The library was a panelled room, with a log-fire burning on an open hearth, and a number of very comfortable armchairs.
Tea was on a gate-legged table by the fire, and neither the cakes, the bread-and-butter, nor the bowl of violets presented that amateurish appearance associated by Laura with her own tea-table.
“Are you going to the Point-to-Point next week?” she heard Bébée enquire, and Alfred’s slow-spoken reply,
“I daresay we shall. I’m afraid I hadn’t realised it was next week. The twenty-second?”
“Do let’s go. I always love the Quinnerton Point-to-Point,” Laura exclaimed. She was partly genuine, and partly desirous of sounding ready to do anything that everybody else did.
“This dreadful girl attends every race-meeting in England,” proudly declared Lady Kingsley-Browne. “Darling Bay-bay, who’s taking you to the Point-to-Point?”
“I can’t remember, mummie, but whoever it is will turn up in time for lunch, I expect.”
“Isn’t she terrible!”
Everybody flatteringly agreed that Bébée was terrible, and Bébée ate sandwiches and looked blasée and contrived to make everybody understand that in a district where young women and men were in a proportion of about twelve to one, it was positively difficult for her to make a choice amongst the escorts that offered themselves to her on every possible occasion.
It was not until tea was over that Onslow spoke to Laura, as he offered her a cigarette.
“When are we to have the pleasure of reading another story of yours in the London Century?” he enquired.
Laura flushed faintly, and smiled uncertainly.
Now, if ever, was the moment to impress A. B. Onslow, his wife, Alfred, Lady Kingsley-Browne, and the insufferable Bébée, with the fact that one might live in the country all the year round and be a wife and a mother, and yet remain a woman of the world, and one in touch with the interests of modern literature.
“I don’t know,” she heard herself reply, inanely.
“Soon, I hope,” A. B. Onslow persisted gallantly.
“I hope so, too,” said Laura feebly, and, overcome with self-consciousness, dashed into an irrelevant reference to a book of memoirs. Had Mr. Onslow read it?
Yes, he had.
After that they were able to talk, and Laura found it the easier because Bébée had disappeared, and Lady Kingsley-Browne was talking to Alfred and Mrs. Onslow about pageants—evidently a link between country life and the artistic interests of Highgate.
It gave Laura acute pleasure to listen again to talk about books, although she would have preferred not to have had to say “I haven’t yet read that” quite so often.
At last Mr. Onslow—evidently a man of infinite tact—again approached the subject of Laura’s own contributions to literature, with all the air of one whose suspense was urgent.
“If I may say so, Mrs. Temple, that story of yours in the Century was a considerable advance in technique over anything that you’ve given us yet. I believe I’ve read everything of yours, and I’ve been wondering very much when another collected volume would appear. Soon, I hope?”
Laura laughed, flushing.
“I hope so, too. You can’t imagine how encouraging it is to hear that from you. It makes me feel that I must go on writing at all costs.”
“You must, indeed,” Onslow assured her earnestly.
“And may I say how much I loved your last book?”
They talked about A. B. Onslow’s last book until they were interrupted by Bébée drifting in again, her hands thrust into the pockets of her jumper suit, a cigarette between her rouged lips.
“Not that it doesn’t suit her,” Laura admitted to herself with reluctant honesty, gazing at that young, unnaturally-crimson mouth.
It was at this point that Mr. Onslow’s attention to his conversation with Laura, although it did not waver, gave her an impression of being, as it were, nailed to the mast, by courtesy and kind-heartedness.
Mrs. Temple, as an instant result, ceased to be either entertaining or responsively intelligent, and their duologue petered out.
“I’m afraid,” said Laura, looking at her husband, “that we ought really to be thinking—”
“Oh, must you really?” Lady Kingsley-Browne rose as she spoke. “How are the children? Mrs. Temple has two such perfectly delightful children.”
“Have you really?” Mrs. Onslow asked—but Laura’s maternal instinct knew very well that she required no reply, and would not perceive the absence of one.
The Temples were escorted to the door, their Morris-Oxford—looking strangely battered in the middle of the square, gravelled terrace, flanked by stone jars of geraniums—was politely extolled, and farewells were exchanged.
“Remember! I shall look out for that volume of stories,” said Onslow.
“Do come and see us when you’re in London,” Mrs. Onslow begged. “We’re in the telephone book.”
“We’d love to,” Laura returned smiling.
“Switch on,” directed Alfred, and cranked up the car. The Temples, in Laura’s opinion, were the only remaining couple in England whose car was not fitted with a self-starter.
As they drove away, she saw Bébée, with a familiar and nonchalant gesture, thrust her hand through the arm of her parents’ distinguished guest.
“That girl is, with no single exception, the worst-mannered and most conceited little fool that I’ve ever set eyes upon,” Laura remarked, in what she believed to be a detached tone of impartial scientific interest.
Alfred, more indifferently, but with Shakesperian outspokenness, coldly applied one single, racy epithet to Miss Kingsley-Browne.
“I daresay,” said Laura, her feelings relieved by a small laugh. “What did you think of the Onslows?”
“Oh, all right. Did you notice her pearls?”
“Of course I did.”
“You ought to go and see them when you’re in London, Laura. I like to hear you talking about books,” said Alfred simply.
Her heart glowed suddenly.
“Do you, darling?”
Occasionally Alfred said things like that, and invariably Laura sought to draw him on further, although seldom with success.
“Why—?”
“Oh well, you do it very nicely, and I know it’s a pleasure to you. Did you notice those hyacinths in the hall?”
“No—yes—yes, I think I did.”
“They were very fine. That head-man of theirs is good. A Scotsman, of course. Did I tell you that I’d had a talk with him about sugar-beet growing the other day?”
How odd it was, Laura reflected, that her desire to hear Alfred talk about sugar-beet—although a loyal and a genuine one, if not absolutely indigenous to her own mentality—should so seldom coincide with Alfred’s desire to talk about it!
Well, at least she could attend to it now, which she couldn’t simply do at home.
“Of course, the trouble with these farmers—” said Alfred.
Laura listened very attentively, and hoped that Alfred wouldn’t remember to ask her if she’d yet read the article in the Agricultural Journal. It was on her writing-table still. She visualised it, and the small packet of letters that was just beside it…answered, thank goodness, but not quite finished with yet. Surely, surely, out of five addresses collected from the Quinnerton Registry Offices and one advertisement taken from the Morning Post, a house-parlourmaid would materialise. If one engaged them too long ahead they always seemed to fail at the last and most inconvenient minute, and if one left it too long, then there was no chance at all, and a terrible and expensive system of “tiding over” came into force. It entailed the presence of a woman from the village, at a cost of three shillings and several meals a day, and a great deal of uncongenial and personal hard work on the part of Laura herself. And Alfred didn’t like it. And one couldn’t have anybody to stay. And it made extra work for nurse, because the boys were on her hands at times when Laura habitually had them with her. Worst of all, a prolonged
period of tiding over always caused the remaining servant to give notice. So that by the time one had a new one, the old one was just leaving, and the vicious circle went on.
“In fact it’s actually a more profitable crop than wheat,” said Alfred conclusively.
And Laura replied with great emphasis, “Yes, I see it must be. It’s wonderful.”
As the Morris-Oxford turned in at the white gate, Laura forgot the existence of the A. B. Onslows, of the Kingsley-Brownes, and of sugar-beet. She glanced at her watch, and saw that there was still half an hour to elapse before the boys need go to bed.
“Mummie!”
Johnnie dashed down the stairs and met her in the hall, but, as usual, he eluded her kiss.
Edward followed more slowly.
“Mummie, will you play with us?”
“Will you read to us?”
“You’re always out, aren’t you?” said Johnnie pathetically, and quite untruly.
His mother contented herself with giving him a look. She knew that Johnnie knew that she knew when he was merely playing for effect.
“Have you been good while I’ve been away?” Laura enquired, sincerely anxious for reassurance, and remembering too late that all the modern books on education stressed the importance of always taking for granted that no child ever had been, could be, or would be anything but good.
“Yes, very,” said Edward glibly.
“Not so very, at tea,” his brother reminded him. “I only upset my milk by an accident, and we wouldn’t finish our crusts.”
“Well,” said Laura, and took them into the drawing-room. “What shall I read? It’s Edward’s turn to choose.”
Edward looked timidly at his mother. He liked the Peter Rabbit books, and Tales about Bad Little Kittens, and even Nursery Rhymes with plenty of pictures. Laura did not smile upon her elder son’s taste in literature. She read the Bad Little Kittens when he asked for them, in rather a chilly voice, for fear of creating a repression in Edward, but she kept her enthusiasm for Johnnie’s favourite Tales from the Classics and Stories from English History. Both her children were well aware of this, as Laura guiltily realised.
“Hercules, please,” said Edward rather faintly.
She saw that he was making a great effort to conform to his mother’s standards, and felt both remorseful and impatient.
“I’ll just take off my hat—”
Laura threw off her hat and coat in the hall, noted with a passing distaste in the oval looking-glass on the wall that her hair always emerged untidy from under any hat, and that her nose required powdering, and went straight to the drawing-room and began to read.
Edward did not listen at all, and Johnnie listened intently, but earnestly bit his nails.
“Johnnie—your fingers—‘So Hercules went to the marshes where those terrible birds—’ Johnnie, dear—and Edward, don’t kick the furniture—‘these terrible birds lived. They were called the Stymphalian birds.’”
“They had brass beaks,” from Johnnie.
“Yes, don’t interrupt, darling, and don’t make me speak to you again about your fingers, or I shall stop reading.”
“‘Now before he went, Hercules had taken the precaution—’ Do you know what that means, Edward?”
“Yes,” said Edward hastily.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Laura, who was almost always mysteriously tired after quarter of an hour spent in the undisturbed company of her children, suddenly felt too jaded to point out Edward’s failure, alike in intelligence and in truthfulness, with that pleasant, gentle reasonableness recommended by all her little modern books. So instead she said wearily and injudiciously, “Tell him, Johnnie.” And Johnnie did so, and received in return a sulky look from his senior.
“It won’t do to let Edward get jealous, poor darling,” thought Laura, as she had thought a great many other times.
She resumed the Labours of Hercules.
At half-past six there was a knock at the door.
“Here’s nurse,” said Laura—too brightly, as she herself felt. “Now I’ll put in a marker, so that we shall know the place to-morrow. Good-night, darlings.”
“Must we go to bed, mummie?”
“Certainly you must. I’ll come up and say good-night to you.”
“What about five more minutes?” Johnnie coaxed, his pleading far more nearly effectual than Edward’s whining.
Laura glanced at nurse, a modern, efficient-looking young woman, not much over thirty.
Nurse had on her offended face.
Laura “did not know the cause of this not infrequent catastrophe, and in all probability never would know it, since nurse was of those who “prefer not to say” when interrogated. But she did know that this was no evening for a display of maternal weakness.
“Not to-night, darling. Now say good-night—you can go and find daddy in the study before you go up, and don’t keep nurse waiting.”
A display of consideration which left nurse quite unmoved, as Laura noticed out of the corner of her eye.
Johnnie elected to be naughty.
He cast himself upon the floor, shrieked, and clung to the legs of the furniture.
Edward took the opportunity of shooting out of the room and disappearing from view.
Laura, exhausted, exasperated, and apprehensive lest Alfred should hear from the study, sought to speak with calm.
“Johnnie, that’s not like a big boy—that’s like a baby. Don’t make that dreadful noise. Go along, now—”
(“Never meet opposition with opposition,” said the little book.)
“You’re making my head ache, Johnnie dear. Please don’t scream.”
Johnnie’s screams appeared instantly to redouble in intensity. Laura looked despairingly at nurse.
“Stop that now,” said nurse in no uncertain tones, and advanced to where Johnnie lay. By a form of ju-jitsu known only in nursery circles, she miraculously jerked him to his feet again.
Laura could not help reflecting how effective physical violence always seemed to be, although so much opposed by every enlightened modern authority. If she were really true to her principles, she would certainly forbid nurse to employ it—but Laura knew only too well that her whole life was one continual compromise between her principles and her sense of expediency.
“Come along and stop that nonsense,” said nurse, and Johnnie followed her, enveloped in a sudden and complete indifference.
“She can just find Edward for herself,” thought Laura childishly, and sank back into her chair.
The house-parlourmaid, Nellie, entered.
“If you please, ’m, Mrs. Raynor is at the back door and would like to speak to you.”
“You’d better ask her to come in here. And Nellie, if she hasn’t gone at the end of a quarter of an hour, please come and say that I’m wanted.”
Two minutes after the organisation of this inhospitable manoeuvre Laura was saying pleasandy:
“Good evening, Mrs. Raynor. Come in and sit down.”
Mrs. Raynor periodically worked and periodically had a bad heart. She had now come to ask if Laura ever wanted a day’s cleaning done.
“Because, if so, Mrs. Temple, I’d be glad to oblige. I’ve given up the washing.”
Laura reflected that the scrubbing and turning out of the two nurseries, by hands other than her own, always gratified nurse.
She engaged Mrs. Raynor to come early in the following week.
A vague feeling of uneasiness, connected with Mrs. Raynor, lurked at the back of her mind, but it was not until later that she remembered a certain rather anxious week in the previous year, in the course of which Mrs. Raynor had come daily to fill a gap, and had nightly departed with a small bundle under her arm.
(Alfred, when Laura had told him at the time what serious misgivings the bundle roused in her, had replied with an air of matter-of-fact common sense: “But you can easily find out. Just stop her one night and ask her what’s in the bundle.”)
“Well, anyway, I should have had to have her when Nellie leaves. Unless I’ve got a new one by then,” Laura thought.
She had not yet found a house-parlourmaid. Her own advertisement remained unanswered, except by newspapers and agencies, the Registry Office assured her that girls wouldn’t look at the country, and the faint possibilities heard of through the friends of friends who were losing theirs at the end of the month had always evaporated by the time that Laura had persuaded her husband to motor her some forty or fifty miles in search of them.
“Mum-mie-ee!”
“All right, darling.”
She went upstairs, and exchanged prolonged good-nights with the hilarious Edward and Johnnie, that left her barely five minutes in which to change into her faded, friendly velveteen tea-gown that had served her for years when she and Alfred had no one staying at Applecourt.
“They are darlings when they are in bed,” she thought, with a little glow at her heart.
The gong rang.
Laura and Alfred went in to dinner, and Nellie waited upon them with that alert efficiency displayed by a departing servant anxious to demonstrate to her employers that they are losing a treasure.
“The boys were having a pillow fight when I went in just now.”
“Were they?” said Alfred. He smiled kindly, if without enthusiasm.
“It’s extraordinary how much better balanced on his feet Johnnie is than poor little Edward. Why, he can bowl him over like a ninepin every time.”
“Can he?”
This time Alfred hadn’t smiled, and the absence of enthusiasm was rather marked.
Laura recollected herself with a start and began to talk about the League of Nations.
Chapter IV
Alfred had been persuaded to drive Laura and the children to the dancing-class at Quinnerton. There was no security that he would repeat this concession weekly, but Laura had thankfully taken advantage of it, with reference in her own mind to the thin end of the wedge. She now sat in the Quinnerton Town Hall, on an uncomfortable seat placed in a draughty position, in the company of half a dozen mothers, a couple of nurses, and three governesses.
The Way Things Are Page 4
