The Anna Bonner, faced with prospective pupils growing up in a neighbourhood that was still attractive to new, if poorer residents, because of its big gardens and wide roads, was forced to open its doors to anyone who could pay its fees and struggle through its entrance examination. Its name as a private school (though it now had a board of governors and was grateful for some help from the Board of Education) gave it the slight extra prestige sought by ambitious parents and it had traditions and customs that made it a little different from the secondary schools.
But the girls were not the ladylike little creatures of 1918, who never took off their hats in the street or talked loudly in the trams because Anna Bonner girls did not do those things. They were sturdy young amazons who played in shorts on games days, and cheeked the Air Cadets at the street corners on their way home from school; they went to the cinema regularly two or three times a week as a habit, and knew the number of husbands owned by every film star. Their fathers were shop assistants, linotype operators or wireless engineers, with a sprinkling of skilled factory workers.
Miss Lathom, the headmistress, thought that the new type of Anna Bonner girl had some excellent qualities. She was less sentimental and quarrelsome than her mother, attending the school at the same age, had been. She had more sense of humour, and she took (perhaps because the school compelled her to take) more interest in public affairs. It was the fault of her home, rather than of herself, that the Anna Bonner found it more difficult each year to impose upon her the qualities of Conscientiousness, Concentration and Courtesy upon which the founder had based the school tradition.
Margaret found these quick, casual, bright-faced Londoners noticeably different from the children of Lukeborough, but she was not so nervous of them as might have been expected. She was neither timid nor self-conscious except when in the company of people like Hebe Niland, who possessed all that she most wanted and were all that she most desired to be, and in the presence of these Cockneys, perhaps the least impressionable class in the world, she was efficient, firm and successful. They were more impressed by personality than by any other human quality, because it was the quality they looked for and admired in the cinema stars; and she had enough personality to impress them. She deliberately acted a part with them; did not speak unless it was necessary, was witty when the opportunity arose, and used surprise, gravity or sarcasm to control them.
She was surprised at her own success. At the end of the first fortnight, as she sat on the dais surveying the rows of heads bending peacefully over their work, she experienced a stimulating sense of faith in her own capacities which was new to her. She despised these giggling fresh-faced children who still all looked alike to her, even when she had learned to distinguish Shirley Bates from Grace Plender, and she was scornful of the attempts at decoration in the classrooms, whilst the elderly staff seemed to her over-talkative and old-fashioned. Nevertheless, this was an old-established and prosperous London school with a reputation, and she, Margaret Steggles, at the age of twenty-three was a form mistress in it, and a successful one. It was a small triumph, she told herself; nevertheless, it was pleasant.
She would have been more pleased with her achievement if she had known how satisfied Miss Lathom was with her. Miss Lomax, of Sunnybrae Preparatory and Kindergarten School, Lukeborough, had written to her old friend and former staff-mate of the Leather-Workers’ School, Croydon, and told her about this interesting young woman who was teaching at Sunnybrae, and who was (according to Miss Lomax) wasted there. Miss Lomax thought that Margaret had a future in the scholastic world; she might one day make a notable headmistress. She had a gift for teaching, Miss Lomax considered, and considerable force of character.
Miss Lathom herself was not attracted to Margaret. Like most people, the headmistress was more susceptible to charm than to force in a character, and it was an additional handicap to Margaret that she had none of that immediate friendly interest in other people which sometimes serves to make a naturally charmless person likeable. Miss Lathom (who prided herself upon being a natural reader of female character with powers developed by twenty-five years as a headmistress) knew well that beneath her too-eager manner and self-absorbed expression there were strong feelings and much warmth of heart; but she also knew that nothing had yet happened to the girl to draw these qualities out and make them stronger than her self-centredness. There is a nature, mused Miss Lathom, which will have to be crushed by tragedy before it will blossom and give forth its perfume.
But if Miss Lathom was not drawn personally towards her new form mistress, she was pleased with her work. Margaret had been entrusted with a form which included one or two unpleasantly lively spirits, and if she had been incapable of managing them the fact would have been apparent within a few days. There had been no signs of failure. Miss Lathom had happened to go past Form IV’s classroom more than once during Margaret’s first two days in the school, at times when she might reasonably have been supposed to be in her own room, and had been reassured by the sound of a clear, composed voice dictating in the midst of an attentive silence. She was relieved, too, that Margaret’s appearance was conventional and neat, and that her artistic tastes (emphasized by Miss Lomax) did not express themselves in purple capes or very large black hats. The only unusual note in her style was the little black velvet bow, and although Miss Lathom had at first had her doubts about that and feared that worse might follow, she finally decided that it was harmless.
Margaret would have been dismayed had she known that the fate of the little bow had hung in the balance, for it was dear to her since Hebe Niland’s comment upon it, and every time she put it on she thought of Mozart and music, and the Past, and Hebe, and all the people at Lamb Cottage.
She had not seen Grantey since the afternoon at the Cottage, nearly a month ago, and she had not walked over to Hampstead since. Although she frequently passed Westwood on her way to shop in Highgate Village, and always looked in through its gates, she never once caught a glimpse of its inhabitants. The windows were screened by curtains of net through which it was impossible to see, and had it not been for the well-kept appearance of the mansion, it might have been shut up. She would loiter wistfully past, trying to find fresh food for her imagination and yet not appear to be rudely staring in, wishing that the front door would open and Gerard Challis himself come out.
The thought of Gerard Challis attracted her even as did the house’s exterior, and every day she found her imagination playing about him and about the inside of the house – which she believed that she would never see.
How she longed to see the inside of Westwood! Every time she passed by and gazed at it, the same thought struck her: in spite of the changes that had overtaken social life in England in the course of the past four years, and the crumbling of so many conventional barriers, and the invasion of private life by public control, an unofficial person like herself was still unable to obtain the entrance to the home of a celebrity; less able, indeed, than she would have been eighty years ago, when social barriers were higher, indeed, but the educated and the uneducated were separated by a wider gulf than they are to-day, and she, as a well-read and educated young woman, would have been on the same side of the barrier as Gerard Challis. She might even have been invited to a summer garden-party or winter evening conversazione given by Mrs Challis to the educated portion of the community in the little, isolated Highgate Village of those days. And so far as the peculiar social advantages of to-day were concerned, she was also out of luck. She was on the fire-watching rota for Stanley Gardens, but she watched with the fat efficient man who owned the greengrocery in Archway Road and a girl cashier from a local bank, while Mr Challis, presumably, watched with others in Simpson’s Lane, and although less than a quarter of a mile separated their homes, they never met. It’s like The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, thought Margaret despondently. We all live in a sort of organized chaos nowadays when you might expect to meet anyone, but in fact you don’t. And it is so maddening that I do
know someone who lives in that house; I know Grantey, but I simply can’t do anything about that. I don’t know why; I just can’t.
In fact, she was too sensitive to force her society where there had been no sign of its being welcome, even when the person concerned was an elderly servant.
She spoke to no one of her obsession with Westwood and its master, for she was afraid of seeming escapist. While there was agony and misery all over Europe, it seemed to her despicable that the chief interest of her secret life could be a beautiful playwright living in a beautiful house! She was ashamed of herself.
Had she been old enough to suspect how many other people were sustained by their secret lives because of all that was going on in Europe, she would have ceased to feel ashamed.
She had indeed hinted once or twice at her feelings to Hilda, but had received so little encouragement that she had withdrawn into her reserve again. There was no trace of romance in Hilda’s early morning nature; it was all sparkling dew and cool sunlight and its few slight shadows were speedily dispersed. Delightful as such a companion might be to a deeper nature for a few hours, there was sometimes a sense of something wanting, and as the weeks passed, Margaret became aware that her friendship with Hilda was not turning out to be the unalloyed pleasure to which she had looked forward.
It was not that Hilda was so absorbed by the claims of her boys that she had no time to spare for Margaret, for she was always pleased to see her or to hear her voice on the telephone, and they usually managed to go to the pictures together once a week and often, if the weather was not too severe, for a walk on the Heath on Sundays; and these occasions were very pleasant, for Hilda was at her most entertaining when walking swiftly through the cold air and chattering away like a much-courted blackbird, or seated beside Margaret in the cinema and excitedly pinching her arm, but she could not, or would not, be serious. She would immediately change the subject if Margaret began to speak of the many topics, including her own dissatisfactions, that interested her. Hilda had made up her mind, after hearing the story of Frank Kennett, that Margaret ought to snap out of it, and she discouraged the discussion of reconstruction or religion, because it always ended in Margaret’s getting browned-off. It was done in all kindness, for she was fond of her friend, and had, she thought, her best interests at heart; but Margaret was beginning to find it irritating and to wish for a companion who would sometimes permit her to talk about the dreams which thronged her mind. She still loved her friend; Hilda would always have that place in her affections which is reserved for the oldest friend; the friend with whom there is often no link surviving save the twenty-five or so years which have elapsed since a mutual youth; but she sometimes felt, not without guilt, that she had outgrown her.
10
The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close as Margaret walked quickly through Highgate Village. It was a Saturday, and she was anxious to find a plumber to attend to a dripping tap in the kitchen which had suddenly increased its flow to such an extent that Mrs Steggles had become alarmed. The air was clear and intensely cold; the sun had almost disappeared behind a bloom of opal clouds, but the windows still flashed back its scarlet light and the houses, the pavements, the spire of the church, were pale and clean in the radiance. Margaret’s fingertips ached with cold as she hurried absentmindedly on. She had come up another turning than the one leading past Westwood, but (as always when she came to the village) her thoughts were busy with the house as she pushed open the door of the ironmonger’s.
An elderly lady was at that moment being courteously attended to by the proprietor. She was explaining about the particular type of knob which she required to be fitted on the door of her coal-cellar.
‘We’ll do our best, madam,’ said Mr Hudson, smiling and nodding and taking it all in. ‘I can’t promise to have a man there until Tuesday but we’ll do our best to get it done before.’
‘And remember I want a china knob,’ said the elderly lady impressively for the fourth time; ‘not one of those metal things, they bang against the wall when my maid opens the door to get the coal, and get dented, and that loosens them, of course, and then …’
Margaret’s attention wandered and she began to look dreamily round the shop, but she was still far from the peace of middle age, which has learned to enjoy gardening more than people, and people were what interested her, not wheelbarrows and secateurs. There was only one other person in the shop besides herself and Mr Hudson and the elderly lady; a small dark woman wearing a bright red beret. Her face was so alive with impatience that it did not occur to Margaret whether she was plain or pretty, and she was actually standing on tiptoe with eagerness; swaying slightly in her desire to attract Mr Hudson’s attention away from the elderly lady, and soundlessly opening and shutting her lips as if rehearsing the sentences which would burst forth the instant the elderly lady should cease to speak.
Margaret watched her with interest which quickly changed to indignation when, the elderly lady having concluded her remarks and turned away to leave the shop, the little woman darted forward in front of Margaret before the latter could take her turn and immediately burst into a flood of speech about an electric-fuse.
Mr Hudson listened smilingly, apparently unaware that Margaret had been supplanted, and even glancing at her once or twice to confirm his own amusement as the little woman’s foreign accent became more pronounced, but Margaret listened with a graver face than usual, for she was annoyed.
‘I’ll do my best, Miss Mandelbaum,’ said Mr Hudson at last, interrupting the flood of broken English, ‘but I can’t promise. I’ve got –’
‘But it iss for der party! Mrs Challis iss gifing a party dis efening!’
‘I know – very awkward, and I’m sorry. But it’s the week-end, you know, Saturday afternoon. My man’s out on a job.’
‘Dere will be no lights in der hall und der drawingroom! Cortway hass gone to see his mother, and so he cannot mend it. Dere iss no one at home now but me and Mrs Grant, und we do not know how.’
A thrill ran through Margaret, whose attention had already been caught by the name ‘Challis,’ and she gazed eagerly at the little woman. She must be from Westwood!
‘Well, if my man comes back before half-past five, I’ll send him along, but I can’t promise, Miss Mandelbaum.’
‘I suppose,’ put in Margaret, in her deep voice to which the last weeks had given a new authority, ‘that that goes for a tap that wants a new washer, too?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ smiled Mr Hudson. ‘It’s the week-end, you see. These things always seem to happen at the week-end, don’t they?’
The little woman flashed a despairing smile at Margaret and flung out her hands.
‘Dere iss a party to-night, it iss at der big house in Simpson’s Lane, Westwood, under der fuse he has blown out. Dis afternoon he blow out. It iss a party for Mrs Niland who hass had her baby –’
‘Oh, indeed! I’m glad to hear that. Is it a little boy or a little girl?’ interrupted Mr Hudson pleasantly.
‘It iss a little boy. But Mr Hudson, if you do not mend dis fuse, dere will be no light in der hall and der drawing-room!’
‘Well, I’ll do my very best,’ promised Mr Hudson, ‘and for you, too, madam,’ to Margaret. ‘If my man comes back to the shop before he goes home I’ll try and get him down to – what was it, did you say?’
Margaret told him about the tap and gave her address, but she found difficulty in concentrating upon what she was saying because she had suddenly thought of a plan which would provide her with the perfect excuse for getting inside Westwood, and she was afraid that the little foreigner might hurry away before she could put it into execution.
Miss Mandelbaum was gazing tragically at the unruffled Mr Hudson with half a dozen expressions a minute passing over her face. She opened her mouth to begin again.
‘I’m so glad Mrs Niland has got her baby,’ said Margaret boldly, smiling at her. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting her at Lamb Cottage a few weeks ago when I too
k back her ration book; I found it on the Heath. She’s a charming person, isn’t she?’
There! The sentence was out, and she congratulated herself upon having a foreigner to say it to. She was not nervous of foreigners, and besides, she could see at a glance that this one was emotional, friendly and easily impressed.
Miss Mandelbaum nodded vigorously. ‘Oh yes, she iss charming. Zo!’ – smiling archly – ‘it iss you who find der ration book! Oh yess, I hear all about it from Mrs Grant. You are Miss – no. It iss a difficult name and I do not remember.’
‘Steggles. Margaret Steggles.’
‘Miss Steggles.’ She stumbled over the pronunciation. ‘And I am Zita Mandelbaum.’ She held out her hand, which Margaret took, and they exchanged a firm shake, smiling at one another. ‘How do you do,’ said Zita, laughing, and Margaret too laughed excitedly. She felt herself already within the walls of Westwood.
Some other customers entered the shop at this moment and she took advantage of Mr Hudson’s preoccupation with them to say in a lowered tone to Zita:
‘Look here, I can mend a fuse. Would you like me to come and have a look at yours?’
Zita’s face brightened so quickly that Margaret was afraid Mr Hudson might notice it.
‘You can mend a fuse!’ she cried. (Margaret was all the time moving towards the door and Zita was following her.) ‘But how wonderful! (I cannot do dose sings; I am der artist-type, I do not know machinery.) But of course you must come! We go now, dis minute! I take you dere,’ and she opened the door and almost pushed Margaret out of it.
Ah, you needn’t ‘take me there,’ I know the way; I’d know it blindfold; I’ve been there in dreams, thought Margaret ecstatically, as they hurried through the village, Zita chattering all the way. A red glow lingered in the west and below it, visible between the houses, there were woods of a dim, cold blue. A host of seagulls flew overhead on their way to the water in the north where they roosted each night, slowly moving their long wings which the rays of the sun, still shining in that upper air, touched with gold. Margaret’s head was filled with thoughts of the past, and strains of music, and dreams of London’s history. The vast city lying in the valley was blue; amethyst, sapphire, turquoise and a strange grey-blue that lay between spires and terraces and made them spectral. White smoke from the trains puffed and rolled up into the still, icy air. In a moment I shall be inside Westwood, she thought.
Westwood (Vintage Classics) Page 13
