Caroline

by Richmal Crompton

  Hearing the front door-bell, she threw a quick glance at her reflection in the mirror, drawing her hair a little farther down over her forehead, wishing for a moment (before she dismissed the thought as unworthy of her) that the lines of her cheek and jaw were as lovely as Philippa’s, resenting Philippa’s loveliness with a bitterness that was easily translated into righteous disapproval.

  Richard was entering the room, his hands outstretched.

  “How good to see you again,” he said, “and how well you look!”

  The warm reassuring kindliness of him seemed to enter her heart, soothing all its secret turmoil. She looked at him with a new sense of possessiveness. Philippa could spoil nearly everything else, but she couldn’t spoil this. This was hers inalienably. There was approval in the smile with which she greeted him. His sunburn—acquired during his holiday—emphasised the blue of his eyes and the slight greying of his temples. She realised for the first time how good-looking he was. She had always before taken him and everything about him for granted. His devotion had seemed so integral a part of her life that she had not valued it. Now the whisperings of disloyalty in her kingdom made loyalty something to be valued, and his became doubly precious.

  “Tell me all about your holiday,” she smiled. “We’ve quite missed you.”

  His answering smile was quizzical and tender as he said:

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  He sat down on the other side of the fireplace and began to tell her about his holiday, describing several incidents that had amused him. She laughed, not because she found them amusing, but because it was so good to feel herself again enclosed in the comfortable walls of his devotion. All her depression and weariness dropped from her. She was restored to her pedestal, surrounded by devout worshippers, for Richard’s attitude made her doubts of Fay and Susan seem ridiculous. She had a pleasant sense of almost domestic intimacy as she poured out his tea, putting into his cup the right amount of sugar and milk. Their conversation was trivial enough, but beneath it she was conscious of a deep bond of understanding. Richard knew her as she was, loved her for what she was. Neither Philippa nor anyone else could blur his vision of her. A silence fell on them when the tea things had been removed, and in the silence all her tenseness seemed to relax. She longed to step down from her pedestal and be gathered into his arms. If he asked her again to marry him, she would say “yes.”

  He broke the silence.

  “Your mother’s not at home?”

  “No. She’s gone up to town for the day. She was going to her dressmaker and milliner and to have her hair waved.” She smiled indulgently. “Really, Richard, isn’t it absurd for a woman of her age to spend so much time and trouble over her appearance?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “She’s so beautiful that it somehow seems quite natural that she should.”

  Her smile faded.

  “Do you think her beautiful?”

  “Of course . . . don’t you?”

  She shrugged. Her face had hardened. She stood upon her pedestal looking down at him with cold blue eyes.

  He continued, unaware that he had said anything to offend her:

  “And extremely attractive. I’ve been feeling so glad for your sake that she’s come here.”

  “Why glad for my sake?”

  “For all our sakes,” he corrected himself. “She’s belonged to a larger life than any of us here have known. She’ll jerk us out of our ruts.”

  She looked at him in silence for some moments, then said:

  “I’m sorry you think me narrow, Richard.”

  He glanced at her in surprise.

  “Narrow?”

  “Of course, we can’t all have lived the life my mother has lived. I think it just as well that we haven’t, though I gather that you don’t agree with me.”

  She spoke lightly enough and smiled as she spoke, but she was trembling with anger.

  He looked uncomfortable.

  “My dear,” he said, “you know quite well that I didn’t mean that.”

  “What else could you have meant?”

  “All that happened such a long time ago.”

  “She’s the same woman now as she was then.”

  “Caroline, it isn’t like you to be so ungenerous.”

  She caught her breath sharply. For a moment she couldn’t believe her ears. So a goddess might have felt whose worshipper had suddenly arisen from his knees and slapped her in the face. Ungenerous! She whose generosity and unselfishness were famous through the town. Why, she was literally a byword for unselfishness. Ungenerous! Before she could reply, however, there came the sound of voices in the hall, Philippa’s and Fay’s. There was that note of eager excitement in Fay’s that Caroline always disliked. She had begun to take it for granted now that Philippa should bring out the worst in everyone she came in contact with, but she could never grow reconciled to the transformation of her grave, responsible little Fay into a giggling schoolgirl.

  “How nice to hear Fay laugh like that!” said Richard.

  She did not answer. Her mouth was a hard tight line. Richard, too. The very mention of her name had destroyed the understanding between them as if it had never been. The very sound of her voice had blurred his judgement, as it blurred everyone’s. Nice to hear Fay laugh like that! A silly childish giggle that was utterly unworthy of her, that wasn’t Fay at all . . . not the real Fay . . . her Fay. There came the sound of Fay’s light footsteps running upstairs, and then Philippa entered smiling.

  She was dressed in dark green and looked very beautiful, her pale cheeks slightly flushed, her dark eyes bright.

  “I overtook Fay,” she said, loosening her furs, “and so we came up together. How do you do, Richard?”

  Richard. . . . She had called him by his Christian name at their very first meeting. It was disgraceful. No reticence, no real dignity, behind that delusive mask of breeding. She hadn’t realised what a formidable enemy she’d set herself to fight. But she’d fight it. Surely Richard—or anyone else—would eventually see the difference between true metal, and false. If he didn’t, he wasn’t worthy of her.

  “I’ll ring for more tea,” she said graciously.

  “No, please don’t,” said Philippa. “I had a late lunch, and I don’t really want any. Just give me a cup as it is. I don’t mind it weak or stewed or anyhow. I’m terribly grubby. I ought to go straight up to wash.”

  Richard smiled at her radiant freshness.

  “You look anything but grubby,” he said.

  Caroline poured out the tea.

  “Well,” she said as she handed her the cup, “did you visit your dressmaker and milliner and hairdresser?”

  She meant to speak lightly, indulgently, as one might question a child about its toys and games, but something in her voice startled Philippa and made her glance at her keenly. What was the matter? Had she quarrelled with her handsome middle-aged suitor? But he looked untroubled enough.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I wasted the entire morning on frivolities, then just had time to go to an agent about a flat before I came home.”

  “I hope he couldn’t find you one,” said Richard.

  Caroline clutched the sides of her chair till her knuckles stood out like bare bones. How much longer could she endure to sit there and listen to Richard being cheaply flirtatious with this woman?

  “I’m afraid he could find me literally hundreds,” smiled Philippa, “but I hadn’t time to start the hunt today. Marcia will be home next week, you know, and she wants me to go up and see her, so I’ll combine business and pleasure and do some flat-hunting at the same time.”

  “You’d do far better to stay amongst us,” said Richard. “We’re dull but worthy. We have a Musical Contest of local talent in the winter, and in the summer there are Galas, Fêtes, and Fayres (we never stoop to anything as common as a Fair, of course). Moreover here, at any rate, your next-door neighbour will call on you.”

  “Is that an advantage?” smiled Philip
pa.

  “A doubtful one, I grant you. It depends so much on the next-door neighbour.”

  “Exactly. One’s duty to one’s neighbour is one of life’s most difficult problems. The Bible is explicit as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. It must be so much easier to make practical arrangements for one’s next-door neighbour when one finds him lying wounded on the road than it is to be pleasant when he comes round to borrow the garden shears for the fifth time in one week.”

  Caroline’s heart was beating in hammer-strokes. “Dull but worthy.” That Richard should sneer at their quiet, simple Bartenham life! The sneer might almost have been aimed at her personally. And—most cruel of all—they both seemed to have forgotten her existence. They were talking to each other as if she were not in the room. Designing. That was the word one used for women like that. And—to think it was her own mother!

  She was relieved when Mrs. Beecham, the curate’s mother, was announced. Mrs. Beecham was arranging the annual sale of work for the local hospital, at which Caroline usually had a stall. Conversation was general for a few minutes, then Mrs. Beecham began to discuss the arrangements for the sale with Caroline, while Richard and Philippa, on the opposite side of the hearth, continued their conversation. Caroline strained her ears to hear what they were saying, but could only catch a word here and there.

  Richard was laughing a good deal more than he usually did, she noticed, and at nothing at all, as far as she could make out. Each time his laugh rang out, her heart contracted with a sharp physical pain.

  “And you’ll bring your usual band of young helpers, won’t you?” said Mrs. Beecham. She was a large majestic woman with prominent features and a gushing manner. “You can do anything with young people. My Rosa always tells me how she used to love your lessons at St. Monica’s. It’s a wonderful gift, Miss Cunliffe, and I do congratulate you on it.”

  Caroline was silent for a moment, hoping that the other two had heard the little tribute, but Richard was laughing at something Philippa had just said, and it was clear that they had not heard.

  “I’ve had a lot to do with young people,” said Caroline clearly. “I understand them.”

  “I should think you do, Miss Cunliffe. We all know how wonderfully you understand them and what a wonderful mother you’ve been to your own young people.”

  Again Caroline was silent, but again it was obvious that the other two were not listening. They were discussing Philippa’s visit to Town on Tuesday. Richard was suggesting that he should drive her up in his car. A sick hatred that she had never before known or even imagined filled Caroline’s heart. Her breath came quickly, and a pulse seemed to beat so loudly in her ears that she could not hear what Mrs. Beecham was saying. By the time it stopped, Mrs. Beecham had left the subject of her hostess’s perfections and was discussing the efforts that were being made in Bartenham to mitigate the lot of the unemployed.

  “It’s really pitiful, Miss Cunliffe. Some of them, of course, aren’t on the dole at all. They can literally barely keep body and soul together.”

  “I know,” said Caroline. “That’s why I can’t understand people spending money on expensive clothes when there’s so much poverty and suffering in the world. It’s nothing less than murder. It sounds fantastic to say that an extravagant woman’s dress or hat may kill a child, but it’s true. . . .”

  Her voice rang through the room, high-pitched and unsteady, attracting the attention of the other two at last. A sudden silence fell as they turned to her, Philippa grave and concerned, Richard acutely embarrassed. Mrs. Beecham continued to look complacent and assured.

  “I’m sure no one can accuse you of extravagance, Miss Cunliffe,” she said.

  “No, I inherited a strong social conscience from my father,” said Caroline. “I think I can honestly say that I never spend a penny more than is absolutely necessary on myself. I went through a hard school, of course, in bringing up my young brother and sisters.”

  She had control of herself now and spoke quite steadily. The words were addressed to Mrs. Beecham, but really she was arraigning Philippa fiercely, passionately, at the bar of Richard’s judgement.

  “You don’t look well, dear,” said Mrs. Beecham solicitously.

  “I feel quite well,” said Caroline, “but—it’s rather close today, isn’t it?”

  Mrs. Beecham rose, smiling.

  “I think it’s cold,” she said, “but I always say no two people ever feel the same about the weather. It’s all a matter of constitution. Well, I must really be going now, my dear.”

  She shook hands with the other two, and Caroline saw her to the front door. When she had gone, Caroline stood for a few moments in the hall, trying to recover her self-possession. She was still breathless and trembling. She had heard Fay come down to the dining-room. She must have had her tea now and be doing her home-work. She wondered whether to go in to her and wait there till she felt less agitated, but she didn’t want the child to guess that anything was wrong. Even Mrs. Beecham had said that she didn’t look well. She daren’t let herself think of Philippa lest that hot breathless feeling of anger should surge over her again. She went slowly back to the drawing-room.

  “I’ve just been telling Philippa about Mrs. Beecham,” said Richard.

  “What about her?” said Caroline.

  Mrs. Beecham, with her gush and complacency and her habit of inaugurating innumerable pieces of social work and leaving them for someone else to carry on, was a local joke, and Richard and Caroline had often smiled together over her vagaries.

  But now Mrs. Beecham seemed to Caroline part of the safe ordered world that was, she felt, being undermined by Philippa’s baneful influence. So she fixed cold blue eyes on Richard and said:

  “What about her?”

  “In general and in particular. In particular of the time she met the Vicar of St. Mary’s in the ’bus and said——”

  “Please, Richard. Mrs. Beecham is a friend of mine.”

  “Sorry,” said Richard. He looked at her, puzzled. “You don’t look well, you know, Caroline.”

  “I’m perfectly well,” said Caroline. She turned to Philippa. “Did you say that you overtook Fay?”

  “Yes.”

  “You hadn’t arranged to meet her?”

  “Oh no. I’d no idea what train I’d be coming back by. That nice boy—what’s his name?—Billy Dickson—came back with us, too, as far as the gate.”

  “How did that happen?”

  Philippa smiled.

  “How do I know, my dear? He just appeared.”

  At that smile of Philippa’s—a smile that took it as a matter of course that Fay, Fay of all people, should indulge in the crude banality of a “boy friend”—the hot suffocating feeling of anger swept over her again.

  “It was extremely impertinent of him,” she said shortly. “I don’t care for any of the Dicksons and neither does Fay.”

  “I thought that Sybil was her friend.”

  “They have to see a certain amount of each other at school, of course, as they’re in the same form, but Fay doesn’t care for either her or her brother.”

  “I suppose the piano’s the attraction then?” said Philippa innocently.

  Caroline stared at her in silence.

  “The piano?” she said at last.

  “Yes.” Philippa was obviously puzzled by Caroline’s tone. “The Dicksons’ piano.”

  “What about the Dicksons’ piano?”

  “Well . . . I gathered that Fay sometimes calls there after school to play on it, that’s all.”

  “Did Fay tell you so?”

  “No. Billy was referring to it. I overtook the two of them. He generally walks up from school with her, doesn’t he?”

  Two red spots blazed in Caroline’s pale cheeks.

  “If anything like that had ever happened,” she said, “Fay would have told me at once.”

  Philippa threw out her hands in a little deprecating gesture.

  “But, Caroline, what
does it matter? Fay’s an attractive girl, and it’s natural that she should enjoy a boy’s admiration.”

  Suddenly Caroline’s self-control broke down.

  “I dare say it is to you,” she flamed. “I can quite believe that your standards and mine on a subject like that would be as far apart as the poles.”

  “Caroline!” said Richard.

  “It’s all right, Richard,” said Philippa. “I’m sorry, Caroline. I’m stupid and exceedingly tactless. I think I’ll go up and wash now.”

  She went out of the room.

  “You oughtn’t to have said that to your mother, Caroline,” said Richard as the door closed.

  Caroline was very white.

  “I think I’m the best judge of what I ought or ought not to say to anyone,” she replied.

  He shrugged.

  “I’m sorry, anyway. I suppose I’d better go now. . . .” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, Caroline. Don’t bother to come with me. I can let myself out.”

  “Goodbye.”

  He was gone. . . . She heard the closing of the front door. She stood where he had left her, staring in front of her, her lips tightly set. There were a lot of things to see to. She must speak to Fay, for one thing, though, of course, what Philippa had said was ridiculous on the face of it. Billy Dickson might have been with Fay today, but it had never happened before, or Fay would have told her at once. First of all, though, she must get back her serenity, that serenity on which she had always prided herself. It had been a trying afternoon. She had had to speak sharply to Philippa. She always disliked doing that, but sometimes, as this afternoon, it was necessary. There were times when one had to stand up for one’s ideals without flinching, to speak out plainly and to the point, to rebuke what one disapproved of without compunction or compromise. That was what she had had to do this afternoon. It had been her clear duty, and she had not shrunk from it, even at the cost of offending both Philippa and Richard. Richard. . . . That, of course, was what hurt so intolerably. That Richard should fail her, should join the ranks of the disloyal. But, still, it was best that she should see him as he really was before it was too late, however much suffering it cost her. She thought of that bond of love and understanding that had seemed to unite them earlier in the afternoon, and her eyes swam suddenly with tears.