arms of that lecher…”

  “But, Mama, he has only been a little wild in his youth like most young men,” protested Kitty.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” spluttered Mrs. Harrison. “Men! Dirty, filthy beasts. And that includes your father. His great hairy hands and his wet mouth and…” Mrs. Harrison put a trembling hand to her mouth to stop her own tirade.

  Kitty got to her feet. “I admit my marriage has not begun well, Mama. But I love my husband and—and I know I can make him love me.”

  She waited a minute in silence but her mother’s glittering eyes were fixed on the middle distance and her thin mouth was working with emotion. Kitty backed out of the door and went in search of Lady Henley.

  Her ladyship was playing patience with one hand and eating asparagus with the other. A small river of butter dripped unheeded onto the cards.

  Kitty sat down and watched, fascinated, as a new tributary of butter made its way down Lady Henley’s neck and then joined up with another little river to form a mainstream that plunged into the cleavage and, she supposed, down into the stays. Kitty remembered the March Hare—“It was the best butter”—and started to giggle.

  Lady Henley eyed her with disfavor. “You’re getting as dotty as your mother,” she remarked.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” said Kitty. “Mama seems a little—well—strange.”

  “She’ll get over it—I hope,” said Lady Henley. “She’s been torturing herself with remorse ever since your wedding.”

  “But I love my husband,” said Kitty.

  “Let’s hope she realizes that,” said Lady Henley. “But at the moment, she’s going about wringing her hands and talking about lily-white maidens in the paws of lecherous beasts. Got the doctor to look at her, you know. He says she’ll be all right with a bit of rest and quiet.”

  Kitty smiled with relief and went home to prepare for her expedition to Camden Town. Lady Mainwaring had insisted that a bodyguard of two footmen accompany her in the carriage. But when they arrived at the Pugsleys’, Kitty begged the footmen to remain in the carriage. “I’m sure the Pugsleys would be embarrassed,” she said. The coachman turned around. “Well, your Ladyship, I’ve got to keep my horses moving. I don’t want them standing around too long.”

  “Call back for me in an hour,” said Kitty. Really, the servants were worse than their masters! What harm could come to her at the Pugsleys’? She had known them all her life.

  Apart from having ten children, the Pugsleys also took in boarders and the three-story house seemed to be jammed with noisy people. Smelling strongly of gin, Mrs. Freda Pugsley ushered Kitty into the parlor. The friends, relatives, and family gave her three hearty cheers and Kitty blushed with pleasure. She accepted a glass of sherry and sat down and realized that the furniture was the same.

  The armchair she was sitting in still reeked of cat and old baby vomit. The sofa was still spilling its innards on the floor and one leg of the table was still propped up with a copy of the Bible.

  Everyone, including the Pugsley children, seemed to have been drinking a lot. Their faces were flushed, their voices raucous, flickering in the candlelight of the tenement, like a scene from Hogarth. The father, Mr. Bob Pugsley, who had been unemployed as long as Mrs. Pugsley could remember, was wearing the jacket of his soup-stained suit open to display a new waistcoat. Then he hitched up his-trousers to display his new suspenders. “Let’s see yer drawers, Bob,” yelled one of the women and everyone screamed with laughter.

  Kitty blushed and began to pray for the arrival of her carriage. But what had happened to the furniture?

  Bob Pugsley was calling for music. A female of uncertain years who seemed to be some sort of aunt to the young Pugsleys, took up her stance beside the piano, and, to the accompaniment of much tinny battering of the keys by another female relative, began to sing a music-hall song.

  The song dealt with the problems of a young miss who had lost her way on the railway system and was appealing to a porter for help, explaining that she had “never ’ad ’er ticket punched before.”

  What there was about this to cause such gales of salacious laughter was beyond poor Kitty.

  She noticed one of the quieter boarders standing next to her and, under cover of the noise, asked him what had happened to all the new furniture.

  “They sold it, your La’ship,” he said.

  “But why?” asked poor Kitty.

  “Because money for the drink and the dogs means more to this lot than new furniture,” he replied.

  It couldn’t be true! Kitty was nearly in tears. “But I’ve visited them almost every Sunday since I was a child and I have never seen them with any drink.”

  The boarder looked at her as if she were a Hottentot. “Course you didn’t! They does their drinking on Saturday. Never on Sundays. Very religious, is Mrs. Pugsley.”

  Kitty glanced at the watch on her bosom. Half an hour to wait. Please God, let something happen to get me out of here, she prayed.

  Suddenly, through the noise and haze of cigar smoke and the capering figures, Kitty saw the dirty net curtains going up in an instant blaze.

  Everyone began to scream at once and fight to get out of the door. But the parlor door was locked. Bob Pugsley was trying to push them back so that he could get space to charge the door but no one was listening. A woman’s hair caught on fire and she screamed in agony. Flames were dancing around the room and setting the swinging skirts of the terrified women alight.

  Kitty began to feel herself falling as the guests swayed backward and forward. Her skirt caught fire and she beat at it with her fingers. The press closed around her again and the room crackled and danced and swayed before her terrified eyes. Then there was a blessed rush of air from the door. Throwing themselves into the room, the footmen grabbed Kitty and unceremoniously dragged her out into the street where they rolled her on the ground and beat out the flames.

  The clanging bell of the fire engine could be heard in the distance and soon the huge horses pulling it came charging down the street. Wrapped in rugs, Kitty sat in the carriage shivering with fright.

  She became aware of a small, white, tearstained face peering over the edge of the carriage door. It was the eleven-year-old Pugsley called Jane.

  “Miss Kitty,” she whispered. Kitty leaned over the open carriage. “Oh, miss,” said Jane. “The fire. I saw a hand at the open window. It reached into the room and held a lucifer to the curtains,” then Jane was swept away by her mother. Mrs. Pugsley was running from child to child, counting feverishly, losing the count, and beginning all over again.

  “We can do nothing more here, my Lady,” said the coachman. “Good thing we came back for you early. With your Ladyship’s permission, I think we should go home.”

  And still shaking and huddled in her rugs, Kitty was borne off, back to the West End, where the passing throng stared at her smoke-streaked face in surprise.

  Lady Mainwaring’s excellent German butler informed Kitty that his mistress was at the theater and then proceeded to summon the staff: a footman to fetch the doctor, Colette to change Kitty’s ruined clothes, the housekeeper to supply hot, sweet tea, bandages, and ointment.

  The doctor fussed but said the burns were minor. He prescribed a sleeping draft and then left Kitty to her worried thoughts. She felt in some way that she had caused the disaster. Without the money from the furniture, the Pugsleys would not have gone in for such wild celebration. Jane’s story of the hand at the window was simply the wild imaginings of a frightened child.

  Mercifully, the sleeping draft began to take effect and Kitty, at last, closed her eyes.

  Lady Mainwaring had, unfortunately, left inst
ructions that the staff were not to wait up for her and had given her personal maid the evening off. It was not until the next day that she learned of the Pugsley fire. It had made headlines on the front page of The Daily Mail, including the sub-headline of the story which carried interviews with all the Pugsleys—“Baroness returns to scenes of childhood.” Lady Mainwaring put down the paper and groaned aloud. What a lot of fun the gossips were going to have with that one. Best get Kitty out of town right away.

  For once the calm and level-headed Lady Emily Mainwaring was shaken from her customary calm and in an effort to save Kitty from society’s malicious gossips, she forgot all about the effect the news would have on Kitty’s husband.

  Lord Peter Chesworth was sitting, as usual, over the books in the estate office when he noticed the trim figure of Veronica Jackson on horseback, riding up the drive under the lime trees.

  He had a sudden impulse to ring for the butler and say he was not at home. But as he sat undecided, the door behind him opened and the butler informed him that he had put Mrs. Jackson in the small salon. With a sigh, Peter Chesworth got to his feet.

  As he entered the salon, Veronica swayed towards him and wrapped her arms around his neck. She pressed her lips to his and he felt all the old passion that she was able to arouse. But after a few minutes, he put her away from him. “You forget I’m now a married man.”

  Veronica was ruffled. “An unhappily married man,” she said acidly.

  “I do not wish to discuss my wife,” said Lord Chesworth, in a flat voice.

  Veronica became very angry. “Then you will not be interested in what your silly little shopgirl has been up to. Cavorting around Camden Town.” She flung a copy of the Daily Mail down on the table and marched from the room.

  Like many of his class, Peter Chesworth despised Lord Northcliffe’s “cheap” newspapers and was heartily afraid of them. The reporters of the Daily Mail and its sister paper, the Daily Sketch, had a nasty habit of ferreting out a lot of accurate and unpleasant facts about their betters.

  With a feeling of distaste, he picked up the paper and saw Kitty’s name staring up at him from the front page. The reporter had done an excellent job. Everything in Kitty’s young life was documented, from Miss Bates’s seminary in Hampstead to her Sunday visits to the Pugsleys with her mother, and the fact that she was newly married and staying with Lady Mainwaring while her husband honeymooned alone in the country. He threw the paper away from him in disgust. What on earth was up with Lady Mainwaring? She had enough political influence to get a story like that stopped before it reached the presses.

  Suddenly, the whole enormity of his marriage struck him. He had accepted the girl’s money but that was all he had done. He had now made it clear to everyone that he did not care anything for Kitty. Well, she was his wife, his property. He would set off for London right away and bring her home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kitty wriggled uncomfortably on the plush seat of the railway carriage. If she leaned her head back, the lace antimacassar caught in her hair. If she leaned forward, her stays jabbed her under the bosom. The carriage was stifling. Sweat trickled down Kitty’s body and she desperately wished she could have a good scratch. She felt as comfortable as a dog with fleas.

  “Emily, can’t we please open the window?” asked Kitty.

  “I’m afraid not,” answered Lady Mainwaring. “Our dresses would be ruined by smoke and cinders. You will just have to suffer. Are you wearing stays?”

  Kitty nodded and searched in her reticule for her book of papier poudré The pads which she wore on her head à la Princesse de Galles to puff out her fine hair, the straw hat with its top-heavy pile of artificial fruit and flowers, and her long, tight, kid gloves worn above the elbow, made her feel as if she were encased in some extremely refined torture chamber.

  “I think you should stop wearing stays, Kitty,” said Emily. “It’s not as if you need to.”

  “Leave off my stays?” gasped Kitty. She was as shocked as if Lady Mainwaring had suggested she leave off her knickers.

  “Well, you’re very slim and have a firm bust. Why suffer needlessly. Really, Kitty, no one would know.”

  Kitty was saved from replying as the train drew into Hadsea station. Both ladies stood for a moment as a cool sea breeze swept the scrubbed wooden platform. The train, which had made a special stop to set them down at the small resort, gave a great contemptuous cough and surged forward to the more fashionable resorts ahead.

  They waited for the servants who had descended from a third-class carriage at the other end of the platform, to join them.

  “I’ll tell you a little bit more about our hosts as we go along,” said Emily as they walked from the clean little station to where three carriages were waiting; one for the luggage, one for the servants, and one for themselves.

  They drove down the little high street past the shops with their bunches of black sandshoes, shrimp nets, and revolving stands of colorful postcards, past the butcher’s on the corner, where the jolly-looking butcher waved his straw hat to them in salute, then around the curve on the high street—and there was the sea!

  Kitty let out a gasp of pleasure and clapped her hands like a child. The sea sparkled like blue sapphires all the way to the horizon. Little white sails of yachts in the distance sculled to and fro on the fresh breeze. The beach was a perfect curve of golden sand, edged with flat sandstone rocks studded with great clumps of sea pinks.

  “Pay attention, Kitty,” said Emily Mainwaring, smiling at her pleasure. “I’ll tell you a bit about the people we are going to stay with. Mrs. Jane Dwight-Hammond is a poet. Not a very good one I’m afraid but she’s a very kind lady. Her sister, Matilda, is also very nice but she has a penchant for collecting stray cats. I’m afraid the little brutes are all over the place. They are both maiden ladies and very old friends of mine.”

  “But you said Mrs. Dwight-Hammond,” pointed out Kitty.

  “Well, she was disappointed in love, or so she says, at a very early age and sees no reason why she should suffer the stigma of being a Miss. She invents husbands for herself but they’re apt to change with the days of the week. Don’t let it bother you. She’s quite harmless. Also, it’s good social training to get used to eccentrics. Goodness knows, society is peppered with them.”

  The house was called unimaginatively “Sea View” and stood on a small promontory at the far end of the beach. It was an enormous Victorian mansion with tall red roofs and it stood in several acres of neglected garden. As the carriages crunched to a halt on the graveled drive, no sound could be heard but the wind sighing through some ragged, monkey puzzle trees on the scraggly lawn.

  “Ring the bell, Judson,” said Lady Mainwaring to one of the footmen, “and keep on ringing. This always happens,” she explained to Kitty. “They love company but they get very nervous when company actually arrives and go into hiding.”

  Judson rang the ship’s bell which was on a stand outside the door. Then the silence fell again and faint, agitated rustling and scurrying could be heard from the back of the house. Just as Judson was about to sound off on the bell again, the front door popped open and a thin middle-aged lady in a shabby teagown rushed out. She had a thin, lined face and a great quantity of strong yellow teeth. Her pale, weak eyes watered in the sunlight and she peered at them anxiously.

  “Oh, it is you, Emily. We can’t be too careful you know. Lots of bad, bad men around.”

  This was Jane.

  An identical figure came bounding down the steps behind her and hugged both Kitty and Lady Mainwaring in turn. “I forgot to tell you they were twins,” said Emily Mainwaring to Kitty.

  Matilda Dwight-Hammond did indeed look, at first glance, like a carbon copy of her sister. But closer inspection revealed her to be smarter in her dress and less vague and timid in her manner.

  “Tea is served in the drawing room,” said Matilda.

  “Can we please change our gowns first?” asked Emily Mainwaring. “We’re very sticky a
nd hot from the train journey.”

  A look of almost childish disappointment crossed Matilda’s face. “But Emily, teatime is always when we say ‘hello.’”

  “Oh, very well,” sighed Emily. Matilda beamed with delight and ushered them into the drawing room. Kitty expected to find other visitors to whom she was expected to say “hello,” but the eyes which met hers belonged to a score or so of cats.

  There were cats sitting on the chairs, cats on the floor, even cats on the piano. Their different-colored furs gleamed with health and their unblinking eyes surveyed Kitty with interest.

  “We’ll start with the first,” said Matilda, and then giggled. “Why, your name is Kitty. How suitable!”

  She led the way to the first cat, a hugh tabby with large green eyes. “Now this is Peter. Say hello to Kitty, Peter.”

  Peter mewed politely. They passed to the next. “And this is Tibbles.” Tibbles was a Persian who fluffed her fur and also mewed.

  More fascinated by the minute, Kitty was introduced to cat after cat. Then Matilda clapped her hands and opened the door. “Hellotime is over,” she announced. “Time to leave.” The cats rose and stretched and slowly loped from the room, quickening their pace as they went out into the garden, the sun shining on their sleek fur. Then they fanned out and dived off into the shrubbery.

  “Now it’s good-bye time,” said Lady Mainwaring. “We really must get changed.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Matilda. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

  Kitty stood patiently and let Colette undress her. Her room was charming. White lace curtains framed the long windows and were looped back to show a view of the beach and the sea on the other side of the tangled shrubbery of the garden.

  The furniture was of white cane with the exception of a marble washstand with a porcelain ewer and basin which were overflowing with roses and maidenhair ferns. An empty crystal bowl stood next to the washstand on a triangular cane table. The sisters had forgotten to arrange the flowers or—more likely, thought Kitty—they considered the basin and ewer more suitable for a flower display.